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

empty.
    Roger saw to it that the emptying process brought him in contact with Moresby. Having already tested the strength of that gentleman’s official reticence, he had not the faintest hope of expecting to crack it on this occasion; but there is never any harm in trying.
    “Well, Mr. Sheringham,” was the Chief Inspector’s genial greeting as they were brought together at last. “Well, I haven’t seen you for a long time, sir.”
    “Since last summer, no,” Roger agreed. “And you’ll oblige me by not talking about last summer over the drink we’re now about to consume. Any other summer you like, but not last one.”
    The Chief Inspector’s grin widened, but he gave the necessary promise. They walked sedately towards a hostelry of Roger’s choosing; not the nearest, because everybody else would be going there. The Chief Inspector knew perfectly well why he was being invited to have a drink; Roger knew that he knew; the Chief Inspector knew that Roger knew that he knew. It was all very amusing, and both of them were enjoying it.
    Both of them knew, too, that it was up to Roger to open the proceedings if they were to be opened. But Roger did nothing of the kind. They drank up their beer, chatting happily about this, about that and about the other, but never about Coroner’s inquests and Chief Detective Inspectors from Scotland Yard at them; they drank up some more beer, provided by Moresby, and then they embarked on yet more beer, provided again by Roger. Both Roger and the Chief Inspector liked beer.
    At last Roger fired his broadside. It was a nice, unexpected broadside, and Roger had been meditating it at intervals for three glasses. In the middle of a conversation about sweet-peas and how to grow them, Roger remarked very casually:
    “So
you
think Lady Ursula was murdered too, do you, Moresby?”

CHAPTER VI

DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM,
OF SCOTLAND YARD
    I T is given to few people in this world to see a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard start violently; yet this was the result which rewarded Roger’s broadside. With intense gratification he watched the Chief Inspectorial countenance shiver visibly, the Chief Inspectorial bulk tauten, and the Chief Inspectorial beer come within an inch of climbing over the side of the glass; and in that moment he felt that the past was avenged.
    “Why, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” said Chief Inspector Moresby, with a poor attempt at bland astonishment, “whatever makes you say a thing like that?”
    Roger did not reply at once. Now that he had got over the slight numbness that followed the success of his little ruse (he had hoped perhaps to make the Inspectorial eye-lid quiver slightly, but hardly more), he was filled with a genuine astonishment of no less dimensions than that which Moresby was so gallantly attempting to simulate. In attributing Lady Ursula’s death to murder he had not so much been drawing a bow at a venture as deliberately making the wildest assertion he could think of, in order to shock the Inspector into giving away the much more insignificant cause of his presence at the inquest. But, perhaps for the first time in his life, the Chief Inspector had been caught napping and given himself away, horse, foot and artillery. The very fact that he had been on his guard had only contributed to his disaster, for he had been guarding his front and Roger had attacked him in the rear.
    In the meantime Roger’s brain, jerking out of the coma into which the inspector’s start had momentarily plunged it, was making up for lost time. It did, not so much think as look swiftly over a rapid series of flashing pictures. And instantly that which had before been a mystery became plain. Roger could have kicked himself that it should have taken a starting Inspector to point out to him the obvious. Murder was the only possible explanation that fitted all those puzzling facts!
    “Whew!” he said, in some awe.
    The Chief Inspector was watching him uneasily. “What an extraordinary