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« on: March 14, 2023, 11:24:03 am » |
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AT four o’clock on the following afternoon an important and carefully planned conference was held in the Subcommissioner’s room at Scotland Yard. Colonel Matterson himself was seated in his accustomed place at his desk. Inspector Pank, bearing his new dignity with great modesty but much pleasure, and Chief Inspector Smithers were also in evidence. There was a shorthand writer in the background.
An orderly brought in the usual slip of paper and immediately afterwards Mr. Edwards was ushered in. He advanced a little dubiously into the room, but Colonel Matterson nodded in friendly fashion and pointed to a chair. The others wished him good afternoon. He was received as a visitor.
“I hoped you might come, Mr. Edwards,” the Subcommissioner remarked.
“I was in two minds about it,” the other admitted. “You gave me such a scare yesterday that I didn’t know whether I was on my head or my heels. I even sent out this morning to see whether there was a boat leaving for the States.”
“Yes, we heard of that,” Matterson observed. “Your messenger fell down and was nearly run over going back to your office, and after all, you found that you would have had to leave at eleven o’clock to catch the America at Southampton. It would not have been worth while, Mr. Edwards. We would have fetched you back if we had wanted you.”
“I’ve been watched, then, have I?”
“Certainly you have. You are being watched, not as a criminal, but as a person who may be of use to us. We have still to find out one or two more things about Lord Edward Keynsham.”
“You’ll find out nothing against him,” Mr. Edwards declared obstinately. “He is one of the most popular men in Norfolk. I can tell you that. He’s one of that sort that couldn’t do a mean action if he tried. If you brought me here to find out anything against his lordship, you’re barking up the wrong tree, sir. That’s the truth.”
The Subcommissioner toyed with his monocle for a moment. He was looking at some notes on the table before him.
“Yesterday, Mr. Edwards,” he said, looking up, “we took you by surprise. A few slight inaccuracies in your statements were excusable. To-day you are being formally interrogated. You understand that?”
Edwards glanced at the shorthand writer in the corner. “Yes, I understand,” he admitted.
“I shall repeat a question I asked you yesterday, your answer to which was not convincing. Did Lord Edward confide to you in any way why he wanted this particular set made in your studio? He must have given you some reason.”
“Well, of course he did. He told me that he wanted to frighten a nervous old gentleman into doing an act of justice.”
“An act of justice, eh? So that’s all you knew about it?”
“Every scrap.”
“You didn’t know who the nervous old gentleman was?”
“No idea.”
“Have you ever thought about the affair since?”
“Could I help thinking about it?” Edwards demanded. “Here was I, practically a bankrupt, suddenly put on my legs with a thousand pounds in my pocket, and all my staff treated in the same fashion. Wasn’t it likely I should think about it? There never was a queerer way of earning money in this world. I thought about it day and night.”
“In the course of your reflections,” Colonel Matterson continued, leaning back in his chair and balancing his finger tips together, “did you happen to remember that a man was hanged on the day after that little show in your studio?”
Edwards sat dumbfounded in his chair. It was perfectly obvious that he had never connected the two happenings.
“My God, sir,” he exclaimed, “you’re right! It was a man named Brandt, who had murdered an actor. Found him with his wife and killed him. He was hanged at Wandsworth the next morning.”
“You never connected the building of a gallows scene in your studio, I suppose, with what Lord Edward told you and the fact that the same thing was happening in real life within a few hours?”
“As God is above, I never did,” Edwards affirmed vehemently.
“Very well,” the Subcommissioner said, after a brief pause. “We’ll leave it at that. Did you know Lord Edward before he came to see you?”
“I did indeed, sir. I used to be a photographer and I’d been over to Keynsham once or twice when his lordship was giving fetes. Treated like gentlemen we always were. He ordered a cinema film from me once. I met him in Norwich several months ago and he stopped me in the street. Remembered me quite well. I told him about my studio and he promised to come and see it some time.”
“That’s all you know about him?”
“Everything except what the whole city and the whole world knows---that he had scarcely enough to live on when he came back from the war, and that he went into business in the City, made a huge fortune, bought back Keynsham Hall, which has been one of the family seats for hundreds of years, and became the most popular gentleman in the county. Lord Lieutenant he was last year, and he could be just what he liked, so far as Norfolk people are concerned.”
“This is all hearsay,” Matterson remarked. “You know nothing personal?”
“Personal? How should I be likely to? I’ve bettered myself a little, but I’ve been next door to being a working man all my life. I did a bit of drawing and got a feeling for cheap art when I was young. That made me go into the photography business. Then, being in cinemas so much turned my head and I worked in a show at Elstree for some time. When I had saved enough money, I built that place at Norwich, and there we are.”
“Do you happen to know where Lord Edward is now?”
“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”
The Subcommissioner reflected for a moment.
“Mr. Edwards,” he said, “I don’t think that you can be of very much further use to us. I’m going to tell you that on the whole we consider what you did was a fairly reasonable action for a man in your position, and, although very grave things have happened since then, the law cannot hold you responsible for them. So you see you have nothing to fear from us, but I do wish to ask you one question, and I want you to give it your careful attention. Did his lordship, when he insisted, for instance, on that twenty-five foot drop,---did he give you any idea at all how far he meant to go in the frightening of this nervous old gentleman?”
“He did not, sir,” was the firm and definite reply.
Colonel Matterson looked through his notes and turned towards Chief Inspector Smithers.
“Is there anything you would like to ask Mr. Edwards before we say good afternoon to him?” he enquired.
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“What about you, Pank?”
“Just two trifling things, sir. When did you and your men, Mr. Edwards, hand over the studio with everything in it prepared to Lord Edward Keynsham?”
“At about five o’clock on Friday, December the nineteenth.”
“Did his lordship come over alone?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“You saw nothing of the companions, then, whom he must have had with him later to stage this affair?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Have you no idea who they were?”
“Not the slightest.”
“The Subcommissioner,” Pank continued, “told you that he is now asking you questions in a different fashion. Yesterday’s interrogation was informal. This is a formal one, which means that if you tell us anything but the truth, you will be in trouble. You understand that?”
“Yes, I understand it,” Edwards admitted. “I have not told you a word that was not the truth.”
“Very well, then,” Pank went on. “Did you leave any one of your men to assist Lord Edward with his practical joke?”
Edwards’ hesitation lasted no longer than the flicker of an eyelid. Nevertheless, it was a hesitation.
“No one at all,” he said stoutly.
Pank looked at him for a moment gravely, then he glanced across at the shorthand writer. Edwards had lost a trifle of his composure.
“About those masks,” Pank asked. “Had you, amongst your properties, a number of rather soiled white masks?”
“That’s so,” Edwards agreed. “We used them for a band of gangsters in the film that was such a flop.”
“And what was the name of the man whom you left with Lord Edward to play the hangman?” Pank demanded in a voice that for him was almost stern. “Don’t tell a lie this time.”
Edwards was for a moment nonplussed. He mopped his forehead.
“Humble,” he said. “Sam Humble.”
“Had some experience of that sort of thing, hadn’t he?”
“You know a damn’ sight too much,” was the vicious reply.
Pank turned away with a smile.
“That’s all I wanted to ask, sir,” he told the Subcommissioner.
The latter nodded.
“Well, Mr. Edwards,” he said, “we all thank you for your information, although I’m afraid some of it was given rather unwillingly. Supposing we should want to see you again---are you thinking of leaving the country?”
“Not now, sir,” the man replied. “I’ve done no wrong that I can think of, and I shall stay and work at the little business I have started. I’m going to buy and sell films and I have a side line dealing with requisites. You’ll find me at the same address at any time.”
“Then we’ll say good afternoon. Pank, perhaps you will see Mr. Edwards to the door and tell the orderly that we will interview our other visitor now.”
Pank obeyed orders and returned.
“No real progress with Mr. Edwards, I’m afraid,” Colonel Matterson observed. “I fancy that he has now told us all he knows. As soon as we’ve finished with Bowhill, the Chief is coming down for a short conference.”
“You will pardon my saying so, sir,” Chief Inspector Smithers ventured, “but it seems to me that the first abduction of Sir Humphrey Rossiter is pretty well cleared up by now, except for details. How are we going to link it up with Sir Humphrey’s present disappearance? Seems to me that’s what we have got to get to work at.”
“You’re quite right, Smithers,” the Subcommissioner agreed, “but don’t you realise that the same central figure is concerned in both affairs? That’s why we want to investigate this matter with such meticulous care. It’s only a question of an hour or two. At any moment we may find the clue we want. At present, if you stop to think of the affair, it is simply ridiculous. The only value in what we are doing is that it may help us to build the bridge over to the second episode.”
“Quite so, sir,” the Inspector murmured, trying to look more satisfied than he felt. “We shall not waste any more time about it than we can help, I can assure you.”
The orderly reappeared, ushering in a smooth-faced young man in chauffeur’s undress livery. He came towards the table with belligerent carriage. The Subcommissioner did not invite him to take a seat.
“Your name is Thomas Bowhill?” he asked, beckoning him to come a little nearer to the table.
“That’s so, sir. And I should like to know what I’ve done to have the police interfering with my business and fetching me here.”
“You were fetched by plain-clothes policemen,” Colonel Matterson said coldly, “and your presence here is necessary in the interests of the law. Be so good as to answer my questions. You have been for some years in the employment of Lord Edward Keynsham?”
“That’s right.”
“About the beginning of December, you received some rather strange orders from his lordship. You were transferred to a large garage in Norwich, where you were told to get a situation as temporary chauffeur. You asked permission to garage a Daimler car of your own there, which car, by-the-by, belonged to his lordship, and you were to take on odd jobs, only accepting such as you approved of.”
“That’s right.”
“You were rung up from Fakenham on the morning of the nineteenth of December and told to be at Keynsham Hall at five o’clock to drive a gentleman to London?”
“That’s right.”
“You went to Keynsham Hall---this appears to have been one of the jobs of which you approved; what happened there?”
“I saw his lordship for a few moments in the gun room and he gave me certain orders. The gentleman came out with his shooting things and bags and I drove him by rather a roundabout way to the studio at Hellesdon.”
“You know that he was in a measure abducted?”
“I don’t know anything,” the man replied. “I was obeying orders.”
“I see,” the Subcommissioner murmured. “You would have obeyed if your master had told you to take your passenger out of the car and throw him into the ditch?”
“His lordship would never have given me any such instructions. His lordship is a straightforward, honourable gentleman for whom it is a pleasure to work.”
“No one is saying a word against Lord Edward, but don’t you think that his behaviour that night seemed a little strange?”
“I didn’t think about it. I did as I was told. I waited for my passenger whilst he was in the studio. When he came out, I drove him to where I was told to drive him---it was somewhere Barnet way. I left him with his bags where he could find a taxicab.”
“You changed the plates of your car afterwards?”
“That’s right.”
“You practically went into hiding?”
“I suppose so.”
“Why?”
“His lordship’s orders.”
“You seem to be a very obedient servant,” the Subcommissioner remarked.
“I have served in the army, sir,” was the brusque reply.
“Have you any idea why you went through all that pantomime? Why too you were turned out of your cottage and made to live in lodgings in Norwich, and become practically a taxicab driver, simply with a view to carrying out this one job?”
“I have no idea whatever, sir.”
“Yet you did it.”
“I did it, sir. I obeyed orders. Any one would, who served Lord Edward.”
“I suppose you know,” Colonel Matterson observed, “that you’ve been concerned in a criminal exploit?”
“I do not, and it would take more than the whole of the police force to make me believe it, sir. A person in Lord Edward’s position wouldn’t run any such risk.”
Matterson smiled.
“Any questions, Pank?”
The newly appointed inspector turned towards the chauffeur and there was enmity in the latter’s face.
“How is it that you’re not in Canada?” Pank enquired.
For the first time the young man hesitated.
“Who said I was in Canada?” he demanded.
“The butler at Keynsham Hall.”
“I’m under orders to go. I have not started yet. And what I should like to know is, what the hell you’ve been doing, messing about at Keynsham?”
Colonel Matterson glanced up.
“Bowhill,” he warned him, “another speech of that sort and I send you to the cells.”
The man folded his arms and remained silent.
“I have nothing more to ask, sir,” Pank announced.
The Subcommissioner touched the bell and Bowhill was dismissed.
---
The Subcommissioner leaned back in his chair and glanced through his notes.
“One thing,” he remarked, “becomes clearer at every moment. Lord Edward Keynsham is the man with whom we need to have a little conversation.”
“Have you any idea where he might be, sir?” Pank required. “He is not in Norfolk.”
“We ought to know in a very few minutes,” Colonel Matterson, replied glancing at his watch. “In the meantime there’s a young lady who demands our attention.”
He touched a bell and gave the necessary order. A very respectable, nicely dressed young woman of secretarial appearance was promptly shown in. Inspector Smithers offered her a chair and Colonel Matterson referred to his notes.
“Your name,” he asked, “is, I believe, Julia Somerby?”
“That is so,” she admitted.
“You are what might be called social secretary to Lord Edward and Lady Louise Keynsham?”
“That is my position, sir.”
“I’m going to ask you very few questions,” Matterson assured her. “The most important is this one---was Lord Edward, to your knowledge, on terms of intimacy with the man Brandt, who was hanged at Wandsworth last month?”
The girl shook her head.
“The name of Brandt does not even appear in the social register which I keep, sir,” she replied. “That means that neither Mr. or Mrs. Brandt have ever exchanged formal visits with his lordship or her ladyship.”
“In other words, it would mean that they were strangers?”
“Precisely.”
“One more question. The late Mr. Brandt was a member of the Shannon Yacht Club, the Doldrums Club and the Royal Automobile. Is Lord Edward a member of any of these?”
The young lady was very decisive upon the point.
“Lord Edward,” she confided, “belongs only to the Marlborough, the Carlton and the Guards.”
The Subcommissioner reflected for a moment.
“Summing up your information, then, Miss Somerby,” he said, “I may conclude that you have never seen the late Mr. Brandt in his lordship’s house or in his lordship’s company, and the same applies to his wife?”
“That is so, sir.”
“We are very much obliged to you,” Colonel Matterson acknowledged, ringing the bell for the orderly and rising as she left the room. . . .
“You didn’t ask, sir,” Smithers remarked, “any questions as to the present whereabouts of Lord Edward.”
The Subcommissioner smiled.
“I am afraid that you don’t read the fashionable news, Inspector,” he observed. “From the Riviera column of the Times of this morning one gathers that his lordship was entertaining a very distinguished party, including the Prince and Princess of Monaco, on his yacht in Monaco harbour on the day before yesterday. I learn from a member of his firm, however, that owing to pressure of business, he is expected back within the course of the next few days. His presence would naturally simplify matters. In his absence, however, and as we have only one more caller to receive, who is not due yet, we may as well take stock of the information which we have received and estimate its precise value to us.”
The two men, in obedience to a gesture from their Chief, drew their chairs a little closer to the table. The Subcommissioner commenced his summary.
“This is how we stand,” he pointed out. “We have discovered the name of the man who planned the Home Secretary’s first abduction and put him through what I must say was a most inhuman ordeal.
“We have discovered that that same person called upon the missing Mrs. Brandt the day before her disappearance, a fact which, unless they were better acquainted than our information would seem to indicate, must possess a certain amount of significance. That man’s dossier is upon the table. You can all read it at your leisure. I will give you the salient points in a few words.
“The present Edward Keynsham is the third son of the Duke of Durham. The family is an impoverished one, but naturally Keynsham went to Eton and Sandhurst. He served with the utmost distinction in the war, receiving French and Italian decorations besides almost everything he could get from us, and but for the death of his senior officer, he would have been recommended for the V.C. He appears to have been a young man of the utmost spirit, for immediately on the completion of the war, finding that there was not a penny in the family, and that every one of his brothers was struggling for a living, he went into business in the City.”
“What kind of business?” Inspector Smithers asked.
“He joined an old-established firm of produce importers and exporters,” Colonel Matterson announced. “They dealt in currants and spices, ginger, tea and coffee, and they imported wines from every wine-growing country in the world. It was a fairly prosperous firm but perhaps a little behind the times. Anyhow, from the moment Lord Edward joined them, they seem to have gone ahead in a most amazing fashion. This report is a very exhaustive one and I shall not trouble you with all its details, but we have here their rating at the end of the war by the Bankers’ Society and their rating now, and it is a fact that, whilst they were in the third rank financially in 1919, they are to-day marked with a triple star, which means that they must be the wealthiest firm in the trade. It means keeping a balance of approximately six figures and being not considered, but pronounced, absolutely good for any possible engagement. Proof of this you have seen, of course, in Lord Edward’s manner of living. He bought back one of the family estates in Norfolk which bears his name, and he indulges in every form of sport. Nevertheless, he still finds time to travel all over the Continent and to keep in touch with the wine growers of every country. In short, we come to this. According to his dossier and every scrap of information we have been able to gather about him, he seems to be a great gentleman, practically a millionaire, a fine sportsman, and---to judge from his munificent gifts to charity---something of a philanthropist. Furthermore, he and Lady Louise are known to have been on intimate terms of friendship with Sir Humphrey. Notwithstanding these proven facts, he is the only man upon whom a shadow of suspicion rests, for the happenings we have met to consider and the mystery we have still to solve. What do you think of that, gentlemen?”
Inspector Smithers considered it a poser. Inspector Pank said nothing.
“It’s that young woman, the secretary, who knocks the bottom out of what might have been our first theory,” the former remarked. “Lord Edward’s very character, as we’re beginning to understand it, might point to his taking desperate risks to save a friend’s life, but when you come to face the fact that no sort of social intercourse existed between him and the Brandts, then, where are we?”
There was a brief silence. Pank cleared his throat nervously.
“If I might make a suggestion,” he ventured.
“No one has a better right,” was his Chief’s gracious response.
“As Inspector Smithers has pointed out, sir, one could imagine a man of Lord Edward’s bravery and determination making a big effort to save a friend’s life. One could also look at the matter from a different point of view. One could understand him making a similar effort in the reverse direction.”
The Subcommissioner was puzzled.
“I don’t quite get you, Pank,” he admitted.
“Before I explain, sir,” the latter begged, “might I trouble you to read Brandt’s dossier? You have it there on the desk.”
“I ought to have done so before,” Matterson acknowledged. “It is very short, however, and very unilluminative.”
He picked up a sheet of paper and read:
“Cecil Brandt, born at Windermere forty-three years ago. Father the vicar there, and several of the family landowners in the neighbourhood. Went only to local school and emigrated to Australia at the age of nineteen. From Australia he appears to have travelled a great deal in various countries and was reported to have made a large fortune on Wall Street and later with some jute factories in Calcutta. Information, however, as to his doings abroad very imperfect. Married Katherine Milsom, the well-known actress, in London six years ago. Financial reports all indicate great wealth. Bought the Imperial Theatre for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and presented it to his wife on her first birthday after their marriage. Owns a racing stable, hunters in Leicestershire, has a long lease of the Powerscourt shooting, and has several enquiries at the present moment with house agents for a country estate, price not to exceed a hundred thousand pounds. Belongs to few clubs, and appears to have a limited circle of acquaintances, but attends most performances given by his wife at the theatre. Nothing whatever known against him, except that his name has been taken on several occasions as having been present on premises raided by the police on suspicion of baccarat having been played.”
“Tells us nothing at all,” the Subcommissioner summed up, as he laid it down.
“Very little that is of any use,” Pank admitted. “I should like, if I may, sir, at this juncture to mention one fact. As you have been good enough to give me a free hand, I took the liberty of going down to Wandsworth Prison this morning and interviewing the governor. I asked him if he would tell me the names of the people who had applied for permission to see the condemned man during his last few days.”
“Nothing in that, I’m afraid, Pank,” Matterson regretted. “I asked the same question and was told that he had seen only his lawyers.”
“If you will excuse me, sir,” Pank pointed out, “you asked your question a little differently, and you got the correct reply. I asked if any one else had applied for leave to see him, and I was told that not only had his wife applied and been refused, but that Lord Edward Keynsham had asked for an interview on urgent personal business, and that the condemned man had refused to see him.”
“That’s a point,” the Subcommissioner reflected. “You’re quite right, Pank. I only asked what interviews had taken place.”
“You will find out that it’s true, sir, if you care to confirm my information,” Pank went on. “Thinking it all over since, it has occurred to me that if Lord Edward was so anxious to see this man Brandt before he was hung, and Brandt had refused to see him, he might have run the risk of trying to stop the execution, not to save Brandt’s life, but to make a further effort to get the interview he desired.”
No one said a word. They seemed to be looking at a blank wall. Colonel Matterson held his head with his hands.
“We don’t progress, do we?” he remarked gloomily. “A quarter of an hour ago we had what seemed to be the most conclusive evidence that the two men were strangers. Now, according to you, Pank, it would appear that there was some very vital matter between the two. A man doesn’t try to see a stranger a few days before he’s hanged, for nothing.”
“The person whom I should like to see in this room,” Inspector Smithers observed, “is Lord Edward Keynsham.”
“I hope that time may come before long,” the Subcommissioner said fervently. “Meanwhile,” he went on, “I do not wish to increase the difficulties of the situation, but I ask you to reconsider these two dossiers---the very imperfect one of this man Brandt and the fine record of Lord Edward Keynsham. Can you conceive of any single bond which there might have been between the two, which could only have arisen or been recognised a few days before Brandt’s death?”
“For the moment, sir, I must admit that I, for one, cannot,” Inspector Smithers confessed. “Lord Edward is not the sort of man who would be blackmailed. Besides, there is evidence that Brandt never even went to his house.”
“Blackmail was the first thing which occurred to me,” the Subcommissioner observed, “but this fellow Brandt seems, after all, to have been fairly well liked, to have been a decent fellow and enormously wealthy. What should turn him into a blackmailer all of a sudden? The thing doesn’t hold water. What do you think about it, Pank?”
Inspector Pank was nervously pulling out his underlip and gazing hard into vacancy.
“Just at that moment, sir,” he confided, “I was wondering whether we had not better try to collect some further evidence as to the identity of the men who helped Lord Edward in that assault upon Sir Humphrey Rossiter.”
Colonel Matterson was unimpressed.
“Seems to me a little off the line,” he declared.
“I’m not so sure,” was the apologetic reply. “The identity of any one of them might bridge over that gulf which exists at the moment between Keynsham and Brandt. If you can’t see clues sometimes, you have to stumble for them. It seems to me to be like that in this case. I have their three names here,” he went on, drawing a piece of paper from his pocket, “all obviously assumed, and they all gave their address as the Savoy Hotel. This is the sheet cut out of the Royal Hotel visitors’ book at Norwich.”
He passed the page across to Colonel Matterson, who scrutinised it through his eyeglass.
“I wonder whether anything occurs to you with regard to those names, sir,” Pank ventured.
“One of them,” the Subcommissioner observed, “evidently signed for the three. They are all in the same handwriting. There’s another thing---they all sign in the American fashion, with a Christian name first, then an initial and then the surname.”
Pank smiled.
“That was what I meant, sir,” he confided. “They also gave their address as the Savoy Hotel where a good many Americans are supposed to stay.”
“You’ve made enquiries, I conclude?” Matterson asked.
Pank assented.
“I took the sheet to a friend of mine in the reception bureau of the Savoy the moment I returned from Norwich. He knew nothing about any one of them.”
Colonel Matterson frowned.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that we shall have to put Lord Edward through a pretty severe cross-examination.”
“And that,” Pank said dolefully, “may not be quite so soon as we think. I ought perhaps to have told you before. Lord Edward is not at Monte Carlo and hasn’t been there. The invitations for the luncheon party were cancelled at the last moment.”
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