Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
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This refusal of the £5 note should be attributed less to his delicacy than to his intelligence. Taylor, even at this early stage, had scented the possibility of big game.
Exactly what was the relation between these two during the months that followed it is difficult to guess. If Miss Absolom was in love with the young scoundrel the love was probably unconscious. It is more credible that he made a strong appeal to her thwarted instinct of motherhood. He himself undoubtedly took this view, for he was able to tell her of his flirtation with a young woman without anticipating jealousy on her part.
During that summer of 1908 they were constantly together. Now and again Miss Absolom would come to the White City and hire his chair. This happened often enough to become the subject of coarse jests among his fellow employees.
During June, July, and part of August, Taylor steadfastly refused to derive the smallest pecuniary benefit from his association with Miss Absolom. She bought the car which they had previously hired. He did everything he could to keep down the running costs, cleaning the car himself and garaging it at a low rent in the Mews over which he lodged in the Grays Inn Road. When they stopped for meals he insisted on paying for both out of his own pocket.
In the third week in August he lost his job through being absent without leave for the purpose of driving Miss Absolom to Reading and back. Thereupon, Miss Absolom firmly demanded the right to assist him in his career. It was absurd, she pointed out, for him to be so squeamish in money matters when every penny of hers would one day be his.
Taylor’s manly pride went down before this remorseless logic.
Miss Absolom, in fact, had her plans all cut-and-dried.
“There is nothing,” she told him, “that you cannot do — with money behind you.” From letters written to a friend it is pathetically clear that at this stage she intended that he should later on adopt a Parliamentary career. In the meantime, as he was now only twenty-two, it would do no harm to enter some profession — for example, the law.
This conversation took place over lunch at her flat. In the afternoon she took him to a ready-made tailor and bought him a dress suit. There are details of masculine attire inseparable from the wearing of a dress suit. She brushed aside his offer to order these himself and have the bill sent to her. She superintended the purchase of each trifle, paying in gold from her chain purse.
That evening she took him to dinner at the Charing Cross Railway Hotel. Afterwards they went to a leading music hall, but did not stay until the end. Oddly enough, this program was repeated every Monday and Friday evening until the following March. In each case they dined at the Railway Hotel and in each case they went to a music hall, staying only for half an hour or so. The attraction to Miss Absolom, one must assume, was not the show, but the fact of being seen in public with the young man.
That first evening was in the nature of a celebration. On the following day Taylor was taken by Miss Absolom to her solicitor, a Mr. Hellier, who had ground-floor offices in Great James Street, that rather shabby extension of Bedford Row which is the solicitor’s Harley Street. Great James Street, it should be noted, is within one minute’s walk of Red Lion Square.
Taylor, it had been previously arranged, was to be articled to Mr. Hellier who, as he had recently drawn up Miss Absolom’s will in Taylor’s favor, was fully alive to the general situation.
Next came a visit, under Miss Absolom’s tutelage, to a landlady in Doughty Street, in whose house Taylor was to occupy two furnished rooms. To round off this day of preparations for the new life, she took him to her doctor, who was also an oculist. The doctor found the young man sound in wind and limb, but suffering from a slight astigmatism. He wrote out a prescription for glasses that need be worn only when reading, or driving a car.
There was still an hour to spare before the shops closed, so Miss Absolom took the prescription, together with her protégé, to an optician in Holborn.
Here there was a slight difference of opinion, Taylor wanted spectacles, but Miss Absolom decided that spectacles were unsightly. At first gently, and then firmly, she pressed the case for pince-nez. Pince-nez it was — and for pince-nez the optician took measurements. She ordered two pairs, rather elaborate gold-rimmed affairs, at a cost of £4-10-0 each. They were delivered a week later at the rooms in Doughty Street.
According to Taylor’s signed statement, the greater part of which was undoubtedly true, he did not contemplate murdering Miss Absolom until some half an hour before he actually did so. Nevertheless, within a week of his coming to the solicitor’s office, he was holding a very peculiar conversation with his employer.
“Miss Absolom’s great kindness to me puts me in an awkward position,” he asserted, and went on: “Suppose she were to die suddenly with her will in my favor! People would say that I had exerted undue influence.”
“You need not worry about that. There could be no question of undue influence in this case,” replied the solicitor — and afterwards regretted his words. In cross-examination later on he said that the question had startled him; otherwise, he would not have answered.
This conversation is the only item of evidence that Taylor planned the murder a long time beforehand.
Between September and Christmas Miss Absolom consulted Mr. Hellier three times, not as a legal adviser, but as a man of the world. Taylor, it seemed, was not as happy and contented as she had hoped. Mr. Hellier, at each sitting, advised her to give him a little more liberty, but later events proved that she did not take his advice.
Taylor, in fact, was learning something of the troubles of the bird in the gilded cage. More exactly, Miss Absolom treated him almost as if he were a young boy. He lunched every day at her flat, dining at his rooms and returning to the flat nearly every evening from nine until ten when, with a good-night kiss on the cheek, he was packed off to bed. Every material want of his was promptly gratified by Miss Absolom, but invariably Miss Absolom herself made the actual purchases and as invariably compelled him to accompany her to the shop. She allowed him fifteen shillings a week for pocket money and made him account for it — not from motives of parsimony, but in order to keep a motherly eye on him. She insisted on discussing with his landlady the most minute details of his personal health and comfort. To the one servant at her flat she would refer to him not as “Mr. Taylor,” but as “Master Harold.”
At Christmas she obtained three days’ extra leave for him and took him for a week’s holiday to a hotel at Torquay where she spoke of him as her nephew and insisted on his sleeping in the dining room of her suite.
On the night of Boxing Day he had a headache and went to bed soon after dinner. She came to his room to give him aspirin and then, with no more than a mild protest from him, went through his pockets.
In one of them she found an affectionate letter from a young woman, then a Miss Sadler, employed by a drapery firm in Oxford street.
“What is the meaning of this?” she asked and before he could answer: “I am surprised and hurt at your having a flirtation with a girl of that class. This is to go no further.”
“Oh, all right!” he grunted sleepily.
She seems to have accepted this as a solemn pledge. As far as can be ascertained she did not again refer to the girl until the following March, the day of her death.
It was the 22nd of March, 1909, and a Thursday. Every Thursday, lunch in the flat was served at a quarter to one instead of one o’clock, in order that Miss Absolom’s servant might have more time on this, her free afternoon. She was allowed to serve the lunch and go.
Now on the previous night Taylor had been to the Oxford Music Hall with Miss Sadler and this fact had somehow come to Miss Absolom’s knowledge.