The Milliner's Hat Mystery

by Basil Thomson

  “No, I don’t. All I know is that he signed his letters ‘B. Pitt.’”

  “Well, we have strong reason to believe that your friend was the cashier of the Asiatic Bank. Had you any idea of that?”

  Brooklyn drew in his breath with a whistling sound. “He was leading a double life, you mean— the man about town in his lighter moments, and the hard-working bank official when he felt like work. I should never have thought it, nor would you if you had known him.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “I dined at his house one day last week. He was in the best of health and spirits then.”

  “Were you his only guest on that occasion?”

  “No, there were half a dozen of us.”

  “And among them a Mr Lewis and a Mr Blake?”

  “The two Americans, you mean? Yes, they were there.”

  “They were Americans? And after dinner you played cards?”

  “We did. I shan’t easily forget that card party. Those two Yanks skinned me alive.”

  “Really, it is about those two men that I am trying to get information. Can you by any chance tell me their address?”

  “When I last saw them I gave them a lift home to their hotel—the Carlton.”

  “Thank you, Mr Brooklyn, that is what I wanted —their address.”

  “At the risk of seeming indiscreet I confess that it would interest me to know what sort of crime they are wanted for. Cheating at cards would be my guess.”

  Vincent laughed. “I’m afraid that it would be premature to say whether your guess is right or wrong. Thank you very much for seeing me.”

  It was but a step for the two police officers to reach the Carlton. There they drew a blank; neither of the two names was known.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Vincent to his colleague. “This is not the kind of hotel they would affect. If it had been the Globe…”

  “Do you think that Mr Brooklyn was lying?” asked Walker.

  “No, I think that they were putting him off the scent. Now, Walker, you took down from the bank manager the address of the rooms in Bloomsbury which Pitt had given as his lodgings.”

  Walker took out his notebook and read: “12, Redcliff Street, W.C.2.”

  “Come along then. We’ll pick up the car and try our luck there.”

  At 12, Redcliff Street, they had better luck than they expected. Mr Pitt, they learned, had occupied rooms there, also his two American friends, Mr Lewis and Mr Blake.

  The landlady received them in a little room which she called “my office.” She seemed quite glad to exercise her tongue and not in the least anxious lest it should carry her too far.

  “Of course I read this morning about the murder of a Mr Pitt, but I didn’t know it was my Mr Pitt, although it set me wondering; you see it gave the dead gentleman’s address in a big house in Hampstead, but I suppose the police do sometimes make mistakes. You’re sure it was my Mr Pitt?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something. If you ask me, Mr Pitt’s body isn’t the only one you’ll find. There are two more of my lodgers missing. Ah! I see you didn’t know that.”

  “You mean Mr Lewis and Mr Blake?”

  “How did you know? Have their bodies been found already?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you’ll find them all right if you look about. They all went off together last Saturday and not a word heard from them since.”

  “Did they say they were coming back?”

  “Oh yes, they were as happy as schoolboys going on a holiday—all went off in the car together.”

  “Did they take much luggage?”

  “Mr Blake and Mr Lewis did, but you see Mr Pitt didn’t have any here since he had to sleep at his old mother’s house to keep her company.”

  “Do you know where his mother lived?”

  “Out north, I believe, but I couldn’t tell you the address.”

  “How long has he lived here altogether?”

  “About four years and it’s only for the last twelve months or less that he hasn’t slept here.”

  “Why did he still keep on his rooms?”

  “Well, he had lunch here every day and had letters sent here and was always thinking his mother would get better and that he would come back.”

  “Well, now, Mrs Briggs, we want to look round the rooms of these three missing men beginning with those of Mr Lewis and Mr Blake.”

  “They had a nice little flat on the second floor—two bedrooms and the sitting room they shared. Perhaps you’d like to start with those.”

  “Well, we needn’t trouble you now any longer. We have to make it a rule to do our searching alone. In ten minutes or so we will call you.”

  The search they conducted was as thorough as long practice could make it. The underside of every drawer was scrutinized and the paper linings were taken out; but nothing was found.

  “It is quite evident that these fellows meant to bolt,” said Vincent. He opened the door and found Mrs Briggs hovering about on the landing outside, bursting with curiosity.

  “I suppose you won’t tell me whether you’ve found anything,” she said archly.

  “No, Mrs Briggs; I can tell you quite truthfully that we’ve found nothing, but you’ll find that we’ve put everything back tidily in its place.”

  “You’ll find that I can be trusted, gentlemen. Just now while you were in that room a reporter called and I never let on that you were here.”

  “Quite right, Mrs Briggs. Who did the motor car belong to that your lodgers went away in—Mr Blake or Mr Lewis?”

  “I understand from what they told me that they’d hired it for a week.”

  “Do you know what garage they hired it from?”

  “No, I don’t, but there are three or four round here where you can hire a car.”

  “Well, now we would like to see Mr Pitt’s rooms.”

  “Yes, they’re on the first floor—a sitting room and bedroom opening into one another.”

  She led the way downstairs and opened the door facing them. “You’ll excuse their not being quite tidy, but we were leaving it till the day before he was to come back. There’s a lot of burnt paper in the grate…”

  “So I see,” said Vincent. “Well, now I fear that you must leave us to our work. We shan’t be longer over it than we can help.”

  Walker went first to the fireplace and turned over the carbonized paper. “The ashes have all been chawed up,” he said; “it’s no good saving any of them for expert examination.”

  A search of the drawers in the writing table produced nothing. There remained only the wardrobe in which were hanging three suits of clothes, not bearing the name of the Sackville Street tailor. They bore signs of hard use.

  Vincent went through the pockets with a practised hand, but found them empty until he came to the third jacket. This also he was about to restore to its hanger when he thought that he heard rather than felt the crackle of paper. Again he plunged his hand into the breast pocket, which he had already explored without result. This time his fingers came upon a thin sheet of paper pressed close against the pocket lining. He took it out. It was a milliner’s bill from the Maison Germaine in the rue Duphot, Paris. It was charged to Monsieur Pitt. There was but one item, “Chapeaux, 100,000 francs.”

  “What,” asked Vincent, “could Mr Pitt be doing with a hundred thousand francs’ worth of ladies’ hats?”

  Chapter Five

  WALKER WAS ASTONISHED to see his chief suddenly take three rapid turns round the room, kicking the furniture impatiently out of his way. Then he halted and handed the bill to his sergeant.

  “What do you make of that, Walker?”

  Walker shook his head in token that the solution was beyond him.

  “It seems to me,” said Vincent, “that a visit to Paris by one of us is foreshadowed. Hats might mean anything except hats. Yes, one of us or both will have to cross the Channel and make the acquaintance of Madame Germaine in the rue Duphot
.”

  “There is the language difficulty, Mr Vincent. I don’t speak French, but, of course, you do. It won’t be the first job that you have undertaken across the Channel.”

  “My French is traveller’s French, The natives over there are too polite to smile at it, but generally they require me to repeat my question and they wear a pained expression when they listen to it. Still, I’m convinced that we must know something more about Madame Germaine than we do now. It’s possible that we might run into the two gentlemen that we want to interview. But the first thing to do is to make a round of the garages in this quarter and trace the people who let out that car on hire. You have the date and the number of the car, so we’ll take our leave and divide the work of making the enquiries between us.”

  It was Vincent who first found the garage that owned the car, and when the young woman in the glazed box learned the nature of the enquiry she seized her telephone and rang up a number in excited tones.

  “If you’ll wait a minute, sir, the proprietor himself will come down. He was just thinking of acquainting Scotland Yard, because the gentleman that signed for the car has been found murdered; we read it in the paper.”

  A man whose gait indicated haste entered the garage with a proprietary look about him.

  “What’s all this?” he asked the young woman.

  “This gentleman is from Scotland Yard. He’s called about that sixteen-horse Daimler hired by Mr B. Pitt.”

  “What I want to know is where is my car and how can I get it back?” he said to Vincent anxiously.

  “I can answer your first question. It is in the hands of the police at Newquay, and your best plan would be to ring them up on the telephone. The window was broken by a revolver shot and a new window was put in at the expense of the men who hired it. And now that I have answered your question I will ask you some of my own. What were the men like who hired your car?”

  “There were three of them. Mr Pitt, who signed for the car, said that he was cashier in the Asiatic Bank, Lombard Street, and I verified this on the telephone. He had two men with him; I think they were Americans by their accent.”

  “Was one of them broad and heavily built and the other an older man, tall and thin?”

  “Yes, you’ve described them exactly.”

  “How long did they hire the car for?”

  “They said they wanted it for the inside of a week and so I let it to them by the day.”

  “Well, I should lose no time in telephoning to the police at Newquay to find out when you can have your car back. I suppose you made them pay a deposit?”

  “Did I not? That’s the rule with everyone who hires a car, unless he’s personally known to me, and Mr Pitt was not.”

  “In what form did Mr Pitt make his deposit with you?”

  “In treasury notes. Thirty pounds was the amount of the deposit. To tell you the truth I didn’t much like the look of those two Americans. They seemed to be slippery customers somehow, and if it comes to that, Pitt himself was a queer fish. What had a bank cashier to do with a big house full of foreigners up in Hampstead? I suppose you could tell me something about that.”

  “What I’m concerned with is to find the murderer,” said Vincent, ignoring the last remark. “Can you remember anything that would be likely to help me—for example any conversation between the three men?”

  “No, but after they’d gone a man came in; he said that he had a garage and that the three men had been round to him but that he didn’t have a car smart enough for them. He asked me what kind of car I’d lent them and I told him; that was all.”

  “He didn’t say where his garage was?”

  “No, he didn’t. I’d never seen him before, but there are lots of little garages about here.”

  Vincent decided that for the moment it was not worth while to hunt up this second garagist. He thanked the man and left, hoping to head off his sergeant. To his relief he saw him coming down the street.

  “It’s all right, Walker: this is where the car was hired and the description of the men tallies with the description of the fellows who embarked from Newquay. I shall have to see Mr Richardson and let him decide the step that ought to be taken. While I’m at the Central Office you might make it your job to find out whether those two rascals have registered as aliens. The landlady gave you their initials.”

  “Yes, I have them: G. Lewis and R. Blake. I’ll be off now.”

  Chief Constable Richardson was startled when his messenger announced that Chief Inspector Vincent wanted to see him.

  “I thought that the chief inspector had been lent to the Berkshire constabulary. Well, show him in.” Vincent presented himself and Richardson looked up. “I thought you were down in the wilds of Berkshire, or was it Cornwall?”

  “Both, sir,” replied Vincent, with a smile, “but my enquiries indicate two Americans as having been guilty of murder in this country. In order to get further evidence I am asking your leave to go over to Paris.”

  “To Paris? I’m rather out of touch with what you’ve been doing. Before I authorize you to go so far afield I think you had better give me a verbal resumé of the case as far as you have got in it.”

  Vincent had a gift for terse narrative. He omitted nothing from his story and yet he reduced it to reasonable length.

  “You didn’t yourself see the motor launch at Newquay?”

  “No sir.”

  “And yet you are satisfied that it could cross the Channel even in rough weather without danger?”

  “I had to depend on what the sailors at Newquay said about her, but they satisfied me that she was a safe sea boat and I gathered that they were competent judges.”

  “One has to be careful or the Receiver may get on his hind legs. All the expenses you have incurred for the Berkshire constabulary now come out of the Metropolitan Police Fund, and if we add your expenses abroad without special authority, he may have a good deal to say. Why not go and explain the case personally to him, saying that I have sent you.”

  “Very good, sir, I will.”

  “You may quote me as saying that personal enquiry in the country itself is a secret of success in cases like this. He will remember that it was in this way that I succeeded in clearing up two of our biggest cases.”

  The man who had come from the Home Office as Receiver was no dry-as-dust accountant. On the contrary he was keenly interested in police work and ready to make any concessions that seemed likely to bring about success. In the hands of Vincent the story was convincing: it was evident that without this visit to Paris the ship would be spoiled for a ha’porth of tar, but when Vincent suggested taking a subordinate with him he drew the line.

  “I can quite understand your case, Chief Inspector, that when you are making enquiries you must have someone with you to do the fetch and carry jobs in a big case, but to take a sergeant, ignorant of French, across the Channel would be in my opinion an indefensible waste of money. If you find it necessary to go, you’ll have to go alone.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Vincent with a sigh. He returned to Richardson’s room and was fortunate enough to find him alone.

  “Well?” asked his chief, looking up with keen eyes. “Did you melt the hard heart of the Receiver?”

  “No sir, but he was very nice about it. I’m sure that he would have given way if he could. I can go over to France myself, but I cannot take a junior officer with me. Happily I’m on very good terms with an officer of the Sûreté with whom I worked during the war.”

  “That’s all right then. You can go over to Paris as soon as you like; in fact the sooner the better. While you are there you had better call upon two friends of mine, M. Bigot and M. Verneuil, both of them members of the Paris police. They will remember having worked with me and I trust you to give them the usual friendly messages.”

  Vincent found Sergeant Walker waiting for him at the basement entrance. There was an expectant look on his face which his chief dispelled by a shake of the head.

  “Nothing d
oing for you, my friend. I have to go alone to save expenses.”

  “That’s all right, Mr Vincent. I was never one for foreign travel. You look such a fool in a country where you don’t even know how to ask for a light for your pipe. The good old Metrop is where I belong. I’ve made enquiry about those two men: they didn’t register.”

  “All the better for us, because if they show up here again we shall have something to hold them on.”

  “Another thing I’ve found out is that the passport carried by the dead man had been tampered with. According to the Foreign Office records it had been issued to Bernard Pitt and the name had been obliterated with chemicals and ‘John Whitaker’ had been substituted.”

  “I know the stuff they use; they employed it a lot during the war. It will take out ink from any document without leaving a trace. Well, keep your eyes open while I’m away and if you hear anything that I ought to know, write to me at the Hotel du Louvre. I’ll write it down for you. I ought to be back at latest in two days.”

  It chanced that during the war Vincent had had to work with a very intelligent and well-educated French commissary of police named Goron, who had lately married. They had since kept up a desultory correspondence and the Gorons had invited Vincent to come over and enjoy their hospitality. It was certainly an opportunity, since a ladies’ hat shop in the rue Duphot which demanded 100,000 francs for a hat was new to his experience. He telegraphed to his French friend to expect him on the following morning, and he crossed the Channel by the night boat. Arrived at St Lazare Station, he took a taxi to the little apartment in the rue St Georges and found a warm welcome from Goron and his wife, a lively little woman from Normandy, who spoke a pretty broken English. Goron spoke no language but his own.

  “To what are we indebted for the pleasure of seeing you, my friend?” asked Goron.

  “It’s a long story,” began Vincent in French that was fluent but not impeccable.

  “Pardon,” interrupted Jacqueline Goron; “we can have no long stories until you have been fortified by a cup of my coffee after your journey.”