Anthony Berkeley - The Silk Stocking Murders

At last Roger fired his broadside. It was a nice, unexpected broadside, and Roger had been meditating it at intervals for three glasses. In the middle of a conversation about sweet-peas and how to grow them, Roger remarked very casually:

‘So you think Lady Ursula was murdered too, do you, Moresby?’

IT is given to few people in this world to see a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard start violently; yet this was the result which rewarded Roger’s broadside. With intense gratification he watched the Chief Inspectorial countenance shiver visibly, the Chief Inspectorial bulk tauten, and the Chief Inspectorial beer come within an inch of climbing over the side of the glass; and in that moment he felt that the past was avenged.

‘Why, Mr Sheringham, sir,’ said Chief Inspector Moresby, with a poor attempt at bland astonishment, ‘whatever makes you say a thing like that?’

Roger did not reply at once. Now that he had got over the slight numbness that followed the success of his little ruse (he had hoped perhaps to make the Inspectorial eye-lid quiver slightly, but hardly more), he was filled with a genuine astonishment of no less dimensions than that which Moresby was so gallantly attempting to simulate. In attributing Lady Ursula’s death to murder he had not so much been drawing a bow at a venture as deliberately making the wildest assertion he could think of, in order to shock the Inspector into giving away the much more insignificant cause of his presence at the inquest. But, perhaps for the first time in his life, the Chief Inspector had been caught napping and given himself away, horse, foot and artillery. The very fact that he had been on his guard had only contributed to his disaster, for he had been guarding his front and Roger had attacked him in the rear.

In the meantime Roger’s brain, jerking out of the coma into which the Inspector’s start had momentarily plunged it, was making up for lost time. It did not so much think as look swiftly over a rapid series of flashing pictures. And instantly that which had before been a mystery became plain. Roger could have kicked himself that it should have taken a starting Inspector to point out to him the obvious. Murder was the only possible explanation that fitted all those puzzling facts!

‘Whew!’ he said, in some awe.

The Chief Inspector was watching him uneasily. ‘What an extraordinary idea, sir!’ he observed, and laughed hollowly.

Roger drank up the rest of his beer, looked at his watch and grabbed the Chief Inspector’s arm, all in one movement. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Lunch time. You’re lunching with me.’ And without waiting for a reply he began marching out of the place.

The Chief Inspector, for once at a decided disadvantage, was left with no option but to follow him.

Quivering all over, Roger hailed a taxi and gave the man the address of his flat.

‘Where are we going, Mr Sheringham?’ asked the Chief Inspector, whose countenance bore none of the happily expectant look of those about to lunch at another’s expense.

‘To my rooms,’ replied Roger, for once economical of words. ‘We shan’t be overheard there.’

The groan with which the Chief Inspector replied was not overheard either. It was of the spirit. But it was a very substantial spiritual groan.

In an extravagant impulse not many months ago Roger had walked into the Albany, fortified by a visit to his publisher’s and the news of the sales of his latest novel, and demanded rooms there. A set being fortunately vacant at the moment, he had stepped straight into them. Thither he led the helpless Chief Inspector, now gently perspiring all over, thrust him into a chair, mixed him a short drink in spite of his protests in which the word ‘beer’ was prominent, and went off to see about lunch. During the interval between his return and the serving of the meal, he regaled his victim with a vivid account of the coffee-growing business in Brazil, in which he had a young cousin.

‘Anthony Walton, his name is,’ he remarked with nonchalance. ‘I believe you met him once, didn’t you?’

The Chief Inspector had not even the spirit left to forget his earlier promise and retort in kind.

Let it not be thought that Chief Inspector Moresby shows up in an unworthy light in this episode. Roger had him in a cleft stick, and Moresby knew it. When police inquiries are in progress that necessitate the most profound secrecy, the smallest whisper of their existence in the Press may be enough to destroy the patient work of weeks. The Press, which may be bullied on occasions with impunity, must on others be courted by the conscientious Scotland Yard man with more delicate caution than ever lover courted the shyest of mistresses. Roger knew all this only too well, and only too well Chief Inspector Moresby knew that he knew it. But this time the situation was not amusing at all.

In the orthodox manner Roger held up any discussion of the topic at issue until the coffee had been served and the cigarettes were alight, just as big business men always do in the novels that are written about them (in real life they get down to it with the hors d’œuvres and don’t blether about, wasting valuable time). ‘And now,’ said Roger, when that stage had arrived, ‘now, Moresby, my friend, for it!’

‘For it?’ repeated Chief Inspector Moresby, still game.

‘Yes; don’t play with me, Moresby. The boot’s on the other foot now. And what are we going to do about it?’

The Chief Inspector tidily consumed the dregs in his coffee-cup. ‘That,’ he said carefully, ‘depends what we’re talking about, Mr Sheringham.’

‘Very well,’ Roger grinned unkindly. ‘I’ll put it more plainly. Do you want me to write an article for The Courier proving that Lady Ursula must have been murdered—and not only Lady Ursula, but Elsie Benham and Unity Ransome as well? Am I to call on the police to get busy and follow up my lead? It’s an article I’m simply tingling to write, you know.’

‘You are, sir? Why?’

‘Because I’ve been following up the Ransome case since the day after the death,’ said Roger with emphasis, but without truth.

In spite of himself, and the traditions of Scotland Yard concerning amateurs, the Chief Inspector was impressed. Nor did he take any trouble to hide it. ‘You have, sir?’ he said, not without admiration. ‘Well, that was very smart of you. You tumbled to it even then that it was murder?’

‘I did,’ said Roger, without blenching. ‘Ah, now we’re getting on. You agree that it was murder, then?’

‘If you must know,’ said the harrassed Chief Inspector, seeing nothing else for it, ‘I do.’

‘But you didn’t realise it as soon as I did?’ pursued the unblushing Roger. ‘You didn’t realise it, in fact, till Lady Ursula’s case came along?’

‘It’s only suspicion, even now,’ replied Moresby, adroitly avoiding a direct answer.

Roger drew for a few moments at his cigarette. ‘I’m sorry Scotland Yard’s tumbled to the idea of murder,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I’d been looking on this as my own little affair, and I’ve been putting in some hard work on it too. And you needn’t think I’m going to drop out just because you’ve stepped in. I’m determined to get to the bottom of the business (I’ve something like a personal interest in it, as it happens), with or without the police. And at present I’m far and away ahead of you.’

‘How’s that, Mr Sheringham?’

‘Well, to take only one point, do you know Unity Ransome’s real identity?’

‘Not yet, we don’t, no,’ the Chief Inspector had to confess.

‘Well, I do,’ said Roger simply.

There was another pause.