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 71 
 on: March 11, 2024, 08:40:37 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
Friday, August 18th

DINNER proved to be a good deal more enjoyable than might have been expected, if only for the absence of the relations. Mrs. Dickinson strove with a surprising degree of success to make the occasion as much like a normal family party as possible. Now that she was no longer coping with the irritability of George, or being exhorted to be cheerful by Edward, her naturally sunny, equable temperament reasserted itself, and she contrived to keep the conversation going throughout the meal without once touching on the subject that hung like a black curtain in the background of the minds of each of them. Stephen and Anne felt that they were seeing a new side to their mother’s character, and to each the same thought came, unbidden: that dinner at home was, regrettably but unmistakably, pleasanter for the absence of the querulous, contradictory figure who, as far back as they could remember anything, had sat at the head of the table.

But in the drawing-room, after dinner, Mrs. Dickinson’s manner changed. Her face from being serious became solemn, and she appeared to be nervously awaiting the moment when the door closed behind the maid who brought in the coffee. Then she drew a deep breath, patted her hair into place---a sure sign, in the family, that she was worried---and said:

“Stephen, I have something important to discuss with you. No, don’t go, Martin. It concerns us all, and I count you as one of the family now. I have had a letter from Jelks, your father’s solicitor, which I don’t at all understand, and which rather disturbs me. I haven’t shown it to Robert, as I didn’t think it concerned him. You must deal with it, Stephen.”

She fetched a letter from her desk, but did not immediately hand it over to Stephen. Instead, she continued to talk, holding it in her hand.

“I must explain, first of all,” she said. “You all know, of course, about the very odd and improper will that your Uncle Arthur made?”

“Yes, of course,” said Stephen and Anne together.

“Do you know what I am talking about, Martin?”

Martin looked at Anne.

“Do I?” he said. To Stephen, he appeared more oafish at that moment than he had ever done before, which was saying a good deal.

“Perhaps you don’t,” said Anne patiently. “I meant to tell you, but I don’t think I did. Uncle Arthur----”

“Perhaps I had better explain,” said her mother. “Arthur Dickinson, who was my husband’s eldest brother, and the only wealthy member of the family, died last year. He was a bachelor, and he left a considerable amount of money, which he divided equally between his brothers, Leonard and George, and the children of Tom and of his sister Mary. Those are the cousins who were here this evening, some of them. We are rather a large family, I’m afraid, but I expect Anne has told you all about us.”

“Oh, yes,” said Martin, squinting rather doubtfully through his thick glasses at Anne once more.

“Very well. As I have said, he left his money equally divided, as to the amount, that is. But in the way in which he left it, he did not deal fairly so far as we were concerned. Although he was always on perfectly friendly terms with my husband, he had or pretended to have some grievance against us, I mean against myself and Anne and Stephen. I need not go into how it all originated---it’s an old story, and rather a painful one, I am afraid---but it seems to have worked upon his mind to such an extent . . .” She began to be a little flustered, and lost the thread of the story. “Of course, he was an old man, and not perhaps altogether---at all events, I have never felt it right to blame him, because he cannot really have been himself at the time----”

“The long and the short of it is, he cut us all out of his will,” said Stephen impatiently.

Martin absorbed the information slowly.

“Cut you out? I see,” he said. Then turning to Anne he said reproachfully: “I’m quite sure you didn’t tell me anything about that. That was rather a rotten thing to do,” he added solemnly. “What made him do a thing like that?”

There was a pause, long enough to make even as thick-skinned a man as Martin aware that he had said the wrong thing. Mrs. Dickinson pursed her lips, Anne flushed, and Stephen looked savagely angry.

“That’s neither here nor there,” he said. “The point is what he did, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you. He left Father the interest on fifty thousand pounds---that was his share---for life only. Everybody else had their bit absolutely, to do what they liked with. But on Father’s death the capital of his little lot was to go to some beastly charity or another, I forget what. Do you remember, Mother?”

“No. It doesn’t matter what charity it was, does it? But as a matter of fact, only half of it was for the charity. The rest goes to somebody else---a woman,” Mrs. Dickinson explained, lowering her voice. “I’m afraid rather a disreputable person, altogether.”

Martin, to Stephen’s disgust, showed a tendency to snigger at this point. That is to say, while keeping a perfectly straight face, he gave the impression that he was only doing so with difficulty.

“My husband was of course very much upset at the injustice of the will,” Mrs. Dickinson went on, “and he decided to do what he could to provide for his family.”

“He insured his life, I suppose,” said Martin at once.

Stephen looked up in some surprise. The man was not altogether such a fool as he had thought. It was difficult to tell what went on behind those thick glasses. Had he been underrating him?

“Exactly. For twenty-five thousand pounds. The premium was very high, I understand, in view of his age. In fact, I do not think it left very much out of the income Arthur had left him. But as most of his other means consisted of his pension from the Civil Service, which would of course die with him, he thought it well worth while.”

“I see.”

“And now that we’ve had all this ancient history over again for Martin’s benefit,” said Stephen, “can we get to the point?”

His voice was impatient, and more than impatient. It seemed to contain a hint of anxiety, almost of nervousness.

Martin took off his glasses, polished them and blinked upwards at the light.

“I think that what Mrs. Dickinson is going to tell us is this,” he said. “Since your Uncle Arthur died only a year ago, I presume that the insurance policy is less than a year old. Most insurance companies have a thing they call a suicide clause in their policies. What company is this one, Mrs. Dickinson?”

“The British Imperial.”

“H’m, yes, just so,” said Martin, replacing his spectacles. “They would be quite certain to have a suicide clause, and a very strictly drawn one too. It’s a most unfortunate position altogether.”

Looking extremely pleased with himself, he pulled from his pocket a foul-looking pipe, blew through it, and began to fill it. Stephen looked at him with feelings of disgust. He was disgusted with Martin for presuming to smoke a pipe in the drawing-room without asking permission, and still more disgusted with himself for having allowed this interloper to take possession of the discussion. Before he could say anything, however, Anne intervened.

“Martin!” she said sharply. “Put that beastly pipe of yours away, and explain things properly. What is a suicide clause, and how does it work?”

Martin blushed and put his pipe in his pocket with a mumbled “Sorry!” Then he said: “It simply means that if you insure your life and commit suicide within a certain time---usually a year---you don’t recover anything on the policy. That’s all.”

“You mean,” cried Anne, “that there won’t be any money for us? Although Father insured himself?”

Martin nodded, took out his pipe again with an automatic gesture, looked at it, and put it back.

There was a shocked silence in the room for a moment or two. Then Stephen, trying to keep his voice steady, said: “And now, Mother, may I see Jelks’s letter?”

The letter was quite short, and only too explicit.

It ran:

Dear Mrs. Dickinson,

I have been in communication with the Claims Manager of the British Imperial Insurance Company in connexion with your late husband’s policy. He writes to me as follows:

“In reply to your letter of yesterday’s date with regard to Life Policy No. 582/31647. In view of the finding of the coroner’s jury, and of the fact that this policy has only been in force for eight months, it seems clear that Clause 4 (i) (a) of the policy applies. I am therefore instructed formally to repudiate liability on behalf of the Company. At the same time, I am to inform you that the Company would be prepared to consider the possibility of making some ex gratia payment to the widow and dependents of the assured, provided, of course, that all claims under the policy were explicitly withdrawn. Perhaps you will let me know when it would be convenient for a representative of the Company to call on Mrs. Dickinson in order to discuss this matter.”

I should be glad of your instructions as to what attitude I should take in the matter. It would be advisable, in my opinion, for you to agree to see the Company’s representative, without, of course committing yourself in any way. But bearing in mind that your husband by his will left half his estate between your son and daughter and the other half to you during widowhood with remainder to them, it would, I think, be only proper for you to discuss the position with them before coming to a decision. I should, of course, myself desire to be present at the interview, to safeguard the interests of the estate.

Yours faithfully,

H. H. Jelks

Stephen read the letter through twice, once to himself and then aloud.

“Well!” said Martin, when he had finished. “That sounds pretty definite.”

“How many halfpennies are there in twenty-five thousand pounds?” asked Anne.

“I don’t altogether follow you,” said her fiancé stiffly.

“I do,” said Stephen. “Uncle George said: ‘Is it going to make a ha’porth of difference to anyone, whether it’s suicide or not?’ Well, we can tell him now.”

“Father didn’t kill himself,” said Anne obstinately.

“How do you know?” said Stephen in a tone of despair. “How does anybody know?”

“I know because I know,” Anne persisted. “He just wasn’t that sort of person. Nobody’s going to persuade me that Father did a thing like that, not if he came and told me that he saw him do it. Nobody,” she repeated. “Mother, you feel like that, don’t you?”

Mrs. Dickinson shook her head slowly.

“I never understood your father,” she said simply. “So far as I’m concerned, I’m afraid I feel like George about it. I have lost him, and it doesn’t seem to matter very much to me how people say it happened. To you children, obviously, it makes a great deal of difference. That’s why I asked your advice.”

“But Mother, it makes just as much difference to you as to any of us!” Anne protested.

“My dear, I was badly off before I married your father, and I suppose I can bear to be badly off again afterwards. Don’t let’s say any more about that. But tell me, please, Stephen, what are we going to do? How am I going to reply to Mr. Jelks?”

“I’ll deal with that,” said Stephen, rousing himself abruptly from the stupor into which he had fallen since reading the letter. “You needn’t bother your head about it any more, Mother. We’ll see this insurance animal and tell him just where he gets off. As for abandoning the claim to the money, of course that’s all nonsense.”

“Then you do agree with me?” said Anne eagerly. “You think I’m right, that Father wouldn’t have killed himself?”

“Obviously you’ve got to be right, if we don’t all mean to be paupers.”

“But that’s not the same thing at all!” she protested.

Stephen assumed his most superior and infuriating attitude.

“My dear Anne,” he said, “your sentiments do you credit, but they are not going to cut much ice with an insurance company. Our job---my job, perhaps I should say---is to prove to their satisfaction that they are legally bound to pay up. When we’ve done that we can afford to be highfalutin about it.”

“That’s absolutely the wrong way to look at it. It makes the whole business so sordid, so money-grubbing----”

“Money,” Martin intervened in his flat, platitudinous voice, “can come in very handy sometimes. You shouldn’t turn your nose up at it, Annie.”

“Annie!” Stephen shuddered. This codfish called his sister “Annie,” and she liked it!

“But what I don’t quite see at present,” Martin droned on, “is how you are going to set about proving all this. Insurance companies,” he wagged his head sagely, “take a bit of satisfying, y’know.”

Stephen was ready with his answer.

“All that the company has done is to take what the coroner’s jury said as gospel,” he said. “Well, we don’t. We start from scratch. And to begin with, we can go over the same ground that they did, only a good deal more carefully.”

“D’you mean, interview all the witnesses all over again, and get ’em to say something different?”

“We may have to do something like that before we’re through. But to start with, there’s the evidence that was actually given at the inquest. I don’t know the first thing about that yet. My little cousin is lending me the reports of everything that was said. I mean to go through that with---with----”

“With a small-tooth comb,” Martin prompted.

“With the greatest care,” said Stephen, glaring at him. “Then I shall see what we’re up against, at any rate. After that, we can set to work to build up our own case.”

“Well,” said Martin, “I wish you luck, I’m sure.”

“You’re in with us on this, Martin,” said Anne. “It makes a bit of difference to us, you know.”

Martin turned on Anne a look that might have been a tender one, if his spectacles had not deprived it of all expression.

“All right, Annie,” he said rather thickly, “I’m with you.”

And as if ashamed at this display of emotion, he shortly afterwards took his departure, lingering in the hall only long enough to kiss her perfunctorily and light his pipe.


 72 
 on: March 11, 2024, 07:47:40 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
Friday, August 18th

“TYPICAL of Leonard to want to be buried at Pendlebury! No consideration for anybody’s convenience. Typical!”

THE speaker was George Dickinson, the eldest surviving brother of the deceased; the occasion was, as will have been gathered, the funeral of Leonard, and the remarks were uttered as George was climbing heavily into his car after the ceremony. He had been a stout man when his morning-coat had been made for him, ten years before. In the interval he had added an inch and a quarter to his girth, and the resulting discomfort, accentuated by the heat of the day, had put him into what was for him an unusually bad temper. His temper, it may be added, was normally a bad one. What was for him an unusually bad temper was something quite beyond the range of the average adult. It belonged rather to the type of the ungovernable rages of the three-year-old. Unfortunately, it could not be dealt with in the same way.

“In August, too! It’s really too much!” added George, sitting down heavily in the back seat, and mopping his forehead where the top hat had creased it.

“Yes, George,” said a thin submissive voice at his side.

Lucy Dickinson had been saying, “Yes, George,” for close on thirty years. If she had got tired of saying it during that time, she kept her own counsel on the subject. It was certainly the easiest thing to say, and by confining her observations to those two monosyllables she did, as she had found by experience, contrive to save a good deal of trouble. At the present moment, for example, she would have been justified in pointing out that George himself had stipulated in his will that he too should be buried in the family vault, that at the present moment he was badly crushing her new black silk dress, and that it would have been more becoming, to say the least of it, to wait until they were out of sight of the churchyard gates before lighting one of the cigars which he was now, with immense efforts, fishing out of his tail-pocket. But to have mentioned any of these things would quite certainly have meant trouble. And trouble, after thirty years of marriage to such as George, is a thing that one learns the value of avoiding.

“Well! What are you hanging about for? Drive on, man, can’t you? We don’t want to be here all day!” was George’s next observation, directed to the chauffeur, who was still standing at the door of the car.

The car, unfortunately, was a hired one, and the driver was a young man who showed no particular reverence for his temporary employer. Servants who depended on George for their livelihood soon learned the necessity of an eager obsequiousness which in George’s language was called “knowing their place.” This one merely stared with interest at the empurpled face confronting him, and remarked, “You haven’t told me where to go to yet.”

“Hampstead,” barked George. “Sixty-seven, Plane Street, Hampstead. Go down the High Street till you get to----”

“O.K.,” the chauffeur said. “I know it.” And he cut off further conversation by shutting the door rather louder than was necessary.

“Impertinent young swine,” fumed George. “They’re all like that nowadays. And what on earth made you tell Eleanor that we would go back there after the service?” he went on, rounding on Lucy. “Confounded nuisance! God knows when we shall get home.” He lit his cigar as the car moved forward.

Lucy’s voice came faintly through the cloud of tobacco smoke. The smell of a cigar in a confined space always made her feel faint, but that was one of the things that dear George was apt to forget, and this was emphatically not an occasion to remind him of it.

“She asked me if we wouldn’t come, dear,” she said. “It was really rather difficult to say no. She wants all the help she can get just now, you know. I thought it was the least we could do.”

George grunted. The cigar was beginning to have its customary mollifying effect on him, and his rage with the world at large was declining to a merely average crossness.

“Well, I hope she gives us dinner, that’s all,” he said. “It’s the least she could do.”

Lucy said nothing. She had not the smallest expectation that Leonard’s widow would wish them to stay to dinner, but it would be wiser to let George discover this for himself in due course.

“But why did she pick on us?” George grumbled on. “Couldn’t she have asked any of the others?”

If Lucy had been a woman of spirit she would have retorted that the reason that Mrs. Dickinson had asked them was that she happened to be extremely fond of her, Lucy, and that George was included merely as a disagreeable but necessary appendage to her. But the wives of the Georges of this world are not women of spirit, or if they are they do not remain wives for long.

“She has asked some of the others, dear,” she said mildly. “Edward is going back with her----”

“That smarmy parson? Why on earth----”

“Well, after all, George, he is her brother. Then I think some of the nephews wished to come, too, and of course, Martin.”

“Martin?”

“Anne’s fiancé, dear. You remember, you met him at dinner when we----”

“Yes! Yes! Of course I remember perfectly well,” said George testily. “You needn’t treat me as a complete child.”

Lucy, who had done very little else for thirty years, was heroically silent. The mention of Martin presently sent George off on another tack.

“Positively indecent, those children not being at the funeral,” he said.

“Anne and Stephen, you mean?”

“Of course I mean Anne and Stephen. They’re the only children Leonard ever had, so far as I’m aware.”

“But George, they couldn’t be there. They are abroad. Eleanor wrote to us and explained----”

“Then they ought to have been got back again. It’s indecent, I tell you. I can’t see myself, if my father had died----”

But the words had suddenly jerked back to George’s mind a recollection of what had really happened when his father died, and of the nasty, unforgivable scene that he had made with his mother on the very day of the funeral. And with that memory embittering even the flavour of his admirable cigar, he was silent.

“They are in Switzerland, climbing somewhere,” Lucy went on, unaware of the reason for her husband’s abrupt silence. “Stephen only went out to join Anne there just before Leonard died. Eleanor wired and wrote, of course, but she hasn’t had any answer. You know what Stephen is on his holidays. He’ll go off for days at a time, staying in huts and places. They may not even have heard about it yet. I’m sure they would have come back at once if they had.”

“Silly young fools. I shouldn’t wonder if they’d broken their necks.”

After this charitable observation, no more was said upon the subject, and for the rest of the way to London George contented himself with explaining at great length the measures he had taken, in his own words, “to squash the newspaper snoopers” who had approached him for information about his brother’s life and sudden death, and with reviling the Press with the paucity and inadequacy of the obituary notices. That there could be any connexion between the two facts naturally did not occur to him.

Just as they were approaching Hampstead, a thought struck him.

“By the way,” he said, “d’you think Leonard left Eleanor very badly off?”

“I don’t know, George, I’m sure.”

“I was thinking, that will of Arthur’s you know. She may be a bit hard hit. You’re sure she didn’t say anything to you about it?”

“No, I’m quite certain she did not.”

“Um!” said George, turning over in his mind the disagreeable possibility that he was going to be asked for help. He decided that it would probably be best not to stay for dinner, after all.

+++

It was certainly a full-blown family assembly. George, with his new-born fear strong within him, took as little part in it as possible, leaving it to Lucy to say the proper things to the various people who seemed to crowd the little room. These included a number of dim cousins, who had not been able to get to the funeral. Exactly what they were doing there it was difficult to say. They seemed a little uncertain on the point themselves. Martin Johnson, Anne’s fiancé, hung rather miserably about the outskirts of the family group. In the absence of Anne, his position was an awkward one. The engagement had never been made public, and officially even the dimmest of the cousins had a better right to be there than he. Mrs. Dickinson’s parson brother, Edward, on the other hand, seemed to be quite in his element. His guiding principle in life was one which he himself had happily described as “Looking on the Right Side of Things,” and his round red face shone with unction---if that is the proper word for clerical perspiration---as he exploited the situation to the full. His one regret appeared to be the unavoidable absence of his wife, laid low by a recurrence of her chronic asthma. It was a regret shared by none who knew her. Aunt Elizabeth, to her numerous nephews and nieces, was The Holy Terror---a title which was on the whole well deserved.

Mrs. Dickinson, meanwhile, sat, the melancholy queen bee in the centre of the family hive, looking at least every inch a widow. George eyed her with interest. Lucy, he supposed, would look like that some day. After all, she was younger than he was, and had had a better life. What would she feel like? He averted his mind from the thought and concentrated upon Eleanor. What, in her heart of hearts, did she really think of it all? It could have been no joke being married to Leonard. He felt pretty sure that Lucy would---no, damn it! we are thinking about Eleanor!---he felt morally certain that Eleanor’s widowhood was a relief to her, even if she didn’t know it yet. At the moment, she was everything that one could expect---calm, subdued, and appealingly helpless.

Presently sherry began lugubriously to circulate, accompanied by small, dusty-tasting sandwiches. Little by little conversation began to be more animated. There were even faint approximations to laughter in one corner of the room, where some of the less responsible of the cousins had forgathered. But, on the whole, the decencies were preserved, and talk remained at a low pitch, so that the sound of a taxi being driven up to the door was distinctly heard by every one in the room.

“Now, I wonder who----” said Edward, who happened to be nearest the window, peering out anxiously. “I only hope it’s not---Bless my soul, but it’s the children!”

A moment later Stephen and Anne Dickinson came into the room. They looked very much out of place in that funeral company. Except for the ice-axes and rucksacks which they had presumably just deposited in the hall, they were equipped as though Plane Street, Hampstead, were a glacier and No. 67 an Alpine refuge. Their huge iron-shot boots grated uneasily on the parquet floor, and when Anne bent to kiss her mother it became only too apparent that her breeches had been lavishly patched in the seat with some rock-resisting but alien material. From the cousins’ corner came something very like a titter.

“The children,” as Edward to their extreme annoyance persisted in calling them, were respectively twenty-six and twenty-four, Stephen being the elder. They were both tall, slim, and loose-limbed, but in other respects there was not much likeness between them. Stephen had light brown hair and a skin that was ordinarily pale. At the present moment his whole face was a fiery red, and his rather prominent nose was beginning to peel in a markedly unbecoming fashion. Anne had been more fortunate, or more circumspect, in her encounter with the sun of high altitudes and rarified atmosphere. Her face and throat were burned a deep mahogany which blended pleasingly with her dark hair and brown eyes. It was a striking face, handsome rather than pretty, with a firm, rather too square chin that was at variance with her retroussé, essentially feminine nose. The chin, one felt, would have been better suited to her brother, whose intelligent brow and eyes were betrayed by a jaw that lacked character. Stephen had the carriage and expression of the fluent talker, easily making himself at home in any society in which he might find himself. In comparison, Anne’s quiet and reserved manner seemed almost gauche. At the moment, it was certainly fortunate that he was present to carry off a situation that was sufficiently awkward.

“I must apologize for our clothes,” he said. “We simply came straight away in what we stood up in. I hope they’re sending on our luggage from Klosters.” He looked round at the black-clad group. “I suppose the funeral was today?”

“You should have let us know you were coming,” said his mother gently. “Of course, we should have put it off for you, if we had known where you were.”

“Didn’t you get my telegram? I gave a couple of francs to a porter at Davos to send one for me, but the fellow must have pocketed it and the cash for the wire as well. Too bad! You see, we knew nothing about this till the day before yesterday, and then it was only a pure fluke that I happened to see the Times.”

“It may not be any affair of mine,” put in George, in a tone that made it quite clear that he was satisfied that it was very much his affair, “but do you think it is quite decent to come home in this way, in those clothes, on an occasion like this?”

Stephen very ostentatiously did not answer him.

“You see, Mother,” he explained, “I actually got to Klosters the afternoon of the very day it must all have happened. There were the guides and Anne and everyone waiting, and I made them start out that very night. I suppose if we’d waited we’d have heard next morning. It was all my fault, really, but I couldn’t have told, could I? We were absolutely out of touch with everything for three days until we came down into Guarda, where I picked up an old paper someone had left and saw the announcement. There was just time to get down to the station to catch the train. Stopping at Klosters for clothes and things would have simply wasted a day.”

“Of course dear, I understand. Give yourself some sherry. You must be tired. It is good to have you back again.”

Anne meanwhile had quickly gravitated towards Martin, who from the moment of her arrival had ceased to feel or to appear like an ownerless dog in the family pack. Stephen, watching them together, wondered not for the first time what his sister could see in the squat, sandy, short-sighted young man.

“I have asked Martin to stay to dinner,” said Mrs. Dickinson, thereby tactfully indicating to the company in general that Martin was now to be regarded as one of the family, and to Anne that she would have plenty of opportunity of monopolizing him later.

“This business has been a step-up for Martin, at any rate,” said Stephen to himself. “Mother always had a soft place for that little squirt. I wonder why.”

He was wondering how he could contrive to say a few words to Aunt Lucy without involving himself with Uncle George when he was accosted by the least dim of the cousins, one Robert, who explained that he had been managing what he described as “the solicitor’s end of the affair,” pending his, Stephen’s, arrival. Pinning him firmly in a corner, he produced sheafs of documents and began pouring out a flood of detail concerning matters that would require attention. Stephen was somewhat overcome by the mass of work which had to be done. He had entirely forgotten what a complex legal and financial operation dying is apt to be, particularly when it is carried out at short notice.

He tore himself away from Cousin Robert at last, and began to do his duty as host with the sherry and sandwiches.

“A pity you weren’t back for the funeral,” said his spinster cousin Mabel acidly, as he handed her a glass. Her tone seemed to imply that he had kept away deliberately.

He felt inclined to point out that he could hardly be blamed for it, but contented himself with saying mildly: “Yes, Cousin Mabel, it was unfortunate.”

“I was in favour of holding it up, but your mother wouldn’t listen to reason. You’ll go and see the grave as soon as you can, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, Cousin Mabel.”

“You mustn’t let the inquest verdict distress you, my dear boy,” said Uncle Edward, squeezing his arm affectionately as he pushed past him to get at the decanter.

“The verdict? I haven’t heard anything about it. There was nothing in the only paper I saw.”

“Suicide,” said Uncle George with all the relish of the bearer of evil tidings. “While of unsound mind. ’Pon my soul, if I’d ever imagined that poor old Leonard would----”

“No, no!” Uncle Edward corrected him. “While the Balance of his Mind was Disturbed. Not at all the same thing, I assure you, George.”

“Same thing absolutely. Difference in wording, that’s all. Why on earth the silly asses----”

“No,” persisted Uncle Edward. “You must pardon me, George, but it is not the same thing. No Stigma, you follow me, no Stigma for the family. That makes all the difference in the world.”

The argument, once under way, showed no signs of ever coming to an end, but an interjection from Anne stopped it abruptly.

“Suicide!” she exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that they actually think Father killed himself?”

“While the Balance of his Mind----” Uncle Edward began again, in his suavest tones.

“I don’t believe it! Mother, Stephen, you don’t any of you really think that? Why, it’s---it’s too horrible for words!”

“But I assure you there’s no Stigma----”

“You were not at the inquest, Anne,” said her mother quietly.

“No, of course I wasn’t. All I’ve seen was the little obituary in the Times, the one that had the notice on the front page. It said something about an overdose of medicine. We took it for granted there had been some horrible accident, didn’t we, Stephen? Why shouldn’t it have been an accident? Nobody’s going to persuade me that Father----”

She seemed on the brink of tears. Everybody began to talk at once.

“But Anne, dear, your father was always a little----”

“The detective fellow made it perfectly clear----”

“When a man leaves a message behind like that----”

“He couldn’t have opened two bottles by accident----”

“I’ve got a complete record of all the evidence----”

Anne, her eyes swimming, her ears deafened with the sudden babel of noise, turned to her brother for support.

“Stephen,” she said, “you don’t believe this, do you? There’s been a horrible mistake somewhere. You’ve got to put it right.”

For the first time Stephen saw himself as the head of the family, the ultimate Court of Appeal in what concerned himself, his mother and sister, with whose decisions the uncles and cousins might disagree if they pleased, but dared not interfere. He squared his shoulders involuntarily beneath the weight of authority which had descended upon them.

“Obviously it was an accident,” he said. “That is, I don’t actually know anything more about the affair than you do. But I’ll make it my business to find out.” He turned to the dimmest of all the cousins, who had spoken last. “Did you say that you had a record of all the evidence at the inquest?”

“Yes. In the local paper. It’s practically verbatim. They’ve spelled some of the names wrong, but you can check that from the other papers. I’ve got them all. I keep a press-cutting book, you know.”

“All right. Will you let me have all you’ve got? As soon as you can?”

“Oh, rather. I’ll send it round tonight.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll let me have it back again, won’t you?”

“Certainly, if it’s any use to you.”

“Oh, rather. I mean, there’s not much in my book yet, and----”

“I quite understand.”

“I don’t want to butt in, my boy,” said Uncle George, who spent most of his life butting in, with frequently disastrous results, “but is it going to make a ha’porth of difference to anyone whether it was suicide or accident?”

“Not the smallest, I should say,” remarked Cousin Mabel.

Uncle Edward’s lips were to be seen silently forming the word “stigma.”

“Probably not, I dare say,” said Stephen wearily. “It isn’t a bit what I expected, that’s all.” What did it matter what he said to these people? It was no concern of theirs.

“It makes a lot of difference to us,” said Anne. Her glance included her mother, who sat, her hands in her lap, listening and saying nothing.

As if recalled to her surroundings by the words and the look that accompanied it, Mrs. Dickinson rose from her chair.

“If you will excuse me, I shall go and lie down for a little before dinner,” she said. “Anne, I think you had better do the same. You have had a long journey. Stephen, will you show Martin where to wash his hands?”

The rest of the party took the hint and left the house in a noisy, chattering body, each with a private disappointment that he or she had not also been invited to stay for dinner. Only George, as he climbed once more into the hired car, with the cheerful prospect of soon getting into comfortable clothes again, was relieved that at all events the dreaded question of financial support for his sister-in-law was postponed for that evening.


 73 
 on: March 11, 2024, 06:09:29 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
Monday, August 14th

HOTELS in England, however bad, seldom go very far wrong with breakfast, and Mallett, fortified by a good night’s rest, for which, perhaps, he owed more to the admirable brandy of the previous evening than to the somewhat stony comfort of his bed, attacked his imported eggs and bacon next morning with his usual appetite. As he did so, his mind reverted more than once to his curious encounter with Mr. Dickinson. A garrulous, peevish old man, he reflected, with a bee in his bonnet about the hotel, and probably, if one could have got him to talk on any other subject, about everything else as well. If his conversation ran on the same gloomy lines at home, it was not very surprising that his family didn’t altogether love him. At the same time, Mallett could not but feel a certain sympathy for him. He gave the impression of a man unjustly treated by fate. It seemed wrong for any one to be so depressed as to have to confide in a chance acquaintance in the way that he had done. And when the confidence amounted almost to a threat of suicide . . . ! He shrugged his shoulders. People who contemplated such things didn’t confide their intentions, whether to chance acquaintances or to anybody else, he told himself. But at the same time, he could not altogether rid his mind of a persistent feeling of uneasiness with regard to Mr. Dickinson. The man seemed in some way haunted. Mallett’s whole training rendered him averse from relying on, or even recognizing, any suspicion that was not founded on tangible facts. Nevertheless, he had to admit to himself that his companion of the night before had left him in a vaguely disturbed frame of mind. He seemed to carry an aura of calamity about him. And Mallett, who was hardened enough to calamities of all kinds, did not like auras.

As he finished his meal, the inspector glanced round the room. The hotel was evidently not very full, for only a bare half-dozen of the tables were occupied. He looked round for Mr. Dickinson, and looked in vain. For an instant the ominous “Perhaps!” on which they had parted flashed into his mind. Then his common sense reasserted itself. The old gentleman was having his breakfast in bed, most probably---at his age he was quite entitled to it, particularly at the end of a strenuous walking tour. In any case, it was none of his business. There would be plenty of genuine problems awaiting his solution at New Scotland Yard that afternoon.

Some five minutes later, he was walking across the lounge to the reception desk with the intention of paying his bill, when he saw a white-faced chambermaid hurry down the stairs and run to the desk in front of him. There was a hasty colloquy between her and the girl clerk. The latter spoke into the house telephone, and after a few moments, during which the maid hung miserably about the lounge, looking sadly out of place (which indeed she was, at that time of the morning), the manager, swart, flabby, and irascible, came on the scene. He had a few angry words with the girl, who seemed on the verge of tears, and the pair of them disappeared up the stairs together. The clerk applied herself to the telephone, and seemed to be speaking with some urgency.

When she had finished, Mallett asked for his bill. It was some time in being prepared. The clerk seemed preoccupied and nervous. Obviously, something was not as it should be in the hotel, and once again the inspector felt an unreasoning qualm at the pit of his stomach. Once again, he told himself that whatever it was it did not concern him. Accordingly, without comment or inquiry, he settled his account, asked the hall porter (whom he found, quite irregularly, gossiping with someone from the kitchen regions) to fetch his bag down from his room, and went out to the garage for his car.

When he drove round to the front door to pick up his bag, there were two cars there that had not been there before. From the second of these, as Mallett drew up, there alighted a man in uniform. He turned to say something over his shoulder to another who was following him, looked up, and his eyes met the inspector’s. Recognition was mutual. The man in uniform was the sergeant of police in charge at the local market town. Mallett had met him a year or two before in connexion with some inquiries which had resulted in the conviction of an important “fence,” specializing in the produce of country-house burglaries. He had liked the man at the time, but just now, as he smiled and nodded, he could have wished him in Jericho.

“Mr. Mallett!” exclaimed the sergeant, coming across to him. “This is a coincidence, and no mistake! Are you here on business, sir?”

“I am here on holiday,” said the inspector, firmly. “That is, I was here. Just now I’m on my way back to London.”

The sergeant looked disappointed.

“Pity,” he said. “It would have been a comfort to have you around, sir, just in case there did turn out to be anything in this job. Not that there ever is, in this part of the world.”

“And even if there was, Sergeant,” returned Mallett, “I am on holiday, and so remain until I report at the Yard at three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Quite so, sir. Well, I’m very glad to have seen you again, sir, in any case. I must go and attend to my business now. It’ll be quite a sensation in the neighbourhood, I expect, seeing that it’s old Mr. Dickinson.”

“Oh, it is Mr. Dickinson, is it?” exclaimed the inspector, taken off his guard for once.

The sergeant paused, one foot on the doorstep of the hotel, and looked at him with renewed interest.

“So you knew Mr. Dickinson, sir?” he said.

“I met him last night for the first time in my life. What has happened to him?”

“Found dead in bed this morning. An overdose of something or other, so far as I can understand. The doctor’s up there now.”

“Poor chap!” said Mallett. Then, conscious of the sergeant’s curious gaze upon him, he added: “Look here, Sergeant, I had rather a curious talk with Mr. Dickinson last night. There’s just a possibility I might be a useful witness at the inquest. I’d better give you a statement before I go, and meanwhile---do you mind very much if I come upstairs with you, purely as a witness, mind?”

+++

Leonard Dickinson’s room was at the end of the long corridor which ran the length of the hotel’s first floor. Facing south and east, it was now flooded with the mellow August sun. On the large, old-fashioned bed lay the body, the angularities of the wizened features softened in death, the lines of anxiety smoothed away. Mallett, looking down on the still countenance, reflected that he looked happier now than he had in life. The last line had been traced on the map, and the end was where he had desired.

The map, appropriately enough, lay on the table beside the bed, open at the section where the Hall marked the centre of the spider’s web of tracks. Also on the table, he observed, was a bottle of small white tablets, and another, similar bottle, which was empty.

The doctor was just putting away his instruments when they entered. He was young, brisk, and cocksure.

“Overdose of a sedative drug,” he remarked. “I suppose you’ll have to have those things analysed.” He nodded at the table. “But I can tell you what’s in them.” He muttered some scientific polysyllables and added: “Analyse him, too; you’ll find he’s full of it. It’s apt to be a bit dangerous, that kind of stuff. You take your dose---it doesn’t work properly---you wake up in the night, feeling a bit stupid---think, Good Lord, I never took my dose---take another---wake up again perhaps, if you’ve had a drink too much---take two or three more for luck, and you’re in a coma before you know anything about it. Easy as winking.”

Something white protruding from beneath the map caught the sergeant’s eye. It was a small card, bearing on it some writing in a firm, clear hand. Without speaking, he drew it out, read it, and held it up for Mallett to see.

The words were: We are in the power of no calamity, while Death is in our own.

Mallett nodded silently. After the doctor had gone, he said, “That’s why I thought I might be wanted as a witness.”

He glanced round the room, and then, reminding himself that this was not his case, left the sergeant to carry on until he was free to take a statement from him in due form.

When the time came for this, the sergeant, who could not bring himself to forego the rare opportunity of cross examining so great a man, had a few supplementary questions to ask. Mallett answered them good-humouredly enough. Having seen the statement completed to the other’s satisfaction, he had a question of his own to ask.

“I don’t want to waste your time, Sergeant,” he said, “but I can’t help being a bit interested in old Mr. Dickinson. He seemed rather an odd fish, to judge by the little I saw of him.”

“He was, and all that,” the other agreed heartily.

“I wish you could tell me a little about him. He said something to me last night about having been born in this place.”

“You didn’t mention that in your statement,” said the sergeant severely.

“I’m afraid not. I thought it was hardly relevant.”

“Well, perhaps it wasn’t. In any case, sir, we hardly needed your evidence for that. It’s what you might call common knowledge in these parts.”

“He was a well-known character, then?”

“Lord bless you, yes, sir! You see, the Dickinsons had this place ever since it was built, and that was near on two hundred years ago, they say.”

“But they got rid of it some time ago, surely?”

“Thirty years ago come Michaelmas---when old Mr. Dickinson died, that was.”

Mallett laughed.

“I see that memories are long in the country,” he said.

“’Tisn’t that exactly, sir,” the sergeant explained. “Mr. Leonard---the deceased, I suppose I should call him---he couldn’t bear to leave the house. He’s been here and hereabouts off and on ever since. Quite potty about the place, he was.”

“So I gathered from what he said to me.”

“Funny, wasn’t it, sir? None of the rest of the family felt that way about it. Mr. Arthur---that was his brother---made a pile of money in London and could have bought the old place back several times over, but he never bothered to. But Mr. Leonard, for all he had a wife and family of his own, couldn’t keep away from it. Well,” the sergeant concluded pointedly, “I mustn’t keep you any longer, sir.”

It was not often that Inspector Mallett had to be reminded that he was wasting his own time or anybody else’s. He was quite ashamed to discover how interested he had allowed himself to become in what was, on the face of it, the commonplace suicide of a commonplace, if eccentric, elderly gentleman. He pulled himself together, thanked the sergeant for his kindness, and left the hotel. Then he turned his car in the direction of London, and put the tragedy of poor Mr. Dickinson firmly out of his mind.


 74 
 on: March 11, 2024, 05:56:06 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
Sunday, August 13th

AS you come over the brow of Pendlebury Hill, just beyond the milestone that reads “London, 42 miles,” you see Pendlebury Old Hall below you. It lies a little way back from the road, a seemly brick-built Georgian house, looking from above like a rose-pink pearl on the green velvet cushion of the broad lawns surrounding it. You will probably think, if you are the type who has any leisure to think at all at the wheel of a car, that the owner of the Hall is a man to be greatly envied; and you must be very much pressed for time indeed if you do not slow down as you pass the wide entrance gates at the bottom of the hill to glance up the broad beech avenue at the simple and dignified façade of the house. At this point you will notice that over the entrance a board in lettering of impeccable taste announces “Pendlebury old hall hotel,” and below, in smaller but still chaster type: “Fully Licensed, Open to Non-Residents.” Charmed by the sober beauty of the house, fascinated by the seclusion of its setting, your refined taste tickled by the good manners of the notice-board, you will decide that here at last is the country hotel of your dreams, where good cheer and comfort await the truly discriminating traveller. And that is where, English country hotels being what they are, you will be wrong.

+++

Inspector Mallett of the C.I.D., sitting in the lounge of the hotel, wondered for the twentieth time, as he put down his coffee-cup with an expression of disgust, why he had ever been fool enough to enter the place. He was, he told himself, too old a hand to be caught in this way. He might have known---he should have known---from the moment that he set his foot inside the door, that it would be just like any other wayside motoring hotel, only more so, where the soup came out of a tin, and the fish had been too long on the ice, and far too long off it, where the entrée was yesterday’s joint with something horrible added to it, and the joint was just about fit to make tomorrow’s entrée, where tough little cubes of pineapple and tasteless rounds of banana joined to compose the fruit salad, where fresh dessert was non-existent---in the heart of the country, in mid-August! but then it was forty-two miles from Covent Garden---where bottles of sauce stood unashamed on every table, and where the coffee---he looked down again at his half empty cup, and felt for a cigarette to take away the taste.

“Did you enjoy your dinner?” said a voice at his elbow.

Mallett looked round. He saw a sallow, wrinkled face peering up into his with rheumy grey eyes which seemed to hold in them an earnest, almost desperate, expression of inquiry, quite out of keeping with the triviality of the words. Mallett recognized the symptoms at a glance---the craving for companionship of any kind, the determination to talk to somebody, no matter who, provided he would but listen---and his heart sank as he realized that to cap everything, he had fallen, bound hand and foot, into the power of an hotel bore.

“No, I did not.” The inspector answered the question shortly. He did not really expect to choke the fellow off so easily, but one could but try.

“I thought not,” said the other. He spoke in the muffled half-whisper habitually employed by the English in the public rooms of hotels. “But they didn’t seem to mind it, did they?” He nodded towards the other guests in the room.

Mallett was roused in spite of himself to reply. The stranger had touched upon one of his favourite subjects.

“That’s the whole trouble,” he said. “So long as the public eat this kind of food without complaint, one can’t expect to get anything different. It’s no good blaming the hotels. I suppose these people would really feel cheated if they were given two good courses for dinner instead of five nasty ones. As it is----”

“Ah, that’s just it!” the stranger broke in. “And, of course, with the best will in the world, you can’t serve five good courses every day, lunch and dinner, in this place. For the simple reason, my dear sir, that the kitchen isn’t large enough. If they had the capital to modernize it, it might be a different story, but they haven’t. And so they have to resort to the wretched apologies for dishes which we’ve had tonight. Every time I come here it gets worse and worse. It’s sad.”

And looking at him, the inspector saw to his astonishment that he genuinely looked very sad indeed.

“You seem to know the place pretty well,” he observed. “Have you been here often before?”

“I was born here,” he answered simply, and for a space was silent.

He was a man of sixty years of age or thereabouts, perhaps more, Mallett decided. Very clean, with thin grey hair and a shapeless moustache stained yellow with nicotine, he was an unattractive figure, but at the same time queerly pathetic. Mallett was surprised to find himself becoming interested in his acquaintance, and felt quite disappointed that he seemed indisposed to say more. He did not, however, care to break in upon thoughts that were evidently painful.

Presently the stranger roused himself from his reverie, and produced from his pocket a much-worn Ordnance Survey map of the district. From another pocket he took a mapping pen and a bottle of Indian ink. Then he unfolded a square of the map and began to trace upon it with great care a zigzag course.

“My day’s journey,” he explained. “I always keep a record.”

Looking over his shoulder, the inspector noted that the line which he had just completed was only one of many, several of them faded with age, and that all of them appeared to centre upon, or radiate from, Pendlebury Old Hall. For want of anything better to say, he remarked:

“You are on a walking tour, I take it?”

“Yes---or rather I was. This is my last port of call. It always is, you see.” He indicated the network of lines upon the map. “For many years I’ve spent my holidays walking in this part of the world---it’s wonderful country, it really is, when you know it well.” He seemed anxious to forestall any possible criticism. “And since I---h’m---since I retired, you know,” he lowered his voice, as though the fact of his retirement was in some way shameful, “I have more leisure, can start from farther afield. Why, one year, sir, I walked here all the way from Shrewsbury!”

“Indeed!”

“Can’t do so much now as I should like to, though. My doctor tells me---but it doesn’t do to pay too much attention to doctors, does it? But wherever I go, I always end---here.”

He contemplated the map with affection.

“Wonderful how the lines all centre on this place!” he murmured.

Mallett was tempted to comment that there was nothing really wonderful in the fact, considering that he had made them all himself, but the pathetic earnestness of the man kept him silent.

“I often think,” he went on, putting the map away again, “that if we left a trail behind us in all our wanderings like---like snails, if you follow me, mine would be found to be concentrated on this place. It begins here---for the first twenty years of my life it was here and hereabouts more than anywhere else---and now I’ve reached a time of life when I ask myself more and more often, where will it end?”

It was a thoroughly embarrassing moment for an undemonstrative man such as the inspector was. He could think of no better comment than to clear his throat loudly.

“Of course,” the stranger pursued, still in the same hushed undertone, “we have this advantage over the snail---we can make our trail end when and where we wish.”

“My dear sir!” said Mallett, thoroughly shocked, as he realized the full implication of the words.

“But, after all, why not? Take my own case, for example. No, not for example, I’m not interested in other cases---take my own case, for its own sake. I’m an elderly man, I’ve lived my life, such as it is, and believe me, I’ve had enough of it to know that the best of it is behind me. When my trail ends, I shall leave my family well provided for---I’ve seen to that, anyway. . . .”

“You have a family, then?” Mallett put in. “Then surely----”

“Oh, I know what you are going to say,” he answered wearily. “But I don’t flatter myself that they will miss me. They may think now that they will, but they won’t. They have their own trails too, and theirs and mine take different directions. My fault, I dare say. I’m not complaining, I’m just facing the facts. I shouldn’t have married a woman fifteen years younger than myself. She----”

He broke off suddenly, as some one walked behind Mallet’s chair and down the room away from them.

“Hullo!” he said. “Why that’s---no, I must have been mistaken. Thought it was somebody I knew, but it couldn’t have been. Those back views are deceptive sometimes. As I was saying---my daughter is very fond of me, in her way, and I’m very fond of her, in my way, but they’re not the same ways, so what’s the good of pretending that we are necessary to each other? I don’t like her---her friends, for instance, and that means a lot at her age.”

Mallett had begun to lose interest again. The fellow seemed to be merely rambling. The way in which after a casual interruption he had suddenly introduced the subject of his daughter, who had not been previously mentioned, when he had been in the full flood of discussing his wife, indicated an ominous lack of grip on his train of thought. But suddenly he jerked himself alive again, and said in a quite new, determined tone of voice: “I’m going to have a liqueur brandy. My doctor doesn’t allow it, but damn the doctor! We can only die once. And you are going to have one with me. Yes! I insist! There’s still some of the old stuff in the cellar that was here when my father was alive. You’ll like it. It will help to digest some of that horrible food you’ve just been eating.”

The inspector allowed himself to be persuaded. He felt that he deserved some recompense for having listened so patiently. When the drinks were brought, the stranger said:

“I like to know who I’m drinking with, and I expect you do too.”

He extended a card. Mallett read: “Mr. Leonard Dickinson,” followed by an address in Hampstead. He replied by giving his name, but concealed his rank and profession, which experience told him was apt to produce either an embarrassing constraint or a troublesome access of curiosity.

“Your very good health, Mr. Mallett!” said Dickinson.

The evening seemed likely to end on a mellower note than that on which it had begun. But when the glasses were empty, Dickinson reverted to the same subject.

“That was good!” he said. “It takes me back for a moment or two to the old days. To my family, Mr. Mallett, this is merely a third-rate hotel. To me, it is a place of memories---the only place where I have ever been in any degree happy.”

He paused, holding the empty glass between cupped hands, savouring the bouquet that still rose from it.

“That is why,” he added with quiet emphasis, “since my trail must end somewhere, I should like---I feel sure that it will end---here.”

He got up. “Good night, sir,” he said. “You are staying the night here, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Mallett. “My holiday ends tomorrow, and I am making the most of it. I shall see you at breakfast?”

Dickinson allowed this innocent question to remain unanswered for quite a considerable time. Then he said softly, “Perhaps!” and turned away.

Mallett watched him walk with the gait of a tired man down the length of the lounge, saw him stop and say something to the girl at the reception desk, and then make his way slowly upstairs. He shivered slightly. The old man’s conversation had been too depressing. He felt as though a goose had walked over his grave. It was high time he too went to bed, but before he did so, he consumed another liqueur brandy.


 75 
 on: March 10, 2024, 11:30:10 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark was born in Mickleham in 1900, and educated at St. Aubyn's, Rottingdean and Rugby. He read History at New College, Oxford.

This novel, entitled "Suicide Excepted", appeared in 1939 and has twenty-one chapters:

1)    The Snail and His Trail

2)    The Trail Ends

3)    Family Post-mortem

4)    Uncle Arthur’s Will

5)    Two Ways of Looking at It

6)    A Visitor at Scotland Yard

7)    Council of War

8)    Two Sorts of Private Inquiry

9)    Elderson Reports

10)  Plan of Campaign

11)  First-Fruits

12)  Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop

13)  Sunday at the Seaside

14)  Monday at Midchester

15)  “Something Attempted, Something Done”

16)  Parbury Gardens

17)  Mr. Dedman Speaks His Mind

18)  An Inspector with Indigestion

19)  Stephen Decides

20)  Return to Pendlebury

21)  Mallett Sums Up


Altogether he left us ten novels, using the pseudonym Cyril Hare:

1)    Tenant for Death (1937)
2)    Death Is No Sportsman (1938)
3)    Suicide Excepted (1939)
4)    Tragedy at Law (1942)
5)    With a Bare Bodkin (1946)
6)    The Magic Bottle, a children's book (1946)
7)    When the Wind Blows (1949)
8)    An English Murder (1951)
9)    That Yew Tree's Shade (1954)
10)  He Should Have Died Hereafter (1958)


 76 
 on: March 09, 2024, 10:43:27 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
CHARLESWORTH was quick to see that Mrs. John Stanmore was in a state of nervous excitement---or of fear. As Bedford handed her out of the cab she glanced apprehensively at the house, and while he paid and dismissed the driver she looked up and down the street as if suspicious or frightened of her surroundings. As for Bedford, his movements were quick and decisive. Turning from the cabman he directed Mrs. Stanmore’s attention to the open door and pointed within to the stair which led to Ehrenfeldt’s office on the first floor. Talking with evident rapidity all the time, he then pointed her down the street in the direction of Holborn Viaduct; Mrs. Stanmore, nodding as if in comprehension, turned away and walked slowly in that direction. And Bedford, after watching her for a second, made for the doorway and they heard him running up the stairs. A moment later and a door opened and closed.

“Queer!” muttered Charlesworth. “Why has she gone away? And will she come back?”

“Evident, I think,” said Mappleson. “The man wants to have a word or two in private with Ehrenfeldt. But---the man is Bedford, eh?”

“Bedford!---right enough!” replied Charlesworth, with a cynical laugh. “Oh, yes, that’s Bedford! Well . . . I think Bedford’s trapped! Out of this house he doesn’t go without me. Safe, up there, I think. And I suppose the lady will come back presently and go up there, too. But---Mrs. John Stanmore! In league with Bedford! There’ll be some strange revelations, Mr. Mappleson!”

He laughed again, and there was a note of chagrin in the laughter---Charlesworth was wondering why the devil he had never harboured any suspicion of these two. Mrs. John Stanmore! Good Heavens!---he had never even thought of her! And yet---why, of course, she’d had equal opportunities with any of the other people living at Aldersyke Manor at the time of Sir Charles’ death. And after all she was Guy’s mother, and if she knew that Guy was about to be cut off with a miserable £500 a year and that she could save his inheritance by sacrificing her brother-in-law, why---there you were! Strange that he’d never thought of that before!---and now to find Bedford in collusion with her---it was a turnover of things that he’d never anticipated. And now he was eager to get to grips with the truth, and he looked excitedly down the street in the hope of seeing Mrs. Stanmore’s immediate return and hearing her climb the stairs to Ehrenfeldt’s office. . . .

“We’ll follow her up there as soon as she comes back,” he said, thinking aloud. “Catch both of ’em red-handed, so to speak. I suppose they’ll have those diamonds on them----”

The door of Mosenstein’s room opened: Ehrenfeldt came in---alone. Charlesworth made for him, hurriedly. Ehrenfeldt nodded.

“All right, all right!” he said. “The lady comes back, soon. Just a moment---I keep the fish playing for you a little while. All right!”

He went up to Mosenstein’s table and spoke a few words to him in an undertone, and in a language which neither Charlesworth nor Sherman understood. Mosenstein nodded, got up, and left the room with Ehrenfeldt; Charlesworth, opening the door slightly, saw them go upstairs. He turned to Mappleson.

“Did you understand what Ehrenfeldt said to the other man?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Mappleson. “He asked him to go upstairs for a minute to look at some diamonds. That----”

What Mappleson was going to say further, Charlesworth never knew. There came suddenly from upstairs a shout of alarm, a stampede on the landing, and a wild call from Ehrenfeldt.

“Hi---hi! You come up here---quick, you come! He is gone!”

With an imprecation on his luck, Charlesworth darted out of the door and up the stairs. Ehrenfeldt stood just within his office, pointing excitedly to the window, the lower sash of which was wide open.

“He must have gone through there while I leave him for the moment!” he exclaimed. “Gone!---when Mosenstein and I come up, he is gone---vanish!”

Charlesworth dashed across the room to the open window and looked out. He saw at once how easy it had been for Bedford to get clear away. A few feet below the level of the window was a low building projecting from the outer wall of the house; it was but a drop of a few feet to that; another drop of a few feet to a yard below. Out of that yard a door, now standing ajar, admitted to a narrow passage which ran in the direction of Great Saffron Hill and Farringdon Road: within a couple of minutes of escaping from Ehrenfeldt’s office, Bedford would be in the midst of teeming crowds. And Charlesworth, muttering a hearty curse, turned to Ehrenfeldt.

“Those diamonds?” he exclaimed. “Did he bring them?”

Ehrenfeldt spread his hands, and then pointed to his desk.

“He bring the lot!” he said. “They are there, spread out, when I leave him for a moment, to ask Mosenstein here to come and look at them. He suggest that his own self. ‘Let somebody else, who is an expert, see them, too,’ he say. ‘See them before the lady arrive.’ So---I leave him to fetch Mosenstein. Leave the diamonds, too---just there, where I show you. Then, when we come back, Mosenstein and me---gone! Diamonds---and him! Vanish---pouf!”

“Why didn’t the lady come in with him?” growled Charlesworth.

“He say he wish to see me alone, first,” replied Ehrenfeldt. “She come presently---take a little walk along the street; then come. You find her outside, eh? But as for him---eh, well, it is as I tell you, as you see! Gone! And those diamonds---worth---oh!”

Charlesworth ran down the stairs and into the street. But he saw nothing of Mrs. John Stanmore. And presently he called Sherman outside.

“No use hanging round here!” he said. “Come on, let’s get busy after this fellow. As to the woman, I reckon she’s off, too! But what on earth did they come here at all for? Here, let’s get to the nearest telephone.”

“Post-office along there---opposite side,” said Sherman. “Telephone there.”

Charlesworth crossed the street and hurried along, with Sherman at his heels, and Mappleson, who had followed them out, in close attendance. They had not gone far before they were aware of a crowd gathered at the entrance to a tea-shop opposite the post-office and near the end of the street. Re-crossing, Charlesworth forced his way to the tea-shop door and asked a policeman standing there what was the matter, at the same time showing his card.

“Lady died suddenly, inside,” replied the policeman laconically. “Walked in, ordered some tea, and died, they say, while she was drinking it.”

Charlesworth pushed into the shop, followed closely by the other two. And he pushed, too, into the midst of a group gathered near a small table in a corner, in the centre of which, still lying in the chair in which she had died, was Mrs. John Stanmore. There was a doctor there, and he was saying just what Charlesworth expected him to say.

“Heart failure---probably been hurrying,” said the doctor.

But Charlesworth muttered something to himself and went out---to get on the track of Bedford.

+++

If Bedford had not made a little miscalculation of his chances---as nearly all criminals do---he might have got away very easily with the Verringham diamonds and with the considerable amount of cash which they found in his pockets when they searched him. But Bedford forgot something---again, as nearly all criminals do. He forgot, when he climbed out of Ehrenfeldt’s window, that that window was overlooked by a great many other windows: if he didn’t overlook it, he took great odds against himself. And as a matter of fact, there happened to be looking out of one of those over-looking windows a sharp youth who just then had nothing to do and was so vastly interested in seeing a man climb out of Ehrenfeldt, the diamond merchant’s window and sneak away from the yard beneath, that he promptly went after him, and following Bedford into Farringdon Street promptly pointed him out to a sergeant and a constable who happened to stand handy at a street corner and told them what he had seen. And what Bedford had to say was not satisfactory, and the sergeant and constable took him in charge, and when, a little later, they found a quantity of loose diamonds and a lot of bank-notes and other valuables on him, they communicated with Headquarters, and by tea-time Charlesworth and Bedford met again.

+++

“He was a queer chap, Bedford,” said Charlesworth, talking to a friend a day or two after Bedford had been hanged at Pentonville. “As queer a chap as ever I came across. Of course, plenty came out at the trial, but I knew more than came out there or elsewhere. Bedford sent for me after it was all over and when he knew there wasn’t a chance for him, and he told me all about it. The real truth was this. Sir Charles Stanmore, who was another queer character, had certain views for his nephew Guy, and certain views for his daughter Irene---who, until all this came out, never knew she was his daughter. Well, Guy and Irene smashed these views to pieces by getting married secretly. A little time before his death Sir Charles found out about this secret marriage---how he found it out nobody knows, and probably never will know. He was a revengeful devil, Sir Charles!---he immediately began preparing to make these young people suffer. But---and here comes in the most important thing!---the very morning before his death, and after he’d had a row with Irene, he discovered---perhaps from her---that Mrs. John Stanmore knew of the marriage and had kept it from him. So he had a holy row with her, and before leaving for town, he told her plainly that instead of leaving her £25,000, and Irene £25,000, and Guy the immense revenue, he should cut his legacy to her down to £1,000 and leave Guy and Irene no more than £500 a year each for life, and, moreover, that he should alter his proposed new will to that effect next day. Next day, mind you!---so there wasn’t much time to be lost. Now then, what happened? To begin with, Mrs. John went in tears and tribulation to Bedford and told him of Sir Charles’ threat, and she moaned and groaned over the pauperism to which she and Guy and Irene were to be reduced. Of course---according to himself---Bedford could do no more than express the pious hope that Sir Charles’ hard heart would be softened. Mrs. John, however, appears to have had more faith in practical measures than in sentimental processes. And that night---again according to himself---Bedford and Purser, indulging in a little quiet conversation, somewhere in its vicinity and where they themselves were unseen, saw Mrs. John steal into the butler’s pantry, where the supper-tray for Sir Charles was laid out ready for Purser to take into the study. Purser stole after her, and peeped through the crack of the door, and saw Mrs. John, but with her back to Purser, bending over the tray as if inspecting it. Now Mrs. John did a good deal of superintendence, and Purser concluded that she was just seeing that the tray was all right. But next day, when rumours began to circulate as to the causes of Sir Charles’ death in the night, Bedford and Purser got hold of Mrs. John and accused her, point-blank, of murdering her brother-in-law! She neither denied nor confessed it, but began to bargain with them. Then Bedford took the situation completely in hand. He agreed with Mrs. John to square Purser, and he made an arrangement with Purser, who was to have a very nice sum per week for life and an occasional bonus into the bargain. Then he accused Mrs. John of having secured the Verringham necklace, and finding that she had it, he forced her to hand it over to him. And, thirdly, recognizing that it might be a very handy thing to have, and before the doctors got hold of the whole bag of tricks, Bedford emptied the contents of one of the bottles in the Borgia Cabinet into a bottle of his own---and took good care of it. It was with that stuff that he impregnated the chocolates that he sent to Purser; it was the same stuff that he used in eventually getting rid of Mrs. John. And now to end with, I’ll tell you exactly what Bedford did on that last day of his liberty. He wanted to be off---and with all the wealth he could get together. He’d tried Gilford for the £5,000---principal and interest---which Guy Stanmore owed him; he’d also tried to sell the diamonds to Ehrenfeldt. Gilford wouldn’t pay; Ehrenfeldt wouldn’t buy except from the principal, the lady of decayed family. So Bedford, having the whip hand of her, turned his attention to Mrs. John Stanmore! First of all that morning, he made her sell out some stock of her own and pay him £5,000 in cash. Then he forced her to accompany him to Ehrenfeldt’s in the character of the real owner of the diamonds---but he had no intention of taking her there. He made her lunch with him somewhere in the neighbourhood of Holborn, and he poisoned her, calculating to a nicety when she would expire. When they reached Ehrenfeldt’s, he sent her down the street, told her to go into the tea-shop and get a cup of tea, and at the end of half an hour to return to Ehrenfeldt’s and walk upstairs. Then, diamonds and money in pocket, he went up to Ehrenfeldt’s, made a show of the stones, asked Ehrenfeldt to get another expert to examine them, and as soon as Ehrenfeldt had left the room, pocketed them and went out of the window. A damned cool, calculating chap!---and possessed of a very queer way of looking at things! ‘It was a most unfortunate thing for me, Mr. Charlesworth,’ he said, in winding up his story, ‘a really deplorable thing that that young fellow should attach any importance to my getting out of the window! I had figured on anybody who saw me taking me for a window-cleaner. A great pity, sir, that a little thing like that should spoil a man’s future!---I’d intended to do very well, Mr. Charlesworth, when I’d got safely away, I had indeed!’ There was an obvious remark that I might have made on that,” concluded Charlesworth, “and I was sorely tempted to make it. But I knew Bedford by that time. He was, like most criminals of his sort---diabolically clever to a certain degree, but beyond that a perfect fool!”

THE END


 77 
 on: March 09, 2024, 10:22:58 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
CHARLESWORTH motioned Sherman to reenter the car, and turned to Gilford.

“That’ll be you, Mr. Gilford!” he said. “He’s after his money again. Let’s go along to your office.”

“I doubt if it’s me that he’s after,” replied Gilford. “I told him plainly that I could do nothing for him until things were settled, and in any case until I’d seen Sir Guy. But you can come along there, if you like, on the chance.”

There was no news of Bedford, however, when they reached the office, but there was news of another sort. One of the clerks stopped Gilford as he was taking the two detectives into his private room.

“Mr. Mappleson called to see you, sir,” he said. “Half an hour ago, that was. As I couldn’t tell him when you’d be in, he asked if you’d ring him up at the First Avenue Hotel as soon as you got here---he wants to see you on a matter of pressing importance and as soon as possible. Either that, or would you go round to see him---he’ll be in there all the morning?”

Gilford looked at Charlesworth and saw that the detective had caught Mappleson’s name and had pricked up his ears at the sound of it.

“We’ll go round,” he said. “It’s only a stone’s throw. Come on, both of you. Now,” he continued when they had got outside the office, “what’s all this about?---why does Mappleson want me and what’s his business that it’s of such pressing importance? Has it anything to do with this Stanmore affair?”

“If you’re asking me,” replied Charlesworth, “I should say---yes! What else? Mappleson, after all, knew things. Perhaps,” he added, with a significant smile, “he now knows more.”

Mappleson, found reading a newspaper in the lounge of the First Avenue, betrayed an evident relief at the sight of Gilford and Charlesworth, and after a hasty inquiry as to Sherman, led his three visitors into a quiet corner of the smoking-room. It was obvious that he had news, and was anxious to impart it.

“I’m very glad you’ve turned up,” he said. “I was rather afraid from what they told me at your office, Mr. Gilford, that you might be out of town all day---in fact, I was just thinking of finding Charlesworth, but I didn’t know, exactly, how to set about it. And something has come to my knowledge which, in my opinion---though, mind you, I may be wrong---in my opinion, I say, may have to do with the mystery of our late friend Charles Stanmore, and I wanted to acquaint you with what I know as speedily as possible. Now, look here---you remember everything about the Verringham necklace, and all that I told you?”

“Everything!” replied Charlesworth.

“You police people have never traced it?”

“Not a trace! Never been able to hear a whisper of it!”

“Well, now, I’ll tell you something. You are aware that I am connected with the trade in precious stones, and especially in diamonds---international trade. Well, there came to me, privately, last night, knowing that I was in town, a man of whom I have some slight knowledge. His name is Ehrenfeldt, and he is a diamond merchant, in a not very big way of business, in Hatton Garden, close by here, you know. He is, I think, a decent and an honest man, but very unfortunately for himself, he was drawn, some few years ago, into a rather nasty case of alleged fraud, in connection with a transaction in diamonds, and though he was cleared, and it was proved that he had been a catspaw in the hands of unscrupulous scoundrels, it has made him very chary and suspicious of anything but absolutely above-board transactions.”

“I remember the case you mention,” remarked Charlesworth. “It was a Central Criminal Court case in which Ehrenfeldt and three other men were charged. Ehrenfeldt, as you say, was acquitted; the others got it pretty heavy.”

“Well, Ehrenfeldt doesn’t want to run any more risks,” said Mappleson. “Which explains why he came to me, last night, with his story. And I may tell you that why he came to me was because he remembered my name in connection with the Verringham necklace. Now his story is this. He says that yesterday afternoon there came to him, in his office in Hatton Garden, a highly-respectable man who after some preliminary, general talk about selling valuables in the way of precious stones, told Ehrenfeldt that he was steward and major-domo to a North of England family which, by agricultural depression and the like, had been considerably reduced in circumstances and was under the necessity of realizing ready money on certain of its possessions. He went on to say that the present head of the family, a widow lady, possessed a quantity of loose diamonds, which she was anxious to sell for cash; she was also anxious that the transaction should be an absolutely private and confidential one, as she didn’t want the affair to get known to friends or the public. In short, was Mr. Ehrenfeldt prepared to buy? Of course, Ehrenfeldt wanted to know how his visitor chanced to come to him? The man replied that it was by mere chance that he came---he knew that the diamond trade is centred in Hatton Garden, so he had come there, looked about him, and had called on Ehrenfeldt as he might have called on any one of his neighbours. Next Ehrenfeldt asked where and when the diamonds could be seen? His visitor replied that he had been entrusted with a few of them, and he produced these from his purse. Now Ehrenfeldt is a practical man, and of considerable experience, and he saw at once that these stones were, first, of great value, and second, that they had been detached from a necklace!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Gilford. “From a necklace!”

“Undoubtedly---he said. Well, Ehrenfeldt, like everybody else, I suppose, had read about the disappearance of the Verringham necklace—anyway, he immediately thought of it. But, of course, he said nothing of that to his visitor. What he did was to put two or three questions of a fishing nature to him---to find out if the man had any idea of the value of the diamonds. He came to the conclusion that he had a very good idea! Then, he wanted to know who it was that he was asked to deal with? The visitor replied that the lady desired to preserve her anonymity. That, replied Ehrenfeldt, would never do---he, in his own interest, must know the name of the vendor; must, indeed, know her; must be satisfied of her bona fides. And eventually, he and his visitor arranged that the latter should bring his principal, the widow lady, to Ehrenfeldt’s office at three o’clock this afternoon. The man then left---but, at his own suggestion, he left the diamonds with Ehrenfeldt!”

“He did!” said Charlesworth. “That seems----”

“Of course, Ehrenfeldt gave him a receipt for them,” continued Mappleson. “But whether it looks very innocent and confiding on the man’s part, he did!---and Ehrenfeldt has them. Now, as I told you, Ehrenfeldt knew I was in town---I have had small transactions with him, now and then---and putting together his suspicions and the fact that I had seen the Verringham necklace, he decided to see me. He found out that I was staying here and came to see me last night. He told me the story, and he showed me the diamonds. And now, gentlemen, having told you all this, I am going to tell you still more! In my opinion, those diamonds formed part of the Verringham necklace, and from the description of him given me by Ehrenfeldt I believe the man who is offering them is the late Sir Charles Stanmore’s butler---whose name I cannot recollect.”

“Bedford!” exclaimed Charlesworth.

“I cannot recollect it. But I saw the man---at close quarters---when I was down there at Aldersyke, on my return from Paris, talking to you gentlemen. Ehrenfeldt described him closely---I am sure he is the man!”

“But---the widow lady?” suggested Charlesworth.

“Pooh!---some catspaw, or woman pressed into service,” replied Mappleson. “If my suspicions are correct about the butler, Bedford, of course he’ll have accomplices. This is not a one man job!”

“It will require a rather clever woman to impersonate a lady of old family,” remarked Gilford. “Unless, indeed, your man Ehrenfeldt is easily taken in.”

“I don’t think Ehrenfeldt is likely to be taken in by anything,” replied Mappleson. “But let us get to business! Ehrenfeldt is coming to see me here, at two o’clock. I want you to be here---all three. I want you to arrange with him that you can be on the spot at his office when these people call, and to fix things so that you can see the man. If he is Bedford, as I suspect, you will no doubt have questions to ask him----”

“About more matters than one!” muttered Charlesworth. “Yes,” he continued in louder tones, “and we shall also be interested in seeing the lady. But can Ehrenfeldt manage to stow us away somewhere so that we can observe and not be observed ourselves?”

“I think he will manage that,” replied Mappleson. “But come back here a little after two and you will find him with me.”

The three men went away, discussing the information they had just received.

“What lies behind all this---if the man is Bedford?” said Gilford. “Something, evidently, took place at Aldersyke Manor on the night of my partner’s murder of which we know nothing. But what?”

“If this man is Bedford, let us get hold of him, and we’ll soon clear that up, Mr. Gilford!” said Charlesworth. “Bedford is a damned sly chap---that’s evident---but he’s the sort that will squeal if he’s pinched. If Bedford is the man, Bedford has had confederates. Mappleson was right---there’ll be accomplices. What I’m chiefly anxious about is---who is the lady of family, or, perhaps, who’s the woman who’s going to impersonate her?”

Gilford considered matters a while in silence.

“I think,” he said at last, “I really think that if Bedford is the man we ought to be very careful. Bedford, I am inclined to believe, might be a very dangerous man to tackle if he were forced into a corner. Those quiet, apparently innocuous sort of men generally are. I think we should adopt very careful tactics indeed!”

“Oh, we’ll fix it!” replied Charlesworth. “We’re going to be there, anyway. We’ll settle it with this man Ehrenfeldt.”

But Ehrenfeldt, duly met in company with Mappleson, shortly after two o’clock, had evidently thought out a plan of campaign for himself. He listened to what Charlesworth had to say and then, without comment, introduced his own proposals.

“Yes,” he said, “but I do not want any trouble, any scenes, eh, in my own office, you understand? It pays me best to keep out of it as far as I can, eh? So I think what you will do is like this. There is a friend of mine has his office on the ground floor, under mine---I have arranged with him that you can go in there and look through his wire blind into the street. At three o’clock this steward man and the lady will come up to my office---you can inspect them as they arrive. Now it is for me, what I do with them: I have consulted with friend Mappleson here on that point. Well, I talk to them, chiefly to the lady, to find things out, eh? I get all I can out of her and so on and so on. Finally, I tell her I can’t do this deal on my own, no! I consult my friends about it---I see what we can do---what offer we can make---and she is to call again to-morrow to hear what I have to say. In the meantime I insist on their taking the diamonds away with them and giving me back my receipt. Then they go, and walk down the stairs---and at the bottom, I think you will be---eh?---waiting for them! It is a good place. I cannot have scenes in my office, you understand.”

“It’ll do,” said Charlesworth. He looked at his watch. “More than half-past two now,” he continued. “You’d better take us round, Mr. Ehrenfeldt, and introduce us to your friend on the ground floor.”

“Plenty of time, plenty of time,” replied Mr. Ehrenfeldt, placidly. “All goes well if you follow my arrangements---we finish our cigars, eh?”

But Charlesworth was impatient to get to work; the mystery about Bedford and the lady of decayed family was urging him to do something, and he whispered to Mappleson to get the diamond merchant away. Mr. Ehrenfeldt eventually complied, but instead of leading his newly-found friends openly along Holborn towards Hatton Garden, he conducted them thither by a devious route which led first through Gray’s Inn, across Gray’s Inn Road, and by a series of slums beyond Brooke Street. Finally emerging into the street of diamonds at its top end, he suddenly shot them into a narrow entry and without any ceremony into a room on the ground floor, the dirty windows of which were effectually screened from the street by thickly-meshed wire blinds.

There was but one man in this room, a Hebraic gentleman in a coat with a fur collar, who sat at a centre table smoking a very large cigar of strong odour, and showed no surprise at this incursion on his privacy. Mr. Ehrenfeldt waved a hand, first at him, then at his companions.

“Mr. Mosenstein,” he said. “The gentlemen that I speak of, Mr. Mosenstein. You let them look through your windows a little, eh?”

“So!” responded Mr. Mosenstein, hospitably. He glanced about him as if in search of something. “I don’t have but two chairs in this room,” he remarked apologetically. “Perhaps you sit on the table, what?”

“Oh, we’re all right, thank you, sir,” said Charlesworth. “The window’s what we want.” He turned to Ehrenfeldt. “Your office is above this?” he asked. “First floor? All right---don’t keep them talking too long after they arrive. We’ll be in the passage at the foot of the stairs.”

“So!” agreed Mr. Ehrenfeldt. He disappeared, and the three watchers disposed themselves at the window while Mr. Mosenstein, watching them, continued to smoke placidly. Ten minutes passed---twenty---then, all of a sudden, a cab drove up and stopped. A man got out; turned his face towards the house; a woman followed him. And Charlesworth spoke, sharply.

“Good God!” he muttered. “Bedford! And---Mrs. John Stanmore!”


 78 
 on: March 09, 2024, 10:04:05 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
THERE was a curious significance in Gilford’s tone which made Charlesworth start and eye him inquisitively. The solicitor, in his turn, glanced questioningly at Sherman.

“One of your men?” he asked.

“Exactly!---he knows all about things,” replied Charlesworth. He edged nearer to Gilford’s side. “Something new?” he inquired.

Gilford shook his head. There was that in the movement which suggested more than Charlesworth, at the moment, could understand.

“I don’t know what to make of certain things---exactly,” said Gilford. “I think there’s something---underneath, you know---that we’re utterly ignorant about. This man Bedford, now---he came to see me, the other day. Privately, you understand?---but I’m not going to keep it private from you police people, for I think you ought to know. Bedford, after some sparring about, wanted to know if the new baronet was coming into his uncle’s property. And---I could see that he was uncommonly anxious to be informed on that point, and I wondered why!”

“Yes?” said Charlesworth.

“Of course, I asked him why he came there to put such a question---what concern was it of his? He hummed and hawed for a while, but I got it out of him at last. And---it was what I expected! Bedford had been in the habit of lending Master Guy money!”

Charlesworth started again.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “He had, had he? On Guy’s expectations?”

“I suppose so---though, considering that Stanmore was of little more than middle-age, the expectations were not likely to be speedily realized, were they?” replied Gilford. “But anyway, there was the fact. Bedford had lent young Guy ready money from time to time, because, according to Guy, his mother and his uncle kept him on short allowance. And, in the end, it amounted to a tidy little sum. How much do you think?”

“No idea---can’t even guess. Five hundred?”

“Five fiddlesticks! Bedford wants five thousand some hundred pounds from Sir Guy---say, six thousand pounds!”

“Exorbitant interest, I suppose?”

“No interest at all---that’s to be agreed upon at settlement. That’s the actual amount of solid cash lent. And---Bedford holds papers for it. Promissory notes---I.O.U.’s, and so on. There’s no doubt about it. Bedford showed me his documents and a little book in which he’d kept the account.”

“Well?” inquired Charlesworth, after a pause during which his mind worked at express speed.

“Well, Bedford wants his money. He wants to buy some hotel property. And he’d been to Aldershot, bothering Sir Guy about it. Guy referred him to me.”

“Will he get his money?”

“Oh, he’ll get it, in time. We’re winding things up as quickly as we can. But. . . .”

Gilford paused, looking at Charlesworth as if to invite some remark.

“Yes,” said Charlesworth, understanding this glance. “But I don’t know what to say! What do you say?”

“I say that there were---as we’re beginning to find out---some very queer things occurring about the time of Stanmore’s death,” replied Gilford. “This is another of them. What I’d like to know is---had Stanmore found out that Guy had been borrowing money from Bedford? Had that anything to do with his resolve to make a new will and cut Guy down to a miserable five hundred a year? Stanmore was evidently very angry with Guy about something or other----”

“Stop a bit!” interrupted Charlesworth. “I’ve something to tell you that I only heard of last night and that I’m sure you’re not aware of. Do you know that Sir Guy Stanmore is married?”

It was Gilford’s turn to start. He turned a stare of incredulous astonishment on the detective.

“Guy Stanmore---married!” he exclaimed. “Nonsense!”

“True enough,” said Charlesworth. “He was secretly married some little time before Sir Charles’ death. There’s no doubt about it.”

“But---to whom?” asked Gilford.

“You’d never guess! Irene Fawdale!”

The solicitor’s stare of astonishment turned to one of utter perplexity.

“Impossible!” he said. “Irene Fawdale? Why---what about the charge Lady Stanmore brought against----”

“Look here, Mr. Gilford,” interrupted Charlesworth, “I know more than you’re aware of, and as a matter of fact I was going to see you, probably this afternoon, to tell you what I’ve discovered, and what I’ve been informed of. Listen!---I’ve solved the mystery about Irene Fawdale. Do you know who she is? You don’t?---and what’s more, she herself doesn’t know! She’s Sir Charles Stanmore’s daughter!---her mother was a Frenchwoman, an actress, or dancer; she’s dead, long since, and I’ve seen her grave. I’ve traced Irene from her birth right up to the time Sir Charles brought her away from school, and what I tell you is the truth---though she’s not aware of it, she’s his daughter. And Sir Guy and she are married---that’s a fact!”

“How did you find out about the marriage?” asked Gilford. “And when?”

“Only last night. Sir Guy’s orderly, a young fellow named Crabbett, came to Headquarters and told us. Crabbett witnessed the marriage, at a village church near Aldershot. And so did Purser.”

“Purser! The woman who’s been poisoned---as Stanmore was!”

“Exactly! Purser---who was poisoned as Stanmore was!”

Silence fell on the three men. Gilford and Charlesworth continued to stare at each other.

“What do you make of it?” asked Gilford at last.

“If you want the plain truth,” replied Charlesworth, “I think that Sir Charles found out about this secret marriage, and that he was so furious about it that he determined to alter his will. I think Irene Fawdale or Stanmore, as she was by then, knew of his intention, and that she got rid of him before he could. And, from certain things I’ve just learnt, I think that it’s highly probable that Bedford knew something about it, and that we may find he was an accessory.”

“Why Bedford?” asked Gilford.

“I’ve just found that Bedford has sent registered letters, containing money, to Purser! Hush money, without a doubt. And,” concluded Charlesworth, “I must find Bedford! You’ve no idea where he’s to be found?”

“He told me he was moving about---looking out for a desirable hotel property,” replied Gilford. “But now I come to think of it, he did say where a letter would find him in London. Care of a Mrs.---Mrs.---ah, I can’t remember the name, nor the address, but my clerk has a note of it, I fancy----”

Charlesworth glanced at his note-book.

“Was it Mrs. Macdowall, Belvidere Street, Hampstead Road?” he asked.

“That was it!---I remember now,” assented Gilford. He glanced at Charlesworth’s car. “Are you proposing to go there?” he asked. “Now?”

“This moment!” declared Charlesworth. “I’m going to have things out with Bedford!”

“Give me a lift back to town, then,” said Gilford. “I can leave my business at the Manor for a day or two; it’s of no great importance. But I say, Charlesworth,” he continued, as the car moved off towards London, “do you really mean all you say---about the new Lady Stanmore? A poisoner!---and of her own father? It’s---almost unbelievable!”

“She doesn’t know that Sir Charles Stanmore was her father,” replied Charlesworth. “He kept all that carefully from her, and from everybody---so well, indeed, that I don’t think anyone but myself knows, with the exception of those, like you, to whom I’ve told what I discovered by investigation. But in the course of that investigation I found out a good deal about Lady Stanmore’s character. Everybody who’s had anything to do with her lays stress on one remarkable characteristic of hers---her utter selfishness and determination to let nothing stand in her way. She was evidently like that from being a mere child---on that point all the people who brought her up are agreed. Now put it to yourself! She marries this young Guy, secretly---why, Heaven only knows, but probably because she knew, well enough, that Sir Charles, for reasons of his own, would never give his consent to such a marriage. Well, somehow or other---I’ve not the remotest idea how!---Sir Charles finds out that these two are married. He’s furiously angry about it----”

“How do you know that?” interrupted Gilford.

“He had a row with Irene the last morning of his life,” replied Charlesworth. “It would be about that, of course! And already he’d seen that solicitor who came to see you, you remember---seen him about altering his will. Of course he was angry---just the sort of man who’d be intensely angry with any member of his family who did anything serious before consulting him or getting his consent, and no doubt he threatened Irene with all sorts of pains and penalties. But what would chiefly affect her would be the threat to cut her and Guy down to £500 a year each!---when she’d been all her life used to having everything she wanted. Moreover, here’s another point. Sir Charles wasn’t dead, then, and both Guy and herself were entirely dependent on him. How do we know that when they had that row, Sir Charles didn’t threaten her with a stoppage of all supplies? Where would Mr. and Mrs. Guy Stanmore have been?---they couldn’t live on Guy’s pay! But she knew that the old will was in existence, and what its provisions were, and that it would probably remain in existence for perhaps a few days, certainly for twenty-four hours. She knew, too, that if Sir Charles died before that old will was destroyed and replaced by the new one she and Guy would be all right. And so---well, Sir Charles had just got to be quietly put out of the way. And . . . she lost no time about it! Look here!” continued Charlesworth, growing still more earnest in his arguments. “I’ve come to the conclusion that Sir Charles didn’t keep what Dr. Serracold told him to himself---you remember that Serracold, after examining him, formed the opinion that his heart was so bad that he might go any time, and told him so? Well, I think Sir Charles let his family know that---he seems to me to have been just the sort of man who’d take a sort of malevolent delight in frightening people, and perhaps he himself didn’t believe Serracold.”

“I think he did, though!” exclaimed Gilford.

“Why do you think so?” asked Charlesworth.

“Because of his apparent haste to get that new will made,” replied Gilford. “If he’d been certain of a longer life he wouldn’t have been in any haste.”

“Well, maybe,” agreed Charlesworth. “But, anyway, I think Irene knew what Serracold had said. And she probably argued that if she got rid of Sir Charles by using some stuff out of the Borgia Cabinet, everybody, doctors included, would say he’d died of heart failure and nobody would be suspected of poisoning him. A very calculating young woman it is that I’m talking of, you know!”

Gilford shivered a little.

“Ugh!” he said. “It all seems so---so cold-blooded! And---her own father!”

“I tell you---for the third time---she didn’t know Stanmore was her father: she’d been brought up in the notion that he was her guardian,” retorted Charlesworth. “He’d never given her a chance of learning the truth---didn’t want her to!”

“Even then---her guardian!---it’s cold-blooded,” said Gilford. “Hideously cold-blooded! Murder!---of the worst sort! And---a woman!”

“Well, and what of that?” asked Charlesworth, with a cynical laugh. “What about Messalina? And Lucrezia Borgia? Weren’t they women? Strikes me, sir, that for cold-blooded, determined, ruthless murder the women can lick the men every time! And in this case the motive was---somewhere about a million of money. A million!---or near it . . . and the lady, I think, has somewhat extravagant tastes. Come, now!---do you think she was going to allow a little sentiment to stand between her and fifty thousand a year? I don’t!”

Gilford shook his head.

“You’re a cynical chap, Charlesworth!” he said. “Cynical!”

“No!” protested Charlesworth. “I’m just an ordinary common sense sort of chap---no more. And what I’ve said is common sense.”

“But this Bedford?” suggested Gilford. “Where does he come in?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Charlesworth. “I’m beginning to think that Bedford is a very deep, sly, scheming fellow!---I daresay he’s had me on toast more than once! Well, I think Bedford knows something! And if he does---by George, I’ll have it out of him, one way or another. Let’s hope we find him at this address.”

Belvidere Street, duly reached, proved to be a drab, down-at-heel side street, in one of the poorer parts of the Hampstead Road. Charlesworth purposely stopped the car at the entrance.

“It won’t do for us all to go down there,” he remarked. “You go, Sherman---you have the number---and find out what you can. If Bedford’s in, signal to me; if not, try to get an idea as to where he’s to be found or when he’s to be back. Keep your eyes and ears open.”

Sherman went down the street; within a minute they saw him talking to a woman at an open door. Presently he came slowly back.

“He’s not in,” he announced. “The landlady says he said he was going to see some lawyer or other.”


 79 
 on: March 09, 2024, 09:44:13 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
CHARLESWORTH drew Sherman aside and pointed significantly to the blank sheet of paper which he had withdrawn from the registered envelope, and then to the postmark on the envelope itself.

“Look here!” he whispered. “See this?---and that? This paper is precisely similar to that foreign stuff we found at Aldersyke! And look at this postmark. This letter, enclosing the five-pound notes of which Mrs. Stradnell told us, has been registered---do you see where?”

“West Central Office, New Oxford Street,” replied Sherman, promptly. “Well, what of that?”

“About the nearest main office to Roxburgh Mansions---that’s all,” said Charlesworth. “It’s a clue, anyhow---and I’m going to follow it up.” He turned to Mrs. Stradnell. “What do you do with your waste paper, Mrs. Stradnell?” he asked. “I don’t mean newspapers and so on, but this sort of thing---letters and papers that get thrown aside or torn up by your boarders in these rooms?”

“Well, it isn’t wasted, in one way,” replied Mrs. Stradnell. “The waste-paper baskets in the various rooms are emptied into a sack, and once a month the sack’s called for.”

“Good plan!” said Charlesworth, with a sigh of hopefulness. “Have you a sack or so now?---that hasn’t been emptied lately? You have? Good! Can we see it?”

Mrs. Stradnell led her visitors to the basement, where, in a corner of the cellar, stood a large sack, bearing the name of a firm of waste-paper dealers, and evidently full to the brim.

“Looks as if it hadn’t been emptied lately,” remarked Charlesworth.

“They didn’t call for it last month,” said Mrs. Stradnell. “Sometimes they forget. So there’s two month’s waste in it.”

“All the better for what I want,” replied Charlesworth gaily. “I’ll borrow this from you, Mrs. Stradnell. Give a hand, Sherman.”

Between them the two men carried the sack upstairs and out to the taxi which they had kept waiting; the cabman viewed the sack with surprise.

“Ain’t got no dead bodies nor portions thereof in there, have yer, guv’nor?” he asked half-seriously. “Can’t be too partik’ler, ye know!”

“Take a feel at it, my lad,” answered Charlesworth. “Important State papers---that’s all. Going to be short rations of sleep for you and me to-night, Sherman,” he went on, as the cab moved off on its way to his rooms. “I’m going right through this little lot, and you’ve got to give a hand.”

“What’s the idea?” asked Sherman, gloomily.

“To see if there are any more of those registered envelopes in this sack, and if so, where they were posted,” replied Charlesworth. “That remittance, you see, that Mrs. Stradnell told us of, has evidently been sent to Purser regularly for the past three or four weeks, and was always in a registered packet. Now, if we can find the envelopes and ascertain the office of origin, we shall be getting pretty close to what I’m determined to find out. And that is---who sent Purser ten pounds every week-end? For that ten pounds, Sherman, was---hush money!”

“You’ve got one postmark,” remarked Sherman. “And as you say, that office isn’t far off Roxburgh Mansions. Of course, you suspect Lady Guy?”

“It’s fastening itself on her, bit by bit, in my opinion,” admitted Charlesworth. “She didn’t know that Sir Charles was her own father! All she knew, and cared about, was that he was going to cut her and her husband down to a miserable five hundred a year each and that he’d got to be put out of the way, carefully, before he could do it. But---Purser must have known of it! Probably she saw something.”

“How do you know Purser wasn’t an accomplice?” suggested Sherman.

“Not before the fact, I think,” said Charlesworth. “Afterwards---yes, in the sense that she knew. Plain as a pikestaff, in my opinion,” he went on. “A clear case---I think!”

“Well, there’s one thing I don’t hear any mention of,” remarked Sherman. “You don’t mention it, and there’s no particular talk of it at Headquarters. Where’s that necklace?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Charlesworth. “If we knew that! But I should say the answer to that question’s pretty evident. The guilty party’s got it! Of course!”

“Murder---and robbery, then,” said Sherman. “But if your theory’s correct, not murder for the sake of robbery. Still, I should have thought that if Sir Charles had been removed just to prevent him from making that new will and destroying the first, whoever it was that removed him wouldn’t have bothered about the necklace. That wouldn’t alter matters!”

“The necklace was probably appropriated by the murderer in the hope that we should conclude that it was the cause of the murder,” replied Charlesworth. “Of course, its disappearance, and a description of it has been made known everywhere, in every likely place where it could be disposed of---here, Paris, Amsterdam, New York, and so on, but nothing’s been heard of it. In my opinion, it’s safely put away---and by the same hand that sent these registered letters to Purser.”

Sherman rubbed his chin, in silence. He appeared to be thinking.

“Didn’t it come out that Sir Charles carried that necklace in his trousers pocket---or something of that sort?” he asked.

“Something like that,” assented Charlesworth. “Careless about it, anyway. Why?”

“If he had it loose in a pocket when he went to bed that night, what was there to prevent anybody from pinching it when Sir Charles was found dead in bed?” asked Sherman. “Servants, for instance? There was a footman, if I remember rightly, and there was that butler chap---Bedford. Either of ’em could have gone through his pockets before raising the alarm.”

“The footman struck me as quite an honest sort of chap,” replied Charlesworth, “and as for Bedford, I should say he’s the personification of propriety. No!---the necklace had gone before the footman drew the blinds and made his discovery. But here we are---and we’ll get to work on this sack of scrapped paper.”

Charlesworth lived in a bachelor flat, the living-room of which was of considerable size. First giving his companion a scratch supper, and then moving some of the furniture aside so as to leave a clear space in the middle of the floor, he shot out the upper half of the contents of the sack, divided that half into two piles and bade Sherman set to work on one while he gave his attention to the other. Sherman glanced ruefully at the clock, and groaned as he got on his knees to begin his task.

“Seem to have been particular to tear up their paper into the smallest possible bits!” he grumbled. “Nice job this, anyhow!”

“Got to be done if it takes all night and all to-morrow!” declared Charlesworth. “Look out for anything in the way of a registered envelope or fragments of it, and for pieces of that foreign note-paper.”

It was then one o’clock in the morning; at half-past two Charlesworth had got what he considered sufficient evidence to warrant him in calling off further research. The results of his and Sherman’s grubbing amongst the waste lay on Charlesworth’s desk, spread out on a clean sheet of blotting paper. He tabulated them in his note-book.

   1. A registered envelope bearing postmark of an E.C. office.
   2. A registered envelope bearing postmark of Aldershot.

And---most important of all----

   3. Another, bearing postmark of Aldersyke.

Charlesworth put his pencil point on the last-named.

“That’s significant!” he said. “Look at the date. It was just about then that Sir Charles was poisoned---and it’s evidently the first of the registered letters sent to Purser. Aldersyke! Sherman, we must go down there first thing in the morning! But we’ll have to see the postal authorities before going, and get the proper authorization to examine the books there.”

Then he and Sherman bundled the waste paper back into its sack and went to bed . . . but Charlesworth lay awake for some time, thinking, and maturing his plans. He was resolved and ruthless by that time, and at the end of all his speculations saw Irene in the dock. Irene . . . the cool, the calculating . . . it could be nobody else. And . . . her own father!

By half-past eleven that morning, Charlesworth and Sherman, accompanied by a post-office official, were down at Aldersyke. The post-office official laughed as they approached the little post-office.

“About a five minutes job, this!” he remarked, looking round him at the evidence of scanty population. “I don’t suppose they register half-a-dozen letters in a month, here.”

“What’s of importance to us is the quality of the post-mistress’ memory,” said Charlesworth. “Can she remember who it was that despatched a particular letter on a particular date?”

“If it’s not too far back, I should say she can,” replied the official. “Village folk generally have pretty good memories for little things of that sort. It depends on what sort of woman this is---all I know about her is that she’s had charge of this office for some years.”

The post-mistress turned out to be a shrewd, sharp-eyed woman who narrowly inspected the official’s authorization before she allowed him to see her books. But when the book of duplicate receipts of registered letters was placed before him and his companions, his prophecy that it would not be a heavy job to find what Charlesworth wanted was justified. Charlesworth pointed to the entry at once.

“There you are!” he said. “Miss M. Purser, c/o Mrs. Stradnell, 611, Arbroath Street, Bayswater, W.2. And the date’s four days after the death of Sir Charles Stanmore. Well, now, who sent off this letter? That’s what I want to know.”

The official fetched in the post-mistress, who, in spite of his assurances, was obviously disinclined to tell anything, and regarded Charlesworth and Sherman with looks of strong disfavour.

“We’re not supposed to give any information about any post-office business,” she said, demurringly. “It’s against----”

“You know who I am, Mrs. Jones,” interrupted the official. “I’ve shown you the authorization.”

“Yes---to inspect that book, but not to tell anything else,” retorted Mrs. Jones. “I don’t know that I’m doing right----”

“I may as well tell you, then, that you are,” said the official. “These gentlemen are detectives! They’ve got permission to see anything here and to ask you any questions. I’m here to see that they get whatever information they ask for, and you can throw all responsibility on me.”

“Oh well, of course, if it’s like that----” remarked Mrs. Jones. She looked at Charlesworth, a little less sourly. “What might you be wanting to know?” she inquired.

Charlesworth pointed to the entry about which he was concerned.

“There’s a duplicate here of the receipt given to the sender of a registered letter addressed to Miss M. Purser,” he said. “I want to know, Mrs. Jones, if you can remember who the sender was?”

Mrs. Jones gave a mere glance at her own writing.

“Oh, yes!” she answered. “We don’t have so many registered letters here that I can’t remember that bit! It was Mr. Bedford, the butler.”

Charlesworth concealed his surprise---Bedford had been the last person he had dreamed of hearing of as the sender!

“You’re sure of that?” he asked.

“Oh, quite sure, mister! Mr. Bedford, he sent off two registered letters that afternoon,” replied Mrs. Jones. “Leastways, one was a letter, and the other was a packet. There’s the receipt for the packet, next to that for the letter,” concluded Mrs. Jones who, now that she had once spoken, seemed inclined to speak freely. “Of course, I recollect it well enough---it’s not so long since.”

Charlesworth looked at the second receipt. The address was Mrs. Macdowall, 331, Belvidere Street, Hampstead Road, London, N.W.1.

“A packet, eh?” he said, meditatively. “Um!---he sent off both these---the letter and the packet---at the same time?”

“Same time---same day,” replied Mrs. Jones. She stood gazing at her visitors, and especially at Charlesworth, as if wondering what they really wanted. “Of course, I shouldn’t like Mr. Bedford to know that I’d told anything about his private business!” she continued. “If he comes back here----”

“You can be quite easy, Mrs. Jones,” answered Charlesworth. “Mr. Bedford won’t hear anything of this.”

He signified to the post-office official that he had got what he wanted, and they left Mrs. Jones’ cottage.

“Satisfactory?” inquired the official.

“May be,” replied Charlesworth. He was not going to say that he had just had a big surprise. “Highly useful, anyway, and----”

He broke off there---pulled up by the sudden appearance of Gilford, who came round the corner from the railway station. Charlesworth ran across the road to him.

“Lucky you should turn up just now!” he said. “I say!---do you know where Bedford, the butler, is to be found?”

Gilford gave him a queer look.

“No!” he answered. “But I can tell you something about him!”


 80 
 on: March 09, 2024, 09:23:47 am 
Started by Admin - Last post by Admin
HIM . . . or her! When Crabbett had gone, with one more hearty curse on the murderer of his sweetheart, Charlesworth turned to Sherman with an expressive glance.

“I don’t think---considering all we know---that there’s much wrong with my theory,” he said. “Seems to be getting strengthened at every turn!”

“What is your theory?---and what do you know?” asked Colindale. “Let me know.”

Charlesworth told him, briefly, the full story of his recent inquiries and of what he and Sherman had discovered at Aldersyke Manor that evening.

“And my theory amounts to this,” he concluded. “There seems to be no doubt that a day or two before his death Sir Charles Stanmore discovered something which roused his anger and set him so much against his nephew Guy Stanmore and against Irene Fawdale that he determined to alter his will and instead of leaving them a big lot of money to cut them down to a bare subsistence---£500 a year each. What that something was I’ve never been able to make out until now! But Crabbett’s told us. It was the secret marriage of these two! How he discovered it, we don’t know. But discover it he certainly did. Hence his row with Irene Fawdale, of which I heard from Bedford. Probably during that row he told her he was going to alter his will, and how. Well, she’s a self-seeking young woman, from all I’ve learnt of her, and she was faced with---what? She’d married this young Guy, expecting that he’d not only come into the baronetcy, but into an enormous fortune as well----”

“She’d have had to wait for all that, though,” remarked Colindale. “Sir Charles was only a middle-aged man, I believe?”

“Sir Charles was liable to die any minute,” replied Charlesworth. “He had something wrong with his heart, and Irene Fawdale was probably aware of it. Anyway, there was the fact. She and Guy were to be practically disinherited. Well, I figure it that she wasn’t taking any chances. From all I’ve learnt about her she’s cool, calculating, determined---not the sort to let anybody stand in her way, and we’ve got to remember that she hadn’t the slightest idea that Sir Charles Stanmore was her father! Also she knew that because of evidently well-known domestic difficulties, Lady Stanmore would be much more likely to be suspected than anybody else. She knew, too---though, to be sure, everybody in the house did, apparently---all about the poisons in the Borgia Cabinet. And, in short, my theory is that in order to make sure of the money left to her and Guy Stanmore in the original will, a copy of which she had no doubt seen many a time, for there was one actually knocking around in Sir Charles’ study, she poisoned Sir Charles the very night on which they’d had their row and before he could sign the new will which he’d told her he was going to make. I say that Irene Fawdale’s the woman we want!”

“Purser?” suggested Colindale.

“All of a piece!” exclaimed Charlesworth. “It all fits in. Purser, without doubt, knew something, or fixed on something, or discovered something that convinced her that Irene Fawdale was the poisoner. It may be that she actually knew it, without doubt. Well, she blackmails Irene! She comes to London and enjoys herself on the money with which Irene supplies her, little knowing with what a cool, calculating woman she’s dealing. Eventually, Irene sends her the box of poisoned chocolates. Lord!---what’s plainer? The paper on which the letter accompanying the chocolates is typed is absolutely identical with paper found by me and Sherman there in Irene’s room at Aldersyke Manor this afternoon; the typewriter used is identical with one also in that room: she was in that room, professing to have gone there to get some stuff of hers only a few days ago. Talk about circumstantial evidence. . . .”

“Sir Guy?” broke in Colindale.

“You mean---do I think him an accessory? No!” replied Charlesworth. “I should say he knew nothing about it---knows nothing about it now! She’s the mainspring of all this---and we ought to lay hands on her at once!”

“Where’s that place Crabbett spoke of---Roxburgh Mansions?” asked Colindale. “The name isn’t familiar to me.”

“I know,” said Sherman. “Block of new flats in the Museum district---where they pulled a lot of property down a year or two ago. Good class.”

“Well,” remarked Colindale, after glancing at his watch, “it’s pretty late, but how would it be if you both go round there, and see if you can hear anything---and perhaps see something of this young lady?”

“I am going---if it’s midnight!” declared Charlesworth. “Sherman will come along with me. And if I get hold of her. . . .”

He shook his head expressively and followed by Sherman, left the building and chartered the first taxi-cab he saw.

“I reckon we’ve as good as got her, Sherman,” he remarked as they drove off. “In my opinion it’s a clear case!”

“Well---yes,” agreed Sherman. “As you put it, it seems so. But that soldier chap said, you remember, that Sir Guy hooked it from Aldershot this morning, in answer to a wire. Well, I should say that wire was from her---I should say, too, that she’s hopped it, and that her husband’s gone after her.”

“Why should she hop it?” asked Charlesworth.

“Probably got a bit frightened after reading the Purser stuff in the papers, and decided to make herself scarce for a time,” suggested Sherman. “After all, she’s a woman, and however cool and calculating she may be, I reckon that being a woman, she’s got nerves. Bet you a fiver she’s off!---they generally hop it, all of a sudden, after doing something they oughtn’t to do.”

“Well, she’ll be good to trace,” said Charlesworth with grim determination. “Especially if we can ascertain beyond doubt that she does live, or has lived, at these flats. And it’s a satisfaction to get a definite object to follow.”

“Aye, well!” replied Sherman, cynically. “I reckon we shall have some surprises before we’re done! They always come!---in my experience.”

Charlesworth experienced a surprise within a moment of reaching Roxburgh Mansions. Arrived there, he and his companion walked into a handsome entrance hall, on one wall of which they at once saw a notice-board in black and gold, bearing the names of tenants. And there, staring them in the face, was the plain announcement----

    Sir Guy and Lady Stanmore. 2nd Floor.

A hall-porter, obviously an old Army man, and in a smart livery, came forward eyeing the two detectives with something like knowingness.

“Yes, gentlemen?” he asked. “Wanting somebody?”

Charlesworth, after eyeing his questioner narrowly, drew him aside.

“Look here!” he said. “Between ourselves, we’re police officers, inquiring into that Purser case---you know? Purser was at one time in the employ of the Stanmore family at Aldersyke, and I want to make one or two inquiries about her of Sir Guy Stanmore. Do you know if Sir Guy’s at home?”

“He isn’t,” replied the porter, definitely. “He’s away, somewhere. He came here in his car this morning, from Aldershot, where he’s stationed with his regiment, you know, and he and Lady Stanmore went off together an hour later. I don’t know where they’ve gone---they took a bit of luggage with them, but not much.”

“Oh?” said Charlesworth. He was taken aback. “Well, some other time, then. I suppose Sir Guy is to be found here?”

“Only at week-ends,” replied the porter. “You’ll find him at Aldershot---Stanhope Lines---any day between Monday and Saturday.”

Charlesworth nodded and was about to turn away.

“I suppose Sir Guy’s only lived here since his marriage?” he said.

“He’s only lived here since that, of course,” answered the porter, in the tone and manner of one who knew all about it. “Lady Stanmore as now is, Miss Fawdale as was, she’s lived here ever since these flats was built. Original tenant, she was. Of course, when her and Sir Guy got married recently, they painted her name out on the board there, and put the new one in.”

“Oh, lived here some time, has she?” remarked Charlesworth. “Ah!---now did you ever know of Sir Charles Stanmore coming here to see her? Sir Guy’s uncle?”

“Sir Charles? Lor’ bless yer, yes!” replied the porter. “Used to come here frequent, he did. Queer business about his death, wasn’t it?” he continued, looking inquiringly at his visitors. “And this Purser affair, too---d’ye think they’re mixed up? Now, I’ve seen Purser, myself!”

“You have, eh?” said Charlesworth. “When?”

“Came here, two or three times, of late, to see Lady Stanmore---Miss Fawdale as was. Oh, yes---she was in here not so many days ago. One day last week it would be. Sharp young woman---poor thing! Getting any further about clearing it up?”

Charlesworth made a non-committal reply and drew Sherman outside to the cab which they had kept waiting.

“So Purser used to visit Miss Fawdale as was, Lady Guy Stanmore as is, did she?” he remarked. “Um!---we keep hearing queer things! Now, how is it that Crabbett didn’t know that? Anyway, if he did, he never mentioned it to us. But I’m sure he didn’t. Strikes me, Sherman, that Purser was an underhand sort. Well---now I’m going round to see that Mrs. Stradnell, in whose house Purser died.”

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock,” said Sherman, yawning.

“Don’t care if it’s twelve or thirteen o’clock,” retorted Charlesworth. “Come on! Arbroath Street, Bayswater!”

There were lights in the windows of 611, Arbroath Street, late as the hour was, and Mrs. Stradnell herself, a somewhat faded, tired-looking woman, admitted them readily on hearing their business. But she sighed wearily when Charlesworth asked her for a little talk about her unfortunate boarder.

“I’ve told your people about all I know,” she said as she ushered her visitors into her private sitting-room. “I’ve had a regular procession of them ever since the poor girl died. And those newspaper young men!---I’m sure they’re worse than you police!”

“Aye, well, but you haven’t had me to see you before, Mrs. Stradnell,” said Charlesworth, assuming his most ingratiating manner. “And, you see, I’ve got a bit more light on this affair than anybody you’ve seen up to now---you’d scarcely believe it but I was engaged on this business this very morning in---where do you think? You’d never guess! Paris!---all that way off! So you see I’m sparing no pains. And I’m sure you’re anxious to see justice done, eh?”

“It was a wicked crime, indeed!” responded Mrs. Stradnell. “Of course, I’ve no idea of who did it. The poor young woman evidently had some enemy, though you’d never have thought it. I found her inoffensive enough. A bit inclined to be gay and frivolous---but quite harmless.”

“How long had she been under your roof?” inquired Charlesworth.

“Well, that would be the fourth week, when---when it happened,” replied Mrs. Stradnell. “She came one Monday, and this last Monday was the fifth from that.”

“Always paid you regularly, I suppose?” suggested Charlesworth.

“Every Saturday morning,” assented Mrs. Stradnell. “Regular as clockwork. You see, she was of what I should call a confidential nature, and very friendly, and she sort of made a confidant of me, as regards certain things. Now every Saturday morning there came a registered letter for her---I’ve seen her open that letter more than once, and I know what it always contained. Two five-pound notes! One of these five-pound notes she always handed to me for her week’s bill---I used to give her the difference in smaller change. I’ve the last five pound she gave me in my purse at this moment.”

“You have?” exclaimed Charlesworth, eagerly. “Let me see it!”

Mrs. Stradnell produced the note at once. But Charlesworth, who had hoped that it might have the stamp of some local bank on it, was disappointed. It was a crisp new note, with nothing whatever on it. Still, he made a note of the number. “She never told you from whom she got this weekly payment?” he asked.

“She did not,” replied Mrs. Stradnell. “She kept that to herself. Once, I remember, I remarked to her that she was a lucky young woman to have such a nice, regular income, and she replied that she could have more than that if she liked---it was only what she considered necessary for a week’s outlay.”

“Gave you the idea that there was a sort of unlimited fund at her disposal, eh?” asked Charlesworth.

“Well, I don’t know about unlimited, but I certainly gathered from her that she could have more than ten pounds a week if she wanted it,” said Mrs. Stradnell. “Of course, her bill with me was never more than three pounds fifteen, at the outside.”

“What did she do with the rest of her ten pounds?” inquired Sherman.

“Oh, she spent a good deal on pleasure---going out,” replied Mrs. Stradnell. “She was very fond of dancing---she meant to go in for it professionally, in the end. And she was fond, too, of finery---I can assure you she soon spent what was left of her ten pounds after paying me! She wasn’t extravagant, but she spent freely. I remember that the last Saturday she paid me, she laughed as she drew the two five-pound notes out of the registered letter and said it was a good job it had turned up punctually, for she was dead broke! Yes, only last Saturday morning that was!” concluded Mrs. Stradnell with a sigh. “There’s the registered envelope her money came in---she threw it aside when she’d taken the notes out of it, and somebody put it on the mantelpiece there.”

Before the words were well out of Mrs. Stradnell’s mouth, Charlesworth had possessed himself of the thing she indicated---half-hidden behind an ornament. Without a word he drew something out of the envelope and in similar silence showed it to Sherman---a blank sheet of the same foreign note-paper that they had found that afternoon in Irene Fawdale’s room at Aldersyke Manor.


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