by Annie Haynes
“I don’t go in for allowances,” the inspector grinned as he poured himself out a liberal tot. “And I’m pretty well pumped out to-day. However, everything comes to an end sometime and this Burslem case isn’t going to be any exception.”
“Isn’t it?” Harbord questioned dubiously. “Don’t see any way out of the tangle myself.”
“Nevertheless there are indications.” Stoddart took a long pull at his whisky and soda, then he pointed to the brown coat. “Have you found out anything?”
“Well, I have not been altogether unsuccessful,” Harbord said with modest pride. “I worked Fountain Street and Mrs. Halliday for all I was worth, beginning at Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Beach, as you advised. Both of them disclaimed any knowledge of the brown coat. At last by the process of elimination I arrived at a certain Mrs. Johnson. She swore she hadn’t seen the coat and knew nothing about it. Mrs. Halliday had only worked for her just lately and she hadn’t given her any presents she vowed. She had just done a few days’ odd jobs and that was all she knew of Mrs. Halliday. But I didn’t take to Mrs. Johnson from the first. There was something fishy about her I thought. She had asked me into the sitting-room before she knew my business, and I took the opportunity of looking round. Then, suddenly there came a knock at the front door. Mrs. Johnson looked scared as if she was expecting bad news and thought it had come. I heard her talking to some one in the hall, but, try as I would, I couldn’t make out what it was about. At last they went upstairs and I caught sight of a waste-paper basket poked away under a table. I went over to it; there were several bits of paper there and I was rewarded by finding among them – this.”
He held out an empty envelope that had been through the post. It was addressed to “Mr. Ellerby, 56 Lorraine St., Northlands Square, Bow, E.”
The inspector raised his eyebrows as he read it.
“A find, indeed. You have done well, Harbord.”
“Wait a bit, sir, I am all at sea still,” his subordinate observed. “I was just looking about to see what else there was to be seen when an untidy little slavey came in and said her missus was very sorry but that she would not be able to spare me any more time, and she did not know nothin’ about the brown coat. I thought this was a bit of unexpected luck, so I showed her the envelope. ‘Is this gentleman here now?’ ‘No, he hasn’t been here for ever so long, but the missus she keeps taking his letters in. He is her brother, you see.’ Well, that did give me a start, I must say, but I hadn’t much time to spare, so I just showed her the brown coat. ‘Ever seen this before, miss?’ I said. Her eyes grew round with amazement. ‘Why – I believe – I do believe it is one as used to hang in Mrs. Ellerby’s room, but I never saw him wearing it.’ ‘When did you last see Mr. Ellerby himself?’ I said. She looked at me. ‘I come here in middle of August. He were ’ere sometime after that. Beginning of September it would be when he went away I should think.’ ‘Where did he go?’ I asked her. She fidgeted with the corner of her apron. ‘I dunno. Missus, I heard her say somethink about foreign parts, but I don’t rightly know where.’”
“Well done, Harbord! Now we really have something to go upon.” The very sound of the inspector’s voice told that he was well pleased. “Ellerby disappeared from 15 Porthwick Square on June 30th. If he was staying with his sister in Fountain Street in September, that at any rate makes it certain that no harm happened to him – that he merely ran away. And why – that is what we want to know. We must set all our wits to work to find Ellerby and make him explain himself.”
“Yes, sir. But it isn’t all such plain sailing as it sounds,” Harbord said slowly. “I thought of the snapshot of Ellerby that we both have. Of course I had mine in my pocket. I fetched it out and showed it to her. ‘Is this a good likeness of Mr. Ellerby?’ I asked her. She stared at it. ‘No! That it ain’t. So ’elp me, I never saw anybody like this gent.’ Rather a facer, wasn’t it, sir?”
“It was undoubtedly.” Stoddart’s face had altered. He was frowning, biting the end of the pencil with which he had been making notes of what Harbord told him. “Did you ask her any more?”
“Yes. I questioned her as to what the Mr. Ellerby who had stayed there was like. But I didn’t get much out of her. She said he looked older than the Ellerby of the photograph, older and whiter – not a bit like him anyway.”
“Older and whiter,” the inspector repeated staring at Harbord in a puzzled fashion. “Still, people do alter, you know.”
“But the girl was very positive that this was not, could not have been, their Ellerby, whom she described as more or less of an invalid, rarely going out.”
“Did she really?” the inspector drummed with his fingers on the table. “Well, I think I will have another tot while I think matters over. Can you get hold of this child again?”
Harbord smiled. “I thought of that. She is only a day girl, but she has to be at Mrs. Johnson’s by eight o’clock in the morning and she stays there till eight o’clock or after at night. She gets an hour or two off on a Sunday afternoon, and that is her only recreation, poor kid.”
The inspector rose and took a turn or two up and down.
“Well, there is nothing else to be done; you will have to meet this girl going to work to-morrow morning.”
“To-morrow morning? That won’t be losing much time.”
“No, and there isn’t much to be lost,” the inspector said with a curious glance at the young man’s face. “I will give you another photograph and you must see whether she can recognize it.”
“She was so very definite about this one that really I don’t think it is much use trying her with another,” Harbord said doubtfully.
“No,” assented the inspector. “But suppose – just suppose – that it is not a photograph of the same man!”
CHAPTER 21
“It is inevitable!” Inspector Stoddart said, and there was no faintest shadow of yielding in his tone.
The manager of Stormount’s stood a minute staring at the inspector’s card. At last he looked up.
“It is extremely awkward. I don’t see how it is to be managed in the circumstances.”
“It must be managed,” the inspector said emphatically. “Surely you frequently engage fresh waiters?”
“Naturally. But our waiters don’t get much chance of seeing Señor Jaime da Dominiguez. His meals are served in the dining-room of Lady Burslem’s suite; and he, as well as Lady Burslem when she takes her meals there, is waited upon by Lady Burslem’s own maid.”
“Isn’t that rather extraordinary?” Stoddart questioned.
The manager shrugged his shoulders.
“It may be; we are used to all sorts of eccentricities on the part of our guests. I don’t know that I have given it a second thought.”
“Lady Burslem herself dines downstairs in the public room, I think you said?”
“Sometimes – not always. I made inquiries, as you desired, and find that Lady Burslem has not dined out since coming to the hotel. Either she has remained in her own rooms or dined at the table d’hote. She has received no visitors that I have been able to trace, except her father Lord Carlford, Miss Burslem, Mrs. Aubrey Dolphin twice, and Mrs. James Burslem. The last-named lady comes most days. Of course there have been other people connected with the late Sir John’s business.”
“And Lady Burslem does not go out.” Stoddart frowned.
“Her ladyship’s instructions when she came were that she was only in town for a few days on important business, and that nobody was to be admitted to her without an appointment. Every day of course, as you probably know, she goes down to Sir John’s business place.”
The inspector pricked up his ears.
“What time does she go?”
“Almost always, but not invariably, in the morning. Occasionally she goes down after lunch as well.”
“And the secretary remains upstairs, dealing with her correspondence?” the inspector said incredulously.
“He remains upstairs certainly,” the manager assented. �
�According to her ladyship’s maid, ‘He write – write all day.’ This piece of information she gave to one of the chambermaids and I happened quite accidentally to overhear it.”
The inspector thought for a moment. “As far as I can see the waiter is the best plan I can think of. He must make a mistake and get into the room.”
The manager looked distinctly opposed to this suggestion.
“I really don’t think I can allow –”
The inspector held up his hand. “The responsibility is mine, not yours. As for not allowing, that card” – pointing to the one in the manager’s hand – “is your authority.”
The other man took a few steps up and down as far as the narrow confines of his office would permit.
“I understand that fully, and also that I have no choice in the matter. But this and similar hotels in Paris and Brussels are the property of a syndicate. I hope you will speak for me should my conduct come up before my committee.”
“I don’t think it is likely to do so,” Stoddart observed comfortingly. “But, should anything be said to me, I will of course bear testimony to your complete innocence in the matter.”
The manager did not look satisfied, but he perforce had to remain silent.
The inspector took his leave with a promise to return in the morning – a promise which the manager received with a suppressed groan.
The rest of the evening passed in making a few changes in the inspector’s appearance and in a chat with Harbord, who called for the photograph he was to show to Mrs. Johnson’s slavey in the morning.
The inspector made him sit down. There was a light of suppressed triumph in his eyes that his subordinates knew well.
“I fancy I shall want you to-morrow for special duty. Report at the Yard on your return from Fountain Street, and wait there until you receive my instructions.”
Harbord looked surprised and extremely curious.
“Any fresh discoveries, sir?”
“Nothing but trifles corroborating what I have suspected all along,” the inspector said slowly. “Straws that show how the wind blows.”
Harbord sat up, his folded arms on the table and gazed at his superior. The inspector looked back at him, the suggestion of a smile on his closely folded lips.
“I have always felt that you had some very definite suspicion with regard to the murderer in the Burslem case,” Harbord said at last. “But though the Burslem Mystery has intrigued me more than any case I have ever heard of, though I have puzzled over it by day and dreamed of it by night, I haven’t been able to think of any explanation that seems at once natural and feasible.”
“No, I suppose not.” The inspector sat back in his chair and leaned his head on the top, his elbows supported on the arms of his chair, his fingers joined together at the tips. “Have you ever gone over the data on which you had to work right from the beginning, putting each fact in its proper place and giving each happening, however small, its own significance?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Harbord said, his gaze still fixed on the inspector. “Put like that, perhaps I haven’t. Not in words anyhow. Though, upon my word, I don’t see how the veriest trifle can have escaped me. The only theory I have ever formed is that of impersonation, and that you –”
“Meaning?” the inspector interjected. “Put it into words, lad.”
Harbord hesitated a moment.
“Well, roughly speaking, I have asked myself whether it could be possible that some man, some lover of Lady Burslem’s – not, I think, Stanyard – met the Burslem car by arrangement with Lady Burslem at Hughlin’s Wood, that Sir John was shot and thrown into the ditch, and that his murderer, who had previously been made up to resemble his victim, came back with Lady Burslem, signed the will, or produced one already signed, managed to deceive the servants and then possibly thinking that at the garage he might be recognized and asked inconvenient questions took the car to that parking ground near the river.
“What became of him afterwards?” the inspector questioned abruptly.
Harbord shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I suppose – the only thing I can think of is that he is keeping dark until a decent interval has elapsed and he can marry the widow.”
“And Ellerby?” Stoddart snapped out.
“I suppose he knew too much and was got rid of,” Harbord hazarded.
There followed a pause. Both men sat silent for a minute or two. Then Stoddart leaned forward and clapped Harbord on the shoulder.
“Good for you, my boy! But utterly untenable from start to finish. In the first place, the most rigorous inquiry has failed to discover the slightest trace of any old lover of Lady Burslem’s except Stanyard. And he was not disguised when he left Epsom. I should say it would have to be a very clever chap who could so disguise himself – sitting in his car – that he could deceive Sir John’s servants, even his trusted valet Ellerby.”
“But don’t you see that that is the point?” Harbord interrupted. “I don’t think Ellerby was deceived. I fancy he either pretended to be just at the time or else he was in the plot at the beginning.”
“Wrong, wrong all through. Though, mind you, the theory is well reasoned out, and does you credit. But, now, let us look at the facts.” The inspector fidgeted about among his notebooks. “We will begin with what we know – surmises can follow later. Sir John and Lady Burslem, to all appearances the best of friends, start out after dinner in a two-seater driven by Sir John himself to Epsom, to Harker’s stables to see Sir John’s colt Peep o’ Day, which is expected to win the Derby the next day. They leave the car some little distance from the stables, why, I don’t know, and appear to have met several acquaintances and talked to them. They leave Epsom about half-past twelve, and we know nothing more definite about their movements until they reach 15 Porthwick Square just after two o’clock.
“They leave the car outside, and come into the house, Sir John carrying his light overcoat over his arm. James is sent to summon Ellerby, finding him in his room, you observe. The two men then witness Sir John’s extraordinary will. Sir John goes out to the car and now wears a dark overcoat. Her ladyship, according to James, remains in the library with Ellerby. James himself goes to bed. But Sir John doesn’t take the car to the garage. Instead he, or some one singularly like him, drives it to a parking ground in South London. Another car driven by a woman is brought on next. This woman is observed by the parking ground attendant suspiciously near the Burslem car, and she then bustles away after Sir John. Nothing more is known of Sir John or his movements. But about 7.30 a message is received at 15 Porthwick Square saying that Sir John is believed to have met with an accident at Hughlin’s Wood. I am also summoned, being informed that a body believed to be that of Sir John Burslem has been found in a ditch at Hughlin’s Wood.
“We are on the scene before Ellerby, and I identify the dead man as, to the best of my belief, Sir John Burslem, with whom I am slightly acquainted. Ellerby’s identification is more positive and is followed by that of Sir John’s doctor and solicitor. The body is in evening-dress, everything marked with Sir John’s initials, but the body, mark this, wears no overcoat, and at the time no trace of either dark or light overcoat can be found. Two questions confront us now: what made Sir John go back to Hughlin’s Wood, and who put the light overcoat, stained with blood, under the thrall in the cellar at 15 Porthwick Square?”
“It seems to me that both questions are answered by my theory of impersonation,” Harbord broke in eagerly. “If Sir John had been murdered and his impersonator returned to Porthwick Square carrying his overcoat and after he had gone, finding it marked with blood, it was hidden where we found it later, by Lady Burslem or the impersonator.”
The inspector got up, and leaning against the mantelpiece regarded Harbord fixedly for a minute or two. Then he said:
“Good for you, my lad. But remember this – nothing is more fatal than a preconceived theory. You will find yourself trying to make every happening fit into it; instead, take your happe
nings and form your theory to fit them. For instance, that will of Sir John’s was written in his own handwriting, as is testified to by his solicitor, his friends and, last but not least, the experts. The writing may be a little hurried, but otherwise it is in his handwriting. That is a bit of a snag for you, Alfred.”
Harbord looked crest-fallen, but he was not inclined to give way at once.
“Handwriting may be forged,” he said quietly.
The inspector raised his eyebrows. “Your impersonator must be a pretty cool customer if after having committed a particularly cold-blooded murder he could make himself up to represent his victim, drive back to town and then have his hand steady enough to forge that will. Not only the signature, mind, but the body of the will was all in the same writing.”
“I know,” Harbord said, his tone growing more mystified. “But if I had any idea what you were working on, sir –”
“You shall have very soon,” the inspector promised. “Shall I tell you something, Harbord? To-morrow – yes, I think I may say to-morrow afternoon I shall want your help to arrest the murderer in the Burslem case.”
“The – the murderer?” Harbord stammered. “Inspector, I have no idea who –”
Stoddart put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“I know you have not, my boy, and I know you feel aggrieved that I have not taken you into my confidence before; but it is one of those cases in which the veriest breath may blow away in a moment everything one has been trying to build up. Even now tomorrow’s arrest is only a possibility, not a certainty. A great deal depends upon you.”
“Upon me!” Harbord echoed in amazed accents.
“Upon you,” Stoddart confirmed. He took a sealed envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to his subordinate. “Take that with you to Fountain Street when you go to meet your slavey friend tomorrow. I trust to your honour not to break the seal until then. You will find that it contains the photograph I promised you. Just ask her whether it is a photograph of the man she knew as Mr. Ellerby, Mrs. Johnson’s brother.”