Crime at Tattenham Corner (14 page)

“I can understand that,” Harbord murmured. “What sort of class – social class, I mean – should you say this customer of yours belonged, Mr. Thompson? Seeing as many people as you do, I take it you would size up a man pretty quickly.”

Mr. Thompson looked flattered. “As quickly as most, sir. I should say this customer – well, he would not belong to the real higher classes, so to speak, though he was a well-spoken chap. But I should have taken him for a tradesman, or it might be a gentleman's servant.”

“Ah!” the inspector drew a long breath. “You are a man of observation, Mr. Thompson. Well, we may have to see you again later, but that is all for today, I think.”

With a word of thanks to Mr. Mercier, they departed, leaving that gentleman and his assistant looking after them with wondering and somewhat discomfited faces.

Outside Harbord looked at his superior. “Well, we are not much farther, sir.”

“Don't you think so?” the inspector questioned, a far-away look in his eyes. “Well, perhaps not. But it all fits in – it all fits in.”

“And yet I suppose in one way we are,” Harbord went on dreamily. “For I think Ellerby's purchases make it certain he did a bunk – that no harm happened to him.”

“Do you think so?” the inspector coughed. “Well, the room had been carefully stage-managed, I admit. From the first moment I entered it I felt certain that Ellerby walked out of it, probably alone, certainly of his own free-will. But afterwards – I would give a good deal to know what happened afterwards.”

“But what could happen afterwards?” Harbord cogitated.

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

“How can one tell? The only thing we know is that he was in some one's way. You remember that letter. All was going well. The only danger to be feared was from Ellerby.”

“Lady Burslem's letter. Yes, I remember,” Harbord said thoughtfully. “But she –”

“The fragment of a letter that Forbes brought in,” Stoddart corrected. “It looked like Lady Burslem's writing certainly. But –”

Harbord looked surprised. “You think it is not.”

“I don't think,” the inspector returned mendaciously. “But if that hastily written will was not really in Sir John's writing this also may be a forgery – to put us off the scent.”

“At any rate,” Harbord went on, “as far as I can see there is no doubt that Lady Burslem is in it up to the hilt.”

“No doubt,” the inspector assented. Then after a pause, “No doubt at all that she is in it up to the hilt, as you say, or that some one is trying – has been trying all along – to make us think she is.” He smiled as he saw the mystified expression on Harbord's face. Then he hurried forward. “Here, from this corner we can get a bus to Battersea. There is one coming now.”

“To Battersea!” Harbord repeated reflectively. “You mean –”

“I think it is time we had a look at Mrs. Ellerby's abode,” the inspector said as they got in. “The corner of Vine Street will be our nearest stopping place, I think.”

From Vine Street to Dorrimer Street, where Mrs. Ellerby's house was situated, was but a step, as the inspector remarked.

The street was one of those melancholy ones beloved of the modern builder, in which every house is a facsimile of its fellows. No. 80 only differed from the others in that instead of an aspidistra in its front window the place of honour was occupied by a small table on which at the present moment a large black cat was lying, blinking lazily at the passers-by as it basked in the sun.

The inspector rang the bell and sounded the brass knocker.

The door was opened almost immediately by a tall, faded-looking elderly woman in a black dress and wearing a large, white apron.

“Mrs. Ellerby?” the inspector said inquiringly.

“Yes, sir. But if it is about rooms, I have none to let just now.”

“I am glad to hear that,” the inspector said politely. “It shows that business is good. But I have not come about rooms. It is just on a matter of business that I want a few words with you, if you will allow me.” He handed her his card. “I rang you up this morning you remember – from Scotland Yard.”

“From Scotland Yard! Oh!” A very scared look flashed into the woman's faded eyes. “But I haven't anything to tell you, gentlemen. I told you over the phone I had not. I know no more than the dead –”

“I think we will come in just for a minute nevertheless, if you will allow us,” the inspector said, stepping forward.

Mrs. Ellerby perforce gave way and silently pushed open the door of the front room. Stoddart and Harbord walked in.

“As I said, Mrs. Ellerby,” the inspector began, “we shall not keep you long. And it is really in your own interests that I want you to answer a few questions. I am sure that you are as anxious as we are that your husband, Mr. Robert Ellerby, should be found and –”

“As anxious!” Mrs. Ellerby interrupted him. “As anxious – my God! What can your anxiety be to mine? Day or night I haven't rested since I heard he couldn't be found. Your anxiety? What is that to mine – his wife's?”

“What indeed?” the inspector echoed, his keen eyes roving round the room. “I suppose I may take it for granted that you have heard nothing of your husband since the night before last when he left 15 Porthwick Square?”

“Left Porthwick Square?” the woman echoed. “Is that what you like to call it? Since he was murdered, like Sir John before him – because he knew too much, I should say.”

“Murdered in 15 Porthwick Square?” the inspector said gravely, regarding her fixedly. “Do you realize the serious nature of the charge you are making, Mrs. Ellerby?”

The woman nodded, drawing her thin, bloodless lips together.

“I know. And I do not mind telling you what is the talk of London today – that, if it had been in a poor woman's house that my husband had been made away with, something would have been found out before now. It is money – money, that is making the Burslem Mystery, as they call it. Not much of a mystery either. Ask her ladyship who signed the will they call Sir John's that left poor Miss Pamela without a penny. It was not Sir John that would have treated his own flesh and blood like that. And ask her ladyship what she was doing wandering about the house, night before last, when all decent people were abed. Oh, there is no doubt that Ellerby knew too much for them.”

The inspector vainly tried to stem the torrent of words.

“Mrs. Ellerby,” he said, when at last he could get a word in, “you're making very serious accusations without, so far as I can see, one iota of proof in support of them.”

“Proof – ugh!” Mrs. Ellerby's sallow cheeks were dyed a dusky red now. “There's plenty of proof to be had by those that know where to look for it,” she observed enigmatically. “Ask Elsie Spencer what she saw in 15 Porthwick Square the night before last.”

A look that Harbord knew well dawned in Stoddart's eyes.

“Elsie Spencer!” he repeated. “Ah, one of the maids, isn't she?”

“Yes. She is one of the maids,” Mrs. Ellerby mimicked. “She is the second housemaid. And if she keeps her wits about her she will not be a housemaid much longer, I say.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows. “When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Ellerby?”

“Alive, do you mean?” The woman's lips began to quiver, some of the fury which had upheld her had departed.

“Alive, certainly,” the inspector assented. “Do you mean that you –”

“He was here the afternoon before they did him in. I had written to ask him to come, for I had had trouble with one of my lodgers – I couldn't get the money for my back rent and I was short of the ready, for I was let down pretty badly over Peep o' Day. So Robert he came over and gave my lodger a talking to and left me a bit that I was to put in the bank if I didn't want it. Which I did – put it in the bank I mean, for Ellerby had put the fear of God into my lodger and he paid up.”

“How much did your husband give you?” Stoddart questioned.

For a moment Mrs. Ellerby looked mutinous, then something in the inflexible face of the man before her compelled obedience.

“It was fifty pounds,” she said sulkily.

The inspector raised his eyebrows. “Doesn't that look to you as if your husband knew he would be away some time? Fifty pounds is a large sum, you know.”

“I know it doesn't go far in these days,” Mrs. Ellerby said defiantly. “You would know that if you had to see to a houseful of lodgers and meals to provide and getting the money from them as bad as pulling their teeth. Your wife would –”

“Haven't got one,” the inspector said shortly. “Now, Mrs. Ellerby, I want a look at the room in which your husband generally sat when he was at home.”

“And that would be difficult to show you,” Mrs. Ellerby went on in the same injured tone. “It just depended on what rooms were let. When we had one empty Ellerby and I would sit there and he would read his paper. But it wasn't often we did sit down, either of us, we had too much to do. Ellerby often didn't do more, for weeks together, than just look in and pass the time of day. Perhaps he'd have a bit of a snack if there was anything going, and that was all I would see of him. Might just as well not have had a husband I used to say.”

“Yet I understood from the servants in Porthwick Square that Ellerby always slept at home once a week, and frequently more often.”

“That's right,” the woman acknowledged grudgingly. 

“But it was late when he came generally – time for bed when he had had his supper – and up again early in the morning to get back in time for Sir John.”

“I see.” The inspector nodded. “Now, Mrs. Ellerby, I want to have a look at your husband's bedroom.”

“Which is mine, too. We do not go in for any newfangled ways,” Mrs. Ellerby remarked scathingly. “Not that that makes any difference. My rooms are always so that anyone can go in them. I may not be grand but I am clean.”

“I am sure of that, Mrs. Ellerby,” the inspector agreed politely. “Now, if you please –”

Mrs. Ellerby led the way upstairs to a fair-sized apartment on the third floor. The big, wooden bedstead in the middle took up most of the room, but there was a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, that apparently did duty as a dressing-table, and a large washstand. Over this hung three photographs, one of Sir John Burslem, one of Pamela as a child with long hair, and one of a woman of middle age with a happy, smiling face. Mrs. Ellerby pointed to this last.

“Sir John's first wife, and a good deal better-looking than his second, if you ask me.”

“Well, I am inclined to agree with you there, Mrs. Ellerby,” the inspector said diplomatically. “Or shall we put it that Sir John had a pretty taste in wives?”

Mrs. Ellerby tossed her head. “I am sure I don't know. Pretty is as pretty does, I say. Well, I will leave you to look round if you feel like it, gentlemen. Not that you will find anything. I am sure of that. The top drawer is Ellerby's and the left-hand little one. But there is not much in them.”

“One moment,” said the inspector, detaining her. “Had your husband any relatives that he was friendly with?”

“He had a brother, William, in Cumberland that he used to stay with in the holidays. But William doesn't know anything of him now. I wired at once and got his answer.”

“I should like to see it,” the inspector said.

“Well, you can't,” Mrs. Ellerby said snappily, “for I put it straight in the fire. And that is the only kin that Ellerby had that I know of except a sister that went wrong years ago and lives somewhere in the East End.”

“I should like her address.”

Mrs. Ellerby tossed her head. “I don't know it. And I don't believe Ellerby did, either. She was not the sort we should care to keep up with – either of us. So if that is all –”

“Only one more question,” the inspector said with a glance at Harbord. “Can you give me the name of any tradesman with whom your husband dealt? Tailor or outfitter?”

Mrs. Ellerby shook her head.

“I don't know that he went anywhere regular. Picked things up where he fancied them I should say.” 

“Vidame & Green's?” the inspector suggested.

“I don't know. He may have done,” Mrs. Ellerby said carelessly. “I seem to have heard the name.”

“Shop down Victoria way,” the inspector told her.

But she made no further remark as she banged down a bunch of keys on the washing-stand.

“There, you will be able to get into everything with them.”

“Thank you.” The inspector looked at Harbord when she had gone. “Nice sort of lady. Ellerby would be justified in keeping out of her way.”

Harbord shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn't make one feel in love with matrimony – some of the wives one meets. I wonder whether she knows more than she says, sir.”

The inspector had opened the wardrobe and was going over the contents carefully. For the most part they seemed to be garments of Mrs. Ellerby's, but an old suit of Ellerby's, neatly folded, was on one of the shelves and a hat-box held a well brushed silk hat. But there did not seem to be much to help them with their investigation, and at the end of the first half hour the detectives were about to confess themselves beaten when the inspector's quick eyes caught sight of a small box pushed right up against the wall beneath the chest of drawers. It was made of drab cardboard, almost the same colour as the painted skirting-board against which it stood. The inspector went down on his knees and managed to poke it out with the handle of an umbrella he found in the wardrobe.

It held some curious-looking articles, Harbord thought, as he took off the lid, and together they looked at the contents of the box. Tubes, lumps of what looked like coloured chalks, and black and coloured pencils – what observation in restaurants and omnibuses had taught both detectives to recognize as lip-stick and boxes of powder, white, red and brown. Various dirty bits of rag were tucked about and among them. Then at the bottom were tiny tweezers, and different shaped knives. The inspector took up one or two of the tubes and squeezed them gingerly, smelt the contents, smeared them on his hand and then wiped the mark off again. At last he glanced at Harbord.