“To us, sir,” agreed the chief inspector, “yes. But those little points, which more or less clinch a case for us, as you might say, don’t carry much weight with a jury. They want something more definite than that. The evidence you can give, for instance.”
“Yes, of course. I quite see that. The normal jury doesn’t care to condemn a man on what it considers subtleties.”
“Well, sir, what I mean is, counsel for the defence is going to be on to you about that point like a ton of bricks,” said Moresby genially. “He’ll know that that’s his one snag, and if he can’t break it his client’s going to the bottom; if he can, he’s bound to be acquitted. He’s going to do his level best to tie you up in knots.”
“I must be prepared for a very unpleasant half-hour of course,” mourned Mr. Chitterwick.
“That’s it, sir. And what I’m saying is this. If you think, here and now, that there’s any possibility of him succeeding, let me know at once; because, if he does, there’s an end of our case. Are you still, now you’ve had time to think it over, just as convinced that you saw that man’s hand over the old lady’s cup as you were when you rang me up here? I’d much prefer you to tell me if you’ve any doubt at all, however small.”
“I can’t doubt the evidence of my own eyes, Chief Inspector,” replied Mr. Chitterwick with dignity. “I can assure you that it is no pleasure to me to be the instrument of justice. Very much the reverse. But I can assure you equally that I have not the faintest doubt as to what I saw, and I shall not flinch from my plain duty in the matter.”
“Then that’s all right, Mr. Chitterwick, sir,” said Moresby with great heartiness. “That’s good. After all, you did ring me up on the strength of what you saw, didn’t you?—which confirms that you did see it. That’s settled, then. Well, we’d better be getting along.”
From the added friendliness, amounting almost to affection, of the chief inspector’s manner toward him, Mr. Chitterwick gathered that the police pet had passed now his final private test and at last was adjudged competent to perform his tricks in public.
By way of reward he enjoyed the experience of being conveyed from Scotland Yard to the district station in a real police car, driven by a real plain-clothes man.
Mr. Chitterwick was not looking forward to his immediate duty. The result would be so final. Once he had picked out his man the full weight of the law would fall on the wretch, bearing him down until it had finally crushed the life out of him. Mr. Chitterwick had to remind himself very hard that nobody deserved more thoroughly to have the life crushed out of him.
Moresby introduced him to the station sergeant, who also regarded him with the eye of benevolent proprietorship. A woman was already waiting, who Mr. Chitterwick was given to understand was the waitress from the Piccadilly Palace who had served the fatal coffee. The sergeant informed Moresby that the parade was ready and waiting, and without more ado the two of them passed, with the woman, into an adjoining room. Mr. Chitterwick, who was left under the charge of a constable, could not help feeling that for so vital an occasion everything seemed curiously informal. Within two minutes the woman was out again, and Mr. Chitterwick in his turn was escorted into the next room, a trifle weak about the knees.
It was a motley crowd that was lined up in front of the farther wall in the bare bleak room. Seediness rubbed shoulders with glossiness, highly polished shoes stood next to others that sadly needed polish. The regulation is laid down that for such affairs the outsiders, roped in as they pass unsuspectingly along the street, shall resemble the suspect in appearance as far as possible, but in practice it is not easy to produce at a few minutes’ notice a round dozen people resembling a large, spruce, red-haired ex-major, of distinct soldierly as well as gentlemanly appearance. Certainly the difficulty had not been overcome on this occasion. Of the other ten only one had the faintest claim to anything approaching red hair, based on a mild ginger-and-peppery mixture. Mr. Chitterwick’s task was a farce.
The sergeant led him slowly down the line and back again, and Mr. Chitterwick, his heart thumping oddly, met in turn a dozen pairs of eyes whose expressions varied from sardonic amusement to intense indignation; and it says something for him that, foregone as the conclusion might be, he was ready to give the red-haired man the benefit of any impossible doubt that he could find and did not shrink from subjecting him to a long, steady look before he announced his decision, searching the face and testing it by his memory.
“Well, sir?” prompted the sergeant, impatient of such niceties. “Can you identify any of these men as having been seated near you in the Piccadilly Palace Hotel this afternoon between half-past two and three o’clock?”
Mr. Chitterwick dismissed his last base hope that any doubt was possible and indicated in a mumbling way the red-haired man. The sergeant, aided by an underling policeman, briskly and efficiently ejected the supers into the street. Moresby strolled, as if casually, toward the red-haired man, whose countenance reflected nothing but indignant amazement in which indignation played very much the larger part; he was evidently waiting only till the room was cleared before he burst forth very volubly indeed. Mr. Chitterwick, succumbing to a moment’s poltroonery, edged out of the room with the last of the ten. He simply did not wish to witness the arrest, he told himself.
The red-haired man’s volubility must have been cut ruthlessly short, for it was barely a couple of minutes before Moresby rejoined Mr. Chitterwick in the outer room with the information that the other was safely locked in a cell.
“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick, and looked as unhappy as he felt. Responsibility sits pleasantly on few of us.
Moresby looked at him and decided that the pet must be rewarded. “Well, sir, I must get busy now. I shall have to make a search of Major Sinclair’s flat, though I hardly expect to find anything there, but first I want to have a look through the old lady’s room at Aldridge’s. Would you care to come with me?”
Mr. Chitterwick brightened immediately. To see the police actually at work . . . For once in his life he forgot his aunt completely. “Oh, thank you, Chief Inspector. Really, that’s very . . . I should like to very much.”
They went out to the waiting police car.
At the hotel Moresby, with the appearance of being about to be tactful and yet firm, disappeared into the dim office, leaving Mr. Chitterwick in the lounge. When he returned it was with the key of Miss Sinclair’s room. A small boy covered with buttons led them to the door. Calmly Moresby unlocked it, and the two of them passed inside.
Moresby did not produce either magnifying glass, fingerprint outfit, or any other of the proper impedimenta of the detective. He simply began, rapidly but methodically, to run through such drawers as there were in the room, paying particular attention to any letters or other documents. Mr. Chitterwick, who had expected to be breathlessly thrilled, sat on the edge of the bed and grew more and more bored as the search silently proceeded.
Then came an interruption. A door in one of the side walls opened suddenly, and a tall young woman was visible in the doorway. On seeing the two men she stopped short and stared at them. Mr. Chitterwick stared back. She was a not very prepossessing tall young woman. Her black, rather dank unshingled hair was drawn straight back from her forehead into two coils over her ears; she wore very large tortoiseshell spectacles and an exceedingly uninteresting plain brown frock; she radiated competence, and she looked alarmingly efficient. Mr. Chitterwick, doing a little private detective work of his own, muttered to himself: “The companion.”
Evidently taken aback for the moment, this efficient young person recovered herself immediately. Though presumably for all she knew she might have been confronting two desperate burglars (that is, had she not looked too closely at Mr. Chitterwick), there was not a tremor in her voice as she observed briskly: “May I ask what you are doing here? This is a private bedroom, and it is engaged.”
“Ah,” nodded Moresby. “Miss Go
ole, isn’t it?”
The young woman looked suspicious. She had evidently heard of the confidence trick before now. “That is my name,” she admitted with some reluctance.
“I’m a police officer,” said Moresby, with his usual smoothness, “and I’m afraid, miss—”
“May I see your credentials, please?” interrupted the young woman efficiently.
With a humorous grimace in the direction of Mr. Chitterwick, the chief inspector established his identity. The young woman at once became competently helpful. Briefly Moresby explained the tragedy to her, though without mentioning the fact of murder or referring to the arrest he had just effected. The young woman listened carefully, gave no sign of being shocked, and when he had finished professed herself entirely at the chief inspector’s service. Moresby thanked her and intimated that he would like to put a few questions to her.
“Perhaps we had better go into the next room,” suggested Miss Goole, and shepherded them through the communicating door into a small sitting room. The two followed her meekly.
Miss Goole seated herself in a chair, waved to the men to do the same, and expressed by her attitude that she was awaiting the chief inspector’s questions. Mr. Chitterwick, catching her eye, smiled nervously. Miss Goole did not smile back. Mr. Chitterwick blushed slightly. To tell the truth, young women like Miss Goole simply terrified Mr. Chitterwick.
Miss Goole’s story did not add very much of importance to their knowledge. With admirable candour she began, in response to Moresby’s hint, by giving a short account of herself and her relations with the dead woman. She was twenty-eight years old, the daughter of a solicitor in a small west-country town. Her career had begun with a couple of years’ work in her father’s office until he had died and she had been left to her own resources. Her father’s practice had not been worth much, and she had sold it for what it was worth and migrated to London. There her knowledge of office routine and her shorthand-typing had at once obtained her a post in the office of another solicitor with whom her father had had business dealings. The post was well paid, but she had not held it long, for a rich American woman, a client of the firm, to whom she had been deputed to act as guide and companion during a brief stay in London, had been so much impressed by her efficient manner of exhibiting the sights of the metropolis that she had made a very handsome bid for a longer tenure of this exceptional capability. (Miss Goole did not put it in quite this way, but it was evident that she had no illusions as to her own worth.) The offer had been accepted, and Miss Goole had returned with her to New York.
There she had remained for five years, supervising her employer’s many activities, ensuring that she attended the right committees on the right days, distributing the correct amount of largesse to the right almoners, and generally making the American woman’s life a smoother affair than it had ever been before. At the end of two years her employer had died, but Miss Goole had had no difficulty in obtaining another post.
During the next three years she had held two other such positions, and then, disregarding the further offers that had been made to her on all sides, had returned to England. She had intended to come back for a holiday only, but a chance meeting with Miss Sinclair had resulted in a mutual attraction of like to like, and her installation as companion-secretary had followed. That had been eight months ago, and now it seemed that another chapter in Miss Goole’s efficient life had come to an end.
“Thank you.” Moresby nodded his gratitude. “If all witnesses were like you, miss, we’d have a good deal easier time of it at the Yard.”
Miss Goole smiled faintly, a brief, competent smile of acknowledgment.
“So now, perhaps,” said Moresby, “you’ll give me as good an idea of the old lady, will you?”
“Of Miss Sinclair?” corrected Miss Goole. “As I told you, I have only been with her for eight months, but no doubt I can give you all the information you wish.”
“I’m sure you can, miss,” openly admired the chief inspector.
Miss Goole’s account confirmed Mr. Chitterwick’s idea that the dead woman had been a person of more than ordinary importance. She was not only very rich, it appeared at once, but she was what Miss Goole evidently considered of vastly more importance, a member of a very good old country family, the last survivor of her own generation; and finally she was, as Miss Goole clearly held to be of the greatest importance of all, an old lady of highly forceful character. As the narrative proceeded Mr. Chitterwick was reminded more and more strongly of his aunt.
Eight months had evidently not been too short a period for Miss Goole to acquire a working knowledge of her employer’s family history as well as her affairs. Earlshaze was one of the oldest country houses in Dorsetshire, and the thirty thousand acres of ground that made up the estate had been in the possession of the Sinclair family or its collaterals since Saxon times. It was not legally entailed, but custom had always dictated the bequeathing of it to the legal heir, except in such circumstances as those in which it had come into Miss Sinclair’s possession. The Major’s father, Captain Sinclair, had been killed in a frontier campaign while the former was still a small child; his mother had died soon afterwards. His grandfather, who had survived the deaths of these two for some years, had left the estate to his only remaining child, Miss Sinclair, absolutely, with a small income to his grandson, but the understanding of course was that it should revert to the latter on her death.
Miss Sinclair, however (so Miss Goole hinted), though possessed of a proper respect for tradition, was not the woman to allow custom to override her own feelings. She had hinted, both to Miss Goole and, more directly, to the Major himself, that she did not consider herself in any way bound to leave him the property, though so long as he behaved himself properly she had no intention of doing anything else. Behaving himself properly, Mr. Chitterwick wistfully gathered, was doing what his aunt wanted. Here Miss Goole hesitated for the first time.
“What would she do if he didn’t, then?” inquired the chief inspector jocularly. “Leave it to the Cats’ Home?”
Miss Goole paused for a moment, as if not quite sure of her ground here. She had gathered that there was another possible heir, a cousin of the Major’s, if he were still alive. Miss Sinclair had been reticent, for it was a matter of a Family Disgrace, but there had been another of her generation besides herself and the Major’s father, a younger sister. This sister, when quite a girl, had fallen in love with a quite impossible person, a journalist, of all awful things, and had actually wished to marry him. On being sternly forbidden by her father to have anything more to do with such scum, she had promptly run away from home and married the creature at the Marylebone registry office. Naturally that was the end of her so far as her family was concerned. Her father did the least he could and cut her off completely, neither answering her letters nor allowing anyone else to do so. Miss Sinclair herself had had one interview with the disgraced one, in the wretched rooms in Bloomsbury which she occupied with the Impossibility, and had implored her to leave the wretch and return penitent to the Ancestral Home, where, if she kept out of his way as much as possible and dressed herself in nothing but sackcloth trimmed with ashes, her father might possibly be clement enough after several months to forgive her.
Letitia (for such was the fallen one’s name) had affronted Miss Sinclair by receiving this suggestion with nothing but mirth, whereupon Respectability, curtly refusing to stay and drink a dish of Bloomsbury tea, had departed and never returned.
Captain Sinclair was in India at the time. None of her family ever saw or heard from Letitia again. By indirect routes they had learned that not long afterward she migrated with the Downfall to the United States, and the same source presented them with the news some years later that both were dead, which of course was the best thing that could have happened to them. But before atoning thus correctly at last for the shame she had brought on the family, Letitia Benson had manufactured a further token
of it by giving birth in New York to a son. Miss Sinclair had privily kept herself informed of the progress of this benighted child till his adolescence, when the source of her news dried up in death too, and she heard no more. That had been more than ten years ago, but if the man were still alive undoubtedly he constituted another possible heir.
“Ah!” said Moresby, stroking his walrus moustache. “And she threw this chap up at the Major, did she? Now, why? What had he been doing against her wishes that made her start talking about leaving her money elsewhere? Been pretty wild, perhaps?”
Miss Goole had not definitely said that the Major had done anything against his aunt’s wishes, but she had implied it, and she now tacitly accepted implication. But, no; so far as she knew the Major had not been wild at all. His career had been blameless. It was just a matter of marriage.
“Ah!” said Moresby, and leaned forward.
“Miss Sinclair never made any secret to me of the fact that she had set her heart on Major Sinclair’s marrying a Miss Carey, the only child of Sir John and Lady Carey, very old friends and neighbours of Miss Sinclair, whose estates touched hers at one point,” went on Miss Goole succinctly. “Miss Carey is quite a charming woman, not particularly young and not very good-looking, perhaps, but a typical country sportswoman: a rider to hounds and all that sort of thing. Sir John, her father, is the master of the local hunt. As she is almost certain to be his heiress (in fact, I gathered that Miss Sinclair and Sir John had an understanding about both inheritances) the match would have been ideal from that point of view.”
“But not from the Major’s, eh?” queried the chief inspector. “I know those country ladies. Faces like the horses they ride, most of’ em.”
Miss Goole smiled faintly. “I don’t know that Miss Carey particularly resembles a horse, but I do know that the match did not appeal to the Major at all.”
The Piccadilly Murder Page 6
