How was it, then, Bobby kept asking himself as he walked along, that from this welter of passion, intrigue and claim, of counter claim and counter passion, intrigue and counter intrigue, there had resulted the death of the apparently inconspicuous, unimportant Munday?
“We don’t even know the motive,” Bobby told himself, despondently. “We don’t even know whether the victim was meant to be Munday or meant to be some one else? Who?”
When he reached the Yard he found waiting for him a startling bit of news that the inspector who gave it him seemed to regard as the most important, possibly the decisive, clue that had come into their hands. South Essex had reported that the pistol recovered from the Barnet public house was not only certainly, as proved by examination of the bullets, found in Munday’s body, the weapon used in the murder, but had also been identified as that for which a licence had been issued to Roger Renfield.
“So what?” said triumphantly the inspector as he finished telling Bobby this.
“So what, indeed?” agreed Bobby, wondering if some day there would be established at one of the older Universities a chair for the study of the British dialect, rendered obsolete by the general adoption of the American language.
“The Roger Renfield bird will have to do a spot of explaining,” opined the inspector. “So will the Martin bird, both in the heat, all right.”
“So they are,” agreed Bobby. “I don’t know about Renfield, but Martin’s dashed good at explaining.”
“He’ll have to work hard this time,” declared the inspector. “South Essex wants you to stay around, their C.I.D. man, Wilkinson, is coming along and he says he would like to see you. He wants the Tamar ten-bob note, too.”
“The Tamar ten-bob note,” Bobby repeated, slightly puzzled.
“Yes, they ought to have had it before, but there’s been a misunderstanding and it’s still here, so now they want it.” He produced it as he spoke. “I’m to give it them,” he said. “You remember, the one Tamar swears he paid for his coffee with the night of the murder, Identified by figures he jotted down while he was waiting—francs into pounds at one hundred seventy-seven francs seventy-five to the pound. I suppose it’s worked out right? Any one checked it, I wonder? A wonder, anyway, the thing was ever found, though a fiver reward will do a lot.”
“Draw ten-bob notes from the vasty deep,” murmured Bobby, who was busy checking Tamar’s figures, They showed a million and a quarter francs as being worth, in English money, at the given rate of exchange, £7031 15s., and Bobby’s calculation agreed. “Figures all right,” he said, dropping the scrap of paper on which he had worked out the sum, into the waste-paper basket. “Martin’s not been picked up, yet, has he?” he asked.
“Gone into hiding,” said the inspector, “it’s a bit queer, though.” He referred to some papers on his desk. “Martin’s been traced to Lady Alice Belchamber’s flat. One of our own men, a chap who knows him quite well, saw him going in there, and the porter remembers, quite clearly, taking him up in the lift. It’s an automatic lift, but the porter didn’t much like Martin’s looks and went up with him just to make sure he really had business with one of the residents. He says he saw him knock at Lady Alice’s door and go in. Lady Alice has been questioned. She says he wanted some money and she gave him a pound note and he went away. He wasn’t there more than five minutes, she says.”
“Yes,” said Bobby, feeling there was more to come. “Well?”
“The thing is,” said the inspector, “the porter swears he never came down again. Of course, that’s nonsense. He must have, unless he’s there still. But the porter swears he was keeping a look out and he never saw him. Well, he must have shown again, mustn’t he? unless he spent the night there,” said the inspector, laughing at what he thought quite a good joke. “Not very likely, a tough old bird like her, and a down and out crook like Martin.”
“No, it’s not very likely,” agreed Bobby. “No. What about the porter? Can you trust him?”
“Well, he seems a steady, reliable chap and he says he is quite sure. Worried him a bit. There’s been a hint or two of scandal. Residents on the same floor been keeping visitors a bit late, and the porter had instructions to be on the look out and make a note of when they went up and when they came down again. Well, Martin’s there all right—in the porter’s notes, I mean. Went up at ten-fifteen. Not seen to come down.”
“Stairs?” suggested Bobby.
“They come out into the hall, just behind the lifts. Porter swears he had an eye on them all the time.”
“Any fire escape?”
“Yes, but it comes down behind the building, where the porter has his own rooms, and he says his wife keeps plants on the platform where it ends and they haven’t been disturbed. Besides, why should any one come down by the stairs or the fire escape when they went up openly by the lift?”
“Don’t know,” said Bobby. “Only, if he didn’t use lift, stairs, or fire escape—well, then he’s there still, only he can’t be, and, anyhow, Lady Alice says he isn’t.”
“What do you mean? What are you looking like that for?” the inspector asked sharply.
“Was I?” Bobby said. “Sorry. I didn’t know. Looking like what?”
“Looking,” the inspector told him, “looking like you had seen a ghost.”
“Sorry,” said Bobby.
“You don’t think—?” began the inspector. “Oh, that’s silly,” he declared.
“Yes, I know,” said Bobby.
“Title and all,” said the inspector, who had all the average Englishman’s very right and proper respect for titles, for titles do, indeed, mean much, and a handle to a name is a handle, also, to many other things. “Look here,” he went on. “Why shouldn’t she have given him a shake-down for the night, only not want to say so, for fear of scandal?”
“I can’t see,” said Bobby, thoughtfully, “Lady Alice worrying a lot about scandal. Besides, why should she? give Martin a shake-down, I mean. More likely, the porter didn’t happen to spot him going. Martin has a way of dodging about on the quiet.”
“Porter looks the sort you can rely on,” insisted the inspector, who was beginning to look worried, himself, now. “Of course, Martin’s not above a spot of blackmail. That in your mind?”
“Yes,” said Bobby.
“Meaning,” said the inspector, slowly, “he might try to put it over Lady Alice and, if he did, she might handle him the way she handled that chap out East somewhere. Is that it?”
“I don’t know,” said Bobby. “Very likely Martin will be picked up soon—or be heard of.”
“There’s that business of the knife you thought had been changed and then there’s the knife wound inflicted on the body after death,” the inspector remarked, speaking now more to himself than to Bobby. “If she did in Munday, and Martin knew something, and tried the blackmail game—perhaps Munday had tried it, too,—perhaps she gave Martin the same.” The inspector paused and rubbed his head. “I don’t like it,” he said, “we’ll have to put it to South Essex, I suppose. Wilkinson may think it worth following up.”
“Where does Mr. Renfield’s pistol come in?” Bobby asked.
“Martin, perhaps,” the inspector suggested. “Only an idea. He might have pinched it for her someway and then, when he knew what had happened, got hold of it again. She might have thrown it away in that patch of bracken, and afterwards thought it wasn’t safe there and got Martin to recover it for her. If he did, and kept it, then he had a chance to put the screws on her.” The inspector was beginning to look excited now. He got up and began to walk about the room. “Looks to me,” he said, “as if Wilkinson might think it worth while to pay a visit to that flat—with a search warrant. She can’t have got rid of the body yet.”
“Do you think there’s evidence enough to ask for a search warrant? They don’t let us have search warrants any too easily.”
“They do not,” agreed the inspector bitterly. “C.I.D. ought to be B.O.R.—Bloody Obstacle Race,” he int
erpreted for Bobby’s benefit. “Martin may turn up. There’s a ‘general’ out for him—nice little snap that you got of him. We’ve tried the Cut and Come Again, put the wind up them proper, they’re trying to be good, just now. They swear they haven’t heard of him. Eternal Vigilance hasn’t, either, and they say he was due to report for an easy money case and they can’t think why he’s let them down. Must be something hot to keep him away from their job, they say. That barmaid in Barnet you got the pistol from seems uneasy, too. Her idea was we had pinched him and when she asked and found we hadn’t, she seemed more worried than before. She asked the man on the beat and this morning she rang up. That’s how we know.”
“She ought to be questioned, she might be able to tell us something and she may be willing, if she’s really uneasy about him,” Bobby said, and he could not help feeling uneasy, too, though he told himself it was absurd.
Yet it was true enough that Lady Alice was hardly the sort of person it would be very safe to blackmail.
“Put it to Wilkinson,” the inspector said. “It’s up to them. Slip it in when you’re talking as if it were your own idea just occurred to you. If he turns it down, his responsibility. If he takes it on—well, their responsibility, too, but you had better let us know at once. What he is coming for is to get fuller details from you about finding the pistol, and what put you on to it.”
“Obvious Martin was up to something,” Bobby answered. “Obvious from what the landlord said about his face and hands being scratched, that Martin had been crawling about in the bracken on Weeton Hill, obvious he had got a woman to address the packet to Judy Patterson, and fairly obvious he was pals with the Barnet pub people, so it was likely to be the barmaid.”
“Yes, I suppose it was all pretty obvious,” agreed the inspector, looking relieved, and Bobby reflected suddenly that his reputation would stand a good deal higher if only he could remember to act the mystery man instead of talking about the obvious.
“Talked myself out of promotion again, I suppose,” he told himself ruefully.
“Wilkinson wants to know something about the Roger Renfield bird, too,” the inspector went on. “You know him, don’t you?”
“I don’t know him, I’ve met him, that’s all,” Bobby explained. “Munday told me he thought it was Renfield left the anonymous letter at the Tamars’ house but I don’t know that I should trust that very far. Renfield wasn’t on too good terms with Tamar, apparently, no open breach but a sort of undercurrent of hostility. He inherits part of the Tamar estate, if there are no children, and he may have been trying to work up a separation between the Tamars, so as to make lawful issue impossible. He may have got Munday to help and Munday may have been threatening to give him away.”
“Looks to me,” said the inspector gloomily, “as if Renfield, from being an also ran, has come to be first favourite. I don’t go in for betting, myself,” added the inspector hastily, “pick up the lingo from a brother-in-law, that’s all.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby, “yes, only I must say I shall be a bit easier in my mind when I know what’s become of Martin.”
CHAPTER XXV
MORE EVIDENCE
It was this problem of what had become of Martin that was chiefly worrying Bobby as, avoiding the canteen where he would have been obliged to chat to colleagues and, perhaps, been asked to take a hand in a round of solo whist, he went out to a teashop near, where, in a quiet corner, he ate a modest meal and then sat long over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, so deep in thought that he was quite startled when a glance at his wrist watch showed him how late the hour had become.
In a mild panic he hurried back to the Yard, wondering if he was in for a wigging for having kept South Essex waiting. However, it seemed he had not been missed and so he sat down at his desk and began to write slowly and carefully, though now, a little to his surprise, it was not Martin chiefly occupying his thoughts but the pale and troubled face of Ernie Maddox, the frowning, sulky features of Judy Patterson that kept thrusting themselves between him and his paper.
They cared intensely for each other, he felt, and yet the tragic aftermath of the Munday murder seemed to be pushing them inexorably apart. He wondered, vaguely, if it would be possible, supposing all this was satisfactorily cleared up, for them to come together again. Not his business, he supposed, only he felt sorry for them both, and, somehow, he had an intuitive feeling that Olive was not only sorry for them but was contemplating action of some sort.
“Only suppose,” he said to himself, with a slight shiver of distaste, “it turns out that Judy is guilty.”
Nor could he deny that there seemed in Judy, partly innate, partly developed by circumstance, that kind of anger and dark recklessness likely to lead to violence pushed even to the last extremity. He did not wish to think it and yet he knew the possibility was there, knew, too, or rather, so believed, that it was in Ernie Maddox’s mind, as well.
“Better get it all down on paper,” he told himself, for in this interval he had ceased to write.
What he had already written he frowned at and tore up and then started afresh, writing first in block capitals,
‘Re
Weeton Hill. Murder. Munday. 1.’
He laid down his pen and looked satisfied. An official opening in the approved manner gave at least a chance that any memorandum submitted by a junior would be read and not merely pigeon-holed.
He picked up his pen again and wrote.
‘A.
Motive.
Not established.’
Having written this he paused once more and this time looked depressed. Unsatisfactory, to put it at the very lowest, that at this stage of the investigation, with so much work done, and so much brought to light, yet so elementary a point as motive was not yet clear. The difficulty was that in his capacity as butler, Munday had had some sort of connection with all those implicated, with all the undercurrents of conduct and of feeling, and yet no known connection sufficiently intimate to account for his death having been desired by any of them.
Once more Bobby started:
‘A.
MOTIVE
Not established.
Possibilities:
A1.Munday may have been mixed up in blackmailing activities.
A2.Munday may have been mistaken for some one else.
A3.Munday may have been taking part in the intrigues and so on that appear to have been going on.
Remarks:
If A1.; was Munday acting alone or in association with some one else? (Martin?)
If A2.; for whom mistaken?
If A3.; in which intrigue or love affair and why?
B.
Weeton Hilly, Munday, Presence on,
Not accounted for.
Possibilities:
B1. By Appointment?
B2. Spying?
B3. For the £100 hidden there?
If B1.; appointment with whom?
If B2.; spying on whom?
If B3.; but the money wasn’t there!
C.
Unexplained Points.
Explanation necessary before action possible.
C1. The anonymous letter.
C2. Knife wound on dead body.
C3. Photo of Ernie Maddox’s car.
Re C1.; who wrote it and why? To extort money? To lure Munday, Tamar, some one, to Weeton Hill? If so, for what purpose?
Re C2.; purposeless malice? to make sure? for other reason?
Re C3.; photo taken by whom? When? Why?
Remarks on C2.
Purposeless malice seems unlikely, it would suggest a degree, and intensity, of hate difficult to account for. The murder of Munday, if intended, can surely only have been, so to say, a business murder, not a murder of passion. To make sure also seems unlikely. Seven shots fired at close quarters are enough to persuade any one nothing more was required. Apparently, then, there must be ‘some other’ reason. What?
Further Remark on C2.
Was Lady Alice’s knife the weapon use
d? If not, why has one knife been substituted for another in Lady Alice’s flat?
Remark on C3.
Martin to be questioned—when found.
D.
Suspects (Nine)
D1. Michael Tamar.
D2. Flora Tamar.
D3. Roger Renfield.
D4. Holland Kent.
D5. Lady Alice Belchamber.
D6. Ernie Maddox.
D7. Judy Patterson.
D8. Will Martin.
D9. X (some person unknown).
If D1. (Michael Tamar).
then:
D1a. Motive:
Jealousy? (possessive instincts strong). Blackmail by Munday?
D1b. Alibi.
Incomplete. Evidence of ten-shilling note and statement by attendant. But no satisfactory proof within an hour or two when note was paid over. If paid somewhat earlier in the evening, or a few hours later on, there would have been ample time for Suspect D1. to have reached or returned from Weeton Hill. Also the attendant is not a reliable person. He may have been actuated by the hope of subsequent reward from D1. On the other hand, D1’s car is a Rolls-Royce, a car likely to attract attention, and no such car is on record as having been seen in the Weeton Hill neighbourhood. The only cars observed are the ones driven by a man in a broad- brimmed hat, seen by an inhabitant of the district, and Miss Maddox’s car, shown on photo on Weeton Hill Road. Possibly these two cars are the same. Noteworthy that faked alibis are not generally so loose and incomplete as D1.’s appears to be. The faked alibi generally has an air of being water-tight and it was more than likely the ten-shilling note would never be recovered. Also, the attendant sticks to his story and no trace of collusion with Tamar has been found. Conclusion: alibi not decisive but by a clever counsel could be presented in such a way as to convince any jury—and most people. Note: The calculation ff. 1,250,000=£7,031 15s. is certainly in handwriting of suspect D1. and is correct at given rate of exchange: ff. 177.75 to the pound.
Suspects—Nine Page 23
