Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 12, 1967

Edgar Wallace The Man Who Sang in Church

Edgar Wallace created many different detectives, crooks, and secret service agents — Mr. J. G. Reeder, Anthony Newton (The Brigand), Heine, Anthony Smith (The Mixer), Oliver O. Rater (The Orator), Four Square Jane, The Ringer, and quite a few others. But perhaps the most popular Wallace characters are The Four Just Men — later, because of the death of one, The Three Just Men — who, as self-appointed avengers (and therefore both detectives and criminals) “unearthed villainy that the law does not punish.”

“The Man Who Sang in Church” was one of the favorite detective short stories of the late James Hilton, author of GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS and LOST HORIZON...

To Leon Gonsalez went most of the cases of blackmail which came the way of the Three Just Men.

And yet, from the views he had so consistently expressed, he was the last man in the world to whom such problems should have gone, for in that famous article of his entitled Justification, which put up the sales of a quarterly magazine by some thousand per cent, he offered the following opinion:

“...as to blackmail, I see no adequate punishment but death in the case of habitual offenders. You cannot parley with the type of criminal who specializes in this loathsome form of livelihood. Obviously, there can be no side of him to which appeal can be made: no system of reformation can affect him. He is dehumanized, and may be classified with the secret poisoner, the baby-farmer, and...”

He mentioned a trade as unwholesome.

Leon found less drastic means of dealing with these pests; yet we may suppose that the more violent means which distinguished the case of Miss Brown and the man who sang in church had his heartiest approval.

There are so many types of beauty that even Leon Gonsalez, who had a passion for classification, gave up at the eighteenth subdivision of the thirty-third category of brunettes. By which time he had filled two large notebooks.

If he had not wearied of his task before he met Miss Brown, he would assuredly have recognized its hopelessness, for she fell into no category, nor had he her peculiar attractions catalogued in any of his subsections. She was dark and slim and elegant. Leon hated the word, but he was compelled to admit this characteristic. The impression she left was one of delicate fragrance. Leon called her the Lavender Girl. She called herself Brown, which was obviously not her name; also, in the matter of simulations, she wore one of those closely fitting hats that came down over a woman’s eyes and might make subsequent identification extremely difficult.

She timed her visit for the half-light of dusk — the cigarette hour that follows a good dinner, when men are inclined rather to think than to talk, and to doze than either.

Others had come at this hour to the little house in Curzon Street, where the silver triangle on the door marked the habitation of the Three Just Men, and when the bell rang George Manfred looked up at the clock.

“It is too early for the post — see who it is, Raymond: and before you go, I will tell you. It is a young lady in black, rather graceful of carriage, very nervous, and in bad trouble.”

Leon grinned as Poiccart rose heavily from his chair and went out.

“Clairvoyance rather than deduction,” he said, “and observation rather than either: from where you sit you can see the street. Why mystify our dear friend?”

George Manfred sent a ring of smoke to the ceiling.

“He is not mystified,” he said lazily. “He has seen her also. If you hadn’t been so absorbed in your newspaper you would have seen her, too. She has passed up and down the street three times on the other side. And on each occasion she has glanced toward this door. She is rather typical, and I have been wondering exactly what variety of blackmail has been practised on her.”

Here Raymond Poiccart came back.

“She wishes to see one of you,” he said. “Her name is Miss Brown — but she doesn’t look like a Miss Brown!”

Manfred nodded to Leon.

“It had better be you,” he said.

Gonsalez went to the little front drawing-room and found the girl standing with her back to the window, her face in shadow.

“I would rather you did not put on the light, please,” she said, in a calm, steady voice. “I do not wish to be recognized if you meet me again.”

Leon smiled.

“I had no intention of touching the switch,” he said. “You see, Miss—” he waited expectantly.

“Brown,” she replied, so definitely that he would have known she desired anonymity even if she had not made her request in regard to the light. “I told your friend my name.”

“You see, Miss Brown,” he went on, “we have quite a number of callers who are particularly anxious not to be recognized when we meet them again. Will you sit down? I know that you have not much time, and that you are anxious to catch a train out of town.”

She was puzzled.

“How did you know that?” she asked.

Leon made one of his superb gestures.

“Otherwise you would have waited until it was quite dark before you made your appointment. You have, in point of fact, left it just as late as you could.”

She pulled a chair to the table and sat down slowly, turning her back to the window.

“Of course that is so,” she nodded — “Yes, I have to cut it fine. Are you Mr. Manfred?”

“Gonsalez,” he corrected her.

“I want your advice,” she said.

She spoke in an even, unemotional voice, her hands lightly clasped before her on the table. Even in the dark, and unfavorably placed as she was for observation, he could see that she was beautiful. He guessed from her voice that she was about twenty-four.

“I am being blackmailed. I suppose you will tell me I should go to the police, but I am afraid the police would be of no assistance, even if I were willing to risk an appearance in court, which I am not. My father—” she hesitated — “is a government official. It would break his heart if he knew. What a fool I have been!”

“Letters?” asked Leon, sympathetically.

“Letters and other things,” she said. “About six years ago I was a medical student at St. John’s Hospital. I did not take my final exam, for reasons which you will understand. My surgical knowledge has not been of very much use to me, except... well, I once saved a man’s life, though I doubt if it was worth saving. He seems to think it was, but that has nothing to do with the case. When I was at St. John’s I got to know a fellow-student, a man whose name will not interest you, and, as girls of my age sometimes do, I fell desperately in love with him. I did not know that he was married, although he told me this before our friendship reached a climax.

“For all that followed I was to blame. There were the usual letters—”

“And these are the basis of the blackmail?” asked Leon.

She nodded.

“I was worried ill about the... affair. I gave up my work and returned home; but that doesn’t interest you, either.”

“Who is blackmailing you?” asked Leon.

She hesitated.

“The man. It is horrible, isn’t it? But he has gone down and down. I have money of my own — my mother left me £2,000 a year — and of course I have paid.”

“When did you see this man last?”

She was thinking of something else, and she did not answer him. As he repeated the question, she looked up quickly.

“Last Christmas Day — only for a moment. He was not staying with us — I mean it was at the end of...” She had become suddenly panic-stricken, confused, and was almost breathless as she went on: “I saw him by accident. Of course he did not see me, but it was a great shock... It was his voice. He always had a wonderful tenor voice.”

“He was singing?” suggested Leon, when she paused, as he guessed, in an effort to recover her self-possession.

“Yes, in church,” she said, desperately. “That is where I saw him.”

She went on speaking with great rapidity, as though she were anxious not only to dismiss from her mind that chance encounter, but to make Leon also forget.

“It was two months after this that he wrote to me — he wrote to our old address in town. He said he was in desperate need of money, and wanted £500. I had already given him more than £1,000, but I was sane enough to write and tell him I intended to do no more. It was then that he horrified me by sending a photograph of the letter — of one of the letters — I had sent him. Mr. Gonsalez, I have met another man, and... well, John had read the news of my engagement.”

“Your fiancé knows nothing about this earlier affair?”

She shook her head.

“No, nothing, and he mustn’t know. Otherwise everything would be simple. Do you imagine I would allow myself to be blackmailed any further but for that?”

Leon took a slip of paper from one pocket and a pencil from another.

“Will you tell me the name of this man? John—”

“John Letheritt, 27 Lion Row, Whitechurch Street. It is a little room that he has rented, as an office and a sleeping place. I have already had inquiries made.”

Leon waited.

“What is the crisis? Why have you come now?” he asked.

She took from her bag a letter, and he noted that it was in a clean envelope; evidently she had no intention that her real name and address should be known.

He read it and found it a typical communication. The letter demanded £3,000 by the third of the month, failing which the writer intended putting “papers” in “certain hands.” There was just that little touch of melodrama which for some curious reason the average blackmailer adopts in his communiques.

“I will see what I can do. How am I to get in touch with you?” asked Leon. “I presume that you do not wish that either your real name or your address should be known even to me.”

She did not answer until she had taken from her bag a number of banknotes.

Leon smiled.

“I think we will discuss the question of payment when we have succeeded. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to get the letters, and, if it is possible, I want you so to frighten this man that he will not trouble me again. As to the money, I shall feel so much happier if you will let me pay you now.”

“It is against the rules of the firm,” said Leon cheerfully.

She gave him a street and a number which he guessed was an accommodation address.

“Please don’t see me to the door,” she said, with a half-glance at the watch on her wrist.

He waited till the door closed behind her, and then went upstairs to his companions.

“I know so much about this lady that I could write a monograph on the subject,” he said.

“Tell us a little,” suggested Manfred. But Leon shook his head.

That evening he called at White-church Street. Lion Row was a tiny, miserable thoroughfare, more like an alley than anything, and hardly deserved its grand designation. In one of those ancient houses which must have seen the decline of Alsatia, at the top of three rickety flights of stairs, he found a door on which had been recently painted:

His knock produced no response.

He knocked again more heavily, and heard the creaking of a bed, and a harsh voice asking on the other side who was there. It took some time before he could persuade the man to open the door, and then Leon found himself in a very long, narrow room, lighted by a shadeless electric table-lamp. The furniture consisted of a bed, an old washstand, and a dingy desk piled high with unopened circulars.

He guessed the man who confronted him, dressed in a soiled shirt and trousers, to be about thirty-five; he certainly looked older. His face was unshaven and there was in the room an acrid stink of opium.

“What do you want?” growled John Letheritt, glaring suspiciously at the visitor.

With one glance Leon had taken in the man — a weakling, he guessed — one who had found and would always take the easiest way. The little pipe on the table by the bed was a direction post not to be mistaken.

Before he could answer, Letheritt went on:

“If you have come for letters you won’t find them here, my friend.” He shook a trembling hand in Leon’s face. “You can go back to dear Gwenda and tell her that you are no more successful than the last gentleman she sent.”

“A blackmailer, eh? You are the dirtiest little blackmailer I ever met,” mused Leon. “I suppose you know the young lady intends to prosecute you?”

“Let her prosecute! Let her get a warrant and have me pinched! It won’t be the first time I’ve been inside. Maybe she can get a search warrant, then she will be able to have her letters read in court. I’m saving you a lot of trouble. I’ll save Gwenda trouble, too! Engaged, eh? You’re not the prospective bridegroom?” he sneered.

“If I were, I should be wringing your neck,” said Leon calmly. “If you are a wise man—”

“I am not wise,” snarled the other. “Do not think I would be living in this pigsty if I were? I... a man with a medical degree?”

Then, with a sudden rage, he pushed his visitor towards the door.

“Get out and stay out!”

Leon was so surprised by this onslaught that he was listening to the door being locked and bolted against him before he realized what had happened.

From the man’s manner he was certain that the letters were in that room — there were a dozen places where they might be hidden: he could have overcome Letheritt with the greatest ease, bound him to the bed, and searched the room, but in these days the Three Just Men were very law-abiding people.

Instead he came back to his friends late that night with the story of his partial failure.

“If he left the house occasionally, it would be easy — but he never goes out. I even think that Raymond and I could, without the slightest trouble, make a very thorough search of the place. Letheritt has a bottle of milk left every morning, and it should not be difficult to put him to sleep if we reached the house a little after the milkman.”

Manfred shook his head.

“You’ll have to find another way; it’s hardly worthwhile antagonizing the police,” he said.

“Which is putting it mildly,” murmured Poiccart. “Who’s the lady?”

Leon repeated almost word for word the conversation he had had with Miss Brown.

“There are certain remarkable facts in her statement, and I am pretty sure they were facts, and that she was not trying to deceive me,” he said. “Curious Item No. 1 is the lady heard this man singing in church last Christmas Day. Is Mr. Letheritt the kind of person one would expect to hear exercising his vocal organs on Christmas carols? My brief acquaintance with him leads me to suppose that he isn’t. Curious Item No. 2 was the words: ‘He was not staying with us,’ or something of that sort; and he was ‘nearing the end’ — of what? Those three items are really remarkable!”

“Not particularly remarkable to me,” growled Poiccart. “He was obviously a member of a house party somewhere, and she did not know he was staying in the neighborhood, until she saw him in church. It was near the end of his visit.”

Leon shook his head.

“Letheritt has been falling for years. He has not reached his present state since last Christmas; therefore he must have been as bad — or nearly as bad — nine months ago. I really have taken a violent dislike to him, and I must get those letters.”

Manfred looked at him thoughtfully.

“They would hardly be at his banker’s, because he wouldn’t have a banker; or at his lawyer’s, because I should imagine that he is the kind of person whose acquaintance with law begins and ends in the criminal courts. I think you are right, Leon; the papers are in his room.”

Leon lost no time. Early the next morning he was in Whitechurch Street, and watched the milkman ascend to the garret where Letheritt had his foul habitation. He waited till the milkman had come out and disappeared, but, sharp as he was, he was not quick enough. By the time he had reached the top floor, the milk had been taken in, and the little phial of colorless fluid which might have acted as a preservative to the milk was unused.

The next morning he tried again, and again he failed.

On the fourth night, between the hours of one and two, he managed to gain an entry into the house, and crept noiselessly up the stairs. The door was locked from the inside, but he could reach the end of the key with a pair of narrow pliers he carried.

There was no sound from within when he snapped back the lock and turned the handle softly. But he had no way to deal with the bolts.

The next day he came again, and surveyed the house from the outside. It was possible to reach the window of the room, but he would need a very long ladder, and after a brief consultation with Manfred he decided against this method.

Manfred made a suggestion.

“Why not send him a wire, asking him to meet your Miss Brown at Liverpool Street Station? You know her Christian name?”

Leon sighed wearily.

“I tried that on the second day, my dear chap, and had little Lew Leveson on hand to ‘whizz’ him the moment he came into the street in case he was carrying the letters.”

“By ‘whizz’ you mean to pick his pocket? I can’t keep track of modern thief slang,” said Manfred. “In the days when I was actively interested, we used to call it ‘dip’.”

“You are démodé, George; ‘whizz’ is the word. But of course the beggar didn’t come out. If he owed rent I could get the brokers put in; but he does not owe rent. He is breaking no laws, and is living a fairly blameless life — except, of course, one could catch him for being in possession of opium. But that would not be much use, because the police are rather chary of allowing us to work with them.”

He shook his head.

“I am afraid I shall have to give Miss Brown a very bad report.”

It was not until a few days later that he actually wrote to the agreed address, having first discovered that it was, as he suspected, a small stationer’s shop where letters could be called for.

A week later Superintendent Meadows, who was friendly with the Three, came down to consult Manfred on a matter of a forged Spanish passport, and since Manfred was an authority on passport forgeries and had a fund of stories about Spanish criminals, it was long after midnight when the conference broke up.

Leon, who needed exercise, walked to Regent Street with Meadows, and the conversation turned to Mr. John Letheritt.

“Oh, yes, I know him well. I took him two years ago on a false pretense charge, and got him eighteen months at the London Assizes. A real bad egg, that fellow, and a bit of a ‘squeaker,’ too. He’s the man who put away Joe Lenthall, the cleverest cat burglar we’ve had for a generation. Joe got ten years, and I shouldn’t like to be this fellow when Joe comes out!”

Suddenly Leon asked a question, and when the other had answered, his companion stood stock-still in the middle of the deserted Hanover Square and doubled up with silent laughter.

“I don’t see the joke.”

“But I do,” chuckled Leon. “What a fool I’ve been! And I thought I understood the case!”

“Do you want Letheritt for anything? I know where he lives,” said Meadows.

Leon shook his head.

“No, I don’t want him: but I should very much like to have ten minutes in his room!”

Meadows looked serious.

“He’s blackmailing, eh? I wondered where he was getting his money from.”

But Leon did not enlighten him. He went back to Curzon Street and began searching certain works of reference, and followed this by an inspection of a large-scale map of the Home Counties. He was the last to go to bed, and the first to waken, for he slept in the front of the house and heard the knocking at the door.

It was raining heavily as he pulled up the window and looked out; and in the dim light of dawn he thought he recognized Superintendent Meadows. A second later he was sure of his visitor’s identity.

“Will you come down? I want to see you.”

Gonsalez slipped into his dressing gown, ran downstairs, and opened the door to the superintendent.

“You remember we were talking about Letheritt last night?” said Meadows, as Leon ushered him into the little waiting room.

The superintendent’s voice was distinctly unfriendly, and he was eyeing Leon keenly.

“Yes, I remember.”

“You didn’t by any chance go out again last night?”

“No. Why?”

Again that look of suspicion.

“Letheritt was murdered at half-past one this morning, and his room ransacked.”

Leon stared at him.

“Murdered? Have you got the murderer?” he asked at last.

“No, but we shall get him all right. He was seen coming down the rainpipe by a City policeman. Evidently he had got into Letheritt’s room through the window, and it was this discovery by the constable which led to a search of the house. The City police had to break in the door, and they found Letheritt dead on the bed. He had evidently been hit on the head with a jimmy, and ordinarily that injury would not have killed him, according to the police doctor; but in his state of health it was quite enough to put him out. A policeman went around the house to intercept the burglar, but somehow he must have escaped into one of the little alleys that abound in this part of the city, and he was next seen by a constable in Fleet Street, driving a small car, the number plate of which had been covered with mud.”

“Was the man recognized?”

“He hasn’t been — yet. What he did was to leave three fingerprints on the window, and as he was obviously an old hand at the game, that is as good as a direct identification. The City detective force called us in, but we have not been able to help them except to give them particulars of Letheritt’s past life. Incidentally, I supplied them with a copy of your fingerprints. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Delighted!” Leon said.

After the officer had left, Leon went upstairs to give the news to his two friends.

But the most startling intelligence was to come when they were sitting at breakfast. Meadows arrived. They saw his car draw up at the door, which Poiccart went out to open to him. He strode into the little room, his eyes bulging with excitement.

“Here’s a mystery which even you fellows will never be able to solve,” he said. “Do you know that this is a day of great tragedy for Scotland Yard and for the identification system? It means the destruction of a method that has been laboriously built up—”

“What are you talking about?” asked Manfred quickly.

“The fingerprint system,” said Meadows, and Poiccart, to whom the fingerprint method was something God-like, gaped at him.

“We’ve found a duplicate,” said Meadows. “The prints on the glass were undoubtedly the prints of Joe Lenthall — and Joe Lenthall is in Wilford County Prison serving the first part of twelve years’ penal servitude!”

Something made Manfred turn his head toward his friend. Leon’s eyes were blazing, his thin face wreathed in one joyous smile.

“This is the prettiest case that I have ever dealt with,” he said softly. “Now, sit down, my dear Meadows, and eat! No, no: sit down. I want to hear about Lenthall — is it possible for me to see him?”

Meadows stared at him.

“What use would that be? I tell you this is the biggest blow we have ever had! And what is more, when we showed the City policeman a photograph of Lenthall, he recognized him as the man he had seen coming down the rainpipe! I thought Lenthall had escaped, and phoned the prison. But he’s there all right.”

“Can I see Lenthall?”

Meadows hesitated.

“Yes — I think it could be managed. The Home Office is rather friendly with you, isn’t it?”

Friendly enough, apparently. By noon Leon Gonsalez was on his way to Wilford Prison, and, to his satisfaction, he went alone.

Wilford Prison is one of the smaller convict establishments, and was brought into use to house longtime convicts of good character and who were acquainted with the bookbinding and printing trade. There are several “trade” prisons in England — Maidstone is the “printing” prison, Shepton Mallet the “dyeing” prison — where prisoners may exercise their trades.

The chief warder whom Leon interviewed told him that Wilford was to be closed soon, and its inmates transferred to Maidstone. He spoke regretfully of this change.

“We’ve got a good lot of men here — they give us no trouble, and they have an easy time. We’ve had no cases of indiscipline for years. We only have one officer on night duty — that will give you an idea how quiet we are.”

“Who was the officer last night?” asked Leon, and the unexpectedness of the question took the chief warder by surprise.

“Mr. Bennett,” he said. “He’s sick today, by the way — a bilious attack. Curious thing you should ask the question: I’ve just been to see him. We had an inquiry about the man you’ve come to visit. Poor old Bennett is in bed with a terrible headache.”

“May I see the governor?” asked Leon.

The chief warder shook his head.

“He has gone to Dover with Miss Folian — his daughter. She’s gone off to the Continent.”

“Miss Gwenda Folian?” and when the chief warder nodded, Leon continued, “Is she the lady who was training to be a doctor?”

“She is a doctor,” said the other, emphatically. “Why, when Lenthall nearly died from a heart attack, she saved his life — he works in the governor’s house, and I believe he’d cut off his right hand to serve the young lady. There’s a lot of good in some of these fellows!”

They were standing in the main prison hall. Leon gazed along the grim vista of steel balconies and little doors.

“This is where the night warder sits, I suppose?” he asked, as he laid his hand on the high desk near where they were standing: “and that door leads—”

“To the governor’s quarters.”

“And Miss Gwenda often slips through there with a cup of coffee and a sandwich for the night man, I suppose?” he added, carelessly.

The chief warder was evasive.

“It would be against regulations if she did,” he said. “Now you want to see Lenthall?”

Leon shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said quietly.

“Where could a blackguard like Letheritt be singing in church on Christmas Day?” asked Leon when he was giving the intimate history of the case to his companions. “In only one place — a prison. Obviously, our Miss Brown was in that prison: the governor and his family invariably attend church. Letheritt was ‘not staying with us’ — naturally. ‘It was at the end of’ — his sentence. He had been sent to Wilford for discharge. Poor Meadows! With all his faith in fingerprints gone astray because a released convict was true to his word and went out to get the letters that I missed, while the doped Mr. Bennett slept at his desk and Miss Gwenda Folian took his place!”