"I was not hearing from the servants anything that would bear that out," observed Grant doubtfully.
"I don't suppose you were. What they had to say, by what I can make out, they might as well have kept to themselves, for all the good it's likely to do us. They've none of them been with her above two years, and most of 'em not half as long. She's a bad mistress, but that doesn't make her a criminal."
"It does not. But they think she is not a lady, for all such grand people visit her house."
"One up to you," agreed Hemingway generously. "If they say that, they're right: they always know!"
He ate his supper that evening in the cosy little house in Bromley in which Ex-Superintendent Darliston had retired. While this meal was in progress, and Mrs. Darliston sat presiding over a teapot almost as enormous as herself, nothing was talked of but the prospects of the Ex-Superintendent's three sons, the amazing intelligence of his five grandchildren, the iniquitous behaviour of his hens, and the success he had enjoyed at the last local Show with his tomatoes; but when the Ex-Superintendent had let his belt out a hole or two, and had drawn a pipe and an aged pouch from his pocket, his spouse heaved her massive form out of her chair, piled all the crockery on a tray, and said: "Well, I'll go and wash up. If Stanley came out here to talk to you about the new greenhouse, Herbert, I didn't marry a policeman, thirty years ago, more fool me! No, I don't want any help, Stanley, thanking you all the same! Just open that door for me, and give over doing the polite!"
So saying, this admirable woman picked up the tray, and sailed off with it to the scullery.
"You can't fool Mother," observed Mr. Darliston. He pushed his pouch across the table. "Here, have a fill of mine! Now, what's eating you, young fellow?"
"Come to pick your brains, Super," said Hemingway.
"Ah!" said Mr. Darliston, leaning back at his ease. "I daresay I've forgotten more than you'll ever know."
"Well, have a shot at remembering, will you, granddad?" retorted Hemingway disrespectfully. "Going on as if you were Methuselah, and me in my first pair of long trousers!"
Mr. Darliston's bulk quivered slightly as he chuckled. He jerked his thumb suggestively towards the beer jug, and invited his guest to unburden himself. He heard the Chief Inspector out in silence, remarking at the end of his discourse: "Yes, I remember young Grant. A good lad: how's he getting on?"
"Fine, for a toddler like him!" said Hemingway. "I'll tell him you remembered him. That'll please him a lot more than it does me. What 1 want you to remember -"
"Slow, but careful," pursued the Ex-Superintendent. "Of course, he owed a lot to the training he had under me. Get on with him all right?"
"I've known worse. In fact, if it wasn't for him breathing that Gaelic of his all over me, I wouldn't have a thing against him."
"Garlic?" repeated Mr. Darliston, staring. "What's he want to eat garlic for? Tell him to stop it!"
"He doesn't eat it: he talks it. At least, that's what he says it is. He's got a shocking outbreak at the moment. They went and gave him Christmas leave, and he jumped on to the first train up to Inverness. By what I can make out, it took him the best part of twenty-four hours to get to this village of his, but he seems to think it was worth it. Never mind him! Do you remember this Seaton-Carew, alias Plain-Carew?"
"Yes, I remember the chap, and I'll tell you this, Stanley: you've got a real slippery customer in him!"
"Well, if he slips out of the mortuary, I'll know you were right. Meanwhile, I'd be glad if you'd tell me if you were playing a hunch when you tailed him, or whether you had any tabs on him?"
"Not to say tabs. Call it a lot of leads. Not one of them led me to his front-door. I could look out my old casebooks, if you like, but they wouldn't tell you much."
"No, that's all right. When you cleared up that particular gang, what became of friend Carew?"
"I don't know. He faded out, and I was under the impression that he skipped over to France."
"Never had any enquiries about him from the Surete?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"I see. Now, I've put Cathercott on to his flat, but drugs aren't my line, and I'd be grateful for a tip or two. Would he be likely to keep the stuff there?"
"He'd probably keep it there, any time he had some to dispose of- though I once met a fellow that used to dump it in a safe-deposit. That's how I caught him: seemed an unnatural sort of thing for a chap to be going two and three times a week to his safe-deposit."
"Could he hide it in a small flat, so as his man wouldn't find it?"
"Easy. If he's been selling it to people like this Lady Nest of yours, it's white drugs he's handling - probably snow, might be heroin, might even be morphia, but that's unlikely. You don't want to go looking for a consignment of hemp, you know. The stuff's worth a blooming sight more than its weight in gold, and the amount he'd have on the premises he could hide pretty well anywhere. Take any cigarettes you find - but Cathercott knows the ropes! Probably handed it over to his customers in neat little packets of powder, anyway. One of the cleverest rogues I ever arrested used to paste chemist's labels on his packets, with Boric Acid written on 'em, and the ends sealed up with red sealing-wax. Life-like, they were."
"That 'ud be more in this bloke's line than handing out boxes of cigarettes," said Hemingway shrewdly. "If that was his trade, it's my belief he'd have done his handing over at all those parties he used to go to. There were no flies on him, and, unless I find he's got a secret deposit for his papers, he's been careful to destroy every last bit of written evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if that was your fault, Super. You went and frightened the poor fellow, and a nice mess that leaves me with!"
"Well," said Mr. Darliston, reaching out his hand for the beer jug, "I don't blame you for wanting to pinch the man that murdered him, Stanley, because that's your job; but I've seen something of the horrors him and vermin like him batten on, and what I say is that whoever did him in did a good job, and ought properly to be given a medal. In fact," he added, refilling the Chief Inspector's glass, "it's those bastards which make me believe in hell! If I didn't think they were roasting down there, I wouldn't be able to sleep o' nights!"
Chapter Twelve
The Chief Inspector, reaching London again shortly after nine o'clock, betook himself to Scotland Yard, and found Inspector Grant awaiting him patiently in his office. He was seated at the desk, studying a dossier, but he rose when his chief came in, and closed the file. "I thought maybe you would be looking in," he remarked.
"I will say this for you, Sandy: you're a conscientious bloke!" said Hemingway, hanging up his hat and overcoat. "Got anything for me?"
"Verra little, I am afraid. Cathercott was on the telephone a while back. He was wanting to know if you would have him continue searching, or if it was a mare's nest he was looking for. They found a safe, hidden in a verra unusual place, and it cost them a deal of trouble to open it. There was two or three hundred pounds in banknotes in it, and some bonds, and never a sniff of snow, nor a speck to show there had ever been any there. Och, the truaghan! What with the toothache he has had all day, and the pains he took to get the safe open; and then nothing to reward him, it's a fine temper he is in! There was a secret drawer in the desk, too, which Sergeant Cringleford found, and bare as the palm of your hand when they got that open!"
Hemingway grinned, but he said: "Did you tell him to keep on at it?"
"I did, the duine bochd, but it went to my heart! If he had had it, would Seaton-Carew not have kept the stuff in the hidden safe?"
"I don't know. You'd think so, but old Darliston's just been warning me he was a damned slippery customer. It would be a smart trick to install a secret safe, just to put chaps like Cathercott off the scent. Did you say there were two or three hundred pounds in it? I suppose Cathercott was so busy sniffing for drugs he never noticed a nasty smell of rat. I would have. What did the fellow want with all that amount of money in the flat? Planning a midnight flit, in case we got after him?"
"
Well," said the Inspector mildly, "it is not an offence to keep money by you!"
"No, and if he ran a big estate, no doubt he would have a lot of cash in his safe from time to time, so as he could pay wages, and such-like. If you can tell me what he should want with a great wad of bank-notes in a small flat in town, you'll be clever! Did you check up on what the Birtley girl said about Mrs. Haddington having kicked up a row because of some towel or other in that cloakroom?"
"I was not able. The girl she would have spoken to, if she spoke at all, is the head housemaid, and she has been ill with the influenza since two days. You would not have me push my way into the lassie's bedroom!"
"Quite right! You can't be too careful," agreed his incorrigible superior. "Nice thing it would be if we had members of the Department getting compromised!"
"I am susceptible to the influenza," said Inspector Grant austerely. "Not but what I would have taken the risk, if I had thought it proper."
"All right, all right!" said Hemingway soothingly. "It'll have to be checked up on, but I'm bound to say it wouldn't have been at all proper. One subject throwing a handful of mud at another isn't anything to get excited about. Not but what there's quite a lot about Mrs. Haddington I could bear to have explained to me. If I could believe that a dame who looks to me to have about as much passion in her as a cod-fish would murder the boy-friend because he got off with her daughter, I think I'd pinch her."
Inspector Grant was well-acquainted with his chief, but this made him gasp. "There is no evidence! Thoir ort, you are joking!"
"It's my belief," said Hemingway severely, "that when you cough that nasty Gaelic of yours at me you're just handing me out a slice of damned cheek, banking on me not understanding a word of it! One of these days I'll learn the language, and then you'll precious soon find yourself reduced to the ranks, my lad! There isn't any evidence - not what you could call evidence! - against any of them: that's the trouble. You take this Haddington dame! She had a row with Seaton-Carew earlier in the evening -"
"So also did Miss Birtley."
"That's so, and don't you run away with the idea that I've ruled her out, because I haven't! But she doesn't so far seem to have had any motive at all for strangling the chap."
"It might be that she was afraid he would tell Mr. Harte she had been in prison."
"It might," conceded Hemingway. "Now tell me what that bird had to gain by telling Terrible Timothy anything at all about her!"
"That," said Grant, "I do not know."
"No, nor anyone else. At this rate, there must be quite a few people she'll have to bump off. If you ask me, it was a darned sight more likely Mrs. Haddington would be the one to split to Terrible Timothy. He wouldn't be a bad catch for that daughter of hers: not at all bad! As far as I remember, his father was very comfortably off, besides being a baronet. Leave the Birtley girl out of it for the moment! What have we against Hard-faced Hannah? She had a quarrel with Seaton-Carew; he was known to have been her lover; there doesn't seem to have been much doubt that he was running after her daughter; she knew he was being rung-up that evening; she knew when the call came through; she had the opportunity to commit the murder; and her account of her movements is uncorroborated. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I think I'm a fool not to pinch her at once."
"Seadh! But there are others! There is young Mr. Butterwick!"
"That's why I haven't pinched her," said Hemingway brazenly. "Did you see him this afternoon?"
"I did, and och, I don't know at all what to make of him! He is afraid for his life, that is sure; but at one moment he will be weeping like a caileag, and the next in such a fury that he looks fit to murder anyone! It was no more than a hint that I gave him, that, according to Mrs. Haddington, he had been only twice to that house, and each time to a large party, when it is not likely he would have heard the telephone-bell ring. He went so white I thought he would have fainted; and so angry he was he could barely speak. He said he had dined with the Haddingtons once, and he had clearly heard the bell. He said I should ask myself why Mrs. Haddington had told us such lies. He said we were fools to think he would have murdered his friend, speaking of that man in such terms as would have made you blush, sir! He said he would go mad, perhaps, and those may have been the only true words he spoke! It did not take him more than five minutes to prove to me it was Mrs. Haddington, and Miss Birtley, and Mr. Poulton, and Mr. Harte that had murdered Seaton-Carew. And then, the silly creature, he would have me believe it was all wicked lies that he had quarrelled with his friend that very evening! Och, there was no dealing with him at all!"
"No, he's difficult," agreed Hemingway, scratching his chin. "You never know where you are with neurotics. I'm bound to say, though I don't fancy him much."
"He has more motive than any other."
"I'm not so sure of that. It'll depend on what Cathercott finds in that flat. Yes, come in!"
Inspector Cathercott himself walked into the room, heavily wrapped in a hairy overcoat, and with a muffler wound round the lower part of his face. He pulled this away from his mouth, and said, setting a neat package down on the desk: "You win, Chief! Take a look at that! Two of 'em!"
"Snow?" Hemingway said. "Good man! Where did you find it?"
"Several of the books in that glass-fronted case were hollow dummies. I might have got on to 'em quicker if it hadn't been for that safe! Clever operator, this Seaton-Carew. I'm sorry he's dead: I'd liked to have had him here for half an hour! But," said Cathercott, looking like a terrier on the scent of a rat, "I think this may have given me a line on the little gang we've been after for the past four months!"
"Is that going to help me?" demanded Hemingway.
Cathercott glanced indifferently down at him. "Help you? Oh, this murder of yours! No, sir, I shouldn't think so. With any luck this little lot may lead us to the boys who are bringing the stuff into the country. I'll be making a report on this find to Superintendent Heathcote first thing in the morning." He rubbed his hands together. "He'll be interested - very much interested!"
"I'm sure he will," said Hemingway. "You can go home to bed, and put some oil of cloves in that tooth of yours, George! You've done very nicely, and you don't want to go writing reports at this hour of night!"
"Well, if you don't want me any more, I'll be off," Cathercott said, picking up his treasured package. "Unless I miss my bet, it's snow all right. Enough here to keep your friend at the Ritz for months! Good-night, sir! "Night, Sandy!"
"Talk of one-track minds!" said Hemingway, as the door shut behind Cathercott. "Little details like murder don't mean a thing to him! Well, now, Sandy, we've got a highly significant angle on the case. We'll pay another call on Lady Nest Poulton in the morning!"
"Not on Mrs. Haddington?" said the Inspector, with the glimmer of a smile.
"No, because I've not got a one-track mind!" retorted Hemingway.
But when he arrived at the house in Belgrave Square next day, he was met by the intelligence that her ladyship was not at home.
"If you mean she isn't receiving callers, just take my card up to her, will you?" said Hemingway.
The butler said, in a voice carefully devoid of ignoble triumph, that her ladyship left town on the previous evening. He regretted that he was unable to give the Chief Inspector her address, or to inform him when she would return. He suggested that these questions should rather be put to Mr.. Poulton.
"Oh, so he's not gone out of town too?"
"No," said the butler, raising his brows.
"Is he at home?"
"Mr.. Poulton is never at home during the day. You will find him at his office, Chief Inspector. Would there be anything further you would like to ask me?"
"Yes: Mr.. Poulton's City address!"
This was vouchsafed, and the two detectives returned to the waiting car. As it moved eastward, Grant said slowly: "It does not seem right to me that she should have gone away from her home just now, and not a word of it said to you yesterday!"
"No reason
why she should have said anything to me: she isn't under suspicion. But you're quite right, Sandy: it smells remarkably fishy! She must know that husband of hers isn't by any means in the clear. Nice moment for her to be jaunting off to the country! Well, we'll see what our poker-faced friend has got to say about it."
Godfrey Poulton, at first declared by a competent secretary to be in conference, did not keep his visitors waiting long in the outer office. They were ushered in a few minutes into a large, turkey-carpeted room. Here, at a large knee-hole desk, sat Godfrey Poulton. He was speaking into one of the telephones on the desk, and merely nodded to his visitors, and made a slight gesture towards a couple of chairs. He did not show any signs of discomposure, but watched the detectives absently, while he listened to what was being said to him at the other end of the wire.
"Very well… I'm sorry: no!… I could give you -"He glanced down at the open diary before him - "twenty minutes, at 11.45 tomorrow morning… Yes? I shall expect you at that hour, then. Good-bye!" He laid down the instrument, and said: "I don't want to be disturbed until these gentlemen leave, Miss Methwold. Goodmorning, Chief Inspector! What can I do for you?"
"You can, if you will be so good, sir, tell me where I can find Lady Nest Poulton," replied Hemingway. "I understand she has gone out of town."
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