When Wyatt came in, he was chewing an unlighted cigar and turning the pages of a report on the affair at the Madrid. It had been written by one of the detective-sergeants, and was none too clearly worded. He had already pencilled in two or three extra sentences and was trying to decide whether he should send it down again to be completely rewritten.
‘I expected you a quarter of an hour ago,’ he said somewhat abruptly as Wyatt closed the door.
Wyatt quickly recounted the details of the accident in Piccadilly.
Perivale laid the cigar on his ashtray and passed a hand over his forehead.
‘More trouble!’ he muttered. ‘There’s no ending to this damned case. I must say it looks pretty fishy Angus being there. Did he give any good reason?’
‘Well, his hotel isn’t very far away, and he was walking down to the Haymarket, so he says.’
‘H’m … I’ve had him on the phone this morning. Wanted to know if it’d be all right if he went back to Scotland tomorrow. Seems he’s had enough of London.’
‘You can hardly blame him,’ smiled Wyatt. ‘This must be his most expensive trip to date. What did you tell him?’
‘I said I’ll let him know,’ replied Perivale moodily. ‘It might simplify things a bit if he’s three hundred miles away. He wouldn’t get into trouble so easily perhaps.’
He picked up his cigar again and eyed it distastefully.
‘Pity you didn’t get the number of that van,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ll bet a hundred to one it’s tucked away at the back of some garage, or abandoned on a piece of waste ground by this time.’
He picked up his telephone and asked to be connected with Lathom’s office.
‘Wyatt’s here,’ he told his colleague. ‘Bring that woman in as soon as you like.’ He put down the receiver and said:
‘We’ll have to handle this girl pretty carefully, Wyatt. She may be a valuable witness.’
‘She certainly seems to be a very likely contact with “Mr Rossiter”,’ nodded Wyatt. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some sort of hold over her. He seems to manage to poke his finger into a lot of pies.’
‘Yes, apparently her name is Christie, but she is usually known as Miss Marcia. Lathom has already had a talk to her, but he hasn’t got very much information.’
‘Has Miss Beaumont identified the girl?’
‘Oh, yes, we had a special parade for her benefit.’
‘And what did Miss Marcia say to that?’
‘Swore she’d never set eyes on Beaumont … she would, of course,’ grunted Perivale. ‘Ah, here she is …’
Lathom opened the door and Miss Christie came in. She was a willowy brunette with a faintly supercilious stare.
‘Miss Christie, sir,’ said Lathom
‘I should prefer it if you called me Miss Marcia.’
‘Certainly, Miss Marcia,’ agreed Perivale a trifle wearily. ‘Perhaps you’ll be good enough to sit down and answer a few questions.’
‘This man,’ replied Miss Marcia with a languid wave of her perfectly manicured hand, ‘has already asked me a great number of quite futile questions, and I fail to see why I should be humiliated in this manner … prying into my private affairs.’
‘I’m very sorry, Miss Marcia,’ replied Perivale gravely, ‘but I must ask you to appreciate that we have had very definite proof that you are concerned in this case.’
‘In what case, may I ask?’ she demanded, with a lift of her delicately pencilled eyebrows.
Perivale waved aside the question and said:
‘This is ex-Inspector Wyatt – Miss Marcia. He may have a few questions to ask you.’
‘Indeed,’ she replied coldly.
There was a vestige of a smile around Wyatt’s mouth as he exchanged a glance with Perivale.
Perivale said: ‘Miss Marcia, I don’t think you realize the seriousness of the situation. You’re aware that young lady identified you as the person who drugged and abducted her?’
‘I’ve told you a dozen times I have never seen her in my life before,’ retorted Miss Marcia with visible signs of irritation.
‘Do you seriously expect us to believe that?’ said Perivale.
‘It’s a matter of complete indifference to me what you believe,’ she said, with a shrug of her elegant shoulders. Wyatt watched her closely, trying to decide to what extent her attitude was insolent bravado. At last, he walked over to her and said:
‘You know, Miss Marcia, I’ve had a feeling for some weeks that this “Mr Rossiter” we’re after might quite easily turn out to be a woman.’
She sniffed.
‘I’ve a suspicion that you get your ideas from reading novels, Mr Wyatt.’
Wyatt smiled, then became serious once more.
‘I take it then you’d feel insulted if I suggested that you were “Mr Rossiter”,’ he suggested.
She gave a little artificial laugh. ‘Good heavens, you can’t be serious!’
‘Perfectly. There’s a pretty strong chain of evidence against you, Miss Marcia. Miss Beaumont visited your shop one afternoon to purchase a costume and made arrangements for a fitting the following morning. Now, it’s my guess that she talked too much. You got her on to the subject of men, and she probably told you about her friendship with Sir Donald Angus. So you decided that she was a pretty safe victim for one of your little coups, “Mr Rossiter”.’
‘Don’t call me “Rossiter”!’ she snapped, recoiling at the accusation. ‘You know it’s all utter nonsense. If that’s what you really believe, then you must be a complete idiot.’
Wyatt regarded her with a faint smile.
‘Shall I tell you what I really believe, Miss Marcia?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t take much imagination to suggest that when Lauren Beaumont boasted to you of her gentleman admirer, you probably hinted that she might like to get him to take her to the Madrid Club, which had lately become the fashion again, and that if she mentioned your name to the proprietor, Charles Luigi, he might be able to supply her with several pairs of silk stockings.’
‘And why should I want her to go to the Madrid?’
‘Simply for Luigi to get a good look at the girl before you went ahead with your plans.’
Miss Marcia favoured him with a cynical stare.
‘I don’t know who you are, Mr Wyatt, but it’s obvious to me that you ought to write novels, with your imagination.’
‘Thank you, Miss Marcia; I’ll keep it in mind,’ replied Wyatt politely. ‘Though there isn’t as much fiction in that story as you might think. You see, we picked up Luigi last night.’
‘What has this man to do with me?’
‘Quite a bit, Miss Marcia,’ replied Wyatt suavely. ‘Because he decided to tell us all he knew.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ she cried in a tense voice. ‘Luigi would never talk! What did he tell you?’
‘Everything,’ replied Wyatt curtly.
She slumped into her chair, and her face suddenly looked old beneath the elaborate make-up.
‘In that case, there’s nothing else for me to say,’ she murmured.
‘I should be interested to hear your side of the story, Miss Marcia,’ said Wyatt.
‘You’re bluffing!’ she cried suddenly in a suspicious tone. ‘I don’t believe Luigi said a word.’
‘All right,’ said Wyatt vaguely, ‘if you’d prefer not to go into the matter. It won’t take us long to check up his statements for ourselves.’
She became apprehensive again.
‘What did Luigi say?’ she demanded hoarsely.
Perivale flashed a warning glance at Wyatt.
‘What did Luigi tell you?’ queried the girl again.
Wyatt sat back and studied her thoughtfully.
‘You were right just now when you said I was bluffing about your being “Mr Rossiter”,’ he said. ‘Luigi told us enough to satisfy us that you couldn’t possibly be.’
‘Luigi knows the identity of “Mr Rossiter” as well as I do!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Didn
’t he tell you that – didn’t he tell you how it all started?’
‘I’d prefer to hear your version of the affair,’ replied Wyatt quietly.
There was a long pause. She looked round the little group of men and found each face inscrutable.
‘Could I have a drink of water?’ she said at last.
Lathom went over and filled a glass from a jug which stood on a side-table in the far corner. He brought it over to her and she began to sip it.
‘Why are you so anxious to hear my side of the story, Mr Wyatt?’ she demanded slowly.
‘Just for the records, Miss Marcia. And I might add that it will be greatly to your own advantage when your case comes to be considered.’
She shook her head. There was a new look of decision in her eyes as she snapped:
‘I’m afraid that’ll never happen.’
As she finished speaking she seemed to bite upon something solid, then she took a drink of water. Almost immediately she began gasping for breath and the men rushed over to her. They lowered her gently to the floor as she relapsed into unconsciousness.
‘Get the first aid people!’ Perivale ordered.
‘She must have had a pellet of some kind in her mouth, ready for an emergency of this sort,’ said Wyatt grimly.
Perivale said: ‘I thought you were overdoing that bluff about Luigi.’
‘But you told me last night you picked him up,’ said Wyatt quickly.
‘That’s true enough,’ grunted Perivale. ‘But we had to let him go again.’
‘You let him go!’ echoed Wyatt.
‘Yes, he was brought up at a special court first thing this morning,’ put in Lathom. ‘He asked for bail, and I put it at £10,000, thinking no one would find it for him. To our amazement, two men came forward.’
‘So Mr Luigi is back in circulation,’ said Wyatt thoughtfully. ‘That certainly complicates matters.’
Sally was sitting at the piano playing a series of Jerome Kern numbers, while her husband sat moodily gazing into the fire. Since his return from the Yard, after the interview with Miss Marcia, Sally had been worried about him, for he had been strangely uncommunicative. Time and again, he made monosyllabic replies to her questions, and apart from a brief account of the girl’s death and the fact that Luigi was still at large, he had enlightened her on no further developments of the case.
‘Lionel!’ she called from the piano. ‘Will you open a window?’
He did not hear her, and she repeated the request. As if reluctant to be dragged out of his reverie, he limped across to the window and flung it open with a bang.
Sally indulged in another furious burst of rhythm, then swung round on the piano stool.
‘What’s the matter, Lionel?’ she asked.
He shifted impatiently in his armchair.
‘Nothing’s the matter, darling; I’m perfectly all right,’ he assured her somewhat ill-humouredly.
She came over to him and perched on the arm of his chair.
‘You’ve had a long face ever since you got up this morning, and you came back tonight like a politician who’s just lost a safe seat. What is it? Are you worried about something?’
‘Well, perhaps, in a way,’ he confessed.
‘Are you still upset about that girl at Scotland Yard yesterday morning?’
‘I’m very puzzled about the whole business,’ he admitted. ‘Not to mention feeling uncomfortable that Luigi is still at large.’
‘I should imagine he’ll lie low for a bit if he has any sense,’ said Sally.
‘He’ll probably have to obey orders, the same as the rest of the outfit,’ brooded Wyatt.
‘Then you don’t think he’s “Mr Rossiter”?’
‘I can’t imagine Luigi as a master mind somehow. He strikes me more as a petty trafficker in drugs or smuggled merchandise. Sir James has put a couple of men on his tail, but I don’t suppose they’ll find out very much.’
Sally picked up two evening papers he had flung on the floor and folded them tidily.
‘Well, what have you been up to all day, darling? Or is it a top secret?’ she said lightly.
‘Oh, no, it isn’t as vital as all that.’
He took a notebook from his pocket and turned the pages.
‘You remember I found this on Reed’s body,’ he reminded her, flattening out the little book at a page towards the end, and indicating a scribbled entry.
‘Royston – 10.30,’ she read slowly. ‘What’s it mean, Lionel? Is Royston a man or a racehorse? Or maybe a greyhound?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s neither. For one thing, there’s no race run at that time. Royston is obviously a man whom Reed was to meet at 10.30.’
‘Well, have you tried to find him?’ asked Sally.
Wyatt sighed.
‘I have spent the whole of the morning and the better part of the afternoon in some of the shadiest quarters of the East End, asking all my disreputable acquaintances if they know a man named Royston.’
‘Phew!’ said Sally. ‘No wonder you’re depressed! Did you run the gentleman to earth?’
He shook his head sadly.
‘Not a trace! No one had ever heard of a man named Royston.’ He snapped the notebook shut and thrust it back in his pocket.
‘So you’re feeling pretty frustrated, eh?’ smiled Sally. ‘Is it really as vital as all that, darling?’
‘My dear girl,’ said Wyatt patiently. ‘I don’t trudge round East End pubs all day unless I’m after something fairly important. It seems more than probable to me that Royston was the man who gave Reed his orders for the Angus job.’
‘Then it’s probably an assumed name,’ suggested Sally. ‘Which makes the whole thing fairly hopeless.’
They were still discussing ways and means of following up the inquiry when the front-door bell rang. Wyatt went out to find Doctor Fraser and Hugo Linder.
The doctor looked ill at ease, and Linder was certainly none too happy.
‘We were on our way to the St James’ Theatre,’ began Doctor Fraser, ‘and as we walked through the park we were discussing the affair at Shadwell Basin.’
‘The doctor told me about your telephone call to her that evening when I was away,’ said Linder.
‘Yes – he takes rather a serious view of it,’ she nodded. ‘In fact, nothing would do but that we should come straight here.’
Wyatt looked from one to the other, then inquired:
‘What are you referring to exactly?’
‘You asked Doctor Fraser what sort of perfume she used,’ Linder reminded him.
‘Ah, yes, the perfume,’ said Wyatt lightly. ‘I’d almost forgotten.’
‘Why did you ask her that question?’ persisted Linder in a somewhat ominous tone.
‘Simply because I wanted to know what sort of perfume she used,’ replied Wyatt airily.
‘I’m serious about this, Mr Wyatt,’ said Linder coldly. ‘It happens to be quite important.’
‘I’m glad you think so, Mr Linder.’
Linder paced across to the window and back again, then thrusting his hands deep in his trouser pockets, said:
‘About a week ago I bought Gail a bottle of perfume for her birthday. It was the brand she always used – Château Number Eight. Two days later, she had a visit from Inspector Lathom about a prescription she had given to a Miss Gillow.’
‘Mr Wyatt knows all about that,’ put in the doctor.
‘Mr Wyatt doesn’t know that the bottle of scent was missing from your dressing-table after the inspector’s visit.’
Wyatt offered them a cigarette and snapped open his lighter.
‘I take it the inspector wasn’t shown into your bedroom,’ he said to Doctor Fraser.
‘Of course not … and I think perhaps Hugo is exaggerating about all this. But I have to admit that the inspector was alone in my flat for about ten minutes. My maid let him in, and as I was out at the time, he said he would wait. She told him I was due back quite soon.’
/> ‘But your maid would surely have heard him move from one room to the other – wouldn’t he have had to cross the hall?’
She shook her head.
‘As it happens, my bedroom leads out of the sitting-room the inspector was shown into.’
Wyatt blew a ring of smoke into the air.
‘Have you asked your maid about this stolen bottle?’ he inquired.
‘She says she knows nothing about it. If you’re suggesting she stole it, well, I’m afraid I can’t believe that. She’s been with me eight years now …’
‘Then you think Inspector Lathom took it?’ demanded Wyatt mildly.
‘Of course not,’ she replied emphatically. ‘The whole idea is quite absurd. But why did you ask me about the perfume in the first place? That seems to be Hugo’s chief worry.’
‘I asked you,’ said Wyatt deliberately, ‘because someone who used Château Number Eight visited Professor Reed on the night he was murdered.’
There was a look of fear in her eyes as she sank into the nearest chair.
‘But I told you! I never went near Shadwell Basin that night,’ she said in what was almost a whisper.
‘I never said you did, Doctor,’ was Wyatt’s reasonable reply. ‘I was only relating the facts of the case.’
Linder laid a hand on Wyatt’s arm.
‘Supposing the person who killed that man wanted to throw suspicion on Doctor Fraser,’ he began urgently. ‘If he knew what perfume the doctor used, then the obvious thing would be to spray some of it on the dead man …’
‘As you say, Mr Linder, it’s quite an obvious trick,’ nodded Wyatt. ‘That was why I didn’t follow it up too closely. But there is a rather more subtle aspect of it, if you’ll think for a minute.’
‘Well?’ said Linder, in a challenging tone.
‘Let us suppose, just for sake of argument, that Doctor Fraser did go to Shadwell Basin that evening, and then later – because of what I said on the telephone – began to get rather worried about the perfume. Wouldn’t it be rather a neat bit of camouflage if you came along with the doctor and spun me a story about the perfume being stolen?’
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