Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

‘But Susan Dangle was at our house for several weeks. She could be identified.’

  ‘How would that help? She would of course admit being there, but would deny everything else. And you couldn’t prove anything. Why, the gang would point out that it was Susan’s presence at your house that had suggested the whole story to you.’

  Cheyne shook his head.

  ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ he declared. ‘There would be a good deal of corroborative evidence on my side. And then there was Blessington at the hotel at Plymouth. He could be identified by the staff.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But even that wouldn’t help you much. He would deny having drugged you and you couldn’t prove he had. No, the more I think of it the better their position seems to be.’

  ‘Well, then, what’s the alternative?’

  She shook her head and for a moment silence reigned. Then she went on:

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the gang since you told me the story—it’s another point, of course—but it occurs to me they must have had a fine old shock on the morning after your visit.’

  Cheyne looked up sharply.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, they must have been worried to death to know what had happened to you. Your dead body wasn’t found—they’d soon have heard of it if it had been. And no information was given to the police about the affair—they’d soon have heard of that too. And you haven’t struck at them. Probably they’ve made inquiries at Dartmouth and found you haven’t gone home. They’ll absolutely be scared into fits to know whether you’re alive or dead, or what blow may not be being built up against them. Though they richly deserve it, I don’t envy them their position.’

  This was a new idea to Cheyne.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he returned, then he laughed. ‘Yes, it didn’t work out quite as they wanted, did it? But I expect they know all about me. Don’t you think that under the circumstances they would have gone round making discreet inquiries at the hospitals?’

  ‘Well, that is at least something to be done. First job: find out if possible if anyone asked about you at the Albert Edward. If that fails, same question elsewhere.’

  ‘Right: that’s an idea. But it is not enough.’ Cheyne shook his head to give emphasis to his remark. ‘We must do something more. And the only thing I can think of is to get into that house again and see what I can find. I’ll risk the police.’

  Miss Merrill was evidently thrilled, but not converted.

  ‘I shouldn’t be in too great a hurry,’ she counselled. ‘How would it do if we went out there first and had a look round?’

  ‘I don’t see that we should gain much by looking at the outside of the house.’

  ‘You never know. Let’s go as soon as it gets dark tonight. If we see nothing no harm is done.’

  Cheyne was not averse to the idea of an excursion in the company of his new friend and he readily agreed, provided Miss Merrill gave her word not to run into any danger.

  ‘I think you should put on a hat with a low brim and wear something with a high collar,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll do the same and in the dark we’re not likely to be noticed even if any of the gang are about.’

  Miss Merrill, pointed out that as she was unknown to the gang, it did not matter if her features were seen, but Cheyne was insistent.

  ‘You don’t know,’ he said. ‘We might both be seen, and then it would be as bad for you as for me. There’ll be unavoidable risks enough in this job without taking on any we needn’t.’

  They discussed their plans in detail, then Cheyne remarked: ‘Now that’s settled, what’s wrong with your coming and having a bit of dinner with me as a prelude to adventure?’

  ‘That sounds bookish. Are you keen on books? I’ll go and have dinner if I may pay my share, not otherwise.’

  Cheyne protested, but she was adamant. It appeared further she was a great reader, and they discussed books until it was time to go out. Then after dinner at an Italian restaurant in Soho they took the tube to Hendon and began to walk towards Hopefield Avenue.

  The night was chilly for mid-May, but calm and dry. It would soon be quite dark out of the radius of the street lamps, as the quarter moon had not yet risen and clouds obscured the light of the stars. In the main street there was plenty of traffic, but Hopefield Avenue was deserted and their footsteps rang out loudly on the pavements.

  ‘Let’s walk past it,’ Miss Merrill suggested, ‘and perhaps we can hide and watch what goes on.’

  They did so. Laurel Lodge looked as before except that the lower front windows were lighted up. Building operations, however, had been much advanced in the six weeks since Cheyne’s last visit. The almost completed walls of a house stood on the next lot, and the house in which the supposed dead body of Cheyne had been abandoned was practically complete.

  ‘Half-finished houses are the stunt in this game,’ Cheyne observed. ‘Suppose we go back to that next door to our friends and see from there if anything happens.’

  Five minutes later they had passed along the lane at the back of the houses and taken up their positions in what was evidently to be the hall of the new house. A small window looked out from its side, not forty feet from the hall door of Laurel Lodge. Cheyne made a seat of a plank laid across two little heaps of bricks and they sat down and waited.

  They were so ignorant as to the steps usually taken by a detective in such a situation that their idea of watching the house was simply adopted in the Micawberish hope that somehow something might turn up to help them. What that something might be they had no idea. But with the extraordinary luck which so often seems reserved for those who blindly plunge, they had not waited ten minutes before they received some really important information.

  The unconscious agent was a postman. They saw him first pass near a lamp farther down the street, and then watched him gradually approach, calling in one house after another. Presently he reached the gate of Laurel Lodge, and opening it, passed inside.

  From where they sat, the watchers, being in line with the front of the house, were not actually in sight of the hall door. But there was a heap of building material in front of their hiding-place and Cheyne, slipping hurriedly out, crouched behind the pile in such a position that he could see what might take place.

  In due course the postman reached the door, but instead of delivering his letters and retreating, he knocked and stood waiting. The door was opened by a woman, and her silhouette against the lighted interior showed she was not Susan Dangle. The woman was short, stout and elderly.

  ‘Evening, ma’am,’ Cheyne heard the man say. ‘A parcel for you.’

  The woman thanked him and closed the door, while the postman crossed to a house on the opposite side of the street. As soon as his back was turned Cheyne left his hiding-place, and was strolling along the road when the postman again stepped onto the footpath.

  ‘Good-evening, postman,’ said Cheyne. ‘I’m looking for people called Dangle somewhere about here. Could you tell me where they live?’

  The postman stopped and answered civilly:

  ‘They’ve left here, sir, or at least there were people of that name here till a few weeks ago. They lived over there.’ He pointed to Laurel Lodge.

  Cheyne made a gesture of annoyance.

  ‘Moved, have they? Then I’ve missed them. I suppose you couldn’t tell me where they’ve gone?’

  The postman shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, sir, but I couldn’t. If you was to go to the post office in Hendon they might know. But I couldn’t say nothing about it.’

  Nor could the postman remember the exact date of the Dangles departure. It was five or six weeks since or maybe more, but he couldn’t say for sure.

  Cheyne returned to Miss Merrill with his news. A sudden flitting on the Dangles part seemed indicated, born doubtless of panic at the disappearance of the supposed corpse, and if this was the cause of their move, no applications at the post office or elsewhere would bear fruit.
>
  ‘We should have foreseen this,’ Cheyne declared gloomily. ‘If you think of it, to make themselves scarce was about the only thing they could do. If I was alive and conscious they couldn’t tell how soon they might have a visit from the police.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to find them,’ his companion answered. ‘I’ll begin by making inquiries at the house. No,’ as Cheyne demurred, ‘it’s my turn. You stay here and listen.’

  She slipped out on to the road, and passing through the gate of Laurel Lodge, rang the bell. The same elderly woman came to the door and Miss Merrill asked if Miss Dangle was at home.

  The woman was communicative if not illuminating. No one called Dangle lived in the house, though she understood her predecessors had borne that name. She and her son had moved in only three weeks before, and they had only taken the house a fortnight before that. She did not know anything of the Dangles. Oh no, she had not taken the house furnished. She had brought her own furniture with her. Indeed yes, moving was a horrible business and so expensive.

  ‘That’s something about the furniture,’ Miss Merrill said, when breathless and triumphant she had rejoined Cheyne. ‘If they took their furniture we have only to find out who moved it for them. Then we can find where it was taken.’

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ Cheyne declared admiringly. ‘But how on earth are we going to find the removers? Have you any ideas?’

  Miss Merrill looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Just full of ’em,’ she smiled, ‘and to prove it I’ll make you a bet. I’ll bet you the price of our next dinner that I have the information inside half an hour. What time is it? Half-past nine. Very well: before ten o’clock. But the information may cost you anything up to a pound. Are you on?’

  ‘Of course I’m on,’ Cheyne returned heartily, though in reality he was not too pleased by the trend of affairs. ‘Do you want the pound now?’

  ‘No, I have it. But whatever the information costs me you may pay. Now au revoir until ten o’clock.’

  She glided away before Cheyne could reply, and for some minutes he sat alone in the half-built porch wondering what she was doing and wishing he could smoke. It was cold sitting still in the current of chilly air which poured through the gaping brickwork. He felt tired and despondent, and realised against his will that he had been severely shaken by his experiences and was by no means as yet completely recovered. If it was not for this splendid girl he would have been strongly tempted to throw up the sponge, and he thought with longing of the deep arm-chairs in the smoking-room at the hotel, or better still, in Miss Merrill’s studio.

  Presently he saw her. She was crossing the street in front of Laurel Lodge. She was directly in the light of a lamp and he could not but admire her graceful carriage and the dainty way in which she tripped along.

  She pushed open the gate of a house directly opposite and disappeared into the shadow behind its encircling hedge. In a moment she was out again and had entered the gate of the next house. There she remained for some time, indeed the hands on the luminous dial of Cheyne’s watch showed three minutes to the hour before she reappeared. She re-crossed the road and presently Cheyne heard her whisper: ‘That was a near squeak for my dinner! It’s not after ten, is it?’

  ‘Half a minute before,’ breathed Cheyne, continuing eagerly: ‘Well, what luck?’

  ‘Watterson & Swayne. Vans came the day after your adventure.’

  Cheyne whistled below his breath.

  ‘My word!’ he whispered, ‘but you’re simply It! How in all this earthly world did you find that out?’

  She chuckled delightedly.

  ‘Easy as winking,’ she declared. ‘Got it fifth shot. I called at five of the houses overlooking the Laurel Lodge gate, and pretended to be a woman detective after the Dangles. I was mysterious about the crimes they had committed and got the servants interested. There were servants at three of the houses—the others I let alone. I offered the servants five shillings for the name of the vans which had come to take the stuff, and the third girl remembered. I gave her the five shillings and told her I was good for another five if she could tell me the date of the moving, and after some time she was able to fix it. She remembered she had seen the vans on the day of a party at her sister’s and she found the date of that from an old letter.’

  ‘Good for you! I say, Miss Merrill, if you’re going to carry on like this we shall soon have all we want. What’s the next step now? Inquiries at Watterson & Swayne’s?’

  ‘No,’ she said decidedly, ‘the next step for you is bed. You’re not really well enough yet for this sort of thing. We’ve done enough for tonight. We’ll go home.’

  Cheyne protested, but as, apart from his health, it was obvious that inquiries could not at that hour be instituted at the furniture removers, he had to agree.

  ‘I shall go round and see them tomorrow morning,’ he remarked as they walked back along Hopefield Avenue. ‘I suppose you couldn’t manage to come at that time? Or shall I wait until the afternoon?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Neither,’ she answered. ‘I shall be busy all day and you must just carry on.’

  Cheyne felt a surprisingly keen disappointment.

  ‘But mayn’t I come and report progress in the afternoon?’ he begged.

  ‘Not until after four. I shall be painting up till then.’

  He wanted to see her home, but this she would not hear of, and soon he was occupying one of these deep chairs in the hotel smoking-room whose allure had seemed so strong to him in the draughty porch of the half-built house. As he sat he thought over the turn which this evening’s inquiry had given to the affair in which he was engaged. It was clear enough now that Miss Merrill’s view had been correct and that the Dangles were scared stiff by the absence of information about the finding of his body. As he put himself in their place, he saw that flight was indeed their only course. What he marvelled at was that they should have taken time to remove their furniture. From their point of view it must have been a horrible risk, and it undoubtedly left, through the carrying contractor, a certain clue to their whereabouts.

  But when Cheyne began his inquiries on the following morning he rapidly became less impressed with the certainty of the clue. A direct request at the firm’s office for Dangle’s address was met by a polite non possumus, and when during the dinner hour Cheyne succeeded in bribing a junior clerk to let him have the information, at a further interview the lad declared he could not find it. It was not until after five hours inquiry among the drivers of the various vans which entered and left the yard that he learned anything, and even then he found himself no further on. The furniture, which had been collected from an unoccupied house, had been stored and still remained in Messrs Watterson & Swayne’s warehouses.

  It was a weary and disgruntled Cheyne who at six o’clock that evening dragged himself up the ten flights to Miss Merrill’s room. But when he was seated in her big arm-chair with his pipe going and had consumed a whisky and soda which she had poured out for him he began to feel that all was not necessarily lost and that life had compensations for failures in the role of amateur detective.

  She listened carefully to his tale of woe, finally dropping a word of sympathy with his disappointment and of praise for his efforts which left him thinking she was certainly the good pal he expected her to be.

  ‘But that’s not the worst,’ he went on gloomily. ‘It’s bad enough that I have failed today, but it’s a great deal worse that I don’t know how I am going to do any better. Those Watterson & Swayne people simply won’t give away any information and I don’t see how else it’s to be got.’

  ‘There’s not much to go on certainly,’ she admitted. ‘That’s where the police have the pull. They could go into that office and demand the Dangles’ address. You can’t. What about the others, that Sime and that Blessington? Could you trace them in any way?’

  Cheyne moved lazily in his chair.

  ‘I don’t see how,’ he answered slowly. ‘We have li
ttle enough information about the Dangles, but there is less still about the others. We have practically nothing to go on. I wonder what a real detective would do in such a case. I feel perfectly certain he would find all four in a few hours.’

  ‘Ha! That gives me an idea.’ She sat up and looked at him eagerly and then in answer to his question went on: ‘What about that detective who was already engaged on the case, the one the manager of the Plymouth hotel recommended? Why not get hold of him and see what he can do? He was a private detective, wasn’t he—not connected with the police?’

  ‘He was, and I have his name and address. By Jove, Miss Merrill, it’s an idea! I’ll go round and see him in the morning. He’s a man I didn’t take to personally, but what does that matter if he’s good at his job?’

  Though Cheyne thus enthusiastically received his companion’s suggestion, he was not greatly enamoured of the idea. As he said, he had not liked the man personally, and he would have preferred to have kept the affair in his own hands. But he felt bankrupt of ideas for carrying on the inquiry, and if a professional was to be brought in, this man whom he knew and who was vouched for by the manager of the Edgecombe should be as good as another. He decided, however, that he would not employ the fellow on the case as a whole. His job should be to find the quartet, and if and when he did that he could be paid his money and sent about his business. Cheyne felt that at this stage at all events he was not going to share the secret of the linen tracing.

  But Cheyne, like many another before him, was to learn the difficulties which beset the path of him who makes half confidences.

  9

  Mr Speedwell Plays his Hand

  Next morning Cheyne called at the offices of Messrs Horton & Lavender’s Private Detective Agency and asked if their Mr Speedwell was within. By good fortune Mr Speedwell was, and a few seconds later Cheyne was ushered into the room of the quiet, despondent looking man whom he had interviewed at Warren Lodge nearly two months earlier.

  ‘Glad to see you’re better, sir,’ the detective greeted him. ‘I was expecting you would look in one of these days. You had my letter?’