Tenant for Death

by Cyril Hare

  “What a fool I am!” Mallett said to himself. “Why don’t I practise what I preach? Here I am, theorizing without the facts, when a simple examination of the office typewriters will give me all I want—that is, if the girl who took the letter down has any memory.”

  He deliberately relaxed, and let his thoughts wander. Links, he reflected vaguely, missing links—the case was full of them. And he was going to see Fanshawe tomorrow. And the only link between Fanshawe and James was—Harper of all people! Fanshawe had been a friend of Harper’s father, and Harper had found James his house—it seemed remote enough in all conscience! The personalities in the drama began to flit through his tiring brain like colours in a kaleidoscope. The speed of the car, from being a stimulant, became a narcotic. He dozed. Presently he found himself speaking to Harper who vainly tried to tie a bow, and explained that if he didn’t get it straight he would be murdered, while Lord Bernard shouted in his ear: “You mustn’t be over-dressed! It’s a crime to be over-dressed!”

  He jerked himself awake. Lord Bernard was still speaking, but what he said was: “We’re just coming into London. Where can I drop you?”

  15

  MR. COLIN JAMES

  * * *

  * * *

  Friday, November 20th

  “Are you sure there were no other machines in the office?” Mallett asked Frant.

  It was Friday morning, and they sat together in the inspector’s room at Scotland Yard, at a table littered with little typewritten slips.

  “Absolutely,” was the reply. “They were all of the same make—big office typewriters, except for a small portable in Du Pine’s room. That was a ‘Diadem’.”

  “And quite obviously this wasn’t,” rejoined Mallett, tapping the letter with a broad forefinger. “I don’t pretend to be an expert in these matters, but at a guess I should say it was a light Hornington.”

  He crumpled up the slips into a ball and threw them into the waste-paper basket with a shrug of disgust.

  “And that’s that!” he observed. “Now where do we stand? Here we have a letter written on office-paper but not in the office—brought in from outside so that poor dear Gaveston could sign it. Who could get at the paper? Obviously, anyone employed in the office who cared to sneak a bit and take it home with him. Who owned a typewriter? Nowadays nearly everybody does. By the way, I wonder if Du Pine has one at his private house?”

  “He certainly has,” said Frant, with an air of triumph. “Here’s a specimen of its work.”

  He laid a sheet of notepaper before the inspector, adding: “It was addressed to the Chief Commissioner personally. It has just been sent down for us to deal with.”

  My Lord,

  Having applied several times in vain at my local police station, I am constrained to write to you personally and ask for police protection. As you may be aware, I was, until it ceased to carry on business, the secretary of the London and Imperial Estates Company Limited. Since giving evidence at the inquest on my late chairman, Mr. Ballantine, I have every reason to suppose that my life also is in danger. I have more than once observed some extremely suspicious characters prowling near my house. There is one on the pavement opposite to me as I write. I earnestly beg that my request, which in the circumstances I feel sure you will agree is no more than reasonable, may be attended to without delay.

  I am, my lord.

  Your obedient servant,

  H. Du Pine.

  Mallett placed the letter side by side with the other. “A different make of machine altogether,” he commented. “Just look at the tail of the ‘g’s’ for instance. Well, what do you suggest we do about this?”

  “Take off our men, and put on uniformed constables,” said Frant promptly. “The suspicious characters were our own people, of course.”

  Mallett pondered. “I think we can do better than that,” he replied after a pause. “Keep the same men on, but put them into uniform for the occasion. That will kill two birds with one stone. We shall be watching him then without his knowing it, and giving him what he wants at the same time.”

  “I don’t quite see——” Frant began.

  “Don’t you? Well, just think it over for a bit. What is the job of a constable who is told off to give somebody or other house police protection? Obviously to watch any suspicious person who may appear outside the house, or who may approach somebody. But it isn’t to watch the behaviour of that somebody himself, is it? Nor is it part of his job to see what goes on in the house. There’s a very considerable difference. And I’ll tell you another thing, Frant. The average crook is apt to have a healthy respect for a plainclothes detective, but very little for the uniformed officer. He thinks of him as an ornament in the streets, just something to control traffic and arrest pickpockets, and so on. If Du Pine thinks he is being protected by ordinary flat-footed coppers he’ll be much more likely to give himself away than if he’s afraid he has a detective on his heels—that is if he has anything to give away.”

  “Certainly he hasn’t done anything to give himself away yet,” Frant remarked.

  “Perhaps he wasn’t quite satisfied in his mind about the ‘suspicious characters’,” said Mallett with a grin. “Now I’ve something else to tell you.”

  He briefly told the sergeant of what he had seen on the dancing-floor of the Riviera Hotel.

  “Odd, very odd,” said Frant, when he had done. “And the oddest part of it, if I may say so, is not that he should have been frightened at seeing you——”

  “Thanks,” said Mallett.

  “I mean he would naturally connect you with the murder, which must have been a horrible shock to him——”

  “He seemed pretty cool about it when I saw him. That was one of the things that struck me at the time. But you were going to say——”

  “What really seems strange is that all of a sudden he could afford to be in a place like that. Do you know what they charge you for dinner there?”

  “I do not,” said Mallett with relish. “I didn’t have to pay the bill, thank goodness.”

  “Well, believe me, sir, it’s something terrific. How could he possibly run to it, I want to know?”

  “What do we know about Harper’s position, anyway?” Mallett asked.

  “Quite a lot sir,” answered Frant, eager to prove his own industry. “We have his address, you know, down Ealing way. I got into touch with the police there, and I find he lives alone with his mother—most respectable, but as poor as the devil. A tiny house, a servant who comes in twice a week—you know the sort of thing. It doesn’t go with posh hotels at Brighton at all.”

  “Poor young men have gone bust now and then before this,” said the inspector. “But you’re quite right, all the same, Frant. This boy has come into money, or the near prospect of it, just lately. I’ll tell you what makes me sure: the expression of the girl he was dancing with.”

  “I don’t see that,” Frant objected. “Of course she’d be pleased to be dancing with a boy she was fond of.”

  “But she wasn’t just ‘pleased’,” persisted Mallett. “She was completely happy—without a care in the world. You don’t so often see people like that, and there was no mistaking it. Now just consider the—what d’you call it—the psychology of it. Here’s a girl who’s been in love with a young man for some time—you’ll remember what Mr. Browne said—who hasn’t a penny to bless himself with; obviously no prospect of getting married for years and years. Would she look like that just because she was spending one evening with him, which anyway she knew he couldn’t possibly afford?”

  “Lots of girls are never so happy as when they’re making a chap spend a month’s wages in an evening,” remarked Frant sagely.

  “Not that sort of girl,” said the inspector emphatically.

  When people say “Not that sort of girl”, particularly when they say it about a girl you have not yourself seen, there is obviously nothing to be said, and the sergeant accordingly remained silent.

  “Why not simply inter
view him and ask him where his money comes from?” he said finally.

  Mallett shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve frightened this fellow pretty badly already, without meaning to. If he’s got anything to conceal, he’ll have done it by now, and have his story pat and ready. If there’s nothing fishy about it after all, there’s no harm done.”

  “Then why not ask the girl, or her father, and see what they know about him?”

  “That’s all very well, Frant, but you can’t just stroll into a man’s house, and say: ‘I’m a police officer, and I want to know how much money your daughter’s fiancé has got and how he got it’—can you? At least, I shouldn’t care to do it, especially with a retired general. All the same, I should very much like to have the chance of a talk with him.”

  “And his daughter,” added Frant, but under his breath.

  The inspector drummed on the table for a moment, tugging at his moustache with his disengaged hand.

  “Still,” he murmured, “it might be managed. It’s a long shot, but it might come off. I think I’ll have a talk on the phone with the Sussex police.”

  “Now, or after lunch?” asked Frant, who knew his superior’s weakness.

  “After lunch, of course,” said Mallett with decision. “Let’s see, Fanshawe’s coming here at three, isn’t he? Well, I’m not going to interview him on an empty stomach, if I can help it. There’s nothing else, is there?”

  “There’s a big bunch of reports from all over the country about people resembling James,” answered the sergeant. “I suppose they’ll all have to be enquired into, but not one of them looks the least helpful.”

  A description of James based upon the evidence already obtained and described with the usual euphemism as that of “a man whom the police desire to interview” had been circulated. These were just beginning to bear fruit, and the resulting harvest was, as Frant said, an unpromising one. Mysterious stout men with beards seemed to have appeared all at once in every part of England. They had been seen leaping into taxis, disappearing down subways, lurking suspiciously behind the hedges of country lanes. Late at night, they had drunk hasty cups of tea at London coffee-stalls or cadged lifts from lorry-drivers on arterial roads. They had even been seen, faces in the dark, peering through the windows of blameless suburban residences. Every one of them, Mallett knew, was probably the product of mere hysteria, begotten of an urge to figure in the news; but somewhere in the heap of nonsense might lurk the one grain of information that would make all the difference. Therefore it would all have to be sifted, enquired into, patiently and relentlessly, until its worthlessness was proved.

  Mallett looked at the bulging file and then at his watch.

  “Not now,” he said. “Have you ever noticed, Frant, how a big dinner the night before gives you an appetite for lunch next day?”

  “I can’t say that I have,” answered Frant.

  “Really, I have, often. I’m off now. These things must wait. I feel so hungry that I shouldn’t care to stop if Mr. James stepped into the room this minute.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?”

  An officer put his head round the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but there’s a man here who’s very anxious to see you at once. He says his name is Colin James.”

  Mallett sank back into his chair.

  “I take it all back,” he gasped.

  Whatever anxiety Mr. James may have had to visit Scotland Yard, it was apparent that once there he found himself in a state of great embarrassment. He stood in the doorway of Mallett’s room, shifting his heavy weight from one foot to another, and turning watery blue eyes first on Mallett, then on Frant, and finally on a vacant spot midway between them. He was palpably in a miserably nervous state, and looked as though an incautious sound or movement would send him bolting back through the door again.

  “Won’t you sit down, sir?” cooed the inspector in his blandest tones. “I understand you have something to tell me?”

  The visitor lowered himself into a chair, where he perched diffidently on the extreme edge.

  “I—I really must apologize for troubling you in this way,” he began, “but I feel it my duty in the very peculiar circumstances—it is all most unusual, I have never had anything to do with the police before and—but my name has been mentioned—excuse me!”

  His face was momentarily obscured by a large blue and white chequered handkerchief, while a sneeze exploded like a bomb in the quiet room.

  “I beg your pardon,” resumed Mr. James when his face reappeared from its momentary eclipse. “A nasty cold—a very nasty cold. I shouldn’t really have travelled in this weather—my daughter tried to dissuade me, but I felt it my duty——”

  This time the sneeze took him by surprise, and Mallett ducked hastily to avoid the resultant shower. So far the inspector had said nothing. Indeed he had only listened with half an ear to the disjointed utterances of the stranger. But his eyes had been busy, and his brain was mechanically registering what he saw, and checking and comparing it with what he had heard elsewhere. The first impression produced by Mr. James was one of great size. As he sat, uncomfortably far forward in his chair, his stomach protruded almost to the desk behind which the inspector sheltered. The impression of size was reinforced by the bushy brown beard that straggled over his chest. But above the beard there showed itself not the fat florid face that one might have been expecting from a man of such bulk, but a peaky little countenance, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. His limbs, too, were by comparison thin. One wondered how such inadequate legs could support the burden of his body. “He looks like a thin man badly made up to play Falstaff,” thought Mallett. He remembered Harper’s words: “A fat man—or rather, paunchy. He had a big stomach and a thin face, as if he had a bad digestion.”

  Aloud he said: “Now let’s take this quietly, Mr.—James. That is your name, I think?”

  The visitor plunged into a pocket and produced a grimy card. “That’s me,” he said.

  The inspector read: “Colin James, 14 Market Street, Great Easington, Norfolk.” In the bottom left-hand corner were added the words: “Seed and Corn Merchant.”

  “Well?” he asked. “What have you got to do with this affair?”

  “That’s exactly it!” cried Mr. James. “What indeed? I’m a respectable man, sir, always have been. You can ask anybody in Easington, or for miles round—as far as Norwich if you like.”

  “But you thought you’d like to come as far as London to make sure,” put in Mallett drily. Any hopes he had of hearing anything useful from the new arrival began to disappear. It seemed that Colin James in the flesh would prove to be no more value than the unsubstantial rumours which filled his files.

  Mr. James blew his nose with a trumpet-like blast.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve troubled you,” he said sorrowfully. “I thought it right to come as soon as I could. My daughter told me it wouldn’t be any good to anyone, but it seemed wrong not to. So as soon as my cold would let me get out of the house, I did”—he sniffed—“though I was hardly fit to travel as it was.”

  The inspector was touched in spite of himself.

  “I’m afraid it is you who have been troubled, Mr. James,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t mind that, sir,” answered James, “if I thought I’d been of any use. But I can tell you, it takes a good deal to get me out of my home nowadays—quite apart from this cold of mine, I mean. My health isn’t what it was, you know. I suffer a good deal——”

  “From your digestion?” enquired Mallett.

  “My digestion, just so. I wonder how you guessed that, sir. It’s easy to see you’re not a detective for nothing.”

  “Well, we’re trained to notice things, you know,” said the inspector pleasantly, rising as he spoke. “Thank you for coming, Mr. James. I think it’s clear you’re not the man we are looking for.”

  “Oh, you can be sure of that, sir,” the co
rn merchant assured him earnestly. “But it was a funny coincidence, wasn’t it? My name and beard and figure and all, my digestion, too, for all I knew, though you didn’t put that in the description.”

  “I think I can promise you that your digestion alone would acquit you,” said Mallett gravely.

  “Would it really, now? That is most interesting—most interesting. I should never have thought of that. It just shows the way you gentlemen of Scotland Yard work. Well, all I can say is, in that case, I ought to have a good alibi—if that’s the word—for any crimes. That’s the first good thing I’ve known come of my wretched stomach. It spoils all pleasure in life”—he contemplated his great paunch gravely—“it does indeed. The least little thing upsets it. You ask my daughter what happened when she took me to France.”

  “Oh, you went to France?” asked Mallett, “When was that?”

  “Last August it was. A week in Paris. She was bent on our going, and all because the Edwardses up the street had been there at Easter and she wanted to be even with them. And nothing would content her but that I should come too. Never again, that’s all I say—never again!”

  “You don’t happen to have your passport with you by any chance, I suppose?”

  “There I go again!” exclaimed Mr. James violently, dropping back into the chair from which he had just painfully risen. “Forgetting the one thing I meant to tell you. Not but what my daughter said it was all nonsense——”

  “Never mind about your daughter,” said Mallett. “What was it you wanted to tell us about your passport?”

  “It was stolen, sir—or at any rate, I lost it, and I always maintained it was stolen, though what anyone should want with such a thing I could never make out.”