“I don’t see much in it,” Craythorn confessed frankly. “I’ll think over it, sir, later on. What’s interesting me just now is this tale of Barsett’s. It seems to upset things badly. Do you make it all out, sir?”
“Well, I make out one thing,” Sir Clinton said with a rather cynical smile. “Mrs. Hyson told us she left her house at eight o’clock. Barsett takes up the thread at 8.30 P.M. and accounts for Hyson, all alive and kicking, until 9.45 P.M. Just about that time, Mrs. Hyson had picked up that friend of hers and was giving her a lift home.”
“You mean, sir, that Barsett’s tale clinches Mrs. Hyson’s alibi completely, so that she’s out of the case?”
“It certainly fits most of the facts very neatly, as I said before,” Sir Clinton said. “And it also fits in with the view that Barsett disposed of Hyson during the time he was in the house, according to his own story. I spotted one flaw in his tale. There may be more.”
Chapter Seventeen
Laid by the Heels
“NOW that you’ve cleared up this affair,” said Sir Clinton, “I suppose you’re going off elsewhere. No doubt you’ve got other cases waiting for you. Wish you as good luck as you’ve had here. We’re grateful to you for ridding us of a pest.”
“I’m wanted in the Midlands, now,” Duncannon explained. “But of course I have my evidence to give in this case before I’m done with it.”
“Well, I want you to do me a favour. We’ve got your suspect in the next room. When she’s brought in, will you put your cards on the table and convince her, here and now, that the game’s up? I know it’s hardly playing the game to ask you to show your hand before the trial; but as you’ve got a lock-fast case it can’t do any real harm. And it’s essential to me to make her talk. It’s in connection with the Hyson affair, so you can see it’s important. If you’ll make plain to her that the game’s up, I’ll take a hand at the proper moment.”
Duncannon pondered for a moment or two before giving consent.
“I don’t see it can harm my case, anyhow,” he agreed. “It’s too strong for anyone to get behind the evidence, even if they know it beforehand. I’ve got all that’s necessary here, since you forewarned me.”
“Then bring her in,” said Sir Clinton, turning to Craythorn. “She doesn’t know why she’s been brought here, does she?”
“No, sir. I just asked her to come and see you about something.”
Without delay, Craythorn ushered Ruth Jessop into the room and placed a chair for her. She was obviously taken aback to find Duncannon present.
“I don’t know what you want me for, Sir Clinton,” she began at once. “Inspector Craythorn gave me no hint about it. You’ll have to explain to me, you see.”
“I shall make it quite clear,” Sir Clinton assured her coldly. “Mr. Duncannon suspects that you are the person who has been sending out these anonymous letters. We wish to know what you have to say to that.”
Ruth Jessop turned beet-root colour under her make-up.
“I never heard anything like it!” she exclaimed. “Does that man accuse me? Why, one of the very first was sent to me. You know that perfectly well, Sir Clinton. Doesn’t that show that I had nothing to do with sending them? Of course it does! The whole thing’s too ridiculous! How could you prove such a thing? I ask you that. I’m not sure what the law is about these things, but anyway you’ve no right to make charges like that, when you can’t prove them. It’s libel or slander, or something. I’ll see my solicitor about it. I warn you I shall.”
Sir Clinton turned to Duncannon, as though putting the matter into his hands. The Post Office expert nodded in acknowledgement and took from an attache case an envelope. He showed the address to Ruth Jessop, without letting the envelope out of his hand.
“Did you send this?” he asked.
Ruth barely glanced at it.
“Most certainly not, Mr. Duncannon,” she denied vehemently. “I never saw it before. I wonder you dare to suggest such things. But I’ll have satisfaction for this, I warn you. I’ll not allow people to defame me without taking steps about it, Mr. Duncannon. So now you know!”
Duncannon was entirely unmoved by this tirade.
“Where do you buy your postage stamps?” he asked in a rather bored tone.
Ruth suddenly seemed to sense real danger in the atmosphere. She dropped her parade of indignation and became sullenly suspicious.
“Has he the right to ask me questions like that?” she demanded, turning to Sir Clinton.
“I’ll explain,” said the Chief Constable, briefly. “I haven’t made up my mind to bring a charge. Not yet. So I’m legally entitled to ask you questions like that. I ask you the same question myself.”
This injection of formality seemed to shake Ruth. She fumbled in her bag, produced her handkerchief, and dabbed her lips with it.
“I buy postage stamps whenever I need them, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another. What’s that got to do with it?”
“You’ve been seen buying stamps at the Grove Road sub-office,” Duncannon explained in the same blasé tone.
“Well, and what if I have bought some there, Mr. Duncannon? Isn’t a Post Office the proper place to buy stamps? Have you anything to complain about there? I didn’t steal the stamps. I paid for them. Are you accusing me of pilfering, or what, Mr. Duncannon?”
Duncannon did not trouble to answer. He opened his attaché case again and took from it two small phials and some pads of cotton-wool. Moistening one pad with liquid from the first bottle, he laid it on the cancelled stamp of the envelope. Then, after leaving it for some seconds, he removed it and subjected the stamp to similar treatment with the liquid from the second phial. Then, after drying the paper with fresh cotton-wool, he held out the envelope. Across the stamp, in plain black letters, the inscription “J.C.D.” appeared.
“My initials,” said Duncannon curtly.
Ruth evidently failed to see what this implied, but she scented some trap and her voice quivered as she spoke:
“Well, what’s that got to do with it, Mr. Duncannon? I suppose it’s what they call sympathetic ink. But I didn’t put it there and I know nothing about it.”
Duncannon ignored this and turned to the inspector.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
Inspector Craythorn grinned. He appreciated this method of trapping people, now that he had an idea of what was afoot. He felt in his pocket, produced a wallet, and from this he extracted a book of postage stamps and also half a dozen stamps attached to each other at the perforation lines.
“I got them from her writing-desk while she went away to put on her hat,” he explained.
“Wait a moment,” Duncannon cautioned him. “Write your initials on that book before you hand it to me, so that you’ll be able to identify it again. And do the same on that blank edge of stamp-paper attached to these others stamps.”
As the inspector obeyed, Ruth Jessop stared at him with eyes which dilated as her dismay increased. She was a stupid little woman and even at this stage she did not understand what Duncannon had in reserve. The Post Office expert treated a stamp from the book and one of the other stamps by the same process he had used in the first instance. In each case, the black initials “J.C.D.” came up boldly on the paper. Ruth stared at them, fascinated, but apparently her brain had been working.
“Well, and what has that to do with me, Mr. Duncannon?” she demanded shrilly. “I don’t see that proves anything. Plenty of people buy stamps at the Grove Road office. Any of them may have got your funny stamps and put them on these anonymous letters.”
Duncannon shook his head dispassionately.
“A mistake, there,” he explained. “The girl behind the counter had special orders to give these prepared stamps to you and to no one else.”
Ruth bit her lip hard, and glanced about the room as though in search of inspiration.
“People sometimes buy stamps from me when they run short themselves,” was the best she could hit on.
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br /> Again Duncannon shook his head.
“People don’t want a dozen stamps at a time, when they run short,” he objected. “Of course you’ll call these persons as witnesses when the case comes on? Or if you give me their names now, I’ll have the matter looked into.”
At the words “the case,” Ruth Jessop’s mouth fell half-open in astonishment and dismay. Apparently she had not realised before that this was a preliminary to a criminal trial.
“I never had anything to do with it,” she declared with a catch in her breath. “You’ve no right to say I had, just because you’ve done something with postage stamps. If that’s all you have against me, then it’s all a mistake.”
“That’s not everything,” Sir Clinton interrupted. “You were away on holiday this summer, weren’t you?”
Ruth Jessop seemed to scent danger in the question.
“Yes . . . I was,” she admitted, haltingly. “But what’s that got to do with it?”
“You were away from home during the first fortnight of July and for a week at the beginning of September, weren’t you?”
Ruth Jessop licked her lips to moisten them before answering.
“Yes, Sir Clinton. I was away on holiday then.”
“And no anonymous letters were despatched between July 1 and July 15, while you were away from home. Nor were any posted between August 26 and September 4, the week when you were staying with your aunt at Lynmouth. Curious coincidence, isn’t it?”
Clearly this reinforcing evidence broke down Ruth’s resistance. She had been so careful not to send any letters while she was away, lest the postmark should leave a clue. And now that very precaution was leading to her undoing. She collapsed ungracefully, sobbing and mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, her stout little body shaking with the spasms of her emotion. After a time she grew a little calmer and managed to put a question in a quivering voice.
“What can they do to me?”
“A ten-pound fine and imprisonment for twelve months,” Sir Clinton said unsympathetically, “under the Post Office Act, 1908. It’s no use expecting much sympathy, Miss Jessop. It’s as bad a case as I’ve come across.”
Ruth Jessop relapsed into sobs and inarticulate protests. She regained some control over herself, after a minute or two, and managed to gasp out:
“I . . . only . . . did it . . . for fun.”
“Your ‘fun’ apparently cost Mrs. Telford her life. She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?”
“I . . . never meant . . . any real . . . harm.”
“Well, you caused it; and now you’ll have to take the consequences whatever they are,” Sir Clinton pointed out bleakly. “You’ll be charged under the Post Office Act. That being so, I can’t ask you any question bearing on the point. But I can ask you about one episode which won’t be used at your trial. Are you fit to answer questions?”
Ruth Jessop glanced from one face to another but found no sympathy in any of them. Apparently she decided to make a clean breast of things in the hope that this might count in her favour with these hard-faced officials.
“I’ll tell you . . . anything you want,” she declared brokenly, giving her eyes a last wipe with her sodden handkerchief.
“Very well. We know your method of posting an envelope addressed to yourself in pencil and then rubbing up the pencil address and readdressing it to someone else, to give the impression that it had been mailed to him. After that, you delivered it by hand yourself, dropping it into the addressee’s letter-box. You did that once in the case of Oswald Hyson, on the night he died, didn’t you?”
“Yes . . . I did,” Ruth admitted falteringly.
“Then tell me exactly what you did. Don’t forget the least detail.”
Ruth seemed to pull herself together with an effort, now that she had been set a definite task. She spent a moment or two in consulting her memory, and then she began, gaining confidence as she proceeded:
“I’ll . . . try to remember. I posted it . . . the envelope, I mean . . . in the morning. And it came back . . . to me by the . . . afternoon post. I know that’s right . . . It’s what I always did when I worked . . . in that way. Then I rubbed out the pencil address . . . and put Mr. Hyson’s on the envelope in ink. Then, after it got dark, I went out Cowslip Avenue and . . .”
“This is where I want you to be careful,” interjected Sir Clinton. “Tell us everything in detail.”
“When I came to the Hysons’ gate,” Ruth went on more connectedly, “I looked to see if the blinds were drawn. I couldn’t have risked passing the window of the drawing-room if they’d been up, because someone might have seen me and that wouldn’t have been safe. But the blinds were down. One of them doesn’t come down straight. It leaves a gap between the blind and the sash. I knew that, because I’d seen it one night when I was at the Hysons’ house in the evening. But I thought that didn’t matter if I was careful. So I went up to the door as quietly as I could and dropped the letter into the box. Then as I came away, I thought I’d like to have a peep into the room, just to make sure. So I stopped just for a moment as I was passing the window on the way to the gate again and glanced in. Mr. Hyson was sitting facing me, but back in the room, talking to another man. I don’t know who the other man was. He was sitting in an arm-chair with his back to me and I could see only the top of his head and his shoes and part of his trousers. He was sitting a bit sideways. But I can’t tell you who he was. I couldn’t see enough of him to recognise him. He had light tweed trousers, that’s all I can tell you. I don’t even know the colour of his hair, because he was between me and the light.”
“You’re quite sure about what you’ve told us?” demanded Sir Clinton.
“Oh, quite, Sir Clinton, quite sure. I’m really doing my best to tell you just what happened, Sir Clinton. I’m not holding back anything.”
“And then?”
“I didn’t wait more than a second. I was afraid Mr. Hyson might glance at the window and catch sight of me. I just went away very quietly and then I went back home again.”
“You saw no sign of Mrs. Hyson on the premises? No other window lighted up in the house?”
“Oh, no, Sir Clinton. Except for the hall light and the drawing-room, it was quite dark.”
“What time was that?”
Ruth Jessop paused for a while before replying.
“I can’t tell you exactly, Sir Clinton, but I know it was between eight and half-past. I’m fairly sure of that, Sir Clinton.”
The Chief Constable’s next question evidently puzzled her.
“You read the newspapers, don’t you? One of the local ones?”
“Oh, yes, Sir Clinton. I take in the Courier.”
“And you cut words and letters out of it for your poison-pen stuff? Now if you read the papers, you must have seen that the police were anxious to get every possible bit of evidence about this Hyson affair. Why did you not come forward and tell us then what you’ve told us now?”
“Oh, but, Sir Clinton,” Ruth protested, “if I’d done that, then they’d have asked me how I came to be at the Hysons’ house that evening and they’d have found out that I was sending these letters. I couldn’t have that happening, Sir Clinton.”
“Afraid of the consequences? Rather a pity — from your point of view. If you’d come forward voluntarily, it might have served your turn in this poison-pen case. You might have got more lenient treatment. But that’s got nothing to do with us here. I want to ask another question. What church do you attend?”
“St. Salvator’s,” Ruth answered in a puzzled tone.
“Ah! So that’s where you got the name Salvator that you put to that telegram of yours — the one that was delivered while you were at Mr. Lockhurst’s office. I congratulate you on that attempt to manufacture an alibi, Miss Jessop. You posted that telegram in an envelope addressed to Waterloo Street Post Office, with stamps on the form to cover the cost of the wire. The result was that it was telegraphed as ‘handed in at 11.49 A.M.’; and at 11.49 you were
with us in Mr. Lockhurst’s office. But, unfortunately, I went into the history of your wire and heard it had been posted, not handed in.”
Ruth Jessop seemed confounded by this exposure of her methods. But Sir Clinton gave her no time for regrets on that point.
“Did you write me an anonymous letter within the last day or two?”
“Oh, no, Sir Clinton, I didn’t,” Ruth Jessop protested, as if she were glad at last to have something she could deny.
“Quite sure?”
“Oh, quite, quite sure, Sir Clinton. I did write you one, and I’m sure I’m sorry for it now. But that was a long time ago.”
“You haven’t a typewriter, have you?”
“Oh, no, Sir Clinton. I couldn’t afford one.”
Ruth Jessop seemed to be recovering herself during these easy questions, but her respite was broken by the Chief Constable’s next inquiry.
“Why did you not tell us that it was Mrs. Telford whom you saw going into Mr. Lockhurst’s office after hours? You recognised her, didn’t you? And yet you pretended not to know who it was, and we had to drag Miss Nevern into the matter. Why did you not make a clean breast of it then?”
Ruth’s answer had so much egotism in it that even Craythorn was surprised by it.
“But that might have been slanderous, Sir Clinton, and it might have got me into trouble. You couldn’t expect me to risk that, surely, Sir Clinton.”
“Libel came easy enough to you,” said the Chief Constable. “I don’t see why you’re so careful about slander, especially when it was a question of giving us your help.”
“Oh, but that was quite different, Sir Clinton, quite different. No one knew I was sending these letters, you see. But if I’d said anything before witnesses, then everyone would have found out that it was I who’d said it. People might have said I’d done it out of spite, just.”
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