Information Received

by E. R. Punshon

  It seemed the cook was the only one of them who had been there in the lifetime of the late Lady Clarke. Sir Christopher had married her very soon after the death of her first husband, Brenda’s father. Sir Christopher had been in New York at the time, but had at once left important interests there to return home to do what he could to help the widow and also presumably to urge his suit with her.

  ‘Fixed it all up, so I heard tell,’ remarked Lewis, ‘before her first husband was cold in his grave.’

  ‘The master was always like that,’ declared the cook; ‘never let anything stand between him and what he wanted, small or big. A hard man, too, but it was only after her death he went quite the way he was these last years. Changed him somehow.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The night she was buried,’ she said, ‘I heard him myself, crying over her coffin like a child, so you could hear him right outside on the stairs, so you would have thought it was tearing him in half. You wouldn’t never have thought that of him, would you now?’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ agreed Lewis. ‘It just shows.’ He said: ‘Even him as granite and iron was butter to, he had his soft spot once. But after that it must have gone hard as the rest of him, for I never saw sign or trace of it.’

  ‘All the same it was there,’ the cook insisted. ‘He was always a little different with me, along of my having known her, and every year you could tell when the day came round when she died.’

  ‘If he was so fond of her mother,’ Bobby observed, ‘that must have been a great bond between him and Miss Brenda.’

  ‘Ah, no one ever knew what that one thought,’ Lewis said. ‘She was always quiet and still, thinking her own thoughts and never telling.’

  ‘It was her ma’s death changed her,’ the cook went on. ‘Until then she was always merry and bright, like any other young thing before their troubles come. But afterwards she went the way she’s always been since, silent and still. Even when she was moving about the house seeing to things, she seemed the. same somehow, still and quiet – waiting, I used to think sometimes, waiting for her mother to come back to her.’

  ‘Quite different now,’ said Lewis benevolently, helping himself to the whisky for the fourth time, ‘and I can’t say I’m sorry for it, neither. But it’s a wonder how different she is, now it’s fixed up with Mr Lester.’

  ‘That’s because,’ explained the ‘tweenie’ in a whispered aside, ‘she worships the ground he treads on.’

  ‘I suppose it’s because he thought so much of her mother he was going to settle such a large sum on Miss Brenda,’ Bobby remarked. ‘She loses that now.’

  ‘Done in, according to law,’ said Lewis, ‘same as our legacies – we was all down for a year’s wages, “if still in testator’s employ” same as we are.’

  ‘Two hundred extra for me he put down,’ added the cook. ‘That was along of my being here when his poor wife died.’

  ‘Miss Jennie says it’ll all be paid just the same,’ the parlourmaid interposed. ‘It’s only right.’

  ‘Then Miss Brenda will get her forty thousand, too?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Well, now, that’s what’s funny,’ the cook replied. ‘Miss Brenda don’t seem to want to have it, and Mr Carsley doesn’t want her to, neither, though quite agreeable to us having ours.’

  ‘Nothing funny about that,’ Lewis pointed out. ‘Our little bits of legacies don’t amount to nothing much, but forty thousand pounds, same as she was to have, that’s money.’

  ‘There’s been words about it,’ confirmed the parlourmaid. ‘Miss Jennie thinks Miss Brenda won’t have the money along of what Mr Carsley said, and it’s worrying ’em both. Like a ghost he looks and never sleeps a wink, for you can hear him all night long walking up and down.’

  ‘What’s worrying him,’ pronounced Lewis, ‘is that he knows there’s some as thinks it’s him that did it, along of it putting all that money in their pockets and saving Miss Jennie that’s Mrs Carsley now from being cut off without a penny. Not that I believe it myself,’ added Lewis generously, ‘but it’s the gossip round here.’

  Evidently this observation was intended to elicit Bobby’s opinion. But Bobby was careful to express none and as it was now very late he got up to go. Before he was allowed to depart, however, he was obliged to renew his promise to continue the watch he was believed to be keeping over the safety of the house and its inmates, and to look in again the following evening to make sure, as cook said, they were all still alive and had not been murdered in their beds, a fate she appeared to anticipate with patient resignation.

  As he came round from the back of the house into the drive, Bobby saw that the front door was open and that two people were standing there, clearly outlined in the light from the hall behind, so that he could recognize immediately both Brenda and Mark Lester. Apparently, Mark was just going and in Brenda’s tone and accent, as she bade him good night, there was more than enough to prove the household staff had not been wrong in the estimate they had formed of her sentiments.

  Not that what she said was much in itself, and indeed Bobby did not quite catch the actual words. But in her voice, in every curve and line of her body as she leaned towards him, as in that of his as he strained upwards from the lower step on which he stood to her upon the threshold, there was enough to tell the same story of the same utter and complete abandonment, so strange a contrast to her former cold, complete restraint.

  But now that was forgotten, gone as if it had never existed, gone as if now there was nothing she had either the wish or the power to hold back. For just one moment Mark responded in an embrace into which it seemed that both of them threw their very souls. The next instant he was hurrying down the drive, as though afraid lest the memory of that divine instant should pass before he had time to carry it away with him, and Brenda whispered after him a ‘Goodbye, my dearest,’ that was still vibrant with the passion of their brief embrace. Then she went back into the house, closing the door behind her.

  Unwilling to follow Mark too closely, a little ashamed of having been the witness, even involuntarily, of a moment of such high passion, Bobby lingered in the drive, waiting till Mark should be quite away.

  ‘No doubt how those two feel,’ he told himself, and he remembered that he had wondered when he knew how readily Brenda had fallen in with Mark’s desires, whether her consent was due to her love for him or whether it had just seemed to her a way of escape.

  But now there could be no doubt of her feelings, and yet it seemed to Bobby that in their embrace, in the passion they had seemed to show, there had been a hurry, an abandonment, that had about it something ominous and threatening, as though they knew their hour was short and that what they felt for each other they must express while there was still time.

  It came into his mind that they had been like two people upon whom a doom had been pronounced and who knew that at any moment it might be put into execution.

  And then it seemed to him this was absurd, and that it was the night that was making him fanciful, that and the way in which he had concentrated all the faculties of his mind upon recent events.

  ‘Two lovers kissing each other good night, that was all,’ he told himself crossly, but without conviction.

  Walking slowly down the drive, Bobby reached the gate. There he turned to look back at the big house behind, huge and formless in the night, with behind it driven clouds that threatened storm. The chatter of the servants that he had listened to so long began to form itself in his mind as the chorus of some dark tragedy that was still hastening to a destined end he could do nothing to avert. The death of Sir Christopher now seemed to him as but one incident in a greater drama, some immense and tangled tragedy of the human soul, some long-drawn tale of wrong and sin and suffering of which the end was not yet, wherein that murder was but one incident, that threatened more and worse to come before the full tale was told, the last debt paid.

  A few drops were falling from those threatening clouds above when at last he turned and made his way homewards.

>   CHAPTER 19

  MORE THEATRE TICKETS

  But of all these fancies and imaginings Bobby felt a little ashamed when next morning he awoke in the clear daylight, with the early sunshine streaming into his room.

  After all, what had they been founded on but the commonplace and ordinary incidents of two lovers bidding each other good night, of a story of a man grieving for the loss of his wife, of a young child growing silent and self-contained when left alone among strangers, of a preference given to a child in blood over an alien, and of a natural wish and disposition to be honourably disembarrassed of that alien’s presence.

  ‘No sign of any ill will,’ Bobby reflected, ‘or any grudge against the stepdaughter when arrangements were being made to settle forty thousand on her.’

  Bobby was careful to be early at the Yard, but even so found that Superintendent Mitchell had already been there and at work for more than an hour. Inspector Gibbons was a later arrival, and when presently he sent for Bobby and heard his report, he seemed less disappointed at Bobby’s failure to find the man he had been sent to look for than Bobby had feared. But then, detectives are as well used to the most promising and hopeful inquiries turning out only a fresh chase of the illusive wild goose, as are youthful poets to receiving back their manuscripts from the editors and publishers to whom they offer them.

  Encouraged by the fact that his failure brought down on his head no official rebuke, and seemed rather to be accepted as a matter of routine, Bobby ventured to suggest that he might prove more successful if he were allowed to pursue his inquiries at the theatres, since it seemed, he thought, there might be some connexion. The Inspector smiled wearily.

  ’Suppose you think that wouldn’t ever occur to us?’ he observed. ‘You young fellows are always the same, always wanting to teach your grandmothers how to suck eggs. A copy of that sketch you made was shown to every theatrical manager and every theatre agent in town yesterday. None of them recognized it. To-day it’ll go the rounds of the provincial theatres.’

  Bobby looked suitably abashed; and the Inspector added a few more details of the steps that had been taken to solve the mystery, giving Bobby a fascinating glimpse of a huge organization, slowly, patiently revolving without either haste or pause. He began to realize that in sober fact the detection of crime is not a matter of individual genius, of brilliant and dramatic improvisations on a given theme, but rather the slow collecting and feeding of facts into a great machine that in the end slowly and ponderously churns out the legal proof required. And he saw that this process is often as dull and tedious a job as that of sitting all day on an office stool, adding up figures – or as he had found his own evening at ‘The Green Man’, drinking beer he didn’t want and exchanging commonplaces on subjects that didn’t interest him with people who interested him still less.

  There was Mitchell, for instance, one of the most famous and successful detectives of the day. And like any other successful business man, he spent nearly all his time at his desk, struggling with masses of correspondence and reports. Glancing at a pile of cigarette ash and deducing therefrom the age, income, and political opinions of the smoker, was a feat entirely beyond his powers. As for false moustaches and cunning masquerades, they were as alien to his habits as they are to those of a suburban vicar. Indeed, to-day, such delights are privileges apparently reserved solely for grave financial magnates and responsible heads of national banks.

  Continuing, Bobby gave a brief account of his conversation with the servants at ‘The Cedars’, and Inspector Gibbons said it was interesting, but he didn’t see it had much to do with the case they had under investigation.

  ‘Lots of men are fond of their wives just the same as lots aren’t,’ observed the Inspector, ‘and anyhow, all that happened twenty years ago, and even if Sir Christopher wanted to get rid of the stepdaughter he evidently meant to do what was right by her – a good many rich men wouldn’t want to settle forty thousand on their own daughters, let alone on a stepdaughter that had no claim on them at all. Got your report ready?’

  Bobby produced it, a little proudly, and he was disappointed to see that the Inspector regarded it without enthusiasm.

  ‘What’s all the fancy work for?’ he demanded.

  Bobby, much hurt, realized that this disparaging reference was to the beautiful and elaborate red ink ruling with which he had taken such pains. He tried to explain the Superintendent had seemed to think red ink ruling essential and Gibbons indulged in a faint chuckle.

  ‘Had you on proper,’ he said, ‘you can take it from me, red ink to Mitchell is much what a red rag is to a bull. Too late to alter it now,’ he added as Bobby showed signs of wishing to resume possession of the unlucky document.

  ‘It’ll have to go in as it is, red ink and all. Now you can clear out and mooch round the theatres. Mitchell said if you asked permission you were to have it – but not unless you did. It’s his way of encouraging initiative. He says most likely you’ll only be wasting the taxpayers’ money, but that don’t matter so much now the budget’s balanced. You’re to make inquiries of the attendants only. Mitchell says most likely they know things managers and stars never dream of, and you might get to know something useful. In the evening you can mooch around about “The Green Man” again, but don’t make yourself conspicuous asking too many questions. Finish up at “The Cedars”. Mitchell says we must watch developments there. He’s worried about Carsley and Marsden, he thinks there’s trouble brewing. They’re both being trailed, but then they both know it, so that’s not much good, except by way of a check. Bad for us,’ Gibbons added, shaking his head, ‘if one of ’em goes and does the other in and it came out at the inquest we had been warned and hadn’t managed to stop it. Leading articles in all the papers about gross incompetence most likely.’

  So the rest of that morning Bobby employed in wandering from one theatre to another, showing the copy of his own sketch he had been provided with to the various attendants and learning with monotonous regularity that none of them could recognize it; though, with a kindly wish to oblige, one commissionaire thought he remembered someone like that he had served with in Mesopotamia during the War, and a stage doorkeeper was sure there was a strong resemblance to an American actor who had been dead some years, and at one box office the sketch was definitely recognized as that of a former backer of musical plays, now in gaol through an unfortunate devotion to business that had induced him to sign rather more share certificates than there was strict authority for issuing.

  None of these clues seeming promising, Bobby pursued his quest and was preparing to accost the magnificent six-foot-sixer who stands superbly outside the Regency Theatre, between Shaftesbury Avenue and St Martin’s Lane, when he saw Mitchell himself alighting from a taxi nearby. As Bobby was not in uniform he took no notice, for it might well be that Mitchell had no desire to be recognized. But he watched closely; and when Mitchell crooked a finger and then disappeared into a teashop near, Bobby followed him. Mitchell was settling himself at a table near the window. He nodded to Bobby and pointed to a chair at the same table.

  ‘Coffee for two,’ he said to the waitress and added to Bobby: ‘Your country pays, but if you want a sausage roll as well, that comes out of your own pocket.’

  ’The coffee will do me, sir, thank you,’ Bobby answered.

  ‘Any luck?’ demanded Mitchell.

  ‘No. sir.’

  ‘Been reading your report,’ Mitchell went on. ‘Glad to see you remembered about that red ink. What’s a report without red ink?’

  Bobby did not answer but he was aware of a faint twitching at the corner of Mitchell’s mouth that made him hastily decide no future report of his should show so much as a sign of red ink.

  ‘Seems you think,’ Mitchell continued, ‘there’s more to come?’

  ‘I don’t know what I do think, sir,’ Bobby answered, ‘but I feel certain whatever it is didn’t begin with Sir Christopher’s death and hasn’t ended with it, either.’

  ‘
Mr Lester,’ observed Mitchell, looking thoughtfully out of the window at the theatre opposite where a certain bustle of people entering and leaving witnessed to a busy box office and the success of at least one Shakespearian revival, ‘went on to the “Butterfly” night club after you saw him last night. He was there till nearly three this morning; and when he left he was fairly soused, but some pals saw him home, so there was no chance to run him in.’

  Bobby both looked and was very much bewildered. He felt it utterly incredible that after that ‘good night’ scene, touched with a real and high emotion, Mark should have gone straight to a night club and got drunk there. He was almost inclined to think there was some mistake and Mitchell said:

  ‘Surprised to hear that, eh?’

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Bear looking into,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘A young fool in love is generally sufficiently drunk all the time not to bother about getting drunk at night clubs as well.’

  ‘I suppose,’ asked Bobby hesitatingly, ‘I suppose, sir, it’s quite certain it was really Mr Lester?’

  ‘Report from the man I put to trail him,’ answered Mitchell.

  Bobby still looked very bewildered. It seemed to him a psychological impossibility that after experiencing that moment of high emotion, Mark should have felt the need for the vulgar stimulus of drink. It was like supposing that a man who had just escaped a violent and sudden death by some mere chance would seek the thrill of a ‘fun fair’, or that the winner of a fortune on the Stock Exchange would want at once to go to play at darts for halfpennies. Mitchell seemed to understand what Bobby felt, for he said:

  ‘Bit of a puzzle, eh? The fact is, we are badly up against it in this case. We’re at a complete standstill with the facts. We don’t know who it was escaped over the next door’s garden wall or what he had to do with it. We don’t know who it was Miss Laing said she saw by the drawing-room window, or whether it was Lester as she said at first, or Marsden, if it was him robbed the safe, or someone else altogether. We don’t know why three times in succession stalls for the theatre were sent to Sir Christopher, or who sent them, or whether that means anything or not. We don’t know why Dr Gregory took so long giving the alarm or if he ever really paid the money he says he did and has the torn I.O.U. to show for it. We don’t know who it is Lester saw at “The Green Man”, and why first he was anxious to find the fellow and then when he did, denied his identity. We don’t know what Lester was told or why whatever it was should make him both want to get married and get drunk. We don’t know who the old boy was who told Sergeant Doran it was suicide or why they all keep saying it wasn’t murder when it’s perfectly plain it was nothing else. We don’t know if Miss Laing was really at the piano when the murder was committed, and we can’t trace the revolver that was used, or find out whether Sir Christopher meant it when he said he had one in his possession that can’t be traced either and that he certainly had no licence for. And now we don’t know whether Carsley and Marsden are working together to fool us or are planning to do each other in. About all we do know is that the murder put a fortune into the pocket of Carsley’s wife, and took another out of Brenda Laing’s pocket, and that Carsley’s hand was cut as was that of the man who climbed the garden wall in such a hurry; and what’s the good of knowing so little when there’s so much we don’t know and can’t find out? We’re at a complete standstill with the facts and the psychology of the case is beyond us altogether.’