Death of a Beauty Queen

by E. R. Punshon

  Bobby’s next visit was to Maddox’s office in the City. The young man held apparently a sufficiently important position with his firm to have a small room to himself, and Bobby, left alone in it to wait, while Maddox, somewhere else in the building, was sent for, examined the apartment with a keen, intent interest.

  Personality is so strong and strange a thing there is nothing so insignificant we use we do not leave on it our own private stamp, though it may be in signs little easy to read. Bobby, now looking about him with the concentrated attention he had learnt from Mitchell, thought he could perceive enough to deduce a character flamboyant, pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, a little careless and even reckless, yet dominating, self-confident, and successful. The fountain-pen lying on the office table was of the most expensive make on the market, and heavily banded in gold, and there was a five-pound note near by, under a paper-weight representing a running greyhound. Only a somewhat careless, even reckless, individual would leave money and a pen of so valuable a make lying on the desk in a room to which access was evidently easy, just as only a flamboyant, pleasure-loving personality would use such a pen in business, or smoke the expensive and heavily scented cigarettes in the silver-mounted box near by. Yet the room had at the same time a business-like and efficient air. On another smaller table near by were several financial journals, neatly folded and laid together, and a list of what seemed Stock Exchange securities with the latest quotations carefully marked.

  ‘Does a bit on the Stock Exchange,’ Bobby thought, and reflected that perhaps the running-greyhound paper-weight was another indication of another form of gambling.

  On each side of the fireplace stood a bookcase, containing what seemed solid works of reference, and on the top of the one nearest the window, and facing the chair that a caller would naturally occupy, was a row of seven silver challenge cups. There were several photographs, too, all of Maddox himself – even one of what seemed to be the firm’s premises in Buenos Aires showed Maddox standing at the entrance as though he were the sole owner. Another photograph showed him in what Bobby thought at first was fancy dress, and then recognized as the traditional gaucho costume – hat and spurs and leggings, all complete. In another similar photograph Maddox was in the act of throwing a lasso, and in yet another he was sitting a rearing horse with a great appearance of skill and mastery. But Bobby knew enough of horsemanship to guess that the rearing was not quite spontaneous. A set piece, Bobby thought, staged so that an effective picture could be taken.

  ‘Must have got on well to have a room like this to himself at his age,’ Bobby thought, ‘but not quite so well as he wants you to think, or he wouldn’t take such pains to impress himself.’

  The door opened, and Maddox himself came in. He looked pale and heavy-eyed, as was only natural after what had occurred, but seemed brisk and self-confident as ever.

  ‘Thought some of you chaps would be along,’ he said. ‘I’ve been expecting you all day. Have a cigarette – help yourself. Those are rather good in that box, but I’ve some gaspers, too, if you prefer them. He produced some that, if not exactly ‘gaspers,’ were less expensive and unscented, and, when Bobby politely declined, helped himself to one from the first box. ‘Bulgarian,’ he explained. ‘Always smoke them. Of course, anything I can do to help... Sure you won’t have a cigarette?’

  ‘We’re not supposed to – not on duty,’ Bobby explained. ‘I was admiring your photographs, Mr Maddox. South America, aren’t they?’

  ‘Brazil and the Argentine chiefly,’ Maddox answered. ‘We’ve big interests in both places. Used to get a lot of riding out there. Missed it when I got home. I did try trotting round the Park for a time, but that seems so infernally slow when you’ve been used to a gallop over pampas that stretch away for hundreds of miles.’

  ‘I see you are throwing a lasso in one,’ remarked Bobby.

  ‘Yes, I got quite good at it – came in second in a competition once. Only amateurs allowed to compete, though,’ he added smiling, ‘the genuine gaucho article was barred. Wonders some of those chaps are, but they thought me quite good for an amateur – and an Englishman.’

  ‘I noticed you have some challenge cups there,’ Bobby observed.

  Maddox turned quickly as if to look at them. There were seven of them, three on each side of one very big one that appeared to be a rowing trophy, as it was supported on crossed oars. To Bobby there came irresistibly the impression that his mention of these cups had startled Maddox considerably, had even alarmed him, though how that could be, Bobby could not even imagine. Yet when Maddox turned again he was very pale, his eyes were uneasy, his hands not quite steady. It was as if some swift danger had shown itself to him, as when on the road at night a sudden obstruction appears.

  Bobby told himself crossly that he was letting his imagination run away with him. How, in the name of all that’s reasonable, could a sudden danger show itself in a row of challenge cups won probably years ago, and apparently all of them in South America, many hundreds of miles away in distance, and in time long before Carrie Mears and Claude Maddox had met.

  ‘No sleep last night, that’s what it is,’ Bobby decided.

  He went on to explain that he was trying to trace a man named Quin. Quin, Bobby explained, had paid a somewhat mysterious visit to the cinema shortly before the murder, and the authorities would like to find him. Probably he had nothing to do with the case, but he ought to be found and questioned. Maddox could give no help. He did not much think he had even heard the name before. He was quite certain he had never known any person called by it; he was equally certain he had never heard it mentioned by Miss Mears.

  Bobby felt fairly certain that in this Maddox was speaking the truth. Then he asked about the engagement-ring Maddox had spoken of buying in Regent Street. Maddox repeated what he had said before. He had given it to Carrie, after having met her as she was leaving her office at the conclusion of work, and while walking to the station with her. He had seen her into the train, but had not accompanied her as he had a business appointment to keep. He repeated, too, his previous story that after disposing of this business he had gone straight home, had his supper, and then, feeling nervous and agitated, had gone out for a spin on his motorcycle, finally proceeding to the cinema when, on ringing up to inquire about Carrie’s success, he had been informed of the tragedy.

  When he had repeated all this, he added, somewhat petulantly:

  ‘You had the whole thing the other night, why do you want it again? Trying to catch me out?’

  ‘We have to check everything,’ Bobby answered.

  ‘It’s the ring being missing that’s worrying you, I suppose,’ Maddox said. ‘If it can’t be found, someone must have pinched it – the murderer probably. I suppose you’ll keep an eye on the pawnshops and so on. I expect poor Carrie had it in her handbag. You said that had been stolen, didn’t you?’

  ‘I think all we know for certain,’ Bobby said, ‘is that there didn’t seem to be one anywhere about, and yet every woman carries a bag. So we rather assumed it must have been taken away by somebody.’

  Maddox agreed, adding, again, that it was an expensive one, worth stealing, even apart from the question of whatever it might have contained. So then Bobby departed, still a good deal worried in his mind over the swift agitation Maddox had shown at the reference to his array of the seven challenge cups.

  ‘Only that’s cracked,’ Bobby told himself once more. ‘What can challenge cups, won long enough ago, thousands of miles away, have to do with it? Keep your head screwed on a bit tighter, my boy,’ he adjured himself.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  An Old Wife’s Tale

  It was Inspector Ferris who was to make the formal examination of the room Carrie Mears had occupied in the flat rented by her aunt, Miss Perry, that was still under the lock and seal of the authorities. But in order to carry out Mitchell’s idea that Miss Perry would be more likely to give useful information during a friendly chat than under direct question and answer, Bobby
had instructions to arrive first, and, during the interval of waiting for his superior officer, to do his best to get the old lady into a gossipy and communicative mood.

  ‘Because what we need,’ Mitchell explained again to Bobby, ‘is to get as clear a notion as we can of all these people. We are groping in the dark till we can establish motive, and we can’t even make a guess at that till we know what sort of people we have to deal with. The more you can get Miss Perry to tell you about the girl, the better idea we shall have of where to look for her murderer.’

  Bobby had been a little afraid that he might find the old lady had entirely collapsed under the weight of so terrible and so unexpected a tragedy impinging on her placid, uneventful existence. A little to his surprise, and even more to his relief, its chief effect seemed, however, to have been to galvanize her into a more alert and livelier mood. But there had never been much sympathy or affection between her and her niece – they had found each other mutually useful, and that had been about all.

  Miss Perry, therefore, in her rickety, comfortable old chair, with her medicine and her knitting, and her picture paper on the small table by her side, was in just the excited, communicative mood Mitchell had hoped Bobby would be able to turn to account. But the idea, though a good one, worked out in an unexpected way, as sometimes happens with good ideas.

  Bobby began by asking permission to wait there the arrival of his superior officer, who was to come to look through Carrie Mears’s papers and possessions in the hope of finding useful clues. Miss Perry had no objection, but repeated her previous warning that it was little likely anything would be found of any use.

  ‘Carrie was always a close one,’ Miss Perry wheezed between two fits of coughing. ‘She never told you anything.’

  Bobby was aware of a possibly unjust suspicion that in time past Miss Perry herself had done a little private examining on her own account of her niece’s belongings and had not found much to reward her curiosity. He said carelessly: ‘Well, one never knows. Sometimes even an old bill or a picture postcard gives us a hint where to look. Or you might be able to help us. Even the most trifling detail might turn out important. But I don’t suppose it’s likely there’s anything much you can tell us.’ Leaving this remark to sink in, he added: ‘I’m admiring that picture of Hamlet over the mantelpiece. Oil, isn’t it? Is it a portrait?’

  ‘My father,’ Miss Perry explained. She named an actor well known in his day, but forgotten now – Bobby, for instance, had never heard of him. ‘He toured his own company, she went on, with nicely adjusted pride and regret. ‘Lost every penny he had doing it, too. The Perrys – of course that wasn’t the name he used on the stage – and the Irwins are both Brush Hill families. Leslie Irwin’s grandfather was a member of my father’s company at one time.’

  ‘Really?’ exclaimed Bobby, interested. ‘That’s peculiar – an odd coincidence.’ He did not see that the fact could have much bearing on the recent tragedy, but it seemed strange. ‘Curious to think of their grandfathers – Leslie Irwin’s and Miss Mears’s – being colleagues so long ago.’

  ‘If you call it being colleagues,’ said Miss Perry, a little stiffly. ‘Of course, it was father’s own company, and he always played leads while Irwin only took small parts – very small parts.’

  ‘He wasn’t a very successful actor, then?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘No talent whatever,’ pronounced Miss Perry. ‘I’ve heard father say so himself – he always said that was the difficulty that wrecked him, finding any supporting talent. And Irwin had less even than most. But all the Irwins are like that. They’ve all got the theatre in their blood, but none of them can act.’

  ‘I thought Mr Irwin – Leslie Irwin’s father, I mean – was very strict in his views. I was told he had never before even been in a cinema, and never in a theatre since he was a child and his father took him.’

  ‘He didn’t dare,’ said Miss Perry.

  ‘Really? Do you think it was that?’

  ‘I do. He didn’t dare. I’ve never been in a theatre for years – I wouldn’t go if you paid me. But that’s because I know it too well – sickened me, it has. But Paul was afraid. He knew what the theatre did to his father.’

  ‘That’s extraordinarily interesting,’ Bobby said. ‘But wasn’t he – the father, I mean – wasn’t he the founder of the Brush Hill Building Society?’

  ‘He was,’ agreed Miss Perry, ‘but that was after he left the stage, because no one would have anything to do with him anymore.’

  ‘Was he as bad as all that?’

  ‘It wasn’t his acting. It was because one of the ladies of the company – well, at the inquest they brought it in accidental death. She was found at the bottom of some steps with her neck broken. Stone steps and slippery, and so they brought it in an accident. Only there was talk – a lot of talk. He had to give evidence – Paul s father, I mean. Accidental death, the verdict was, but after that no one wanted him anymore.’

  ’So he had to give up acting?’

  ‘Yes. And started the Brush Hill Building Society. But he always hankered after the theatre, and, though he had no chance of an engagement after what had happened, he could still take an interest in new productions and so on. Find money to back them sometimes.’

  ‘He still had some money, then?’

  ‘Not a penny.’

  ‘Well, then...?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Miss Perry, and was taken by a violent fit of coughing. When she recovered, she said slowly: ‘There were stories got about. Not so much in Brush Hill itself. In Brush Hill they don’t know much about theatre business. But people in the profession wondered. In Brush Hill they didn’t know he was even interested in stage affairs, but the profession knew he was secretary and manager of a building society. After a time Brush Hill people did begin to get a little uneasy, but he was clever with figures, and he had a stock of funny stories and a way of telling them. They used to say in Brush Hill a general meeting of the Building Society was as good as a play – he kept the shareholders and depositors laughing all the time, and, if anyone asked an awkward question, he didn’t answer it, he just told another funny story and everybody laughed and the question was forgotten. Then he took a chill, walking home in the rain after a first night he had put money in that was as bad a flop as could be. He was dead from pneumonia in twenty-four hours, and Paul had to take his place. Paul was only twenty-two, but there was no one else to do it, for there was no one else could understand the books. They had been kept in what was almost a kind of shorthand, but Paul said he could straighten them out – and so he did, only it took time. Some of the committee backed him and some didn’t, but he hung on, fighting all the time, and the more those against him tried to down him, the harder he fought back. Once they all turned on him and told him to resign. He refused flatly. He said they had the power to dismiss him, but if they used it they would be in bankruptcy in twenty-four hours – and there wouldn’t be much left for the sweeping up, either. But he told them he could save them, and he would, though only if they left him alone. So they did. Every night I could see his light burning in his office – that was in the old place, before the new building was put up. He was secretary, manager, cashier, clerk, office-boy – everything. He wouldn’t have anyone else in the office – not then. It s different now – a big staff they’ve got; but the first time I knew he had won through was when he told me they were engaging two new clerks. There’s many living yet in Brush Hill still remember how he worked like the tides that never rest or are still – twenty hours a day, often enough – until at long last the society was safe again.’

  ‘You think when his father died there was a deficiency?’

  ‘I think there was nothing else,’ Miss Perry retorted. ‘I think it was all one huge deficiency. But he fought it out – dear Lord Christ, how he fought! Day and night, day after night, year after year – any little slip, any awkward question almost, any unsatisfied curiosity, and there was his father known for a thief and a forger, and the Buildin
g Society bankrupt, and half Brush Hill ruined – and gaol for himself, most like, though I don’t believe he ever thought of that, but only of his father’s name and all the little people in Brush Hill with all their savings for their old age all swept away. That’s why he married.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes. There was one man who suspected – at least, perhaps others suspected, only they were willing to wait, and this man wasn’t. The others hoped to save their money, and knew Paul was their only chance. But this man hadn’t any money of his own in the Society, he was only a trustee for a fund he didn’t care much about. Most likely he more than suspected. He had a daughter. She had no looks, a pasty-face and flat hair, and one shoulder higher than the other, and a tongue like a snake’s. Nagged her father fit to drive any man to drink, and, what with her tongue and her looks, he had long ago given up any hope of ever getting her off his hands. Paul – Mr Irwin – I called him Paul then – Paul knew this man was going to insist on an investigation and he knew he had figures ready. Paul knew he was going to post a letter with them on the Wednesday to the chairman, ready for the committee meeting on the Thursday. That Wednesday evening Paul called and asked the girl to marry him. Jumped at him, she did. Her only chance, and she knew it, and she wasn’t going to miss it, either. The chairman never got that letter, it was never posted.’

  She lapsed into silence, and Bobby, profoundly interested as he was, was silent too, making no comment. He was wondering what part in this strange tale had been taken by the commonplace-looking old woman who had told it and sat there in her chair, wheezing, rheumatic, her bottle of medicine and her knitting by her side, looking as if none of the storms of life had ever troubled her dull repose, as if nothing but her medicine and her knitting had ever interested her.

  ‘That Wednesday,’ she said abruptly, ‘before he proposed to the girl he married, he came and saw another girl. He told her what he was going to do. It was the last time they ever saw each other.’