Suspects—Nine (29 page)

“Why was it sent to Judy?” Ernie asked, “You don't believe he had anything to do with it?”

“We're still collecting evidence,” Bobby said. “If there's anything you can tell us, it would help.”

He waited then, and she seemed to brood darkly over what he had said. She lifted tortured eyes to his.

“It wasn't Judy,” she repeated, “it's almost as bad—worse—” She broke off abruptly and Bobby did not ask her what she meant. He had neither the right nor the wish to question her closely. All he had hoped was that she might be willing—and able—to say something that might help to confirm, or to dissipate, the conclusion already, as it were, framing itself at the back of his mind, ever since the discovery of the pistol used in the murder, Ernie said, presently, “He's going to Kenya. He told me. I—I'm glad. Very glad. You see, he'll be safe there and that's all that matters.”

She turned then, and went slowly up the stairs to the room above. Bobby watched her go.

“She's badly scared,” he said. “Rough luck on her. I don't wonder, either. That letter she's had may be important, and, anyhow, she evidently knew nothing about the photograph. I had to make sure of that.”

“I don't understand what it's all about,” Olive said helplessly.

“Well, I don't, either,” Bobby agreed. “It's all a bit of a mix up. Only, I think I can begin to see a sort of pattern forming. Always a bit exciting and rather dreadful when you begin to see it coining together. Only, I'm not clear yet.”

“You—you make me afraid when you look like that,” Olive whispered.

He smiled at her then, and drew her nearer to him.

“I read somewhere once,” he said, “that we should never fear anything but the consequences of our own acts. Well, I suppose I am a consequence of your act in just being there. Olive. That girl will have to be questioned again. I think you ought to tell her to get legal advice. It's a bad mess.”

Olive said, leaning comfortably against him as she spoke,

“It's not only that that's bothering her. It's another letter. From Judy. He says he's going to. Kenya. He says he supposes they'll never see each other again. He says she'll find some decent sort of chap she'll be happy with and he'll always remember her and hope it's like that, and he wishes he had been any sort of half-way decent chap, but he isn't, only just decent enough to clear out and never see her again. It's all awfully muddled as if he didn't quite know what he was writing, and, of course, it's awful for her because, you see, she really does care. She just knows they belong to each other and so, of course, it doesn't matter a scrap whether he's a decent sort of chap, as he calls it, or whether he isn't. It just doesn't count.”

“Doesn't it?” said Bobby, wrinkling a puzzled brow. “Rum lot, girls, aren't they?”

“Why?” asked Olive. “Would it matter to you if I wasn't what poor Judy calls a half-way decent sort?”

“That's quite different,” said Bobby indignantly. “You are just you and that's all there's to it.” He added, “Of course, it's all jolly rough on her, poor kid, if she really cares.”

Olive promptly burst into tears,

“Oh, Bobby, can't you help her?” she said, through her sobs.

“Only by getting at the truth,” he answered. “Only truth can help—ever.”

From the hat shop Bobby went on to the Yard, going on foot and slowly, for he wished as far as possible to clear his mind of the confused and contradictory thoughts that now, as it were, fought within it in their effort to compose themselves into some coherent pattern.

Strange, he thought, most strange, how the death of Munday, cold-blooded murder that it was, seemed framed against a background of tumultuous, unrestrained passions, passions of which, apparently, in some way he had been the victim and yet with which, surely, he could have had small concern.

There in the background brooded the dark, revengeful figure of Lady Alice, remembering the bitter past and the love that once might have been hers, had not another intervened. There was Ernie Maddox, watching the man whom something in her had chosen from all others, now drawing away from her, now driven into exile by a past against which she was fighting with a vain, yet desperate hope. There was Flora Tamar, making men her sport and yet reduced to a strange, primeval rage when, in return, one made sport of her. There was Holland Kent, treading delicately, and yet how' delicately one did not know, through the confusion of this general tangle. There was Michael Tamar, with his fierce, possessive instincts and his resolve not to give up his woman, neither for this reason nor for that. There was Judy Patterson, reckless and sullen, dragged down—how far? Bobby wondered—by harsh memory of a disillusioned youth, with his scornful acceptance of Flora, his what seemed almost equally scornful rejection of Ernie. There was Roger Renfield, with his grudge against Tamar and the vague hints that he, too, had come within Flora's orbit. Suppose it was not only his cousin's money that he coveted but his cousin's wife as well? And, finally, there was Martin, that mean, disreputable figure, slipping in and out on some cunning, villainous business of his own.

How was it, then, Bobby kept asking himself as he walked along, that from this welter of passion, intrigue and claim, of counter claim and counter passion, intrigue and counter intrigue, there had resulted the death of the apparently inconspicuous, unimportant Munday?

“We don't even know the motive,” Bobby told himself, despondently. “We don't even know whether the victim was meant to be Munday or meant to be some one else? Who?”

When he reached the Yard he found waiting for him a startling bit of news that the inspector who gave it him seemed to regard as the most important, possibly the decisive, clue that had come into their hands. South Essex had reported that the pistol recovered from the Barnet public house was not only certainly, as proved by examination of the bullets, found in Munday's body, the weapon used in the murder, but had also been identified as that for which a licence had been issued to Roger Renfield.

“So what?” said triumphantly the inspector as he finished telling Bobby this.

“So what, indeed?” agreed Bobby, wondering if some day there would be established at one of the older Universities a chair for the study of the British dialect, rendered obsolete by the general adoption of the American language.

“The Roger Renfield bird will have to do a spot of explaining,” opined the inspector. “So will the Martin bird, both in the heat, all right.”

“So they are,” agreed Bobby. “I don't know about Renfield, but Martin's dashed good at explaining.”

“He'll have to work hard this time,” declared the inspector. “South Essex wants you to stay around, their C.I.D. man, Wilkinson, is coming along and he says he would like to see you. He wants the Tamar ten-bob note, too.”

“The Tamar ten-bob note,” Bobby repeated, slightly puzzled.

“Yes, they ought to have had it before, but there's been a misunderstanding and it's still here, so now they want it.” He produced it as he spoke. “I'm to give it them,” he said. “You remember, the one Tamar swears he paid for his coffee with the night of the murder, Identified by figures he jotted down while he was waiting—francs into pounds at one hundred seventy-seven francs seventy-five to the pound. I suppose it's worked out right? Any one checked it, I wonder? A wonder, anyway, the thing was ever found, though a fiver reward will do a lot.”

“Draw ten-bob notes from the vasty deep,” murmured Bobby, who was busy checking Tamar's figures, They showed a million and a quarter francs as being worth, in English money, at the given rate of exchange, £7031 15
s
., and Bobby's calculation agreed. “Figures all right,” he said, dropping the scrap of paper on which he had worked out the sum, into the waste-paper basket. “Martin's not been picked up, yet, has he?” he asked.

“Gone into hiding,” said the inspector, “it's a bit queer, though.” He referred to some papers on his desk. “Martin's been traced to Lady Alice Belchamber's flat. One of our own men, a chap who knows him quite well, saw him going in there, and the porter remembers, quite clearly, taking him up in the lift. It's an automatic lift, but the porter didn't much like Martin's looks and went up with him just to make sure he really had business with one of the residents. He says he saw him knock at Lady Alice's door and go in. Lady Alice has been questioned. She says he wanted some money and she gave him a pound note and he went away. He wasn't there more than five minutes, she says.”

“Yes,” said Bobby, feeling there was more to come. “Well?”

“The thing is,” said the inspector, “the porter swears he never came down again. Of course, that's nonsense. He must have, unless he's there still. But the porter swears he was keeping a look out and he never saw him. Well, he must have shown again, mustn't he? unless he spent the night there,” said the inspector, laughing at what he thought quite a good joke. “Not very likely, a tough old bird like her, and a down and out crook like Martin.”

“No, it's not very likely,” agreed Bobby. “No. What about the porter? Can you trust him?”

“Well, he seems a steady, reliable chap and he says he is quite sure. Worried him a bit. There's been a hint or two of scandal. Residents on the same floor been keeping visitors a bit late, and the porter had instructions to be on the look out and make a note of when they went up and when they came down again. Well, Martin's there all right—in the porter's notes, I mean. Went up at ten-fifteen. Not seen to come down.”

“Stairs?” suggested Bobby.

“They come out into the hall, just behind the lifts. Porter swears he had an eye on them all the time.”

“Any fire escape?”

“Yes, but it comes down behind the building, where the porter has his own rooms, and he says his wife keeps plants on the platform where it ends and they haven't been disturbed. Besides, why should any one come down by the stairs or the fire escape when they went up openly by the lift?”

“Don't know,” said Bobby. “Only, if he didn't use lift, stairs, or fire escape—well, then he's there still, only he can't be, and, anyhow, Lady Alice says he isn't.”

“What do you mean? What are you looking like that for?” the inspector asked sharply.

“Was I?” Bobby said. “Sorry. I didn't know. Looking like what?”

“Looking,” the inspector told him, “looking like you had seen a ghost.”

“Sorry,” said Bobby.

“You don't think—?” began the inspector. “Oh, that's silly,” he declared.

“Yes, I know,” said Bobby.

“Title and all,” said the inspector, who had all the average Englishman's very right and proper respect for titles, for titles do, indeed, mean much, and a handle to a name is a handle, also, to many other things. “Look here,” he went on. “Why shouldn't she have given him a shake-down for the night, only not want to say so, for fear of scandal?”

“I can't see,” said Bobby, thoughtfully, “Lady Alice worrying a lot about scandal. Besides, why should she? give Martin a shake-down, I mean. More likely, the porter didn't happen to spot him going. Martin has a way of dodging about on the quiet.”

“Porter looks the sort you can rely on,” insisted the inspector, who was beginning to look worried, himself, now. “Of course, Martin's not above a spot of blackmail. That in your mind?”

“Yes,” said Bobby.

“Meaning,” said the inspector, slowly, “he might try to put it over Lady Alice and, if he did, she might handle him the way she handled that chap out East somewhere. Is that it?”

“I don't know,” said Bobby. “Very likely Martin will be picked up soon—or be heard of.”

“There's that business of the knife you thought had been changed and then there's the knife wound inflicted on the body after death,” the inspector remarked, speaking now more to himself than to Bobby. “If she did in Munday, and Martin knew something, and tried the blackmail game—perhaps Munday had tried it, too,—perhaps she gave Martin the same.” The inspector paused and rubbed his head. “I don't like it,” he said, “we'll have to put it to South Essex, I suppose. Wilkinson may think it worth following up.”

“Where does Mr. Renfield's pistol come in?” Bobby asked.

“Martin, perhaps,” the inspector suggested. “Only an idea. He might have pinched it for her someway and then, when he knew what had happened, got hold of it again. She might have thrown it away in that patch of bracken, and afterwards thought it wasn't safe there and got Martin to recover it for her. If he did, and kept it, then he had a chance to put the screws on her.” The inspector was beginning to look excited now. He got up and began to walk about the room. “Looks to me,” he said, “as if Wilkinson might think it worth while to pay a visit to that flat—with a search warrant. She can't have got rid of the body yet.”

“Do you think there's evidence enough to ask for a search warrant? They don't let us have search warrants any too easily.”

“They do not,” agreed the inspector bitterly. “C.I.D. ought to be B.O.R.—Bloody Obstacle Race,” he interpreted for Bobby's benefit. “Martin may turn up. There's a ‘general' out for him—nice little snap that you got of him. We've tried the Cut and Come Again, put the wind up them proper, they're trying to be good, just now. They swear they haven't heard of him. Eternal Vigilance hasn't, either, and they say he was due to report for an easy money case and they can't think why he's let them down. Must be something hot to keep him away from their job, they say. That barmaid in Barnet you got the pistol from seems uneasy, too. Her idea was we had pinched him and when she asked and found we hadn't, she seemed more worried than before. She asked the man on the beat and this morning she rang up. That's how we know.”