Crow's Inn Tragedy (9 page)

“Only passing the time of day on the stairs, and when he came to pay his rent which he did regularly every Saturday morning.”

“That room does not look as if it had been slept in or eaten in,” John Steadman said abruptly.

The landlord stared at him.

“Well, we don't bother about our neighbour's business in Brooklyn Terrace, sir. But, if he didn't want the room to sleep in or live in, why did he rent it?”

“Oh,” said the barrister warily, “that is just what we should like to know.”

With a nod of farewell the two men went on. They got into the waiting car in silence. With a glance at the inspector John Steadman gave the address of the library from which Thompson's book had been procured. Then as the car started and he threw himself back on his seat he observed:

“Admirably stage managed!”

The inspector raised his eyebrows. “As how?”

“Do you imagine those people know no more than they say of Thompson?”

“They may. On the other hand it is quite possible they do not,” the inspector answered doubtfully.

“That room had been arranged for some such emergency as has arisen,” Steadman went on. “Thompson has never lived there. But he came there for letters or something. He has some place of concealment very likely quite near. I have no doubt that either of those men could have told us more. I expect they will give the show away if a reward is offered.”

“If—” the inspector repeated. “I don't quite agree with you, Mr. Steadman. I think those men were speaking the truth, and I doubt whether they knew any more of Thompson than they said. The man, who as you say, has so admirably stage managed that room would hardly be likely to give himself away by making unnecessary confidants. But now I wonder for whose benefit this scene was originally staged?”

The barrister drew in his lips. “Don't you think Luke Bechcombe's murder answers your question?”

“No, I don't!” said the inspector bluntly. “Thompson was a wrong 'un, but at present I do not see any connection with the murder at all! They are at it now, full swing!” For as they neared Notting Hill Gate they could hear the voices of the newsboys calling out their papers—“Murder of a well-known Solicitor. Missing Clerk!” Up by the station the newsboys exhibited lurid headlines.

They bought a handful of papers and unfolded them as they bowled swiftly across to the library. In most cases the murder of the solicitor occupied the greater part of the front page. The disappearance of the managing clerk was made the most of. But in several there were hints of the mysterious visitor, veiled surmises as to her business and identity. Altogether the Crow's Inn Tragedy, as the papers were beginning to call it, seemed to contain all the materials for a modern sensational drama.

At the library they both got out. The section devoted to ‘T's was at the farther end. A pleasant-looking girl was handing out books. Seizing his opportunity the inspector went forward and held out the volume.

“I have found this book under rather peculiar circumstances. Can you tell me by whom it was borrowed?”

For a moment the girl seemed undecided; then, murmuring a few unintelligible words, she went round to the manager's desk. That functionary came back with her.

“I hear you want to know who borrowed this book, but it is not our custom to give particulars—”

“I know it is not.” The inspector held out his card. “But I think you will have to make an exception in my case.”

The manager put up his pince-nez and glanced at the card, and then at the inspector. Then he signed to an assistant to bring him the book in which subscribers' names were entered, and spoke to her in a low tone. She looked frightened as she glanced at the inspector.

“It was borrowed by a Mr. Thompson, sir, address 10 Brooklyn Terrace, North Kensington. He is an old subscriber.”

“Did he come for the books himself?” the inspector questioned. “Can you describe him?”

“There—there wasn't much to describe,” the girl faltered. “He had a brown beard and some of his front teeth were missing, and he nearly always wore those big, horn-rimmed glasses.”

“Height?” questioned the inspector sharply.

“Well, he wasn't very tall nor very short,” was the unsatisfactory reply.

“Thin or stout?”

“Not much of either!” The girl twisted her hands about, evidently wishing herself far away.

The inspector deserted the topic of Mr. Thompson's appearance. He held up the book.

“When was this taken out?”

The manager glanced at a list of volumes opposite the subscribers' names.

“Last Thursday. I may say that Mr. Thompson always wanted books of this class—detective fiction, and he literally devoured them. He always expected a new one to be ready for him, and he was inclined to be unpleasant if he had for the time being exhausted the supply. He generally called here every day. This is an unusually long interval if he has not called since Thursday.”

“Um!” The inspector glanced at Mr. Steadman. Then he turned back to the manager. “I am obliged by your courtesy, sir. Would you add to it, should Mr. Thompson call or send again, by ringing me up at Scotland Yard? The book we will leave with you.”

“Extensive defalcations. A system of fraud that must have been carried on for many years,” repeated Aubrey Todmarsh. “Well, that pretty well settles the matter as far as Thompson is concerned.”

“I don't see it,” contradicted Tony Collyer. “Thompson is a defaulter. That doesn't prove he is a murderer. I don't believe he is. Old chap didn't look like a murderer.”

“My dear Tony, don't be childish!” responded Todmarsh. “A man that commits a murder never does look like a murderer. He wouldn't be so successful if he did.”

“Anyway, if Thompson is guilty, it pretty well knocks the stuffing out of your pet theory,” retorted Tony. “Thompson didn't go to the War.”

“No, but the lust for killing spread over the entire country,” Todmarsh went on, his face assuming a rapt expression as he gazed over Anthony's head at the little clouds scudding across the patch of sky which he could see through the windows above. “Besides, there were murders before the War, and there will be murders when, if ever, it is forgotten. But I do maintain that there have been many more brutal crimes since the War than ever before in the history of the country. Teach a man through all the most impressionable years of his life that there is nothing worth doing but killing his fellow-creatures and trying to kill them, and he will—”

“Oh, stow that—we have heard it all before,” Tony interrupted irritably. “According to your own showing the murder might just as well have been committed by one of your own dear conchies as anyone else. Anyway, I don't believe Thompson killed Uncle Luke. Why should he? He had got the money. He had only to make off with it. Why should he kill the old chap?”

“Well, Uncle Luke may have taxed him with his shortcomings and threatened to prosecute him, perhaps he tried to phone or something of that sort. And Thompson may have sprung at him and throttled him.”

“Don't believe it!” Tony said obstinately.

Todmarsh's eyes narrowed.

“I wouldn't proclaim my faith in Thompson's innocence quite so loudly if I were you, Tony. I imagine you have no idea who the world is saying must be guilty if Thompson is innocent.”

“I imagine I have,” Tony returned, his tone growing violent. “I am quite aware that the world”—laying stress on the noun—“is saying that, if Thompson didn't murder Uncle Luke, I did, to gain the money my uncle left. But I am not going to try to hang Thompson to save my own neck. By the way, I come into some more money when Aunt Madeleine dies. You will be expecting me to murder her next! You had something left you too. You may have done it to get that!”

Aubrey Todmarsh shook his head.

“My legacy is a mere flea-bite compared with yours. And I trust that my life and aims are sufficiently well known—”

Tony turned his back on him deliberately.

“Bosh! Don't trouble to put it on for me, Aubrey. I have known your life and aims fairly well for a good while. Take care of your own skin, and let everything else go to the wall. That's your aim.”

His cousin's dark eyes held no spark of resentment.

“You do not think that, I know, Tony. But, if the world should misjudge my motives, I cannot help it.”

The cousins were standing in the smaller of the two adjoining waiting-rooms in the late Luke Bechcombe's flat offices. The inquest had been held that morning and the auditors' report on the books that had been in Thompson's charge and the contents of the safe had been taken. Their statement that there had been a system of fraud carried on probably for years had not come as a surprise. The public had from the first decided that Thompson's disappearance could only be accounted for as a flight from the charge of embezzlement that was hanging over him. Ever logical, rumour did not trouble to account for the chloroform and the covered finger-prints or the lady with the white gloves.

The auditors' report had brought both Aubrey Todmarsh and Tony to the office this afternoon, and as usual the cousins could not meet without contradicting one another or quarrelling. Inspector Furnival and Mr. Steadman had also given their account of their visit to Thompson's room and the mystery mongers were more than ever intrigued thereby. There could be no doubt that, whatever might be their opinion of his guilt, Thompson's disappearance was becoming more and more of an enigma to the police. Not the faintest trace of him could be discovered. When he left the clerks' office in Crow's Inn, he apparently disappeared from the face of the earth; no one had met him on the stairs, no one had seen him in the vicinity of the square. After an enormous amount of inquiry the police had at last discovered a small restaurant where he generally lunched, but he had neither been there on the day of the murder nor since, and the railway stations had been watched so far without success. In fact, Inspector Furnival had been heard to state that but that they could not find the body he would have thought that Thompson had been murdered as well as his chief.

Thompson was described at the restaurant as always taking his meals by himself and speaking to no one, and always at the same table. Then the waitress who had waited on him for the last two years had never heard him say more than good morning, or good afternoon. He always lunched
à la carte
, so that there was no ordering to be done. Still with the precautions taken, with his description circulated through the country, it seemed that his capture could only be a matter of time.

But the inspector was frankly puzzled. At every point he was baffled in his attempt to discover anything of the real man. The very mystery about him was in itself suspicious.

The inspector and Mr. Steadman were in Mr. Bechcombe's private room this afternoon. Everything remained just as it had been when the murder was discovered, except that the body had been removed to the nearest mortuary now that the inquest had been adjourned, and the funeral was to take place at once.

The inspector had been over the room already with the most meticulous care. To-day he was trying to reconstruct the crime. The dead man's writing-table table was opposite the door into the ante-room, and from there into the clerks' room. The door into the passage opened upon Mr. Bechcombe's usual seat. Supposing that to have been unlocked, it seemed to the inspector that, when Mr. Bechcombe had received his expected visitor, he might have been thinking over some communication that had been made to him, and the assassin might have entered the room silently from behind, and strangled him before he was aware of his danger. But there seemed no motive for such a crime, and the inspector was frankly puzzled. There was no view from the window, the lower panes being of frosted glass, the upper looking straight across to a blank wall. The safe was locked again now as it had been in Mr. Bechcombe's lifetime. Mr. Turner had finished his examination. But, try as the inspector would to reconstruct the crime, he could not build up any hypothesis which could not be instantly demolished, or so it seemed to him. Mr. Steadman stood on the hearthrug with his back to the ashes of Luke Bechcombe's last fire. For the lawyer had been old-fashioned—he had disliked central heating and gas and electric contrivances. In spite of strikes and increasing prices he had adhered to coal fires.

At last the silence was broken by Mr. Steadman:

“You have the experts' opinion of the fingerprints, I presume?”

The inspector bent his head.

“It came this morning. It was not put in at the inquest, for it is just as well not to take all the world into our confidence at first, you know, Mr. Steadman.”

“Quite so,” the barrister assented. “Do you mean that you were able to identify them?”

“No,” growled the inspector. “They will never be identified. The murderer wore those thin rubber gloves that some of the first-class crooks have taken to of late.”

“Phew!” Mr. Steadman gave a low whistle. “That—that puts a very different complexion on the matter.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows. “As how?”

“Well, for one thing it settles the question of premeditation.”

The inspector coughed.

“I have never believed Mr. Bechcombe's murder to have been unpremeditated. Neither have you, I think, sir.”

“Well, no,” the other conceded. “The crime has always looked to me like a carefully planned and skilfully executed murder. And yet—I don't know.”

“It is the most absolutely baffling affair I have come across for years,” Inspector Furnival observed slowly. “It is the question of motive that is so puzzling. Once we have discovered that I do not think the identity of the murderer will remain a secret long.”

“The public seems to have made up its mind that Thompson is guilty.”