Death of a Beauty Queen (27 page)

Mitchell thought a moment:

‘He has left his money and his clothes behind him, he is in pyjamas, without even shoes, barefooted, and the alarm was given within two minutes of his escape,' he said slowly. ‘Well, I think we can be sure he hasn't one chance in a million – one chance in a billion, for that matter – of escaping. We shall have him before twelve hours are over – before it's even morning, most likely.'

And Ferris, and Bobby, and, in fact, all the police force of London, were all of the same clear and confident opinion.

But this assumption proved unfounded. Yet it had seemed reasonable enough – even certain. The fugitive had had scarcely five minutes' start. He was without clothes or money – barefooted even. It seemed impossible he could evade arrest for more than an hour or two. Yet it was as though he had stepped off the planet altogether. No one had seen him; no one had heard of him; not even so much as the hint of a rumour came through of any glimpse of a barefooted man in pyjamas having been had anywhere by anyone that night.

The newspapers, seeing the chance of a popular sensation, took it up, and demanded, in huge headlines: ‘Where is the barefooted man in pyjamas?' For a few days it raged as a popular catchword – the standard joke of the season. The fact that a human life was in question, became forgotten or ignored. The music-halls jested about it; three popular songs, with the refrain, ‘Have you seen a barefooted man in pyjamas?' scored an enormous success, and one found its way into Mr C.B. Cochran's latest – and best – revue; gay young sparks began to lean out of sports cars to beckon traffic police and demand of them the same question, speeding away before outraged law could assert itself; one of the Sunday papers published an article by the most popular writer of the day, torn reluctantly from his garden, on ‘Celebrated Pyjamas of History'; a daily paper offered a reward of £1,000 for the solution of the mystery, and one of its rivals at once offered a counter-reward of £3 a week for life, a new seven-roomed house, furnished by Mage, and a free ticket for a month's cruise in the summer; a third filled its front page with an enormous photograph (exclusive) of Maddox, and most of the rest of that issue with specimens of his handwriting and of his (alleged) finger-prints; the correspondence columns of all the papers alike swarmed with letters offering every kind of solution, possible and impossible; a lecture on ‘Dematerialization,' at the Albert Hall, by a well-known student of the occult, ‘with special reference to Ancient Wisdom in Modern Crime,' achieved a resounding success – a hint that tidings might presently be received of the sudden appearance of a barefooted man in pyjamas in a monastery on a peak in Tibet causing unparalleled excitement. In fact it was the biggest sensation known for years – it even spread abroad; several prominent Nazis expressed their firm belief that the Jews were at the bottom of the whole thing; several French newspapers sent over special correspondents – all eminent men of letters – to report on this strange manifestation of ‘
l'hysterie Anglaise
'
;
the Italian Press congratulated itself warmly on the fact that in the Corporate State such things did not happen, the Duce never having given permission; and even America admitted that Europe, like nature, was creeping up though still with a long way to go before attaining real gangster levels.

As for Superintendent Mitchell, he openly confessed himself puzzled, baffled, and bewildered as he never remembered having been before in all his long experience.

‘The thing's not in nature,' he declared. ‘It was three in the morning, and within ten minutes every man of ours on duty was on the look-out for him. Nothing could be much more conspicuous than a man in pyjamas with bare feet. The merest glimpse of him would be remembered. But not a soul seems to have seen him. He had no cash, apparently, no means of getting clothing, and yet he's vanished, like your money when you back the favourite and nothing left even to show it was ever there.'

After a long pause, he added:

‘It's against all reason, sense, and possibility, and yet there must be an explanation if only we could think of it.'

The joke began to pall, though the mystery deepened. Mr C.B. Cochran tried out on Manchester another revue – his newest and his best – without a single reference to the barefooted man in pyjamas; the stream of royalties to the authors of the three popular songs with that refrain dried up, as it were, in an hour; the newspapers discovered other and newer sensations; the French papers recalled the eminent men of letters who had been acting as their correspondents; and prominent Nazis hinted darkly at an Israelite conspiracy to hush up the truth, which was probably, they declared, connected with a case of ritual murder.

The general opinion turned to a certainty that Maddox had committed suicide, though, in that case, what had become of his body still remained for explanation. Besides, how, in that brief ten minutes before the hunt became general, suicide could have been carried out in such a manner as to evade observation at the time, or discovery of the body afterwards, seemed utterly inexplicable. Nevertheless, every empty or unoccupied house for miles around was searched without result, except that here or there unlucky vagabonds, who had found a cheap resting-place, were duly routed out. As for the Thames, inconceivable that a man in that state of undress could have traversed the four miles from Brush Hill to the river without being seen.

‘Suicide won't do for an explanation,' declared Mitchell. ‘Somehow or another he must have got away – found food, shelter, money – and that within ten minutes, and all within a radius of about a mile or so. Beats me.'

‘Could he have met a pal in a car, and been whisked off right into the country?' suggested Ferris.

Such a coincidence, had it happened, would have bordered on the miraculous. It would have required not only an accidental meeting at three in the morning with a friend able to help, but also required that that friend should be prepared to risk the severe penalties incurred by those assisting fugitives from justice.

Nevertheless the possibility was thoroughly considered. Every friend and acquaintance of Maddox who could be traced was asked to account for his movements on that night.

All could do so satisfactorily, but, all the same, all were kept under observation – without any result Nor does the passage of a motor-car through a quiet suburban district at three in the morning easily escape observation, yet nobody, certainly none of the police on night duty, seemed to have noticed one. Nor was there a boarding-house, hotel, or lodging-house within reasonable distance that escaped questioning.

Every effort failed completely. The mystery deepened. Yet it was a search not for a needle in a haystack, but for a haystack itself, or, at least, for an object that should have been as conspicuous. But in spite of failure, so complete and so bewildering, the search still raged – there is no other word for it; Mitchell's perseverance was of that kind. The more hopeless it seemed, the more bewildering the utter lack of result appeared to be, the more determinedly he drove on his assistants to fresh effort.

‘Because,' he explained, ‘there must be some explanation how a man without clothes or money, without even shoes on his feet, could vanish in ten minutes, and, if there is an explanation, it must be possible to find it, and we've to go on trying till we do.'

But still the days passed and nothing was discovered. The adjourned inquest on Carrie Mears was held, and resulted in a verdict of ‘Wilful Murder' against Claude Maddox, with a rider to the effect that the police should be urged to effect his arrest without delay.

It was a rider little appreciated at Scotland Yard, where everyone was doing double work, and the word ‘leave' had become a mockery and a byword, so that men hearing it spoken would go to the dictionary to look it up and find out what it meant. A poor revenge, indeed, was attempted by the circulation of a story that the jury, used to investigating motor-car fatalities, had added a further rider, from force of habit, exonerating the murderer from all blame, but this was only a passing consolation.

The next day another inquest was held – that on Leslie Irwin – and attracted more interest, for many rumours had been in circulation. However the police made it plain that their investigations inclined them to accept Paul Irwin's story, and he himself told it simply and frankly in the witness-box, with little visible trace of emotion, and with a complete recovery from his first collapse to his normal complete self-control. In effect his statement was that his son had been very depressed over recent events, and was moreover probably aware that the forgery of which he had been guilty was known to his father.

‘On that night,' Mr Irwin said, ‘he made what I took to be a reference to the forged cheque. He did not wait for me to answer him. He went immediately to his room. I was following, when I heard the shot. I went into the room, and found him dead. I picked up the pistol, and went out to get a doctor, I think. There was no one else in the house. Our housekeeper, Mrs Knowles, was spending most of her nights, just then, with a sick relative. I think some minutes passed before I did anything at all after I found out what had happened, but I don't remember very clearly. I do remember seeing a motor-car passing and recognizing police in it, and I suppose I thought help had come, and I went back to the house to tell them. I am afraid I don't remember details very clearly.'

The evident truth and simplicity of the statement won credence, and it was supported both by the doctor's evidence and by Bobby's that accounted for the possession by the dead boy of Claude Maddox's pistol. Without hesitation the jury returned a verdict of ‘Suicide During Temporary Insanity,' and added a rider expressing sympathy with the bereaved father.

All this time the search for Maddox still continued, without the least success, till a day or two after the inquest on Leslie a coffee-stall keeper on the Embankment came forward to say he believed he had recognized Claude Maddox in a customer who had purchased coffee and sandwiches at his stall one night.

‘Noticed him first,' explained the coffee-stall keeper, to Bobby, who had been sent post-haste to investigate, ‘along of his doing himself well – mightn't have had anything to eat for a week of Sundays. Of course, in a manner of speaking, I get all sorts – toffs what thinks it's seeing life to have a cup of coffee, and coves what's had nothing since the day before, and now only enough for a coffee and bun. But this fellow was eating solid, and all the best, and he give me a pound note to change, so he wasn't hard up, and I wondered why he didn't go to the Corner House with the slap-up swells. Then I noticed the suit he had on – grey tweed lounge it was – seemed too small for him. Tight it looked, and his arm sticking out so you saw it half-way up to his elbow, and then the pound note he gave me was that clean it looked as if it had come out of the bank that day almost. So with one thing and another, and me watching him with there not being no other customer just then, it came to my mind he was like the picture was on the
Daily Intelligence
front page last week – wonderful how they get them things, isn't it? Well, it came to me sudden-like, and, yielding to the impulse-like, I says to him: “Aren't that Claude Maddox bloke, are you?” expecting him to take it as a joke and have a laugh. Well, he didn't – off like nothing, he was, and on his bicycle and away. And what's more – and that's what made me think you fellows had better know – he didn't wait for his change, which was seventeen and ten.'

‘Was it an ordinary bicycle, or a motor one?' Bobby asked.

‘Push bike, and off on it like nothing, so as I hadn't even time to yell – there, in a manner of speaking, he was,' said the coffee-stall keeper impressively; ‘and there, in a manner of speaking, he wasn't.'

Bobby secured the note with which the unknown had paid for his refreshment, and went back to the Yard with it. It was, as the coffee-stall keeper had remarked, quite new and fresh, so that it could not have been much in circulation, and Mitchell, when it was shown to him, examined it with great interest.

If it was Maddox,' he said, ‘it means someone must have provided him with shelter, money, and clothing, and yet he has to run the risk of getting his food outside. Also he has to put up with a suit obviously too small for him. Looks almost as if he had broken into some unoccupied house and had found money and clothing there, but no food. Only, how on earth did he manage that in such a short time? Besides, there's hardly a house anywhere near that hasn't been investigated – bicycle, too, apparently. Possibly this note may help us.'

To trace one-pound notes is generally impossible, few people taking the trouble to keep record of their numbers, but inquiry showed that, as Mitchell had hoped, this note belonged to a series only just issued. It had gone, with others of the same series, to the London and Suburban Bank, and Mitchell was not altogether surprised to find that it was to the Brush Hill branch of that bank that it had been sent. Thither, therefore, Bobby was forthwith dispatched to make inquiry. Before long he was back.

‘Well, what luck?' Mitchell asked, when he appeared to report.

‘They say,' Bobby answered, ‘it was one of a number paid out to meet a cheque for five hundred pounds, drawn by Mr Paul Irwin on his private account, and cashed by him personally two days ago.'

Mitchell was not often taken aback, but this time he fairly gasped.

‘What on earth is the meaning of that?' he demanded at last. ‘How could a note paid out to Paul Irwin get into the possession of Claude Maddox?'

‘I don't know, sir,' answered Bobby simply.

Mitchell decided now that it would be as well for Bobby to go at once to Brush Hill to interview there Mr Irwin again, and see if he could throw any light upon what appeared so inexplicable a circumstance.