Murder in the Museum, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  “Moss?” he said with a cheery smile. “Why, yus, guv’nor, I knows Mr. Moss all right. A nicer young chap you never did meet.”

  Cunningham rightly diagnosed this as indicating a ready hand with tips, and discounted its value accordingly. He made further questions force their way into the conversation, and soon obtained some information which might, or might not, prove useful in due course.

  “Last night. Now let me see,” said the caretaker, pursing up his lips thoughtfully. “Last night I lef’ this ’ere orfice at ar’-pas’ twelve. He hadn’t come in up to then, not so far as I remember.”

  “Half-past twelve? Do you have to work as late as that?” asked Cunningham, knowing that a little human sympathy goes a long way in establishing a more friendly footing.

  “Yus. I works all hours ’ere. ’Tis about time they put things on a proper footin’. I tells the landlord that every week or two, but ’e don’t tike no notice. So I just sticks to me job and ’opes for the best.”

  “Is Mr. Moss a pretty gay dog, then?” pursued Cunningham, leading the conversation back into what he hoped would be more profitable channels.

  “Ho, yus!” the caretaker chuckled. “Out ’alf the night, ’e is, sometimes. Though we must all ’ave our bit of fun, you know. After all, we’re only young once, guv’nor. We all ’ave our fling in our time.”

  “That’s right.” Cunningham agreed. “But it’s rather important that I should get hold of him as soon as I can. Any idea of where he’d be now?”

  “Regent Street,” said the caretaker. “That’s where he’d be. Yus. Regent Street.”

  “Where in Regent Street?” asked Cunningham, and the old Cockney chuckled again.

  “Couldn’t tell you, guv’nor,” he said. “’E works in a motor shop in Regent Street, selling cars to them toffs up in the West End. That’s all I knows about ’im.”

  “Don’t know the name of the firm, I suppose?”

  “Sorry, guv’nor, I don’t. If I did, I’d tell you, strite I would.”

  “Right. That’s all I can do, I suppose,” said Cunningham, and then, another idea suddenly striking him, he added: “I suppose you know that he did come home last night, don’t you?”

  “Ho, yus,” said the caretaker. “I know ’e come ’ome, all right. I seen ’im this morning, seen ’im with me own eyes. ‘Mornin’, Bill,’ ’e says to me as ’e goes out, so cheerful as you like. I will say that for Mr. Moss, it don’t matter ’ow thick a night ’e may ’ave ’ad, ’e always ’aves a cheery word for me next mornin’.”

  “Good,” said Cunningham. “Thanks very much.” And, pressing a half-crown into the not unwilling hand of the old Cockney, he made a hurried escape before another instalment of gossip could be poured into his ear.

  In Regent Street he found that his task was by no means easy. There were not many car dealers in Regent Street itself, but he knew that the name of the street might well be an elastic term, and in the smaller streets running off the principal thoroughfare there seemed to be such shops by the dozen. He tried each in turn, valiantly working along from the Oxford Circus end of the street, and drawing a blank at each one. Some of the managers looked at him in amazement, but most of them were quite courteous, announcing that, though they had no one named Moss on their staff, it was possible that one of their competitors a little farther along might know more about him.

  It was all very trying. Although they all did their best to be helpful, Cunningham was getting almost desperate, and was thinking that the elusive Mr. Moss had lied to the caretaker of the block of Bloomsbury flats, and was really engaged in some other—perhaps some less respectable—profession, when he struck oil at last.

  It was in a shabby little side-street, near the Piccadilly Circus end of Regent Street, that he at last ran his quarry to earth, though even here he did not find him at once.

  “Moses Moss?” said the manager. “Yes; he works here.”

  “Could I have a word with him?” asked Cunningham.

  “You can when he comes in,” answered the manager.

  “What, hasn’t he arrived yet?” asked Cunningham.

  “Oh, yes,” replied the manager with a superior smile; “he came in at the usual hour this morning, but he’s off on a job. He’s taking a client for a trial run in a car, you see—the sort of thing that clients want, these days,” he added ruefully, “and if they don’t get a damned good run we don’t get any money.”

  “I see,” agreed Cunningham. “But when do you think there’s any chance of his coming back? It’s very important that I should get hold of him as soon as possible.”

  “Yes?” The manager looked at him with an air of some curiosity. “Money troubles, eh?”

  “No.” Cunningham smiled. “Nothing like that. Just a bit of information that I think he can give me. So when do you think that I shall be able to get him?”

  “Not for some time,” was the unwelcome reply. “Not for some hours, anyway. When Moss gets a client on the string he usually takes some hours before he gets anywhere with him. And, as likely as not, he’ll have lunch with the fellow and then take him around to Sally’s for a drink afterwards, just to mark the bargain, as you might say.”

  “Sally’s? Is that the club in St. Martin’s Lane?” asked Cunningham.

  “That’s right. Dull little show, I call it. Can’t think why so many people go there,” replied the manager. “Still, it seems to do pretty good business, all right, and I know that Moss goes there nearly every day—certainly every day that he’s got a client on the string.”

  “What time is he likely to be there?” asked Cunningham.

  “Not till three o’clock, ’cos that’s when the club opens,” sniggered the manager. “And I haven’t the least idea where he’ll be between now and then, because, you see, we don’t keep very close tabs on our men. As long as they bring home the bacon, that’s all that really matters. They can do it as they damn’ well like.”

  “Nuisance,” was Cunningham’s comment. “That means that I’ve got some hours to waste.”

  “’Fraid it does. Only sorry that I can’t help you any more. Still, you see the way it is. I haven’t the least idea where the man is now.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Good morning,” said Cunningham.

  “Cheerio,” returned the manager.

  Cunningham spent a miserable morning, drinking coffee and wasting as much time over it as possible. Then, when the time for lunch arrived, he lingered over his frugal meal as long as he dared, glancing miserably at the clock at frequent intervals, and cursing the laggard minutes which dragged so heavily by. Eventually, however, the hour of three approached, and he thankfully paid his bill and wended his way towards St. Martin’s Lane.

  Sally’s Club was not far from the London Coliseum, and was reached by some dark and winding stairs. The club was at the top of a high and ramshackle building, and when Cunningham tapped on the door a grille opened, and a female face peered out at him suspiciously.

  “Yes?” snapped the owner of the face, frowning at the intruder portentously, as if trying to remember under what unpleasant conditions she had formerly seen him.

  “I want to see Mr. Moss,” said Cunningham in as coaxing a tone as he could command.

  “Well, he’s not here,” she snapped and banged the grille to with an emphatic gesture.

  Cunningham tapped again and the grille opened.

  “I’ll come in and wait,” he announced.

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind. This is a private club, and only members and their friends are admitted.”

  “Well, I’m Mr. Moss’s friend, and I’ll wait and see him.”

  “Then you can wait on the stairs.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Cunningham, and produced his warrant card. “How does that strike you?” he asked. “Now, perhaps you’ll let me in.”

  The hard,
unfeminine face, glaringly white with powder, the lips a vivid slash of red across its clear whiteness, seemed to relent. “Very well, Sergeant,” said Sally—for she it was—“I’ll let you in. Can’t do anything else, I suppose. But you’ll realise, I hope, that I can’t go having any damned stranger who says he’s a friend of a member wandering in without as much as a ‘by your leave.’”

  “I understand. That’s all right,” said Cunningham, and was forthwith admitted.

  The club was quite a small place. At one end of it was a bar around which a few men were standing, glasses of beer in hands. Behind the bar were bottles of wine and spirits and two barrels of beer. In the room itself were a few wicker chairs, occupied by languid-looking women, and a table on which their glasses were resting. In one corner was a mechanical “pintable” at which two or three people were playing. On the wall was a dart-board. And that was all. The place was obviously merely a drinking-den, a place by which a group of people were enabled to get drinks at hours during which a benevolent government had seen fit to close the public houses, and Cunningham, knowing the habits of such places, was vaguely surprised to think that there had been difficulty in getting in. Usually, he reflected, a place of this type would make anyone a member without further argument. But possibly the woman had realised that he was a police officer, and so paraded this ridiculous show of caution to impress him. Anyhow, whatever the reason for the difficulty, he had now overcome it, and, ordering a glass of beer at the bar, he sat down on a vacant chair to await the arrival of Moses Moss.

  He had not long to wait, as it happened, for, long before he had finished his glass of beer—incidentally finding it of an inferior brew—a young man came in.

  “Someone here to see you, Mr. Moss,” said Sally, and made a mute gesture in Cunningham’s direction. Moss looked at him with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Want to see me?” he asked, approaching Cunningham, his countenance still screwed up in an air of bewilderment.

  “But who are you? I don’t know you,” Moss objected. “And what do you want with me?”

  “Information,” answered Cunningham, and lowered his voice to a tactful murmur. “I’m an officer from Scotland Yard and I want to have a chat.”

  “Scotland Yard?” Was it mere fancy, Cunningham asked himself, or did this young man definitely wince at the mention of police headquarters?

  “Yes,” he answered aloud. “I am investigating the death of the late Professor Arnell.”

  “I saw he was dead,” answered Moss. “Saw it in the paper. But what’s that got to do with me?”

  “Wasn’t he a relative of yours?”

  “Oh, yes,” admitted Moss. “He was my uncle. But I never saw much of him. In fact, I think that when my mother married my father she was more or less cut off by her family—I think that they had some sort of prejudice against the Jews, you know, and did not like the idea of her marrying into a Jewish household. This is all surmise, for she never spoke to me of it, but I summed things up that way.”

  “Would you be surprised to know that he left money to you?” asked Cunningham, and Moss grinned.

  “I certainly should,” he said. “The old devil never did anything for me in his lifetime, and I shouldn’t expect him to do anything for me after his death.”

  “Well,” said Cunningham, not knowing, of course, what the disclosure of the will might bring forth, and in any case not wishing to give away any information, but thinking that this might prove a useful lever to extract the data that he needed, “I can’t give you any information about that, but we understand that you may benefit under his will.”

  “Hope to God I do,” answered Moss. “I’m pretty well broke at the moment, old man, and I don’t mind admitting it. So the old fellow has turned up trumps after all, has he?”

  “Don’t go counting too certainly on that, sir,” Cunningham advised him. “I only told you that it was at any rate possible.”

  “I imagine that your ‘possible’ is as good as another man’s ‘certain,’” returned the other, and Cunningham let the matter rest at that.

  “There’s another point,” he said, “that has to be settled—purely as a matter of form. This is a question that we have to ask everyone who might be connected with the case, or who might be expected to benefit by Professor Arnell’s death.”

  “Carry on,” said Moss. “You won’t offend me, whatever your question is. I’m not one of these thin-skinned devils who take offence at every question.”

  “Can you give me an account of your movements yesterday?” asked Cunningham.

  Moss whistled softly. “Alibis, eh?” he said, and Cunningham nodded.

  “You will understand that it is important to trace the alibis of everyone in any way connected with the case,” he explained, although he reflected that the explanation was probably quite unnecessary.

  “Let me see, now,” Moss said thoughtfully. “What exactly did I do? Oh, yes, I know. I went to the British Museum in the morning.”

  Cunningham was unable to restrain the “What?” that sprung unbidden to his lips.

  “Yes,” said Moss. “The British Museum. What’s wrong with that? Nothing unlawful about going to look at the Egyptian antiquities, is there? I happen to be interested in ancient Egypt, and I went along there to have a look at them. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Cunningham. “What time were you in the British Museum?”

  “From about eleven o’clock until half-past twelve, I should think,” answered Moss. “I had had a thickish night the night before, and I didn’t have breakfast until after ten.”

  “What did you do when you left the Museum?” pursued Cunningham.

  “Went to my firm’s place off Regent Street,” answered the young Jew. “There was an old lady there who was trying to decide whether she wanted a car or not. I ran her out to Slough and back—along the Great West Road—had tea with her, and succeeded in landing the sale at about half-past six.”

  “Then?” Cunningham was resolved to leave nothing to chance, although he felt fairly sure that the crucial part of the alibi would lie in the time which the young man had spent at the British Museum.

  “Then I went home, had some dinner in my flat, and went to my pub—the Fifteen Swords in Bloomsbury Street—where I played shove-ha’penny until closing time. Then to bed, as old Pepys used to say.”

  “What parts of the day have you any sort of alibi for?” asked Cunningham. “I mean, what times have you any confirmation for?”

  Again the young man plunged deep in thought. “The British Museum part I think I can confirm,” he said. “I had a chat with the curator of the Egyptian Antiquities Room. A friend of mine has been doing some excavations in Luxor, and some of his stuff was on show there. He asked me to go and make enquiries about what they were doing. I think that fellow will know me, and will remember my being there.”

  “And the rest of the day?”

  “Well, the old lady—Mrs. Hatton, of Slough—will bear me out for the period from one-thirty until six or so, the waiter fellow at the flats where I live will give you the time I had dinner, and the barman at the pub, as well as some of the ‘regulars’ there, will give you my times for the evening,” announced the young man. “I don’t think, in fact, that there will be any difficulty for any part of the day. I think my alibi, my dear old chap, is about as watertight as it can be.”

  “Seems quite satisfactory,” said Cunningham, putting into his voice far more conviction than he really felt.

  “Anything more?” asked Moss, obviously getting restive under this cross-examination.

  “Not much,” Cunningham admitted. “Only the names and addresses of the people concerned.”

  “By Jove, you fellows are pretty thorough, aren’t you?” said Moss, in open admiration.

  “Have to be in our job, sir,” said Cunningham, and wrote down the names and addresses
that the young man gave him.

  “And now,” said Moss, when the work was apparently complete, “am I free to go where I like?”

  “Perfectly free, sir,” said Cunningham, “although I should like you if you happen to leave London, to let us know where we can get hold of you. You are an important person in this case, you see, and we just can’t afford to lose touch with you.”

  “Right-ho,” Moss answered. “I’ll take care to do that. And that really is all?”

  “That,” Cunningham said, “really is all.”

  As he was about to leave the club, now rapidly filling up, Moss called him back.

  “Might I be permitted to ask you one question, old man?” he asked.

  “If you want to, fire away,” answered Cunningham. “Although, mind you,” he added cautiously, “I can’t guarantee to answer it. That must depend on my judgment.”

  “Oh, of course, I understand that,” said Moss, with a smile. “Official secrecy and all that sort of thing. That’s understood, of course; that goes without saying. Oh, yes, certainly.”

  Cunningham was rather puzzled at this indecision of Moss. The young man seemed uneasy and on edge, as if there were a question on the tip of his tongue, a question which he was longing to ask, but which, none the less, he did not dare to risk putting to the test.

  “Well,” he said, at length, when Moss seemed to have talked himself to a standstill, so to speak, and did not show any inclination to ask this question, whatever it might be, “what is this question that you want to ask me?”

  “Why,” asked Moss, “were you so surprised when I said that I’d been at the British Museum yesterday?”

  “Do you mean to say you don’t know?” asked Cunningham.

  Moss shook his head mutely.

  “You said you read in the papers of Professor Arnell’s death,” Cunningham went on.