Dorothy Fielding - Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries

"He was easy to hoodwink. It was his father who had known the real Mrs. Erskine well, the younger Russell had only seen her a couple of times as a lad. But your aunt by marriage, Mrs. Fraser, of Glasgow, would only too gladly swear to you any time, as will other relations. She seemed to think that your death stopped the pressing home of some claim against you about the illegal sale of a cottage of hers. She sent me your photo..."

The woman in the white wig, and artificially shaped eyebrow, bit her grey lips.

"You are Janet Fraser, of Murry Street, Glasgow. You were engaged as a companion by the late Mrs. Erskine some fifteen years ago, after having been an unsuccessful actress for over six years. You joined her near St. Jean de Luz, and went on with her to Bayonne, where she was taken with a paralytic stroke the same night and was removed to the hospital. She died a few days later without recovering consciousness. The doctor in charge of the hospital mistook you for the mistress, and you kept up the deception. He has identified the photo of Janet Fraser—your photo without that wig on, and without that shaved peak to one eyebrow. The hotel people at Bayonne and the sisters at the hospital have also identified it. Mrs. Erskine lies buried in the churchyard there under your name. We are getting an order for her exhumation under the pretext of having her body taken to Scotland. Her identity can easily be proved by a couple of operations she had had. You assumed her name, forged her handwriting—which was a very easy one to copy. You continued to enjoy her income, until chance gave your secret away to Mrs. Clark, at that time Mabel Baker, your companion."

The woman seemed to collapse more and more as he spoke. Now she tried to pull herself up once more.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered, with a voice which was but a ghost of itself.

He stopped. "Now, look here. You can deny everything, of course, but it won't help you any; and meanwhile these others, the Clarks and the major, who, I don't doubt, are as deep in it as yourself, who've battened on you for all these years, may get off scot-free, and in any case won't get much more than a few months. Do you want that?"

Her haggard eyes opened and shut themselves convulsively, her throat worked, but she forced back the words by an effort which was visible.

"Wait—I'll go on. Robert Erskine came to England. You poisoned him to prevent his discovering the fraud. For he would have known his mother. You could not hope to always receive him in twilight as you did Mr. Russell or anyone who had ever met the real Mrs. Erskine. You wrote your letters to him as forbidding as possible in order to prevent his wanting to come to Europe and see you. But you made your big mistake when by your miserliness you only sent him one thousand pounds of the money he asked for. The whole of the five thousand would have kept him in Canada. Carter here is ready to swear that the one thousand which you finally sent him was the only money Robert Erskine ever received from you. Those letters you showed me in Paris were all forgeries. That was why you 'lost' them. You got him to supply you with a box of his stationery when you heard that he was sailing for England. The discarded box is in our possession. Unfortunately for himself, he told you that he was coming over, though he did not tell you on what business, as he had never referred to business matters with you. He gave you the name he intended to use, and you sent a letter to meet him on the boat's arrival in which you wrote of your joy at the thought of seeing him, and that he was to telegraph you as soon as he had found a hotel. He kept that letter among his papers in a safe. Otherwise you would have destroyed it as you did all the other papers in his room. But to go back, for I want you to see that there are no gaps. As soon as you knew his hotel, you flew over to England and took a room in the same house, by good luck—as you thought—getting a room very near his. You passed under the name of Mrs. Willett. You painted, padded, darkened your eyes with belladonna, and had a wig arranged to look as like a portrait of Mrs. Clark which you had with you as possible. The firm who supplied you with it, and the eyebrows meeting over the nose, kept a copy of that photo, as they always do, to safeguard themselves in case of dissatisfaction. I found an eyebrow box in the attic which bore the name of the shop."

"The others planned it. They egged me on. They were all in it!" burst out, as though in spite of herself, from the woman. "They said it was the only way."

"Very likely they did, but, you see, I have no proofs of that. All I can prove is that when you found Robert Erskine's acquaintance impossible to make, that medicine bottle of his gave you your chance. You changed the last but one dose for a deadly solution of morphia, obtained how I can't think..." Pointer knew perfectly, but he wanted her to speak, and she did.

"No, no, no! I never did such a thing!" The sane part of her brain was fighting the drugged part which wanted to babble.

"Oh, yes, you did."

"If I did, I got it from that sneering, drug-sodden fiend Vaughan."

"Robert Erskine drank the poison. When it was acting,—I take it you listened at the door—you entered his room, locked the door, unscrewed the back of the wardrobe, fastened the bolt on inside, and dragged the armchair up to it. You're a tall woman and a strong one, but you must have had some difficulty with his body before you got it safely bundled in..."

The woman turned livid.

"...with your letter to the manager in the pocket. Next you laid in some things of his which you thought would bear out your 'phone about his having gone into the country, screwed the back on again, pushed the wardrobe into position, emptied the medicine bottle on to the balcony, filled in the cough mixture again, and went through all his belongings. His bag you fastened inside a larger bag..."—This last was guess-work, but he saw by her terrified eyes that he had been right.—"Wearing Major Vaughan's shoes, you crept down the back stairs into the street. You had already oiled the lock and opened it at noon. When you had disposed of your bag, and exchanged the shoes for your own, you waited in the theatre and took a taxi back to the hotel. When you heard the arrival of the police—your door was ajar, we noticed—you put on his shoes again, and crept out on to the balcony to peer in through the blind, as you had done once before when Mr. Beale was in the room. You had intended to reach France Saturday night, but the storm which raged made flight out of the question. Even the channel boats did not go. Besides, once you knew the body had been found, you waited on to see what would happen. The telegrams which I sent Mrs. Erskine here were received and answered by Mrs. Clark. You flew to Paris, using her passport, and back again the same day after the interview with Russell and me, an interview which you were expecting and had prepared for after catching sight of Mr. Russell at the hotel."

Watts shot his chief a crestfallen glance, but the woman broke out excitedly: "She lent me that passport. She helped...They all helped...They're all in it. Yes, you're right, Inspector, they knew all about it. And ever since then I've been in hell! In hell! I knew it was only a question of time before I should be killed in my turn...oh, my head...I don't mean that! I don't know what I'm saying."

"I'll just make a note of what you say about their being implicated too." Pointer drew out a block of writing paper.

She veered around again, the hatred of years sweeping away every barrier, as the wily police-officer had hoped it would. He had a full confession of the crime, written in the first person, in his pocket, only waiting for her to sign, and for that signature he was working, leaving her no time to recover that cold nerve of hers which had been temporarily broken down, but which was sure to come again later as he well knew. There was too much tension between France and England just then for extradition to be a quick matter when the crime had been committed on French soil, but with the criminal's confession safely at the Yard the police could wait in patience the law's delays.