“It was as simple as that.
“You see, the French don’t want scandal about American newspapermen; the French don’t like scandal, anyway not that sort of scandal. So they hushed the story up as much as they could, and Anderson hushed it up as much as he could, and the coroner’s inquest — you know how things go in such cases — they hushed the story up too, with a neat little verdict of suicide while temporarily deranged by the strain of overwork. It was as simple as that.
“That’s what I mean, gentlemen, by saying that you’re all wrong about the percentage of detected murders and of murderers convicted, in Paris or London. This was a murder, but no one ever thought so; no one ever thought there was any crime at all — unless you call suicide a crime. Well, I suppose you want your lunch. I don’t feel hungry myself, so I think I’ll take a stroll round the deck. Perhaps we might meet this evening and have a rubber of bridge.” He scrawled a signature across the steward’s check for the drinks and walked out of the smoking-room.
The other three looked at each other in silence. Then Dubois laughed. “What a strange fellow,” he said. “Where did you find him, Peabody?”
“Oh, we were chatting on the deck,” said the doctor, “and he suggested a drink before lunch, and I said you were waiting for me and brought him along. That was a most curious story, and he told it with such intensity. I wonder who he is.”
Colonel Hepplethwaite beckoned to the head steward, who happened to be passing. “George,” he said, “do you know the gentleman who was sitting with us just now?”
The steward nodded. “Oh, yes, sir, he’s crossed with us several times — Mr. Howard Jackson. He writes for one of the American newspapers, perhaps you’ve seen his name. A very nice gentleman, and always before so gay and cheerful, he’d keep the ’ole smoking-room in a roar. But” — he lowered his voice — “poor Mr. Jackson, he’s had very ’ard luck this year. His best friend committed suicide recently, been speculating on the market, it seems, and got ’imself into a jam. That was a great blow to Mr. Jackson, because they were very old friends. And then on top of that his wife ran away from him with someone from his own office in Paris, one of his subordinates, a much younger man. Mr. Jackson isn’t one to talk much, but I can see he’s quite broken up about it.”
The House-in-Your-Hand Murder
by Roy Vickers
About the Author: Roy Vickers left Oxford (no, he was not sacked) because he was convinced that wealth and fame awaited him in his chosen profession — writing. For two solid years he wrote novels, short stories, articles, and plays, and all he had to show for his efforts was a collection of typewritten rejection slips. Bowing to the Great God Economo (although only on a part-time basis), Mr. Vickers became a salesman, dividing his energies between huckstering insurance, cigarettes, and houses, and continuing to write. It didn’t work out: he realized that he was ruining his chances for literary success by leading a “double life.” So he started all over again — as a “ghost writer.” Immediately Mr. Vickers found that he had struck pay dirt; he built a high-powered industry for himself, turning out sermons, speeches, and lectures, all “strictly business” at four-and-six pence per thousand words (including finished manuscript). But Fate still carried a concealed weapon — a monkey-wrench: an ill-advised political article broke a scandal over Mr. Vickers’s head and he retired from the ghost racket to accept a modest job on a popular weekly periodical. Here he rose to the exalted position of “Competitions Editor” and all went well until that Alice-in-Wonderland moment when 416 contestants all won first prize! Again Mr. Vickers beat a hasty retreat. He began afresh writing articles and once more the Wheel of Fortune turned his way: in the next three years he wrote 1,000 articles on soup-to-fish and sold two-thirds of them. But success can become boring: the monotony of a steady stream of checks instead of the old torrent of rejection slips drove Mr. Vickers back to writing fiction. But success can also become a habit: now he sold everything he wrote! Came an interlude (called the War to End War) when Mr. Vickers traded in the mightier weapon for the sword — but that is now over (we hope). Mr. Vickers is writing steadily again. You may have read his work and not known it — he has used pseudonyms, including John Spencer, David Durham, and Sefton Kyle...
The murder of Albert Henshawk, headlined as the House-in-Your-Hand Mystery, became a test case for plainclothes constables who had put in for promotion. It is still used to emphasize that the most trivial remark of a murderer — such as a comment on a work of commercial art — may contain the raw material of a clue.
Henshawk, who specialized in financing the purchase of houses, had been running an advertisement showing, in an outstretched palm, a picturesque country cottage, with the slogan: A House in Your Hand is Worth Two in the Clouds. It is noteworthy that the picture in the advertisement was a photograph of a model. The whole model, including the outstretched hand, covered an area about equal to that of a pocket handkerchief. It was kept in Henshawk’s office under a glass dome, flanked by the bronze statuette with which Henshawk was battered to death. It is an ironical comment on this amiable egotist that the statuette was the work of Henshawk, and the subject — Henshawk himself.
A tubby, chubby little man in the early forties, he was naively proud of himself and his not inconsiderable talent as an artist. “Neat bit of work, that model, eh! Supplied the idea myself,” he would say, if you were a business acquaintance. Your attention would be directed to the seventeenth-century thatched cottage, to the oaks on one side of it, to the sloping meadow in which a cow drank at a sluggish brook, to a somewhat startling confusion of farm stock in the foreground.
“And, mind you, it isn’t a studio fake, except for those pigs and things. Made from a drawing. A little effort of my own.” You were urged to inspect a charcoal drawing — complete with farm stock but minus the outstretched palm — hung in a somewhat elaborate frame. “Of course, I’m only an amateur, but you can see it’s drawn from life.”
The last statement was confirmed, after the murder, by a number of experts, consulted independently. Each said, in his own words, that if the model had been a work of fancy it would have exhibited certain essential differences. Architects, also consulted independently, passed the house as structurally and historically correct; surveyors agreed that the layout of the land contained no absurdity.
The murder took place on February 16th, 1938, at about six forty-five, in Henshawk’s office in Gorlay House, Westminster. After lunching at the Redmoon Restaurant, Henshawk had spent the afternoon at his club, discussing business with an official of a big investment trust, for which he was, in effect, an agent.
At a few minutes past six, when his staff had left, with the exception of his secretary, he entered his room by the private door, which opened directly on the corridor. In the wall on your right as you entered by this door was another door, now ajar, to the staff room, in which Miss Birdridge was waiting.
She heard his key, then his voice talking to a companion. Of the latter she had only an oblique view. But she was able to state that he was between forty and fifty, of medium height, regular features, and with an iron-grey mustache.
“I must have a word with my secretary — shan’t be a minute,” Henshawk was saying. “Suppose you look about until I get back. I think you’ll be pleased.” He went into the staff room, leaving the communicating door open.
“Miss Birdridge, I simply must get that report off tonight. So will you go and have a meal right away, and be back here at seven sharp.” Henshawk had a booming voice: the other man must have overheard him. “Oh, and you might ’phone Mrs. Henshawk that I shan’t be home till about ten and I’ll eat in Town.”