Murder Jigsaw

by E.

  At Tavistock, Sergeant McRobbie, with a staff of four men, was scouring the town for traces there of the fishing woman on the day of the colonel’s death.

  On the river, Mrs. Devereux, flicking a wrist, tightened her line, and an unseen force carried it straight upstream for ten yards before she was able to reel slowly in. Into her landing net she guided a three quarters of a pound, speckled trout. Holding it in her left hand she gave it a sharp blow at the junction of head and neck with her “priest,” and it lay still and limp. “There!” she said, and the satisfaction in her voice was purely animal. She might, as a sportsman would have done, have played the fish for a few minutes for the satisfaction of giving it a chance to get away. But Mrs. Devereux, as she had told Doctor Manson, did not fish for sport. She angled to kill fish. Manson had never forgotten her confession.

  At the time that Mrs. Devereux killed the trout in the paragraph above, the scientist himself was letting Inspector Rawlings in front of him into the residence of the late Colonel. The apartment was one of the twin-roomed service flats in Albemarle Street, that resort of the not-too-well-off who covet a fashionable address; some for reasons of pride; others because it invites confidence in the nefarious ways by which they earned a living.

  The rooms in which Colonel Donoughmore had passed his days were well-furnished. Deep, club armchairs stood on either side of the fireplace. A refectory table occupied the centre of the dining-room, and a well filled bookcase stood opposite the oak sideboard-and-cocktail cabinet combined. At the end of the room, opposite the door, a heavy oak desk stood solidly on guard, as it were, over its dead owner’s secrets. It was to this desk that Doctor Manson turned after a cursory examination of the bookshelves and letters and papers pushed behind a clock on the mantelpiece. It was locked.

  “All right, Doctor. That won’t cause us any trouble.” Inspector Rawlings produced a bunch of keys. The second one turned the wards of the lock, and the inspector threw the top open. He smiled at the scientist’s interested look at the keys. “We took them off the best office burglar I ever knew,” he explained. “Man we called ‘Keys’ Denham. Died in prison. And very useful the keys have proved to us on several occasions.”

  “I believe it, Inspector!” Manson chuckled. “Let’s hope they have unlocked a secret I want this time.” He surveyed the desk with its triple rows of pigeon-holes of various sizes, all neatly filled with papers and documents, and his head unconsciously nodded in recognition of its orderliness. Manson had an orderly mind, and appreciated the habit in others. “Whatever else this man may have been, and I think he was a very nasty kind of man, Rawlings, he was at any rate a tidy individual.”

  “Army training, probably, Doctor. You have to be neat and methodical there.”

  “Yes.” The scientist spoke absent-mindedly. He was already looking through the contents of the first of the pigeon-holes. “Mostly bills and receipts,” he said, and replaced them. Nothing in the contents of the other holes raised any comment from him until the larger of them gave up its contents. They consisted of a dozen or so bundles of share script. Manson, after a glance, passed them over to the inspector. “Your line, I think,” he said.

  Rawlings eyebrows rose at the names of the companies printed across the script. “If this was his means of livelihood, Doctor, he died a poor man,” he said.

  “On the contrary, Rawlings, he died a pretty well-off man, I should say. He lived on those shares, all right.”

  “But they are useless, Doctor.”

  “Mebbe, but the colonel sold a few thousand of them for good money. These, I take it, are the remnants.”

  “You mean—he was a sharepusher?”

  “Exactly. . . . Hallo! What is this?” Manson had pulled a packet of photographs from a drawer of the top row of recesses, and was staring at them with marked interest. They were unusual photographs to say the least. Instead of the usual array of faces of groups or representations of buildings or scenery, the prints showed only lines of newspaper print. They were, in fact, photographs of half a dozen reports copied by a camera from the pages of a newspaper. Each was pasted on a headed sheet of notepaper which announced that it was supplied by the Service Press-Cutting Agency, Fleet Street, London; and in the space between the reproductions a date stamp of five years ago was printed.

  “Obviously the date of the issue of the paper in which the report appeared, Doctor,” said Rawlings.

  “Quite. What ARE the papers? . . . Um . . . Times of India, The Statesman, Calcutta Times, Simla Journal, the Times again and the London Times. Very interesting.”

  Settling himself in one of the colonel’s armchairs, Doctor Manson read slowly through the reports. Pieced together they unfolded the panorama of the death of Lieutenant Ronald Devereux of the Indian Army, thumbnail sketches of the officer and his wife, and finally, the departure of the grief stricken young widow from India.

  Manson, his perusal ended, pushed them back into the envelope which had held them. “Now, why do you suppose he wanted those?” he asked, half aloud. The wrinkles formed on his forehead, and he eyed the envelope as though expecting it to answer. Slipping it into his pocket, he rose and turned again to the desk.

  Only one other item raised any interest in him, however; a desk size diary which lay in the drawer beneath the writing-pad. As he turned the pages over, expletives escaped from his lips from time to time.

  At last he turned away. “I think that is all the desk can tell us, Rawlings,” he said. “I suppose you can lock it again with those keys of yours?” Manson shut down the top and made way for the inspector.

  “Just as easily as I opened it, Doctor.” With a grin he slipped in the key and turned it. “There you are. Nobody would know that it had been opened if it wasn’t for your finger-prints, Doctor.”

  He chuckled. “I’m surprised you made the mistake of handling it. We’ve got your prints at the Yard, you know. By the way, can we turn the flat over to the relatives now. They want to see what they can take away. Or will you want to keep it intact?”

  “No. I have all that is likely to be of any use to me. Give them access, if you like.”

  Manson entered the Yard on his return, at the precise moment that the Assistant Commissioner walked in. He took his arm. “Hallo, A.C. I want to have a chat with you.”

  “Didn’t know you were in Town again, Harry,” was the surprised reply. “Hooked that fish of your’s yet?”

  “Just what I want to talk over, A.C.” The two men walked arm in arm along the corridor to the Assistant Commissioner’s room.

  * * * * *

  “Janice Devereux? Now what has that young woman been up to that a detective should want to know anything about her? Did I know her? Of course I knew her. Bless me, everybody knew her in Monte Carlo, and some of ’em wished to goodness they hadn’t known her afterwards. Didn’t I see the other day that she is going to marry Johnny Shepstone?”

  Mrs. Watkins looked up from the depths of her brocade-covered chair at Sergeant Merry, perched, ill at ease, on a piece of straight-backed, delicate, Louis Quinze furniture, fearing to move lest an incautious misbalance of weight should break off one of the spindle legs, or something.

  It was on the advice of the Yard’s Society expert that he was sitting in front of the painted old woman—mutton served up as lamb, was his unspoken comment. “If it’s any scandal on the Riviera you want to know about, Merry, go and see Mrs. Watkins,” the expert had advised.

  “She’ll know it. The damn old mischief-maker can describe everybody’s dirty linen piece by piece. Her tongue will wag an omnibus biography of scandal. Go and see her. Here, I’ll make an appointment for you.”

  He picked up the phone and dialled. “That you, Mrs. Watkins?” he asked the answering voice. “Larry Waller here. I’m sending a young man round to see you. He wants to know something about someone who was at Monte. Can he come along now?”

  “Of course he can, Larry. I can’t give him longer than twelve o’clock. I’m lunching out at half-past.
And be sure that he IS a young man. The last one you sent round was old enough to be my husband.”

  “There you are, Merry. You hop round—and you’ll have to be careful if you want to get away without being seduced.”

  Merry went!

  “Now what has that young woman been up to?” Mrs. Watkins demanded again.

  “She hasn’t been up to anything, so far as we know,” Merry explained. “But somebody connected with her is concerned in a case of death we are investigating, Mrs. Watkins, and we wanted a background to them. How long had Mrs. Devereux been in Monte Carlo when you knew her?”

  “Bless the boy! I had been going to Monte for the season before Janice Devereux was born,” was the reply. “I remember the day she turned up in the place in widow’s weeds, and with a face looking like as though the world had come to a sudden and tragic end. Bah! A pose. She had every man in the place round her within a week. Never saw a widow so much enjoy herself in her tragic loss, never before nor since.”

  “I suppose you mean the weeds were a sprat, eh, Mrs. Watkins?”

  “What do you suppose? She was a clever woman, and she stopped clever.”

  “How so?”

  “How so? A woman who lived in the Hotel de Paris and played roulette and baccarat in the Sporting Club wants a few hundreds more than her husband left her plus an army lieutenant’s pension. I should know! Why, damn you, she went everywhere, dressed like a mannequin, and entertained. And I’ve seen her stake a maximum on the transversales at roulette.”

  “Men, I suppose?” Merry’s question was accompanied by the smug look which seemed justified by the tones of Mrs. Watkins’ voice.

  “And she played ’em well. Mind you, I’ve nothing against her for that. They’re fair game and a woman has to have her fun. Men have bought me a few luxuries in me time, and Janice was a pretty woman and knew her way about. But I used to have ’em one at a time—with another always in the background.” The old woman leered.

  “Janice had ’em all on the stage at the same time. And they never knew when it was their turn to do the play-acting. She made mistakes, mark you. Got herself engaged to young Whitehaven one night, in the Abrek Nightclub. Now THAT was the place to spend money in Monte. If the bank couldn’t break you, Abrek could. Idea of a few Russian naval—ex-Czar—officers that was. They borrowed some money off the mugs who thought it grand to entertain penniless grand dukes, and took the lease of a cellar in a back street. All very fine, it was, me lad. Waiters were the Naval officers, the orchestra leader was a nephew of one of the Czar’s dukes, and what with the dim light and the vodka and champagne, you never realised until you went home to breakfast that you’d paid ten pounds for something that hadn’t cost ’em ten shillings to produce.

  “Abrek, eh? I asked a Russian one day what the damn word meant. It wasn’t a word he told me, young man: it was formed of a syllable each of three Russian words which meant ‘rob the rich to help the poor’ and I never knew a place that lived up to its name better or more painstakingly. The place didn’t open until midnight, when everything else was closed down except the Casino. The Russian robbers knew the victims all right—that was good psychology. There was never a night, or rather morning, when Janice Devereux wasn’t there. And that’s where she made the mistake over Billy Whitehaven.”

  “Mistake?” queried Merry.

  “Mistake, I said. She thought he was the other brother, who had been left £25,000 a year by his aunt. He wasn’t. He was the one who lived on the other one’s allowance. She dropped all the other men like a hot brick till she found out—I told her.” The old harridan chortled with glee at the recollection. Then she started up all over again, “I’m telling you, young man, not much stands in the way of Janice Devereux when she wants something. She gets what she intends to get. There was one incident—well, I was told by the Court Chamberlain of Monaco that she was in prison there for one night. It was hushed up, so I heard, and only one or two knew about it.”

  “She seems to have been a bit of a goer,” said Merry with a smile. “But she’s finished up all right. Sir John Shepstone seems to think the world of her. Wonder what would happen if somebody came between them—that is, if she is still the same kind of woman?”

  “You can bet your breeks she’s still the same kind of woman. That sort don’t change. And this, mark you, is Janice Devereux’s last chance. She’s no chicken now. I think she’d do murder before she lost Johnny Shepstone.”

  Merry had hard work to keep down the exclamation that rose to his lips. Instead, he laughed quietly. “Murder!” he said. “My dear Mrs. Watkins! Little Janice Devereux! Murder! Do women do murder?”

  “For their men, yes. It’s about the only thing for which they would murder,” was the reply.

  “Did you know anything about her husband?”

  “Only how he died, while shooting. He was dead, of course, when I met Janice. He was a good-looking young man, mind you, according to the photograph she gave me. I’ve got it somewhere, still.”

  Mrs. Watkins rummaged through the drawers of an escritoire to emerge with a photograph. A cabinet size head and shoulders, it showed Lieutenant Devereux in uniform with sun helmet, and Mrs. Devereux in cream silk with floppy hat. Merry eyed it with interest. “Do you mind if I borrow this, Mrs. Watkins?” he asked.

  “No, my boy. You can have it, so long as you bring it back yourself when you’ve finished with it, and have tea with me.”

  “I’ll certainly do that, Mrs. Watkins. I’d love to.” (I don’t think! he added under his breath). “And now, I mustn’t keep you any longer. Many thanks for the interesting chat.”

  Merry collected his hat and made for the street.

  * * * * *

  “Get the Photographic Department to copy the photograph and have half a dozen proofs made for us, Merry. We’ll catch the 3.15 back to Tremarden.”

  Doctor Manson had listened with marked interest to Merry’s account of Mrs. Devereux’s Riviera life. Once or twice he nodded to himself, and wrote down a few words in his note-book. He made no comment, however; but detailed his own morning’s work to his assistant, and the talk he had had with the Assistant Commissioner.

  After lunching at the Savage Club, the two walked back to the Yard, collected the Devereux photographs and, leaving by the side entrance, hailed a taxicab.

  “Forty-four ‘B,’ Fleet Street, and wait there,” the scientist instructed the driver. The taxi, skirting the Embankment slipped up into the Strand in front of St. Dunstan’s Church and two minutes’ later dropped them at the entrance to the offices of the Service Press Cutting Agency.

  Manson demanded a private talk with the manager. “A few days ago you sent to a Colonel Donoughmore, of Albemarle Street, a number of photographic reproductions of reports in Indian papers,” he said.

  The manager agreed. “That is so, Chief Inspector,” he said. “Something wrong, is there?”

  “No. But they have cropped up in an investigation we are making. Can you give me the date on which the colonel asked for these cuttings to be traced and copied?”

  “I think so. Excuse me for a moment.” He left the room to return with a file. He produced a letter, ran a finger through the contents and finally handed it over to the Doctor. “That is his letter to us. You will see that it is dated July 15th.”

  Manson read the letter and passed it over to Merry. It asked for all available cuttings of Mrs. Devereux from the Indian papers of April, 1933. It was a matter of some urgency, the letter said, and he would be obliged if they could make every effort to get a complete account and post them to reach the Albemarle address by July 17th.

  “It was, of course, impossible to get in London numbers of the Indian papers so far back as that,” the manager explained. “But we did get the consent of the London offices of the papers concerned to photograph the references to the Devereuxs in their files. These we developed and printed and sent to Colonel Donoughmore.”

  Manson smiled. “Service seems to be your method as
well as your name,” he said, genially. “I would never have thought of that neat way of getting the cuttings. I’m much obliged to you.”

  The pair returned to the taxi. “Waterloo,” said Manson, and sat back in his seat. The taxi sped down the Street of Ink, passed that extraordinary glass-house of the Daily Express (if there is any truth in the old adage that they who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones, that newspaper ought to be exceedingly careful not to throw brickbats about!), passed the centre of interest of Aussies over here—the shop of Jack Hobbs, the greatest cricketer of all time. It swung into New Bridge Street, over that experimental bit of rubber street surface; what the experiment proved or disproved has never leaked out to the public, though it is about fifteen years since the road was laid down. Over Blackfriars Bridge, past that home of desperate fights, the Blackfriars Ring, and under the arches to Waterloo Road.

  Merry woke to life here. He nudged Doctor Manson. “Do you think we could have got anywhere with the little murders round here, Harry?” he asked.

  Manson looked up. “What murders?” he asked. He had only caught the tail end of his Sergeant’s query.