Richardson Scores Again Read Free

now at the house.”
    Beckett put out his hand for the message, glanced at it, initialed it and threw it into his basket before resuming his work. From that basket it would go automatically to Morden, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, and from him to Sir William Lorimer. As Richardson knew, no action would be taken by Headquarters until Symington’s report was received.
    No. 23 Laburnum Road was a square, ugly Victorian house standing in its own garden; a semi-circular carriage drive led from the gate to the front door. In answer to Symington’s ring the door was opened instantly. “I am Divisional Detective-Inspector Symington from Hampstead Police Station,” he announced. “I have had your telephone message. You are Mr. MacDougal?”
    â€œYes, that is my name. I’m very glad you’ve come. This terrible affair has been a great shock to me.”
    Symington required no corroboration of that statement: the old man was pale and his mouth was twitching. He was a tall, spare man with stooping shoulders and dreamy eyes that seemed short-sighted, and he looked like a professor of some kind—the sort of man who is ill-fitted to deal with the hard facts of life. In fact, as Symington came afterwards to know, he was one of those stay-at-home archaeologists who make a hobby of the modern excavations in Palestine and their bearing on the Jewish history of the Pentateuch; a F.S.A. who attended every meeting of the Society and occasionally took part in the discussions.
    The first step to be taken was to summon the police surgeon to examine the body, which was lying on the floor only three feet from the table on which the telephone stood: indeed, when Porter went to the instrument, he had to step over the body and avoid treading on the patch of coagulated blood which had flowed from the head. Symington did not touch the body: he asked MacDougal to show him the window which he had found open when he came home. He was taken down stone steps to the kitchen. There, as had already been reported on the telephone, he saw that a saucepan of aluminium which was standing on the gas-stove had been split open by the heat and partly melted.
    â€œYou found the gas still burning when you came in this morning?”
    â€œYes, and I turned it off. The gas-tap was the only thing I touched, except the door of my library. Naturally I had to see that my books and manuscripts were safe.”
    â€œYou found the front door bolted on the inside?”
    â€œYes, my latch-key wouldn’t open it. I went round the house and found that window open, and I climbed in.”
    The contents of the saucepan had burned into black, greasy ash, but some of the liquid had boiled over, and it was easy to gather from the dried stains on the stove that it had been cocoa. There was no sign of any struggle in the kitchen: everything was tidy and scrupulously clean. But the lower half of the window had been pushed up; one of its upper panes was broken. Symington took out a reading-glass and examined the pane, especially near the fracture; then he leaned out to examine the flowerbed underneath. There were footprints in the soft earth—the prints of boots. Mentally he made a preliminary reconstruction of the crime. The maid had been preparing her supper at the stove with her back to the window when the window-pane had been smashed with a hammer or a stone, leaving an aperture wide enough to admit a hand to draw back the catch. Probably the dead woman had screamed, but the nearest house was too distant for the cry to have been heard. Then, seeing a man getting in through the window, she had run upstairs to telephone for help, but before she could reach the instrument he had overtaken her and killed her by some means which it would be the police surgeon’s business to determine. He invited MacDougal to sit down and answer a few questions while they were waiting for the doctor.
    â€œYou were away when this