Murder Jigsaw

by E.

  His inquiries produced little result. The lady, he learned from the staff at the flats, lived a decorous life, receiving only one or two men friends. One of these, it was known, was her fiancé, Sir John Shepstone. Another was a tall, soldierly looking man of past middle-age. He had, however, been seen only twice, and that quite recently. It was at this point, when he seemed to be making little progress that a fortunate chance provided Penryn with a totally unexpected angle on the woman.

  The inspector was one of those men who had drifted into the Police Force after finding that a University career did not attract prospective employers as a reason for providing him with a salary. It had the advantage, however, of qualifying him for membership of the Universities Club in London. Dropping in at the club for lunch, after his visit to Mrs. Devereux’s flat, the first person he saw was Major Ruddock, with whom he had been a fellow student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Over lunch, the two talked of past and present times. It was as they were about to part that Penryn remembered that the major had for some years held an appointment in the Indian Police. He took a long chance.

  “I suppose you never came across a Mrs. Devereux during the time you were in India, Jack?” he asked.

  Ruddock looked up in astonishment. “Devereux?” he queried. “What, Janice Devereux? Good Lord, yes! Lively young woman she was, too. Married to an Indian Army officer, Lieutenant Ronald Devereux. In the artillery if I remember rightly. Got himself killed. Queer you should ask me that,” he said, ruminatingly. “I thought I saw Janice in town the other day. Now, you start asking me about her.”

  A thought struck him. “In the Force, aren’t you? What do you want with Janice Devereux? Aren’t thinking of marrying her or something, are you?”

  “Not I!” Penryn laughed. “A bachelor life for me, same as you, Jack. No, she’s popped up in a case with which I have some connection. A fellow fell in the river while fishing, and was drowned. Scotland Yard think it’s a curious case, so we are investigating the alibis of the people who were on the river the same day. Mrs Devereux is one of them. Old Donoughmore. . . .”

  “Who did you say?” Ruddock stared.

  “Donoughmore. Dashed old Colonel. Why?”

  “Well, damn me for coincidence. I see Janice Devereux in Town, first time I’ve seen or heard of her for years. Then you ask me about her. Now you poll up with old Donoughmore. Damn it, Penryn, Colonel Donoughmore was the C.O. of a command to which young Devereux was attached.”

  “The deuce he was! Did he know Devereux?”

  “Couldn’t say, old fellow. Shouldn’t think so. Devereux was mostly in the Plains, you know, and Donoughmore was higher up. And Colonels don’t know Junior Lieutenants, m’lad.”

  “Where was Mrs. Devereux?”

  “Mostly up with us. I knew her pretty well.”

  “Did the colonel know her?”

  “Again I couldn’t say. He must have known her by sight. And we all went to dances in the same club, you know.”

  “You said that Devereux was killed. How come?”

  “Shooting. He went out on a couple of days’ leave. He was an adventurous young devil. Year before he had been mauled by a tiger, which he’d missed at short range. The thing got behind him and leapt. Clawed his right arm pretty badly. He got a wigging from old Donoughmore. He was off duty for weeks with it. Anyway, this last time he didn’t come back—not even with a wound. Apparently, he tried to cross a torrent in a native boat. It capsized and he was swept away. A couple of boys tried to reach him and were drowned as well. His body was never recovered. Janice Devereux left India shortly afterwards. I thought she had gone to the French Riviera.”

  “But I take it she would have known Colonel Donoughmore by sight?”

  “Oh Lor! Yes. Damn it, she must have seen him in the club.”

  “What kind of a man was Donoughmore?”

  “Bit of a bully. He was C.O., and let everybody know it. Not a popular fellow, either, with the men or the women, though he fancied himself as a lady killer.”

  Inspector Penryn left his club in a reflective mood. He wanted to think how this unexpected information fitted into the jigsaw puzzle of the Tamar tragedy. He turned into Oxford Street and boarded a bus for Richmond. He could think best on a bus, and he wanted to see Richmond again, anyway. He had been wont, in his younger days, to sail a boat there. From a front seat on the nearly empty bus he argued the pros and cons with an imaginary companion.

  “Supposing she had known the colonel in India, what’s that to do with his going into the Tamar, anyway? After all, she had been away from India for several years, and there had been no reunion greetings when she had met the colonel in the Tremarden Arms.”

  “You don’t think that will do?” The inspector frowned at his imaginary companion. “You don’t see any need for Mrs. Devereux not to have acknowledged the colonel as an old acquaintance? Well, why should she acknowledge him?”

  “No reason at all; any more than she should say that she had never seen him before she came to the Tremarden Arms. There is no reason why she should not have known him. Or is there?”

  “True,” the inspector conceded. “She must, at any rate, have heard of him in India. Why hide it?”

  “She lied in that case, you see—” from the companion.

  “I see what you’re getting at. If she lied about not knowing the colonel, then she might have lied about not being on the water.”

  “Didn’t one of the guests say he saw her there?”

  “He says he supposed it was her.”

  “Once a liar always a liar.”

  The bus lumbered up the hilly main street of Richmond, and the inspector, with a nod of appreciation at his invisible friend, descended and walked to the river bank.

  In the evening, before catching the night train back to Tremarden, he visited the Daily Examiner. There he secured the information he wanted. Press cuttings from the extensive library of the paper revealed that Mrs. Devereux had made the acquaintance of Sir John Shepstone during the previous winter at Mentone, on the French Riviera, where Sir John had a villa out near the Italian border at Mentone-Garavan.

  The inspector was early at his office next morning. After preparing his written report for the superintendent, he rang his bell and a sergeant answered.

  “How did the Devereux alibi go, Bates?” he asked.

  “Absolutely cast iron, sir,” was the reply. “I saw the proprietress of the Devonshire Tea Rooms, and I saw the waitress who served Mrs. Devereux both times. I questioned them very closely and separately. Each of them described the woman. There is no doubt about the description fitting Mrs. Devereux.”

  “What about the scarf and the teacup?”

  “Identified, Inspector. The waitress remembered seeing the scarf after the customer had left, about 12.45. It’s funny how she forgot it, because it was lying across the back of a chair on the other side of the table from her. Mrs. Devereux was the only person at that table for lunch. Anyhow, nobody could mistake the scarf—yellow, with black dogs and horses all over it—the sort of thing once seen never forgotten. The proprietress says that Millie—that’s the waitress—gave it to her to take care of; and when Mrs. Devereux walked in, at a quarter to five, Millie told her at once in a whisper: ‘That’s the lady who left the scarf!’”

  “And the tea-cup?”

  “Happened just as she said. Waitress says that Mrs. Devereux had paid for the tea and stood up to go. She swept the cup and saucer off the edge of the table. They broke to pieces on the floor. Mrs. Devereux apologised and insisted on paying for the damage.”

  “Hm! That seems to dispose of that, then, Bates. All right. Keep on hand in case I want you. Is the Super in?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s in with the Chief Constable and the Scotland Yard man.”

  Penryn decided that it would be as well to give the result of his investigations to the three men at once, when it could be considered by them collectively. It would save time. Knocking at the door, he peeped round the jamb a
t the conference.

  “Ah! Come in, Penryn. We were just talking about you,” greeted the Chief Constable. “Anything come of the Devereux inquiries?”

  “So far as this end is concerned the alibi is sound, sir.” He related the result of the sergeant’s talk with the tea-room people. “As regards the wider inquiries, which I have made in London, I am not so sure as to what they are going to mean to Doctor Manson.”

  The inspector paused, to give effect to his coming pronouncement.

  “Mrs. Devereux knew Colonel Donoughmore before she ever came to Tremarden,” he said.

  The effect on the three men was instantaneous.

  “What!” roared the Chief Constable. “Why she said she had never met him.”

  Superintendent Burns swore that he had never believed the damned woman. Manson alone spoke quietly: “Let’s hear all about it, Penryn,” he said.

  Briefly the inspector sketched in all the details of his talk with his club friend. “There is no doubt whatever that, if she did not know the colonel personally—and she is certain to have done so, in my view—she must have known of him, and who he was. She spent two years in India and her husband was in Colonel Donoughmore’s command.”

  “And what do you see in the fact that she said she had never met him, Inspector?” asked Manson.

  “That there is some reason connected with his death that would implicate her if it was known that she was acquainted with him before Tremarden,” was the inspector’s prompt reply.

  Manson nodded. “There is something to be said for that point of view,” he admitted. “But you must not take it for granted. For instance, Mrs. Devereux is engaged to be married to a wealthy Baronet. Her denial of any acquaintance with the colonel might be due to a desire not to be mixed up or associated in any way with the colonel’s death. She might assume that, if we knew that she had known the colonel, we would ask her questions about that acquaintance. That would be quite understandable.”

  “In certain circumstances, yes sir,” retorted Penryn. “But that does not explain why, when she came to the hotel she did not acknowledge the acquaintance. She didn’t know then that the colonel was going to be killed.”

  He paused as a thought suddenly struck him.

  “Or did she?” he asked emphatically.

  Even Manson was startled by the remark. He looked long and sharply at the inspector. Then: “That is an accusation, Penryn,” he said. “Is there any ground for it that we do not know. I mean, have you anything that you have not told us?”

  “No, Doctor. But I have been thinking pretty deeply over this case since Major Ruddock told me about the Indian business. And, frankly, I am suspicious of the lady. Major Smithers says he saw her on the water. She denies that she was ever there. She does not, by the way, know that the major says he saw her there. She gives us an alibi. I think it is too good an alibi.”

  Manson was listening to the inspector with marked attention. As the officer paused he nodded to him to continue. “Go on, Inspector,” he said. “You are interesting me very considerably.”

  “Well, gentlemen, I have had a lot of experience with alibis. And I have found that a person with an alibi is, more often than not, a guilty person. The innocent person seldom has an alibi because he has never prepared one beforehand—he has had no reason to do so. For instance, if I asked the Chief Constable here, for an alibi for the afternoon on which Colonel Donoughmore died, I would be very much surprised if he could give me a satisfactory answer—one which could be checked and accepted.” He looked across at the Chief Constable.

  Sir William thought for a few moments. “I remember that I went out in my car that afternoon,” he said.

  “Where?” asked Penryn.

  “Just for a drive, Inspector.”

  “Did you see anyone you know, who could vouch that you were at any given spot?”

  “No. I don’t remember seeing anyone I knew.”

  “Did you call anywhere, sir?”

  “No. I just drove out, stopped by the roadside once to refill my pipe, and then turned for home.”

  Manson chuckled and took up the questioning. “So, if the inspector, here, said he believed that you went to the river, had a row with the colonel and pushed him in, you could not prove that you were elsewhere, Sir William?”

  The Chief Constable looked staggered at the suggestion. He realised that he was now, himself, in the position of being asked to account for his movements, that many men had been in at his hands and at the hands of his officers. He glanced from one to the other of the two men, and his tone became much less assured than usual. “Dammit, Manson, I couldn’t,” he said. “I . . . I . . . I really c-c-ouldn’t.”

  “Stammering over the reply—that’s usually a very bad sign,” commented Manson to the others. “I suppose you DIDN’T kill the colonel, Sir William?” he asked suddenly.

  “ME!” roared the Chief Constable with a fine disregard for grammar. “Me—of course I didn’t!”

  “Well, PROVE it, sir,” said Inspector Penryn. “By an alibi,” he added.

  “You see what I mean, sir,” he went on. “Here is a woman apparently hiding something between her and the colonel. She has an alibi which is good from midday to about five or six o’clock in the evening. And somewhere between those times the colonel gets killed. I say I view so perfect an alibi with suspicion, the more so in view of the fact that one of the persons on the river says he saw a woman on the bank. And the only woman who had any right to be there—she had a rod the major said—is the woman with this beautiful alibi.”

  The inspector sat back, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. He had, he felt, gone a little too far with the Chief Constable.

  Sir William turned a comprehensive gaze on the police chiefs. There was a rueful, but at the same time, humorous glint in his eyes. “Well, Doctor, what do you say to all this?” he asked. “Do YOU want to pull me in?”

  Manson returned the smile. “No, Sir William. I think we will acquit you on this count. But—” and his face became serious—“as to the other aspect, Inspector Penryn has thought along the very lines that I myself would have put forward had I had the knowledge that he had gained. It is a very well-reasoned argument; and I would like to say so in front of him. We must, I think, take serious notice of it. And if there is any chance of the alibi being a prepared one, then it must be investigated very thoroughly.”

  “Have you any idea of the actual time the colonel died, Doctor?” the Chief Constable asked. “That seems to be a crucial point.”

  “I haven’t, Sir William. That is a very difficult thing to decide in drowning cases, or where water is concerned. Normally, the heat of the body is lost almost twice as rapidly in water as it is in the air, and the temperature of the water is reached in about 14 hours. The temperature of the colonel’s body, according to Dr. Tremayne, was slightly higher than that of the water in the Tamar. That would make the colonel’s death in normal circumstances about five o’clock the previous night. But several things might affect the position. The colonel might have engaged in a struggle, which would have increased his temperature at the time of death; and he was wearing heavy waders and waterproof coat, which would have retarded cooling—it might be to the extent of three or four hours. But I think we can say, as an estimate, that Donoughmore died not earlier than two o’clock, and not later than four o’clock. Both these times are well-covered by Mrs. Devereux’s alibi.”

  “We can narrow things down a little more, can we not, Doctor?” said Inspector Penryn. “Mrs. Devereux did not leave the tea rooms after lunch until 12.45, and she was back at tea at 4.45.”

  “So she would have four hours in which to get from Tavistock to the Tamar beat, and back to the tea rooms.” Superintendent Burns supplied the calculation.

  “And the hours we are most concerned with—2 to 4 p.m.—you will notice are right bang in the middle of her time,” commented the Chief Constable. “Could she get there and back and do the deed in the time?”

  �
�How far is Tavistock?” asked Manson.

  “Thirteen miles from Tremarden and about ten-and-a-half from the nearest point to the Tamar beats.”

  “That is 21 miles, there and back. There doesn’t seem any difficulty about covering the distance. Any cars for hire in Tavistock?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Well, perhaps we had better leave the inquiries to Inspector Penryn, who has done so well up to now. There is, however, one thing you might do, Inspector.”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Have a word with Major Smithers and see whether he can fix the time he saw the woman at the end of the Avenue, and whether he can identify the woman more closely. Also, whether he saw her subsequently.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.”

  “I’ll have a word with the Tavistock police, Penryn, and get them to give you any help you may require,” said the Chief Constable.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE MAJOR

  “Actually, all I can say, Inspector, is that I saw a woman on the beat which adjoined mine. I assumed, naturally assumed, that woman to be Mrs. Devereux. If it was not, then I have no idea who she could have been.”