Invisible Weapons

by John Rhode

  ‘This may explain Alfie’s next recorded appearance. Dr Thornborough says that he saw him cross the road in front of his car as he was returning home. Superintendent Yateley dismisses that as a fable, owing to the apparent impossibility of Alfie having been there at the time. But if he had been driven there in a car this appearance becomes not only possible but also inevitable. He had done the job and was leaving the scene before the investigations began.’

  ‘But hang it all, Jimmy!’ Hanslet exclaimed. ‘Would the doctor deliberately have drawn attention to his accomplice like that? Surely, he would have held his tongue and said nothing about Alfie.’

  ‘I thought about that, and it seems to me that there are two possible reasons for the doctor’s statement. The first is that somebody else might have seen Alfie crossing Gunthorpe Road and the doctor’s car in the distance. If the doctor had denied seeing Alfie, suspicions might have been aroused. The second reason is that the doctor might have intended all along that Alfie should be arrested for the crime, trusting on the hiatus in his memory for his own immunity.’

  ‘You said just now that the doctor didn’t strike you as a likely murderer,’ Hanslet remarked. ‘Yet now you’re making him out to be the dirtiest scoundrel unhung.’

  ‘I know. But I’m not trying to prove his guilt. I’m only putting forward theories of what might have happened. And you must remember that all the time it remains a mystery how Alfie, or anyone else for that matter, can have killed Mr Fransham from behind the wall. If Alfie is guilty, he must have done the job from the carriage-way outside the cloakroom window. And I can’t imagine how he could have got there without being seen by Coates.’

  ‘As I have already suggested, Coates may have his own reasons for keeping quiet,’ Hanslet remarked.

  ‘In which case there are three of them in it,’ replied Jimmy wearily. ‘However, let’s try and follow Alfie’s movements. I don’t think that there can be any doubt that it was Alfie who called upon Mr Willingdon later in the afternoon and cadged cigarettes. Willingdon’s picturesque description of the coat could not possibly apply to any other garment. Besides, Alfie is the only inhabitant of Adderminster who indulges in that particular practice. So we are confronted with the fact that if Alfie ever parted with his coat he had recovered it by two or three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. But he seems to have discarded it later and left it in the corner of the field. When Linton overtook him that evening he was wearing the coat which he had taken from the hook outside Murphy’s shop. Alfie’s Odyssey terminated a few minutes later in a cell at the police station. And it was on Sunday morning that I found the coat.’

  There was silence for a few moments before Dr Priestley spoke. ‘Has it occurred to you, inspector, that someone may have acquired this man Prince’s coat in order to be able to impersonate him?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m bound to confess that it hasn’t, sir,’ Jimmy replied, somewhat nonplussed.

  ‘The suggestion occurred to me when you repeated Prince’s account of his meeting with the man at Weaver’s Bridge. The very fact that Prince’s coat was notorious in Adderminster would make it an excellent disguise. People catching sight of it would assume that its wearer was Prince, and would not trouble to make any closer inspection. If you accept Dr Thornborough’s statement as true, the man he saw crossing the road may not have been Prince but somebody impersonating him’

  ‘But how about Mr Willingdon’s visitor, sir?’ Jimmy asked.

  Dr Priestley smiled. ‘He was no doubt the impersonator,’ he replied. ‘He wished to make it appear that Prince was in the neighbourhood of Gunthorpe Road on Saturday afternoon. Being anxious to secure evidence to this affect, he called upon Mr Willingdon. In my opinion he could not have chosen a more suitable witness. Mr Willingdon, I understand, is a stranger to Adderminster. It was extremely unlikely that he would know the genuine Prince by sight. But his attention would inevitably be drawn to the coat, which would figure prominently in his subsequent description. You yourself, inspector, have no doubt that it was actually Prince who called upon him.’

  ‘I haven’t sir, for the idea of an impersonator had never occurred to me. But who can that impersonator have been? Certainly not the doctor, for his appearance is entirely different from that of Alfie Prince. Even the wearing of Alfie’s coat would not produce the slightest resemblance. Besides, Willingdon had consulted the doctor and knew him by sight. And at the time when Willingdon was interviewing his visitor the doctor was in his own house talking to Superintendent Yateley.’

  ‘You have yourself expressed doubts of the doctor’s guilt,’ Dr Priestley remarked drily.

  ‘I have, sir, but I can’t suggest any alternative,’ Jimmy replied. ‘The difficulty is this. Mr Fransham’s association with Adderminster was confined to an occasional visit to his niece and her husband. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that nobody in the town or district had the slightest motive for wishing for his death. It is of course, possible that Mr Fransham had enemies elsewhere and that his murder was based on revenge. The murderer may have followed Mr Fransham to Adderminster. But in that case he must have made a careful study of the place in advance.

  ‘It occurred to wonder whether young Willingdon could have played any part in the affair. It seemed to me a bit odd that he should have taken that cottage by himself and actually been in residence there at the time of the crime. And his manner suggested that he had something to hide. So this afternoon, before I came here, I went to Harlow’s Hotel in Kensington and made a few inquiries about him.

  ‘Willingdon had mentioned to me a girl in the reception office there. She happened to be on duty and I recognised her at once from his description. With the manager’s permission I had quite a long chat with her. As soon as I mentioned Willingdon’s name, she laughed and told me that she knew him quite well. She referred to him as Frank, I noticed. And, as it happened, she had seen him as recently as this morning. He had looked in on his return from Adderminster and told the girl, whose name, by the way, is Miss Bayne, that he was just going to catch a train home.

  ‘Miss Bayne was quite ready to talk about her friend Frank, as she called him. She had first met him a couple of months ago when he had stayed at the hotel for a few days. She’s a thoroughly sensible girl, and Willingdon seems to have adopted her as his confidante. He told her that his father was a manufacturer in Leeds and that he himself was a junior partner in the business. But he said that at present he was rather at a loose end, for he had found it convenient to leave home and lie low till a certain unpleasantness had blown over.’

  Hanslet looked up at this. ‘Something fishy?’ he inquired.

  ‘Fishy, perhaps, but not criminal,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Miss Bayne tells me it was something to do with a girl in Leeds. Rather an involved story, I gather. Anyhow, Willingdon had thought it better to clear out and amuse himself in London for two or three months.

  ‘According to Miss Bayne he had no lack of funds and found little difficulty in obtaining the amusement he wanted. He found his way into a set of young people of his own age and, according to Miss Bayne, had a pretty hectic time. The usual sort of thing, bottle parties, night clubs and all the rest of it.

  ‘It was about six weeks ago that he asked Miss Bayne if she had ever heard of a place called Adderminster. As it happened she had, for a friend of hers lived somewhere down that way. She told Willingdon that it was a quiet little market town which wouldn’t suit his tastes at all. To her astonishment, he replied that quiet was the very thing he was looking for. He explained that he was beginning to find weekends in London too much of a strain upon his system. Then he produced a newspaper cutting with an advertisement of the cottage in Gunthorpe Road to let furnished.

  ‘After this Miss Bayne seems to have taken charge of his weekend catering. Willingdon used to ask her to put up a hamper of food for him, telling her to put in enough for two in case he took a friend down with him. And it was that request which first aroused her suspicions that it was not only quiet which W
illingdon sought in the weekends. These suspicions were confirmed when Willingdon called at the hotel for the hamper, in a car which he had hired to drive down to Adderminster. Miss Bayne, from her point of vantage in the reception office, saw a highly-decorative young lady sitting in the car. And then I remembered that unmistakable aroma of scent which I had noticed when I called at the cottage yesterday.’

  Hanslet laughed. ‘That seems to account for Willingdon,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I thought. Whether there was a lady hidden away somewhere in the cottage yesterday, I don’t know. Anyway, the reason which caused Willingdon’s exile from Leeds appears to be at an end. When he called at Harlow’s Hotel this morning, Miss Bayne gave him a letter with a Leeds postmark addressed to him. He opened it, read it, and seemed greatly relieved. He told her that it was from his father, that everything was all right and there was nothing to prevent him going back home. He gave her a card with his Leeds address on it and told her that he’d look in and see her whenever he came back to London.’

  ‘She showed you the card?’ Hanslet asked.

  ‘She did. I copied the address and looked it up in a Leeds directory. The occupier of the house is there given as Ernest Willingdon, Esq. Frank’s father, no doubt. But, unless in the course of my investigations I can find any connection between him and Mr Fransham, he seems to be out of the picture.’

  Dr Priestley had listened to this account of Willingdon’s adventures without any very great display of interest. And when he spoke it was to introduce an entirely different subject.

  ‘You have spoken of a key used for turning a water-cock, inspector,’ he said. ‘You have satisfied yourself, I suppose, that there is actually a water-main serving the houses in Gunthorpe Road?’

  ‘Yes sir, Sergeant Cload told me that the mains were laid there when the road was made.’

  ‘Is there a supply of gas and electricity as well?’

  ‘Electricity, certainly, sir. The doctor’s house is lighted by electricity and so, I noticed, is the cottage on the other side of the road. And, now that I come to think of it, there was a gas stove in the doctor’s consulting-room.’

  ‘And what are you going to do next?’ Dr Priestley asked.

  ‘I’m going round to No. 4 Cheveley Street tomorrow morning, sir, to interview the married couple employed by Mr Fransham. Then I shall go back to Adderminster in the hope of picking up some definite line on which to work.’

  ‘You have a busy day before you,’ said Dr Priestley, glancing at the clock.

  Hanslet and Jimmy took the hint.

  CHAPTER VII

  Next morning Jimmy set out to explore Cheveley Street. He found it to be a short thoroughfare, joining two longer streets at right angles. It was bordered on one side by the railings of a square, and on the other by the fronts of six houses, numbered one to six. Numbers one to four formed a solid block. Then came a narrow entrance leading into mews at the back. This again was flanked by No. 5 which with No. 6 formed a second block.

  As Jimmy rang the bell of No. 4 he noticed that all the blinds were drawn. The door was opened by an elderly man, dressed in a black suit, who looked worried and downcast. Jimmy explained who he was and was taken into the dining-room on the ground floor, a gloomy apartment furnished in heavy Victorian style.

  The elderly man informed Jimmy that his name was Stowell and that he and his wife had been employed by Mr Fransham for the last seventeen years. ‘Ever since Mr Fransham took this house, sir,’ he explained. ‘My wife and I have been in service together before, in the country. But we wanted to come to London because all her relations are here. So we put our names down at a registry office, and that’s how we came to hear of this, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Since you’ve been here all that time you can’t have had much to complain of?’

  ‘We couldn’t have had a better place, sir. Mr Fransham was always very considerate and took care that we should not be overworked. It’s terrible to think that he should have been killed like that. My wife’s hardly stopped crying since we first heard about it, sir.’

  ‘How did you first hear about it, Stowell?’

  ‘Dr Thornborough rang up on Saturday evening and told us what had happened, sir.’

  ‘What exactly did he tell you?’

  ‘He said that we must be prepared for a shock as he had some very bad news for us. It was I who answered the telephone and I asked him what had happened. And then he said that Mr Fransham had been found dead in the doctor’s house at Adderminster. I thought at first that it must have been his heart, but the doctor said that it was much worse than that. Somebody had hit him on the head and had killed him.’

  ‘Do you know Dr Thornborough?’

  ‘I’ve only set eyes on him once, sir, when he came here to lunch. That was long ago, just before he married Miss Betty, as she was then. Miss Betty was staying here at the time and the doctor came up to see her.’

  ‘Mrs Thornborough has been here fairly often since her marriage, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sometimes she has stayed here for a night or two and sometimes she has only come in for lunch, when she has been spending a day in London shopping. She was Mr Fransham’s niece, as I expect you know, sir, and he was very fond of her.’

  ‘Have you ever met her mother, Mrs Thomas Fransham?’

  Stowell shook his head. ‘No, sir,’ he replied, then added confidentially, ‘I have always understood that there was something between Mr Fransham and his sister-in-law, sir.’

  ‘You mean that they didn’t get on very well together?’

  ‘That’s about it, sir. When Miss Betty used to come and stay here before she was married, her mother never came with her, sir.’

  ‘When did Mr Fransham tell you that he was going down to Adderminster on Saturday?’

  ‘Not until breakfast time that very day, sir. There was only one letter for Mr Fransham that morning and I put it by his plate, as I always do. And when I was pouring out his coffee, he said to me, “It’s a nuisance, Stowell, but I shall have to go down to Adderminster today. Send Coates to me when I have finished my breakfast and I’ll give him his orders. And tell Mrs Stowell that I shall be out for lunch but shall be home in time for dinner.”’

  ‘Coates? Oh yes,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s the chauffeur, of course. I met him at Dr Thornborough’s house. How long had he been with Mr Fransham?’

  ‘It’ll be a matter of five years or more, sir,’ Stowell replied. ‘Yes, it must be five years last April when he first came. That was when Mr Fransham first owned a car of his own. Before then he always used to hire when he wanted one.’

  ‘How did Coates get the job? Through a registry office?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a matter of personal recommendation. Sir Godfrey Branstock spoke to Mr Fransham about him. He’s told me since that he was second chauffeur to one of Sir Godfrey’s friends in the country. He had very good references, I understand, sir.’

  ‘Was Mr Fransham satisfied with him?’

  ‘Perfectly satified, so far as I am aware, Stowell replied rather stiffly. ‘Mr Fransham would not have kept him in his service for five years if he had had anything against him.’

  Jimmy fancied that he detected a note of resentment in Stowell’s voice. ‘Coates lives in the house here, doesn’t he?’ he remarked casually. ‘How do you and Mrs Stowell get on with him?’

  ‘It’s not my place to say anything against him, sir,’ Stowell replied.

  Jimmy smiled. ‘Of course it isn’t,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t expect you to tell tales against your fellow-servant. But the position has changed since last Saturday. Neither you nor Coates are any longer employed by Mr Fransham. I hope he has remembered you in his will, by the way?’

  ‘I understand that he has, sir. In fact, he told me once some time ago that if my wife and I stayed with him until he died we shouldn’t be the losers by it. And he told Coates the same thing at the beginning of this year.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear
that. Now, won’t you tell me in confidence why you don’t like Coates?’

  ‘I never said I disliked him, sir,’ replied Stowell firmly.

  ‘I know you didn’t. But you weren’t exactly enthusiastic just now when I asked you how you got on with him. He struck me as being rather a surly sort of chap, if that’s any encouragement to you.’

  ‘Surly’s just the word, sir. He’s one of those chaps who are never content, but must always be finding something to grouse about. He makes us tired with his constant grumbling, and my wife and I have often told him so. But he always complained behind Mr Fransham’s back, and took care not to say anything in front of him. And all the time it was Mr Fransham who should have done the grumbling, if he’d only known.’

  ‘What do you mean, Stowell?’ Jimmy asked quietly.

  ‘Well, sir, I wouldn’t have said a word while Mr Fransham was alive. For one thing, I couldn’t prove it. But now that he’s dead, it doesn’t seem to matter so much. It was like this, sir: Coates used to buy everything for the car—petrol, oil, spare parts, and so forth. Mr Fransham used to give him money from time to time, and Coates would show him an account of how he’d spent it. And I know for a fact that Coates used to put in things he’d never had. I faced him with it once, sir, but he only laughed at me. He said it was a recognised perquisite. Those are the very words he used. And he had the impudence to tell me that I was a fool if I didn’t do the same thing with the housekeeping money.’

  ‘Mr Fransham had no suspicion that this sort of thing was going on, I suppose?’

  ‘He’d have been very much upset if he had, sir. Nobody could have wanted a better master than Mr Fransham, but he was always very careful where spending money was concerned.’

  ‘However Coates may have grumbled, he was really perfectly satisfied with his place, I suppose?’

  Stowell shook his head. ‘No, sir, he wasn’t,’ replied he. ‘Mr Fransham treated him with every consideration, but Coates is one of those men who doesn’t like working for a master.’