On the hearth, where there was no fire, was an empty packet of Victory cigarettes, while two stubs lay, one inside, one outside the fender. Bragg collected all three.
Next the heap of sewing caught his eye; it did not take long for a married man to identify it as a female garment in embryo. A wireless set stood on the table in the window, and, turning it on for a moment—the knob could hold no prints—Bragg noticed that it had a powerful amplifier.
That seemed to be all in the living-room, and Bragg returned to the kitchen. He had noticed a bucket of refuse in a corner, and this he now carefully emptied on to a newspaper spread on the floor.
Its contents were mainly food—scraps of bread, vegetables, tea-leaves, orange-peel, three egg-shells—that presumably represented the same allotment as the cutlet bones, two for Bransome and one for his wife.
Returning all these to the bucket, the detective looked about him. The general impression of untidiness remained, but it was difficult to see that anything here had any bearing on the case.
Then his eyes caught the small furnace in the corner—evidently used for the domestic hot-water supply. Opening the door, he looked inside.
Under a banking of dust and ashes, the fire was just alive; no doubt it would have been “the girl’s” job to wake it up when she arrived at seven if this tragedy had not intervened. A faintly unpleasant smell caught Bragg’s attention; he put his head closer, and sniffed again—it was a singeing smell, like that of some burnt material.
Flashing his torch inside, the detective saw and presently raked out a scrap of what appeared to be calico with some cotton-wool adhering to it—no doubt something to do with Mrs Bransome’s sewing.
He was about to put it back when he changed his mind, and, taking an envelope from his pocket, stowed the scrap inside that.
***
While his subordinate was keeping himself amused in the back room, Inspector Hurst was interviewing Mrs Bransome in the parlour. She was a thin, fair-haired woman with blue eyes behind rimless pince-nez.
Although her face showed signs of recent tears, Hurst did not think she was an hysterical type; her mouth was too firm for that. She answered his questions quietly and clearly.
“My husband is—was forty-seven,” she said. “I am thirty-six. He is a draper, I expect you know, and business has not been very good lately. He didn’t tell me much about it, but I thought he might be in difficulties—he was getting so depressed.
“I took him to the pictures yesterday to try to cheer him up. We went straight to the 6.30 house after his shop closed and then came back to some supper at nine; he did not like being up late, and the last house doesn’t generally come out till eleven—not at the Clarion.”
“What sort of spirits was he in then?” asked Hurst.
“Not very good, I’m afraid. The pictures didn’t seem to have cheered him up much. I was tired myself, and I went straight to bed after we’d listened to the nine o’clock news. I left supper for the girl to clear when she came.”
Hurst guessed that the girl was accustomed to do a good deal of “clearing”, in this house.
“Weren’t you surprised when your husband didn’t come to bed?” he asked. “You say he didn’t like staying up late.”
“Oh, he generally sat up till about half-past ten, and I must have dropped off to sleep directly my head touched the pillow.”
“He didn’t generally wake you when he came up?”
“No…I…you see, we don’t share the same room now. We haven’t for the last year or so.”
“I see. Any trouble in that direction, Mrs Bransome?” asked Hurst quietly. “I’m sorry to ask you such a personal question, but we have to look for a reason when a thing like this happens.”
Mrs Bransome looked uncomfortable, but she did not, as Hurst rather expected, blush.
“Ralph hasn’t been behaving properly…in that way…for some time,” she said in a low voice. “I think that was why he was in money trouble; he was spending a lot on some woman.”
Ah, that would be worth looking into! For the moment, Hurst thought, he would not press the point.
There came a ring at the front door and he heard Bragg’s footsteps, then his voice. Hurst waited, in case there was going to be an interruption. It came—a knock at the door and the appearance of his subordinate.
“There’s a gentleman here, sir—a Mr Yates, Mrs Bransome’s brother, I understand.”
Mrs Bransome rose to her feet, but Hurst signed to her to sit down.
“Just one minute, madam. Take Mr Yates into the other room, Bragg.”
He knew that it was not necessary to warn a trained detective not to leave a visitor alone in such circumstances.
“I must just ask you one more question, madam,” he said, “and then I shall not trouble you any more for the present. I must ask you to tell me frankly whether you had any reason to suspect that your husband might take his life.”
Mrs Bransome sat up abruptly.
“Oh, no! He was worried, of course, and…not happy…but I never for a moment…oh, never for a moment—!”
Though not a well-constructed sentence, it conveyed a meaning clearly enough and Hurst left it at that.
“Thank you, madam; I will send your brother along to you when I have had just one word with him.”
Inspector Hurst thought that the case was developing normally, but it would be necessary to do a good deal more questioning before it could be accepted as suicide. Mrs Bransome’s brother ought to be a help.
He found a small, rather seedy looking man, with none of his sister’s good looks. Mr Yates answered the formal questions with commendable lack of beating about the bush.
“George Yates, forty-two, address 28, Lavender Grove, Battersea, clerk to Winsome and May, stockbrokers, of 27, Monk Street, E.C.4. Someone telephoned me, Inspector, so I came straight along. This is a shocking business; I never should have thought it.”
“Do you mean that literally, Mr Yates—or—?”
“Well—” George Yates hesitated. “He’s been in the dumps of course; he was a fool about money and wouldn’t take advice. But I wouldn’t have expected him to do this—it’s wicked.”
“You think he did it? Committed suicide?”
George Yates stared.
“What else? Good Lord, you don’t mean…? You don’t think someone else can have done it—shoved a great strong fellow like that into the gas-oven?”
Inspector Hurst’s eyebrows rose; he did not look directly at Bragg, but he was aware that his subordinate had given a slight shake of the head.
“When did you last see your in-law?”
“Me? Oh, I don’t know; week ago perhaps.”
“You didn’t see him yesterday at any time?”
“No, not for a week or so, as I told you.”
Hurst thought for a moment.
“Can you tell me anything about his money affairs? Had he much capital, for instance?”
“He had some, but he’s been selling it, the silly fool. I know, because my firm are his brokers; I put him on to them as a matter of fact. That’s what made me realise he was getting into trouble.”
“Any other reason, besides money, that might account for this?”
“Such as?”
“Well, sometimes there’s a woman in the case. Was there here?”
“Have you asked my sister that?”
“I have.”
“What did she say?”
“I’m asking you.”
For a moment Yates hesitated, then gave a slight shrug of the shoulder.
“Oh, well, if you’re asking that you’ll find out, whatever Winnie told you. Ralph’s been running after a little bit that used to be in his shop. She’s in Balaclava’s, that big drapers in Clapham, but he’s—well, he’s been spending a lot of money on her or I’m a
Dutchman. And that’s why he’s in Queer Street.
“There’s more in that than in the money part of it, if you ask me; she’s been playing about with him and…well you know what some of these girls are—nasty little teasers. I think she got him thoroughly miserable.”
Having got the young Delilah’s name, Hurst sent Mr George Yates along to console his sister. When the door had closed after him the inspector turned to his subordinate.
“He didn’t see into the kitchen, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, well, I suppose Mrs Bransome told her neighbours what she’d seen and the one who telephoned told him.”
He opened the kitchen door and looked at the still prostrate body of Ralph Bransome. He was a man of more than medium size, heavily built, so far as it was possible to judge by the congested face, healthy.
“Not possible for any one to shove that fellow in there without bashing him on the head first. Unless he was drugged, of course. Dr Bellerby’ll tell us that, but we’ll have this beer and stuff tested. Anything you noticed, Bragg?”
“Nothing that seems to signify, sir. There was something like calico and cotton-wool burnt in the furnace last night. I haven’t seen any of it among Mrs Bransome’s sewing, but I don’t suppose there’s any importance in it.”
“No.” Inspector Hurst’s thoughts were wandering elsewhere. “Wonder if there was anyone after her—the wife,” he muttered. “She’s not bad looking—we must get a look at the will.”
That was more easily done than is usually the case. Mr Witley, Bransome’s solicitor, deeply shocked at his client’s death, saw no reason to withhold information from the police. He did not show the will, but he told Hurst that Mrs Bransome was the sole beneficiary.
He did not know the amount of the invested capital; it should have been substantial, but he had heard disquieting rumours; possibly there would not prove to be a great deal to pass.
Bransome’s bank manager was much less accommodating than his solicitor. His client’s affairs were confidential, and he was not prepared to disclose them without an order of the Court. Hurst had had this trouble with bank managers before, so he was not surprised—but the legitimate discretion did not help him in his investigation.
He had discovered among the untidy contents of Bransome’s desk a chequebook with a number of counterfoils not filled in. He wondered whether these represented payments to Miss Lucy Petworth of Balaclava’s—or possibly large cheques drawn to “self.” Bransome might have wished to avoid the risk of his wife seeing these. The other counterfoils apparently represented payments to shops and so on.
A day’s hard work by himself and Bragg filled in a good deal of the canvas, and it became pretty clear that the dead man had been seriously entangled with his charmer. No entanglement on the other side was known; Mrs Bransome was believed to have no gentleman friend of particular note.
One more brother had turned up—a strapping young fellow of thirty-two. Fred Yates, from all accounts, was something of a rolling-stone, if not actually a ne’er-do-well.
He had been a soldier, but three years in the Guards had been enough for him. He had been a kinema commissionaire, but had not proved reliable. He had been several things for short periods and was at present “resting.”
Though his Army record was only fair, he had been of value there for his athletic prowess; he was—or had been—a good boxer. Since leaving the Army he had also turned his hand to wrestling, but the hard training required to make money at that sport had not appealed to him.
So much for the Yates family. Bransome had been an only child.
By the end of the day Hurst thought that, when he got the medical report, he would probably be able to wind up his investigation. He had seen the coroner and arranged, in conjunction with the superintendent of the division, for the inquest.
Dr Bellerby’s report arrived soon after the two detectives had had a well-earned supper. Hurst read it and then handed it to his subordinate.
“Straightforward enough,” he said. “No sign of drug or poison in the stomach. No marks of violence on the body. Clear enough case of suicide.”
But Bragg was thinking.
“There’s one thing rather odd about it, sir,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It says that the stomach was practically empty. What about his supper, sir?”
Inspector Hurst frowned.
“Never thought of that,” he said.
He reached for the telephone and put a call through to the police-surgeon.
“Dr Bellerby? Inspector Hurst here, sir. About your P.M. report. It says the stomach was practically empty. What about his supper? Would he have digested that?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Not unless it was a very light one—he didn’t die till about midnight,” said the voice at the other end. “What did he have?”
Hurst looked inquiringly at Bragg.
“Any idea what he had for supper, Bragg?”
“Yes, sir. He had two cutlets, some stewed pears and a bottle of beer. At least, one of them had two cutlets and the other had one.”
Hurst repeated this to the doctor.
“There was no sign of meat in the stomach,” said the voice. “There was a little pulp—perhaps bread and butter, but you can take it that he ate no meat.”
“And that,” said Inspector Hurst, leaning back in his chair, “seems to imply that someone else ate that supper. It implies a good many other things too—eh, Bragg?”
“Yes, sir; murder.”
Hurst nodded.
“That’s taking a short cut, but I think we can leave the correct road for a time while we do a little guessing. How could a big chap like that be gassed without being knocked out by a blow or a drug?”
“Might have been pinioned in some way, sir, and gagged—if there were enough of them.”
“That sounds a risky business—a lot of people in a murder. And what’s the motive?”
Bragg thought there was a fairly obvious one, but he did not like to shove in his oar too much. Inspector Hurst had asked the question of himself as much as of his subordinate.
There was a long silence, each man following up his own ideas. At last the inspector broke it.
“The three of them—Mrs Bransome and her brothers—might have been in it together. If Bransome was squandering his money on that girl they may have wanted to stop him before the will became worthless—and there was always the risk of his altering it.
“I still don’t see how even three people could do that job without marking him but I’ll have another little talk with Master George Yates—and with his brother, too.
“Meanwhile, Bragg, go back to the house and give it a proper hunt over. I’d like to see Bransome’s passbook if he’s got one; it’s just possible that an untidy devil like that might have left it lying about, or put it in some odd place.”
Bragg found that a good deal of tidying-up had been done in the Bransome’s house since the previous day. He found that he was not a welcome guest, but his polite request to be allowed to look around “as a matter of form, in case the Coroner wants to know anything,” was not refused.
His search was thorough and lasted two hours, at the end of which time he was rewarded by finding in the hip pocket of an old pair of flannel trousers—of all unlikely places—a folded bundle of used cheques.
Each was drawn by Bransome to “self,” the amounts ranging from £5 to £40 and the total—fifteen cheques over a period of three months—reaching £315. Here was something that would please his chief. He returned at once to Headquarters, but finding that Hurst was out, wrote a short report and left it with the cheques.
An idea had struck him during the previous evening’s cogitation, but it was still so vague that he had not mentioned it, hoping to give it some substance before doing so.
Now he visited a number of drapers and chemists in the neighbourhood of the Bransomes’ house, and when he came back to luncheon some of the substance he had hoped for was in his hands.
Hurst, too, had had a satisfactory morning.
“Just seen both the Yates brothers. The younger one, Fred, is a hefty-looking blighter, but weak morally, I should say. They’ve both got a story about where they were the night before last, but there’s nothing to support it—not from 8 p.m. onwards.
“If this is murder and they are in it, I fancy they may have got into the house by a back window, or Mrs Bransome may have given them a key, while the Bransomes were out. They could hide in her bedroom, as Bransome probably never went into it.
“That’s as far as I’ve got, but these cheques of yours are the goods, Bragg. I’m going to have a talk with Miss Petworth this afternoon.”
Miss Lucy Petworth, of Balaclava’s, however, flatly denied that Ralph Bransome had spent anything like £315 on her during the last three months.
At first she denied that he had spent anything, but when Hurst had got her frightened she told what was probably the truth. At the outside £200 had been spent in presents, dinners and hotel bills; probably £175 was nearer the figure? What, wondered Hurst, happened to the rest?
It was possible, of course, that Bransome normally paid some of his bills in cash, but this seemed a large amount. It might be possible, now that murder was in the air, to bring pressure on the bank.
But another idea had struck Hurst, and he went along to Scotland Yard to have it tested by an expert. The idea proved to be a good one; four of the cheques in the bundle were forgeries—cleverly enough done to elude a bank official but not clever enough for a handwriting expert. The total of these forged cheques was £95.
“There’s another motive, Bragg, and a stronger one. Probably this is George Yates’ work; he’s a clerk. He knew about Bransome selling his capital. He knew how careless Bransome was.
“He started to forge cheques—and Bransome spotted him; threatened him with exposure; the fact that the cheques were in Bransome’s pocket suggests that. I expect they looked for them after he was dead but didn’t find them.
The Long Arm of the Law Page 13