‘Opportunity’ was his third heading. The details of this he had already thought out. Breene could have arranged for Sir John’s visit to Belfast, if necessary by forged letter: he could have met him in Sandy Row and no doubt could have devised some scheme for sending the old man to the Cave Hill. He had dined at 7.00 and perhaps could have gone to Whitehead by the 8.00 p.m. train. Perhaps he could have spent the night between there and Lurigan, slipping into the hotel unseen in the early morning.
These last two items French queried, and under his fourth heading ‘Objections,’ proceeded to consider them in detail. Alibis consisting of evidence as to the presence of a visitor in an hotel were notoriously unreliable. In this case the man might have been present at dinner and might have been in his room when called next morning, but what evidence was there that he had remained in the building between these two hours?
There didn’t seem to be any. From Rainey’s report, Breene might have been there or he might not. It was a matter for investigation on the ground. French felt a sudden urge to go straight to Belfast and look into it himself. He recognised, however, that this would scarcely be the game. So he did the next best thing. Calling a stenographer he drafted a summary of his ideas to Rainey, suggesting that he should do the needful.
Half an hour later he passed through the great swing doors of Sirius Motors, Ltd.’s palatial showrooms in the Haymarket. By a stroke of luck Joss was in the building.
The moment French laid eyes on the man he experienced one of his thrills of delightful satisfaction. For there could be no doubt that before him stood the mysterious Coates! This was certainly the man who had called on Sir John Magill before the latter paid his fatal visit to his native country. This was the man who had engaged the communicating sleeping berths, who had travelled to Stranraer, breakfasted at the King’s Arms and joined the launch at Portpatrick. He answered the description too closely for any doubt to be possible.
‘Good morning, Mr Joss,’ said French, handing over his official card. ‘As you see, I’m a police officer. I’m investigating the death of Sir John Magill and I want to ask you one or two questions. I got your name from Mr Victor Magill.’
Joss looked slightly perturbed, but he spoke pleasantly enough.
‘Sit down, Inspector.’ He pulled forward a chair. ‘I shall be pleased to tell you anything I can, but I’m afraid that will amount to just nothing at all. You see, I didn’t know the late Sir John.’
French gave an inward sigh of satisfaction. At last he was on to something definite. In his very first reply Joss had lied. French feared that the man might have had some plausible explanation for his conduct. Now this seemed unlikely.
‘I think,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that you can probably tell me all I want to know. You understand, of course, that your are not bound to answer my questions unless you like?’
Joss shrugged.
‘Oh, yes, I understand that all right,’ he said dryly. ‘I also understand that if I don’t you’ll use your position to compel me.’
‘Not necessarily,’ French rejoined; ‘but of course something of the kind might occur.’
‘I thought so.’ The man’s pleasant smile had faded and his face had grown grim and his eyes wary.
‘Well,’ said French, ‘don’t let us meet trouble halfway. Now, Mr Joss, there are one or two things about Sir John Magill’s death which are puzzling us. One is, what he went to Ireland for. Can you throw any light on that?’
Joss’s face expressed genuine amazement as well, French thought, as dismay.
‘I?’ he exclaimed. ‘I should think not! Didn’t I tell you I didn’t even know the man.’
‘You did,’ French admitted quietly, ‘but then, you know, that wasn’t true.’ He bent forward and looked at Joss keenly. ‘You see, we know of your interviews with him under the name of Arthur Coates, of 7 Talbot Terrace, Sandy Row.’
It was a blow. Joss almost visibly staggered back. Admission showed complete in his look, but in words he still tried to prevaricate.
‘It’s a lie!’ he cried. ‘A darned lie! You don’t know anything of the sort. I tell you I wasn’t there!’ He spoke confidently, but his face grew white and little drops of sweat appeared on his forehead.
French still spoke quietly, but his voice took on a certain hardness.
‘Nonsense, Mr Joss: think again. You’re too intelligent a man to take up that line. You may believe me that we know all about your visits. We can prove them in any court of law, if necessary.
Joss remained silent, staring sullenly at the other. He seemed to be deliberating what his answer should be, as if weighing the consequences. Presently he made up his mind.
‘Well, and what if I did,’ he demanded truculently. ‘I haven’t broken any law and therefore it’s none of your business.’
‘That’s all I wish to be convinced of,’ French said smoothly. ‘At present, however, I am up against these facts: You called on Sir John, giving a false name and a false Belfast address. A few days later Sir John went to Belfast, to that very area in the city, and the suggestion is that he was looking for that address. That same day he was murdered. You will see that wants some explanation. But if you can convince me that your action was innocent, the matter so far as you are concerned is at an end.’
French paused. Joss was evidently thinking rapidly. He kept shooting little glances at French as if weighing his gullibility. At last he appeared to have thought of an answer.
‘I guess, Inspector, you’ve got it wrong,’ he declared. ‘I don’t need to justify my action to you or anyone else. It’s you that’ll have to do the justifying. You’ve practically accused me of complicity in a murder and that’s actionable. You can arrest me and prove your accusation or you can meet an action for defamation of character and wrongful arrest, whichever you like. But you have no third course.’ As he spoke his manner grew more confident and he went on tauntingly: ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
French called his bluff.
‘Arrest you, of course, Mr Joss,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘If you don’t satisfy me what else can I do? And in view of this I’d better repeat my warning. You are not bound to answer my questions and anything you say may be used in evidence against you. At the same time I offer you an opportunity of explaining your conduct, should you care to do so.’
Joss’s jaw dropped.
‘You can’t prove I ever spoke to Sir John Magill in my life,’ he said, but with less assurance.
French made a gesture of impatience.
‘That, Mr Joss, is simply silly. Do you imagine I should take up the line I have if I wasn’t sure? Of course I can prove it. The butler will swear you called on Sir John and gave in Coates’s card, which card is now at Scotland Yard. He will swear that you did this twice. I assure you there is proof of your interviews that would convince any jury in the world.’
‘But that won’t prove that I had anything to do with Sir John’s Belfast visit.’
‘Won’t it?’ French returned grimly. ‘All right, Mr Joss, if that is your attitude I’m sorry, but there is no help for it. You must come with—’
With an involuntary gesture Joss threw up his hand.
‘Stop,’ he cried. ‘I’ll tell you. In a way there’s no reason why I shouldn’t, for I’ve done nothing illegal and you can’t get anything on me. All the same I’m not proud of the thing and I’d rather not have said anything.’
‘Very good, Mr Joss. Just as you please.’
Joss looked profoundly uncomfortable. French, outwardly indifferent, but inwardly seething with a delicious excitement, watched him, trying to fathom whether the man was going to lie or tell the truth. From his manner so far he couldn’t tell. Joss certainly looked as if his tale involved something discreditable, which he was ashamed of bringing into the light of day.
‘Well, Mr Joss. I’m waiting.’
The man started as if from a reverie and with a little hopeless gesture he began:
‘It’s a lo
ng story, for I must go back six years for its beginning. Six years ago I was in a bad way. I’d been invalided out of the army, and as I had recovered my health, my disability allowance had ceased. But I couldn’t get a job, my little savings were gone, and I was face to face with destitution. I needn’t labour the thing. I had my bad time. Not worse, of course, than hundreds of other poor devils who had chucked a good billet to join up. I had been an actor in the States—nothing very much, travelling shows mostly—but I couldn’t get back there; hadn’t the money for the journey.
‘When things were about their worst I happened to meet a man I knew in Piccadilly—I’ll give you his name if you want it. We had served together in the Salient and down at Loos. He played the good Samaritan. He said he knew of a job—this job it was, and he lent me clothes—it was as bad as that. He brought me here and had a pow-wow with the manager, with the result that I got a start on commission. I did my best and made good in a small way. I got my name on the payroll and with good percentages I’ve not been doing so badly.’
Joss paused and buried his face in his hands. For a moment he remained with head bowed, then raising it, he resumed.
‘That was all very well for a while, but like the darned fool I’ve always been, I’ve lately got off the rails again. I got in with a betting set and began going to race meetings and backing horses. Well, you can guess where that led to. I lost my savings and I got into debt. Then the time came when I had to pay a bet or be ruined, for as you know, Mr French, if there was any scandal of that kind I would have lost my social position and my job. I hadn’t the money and I couldn’t raise it, I had touched my friends too often. There was only one thing I could and I did it. I went to the moneylenders.’
Once again French nodded. It was an old and oft-repeated tale, this he was listening to. The thought crossed his mind that if he were to get a ten pound note for every time he had heard it, he should by now be in a position to retire.
‘That was out of the frying pan into the fire for me,’ Joss went on. ‘I had been bad before, but now I was ten times worse. I needn’t weary you with the details. It is enough to say that about a month ago I found myself with a fortnight to find between six and seven hundred pounds. It was that or ruin.
‘It’s easy to talk about being faced with ruin, Mr French, but the reality’s a different proposition. It’s a darned terrible thing—awful! I had been down and out before and I knew what it was like, and I think there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to save myself. And then I thought I saw a way out.
‘It was something I’d like to forget, but there isn’t much chance of that. I met Victor Magill and he had told me his uncle had succeeded with an invention he’d been working at for years—a new way of combining artificial silk with linen to give a smooth, strong fabric. We had talked about it and I was satisfied that the thing would be worth thousands. Well, here was I threatened with the loss of everything worth having in this world for the sake of a few hundreds, while old Sir John had wealth overflowing, ten times, a hundred times more than he could ever use. And here were thousands more going to pour into his pockets. I thought over it and I don’t deny I was bitter. And then I saw how I might get a few of those thousands out of him and not really do either him or anyone else a bit of harm.’
French, it must be confessed, was listening to this story with a good deal of disappointment. So far it rang true, and if it were it might explain Joss’s puzzling actions in connection with Sir John, without throwing any light on the latter’s death. It was therefore with more than a little anxiety that he bent forward to listen as Joss went on.
‘I began by getting a few cards printed in the name of Coates, and I called on Sir John, saying I was from Belfast. I chose Belfast because the old boy had come from it and I knew it for I’d lived there before I went to the States. Also because it was the centre of the Irish linen trade. Well, I told Sir John that I’d heard he was interested in developments in the uses of linen. He said that was so, and I went on to explain that a friend of mine and I had been working for years trying to find a scheme for combining artificial silk with linen, so as to get a smooth glossy fabric that would yet be strong. I saw I’d got him interested and I went on to say that at last my friend had succeeded and that we had made the stuff. As far as we could see from rough tests, it was a swell fabric, as smooth as silk, uncreasing and with any amount of wear in it. He was quite upset at that, and when I told him that we had no money to develop the thing and wanted to let someone with capital in with us, I saw I’d got him on the hook.
‘What I really wanted, as you may guess, was to get hold of his plans and I fixed it, or tried to fix it, like this. I told him our apparatus was at our house in Sandy Row in Belfast and asked would he come over and see it. He jumped at the idea. He was to see our plant and get a copy of our plans and in return, if he was satisfied, he was to join us in the venture, putting up the necessary cash. He was also to take over the plans of his own invention, which by this time he’d told me about, with the idea of combining his scheme with ours to get improved results. When this was settled we fixed the date and route. For reasons I’ll explain later I wanted him to travel by Stranraer, and as I found he was a bad sailor, I had no difficulty in getting him to agree to the short sea route. To clinch the matter I said I would engage the berth for him and to this he also agreed.
‘It happened that I was joining Victor Magill and a couple of other men in a motor launch cruise up the west coast of Scotland. We were to start from Barrow on the Wednesday evening and work along the coast to Campbeltown and from there north. We were to call at Portpatrick on the Thursday. I told my friends I could not start with them from Barrow, but that I would join them at Portpatrick.
‘Now I come to the part I like least to think about. Unknown to Sir John I engaged sleeping berths with a communicating door. For my scheme it was necessary to get into his berth without being seen in the corridor. I also bought a single dose of a harmless sleeping draught.’
Once again Joss showed hesitation. His last two statements had given French a nasty jar. If he were going to admit drugging and theft—burglary, French supposed it would really be—it would go far towards proving the truth of his story. A man does not falsely plead guilty to serious crime. French had been reserving this matter of the communicating berths for Joss’s confounding, but now the man had taken the wind out of his sails. French swore silently as the other resumed.
‘I got down to Euston in good time for the 7.40 on that Wednesday evening and shut myself into my berth. I heard Sir John arriving, and when his man had cleared out I watched my opportunity, showed myself at his door unseen by anyone else, and said I’d some news for him and that I’d come in for a chat after the train started.
‘When the attendant had gone his rounds I bolted my corridor door and set to work with a bunch of skeleton keys on the communicating door. I’m a bit of a mechanic in a small way, but it took me all I knew to get that door unlocked. At last, however, I did it. These doors, as you probably know, are fastened in three ways; by a finger bolt on each side as well as a lock. I had now unlocked the door and I also undid the finger bolt on my side.
‘I peeped out into the corridor, watched my chance again, knocked at Sir John’s door and entered. He was lying down, and without letting him see me, I bolted the door behind me; that was the corridor door, you understand. We began to talk and I told him how much my friend and I hoped from the invention and how long we’d been working at it and so on; just sort of padding. At last I said we should try and get a good sleep and suggested a nightcap. I brought out my flask and said I’d got some extra special old brandy that I wished he’d try. He agreed. I had the sleeping draught ready mixed in it and I poured it out with some water in his tumbler and gave it him and he drank it off. I pretended to drink out of the cap of the flask, but I didn’t really swallow any. Presently he went asleep as I’d hoped he would. As soon as he was over I unbolted and opened the communicating door and went back to my ber
th and bolted its corridor door. That is to say, the door between the berths was open, but both corridor doors were bolted. You follow me?’
‘I follow you,’ French said dryly. ‘You could do what you wanted in either stateroom without interference from the corridor.’
‘That’s right,’ Joss admitted ruefully. ‘I started in then and had a look for the plans. I searched everywhere, through the man’s luggage and his clothes and under his pillow. I even rolled him over and looked under the sheet, but devil a plan there was. He was evidently carrying the thing in his head.
‘Well, as you can imagine, this pretty well upset my apple cart. The whole journey had hinged on Sir John’s bringing his plans, and now he hadn’t done it. I cursed till I was blue in the face, but what could I do? I sat and thought for a couple of hours, but I could see no way out. So I had to give up. I re-locked and bolted the communicating door and hoped that Sir John wouldn’t twig that he’d been drugged.
‘When we got to Stranraer—’
French held up his hand.
‘A moment, please,’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t follow about that door. How did you bolt the communicating door on Sir John’s side? You went out into the corridor again, I suppose?’
‘No. By that time it was late and I didn’t want to be seen coming out of Sir John’s room. What I did was this: I unbolted his corridor door, then I went back through the communicating door to my own state-room, bolted this last on my own side and then with my skeleton key locked it.’
Inspector French: Sir John Magill's Last Journey Page 13
