“Perhaps you are right, sir. I believe that Maddox is already on the alert and was following me this morning: that’s why I have to be very careful.”
“You could probably make some quiet arrangement with one of the hotel servants without incorporating it in your report.”
“I have one hope, sir. The man Grant is a weak-kneed fellow who might come out with everything he knows if he’s properly handled, but I’m not sure that he knows enough yet to be of use to us.”
“Well then, when the moment comes you might try the pressure of putting him under clumsy observation —the kind of observation that he could not help noticing. You might convert him into becoming a useful informant.”
Richardson nodded. He knew from experience in other cases that the one thing which the criminal afflicted with nerves cannot withstand is the knowledge that he is being followed wherever he goes.
“Very good, sir. I may have to draw upon an informant who is known to yourself.”
“You mean Mr Milsom. Do so if you think it necessary, but don’t refer to it, of course, in any of your reports. Now we had better send that cipher cable to New Zealand.”
He took up a cable form. “We’ll mark it ‘priority’ and get the people upstairs to cipher it. ‘Police, Wellington. Cable any criminal record against Charles Otway. N.S.Y.’ This will get through in the middle of the night when the man on duty in Wellington will be little better than a watchman. We can’t count on getting a reply under five or six hours.”
“No sir, but if I am not here I shall be down at Ealing. You could have the message telephoned to me there.”
Richardson took the message upstairs to be ciphered and then glanced at the clock. If his friend Jim Milsom were lunching at home, as sometimes happened, he would be in time to catch him. He made for the building of service flats and was in time to catch his friend as he was about to sit down to his meal.
“You are just in time,” exclaimed the publisher, slapping him on the shoulder. “I was going to have a solitary meal. Now, in your agreeable company, I shall expand, eat a colossal meal and sleep it off in my office, unless; you let me cart you to some exciting adventure in the; car. Even my uncle could not find fault with that as a way of spending an afternoon.”
“I did not come to sponge on you for luncheon. I came to ask whether you could help us by undertaking a little job of observation.”
“Could I not? It’s the one spring that my thirsty soul has been panting for—no disguise needed, just the silly old publisher chap who’s always poking in his nose where he’s not wanted. No one could suspect him of being a police nark. Come along in and let me feed you.”
“On one condition, Mr Milsom: that we keep off shop until the waiters have left us. They all know me, and their ears will be flapping. We will talk about the weather and the League of Nations, if you don’t mind.”
When they had exhausted the political field and the waiters had left them to their coffee, Richardson said, “You remember our last talk about that Ealing case, when you told me that you centred your suspicions on Otway and asked me to watch him? Well, that’s exactly what I’m now going to ask you to do.”
“Steady. Maddox might remember me. We passed the time of day in the garden of the bungalow on that morning of the murder.”
“Oh, you never told me that. This may mean a change in our plans. He is staying in the Palace Hotel with Otway and the murdered woman’s brother, a man named Arthur Grant.”
“How does the brother come into it?”
“Out of sheer weakness and impecuniosity, I fancy. Maddox met him at the funeral and took him away with him to his hotel.”
“That’s just what we don’t know. Presumably it is to make a cat’s-paw of him in some way. I had hoped that you would get me some useful information on that point.”
“Well, then I suppose it will have to go, and I shall be left to mourn it with a horrible feeling that I have come out partially unclothed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My moustache, of course. What else?”
“Oh, that moustache may make all the difference in the world. When he saw you he was agitated and only half took you in, and although there isn’t much of it beyond a smudge under each nostril, it may make all the difference. It’s worth trying.”
“So that’s the cold-blooded way in which you accept my sacrifice in the interests of justice? I wonder that you get anybody to work for you. But go on, give me my orders.”
“Now, I don’t suggest that you should be victimized to the extent of taking a room at the Palace, but I don’t think that it would be difficult for you to cultivate relations with them by finding your way to their hearts down their throats.”
“You mean there is a bar at the Palace? And if I told you that in deference to my uncle I had joined the prohibitionists…?”
“I shouldn’t believe you.”
“Well, of course, in deference to you and in entire disregard for my own interests I’ll take it on, but you must indicate the moment when my secret observation is to become apparent. When, for example, I am to whip out a pocket Kodak, spin round in front of the trio, snap them and make off at top speed.”
“All that shall be done. But, seriously, it is essential that they should not guess that you and I are acquainted with one another. Maddox already thinks me worth keeping under observation.”
“Right. I’ll send you all the information I gather by post or by telephone.”
“We have cabled to New Zealand asking for any criminal record against our friend Otway. You shall have the reply as soon as I get it. For the next day or two I shall be lying doggo down at Ealing to allay the suspicion of Maddox that I am deeper than I look.”
“I can’t for the life of me see why Maddox should have killed that woman when he had no chance of getting hold of her money. He must share the old man’s fortune with her heir, and her heir is her husband. Anyone would have told him that. Even if he knew that he would have to share the fortune with her husband and hoped to get him removed by the hangman, there would still have been another heir.”
“I think that the crime was unpremeditated—the result of a sudden quarrel. We’ve no means of knowing what the quarrel was about, but I have no doubt at all that it had to do with the division of the property in some way.”
“Look here. To me the case seems quite simple. Mrs Pomeroy had passed her youth in New Zealand, hadn’t she? Good. She had a passion for the stage, hadn’t she? Good. That meant that she was larky, and larky young women in New Zealand, like everywhere else, have lovers. Well, there you are. Otway was her lover: it was what the French call a crime passionnel—a crime of passion.”
“Otway doesn’t strike me as a man who would commit a crime for passion—for filthy lucre if you like, but not for disappointed love.”
“My dear Richardson. You distinguished police officers go about your work in blinkers. You know nothing of the ravages of the human heart as we do out in the world. Why, as a publisher of thrillers mostly written by passionate women, I have double your advantages. Disappointed love, my authoresses tell me, is the most fruitful source of murder that can be found anywhere. Let me send you a few books to prove it.”
“It’s very kind of you, but I won’t trouble you to do that. We police officers are brought face to face with cases quite as poignant as any that you can find in the novels, and they have the advantage of being true.”
“Well, Superintendent, I have my orders. This very evening I shall go and take my cocktail at the bar in the Palace Hotel, if I can arrange it, in the company of the travellers from New Zealand.”
“Before I go there’s one thing you might try to remember—Maddox’s demeanour when he arrived at the bungalow. Was he agitated?”
“Well, now I come to think of it, he was. He was mopping his brow, breathing hard and quite unable to keep still. I thought that it was the surprise of the news of his cousin’s death that had upset him, but it would fit in very w
ell with the other thing. In plain English he was as nervous as a cat, but leave it to me: I’ll watch him.”
Chapter Twelve
THE BAR at the Palace Hotel seemed to have been especially designed by the architect for the business which Milsom had in hand. He had armed himself with a cable form and was apparently struggling with composition at one of the little tables when the two travellers from New Zealand drifted over to the bar for their evening refreshment. Milsom recognized Maddox at once. He allowed them a little rope before he, too, slouched over to the barman with a request for information.
“Supposing I send a cable to Wellington in New Zealand now, what time of day would they get it out there?”
This appeared to be a riddle which had never been put to the barman before. He suggested applying to the office for the information, but Maddox interposed.
“I can tell you that, sir. Seven o’clock in the evening here is about seven o’clock in the morning in Wellington. You ought to be able to count upon getting a reply to your cable first thing in the morning. It all depends upon the line being clear.”
Milsom thanked him and begged the two to share a drink with him.
“You seem to know all about cabling to Wellington,” he said when the drinks were served.
“We ought to. We started from Wellington just over five weeks ago.”
“It’s a very nice place, I believe.”
“Oh, it’s all right, but one soon gets through it. Give me London every time,” said the shorter man, whom Milsom guessed to be Otway.
Maddox laughed. “My friend Otway is a town bird, you see. I belong to the big open spaces out there. You see, I have a sheep run, and that means sticking to the country whether one likes it or not.”
Milsom knew his type: knew that if once set going he would brag about the sheep run until he had produced the impression that he owned half the Dominion; that if he wanted to ingratiate himself he could do it in no way better than by encouraging him to boast; so for the next half-hour he invited his tongue to wag. With every sentence the man uttered, Milsom’s dislike of him grew, and, as he reflected, it would have been so easy with a word or two to reduce the man to pulp, but without any effort that could be seen he contrived to conceal his feelings. There was one palliative: it was clear that he had not been recognized.
“Well,” he said at last, “I dropped in here to pass the time, never thinking that I should meet such interesting companions.”
“We’re staying here,” said Maddox. “If you care to drop in tomorrow or any day at this hour, you’ll generally find us here. My name’s Maddox.”
“And mine’s Hudson—Jim Hudson.” This was true as far as it went. James was his first name and Hudson his second—his surname had escaped his memory for the moment.
Jim Milsom was feeling a little uneasy about Otway’s silence. The man had allowed his friend Maddox to do all the talking, but he did second the invitation with cordiality, though his steady gaze upon their new acquaintance had been a little disturbing. Milsom decided that he had disarmed criticism, but that Otway would always prove to be a more difficult proposition than his blustering friend.
“I shall certainly look in again,” he said, “and I promise in advance that I shall not abuse your invitation by dropping in too often.”
He was about to take his leave when a man crossed the floor towards them, saying to Maddox, “Hallo, Ted.”
Maddox introduced him as “My cousin, Mr Grant,” but Milsom did not stop to make his further acquaintance.
On reaching his own flat he went straight to the telephone and called up Richardson at Ealing Police Station.
“Is that you, Superintendent? This is your friend J.H.M. speaking. I want to give you my first impression of that trio. Make your mind easy: I wasn’t recognized—I could swear to that.”
“That’s good. Now for your impressions.”
“Well, the first violin was almost too vocal to be healthy. I got him going on the Antipodes, but when it came to personalities he was evasive. For example, the sheep run that he was boosting melted away when I asked him whether it belonged to him. In a way it did, but when pressed for details it didn’t. The subject was changed without any definite answer to that question.”
“I shouldn’t alarm him by asking any personal questions at first.”
“You can trust me for that. When he invited me to call again I said that I should be delighted; that I had feared that he was only staying the night at the hotel and that we might not meet again. He said, ‘If I could get a move on in this worn-out old country you wouldn’t see my back for smoke, but these hidebound lawyers in England are the limit, and if I am to get my business settled I’ve got to stick on here and wait their good pleasure.’ The other chap, Otway, seems to be quite content with London and not at all in a hurry to get back to the Antipodes.”
“Did you see Grant?”
“Yes. He was a nervous sort of chap with ‘poor relation’ written all over him. What beats me is why Maddox should be footing the bill for those other two fellows, because he struck me as rather a mean bloke.”
“Unless the other two hold the whip hand over him in some way.”
“Exactly. Don’t think that I want to chuck the job just at the moment when I am becoming the white-haired boy. I shall have them eating out of my hand before I’ve done with them.”
“Well, I have a reply to my cable asking for O’s record. It will be useful to you to know exactly what it is. He has had three pre cons—you know what pre cons means?”
“My agile brain has grasped the point. Three pre cons. You can go on.”
“Three pre cons for gambling offences. Keep him away from cards and you may bring his life to an untimely end. He can’t live without them. So don’t be tempted to join him in a little flutter. You promised your dead mother never to touch a card if he should ask you to play with him. Apart from that little weakness they don’t seem to have much against him out there.”
“I’ll remember your warning, but I may be tempted, nevertheless, if only to see how it’s done.”
“Well, be careful. And now I must ring off.”
Jim Milsom was feeling so happy about his success as a sleuth that he had forgotten all about the loss of his moustache and was eager to see his adventure through. During the next day he found himself rehearsing his part for the evening. Like his new acquaintance, Otway, he too would be a devotee of the gambling table, but being a stranger to London he could not act as a guide.
The hour of half-past six found him once more in the bar of the Palace Hotel, and a few minutes later he was joined by the two New Zealanders. There was no air of distrust about them. They swallowed down their aperitif with relish, and then the talk turned quite naturally to cards.
“In this old town of London, one can’t get what one would call a game. One can sit down to a game of bridge, of course, but the points are so low that they are not worth playing.”
“Pardon me,” said Otway in a low voice. “I haven’t been wasting my time. I can take you to a place a short walk from here where we can join in a game that’s worth playing.”
“Where’s that?”
“Close to Piccadilly Circus—a nice little upper room, and if by bad luck the flicks break in we are just a respectable little debating society, drinking lemonade and discussing the British policy in the Mediterranean.”
“I suppose it’s too early to go now?”
“Not at all. We can dine downstairs—the cooking is quite decent—and then a flight of stairs brings you into the room where business is done. In fact it’s a better plan to go there early, because there’s less danger of a raid: the flics make their raids as late as possible because then they have two strings to their bow— gambling and selling liquor after hours.”
“They may know you there, but probably they’d stop me at the door and not let me in.”
“Not if I introduce you as a pal of mine—one who likes a flutter and doesn’t mind losing a bit
now and then. Of course you’re not bound to lose. A pal I took in there the other day came away with his pockets stuffed and all won in the last fifteen minutes he was there.”
“Very well then. You shall be my guests at dinner. We’ll do ourselves well, and then we’ll get to business and we’ll do ourselves better still. What about it?”
If Milsom had been in any doubt about his identity being suspected it was immediately dispelled. The two New Zealanders accepted his invitation with alacrity, and, it being now about the time for dinner, they moved off to an unpretentious little restaurant in a side street off Shaftesbury Avenue. Here there seemed to be an understanding between the head waiter and Milsom’s guests: they were given a choice of tables, and they chose one close to the staircase. Milsom consulted his guests about their fare and the drinks of their preference, and he ordered them what he considered a very generous meal. Then came the moment when Otway suggested a visit to the room upstairs. Here they found themselves in an overcrowded room in a stifling atmosphere, the windows shut and curtained, with a table of some size almost hidden by the people of both sexes crowding round it. A game was in progress. The visitors were so thick about it that it was impossible to see what the game was, but Milsom, with his superior stature, caught a glimpse of a little rat-faced man manipulating a pack of cards and of people handing notes and silver to be staked on the table if their arms were not long enough to reach the green cloth themselves. A croupier with a rake was at work pushing winnings to some gamblers and raking in the contributions of the losers. Milsom speculated on what would happen if a raid took place; what evidence the raiders would be able to produce in court when there might be twenty witnesses to swear that it was a meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Association. He decided that without a witness produced from inside the room the police would have difficulty in proving their case. The waiter who had passed them up the staircase would be equally capable of sounding an alarm.
There was no difficulty in evading the observation of Otway, the gambler, who seemed to scent the game before he had actually entered the room. With the dexterity of the habitual he had insinuated his body through the crowd until he had found a place at the table. His companion, Maddox, slithered in behind him, leaving their host, Milsom, in a good place for observing them.
Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? Page 11
