Death in the Dentist’s Chair: A Golden Age Mystery Page 12

  “But you don’t believe he could possibly have done such a vile thing?”

  “I don’t,” answered Constantine, with conviction.

  “You know they’ve been bothering him? He’s been questioned and his servants have been got at. Richard’s not a patient person and I’m so afraid he’ll put himself in the wrong with the police. And yet it’s so obvious to anyone that knows him that he couldn’t be anything but innocent. Can nothing be done about it, Dr. Constantine?”

  “If you mean as regards the police, any attempt to interfere with their activities would be the gravest mistake, from our point of view. Arkwright has got the case in hand and he’s scrupulously fair in his methods. He’s a good friend of mine and he knows that Richard’s arrest would hit me heavily. He won’t move unless he has good reason to. If you’re afraid that the police will make Richard a scapegoat simply with a view to saving their face, you can dismiss that idea from your mind completely. My only anxiety is as to how far he actually is implicated.”

  Mrs. Vallon turned on him, her eyes flaming.

  “Then, in your heart of hearts, you do suspect him!” she exclaimed. “And I came to you because I thought you were his friend!”

  “I am a good enough friend to face any possibility,” answered Constantine gravely. “Can you say the same?”

  If she hesitated, it was only for a moment.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Even if I knew he was guilty, I should stick to him. I couldn’t help it. But he didn’t do it, you know.”

  Constantine smiled.

  “I wanted to hear you say that,” he told her, “because, though I share your conviction that he isn’t guilty I have had an uneasy feeling in my bones from the very beginning. I can’t define it, but I never see Arkwright without dreading some fresh piece of evidence he may have picked up against him. I’ve nothing to go on beyond an impression I got from Richard himself on the day of the murder.”

  He waited, his wise old eyes on the glowing coals in the grate, but he could feel the impulse to speak flame and then die within her and knew that, as he had suspected, she had come to him driven by more than just a vague fear for Richard’s safety.

  “Dr. Constantine,” she said at last, “there is something Richard ought to tell you, though, seeing that you are in touch with the police, I don’t know whether it will help or hamper you. You are the only person who can judge of that and, without Richard’s permission, I would rather you did not hear it from me. May I ask him to come to you?”

  “I can assure you of one thing,” answered Constantine. “I do not consider myself by any means bound to pass on everything I hear to our friends at New Scotland Yard. And I should feel a great deal happier if I could get a square look at the bogey that has been lurking in the dark corners of my soul for the last few days!”

  She rose and began to draw on her gloves.

  “You have laid some of my bogies, I think,” she said, with a little laugh that broke suddenly in the middle. “I shall sleep better now that I know you are on his side. Richard is such a dear fool and when his back is up he’s capable of any idiocy. If I can persuade him, he will come to you and, if I can’t make him do that, I shall make him understand that I intend to tell you myself. The worst of it is, he’s so unreasonable, bless him. He’s furious at what he calls the interference of the police and yet I can’t make him see that there is any real danger.”

  “Send him to me,” agreed Constantine, with more cheerfulness than he felt. “It won’t be the first time I’ve spoken my mind to Richard, you know! And, for both your sakes, may I say how glad I am that you decided to come and see me?”

  She had not been gone ten minutes before the telephone bell rang. Arkwright was at the other end.

  “Davenport has just rung up,” he said. “He’s heard from Cattistock! Got a polite note from him by this evening’s post making an appointment for tomorrow! He’s in a nursing home! What price our fugitive, fleeing from justice, now?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The revolving doors of the Hotel Pergolese led straight into the lounge. Arkwright had hardly passed through them before he recognised the original of the photograph he had been carrying about with him so assiduously seated in a wicker chair reading the identical copy of “Esmond” that had been found beside his bed by the police on their first visit.

  At the sight of the little, white-faced, sandy-haired man, who looked as if the torrid Eastern sun had sapped what little vitality his meagre frame had ever possessed, Arkwright recalled Mrs. Miller, vast and domineering and still retaining, in spite of years of soft living, the muscular vigour of her type. Cattistock would have been helpless as a rabbit in her hands and, as his eyes fell on him, Arkwright saw his case against him crumbling ominously.

  At the sound of his own name the little man raised a pair of gentle blue eyes from his book.

  “I am Mr. Cattistock,” he said courteously, “but I don’t think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

  Since his painful interview with the dentist he had mastered at least some of the difficulties of enunciation, but the effort entailed made his words sound curiously prim and pedantic.

  Arkwright introduced himself and the little man’s pinched features relaxed into a smile that, owing to his complete lack of front teeth gave him somewhat the air of a very sophisticated baby.

  “The manager told me that you had been enquiring for me,” he said. “He gave me the impression that the matter was one of some importance and I was intending to call at Scotland Yard first thing tomorrow morning to inform you that I had returned to the hotel. If it were not for the fact that I have been unwell and am still in the doctor’s hands I should have done so this evening.”

  Arkwright did not tell him that, not only had the manager rung up the Yard within five minutes of his return, but that one of his own men had reported his presence in the hotel and had been keeping him under observation ever since his arrival.

  “I understand that you have been laid up ever since your visit to the dentist on Monday last,” he said.

  Cattistock once more inflicted his toothless smile on him and Arkwright’s lips twitched in spite of himself. So long as his mouth was closed the little man bore himself with a certain prim dignity, once it opened he had the aspect of some fantastic, fairy-tale changeling.

  “I have had a very distressing experience,” he said. “The dentist was not in any way at fault and I am afraid I have only my own unfortunate constitution to thank for what happened. I had had several teeth extracted and was on my way back to this hotel when my gums began to bleed so badly that I became alarmed and called on a doctor who had treated me for malaria when I first returned to England. He did his best to stop the haemorrhage, but it persisted, in spite of his efforts, until early on the following morning. I was so weak from loss of blood that I was only too glad to comply with his suggestion that I should go into a nursing home that night and, on his advice, I remained there until all danger of a return of the trouble was over. Owing to severe attacks of fever in the past my heart is not all it should be and it was only today that I was able to leave the home and come back here.”

  “I take it, then, that you have not seen the newspapers for the last few days?”

  Mr. Cattistock gave what in other circumstances would have been a wan smile.

  “I must confess I had little inclination to read. I was feeling so ill that I even omitted to inform this hotel of my whereabouts, thereby causing you some inconvenience, I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to give me the names and reason you can have for wishing to see me.”

  “We are endeavouring to ascertain the movements of everyone who was at forty-two Illbeck Street on the morning of Monday last and you are naturally on our list. I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to give me the names and addresses of the doctor and the matron of the nursing home you mentioned, after that, should our enquiries prove satisfactory, I think I can promise you that you will not be troubled again.”

&
nbsp; Mr. Cattistock blinked at him in mild amazement.

  “I hope this man, Davenport, has been doing nothing irregular,” he said apprehensively. “He was very strongly recommended to me by the manager here, and I must say the place seemed to be run on excellent lines. I observed nothing unusual myself, though, I confess, I was hardly in a condition to be very critical.”

  “If you had stayed a few minutes longer you would have found yourself involved in something that, I am happy to say, is still very irregular in this country. A patient whose appointment came shortly after yours was very brutally murdered in the dentist’s consulting room.”

  Mr. Cattistock recoiled.

  “By the dentist who extracted my teeth?” he gasped. “He certainly struck me as somewhat callous, but ...”

  Arkwright laughed.

  “The dentist had nothing to do with it,” he said. “You needn’t worry yourself about him, his reputation is good enough to stand even this nasty business. It was done while he was out of the room and our job is to find out who did it. That’s why we have been concerning ourselves with your whereabouts. Could you give me a rough idea of the time you left Davenport’s house and the hour at which you arrived at the doctor’s?”

  Mr. Cattistock hesitated.

  “I’m usually a fairly reliable person,” he declared conscientiously, “but you must remember that I was more than a little dazed that morning, indeed, as time went on, I became too faint to realise anything very clearly, but, so far as I can recollect, I must have left the dentist’s house somewhere about twelve o’clock. My appointment was for eleven and, after he had finished with me, I sat for a time in the waiting room. Then, as the bleeding grew worse, I went to the lavatory to try to make myself look a little more presentable. It grew so much worse there that I went straight to the doctor’s and I can remember noticing that the clock in his consulting room said twelve twenty. I am estimating the time I left the dentist’s on that.”

  “I wish everybody was as conscientious as you are, Mr. Cattistock,” said Arkwright, with a smile. “Now can you go one further and tell me what other patients you saw in Davenport’s house?”

  Cattistock described Sir Richard Pomfrey, Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Vallon with an earnest eye for detail.

  “I sincerely trust that that good-looking man was not the victim of this shocking affair,” he concluded.

  “Sir Richard? No, the victim was a woman, the large, overdressed lady whom, from your description, I gather you did not much like, Mr. Cattistock.”

  The little man’s reaction was immediate.

  “Dear, dear! The poor creature!” he lisped, in a voice full of contrition. “It was heartless in the extreme of me to have given that impression!”

  He hesitated for a moment, then his natural honesty triumphed.

  “The truth is, I did not like her,” he admitted. “But, as I have said, I was feeling ill and perhaps a little morbid. I certainly wished her no ill, poor woman.”

  “You saw no one else? Either coming in or going out?”

  “I passed someone, an elderly man, on my way out, but I could not describe him.”

  “You saw no one else? In the hall or coming out of the lavatory?” insisted Arkwright. “We believe the murder to have taken place between eleven forty-eight and twelve five.”

  Cattistock looked mildly agitated.

  “Then I may actually have been on the premises when it was committed!” he exclaimed.

  Arkwright nodded.

  “That is why I hoped you might help us,” he said. “You saw nobody but the people you have mentioned?”

  “No one. Except the dentist’s assistant, who crossed the hall as I was on my way to the lavatory.”

  It was Arkwright’s turn to look startled.

  “Was he wearing a white coat?” he demanded.

  “Yes. A long white coat, like the one the dentist had on.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “From the lavatory. He crossed the hall and went into the consulting room.”

  “Could you describe him, Mr. Cattistock?”

  But Cattistock shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. If you had not been so persistent in your questions I should not even have remembered him. He simply passed across my vision, as it were. Even if I’d wished I couldn’t have observed him closely.”

  Arkwright sighed.

  “Well, you enjoy the unique distinction of having seen the murderer, Mr. Cattistock,” he said. “I only wish you could have got a better look at him!”

  Then Cattistock said a surprising thing.

  “I have seen, aye, and spoken to, many murderers in China,” he announced calmly, “but, curiously enough, I have never been affected as I am now. I find this rather horrible, Inspector.”

  Before he left Arkwright questioned him more closely as to his own movements.

  “We found traces of blood in the lavatory,” he concluded, “Until now we were under the impression that they had been left by the murderer.”

  Cattistock blushed.

  “I’m afraid I was responsible,” he confessed. “I know I was driven to use a towel owing to the deplorable state of my handkerchief and I no doubt left the basin in somewhat of a mess. If I had not been feeling so ill, I should, I hope, have been less inconsiderate.”

  Arkwright’s main feeling was one of regret that Constantine had not been present at this interview. The old man would have appreciated every moment of it. As a matter of routine he went straight from the hotel to the nursing home Cattistock had just left. Here the matron corroborated his story. It was too late to get in touch with the doctor that night, but Arkwright was under no delusions as to what the result would be when he did succeed in interviewing him. As a potential murderer, Cattistock was a complete failure.

  He said as much to Constantine when he dropped in to the Club to snatch a hasty meal before returning to the Yard.

  “He’s an absolute wash-out. A queer little chap, but he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, hurt a fly. He saw the murderer, all right, though.”

  Constantine listened while he described the interview.

  “And that leaves us, where?” was his comment at the end.

  “Pretty much where we were at the beginning,” admitted Arkwright, with a wry smile.

  “With Richard as your only hope?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Arkwright, and Constantine knew that he was speaking the truth. “He had the opportunity, he’s an old acquaintance of Mrs. Miller’s and I fancy the motive won’t be too difficult to find.”

  “In fact, he’s got everything but the mental and moral equipment necessary for the murder,” concluded Constantine drily.

  “You might say that, superficially, of a dozen murderers. It doesn’t alter the fact that they did do the job.”

  “My knowledge of Richard’s character is not superficial. He’s hot-tempered, even violent, in anger, but utterly incapable of cold-blooded brutality. Apart from which, what motive can you possibly assign to him? To begin with, his association with Lottie Belmer was never of an intimate nature. She can have had no possible hold over him.”

  “You admit that if she had, she might have used it to her own advantage?”

  “From what I have heard of her, I think she might,” agreed Constantine.

  “Miller kept her short of money and she was hopelessly extravagant. If it was a question of hard cash, I don’t fancy she would be too scrupulous. And, if what one hears about Mrs. Vallon is true, this is the last moment that Sir Richard would wish for any kind of scandal.”

  “Mrs. Vallon isn’t a young, romantic girl,” objected Constantine. “She’s a sophisticated woman of the world and she must have heard a good deal of what was common gossip at one time. It would be unlikely that Mrs. Miller could tell her much that she doesn’t know already.”

  Arkwright pushed his plate aside and planted his elbows on the table.

  “Look here, sir,” he said. “Laying all prejudice aside, what is th
e situation? Mrs. Vallon and yourself are beyond suspicion. Davenport could have committed the murder, but, so far, we have been unable to trace any possible motive for the crime. I think we can take it that, by tomorrow, Cattistock will be safely out of the picture. If the murderer came from outside he may have entered through the house next door, but you yourself have pointed out that the traces we found there could have been made any time during the past week. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent Sir Richard from having concealed the overall and gloves in the lavatory and gone there to put them on. Having killed Mrs. Miller the murderer left his disguise in the consulting room and departed, either by the front door or across the leads into the next door house. Now, just before twelve, Cattistock saw him cross the hall on his way to the consulting room. We can take this for granted, as Davenport, when he left Mrs. Miller, went straight downstairs and did not go near the lavatory. His assistant was in the basement, with another mechanic, who can vouch for it that he did not go upstairs until he was sent for to force the lock. If the man Cattistock saw was the murderer, that clears Davenport. All this narrows down the time of the murder to between twelve and twelve five, though it is possible that it actually took place while Davenport was trying to get the door open. By twelve fifteen the room had been entered, so that we can now place it pretty definitely as between twelve and twelve fifteen. Therefore, unless the murderer made his get-away across the leads, he must have been someone who had a definite right to be in the house, owing to the fact that Betts was standing on the doorstep until twelve five, and from then onwards, he and Davenport and the assistant were outside the consulting room door. There was only one person who did go down the hall while they were there, and that was Sir Richard.”

  “Perfectly logical, if you exclude the house next door,” agreed Constantine. “When I pointed out that the traces we found need not have been made on the day of the murder I did not for a moment suggest ruling them out altogether.”