“You must have had an anxious moment when you saw that you had been visited by burglars. I imagine they would take an unhealthy interest in a package tied and sealed.”
“Not at all,” replied their host blandly. “I had the package quite safe with me in my bedroom. Under my mattress, in fact, where I keep most of the small things I value. It is now in the post, and will reach its destination some time this evening, I imagine, if it has not already done so.”
“A queer request,” said Christmas in a casual tone, but inwardly much excited. “I don’t think I should have cared to undertake such a responsibility.”
“Yes,” agreed Cold. “I don’t to this day understand why he didn’t leave the package with his lawyer in the obvious way. And I was certainly in two minds about accepting the responsibility at first. But when he assured me there was nothing of value in it, I thought I might as well humour his caprice—his rather flattering caprice.”
The big man stretched his long legs and sighed philosophically.
“I little knew the responsibility would be mine for so short a time,” he added. “And even now I find it hard to believe that so rich and live a personality is wiped out. He warmed both hands before the fires of life,” he continued to misquote impressively, edging his feet a little nearer to the gas-stove’s weak yellow flames. “It sank, and he was—”
“Yes,” said John, firmly stemming the flow of a very inapplicable quotation which was leading them away from a more interesting subject. “These wealthy bachelors are often as incalculable and capricious in their doings as prima donnas. It comes of—”
“But,” interrupted Mr. Cold, and paused heavily, rubbing his imperfectly-shaven chin, and gazing meditatively at his boots. He paused so long that Christmas, fearing that he was about to take up the thread of his interrupted quotation or find a new one, repeated firmly:
“It comes of not—”
“But,” said his host mildly, “our poor friend Frew was not a bachelor. I’ve met his wife.”
With enormous self-control John managed to repress a start and an exclamation. This was an unexpected bombshell.
“Yes,” went on their host complacently, and he seemed to grow visibly larger with the importance his superior knowledge gave him, “he was a Benedick, all right. Or he said so, and I can’t conceive why he should, if it weren’t true. Did not Mrs. Frew live at Madox Court, then?”
“Certainly not,” replied Newtree. “Frew never so much as mentioned her to me, or to any of us. He lived alone, with a valet. We all took him to be a bachelor.”
“Queer,” commented Mr. Cold dreamily. “But he was a queer fellow altogether. And his death is as queer as everything else about him.”
John stood on the hearth-rug and looked narrowly at the big, lethargic man, wondering how to force him to be more explicit without arousing his suspicions. He was disposed to take everything Mr. Cold said with a healthy salting of scepticism, recognizing the man as one of those romantically-minded beings to whom the line between fact and conjecture is always a little blurred and who will make very positive statements on very flimsy evidence. Laurence came opportunely and unconsciously to the rescue.
“Very queer,” he murmured, “that the widow hasn’t been in evidence at all, after last night’s happenings. Isn’t it possible you are mistaken, Mr. Cold? I am sure that not even Frew’s valet knew he was married. And they say valets know everything about their masters.”
“Mistaken?” echoed Cold.
“My dear Mr, Newtree, certainly not. It was about a month ago that I met poor Frew quite by chance in a Soho café. Naturally I went over to his table to speak to him. He had a lady with him, and introduced me to her, saying that she was his wife. I cannot imagine why he should say so if it were not true. There is nothing criminal, or even unconventional, about sitting in a cafe with a lady who is not your wife. The lady did not seem to see anything strange in the introduction, either, though she was not exactly responsive to the few remarks I addressed to her. She hardly spoke, and seemed either very reserved or very shy. She looked ill,” added Cold meditatively, “but she was a very beautiful young woman, in the petite, perfectly finished style.”
He seemed a little disappointed when they rose to go, and pressed them to stay and have some tea, but finally accompanied them to the hall door, expressing his hope of seeing Laurence again.
“Do you know,” he added, with a sudden rather engaging burst of frankness, “when I saw you both coming up the steps, I thought you were come to seize some furniture I bought some time ago and haven’t paid for yet. They generally hunt in couples, you know. But I don’t suppose you’ve had my experience of their ways.”
“Oh, yes, I have,” replied Laurence. “I once had a drawing-table pinched from under my pen, as it were, in my young days.”
Gilbert Cold gave his great booming laugh.
“I’m hopeless at domestic finance, I’m afraid. And I haven’t got anybody to look after it for me. As a matter of fact,” he added candidly, “I never have any money. The fact is, I’m abominably lazy. It’s ruined my life. That’s why I write other people’s books instead of my own. But I don’t mind. I enjoy my ruined life! Eh? Ha, ha, ha!”
His laughter followed them down the unwhitened crumbling steps, and he waved a large hand to them as they turned out at the creaking gate.
“Rather a nice chap, that,” commented Laurence as they went towards their bus. It was his invariable comment on all the people he met; and it was true that, confronted with Laurence’s simple, diffident amiability, even the surliest misanthropist showed his more genial side.
“He certainly finished better than he began,” agreed Christmas. “I thought he was a sham at first. But I’ve noticed people generally present you with the truth sooner or later, Laurence. You’re so infernally amiable.”
“Amiable? Me?” stuttered Laurence indignantly, and for several yards his gentle, mildly-surprised face wore a meretricious scowl, as if to give the lie to such an accusation.
“I would give a good deal to know,” murmured John, “what is in the packet that Mr. Gilbert Cold has just posted to a notoriously shady character. There’s a word that’s been buzzing in my head all day, and the word’s blackmail. Is there such a thing as vicarious blackmail? Too risky, perhaps. But blackmail from the grave? Why not? A dead man can’t be prosecuted. A dead man can’t go in fear of his life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I say, why not?” repeated Christmas thoughtfully. “It argues hatred on a grand scale, of course. Most people are content to let their antipathies die with them. Did Frew hate anybody, do you happen to know, Laurence?”
“I should say not. He was one of those queer cusses who don’t give a damn for anybody either way, but make themselves agreeable all round just out of habit. He’d have been just as ready to see a man hanged as stand him a drink. There was something—well, what I call mediaeval about him.”
“There’s something medieval about hatred,” murmured John dreamily. “At least, it’s not a modern thing. We get annoyed, irritated, bored. We don’t hate. Leave me alone a bit, old chap. I want to think.”
He thought so long and so deeply that Laurence had to rouse him when they arrived at the end of Greentree Road, and drag him from the bus. They walked up the quiet street in silence. The sunshine had vanished with the approach of evening, and there was a sharp chill in the still air. The women they passed on the pavement wore their furs muffled close around their necks, and the crossing-sweeper who exhibited a broom and a wooden leg at the corner of Shipman’s Mews was blowing on his purple hands.
“Good evening, sir,” he cried in a hoarse but genial voice as they passed. In his younger days before he lost his leg and had his outline blurred by a too sedentary life, he had been an artist’s model, and now subsisted very comfortably on the small sums contributed by passers-by in this small artist’s colony. He had humour and a genial philosophy, assets even greater than his connectio
n with art.
Laurence’s hand dived automatically into his trouser-pocket.
“Dreadful doings up at your place last night, sir,” remarked the crossing-sweeper conversationally, looking politely away while Laurence examined his small change and found that he had nothing between a halfpenny and a florin. “Thank you, sir.” Unbuttoning his ragged coat he produced a small black purse into which he stowed the florin, replacing it carefully in some mysterious hiding-place among the multitudinous ragged garments that were part of his stock-in-trade. “Did you hear anything of the murder? But there, o’ course you did, for I see your name in the paper, Mr. Newtree? It didn’t ’alf give me a queer turn when I see it were Mr. Frew as ’ad gone like that. I s’pose there’ll be a ninquest, sir?”
“I suppose so.”
“He was a queer gentleman, Mr. Frew was. One day he give me half a sovereign, an’ the next day he said I was a parasite, and did I know there was laws against begging. But I didn’t mind. I could see as he didn’t mean it, but just wanted to be thought a peculiar gentleman. And sure enough two days after he called me an old scoundrel, just as you might yourself, sir, and give me half a dollar. And now to think the poor gentleman’ll never come walking down this road again! Used to walk as if he owned the street and half London into the bargain, too, poor gentleman. My sight’s not much good nowadays, but I always knoo who it was as soon as he turned the corner. Ah, well! It just shows as riches isn’t always a blessing.”
“I suppose,” said Christmas, “you weren’t on your beat at the time the thing happened?”
“Well, as it ’appened, I was, sir. See, I live ’ere.” He jerked his head back towards the small grey houses and stables of the mews. “And on a foggy night like last night I often stays on me beat a bit longer to see if I can earn a bit ’elping people to find their way, sir. Lot o’ people about last night, too, considerin’ what the weather was like. One queer customer didn’t arf give me a turn.”
“Oh,” murmured Christmas, producing half-a-crown. “How was that?”
“I was sittin’ at the corner ’ere, sir, a little after eight it was, cos I’d just ’eard it strike and was wondering whether I wouldn’t pack up me traps and ’ook it. Thinkin’ about the ’ot tea my old woman ud have ready for me, I was, when all of a sudden somebody comes round the corner and bolts into the mews like as if the police was after him. ’E stands just in ’ere a bit and looks around as if ’e didn’t know what to do next, and I sees ’e’s a kind of a foreigner in a red ’at, but quite, a gentleman, sir, and good for a tanner, sir, I thought, though I was mistaken, as it turned out. So I hollers out: ‘Can I direct you, sir?’ Blowed if ’e didn’t let out a kind of grunt as if ’e’d been landed in the wind, an’ jump round as if somebody’d thrown a knife at ’is back. Then ’e comes a bit closer, as jumpy an’ nervy as you please, an’ stares at me as if I was a ghost. An’ ’e ses:
‘ Tell me how far to Primrose ’ill, please, tell me what way...’ speaking like a Frenchman, sir, or some other furriner, which I can’t do meself. So I tells him, friendlylike, not forgeting to ’old out me hand a bit, suggestive-like. An’ off ’e bolts in the opposite direction to what I’ve told ’im without givin’ me so much as a copper. I’ve noticed before furriners are apt to be disappointin’, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“He went off in the opposite direction to what you’d told him,” repeated John thoughtfully. “And he asked the way to—where, did you say?”
“Primrose ’Ill, sir.”
“Primrose Hill. Are you sure he asked you the way to Primrose Hill?”
“Course I’m sure, sir.”
“I mean to say, it couldn’t have been Shootup Hill, or Haverstock Hill, or a hill that lies in this direction? Or Kilburn Lane, or Golders Green, or—”
The crossing-sweeper looked up at John with an injured expression on his dirty, amiable face.
“’Ere, sir, I asks yer! Why should it a been any o’ them? Primrose ’Ill ’e asked me for, and why not? Plenty o’ people does live round Primrose ’Ill. I mean to say, there ain’t anything peculiar about wantin’ to get to Primrose ’Ill, is there?”
“Oh, no! Only his going off in the wrong direction after asking you seems a bit queer.”
“Ha!” ejaculated his ragged friend sardonically. “You wouldn’t think it queer if you’d directed as many people as I ’ave, sir. Often as not they does go off in just the road you’ve wasted your breath tellin’ ’em not to. Before you’d bin in my place a week, sir, you’d begin to find out that arf the population of London is as scatter-brained as rabbits, sir. As for the foreign gentlemen, ’e asked me the way to Primrose ’Ill as if ’is life depended on ’is gettin’ there, but did ’e listen while I was tellin’ ’im? Not ’e! ‘Thank you, thank you,’ ’e ses, an’ off ’e bolts ’fore I’d got farther than the third turnin’ on the left, an’ didn’t leave so much as a copper be’ind ’im, sir.”
“Suppose,” said John slowly, “I were to tell you that five minutes before he met you this same man asked somebody else the way to Golders Green, what would you think?”
“Think?” echoed the old man with a hoarse chuckle. “I should think the place ’e really wanted was Anwell. Tell yer the truth, the thought did cross my mind last night, ’e stared at me so queer for a moment.”
“Was there anything else queer about him?”
“Well, ’e was a darkish-coloured gentleman, an’ wore a red ’at. Looked as if ’e might be carrying somethin’ under ’is coat, too, way ’e kept ’is arm to ’is side. But I dunno.”
“Nothing else queer?” asked John, abstractedly turning over a little pile of sweepings with his walking-stick as though he hoped to find a clue to the mystery buried in it. “No scar, or squint, or—”
“Not as I noticed, sir. But it wasn’t a night for noticing. You won’t find any buried treasures in that little ’eap of leaves, sir,” added the old man with a grin. “I always picks up the cigarette-ends before I sweeps.” John came to himself with a smile.
“I should imagine that the soil of Greentree Road isn’t very rich in ore,” he said chaffingly, “though I dare say you manage to scrape a living out of it, eh?”
“Well, sir,” replied the old man with a humorous glance at Newtree, “the soil ain’t so bad. Artists are very generous gentlemen, sir. And talkin’ of the soil, I found a bit of gold in my sweepings this morning.”
He dived once again into his hidden pouch and held out a horny palm with a small, glittering object lying in it. Picking it up Christmas saw that it was a small piece of yellow metal, slightly roughened at the edges as if it had been broken from some larger object. Examining it closely, he saw that it was engraved all over one side with a tiny pattern.
“Looks like a piece out of the back of one of those little lockets our grandmothers used to preserve the hair of the dear departed in,” he observed. “Where did you find it?”
“Picked it out of the sweepings this morning, sir,” replied the old man. “Didn’t notice it till I’d swept it up. You can have it, sir,” he added generously, “as you seem to have taken a fancy to it; it’s only brass I fancy. And even if it’s gold there ain’t enough of it to be any use.”
“Thank you,” said Christmas, rewarding him suitably for the gift. “I’ll keep it. It may be interesting.”
They left him stowing away his coins with the rest of his fast-accumulating store, and walked along in silence towards Madox Court. Laurence waited for John to comment on what they had just been told, but John did not seem communicative. He twirled his stick and hummed a tune and walked very fast. Just as they were turning in at the Court the nursery tune he was. humming resolved itself into words.
“And he asked me the way to Primrose ’Ill, to Primrose ’Ill, to Primrose ’Ill, he asked me the way to Primrose ’Ill on a Christmas day in the—dash it, Laurence. Why Primrose Hill?”
Chapter IX
A Coffin for One
“Don’t waste much money on elect
ric light and caretakers, do they?” remarked Inspector Hembrow, as he and Christmas toiled up the narrow, dim-lit, uncarpeted stairs to Pandora Shirley’s flat. The long, narrow, flat-converted house in which she lived looked well enough from the outside, but the entrance hall and stairway had the indescribably gloomy, forlorn, slightly dirty appearance of a place which it is everybody’s, and therefore nobody’s, business to keep presentable. Up from the basement, where the caretaker lived, drifted a thin, permeating suggestion of damp and closed windows and stale food.
However, the knocker on Miss Shirley’s door glittered self-respectingly under the inadequate light on the landing, and the door-paint was fresh and green, and the door-mat had the word “WELCOME” printed on it in large, black letters. Hembrow smiled grimly as he noticed this.
“I don’t think the lady’ll feel so hospitable as her door-mat,” he remarked. “If I’m not mistaken she doesn’t feel too friendly towards the police. I’ve been looking her up, and I find her record includes shop-lifting and obtaining money on false pretences.”
He knocked as he spoke, and the door was opened with extreme celerity by a golden-haired young woman wearing the crimson doublet of a mediaeval page. Her long slim legs were encased in parti-coloured tights of green and black, and as if living up to her clothes she stood jauntily with her feet planted apart and one large, capable hand resting on her hip. As she saw that Hembrow was not alone her eyebrows shot up under her thick, straight, golden fringe.
“Good evening, Inspector,” she said demurely, and with the sound of her voice, nasal, harsh and with the indescribable drawl of the would-be refined, the illusion created by her appearance broke and vanished. It was not a figure from some old tapestry come alive, but a well-set-up, coarse-featured little Cockney dressed to go to a ball. The room into which she led them would have effectually destroyed the illusion, anyway. Miss Shirley’s notion of domestic beauty and comfort seemed to comprise little but rose-coloured lamp-shades, gilded mirrors and cushions of rainbow hues. The place reeked with scent and cigarette smoke with a soft, persistent undertone of fried food.
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