Information Received

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby.

  Mitchell was playing with his coffee spoon and staring at the same time at the busy theatre entrance opposite.

  ‘Doing good business over there,’ he remarked. ‘Do you know, I’m not sure, after reading your report, that the solution of the whole thing is not, quite literally, staring us in the face at this very minute.’

  ‘Sir?’ said Bobby, startled, looking vaguely round the tea-shop, as if searching for the solution referred to that Mitchell apparently thought was visible.

  ‘Have to wait,’ Mitchell mused, ‘and see if things go on pointing to the same conclusion – or if it strikes anyone else the same way.’

  He looked sharply at Bobby as he spoke, and Bobby knew well that he was being tested. He felt there was something Mitchell hoped and expected him to say, but as he had not the least idea what it could be, he had to remain silent. Mitchell looked a little disappointed, as if Bobby had failed in some way, and Bobby remarked rather hurriedly, partly perhaps in order to prevent Mitchell from dwelling on this disappointment whatever it might be:

  ‘Mr Lester is being trailed then, sir?’

  ‘Of course,’ answered Mitchell, ‘they all are and most of them know it, though I’m not sure Lester does. He doesn’t seem as if he were noticing much just now. You hadn’t known about the trailing? One up to the other fellow if you didn’t spot him. He reported Lester’s saying good night to Miss Laing, too, only he put it rather differently. How he put it was: “Said good night to girl on doorstep and kissed same.” Left us to guess whether it was girl or doorstep got the kiss, but likely enough we should have guessed right even without your report. What have you been doing this morning?’

  Bobby ran over the names of the theatres he had visited and Mitchell said:

  ‘You haven’t been to the Regency yet, then?’

  ‘No, sir, I was just going when I saw you.’

  ‘Shakespeare they are playing there, isn’t it?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Any good, do you know?’

  ‘The papers say it’s a very fine and novel reading of Hamlet,’ Bobby answered. ‘I’ve not seen it myself.’

  Mitchell produced some money.

  ‘When you’re over there,’ he said, ‘get me two stalls for to-night. Leave the tickets at the Yard, will you? I promised my old woman a show to-night, only I wanted something jolly with lots of legs and music and she wanted Shakespeare, so we’ve decided to compromise on Hamlet. When you’re married, always compromise with your wife when you can, Owen.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bobby. ‘What shall I do if there are no seats left for to-night?’

  ‘If there are no seats left for a Shakespearian production in the West End of London,’ said Mitchell benevolently, ‘you needn’t do anything, because the end of the world will have arrived. Afterwards you can go on to Lincoln’s Inn, and try to get Peter Carsley, or Mr Marsden, or both if you can, to have lunch with you. You can make it a good lunch. After all, if one has Oxford graduates in the Force one may as well make use of them, and I daresay lunch was one of the things you studied at the ’Varsity – the Assistant Commissioner always squirms when I say “’Varsity” to him, I don’t know why.’

  ‘To squirm at that word, sir,’ explained Bobby, ‘is one of the more important points of the U-ni-versity curriculum.’

  ‘Is it, indeed?’ said Mitchell, ‘now that’s interesting. Before you send your lunch bill in to Expenses, give it to me to initial, and then perhaps they’ll let it through, if you’ve luck. But I don’t say it’ll run to champagne, mind.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Talk to ’em,’ said Mitchell as he rose to depart, ‘talk to ’em good and long and then they’ll talk back again. Champagne might make ’em suspicious but talk won’t, and it’s not in human nature to listen long to another fellow without wanting to get your own word in. Remember what I told you before – talk and it shall be talked unto you. Oh, and if you like, you can tell them both about Lester getting drunk at the night club.’

  He nodded and departed, leaving Bobby quite convinced that in these last words lay the cause and reason of the instructions given him.

  CHAPTER 20

  A SECOND WARNING

  That Mitchell had some obscure motive in wanting those tickets for that night’s performance at the Regency, and that in his choice of an evening’s entertainment Mrs Mitchell’s alleged preferences had but small part, Bobby was also well assured. Yet what that motive might be, he could not even begin to guess. Had he not been under definite orders to spend his evening at ‘The Green Man’, he felt he would have been tempted to visit the theatre himself, even though it was only a Shakespearian revival, in the hope of getting some hint as to what was in the Superintendent’s mind.

  But perhaps that would have been a breach of discipline. It was Mitchell who was playing the game, it was he at whose will the pieces moved, Bobby himself was but a pawn whose business was merely to proceed modestly from square to square at the player’s will.

  Most likely there would be someone at the theatre Mitchell wished to watch, and as there was not too much time to spare, if he were to be in Lincoln’s Inn by lunch time, Bobby hurried across the road straight to the box office. There he bought the two stalls Mitchell required and at the same time showed his sketch. But though it seemed to rouse a certain interest, and was looked at long and carefully, complete ignorance of the original was protested.

  ‘No one I’ve ever seen, I’m sure of that,’ decided the box office, and as all this had taken time, and it was now later than ever, Bobby had to hurry away as fast as he could back to Scotland Yard with the tickets and then on to Lincoln’s Inn, where he arrived just in time to come face to face with Peter as that young gentleman emerged from the office of his firm. Peter knew him again at once.

  ‘Come to relieve the other fellow who’s been trotting after me all day like a pet dog?’ Peter asked him harshly.

  Bobby for a moment did not answer but looked at Peter curiously, for the other’s appearance startled, almost shocked him. In the bloodshot eyes of the young man there was a look as of a strain too great to be borne much longer; the whole expression of the pale, drawn face was that of a man not far from collapse, and yet at the same time the mouth was still as firmly set as ever, the square chin had still its defiant, upward tilt. It was as if in the contest between the red-rimmed, nervous eyes and the grim-set chin and mouth, the latter still had the upper hand and would not yield it easily.

  ‘You don’t look well, Mr Carsley,’ Bobby said.

  ‘A murder in the family is a trying experience, especially when you know you are suspected and have a chap hanging after you all day long,’ Peter retorted, and would have passed on, but Bobby stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘I wanted to ask you,’ he said. ‘Have you seen Mr Lester this morning?’

  ‘Lester? No. Why?’

  ‘He visited a night club last night and got very drunk,’ Bobby explained. ‘I was wondering how he was this morning.’

  ‘He did what?’ Peter asked, and it was evident that for some reason this information disturbed him. ‘Lester? Are you sure?’

  ‘Our information is that Mr Lester, after visiting Miss Laing last night and persuading her to agree to their getting married immediately, went on to a night club and got very drunk. He would probably have been run in by some of our people, only that friends saw him home.’

  Peter made no comment, but stood silent and moody, evidently considering this news that for some hidden reason so much troubled him. Was it danger, Bobby wondered, that the other sensed in Lester’s indiscretion, or was it something that cut deeper still?

  ‘Mr Carsley,’ Bobby said, ‘I don’t think you are being frank with us. Wouldn’t it be better if you were? That is, if you want your father-in-law’s murderer brought to justice?’ Peter looked at him but made no answer. None was required, the look was enough. It very clearly meant that whatever Peter knew, nothing would ever make him tell. Whe
ther he were guilty himself, or knew something that pointed to another’s guilt, or whether in fact he only entertained some possibly ill-founded suspicions, it was certain he would never speak. But after a time he said slowly: ‘How do you know there is a murderer? How do you know it was – a – murder?’

  ‘If it wasn’t murder, what was it?’ Bobby asked sharply, more than a little startled to find this same idea put forward once again. ‘Isn’t the doctor’s evidence good enough?’ he demanded.

  ‘I forgot the doctor,’ Peter answered. He added: ‘You are following Lester about, too, are you?’

  ‘We’re following, as you call it, everyone who shows unwillingness to help us get at the truth,’ Bobby answered tartly, ‘or who seems to be trying to shelter the murderer. A suspicious attitude, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I know you suspect me,’ Peter answered quietly. ‘It’s rather a wonder you haven’t made up your mind to arrest me. There’s that – coincidence – of my having cut my hand just as the fellow must have done you say you saw climbing the garden wall next door. And it’s a fact I can’t say whereabouts exactly I was at the time it happened; and it’s another fact that because of it my wife gets all her father’s money, instead of nothing. Only does one murder one’s father-in-law to get his money for one’s wife? Matter of taste, I suppose, but I don’t think I ever wanted to marry a rich wife.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why you’ve not been arrested,’ Bobby suggested. ‘Mr Carsley, there’s a lot I should like to talk over with you and it’s getting near lunch time. If you will come and have something to eat with me somewhere, we could talk more comfortably.’

  ‘Is this the new technique of – shadowing, do you call it?’ Peter asked suspiciously.

  ‘Of course not,’ Bobby said impatiently. ‘In your case you must remember you’ve given us double reason for wanting to keep you under observation. You’ve thrown a heavy responsibility on us by telling us you consider yourself threatened by Mr Marsden. If that came to anything, we should be blamed for not having stopped it.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Peter answered, ‘you can wash that out now. I expect I was a bit far gone when I told you that, and anyhow Marsden is not so crude as all that. What he’s hoping now is to see me hanged; and until he finally gives up hope of that coming off, I think I’m fairly safe from more direct methods. He told me as much quite plainly last night, and any help he can give you to getting me put on trial, you won’t have to ask for twice. In the interval he’s playing for time, very successfully, too. He’s got a perfect genius for holding things up, but I’ll get through in the end. Meanwhile, the office is like Bedlam, with the poor devils of clerks not knowing which of us to stand in with, whether he’s an embezzler or I’m a murderer as he’s fond of hinting, or whether we’re both – both. To do him justice, I believe half the time he thinks I really did do it.’

  He began to walk away, and when Bobby repeated his invitation to lunch, he once more shook his head.

  ‘There’s a lot we could talk over,’ Bobby insisted.

  ‘I daresay, but we aren’t going to,’ Peter answered and walked off.

  ‘Obstinate beggar,’ Bobby reflected, watching him go. ‘One thing, if it’s true there’s anything wrong about their clients’ money, he’ll find it out sooner or later. Not the sort you turn off easily, once he’s got an idea in his head.’

  He waited a little longer and presently Marsden appeared, evidently also on his way to lunch. He, too, recognized Bobby at once and greeted him quite amiably.

  ‘Making any progress?’ he asked. ‘Your people are still shadowing me, but I suppose I mustn’t complain, though it’s rather a bore. Still, you chaps know your job, I must say that. I don’t think anyone else has noticed it. Do you know I’ve been nearly coming round to ask for a talk with some of you people?’

  ‘If you’ve information you think you can give us,’ Bobby said, ‘it will be very welcome. We aren’t making much headway at the moment, though there are a number of clues being followed up. Have you seen Mr Lester lately?’

  ‘Lester? The man that’s engaged to Miss Laing?’ Marsden asked. ‘No, I hardly know him. Why?’

  ‘He got badly drunk at a night club last night,’ Bobby answered.

  Marsden appeared rather amused.

  ‘Saying farewell to his bachelor ways, I suppose,’ he remarked. ‘By the way, the papers say the revolver Sir Christopher was shot with has not been identified and it’s not certain whether he actually possessed one or not.’

  ‘One of our difficulties,’ agreed Bobby. ‘It is known that he used to talk about having a pistol but no one seems ever to have seen the thing. If he possessed one and it’s the one that was used to shoot him, obviously that would be a very important fact indeed.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you of someone he told me himself he had shown it to,’ Marsden said. ‘It was someone who thought he had a grievance and who used threats. Sir Christopher told me he showed this fellow a pistol he had, and warned him that if he tried to play any tricks he would get the contents.’

  Bobby thought this piece of information sounded promising. He suggested their having lunch together and pressed Marsden for further details. But Marsden, though he accepted the invitation to lunch readily enough, knew no more. He could give no hint of the identity of the person concerned. All he knew was what Sir Christopher had told him, but it seemed fairly good evidence that Sir Christopher had actually possessed the weapon of which he had talked, though hitherto no proof of that had been found. To Bobby all this seemed important, the implications to be drawn from it more important still. Forgetting Mitchell’s instructions to talk continually, he lapsed into a worried silence. And more and more did it seem to him certain that this unknown was the centre of the whole mystery, and was also identical with the unknown of ‘The Green Man’ to whom Mark Lester had spoken and who after that had disappeared.

  ‘This man you speak of,’ he said finally, ‘we’ve got to get hold of him somehow or another.’

  ‘I don’t see how that would help you,’ Marsden answered. ‘You can be pretty sure he doesn’t know anything about it. There’s an old saying. When you want to know who is responsible for anything, find out who profits.’

  ‘We want more than that to show Treasury Counsel,’ Bobby remarked, ‘before he would be willing to order a prosecution.’

  ‘You won’t get it,’ declared Marsden. ‘The man who finished old Sir Christopher left no evidence. If I’m right in what I think, he had every advantage and every means for doing what he did without leaving any traces, and he made use of them all very cleverly. I should say you had better give up trying only – only –’

  ‘Only what?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Only for this,’ Marsden answered, ‘it’s my idea there’s worse coming.’

  ‘In what way?’ Bobby asked cautiously.

  ‘I’m speaking in confidence,’ Marsden said, ‘only it seems to me – what happened to the father might happen to the daughter next.’

  ‘You don’t mean...?’ Bobby stammered, staring.

  ‘I don’t mean anything,’ Marsden answered, ‘except that I think you’re altogether likely to have a second murder on your hands before long. A wife with money is good but money of one’s own is better still. So if I were you I should try to keep an eye on Miss Jennie that’s Mrs Carsley now.’

  CHAPTER 21

  A STEP FORWARD

  Nothing more could Marsden be induced to say, but this that he had said, Bobby thought of sufficient importance to make of it a special report to headquarters.

  Not that he was there allowed to see Mitchell. Special instructions seemed to have been issued on that point.

  ‘Old man,’ explained the sergeant to whom Bobby spoke, ‘says if he wants to see you, he’ll send for you, and meanwhile you’re to be kept out, handcuffs and violence to be used if necessary.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think of making it necessary,’ protested Bobby, quite hurt, and went away to write a brief report, perceiv
ing however from the large bottle of red ink ostentatiously brought for his use by one of the officers on duty that the tale of the superb adornment he had given his last report was already a current jest – for, possibly because its duties are seldom humorous, nowhere is even the tiniest, feeblest joke more keenly appreciated than at ‘The Yard’.

  The report duly written and sent in, Bobby went on to spend the rest of the afternoon pursuing without success his inquiries at the different theatres, of which there seemed to him so many that when, in an evening paper he bought, he read the customary weekly article they all publish explaining that the theatre is slowly dying, he could not help wondering how many would be open if the theatre were in rude health.