Dancers in Mourning (36 page)

‘Ah, ye see we're on to something, sir,' he said, ‘and we don't want to hurry it. That all depends on a telephone message from Scotland Yard. Sergeant Cooling, of the Central London Branch, has nipped up to Town with the dead man's finger-prints. There's a great likelihood that the dead man is the same fellow who was seen to steal the car up in London. We've just heard the Sergeant was able to get hold of the Department before it closed and he's keeping them at work on it now. We're all sitting here waitin' to hear what he'd got to tell us.'

The vigorous old man was partially satisfied. The assurance that a great many people were losing their sleep in a decent public endeavour to clear up the mystery which had smirched his beloved district comforted him considerably.

‘All right, Larkin,' he said a little wistfully. ‘I'll leave it to you, if you prefer it. I'll get back now. What is it? A quarter to five? Yes, well, I shall have a couple of hours' sleep and invite myself to Beller's table for breakfast. We shall be down here about half past eight. Good night. Good night, Campion. Don't forget to come and see my roses when you're passing. Very fine show. Very fine indeed.'

He went at last and the tension in the office relaxed considerably. The young constable who had taken part in the demonstration was dispatched by the superintendent to make ‘farmer's tea', and went off to do so amid grunts of approval from the local members of the conference.

The party spirit, which is never far absent when countrymen get together to observe a Londoner, became very apparent when he returned and they sat round sipping the somewhat remarkable beverage, half thick sweet strong tea and half whisky, from immense coarse white cups. Yeo, who had been not unnaturally suspicious of the concoction, expressed sincere gratification at its taste, which reminded Campion of the cheap ‘flavoured caramels' of his youth, and the excitement which had been growing all the night bubbled up to boiling point.

‘I doubt not the superintendent's right he took the down train,' remarked Inchcape, the local inspector, giving up all attempts to conceal his pleasant country accent. ‘Where else would he go? He wouldn't be hanging about the fields, surely?'

The superintendent glanced at Yeo.

‘That all depends who that was, don't it?' he said slyly, his own country intonation increasing now that the doctor had gone.

Yeo nodded and his round eyes turned towards Mr Campion, who avoided his glance.

It was just before five when a sergeant came up from below stairs.

‘The young gentleman would like to speak to you, sir,' he said. ‘He's been thinkin', seemingly.'

The superintendent gave the word and he and Yeo changed significant glances.

Sock came in looking haggard and exhausted. The pains to which the whole police station had been put to get it into his head that he was not under any sort of arrest, but had merely been invited to stay in the charge room until he remembered why he had not come down by train that afternoon and had merely waited in the booking hall until Campion had come to fetch him, had not been successful.

The evidence of the station officials had been disconcertingly full. A porter had seen Sock walking up the hill that afternoon. A booking office clerk had seen him phone from the box in the hall and the ticket-collector had watched him kicking his heels on the steps until Campion and the Lagonda had arrived.

Sock caught sight of Campion as he came in and appealed to him direct.

‘It's a damn silly story. So I have to tell everybody?'

The superintendent intervened tactfully. He had a vast experience of that other half of the world which he so delightfully called ‘the gentry'.

‘We're all officers, sir,' he began in a fatherly, not to say motherly, fashion, ‘and we're all working hard to get to the bottom of the mystery. There's not one of us here who can't keep his mouth shut if it be that we're not called upon to know something in the way of duty. Sit down, sir, and tell us how you come to get into the town.'

Sock dropped into the chair so lately vacated by the doctor.

‘I'm a fool,' he said. ‘I ought to have told you this right away. I would have done only I felt it had nothing whatever to do with the murder and –'

‘Ah, you must let us be the judges of that, sir.' The superintendent was still parental but firm. ‘Your car's been stolen in London and you come down to a country place the next day, and the first thing you see on your way from the station is your car with a murdered body in it – well, that's a big coincidence now. We had to check up on your story as a matter of form and we found out you didn't come by train like you said you did. Well, that sets us thinking. We feel we'd like to have a talk to you. You don't want to talk to us and so we say we're very sorry but we'd like you to sit downstairs until you decide to tell us something. That's fair, now. You can't say that isn't fair.'

Sock laughed and looked remarkably young again.

‘You're perfectly right, superintendent,' he said. ‘I'm an idiot. I was driven down here by car this afternoon – that is to say Saturday afternoon; it's Sunday now, isn't it? I left London by train Saturday morning and went to Watford. From there I was driven down here to Birley in a Hillman Minx. I got out at the station because the driver of the car didn't want to go to White Walls. The rest of my original story is perfectly true.'

‘I see, sir.' The superintendent paused long enough for the constable in the corner to complete his shorthand notes. ‘Now, who was the driver of the Minx? You'll have to tell us that.'

Sock sighed helplessly.

‘Eve Sutane,' he said.

Yeo beamed and Inchcape sat forward.

‘The address in Watford where the young lady met you?' murmured the superintendent with the delicacy of a good
maître d'hôtel
.

Sock hesitated.

‘Is this really necessary? I'm betraying a confidence.'

‘I'm afraid so, sir. What address?'

‘St Andrews, 9, Cordover Road.'

‘And the name of the occupier?'

‘Major and Mrs Polthurst-Drew. For God's sake don't drag them into it. Eve's been staying there with the daughter. Her name's Dorothy. Is that enough?'

Yeo leant forward and touched the superintendent's arm and a nod of mutual understanding passed between them. Yeo cleared his throat and the side of Mr Campion's mind that was not sick with apprehension noticed with amusement that the county superintendent's velvet-glove technique had impressed the Yard man and he was inclined to pay it the sincerest form of compliment.

‘There are just one or two little points I should like to clear up, Mr Petrie,' he began affably. ‘Why did Miss Sutane hesitate to drive you right up to her own home?'

Sock fidgeted and suddenly capitulated.

‘She's very young,' he began awkwardly. ‘She ran away on Wednesday and Jimmy – I mean Mr Sutane – and I have had the devil of a job looking for her ever since.'

His audience took some seconds to digest this information, and when he spoke again Yeo had resumed his familiar sharpness.

‘The young lady was missing for three days and no one mentioned it … why was that?'

Sock smiled disarmingly. He was at home with brusquerie.

‘We'd had a spot of bother already, Inspector,' he murmured. ‘As you know, she's ridiculously young and her brother wanted to keep her out of the newspapers if possible. That was quite natural. I think he said she was staying with friends, and after all that did prove to be true. She went to Town on Wednesday afternoon and called at the Drury Lane studio of some art-school friends whose name is Scott. They're sisters. While she was there she met the Polthurst-Drew girl, whom she knew, and who asked her down to Watford for a day or so. Mr Sutane saw the Scotts at once. It was the first place he thought of looking. But they had some barmy idea of shielding their dear little pal from cruel guardians and whatnot, and like little lunatics they swore they hadn't seen her. It was only Friday night, when we'd tried everywhere else, that I got the idea of going back to the Scotts with a romantic yarn of deserted but undying affection and they coughed up the right address. I went down there this morning and she drove me as far as Birley in Dorothy's car. I was trying to get her to come home, but she wouldn't listen to me. No one knew that there'd been a spot of difference – no one at White Walls, I mean; except Jimmy, of course – so I thought I'd pretend I'd come down from Town by train. There you are. I've told you the full strength.'

He sighed and lay back in his chair.

‘It's a great weight off my mind,' he said frankly. ‘I didn't bash any unknown car thief over the head and you can go through every moment of my time in the last twenty-four hours and prove it.'

Yeo nodded gravely. There was a preoccupied expression on his round face.

‘You spoke of a difference between Miss Sutane and her brother,' he said. ‘What was that?'

Sock's hesitation was barely noticeable and his reply was glib and convincing.

‘I don't know. I don't think it was important. Eve is inclined to be – well – young, you know, and Jimmy is naturally nervy. It was probably something very trivial. It usually is when they have a row. Perhaps he told her she was spending too much or using too much lipstick … I don't know.'

‘She didn't tell you?'

‘She drove me here in silence. I was nearly frozen out of the bus.'

The local superintendent smiled indulgently.

‘Wouldn't it have been better to tell us all this before?' he murmured. ‘We had to hold –' he coughed, ‘– ask you to wait, because of your car turning up so strangely.'

‘I know. That's fantastic! Why should it happen here? It's an incredible coincidence.' Sock looked about him earnestly. ‘It's crazy,' he said. ‘Was there anything in the man's pockets to show who he was?'

No one answered this unprofessional question, but the superintendent, who seemed to have taken an incomprehensible liking to the young man, made a little concession.

‘I'll tell you one thing,' he said. ‘It wasn't robbery. He had quite a quantity of money on him. That's not for publication, mind.'

‘Not robbery?' Sock repeated dully. He shook his head. ‘I'm all in,' he confessed. ‘My mind doesn't work any more. Can I go now? Coming, Campion?'

The lank figure in the corner roused himself.

‘No,' he said. ‘I'm waiting for something. You take the car. Someone will run me down in the morning. Make my apologies, won't you?'

The superintendent glanced up.

‘Stay in the district, won't you, sir?' he murmured pleasantly. ‘Just till we get the address verified. It won't take long. Tomorrow tea-time, perhaps. We'll let you know. Meanwhile we'll have to hold the car.'

‘Lord, yes! I don't want it. This has put me clean off it.' Sock's smile was sickly. ‘Good night, everybody. I'll do the polite for you, Campion. I'll tell 'em you're not exactly on the tiles. So long.'

When he had gone Yeo frowned.

‘It seems a straight story,' he said. ‘Why make such a mouthful of it? He knows more about the row than he cares to admit. I'll have to get that out of the girl.'

The telephone bell silenced them all. The instrument stood trilling on the superintendent's desk for what seemed a full minute before Yeo leapt upon it and clapped the receiver to his ear. Campion saw his face light up.

‘Good man!' Yeo said enthusiastically to the weary Cooling in London. ‘Oh, good man! Wait a minute.' He pulled a pad towards him and wrote from dictation.

As the minutes went by his spirits soared and his comical face became jubilant.

‘Beautiful,' he said at last. ‘Just what I wanted. Stay where you are and do the necessary. Oh, he's still there, is he? Give him my compliments and tell him this is my show. Don't put him off. I want the old ferret right on the trail. Yes, right-o. I'll ring you later. Don't say I called him a ferret. That's a breach of discipline and you never know. Yes, fine. Good-bye.'

He hung up the receiver and sat grinning at them.

‘Listen to this. Just listen to this,' he said at last without attempting to disguise his delight. ‘They've got the prints on the files and here's the dope we want.'

He began to read from his notes in a steady, monotonous drone.

‘Georg Kummer, alias Kroeger, alias Koetz, thought to be a Pole. About forty-four or forty-five years old. First attracted police notice in this country in January, nineteen twenty-eight, when he appeared before the Bow Street magistrates on a charge of failure to register as an alien. Papers found to be unsatisfactory. Deported. Reappeared June, twenty-nine. Charged with felonious conspiracy in Glasgow and sentenced to six months in the second division in company with four others. Deported. Next heard of in France, following year, in connexion with arson charge. No sentence, but deported from France. Became mysteriously wealthy during and just after Repudiation of Arms agreement by Severino Government. Reappeared in England, nineteen thirty-two, and was apprehended by police after he had been working in a firework factory for three months. Once more deported. Last heard of, nineteen thirty-four, when he was acquitted by a Viennese court on a charge of concealing arms and war material. (Foreign information by courtesy of Austrian Police, who applied to us for English details concerning him.) Note: This man is known to have been employed by several governments in his capacity as a chemist. He is believed to hold valuable degrees in his subject, but has always come to grief through a crooked streak. He is subject to sudden and great changes in his financial condition. During the last two years his headquarters have been in Vienna. Last permanent address: 49, Wienstrasse 7.

Yeo paused and cleared his throat. His eyes were dancing.