Mystery of Mr. Jessop (2 page)

At the rear of the house, too, the garden was well looked after, and, even in this time of early autumn, was still gay with flowers. The lawn was such a lovely expanse of velvety green as only the British Isles can show, and on each side of it ran two paved, sheltered alleys, bordered by trellis-work, on which grew climbing roses and other plants trained on cross-pieces between the borders of trellis-work, so that in summer the alleys were completely covered in by a green growing roofery. But many people have little private fads, and, though Mr. Mullins spent money freely on his garden and saw that it was always beautifully kept, he appeared to grudge even the smallest sum for the repair of the fence running between his domain and the common. Not even occasional trespassing by children and others, flower stealing, raids on the gooseberry-bushes, and so on, could induce him to have the many gaps in the fence attended to. Sometimes he talked about having a wall put up to replace it, and he had even gone so far as to obtain an estimate of the probable cost. But the project remained in abeyance. Apparently Mr. Mullins hesitated at the expense of erecting a wall and yet did not wish to spend anything on a fence he contemplated replacing.

Exactly opposite The Towers there opened, from Chesters Street, West Lane, as it was called – originally, no doubt, a country lane between common and village, but now a wide street, lined at the end near the common by smart little villas that further on changed gradually to shops, and then, at the corner of the first cross-street, blossomed into two magnificent public-houses, facing each other across the Lane. Naturally, at a third of the four corners stood the natural companion of flourishing public-houses, an equally flourishing pawnbroker's shop. Only a short distance further on was the chief shopping-centre of the district, with the local tube station. As the lane ran due west, the setting sun, when visible, shone down it full upon The Towers, and along it now drove a big old-fashioned car no second-hand dealer would have given more than a five-pound note for, if as much. In spite of its age, it was travelling at fully the thirty-mile speed-limit. Perhaps because of its age, its steering or its brakes may not have been in perfect order. At any rate, at the corner of West Lane and Chesters Street it blundered full into the furniture van, damaging itself pretty badly, apparently; less so the van.

The van driver jumped down and expressed himself with fluency and vigour. He seemed, indeed, to be thoroughly enjoying such a chance for self-expression. The two men in the car that had done the mischief got  

down too, and looked dejectedly at the damage done, and commented to each other on the impossibility of moving car or van. The man in the green baize apron alighted from the tail-board and came up to join the others and to look on in his uninterested way. Miraculously, as though rising from the earth or falling from the heavens, for there had been no sign of them before, two policemen appeared. One, in the uniform of a sergeant, said it was a bad smash, and such was a disgrace, and, if he had his way, six months' hard was what all concerned would be the better for. His companion, a constable, produced an enormous pocket-book and began to write with slow diligence. A motorcyclist sped by – built-up area or not, he was doing a clear forty mile an hour, but he seemed to care nothing for the presence of the two policemen.

“What ho! she bumps,” he cried, “she bumps,” and so sped on, forty m.p.h. again, police or no police.

Through the gate admitting to The Towers drive emerged Mr. Mullins, a short, fat, smiling man with pale blue eyes, a big bald head, and quick and secret movements, so that unless you watched him closely you were never quite sure of what he had been doing last, or what he would be doing next.

“Dear, dear,” he said, his somewhat high-pitched voice full of solicitude, “another accident? Really, the roads these days – intolerable.”

He made clicking sounds of sympathy with his tongue. Behind him was another man, tall, fair, elegant, well-dressed, languid in manner, drawling in speech. The carefully patterned tie he wore suggested the old school, though it was a little hard to be quite sure which one. A fine signet ring, probably bearing the family crest, showed on the hand that held a cigarette as he observed disdainfully:

“Another of these jay-walkers, probably.”

He had not come into the road, but was still within The Towers grounds, leaning easily on the big five-barred gate at the entrance to the drive. He yawned, evidently bored by the scene, and Mr. Mullins began to walk round the van.

“The only thing to do,” he observed to the world at large, “is to unload – lighten the van – unload.”

Suddenly, swiftly, dexterously, unexpectedly, he swung open the van doors, heedless of the fate of the aspidistra that he knocked from the tail-board into the road, and began to haul and pull vigorously at the furniture within.

“Here, I say,” shouted the sergeant, beginning to run towards him.

“Unload – only thing – lighten van,” persisted Mr. Mullins, dragging out a chair, a fender, and a small table. “Good God,” he screamed at the top of his voice, “there's men in there.”

The sergeant said something unprintable, unreportable, altogether shocking. He also took Mr. Mullins by the coat-collar, and, none too gently, jerked him back. But Mr. Mullins made no attempt to resent this rough handling. He said, with every appearance of extreme astonishment:

“Why, it's my old pal Superintendent Ulyett been and gone and got himself demoted to sergeant again. Oh, Superintendent Ulyett, Superintendent Ulyett, whatever have you been a-doing of?”

Superintendent Ulyett again said something unprintable, unreportable, shocking.

“You must have been heard using such words, that's what it was, I'll bet a monkey,” declared Mr. Mullins, shaking a reproachful head. “Bad example to junior ranks.” Then he looked at the constable with the notebook and fairly reeled against the van, as though under the shock of even further and greater surprise. “Sergeant Bobby Owen, if my eyes don't deceive me,” he moaned. “The most promising and thickest-headed of the younger C.I.D. men reduced to the ranks, sent back to the uniform branch. This moves me to tears,” he said, and produced accordingly a very large, very white silk handkerchief.

“Anyhow,” said Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen to himself, prudently preferring not to make aloud a remark his superior officer might have failed at this crisis fully to appreciate, “anyhow, they've got it in writing I said a blessed old stunt like a furniture van, that was old before the war” – he said this as another generation would have said “Before the flood” – “would never come off against the smartest receiver in London – that's old T.T. Mullins.”

From the van emerged in solemn, sad procession five full-sized members of the C.I.D., headed by Inspector Ferris, all looking somewhat sheepish, none making any response to the cordial greeting extended by name to each by Mr. T.T. Mullins, whose memory for faces was as remarkable as were other of his gifts and qualities.

“Splendid to see what good pals you fellows are in the C.I.D.,” he said. “One of you moves because of the rent he owes and won't pay, and the rest of you hurry along to help with the family heirlooms. Touching, I call it,” declared Mr. Mullins enthusiastically, “even if some careless bloke has knocked over great-grandma's own pet plant pot.”

He shook his head sadly at the overturned aspidistra pot that had scattered plant and mould into the gutter. He began to busy himself gathering up plant and pot, and pushing them into the van. The police officers stood round in a circle, big men all, the least of them a head taller than he was, all regarding him with a nice mingling of reluctant admiration and intense yearning to slay him on the spot. And the smile with which he regarded them would have done credit to an angel at the gate welcoming a lost sinner home at last.

From the man leaning on the gate at the entrance to The Towers drive came a loud, sudden laugh, harsh, less elegant than might have been expected from such a very elegant exterior. As abruptly as it had been uttered it ceased, and, turning quickly, the laugher disappeared up the drive towards the house, walking with a long, swift, easy stride that took him out of sight almost immediately.

“Getting wet, most likely,” observed T.T. Mullins, watching him go. “Something amused him though. I wonder what? Business friend of mine – Augustus Percy Wynne. Augustus Percy because such is his nature, as his loving parents knew; Wynne for the same reason. Nice chap. Wanted me to go in with him on some South African deal – De Beers and diamonds and that sort of thing. Too risky for me. I prefer local loans to – er – diamonds. Getting old, I suppose.”

He shook his head again with an air of deep self-pity, and his remarks seemed somehow to increase the general depression. Superintendent Ulyett glared at his companions as if selecting one or all of them for instant dismissal. What he was really thinking of was the interview due to take place next morning between himself and an Assistant Commissioner known to possess a caustic tongue.

“I suppose,” said Mr. Mullins timidly, “I couldn't persuade you gentlemen to come in and have a glass of something comforting? Do you good after standing about in this horrid damp mist. November fog before its time. Of course, if you can spare a minute, I mean?”

“We can,” said Ulyett briefly; “and, if you want to know, T.T., and would like to see it, I've a search-warrant in my pocket.”

“Now, isn't that just too wonderful?” cried T.T., beaming with apparent delight. “Extraordinary how things turn out. Wouldn't happen once in a million years, your search-warrant and my invitation coming together. Talk about coincidences,” said T.T., lost in admiration.

Ulyett grunted, and made a move in the direction of the house. T.T. trotted ahead to open for him the gate of the drive. Pausing in the opening, he turned to murmur once again his pleasure over the unexpected arrival of his visitors.

“You shan't one of you go out of the house,” he declared firmly, “till you've tasted my cocoa – the best in London, if I say it myself.”

Ulyett grunted again. His appetite for cocoa was limited. Some of the others, overhearing what T.T. said, looked more depressed than ever. T.T. continued to survey them with gentle, coy benevolence. The man in the green baize apron he had not had time to discard, though his eyes had lost their dull, lack-lustre expression – had grown, indeed, keen and alert instead – said to Bobby:

“Do you know what it's all about? I got pulled in the moment I came on duty, and they've had me sitting on that blessed tail-board ever since, without a chance to say a word to anyone.”

“Swagger diamond necklace,” Bobby explained. “Quite No. 1 in diamond necklaces – runs to a hundred thousand or so. Belongs to Miss Fay Fellows, the film star. She's not such a favourite as she was, and, as her income has dropped to something under a million a week, she's been trying to sell. Jessop & Jacks, the Mayfair Square jewellers, had it in hand, and they rang up in an awful sweat this afternoon to say they were afraid it had been pinched. But they wouldn't give any details, so our people said they couldn't do anything, and Jessop said they must avoid scandal, and big people were implicated, but would we stand by and be ready? Of course, we said we were always ready, but they must tell us more if they wanted us to take action, and then they rang off. Next thing was what seemed a sure-fire tip that T.T. was going to be offered the biggest ever in sparklers this evening somewhere round eight or nine o'clock. Looked like a chance to score – to ring up Jessop & Jacks and say, “Oh, by the way, we've got that necklace of yours,” and have them eating out of our hand ever after. Jewellers get to know a lot that's going on, and can give useful tips at times if they want to. So we were packed off to see what we could do, and Ulyett came along himself because he's jolly keen on roping in T.T. if possible. The idea was to surround the house and rush it before there was time to spot us, and get the thing away or hidden. But a furniture van is too old a stunt for a wary bird like T.T.”

The other nodded agreement, and from the direction of the house came suddenly, sharp and loud and ominous on the still night air, the sound of two pistol shots in quick succession.

Short, round, and fat T.T. Mullins might be, but no champion of the hurdles or the track could have been swifter in response to that startling summons from the house.

“The diamonds, diamonds,” he screamed, and ran, his little fat legs carrying him along at an astonishing speed, so that he was almost out of sight round the curve in the drive before the echo of those two shots had died into the evening quiet.

Also, whether by chance or calculation, he had, as he started to run, swung back with violence the gate he had been holding open, so that it and burly Superintendent Ulyett came into somewhat violent contact.

For perhaps some five or six seconds there was delay as the swung-to gate and the breathless superintendent blocked the road. Then the gate was hurled back, and all of them went pelting up the drive. But, though five or six seconds does not sound much, an astonishing amount of ground can be covered in that time, and the start T.T. had secured enabled him to reach the turning by the hawthorns and dodge round it unperceived, and so by the side-path direct to the garden door, while Ulyett, not as young now as on the day when he joined the force but in first-class training and keen to show he was still good for a bit of a run, headed the race straight down the deceptively straight remainder of the drive to the dead end of the open space before the garage. Two or three of the others, however, including Bobby, turned off by the hawthorn bushes, though they in their turn missed the path to the side-door. But in this way they reached the front entrance a minute or two before the arrival of the superintendent and those who had followed him.