Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  So it seemed the hint, intended or not intended, Bobby had derived from Eddy Dene’s remark that Jones asked as many questions as a detective, was proved valueless; and that the idea that he was a private detective employed to watch Lady Cambers had to be given up.

  ‘Of course,’ the official Bobby was talking to remarked presently, ‘there are plenty of bright lads who mix a dash of private detection with a spot of blackmail, and who take care we never hear of them if they can help it, but this letter you got hold of from Miss Bowman’s charwoman does not seem to tune in very well. If you’re employing a private detective to watch your wife in the hope of getting a divorce because she’s carrying on with someone – Eddy Dene, probably, in this case – you would hardly switch on to murder while your private detective was still on the spot, would you?’

  ‘It seems a weak point in the case,’ Bobby agreed. ‘I suppose the prosecution would argue impatience and disappointment at lack of results leading to other methods – the method someone did adopt with Lady Cambers. It might be the private detective developed into the accomplice. There’s always that fountain-pen to account for. I suppose it’s been examined here?’

  ‘Goes back with full report to Colonel Lawson to-day, I believe,’ the other answered. ‘Nothing significant discovered, though. What do you propose now?’

  ‘To get hold of Jones.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There’s the match-stalk from the Hotel Henry VIII. I thought of trying there first.’

  ‘Rather an off chance,’ observed the other. ‘If you draw blank there...?’

  ‘I’ll ask Colonel Lawson if we hadn’t better call in the Press and the B.B.C.’

  The official nodded agreement, and Bobby went on to the Hotel Henry VIII, where the manager, aware of the advantages of being on good terms with the police, received him amiably, and promised at once to do all he could to help.

  But he looked blank when Bobby produced his precious clue – the burnt match-stalk with on it the name of the hotel.

  ‘But, inspector,’ he protested – he knew perfectly well Bobby was a sergeant, but thought a little temporary promotion might be acceptable, ‘we order those things by the hundred gross. People come in for a cocktail and go out with a book of matches. It is wonderful,’ he mused, ‘how those who pay willingly our price for a cocktail love to feel they are getting their matches for nothing. It is, I suppose, as it were, a consolation.’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Bobby. ‘I was thinking more of your staff,’ he added.

  ‘Oh, the staff,’ repeated the manager, darkly brooding as on a word that to him, represented all that is incomprehensible, bewildering, dangerous, liable at any moment to offend a client, spoil a dinner, cork the best bottle of wine in the cellar – in a word, to let red ruin loose with cheerful unconcern. ‘A staff,’ he said bitterly, ‘is capable of all – nor do I suppose there is one of them, from my secretary down to the man who washes the silver, whoever dreams of buying a match. I know I never do, superintendent,’ he admitted candidly.

  ‘What I thought,’ explained Bobby, hopefully wondering if presently he would find himself ‘commissioner’, ‘is that if we questioned your heads of departments, or whatever you call them, one of them might be able to tell us something useful. I know how carefully you pick your staff,’ he added, in his most conciliatory tones, ‘but you know, too, that waiters...’

  ‘Oh, waiters,’ repeated the manager, and again his voice expressed an even darker, stranger significance, so that one seemed to see in the waiter no longer a simple, shuffling, subservient figure, tray in hand, napkin under arm, but rather an immense and brooding form stooping from immeasurable heights to take cognizance of the follies and the weaknesses of man. ‘Waiters,’ repeated the manager, as one who pronounced a word of power. ‘It is true. They see. They hear. They know. And sometimes they tell.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ agreed Bobby.

  ‘It is not, of course,’ the manager pointed out earnestly, ‘professional for them to tell. But occasionally it happens that they do. Then,’ said the manager simply, ‘the fat burns.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bobby.

  ‘We will inquire. Any help that we can give, it is yours – we will do our utmost. One thing only we ask in return, inspector – that the name of the Hotel Henry VIII is not mentioned.’

  Bobby, though a little disappointed that not further promotion, but a reversion in rank, had been his fate, promised no avoidable mention of the hotel should be made, and expressed his gratitude for the promise of help.

  Well he knew how many are the opportunities the waiter has of acquiring knowledge; well he knew, too, the uses to which that knowledge may at times be put – as, for instance, when the dashing, middle-aged cavalier, or perhaps some lovely lady, does not very much wish it known with whom they dined that night of the supposed pressure of office work or the imagined visit to the aunt in the country. Or when business men, a strangely simple – minded, even innocent, race, not wishing their City friends to know what negotiations are in progress, avoid each other’s offices, and meet instead in West-End restaurants, where they are almost equally well known, and then are surprised to find a paragraph in the financial columns that has been worth a fiver or even more to the observant waiter.

  Now in long procession Bobby interviewed the banqueting-manager, his assistant, the head waiter, the deputy head waiters, the senior service waiters, the wine waiter, and none could help till at the last one remembered that about two weeks previously Lady Cambers had dined there. He remembered the name because a phone-message had come for her during the meal, and it had been his duty to identify her – no easy task in a crowded restaurant. He remembered her companion, too.

  ‘Wasn’t class,’ the waiter explained. ‘Anyone could see he wasn’t – cut from the joint, two veg. and sweet, one shilling, was his usual. She paid, too; and when he got his hat and coat afterwards he asked if there was any charge!’

  ‘Did he, though?’ said the manager, impressed.

  ‘So Peters – it was him there at the time – Peters said gentlemen gave what they liked, and he’ – the waiter paused and drew a long breath – ‘he handed Peters twopence.’

  ‘My God!’ said the manager, appalled.

  ‘Peters thanked him very grateful,’ the waiter added, ‘and gave him an extra brush-down, and said how much he hoped they would see him again. You see,’ he explained, ‘Peters knew it wasn’t intended, only ignorance.’

  ‘Would Peters know him again?’ Bobby asked.

  The waiter answered that Peters said he often dreamed of it still; and Peters, being produced, gave a description of the young man of the twopence that made it abundantly clear he was Eddy Dene.

  It seemed a fact significant of much to Bobby. If Sir Albert had heard that his wife had been dining in a West-End restaurant with young Dene, it was quite possible he had entertained suspicions. Inquiries as to who had been the waiter serving Lady Cambers and her guest produced evidence presently that it was a man who had now left.

  ‘Said he had been offered a good job in the country,’ the staff-manager explained, ‘and went off to it. Name of Jones – Sammy Jones.’

  Bobby got Mr. Samuel Jones’s address, and proceeded thither, only to draw blank once again. Mr. Jones had, in fact, lodged there, but had left on securing work in the country, and his present address was not known. Patient inquiry revealed, however, that he had been wont to ‘use’ a certain public-house in the neighbourhood. But there nothing had been seen of him for some time; nothing was known of his present whereabouts. One of the barmen, however, remembered that he had boasted sometimes of an interest he had in a small eating-house in Islington. To Islington Bobby accordingly proceeded, found, with some difficulty, the eating-house indicated, and discovered that Mr. Jones’s interest in it consisted in the fact that he owed its proprietor nearly three pounds for meals there partaken of, so that the proprietor was nearly as anxious as Bobby himself to get in touch with Mr. Jon
es.

  ‘Not that I suppose I shall ever see him again,’ he opined pessimistically.

  Persistent questioning by Bobby brought presently to mind that Mr. Jones had on one occasion mentioned that he knew the young lady who presided over the tobacco-kiosk at Hammersmith in the Square – a slender clue, but one Bobby felt he must do his best to follow up.

  So he thanked the eating-house proprietor warmly, retired, paused a moment or two outside to relieve his feelings by a few appropriate words, reflected moodily that a detective needs a stout leg as much as, indeed more than, a strong head; thanked heaven that whatever might be said of his brains no one could deny the highly satisfactory measurement of his calves – no less an authority than John Ridd himself declares them the true test of a man – and made his way to Hammersmith, pessimistically persuaded that he would next hear of Mr. Jones in connection with Palmer’s Green or Greenwich.

  There is no need to follow the unfortunate Bobby through the rest of his perambulations as he raced and chased all that day through – and under – the streets of London, till he loathed the very thought of a tube, and felt positively sick at the mere sight of a motor-bus. It was evening when at last he discovered, within three or four hundred yards of the Hotel Henry VIII where he had started, the back-room above a greengrocer’s which Mr. Jones had rented on his return the previous Monday from a holiday in the country.

  ‘Says he’ll be leaving for Canada soon,’ the greengrocer remarked. He added enviously: ‘An aunt left him a tidy bit of money the other day.’

  ‘Did she, though?’ said Bobby, interested. ‘How jolly!’ And the greengrocer said it was – for them as had aunts.

  It appeared Mr. Jones was out at present, but was expected back soon, and Bobby was shown into an ordinary shabby back-bedroom, very poorly furnished. And on the mantelpiece was a letter, stamped, sealed, ready for the post, addressed to Sir Albert Cambers. Bobby’s look was grim as he took possession of this and put it in his pocket.

  Then he set himself to wait, occupying himself jotting down in a new note-book, with which he had provided himself, since his other was full, the points in the case that seemed to him the most significant.

  Fortunately it was not long before Mr. Jones returned, a little the worse for drink, but with apparently his legs more than his mental faculties affected, for the moment he saw Bobby he pointed an accusing finger at him.

  ‘You’re police,’ he said. ‘I know you.’

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Bobby. ‘There’s my card.’

  ‘About the murder, is it?’ Jones asked.

  ‘Right again,’ said Bobby. ‘What can you tell us about it?’

  ‘I can tell you who did it,’ Jones answered simply. ‘Sir Albert Cambers.’

  CHAPTER 26

  STORY OF AN EYEWITNESS

  Such simplicity and directness of statement – made, too, with such evident sincerity – startled Bobby considerably. Jones had certainly had more beer than was good for him, and possibly it had loosened his tongue to some degree, but he was beyond doubt fully aware of what he was saying. There had even come a certain gravity into his manner.

  ‘You know what you are saying?’ Bobby asked him.

  ‘I’m saying he did it, and so he did,’ Jones answered as simply as before.

  Bobby took from his pocket the letter to Sir Albert of which he had taken possession.

  ‘Is that what you were writing to him about?’ he asked.

  ‘Here, I say,’ Jones cried excitedly. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It was on the mantelpiece,’ Bobby said. ‘Have you any objection to my reading it?’

  ‘It wasn’t posted,’ Jones protested. ‘I take you to witness. You can’t say it was. There’s no postmark. That’s proof.’

  ‘I’ve just told you I found it on the mantelpiece,’ Bobby reminded him.

  ‘It wasn’t going to be posted, either,’ declared Jones. ‘See? You had better read it now you’ve got it. Tell you all about it, it will. But you can’t bring it up against me when it wasn’t posted. I don’t deny as I was tempted, same as anyone would be – and me a poor man and all. Besides, it was him I was working for, and you’ve got to stand for them as pays you – or where’s your reputation? You’ve got to think of your reputation when you’ve your living to earn.’

  ‘So you have,’ agreed Bobby. ‘Sir Albert Cambers employed you, did he?’

  ‘To find out what his old woman was up to. If I wasn’t paid for it, you wouldn’t catch me in a god-forsaken hole like that there where she hung out. And when I knew she was done in, I knew at once who had done it. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m taking down what you tell me,’ answered Bobby, who had produced pencil and note-book. ‘Afterwards it will be written out for you to sign. You understand, of course, it’s pretty serious, what you’re saying?’

  ‘You can’t bring it up against me when it was never posted,’ Jones retorted defiantly. ‘It ain’t blackmail or nothing till it’s posted. Mind, I don’t deny as I was tempted same as anyone else – same as you in my place. “Let him that taketh a stone, take heed who it hits.” That’s Bible, that is. And I thought better of it. What I came back here for was to burn the letter, and go straight on to you chaps and tell you what I saw.’

  Bobby thought it equally likely Mr. Jones had been out to re-enforce his resolution at the nearest public-house, and had returned to carry out an intention much beer had helped him to decide was best.

  ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

  ‘You read that letter, and you’ll know,’ Jones answered. ‘But you can’t bring it up against me. It wasn’t posted. I was going to tear it up, so I was. There hasn’t been any overt act,’ he declared, a little proud of a phrase that he felt put him on a level with his questioner. ‘You read it, and you’ll see.’

  Slowly Bobby slit the envelope and extracted the contents – two sheets of closely written notepaper. It ran thus:

  To Sir A. Cambers, Esq., Bart.

  ‘Sir,

  ‘This is to say I saw all that happened Sunday night and now hasten to assure you my sympathies are all yours, besides which it isn’t for me to judge others, never having been convicted myself through the jury saying there was no evidence, and there wasn’t, either.

  ‘I wish to state, sir, that acting on your honoured instructions to keep out and leave you by yourself to spot your good lady come out to meet the young gentleman, I did so, but being uneasy in my mind, re developments, I got out again by the window to avoid attracting attention as before.

  ‘Sir, I saw it all, just what you did.

  ‘I beg to respectfully say my sympathies are all yours as I fully understand and appreciate how you felt, being married myself and knowing well how often you feel the only thing to do is to out them.

  ‘But for understanding so well and knowing just how you felt and how it happened, through having been married myself, not to mention the others, I should have gone immediate to the police if it had been an ordinary case, just as duty demands.

  ‘Only then there’s my duty to my employer I always remember just the same as my duty to King and Country.

  ‘There’s this, too, I’ve got to think of and suppose the police which is slow and stupid enough as all know and can read in the papers every day, and especial the young fellow they’ve got messing about there, only suppose they do come asking questions same as they may any moment almost.

  ‘Done in, both of us, sir, if you ask me.

  ‘I beg to respectfully suggest for both our sakes it would be best for all concerned if I went abroad, having friends in Canada and same speak well of it with my fare paid and adequate compensation for risk run and loss of situation and prospects (both first-class) at home.

  ‘I beg to respectfully suggest one thousand pounds in one pound and ten shilling notes, in a brown-paper parcel, delivered to above address, same being moderate enough when you come in for all her money.

  ‘I beg to respectfully suggest an
early reply by return will oblige, same being necessary on account of me not knowing if I am acting right and feeling all the time I ought to split, being so troubled sometimes I feel I must though fully sympathizing as a married man and knowing well what it’s like.

  ‘I am,

  ‘Honoured sir,

  ‘Your obedient servant,

  ‘Samuel Jones

  ‘Ps. What I mean is, the sooner I’m out of it, the safer for you.’

  Bobby folded the letter again, and replaced it in its envelope.

  ‘Quite plain,’ he said. ‘I take it Sir Albert had employed you to watch his wife?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did you get in touch with him?’

  ‘Saw the old girl at the Henry VIII one night having dinner. They were at my table. You could see the young chap with her wasn’t her class, and when you see an old girl like her standing treat to young fellows like him, you know what’s up. I made a few inquiries on my own, because there’s times when a gent will come down handsome for a tip about what his wife’s been up to – worth a lot sometimes. I found out easy enough there had been a split, and Sir Albert was living in London on his own and sweet on a bit of skirt himself, and wanting a divorce she wouldn’t agree to, aggravation being woman’s nature all along. So I rung him up, and sounded him cautious what he would give to know how his wife was carrying on. He bit at once. Recognized the young man the moment I said what he was like, been suspicious of him before, seemingly. So he engaged me at five quid a week, my ex’s, and a hundred bonus if it came off, fifty when the divorce suit was entered, twenty-five when the decree nisi was pronounced, and the rest of it when made absolute. He wasn’t taking any risks. At first it seemed a wash-out. They had put it across so well down there where they lived it was only digging for bones and suchlike they was interested in; no one spotted what was behind. Lapped it all up at face-value,’ said Mr. Jones, with a superior smile. ‘Called the young fellow her ladyship’s tame cat, and left it at that. Innocent lot down there – comes of watching the flowers grow and hearing the birds sing, but it takes more than a tale like that to kid you when you’ve lived in London all your life. But they covered careful – remarkable careful – I will say that for them, and I was getting a bit worried till I got the tip I wanted.’