A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  “We both want to help Hugo. I can’t help him unless I know what really happened.”

  “But didn’t he tell you, when you came down to South-bourne?”

  Jacko’s tongue flickered over his lips. He gave her a sidelong, speculative glance. “But was that the true story, all the story? Do you believe it yourself? If so, why are you afraid?”

  “Oh, why do you torture me like this? I thought you were fond of me.”

  “You are afraid. What do you think you were trying to run away from just now? Me? Not a bit of it. You couldn’t face the possibility of Hugo’s guilt. And you’ve been feeling guilty yourself, for suspecting Hugo. You can’t just shove all this dirty linen into a drawer and pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  “Hugo never did it—not a cowardly thing like that. I know he couldn’t have.”

  “All right, then, my dear. I don’t believe he’d do such a thing myself. So, as we both believe in him, why can’t we talk about it?” He gave her his engaging, rueful smile. “Or is it that you don’t quite trust me?”

  “I dunno. I’m proper mazed.” Rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, like a child, Daisy lapsed into her childhood vernacular. “Proper mazed. I don’t know where I’m to.”

  “Of course, if you feel you can’t trust me, there’s no more to be said.”

  “Don’t you turn against me now, John,” she said forlornly. “I didn’t mean to hurt’ee. But sometimes—well, you can be ever so curious.”

  “Curious? How?”

  “Asking so many questions. Sort of for the fun of asking them. It used to make me uncomfortable.”

  “You felt I was prying unwarrantably into your affairs?” he asked—not stiffly, but the girl felt his sympathy withdrawing like a tide.

  “Oh, I don’t mean you’re a busybody,” she said in distress. “But—I’m no good at words—it’s as if you wanted to take people to bits and find what makes them tick. Like little boys do with frogs and insects and such. They don’t know they’re being cruel.”

  “Well, I must say, you’re a pretty outspoken young woman. So I’m like a little boy tearing the wings off flies? You think I get a kick out of watching people squirm and wriggle?” His tone, even now, was more interested than affronted.

  Daisy’s exhaustion gave her a sort of clairvoyance. She saw that the answer to Jacko’s last question might be “yes”; but she didn’t quite dare to say that.

  “Hugo told me once you liked having power over people.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Jacko eyed her quizzically. “Be honest now. Don’t you enjoy being able to make Hugo come to heel? Your sexual power over him?”

  The girl flushed, rather shocked by the naked way he presented this truth. “It’s different when you love someone. That’s nothing to do with power.”

  The silence lasted so long that presently Daisy turned her eyes on Jacko and was disconcerted to see his face working and his whole body shivering violently.

  “Are you cold? I’m so sorry. I oughtn’t to be keeping you here.”

  “So you think I’m incapable of love? That’s it?” The man’s voice frightened her: it sounded like some explosive mixture, barely under control, of self-pity, resentment, malice. How touchy men are, she thought—touchy and vain and difficult. But she felt she must make amends for whatever injury he imagined she had done him.

  “I don’t mean that at all, Jacko. You’re twisting my words.” She had another flash of clairvoyance. Smiling at him—she did not realise how maternally—she went on, “You know, I believe you keep things bottled up as bad as anyone.”

  “And, being a woman, you want to let the genie out of the bottle?” Gazing full at her, he said, “An attractive woman. I’m not your doctor all the time, my girl.”

  She blushed, in a confusion of feelings, of which a kind of shamed gratification was not the least.

  “I suppose you assume you’re perfectly safe with me,” Jacko went on, in an almost petulant tone. If he intended to put her out of countenance, he had not reckoned with the element of country frankness in her make-up.

  “Oh, I should think I’m safe enough with anyone just now,” she replied, laughing. “Besides, you’re our friend.”

  “Then why don’t you treat me as a friend, not a convenience?” His voice became smooth and melting, like honey. “Why don’t you let me help you and Hugo?”

  “You’ve done so much already.”

  “There’s plenty more to be done, if you’d really confide in me.”

  And so it was that the girl told him everything about those last two days at Southbourne. Emotional exhaustion had created in her the automatism which makes one go forward, as a man, at the extreme limit of fatigue, will go on walking, for if he does not he must drop down and die. Daisy heard this automaton within herself talking, talking: her tongue seemed to remember little things which her mind had forgotten. And, partly anæsthetised though she was by exhaustion, she could still have the sense of being nearer to Hugo in re-living that time and repeating his words. But she said nothing about the burying of the revolver—not because she distrusted Jacko, but because the horror of that episode, as shameful to remember as if they had made love over a corpse, inhibited her.

  However, when she had finished Daisy felt wonderfully relaxed—floating and unharassed, as if she had given birth—and this filled her with gratitude to Jacko. She pressed his hand.

  “Good girl,” he said. “You feel better already, don’t you? What did I tell you?”

  “Yes. I do. But it will be all right for Hugo? Say it will. Now you’ve heard—”

  “I don’t see how the police could prove anything against him—”

  “But, Jacko, it’s not a question of—he’s innocent. He must be,” Daisy exclaimed.

  “Provided he hid that revolver of his in a really safe place.”

  Daisy stared at him, aghast. “Revolver? I didn’t—”

  “You remember, his brother asked him about it, and Hugo said he’d ‘got rid of the nasty firearm.’ I just hope he got rid of it thoroughly,” said Jacko in a light voice.

  “Oh yes. We”—Daisy broke off, rubbing her fingers against her mouth—“we decided he mustn’t have it any more—after what happened at his brother’s house.”

  Jacko did not pursue the topic. They talked for a little longer, Jacko very brisk and encouraging; then, giving her a chaste kiss on the forehead, he left her.

  Daisy slept late the next morning. When the housekeeper brought in her breakfast-tray, there was an affectionate note from Jacko saying he had been called out of London but would get back in the evening and looked forward to dinner with her.

  At Southbourne the Chief Constable was in conference with Chief Inspector Nailsworth and Detective-Inspector Thorne. They had just come from the inquest upon their colleague, which had been adjourned for a fortnight. The three men were discussing plans, for the investigation had ground to a standstill. Thorne had spent a considerable part of the two days interviewing the occupants of houses in Queen’s Parade, starting with Princess Popescu, her companion and her maid. But no further evidence had come to hand which could give them a lead to the murderer: nor was the cabby, Charles Poore, able to provide any further identification. Indeed, it had become plain to Thorne that none of the few eye-witnesses who had seen the murderer would be able to identify him with any certainty at all.

  One trail, which at first seemed promising, had petered out. A crook called Joe Samuels was discovered to have been staying at the Queen’s Hotel, with two friends, on the day of the murder. The party had checked out of the hotel at six o’clock that evening, however, and returned to London by car. It could have been a feint departure; but Joe’s alibi stood up like a rock to the C.I.D. inquiries—he produced several witnesses, other than the man and woman who had accompanied him, to vouch for his arrival in London at a time which could not possibly have allowed him to commit the murder. There was nothing against Joe, except that he had served two sentences for jewel thefts. Never
theless, one of Thorne’s colleagues was checking Joe’s alibi once again.

  Nailsworth had detailed a sizeable part of his force to the search for the weapon, with equal unsuccess. The foreshore was scrutinised at low tide, every garden in Queen’s Parade searched and its street drains investigated. The search was continuing, and police officers were making a round of the Southbourne hotels and lodging-houses to inquire if any suspicious behaviour or abrupt departure had taken place on the night of the murder. But it looked now as if the murderer had not panicked to the extent of throwing away his weapon. Thorne’s hunch that it might be a political affair, though he played it down in the Chief Inspector’s presence, was not weakened by anything yet discovered, and he had asked the Special Branch for a dossier of the Princess.

  The only positive gain so far, and it was a very small one, was the evidence of the Brighton shopkeeper. He had identified the cap as one from the consignment which had come in a month ago: up to the date of the murder, he had only sold four—three to men and one to a girl. He might or might not be able to identify the male purchasers, but the girl—a striking young blonde, and pregnant—he would recognise again anywhere.

  “So we’re back to the old ‘on information received,’” said Thorne.

  “Not a very hopeful prospect,” the Chief Constable remarked.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised, sir. Sooner or later, somebody talks—maybe the criminal himself can’t keep his trap shut. Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that’s how we get the first break.”

  “Nobody in Southbourne’s talking about anything else. But it doesn’t seem to have got us any further.” The elephantine Nailsworth gave his peaky, perky little London colleague a look, at once severe and faintly jocular, which attested to their improved relations.

  “If this was a bona fide attempt at burglary,” Thorne began. The Chief Inspector raised his eyes ostentatiously to the ceiling, but Thorne pressed on regardless, “—the maid, Velma, is the weak point. She doesn’t speak English well, and she’s obstinate—peasant type, I should think. I can’t get anything out of her, but I feel she’s more on the defensive than she should be. Who else could have told our man where the Princess keeps her jewels? And who’d break into a house without knowing that much?”

  “The Princess has had other maids.”

  “Oh yes, sir. And we’ll have to check up on them. But Velma’s the only one who knew the house would be empty that night.”

  “She and Mrs. Felstead,” the Chief Constable put in. “But I agree. We’d be wasting our time on Mrs. Felstead.”

  Thorne said his next step would be to interview the Italian maid again. He would try to check her movements on the day of the murder, any telephone calls she had made, and so on. If it could be discovered that she had been in contact with a stranger that day, or before it even, the police would have something to bite on. To-morrow Thorne would return to London and take over the inquiries, which were already proceeding, into the movements of jewel thieves known to Scotland Yard.

  The three men discussed press publicity—further appeals for anyone to come forward who had noticed any suspicious behaviour; circulars to pawnbrokers in case the murderer had been foolish enough to get rid of his gun that way—the ballistics experts, working on the bullet found in Stone’s body, had now reported on the calibre and possible make of the weapon. The rope and hook discovered in the parcel were new, or at least unused, but no local shop had sold such an article: they had probably been bought separately, and the rope bent on to the hook by the purchaser. So the rope provided no clue worth following up at present. Had the criminal used it, it would have narrowed down the police investigations, for Scotland Yard had records of all criminals habitually employing this method: but—and this was one of the most baffling features of the case—the hooked rope had been left on the beach, neatly parcelled up, for anyone to find: there were no scratches on the hook: it had never been put to any use, nefarious or otherwise.

  “Maybe,” remarked Nailsworth, in a spirit of unwonted fantasy, “it was mislaid on the beach by a mountaineer.”

  “Why not a gymnast?” Thorne asked. “Some small boy might have pinched it out of his school gymnasium, for a dare. These nippers’ll get up to anything.”

  “Well, gentlemen, I think we’d better dismiss the parade now. Unless there’s anything more—?” Colonel Allison rose to his feet. As he moved to the door, a police constable entered.

  “Gentleman wants to see the Chief Inspector, sir. Says he has information about the Stone case.”

  “Another of these lunatics, I suppose,” muttered Nailsworth. He had been pestered enough already by the cranks, crackpots and zealous nitwits who always spring up on the track of a murder investigation and cling like brambles to the policeman’s boots.

  Colonel Allison passed to his Chief Inspector a visiting card which the constable had handed him.

  “Dr. John Jaques. Never heard of him,” said Nailsworth. “Well, I suppose we’d better see him, sir? Bring him in, my lad. And the shorthand wizard.”

  14. The Kiss of Death

  Nailsworth and Thorne gave Dr. Jaques the policeman’s look—the leisurely, ruminant, top-to-toe gaze, neutral yet oppressive, by means of which, had some supernatural agency whisked him from sight after five seconds, they could have catalogued him down to the last button on his coat-sleeve. The Chief Constable introduced himself and his colleagues to their visitor, invited him to sit down, glanced at the Chief Inspector.

  “I understand, sir, you have some information to give us about the death of Inspector Stone,” said Nailsworth. It was like a machine talking—a machine adjusted to an endlessly repetitive ritual.

  “Yes, I think I can—”

  “Your name and address, sir.”

  “You have them on that card in your hand.”

  “You are a doctor of medicine?” Nailsworth went on, ponderous as a steam-roller, undeflectible from his routine.

  While the ritual questions proceeded, Colonel Allison studied their visitor. His first impression, when Dr. Jaques entered, had been of a man uncertain of his welcome yet sure of his status: a photographer, as it might be, at a society wedding—not exactly obsequious, but not brashly pushful either—ready to play a needed part unobtrusively and professionally. There was nothing obviously offensive about him; yet Colonel Allison found himself thinking, “impudent fella—a bit smooth.” Perhaps it was the man’s eyes; a hint of mockery behind their deference. He looked sane enough, anyway, which was more than could be said of most of the funnies who had bowled along to assist the police. No, not a photographer, thought the Colonel now; an actor. The glib speech, quick on its cues: the rather theatrical fluff of white hair (cast him for the benevolent if eccentric uncle, back from Australia, his fortune made, ready to help out the struggling young couple): above all, the face was surely an actor’s, with its mobile mouth and loose flesh—a face which, by rearrangement of its fluid planes, could become a different face, or at any rate the face of a quite different character.

  The Chief Constable pulled himself out of these unprofitable musings. Or rather, he was abruptly jerked out of them by the doctor’s replying to some official phrase of Nailsworth’s, “No, no, I’ve not come here to make a confession.” It was not the words so much as the light, amused tone in which they were spoken that gave Colonel Allison an obscure sensation of outrage. And, as if Dr. Jaques was instantly aware of this without even needing to have looked at the Chief Constable’s face, his voice changed colour and he went on, soberly, with a worried expression, “I’m afraid it’s a good deal more difficult than that. For me.”

  “If you will give us your statement, sir, in your own words,” said Nailsworth patiently. “Keeping to the facts, please—no hearsay, or theorising.”

  “On the morning of October 10th I was rung up in London by Mark Amberley,” began Dr. Jaques, in a manner that might have been the most delicate parody of a police constable giving evidence in a magistrate’s court. “He told me
that his brother had telephoned to him from Southbourne, asking him urgently to come down, bringing money with him: he was to ask me if I could come too. I have known Mark’s brother for some time. He changed his name, seven or eight years ago, to Chesterman—Hugo Chesterman.”

  “Wait a minute!” Thorne was snapping his fingers like a schoolboy trying to remember the right answer. “Amberley. Amberley. Hugo Amberley? No. Chesterman… I’ve got it—Chester Hugh Amberley. Was that his original name?”

  Jacko lowered his eyes, and a look of pain passed over his face. “Yes. I see you remember. Hugo changed his name after being released from prison.”

  “Jewel robbery, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe so,” said Jacko, inclining his head. “I travelled down here with Mark. We read about the death of your Inspector Stone in the morning paper. When we got to Hugo’s lodgings”—Jacko gave the address—“he’d told Mark, by the way, to ask for him by a different name, we found him and Daisy in a very agitated state. Daisy Bland, I should have said, is a girl he has been living with for some eighteen months.”

  “Would she be a striking blonde?” asked Thorne, with a flick of the eye at Nailsworth.

  “I suppose you could describe her that way,” replied Jacko coldly. “She is a patient of mine. She will become a mother towards the end of December. Hugo told us that he had run out of money, and was frightened of the police connecting him with the murder, being a man with a police record, if his presence in Southbourne were discovered. He said he must go into hiding for a bit, till the fuss, as he put it, had blown over.”

  Nailsworth drew in a sharp breath, clenching his fist.

  “We gave him some money, and I agreed to put up Miss Bland in my own house. She’s there now. Mark returned to London with Hugo, and Miss Bland and I followed by a later train.”

  “Did it not occur to you and Mr. Amberley that you might be compounding a felony?” asked the Chief Inspector.

  Jacko made a little grimace. “I really don’t remember. I’m fond of Hugo and Daisy, and they were in trouble. One does what one can for one’s friends, under such circumstances.” He took out a clean, folded handkerchief and dabbed his lips. “Besides, Hugo swore he had nothing to do with the crime. I did try to impress on him that, if he ran away, it would look like a confession of guilt, but the poor old boy was too panicky to see reason.”