Death and the Professor: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  ‘Inside, in the lounge were the eight guests, and the waiter; upstairs, Mary, the maid, was turning down the beds. In the basement kitchen, Mrs. Leeming, the landlady, was washing-up the dinner things, helped by an evening woman. That was the set-up at 7.20 o’clock, five minutes after Banting had gone to his room and banged the door.

  ‘Then it happened! From upstairs there came, startlingly, a second bang. The unexpectedness of it chopped off the gossip literally in the middle of words, and (so Mrs. Anstruther says) jumped twelve stitches off the needles on which she was knitting a modestly grey jumper. It also betrayed her, Miss Mackinder asserts into a loud ‘damn’; and this will probably be held against her for the remainder of her stay in Coronation Road, she being a consistent church-goer. However, she stormed up in her annoyance with, ‘Now what’s the man banging?’

  Colonel Parmenter had shot out of his chair at the explosion. ‘That wasn’t a bang,’ he said. ‘That was a shot.’ He should know, being an old infantry officer. He moved towards the stairs. ‘A revolver shot,’ he augmented. ‘Come along, you men!’

  Sir Edward felt in an inside pocket and brought out a slim writing pad. He adjusted his monocle in his left eye and read over his notes. ‘I want to get this quite accurate,’ he apologized. ‘The colonel led the men to the first floor corridor from which four bedrooms opened. The maid, scared half out of her wits, peeped white-faced, round the turning at the farther end. ‘It came from Mr. Banting’s room, Colonel,’ she called out. ‘Whatever was it?’ The colonel rapped on a panel of the door. ‘Are you all right, Banting?’ he called. There was no reply. He knocked again, heavily. No sound came from within. The door-handle turned in his grasp, but the door remained closed. The colonel knelt down and peered at the keyhole.

  ‘No key in it,’ he said. ‘Give me your master key, Mary.’ The girl brought it, and scuttled back to the corner. The colonel inserted the key in the lock and turned it. He threw open the door, and the group rushed into the room after joggling each other in the doorway. There they stopped.

  ‘Banting lay on the floor. Blood was spreading slowly over the carpet. A revolver lay beside him.

  ‘The colonel bent down and lifted his head. He let it drop again, and stood up. ‘Better get out, men,’ he said. ‘He’s shot through the head. Quite dead. I’ll telephone the police! He locked the door, and put the key in a pocket. The last thing he noticed was the barrel organ; it was playing, rather inappropriately ‘Let me like a soldier fall’.’

  3

  The company were following the narrative with an interest that was eloquently illustrated in their attitudes. Sir Noël Maurice was bending forward in his chair, elbows on the table. Both Charles and James had concentrated so intently that they had committed the unpardonable sin of allowing a good cigar again to become dead. The Dilettantes were accustomed to absorbing problems from Sir Edward but this one, was by general consent better than most. Purcell, the mathematician, was slouched back in his seat with eyes closed. He opened them as the A.C. finished speaking.

  ‘But that isn’t all?’ he suggested.

  ‘Not by any means,’ Sir Edward agreed. ‘I want refreshment.’ He smiled and swallowed some port. ‘Well, then, Detective-Inspector Kenway and a sergeant were at Coronation Road within ten minutes after the 999 call. The eight residents were in the lounge, bringing the landlady out of hysterics. The inspector, after viewing the body took their statements; it is from those that I have compiled this precis. Then he went back to the bedroom, with his sergeant.

  ‘Banting’s body was lying between the door and the bed, and facing the window. There was a bullet wound in his right temple, and an exit wound at the back of the head. He had obviously died instantly. The weapon was on the floor, on his right side, about two feet from the body — an automatic of French make, 7.63 —’

  ‘His own?’ the Pathologist asked. The A.C. nodded. ‘He kept it in a drawer of his desk. Mary, the maid, who seems a bit of a snooper, announced that she had seen it there on several occasions.’ The A.C. smiled slightly. ‘The statement brought indignant stares from the woman guests and a strangled word from the landlady. The snooper seemed in for trouble. Incidentally, Banting had no licence for the automatic.

  ‘The inspector spent twenty minutes in the room. He called up Mary and the decrepit waiter to whom he put a request which was complied with. Then he telephoned me from the squad car, and asked for the help of the Murder Squad.

  Five pairs of eyes turned, startled, on the A.C. Only the voice of two of them spoke — the professor:

  ‘W . . . why m . . . murder?’ he asked.

  ‘The appearance of the room.’ The A.C. felt in his inside pocket. ‘I have copies of sketches which Inspector Kenway made of the room and its contents. You may like to examine them.’ He passed them round.

  The club members studied the sketches. Sir Edward lighted another cigar — and waited.

  ‘Nothing?’ he queried when they looked up again. ‘Ah, well it is of no consequence.’

  ‘And the Murder Squad?’ asked James, who was the pathologist. ‘I am impatient.’

  ‘The room was combed all through. It and everything it contained were finger-printed. There were prints only of Banting and the maid — on the bed framework, the desk, the bedside table, on the chairs, wardrobe and chest of drawers — and no other prints. On the automatic there were only Banting’s fingers. Banting’s key to his room was on the writing desk where, presumably, he had put it when he had locked his bedroom door on entering. I should add that he had a phobia about locking his room. The Squad found no sign of struggle, or even disturbance. The only thing out of order was the left-hand drawer in the desk; it had been forced — judging by the marks — with a steel paper-knife lying on the desk. The blade bore Banting’s prints. Inside it was a brief-size leather carrying wallet. It was empty. Mary, who snooped, said that whenever she was in the room when Banting was writing, the wallet was always on top of the desk, and was always full of papers.’

  ‘So Banting was murdered?’ The query came from the chairman. The A.C. smiled, gently.

  ‘Ah! I did not say so. There’s the rub. We don’t know whether he was, or not. I will pick the wealth of brains and reasoning round this table. Tell me, did he commit suicide, or was he killed in his room; and if so how a murderer killed and vanished leaving no trace within a minute?’

  4

  Sir Noël Maurice, from the chair gazed benignly round the company and chuckled. ‘Admirable,’ he said and his voice had the timbre of delight. ‘Quite the best problem to come before the Dilettantes.’ He nodded to the A.C. ‘Our thanks to you, Edward . . . Well, who starts the ball rolling?’ His eyes wandered over their faces . . . ‘Purcell!’

  The mathematician smiled. ‘X is the unknown quantity,’ he said. ‘Let us equate. We have a total of nine people. Can we reduce? . . . Say, on alibis?’

  ‘The eight guests alibi each other,’ the A.C. said. ‘They agree they were together in the lounge when the shot was fired. They were together when Banting was found, the men upstairs, the women on the stairs looking up. The landlady has the evening help as her alibi.’

  ‘Between the sound of the shot and the arrival of the men at the door of the room, how long?’

  ‘We tested it by a repeat performance — two minutes.’

  The psychiatrist interposed. ‘The human mind and its sudden reflexes are unaccountable. There is here the too obvious, which, however, is sometimes the unexpected truth. There is one person upstairs, a maid. There is Banting, said to be a man for the ladies. Postulate the maid turning down the bed . . . an overture . . . a repulse. Then persistence, and the mind panics. She backs away — to the desk. She knows there is a revolver there. She takes it and points it. Her finger tenses, and it explodes. She darts to the door, locks it from the outside with her master-key and peers at the running men from the corner of the corridor. It could be done in two minutes but that is not murder.’

  The A.C. nodded. Then he smiled
. ‘Banting stood 6 ft. 1 in.: Mary 5ft. 5 ins.,’ he responded. ‘The bullet entered the head horizontally. Unless she was standing on a chair she could not have fired that shot.’

  Sir Noël said: ‘It was a very warm evening. The window, perhaps, was open. A watcher across the street —’

  ‘The window was closed and, in fact, locked with a thumb-screw. Banting had a fear of burglary,’ the A.C. said.

  The professor had been peering over the sketches for three or four minutes. There was an air of absorption about him, and he had taken no part in the discussion. The chairman called his name twice before he looked up and became aware of the summons. His eyes sought those of the A.C. ‘T-the sketches, they would be quite accurate?’ he inquired.

  ‘Quite.’ The police chief’s eyes rested on him, levelly. There was anticipation in the glance.

  ‘Ah! T-then the m-murderer made two mistakes,’ the professor said, gently. The A.C’s head nodded slightly, very slightly as though he followed the unspoken argument.

  ‘The murderer!’ The ejaculation came from three of the Dilettantes simultaneously. ‘Then —’

  ‘Oh, y-yes. It w-was m-murder.’

  ‘An opinion,’ the chairman said. ‘From a sketch?’

  ‘W-why is the weapon lying near the dead man’s right hand?’ The professor spoke mildly and very gently. A slight smile played round the A.C.’s eyes.

  The pathologist sniffed a little. ‘The man’s reflexes would jerk it from his hand after the shot, and it would fall, naturally.’

  ‘W-why would a man who is left-handed shoot h-himself w-with a g-gun held in h-his r-right hand?’ The question came softly from the professor.

  ‘Left-handed!’ The chairman ejaculated. The professor chuckled, and it seemed strange coming from him. ‘B-but y-yes,’ he said. ‘Look at the sketches. The bedside table is on the left of the bed. On the desk, t-the b-blotting-pad is to the right, so that there is space for the ink-pots and the pens and the paper rack on the left. The desk is placed so that the light from the window falls on t-the right s-side, w-which is w-where a man sitting left-handed would want it.’ He addressed the chairman. ‘Sir Noël, you are s-sitting at y-your desk, in which t-there are d-drawers. You refer to papers v-very often. On w-which side is t-the drawer in w-which y-you keep your references?’

  The chairman’s left hand moved involuntarily to the front of the table.

  ‘So!’ The professor pointed to it. ‘But the drawer in which Banting kept t-the w-wallet w-which Mary t-the maid says held h-his papers w-was on t-the right — w-where a left-handed man, pen in hand w-would keep it. T-the m-murderer forgets t-that Banting was left-handed. He drops t-the gun on the wrong side. But you cannot escape the inevitability of logical reasoning.’

  ‘And the second mistake?’

  ‘The man Banting goes upstairs t-to his room. He unlocks t-the door and enters. He is carrying t-the key — how? W-with h-his left hand. B-but he p-places t-the key on the right-hand side of the desk. Lastly, why s-should a man force his drawer when h-he h-has a key to it?’ The professor peered up at the A.C. from under his shock of unruly hair. He fingered the high collar of his old-fashioned ‘dicky.’ Slowly, he produced a box and took from it a pinch of snuff between his short, stubby fingers, brushing off the particles of dust which dropped on to the shining lapel of his ancient jacket. ‘You said, Sir Edward that your inspector called to the room the old waiter and put to h-him a question. A-afterwards he asked for t-the M-murder Squad.’ He giggled, delightedly. ‘I will tell you the question. The inspector asked how he laid the table for Banting. Yes?’

  The A.C. nodded, ‘Congratulations, Professor, on your perspicuity,’ he said.

  ‘Yet — you are still not sure, Edward?’ the chairman remonstrated.

  ‘There is the possible interposition of coincidence. A man, his mental balance upset by a decision to take his own life, may break the habit of a lifetime. As for the forced drawer, there were no keys in the pockets of Banting’s suit. We found them in the trousers pocket of an evening suit which Banting had not worn for a fortnight. He may have thought he had lost his keys — and so forced the drawer. We have to be sure, you know. And, you will remember the room was locked and, except for Banting, was empty — and there were only two minutes since the shot.’

  Mr. James, who was the pathologist, leaned forward. ‘The head wound, Edward? You have a medical report?’

  ‘Yes.’ The A.C. consulted again his notes. ‘There was some tearing of the skin at the entrance, and an exit wound at the back of the head.’

  ‘Any blackening of the skin, and powder marks?’

  ‘Blackening — no. A little marking, not a great deal.’

  ‘Then, I must agree with the professor.’ He responded to the inquiring looks of the Dilettantes. ‘If a discharge occurs at a distance of 6 to 12 inches no tearing of the skin takes place and the entrance wound is seen as a rounded hole with a bruised margin and surrounded with a zone of blackening, as well as impacted particles of powder. The powder marks disperse as the distance increases, until at two or three feet there may be little sign of powder. I should say, therefore, that the shot was fired from a distance of three feet or so, Edward?’

  The A.C. acknowledged. ‘I accept the theory of murder. We are inclined to it. But tell me, who is the murderer and where is he — or rather what happened to him. He could not have escaped into the corridor. Mary would have seen him. He did not escape into the street.’

  ‘The barrel-organ men?’ asked James.

  ‘They were questioned, and saw nobody leave the house. They heard the shot when they were practically opposite the house, but thought something big had dropped in the basement and took no notice of it.’

  ‘This lounge,’ the professor said. ‘D-describe it for me.’

  ‘It is fairly large, with a door leading to a porch and to the front door. There’s a large window, and a fireplace. It is really a hall. At the far end a door leads to the domestic quarters where a staircase goes down to the basement kitchen, and a servants’ staircase upstairs.’ He grinned at the look which appeared on the faces in front of him. ‘Oh, no, nobody went down that way after the shooting; they would have to pass Mary, who was practically on top of it round the corner from which she peered.’

  ‘Well, Edward, I see no solution,’ Sir Noël said, ‘any more than you do.’

  The professor cleared his throat. The company turned to him. He fingered his tie, and then waggled a finger at them as though at students during a lecture. ‘This is an impossible situation,’ he said. ‘And logic does not admit that the impossible can happen. Logic deals s-systematically with the principles which regulate valid thought, that is thought of which the c-conclusions are justified by the facts given; it enables us to judge whether any given evidence is sufficient to prove a given statement, and to perceive what additional statements can justifiably be inferred from any given statements. It has been called the science of proof and the study of the general conditions of valid inference.

  ‘One assumption to logical reasoning is the Law of Contradiction. I will illustrate it from our present argument. This is how it works:

  Murder is committed in a locked bedroom.

  There is no murderer in the room.

  Therefore the murderer has escaped.

  ‘B-but if it can be proved beyond argument that the murderer could not possibly have escaped from the room, as Sir Edward has proved here, then you are left with the contradiction:

  Murder has been committed in a locked bedroom.

  The murderer has been unable to escape.

  Therefore the murderer is still in the locked room.

  ‘From that syllogism, gentlemen, there is no p-possible extrication. So the murderer of Banting was in the locked room all the time. That you d-did not see him does not eliminate him from the room —’

  ‘But hang it all, Professor, people crowded into the room when the door was opened. One of them must have seen him —’

 
‘Go on, Professor,’ the A.C. said. ‘You interest me greatly.’

  ‘I can see him, white-faced, terror stricken, with the gun in his gloved hands. He had gone to the room to rob, at a safe time, while the guests were in the lounge with coffee. And then, unexpectedly Banting comes in and finds him. There is a crisis. He is to be assaulted by the angry Banting. He is at the desk, which he has been searching — for the papers missing from the wallet. He has seen the revolver and t-takes it out to threaten until he can pass Banting who is between him and the door. Banting moves towards him, and he fires. And he is in m-mortal peril. The shot has been heard. Already men are coming up the stairs. He can hear them. But he is quick-witted, and his wits are quickened even more by danger. And he escapes — by those wits.’

  They stared at him with his eyes dancing in excitement beneath the grey shock of hair, and snuff particles gathering on his right lapel, which in his excitement he failed to brush off.

  ‘But how, my dear man, how?’ the chairman asked.

  5

  ‘There is only one way in which he could have escaped,’ the professor went on after drinking a glass of wine. ‘Only one way. And I know that way, I, the logician.’

  ‘Tell us, there’s a good fellow. Or rather, tell Sir Edward.’

  ‘Tell you, ah no. T-that w-would be no m-mystery.’ The spell and narrative broken, the professor lapsed into his slight stutter. ‘I will show you. We will play the drama all over again.’ He turned to the chairman. ‘It would be permissible to use the service room for a little while, and to h-have the estimable waiter. H-he c-can be the Banting man.’ He rang the bell. The waiter entered.