by Annie Haynes
She opened the vanity bag which hung at her side and took out a piece of paper crushed with much folding.
“There! You can’t get away from that!”
The inspector read it.
“Mrs. Carnthwacke has entrusted her diamonds to me for valuation and I have deposited them in my safe. Signed—Luke Francis Bechcombe,” he read.
The paper on which it was written was Luke Bechcombe’s. There was no doubt of that. The inspector had seen its counterpart in Mr. Bechcombe’s private room. But his face altered curiously as he looked at it.
“Certainly, if this receipt was given you by Mr. Bechcombe, the estate is liable for the value of the diamonds,” he finished up.
“Well, Mr. Bechcombe gave it me, safe enough,” Mrs. Carnthwacke declared. “I put it in this same little bag and went off, little thinking what was going to happen. It struck one as I came out.”
“One o’clock!” The inspector was looking puzzled. If Mrs. Carnthwacke’s story were true it was in direct contradiction to the doctors’. “Did you meet anyone on the stairs?”
Mrs. Carnthwacke looked undecided.
“I don’t remember. Yes, I think I did—some young man or another. I didn’t notice him much.”
“And you didn’t notice anything peculiar in Mr. Bechcombe’s manner?”
“Nothing much,” Mrs. Carnthwacke said, holding out her hand for the receipt. “I’ll have that back, please. You bet I don’t part with it till I have got my diamonds back. The only thing I thought was that Mr. Bechcombe seemed in rather a hurry—sort of wanted me to quit.”
The inspector felt inclined to smile. Half an hour in the busiest time of the day seemed a fairly liberal allowance even for a millionaire’s wife.
“Now, can you tell me how many people knew that you were bringing the diamonds to Mr. Bechcombe?”
“Not one. What do you take me for? A first-class idiot?” Mrs. Carnthwacke demanded indignantly. “Nobody knew that I had the diamonds at all—not even my maid. I kept them in a little safe in my bedroom—one my husband had specially made for me. Great Scott, I was a bit too anxious to keep the whole business quiet to go talking about it.”
“Not even to the friend that told you that Mr. Bechcombe had helped her out of a similar difficulty?”
“No, not a word! I didn’t think of asking Mr. Bechcombe while she was with me, and the next day she went off to Cannes and I haven’t seen her since. The receipt, please?”
The inspector did not relax his hold.
“You will understand that this is a most valuable piece of evidence, madam. You will have to entrust it to me. I will of course give you a written acknowledgment that I have it.”
The colour flashed into Mrs. Carnthwacke’s face.
“Do you mean that you will not let me have it back?”
“I am afraid I cannot, madam.”
She sprang forward with outstretched hands—just missed it by half an inch. The inspector quietly put it in his notebook and snapping the elastic round it returned it to his pocket.
“You may rely upon me to do my best for you, madam. I shall make every possible search for the diamonds and will communicate with the executors, who will of course recognize their responsibility if the jewels are not found. And now will you let me give you one piece of advice?”
“I don’t know. I guess I am not a good person to give advice to.”
Evidently Mrs. Carnthwacke was not to be placated. Her eyes flashed, and one foot beat an impatient tattoo on the floor.
The inspector was unruffled.
“Nevertheless, I think I will venture upon it. Tell your husband yourself what has happened. He will help you more efficiently than anyone else in the whole world can. And Mr. Carnthwacke’s advice is worth having.”
CHAPTER IX
“Good morning, Miss Hoyle.” Inspector Furnival rose and placed a chair for the girl, scrutinizing her pale face keenly as he did so.
Cecily sat down.
“You sent for me,” she said nervously.
The inspector took the chair at the top of the table that had been Luke Bechcombe’s favourite seat.
His interview with Cecily Hoyle was taking place by special arrangement in the library of the murdered man’s private house, where, by special desire of Mrs. Bechcombe, Cecily was now installed as secretary to her late employer’s widow.
The canny inspector had taken care to place the girl’s chair so that the light from the near window fell full upon her face. As he drew his papers towards him and opened a capacious notebook he was thinking how white and worn the girl was looking, and there was a frightened glance in her brown eyes as she sat down that did not escape him.
The door opened to admit John Steadman. After a slight bow to Cecily he sat down at the inspector’s right.
“Yes,” the inspector said, glancing across a Cecily, “I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Hoyle. It may make matters easier for you at the adjourned inquest if you answer them now.”
“I will do my best,” Cecily said, looking at him with big, alarmed eyes. “But, really, I have told you everything I know.”
John Steadman watched her from beneath his lowered eyes. She would be a good witness with the jury, he thought, this slim, pale girl, with her great appealing eyes and her pathetic, trembling lips.
“A few curious sidelights have arisen in connection with Mr. Bechcombe’s death,” the inspector pursued. “And I think you may be able to help me more than you realize. First, you recognize this, of course?” He took from its envelope of tissue paper the picture post card he had found in Amos Thompson’s room in Brooklyn Terrace and handed it to her.
Cecily gazed at it in growing amazement.
“It—it looks like me! It is me, I believe,” she said ungrammatically. “But how in the world did you get it?”
“I found it,” the inspector said slowly, watching every change in her mobile face as he spoke, “in Amos Thompson’s room in Brooklyn Terrace.”
Cecily stared at him.
“Impossible! You couldn’t have! Why should Mr. Thompson have my photograph? And where was this taken, anyway?”
“That is what I am hoping you may tell us.”
“But I can’t! I don’t know!” Cecily said, still gazing in a species of stupefaction at her presentment. “It—it is a snapshot, of course, but I never saw it before, I never knew when it was taken.”
“You did not give it to Amos Thompson, then?” the inspector questioned.
“Good heavens, no! I knew nothing about Mr. Thompson. I have just seen him at a distance in the office. But I have never spoken to him in my life. I should not have known him had I met him in the street.”
“You can give no explanation of his treasuring your photograph then?”
Cecily shook her head. “I can’t indeed. I should have thought it a most unlikely thing to happen. I cannot bring myself to believe that it did. This thing”—flicking the card with her forefinger—“must have got into his room by accident.”
The inspector permitted himself a slight smile.
“I really do not think so.”
Cecily shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I give it up. Unless—unless—an accent of fear creeping into her voice—he wanted to implicate me, to make you think that I had been helping him to rob Mr. Bechcombe.”
“In that case he would surely have thought of some rather more sure plan than leaving your photograph about in his room,” said the inspector. “You do not think it likely that seeing you so much in the office, he has taken a fancy to you—fallen in love with you, in fact, as people say.”
“I do not, indeed!” Cecily said impatiently. “As I tell you, I know nothing of Mr. Thompson, and he did not see much of me in the office. I never went in to Mr. Bechcombe’s room through the clerks’ office. I never had occasion to go there at all. My business concerned Mr. Bechcombe, and Mr. Bechcombe only, and by his wish I always went to him by the private door.”
“I see.” The inspecto
r studied the photograph in silence. “You know where this was taken?” he said at last.
Cecily looked at it again.
“It looks—I believe I am sitting in my favourite seat in the Field of Rest. I suppose I must have been snapshotted without my knowing it—by some amateur probably.”
“Mr. Thompson?” the inspector suggested.
“I do not know!” Cecily tip-tilted her chin scornfully. “It was a mean thing to do, anyway.”
The inspector wrapped the photograph in its paper. “No use bothering about that any more,” he said, somewhat contradictorily, putting it away carefully in his pocket as he did so. “Now, Miss Hoyle, once more, you adhere to your statement that you heard some one moving about in Mr. Bechcombe’s room when you passed the door on your return from lunch—that return being some little time after one o’clock.”
“Half-past one, I dare say,” Cecily corrected. “As I came down the passage I heard the door into Mr. Bechcombe’s room close rather softly, as I have heard Mr. Bechcombe close it heaps of times. Then just as I passed I heard some one move inside the room distinctly. It was a sound like a chair being moved and catching against something hard—table leg or something of that sort.”
“And you are aware that the doctors say that Mr. Bechcombe’s death must have occurred about twelve o’clock?”
“I have heard so. You told me so,” Cecily murmured, then gathering up her courage, “but doctors make mistakes very often.”
“Scarcely over a thing of this kind,” the inspector remarked. “I suppose you realize the inference that will be drawn from your testimony?” he went on.
A little frown came between Cecily’s straight eyebrows.
“Inference? No, I don’t!” she said bluntly.
“If Mr. Bechcombe died at twelve o’clock, and you heard some one moving about when you came back about half-past one o’clock,” the inspector said very slowly, giving due weight to each word, “the inference is that the person you heard moving about when you came back was the murderer.”
Cecily shivered as she stared at him.
“Oh, no, no, surely it could not have been! I do not believe it could!”
The inspector made no rejoinder. He glanced at his notebook again.
“Most probably you will be among the first witnesses called at the adjourned inquest on Friday, Miss Hoyle. I think that is all for to-day. Your name and address, please.”
“Cecily Frances Hoyle, Hobart Residence, Windover Square.”
The detective wrote it down.
“I think that is only a temporary address, though, you said, Miss Hoyle. Will you let me have your permanent one, please?”
Cecily hesitated in obvious confusion.
“I—I—that is my only address—the only one I have at present. I came to Mr. Bechcombe straight from school.”
The inspector scratched the side of his nose with his pencil.
“That is rather awkward. It will be necessary that we should be in touch with you for some time. And you might leave Hobart Residence at any moment.”
“Then I could let you know,” Cecily suggested.
“That would not quite do,” the inspector said mildly. “No. Just give me some address from which letters could be forwarded to you. Some relatives, perhaps!”
“I don’t know any of my relatives—yet,” Cecily faltered, a streak of red coming in her pale cheeks. “But Miss Cochrane, Morley House, Beesford, Meadshire, would always forward letters.”
The inspector wrote the address down without further comment.
Cecily got up. “If that is all, I think Mrs. Bechcombe wants me, inspector.”
“Yes, thank you.” The inspector and Mr. Steadman rose too. John Steadman moved to the door.
“I must introduce myself, Miss Hoyle,” he said courteously. “I am the late Mr. Bechcombe’s cousin and, as your post with Mrs. Bechcombe is of course only temporary, it has struck me that you might possibly be looking out for another engagement. Now, a friend of mine is in urgent need of a secretary, and we thought you might like the post.”
The red streak in Cecily’s cheeks deepened to crimson.
“I—I don’t mean to do anything else at present, thank you.”
John Steadman looked disappointed.
“Oh, well! Then there is no more to be said. Should you change your mind perhaps you will let us know,” he said politely.
When he had closed the door behind Cecily he looked across at the inspector.
“Well, you were right.”
“I was pretty sure of my ground,” returned the inspector. “What do you think of young Mr. Collyer’s choice, Mr. Steadman?”
“Well, she looks a nice girl enough,” the barrister returned somewhat dubiously.
“It is easier to look nice than to be nice nowadays,” the inspector returned enigmatically. “What do you make of this, Mr. Steadman?” throwing a torn telegram form on the table. “And this, and this,” placing several odd pieces of writing paper beside it.
The barrister bent over them. The used telegraph form had been torn across and crumpled, but as the inspector smoothed it out the writing was perfectly legible.
“Do not mention home address. Father.”
“Um!” John Steadman drew in his lips. “Handed in at Edgware Road Post Office at 12.30, March 4th,” he said. “Well!”
He turned to the scraps of paper. The inspector leaned forward and pieced them together. The whole made part of a letter.
“Will see you as soon as possible. In the meantime be very careful. A chance word of yours may do untold harm. Say as little as possible—all will be explained later. Further instructions will reach you soon.” Then came a piece that was torn away, and it ended in the corner—“5 o’clock, Physical Energy.”
John Steadman’s face was very stern as he looked up.
“It is obvious the girl knows—something. How did you get these scraps of paper, inspector?”
“One of our most trustworthy women agents has been doing casual work in Hobart Residence,” said Inspector Furnival with a quiet smile. “These were found in Miss Cecily’s Hoyle’s room there, in the waste-paper-basket.”
“Have you taken any steps in the matter?”
“Not yet! Of course we have had ‘Physical Energy’—the statue in Kensington Gardens, you know—watched since yesterday morning, but so far there has been no sign of Miss Cecily Hoyle, or of anyone who could be identified as the writer of that letter.”
“Have you any idea who that is likely to be?”
“Well, ideas are not much use, are they, sir? It is not young Mr. Collyer’s writing, so much is certain, I think.”
Was the inspector’s reply evasive? Used to weighing evidence, John Steadman decided that it was. He made no comment, however, but bent his brows over the paper once more.
“Of course the temporary help has been chatting with the regular staff at Hobart Residence,” the inspector pursued. “But there is little enough to be learned of Miss Hoyle there. Hobart Residence is a sort of hostel, you know, sir; all the inmates are supposed to be ladies in some sort of a job. They have a bedroom varying in price according to its position, and there is a general dining-room in which meals are served at a very reasonable price. Miss Hoyle usually took her breakfast and dinner there and was very seldom absent from either meal. She was looked upon as a very quiet, well-conducted girl, but she made no friends—and nothing was known of her private life. It was impossible to get at her home address there. Then I rang up Miss Watson, her old schoolmistress, but found that Cecily Hoyle’s father had always paid her school bills in advance. He is an artist and has never given any settled address; sometimes he took his daughter away in the vacation. If he did not Miss Watson was asked to arrange a seaside or country holiday for her. Miss Watson only knew the Hobart Residence address.”
“Extraordinary! I should have thought Cecily Hoyle one of the last girls about whom there would be any mystery,” was the barrister’s comment.
“Burford, Burford!” John Steadman repeated reflectively. “Why, of course I have been there for golf. There are some very decent links. My friend, Captain Horbsham, rented a house in the neighbourhood, and I have been over the course with him.”
“Many burglaries down there?” the inspector said abruptly.
The barrister emitted a short laugh. “None that I ever heard of. Why, do you suspect Miss Hoyle—?”
“I don’t suspect anybody,” the inspector returned. “It isn’t my place to, you know, sir. But I am going down to Burford to-morrow morning. Do you feel inclined to come with me?”
“I don’t mind if I do,” said the barrister cheerfully. “I can always do with a day in the country. We will drive down in the car, and I might take my clubs.”
CHAPTER X
“One o’clock. We have come down in very decent time. Tidy old bus, isn’t it?” John Steadman replaced his watch and looked round with interest as his car slowed down before the “Royal Arms” at Burford. Rather a dilapidated “Royal Arms” to judge by the signboard swaying in the breeze, but quite a picturesque-looking village inn for all that. There was no station within five miles of Burford, which so far had preserved it from trippers. Of late, however, two or three of the ubiquitous char-à-bancs had strayed through the village and there appeared every prospect of its being eventually opened up. This, with other scraps of information, was imparted by the garrulous landlord to Mr. Steadman and his companion, Inspector Furnival. But, though he talked much of the village and its inhabitants, the inspector did not catch the name for which he was listening. At last he spoke.”