The Case of Sir Adam Braid: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “It is to some people,” Fenn reminded her gently. “And, remember, you were within an ace of losing every penny of it.”

  She stared at him. Evidently she had not realized till then the difference it would have made in her life if her grandfather had had time to sign the letter.

  “The letter, you mean, to his lawyers?” she said slowly. “I see now what you’ve been driving at. I suppose I was blind and stupid not to have seen it before. I might have gone in and seen the letter and killed him to prevent him from finishing it? Of course, I suppose it does look like that. It might seem like it to me, if it was anybody else; but when it’s me, it seems so ridiculous!”

  She shot a glance at him, half humorous, half apologetic, which was wholly enchanting. Even now she did not seem quite to realize the seriousness of her position.

  “There’s nothing ridiculous about it, I assure you,” said Fenn gravely. “It’s a very nasty state of affairs, from your point of view. You’re sure there’s nothing of any importance you haven’t told me?” She made a little hopeless gesture.

  “Nothing. I came here at seven, as I said, and waited; but there wasn’t a soul on the stairs, and I don’t suppose any one saw me all the time I was here. There’s nothing to prove that I didn’t come in here. I can see that.”

  “You’re sure that you didn’t hear a woman’s voice when you were standing outside the door of this flat? If we could get on her track it would simplify matters.”

  “Certain. The voices I heard were men’s. By the way, I can prove that the woman Mr. Webb heard was not me, if that’s any help. I came straight here from Louis, the hairdresser’s, and the man who cut my hair will know what time I left. I must have been there till about ten minutes to seven.”

  Fenn made a note of the hairdresser’s address, and finding that there was really nothing more she could tell him, led the way out of the flat. As he stood aside to let her pass out, he felt a light touch on his arm.

  “It seems impossible, but if—if there’s any arresting to be done, could it be by you, please, Mr. Fenn?” said a small voice at his elbow.

  And Fenn, catching sight of her face, realized that she was frightened at last.

  He parted from her outside Romney Chambers and made his way to the local branch of the Northern Counties Bank. He interviewed the manager, but got, as he had expected, very little information of any value. One thing, however, he did ascertain. Sir Adam Braid had cashed a cheque for eighty guineas, and had taken the money away in pound notes, seven days before he was murdered.

  “He had banked with us for years,” said the manager. “And there was plenty of money lying to his account, but during the last two years he had developed a rather curious and, I considered, dangerous habit. Except for his rent and certain big payments he hardly ever drew a cheque on his account. It was his habit to cash any cheques that came to him in payment for his work and use the money for his current expenses. And there was a good deal coming in. I fancy he must have had plenty of old work stowed away to fall back on. Some of the cheques, especially those from American dealers, were for large sums, and after his exhibition last winter, I remember, he walked out of this bank with over six hundred pounds in cash in his pocket. I ventured to expostulate with him once on the danger of keeping such large sums of money in his flat, but I never did it again! He was a very peppery old gentleman.”

  “The chances are, then, that there was a considerable sum of money in the flat?”

  The manager shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s difficult to say, of course. I’ve no idea what he did with his money. But he has changed some largish cheques at varying intervals during the last six months, and, as I told you, he changed one for over eighty pounds only a week ago. If, as I have suspected, he had got into the habit of hoarding his money, there may have been a considerable sum in the flat.”

  Fenn produced an envelope from his pocket and took out four one pound notes.

  “These were found in Sir Adam’s pocket after his death,” he said. “Seeing that they run in consecutive numbers it struck me that they might be part of a batch paid out by you for a larger sum. You’ve no record of the numbers, I suppose?”

  The manager took the notes.

  “We may be able to help you there,” he said, “if you’ll wait a minute.”

  He left the room, and was back almost immediately, carrying a slip of paper in his hand.

  “They are part of the payment of eighty guineas which we made to him on the thirtieth of October,” he said. “He had a prejudice against notes for big denominations, and the sum was paid in one pound notes. They were a series of new notes, and you may take it that any number between the two on this memoranda is part of the series. That will give you something to go on, anyway.”

  Fenn thanked him and departed with the paper in his pocket. He turned down Shorncliffe Street once more, and dropped into the paper shop Webb had mentioned earlier in the day.

  He found Ling, the proprietor, seated behind the counter reading one of his own papers. He was a heavily-built man of about fifty, with a shrewd face and intelligent grey eyes. Fenn recognized in him the makings of a clear and conscientious witness. He remembered the man Miss Webb had noticed perfectly, and described him with some skill.

  “You see, livin’ on the corner as I do, I get to know most of the people round here by sight. Any one strange to the neighbourhood I seem to notice, without thinkin’ like. This chap didn’t belong round here, and when I see him hangin’ about round this corner, I begun to wonder what he was up to. Seedy-lookin’ chap, he was. Handkerchief round his neck and no overcoat on, in spite of the cold. Thin, with a stoop, and a long, thin face. I should know him again all right. You see, he stood for a good quarter of an hour under the lamp outside, and I got a good view of him. Looked to me as if he’d got his eye on one of the houses in Shorncliffe Street.”

  “How often did you see him?” asked Fenn.

  Ling gave the matter his careful consideration before he answered.

  “Well, now,” he said at last, “I can check that pretty close. I’ll tell you for why. I see him Friday last. He was out there between one and two, Friday afternoon. Now I know it was Friday, because I was makin’ out my bills, which I always do on a Friday, seein’ as there’s a lot of the regular customers like to pay up on Saturday. Then I see him Monday last—the day before yesterday, that is—and I pointed him out to Ernie Bell, porter he is at the mansions, and he was payin’ of his bill, which he always does of a Monday. And I see him again; but I can’t say which day that would have been. One day last week, towards the end of the week, I should put it, and it was in the evening. I can’t say no nearer than that. But I’d know him again. So would Ernie Bell, I should think.”

  Fenn made a note of Bell’s address, and, very reluctantly, paid his somewhat belated visit to Miss Webb. He found her overwhelmingly full of information, and it was nearly an hour before he managed to wrench himself away. But her description of the loiterer, whom she already designated as “the murderer,” tallied with Ling’s. When Fenn asked her if she would know the man again she refused to commit herself.

  “Knowing some one is one thing, but identifying him is another, isn’t it, inspector?” she said brightly.

  Fenn murmured something that might be taken for an affirmative, but the subtlety was beyond him.

  As he was leaving the Chambers he ran into Gilroy. He refused his offer of lunch, but stood chatting for a minute or two.

  “How are things going?” asked the doctor.

  Fenn shrugged his shoulders.

  “Pretty damnably, from my point of view,” he said morosely. “The truth is, I’m beginning to hate my job.”

  “By which I gather you haven’t managed to establish the innocence of your chief suspect. I’m sorry, old man. It’s a beastly business, from your point of view. There’s one thing, however. Until you’ve actually laid hands on the weapon that was used you can’t be sure in whose possession you m
ay find it.”

  “The weapon, as you call it, turned up last night,” answered Fenn sourly. “One of my men found it under the mat outside Sir Adam’s front door.”

  Then, in answer to Gilroy’s unspoken question—

  “Nothing doing. Both the blade and the handle had been wiped clean on the bath-towel in Sir Adam’s room, and the knife is just a sheath-knife, the kind you can buy anywhere for five or six shillings. The sheath’s missing, but there’s very little chance of our stumbling on that now—burns too easily.”

  “Doesn’t sound very promising. Nothing else has turned up, I suppose?”

  “Nothing, except that Miss Webb has found the man who did it. She’ll tell you all about it if you ask her.”

  “God forbid,” murmured Gilroy, making a dive for the stairs that led to his own flat.

  CHAPTER V

  That afternoon Gilroy had knocked off work at the Lister Institute rather earlier than usual, and was washing his hands preparatory to leaving, when he was rung up by Fenn. The chief inspector, who seemed to have recovered his temper since the morning, asked him what time he was likely to get back to his flat.

  “I’m on my way there now,” answered Gilroy. “Do you want to see me?”

  “Heaven forbid!” was Fenn’s ungrateful rejoinder. “Though I suppose you have your uses—as a Job’s comforter! No, I want to stop Miss Braid before she leaves her grandfather’s flat. I know she’s got an appointment there with his solicitor at three-thirty this afternoon, and it struck me that if you’re on your way home you might just catch her.”

  “What am I to do with the bereaved damsel if I do manage to get hold of her?”

  “Simply ask her to wait at the flat till I come. I’ll get down there as soon as I possibly can. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but the only telephone in the building seems to be Webb’s, and for obvious reasons I don’t want him buzzing round.”

  “Ungrateful brute, aren’t you? when you know he’d run his little legs off to oblige you! Right, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Various small matters cropped up to delay Fenn, and it was past five when he reached Sir Adam Braid’s flat. He was about to put the key in the lock when he noticed a card wedged into the flap of the letterbox. It was from Gilroy, and ran:

  “Victim waiting for you upstairs.”

  Fenn chuckled softly.

  “So friend Robert’s been having a look-see for himself!” he murmured. “Webb’s disease must be catching.”

  But he was not ill-pleased with the way things had fallen out. He had been reproaching himself for leaving the girl so long alone in the flat, with its gruesome associations. Also, he was not sorry that Gilroy should have an opportunity to judge for himself whether he had been unduly prejudiced in her favour.

  He found her comfortably established in Gilroy’s kitchen.

  “I asked Miss Braid if she minded kitchen tea, and she said she didn’t,” Gilroy informed him, rather unnecessarily.

  “If he only knew, it’s just what I’m accustomed to,” said the girl. She spoke gaily enough, but her voice sounded strained and tired. Fenn, glancing covertly at her, realized that she had lost much of her vivid charm since the morning. There were dark circles under her eyes and her shoulders sagged perceptibly under the weight of the well-worn dark coat which she had evidently put on as the nearest approach to mourning she possessed. He was also surprised to observe that there was an empty eggshell on her plate and an open box of sardines in front of her.

  Gilroy caught his eye.

  “I’m a better detective than you are,” he announced cheerfully. “It took me just four minutes to find out that Miss Braid had had no lunch. Even if you don’t eat yourself, you might give other people a chance, you know.”

  “I may occasionally miss my lunch, but I always make a point of having tea,” answered Fenn, commandeering a cup from the dresser and calmly taking possession of the teapot. “There’s no hurry. My business will wait.”

  “If you want me to go down to the flat, I’m quite ready,” volunteered Jill Braid quickly.

  “She isn’t, whatever she may say,” said Gilroy, who was performing feats of jugglery with a sardine between the box and her plate. “She never wishes to see the inside of that flat again. She’s just told me so. And, what’s more, no one but an unmitigated brute would make an appointment with a starving woman in such a place. It’s the sort of thing one used to hear of in Russia, under the old regime. It’s not done in England, you know.”

  Jill Braid laughed in spite of herself.

  “Truly I can’t eat any more sardines,” she assured him. “Please put that back.”

  “Well, it’s obviously got to go either on your plate or the table-cloth. I’d rather it was the plate, if it’s all the same to you. Joking apart, don’t take her down to that beastly flat, Fenn. I’ll clear out, and you can have your interview in peace over your tea.”

  “No need for you to do that, Robert,” Fenn assured him. “I’ve nothing private to discuss. It’s merely this.”

  He took a typewritten list from his pocket and spread it out in front of the girl.

  “I’ve managed to get a list of some of the missing articles from Johnson, and I wondered if you could check it for me. Of course, Johnson knows very little about the contents of the dispatch-box, but there are certain articles of jewellery which he declares are gone. Have you any idea what your grandfather did keep in that box?”

  Jill shook her head.

  “I know practically nothing about his things. You see, until lately, I hardly knew him. He never took the slightest notice of us as long as my mother was alive, and it’s only since she and my father died that I’ve seen anything of him. Until last night I had never even set foot inside his bedroom.”

  She ran her eye over the list.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you much,” she said. “I remember the gold watch and chain. He always wore it, and it had his name inside the case. He showed it to me once. And the signet ring—if it’s the one I mean—that should be easy to identify. My great-grandfather had several of them made for his sons, and grandfather had his copied, and gave my father one when he came of age. They’re all exactly alike, with the crest and motto on them, and the name and date of the person they belonged to on the inside. Grandfather did not wear his, and I think he must have kept it in a little trinket box in his bedroom, as he fetched it once to compare it with my father’s.”

  “Have you got your father’s ring?” asked Fenn. She slipped it off her finger and handed it to him. “I always wear it. It’s exactly like grandfather’s, except for the name engraved inside.”

  Fenn added a careful description of the ring to the list.

  “That will give us something to go on, anyway,” he said, “provided the thief’s fool enough to sell it. You don’t recognize anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m afraid not; you see I knew so little about his affairs.”

  “It’s unfortunate, from our point of view,” admitted Fenn. “We know that a certain amount of jewellery is missing, if Johnson’s account is correct, and we’ve reason to believe that quite a large sum of money may have been taken. There’s also a waterproof which Johnson declares is missing from the hall. It had the maker’s name inside the collar, and he’s described it pretty accurately, down to a button missing off the belt, which your grandfather complained of a few days ago. However, you’ve helped us considerably over the ring and the watch. If anything else occurs to you, let me know, will you? Now, having picked your brains, I’ll leave you in peace.”

  Jill rose and collected her bag and gloves.

  “I must go,” she said. “Thank you so much for the delicious tea, Dr. Gilroy. It saved my life. I should probably have been in a state of coma by now if you hadn’t taken pity on me.”

  “Or gnawing your shoe-laces in that abominable flat downstairs! Why not wait and have a comfortable cigarette before you go?”

  She refused re
gretfully.

  “I’ve got work to do. You forget I’m still a wage-earner!”

  “You know that your grandfather’s lawyers will advance you anything you need,” Fenn informed her. “That half-finished letter of his can’t affect the will in any way.”

  She hesitated, her eyes on the glove she was buttoning. Then, with the colour deepening in her cheeks, she plunged.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t take that money,” she said. “I don’t care whether the letter counts or not in the eyes of the law, but it’s quite obvious that grandfather didn’t mean to leave me anything. Surely that’s enough. I can’t take it on the face of that, can I?”

  Fenn did not answer at once. He might have known, he told himself, that she would take a line that was typical of her, but he was at a loss as to how best to advise her. In view of her position she was doing a wise thing in refusing the legacy, but he, of all people, knew how badly she needed it. Gilroy said nothing, but he was watching her closely.

  “I should think it over,” said Fenn at last. “Don’t do anything in a hurry. As regards your grandfather’s letter, I shouldn’t make too much of it. He wrote it in a moment of anger, and even then was obviously in no hurry to send it. If you had seen him and had the matter out with him when you first arrived at the flat he would certainly have destroyed it. Given a temperament like his there is every reason to believe that he would have thought better of it.”

  She lifted her eyes to his. They were transparently honest.

  “Do you know, that sounds rather like sophistry,” she said. “It’s so exactly what one would like to believe, that it makes one suspicious. And there’s another thing.”

  She hesitated again, then went on bravely.

  “Mr. Compton didn’t offer to advance the money. In fact, I think he kept off the subject on purpose. Just as he was going he said something about going into money matters after the inquest. His meaning was pretty clear, though he didn’t put it into words. He’s suspicious, too, you see.”

  She tried to smile, but her eyes were haunted. Then, with an obvious effort, she squared her shoulders and faced the two men gallantly.