Read Online The Silk Stocking Murders by Anthony Berkeley - Free Book Online Page A

“that we’ve been talking too much at random. Let’s take things under their proper heads, one at a time. First of all the deaths themselves. We’ve agreed that any other hypothesis but that of murder is putting too great a strain on coincidence, haven’t we? Well, then, let’s take a leaf out of the French notebook and reconstruct the crime.”
    “Very well, Mr. Sheringham, sir. I’d like to hear you do that.”
    “Well, this is how I see it. The murderer first of all selected his victim with a good deal of care. She must fulfil certain conditions. For instance, she must above all be so far familiar with his appearance, at any rate, as to feel no alarm on seeing him. Then the opportunity would be chosen with equal cunning. It must be when she is alone and likely to remain so for at least half an hour. But all that’s quite elementary.”
    “There’s never any harm in running over the elementary parts with the rest,” said the Chief Inspector, gazing into the fire.
    “Well, having got the girl and the opportunity together, he proceeds to overpower her. I say that, because no girl is going to submit tamely to being hanged, still less is she going to take off one of her stockings and offer it for the purpose; and yet none of them show any obvious evidence of a struggle. Even the marks on Lady Ursula’s wrists can’t be called that. Well, now, how did he overpower them?”
    “That’s it,” observed Chief Inspector Moresby.
    “He was devilish clever,” Roger continued, warming to his work. “You try overpowering an ordinary, healthy girl and see whether there isn’t going to be a deuce of a struggle. Of course there is. So it’s an elementary deduction to say that he must be a strong, and probably very big man. And they didn’t even cry out. Obviously, then, he must have stopped that first. I’m not so childish, by the way, as to suggest chloroform or anything fatuous like that; anybody but the writers of penny dreadfuls knows that chloroform doesn’t act like that, to say nothing of the smell afterwards. No, what I do suggest is a woollen scarf thrown unexpectedly across her mouth from behind and drawn tight in the same instant. How’s that?”
    “I can’t think of anything better, and that’s a fact.”
    “Well, a strong man could easily knot that at the back of her head, catch her wrists (her hands would be instinctively trying to pull at the stuff over her mouth) and twist them into the small of her back. I admit that it’s more of a job to fasten them there, but a knowledge of ju-jitsu might help; he could put her, I mean, in such a position that she couldn’t move without breaking an arm, hold both her wrists there with one hand and tie them together with the other. And as there are only the faintest bruises there, he would obviously have to fasten them with something that isn’t going to cut the skin—one end of the same woollen scarf, for instance.” Roger paused and moistened his clay.
    “Go on, Mr. Sheringham,” urged Moresby politely.
    “Well, then, of course, he’d got her where he wanted, her. It wouldn’t be difficult after that, I imagine, to remove one of her stockings; and then he could proceed with his preparations at leisure, screwing the hook in the door, arranging a chair to stand her on, and all the rest of it. And after he’d hanged her all he would have to do is to unfasten the scarf and untie her wrists and ankles.”
    The Chief Inspector nodded. “That’s about what happened, no doubt of it.”
    “Well, there’s the reconstruction, and I don’t see that it gives us anything fresh, except perhaps the woollen scarf, and that’s only a guess. As to the man’s psychology, that’s obvious enough. He’s mad, of course. His only possible motive, so far as one can see, is murder for love of killing. Homicidal mania, developed to hopeless insanity. The victim’s own stocking, for instance. And I imagine it would have to be silk. Yes, that brain of his must be