House in Charlton Crescent (19 page)

“Of course she couldn't!” John Daventry said roughly. “Don't be a fool, Dorothy! Poor little Maureen. The child must have been scared out of her senses. That is what it means.”

But though his tone was decided, his voice gruff almost to bearishness, his face had turned again that sickly greenish colour, his grey eyes evaded both the girls. It was curious, too, that the same tint seemed to have spread from him to Bruce Cardyn, that even the inspector's usually ruddy colour had faded to a dull grey hue.

Neither Dorothy nor Margaret could well have been paler. The silence lasted a minute longer. Then it was broken in an odd way. Margaret Balmaine laughed aloud, a harsh, grating sound that broke in her throat in a high choking laugh.

“Fancy Maureen killing Aunt Anne!” she cried, between her spasms. “Just fancy Maureen or even Alice killing Aunt Anne!”

“No news?” questioned the inspector as Bruce Cardyn hung the receiver up and turned from the telephone with an exclamation of impatience.

“No news!” he assented. “Sometimes I think there never will be.”

The inspector's little ferret-like eyes glanced at him keenly for a moment, then turned back to a parcel he was slowly unfolding.

“Give us time!” he remarked philosophically. “We shall find it all out some day. But it is not so easy to put one of those things—jig-saw puzzles—together, if all the important pieces are in the hands of different people who refuse to give them up. This case reminds me of that.”

“Why?” Cardyn inquired laconically.

“Because nobody—I say nobody, advisedly—will speak the truth about his or her little bit of the puzzle. Now you have your own little corner which you are trying to get straight. That little piece of the corner on which you are busy probably dovetails into some other bit and the two joined together might make a whole large piece of the puzzle plain. When are you going to speak out, Mr. Cardyn?”

For a moment Cardyn stared at him in amazement, then a glance of comprehension flashed into his grey eyes.

“You shall be the first to hear when I know anything definite, inspector. At present it is only vague surmise and suspicions that are probably unjustifiable.”

“Nevertheless,” said the inspector firmly, “I think we will have the surmises and the suspicions out in the open, if you please.”

Bruce met his penetrating gaze squarely. “Will you give me an hour or two? I think—I hope that by then may have something definite to tell you.”

The inspector nodded. “Wait till to-night,” he said gruffly. “And now look at these!”

Bruce glanced at the white plaster of Paris objects that were gradually emerging from their wrappings under Inspector Furnival's capable fingers.

“Footprints! Those in the border under the window in the hall?” he questioned.

Inspector Furnival touched them gingerly with the tip of his finger.

“Ay! Beautifully done, aren't they? You can't beat my man, Botts, at this sort of thing. Now, what do you make of this, Mr. Cardyn?” 

Bruce Cardyn bent over them. “Small size—eights, I should say.”

“Right! No, Mr. Cardyn, what do you make of them?”

“That the murderer was a man with small feet.”

“If he wore them,” the inspector said significantly.

Cardyn looked at him. “Who else would be likely to?”

“That is what we are trying to find out,” the inspector said sapiently.

“You mean?”

“Perhaps we shall each find out what the other means later on,” the inspector said dryly. “In the meantime may remind you that there were three men among the persons in the fatal room. Two of them Mr. John Daventry and Soames, take the same size of shoe—ten. The third—yourself—”

“I take nines,” Cardyn said quietly. “Though I daresay I might get into eights. All my shoes are at your disposal. Those in my rooms as well as the few pairs have here. Probably, however, you know all that is to be known about them already.”

A slight spasm—was it a smile?—momentarily contracted Inspector Furnival's sharp-featured little face.

“Mr. Cardyn, I am going to show you a pair of shoes that exactly fit those footprints.” He led the way across the hall and up the staircase. Past the death chamber on the first floor, past Lady Anne's bedroom, past those belonging to the two girls, past the one Bruce had occupied, right up to the servants' quarters on the top floor went he. Then he unlocked a door Bruce had not seen open before.

“The lumber-room,” he said briefly. “Always kept locked in Lady Anne's time.”

It was a small room. The houses in Charlton Crescent were not big enough to have much space for lumber-rooms, and it was almost entirely filled with boxes.

“All locked!” the inspector said, waving his hand comprehensively around. “Lady Anne believed in safeguarding her property and her life. It is the very irony of fate.”

As he spoke he was unfastening a huge wooden chest that stood under the window. Inside there appeared to be an unusual and incongruous collection of things, arranged in no particular order. Articles of clothing were mingled with books and papers. One corner was entirely given up to shoes. The inspector put his footprints down carefully on another box and chose out a pair of shoes. Then placing them beside the plaster of Paris models, he pointed to Cardyn. “The shoes that made those prints. See for yourself!” 

Bruce compared the two point by point. They fitted exactly. Even the place where the heel was a little worn down had its counterpart in the cast. He looked at the inspector.

“No doubt about that! You have the originals safe enough? But how did they come there?”

“That,” said the inspector slowly, “I should very much like to discover. You know to whom this chest and its contents belonged, perhaps?”

Bruce shook his head. “I have not the least idea.”

“To Frank Daventry—Lady Anne's youngest son,” the inspector said impressively. “When he went out to France he left a lot of things here. After his death most of them were packed up and brought here by Lady Anne's orders.”

“But how—” Bruce Cardyn looked like a man thoroughly dazed.

“Ah, how!” the inspector echoed. “Another little piece of the jig-saw puzzle, Mr. Cardyn. A regular bit of snag too, for you think that pair of shoes just like the others I suppose?”

Cardyn scrutinized them all round; then he picked up one of the pair in question and compared it silently with several of the others. At last he looked up.

“This boot is a little wider than the others. I should say they were eights with a five fitting. Probably this is an eight with a six fitting.”

“Right!” the inspector said laconically. “Well?”

“I never knew a fellow alter the size of his boots unless he had an attack of gout—or something of that sort,” Cardyn observed.

“No.” Inspector Furnival put the two of them together. “If you look you will find that every shoe in that box is made by the same shoemaker—except this pair that fit the footprints. They have inside the name of a well-known firm of American bootmakers in the Strand-—John D. Palmer and Co. Now I paid Mr. John D. Palmer a visit the other day and made a few inquiries. As a result discovered that this particular shoe, though to the lay mind it looks very much like any other, has been on the market only about twelve months, which naturally precludes the idea of their having any connexion with Frank Daventry.”

Bruce Cardyn paled, detective though he was. In that moment he seemed to realize something of the tortuous, devilish mind they were up against.

“They must have been put here by the murderer,” he said.

“Not necessarily. One must look at the thing all round. Some one may have found them and put them here to shield the real criminal.”

Bruce Cardyn did not look convinced. He had taken up the shoes once more and was examining them with meticulous care, and comparing them point by point with the plaster of Paris models. The inspector's keen little eyes followed every movement. At last Cardyn looked up.

“The impression is much deeper at the toes than at the heels. It looks to me as if the murderer had sprung out backwards, standing on his toes while he shut the window behind him, and—”

“Yes! And?” The inspector prompted gently as the younger paused with a bewildered expression. “The footprints went no farther.”

“I know,” Bruce assented. “But how the beggar got off has always been a puzzle to me. Sometimes I have thought that he put down stones and sprang from one to the other, pulling up the last one as he took another step.”

“Ingenious,” said the inspector, “but it won't wash. In the first place he would have had a large stone on which to balance himself if he pulled the back one up. In the second, look at the time he would have wasted, with innumerable opportunities of detection. Thirdly, why should he take so much trouble to avoid the soil of the border, when he had already left two well-defined foot-prints in the most conspicuous place, right under the window?”

He waited for a reply, but none came. Bruce Cardyn was still examining the shoes, his brows drawn together in a frown.

The inspector pointed to the toes again. “Curiously deep impression the toes have made, haven't they?”

“I don't know that it is any deeper than one would expect if a man sprang from the window on to some soil that had been freshly dug.”

The inspector rapped the cast with his pencil. “A man springs down upon his toes—granted—but then he lets himself down upon his heels—he doesn't remain standing on his toes. Now the impressions of the heels are of the slightest. The wearer of these shoes neither stood firmly on his feet nor turned.” “You mean,” said Cardyn slowly, “that the—the person who wore those shoes jumped on to the border purposely to make those impressions, and then got back into the house, wishing to give the impression that the murderer had left that way.”

“Precisely,” said the inspector dryly. “I couldn't have put the case better myself if had been laying it before the chief himself.”

“The inference being,” Bruce went on, his voice controlled as ever, though a very dangerous look was growing in his eyes, “that the shoes were worn by someone in the house. Further that as I was the only one of the three men who could by any possibility get into the shoes—I must be the assassin, Inspector Furnival.”

The inspector held up his hand.

“Steady, please. You are taking a little bit too much for granted, Mr. Cardyn. Though those are a man's shoes, that does not prove that a man wore them when the footprints were made.”

“You cannot mean that one of the girls—” Bruce uttered.

“It might have been or might not,” the inspector said with judicial calm. “There is nothing inherently impossible in the idea, as I hope to presently show you. A woman might perfectly easily have made the footprints either definitely to turn suspicion from herself or her lover. Now to come back to business. After an enormous amount of trouble have managed to get something from the shop where these were sold—a list of the names on the books. It is not complete, of course, and quite inconclusive since many people pay ready money for their shoes. But there was one name on their books and only one that was familiar to me in this case.”

The inspector was not often guilty of pausing for effect, but his hesitation was now dramatic.

No shade of enlightenment came into Cardyn's eyes as far as the inspector could see.

“What name?” he questioned breathlessly.

“The name,” said Inspector Furnival watching the effect of each word as it dropped from his lips, “was that of your predecessor—David Branksome!”

“Twenty-five Todmorden Lane, Ryston, N.”

Even with his extensive knowledge of London and its suburbs the above address had puzzled Inspector Furnival. At last, however, he had found Todmorden Lane, tucked away between two of the better-known streets. Just as he turned into it a car stopped behind him and a familiar voice exclaimed:

“Why, Inspector Furnival, I declare! On the same errand as myself, I dare bet!”

The inspector did not look too pleased.

“I thought you were here yesterday, Mr. Daventry.”

“So I was,” John Daventry returned, with a scowl that sat ill upon his pleasant, open face. “But Alice was out—slipped out by the back door as I came up to the front, expect.”

“Ah, well, she won't do that to-day—not unseen, anyway,” the inspector said grimly. “My man— Cuthbertson—is watching the house.”

“Pity he wasn't yesterday,” John Daventry growled. 

“I expect he was,” the inspector said placidly. “Probably when she went out of the back door he shadowed her. To-day, however, if she is not at home we shall soon find her.”

Number twenty-five was not the cleanest of the houses in Todmorden Lane; there were the usual Nottingham lace curtains over the front window, drawn back to show the aspidistra between, but the steps and the door-knocker looked neglected, the dingy curtains could not disguise the dirtiness of the windows.

Mr. Daventry seized the knocker and banged it loudly.

“If you wished to frighten our prey,” the inspector said mildly, “you could hardly go a better way to do it.”

“I do mean to frighten the truth out of her,” John Daventry muttered between his teeth.

“It isn't always the truth you frighten out of people,” the inspector said wisely.

John Daventry did not answer. His knock at the door had brought a speedy response.

In curious contrast with John Daventry's vigorous assault upon it, the door was opened just a little way slowly and very noiselessly, and a woman looked out—a little drab-coloured woman with hair already going grey, though she was only old with that pathetic early age of the hardworked and the very poor.

As she saw John Daventry who stood well in front of the inspector she uttered a low cry. “Oh dear! Oh dear!” She tried to close the door again but Daventry had got his foot inside.