The Twenty-One Clues

by J. J. Connington

  “Mrs. Callis wore a wedding-ring, of course. A plain gold one?” he asked.

  Callis shook his head decidedly.

  “No, no. When we were married, I gave her a platinum one,” he explained. “What they call an Eternity ring, with some sort of pattern chased on it, inside and outside.”

  “And initials, perhaps?” hazarded the inspector.

  “No, no initials. Just this chased pattern. People noticed it, I know, when she was a bride”—he gulped slightly, and the inspector guessed that this subject had touched a raw spot—“and she used to make a little joke about keeping a score of the people who asked to be allowed to look at it each day when we came back from our honeymoon. Why do you ask?”

  “Well . . .” the inspector hesitated before inflicting the stab, “when we found her, she had a plain gold ring on her wedding finger. I’ll let you see it, later on.”

  This piece of information seemed to perplex Callis more than anything else had done throughout the interview.

  “I don’t understand that,” he said, almost plaintively.

  As the inspector turned while closing the garden gate, he saw Callis still on the doorstep, his head down-bent, with an expression on his face as if he had been completely puzzled by what he had just been told.

  Chapter Five

  The Black Bag

  AFTER leaving Fern Bank, the inspector stopped at the first telephone-box on his way, rang up one of his subordinates, and gave an order. He knew the Longnors had no phone. Callis had mentioned that. But the Toynton Lacey constabulary could get him the information he needed, and it would be waiting for him when he got back to the police station. He was not in the best of tempers. The loss of his luncheon had begun to rankle in his mind, for even the keenest detective has his human side.

  “Round about £400 to £450 a year,” his automatic estimate of the average yearly income of the residents in Granville Road when he reached it. “Some of them don’t keep a maid.”

  The Barratts apparently fell into this category, for when he rang the bell the door was opened by the obvious mistress of the house. At the first glance, she surprised Rufford, for instead of the household drudge he had expected, he found himself confronted by an attractive, dark-haired, grey-eyed young woman, with lips whose fine modelling owed their lines to nature and not to lipstick.

  “Might be anywhere between twenty-eight and thirty-odd,” he decided as he glanced at her. “And she’s a real lady, by her looks. A bit of a fish out of water in this neighbourhood.”

  This comment was not intended as a depreciation of the inhabitants of Granville Road. It was extracted from the inspector by his feeling that a woman of this type must have been born and brought up in quite other surroundings, an environment more spacious and leisurely than a suburban street of the Granville Road level.

  Mrs. Barratt did not wait for him to introduce himself.

  “You are Inspector Rufford, aren’t you?” she asked in a low, clear voice which Rufford found very attractive. “I’ve been expecting you. Mr. Callis rang me up a few minutes ago and explained matters. Won’t you come in?”

  Rufford was confirmed in his conclusions by this opening. Callis had evidently saved him the trouble of breaking the news to her. She must have learned of her husband’s death only a few minutes before, but she had pulled herself together and was able to face a stranger with a cool collected manner as if she was receiving a formal caller. That showed the results of early training and a certain standard of behaviour. “Never show a wound.” If she could keep it up, his task would be less uncomfortable than he had expected.

  She led the way into a room which was obviously her husband’s study, with its desk and some shelves of theological works round the walls. Taking a chair herself, she invited the inspector to sit down and then she seemed to leave the next move to him.

  “Mr. Callis has told you what’s happened?” he queried.

  “Yes, he told me about my husband and Mrs. Callis. You’ve come to ask some questions, I suppose. I’m quite ready to tell you anything you wish.”

  Rufford could guess that her composure was not being easily maintained. She was sitting with her knees pressed together, her feet side by side, her hands clasped in her lap, and there was a stiffness in her whole attitude which suggested that she was holding herself in by a strong effort, though her voice remained as level as it had been when she met him at the door.

  “You can imagine how sorry I am to trouble you at this moment,” Rufford went on. “It’s no choice of mine, Mrs. Barratt. But we have to do these things, whether we like them or not.”

  “I quite understand,” Mrs. Barratt assured him, evidently with the intention of being helpful. “You mustn’t mind my feelings. Please ask any questions you wish to put.”

  “Very well, then,” the inspector continued. “I think you rang up Mrs. Callis about eleven o’clock yesterday morning?”

  “That’s quite correct,” said Mrs. Barratt frankly. “My husband asked me to do that. He’d something he wanted to talk to her about, I believe, something in connection with the Guides; but he didn’t tell me exactly what it was. When I rang up, the Callis’s maid told me that Mrs. Callis had gone down town. I told my husband that when he came in to dinner. We have dinner at half-past one and supper at seven. He’d gone out after breakfast and had been at our church all morning. The organist wants the organ overhauled, and they had an expert in, to discuss the matter and give them an estimate. That was why he asked me to ring up Mrs. Callis for him, instead of doing it himself.”

  “I see,” said Rufford. “Now can you tell me what you and Mr. Barratt did in the afternoon, yesterday?”

  “I can tell you what I did myself. I went out, after I’d washed up our dinner dishes, and I spent the afternoon at a picture-house. I did some shopping, too. It was about half-past five when I got home again. My husband went out before me. He had calls to make on a few of the congregation, he said. He came back again shortly after I did, before six o’clock it was, for I remember he switched on the wireless for the six o’clock news.”

  “Did you see him go out after dinner? I mean, did you actually see him leave the house?” demanded Rufford, thinking of the second suit-case mentioned on the left-luggage office receipt which he had found in Barratt’s pocket.

  “No,” answered Mrs. Barratt promptly. “I was in the scullery at the moment. But I heard the front door close after him.”

  “You had supper with Mr. Barratt at seven o’clock, as usual? When did he go out to his church meeting?”

  “The meeting was at eight, and he left here about a quarter to.”

  “That was the last time you saw him, was it?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t actually see him leave the house,” Mrs. Barratt explained carefully. “I was busy washing up the supper dishes. We keep no maid, you see, Mr. Rufford.”

  “Ah, that reminds me of another question,” said the inspector. “Had Mr. Barratt any private means? Had he any income apart from his salary from the church, I mean?”

  Mrs. Barratt seemed faintly amused by this question.

  “Oh, dear, no. I thought you’d guessed that we have to live very simply. Neither of us has any private means.”

  So when Barratt planned his elopement with Mrs. Callis, he must have meant to sponge on her, since he had no funds of his own. Evidently a despicable creature, Rufford decided, and far from scrupulous.

  “Had your husband any sum of money immediately available to him in the last week or two?” he asked, as a fresh idea occurred to him. “I mean something in the neighbourhood of twenty or thirty pounds.”

  Obviously, even if Barratt meant to live on Mrs. Callis in the future, they would need some ready money to go on with.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Barratt answered promptly. “We never have as much as that in the house. You can see for yourself, Mr. Rufford, that we don’t live on a lavish scale. So far as money goes, it’s rather a hand-to-mouth business with us, I’m afraid. My husban
d’s salary just covered our outgoings and no more. I know exactly what we spent, because I take charge of that side of things. My husband has—had, I mean—no money-sense whatever. I took all that off his hands, paid outstanding bills, and kept our household accounts. . . . Ah! that reminds me of something. I was wrong, a moment ago. We pay some of our bills quarterly, when my husband’s cheque for his salary comes in, I made out a list of the outstanding ones, the day before yesterday, and gave it to him, so that he could draw a cheque and get the cash required from his bank. He gives me the money and I pay the bills myself.”

  “How much did you require, this time?” demanded Rufford.

  “I can remember it. It was over twenty-four pounds—twenty-four pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence, I think. He was to draw out twenty-five pounds. But he forgot to hand me the cash.”

  “So he must have had twenty-five pounds actual cash in hand, yesterday, if he cashed a cheque? What bank did he deal with?”

  “The Burlington and Industrial, the branch in Kandahar Street.”

  So evidently Barratt had £25 at least, in hand, when he made his break-away, the inspector inferred. He had drawn his cheque, stuck to the cash instead of handing it over to his wife in the normal manner. That would set him up with enough money to carry him on for a week or so, perhaps. After that, Mrs. Callis would pay. But it was never safe to take things for granted, so he put another question.

  “Do you know where your husband kept his cheque-book?”

  “In his desk, usually.” She rose, went over to the desk and searched in one of the drawers. “Yes, here it is,” she added, offering it to the inspector.

  Rufford opened the book, glanced at the last counterfoil, and made a jotting in his notes.

  “Apparently he drew a cheque for twenty-five pounds,” he commented. “There’s a counterfoil filled in with ‘Self, £25’, dated the day before yesterday. And as he didn’t give you the money, he must have had at least that sum in hand.”

  But although this cleared up one point, it raised a fresh difficulty at once. Barratt’s body had been carefully searched, and only a small sum had been found upon his person. He had, perhaps, spent a certain amount on the railway tickets and other items, but nothing like the full £25. Where had the balance gone? Had someone found the bodies and gone through Barratt’s pockets before the police arrived? The engine-driver had made a casual mention of tramps frequenting that district. Twenty-five pounds would be a windfall to a tramp. And, if the money was in pound notes, even a tramp could use it without exciting much suspicion, so long as he was sensible enough not to spend it lavishly in one place. Rufford decided that he would have inquiries made amongst the public-houses in the district. In the meantime, he switched over to a fresh line.

  “By the way,” he pursued, “can you tell me if Mr. Barratt took anything with him when he went to the meeting—a case with papers, or something like that?”

  It was the second suit-case he had in his mind, but Mrs. Barratt’s answer put him on a fresh trail.

  “Usually he carried a very small black bag with him. A collection is taken up, and he brings the money home with him in this bag.”

  “Have you seen the bag about the house to-day?”

  Mrs. Barratt shook her head and rose to her feet.

  “I’ll look for it now,” she suggested.

  “I wish you would,” replied Rufford, rising also. “And at the same time, would you mind examining your box-room to see if all your suit-cases are there.”

  Mrs. Barratt seemed surprised at this demand, but she contented herself with a nod of agreement. After a perfunctory search round the study, she left the room. In a very few minutes she returned again, looking puzzled.

  “I can’t find the black bag,” she explained as she sat down again opposite Rufford. “Usually it’s left in our cloakroom. But it’s gone. And a suit-case is missing also, though I can’t imagine how you guessed that.”

  “Can you describe the suit-case?” asked the inspector.

  “Oh, yes. It’s an old one, compressed cane, with rows of brass nails on its top, and three locks. It has a big initial ‘B’ on the top, in white paint. That’s really all I can remember about it.”

  “Now let’s go back to yesterday,” Rufford suggested, after making a note in his pocket-book. “You didn’t join Mr. Barratt at this meeting? How did you spend the evening?”

  “I finished washing the supper dishes. After that, I rang up a friend, Mrs. Stacey, about a bridge engagement. Then I switched on the wireless after a time. While the nine o’clock news was running, the front door bell rang and I found Mr. Callis when I went to open the door. He had called to consult my husband about church affairs—something to do with the organ, I think, I invited him in, as I expected my husband back very shortly, once the meeting was over; but when it came to about a quarter-past ten, Mr. Callis said he would see my husband some other time, and he went away.”

  “Did he come in his car?” asked the inspector casually.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Barratt replied without hesitation. “It was a fine night. He must have walked here. I saw no car at the gate when I went to the front door with him.”

  “Did anything more happen after Mr. Callis had gone?” asked Rufford. “I mean, had you any other visitors?”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Barratt answered. Then after a second or two she remembered something. “Now I think of it, at about a quarter-past ten, there was a phone call from a Miss Legard which puzzled me. She’s a member of our congregation. She told me some long tale about a Jubilee double-florin, whatever that is. She’d put it in the collection or something. But the wires were crossed or there was some interference on the line, and I couldn’t make head or tail of what she was talking about. I said I’d tell my husband about it when he came in; and she rang off.”

  “Were you not surprised when Mr. Barratt didn’t come home at all last night?” demanded Rufford, who had reserved this question until he had dealt with less disturbing subjects.

  Mrs. Barratt, rather to his surprise, shook her head.

  “Oh, no,” she said calmly, as if the absence of a husband overnight was of no importance. Then at the sight of the inspector’s expression, she smiled rather cynically. “My husband and I use different bedrooms, you see. After I finished talking to Miss Legard, I went upstairs to bed. I fall asleep very quickly; and naturally I didn’t lie awake, waiting for my husband to come in. Why should I?”

  She had relaxed her tense attitude by this time, and now she leaned back in her chair and crossed one knee over the other in an easy pose. Rufford judged that she had grown accustomed to his questioning and was no longer on edge as she had been at the beginning of the interview.

  “So it wasn’t until this morning that you realised that Mr. Barratt hadn’t come back?” he pursued.

  “No, not until breakfast-time. When he didn’t come down as usual, I went up to his room and found the bed hadn’t been slept in. Of course then I was anxious; I thought he’d met with an accident, and I rang up the hospital to ask if he’d been brought in, hurt. But they knew nothing about him. I thought of ringing up the police; but you can guess that in our position one doesn’t want even the suspicion of a scandal, and to ring up the police would have started a lot of talk. . . . He might have been detained all night, if one of our congregation had fallen suddenly ill and he’d been called in. That’s happened before now, more than once. So I wasn’t in the least anxious about him, on that account. I didn’t want to start a hue and cry after him which would start people chattering. Some people are always eager to gossip, Mr. Rufford, even when there’s nothing to gossip about. Especially in a church like ours,” she ended, with a touch of bitterness in her tone.

  Putting two and two together, the inspector was able to guess the cause of that bitterness easily enough. Callis had given him the impression of a narrow little sect with ultra-rigid ideas. No doubt some of the women were jealous of Mrs. Barratt, who obviously came from a higher social level
than themselves; and they would be glad to find some gossip which would be disagreeable to her. Callis, he remembered, had the same fear of ill-natured tittle-tattle about his wife.

  “There’s another question I must ask,” he went on. “Had Mr, Barratt a pistol, an automatic?”

  Mrs. Barratt seemed completely taken aback by this. She sat up in her chair and stared at Rufford with an expression of extreme surprise.

  “A pistol? No. What on earth would he need a pistol for?”

  Evidently Callis had not given her full details, Rufford inferred, and she knew nothing about how the deaths had been brought about.

  “Mr, Barratt and Mrs. Callis were killed by a pistol,” he explained hurriedly, “and I found his finger-prints on it. So he must have had one, although you knew nothing about it. You’ve never seen one about the house?”

  “No, never,” Mrs. Barratt answered in a tone of complete certainty, “What would we need a pistol for? There’s nothing in this house to attract a burglar,” she added, rather contemptuously.

  Rufford had kept his eyes open, and he wholly concurred with her; but it might not have been tactful to agree in words. He contented himself with an understanding nod.

  “Now, I’m sorry; but I must ask a question or two which may be painful,” he continued. “Can you tell me anything—anything at all—bout Mrs. Callis which seems to throw light on this affair?”

  “I don’t quite understand what you mean,” Mrs. Barratt replied, looking him straight in the eye. “Perhaps it would be better if you asked questions. Then I could see what you wanted, exactly.”

  This was precisely what Rufford had been trying to avoid. He had meant to lure her into general talk about Mrs. Callis, hoping that some fresh facet in the case might show itself unexpectedly. But it was clear that he would have to fall back upon plain questioning now.

  “Very well, then,” he said, “since you prefer it, I’ll ask one or two questions. Now, I’m told that your husband and Mrs. Callis saw a good deal of each other. Some people seem to have disapproved of their association. Did you yourself feel suspicious about it?”