“She’s right about that,” said Henry. “I remember now. There was some row about it between Uncle G. and Aunt V. He said Tinkerton was debauching Giggle. How Giggle could! Imagine it!”
“We won’t,” said Alleyn. “To continue. Michael left Giggle and took the parcel into the dining-room. The coast was clear for Tinkerton. We think she may have crossed the landing and got Giggle to come out there. She probably told him then of the quarrel. I fancy Tinkerton, like Lady Macbeth, was the brains of the party, and I may add that a casual conversation with a Shakespearian P.C. first gave me this idea. Sometime between Michael’s departure to the dining-room and Lady Charles’s return from Flat 26 the thing was concocted. Either a tentative plot was interrupted by Lord Wutherwood coming out and getting into the lift, or the whole thing took shape in Tinkerton’s fertile brain after he was there. Here was their opportunity. He was alone and he had quarrelled violently with his brother who had audibly wished him dead. They made themselves scarce while Baskett put Lord Wutherwood into his coat. As soon as Basket had gone, out they came. Giggle got his instructions. He was to go to the deserted landing below, summon the lift with Lord Wutherwood inside it, kill him, and go on downstairs. Tinkerton would recall the lift and as soon as she had touched the button hurry down after Giggle leaving all of you upstairs with a very healthy motive. All went according to plan, except that neither of them knew that injuries to the brain are not always instantly fatal. As soon as Lord Wutherwood entered the lift she gave Giggle the skewer and gloves, sent him along to get Michael as his witness, took to her old hidy-hole until Giggle had gone, and then returned to the landing. She would see the lift go down and stop at the lower landing. She would hear the doors open. Possibly she would hear another more ominous sound. She would hear the doors close again. That was her cue. She pressed the button and followed Giggle downstairs. The lift returned to the top floor and Tinkerton, having summoned it, passed it on her way down. The commissionaire saw them go out to the car, one after another, just as they said. If it seemed impossible for Giggle to have killed him then it must seem equally impossible for Tinkerton to do so since she was on Giggle’s heels. Michael provided the upstairs alibi. The pause on the second floor was sandwiched neatly between their two appearances.”
“They took frightful risks, sir.”
“They took one big risk. I think Giggle left the doors open while he attacked Lord Wutherwood. Tinkerton, in that case, would be quite safe, if she kept her thumb on the call button up above. That would prevent anybody summoning the lift to the ground floor and it would return to the top floor the moment Giggle left it and closed the doors behind him. The great risk was that somebody would come out on the landing and notice that the lift was not there, or catch it on its return, or even see it returning. In that case the job would have been up to Tinkerton. If somebody appeared as the lift was going down, she would have had to keep her thumb on the button and no sooner did it stop than it would return, with Lord Wutherwood angrily alive inside it. If somebody appeared during the few seconds after the attack but before the lift returned, and before Tinkerton got away, she would have had to distract the newcomer’s attention. Ask if she might fetch Lady Wutherwood. Faint, like Lady Macbeth. Slam the hall door on her own finger. Anything to draw attention away from the lift. That was their difficult moment, but it only lasted a few seconds, and remember that Tinkerton knew pretty well what you were all doing. She wouldn’t have been implicated but Giggle would. Giggle was the mug.”
“Why did she kill him?”
“Because he’d lost his nerve. This morning we questioned him about the lift and about his legacy. He went to pieces. He was a stupid fellow, ready enough to act quickly when the brains of the party shoved the weapon in his hand and egged him on, but wildly incapable of keeping his head afterwards, when the mental rot set in. No doubt he returned to Brummell Street in a state of terror and Tinkerton decided he was dangerous. She’s a clever, a desperate and a courageous woman. Moreover she is in her mistress’ confidence. I’ll bet you anything you like that Tinkerton is the buyer of whatever drug Lady Wutherwood takes and that she gets a little commission on the side. As Lady Wutherwood’s confidante, she undoubtedly knows a great deal about the witchcraft business. We shall only find Lady Wutherwood’s prints on the—” Alleyn checked himself — “on the objects connected with this last crime, but I’ll stake my life that Tinkerton visited the kitchen sometime during the night and brought away an instrument which she laid ready to hand in the green drawing-room. You may be sure Tinkerton knew very well what her mistress meant to do during the small hours. You may be sure it was Tinkerton who suggested that Lady Wutherwood should test the power of the Hand of Glory and Tinkerton who slipped down the backstairs and pulled out the fuse plug. One can imagine the instructions that were poured into that demented ear. First she was to secure the hand, then take it up to the top landing and down the deserted passage to the end room. There she would find a sleeping man. Let her make any noise she could think of, drop his heavy boots on the floor, scream, shake the bed. No one would stir, said Tinkerton, for all would be under the soporific spell of the severed hand.”
“So poor Aunt V. was the cat’s-paw.”
“Yes. Tinkerton may even have persuaded her that her Little Master required the death of the chauffeur. She may have told her where to find the razor. Her prints on the razor would be useful and her reaction when she found Giggle already murdered wouldn’t matter. Let her make whatever noise she liked. Let her be found there, with the razor in her hand. I’m sorry, Miss Grey, it’s a beastly story but I think you’ll feel better if you know exactly what happened, however unpleasant the recital.”
“Yes,” said Roberta. “But I still don’t quite see.”
“It may be Aunt V., after all,” said Henry. “Egged on by Tinkerton.”
“No. Only a left-handed person could have done it. I shan’t describe the nature of the injury.”
“I’d rather you did,” said Henry. “Robin, dear, perhaps if you—”
“I’d rather know, too, Henry. It’s beastly to wonder.”
“Well,” said Alleyn, “the murderer stood behind the head of the bed and the angle and position of the injury precludes any possibility of it being a right-handed attack. That’s all you need to know, isn’t it?”
“But why didn’t she arrange it to look like suicide?” asked Henry and Alleyn saw with astonishment that the passionate interest of the amateur had already replaced in Henry’s mind the horror of the scene with Lady Wutherwood. Henry had not seen Giggle and so, though he lay upstairs with his throat slit, his injury had an academic interest and Henry was prepared to discuss it.
“Tinkerton was very careful that it should not look like suicide,” Alleyn said. “A theory of suicide might have led to the possibility of Giggle’s complicity and that would have come altogether too close to Tinkerton. No. Tinkerton was desperate. With Giggle in a state of terror, blundering in his statements to the police, threatening perhaps to confess and be hanged, she had to revise her plans drastically and disastrously. We must now be led to plump for Lady Wutherwood as a homicidal maniac. The whole object of the first crime went west but Tinkerton was in terror of her life. She made up her mind to cut her losses and Giggle’s throat.”
“Won’t it be very hard to prove all this, sir?”
“If Miss Grey hadn’t heard the lift and if you both had slept through the night, we should have had little against her beyond the left-handed evidence and her earlier lies. As it is you heard Lady Wutherwood downstairs and saw her come upstairs and go to the top landing on the errand that was to be thought murderous. But when Campbell followed her to the chauffeur’s bedroom and found her there with the body Giggle had been dead for over two hours. We’ve medical evidence for that. It was half past two then. The nurse will swear that at one o’clock Lady Wutherwood was in bed and had not stirred. The nurse had her cocoa in a thermos flask. Tinkerton brought it to her at eleven o’clock. The previous night she drank it immediately. To-night she was about to drink it, she had actually set out her cup and saucer before Tinkerton went away, when the storm reminded her that she had left the window open in the next room. She shut the window, decided to write a letter and forgot her cocoa. She did not drink it until two hours later. In the meantime Tinkerton had killed Giggle. The nurse drank her cocoa at two o’clock and immediately fell into a deep sleep.”