Over lunch he made up his mind. The police, no doubt, would know something about the other flat-holders, but the line of inquiry which they would have followed would not be the same as the one which Roger would want examined. He would therefore take the list round to a firm of inquiry agents and put them on to it, no expense to be spared, a full report within thirty-six hours. He rang up Scotland Yard immediately after the meal, obtained the name of such a firm, conducted by an ex-C.I.D. Chief Inspector, and went round at once to put the matter in hand. He was assured that everything he wanted (and he mentioned particularly what he did want) could be obtained in the time.
His next move he had already planned. Obviously he must pay a call on Miss Zelma Deeping. Her temporary address he knew already. Once more he hailed a taxi (Roger felt that this was the most expensive case he had ever handled) and was driven to Hampstead.
Miss Deeping, whom he had not hitherto met, was a vivacious, dark-haired young woman of twenty-eight or thereabouts. Roger had no difficulty in getting her to talk. She told him frankly that she would talk to him for a year on end if it would help to catch the man who had murdered Dorothy. (Roger noticed that she used the word “murder.” Evidently Miss Deeping had no doubts as to how her friend had met her death.)
Without beating about the bush, he proceeded to the questions he wanted to put.
“How was Miss Fielder dressed when you left her?”
“She wasn’t,” replied Miss Deeping promptly. “She was in the bath.”
“Oh! Then she might not have been fully dressed at all that morning?”
“No, I shouldn’t say she was. She’d been having what we called one of our lazy mornings. We used to have them if we felt extra tired, or had a headache, or anything like that. The one who was going to be lazy would stay in bed, and the other would bring her breakfast; the lazy one would get up when she felt like it have her bath, and be a perfect lady till lunch-time.” Zelma Deeping was trying to speak in a light voice, but her tones shook every now and then, and once she dabbed surreptitiously at her eyes.
“I see,” said Roger, who was terrified of her bursting into tears. He assumed a very matter-of-fact, brisk tone. “You think it probable that she was wearing the underclothes she was found in, and just a wrapper over them (the one that was on a chair, I suppose), when she let her murderer in?”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Deeping, “I suppose she must have been.” She spoke in a hesitating way.
“Why aren’t you sure?” Roger asked quickly.
“Well, it doesn’t sound a bit like Dorothy to let anyone in when she was in her wrapper. We weren’t so very conventional, either of us, but once you go beyond a certain limit, if you happen to be on the stage, your reputation’s gone, whether you’ve done anything to deserve it or not. Dorothy and I were always rather careful in that way. I don’t mean we were so silly as not to give a man tea if either of us was alone in the flat; but I shouldn’t have said Dorothy would have entertained a man in the morning in her wrapper.”
“What would she have done, then?”
“Either told him he couldn’t come in, or else, if she knew him very well, pushed him into the sitting-room while she went to slip on a frock.”
“Supposing if it were a plumber, or a man to see about the electric light—that sort of man?”
Miss Deeping smiled. “Oh, well, that’s different. I suppose it’s silly, but it is different, you know. After all, one doesn’t—what shall I say?—dally with a plumber, does one?”
“The point is well taken; yes, it is different. And supposing it had been an actor? She would have gone to slip on a frock?”
“Yes, I’m sure she would.”
“And yet she didn’t,” Roger pointed out. “Can you suggest any explanation, Miss Deeping? It seems to me quite an important point.”
Zelma Deeping considered. “The only thing I can think of is that he took her by surprise as soon as she’d opened the door. Couldn’t that be what happened?”
“Yes, quite well. Now, I’ve gathered that Miss Fielder didn’t take much interest in men. That is so, isn’t it?”
“No particular interest. She didn’t flirt, if that’s what you mean. We both had plenty of men friends. But they weren’t any more than friends.”
“You’re quite sure that Miss Fielder had not recently begun to have an affair with somebody?” Roger already knew that Dorothy Fielder’s moral character had been all that the most zealous advocate of the purity of the British stage would have desired. But that did not say that she was not prepared to receive just one man in her wrapper.
Miss Deeping promptly extinguished this hope. “No, I’m sure she hadn’t. She’d certainly have told me (we’ve lived together for over six years now), but she never said a word about one man more than any other.”
“Humph!” said Roger, disappointed; so far this interview had yielded nothing. He tried a new tack. “Of course you’re sure that when you went out you left Miss Fielder alone?”
“Quite sure,” agreed the girl, surprised. “Why, I couldn’t have overlooked anyone in the hall, could I?”
“No, I suppose not,” Roger admitted. “Well, did you see anybody loitering on the stairs, or coming in as you went out, or generally behaving in a furtive manner?”
“No. I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“That’s a nuisance,” said Roger.
“Are you meaning that the murderer might have arrived as early as eleven o’clock?” asked Miss Deeping. “Because if you think that, I’m quite sure you’re wrong. Dorothy might have stayed a few minutes in her wrapper, if he’d come on really important business, but she certainly wouldn’t have been with him like that for two hours. That I can tell you is out of the question, Mr. Sheringham.”
“Is it? Then something is established. Now here’s another thing I want to ask you about; had Miss Fielder ever mentioned the name of Newsome to you?”
Miss Deeping shook her dark head. “The police asked me that too. No, I’m sure she didn’t. At any rate, I haven’t the least recollection of the name.”
“Not with regard to a supper-party once, and a casual meeting in the street once or twice afterwards?” Roger prompted.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t seem to remember it.”
“I’m very glad you don’t. He’s rather a friend of mine. Well, here’s something else. Was she excited about anything that morning? Had she said anything about an interesting proposition that had been put up to her? Something to do with the stage, I should imagine?”
Miss Deeping looked bewildered. “No, this is the first I’ve heard of such a thing. No, certainly Dorothy wasn’t excited at all; quite the opposite. And I know for a fact that she’d had nothing but a couple of bills by that morning’s post.”
“There isn’t another post, before half-past twelve?”
“There is, but it’s at half-past ten. It had come before I went out. Dorothy got nothing by it at all.”
Roger paused for a moment. “All this is important,” he said. “You’re sure of your answers?”
“About the excitement and the posts? Positive. Quite positive.”
“Good!” said Roger. “Well, I think that about exhausts my questions this visit. May I come up here and see you again if I think of anything else that you can clear up?”
“Please do! I shall be in most of the time, except when I’m at the theatre of course. I’d do anything to help you, Mr. Sheringham, really.”
She continued to press him to make use of her in any way possible till the front door had closed behind him.
“I like theatrical people, I think,” observed Roger to himself, as he walked quickly away.
It was now nearly half-past three, and he was not due in Sutherland Avenue for an hour. He turned in the direction of the Heath.
It was a fine, warm afternoon, and there is no time of the year, when the weather does happen to be fine and warm, to compare with the latter half of April—as the poet Browning has already hinted. Roger
found a seat and settled down for half an hour’s bask. While basking, he turned over in his mind the result of his late visit. There were several points that he felt deserved his close attention.
An hour later, punctually at half-past four, he was climbing the stairs towards Anne’s flat, his heart a little inclined to thump. Had he and Pleydell been wise in allowing such a small person to take the risk? Supposing by any weird chance something had…
The sound of voices and laughter from the top floor relieved his anxiety. He tapped on the sitting-room door, and Anne’s voice told him to enter. Standing in front of the fireplace smoking a pipe, and with every appearance of being thoroughly at home, was Newsome.
“Hullo, Jerry,” said Roger, with creditable mildness. “You’re very smartly back on the mark.”
“Back?” retorted the unabashed gentleman. “I haven’t been off it yet.”
Roger frowned. “You haven’t been here the whole afternoon?”
“I have, Roger. Don’t look at me so fiercely. We forgot the time.”
“Don’t let him tease you. Mr. Sheringham,” Anne smiled. “He hasn’t been in this room. But I’m afraid he absolutely refused to leave the house. I couldn’t do anything with him.”
“What about that tea you promised you’d give me, Anne?” Newsome cut in before Roger could speak. “And you can get a cup for Roger too; I expect he’ll only make a fuss if you don’t.”
“And Mr. Pleydell will probably look in, now it’s the half-hour,” said Anne. “Very well. Oh, don’t look so cross, Mr. Sheringham. Gerald was only pulling her leg.”
“‘Gerald!’” quoted Roger nastily.
Anne blushed fiercely, but retained her dignity. “Well, I’ve known him all my life—off and on,” she countered, and made a good exit.
Roger turned to Newsome. “Jerry, would you mind telling me what you really have been doing?”
“Yes.” Newsome was looking more serious. “Roger, I think you must have been out of your senses to let that kid sit here all alone waiting to be murdered like her sister was. I can’t imagine what you were doing.” He went on to say more in the same style, a good deal more; and he became considerably warmer.
“But, my dear Jerry!” Roger tried to stem the tide. “She was safe enough, with one of us next door all the time.”
“Next door!” snorted Mr. Newsome. “What the deuce is the good of that?” He continued his monologue. The worst of the friends of one’s youth is that they consider that they have the privilege of being so unpleasantly outspoken.
“All right, all right,” Roger interrupted in despair two minutes later. “I deliberately tried to get the girl killed; I took advantage of her offer and telephoned to the murderer that there was another little job waiting for him; I’m not fit to be trusted to protect a Brussels sprout. We’ll take all that for granted. Now will you please tell me what you’ve been doing?”
“Looking after Anne, of course. If you’d had the gumption of a woodlouse you’d have discovered, as I did, that there’s a trap-door in the ceiling on the landing outside, which leads into a sort of cubby-hole in the roof. That was the place to lie in wait, of course. Not rig up a silly arrangement of bells, which ten to one’ll go wrong when they’re really needed. My dear chap!”
Roger tried to explain that the main object had been to escape the attention of any possible watcher with his eye on this particular house, but Newsome waved his words aside.
“You can watch over an alarm clock in Birmingham, if you like,” he said forcibly. “but I’m going to skulk in that roof.”
Roger reflected that Newsome’s presence would, after all do no harm, for though he himself might be known to be connected with the police investigations, and Pleydell, of course, was already concerned in the case, there was no reason why the murderer should have any suspicion about Jerry. But one thing he must promise, and that was to arrive inside the house not less than an hour before the séances began.
“Oh, right-o,” Newsome grinned. “I’m with you there. In fact, better make it two, I should say. There’s nothing like being on the safe side, is there?”
A tap sounded on the door, to be followed the next instant by the appearance of Pleydell. His eyebrows rose a little as he saw Newsome.
“Hullo, Newsome,” he said, naturally enough, keeping any surprise he might have felt out of his voice. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I’ve just been hauling Roger over the coals for the way you two have been offering Miss Manners’ neck to the knife,” Newsome replied good-temperedly. “I might have expected it of Roger, but I didn’t of you, Pleydell.”
“Jerry seems to have joined us as a new recruit,” Roger remarked, seeing Pleydell’s bewilderment, and he explained the steps which the former proposed to take.
Pleydell assented with his usual courteousness, but Roger could see that he was not particularly pleased with the arrangement. Suggesting that Newsome should go and give Anne a hand with the tea (an idea which was at once taken up with the greatest enthusiasm), he made the opportunity to tell Pleydell privately that, between themselves, Newsome could be struck off the list of suspects henceforth.
Pleydell seemed a little dubious. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Can he prove his innocence? I admit that Newsome was a friend of mine,” he added pointedly, “and personally I agree with you that he is quite incapable of being the man we want; but till this business is cleared up I have no friends.”
“Yes, yes,” said Roger, a little uncomfortably. “That’s the only attitude, of course. But I’ve been looking into Newsome’s movements, and I think he’s cleared all right.” This was untrue, and Roger knew it; moreover, he had an uncomfortable idea that Pleydell knew it too. Pleydell, Roger saw, was not an easy man to lie to.
“Definitely?” was all that Pleydell said, whatever he might have thought.
“In my opinion,” Roger replied, this time nearer to the truth.
Pleydell shrugged his shoulders perceptibly. “Well, Sheringham, we agreed that you should be in charge of our independent inquiry, and I am the last to dispute your leadership. But to my mind nobody should be definitely considered innocent until somebody else has been definitely proved guilty.”
Which thought Roger, as Anne tactfully put an end to a rather difficult situation by appearing with the tea-pot, is exactly what I was saying myself a few hours ago. How very awkward!
Pleydell had intimated plainly enough that he disapproved of the new addition to the partnership, inasmuch as the newcomer had stepped straight from the rôle of suspect into that of subordinate sleuth, but no hint of this appeared during tea. He was as gravely charming to Newsome himself as he was to Anne; though Roger, watching them with a somewhat uneasy amusement, thought he had never seen two men more totally dissimilar.
The conversation not unnaturally turned upon Anne’s recent ordeal, which, now that it was over for the day, she was ready to admit that she had not enjoyed at all. “It was much worse than I expected,” she said. “I tried to read a book, but I simply couldn’t. I had an unpleasant feeling that the horrible man was going to appear suddenly in the middle of the room and grab hold of me before I could reach that bell.”
“Yes, and what would you have felt like if I hadn’t been actually in the same house?” Newsome asked, with what Roger privately considered a fatuous grin. The years, Roger felt sadly, had not improved Jerry Newsome. He had always been obvious, but now he was positively blatant.
“Exactly the same, I suppose,” said Anne, in a tone which would have been imputed to any other girl as nothing less than pert.
“I suppose you two have arranged some sort of signal on which you would drop down from the roof, like a deus ex machina, Newsome?” asked Pleydell. “I mean, you don’t intend to appear unless you’re definitely needed?”
“Oh, no,” Anne answered quickly. “He’s promised most faithfully not to come out unless I scream.”
“And you promised just as faithfully to do that on t
he least sign of danger,” Newsome reminded her.
“Oh, I should,” said Anne, with some feeling. “By the way, Mr. Sheringham, it may interest you to know that I had a productive afternoon, if not in the way we expected.”
“Oh? How was that?”
“I did some hard thinking. And I made one or two rather interesting discoveries. I began to put two and two together, in fact. Do you know, Mr. Sheringham, I think you’ve been rather blind.”
“I’ve no doubt about it,” said Roger. “But I’d be very grateful if you’d open my eyes.”
“I think I shall, in a day or two,” Anne replied serenely. “I want to work out a nice little theory I’m beginning to form, and if certain things turn out to be as I suspect I rather fancy I may surprise you all.”
“I don’t think anything else in this affair could surprise me,” said Pleydell, with a gloomy little smile.
“I think this will,” Anne replied sweetly.
“But Anne, we share ideas, you know,” Roger put in. “All ideas go into the common pool.”
“Except this one,” Anne smiled. “There are just one or two points I want to verify first. I shouldn’t like you all to laugh at me, so I’m not going to be premature; but—let me see, you’re my guardian to-morrow, aren’t you? Well, if you come in and have tea at four-thirty, quite alone, I might be able to tell you by then.”
“Oh, I say, Anne,” objected Newsome, “does that mean I don’t get any tea to-morrow?”
“Not at all,” said Anne, still more sweetly. “There are plenty of cheap tea-shops in the Kilburn High Road.”
CHAPTER XXI
ANNE HAS A THEORY
IT was now Thursday and, unless Roger could produce valid reason to the contrary, Newsome was to be arrested on Saturday afternoon. And so far Roger could produce no such reason whatever. He acknowledged frankly to himself, as he returned with the suspected party to the Albany an hour or so later, that he was so far not even on the track of a reason. Certain curious facts had emerged in his conversation with Zelma Deeping, but that was really all the first day’s efforts had to show.
The Silk Stocking Murders Page 18