by E.
“How far away would she be when you caught sight of her, Major?”
“Difficult to say now, Inspector. I didn’t notice particularly. I had fished half up my beat, walking upstream, and decided to have a rest and a smoke. It was when I turned and waded slightly downstream, and across to the bank, that I caught sight of her, quite casually, if you know what I mean; just mentally noted having seen her.”
Inspector Penryn was sitting with Major Smithers on a bank of the upper Lyner. The sun was shining hotly down through the timbering along the bank, turning the water, as it were, into a lacey design as light and shadow was reflected from the trees on to the surface of the stream. The major was munching sandwiches, and eyeing with a frown the speckled forms lying in his creel. The catch was a good one; normally the major would have regarded it with no little satisfaction. The presence of the inspector, however, had robbed the fishing of its pleasure. Major Smithers desired nothing so much as to forget the colonel and his death; and it had been with mixed feelings that, a few minutes earlier, he had looked up to see the inspector approaching along the bank.
He might have felt differently, perhaps, had he realised that Inspector Penryn had shown not a little consideration, at inconvenience to himself, in thus visiting the major at the riverside. His first intention after the conference with his chiefs had been to call at the hotel and interview Major Smithers there. The thought had then crossed his mind that, possibly, neither of the parties, in the circumstances, would care to be seen chatting with a police officer in full view of the other guests. He had, accordingly, waited until the major had set out to fish; had given him an hour, and then slowly walked along the bank till he came upon the angler.
“Quite,” he commented to the major’s description of his fleeting glance at the woman he had seen on the bank. “There was not, of course, any reason why you should have taken particular notice of anyone on a beat where you would naturally expect to see somebody or other during the course of the day. I think you told Doctor Manson that the time was about two o’clock?”
“As near as I can say, Inspector, yes. It might have been a trifle later. I did not note the time, of course. It was not before two o’clock—I know that. And it certainly was not after two-thirty, because I remember looking at my watch some time later, and it was just two-thirty then.”
The inspector noted the statement in his book. “And I think you said she had a rod?” he asked.
“She certainly had. That was the first thing I noticed. It’s funny how an angler will see a rod before he sees anything else. But, in any case, why worry me, Inspector? Why not ask Mrs. Devereux? She ought to know what time she was on the beat.”
Penryn was silent for a fraction of a minute. He was thinking rapidly. So far, the major was equally suspect with Emmett, Sir Edward and Mrs. Devereux herself. His story of seeing a woman might be only another attempt at an alibi. How far he (the inspector) could go in telling one suspect anything about another was exercising the inspector’s mind, while the major waited for an answer to his remark. But then, he argued, he had known the major for a considerable time now, and had fished with him. As far as one could judge men from acquaintance with them, the major was not, in his opinion, the man to go about killing superior officers. It wasn’t done in Army circles, argued Penryn. He decided to take the risk.
“Well, the point is, Major,” he said at length. “We have asked Mrs. Devereux. This, by the way, is in strict confidence between you and me. Mrs. Devereux says she was never on the water on that day; and she has turned up with an alibi to say where she was. And it is as excellent an alibi as ever I have come across.”
The major looked up quickly, but met a glance from the inspector devoid of any expression other than that of interest in the topic under discussion. “I see,” he said. “And you think, perhaps, that the woman on the beat was a figment of my imagination!”
The major had not seen years of service in Military Intelligence without being able to see through a brick wall, as it were.
Penryn cursed himself under his breath. But he smiled cordially at his victim. It was a smile with a chuckle behind it. “That would be touché to you, Major, if it was correct,” he said. “But it is not correct. What I am trying to get from you is some kind of description, in order that we can have a go at tracing the woman. If it wasn’t Mrs, Devereux, then it must have been some other woman. Is there any chance that you noticed, even casually, what she was wearing?”
“Not a hope, Inspector. As I say, I simply noted her mentally in passing. I do not suppose my eyes were on her more than a fraction of a second. I saw a rod and a woman. I knew that Mrs. Devereux had that beat, and I said to myself: ‘There is Mrs. Devereux.’ The figure looked like Mrs. Devereux—although that may have been due to the psychological fact that I expected to see Mrs. Devereux, if I saw anybody at all.”
“That’s what I am trying to get at, Major. Supposing the woman had been totally unlike Mrs. Devereux, would the fact have registered in your mind? Would you have said, for instance: ‘Now, who the Devil is that’?”
Major Smithers considered the question. “I see what you mean, Inspector, and it is very ingenious,” he replied. “But I don’t know whether I can answer. If I had kept her in sight for even a minute, I should have said that it would. But in the passing glance which I caught, I should say it is extremely doubtful. Anyway, if Mrs. Devereux has shown that she was not there, then, obviously, it could not have registered with me, because I would be prepared to say, as I did indeed say, quite definitely, that I had seen her at that spot.”
The inspector left it at that, and tried another tack. “It’s a dreadful business, the whole thing, Major,” he commiserated, “and a very uncomfortable one for me, knowing Franky so long, and Sir Edward and you. It’s a pity the whole thing could not have been allowed to go down as the accident we at first thought it was. Of course, when suspicion arose, we had to take up the investigation.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you that it WAS a pity, Inspector,” was the reply. “I am afraid that my sympathies are all on the side of the person who rid us of the presence of the colonel. I cannot feel any regret at Donoughmore’s passing. I knew quite a lot about him, and I think his death will be blessed, rather than mourned, by a number of people. Perhaps I should not say that—nil bonum, you know—but the fact remains that he won’t be missed except, perhaps, by the village maidens.”
Penryn’s brain jerked again into alertness at the asperity in the major’s voice. There seemed, to his mind, something suspiciously like a personal note behind the epitaph. He might be wrong—“I’m getting suspicious of everybody,” he said to himself—but it might be worth while probing a little deeper. “You had known him for some years, had you not, Major?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say I had known him, Inspector. He had come down here for several years and since, like myself, he had usually picked the best trouting months, we were generally here together. Sir Edward was usually here also.”
“Where did he get his money, do you know? Franky’s place isn’t cheap by any means, and he usually stayed a couple of months or so, didn’t he?”
“He had his army pension, of course, and perhaps he had saved a bit, though I doubt it—in India. I know of one or two occasions on which he made considerable sums of money by what I, personally, would call fraudulent means, but which I have no doubt he called smart business. That is what I meant by saying that he wouldn’t be mourned; and I’ve an idea that he made a business of the ‘means’ behind the ‘fellow fisherman’ guise. I cannot, of course, say that that is true. There are only two cases that I know of.”
“Would it be too much to ask what they were, Major?”
“No, I can’t tell you that, Inspector. It concerns other people, and has nothing to do with this case. I only mentioned it to show you the character of the man.”
“And the village maidens, Major. Any of them in Tremarden?”
“Quite a number, I should think
, Inspector. And some who were by no means maidens, if the truth is known.”
“That’s why old Trepol was so anxious to offer a free coffin for the colonel if he had fallen in the river and drowned himself, wasn’t it?”
The major smiled for the first time during the talk. “Oh, old Trepol’s bark is a good deal worse than his bite. YOU know that. I don’t think there was much between his girl and the colonel. The number of people to whom old Trepol has offered free coffins is legion—and they are still alive.”
A smile passed between the two men. The inspector knew Trepol as well as he knew the major—if not, indeed, better. “Nevertheless,” the inspector said to himself: “I’ll have a word or two with the girl. She was with the colonel in the ruins at night.” Aloud he said: “Well, Major, you’ll want to get on with your fishing, and I must be getting back to the station. Thanks for the help you’ve been. Perhaps if you remember anything else you’ll give me a ring, or let me come along and see you.”
“I will, Inspector.”
Penryn wended a way back to Tremarden in a thoughtful frame of mind. His inquiry, he felt, was not getting him any forrader; on the contrary, it seemed to be putting him further and deeper into the mystery. Who, for instance, were the people who had been the victims of the colonel’s frauds; for that is what Major Smithers had virtually accused the dead man of perpetrating. They must have been pretty bad frauds to have aroused so much feeling in the major, for, the inspector ruminated, he was not the man to be easily moved. Were they, the inspector wondered, sufficiently serious to have goaded the victims to take revenge on the colonel? And were the people concerned local people, or outlanders, as the Cornishman calls strangers? If they were locals . . .
The inspector’s soliloquy was broken by the sudden appearance over a hedge of a line full of clothes, jerked up at the end of a clothes prop.
Anne Trepol was hanging out the family washing.
Penryn grunted. “Might as well get a talk with her while her old father’s away,” he said to himself. He walked through the gate and along to the back door.
The girl looked up at him from the other side of a washtub, her arms deep in soapsuds. Anne Trepol was eighteen, but a large eighteen, and a buxom one, with spacious curves which she never troubled to conceal overmuch at any time, but which were now hardly concealed at all. The inspector looked her over with disapproval at the brazenness.
“I want to talk to you about Colonel Donoughmore, Anne,” he said.
The girl made no reply, but began again to rub the clothes in the tub. Going to be difficult, the inspector decided. A tactful man, he made a new approach. “The colonel was very good to you, Anne, wasn’t he? Now, we think he may have been killed, and I’m sure you wouldn’t like anyone who killed him to get off scot free, when you might be able to tell us something that might help us to catch him.”
“How do you know the colonel was good to me?” Anne demanded.
“Well, Anne, we know you used to meet him. You’ve been seen in the old ruins, you know.”
“That would be the Devereux woman who told you that, I know. She wanted the colonel herself, I suppose. She flew at me that night, and said as how the colonel wouldn’t do me any good and I had better not meet him any more. I reckon she killed him herself, she was always rowing with him.”
“Rowing? How do you mean, Anne?”
“I’ve heard them in the hotel when I’ve been helping as a chamber-maid, when the hotel has been full.”
The inspector nodded. “Of course, Anne. I had forgotten that you went in there sometimes. How were Mrs. Devereux and the colonel rowing?”
“Well, once he was in her bedroom and I heard her say, ‘Don’t drive me too far, my friend, or I’ll have to find some way out.’”
Penryn looked up, startled. “Did the colonel say anything to that?” he asked.
“Yes, he said, ‘You’ll be well advised not to, my lady. I’m not such a fool as to leave things so you could get away with anything. It’s in black and white.’”
“When did this happen, Anne?”
“Last week-end. It would be on the Friday, when the coachload of people came to the hotel.”
“Was anything else said?”
“I don’t know. I was in the room next door and then Mrs. Baker came in, and I had to go out.”
“Were you down by the river on the day the colonel was drowned, Anne?”
“Me? No. I wasn’t near the river that day. I wasn’t, I tell you.”
Inspector Penryn looked hard at the girl. The vehemence of her reply seemed to him to be concealing something she feared to have revealed. She had, he thought, a frightened air. “You see, Anne, Mrs. Devereux wasn’t on the river that day, though we thought she was. So she couldn’t have hurt the colonel. But Major Smithers says he saw a woman down there. . . .”
“Major Smithers! Him! He’s another one who hated the colonel. He couldn’t say a good word for him. The colonel told me all about it. It wasn’t the colonel’s fault that him and Sir Edward lost money on the shares. He couldn’t help it. How could he?”
“Shares?” The inspector spoke sharply. “What shares, Anne?”
“Shares what the colonel sold to them. How could he help it if the companies didn’t pay any money. The colonel told me all about it. He gave me some of the shares, too, he did. And he said, they’d be worth a lot of money some time.”
Penryn felt himself wading in deep water, to use a fisherman’s term. Was this to do with the frauds that the major had talked about half an hour since? Shares . . . lost money . . . companies didn’t pay anything. He decided that he ought to see the shares which Anne held.
“Of course, the colonel couldn’t help it, Anne,” he said. “Shares are always going up and down, and lots of people lose money every week buying them. I hope your shares will be worth a lot of money, Anne. Perhaps I could tell you if they are worth much money now, if I saw them. Have you still got them?”
The girl nodded. She turned, ran upstairs, and came down a minute or two later with a bundle of engraved papers. “That’s them,” she said.
Penryn, looking them through, whistled softly to himself. They were, according to the wording, 400 shares of £10 each in the Grand Consolidated Gold Mining Corporation of South Africa, Ltd. Four thousand pounds’ worth of money—“and the gold on the paper worth another five pounds, I should think,” the inspector said to himself. He handed them back to the girl. “I don’t know much about these shares, Anne, but I don’t think they are worth much money now. Of course, as the colonel said, they may be worth more later. You keep hold of them, and don’t let anybody else see them.”
“I shall take care of that,” was the reply.
“And you can’t tell me anything else about the colonel, Anne?”
“No. Only about the major and Sir Edward having threatened him.”
“What did your father say about you knowing the colonel?”
The girl coloured. “Him!” she said. “I didn’t care what he said, nor what he did. He give me a good hiding when somebody told him and he said I wasn’t to see the colonel again. He said he’d give the colonel a good hiding, too. The colonel said not to worry about that, as he was used to dealing with men, him being an officer of a regiment.”
“And you saw the colonel again, I suppose?”
The girl scowled. “Of course I did,” she agreed.
“But not on the day he died, Anne? You’re sure of that, are you?”
“I never saw him that day,” was the reply.
Penryn hurried back to the Tremarden Arms, turning over in his mind the strange story of £4,000 worth of shares given to a chamber-maid, and other shares over which Sir Edward Maurice and Major Smithers had, according to Anne, lost money. Was there, he wondered some link between those losses and the tragedy of the Tamar? He turned in at the hotel, walked up the stairs, and into Doctor Manson’s room. The Doctor was bending over his microscope. He glanced up as the door opened. A questioning look on
his visitor’s face caused him to push the microscope back. “Anything wrong, Inspector?” he asked.
“Do you know anything, Doctor—” Penryn spoke very slowly—“about the shares of the Grand Consolidated Gold Mining Corporation of South Africa, Ltd.?”
Manson stared at him in bewilderment. “Grand Consolidated Gold Mining Corporation of South Africa?” he repeated. “Never heard of them, Penryn. Why? Anything to do with us?”
“I don’t know, Doctor—yet. But it might help if you can find out anything about the company.”
“I dare say I can find out, Penryn.” The scientist pulled the telephone towards him and spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is a police priority call, please. Get me Whitehall 1212, and I want a personal call to Inspector Thompson—What? Half an hour? Very well.”
“Thompson is the Yard’s City expert, Penryn,” he explained to the superintendent. “If he knows anything about your company I will telephone you. That all right?”
“It will do me fine, Doctor,” was the reply.
* * * * *
Inspector Penryn lifted the telephone receiver. By force of habit he glanced at the clock, a routine precaution in case the call should require timing for future reference. It was less than twenty minutes since he had left Doctor Manson. “Hallo!” he said. “Inspector Penryn.”
“Manson here,” was the reply. “Grand Consolidated Gold Mining Corporation of South Africa is a moribund company. Two years ago it was concerned in a share-pushing fraud. The mine was a genuine concern at its start, fifteen years ago, but gold petered out. Then, two years ago, a report was circulated that a new vein of gold had been found. An inspector’s report was attached giving glowing prospects. Nothing was disclosed to the Stock Exchange, but the shares were sold privately, in thousands, at the price of £50 a £10 share, mostly by circular and through the whispered offers of people who were prepared to let a few friends in ‘on a good thing.’ Something like 150,000 shares were sold, Thompson says, before the fraud leaked out. There was no gold; there had never been any gold. The inspector and his reports were both frauds, and were circulated after a man named Mallinson and two companions had bought the original shares from their holders for two shillings apiece, which was one and elevenpence more than they were worth. Mallinson vanished to South America, and is still living there on the proceeds—about £750,000 profit. The shares to-day are not worth £1 for the whole issue. That any use to you?”