Sybil interrupted sharply, throwing out a hand against him.
‘Maurice didn’t do it,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’
‘Well, then, who did?’ Curtis retorted. ‘What were they quarrelling about? We’ve got to know that to be sure.’
‘You’ve no right to suspect Maurice,’ she flashed at him, the kind of terrified composure she had shown before breaking out into a protesting cry. ‘How dare you suspect him?’
‘He’s not the only one; the police suspect me,’ Curtis answered with a touch of wildness in his manner. ‘You know, that’s tough – to have people think you murdered your own wife when – when you loved her. But they do, at least some of them do. I’m not sure about the Owen fellow whose report Mitchell showed me. He seemed to have an idea – I couldn’t understand what, and Mitchell wouldn’t say even if he knew himself. The other night they were just going to arrest me, only they changed their minds... I don’t know why... they said it was a photograph in the Announcer... eye-wash, of course, but they must have had some reason... most likely they’re only waiting... I don’t care much about being hanged, but I don’t want to be hanged for killing Jo, while the man who did it stops all right... that’s all... well, will you find out what Hunter and Keene were quarrelling about... where Keene really went that afternoon after he left the sun bathing place?’
‘Do you know where Mr Hunter was?’ Sybil asked, though with obvious effort.
‘They’re trying to check his movements as well,’ Curtis answered, ‘at least I think so, I think this Owen man has that in hand as well. Hunter’s story is that he went back to town by train, and when he got in he went to keep an appointment with a man on business, and then changed his mind, because he didn’t want to seem too eager and thought instead he would wait for the other fellow to make the first move. He got some tea at a tea-shop, and then went into a news cinema for an hour, and didn’t get back to Howland Yard till late, after everyone else had gone. He did some work in his own office and then went home, and all it comes to is that his story just rests on what he says himself. He can’t produce any evidence to confirm it. None of us can, us three I mean. I daresay the police don’t believe it’s true I went straight back to the flat and stopped there till I was dead drunk. No one saw me, any more than anyone saw Keene or Hunter. And one of the three of us may be lying. But Hunter’s out of it, I suppose, he hardly knew Jo, he could have no motive.’
‘No,’ agreed Sybil in her low, almost whispering voice, ‘no, he couldn’t, could he?’
‘What do you mean?’ Curtis asked sharply. ‘Why, he didn’t know her, not to speak of.’ He went on without waiting for a reply, ‘She was your sister and she’s been murdered... it’s up to you... are you going to help to find out who did it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and the soft monosyllable seemed to linger strangely in the quiet, still air of the tiny hall where they yet stood.
‘Well, now then,’ he muttered, staring at her afresh, as if he recognized in that little word some strange quality he did not fully understand.
Presently he went on,
‘If the murderer stopped Jo’s car after Mitchell says they saw it go past him, then it was probably someone she knew. She wouldn’t be likely to stop for any stranger. But if she had been murdered before, and her body was hidden in the car, and the murderer was driving it, in her hat and coat he had put on as a disguise – then most likely she was shot in the Grange car park by someone waiting there to do it. Only who? And why?’
Sybil made no answer.
After a long silence he said loudly, and roughly,
‘I’ve told you what you can do.’
After saying that, he turned and went away, banging the front door behind him. Sybil waited a little and then went upstairs.
‘Mother,’ she said, entering her mother’s room, ‘I’m phoning for a nurse to come in this evening. I think I shall have to be out late to-night.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Motor-Cyclist Found
In his room at Scotland Yard next day Superintendent Mitchell sat before his desk, regarding it with a melancholy and indeed despairing eye. It was a large desk, of the very latest pattern, provided with all those latest conveniences which make mislaying the document you specially require so fatally easy, and only recently had it been wangled, with some difficulty, from the competent authority. Now it was covered with files, files to the right, files to the left, files in front; even the wonderfully designed drawers on each side bulged with more files, reports, correspondence. Mitchell’s brow perspired spontaneously just to look at them.
Yearningly he wished he were the ideal detective of popular imagination, chiefly engaged on examining the scene of the crime through a large magnifying glass, identifying invisible finger-prints, brilliantly deducing from infallible signs on a burnt match-stick the age, height, name and address, and political opinions of the user. Whereas what he had to do was to toil through all these masses of reports and try to abstract those relevant facts that might perhaps indicate in what direction the truth might best be sought.
Yet though both to himself and to the casual onlooker he presented the appearance of any ordinary business man dealing with the morning’s correspondence on an extra busy day, nonetheless as he sat there with his files, his letters, his carbon copies, his card index, his desk telephone, he was just as much the grim huntsman, fierce upon the trail of the flying murderer, on the clearness of whose vision lay the issues of life and death, on whom it depended whether the spilt blood still unavenged should cry to heaven in vain or no, as the sleuth of imagination more dramatically engaged on the scene of the crime. For it was he who held the threads that ran between his desk and the score or more of busy agents, checking this fact, verifying that, putting this other to the proof, who were engaged on the case; and his was the task of weaving from the mass of disconnected, unnecessary facts presented to him the inevitable pattern that would mean life with honour for one, and for another a death of shame upon the scaffold. To the understanding eye indeed this that seemed just the everyday spectacle of a business man occupied with his letters and his files had about it something more intense and daunting and dramatic than any such scene as the fancy might conjure up of the hawk-eyed detective, strangely disguised, poring over signs indistinguishable to all others.
Not that Mitchell felt like that himself. He was wondering how any human being could bear up under this barrage of reports and documents, and thinking how jolly it would be to shove the whole lot into the waste-paper basket and get out into the open air. Enviously he thought of his juniors whose duties did not keep them tied all day to an office chair. There was that lucky young devil, Owen, for example, running round the whole time, and never any need to soil his fingers with a fountain pen except when he sat down at night to write another report to be added to the pile upon this nice new overloaded desk it had been such a triumph to get through.
Owen’s last report indeed was at this moment in the hands of the only other occupant of the room, Inspector Ferris, for whom Mitchell had just sent in order that he might read it over before starting out on the day’s round.
‘Well, what do you make of it?’ Mitchell asked when Ferris, having read it twice, put it down thoughtfully.
‘Difficult to say,’ answered Ferris prudently, ‘but it does show I was right about seeing Sybil Frankland there, since Owen says he saw her, too, dodging round just in the same secret way.’
Mitchell glanced over his laden desk, and then, by virtue probably of a sixth sense much dealing with reports had developed, made a grab at the very one he wanted.
‘From the chap we have watching the Ealing house,’ he explained; ‘it says she got back last night late, arriving by the last train probably. So anyhow she didn’t come to any harm there.’
‘Did you think she might?’ Ferris asked, a little startled.
‘Her sister did,’ Mitchell answered grimly. He added after a pause, ‘I would give quite a lot to
know what she’s up to.’
Ferris, looking at the ceiling, suggested,
‘Ask her.’
‘Asking questions means getting lies told you. I was taught that in infant school, if you weren’t,’ snapped Mitchell, who this morning was both cross and worried. ‘It may come to that,’ he conceded, ‘but it would mean letting her know she’s being watched, and then probably she would stop her little game, whatever it is. Only what on earth can she be up to, prowling round the place the way it seems she is?’ Ferris, still with his eyes upon the ceiling, remarked, ‘Seems it was a woman driving the Bayard Seven when it passed us; that is, if we can trust what the A.A. scout says, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t.’
Selecting about the one square inch of desk visible, Mitchell used it to drum upon hard with his fingers.
‘It’s a possibility,’ he agreed. ‘If Keene’s guilty, she might have been willing to help him out... even though it was her own sister... only you won’t find Treasury counsel very anxious to put that to a jury... or a jury very anxious to accept it, either... unluckily there’s no saying where Keene was himself last night. He gave our man the slip and we’ve no record of his movements. You notice Owen says both Sybil Frankland and Miss James part their hair on the right?’
Ferris nodded.
‘That’s important,’ he agreed, ‘but I must say, for my part, it’s Curtis himself I’m thinking most about. There’s this new story that Hunter and Keene have been quarrelling. We’ve only his word for it. Suppose he just faked that yarn up to throw suspicion on them?’
‘If it’s Curtis all the time,’ objected Mitchell, ‘and he’s the guilty man, who is the woman who seems to be in it somewhere? I’m inclined to agree with you we must accept the A.A. man’s evidence as proving there is one. All we seem to have got so far is that the murder was committed some time between Jo Frankland’s saying good-bye to Mr Bryan just outside the car park, and the moment when the driver of the Bayard Seven spoke to the A.A. man – and that must have taken some nerve when the murdered girl’s dead body was almost certainly lying in the bottom of the car at the moment, though probably covered up in some way. Whoever it was, she evidently wanted to be taken for Miss Frankland, as she had on her coat and hat and gave the A.A. man her card, so it’s pretty certain what she was after was to provide evidence that Jo Frankland left Leadeane Grange safely – a little bit of extra proof, and there’s nothing so suspicious as the little bit of extra proof that’s faked nine times in ten. It was faked this time all right, and I take it the chances are the murder was committed in the car park, most likely just as she was starting up, so the noise of the engine would drown the pistol shot. Significant, too, that the car park attendant was out of the way at the time; only was that pure coincidence that gave the murderer his chance he – or she – was quick to seize? Or was it part of a prearranged plan? If it was the last, then it means the Leadeane Grange lot are in it somehow. Only how? And why? Sybil Frankland’s story is that the day of the murder she was at Ealing the whole time. But her mother started out early to visit a friend living at Purley and didn’t get back till late, and the daily woman they employ left as usual after lunch. Consequently Sybil was alone in the house from lunch till nine or thereabouts, according to her own story, and there’s nothing to show she stayed there the whole time. Nothing to show she didn’t, for that matter, but she may have been hanging round Leadeane just like last night, for all we can tell. As for Miss James, according to Owen there’s evidence she was busy writing letters in her own room at the Grange at the moment when Miss Jo Frankland left there with Bryan. Owen has a confidential report from Mrs Barrett, who seems quite trustworthy; she’s the widow of a man who served his full time in the Force. Her statement’s clear enough. There had been some sort of business meeting or committee meeting or something between Bryan, Zachary Dodd, and Miss James, at which there was a good deal of quarrelling, as apparently is generally the case. Mrs Barrett says she remembers clearly being sent down to the canteen where Mr Bryan and Miss Frankland were sampling some of the weird stuff they sell there, to tell Bryan the other two were waiting for him, and Bryan asking Miss Frankland to excuse him, and her saying that was all right and she would have another look round till he was free. After the meeting was over, Mrs Barrett, who is always on guard at the door leading to the upper part reserved for women, is quite certain she saw Miss James go back to her room. When Mrs Barrett went off duty, she reported as usual to Miss James, who was still busy with her letters in her room, and couldn’t have left it without Mrs Barrett seeing her – unless she climbed out of the window or up the chimney or something like that. So far there’s no trace of any other woman.’
‘One may turn up,’ suggested Ferris, though not very hopefully.
‘May,’ agreed Mitchell, ‘but until she does we’ve got to leave her out. The man I have been hoping would turn up is that other motor-cyclist who was reported as having been seen to stop Miss Frankland when she was on her way to the Grange and to be quarrelling with her. It mayn’t mean much and it may mean a lot, but we seem to have no luck trying to trace him.’
‘Nothing to go on,’ Ferris pointed out, ‘and either he hasn’t seen our appeal to him, which isn’t likely seeing the way the papers have featured it, or else he has his own reasons for not wanting to.’
‘It may be that,’ agreed Mitchell, ‘and by the way, when you meet Owen today, you might tell his lordship that when I gave him a free hand, I didn’t mean we never wanted to see him ever again. Tell him that if it’s quite convenient he had better show up here about eight this evening. I don’t say his reports haven’t been full and less useless than some, but there are several questions I want to put him. I haven’t set eyes on him,’ Mitchell complained, ‘since the investigation began and I gave him his orders.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Ferris, rising to go, and then Mitchell corrected himself,
‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t tell Owen to report here – tell him to come to my house at ten. But of course,’ he added with deep sarcasm, ‘only if it’s quite convenient. Give some of these youngsters their head,’ he grumbled, ‘and they seem to think they can have it all their own way for ever after. But I should like to see Owen again before he’s grown out of all recognition with the passing years.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Ferris, and departed, thinking to himself that it really must be a difficult case when it made the old man so touchy; and a little later on a message was brought to Mitchell that a gentleman had called who said his name was Freeman, and he had come about the ‘Burning Car Mystery’ as the papers called it, having noticed an appeal in the Press to him to communicate with the police.
Mitchell sat up at once and told the messenger to bring in Mr Freeman without any delay. The newcomer proved to be a youngish man who described himself as a journalist on the staff of the Daily Intelligence. It was he, he said, who had intercepted Jo Frankland on a motor-cycle on the day of her murder; and he would have come forward before but for the fact that his paper had packed him off abroad the afternoon of the murder to interview a Russian supposed to possess certain valuable information.
‘I speak Russian,’ Mr Freeman explained, ‘that’s why they picked on me.’
‘You knew Miss Frankland, I understand?’ Mitchell asked.
‘Just as a girl doing rather well on the Announcer,’ Freeman explained; ‘she had brought off one or two rather good exclusive stories, and I got word from a girl pal of mine that she was after another that afternoon that promised big. So I thought I would try to see if I could find out what it was. I knew the road she was taking, and I got out my motor-bike and cut her off. I put it to her that if she would let me in on the ground floor I would do as much for her some day, and she said there was nothing doing. So I said, All right, I would hang on till I saw where she went, and she said I could do that as much as I wanted, and I could go to blazes, and anyhow all she was doing was going to a sun-bathing place after the sunshine cure some people a
re so keen on. Well, I didn’t believe her, and I said so, and afterwards I followed her just to make sure. But it was O.K., a place called Leadeane Grange where they sit and bake all day – it’s been written up once or twice. I waited a little to make sure she wasn’t just trying to throw me off the tracks, but she stopped there all right, and then I saw Curtis himself was there – her husband, you know; I reckoned then he had come to meet her or she to meet him, and that was all there was to it. So I went home and found the paper had been ringing me up and wanted me badly. I was on my way to Warsaw an hour later, and I heard nothing about your wanting to see me till I got back to-day and started looking through the back files to see how things had been going while I was away, and how much I owed my bookie now.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Capital ‘C’
Superintendent Mitchell gave no sign of how keenly this statement interested him. The thin, loquacious lips from which at times such a torrent of words could issue remained firmly pressed together, the grey eyes stayed half closed and indifferent. One or two additional questions were put and answered; it was elicited that the ‘girl pal’ had no idea of the nature of the ‘big, exclusive story’ Miss Frankland had hinted she was on the track of. To Mitchell’s suggestion that perhaps Miss Frankland had not been speaking very seriously, Freeman agreed that occasionally some journalists, though not many, would ‘talk big’ as he put it, and hint at wonderful stories they were on the verge of obtaining that, however, never materialized into cold print. But Jo Frankland had not been like that.
‘She wasn’t one of the sort that’s all talk and no do,’ Mr Freeman insisted. ‘If she said she was on a big thing, then it was a big thing she was on all right. She didn’t often talk that way, but when she did, then editors sat up and took notice.’
Death Among the Sunbathers Page 13