"The Monday Night Murder"

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 228, 26 September 1930, Page 17

"The Monday Night Murder"

| I==== By J. R. *WILMOT. ===1 |

CHAPTER XII. The Clue of the Violets. There were two things upon which Inspector Willard had quite satisfied himself. The first of these was that Roger Pleydell had gone to Sir Gilbert Dyall's room on Monday night somewhere between 11.40 p.m. and midnight. The second was that Roger Pleydell had had no hand in the man's murder, even though he might have had a far greater motive for wishing him dead than anyone else iu the Hydro at Beachaven. For a long time after Pleydell had left him, Willard sat puzzling out the problem that had been set him. To-morrow he had promised that everyone under suspicion should be permitted to go their various ways no longer detained for observation and interview. Willard's immediate trouble was not that there was an absence of clues, but that there were too many of them. Almost every turn he had ta.ken had confronted him with pointers, but unfortunately they all pointed in entirely dif" rent directions. 'i he only definite clue, however, was the clue of the small bunch of violets he had found beside the curtains in the murdered man's room. Willard was a great stickler for anything that fascinated him, and though he appreciated the fact that it was Peter Blayne who had first drawn his attention to their significance, he felt that they would in the end, prove the turning point of the mystery. Just then Peter Blayne strolled in. He tossed his soft felt hat on to a nearby settee and dropped into the armchair. "Well, "Willard, my lad, how many nails have you driven into the coffin this afternoon ?" Peter Blayne spoke with a light laugh as he lit a cigarette. "One or two—possibly three or four," grinned the inspector. "Fact is, Peter. I'm fed up. Have you ever felt that you never want to be sent on another murder mystery so long as you live? That's how I feel now." "That means you're running short of nails," announced the young doctor. "By the way, have you heard anything more about the violets?" "Nothing —except that Mrs. Pleydell had a bunch on Monday. Wkt makes you ask that?" "Because I've some news for you — news that will probably gladden your dull heart. You will be interested to know that Mrs. Pleydell was not alone in possession of violets on Monday. I have been having a little~friendly chat with Tony Page. I like that lad. There's something typically British about him. For one* thing he has an anti-foreign compler. He simply loathes your friend Kleiner. For another, he's very much in love with Bernice Dvall, and, as I've already met the lady, I can excuse him that. But he tells me that he brought Bernice a bunch of violets on Monday. Went to no end of trouble, so I gather, to obtain them of just the right shade she particularly adores. By the way, did you say that Mrs. Pleydell wore, her violets, or that merely she was possessed of them? It's rather important, Willard!" Inspector Willard knew Blayne too well ever to interrupt him when he was speaking, and, much as Willard detested people who meandered in their conversation, he had listened to the doctor with a bountiful patience. "From -what Pleydell told me his wife actually wore the violets," replied Willard. "But why should that make any difference?" Peter Blayne smiled. He knew Willard to be an extremely competent detective, but there were occasions when the inspctor was inclind to overlook, or grow impatient of details that might, at first sight seem trifling. It was an idiosyncrasy which was pardonable because Blayne knew, only too well, that the omission was due more to an excess of zeal and a desire to accomplish his purpose in as direct a manner as possible, rather than to the possession of an incomplete method of attack. "Because Bernice Dyall is one of those people —and there are a great many of them, Willard—who dislike wearing flowers in their buttonholes. She has always preferred her floral offerings arranged tastefully, I have no doubt, in vases and bowls in her rooms, and when Tony Page presented her with this particular bunch of violets she straightway arranged them in a small, shallow glass bowl on her dressing table so that their delicate fragrance might perfume the surrounding air. From what I can gather she remembers seeing the violets there on Monday afternoon when she went' up to her room shortly before tea. She missed them when she went to bed and stood before her dressing table to make her toilet for the night." "Someone had removed them!" There was a queer little note of triumph in the inspector's voice. "I imagine you must be right there, Willard," smiled Blayne, "unless violets are possessed of powers for which we have never given them credit." Willard ignored the good-natured taunt. "Have you made inquiries of the chambermaid ?" Blayne nodded. "You know, Willard, there's one thing I always admire about the British chambermaid. She is particularly jealous of her integrity and her honesty. If you could have seen the flash of indignation in that girl's.,eyes when I merely asked her whether ehe had, for some -reason best known to herself, removed the flowers, you would have retracted everything you have said about our younger generation being spineless idiots." "But I've never discussed the matter," protested Willard. "I know you haven't,' 1 retorted Blayne, "but you think it. A man of your age invariably does. You're the type of fellow who talks about 'when I was a boy' and all that sort of rot." "Peter!" stormed the inspector, irritably. "Do you want me to lose my temper?" "If it means losing your sense of humour at the same time —please don't," replied Blayne, quietly amused. "I gather that the chambermaid denied removing the violets." Willard's tone was commendably more conciliatory. "You've, got it," smiled Blayne. "She protested volubly against such a gross irregularity." "Then who took them?" "You forget my degree was in medicine and not in deduction," Blayne re-

: minded him. tr ßut my limited intelligence tells me this. Find who took Bernice Dyall's violets and you've got the person who shot and killed Sir Gilbert Dyall. Could anything be more simple, my dear Willard?" Willard groaned audibly and Blayne glanced across at him quickly. '"What have you been eating?" asked the medical man, with professional sternness. "Eating? Who's talking about food?" demanded the astonished detective. "I thought I recognised a symptom of dyspepsia," smiled Blayne. "Look here, Peter," the inspector's eyes were mutinous, "I consider your jests are in rank bad taste. Try, if you can, to realise that this is a serious effair —at least it is to me. I don't know how it strikes you. I do know, however, that if I don't get to the bottom of it, it won't be you who'll get the bird. That's the way with all you highly-specialised people. You're supposed to be sent down to help. Insteadof that you merely make yourself an infernal nuisance." "Any idea who stole the violets?" Blayne lighted another cigarette, and, ignoring the taunt, slumped into the armchair. "None! Have you?" Willard was, by now, normal. "Might have been Kleiner —anybody," Blayne mused. "It rather upsets your theory that the deed was probably done by a woman, Willard." The inspector shook his head vigorously. "Don't agree with you, Peter. If Kleiner, or any other man of the party —Pleydell or your friend Tony Page— had wanted to kill Dyall, he wouldn't have bothered about a bunch of violets. He'd have gone there just as Pleydell admits he did. Dammit! I wish that man wouldn't be so confoundedly tightlipped. If only he'd tell me whether the old man was alive or dead when he went to his room, I'd feel more satisfied." 'Yet we found violets in the room— probably * the same bunch of violets. Have you still got them, by the way?" Blayne's voice had taken on a new eager note. For answer Inspector Willard unlocked his leather case and took from it a cigar box. "They're not looking any too healthy just at the moment," he mused, as he turned the little nosegay of violets over in his fingers. "If only you could speak," he murmured absently. '"May I have charge of them for a few moments?" asked the doctor. "I'd just like to make certain that they are the same violets that Bernice Dyall had on Monday. Do you mind?"^ "Not a bit," proffered Willard eagerly. "If she can say for certain." Peter Blayne found Bernice Dyall in the lounge with Tony Page. They were talking together in low tones, but they ceased instantly they saw Blayne approaching them. Bernice smiled. j "Well, Mr. Blayne, and what can you want us for now?" Blayne drew up a chair in front of the divan on which they were sitting. "It is quite a small matter, Miss Dyall," he began. "You remember your telling me about the disappearance of the violets from your dressing-table." Bernice nodded, although he noted that a frown came to her white brow. "I wonder whether you would recognise them again if you saw them?" "One bunch of violets is very much like another," interrupted Tony Page, irritably. "How much longer has Bernice to be pestered like this, doctor?' Blayne shot a quick glance at the young man. He seemed to be a bundle of frayed ends these past two days. "I hope that this will be the last time either Miss Dyall or yourself is questioned —by me," said Blayne, quietly and convincingly. "Now, Miss Dyall, would you say that this was the bunch of violets which Mr. Page so thoughtfully bought for you on Monday?' And the doctor brought from his pocket the bunch of violets that Willard had found in the murdered man's room. Bernice took them into her slim fingers and. turned them about, critically. Then she looked up. "When Tony gave trem to me, doctor, a piece of thin florist's wire was twisted tightly round their stems. It was twisted much more tightly than you see it is now. When I placed them in the glass bowl on my dressing-table, I unloosed the wire considerably especially about the ends of the stems so that they should not lack water, but I did not remove it entirely. I allowed it to remain about an inch below the blooms "themselves to form a kind of support in the bowl. From what I can tell you, doctor, these are the same violets, but whoever took them re-twisted the wire somewhat about the stems probably for convenience in carrying them.' "Thank you, Miss Dyall," said Blayne. "You may have helped us more than you know. I suppose you will be glad to be leaving in the morning V "Glad!' echoed the girl. "I'm overjoyed—overwhelmed. Tony and I have just been consoling one another. Neither of us ever thought such an experience as this could have happened to us. It's been just terrible. Thank goodness I've got so many kind friends. If it hadn't been for Elsa and Mr. Pleydell—and even dear Miss Trimm, fussy though she sometimes is, I don't know that I should have survived." "You hear that, doctor," smiled Tony. "She's mentioned everyone but me. And I've been worrying my soul out for her ever since the beastly thing, happened. There's gratitude for you if you like. That's the sort of woman I was thinking of taking for my wife." Bernice flashed a startled glance at the young man at her side, but before she could reply, Blayne interjected. "I shouldn't cease thinking about marrying her, if "I were you," he said, seriously, "and I don't think Miss Dyall thinks of you as a friend —isn't it true that she regards you as- something more than that, young man?" Tony. Page coloured up to the roots, of his hair, and Bernice smiled at his obvious discomfort. (To be continued daily.)

DUCK SECTION. White Indian Runners (7 teams). — Thos. McKay (23), 652; B. R. Arnott, No. 2 (25), 634; J. A. Hanham (28), 540; H. Harrison (13), 538; B. R. Araott, No. 1 (27), 492; B. R. Arnott, No. 3 (—), 423; Mrs. I. Dimant (271, 341. Fawn and White Indian Runners (1 team). —Mrs. Thos. Chirnside (24), 58S. Khaki Campbells (5 teams). —M. G. Leech (25), 634; Mrs. Leo. Ayling (2S), 601; Thos. Guy (21), 585; Cameron Finlayson (27), 561; 6. Clark (20), 537. The first egg weighing was held on August 25, and the birds and teams marked * had not, at that date, qualified under clause 13 of schedule for standard weight of 240z. to dozen.