“Just as well to be careful,” agreed Bobby. “Do you know what staff is employed?”
“There’s Mr. Lawrence what’s the boss and a young lady typist. Very quiet gentleman, Mr. Lawrence, and, if you ask me, bit too fond of crooking his elbow – not that I’ve ever seen him with more than he could carry comfortable. Looks it though, if you see what I mean! sort of dazed-like, lost look to him. Young lady very smart, like all of ’em are; goes with the typing some way. Lumme, my missis says you can study the fashions here all right, and see the latest hats at nine a.m. and six p.m. long before the swagger shops up West are on ’em, especial this young lady when she first come, with her leopard-skin coat you could see the eyes of all the other girls bulge at the sight of, and never came from any typing machine, as my missis said herself, and Miss Andrews – her at our private phone exchange – said so, too.”
“I suppose leopard-skin coats are a bit expensive,” Bobby agreed, giving no sign of how much this second reference to a leopard-skin coat interested him. “Well, there’s my card. You see, you were right. I am from the police.”
“Blooming sergeant, eh?” said the caretaker, reading the card with respect. “C.I.D. too. Lumme, I ain’t seen a split since I got as near as maybe run in year before last when your chaps raided the ‘Slap Up’ Club when I was having a quiet drink after hours. I was in a cupboard under the stairs like winking,” he added with satisfaction; “three hours there, and nearly smothered, too.”
“Oh, yes, we always try to be tactful,” agreed Bobby; “if we’ve got a good enough haul, that is. After all, three hours’ stifling in a cupboard under the stairs does deserve some consideration.”
The caretaker looked gloomy at this point of view, and then asked, nodding towards the syndicate offices:
“Them lot been up to anything? If there is, we’d like to know.”
“Oh, no, it’s only a case of making inquiries,” Bobby explained. “There’s some information they may be able to give us. Nothing to do with them, so far as we are aware, but there are things they may be able to tell us. But, of course, that doesn’t mean they are concerned themselves.”
“Of course it don’t,” agreed the caretaker, obviously meaning that of course it did.
“Be careful not to say anything to anyone,” Bobby warned him sternly. “You understand all this is strictly confidential?”
“Not a word, you can trust me,” declared the caretaker, his eyes bright and eager, his lips visibly twitching, so that Bobby knew there was about as much chance of his keeping what he had heard to himself as of a wide-mouthed jug keeping its contents to itself when held upside down. Still, one had to try. Bobby took a ten-shilling note out of his pocket and smoothed it slowly between his fingers, while the caretaker watched with interest.
“I shall hope,” said Bobby thoughtfully, “to be satisfied by this day next week that nothing has been said to anyone.” Briskly he put the ten-shilling note back in his pocket, whither the eyes of the caretaker followed it longingly. “This day next week," he repeated.
“You can trust me,” the caretaker affirmed, with a note of gentle reproach in his voice. “Anyone could. I never was one to talk. Just like an oyster I am, and always have been.”
As Bobby’s impression was the exact opposite, the ten- shilling note remained in his pocket, and he decided to try an additional curb.
“Very likely we’re quite on the wrong track,” he said, “and there are such things as actions for slander – or complaints to bosses about spreading gossip.”
The caretaker looked very offended indeed.
“Such has never been with me,” he said stiffly. “Gossip is what none could ever say of me, however spiteful or wanting to be nasty. Why, my missis, she says: ‘Don’t you never hear nothing spicy where you work?’ and I says: ‘My dear, if so be I did, mum would be the word, same as duty calls.’”
“Then that’s all right,” Bobby interrupted, “and I needn’t worry. A careless word makes a lot of trouble sometimes, you know, even when it seems it couldn’t possibly matter. Well, I must be off now. Elevator still working?”
“No, it ain’t,” retorted viciously the still-offended caretaker. “You might get it on the fifth,” he added, relenting a little.
“Oh, well, if it’s running that far, perhaps it’ll come up here, too,” observed Bobby cheerfully.
The caretaker took himself off, still grumbling his offended dignity. The elevator duly arrived in answer to a pressed button, and, as he sank earthwards, Bobby’s thoughts were very busy. It was too late to do anything more that day, and he was still deep in thought as he made his way homeward. Short as was the time since he had begun this investigation, he had already learned much. Impossible, he thought, that such a sequence of tragedies as this that he had heard of, all of sudden deaths of heavily insured persons, all occurring in baths, could have an innocent explanation. The arm of coincidence is not so long as that, and he remembered the “Brides in the Bath” case he had read about. There were resemblances between that case and this, though this seemed upon a bigger and a bolder scale, and though this time apparently all the victims were men, while in the other affair all had been women. Easier, he supposed, to secure heavy insurances upon a man.
But it was going to be very difficult to secure proof. Each time the death had been certified as accidental by verdict of a coroner’s jury. One case was nearly three years old, one fifteen months, one six months – and in much less than six months clues are lost, witnesses disappear, facts get covered up, details forgotten. For guilt there is no cloak like the lapse of time.
It was true, careful examination of the different documents the different companies had promised to place at his disposal might provide additional information it would be possible to follow up. Already there were interesting and significant facts jotted down in his notebook. For instance, this Mr. Percy Lawrence had recently taken out a heavy insurance on his own life. Did that mean he was the next destined victim? Or did it, as Bobby grimly surmised, mean that somewhere another “Lawrence” waited unsuspectingly a fate for which preparations were already being made? Already Bobby felt sure a good deal of impersonation had been practised in these cases. It was certain, for instance, someone else must have taken Ronnie’s place for the insurance company’s medical examination.
Though if in fact Mr. Percy Lawrence were meant himself to be the next in this long trail of death, and if that could be demonstrated to him, the investigation would become easier. He would presumably know his life had been insured, and for whose benefit.
The history and identity of the wearer of the leopard-skin coat would have to be investigated, too.
Then the machinery of the Yard would have to be set to work in an attempt to discover the identity of the different victims. Probably all of them had lived – and died – under false names, as had Bobby’s unfortunate cousin, Ronnie. The lists of men who disappear every year would have to be gone through carefully, though it was likely enough that they were all men who, as Ronnie had done, had cut themselves off for one reason or another from their former friends and acquaintances, and for whom, therefore, no inquiry had been made. To this day no one had been able to identify the body of the victim in the Rouse case; no one could say whose was the headless body found in a trunk at Brighton.
One thing seemed certain. Each of these deaths had been most carefully arranged.
CHAPTER 6
THE PLAIN TYPIST
That evening Bobby spent pouring over the notes he had made during the day, trying to co-ordinate them, comparing every detail, asking himself, for instance, if there were significance or mere coincidence in the fact that in two of the tragedies the names of one witness called had had “A. B.” for its initial letters. He noticed, too, how often the addresses mentioned were in Ealing, and how none of them seemed to be permanent but always of a lodging house or hotel of some sort or else of a vacated flat, while the address of the Islington flat had been given often. Then, too, th
ere was the leopard-skin coat worn by the woman who had passed herself off as Ronnie’s wife. Apparently a similar coat – or was it the same? – had been worn by the typist engaged by the Berry, Quick Syndicate that, according to the caretaker, did so little business it hardly needed a typist at all. No doubt, Bobby reflected, there were plenty of similar coats being worn by various women in London, but he was inclined to think this must be a fairly expensive one – probably, from the description, ocelot fur – or it would hardly have attracted such respectful attention from the sharp-eyed young City women whose comments had reached the ears of the caretaker.
But Bobby knew enough of the world to be well aware that some typists, like some chorus girls, seem to be able to afford expensive furs on salaries of forty or fifty shillings a week. It did not do to jump to conclusions, and very likely the fur coat meant nothing.
Again in the morning Bobby studied his notes, and one thing that seemed even more plain to him than before was the extraordinary difficulty caused by the lapse of time. What hope was there after so long an interval of obtaining, for example, any description of the personal appearance of those who had given evidence at these inquests, or been in any way concerned?
Always, Bobby told himself, time was the detective’s greatest enemy; and, looking at the clock, was startled to observe that it was nearly the lunch-hour, so that he had spent the whole morning dreaming and musing over his notes when he ought to have been up and doing. Lapse of time the detective’s greatest enemy indeed, and here he was allowing it to slip by unheeded. Feeling very guilty, he seized hat and stick and made off as fast as he could, though, in spite of his haste, it was after one when he reached the City. His own appetite was in good condition, and it is elementary that the well-lunched man is more likely to be communicative than the man still hungry. Bobby decided to wait, therefore, till lunch was over, and – for he still had enough to occupy his thoughts – he lingered for some time over his own coffee and cigarette. One computation he made was that the total involved in these different cases came to something like £70,000, a total that seemed bigger and more impressive to Bobby than it had done to the insurance company officials, more used to thinking in large sums. One of them had mentioned quite casually the previous afternoon that a client of theirs – a member of the House of Lords – was insured for £400,000.
And Bobby reflected that, with a profit of £70,000 in view – paid down in cash, too; none of your jewelry to be sold at a tenth of its value, none of your traceable securities to be dealt with only at risk and heavy discount – it was easy to understand the elaborate organization, the careful, long-distance planning, the trouble taken to provide all necessary documents, that these cases seemed to show.
But surely, Bobby thought, this Mr. Percy Lawrence, in charge, apparently, of the operations of the Berry, Quick Syndicate, would be only too ready, once he understood what apparent peril he himself stood in, to help to unravel what in Bobby’s eyes was beginning to take on the semblance of a murder plot of an audacity and on a scale unparalleled. Lawrence would have to be handled with tact, since there was at least the possibility that he was implicated in the previous cases, in which event his own neck might be in danger. Nor are the officers of the Crown too eager to accept the evidence of an accomplice if doing so can possibly be avoided. But Bobby thought Lawrence much more likely to prove the new destined victim rather than a former accomplice, or why this heavy insurance on his life? There was, of course, the possibility that the insurance was merely a blind, and that Lawrence was in fact responsible for everything that had happened.
These different reflections, and the planning out in his mind of the best course to follow in the forthcoming conversation with Lawrence, occupied him so long that it was three o’clock before Bobby at last arrived before that door whereon was inscribed the name of the Berry, Quick Syndicate and the cordial invitation to “Please Enter.”
Accepting, accordingly, the invitation, and without waiting for any reply to his knock, Bobby pushed open the door and went in. He found himself in a small, box-like compartment, formed by temporary partitions, and cut off by them from the larger office, of which plainly it had been meant to form a part. As the partitions did not reach to the ceiling by at least a foot, the kind of entrance-lobby or cubby-hole they made received over them plenty of air for ventilation but not enough light to save the necessity of keeping an electric bulb burning. On his right as Bobby entered was a large roll-top desk, with a slide extension for a typewriter, whereat was seated a woman whom at first he took to be middle-aged or more, till it dawned upon him she was young – not more than twenty-five or so. She was busy, not with her typewriting, but with some needlework. He noticed that it was not knitting – girls in City offices not infrequently indulge in knitting when work is slack – but something that looked as if it required much greater skill and attention, and he thought idly that it must be trying to the sight to do such work by this not very good artificial light.
He saw now, too, that his first mistaken impression of her age had been given him by her sallow and worn complexion, which indeed was in a dreadful condition, blotched, pimply, unhealthy-looking in the extreme. He thought vaguely that perhaps she suffered from some skin disease that made the use of cosmetics impossible for her, and then he told himself, as he looked at her more closely, that but for the unfortunate condition of her skin and for the unbecoming way in which her hair was done – drawn back tightly from her forehead, to be knotted in a kind of tight bun behind – but, in fact, for an almost defiant neglect of every feminine art and grace, she could easily have passed for an unusually pretty girl. Bobby had some slight artistic gift – he had a really good sense of form, though his feeling for color was defective – and he was able to appreciate the fine shape of the head, well set upon a slender neck, the regularity and harmony of the features, a grace and balance apparent even in her seated position. It struck him that a visit or two to a beauty parlour would turn very quickly this extremely plain duckling into a swan scarcely to be recognized as the same creature. He also became aware that she had slipped her needlework, wrapped in the tissue paper that protected it, into a drawer, and was now regarding him with a gaze passionate and strange in its fierce intensity of question. But no question came, though he waited for it. She put her hand – he saw it was a slender, well-shaped hand – before her face once or twice with an odd kind of movement, as though to brush away something hanging there. Once or twice she blinked, as if again her eyes could not endure the strength of inquiry and demand she put into them, but she still did not speak. At last Bobby said:
“I wanted to see Mr. Lawrence. He is your manager, I think. Is he disengaged?”
Even yet she did not answer, and more and more Bobby was aware how tremendously the whole force and content of her being was concentrated in her gaze directed upon him. Yet its meaning baffled him. He did not know whether it was hostile or no; whether it held menace, or passionate appeal, or what. Her whole body, too, had tightened itself there beneath his eyes, like a spring invisibly coiled back upon itself. He understood with certitude there was something she experienced and yet controlled with an almost dreadful energy, though what that could be he had no more idea than has the traveller in a strange land of what is meant by the trumpet peal he hears sounding from afar.
His first idea was that this emotion, whatever might be its cause, was too powerful, too powerfully felt, not to find relief in word or action. Knife-thrust or pistol-shot would hardly have surprised him, so much an outlet seemed needed and natural, or a cry of help wrung from uttermost despair. He was all prepared as he leaned forward. He put one hand on the roll-top desk. He said:
“Yes... yes.”
In an instant she changed. The awful fire vanished from her eyes. They blinked mildly. Again she passed her hand before them with that odd action as of brushing away some web or veil that hung there. The tension and vitality went from her body; her whole personality seemed to shrink.
“Have y
ou an appointment?” she asked. Her voice was low and pleasant and carried well; she had forgotten apparently to be careless with her voice, or more probably had never thought of it. “I am afraid Mr. Lawrence is engaged at the moment, but I am sure he will be very pleased to see you if you can wait. There is one other gentleman first, or, if you prefer to call again, I can make an appointment.”
“Mr. Lawrence seems busy,” Bobby remarked, still watching her closely, more bewildered than ever by this sudden and complete change in her, thinking, too, that these demands on Mr. Lawrence’s time did not accord well with his previous information that the Berry, Quick Syndicate had so few callers and did so little business.
“Yes, very busy,” she agreed, fumbling with a book marked “Appointments” at her side. “So many of our clients insist on seeing Mr. Lawrence personally.”
Bobby came to a sudden decision. Plainly, in her present mood, it was hopeless to think of getting the girl to talk. But she might change again, as quickly and as strangely as she had changed before. He said:
“Oh, if you don’t mind, I’ll wait. I rather wanted to see Mr. Lawrence personally, too.”
“I don’t think he will be long. May I have your name?” she asked, changing once again, this time to the brisk, efficient young woman of business.
He gave her his card – his private card, not his official one. She looked at it, put it down, and then spoke into an office phone at her side. She said:
“Mr. Lawrence will be delighted to see you, and won’t keep you waiting long. He is so sorry he has to see another client first.”
She got up from her typewriter as she spoke and opened a door in the partition just behind her into the inner apartment from which that partition cut off the little outer office in which she sat. As is often the case in the newer office buildings in London, the rooms were arranged so that their size and number could be easily altered by the arrangement of substantial partitions, strongly made and often doubled, with an air space between to prevent any possibility of sounds penetrating, but that can be swiftly put up and taken down without any risk of damaging the outer walls. The floor space rented to a business firm can, therefore, easily be arranged, after the American fashion, as one office in which the whole staff sits, or in as many separate divisions as may be preferred.
The Bath Mysteries Page 5