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

by Frank Howell Evans

  “Ah!” said Edgar; and his face took on suddenly a keen and eager look. “You can tell me about her perhaps?”

  “All that I know I will tell without hesitation,” said Baronet Reece-Jones.

  Half-way between the gate and the villa stood a young man in black driver uniform.

  “The driver?” asked Poiret. “Poiret will speak to him immediately.”

  Inspector Watkins called the driver forward.

  “Emerson,” he said, “you will answer any questions which the gentleman may put to you.”

  “Certainly, Inspector,” said the driver. His manner was agitated and his face showed signs of fear.

  “How long have you been with Lady Charingbridge?” Poiret asked.

  “Four months, Sir. I drove her to Torquay from London.”

  “And since your parents, they live in Exeter you wished to take advantage of the opportunity?”

  “What opportunity, Sir?

  “The opportunity of spending a day with your parents while you were close-by.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “When did you ask for permission?”

  “On Saturday, Sir.”

  “Did you ask for the Tuesday?”

  “No, Sir; I asked only for a day whenever it should be convenient to Milady.”

  “Bon,” said Poiret. “Now, when did Lady Charingbridge tell you that you might have Tuesday?”

  Emerson hesitated. “It was not Lady Charingbridge, Sir, who told me that I might go on Tuesday,” he said.

  “Not Lady Charingbridge! Who was it, then?” Poiret asked sharply.

  “It was Miss Rosette,” he said, “who told me.”

  “Oh!” said Poiret, slowly. “It was Mademoiselle Rosette. When did she tell you?”

  “On Monday morning, Sir. I was cleaning the car. She came to the garage with some flowers in her hand which she’d been cutting in the garden, and she said: ‘You can go tomorrow by the train which leaves Torquay at 1.52 and arrives at Exeter at twenty minutes after two.’”

  Poiret raised his walking stick. “Then Miss Rosette had spoken to you before about this visit to Exeter,” said Poiret, with his eyes fixed steadily on the driver’s face. The distress on Emerson’s face increased. Suddenly Poiret’s voice sounded sharply. “You hesitate. To speak the truth, Emerson!”

  “Sir, I’m speaking the truth,” said the driver. “It was Rosette who first suggested to me that I should ask for a day off to go to Exeter.”

  “When did she suggest it?”

  “On the Saturday.”

  To Captain Haven the words were startling. He glanced with pity towards Reece-Jones. Reece-Jones, however, had made up his mind. He stood there with a dogged look on his face, his chin thrust forward, his eyes on the driver. Inspector Edgar had made up his mind, too. He merely shrugged his shoulders. Poiret stepped forward and put his hand gently on the driver’s arm. “Bon,” he said.

  The “bon” sounded like a bomb to Captain Haven. He had the impression of a man closing an important document, giving it a name and filing it away in his world class mind. “Let us see the garage!” continued Poiret.

  They followed the road between the bushes until they reached the garage with its doors open.

  “The doors, they were found unlocked?”

  “Just as you see them,” said Inspector Edgar.

  Poiret nodded. He spoke again to Emerson, “What did you do with the key on Tuesday?”

  “I gave it to Harriette Carter, Sir, the maid, after I’d locked up the garage. And she hung it on a nail in the kitchen.”

  “Bon,” said Poiret. “So anyone could easily have found it last night?”

  “Yes, Sir—if one knew where to look for it.”

  At the back of the garage stood a row of petrol-cans against the brick wall. Poiret tapped his walking stick against the cans.

  “Was any petrol taken?” asked Poiret.

  “Yes, Sir; there was very little petrol in the car when I went away. It was taken from these cans here.” And he pointed at three cans in the middle of the row.

  “I see,” said Poiret, and he raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. Inspector Watkins moved impatiently, having listened till now silently. “From the middle or from the end—what does it matter?” he exclaimed. “The petrol was taken.”

  Poiret, however, did not dismiss the point so lightly. “But it is very possible that it does matter,” he said gently. “For example, if Emerson, he had no reason to examine his cans it might have been some time before he found out that the petrol, it has been used.”

  “But since the car is gone,” cried Inspector Watkins, “how could the driver not look immediately at the cans?”

  The question had been uttered like a coup de grace. Captain Haven wondered how Poiret would defend his thinking. Poiret, however took little notice of it at all.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, carelessly. “Since the car, it is gone, as you say, that is so.” And he turned again to Inspector Edgar. “You have the number and description of the car? It will be as well to advertise for it. It may have been seen.”

  The inspector replied that the description had already been distributed to reporters. Poiret, with a nod of approval, examined the ground. In front of the garage was a small stone courtyard. On its surface were no traces of footsteps.

  “Yet the gravel, it was wet, because of the rain,” he said, shaking his head. “The man who took the car, he took it without leaving any imprints.”

  He turned and walked back with his eyes on the ground. Then suddenly he ran, as much as he could run to the grass border between the gravel and the bushes. “Vite! Baronet Reece-Jones.” The Baronet ran after him, followed by the other three.

  “Look!” he said to Reece-Jones; “A foot, it has pressed the blades of grass down here, but very lightly—yes, and there again. Someone ran along the border here on his toes. Yes, he was very careful.”

  Haven and Watkins looked at each other, not understanding why they had just run. Inspector Watkins shook his head. He said, “Gentlemen, I have to bid you goodbye. I’ve been up all night and I have a train to catch.”

  “Going back to London, old man?” asked Haven.

  “No such luck. First Exeter, then Southampton. Anyway, teaching new investigative methods on the South Coast beats being knee deep in crime in London.” He tipped his hat and quickly left the grounds of the villa.

  Poiret hardly noticed him. Looking at the ground and with his walking stick pointing forward, he held it like a leach and followed it like an imaginary dog. They reached the back of the villa, where the front door was.

  Villa Argyle was built of yellow stone, and was almost square in shape. Here and there the green shutters were closed; here and there the windows stood open to let in the air and light as the policemen did their work inside. A couple of ornate pillars flanked the door, and a gable roof, topped by a gilded vane, surmounted it.

  To Haven it seemed impossible that so sordid and sinister a tragedy had taken place within its walls during the last twelve hours. The room on the extreme left, as the party faced the villa, was the dining-room, with the kitchen at the back; the room on the right was the salon in which the murder had been committed. In front of the glass door to this room a strip of what had once been grass stretched to the gravel drive. But the grass had been worn away by constant use, and the black soil showed through. This strip was around three yards wide, and as they approached they saw, even at a distance it had been trampled down after the rains last night.

  “We will go round the house first,” said Poiret. A careful investigation showed conclusively that the only entrance used had been the glass doors of the salon facing the drive. To that spot, then, they returned. There were footmarks on the soil. One set ran in a distinct curve from the drive to the side of the door, and did not cross the others.

  “Those,” said Edgar, “are my footsteps. I tried not to disturb the ground.”

  “But, Monsieur”—and Poiret pointed to a blur of marks�
�”Poiret wishes that your other officers, they had been as intelligent. Regarde! These run from the glass door to the drive, and, for all the use they are to us, a how do you say, harrow might have been dragged across them.”

  Inspector Edgar perked up. “Not one of my officers has entered the room by way of this door. The strictest orders were given and obeyed. The ground, as you see it, is the ground as it was at twelve o’clock last night.”

  Poiret’s face grew thoughtful. He bent down to examine the second set of shoe prints. “A woman and a man,” he said. “But they are mere hints rather than prints. One might almost think—”

  He rose up without finishing his sentence, and he turned to the third set and a look of satisfaction came over his face. “Ah! Here is something more interesting,” he said.

  They were quite clearly defined, made by a woman’s small, arched, high-heeled shoe. The pressure of the sole of the shoe was more marked than that of the heel. Poiret looked at the marks thoughtfully. Then he turned to the inspector.

  “Are there any shoes in the house which fit those marks?”

  “Yes. We have tried the shoes of all the women—Rosette Dereham, the maid, and even Lady Charingbridge. The only ones which fit at all are those taken from Rosette Dereham’s bedroom.”

  He called an officer standing in the drive, and a pair of grey suede shoes were brought to him from the hall.

  “See, Mister Poiret, I checked,” he said, with a smile; “Lady Charingbridge’s foot is short and square, the maid’s broad and flat. Neither Lady Charingbridge nor Harriette Carter could’ve worn these shoes.”

  Poiret took the shoes and looked at them. They were new, but used at least once. There were scratches on the bottom of the soles. Poiret, kneeling down carefully on his handkerchief, placed them one after the other over the footprints. To Haven it was extraordinary how exactly they covered up the marks and filled the indentations.

  “Miss Dereham,” said the inspector, “walked away from here after the crime. She must be in hiding by now.”

  Poiret rose to his feet and handed the shoes back to the officer. “Yes, mon ami” he said, “so it seems.” He took a measuring tape from his pocket and measured the ground between the window and the first footstep, and between the first footstep and the other ones.

  “How tall is Mademoiselle Rosette?” he asked, and he addressed the question to Reece-Jones. It struck Haven as strange that the detective should ask with confidence for information which might help to bring Rosette Dereham to the gallows from the man, who had staked his happiness on her innocence.

  “Around five feet five,” he answered.

  Poiret put his measuring tape in his pocket. He turned with a somber face to Reece-Jones.

  “Poiret, he gives you a warning,” he said. “Mademoiselle Rosette, she was in the car with the man and the other woman—sometime between eleven and twelve, they flee.”

  “Between eleven and twelve? Is that sure?” asked Inspector Edgar.

  “Certainly,” replied Poiret. “The gate, it is open at eleven, and you close it. It is open again at twelve. Therefore the murderers, they had not gone before eleven?”

  Inspector Edgar moved forward with his eyes full of horror.

  “Then, when I first closed the gate,” he cried, “and came into the garden and up to the house they were here—in that room? Oh, my God!” He stared at the window, with his mouth open.

  “Mon ami, that is so,” said Poiret.

  “I knocked on the wooden door, I tried the bolts; and they were there—in the darkness murdering Lady Charingbridge not three yards from me.” The inspector stood transfixed.

  “That we shall see,” said Poiret.

  Taking a magnifying-glass from his pocket, he examined the green wooden doors which opened outwards. He stepped into the room, followed by Reece-Jones and the others. They found themselves in a small room painted blue. On the left was a small fireplace with the ashes of a burnt-out fire in the grate. Next to the grate was a long sofa, with a crumpled cushion at each end. On the right were three windows. A round satinwood table stood under the windows, with three chairs with high backs around it. One of them overturned on the floor.

  Haven could hardly believe that he stood on the spot where within the last twelve hours, a cruel and sinister tragedy had taken place. There was so little disorder. Haven leaned with a studied pose against the wall.

  “Now, what has this room to say to me?” he asked importantly. Nobody paid the slightest attention to his question, and it was just as well. For the room had very little information to give him. It was very annoying, all the more because Poiret was so busy.

  Poiret looked carefully at the long sofa and the crumpled cushions, and he took out his measuring tape and measured the distance between the cushion at one end and the cushion at the other. He examined the table. He measured the distance between the chairs. He went to the fireplace and raked in the ashes of the burnt-out fire. Haven noticed one thing. In the midst of his search Poiret’s eyes were always straying back to the sofa, and always with a look of extreme surprise, as if he read there something, definitely something, but something which he could not explain.

  After a few moments of silence for himself, of suspense for all the others who watched him, he bent down suddenly. Slowly, and with extraordinary care, he pushed his hands under the head-cushion and lifted it up gently, so that the indentations on its surface would not change. He carried it to the light of the open window. The cushion was covered with silk, and as he held it to the sunlight all could see a small brown stain.

  Poiret took his magnifying-glass from his pocket and bent his head over the cushion. But at that moment, careful though he had been, the folds and indentations disappeared, the silk covering was stretched smooth.

  “Oh!” cried Haven tragically. “What have you done?”

  Poiret looked at Haven in amazement. “Well, what has Poiret done?” he asked. “Come! Tell it to Poiret!”

  “You have destroyed a clue,” replied Haven importantly.

  “But, Captain Haven,” he implored mockingly, “a clue! And Poiret, he has destroyed it! But what kind of a clue? And how has he destroyed it? And to what mystery would it be a clue if he hadn’t destroyed it?”

  Haven turned red. He had no clue. Poiret turned to Inspector Edgar. “It is of no importance whether the creases in this cushion, they remain,” he said, “We have all seen them.” He put the looking-glass in his pocket.

  He carried the cushion back and put it on the sofa. Then he took the other, which lay at the foot of the sofa, and carried it in its turn to the window. This was indented too. The surprise on Poiret’s face increased. He stood with the cushion in his hands, no longer looking at it, but looking out through the doors at the footsteps so clearly defined—the foot-steps of a woman who had run from this room and sprung into a car and driven away.

  “There is something here, gentlemen, which Poiret, he does not understand. The clues, they do not make the sense.”

  Captain Harry Haven heard someone beside him draw a deep breath, and turned. Reece-Jones stood next to him. A faint colour had come back to his cheeks, his eyes were fixed intently on Poiret’s face.

  “What do you think?” he asked; and Poiret replied brusquely: “It is not my business to just think, Monsieur; my business is to make sure.”

  Haven asked himself what clues confused Poiret. He looked once more around the room. He did not find his answer, but he caught sight of a painted tambourine with a bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim. It was hung on the wall between the sofa and the fireplace at around the height of a man’s head.

  “We have seen everything here; let us go upstairs,” Poiret said. “We will first visit the room of Mademoiselle Rosette. Then we will question the maid, Harriette Carter.”

  The four men walked into the hall and went up the stairs. Rosette’s room was in the southwest wing of the villa, a bright and airy room, of which one window overlooked the road, and two others, betwee
n which stood a dressing-table, the garden. In the bedroom a dark-grey dress of silk and a petticoat were flung carelessly on the bed; a big grey hat of Asian silk was lying on a dresser next to a window; and on a chair a little pile of fine linen and a pair of grey silk stockings, which matched in shade the grey suede shoes, were tossed in a heap.

  “It was here that you saw the light at half-past nine?” Poiret said, turning to Inspector Edgar.

  “Yes” replied Inspector Edgar.

  “We may assume, then, that Mademoiselle Rosette was changing her dress at that time.”

  Inspector Edgar was looking around him, opening a drawer here, a wardrobe there. “Miss Rosette,” he said, with a laugh, “must’ve changed her dress last night in an unusual hurry.”

  It seemed to Captain Haven as though the woman had impressed something of her own delicate self on the room. Reece-Jones stood on the threshold watching with a sullen face the violation of the bedroom of his loved one by the men.

  No such feelings, however, troubled Poiret. He went over to the dresser and opened a few small leather cases which held Rosette’s jewelry. Suddenly Reece-Jones moved forward into the room. Poiret opened an empty case made to hold a couple of long earrings—those diamond earrings, which Captain Haven had seen her wear at the casino.

  “Can I see?” asked Reece-Jones, and he took the case in his hands. “Yes,” he said, “Miss Dereham’s earrings,” and he handed the case back with a thoughtful air.

  It was the first time he had taken part in the investigation. To Haven the reason was clear. Baronet Reece-Jones had himself given those earrings to Rosette. Poiret closed the case and turned around.

  “There is nothing more for us to see here,” he said. “Nobody has been allowed to enter the room?” He opened the door.

  “Nobody except Harriette Carter,” replied the inspector. Captain Haven felt indignant at so obvious a piece of carelessness. Even Reece-Jones looked surprised. Poiret merely shut the door again. “Ah, bon, the maid!” he said. “Then she has recovered!”