Who Killed Stella Pomeroy?

by Basil Thomson

  He found cause for regretting that advertisement about ladies’ bags. The waiting room downstairs was half filled with impatient ladies. A harassed constable was endeavouring to deal with the applicants in order of arrival, but that did not prevent attempts by the ladies to “jump” their turns. For Inspector Aitkin the task was formidable. He required each applicant to give the colour and the material of her bag and then, if the description corresponded with a bag in his collection, to pick it out from the others. He was not compounded of soft clay, having, as he said, a wife at home, and most of the ladies left the station empty handed. Those who passed his interrogation came away even more indignant than those who had failed, because they valued the contents of their bags as highly as the bags themselves, and the contents were not there.

  As Richardson entered the room a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman was being interviewed.

  “Well sir,” she was saying, “of course it was my own fault. It was in the hat department of Giveen’s, and the walls are plastered with notices that you put down your property at your own risk; that the shop is not responsible. But you know how it is in trying on a hat. You must have both your hands free when you go to the glass, so you put down your bag with your hat on top of it and turn to the glass, and when you turn round again your bag’s gone. Lord, but there are some dishonest people in the world. But if you gentlemen have been picking up one of these bag thieves it struck me that I ought to come and see whether she had got mine.”

  She proceeded to give a description of her missing property. Aitkin listened carefully and laid before her one of the bags. She pounced upon it. “Yes sir, that’s mine. You see it’s the same as the description I gave you, right down to the fastening.” She opened it. “Oh, what a shame! The woman who pinched it has taken out everything, and it isn’t as if there were valuables, except for the money which I never thought to get back, but you see everything’s gone—even the snapshots of my little nieces, which had no value for anybody but me. Well sir, I’m very much obliged to you, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sorry for the loss of the contents, madam, but you see a thief would naturally destroy any evidence that might bring the theft home to her.”

  Richardson sat in the background, scrutinizing every claimant as she came in and listening to Aitkin’s competent way of handling them. By midday all the bags had been given to their rightful, or pretended, owners, except the costly bag bearing the initial E. No claimant had come forward for that, and none of the claimants were of the class that would carry a bag of that kind.

  “I see no claimant has come forward for that expensive bag marked E.”

  “Not yet, sir, though a description of it was circulated in the list of lost property.”

  “It is very significant, to my mind, that no one has come forward. There may have been something in it which the owner regarded as compromising. In that case an advertisement will never produce a claimant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it might have been drugs, or it might have been a compromising address which the owner would not like the police to have. One can only guess at it, but I can’t help feeling that that bag has a strong bearing on our case. Most of the women lost their bags in the same way, by putting them down while they tried on a hat. That was evidently Stella Pomeroy’s method of working. Many of the losers said that they made a complaint in the shop at the time. It’s possible that the owner of the bag marked E also made a complaint when she first missed it. It will be worth while for you to send round to the big stores, asking whether they have had a complaint in connection with a bag of this description.”

  “Very good, Superintendent. I will have this done.”

  “I took the liberty of sending one of your patrols up to the Palace Hotel to bring Grant down to this office to answer one or two questions about his dead sister.”

  “In connection with the murder, do you mean?”

  “No, I want him to give us some information about this man who calls himself Maddox. We don’t know at present who he is, because Ted Maddox, who we assumed him to be, died on July thirty-first.”

  “Then this man’s a fraud?”

  “To the extent that he poses as Ted Maddox he is, but his name may be Maddox all the same, and I want to question Grant about him. Unfortunately one cannot clear up the murder as easily as that, because we now have evidence that the men who landed from New Zealand on September thirteenth had a perfect alibi for the hour of the murder.”

  The station sergeant looked in. “The patrol has just arrived with that man Grant, sir. Where will you see him?”

  “I’ll see him in this room.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  While the men were mounting the stairs, Richardson took his seat at the table and assumed a magisterial air.

  “Sit down there, Mr Grant. I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you.”

  Grant glanced nervously behind him as if looking for support from the patrol who had brought him upstairs, but he found that he was alone with his interrogator, who proceeded: “You know that Mr Colter left half his fortune to your dead sister and that, as she died without making a will, her share will go to her husband for his lifetime.”

  “Yes, I know, and it’s a damned shame. Mr Otway told me that it was the law.”

  “Oh, is Mr Otway an authority on wills?”

  “I don’t know that he’s exactly an authority, but he’s been looking up the law in the case to see whether I couldn’t get my whack out of my uncle’s estate.”

  “Your uncle left you nothing? How long is it since you left New Zealand?”

  “It must be about fifteen years.”

  “Was Ted Maddox living with your uncle when you left?”

  “Yes, he had just left college.”

  “He was fond of study, I believe.”

  “Yes, he was. He brought back a lot of prizes. I know that when my uncle talked to me about him he didn’t think that he’d take kindly to farm life.”

  “After you left New Zealand fifteen years ago, you never saw Ted Maddox again?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t see him again until I met him at the cemetery at my sister’s funeral.”

  “And you found him a good deal changed?”

  Richardson was watching him closely and caught the look of awakened caution in his face.

  “Everyone changes in fifteen years.”

  “Tastes and all, do you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “But two years ago Ted Maddox hadn’t changed in his tastes. He still loved books.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know it from letters that your uncle wrote to your sister.”

  “They say that I ought to have the letters written to my sister.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Why, Ted Maddox and Otway.”

  “Those letters are the legal property of your sister’s husband, her next of kin. You will have to apply to him.”

  “What I don’t understand is why you’ve had me brought down here to be questioned like this. Have you got anything against me, because if you have you had better tell me so outright.”

  “I’ve nothing against you. All I want from you is that you should help the cause of justice by answering one question quite truthfully. Are you satisfied in your own mind that Maddox is actually the Ted Maddox whom you knew at your uncle’s sheep run in New Zealand?”

  “Well, I couldn’t swear that he isn’t.”

  “But on the other hand you couldn’t swear that he is. Is that it?”

  “Yes, if you put it that way, I suppose it is.”

  “Have you ever mentioned your doubts to him?”

  “Not in so many words, because Otway is always there, and whenever I seem to be getting near the point he cuts in and talks about Ted’s loss of memory and then he shoves ten pounds into my hand and says, ‘You forget about his loss of memory.’ And mind you, I can’t be sure, because a boy of sixteen does change by the time he’
s thirty-one.”

  “Do you know why your uncle adopted Ted Maddox?”

  “Well, he was the son of an old friend, John Maddox, who hadn’t been so successful as my uncle, and he was one of a large family, while my uncle had no son. Have you any reason for doubting that he is Ted Maddox?”

  This was a difficult question for Richardson to answer, for if he replied in the affirmative what he said would almost certainly be passed on to the two rascals staying at the Palace Hotel. He replied by asking another question.

  “Your sister did not leave New Zealand at the same time that you did?”

  “No, not until five years later. You see your suspicion must be wrong, because the first thing that Ted Maddox did was to go down to Ealing with his adopted father’s will to show it to my sister, and he must have known that she would recognize him at once.”

  The obvious answer would have been to say that the object in visiting the heiress was to persuade her to become an accomplice in the deception, but Richardson did not suggest this to his visitor.

  “I don’t know that I need detain you any longer, Mr Grant,” he said, half rising from his seat. “But I’d like you to keep this conversation that we’ve had confidential. You can say that I’d sent for you to ask whether your sister had a hasty temper and other questions of that sort.”

  “Well, as we’re talking quite confidentially, I think I ought to tell you that neither Maddox nor Otway intends to go back to New Zealand. All they’re waiting for is to get the money from those solicitors and then slip off with it to South America.”

  By this time Richardson felt that there was little more to be learned about the character of the man before him. He was no criminal in intent, but he was a poor, weak-willed creature who would always take the line of least resistance. He decided that the moment had come for telling him the truth, but in such a way that even if he divulged it to the two men at the hotel there would be no danger of their escaping justice.

  “Now, Mr Grant, you’ve been so frank with me that I feel that I ought to tell you the truth. Ted Maddox died on the thirty-first of July last, and this Maddox is probably his brother.”

  The look of astonishment on Grant’s face was an assurance that this was news to him and that he was in no way implicated in the imposture.

  “Ted Maddox dead! That explains a lot that I couldn’t understand, but it’s Otway who’s got the brains: Maddox does nothing without consulting him first. And all this money they’ve been getting from the lawyers…what’s going to happen about that?”

  “That’s easy to answer. The lawyers are going to proceed against Maddox for obtaining money under false pretences.”

  “If they got to know that they’d be off to South America by the next boat.”

  “No they wouldn’t. The police at every port of embarkation are on the lookout for them. They’ll have to stay here to answer the charge which is being made against them, or at any rate one of them, by the solicitor. All you have to do, Mr Grant, is to keep your mouth shut and carry on for a day or so as usual.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WAS obvious that the next step to be taken was to see Mr Jackson, the solicitor, again and tell him that as it appeared probable that Maddox had landed with a legal passport of his own, the police had no ground for taking out a summons against him, whereas in respect of obtaining money under false pretences, the solicitors had a clear right of action. Richardson decided to give Mr Jackson time to return from luncheon before calling. When he saw him early in the afternoon it was decided between them that Mr Jackson should obtain a summons immediately. Then arose the question whether the information should include Otway as aiding and abetting the fraud.

  “The difficulty in Otway’s case,” suggested Richardson, “is that he may plead that he too was a victim of the fraud; that he had simply accepted the story of a fellow traveller and had had no means of checking it. Personally I believe that Otway was at the bottom of the fraud. He knew that if Maddox had presented himself as the elder of the surviving brothers of Ted Maddox he would have received only one seventh of his brother’s fortune as his share, but by passing himself off as that dead brother he would get the lot. In looking up my reports I see that the purser of the Aorangi described how Maddox behaved on the voyage. At the beginning he had come into a modest fortune, but the fortune grew until when they were nearing England he had become something approaching a millionaire. At the time I thought that this was merely due to his bombastic character, but now I have come round to the belief that it was owing to suggestions made by Otway. I presume that the late Mr Colter’s personal property in England amounts to a considerable sum, because I learn from Grant that their intention is to go to South America and not to return to New Zealand.”

  “Mr Colter had investments in gilt-edged securities amounting to at least two hundred thousand pounds. After what you have just told me, Mr Richardson, I shall issue a summons for both the men.”

  As he left the office Richardson had to remind himself that in tracking down these minor rascals he was not getting on with his real preoccupation—the discovery of the murderer. These two could now be left to the mercies of Mr Jackson, but he reflected ruefully that they were going to be no help to him.

  In view of certain passages in Casey’s letters there were questions to ask him, but a newspaper office was certainly not the place for an interview of that description. He would have to wait and send for him as he did before. This time, in view of the references to the “dangerous game” he was playing with the dead woman, there was fresh material for inviting him to a second interview and the invitation need not be too politely worded. Then from Casey his thoughts wandered to Ann Pomeroy, who had always suspected the Irishman. Was it woman’s intuition, or some gift that had been denied to him? He himself did not believe that Casey was the actual murderer, but it was clear from the correspondence that he had been engaged in some illicit business with the dead woman. Ann Pomeroy had been right in suspecting from the very beginning that Casey was at the bottom of the mystery, and then the memory of those clear grey eyes set his thoughts wandering, and he brought himself up with a start on discovering that he, a staid detective officer, had allowed his feet to carry him two whole streets out of his way while his thoughts were filled with Ann Pomeroy.

  It is not often that a superintendent has time to kill during an afternoon, but on this day Richardson found himself free for the afternoon to write his report at the Central Office and clear up a number of small points that had arisen during his investigation. He was at his writing table when Mr Beckett, the Chief Constable, looked in.

  “Oh! It’s not often that one finds you at your table in these days, and it’s not very often that one has the opportunity of reading your handwriting. How are you getting on with that Ealing murder case?”

  “Not very fast, Mr Beckett, I’m sorry to say. It’s a complicated kind of case, and one after another the persons suspected have succeeded in producing alibis. It’s entailing a lot of work, but it’s not been altogether wasted. Two of the suspects are being prosecuted on a charge of fraud.”

  “Do you want help? I fancy you’re not finding D.D. Inspector Aitkin much good to you.”

  “Oh, he’s all right, sir. He’s doing a lot of patient investigation, but I confess that it’s an extraordinarily difficult case. There is documentary evidence that the dead woman was engaged in some unlawful business, and I hope that by this evening I shall know what it was. It may turn out to be important in giving us a clue towards finding out who was the murderer.”

  “Well, there’s one thing to guard against. We can’t afford to make another arrest and then have to let the man go.”

  “No sir. We must avoid that at all costs.”

  The time passes quickly when reports have to be written. Richardson realized with a start that if he was to make an appointment with Casey he must either try to lure him to New Scotland Yard or to the police station at Ealing. He decided on the latter course and re
solved to despatch a patrol to head him off from his lodgings when he returned from town. For this purpose he selected Sergeant Hammett as being the most likely man to use the fist in the velvet glove successfully.

  He found himself comfortably seated in the divisional detective inspector’s office about the time when Casey was likely to arrive. He must have returned by an earlier train than usual that evening, for Richardson’s quick ear soon caught the sound of an Irish accent on the stairs. As far as he could judge the Irishman was still undeflated in his tone. Bluff was again to be his armour against inconvenient questions.

  “Sit down, Mr Casey.”

  “If it’s all the same to you. I’d rather stand.”

  “That is just as you please. Since I saw you last I have been reading pertain correspondence that passed between you and the late Mrs Pomeroy.”

  “You police seem to spend your time in reading other people’s correspondence. Don’t you find it a dirty business?”

  “In your case I confess that I did, but unhappily we are condemned to do that, though in many cases the correspondence produces a feeling of nausea. I speak in a general way; I do not specify the correspondence I am thinking of. Let us turn to your own letters written to the late Mrs Pomeroy.”

  “Why, you’d read those letters before I saw you last.”

  “I hadn’t studied them. At that time I thought that the words ‘dangerous game we are playing’ might refer only to Mrs Pomeroy’s infidelities under the nose of her husband; now, in the light of what I have since heard, they seem to take on a different significance, and I want you to throw light on the phrase ‘dangerous game.’”

  “You put a name to it just now. Marital infidelities, or words to that effect.”

  “I suggest to you that the words meant more than that—that you were associated with this woman in some enterprise that would have cost you both dear if it had become known. I want you, if you can, to explain those words away.”