“Are we up against a blank wall, sir?” asked Clarke, lured into pessimism by his superior’s subdued irritation.
“No, not a blank wall, Clarke. It’s a wall though, and the trouble is that we can’t pull it down and see what’s behind it. But I’ll have the murderer of Massy Cheldon, Clarke, I’ll have him.”
It was at least the twentieth time Detective-Sergeant Clarke had heard the same confident prophecy and he was officially and unofficially tired of it. Yet it had its effect, for his own confidence was oozing now that the days of the investigation were accumulating. It restored his hopefulness to be told by one of the cleverest men in Scotland Yard’s service that the Piccadilly murder was not to be added to the list, reprinted at disturbing intervals by the morning and evening papers, of London’s unsolved murder mysteries since the termination of the great war.
“You might fetch the dagger,” said Wake abruptly. “Trench has it. He was visiting the curio shops on the off-chance of finding someone who could identify it. I have an idea.”
The idea took shape when Chief Inspector Wake dined late at Greville’s that night and was waited on by the obsequious proprietor himself.
“Your claret is excellent,” said the detective, who was no judge of wine or song, but who prided himself on his knowledge of men and women. “How’s business in the hot weather?”
The signor answered with a gesture.
“Then it’s a pity you can’t earn that reward?”
With intense interest and some excitement the signor protested that he had never heard of a reward, and Wake did not admit that neither had he until he had mentioned it. It was simply an idea, one of those harmless and cheap experiments he indulged in occasionally to help his plans and movements.
“You’ve read that the murderer of Massy Cheldon left the weapon behind? It was a dagger of the sort your countrymen carry.”
The signor smiled protestingly.
“There’s fifty pounds for anyone who can identify it. I mean give me an idea as to the owner of it. Fifty pounds, signor, and not a word to the public. No publicity—everything private.”
The dark eyes gleamed.
“I have seen many daggers,” he murmured, “but not in London.”
“Where’s your private room?” He glanced again at the occupied tables and failed to recognise an acquaintance. “No one here knows me. It will be quite safe.” Wake knew the fear of the foreign element of the epithet of police spy.
“My apartment—here,” exclaimed the proprietor, who was thinking of fifty pounds and trying to work out the number of dinners which would have to be served to produce such an entrancing profit.
Behind the half closed door he took the dagger from Wake’s hands and held it close to his eyes. The detective watched him anxiously, trying to read his thoughts and to anticipate his verdict.
“I have seen poignards that I would mistake for it,” the veteran Italian murmured. “Twenty years ago I had one myself though not as long. It is expensive, this one, and sharp.” He fingered it almost lovingly. Then the light of a triumphant smile broke across his sallow, withered features. “I remember now, Mr. Inspector. Yes, I remember here in this very room.” Wake wished he could shout at him to hurry up. “Carlo Demonico—they call him Italian Charlie—offered me this dagger for a dinner and one shilling. I refused. I am not a pawnbroker, I told him.” He drew himself up to the topmost inch of his height.
“Is that all that happened?”
He bowed.
Wake replaced the weapon in its special case and dropped it into his inside pocket. Disappointment was his predominant emotion.
“‘I am no pawnbroker, Carlo,’ I said to him.” Again the smile of a strength that for a few moments concealed the dirt and the hairs of his face. “‘I am a restaurateur, my friend.’ That’s my answer to him, Mr. Inspector, and he went away cursing.”
The detective, having hinted at the probability of the fifty pounds coming the way of his genial informant, strolled out in a state of pessimism which blinded him until he was nearly at the corner of Piccadilly facing the Criterion restaurant. Here he recovered his official self and although he had gone off duty it was his official eye that surveyed the crowds that streamed in every direction. A dozen times he overheard references to the Piccadilly murder, and twice loud-voiced females pronounced the words “Scotland Yard” in a tone which left no room for doubt as to their opinion of that famous institution. Wake did not wince nor did he cry aloud. He was inured to criticism of imperfect worldlings who expected perfection in at least one very human institution.
And then something happened which caused an inward revolution as startling in its changes, if not reforms, as any revolution ever could be. He had grown impatient of inaction, and too restless to plan a return homewards, he swung round on his heel. Simultaneously his eyes came into line with the painted word “pawnbroker,” and once more Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland Yard had reason to kick himself metaphorically for having taken quite thirty-five minutes to appreciate the importance of the restaurant proprietor’s parting advice to Italian Charlie.
“It’s a chance, but a winning chance,” he muttered, and after the longest night he had ever spent with his eyes open he was at Scotland Yard at half-past eight and holding an impromptu conference of his most efficient and therefore most trusted assistants.
“Clarke, you’ll come with me,” he said at its close. “Trench and Agate will begin at the end of the list. Graham, you and O’Leary, try your luck in Holborn. I’ll ’phone here every half-hour in case there is anything for me to hear. Now be off.”
He examined his own extract from the list of London’s pawnbrokers within a mile of Piccadilly Circus.
“That would be Italian Charlie’s unless he was extra cautious,” he said to his companion as they stepped into a taxi.
There had been a murder case sixteen years previously which had involved a visit being paid to each of three hundred and eleven laundries before a vital laundry mark on a collar had been identified. Chief Inspector Wake, then a detective-sergeant, had participated in that weary visitation which remained one of his most seared memories.
“Hope it won’t be the Renfrew Street laundry mark again, Clarke,” he said as the car was nearing Trafalgar Square.
The sergeant nearly laughed.
“I’ve heard all about it from Trench, sir.”
“Because he happened to have the laundry on his list where the murdered man used to send his shirts and collars? That was a wonderful feat of detection, Clarke,” he added, sarcastically. “I wonder how many pawnshops there are in London? A few thousand, I should think.” He yawned. “Pity I couldn’t sleep last night, but excitement kept me awake.” He noticed his companion’s surprise. “Oh, I’m young enough to be foolish enough to get excited,” he explained cheerfully.
“Something tells me we’ll be lucky, sir,” said Clarke, whose thoughts had not been diverted by the incursion into past history.
“When a pessimist turns optimist the expected simply has to happen,” said Wake with all the weight of his fifteen stone.
Detective-Sergeant Clarke’s psychic informant was justified by results. Three pawnbrokers within a quarter-mile radius of Italian Charlie’s recently vacated bedroom on the heights of Soho convincingly repudiated previous acquaintance with the sinister weapon Chief Inspector Wake affably tendered to them for examination and, if possible, recognition. The fourth twenty-five per cent philanthropist, whose angular Rialto was situated near the trackless region of Euston Road, identified it with a grin which was reminiscent and not merely a sign of pleasure at the reunion.
“Little dark-faced chap brought it in with a silver watch and a gold-plated brooch. Gave him seven bob on the lot. Want his name and address?”
He went to a safe at the back and sorted out his ledgers.
“Wonder what name he gave?” Wake whispered.
“Here it is,” said the pawnbroker, placing the open book on the counter. “May the eleventh. Carlo Demonico, 29, Frederick Alley, W.”
“And when were the articles redeemed?” asked Wake, recovering from his surprise.
“May the twenty-seventh.”
“Did you know this Carlo Demonico?”
The pawnbroker shook his head.
“Never saw him but once,” he said.
“You mean twice,” Detective-Sergeant Clarke corrected. “You forget he redeemed the articles.”
“I didn’t say he redeemed them,” was the quiet reply.
The pawnbroker knew he was in the presence of policemen and was wary.
“Who did?” The question was Wake’s.
“Ah, now you’re asking me one,” exclaimed the man on the other side of the counter with inconsequential cheerfulness. “When it’s a matter of redeeming seven bobsworth of odds and ends I’m only too glad to be rid of the stuff and take my small profit. I don’t ask questions.”
“But wasn’t the dagger rather unusual in your experience?” Wake’s anxiety to preserve his hopefulness was almost pathetic.
“No. I’ve had plenty. You get everything nearly some time in our business. But now that I come to think of it I remember sizing up the chap who came in with the ticket and the money and trying to guess if he were Carlo Demonico’s brother or cousin.”
Wake took a photograph out of his pocket.
“Does that remind you of him?” he asked, and in unison with his subordinate waited anxiously for the answer.
“That’s the chap,” was the almost immediate rejoinder. “He tried to keep his face from me but I saw him clear enough as he turned to leave the shop. Yes. That’s him.”
“Thank you,” said Wake, and would have sat down heavily had there been a chair handy.
“Nothing serious, I hope, gents?” asked the pawnbroker, awed by the set faces that were signalling to each other.
“The Piccadilly murder,” said Wake, a trifle sharply.
The pawnbroker threw his hands in the air.
“What! That? Good Lord! I’ve been reading about it half the night, but it never occurred to me to—”
“There was a photograph of the dagger in every paper a few days ago,” said Wake severely. “Didn’t you connect it with the one you took in pawn?”
“I saw the photograph, but it didn’t look the same—quite different, in fact, gents. The Piccadilly murder!” The twenty-five per cent look came into his eyes. “Is there a reward?” The question was accompanied by a smirk that began with a smacking of the lips.
“No, we don’t offer rewards,” was the only answer he was vouchsafed. “But keep this to yourself until I call again and you’ll have a friend in me and my colleague. Not that it matters very much to us if you do talk, but it may matter something to you. Good morning.”
They had only a yard and a half to cover before reaching the pavement, and the taximan was waiting for them with the door open, but to the detectives it seemed that the age of the old coach and horses must have returned as the vehicle trotted to its appointed destination. Half a dozen times Wake thrust his head out of the window to signal to a traffic impeder in uniform information as to his identity, and they did reach Scotland Yard before that June morning was fifteen minutes older, but as Wake waddled vigorously towards the superintendent’s room he was lamenting the years he had lost since the interview with the pawnbroker.
“We have traced the dagger, sir,” he announced. “It was pawned on May the eleventh by Carlo Demonico, known as Italian Charlie, and redeemed on May the twenty-seventh by Billy Bright.”
“Less than a fortnight before the murder,” the superintendent of the C.I.D. exclaimed. “And Billy Bright is an intimate friend of Nosey Ruslin’s.” He spoke as another old acquaintance of Nosey’s.
“And Nosey has been very pally of late with young Cheldon who’s inherited a fortune through his uncle’s death,” said Wake, unwilling to break the chain.
“There’s only one obvious thing to do and that is to arrest Billy the Dancer. And yet I doubt its wisdom. I’ve got a constitutional suspicion and distrust of the obvious.”
“I would also prefer to wait a little longer, sir,” said Wake, in his stolid, matter of fact manner. “Give him more rope so that—”
“We may be in a better position to give him the whole of it,” interjected the superior with the smile that invites laughter.
There was an interval of recovery for Chief Inspector Wake, who was not an expert laugher, and when he was himself again he walked over to the window and looked out.
“It’s an easy case, sir, and yet somehow difficult. All the time I feel that the murderer is under my nose and I can’t see him. I’d bet a million to one that Nosey Ruslin knows all about it.”
“That would be a safe bet, Wake,” said the superintendent drily. “What we want is someone, yourself for preference, who can boast that he knows all about it, too. But it’s something to have narrowed the circle of suspicion down to Nosey Ruslin and Billy the Dancer. You are sure Italian Charlie had nothing to do with it?”
“I wouldn’t have let him go, sir, if I hadn’t known that at forty minutes past eleven last Monday night he was playing cards in a club in the City Road. I have a dozen witnesses to that.”
“So it’s Nosey and Billy. What about Cheldon?”
“Can’t quite fix him, but he may know something. I am having an eye kept on him in case.”
“But the identification of the ownership of the dagger is vital, Wake. That’s a real score for you. And yet you don’t wish Billy to be brought in at once?”
“No, sir. I’d rather he was provided with opportunities to see his pal, Nosey Ruslin, again. I want to let them talk—talking sometimes leads to quarrels. You remember the Battersea case? If Granger hadn’t got unfounded suspicions of his confederate we’d never have secured a conviction. And in my opinion the dagger isn’t sufficient even if we can prove it was in Billy’s possession twelve days before the murder. A lot can happen in twelve days. Picture Norman Birkett or Patrick Hastings defending Billy at the Old Bailey. Don’t you see how much they’d make of those twelve blank days?”
“Too true.” The superintendent had had many lively and disadvantageous encounters with famous counsel in the course of his professional career.
“If Billy goes into the witness box with half an alibi the other half will be supplied by his counsel.”
“Yes, yes,” was the testy interruption. Wake was seldom loquacious, and his colleagues preferred him to be his usual self. “You must have had a dozen reports on Billy.”
“About forty, I should say, sir.”
“But nothing definite as to his movements on the night of the murder?”
“Up to the present our information would suggest that he vanished off the face of the earth after saying good afternoon to the attendant at the ‘Frozen Fang’ who was washing the tables. That was at four o’clock.”
“But what puzzles me is the entire absence of motive, Wake.”
“One can make a guess, sir.”
“Have a shot at one then.”
“Money. Hard cash. Billy’s been on his uppers for months. Can’t get engagements, and is crazy about his partner, Nancy Curzon.”
“Always a woman in the case, Wake,” said the superintendent sententiously.
“Only on the borders of this one, sir. She’s completely ignorant of the events leading up to the murder. Nosey would never take her into his confidence. He never does because he feels he can’t trust them.”
“That doesn’t get us any nearer the solution of the problem of the motive,” said the superintendent. “If Billy did it for money where did the money come from or if it hasn’t been paid who will pay it and when? Nosey hasn’t any, and you’ve ruled out young Cheldon, who will be, actua
lly is at the moment, the owner of the Cheldon estate. There’s the weakness of your case, Wake.” He leaned back in his chair and stared importantly at the wall beyond. Chief Inspector Wake, who could remember him as a uniformed colleague in the days before he had won the race for promotion, tried to assemble all the humility of which he was capable.
“Very true, sir, very true. But it’s less than a week since the murder took place and we’ve done something.”
“You’ve accomplished a great deal,” said his superior generously. “You must forgive my impatience, Wake.” He laughed. “You won’t be beaten—you never are. The Piccadilly murder will be one of your triumphs.”
“Thank you, sir.” Wake spoke awkwardly, for compliments unsettled him. “But you are right about the motive. Unless we can secure Old Bailey proof of Nosey Ruslin’s participation it wouldn’t be safe to arrest Billy the Dancer yet. He’s young Cheldon’s rival for the hand and feet”—he permitted himself a smile—“of Nancy Curzon.”
“A good-looker?”
“Really beautiful, sir,” was the enthusiastic reply. “Quite different from the usual Soho dancer. Even when she’s made up for her show she’s fresh and natural. Got any amount of horse sense too.”
“Ambitious?”
“Very. Wants to clear out of the game with the aid of a rich husband.”
The superintendent sat bolt upright.
“How’s this for a possible solution, Wake? Nancy Curzon has young Cheldon madly in love with her, but he is poor. There is, however, a rich uncle who has only to die to make her lover rich. Well, she has another would-be lover, Billy the Dancer. She goes to him and promises him a small fortune if he will remove the inconvenient uncle.”
Chief Inspector Wake smiled the tired smile of the man who has the knowledge and wisdom of which he is about to administer a small dose to a foolish and reckless ignoramus.
“You can take it from me, sir, that Nancy Curzon is as ignorant and innocent of the murder of Massy Cheldon as you and I are. I know that. She was one of the first I suspected but I was soon convinced that I was wasting my time.”
Murder in Piccadilly Page 25
