by Molly Thynne
He paused, rendered a little breathless by this unaccustomed eloquence.
“Who told you Mr. Anthony had a key?” asked Constantine.
“One of the door-keepers, sir. A man called Binns. He informed me that Mr. Anthony was in the habit of practising on the organ and had been supplied with a key for that purpose.”
“Have you known this man Binns long?”
“I’ve been in the habit of chatting with him on the occasions on which I have visited the cinema, sir.”
“He doesn’t belong to your branch of the British Legion, by any chance?”
“No, sir, but he was in the same sector as myself in nineteen sixteen, though we never met out there. We have recollections in common, sir.”
Constantine regarded him with amused approbation.
“So far as I can see, Manners,” he said, “your job’s half done already. I was going to ask you to cultivate this man Binns, and see if there is anything he hasn’t told the police. There are one or two facts you had better know about him.”
He told Manners of the grudge Binns was supposed to harbour against Anthony.
“My own impression is that the man had nothing to do with the murder,” he added, “but he may know more than he has chosen to say. You might see what you can do in that direction. And there’s another thing. I gather that the members of the orchestra are in the habit of slipping out occasionally during the performance, and I think we may take it that some of them, at any rate, are also in the habit of frequenting some pub in the neighbourhood. Binns would no doubt help you there. Get into conversation with them if you can and pick up anything, no matter how trivial.”
“Very good, sir.”
“You understand, Manners, I’m not asking you to trap Binns in any way. In fact, if you’d prefer not to touch that side of it I shall understand.”
“I feel no anxiety about Binns, sir,” said Manners firmly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think your estimate is correct. He hasn’t the criminal mind. I take it that I report to you, sir, and not to the police?”
Constantine looked doubtful.
“Anything you tell me will be passed on as I think fit,” he warned him.
“If you will excuse me, sir, I am quite content to leave it at that. You would wish me to get to work at once?”
“The quicker the better,” agreed Constantine. “Mrs. Carter will carry on in your absence.”
Mrs. Carter’s name had hardly passed his lips before he realized his mistake. Manners hastened to atone for his lapse from duty.
“As regards the soup, sir?” he began firmly.
Constantine fled into his study.
Arkwright rang up in the evening to say that the expert’s report on the metal support of the double-bass had come in. There were undoubted traces of blood on the spike. He had also been to the Parthenon, and, as the result of a careful inspection, had discovered small traces of blood, both at the edge of the knot-hole and on the flooring of the orchestra. There seemed no room for doubt now as to what had caused the wound in Anthony’s neck.
“Thanks to you, sir, we can now take it that he entered the cinema, dead or alive, some time on the Wednesday morning,” he concluded.
“It narrows things down, certainly,” agreed Constantine, “but we’ve got our work cut out for us still. Will you do something for me? I warn you that it may lead nowhere and will involve you in a certain amount of extra work.”
“I’ll do a good deal for the sake of that little word ‘we’!” declared Arkwright. “It’s something to know that the old combination’s at work again. What do you want?”
“Anthony’s fingerprints, for one thing. I take it that the corpse is still accessible?”
“At the mortuary. That’s easy enough, but why on earth—?”
“A possibility has occurred to me, but it’s so fantastic that, at present, I should prefer to keep it to myself. Meanwhile—and you’ll curse me now—why not add Howells’ fingerprints to your collection at the Yard?”
A low whistle reached his ears.
“Now you’re asking! However, there are ways and means, and it’s good for the young entry to get a little practice. We can probably accommodate you. Anything else?”
“That will do for the present. Good hunting!”
Constantine replaced the receiver and returned to the study of the little leather-covered notebook that had proved so useful in the Goldstein case. The notes he had made in it were rough, mere jottings of times and dates, but they served as a solid basis for his thoughts.
At the head of the page he had written the date, January the eighteenth, the occasion of Anthony’s first unexplained departure. He was beginning to feel more and more certain that there was some connection between this journey and the one that had ended so fatally for the old man. Mrs. Berry had met the police with the utmost frankness, and it seemed highly improbable that there was anything more to be learned from her. Still, seeing that she was the only fount of information on that particular subject, she might be worth tackling.
Accordingly, the following day she was startled out of her Sunday afternoon doze over the fire by the sound of the front door bell.
The Anthonys’ rooms were empty since Betty had departed in state for Steynes House; her two other lodgers were away for the week-end, and her own friends invariably came to the basement.
She rose ponderously to her feet and stepped with exaggerated caution into the area. Since “that there piano-tuner” had played such a trick on her she had been nervous about opening the door to anyone.
She peered up at the front doorstep and gave vent to a gusty sigh of relief. Constantine was Miss Anthony’s friend, and therefore above suspicion.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, sir. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Constantine turned and came down the steps.
“Miss Anthony’s away, sir,” she informed him anxiously.
“I know. It was you, Mrs. Berry, that I really hoped to see. If I might come down. Or am I disturbing you?”
He opened the area gate and descended, a pleasing study in black and white, on the bridling Mrs. Berry.
“Not at all. It’s a pleasure. But I’d have opened the door, sir.”
“This way we both save our legs, and that’s a consideration at my age. Could you spare me half an hour of your time?”
Still pleasantly flustered, Mrs. Berry led the way into her comfortable front room.
“I hope Miss Anthony’s all right, sir?” she panted.
“She’s getting over the shock and being well looked after. You can make yourself quite happy about her, though, of course, it will take her some time to get over this tragic business.”
Mrs. Berry, fussily pulling up a chair, paused, her china-blue eyes round with horror.
“The poor old gentleman! Who was it did it? They do say he was poisoned.”
“Something of the sort. Who did it is what we should all like to find out.”
He sank into the chair.
“This is real comfort. I wish I could get fires to burn like that in my flat. But the kettle’s boiling! I’m interrupting you at your tea!”
“Oh, dear me, no, I’m sure. I was just sittin’ over the fire, havin’ a bit of a rest till the water boiled.”
She hesitated, then:
“I suppose I couldn’t offer you a cup, sir? It’d be a pleasure.”
Twenty minutes later Constantine, over his second cup of coal-black tea, was listening to the entire history of Mrs. Berry’s connection with the Anthonys, dating from their first entry into her house six years before.
“And nicer, more considerate lodgers no one could have,” she finished. “A bit quiet and old-fashioned the old gentleman was sometimes, but Miss Anthony, she’d a pleasant word and a bit of a joke whenever I see her. And thought a lot of her too.”
“You must have been worried when he went off like that, that first time, while she was away,” said Constantine.
Mrs. Berry nodded p
ortentously.
“I came very near to sendin’ for her. And then, when he come back, I was glad I hadn’t. A nice fool I should’ve looked, bringin’ her all that way.”
“Can you remember when it was exactly that he told you he was going?”
“As well as if it was yesterday I can. I’d had me tea and just washed up all the tea-things, upstairs and down, when he called to me. I always reckon to get through with me washin’-up by six o’clock. Must’ve been just after six when his bell went and he called down to me over the banisters to say that he’d got to go away unexpected. I went up, and he was just gettin’ out his suitcase from the cupboard on the stairs.”
“You don’t know if he looked up any train or rang up one of the railway companies?”
“He looked a train up. I was there when he did it.”
“I suppose the book isn’t lying about anywhere?”
She beamed on him.
“It’s in Mr. Anthony’s sittin’-room on the shelf.”
“Might I fetch it, I wonder? It might give us some clue as to where he went.”
“You sit where you are, sir. Them stairs are nothin’ to me.”
In token of which she bustled up them and returned, panting but triumphant, with the railway guide in her hand.
Constantine went through it carefully, but the book apparently had been very little used, and, when he let it fall open of its own accord, did so at a different page each time. Reluctantly he concluded that there was nothing to be learned from it and laid it aside.
“Do you think anything happened while he was out that might have caused him to go away so suddenly?” he asked.
“He hadn’t been out, not since he got back from the cinema at five. The moment he got in I took up his tea as usual, and he wasn’t thinkin’ of goin’ out then, I know, because he asked me to give a message to Miss Anthony in case she wasn’t back before he left to go back to the Parthenon. That’s what I can’t understand.”
“What was the message? Do you remember?”
“That I do. I was to say that he’d be callin’ in at Gunters’, the shop at the corner, on his way to the cinema. So that shows he meant to go back there, doesn’t it, sir?”
“Looks like it, certainly,” said Constantine thoughtfully. “He didn’t get a telephone message, I suppose? Would you know if anyone had rung him up?”
“He couldn’t have had, without me knowing. You see, that’s an extension that they’ve got upstairs. It’s the same with all my lodgers. The telephone rings down here and I press the bell two or three times, according to which party’s wanted. That’s what I told the police. The Exchange has got to get on to me first, and I was in all the time. It’s different when the lodgers want to ring anyone up. They can get through direct from upstairs.”
Constantine nodded.
“That wipes out that then. And yet something must have happened to make him change his mind.”
“I know, and I’ve puzzled over it, that I have. It wasn’t anything in the paper, I can tell you that. You see, he generally used to bring home a Standard with him when he came in to tea, and when he’d read it he’d hand it over to me. Sometimes, if Miss Anthony was home, I wouldn’t get it till later, but that day he give it to me when I took up his tea, so he must have finished with it. And he wasn’t meanin’ to go out then.”
“And no one came to see him?”
“Not without me knowin’ it they couldn’t.”
“What about the other lodgers?”
“All out, every one of ’em. It’s a mystery, sir, and a mystery it’ll remain.”
Constantine stayed on for another quarter of an hour, skillfully drawing out what little she knew about the Anthonys’ habits and environment, but it was becoming more and more apparent that he might as well have remained away for all the good he had gained by his visit. In fact, he realized that he had only gone over the ground that Arkwright had already covered.
After he had listened to a voluble and circumstantial account of Anthony’s depressingly regular habits, he rose to his feet and held out his hand.
“Thank you for allowing me to victimize you, and for one of the best teas I’ve had for a long time,” he said. “I don’t wonder your rooms are never empty.”
“It’s been a pleasure, I’m sure,” the gratified Mrs. Berry assured him. “I wish I could have helped you more, but there it is. There’s some things it seems we aren’t meant to know.”
“It certainly is a puzzle,” he agreed with a smile. “But we may solve it yet. You know, I’ve got a theory that that’s what puzzles are made for.”
“It’s him goin’ away so suddenly that time, I can’t understand,” she insisted. “If he hadn’t given me that message for Miss Anthony about the accumulator, there’d be some sense in it.”
Constantine, already on his way to the door, halted.
“What’s that? An accumulator, did you say? Had Mr. Anthony got a wireless set?”
“Indeed he had. A beauty. One of them portables. Not that he listened in much, him bein’ out such a lot and not likin’ the dance music. Miss Anthony was a one for that, though. Gunters’ used to fill up them things for them, and sometimes Miss Anthony would take them round and sometimes him, accordin’ to which was passin’ the shop.”
“Was he listening-in when you took up the tea?”
“No, but likely he turned it on afterwards. He’d generally listen to the news and weather report at six o’clock.”
Constantine extricated himself as quickly as possible and made a dive for the nearest telephone-box. It seemed better, on the whole, not to retail his news within hearing of the excellent but loquacious Mrs. Berry.
Arkwright was out, but he left an urgent message for him.
“Make him understand that it’s important,” he added, “and that he will find me in any time this evening.”
Then he went home to await the information he had demanded. It came as he was sitting over his after-dinner coffee, and Arkwright brought it in person.
“You’ve done it again, sir!” he exclaimed enthusiastically, as his foot crossed that the threshold of the study. “The information has just come in from the B.B.C. Congratulations. I’m running down to Brighton to-morrow on the strength of it, and, after that, with luck, we ought to get a move on. Look at this!”
He thrust a slip of paper under Constantine’s nose, placing a finger on the second of three typewritten SOS messages.
Will Julius Anthony, a musician, believed to be living in London, go at once to the East Sussex Hospital, Brighton, where his daughter, Mrs. Bianchi, is seriously ill and asking for him (read Constantine).
The date at the top of the page was January the eighteenth.
CHAPTER IX
“IT’s easy to see now why Anthony was so secretive about first journey,” said Constantine, his eyes on the SOS message. “He had kept his grand-daughter in ignorance of the fact that her father had a sister. She’s certainly under the impression that he was an only child.”
Arkwright nodded.
“The old story, I suppose. The daughter kicked over the traces or married someone he didn’t approve of, and he broke off all connection with her.”
“It’s in keeping with his character as I see it,” agreed Constantine. “There was a puritanical streak in him, I should imagine, and once he had made up his mind, he would be difficult to move. But, judging from his grand-daughter’s account, he was both kindly and affectionate. The daughter must have hurt him deeply to have made him go to such extreme lengths.”
“I may get a line on that at Brighton. If she didn’t die, there’s your connection between the two disappearances. If she did die, we’re no better off than we were before.”
“Are you doing anything at this end?”
“Somerset House, you mean? We may as well get all the data we can. I’ll send a man down.”
“Would you like me to try my luck? I know one of two of the officials there. She may, of course, have marrie
d this man Bianchi abroad somewhere, in which case we shall have our work cut out for us.”
“I should be grateful if you’d take it over, though, honestly, I don’t see where it’s likely to lead us. To my mind, the whole thing hangs on whether she’s still alive or not.”
He hurried away, and ten minutes later Manners returned and handed in his report. He had been to a smoking concert got up by the branch of the British Legion to which Binns belonged, and Binns had got leave from the Parthenon to attend it. Manners had treated him generously, which had caused his tongue to wag with amazing freedom.
“He had nothing to do with it, sir,” Manners assured his master. “I have observed him closely, and, if I may put it that way, his personality’s against it. A weak character with a grievance against everybody and everything—that’s not uncommon, sir, with old soldiers. He might get his own back in little ways, but he’d never bring himself to commit a real crime. I should say he’s straight enough in himself, but a bit warped, if you understand me.”
“I do,” answered Constantine solemnly. “But he’d make a good tool, Manners.”
“If you’ll excuse me, sir, I think not,” objected Manners firmly. “A very unreliable character and apt to let anyone down at the critical moment.”
“In that case we’re barking up the wrong tree. We’d better drop that line altogether. As a matter of fact, the police have no doubt got him under observation.”
