Information Received

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘I must let Jennie know first,’ Peter said.

  ‘There’s no hurry about that; never any hurry telling bad news,’ replied Mitchell. He did not add that already he was planning to send one of his best men to interview Jennie, to try to obtain from her information as to Peter’s movements and Brenda’s. There were many thoughts in his mind and some of them were strange. He said again: ‘Mrs Carsley will know soon enough and there’s a lot to be thought of, if we’re to make sure that whoever it was did this shall hang.’

  ‘Yes, but I must see Jennie, tell her, I must see my wife first,’ Peter persisted.

  ‘I am afraid I can’t permit that,’ Mitchell said, more sternly, for the idea was in his mind that this looked as if Peter might be anxious for a chance to tell his wife both what to say and what not to say.

  But Bobby had a surer intuition, and he said aside to Mitchell:

  ‘I think he’s afraid, sir... afraid about her, I mean, I think he wants to make sure she’s safe.’

  ‘But I must, I tell you I must,’ Peter was saying angrily, and then with a sudden change of tone: ‘Do you mean you want to arrest me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say that, Mr Carsley,’ Mitchell protested. ‘I wouldn’t put it like that... shall we say we’re detaining you for necessary inquiries? You see you were on the spot, and now there’s your walking stick, and then that digging business in the cellar – it all wants clearing up, doesn’t it? And you needn’t worry about Mrs Carsley. I’ll ring up and make sure she’s at home and safe and then I’ll ring our people and they’ll tell you at once, they’ll know before you get to the Yard most likely.’

  ‘If you’ll do that,’ Peter said, looking relieved. ‘I suppose it’s silly... I feel as if I were going off my head... it’s all like some awful nightmare.’

  ‘If you’re ready, Mr Carsley, sir,’ Gibbons said, ‘we had best be moving... lots to do, you know... not much bed for any of us to-night, I expect.’

  The three of them went down the stairs together and Mitchell turned to Bobby.

  ‘If that had been Mrs Carsley lying there,’ he said, ‘the rope would be as good as round his neck already, if that were Mrs Carsley.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby, ‘but it isn’t – it’s Brenda Laing.’

  ‘And rum, too, that is,’ Mitchell remarked. ‘If you serve as long as I’ve done, Owen, I doubt if you’ll ever have a rummier case than this to deal with.’

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed Bobby again.

  ‘Got any ideas?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘I can’t get them clear in my mind, sir,’ Bobby answered. ‘They go whirling round and round and I can’t get them to settle.’ After a long pause he said: ‘There’s such a thing as being too clever by half.’

  ‘So there is,’ agreed Mitchell, ‘and it’s fatal. You can be not clever enough, and get away with it all right, but when you’re too clever, then, sooner or later, you crash. And all this business looks to me just a little tiny bit too clever. But there’s one thing I’ll say again, if that were Mrs Carsley there, instead of only her coat and hat – why, then Carsley would swing sure as God’s in heaven.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby, ‘so he would, only –’ and he and Mitchell talked long and earnestly together, were still so talking indeed when at last there arrived the assistance Mitchell had sent for.

  CHAPTER 30

  BAITING A TRAP

  It was late enough before Bobby got to bed, but he was able to allow himself an extra hour there or so, and then to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, during which he read his own paper, and borrowed the landlady’s to look at hers, and was able to note with satisfaction that not a word appeared of the previous night’s tragic happenings.

  ‘Good old Mitchell,’ he said to himself, ‘he’s managed to keep it dark so far, though I suppose the newspaper men will always play up if you put it to them nicely – hard on them, too, when they smell things out so quickly.’

  He finished his meal and started out in time to arrive at Lincoln’s Inn about eleven, at which hour he strolled into the office of Messrs Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden.

  ‘Mr Carsley in?’ he asked. ‘Could I see him?’

  It appeared Mr Carsley was not in, a fact which did not much surprise Bobby. Mr Carsley, the clerks explained, had not yet arrived. It was unusual for him to be so late and no message explaining his absence had been received, but no doubt he would not be long now. So Bobby looked worried, and said it was important, and would Mr Carsley’s partner, Mr Marsden, know where he was?

  The clerks all giggled at this, and said he might ask Mr Marsden himself if he liked. For their part, they would rather be excused. It was hardly safe, these days, to mention one partner’s name to the other, and then Marsden appeared from his private room. To Bobby’s inquiry he answered that he knew nothing about Carsley and didn’t much want to, either. Why? Did Bobby want to see him?

  ‘Oh, just one or two questions I’ve been instructed to ask him about last night,’ Bobby answered carelessly. ‘But I can’t find him. I’ve been to the house and he’s not there. Mrs Carsley isn’t there, either. It seems she didn’t come home last night. The servants say they suppose Mr Carsley knows where she is, but he didn’t say.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Marsden, ‘very funny. But what happened last night? Nothing serious, I hope? Come in here.’ He led the way back into his private room, and, producing a box of cigars, offered Bobby one. ‘What about last night?’ he repeated.

  ‘Oh, nothing of any importance,’ Bobby answered.

  ‘Only, as you know, we’ve felt we had to keep Mr Carsley under observation, and last night our men trailed him to a rummy, out-of-the-way place, way out at the back of beyond, an old empty house.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marsden. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, when he got there, he started digging in the cellar. Now, what can you make of that?’

  ‘Digging in the cellar?’ Marsden repeated. ‘Why? Digging... what for?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Bobby, savouring his cigar. ‘I am enjoying this, Mr Marsden, if I may say so – not often a cigar like this comes my way.’

  ‘But... but... you did something...? Surely you did something...?’

  ‘Oh, yes, our people asked him what he was up to,’ Bobby answered. ‘He told some sort of wild story about having been rung up about the diamonds stolen when Sir Christopher was murdered – you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ said Marsden. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, his story was someone had rung him up and told him they were hidden there – buried in the cellar apparently. Sort of yarn you can’t make head or tail of – might be true and mightn’t.’

  ‘But but...’ Marsden said, ‘didn’t you... I mean... you surely didn’t accept that? Surely you took further action?’

  ‘What could we do?’ asked Bobby. ‘No law against digging holes in cellar floors. Funny, of course, as suspicious as you like, most likely something behind it, but we can’t act on suspicions and “most likely”, can we?’

  ‘Didn’t you look round... search the house?’ Marsden asked.

  ‘Why, of course,’ Bobby answered. ‘From top to bottom – rather.’

  ‘You... found... found?’

  ‘The whole place was as bare as the palm of your hand,’ Bobby said. ‘Looked as if no one had lived there for years – I expect no one has, either.’

  ‘You looked everywhere?’

  ‘Went over it with a fine tooth comb,’ declared Bobby. ‘The garden, too. We thought there must be something somewhere to explain why Mr Carsley went digging in the cellar. But as I said just now, no one might have been near the place since the beginning of the century. Funnily enough one room was locked – a room at the very top of the house.’

  ‘You didn’t open it – look there?’

  ‘Oh, come, Mr Marsden, what do you take us for?’ Bobby asked in mild protest. ‘We have got some sense, you know, we have really.’

  ‘Then... inside... you loo
ked...?’

  ‘Oh, we had that door open in two shakes of a donkey’s tail,’ Bobby answered, puffing out a cloud of smoke and watching it curl upwards to the ceiling... ‘I can tell you, Mr Marsden, if ever the C.I.D. take to burglary... there isn’t a door or a safe in existence our people couldn’t open.’

  ‘And,’ asked Marsden, ‘when you opened it... this locked door... you found...?’

  ‘Why, that’s almost the queerest part of it,’ said Bobby, slowly knocking off the long ash from his cigar. ‘Yes, I really think that’s the queerest thing of all.’

  ‘Yes... what?’ asked Marsden. ‘What?’

  ‘You would never guess,’ said Bobby. ‘I would lay anyone a five-pound note to a bad threepenny bit, they’d never guess.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they?’ said Marsden. ‘What... what did you find?’

  ‘Why, inside that locked room,’ said Bobby, ‘behind the door, lying there–’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marsden, ‘yes.’

  ‘–was Mr Carsley’s walking stick,’ Bobby concluded his sentence. ‘What do you make of that? You know the one with the crooked handle in some kind of horn.’

  ‘Nothing... else?’

  ‘Well, they did have a good look round for his hat and gloves as well,’ chuckled Bobby, ‘because they felt those ought to be there, too. But they weren’t. Not a sign of them. A locked room in an empty house, all bare as the top of the bald man’s head in the advertisements before he starts using So-and-So’s hair restorer, and inside that locked room – Mr Carsley’s walking stick. What do you make of that, Mr Marsden?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marsden. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Funny, too,’ Bobby went on; ‘when we showed it Mr Carsley he agreed at once it was his, but he swore up and down he hadn’t brought it with him, hadn’t been upstairs, didn’t know there was a locked room in the place, or, if there was, how his walking stick came to be inside it. Told us we were drunk or dreaming, but we weren’t, for that’s where we found it. Now, Mr Marsden, what are poor, worried C.I.D. men to make of all that?’

  ‘It seems funny, certainly,’ agreed Marsden, ‘there must be something ... I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I must be going,’ declared Bobby, ‘mustn’t waste any more of your time – suppose we shall run up against Mr Carsley sooner or later.’

  ‘Isn’t he still under observation?’ Marsden asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s how it is he was followed last night to the place I’ve been telling you about. But we lost him afterwards.

  ‘Of course, anyone can always dodge us if he wants to – tubes, lifts, shops with a dozen doors, and all the rest of it. Big towns are just made for dodgers. We can’t help that. But I want to see him again as soon as possible. Mrs Carsley, too. It’s worrying us more than a bit to know what’s really behind his being in that old empty house last night.’

  ‘I suppose you are keeping the house under observation, too?’ Marsden asked.

  ‘What for?’ Bobby demanded. ‘Nothing there, it was examined and searched from top to bottom, and I’ll swear there’s nothing there.’

  He went off then and round a corner at a little distance found a car waiting. As he approached the door opened. He entered. Mitchell was sitting there. The car started and Mitchell said:

  ‘Get on all right?’

  ‘I think so, sir,’ Bobby answered. ‘I followed instructions closely.’

  ‘Good. You look a bit pale.’

  ‘I remember reading,’ Bobby said slowly, ‘that St Thomas Aquinas, I think it was, said one of the pleasures of the saved in heaven would be leaning over to watch the damned burning in the flames of hell. That’s what I’ve been doing.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Watching the tortures of the damned – and I think Thomas Aquinas overrated the fun to be had from doing that.’

  ‘I think in your place,’ observed Mitchell meditatively, ‘I should have enjoyed it all right enough – this time for once in a way I’m on the side of the saints. Got any sandwiches?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Mitchell shook his head gravely.

  ‘A good detective never forgets his sandwiches,’ he said. ‘That’s the first law of all sound detective work – don’t forget the sandwiches. We may have to wait there all day.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bobby, rather dispiritedly.

  ‘Just as well,’ observed Mitchell, ‘that they always put me up enough for two.’

  ‘Do they, sir?’ said Bobby hopefully.

  ‘That’s because,’ explained Mitchell, ‘they know I’ve an appetite for two.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ said Bobby, less hopefully this time.

  The car stopped and Mitchell got out. Bobby followed and Mitchell said:

  ‘We’ll do the rest of the way on foot, across the fields at the back. We have a wary bird to deal with and we don’t want to give anyone any more chance than we can help of telling him two men, both outsize, have been seen entering the old mill.’

  Evidently Mitchell had taken pains to find out the best way to take to accomplish his purpose of reaching their destination unseen. He led the way first by a field path, and then across some fields in the shadow of a tall hedge, till they reached the crumbling wall that bounded the old mill’s garden. A gap Let them through, and by the back door, purposely opened the previous night, they entered the building and made their way upstairs to the room where had been found the dead body, now removed, of Brenda Laing.

  ‘Suppose he doesn’t come, sir?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Then we shall have wasted our time and had our trouble for nothing,’ answered Mitchell. ‘Most C.I.D. work is time wasted and trouble for nothing. You can make up your mind to that, young man. Which of those two cupboards looks the most uncomfortable?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ answered Bobby cautiously.

  ‘It’s the one I wanted you to choose,’ explained Mitchell. He got inside one and closed the door, then opened it again. ‘Get inside the other and see if you fit,’ he ordered and when Bobby obeyed: ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘the door shuts all right and none of you is sticking out. Leave a crack or make one with your knife so you can see to take notes. How’s your shorthand?’

  ‘Fair to middling, sir,’ answered Bobby.

  ‘Can you do two hundred a minute?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Bobby confidently, ‘but I can’t read it again. A hundred a minute is as much as I can manage and be sure of being able to make it out afterwards.’

  ‘Ought to be good enough,’ observed Mitchell. ‘Remember, we mustn’t move, we mustn’t speak, we mustn’t smoke, we must only stand and suffer, and curse the day we told our mothers we were entering the police force.’

  CHAPTER 31

  IN THE ATTIC

  After several years – at least, so it seemed to Bobby, suffocating, cramped, bored stiff in a very literal sense, but really after a couple of hours or so by a more normal measurement of time – they both heard an approaching sound. Rather, they both heard amid the other sounds of which the still, old house seemed full, one that was like that of a footstep on the stairs.

  They lost it. They heard it again. It was doubtful, hesitant, uncertain. They both knew, with an intuition surer than any formal knowledge could ever be, that on the landing outside there was someone driven very horribly by a fear that urged him on to enter, held back as terribly by another that told him he must not. And to both of them, hidden and waiting, there came the same thought:

  ‘Suppose the second fear proves the greater and he goes away again and we do not even see him.’

  The door of the room was dashed violently open. With a kind of rush Marsden appeared on the threshold. A stray ray of sunshine through a crack in the shuttered window illumined his features and showed them, no longer smooth, controlled, set in an unchanging mask as formerly, but twisted, contorted, agonized beyond all imagining. For a moment he stood there glaring – there is no other word – glaring all around in a p
anic of wonder, doubt, and terror.

  He came a step or two forward, peering anxiously, doubtfully, at the spot upon the bare boards where a little before a dead body had lain. He made a kind of gesture with one hand towards it, and then quite suddenly, as it seemed, his self-control broke down, and he burst into a screaming torrent of words from which it was hard to pick out any two that made coherent sense. He swore, gesticulated, shouted, he made appeal to unseen powers, his arms waved frantically, hysteria had him in its grip, he blasphemed aloud, defying his Creator; alone, as he thought, he raved there in that quiet, silent, and unheeding room, and the two hidden watchers waited in grim patience the outcome of this extraordinary scene.

  As for trying to take down that torrent of incoherent raving, Bobby, though he had note-book and pencil ready, gave up the attempt. All he could do was to try to catch now and again distinguishable words and to remember them.

  At last, breathless, panting, exhausted, Marsden ceased, and leaned against the wall, wiping with his handkerchief his face down which the sweat ran like a young girl’s tears.

  ‘Who moved her?’ he said aloud, muttering to himself, ‘she couldn’t have moved herself... that’s certain, not when she was dead... who’s done it then?... what for?... where is she?. .. she couldn’t herself... I didn’t miss... well, then, someone must have moved her... who?... what?... why?... what for? What for? What for?’ He went unsteadily across the room and stood staring down at the spot where the body had lain, where the fresh bloodstains were clearly visible. ‘They couldn’t see that,’ he muttered, ‘those cursed police... the fools, the fools,’ he screamed, ‘not to see that, the fools.’ Then he fell to his muttering again. ‘Everything arranged so perfectly and then for it to go wrong like this because those fools... those utter fools... well, she didn’t move herself, that’s certain, but who did? What for? What for? I shall go mad, I think... there’s madness somewhere... where can her body be?’

  He wiped his streaming face again and seemed on the brink of a fresh attack of hysteria. With an effort he appeared to conquer it and for the first time to notice the cupboards.