Dr. Morelle and the Drummer Girl Read online

  DR. MORELLE AND THE DRUMMER GIRL

  Ernest Dudley

  © Ernest Dudley 1950

  Ernest Dudley has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1950 by Hodder & Stoughton.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Extract from the Medical Directory (current year):

  Extract from Who’s Who (current year):

  Chapter One – Party in Park Lane

  Chapter Two – Where is Doone Drummer?

  Chapter Three – At Dark Lantern Street

  Chapter Four – The Visitor

  Chapter Five – The Photograph

  Chapter Six – The House in Heath Lane

  Chapter Seven – The Intruder

  Chapter Eight – Wrong Number?

  Chapter Nine – Inside Information

  Chapter Ten – The Housekeeper

  Chapter Eleven – The Reply

  Chapter Twelve – Bertie

  Chapter Thirteen – Fear and Trembling

  Chapter Fourteen – Ring at the Door

  Chapter Fifteen – The Man from Scotland Yard

  Chapter Sixteen – Melody in F

  Chapter Seventeen – The Trap

  Chapter Eighteen – When Midnight Strikes

  Chapter Nineteen – Grim News

  Chapter Twenty – Double Disaster

  Chapter Twenty-One – The Secret Room

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Aboard the ‘Aloha’

  Chapter Twenty-Three – The Liaison

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Dilemma

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Nightmare

  Chapter Twenty-Six – A Scrap of Evidence?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – The Tip-Off

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Unmasked

  Extract from the Medical Directory (current year):

  MORELLE (Christian names given) 221B, Harley St., W.1. (Tel. Langham 05011) — M.D. Berne (Univ. Berne Prize & Gold Medallist) 1924; F.R.C.P. Lond. 1932 (Univ. Vienna, Salzburg, Carfax, U.S.A.); Phys. Dept. Nerv. Dis. & Lect. in Neurol. Rome Academy, 1929; Lect. & Research Fell. Sorbonne, 1928; Carfax, U.S.A. Fell. Med. Research Counc. 1930; Research Fell. Salzburg Hosp. 1931; Psychiat. Carlos Hosp. Rome; Psychiat. Horgan Hosp. Baltimore; Pathol. Rudolfa Clin. Berne; Medico-Psychol. Trafalgar Hosp. and Clin. London; Hon. Cons. Psychiat. Welbeck Hosp. Lond. Author, ‘Psychol. aspects of prevent, treat. of drug addiction’, Amer. Med. Wkly, 1932; ‘Study of analysis in ment. treat.’, Ib., 1930; ‘Nervous & mental aspect of drug addict’, Jl. of Res. in Psycho-pathol., 1931; ‘Hypnot. treat. in nerve & ment. disorder’, Amer. Med. Jnl., 1930; etc.

  Extract from Who’s Who (current year):

  MORELLE (Christian names, but no date, place or details of birth given). Educated: Sorbonne; Rome; Vienna. M.D. Berne, 1923 (for further details of career as medical practitioner see Medical Directory — current year); Lecturer on medicopsychological aspects of criminology to New York Police Bureau, 1934; Lecturer and medicopsychiat. to police bureaux and criminological authorities of Geneva, Rome, Milan and Paris, 1935–1937. Published miscellaneous papers on medical and scientific subjects (see Medical Directory — current year). Writings for journals include: ‘Auguste Dupin versus Sherlock Holmes — A Study in Ratiocination’, London Archive & Atlantic Weekly, 1931; ‘The Criminal versus Society’, English Note-book, Le Temps Moderne and New York Letter, 1933, etc., etc. See also the Case-books ‘Meet Dr. Morelle’, ‘Meet. Dr. Morelle Again’ and ‘Menace For Dr. Morelle’ (published by John Long.) Address: 221B Harley St., London, W.1. Recreations: Criminology and fencing — European fencing champion (Epée) Switzerland, 1927–28–29. Clubs: None.

  Chapter One – Party in Park Lane

  ‘Isn’t it a lovely party, Doctor?’

  Miss Frayle’s face was pink with excitement, her eyes bright behind her horn-rimmed glasses as they roamed round the crowded room. Dr. Morelle stared at her in simulated amazement.

  ‘You perceive some attraction in such a futile waste of time and money?’ his voice rasped in her ear. ‘I confess I find difficulty in agreeing with you.’

  But Miss Frayle refused to listen. She had been looking forward to all this tremendously and she was determined no one, not even Dr. Morelle, was going to damp her enjoyment.

  ‘People must be gay sometimes,’ she protested. ‘Besides, it isn’t as if it’s any ordinary party. It’s a celebration for Doone Drummer’s novel —’

  She broke off with a giggle. The Doctor was deliberately turning his back upon a society photographer trying to creep up on him to add another celebrity to his bag. Rebuffed, the man moved off in search of more co-operative subjects for his candid camera. Dr. Morelle took out a thin gold cigarette-case, lit an inevitable Le Sphinx and drew at it irritably.

  Miss Frayle’s giggle faded as she watched the cigarette-case slipped back to its pocket. It had been presented to the Doctor by a certain young baroness as a token of gratitude for his extricating her from a particularly unsavoury blackmail business. Miss Frayle frowned as she remembered the baroness and her svelte allure. She had tried several times to glimpse the inscription inside the cigarette-case, but he never left it lying about and invariably filled it himself. It was only ordinary curiosity on Miss Frayle’s part, of course.

  ‘As I was saying,’ she continued, ‘this is a party to celebrate the year’s best seller.’ Dr. Morelle’s finely-chiselled nostrils fairly quivered in disdain. ‘It’s all very well for you to turn up your nose like that,’ Miss Frayle exclaimed, ‘but The Friendly Enemy has been raved over by everybody. Look at the terrific sales it’s had. It’s going to be made into a play, and Hollywood’s just bought it. Anyway, I loved it.’

  ‘Which, of course,’ Dr. Morelle murmured, ‘automatically bestows upon it the cachet raising it to the ranks of immortal literature.’

  She gave a little shrug, sipped her sherry and turned her attention again to the celebrities jostling around her. She picked out film actors and actresses, famous novelists, journalists and the usual society characters. There was even a champion boxer being mobbed by admirers while he toyed with a sliver of pâté de foie gras in an enormous fist.

  Her gaze hovered over people with their noses in cocktail-glasses, or munching delicatessen delights, or filling the air with cigarette smoke and high-pitched chatter. For a moment she experienced the oddest sensation that she was watching the antics of a lot of specimens at the Zoo. Resolutely she pushed the absurd thought away. It was not often she found herself at an entertainment like this and she made up her mind unreservedly she was going to enjoy it. She looked round for Doone Drummer.

  The author of The Friendly Enemy did not, however, appear to have arrived. No doubt, Miss Frayle conjectured, she will wait until the last moment to make her entrance. Miss Frayle had read about her and seen her photographs in the magazines and newspapers, and she had been anticipating meeting her. If her pictures were anything to go by she must be an extremely lovely young woman. Again an involuntary thought obtruded itself upon her enjoyment. It occurred to her that it was Doone Drummer’s pulchritude as much as her literary ability which had boosted her into one of the most publicised personalities of the day.

  ‘Do you see Doone Drummer?’ Miss Frayle turned to Dr. Morelle.

  ‘Whom?’

  ‘Doone Drummer. She wrote The Friendly Enemy. Or are you going to pretend you don’t know that all this is in aid of her?’

  Whatever crushing reply the Doctor was preparing to deliver was destined to be lost to posterity. At that moment a slim, grey-haired man approached them. His strong, regula
r features were marred by a slightly strained expression.

  ‘Dr. Morelle? I’m Harvey Drummer, Doone’s father. I must apologise for not making myself known to you before. As a matter of fact I’ve been waiting for my daughter to arrive and introduce us.’ He turned to Miss Frayle. ‘You’re Miss Frayle, of course.’

  She smiled at him and then said: ‘But the Doctor doesn’t know Miss Drummer either. Do you, Doctor?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he surprised her by replying, ‘we have met.’

  Drummer nodded. ‘Doone told me. At the publishers.’

  Miss Frayle stared up at the Doctor with a sudden feeling of uneasiness. She had been under the distinct impression that the publishers of some of his scientific works had invited him to the party. The same firm also happened to publish popular literature, and at the top of their list was The Friendly Enemy. Miss Frayle found it difficult to believe he had consciously misled her. All the same, she felt fairly certain he had conveyed to her the idea that he had accepted the invitation only because it was from his own publishers. It sounded now, however, as if Doone Drummer, whom she didn’t know he had even met, had invited him.

  She glanced sharply at that saturnine countenance. Could it be possible that as a result of this chance meeting that heart of ice had melted at last under a woman’s spell? Miss Frayle, who was inclined to think sometimes in terms of romantic rhetoric, boggled at the idea. She recalled how he’d accepted the invitation which she had expected him to turn down flat. She dragged her gaze from his inscrutable face as Drummer, giving a swift glance round, turned to them again.

  ‘Your daughter,’ Dr. Morelle suggested, ‘may be postponing her appearance until the last moment in order to achieve the maximum affect.’

  ‘Frankly that’s what I thought myself,’ Drummer said. ‘Though it would be very unlike her. Success hasn’t gone to her head a bit.’ The undercurrent of misgiving rose to the surface of his voice as he went on. ‘You see I’m giving this party especially for her. Most of the guests are her friends, and she should have been here to receive them.’

  ‘When did you see her last?’ Miss Frayle asked.

  There was an almost imperceptible pause before the other replied.

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ he said.

  ‘Yesterday evening.’ Miss Frayle stared at him.

  ‘I assume that your daughter is of a somewhat independent nature?’ Dr. Morelle queried smoothly.

  ‘Definitely,’ the other replied. ‘And since her mother died some two years ago she’s lived her own life. She has her own flat, her own car, and so on.’

  ‘She impressed me as having a strongly individual character,’ Dr. Morelle murmured. ‘I seem to recall a marked resoluteness about the line of her chin.’

  Once again Miss Frayle experienced a pang similar to the one she had felt at the apparent revelation that he had been invited to the party by Doone Drummer herself. Talking about the line of her chin! What could have come over him? Involuntarily she touched her own jaw, and then Harvey Drummer was saying:

  ‘By that I don’t mean we aren’t the best of friends.’ His expression relaxed momentarily with a faint smile. ‘As a matter of fact her flat’s only a stone’s throw away, so we can be near each other.’ He added: ‘I hope you’ll forgive me bothering you, only it’s nearly an hour since she should have shown up. I suppose I’m — well — rather more anxious than I care to admit.’ He forced another smile at the Doctor. ‘Your reputation for being able to deal with situations of this sort prompted me to ask your advice.’

  ‘You don’t think she might have been taken ill?’ Miss Frayle put in.

  ‘If so, why hasn’t she got in touch with me?’

  ‘You have of course telephoned her flat?’ Dr. Morelle said.

  ‘Several times. No reply.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone here who might know something?’ Miss Frayle said. The room seemed even more crowded, the atmosphere heavy with cigarette-smoke and chatter.

  ‘I’ve already asked two or three of her friends, but none of them have seen her since yesterday. I can’t very well go round tackling everyone; they’d start thinking something was wrong. That’s another reason, Dr. Morelle, why I thought I’d ask you what I should do.’

  ‘Have you any idea how your daughter occupied herself since you last saw her?’

  ‘I knew she was lunching with someone today. She told me that this morning.’

  ‘A moment ago you said you hadn’t seen her since last night,’ Dr. Morelle insinuated.

  ‘Doone ’phoned me about one or two things to do with this party,’ the other explained quickly. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘About what time was this telephone call?’

  ‘It would be somewhere around twelve o’clock.’

  ‘So although you had not set eyes on her since last night she had, in fact, spoken to you as recently as midday.’

  Harvey Drummer nodded. ‘It was then she told me she’d be lunching out. Though she didn’t say where or who with. I gathered she’d be returning home to work — she’s planning a new novel — until she came along here.’

  ‘That is, of course,’ Dr. Morelle murmured through a cloud of cigarette smoke, ‘if it was her voice you heard.’

  Chapter Two – Where is Doone Drummer?

  Dr. Morelle’s words caused Miss Frayle to start slightly. Harvey Drummer drew in a sharp breath and muttered jerkily:

  ‘But — but who else could it have been?’

  ‘Dr. Morelle means,’ Miss Frayle said, ‘it might have been someone imitating her.’

  Drummer stared hard at the Doctor.

  ‘Miss Frayle, as usual, has interpreted my meaning admirably. The possibility, however, merits consideration,’ he went on. ‘Unless, that is —’ Deliberately he left the sentence dangling in mid-air.

  ‘Unless what?’ the other asked quickly.

  ‘Unless you are positive beyond all doubt it was your daughter’s voice.’

  ‘I’m positive.’

  Dr. Morelle gave a little shrug and stared abstractedly at the tip of his Le Sphinx. ‘In that case we may forget the idea.’

  ‘But how can you be sure, Mr. Drummer?’ Miss Frayle persisted.

  ‘Doone’s voice is unmistakable. It’s low and sort of husky. And her drawly way of speaking — I know it was her.’

  ‘I seem to recall the characteristics, you mention,’ Dr. Morelle mused, ‘upon the occasion of our meeting.’

  You seem to recall a lot about it, Miss Frayle commented to herself, considering you only saw her for such a short time! She said: ‘I should have thought such an individual voice would have been all the easier to imitate.’

  Harvey Drummer shook his head. ‘It wasn’t only her voice. We discussed matters to do with this party, for instance, which only she could have known.’

  ‘Oh.’ Miss Frayle subsided.

  ‘It seems evident that we can reject the theory that anyone else but your daughter telephoned,’ Dr. Morelle said.

  ‘Then what’s the next step?’ Drummer asked.

  Dr. Morelle glanced about him before replying. ‘If the next step conveyed us to an atmosphere more conducive to speculation,’ he suggested. And the other responded promptly.

  ‘Of course, of course. Let’s get away from all this.’ He indicated a sparse black-coated figure across the room who was actively engaged in re-filling some glasses. ‘I’ll just tell Brethers in case I should be wanted.’

  A few minutes later found them in a room from which the noise of the party was practically excluded. It was quietly furnished in definitely masculine taste. Sporting prints and trophies. By a leather armchair stood a large bowl of pipes of all shapes and sizes. Some black and worn, some newer. But it was a photograph which attracted Miss Frayle’s immediate attention, and she kept stealing a look at it. She hadn’t seen this portrait of Doone Drummer before. No doubt, she decided, its composition was too simple and delicate for ordinary magazine or newspaper reproduction.


  ‘Have you considered,’ Dr. Morelle was remarking to Drummer, ‘that your daughter’s absence may be part of a plan designed to publicise her novel?’

  ‘She’d never leave me in the dark, even if she decided to do a thing like that. Which she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Someone might have persuaded her to lend herself to such a scheme.’

  Harvey Drummer put the drink he had brought with him down on the table, took a cigarette from a large silver box. He said with finality: ‘No one could persuade her to do anything she didn’t want to do.’

  ‘I should have thought,’ Miss Frayle put forward, ‘she couldn’t get much more publicity than she’s had already.’

  Drummer nodded over the flame of his cigarette-lighter. ‘I think we can rule out any idea of a publicity stunt.’

  ‘She must have been taken ill,’ Miss Frayle went on. ‘Or — or there’s been an accident.’

  ‘But surely someone would have got in touch with me by now? If anything had happened to her when she was out she would have had her handbag with her. Anyone could have checked who she was.’

  ‘Supposing her handbag had been stolen,’ Miss Frayle suggested, ‘and she met with an accident afterwards?’

  ‘Even then, the very fact that she’s had so much publicity would make it easy to identify her.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Miss Frayle gave a sigh of defeat.

  There was a little silence. Through the open windows came the hum of the evening traffic of Park Lane. As Drummer turned to Dr. Morelle Miss Frayle’s gaze was held for a moment by his hand holding his cigarette. It was shaking visibly. She realised that beneath his apparently calm exterior his concern for his daughter was torturing him.

  She glanced at the Doctor. He had just turned from the photograph which had attracted her attention, and there was an expression on his face which she found difficult to analyse. She thought she detected the shadow of a smile at the corners of his mouth. But what sort of smile? Of admiration? Of derision? Or was it that he already knew why she had not turned up? She broke off her conjectures as he observed: