by Roy Vickers
After the nine o’clock news that night, Gertrude’s name was called amongst those missing from their home and believed to be suffering from a loss of memory.
Cummarten sat up until after midnight in the hope that she might turn up. It didn’t occur to him that her absence might have a wholly selfish explanation. For his peace of mind he forced himself to accept the loss of memory theory. Someone had told him that the broadcasts always found such persons, if they were alive. He saw clearly what his fate would be if the broadcast failed to produce results in a very few days.
Chapter Seven
When Cummarten entered his office the next morning he found a young man chatting to Miss Kyle.
‘Mr Cummarten,’ said Miss Kyle, ‘this gentleman is from Scotland Yard.’
Cummarten managed to say ‘good morning’. But it was a minute or more before he could understand what the young man was saying.
‘In a boarding house in West Kensington, Mr Cummarten. We can get there in twenty minutes in a taxi. If the lady is Mrs Cummarten I can then notify the BBC.’
The lady was indeed Mrs Cummarten. She was being virtually held prisoner by the proprietress of the boarding-house, who had been suspicious from the first of this visitor who had paid a deposit in lieu of luggage.
Gertrude had the presence of mind to tell the plain-clothes youngster that her memory was a blank from the moment she left Brighton on the previous Monday. While the report for the BBC was being filled in, Cummarten telephoned a telegram to Superintendent Hoylock.
In the taxi that was taking them to the station, their first moment alone, Gertrude asked:
‘Is everything all right, Alfred?’
‘Absolutely! Only it would have been everything all wrong if you hadn’t been found. I say – did you really have a lapse of memory?’
‘Of course not! In the train I suddenly remembered mother was at Salisbury. I daren’t ring you up – in case. It wouldn’t have been safe to do anything but just keep out of the way. I was getting short of money. I tried yesterday to catch you on the Tube without anybody seeing me.’
He failed to perceive her callous indifference to his own fate, contented himself with a modest grumble.
‘This time yesterday everybody thought I’d murdered you. In another day or two –’
‘Well, then, that’s the best thing that could have happened, when you come to think of it!’
In the train, in an unoccupied compartment, he gave her his account. To his surprise, she was extremely annoyed when he told her about the locked drawing-room door and the china ornaments.
‘As if anybody would believe I’d be so silly! What would be the sense of putting the china on the floor?’
‘I couldn’t think of anything else to say on the spur of the moment.’
‘The less you think about the whole thing now, the better. I shall pretend I’ve forgotten everything, and they can’t get over that.’
The neighbours did not even try to get over it. The prestige of the BBC had the illogical effect of making everyone believe that the lapse of memory must have been genuine. Police interest vanished with the return of Mrs Cummarten. In a week or so, the neighbourhood, in effect, forgot its disappointment that a major scandal had failed to materialize.
A month later, Isabel Redding’s landlord distrained on the flatlet for non-payment of rent. A dressmaker complained that Isabel had obtained a credit of forty pounds by false pretences. The Bloomsbury police, after a perfunctory attempt to find her, reported her as missing. As missing she appeared in the official police publication. Superintendent Hoylock, remembering the name, sent a copy of his report to Scotland Yard.
‘Same old story!’ grunted the inspector in charge. ‘You can never trace these girls. You may pick ’em up by chance some day. Or you may not!’
With which remark he dropped the report into the basket which would eventually be emptied in the Department of Dead Ends.
The Cummartens resumed the even tenor of their life together. Though neither was strong in logic nor in law, they knew, in general terms, that before the police can start digging up a man’s garden or lifting his floor boards, they must establish before a magistrate a prima facie case that somewhere therein he has feloniously concealed a corpse.
They knew also that it was now impossible to establish such a case.
Chapter Eight
In May, 1935, the Cummartens went to Brighton to stay for a fortnight with Gertrude’s cousin Mabel. While they were away, one Leonard Haenlin, a tall, dark, handsome scoundrel, remarkable for his sidewhiskers, was charged by a wealthy spinster with stealing her automobile and defrauding her in other ways.
The defence was that the car and the other articles and sums of money were gifts, and it looked as if the defence would succeed. The police had recognized that this man was a professional despoiler of women and were working up the case. His rooms were equipped with a number of expensive articles – including a handsome and obviously expensive dressing-table set of eight pieces, in real tortoiseshell.
When asked to account for the latter, he grinned in the face of Detective-Inspector Karslake.
‘You think they are not mine. For once, you happen to be right. They belong to a girl friend, who lent them to me. Her name is Isabel Redding.’ He added the address of the flatlet.
One of Karslake’s men went to the flatlet to check up – to be humiliated by the information that Scotland Yard had posted the girl as missing the previous September.
A chit was duly sent to Detective-Inspector Rason asking for any available light on the ownership of the tortoiseshell set. Having found the reference in Superintendent Hoylock’s report, Rason called on Haenlin, who was on bail, to see the set for himself.
‘When did you borrow it, Len?’
‘She lent it to me to pawn on July 20th, last year. If you look it up, you’ll find that on that day I was fined forty quid for a little misunderstanding in Piccadilly. Perriere’s, where it came from, said they’d always lend her sixty quid on it. But one of the bottles had a dent and a chip – the mutt who gave it her knocked it off her table – look for yourself – and they would only spring forty-five.’
‘A good tale, old man – but you’re switching this set with another,’ chirped Rason. ‘D’you know where Isabel got her set?’
‘Yes, from a funny little bloke with a pasty face called Cummarten. You been a detective-inspector long, Mr Rason?’
‘July 20th, you said,’ returned Rason. ‘Stand by for a shock! On the night of Monday, August 7th, Mr Cummarten saw Isabel packing her tortoiseshell set into her suitcase.’
‘He didn’t – he only thought he did,’ grinned Haenlin. ‘Listen! I knew I couldn’t redeem the stuff for a bit, and Pasty Face might miss it from Isabel’s table. So we went to Harridges and paid thirty-seven-and-six for an imitation set, like enough to that one for old Pasty Face not to know the difference. I redeemed the other set last month; you can check up if you want to.’
‘That’s big of you, Len. Where shall I find her to check up?’
‘Wish I knew! She’s a good kid, that!’
‘Very good not to bother you about her tortoiseshell.’
‘Can’t make out why she hasn’t been round!’ Haenlin scowled. ‘I’m not sure she isn’t holding out on me. She went down to make a row between Pasty Face and his wife, saying she must have a divorce. It’s not a sound line as a rule, but sometimes it works. She reckoned to touch for a thousand. Maybe she got it and is spending the dough on her own. Can’t think of any other reason why she has kept out of my way.’
At Perriere’s, Rason learnt that Haenlin’s tale of the purchase and the subsequent pawning was true. Therefore the tale about the imitation set, which had successfully deceived Cummarten, must also be true. But it didn’t make sense.
‘If the girl was off in a hurry with one suitcase, she wouldn’t stuff it with the whole eight pieces of doodah which she knew to be practically valueless. Even if she had pretended to C
ummarten that she was taking them, she’d have unpacked ’em as soon as he left the flatlet. Hm! Probably Hoylock has muddled his facts.’
At Thadham, it soon became clear to Rason that Superintendent Hoylock had not muddled his facts. He heard Hoy lock’s full story, which included the story of the locked drawing-room and the china.
‘So all Tuesday that door was locked – and most of Wednesday? And the blinds were down?’
When Hoylock assented, Rason asked for Bessie’s address. By indirect means he contrived that the girl should show him the china, of which he noted that there were only a dozen small pieces.
On the way back he surveyed progress, if any.
‘The next check-up is whether it’s true the girl was blackmailing Cummarten for a thousand. Hm! Simplest way to do that would be to ask Cummarten.’
Chapter Nine
Two days later, when the Cummartens stepped out of the Brighton train at Victoria Station they were surprised to find that Bessie had come to meet them. And Bessie was not alone.
Rason stepped forward and announced himself, positively grovelling with apology.
‘I’m very sorry indeed to pounce on you like this, Mr Cummarten, and I hope Mrs Cummarten will forgive me. It’s about the Haenlin case – I daresay you read about it in the papers.’
Cummarten felt the pain in his breathing apparatus vanish.
‘We have a strong suspicion that Haenlin is the man you told Superintendent Hoylock last year that you had seen outside the flatlet of Miss Redding. By the way, we haven’t traced that girl yet.’
Cummarten, with something approaching graciousness, agreed to accompany Rason to the Yard to identify Haenlin. Now that the whole thing had blown over, he wished he had never mentioned ‘Len’ to the superintendent. Still, it had been a wise precaution at the time. He told Gertrude that he would come on by the one-fifteen to Thadham and his lunch could be kept hot.
‘Haenlin,’ said Rason in the taxi, ‘is charged with swindling women. But we strongly suspect that he knows something about the disappearance of Miss Redding.’
‘He struck me as a pretty rough type,’ put in Cummarten, ‘though I suppose one shouldn’t judge on appearance.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Rason. ‘He was working with that girl to trim you, Mr Cummarten. He knew all about her coming down to try and sting you for a thousand quid – he admitted it when we started work on him. But he wouldn’t say whether you had paid her the thousand. Would you have any objection to telling us?’
‘I have no objection to telling you,’ said Cummarten gaining time to reflect that such a payment could be traced, ‘that I did not. I couldn’t afford such a sum.’
So it was true that the girl had tried. That altered the perspective of all Cummarten’s statements and all his actions. But perspective isn’t evidence. There was still a long way to go.
‘To show you how he knew all about your affairs,’ continued Rason, ‘he even mentioned that you’d given her that tortoiseshell dressing-table set and that you yourself had chipped and dented a scent bottle, thereby reducing its value.’
Cummarten was shocked at this revelation of Isabel’s treachery.
‘I’m not the first man to make that sort of fool of himself,’ he muttered. ‘But I didn’t know she was playing as low down as that.’
Rason’s room, normally a disgrace to the orderliness of Scotland Yard, to-day looked more like a store room than an office. His desk had been pushed out of place to make room for a trestle table, the contents of which were covered with a white sheet which might almost have been a shroud.
‘We shall have to keep you waiting a few minutes for the identification, Mr Cummarten,’ apologized Rason. ‘Take a seat.’
Cummarten sat down, uncomfortably close to the trestle table.
‘In the train coming up from Thadham, your maid Bessie made me laugh,’ chattered Rason. ‘Told me how she thought once you had murdered Mrs Cummarten, because the drawing-room door was kept locked. And it all turned out to be something to do with the china being on the floor.’
Cummarten, being a silly little man, took the words at their face value.
‘Yes. My wife was cleaning it when she had to run for her train, and –’
‘Why did Mrs Cummarten clean the china in the dark?’
Cummarten blinked as if he had not heard aright. Rason added:
‘Bessie says the blinds were down.’
Cummarten opened his mouth and shut it. Rason stood up, towering over him.
‘D’you know, Mr Cummarten, if a girl tried to sting me for a thousand pounds I wouldn’t see her home.’ He drew at his cigarette. ‘I’d be more likely to murder her.
‘And if I had murdered her I might sneak into her flat and plant her scarf and her bag – then carry off her expensive toilet set, to suggest that she had bolted.’
Again Cummarten had felt that pain in his breathing apparatus. It passed, as cold fear forced him to self-control.
‘I don’t begin to understand you, Mr Rason. You asked me here to identify that man –’
‘Still trying to plant the murder on him, Cummarten? You packed that tortoiseshell stuff in the suitcase yourself and took it back to your house. And you know where you put it.’
‘I deny it!’ The words came in a whispered shout.
‘You’re wasting your breath, Cummarten. Look at that white sheet in front of you, Cummarten. Any idea what’s underneath it, Cummarten? Well, lift up the sheet and see. Go on, man! It isn’t Isabel – we couldn’t bring her along.’
Cummarten sat as if paralysed. Rason tweaked the sheet, slowly raising one corner. Cummarten stared, uncertain whether he were experiencing hallucination. For he saw on the trestle table a scent bottle, with a chip in the glass and a dent in the tortoiseshell cap.
He sprang up, tore the sheet from Rason’s hand and flung it back. Spread out on the table was a complete tortoiseshell set of eight pieces.
‘You know where you put it!’ repeated Rason.
With a cough-like sound in his throat, Cummarten collapsed into his chair, covering his eyes with his hands. When he removed his hands he looked like an old man, but he was wholly calm.
‘I suppose it had to come some time,’ he said. ‘In a way, it’s a relief to get it over. I can see now what a fool I’ve been, from the first. That tortoiseshell brings it all back.’ He smiled wanly. ‘Paid a hundred guineas for that set!’
It was indeed the set for which Cummarten had paid a hundred guineas – the set which Len Haenlin had pawned and redeemed. Rason had borrowed it when he had become morally certain that Cummarten had buried Isabel – and the imitation set.
But he still had no proof – still did not know precisely where Isabel was buried – could doubtfully have obtained an order to dig at random.
‘You made a good fight of it!’ remarked Rason. ‘Weakest spot was that yarn about cleaning the china –’
‘First thing that came into my head where Bessie wanted to do the drawing-room on the Tuesday morning! You see, I couldn’t finish the job in the morning-room on the Monday night – all that rubble!’
Rason dug under the morning-room. With the remains of Isabel Redding, there was found an imitation tortoiseshell toilet set costing thirty-seven and sixpence.
Blind Man’s Bluff
Chapter One
Until he committed murder, Robert Silbey was a model citizen. Everyone admired him for one or other of his qualities – including the go-getters, who admired only his business abilities. The example of his courage under a devastating affliction helped other sufferers. Many who knew him well would speak of him almost reverently.
Yet he was, in vulgar parlance, a tough guy, with a toughness that would have frightened any gangster who had brain enough to understand it – a toughness with which even Scotland Yard was impressed.
‘That man,’ said Chief Inspector Karslake, ‘practises all the virtues as if they were vices.’ All that, from Karslake, after a single murder!
His father was a country solicitor who, perceiving Robert to be something exceptional, scraped and saved and sent him to the Bar. He died when Robert was twenty-three, leaving him about a thousand pounds. Having no influence, Robert at first secured only dock briefs in defence of impecunious criminals. Through these he soon attracted favourable attention. But as his income remained perilously low, he occupied his spare time in writing sketches for West End revues – cheeky little seven minute playlets – with enough success to enable him to carry on at the Bar without dipping into his reserve.
His knowledge of law was but little above the average, but his advocacy was of a high order, and he had the adroitness of an old hand in humouring his judges. His early success was helped, in some measure, by his magnificent physique, his full-toned voice, and his handsome face. Win or lose, he always made the most of his case. As generally happens to young defenders who show consistent ability, the Crown gave him a chance to function as prosecutor.
In his fourth year at the Bar, when he was twenty-six, he earned nearly a thousand pounds – six hundred in practice, the balance deriving from a minute share in the royalties of a revue to which he had contributed three playlets. He was already crawling along the road to success – a road along which he intended to gallop.
He had surprised himself by falling in love with Mildred Kelston, the daughter of a doctor who had attended him for a trifling ailment. Women tended to favour him: he had had his share of adventures and believed himself free from the danger of a serious entanglement. But Mildred did not appear to him as an entanglement. Tall and exquisitely shaped, with grey-green eyes and chestnut hair, intelligent and perceptive but temperamentally docile, she attracted him as he had not been attracted before. Considered impartially, he told himself, she was an ideal wife for a man such as himself. He proposed and was accepted in February: they were to be married in the Easter vacation.
