“There were papers in the car but none on the body? Isn’t that rather queer?”
“We thought it so,” answered the colonel cautiously. “Everyone has some sort of document in his pocket,” declared Mr. Moffatt, “if it’s only a notebook or an old envelope. Can they have been taken by someone – removed?”
“We thought it possible,” agreed the colonel, still cautiously.
“But, then, that would mean,” said Mr. Moffatt hesitatingly, “that would mean – murder?”
“We thought it possible,” agreed the colonel once again.
CHAPTER 3
STORY OF CARD-SHARPERS
Mr. Moffatt looked very disturbed, even uneasy, but excited and interested as well. Murder was certainly a dreadful thing, but also, in a way, impersonal. It was like a war in Spain, a famine in China, a revolution in Mexico or Brazil, tragic, deplorable, but also comfortably remote. Startling, certainly, that this time it had come even as near as Battling Copse, three miles away, on the west far boundary of the Sevens estate, but none the less utterly remote from oneself.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, what for?... Have you any idea?”
“Well, we haven’t much to go on at present,” the colonel answered. “One of Markham’s men, on his way to work this morning, noticed car-tracks and broken bushes near the Battling Copse chalk-pit. He didn’t think much of it – not a quick thinker, probably. Later he mentioned it to some of his mates and Mr. Markham heard of it, and went down to have a look himself. He saw at once something had gone over the edge of the pit, and there below was the car, upside-down, with the poor chap who had been driving it lying all smashed up by its side. He sent word to Norris, Norris reported, and when I heard I thought I had better come along myself. From the first I didn’t think it looked like an accident. Of course, a skid at a high rate of speed might have done it. But there was no sign of that. And to get there off the road would mean a sharp turn for no apparent reason and then forcing a way through bushes that even in the middle of the night or a fog would have shown any driver he was off the road. It looks as if the car had been parked there for some time, out of the way, and then deliberately driven over the edge.”
“But that would be suicide,” Mr. Moffatt exclaimed.
Colonel Warden made no reply. Detective-Sergeant Owen still seemed absorbed in his map, even though at the same time he was watching and listening attentively. Mr. Moffatt was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Murder seemed somehow to be creeping near – too near. No longer did it seem merely a paragraph in the paper, something fresh to chat about, an occasion for a comfortable shiver over a comfortable glass of wine. Besides, the impression was growing upon him that these two men, the burly, elderly, soldier-like colonel, the good-looking but quite ordinary young fellow from Scotland Yard, were both watching him closely, though he could not imagine why. He said:
“You have no” – what was the word? ah – “no clues?”
“There was a woman’s lipstick,” the colonel answered, “picked up near where the car went over. Nothing to prove any connection, but it certainly hadn’t been there long and Markham says he saw it long before, so far as is known, any woman had been near. And a fragment of the wrapper of a roll of photographic film. Someone found it and handed it to Norris, and Norris is sure no one had been taking snaps. No connection, most likely; it’s not usual to take snaps of murders.”
Bobby, as if in answer to the colonel’s nod, opened an attaché-case he had with him and produced a small metal lipstick case and a fragment of a paper wrapper with enough printing on it to show what purpose it had served. Both were carefully preserved in cellophane envelopes, though the lipstick case had been trodden deep into the mould by the foot of its finder, and the fragment of wrapper had been handled by half a dozen persons before finally coming into Constable Norris’s possession.
But routine is routine, regulations must be observed, and “Protect the evidence” remains the first standing rule of all investigation.
“Not much chance of finding anything in the way of footmarks or finger-prints,” observed the colonel. “Everything was pretty thoroughly trampled over and pulled about long before Norris got there. The car had been turned right side up, the dead body carried up to one of the farm outhouses. Of course, they had no idea it was anything but an accident. There’s nothing much for us to go on – except the lipstick case and the bit of Kodak film wrapper. Oh,” he added carelessly, “and that odd incident Norris happened to see – the watching Sevens through field-glasses.”
“Seems extraordinary,” agreed Mr. Moffatt uneasily. “Not quite – well, not normal even. Why on earth should anyone...? Looks to me like suicide – or accident.”
“Accident we can rule out,” the colonel answered. “The tracks show the car had been standing some time before being driven over the edge. Suicide is possible. People intending suicide do sometimes destroy all papers and evidence of identity. Even the tailor’s tabs seem to have been removed. But, then, the papers we did find were there, and it’s more likely they were overlooked by someone else than forgotten by the dead man himself – especially as they seem somewhat compromising. We may trace him through the car, of course. And we haven’t the report of the doctors yet. They are doing the post-mortem, and they may find something to show one way or the other. There’s another point. There’s evidence two or three shots were heard close together about four o’clock, and a noise that it seems likely was the car falling. A delivery-van driver, it was. He didn’t trouble to investigate; didn’t think much of it, and was late on his rounds anyhow. Someone shooting rabbits, he thought. But he did mention it when he got back, so there is proof he actually heard something and he seems fairly sure about the time. Also a man working in the field beyond the chalk-pit says he saw someone leaving the copse late in the afternoon, though he’s pretty vague about the exact hour. He can’t give the least description of him, except that it was a man dressed in what he calls gentleman’s clothes, which means, I gather, a dark lounge suit, and that he was holding a hat before his face. No hat can be found belonging to the dead man, and, though plenty of people don’t wear one nowadays, especially when driving, still, Norris says the man he saw had one. Only why take away a hat of all things? It might be it was being held before the face by way of disguise,” he added thoughtfully.
“Is Norris quite certain the dead man is the same as the man he saw before?” Mr. Moffatt asked.
“Oh, yes, he is quite clear about that; thought his behaviour so queer he noticed him particularly. I was wondering – most unpleasant, of course – I hate to do it – but I shall have to ask you to see if you can recognise the body. There must, one supposes, be some reason why he was watching your place.”
“I can’t imagine...” Mr. Moffatt insisted. “Of course, if you think it necessary...”
“I knew we could depend on you,” declared the colonel heartily. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have to ask you. Oh, by the way, Mr. Pegley – was that his name? – have you known him long? You have another friend staying with you, too, I think?”
“Yes. A man named Larson; very nice fellow, down for the week-end. City man – finance, companies, all that sort of thing. Ena and I met him on the Berengaria two years ago, when we went to Boston to visit Ena’s uncle there. Larson put me under a considerable obligation during the voyage.”
“May I ask in what way?”
“Well, in confidence, of course. As a matter of fact, I had been playing poker a good deal. Silly, no doubt. Bridge is my game, not poker. I ought to have known better. Dropped a tidy sum. Larson looked on one night. Never said a word. He’s like that. Just watched. Next day told me the play was crooked. Said it just like that. ‘Crooked play last night,’ like ‘Nice morning, isn’t it?’ or ‘Lunch bell gone yet?’ I – well, I didn’t know what to think. He offered to prove it. He joined us next night. Told me what to do. I won back all I had lost and nearly fifty more. Spoiling the Egyptians, eh?”
>
“And Larson?”
“Dropped a fiver. He wouldn’t let me return it; said he had had more than his money’s worth in fun. He watched them, saw how they stacked the cards, was able to sign to me when to back my hand, when to throw in. They didn’t like it. Kept muttering and whispering to each other. Broke up the game finally, and there was no more card playing that voyage.”
Mr. Moffatt chuckled delightedly, thoroughly enjoying the memory of that past triumph. The colonel asked:
“Did you make any complaint?”
“No. Impossible. Those fellows don’t give you the chance. No proof. Larson told me they don’t even use marked cards or anything. They just rely on their own smartness, palming an extra ace and so on. Besides, I had got my own back and some more, too. Not so bad to sit down with a brace of card-sharpers and get up nearly fifty to the good.”
“Since then you have been friendly together?”
“Well, I gave him my card and asked him to look me up when he was back in England. He never did, and then I ran across him in town about six months ago. He had quite forgotten me and he had lost my card. Not the only time, apparently, he has had a bit of fun with card-sharpers. I insisted on lunching him, and we’ve seen something of him since. But he’s a very busy man. Reserved, though. Especially about business. Says it’s second nature with him now; so much often depends on not letting the other fellow know what you’re doing. He’s in with some very big people indeed.”
Bobby was making notes again. The colonel said:
“And Mr. Pegley? Have you known him long?”
“A few months, not more,” Mr. Moffatt answered. “He wrote offering to buy a few shares I had in a West African gold-mining concern. Worth nothing at all. He offered a penny a share – they are two-shilling shares. He was quite frank about it – said there was a possibility of a new paying vein being found. One of his clients was buying up all the shares he could find – purely speculative. Pegley said I must decide for myself whether to sell out or hang on. I said I would think it over. Pegley sent me a wire next day to advise me to sell, but before I decided the bottom fell out of the whole thing and I lost the £20 I might have sold for. The shares are waste paper now.”
“Do you often operate on the Stock Exchange, Mr. Moffatt?” Bobby asked, looking up from his notebook in which he had been making entries.
“Rarest thing in the world,” declared Mr. Moffatt. “My money is nearly all in consols – safe two and a half; not much, but safe.”
The colonel smiled to himself at the virtuous tone in which this had been said. That Mr. Moffatt was the fortunate holder of a very large block of old consols was fairly well known, for when he was not grumbling about the poor return derived from land in these days he was generally lamenting the niggardly return of two and a half per cent he derived from his invested capital. As the investment had been made a good many years before, when consols stood well over par, there really had been a considerable shrinkage in nominal capital value, even though they had recovered from those dreadful war days when they had dropped so low that Mr. Moffatt felt himself face to face with ruin.
“You have kept in touch with him though?” the colonel asked.
“Well, no, not exactly. It just happens we have run across one another once or twice – we met in the train again some time back. He got into my compartment. I was coming back from town. He was going on somewhere to see a client – he’s an investment consultant.”
“What’s that?” inquired Colonel Warden, and Bobby, too, seemed interested as his busy pencil hovered over the pages of his notebook.
“Well,” Mr. Moffatt answered slowly, “he advises people about their investments. Has most amazing stories to tell. He tells of one client he advised to invest a trifle in Woolworths and now he draws £20,000 a year from them.”
“Oh,” said the colonel, with a certain touch of incredulity in his voice, for, though the tale might be true, he had heard it before.
It was the hint of scepticism in the other’s voice that decided Mr. Moffatt. He drew out the card Larson had dropped before him earlier in the evening.
“Larson doesn’t like him,” he blurted out. “I saw there was something wrong the moment I introduced them. Larson says he’s a share-pusher.”
CHAPTER 4
DISCUSSION
They all three went down the passage and across the hall to the drawing-room, where it seemed a somewhat awkward silence prevailed; at least, awkward as far as Ena was concerned, for the mutual hostility between the two men was making itself very plain to her as Pegley fidgeted and glared, and Larson, imperturbable as ever, maintained a chilly silence that almost resembled a shouted accusation. It was to her an immense relief when the door opened and the little party from the library came in.
Mr. Moffatt introduced the colonel to his two visitors. Ena, of course, already knew him. She rang for two more coffee-cups, feeling a little sorry for the good-looking young man she understood had something to do with Scotland Yard and who stood patiently and apparently forgotten by the door, since to Mr. Moffatt of Sevens a sergeant was a sergeant and he was nothing more.
But when she looked a little more closely she was not sure that that somewhat stern mouth and the clear and direct eyes were those of one much in need of sympathy.
“There’s been another of these motor accidents,” Mr. Moffatt was explaining. “Poor chap killed. Colonel Warden is trying to find out who he is. Odd thing is, he was seen peeping at this house through field-glasses just before it happened – can’t imagine why.”
His three auditors all looked puzzled, and two of them made vague comments while Larson preserved his accustomed silence. Reeves returned with the two coffee-cups Ena had asked for. When he left the room, Bobby followed him. Mr. Moffatt noticed this and approved. Ena was a trifle disappointed. Outside, Bobby said to the butler:
“I hear you recognised me, mentioned my name to Mr. Moffatt. I don’t think I remember your face.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t,” answered Reeves quietly. “I was out of a job last year and I used to go and sit in the law courts sometimes, just to pass the time. Nowhere else to go. Cinemas cost money. So do pubs. I was there when you were giving evidence in a case and someone told me your name. Said you were a relative of the Home Secretary’s.”
“Well, I’m not,” snapped Bobby angrily. “The lies people tell.” He almost choked in his indignation. He felt this tale was one he would never, never live down. He seemed to see his tombstone with the epitaph inscribed upon it: “...and was a relative of the Home Secretary.” He said gloomily: “I don’t know the blighter from Adam. I’m a sergeant in the C.I.D., and some day perhaps I shall be an inspector if I watch my step, but not yet, because I’m not senior enough, and the High-Ups don’t want any jealousy.”
He went back angrily into the drawing-room. Reeves’s story was probable enough. People with nothing to do often hang about the law courts for free entertainment, since these have the advantage over their equally free rivals, the big stores, the public libraries, the museums, of providing more seating accommodation than the first, more sociability than the second, more human interest than the third. All the same, Bobby did not much believe Reeves’s story. The butler had certainly never been through his own hands in the way of business, but, all the same, it might be well to get a set of his finger-prints and find out if Scotland Yard was equally unaware of Mr. Reeves’s past.
Bobby’s reappearance Mr. Moffatt greeted with a lifted eyebrow, but did not quite know what to do about it. He had imagined Bobby, a sergeant, sitting patiently in the hall, waiting till his superiors had finished, or possibly sharing a friendly glass of beer with Reeves. Now here he was marching in again with his air of having a job to do and meaning to do it, and Ena began to fill the second cup as the colonel, sipping the contents of his, observed to Pegley and Larson:
“I understand both you gentlemen have been a good deal in America?”
“I’ve lived in Denver,” Pegley an
swered sulkily. “Business there after the war. Fine place. Business centre. Tourist centre. Health centre. It was there I picked up my knowledge of American business conditions I think my clients have found useful.”
“I make occasional trips to New York on business connected with the financial group I am associated with,” Larson explained. “I have never been further than New York.”
“Do you know anyone of the name of Arthur Bennett?”
Larson contented himself with a shake of the head. Pegley said:
“Don’t think so. Never had a client of that name, if that’s what you mean. Of course, I should have to look up my files to be sure. I meet a lot of people; people drift in and out – sometimes business comes of it, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes a smarty just tries to pick my brains without paying my fee. They don’t succeed very often. Anyhow, I can’t place any Arthur Bennett? Is that the name of the man who’s been killed? Was he an American?”
“We are trying to find out,” answered Colonel Warden. “Sergeant Owen has been able to identify him as a man who was recently staying at a London hotel under the name of Bennett.”
“A criminal?” asked Mr. Moffatt eagerly. “A burglar? Ten to one, that’s what he was after with his field-glasses, trying to find out how to get in.”
“There was nothing definite,” Bobby explained. “I was sent to interview him in connection with an inquiry we had from New York. The suggestion was that he was one of a gang of confidence men. He wouldn’t answer questions; blustered a bit and so on. He had papers to show he was a British subject and so he didn’t need a passport. There was nothing we could do and we had to leave it at that. But he left the hotel in a hurry without saying where he was going, and now papers found in his car suggest he really had something to do with a sharepushing gang operating over here.”
The Dusky Hour Page 3