The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  “No, indeed, Markham. Austin’s message to us is a bit more subtle than that. In fact, I might not have been able to read it, had I not linked it with a couple of other pertinent clues.”

  “Do I understand you to mean, Vance,” demanded Markham, seeming near apoplexy, “that you claim to have solved this case?”

  “Oh, quite, old chap.”

  “And Belmont is not the murderer in your redoubtable estimation?”

  “’Fraid not, old boy.”

  “Then who did it?” demanded Heath.

  “Gather the guests in the ballroom and I’ll tell you all about it,” Vance promised, puffing his Régie nonchalantly.

  Markham complied, though too upset to speak above a strangled whisper. A few moments later, Vance was telling the assembled group, “A most entertainin’ comedy, y’know. I rather fancy it would make a fine picture, non-talkin’ of course. Archie Belmont, who somehow mislaid his big round glasses, was accused of a crime in which his big round glasses didn’t really figure at all. Amusin’, what? Quite so.”

  Few of the tense gathering appeared very amused. In strained silence, they hung on Vance’s every syllable.

  “It’s all extr’ordin’rily simple y’see. The real murderer is here, among the people in this room. A person capable of bitterness and vindictive hatred. One capable of plannin’ a darin’ and complicated crime.”

  He paused dramatically and looked at each face in turn – the pale, beautiful visage of Molly Hawley; the ashen, haggard face of Judge Hawley, her father; the handsome, uncharacteristically serious face of Roger Kronert; the scowl of George Gruen, his Lon Chaney makeup removed; the sneering, now unlovely features of Arletta Bingham; the impassive countenance of the butler, Stitt.

  Which of these was guilty, we all wondered – all but the one who knew.

  “The murderer was one whose costume allowed him to cover up any annoyin’ blood with which he might have been spattered – cover it up with a handy black opera cape!” Suddenly, all eyes were on George Gruen, who began to rise out of his chair but thought better of it when he felt Heath’s beefy hand on his shoulder. “A man who hated Jack Austin for leavin’ him on the brink of financial disaster. A man who is noted on Broadway for colossally elaborate musical productions with countless chorus girls and expensive, intricate sets, a producer of – in short – spectacles!”

  With breathtaking suddenness, Gruen produced a dagger from under his cloak and plunged it into his own heart. The drama was over.

  And so ended the famous Austin murder case. To me, I confess, it is more memorable than any of Vance’s other cases – and for reasons apart from Vance’s great detective skill.

  Though you may have difficulty in believing it, we were men, Vance and I, not mere cardboard figures. I admit here for the first time that during the course of this investigation I fell in love for the only time in my life – in love with Miss Molly Hawley, the judge’s red-haired daughter. Of course, I could say nothing, for to do so would be to break one of my own rules.11

  I could have composed long paragraphs celebrating her Titian locks, her flawless white teeth, her dimpled cheeks, but I had long ago vowed never to lose my equanimity in the manner of Dr Watson and other narrators of detective tales who have allowed themselves such indulgences as romance.

  By being true to the rules, I consigned myself to a life of loneliness. And seeing every Clara Bow movie I possibly can has not significantly abated that loneliness.

  The Man Who Scared the Bank

  ARCHIBALD PECHEY

  Here’s the last of the stories I have reprinted from the 1920s. Pechey (1876–1961) was scarcely known under his own name. He wrote all his best known books and stories under two pen names, initially as Valentine during the 1920s and later as Mark Cross. He was as well known in the theatre as the literary world, collaborating on writing the lyrics for, amongst other musicals, The Maid of the Mountains (1917). Pechey’s longest-running series featured Daphne Wrayne and the Adjusters. Wrayne was a beautiful, rich society girl who served as the front (and often the brains) behind a group of four individuals who were known only as the Adjusters. Their identities are never revealed to the public, though the reader is let in on the secret. Pechey struck a rich vein. The stories first appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in 1928 before being collected in The Adjusters (1930), all under the Valentine alias. Pechey then changed persona and, as Mark Cross, penned another forty-six novels in the series, from The Grip of the Four (1934) to Perilous Hazard (1961). The series ended only with Pechey’s death in 1961. The following is the first story in the series.

  Pechey, by the way, may be remembered for one other production: his daughter – the TV cook, Fanny Cradock.

  The Editor of the Daily Monitor rang his bell.

  “Send Mr Mannering to me at once,” he said when the boy appeared.

  He sat drumming on the table with his fingers and frowning at the letter in his hand until a knock sounded on the door. Then:

  “Come in, Mannering. Read that letter!” thrusting it at him.

  The other took it, scanned it, whistled softly.

  “I know the Duchess, sir,” he said.

  “Exactly. That’s why I sent for you. Go up and see her at once. Find out all you can about this story. Maybe she’ll get you an interview with these ‘Adjusters’ people. Hitherto no one’s been able to get one. Get hold of every bit of news you can lay your hands on . . . The moment we publish the fact that they’ve recovered her necklace the public will be on its toes to know who and what they are. It’s over three months since the necklace was stolen from Hardington House, and the police have owned themselves beat.”

  For four weeks the Adjusters had been intriguing public curiosity. Who and what they were no one seemed to know. Four times had a full-page advertisement appeared in the Daily Monitor: –

  IF THE POLICE CANNOT HELP YOU

  THE

  ADJUSTERS

  CAN.

  179, CONDUIT STREET, W

  Just that and no more. Interviewers and reporters had called, but had come away empty-handed. All that they could say was that the Adjusters occupied the whole of the first floor at 179, Conduit Street, that a stalwart commissionaire – an ex-army man with a string of ribbons across his chest – replied to all callers that “Miss Wrayne could see no one except by appointment, and no Pressmen in any circumstances whatever.”

  Now he gave the same reply when Mannering presented his card. But Mannering merely smiled and produced a letter.

  “Perhaps you will be good enough to give that to Miss Wrayne,” he said. “It’s from the Duchess of Hardington.”

  Five minutes later the commissionaire came back.

  “If you will come this way, sir, Miss Wrayne will see you,” he said.

  The next morning the Daily Monitor brought out flaming headlines announcing that the Duchess of Hardington’s world-famous pearl necklace had been recovered by “The Adjusters of 179, Conduit Street”. But it was what followed that made the public rub its eyes in astonishment –

  “Armed with a letter of introduction from the Duchess of Hardington I succeeded yesterday in gaining an interview with Miss Daphne Wrayne, the secretary of the Adjusters. To comment on that interview is impossible. I can merely state what Miss Wrayne told me and leave the public to judge for themselves. Probably they will be as bewildered as I was – and still am.”

  Followed then an account of a lavishly furnished suite of offices and a beautiful young girl who called herself the secretary, who declined to give the names of her associates, but who said that the Adjusters came into being for the “Adjustment of the inequalities that at present exist between the criminal and the victim.” Asked to explain this a little more fully, Miss Wrayne said that where the police were chiefly interested in the capture and punishment of the criminal, the Adjusters were solely concerned with the restoration to the victim of the money, or property, out of which he or she had been defrauded. She added, furthermore, that they had un
limited money behind them and charged no fees whatsoever! Then the Monitor man went on:

  “But, frankly, to me Miss Daphne Wrayne is the most amazing part of this amazing firm. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that this singularly lovely girl, barely out of her teens, who looks as if she had just stepped out of a Bond Street modiste’s, is really in control of an enterprise of this kind. I say, ‘in control’ for even if she is not, she is, on her own statement, the only one whom the public will see, and behind the very up-to-date exterior, with its dainty Paris frock, silk stockings, etc., there is obviously a brain out of the ordinary.

  “I was bewildered at the rapidity with which this pretty, laughing-eyed school-girl who smoked cigarettes and used slang, changed into an earnest young woman, with the criminal life of London at her slim fingers’ ends.

  “I came away from Conduit Street trying to tell myself that it was foolish, impossible, ridiculous. And yet there is Miss Wrayne herself. I can still see those clear hazel eyes of hers, and hear her final words: ‘Is it so strange that some who have unlimited money and brains should want to help their less fortunate brethren?’”

  One week later, when Sir John Colston – the interview had been arranged that morning by telephone – was ushered into Daphne’s private room, he was conscious of a slight sense of annoyance. To discover that he, Sir John Colston, the head of one of the biggest banks in London, had to lay his difficulties at the slim feet of a lovely, hazel-eyed girl hardly out of her teens – a girl who coolly waved him to a chair as she lighted another cigarette – it was almost preposterous!

  “Well, Sir John, what can we do for you?”

  Just as if he were nobody and his affair a trivial matter!

  “I understand from the Duchess of –” he began stiffly, but Daphne Wrayne’s eyes narrowed a little as she cut in on him.

  “I know, and you’re surprised at finding me so young.” She leant forward suddenly in her chair. “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a little behind the times. You are obviously in trouble or you wouldn’t be here. If you want my services they are at your disposal. But in that case it will be very much better, both for you and for me, if you will forget that I am a girl and not yet twenty-one. You will excuse my plain speaking, won’t you?”

  A little smile curved her lips, but her eyes were steady on his.

  “You’re not the first, you know, Sir John,” she went on. “It’s a bit of handicap sometimes, being a girl!”

  His resentment vanished from that moment. Her ingenuousness disarmed him.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Wrayne,” he said. “I’m an old man – a bit old-fashioned, I’m afraid, too. You – this place,” he waved a hand, “rather took me by surprise.”

  “Of course,” sweetly. “Now, let’s get to business. You, I take it, are the head of the Universal Banking Corporation of Lombard Street?”

  “I am. I have a client of the name of Richard Henry Gorleston.”

  “The bookmaker?”

  “I begin to see that what the Duchess told me about you was true,” he smiled. He was becoming more impressed now every minute.

  “I have a good memory for names,” she replied.

  “He has been a client of mine for nearly three years. His father, I may tell you, left him £50,000. The son has banked with us ever since, and until this week has been a trusted client.

  “I must tell you,” he went on, “that ever since he opened an account with us it has been his habit to draw out large sums of money in notes and to replace them within a few days. He told me from the start that he lived by gambling.

  “On numerous occasions he has presented cheques for five or ten thousand pounds, and drawn the money out in notes. Then a few days later he would come and pay it all back, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less.

  “Ten days ago he called at the bank and came into my private room – nothing unusual in that, though. He often does. Now, the moment he came in I noticed that he was wearing hornrimmed spectacles, a thing which he has never done before. I commented on it and he said that he’d had trouble with his eyes, and had been to an oculist.”

  “Mention his name?” casually.

  “He did. James Adwinter, of Queen Anne Street.”

  Daphne Wrayne made a note of it.

  “Please go on, Sir John.”

  “I asked him if he was drawing out any money and he said he was – would I tell him what his balance was. I sent out and found it was about thirty thousand pounds. In front of me he took his cheque book and wrote a cheque for £25,000. I sent for one of my cashiers and we paid it over to him in thousand-pound notes. Now comes the amazing part of the story. Two days ago he came into the bank and presented a cheque for £15,000. The cashier told him he hadn’t got it, and reminded him of the £25,000 one. He indignantly denied it – said he’d been out of town for nearly a fortnight, and he could prove it. Declared that someone must have impersonated him. This morning we received a letter from his solicitors threatening us with an action.”

  “But the signature, Sir John? If it was Richard Henry Gorleston’s usual signature with no irregularity—”

  “That’s the trouble, Miss Wrayne. This,” handing her a cheque, “is his usual signature. This,” handing her another, “is the disputed cheque.”

  Daphne Wrayne’s eyebrows went up as she scanned it.

  “How did you come to pass this cheque without comment?” she queried. “The difference is not very great, I admit, but still – ”

  “Miss Wrayne, I put it to you! You have an old client whom you know well. He comes in, sits down and talks to you, writes out a cheque. You send for your cashier who knows him equally well. You’ve seen him write the cheque. You’re satisfied. You cash it without question.”

  “Oh, I know. But will the law exonerate you?”

  “I’m afraid it won’t,” a little ruefully.

  “Tell me, Sir John,” after a slight pause, “had you any shadow of doubt when this man presented that £25,000 cheque but that he was Richard Gorleston?”

  “Not the faintest, Miss Wrayne.”

  “When he came in two days ago was he wearing spectacles?”

  “He wasn’t. He said he’d never worn them in his life, and never heard of Adwinter.”

  “What was his manner like?”

  “Oh, he was naturally very upset, but he quite appreciated our position, though he said, of course, that we should have noticed the difference in the signature. He went on to say that he’d known for some time that he had a ‘double’, but he’d never been able to run him to earth.”

  The girl wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully.

  “He told you he’d been out of London all the time. Did he say where?”

  “Yes. He gave me his address. ‘The Golden Crown, Portworth, Tavistock’ – trout fishing. Incidentally I have verified this by one of our local branches. He was there the whole time.”

  “Well, Sir John, in about a week’s time I’ll report to you. In the meanwhile say nothing to anybody.”

  “What am I to tell my solicitors to do?” a little perplexedly.

  She laughed merrily.

  “Oh, come, Sir John, you don’t want to throw in your hand yet! Instruct ’em to say that you repudiate all liability. After all, if you have to climb down – still, let’s hope you won’t!”

  In a comfortably-furnished room in the Inner Temple four men sat round a table talking. Just an ordinary room, but certainly no ordinary men, these four. Actually, you could have found them all in Who’s Who.

  The big, tanned, curly-haired, merry-eyed giant, who sat next to the empty chair at the head of the table, was none other than James Ffolliott Plantagenet Trevitter, only son of the Earl of Winstanworth – Eton and Oxford, with half a page of athletic records added. Next to him, lounging a little in his chair, thin, lean, bronzed, almost bored-looking, with his gold-rimmed monocle, sat Sir Hugh Williamson, most intrepid of explorers. Opposite to him, elderly, grey-haired, almost benevolent-looking, All
an Sylvester, the best-loved actor-manager in England. And lastly, leaning forward talking, a smile on his clean-cut handsome face, Martin Everest, K.C., the greatest criminal barrister in England.

  And these were the four Adjusters . . .

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed out the hour, and as it did so the door opened and the four men rose to their feet, as Daphne Wrayne stood in the doorway.

  “Well, Peter Pan!” exclaimed Sylvester.

  “Well, you dear Knights!”

  Very lovely she looked as she came forward, and her eyes were for all of them. But it was Lord Trevitter who, as if by tacit understanding, helped her off with her cloak and put her into her chair. Very naturally, yet quite openly too, she slipped her hand into his and let it stay there. But the other three only smiled indulgently – though their smiles spoke volumes. You felt, somehow, that they had known her from childhood – looked on her now almost as a beloved child. That even if she had signalled out Trevitter – as indeed she had – she loved none of them less dearly for that.

  “Oh, it’s great to be here!” she exclaimed with shining eyes. “I can still hardly believe it’s true.”

  “It’s a wonderful stunt,” murmured Everest thoughtfully.

  “We’ve been lucky, Martin,” answered the girl. “If it hadn’t been for the Duchess’s pearls—”

  “And then you giving an interview to the Monitor” chimed in Lord Trevitter. “That was the master stroke, Daph.”

  “Well, it was just the right moment, Jim. Having had a big success, it seemed to me to be the very wisest thing to do.”

  “By Jove it was, my dear,” chuckled Sylvester. “It couldn’t have come at a better time. If you’d given it before, the public would only have scoffed. But as we had recovered that necklace they couldn’t afford to scoff.”