Tenant for Death

by Cyril Hare

  “Oh, that’s an easy one. I had a cold and was indoors. Gandhi was with me.”

  “I see. Did anyone see him here—besides the people in the house, I mean?”

  “Yes, Colonel Follett came to tea, I remember. He knows the dog quite well—he’s always making fun of him and his name.”

  “His address?”

  “Rockwell Priory—just the other side of Lewes.”

  The sergeant noted the name, and went on: “The next day is Thursday last, the 19th. Three in the afternoon.”

  Susan wrinkled her brow.

  “I remember now,” she said after a pause. “I went out to the post office that afternoon.”

  “Was anybody with you?”

  “No, but Mrs. Holt at the post office will remember, because Gandhi chased—I mean, her cat ran after Gandhi, all over the shop. There was quite a fuss about it.”

  The sergeant laughed.

  “Excellent!” he said. “I will see Mrs. Holt on my way back. Now there is only one more date—the worst case of all. Friday the 20th, that is, yesterday, some time in the morning.”

  “I know that can’t have been Gandhi,” said Susan triumphantly. “I was out riding on the downs that day, and he was with me all the time.”

  “Are you sure it was Friday morning?”

  “Certain. I had been dancing in Brighton the night before.”

  “How does that help you to remember it?”

  “Because the—the person I had been dancing with stayed the night here and we went riding together the next day.”

  Susan was enraged to feel herself blushing like an early nineteenth-century miss as she made the reply. It may be that the sergeant noticed it, for his next question was: “Is he an independent witness?”

  “Not independent exactly,” answered Susan, as coolly as she could. “As a matter of fact, we’re engaged to be married. If you want his name and address,” she went on, “here it is.” And she handed him the letter which she had addressed that morning.

  “Thank you, miss,” said the sergeant. He copied the address in his notebook, and handed back the letter. “May I be allowed to congratulate you?” he added, with grave courtesy.

  “Thank you,” said Susan in some confusion. First congratulations are sweet, even when they come from a police officer.

  Meanwhile the sergeant had risen to his feet.

  “Will the wedding be soon?” he asked.

  “Oh, quite soon. We’ve waited long enough as it is.”

  “Just so. And you’ll be living in the country, no doubt?”

  “No. We’ve just had the offer of a share in a farm in Kenya. We shall go out there as soon as we’re married.”

  “Ah, Kenya,” said the sergeant musingly. “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy there. I’m sure. It’s a fine life, they tell me, for those that have a bit of capital behind them.”

  “Yes, it’s a wonderful chance, isn’t it?” said the girl eagerly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, but I never thought we could manage it. I was so surprised when he told me——” She stopped abruptly, as though she had only just realized how far the conversation had led her away from the matter in hand into her private affairs. “Is there anything else I can tell you, sergeant?” she went on in a different tone.

  “Nothing else, miss, thank you very much,” said the sergeant genially, stuffing his papers back into his pocket. “I must be getting back to Lewes now. And I shouldn’t worry too much about your dog. Between ourselves I don’t expect you will hear any more of this affair. Good morning.”

  He paused in the doorway. “Perhaps I can post your letter for you in Lewes?” he added.

  “Oh, no, thanks. You needn’t bother,” Susan replied. “I’ve just thought of something I wanted to add to it, as a matter of fact.”

  The sergeant gave an understanding smile.

  “I see,” he said. “Good-bye, then, miss. And good-bye, Gandhi.”

  General Jenkinson, who had elected to leave the stables just half a minute too soon, encountered the sergeant as he was mounting his bicycle in the drive. He would have passed indoors without noticing him, but he felt that his dignity demanded that he should return the man’s salute. As he did so, he looked at him curiously.

  “I haven’t seen your face before,” he said. “You’re not a local man, are you?”

  “No, sir. I’m temporarily attached to this division.”

  “H’m,” said the general. Then, almost automatically, he found himself exclaiming: “Mind you, I take no responsibility for this dog—no responsibility at all.”

  “Quite so, sir,” said the sergeant soothingly. “The young lady took full responsibility herself in the matter. But in any case,” he went on, “I don’t think there is any reason for suspecting the animal. It seems quite clear that he is not the one we’re after. I’m only sorry you should have been troubled in the matter.”

  “No trouble at all,” the general assured him, “I’m always only too glad to assist the police in any way. It’s part of one’s duty as a citizen, in these days especially.” He swelled visibly with pride at the assistance he had rendered. “And mind you,” he went on, “I shouldn’t have been at all sorry if it had turned out to be the dog you wanted. It’s a ridiculous dog, and she’s given it a ridiculous name. I don’t care to have it about the house, I can tell you, sergeant. No pedigree, no manners, and then to hear that name always being shouted about the place—the name of the biggest enemy our Indian Empire has got—it’s monstrous!” He paused, and then added: “It isn’t even as if it looked like the blighter at all.” The circumstance seemed for some reason to add the final drop to his cup of bitterness. He went on: “Of course, she’s very fond of the dog, and all that, and I wouldn’t see her unhappy if it could be helped, but all the same, I shouldn’t be sorry to see the last of it—sheep-killing or no sheep-killing.”

  The sergeant, who had been making sympathetic noises during this tirade, here took the opportunity to murmur deferentially: “I dare say you will be seeing the last of it before long, sir. I presume the young lady will take it with her when she marries.”

  “Oh, she told you she was going to get married, did she?” asked the general.

  “Yes, sir. But perhaps I oughtn’t to have mentioned it.”

  “God bless my soul, why not? I approve of the affair entirely. She might have done better for herself, I suppose, if she’d wanted to, but Harper is a very decent young fellow—I knew his father well—very decent people—quite a sahib in fact—oh, I approve, absolutely! Though, mind you, the young people nowadays manage these affairs very differently from what they did when I was their age. In those days no young man would go near a girl’s parents until he was in a position to keep her. Nowadays they all seem to think they can rush into an engagement without any prospects at all. Then they have to wait, and waiting’s a ticklish business for all concerned—unsettles them, if you, follow me.”

  “Quite so, sir,” the sergeant agreed. “I’ve a daughter at home waiting to be married, and I know what it’s like.”

  “You understand, then. Well, it seems to be all fixed up now. Not such a long wait as I feared. They’ve got round the difficulty somehow—heaven knows how. That’s the young people of today again, all over. Secrets, you know. In my young days it was: what’s your income, and how do you earn it? Nowadays it’s: I can keep your daughter and don’t you ask any questions. Still, I suppose we should be satisfied even with that, as things go. We old ’uns aren’t treated with the respect we used to get, and that’s a fact.”

  “Quite so, sir,” the sergeant said again.

  The general looked up, quite surprised to find that he had been addressing a policeman, and not, as he had imagined in the oblivion induced by eloquence, a crony in his club.

  “Quite so,” he repeated fiercely.

  “You’ll be sorry to lose her, sir, no doubt,” added the sergeant. “I understand they are to live out of England.”

  “The young fellow me
ans to go out to Kenya, he tells me,” said the general. “Got the offer of a partnership in a farm there. And a very good life for a young man—I don’t approve of them hanging about in the old country when there’s Empire-building to be done elsewhere.”

  He stopped suddenly, as though conscious that he had been talking a good deal. “Well, I mustn’t keep you,” he said, nodded curtly and strode into the house.

  The sergeant saluted his retreating back, mounted his bicycle and rode slowly away. Before he had gone far, a curve in the drive hid the house from view. Here he dismounted and with a sigh of relief undid the collar of his tunic.

  “Phew! That’s better!” he murmured. “Well, thank heaven for the garrulity of generals, anyhow. It was a very long shot,” he added to himself as he pedalled away once more, “but I’ve learned something, anyhow. Marriage—money—Kenya—but where the devil does it all fit in?”

  Outside the gates he was overtaken and stopped by a police car. A superintendent got out.

  “I don’t approve of my sergeants going about the roads dressed in that slovenly manner,” he said with mock sternness. Then, with a smile: “You’d better get in, Mallett. I’ve a man here who will take the bicycle back for you.”

  “Thanks,” was the reply. “I’ve worn these clothes about as long as is good for them.”

  In the car, the superintendent observed: “By the way, we’ve found the dog that’s been doing the damage.”

  “Good,” said Mallett. “You might let Miss Jenkinson know. I shouldn’t like her to be worried unnecessarily.”

  He could not but feel a hypocrite as he said it.

  * * *

  In the house, Susan was finishing a long postscript to her letter.

  “Darling,” she wrote, “since I finished this, rather an odd thing has happened. I’ve had a policeman here—a sergeant, asking questions about Gandhi!—sheep-killing, of all things, as if the poor lamb would even so much as give a sniff at a loathsome great sheep. Of course I told him it was all nonsense, and then he started asking me about dates and things, and one of them was Friday. So, of course, I told him about our heavenly ride on the Downs that day, and how Gandhi was with us every minute of the time, and then—darling, you’ll think me a perfect idiot—but he asked me who you were and whether you could back up Gandhi’s alibi or whatever you call it, and then before I knew what I was doing I started telling him all about you and how we found we could get married ages sooner than we thought we could and—oh, angel! I do feel such a complete worm to have gone and talked about our private selves to a great red-faced policeman! As if it mattered to a soul except just us! Do forgive me for being such an absolute fool. I feel so beastly about it because, you see, I must tell you now, I have been a bit worried in my mind ever since you told me about the money. It is marvellous having it and all that it means, but, darling, why are you so mysterious about it? Honestly, it makes me frightened sometimes. I hate to feel there’s something about you I’m not supposed to know. And then when a great fat sergeant starts asking questions about you—he wasn’t a bit like an ordinary sergeant, really, much more polite and educated—I suppose that’s why I talked to him so much more than I meant. Dearest, do tell me, really, is there anything about this money which—you know what I mean, which the police oughtn’t to know about? I don’t mind what it is—honestly, I don’t—it’s only you I care about. Do write soon, if it’s only to tell me I’m a nervous little fool. I get these silly frights simply because I love you so much. . . .”

  The rest of the letter is irrelevant.

  * * *

  “That sergeant talked a lot,” remarked the general at dinner. “I hate a talkative man.” He took a spoonful of soup. “Now where all these politicians go wrong about India. . . .”

  India lasted well into the savoury.

  18

  EVIDENCE IN MOUNT STREET

  * * *

  * * *

  Sunday, November 22nd

  A flurry of rain, driven on a gust of cold wind, sent pedestrians running for shelter as Mallett turned into Mount Street. It was not a morning for loitering out of doors any longer than was necessary, but the inspector paused a moment beside a street hawker who stood, chilled and dripping, on the pavement. He threw sixpence into his tray, took a box of matches and looked into the man’s face as he did so, raising his eyebrows in enquiry.

  “Du Pine went in half an hour ago,” murmured the hawker.

  “Alone?”

  The man nodded, and then whined: “Thank you, sir, God bless you, sir,” as someone brushed past them.

  Mallett put the matches in his pocket and crossed the deserted street. The house he sought was almost immediately opposite, and an observer might have thought it strange that only when he had reached the other side and was within a yard or two of the door did he unfurl the umbrella in his hand. With what seemed unnecessary disregard for any other passers-by, he held it right in front of his face. At that moment two men emerged from the house door. They paused for an instant, looking right and left, before getting into a small two-seater car which was drawn up by the kerb. Not for the first time Mallett thanked the unknown inventor of the umbrella, who has supplied us with a mask, effective and opaque, which can be assumed in a moment, on at least nine days out of ten in an English winter, without attracting the least suspicion. Only one thing was needed to make it perfect from a detective’s point of view—an artistically contrived slit in the silk. Mrs. Mallett could never understand why her husband consistently refused to have his umbrella re-covered.

  “Du Pine and—who?” the inspector asked himself, as he let down his umbrella in the hall, while the noise of the car receded down the street. “Thin, sandy, not too well dressed, toothbrush moustache—Captain Eales, I should imagine. Better make a note of the number of the car, anyway—VX 7810.”

  To Mallett, making a note of a fact or name was merely to repeat it once to himself under his breath. Thereafter it was more securely recorded that if it had been copied into a dozen notebooks.

  He turned to the porter. “Is Mrs. Eales in?” he asked.

  The man nodded. “Oh, she’s in all right,” he said. There was something of a sneer in his voice, a knowing contempt that to Mallett as a man was intensely disagreeable; for Mallett the detective, like anything else out of the ordinary, it had its interest.

  “Then take me up in the lift, please,” he said sharply.

  “Very good, sir. It’s on the second floor. This way.”

  The maid who opened the flat door to Mallett’s ring was young and pretty, but her looks were marred by the expression, a compound of peevishness and indifference, that is to be found on the faces of servants in certain circumstances and in those circumstances only.

  “She’s under notice,” was the inspector’s instant reaction. “And she’s worried about it, too. Now what is her worry—her next place, or this week’s wages?”

  “Mrs. Eales?” he asked.

  “I don’t know whether she can see you. I’m sure,” said the maid. “She isn’t hardly up yet. Is she expecting you?”

  “I’m from Scotland Yard,” said Mallett.

  “Oh. . . .” A gleam of interest appeared in her eyes. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose you’d best come in then,” she added with an instant resumption of her pose of unconcern.

  With a swish of her skirt that said as plainly as words: “If she has nasty policemen coming after her, it’s no affair of mine, thank goodness!” she led the way to what was evidently the drawing-room.

  “I’ll tell her you’re here,” she said, in a tone from which the inspector could guess the relish with which she would announce his identity, and left him.

  After the cold cheerlessness of the street, the warmth of Mrs. Eales’s drawing-room was agreeable. It was indeed a warmth that in a very few moments began to produce on Mallett an impression of stuffiness. Somewhere or other, concealed hot-water pipes were trying to dispel the rigours of the outside world and succeeding
, he felt, only too well. The windows were closed, and heavy looped curtains shut out so much of the scanty daylight that he would hardly have been able to examine his surroundings without the aid of the electric light which the maid had turned on before she left him.

  “H’m,” he said to himself, as he looked around him. “This place would look better by night than by day, I fancy.”

  It was a fair-sized room, but the multiplicity of objects in it made it look smaller than in fact it was. The modern craze for blank spaces and clean, spare lines had evidently not affected Mrs. Eales. Nothing was here that was not rounded, soft, stuffed, tasselled, fringed. The carpet which covered the floor from wall to wall was thicker and heavier than any carpet had a right to be, the huge divan was piled with cushions of monstrous size. Everything in the apartment breathed an air of expensive and unsophisticated comfort. From a little heap of illustrated society papers on a side-table it might be deduced that its inhabitant had at some time learned to read.

  Mallett sniffed. “No books, of course,” he murmured. “That’s characteristic. And”—he glanced round the walls, “no pictures either. Not so characteristic. I wonder why. . . .”

  He looked more closely. On either side of the mirror over the mantelpiece a faint patch of wallpaper showed darker than the rest. Above, two picture-hangers still depended from the rail. Mallett’s mind went back to the insolent porter, to the maid under notice. All pointed in the same direction—Mrs. Eales was hard up, sufficiently so to be selling things.

  Had anything else gone? he wondered. It hardly seemed possible that a room so crowded could ever have held anything more, but a very short search proved that such was the case. The disinterested maid had evidently neglected her duties for some days and the array of miscellaneous curios and misnamed objets d’art that encumbered the mantelpiece and occasional tables was thinly coated with dust. And here and there a little ring of comparatively clean surface gave evidence that not long since the ranks had been thinned. Mallett counted half a dozen of them without difficulty—silent evidence that here a statuette of jade or ivory, there a china figurine had been sacrificed to necessity.