“Yes,” assented the other. “I rather thought it would.”
“For instance. I keep coming back to one of the points you mentioned this morning, and one of the big difficulties. Ames was brought to this quarter, to interest himself in that household, by an anonymous letter. Could it have been anonymous? That’s what I can’t swallow. In my own day at that sort of job, I know I shouldn’t have paid much attention to an unsigned letter telling me to put on a fool disguise and plant myself somewhere in the hope of hearing something interesting. Lord, no! Not with the flood of crank letters that pour into the Yard about much less important cases than the Gamridge murder. Ames was thorough, yes. But was he as insanely thorough as all that? … On the other hand, if the letter came from a source he knew and thought authentic … Blast it! nothing works!” He banged the table. “I see a dozen objections, and yet—”
“Hadley,” said Dr. Fell, abruptly, “do you want to see justice done?”
“Do I! With what’s happened? My God! If we could get some evidence to lay this killer by the heels, then—!”
“I didn’t ask you that. I asked you if you wanted to see justice done.”
Hadley stared at him, a stare that grew to suspicion.
“We can’t have any tampering with the law,” he snapped. “You did it once, in the Mad Hatter case, to shield somebody; and you did it with my permission, I admit. But this time … what’s in your mind?”
The other’s forehead had grown sombre.
“I don’t know whether I dare do it!” rumbled Dr. Fell. “Even whether it would work. And if it did work, whether it mightn’t go too far. Oh, it would be justice! Make no mistake of that! But I juggled with dynamite once, in that Depping business, and—it rather haunts me sometimes.” He struck his forehead. “I swore never to do it again, and yet I see no other way out … unless…”
“Just what are you talking about?”
“I’ll give my final hope a chance before I try it. Don’t worry! It’ll be nothing to hurt your conscience. Now, then, I’ll go with you to see Ames’s lodgings. Afterwards I want about four clear hours to myself—”
“Alone?”
“Without you two, anyhow. Will you follow my instructions?’’ “Right,” said Hadley, after they had looked at each other briefly.
“Well?”
“I want a car and driver put at my disposal, but with nothing to mark it as a police car. Let me have two of your men for special work; they don’t have to be intelligent—in fact, I should prefer that they weren’t— but they must be discreet. Finally, you’re to see that all members of our Carver household are at home by nine o’clock tonight. You are to be there, with two of your men …”
Hadley looked up from snapping shut the catch of his briefcase. “Armed?” he asked.
“Yes. But they’re to keep out of sight, and under no circumstances are they to draw a weapon unless I give the word. They are to be the biggest and nerviest fellows you have, because there’s certain to be a rough-house and there may be slashing. Now let’s get started.”
Melson, not a man of action, felt an unpleasantly clammy sensation in the pit of his stomach when he followed the others out. But he refused to admit it. He was going to get one glimpse of that killer before he bolted … if he did bolt. How did you know what you would do under any such circumstances? After all, it was only a man—or a woman. What the devil! And still he felt ineffectual … Under swollen grey clouds the little street looked unreal. It had that powdery grey colour which comes to the London sky towards twilight or storm; and a high wind was rising across the trees of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Down the curve of Portsmouth Street a few furtive gas-lamps were flickering in a nimbus. Here were low brick houses with bulging fronts and windows; and, curiously enough, the spurious Old Curiosity Shop at the corner gave the whole street the look of a Cruikshank print. Consulting his notebook, Hadley led them into a muddy alley between brick walls—one of those unexpected nests of houses within houses, with toppling chimneypots and withered geraniums in boxes on the windowsills. When he pulled the bell wire of one numbered 16, there was first a stubborn silence; then the noise of a slow clanking approach, like a ghost, from down in the bowels of the house. Then a small fat woman, with a face rather like a greasy cooking-pan, pushed her cap up from her eyes, breathed hard, and regarded them suspiciously. Her keys clanked again.
“Yeza, whattayou want?” she said, without inflection. “You wanna room, eh?—No? You wanna see who? Meesterames? Meesterames heesa not at home,” she announced, and instantly tried to shut the door.
Hadley got his foot wedged inside, and then difficulty began. When he had at last made matters clear, there were only two things the woman knew and insisted on—that she and her husband were good people, and that they knew absolutely nothing about anything. She was not in the least frightened. She only remained stolidly without information.
“I ask you, did he ever have any visitors?
“Maybe. I dunno. Whateesvistors?”
“Did anybody ever come to see him?”
“Maybe,” A mountainous shrug. “Maybe not. I dunno. My Carlo, heesagood man; we area bote good, you ask polissman. We don’t know not’ing.”
“But if somebody came to see him, you would have to open the door, eh?”
It did not catch her. “Whatafor? Meesterames hesa no cripple, what you call, eh? Maybe he coulda walk down. I dunno.”
“Did you ever see anybody with him?”
“No.”
This sort of attack, with variations and repetitions, went on until Hadley fumed. Dr. Fell tried Italian, but his accent was strong and it produced only volubility about nothing. Hadley was beaten before he started, and knew it. The witness who has once lived in terror of the Mafia keeps a close mouth even when the Mafia exists no longer; threats from the mere law are nothing. At last, in accordance with his order, she waddled ahead up a dark flight of stairs and opened the door to a room.
Hadley struck a match and lit an open gas-jet. Out of the corner of his eye he kept watching the woman, who had planted herself composedly in the room, but he did not appear to notice her. It was a small, bare room looking out on a tangle of chimney-pots. It contained an iron bed, a dresser with pitcher and washbowl, cracked mirror, table, and straight chair. The place was surprisingly clean; but it contained nothing more except a battered portmanteau and some clothes hung up in the closet, with a pair of ancient shoes in one corner.
As the chief inspector moved about the creaky carpetless floor, Melson found himself watching the woman’s impassive mouth, as Hadley was doing. Her eyes were straying somewhere … Hadley went through the clothes in the closet, found nothing; the mouth remained impassive. He examined the dresser; still impassive. He lifted and sounded the mattress; impassive to the point of scorn. The duel went on. There was no sound but the creak of boards and the singing of the yellow-blue gas. When he bent towards one part of the floor, the mouth changed a little. As he approached the baseboard of the wall near the window, it changed still more …
Suddenly Hadley bent down and pretended to find something. “So, Mrs. Caracci,” he announced, grimly, “you’ve lied to me, haven’t you?”
“No. I don’ know noting, what I tellayou!”
“You lied to me, didn’t you? Yes, you did. Mr. Ames had a woman in his room, didn’t he? You know what that means. You’ll lose your licence to keep a rooming-house, and they’ll deport you; maybe send you to a gaol.”
“No!”
“Be careful, Mrs. Caracci. I’m going to put you in court, up before the big judge, you know; and he’ll know. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”
“No. No woman sheesa been in theesehouse! Man, maybe; no woman!”
She struck her breast passionately, and her breathing had become gusty.
“That’s allaIknow! I’m poor woman. I don’ know not’ing—”
“Get out,” said Hadley. He cut short a storm of lamentations by shoving her through the door, and a full soprano voic
e rose and fell above beatings on the door as he bolted it. He took out a pocketknife and clicked open the big blade.
“Over under the window,” he explained. “Loose board. There may be something hidden. But I suspect it’s only his money. She may have got it.”
As Melson and the doctor leaned over him, he pried up the board. From the hollow of the rafters beneath he took out several objects. A pigskin notecase, stamped G. F. A., containing police credentials but no money. A bunch of keys, a silk tobacco pouch and a meerschaum pipe, a penny packet of envelopes, a writing block, a good fountain-pen, and a paper-bound book with the title, The Art of Watchmaking.
“No notes,” said Hadley, getting up with a grunt. “I was afraid there wouldn’t be.” He ruffled the pages of the book. “Studying his last role, poor devil. And he never even got away with it. Carver saw—Good God!”
Hadley jumped back as a folded sheet of notepaper slid from between the pages and fluttered to the floor: a letter, with its signature uppermost. Hadley muttered something as he fumbled to pick it up, and his shaking fingers could not at first snare it …
“Dear George [said the typewritten note]: I know you will be surprised to hear from me after all these years, and I know you think I tried to do you in the eye over the Hope-Hastings case. I won’t say I’m trying to make amends, but I will say that I want to see if I can’t do something that will get me back into favour with the Powers, even if it’s a uniform job. I have a line on that Gamridge murder case you’re handling, and it’s HOT. Keep this strictly to yourself and don’t try to see me until I write you again. I’ll communicate with you. This is BIG.”
It was dated, “Hampstead, 29th August,” and signed “Peter E. Stanley.” They looked at each other. The gas sang thinly.
21
The Impossible Moonlight
AT HALF-PAST EIGHT THAT NIGHT, after some hectic business at Scotland Yard, Hadley and Melson shot out on the Embankment in the former’s car, and Hadley was raving. He had to tone down his voice, because in the rear seat were Sergeant Betts and a six-foot-six-inch plainclothes constable answering to the name of Sparkle. But he raved, nevertheless, and his driving style was savage.
“An interview with the Assistant Commissioner,” he said, “and nothing to tell him but that Fell was up to some hocus-pocus, and I didn’t even know where he was. Desk full of business—some big pot’s country house has been robbed, and the Commissioner himself’s been phoning in. A mess. You ought to be glad you cooled your heels in the lost-and-found department.”
“What about Stanley’s letter?”
“Fell took it. I—I, mind you—was instructed to say nothing yet. I didn’t mind that. My God! Do you—does Fell—realize what this means if Stanley’s guilty? One police officer, even an ex-, accused of murdering another? There’ll be a scandal that’ll blow the lid off the C. I. D. and maybe the government. The Roger Casement case’ll be nothing to it! You notice I kept Stanley clear out of today’s papers; not a word, not a line about his connection with it? … Then all the worse if he’s guilty. I’m only praying he isn’t. I sounded out Bellchester, that’s the Assistant Commissioner, and he went off the deep end. We’re paying Stanley a pension. It seems the man’s crazy—”
“Literally?”
“Quite literally insane, and several times within an ace of being certified. Ought to be, as a matter of fact. But his sister got around somebody higher up … I don’t know the straight of it. Of course he’ll never hang if he is guilty; he’ll go to Broadmoor, where he belongs. But do you see the leader in the morning Trumpeter, for instance? ‘Let our readers consider the strange case of the mad policeman who has for some years been supported and coddled by the present authorities, instead of being placed in a position where he can do no further harm. Is it at all strange that the authorities endeavoured to hush the matter up when this man ran amok and killed a senior detective-inspector of whom he had long been jealous, just as he killed, some years ago, a banker against whom nothing has yet been proved,’ etc. I tell you—”
The big car swerved to avoid a barrow, and roared on through the light mist and rain that blurred the Embankment lights. Melson felt his heart rise as they skidded; but the whole mad business was lightness and exhilaration, as though the car itself were rushing to a conclusion of the case. His fingers tightened on the door.
“But what,” he demanded, “does Fell think?”
“All I can tell Fell,” the chief inspector returned, “is that he’s got to swallow his own medicine. He can’t have it both ways, either. If his reconstruction of the whole business is right—I mean about Eleanor—then Stanley can’t be guilty! It would be raving nonsense; it would make nonsense of everything else. Don’t you see that? If I could only prove that that letter we found is a forgery! But it’s not! I showed it to our handwriting man, with a blotter over the letter itself, and he swears it’s absolutely genuine. That tears it. It puts Stanley in a corner … while all I can do now is follow Fell’s instructions, return to the house, and tell the Carver crowd that we’ve decided to release Eleanor. Seems rather an anticlimax now, doesn’t it? Anyhow, there you are. If that young fool Paull hadn’t …”
He checked himself, and spoke no more until the car drew up in the drizzle outside No. 16. Kitty Prentice, whose swollen reddish eyes attested to recent weeping, opened the door. She jumped back with a queer squeak like a toy, peered over Hadley’s shoulder, saw nothing, and seized his arm.
“Sir! Oh, sir, you’ve gotter tell. ’Ave they arrested Miss Eleanor? ’Ave they, sir? Oh, it’s awful! You gotter tell! Mr. Carver’s frantic, and ’e’s been a-telephoning to Scotland Yard, and couldn’t find you, and they wouldn’t tell ’im anything, and—”
Hadley evidently feared that premature joy would have the wrong effect in a too-quick revelation for the rest of them. His eye silenced her, even though his expression approved this witness.
“I can’t tell you anything. Where are they?”
She was stricken silent, and pointed to the sitting-room. In a moment her face would slowly begin wrinkling up with tears. Hadley crossed over swiftly to the sitting-room door. Into the house had come palpably now a new atmosphere: at once of hurry and tense waiting, of hands that were clenched and faces waiting to wrinkle like Kitty’s. In the stillness Melson could hear the rustling noise of clocks ticking in the front workroom, as he had heard them last night; but this time they had a quicker beat. From the sitting-room he heard Lucia Handreth’s muffled voice raised:
“—I repeat I’ve told you all I can. If you keep on I shall go mad. I promised not to tell, but I can warn you you’d better be prepared for—”
Hadley knocked.
The white door, with its porcelain knob and big key, opened like a theatre curtain on sudden silence. Carver, big and dishevelled, still in smoking-jacket and slippers, stopped pacing before the fireplace. His grip on a short pipe-stem made the jaw muscles stand out, and Melson could see the gleam of his teeth as one corner of his lip lifted. Mrs. Steffins, a handkerchief below her smeary eyes and her face now clearly furrowed, rolled up her head from where she sat lolling by the table; she gave a hiccoughing sob just before she was transfixed by the sight of Hadley. Lucia Handreth stood bolt upright by the mantelpiece, her arms folded, her colour high.
For a second the tableau held, emotion arrested at its climax and in the weird facial distortions of its climax; while the currents of it, hatred or tears or anger or jubilation, flowed out palpably at the watchers. They felt these emotions like the heat of a fire. Then Lucia Handreth released her breath. Carver took a step forward, and Mrs. Steffins’s knuckles made a rattling noise as her arm fell on the table.
“I knew it!” Mrs. Steffins cried, suddenly, as at a confirmation. Her face grew to hideous ugliness with tears. “I knew it, remember! I warned you! I told you it would come to this house …”
Carver took another step forward, slowly, his big shoulders against the light of the lamp. The pale-blue eyes were unreadable.
“You have kept us waiting a long time,” he said. “Well?”
“What,” said Hadley, bluntly, “do you wish to know?”
“I wish to know what you have done. Have you arrested Eleanor?”
“Miss Handreth,” the chief inspector replied, without conscious irony, “has undoubtedly given you some idea of what we talked over in Miss Carver’s room this afternoon …”
The pale-blue eyes bored in. Carver made a slight gesture. He seemed to grow larger and nearer, although he did not move.
“That is not the point, Mr. Inspector. Not the point at all. The only thing we are interested in is—is it true?”
“It’s the shame of it!” cried Mrs. Steffins, and began to beat her hands on the table wildly. “It’s the awful shame of it. Arrested for murder. In this house. Living in this house, and her name in the papers as arrested for murder. I could have stood anything else …”
Hadley’s impassive look roved round the group.
“Yes, I have something to tell you, if you will be quiet. Where is Mr. Boscombe?”
“He’s done no talking. But he’s just as much of a fool,” said Lucia, and kicked at the edge of the mantelpiece. “He’s gone to find his solicitor for her. He says you haven’t any case, didn’t have a case, and never will have a case…”
“He is quite right, Miss Handreth,” said Hadley, very quietly.
Again they were stricken motionless in a hush, in that queer illusion wherein their faces seemed to have been caught as though by a camera. Melson felt a roaring in his ears. In the quiet Hadley’s voice sounded loudly.
“The evidence against her,” he continued, “is wiped out. We do not have a case, did not have a case, and never will have one. We knew it this afternoon, in time to prepare for—something else.” A faintly sinister ring here. “She has been enjoying herself at the theatre, with the young man she intends shortly to marry, and should be here presently.”
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