by Annie Haynes
“If Miss Annie Simmonds had kindly left the bed alone we might have known more. As it is, one can only say that there is not the faintest smell of any drugs, no slightest sign of any struggle. The carpet may have been tossed back, but there are no scratches on the paint beneath. No; I feel we may be pretty certain that Ellerby walked out of this room.”
“But what happened to him afterwards?”
“We cannot search the house tonight,” Harbord said doubtfully.
The inspector drew in his lips. “Plenty of time to get rid of anything that anybody wanted to get rid of, and was able to get rid of, before we came on the scene. Of course now the whole house is under the most rigorous observation and everybody, even the kitchen-maid, is shadowed every time they leave the house. But when the steed is gone, you know. At the present my inner man warns me that supper must be the next thing. First thing to-morrow a visit to Vidame & Green is indicated.”
CHAPTER 9
The inspector came into his room at Scotland Yard and threw down his hat with an exclamation of impatience.
Harbord, who had followed him in, looked at him in surprise. It was not often that Stoddart was betrayed into showing any irritation.
“That pistol that was found in the ditch at Hughlin’s Wood was not the one with which Burslem was shot.”
“Not! But I understood that the bullet fitted.”
“So it did – so it does.” Stoddart sat down and frowned heavily. “But this new system that they have discovered lately, of examining the bullet through a powerful microscope, which discovers small, almost invisible lines on the bullet, proves positively whether a bullet has been fired from a certain revolver or not, though one shot had been fired from the revolver, mind you, says in this case definitely not. Now we have to begin our search for the weapon used in the Burslem case all over again.”
“How then did that revolver with the initials ‘J.B.’ come in the ditch?” cogitated Harbord. “It must have been Burslem’s.”
“It may have been – most probably it was,” Stoddart corrected. “But so far we have not been able to prove it. None of the men at Porthwick Square identify it; the butler goes so far as to say that he feels sure it is not Sir John’s; Ellerby alone could have been certain, and Ellerby has vanished. It is the same with the watch. Henry and James, both of whom occasionally valeted Sir John, do not recognize it. The utmost that I have been able to ascertain from them is that Sir John often wore a watch of that kind, not caring much for a wrist-watch. But the one they both remember is in its case in Sir John’s room. Both of them say that they have no recollection of ever seeing the one found in the ditch. So that is as far as our discoveries of yesterday carry us. Heaven knows it is not very far!”
Harbord sat down heavily and leaning his elbows on the table rested his head on his hands.
“It is like a maze,” he groaned. “You get what you think is a clue only to find when you begin to follow it that it leads nowhere. To reconstruct the crime seemed fairly easy. The revolver drawn by Sir John to defend himself, seized by the assassin, and turned against its owner, then flung away into the ditch.”
“Reconstructing crime is easy enough, but it is a game in which it is possible to make a good many mistakes,” the inspector commented dryly.
“And why did that watch stop at 12.30 if it was Sir John’s, when he must have been alive until after two o’clock?” Harbord pursued, ignoring Stoddart’s interjection.
The inspector stood up suddenly. “I am not here to answer conundrums. You have just come in time to assist me at an interview which may be of interest to both. Harbord, a lady is anxious to claim the reward.”
“What lady?” Harbord inquired eagerly.
The inspector shook his head. “I know no more than you. All I can tell you is that I was rung up half an hour ago, and a voice, unmistakably a feminine one, inquired if the speaker could see the gentleman who offered the reward for the discovery of Sir John Burslem’s assassin. I told her to come here, and if her information was worth anything the reward would be hers. She replied that she would be round directly, and I am expecting her any minute.”
“Where did the call come from?” Harbord inquired.
“Public office,” the inspector answered laconically. “Oh, there are not many flies on William Stoddart, my friend. Here she is!” as there was a knock at the door.
A constable in plain clothes ushered in a young woman dressed plainly in black, carrying a fair-sized parcel done up in brown paper.
Both men looked at her with a strange sense of familiarity. Then Stoddart exclaimed:
“It is Lady Burslem’s maid!”
The woman’s dark eyes glanced at him in an odd, sidelong fashion.
“Yes, I am Lady Burslem’s maid, certainly. But my name is Forbes – Eleanor Forbes.”
“I am much obliged to you, Miss Forbes,” said the inspector setting a chair for her.
Harbord knew by the tone of his voice and the look on his face that much was expected of the coming interview.
“I have come about this reward that is offered,” Forbes began. “Who offers it?”
The inspector smiled. “That we are not at liberty to say.”
“Well, if you don’t tell me that I do not know that it is much use my going on,” the maid said in an aggrieved fashion.
The inspector made no reply. He stood looking down at her with an inscrutable expression on his dark face.
Forbes half rose, then sat down again. “Well, perhaps you will answer these two questions – is the reward offered by Lady Burslem?”
The inspector thought things over for a minute. “No,” he said, at last, “it is not.”
“Is it safe?” Forbes proceeded. “I mean, suppose I give you the information that leads to the discovery of the murderer of Sir John Burslem, shall I be sure to get the thousand pounds offered?”
“Certain,” Stoddart assured her. “You need have no doubt about the bona fides of the person offering the reward, Miss Forbes. If your information is worth it, you will get the money safe enough.”
“That is all I want to know,” the maid proceeded. “Well, then, I should like to show you something, but when you have seen it I shall have given the best part of my story away, and you –”
“You will have to trust us,” the inspector said more firmly. “The police are not allowed to take rewards, you know, so you have no rivalry to fear from us.”
“Oh, well, that is all right then.”
Forbes untied the string of her parcel. Then she looked up.
“I am going to show you the frock that Lady Burslem wore on the evening of June 2nd, when she went to Oxley with Sir John.”
She tore off the enveloping wrapper and held up to the astonished eyes of the two men the crumpled, stained, torn rag that had once been Sophie Burslem’s evening frock.
The inspector put on the glasses he used for examining objects closely.
“You are sure?”
The maid tossed her head. “Of course I am, or I should not have made a fool of myself coming here. There’s lots of others that can identify it as well as me if you come to that. I couldn’t find it in the morning of June 3rd. And when we heard what had happened to Sir John it sort of took my breath away and then I remembered and began to look for it. At last I found it all crumpled up together, right down at the bottom of the well of the wardrobe and a lot of other things on top of it. I shook it out” – suiting the action to the word – “and I saw the front breadth had been all torn out, or cut out, I should say.”
“Cut?” the inspector said, bending over it.
“There is no doubt about that. Anybody can see it has been cut,” Forbes said scornfully, “but when I showed it to her ladyship, she said there were a lot of thorns about at Oxley and she must have torn it on them. Pretty green she must have thought me. I racked my brains to think what she had done with the piece she had cut out. Then all at once I remembered that on the morning of June 3rd, when I came to dres
s her after her bath, she was doing something at her dressing-case, and shut it up very quickly. There is a secret drawer in it, at least she calls it a secret drawer, but the secret of it is not difficult to discover, and of course I opened it, and there I found this.”
She took out a small packet that had lain under the frock and unrolled its contents – the long, jagged piece of satin that had once been white, and was now stained, almost all over, an ugly reddish brown.
The inspector took it from her, and placing the frock on the table fitted the strip into it. Then he glanced at Harbord.
Forbes looked at them both. “Well, can I have the thousand pounds?” she demanded.
The inspector smiled. “Not quite so fast, Miss Forbes. This evidence of yours may probably be of great assistance to us, and, if we ultimately trace the murderer through your agency, you may rely upon it the reward will be yours. Is this all you can show us?”
“I should have thought it would have been quite enough,” Forbes said. “Can’t you see that her ladyship and Sir Charles –”
“No, no!” The inspector interrupted her. “What you may think and what I may surmise is one thing, and a definite proof is another. And you must remember that there is such a thing as a libel action, Miss Forbes. Of course what you say here is privileged; but if you mention names outside –”
“I am not such a fool!” Forbes observed shortly. “And I do not speak without the book as I am going to show you.”
The inspector looked at her. “Ah, now you are talking. If you have any further proof –”
“That her ladyship has been carrying on with Sir Charles Stanyard?” the maid said tartly. “What do you think of this?”
She produced another packet from among the folds of brown paper on her knees and unwrapped it. Inside was another packet, of old letters labelled from “C.S.” and a photograph: an old photograph, but easily recognizable as that of Stanyard.
The inspector took the packet of letters and glanced at it, turning back the envelopes without untying the string that bound them together.
“These may be from Sir Charles Stanyard, but they were all written before Lady Burslem’s marriage. They are addressed to Miss Sophie Carlford.”
“Anyway, this was not written before she was married.” Forbes brandished a piece of paper from her handbag. “I found this in her ladyship’s blotter the other day when Mr. Weldon and Lord Carlford came in and wanted to see her at once, so she went down and left it.”
The inspector held out his hand.
Forbes did not look inclined to surrender her find. “I ought to get good money for this. Her ladyship or Sir Charles –”
“Blackmail!” the inspector snapped. “Better stick to the reward, Miss Forbes.”
“Um! Well, if I get it,” the maid said, putting the paper in his hand with obvious reluctance.
The inspector held it up to the light and beckoned to Harbord. The paper was good, but unstamped and undated. “My own dearest,” the letter began in the big, rather childish-looking writing with which the inspector had taken care to familiarize himself with of late as that of Lady Burslem. “I shall hope to see you before long in the place we know. Everything is going on well. There is no suspicion, and the only danger I really fear is that Ellerby may –” There it broke off suddenly. The inspector turned it round and looked at it this way and that; but there was nothing further to be gleaned from it.
“Well,” Forbes said impatiently, “what do you say now?”
The inspector went over to his writing-table and sitting down made an entry in his big book of notes. Then he put the piece of notepaper in one of his drawers and shut it up.
“What can I say but that these discoveries of yours will probably be of the greatest assistance to us. As soon as anything definite can be settled I will let you know.”
“And the reward?” the maid said blankly.
The inspector looked at her. “Matters are hardly forward enough for us to think of that yet. When they are, well, you may be sure that we will bear you in mind.”
“I thought you would give it to me today.”
The inspector nearly laughed. “You are rather anticipating matters, Miss Forbes. There is a good deal to be done yet before Sir John Burslem’s murderer is found.”
Forbes got up with a jerk. “Then I don’t see that I have done much good by coming. It seems to me that I might have taken my goods to a better market.”
“Oh, come, come!” the inspector said soothingly. “You have done the very best thing you could, Miss Forbes. And you will find that matters will be all right in the end. Only you ladies always do want to hurry matters, don’t you? You trust everything to me.
Forbes looked mollified. “Oh, well, if you put it that way –”
“That is the only way to put it,” the inspector rejoined. “And you may be sure that I shall do my best for you. I should for any lady, but, Miss Forbes, for you –” He stopped a minute. “Now I wonder whether you could help me a bit about something else?”
“Well, if there is anything I can do –”
“I suppose in the exercise of your duties you saw a good deal of Ellerby, in your position and his in the Burslem household?”
“Yes, of course I saw a good deal of him. In the housekeeper’s room, and so on. But he was a man who kept himself to himself.”
“Was he really? I had got the idea, but I dare say I was wrong –” The inspector looked at his book again. “Did it occur to you that Ellerby was the sort of man to have – well, shall we say a friendship for any woman other than his wife?”
“My hat! I should think not. I should not think that any woman would look at him if he had. Dried up old fossil! I wonder he ever got married at all. Only I suppose any man can pick up somebody.”
“Dear me, do you think so, Miss Forbes? Then there is hope for us all,” the inspector remarked politely. “Then I may take it you do not think Ellerby has gone off with any woman? I wonder what you do think has become of him?”
A curiously scared expression crept into Eleanor Forbes’s eyes. “I – I don’t know. We don’t know what to think, any of us.”
“If he died in 15 Porthwick Square, his body must be there,” the inspector said thoughtfully.
The maid shivered. “Oh, however can you talk like that? I am sure I shall be frightened to go upstairs tonight. There’s none of us going to sleep alone. I shall have the head housemaid with me. Nobody will be alone – except her ladyship, and she says she is not frightened at anything. Perhaps she has her reasons,” she finished significantly.
“I should have thought that perhaps Miss Burslem –”
“Miss Pamela – not much! She hates her stepmother like poison. She will have her own maid with her.”
“You saw and heard nothing the night before last?”
“Nothing – nothing at all. I wish I had,” Forbes assured him.
“Well, then, perhaps I had better think things over,” the inspector said, standing up. “But I shall want another long talk with you very soon, Miss Forbes, for more reasons than one.”
Harbord smiled to himself as he saw how the woman bridled under the inspector’s gaze as he escorted her politely to the door.
Stoddart came back when he had seen her safely off the premises.
“Well, what do you think of Miss Forbes?”
“Not much of her personally, but of her story a good deal,” Harbord said at once. “She has confirmed me in my – I will not say belief, but my very strong feeling that Sir John Burslem never returned to 15 Porthwick Square – that it was his murderer made up to impersonate him who came back with Lady Burslem and forged the will.”
“Ah, the will is a nasty snag in your theory. Experts say it is in Sir John Burslem’s writing – hurried, carelessly written, but his unmistakably.”
“Don’t believe ’em!” Harbord said bluntly. “No, sir, I shall stick to my theory until I hit on a better. Sometimes I have thought you have –”
He looked searchingly at the inspector.
Stoddart frowned. “Theories are no use. If sometimes a faint gossamery suspicion has dawned upon me – well, I don’t know that Miss Forbes’s discoveries help me much.”
CHAPTER 10
“We will go right through the Park. I like to have a look at the swells sometimes,” Mrs. James Burslem remarked as she said “Home” to the chauffeur.
Pamela was going to pay her promised visit to her aunt by marriage. Somewhat to her surprise her stepmother had made no objection to the plan, and the girl was now on her way to spend the week-end in Mrs. Jimmy’s house in Kensington.
The séance, the principal attraction offered to Pamela, was to come off that afternoon. A friend of Mrs. Jimmy’s, Winnie Margetson, was to be the medium, and Pamela was in a terrible state of excitement at the prospect of getting into touch with her much-loved father. This had been definitely promised to her by Mrs. Jimmy, who had bidden the girl prepare a list of questions which would be a test of the reality of the communication established with the other world. This Pamela had done, and she now clutched the paper feverishly in her hand as she sat in the car beside her aunt. In the Park, Mrs. Jimmy directed the man to draw up under the trees near Hyde Park Corner.
“Now, I expect we shall soon come across some of your fine friends,” she remarked to Pamela.
“I don’t know. I have very few friends in town now.” Pamela looked inclined to be restive. She was anxious to get on to the séance with as little delay as possible, and at the bottom of her heart she was conscious, in spite of her expressed affection for her new-found relative, of a shrinking from the attention that lady’s frequent laugh and loud speech attracted. Rather to Mrs. Jimmy’s disappointment, as Pamela could not help recognizing, no acquaintance of the girl’s passed for some time, and Mrs. Jimmy was reluctantly agreeing to make a start when a man who had been leaning against the railings lower down raised himself and came towards them. His face brightened as he caught sight of the pair in the car, and he quickened his steps.