Suspects—Nine (15 page)

“You're interested? Oh, well, you're right. I'm anxious. Ernie's a little fool. Soft. Girls are. Martin may have been telling her yarns.”

“What sort of yarns?” Bobby asked.

“How should I know?”

“You could guess, perhaps?”

“I can guess Martin means what mischief he can,” Lady Alice said, and looked more darkly formidable even than before. “Have you seen Judy Patterson?”

“I had a talk with him this morning.”

“Your South Essex pals asked about him. I told them to talk to him. I told them I didn't gossip about my friends. They say some one wearing a broad-brimmed hat like the one he swaggers about in was seen near Weeton Hill. What about it? Other people wear broad-brimmed hats, don't they?”

“Yes. But not many. Did you know Mr. Patterson has a week-end cottage not far from Weeton Hill?”

“Yes. So does Flora.”

“Flora?”

“Flora Tamar. She's been there. So have I. So has Ernie. Flora hates her.”

“Why?”

“Because she's fifteen years younger, fifteen reasons of the best,” Lady Alice answered. With a gesture of contempt, she added, “She lets her hate be seen. Did you see her at that cocktail party? She's no control. She lets every one see it when she hates—or loves. I've seen her look at Ernie as if she would like to murder her. She's said as much.”

“People talk like that without in the least meaning it,” Bobby remarked, though he remembered clearly how he himself had heard that word ‘murder' slip through Flora's red and smiling lips, slip through as from some internal stress that would not be denied. “Idle chatter gets exaggerated, too.”

“That wasn't exaggerated, it was what she said. I don't know what she meant.”

“Did you hear it yourself?” Bobby asked and when she made a slight negative gesture, he went on, “Gossip? or something you heard through Martin from one of the servants?”

“Oh, you're good at guessing, aren't you?” she retorted. “Clever.”

“Nothing very clever at seeing the obvious,” observed Bobby mildly, “though I do sometimes think the cleverer you are, the more likely you are to miss it—the obvious, I mean. I take it it's obvious you're not afraid Mrs. Tamar has been busy to-day murdering Miss Maddox?”

“Nothing to joke about,” declared Lady Alice, who, indeed, always disliked jokes which she seldom understood and then only with difficulty, “but perhaps that is what was meant for Friday night, only it didn't come off and something else did instead.”

“What do you mean?” Bobby asked, a little startled.

“You talked about blackmail, didn't you?” she asked. “Well, suppose that was Munday, and he wrote some letter or another I believe was sent Mr. Tamar. It was his way—Munday's way—of putting pressure on Flora. If it was like that, perhaps Flora—took steps. I know I would. It might account for the knife wound, too. She used a pistol first, but she isn't sure. She feels she must be. A woman always worries. She comes back—with a knife. Not that knife,” Lady Alice paused and glanced at her own, hanging over the mantelpiece. “But she has one and she used it so as to be certain. I daresay Martin comes into it some-how.”

“Did you tell the South Essex police all that?” Bobby asked.

“No, they didn't give me a chance. Besides, I hadn't thought it out. Very likely it's all wrong. It's just my own idea. They only thought about where I was Friday night. Their one idea. Oh, and that knife.”

“Oh, yes,” Bobby said and turned to look at it again.

He sat down and took out his note book. She said, “I've told you before and I told them, too. I'll put nothing in writing. Not without a lawyer there.”

“I wasn't going to ask you to,” Bobby said. He began to sharpen his pencil. He added, “I don't see where Miss Maddox comes in. I thought you meant her.”

“I thought about that, too,” Lady Alice said. “You can't help getting ideas when you have a lot of police cross-examining you, letting you see they suspect you of murder, gaping at a knife you happen to have as if they had never seen such a thing before, expecting you to be able to produce signed and sealed statements for where you were or weren't at any hour they choose to mention.” She paused and stared at Him from under her heavy brows. “What are you drawing?” she asked.

“Only a little sketch,” he answered. “I'll show it you in a moment.”

“I suppose if they could prove I was near Weeton Hill, about nine Friday night—well, then, they would want to run me in at once?”

“I shouldn't think so,” Bobby said, his pencil hovering over the drawing he was making. “Were you there?”

She emitted again that harsh cackle she seemed to mistake for mirth.

“Always the detective, aren't you?” she said.

“Oh, yes, my job,” he explained. He added thoughtfully, “I've a kind of horror of murder. There are worse crimes, I think, but none such a challenge to all other men.”

She seemed to meditate on this for some minutes before she spoke again. Then she said,

“Finished your sketch?”

“Nearly,” he answered. “You see, it is a little difficult because I am doing it from memory.”

“You make me curious,” she said, though it was not curious she looked but dark and brooding, menacing as the cloud that threatens thunder. She continued, “Why should I kill Munday? He was nothing to me. Perhaps he was a blackmailer and one of his victims turned on him. Bravo, I say. Perhaps he was mistaken for some one else. Have you thought of that, Mr. Artist?”

“Not an artist,” protested Bobby. He had ceased drawing now and he and Lady Alice were watching each other closely. “Yes, the idea that there was a mistake has been suggested—theory only at present.”

“Put it,” Lady Alice said; “that Flora hated Ernie— afraid of her, too. No hatred like that of the woman with a past behind her for a girl with her future before her. I mean, when it's a woman like Flora who is all one emptiness except for her past. Do you think it's possible—”

She paused and Bobby, adding now a final touch or two to his sketch, said,

“Anything's possible. Luckily most things stop there.”

“Do you think,” she went on, “that Flora may have tried to get Ernie to Weeton Hill on some pretence or another only Ernie didn't go and Munday was there instead, meaning blackmail, and Flora—made a mistake?”

Bobby put down his pencil and considered.

“Miss Maddox is a young woman, Munday was a middle-aged man,” he objected.

“In the dark all cats are grey,” retorted Lady Alice. “Any one coming over the brow of the hill would be a shadow. Find out where Flora was that night—find out if she's got that alibi your South Essex friends were so keen about. Perhaps she'll have an alibi. Why not? Finished your drawing? Am I to see it?”

“If you wish,” Bobby said and passed it over.

She looked at it for a long time without a word.

Presently she said,

“What is it?”

“You do not recognize it?”

“No.”

“I hoped you would.”

She closed the book and handed it back to him. She was seated now, opposite to him. Across the table, they watched each other, two wary, grim antagonists.

“You have good eyes, a good memory,” she said at last.

“Training,” he explained. “My job again.”

“It's meant to be a drawing of the hilt of that knife of mine, hanging on the wall there, I suppose,” she remarked. “But the pattern is wrong.”

“I wonder,” he said.

“Well, look for yourself,” she said defiantly. “There it is. Compare them, your drawing and the hilt of the knife.”

Bobby put his note book back in his pocket and got to his feet.

“I must go,” he said. “Unpardonable to have kept you so long. It's dreadfully late. I've a poor eye for colour. Better for form. Form interests me somehow. I noticed the pattern of the hilt of the knife hanging there when I was here before. That drawing is my recollection of it. There is a difference. As you said. You saw that at once. It seems my memory holds a different pattern from that the hilt shows now. It is as if there had been a change, as though this knife is not that knife, not the one I saw before.”

She made no answer but all the more she looked like a brooding menace, her head bent a little forward, her eyes with a fire in them no longer secret, her great nose thrusting out above a mouth shut in a tight and threatening line. At last she said,

“I think you had better go.”

“Yes, indeed,” he agreed at once. “It really has got late. Awfully late. I must apologise. I'll say good night, then, and may I assure you none of the suggestions put forward to-night will be forgotten or overlooked.”

It was after midnight now but all the same, Bobby, anxious as he was for bed, made up his mind that it would be as well to try to find out whether or no Ernie Maddox had yet returned home.

By good luck, as he left the block of flats where Lady Alice lived, he saw a cruising police car, and, after a certain amount of badinage, including a threat on the part of the crew of the car to run him in as a suspected character, and an offer on his to hide in the gear box so that no inquisitive superior should see him and want to know why cruising police cars gave joy rides to wandering policemen, he was conveyed to the even larger block where Ernie Maddox occupied an even smaller flat—all heaven in a band-box, the management used to say to prospective tenants. ‘

Fortunately, there was a night porter on duty and to him, Bobby, without saying who he was, explained that a nervous, elderly maiden aunt of Miss Maddox's—Bobby enjoyed giving this description of Lady Alice—was dreadfully worried because the young lady had not kept an appointment.

“You know what old ladies are like,” Bobby said confidentially, thinking he would give half a week's pay for Lady Alice to hear him; “traffic accidents on the brain and all that.”

“Oh, Miss Maddox is all right,” declared the night porter, accepting the cigarette Bobby offered. “Been back an hour. I saw her come in. She'll be in bed now. Gentleman brought her back.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobby, remembering that Lady Alice had mentioned Martin's name. “Mr. Martin, perhaps. That would explain it if it was him.”

“I don't, know the gentleman's name,” the porter answered, doubtfully.

Bobby gave a brief description. The porter agreed that it answered well enough so far as he remembered, though he hadn't taken any particular notice. Bobby thanked him, tipped him a shilling he felt very certain would never get through expenses, told him he could tell Miss Maddox the inquiry had been made on behalf of her aunt, Lady Alice Belchamber, and departed for home and bed in thoughtful mood.

This long absence, spent, apparently, in the company of a man of Martin's reputation seemed to him distinctly ominous. It almost looked as though the girl had some connection with these recent doubtful and uncertain happenings. Had that been the meaning of what Lady Alice had said? Was that why Lady Alice had brought up the girl's name? Had she some knowledge or suspicion that Ernie Maddox had been near Weeton Hill on the night of the crime and was she trying half unconsciously, perhaps, to prepare for that fact becoming known?

It took an effort to push all these considerations out of his mind and get to sleep. In the morning he was early at the Yard, busy with routine work he thought, it would be well to get finished with as promptly as possible in case he was called away. Then their duties had to be assigned to the members of the squad for which, as sergeant, he was responsible. He made a report, too, of his recent activities, and, following instructions, rang up South Essex to inform them of what he knew and had been told.

South Essex sounded excited about the probably changed knife and thought that might prove a fact of capital importance. They were interested, too, to hear of the apparent connection between Miss Maddox and Martin of the Eternal Vigilance people. They would bear it in mind, they said.

“Bad character,” declared the distant voice over the 'phone. “What reason can a respectable young lady have for running round with him?”

Bobby said he didn't know, and South Essex went on to explain that their Inspector Wilkinson, second in command of the South Essex C.I.D., was in town, making inquiries in connection with the case. When he rang up, as he would be doing from time to time, they would suggest that he might look in to have a chat with Sergeant Owen, if Sergeant Owen could arrange to wait at the Yard for him.

Sergeant Owen, with the consent of his superiors, was very willing. It would give him a quiet morning at his desk he could employ in trying to get on terms with the constant, inflowing tide of official forms under which, morning by morning, he was regularly submerged, instead of having to spend it running round to see all the men of his squad were behaving themselves.

It was not till after lunch, however, that Bobby, still wrestling with a pile of forms that seemed almost as big as ever, was summoned to the presence of the chief inspector on duty. To his surprise, however, it was on another matter, not on account of the South Essex man's visit, that he had been sent for.

“Some bird here,” explained the chief inspector, “who seems in a tearing rage about something. Name of Holland Kent. Big bug, too, it seems. Fair spluttering, he is. As far as I can make out it's about that Weeton Hill case South Essex has in hand, good luck to 'em. You know something about it, don't you? Been making reports, I think. So you had better take on Mr. Kent and find out what's his trouble. Handle him gently, you know, these big bugs need it. I,” said the chief inspector, slipping a half-completed crossword puzzle out of sight, “have got enough to do without listening to every swell who has had his toes trodden on.”