Richardson Scores Again (6 page)

“‘Of course I do, if you'll pay for him,' I said. ‘I don't suppose he'll work for nothing and I haven't any money.'

“At that he grinned again, but when I asked him to telephone to my captain he wilted a bit and went off to the telephone again. I don't know what happened because they shoved me into a cell and left me there.”

“Didn't they bring you before a magistrate?”

“I was coming to that. At eleven o'clock they unlocked me and took me across the street to a room they called the court-house—just a bare room with a desk and a barrier before it. A few loafers followed us into it. The big chief from over the way, all shaved and spruce, yelled ‘Silence in Court!' and a benevolent old boy in side-whiskers and spectacles waddled in and took his seat at the desk. ‘What's the case, superintendent?'

“‘Stealing a motor-car and assaulting the police, y'Washup.' Then he called Daniel Scoop, and the blighter who'd bruised my fist with the point of his lantern jaw took the oath and let himself go.

“‘Is anything known about this young man?' asked the beak.

“‘He says he's a naval officer, y'Washup. I've 'phoned the Portsmouth police and they're sending up an officer from the
Dauntless
to identify him. I ask you to remand him.'

“So back I went to the cells. They kept me locked up there all yesterday and last night with a plank bed to lie down on. I'll bet you've never been locked up, inspector, so you don't know what it's like, but I can tell you that it's hell. When I got hungry I banged on the door and a policeman put his head in and told me that if I didn't shut up there'd be another charge against me for disturbing the quiet of the cells. I told him that I should go on knocking until I got something to eat. He said, ‘That's not the way to get it,' but it was, because he brought me in a plate of cold beef, all cut up into mouthfuls, and when I asked for a knife and fork he said that they weren't allowed—I must eat with my fingers or the best way I could. ‘As a remand prisoner,' he said, ‘you are entitled to send out for your meals if you pay for them, but as you say that you haven't any money, this is the best I can do for you.' I scarcely slept a wink all last night, and it wasn't until eleven o'clock this morning that they told me that someone had come to see me. I was taken to the superintendent's room and there was my shipmate, Meredith. All he would do was to roar with laughter until I gave him a shove to remind him where we were. Then he identified me all right and told the superintendent that he'd made a big mistake and wouldn't hear the end of it when the Admiralty got to know of it. He said he'd been instructed by the captain to apply for bail. The superintendent bloke looked foolish and went off to his telephone again. When he came back we had both to sign papers letting me out for a week, and I caught the next train to town. Meredith told me that he was the only officer left in the ship when the police came on board yesterday afternoon, and of course he couldn't leave her. He had had a hell of a job to find the captain on the telephone and getting another officer to relieve him. That was the reason for the delay. Now perhaps you'll let me see my uncle.”

Foster became serious. “I told you that there had been a burglary here, Mr. Eccles. I must now tell you that it was more than a burglary. There has been a murder.”

“Good God! Do you mean my uncle?”

“No, your uncle is upstairs. It was his servant.”

Richardson was watching the young man closely and saw him go white.

“Not poor old Helen? How awful!”

“Apparently the poor woman was shot by the man who got in at that window.”

“The burglar? My God! I hope you will catch him. If I can do anything to help…Have you any clue?”

“In the shrubbery outside we have found this pocket-book.”

“Let me look at it. Why, it's mine: it's the pocket-book that was pinched from me in the hotel at Portsmouth where I lunched!”

Richardson, watching him, felt that the most accomplished actor could never have produced the effect of blank astonishment in his face and manner.

“Yes,” he added in an excited tone; “it
is
mine. Look, here are my cards: here's my uncle's letter!” He fumbled in the pocket of the note-case. “The blighter who pinched this was careful to take every penny out of it.”

“How much money had you?”

“I cashed a cheque for twenty pounds before I left the ship, but I paid my mess-bill out of it. I suppose I had sixteen or seventeen pounds left and the blighter's pinched it all.”

“Were there any Bank of England notes?”

“No, it was all in Treasury notes. But how did my pocket-book get here?”

“If we had the correct answer to that question,” remarked Foster dryly, “we should soon know who killed that poor woman. Now I should like to have a description of the man who said he was a detective.”

“Flaxton? Oh, he was an inch or two shorter than you and broader. He had a biggish nose and rather pale, shifty-looking blue eyes—you know the kind I mean—just narrow slits. He was clean-shaved except for a light-coloured clipped moustache. His hair was sandy.”

“How was he dressed?”

“In a suit of reach-me-downs of a rather flashy check pattern. He was wearing a rather shabby bowler hat with a flat brim.”

“Good. Well, now, Mr. Eccles, if you like to go upstairs you'll find your uncle, and in twenty minutes or so your statement will be ready for your signature.”

Foster watched his retreating figure as he went upstairs two steps at a time. “Get on with that statement as quick as you can, Richardson; we've a lot before us. All this yarn about the Somerset County Constabulary will have to be checked. I'm going upstairs to see how Mr. MacDougal is taking this story of his.”

He found the two closeted in the library: the uncle broken under the strain of the double disaster; the nephew trying to put before him the less gloomy side of the family tragedy. “After all, Uncle Jim, it might have been worse. The blighter might have shot you instead of poor old Helen,” he was saying when Foster made his appearance. “Look here, inspector, you can help us. I've been telling my uncle that he must engage another servant at once. Can you tell us where there's a good servants' registry?”

“Not off-hand, Mr. Eccles, but if you telephone to the Hampstead Police Station and explain who you are, they'll tell you. You can mention my name—Superintendent Foster—if you like.”

“You won't leave me, Ronny,” said MacDougal.

“Not for long, but remember, I've got to get a lawyer to conduct my case when it comes on next week. I'm on bail. I know of a chap named Meredith—the brother of my shipmate who bailed me out. He gave me a chit to him. I'll go and hunt him up this evening and listen to his words of wisdom. If you don't mind I'll go down and telephone for the address of that servants' registry.” 

“I've one question to ask you, Mr. MacDougal, while your nephew is out of the room,” said Foster. “Is he the kind of young man who runs into debt?

“Not more than other young men of his age, I think. I make him a small allowance over and above his naval pay, and it is very seldom that he comes to me for more. When he does I always give it to him.”

“Do you know whether he has any entanglements with young women?”

“Not that I have heard of. Why do you ask me that? Has he said anything to you about it?”

“Only because if he had it would account for the scrape he seemed to have got into in Portsmouth.”

Richardson knocked at the door and said that the statement was ready for signature. Foster accompanied him downstairs. Ronald Eccles was in the act of disconnecting the telephone, after having come to a satisfactory arrangement with the registry office. He went down with them to the kitchen where the statement was read over to him.

“Have you anything to add to it?” asked Foster.

“Not that I can think of. I'm ready to sign it.”

When the two police officers were in the street on their way to the Tube station, Foster asked Richardson what he thought of the statement.

“It sounded a bit thin, sir, but I think we shall find that it was correct.”

“You think so? If you're right it means that we're up against a gang. First the thief in the hotel who stole his pocket-book; then a car thief who posed as a detective; and then the man he arrested in the public-house. It means that they read the uncle's letter in the pocket-book and came straight off here to steal the money and plant the pocket-book where Mr. Symington found it in order to throw suspicion on the nephew. Such things have happened, we know, but they are so rare that for me it is easier to believe that that young man was lying. Remember, he wouldn't give me the name and address of the young woman he said he went to see. A man who has something to hide is generally unscrupulous about lying. We shall see what the Somerset police say about his statement.”

T
HERE WERE
two good reasons why Dick Meredith seldom used the lift to his flat on the fourth floor: he had a strong dislike for the pert, red-haired lift-boy, and in running upstairs there was always a sporting chance of meeting the girl who lived in the flat above him—in an eyrie to which the lift did not go. Artfully he had wormed her name out of the hall porter—Miss Patricia Carey—but that was all that the porter knew about her. He himself knew even less, for an occasional meeting on the stairs, when he stood aside to let the vision pass, can scarcely be counted as acquaintance.

Dick Meredith took his practice at the Bar seriously. He knew the story which Lord Chancellor Cairns used to tell about himself—how he owed his start to sticking to his chambers when every other barrister on his staircase had gone to Epsom on Derby Day, and the halting footsteps of a solicitor's clerk sounded on the stairs; how, after trying door after door, they had stopped on his landing, and the knuckles of a solicitor's clerk, carrying an urgent brief marked £5 5
s
., had summoned him to the door—a brief which was the foundation of his fortunes. No solicitor's clerk had yet blundered into Dick Meredith's chambers with a brief intended for another counsel, but he had appeared before a Judge in Chambers, shaking at the knees, and he went on circuit religiously and had had his modest share of dock briefs, even succeeding by a stroke of luck in getting a Yorkshire jury to find a persistent housebreaker “not guilty.”

On a memorable afternoon he was plodding up the fourth flight to his flat when he heard the rush of flying feet on the stairs above him. He drew aside to allow room for the headlong descent. It was the girl whose acquaintance he so ardently desired to make.

“Come quick!” she panted. “James is on the fire.” She tore upstairs with Dick at her heels.

“Is James your little brother?”

She did not hear the question. They had reached the top landing; a door stood open. “Quick!” she cried as she dashed in. “Oh, you're safe, you brute!”

It was no way to speak even to a younger and very trying brother. Dick looked round the tiny sitting-room. A dull fire was burning in the grate; a yellow-fronted Amazon parrot was perched on the back of a chair; there was a strong smell of burnt feathers.

The girl was profuse in apology. “I'm so sorry to have brought you up all this way for nothing, but when I ran downstairs for help that brute James flew from his cage on to the fire and was sitting on it.” 

“I've read somewhere that the cock parrot takes his turn at sitting on the eggs. He may be colour-blind. Those little lumps of coal are about the size of parrot's eggs. Never mind, I'm grateful to James for the introduction. My name is Meredith. James speaks so indistinctly that I didn't catch yours.”

“Mine is Patricia Carey, but I don't want you to think that that horrid bird is mine: he belongs to the old gentleman I work for. I ought not to be calling him names. I owe him a month's leave on full pay.”

“Absolutely,” remarked the parrot with sepulchral decision.

Dick Meredith started and looked round for the speaker. The girl laughed merrily.

“James gave you a start. ‘Absolutely' is Mr. Vance's favourite affirmative and James has caught it from him.”

“How did he get you a month's leave on full pay?”

“The condition attached to my leave was that I should have to give a home to that bird while Mr. Vance was going round foreign prisons—they call him the ‘Second John Howard,' you know—and he's let me down on the very first day. Mr. Vance told me that if I let him sit on the top of his cage in the daytime he could be trusted to behave himself, and the first thing he did when I let him out just now was to fly straight on to the fire and sit on the coals as if he meant to hatch them.”

“Well, he had the sense to get off in time. You're a stout fellow, James.”

The bird ruffled his neck and bowed his head to be stroked.

“He seems to have taken a fancy to you. He hates me.”

“Absolutely,” remarked James with marked distinctness.

“Does he talk much?” asked Dick, caressing him.

“He's a good weather prophet. He's much more reliable than the B.B.C. When it's going to rain he goes down to the bottom of his cage and chatters gibberish. I suppose—” She hesitated.

“You were going to say?”

The girl laughed nervously. “Oh, nothing. I nearly made a silly suggestion—that as he's taken to you so quickly—well—that you might like to have him in your flat for a few days.”

“I should love to, but it's a big responsibility. Still—if you would look in from time to time to see that he's all right—”

“Well—I
was
going down to my people in the country for a few days if I hadn't been saddled with James—” She had the grace to blush at the audacity of her manoeuvre.

“I'll take charge of him with pleasure if you'll give me his diet chart. I suppose that it's rather complicated.”