Black Widow Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1934 by S. Fowler Wright

  Copyright © 2009 by the Estate of S. Fowler Wright

  Originally published under the title, Who Else But She?

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  CHAPTER I.

  Chief Inspector Pinkey was annoyed. The crime (for he was disposed to agree with the view of the local police that the possibility of suicide could be eliminated) had been committed within a few minutes of 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday last, and now it was 11:30 on Tuesday morning; and it was only an hour ago that the assistance of Scotland Yard had been solicited by the Chief Constable of Buckfordshire, and within ten minutes of that telephone conversation he had been in a taxi for Paddington. Now he gazed at the high banks of the railway cutting, pleasant in October sunshine, as the train pulled slowly up the Chiltern gradients, and wondered how many clues had been blurred or obliterated before he had been called in to clear up a puzzle which the local officers had been unwilling to consider beyond their powers. Well, there was nothing new in that. He knew that it was of the first importance that he should stifle his annoyance and accept it cheerfully.

  Any impatience on his part, any affectation of superiority, would make a difficult problem even harder than it must inevitably be. He must put aside all he had heard, all he had read, even all the possibilities that had engaged his mind as he had thought it over during the last few days (anticipating the possibility that he might soon be travelling in this direction), and approach it freshly. That was always the safest way. He got out at Ricksfield to change into the local train.

  The village of Beacon’s Cross lies about two miles from the station of that name. Inspector Pinkey remembered reading of this distance, and hoped that he would not be obliged to walk. Probably there would be a taxi. But you could never be sure at these little country stations. And he had a rather heavy bag. It was with a real gratitude, disposing him to unusual geniality, that he found himself being greeted by a tall man of somewhat military aspect, who announced that he was Superintendent Trackfield of the County Constabulary.

  “I’m driving myself,” he added, “so that we can talk freely. There aren’t many places where you can be equally certain that you couldn’t be overheard.”

  Inspector Pinkey had a moment of wonder as to whether this local policeman really believed this to be a remark of unusual profundity. Was he anxious to show that the country constabulary are shrewder than is commonly believed in the metropolitan area?

  “Yes,” he said, in a rather drier voice than he had meant it to be, “when you’ve looked under the seat.”

  “Under the seat?” Superintendent Trackfield had a moment of surprise. Then his face cleared. “Oh yes. I see. You don’t mean that too literally. You mean when you’ve had a good look inside. Oh yes, of course.”

  By this time they were in the car.

  The two officers exchanged platitudes upon the weather and the Cotswold Hills. Inspector Pinkey was too accustomed to the delicate operation of taking over investigations from less experienced or less competent hands to feel any awkwardness, but he knew the importance of doing it in a tactful way. It was to open the subject rather than to gain information that he remarked: “I understand that the inquest has been adjourned?”

  But to Superintendent Trackfield, remembering the unadvertised reason for that adjournment, it was an unpleasant question to hear, and many would have given it a shorter answer. Chief Inspector Pinkey could observe that Trackfield might be obtuse, but he was an honest man. He said:

  “Yes. You see, I told the coroner that we were about to arrest Lady Denton, and so he agreed to adjourn sine die in the usual way. After that Sir Henry said he’d like to go over the evidence again before we committed ourselves finally, and then he said he wasn’t quite satisfied, and he’d decided to call you in.”

  Sir Henry Titterton was the Chief Constable of Buckfordshire.

  “The evidence against Lady Denton must have appeared fairly strong. You felt satisfied of her guilt?”

  The answer came rather stiffly. “Obviously. I applied for a warrant for her arrest.”

  Inspector Pinkey thought silently: “And you are still convinced of her guilt.” He reminded himself again of the necessity of keeping an open mind. It might be true, as the obvious often is—but not always. What he said was: “Going by the Press photographs, she seems to be quite an attractive woman.”

  The Superintendent agreed. Exceptionally. He added that she was very popular also.

  “Not the sort you would expect to be guilty of such a crime?”

  “Not in the least.” Trackfield was quite frank about that. The experienced ears of the Scotland Yard officer caught a tone which suggested that, though the speaker had been resolved to arrest her, he had not been entirely insensible of the lady’s charm. It was confirmed by the remark that followed, rather stolidly spoken. “But you have to go on the evidence.”

  “That,” Inspector Pinkey thought silently, “is an indisputable proposition, which makes it particularly important that the evidence should be considered by those who are most competent to handle it.” But it was obviously not a reflection to be spoken aloud What he said was: “I was told—it was not in the press reports—that you are able to fix the time with certainty, owing to one of your own men having heard the shot.”

  Trackfield agreed again. “There is no doubt about that. But it was not one of my men. I was cycling along the lane below Bywater Grange when I heard the shot. I reached the station within five minutes, and it was then four minutes after five, as our records happen to show in a particularly conclusive way. Unfortunately, the exact time is not one of the decisive elements in the case. It does no more than confirm all the evidence of those who were in the house. Indeed, you may say that the time is the one point about which there has never been any doubt.”

  “Still, it’s an advantage to know that we can accept that. I suppose you were quite near?”

  “Yes, out of sight, but quite close. The lane is slightly hollowed, and there’s a tall hedge. On the other side, a narrow strip of paddock divides the grounds of the Grange from the road. Sir Daniel’s study faced that way, looking across a rather wide lawn to a strip of flower bed, and a background of laurels that hid the field fence from the house.”

  “And you heard or saw nothing beside the shot?”

  “Nothing at all. Had I done so, I should have stopped to investigate then.”

  “Yes, of course. I suppose there was nothing remarkable in the sound of a shot coming from that direction? I dare say they’d often be potting a rabbit in the grounds?”

  “No, I can’t say that. I don’t think Sir Daniel ever used a gun, or Mr. Gerard either. The gardener may take a shot at the birds sometimes, but I don’t know.” Inspector Trackfield had answered frankly, but he saw the implication of the question, which he did not like. He added: “It’s just that there’s so much shooting round here that we get in the habit of taking no notice. If I told our men to follow up every shot they hear, they’d be off the road half their time, and a nuisance to every neighbour I have.”

  “Yes, I see.” The Inspector fell silent. He thought that, whatever absurdity there might be in ordering constables to investigate every shot they heard, it was a very different proposition that their Superintendent should ride on when he heard a shot in a house nearby, from which no sound should be expected to come, without investigating what it might mean. But it was a thought which should not be spoken aloud. He thought also that, if the tale told by the inmates of the house were true, there was no one (on his own account) who had been better placed than the Superintendent to have committed the crime himself. But it would be still more inexpedient to say tha
t!

  Still, he resolved to keep an open mind on that too. The fact that it was the Superintendent’s own witness that he had heard the shot was in his favour, of course. But it might mean no more than that he thought he might have been observed as he rode away, and wished to disarm suspicion before it arose.

  He looked at the Superintendent, and decided that it was not a probable guess. Still—he had proved more improbable things before now. Suppose that the Chief Constable had had the same idea, which was why he had refused the warrant for Lady Denton’s arrest? Suppose he had hesitated to accuse his own assistant, and that that was why Scotland Yard had been called in? He must just investigate whether there had been any quarrel between the Superintendent and the dead man.

  As he reflected thus, the car drew up at the police station and he went in to examine the statements which had been taken, on the particulars of which Lady Denton’s arrest had been based.

  He looked up from this perusal to ask: “Does she know I have been called in?”

  “Yes. She has offered to put you up at the Grange while you are here.”

  “Then I may take that as arranged?”

  “I said I would tell you when you arrived. I thought you might prefer to stay at the Station Inn.”

  “Any reason for that?”

  “Only that you might feel freer to go about investigations in your own way. And if you’re going to arrest a lady for murder….”

  “Yes, I see. But I don’t know that I am. We’re all innocent, you know, till we’re found out. You might tell someone to phone Lady Denton that I’ll be there in an hour’s time.”

  “There’s one other thing—I don’t say it’s a reason why you should stay at the inn, but it’s just a fact you might like to know before you decide. Redwin’s still there.”

  “Redwin? I’m not sure I’ve heard his name yet. How does he come in?”

  “Well, I can’t say that he does. Only, he was the natural man to suspect. He’d been Sir Daniel’s secretary for three years, and the only one he appeared to trust. And then he was suddenly accused of financial dishonesty, and turned out of the house. That was only a few days before Sir Daniel was shot. The tale is that there was a violent scene, and Redwin left protesting that he was an innocent man, and threatening that he’d make them sorry before he’d done.

  “He wouldn’t leave the district. He put up at the Station Inn, and went to Forbes and Fisher, a firm of Ricksfield solicitors who have a branch office here, and asked them to take up the case, which they wouldn’t do.

  “We’ve got two witnesses who heard him swear in the bar that he wouldn’t leave till he’d had his rights, and that if he couldn’t make Sir Daniel pay in one way, he’ll find another that he’d like less.

  “In fact, there was enough evidence against him to have justified detaining him on suspicion at once, but for one thing that there’s no getting past—he wasn’t there at the time.”

  “Certain?”

  “Quite. There’s the landlord himself, and two other witnesses—men who’ve lived here for forty years, and whose word anyone’d take. They don’t love him overmuch either; but they’d all swear that he was playing billiards in the smoke room from four o’clock till after six, and we’d been called in, and Sir Daniel an hour dead, before then.”

  “That is if you can be sure that the shot you heard was the one that killed him.”

  Superintendent Trackfield did not look grateful for this suggestion. It was an idea which, until that mo­ment, had not entered his mind, and, now that it was introduced, he thought that it approached the fantastic. His experience was that the obvious was most often true. He had passed Bywater Grange at 5:00 p.m. and heard a shot, where shots were not usually fired. It had after­wards been reported by various witnesses that a fatal shot had been fired at Sir Daniel Denton at the time in the library of that house. Obviously, the shot he had heard had been that from which Sir Daniel had died. It was equally obvious that those witnesses—six in all—could not all be wrong as to the time of the tragedy.

  No; he hadn’t considered that contingency, and he didn’t blame himself in the least. He said: “I think when you’ve gone further into the case, you’ll agree.”

  Inspector Pinkey, judging from the tone of this reply that he was on rather thin ice, became tactful again.

  “Yes. I expect I shall. I don’t think I’ll go to the inn. The lady seems likely to be able to tell me more. You might let her know now. And when that’s off our minds, perhaps you’ll give me the whole story from your angle, and explain why you feel sufficiently confident of Lady Denton’s guilt to justify locking her up.”

  “Yes, I can soon do that. The facts are simple enough, if we agree that Lady Denton must have fired the shot. It’s only if we accept her story that they become hard to explain.

  “Sir Daniel was in his study at the time. Lady Denton says that, as far as she knows, he was alone. The study has French windows opening on to the lawn. They were unbolted, if not actually standing wide. Sir Daniel’s desk faces the window, and he appears to have been standing at it, having risen from his chair, but still facing the window, when the shot was fired.

  “The door was behind his back. It opens on to a passage, which has the drawing room door almost opposite. Lady Denton says that she was in the drawing room when she heard the shot and the sound of Sir Daniel’s fall—that was quite possible, he’s a heavy man—and ran into the room. She says she saw him on the floor, bleeding from the head, and screamed for help.

  “Sir Daniel’s half-brother, Gerard, who lives with them, was in the library, the door of which is further along the passage. He says he didn’t hear the shot or the fall—which is possible, too, for the library has a heavy, close-fitting door, and its windows are on the further side of the house—but he heard Lady Denton’s scream, and ran to her.

  “Lady Denton confirms this. She says he was with her almost at once.

  “Mr. Gerard says that he went out on to the lawn to see if anyone was in sight. He cannot remember whether the windows were open, but, if not, they opened at a touch. He found the gardener’s boy on the path, within sight of the window. He questioned him, and was told that no one had entered or left by that window for an hour or more previously, during which time the boy had been weeding the path.

  “The head gardener was working at the side of the path somewhat further away, and out of sight of the window, owing to the curve of the drive. He is deaf and heard nothing.

  “The boy says he heard the shot, and started to run to the window to see what it was, but the gardener called him back and told him to get on with his work.

  “The gardener confirms this. He says that, being deaf, he heard nothing, but he was keeping a watchful eye on the boy, whom he charges with a habit of slipping round the house to talk with the kitchen maid more frequently than he approves. He agrees that the boy resumed his work when he called him back, and they both say it was not more than three or four minutes after that Mr. Gerard came out.”

  “Anyone else in the house?”

  “No one except the servants. There are a cook, a house parlour maid, and the kitchen maid I mentioned before. They appear to have been about the kitchen or pantries at this time, within hearing and practically within sight of each other. Even if there were any reason to suspect any one of them of such a crime, they each have alibis from the other two. There was no one else in the house at the time.”

  “That is, so far as we know yet.”

  “Yes, of course. It didn’t seem necessary to say that.”

  Inspector Pinkey realized that he had been tactless again. “Beg pardon,” he said, “I didn’t mean it the wrong way. I don’t think I’ve often heard a statement so clearly put. What about the weapon?”

  “It was a rather old-fashioned revolver which belonged to Sir Daniel, and which, if we’re told the truth now, he used to keep very carelessly in an unlocked drawer of his desk.”

  “Lady Denton says that?”

  “Ye
s. And Mr. Gerard.”

  “Well, they ought to know. No possible doubt that the bullet came from that gun?”

  “Practically none. I ought to tell you that it’s one of a pair, of which Mr. Gerard had the other. He told me about it quite frankly, and turned it up from the bottom of an old trunk. He said he hadn’t fired it or had it out for years, which its appearance confirmed.”

  “How do we know that he didn’t own both?”

  “We’ve Lady Denton’s statement as well as his.”

  “Yes, I see. Couldn’t it have been possible for this Mr. Gerard to have run back to the library after firing the shot, and then come back when Lady Denton screamed?”

  “We’ve her own evidence again against that. She says there wouldn’t have been possible time. She says she went instantly when she heard the shot.”

  “Then it comes to this: that it was suicide, or she’s shielding her half-brother-in-law, or else she did it herself, as you think she did.”

  “Yes, but she wouldn’t shield him. I shouldn’t say that they’re on good enough terms for that. Not if she found she might be going to hang for him anyway.”

  “And, if you’d arrested her, it might have led up to the truth, even if she didn’t do it herself? Well, I wouldn’t say you were wrong, if you thought that—but what does she say herself? Doesn’t she put forward any explanation at all?”

  “She says he must have done it himself.”

  “And Sir Lionel Tipshift didn’t agree?”

  “No, we’ve got his report here.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen a copy of that, but it’ll bear reading again.”

  Inspector Pinkey took up the report of the eminent Government expert, and read it as carefully as though he saw it for the first time. But he had finished it for some moments before he lifted his eyes from the paper and spoke again. He was silently reviewing the tale he had heard in a very experienced mind, and was inclining toward agreement with Superintendent Trackfield’s conclusion. He thought it likely that Lady Denton’s remaining hours of freedom would not be many. But he would see for himself, and resolutely keep an open mind until then. He mustn’t even forget his theory that the Superintendent might have done it himself!