Death of a Beauty Queen (15 page)

‘I understand,' Bobby said, persuaded that now at last he had the truth on at any rate one point. ‘Was there anything special or important you wished to see her about?'

I only wanted to tell her it was no good her expecting too much. I was doing my best for her all right, but she never quite got the difference between an exhibitor and a director or a producer. I suppose a director or a swell producer could have had any girl he fancied given a real serious test right off. All I could do was to tell her to apply in the usual way, with name, address, experience, and photo, and I would write in at the same time. Unluckily she didn't take too well – her photos never did her justice. When all she got was a printed form to say her name had been put down and she would be communicated with in due course, if occasion arose, and not a word about me, she thought I had let her down. Didn't believe I had been trying.'

‘Did she show anger openly, do you mean?' Bobby asked. ‘Well, depends what you call threatening to go round and tell my wife; asked me how I would like Mrs Sargent to know all about our little dinners up West when I was supposed to be looking after things here – not that there was any harm in them, only I wasn't keen on Mrs Sargent hearing it like that. She's interested on the financial side– here, for one thing – put all her money in when we started, on debenture.'

‘On debenture?' repeated Bobby thoughtfully.

‘Yes, a mortgage – safer, of course, as I told her,' said Sargent, though just a little uncomfortably; and added:

‘Much safer, and then she hadn't to attend meetings or be bothered with voting.'

‘Quite so,' agreed Bobby, rather inclined to suspect that the fact that the debenture holders had no right to attend the general meeting or vote at it was one reason why Mrs Sargent had been advised to invest her money in a debenture holding.

‘I don't deny,' added Sargent, ‘it would be a bit awkward if she chose to call her money in.'

‘But the company could pay?'

‘Oh, yes. But I should be left high and dry.'

* Did you think it at all likely Miss Mears would do what she said ? '

‘No; not for a moment. She was only a bit excited and hysterical. Besides, I should have denied the whole thing. She had nothing to show – no letters, for instance.'

Sargent paused and looked cunning – and unpleasant.

‘I wasn't born yesterday,' he said. ‘I always phoned.'

Bobby went away, convinced that Sargent had been in fact more troubled and alarmed by the girl's threats than he now cared to admit. All the same, from being alarmed and disturbed to committing murder is a long step – especially to murder in circumstances and surroundings bound to cast suspicion on oneself.

Then, too, Sargent had made more admissions than might have been expected from a guilty man, though that might be due to his perception that sooner or later the facts he acknowledged were bound to become known.

On the whole, Bobby thought that an interesting case against Sargent was being slowly built up, but hardly one that at present justified action. Too many loose ends, he told himself, still lying about – loose ends that in a trial counsel for the defence would thoroughly enjoy trailing before a jury.

Still, he felt satisfied with the results of his interview. He went back to the Yard, deposited there the list of the names and addresses of the Beauty Queen competitors Sargent had provided him with, and knew that very shortly a polite plain-clothes man would call on each in turn to inquire if anything was known of any person named Quin, just as a good many people of that name entered in the directory were likely to be asked presently if they knew or ever had known anything of Carrie Mears. Not that Bobby felt it likely that these inquiries would have much result, as in fact they had not. They were, indeed, merely a part of the slow, dull, laborious, careful routine of which detective work almost entirely consists, since to meditate deeply and arrive at deep conclusions is of little value when what a jury asks for is quite commonplace proof.

Bobby's next visit was to Maddox's office in the City. The young man held apparently a sufficiently important position with his firm to have a small room to himself, and Bobby, left alone in it to wait, while Maddox, somewhere else in the building, was sent for, examined the apartment with a keen, intent interest.

Personality is so strong and strange a thing there is nothing so insignificant we use we do not leave on it our own private stamp, though it may be in signs little easy to read. Bobby, now looking about him with the concentrated attention he had learnt from Mitchell, thought he could perceive enough to deduce a character flamboyant, pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, a little careless and even reckless, yet dominating, self-confident, and successful. The fountain-pen lying on the office table was of the most expensive make on the market, and heavily banded in gold, and there was a five-pound note near by, under a paper-weight representing a running greyhound. Only a somewhat careless, even reckless, individual would leave money and a pen of so valuable a make lying on the desk in a room to which access was evidently easy, just as only a flamboyant, pleasure-loving personality would use such a pen in business, or smoke the expensive and heavily scented cigarettes in the silver-mounted box near by. Yet the room had at the same time a business-like and efficient air. On another smaller table near by were several financial journals, neatly folded and laid together, and a list of what seemed Stock Exchange securities with the latest quotations carefully marked.

‘Does a bit on the Stock Exchange,' Bobby thought, and reflected that perhaps the running-greyhound paper-weight was another indication of another form of gambling.

On each side of the fireplace stood a bookcase, containing what seemed solid works of reference, and on the top of the one nearest the window, and facing the chair that a caller would naturally occupy, was a row of seven silver challenge cups. There were several photographs, too, all of Maddox himself – even one of what seemed to be the firm's premises in Buenos Aires showed Maddox standing at the entrance as though he were the sole owner. Another photograph showed him in what Bobby thought at first was fancy dress, and then recognized as the traditional gaucho costume – hat and spurs and leggings, all complete. In another similar photograph Maddox was in the act of throwing a lasso, and in yet another he was sitting a rearing horse with a great appearance of skill and mastery. But Bobby knew enough of horsemanship to guess that the rearing was not quite spontaneous. A set piece, Bobby thought, staged so that an effective picture could be taken.

‘Must have got on well to have a room like this to himself at his age,' Bobby thought, ‘but not quite so well as he wants you to think, or he wouldn't take such pains to impress himself.'

The door opened, and Maddox himself came in. He looked pale and heavy-eyed, as was only natural after what had occurred, but seemed brisk and self-confident as ever.

‘Thought some of you chaps would be along,' he said. ‘I've been expecting you all day. Have a cigarette – help yourself. Those are rather good in that box, but I've some gaspers, too, if you prefer them. He produced some that, if not exactly ‘gaspers,' were less expensive and unscented, and, when Bobby politely declined, helped himself to one from the first box. ‘Bulgarian,' he explained. ‘Always smoke them. Of course, anything I can do to help... Sure you won't have a cigarette?'

‘We're not supposed to – not on duty,' Bobby explained. ‘I was admiring your photographs, Mr Maddox. South America, aren't they?'

‘Brazil and the Argentine chiefly,' Maddox answered. ‘We've big interests in both places. Used to get a lot of riding out there. Missed it when I got home. I did try trotting round the Park for a time, but that seems so infernally slow when you've been used to a gallop over pampas that stretch away for hundreds of miles.'

‘I see you are throwing a lasso in one,' remarked Bobby.

‘Yes, I got quite good at it – came in second in a competition once. Only amateurs allowed to compete, though,' he added smiling, ‘the genuine gaucho article was barred. Wonders some of those chaps are, but they thought me quite good for an amateur – and an Englishman.'

‘I noticed you have some challenge cups there,' Bobby observed.

Maddox turned quickly as if to look at them. There were seven of them, three on each side of one very big one that appeared to be a rowing trophy, as it was supported on crossed oars. To Bobby there came irresistibly the impression that his mention of these cups had startled Maddox considerably, had even alarmed him, though how that could be, Bobby could not even imagine. Yet when Maddox turned again he was very pale, his eyes were uneasy, his hands not quite steady. It was as if some swift danger had shown itself to him, as when on the road at night a sudden obstruction appears.

Bobby told himself crossly that he was letting his imagination run away with him. How, in the name of all that's reasonable, could a sudden danger show itself in a row of challenge cups won probably years ago, and apparently all of them in South America, many hundreds of miles away in distance, and in time long before Carrie Mears and Claude Maddox had met.

‘No sleep last night, that's what it is,' Bobby decided.

He went on to explain that he was trying to trace a man named Quin. Quin, Bobby explained, had paid a somewhat mysterious visit to the cinema shortly before the murder, and the authorities would like to find him. Probably he had nothing to do with the case, but he ought to be found and questioned. Maddox could give no help. He did not much think he had even heard the name before. He was quite certain he had never known any person called by it; he was equally certain he had never heard it mentioned by Miss Mears.

Bobby felt fairly certain that in this Maddox was speaking the truth. Then he asked about the engagement-ring Maddox had spoken of buying in Regent Street. Maddox repeated what he had said before. He had given it to Carrie, after having met her as she was leaving her office at the conclusion of work, and while walking to the station with her. He had seen her into the train, but had not accompanied her as he had a business appointment to keep. He repeated, too, his previous story that after disposing of this business he had gone straight home, had his supper, and then, feeling nervous and agitated, had gone out for a spin on his motorcycle, finally proceeding to the cinema when, on ringing up to inquire about Carrie's success, he had been informed of the tragedy.

When he had repeated all this, he added, somewhat petulantly:

‘You had the whole thing the other night, why do you want it again? Trying to catch me out?'

‘We have to check everything,' Bobby answered.

‘It's the ring being missing that's worrying you, I suppose,' Maddox said. ‘If it can't be found, someone must have pinched it – the murderer probably. I suppose you'll keep an eye on the pawnshops and so on. I expect poor Carrie had it in her handbag. You said that had been stolen, didn't you?'

‘I think all we know for certain,' Bobby said, ‘is that there didn't seem to be one anywhere about, and yet every woman carries a bag. So we rather assumed it must have been taken away by somebody.'

Maddox agreed, adding, again, that it was an expensive one, worth stealing, even apart from the question of whatever it might have contained. So then Bobby departed, still a good deal worried in his mind over the swift agitation Maddox had shown at the reference to his array of the seven challenge cups.

‘Only that's cracked,' Bobby told himself once more. ‘What can challenge cups, won long enough ago, thousands of miles away, have to do with it? Keep your head screwed on a bit tighter, my boy,' he adjured himself.

It was Inspector Ferris who was to make the formal examination of the room Carrie Mears had occupied in the flat rented by her aunt, Miss Perry, that was still under the lock and seal of the authorities. But in order to carry out Mitchell's idea that Miss Perry would be more likely to give useful information during a friendly chat than under direct question and answer, Bobby had instructions to arrive first, and, during the interval of waiting for his superior officer, to do his best to get the old lady into a gossipy and communicative mood.

‘Because what we need,' Mitchell explained again to Bobby, ‘is to get as clear a notion as we can of all these people. We are groping in the dark till we can establish motive, and we can't even make a guess at that till we know what sort of people we have to deal with. The more you can get Miss Perry to tell you about the girl, the better idea we shall have of where to look for her murderer.'

Bobby had been a little afraid that he might find the old lady had entirely collapsed under the weight of so terrible and so unexpected a tragedy impinging on her placid, uneventful existence. A little to his surprise, and even more to his relief, its chief effect seemed, however, to have been to galvanize her into a more alert and livelier mood. But there had never been much sympathy or affection between her and her niece – they had found each other mutually useful, and that had been about all.

Miss Perry, therefore, in her rickety, comfortable old chair, with her medicine and her knitting, and her picture paper on the small table by her side, was in just the excited, communicative mood Mitchell had hoped Bobby would be able to turn to account. But the idea, though a good one, worked out in an unexpected way, as sometimes happens with good ideas.

Bobby began by asking permission to wait there the arrival of his superior officer, who was to come to look through Carrie Mears's papers and possessions in the hope of finding useful clues. Miss Perry had no objection, but repeated her previous warning that it was little likely anything would be found of any use.

‘Carrie was always a close one,' Miss Perry wheezed between two fits of coughing. ‘She never told you anything.'