“It’s an idea,” Bobby admitted, “but it assumes that the murderer didn’t get it.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Charley asked.
“Jessop wouldn’t have it in his pocket when he was calling on a chap like T.T., would he? Everyone knows T.T.’s reputation.”
“Well, what was Jessop doing there?”
Charley smiled and winked.
“At T.T.’s?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t they have been doing a deal? Jessop bought stuff, didn’t he? All jewellers do. And the general idea is that T.T. often had stuff to sell.”
“Risky for a respectable firm of jewellers to have dealings with a notorious receiver.”
“It’s when you’re respectable you’re safe,” retorted Charley, winking again. “Mind, I’m only guessing. I don’t know anything really. Only that’s what struck me at once.”
Bobby was forced to agree that it was a possible though somewhat cynical explanation. But again it implied that Jessop and T.T. knew each other. If that were so, then T.T. was a remarkable actor, for certainly his astonishment had seemed genuine.
But it remained a possible theory that Wynne, T.T., and Jessop had all met in connection with some proposed deal; and that the murder had been committed by some fourth person of whom as yet no trace had been found, and who had escaped with whatever the others had met to bargain over. And that might very probably have been the Fellows necklace, but, then, also it might have been something else.
Charley broke in on Bobby’s thoughts with a new question.
“What’s this about T.T.’s moving?” he said. “He’s going round asking everyone for a really trustworthy firm of removers.”
“Well, I suppose,” Bobby said cautiously, “it is a bit upsetting to have someone murdered in your house. Might get on your nerves a bit.”
“Fat lot T.T. knows about nerves,” scoffed Charley. “I’ll tell you what struck me at once. He wants to know who you go to at the Yard when you use a van for police purposes, so he can get warning in time. But I expect you have your own, haven’t you? Or else you just ring up one of the big firms?”
“To tell you the truth,” Bobby answered, “I think it’ll be a long time before we try that game again, after Saturday’s fiasco. Vans are a bit of a sore subject with us just now. I wouldn’t mention them to any of our people for a year or two, if I were you.”
Charley laughed, and asked if it was as bad as that, and Bobby said it was even worse, and Charley said wouldn’t the van-driver give the show away, and Bobby said he had been sworn to secrecy on crossed knives and a bottle of red ink, and Charley laughed again and said he was sorry if he had been trying to butt in on official secrets, and Bobby said it wasn’t that at all and would Charley have another drink?
Charley accepted, and then got up to go.
“But I’m afraid you do think I’ve been nosy,” he said. “Because I notice you didn’t say whether it was your own van or one of the big shops or what? I didn’t mean, you know. Only I did wonder what T.T. was so keen on moving for all at once.”
“Oh, just that, I suppose,” said Bobby vaguely, and as he was opening the door for his visitor he paused. “By the way,” he said, “had you any special reason for wanting to see Miss May?”
“No, nothing special,” Charley answered, a little hurriedly. “I just thought I might ask her to come out somewhere for a spot of dinner.” He added gloomily: “I don’t suppose it would have been any good, it’s all that Chenery blighter; now she’s got a down on me.”
“How’s that?” Bobby asked.
“Well, I suppose I’ve got her job,” Charley admitted. “Had no idea, though; thought she was quitting on her own. Won’t catch me stopping, if I get half a chance to clear. The old girl’s not such a bad sort really, but she does keep you on the jump, Sundays and all.”
“I suppose she was really keen on the Fellows necklace?”
“Dreamed of it,” asserted Charley, “but she hadn’t the coin and she knew hubby wouldn’t come down, so what was the good? Jessop did his best to hook her, you know. Took it down to Hastley Court once to show her.”
“I suppose there’s no doubt of that,” Bobby asked. “You arranged for Jessop to see her, didn’t you?”
“No; never knew a thing about it till afterwards,” Charley asserted. “Too busy for one thing. Any idea what a poor devil of a private secretary has to do when there’s a big show on? But Colonel Edwardes was there, and he knows Jessop and happened to catch sight of him, and wondered what he was up to. When he told me, I guessed at once it was the Fellows necklace again. Only on the q.t. Wouldn’t have done to let hubby know; he would have gone in off the deep end if he had known she was still playing about with the thing after he had turned it down.” He repeated that he had known nothing of the jewellers’ visit till later, accepted without comment Bobby’s explanation of his questioning that it was necessary to check up Mr. Jessop’s movements in the fullest detail, and returned to his grievance of Miss May’s displeasure.
“Wouldn’t do her any good if I chucked the job,” he complained. “She’ll come round in time, but Chenery’s making all the running just now, blast him! Thank the Lord, his garage will have to buck up a whole lot before he’ll be able to marry.”
“Doing badly, is it?”
“May be sold up any minute almost – at least, that’s what Penny Logan told me.”
“Bit prejudiced, perhaps?”
“There’s that,” agreed Charley, “but I’ve heard from other people he’s in pretty low water. He may come in for the title some day, but not for half a century or so. No one will take half a century as good security.”
“I suppose not,” said Bobby, and Charley departed, and Bobby went back and sat down at his typewriter, feeling that his chat had given him quite a remarkable amount of useful information, though how it all hung together was more than he could see for the present.
Slowly he typed:
QUESTIONS
A. DUKE AND DUCHESS OF WESTHAVEN
AA. DUKE OF WESTHAVEN
1. Why was duke interested in Fellows necklace, and why did he keep harping on the price, as if it were a personal grievance or disappointment?
(Theory that he intended it as a present to his wife apparently untenable.)
2. Where was he at the relevant time Saturday night?
3. How did he know Jessop gambled?
AB. DUCHESS OF WESTHAVEN
1. Is she telling the truth when she says she didn’t see the necklace at Hastley Court?
2. If she is, what happened there?
3. If she is lying, why?
4. Was she seriously thinking of buying?
Purely hypothetical questions:
1. Are dukes and duchesses necessarily above suspicion? If so, why?
2. If a person dreams of a thing, how far will that person go to get possession of it?
General observations:
1. Dukes are kittle cattle.
2. Bobby, my boy, mind you don’t make a damn fool of yourself.
B. MAGOTTY MEG
1. Why did she go out of her way to say she didn’t hold with murder?
C. WYNNE
1. Had he the time to commit the murder?
2. Had he the nerve when he knew police were at hand?
3. Where is he?
4. What was he doing at T.T.’s?
5. Has he got the necklace?
D. T.T. MULLINS
1. Is it a fact Jessop was a complete stranger to him?
2. Why does he keep talking about moving?
3. Why did the disappearance of the football pages of the Evening Announcer scare him?
E. DENIS CHENERY
1. Is he identical with the “Denis” Mr. Wright says he knows of as mixed up in jewel thefts?
2. Is it pure coincidence he was leaving the flats where Miss May lives about the time of the attack on her?
3. Is it true he is pressed for money?
4. Is it possible he a
nd Hilda May have been associated to secure the necklace?
5. Where was he at the relevant time Saturday night?
F. HILDA MAY
1. Are there real grounds for the doubts her employers seem to have entertained of her honesty?
2. Why didn’t she say she had left Jessop and was consequently out of a job?
3. Was the necklace concealed in her flat, and is that why she was attacked? If so, by whom?
G. MESSRS. JESSOP, JACKS & Co., Mayfair Square,
Jewellers.
GA. JESSOP
1. What was he doing at T.T.’s?
2. Was he a gambler?
3. Why was there £5,000 in foreign currency at his flat, and where did it come from?
GB. JACKS
1. Was he at the cinema, as stated, at the relevant time?
GC. WRIGHT
1. Was he motoring at the relevant time?
General query:
1. What were the actual relations between the partners and between them, and each of them, and their manager?
General observations:
1. Firm in low water financially.
2. No one but Jessop had seen the necklace for two or three weeks.
3. Check up on Wright’s history as boxer, and secure impressions of his fingerprints to see if they are on record.
H. SUMMER-HOUSE AND OCCUPANTS (unknown)
1. Were they accomplices of Wynne? Friends of Jessop? T.T.’s scouts? Unknowns after the necklace on their own account? Unknowns having nothing to do with what happened?
2. How the mischief to find out who they were?
J. MR. PATTERSON
1. Check up on story he was seen in Paris after ostensibly leaving for New York.
2. Is there anything in the fact that his special cigars were left both in T.T.’s place and in Miss May’s flat?
General note:
Patterson seems to have had an eye on the necklace. Query: Was it more than an eye?
K. CHARLEY DICKSON
1. Check his statement he was too busy the day of the fete at Hastley Court to have had any time for making arrangements with Jessop.
2. See if Wright can identify him. If not, who was it introduced himself to Wright and Jessop as the duchess’s secretary, giving Dickson’s name?
3. Dickson lost his raincoat Saturday night. Is there anything in that? If so, what? He had been drinking, by report of constable on beat. If he left it at any pub near, that would show where he actually got his drink if the Cut and Come people are telling the truth in saying it wasn’t there. (N.B. Cut and Come staff seldom tell the truth.)
4. Apparently sound alibi for the forcible entry to the Hilda May flat, but check up with Mr. Logan for this.
L. UNKNOWN YOUNG MAN noticed by Brush Hill constable, and considered by him to have behaved suspiciously
1. Does he come in?
2. If so, where?
M. GENERAL CLUES
MA. Evening Announcer with football results missing.
1. Why?
2. What became of missing pages?
MB. Copy of Upper Ten two weeks old, with snap of duchess.
1. Why had Jessop this in his pocket?
MC. Automatic pistol found near Jessop’s body.
1. Jessop and Jacks possess one of same make and calibre. Had they another, similar, and, if so, did Jessop take it with him to Brush Hill?
2. Miss May said by Dickson to have an automatic in her possession. None found in flat. Check up on this when she can be questioned.
MD. Fragment of steel, probably from knife blade.
1. Whose knife?
ME. Thumb of rubber glove caught on trigger of pistol.
1. What chance of finding the glove?
Having typed this last sentence, Bobby put the machine away, and, getting out the copy of the Upper Ten found at Brush Hill, he brooded over it so long that presently, hypnotised by that long succession of photographs of supersmart women on super-shiny paper, he fell asleep. So he put the paper away and went discontentedly to bed.
CHAPTER 18
SIDE-LINE
Monday morning saw all the usual routine of a Scotland Yard inquiry in full spate. Every detail was being checked, so that the smallest discrepancy, the tiniest point left unexplained, might be carefully and fully examined and reported on. Every police force throughout the country was on the look-out for the missing Wynne; special attention was being given to tracing the history of the pistol found by the murdered man’s side from the moment it left its factory of origin. Ulyett himself visited Jessop’s lawyers and had a long conversation with them, from which it appeared that his affairs were certainly embarrassed, though to what extent the lawyers did not know. But he had consulted them about raising a loan, and they had been obliged to point out that the security he had to offer was not very satisfactory, especially as he did not wish to give any details of the Mayfair Square business, beyond his personal statement that it was exceedingly prosperous. The loan was, he had explained, to be entirely private to himself; he did not even wish his business associates to know of it; and so there the negotiations had come to an end.
At all ports, too, a sharp look-out was being kept, and every dealer in precious stones all over the country, all over Europe indeed, was already on the look-out for the Fay Fellows necklace, or for loose stones that might have come from it had it been broken up. And Inspector Ferris was down in the Hastley Court district, his errand there to confirm Charley Dickson’s statement that Colonel Edwardes, who lived near by, had seen and recognised Jessop on the day of the garden fete, and that Charley himself had been so busy, and so much in public view, as to have had no opportunity for arranging private meetings between Jessop and the duchess – or anyone else, for that matter.
On both points Charley’s story received most satisfactory confirmation. Colonel Edwardes remembered distinctly having seen Mr. Jessop, whom he knew quite well, having wondered whether he was there as a guest or on business, since the duchess’s love of jewellery and fondness for little deals in it were well known, and having mentioned the incident to Charley when he happened to meet him a day or two later at the Cut and Come Again, of which club Colonel Edwardes was also a member – though, as he was careful to explain, he, like all the other members, hardly ever went there. By chance also it came out in the course of the chat with Ferris that he had seen Charley in the club on the Saturday evening. He had dropped in for a few minutes before going on to dine with a friend at Wimbledon, and he remembered having seen Charley there.
“The young ass,” said the colonel smilingly, “had been having more than he could carry comfortably. I told him so, and he said he was fed up with everything and he was going to get jolly well soaked, if it took him all evening. I told the people there they oughtn’t to serve him, and they said they wouldn’t.”
That seemed also conclusive proof that the Cut and Come Again staff had not been telling the truth when they denied Charley’s presence that evening, but, then, that didn’t matter much, as anyhow no one ever believed anything they said until it had been fully confirmed.
Other inquiries Ferris made seemed to prove a general agreement that on the occasion of the Hastley Court fete Charley had in fact been in evidence the whole afternoon till the last guest had departed, and long afterwards as well, though it also came out that the hostess herself had retired from the scene once or twice for brief intervals, for a respite from perpetual hand-shaking. It seemed probable, too, though not quite certain, that one of these intervals had been about the time when Mr. Jessop had arrived. But it was clear that, immediately before, during, and after the duchess’s brief absence, Charley had been specially busy over some dispute or confusion caused by a threat of a shortage in the supply of strawberry ices.
Apparently too, even to Hollywood itself the news had been cabled, and there Miss Fay Fellows was dividing her time between fits of passionate weeping (see photographs in every paper, magazine, and journal in the whole wide world), granting inte
rviews between sobs to newspaper men, and sending imperative cables to various official personages, insisting on the instant recovery of her necklace, or, in default, a demand for full compensation from the British Government. Also she instructed her agent to demand that her salary should be immediately put back to its former level.
“Big publicity,” she said to him, “and the best sort, because there’s not even any possible smell of fake about it. Knocks even a pathetic divorce from a brutal husband.”
“Yes, it’s fine; just all honey, cream, and jam,” agreed the agent, who once himself had nearly been a poet before he decided to become rich instead.
The Yard was busy, also, following up all the usual false trails presented to it by circumstance and by too zealous members of the public. Bobby, sent to check a story that a man answering Wynne’s description had been seen examining a diamond necklace in a cafe at Hammersmith, soon found that the only foundation for it was that two girls there had been trying on in turn a string of beads one of them had just bought at a sixpenny bazaar; found, too, that this left him with a little time to spare, and availed himself of it for an investigation of his own – a side-line, so to say, he had received permission to follow up.
Mystery of Mr. Jessop Page 16
