Crime at Tattenham Corner (10 page)

“Beg your pardon, ma'am, but I do not think that is so,” James dissented. “Henry rang up Mrs. Ellerby just now, and she said she knew nothing of Ellerby. She hasn't seen him since last Friday ma'am.”

“Oh, dear! Is that really so? Where can he be?” Mrs. Dolphin caught Pamela's arm. “Surely no more dreadful mysteries! Misfortune seems to dog this house lately.”

Two policemen were walking backwards and forwards before the place where Sir John Burslem's body was found. A couple of men stood near; one of them held a short scythe, the other had some sort of dredging apparatus beside him. A group of interested spectators stood a little way off. Inspector Stoddart came up from Hughlin village at a sharp pace.

“All right, my men. Now we will set to work at once, and first we will have all this rough growth of grass fringing the ditch mown off, as close to the ground as you can get it, for a couple of hundred yards or so above and below the place where the body was found.”

“Ay, sir.” The man with the scythe looked round vaguely. “It won't be such an easy job; the grass and the creepers is all grown together and mauled about like.”

“You will manage it, I fancy. There is nothing like a scythe for cutting grass. I put it before these new-fashioned cutters any day.”

“You are about right, sir.” In his obvious pleasure at the compliment the man spat on his hands, grasped his scythe handle and set to work at once.

He with the dredger did not look inclined to follow his fellow's example. 

The inspector stood for a minute or two looking up the road and measuring the distance with his eye. Presently he turned back.

“Come, my man, start your dredging and scrape right through the mud at the bottom, mind.”

“I ha' bin through this place, mud an' all a dozen times and found nothin'. Don't believe there is anything to find.”

“Set to work at once. Clear out all the mud right up to here, and the same distance nearer the village.”

The man obeyed sulkily. Stoddart went to meet Harbord, who was coming up from Hughlin village.

“Any success?”

“I can't find any trace of my woman – the one who was behind the tree.”

“Your hypothetical woman,” Stoddart corrected.

“On the other hand, I met with a man, a sort of hanger-on at the stables at Epsom, who knows Sir Charles Stanyard quite well by sight, and of course had him impressed on his memory as the owner of Perlyon, and this chap had stopped on at the stable doing various little jobs that would crop up on the eve of the Derby. On his way home he came across Stanyard, whose car had apparently broken down, tinkering away at it, and beside him, bending down, apparently giving advice, was a woman.”

“What sort of a woman?” Stoddart questioned abruptly.

“Unfortunately, my man does not seem to be able to give any coherent description. According to him she was neither particularly short nor particularly tall; says he didn't see enough of her to know whether she was young or old; but she was plumpish-like, he thinks, and maybe she was wrapped up like for motoring, for the night was not so warm as it might have been.”

“H'm! Not very helpful,” the inspector commented, “but it is curious that Stanyard should have said he was alone at the time.”

“Another curious thing is,” Harbord went on as they watched the men casting up the evil-smelling, black mud, “that he did notice that this woman was holding a bag, a bigger one than most folks carry, he said.”

“Funny he should notice that, if he did not notice what the woman herself was like,” the inspector remarked, turning up the road.

“The yokel mind is strangely constituted – and this man is just a country yokel, taken on at the stable at a busy time, curiously observant and curiously unobservant. Anyway, now we have something definite to connect Stanyard with the woman, or rather a woman.”

The inspector nodded. “Can't say any more than that last.”

“I say, what is that?” as there came a shout from the man turning up the mud.

He was looking at an oblong, mud-encased object that had been brought up by the dredger. 

“'Tis something sure enough,” he observed intelligently, stirring his find with his foot.

The inspector looked at it. “A revolver, by Jove!”

Harbord picked it up gingerly, covering his hands with mud. “Looks as if it had lain there some time.”

“Wouldn't make much difference after it had lain there a week,” said the inspector, taking out a sheet of newspaper to wipe the mud away. “Go on, my man,” to the dredger, who appeared to be inclined to rest on his laurels and watch operations.

A minute later the inspector uttered a sharp exclamation:

“What's this?”

Harbord looking at the butt end of the revolver, perceived in the middle of the space the inspector had cleaned, the initials intertwined, J.B.

“Sir John's revolver. What on earth was he doing with it? Did he bring it knowing he was going into danger, and did his assassin turn it upon him?”

“If there is anything more unprofitable than another it is asking riddles,” said the inspector, scrubbing away at his muddy pistol. “Somebody fired the fatal shot and threw the revolver in here; so much is selfevident. For the rest, the only thing that strikes me is that here we are about fifteen yards from the spot where the body was found. That is just about the limit of a man's throw – outside that of any woman that I know. Besides, a woman never can throw straight. I set the dredger to work on the assumption that the assassin would naturally try to get rid of the revolver, and that the likeliest hiding-place would be this ditch. I reckoned too that he would throw it as far as he could, either one way or the other. And you see we have found it just where I expected. Still, that does not prove that my assumption was right. The thing might have got there in a hundred different ways. Now I think I shall leave you to superintend the dredging while I get back to the Yard and find out what we can from this toy.”

Throwing away the dirty sheet of paper, he wrapped the revolver carefully in a clean one and dropped it into his pocket. Then he walked sharply to his run-about.

Harbord found the watching of the dredging rather tedious when he was left alone. Nothing further turned up for some time, and the man had nearly reached the limit set by the inspector when, with an exclamation of contempt, he threw on the road a small object that made a clinking sound as it fell.

Harbord picked it up: a man's watch and chain of the old-fashioned type, discarded now by most men in favour of the wrist-watch.

Harbord took out his handkerchief and rubbed it as clean as he could, noting one significant fact, that the watch had stopped at 12.30. But, when he got all the mud off that was possible, he was disappointed to find no monogram, nothing apparently by which the watch could be identified.

It was getting late in the afternoon when the work that the inspector had ordered was finished, with no further result, and Harbord was just beginning to think that for him it would be possibly a case of sleeping at the Crown Inn – since the nearest station was quite out of walking distance and there was no car to be had in Hughlin – when Stoddart in the run-about came speedily down the track from the Downs and dashed across to the Wood. He stopped the car by Harbord and sprang out.

“Ready?” he asked sharply. “We must get back at once. There is grave news from Porthwick Square. Jump in!”

Still holding the watch, Harbord swung himself over the side of the car. The very sound of Stoddart's voice was enough to show that he was seriously perturbed. But he did not speak until they had left Hughlin's Wood far behind. His lips were firmly compressed, and Harbord knew him too well to be the first to speak. At last, however, they reached a level stretch of ground and he said:

“Ellerby has disappeared!”

“What!” Harbord looked at him in amazement. “How do you mean disappeared – run away?”

“I don't know,” Stoddart answered sharply. “All that I can tell you is that he has disappeared from 15 Porthwick Square, apparently in the middle of the night.”

“Last night?” Harbord's bewilderment was increasing.

“Last night, of course!” The inspector nodded. “And the fools never thought to inform me of the fact until this afternoon. So that whatever has happened we are twelve hours late on the scene.”

“H'm!” Harbord drew in his lips. “Perhaps there was wisdom in this folly. But I thought that 15 Porthwick Square and its inhabitants were all under observation, and that the latter were all shadowed.”

“So they are! Flaxman had got the job with as many plain-clothes men as he liked to ask for,” the inspector assented. “But their watch does not seem to have been very successful. At any rate, Ellerby has got out, or has been got out of the house without Flaxman and his satellites being any the wiser.”

“I can't understand –” Harbord was beginning.

“Don't say that again!” the inspector interrupted him irritably. “I should like to know who does understand any thing about this damned Burslem case. All I can tell you is that Ellerby went to bed as usual, that this morning he was not there and that nobody knows where he is.”

“He may only have gone out somewhere on business,” Harbord suggested. “If he only went this morning –”

“He apparently went without any clothes,” the inspector said grimly, as they neared the suburbs. “It is no use speculating, Harbord. That is all there is to know at present. What there may be behind we have got to find out. We are going straight to Porthwick Square now. I went there at once and locked up Ellerby's box. When we have done we will have a bit of supper at a decent little pub I know of in the mews round the corner. The landlord is by way of being a friend of mine, and he will let us have a room to ourselves and we can discuss some plan of action.”

“The watch!” Harbord hazarded tentatively.

“It isn't Sir John's, anyhow,” Stoddart said in the same snappy tones. “He had his wrist-watch on. The revolver I have left at Lowson's, the gunsmith's, together with the bullet. I ought to get the report sometime this evening.”

They were getting into more traffic now and the inspector had to give all his attention to his steering.

It was seven o'clock when they reached Porthwick Square. The door was opened to them immediately by the butler himself – a fact that spoke volumes for the disorganization of the household.

“Any news?” the inspector questioned sharply.

The butler only shook his head. He was looking oddly white and discomposed.

“We will go to the bedroom first and see what we can ascertain from it. Of course the housemaid had put it tidy, as she calls it, before I heard anything of the disappearance.”

“She would have,” Harbord nodded as the two turned towards the rooms, the butler merely looking after them in silence.

When they reached the door, Stoddart took out a key and unlocked it.

“Whatever clue there may be after the tidying, which my experience of housemaids tells me is not usually extensive, is still intact.”

Ellerby's room was quite a good-sized, comfortable-looking apartment, and the style in which it was furnished was a sign of the esteem in which he was held in the Burslem household.

As Stoddart had said, the housemaid's tidying up had not been extensive. Harbord looked round. The bed had been made. Otherwise probably the room was much as Ellerby had left it. His underclothes, neatly folded up, were on a chair near the bed. A coat and waistcoat were laid on top of the drawers. The trousers were thrown over a chair near the cupboard.

Stoddart rang the bell. The housemaid appeared with a celerity that showed she had been close at hand. Ordinarily a bright, rosy girl, she was pale and nervous-looking.

“Your name, I understand, is Simmonds,” the inspector began.

“Yes, sir,” the girl said in a frightened tone. “It is – it is Annie Simmonds!”

“Well, Miss Simmonds, will you come over here?” Stoddart went on, going across to the window. “I understand you usually attend to this room.”

The girl looked up at him with big, frightened eyes. “Yes, sir!” 

“Well, now, don't look alarmed” – the inspector gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder – “we are not going to hurt you. All I want you to do is to answer a few questions. Now, take a good look round the room and tell us if everything this morning was just as you were accustomed to see it when Ellerby had left it.”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

The girl looked round vaguely until her glance rested on the bed.

“Except –” She faltered and stopped.

The inspector pricked up his ears.

“Except –” he prompted.

“Except that I didn't see Mr. Ellerby's pyjamas when I did his bed, sir,” the maid faltered. “Mr. Ellerby, he generally leaves them on that chair,” pointing to the one that now held the underclothing. And then I put them on top of the pillow when I made the bed. But this morning they were not on the chair, nor on the bed, nor anvwhere.”

“Umph!” The inspector went over to the chest of drawers and took up the coat. “This is the one he wore yesterday?”

“I – I think so.” The girl hesitated. “It is the one he generally did wear most days – leastways, he has since Sir John died.”

The inspector threw open the cupboard door.

“Now, can you tell us whether anything has gone from here – any clothes, I mean?”

The girl shook her head. “It doesn't look as if there had, sir, but I couldn't say rightly. Perhaps James might know more.”

“No boots!” the inspector went on. pointing to a row that stood in the bottom of the cupboard, each pair on its own trees.

“It doesn't look as if any had gone,” the maid said, scrutinizing them.

“And the bed was just as usual, not tossed about, nor the bedclothes on the floor or anything?”