Information Received (5 page)

‘I am afraid it was, madam,' Bobby said, ‘but that will be decided soon.'

She lifted one hand high in the air.

‘If it is murder,' she said, ‘it will be punished. Murder is always punished, for that is God's will.'

For a moment she stood there, her hand uplifted, almost like some inspired prophetess of old. Then she turned and went away quickly, and in silence and motionless Bobby and Lewis watched her go.

When they reached the door of the billiard-room, Bobby for a moment could not find the key. Manfully though he strove to control his excitement and to remain cool and collected, he was too conscious of the responsibility that rested on him, too well aware of the importance of the chance fate had offered him, to be quite normal. Any slip he made, any blunder, any trifling negligence or oversight might mean that this atrocious crime would go unpunished. And if he handled these preliminaries well, a transfer to the C.I.D., with a good mark against his name, might easily be his reward.

But in which pocket he had put that wretched key he could not imagine, and he grew hot all over as he reflected that even so trifling an incident as this might ruin all. What would Mitchell, the famous head of the C.I.D., think of a man who at a critical moment lost the key – ah, there was the wretched thing, in the very first pocket he had felt in, too. To hide the delay from the waiting Lewis, who was besides much too excited and over-wrought to have noticed that there was any delay at all, he said:

‘Was that Miss Laing we were talking to?'

‘Guv'nor's stepdaughter; Lady Clarke had her by her first marriage. Miss Jennie's his own daughter.'

‘Where's Lady Clarke? Is she in the house?'

‘Oh, she's been dead years – when Miss Jennie was only a kiddie, she died. Before my time that was.'

‘Miss Laing's a striking-looking young woman,' Bobby observed, for he had been a good deal impressed both by her manner and appearance.

‘Oh, I've nothing against her,' answered Lewis. ‘Quite a nice lady to have in the house if you do your work proper, but it don't do to get in her bad books. She's one of them as don't forget.'

‘Who is the Mr Lester she mentioned?'

‘That's the young gent she's engaged to,' Lewis explained. ‘Don't see what he can have been doing outside the drawing-room window, though.'

‘And Miss Jennie you speak of?' Bobbie asked. ‘Is she engaged, too?'

‘Like to be, only her pa won't let her,' Lewis grinned, and then with a sudden realization: ‘And now he's dead, just think of that.'

‘Was there any special reason for his objecting, do you know?' Bobby asked.

‘Only as he wanted better for her,' answered Lewis. ‘You can't wonder, either. Mr Carsley's only a lawyer, does work for the guv'nor, that's how he's been here sometimes. But of course when the guv'nor found out what was going on he put his foot down hard – like the way he could. And now he's dead,' Lewis added, evidently hardly able to believe it.

Bobby had the key in the door by now. He turned it and they went in. A little to his relief Dr Gregory was still there, patiently keeping watch by the window. An absurd fear had been in Bobby's mind that possibly the doctor might be the murderer himself and have used this interval to make an escape for which he, Bobby, might he held responsible. However, nothing of the sort had happened, and Bobby said to him:

‘I got through; they are sending help as soon as they can.'

‘That's him all right, that's Sir Christopher, that is,' said Lewis, staring with a kind of fascinated horror at the still and prostrate form upon the ground. ‘That's him... dead,' he said, his voice suddenly high and shrill, and he sat down heavily on the nearest chair as though collapsing beneath the weight of that knowledge. ‘He's dead all right, he is,' he muttered, ‘and who's done it?'

A new idea came into Bobby's mind, one he realized he ought to have given more weight to before.

‘Do you know if there were any valuables in the safe in the study?' he asked Lewis. ‘It was open and the window was open, too.'

Lewis shook his head slowly, his eyes still upon that prostrate form from which it seemed he could not remove them.

‘I don't know what he kept in it,' he answered. ‘I've never seen it open before, never. Whoever would have thought of a thing like that happening in a house like this?'

There appeared suddenly at the window the burly form of that Sergeant Doran for whom Bobby had been waiting. He gave a quick look at the body but did not seem much surprised.

‘Bad business, Doctor,' he said to Gregory, whom apparently he recognized. ‘Gent done himself in, eh? Done anything, Owen?'

‘I've reported by phone,' Bobby answered. ‘They said they would be along at once.'

‘That's right,' said Doran approvingly. ‘I suppose it is suicide?'

‘I don't think so,' Gregory answered. ‘He has been shot twice, both times near the heart. A man can hardly shoot himself twice through the heart.'

Doran looked startled and stepped into the room.

‘Murder, eh?' he said. ‘That's murder, if it's like that, only what did the old cove mean, telling me the gent at “The Cedars” had shot himself? So I came along quick as I could. Old lady knocked down by a motor in the High Street stopped me being here before,' he added to Owen.

‘Do you mean someone told you Sir Christopher had shot himself?' Gregory asked, looking puzzled. ‘How could he know anything about it?'

‘Things like that get about quick enough,' Doran answered. ‘All over the place they are, before you can turn round.'

‘I don't see how anyone could know,' Gregory repeated, ‘except your man here and myself – and the murderer.'

Doran's jaw dropped and he looked very much taken aback.

‘You don't mean you think the old chap who spoke to me was the murderer himself,' he protested. ‘Murderers don't give information themselves about what's happened.'

‘I don't see how he can have known,' Gregory repeated once more.

‘Was he a man about middle height and size, well dressed, sandy beard, grey felt hat?' Bobby asked, describing as well as he could the elderly man he had noticed and who had seemed to be showing so much interest in the house.

‘You know who he is?' Doran asked sharply.

Bobby explained; and added that the caretaker of the empty house next door had seen someone rush through the garden there and climb the wall into the street.

‘He cut his hand doing it, I think,' Bobby added, ‘for there was what looked to me like blood on the broken glass on the top of the wall.'

‘May turn out a useful clue, that,' commented Doran. ‘Good thing you noticed it.'

‘There's another thing, Sergeant,' Bobby went on. ‘The study window is wide open and there's a safe there with its door open, too. It looks to me as if someone had been at it. I don't know if that can have anything to do with what's happened here.'

‘It may have,' agreed Doran. ‘Sounds a bit queerish. You had better go back there and see nothing's interfered with or touched. Can't be too careful in these cases.'

Bobby went off accordingly, though he would much rather have stayed in the billiard-room, on which he supposed the investigation would centre. But orders must be obeyed, and as he passed the drawing-room door, which was wide open, he saw Brenda standing within, between the grand piano and a large and expensive-looking combined gramophone and wireless cabinet. Close to her, looking up at her from an armchair in which she was crouching down, as though she had just collapsed into it, was another girl, of a very pretty and graceful appearance. She had nothing of Brenda's rather imposing and striking manner and presence, but her features were good, and her small, well-shaped head was crowned by a mass of fair curls that owed all to nature and nothing at all to the hairdresser. Her wide-opened eyes were of a singularly clear, bright blue, and though now her whole attitude was one of startled terror, there was about her still something of lightness and of gaiety, so that the thought came into Bobby's mind that she was like a butterfly caught in a sudden storm. Seeing Bobby pass, and noticing his uniform, she gave a quick cry, and Brenda put out a hand towards her as if to soothe and reassure her.

‘Hush, darling,' she said, and then, to Bobby: ‘Has anyone come yet? Is there anything we can do?'

‘I must go to him,' the younger girl cried, and Brenda said again:

‘Hush, Jennie, darling, hush.' She added to Bobby: ‘I had to tell Miss Clarke.'

‘I must go to him. Why can't I go to him?' Jennie repeated.

‘Not yet,' Bobby said to her. ‘It is better not, not yet. We are doing everything possible. We will do our best to find out what's happened.'

He went on, feeling very sorry for the two girls, more especially for the younger one who looked so pretty and so fragile. It seemed to him sad that her young life should be darkened by such a tragedy. The elder girl, he thought, seemed like a tower of dark strength, able to stand up against worse things still.

‘Must be a dreadful shock for them both,' he thought. ‘Unbelievable thing to happen, they must think it.'

By now the maids, too, had become aware that something was amiss. He found them all four clustering uneasily by the service door at one end of the hall. He told them that their master had met with an accident, but that Dr Gregory was in charge, help had been sent for, and that there was nothing for them to do but to go on with their ordinary duties.

Then he proceeded to the study where he looked very thoughtfully at the open window and the open safe against the wall, for it seemed to him strange that when Sir Christopher went to the billiard-room at the other end of the house, he should have left his study with the door of the safe wide open like this.

Only had he?

Certainly there was no sign that the safe itself had been tampered with in any way, but then as he had noticed before the contents seemed disarranged and in disorder. One large envelope, apparently containing papers, had fallen on the floor, and looking at it, though he was careful not to touch it, Bobby saw that it bore the imprint of Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden, Lincoln's Inn.

‘That's the lawyer the Jennie girl is sweet on, I suppose,' Bobby commented to himself.

He crossed to the window and examining it carefully was able to detect what seemed to him recent scratches on the sill, as though someone had climbed in there recently. Unfortunately, the ground just beneath was flagged and showed no footprints. But bending out farther, though still with great caution, Bobby saw that just below the sill a piece of freshly-torn cloth fluttered on an old rusty nail that had at some time, for some reason, been driven in the wall, between the bricks. Cautiously he detached it, and placing it on paper on the writing-table, examined it closely.

‘Bit of striped worsted, apparently,' he muttered. ‘Well, I wonder what the C.I.D. will make of that? Got to look for someone wearing striped worsted trousers, I suppose.'

He heard motor cars arriving and concluded that the Yard people had come at last. He wished very keenly that he had been allowed to stay in the billiard-room. It would have been very interesting to see how the big men set to work. Mitchell would be there, no doubt, and other big wigs as well, perhaps even that semi-divinity, the Assistant Commissioner himself. For this was probably going to be a big case and rouse much public interest.

But a humble constable with only three years' service to his credit could not expect to be allowed to participate in the doings of the great, and so resignedly he took a slip of paper, timed himself very carefully, and copied out the brief report he had made of the incident of the caretaker and his apples and the escape of the intruder into the ‘Elmhurst' garden.

He found that writing this out again took five minutes and a half and at that he rubbed his nose very hard indeed.

‘More and more of a puzzle,' he thought. ‘What was Dr Gregory doing for five and a half minutes?'

Meanwhile, in the billiard-room, the whole routine of such investigations was in full process. Superintendent Mitchell himself was there, his natural loquacity a little checked, but not much, by the presence of the Assistant Commissioner, for Bobby had been right in thinking the case was of sufficient importance to draw even that potentate from the Olympian heights whereon he usually dwelt. And there was the Divisional Detective-Inspector, and one or two other inspectors, all with their attendant sergeants, and an expert photographer, and two finger-print experts, and various other plain-clothes and uniform men till indeed the room was so crowded it was a wonder anyone there could get anything done at all.

Nevertheless a good deal of work was being accomplished and gradually the crowd thinned as one or other departed on this ground or on that, the photographer to develop his plates, the finger-print experts after him, and everyone else who had nothing more important to do, to search the garden in the hope of finding footprints or any other clue. And the unhappy Bobby, alone, hungry, apparently forgotten, sat solitary in the study, and cursed the fate that had first plunged him into the midst of what seemed likely to prove the most sensational murder London had known for many years, and then thrown him carelessly into the backwater of a deserted study.

He had permitted himself to open the study door as wide as possible, in the hope that one or other of the important-looking people he saw bustling to and fro might notice him as he sat within and watched them wistfully. The big man with the pale, flat face and small sandy moustache was, he knew, the famous Mitchell. At first sight it was difficult to say why even the most desperate criminal dreaded this man's name and in his presence lost courage and self-possession; at least, it was till one noted how tightly the lips could close when they were not parted for speech, with what intensity of purpose the deep-set, grey eyes could glow at times. The tall, thin man in eye-glasses, who moved with so assured a step of authority and dignity, was probably, Bobby thought, the Assistant Commissioner, a person whose majestic path through life the humbler track pursued by Bobby had not yet approached. As a matter of fact the gentleman in eyeglasses was not the Assistant Commissioner, but the Assistant Commissioner's assistant private secretary. The Assistant Commissioner was a small, thin, harassed-looking man, who went in perpetual fear of superiors and subordinates alike, was bullied frightfully at home by wife and children and the domestic staff, and never opened a daily paper without a panic terror that it might be starting a campaign for his resignation. The Divisional Detective-Inspector Bobby knew, and there was also a detective-sergeant Bobby knew by sight from having seen him in short skirt, silk stockings with clocks, and a coquettish hat trimmed with cherries, leading the dancing girls' chorus at the last performance of the police minstrels. He still limped a little, though, from a bullet through the thigh he had received when arresting an Irish Communist at Liverpool, and there was some fear that this would interfere permanently with his dancing.