Who Killed Stella Pomeroy?

by Basil Thomson

  She had just determined to close down for the night and go to bed early when her own telephone rang.

  “Arthur Grant speaking,” said a voice.

  “Arthur Grant?”

  “Yes, you remember: the brother of the dead Mrs Pomeroy. I was at your house today.”

  “Of course. How stupid of me. For the moment I had forgotten the name.”

  “I promised to find out if I could the whereabouts of that actor fellow who might have been sponging on Stella.”

  “Yes. Have you got his address?”

  “Listen. Will you let me give you some advice? I’m giving it to you in good faith. It is that you should let the whole matter drop. Believe me, it is far the wisest course. These things always die down and get forgotten in a day or two if you let them, but if one starts stirring them up again one never knows where they will end.”

  “But I particularly want to trace that coat, and you promised to help me.”

  There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire. Then the voice continued: “I am convinced that I can help you most by advising you to drop the whole matter.”

  “Thank you,” said Ann shortly and rang off.

  Here, at any rate, she reflected, is something that is likely to be of interest to Superintendent Richardson. She sat down and wrote out the conversation from memory, reflecting that when a doubtful kind of person urges a particular course there is something behind it.

  On the following morning Pat Coxon was at the house punctually; there was a quarter of an hour to wait. Ann explained to him that as soon as he had shown his Irish shilling to the superintendent and explained where he had found it he must go, because she had other things to tell him.

  “Couldn’t I stay and protect you?” asked the boy earnestly. “I might be a great help to you.”

  “No, Pat, I’m afraid you must go. You see, before the superintendent allowed me to tell him anything he would open the front door and put you out, and if you resisted they might give you three months for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.”

  There was no time for further protest: the front-door bell rang. “You may answer the door,” said Ann, “and if it’s Mr Richardson show him straight in here. Then we’ll tell him all about the shilling and you will slip away.”

  Richardson listened with grave attention to Pat’s story and examined the shilling.

  “I stuck a stick in the exact place where the shilling was lying. You’ll find it there now.”

  “If you go on like this you’ll make a wonderful detective, young man, when the times comes. I suppose you’ll like to keep this shilling as a memento of your first detective case. I shall go down later in the day and look for your stick. I shall also be putting you to an important test. If detectives are to be any use at all, they must first satisfy their superior officers that they can keep secrets. Mind, not a word of this to anyone, either boys or grownups. Treat it all as something that you have forgotten when you get out of this room.”

  Pat made a grave salute and left the room holding his head high.

  “Now, Mr Richardson,” said Ann when they were alone, “don’t you think that this bears out my theory that Casey was mixed up in this affair?”

  “Granted that the Irish shilling may have belonged to him, isn’t it more likely that when he dropped it he was doing what we all have been doing—looking for some clue in the waste ground behind the bungalow? I went very carefully over that ground, and the shilling was not there when I looked.”

  “I suppose that you, like Mr Aitkin, think that that bloodstained coat belonged to my cousin.”

  “On the contrary, some enquiries that I have been making have established the ownership of that coat. As you know, a public road much frequented by motor vehicles runs a little over two hundred yards from the back of the bungalow. There was a serious motor accident there early in the month—a collision between a car and a motorcycle. The man on the motorcycle was badly injured and was taken to the hospital; the car owner offered to break the news to his wife and was taking that coat with him to her house. Then he reflected that to bring back a coat in that state would add very much to her alarm, and he rolled it up and concealed it in the undergrowth by the roadside, intending to let her know later where it would be found. This he neglected to do, but he came forward yesterday to tell the police as soon as he read about the coat in the newspapers.”

  Ann listened attentively. “Then the police have no evidence whatever against my cousin.”

  “That is so.” Then he added with a smile, “Neither have they any evidence against Mr Casey.”

  “Well, this makes it more mysterious than ever. I have kept for you the notes of a conversation I had on the telephone with that man Grant yesterday. He had promised to help me to find the man to whom his sister, my cousin’s wife, might have given the coat. This is a verbatim account of what passed.”

  Richardson frowned over the manuscript. “May I keep this?” he asked.

  “Certainly. I wrote it out for you, but can you suggest any motive for all this mystery?”

  “Mr Maddox took Mr Grant off to his hotel after the funeral, didn’t he?’’

  “Yes, and promised to look after him. He may have the idea of giving Stella Pomeroy’s share of that estate in New Zealand to her brother instead of to her husband, but I’m sure my cousin wouldn’t care to take it.”

  “That, of course, is a question for the lawyers, not for me. Grant was to have given you the names of actors who might have been sponging on the dead woman. He didn’t give you these?”

  “Yes, he gave me two names but no addresses. I made a note of the names at the time. Here they are.”

  “Clement Wickham and Arthur Rowton,” said Richardson, searching his memory. “No, they have not been before me in any case that I remember, but if I can use your telephone…”

  “Whitehall 1212,” demanded Richardson. “C.R.O. Index, please. Superintendent Richardson speaking. Have you any record against Clement Wickham or Arthur Rowton?…Nothing against Arthur Rowton. Clement Wickham once cautioned for sending begging letters. Thank you.” He rang off and turned to Ann. “The information you have given me may turn out to be useful, Miss Pomeroy. At any rate you need not worry any more about that raincoat.”

  “I’m afraid I shall still have to worry until the real murderer is found, because there are people who look awkward when my cousin’s name is mentioned. I have to clear him entirely—or rather, I ought to say that you have to.”

  “You can rely upon me doing my best.” He stowed away in an inner pocket the notes that she had given him and took his leave. His next visit was to Divisional Detective Inspector Aitkin at the police station. He found him wading through a sheaf of papers, dividing them into two heaps. This separating of the grain from the chaff is a familiar practice whenever the public begins to take an interest in a crime, for every well-meaning person anxious to help in bringing a criminal to justice hastens to send in to the police what he believes to be useful information.

  “Have you found anything useful among all those papers?”

  “One or two that might be useful if they could he relied upon,” replied Aitkin; “but I haven’t yet found one that calls for action. In the whole of this lot there are no two which corroborate one another. The two nearest give descriptions of a stranger seen about nine o’clock near the bungalow, but their descriptions do not coincide. Here’s one of them, from Mrs Banning, who occupies the last house before you come to the bungalow. She describes the man she saw as being under middle height and wearing a dark-blue suit. She says that he walked up and down in front of her windows for some minutes; that she did not see what became of him because she had to get the breakfast. Mrs Wilson, who lives in the same road, also saw a man in a dark-blue suit, but he was a very tall man. She too failed to see what became of him.”

  “Alas, what a number of involuntary liars there are among us. How did these two people strike you?”

  “They
both thought that they were telling the truth.”

  “And when we see the man he will turn out to have been dressed in grey and neither short nor tall.”

  “The only point on which their evidence coincides is the time—nearly nine o’clock.”

  “Yes, because that was the hour for getting the children off to school. The longer I live the less confidence I put in the descriptions furnished by eyewitnesses.”

  “The others consist of people who say that they saw a tramp hanging about. One describes him as persistently begging for a cigarette and refusing to take No for an answer.”

  “Of course we can dismiss that kind of story. No tramp who killed a woman would have thought of putting her into a bath to make it appear that the death had been an accident. I shall probably be in London making enquiries for the next few days. You can always ring me up if any promising information comes your way, otherwise please continue to make a note of circumstances that seem to require attention. Of one thing we can be pretty sure—that some stranger did approach the front door that morning and drop a more than half-smoked cigar on the doorstep, which might signify that he intended to seek admission and was too polite to enter smoking, or that he found a cigar too strong for him.”

  Chapter Eleven

  RICHARDSON’S first destination on reaching Paddington was the Palace Hotel. He wanted to catch Arthur Grant and Ted Maddox before they sallied forth for the afternoon. As he hoped, he found them in the bar with a third man, whom he guessed to be Otway, the fellow traveller of Maddox and the person of doubtful antecedents in New Zealand. The three men affected not to see him, which meant that he could not count upon a cordial welcome, for Grant and Maddox were obviously engaged in apprising their companion of the identity of the newcomer, much to the entertainment of the barman, who knew Richardson well and was always ready to help him.

  “You’re the very man I wanted to see,” said Richardson to Grant. “I’ve something to tell you that you will be glad to hear. I suppose that I may talk freely here.”

  “Of course,” said Maddox, joining in and shaking hands. “We are all friends here. Ah, I forgot; you do not know my friend Mr Otway—he’s from New Zealand like myself.”

  “Glad to meet you, Mr Otway.”

  “Well now, Mr Richardson, you’ll have something?”

  “I never drink in the morning.”

  “Oh come, a sherry won’t hurt you. Bring a sherry over to this table, John,” said Maddox to the barman, and led the way to a table at some little distance from the bar.

  “Well,” said Richardson as they sat down, “I came to relieve Mr Grant’s mind about his brother-in-law, Miles Pomeroy. You will be glad to know that the mystery about that bloodstained coat has now been cleared up. It did not belong to Mr Pomeroy.”

  “Have you found another suspected person?” asked Maddox before Grant could reply.

  “No, the coat had nothing whatever to do with the case.” He related the true story of the coat and then turned to Grant. “I know you were worried about your brother-in-law’s missing raincoat. You had promised to help Miss Pomeroy to trace it.”

  Grant’s alert look of suspicion was not lost upon Richardson, neither was the furtive look of enquiry which he threw at Maddox as if he was to be the prompter in the piece.

  “Oh,” he said, “I don’t know that I exactly promised to help her.”

  “She thinks you did. You were to find the person to whom that raincoat may have been given, and last night you rang her up and told her that she had better drop the whole thing. Why was that?”

  Again Grant looked at his prompter, who came to his rescue.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Mr Richardson, we had been talking the case over between us, and we came to the conclusion that it was no good beating about the bush; that everything pointed to Pomeroy as having been the guilty person, and that his cousin would be only burning her fingers if she pushed her enquiries any further. That is why Grant rang her up.”

  Otway broke in for the first time. “I daresay that I was partly responsible for this. I warned them that they might get an innocent actor drawn in, as happened in a case I heard of some years ago.”

  It was a moment for Richardson to dissemble—to let it appear that he, too, could be an innocent dupe. “Oh, I understand now,” he said, rising to go. “Clouds seem to be thickening about Pomeroy—poor wretch.”

  He took particular note of the demeanour of the men as he shook hands—of the manifest relief of Grant, of the assumed joviality of Maddox, of the well-acted indifference of Otway—for in dealing with his criminal acquaintances Richardson never neglected to relieve their minds during the parting handshake.

  His next quest was in the office of the steamboat company, in the hope of encountering either the purser or some other officer of the Aorangi of the New Zealand line. There he learned that the Aorangi was sailing next day and if he wished to see any of the officers he should seek them on board the steamer at the docks.

  As he came out into the street he ran into Maddox, who, to do him justice for histrionic talent, appeared astonished at the encounter.

  “Are you going on a foreign trip, Mr Richardson? You didn’t tell us that half an hour ago.”

  “In my job one never knows from minute to minute where one may be sent,” retorted Richardson. He knew that Maddox had been employed in shadowing him, and he carried the war into the enemy’s camp. “And you, Mr Maddox? Are you booking a passage too? Have you got tired of England already?”

  “Unfortunately they’re so slow in England over probate business I don’t know when I shall get this will proved, and until I do I shall have to stay here. But all the same I like to keep myself informed about the sailings.”

  “Ah, I see—as a cure for homesickness.” He hailed a passing taxi and called to the driver, “To Scotland Yard.” As soon as a glance through the little window at the back assured him that his taxi was not being shadowed, he tapped on the glass behind the driver and changed his destination to the West India dock. There he was fortunate enough to find the purser on board. From him he learned that the bedroom steward of these two young men could be seen. This steward had a perfect recollection of the two and remembered to which of the dock porters he had given their hand luggage. He was able to call up the man, who told him that when he offered to carry the luggage to a taxi, they had declined and desired him to put it in the cloakroom, where they would call for it later in the day.

  “Did they take a taxi when they left the docks?”

  “Yes sir, I believe they did. Leastways, I remember them asking me where the rank was.”

  This tracing of a particular taxi was a job for a junior officer, and he would confide it to one from the Central Office. He felt that the time had now come for him to take counsel with his chief.

  He sent up his name to Morden and was admitted immediately.

  “Well, Mr Richardson, I’ve been wondering how you were getting on. Your reports don’t tell us very much.”

  “No sir, there hasn’t been very much to tell so far. All that I can say positively is that the husband of Stella Pomeroy had nothing to do with her murder and was quite properly released.”

  “Well, that’s something, but not very much. What about the lover whom you mentioned in one of your reports?”

  “I think it is too early to dismiss him from the case, but Inspector Aitkin is keeping an eye upon him. I came to take instructions from you about three new individuals in the case, of whom two have turned up from New Zealand.” He described the relationship between the dead woman, Grant and Maddox, and the terms of the will of the New Zealand sheep farmer.

  “Would Maddox stand to benefit by the death of Stella Pomeroy?”

  “No sir; that is where any motive fails us. The only person to benefit will probably turn out to be the husband of the dead woman, Miles Pomeroy.”

  “Then what have you against Maddox?”

  “To tell you the truth, sir, I have nothing against him exc
ept my own personal suspicion.”

  “Was he in the neighbourhood that morning?”

  “He arrived, apparently for the first time, at the bungalow during the confusion following the discovery of the body; but I have ascertained this morning that his steamer tied up in the West India dock in time to allow him to arrive at the bungalow in Ealing at the hour when the murder was committed, and that he left his luggage in the cloakroom and went off from the docks in a taxi.”

  “If that’s all you’ve got to go upon I don’t envy you the job of proving your case against him. You haven’t forgotten, of course, that a stranger arriving from New Zealand and in London for the first time in his life would know nothing about railways or underground, and would take a taxi the whole way. He would know that Ealing was in the London area. It is curious that no taxi driver reading of the murder has come forward to say that he drove a stranger from the docks to the Ealing village settlement that morning; they are generally so ready to come forward with information.”

  “I know sir, and I’m putting P.C. Dunstan onto that very enquiry. He is, as you know, in the Public Carriage Department. As regards the local enquiries, they have been covered by the D.D.I.”

  “Inspector Aitkin?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Have you cured him of his obsession that the husband was the murderer?”

  “I think so, sir, though it wouldn’t take much to put him back into that error again.”

  “You say that you think Otway may have had a criminal career in New Zealand. We ought to be able to verify that by cabling in cipher to Wellington.”

  “Yes sir. If you will authorize this I will see to it. In the meantime I should like to put those three men in the Palace Hotel under discreet observation.”

  “I’m not a believer in observation of obvious crooks. They always tumble to it. Probably this man Otway is a past master in the art of shaking off followers, and at this point it seems to me you ought not to risk alarming them.”