House in Charlton Crescent

by Annie Haynes

  “Thirty-eight years it will be next Martinmas. The Squire’s first wife was alive then, and her daughter, pretty Miss Marjory.”

  “Mrs. Balmaine, you mean?” the inspector questioned with a sudden accession of interest. “Was she like her daughter?”

  “Not much.” Soames blew his nose again. “She was darker than Miss Margaret Balmaine, and taller, but she was the apple of her father’s eye. He was never the same after she went away. He was proud of Mr. Christopher and Air. Frank, but they never came up to Miss Marjorie with him.”

  “I wonder he didn’t forgive her marriage, then,” Cardyn remarked.

  “He would, if she had ever asked him. It was her never troubling about him again that broke her father’s heart. And then she died.”

  “Ah, well! We all have to come to it, Mr. Soames.” The inspector gave him a farewell nod. “Now, Mr. Cardyn, we have our work cut out for to-day.”

  Bruce Cardyn gave himself a mental shake.

  For the time being he seemed lost in a sort of dream. His thoughts were very far away as he followed the inspector to Lady Anne’s sitting-room.

  Nothing could have looked less like the scene of a tragedy. There was nothing to show what had happened. By Inspector Furnival’s orders everything had been left exactly as it was at the time of the death, except that what remained of Lady Anne herself had been carried across to her bedroom. The teacups and saucers they had been using stood where the members of Lady Anne’s last tea-party had hurriedly set them down when the alarm was raised. The very hot cakes that Soames had dropped when he caught sight of the face at the window still lay on the floor. Some of them had been trodden into Lady Anne’s beautiful carpet. The silver cover had rolled or been kicked under the table; the dish itself, with one cake still on it, was near the escritoire.

  The inspector’s grey eyes looked round appraisingly.

  “Now, once more, show me where you all sat, Mr. Cardyn.”

  Bruce pointed out Dorothy Fyvert’s place at the tea-table, his own chair in close proximity, John Daventry’s and Margaret Balmaine’s near Lady Anne’s.

  On the flap of the escritoire the little bits of jewellery lay in their open cases, Lady Anne’s teacup beside them. On the floor beneath was a deep stain, a silent witness to the tragedy. Inspector Furnival, stepping gingerly among the cakes, went over to the window farthest from the escritoire, which was wide open as it had been left the day before.

  He stretched himself out and twisted himself round, staring up and down and both sides.

  “I’m afraid your man was not much of a shadower, Mr. Cardyn. In the summer-house, you say he was stationed? I should have said it was impossible for anybody, or anything, to get at this window without being seen.”

  “So should I,” Cardyn acknowledged. “Yet Brooks is one of our most careful men. He allows, though, that he was watching the terrace below, more than the actual window itself. He swears that no one either climbed up from the terrace or came down again.”

  The inspector took another look.

  “He might have put a ladder up possibly without leaving any trace, but he certainly did not climb up by the creeper, that swear. There isn’t not a twig broken as far down as can see. I’ll have a look at the roof later on. But now this escritoire. We will just glance through the contents, and then seal it up. Lady Anne kept a diary—I think we will take it away to examine it.”

  Most of the drawers in the escritoire were unlocked, many of them stood open, as they had been: left when Lady Anne was searching for any trace of the missing jewels. But so far as casual glance could see there was nothing in them that bore upon the present case. Right at the back of the secret cavity, where the pearls had been kept, the inspector’s keen eyes had noticed some papers, not rolled up or fastened together in a packet, but looking as though they had been hastily thrust in at odd moments.

  He pulled them out; some of them had superscriptions written across the envelopes. “From my son Christopher”; “From my boy Frankie”; two or three older far—“From my husband.”

  The inspector laid all these reverently aside after a cursory glance. Then he took up the handful of odd ones that remained. Some of them were quite recent. He opened the first.

  “‘From your loving niece, Dorothy Fyvert,’’’ he read. “Now why did the old lady preserve this, wonder?”

  “She was very fond of Miss Fyvert,” Bruce said quickly.

  “Yes,” the inspector assented dryly. “This is the letter, Mr. Cardyn. It is dated from Barminster Court: ‘Dearest Aunt Anne, I am in dreadful trouble. There is no one—no one to whom I can turn but you. I want five hundred pounds at once. You have often talked of leaving me money. Will you give it me now instead? If you will, I will thank you and bless your name for ever. Oh, dear Aunt Anne, my need is dire as you would realize if I could explain to you. Help me for mercy’s sake.’”

  Across the sheet there was scrawled, in the shaky handwriting that had become very familiar to Bruce Cardyn since his coming to Charlton Crescent, the one word “Refused.”

  The inspector handed it to Cardyn with a keen glance at the young man’s averted face.

  “Miss Fyvert would not have murdered her aunt for five times five hundred pounds. Faugh! The very idea is unthinkable. Besides”—growing calmer—”we have no proof that Lady Anne’s death would give Miss Fyvert the five hundred pounds she wanted.”

  “I feel sure that Miss Fyvert comes into a considerable amount of money on her own account,” the inspector said gravely. “But at any rate Miss Fyvert is supposed to be engaged to Mr. John Daventry, who certainly succeeds to much of Lady Anne’s wealth automatically—I mean under her late husband’s will. Still, I don’t know. I wonder whether she got her five hundred, and how, but we shall have to hear her explanation.”

  “I should say there was a much greater motive for John Daventry to commit the murder than for a girl who might and might not marry him,” Bruce said sarcastically. “There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, you know.”

  “Undoubtedly there is,” the inspector agreed. “Still, I think we will have a little confidential talk with Miss Dorothy Fyvert.” He was thrusting the rest of the papers back into their hiding-place as he spoke. “These all date farther back.” Bruce Cardyn went over to the window. He was anxious above all things that the inspector should not guess the secret he had hitherto guarded so carefully, and, ostrich-like, fancied the Ferret’s keen eyes had not even suspected. As he stood there looking up and down it was impossible that the memory of yesterday’s tragedy, of the ghastly face at the window, should not recur to his mind. Was the form that had looked so shadowy that of a living man or woman, or was it some visitant from another world? Plain matter-of-fact man as Cardyn had hitherto considered himself, he could not answer the question. As he leaned out still farther, a tiny fluttering thread of white caught his eyes. It was in the ivy, just below the window ledge. He stretched down his arm and picked it out. Then he laid it on the palm of his hand and gazed at it curiously. It looked like a thread torn from a piece of muslin, and he remembered the shadowy veil that had seemed to float round that white face. He was just about to show it to the inspector, when he was startled by a sharp exclamation from the other.

  “The diary!”

  Cardyn turned quickly.

  “Lady Anne Daventry’s diary,” Inspector Furnival repeated. “It is gone.”

  “Gone!” Bruce Cardyn stepped back. “What do you mean? I saw it on the writing-flap when we came here after the body was moved—a square book bound in grey leather with ‘Diary’ written in gold across it and a tiny gold lock which was locked.”

  “It was here then of course,” the inspector said. “I noticed it particularly, for I was in two minds whether I should begin to read it last night, but there was so much to be done that I decided to leave it until after the inquest to-day. Now, dolt, ass that am, I shall never forgive myself, some one has been before me.”

  “But who could have taken i
t?” Cardyn looked as amazed as he felt. “And how could anyone get into the room at all? You had the key.”

  “It has not been out of my possession for a moment,” the inspector said. “But that book held a secret that might have hanged some one—and that some one had the means of getting into the room.”

  Cardyn’s eyes turned to the open window.

  “Suppose—suppose the—the man came back?” he hazarded.

  “And got into the room and got out again without being seen by the two men watching—I think not,” the inspector observed.

  Then, while the two men were still staring at one another, there came an oddly incongruous sound in the stillness—the sharp ring of the telephone bell.

  There was a moment’s hesitation, then the inspector took up the receiver.

  “Hullo! Furnival speaking. Who are you?”

  “Wilkins, Scotland Yard,” came back the answer. “The pearls—the long string with the diamond clasp for which we were to make inquiries—they were found at the first place we went to.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Messrs. Spagnum and Thirgood, Bond Street. Sold there last month by Lady Anne Daventry herself.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  “It is, take it all in all, about the queerest case I was ever engaged upon.”

  Inspector Furnival was the speaker. He and Bruce Cardyn were in a taxi on their way to Messrs. Spagnum and Thirgood’s. Furnival was keeping Cardyn religiously by his side during his investigations—a fact that was beginning to puzzle the younger detective, with whom it was more or less a tradition that the “Force” distrusted all private or unofficial detectives.

  “I expect we shall find that they have made a mistake at Spagnum and Thirgood’s,” Bruce rejoined. “Probably the thief said they were sent by Lady Anne Daventry.”

  “Likely enough,” the detective assented, his small eyes looking particularly alert as their taxi stopped before a well known jeweller’s establishment in Bond Street.

  Inspector Furnival and his companion, on the production of the former’s card, were shown at once to the manager’s office. That functionary received them affably.

  “I have been expecting you, gentlemen,” he said at once. “Come about this matter of Lady Anne Daventry’s pearls, haven’t you? What a terrible affair this murder of hers is! You might have knocked me down with a feather when I saw it in this morning’s paper. Lady Anne Daventry was such an old customer of ours. I feel as if it were a personal loss. Was the crime committed to obtain money, inspector?”

  The inspector graciously admitted that it might have been, and asked to see the pearls.

  The manager produced them from a safe close by.

  “I thought you would want to see them first thing. Here they are. You see there is no mistake about them.”

  The inspector took the much talked-of pearls in his hand and examined them. They had all been matched with great care both in size and colour, and the clasp was unmistakable.

  Inspector Furnival drew a deep breath.

  “Yes. It is the pearls right enough. Now, who brought them to you?”

  “Lady Anne Daventry herself,” the manager answered promptly. “She came about them twice.”

  “Lady Anne Daventry herself!”

  For once the inspector was really amazed.

  “Who told you it was Lady Anne Daventry?”

  “Who told me it was Lady Anne Daventry?” the manager repeated explosively. “Why, bless my life, inspector, don’t you understand that I know Lady Anne Daventry personally? I have only been manager here the last six months. Before then I was head assistant for some twenty years. I have seen Lady Anne here on many occasions, and since she grew more invalided I have waited on her at the house in Charlton Crescent on several occasions with trays of jewellery from which she would select a wedding or birthday present. It was a great pleasure to me to know that she was well enough to come here again.”

  The inspector regarded him keenly.

  “Do you seriously mean to tell me that you really believe it was Lady Anne Daventry herself who brought the pearls here?”

  It was the manager’s turn to look amazed now.

  “I tell you that I know it was Lady Anne Daventry. Her first visit was preceded by a note saying that she was coming, so we were expecting her.”

  “Was the note written by Lady Anne herself?” questioned the inspector sharply.

  The manager hesitated.

  “N—o; I don’t think it was. It was written on her paper I know, for I remember noticing her crest, but it was written, I presume, by her secretary.”

  “Have you the letter?”

  The manager shook his head.

  “I should say it is not in the least likely. If you wish I will have inquiries made. But it was not regarded as of any importance, especially after Lady Anne’s visit.”

  “It is most important that it should be found now, though.”

  The manager shrugged his shoulders as he said a few words down a speaking tube. It was evident to Bruce Cardyn, watching him, that he looked upon the inspector as both interfering and officious.

  “Now with regard to the price?” the inspector went on. “What did you give her for them? And in what form? There is no record of such a transaction in her bank book.”

  “No,” the manager paused. “Of course in an ordinary case all details would be confidential. But I have no choice here.”

  “None!” the inspector interposed firmly.

  “We offered two thousand for it,” the manager said reluctantly, “and she accepted at once. As to the form, she explained that she did not wish anyone to know that she had parted with her pearls. We gathered that she wanted the money for some member of her family who had got into trouble, therefore she did not want to have a cheque as it would be easily traced. She asked us to give her the amount in notes. We gave her that day ten notes of a hundred each and arranged to pay the other instalment at a later date. We should, of course, have sent it to her, but she explained that she would come for it in person, as practically all her correspondence passed through her secretary’s hands.”

  “Then this second thousand—”

  “It is still waiting for her. Some three days ago we received a note from her saying that she would come to our establishment to complete her business with us on Thursday, the 5th of February, which, of course, is next week. We replied that everything would be ready for her. The next thing we saw was in the paper telling of her cruel murder. You can hardly imagine what a shock it gave us.”

  “It must have done,” the inspector agreed, a certain amount of sympathy in his tone. “And now, I am afraid you must prepare for another shock. Lady Anne Daventry did not sell her pearls to you. She had not found out that they were missing until the afternoon of her death when she wanted to show them to some friends. She herself summoned Scotland Yard to her assistance and I was on the point of starting for Charlton Crescent to interview her on the subject when the news of her brutal murder arrived.”

  “What!” The manager was staring at the inspector as though he doubted the evidence of his own ears. “But I tell you it was Lady Anne who—”

  “I am afraid you have been deceived by a clever impostor,” the inspector said gravely. “The person who sold you the pearls was not Lady Anne Daventry herself, but some one impersonating her.”

  “But it is impossible,” stuttered the manager. “I tell you knew Lady Anne not only by sight, but had often spoken to her. I am certain it was Lady Anne who brought the pearls.”

  “Well, if you are right, the mystery only deepens,” the inspector said diplomatically. “Will you please tell us all about the interview. Every detail of it, so far as you remember.”

  The manager waited a moment.

  “It—there is so little to say,” he began at last. “Lady Anne arrived punctually at the time she had fixed on the Friday of last week. I went out to receive her and with her man on the other side helped her from the carriage. From
there she walked in here with my arm and the stick on the other side. Her man carried the case containing the pearls. I may say that Lady Anne explained that she would have brought her maid with her, but that she did not wish the woman, who I understood had been with her for many years, to know that she had parted with her pearls. The interview was very quickly over. We had valued Lady Anne’s pearls for her some years before, so that she knew what to expect and we were quite satisfied to give the price she asked. I helped her back to her carriage, and she drove off promising, as I say, to call to complete the transaction next week, on the 5th of February.”

  “I wonder why she did not arrange to come sooner,” the inspector said, speaking as if half to himself, while his small grey eyes watched every change in the other’s face from beneath their lowered lids.

  The manager spread out his hands.

  “Who can account for the vagaries of these great ladies? Lady Anne did, however, say something about having something else to bring us to-day.”

  “And you really noticed nothing unaccustomed or strange in her voice or manner?”

  “Nothing!” the manager said decidedly. “She talked in her usual brisk and rather snappy manner—for there is no denying she was a snappy old lady, you know, inspector! And she wore the same sort of clothes she always did—a rather full mantle, some magnificent furs and a regular Victorian bonnet. No, I noticed nothing particular about her except—But, no, there couldn’t be anything in that.”

  “Perhaps you will let us have it?” suggested the inspector. “We can’t afford to neglect any clue, however slight.”

  “Well, it was nothing of course,” the manager went on. “But I noticed that she signed the receipt without removing her gloves. I remarked it because I remembered the big diamond she generally wore and glanced to see if it was still there. I thought it a little strange perhaps that she did not take off her glove, but of course one can understand that crippled with rheumatism as she was it may have been very painful to pull her gloves off and on.”