Death of a Beauty Queen

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Dear me,’ said Bobby, feeling something was expected of him.

  ‘You can take it from me,’ said the assistant, ‘either he don’t think an awful lot of his girl – or else he isn’t too sure of her. Only if it’s that way,’ added the assistant shrewdly, ‘there’d be more sense in getting something really good she would know she might have to turn up again if they parted, and so she wouldn’t want.’

  ‘Yes, there would be that,’ agreed Bobby, in whose head some strange thoughts were buzzing.

  ‘Gentleman did ask,’ the assistant added, ‘if we would mind changing it, supposing he wanted something more expensive, which, if his young lady knows what’s what, as most of ’em do,’ said the assistant, with some show of feeling, ‘something more expensive is what she’ll want and quick about it. Unnatural, I call it, wearing a fifty-pounder sapphire yourself, to put your fiancée off with a small pearl-and-diamond fiver.’

  ‘Unnatural does seem the word,’ agreed Bobby.

  ‘And then to go and lose it,’ the assistant went on. ‘At least, if it was him lost it. Shouldn’t wonder, myself, if the young lady wasn’t so mad and disgusted she just up and flung it at his head, and that’s how Mr Quin came to find it.’ Bobby fairly jumped. A detective should not show surprise too easily, nor too easily be taken aback, but this name came in so unexpectedly it was almost like a blow.

  ‘Quin? Quin?’’ he repeated. ‘But who? But how?’

  ‘Gent,’ explained the assistant, wondering a little at the excitement Bobby seemed to show, ‘who found it lying in the street, and brought it back here this morning – our name and address being on the cardboard box it was packed in.’

  ‘You mean,’ Bobby asked, very puzzled, ‘that someone picked it up in the street and brought it back to you this morning?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the assistant.

  He went on to explain in detail. A rough-looking man had come into the shop almost as soon as it opened that morning. He had produced the ring purchased by Maddox the afternoon before, and had explained that he had picked it up, and, seeing the shop’s address on the box containing it, had brought it back to them on the assumption that they would know their customer’s name and address.

  ‘Which we didn’t,’ said the assistant. ‘Not even his name till you mentioned it just now – Maddox, didn’t you say? It was just an ordinary counter transaction, paid for in pound notes on completion.’

  ‘Honest of Mr Quin to bring it straight here,’ Bobby observed.

  ‘So he thought,’ answered the assistant, ‘and he let us know it, too. Kept on saying some would have put it in their pockets and kept it there, but he wasn’t that sort, which, to look at him,’ the assistant added, ‘you would have thought he was. Second time,’ declared the assistant, frankly bewildered, ‘I’ve been wrong in two days. Wrong yesterday, thinking Mr Maddox was a spender, wrong in thinking Mr Quin wasn’t the sort to bring straight back any little bit of jewellery he happened to find in the street. Of course, he may have some game on.’

  ‘Did he leave his address?’ asked Bobby.

  I asked him, but he said it didn’t matter,’ the assistant explained. ‘All he wanted was for us to take charge of the ring for our customer. I told him there ought to be a bit of a reward, and if we didn’t know his address, how could we let him have it? Besides, if it isn’t claimed, he had the best right to it. But he said he wasn’t out for a reward; all he wanted was to be honest and run straight. Said he had always believed honesty was the best policy, and no one could say anything else or anything against his character. You can take it from me there was something behind. Being honest wasn’t so natural to him as all that, or why did he talk so much about it? And he looked as if there was something upsetting him pretty bad – scared, he looked to me. Shouldn’t wonder if he hadn’t pinched the thing, and then got the jumps. Thought someone saw him, perhaps, and he had best bring it back here so as to prove bona fides.’

  ‘Perhaps there was something like that,’ agreed Bobby. ‘We should like a chat with Mr Quin, I think.’

  Before he left the shop, he arranged that if Quin called again he was to be detained, and that if Maddox called to claim the ring he was to be referred to Scotland Yard. Bobby arranged, too, that an appointment was to be made for the assistant to visit the Yard and see if he could identify any of the photographs of criminals kept there as that of this mysterious Mr Quin, who seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of the case in so peculiar a manner.

  ‘Though what he can have to do with it, it’s difficult to see,’ Bobby said to himself thoughtfully.

  For one thing, why had he been so anxious to emphasise the honesty of his action? Was it simply because he was a gentleman to whom honesty was a rarity, and therefore a quality to which too much attention could not be drawn? Or was there some hidden motive? And was it true he had simply picked the ring up in the street? If so, an odd coincidence indeed. Or had he come into possession of it in some manner? Had it been in the missing crocodile-skin handbag, for example? If so, was Quin the thief responsible for its disappearance? But, if he had stolen it, why should he have taken the trouble to return the ring, and why in so elaborate and marked a manner, even leaving a name that, whether his own or not, certainly hinted at some other connection with the case?

  Could Quin be the murderer, Bobby wondered, and was this return of the ring part of some elaborate scheme to establish an alibi? It seemed unlikely, nor when he made his report at the Yard was anyone there able to suggest any probable explanation, even though they all seemed to feel, like Bobby, that somewhere in this odd incident lay a hidden and important clue, if only it could be discovered.

  ‘Seems likely to turn out important, a key-piece, perhaps, to fit into the puzzle,’ Mitchell commented. ‘But I think we shall have to wait a while before we can guess where it ought to go.’

  ‘May not be the same Quin at all,’ suggested Ferris. ‘Plenty of Quins – not such an uncommon name as all that.’

  ‘I never much care for coincidences,’ Mitchell remarked. ‘They do happen, but they’re rare, or else they wouldn’t be coincidences. We’ll have to check up on all the girls in the Beauty Queen competition to see if any of them have any friends or enemies called Quin. Mr Sargent will have a list of their names and addresses. All the staff connected with the cinema had better be questioned, too, and if necessary every Quin in the directory. The fellow has got to be found somehow. Maddox had better be seen, too, to find out what he has to say about the ring, and whether he knows, or has ever heard of, Quin, especially if Miss Mears has ever mentioned the name. His story was that he had given the engagement-ring to Miss Mears, I think?’

  ‘Yes. He said he met her as she left her office, and gave it her before he saw her into the train. She travelled by train from Cannon Street every day.’

  ‘Have a talk with young Irwin, too, in case he knows anything about Quin. Make the same inquiry of Sargent, and tell him we want a list of names and addresses of his staff and of all competitors. Then go on to Miss Mears’s flat. Ferris is making a search of her room this afternoon. She may have left letters or papers that may help. Try to get on good terms with the aunt, and see what she can tell about the girl’s love-affairs. If you’ve any time to spare–’

  ‘Sir?’ Bobby could not prevent himself from interposing, nor control the pained indignation in his voice, but Mitchell swept on unheedingly:

  ‘Report back here for further instructions, but whatever you do don’t hurry the aunt – let her talk as long as she wants. Get her to give you some tea, if you can, and don’t ask too many direct questions. Most people will tell far more if you let them ramble on than if you try to cross-examine them. They get scared and flustered, and won’t mention trifles, because they don’t seem important, and it’s trifles that’ll most likely tell us most in this case. It’s the trifles that help you to understand people, and the better we understand people in this case the more likely we shall be to get an idea of what they w
ere all doing. We don’t know whether it was a lover’s quarrel that led to jealousy and death. Or theft, if the Quin person, the missing handbag, and the restored ring mean that. Or resentment and revenge for an injury, if the Ellis girl is responsible. Or the same sort of thing if it was Beattie, and we mustn’t forget he is the last person known to have been in the room with Carrie Mears. Or self-protection, for I think it seems clear the girl was pressing Sargent pretty hard. Or something else we’ve no hint of yet. Difficult to know how to set to work till we’ve a clearer idea of the motive.’

  ‘Love and passion,’ mused Ferris, ticking off on his fingers. ‘Love, that’s one. Theft, that’s two. Revenge, that’s three. A sort of protecting-your-girl idea, if it was Beattie, and that makes the fourth possible motive. Blackmail, if it was Sargent, and that’s the fifth possibility. Plenty of lines of approach, but, if you ask me,’ declared Ferris, with energy, ‘it’s just one of those love dramas.’

  ‘Likely enough,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘Young people lose their heads sometimes, and think of nothing else till it seems to them there is nothing else. Only we’ve got to clear up all these other possible lines before we go any further, or it’ll be just waste of time making an arrest. Treasury counsel wouldn’t even prosecute. And it’ll be as well to remember there are more kinds of love than one.’

  But what Mitchell meant by this last remark neither Ferris nor Bobby had any idea.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Challenge Cups

  The tube took Bobby swiftly to Brush Hill, and there, at the Central Cinema, the first thing he did was to arrange with the door-keeper, Wood, for him to call at Scotland Yard, to see if he could pick out from the photographs kept there of various criminals one that in any way resembled the man who on the night of the murder had inquired for the non-existent Miss Quin. It was with enthusiasm that Wood fell in with this proposal.

  ‘Take it from me,’ he announced. ‘You’re on the right track there. It was him did it, sure as nuts in May.’

  ‘Well, we haven’t got quite as far as saying that,’ laughed Bobby, ‘but we would like to have a talk with him.’

  Then he went on to Mr Sargent, whom he found in a very depressed, nervous condition.

  ‘Reserved seats all sold for I don’t know how far ahead,’ he announced without joy – almost, indeed, as if this statement, the idle, happy dream of every exhibitor in his most after-dinner mood, were but the added blow of a remorseless and malignant fate. ‘People come along and tell us we ought to shut down after what’s happened, and how surprised they are we haven’t that much good feeling, and then they ask for seats giving a clear view of the exact spot where Carrie stood last night, and may they have just one peep at the room where it happened? I’ve told Wood he gets the sack if he lets anyone else go behind to look. Made him turn up some of the tips he’s had, too – made him send them on to the hospital.’

  ‘But isn’t the room locked?’ Bobby asked. ‘I thought we had the key?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ answered Sargent, ‘but they can look at the outside of the door, can’t they? And then sometimes Wood lets them rattle the handle. I made him turn up thirty bob – I expect he’s had twice that.’

  ‘Anything like this happening always means a lot of trouble and worry to everyone,’ observed Bobby sympathetically.

  ‘If it was only that,’ groaned Sargent, looking more melancholy than ever, ‘I wouldn’t mind. People are pointing,’ he burst out suddenly.

  ‘Pointing?’ repeated Bobby, slightly puzzled.

  ‘At me,’ explained Sargent. ‘Whispering, too. Do you know what I caught some of the pages up to this morning?’

  ‘Mischief?’ suggested Bobby, playing for safety by suggesting the obvious.

  ‘Staging a hanging,’ said Sargent miserably. ‘My hanging,’ he explained. ‘I sacked the lot. On the spot. Without a reference.’ He looked up sharply, and Bobby understood that in part at least this story had been told to test official opinion. ‘A lot of people think it was me,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘We are trying to get enough to go on to think that about someone or another,’ was Bobby’s non-committal reply. ‘Of course, you’ve told us yourself you were on friendly terms with Miss Mears.’

  ‘The only thing the fools think of is that it happened in my private office,’ Sargent said moodily. ‘I wish to heaven I had never thought of letting her have it.’

  ‘Mr Sargent,’ Bobby said gravely, ‘probably you will be asked if that really was entirely an afterthought; and if it was entirely by accident that her name was overlooked when the other competitors were being given their places. I’m not suggesting anything, but you will certainly be pressed about that, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, it’s always the best plan – and much the safest’ – Bobby lingered a little on this last word, and Sargent wriggled uncomfortably in his seat – ‘to be entirely frank and open, and absolutely accurate about every detail.’

  Sargent took a cigar from a drawer of his desk, and offered it to Bobby, and then, without waiting for either acceptance or refusal, proceeded to light it himself. Then he put it down again, and let it go out, forgotten. Then he said:

  ‘Oh, all right. It was fixed up beforehand, why not? I made sure she would be the winner – certain to be with her looks; besides I knew the committee of judges would be favourable to her type. I fixed that, too, if you want to know. I thought it would be better if she had a room to herself, for congratulations and all that sort of fuss. And then,’ he added, seeing that Bobby was still waiting, still expectant, ‘if you must know, though it’s nothing to do with it, I wanted to have a chance to talk to her without all the rest of them all buzzing round.’

  ‘I understand,’ Bobby said, persuaded that now at last he had the truth on at any rate one point. ‘Was there anything special or important you wished to see her about?’

  I only wanted to tell her it was no good her expecting too much. I was doing my best for her all right, but she never quite got the difference between an exhibitor and a director or a producer. I suppose a director or a swell producer could have had any girl he fancied given a real serious test right off. All I could do was to tell her to apply in the usual way, with name, address, experience, and photo, and I would write in at the same time. Unluckily she didn’t take too well – her photos never did her justice. When all she got was a printed form to say her name had been put down and she would be communicated with in due course, if occasion arose, and not a word about me, she thought I had let her down. Didn’t believe I had been trying.’

  ‘Did she show anger openly, do you mean?’ Bobby asked. ‘Well, depends what you call threatening to go round and tell my wife; asked me how I would like Mrs Sargent to know all about our little dinners up West when I was supposed to be looking after things here – not that there was any harm in them, only I wasn’t keen on Mrs Sargent hearing it like that. She’s interested on the financial side– here, for one thing – put all her money in when we started, on debenture.’

  ‘On debenture?’ repeated Bobby thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, a mortgage – safer, of course, as I told her,’ said Sargent, though just a little uncomfortably; and added:

  ‘Much safer, and then she hadn’t to attend meetings or be bothered with voting.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Bobby, rather inclined to suspect that the fact that the debenture holders had no right to attend the general meeting or vote at it was one reason why Mrs Sargent had been advised to invest her money in a debenture holding.

  ‘I don’t deny,’ added Sargent, ‘it would be a bit awkward if she chose to call her money in.’

  ‘But the company could pay?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I should be left high and dry.’

  * Did you think it at all likely Miss Mears would do what she said ? ’

  ‘No; not for a moment. She was only a bit excited and hysterical. Besides, I should have denied the whole thing. She had nothing to show – no letters, for instance.’

/>   Sargent paused and looked cunning – and unpleasant.

  ‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ he said. ‘I always phoned.’

  Bobby went away, convinced that Sargent had been in fact more troubled and alarmed by the girl’s threats than he now cared to admit. All the same, from being alarmed and disturbed to committing murder is a long step – especially to murder in circumstances and surroundings bound to cast suspicion on oneself.

  Then, too, Sargent had made more admissions than might have been expected from a guilty man, though that might be due to his perception that sooner or later the facts he acknowledged were bound to become known.

  On the whole, Bobby thought that an interesting case against Sargent was being slowly built up, but hardly one that at present justified action. Too many loose ends, he told himself, still lying about – loose ends that in a trial counsel for the defence would thoroughly enjoy trailing before a jury.

  Still, he felt satisfied with the results of his interview. He went back to the Yard, deposited there the list of the names and addresses of the Beauty Queen competitors Sargent had provided him with, and knew that very shortly a polite plain-clothes man would call on each in turn to inquire if anything was known of any person named Quin, just as a good many people of that name entered in the directory were likely to be asked presently if they knew or ever had known anything of Carrie Mears. Not that Bobby felt it likely that these inquiries would have much result, as in fact they had not. They were, indeed, merely a part of the slow, dull, laborious, careful routine of which detective work almost entirely consists, since to meditate deeply and arrive at deep conclusions is of little value when what a jury asks for is quite commonplace proof.