Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  “A rest cure,” Bobby repeated to himself uneasily, remembering the last casual remark Eyton’s journalistic friend had made, and he found himself hoping that it was only his own troubled imagination which had felt the phrase so ominous, though indeed there were too many names in his mind of those who had reached a ‘rest’ lasting beyond the confines of this present world.

  He returned to the station to take the next train back to London and there was surprised, so far as the developments of this case were not removing from him all capacity for surprise, to find Lady May Grayson. Apparently she had learned of his visit to Asbury Cottage and of his attempt, and of its failure, to get in touch with Colonel Glynne. Guessing that he would be likely to return to London she had come here on the chance of meeting him. Very evidently she was troubled and alarmed. For one thing she knew of Bobby’s visits to Leonard and its result and evidently she feared consequences.

  “Becky’s in London, too,” she said, “though her father’s so bad. When I ring up she is either out or she won’t answer, and Leonard hasn’t heard either.”

  “Would he be likely to?” Bobby asked. “I understood they were not on very good terms.”

  “You mean about me?” Lady May countered, and then when she saw that Bobby looked surprised, she added quickly:—“Oh, you mean about poor Mr. Cadman. He had behaved very badly to Becky and it set her against every one almost. She seems to think it was all every one’s fault, and especially Leonard’s for finding out and telling.”

  “I suppose it was a great shock,” Bobby agreed, wondering if he knew all the story, or if Lady May knew it, and, if so, if he could induce her to tell it.

  “You see,” Lady May said, “she always felt that it didn’t matter so much about what Mr. Cadman had done—she thought she could change him.”

  Bobby winced. ‘Changed’ was a word he little liked to hear in connection with this case. It had acquired an ugly sound. He said:—

  “Have you any idea why Miss Glynne has gone to London?”

  Lady May did not answer at once. She was looking at him very closely and attentively, and somehow it seemed as though she had ceased to be the professional beauty and had become simply human, beset by secret doubts and fears, troubled by some deep misgiving. Bobby had an idea that what she was about to say might be of great importance and yet he dared not press her; for how easy it would be, in this crowded railway station, for her simply to turn and walk away. She said:—

  “I think Becky wants to find Hazel Hannay.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, hoping more was to come.

  “Her father’s in London, too,” Lady May went on. “Hazel’s, I mean. That’s what’s upsetting Colonel Glynne.” It was a remark Bobby found unexpected and that he did not understand. He did not see why Sir Harold Hannay’s presence in London should disturb Colonel Glynne so much as to make him seek refuge in a nursing home, as Lady May’s words clearly implied. It was another explanation Bobby had had in his mind.

  “Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. “Yes.”

  “Becky’s changed herself,” Lady May said. “She wants to change every one else too, I think.”

  “Lady May,” Bobby said. “I think you know very well—”

  “No,” she interrupted, “no, I don’t; nothing.” She was looking at him with quick alarm. “I don’t know anything, I must go,” she said.

  “There’s one thing you do know,” Bobby told her, checking her with a gesture as she began to turn away. “Will you tell me—it’s whether the ring you wear sometimes is really the genuine Blue John diamond.”

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked, astonished.

  “Because, if it is, then I would like to know how it came into your possession?”

  But she shook her head.

  “I don’t see that that matters,” she answered. “You know I tell every one it’s only imitation. One man said he didn’t need me to tell him that. He could see it for himself. He was an expert.”

  “Did he say anything else?” Bobby asked. “Did he say, for instance, that owners of valuable jewellery sometimes have replicas made for them to wear instead, as a sort of safety precaution?”

  “Detectives do know a lot, don’t they?” she retorted. “I keep my secrets. The more people go on guessing, the more they talk, and the more fuss they make, the more publicity, and the bigger fees for me.” More gravely, she added:— “I wish you would find Becky and Hazel. I’m—I’m afraid.”

  Then she was gone swiftly and lightly, and as Bobby watched her tall form passing through the bustling crowds that filled the station, he wondered gloomily what this meant, if it had been a genuine attempt to express uneasiness about Becky, or a warning about Hazel, or simply an ingenious effort to divert his energies.

  Lady May had given him the address of Becky’s hotel. It was late when he got back to town but he went on to the hotel at once—he had his dinner on the train—and found it to be small, not very attractive in appearance, and situated in a not very savoury neighbourhood. When he asked for Miss Glynne, he was told she was not in. She had a room there, but she did not use the hotel services very much, explained the hotel with a knowing, faintly unpleasant smile. The evening before she had rung up rather late to say she would not be back that night—she had explained she was staying with a friend in the country, added the hotel, again with that knowing and this time distinctly more unpleasant smile. She had also said that it might be very late when she reached the hotel to-night, as she was motoring up from her friend’s place in the country. So it was not much good Mr. Owen’s trying to wait, unless, suggested the hotel, he also booked a room. Oh, yes, Miss Glynne’s belongings were still there, she had taken nothing with her when she went out the previous morning. Bobby guessed it was a point on which the hotel had assured itself and made certain also that their value was more than enough to cover the bill.

  Plainly no use to wait, so Bobby left his name and his address in London and his ’phone number—though not his profession. He had no intention of telling the hotel that, though in point of fact they already strongly suspected it. He left also a message asking Miss Glynne to ring him up as soon as possible on her return, and then, deciding it was too late to do anything more, made his way home. On the way he bought an evening paper and there found in the ‘stop press’ column a brief note to the effect that much uneasiness was felt over the fate of a visitor who had hired a motor launch at a small East Coast watering place and had not since been heard of. It was feared an accident might have occurred.

  Bobby read it over twice. More or less it was what he had been expecting. He got down at the next stop and proceeded to the nearest police station.

  There he showed his credentials and got permission to use their telephone. It was not easy to establish communication, but by midnight evidence gathered from the owner of the missing motor launch, from the local inn, and from what the local police already knew, made it clear that the missing man was De Legett. To Bobby this was no more than confirmation of what he had been gloomily anticipating, and all through the greater part of the night he drove in a hastily-secured car to the scene of this latest tragedy, or rather to the spot where the beginning of the final act had been staged. He arrived in the small hours, was able to snatch a little sleep, and then in the morning began his enquiries.

  He learnt little and all that he did learn merely confirmed his expectations. De Legett had arrived alone, he had been alone when making the arrangements for the hire of the motor launch, nor had he said anything about expecting any companion. A local youth reported that, lounging on the quay where the launch was lying, he had seen a woman walk briskly to the launch and go on board, without hesitation or question, entirely as if the boat were her own or she knew she was expected. The young man had not thought much of it at the time, he certainly would not know the woman again, he could give no useful description of her, he had only seen her back, and that from a distance. His impression was that she had been well wrapped up but that was abo
ut all. No one else seemed to have seen her, or if they had seen her, they had not paid her any attention. Shortly after her arrival the launch had started off and it had not since been seen. Nor had any one remarked what course it took, except vaguely, as out to sea. It was a fair sized boat, the weather had been calm, there had been no reason to suppose anything but a brief pleasure trip, only the failure to return had caused alarm. Probably, said the local people Bobby questioned, no one would ever know what had really happened.

  “I suppose not,” agreed Bobby, though a clear vision had risen in his mind and he had seemed to see a man lying drugged and insensible in the cabin of a launch that was slowly sinking somewhere out there in the wide and lonely sea, sinking into depths from which never would it rise again, the while a little boat pulled steadily away towards the shore, towards a point where probably lay hidden a car or a bicycle to make escape easy.

  In answer to further questions he learnt that the launch had naturally, and as a matter of course, carried a small collapsible boat. Necessary both for safety and convenience. Other questions brought the information that nothing unusual or abnormal in De Legett’s behaviour had been noticed, except a certain excitement and restlessness that had at first given rise to some suspicion that he had had too much to drink. But then it became apparent that he was merely a little nervous and expectant, as if waiting for someone whose coming was eagerly anticipated. A chambermaid, remembering a former case and hearing that a woman had been seen boarding the launch, had at once openly expressed her conviction that here was another romantic elopement.

  The local police, when Bobby finished his enquiries, asked uneasily:—

  “What’s in your mind? do you mean you think it’s one of these suicide compacts?”

  “I think it’s murder,” Bobby answered, “but I don’t think we shall ever know.”

  He drove back to London and on the way made up his mind that, incomplete though his case still remained, difficult though it was to see what could be done, ardently though he wished for more time to try to secure the further proof he needed, yet now he must ask higher authorities to act.

  In view of what might happen next—and soon—he dared not run the risk of the further ill that further delay might mean.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CONFERENCE

  Even so there were delays and formalities to be gone through, and it was not till the next morning that Bobby was able to present himself at the offices of the Public Prosecutor, where there was awaiting him one of the staff, a Mr. Findlay, known as the author of a leading work on jurisprudence and one of the assistant directors of the department, together with no less imposing a functionary from Scotland Yard than that high personage known as a chief constable, a personage so exalted that in all his years of service at the Yard Bobby had never seen more than his majestic back. His appearance cheered Bobby considerably, as proof that the report he had submitted was being taken seriously and had not merely been consigned to the waste paper basket as the melodramatic dreamings of an over-excited imagination—a fate he had sometimes feared might overtake it. Moreover, the chief constable seemed in a good temper, which, rumour said, was not always the case, at least not before lunch, and when Bobby put down on the table two books he had previously borrowed from the public library—Tales of Old Paris and Legends of the Incas—he looked quite interested.

  “Well, well,” he said mildly, “are these exhibits in the case?”

  “Not exhibits exactly, sir,” Bobby answered. “More what you might call atmosphere—background.”

  Both chief constable and assistant director looked puzzled and then settled down to listen to what Bobby had to say and to question him on details of his report, and all the time Bobby had the feeling that they would have refused to give his story serious attention but for that paragraph in the papers, under the heading ‘Feared Boating Tragedy’, which recounted how a London business man, Count de Legett, had hired a motor launch for a trip to sea and had not since been heard of.

  The chief constable said when at last they were at the end of their questions:—

  “I’ve come across some queer things in my time, but never anything like this.”

  Mr. Findlay said:—

  “It’s quite incredible but it does hang together.” Bobby said:—

  “It was a long time before I could get myself to think it was possible nowadays. I don’t know why. All over Europe we are going back to the primitive instincts in public life, so why not in private life, too? It spreads.”

  “Yes, but a woman,” the chief constable protested. “You can’t think a woman—” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “I know, sir,” Bobby agreed. “You don’t think of women like that. Only sometimes they are.”

  “Once a woman gets going—” began Mr. Findlay and then he, too, left the sentence unfinished. Then he said rather loudly:—“Unnatural.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” agreed Bobby once more. “It does seem like that—unnatural, I mean. When the sultan in the Arabian Nights takes a new wife every night and has her beheaded every morning—well, we feel we can understand it in a way. So to speak, it’s in character. When a woman turns the tables and does much the same sort of thing— well, it seems out of character.”

  “Once a woman gets going—” repeated Mr. Findlay, and again he left the sentence unfinished. Then he said:— “You can’t believe it, only you can’t believe half the things that are going on in the world to-day.”

  Bobby picked up the two books he had brought with him.

  “When I began to suspect what was behind it all,” he said slowly, “I went to the library near where I live.”

  “Looking for precedents?” asked Mr. Findlay with a grim smile.

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby said. “Somehow it seemed less incredible when I knew something like it had been heard of before.” He opened one of the books—the one entitled Tales of Old Paris—and showed an illustration. “The tower,” he said, “from which one of the old French queens is supposed to have had her lovers thrown into the Seine each morning.” He showed the second book: Legends of the Incas. “The same sort of story here,” he said, “about Inca princesses who disposed of their succession of lovers in much the same way.”

  “The ancient way,” mused the chief constable. “I suppose the modern way is divorce. Some women get divorced half a dozen times. Too slow for this lady, I take it. A throw back as you might say.”

  Mr. Findlay had been taking notes, and now he said, referring to them:—

  “You say the first thing you noticed was that Lord Henry Darmoor knew about these purchases of jewels from Messrs. Higham?”

  “I didn’t realize that was important for a long time,” Bobby answered. “What did strike me was the extraordinary resemblance between all these cases. The ‘modus operandi’ was always the same, and of course we all know how important the M.O. is—criminals always stick to the same line. I noticed, too, it always happened that the actual cause of death couldn’t be determined. The one thing certain was that violence had not been used—even after a body has been burnt a doctor can almost always tell if there is any trace of a bullet or knife wound or of broken bones. That made me think that possibly poison or a drug of some sort had been used and that first gave me the idea that a woman might be concerned. Then when I began to make enquiries, I found there always seemed to be a woman somewhere about, never very conspicuous but always there. That made me remember there was always a mention of jewellery, too, and there’s a connection in a way between the two ideas—women and jewellery. It was then I got my first glimpse of the truth. It struck me that if Lord Henry knew so much about these purchases of jewellery, he could only have got the information from Higham’s, and that meant that he must have been in touch with Higham’s himself and probably therefore buying jewellery himself. Only that didn’t prove for whom he had bought it whether for Miss Barton or someone else. Another thing that began to seem significant was that all this jewellery always disappe
ared. Jewellery is usually bought for display—what it’s for. But this wasn’t, because it wasn’t displayed, and when I tried to think what it could have been wanted for the only answer I could find was—a trophy.”

  The two others looked startled.

  “You mean,” the chief constable asked, “she wanted a sort of souvenir of each of her victims?”

  “I think so,” Bobby said.

  The chief constable made no comment, but even he, man of long and varied experience as he was, had become a little pale, and taking out his handkerchief he wiped his forehead and his wrists that had grown damp. Bobby went on:—

  “As soon as I felt sure it was a woman, I knew it must be always the same woman. There were four, and four only, who seemed in various ways to have known or been connected with each of the dead men—Lady May Grayson, Miss Becky Glynne, Miss Hazel Hannay, Miss Gwen Barton. In addition I had to remember Mrs. Reynolds, the wife of the absconding chauffeur—”

  “You don’t mean you think he was another victim?” Mr. Findlay interrupted.

  “Yes,” Bobby said, “though I’m not sure whether partly at least he didn’t suspect the truth—perhaps even he had helped. I don’t know. But there is evidence he was hanging about in the vicinity at the time of Lord Byatt’s death. Anyhow, I feel sure he is dead, and that is why the search for him was a failure.”

  “No body has been found, has it?” the chief constable asked.

  “No, I think it was hidden. Probably there had been less time for making the necessary arrangements for passing it off as suicide or accident, as was done pretty successfully in the other cases.”

  “Can’t do much unless we find the body,” remarked the chief constable.

  “I think I know where to look,” Bobby answered. “I’m not sure, of course, but I’ve a pretty good idea.” He went on:— “So I had to think of Mrs. Reynolds as a possibility, and then there was the street singer who kept turning up as if she had something to do with it. Also I had to remember the statement made by the old butler or whatever he was Lord Henry sacked—rather brutally, it seemed. Incidentally, it was noticeable that all the men concerned seemed to have their characters changed—developed perhaps would be a better word—by their contact with this woman. I took it that was another proof of the strength of her personality she seemed able to impress on everything and every one near her. That fact became an important indication.”