Antidote to Venom

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  His next discovery was not so immediately promising, but it led to an even more satisfactory conclusion. Another stack of papers showed that Capper had been solicitor to a Miss Lucy Pentland, and when French learned who this lady was, he realised that he need go no further. Here was a connection, hitherto unsuspected, with the Zoo, and more than that, with the one member of its staff who could most easily have stolen the snake! French was thrilled, and dropped everything to follow up this line of research. The correspondence shewed, first, that though Capper had been employed by George on Miss Pentland’s death, he had not yet applied for probate. Whether or not this was suspicious, French didn’t know, but when at last he learnt that Capper had held the deceased’s securities, he felt like a ship master when in tricky waters a fog suddenly lifts.

  The next enquiry was obvious. The securities must be produced and checked over. The office records showed that these were not in the bank, but in a safe deposit in Birmington. With Capper’s keys French and Rankin returned to the city.

  Then suspicion became certainty. Not a single one of the securities remained, and French’s examination of the deceased’s books showed that they had been sold at various times during the previous ten years.

  It took a little time to calculate their present worth, but eventually French found that George’s loss amounted to over eight thousand pounds. Here, he realised, was an entirely adequate motive for the accomplice also.

  He sat thinking over what George must have done, but nowhere could he see how any of his actions could be established in court. However, it was inconceivable that the man had nowhere made a slip. All that was necessary was to trace his probable movements, and he would surely come on the required evidence.

  One obvious line of research would be into his finances. Rankin’s routine inquiries showed that George was living on the scale which might naturally be expected from a man in his position. It might, however, be that in his life there was some secret expenditure corresponding to Capper’s gambling. The turf, cards, an expensive hobby, women: there were innumerable ways of getting rid of money, and it would be French’s duty to see if he could find any such financial leakage in Surridge’s life.

  There were two avenues of research therefore—into Surridge’s movements on the night of the theft of the snake, and into his life in general. Were there any other lines?

  Suddenly, it occurred to French, that one episode which Rankin had noted without comment was really highly suspicious: George’s story of leaving his keys in the side door of the Zoo.

  Was it likely, French now asked himself, that a man who had the custody of such vitally important keys would neglect to wear them on a chain? But if George had worn them on a chain, he could not have stepped over to a car, leaving them in the lock. Then French saw that the whole episode of the car was improbable. The driver had stopped to ask if this were the way to Bursham, but French remembered having seen a quite adequate direction board to Bursham at the end of that very street. A driver turning into Calshort Road would have seen the notice, and therefore the question would have been superfluous.

  On the other hand, if a snake were to be stolen in the early future by the use of just those keys, what more likely than that George would try to account for their having got into other hands for a long enough period to enable impressions to be taken?

  French returned to his hotel determined that before he went to bed that night he would re-read the dossier in the light of his new discoveries. He believed that with this fresh outlook he would find some further lines of investigation, one of which would give him what he wanted.

  Chapter XXII

  Venom: Through the Tongue

  French found his study of the dossier disappointing. He came on no facts from which by a brilliant tour de force of deductive reasoning he could prove George’s guilt to an admiring court. The man seemed to have been distressingly efficient in his actions. Apparently he had left no clues for investigating detectives to pick up. French might himself be sure of what had happened, but to prove it was going to be troublesome.

  The chief difficulty was to carry on an investigation without letting the subject know what was in progress, and thus enabling him to follow Capper’s distressing example. This, it occurred to French—the one crumb of comfort in the affair—would be better done by local men who knew the place, and he decided his first step must be to see the Chief Constable and discuss with him a plan of campaign.

  French had, of course, reported his discoveries after the search into Capper’s papers, but Stone had left to him the further conduct of the case. Now he was surprised to find Stone a little embarrassed.

  “I heard quite incidentally something of which I thought nothing at the time, but which in the light of all you say becomes suggestive. As a matter of fact, it was a bit of gossip my wife repeated in an idle moment. She shouldn’t have done it, of course, and I rather hesitate to use anything so obtained, but there it is, I think I must give you the hint. There’s a Miss Corrin who lives out near the Zoo. She’s one of those women with brains and energy and no outlet for either, who minds everybody else’s business, and to whom spiteful gossip is the breath of life.”

  He glanced at French, who nodded appreciatively. He knew those women. They were what used to be called “dangerous.” They came to the Yard with tales against their neighbours and you had to be extraordinarily careful not to act on them rashly, or you might find yourself sustaining an action for wrongful arrest.

  “She had been full of a story of going off to some God-forsaken hole to look for a maid—it was a place called Bramford, with a rather decent old inn—and seeing Surridge drive up in a sports car with a pretty stranger. She told the story with all due suggestion and innuendo when Mrs. Surridge was present—my wife was there, too, as a matter of fact—and Mrs. Surridge turned it off with some tale about a friend who was house-hunting. But my wife thought it was a true bill.”

  French listened to this story with profound satisfaction. “That may be just the hint we want, sir,” he declared. “Did Miss Corrin give the date when it happened?”

  “No, I’ve told you everything I know. If you want more you’ll have to go to the lady herself.”

  “I’d rather avoid it if I could. The inn people might recognise a photograph, or we might get something else there. Or perhaps from the car. Any of your men know what kind of car Surridge drives?”

  Stone made an inquiry on his desk telephone. Presently a constable entered.

  “Doesn’t Mr. Surridge of the Zoo live on your beat?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What kind of car does he drive?”

  “A Mortin, sir, an old model. Looks about twelve or fourteen horse, and about five years old, but I don’t know exactly.”

  “Ever seen any of them in a sports car?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Looks as if the car wasn’t Surridge’s,” Stone went on, when the constable had withdrawn. “He might have hired it.”

  “He might have hired it, yes,” French agreed, “or it might have been the woman’s, or one or other might have borrowed it. Perhaps we should try round the city garages before we go any further.”

  “It’s a chance. I agree it’s worth taking.”

  A number of constables were enlisted and sent out to work various areas, while French sat considering what further steps he must take if the inquiry drew blank. However, before an hour had passed, one of the men rang up.

  “Speaking from Bailey’s Garage in Norfolk Street, sir,” came the voice. “Mr. Surridge ran an account here for the occasional hire of an N. J. Gnat sports car. Is that what you require?”

  “Sounds like it,” French answered, with satisfaction. “Just stay where you are, and I’ll be with you directly.”

  French called Rankin and in a few minutes the two men reached the garage. There recourse to the books showed all the occasions on whic
h Surridge had taken out the Gnat. French noted the dates and hours, and then minutely examined the car, this latter unhappily being without result.

  “Was the car used by others than Mr. Surridge?” he asked the manager.

  Another book was turned up. “Only on one other occasion during the period,” the manager returned. “That type of car hires better in summer than winter.”

  This made it easier for French. Within an hour a general call had gone out to all neighbouring stations, asking whether during the previous few months a car of such and such details had been seen.

  While waiting for a reply, French and Rankin set off for Bramford, and drawing up at the inn, asked to see the manager.

  He proved a fussy little man of the self important type. He declared that it was impossible for either himself or any of his staff to identify a call from a man and woman on some unknown date several weeks earlier, and thought the officers were unreasonable to expect it. While admittedly they had not a great many for tea in the winter—making their money in the bar—they still had too many to recall individuals.

  Without comment, French handed over his batch of photographs.

  The manager didn’t recognise any of them, but when the waitress was called, she picked out George. “That gentleman was in some time ago for tea,” she declared. “He sat there in the window, and there was a lady with him.”

  “You didn’t recognise the lady?”

  The waitress had never seen the lady before. But she was an observant girl and had noticed a good deal about her. Presently French had obtained a vaguely sketched portrait of Nancy herself, a rough description of her clothes, and a detailed and highly technical specification of her red hat. The waitress, it appeared, trimmed her own hats and she had approved Nancy’s and decided to have one like it.

  This was more than French could have hoped for, and when he returned to Birmington and found that a reply had been received to the general call about the car, he felt that his progress was almost uncanny.

  The sergeant in charge of the small station at Neverton reported that one of his patrols had on three separate occasions noticed a car of the type and number standing on the road at various places near the village. In each case a man was sitting in it reading a book. On the first occasion the constable had seen nothing unusual in the matter and had simply passed on. But on the second and third he remembered having seen the car before, and on general principles he noted its particulars in his book. There was, of course, no reason why he should have interfered, and he had not done so.

  French next morning set off for Neverton and saw the sergeant and constable.

  “Now, another matter,” he went on, after discussing the car. “I have the description of a lady here. Can you identify her?”

  The officers looked at each other, and the sergeant called in the remaining members of his force. One of them, a young man whom French at once imagined might have an eye for the fair sex, somewhat sheepishly propounded a query. “What about Mrs. Weymore?” he asked. “She’s something like that and she had a hat of that colour.”

  “Good looking?” asked French, drily.

  On this point the young constable was not to be drawn. He thought, however, she might please some people.

  “She live on your beat?” asked French again.

  “She did, sir. But she’s left the village.”

  “Tell me what you know about her.”

  Mrs. Weymore, it appeared, had been companion to an old lady, a Mrs. Sherwin, who had died some six months earlier. The house had then been closed and was still empty. Mrs. Weymore had left the district and the constable did not know where she had gone.

  “Go and see if she left an address anywhere,” the sergeant directed, with an inquiring look at French.

  “Good thought,” French approved. “He might get a photograph of her also, if he can. I need scarcely wait,” he went on. “If you get any information let me know at Birmington.”

  As Rankin drove him back to the city, French again examined the list of George’s car hirings. There was a suggestive gap towards the end of June, then the trips had begun again about the second week in July. Did this, French wondered, mean that Mrs. Weymore, if she were really the woman, had left the district on her employer’s death, returning to some other job a fortnight later? It would at least, he felt, be worth acting on this assumption.

  At police headquarters he drafted a circular giving the lady’s description, and saying she was believed to have taken a house, a flat, rooms or a job somewhere about the second week in the preceding July.

  Two days later there was a reply from the sergeant in the little village of Cleerby. A cottage in the neighbourhood, which had been lying vacant for some time, had been taken about the time mentioned by a lady who answered very well the description. She was still in occupation. In accordance with the terms of the circular the police had not approached her, and they could not say, therefore, whether or not she had come from Neverton.

  Two hours later French and the local sergeant were discreetly observing Rose Cottage. They presently saw Nancy take her car from the garage and drive slowly off. French had intended, if this occurred, to try to search the cottage, but now he thought he might do better.

  “Who’s the agent of the place?” he asked the sergeant, and when he heard it was a firm in Cleerby, he drove there at once.

  “My inquiries are connected with an entirely separate affair,” he told the agent. “I have nothing whatever against Mrs. Southern,” as the lady’s name appeared to be. “All I am interested in is the negotiations about the taking of the house.”

  The agent hummed and hawed. The chief inspector would understand that his clients’ business was confidential. However, when French promised that nothing he said would be repeated unnecessarily, he somewhat reluctantly told what he knew.

  French was interested to find that the cottage had been bought by Messrs. Abraham & Co. In the evening he went to London and early the following day he called on the senior partner.

  That call gave him the evidence he required. It was George Surridge, he found, who had tried to borrow, and who was therefore hard up. It was George Surridge for whom the cottage had been bought. It was George Surridge who had been carrying on this intrigue, which had run him into a heavy expenditure. Doubtless he had been depending on his inheritance to square his account. And when the inheritance proved non-existant the temptation to join with Capper in the murder of Burnaby would be overwhelming. All this, French was satisfied, could be substantiated by an examination of the man’s papers. He felt indeed that already he had obtained sufficient evidence for a conviction.

  At the same time it would be better if he could connect his suspect more directly with the crime. He had felt this all through and had been working on other lines of inquiry. It happened that one of these produced its fruit at about the same time.

  It had occurred to him that if Surridge really was accomplice of Capper’s, they must have met to discuss the plot. Could he trace these meetings?

  When would they have taken place? Probably not till after Miss Pentland’s death, as this was doubtless the event which brought the whole matter to a head. And as soon after that as possible, as the question of the inheritance would arise with the reading of the will after the funeral. The funeral was on the 27th October.

  French turned up the list of dates on which George had hired the Gnat. Two following the 27th October, on the 7th and 10th November respectively, interested him, because while most of the hirings were in the afternoon between lunch and dinner, these two were in the evening between 8.0 p.m. and 12.30 a.m. On no other occasion had George been so late.

  Could these hirings, French wondered, represent visits to Capper? With this in mind he went back to Bursham and consulted the local officers. An intensive search was made for traces of parking, and eventually some valuable evidence was obtained.
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br />   At about ten o’clock on the evening of the 10th November, the second of the two dates French had queried, a lad named James Grant had observed an N.J. Gnat car parked down a side street some forty yards from Capper’s door. This lad lived at the farther end of this side street, and he was returning from a Boy Scout entertainment. It happened that he was a car fan and this particular model had always represented to him the ne plus ultra of two-seater design, that which he would himself buy had he the wherewithal. He even remembered the number, as he had wondered from where the car had come. The constable who made this discovery at once checked up the information. An appeal to the Secretary of the Scouts’ organisation confirmed the date and the probable time at which Grant would be passing Capper’s.

  George then had undoubtedly called on Capper on the evening of the 10th November. And what had immediately followed? On the 11th November, the very next day, George had left his keys in the side door. Surely here was cause and effect? French was positive that the key episode was the first item of the scheme which had been arranged at that evening meeting, and he was equally certain that a jury would take the same view. Further, was there not an element of design in parking the car out of sight of Capper’s door? French felt he was getting on.

  Indeed, he thought he had now a sufficient case to justify an arrest. Once again he summarised it, as he would present it to the public prosecutor.

  George Surridge had for some time been carrying on an intrigue which involved the frequent hire of an expensive car, and doubtless he gave the woman presents, and there was other outlay on various matters. He had bought her a cottage and had got Messrs. Abraham to advance the money. He had also tried to borrow from them for other purposes. He was therefore definitely short of cash.