The Witness on the Roof (28 page)

The rose-coloured blinds were drawn half-way down, producing a half light, no doubt considered by Miss Merivale as becoming; an odour of stale tobacco clung about the room, producing a combination with the smell of the faded flowers that was anything but agreeable.

The detective looked longingly at the closed windows as he heard the click-clack of high-heeled shoes on the tessellated flooring of the hall.

Miss Rose Merivale entered the room—a tall, finely- proportioned, largely-developed woman, with a profusion of auburn hair and a large amount of rouge and powder on her ample cheeks.

“How do you do, Mr. Detective?” she began, with jocund familiarity. “You wanted to see me about poor Marie De Lavelle, you said in your letter. We were great chums once, though I lost sight of her when she left the stage, but I was never so shocked in my life as when I saw this horrible affair in the papers. I hope you will hang the beast that did it!”

“We shall do our best if we can catch him, madam,” the detective responded grimly. “It is on that very account that I have ventured to trouble you to-day.”

Miss Merivale had thrown herself down on the sofa in a remarkably free-and-easy attitude, motioning Hewlett to the nearest easy-chair. She opened her violet eyes now to their fullest extent.

“But goodness me, Mr. Detective, what good can I be to you? Why, I hadn't seen her for more than eighteen months before it happened, so I don't see that I—”

“I know you don't, Miss Merivale!” Hewlett leaned forward and spoke impressively. “But when a tragedy such as this occurs, the seed of it, so to speak, generally lies far back in the life of the deceased. If you would tell me anything you could of Miss De Lavelle it is quite possible that a chance word of yours might put me on the right track.”

“I wish I might!” Miss Merivale said heartily. She took a cigarette and lighted it thoughtfully, then tossed the case over to Hewlett. “Help yourself, please! What I knew about Marie De Lavelle didn't amount to much really. We were pretty chummy for a time when we were doing our turns at the same hall—should have been more so, I dare say, if she hadn't taken up with Cécile. I couldn't stand her at any price, and so I told Marie. That was the reason of the first coolings between us. I wonder what has become of her, by the way? Cécile, she would be the one to tell you anything there was to tell.”

“I should very much like to have an interview with Miss Cécile,” said the detective, with perfect truth. Septimus Lockyer and his co-trustee, Sir Edward Fisher; had agreed, that for the sake of the family name, it was inadvisable that the search for the pseudo-Evelyn should be too vigorously prosecuted and the details of her imposture made public; but Hewlett had come to see of late that it was possible she could have given them valuable information that might have led to the apprehension of the murderer, and a close search was now being instituted with a view to discovering her whereabouts. So far it had been without success. She had taken a considerable amount of money with her, and Hewlett was beginning to think that by its means she had placed herself beyond the reach of pursuit. “I suppose Miss Marie De Lavelle had several lovers,” he hazarded at last.

Miss Merivale smoked her cigarette reflectively.

“Well, she had—and she hadn't. You see, she was a dear, and she was pretty too, but she hadn't much go about her; and after a while the boys used to get tired of her and seek other society that was a little more lively.”

Hewlett looked disappointed.

“Then she had no special lover?”

Miss Merivale shook her head.

“Not as long as I knew her. I saw in the papers she was supposed to be married, but I have no notion who it could be. Not but what the De Lavelle girls always had plenty of men to take them about, but it always seemed to me that Cécile was the attraction: she had plenty of
diablerie
—or whatever you call it. The Demon and the Saint, you know. That was what the boys used to call them. It was one of the Wiltons that gave them that name first, I believe, but it stuck, Marie was the Saint.”

“Of course,” the detective assented mechanically. This was almost better luck than he had hoped for—the introduction of the Wiltons' name—but it behoved him to walk warily now. He hesitated a moment. “They—the De Lavelles—were very intimate with the Wiltons, were they not?”

“Oh, I shouldn't say that!” Miss Merivale responded carelessly. “Basil Wilton was mad on Cécile for a bit, but I think his cousin, Paul, only came to look after him; to see he didn't get into mischief. Well, in a way Paul got friendly with Marie—Queenie as we used to call her then—but there never was any love-making between them, bless you! Paul is Lord Warchester now, you know. I wonder whether he remembers, and what he thinks about this affair when he sees it in the papers.”

So did Mr. Hewlett wonder, but there was little to be gained by speculation in that quarter.

“I thought it was Marie that Mr. Basil Wilton admired?”

Miss Merivale shook her head.

“No, it was Cécile. Basil Wilton was just crazy about Cécile for a while, and then there was Caliban,” with a laugh.

Mr. Hewlett pricked up his ears,

“Caliban?”

Miss Merivale laid her head back on the pillows with an air of luxurious abandonment.

“Ah, he was a great lout of a fellow that was a sweetheart of Marie's before she came on the stage! How she ever stood him I can't think. But she would have had a tremendous bother to get rid of him when she found her bearings and saw what other men were if he hadn't been like the rest and fallen in love with Cécile. Let me think now, what was his name?”

She wrinkled up her artificially-darkened eyebrows.

“Gregory—that was it of course—Jim Gregory.”

Gregory! The detective drew a long breath. Was there ever a case like this? he asked himself despairingly. It seemed that Miss Rose Merivale was about to prove another blank wall.

“Yes, Jim Gregory!” Miss Merivale repeated, blowing a thin blue cloud of smoke into the air. “I remember once I asked Queenie—we used to call her Queenie sometimes because of her funny little airs, you know—why she didn't shake him off, why on earth she ever let him know what she was doing. And she told me that he gave her news of her little sister, who was left under her stepmother's care at home. Queenie herself had run away, and she was afraid the child might be treated so badly that she too might not be able to stand it. Gregory had promised to keep a watch and let her know.”

“Ah, yes, he could do that!” Mr. Hewlett said slowly. “I have heard they were sweethearts once, Gregory and Miss De Lavelle—he has told us as much.”

Miss Merivale looked a little surprised.

“Oh, has he? But that was all over before I knew Queenie. Then he was head over ears in love with Cécile—used to follow her about and glower at her all over the place.”

Hewlett laughed a little, though his eyes had a far away expression. “And what did Miss Cécile think of him?” 

“Not much, as you can guess, if you have seen Gregory,” Miss Merivale responded. “She used to throw him a word now and then as you might a bone to a dog. I have told her many a time she ought to be careful, for I have seen a look in his eyes sometimes when she has been teasing him as if he would like to make an end of her there and then. If it had been she that was murdered I should have said, ‘Look up Jim Gregory'; but as it is poor Queenie I don't know what to think.”

Mr. Hewlett did not know what to think either; various wild theories and suspicions chased one another in a nebulous state, through his brain.

“I suppose the Sisters De Lavelle were not sufficiently alike to be mistaken for each other?” he hazarded at last.

“Off the stage, do you mean?” Miss Merivale questioned. “Bless your life, no! Their faces were the same shape, but Cécile's fair hair was a transformation, if you know what that means, Mr. Detective—her hair was brown. And the rest of the likeness was mostly make-up. Cécile was stouter and bigger in every way, but she used to dress up to Marie very well.”

“I was thinking,” the detective said slowly, “I was wondering whether it was in any way possible that Marie was murdered by mistake for Cécile by some jealous lover.”

“No, indeed it wasn't!” Miss Merivale said emphatically. “You may take my word for that. No, discovery doesn't lie that way, Mr. Detective, I can assure you. And now”—she looked at the tiny jewelled watch pinned in front of her gown—“you said a few minutes' conversation, and I believe you have had half an hour. I have to go to a rehearsal directly. If there is anything else I can tell you—”

Hewlett rose. He was still looking puzzled; his monocle hung by its cord.

“I am much obliged to you for sparing me so much of your time, Miss Merivale,” he said politely. “There is nothing else that I can think of this afternoon, but if anything should occur later—”

“You will come again—that is understood,” Miss Merivale finished. “And I wish you good luck, Mr. Detective. I would give a good deal myself to see poor Queenie's murderer punished, I would indeed.”

Mr. Hewlett shook hands and went out. As he walked slowly back to Swiss Cottage he was thinking harder than he had ever thought about a case before. It seemed to him that never had he been engaged on one that seemed at once so absorbing and so provoking. It reminded him of a game he had played as a child, where an object is hidden, and when the searcher is near it he is told that he is “warm.” Mr Detective Hewlett continually had the feeling that he was quite near the solution of his problem, that he was “warm” in fact, only to find the next minute that he was as far as ever from it.

As the bus tore on its way down Finchley Road he pondered once more the facts, as he knew them. For the past month, ever since the discovery that it was Basil Wilton that Evelyn Spencer had married, he had been strongly of the opinion that her death must be laid at the door of one of these three men—either one of the two cousins Lord Warchester and Basil Wilton, or James Gregory. To some extent of late he had been compelled to exonerate Basil Wilton. Inquiries had shown that his accident had occurred at least half an hour before the time at which the doctor's testimony proved that Evelyn Spencer met her death, and his long illness fully accounted for Wingrove's silence, which had appeared at first to be so suspicious.

At the same time, Mr. Hewlett was not inclined to be entirely satisfied; there might be a mistake in the time at either end, he told himself—and an alibi is always the most unsatisfactory of defences. He, at least, might have had some sort of motive—the desire to rid himself of a wife of whom possibly he was tired, and who was obviously desirous of a recognition which would offend his mother and endanger his inheritance.

In the case of Lord Warchester, as of Jim Gregory, there was apparently no reason which could in any way account for the murder. To Lord Warchester, in spite of the letter dated two years back, Evelyn Spencer had been, as far as could be ascertained at the time of her death, merely his cousin's wife; to Jim Gregory she had been merely the sweetheart of his younger days, long since forgotten in a newer passion.

Yet Mrs. Spencer had identified, in the most positive fashion, the pouch found beside the body as the one the dead girl had worked for Gregory. If her evidence was to be trusted, his presence in the room at the time of or immediately prior to her death might be taken as proved.

Think of it as he would, Mr. Hewlett could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. That the guilt lay with one of those three he felt convinced. The question was—which? And this question his interview with Miss Merivale had not, so far as he could see, in the least answered.

He got off the bus at Charing Cross and, turning up Bedford Street, made his way down Maiden Lane to his offices. At the door he almost collided with some one coming out.

“ Why, Hewlett, the very man I was looking for!” Septimus Lockyer exclaimed, “But I have not a moment to spare now. Walk back with me as far as the post office.”

“Any news, sir?” asked Hewlett as he complied.

Septimus Lockyer looked at him.

“The best time to call on Mr. Edward Wallace is between five and six, Hewlett.”

“So we have found, sir. But the door fits like wax: it isn't possible to hear much.”

“It was not,” Septimus Lockyer said significantly, “but Mr. Wallace's young brother has a taste for carpentering; he has eased the door at the bottom so much, Mrs. Perks says. But there—boys will be boys, and there's no harm done!”—with a mimicry of Mrs. Perks' manner that made the detective smile.

“Have you any engagement for to-night, Hewlett?” Mr. Lockyer went on, with a sudden change of tone.

“No, sir, nothing I can't put off if there is work to be done,” the detective said hopefully.

“I want you to come to a music-hall with me.”

“A music-hall, sir?” Hewlett stared. “I don't understand!”

“Down Islington way,” Septimus Lockyer went on. “Not a swagger sort of place at all, Hewlett. We need not put on our evening clothes, and I know that moustache of yours comes off on occasion. Suppose you leave it at home to-night.”

“Of course, sir!” Hewlett looked more mystified than ever

They made their way into the orchestra stalls. Hewlett glanced around the house; it appeared to be fairly full. A much painted lady was on the stage singing one of the usual inane songs, which received but faint applause. Hewlett saw that Mr. Lockyer was not looking at the stage, that he was half turned round, as if to get a better view of the occupants of the gallery.

Instinctively the detective's eyes followed. To his surprise he saw Gregory leaning forward, his gaze fixed on the stage.

A voice began to sing in the flies, words commonplace enough in themselves, yet given with an accent that seemed to lend a certain coarse suggestiveness; then a woman bounded upon the stage and began to dance. She was veiled from head to foot in shining golden tissue—even her face was covered, save for two holes through which her eyes gleamed oddly.