Scandal at High Chimneys (21 page)

“You clear out, my girl. I’ve warned you for the last time.”

Cherry said he was not going to knock her about. Jeeringly, as she pirouetted towards the staircase, her voice was upraised in a song.

Hit him on the boko!

Dot him on the snitch!

Wot a lovely fighter—!

Was there ever sich?

It woke more echoes at the Alhambra. It had once celebrated Tom Sayers, retired former Champion of England. Sung with joyous sarcasm in Cherry’s loud if not untuneful voice, while the hat joggled on her fair hair, it carried her pirouetting into the shadow beyond gaslight and still warbling down the stairs.

“Thunderation!” said Whicher.

He drew his coat-sleeve across his forehead.

“You wouldn’t believe, now would you, that girl’s one of the cleverest sharpers that ever worked a game to help the Peelers and not flummox ’em? She’s already done most of her part, and it’s a good deal. She’ll be sober tonight, I promise you. And—”

Here he stopped, since Clive was still staring at him.

“Don’t think that, sir! Not what you’re thinking!”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Even if it is a woman, that needn’t necessarily mean anything!”

“I don’t suppose,” observed Clive, at once coldly courteous and violently driving the note-case back into his pocket, “you could bear to indicate what it does mean?”

“Yes,” said Whicher after a pause, “I owe you that much.”

It was the mosaic-tile floor, under a low roof with the pillars, which threw back so many noises. Whicher took a turn back and forth by the counter.

Heat, too, with the stuffiness of dead cigars and stale perfume, closed in round Clive’s throat. After muttering to himself, Whicher again consulted his watch.

“The fact is, sir, I’m waiting for somebody. You’ll recall I spoke to a pal o’ mine at the oyster-stop?”

“Yes. Well?”

“It was to leave a message. I’m not even sure my game’s to be allowed, and even if it is … anyway! You know I’m setting a trap. But it’s not what I had a mind to do yesterday. No! Or, to say truer than that, what I had in mind yesterday was only a beginning of what might ’a’ been good if I’d had time. Got it?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Nineteen years ago, when Harriet Pyke was in the condemned cell, she wrote a letter to the father of her child. And, three months ago, that man—Ivor Rich, remember?—killed himself at a lodging-house in Pimlico. When the keeper of the lodging-house called me in to see if we could hush up the scandal of a suicide, we found Harriet Pyke’s letter. Got
that?
”

“Of course. You told me so yesterday.”

Whicher pointed a finger with some intentness.

“Now, then! In Harriet Pyke’s letter, d’ye see, there are a lot of references to her sister, Mary Jane Pyke Cavanagh, and also to the child….”

“Wait!” interrupted Clive. “You told me you didn’t know the name of the child!”

“I didn’t, sir, and in a manner of speaking I still don’t. Howsoever, the trap’s been set and that letter is the bait. Cherry, posing as a blackmailer, has offered to sell that letter to a certain person who’ll walk in here tonight. Cherry says she won’t hand over the letter except in a public place where there’s no danger of trying any shooting or strangling games. So it’ll be handed over in the sight of witnesses: including you. So, if the Peelers turn up on the spot too … follow me?”

“No, I don’t follow you. Simply because someone buys a letter about a child’s parentage, it won’t prove that person killed Mr. and Mrs. Damon!”

“Quite right,” agreed Whicher, with a sardonic look. “It won’t prove anything at all.”

“Well, then?”

“Howsoever!” said Whicher, raising his forefinger impressively. “If a self-confident copper, who’s dead certain he’s right, thinks that’s the proper moment to step in and take the guilty party off balance and force a confession—eh? What do you say?”

And he raised his eyebrows.

“I say,” retorted Clive, “it’s too damned risky and too much of a long shot. Do
you
want to try that?”

“No,” said Whicher, rounding the syllable.

This time it was irony which stamped satiric puckers round his eyes and mouth.

“You see, sir, that’s what I did in the Constance Kent case. There was evidence all over the place, evidence that told me certain-sure the girl was guilty. But there wasn’t a scrap of evidence I could show a jury. Thinks I to myself, ‘Aha! I’ll put that girl under arrest straightaway, with what we call the shock o’ surprise, and I’ll have a confession before she’s got time to think.’

“Well, I was wrong. That’s the mistake I made. That’s one mistake I swore I’d never make again. I swore it to you as late as yesterday afternoon. But now, if Sir Richard Mayne lets me have a tack at it, I’ll risk it and glad of the chance to do it. Because, if I don’t get the authority from Scotland Yard, as sure as guns Superintendent Muswell will walk in tomorrow and arrest you or somebody else who’s not guilty. Now do you see?”

It was a rhetorical question. For a moment Whicher stared into vacancy.

“Tonight, sir,” he added, “I’ll be arresting that girl all over again.”

“T
HAT GIRL?” ECHOED CLIVE.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“But you said—”

“Stop!” interrupted Whicher. “Let’s have this fair-said. Whatever else may be, nothing’s going to happen to your young lady. I promise you that. Or, at least,” and he hesitated in bad worry, “I think I can promise that; it’s the part I like least. Still and all! If nothing happens to your young lady, do you care who’s arrested?”

“No, I do not.”

“Then never mind what my original scheme was. It had to be altered when you and Miss Damon ran away. But the clothes still fit the very same customer.”

“When you use the term ‘clothes,’ you refer to—?”

“The murderer. Oh, ah! Maybe it’s what they call poetic justice that there’s more than one likeness at High Chimneys to the matter of Constance Kent. Evidence, evidence all over the shop! But not one scrap you can show a jury here either.”

“Where did you get this evidence?”

“Mostly from you. But also from talking to the lot of them today. And a bit of it, too,” Whicher stared at the past, “from visiting Mr. Damon last August, and finding all of the family except Mrs. Cavanagh were gathered round a table for Miss Celia’s birthday. Have you thought about motive, sir?”

“Well, unless there’s insanity in the family after all, as Dr. Bland seems to fear …”

Whicher made no comment.

“Unless there’s insanity, I say,” repeated Clive, “the great problem is simply the motive. The great problem is why in Satan’s name the murderer behaved like that.”

Whicher uttered a noise between a snort and a breath of triumph.

“Now you’re getting warm!” he declared, to a man getting warm in the physical sense as well. “Now you’re using your wits, thank’ee. I’ll ask you one last question, Mr. Strickland, and I’ll say no more.”

“What question?”

“In all the times you’ve seen men’s parts played by women on the stage, and there must have been lots of ’em….”

“There have been. Admittedly!” Clive attempted to sweep this aside. “I’ve seen women play every part from Rosalind and Viola to the boy-apprentice in
Sweeney Todd.
What does it mean if I have?”

“What does it mean? Thunderation! Did you ever see one that deceived you into thinking she was a man? Or was meant to deceive you? That’s the secret. That’s the answer. It means—”

Clive started as though a revolving pistol had been fired behind his ear.

His companion broke off, also jumping a little, as someone began to bellow Whicher’s name downstairs in the foyer of the Alhambra. Exasperation, doubt, even nervousness poured out of that voice, together with a stumbling and groping on bare boards in the dark.

“Up here, Hackney,” called Whicher, clearing his throat. Again he addressed Clive. “Just you keep your eyes skinned tonight, that’s all; and be ready to testify (in court, if needs be) to anything you see or hear.”

Whicher consulted his watch for the last time.

Slow footfalls, a wheezing of breath from someone carrying too much weight, clumped up the staircase and across towards them on mosaic tiles.

The newcomer, a burly man with a moustache flowing into fan-shaped side-whiskers, and a beaverskin hat above an open greatcoat, must ordinarily have been jovial and knowing, carrying a wink at one corner of his eye.

But he was not merry now.

“Afternoon, Hackney,” said Whicher. “You’re late, aren’t you?”

“Late, eh?” said the newcomer. “That’s a good ’un, that is!”

“Didn’t George tell you at the oyster-shop?”

“He said the Alhambra. He didn’t say where in the blooming Alhambra. He didn’t say you was as mad as a March hare.”

“Mr. Strickland,” observed Whicher, who had become his old imperturbable self, “this is Inspector Hackney of the Detective Branch. Old friend of mine. Hackney, this is the gentleman I spoke of.”

Inspector Hackney touched two fingers of his hat towards Clive, but did not look at him. Inspector Hackney only wheezed.

“What’s the word, Hackney? Did you see Sir Richard?”

“I saw him.”

“And what did he say? What luck?”

“Bad luck. We got the news you wanted from Yorkshire by police-telegraph; but bad luck all the same.”

“Won’t he let me use the Detective Branch?”

“Yes. He’ll let you. That’s the bad luck.”

“Ah! I rather thought he would.”

“Jonathan,” burst out Inspector Hackney, “what’s become o’ you? Are you simple? Don’t be took in! ‘King’ Mayne didn’t stand by you when he ought to have done, in ’60; and he’s never forgiven you because he didn’t stand by you. He’d like you to see trouble again.”

“Maybe.”

“You telegraph me from Reading,” said Inspector Hackney, taking a grimy if bright-spotted handkerchief from the tail-pocket of his coat, and mopping his face with it. “You ask me to meet you at the Great Western depot here in town—”

“
And
Cherry White too.”

“All right. Cherry White too. You ask me to see the ‘King’ and get his permission for this do, and that might be well enough if the scheme had reason in it. But it ain’t and it hasn’t. Don’t you see that? There’s no sense in it!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Whicher.

While Inspector Hackney made noises, Whicher went thoughtfully round to the side of the semi-circular counter. Raising the flap, he strolled inside the counter. There, with a rather terrifying little smile, he faced Hackney between pyramids of oranges.

“It’s not what I’d have chosen, mind you,” he pointed out, “if I’d been given more time. Still and all, it’s got a good chance. Have an orange?”

Inspector Hackney condemned oranges to complete spiritual ruin.

“Jonathan, my lad, it’s got no chance at all! That’s what I’m a-complaining of!”

“Not even,” inquired Whicher, “with Cherry’s testimony too?”

Inspector Hackney peered past the handkerchief.

“Cherry hasn’t—?” he demanded.

“Yes. Cherry has.”

“Then why can’t we make it a dummy arrest? You always used to be a rare one for dummy arrests. I could ’a’ helped you out with a dummy arrest, and no bones broken. Why has it got to be a real arrest?”

“Because I’ve seen the guilty person,” answered Whicher, picking up an orange. “And I’ll lay you ten to one the guilty person won’t give way except under a formal charge at a real police-station. That’s not the danger of failure. The danger of failure is with us, don’t think it’s not!—Mr. Strickland,” Whicher added abruptly, “I thank you very much. But hadn’t you best go home now?”

There are times when too much mystery, too many statements which will not fit into a comprehensible pattern, produce the effect of a physical fear. Clive felt it now. The whole atmosphere of the promenade had grown poisoned.

“Your young lady will have tea ready for you, won’t she?” asked Whicher.

“That’s what Kate said, yes.”

“Ah! Then you’d best go,” Whicher told him in a persuasive voice. “You’ll have a servant at your rooms too, I imagine?”

“I have a housekeeper. She—”

“Good. Very good, sir! Well! When you take your leave of Miss Damon tonight, sir, just be sure she’s at Mivart’s Hotel. And tell her not to admit anybody to her room. Not anybody, no matter who it is!”

“Mr. Whicher, are you suggesting Kate’s in danger?”

“Not in any danger of being killed, if that’s what you mean.” Whicher gave him another of those indecipherable glances. “There’s probably nothing in a notion that did enter my head. It’s just in case, sir. It’s just in case.”

Just in case.

The fuming face of Inspector Hackney, the impassive blandness of Whicher, faded behind Clive as he hastened downstairs through the echoing shell. When he emerged into the street, his watch told him it was nearly four o’clock.

He could find no cab in the scabrous emptiness of Leicester Square. He did not find one until he had walked to lower Regent Street, through spattering mud. With the leisureliness of wheeled traffic, it was nearer five when the hansom jingled into Brook Street. He could have walked in far less time.

In this part of town, where the bows and the raising of hats became a very stately process for those few who were on foot, a tinge of darkness had crept into the smoke. Gaslight was glowing, curtains were being drawn across stately windows, in Mivart’s Hotel at the south-western corner of Brook Street and Davies Street.

Clive had started up the stairs, to his apartments on the first floor at number 23, before he remembered that this was a Thursday. Mrs. Quint, his superior and modern-minded housekeeper, would have taken the afternoon off.

Nonsense! It made no difference.

Nevertheless, Kate was not there.

The outer door, fastened with a Chubb lock, had been left on the latch. In his sitting-room the gas-jet in a glass dish burned beside the mantelpiece; it had acquired its usual faint whistle against an emptiness of silence.

Rows of calf-bound books looked down at him. The tea-service had been set out on a table near the fire, with tea in the pot; a filled kettle was on the hob. In an easy chair near the fire he found a handkerchief with Kate’s initials.