The Division Bell Mystery

by Ellen Wilkinson

  Blackitt hesitated. It was against all rules, and all his training, to let documents out of his hands or from under lock and key for a moment. On the other hand, West was, in a way, a more responsible person in this business than himself, from the Government’s point of view, and he had to think of Sir George Gleeson. He must keep in with West if he was to do anything towards untangling a knot in the strands of which he could see neither the beginning nor the end.

  “It’s absolutely against all rules, sir,” he said.

  West was too wily to argue that point.

  “We must trust each other, Blackitt,” he said simply. He felt rather uncomfortable at the effect produced, for he was not trusting Blackitt, but the Inspector said: “Very well, sir. Anyway it won’t be wanted before morning. You will be sure to let me have it back first thing. It may have to be produced at the inquest.”

  With the precious book in his pocket West went along to his room at the Home Office and phoned Annette. She would see him at once. The taxi seemed to take an incredible time finding its way through the traffic to Clarges Street.

  Annette’s flat was stamped with her curiously reserved personality. The walls and ceiling, the carpets and hangings, were of the same shade of old parchment. The modern furniture was of black wood. The only notes of colour were a magnificent Gauguin painting and Annette herself in a trailing dress of orange velvet. Mourning was evidently a duty which sat lightly upon her shoulders.

  Characteristically her only greeting was a smile. Robert felt that he must be equally dramatic. Annette had to be lived up to. He produced the little notebook from his pocket and held it out to her.

  “Is this it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” and her fingers closed over it.

  West caught his breath in a moment of sheer fright. It had been a good entrance, but suppose she would not give up the book? He felt horridly gauche and embarrassed beside this elegant woman; he did not understand what she was after, but he must keep control of the situation.

  “It has been very difficult to get it,” he said. “And I have it on loan from the police department for only a few hours. I must take it back with me to-night.”

  “But it is my property. My grandfather has left me everything that belonged to him.”

  “My congratulations. But this is more than property. It may be the most important link in the whole chain of evidence, and you must help me to use it to find who killed your grandfather.”

  Annette looked up at him with her deep, untelling eyes. “But of course. You are so good to take so much trouble. I will do exactly as you wish.”

  Bob felt this was almost equally embarrassing. “You are sure that this is what the burglars were after?” he asked.

  “I think so. It is the code-book in which he kept notes of all his financial transactions. It is certainly the most important document that was in the flat that night as far as I can tell. But where did you find it?”

  “In the pocket of Jenks.”

  “But why? What was he doing with it?” asked Annette. “Do you think he was trying to steal it?”

  “Well, it’s most unlike anything I have ever heard about Jenks if he was,” said Robert in a worried tone. “And what could he do with it anyway? Perhaps he had wrested it from the burglars before they shot him?”

  “Would they be likely to leave it with him, then?”

  “No, I suppose not, but of course there is the further possibility that your grandfather might have handed the book to him for safe-keeping. That really fits in best with what I know of Jenks. Mr Oissel was breaking his rule in being away from his rooms at night. We know that he thought a lot about Jenks. Surely the simplest thing to do would be to give him the book to look after.”

  Annette smiled her slow smile. “You did not know Grandpère well, or you would know that he would never do that. He never trusted any living person, not even those he liked, not even me. He had no faith in any human being except himself. Awful, isn’t it, but it’s true.”

  They were silent. Robert wondered what was the real history of this strange pair that fate had thrust into his life. Annette was so unlike the other women he knew. He had no key to her mood. He would have liked to have her painted just as she sat, with the colour of her orange velvet dress repeating the rich tones of the Gauguin picture, vivid against the parchment of her walls.

  Her white arm rested on the plain black wooden arm of her chair, and the wood seemed no shinier or blacker than her hair. And so still. She talked almost without moving, but Robert was not conscious of peace, rather of a hidden power rigidly controlled.

  It was no use trying to get Annette to talk at large. Her handling of the Press had shown that. The problem he could not decide was whether she wanted to be helpful, whether this self-control was a screen behind which she had something to hide, or whether this was her usual attitude.

  To break the silence he said gloomily: “Then you are inclined to think that things look black against poor Jenks.”

  Annette considered this for a while, then she said evenly: “But if he were trying to steal information, how did he know that this book was the key document to steal? Grandpère would certainly not have let him know that. No one would know who had not been in actual negotiations with him.”

  “Then you mean that Jenks was trying to get this book for some one who knew its importance?”

  “That seems the most obvious explanation.”

  “Could it be for one of your grandfather’s friends. Did you know them?”

  “Yes, I think I knew all the men he received as guests. The only duty Grandpère ever required of me, in return for his immense generosity, was that I should act as hostess at the small business dinners he gave. I was the only woman, of course, and I left at the end of the meal. I never joined them after coffee. It was such a trifling duty when he was so good to me.”

  West repeated the names Blackitt had mentioned. “Forgive me if I seem to have pried already into your affairs. Were there any others?”

  “No,” she smiled. “Your information seems to be quite complete.”

  He wanted to bring in Philip Kinnaird’s name and watch her reaction, but it’s a little difficult to ask a woman if her lover is a thief.

  “I know all these men so well, except Kinnaird, whom I just meet casually at the House,” he said tactfully. “You don’t think he had fixed things up with Jenks? I mean… er… I don’t want to accuse him, of course…”

  West expected to be annihilated, but Annette remained calm as ever. “Jenks disliked Philip too much to do anything for him. You know Philip’s way with servants? He is not tactful, and Jenks was not quite a servant.”

  “Then the only suggestion that I can make is that some rival group to your grandfather was operating. But killing a man and burgling his flat, however much the mode in Chicago, seems a somewhat drastic method of managing business relations in London. Besides, they could hardly ring up the Prime Minister on the phone and offer to take over the interrupted business where Mr Oissel had left it.”

  Annette smiled her slow, non-committal smile. West felt that he could get no farther with her now. He had established the identity of the book. That, while it seemed to complicate things even more at the moment, must be a valuable clue, but Annette had withdrawn into herself again. She was the silent, defensive woman of the morning’s interview.

  West tried in various ways to draw her out of herself. He felt that something had happened even in the few hours that had elapsed since they had talked on the Terrace. At tea she had been friendly, almost confidential. Now she seemed to have withdrawn behind a sheet of glass. She would not even help when Robert, determined to keep the interview going as long as possible, tried to turn her mind from the grim facts of the tragedy by talking at large. Yet she did not seem to want him to go. He wondered whether she was just lonely in spite of her wealth, or whether she was fright
ened of something or some one.

  He leant forward and put his hand over the hand that rested on the arm of her chair.

  “Miss Oissel, I do want to help. Is anything worrying you? I don’t expect you’ll feel like trusting me. You feel I’m a British Government man and all that, and of course I’ve got to be, but if there’s anything on earth I could do for you…” He paused, embarrassed. He wanted to say: “Oh, hang the Government, take me as your ally, I want to serve you,” but obviously he couldn’t do that, and she wouldn’t believe him if he did.

  He found himself staring at his own hand that was pressing on hers, and forced himself to look up at her. Her dark blue eyes glistened a little. She seemed for the moment near to tears.

  “I’m sorry… I…” he stammered.

  She rose, and he stood beside her, but not looking at her. “I can’t do anything?”

  “No,” she said. “I wish…” She pulled herself together. “It’s the notebook that’s important. Terribly important. If you could find out who was after that I am sure you would have the key to the whole affair.”

  He put the little notebook back into his inner pocket, as though it were a personal gift from her. “You can rely on me,” he said. “I’ll find the blighters.”

  She smiled and held out her hand. He bent and kissed it, and then, to hide an Englishman’s slight embarrassment at this courtesy, he said lightly: “I feel as though you were sending me off to the Crusades.”

  “Perhaps I am. Goodbye, Mr West. Come and see me again soon.”

  Robert, whose mind was filled with memories of an orange velvet dress as he drove back to the House of Commons in a taxi, was jolted into consciousness by a crowd in Parliament Square. He was startled to see a posse of mounted police ride by his window and into the crowd. Putting his head out he hailed a near-by constable, who recognized him.

  “What’s the matter, officer?”

  “Unemployed demonstration, sir. They’re having a deputation about the price of bread. But you will be through in a moment, sir. The mounted police are clearing the square.”

  Robert watched the well-trained horses chivvying the crowd before them. A woman with a baby slipped. Robert opened the door to drag her for safety into his cab, but a policeman helped her to her feet, and the crowd swept her with them.

  The price of bread. The costliness of Annette. But a bread-march was not like England. Robert suddenly realized that he had never seen a bread-march in his life before. He had read of the demonstrations of the eighties and nineties, the long parades of unemployed in 1911. But the unemployment benefit had settled all that. Now it had been cut to the bone, and so…

  The taxi moved slowly into the peace of Palace Yard. Constables were massed at the entrance, instead of the usual couple of amiable bobbies. When he had paid off his taxi, West stood for a moment at the entrance looking across the silent Yard framed by the dark surging crowd outside.

  The House with its lighted windows seemed the quiet centre of the whirlpool that was London. A harassed Cabinet Minister negotiated with an American financier inside, and outside the raw material of their transactions, the people who elected the Minister and would have to pay interest on the loan, surged and demonstrated. They wanted bread. It wasn’t like England—Stuart-Orford was right about that. But it was the new England, and what was to be done about it?

  The division bell rang for the last vote of the day. West ran up the stairs to vote. He hadn’t the least idea what about. But that is the comfort of the House of Commons. It gives everybody such a comforting feeling that ‘something has been done about it.’ But what, and how, and why, even the men who were doing the ‘something’ had very little idea beyond the immediate details of the day.

  CHAPTER X

  When Donald Shaw called at West’s flat the next day to accompany him to the inquest he was surprised to find his friend looking so worried. It was obvious that he had not slept much the previous night.

  “Buck up, Bob,” said Shaw. “If you go into the witness-box looking like that, they’ll convict you of the murder without troubling to call witnesses.”

  “I’m worried, Don. Damnably worried. There are too many side-issues coming into this affair. Every one connected with it seems to have something to hide. No one is telling all they know… and can’t—that’s the devil of it.”

  “You haven’t been noticeably frank yourself, Bob,” replied Shaw, who felt that he had not been in things very much since the conversation with Sancroft and Blackitt on the night of the double crime.

  “I know, Don, and I’m sorry. About you, I mean. But I can’t tell you everything, and I expect the others are in the same boat. I tell you I am dreading the inquest. The show is taking place on a barrel of international gunpowder, and the coroner may chuck a fuse into it without knowing what he’s doing.”

  “And what will go up if he does?”

  “The whole bally Government as likely as not,” answered Bob gloomily, as their taxi stopped at the door of the coroner’s court. “But what worries me most is that the Chief and Gleeson are at outs as to police evidence, so anything may happen if Oissel’s solicitor wants trouble.”

  There was no doubt as to the immense public interest in the inquest. The gallery had been restricted to ticket-holders, but even so there were many M.P.s and other important people who were unable to gain admission.

  West noted gloomily that Michael Houldsworth was in the front row. Of course, he would be. West had seen something of this Lancashire man’s quiet determination when he was following a trail. He had admired it then, but he was not feeling too pleased at the prospect of having to deal with it himself.

  The evidence of West, Shaw, and Dr Reading was taken first and disposed of very rapidly. Everything they could say had already been reported and written about from every angle in the Press. Dr Reading considered that the wound might have been self-inflicted, but he refused to commit himself further, and was not pressed beyond that.

  Then the waiter was called. West noticed that the Oissel solicitor, who had asked questions in a very perfunctory fashion so far, began to take considerably more interest.

  No amount of cross-examination, however, could shake the simple story of the waiter. He had changed the plates after the Home Secretary had left the room. Mr Oissel had told him not to bring coffee until the Minister had returned. He had not noticed anything unusual about Mr Oissel. The waiter was quite sure that there had been no quarrel during the meal. The Home Secretary and Mr Oissel had been talking quite cheerfully whenever he was in the room.

  “Did you see the revolver on the table when you changed the plates the last time?” asked the solicitor.

  “No, sir.”

  “Nor in Mr Oissel’s hand?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What did you do when you left the room after changing the plates?”

  “I went to the end of the corridor to tell the still-room maid I shouldn’t need the coffee just yet. It is always made fresh for each dinner, sir.”

  “And where is the still-room?”

  “Right at the other end of the corridor.”

  “So some one could have entered that room between your leaving it and your getting back to the door, without your seeing them?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” said the waiter with conviction. “It would have been quite easy. There was a crowd of people up and down the corridor all the time. No one would have noticed anyone going into one of the private rooms, sir.”

  “But could they have got out again after you heard the shot?”

  “No, sir, I was standing just at the door when the revolver went off, and Mr West was there too, sir.”

  “Why were you at the door just then?”

  “The division bell was just ringing, sir, so I knew the Home Secretary could not be long. I was going in to remove the dessert-plates and get all ready to bring in the co
ffee when the Minister returned, as I had been ordered, sir.”

  “So in another few seconds you would have been inside the room?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And seen how Mr Oissel died?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “It might have saved us a lot of trouble,” commented the coroner.

  There was a faint ripple of laughter in the court.

  The summoning of Annette Oissel into the witness-box caused much craning of necks.

  “Queer the effect she gives of brilliant colour even in jet black,” thought Bob as he watched her go through the preliminaries with perfect self-possession, utterly indifferent to the curious glances from the public gallery.

  Annette identified the revolver as belonging to her grandfather. “Was it not unusual that he should take a revolver with him to a friendly dinner at the House of Commons?” asked the coroner.

  “My grandfather never went out unarmed,” she replied.

  “Had he any special reason to anticipate any attack upon his life?”

  “Not more than usual, not at all really, but that would not make any difference. He was shot and very badly injured once when he was unarmed. He never again was without a revolver when he was alone, not even at home.”

  “Once bitten, twice shy,” commented the coroner, and again audible laughter came from the crowd. Robert, watching Annette’s every movement, sympathized with her silent contempt at this flippancy.

  “But how do you account for the waiter not having seen the revolver when he was in the room and clearing the table?”

  “That I don’t know. I am only positive from my knowledge of my grandfather that the waiter would be covered all the time he was in the room while Mr Oissel was alone.”

  “Without his seeing the revolver?”

  “My grandfather was a trick shooter. He could shoot from anywhere. Normally he kept his revolver in the pocket of his coat.”