Richardson's First Case (16 page)

“That's why the gentleman wants to find out about that brown paper.” The lady's face hardened. “That's all very well, George, but if you think I'm going to say anything to get poor old Mr. Cronin into trouble with the police, well, you're making a mistake. I'm sorry, sir, but we don't remember anything about the date.”

“I'm sorry, too; it might have helped Mr. Cronin if you did.”

“Besides, if we did remember we wouldn't be so certain as to swear to it, and I'm sure George doesn't want to go into court as a witness.”

“I don't know,” said the landlord dreamily; “it would be a wonderful thing for business.”

“I sometimes listen in myself,” said his wife—“not so much to hear the news, though that's very nice, too, but to listen to that announcer's voice—such a nice man he is.”

“I'm getting quite jealous,” remarked the landlord slyly. “She's fallen in love with the voice and some day—you know what women are when they get things into their head—she'll find out who he is and hunt him down.” At which he received a playful dig in the ribs that would have felled an ox. Richardson recalled them sternly to the business in hand. “Can't you remember whether Mr. Cronin called on the evening before the murder was discovered?”

They thought, breathing deeply, but had to confess that their memories were blank.

“If you could remember hearing the description of any particular missing person that evening, I could fix the date by going to the B.B.C. office.'' But even this suggestion failed to fire their memories. The potman looked in at the door to know when one or other of his employers was coming to lend a hand at the busy time. Customers were dribbling into the bar parlour.

“You'll excuse me, Inspector,” said the landlord, deferentially, “but business is business: we're wanted.”

“Inspector!” thought Richardson. When would he reach that giddy height in his profession? The unsolicited compliment warmed his heart towards this landlord, but here he was on the very brink of an important discovery without much prospect of being able to establish its most important feature—the date. He thought bitterly of the luck which he had heard was fifty per cent of a detective's success. The jade, Fortune, had smiled upon him for a moment and then turned her back. He cudgelled his brains for some original method of arriving at this elusive date. He knew from intuition that these two people would make admirable witnesses, if once they were clear in their own minds that the date was Tuesday, the 8th. As he drank his beer gloomily he did not know that the jade was about to smile upon him again.

The stout landlady stood in the doorway smiling on him. She advanced still smiling, and whispered, “If you'll step this way, Inspector, I think there's someone in the bar who can fix that date for us.” She led the way through the bar into a dark, stuffy little apology for a hall. “Now you just stand there while I fetch me husband.” Through the doorway he could see the whispered colloquy between husband and wife. She motioned with her chin towards a man wearing a railway company's cap, who was standing chatting in the crowd. The landlord reached over the bar to touch him on the shoulder. He detached himself, swallowed the remainder of his beer, set down his glass, and followed the landlady. Into the hall they came, and Richardson found himself facing a stout, hefty man with a jolly face.

“Now, Jim, you can settle an argument we've been having with this gentleman about what evening it was that you delivered that parcel of perishables you brought about a fortnight ago—you remember—the chicken that my sister sent me from down in the country.”

“Why, what's up? Anything wrong with the chicken?”

“No, none of yer fooling, Jim. This gentleman and me has a little bet on what day it was.”

“Now you're talking. Of course I can fix the date. I've got it in my book.” He fished out a memorandum book from one of his capacious pockets. “Here you are! It was on the 8th—a Tuesday it was.” Richardson suppressed an inclination to shake hands with him.

“And you remember me telling you that my husband was upstairs listening to the wireless?”

“And you had to call him down! Yes, I remember that.”

“Well, there you are, mister. You've won your bet. Mr. Higgins has never made a mistake yet.”

“I'd lose my job if I did,” laughed the parcels delivery man.

The least that Richardson could do was to return to the bar and stand his benefactor a drink, and this he did without disclosing the fact that he was a police officer and that his new friend's memory for dates might cost him a visit to a police court as a witness. He had established the fact that Cronin, the artist in historical drawings, had got his brown paper after six o'clock and was lying when he said it was nearly an hour earlier.

His success with the landlord of the Red Lion and his wife had elated him more than the beer he had been obliged to drink. On his way back to Marylebone Road he walked on air, and he took the narrow staircase in three bounds. He found the “D.D. Inspector,” as Foster's rank was always referred to, just finishing a report. Richardson stood at attention in the doorway. “Oh, it's you, Richardson. Have you brought in anything useful?”

“I think so, sir. I've found the place where Cronin got that brown paper.”

“Good, but what we want is the date and the time.”

“I've got that too, sir, and three witnesses who can swear to it. It was six-fifteen on the evening of the murder.”

Foster leapt in his chair. “Then that old rascal was lying to us. Get your report written out before you go off duty. I'll take it down with me to C.O. tomorrow morning. You've done well.”

The concluding sentence sent Richardson to his table in a glow. It was rare that the D.D. Inspector allowed himself to commend his subordinates. He might even aspire to receiving ten shillings out of the reward if there was one. His foot was now on the lowest rung of the ladder.

T
HEY BREAKFASTED
at eight in the Kennedys' flat to give Guy time to catch his train for Greenwich, but this morning his class was destined to continue its studies without its naval instructor. A letter lay beside his plate: he slit open the envelope, while Nan led Michael to the side table and uncovered each of the three dishes that sizzled over the spirit lamps to tempt his appetite.

“What's your letter, Guy?” she called over her shoulder. Her husband made no reply. He was reading his letter. Two strides took him to the telephone: he called a Greenwich number.

“Is that you, Watson?” they heard him ask. “Look here, I want to take a day's leave—urgent private affairs. Pitch it strong, my boy, and if the old man digs his toes in give him the soft answer and all that sort of rot. You will? Good boy. I'll do the same for you one of these days.”

“He's going to shirk his work again,” remarked Nan to her guest. “The day is at hand when he'll be thrown out of his job, and we shall be begging our bread in the streets. Now, Guy, tell us the worst. What has the post brought you?”

“A letter from a lady. Here, you can read it aloud, Nan. It will interest Michael, I fancy.” He tossed the letter over to her. She read it to herself, with knit brow.

“What an awful sprawling fist! I can scarcely read it. Listen, Michael.

“Did your unknown lady answer to the name of Myrtle, Mike?” asked Guy, in honeyed tones.

“How should I know what name the woman answered to?” replied Michael crustily. “Where does she write from?”

“No. 9 Essex Mansions, Eastcastle Street, W.C.”

“What a nuisance! I suppose I shall have to go, if I'm to get my brolly back.”

“No, you don't, my boy; not if I know it. The man who's going for your brolly is me.”

“You? She'll throw you out.”

“You're not serious, Guy?” protested his wife. “I won't have you keeping trysts with any female who calls herself Myrtle. It's not respectable. Let Michael go. It's his funeral.”

“It's his umbrella, I admit, but, without a kindergarten mistress to look after him, I'll be no party to it. Don't be alarmed, my dear. I'm going to be properly chaperoned.”

“Who by?”

“A bandit from the Yard, bearded like the pard, complete with notebook in hand.”

“You mean that Myrtle is going to be arrested?” There was a ring of joyful anticipation in Nan's tone.

“I mean that I am going to save the honour of the service. Michael's adventure that evening has tarnished its honour. Even those case-hardened sleuths won't swallow it. I'm going to prove to them that it was true. With any luck I shall be back to lunch, whereas if Michael went he'd miss Joan; so he can sit here and help you housekeep.”

Guy's first visit was to New Scotland Yard, where he was admitted at once to Morden's room. “Don't look so sour, Morden. I never come to worry you except when I bear important tidings. I've found the lady.”

“What lady?” So many ladies took passage across Morden's office table every day in one file or another that he was inclined to lump the entire sex together as having been created solely for the purpose of hampering public work.

“The mysterious lady that you fellows don't believe in—the lady who enticed Michael Sharp from the narrow path of a motor omnibus to an unknown flat, and left him sitting there like Tannhäuser waiting for Venus—at least, that is what wicked men of the world like you must have thought, if you believed the story at all. Our advertisement did the trick. Read this.”

Morden read the letter and gave it back to him. “All right, I see that he was telling the truth and that he's accounted for his time. May I keep this letter for our file?”

“Not yet, my boy. We haven't done with the lady. I came down this morning to suggest that you and I should go and see her together.”

Morden pointed mutely to the stack of papers on his desk and said that he was snowed under. “But,” he added, “it would be well to have a statement from her. I'll tell you what we'll do. It is now half-past ten. You go on there ahead, and at eleven-fifteen I'll arrange for the D.D. Inspector, Foster, to ring the bell and join you. By that time you ought to have the lady weeping on your shoulder, and Foster can take down her statement. You have seen him, I think, in Lorimer's room—a quiet, soft-spoken Scotsman.”

“I know him. He came to the flat to put the thumbscrews on Joan Summers. Yes, failing you, he'll do very well. I'll take this letter with me in case the ogress bites, and give it to Foster when we've done.”

A taxi carried Guy to Eastcastle Street, and the lift carried him up to No. 9, on the first floor of Essex Mansions. His friends had never had cause to reproach him with diffidence, but, with his finger almost on the bell-push, he did feel a little anxious about his reception. The door was opened by a lady whom he judged to be in the early thirties—a very personable lady, with a coy, kittenish manner, which froze as she surveyed her tall visitor; her lips trembled.

“I'm afraid you were expecting my friend,” said Guy, pleasantly. “Unfortunately he could not come this morning and he asked me to come instead. It was most kind of you to answer his advertisement.”

“I did so want to see him to apologize for what happened. Did he tell you—but won't you come in? It's so much more comfortable to sit down and talk, don't you think?” She led him into the little sitting room furnished with the latest extravagances of simplicity. “Did he tell you what happened here when he came? I wanted my husband to thank him for what he did for me, but he wasn't in the flat, and so—well—so I didn't come back for the moment, and when I did your friend had gone. He must have thought it dreadfully rude of me.”

“Not at all. He thought that you were busy, and he would be very much in the way.”

“I should so like to see him again.”

Guy felt that the moment had come for throwing his brick. “Poor fellow! That chance visit here is likely to cost him dear.”

“What do you mean? Surely they're not going to serve him with papers. It's monstrous!”

Guy felt that there was more in this than met the eye. He resolved to play for time. “I think, Mrs. Waring, that it would help matters very much if you could tell me what was happening while my friend was sitting in this room.”

She looked at him with pleading eyes. “I see that I can trust you. Are you happily married?”

“Yes,” said Guy emphatically, feeling that when embarked upon a sea of mendacity it is comforting to have one firm rock to stand on.

“Then you can realize the horror of what I'm going to tell you. Of course, I expected to find my husband here. I must tell you that there is a woman on the floor above—a perfectly awful woman—I know her slightly—and I thought that possibly he might be calling upon her. Well, I ran upstairs, and at first I could get no answer to the bell. I kept on ringing and knocking, and at last someone came. It was my husband, and he was furious. Well, I did what I think any wife would do under the circumstances. I forced my way past him into the flat. I won't tell you what I found. It's enough to say that I put the matter into the hands of my solicitor to start divorce proceedings. That, of course, is my private affair, but to think that my husband has had the audacity to drag your friend in on a counter-petition is more than I can bear, and he was so good to me.”