by Molly Thynne
Fenn inspected the bedroom, and found that it was above Gilroy’s room, which, in turn, was immediately above that of Sir Adam Braid. He also tackled Mrs. Smith once more as to the exact time at which she had heard the sounds from below. But she was not to be moved, and, to the best of his knowledge, she could have no possible object in lying.
Then, accompanied by Miss Anderson, who showed herself a chatty and philosophical companion, he left the flat.
On the way to the police station she favoured him with her opinion of Mrs. Smith’s statement.
“If Carrie didn’t hear that poor old chap’s last words, I’d like to know what she did hear,” she said. “And that’s a straight story she told you, Mr. Fenn. If she says the time was a quarter to seven you may be pretty sure she’s right. She’s got a good enough head when she keeps it. What she told you is, word for word, what she told me the night I came to the flat. The trouble with Carrie is that she’d swear herself black in the face to save Ned. Fairly soppy about each other, those two are. But she wasn’t lying just now, you can take my word for it.”
And Fenn, though he had little enough opinion of her word, was, for once, inclined to accept it. He went back to the Yard feeling tired and disheartened.
If it were Sir Adam Mrs. Smith had heard, her information opened out an entirely new vista and one which he did not much care to contemplate. Her suggestion that the voice was that of Johnson was, of course, inadmissible, seeing that Johnson was at “The Nag’s Head” at that time. Given that the cry had come from Sir Adam and that he had actually met his death at that moment, the dispute both Stephens and Webb had heard going on in the study could only have been between two unknown people, a man and a woman, presumably in league with Braid’s assailant. For Webb had arrived outside the flat and had stood listening to two people quarrelling at the precise moment that Mrs. Smith had heard the cry from the bedroom.
In his endeavour to reconcile Mrs. Smith’s account with that of Webb, Fenn began, for the first time, to realize how misguided he and Gilroy had been in their too hasty assumption that the voice in the study had been that of Sir Adam Braid. Webb, misled by the violence of the speaker, had at once jumped to the conclusion that he was listening to Sir Adam; Jill Braid had stated frankly that she could not identify the voice as that of her grandfather. Fenn now found himself confronted with the possibility that, instead of one intruder, there had been three in the flat that night, and that the man and woman in the study, on hearing the front door bell, had raised their voices purposely, with the object of drowning the sound of a struggle going on in the bedroom.
This, as a theory, seemed plausible enough, but what Fenn found difficult to believe was that, fifteen minutes later, Sir Adam’s assailants should still be engaged in loud conversation in the study whilst the body of their victim was actually lying in the room across the passage. And yet, if Jill Braid’s account were true, this is what would seem to have happened.
Fenn reviewed his list of suspects. If Stephens’ witness was prepared to substantiate his statement—and it seemed, judging by the message Fenn had that afternoon received from Whitaker, that he was about to do so—he must have been clear of the flat before the murder took place. This left the two Smiths, Gertie Anderson, and Jill Braid, none of whom, so far, had been able to produce any convincing proof that they were not in the flat at the time.
Disregarding Mrs. Smith’s statement, the voices heard by Stephens at six-thirty-five and Webb between six-forty-five and six-fifty-five might have been those of Mrs. Smith and Sir Adam, or Jill Braid and Sir Adam, or Gertie Anderson and Sir Adam.
Taking Mrs. Smith’s evidence as true, the voices heard by Webb and Stephens might have been those of Smith and Gertie Anderson, or Jill Braid and a man at present unknown.
Or, provided that there was a third person in the bedroom and that the cry Mrs. Smith had heard had emanated from him and not from Sir Adam, the disputants in the study might have been: Gertie Anderson and Sir Adam, or Jill Braid and Sir Adam.
Accepting Jill Braid’s, Stephens’, and Webb’s accounts, and ruling out Mrs. Smith’s, there would seem to have been a man and a woman (Smith and his wife, or Smith and Gertie Anderson?) present in the flat, the woman between six-thirty-five and six-fifty-five, and the man at seven.
There was also Stephens’ evidence to take into account that some one, man or woman, had entered the flat soon after six-thirty, when he was standing in the passage.
And this person had entered without a key. If Stephens was speaking the truth, this admitted of three explanations: Either Johnson had left the door unlatched deliberately; or the man whose voice Stephens had heard in the study had failed to shut it when he entered; or Sir Adam had opened it himself after the departure of Johnson.
That night Fenn dreamed that he had surprised Webb and his sister in the act of stabbing Mrs. Smith, their excuse being that she was not the kind of person they were accustomed to.
It was a nice, straightforward case compared to the one he was engaged on in his waking hours.
CHAPTER IX
Three days later Fenn, on coming down to breakfast, found a letter addressed in Gilroy’s small, neat handwriting lying beside his plate.
“Dear Fenn,” it ran, “taking the estimable Miss Webb as my model, I have, I think, squeezed the last ounce of information out of old Cotswold. She has, as you so sapiently suggested, a husband who frequents ‘The Nag’s Head.’ Here are her contributions, for what they are worth. Johnson puts his money on horses, with very little judgment, going by results. He does most of his betting through Ling (the chap at the corner of the street, who, it appears, runs the usual newsagent’s little side-show, in addition to his legitimate business), and, a short time ago, is known to have owed money right and left. Two days ago he paid up what he owed to a pal of Mr. Cotswold’s, and at the same time he settled up with two other men to whom he owed money. The general impression is that he has had a windfall of some sort. This seems a bit significant, in view of the disappearance of the hat-box, and might very well account for his nerviness now. Mrs. C. has no information worth reporting concerning the Smiths, and has never heard of Stephens. Says her husband knows most of Johnson’s pals, and, egged on by me, she questioned him, but drew a complete blank there. She is sure that Stephens was not a regular frequenter of ‘The Nag’s Head.’ Mr. Cotswold is, according to his long-suffering wife! Let me know if there is anything else I can do.—Yours, Robert.”
Fenn rose from the table feeling considerably cheered. He had reached a pitch at which he was grateful for any evidence that pointed away from Jill, though, at the most, it seemed doubtful whether Johnson could have been guilty of anything more heinous than theft. He had undoubtedly had ample opportunity to rifle the flat immediately after the murder, and, if he knew of the hat-box, could have helped himself to its contents while Jill was telephoning from Webb’s flat. Why he should have taken the hat-box, instead of merely abstracting the money it contained, was a mystery. That Ling should run a betting agency on the side was not surprising. It would have been more so if he hadn’t! Nearly every little shop of the sort in the poorer districts of London acts as a blind for traffic of that sort, and the mere fact that Ling thought it worth while to install a telephone had given Fenn a pretty good inkling as to his real business on the occasion of his first visit to the shop. But if his morning had begun well, it was destined to end badly.
He had not been at New Scotland Yard more than ten minutes before he was rung up by the manager of the Chelsea branch of the Northern Counties Bank.
“Four of the notes we issued to Sir Adam Braid on October the thirtieth have returned to roost,” he said. “Shall I send our clerk round to you, or will you drop in and hear what he has to say?”
“I’ll come round now,” was Fenn’s answer, little recking of the shock he was to receive when he got there.
“You’d better see our man yourself,” said the manager, as he greeted him. “He’ll give you the facts. But I�
�m afraid they won’t help you much, seeing where the notes came from.”
He sent for the clerk, who gave his name as George Soames, and produced four one pound notes which he handed to Fenn.
“These were handed in just before closing time last night by a Mrs. Sutherland, who has banked with us for several years,” he said. “She owns a couple of houses in Chelsea, which she lets out in rooms at a weekly rental. She collects these rents every Wednesday, and usually pays the results into her account on Thursday. These notes were part of her payment.”
“You’ve no idea which of her lodgers they came from, I suppose?” asked Fenn.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” answered Soames. “I recognized the numbers at once, but I didn’t know whether you wanted her suspicions roused, so I didn’t question her directly. I merely made a joking comment on the fact that we had paid out these very notes not so long ago and had not expected to see them back so soon. Fortunately she rose to the bait and told me of her own accord where she had got them. Apparently some of her tenants slip their rent into an envelope, and drop it, with their rent book, into her letter-box. I actually saw her take these out of the envelope in which she had received them, so her information was probably correct. I’m afraid it won’t lead anywhere, though. She got them from the one person in whose hands one would naturally expect to find them.”
Fenn caught his breath.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“Miss Braid, Sir Adam Braid’s granddaughter.” There was a silence while Fenn slowly tucked the notes away in his pocket-book.
“We’ll keep these, if you don’t mind,” he said at last, “though I admit it would have been more satisfactory, from our point of view, if they had come from almost any other source.”
He went straight from the bank to Mrs. Sutherland’s. The landlady was at home, and he questioned her closely, taking the line that if the notes had really been paid in by Jill, who had a legitimate right to them, there would be no point in pursuing that avenue of investigation any further. Mrs. Sutherland assured him emphatically that they had. She also volunteered the information that Jill Braid was a lodger after her own heart, quiet and hardworking, and that she would have been prepared to stretch a point and meet her half-way even if she had, after all, failed to come up to the scratch with the rent.
“What’s that?” demanded Fenn.
The landlady hesitated.
“I don’t want to say anything against her,” she said at last. “As I told you, she’s a good tenant. But money’s been pretty tight with her lately. She was quite frank about it. All my tenants are supposed to pay by the week; it’s the only way in which I can make sure of getting my rents. They’re a ‘here to-day and gone to-morrow’ lot, most of them. Well, Miss Braid owed me four weeks’ rent when she paid up the other day, and knowing how things were with her, I was very glad to get it. A pound a week she pays for those rooms, and that’s less than I charge the others.”
“I suppose she told you the money was part of her grandfather’s legacy?”
“No. She simply said that she had come into a bit of luck. I thought she meant she’d sold some of her drawings.”
Fenn went on from there to Jill’s lodgings, but there he drew a blank. She was out, and the music student who shared the top floor with her could not say when she might be expected back. All she knew was that she had gone off with a parcel of drawings to Fleet Street early that morning.
As he walked briskly away down the street, Fenn’s mind dwelt bleakly enough on this, the latest of his problems. Unless Jill had some convincing explanation ready, he saw nothing for it now but to take out a warrant for her arrest.
Before going back to the Yard he turned off King’s Road and went round by the newsagent’s shop. Ling was sitting behind the counter as usual. He looked up with a gleam of interest in his eyes as Fenn entered.
“Anything I can do for you, inspector?” he asked.
“You can tell me how much Sir Adam Braid’s man, Johnson, has dropped to you during the last few months,” said Fenn briskly; “and whether he has paid any of it back yet.”
Ling stared at him. His face was inscrutable.
“I’m afraid I don’t get you,” he answered. “Sir Adam had a running account here for papers, and I was going to ask you where I should go for my money. But Johnson, he paid for any he bought on the spot.”
“I’m not talking of bills,” said Fenn, going straight to the point. “Look here, Ling, it’s no affair of mine if you do keep a betting joint. That’s a matter for the local police. But if I can’t get my information one way, I’ll have to get it another. You don’t want this place raided, though I daresay it’s not the first time you’ve had a visit from the police.”
“They can come, for all I care. They won’t find nothing here.”
“Which means you’ve got a room somewhere else you’re using,” asserted Fenn cheerily. “Well, I’ve no doubt a good many people know where it is, and there’s generally one squealer at least when it comes to a betting raid. Better not risk it.”
Ling waited till he had finished tying up a bundle of old newspaper remainders before he spoke.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, and Fenn knew that he had gained his point.
“Just what was against Johnson on your books and whether he has paid up,” he said.
“He owed me close on fifteen pounds,” admitted Ling reluctantly. “Mind you, I’m not saying he’d been betting. It was a private debt. He was fed up with service, and had some idea of buying up a tobacco business and retiring. He said he could double the money if I’d lend it to him. That’s what he told me, anyway. Well, I knew he was getting steady money, and I let him have it. And he paid me back all right, too.”
“When?”
“Last Thursday week. Two days after the murder, that’d be.”
“Did he say where the money came from?”
“Come to think of it, he didn’t. But I know as he’d got some money in War Loan that he hadn’t wanted to touch till he bought the business. Likely he sold that. I’d been pressin’ him a bit, I admit.” Then, as Fenn turned to go—
“You’re not trying to fix the murder on him, are you, inspector? He wasn’t nowhere near the flats at the time, and besides, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, Johnson wouldn’t.”
There was a suspicion of contempt in his voice. Evidently he had a poor enough opinion of the man.
Fenn shook his head.
“We’ve got nothing on Johnson,” he said, with an assumption of frankness. “But certain notes which we believe to have been in the possession of Sir Adam Braid when he died have been traced, and we’re trying to locate the person who paid them in. How did he pay you? In pound notes?”
“Two fivers, and the rest in pound notes,” answered Ling promptly. “I banked the fivers and stuck the rest in the till. They may be here, or I may have paid them out. There’s no telling.”
He opened a drawer in the counter and took out a tin box.
“This is where I keep any notes as come in. His may be among them, but I’ve changed a cheque or two for customers in the last few days and, as like as not, I used them.”
Fenn looked through the little bundle of notes he handed him.
“None of my numbers here,” he said, as he gave them back. “I needn’t tell you we don’t want this to get about.”
“It won’t be my fault if it does,” Ling assured him. “There’s enough gossip goin’ on as it is over that affair at Romney Chambers. They’re sayin’ as the old gentleman’s granddaughter’s mixed up in it now.”
Fenn did not miss the inquisitive gleam in the man’s eyes.
“Trust them for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick,” he said carelessly. “Miss Braid didn’t get to the flat till some time after her grandfather was killed.”
“She was in the building, though, by all accounts,” was Ling’s shrewd rejoinder.
“Who told you that?” asked Fenn sharply.
“Then if he told you that much, he’ll have told you that he saw her enter the flat himself.”
Ling shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t take no stock of what people say,” he said. “I’ve got me own affairs to attend to. And what if she was in the building? She wasn’t the only one, as I told Johnson.”
Fenn took him up sharply.
“What are you trying to say?” he demanded. “If you’ve got any information to give, let’s have it.”
But Ling declined to commit himself further.
“If I’d any information I’d have been to you with it by this time,” he said. “I know my duty. I’m not sayin’ nothin’ and I’m not accusing anybody. But there’s some queer customers got flats in Romney Chambers, and I’ve an idea you know it, inspector.”
Fenn met his eyes with a glance as shrewd as his own.
“The question is, how do you come to know it, Mr. Ling?” he parried.
“Well, I’m not a betting man, as a rule,” explained Ling virtuously. “But I do a bit of racin’ now and again like any one else. And twice I’ve travelled up from Kempton in the same carriage with a gentleman I see sometimes going in and out of the flats. The last time we came up together and the coppers were waitin’ for him at this end.” Fenn laughed.
“In that case, you’ll be interested to hear that he’s travelling for a gas-fitting company at present,” he said. “He tried to sell me a contraption of some sort the other day.”
“I’ll take your word for it he’s travelling,” was Ling’s cynical rejoinder. “And I’ve no doubt he tried to take some money off you. It’s what happened the only two times I met him.”
Fenn worked late that night at the Yard, and it was close on eight o’clock when he gathered up his papers preparatory to departure. He was about to rise from his table when he was arrested by the buzz of the telephone at his elbow. He took off the receiver. “That you, Fenn?”