Blood From a Stone

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘More or less,’ said Isabelle, with some relief that Celia Leigh wasn’t a hands-off topic, ‘but that’s not what I wanted to tell you. The thing is, Celia’s related to Mrs Paxton. You know? The old lady who was murdered in Topfordham.’

  Bill looked up alertly. ‘Mrs Paxton? Hang on, that’s the Napier case, isn’t it? What are you getting at, Isabelle?’

  ‘The man who was killed got on the train at Market Albury,’ said Isabelle. ‘That’s not far from Celia Leigh’s house in Madlow Regis. In fact, the train he arrived on in Market Albury must’ve come through Madlow Regis. I wondered, as there were sapphires involved in the Topfordham case, if these sapphires were the same ones?’

  ‘They might be, I suppose,’ said Bill doubtfully, weighing the sapphires in his hand. ‘I must say the connection doesn’t seem immediately obvious.’

  ‘What if the man I saw was a thief?’ asked Isabelle. ‘These could be the sapphires that belonged to Mrs Paxton. He could’ve stolen them from the Leighs.’

  ‘Did the Leighs inherit the sapphires?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t know,’ admitted Isabelle, her face falling. ‘However, they’ll know who did, won’t they?’

  ‘It’s worth a telegram, Bill,’ said Jack. ‘There can’t be that many strings of priceless jewels kicking about.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Bill, slipping the jewels back into his pocket. ‘I’d better get them authenticated first, though.’ He glanced at Duggleby. ‘No slight on your opinion, sir, but I want to make sure they’re genuine before raising the hue and cry.’

  ‘They’re genuine, all right.’

  ‘As you say. Thanks for the tip, Isabelle. If you’re right, that’s one part of the puzzle solved straight away.’

  Jack clicked his tongue. ‘Part of the puzzle, yes. But granted the man was a thief, why on earth didn’t the murderer take the jewels?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Bill. He turned to Duggleby. ‘Mr Duggleby, you spotted the sapphires. Were they out in the open?’

  Duggleby breathed deeply and steadied himself. ‘I’d better explain. I went into the compartment. I saw ... saw him right away.’ He put a hand to his mouth. ‘I’m not proud of this, but I froze. I backed away and leaned against the door. Then – I told you, I’m not proud of this – my legs went and I slid down the door so I was more or less sitting on the floor. I don’t know how long I was there. I had my eyes shut and had to nerve myself to open them. When I did, I simply couldn’t bear to look at him again, but I saw something glinting under the seat. I pulled out the glinting thing and it was the necklace. For some reason, that made it worse. It was so bizarre, finding something like that on top of everything else. And then ... And then ...’

  He stopped and swallowed. ‘I knew the jewels were worth a fortune,’ he said with a break in his voice, ‘then it suddenly struck me that I was in a compartment with a dead man. Even if I picked up the stones and surrendered them later, people might think I’d killed him. I flung them away and scrambled out of there as fast as I could.’ He turned to Isabelle. ‘That’s when you came along. I was grateful to you.’ Instinctively Isabelle reached out a hand to his trembling arm. ‘Thanks,’ he said eventually.

  ‘So the killer might not have realised our man had the jewels on him,’ said Jack, after an awkward pause. ‘They weren’t in a case, were they?’

  ‘No. I told you. I saw them glinting.’

  ‘That’s a clear enough story,’ said Bill. He put the sapphires back in his pocket, then summoned one of the constables with a wave of his hand. ‘Mr Duggleby, if I can ask you to go with the constable, I’ll be with you as soon as possible.’

  After Duggleby had been escorted away, he turned to his friend. ‘Jack, the railway people are going to move the coach into a siding. Shall we meet there in about half an hour?’

  ‘That’s fine with me,’ said Jack. ‘Isabelle, why don’t you let me buy you tea and you can give me a blow-by-blow account of what happened?’

  ‘Tea!’ she repeated with a sort of blissful intensity. ‘Lead me to it.’

  It took Isabelle three cups of tea and a macaroon before she considered herself suitably fortified for the journey home. Once she and Arthur had departed, Jack hunted out what a helpful railway official referred to as The Fatal Compartment.

  The coach had been shunted to the far reaches of the station. The siding was a neglected little backwater of sooty pillars bounded by a grimy wall housing railway offices.

  The coach itself looked lonely without its companion coaches and engine. Two policemen stood on guard outside the open door and three more policemen stood outside the railway offices.

  The green canvas cover had been removed from the coach, revealing a compartment painted in the Southern Railway colours of olive green and black with a yellow number 3, indicating Third Class, emblazoned on the door. The only difference between this and any other compartment were the dark, sinister stains that fingered out from the window and across the coachwork. It looked as if someone had thrown a pot of dark lumpy paint at the door.

  The policeman outside the offices touched his helmet as Jack approached. ‘Are you looking for Inspector Rackham, sir? He’ll be along in a few minutes.’

  Jack found a space amongst the assorted trunks and bags on a wooden, iron-wheeled trolley and sat down to wait for Bill. At the far end of the platform the smoke-smudged sunlight hazed across the open end of the great blackened arched glass of the roof.

  The hubbub of the crowds on the concourse and the whoosh and clank of the trains softened into rhythmic industrial music. It was, he thought, as he looked at the shining rails stretching out into London through the flickering veil of dust, like being inside a piece of modern art, a picture with riveted girders and astonishing angles.

  He stood up as Bill came along the platform.

  ‘Hello, Jack. Sorry I wasn’t here, but I’ve just got Duggleby off my hands.’ He nodded at the office. ‘Shall we go in? I had the body put in here until it can be moved to Charing Cross Hospital. The divisional surgeon can take a look at him there, but we might as well see what we can discover in the meantime.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Jack, following Bill into the office.

  It was a high-ceilinged, sooty-smelling room with a pair of wooden filing cabinets, four chairs and a table. Two grimy windows looked out onto Craven Street and two more looked out onto the platform. Bill lit the gas lamp and the mantle hissed and glowed in a fitful kind of way. It seemed to make the daylight gloomier. The paintwork, of olive green and discoloured cream, did nothing to brighten the surroundings.

  If I had to work in here, thought Jack, I’d turn my toes up and fade away from sheer depression. However, even if the office had been glowing with colour and radiant with light, it would be hard to feel cheerful, looking at the human shape beneath the blue cloth on the table.

  Bill turned to the two policemen at the door. ‘Let me know when the mortuary men arrive, but don’t let anyone go into that compartment until I’ve given them the say-so. Not that,’ he added to Jack as he closed the door, ‘it’ll make very much difference. Inspector Whitten decided early on he was going to hand the case over to us, but not before the Railway Police traipsed all over the compartment. A Doctor Lomax was called to Turnhill Percy to pronounce that our man was officially dead and he had a good poke around, too. In fact,’ he added ruefully, ‘everyone seemed to be called in at Turnhill Percy.’

  ‘Which is understandable but a real bind, all the same,’ said Jack sympathetically. There was a small brown leather suitcase by the foot of the table. ‘Does that belong to our man?’

  ‘I hope so. The case was on the luggage rack above our chap’s head. Inspector Whitten and his men have been through it like a dose of salts. They didn’t bother with fingerprints or any niceties of that sort, just rummaged through the contents, shoved everything back in, and expected a pat on the back. By the way, Mr Duggleby was right about the sapphires being the real McCoy. I�
�ve had them authenticated. A bloke from Sheringhams examined them. They’re worth a fortune.’

  ‘A fortune being?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Get ready for this,’ said Bill with a grin. ‘Would you believe about thirty-five thousand pounds?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Jack gaped at him. ‘Thirty-five thousand?’

  ‘Not bad, eh?’

  Jack gave a long, slow whistle. ‘Blimey, Bill, that’s incredible! Well, that answers one question. Whatever the motive for the murder was, it wasn’t robbery.’

  ‘Absolutely. I suppose, technically speaking, as Duggleby was the first person to discover the body, he should be the prime suspect, but I can’t see it somehow. He struck me as a pathetic sort of beggar.’

  ‘M’yes. I can’t see he’d commit a murder and leave a string of sapphires lying on the floor. The time’s wrong, too. From what Isabelle said, it was a good ten minutes from feeling the train jolt when the body hit the bridge, to finding Duggleby dithering outside the compartment.’ He looked at the blue-covered body on the table. ‘If Duggleby had stuck a knife in this poor beggar’s ribs and bundled him out of the window, he’d hardly hang around outside the door to tell the first person who walked past all about it.’

  Bill nodded. ‘I think you’re right. I took his statement, of course. He’s thirty-eight years old and lives in a cheap boarding house in Murchinson’s Rents, off Shoe Lane near Fleet Street. He served in the Royal West Surreys in the war and was invalided out with a dicky chest. He’s a journalist and gave the name of a couple of magazines who’ve published his articles.’

  Bill laughed. ‘He certainly doesn’t have a newspaperman’s nose for a story. The difference between him and Burgess of the Monitor was laughable.’ He shook his head with an indulgent smile. ‘He’ll get something out of it, I suppose.’

  ‘Burgess certainly will.’

  ‘Burgess,’ said Bill, ‘is in seventh heaven. Not only has he got a murder to keep him happy, he’s got a string of sapphires to write about.’

  ‘He doesn’t know they could be the Topfordham sapphires, does he?’

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ said Bill emphatically. ‘And neither, I may say, do we. I’ve told our Mr Duggleby to keep stumm about it, too. This is sensational enough without throwing Mrs Paxton’s murder into the mix. Ideally, I wouldn’t have mentioned the sapphires to Burgess at all but Tetlow, the ticket inspector, was full of it, so I had to come clean. I’ve sent a telegram to the Leighs and with any luck we should receive an answer to that soon. Anyway, do you want to look at the suitcase first or the body?’

  ‘Let’s take the case first, shall we? If I must pore over decapitated corpses, I like to work up to it.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Bill laid the suitcase flat on the dusty wooden floor and clicked open the catch.

  Jack ran his hand over the leather case. ‘It’s good quality. Marked with the initials A.P., I see. Rather old now, perhaps, but it must have cost a fair bit when it was new.’

  On top of the clothes in the case were two cheap editions of The Four Just Men and The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace.

  Jack took the books out and flicked through them. ‘Our man’s written his name on the flyleaf which is obliging of him. Andrew Parsons.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Granted that the victim might be a thief, I don’t suppose the name Andrew Parsons means anything to you, does it?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Bill, ‘I’ll get the Records Department to see if we’ve ever run across him before.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Jack. ‘What’s this?’

  Tucked inside the book were two pieces of white, plain card about the size and shape of a visiting card. One of the cards had a little drawing in pencil, a cross with what looked like a halo over the top of it. Jack looked at it with a frown.

  ‘What on earth’s that for?’ asked Bill. ‘A bookmark, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Jack put down the books and took a newish light overcoat from the case and examined it carefully. It was a perfectly ordinary cheap overcoat of the sort made by Cross and Co. and, Jack ruefully thought, sold by the hundred in every city in Britain. The pockets contained the screwed-up wrapper from a bar of Nestlé chocolate and a well-washed fine linen handkerchief embroidered with an elaborate A.P.

  Jack put the coat to one side. ‘He’s written his initials on the inside of the collar with indelible pen, but that’s about it for the coat, I think.’ He quickly rummaged through the rest of the case. It contained a pair of pyjamas, a cheap shirt, a pair of socks, a set of underwear, a safety razor, a packet of blades and a toothbrush. ‘No laundry marks,’ said Jack, ‘but there’s something wrapped in the pyjamas.’

  He drew out a man’s hairbrush and a hand mirror. ‘I say, these are rather nice.’ The brush and the mirror were backed in a hard, heavy black wood. ‘It’s ebony, I think.’ On the back of both the brush and the mirror, let into the wood so it was smooth with the surface, were the initials A.P. in stylised loops of silver wire.

  ‘That’s a pre-war set, I’d say,’ said Jack, weighing the mirror in his hand. ‘My father had something very similar. They’re the sort of quality I’d expect to go with the suitcase. The clothes are cheap enough but the toiletry set and the case fit, if you know what I mean. They’re old and expensive.’ He picked up the handkerchief once more. ‘So’s this.’

  He rocked back on his heels, frowning. ‘There’s definitely two sorts of belongings here. His suit, shoes and coat are new and cheap but these things aren’t.’

  ‘Someone who’s down on his luck?’ suggested Bill.

  Jack nodded. ‘It’d be a familiar story, that’s for sure.’ He repacked the suitcase and glanced up at the table. ‘Come on. Let’s have a dekko at the body.’

  ‘Right-oh,’ said Bill. He took hold of the blue sheet. ‘Brace yourself. I’ve seen him once already. This is nasty.’

  It was.

  Jack recognised the blue suit and the sturdy shoes from Isabelle’s description, but the man himself was a battered wreck. His shirt and waistcoat were torn with the impact and dark with blood but his jacket was lying draped across him, untouched.

  ‘He’d taken off his jacket and put it on the seat beside him.’ said Bill.

  Jack swallowed hard. ‘Poor beggar,’ he said eventually. ‘Can we cover up his head? Or, at least, where his head was. I saw quite enough poor devils like that in the war not to want to look at any more.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Bill and adjusted the sheet.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Jack with a sigh of relief. ‘I can think straight now. Look at his wristwatch, Bill. It’s suffered a bit, but I’d say it’s old and very good quality.’ Jack stepped back and looked at the body appraisingly. ‘D’you think he’d been in the army? That way of wearing his watch with the glass on the inside of his wrist is a real soldier’s trick.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Mind you, roughly half the men in Britain have been in the army, so it hardly narrows things down.’ Pulling a face, Bill undid the strap and, holding the watch in his hand, grunted in approval. ‘It’s real gold, I’d say.’ He flipped open the back. ‘There’s something marked inside.’ He turned it to the light. It was a cross in a circle. ‘That’s been scratched in with a compass point, I bet.’

  ‘It’s the same symbol as on the card in the book,’ said Jack. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully. ‘This mix of belongings is interesting, Bill. Let’s have a look at the knife.’

  He bent closer and examined the hilt. ‘Straight between the fourth and fifth ribs, by the look of it. That’s a direct blow to the heart. There wouldn’t be much blood from the knife-blow.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bill. ‘It might be luck or he could’ve been stabbed by someone who knew what he was doing.’ He drew his breath in sharply. ‘By George, that knife’s a trench dagger! I’ve got one like it kicking around in a drawer at home somewhere.’

  ‘A French dagger, going off the shape,’ added Jack.

  ‘You’re right. I’ll leav
e it to the surgeon to get it out, but I’ll be surprised if we’re wrong.’

  He turned back the flap of the dead man’s jacket and slipped his hand into the inner pocket. ‘Here’s his wallet. I say, look at this. He did come from Madlow Regis. He’s got a single ticket from Madlow Regis to London.’ He ran his thumb over the edge of the banknotes in the wallet. ‘He’s got three pound notes and one ten bob, plus thirty francs in notes.’

  ‘French money? Put them together with the French dagger and there seems to be a definite Continental whiff to this case.’

  ‘And what’s this?’ Bill pulled out a piece of paper, evidently a torn-out picture from a magazine. ‘I say, Jack! It’s a photo of the sapphires!’

  Jack took the piece of paper. The sapphires so dominated the picture, it took a moment or two to see past them to the woman who was actually wearing the necklace. And yet, thought Jack, she had a very definite personality, with a firm chin, commanding, clear eyes and an imperious expression. Underneath the picture was written Mrs Francis Leigh, Breagan Grange, Madlow Regis, Sussex.

  ‘That’s them!’ said Bill. He took the sapphires from his pocket and compared them with the picture. ‘There’s no two ways about it.’

  ‘So the sapphires do belong to the Leighs. My word, that’s one up for Isabelle, all right. I’ve met Mrs Leigh. She was at Isabelle’s wedding. She struck me as a bit of a tough egg.’

  Jack took the paper from Bill and rubbed it absently between his fingers. ‘I wonder which magazine it is? Not top-quality paper, so not one of the monthlies such as Vogue or Eve or Modern Woman or anything like that. I’d say it was one of the weeklies, price tuppence. Poppy’s Paper or Woman’s Companion, perhaps, but there’s dozens of them to choose from.’

  ‘Is that important? The main thing is that we know our man here knew about the sapphires.’

  ‘Absolutely. I just thought that his choice of magazine could tell us something about who he was and where he came from.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Bill abstractedly. ‘There’s something in his other jacket pocket, too. It feels like a squashy book ...’ He gingerly unbuttoned the flap of the pocket and drew out a stack of white bank notes secured by a rubber band.