The Durham Deception

by Philip Gooden

  ‘I would like to see the Lucknow Dagger again.’

  ‘You saw it yesterday.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Helen, speaking more gently than Tom and not giving the slightest hint that she had already seen the Dagger in the court house office, ‘I would appreciate a glimpse of it. Tom has described it to me. It is such a fine piece of work, he says.’

  ‘It is certainly that.’

  ‘We must see it,’ repeated Tom.

  There was a pause. A lot hinged on Sebastian Marmont’s reply. He could not still be in possession of the Dagger which was currently locked up in a police safe. But what he said next would determine how much he knew of the weapon which was responsible for a murder, possibly even whether he had committed it himself.

  The Major sighed. He seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘I cannot show the Lucknow Dagger to you, dear lady and gentleman, for the simple reason that I no longer have it. It was stolen from me on the evening of the performance. As I said, Eustace Flask came storming after me into the dressing room. I turned my back on him for a moment – I wasn’t afraid of him and his tantrums! – and when I looked round again his expression had changed. He had obviously thought better of starting a set-to. He stalked out. It was only later that I realized that the Dagger had gone. I had taken it off and laid it down as I was changing. He must have removed it as a form of revenge. Like the sneaking opportunistic thief he was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go after him?’

  ‘I decided to leave it until the next day. I knew where he lived, Flask and the man and woman who share a house with him.’

  ‘Yes, you must have known,’ said Tom, ‘because you wrote a letter to him inviting him to take part in the performance. How did you know that, Major Marmont?’

  ‘You are very suspicious, Mr Ansell. You ought to be a detective.’

  ‘I – both Helen and I – have cause for suspicion, sir. Believe me, the police might have cause for suspicion too.’

  ‘I sense there is something you’re not telling me. Very well, yes, I did know Flask’s address in the city. I told one of my lads to follow him and his little entourage after that business at Miss Howlett’s. It was easy to do. Flask and the woman were sauntering through the old town with that bruiser of a fellow pushing a handcart containing all Flask’s tawdry props behind them. They finished up at a house in Old Elvet. My lad noted the street and the number, then came back and gave me the information after which I wrote to the medium requesting his presence at the Assembly Rooms. He duly came as a member of the audience and the rest followed.’

  ‘Did you go to get the Dagger back?’

  ‘I went the next morning, only to be told by the woman – Kitty’s her name, I think – that Flask had returned to the house very late the previous night, in fact in the early hours of the morning. But by that stage he’d vanished once more, she said, gone to meet someone. She did not say who he was meeting.’

  ‘You asked her about the Dagger?’

  ‘I did not mention it. The matter of the Dagger was between Flask and me. If I encountered him again I was going to call him a thief to his face and demand its return.’

  ‘If you encountered him. You don’t sound very concerned about the loss of the Dagger.’

  ‘The Dagger has a strange and violent history which I have only hinted at in the notes I have given you. If I’m honest I had mixed feelings about its loss. I suspected that it would bring no good to Eustace Flask.’

  ‘It did not,’ said Helen. ‘The Dagger was the implement which was used to kill him.’

  ‘Was it now?’ said the Major with surprising equanimity, though his face grew more ruddy. ‘Well, that is an example of poetic justice, since Flask took the Dagger from me.’

  ‘You did not tell any of this to Superintendent Harcourt?’ said Tom.

  ‘As I say, the taking of the Dagger was a matter between me and Flask so, no, I did not mention it. Besides, Superintendent Harcourt did not seem very interested by what I said. He was easily satisfied. I gathered from something he let slip that he was familiar with this man Flask and didn’t much like him either. Without giving a demonstration, I merely informed Harcourt of how I first caused Flask to disappear from the Perseus Cabinet and then let him out again five minutes or so later. So where is the Lucknow Dagger now, Mr Ansell? I ask, because you seem to be so well informed.’

  ‘It’s in the hands of the police,’ said Tom.

  Helen told of the strange parcel which had been forwarded to the Crown Court and the yet stranger note which had exonerated her of blame for the murder. She could even recite it word for word – ‘THE LADY DID’NT DO THE DEED’ and so on – as though it were imprinted on her brain. It was imprinted on Tom’s too. Now Marmont looked truly shocked.

  ‘You don’t mean that you have come under suspicion yourself, Helen? That is terrible, terrible. Thank God for the anonymous letter-writer.’

  ‘Whoever he was,’ she said.

  ‘Major, you will have to go to the police and give a statement about how Flask took the knife and so on. Now that you know it was the murder weapon.’

  ‘Is that the advice of a lawyer, Mr Ansell?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Very well. But before that I should like you – both of you – to hear the full story of the Dagger’s provenance. The notes I have given you, Mr Ansell, only hint at it. A day or so’s delay in informing the Durham Constabulary cannot make much difference.’

  Tom agreed since he had little choice. Dilip Gopal, Marmont’s assistant, appeared at this point. The Major introduced him to Helen and he bowed slightly.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Ansell are curious about the disappearance of Eustace Flask. I have told them that no harm came to him here.’

  ‘That is the case,’ said the Indian. ‘I saw him go. But not before he had roundly insulted me as he left the theatre. It is fortunate that I am a forgiving fellow.’

  He uttered the remark in a light spirit but his mouth was grim.

  ‘Oh I don’t think anyone would suspect you, my dear fellow,’ said Marmont. ‘But I have some bad news, Dilip. The implement which was used to murder Flask was the Lucknow Dagger. It is at present in the hands of the police.’

  ‘I hope that they will return it, Major,’ said Dilip Gopal.

  ‘No doubt, but they must retain it as evidence for a time.’

  An odd look passed between Marmont and Dilip Gopal. Tom could not interpret it. A warning? A sign of collusion? He felt more than ever out of his depth.

  The Police-House

  Miss Kitty Partout was visiting Superintendent Frank Harcourt at the station-house. She said that she had come to clear her name because of whisperings and rumours over the murder of Eustace Flask. He was the one to speak to, wasn’t he?

  ‘That’s right, Miss Partout,’ said Harcourt. ‘I am in charge of the investigation.’

  Harcourt was the natural choice to take charge of the inquiry into Flask’s murder. He had practically volunteered himself. Hadn’t he been ordered by Chief Constable Huggins to deal with Flask when the medium was alive? Therefore he was the one to handle him when dead.

  Normally Frank Harcourt would have enjoyed sitting in his cramped little office in the company of an attractive woman like Kitty. She was slight and dark-haired with a plump figure and quite a forward manner. But he was uneasily aware that Kitty was probably familiar with his own links to Eustace. Although his own early dealings with Flask – when he attempted to make contact with Florry – had been while the medium was operating alone in Durham, Harcourt knew of Kitty and Barker. Therefore she might know of him. Had the medium boasted of having one of the town officers under his thumb?

  He wondered if he could discover how much she knew. Before he could utter a word, however, she began to tumble out her own story. He shushed her and said they would do things in the proper, orderly style. He started with a benign query.

  ‘I am sorry to see you have hurt your hand, Miss Partout. I hope it is not your
good hand.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Kitty, tucking the bandaged hand in her lap without answering the question directly. ‘I cut it on some glass is all. But thank you for asking. My name is pronounced “Partoo”, by the way.’

  Harcourt fussed over his pad and pencil as he usually did so that he could make a covert assessment of those he was interviewing. Eventually he was ready.

  ‘Some preliminaries first, Miss Partout,’ he said, taking care to pronounce her name as instructed. ‘What was the nature of your connection with Mr Flask? I heard tell he was your uncle.’

  Kitty might have been about to agree to that but she picked up on the sceptical, even slightly sneering tone in the Superintendent’s voice so she said, ‘He was not my uncle, no. I don’t know how that story got about. But we was as respectable as brother and sister. I helped him in his séances.’

  ‘And the other gentleman, the other helper. Ambrose Barker. Is he like a brother to you?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Kitty shifting on her seat, ‘’cept he’s no gentleman.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Dunno. We had a quarrel and he walked out a couple of days ago.’

  ‘What was the quarrel about?’

  Kitty thought for a time. ‘Nothing much. A bit of property, you might say.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You said just now that Mr Flask returned to the house which you shared on the evening after the performance in the Assembly Rooms.’

  ‘He came back very late. I was worried after that magician disappeared him. But Eustace, Mr Flask, came back late, yes, he came back in the small hours. He was angry coz he thought he’d been made a fool of. You ought to talk to that magician.’

  ‘I have talked to Major Marmont,’ said Harcourt, beginning to feel more confident. Perhaps this woman knew nothing at all of his own dealings with the dead man. ‘What you are saying confirms what he says, that Mr Flask left the theatre after the show.’

  ‘He didn’t come straight back, he must have been wandering round the town.’

  ‘Possibly. But Eustace Flask did come back, that’s the main point. And the next morning, the morning of his, er, death . . . what happened then?’

  ‘He left the house again.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘’Bout nine o’clock it must have been. Said he had a meeting with someone.’

  ‘Did he say who he was meeting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see which direction he took?’

  ‘No.’

  Harcourt’s hand was gripping the pencil tightly. His confidence had gone again when Kitty referred to Flask’s meeting ‘someone’. He realized he hadn’t yet made a single note of any of Kitty’s answers. He didn’t need to, of course, because he had himself seen Flask on the morning of the medium’s death and she was telling him nothing he was not already aware of. But, for the sake of form, he automatically scribbled down some words on his pad. The little display wasn’t necessary because Kitty suddenly sunk her head in her hands, one gloved, one bandaged. She said, between gulps, ‘I didn’t see him again and now I won’t coz he’s gone.’

  ‘There, there,’ said Harcourt. ‘We will catch the person who did this.’

  ‘Will you?’ said Kitty. She seemed to recover all at once. She gave him a curious look from beneath her lowered lashes, half flirtatious, half tearful. ‘Will you now? You really ought to talk to that magician again. He came round to the house too.’

  ‘Marmont did? I didn’t know that. When did he appear?’

  ‘That Major Marmont, he turned up on the doorstep shortly after Eustace, Mr Flask, had left. He asked where he’d gone as well. Like I just said, I didn’t know.’

  ‘So what did he do?’

  ‘Took off himself.’

  ‘In pursuit of Mr Flask?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Harcourt gave up the pretence of writing. He leaned back in his chair. It was baffling. Why had Marmont gone to visit Flask? Wasn’t he satisfied with having humiliated the medium on the previous evening? Had he come to inflict more pain? Or to apologize?

  ‘What was his manner, Major Marmont’s manner? How was he behaving?’

  ‘He wasn’t best pleased about something, I can tell you.’

  ‘This is significant information, Miss Partout,’ said the Superintendent. ‘I will certainly be talking to the Major again.’

  There was little more to say after that. Harcourt indicated to Miss Partout that she could leave. Although he was still curious enough to ask her what she planned to do now that her employer – or protector – or brother – but not uncle – was gone.

  Kitty stood up. She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

  ‘Dunno,’ she said for at least the third time, ‘’spect I’ll make my way. I usually do.’

  When she had gone, Harcourt sat in thought. Did the unexpected appearance of Major Sebastian Marmont at the house on the morning of the murder help to clarify or muddy the waters? It muddied them, he concluded. Which was a state of affairs that suited him. Also, he might now add the name of Ambrose Barker to those who could plausibly be suspected of wanting to see Flask dead. The more potential murderers, the merrier. Harcourt would have bet a week’s salary that the quarrel that Kitty mentioned had involved a dispute between Ambrose and Flask. Perhaps the injury to her hand was related to it as well.

  Even Kitty herself might be viewed in a suspicious light, as one of the last people to see Flask alive and someone whose relations with him were murky rather than uncle-like or brother-and-sisterly. The Superintendent, in his detective role, had tried to establish whether Kitty was right-handed (it was the right which was bandaged) by asking whether it was her good one but she hadn’t responded to his hint. If she happened to be a southpaw, she might have wielded the knife against Flask herself. At least that’s what a detective might think!

  Harcourt was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Constable Humphries. He was carrying a telegram form. He most probably knew its contents since there was a telegraph wire direct to the police-house where messages were transcribed by a clerk. Nevertheless the excitement of its arrival caused Humphries to hover by Harcourt’s desk. The Superintendent waved him away and the constable went to the window and blocked the light while pretending to examine the view.

  Harcourt unfolded the telegram and read:

  Arriving Durham by 2.30 from London. Please arrange for someone to meet at railway station and escort to police-horse. Urgent and confidential business. Inspector William Traynor, Great Scotland Yard.

  Harcourt was baffled, even after he had substituted ‘police-house’ for ‘police-horse’. But, more than being baffled, he was deeply worried. Why should a London police inspector be travelling – urgently, confidentially travelling – to Durham? He thought of the murder of Eustace Flask. But that had occurred yesterday and, even in the Durham paper, news of it was being circulated only this morning. Too soon, surely, for Scotland Yard to be alerted to take action? What was it to do with them anyway? This was Durham business.

  Harcourt took out his watch. It was dinner time. An hour or so until Traynor was due in. Humphries cleared his throat. Harcourt looked up, he’d almost forgotten the constable’s presence. He needed some time alone, time for reflection. He ordered Humphries to go to the railway station and collect Inspector William Traynor of Great Scotland Yard. He laid emphasis on the last words and was gratified to see the expression of alarm, almost panic, on Humphries’ stolid face.

  The constable bustled for the door and fumbled with the handle.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How’m I go’in to reckernise him?’

  Harcourt thought. Would Traynor be wearing a uniform? He didn’t know how they did things in London. It was all a mystery. He said, ‘He’ll be wearing a – an air of authority. Anyway, you will be wearing
a uniform and he will recognize you.’

  When Constable Humphries had left, Harcourt tried to gather up his thoughts. But, since he had no idea why Traynor was visiting Durham, he did not get very far. He would find out soon enough. He remembered the recent interview with Kitty Partout and the one piece of fresh information which she had given him.

  There was another knock at the door. For an instant he thought it was Humphries returning with Inspector Traynor before realizing that the constable would not even have reached the railway station yet.

  ‘Yes.’

  The door opened timorously. A man in a shovel-hat which barely suppressed an unruly thatch of white hair poked his head round.

  ‘Superintendent Harcourt?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was directed to your office by the sergeant. May I come in?’

  ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘My name is Septimus Sheridan.’

  Septimus Sheridan? Harcourt struggled to place the name. The face was vaguely familiar. Couldn’t he be left in peace?

  ‘Why do you want to see me, Mr Sheridan?’

  ‘It is to do with the . . . the murder of Eustace Flask.’

  At once Harcourt was alert.

  ‘You have some information about Mr Flask?’

  ‘I do, yes I do.’

  ‘You had better come in and sit down, sir. Make yourself comfortable. If you’ll just wait while I get my pad and pencil. Oh dear, I see it needs sharpening.’

  Harcourt fiddled with his clasp-knife and honed the pencil to a dagger-sharp tip. All the time he was studying the gent on the other side of his desk. He looked like a reverend, except that he was not wearing a collar. What connection could he possibly have to Flask? Eventually he was ready.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Sheridan,’ said Frank Harcourt. ‘Tell me everything.’

  The Return

  Kitty went straight from the police station back to the house in Old Elvet. She had said to Harcourt that she would ‘make her way’ but in truth she had no idea what to do next. She thought the rent on the house was paid for another week or so and she had a few pounds in hand but, for the first time in months, she was without a male protector. Eustace was dead – she went cold as she recalled the fact of his murder – and Ambrose Barker was gone. At least she hoped he was. She had known Ambrose for nearly two years and this was not how she had felt about him at first.