“Broke into—”
“Yes. Here are the facts, briefly. You remember, when we questioned that Larkin woman I left orders to have her shadowed. Fortunately, Hamper had an excellent man there; a plainclothes constable, new man, whose only talent seems to be along that line. He took up Larkin’s trail as soon as she left the gates. She walked straight up Tower Hill, without hesitating or looking back. Probably she knew she would be followed; anyhow, she made no attempt to give this man—what’s his name—Somers, yes—to give him the slip.
“At the top of Tower Hill she cut across and went into the Mark Lane Underground Station. There was a queue in front of the booking office, and Somers couldn’t get close enough to hear the station to which she booked. But Somers had a hunch. He took a ticket to Russell Square, which is the tube station nearest to where she lives. She changed at King’s Cross, and then he knew he was right. He got out after her at the Russell Square station in Bernard Street, and followed her down Woburn Place to Tavistock Square.
“She went into the third entry of Tavistock Chambers, still without looking round. Somers walked straight in after her, like a fool. But it’s fortunate he did.
“He describes it as a rather narrow entry, badly lighted by a door with a glass panel at the rear, and with an automatic lift in the center. The doors to the two flats on that floor are on either side. He had seen her closing the door of Number One after her. And, at the same time she was going in, a woman slid out of the door of Number Two, darted past the lift, down a couple of steps, and out of the glass door at the back.”
“The woman again, eh?” said Dr. Fell, blowing out smoke placidly. “Did he catch a glimpse of her?”
“Wait. Nothing at all definite, you see. There were no lights on, and what with the mist, the darkness of the hall, and the sudden run she made, he could just be sure it was a woman. Of course, he wasn’t sure that anything was wrong. But as a matter of caution he went close and looked at the door, and then he was sure.
“The lock of the door had been splintered out from the jamb with some sharp instrument like a chisel or a heavy screwdriver. Somers ran down the way she had gone. The glass door opened on a large paved court, with a driveway going out to the street. Of course, the woman was gone. And Somers came back.
“Now, at the time he didn’t know Driscoll lived there; he only knew the Larkin woman did, from what instructions he’d been given. But he struck a match and saw the card on the door, and then he was inside in a hurry.
“The place was in a wild state of disorder; somebody had been searching for something. But I’ll come to that in a moment. Somers went out after the porter, and had the devil’s own time finding him. The porter is an old man, rather deaf, and he was in a bad state when Somers made him understand what had happened. He said he had been in his room for several hours, and had heard nothing. The only person he had seen there that afternoon was a young man who had been there many times before, and had a key. He knew he hadn’t burgled the place, because he had met the young man coming out of the door of the flat, and walked out to his car with him, and he knew everything had been in order then. Somers explained he meant a woman, who had been there just a moment ago; and the porter refused to believe him.”
Dr. Fell was drawing designs on the tablecloth with a fork.
“Had anything been stolen from the flat?” he inquired.
“We can’t tell yet. I haven’t seen the place, but one of my best men is up there now. According to Somers’s report, the desk had been broken open, every drawer in the flat ransacked, and most of Driscoll’s papers were scattered over the floor.”
“In search for some sort of letter or document?”
“Apparently. And I think we have an explanation of ‘Mary.’”
“I rather thought we should,” said the doctor. “Well?”
“One thing in the study struck Somers’s eye because it seemed so out of place. It was your typical bachelor digs—hunting prints, leather chairs, a silver cup or two, sport groups, things like that. But on the mantelpiece were two plaster figures on bases, painted in bright colors—a man and a woman. They wore what Somers called ‘old-time clothes, like the ones in Madame Tussaud’s,’ and they were labeled—”
Dr. Fell raised his eyebrows and grunted. “I see. Philip II and Mary Tudor. Rather an unfortunate instance of a romance, though. H’m. They probably got them at some outing together, and kept them for the sentimental remembrance. Well—who was the woman?”
The waiter brought Hadley a ham sandwich and a stiff whisky and soda. He took a pull at the latter before he answered.
“It looks fairly clear, doesn’t it, after what we decided this afternoon?” he demanded. “It had to be somebody who already knew about the murder. She would realize that, with Driscoll dead, his papers would be examined immediately. And if there were any letters that incriminate her—?”
“In short, Mrs. Bitton,” said Dr. Fell. “No, I don’t have any doubt you’re right. Let’s see. We questioned her before we questioned Larkin, didn’t we? And then let her go.”
“Yes. And think back, now! Do you remember just before she was about to leave? Ah, Rampole, you remember it, I can see. You noticed?”
The American nodded. “Just for a moment; an expression of real and close terror. She seemed to remember something.”
“And do you recall what General Mason had just said? I saw that expression on her face, and I tried to account for it; but I understand now. General Mason had been urging Sir William to go up to his rooms and rest, and he said, ‘The Devereux record is in the portfolio on my desk.’ And that instantly suggested to her the damning evidence that might be lying in Driscoll’s desk for the police to discover. Evidently she has called herself ‘Mary’ only since he had reason to believe she was being watched.”
“But would she have had time to get up to Driscoll’s flat and do all this?” Rampole asked. “We didn’t talk very long with Mrs. Larkin. And Sir William went out to put Mrs. Bitton into a cab—”
“Which she dismissed at the top of Tower Hill for the underground. She could have gone from Mark Lane to King’s Cross in less than fifteen minutes; she could have even saved the risk of time lost in changing trains by getting out at King’s Cross and walking to Tavistock Square. Oh yes. The taxi would have been much too slow. And as for getting into the flat, you’ve only got to take one look at her to realize that she could have broken open a much less flimsy door with no particular trouble. The deaf porter wouldn’t be apt to hear any noise, and the only other person who could have discovered her was Mrs. Larkin—whom she knew to be detained at the Tower.”
“That tears it,” said Dr. Fell. “That undoubtedly tears it. Hah!” He put his big head in his hands. “This is bad, Hadley. And what I don’t like is the symbolism.”
“Symbolism?”
“I mean those two plaster figures you’ve described. God knows, they may have won them throwing balls at bottles at a country fair. But it’s a curious and disturbing fact that the woman signed at least one of her letters ‘Mary.’ Suppose you and your lady-love have two china dolls in which you like to fancy an analogy to yourselves. One of them is labeled ‘Abélard’ and the other ‘Héloïse.’ You’re very apt to look up Héloïse and Abélard, aren’t you, and see who they were? If you don’t already know. And I tell you, Hadley, I didn’t like that Bitton woman’s much too palpably idiotic prattle about Queen Elizabeth being executed. It wasn’t like her.”
“What are you driving at?”
“If there is a symbolism about those two figures,” said the doctor, “we have got to remember two things about Queen Mary Tudor of England and her husband, King Philip II of Spain. One is that all her life Mary was violently in love with Philip, a passion almost as strong as her religious faith; while Philip was never in the least interested in her. And the second thing we must remember—”
“Well?”
“That they called her ‘Bloody Mary,’” said Dr. Fell.
T
here was a long silence. The little restaurant, almost empty of diners, whispered to that suggestion as with the ticking of a clock. There was a little fine left at the bottom of Rampole’s liqueur glass, and he drained it hastily.
“Whatever that amounts to,” Hadley said, at length, with grim doggedness, “I’ll go on to the second thing that’s happened since I’ve seen you. And it’s the really disturbing one. It’s about Julius Arbor.”
Dr. Fell struck the table. “Go on!” he said. “Good God! I might have known— That chases the cobwebs. Go on, Hadley.”
“He’s at Golder’s Green. Listen.
“They didn’t tell us this when we left the Tower, but Sergeant Hamper found it out and phoned to me, and I’ve just finished tracing down the rest. When Arbor left us, it couldn’t have been much more than twenty past six o’clock. You remember, we all looked at our watches to be sure Arbor was right about the time? It was six-fifteen then, and he left shortly afterwards.
“Well, the word had already been carried up to the first tower you enter as you go in—it always confuses me, because it’s called the Middle Tower—word had been carried up to let him go through. He told us, you remember, that he’d brought a taxi down there; told the driver to wait, and then couldn’t reappear. After some length of time, the driver wondered what was wrong and came down to the Middle Tower to investigate. The Spur Guard barred his way, and the warder on duty said something about an accident. Apparently the driver had happy visions of his meter clicking into pounds; he planted himself there and waited. He waited, mind you, for over three hours. Such is the London cabby.”
Hadley finished his sandwich, called for another whisky, and lit a cigarette.
“Then Arbor came out from the Byward Tower, where we were, and started to walk along the causeway between there and the Middle Tower. It was dark then, and still rather misty. But there’s a gas lamp on the parapet of the bridge. The taxi driver and the warder on duty at the Middle Tower happened to glance along the causeway, and they saw Arbor leaning against the lamp standard as though he were about to collapse. Then he straightened up and stumbled ahead.
“They thought he was drunk. But when he reached them his face was white and sweaty, and he could hardly talk. Another of those attacks we witnessed, undoubtedly, but a worse attack because, somehow, he’d got a worse fright. The taxi driver took him over to the refreshment room, and he drank about half a tumbler of brandy neat. He seemed a bit better, and ordered the driver to take him to Sir William’s house in Berkeley Square.
“When he arrived there he again told the driver to wait. He said he wanted to pack a bag and then to go to an address at Golder’s Green. At this the driver protested volubly. He’d been waiting over three hours, there was a big bill on the meter, and he hadn’t seen the color of his fare’s money; besides, Golder’s Green was a long distance out. Then Arbor shoved a five-pound note into his hand, and said he could have another if he would do as he was told.
“Naturally, the taxi driver began to suspect something fishy. During all the time he spent hanging about the Middle Tower, the warder had let slip a few hints about the real state of affairs. Arbor wasn’t in the house long before he came out carrying a valise and a couple of coats over his arm. On the drive to Golder’s Green the driver grew decidedly uneasy.”
Hadley paused, and turned over a sheet of paper from his briefcase as though to refresh his memory. He spoke while his eye was still running down the typewritten lines.
“Did you ever notice how even the most reticent people will speak freely to taxi drivers? They’ll not only speak, but they’ll be quite garrulous. I don’t know why it is, unless it’s because a taxi driver is never surprised at anything. If I were going to establish a system of police spies in England, I shouldn’t make them concierges, as they do in France; I’d make them taxi drivers. Never mind that. Here we are.”
He frowned, and then tapped the sheets on his palm.
“Now, but for what this driver knew of the murder, and Arbor’s rather remarkable mumblings in the cab, I shouldn’t have heard this at all. But the taxi driver was afraid he’d be mixed up in a murder. So after he drove Arbor to Golder’s Green, he came straight back and went to Scotland Yard. Fortunately, he fell into the proper hands, and they sent him to me. He was one of the famous type—stout, patient, rather morose, with a red face and a large grayish mustache and a gruff voice. But, like most Cockneys, he had a flair for description and vivid pantomime. He perched on the edge of a chair in my office, turning his cap round in his hands and imitating Arbor to the life. You could see Arbor, nervous and ultra-dignified, holding to his glasses as the cab bumped, and every two minutes leaning up to ask a question.
“First Arbor asked him whether he carried a revolver. The taxi driver said ‘Ho!’ and laughed. Then Arbor suggested he must be a pretty ugly customer in a row. The driver said he could hold his own. Next Arbor wondered whether they were being followed; he began talking about how he wasn’t in the directory at all, and he had a cottage at Golder’s Green which nobody knew about except some friends near by. He kept hinting that London wasn’t as full of criminals as New York; was it? But what the driver especially remembered was his constant reference to ‘a voice.’”
“A voice?” Doctor Fell repeated. “Whose voice?”
“Arbor didn’t say. But he asked whether telephone calls could be traced; that was the only point he definitely mentioned in connection with it. Well, they reached the cottage, in an outlying district. But Arbor said he wouldn’t go in just at the moment—the place hadn’t been opened for months. He had the driver drop him at a villa not far away, which was well lighted. The driver noted the name. It was called ‘Briarbrae.’”
“The friends of his, I suppose. H’m.”
“Yes. We looked it up later. It belongs to a Mr. Daniel Spengler. Now, that’s about all. What do you make of it?”
“It looks bad, Hadley. This man may be in very grave danger. I don’t think he is, personally, but there’s just a chance—”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” the chief inspector said, irritably. “If the damned fools would only come to us when they get into trouble! That’s what we’re for. But they won’t. And if he is in any danger, he took the worst possible course. Instead of going to a hotel, as he said he intended, he thought he was choosing a spot where nobody could find him. And instead he picked a place ideally suited for—well, murder.”
“What have you done?”
“I sent a good man immediately to watch the house, and to phone the Yard every half-hour. But what danger is he in? Do you think he knows something about the murder, and the murderer knows he knows?”
For a moment Dr. Fell puffed furiously at his cigar. Then he said, “This is getting much too serious, Hadley. Much. You see, I’ve been basing everything on a belief that I knew how all this came about. I told you this afternoon that everybody liked playing the master-mind. And I could afford to chuckle, because so much of it is really funny.”
“Funny?”
“Yes. Ironically, impossibly funny. It’s like a farce comedy suddenly gone mad. It’s as though they introduced a throat-cutting into the second act of Charley’s Aunt. Do you remember Mark Twain’s description of his experiences in learning to ride a bicycle?”
“I’ll be damned,” said Hadley, stuffing papers back into his briefcase, “if I listen to any lecture when—”
“This isn’t a lecture. Listen,” urged Dr. Fell, with unwonted seriousness. “He said he was always doing exactly what he didn’t want to do. He tried to keep from running over rocks and being thrown. But if he rode down a street two hundred yards wide, and there happened to be one small piece of brick lying anywhere in the road, inevitably he would run over it. Well, that has a very deadly application to this case.
“And I can’t keep my pose any longer,” the doctor said, with sudden energy. “I’ve got to separate the nonsense and the happenings of pure chance from the really ugly angle of the business
. Chance started it, and murder only finished it; that’s what I think. I must show you the absurd part of it, and then you can judge whether I’m right. But first there are two things to be done.”
“What?”
“Can you communicate with that man you have on guard at Arbor’s cottage?” the doctor asked, abruptly.
“Yes. Through the local police station.”
“All right. Get in touch with him. Tell him, far from keeping in the background, to make himself as conspicuous as possible. Let him walk about the lawn, if he likes. But under no circumstances—even if he is hailed—to go near Arbor or make himself known to Arbor.”
“What’s the purpose of that?” the chief inspector demanded.
“I don’t believe Arbor’s in any danger. But obviously he thinks he is. He also thinks the police haven’t any idea where he is. You see, there’s something that man knows, which for one reason or another he wouldn’t tell us. If he notices your man lurking about his cottage, he’ll jump to the conclusion that it’s his enemy. If he tries calling the local police, they will find nobody—naturally. It’s rather rough on him, but we’ve got to terrify him into telling what he knows. As you said, the man has no courage at all. Sooner or later he’ll seek your protection, and by that time we shall be able to get the truth.”
“That,” said the chief inspector, grimly, “is the only good suggestion you’ve made so far. I’m glad to see you’re waking up. I’ll do it.”
“It can’t do any harm. If he is in danger, the obvious presence of a guard will have a salutary effect on the enemy. If he does call the local police and there’s a real enemy about, the police can have a look for the real enemy while they pass up your own man. The next thing, we’ve got to pay a very brief visit to Driscoll’s flat.”
“If you’re thinking something is hidden there, I can tell you that my men will find it more easily than we can ever—”
The Mad Hatter Mystery Page 14
