The Silk Stocking Murders

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Book: Read The Silk Stocking Murders for Free Online
Authors: Anthony Berkeley
made his way to the bookstall and bought a paper. Opening it a few minutes later, his eye at once caught certain headlines on the centre page. The headlines ran as follows:—
    ANOTHER SILK STOCKING TRAGEDY
S OCIETY B EAUTY H ANGS H ERSELF
L ADY U RSULA G RAEME’S S HOCKING F ATE
    “This,” said Roger, “is becoming too much of a good thing.”

CHAPTER V

ENTER CHIEF INSPECTOR
MORESBY
    S EATED in the train, Roger began to peruse the account of Lady Ursula’s death. Now that it had to deal with the daughter of an earl instead of an obscure habituée of nightclubs, the story had been allotted two full columns on the centre page, and every detail, relative or not, that could be hastily scraped together had been inserted. Briefly, the facts were as follows.
    Lady Ursula had left her home in Eaton Square, where she lived with her widowed mother (the present Earl, her eldest brother, was in the Diplomatic Service abroad), shortly before eight. She dined with a party of friends at a dance-club in the West End, where she stayed, dancing and talking, till about eleven. She then began to complain of a headache and tried to induce one of the others to accompany her for a little run in her car; the rest of the party refused, however, as it was raining and the car was an open two-seater. Lady Ursula then left the club, saying that she would go for a run alone to blow her headache away, if no one would accompany her.
    At half-past two in the morning a girl called Irene Macklane, an artist and a friend of Lady Ursula’s, returned to her studio in Kensington from a party in a neighbouring studio and found Lady Ursula’s car outside. She was not surprised at this, as Lady Ursula was in the habit of calling on her friends at the most unusual of times of the day and night. On going inside and calling, however, she could at first see no sign of her.
    The studio had been made out of the remains of some old stables, and spanning its width in the centre was a large oak beam, some eight feet above the ground, in the middle of which, on the underside, was a large hook, from which Miss Macklane had hung an old-fashioned lantern. This lantern contained an electric light bulb which was connected by a flex to a light-point farther down the room. On turning the switch at the door, Miss Macklane was surprised to see the lantern light upon the floor some distance away from the beam instead of in its normal position. She lifted it up and was then horrified to see Lady Ursula hanging in its place from the hook in the beam.
    The details of her death corresponded almost exactly with those of Janet’s and the other woman’s. An overturned table lay on the floor a few feet away, and Lady Ursula had made use of one of the stockings which she was wearing at the time; the leg from which she had taken it was bare, though the foot still wore its brocade slipper. A loop had been formed by tying the extreme ends of the stocking together, this had been passed over Lady Ursula’s head, the slack twisted round three or four times, and a tiny loop at the end slipped over the hook. She had then apparently kicked the table away and met her death, like the other two, from slow asphyxiation.
    The note she had left for Miss Macklane, however, was a little more explicit than those of the others, though its wording gave scope for conjecture. It ran:
    I’m so sorry to have to do this here, my dear, but there’s simply nowhere else, and mother would have a fit if I did it at home. Don’t be too terribly furious with me!
    U.
    There followed a eulogistic account of Lady Ursula, “by a friend,” expatiating on her originality, her lack of convention and her recent engagement to the wealthy son of a wealthy financier. Whether it was the engagement, or her determination at all costs to be original, that had led Lady Ursula to dispense with a life with which, as she was in the habit of informing her friends, she had for many years been bored stiff, the writer obviously

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