Mystery of Mr. Jessop

by E. R. Punshon

  “I suppose so,” agreed Mr. Jacks.

  “The Duke of Westhaven thought of buying the necklace at one time, didn’t he?” Bobby asked.

  “No,” snarled Wright, “he thought we might make him a present of it because we loved him so much. He missed his guess.”

  “But he did come here to have a look at it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Afterwards you sent it for the duchess to see. Miss May showed it her, I think. Was she alone?”

  “I went with her,” answered Wright. “Don’t take risks with £100,000. I waited in the entrance-hall while she was showing it.”

  “Was it Miss May who took it to Hastley Court?”

  “No. That was Jessop. The duchess rang up in a hurry.

  We thought, from what she said, hubby might be weakening – we knew she was keen on it herself, as far as that went. We started off as soon as we could get the car out.”

  “We?”

  “I went, too. Hang it, the thing’s worth money.”

  “Yes, got to be careful,” agreed Bobby. “Armed?”

  “We keep a pistol on the premises,” Wright answered. “I put it in my pocket any time like taking good stuff to show customers.”

  “Got a licence, I suppose?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know what make it is?”

  “Smith Webley – 22.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Bobby, remembering that had been the make and calibre of the weapon found by the side of the murdered man. But that was a point for his superiors to follow up. “Did you see the duchess at Hastley Court?”

  “I didn’t. I waited in the car. There was some sort of swell party on.”

  “Didn’t it strike you as odd that the duchess should choose a time when she must have been busy with her guests?”

  “That was so we could slip through in the crowd – she didn’t want the duke to know,” explained Wright. “That’s what she told Jessop. She was going to finance the thing herself, and not let on till it was all settled and too late for the duke to do anything but tear his hair. That was her look-out; for all we cared, hubby could tear his hair till he was bald. Once we had got the necklace into her hands and her I.O.U. in ours we were O.K. We knew his starchiness would never face a lawsuit or a scandal. That,” said Mr. Wright comfortably, “is where you have the nobs on toast. You and me, we wouldn’t give a cuss for being shown up in the Sunday rags, but dukes can’t stand for it.”

  “There’s that,” agreed Bobby. “But I don’t quite see how you managed.”

  “Why not? Simple enough. She told us on the ’phone to wait in our car, where all the others were parked – there were dozens of ’em. So we did, and the secretary chap – Dickson he said his name was; secretary or something – came along and fetched Jessop. Jessop came back very bucked. Told me it looked like a deal all right.”

  “I knew nothing of all this,” interposed Mr. Jacks.

  “It was entered in the office diary,” Wright growled.

  “Only ‘Fellows necklace shown D. of W. and returned to stock,’” Mr. Jacks said.

  “Well, it was no good saying too much before we were sure,” Wright answered.

  “You brought the necklace back with you?” Bobby asked.

  “That’s right. The deal hadn’t gone through by a long way; we weren’t building on it too much. Our idea was she would have to get round the duke and find the money too. Our terms included prompt payment of at least £5,000 cash, and the rest in instalments.”

  “What was the total figure to be paid?”

  “Hadn’t been settled,” answered Wright frankly. “We meant to soak it to her for as much as we dared, but we weren’t sure of the limit – there was to be a conference with Mr. Jacks to settle the exact figure. I thought Jessop had said something to you about that,” the manager added to Mr. Jacks.

  “Not a word; not one word,” complained Mr. Jacks.

  “Jessop was waiting till he knew for certain, I suppose,” observed Wright. “No good gassing till you’re sure.”

  Mr. Jacks looked dissatisfied still, and Bobby could not make up his mind what to think of this story. He remembered how firmly and convincingly the duchess had denied having seen the necklace at Hastley Court – how genuine her dismissal of the story as “silly” had sounded. But, then, some people are wonderfully good liars, especially those who do not think of themselves as liars but merely as economising the truth for some necessary purpose. The duchess might, for example, consider herself justified in concealing from her husband negotiations entered into for the making of a purchase he had not yet approved of.

  In any case, Bobby had, he felt, asked quite enough questions. He was risking getting a severe rap over the knuckles for conducting on his own account an examination that he ought to have left to his superiors. He decided, too, that for the present, until the whole business was a little clearer, it would be better to say nothing about the duchess’s denial of the Hastley Court visit. That would be for his superiors to follow up, as would also what to Bobby was apparent enough – a lack of trust and harmony between the partners that might or might not have serious implications.

  “Did Miss May accompany you to Hastley Court?” he asked as a final question, and he saw the other two exchange a quick glance.

  “No,” answered Wright, and added: “Miss May has left us now.”

  “How’s that?” Bobby asked quickly. “You mean...?”

  “Jessop gave her notice a week ago,” Wright answered. “It was up yesterday.”

  “Was there any special reason?” Bobby asked.

  “We don’t want to get let in for a libel action,” Wright remarked. “I suppose what’s said to the police is confidential?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mr. Jessop got to know she was going about with a fellow we believe to have been behind one or two big thefts, like that one at the Ritz, where a fellow shinned off down the fire-escape with a pocketful of diamond rings sent there on appro – chap of the name of Denis Something, but no one knows anything else about him, except that he’s said to be a swell of some sort, well connected. And when Jessop heard that, and found her one day monkeying with his keys – well, he thought she had better go.”

  Bobby turned to Mr. Jacks.

  “You never said anything about that last night,” he said. “Mr. Jacks didn’t know,” interposed Wright. “Mr. Jessop told me in confidence, but he didn’t want anyone else to know. She might have landed us for heavy damages if we hadn’t been careful. She has swell friends. Besides, it was only suspicion, nothing in it, perhaps. All the same, Mr. Jessop thought, and so did I, that she had better have notice – only without any fuss, and good references and all that. Nothing actually against her.”

  “I ought to have been told,” Mr. Jacks said darkly. “There’s a lot of this I ought to have been told before and I never was.”

  CHAPTER 15

  FORCIBLE ENTRY

  Bobby, after he had seen Jacks and Wright depart in their car to Scotland Yard, walked on slowly to the Cut and Come Again club, revolving slowly in his mind as he went this latest piece of information.

  Hilda May had known all about the necklace, and would undoubtedly have been a most useful accomplice in any plot to secure possession of it. And there was the coincidence of the name “Denis” that Wright had mentioned, and that was also the first name of young Chenery. Miss May would have to be questioned again, that was clear. He wondered if he ought to ask her to come with him to headquarters. He saw that he had reached the Cut and Come Again, and he decided to ask a few questions there before making up his mind what to do about Hilda.

  The Cut and Come Again rented the first and second floors of the fine old house he was looking at. The ground floor and basement were occupied by a restaurant entirely unconnected with the club, though it is true that there seemed somehow a good deal of traffic through a door leading from the rear of the restaurant dining-room to the passage at the back, whence ros
e the back stairs constructed recently as an additional means of escape in case of fire. But, then, that door led also to the cloakrooms, where the restaurant customers could wash their hands or powder their noses or perform other necessary toilet operations. Nor did the restaurant waiters grumble so much as might have been expected if their customers mysteriously vanished for a time – even for a long time. A police raid on the club – there had been one or two, but none recently – was apt to find the restaurant crowded with guests innocently chatting over glasses of lemonade or barley-water or admiring the surrealist paintings with which the walls were adorned; for the restaurant had quite a name as a centre of surrealist art, and odd-looking people often wandered in just to admire the pictures on exhibition.

  On the half-landing was a telephone call-box and a small cloakroom in charge of a former police constable, a Mr. Isaac Finch, who had at one time been much favoured by his superior officers as likely to bring the police boxing championship to their division, but who had afterwards proudly resigned rather than face the indignity of a threatened inquiry into certain entirely personal transactions.

  The top floor was a flat in private occupation, though the tenant, Mr. John Smith, was seldom seen, nor did a knock at his door often secure an answer. Occasionally club members wandered up there just to try, but knocking was always vain, though, on the other hand, at times the door would swing open as of its own accord, so that there was no need to knock, and visitors could pass through unheralded and unannounced.

  As Bobby approached this intriguing institution there emerged from the ever-open door that gave admission both to the restaurant – on the right – and to the stairway directly in front that led to the club premises, a little thin old woman with a small, shrivelled face, well known to Bobby himself, to the police in general, and in all the more disreputable haunts in town, as Magotty Meg. It was a sobriquet frequently misunderstood and invariably misspelt, for it was in no sense personal, but was due merely to her habit – she was partly of French extraction – of referring to her magot, by which she meant her little private store of savings that, with the prudence of her maternal ancestors, she was endeavouring to accumulate so as to be able some day to retire to that little rose-embowered country cottage, at the thought of which she would shed tears on those comparatively rare occasions when she was really drunk. Age had forced her to abandon a profession she had formerly – adorned is hardly the word perhaps – practised lavishly, freely, even generously indeed, and still there was little that went on in the underworld of London that she was not aware of, and wherefrom she did not manage somehow or another to glean for her own use a few ears of ill-gotten corn. In criminal circles she was universally respected, for her silence was that of the brooding pyramids, even though there was hardly a rogue in London against whom she could not have given damning evidence. But what she knew was as inaccessible to the police as the summit of Mount Everest to the aspiring climber. Her magot, too, remained comparatively small, since a certain innate generosity of soul prevented her from refusing any demand for assistance. She took, but she gave as well.

  “If you’re looking for T.T.,” she greeted Bobby abruptly, “he isn’t there, and if you find him anywhere, tell him I want him.”

  It was said regally, as by one who had a right to command, and Bobby wondered a little.

  “Why?” he asked, though he knew the question was useless.

  “To talk about the weather,” she retorted.

  “Or diamonds?” he asked.

  “That’s it; you’ve hit it.” She beamed on him. “He promised me a diamond bracelet once, and I want to know when I’m to have it.”

  “I see,” said Bobby drily. “Is Wynne at the club?”

  “Who’s that?” she asked, assuming now her expression of bland ignorance police interrogators knew so well.

  “The Count de Teirney,” Bobby answered.

  “Ah,” sighed Meg, “I knew a Count de Teirney forty years ago – a lovely man. I remember –”

  “Sorry, Meg; haven’t time now,” interrupted Bobby, for Meg’s reminiscences, though both diverting and entirely incredible, were apt to lead far from the subject supposed to be under discussion.

  “Perhaps it’s his son,” mused Meg. “Or even mine,” she added thoughtfully; for one of her most embarrassing habits was that of claiming the possible procreation of almost anyone of suitable age – she had even advanced the claim once to a scandalised, indignant, and blushing Assistant Commissioner of Police.

  “You’ve heard about the Jessop murder?” Bobby asked her.

  “It’s in the stop press,” she said, and gave him a sudden and a different look from her small, beady old eyes. “I don’t hold with murder,” she said, and walked away, and Bobby told himself it might be as well to remember how she had said that – it might be that if she knew anything, as was entirely probable, since there was so little that she did not know or guess, she might be willing for once to drop her usual impenetrable guard of silence and assumed forgetfulness.

  But that would be, Bobby knew well, in her own good time, if at all; and he walked on through the open door and up the stairs leading to the Cut and Come Again premises.

  Mr. Finch, in charge of the cloakroom, knew Bobby well enough, and greeted him with a friendly grin.

  “Hullo, hullo,” he said. “Here’s the white hope of the C.I.D. Hope you’re off duty or what’ll the Home Sec. say?”

  Bobby went white with rage. He had a naturally equable temper, and he had trained himself to keep it in the strictest control, but this reference to the loathsome legend that he was a special friend and favourite of the Home Secretary’s was always too much for him. He said between his teeth:

  “All right, all right. You wait, Finch, I’ll remember that.”

  There was an energy of anger about him as he spoke that fairly scared Finch, who had meant no more than a little friendly chaff. After all, no night-club porter wishes unnecessarily to antagonise a “busy,” even if only because a night raid offers too many opportunities for a clip on the jaw from some unidentifiable but substantial fist.

  “No insult or offence intended, mate,” he said earnestly, “and hope none such is took.”

  Bobby took his temper in hand. Even the most deadly insults a policeman must learn to ignore. He said abruptly: “When was the Duke of Westhaven here last?”

  Finch was one of the readiest and most accomplished liars in the world – made perfect by long practice – but his look of surprise at this question was pretty plainly genuine. Then he rallied.

  “Oh, he often looks in,” he said. “One of our regulars. Every night almost. Only don’t you let on I said so. He calls himself Mr. Smith here. ‘Finch, my boy,’ he said to me, friendly like, not more than half an hour ago, ‘you let on this is my home from home and I’ll have your blood. Meanwhile, here’s a quid for you.’ Jolly little cuss, the duke.”

  “That was half an hour ago, was it?” asked Bobby, fully appreciating this reference to the stiff and pedantic duke as a “jolly little cuss,” and the suggestion that he, who had the reputation of being the meanest man in town, gave pound notes away so freely.

  “There or thereabouts,” asserted Finch, and Bobby was convinced by these replies that Finch knew nothing of the duke, and that that maligned peer had never in his life been near the place.

  “Heard about the murder of Mr. Jessop?” Bobby asked. “It’s in the stop press this morning.”

  Finch shook his head.

  “Didn’t notice it,” he said. “Why? The duke done it? I thought I noticed a dark, suspicious stain on his left trouser-leg.”

  “Don’t try to be funny,” snapped Bobby. “Was Jessop a member?”

  “No,” answered Finch. “Visitor sometimes. You’ll find his name in the visitors’ book.”

  “Miss Hilda May a member?”

  “Couldn’t rightly say,” answered Finch. “There’s some I know when I see ’em, but not by name. Ask Mr. Dillon. He’s secretary. He�
��ll know. He keeps the member list.”

  “So he does,” agreed Bobby, who knew well that list, comprehensive, and, in a very real sense, more than complete. “Mr. Jessop used the ’phone here on Saturday?”

  “Did he?” countered Finch. “I couldn’t say, I’m sure. Anyone can slip in and use the call-box without me knowing. I don’t notice; no call to.”

  “Mr. Dillon in his room?”

  “I’ll ask,” Finch said, and, using the house ’phone, reported that Mr. Dillon was there and would be happy to see Sergeant Owen.

  Bobby went on accordingly to a little room at the top of the stairs, observing with interest, as he passed, the grooves which showed where a light steel netting could be dropped at a second’s notice to bar all ingress, so as to prevent, as the authorities had been carefully informed, any attempt by the roughs, who at times infest West End districts, to rush the club premises.

  “Keep ’em out until we’ve time to get you fellows of the police round to protect us,” Mr. Dillon had explained blandly. “Everyone knows big money changes hands here sometimes when members settle up the bets they’ve been making between themselves on any of the big races.”

  And that big money did change hands at the Cut and Come Again was indeed well known, though not racing was the reason, but baccarat, chemin de fer, roulette, poker, and other such devices.

  Mr. Dillon, waiting for Bobby at his desk in the small bare room that was his office, was a little wizened elderly Irishman about whose past various picturesque and possibly untrue tales were told. He had a sad and solemn personality, and his almost superhuman ability to absorb whisky without limit or pause was often accounted for by the copious tears over the wrongs of Ireland he was accustomed to shed after beginning his second bottle. How, indeed, could man get drunk when from his eyes moisture poured out in proportion as he poured liquid in by the throat. Curiously enough, when sober – that is, nearly every morning before noon – he never showed a sign of having even heard of Ireland; towards the small hours he could recite in length and in detail every wrong Ireland has suffered since St. Jerome wrote a careless phrase calumniators of the country have interpreted as a suggestion that the saint believed cannibalism was practised there in his day.