Flowering Death Read online

  “You took home no parcel of any kind?”

  “No. Seale will tell you.”

  “And no parcels arrived for you during the day?”

  “No ... Look here, sergeant! I know perfectly well that I’m under suspicion. So are Fayne and Seale. Quite honestly, however, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. My uncle’s murder was an outside job. I’m positive of that ... But I, for one, would only be too glad if you seized every opportunity to establish our innocence by questioning us and by proving our answers. It seems to be the only way in which we can be cleared.”

  Spring nodded.

  “That’s good of you, Mr. Lancaster,” he said gratefully. “I shall certainly do my best ... Now, Dr. Fayne, if you would be kind enough —”

  Lancaster shrugged expressive shoulders and grinned wryly at the dark-skinned doctor. Then he moved away to stand gazing out of the partially open windows on to the expanse of Park Square.

  The sun beat down strongly on practically deserted pavements, and a faint odour of melting tar percolated into the freshness of the room. A sudden longing assailed Sergeant Spring for the clean air of the seaside. He thought of waving bent and little creamy waves hissing along sandy beaches. He imagined the glory of a quick plunge into the cool water and compared his mental picture with his present circumstances — cooped up in the city, clad in stuffy clothes, a difficult murder case on hand ... Then fiercely, for Spike’s sake, he crushed down his longing and concentrated upon his task. Spike had said that they would not fail. The ghastly threat of the flower-disease lay over their work. The safety of British people, the safety, perhaps, of Americans, French, Germans, Russians, Italians, depended upon the fact of his playing the game without a falter.

  Kenneth Fayne was speaking, a thin, foreign cigarette between his brown fingers. Spring, his back to the window, watched the smoke of that cigarette for a moment and was interested to observe its irregular course to the ceiling.

  “I had breakfast with Lancaster,” said the doctor quietly. “Before lunch I paid six professional visits to nominal patients of Dr. McIntee. Do you wish the names of those people?”

  “If you please. And their addresses.”

  His boyish, ruddy face intent, Spring jotted down certain information.

  “You will discover,” remarked Fayne when he had finished, “that I have been telling you the truth ... In the afternoon I did my usual duty at St. Clement’s Hospital. I have quite a number of patients there. At six-thirty I returned here for dinner. Afterwards Miss Nevinson went to the drawing-room to read, while Dr. McIntee and I had a game of billiards upstairs. I noticed then that the old man was disturbed about something. He asked me twice if the murder of one could be justified by the safety of many. I could not understand his meaning and I answered with a conventional condemnation of murder.”

  Spring was gazing into the impassive dark features, but he heard a sound behind him which he took to be Lancaster’s expression of surprise at the other’s new item of information.

  “And Dr. Fayne — were you the recipient of any parcels during that day?”

  “Yes. I did receive a parcel. It was delivered here in the course of the afternoon. Searle drew my attention to it when I returned in the evening. It was a gift from one of my patients. It contained flowers.”

  There was a strained silence.

  “What did you do with the flowers?” asked Spring. “You know, Dr. Fayne, you should have told me of this before.”

  “I know ... Unfortunately I was afraid to do so. I left the parcel in the hall, intending to speak to Miss Nevinson later about the flowers. She would have been glad of them for one of the rooms. The matter went completely from my mind. When next I saw the blooms they were lying amongst the others strewn upon the corpse.”

  Fayne spoke careful English, marred only by the slightest trace of a hissing accent. Spring’s ideas were rather confused.

  “What kind of flowers were they?” he asked.

  “Hollyhocks and a few spikes of spiraea.”

  “Thank you, doctor. And the name of the patient who sent them to you?”

  “I am sorry. I cannot tell you. There was attached to the flowers a little typewritten card. There was nothing on this card, save the words: ‘From a Grateful Patient.’ I thought —”

  Suddenly there was a cry from Lancaster. Spring whirled round in his chair; and at that moment a stone thudded upon the carpet near the book-table. Wrapped round the stone was a fluttering piece of paper.

  “My God!” cried the actor. “It came through the open window. It nearly struck my head.”

  His vivid blue eyes were lit with a sudden fear. Hands plucked at his lips. He gazed as if fascinated at the stone which, lying on the thick pile of carpet, seemed so out of place in the beautifully furnished room. Dr. Fayne’s cigarette was flattened between twitching fingers; but his features retained their passivity.

  Spring was not a detective-sergeant for nothing. He leaped to his feet. He ignored the stone, and, brushing Lancaster aside, made for the windows. He glanced rapidly around the Square. He could see no one moving in the heat, save a nursemaid with a pram, two little boys feeding birds with breadcrumbs and a couple of old gentlemen with white beards who sat on a wooden seat under the trees. They did not look suspicious, though it was just possible that any one of the adults in sight could have thrown the stone the distance of Arundel House.

  He put his head outside and looked upwards. He saw that above the drawing-room there was another apartment with windows which swung open. With professional quickness Spring observed that the second storey windows might have been obscured from the view of his watchers in the street by the gable of an adjoining property.

  Turning, he found the two men regarding him in puzzled fashion.

  “Did you see anyone throw that stone, Mr. Lancaster?”

  “No. It seemed — somehow — to come from above.”

  The sergeant jumped forward, picked up the stone with its wrapping of paper and thrust it into the pocket of his tweed jacket. Then he hastened to the door.

  “Come on!” he snapped, white teeth flashing in the sudden smile of the hunter. “Show me the quickest way to the room above this one.”

  “It is Seale’s,” muttered Fayne and led the way upstairs at a run.

  Lancaster came more slowly in the wake of the others, and Spring allowed himself to consider the character of the actor for one short moment.

  Reluctantly the sergeant arrived at the conclusion that the man was a coward. On the surface Dr. McIntee’s nephew was an engaging, charming Englishman; and his fresh colouring and generally manly bearing helped to strengthen the illusion. But there was about him — something odd. Spring put that something down as cowardice. On the morning of flic murder there had been in Lancaster’s expression the same shrinking from an unknown horror as had been apparent when the wrapped stone fell upon the carpet in the drawing-room ... There must be a yellow streak, thought Spring, in the actor’s personality.

  In a flash the sergeant compared Lancaster with Fayne, and there was an instant when he was on the verge of an illuminating idea. Fayne was a better man in every way. He was in an unfortunate position with regard to the flowers which had been sent to him; but, though admittedly afraid, he had almost complete control over his emotions. And in spite of the fact that there was dark blood in his veins the doctor had shown no signs of perturbation at the sudden appearance of the stone in the drawing-room. And he had led the hunt to Seale’s room without hesitation.

  The butler’s apartment was empty. It was furnished severely with oaken chairs and bedstead. In one corner there stood a locked bureau, while the walls, papered in pale green, were bare. An alarm clock and a collection of pieces of string were to be seen on the mantelpiece.

  Spring took one glance at the open window. Then he shook his fair, curly head as if puzzled. And presently he went slowly downstairs and towards the region of the kitchen, Fayne and Lancaster following close behind him. The ser
geant wondered why he should feel his nerves so taut, as if he were on the fringe of a discovery.

  Seale was in his shirt sleeves in the scullery, an apron round his narrow waist. He was engaged in peeling potatoes.

  He laid down his knife as the three men disturbed his labours.

  “I’m sorry you should find me like this, gentlemen,” he said in his deep, smooth voice. “But until Miss Joan finds a housekeeper to take Mrs. Parkinson’s place we shall be short-handed. Mary, the kitchen-maid has gone out to do some shopping, and” — his lean, wrinkled face creased into a deprecatory smile — “in her absence I have to make myself useful.”

  Spring did not move a muscle.

  “Were you in your room, Seale, during the last half hour?”

  The butler’s heavy eyebrows went up. He cleared his throat in the sibilant way which seemed to be a habit with him.

  “No, sir,” he replied in a slightly higher key. “I have been so busy —”

  “All right, Seale ... But now that we are here, I should be obliged if you would tell me exactly your movements on the day preceding the — er — murder.”

  The butler’s long hands clenched.

  “I did my duty as usual, sir. I did not leave the house all day. And I spoke to no one not resident here, with the exception of a message-boy who delivered a parcel for Dr. Fayne in the afternoon.”

  “I see ... You didn’t know the boy?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. He has called here before with flowers ordered by Miss Joan. He was from Allbert’s, the Piccadilly florist’s.”

  Spring made a mental note. Then his interrogation continued.

  “About Mrs. Parkinson and Mary Daw ... Were their actions at all suspicious that day?”

  Seale frowned.

  “No, sir,” he said at last. “They seemed to go about their duties quite normally. Mrs. Parkinson, I remember, did not leave the house at all. Mary Daw had some shopping to do for an hour in the morning.”

  “Miss Nevinson, Dr. McIntee and Dr. Fayne had dinner together that night? Afterwards Miss Nevinson proceeded to the drawing-room to read while the men played billiards?”

  “To the best of my recollection that is correct, sir. Miss Nevinson retired shortly before eleven. My master and Dr. Fayne went to their rooms shortly afterwards. I let Mr. Lancaster into the house about half-past-eleven, and then, everyone being inside, I made my usual tour of the premises to ascertain that all doors and windows were secured.”

  “The library windows were snibbed?”

  “That is so, sir. Every window on the ground floor was firmly shut against intruders.”

  Sergeant Spring was irritated and deeply puzzled when he returned with Fayne and Lancaster to the drawing-room. How had the stone got into the apartment? To his mind it had not come from the street but from somewhere above the level of the ground floor windows. Lancaster declared that it had narrowly missed his head during its flight, and, were it thrown up from the square, it would not have dropped to the floor as quickly as had been the case after gaining such a high trajectory ... Spring possessed an inkling of the science of mechanics.

  But, if not from the street, whence had the stone come? Spring had a vague impression that with the aid of string and a running loop it might have been whisked in from the windows of the room above. But the room above had been quite empty when they visited it. Had Seale been able to descend swiftly to the kitchen and don his apron before he — and Fayne and Lancaster — had left the drawing-room? The sergeant scarcely thought this possible. Seale was a thin, spare man, but suppleness did not seem to be one of his characteristics.

  Had Mary Daw, the little maid, anything to do with the mystery. Surely the puny, rather featureless girl did not possess ingenuity enough to accomplish the stone-throwing. And his men outside would be able to check her movements, if, as Seale averred, she had gone out.

  Then who else ... Suddenly Spring pulled himself together. He was losing himself in a maze of conjectures. He could not go searching all over Arundel House, looking under the beds and tables for sinister strangers who might have entered the building. He would make an almighty fool of himself in a minute if he didn’t keep his imagination within bounds. He was seeking for facts. It was for the head of Department Q7 to do the theorizing.

  And yet, as Spike had done on the previous night, he felt that he was missing some vital clue to the problem. He had the sensation of a writer who, — searching for a word, finds it trembling on the verge of his brain but refusing to enter. He glowered at his two companions.

  “The stone, sergeant,” muttered Lancaster, taking his pouch from the mantelpiece to refill his pipe. “Have you —”

  “I haven’t forgotten it!” snapped Spring crossly. “I was wondering just what to make of all this.”

  He plunged his hand into the pocket of his jacket; and as he spread out on the book-table the paper with which the stone had been wrapped, an involuntary exclamation came from between his pursed lips.

  “What is it?”

  Fayne drew closer, while, glancing up, Spring saw the frightened expression again become apparent in Lancaster's face.

  “A short and rather remarkable message.” In replying to the doctor, Spring endeavoured to copy Spike’s mode of speech. “Listen. I will read it to you:

  “ ‘To Scotland Yard. You are wasting your time trying to find me. Concentrate upon preventing the Government from ratifying the Naval Pact. Black and White.’ ”

  Upon leaving Arundel House, Spring spoke to his men outside. Mary Daw, he learned, had certainly left the building about half-past-ten, a basket on her arm, and she had still to return. No one had been observed throwing a stone from the Square in the direction of the drawing-room windows. And while the watchers admitted that upon certain occasions, while they strolled upon their beat, their view of the upper windows of the house might have been obscured by the neighbouring houses, they stated that nothing suspicious had been noticed by them during the morning.

  Fifteen minutes later the sergeant was speaking to Joan Nevinson at Spike’s house.

  CHAPTER XI

  SPIKE took up his wide-brimmed felt hat, crooked his ash stick over his arm, and bade Mr. Peter Todd good morning.

  His cold eyes, in which there glinted a message of the most serious character, were remembered vividly by the Daily Star’s specialist in sensation for many days; and their warning was sufficient to keep that stout and imaginative young man in the ways of rectitude until such time as the head of Department Q7 released him from his promise. In fact, Mr. Todd’s emotions were so cruelly kept in cheek during this period that when Spike gave him at last the full and finished details of the crime for publication a tremendous reaction set in — a reaction which resulted in Todd out-Todding Todd and giving his readers an exclusive story so full of lurid details that he was offered a job by the New York Courier at seven hundred dollars a month. Mr. Todd, naturally enough, accepted the engagement; and responsible journalists throughout the length and breadth of Britain heaved sighs of incredible relief. But that is another story ...

  Striding through the rubber-floored newspaper office, looking neither to right nor to left, Spike gained the roaring, sunlit street; and a junior reporter who passed him in the vestibule of the building announced later to a close friend that Dorrance, by the happy, eager expression on his face, was undoubtedly on the track of some poor devil.

  And, in truth, his favourable interview with Peter Todd, coupled with McGonagle’s message, had given Spike new courage. He boarded a bus in the Strand which took him, with many jolts and rumblings, in the direction of Limehouse. His mind, however, was oblivious to discomforts. He was wondering if the Chinese girl would provide the clue for which he had been seeking so assiduously since his summons to Arundel House on the previous morning.

  Only once during his journey did he allow his thoughts to stray. And that was when he calculated that by then Spring’s visit to the house of the late Dr. McIntee would be over and that the sergeant
ought, at the moment to be interviewing Joan Nevinson. Would Joan like Spring? And — what was as important to Spike’s mind — would Spring be favourably impressed by Joan? Spike was always eager that those who were friendly with him should be friendly with each other ... And he was well enough aware that his feelings for Joan were prompted by a deeper emotion than mere friendship.

  Then he pulled himself up short. This weak dreaming in the middle of a case was unlike him. As a rule, when engaged upon the task of discovering a murderer, his waking mind was occupied solely by considerations of the business in hand. He took the problem to meals, worried over it in the seclusion of his flat, brought it to church with him on Sundays. And generally he slept little until his job had been completed.

  On this occasion, however, when issues, the gravity of which he had not before encountered, were presented to him, he found himself distracted quite frequently by the loveliness of Joan. There were periods in which he forgot altogether that Dr. McIntee had been murdered and that a plot was afoot to hold his country to ransom.

  He was uneasy. He blamed himself, and put a tentative question to Dr. Dorrance, the scientist. Had he missed that vital clue, which, his instinct told him, lay clearly within his vision, because of his preoccupation with Joan and her troubles? Dr. Dorrance, the scientist, replied that such might easily be the case; and Spike, the boyish young man, flushed painfully and with self-reproach.

  But just then Dr. Dorrance, the scientist, put in a quick word, to the effect that on this account he should by no means lose confidence in his powers. To lose confidence at this stage would be fatal.

  And so, when he stepped off the bus, some distance away from Livingstone Street in Limehouse, the eager look had returned to his face. Again his courage was high. The next few minutes might show McGonagle and him the road which, through a maze of impassable thoroughfares, led to the murderer ... and to Mr. “Black and White.”