Richardson Scores Again

by Basil Thomson

  “Yours ever,

  “UNCLE JIM.”

  Beckett handed the letter back and went to the window to think. “The captain of the Dauntless told the dockyard people that the nephew got leave on urgent private affairs and left the ship early on Tuesday morning. If he took the next train, he ought to have been in London by lunch-time. It’s funny. And then his pocket-book is picked up in the garden on the morning after the murder! And no one has seen or heard of him since! But so far there’s nothing in the case that Symington couldn’t handle. He’s started with the advantage of knowing MacDougal and the house and grounds, and he’s a regular ferret for getting to the bottom of his cases.”

  “He is, but when he comes to a sticking-point, as he’s bound to, we shall be made to take over the case in Central, so why not begin now? Probably there’ll be questions in the House, and the Home Office people will want to know who’s in charge of the case. We shall have to get the inquest adjourned—”

  “Oh, that needn’t worry us. Symington is on the best of terms with the Hampstead coroner—”

  “No doubt he is, but—well, talking won’t make either of us change our opinion: we shall have to ask Sir William to decide.”

  Morden touched his desk telephone and had an answering buzz.

  “Are you very busy? Beckett and I want you to decide a point that has arisen in this Hampstead murder case…Right! We’ll come.”

  The two passed through the swing doors of the entrance hall to a room facing the granite staircase. The Office of Works, with a fine sense of the differences of rank in the hierarchy, had furnished it more lavishly than any other room on the ground floor. It had, for example, a Turkey carpet and mahogany furniture. On the big writing-table in the centre was a miniature telephone exchange, with private wires connected with the various Government departments. At this table sat Sir William Lorimer, the Director of Criminal Investigation, an intelligent-looking person of about fifty with an easy manner and a sense of humour.

  “Good morning, both of you. I gather that you were on the point of coming to blows when you rang me up. What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s about that murder in Hampstead,” explained Morden with a wry smile. “You’ve seen the telephone messages?”

  “The murder of the servant in Laburnum Road?”

  “Yes. We want you to decide whether the case should be taken over by Central. Mr. Beckett thinks that it should be left to the Division.”

  “Didn’t I see that a naval officer was somehow involved in the case?”

  “Yes, but only to the extent that his pocket-book was picked up in the garden. There’s nothing yet to show that he dropped it there.”

  Beckett remained silent, being one of those men who are loath to give their opinion until it is asked for.

  “What do you say, Mr. Beckett?” asked Lorimer.

  “Well, sir, I’m in favour of leaving it to the Divisional Detective-Inspector. Mr. Symington is a very careful man and he knows his division inside out. He’s already begun the case, and I don’t see why he shouldn’t go through with it. S Division is pretty free from crime at the moment, though of course at this season it’s had its share of burglaries and house-breaking.”

  “I’m afraid that I must rule against you, Mr. Beckett. It is just one of those cases in which I shall be pestered with questions, and I want to feel that I’ve only to ring the bell to get a quick answer; whereas, if the inquiry is going on in Hampstead—But please understand that I’ve every confidence in Symington, and that if it had been an ordinary case, however difficult, I should have said, “Leave it in his hands.’ Which of the superintendents is free at this moment?”

  “Only Foster can be spared at present, Sir William.”

  “Very well, then, let Foster take it on. He may be a bit slow, but he’s sure, and his Scottish accent gives one confidence somehow.” He turned to Morden. “You’d better send for him and put him in charge of the case. Let him choose the man to work with him.”

  Beckett permitted himself to laugh sardonically. Lorimer looked up in surprise.

  What are you laughing at, Mr. Beckett?”

  Well, sir, I was thinking that I knew who he’d choose—that new second-class sergeant in Central— Sergeant Richardson.”

  “Well, I don’t know that we could do better. They make a good team.”

  Thus the junior superintendent and the junior of the detective-sergeants in Central found themselves engaged on a case that was destined to prove far-reaching in its consequences. Charles Morden sent for Foster and gave him all the papers to read. “Sir William wishes you to take over this case, Mr. Foster. It may turn out to be an important case. Who would you like to take with you?”

  Foster’s blue eyes narrowed. “I’d rather have Sergeant Richardson, sir.”

  “Why not a more senior man?” asked Morden with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Well, sir, I suppose that it’s because he knows my way of working and—the man’s got ideas.”

  “Very well; Sir William said that you were to choose your own man. You’d better go carefully through this file, paying special attention to the enclosures in that pocket-book before you visit the scene of the crime. You will find in it two letters that seem to show that Lieutenant Eccles was in urgent need of money. The first is from a moneylender, threatening to complain to the Admiralty unless a loan of seventy pounds is at once repaid, and another from a woman which is getting very near blackmail. Here it is: I’ll read it to you. She gives no address and only dates the letter ‘Thursday.’

  ‘DEAR RONNY,

  ‘I am sorry to have to write a plain-spoken letter to you, but the time has gone past for pretty speeches. Unless I have £200 by return of post we shall be in the soup, and will have to let the farm go for what it will fetch. I was a fool to listen to your pretty speeches: if I hadn’t listened to you I should have been rolling in money now, but you barged in and spoilt everything and now I’ve no one to look to but you. Don’t say that you can’t raise the money somehow, because I know you can. You’ve spoilt my life, and the least you can do is to make amends. If you want us to keep on the farm send the money by return. If I don’t get it in time it will be the end. You’ll live to regret it.

  ‘Yours,

  ‘GWEN.’

  What do you make of that?”

  “It scarcely reads like a blackmailing letter, sir, but until we can get an explanation from Lieutenant Eccles himself, it is impossible to say what were his relations with the writer. The first thing is to find him.”

  “Quite so, but these two letters show that he was in urgent need of money, and the finding of his pocket-book in the garden, coupled with his disappearance, are making things look rather black. Symington has already started on the case, but I dare say that he won’t be sorry to be relieved of it. I’ll ring him up and tell him that Central will take it over and why. When you’ve gone through the papers you’d better run up to Hampstead and get him to take you down to the house. Let me have the file back before you go. Sir William hasn’t seen it yet.”

  “You shall have it in half an hour, sir.”

  Foster had an uncanny knack of mastering the contents of a file and storing the salient facts in his memory in a few minutes. In twenty minutes the file was back on Morden’s table and he was half-way to Hampstead in the Tube. The neatly dressed young man beside him was Sergeant Richardson: the other passengers would have thought them unacquainted, for they said not a word to one another until they were clear of the Tube station.

  “You’ve never met D.D. Inspector Symington, have you, Richardson?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He’s one of the best thief-catchers in the service. Have you ever come across the detective patrol, Porter?”

  “Yes, sir. He went through the detective class with me.”

  “Good! Then while I’m having a talk with the D.D. Inspector, you might do worse than have a yarn with him and see what he thinks of the case. He was the officer who accompani
ed Mr. Symington to the house.”

  “Very well, sir, I will, if we’re lucky enough to find him in the office.”

  Having been warned by telephone that Foster was on his way to Hampstead, Symington was in his room and Porter had been warned to be in the sergeants’ room in case he should be wanted. If Foster was in any doubt about the quality of his reception by the man he was supplanting in the case, it was at once set at rest. “I’m very glad that you’re taking this case over, Mr. Foster,” said Symington; “it promises to be a very ticklish case and I haven’t men enough here to undertake all the inquiries without neglecting cases in my own division. You have read my report? Is there anything you would like to ask me before you go on to the house?”

  “Yes, I want to talk the case over with you and get your personal impressions.” Thereupon they engaged in a long discussion.

  Meanwhile Richardson had looked into the room where the sergeants were at work on their reports and had found Porter, his old classmate. After exchanging greetings, he told him that the murder case had been taken over by Superintendent Foster of Central, who was in conference with Mr. Symington at that moment. “It’s going to be a tough nut to crack, don’t you think?”

  “It all depends how soon we get that nephew,” observed Porter. “You may get some sense out of him.”

  “You don’t think the uncle told you the whole story?”

  “Good Lord, no! He couldn’t tell a connected story—not if it was to save him from the gallows. He’s one of these vapouring professor-chaps. All this stuff about the money hidden in a drawer! He’s the sort of feller that is always waking out of a dream—the sort that would accuse you of stealing his watch and come along two days later to say that he was sorry to have caused any trouble, but he’d found the watch on his dressing-table when he got home. You’ll get nothing coherent out of him.”

  Symington looked in and beckoned to Richardson, who found Foster ready to start for Laburnum Road. The two seniors walked ahead, deep in conversation: Richardson followed a few paces behind, taking keen note of the streets through which they passed. Arrived at the gate of No. 23, Foster turned to him and said, “Three of us will be too many for Mr. MacDougal, I think. You had better play about in the garden, Richardson, until I call you in.” As the two seniors went up the drive, Symington took Foster a few steps into the laurels to show him the spot where he had found the pocket-book and the footprints.

  “I suppose that we’d better take casts of the footprints?” said Foster.

  “Yes. I haven’t had time to get it done myself.”

  When the front door had closed behind the two seniors, Richardson began to “play about in the garden.” It was a sedate game. Beside the drive were two long and narrow rose-beds, and something in them attracted his close attention. It was a deeply indented footprint in the soft earth. He pulled out his pocket diary in which he recorded the weather conditions day by day. It had not rained since the night of the murder. Now, even a jobbing gardener does not plant his foot on a flower-bed, or if he has occasion to do so, he smooths over the defacement with a rake. A few feet farther on was a print of the same foot: the toes of both pointed towards the house. He crossed to the bed on the other side of the drive, and there, not only did he find a print of the same boot, but two of them with the toes pointing towards the next house. There were other marks between them: a branch of the standard rose had been broken and was hanging to the stem by a shred of bark, and six feet farther on was a print of the same boot with the toe pointing in the opposite direction. Suddenly the explanation flashed on him: the footprints were those of a drunken man aiming for the front door. He had lurched off the drive into the rose-bed on the right and had then staggered across the gravel into the bed on the other side, colliding with the standard rose and falling. The fall accounted for the other marks in the earth. Then he picked himself up and got back into the drive, where his feet left no impression. Richardson went back to the footprints and went down on his knees to examine them more closely. The boots that had made them were not such as townsmen wear: the heels were shod with iron, and the tip of the iron horseshoe on the right heel had been broken off at one of its screw-holes. That might prove to be a useful clue hereafter.

  He went round to the back of the house to look at the footprints under the broken kitchen window. They, too, had lain undisturbed, though the earth had dried in the wind. Here the difficulty was to know which had been made by the owner of the house: all seemed to have been made by gentlemen’s walking-shoes. The country-made boots of the drunken man had made no impression here. Richardson tried to reconstruct the movements of the inebriated visitor. He had been making for the front door: he reached it and rang the bell, or plied the knocker. No one came, because the only person left in the house was a dead woman. So this visitor arrived not before, but after the murder. Had the farmer who had paid over the money gone off and made a night of it, and come back with some confused idea of getting his money back? Could it have been his visit that had so alarmed the murderer that he left everything in confusion?

  He turned to the window, pulled from his pocket a little tin box containing two tiny, wide-mouthed bottles, the one with black and the other a white powder, and a camel-hair brush. Dipping this into the white powder, he passed the brush gently over the glass surrounding the fracture, without result. Undiscouraged, he repeated the process over both the lower panes, and here his patience was rewarded: a thumb or fingerprint flashed out like the image on an exposed negative under the developer, as soon as he had blown away the superfluous powder. He examined it through a glass: it was a disappointing impression, for the pressure of the finger that had made it had slipped, and the ridges were blurred. He blew the white powder from the brush and dipped it into the black powder. Reflecting that a man who lifts the sash of a window uses his thumbs under the sash-bar to push it up, he painted the underside of the sash-bar with black, and blew off the superfluity. Here he was successful beyond his hopes. Two perfect thumb-prints stood out on the white paint. It was at that moment of triumph that Foster opened the back door and found him.

  “Oh, there you are! I’ve been looking for you all over the place.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve been looking about and I’ve found a good fingerprint on the window-frame.”

  “The devil you have! Let me have a look at it. Yes, it’s a print all right, but short of taking out the window-frame, how are we to get it photographed?”

  “If I fix the impression first, Mr. Foster, we can easily take out the window and get it boarded up. We could even take it into court as an exhibit. Juries like that kind of exhibit.”

  “Go ahead then and fix it, as you seem to be one of those fingerprint fiends.”

  Richardson took this as a compliment. In his spare time he had chummed up with one of the sergeants in the fingerprint department, who had pointed him out to Wilkins, the superintendent, as a likely recruit for the section: indeed, Superintendent Wilkins had actually sounded him on the question, but as there was no vacancy at the moment, the proposal had gone no further than lending him a manual to read and giving him desultory instruction. Richardson had sat up at nights delving into a science that fascinated him, and had pored over the exhibits of past cases in which fingerprints had played a deciding role. It was true that Wilkins had warned him against building too much upon prints found on the scene of a crime to the neglect of other evidence, from which almost equally sound deductions could be drawn. He had said, “You’ve always got to remember, my boy, that out of the thousands of crimes committed in the metropolitan area every year, we get only a dozen in which a print found on the scene of a crime is the only piece of evidence. Then, of course, we make a song about it, because the ignorant public, from which jurymen are drawn, needs educating. Most of the prints left by burglars and safe-breakers are useless for our purpose because they are blurred; others are useless because the men who left their prints behind them had never been convicted before and therefore their prints
were not in our files; and lastly, experienced burglars are alive to the danger they run, and before they set out to break in, they buy a pair of gloves.”

  “But those cases, sir!” objected Richardson, pointing to photographs of successes displayed on the wall.

  “The list is a pretty small one. You must remember that until last year we couldn’t make a classification from the print of a single finger. We arrived at the classification largely by guesswork. Now, things promise to be better, because one of my sergeants has been ingenious enough to devise a system of classification from a single finger, but his system has still to be tried out. When those prints over there were enlarged and photographed, we had to begin by guessing which of the ten fingers made the print. Suppose it was a loop: then we had to use the rule of average frequency to guess what the patterns on the other fingers were likely to be if this kind of loop belonged to the first finger of the right hand. Having done that, we made an experimental classification and went to the appropriate pigeon-hole. If we failed to find it there we had to start all over again.”

  “There was that case at Deptford, sir.”

  “You mean the case where the man left his whole finger on a spike of the gate as he was getting over. Poor devil! The spike caught in his ring as he was jumping down. That happened to be an easy case because we knew which finger it was, but we made a stir about it because it happened in the early days of the system and we wanted to educate the public. In that case, of course, we had corroborative evidence in the fact that when the man was arrested that finger was missing from his left hand: we had it here in a bottle of spirits and had taken a print from it. He was an old hand at the game of warehouse-breaking.”

  “If the print is in the collection at all, you always find it in the end?”

  “I would not like to go as far as that. We may fail sometimes, but not very often, I fancy. The search may take five minutes, or it may take a couple of days, and sometimes, perhaps, it beats us. It is possible that we may have reported that a print is not in the collection when it was there all the time, but I don’t remember such a case.”