The Grell Mystery

by Frank Froest

  ‘By the time she reached her own home reflection had shown her that there was one possible chance that Grell might not be guilty. She rang up the St Jermyn’s Club and asked for him. Fairfield answered, declaring that his friend was in the club, but busy—too busy to talk to the girl he was to marry next day, mark you. It is idle to suppose that she did not appreciate the excuse as a flimsy one—one manufactured perhaps for the purpose of an alibi. She must have gone to bed filled with foreboding.

  ‘All this is hypothesis. I am supposing that she never closely inspected the features of the dead man. The next morning she is informed that Grell was the victim. At once the lie that Fairfield told her assumed a new aspect. She denounced him as the murderer. She dared not say that she was the first to discover the body, for that would have meant revealing that she knew he was being blackmailed.

  ‘Then the Princess Petrovska paid her a visit and told her that Grell was not dead but in hiding. There was nothing for it, in default of any explanation, but to revert to the thought that he was the murderer. She went to extreme lengths to help him—even to forgery. She believes him guilty still; he believes her guilty.’

  ‘But Petrovska?’ objected Thornton.

  ‘I was coming to that. She is a clever woman. When Grell got in touch with her the following day she may have had many reasons for assisting him. She most likely had a shrewd idea of the situation and resolved to profit by it to avert suspicion. While Grell was suspected she would be safe. But it may have occurred to her that if we laid our hands on him and he told us anything, we might get on her track. Suppose that to be so, it is not difficult to see why she should take a prominent part in assisting him. She would still have a certain amount of money, for he paid her to come to England, and she, as we know, would stand at nothing.’

  ‘It all sounds very interesting,’ commented the Assistant Commissioner, ‘but it looks to me as though it may be a tough proposition to get evidence bearing it out.’

  Foyle pulled out his watch. ‘My idea may all tumble to pieces as soon as a test is applied. I can’t pretend to be infallible. But we can try. I am going back to Scotland Yard now, sir. It is ten o’clock. I expect to be at it all night. Are you coming back?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I can be of any assistance to you. I shall be glad if your theory does come out all right this time. The alternative suspicions are horrible. Good night, Mr Foyle.’

  CHAPTER LIII

  WITH his mind revolving the strength and weakness of his theory, Heldon Foyle returned to Scotland Yard. He paused for a moment at the door of the night-inspector’s room.

  ‘Anything for me, Slack?’ he asked. ‘Has Mr Bolt come in? Ah, there you are, Bolt. Come down to my room.’ He led the way down the green corridor, the divisional inspector following.

  ‘Well?’ asked the superintendent sharply, as he seated himself in his office.

  ‘I have seen the manager, a hall-porter and a chamber-maid at the Palatial, sir. They repeat what they said in their statements before. The Princess left the hotel at about ten o’clock. No one can fix the time precisely, but it was certainly not before ten. She made up her mind very suddenly, the manager tells me.’

  Foyle was rummaging with some papers. ‘Thanks very much, Bolt. Stand by in case I want you. Tell Slack if he hears from Mr Green to ask him to leave things and come up to me.’

  He concentrated himself on the neat bundle of documents in front of him, and gave his mind with complete detachment to the study of several of them. The investigation had narrowed itself. Whoever was guilty was in his hands. The choice lay between Robert Grell, Lady Eileen Meredith, and the Princess Petrovska.

  The reconstruction of the crime for the benefit of the Assistant Commissioner, Foyle had purposely made provisional, but he was becoming more than ever convinced in his own mind that, in spite of appearances, Lola was the person at the bottom of the matter. She had left the Palatial about ten. If, he argued, she had left Grosvenor Gardens immediately after the murder it would have been possible for her to get to the Palatial by that time and to immediately make arrangements to leave. But for all that his intuition told him he was right, he could see no way of fixing the guilt on her.

  He placed the dossier back in a drawer and, lighting a cigar, paced up and down the room puffing furiously. Half an hour after midnight Green came in.

  ‘Yes, it’s worth trying,’ soliloquised Foyle aloud.

  ‘What is, sir?’ asked the chief inspector, stopping with his hand on the door-handle.

  ‘Ah, Green. I was just thinking aloud. Everything all right in Berkeley Square?’

  ‘Everything quiet, sir.’

  ‘Well, things have been happening since I last saw you. I want your opinion. Sit down and listen to this.’

  Green selected a comfortable arm-chair by the desk, while the superintendent went over his interview with Grell. The chief inspector made no comments until the story was finished. Then he sat in silent thought for a while.

  ‘I’ve got faith in your idea, sir,’ he admitted at last. ‘It’s likely to be right as anything. But I am doubtful if we shall be able to get any admission from the Princess.’

  ‘One never knows,’ retorted Foyle. ‘She’s not under arrest yet—only detained. We’re entitled to ask her questions to see if she can clear herself. But our best chance is to take her off her guard. We might go along and wake her out of her sleep now and chance it.’

  The Princess Petrovska had been allotted a couch in the matron’s room of Malchester Row police station, partly to spare her the ignominy of a cell, partly to ensure that she should be under constant supervision. Her sleep was troubled, and she woke with a start when the matron roused her.

  ‘You must dress at once. Some gentlemen are waiting to see you.’

  ‘Waiting to see me? Who are they?’ she asked. Her nerves were still quivering, but her voice was steady and her face composed.

  The matron had received her instructions. ‘I don’t know who they are,’ she replied, in a tone that did not invite further questioning.

  Lola, for all her iron will, found her mind dealing with all sorts of possibilities as she dressed herself mechanically. It was not for nothing that Foyle had chosen that hour for his visit. The sudden summons at such an hour, amid unusual surroundings and the speculation as to what it would be for, had upset the woman’s balance.

  She was taken by the matron into the same room where Grell had been questioned an hour before. Foyle and Green sat at the table and, to her imagination, there was something of judges in their attitude. A chair had been placed at the other side of the table facing them, and the lights were so arranged that while her face would be fully illuminated, theirs would remain in the shadow.

  ‘Sit down, will you,’ said Foyle suavely, when the matron had gone, closing the door behind her. ‘We’re sorry to trouble you at this hour, but matters of urgency have arisen.’

  She strove to read their faces as she seated herself, but the light baffled her. ‘I am quite at your disposal, Mr Foyle,’ she said, hiding her uneasiness under an appearance of flippancy. ‘What do you want?’

  The superintendent balanced a pen between his fingers. ‘Mr Green has already explained that you are not under arrest,’ he said, in a quiet, cold voice. ‘We are detaining you. Whether you will be the subject of a grave charge depends upon your answers to the questions we shall put to you. You must clearly understand, however, that you are not bound to answer.’

  ‘That sounds serious,’ she laughed. ‘Go on, Mr Foyle. Put your questions.’

  ‘Very well. Do you still deny that you visited Mr Grell’s house on the night that the murder took place? I think it fair to tell you that we have had statements both from Ivan Abramovitch and Mr Grell that you were there.’

  He eyed her sternly. She made an expressive gesture with her white hands, and her rings sparkled in the electric light. ‘I’ll not dispute it in the circumstances.’

  ‘You went there with Harry Goldenburg,
your husband, in connection with a scheme of blackmail he had conceived. You were to get certain letters from him for Mr Grell if you could?’

  She bowed. ‘You are correct, as usual.’

  ‘Mr Grell left the room for some reason, and during his absence you had an altercation with Goldenburg.’

  One slender hand resting on the table opened and clenched. She contemplated her finger-nails absently. ‘Oh, no,’ she said blandly. ‘We were always on the most amicable terms.’

  Foyle leaned over the table, his face set and stern, and gripped her tightly by the wrist. ‘Do you realise,’ he demanded, and his voice was fierce, almost theatrical in its intensity, ‘that you left your finger-prints on the hilt of the dagger with which you killed that man—indisputable evidence that will convict you?’

  She shuddered away from him, but his hand-grip bruised the flesh of her wrist as he held her more tightly. He had timed his denunciation well. The strain she had put on herself to meet the situation snapped with the sudden shock. For a brief second she lost her head. She struggled wildly to release herself. His blue eyes, alight with apparent passion, blazed into hers as though he could read her soul.

  ‘I never left finger-prints,’ she exclaimed wildly. ‘I wore gloves.… Oh, my God!’

  The superintendent’s hand opened. The storm of passion on his face died down. The woman, now with a full realisation of what her panic had done, was staring at him in an ecstasy of terror. Green was writing furiously.

  It was Foyle who broke the stillness that followed. ‘That will do, I think,’ he said in an ordinary tone of voice, as though resuming a dropped conversation. ‘Have you got that down, Green? Mrs Goldenburg’—he gave her her real name—‘you will be charged with the wilful murder of your husband. It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down in writing and used as evidence against you.’

  A hysterical laugh came from the woman’s lips. She flung her hands above her head and went down in a heap, while shriek after shriek of wild, uncanny laughter echoed in the room.

  CHAPTER LIV

  THE blaze of electric lights under their opal shades in Heldon Foyle’s office became dim before the growing of the dawn. The superintendent, a cigar between his lips, was working methodically over half-a-dozen piles of papers. At the other side of the table Green puffed furiously at an old brier as he compiled from the documents Foyle handed him a fresh list of witnesses and their statements to be submitted to the Treasury solicitors.

  All night the two men had toiled without consciousness of fatigue. Their jigsaw puzzle was at last righting itself. The fragments of the picture had begun to shape clearly. Their efforts had at last been justified. That alone would be their reward. The trial would show little of the labour that the case had cost—only the result. The hard labour of many scores of men would never be handled outside the walls of Scotland Yard. They had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the Princess Petrovska. When the case was handed over to the Treasury it would be entirely straightened out, and it would be for them to present the simple issue to the judge and jury at the Old Bailey.

  Foyle flung away the remnant of his cigar, and drew out his watch. It was nine o’clock. Sir Hilary Thornton, who had heard of the woman’s confession by telephone, might be expected at any moment.

  ‘That ought to do, Green,’ said the superintendent, as he strung tape round the discarded bundles with which they had been working. ‘We’ll have the lady brought up at the afternoon sitting of the court. That’ll give us time to talk it over with the people from the Treasury. Yes, what is it?’

  A man had tapped and opened the door. Before he could reply, a slim figure pushed by him. Green rose to his feet and hastily pushed his pipe into his pocket. Foyle raised his eyebrows and stood up more slowly. Lady Eileen Meredith confronted them with wild eyes and pallid face. She swayed a trifle, and the chief inspector with a quick movement placed his arm round her waist and helped her to a chair.

  ‘You are not well, Lady Eileen,’ said Foyle, slipping to her side. ‘Shall I do something?—send for a doctor?’

  She waved a slim hand in an impatient negative. ‘I—I shall be all right in a minute,’ she gasped. Her throat worked. ‘I wanted to see you, Mr Foyle. I wanted to tell you—to tell you—’

  Her voice trailed away in piteous indecision. Heldon Foyle whispered a few words to Green, who nodded and passed out. The superintendent took a small decanter from a cupboard, poured something into a glass, and added some water.

  ‘Drink this,’ he said sympathetically. ‘You will feel better afterwards. That’s right. Now, you wanted to tell me something.’

  A little colour returned to the girl’s pale cheeks. Her hands opened and shut convulsively.

  ‘The paper—this morning!’ she exclaimed incoherently. ‘It said—it said—’

  Foyle rubbed his chin. ‘It said that we had detained a man in Sussex,’ he said encouragingly.

  She pulled herself together a little, but her whole form was trembling. ‘It was Mr Grell?’ she asked eagerly.

  He inclined his head in assent. ‘Yes, it was Mr Grell.’

  Her face dropped to her hands and her frame shook. But when she raised her head she was dry-eyed. The emotion that possessed her was too deep for tears. She gazed in a kind of stupor at the immobile face of the detective.

  ‘You have made a ghastly mistake,’ she said, and her voice was level and dull. ‘Mr Grell had nothing to do with the murder. I killed that man. I have come here today to give myself up.’

  A twinkle of amusement shot into the blue eyes of Heldon Foyle. The girl, oblivious to all save the misery that enwrapped her, noticed nothing of his amusement. But his next words aroused her.

  ‘That’s curious,’ he said slowly, ‘very curious. You are the third person to confess to the murder. Really, I don’t believe you can all be guilty.’

  She stared at him in dumb amazement. Her tortured mind was slow to accept a new idea. ‘The third!’ she echoed mechanically.

  ‘Yes, the third. The others are Mr Robert Grell and the woman you know as the Princess Petrovska, who in our police jargon would be described as alias Lola Rachael, alias Lola Goldenburg.’ He smiled down at her as she turned her bewildered face towards him. ‘So you see, there is no great need to alarm yourself. The mystery is all but cleared up. If you will permit me, my dear young lady, I should like to congratulate you.’

  ‘But—but—’ She struggled for words.

  Foyle seated himself, and picking up a pen beat a regular tattoo on his blotting-pad. He went on, unheeding the girl’s interruption.

  ‘I won’t deny that if you had told me you killed Harry Goldenburg a day or two ago, I might have believed you, and it might have made things awkward. But there is now no question of that. We know now that it was neither you nor Mr Grell. If you had told us the real facts at first so far as you were concerned, it would have simplified matters. However, there is no reason why you shouldn’t do so now.’

  The warm blood had suffused her cheeks. She had risen from her seat, unable at first to comprehend the full meaning of it all. ‘I cannot understand,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You will presently. Now, if you don’t mind, sit down quietly, and tell me in your own way exactly what happened on the night this man was killed. Take your own time. I shall not interrupt.’

  A lurking fear at the back of the girl’s mind that he was trying by some subtle means to entrap her into an admission that would implicate Grell disappeared. He dropped his pen. She searched the square face, but could see nothing behind the mask of smiling good nature. Her own curiosity was alight, but she sternly suppressed it.

  ‘You know about the letter?’ she asked. ‘The letter I got from Goldenburg?’

  He shook his head. ‘Assume that I know nothing. Begin at the beginning.’

  ‘Well, that was the beginning. I did not know it was from Goldenburg then, for it was unsigned, and both the address and the note itself were in typewriting. I
t was delivered by an express messenger. It said that the writer had something of importance affecting my future happiness to say to me, and that I could learn what it was by calling at Mr Grell’s house about ten. The writer advised me to keep my visit as secret as possible.’

  ‘Ah! What time did you get the note?’

  ‘I am not quite sure. It was about half-past nine or quarter to ten.’

  ‘Very neatly timed to prevent you making inquiries beforehand. Go on.’

  ‘I was perhaps a little frightened and the note piqued my curiosity. The quickest way to learn what was wrong seemed to me to follow the writer’s instructions. I went to Grosvenor Gardens, where I was apparently expected, for a man-servant let me in and took me to Mr Grell’s study. I walked in by myself, not permitting him to announce me. The room was in semi-darkness, but I could make out a figure on a couch at the other end of the room. I walked over to it. The face was in shadow, and not until I was quite close could I see the stain on the shirt front. It took me a few moments to realise that the man was dead.

  ‘Then I wanted to scream, to call out for help, but I could not. It was all too terrible—horrible—like a ghastly dream. Gradually my wits and my senses returned to me. It came into my mind like a flash that the letter I had received hinted at blackmail. I could not see the dead man’s face.’

  Her voice died away and she looked a little hesitatingly at the superintendent. He nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Lady Eileen. You had found a dead man in Mr Grell’s house—a man whom you suspected of blackmailing your fiancé. You not unnaturally thought that he had been killed by Mr Grell.’

  ‘Yes.’ She was speaking in a lower key now. ‘I feared that Mr Grell in an excess of passion had killed him. What was I to think?’ She made a gesture of helplessness with her hands. ‘My brain was in a whirl, but I seemed to see things clearly enough. I dared not raise an alarm, for I recognised that my evidence as far as it went would be deadly against the man I loved. I laid my hand on the dagger to withdraw it, but at that moment I heard the door behind me open and close quickly. I turned, but not sharply enough to see who the intruder was.