by E.
The matron of the theatrical club could add little more. She believed that Miss de Grey came originally from Lancashire, but thought one of the girls now in the club might know more. She had been a bit friendly with Miss de Grey.
The girl, Marion Strange, a chorus lady, agreed that Miss de Grey had come from Manchester. She had, she said, run away from home to go on the stage, and had started in the chorus before becoming a show girl. Then she got a small part in a musical comedy on tour. She had appeared in several other little parts, and then, said Miss Strange, she met a gentleman friend. He had financed a small, but expensive, flat in Kensington for her. Since then, Miss Strange announced, she had not seen much of Miss de Grey, whom she had known as just Norma Grey. She had read that she was playing Boy in Dick Whittington, and wondered what kind of a job she’d make of it.
The problem of the Kensington flat gave Inspector Kenway a headache. He could find no Norma Grey in the telephone book. It was not until he telephoned Burlington police that he obtained a clue to it. The Burlington inspector visited the girl’s diggings in the town. Where, he asked the landlady, had Miss de Grey written from when booking the rooms? After some searching, the woman was able to produce a letter giving a Kensington address. This the inspector telephoned to Kenway.
On arriving at the address he was staggered to find Inspector Makepeace already making inquiries at the block. He was even more surprised to hear that the inspector’s inquiries were directed to a telephone call to a man.
“Sounds to me like the gentleman friend,” he announced.
“Gentleman friend,” echoed Makepeace. “What’s all this about, anyway?”
After comparing notes the two interviewed the porter together. That worthy agreed that a Miss de Grey had occupied flat number 27. Very nice person she was, on the stage. He had heard of her death, and was very sorry indeed to hear it.
She had, he said, vacated the flat a week before the tragedy. The furniture had been removed on her written instructions. She had given written notice of her intention to give up the flat a week before that—in Christmas week, he thought—and then a van had come for the furniture, the driver of which had produced a letter from her. The van, he thought, came from Barings.
“Gentleman friend? Well, gentlemen, I do know that she had a gentleman caller sometimes. Rather foreign-looking gentleman he was, tall gentleman, and good-looking in a foreign sort of way, if you get me.”
He did not know his name, said the man, never having heard it, and he had not seen him since Miss de Grey had left.
“Better go and see Barings, and find out what happened to the furniture,” suggested Inspector Makepeace.
Inspector Kenway shook his head.
“I think perhaps not,” he rejoined. “I think we’d better tell the doctor first, and see what he says about it.”
“Why?”
“Well, as I see it, Makepeace, there’s a link-up here. I come to this flat on a hunt into Miss de Grey. I find you here, on a hunt about a fire. I don’t know whether you know it, but Doctor Manson is working on a series of fires. If we go messing about with the furniture in this flat we might be getting in his way. Apparently your man made a slip-up in asking for the telephone number of this flat first. The Doctor might not want the man to know that we are on to this flat.”
Doctor Manson, told of the decision, nodded warm approval. “You did very well, Kenway,” he said. “It would, as it happens, have been a fatal move. I do not know, as yet, how far Mr. da Costa is mixed up with the fire at Shepherd’s Bush, and I do not know whether he is concerned at all with the other fires, but any inquiries into the whereabouts of the furniture would in all probability have put him on his guard. We can, I think, assume that the furniture was his, or at least he had paid for it, and that it has probably gone back to his charge, now that Miss de Grey is dead.”
He thought over the points of the interviews which the inspector had had with the Dick Whittington company. “I should think that the pair had broken off their relationship,” he said, “and that the break dated from the time Miss Prue missed the photograph of the handsome gentleman from the dressing table of Miss de Grey in the Burlington theatre. The date would seem to agree with the time that Miss de Grey gave notice to vacate the flat, if she had lost the financial support of Mr. da Costa, she obviously couldn’t keep up the rent of the flat. Is there any other point in the talks you have had which suggests anything to you?” he concluded.
“Only one thing, Doctor. And that is Lancy, the second Cat. He was violently bitter against Miss de Grey. Called her a bitch. But what excited my interest was his saying that he had never known her, and that he had never met her in the show.”
“What worries you about that, Kenway?”
“Well, Doctor, we know that Enora did not play the Cat on Highgate Hill that night, don’t we? So Lancy must have been playing. . . .”
Doctor Manson regarded the inspector thoughtfully.
“Does it not occur to you, Kenway, that Lancy does not know that we are aware that Enora was not on the stage in the Highgate Hill scene; that he thinks we are under the delusion that he was on the stage? Nobody, except us, is aware that it was impossible for Enora to have been playing the part. The entire company knew that Bradley had stationed two plainclothes men at the bedside of the man, and I suppose they still believe that Enora is virtually under arrest, and will be arrested when he is able to leave hospital.”
“You mean that the company are probably under the delusion that Enora poisoned Miss de Grey, and then dashed up to his room and tried to commit suicide by poisoning himself, and didn’t take enough stuff?” asked Kenway.
Doctor Manson considered the question carefully before he replied. “I think it quite possible, Kenway,” he said at last. “Except for one person, maybe two, but more probably a single one—the one who removed the greasepaint and the bottle that had contained beer, and the glass that went with it, from the dressing-room of Enora.”
CHAPTER XVI
INK AND ASHES
Now, ink is a weapon fraught with menace to bad men. The adage of a worldly father to his son, come of age, about saying what you like to a lady but never putting it into writing, is proverbial. But that refers only to the laws of evidence. That is the least of the perils of ink. There are also the gentlemen who tell your character from your writing. Unpleasant, sometimes, but not a menace. The peril of the use of ink is not so much in the writing with it as in the writing in it. For inked words in the hands of a forensic chemist can reveal all kinds of unpleasant things that the writer fondly hoped, and certainly expected, would remain for ever hidden.
The forger who takes out one figure and substitutes another is doomed; the ink will give him away. The fraudulent heir who maintains that the will under which he is benefiting was made six years ago is like to be gaoled by a learned man who talks to the judge and jury of the oxidation of ferrous iron in ink, or the diffusion of sulphates.
The point was well illustrated by Doctor Manson’s explanation of certain proved facts to the conference which the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) called in order to learn what progress had been made in the crime at Burlington, and whether the apparent link-up with the fires had been strengthened, or disproved.
At the request of Doctor Manson, Mr. Redwood, of the insurance societies, had been invited to be present at the conference—a little unusual, Sir Edward had suggested, to be met with the reply from the scientist that perhaps it was, but he regarded it as worth while, and Redwood was a lawyer who would keep his mouth shut about facts that transpired about the murder side of the inquiry.
Sir Edward listened without much interruption to the reports of the officers who had inquired further into the death of Miss de Grey. The past life of Miss de Grey, so far as it had been made known, was related by Inspector Kenway. He regarded the inquiries as telling only that Miss de Grey had a gentleman friend, who was maintaining her flat, and that they had apparently quarrelled about a week after she had gone
to Burlington, and at the time that his photograph had disappeared from her dressing table in the theatre.
The meeting of Kenway and Makepeace at the Kensington flat brought a raising of the eyebrows on the face of the Assistant Commissioner.
“Then you think that Mr. da Costa is the gentleman friend of Miss de Grey?” he asked.
“It would look that way,” answered Kenway. “But we made no further inquiry pending consultation with Doctor Manson.”
The A.C. nodded. He looked towards the doctor, for the first time in the conference. It was his custom to hear the scientist’s views last of all. He liked to give that analytical mind time to coordinate the information gleaned by the other investigators and assess its possible value. He received an affirming nod from Manson, and then addressed the gathering.
“That,” he announced, “brings us to another point in this inquiry which most of you know nothing about. It is in regard to this that Mr. Redwood is present at our conference. Mr. Redwood is the legal representative of a number of insurance societies. . . .”
Briefly, the Assistant Commissioner sketched the suspicions of the insurance societies, and the result of investigations which had been carried out by Doctor Manson. He concluded with the identification of Miss de Grey’s mink coat as one which had figured in the claim of a Nottingham warehouse. “That,” he said, “seemed to link up the pantomime star with the fires.”
“But . . . nothing . . . links up with . . . murder?” suggested Superintendent Jones.
“Not that I can see,” agreed Sir Edward. “Perhaps the doctor—” He broke off and waved Manson into speech. “I think that you should now hear what the doctor has to say on the fire investigations,” he concluded.
The scientist began by answering Superintendent Jones’s question.
“No, Jones, I have nothing to link the death of Miss de Grey with the fires. Only her life is joined in some way with the goods destroyed, or supposed to have been destroyed by the flames,” he said. “At the moment, the two inquiries are a jigsaw puzzle with the key piece unidentified. I am wondering whether the Shepherd’s Bush fire is the key-piece. And I think it will be best if I explain what the Laboratory has discovered out of that fire.”
Mr. Redwood, who up to now had listened with no more than a polite interest, now sat up and began to take notice. The scientist eyed him, smilingly.
“The first thing I had to probe was whether the fire was accidental, or otherwise,” Doctor Manson began. “Mr. Oppenheimer, the proprietor of the business, suggested that a woman worker, whose job it was to alter and press frocks which had been sold, had left an electric iron burning, and that this might have set fire to material on which it was standing, and that this led to the place catching fire. It was a fact that the seat of the fire seemed to be at a spot which Mr. Oppenheimer explained was a part of the premises partitioned off by plywood and curtains for the purpose of making a small work-room. The floor was badly burned at that spot.”
The scientist described how he had cut away some of the charred boards, and had tested them in the laboratory.
“It is a simple test, but remarkably efficient,” he said. “It disclosed the presence of paraffin still in the charred fragments.”
He looked across at Mr. Redwood.
“Now, if a candle standing on a floor burned down to its end, or was otherwise melted by heat, I should expect to find in the boards traces of paraffin wax. Paraffin is an exceedingly difficult thing to get completely rid of; it actually hangs about for weeks afterwards. And one way of starting a fire is to place a candle on, say a celluloid tray, so that when it burns down to the tray, the latter at once flares up and sets fire to any inflammable material that may have been arranged round it.
“So I had some grounds on which to base a suspicion that the fire which destroyed the shop was not accidental. Not, of course, evidence. Paraffin might have been spilt there. Fortunately, other material for tests, confirmatory or otherwise, was at hand.”
The scientist next described the tests which he had applied to the portions of soot which he had taken.
“The presence of lead supposes the use of petrol,” he explained. “Now, the spot from which I had taken this particular specimen of soot was over the area from which came the paraffin traces. It is worth noting that petrol gives a large burst of flame but not a lasting one; it burns out very quickly, unless fed by something else, by some other substance. Further afield, the soot samples that greasy appearance due to oil, and very little evidence of petrol.”
Finally, Manson detailed the finding of indium in the ash debris.
“This was to me remarkably interesting,” he announced. “Because whatever explanation there may be for the accidental presence of paraffin and petrol in the debris, I can imagine none for indium, which is a metal not only very rare, generally, but exceedingly rare in this country. I have come across it only on one occasion here, and that was in the laboratory of a scientist. He had sent to America for a few pieces of it for experimental purposes. There is no doubt whatever that the stuff was indium; its spectrum colour and its place on the wave band were quite convincing. I am hoping that a metallurgist of my acquaintance may be able to suggest some explanation of the phenomenon.”
The Assistant Commissioner digested the explanation during a pause in the recapitulation of the experiments. He now spoke.
“I gather then, Doctor, that you think that what took place in that shop was something like this: Inflammable material was piled round a celluloid tray on which was stood a candle, lighted. The candle burned down to the tray, which then caught fire, igniting in its turn the petrol-soaked material, and this, by means of an oily trail, was conveyed to other parts of the interior.”
Doctor Manson nodded. “That is exactly what I conjecture to have taken place,” he agreed.
“Then that is incendiarism,” said the Assistant Commissioner.
He considered the point for a moment or two. Then: “But it has a weakness so far as the investigations into the series of fires are concerned, and one that will have to be eliminated.”
“And that is?” asked Doctor Manson.
“Who done it.”
The reply came from Superintendent Jones. The fat man of the Yard leaned forward.
“Oppenheimer’ll say . . . wasn’t near Bush . . . miles away . . . old game . . . candle . . . give him time . . . get forty miles away.”
Manson nodded agreement. So did the Assistant Commissioner.
“He can say . . . somebody broke in . . . stole something . . . set fire to place . . . can say . . . employee must have done it. Can you say . . . Oppenheimer . . . did it. If . . . can’t . . . no link Oppenheimer or Bush . . . other fires.”
The Assistant Commissioner turned his gaze from Jones to the scientist.
Manson grinned delightedly. “Excellently argued, Jones,” he said. “Becoming quite imaginative, aren’t you?” There was a ripple of laughter among the Yard men for the lack of imagination of the fat superintendent was something of a joke. He was the greatest hunter of facts the Yard possessed, but his usefulness generally ended there.
“The answer to Jones’s argument is this,” the scientist proceeded. “If I can prove attempts at fraud on the insurance companies by Oppenheimer, by which he would gain large sums of money to which he was not entitled, then I think we should be entitled to assume that the fire we have found to be incendiary was indeed contrived by him for the purpose of thus defrauding.”
“Can you?” demanded Mr. Redwood.
“I think that I can,” was the reply.
“How?” The query came from the Assistant Commissioner.
For reply, Doctor Manson produced the day book and the stock sheets taken from Mr. Oppenheimer. He opened the former and displayed its pages.
“The purpose of this day book,” he explained, “is the purpose of all day books of business houses—to give an account of purchases and sales of each day. From it, and from the stock lists allied to it, the prop
rietors of the business can compute their stocks, their expenses and their receipts. The balance is, naturally, profit. The day book is, of course, made up from day to day. The stock list is compiled from time to time as goods are purchased, and as goods are sold. The stock list goes back to the day that the shop at Shepherd’s Bush was opened—some six weeks before the fire. It shows—or it purports to show—what was destroyed in the fire, and that means the amount of the damage which Mr. Oppenheimer is about to claim from Mr. Redwood’s company. Is that clear?”
There was general agreement that the facts were as the scientist had stated.
Doctor Manson continued.
“It is an old-established scientific fact that ink darkens with exposure to the air. The explanation is that the gallotannates of iron deepen in colour with oxidation. Because of this it is possible for an expert to tell if any expiry of time has taken place between the writing of any one part of the text and another. The time that has elapsed cannot be stated with any degree of accuracy; only the fact that it was not written at the same time, although in certain circumstances it is possible to say definitely that a period exceeding twenty-one days has passed between two entries. There is, for instance, the case of an Archdeacon some years ago in which he claimed that the words ‘and wife’, after his name in a hotel register, had been added some time after he had written his own name there. It was proved that the words were written at the same time, and by himself.
“Now, I took this day book and the stock sheets and tested them. The test is not a difficult one for an expert. From a dozen or so different entries I subtracted the colour of the ink with the aid of re-agent. These subtractions I compared through a comparison microscope and regulation tintometer glasses.
“I could find no variation of any kind in the colour of the ink used on the pages of this day book. Neither could I find any variation in the colour of the inked entries in the stock lists, although those entries purport to extend over a period of six weeks.
