Information Received

by E. R. Punshon

  That his approval of the proposed double was based upon solid knowledge Bobby was thus able to demonstrate, and, much cheered, Mr Lewis trotted off to drop his letters into the pillar-box across the way. Coming back, he stopped again to speak to Bobby.

  * You haven’t noticed a little old chap, thin face, long nose, grey whiskers, rather shabby, boots down at heels, hanging about here, have you?’ he asked. ‘If you do, you might keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bobby. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Been talking a bit wild,’ explained Lewis, ‘not using threats exactly but talking as if he meant to. Sir Christopher told me if he come again to make sure I saw him off the premises, but what’s the good of that? Nothing to stop him coming back.’

  ‘Sir Christopher your guv’nor?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Lewis, ‘big City man – it’s him as nearly owns United Firms and he’s chairman of the City and Suburbs bank, too.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Bobby. ‘Made a speech about getting back to gold the other day, didn’t he? Said gold was gold and when you had gold, why, then you had it. Made a big impression in the City, the papers said. What’s the trouble with the grey-whiskered bird?’

  ‘Expect,’ said Lewis with appreciation, ‘it’s someone the guv’nor’s done in the eye. Guv’nor told me, if he gave any trouble to clear him out quick and see he didn’t hang about the house or garden. But how can I stop that? Nothing to prevent him slipping back again any time he wants. We don’t keep the gate locked, and, if we did, he could go in next door now it’s empty and get over the wall, couldn’t he?’

  Bobby agreed that that was possible, promised to keep on the watch for any elderly and grey-whiskered gentlemen who looked as if they might ‘give trouble’, and Lewis, apparently easier in his mind, returned to the house.

  Even yet the sergeant had not put in an appearance and Bobby began to wonder if something had occurred to prevent him from coming. Bobby decided to stroll to the corner and see if any sign of his approach were visible. Coming back, for no sergeant was in sight, he saw across the road an elderly man who certainly appeared to be paying a somewhat unusual attention to ‘The Cedars’, as though for some reason he took a special interest in the house. True, he did not fully answer the description Lewis had given, for he was not a little man but of middle height and size, and he looked more prosperous than shabby. A glance Bobby gave at his boots showed that, far from being down at heel, they were quite new, and he noticed, too, that they were unusually long and narrow, though that was not a point which interested him at the moment or to which he thought of attaching any importance. Nor had he grey whiskers but, instead, a sandy beard. Still, even Bobby’s short experience in the police had taught him that personal descriptions offered by apparently trustworthy witnesses were often wildly inaccurate, and it was at least certain that this stranger was elderly and that he was showing an unusual degree of interest in ‘The Cedars’.

  ‘Elmhurst’, the next house to ‘The Cedars’, was empty, except for a caretaker, and stood also in a fairly large garden of about half an acre or more. Deciding that it might be as well to watch this elderly stranger for a time, Bobby pushed open the ‘Elmhurst’ gate and took up his position behind one of the trees lining the short drive that led to the house. And scarcely had he done so when he heard, coming from the direction of the empty house, the sound of angry shouts, of a dog barking, of running footsteps.

  All this seemed to require investigation more pressingly than did the movements of the elderly stranger, and Bobby ran up the drive towards the house, where he met the caretaker, a man named Walters. Walters, it seemed, had seen from the kitchen window a strange man in the garden, in which there was a fair amount of fruit growing, unripe still, but all the same subject to many raids. At once, fearing for the fruit, Walters had dashed out in pursuit, armed with an over-ripe tomato his wife had just been indignantly displaying to him as having been foisted off upon her by a too enterprising greengrocer.

  ‘Chap was after the apples,’ complained Walters indignantly, for the produce of the garden he regarded as part of the emoluments of his office. ‘I saw him from the kitchen but he must have spotted me, too, for he ran like a good’un – off he was and over the wall in quick time, but I let him have the tomato and it took him clean in the middle of the back – spoilt his Sunday suit for him, I hope,’ said Walters, chuckling, ‘but the cheek of it and in broad daylight, too.’

  He and Bobby walked down the garden together, but could not discover that any fruit had been taken or any damage done.

  ‘I spotted him too quick,’ said Walters with satisfaction. ‘Got to be on the look out all the time, so you have.’

  He enlarged on his troubles with naughty little boys, as well as with more serious, older raiders, and declared that sometimes the very apples and pears and plums stolen from the garden were offered by the thieves to his ‘missis’ for purchase. Bobby listened and sympathized, and looking at the wall, he said:

  ‘Good height, topped with glass, too. The chap must have had a bit of a job to get over.’

  ‘Had to, else I’d have copped him,’ said Walters proudly.

  They went along to the wall, and soon found the place where it had been scaled, for the flower bed beneath was badly trampled, and several flowers broken. Complaining loudly of the damage done, Walters fetched a rake to smooth the soft mould, while Bobby found a ladder, and, mounting it, examined the top of the wall. He said:

  ‘He cut his hand getting over, at least, it looks like blood on some of the broken glass.’

  Walters, finishing his task of smoothing the mould of the flower bed, expressed a wish that the broken bits of glass had cut the intruder to mincemeat, and then Bobby returned to his post in the road. There was no sign now of the old man he had noticed before, no sign either of his sergeant, and more for the sake of having something to put in his notebook than because he thought the incident of any real importance, Bobby began to write a brief report of it. He noted the time, now a quarter to seven, and, deciding to give up waiting any longer for the sergeant, who must, he supposed, have been somehow detained, he was on the point of moving away to resume his patrol, when he heard someone crying out for help. Looking round he saw a man standing at the open French window of a room built out from ‘The Cedars’ on the ground level, and beckoning to him with a certain wildness and urgency of gesture. Bobby began to run; quickly and lightly he ran up the gravel drive towards that gesticulating figure, which now, seeing him coming, ceased to gesture but waited with hardly less of urge and concentration in its intense, still attitude.

  ‘Murder,’ this man said as Bobby, leaving the drive, came running across the lawn to him, ‘it’s murder – it’s Sir Christopher Clarke and he’s been murdered.’

  CHAPTER 4

  THE BILLIARD-ROOM

  When he had called out this, and seen that Bobby had heard and was coming as quickly as possible, the stranger went back into the room. Bobby followed him through the open French window. It was a billiard-room he found himself in, containing a full-sized table, and at one end three or four comfortable-looking chairs grouped before the fireplace. A game had apparently been in progress, for the balls, and one cue, were on the table, and another cue was lying on the ground. The scoring board showed thirty-four for one player, forty for the other. Between the head of the billiard-table and the chairs before the fireplace lay the body of Sir Christopher, supine and still. Only a glance was needed to tell that here was death, for there was that about the prostrate form which told that all rendering it significant had fled, leaving it void, a deserted habitation. Yet there was something, too, in the contorted features, and the eyes still glaring upward under those bushy brows, that seemed to say the soul had parted from the flesh in anger and tumult and most fierce hatred.

  Close by lay a revolver, and an acrid smell of powder still lingered in the room. From two round, burnt holes in the dead man’s chest bubbles of blood we
re oozing with a slow and dreadful regularity. From some other room in the house came the sound of music, one of Wagner’s stormy pieces somebody was playing on the piano, and playing very well too, as even Bobby’s limited knowledge of music told him. The crashing, reverberating chords seemed somehow a fitting accompaniment to the tragic scene on which he was gazing.

  He said to the man who had called him:

  ‘What do you know of this?’

  ‘Only that I found him lying here, and I remembered I had seen a policeman at the gate, so I thought I had better call you at once. My name’s Gregory,’ he went on, ‘Dr Gregory. I’m Sir Christopher’s medical attendant. I came across to-night to see him – my God, who can have done it?’ he broke off, as if with a fresh realization of the horror of the thing.

  ‘You didn’t see or hear anything else?’ Bobby asked, and when the doctor shook his head, he added: ‘No one else knows, you’ve told no one else?’

  ‘No,’ answered the doctor. ‘I came in by the window there. I saw it was open and I thought Sir Christopher might be here. As soon as I got into the room I saw him, like that, dead. Someone’s shot him.’

  ‘It couldn’t be suicide?’ Bobby asked, and then: ‘That doesn’t matter now. The first thing is to get help. I suppose they have a phone here I can use. Will you wait till I get back and make sure no one comes in? Please don’t touch anything, don’t even close the window. Just stand by and see no one comes in. I’ll lock the door behind me to stop anyone coming in that way. No one seems to have heard the shots. Has that music been going on all the time?’

  ‘I think so,’ Gregory answered. ‘It’s Miss Laing, I expect. I don’t think it’s ever stopped.’

  Bobby didn’t wait to ask who Miss Laing might be. He went out into the corridor, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket. The music sounded more loudly here. Evidently it came from a room just across the passage in which he found himself. The door a few steps farther along was half open and looking in Bobby saw that it was a large, well-furnished apartment, the drawing-room apparently. At one end was a grand piano at which, with her back towards him, a woman was sitting. The crashing chords of the Wagnerian music she was playing seemed to fill all the air, and Bobby thought it was no wonder that the pistol shots had not been heard, or, if heard, had merely been taken for a specially vigorous outburst. The music swelled now into the notes of a triumphal march, played with something of the vigour and the passion that characterized the music itself, and Bobby wondered what the player would think if she knew of the dreadful event that had just taken place while she poured out these strains of victory. Without entering the room, he walked on and came to the large inner hall, where he found himself face to face with his recent acquaintance, Lewis, who looked very bewildered and surprised at his unexpected appearance.

  ‘He doesn’t know anything either of what has happened,’ Bobby thought, ‘that’s plain enough.’ Aloud he said: ‘There has been an accident. Have you a phone here? I want to use it at once, please.’

  ‘An accident?’ Lewis repeated. ‘Them motors, them motors,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘never know where you are with ’em. Is it bad?’

  “Yes,’ said Bobby impatiently. ‘I must get help at once. You’ve got a phone?’

  ‘We’ve two,’ answered Lewis proudly. ‘One in the outer hall with an extension to my pantry, and Sir Christopher had one put in for himself. In his study, that is.’

  ‘I’ll use that one,’ said Bobby, thinking it would be more private. ‘Where’s the study?’

  ‘But Sir Christopher mightn’t like –’ protested Lewis. ‘Very particular gent, Sir Christopher.’

  ‘Not now,’ answered Bobby. ‘There’ll be no objection from him now. Show me the room, quick, don’t waste any more time.’

  Impressed by Bobby’s manner, trained, too, by lifelong habit to obey the orders given him, Lewis led the way, though still a little uneasily, to a large comfortably furnished room, the principal features being an enormous writing-table in the middle of the apartment and a correspondingly enormous safe against one wall. The door of the safe hung open and the contents seemed somewhat disordered. The window, of the sash type, was open and the curtains pulled aside. As the house stood on a pronounced slope, the flooring on this, the east side, was not on a level with the ground as was the case on the west where the billiard-room was situated, but was raised several feet above the ground. On the big mahogany writing-table stood a phone. Bobby picked it up and called the police station.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Lewis, staring hard at the open safe, ‘I never knew the guv’nor leave that open before, I never did.’

  Bobby was through now and briefly reported. He was told help would be sent at once and that meantime he must see nothing was interfered with. Lewis, hearing what was being said, stood as if utterly paralysed, till at last he burst out in a sort of shout:

  ‘Murdered? Sir Christopher? The guv’nor shot? Good God Almighty, who done that? Who...?’

  He looked as if he were going to run out of the room in his excitement, but Bobby caught hold of his arm and pulled him back.

  ‘Now, don’t lose your head,’ he said sharply. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  ‘But it can’t be,’ Lewis protested. ‘It isn’t possible, not him... it can’t...’

  He was silent, abruptly realizing that all the same – it was. To him, his master had seemed the very embodiment of authority and power, and to imagine him now, the victim of such a deed, was almost beyond his power.

  ‘Murdered? Him? Are you sure?’ he asked weakly.

  Bobby was still at the phone.

  ‘I think the murderer was seen escaping,’ he said. ‘The caretaker at the next house – it’s empty – saw a man in the garden there and thought he was stealing fruit and went after him. He got away over the wall, and the caretaker only had a passing glimpse of him, so I’m afraid that won’t be much help.’

  ‘I know who done it,’ cried Lewis. ‘It’s that old chap in the grey whiskers what the guv’nor told me to look out for. That’s him. The guv’nor did him down in the City and now he’s got his own back.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell the C.I.D. people that when they get here,’ Bobby said, a little worried, though, for while that seemed a plausible idea on the face of it, nevertheless it was certain that whoever had escaped with such agility and speed through the next door garden and over an eight-foot wall studded with glass, could hardly have been an old man. ‘You had better come back to the billiard-room and identify the body,’ Bobby added. ‘Dr Gregory is there. You know him?’

  ‘Dr Gregory? Yes, but how did he get there? I didn’t know he was in the house; no one’s let him in that I know of.’

  Bobby offered no explanation. He asked:

  ‘Who else is there in the family? Anyone else staying here?’

  ‘There’s the two young ladies,’ Lewis answered. ‘Miss Brenda and Miss Jennie. That’s Miss Brenda what’s playing. Miss Jennie’s upstairs resting before dinner. There’s no one else staying here; there’s a Mr Belfort coming to dinner.’

  ‘What servants are there?’

  It seemed the staff consisted of Lewis himself, the chauffeur who lived in a cottage a short distance away, and was presumably there now as he had been told he would not be required again that day, and four maids, cook, parlourmaid, housemaid, and ‘tweenie’ in order of dignity and rank. They were probably all now in the kitchen, busy with preparations for dinner. The fairly extensive gardens were kept up by contract, and there was a woman who came in daily to do the rougher work and always left again at five.

  It was not information that seemed to promise much towards the elucidation of the mystery, and Bobby and Lewis went back together to the billiard-room. As they came into the inner hall, the music, which had been going on all this time, came to an end. A moment later a tall, handsome girl, with strongly-marked features, dark hair, dark, heavy-lidded eyes, altogether a striking and commanding personality, came ou
t of the drawing-room. Seeing them she stopped and looked at Bobby, as if asking for an explanation of his presence there. She did not speak, but all the same had the air of waiting for and expecting an answer as she stood and watched them. Offering the explanation he felt she was demanding, Bobby said:

  ‘I am sorry to have to tell you, madam, there has been an accident.’

  ‘An accident?’ she repeated, turning her dark, strong gaze on him. ‘What accident? Who to?’

  ‘To Sir Christopher,’ he ventured. ‘You are Miss Brenda Laing?’

  With a slight gesture of one hand she seemed to acknowledge her identity and put it aside as unimportant.

  ‘But Sir Christopher is in the house,’ she said, ‘he came back from the City an hour ago. I did not know he had gone out again. Is it serious?’

  ‘He is dead,’ Bobby answered, for somehow he felt he was facing a personality strong enough for the truth and desirous of it above all else. ‘He has been found shot. There is nothing as yet to show whether it is accident, suicide, or – murder.’

  She might not have heard, so still did she stand, so unmoved were her features, so level and so steady was her gaze. But very slowly she lifted both her hands, and put them to her throat, and one felt that she was struggling desperately to maintain her self-control. In a low voice she said:

  ‘Accident, suicide, or – murder.’ And then again: ‘Accident, suicide, or – murder.’ Then more loudly, she said: ‘Someone must tell Jennie, someone must tell Jennie at once.’

  ‘Let that wait for a time, madam, if you please,’ Bobby said. ‘You heard no report of any pistol shot?’

  ‘I have been playing the piano for nearly an hour,’ she answered. ‘I heard nothing. When did it happen? Where is he? You are sure there is no mistake?’