There was nothing unusual in this. Miss Birdridge was a middle-aged woman with no home ties, who appreciated a restaurant dinner at the firm’s expense and the extra payment for late work. Henshawk lingered in the doorway while she reported an item of minor importance, but she noticed that his attention had shifted to the other room.
“Ah! It caught your eye at once, old man. Neat bit of work, eh! Made from that drawing of mine on the wall there.”
Then the other man’s voice: “But, my dear fellow, that damned cow spoils the whole thing! And why is it perched on a giant’s hand? Makes it look like a cartoon.”
“You’re not far off. I’ve been using it for an advertisement display. I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. After all—”
At that point the communicating door was closed. Miss Birdridge was sure that it was exactly at that point, and sure that she had reported the exact words used by each man.
She went out to dinner, returning as Big Ben was striking seven. In the meantime the communicating door had been used and was again ajar. A couple of minutes later, having equipped herself for work on the report, she went into the inner office, to find Henshawk sprawling face downwards, over his chair patently murdered. She observed no more than this before rushing back into the outer office and calling the police.
By midnight, Detective Inspector Karslake had a clear outline. For about forty minutes, during which he had smoked four of Henshawk’s cigarettes, the murderer had sat in the client’s chair, with his back to both doors.
At about six-forty, Henshawk’s wife had knocked on the private door. Henshawk had opened the door but had stepped into the corridor to speak to her. He told her, she said, that he was engaged with a client, so could not take her home. He himself expected to be home late.
Over her husband’s shoulder Mrs. Henshawk had seen a man sitting in the client’s chair with his back towards her. She did not take particular notice of him, because, she said, being a client he was of no interest to her. She was somewhat hurt because her husband had apparently forgotten that he had asked her to call for him at the office.
After getting rid of his wife, Henshawk had probably sat down again in his chair. But a few minutes later he had got up and turned his back, whereupon the other had struck him on the back of the head with the statuette, causing almost instant death.
At the cupboard-toilette the murderer had washed bloodstains from his hands. He had not removed bloodstains from the soap well. He had left the statuette immersed in the basin.
Although his time was running perilously short, he had lingered in order to remove a drawing from its frame on the wall. As this drawing was the original from which the House-In-Your-Hand model was made, the incident gave emphasis to the remark, overheard by Miss Birdridge, seeming to connect the deceased with the cottage depicted in the model.
The murderer left by the outer office, within two minutes of seven o’clock, carrying the drawing loosely wrapped in tissue paper. In the hall he asked the porter to call him a taxi. He was getting into it when Miss Birdridge returned, though she noticed no more than that a man was getting into a taxi, carrying something flat and loosely wrapped in tissue paper. He told the driver to take him to the Westminster Station of the Underground. Nothing further was known of his movements.
“The porter is no good, sir,” said young Rawlings. “All he can do is a ‘middle aged, middle height, middling well-dressed gentleman with a mustache’ — which of course will be shaved off by now.”
“Never mind his mustache — he has practically left us his address, hasn’t he!” snorted Karslake. He had recently had several big successes and was becoming a trifle didactic.
“Yes, sir — that cottage!” said Rawlings, who had not yet learned how to handle seniors.
“I guessed that myself,” snapped Karslake. “Where is that cottage? What’s it called?”
Rawlings slunk away and woke Miss Birdridge by calling her on the telephone.
But Miss Birdridge did not know, had always thought the cottage was an imaginary one until she had overheard the murderer’s reference to it. Next he rang Mrs. Henshawk, who was equally unhelpful. Her husband was a prolific amateur artist, but she knew nothing about art and he never talked to her about his hobby.
“All right then — we’ll advertise for that cottage,” said Karslake. “The papers will make a news story of it, with picture. Warn all stations in the U. K. to study that picture in the Press and report to us if the cottage is in their district.”
In his Appreciation for the Chief, Karslake wrote: “An unpremeditated murder (cigarettes) by a man on familiar terms with deceased, who was urging Henshawk to do something important enough to make the latter forget his appointment with his wife (Mrs. Henshawk’s admitted annoyance). Mrs. Henshawk’s interruption broke the trend of their talk. Henshawk rejected the proposition, whereupon the other lost his temper and struck with the nearest object, not necessarily intending to kill. The murderer owns, or has some direct or indirect interest in, the cottage (theft of drawing: remark reported by Miss Birdridge — ‘I felt sure you wouldn’t mind’ i.e., use of cottage as advertisement). There should be little difficulty in tracing such a cottage.”
Karslake had Miss Birdridge’s report under his hand as he wrote. Yet he missed the clue-value of that other remark about “that damned cow.”
True, the murder was, in the legal sense, unpremeditated. But it might be argued that Harold Ledlaw had been unconsciously premeditating the murder for eighteen years, though he did not know that the victim would be Henshawk.
Ledlaw had been waiting outside Gorlay House expecting Henshawk to leave at the end of the office day. But he spotted him at once when he stepped out of the taxi that brought him from the club.
“Hullo, Albert!... Dammit, you’ve forgotten me!”
“I certainly have not—” a second’s pause “—Harold Ledlaw, of course.” He was pumping the other’s hand. “You’ve changed a lot, old man, but I’d have known you at once anywhere. I suppose we shall both soon be what they call middle-aged. Well, I’m jiggered! We must fix something. Are you staying long?”
“I’m not going back to Canada. It has done me proud, but I’m back for keeps. I landed last week. Been getting acclimatized. I’m counting on you to give me the low-down on one thing and another.”
“Look here, I’m rushed off my feet, but come up to the office for a few minutes and we’ll fix something.”
They ignored the lift and walked to the first floor, exchanging the commonplaces of an almost forgotten friendship, for Ledlaw had been in Canada for nearly eighteen years.
At the first pause, which occurred just outside Henshawk’s private door, Ledlaw said:
“Whiddon Cottage! I heard some of the timber had been cut. Can you tell me anything about it?”
“It so happens I can tell you quite a lot about it — though I’m not in touch with — er — anyone.” He unlocked the private door, said that he must speak to his secretary and, with a fatuous archness, invited the other to look about the office.
The first thing one noticed in that office was the model under its glass dome. Ledlaw stared at it, at first in confusion, then with full recognition.
“My God, what damned cheek, and what the hell does it mean!” he muttered under his breath, then warned himself that he must keep his temper. Albert Henshawk was braying at him from the doorway: he must say something in reply.