The Mad Hatter Mystery

11. The Little Plaster Dolls

Never before that time, Rampole afterwards thought, had he ever seen a man's naked face. Never had he seen it as for a brief instant he saw Lester Bitton's face in the mirror. At all times in life there are masks and guards, and in the brain a tiny bell gives warning. But here was a man caught blind in his anguish.

He looked a little like his brother, though his face was inclined to be reddish and have heavy folds. But you could not tell now.

The lost, damned eyes stared back at them from the mirror. His wrist wobbled, and the figure almost slid through his fingers. He took it with his other hand and put it back up on the mantelpiece..

`Who the hell,' said Lester Bitton, `are you?'

His deep voice was hoarse, and it cracked. That almost finished him, but he fought his nerves. `What God damned right have you got to walk in… '

`Steady,' said Hadley, quietly. `I'm afraid it's you who have to make an explanation. This flat has been taken over by the police, you know. And I'm afraid we can't respect private feelings in a murder case. You are Lester Bitton, aren't you?'

The man's heavy breathing quieted somewhat, and the wrath died out of his eyes.

`I am,' he said in a lower voice. `Who are you?' 'My name is Hadley

'Ah,' said the other, 'I see.' He was groping backwards, and he found the edge of, a heavy leather chair. Slowly he lowered himself until he was sitting on the arm. Then he made, a gesture. `Well, here I am.'

`What are you doing here, Mr Bitton?'

'I suppose you don't know?' Bitton asked, bitterly. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the smashed figure on the hearthstone.

The chief inspector played his advantage. He studied Bitton without threat and almost without interest. Slowly he opened his brief-case, drew out a typewritten sheet — which was only Constable Somers' report, as Rampole saw — and glanced at it.

`We know, of course, that you have employed a firm of private detectives to watch your wife. And — he glanced at the sheet again- `that one of their operatives, a Mrs. Larkin, lives directly across the hall from here.'

`Rather smart, you Scotland Yard men,'' the other observed in an impersonal voice. `Well, that's right. Nothing illegal in that, I suppose. You also know, then, that I don't need to waste my money any longer.'

`We know that Mr Driscoll is dead.'

Bitton nodded. His heavy, reddish, rather thickly-lined face was assuming normal appearance.

`Yes,' he said, reflectively. `The swine's dead. I heard it when I went home to dinner. But I'm afraid it hasn't cut my detective agency off from much money. I was intending to pay them off and get rid of them to-morrow. Business conditions being what they are, I couldn't afford an unnecessary expense.!’

'That, Mr Bitton, is open to two meanings. Which of them do you imply?'

'Let's be frank, Mr…. er… Hadley. I have played the fool. You know I was having my wife followed. I owe her a profound apology. What I have discovered only does credit to her name.'

Hadley's face wore a faint smile.

'Mr Bitton,' he said, 'I had intended having a conversation with you tonight, and this is as good a place as any. I shall have to ask you a number of questions.

`As you wish'

Hadley looked round at his companions. Dr Fell was running his eyes over the small, pleasant room, with its dull, brown-papered walls, sporting prints, and leather chairs. One of the chairs had been knocked over. The drawer of a side-table had been thrown, upside down on the floor, its contents scattered. Dr Fell stumped across and peered down.

`Theatre programmes,' he said, `magazines, old invitations, bills…. H'm. 'Nothing I want here. The desk and the, typewriter will be in the other rooms somewhere. Excuse me. Carry on with the questioning'

He disappeared through a door at the rear.

Hadley removed his bowler, gestured Rampole to a chair, and sat down himself.

`Mr Bitton,' he said, harshly, `I suggest that you be frank. I am not concerned with your wife's morals, or with yours, except in so far as they concern a particularly brutal murder. You have admitted you had her followed. Why do you trouble to deny that there was an affair between your wife and Philip Driscoll?'

`That's a damned lie. If you insinuate.’

`I don't insinuate. I tell you. You can hardly be very excited by an insinuation which you made, yourself when you put a private detective on her movements can you? Let's not waste time. You have the "Mary" notes, Mr Bitton.'

'Mary? Who the devil is Mary?'

`You should know. You were about to smash her on the hearth when we walked into this room'

Hadley bent forward; he spoke sharply and coldly: 'I warn you again, I can't afford to waste time. You are not in the habit of walking into people's houses and, smashing ornaments off their mantelshelves because you don't approve of the decoration. If you have any idea that we don't know the meaning of those two figures, get rid of it. We do. You had broken the man, and you were about to break the woman. No sane person who saw your face at that moment could, have any doubt of your state of mind.'

Bitton shaded his eyes with a big hand. 'Is it any of your business.' he said at length, 'whether..'

`Have you heard the facts of Driscoll's murder?'

`A few. I spoke to my brother when he returned from the Tower. Laura had come home and locked, herself in her room. When I — when I came back from the City, I knocked at her door and she wouldn't let me in. I thought everybody, had gone mad: Especially as I knew nothing of this murder. And Sheila said that Laura had run into the house as white as death and rushed upstairs without a word. Then Will

came in about seven-thirty and told me a little…. `Are you aware that an excellent case could be made out against your wife for the murder of Driscoll?'

Hadley was in action now. Rampole stared at him; a placid merchant ship suddenly running out the masked batteries. Hitherto, the American knew, he had lacked proof of his most, vital point, and Bitton had supplied it., He sat grey and inexorable, his fingers interlocked, his eyes burning.

`Just a moment, Mr Bitton. Don't say anything. I'll give you no theories. I simply intend to tell you facts.

`Your wife was having an affair with Philip Driscoll. She wrote a note telling him to meet her to-day at one-thirty at the Tower of London. We know that he received this note, because it was found in his pocket. The note informed' him that they were being watched. Driscoll lived off the bounty of a quick-tempered and far from indulgent uncle. I, will not say that if the uncle ever discovered any such scandal he would disinherit his nephew — because even that obvious point is a theory. I will not say that Driscoll saw the vital necessity for breaking off his liaison — because that obvious point is a theory, too.

'But he did telephone Robert Dalrye to get him out of a mess, just after he received that letter. And, later, someone did speak to Dalrye on the telephone, in a high voice, and lured him away on a wild-goose chase to this flat. You need not consider the following inferences, because they are theories: (i) That Driscoll always ran to Dalrye when he was in trouble, 2)That all Driscoll's family knew this, (3) That Dalrye's level-headedness would have caused the impressionable Driscoll to break off such a dangerous entanglement, (4) That Driscoll was in a mood to break it off, because he had not seen his paramour for several weeks and he was a youth of roving fancy, (5) That this paramour felt convinced she could keep him in line if she saw him once again alone, without the interference of a cool-headed third party, (6) That Driscoll's paramour knew of this morning telephone call through Sheila Bitton, who had also spoken with Dalrye on the phone that morning, (7) That the voice of Driscoll's paramour is, for a woman, fairly deep, and, finally (8) That a voice on the telephone speaking quickly, chaotically, and almost unintelligibly, can pass without detection for the tones of almost anyone the speaker may choose.'

Hadley was quite unemotional. He spaced his words as though he were reading a document, and his interlocked fingers seemed to beat time to them.

`I have told you these were inferences. Now for more facts,' the chief inspector continued.. `The appointment in the note had been for one-thirty. One-thirty is the last time Driscoll was seen alive. He was standing near the Traitors' Gate, and some person approached out of the shadows and touched his arm. At precisely twenty-five minutes to two, a woman answering to the description of your wife was seen hurrying away from the vicinity of the Traitors' Gate. She was hurrying so blindly, in fact, that she bumped squarely into the witness who saw her in a roadway no wider than this room. Finally, when Driscoll's body was found on the steps of the Traitors' Gate, he was discovered to have been stabbed with a weapon which your wife purchased last year in southern France, and which was ready to her hand in her own home.

`Can't you imagine what a clever lawyer could do with all those points, Mr Bitton? And I am only a policeman.'

Bitton hoisted up his big body. His hands were shaking and the rims of his eyes were red.

`Damn you,' he said, `that's what you think, is it? I'm glad you didn't make an unutterable ass of yourself before you told me how good your case was, and arrested her. I'm going to blow your whole case higher than hell without stepping any further than that flat across the hall. Because I have a witness who saw her the whole time she was at the Tower of London, and can swear Driscoll was alive after she left him.'

Hadley was on his feet in an instant.

`Yes,' he said, in a louder voice, `I rather thought you had. I rather thought that was why you came to Tavistock Chambers tonight. When you heard about the murder, you couldn't wait for the usual report of your private detective over there. You had to go to her…. If she knows anything, bring her over here and let her swear to it. Otherwise, so help me God! I'll swear out a warrant for Mrs Bitton's arrest.'

Bitton shouldered out of the chair. He was fighting mad, and his usual good sense had deserted him. He flung open the, door with the broken lock, and closed it with a slam.

Rampole drew a hand across his forehead. His throat was dry and his heart hammering.

`I didn't know,' he said — `I didn't know you were so certain Mrs Bitton. had… '

There was a placid smile under Hadley's clipped moustache. He sat down again and folded his hands.

`S'h-h!' he warned. `Not so loud, please; he'll hear you. How did I do it? I'm not much of an actor, but I'm used to little demonstrations like that.'

He caught the expression on the American's face.

`Go ahead, my, boy. Swear. I don't mind. It's a tribute to my performance.'

`Then you don't believe-,’

`I never believed it for an instant,' the chief inspector admitted, cheerfully. `There were too many holes in it. If Mrs Bitton killed Driscoll, what about the hat on Driscoll's head? That becomes, nonsense. If she killed him by Traitors' Gate with a blow straight through the heart at one-thirty, how did he contrive to keep alive until ten minutes to two? — Why didn't she leave the Tower after she had killed him, instead of hanging about unnecessarily for nearly an hour and getting herself drawn into the mess without reason?… Besides, my explanation of the faked telephone call to Dalrye was very thin. If Bitton hadn't been so upset he would have seen it. Dalrye, of course, never talked to Sheila, Bitton this morning and told her Driscoll had made an appointment. But I had to hit Bitton hard while his guard was down.'

Rampole stared across at the smashed plaster on the hearthstone. `You had to do that. Otherwise you'd never have got Mrs Larkin's' testimony. If she followed Mrs Bitton, she knows all Mrs Bitton's movements, but… '

`Exactly. But she would never tell them to the police. This afternoon she swore to us she had seen nothing. That was a part of her job; she took the risk. She couldn't tell us she was following Mrs Bitton; without exposing the whole thing and losing her position. More than that — and a much sounder reason — I think she has tidy blackmail schemes in her mind. Now we've knocked that on the head.'.'. She's already told Bitton, of course. So if she won't tell, he will to clear his wife.'

Rampole pushed back his hat.

`Neat!' he said. `Very neat, sir. Now, if your plan to persuade Arbor to talk works as well…'

`Arbor…. '' The chief inspector sprang up. 'I've been sitting here explaining my own cleverness, and I clean forgot that. I've got to telephone Golders Green, and do it quickly. Where' the devil is the phone? And, incidentally, where's the man who was supposed to be guarding this flat; how did Bitton get in here, anyhow? And where, by the way, is Fell?'

He was answered without delay. From beyond the closed door, somewhere in the interior of the flat, there was a scrape, a thud, and a terrific metallic crash.

`It's all right!' a muffled voice boomed out to them from some distance away, 'No more plaster figures broken. I've just dropped a basket of tools.'

Hadley and Rampole hurried in the direction of the voice. Beyond the door through which the doctor had gone, a narrow passage ran straight back. There were two doors in either wall; those on the left leading to a study and a bedroom, and those on the right to a bath and a dining-room. The kitchen was at the extreme rear of the passage.

To add to the confusion of the room, Driscoll had never been especially neat in his habits. The study had been cluttered up long before the woman's frantic search that afternoon. The floor was a drift of papers; rows of shelves gaped where whole sections of books had been' tossed out; and the drawers of the desk hung out empty and drunken. A portable typewriter, its cover off, had become entangled with the telephone, and the contents of several brass ash-trays were sprayed across some carbon paper and pencils.

Hadley glanced quickly into the other rooms as Dr Fell opened the door of the kitchen.' The bed was still unmade in the bedroom. The search here had been more perfunctory, confined to the bureau. And the dining-room had not been touched at all. It had seldom or never been used for eating purposes, but there had palpably been a use for it. Two gigantic rows of empty soda-siphons had been lined up on the sideboard. Under a mosaic dome of lights over the table there mingled in confusion empty bottles, unwashed glasses, a cocktail-shaker and ash-tray.

`The kitchen also,' Dr Fell observed at his elbow, `seems to have been used chiefly for mixing drinks' He swept his arm about. `You see? That sitting-room he kept tidy for casual visitors like his uncle. This is where he really lived. H'mf.'

He was wheezing in the kitchen doorway. Over his arm he carried a large market-basket which jingled with iron.

`You said tools?' inquired Hadley, sharply. `Was that what you were looking for? You mean a chisel or a screwdriver used to force open the outer door of this flat?'

'Good Lord, no!' snorted the doctor. `You don't suppose the woman got into the flat, came back here, found a chisel, and went out, again so that she could break open the door for sheer amusement, do you?'

`She might have done just that,' said the inspector, quietly, `to give the impression it was some outsider who had burgled the flat.'

`It's entirely possible, I grant you. But, as a matter of fact, I wasn't interested in the breaking or entering. It was an entirely different sort of tool I was looking for.'

`It may further interest you to know,' the chief inspector pursued, rather irritably, `that while you have been poking about in the kitchen we've learned a great deal from Bitton….'

The doctor nodded several times, and the black ribbon on his glasses swung jumpily.

`Yes,' he agreed, `I thought you would. He was here to get information from his private detective, and you've scared him into forcing, her to tell what she knows by making out a thundering case against his wife. I imagined

I could safely leave that to you. But from my point of view it wasn't necessary. I'm rather sure I can tell you what the Larkin woman knows, Come over here to the study for a moment, and have a look at Driscoll's character.'

"You infernal old stuffed-shirt bluffer…!' said Hadley, like one who commences an oration.

'Oh, come,' protested the doctor, with a mildly injured air. `Tut, tut! No. I may be a childish old fool. I admit that. But I'm not a bluffer, old man. Really, I'm not. Let's see, what was I talking about? Oh yes; Driscoll's character. There are some rather interesting photographs of him in the study,'

Sharply and stridently through the silent passage the telephone in the study rang.