Murder Jigsaw

by E.

  July 15. Donoughmore writes to Service Press Cutting Agency.

  July 17. Latest dates at which cuttings were asked to arrive at his flat.

  July 18. Donoughmore goes to Town.

  July 19. Returns to Tremarden.

  July 27. Donoughmore killed.

  The detective surveyed the table. The journey to Town and the return next day were obviously for the purpose of collecting the cuttings asked for by the 17th, he decided. That left July 15. Manson, frowning, repeated to himself the question he had put to Merry in the taxi-cab on the way to Waterloo: “What happened on July 15 to make the colonel write for the Press cuttings?”

  An idea struck him. He rang his room bell; and to the maid who answered it asked if she would bring up the hotel visitors’ register. With the book on his desk a minute later, he opened it at the July entries. They read as follows:

  The page was greeted with a frown. “There doesn’t seem anything here to help,” the Doctor said to himself. “I can hardly see how a Cook’s party touring Cornwall can have any bearing on the colonel’s sending for Indian Press cuttings. Anyway, they left next morning, so nobody there can have had any hand in the death. He made a mental note of the date, however. It would be possible to get from Cook’s, if necessary, the names and addresses of the party.”

  Manson was about to close the book when his eye was arrested by the appearance of the page as a whole. He studied it for a moment and then closed it thoughtfully.

  “Now that,” he said, “is rather interesting. . . . I wonder,” he added, after a pause.

  * * * * *

  Sergeant Merry, wandering along the banks of the Inney, came across Mrs. Devereux. She was fishing in the tail of a torrent pouring down from a steep hill lined with tall trees. As he approached he saw her hook a trout, play it for a few seconds, and then transfer it to the creel, which was slung around her shoulders. She was casting again at the tail of a deep whirlpool when he reached her. His request for a few minutes’ talk was greeted with a frown.

  “Now what is it, Sergeant?” she asked, angrily.

  “Perhaps we had better sit on the fallen tree, here,” Merry suggested. “My talk will probably take a few minutes.”

  “Just as you like,” was the reply. Mrs. Devereux slipped the hook of her fly in the lowest of the rod’s eyelets, reeled in the line tightly, and then gently placed the rod leaning against a bramble bush, taking care that it was safely poised and could not, by accident, fall or be knocked over. A few feet away a second rod reclined in similar fashion. Merry, glancing at it saw that this rod carried a wet fly. He commented on it when Mrs. Devereux, satisfied as to the safety of the rod she had just been using, sat on the trunk by his side.

  “Fishing the rise, Mrs. Devereux?” he asked.

  “No, just casting for a fish,” was the answer. “They are not taking wet fly to-day.”

  For a quarter-of-an-hour the sergeant asked a number of innocuous questions bearing on the colonel’s conduct and subsequent death. At the end of that time, he rose. “I mustn’t keep you from your fishing any longer, Mrs. Devereux,” he announced. “I see there are a few rises now. Tight lines.”

  Doctor Manson heard Merry’s description of the scene with grim satisfaction. “That, Jim, is another pointer,” he said cryptically.

  * * * * *

  Franky Baker was passing through the lounge of the Tremarden Arms to his bar when Doctor Manson, halting him, produced a pillbox from a waistcoat pocket. He lifted from the box the artificial fly which he had taken from the colonel’s rod when it lay on the bank on the day of the tragedy. “I’ve come across a fly here, Franky, which I cannot place. It doesn’t look to me like a machine-made fly, nor like one of the recognised ties, and there isn’t one like it in any of the fly-boxes of the fishermen here, because I’ve looked into them all. Perhaps you can identify it for me and, I hope, can tell me who uses a fly like it.”

  Baker took the elegant “insect” into his right hand. He gave one quick glance at it and handed it back. “Oh, yes, Doctor, I can tell you that,” he said. “I tied it myself.”

  Had a bomb burst suddenly behind him, the scientist could not have shown greater alarm. He dropped the box and stared at the hotelier with startled eyes. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I said that I tied the fly myself. It’s one of mine. What is wrong with it?”

  “You tied it, Franky?”

  “Of course, Doctor. I always tie my own flies.”

  The scientist regarded him in strained silence. Then, hopefully: “Do you sell them, Franky?”

  “No, Doctor—” with a grin. “Most everybody round here ties their own; and the visitors get theirs from the tackle shops.”

  Manson looked more worried than ever. “I suppose you lend one or two occasionally?”

  “Nobody would borrow them, Doctor. Would you? They don’t correspond to type, as you know yourself.”

  “There is no mistake, I suppose, Franky? It really is one of yours?”

  “It’s sartin sure one of mine, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE CONFESSION

  There was no outward and visible trace of perturbation in the demeanour of Mrs. Devereux as she sat in the Chief Constable’s office, facing Sir William Polglaze, Doctor Manson, Superintendent Burns and Inspector Penryn. She lounged at ease, one silken-sheathed leg crossed over the other, and an air of repose surrounding her. Taking a cigarette from a gold case, she lit it from a gold petrol-lighter and, puffing a smoke-ring, waited. The men, watching her closely, could detect no anxiety in either her glances or the tone of her voice as she asked the reason for her invited presence.

  The Chief Constable answered her query. “We asked you to come here, Mrs. Devereux,” he said, “because we are hoping that you can throw a little more light on Colonel Donoughmore, and on his death,” he said.

  She flicked the ash from her cigarette into a tray at her elbow. “I cannot,” she answered. “I told you all I could tell the last time you asked me. I was not, as I think you know, fishing that day.”

  Sir William acknowledged the checkmate with an inclination of his head. “That I remember, Mrs. Devereux,” he said. “You gave us, I recall, an alibi in tea rooms at Tavistock. I think we can tell you right away that we checked that alibi, as it was our duty to do, and you were remembered in the tea-rooms on the luncheon and tea-time occasions to which you referred.”

  “You also said, I think, that you had not known Colonel Donoughmore before you met him in the Tremarden Arms, when you arrived here?” The Chief Constable paused and awaited her reply.

  “That is so.”

  “That seems to us very strange, Mrs. Devereux.” The Chief Constable spoke very quietly and very slowly. “Surely Colonel Donoughmore was a staff officer in the Command in India to which your late husband, Lieutenant Devereux, was attached. Were you not there at the time?”

  There was a silence. Superintendent Burns, who sat directly facing Mrs. Devereux saw the look which flashed into her eyes. It was there only momentarily, and vanished almost as soon as it appeared. When she looked at the Chief Constable her eyes showed only a cool reassurance. “That is quite correct,” she answered. “I knew OF Colonel Donoughmore, of course. I did not know him personally. There is no reason why I should have done. My husband was not at Command Headquarters. And I did not go out much, anyway.”

  “Is it not a curious thing that, knowing who he was, and he knowing that you were the widow of one of his officers who died so tragically while under his orders, neither of you recalled each to the other’s notice?”

  “Why should I do so? I was not interested in the colonel. I doubt whether he remembered my husband at all. And I am not the only Devereux in the world.”

  “You think that he had no knowledge of who you were?”

  “Quite likely, I should say.”

  “Supposing we told you, Mrs. Devereux, that Colonel Donoughmore had asked a London press-cutting agency to send him all the det
ails printed in the Indian Press about yourself, would you not think that a very strange circumstance, taken in conjunction with the fact that you had met and fraternised at the hotel as perfect strangers, meeting for the first time?”

  “I am not conversant, Sir William, with what Colonel Donoughmore may have had in his mind. I can conceive no reason why he should want to know anything about me.”

  A little of the repose had left the woman now. A tenseness displayed itself in the straightened back which had, so far, nestled to the shape of the armchair. A tinge of colour suffused her face.

  “Well, we’ll leave it at that,” said the Chief Constable. “Now, about the day of the colonel’s death. You lunched at the Devonshire Tea-rooms in Tavistock, going in about mid-day and leaving at 12.45. You returned to the rooms for tea at 4.45, picking up the scarf which you had inadvertently left behind at lunch-time, and you returned to Tremarden on the 6.30 train. Is that correct?”

  “Quite correct, Sir William.”

  “That, then, leaves all your movements accounted for except for the short period between your lunch and tea. Would you tell us where you were between 12.45 p.m. and 4.45 p.m.?”

  “Certainly. I spent the time in the town of Tavistock. It was my first visit to the place. I looked round the church, I did some shopping, and generally inspected the shops and places as strangers usually do.”

  “Could you, if we asked, produce anybody who could vouch for your presence anywhere at a given time—such as you did for lunch and tea? The assistant at the shop, or shops, into which you went might remember you. You are an elegant woman, Mrs. Devereux, and one easily to be remembered. Whose were the shops?”

  “That I cannot say. They were in the main street and a side street. That is all I can say. I did not notice the names. But what does it matter, anyway?”

  The Chief Constable polished his monocle with elaborate care and replaced it in an eye before answering. The arrival of the crucial moment in the interview found him in a somewhat abashed state of mind. He was a gentleman and was, he apostrophised himself, about to call a lady a liar. He did not relish the task, yet it had, he realised, to be done. “Well, you see, Mrs. Devereux,” he explained, somewhat apologetically, “Doctor Manson here has a somewhat different version of your movements during the times I have mentioned.”

  “And pray, what would that version be?” she asked. Transferring her gaze from the Chief Constable she rested it on the scientist.

  Manson spoke decisively, without qualms—in fact, sternly.

  “I suggest, Mrs. Devereux,” he said, “that when you left the tea rooms after lunch you hurried to a bus terminal stop. I suggest that from there you took the 12.55 bus to Tremarden. You left the bus by the lane just past a wayside carters’ café, walked up the lane to the river near the Pylons—on the beat which you were supposed to be fishing—and there met Colonel Donoughmore. I should say you met the colonel there by appointment. Something occurred between you and the colonel there—I am not at the moment sure what it was, though I could, I think, guess. However, you were at, or around, that spot until 2 o’clock, when you were seen with a rod in the vicinity of the Pylons, by Major Smithers, who was leaning near the bank, below eye-level on his beat.

  “I suggest that you then returned down the lane and walked along the main road towards Tavistock. It had been your intention to board the 2.35 bus, but the vehicle had its full complement of passengers, and passed on. You continued walking for about half-an-hour until you reached a stile on the left-hand side of the road, and lying slightly back from the road. There you waited, wiling away the time with a cigarette, until the next bus came along, on which you rode into Tavistock.

  “I suggest, further, that, arrived at the terminus, you walked to a women’s cloakroom just off the main street, where you cleaned your shoes, which had been muddied from contact with the sides of the cattle pool near the Pylons, had a wash and brush-up, and then walked to the tea rooms to collect the scarf, which you had purposely left there at lunch in order that you should be remembered, and noted as having visited the rooms for tea. Thus you completed a carefully prepared alibi.”

  The scientist paused, and the four men regarded the woman with professional interest. Burns, who was nearest to her, was the only one to see the vein throbbing in her neck—that danger signal of a woman’s emotions.

  The Chief Constable spoke. “What do you say to that, Mrs. Devereux?” he asked.

  “I say that it is a great pity that Doctor Manson has nothing better to do with his time than to utilise it in telling fairy stories,” was the reply. “May I ask what evidence he has to support this preposterous invention?”

  “Plenty of evidence, madam,” replied Manson. “The conductor of the bus from Tremarden to Tavistock recognised you by this photograph.” He produced and handed over a copy of the photograph taken by the street cameraman. “The driver of the second bus has also recognised the photograph and description as that of a woman who stepped from that stile and stopped, and boarded, his bus. The attendant at the cloakroom has recognised it as that of a woman who came into her cloakroom and had her shoes cleaned of mud. She described your dress and your appearance before she had seen the photograph.

  “Finally, from beside the stile of which I spoke, I picked up this.” From his wallet Manson took a cigarette stub. Bending forward, he picked up from the ash-tray almost at his elbow, the stub which Mrs. Devereux had deposited there a few minutes before, and at which, at the time, the scientist had peered intently. He placed the two stubs side by side. “They correspond, you see, perfectly, even to the colour of the lipstick,” he pointed out. “That is the main evidence, Mrs. Devereux. Will you agree that it is pretty convincing?”

  She sat very still. The colour had gone from her cheeks, leaving a pallidness that gave the waiting quartette their answer without the necessity for words. For two minutes they waited; two minutes, which must have seemed like an hour to the woman, before she looked at the Chief Constable and spoke.

  “I see I have been very stupid,” she said. “I did not think for a moment, that it would have been possible for my movements to have been traced like you have done—minute by minute.” She turned swiftly to the scientist. “I congratulate you, Doctor Manson, and apologise for my deprecating remarks just now.” A wan smile crossed her face, but did not appear in her eyes. “I thought you were trying to jump me,” she explained.

  Manson inclined his head in acknowledgment, and Mrs. Devereux continued: “Now I will tell you the truth.”

  She paused, as if thinking over the words she was about to speak. Then:

  “I DID go down to the river, and I did see Colonel . . .”

  Before she could continue, Superintendent Burns, at a whispered word from Manson, broke in. “Mrs. Devereux,” he said, “we do not, of course, know what you are going to say. It may be harmless to you, or it may not be. But I should warn you that the consequences may be of some seriousness. It is, therefore, my duty to warn you that anything you now say may be used in evidence. I do not say that it will be, but it may be. Do you understand quite clearly?”

  “I quite understand, Superintendent. There is nothing in what I am going to say that can have any bearing on the death of Colonel Donoughmore.”

  “Very well. I shall take such notes as seem to us fitting, and you may be asked to sign them after they have been read over to you.”

  The woman composed herself and began her story.

  “Well, I DID take the bus to Fisherman’s Lane and I did go across the fields and I did meet the colonel at the spot where I had, indeed, arranged to meet him,” she said. “I am now going to tell you the truth, about that meeting and the reason for it, so far as it concerns—”

  She paused, and then in a voice filled with bitterness said: “Colonel Donoughmore was blackmailing me. Something he knew of in my past life, something which does not concern this case at all, gave him the weapon.”

  Again she paused, as though inviting comment. The f
our men, however, remained silent.

  “You know that I am engaged to be married to Sir John Shepstone,” she continued. “The something which Colonel Donoughmore had found out about me would, I fear, have had the effect of making that marriage impossible. It was highly probable that Sir John would not marry me if he was aware of it. Within a day or two of my arrival here Colonel Donoughmore revealed what he knew to me. He suggested that I should buy his silence. The alternative, he made perfectly clear, would be that he would send to Sir John, anonymously, proof of the things he knew. The amount he asked from me was impossible.”

  “What was it?” asked the Chief Constable.

  “He wanted £5,000. I haven’t that much in the world. He had become more insistent during the last two or three days, and told me he must have the answer, yes or no, on the next day. I arranged to meet him near the Pylons on my fishing beat. I was prepared to pay something, but not £5,000, and went to argue with him that it was better to have what I could pay than for him to tell Sir John and receive nothing at all.

  “I met him on the beat, quite close to the Pylons, and we argued for half-an-hour. He was quite adamant on the sum for which he asked. He said it was nothing to the wife of Sir John Shepstone. I answered that I could not possibly ask for the loan of such a sum from Sir John before I was married, and that all I had of my own was £1,000. He then made an alternative suggestion of a vile character. I lost my temper and did what any woman would have done placed in such circumstances. I struck him.”

  “With what?” The query came from Doctor Manson.

  “With his priest.”

  “What happened then? Be very exact, Mrs. Devereux; as exact as you possibly can,” said Manson.

  “I snatched the priest from his hand and hit him on the forehead. He moaned and fell on his back. Then he moaned again, and after that he was silent. I was terrified. After a moment or two, I recovered myself. I leaned down and called him by name, but he did not speak. He was quite still. I unbuttoned his waterproof jacket and felt his heart inside. I could not feel it beating. I thought he was dead. And then I saw that I was in a terrible position. I thought first of going for help. Then I remembered that I had seen nobody on my way there, and I could not see anybody now. I knew that there could not be anyone on that part of the river, because it was the beat which I was supposed to be fishing. So I ran back across the field to the road, where I waited for a bus which I knew should be along presently. You know what happened after that. It was just as Doctor Manson said just now.