by Zenith Brown
Bull read it and put it aside. He was always let down a little, he felt, by anonymous letters, especially letters from servants accusing their employers. This letter he took to come from such a source. The cheap paper, bad ink and pen, together with the knowledge—or claimed knowledge—of the Coltons’ private lives—pointed to some one of their servants. Probably the girl who led him outside, Bull thought. He looked at it carefully. Could it be from someone else—Agatha Colton, for instance? He decided that that suspicion was wrong; there was no doubt the letter had been written by an illiterate. The writing was not disguised.
He looked at the postmark. S.W. 5 Earl’s-court. That would put the girl—he assumed it was a woman for the reason that it was the sort of thing women did—probably in one of the long deadly streets off Richmond-road. Finborough-road, somewhere along there. He put the letter in his pocket again and smoked a pipe, his forehead screwed into an agony of concentration.
Finally he came to a conclusion and his brow cleared. He reached for the telephone and put in a call.
“Hello, Crissie! Is there a letter for me? From France? Madam’s writing? Fine. I’ll be home early.”
Mr. Field was already at the jeweller’s shop in St. Giles-street when Inspector Bull got there at half-past three. He had put up the shutters with the help of the doorman across the way and had removed the black cloth coverings from the show case.
“Mrs. Colton tells me Gates hasn’t turned up,” he said. “Do you know where he is?”
“I’ve got a man hunting him,” Bull answered. “We’ve not had any luck so far. Rather holds us up, too. I understand that those two with Colton were the only people who knew anything of the actual working of the shop.”
“I’m afraid that’s right. Colton was curiously old-fashioned in some ways. I fancy, however, that we can find whatever you want in the papers I’ve brought along, and the files here. What do you want, by the way?”
Field looked up suddenly with an air of perplexity.
“I don’t know exactly,” Bull said stolidly.
“What I mean is, Inspector, I don’t see that anything here is going to help you find out who held up and robbed Colton.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Bull. “Can you open the safes?”
“No, I can’t. I’ve told you that Colton didn’t confide in anyone. He said once that he’d make provisions in case of his death, but he never did, that I know of.”
“All right. I’ve got a man outside who’ll open them for us. I wanted you chiefly as a witness.”
Mr. Field looked at him in surprise.
“You mean you’re going to have these safes forced?”
A faint grin warmed Inspector Bull’s simple face.
“No,” he said. “Francher won’t have to force them. He can open them without any trouble. He’s reliable—been working for the Crown one way and another almost all his life.”
He didn’t bother to explain that at present one of Mr. Fancher’s ways of serving the Crown was as cook’s assistant at Pentonville.
The man came in, an insignificant, rather apathetic figure with a thin nose and long sensitive fingers. He took off his cap and cast an uncertain glance at the immaculate Mr. Field. He smiled timidly at Inspector Bull.
“That ’er, sir?” he said, nodding at the enormous Davy safe in the corner. “Purty!”
Field put on his pince-nez and looked at the Inspector. He cleared his throat.
“You’re quite sure that this is . . . in order?” he asked cautiously.
“You can stop me if you want to,” Bull said, “—until I get a court order.”
Francher jumped at the word.
“But this is a case of murder, Mr. Field”
“I know it is, Inspector. But I don’t see that there’s the slightest possibility of finding useful evidence here?”
“Well,” Bull said, “Colton’s dead. Smith’s dead. Gates has disappeared. That’s the lot of ’em. They were the only people who could get in this place. Wednesday night, after Colton was shot, a man came here. He came in with a key. Perfectly familiar with the place, do you see? He asked the constable on duty to stop at the door until he came out. Stayed here three or four minutes and went away.”
“You think it was Gates?”
“I don’t know. Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
Mr. Field looked doubtful.
“Nothing was disturbed, Inspector. Look at it!”
He waved his hand around the orderly shop.
“That’s just what we don’t know, Mr. Field,” returned Inspector Bull. “That’s what I want to see the inside of these safes for.”
The other glanced quickly at him.
“I mean,” Bull continued imperturbably, “that if Gates came here knowing what he does about the shop, he could have gone through these safes and emptied them with nobody the wiser until they were opened by due process of law. Meanwhile, he’d have plenty of time to get rid of his haul. That’s why I want to see the inside of them—or it’s one reason.”
Mr. Field said nothing for a moment.
“Mrs. Colton said Smith was trying to tell her something when he came there. Do you think he knew about it? You know his record, of course. Do you think he was involved?”
“And changed his mind when he heard Colton was murdered?”
“Exactly.”
Bull shook his head.
“I don’t know. Let’s see if anything is missing.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Field.
Bull nodded to the little man, who had drawn a chair in front of the safe and was awaiting orders. He gave the two men a pleased smile and began to work, quickly and deftly.
While Bull watched him—just, he thought, to be on the safe side—Field began to go through the papers he had in his case.
“This is what we need,” he said, handing a sheaf of foolscap to Bull. “It’s the inventory. Fortunately, it was taken only three weeks ago or so. Here we are—January 26th.”
Bull glanced through the neatly written columns.
“We’ll have to have an expert check it before we’re through,” he remarked. “I suppose we could tell now if there was any considerable tampering.”
Francher stopped a moment and leaned back in his chair. He mopped his forehead with a grimy handkerchief and grinned sheepishly at Bull.
“ ’Ard work, it is, sir,” he said. “I’m a little ahrt of practise, as you might say. An’ you cahn’t tyke yer time. Yer cahn’t never forget yer ‘aven’t got orl night to it.”
He went back to work. In a moment he grinned again as his delicate ear caught the whirr of the mechanism as the bolts slipped into place. In another moment the great door swung open.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mr. Field’s troubled face cleared. A faint flicker of amusement disturbed the cold slate blue of his eyes.
“You gave me quite a turn, Inspector,” he said pleasantly.
Bull’s face seldom showed emotion of any sort. He was one of those fortunate people who feel no responsibility about their theories being infallibly correct. If Mr. Field expected him to be disconcerted when he found the contents of the safe undisturbed, he was wrong. Bull examined the neatly arranged trays of exquisitely mounted stones, and unwrapped several costly ornaments. One diamond and emerald tiara along was worth Bull’s income for ten years, even before deducting the tax.
He closed the door of the safe and spun the knobs into place.
Now that one of his theories was apparently disproved, he wasted no time regretting it.
“Will you have the inventory checked within the next few days, Mr. Field,” he said. “If there’s any motive for Gates’s disappearance I’d like to know it. There’s no one else that I can see who had a key to the place, and a perfect right to come and go as he pleased.”
“Has it occurred to you, Inspector,” asked Field, “that he may have come here that night with some perfectly legitimate purpose, and got the wind up when he heard Colton was dead? He
must have known, of course, that he himself was one of the few people who knew Colton was bringing the diamonds to town that night.”
Bull made no comment. The solicitor continued.
“If Gates had killed Colton and taken the diamonds, he would never have come back here. He’d have taken the next boat to Amsterdam or New York.”
“Did he know Colton was bringing the stones in that night, Mr. Field?”
“I should suppose so. It was quite common knowledge. Miss Colton rang me up to try to get her father to send a bonded guard after them in the daytime. As I understood it, Inspector, Mr. Colton had a possible purchaser for them. I see no reason to think Gates wouldn’t have known it.”
It was time for tea when Inspector Bull and Mr. Field came out of the shop in St. Giles-street, Bond-street. With the aid of the doorman across the way they drew the steel shutters down over the faded emblems of the Coltons’ magnificent patrons and locked them.
“I’ll run out to Cadogan-square,” said Field, getting into his car, “and tell them the place is intact.”
He put his foot on the starter.
“May I drop you anywhere?”
“No, thanks,” said Bull.
“Very well then, Inspector. I’ll take care of the inventory. Til get two of Steiner’s clerks to check it. Do you want to have a man present?”
“I think not. You’re an executor? Who’s the other?”
“Steiner.”
Bull stepped off a bus at the Strand Corner House. It was the most convenient place for tea when he was on his way back to New Scotland Yard. The walk down Whitehall was just enough to cope with the enormous tea of Devonshire cream and raspberry jam that he usually managed to put away.
It was a little after five o’clock when he got a seat by a window on the first floor. He gave the waitress his order and gazed idly around the crowded room. He caught a glimpse of the Evening Standard over the shoulder of the woman at the next table. Her husband was reading the back page.
His gaze wandered about. Every paper he could see had the Colnbrook Outrage inquest displayed in large type. Bull knew what they were all saying. Scotland Yard for all its reputation was unable to cope with simple highway robbery. They were probably citing the case of a recent £ 10,000 hold-up in an American city—Baltimore, was it?—where the police had got their man in three days. And they weren’t Scotland Yard. Bull sighed and poured his tea and stirred it, profoundly comfortable in spite of his critics.
He was finishing his first cup of tea when he saw two people he knew. They came in and took a table not very far from his, on the other side of one the waitresses used for service. They had not seen him, and he was mildly grateful to the stationary young woman whose customers were, for the moment, all fed. She made an effective screen around which he could watch Agatha Colton and Michael Royce without their seeing him.
She was talking softly but urgently. He was listening with far more genuine concern in his handsome dark face than Bull imagined possible. This Michael Royce was very different from the young gentleman with the elevated eyebrow and amused flicker that Bull had seen at Windsor. His face watching the girl was curiously tender.
Bull watched them steadily. The man ordered tea and the girl waited impatiently for the waitress to leave. She continued talking, pushing her plate away with an impatient gesture and leaning forward a little across the table. When tea came, she poured it, handling the tea things with a sort of bewildered delicacy. Gradually she became calmer, and by the time Michael Royce passed his cup again she was smiling.
Detective-Inspector J. Humphrey Bull would have denied, and correctly, any academic knowledge of psychology. But he had a practical working knowledge of how people act He knew, therefore, from his five minutes’ observation, several things. First, that Agatha Colton was not an habitué of Messrs. Lyons’ Corner House. Second, that they had just met; because her urgency had gradually subsided. Third, he knew that Michael Royce was in love with Agatha Colton.
Similarly Inspector Bull knew nothing of formal logic. But he knew better perhaps than Aristotle or Whitehead that for some reason Miss Colton and Royce were meeting secretly, that they had chosen this place as the least likely for them to be seen by anyone who knew them. And finally he knew that Agatha was extremely worried about something that Michael Royce had been able to reassure her about
Bull took the check the waitress pushed significantly in front of him and made his way to the cashier’s desk by the door. There was little chance that they would notice him, enormous as he was. They would not have seen an elephant carrying the Shah of Persia. He paid his bill and stepped into the lift. Two women were talking. They wore bright gold wedding rings and had cinema programmes in their hands.
“You needn’t to tell me she didn’t do it,” said one of them indignantly. “It’s plain as the nose on your face. She shot him with that revolver. She and the driver.”
“There was only one shot from her revolver,” said her friend. More, Bull thought, from argumentativeness than conviction.
“Of course! She’d put another shell back in before the police got there!”
It was dark and drizzly in the Strand. Bull turned his collar up around his neck, thrust his hands in his deep overcoat pockets, and turned toward Trafalgar-square. He went slowly down Whitehall, feeling rather depressed.
Brindley had turned in a report on Smith during the afternoon. Bull glanced over it. The man had managed to keep his secret fairly well guarded. There was no mention of the crime that sent him to Dartmoor. In fact there was no mention of anything that would distinguish him from the millions of Londoners who pay their rent, regularly go to business, return home and go to bed. The purple patch in his early life had faded into the distance. He had probably forgot it himself, or thought of it as an adventure in someone else’s life. Poor Smith!
Suddenly Bull realised that it was not poor Smith that he was thinking about. It was a man and a girl in a Lyon’s tea shop.
He cleared up several minor matters on his desk. Disposed of eight kittens who had started a neighbourhood row near the Oval. Arranged for Piper Tom’s aged mother to draw his unemployment insurance while he was at Princetown; and passed on some evidence that connected two cat burglars in Wormwood Scrubs with the erratic Miss Abury of Westminster. Then he got on his hat and coat again.
He went home on the Underground. On the way he read the Standard and the News over a bank clerk’s greenish-black shoulders. He listened to a prosperous-looking draper; he was telling his neighbour that there was no doubt in his mind that Mrs. Colton had murdered her husband.
When he had opened his own front door he saw Mr. Pinkerton sitting in the living room in front of the fire, reading the Standard. He turned and tapped the front page significantly with his old-fashioned eyeglasses.
“There’s not the least doubt about it, Inspector,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “Mrs. Colton murdered her husband.”
Bull took off his coat and hat and hung them in the closet. Then he put on a brown velvet smoking jacket and a pair of comfortable house slippers, and sat down on the other side of the fire with his letter from Mrs. Bull.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, and continued with his own affairs.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I insist Mrs. Colton is the murderer,” said Mr. Pinkerton.
They had discussed the case at dinner. Bull had told the little grey man about his interview with the Royces and their servants, and his seeing Agatha and Michael at the Strand Corner House. Then he remembered he had not told Pinkerton what he had done the day before, so he began at the beginning and went over everything again.
“I still insist that Mrs. Colton is the woman.”
Dinner was over and they were sitting upstairs in Inspector Bull’s dark brown den with the green desk lamp. It was fairly quiet. They could still hear the clatter of pots and pans in the scullery where “that girl”—as Mr. Pinkerton called her—was washing up.
Inspector Bull scowled.
>
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “That’s what every clerk and shop assistant in London thinks. Go down and ask Crissie. She’ll agree with you. I don’t.”
Pinkerton had never known his friend to be so stubborn before. He took off his eyeglasses and wiped his pale little eyes. Then he polished his glasses and put them on again.
“Maybe you’re right, Inspector,” he said when he had determined by squinting and examining the title page of a book on the desk that his sight was in order. He looked cautiously at Bull.
“At the same time,” the Inspector continued soberly, “there is one thing that worries me.”
Pinkerton nodded eagerly.
“You mean the motorcycle?”
“How did you guess?”
“I thought of that at once,” Pinkerton replied hastily. “It was perfectly simple. There wasn’t a sign of a motorcycle in the entrance of that place in the road. And the evening papers said nobody had heard one anywhere on the road at that time.”
“In other words,” he went on, “there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever—except the word of Mrs. Colton and the chauffeur—that there was a motorcycle, or a man on it.”
A troubled frown clouded Bull’s simple, ordinarily placid face.
“I’ve been thinking of that all day,” he admitted. “It’s a possibility. If it’s true it means that Mrs. Colton and the driver are in it together. Then they’ll have the jewels stowed away somewhere.”
Mr. Pinkerton nodded brightly.
“And in that case, Mrs. Colton just fired her gun as a blind, and the chauffeur had a gun and killed Colton. But what did he do with it?”
Inspector Bull chewed the inside of his right cheek in the deepest meditation.
“That would be easy,” he replied. “He could have thrown it over the wall into the undergrowth and got it later. Or he just put it in his pocket—nobody searched him or the car either. They could have put his revolver in the side pocket and put the satchel of jewels under the rug on the floor. I’ll just have them search the garden by the wall tomorrow.”
