The Murder in Torquay (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 9)

by Frank Howell Evans

  It was Captain Harry Haven’s habit as soon as the second week of August came round to travel to Torquay in Devon, where for five or six weeks he lived pleasantly. He pretended to play golf in the morning. He went for a ride in his car in the afternoon. He dined at Hotel Chesterfield in the evening and spent an hour or two afterwards at Hotel Bay Torbay, which had just enlarged its casino at great cost. An enviable, smooth life without a doubt and it is certain that his acquaintances envied him. At the same time, however, they laughed at him, and with some justice. He was known for his fantastic investment ideas and the famine or feast outcomes. The last two years it was feast, having made a fortune in Latin American aviation.

  Two years of ease, however, had not altogether stopped his love of speculation. His new money-making idea was painting. At first he just bought paintings to decorate his suite at Hotel Chesterfield. He had however seen how much some artists charged for their paintings and decided he could do that too. As was his character he went all in, paying fast amounts of money to be part of the art scene in London and Torquay and taking lessons from expensive French “masters” without ever getting better, though they told him he was making progress. This was the reason his acquaintances did not take him altogether seriously.

  The beauty of the little town, the crowd of well-dressed and agreeable people, the rose-coloured life of the place, all had their appeal to him as a painter. But it was the casino, which he thought gave him the most inspiration for painting. Not that he played for anything more than an occasional hundred Pounds; nor, on the other hand, was he merely a cold looker-on. He had a bank-note or two in his pocket on most evenings at the service of other guests at the tables. But the pleasure to his curious and artistic mind lay in the spectacle of the battle which was waged night after night between the beautifully dressed winners and losers.

  On the first evening of this particular visit he found the room hot, and sauntered out into the little semicircular garden at the back. He sat there for half an hour under a flawless sky of stars watching the people come and go in the light of the lamps, and took in the gowns and jewels of the women with the eye of a connoisseur; and then into this starlit quiet there came suddenly a flash of vivid life. A woman in a soft, clinging dress of white satin rushed swiftly from the baccarat-room and flung herself nervously on a bench. She could not, to Haven’s thinking, be more than twenty years of age. She was certainly quite young. The supple slenderness of her figure proved it, and he had moreover caught a glimpse, as she rushed out, of a fresh and very pretty face; but he had lost sight of it now.

  The woman wore a big black satin hat with a broad brim with a couple of white ostrich feathers curved over at the back, and in the shadow of that hat her face was hidden. All that he could see was a pair of long diamond eardrops, which sparkled and trembled as she moved her head—and that she did constantly. She would stare moodily at the ground; then she would fling herself back; then she twisted nervously to the right, and then a moment afterwards to the left; and then again she stared in front of her, swinging a satin slipper backwards and forwards against the pavement with the attitude of a child. She looked on the verge of hysteria. Haven was expecting her to burst into tears, when she sprang up and as swiftly as she had come she hurried back into the room.

  “Summer Lightning,” thought Captain Haven and decided he would make her the subject of his next painting. “Don’t forget those earrings.”

  Near to him a very tall, red headed woman sneered to a man: “She’s pretty, that little one. It’s regrettable that she lost.”

  A few minutes later Haven finished his cigar and strolled back into the baccarat-room, making his way to the big table just on the right hand of the entrance, where the play as a rule ran high. It was clearly running high tonight, because so deep thronged the crowd around the table that Haven could only by standing on tiptoe see the faces of the players. He couldn’t see the banker. But though it remained crowded, people were coming and going, and it was not long before Haven found himself standing in the front rank of the spectators, just behind the players seated in the chairs. The oval green table was spread out beneath him littered with banknotes. Haven turned his eyes to the left, and saw seated at the middle of the table the man who was holding the bank. Haven recognised him and was surprised to see him. He was a young man, Baronet Jack Reece-Jones, who, after a brilliant career at Oxford and at Hamburg, and having inherited a large portfolio of real estate from his uncle, was ready to take on the world.

  He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual player on his chiseled face. It was clear that good fortune was with him this evening, because in front of him the croupier was arranging with extraordinary skill piles of banknotes in the order of their value. He was winning heavily. Even as Haven looked Reece-Jones turned up “a natural,” and the croupier pushed the chips on the table to his side.

  “Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Le jeu est fait?” the croupier announced, all in one breath, and repeated the words. Reece-Jones waited with his hand on the wooden frame in which the cards were stacked. He glanced around the table while the stakes were being put on the cloth, and suddenly his face changed from boredom to interest. Almost opposite to him a small, white-gloved hand holding a five-hundred Pounds note was thrust forward between the shoulders of two men seated at the table. Reece-Jones leaned forward and shook his head with a smile. With a gesture he refused the stake. But he was too late. The fingers of the hand had opened, the note fluttered down on to the cloth, the money was staked.

  At once he leaned back in his chair.

  “Il y a une suite,” he said quietly. He relinquished the bank rather than play against that five-hundred Pounds note. The stakes were taken up by their owners.

  The croupier began to count Reece-Jones’ winnings, and Haven, curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought the game to so abrupt an end, leaned forward. He recognised the young woman in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves had gotten the better of her a few minutes ago in the garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought she had an entrancing loveliness. She was moderately tall. Her hair was blonde, her eyes dark and wonderfully clear.

  “There are two thousand Pounds in the bank,” the croupier cried. “Who will take on the bank for two thousand Pounds?”

  Nobody, however, was willing. A fresh bank was put up for sale, and Reece-Jones, still sitting in the dealer’s chair, bought it. He spoke to a doorman, and the man slipped around the table, and, forcing his way through the crowd, carried a message to the woman in the black hat. She looked towards Reece-Jones and smiled; and the smile made her face a miracle of tenderness. Then she disappeared, and in a few moments Haven saw a way open in the throng behind the banker, and she appeared again only a yard or two away, just behind Reece-Jones. He turned, and taking her hand in his, shook it tenderly.

  “I couldn’t let you play against me, Miss Rosette,” he said, in Etonian English; “My luck’s too good tonight. So you shall be my partner instead. I’ll put in the money and we’ll share the winnings.”

  The woman’s face blushed rosily. Her hand still lay clasped in his. She made no effort to withdraw it.

  “I couldn’t do that,” she exclaimed.

  “Why not?” said he. “See!” and loosening her fingers he took from them the five-hundred Pounds note and tossed it over to the croupier to be added to his bank. “Now you can’t help yourself. We’re partners.”

  The woman laughed, and the company at the table smiled with amusement. A chair was brought for her, and she sat down behind Reece-Jones, her lips parted, her face j
oyous with excitement. But all at once Reece-Jones’s luck left him. He renewed his bank three times. He took a fourth bank, but rose from that a loser too. He had lost most of his winnings.

  “That’s enough, Miss Rosette,” he said. “Let us go out into the garden; it will be cooler there.”

  “I’ve taken your good luck away,” said the woman remorsefully. Reece-Jones put his arm through hers.

  “You’re the only good luck I want,” he answered, and the couple walked out of Haven’s hearing.

  Haven was left to wonder about Rosette. She was just one of those problems which made Torquay so unfailingly interesting to him. She was some sort of child of nature; so much was clear. The openness of her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it. She was at no pains to show her true feelings. She was a young woman running around the gambling room alone, as unembarrassed as if she had been at home. But it seemed to Haven that she could move in any company and yet not look out of place. She would look a little more picturesque than most women of her age.

  Haven was still thinking about her and the exciting task he had set himself painting her. The painting would be a surefire triumph at last, when he saw her again half an hour later at the entrance of the casino. She came down the long hall with Baronet Jack Reece-Jones at her side. The couple was walking slowly, and talking with so complete an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their surroundings. At the bottom of the steps a heavyset woman of fifty-five over-jeweled, over-dressed and over-painted with make-up, watched their approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement. When they came near enough to hear she said:

  “Well, Rosette, are you ready to go home?”

  The young woman looked up with a surprise.

  “Of course, Milady,” she said, with a certain timidity which surprised Haven. “I hope I have not kept you waiting.”

  She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.

  “Good-bye, Baronet Jack,” she said, dwelling on his name and looking at him with soft and smiling eyes.

  “I will see you tomorrow evening,” he said, holding her hand. She frowned, and a sudden cloud set on her face. She turned to the elder woman.

  “No, I don’t think we will be here, tomorrow, will we, Milady?” she said reluctantly.

  “Of course not,” said Milady terse. “You haven’t forgotten what we’ve planned? No, we won’t be here tomorrow; but the night after that—yes.”

  Rosette turned back again to Reece-Jones.

  “Yes, we have plans for tomorrow,” she said, with a tone of regret in her voice; and seeing that Milady was already at the door, she bent forward and said encouragingly, “But the night after that I will see you again.”

  The Baronet kissed her hand tenderly. The woman tore her hand out of his hand and ran up the steps.

  Baronet Reece-Jones returned to the gambling room. Captain Haven didn’t follow him. He was too busy with the little problem which had presented itself to him. What could that young woman, he asked himself, have in common with the middle-aged woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed, there had been a tone of more than respect in her voice. There had been something of affection. And as he walked to his hotel yet other questions popped up in his mind to amuse him.

  “Why,” he asked, “could neither Rosette nor Milady come to the Casino tomorrow night?”

  It was on a Monday evening that Haven saw Baronet Jack Reece-Jones and Miss Rosette together. On the Tuesday he saw Reece-Jones in the gambling room alone and had some talk with him as he had met him before in London.

  Reece-Jones was not playing that night and around ten o’clock the two men left the casino together.

  “Which way do you go?” asked Reece-Jones.

  “Up the hill to Hotel Chesterfield,” said Haven.

  “We go together, then. I, too, am staying there,” said the young man, and they climbed the steep streets together. Haven was dying to ask some questions about Reece-Jones’s young female friend of the night before, but discretion kept him reluctantly silent. They chatted for a few moments in the hall of the hotel about different topics and then separated for the night.

  Captain Haven, learned more about Rosette the next morning. He was preparing himself to go to a restaurant for breakfast with his friend Jules Poiret, a famous detective from the continent, who had made London his home the last couple of years and who had arrived in Torquay early that morning at the advice of his doctor, who demanded Poiret take up a more active lifestyle to alleviate his breathing problems. As Haven was fixing his tie in front of the mirror next to the door of his suite Reece-Jones burst into his room without knocking.

  Captain Haven forgot his curiosity about the woman in a surge of indignation. “I say…!” Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage. But Baronet Reece-Jones was out of breath and shaking with agitation.

  “I have got to see you. You must help me, Captain Haven—you must.”

  Haven spun around on his heels. At first he had thought that the help wanted was the help usually wanted in Torquay and its large all-consuming casino. A glance at Reece-Jones’s face, however, and the tone of anguish in his voice, told him that the thought was wrong. Haven slipped out of his indignation. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Something terrible!” With shaking fingers Reece-Jones held out a newspaper. “Read it,” he said.

  It was an edition of the local newspaper, Herald Express, and it showed the date of that morning.

  “They are crying it in the streets,” said Reece-Jones. “Read!”

  A short paragraph was printed in large black letters on the first page, and caught his eyes immediately.

  “Late last night,” it ran, “an appalling murder was committed at Villa Argyle, on the road to Exeter. Lady Emily Charingbridge, an elderly, rich woman who was well known in Torquay, and had occupied the villa every summer for the last few years, was discovered on the floor of her salon, fully dressed and brutally strangled, while upstairs, her maid, Harriette Carter, was found in bed, chloroformed, with her hands tied securely behind her back. At the time of going to press she had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Simon Wilson, is in attendance on her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to throw some light on this deadly affair. The police are as usual quiet about the details of the crime, but sources tell us these are the facts:

  “The murder was discovered at twelve o’clock at night by local police Inspector Jeffrey Edgar. It is obvious from the absence of all marks on the door and windows that the murderer was let in from within the villa. Meanwhile Lady Charingbridge’s car has disappeared, and with it a young woman who came to Torquay with her as her companion. The motive of the crime seems obvious. Lady Charingbridge was famous in Torquay for her jewels, which she wore everywhere. The ransacked condition of the house indicates that a careful search was made for them, and they have disappeared. It is anticipated that a description of the young woman, with a reward for her arrest, will be issued soon.”

  Haven read through the paragraph with a growing consternation.

  “This is outrageous,” cried Reece-Jones emotionally.

  “The young woman is, I suppose, your friend Miss Rosette?” said Haven slowly.

  Reece-Jones moved forward.

  “You know her, then?” he cried in amazement.

  “No; but I saw her with you at the casino. I heard you call her by that name.”

  “You saw us together?” exclaimed Reece-Jones. “Then you can understand how untrue the suggestion is.”

  But Haven had seen the woman half an hour before he had seen her with Baronet Reece-Jones. He could not but vividly remember the picture of her as she flung herself on the bench in the garden in a moment of hysteria, and kicked her satin slippers backwards and forwards against the stones. She was young, she was pretty, but—but—fighting against it as much as he could, this memory began looking more and more sinister. He remembered some words spoken by a stranger. “She’s pretty, that l
ittle one. It’s regrettable that she lost.”

  Captain Haven arranged his tie with even a greater deliberation than he usually employed to give him time to think.

  “And Lady Charingbridge?” he asked. “She was the heavyset woman with whom your young friend went away?”

  “Yes,” said Reece-Jones.

  Haven turned around from the mirror.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Jules Poiret is the cleverest of detectives. You know him.”

  Captain Haven used to organise Whist tournaments in London during a short lived Whist mania, and at one such gathering Poiret and Reece-Jones had been present together.

  “You wish me to approach him?”

  “Yes, at once.”

  The confidence with which Reece-Jones spoke shook Haven for a moment, but his memories of the woman’s behaviour were untainted by infatuation, though she became more interesting as a painting subject.

  “You are going out of your way to get the smartest of detectives involved in the search of this woman. Are you wise, Reece-Jones? You know, Poiret is here on doctor’s orders and not…”

  Reece-Jones sprang up from his chair in desperation.

  “You, too, think she’s guilty! You’ve seen her. You think she’s guilty—like this confounded newspaper, like the police?”

  “Like the police?” asked Haven sharply.

  “Yes,” said Baronet Jack Reece-Jones. “As soon as I saw that rag I ran down to Villa Argyle. The police are all over the place. They wouldn’t let me in the garden. But I talked with one of them. They, too, think that she let in the murderers.”

  Haven grabbed Reece-Jones’s shoulders with both hands.

  “Listen to me, before you do something rash,” he said solemnly. “I saw this woman half an hour before I saw you. She rushed out into the garden. She flung herself on a bench. She was hysterical. You know what that means. She had been losing. That’s point number one.”

  Captain Haven ticked it off in his head like he had seen his friend Poiret do so many times.