Sand on the Gumshoe

The Passing of Pansy

Old Pansy was a pathetic challenge to the disillusioned and patient social workers of other districts before she gravitated to Hutchinson Alley, after which they gave her up in despair.

Her blouse and skirt were ragged, and it would have seemed tidier had she worn no stockings at all rather than the remnants which revealed extensive areas of flesh where her legs vanished into the overrun and dirty shoes.

The aged derelict had lost all association with any other name than that by which she was known in Hutchinson Alley, that most unsavory street in the sinister and frowsy suburb where she did her drinking and managed to live, somehow or other.

On this late afternoon she was more drunk than usual, which as Hutchinson Alley would have admitted, was saying plenty.

When she tottered out of the hotel and swayed, blinking foolishly while she gathered her sense of direction, even her over tolerant acquaintances murmured that ‘old Pansy had a load on.’

They encouraged her with: ‘Goodnight, Pansy.’ ‘Whoops, Pansy, hold your chin up and don’t spill any.’

But the old woman was too sodden in drink to return their greetings. With eyes glazed, and retaining her equilibrium by some amazing instinct of the sozzled brain, she lurched tipsily away into the gathering shadows of the brownout.

She swayed perilously close to falling before she at last commenced her journey down the narrow alley which led to the room she called home.

In the minute or two before the group on the street corner forgot her, they speculated idly whether old Pansy would reach the squalid dwelling in which she had a room.

Most of them thought not.

But they were wrong! This was proved later when her dead body was found next morning.

It was Pokey Joe Malone who made the discovery. Pokey Joe had a marine dealer’s licence, but was more commonly known as a bottle-o.

It was only by chance that Detective-Inspector Price and Detective Richardson happened along just then and saw a uniformed policeman hurry to the hovel on the heels of an excited and grubby little boy whom Pokey Joe had despatched for help.

Detective-Inspector Price was sardonically amused to observe the rather strained look on the face of the uniformed man. The constable did not look happy. The uniformed police officers had taken a lot of beatings in Hutchinson Alley, and it was only natural that none of them liked entering it singly.

The C.I.B. chief and Richardson crossed the road just as Pokey Joe was explaining, ‘I only just poked me nose in to see if old Pansy might ‘ave an empty or two.’

There was a whine in the voice of Pokey Joe, a voice which was singularly harsh and unattractive from over much raucous yelling of his trade slogan connected with the purchase of ‘Empt EEEE bo’l’s!’.

Like all other residents of Hutchinson Alley, Pokey Joe disliked being associated with police inquiries. But he had sufficient cunning not to involve himself more deeply by concealing his discovery of the corpse. His eyes glanced from one to the other like those of a stray dog expecting a kick.

‘And that’s all I know about it, s’welp me Gawd, Mr Price,’ he whined.

The officers looked at the body of the old woman as it lay on the sorry palliase of rags in the corner. There was a dignity about her face in death which it had not worn in life within their memory.

‘Lived here like an animal, sir,’ said the young uniformed man gazing about him in disgust.

He was relieved to find that he had official company so quickly, and relieved also to think that if there should be anything criminal associated with the death of the old derelict. The chief of the C.I.B. was here in person to assume responsibility for investigations.

Detective Richardson also wrinkled his nose. ‘Her heart gave out, or she took an overdose of metho’, he said tersely.

‘Maybe, but it looks to me as though she had some sort of seizure,’ said Inspector Price. ‘She’s doubled up as though she was in some pain when she passed out, and her knuckles on her right hand are barked.’

‘Probably where she fell over when reeling home three sheets in the wind last night,’ suggested Richardson.

‘Maybe,’ said Price again.

He was looking reflectively at the dusty surface of the oilcloth covering the packing case which served the old woman as a combination dining table and cupboard. Near the centre was a stained ring, where a glass or a bottle had stood.

Price bent down and examined the makeshift table closely. Then he peered into the interior at the pitiful collection of such pantry commodities as the old woman had possessed.

He straightened up with a grunt and wandered round the untidy room, peering about him with a thoroughness which inwardly amused Richardson and openly impressed the uniformed man. Richardson was beginning to feel bored and unhappy.

‘Seems to be a simple enough case for the coroner here, sir,’ he suggested. ‘Just a case of her heart conking out after too much cheap plonk.’

‘Yes, that’ll be it sure enough,’ agreed the constable. ‘Old Pansy was a whale for the grog and there’s no reason why anyone should do her in.’

‘Yet I think it was murder.’

The two young men were startled by Price’s quiet statement.

‘MURDER!’ gasped the uniformed constable.

‘Who would want to murder this poor old derelict?’ demanded Richardson.

‘In our records you’ll find quite a number of cases where old women, just as unlovely and bedraggled as Pansy, were murdered,’ said Price slowly. ‘The first question young detectives always asked was who could be bothered murdering such frowsy old waifs, and why.’

Richardson looked a bit shamefaced. Off hand, he could recall several similar cases which had caused the C.I.B. infinite trouble before it was able to put the murderers in the dock.

‘Better telephone to the C.I.B. and get the Science Section men here at once,’ Price told him. ‘I want every bit of this room investigated before the body is examined and taken away.’

Richardson hastened down the street to the nearest telephone. In his own mind he was quite satisfied that Inspector Price was over-dramatising a case of what, at the worst, could only be alcoholic poisoning.

He returned from telephoning, and a few minutes later, was watching the fingerprint men and the police photographer at work.

He looked in vain for indications of a struggle. There was no sign, as far as he could see, that a murderer had either violently or subtly brought death to this old woman whose dignity of features was now in curious contrast to her rags.

In spite of this, he noted that the Science Section men were going over every inch of the room with a thoroughness that pleased Inspector Price as much as it irked the young detective to witness such waste of time.

Price left them at it while he interviewed the other dwellers in the ramshackle dwelling. Most of them he knew, and with his old-fashioned hat stuck carelessly on the back of his head, he questioned them with a camaraderie which surprised Richardson. The interrogation of a bleary old hag in a front room was typical.

‘Hello, Maggie, you’re looking more beautiful than ever. Now you know that you have lost your good friend and neighbor, old Pansy, you might tell us if she had any callers last night.’

The blowsy old crone leered in a manner which Richardson found most objectionable.

‘Now, Mr Price, you know – well, that Pansy and me was past having visitors. The only man that ever called on us was that hook-nosed so-and-so squirt sent by the landlord. Who the hell else would call on Pansy?’

She leered again, and it made Detective Richardson feel unclean merely to behold it. Immorality and debauchery had carved their repulsive tracery deeply into the face of the old woman.

The sensitive and impressionable imagination of the young detective sought to picture her as a young woman, and failed abjectly. Snaggled-toothed and brazenly vile, she winked at Price.

‘This young feller here is too high and mighty, Inspector. He wouldn’t believe that Pansy and me was as fine a pair as you could see, when we was young ‘uns. But we was, you take it from me.’

Inspector Price did not reveal his quickened interest as he said casually, ‘So you knew Pansy when she was young eh, Maggie?’

The hag shrugged. To his disappointment, she added:

‘Hell, no, of course I didn’t. Never seen her in me life before she came to Hutchinson Alley, but you could tell she was a good looker when she was young. At least, they could as ain’t too superior,’ she went on with a sharp and disapproving glance at Detective Richardson.

Inspector Price was very patient. He chattered on and on with one after another as though he had all day to spare and could think of no better way of spending his time than exchanging pleasantries with residents of Hutchinson Alley. His patience got him nowhere.

No one could remember any stranger calling. More than a dozen could testify that old Pansy had reached her abode about 6.30 the previous evening, a bit drunker than usual, but no different otherwise.

Richardson was peeved as well as bored by the time Price had concluded his inquiries in the vicinity. Yet when they returned to the C.I.B. after lunch, Richardson received a shock.

On Price’s desk was a report from the police medical officer which stated that the woman known as Pansy Morton had died of poisoning by cyanide.

Price peered at Richardson quizzically as the young detective handed back the report with a ‘Well, I’m jiggered! Who would want to murder old Pansy?’

He flushed as the inanity of his remark was driven home to him by Price’s terse reply. ‘Exactly! Who? That’s the job ahead of us.’

He sat back in his chair and contemplated the elastic-sided boots which were known throughout the force as ‘old Price’s laughing-sides,’ as though from their highly polished and comfortable appearance he would derive inspiration.

Richardson, very subdued and crestfallen, was staring humbly at his chief. It was really surprising, he confessed to himself, how difficult it was to keep in mind the undoubted shrewdness and ability of old Price, in spite of the innumerable occasions when the old man had proved capacity almost to the point of genius.

‘Tell me, sir, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Why were you so sure that it was a case of murder as soon as we went in?’

‘I wasn’t sure at all,’ replied Price. ‘Better to say that I was sort of very, very doubtful.’

‘But why? What was the obvious clue to foul play that I missed?’

‘It was on the oilcloth which old Pansy used to cover the box that served as a table and pantry. There was the impression of a glass or a bottle – in my opinion a glass.’

‘I saw that,’ said Richardson. ‘I hope I don’t seem to be too dumb, but I can’t see where that furnished the direct clue to murder.’

‘You don’t eh? Well, the impression of that glass was still moist.’

‘Yes, I noticed that. So what?’

‘Yet there was no glass or bottle in the room which could have made it. Someone took that glass away. Who was it?’

Richardson stared at his chief more subdued and crestfallen than ever. He paid sincere tribute to Inspector Price’s alertness.

It looks as though we have to find out the answer to your question, why would anyone murder old Pansy, before we can find out who murdered her,’ went on Price.

‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be very easy,’ said Richardson dolesfully. ‘All I can hope, sir, is that your foresight in having the Science Section on the job before anything was disturbed will produce something to help us.’

‘So do I,’ said Price grimly.

A little later they found that the only assistance the Science Section could offer them was several sets of unidentifiable fingerprints.

‘Those of the left hand were taken just here on the floor,’ explained Sergeant Jarman. ‘You will see from the plan that they were near to the old cushion Pansy used for a pillow. And just here we got a full impression of the right hand. There are a couple of smudged prints from the oilcloth, but they had been rubbed over. They might have been anybody’s, but these are clear enough and they don’t belong to you, or Richardson, or Bailey, the uniformed man.’

‘And it’s too much to hope that they belong to somebody we know, of course, Sergeant?’ asked Price.

Jarman nodded. ‘Sorry, Inspector. That does happen to be the case, worse luck for you.’

Price stared at the photographs. ‘It’s plain enough, I think,’ he said, ‘that the prints of the right hand were made when he rested his weight on it to lift up her head while he gave her the drink of poison. The left hand prints would be from resting his weight on that hand while he put down the glass on the box she used for a table.’

‘Yes, that’s the way we reconstructed it,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘There was nothing in the room which could have left an impression identical with that left by the glass on the oilcloth. There was evidence of cyanide in that smear, but the glass itself was gone. It proves it’s a clear case of murder all right. Now, I wonder who would want to murder old Pansy, and why?’

Sergeant Jarman left the room happily aware that this knotty problem was not his pigeon, and pleasantly unconscious of the indignant glare his final remark evoked from Richardson.

‘Well, now we’ve got to face up to it, I suppose,’ said Richardson gloomily. ‘Nothing else to help us, I suppose?’

‘Only one thing which seems a bit out of the ordinary,’ replied Price. ‘At the morgue they found that in spite of old Pansy’s dirty outside rags, her underclothes were of much better quality and her body was amazingly clean. Can we make anything out of that?’

If something could be made out of it, it would not be by Richardson, and he admitted as much.

He was relieved when Price suggested that he start at once questioning everybody who lived in the immediate neighborhood of the murdered woman, and devote himself entirely to getting on the track of the man who had entered her room the previous night.

‘Well, that’s something definite to track up, anyhow,’ he said, and was pleased when Price added, ‘And it’s most important that you find someone who saw him. When we find out who he was, we shall need that identification as well.’

As Detective Richardson departed he was amazed at Inspector Price’s cheerfulness, and thought Price would not be so jaunty when their investigations had failed to locate the mysterious visitor to a frowsy old nobody who bade fair to furnish an insoluble problem for the C.I.B.

Richardson had not yet absorbed Inspector Price’s confidence in the belief, based on records, that the great majority of crimes are solved in due course.

That evening and the whole of the next day Richardson devoted to questioning people in Hutchinson Alley where old Pansy had been found dead.

They told him that they ‘would never have known old Pansy from her picture in the papers. It made her look like a bloomin’ toff, and no error.’ Richardson thought so, too, and wondered why Price had had the photo so much touched up.

To describe the photograph as ‘touched up’ was to put it mildly. Under Inspector Price’s instructions, an artist had made an entirely new picture out of the photograph of old Pansy, while, at the same time, contriving to leave a resemblance which seemed grotesque to the young detective.

It was as though old Pansy had had a twin sister, one who had closely resembled her in features while differing from her in habits. He found it impossible to believe that old Pansy could have looked like this, even if she had never taken to drink and the other weaknesses which had made her face a tragic caricature of the picture reproduced under the deft brush of the artist working under Inspector Price’s careful instructions.

To the young detective, it seemed a foolish bit of business on Inspector Price’s part. What could be the value to police detection of pandering in this way to a drunken old flibberty-gibbet – and a dead one, at that?

If she had been alive, Price’s motive would have been understandable, for the young detective was well aware of an aptitude of Inspector Price for indulging in flattery, and the flattery did not always have to be subtle.

Richardson banished this aspect of the matter from his mind, writing it down as just one more of Price’s whimsicalities, and devoted himself assiduously to the more practical side.

Early in his inquiries he had been exhilarated on learning from several of them that a man had been seen to enter the dwelling and had also been seen to leave again within a few minutes.

This information whetted his interest and he devoted his whole attention to the task of building up a clear impression of this individual, who undoubtedly was the murderer.

But persist as he would, he could get no detailed description of the visitor. All agreed that he was a man about 5 ft 10 ins. and walked with a slight limp.

‘All I have to do now is go round and find the right one out of about 5,000 men who walk with a slight limp in the left leg,’ said Richardson sourly as he returned to the C.I.B. to report.

But Inspector Price appeared pleased with the results, scantry though they were.

‘Good work, my boy. You’ve been very patient and thorough, and that’s the only way to solve a difficult police case,’ he commended. ‘Now you can come along with me and I think we might take the investigation a step further. It will please you to have a drink with an up-and-coming public man who intends getting into Parliament at the next elections.’

In the police car they called at the large and comfortable hotel in Camperdown. In a few minutes they were seated in the proprietor’s private office, just off the saloon bar.

‘I think you know Richardson, Mr Dalton.’

Mr Dalton was a very handsome man. He was also well groomed, and his voice was exceedingly pleasant.

Richardson liked him at once. Seated in his office, the proprietor shook hands affably with the detectives and discussed a burglary which had occurred, so Price said, in the neighborhood the previous night.

But Mr Dalton was unable to help them, as he had noticed no strangers of the type to excite suspicion within the past few days. Price insisted on taking out the tray himself for the second round of drinks, after which the C.I.B. men departed.

‘Dafton’s a nice chap, even if he couldn’t help us,’ said Richardson.

‘I hope he doesn’t miss his whisky glass I pinched,’ replied Price. ‘It’s a very serious offence to steal glasses from hotels, and there’s been a lot of it going on lately. I feel like a criminal.’

Inspector Price did not appear contrite. In fact, there was an undeniable smirk on his face.

While Richardson stared, he gently withdrew from his coat pocket a whisky glass which was held carefully between two fingers distended within the glass itself.

‘His fingerprints will be plain on the outside of it, you see,’ said Price. ‘I hope they’ll tell us something.’

‘But where the devil does the publican come into it?’

‘Maybe you’ll be surprised – and maybe I will,’ detorted Price. ‘Anyhow, we’ll soon find out.’

Within a couple of minutes after their return, Jarman was able to assure them that Dalton ’s fingerprints were identical with those on the floor. ‘You’ve got your man,’ he said.

Richardson was nonplussed. ‘How the devil did you get a lead up to him?’ he asked in amazement.

‘It wasn’t so difficult,’ said Price. ‘The newspapers really did the job for me.’

He gestured to the ‘doctored’ photographs of the dead woman which were scattered about the desk.

‘You probably wondered why I used such a flattering photo of old Pansy, but I wanted to know who she was before she became nobody except old Pansy. The letters there are from people who knew her years ago. They all thought she was dead, but all of them could remember her as a Mrs Emily Dalton, who had a son named James Arthur Dalton. In other words the man we just left. Quite simple after all, wasn’t it?’

‘But why would he poison his own mother? That’s what we’ve got to prove, isn’t it?’

‘These letters describe Emily Dalton as a woman who became an habitual drunkard years ago, and who was in and out of inebriates’ homes until they finally lost track of her,’ said Price. ‘As we know, she became old Pansy, and I think we’ll find that Dalton, who was steadily rising in the world, was plagued by the nightmare of people finding out her relationship to him. It would be damning to a cove with his social and political ambitions.’

‘What a swine!’

‘Oh – well – I don’t know,’ said Inspector Price slowly. ‘Human nature is unpredictable, and perhaps he thought she would be better dead.’

‘Good heavens, sir! You’re not defending a murderer, are you? And a murderer who put away his own mother?’

‘This is a hard, hard world, my boy. If you’ll read through those letters, you’ll find that James Arthur Dalton has always been a model son, even in circumstances which must have been always exasperating and very often frightfully humiliating. The letters point out that he looked after his mother devotedly, giving up everything for her sake.’

‘That puts a different complexion on it, of course, but it can’t make much difference to the jury, for all that.’

‘That’s so. It’ll be almost impossible for the jury not to see the crime in its worst light. To them it will be a case of a coldblooded poisoner killing his own mother.’

‘What else could he expect?’

‘That’s so,’ agreed Inspector Price again. ‘They can hardly be expected to be interested in pictures of a younger James Arthur Dalton almost carrying his mother from hotel bars and wine saloons. Some of the people who wrote these letters, though, thought it very pathetic. They refer to the patience and devotion and loyalty of young Jimmy to his mother. It seems to me that the scales of justice in this case are off the balance, that it’s old Pansy who should be in the dock for ruining the life of her son.’

‘Her influence certainly warped it.’

‘Warped it is the word. Did you know that he got his limp when he was hurt a dozen years ago while rescuing her from the bedroom she had set on fire while boozed? Ironical, isn’t it? And I can’t help feeling sorry for him, but I don’t know that the Crown Prosecutor won’t let him down as lightly as possible seeing that she was so full of booze that she must have died painlessly.’

‘It seems a hell of a pity,’ said Detective Richardson, whose sympathies had now swung completely to the pleasant-mannered hotelkeeper. ‘He was such a smart and capable type of fellow. I’m sure he would have gone a long way.’

Inspector Price’s telephone interrupted them. Price listened carefully, and laid the receiver back in its cradle thoughtfully.

‘You’re very right about Dalton being smart, my boy,’ he said. ‘He was smarter even than I thought. He must have been suspicious about our visit. He rang the local police station after we left, and asked if there had been a burglary, which was our excuse for going out. The local sergeant told him that there had not been one, which was only natural of course.’

‘He’s smart all right,’ said Richardson. ‘Fancy bowling us out like that! I’ll bet he’s even missed the glass you took!’

‘I never bet when I think I’m going to lose,’ returned Inspector Price. ‘I feel quite sure that he’s missed the glass, and I feel quite sure, too, now, that there’ll be no case for the jury.’

‘You mean – you mean – that he -!’

‘That’s just what I do mean, my boy. You heard me tell the sergeant to go round to the hotel. Well, that’s why I wanted him to go, but I think he’ll be too late.’

They gazed at each other in silence until the telephone bell again buzzed sharply. Inspector Price picked up the receiver. His conversation was short.

As he replaced the receiver, he said. ‘Yes, Dalton was smart. He knew we were on his wheel, and he took the same fatal medicine as he dished out to old Pansy. He even left a brief confession, which tidies up the whole business very nicely. Poor devil. As I said before, I can’t help feeling sorry for him.’