by Annie Haynes
Wilton went in search of Miss Priestley. He found her, as he expected, in the drawing-room with her niece, but his brow contracted as he saw Sir Felix Skrine sitting beside Hilary. Miss Lavinia did not look pleased at this second summons to the morning-room. She flounced off with the expressed intention of giving the policeman a piece of her mind. Without a second glance at Hilary and disregarding a piteous glance she cast at him, Wilton went back to the consulting-room.
Miss Lavinia entered the morning-room door.
“Well, Mr. Detective, what now?” she began unceremoniously. “Found something out that makes you think I shot my brother-in-law?”
The detective rose and placed a chair for her, which she declined with an emphatic gesture. He ignored her question.
“I want to ask what you know about the missing parlourmaid, Mary Ann Taylor, ma’am.”
“Don’t know anything,” Miss Lavinia responded bluntly. “Except that she no more looked like Mary Ann Taylor than you or I do. Don’t suppose for a minute she was christened Mary Ann.”
Inspector Stoddart permitted himself a slight smile.
“Unfortunately we do not know what children will grow up like when they are christened, madam.”
“Rubbish!” Miss Lavinia retorted uncompromisingly. “That girl Taylor was a minx in her cradle I am certain, and made eyes at the parson who baptized her. But I can’t tell you anything about Mary Ann Taylor; I only know what my niece says about her – that she was a very good parlourmaid.”
“Mr. Wilton has informed me that you thought you had seen Mary Ann Taylor in a different position.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” Miss Lavinia sniffed.
“That young man says considerably more than his prayers. I did fancy I had met the girl in different circumstances when I first saw her, and I suppose Mr. Wilton heard me say so, but I have never been able to place her, so I have come to the conclusion that I must have been mistaken. After all, what with lipsticks and rouge and legs, most of the girls are pretty much alike nowadays.”
The detective looked disappointed.
“You cannot give me any idea where you may have seen her?”
Miss Lavinia shook her head vigorously.
“Haven’t I just told you I believe it must have been a mistake? Still” – she wrinkled up her brows until they threatened to disappear altogether – “if I did see her or some one like her I think it must have been abroad. Probably at one of these casinos or places. But what it matters I can’t imagine. Wherever I saw her or whatever she was doing if I did see her, one thing is certain – she had nothing to do with my brother-in-law’s death.”
“Madam, I am certain of nothing,” said the inspector, fixing his penetrating eyes upon her.
She gave a short laugh.
“Anyhow, my good man, you won’t get me to believe a good-looking girl – parlourmaid or not – shot her master in cold blood without any provocation whatever. A master, moreover, upon whom, I guess, she had cast the glad eye.”
The inspector pricked up his ears.
“The only thing I have heard is that Dr. Bastow was not at all that sort of man.”
“What sort of man?” Miss Lavinia said satirically. “If there is any sort of man that does not like being made much of by a pretty woman, I have never encountered the species. Why, even Sir Felix Skrine remarked to me just now that Taylor was a good-looking girl. Oh, I dare say she had her own reasons for not wanting her past to be looked into, but those reasons had nothing to do with Dr. Bastow’s death. You may take my word for it.”
The inspector fingered the tip of his ear meditatively. Evidently there was nothing much to be gained by questioning Miss Priestley further about Mary Ann Taylor. He changed the subject.
“You know Miss Iris Houlton, of course, madam?”
Miss Lavinia sniffed – snorted would perhaps be the better word.
“Well, I do and I don’t. Nasty, sly-looking little cat! Nobody ever knows what she is up to. Now, if you suspected her of the murder you might be nearer the mark. Not but what I believe she was safely off the premises long before the murder took place,” she finished grudgingly.
“So I understand,” Inspector Stoddart assented. “Well, Miss Priestley, I don’t know that there is anything else at present. The inquest, of course, will be opened tomorrow morning, but I expect only formal evidence will be taken and it will be adjourned for a week or so to give us time to make inquiries. After the adjournment you will be one of the first witnesses called.”
“Well, I shall not be much use to them,” Miss Lavinia said as she turned to depart. “Not that that will stop them asking me all sorts of idiotic questions!”
CHAPTER 5
“Hilary, my dear child, you must not cry like this.”
Sir Felix Skrine was the speaker. He put his hand caressingly on Hilary’s shoulder as he spoke.
“You will make yourself quite ill.”
He had been talking to the girl about his long friendship with her dead father, and Hilary had been listening with the same apathetic calm with which so far she had listened to all the discussion of her father’s death, when quite suddenly to Sir Felix’s dismay her face began to twitch and she burst into a passion of tears.
“Oh, father, father!” she sobbed.
Skrine’s own face began to work.
“I wish to God I could bring him back to you,” he breathed. “But, Hilary, how it would grieve him to see you crying like this.”
“Not a bit of it! He would know it was the best thing for her,” a third voice, Miss Lavinia Priestley’s, interrupted at this juncture. “Come, Sir Felix, you will do no good here now. Go and talk to Fee. The poor boy is miserable enough and he has no young man to console him.”
Sir Felix drew his brows together. It was obvious that the allusion to the understanding between Hilary and Basil Wilton had displeased him. But consoling Hilary in Miss Lavinia’s presence was not quite what he wanted. He went out of the room but he did not go upstairs to Fee. Instead he paced up and down the hall, his hands behind him, that furrow in his forehead that always showed when some knotty problem was perplexing him.
So Inspector Stoddart found him, when ten minutes later he came in through the surgery entrance, followed by a man unmistakably of the street lounger type – a man who slunk along with furtive eyes and loose, damp mouth across which he continually drew a grimy, hairy hand.
Sir Felix looked at him in disgust as he responded to the inspector’s greeting.
“I was hoping for a word with you this morning, Sir Felix,” the inspector began. “But first I should like you to hear what this man has to say.”
As he spoke he opened the door of the morning-room which was now practically given up to him.
The expression of distaste on Sir Felix’s face deepened as he followed. The inspector beckoned the man he had brought in up to one window.
“This man is a licensed police messenger, Sir Felix, and his pitch includes this street, Upper Mortimer Street and the right side of Park Road and Rufford Square. He manages to scrape a living out of it somehow, and on the night of Dr. Bastow’s death he was walking round as usual, hoping to pick up a job.”
“Oh!” Sir Felix’s face changed. He looked again at the licensed police messenger, for the first time noticing the badge on his arm. “Well, what do you know of Dr. Bastow’s death?” he inquired. “For I suppose he does know something or you would not have brought him here, inspector.”
The inspector nodded.
“Speak up, Turner,” he said encouragingly. “Just tell this gentleman what you have told me.
The police messenger swallowed something in his throat two or three times as he drew his hand across his mouth.
“I was just walking down this side of Rufford Square,” he began, “when I see a tall man come across –”
“When was this?” Sir Felix interrupted.
The man hesitated, standing first on one foot, then on the other.
“Last Tuesd
ay night, as ever was, sir, it were.”
“And what time?” Sir Felix pursued, adopting his cross-examining manner.
“About half-past nine, sir, putting it as near as I can. Leastways it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes past, for I hear it strike the half-hour from St. Michael’s Church after I come into the Square. Looking out for a job, I were, for I had had a lean time last week, and I see –”
“Rather late to be looking for a job, wasn’t it?” Sir Felix again interposed.
“Well, no, sir. There’s often new folks coming in with boxes then and I picks up a copper or two.”
“Well, now go on. What did you see?”
“I see a tall gent come into the Square from St. Michael’s way; right across out into Benbow Street he went, and across to Lower Park Road. I kep’ on the same way thinking he might want a taxi or some’at. But in Lower Park Road he opens the green door in the wall as I know were Dr. Bastow’s.” He stopped, drawing in his breath.
“Well, well, go on!” said Sir Felix impatiently.
“I were surprised, sir, for I knowed that door was not opened, ’cept for something very special an’ I stood an’ waited, thinking it looked like a job. Then a woman came along and went in, an’ I –”
“A woman – what sort of a woman?” Sir Felix interposed.
The man stared round vaguely.
“A – just a woman, sir.”
“Old or young?”
“Well, I couldn’t rightly say, sir. She didn’t look old, not as I could see. Her petticoats was short and her stockings was light like.”
“Everybody’s are,” the inspector remarked. “Was she tall or short – this woman?”
“Well, short-like, sir. I call to mind I thought she looked a little ’un, going in after the man. He were tall.”
“Now, can you tell us what he was like?” Sir Felix was resuming his cross-examination.
Turner scratched his head.
“Well, he was tall, sir. As tall or maybe taller than yourself. An’ he had a darkish beard, which I noticed, not so many folks wearing ’em nowadays.”
Sir Felix nodded.
“Sure enough! You seem to be a man of observation after all, my friend. Now can you tell us anything more you noticed? His clothes, for example?”
Turner hesitated a moment, taking out a grimy pocket-handkerchief and blowing his nose noisily.
“He ’ad a bowler ’at on, sir – my lord, and dark clothes – one of them short jackets what everybody wears.”
“And you heard nothing while you were waiting there? No opening or closing of doors, or talking, as if this man and woman had met?” the inspector interrogated sharply. He was not disposed to leave quite everything even to Sir Felix Skrine.
“Not as long as I was there, sir,” the man answered. “But I were in luck’s way that night. I had a call from the other side of the road. And I hear no more from Dr. Bastow’s. Nor give the man another thought, not even when I heard the doctor was dead. Not till this morning when the policeman come asking me questions like.”
“Well, I think that is all, for now, my man,” the inspector finished. “You will be wanted later.”
Turner touched his forehead awkwardly and shambled out of the room.
The inspector looked at Sir Felix.
“Well, Sir Felix?”
“Well!” Sir Felix looked back.
“What do you make of that?” the inspector went on.
“I don’t know,” Sir Felix said slowly. “It is a curious statement. But it bears out the paper on the desk, if it is true.”
“Why, you don’t doubt it?” The inspector’s tone was staccato, quite evidently this decrying of his witness did not please him.
Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.
“He will not be much of a witness to produce, will he? And it seems strange that he should say that he saw a man and a woman go into the garden. I cannot believe the murderer would take anyone 'with him. I know that sort of street lounger pretty well, inspector, and I must confess that my experience has taught me that no sort of reliance whatever can be placed on the word of one of them; moreover, if any inquiry is going on, they thoroughly enjoy telling some sort of a yarn – I fancy they imagine it will make the police regard them more favourably.”
“Do they?” The inspector’s smile was grim. “But there is one little item that you have not heard yet, Sir Felix.”
“What is that?” Sir Felix asked quickly. The inspector was evidently enjoying the impression he had created.
“Turner spoke of seeing the man with the dark beard who entered Dr. Bastow’s garden coming across the north side of Rufford Square.” Sir Felix nodded.
“Well?”
The inspector waited a moment.
“Well,” he said slowly at last, “Rufford Square, like most of the streets in this neighbourhood, is built on clay. The roads, of course, have been macadamized far past any recognition of this fact. But some repairs to the water main have been going on the north side of Rufford Square. The ground is strewn with red clay. In Dr. Bastow’s consulting-room, by the door and behind his chair, I found tiny fragments of red clay – particles, perhaps I should say, but perfectly visible under the magnifying-glass. Dr. Bastow’s murderer came across the north side of Rufford Square, for it is the only place in this neighbourhood where any red clay is to be found. So Turner’s story is corroborated, you see, Sir Felix.”
Skrine nodded.
“I see what you mean. Yes, it is strong corroboration. Now we have to find this man – which seems about as hopeful as looking for the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay.”
“The man with the dark beard – and the woman,” the inspector corrected. “I am by no means hopeless, Sir Felix.”
Skrine shrugged his shoulders.
“On the face of it you seem to have only a slender clue to work upon. But you have done some wonderful work, inspector, and I think – more, I believe, that this case will be one of your successes.”
“I think it will be,” the inspector said confidently. “‘It was the Man with the Dark Beard’; that didn’t seem much of a clue when we found those words written, did it, Sir Felix? But see how it is developing. It mightn’t have anything to do with the murder, we both thought at first. But now here comes a witness who actually saw a man with a dark beard go into the doctor’s garden on the very night of his death.”
The great lawyer’s brow was furrowed, he passed his hand over it wearily. Since his friend’s death he had begun to look his real age.
“With Turner’s evidence we ought to be able to find him. Not, as I have said before, that he will be a satisfactory witness. Still, it is not as if every second man you meet wore a beard nowadays. Bar the King, and a few members of the admiring aristocracy who follow his lead, nearly everybody is clean-shaven nowadays. The beard is certainly a clue. But it may be shaved off now.”
“Yes,” assented the detective. “The shaving may help ultimately to identify our man too. But what makes me more hopeful than anything else is that some one knows who he is, Sir Felix.”
“What?” Skrine stared at him. “I don’t seem able to follow you this morning, Stoddart. Perhaps it’s because it is my greatest friend who has been foully done to death. You mean that there is more than one in it – that this woman –”
“I don’t know.” The detective hesitated. “No, I think not. But I am certain that some one knows who the man with the dark beard is. And I am pretty sure also that that some one is living or at any rate is some one; who comes in and out of this house.”
“Why? What ground have you for making; such an assertion?” Sir Felix had resumed his best cross-examination manner now. His blue eyes were focused upon the detective as though they would wring the truth out of him.
“Well, Sir Felix, I only heard this morning, so there has not been much chance of telling you yet,” the detective began slowly.
Sir Felix made an impatient sound.
“Telling
me what? Make haste, Stoddart. This man has got to be found, and his accomplices too, if he has any.”
Stoddart hesitated.
“I don’t know about accomplices, Sir Felix! I don’t think, as I said a moment ago, that anyone was concerned in the actual murder except probably the man with the dark beard. But some one knows who he is and that someone we have got to find –”
“Yes, you said that before. But your reasons?” interrupted Sir Felix.
“The paper with the words ‘It was the Man with the Dark Beard’ that was found on the desk,” Stoddart went on with exasperating slowness. “It has been taken for granted that it was Dr. Bastow’s writing, but I thought it better to make certain, and I sent it to Thornbow. I had his report this morning.”
“What is it?” Sir Felix questioned eagerly. “Well, as you will have guessed, he says the words were not written by Dr. Bastow. They are a forgery – have been intentionally forged. There can be no doubt of that. But the question is, who wrote them? Thornbow gives it as his opinion that the writer was a woman.”
“A woman!” Sir Felix repeated in surprise. *“That seems to me most unlikely. And my experience has taught me not to place too much reliance on expert evidence. Who was it who said there were three kinds of liars – liars, damned liars and experts? I am inclined to stick to my opinion that the words are in Dr. Bastow’s writing. And I am as familiar with it as most people. Besides, what object could anyone else have had in writing just that?”
“The object of giving us a clue to the murderer. The writer knew who he was.”
“Pity not to have been a bit more definite about it, then,” said Skrine.
“Guess she had her own reasons for not wanting to come out in the open,” said Stoddart with an emphasis on the pronoun that made the lawyer look at him.
“Have you any idea who she is?”
The inspector permitted himself a sardonic smile.
“Well, rather. Though how she managed to place the paper on the desk I can’t say. Who could it be but that girl who has decamped – Mary Ann Taylor?”
“Out of the question,” Skrine said sharply.
