Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (12 page)

“That I will, sir, and glad to. Anything I could do to punish the poor thing's murderer would be done, you may be sure.”

The two detectives did not speak until they were outside the theatre, then Harbord drew a deep breath.

“Drawn blank!”

“Practically,” the inspector assented. “Just one trifle may be useful.”

“Yes,” Harbord looked at him. “And –”

“The initials on the cigarette-case. Once we find out her real name and can trace her life from the beginning I feel sure we shall discover the clue to the mystery of her death. I had this, this morning.”

He took out his pocket-book and unfolded a sheet of paper.

“If Inspector Stoddart wishes to know Miss Karslake's address, he will hear something of her at Mrs. William Walker's, 10 Moira Road, Victoria,” he read aloud, and then passed the paper to Harbord.

“There is no signature. Nothing more to be made of it except that the postmark is Hepton,” the inspector remarked. “But I think we will pay a visit to 10 Moira Road and find out what we can learn from Mrs. William Walker.”

“H'm, I can't say Moira Road appears to be an exhilarating locality,” the inspector said, as he and Harbord stepped out of their taxi and he glanced round.

Moira Road was just a short little street at the back of Victoria. Without exception the houses seemed to belong to the lodging-house type. Number 10 differed in no appreciable respect from its neighbours.

The inspector knocked and rang, and presently the door was opened by a maidservant, who looked at them inquiringly.

“Mrs. William Walker,” the inspector said authoritatively.

Obviously the girl was much impressed. Silently she opened the door and flattened herself against the wall. The inspector walked in.

“Let Mrs. Walker know that we are here at once, please. Show her this card.”

The maid took it and then, with another glance at the inspector, she hurried off to the back regions.

They heard the sound of talking and soon a tall, untidy-looking woman appeared. One look showed the inspector that the roughly shingled hair was fair, that the big, prominent eyes were blue; and a suspicion he had entertained since he had received the anonymous letter became a certainty.

“You wanted to see me?” she said, glancing from the inspector to Harbord.

“If you can spare us a minute or two,” the inspector said politely.

“Come in.” She opened the door of a little sittingroom and motioned to them to precede her. “I have nothing much to do just now. And if I had, well – I should make time for you, Inspector Stoddart. I was going to write to you. I hear that you have been making inquiries about me in Hepton.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows in well simulated surprise.

“You mean?”

“I am – or I was before my marriage – Charlotte Carslake,” Mrs. Walker said quietly. “An old nurse of ours, Ruth Heddle, is living in Hepton. I have always kept up with her. Dr. Brett spoke to her, and she let me know.”

“And wrote an anonymous letter to me!” the inspector finished.

“An anonymous letter!” Mrs. Walker stared and laughed. “I am sure she did not. She hates putting pen to paper. It is all I can do to get her to write to me occasionally and give me a bit of news about the old place. But an anonymous letter about me! Who could have written it? And what did it say?”

“Only that if we wanted to find Miss Lotty Carslake we should do well to come to 10 Moira Road.”

“Somebody Ruth had been talking to, I suppose.” Mrs. Walker dismissed the subject with a shrug of her shoulders. “It was about Charmian Karslake I wanted to see you. I knew her years ago.”

The inspector's eyes became suddenly keen.

“At Hepton?” he questioned.

“No.” Mrs. Walker laughed. “And don't run away with the idea that she was one of our Carslakes because she wasn't. No, I first met Charmian Karslake in New York six years ago.”

“Before she made her name.”

“Decidedly before she made her name. But do sit down.” As she spoke, Mrs Walker took the chair nearest her and pulled another forward. “I am sure you would hear in Hepton that I made one of those wretched war marriages,” she proceeded. “Like most of them ours was dissolved in a year or two. I tried all sorts of ways to get my living, for by the time I had got rid of the beauty I had married I hadn't much left. Then I met Bill Walker, an American actor, and we got married almost as quickly as we managed it in the first case, and I went back with him to the States. Of course they made the usual silly row about letting me in – threatened me with Ellis Island and all sorts of things. But in the end we won. It was while we were at the Grand Follies that I first saw Charmian Karslake. She was just understudying small parts, and living at a cheap boarding-house, half starving herself and saving every penny to send away somewhere. No, I haven't an idea where it went or who it was to. But she had somebody to keep, that is certain,” Mrs. Walker anticipated the inspector's question. “Though she was so thin that her eyes seemed ever so much too big for her face, she was beautiful, a lovely, vivid thing, with hair that looked as if every strand was alive and flaming. And she could act too. I knew her chance must come and I told her so. But it did not come while I was there. My husband fell ill and I brought him home, thinking the voyage might cure him. It was too late, though, poor chap. He died before we had been at home a month; and I have been on the loose ever since, scratching for my living on the stage and off the stage, for we had got rid of most of our money before the end came for Bill. My brother, Walter, out in South Africa sends me a cheque sometimes and I manage somehow for the rest. I often think longingly of the happy and sheltered life at Hepton when I was a kid.”

“I am sure you must do,” the inspector said sympathetically. “Tell me, did you never get any idea that Charmian Karslake came from Hepton as well as yourself?”

Mrs. Walker shook her head.

“Can't say I did. We didn't have much time for jawing, you know, inspector. Theatrical folks don't. I just wish some of these novelists who write about the stage could try it for a week or two. They wouldn't find it was quite all their fancy painted it. As for Charmian Karslake, I never heard her talk of her early days. If she did come from Hepton she took jolly good care to keep it quiet. But I tell you what I do think. I think she was a Britisher, as they say over the water. I am pretty sure from little things she let drop. No, there was nothing I can repeat or remember for that matter. There were just little things she would mention – flowers in the hedgerows – well, once she mentioned the Cotswolds, I know, but when I asked her about it she drew back and said it wasn't the Cotswolds she had been talking of, it was somewhere in America and I had made a mistake, but I knew I hadn't.”

“Had she many friends when you knew her?” the inspector asked. “You will understand, Mrs. Walker, that we are out to solve the mystery of Charmian Karslake's death and personally I feel convinced that the key to the whole matter will be found in her early life and in that part of it before she became famous. And we need your help.”

“I don't believe I can help you.” Mrs. Walker drew a long breath. “Charmian was not communicative. She was ambitious and she made up her mind to get on. She worked tremendously hard, and the only extravagance she was guilty of that I know of was that she had expensive dancing lessons from one of the best teachers of stage dancing in New York. As for friends, I don't know that she had any. Nobody came to see her and she never spoke of any. No, you will have to go further back than that time in New York to find your clue, inspector.”

“You have no knowledge of anyone having a feeling of enmity towards Miss Karslake?”

“No. And I shouldn't have thought anybody could have had,” Mrs. Walker said frankly. “She was just an honest, hard-working, little actress who kept herself to herself, which is more than most of them do.”

The inspector took out his note-book. He was not getting much assistance from Mrs. Walker.

“What have you seen of Miss Karslake lately?” he asked.

“Nothing at all,” Mrs Walker replied. “I said good-bye to her in New York when we came home, and that is the last I have seen of her. I wrote to her for a bit, but it was soon after that that Louisa Marillier was taken ill, and Charmian Karslake being her understudy went on in her place and made such a hit I didn't like to press myself on her after that. And I had all the trouble over my husband's death, so we drifted right apart. When she came to London I went to see her act and stood in a queue nearly all day just to get into the pit. I dare say she would have given me tickets if I had asked her for them, but I couldn't bring myself to it.”

“Did you find her much altered?”

Mrs. Walker clasped her hands. “Oh, she was wonderful, glorious!” she breathed. “I never saw anyone so marvellously vital. You saw nobody else on the stage when she was there. She just dwarfed everybody. She would have been the best actress in the world if – if that vile man, whoever he was, had not killed her.”

“Ah! I wish you could help us to find him,” the inspector said, looking at her closely. “Somebody went down to the Abbey, perhaps, who had reason to fear her.”

“Well, I don't know who it could have been,” Mrs. Walker said, moving impatiently under the inspector's eye. “I should not think anybody had any reason to fear Charmian. If they had I know nothing about it.”

“No.” The inspector did not speak again for a minute. He glanced at his notes, and made a few apparently aimless marks with his pencil. At last he looked up. “You know Hepton very well, I take it, Mrs. Walker.”

“Oh, well, I certainly could not say that,” she re-turned. “I was only fifteen when my dear mother died and my brother and I left Hepton. I have never been back since and there's a good lot happened to make me forget, though I will say I have a good memory.”

“You remember the Penn-Moretons, of course?”

“Oh, well,” Mrs Walker laughed, not altogether agreeably, “it would be impossible for anyone who had been at Hepton for even a day to forget the Penn-Moretons, I should say. They are the only people of importance in the place and they and their doings and their sayings are canvassed in every house you go into.”

“I suppose you knew them very well, personally, I mean?” the inspector went on.

“Then you make a great mistake,” Mrs. Walker said equably. “The Penn-Moretons were just the little tin gods of the town. I am sure people went to church more to see what Lady Penn-Moreton had on and how Sir Arthur was looking than to worship God. In return the Penn-Moretons were very good to us. They gave soup and other delicacies to the inhabitants. I remember when my mother was ill they sent grapes and pheasants. But as for calling upon us or knowing us, why, dear me, they would have thought us mad to expect such a thing. They would bow to us when they met us, but only as a king and queen bow to their subjects. Oh, I have no use for such a place as Hepton with its petty class restrictions.”

Mrs. Walker was getting breathless and her cheeks were hot as she stopped. Evidently Hepton society and its restrictions were subjects that moved her deeply.

The inspector gave her time to recover herself and apparently devoted his attention to the aspidistra in the window. When he did speak again it was very quietly:

“Did you ever know a Peter Hailsham?”

“Peter Hailsham!” Mrs. Walker started and stared at him, the flush in her cheeks faded slowly away. “What do you know of Peter Hailsham?”

“Not so much as I should like,” the inspector said candidly. “Nor so much as you could tell us, I fancy.”

“I – I can tell you nothing of Peter Hailsham,” Mrs. Walker said in a tone of indignation which somehow did not ring true to the detective's ears. “At least nothing but what everybody else knew in the Hepton of my day,” she went on. “An old man named Peter Hailsham lived by the side of the Canal, a rag-and-bone picker. He sold mixed sweets and ginger-pop. But he must have died years ago.”

“A Mr. Peter Hailsham was present at the Hepton ball,” the inspector said quietly.

“What!” Mrs. Walker stared and laughed, glancing up at Stoddart in a curious, sidelong fashion. “Not the gentleman of the Canal bank, I presume?”

“That seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?” The inspector's tone had altered indefinably. “But do you know that Mr. Peter Hailsham – the one who was at the ball – Mrs. Walker?”

“I? Certainly not! Haven't I just told you that I do not – never did have anything to do with the Penn-Moretons or their friends?” Mrs. Walker retorted. “I can't tell you any more, inspector, not if you question me for hours.”

“You sent for me, inspector.” Harbord had just entered the inspector's private room at Scotland Yard.

“Yes, I want to consult with you as to our next step in the Charmian Karslake case. As far as I can see we are at a regular deadlock. Those damned newspapers are on to us too. Lists of undiscovered murders – police failures. Is our detective system inferior to that of France? I could tell them that, if they keep up an infernal outcry every time we question witnesses, there will be a good many more criminals going about unpunished.”

By which Harbord understood that the inspector was more upset over the Hepton Abbey case than he wished to appear.

“It is a difficult case,” he agreed; “whichever way one goes one finds oneself up against some nasty snag or another. How did you get on at the flat, sir?”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

“Not what I hoped for. Certainly Charmian Karslake was an adept at concealing her traces. How did you prosper at the Bank?”

“Fairly well. The necessary permission has come through. The deed-box may be opened in the presence of the manager of the Bank; but nothing it contains is to be taken away.”