Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries

by Anthony Gilbert

  He stopped abruptly and began to laugh in a rather appalling fashion. “You don’t mean he was killed with his own revolver? Oh, no, that would be too rich. A sort of ironic justice.”

  Grey broke in eagerly, “If he had a gun of his own, that changes everything, doesn’t it, sergeant? Because if he threatened X, and there was a struggle, then it isn’t murder, but self-defence. And every man has a right to protect himself.”

  “This gun didn’t go off in any struggle,” the sergeant assured him, grimly. “Moore was shot the width of the room, probably when he was on his feet. All the signs indicate that.”

  “But—say he threatened his visitor and X twisted the gun away from him, and then at the door turned in panic and fired ...”

  “You’ve got it all very pat,” said the sergeant. “Mind you, I don’t say you aren’t right. But we haven’t proved—yet—that the gun Moore owned isn’t still on the premises.”

  But though they found the intimidating letter, written almost a month before, that had sent the dead man out in a hurry to provide himself with a weapon, and the gunsmith’s receipt dated one day later, of the weapon itself there was no sign.

  “So you see, Mr. Grey, you must be right. Mind you, that’s what I thought myself. As for where it is now–the revolver I mean–only one person could tell us that; X, the murderer, who, having shot Marcus Moore, went off to put the weapon in the river or in a rubbish tip or what-have-you, and then came hurrying back here to establish an alibi. Because, you see, if X had a witness to prove that Moore was dead on arrival, that might seem to be a proof of innocence.”

  There was a sudden cry of protest, instantly suppressed by the sergeant. “Don’t say anything, any of you. There’ll be time for that later. In the meantime, I must ask you to accompany me to the station.”

  And putting out his hand he identified the murderer of Marcus Moore.

  Solution

  The murderer was Paul Whitaker. He betrayed himself by his admission that he knew of the existence of the threatening letter and of the revolver subsequently bought by Moore to protect himself. But the letter was less than a month old, and Whitaker had stated that he never saw the dead man except on one day in the month. Therefore, he must have been with Moore earlier on the day of his death, and was, in fact, the nameless visitor who came between the woman and the man called Grey. Having disposed of the weapon he came back after watching another victim enter the building, thereby hoping to establish his alibi, and, to this end, insisted on telephoning the police.

  The Man With The Chestnut Beard

  The sensational affair that came to be known colloquially as the Chestnut Beard Murder was quite literally a nine days’ wonder, beginning very dramatically on a certain Tuesday and ending, equally astoundingly, on the Thursday of the following week.

  It was on a wet and foggy afternoon that a taxi drew up before the entrance of the Ritz, beneath whose shelter several people were taking refuge, and the driver, descending to open the door, discovered he was carrying a corpse. He was a sturdily-built man, with a square, tanned faced and powerful limbs, but as he drew his head out of the cab and exclaimed, “ ’Strewth! It’s murder!”

  his face was an ugly, greenish shade, and his voice sick and shaken. As if he doubted his own senses, and those of the police sergeant who had been among the crowd and was attracted by his exclamation of horror, he put out one hand with a snake tattooed on the wrist and awesomely touched the body.

  “No use doing that,” growled the sergeant.

  “Dead?” queried the driver starkly.

  “As a door-nail. Where d’you pick him up?”

  “Bargoed Street. They came rushing out of an office block and shouted to me... .” “They?”

  “Yes. There was two of ’em to start with. ’Im—and the other one.” He broke off again and shivered. “Gordamighty. And only yesterday I was saying I’d been driving this blooming cab for nine months and never found so much as a pin in ’er, and the very next day—a corpse.”

  The sergeant became important. Producing a notebook, he asked the driver’s name—James Lawrence; address—Fulham Palace Road; number of his cab—XY.99991; then the man broke into his story.

  “I was coming down Bargoed Street, steaming pretty slow, knowing it was the sort of day when any gent in a hurry might be glad of a cab, when these two comes rushing out of an office six doors ahead, and the other chap signals to me with a thick cane with a gold head so heavy you’d stove in a fellow’s skull with it. Tall, thin, smiling chap he was, dressed in grey trousers and a tail-coat and a silk hat, as chipper as ever you see—patent shoes and gold spectacles, with the light glinting on ’em. He had a long chestnut-coloured beard, very fine and silky; bit foreign-looking, I thought. This gent.,” he indicated the body, “seemed a bit troubled like, and stumbles getting in, as gents, do when they’re thinking of something unpleasant, and the other laughs and says, “Have a care, Andrew,” and then they slams the door and goes on pretty slow, because of the fog, till we reaches Whitney Square, when the bearded chap calls to me, “Driver, stop here, will you? I have to get out.” So I draws up, and out he gets and goes down the square towards Lumley Street.”

  “Walking?”

  “Yes,”

  “And then?”

  “Well, you see for yourself. I opens the door—and here he is.”

  At that moment a young man pushed softly through the crowd and said in a low gentle voice, “I am a doctor. Possibly I can be of assistance.” He pushed a slip of pasteboard into the official’s hand, inscribed “Dr. Leonard Humphreys.” It conveyed nothing to him.

  “Perhaps,” suggested the young man gravely an instant later, “we may have the cab opened. In this fog and darkness... .”

  The cab was opened and they could all see the hapless occupant, a man,

  square and upright, rather more than sixty years of age, with a clean-shaved face, the skin stretched tightly over prominent cheek and chin-bones; the eyes were ice-grey, hard and compelling; the hands were firm and very powerful,

  but scarred with manual toil; the clothes betrayed an excellent tailor. His face was turned towards the sergeant and the entrance to the hotel, as though in the act of rising in sudden apprehension he had been struck down and proved his fears an instant too late. In the front of the coat, just above the heart, was a jagged rent, dark and dampish at the edges.

  “Stabbed,” said the young doctor, after a few moments, “a rough sort of weapon, like a jack-knife. No dagger did this. Clean through the heart, struck

  from above. Any sign of a weapon?”

  But no amount of search revealed any sort of clue. “Better take him to the mortuary,” the young doctor suggested, dropping back on to the pavement;

  throughout the affair he preserved a remarkably cool front. “You know who he is?”

  “Can’t say I do, sir.”

  “Andrew Martin.”

  The policeman achieved an air of profundity. “Ah! Friend of yours, sir?”

  The young man’s face, which was pale and thin, with dark secretive eyes and thin compressed lips and an expression that bordered on a perpetual sneer, now twisted into an odd grimace.

  “Hardly that.”

  “But you know him?”

  “I knew him well.”

  Some inexplicable instinct made the sergeant ask unexpectedly, “And liked him well?”

  Humphreys smiled and said more softly yet, “Never so well as now.”

  The policeman looked suspicious. “If Headquarters was to know you’ve said that... .”

  “You are at liberty to inform them, and I will explain when I am asked to do so.”

  II

  He was actually asked for that information two days later, when the coroner’s jury had brought in a verdict of “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.”

  “That was a strange remark of yours, Dr. Humphreys,” said Detective Inspector Galleon keenly. “Perhaps you will tell us what you meant.”
>
  “He was a despoiler of other men’s goods.”

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to be a little more explicit.”

  The young man said slowly, with a smile Galleon didn’t like, “There’s a curious illogicality about the Forces under the Crown. You’re going to put the whole machinery of the police in action to hound a man you call a murderer, in order to avenge another who was, in effect, an assassin on a very much larger scale. Everyone knew the sort of man Martin was. He wanted money and power, and he didn’t mind how he got money and power. My father was one of the men who stood in his path. He swept him aside, ruined him out of sheer scoundrelism. I assure you,” he added earnestly, and offered the detective a cigarette, “if I knew the man’s name and you were after him and I could do anything to save him, I would do it. No, I didn’t commit the murder myself. I hadn’t the opportunity, and I daresay if I had I shouldn’t have taken it. I’m more useful alive than dead, even without the money.” His arrogant expression said that if Galleon didn’t know who he was it was his loss.

  Since it was manifestly impossible to connect the young man with the crime, Galleon reluctantly let it go at that. So far the search for the mysterious chestnut beard had drawn a complete blank. Neither Martin’s clerks, his son, or his servants had ever heard of him or seen him.

  On the day of the murder, said Martin’s confidential secretary, he had been extremely irritable because of his failure to get an interview with one Waters, a South American merchant, who was sailing that night. At about three o’clock there had been a telephone call to the private office, and an instant later Martin had come racing out, shouted to his secretary that he was going down to the Ritz to talk to Waters, and had been seen from the window to enter a taxi and be driven away. At the Ritz, however, whither Galleon next repaired, he learned that Waters had changed his plans at the eleventh hour and had sailed at ten o’clock. It was, therefore, obvious that the telephone message was a trap laid by the chestnut-bearded stranger to get the dead man into his power. But though hotels, boarding-houses, shops, stations, docks, restaurants, taxi-drivers, were particularly warned regarding him, he remained securely hidden.

  A search of the dead man’s papers had revealed several anonymous letters written in a characterless upright script, which he had received at irregular periods during the past nine months. They were couched in threatening, rather melodramatic language. “You were very near death to-day. Have you forgotten Fenton’s Bridge?” “This is the anniversary of Pollitt’s death. You were grieved, I remember. But there are compensations.” The fact that Martin had never attempted to take the matter to the police showed that there were certain incidents in the past that he did not wish made public.

  The dead man’s son, Gerald, summoned from a fishing holiday in Scotland to attend the inquest, proved singularly unhelpful. He showed, indeed, a strange disinclination to discuss the matter.

  “Have you any reason to suppose your father was being blackmailed?” Galleon asked him.

  The young man considered for a time. Then he suggested thoughtfully, “I suppose all this is inevitable? All this police enquiry and so forth?”

  Galleon stared at him. “Are you suggesting that your father’s murderer should be allowed to go scot free?”

  Young Martin played with his cigarette-case. “It’s what he would have wished. It was his gospel that the man who’s out of the running doesn’t count. And if he’d wanted the police to interfere he’d have called them in himself when he got these letters.”

  “In this country,” observed Galleon in his cold dry way, “murder is criminal, and is treated as such. To return to my original question... .”

  His companion sighed and resigned himself. “I can do precious little to help you. My father told me nothing of his early life. That he had enemies was self-evident. He was a successful man, and he won his success in a land where the law is identical with a man’s own inclinations. You’ve heard Leonard Humphreys’ story. I don’t doubt he’s one of many.”

  “Then you didn’t know he was being blackmailed?”

  “Theoretically, no.”

  “But actually?”

  “It was obvious there was something on his mind. It was wearing his nerves thin. He became jumpy, couldn’t sleep, developed a habit of glancing furtively round him. And he talked to himself... .”

  “Names?” queried Galleon sharply.

  “He spoke of a man called Bassett, argued with him, but I never knew who he was.”

  Galleon pursued his lips. The name of Bassett had occurred more than once in those strange letters. It seemed to have been an ugly story.

  But Gerald Martin had, in fact, no real evidence to give. Nor was Galleon much more successful with the dead man’s lawyer, a thin aristocratic fop called Cowdrey.

  “I really know nothing at all of Martin’s early life. He never confided in me. I only know that, as a wealthy man, he was bound to have enemies.”

  “How long was he out there?”

  “Till he was thirty-two.”

  “Then, if Lawrence’s estimate of the bearded fellow’s age is right—he put it at two-and-forty—he couldn’t have been more than ten when Malcolm left the country for good. Yet he calls a man twenty years his senior by his Christian name. Who but a relation does that? And if he’s a relation why hasn’t young Martin seen him?”

  “Suppose,” suggested the lawyer slowly, “he is a relation, one Martin was particularly anxious the boy shouldn’t meet?”

  “A son or something of that kind? Even so, why murder? And why

  ‘Andrew’?”

  “It’s scarcely likely that the driver misheard him. He didn’t recognise his fare, and he couldn’t conceivably have dreamed the ‘Andrew.’ There’s the question of the weapon, too. Not an ordinary civilised man’s, according to Humphreys. Still, with a sealed history like his, any number of people were probably waiting their chance to knife the fellow.”

  “Including Humphreys himself?”

  “I fancy his is a hard case. He’s a brilliant young man, with a dream of establishing a cancer clinic for working women. He’s done a lot of research work already, and a few years ago old Humphreys, who’d believe the moon was made of green cheese if you told him so, walked into old Martin’s net. I think there’s no question that there was a bit of sharp practice on Martin’s side. Of course, it damaged the youngster’s prospects and smashed up the old man altogether. And it’s more than likely that there are various Australian Humphreys biding their time. He wasn’t, you know, a very desirable person to have for a father.”

  “Possibly not. Well, then, by hook or crook we’ve got to find the bearded gentleman.” But that they proved unable to do.

  III

  The case was seven days old when rumour began to assert that five-and-thirty years ago Martin had had a red-bearded partner who, having mysteriously come to grief, had shot himself, mouthing strange curses on his betrayer, while the son, who should have been a young man of substance, had gone to sea, hating the land, without a penny in his pocket. From that rumour, others sprang; the chestnut-bearded man was, of course, the missing son; spiritualists went further still, and said it was a reincarnation of the ego of the dead man come back to claim vengeance. Gerald Martin, faced with these rumours, said only one thing. He said, “Do you realise that there’s a telephone booth six doors from my father’s office?”

  On the ninth day, wearying of the slow and circuitous methods of officialdom, he took the matter into his own hands and put an end to the mingled perplexity, mystery, and excitement by himself producing the criminal and bringing him on his own account to the very doors of Scotland Yard. To accomplish this he rose extremely early in the morning and took a workman’s tram to the Lillie Road district, where he entered a garage, apparently by arrangement, and chartered a small dark-red car with a plainclothes chauffeur. In this he made several curious journeys, going to Hyde Park Corner, to Oxford Street, to Victoria, to Fenchurch Street Station, back to Kensin
gton High Street, always following one trail. At last in the Edgware Road he abandoned the car, sent it back to the depot, and immediately hurried round the corner and picked up a taxi that had just put a passenger down. In this car he drove direct to Scotland Yard, where he was met by Galleon and Cowdrey, to whom he had telephoned earlier in the day.

  Galleon looked tired and bored. “May I ask your reason for this extraordinary request?” he snapped as the young man came in.

  “I came to propose that, if you have a form of arrest handy, you might like to take my father’s murderer into custody,” returned Gerald Martin mildly.

  “You have him here?”

  Galleon seemed taken aback, but Cowdrey broke out, “Martin, what in God’s Name does this mean? Are you trying to tell us that you murdered him?”

  “I was in Scotland at the time. No, he was murdered by the man who calls himself James Lawrence, a taxi-driver, but in reality James Bassett, son of Arthur Bassett, who shot himself more than thirty years ago on my father’s doorstep.” His face was quite impassive.

  IV

  “It’s extremely simple,” he explained to Cowdrey that evening at dinner, “it occurred to me when the bearded man didn’t materialize there was probably an excellent reason—that he couldn’t. It was a significant feature that no one had ever heard of or seen him, and except for Lawrence’s evidence there was nothing to show there’d been a second man in the taxi at the time of the murder. The more I thought of that the more likely it seemed that there wasn’t. For consider. My father was seen to rush down the office stairs and to leap into a taxi, but not one of his clerks spoke of a fair-bearded man, or recalled one after the story leaked out. Clearly, he must have joined him later, or been in the cab already. But Lawrence, as we’ll continue to call him, swore they got in together. That was disturbing, but there were other minor points that helped to convince me. How should he, for instance, on a foggy day, see the sort of shoes he wore, or notice the light flash on gold glasses? How could he have noticed so meticulously what the fellow wore? Was it conceivable that on such a day any man would wear such clothes without a mackintosh? And would a man so sprucely dressed use such a primitive weapon as a blunt knife? Then came the story of Bassett, and Bassett’s son, who had run away to sea; I remembered the snake tattooed on this fellow’s wrist: and then I realised that the weapon was probably a seaman’s knife. Of course, it was simple enough for him to lean through the door as if asking the way, flash out the knife—you remember the wound was inflicted from above, whereas if it had been a man sitting next to him it would be struck under the heart and run upwards; and he’d put the knife back in his pocket, where no policeman would think of looking for it. He played his cards very well, but he couldn’t guess Waters was going to change his plans at the last moment. There was another point. My father’s life had only been threatened during the past nine months; Lawrence offered the information that he’d been driving a cab for just that period.”