Murder in Piccadilly

by Charles Kingston

  “Nosey Ruslin.” The sergeant repeated the name with a gentle emphasis which indicated his estimate of its importance. “A wily bird, Nosey, sir. Wish I had his knowledge of Soho though.”

  “So do I. But I’ll extract some of it from him very soon. Don’t forget, Clarke, when you’re dealing with a secretive crowd you must worry them into talking and doing things. Get on their nerves. Make them commit mistakes. I mean, keeping away from their usual haunts, getting scared at the least little incident. You see how Billy Bright fainted? Of course, he doesn’t know he’s being watched day and night.”

  The sergeant laughed.

  “He’d have fainted again if he’d known that the chap who held the smelling salts to his nose was one of ours.”

  “They’re a queer crowd, Clarke, a queer crowd, and Nosey Ruslin’s the queerest and most dangerous of them all. I don’t suppose he’s ever done anything worse than cheat at cards or swindle a bookmaker, but he’s been behind a few serious affairs which have interested us.”

  “And we can never get him.” The tone was a sigh.

  “We’ll get him now, Clarke, and at once. Something in my bones tells me that. You know it’s not my form to boast and that outside the office I don’t talk except when I take the office with me in the shape of Detective-Sergeant Clarke.”

  There was no need for the younger man to endorse the testimonial. Besides, he knew his chief disliked sycophancy. It was one of the reasons he had chosen him for his A.D.C.

  They read the newspapers in scraps and between intervals of comment throughout the remainder of the journey, and they seemed to know by heart all that had happened to the millions of Londoners outside the actual murderer when they stepped from the train at Lewes.

  “There’ll be a fairish crowd at the Manor today,” said the inspector with a sour expression, “but tomorrow and Sunday the place will be in a state of siege.”

  “Didn’t you see the picture in the Daily Express and the larger one in the Daily Mail?” asked the sergeant in surprise. “It says there were over three hundred cars outside Broadbridge Manor yesterday.”

  Chief Inspector Wake did not answer. He had by now identified the car which was to convey him and his assistant to the small Sussex village where only three days previously Massy Cheldon had been the squire and overlord. Only three days since he had bubbled with pride at the offer of a seat on the county bench, and now he was a corpse, a spectacle of sensation and tragedy, the centre of an absorbing and puzzling murder mystery. Life was like that and death also.

  Six policemen saluted him when he descended into their midst, and standing afar off after the manner of the disciples on a famous occasion were several groups of curiosity-mongers complete with cars. It was nearly three in the afternoon and most of the spectators were munching sandwiches and staring at the low wall surrounding the manor grounds and apparently deriving satisfaction from the inspection.

  “Anything new?” Wake asked of the sergeant who was in charge.

  “Nothing, sir.” He moved his heavy feet to the left and gave the onlookers the full benefit of a hostile stare.

  “Never mind about them,” said the chief inspector sharply. “I’m going into the house. There might be something there.”

  “We’ve been through it, and your colleague, Inspector Carlett, has almost scrubbed the floors.” The essay in humour passed unrecognised.

  “I have seen his reports. They leave nothing to the imagination or to hope. But all the same I wish to see for myself.”

  The mansion impressed him with its air of wealth, luxury and superiority over most of the other mansions he had entered in his professional capacity. The walls seemed to breathe ancient lineage, the furniture proclaim the eternity of the wealth and standing of the Cheldons. West and his underlings had obviously not permitted the gloom and the horror without to interfere with the daily ritual of maintaining the cleanliness of the mansion which even now did not convey an impression or suggestion of desolation and emptiness.

  “There is a new heir, sir,” he explained, a trifle condescendingly to the man from Scotland Yard. “There always is an heir. Just as the throne is never vacant so is Broadbridge Manor never without a master. The moment Mr. Massy Cheldon died Mr. Robert Cheldon became the squire.”

  “But he hasn’t arrived yet?”

  “No, sir. I understand that the etiquette is to keep away until after the funeral. In this case as the death of the late master was so tragic it is probable Mr. Robert will wait until the inquest is over and done with. The Cheldons are always sensitive. They could not bear to live at the Manor when it is surrounded by trippers and their cars.”

  Chief Inspector Wake listened with a patience which was only possible because he attached no importance to the speaker or his speech. He had never expected to be rewarded at Broadbridge Manor for his trouble in coming all the way from London to see it, but it was a duty which he had to perform as the chief of the squad responsible for bringing the murderer to justice. The house told him nothing, the butler and the other servants less. Whatever secrets, good, bad and indifferent, which the late Massy Cheldon had had they were not at home at Broadbridge Manor now.

  “He was murdered in London and the whole explanation of the murder is there,” he said later on to his assistant.

  “Had Mr. Massy Cheldon many visitors during the last month or, perhaps, it would be easier to remember the last week of his life?” he asked West, who had taken a dislike to the unfashionable umbrella if not to its owner.

  “Mr. Massy Cheldon’s friends were not many, but I can show you the visitors’ book which I keep myself.”

  “That would be a help,” said the inspector.

  The names suggested nothing and revealed nothing, and after another colloquy with the local sergeant Wake strolled unaccompanied down to the village of one street and five alleys. He was not a lover of the country although he had been trying for thirty years to convert his back yard in Chelsea into a flower garden, and he was too conscious of the fact that he was wasting his time. A few women and children with an occasional male constituted the representatives of the population at the moment, for the closed doors of the “Wheatsheaf” deprived the thirsty of any temptation to leave their work prematurely.

  But when he could forget the mileage between himself and his beloved London he could be grateful for the opportunity to think, and soon he had once more completed a panorama of events and scenes since he had been called from his well earned rest to take charge of the Piccadilly Murder. It was satisfactory to know that he had electrified Nosey Ruslin, Billy Bright, Robert Cheldon and the last-named’s mother. One of the four if not all of them, could supply the solution of the problem, or at the worst make a guess which would be more than half the truth. He dealt in half-truths and lies and everything appertaining to them, for out of them there often emerged the exact truth.

  There was no Broadbridge Manor end to the mystery, however. That was certain. If the late Massy Cheldon cared to mingle in bohemian circles in London he did not permit his more or less disreputable acquaintances there to invade the aristocratic solemnity of his country mansion. It was useless looking to the servants or to the locals.

  As he muttered this to himself he came to a standstill outside a shop window which from the variety of its contents might have been a London store in miniature. But he was not interested until he noticed a piece of cardboard bearing the legend “Post Office.”

  “A shillingsworth of threehalfpenny stamps and a packet of stamped postcards,” he said to the plump, spacious and elderly woman who appeared before the door bell had ceased to tinkle.

  “Yes, sir.” She deducted he was from London by the simple process of remembering that she had had many customers from outside the village since the death of the owner of Broadbridge Manor. To Mrs. Chalk England consisted of Broadbridge and London.

  “I suppose you’ve had crowds
down here?” said the inspector, assuming that she was one of nature’s talkers, the living local newspaper whose one accuracy could redeem a hundred inaccuracies.

  “Trippers!” A sniff of contempt. “How they find the time puzzles me. Now on Saturday and Sunday one expects plenty of people.”

  Chief Inspector Wake leaned across the counter and examined a pair of men’s socks which were cheap enough to warrant purchase as a prelude to a more friendly atmosphere.

  “Thank you,” he said, as he paid the half-crown. “I suppose you knew Mr. Massy Cheldon rather well?”

  “Can’t say that, sir.” Mrs. Chalk had her pride and it forbade her to claim acquaintance with the great unless the claim could be substantiated. “The last time I saw him was some weeks before his murder when he surprised me by coming in here.”

  “Indeed! Was he looking well?”

  “Looking well? Why, I never saw him so pleased with himself in his life. When he was in the temper he could be very pleasant, and he was very pleasant indeed, that morning.”

  She paused, and the detective, knowing how foolish it is to attempt to force a conversation into a desired channel, picked up a packet of scented soap and read the label.

  “I hadn’t seen him for nearly a month and it was the first time he’d been in the shop since I took it over eleven years ago.”

  “That was remarkable!” exclaimed Wake with flattering astonishment.

  “It was, and I said so.” She smiled. “Seeing that Mr. West or one of the other servants usually brought the parcels and letters that had to be registered it was a surprise when in he walked with a parcel of his own.”

  “Doing the work himself he paid others to do?” said Chief Inspector Wake with an encouraging smile. “That’s not my idea of spending money.”

  “And it isn’t mine. But he was that affable that I quite enjoyed our little chat. I remember how he laughed when I remarked that the parcel was heavy for its size, the heaviest I’d ever handled.”

  “Heavy was it?” The question was an articulate thought. “I suppose it was addressed to someone in London?”

  To his astonishment Mrs. Chalk burst into the heartiest laughter he had heard for years.

  “Addressed to London!” She laughed again. “I should think it was, and the funniest address I’ve ever known. I don’t need to look at the book to remember it. Didn’t I tell everyone about it?”

  The detective could not hurry her, but his curiosity was developing at such a rate as to threaten to imperil his peace of mind.

  “I come from London,” he said suggestively, “and I know there are some funny names there, people and odd streets. There’s one in the city which sounds as if it—”

  “But this was in the West End—in Dean Street,” she interrupted. “N. Ruslin, The Frozen Fang, Dean Street, London, W.1.” She repeated the address with the readiness with which a child proclaims the only date it knows, that of the battle of Hastings.

  Chief Inspector Wake was not naturally a stolid man and although he substituted for the daily dose the daily thought, “Never let your face or your tongue give you away,” he was ever exposed to the danger of self-betrayal. He very nearly betrayed himself now when Mrs. Chalk, all her features animated by merriment, startled him by pronouncing the name and address of the last man he would have associated with this quiet backwater in Sussex. Had it not been for the gloom of the shop even on a sunny June day she must have noticed the sudden convulsion of his frame and the trembling of the stolid umbrella infected by the shakiness of his left hand. But to Mrs. Chalk he was merely an audience and her enjoyment of the rarest episode in her career was too vivid and intense to permit of any kind of deviation.

  “The ‘Frozen Fang’ is a night club,” he explained.

  “Is it? I thought it was public house. But fancy your knowing it? A night club. I’ve heard of them. A niece of my late husband used to be a waitress in one at Birmingham.”

  “The ‘Frozen Fang’ is not one of the best in London,” said her customer, determined to steer the conversation round to Nosey Ruslin. “I’m surprised Mr. Massy Cheldon ever heard of it.”

  “He was never in it. He told me that. Oh, he was affable that morning. Quite the free-spoken gentleman.” Mrs. Chalk’s pride was something which had to be encouraged and flattered.

  “He probably saw you were a sensible and intelligent lady,” said the detective, venturing into what he was afraid might prove to be a morass. “Men like to talk to women who have a sense of humour.”

  He was relieved when she smiled her appreciation.

  “He laughed when I told him the postage would be one shilling,” she resumed at a gallop. “But that included the registration fee. Then he didn’t want the receipt, but I insisted. We don’t often have registered letters here. There was the big box with Milly Ellis’s new hat in it which she was sending ahead of her to Derby and she registered it and claimed….”

  The adventures of the hat continued for nearly five minutes.

  “Could I see the duplicate receipt?” he asked suddenly. “I am rather interested in Mr. Massy Cheldon although I never met him when he was alive.”

  Mrs. Chalk, unable to detect anything sinister in the distinction between death and life, spared Chief Inspector Wake the trouble of disclosing his identity by producing the book.

  “Thank you,” he said after giving it a glance. “And now I think I’ll have that tie with the blue and green spots. It’s taken my fancy. Four and six? Here it is. Oh, by the way, I suppose Mr. Cheldon didn’t tell you what was in the parcel? I mean as he was in such an affable mood he might have asked you to guess.”

  Mrs. Chalk, pausing in the act of wrapping up the tie, stared at him in astonishment. Evidently he had scored with his guess.

  “Why, you might have been in the shop at the time!” she exclaimed. “That was just what he did do. ‘I’ll give you three guesses, Mrs. Chalk,’ and I said ‘diamonds, clock and old iron’. How he did laugh to be sure! ‘You’re not so far off, Mrs. Chalk’, he says, but he didn’t tell me what it was.”

  Chief Inspector Wake made his exit on her last word of gratitude, for the tie had been written off as a dead loss eleven months previously, and once he was in the sunshine he walked as rapidly as he could back to the sophistication represented by Detective-Sergeant Clarke and a police car.

  “We’ll catch the next train from Lewes,” he said without a sign of the feeling of triumph which he was mastering. “There’s nothing here, Clarke, and yet I haven’t wasted my time.”

  They were a mile out of Lewes station when he disclosed his discovery.

  “Clarke, I nearly let myself be tricked by that young Cheldon. You remember I said I thought his part in the business was small if he had had any part in it at all?”

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant showed his excitement by sitting bolt upright.

  “I was wrong. He’s been lying to me, and lying with intent. He told me again and again that Nosey Ruslin had had nothing to do with his uncle, that they had never met; that his uncle didn’t even know Nosey by sight.”

  “And it isn’t true?” Clarke’s question was put in an awed whisper.

  “I know now it isn’t. On April 9th, Massy Cheldon took a small parcel to the local post office, and that parcel was addressed to Mr. N. Ruslin, The Frozen Fang, Dean St., London, W.1. I inspected the entry in the registration book at the post office.”

  “But this is amazing!” his companion exclaimed. “It alters everything. You were so confident that they had never met.”

  “It’s never too late to learn, Clarke,” said his chief gravely. “Thank goodness, I’ve done nothing that’ll have to be undone. This discovery of mine will only grease the wheels of the case and compel us to work faster. But it’s all to the good. Fancy Nosey and the squire of Broadbridge Manor being acquaintances! Somehow I’d never imagined it. I did think
of it at first, but knowing Nosey as I do I soon put it out of my mind. Clarke, we’ll have to pay more attention to the young heir.” He laughed throatily. “Ten thousand a year—that’s what they say he’s come in for by his uncle’s death.”

  “Ten thousand a year.” The voice had envy in it.

  “It was the first time in his life Massy Cheldon ever took a parcel to the post office himself. One of his servants always attended to the letters and parcels. Mrs. Chalk, the postmistress, made an instant hit with the squire and they talked quite a lot. He asked her to guess what was inside the parcel. She voted for diamonds, clock and old iron, and he told her she wasn’t so far out.”

  It was Detective-Sergeant Clarke’s turn to smile knowingly.

  “You didn’t tell her, sir, that if she’d said ‘revolver’ she’d have very likely won his money?” he remarked.

  “What would have been the use? I left her to guess further. What interested her, though, was the address, the ‘Frozen Fang’ took her fancy.”

  “Mr. Massy Cheldon evidently had nothing to hide or he wouldn’t have taken the parcel to the centre of local gossip,” said the sergeant.

  “We must remember that.” Chief Inspector Wake half closed his eyes. “Clarke, there’ll be no rest for either of us until we find the answer to the question, why did Massy Cheldon send a registered parcel containing a revolver—we can bank on the contents—to one of the most dangerous men in London a few weeks before he was himself murdered.”

  The sergeant looked thoughtfully in the direction of the fields they were passing at forty miles an hour.

  “He sent a revolver but he was stabbed to the heart,” he murmured as if memorising a lesson. “Yet it may not have been a revolver. I suppose you have a reason for not inquiring about it at Broadbridge Manor?”

  “You evidently understand me, Clarke,” said Wake with a bare smile. “My first intention was to question the butler and the other servants, but I quickly saw that would be a mistake. For the time being only you and I know about the registered parcel.”