Afford had been able to obtain information about this nephew. His name was James Carew Staples, and he was third officer on the Duchess of Denver, one of the Western Navigation Company’s passenger boats plying between Liverpool and South America. He was about twenty-nine, and unmarried. Before coming to Scotland Yard that morning, Afford had ascertained that the Duchess of Denver was at that moment one day out from Buenos Aires.
Moresby at once wrote out a radiogram addressed to James Staples, on board, asking him to wireless the present whereabouts of his sister and to call at Scotland Yard immediately on his return to England.
Afford was then despatched to Lewisham to make further enquiries in Burnt Oak Road and the houses whose gardens backed on to it, as to suspicious movements of strangers noticed during the summer, and particularly in the second week of August.
Moresby then sent for the inspector whose services were at his disposal, and set him to checking up the lists of missing women for the second half of the previous year. When it is realised that no fewer than six thousand women are reported as missing every year to Scotland Yard, it will be seen that this task was no light one; especially as anxious relatives, while hastening to report the missing one’s absence, hardly ever bother to report her return, as in nineteen cases out of twenty return she does.
To help the inspector in his weeding-out, he was given a copy of the doctor’s preliminary report, which had been put on Moresby’s table late the previous evening. In view of the time the body had been in the ground, this was necessarily sketchy as regards her appearance. The doctor had however been able to give the following indications:
Height: Five feet five inches.
Figure: Medium slim, but well covered.
Hair: Medium brown, but might have been darker during life.
Feet: Small. ? Size four shoes.
Teeth: All sound.
A closer examination had still revealed no natural distinguishing marks on the body, but what looked like the remains of a thin scar, some three or four inches long, had been found on the outside of the right thigh, about halfway down. It was impossible to say what colour the eyes had been, or the shape of the nose; nor was it possible to estimate the age within closer limits than twenty to thirty, and even these were elastic. The body had been in the ground certainly not less than three months, and probably not more than nine; six months was a likely guess.
This meagre information Moresby sent down for incorporation in the next day’s Police Gazette, with a note on the circumstances in which the body was found, and a request for information regarding any woman to whom the description might apply and who had been missing for the period given.
Lastly, a detective-constable was given the pair of gloves which had been taken from the dead girl’s hands, and sent off to a firm of glove manufacturers to learn what he could about them; and a second one despatched to make enquiries of every builder and builder’s merchant in London as to a single bag of cement having been sold to a private customer during the months of June, July, or August last year. As he gave this last man his instructions Moresby thought of Roger Sheringham. It is by such arduous and painstaking and quite unspectacular methods that Scotland Yard gets its results; Mr. Sheringham, Moresby thought with a small grin, would be most scornful about them.
Having thus set the wheels of his machine in motion, the chief inspector rang through to Superintendent Green to ask if he might come along to the latter’s room and discuss the case.
It was the superintendent’s custom, before he voiced his own ideas about a case, to hear those of the officer in charge of it. He therefore began the conference with a grunted request to Moresby to sketch out the lines on which he proposed to conduct the investigation, and why.
Moresby explained the steps he had already taken, which met with a short nod not so much of approval as absence of disapproval, and then went on to give his views about the case in general.
“It seems to me, sir, that there are two ways of approach: was either the murderer or the girl connected with Miss Staples, or were they both complete strangers? In the first case, you see, we ought to be able to get a line through Miss Staples, in the second we can only get one through the girl’s identity. I propose to work along both lines, of course.”
The superintendent was understood to mutter to the effect that once the girl was identified the case would probably be as plain as a pikestaff.
“Yes,” agreed the chief inspector, in a rather worried tone, “but to tell the truth, Mr. Green, I’m not too hopeful about identification. It’s a long time, you see, and there’s precious little for the relatives to swear to. We’ll probably have her identified forty times over, if I know relatives.”
“No wedding-ring.”
“No rings at all. But that doesn’t say there never were any. And it’s impossible to say whether there were any marks of rings, or not; I looked particularly for that. No, I’m not relying too much on getting her identified through herself, so to speak; it’s my belief that it’ll turn out easier to get a line on the man, and identify her through him. And that’s why I propose to work the Miss Staples end for all it’s worth.”
“Unless it turns out to be the niece.” The superintendent had already had Moresby’s report, drawn up late on the previous evening, and was informed of everything that had been discovered up till then.
“Ah, yes, sir; and that’s just what I’m hoping it will turn out to be,” Moresby admitted. “That would make things nice and easy for us, that would.”
“But apart from that, you think one of them was connected with Miss Staples?”
“I do; and there’s two things that make me think so. How else did the murderer know that house was going to be empty, and the houses on each side of it too, in the second week in August? (I’m assuming that’s when it was done.) How did he get in without leaving any traces—and you can bet the old lady didn’t leave any windows open or the back door unlocked—if it wasn’t with a key, and how did he get hold of a key, or the chance to get a key cut, if he didn’t know her, and pretty well at that? Of course, both of those apply equally well to the girl; she could have passed ’em on.”
“Something in that. Obviously premeditated, as I said yesterday. What about the cement? You think he had that there all ready?” Both officers were taking it for granted that the murderer was a man.
“It seems likely, doesn’t it, sir? And a bag, to take her clothes away in. It wouldn’t need to be a large one, the way girls’ clothes are nowadays. We’re dealing with a cunning one, all right; he had everything cut and dried beforehand. And what I mean is, he must have known some time ahead that he’d have that bit of the road to himself then, and how could he possibly have known it if he hadn’t got it (or she hadn’t got it) from Miss Staples herself?” And Moresby, feeling that he had stated the argument as forcibly as was possible, permitted himself a mild beam.
“That’s sound enough—if the murder was committed in that particular week. But you’ve not got the smallest evidence that it was.”
“Well, no, Mr. Green, I haven’t,” the chief inspector confessed, a little dashed. “But it looks to me like a safe bet.”
“We can’t rely on safe bets,” he was told severely. “We must have evidence. You know that. But there’s no harm,” added the superintendent more kindly, “in taking it as a working assumption, and seeing if you can get anything on it. Now, what about the girl? Putting the niece out of the question for the moment, have you got any ideas about her? ”
“Well, no, sir; I can’t say I have. Have you? ”
The superintendent drew for a moment or two at his pipe before he answered.
“In this sort of case it usually turns out to be husband and unwanted wife. The Rainshill business. Remember? Deeming. Buried her, and two kids, under the hearth. But that’s when they’re the occupiers. I don’t remember any other case where a house actually i
n the occupation of someone else, was made use of this way. That ought to give us something in itself, oughtn’t it?” He puffed at his pipe again. Moresby waited in interested silence. The super, when he chose, could put two and two together as well as anyone.
“It shows a high level of intelligence, for one thing. It was safer than an empty house, you see, with all that junk in the cellar. And though it looks as if more nerve was wanted, it isn’t really, if you’ve the sense to realise it. He had bad luck. It ought never to have been discovered at all. Yes, he’s certainly of a higher type than the Rainshill man; and therefore probably, but not certainly, of a higher social class.
“You get that in the girl too, don’t you? Size four shoes. And those gloves looked to me about six-and-a-half. Small hands and feet, sound teeth, well nourished. The gloves weren’t cheap ones either, you noticed. Yes, I think we can call her a lady. Of the professional class at a guess, both of them. That should help you with those lists.
“Then what about their relations with each other? Intimate, obviously. Why does a man want to get rid of a woman—a young woman? Because she’s become a nuisance to him. And that means almost invariably that she’s standing in his way with another woman. She must have been under his influence. She accompanies him, you see, to someone else’s house, and down they go to the cellar. I wonder what excuse he gave for that. They must have gone almost straight there too, because she still has her outdoor things on; hasn’t even taken off her gloves.”
“Unless he put them on her after she was dead, to mislead us in some way,” Moresby ventured to put in. “I’ve wondered about that, because of the absence of rings. It isn’t natural for a girl to wear no rings at all, is it? And if he took them off her, he must have had her glove off to do it. Well, why should he put the glove on again, instead of taking it away with the rest of her things? ”
“May be something in that,” agreed the superintendent. “It certainly looks as if he had some idea or other about those gloves. Well, you’ve got to find out what it was, that’s all.”
The telephone on the superintendent’s desk tinkled, and he lifted the receiver. “Yes? Yes, put it through here. Bristol,” he explained to Moresby. “You’d better take it.”
Much of Bristol’s information duplicated, and confirmed, that obtained by Sergeant Afford. With regard to the niece Bristol was not helpful. She had left the town on her father’s death five years ago, and the authorities knew no more about her. They were however enquiring among those of Mr. Staples’s friends who might have kept in touch with her and hoped to have something further to report later in the day. In the meantime all they could say was that her age was thirty-one, and she had been unmarried when heard of last. Mrs. Staples died in 1907.
“Humph!” observed Superintendent Green, when this had been communicated to him. “Got to wait for the radio from her brother, then. Well, that’s enough theorising. You’d better get on with it.”
Moresby went back to his own room. There was little more he could do at the moment, and he occupied himself in drawing up an official paragraph for the evening papers, on much the same lines as that for the Police Gazette, giving the dead girl’s description and asking for information. The papers could be trusted to embellish it with cajolery to their readers to recognise even from such sparse details somebody known to them; and though the inevitable result would be a flood of false identifications, each of which would have to be carefully enquired into, there was a good possibility that among them would be the correct one. In any case, it was the most hopeful line that offered at the moment. A helpful Press at their backs is one of Scotland Yard’s greatest assets.
Just as Moresby was thinking of going out to lunch his telephone-bell rang. It was the police surgeon who, with a colleague, had been spending the morning in conducting the post-mortem on the body.
“Well, we’re through, thank heaven,” he told Moresby, “and I hope you don’t find any more corpses in cellars for a long, long time. You’ll get my report later. I’m just ringing you up now to give you one bit of information red-hot, in case it helps you. In fact so far as I can see it’s the only thing we’ve found that’s likely to be of the slightest help to you. She was going to have a child. About five months gone.”
“Ah!” said Moresby, with great satisfaction. “Well, that gives us the motive at any rate. Thank you, doctor.”
CHAPTER III
The radiogram from James Staples reached Moresby that afternoon. He gave his sister’s address as a girls’ school in Berkshire, and Moresby took his inspector off his lists in order to send him down to see her. It may be said at once that the inspector found the younger Miss Staples alive and extremely well at the school, where she worked as personal secretary to the headmistress, that she was able to prove that she had been abroad with two other mistresses during the whole of the previous August, that she had scarcely known her aunt, and that she was unable to throw any light on the affair whatsoever. And that was the end of Moresby’s hopes concerning her.
He was not unduly cast down. Scotland Yard has to follow up so many false trails before it hits the true one, that the latter is cause for elation rather than the former for disappointment.
In this particular case, however, Moresby could not help feeling that the number of false trails seemed even greater than usual, and the number of pointers towards the true one even less in evidence. Beyond the fact that she was about to have a child, the surgeon’s report on the postmortem added nothing at all to his knowledge of the dead girl. The cement clue petered out; after an enormous amount of work no mysterious single bag of cement could be traced, and every one of which there was a record was accounted for.
The gloves seemed to afford no help. The manufacturers of them were quickly found, but the pattern was a standard one; while not cheap they had not been expensive, and had been turned out in hundreds of pairs. It was impossible to follow any individual pair to its purchaser.
Nor was James Staples any more use. He called promptly at Scotland Yard as soon as he reached England, but though Moresby had a long interview with him nothing of the faintest interest came of it. He had only taken a bare look into the cellar after his aunt’s death. As soon as he had gone through her papers he had sold the entire contents of the house to a firm of second-hand furniture merchants. He could suggest nothing at all. Moreover he had a quite unbreakable alibi for July, August and September, not having set foot in England at all during those months.
More time was wasted in checking this alibi before the chief inspector was satisfied, and a little more still in interviewing the furniture firm, whose men had noticed nothing.
In the meantime other enquiries were quietly in progress.
An immense amount of labour went to the ferreting out of all Miss Staples’s friends and acquaintances, all of whom were questioned as to their whereabouts during the last three weeks of August, and in some cases, beginning with Mr. Cottington (to that gentleman’s indignation, had he ever known of it), these statements were very carefully checked; and though the result was that half a dozen people, mostly in Burnt Oak Road, might have committed the crime, there was nothing at all to show that any one of them had.
A laconic note was also sent down one day from the superintendent’s room to the chief inspector’s: “What did Miss Staples die of?” Moresby followed up the implication, looked up Miss Staples’s death certificate, and interviewed the doctor who had signed it; but there was no doubt that Miss Staples had died naturally.
Three weeks running did the case come up at the weekly pow-wow, and on each occasion Moresby had to admit that no progress at all had been made, although three or four men had been working on it continuously.
At last the assistant commissioner sent for him.
Superintendent Green was in the room too, and both looked grave. Moresby, though he felt he had done all mortal man could do, was yet put on the defensive. As he sat down in the
chair to which the assistant commissioner nodded, he felt uneasy; it is not enough for superintendents and assistant commissioners that their chief inspectors should do all mortal man can do, they expect more still.
The assistant commissioner had the dossier of the case before him, and he flicked over the pages absently as Moresby recounted the means by which he had tried to get to the bottom of it.
“And what do you think, superintendent?” he asked, when the chief inspector had finished.
“I think, sir, that there’s been too much concentration on the Miss Staples line of approach. Moresby’s told us that his opinion still is that the thing was done by somebody who knew Miss Staples personally, because of the apparent use of a key to the house; but that isn’t proved at all.”
“Or he thinks that the girl might have been known to her,” added the assistant commissioner.
“I did, sir,” Moresby put in. “But we’ve checked up, so far as we could, every single woman between the ages of eighteen and forty whom Miss Staples seems to have known, and there’s not one of them missing.”
“You can’t put the age limits closer than that?” asked the assistant commissioner, rather petulantly.
“All the doctor could say was that it was the body of an adult, and there were no signs of arthritis in the bones of the spine, as usually in the case of an elderly person. He guessed the age limits as twenty-two to thirty, but he warned me that might be a few years wrong at either end.”
“Humph,” said the assistant commissioner.
“I think, sir,” pursued Superintendent Green, firmly bringing the discussion back from this irrelevance, “that as we can’t say for certain that either the murderer or the girl was known to Miss Staples, and as all enquiries along that line have come to dead ends, we ought to concentrate on getting the girl identified. As I said to Moresby right at the beginning, once she’s identified the chances are a pound to a penny that our troubles are at an end.”
Murder in the Basement Page 3
