by Zenith Brown
“Nor men either, Bull; be fair.”
“So I got started wrong, sir. I thought Mrs. Colton had fired those two shots that night on the Colnbrook Road. I didn’t think she’d shoot as wild as all that unless she meant to. She nearly hit the driver, so when he was shot I said to myself, ‘She’s done it right this time.’ She says now she wasn’t trying to hit the man, just frighten him.”
“I see, Bull. But I take it Field wasn’t frightened into shooting Colton?”
“Not him, sir. It was all planned. It was the girl, really. She was a vicious one. She hated Louise Colton, and she hated her father for marrying her. She tried to get away, but her father wouldn’t let her go. So she took matters into her own hands.”
“Through Field?”
“Well, Field was in love with her. He put all his money into her account at Lloyd’s in Paris if anything happened to him; and he tried to hold me until she got away. Then there was the money.”
“She had a fair income, didn’t she?”
“As it turned out, she did, sir. But there was the rub. Colton was hard up. He’d tied everything up so his wife couldn’t get it until some time after he’d died. Then he found he needed cash, so he started converting the securities he’d left his daughter. They were the easiest negotiated. Field protested; the old fellow swore he’d cut the girl off without a shilling. I don’t doubt he would have done, too. So they decided to put an end to it. It was the girl who persuaded him to come back by Colnbrook. Field told me this. She asked her father to pick her up at the Lane-Frazier’s on the Road; said she was having dinner there. He didn’t like to explain his reasons to people.”
“And young Royce?”
“Well, the girl was entirely unscrupulous, sir. His mother kept telling him she didn’t really care for him at all. That’s what they quarrelled about. Then Gates wrote Mrs. Royce a letter saying Agatha and Field had been negotiating for the sale of diamonds with an underground buyer in Antwerp. She told her son that. He raised a terrible row and was off to France. When he heard Peskett was killed he knew Agatha had done it and decided to stand by. She wasn’t waiting for a call from him. She was just pretending, getting a good pettish reason for going off to Paris.
“You see, it started—or the complications did—when Peskett recognised Field. He started to blackmail him. He got hold of Doaks and paid him to let him into Field’s rooms. He was looking for the revolver and also for the diamonds. Field, after he’d shot Colton, drove to Cranford, got his car out of an empty estate garden and came calmly in to town. He unlocked the shop—with keys he’d got from Colton—and simply put the diamonds in the top drawer of Colton’s private desk. I was fooled by the gold key. I almost had my hands on them the first time I went in the place.”
“It was Field who was there that night?”
Bull nodded.
“Not Gates?”
“Gates was never near the place, after the murder. He was on a buying trip. And that’s a funny thing, sir.”
Debenham looked up from the squares and circles he was drawing on his desk pad.
“What is?”
“That trip. Do you remember the emerald collar that belonged to the Dowager?”
Debenham grinned.
“Rather.”
“Well, you see Steiner is mad about diamonds. Colton wasn’t. But as Steiner told me—and I should have known he had a reason—Colton would sell his soul for emeralds. Gates was in Nice, negotiating with Lady Blanche for her mother-in-law’s emeralds. Gates got them for Colton for £ 15,000 cash.”
“Is that where the emeralds were lost?” Debenham said with a grin. “Good Lord! Dryden persuaded me an American gang had got them; he sailed yesterday for New York and Chicago.”
Bull allowed himself a respectful smile.
“Well, sir, I think Gates got the £ 15,000 on the promise of Mrs. Royce’s diamonds; and I think it was from Steiner. The whole thing of course was grossly illegal. That’s why Gates got the wind up and had to lie low. He had the emeralds and not only that, he had already taken them out of the Duchess’s collar. He put them in a deposit vault in Brussels and came back to tell Mrs. Colton, Mrs. Royce and Field the whole story. By that time the police were after him and he lost his head. Then he found out that somebody was negotiating with the Belgian fence Arnaud, and that it was Field. He got in touch with Field. This comes from a letter I got this morning from Steiner, and from Field. Well, then Field was going to turn the diamonds over to him to take to Mrs. Royce. Gates knew Hammersmith, Shepherd’s Bush and Bond-street; he didn’t know Trig-lane.
“In the meantime when Field saw I was on Doaks’s track he planted his gun in Doaks’s box and wore Doaks’s overcoat All he had to do to get rid of Doaks was to leave the brandy out. And Doaks found the gun in his box, and was on the point of signalling me when Field caught him and tied him up.”
Debenham smiled.
“Jackson pulled Doaks out of the linen press that night” he said. “Field had done a good job of tying up. Much better, I judge, than Pinkerton did with Miss Colton’s chemises, or whatever they call them nowadays.”
“He was lucky Field rather liked him,” Bull commented.
“Precisely. You haven’t told me how Mr. Pinkerton discovered Agatha.”
“He says he knew it was Agatha as soon as I found the bolt in her table, and she mentioned how soundly she’d slept. I don’t believe it. I think he was still following Mrs. Colton. He was sure at first that she was in it. I think he sort of happened on to Agatha.”
Bull’s sober face became more sober as he thought of Mrs. Colton.
“You see, Mrs. Colton was sure she was being drugged, but she was afraid to say so. She called Bellamy. He refused to let her stay in the house alone. She used to smuggle him in after Agatha was out of the way. Agatha knew it, and she and Field decided to polish her off. In that case Agatha would get the whole fortune. She drugged Mrs. Colton’s coffee with Luminall and got her into the car. I don’t think she would have been found, out there on the Common, for a long time. Agatha hated her like poison. Well, Pinkerton was watching; he saw them come out, and he hung onto the spare tire. Out on the Common he had quite a tussle with Agatha. I should have thought she was stronger than he was. Then he found a man to take the telephone message.”
Bull smiled. So did the Commissioner.
“It was the fastest ride he ever had.”
“Well, Bull, what was the little gold key?”
Bull blushed.
“It was the key to his first wife’s jewel box. It was to go to Agatha at her marriage.”
“You got off on Mrs. Royce too, Bull, I think.” The Commissioner smiled again. “When you’ve known as many old Tartars of the late reign as I have, Bull, you’ll never suspect them of anything more than a desire to be loyal, kind and generous without anybody’s knowing it.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Mr. Steiner to see you, sir.”
“Ask him to come in. Hello, Mr. Steiner. You know Inspector Bull.”
“Very well,” said Albert Steiner. He peered myopically at Bull, and smiled his dark enigmatic smile.
“Why did you go, Mr. Steiner?” Bull asked. “Do you mind telling me?”
“I will gladly tell you. I went because you were going to arrest me, and Mr. Field was going to shoot me; and I was afraid Mr. Field would be first. I was trying to tell you what it was all about, Inspector, when I told you that Colton was fond of emeralds. I’ve known Mr. Field for many years. I’ve warned Mrs. Colton as much as I dared. I’m very glad she is free. She is a beautiful woman. One of the few women I’ve known who can really wear diamonds.”
In Cadogan-square Louise Colton, Dr. Bellamy and Mr. Pinkerton were having tea.
“I don’t know how I can ever thank you, Mr. Pinkerton,” she said. Her eyes still bore traces of the harrowing three weeks.
“You mustn’t try, ma’am,” Mr. Pinkerton stammered, blushing behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. “You see,
I knew about Dr. Bellamy. I knew he would want to know, because when I first began to watch your house, he used to walk by. In fact, we each suspected the other for a while—until I saw his face one night when he looked up at your window.”
Dr. Bellamy flushed like a school-boy. Louise Colton smiled charmingly.
“If you’ll excuse me, I think I shall go to Scotland Yard to find my friend Inspector Bull.”
Mr. Pinkerton long considered that his most tactful remark. He got his hat and let himself out of the front door.
“You ought to get away from here, Louise,” Dr. Bellamy said gruffly. “You look perfectly ghastly.”
“I know,” she said, wistfully gazing out of the window. “But I hate to go alone.”
“I’ll wire your brother. He can take you to Italy or Norway or somewhere.”
She shook her lovely pale gold head.
“What about Mrs. Royce, then?”
“Or one of the lions in Trafalgar-square.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
The corners of her mouth slowly began to quiver, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I can’t think of anyone else,” he said helplessly, and looked at her.
Louise Colton was crying.
Bellamy was on his knees beside her. She was sobbing like a tired child in his arms. He didn’t feel helpless any longer. The years he had adored her and been afraid of her, watched her growing up, marrying George Colton, had thought he hated her for it, were gone. She was his. Her sobs gradually became quieter, then stopped. She looked up, and the grief had gone from her eyes.
“Darling,” she whispered, “don’t make me go away! Please!”
