The Ponson Case

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  Returning to his taxi, he continued his journey till he reached King’s Cross. It was just nine o’clock, and the great station was partially deserted, there being a lull in the traffic about that hour. For the first time that day Tanner felt cool, and he began to realise that he was tired. But apart from the general urgency of his business, he expected the persons he wished to see were on evening duty, and he decided he must finish his inquiries then and there. He therefore went to the stationmaster’s office, and sent in his card. A dark, intelligent looking young man with an alert manner received him, and to him Tanner explained his business.

  ‘I did hear something about it,’ the young man returned. ‘If you will wait a moment I’ll make inquiries.’

  He left the room, returning presently with a clerk.

  ‘Mr Williams here remembers the affair. He dealt with it. Tell this gentleman what you know, Williams.’

  ‘On Wednesday evening, the 7th instant, about 7.20 or 25,’ began Williams, ‘a man called at the office and said he had booked a berth to Montrose on the 7.15 p.m., but that he had missed the train while in the refreshment room. He said his suit-case and waterproof had gone on in the train, and he asked what I would advise him to do.’

  ‘That’s the man,’ said Tanner, nodding. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I told him the trains. The next to Montrose was the 10.30 p.m., and his mistake only meant that he would reach there at 8.24 a.m. instead of 5.25. But it seemed he wanted to arrive early, and I mentioned the 8.30 p.m. which runs from here to Dundee, suggesting he could go on by car. But on going into it he decided even this would be too late, and said he would travel on the 10.30. With regard to his luggage I offered to wire Grantham, which is the first stop of both the 7.15 p.m. and the 10.30, to have it collected from the sleeping car on the 7.15 p.m., and put into the 10.30. He agreed to this, and I sent the telegram at once.’

  ‘Would you know the man if you saw him again?’

  ‘Yes, I believe I should.’

  ‘Any of these he?’ and Tanner handed over the half-dozen photographs.

  The clerk instantly passed over Sir William’s and those of the strangers, then he examined Austin’s for some moments with a puzzled expression, but when he came to Cosgrove’s he hesitated no longer.

  ‘That’s the man,’ he said, repeating Tanner’s words of a moment before, ‘I should know him anywhere.’

  ‘So far so good,’ thought Tanner as he stepped out once more on to the concourse. ‘Now for the refreshment room.’

  He found the platform from which the 7.15 had started on the night in question, and looked about him. There was little doubt as to where Cosgrove had gone for his cigars. On the platform itself was a large sign ‘First-Class-Refreshment Room.’ The Inspector pushed open the door and entered.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, raising his hat politely to the presiding goddess. ‘I want a few cigars, please.’

  ‘I have only these,’ the girl answered, placing two partially emptied boxes before him.

  Tanner examined them.

  ‘I am not much of a judge,’ he informed her, ‘but these look the lighter. I’ll have half a dozen, please. That is,’ he went on with a whimsical glance at the clock, ‘if it’s safe.’

  The barmaid looked at him as if she thought he was crazy, but she did not speak and Tanner explained:

  ‘A friend of mine had an experience here the other night buying cigars, so he told me. He missed his train over the head of it. I was wondering if I should do the same.’

  A light seemed to dawn on the girl. She laughed.

  ‘I remember your friend. I couldn’t help smiling, but I was sorry for him too. He came in here and chose a dozen cigars, and then he looked up and saw the clock.

  ‘“Your clock’s fast,” he says.

  ‘“I don’t think,” I says, and with that he hooked it out of the door, fair running, and all the cigars lying on the counter. I couldn’t but laugh at him.’

  ‘But he didn’t laugh, for he missed his train,’ prompted Tanner.

  ‘Oh, he missed his train right enough. He came back and showed me his watch—three minutes slow. But he got his cigars all right.’

  Tanner took Austin’s photograph from his pocket, and glancing at it casually, passed it to the girl.

  ‘He’s a good old sport, he is,’ he announced, ‘but to look at him there you wouldn’t think butter would melt in his mouth. What do you say?’

  The girl wrinkled her pretty eyebrows.

  ‘But that isn’t the man,’ she exclaimed.

  Tanner took the card.

  ‘I’m a blooming idiot,’ he said. ‘I’ve shown you the wrong photo. This was the one I meant.’ He handed over the print of Cosgrove.

  ‘Why, yes,’ the girl answered unhesitatingly. ‘That’s him and no mistake.’

  ‘He’s a good soul enough,’ went on Tanner, ‘but he was very sick about that train, I can tell you.’

  They conversed for a few moments more as the Inspector lit one of his purchases. Then with a courteous ‘Goodnight,’ he left the bar.

  Whatever else might be true or false in Cosgrove’s statement, thought Tanner, it was at least bed rock that he had missed the 7.15 train as he had said. The thing now to be ascertained was whether he really had travelled by the 10.30.

  By dint of persistent inquiries the Inspector found a number of the men who had been on duty when that train left. But here he was not so successful. No one so far as he could learn had seen Cosgrove.

  But this was not surprising. Tanner could not and did not expect confirmation from these men. They had had no dealings with Cosgrove which would have attracted their attention to him. The point could be better tested at Grantham, where whoever gave him his luggage should remember the circumstance.

  Inspector Tanner glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to ten. Why, he thought, when he was so far, should he not carry the thing through right then? He looked up the time tables. A train left at 10.00 p.m. for Grantham, arriving at 12.28. The 10.30 p.m., following, reached the same station ten minutes later, proceeding at 12.43. If he went by the 10.00 he would have fifteen minutes at Grantham to make inquiries, and he could go on by the 10.30 to Montrose and interview Colonel Archdale. And if fifteen minutes proved insufficient for his Grantham business he could sleep there, and go on in the morning.

  Five minutes later he was in the train. Though, compared to that following, it was a slow train, it only made four stops—at Hatfield, Hitchin, Huntingdon and Peterborough. A minute before time it drew up at Grantham.

  Here Tanner had even less difficulty than at King’s Cross. An official at the stationmaster’s office remembered the episode of the telegram, and was able in a few seconds to find the porter to whom he had entrusted the matter. This man also clearly recollected the circumstances and unhesitatingly identified Cosgrove from his photograph.

  ‘Just tell me what occurred when you met Mr Ponson, will you?’ asked Tanner.

  ‘Well, sir,’ the man answered, ‘I was going along the train with ’is bag and coat, and ’e comes out of a first-class carriage bare ’eaded, and when ’e sees the bag ’e says, “that’s my bag, porter,” ’e says, and ’e gives ’is name. “Shove it in ’ere,” ’e says. ’E ’ad ’is ’at on the seat for to keep ’is place, and that’s all I knows about it.’

  The confirmation seemed so complete that Tanner was tempted to return to town instead of taking the long journey to Montrose. But before everything he was thorough. He had paid too dearly in the past for taking obvious things for granted. In this case every point must be tested.

  Soon, therefore, he was moving slowly out of Grantham on his way north. He had not been able to get a sleeping berth, but he made himself as comfortable as possible in the corner of a first-class compartment, and there he slept almost without moving till the bustle at Edinburgh aroused him. Here a restaurant car was attached, and shortly after Tanner moved in and breakfasted.

  At Montrose he went to a barber’s and wa
s shaved, then, hiring a car, he was driven out to the training stables.

  Colonel Archdale was an elderly man of a school Tanner had imagined was extinct—short, red-faced and peppery, and dressed in a check suit and riding breeches. The Inspector had called at the house, a low, straggling building of the bungalow type, but had been sent on to find its master at the stables, half a mile distant.

  ‘Mornin’,’ the Colonel greeted him, as Tanner handed him his card and asked for a few moments conversation. ‘Certainly, I’ll go up to the house with you in a minute.’

  ‘I shouldn’t, sir, dream of troubling you so far,’ Tanner assured him. ‘Besides, it is not necessary. A minute or two here when you are disengaged is all I want.’

  ‘Be gad, sir, you’re modest. Comin’ all the way from London for a minute or two,’ and calling out some directions to a groom, he led the way into a kind of small office at the end of the stable.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said as he seated himself before a small roll top desk, and pointed to a chair, ‘and what can I do for you?’

  ‘I am engaged, sir,’ Tanner answered, ‘in making some confidential inquiries into the movements of a man, who, I understand, was recently here—Mr Cosgrove Ponson of London.’

  ‘He was here’—the Colonel hesitated a moment—‘this day week. And what the devil has he been doin’?’

  ‘Nothing, sir, so far as we know. It is the case of another man altogether, but it is necessary for us to know if Mr Ponson really was out of London on that day.’

  ‘Well I’ve told you he was here. Is that evidence enough?’

  ‘Quite, sir, as far as that goes. But I would like also to know some details to assure myself if his business here was genuine. What was his business, if I might ask?’

  ‘You may ask and I’ll tell you too, be gad. He wanted to see Sir Jocelyn, that’s a three-year-old I’m goin’ to sell. Devilish good bit of horseflesh too. But he wouldn’t stretch to my figure. I wanted seven hundred, and he would only go five fifty. So it was no deal.’

  ‘He came about this time in the morning, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, and a confoundedly silly time it was to come. He was to have been here at six for the morning exercise, but he missed his train, so he said, in London.’

  ‘I understood so from him. Just one question more, sir. When was the arrangement about his visit made?’

  ‘Some days before; I think it was on Monday evening I got his wire asking would Thursday suit me.’

  ‘This is the man you mean, I presume?’ and Tanner took out Cosgrove’s photograph.

  The colonel nodded as he answered: ‘That’s he.’

  ‘And there was nothing, sir, in the whole episode that seemed to you suspicious or otherwise than it appeared on the surface?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Tanner rose.

  ‘Allow me then, sir, to express my thanks for your courtesy. That is all I want to know.’

  Declining an invitation to go up to the house for a drink—‘too devilish risky to keep it here, be gad’—he returned to Montrose and looked up the trains to London. There was one at 2.29 which, travelling by Edinburgh and Carlisle, reached St Pancras at 6.30 the following morning. This, he decided, would suit him admirably, and when it came in he got on board.

  As he sat a little later gazing out on to the smiling Fifeshire country, he went over once more, point by point, that portion of Cosgrove’s alibi which he had already checked. So far as he had gone it certainly seemed to him very complete. In the first place, not only was the journey north made with, so far as he could ascertain, a quite genuine purpose, but the selection of that particular night was reasonably accounted for. The arrangement for it had been made at least as early as the previous Monday, which, again, would be a reasonable time in advance. Tanner could see nothing in any way suspicious or suggestive of a plant about the whole business.

  Then, coming to details, the missing of the train at King’s Cross might of course have been faked, but there was no evidence to support such a supposition. On the contrary, everything he had learnt seemed to prove it genuine. But even if it had been a plant, it was demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that Cosgrove had missed the 7.15 p.m. as he said, and that, further, he had travelled to Montrose by the 10.30. Even as the case stood Tanner felt bound to accept the alibi, but if he could confirm Cosgrove’s statement of his visit to his rooms at 7.45 or 8 o’clock, and to the Follies about 10.00, any last shred of doubt that might remain must be dispelled. This, he decided, would be his next task.

  The following morning, therefore, he returned to Knightsbridge. Here, keeping his eye on Cosgrove’s door, he strolled about for nearly an hour before he was rewarded by seeing it open and Cosgrove emerge and disappear towards Piccadilly. He allowed some ten minutes more to elapse, then he walked to the door and rang. It was opened by the same dark, clean-shaven butler who had admitted him before. The man recognised his visitor, evidently with suspicion.

  ‘Mr Reginald Willoughby, the Albany?’ he asked with sarcasm, and a thinly veiled insolence in his tone.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Tanner answered easily. ‘I know my name is not Willoughby. It’s Tanner’—he handed over his real card—‘and if you’ll invite me in for a moment or two I’ll show you my credentials so that you’ll have no more doubt.’

  The butler was evidently impressed, and proffering the suggested invitation, led the way to a small sitting room.

  ‘Mr Ponson he phoned the Albany,’ he explained, ‘and they said there weren’t no one of that name there, so we was wondering about your little game.’

  Tanner, following his usual custom, rapidly sized up his man, and decided how he should deal with him. With the veneer of his calling removed the Inspector imagined he might prove a braggart, a bully, and a coward. He therefore took a strong line.

  ‘I suppose you know,’ he began, without heeding the other’s remark, ‘that Mr Cosgrove Ponson is under serious suspicion of the murder of his uncle, Sir William, at Luce Manor?’

  It was evident this was the last thing the butler had expected to hear. He stared at the Inspector in amazement.

  ‘Lord lumme!’ he stammered, ‘is that a fact?’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ Tanner went on sharply, ‘and I want some information from you. And let me advise you to give it to me correctly, for if you don’t you may find yourself in the Old Bailey charged as an accessory after the fact.’

  The man blenched, and Tanner felt that the estimate he had made of his character was correct.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about it,’ he growled sulkily.

  ‘Oh yes, you do. Mr Ponson told me he spent that Wednesday night here, or a part of it anyway. Is that true?

  Tanner had set his little trap to learn whether the butler had been primed with a story by Cosgrove. His victim did not answer for a time. Clearly a struggle was going on in his mind. Then at last he said, ‘Has Mr Cosgrove been arrested?’

  The question still further bore out the estimate Tanner had made of the man’s character. The Inspector could follow the thought which had prompted it. If the butler was to continue uninterruptedly in his master’s service, he would rather not have the latter know he had given him away, but if Cosgrove was already in custody he would keep on the safe side and tell the truth. Tanner did not assist him to a conclusion.

  ‘Never you mind that. You concentrate on avoiding arrest yourself. Now, will you answer my question?’

  After some further urging the statement came. Cosgrove had not spent the evening in his rooms. He had left about 6.45 to catch the 7.15 at King’s Cross, but he had returned unexpectedly in about an hour. He told the butler he had missed his train, and was travelling by a later one. He had gone out again, almost at once, and the butler had not seen him for two days.

  Tanner asked several searching questions, and ended up completely satisfied that the man was telling the truth. There was no doubt whatever that Cosgrove’s story was true in this particular also.

/>   There now remained to be checked only the matter of his visit to the Follies, and though Tanner was not certain of the necessity for this, his habit of thoroughness again asserted itself, and he drove to the theatre. There he learnt that there was no rehearsal that forenoon, and he went straight on to Chelsea. His ring at the actress’s flat was answered by a smartly dressed maid, to whom he handed his card, asking for an interview with her mistress.

  The girl disappeared and in a few moments returned.

  ‘Miss Belcher will see you now, sir.’

  He was ushered into a small drawing-room, charmingly furnished in pale blue, with white enamelled woodwork. The chairs were deep and luxurious though elegant, the walls panelled with silk and bearing a few good monochrome drawings, while on the dark polished floor were thick and, as the Inspector knew, costly rugs. But though everything in the room was dainty, its outstanding feature was its roses. Roses were everywhere, massed in great silver bowls and rare old cut-glass vases.

  ‘It’s a rose case,’ thought the Inspector whimsically, as he recalled that in two other sitting rooms he had had to visit—those of Miss Lois Drew and Cosgrove Ponson—he had found the same decoration, though in neither case with the same prodigal liberality as here.

  He waited for over half an hour and then the door opened and Miss Belcher appeared.

  Seeing her full face in the light from the window, he realised her beauty as he had not done in the restaurant. Though she was slightly—Tanner thought comfortable looking, though jealous people might have used the word stout—her features were so delicately moulded, her little, pouting mouth so daintily suggestive of dimples, her light blue eyes so large and appealing, her complexion so creamy, and above all and crowning all, her hair, so luxuriant and of so glorious a shade of red gold, that he began to understand the position she held in the popular favour. She was dressed in a garment which Tanner imagined was a négligé, a flowing robe of light-blue silk trimmed with the finest lace, beneath which peeped out the tiny toe of a gilt slipper.

  Tanner bowed low.