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‘She’s not a titled beauty, I can tell you that; but she might have been either of the other two. I haven’t the faintest notion what she is.’
‘Why do you want to know if we’ve ever had a photograph of her through here, then?’
‘Oh, it’s just a personal matter,’ Roger said evasively. ‘Her people haven’t heard from her for a week or two and they’re beginning to think she’s been run over by a bus or something like that. You know how fussy the parents of that sort of girl are.’
The other shook his head and handed back the snapshot. ‘No, I’m sorry, but I can’t place her. I’m sure I’ve seen her face before, but you’re too vague. If you could tell me, now, that she had been run over by a bus, or had some other accident, or been something (anything to provide a peg for my memory to hang on) I might have been able to—wait a minute, though!’ He snatched the photograph back and studied it afresh. Roger looked on tensely.
‘I’ve got it!’ the bespectacled one proclaimed in triumph. ‘It was the word “accident” that gave me the clue. Have you ever noticed what a curious thing memory is, Sheringham? Present it with a blank surface, and it simply slides helplessly across it; but give it just the slightest little peg to grip on, and—’
‘Who is the girl?’ Roger interrupted.
The other blinked at him. ‘Oh, the girl. Yes. She was a chorus-girl in one of the big revues (I’m sorry, I forget which) and her name was Unity Something-or-other. She—good gracious, you really don’t know?’
Roger shook his head. ‘No. What?’
‘She was a friend of yours?’ the other persisted.
‘No, I’ve never met her in my life. Why?’
‘Well, you see, she hanged herself four or five weeks ago with her own stocking.’
Roger stared at him. ‘The deuce she did!’ he said blankly. ‘Hell!’
They looked at each other.
‘Look here,’ said the photographer, ‘I can’t be certain it’s the same girl, you know. Besides, this one seems to be called Janet. But I tell you what: there was a photo of Unity Something published in The Picture at the time, a professional one. You could look that up.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger, his thoughts on the letter he would have to write to Dorset if all this were true.
‘And now I come to think of it, I seem to remember something rather queer about the case. It was ordinary enough in most ways, but I believe they had some difficulty in identifying the girl. No relatives came forward, or something like that.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Picture didn’t pay much attention to it, beyond publishing her photo; rather out of our line, of course. But I expect The Courier had a report of the inquest. Anyhow, don’t take it for certain that I’m right; it’s quite possible that I’m not. Go down and look up the files.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger glumly, turning on his heel.
‘I will.’
CHAPTER II (#ulink_6d722be2-dd36-5299-b76a-3ba75fa6d0f1)
MR SHERINGHAM WONDERS (#ulink_6d722be2-dd36-5299-b76a-3ba75fa6d0f1)
ACUTELY disappointed, and not a little shocked, Roger made his way downstairs. His thoughts were centred mainly upon that pathetic household in Dorsetshire, to whom his letter must bring such tragedy; but Roger, like most of us, while able to feel for other people strongly enough, was at heart an egoist, and it was this side of his nature which prompted the sensation of disappointment of which he was conscious. It was, he could not help feeling, most unfortunate that just when his help had been solicited as that of an able criminologist, the problem should be whisked out of his hands in this uncompromising way.
The truth was that Roger had been longing for an opportunity to put his detective capabilities into action once more. The letter had acted as a spur to his desires, coming as it did from one who evidently held the greatest respect for his powers in this direction. Roger himself had the greatest respect for his detective powers; but he could not disguise from himself the fact that others were obtuse enough to hold dissimilar views. Inspector Moresby, for instance. For the last nine months, ever since they had parted at Ludmouth after the Vane case, Inspector Moresby had rankled in Roger’s mind to a very considerable extent.
And those nine months had been, from the criminologist’s point of view, deadly dull ones. Not an interesting murder had been committed, not even an actress had been deprived of her jewels. Without going so far as to question whether his detective powers might be getting actually rusty, Roger had been very, very anxiously seeking an opportunity to put them into action once more. And now that the chance had come, it had as swiftly disappeared.
He began gloomily to turn back the pages of The Daily Picture file.
It was not long before he found what he wanted. In an issue of just over five weeks ago there was, tucked neatly into a corner of the back page, a portrait of a young girl; the heading above it stated curtly: ‘Hanged Herself With Own Silk Stocking’. The letterpress below was hardly less brief. ‘Miss Unity Ransome, stated to be an actress, who hanged herself with her own silk stocking at her flat in Sutherland Avenue last Tuesday.’
Roger pored over the picture. Like amateur snapshots, the pictures in an illustrated paper are considered fair game for the humorist. Whenever a painstaking humorist has to mention them he prefixes one of two epithets, ‘blurred’ or ‘smudgy’. Yet the pictures in the illustrated dailies of today are neither blurred nor smudgy. They were once, it is true, perhaps so late as ten years ago, when the art of picture-printing for daily newspapers was an infant; nowadays they are astonishingly clear. One does wish sometimes that even humorists would move with the times. Roger had no difficulty in deciding that the two faces before him were of the same girl.
He turned to The Daily Courier of the same date.
There he found, unobtrusive on a page lined with advertisements, a laconic account of the inquest. Miss Unity Ransome, it seemed, had been a chorus-girl in one of the less important London revues. There was evidence that this was her first engagement on the stage, and she had obtained it, in spite of her inexperience, on the strength of her good looks and air of happy vivacity. Prior to this engagement, nothing was known about her. She shared a tiny flat in Sutherland Avenue with another girl in the same company, but they had met at the theatre for the first time. This girl, Moira Carruthers, had testified that she knew less than nothing about her friend’s antecedents. Unity Ransome not only volunteered no information concerning herself, but actively discouraged questions on that subject. ‘A regular oyster,’ was Miss Carruthers’ happy description.
This reticence the coroner had not been unwilling to emphasise, for on the face of it there appeared no reason for suicide. Miss Carruthers had stated emphatically that, so far as she knew, Unity had never contemplated such a thing. She had appeared to be perfectly happy, and even delighted at having obtained an engagement in London. Her salary, though not large, had quite sufficed for her needs. Pressed on this point, Miss Carruthers had admitted that her friend had more than once expressed a wish that she had been able to earn more, and that quickly; but, as Miss Carruthers pointed out, ‘Unity was what you might call a real lady, and perhaps she’d been accustomed to having things a bit better style than most of us.’ At all events, she had not complained unduly.
The police had made perfunctory efforts to trace her, Roger gathered, and attempts had been made, besides the publication of her professional portrait, to get into touch with any former friends or relations, but without success. To this also the Coroner called attention. In his concluding remarks, he hinted very delicately that the probability seemed to be that she had quarrelled with her family, left home (but not necessarily in disgrace, the Coroner was careful to add with emphasis, thereby showing quite plainly that this was precisely what he thought), and endeavoured to make a career for herself on the stage; and though she might appear to have met with unexpected success in this direction, who could say what remorse and unhappiness might not burden the life of a young girl cut off thus from all the comforts to which, it would seem, she had been accustomed? Or, again, she might have been an orphan, left penniless, and overcome by a loneliness which she felt, rightly or wrongly, to be unbearable. In other words, the Coroner was extremely sorry for the girl, but he wanted to get home to his lunch and the usual straightforward verdict was the best way of doing so.
He got his wish. Indeed, there was little likelihood of anything else, for Unity Ransome had simplified matters by leaving a little note behind her. The note ran briefly as follows: ‘I am sick and tired of it all, and going to end it the only way.’ It was not signed, but there was plenty of evidence that it was in her writing. A verdict of ‘Suicide during Temporary Insanity’ was inevitable.
Quite illegally Roger cut the little paragraph out of the file and put it away in his pocket-book. Then he went upstairs again and sought out the news-editor, with whom he usually lunched.
For some reason Roger did not say anything to the news-editor about his activities of the morning. News-editors, though excellent people in private life and devoted to their wives, are conscienceless, unfeeling bandits when it comes to news. Roger’s reticence was instinctive, but had he troubled to search for its cause he would certainly have found it in the fact that the Dorsetshire Vicarage would have enough to bear during the next few days without a pitiless and lurid publicity being added to the sum of their troubles. That, at any rate, he could spare them.
It was still with the secret of Unity Ransome’s identity undisclosed, then, that he returned later to The Courier’s offices and, having obtained from the bespectacled one a copy of the photograph which had appeared in The Daily Picture, prepared to write to Mr Manners and ask him, as gently as possible, whether he recognised his daughter in the portrait of the girl who had committed suicide in the Sutherland Avenue flat.
Yet, seated definitely at the task, his pen in his hands, the paper spread out in front of him, Roger found himself quite unable to make a beginning. The paper remained blank, the pen executed a series of neat but meaningless squiggles round the edges of the blotting-pad, and Roger’s brain buzzed busily. It was not the difficulty of the job which prevented him from forming even the initial ‘Dear Sir’ of the letter; it was something quite different.
‘Hang it!’ burst out Roger suddenly aloud, hitting the desk in front of him a blow with his fist. ‘Hang it, it isn’t natural!’
It was an old cry of his, and in the past it had led to important things. His own spoken words made Roger prick up his own ears. He threw the pen absently from him, drew out his pipe and settled down in his chair.
Ten minutes later he struck the match he had been holding during that period in his hand. Five minutes later he struck another. Three minutes after that he applied the third match to his pipe.
‘Now am I,’ communed Roger with himself, crossing his legs afresh and drawing deeply at his now lighted pipe, ‘am I getting a bee in my bonnet—am I getting hag-ridden by an idea—am I all that, or is there something funny in this business? I’m inclined (yes, most decidedly I’m inclined) to think there is. Let us, therefore, tabulate our results in the approved manner and see where they lead us.’
Picking up the pen again, he began to cover the blank sheet at last.
‘Assuming that Janet Manners = Unity Ransome:
(1) Janet was not only a dutiful but an affectionate daughter. She was at pains to write cheerful letters home every week. She went out of her way not to distress her father in any manner, even concealing from him the fact that she had found work on the stage, because he probably would not like it. Is it not, then, almost inconceivable that she should have deliberately taken her own life without at least preparing him towards not hearing from her for a considerable time? The only explanation is that she acted on a sudden, panic-stricken impulse.
(2) So far as one can see, Janet had no possible reason for suicide. She had been unusually lucky in getting good work. Her object was firstly to keep herself and so save expense at home, and secondly to contribute to the Vicarage household upkeep. She had achieved the first, and she was on her way to achieving the second. Not only had she no reason for killing herself, but she had every reason not to do so. In short, on the facts as known, the only explanation for Janet’s suicide is that she suddenly went raving mad. This is in accord with the panic-stricken impulse, and both show that all the facts are not known.
(3) We know that Janet did commit suicide, because she tells us so herself. But in what a very stereotyped formula! Would a girl who had the initiative to leave a country parsonage and go on the stage express herself, in a note of such importance, in such a very hackneyed way? And what was she “sick and tired” of? Again, this can only mean that we do not know all the facts.
(4) Why did Janet not sign that note? The omission is more than significant; it is unnatural. To sign such a note as that, or at the least to initial it, is almost a sine qua non. There seems no obvious explanation of this, except, possibly, frantic panic.
(5) What do we know of Janet? That she was a young woman of considerable character and determination. Young women of considerable determination do not commit suicide. Moreover, allowing for a father’s prejudice, her photograph shows clearly that Janet was not a suicide type. Once more one is driven to the conclusion that events of enormous importance have not yet come to light.
(6) Janet hanged herself with her own stockings. In the name of goodness, why? Had she nothing more suitable? In fact, Janet’s method of suicide is more than strange; it is unnatural. A girl bent on suicide would adopt hanging as a very last resource. Men hang themselves; girls don’t. Yet Janet did. Why?
(7) Is Roger Sheringham seeing visions? No, he isn’t. Then what is he going to do about it?— Jolly well find out what had really been happening to that poor kid!’
Roger put down his pen and read through what he had written.
‘Results tabulated,’ he murmured. ‘And where do they lead us, eh? Why, to Miss Moira Carruthers, to be sure.’
He put on his hat and hurried out.
CHAPTER III (#ulink_ddd8cc24-c220-5f73-bc1f-7e6b26aa3be4)
MISS CARRUTHERS IS DRAMATIC (#ulink_ddd8cc24-c220-5f73-bc1f-7e6b26aa3be4)
IT was with no definite plan in his mind, or even suspicion, that Roger jumped into a taxi and caused himself to be conveyed to Sutherland Avenue. All he knew was that here was mystery; and where mystery was, there was something in his blood that raised Roger’s curiosity to such a point that nothing less than complete elucidation could lower it. The affairs of Janet Manners had, he acknowledged readily, nothing whatever to do with himself, and it was very probable that their owner, had she been alive, would very much have resented the poking of his nose into them. He appeased his conscience (or what served him on these occasions for a conscience) by pretending that his real object in making the journey was to acquire positive proof that Unity Ransome really was Janet Manners before he wrote to Dorsetshire. He did not deceive himself for a moment.
His taxi stopped before one of those tall, depressed-looking buildings which line Sutherland Avenue, and a tiny brass plate on the door-post informed him that Miss Carruthers lived on the fourth floor. There was no lift, and Roger trudged up, to find, with better luck than he deserved, that Miss Carruthers was at home. Indeed, she popped out of a room at him as he reached the top of the stairs, for the flat had no front-door of its own.
Chorus-girls (or chorus ladies, as they call themselves nowadays) are divided into three types, the pert, the pretty and the proud, and of these the last are quite the most fell of all created beings. Roger was relieved to see that Miss Carruthers, with her very golden hair and her round, babyish face, was quite definitely of the pretty type, and therefore not to be feared.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Carruthers prettily, and looked at him in dainty alarm. Strange men on her stairs were, it was to be gathered, one of the most terrifying phenomena in Miss Carruthers’ helpless young life.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Roger, suiting his smile to his company. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but could you spare me a few minutes, Miss Carruthers?’
‘Oh!’ fluttered Miss Carruthers again. ‘Was it—was it very important?’
‘I am connected with The Daily Courier,’ said Roger.
‘Come inside,’ said Miss Carruthers.
They passed into a sitting-room, the furniture of which was only too evidently supplied with the room. Roger was ensconced in a worn armchair, Miss Carruthers perched charmingly on the arm of an ancient couch. ‘Yes?’ sighed Miss Carruthers.
Roger came to the point at once. ‘It’s about Miss Ransome,’ he said bluntly.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Carruthers, valiantly concealing her disappointment.
‘I’m making a few enquiries, on behalf of The Courier,’ Roger went on, toying delicately with the truth. ‘We’re not altogether satisfied, you know.’ He looked extremely portentous.
Miss Carruthers’ large eyes became larger still. ‘What not with?’ she asked, her recent disappointment going the same way as her grammar.
‘Everything,’ returned Roger largely. He crossed his legs and thought what he should be dissatisfied with first of all. ‘What was her reason for committing suicide at all?’ he demanded; after all, he was more dissatisfied with that than anything else.
‘Well, reely!’ said Miss Carruthers. And then she began to talk.
Roger, listening intently, was conscious that he was hearing an often-told tale, but it lost none of its interest on that account. He let her tell it in her own way.
Uny, said Miss Carruthers (‘Uny’! mentally ejaculated Roger, and shuddered), had absolutely no reason in the world for going and doing a thing like that. None whatsoever! She’d had a slice of real luck in stepping into a London show straight away; she was always bright and cheerful (‘well, as happy as the day is long, you might say,’ affirmed Miss Carruthers); everybody liked her at the theatre; and what is more, she was marked out by common consent as one who would go far; it was generally admitted that the next small speaking part that was going, Uny would click for. And why she should want to go and do a thing like that—!
In fact, Miss Carruthers could hardly believe it when she came in that afternoon and saw her. Hanging on the hook on the bedroom door, she was, with her stocking round her neck, and looking—well, it very nearly turned Miss Carruthers up just to see her. Horrible! She wouldn’t describe it, not for worlds; it made her feel really ill just to think of it.—And here Miss Carruthers embarked on a minute description of her unhappy friend’s appearance, in which protruding eyeballs, blue lips and bitten tongue figured with highly unpleasant prominence.
Still, Miss Carruthers was by no means such a little fool as it apparently pleased her to suggest. Instead of screaming and running uselessly out into the street as, Roger reflected, three-quarters of the women he knew would have done, she had the sense to hoist Janet somehow up on to her shoulders and unhook the stocking. But by that time it was too late; she was dead. ‘Only just, though,’ wailed Miss Carruthers, with real tears in her eyes. ‘The doctor said if I’d come back a quarter of an hour earlier I could have saved her. Wasn’t that just hell?’
Wholeheartedly Roger agreed that it was. ‘But how very curious that she should have done it just when you might have been expected back at any minute,’ he remarked. ‘It couldn’t be,’ he added, stroking his chin thoughtfully, ‘that she expected to be saved, could it?’
Miss Carruthers shook her golden head. ‘Oh, no I’d told her I wasn’t coming back here, you see. I was going to tea with a boy, and I said to Uny not to expect me; I’d go straight on to the theatre. Well, now you know as much about it as I do, Mr—Mr—’
‘Sheringham.’
‘Mr Sheringham. And what do you imagine she wanted to go and do it for? Oh, poor old Uny! I tell you, Mr Sheringham, I can hardly bear to stay in the place now. I wouldn’t, if I could only get decent digs somewhere else, which I can’t.’
Roger looked at the little person sympathetically. The tears were streaming unashamedly down her cheeks, and it was quite plain that, however artificial she might be in other respects, her feeling for her dead friend was genuine enough. He spoke on impulse.
‘What do I imagine she did it for? I don’t! But I tell you what I do imagine, Miss Carruthers, and that is that there’s a good deal more at the back of this than either you or I suspect.’
‘What—what do you mean?’
Roger pulled his pipe out of his pocket. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked, gaining a few seconds. He had to take a swift decision. Should he or should he not take this fluffy little creature into his confidence? Would she be a help or a hindrance? Was she a complete little fool who had had a single sensible moment, or was her apparent empty-headedness a pose adopted for the benefit of the other sex? Most of the men with whom she would come in contact, Roger was painfully aware, do prefer their women to be empty-headed. He compromised: he would take her just so far as he could into his own confidence without betraying that of others.
‘I mean,’ he said carefully, as he filled his pipe, ‘that so far as I’ve been able to gather, Miss Ransome was not the sort of girl to commit suicide—’
‘That she wasn’t!’ interjected Miss Carruthers, almost violently.
‘—and that as she did so, she was driven into it by forces which, to say the least, must have been overwhelming. And I mean to make it my business to find out what those forces were.’
‘Oh! Oh, yes. You mean—?’
‘For the moment,’ said Roger firmly, ‘nothing more than that.’
They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then Miss Carruthers said an unexpected thing.
‘You belong to The Courier?’ she asked, in a hesitating voice. ‘You’re doing this for them? You’re going to publish everything you find out, whether—whether Uny would have liked it or not?’
Roger found himself liking her more and more. ‘No!’ he said frankly. ‘I am connected with The Courier, but I’m not on it. I’m going to do this off my own bat, and I give you my word that nothing shall be published at all that doesn’t reflect to the credit of Miss Ransome—and perhaps not even then. You mean, of course, that you wouldn’t help me, except on those terms?’
Miss Carruthers nodded. ‘I’ve got a duty to Uny, and I’m not going to have any mud slung at her, whether she deserves it or not. But if you’ll promise that, I’ll help you all I can. Because believe me, Mr Sheringham,’ added Miss Carruthers passionately, ‘if there’s some damned skunk of a man at the bottom of this (as I’ve thought more than once there might be), I’d give everything I’ve got in the world to see him served as he served poor old Uny.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ Roger said easily. The worst of the theatre, he reflected, is that it does make its participants so dramatic; and drama in private life is worse than immorality. ‘We’ll shake hands on that bargain.’
‘Look here,’ said Miss Carruthers, doffing her emotional robe as swiftly as she had donned it, ‘look here, I tell you what. You wait here and smoke while I make us a cup of tea, and then we’ll talk as much as you like. And I have got one or two things to tell you,’ she added darkly, ‘that you might like to hear.’
Roger agreed with alacrity. He had often noticed that there is nothing like tea to loosen a woman’s tongue; not even alcohol.
In a surprisingly short time for so helpless-looking a person, Miss Carruthers returned with the tea-tray, which Roger took from her at the door. They settled down, Miss Carruthers poured out, and Roger at last felt that the time was ripe to embark on the series of questions which he had really come to ask.
Miss Carruthers answered readily enough, leaning back in her chair with a cigarette between lips which even now must occasionally pout. Indeed, she answered too readily. Nevertheless, from the mass of her verbiage Roger was able to pick a few new facts.
In the main her replies bore out the brief account of her evidence at the inquest, though at very much greater length, and Miss Carruthers dwelt upon her theory that her friend was ‘a cut above the rest of us, as you might say. A real lady, instead of only a perfect one.’ To Roger’s carefully worded queries as to any indication of Unity Ransome’s real identity, Miss Carruthers was at first vague. Then she produced, in a haphazard way, the most important point she had yet contributed.
‘All I can say,’ said Miss Carruthers, ‘is that her name may have been Janet, or she might have had a friend called Janet, or something like that.’
‘Ah!’ said Roger, keeping his composure. ‘And how do you know that?’
‘It’s in a prayer-book of hers. I only came across it the other day. Would you like to see it?’
