Iris1
“For I thought that the dead had peace
But it is not so . . .”
One
Colonel Race turned into the doorway2 of New Scotland Yard. He filled in
the form that was brought forward and a very few minutes later he was
shaking hands with Chief Inspector3 Kemp in the latter’s room.
The two men were well acquainted. Kemp was slightly reminiscent of
that grand old veteran, Battle, in type. Indeed, since he had worked under
Battle for many years, he had perhaps unconsciously copied a good many
of the older man’s mannerisms. He bore about him the same suggestion of
being carved all in one piece—but whereas Battle had suggested some
wood such as teak or oak, Chief Inspector Kemp suggested a somewhat
more showy wood—mahogany, say, or good old-fashioned rosewood.
“It was good of you to ring us, colonel,” said Kemp. “We shall want all
the help we can get on this case.”
“It seems to have got us into exalted6 hands,” said Race.
Kemp did not make modest disclaimers. He accepted quite simply the
indubitable fact that only cases of extreme delicacy7, wide publicity8 or su-
preme importance came his way. He said seriously:
“It’s the Kidderminster connection. You can imagine that means careful
going.”
Race nodded. He had met Lady Alexandra Farraday several times. One
of those quiet women of unassailable position whom it seems fantastic to
associate with sensational9 publicity. He had heard her speak on public
platforms—without eloquence10, but clearly and competently, with a good
grasp of her subject, and with an excellent delivery.
The kind of woman whose public life was in all the papers, and whose
private life was practically nonexistent except as a bland11 domestic back-
ground.
Nevertheless, he thought, such women have a private life. They know
despair, and love, and the agonies of jealousy12. They can lose control and
risk life itself on a passionate13 gamble.
He said curiously14:
“Suppose she ‘done it,’ Kemp?”
“Lady Alexandra? Do you think she did, sir?”
“I’ve no idea. But suppose she did. Or her husband—who comes under
the Kidderminster mantle15.”
The steady sea- green eyes of Chief Inspector Kemp looked in an un-
troubled way into Race’s dark ones.
“If either of them did murder, we’ll do our level best to hang him or her.
You know that. There’s no fear and no favour for murderers in this coun-
try. But we’ll have to be absolutely sure of our evidence—the public pro-
secutor will insist on that.”
Race nodded.
Then he said, “Let’s have the doings.”
“George Barton died of cyanide poisoning—same thing as his wife a year
ago. You said you were actually in the restaurant?”
“Yes. Barton had asked me to join his party. I refused. I didn’t like what
he was doing. I protested against it and urged him, if he had doubts about
his wife’s death, to go to the proper people—to you.”
Kemp nodded.
“That’s what he ought to have done.”
“Instead he persisted in an idea of his own—setting a trap for the mur-
derer. He wouldn’t tell me what that trap was. I was uneasy about the
whole business—so much so that I went to the Luxembourg last night so
as to keep an eye on things. My table, necessarily, was some distance away
—I didn’t want to be spotted16 too obviously. Unfortunately I can tell you
nothing. I saw nothing in the least suspicious. The waiters and his own
party were the only people who approached the table.”
“Yes,” said Kemp, “it narrows it down, doesn’t it? It was one of them, or
it was the waiter, Giuseppe Bolsano. I’ve got him on the mat again this
morning—thought you might like to see him—but I can’t believe he had
anything to do with it. Been at the Luxembourg for twelve years—good
reputation, married, three children, good record behind him. Gets on well
with all the clients.”
“Which leaves us with the guests.”
“Yes. The same party as was present when Mrs. Barton—died.”
“What about that business, Kemp?”
“I’ve been going into it since it seems pretty obvious that the two hang
together. Adams handled it. It wasn’t what we call a clear case of suicide,
but suicide was the most probable solution and in the absence of any dir-
ect evidence suggesting murder, one had to let it go as suicide. Couldn’t do
anything else. We’ve a good many cases like that in our records, as you
know. Suicide with a query17 mark. The public doesn’t know about the
query mark—but we keep it in mind. Sometimes we go on quite a bit hunt-
ing about quietly.
“Sometimes something crops up—sometimes it doesn’t. In this case it
didn’t.”
“Until now.”
“Until now. Somebody tipped Mr. Barton off to the fact that his wife had
been murdered. He got busy on his own—he as good as announced that he
was on the right track—whether he was or not I don’t know—but the mur-
derer must have thought so—so the murderer gets rattled18 and bumps off
Mr. Barton. That seems the way of it as far as I can see — I hope you
agree?”
“Oh, yes—that part of it seems straightforward19 enough. God knows what
the ‘trap’ was—I noticed that there was an empty chair at the table. Per-
haps5 it was waiting for some unexpected witness. Anyhow it accomplished20
rather more than it was meant to do. It alarmed the guilty person so much
that he or she didn’t wait for the trap to be sprung.”
“Well,” said Kemp, “we’ve got five suspects. And we’ve got the first case
to go on—Mrs. Barton.”
“You’re definitely of the opinion now that it was not suicide?”
“This murder seems to prove that it wasn’t. Though I don’t think you can
blame us at the time for accepting the suicide theory as the most probable.
There was some evidence for it.”
“Depression after influenza21?”
Kemp’s wooden face showed a ripple22 of a smile.
“That was for the coroner’s court. Agreed with the medical evidence and
saved everybody’s feelings. That’s done every day. And there was a half-
finished letter to the sister directing how her personal belongings23 were to
be given away—showed she’d had the idea of doing away with herself in
her mind. She was depressed24 all right, I don’t doubt, poor lady—but nine
times out of ten, with women, it’s a love affair. With men it’s mostly
money worries.”
“So you knew Mrs. Barton had a love affair.”
“Yes, we soon found that out. It had been discreet—but it didn’t take
much finding.”
“Stephen Farraday?”
“Yes. They used to meet in a little flat out Earl’s Court way. It had been
going on for over six months. Say they’d had a quarrel—or possibly he
was getting tired of her—well, she wouldn’t be the first woman to take her
life in a fit of desperation.”
“By potassium cyanide in a public restaurant?”
“Yes—if she wanted to be dramatic about it—with him looking on and
all. Some people have a feeling for the spectacular. From what I could find
out she hadn’t much feeling for the conventions—all the precautions were
on his side.”
“Any evidence as to whether his wife knew what was going on?”
“As far as we could learn she knew nothing about it.”
“She may have, for all that, Kemp. Not the kind of woman to wear her
heart on her sleeve.”
“Oh, quite so. Count them both in as possibles. She for jealousy. He for
his career. Divorce would have dished that. Not that divorce means as
much as it used to, but in his case it would have meant the antagonism25 of
the Kidderminster clan26.”
“What about the secretary girl?”
“She’s a possible. Might have been sweet on George Barton. They were
pretty thick at the office and there’s an idea there that she was keen on
him. Actually yesterday afternoon one of the telephone girls was giving an
imitation of Barton holding Ruth Lessing’s hand and saying he couldn’t do
without her, and Miss Lessing came out and caught them and sacked the
girl there and then—gave her a month’s money and told her to go. Looks
as though she was sensitive about it all. Then the sister came into a peck of
money—one’s got to remember that. Looked a nice kid, but you can never
tell. And there was Mrs. Barton’s other boyfriend.”
“I’m rather anxious to hear what you know about him?”
Kemp said slowly:
“Remarkably little—but what there is isn’t too good. His passport’s in or-
der. He’s an American citizen about whom we can’t find anything, detri-
mental or otherwise. He came over here, stayed at Claridge’s and man-
aged27 to strike up an acquaintance with Lord Dewsbury.”
“Confidence man?”
“Might be. Dewsbury seems to have fallen for him—asked him to stay.
Rather a critical time just then.”
“Armaments,” said Race. “There was that trouble about the new tank tri-
als in Dewsbury’s works.”
“Yes. This fellow Browne represented himself as interested in arma-
ments. It was soon after he’d been up there that they discovered that sab-
otage business—just in the nick of time. Browne met a good many cronies
of Dewsbury—he seemed to have cultivated all the ones who were connec-
ted4 with the armament firms. As a result he’s been shown a lot of stuff
that in my opinion he ought never to have seen—and in one or two cases
there’s been serious trouble in the works not long after he’s been in the
neighbourhood.”
“An interesting person, Mr. Anthony Browne?”
“Yes. He’s got a lot of charm, apparently28, and plays it for all he’s worth.”
“And where did Mrs. Barton come in? George Barton hasn’t anything to
do with the armament world?”
“No. But they seem to have been fairly intimate. He may have let out
something to her. You know, colonel, none better, what a pretty woman
can get out of a man.”
Race nodded, taking the chief inspector’s words, as meant, to refer to the
Counterespionage Department which he had once controlled and not—as
some ignorant person might have thought — to some personal indiscre-
tions of his own.
He said after a minute or two:
“Have you had a go at those letters that George Barton received?”
“Yes. Found them in his desk at his house last night. Miss Marle found
them for me.”
“You know I’m interested in those letters, Kemp. What’s the expert opin-
ion on them?”
“Cheap paper, ordinary ink—fingerprints29 show George Barton and Iris
Marle handled them—and a horde30 of unidentified dabs31 on the envelope,
postal32 employees, etc. They were printed and the experts say by someone
of good education in normal health.”
“Good education. Not a servant?”
“Presumably not.”
“That makes it more interesting still.”
“It means that somebody else had suspicions, at least.”
“Someone who didn’t go to the police. Someone who was prepared to
arouse George’s suspicions but who didn’t follow the business up. There’s
something odd there, Kemp. He couldn’t have written them himself, could
he?”
“He could have. But why?”
“As a preliminary to suicide—a suicide which he intended to look like
murder.”
“With Stephen Farraday booked for the hangman’s rope? It’s an idea—
but he’d have made quite sure that everything pointed33 to Farraday as the
murderer. As it is we’ve nothing against Farraday at all.”
“What about cyanide? Was there any container found?”
“Yes. A small white paper packet under the table. Traces of cyanide crys-
tals inside. No fingerprints on it. In a detective story, of course, it would be
some special kind of paper or folded in some special way. I’d like to give
these detective story writers a course of routine work. They’d soon learn
how most things are untraceable and nobody ever notices anything any-
where!”
Race smiled.
“Almost too sweeping34 a statement. Did anybody notice anything last
night?”
“Actually that’s what I’m starting on today. I took a brief statement from
everyone last night and I went back to Elvaston Square with Miss Marle
and had a look through Barton’s desk and papers. I shall get fuller state-
ments from them all today—also statements from the people sitting at the
other two tables in the alcove—” He rustled35 through some papers—“Yes,
here they are. Gerald Tollington, Grenadier Guards, and the Hon. Patricia
Brice-Woodworth. Young engaged couple. I’ll bet they didn’t see anything
but each other. And Mr. Pedro Morales—nasty bit of goods from Mexico—
even the whites of his eyes are yellow—and Miss Christine Shannon—a
gold-digging blonde lovely—I’ll bet she didn’t see anything—dumber than
you’d believe possible except where money is concerned. It’s a hundred to
one chance that any of them saw anything, but I took their names and ad-
dresses on the off chance. We’ll start off with the waiter chap, Giuseppe.
He’s here now. I’ll have him sent in.”
点击
收听单词发音
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1
iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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ted
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| vt.翻晒，撒，撒开 | |
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haps
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| n.粗厚毛披巾；偶然，机会，运气( hap的名词复数 ) | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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11
bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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12
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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13
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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14
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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15
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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query
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| n.疑问，问号，质问；vt.询问，表示怀疑 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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19
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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influenza
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| n.流行性感冒，流感 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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belongings
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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fingerprints
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| n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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dabs
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| 少许( dab的名词复数 )； 是…能手； 做某事很在行； 在某方面技术熟练 | |
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postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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