Death of a Beauty Queen (29 page)

‘One can understand,' Mitchell remarked, ‘his refusing to help us before, when it looked as if his son might be implicated, but what is he lying low for now?'

‘Put it this way,' Ferris suggested abruptly. ‘He means to do the job his own way instead of leaving it to us.'

‘How do you mean?' Mitchell asked, startled, and yet aware that this suggestion responded to a thought in his own mind.

‘He doesn't want human justice, he wants divine justice, and he means to be the instrument himself,' Ferris answered slowly. ‘There's something about the old man that always frightened me. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' he repeated.

Bobby fidgeted. He would have liked to say something, but neither of his two seniors was paying him any attention and discipline bade him hold his tongue.

‘I've felt like that with him myself,' Mitchell admitted. ‘Only, what have you got in your mind, Ferris?'

‘Put it this way,' Ferris said. ‘It looks like money paid out to Paul Irwin goes at once to Claude Maddox. That means connection of some sort. Perhaps not direct, but there all the same. Put it this way. Mr Irwin means to land Maddox himself. Some way he's got a hint where Maddox is, and he thinks Maddox responsible for his son's death – thinks of him as his murderer. Well, the one-pound note was ground-bait, the five hundred is bait for the hook to catch him, and Mr Irwin's not saying a word beforehand because he means to bring it off himself – and there won't be much left for us to do afterwards, either. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'

‘There's a tremendous change in him,' Bobby could not prevent himself from interposing.

‘Yes, you put that in your report. I don't like that, either,' Ferris answered. ‘Penfold said something of the same sort yesterday, when he rang up. Everyone noticed it, he said. Penfold said no one could understand what had changed him so, and I put it to Penfold at once, I didn't half like it.'

‘Why? Do you think he is fey?' Mitchell asked.

‘Oh, I don't think it's drink or anything like that, sir,' answered Ferris, rather badly misunderstanding the meaning of the Scots word that presumes a sudden alteration in character to indicate the near approach of death, as if in that great coming light all things must needs grow different and change. ‘I just don't like it. Looks like he was planning something – trying to put people off. If we don't mind, we shall have another murder case on hand, with Claude Maddox not in the dock, but chief exhibit. That's why Irwin's gone so quiet and soft spoken, so as to hide what's in his mind.'

Mitchell looked uneasy. So did Bobby, to whom this was a completely new view. But both of them felt it was possible, even that it had about it a certain air of plausibility. Bobby, in especial, found he could not dismiss the suggestion as entirely fantastic. That new softness and gentleness he had seen in Paul Irwin might indeed have been assumed to hide a deadly resolve, and the cheque for five hundred pounds have been drawn to provide the necessary means for carrying it out – for bribes, rewards, and so on. Mitchell was beginning to drum with his finger-tips on his desk – a sure sign that he was seriously disturbed. He said heavily:

We'll have to watch out. Then, too – even supposing Mr Irwin has any such mad idea in his mind – it doesn't follow that's the way it'll work. Suppose he does find Maddox – even suppose he comes upon him unexpectedly? Well, he would have that much advantage, but Maddox is a good deal younger – desperate, too.'

‘I would back Mr Irwin,' Ferris declared, ‘to come out on top all right – he's that sort.'

‘Because he's always so dead sure that God is with him,' Mitchell said. ‘I know. Many a man has gone all the way to hell quite convinced of that. It's a belief that helps you to get to your destination, though I don't think it alters it much. All the same, Owen, I think it would be as well to keep him under observation. The house, too. It is just possible that five hundred is meant for a bait to draw Maddox. You remember Leslie Irwin said Maddox had a key at one time, so he could let himself in when he wanted to use their workshop in the attic. He may have it still, and Mr Irwin may know or suspect as much. Somehow he got that pound note to Maddox's hands. Suppose he also gets to him the information that there is five hundred in the house in cash – the house being left all day in the charge of one old woman, who must go out sometimes to do her shopping. You know, it does begin to look a bit like a trap. What do you think, Owen?'

‘Yes, sir, perhaps,' Bobby agreed, though reluctantly. ‘Only, I don't quite see how the trap's to be sprung if the house is left all day in the charge of one old woman, and she's out sometimes.'

‘No, I don't see how it's to be sprung, or who is most likely to be caught in it, either,' answered Mitchell grimly. ‘Possibly Irwin leaves someone on watch. Or he may have some other scheme. Better get along to Brush Hill, Owen, and see what you can do there. Find out if the house seems under observation, if you can, and if Irwin sometimes leaves his office without explanation. Are you on terms with Mrs Knowles?'

‘I think so, sir. She doesn't think much of us, but she's keen to help. I expect she thought a lot of Leslie Irwin, and there's nothing she wouldn't do to get Maddox arrested. She thinks he is the cause of it all, and resents any chance of his getting off scot-free, as she calls it.'

‘So much the better,' Mitchell said. ‘Try to get her to let you go over the house. If it's necessary, hint you are afraid burglary may be attempted, but don't alarm her more than you can help, and give her a hint not to say anything to Mr Irwin – put it, for fear of alarming him unnecessarily. And keep your eyes open for anything unusual – clubs behind doors; poisoned bottles of whisky; any old thing you can imagine, in fact – for in this business I'm beginning to believe anything and everything is possible. And I'll get on the phone and ask Penfold to place two men on watch at the house – one in front and one at the rear.'

To Brush Hill, accordingly, Bobby returned, and there made little progress. It was certain that Mr Irwin was present at his office early and late, hard at work on the details of the proposed amalgamation, and not allowing in any way the recent tragic happenings of his private life to interfere with the routine of his business engagement. A true descendant of the ‘Ironsides' he was showing himself, steadfast in every circumstance of life, though it appeared that in the office, too, a new gentleness and benignity of manner had been noted. At the house, Mrs Knowles, by no means above a weakness for gossip, showed no displeasure at Bobby's reappearance and made no difficulty about allowing him to go through every room. Burglars, she admitted, she had a dread of, and after what had happened and all the talk in the papers, and the pictures they had published with an ‘x' in the corner to indicate this or that, no one could be surprised at anything that happened next, and if this polite police young man could suggest any further precaution to take, it would certainly be adopted.

But she made a point of accompanying Bobby on his tour of inspection, and used the opportunity to comment, frequently and unfavourably, on the total failure there had been to find Maddox.

‘And him in pyjamas and his feet bare,' she reminded Bobby, who had not forgotten those facts, ‘so it stands to reason he can't have got far, and no money, either.'

Bobby admitted he and his colleagues were completely baffled. It didn't seem possible for a man in such circumstances to have evaded notice and pursuit, and yet that Maddox had completely succeeded in doing. Mrs Knowles indicated, not obscurely, that the probable explanation was complete incompetence on the part of the police, and Bobby found no adequate defence to put up, since the only defence acceptable for even a moment would have been the discovery of the vanished Maddox.

With such converse they passed the time as they went over the house together. It was not a large one. On the top floor were the attics, and above them a space in the roof occupied only by the storage cistern. Access was obtained by a ladder, and Bobby got Mrs Knowles's consent to put it in position and ascend, when only a glance was needed to tell him no one had been there since the last time a plumber had dozed over the job of putting right a defective ball. The attics consisted of two small ones at the back, and one larger one in front. Of the two small attics, one was a lumber room, full of odds and ends, the other was Mrs Knowles's bedroom. The front and larger attic was the one Claude Maddox and Leslie had used in past years as a workshop when they were boys together. Bobby paid it particular attention. It still contained the bench at which the youngsters had worked, a supply of wood of various kinds, a tool-box, and so on. Everything was clean and in good order, and Mrs Knowles explained that it was part of the household routine to sweep and tidy the place at regular intervals.

‘I did it myself yesterday,' she remarked. ‘Mrs Harris docs it generally, but I saw to it yesterday.'

Mrs Harris was, it appeared, a woman who came in to help with the house-work every week-day.

‘It needs papering,' Mrs Knowles remarked, ‘but Mr Irwin says no one uses it now, so it doesn't matter.'

Bobby had been looking at the wallpaper, which was in fact a good deal faded, and stained here and there with damp, though it was not those facts that had caught his attention, but the variegated and complicated, and even startling pattern, which he supposed must have represented some very early cubist design. At any rate it seemed a quite mad confusion of lines and angles, without so much as a single curve among them. However, an eccentric wallpaper pattern was evidently of no interest or importance to his quest, and Bobby turned his attention to the windows. A glance showed that they, like those in the other attics, had not been opened for a very long time, for Mrs Knowles held fresh air in some suspicion, associating it with draughts, and draughts with sudden death.

‘Open windows lets in the dirt,' pronounced Mrs Knowles, though it was draughts and death she meant, for experience had taught her the first excuse was more likely to be sympathetically received. ‘The window-man does the outside,' she explained, ‘and we rub them up inside, and no need to bother opening them.'

On the first floor were two larger bedrooms in addition to the bathroom, and the smaller room over the front door that Leslie had used for his own, and where so unhappily he had ended his life. On the ground floor were dining- and drawing-rooms, and the smaller room Mr Irwin used as a study. The kitchen and other offices were built out behind, and were reached by a narrow passage continuing from the entrance hall round the foot of the stairs – an arrangement calculated to ensure that food should always be cold before it reached the dining-room. Noticing the attention Bobby was paying to the fastenings of the windows, Mrs Knowles told him she always made sure herself before retiring to bed that all bolts and fastenings were in good order.

‘I make sure they're working proper,' she told him; ‘well-oiled and all. I put my trust in the Lord, but that's no reason for leaving windows so any man could open them with a knife. Ours have all got proper screws.'

Bobby agreed that all fastenings were secure, and that if all windows and doors were as well secured burglary would soon become yet another of Britain's lost trades. Then he departed, well assured that if Mr Irwin were really planning, as Ferns suggested, to use his £500 as a bait to draw Maddox from his place of concealment, then he must also be planning to provide some special mode of entry.

It might be, of course, that the plan involved a door or window deliberately left open, and a picture framed itself in Bobby's mind of an open window, of Maddox climbing through to secure the money that would give him his chance of escape, of the old man grimly waiting the coming of his victim.

But there was, too, Mitchell's remark to reflect on – that even so the issue might be doubtful.

‘Youth on one side, surprise on the other,' Bobby thought, remembering what Mitchell had said. ‘And which'll win?

Probably, however, in spite of the Firearms Act, Mr Irwin had provided himself with a revolver or automatic pistol, and Bobby remembered, too, that to shoot a burglar entering your house might easily pass for an act of self-defence.

It might well be, Bobby thought, that was what was in contemplation, and he could not help shivering slightly at the possibility, for, though he would scarcely have believed credible a scheme of that nature in the case of the ordinary citizen, he felt in Paul Irwin a strength, motives, standards, beliefs that were the old man's own.

‘He is his own judge,' Bobby reflected. ‘Or rather, he has made up his mind that only God shall be his judge.'

From all this, therefore, it followed that he took especial care to see the observation kept upon the house was as careful as complete. One man was to watch the front, one was stationed behind; they were warned that no relaxation of vigilance was to be permitted for even a moment for any reason whatever. Even a blowing of police whistles near by was not to draw them from their post. Any person answering in any way to the description of Maddox was to be challenged instantly, and the most careful notice was to be taken of any unusual noise or occurrence.

With such precautions taken, and approved by his superiors, Bobby went off duty with a mind at ease, and from his first slumbers he was wakened by the loud ringing of the phone bell at his bedside. He answered it mechanically before he was well awake, but his senses were shaken into full consciousness when he heard the far-off tiny voice directing him to repair at once to Brush Hill.

‘There's been fresh murder done,' the voice said dispassionately, ‘and the Super, wants you to report to him there at once.'

Already when Bobby reached Brush Hill the full routine of investigation was in progress.