2: Murder of the Unknown Woman

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STARTLED though I was at this sudden announcement, my first instinct was to notice its effect upon the people sitting around me. Chaney caught his breath with a sharp click. Windover half started to his feet, as if to make for the door, which Doxford had left half-open. Lord Cheverdale threw up his hands with a groan of dismay: his daughter’s already prominent eyes seemed to protrude more than ever. Craye frowned incredulously, staring at Doxford. The only person who showed nothing whatever was Paley. Paley, who had been making (what I supposed to be) notes, on a pad in front of him, went calmly on with his work and did not even look up.

Lord Cheverdale’s voice, agitated, shaking, broke the silence.

‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘That woman? Surely----’

‘From the hurried description given me, I should say it is that woman, my lord,’ said Doxford. ‘A double murder! The same motive, no doubt, to cover up the secret! Or, perhaps, to obtain possession of it. First, Mr. Hannington---now, the woman.’

‘Where is this place---Little Custom Street?’ asked Lord Cheverdale.

‘Near Great Portland Street,’ replied Doxford. ‘There are various new buildings there---flats, I fancy. Probably this woman occupied a flat.’

‘You had better go there at once,’ interrupted Lord Cheverdale. ‘All of you! Let me know what you discover. Murder---double murder! Dear, dear----!’

He broke off and hurried away from the room, followed by his daughter and Craye. Paley looked up from his writing---at me and Chaney.

‘You had better accompany the detectives,’ he said calmly. ‘Lord Cheverdale will want to know everything. And one thing he’ll want to know at once---and that’s if it really is the woman who called on Hannington.’

‘Who’s to identify her?---I mean, to prove that?’ asked Windover.

Paley pointed the end of his pen towards Miss Hetherley.

‘Miss Hetherley will go with you,’ he answered. ‘She saw the woman.’

Miss Hetherley made a grimace indicative of her dislike to the commission.

‘I told you she was very heavily veiled,’ she said. ‘I haven’t the remotest idea of her features, hair, eyes, colour, anything! I----’

‘General appearance---clothes---so on,’ broke in Paley. ‘You can identify her quite well. Telephone me if it is the woman,’ he went on, turning to Doxford. ‘The various details can wait. The car will take you there.’

We went out to the big car, still waiting at the door, and climbed into it.

‘Cool hand, that!’ remarked Windover, nodding his head at the windows of the room we had just left. ‘That secretary chap, I mean. Murder don’t seem anything out of the way to him!’

‘Human iceberg!’ declared Miss Hetherley, who was obviously ruffled. ‘However, I am not going to be ordered about by him. And how can I identify this woman when I never saw her face and----’

‘Oh, well, Paley was right there, though,’ said Doxford. ‘General appearance, you know, Miss Hetherley. You can remember how the woman was dressed, for instance? Also her height, build, and so on. Unpleasant business, of course, but---as I’ve had occasion to remark before---this is murder! And---double murder! If the thing was serious before it’s ten times as serious now.’

‘Why ten times?’ asked Miss Hetherley.

‘Well, twenty times, then!’ retorted Doxford. ‘Fifty times---a hundred times---a thousand times! Why? Why, because it shows that the murderer would stop at nothing! One life---two lives---we may hear of three lives yet.’

‘You don’t know that this is the work of the same hand,’ said Miss Hetherley. ‘There may have been two or three men at work.’

‘We don’t know anything,’ admitted Doxford, good-humouredly. ‘But we soon shall know something. Here’s Little Custom Street.’

The big car swung out of Great Portland Street into a labyrinth of small streets lying to its eastward. Little Custom Street was one of the smallest. Whatever sort of houses or shops or anything else had been in it, originally, had disappeared---each side of its short extent was now filled up by blocks of brand-new flats. And at the entrance of one of these---Minerva House---presided over by two or three policemen, was a group of inquisitives; men, women, children, all open-eyed and wide-mouthed with excitement.

A plain-clothes man, emerging from the door as we approached it, recognized Inspector Doxford and saluted.

‘Top flat---No. 12,’ he said. ‘There are two or three of our people up there---I’m seeing about the removal of the body.’

He hurried off, and we entered the lobby, guarded by two more policemen, in uniform. Chaney gave my elbow a nudge.

‘Take particular notice of all you see as we go up,’ he whispered. ‘You notice one thing at once: there’s no lift here. Flight of stone steps---nothing but that. That’s a matter to be noted---but look carefully at everything.’

I obeyed his orders, knowing that he would have some reason. And what I noted, in the course of our progress to the top of the building was as follows: Within the door of the main entrance was a hall, or lobby, some nine feet square. On the left of this, facing the door, was the beginning of the stone staircase which Chaney had indicated. On the right, a similar stair led downwards to---presumably---the basement. At the top of the first flight of steps we were faced by two doors, one left, one right; the one on the left was lettered No. 1, that on the right, No. 2. Then came another short flight of steps, terminating in a landing on which there was a window looking out on the street. Then another flight, at the head of which were two more doors---No. 3, No. 4. This arrangement of flats and steps and windows went on till we came to the very top of the house and confronted No. 11 and No. 12. It was a long and toilsome way up, but there was one significant thing about our progress: every door we passed, from 1 to 11 was closed---not a single one of the occupants of these eleven flats had his or her head out. I have often wondered since, if, at that moment, any of those flat-holders knew what had happened in the top story?

The door of flat No. 12 stood wide open, and we crowded in. I say crowded, for the place was limited in space---probably the flats had been designed for single persons or for married couples without children. There was a little entrance lobby, a kitchen behind it, a bedroom and a sitting-room. And in the bedroom, on the bed, lay the dead woman. The detectives who were already there took us in to see her, after hearing from Doxford that Miss Hetherley would probably be able to identify the body. And Miss Hetherley was swift in what she did. One quick but searching look gave satisfaction.

‘That is the woman who came to see Mr. Hannington yesterday afternoon!’ she said. ‘I am certain of it! I have no doubt whatever!’

‘You can point to something, Miss Hetherley?’ asked Doxford.

‘Yes! I could not identify her by her face or features, because, as I’ve told you, she was heavily veiled,’ replied Miss Hetherley. ‘But I recognize the ear-rings and the dress---and also that coat,’ she added, pointing to a garment thrown aside on the chair. ‘The ear-rings, you see, are of an unusually large and heavy pattern; the dress is, well, Parisian; the coat is foreign, too.’

‘You’ve no doubt?’ said Doxford.

‘None whatever!’ declared Miss Hetherley. ‘None! And---may I go now?’

But Chaney begged her to stay---a while, anyway: there might be something he wanted to ask her about or to which he wished to draw her attention. We went into the sitting-room with her: the police-surgeon who had been fetched was there, with another medical man; they were telling the results of their examination to one of Doxford’s fellow inspectors. We listened.

‘This woman,’ one of the doctors was saying, ‘was killed by blows on the head inflicted by some heavy blunt instrument. Death----’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ interrupted Chaney, ‘but have you formed any opinion as to what particular sort of blunt instrument?’

The doctor reflected a moment.

‘Well!’ he said, ‘I hadn’t thought too closely on that matter, but I can tell you what sort of instrument would have caused the injuries. An old-fashioned life-preserver!---probably covered at the thick end with wash-leather.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Chaney. ‘Exactly my own opinion. You were about to say----?’

‘I was about to say that death was instantaneous. And in my opinion, and that of my colleague here, it probably took place---this murder, I mean---about one o’clock this morning. Sometime, anyway, between midnight and one o’clock. It was about noon when we were fetched here, and we are of opinion that the woman had then been dead at least eleven hours, and perhaps a little longer. That opinion may be of use to you.’

We turned to the work of examining the flat. And here I may say at once that it needed no more than one comprehensive glance to suggest the murderer’s real object---search!---search---and the discovery of . . . something. Whether the search had been successful; whether the something had been found, who could tell? But there was the fact---the tiny place had been turned upside down, ransacked from top to bottom; anything in the shape of cupboard, receptacle of any sort had been searched, perhaps rapidly, but without doubt, thoroughly. It seemed to us---the detectives, Chaney, and myself---that the woman had been struck down and silenced for ever, immediately after her assailant’s entrance, and that he had then set to work, swiftly and methodically, to search for what he wanted: he had even gone so far as to turn up carpets and hearthrugs and look behind every cushion in the place.

‘The woman’s personal belongings?’ suggested somebody. ‘Her luggage?’

What she had of this sort was in the little bedroom, where her dead body still lay. There were three articles; a medium-sized, square trunk, of foreign manufacture; a small suit-case; a hand-bag (not of the vanity-bag variety, but a substantial, useful article); these two last-named articles were also of foreign origin. The trunk contained clothing; gowns, linen and the like---it was obvious that its contents, probably neatly packed when the murderer began to search, had been taken out, examined, rammed in again any way: the same remark applied to the suit-case. The hand-bag contained various small feminine matters, toilet articles, a French novel or two; a Paris newspaper the date of which was some fourteen days previously. But it also contained something else: an old-fashioned capacious purse. In this purse we found a sum of about thirty thousand francs, in notes of various value (the franc was at that time in a very feeble stage of its post-war history) and some £25 in English notes: in one compartment, folded in tissue paper, were five English sovereigns—Chaney at once pointed out their dates, and the fact that each bore the image and superscription of Queen Victoria; evidently they had been hoarded. And as if to prove that the murderer had had no wish to acquire ready money by the death of his victim, there lay, on the mantelpiece of the bedroom, another, a more modern purse, in which we found two £5 Bank of England notes, seventeen pounds in twenty-shilling and ten-shilling Treasury notes, and nine shillings and sixpence in silver. Also, by the side of this second purse lay a very pretty gold watch and a couple of solid gold bracelets; we had already noticed that the dead woman’s rings, good, valuable rings, were still on her fingers.

At the end of this---a merely preliminary examination of surroundings, Chaney turned to Miss Hetherley who, unwillingly enough, and being impressed by the horror of the thing, had remained with us.

‘Run your eye over that, Miss Hetherley,’ he whispered, pointing to the clothing in the trunk. ‘You know all about women’s stuff. Is that foreign---taking it altogether?’

We stood by, watching, while Miss Hetherley examined the various articles. She gave us her reply in one word.

‘All!’

Chaney turned to Doxford.

‘Let’s go down to the basement,’ he said. ‘The next person to see is the caretaker.’