The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  “But I don’t see the use of your pretending you were going away.”

  “I did it on purpose. I knew the fact that old Mrs. Hannaford had engaged me would get about in certain circles, and I wanted certain people to think that I had gone away to investigate some clue which I thought I had discovered. In order to baulk all possible inquirers I didn’t even let the servants forward my letters. They went to Jackson, who sent them on to me.”

  “Then you were really investigating in London?”

  “Now shall I tell you where you heard that I was on this case?”

  “Yes.”

  “You heard it at Kempton Park Steeplechases, and your informant was Inspector Swanage.”

  “You have seen him and he has told you.”

  “No; I saw you there talking to him.”

  “You saw me? You were at Kempton Park? I never saw you.”

  “Yes, you did, for I caught you looking full at me. I was trying to sell some race cards just before the second race, and was holding them between the railings of the enclosure.”

  “What! You were that old gipsy woman? I’m certain Swanage didn’t know you.”

  “I didn’t want him to, or anybody else.”

  “It was an astonishing disguise. But come, aren’t you going to tell me anything about the Hannaford case? I’ve been reading it up, but I fail entirely to see the slightest suspicion against any one but the husband. Everything points to his having committed the crime in a moment of madness. The fact that he has since gone completely out of his mind seems to me to show that conclusively.”

  “It is a good job he did go out of his mind—but for that I am afraid he would have suffered for the crime, and the poor broken-hearted old mother for whom I am working would soon have followed him to the grave.”

  “Then you don’t share the general belief in his guilt?”

  “I did at first, but I don’t now.”

  “You have discovered the guilty party?”

  “No—not yet—but I hope to.”

  “Tell me exactly all that has happened—there may still be a chance for your ‘assistant.’ ”

  “Yes, it is quite possible that now I may be able to avail myself of your services. You say you have studied the details of this case—let us just run through them together, and see what you think of my plan of campaign so far as it has gone. When old Mrs. Hannaford came to me, her son had already been declared insane and unable to plead, and had gone to Broadmoor. That was nearly a month after the commission of the crime, so that much valuable time had been lost. At first I declined to take the matter up—the police had so thoroughly investigated the affair. The case seemed so absolutely conclusive that I told her that it would be useless for her to incur the heavy expense of a private investigation. But she pleaded so earnestly—her faith in her son was so great—and she seemed such a sweet, dear old lady, that at last she conquered my scruples, and I consented to study the case, and see if there was the slightest alternative theory to go on. I had almost abandoned hope, for there was nothing in the published reports to encourage it, when I determined to go to the fountain-head, and see the Superintendent who had had the case in hand.

  “He received me courteously, and told me everything. He was certain that the husband committed the murder. There was an entire absence of motive for any one else in the house to have done it, and the husband’s flight from the house in the middle of the night was absolutely damning. I inquired if they had found any one who had seen the husband in the street—any one who could fix the time at which he had left the house. He replied that no such witness had been found. Then I asked if the policeman on duty that night had made any report of any suspicious characters being seen about. He said that the only person he had noticed at all was a man well known to the police—a man named Flash George. I asked what time Flash George had been seen and whereabouts, and I ascertained that it was at half-past two in the morning, and about a hundred yards below the scene of the crime, that when the policeman spoke to him he said he was coming from Hampstead, and was going to Covent Garden Market. He walked away in the direction of the Chalk Farm Road. I inquired what Flash George’s record was, and ascertained that he was the associate of thieves and swindlers, and he was suspected of having disposed of some jewels, the proceeds of a robbery which had made a nine days’ sensation. But the police had failed to bring the charge home to him, and the jewels had never been traced. He was also a gambler, a frequenter of racecourses and certain night-clubs of evil repute, and had not been seen about for some time previous to that evening.”

  “And didn’t the police make any further investigations in that direction?”

  “No. Why should they? There was nothing missing from the house—not the slightest sign of an attempted burglary. All their efforts were directed to proving the guilt of the unfortunate woman’s husband.”

  “And you?”

  “I had a different task—mine was to prove the husband’s innocence. I determined to find out something more of Flash George. I shut the house up, gave out that I had gone away, and took, amongst other things, to selling cards and pencils on racecourses. The day that Flash George made his reappearance on the turf after a long absence was the day that he backed the winner of the second race at Kempton Park for a hundred pounds.”

  “But surely that proves that if he had been connected with any crime it must have been one in which money was obtained. No one has attempted to associate the murder of Mrs. Hannaford with robbery.”

  “No. But one thing is certain—that on the night of the crime Flash George was in the neighbourhood. Two days previously he had borrowed a few pounds of a pal because he was ‘stony broke.’ When he reappears as a racing man he has on a fur coat, is evidently in first-class circumstances, and he bets in hundred-pound notes. He is a considerably richer man after the murder of Mrs. Hannaford than he was before, and he was seen within a hundred yards of the house at half-past two o’clock on the night that the crime was committed.”

  “That might have been a mere accident. His sudden wealth may be the result of a lucky gamble, or a swindle of which you know nothing. I can’t see that it can possibly have any bearing on the Hannaford crime, because nothing was taken from the house.”

  “Quite true. But here is a remarkable fact. When he went up to the betting man he went to one who was betting close to the rails. When he pulled out that hundred-pound note I was at the rails, and I pushed my cards in between and asked him to buy one. Flash George is a ‘suspected character,’ and quite capable on a foggy day of trying to swindle a bookmaker. The bookmaker took the precaution to open that note, it being for a hundred pounds, and examined it carefully. That enabled me to see the number. I had sharpened pencils to sell, and with one of them I hastily took down the number of that note—35421.”

  “That was clever. And you have traced it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has that furnished you with any clue?”

  “It has placed me in possession of a most remarkable fact The hundred-pound note which was in Flash George’s possession on Kempton Park racecourse was one of a number which were paid over the counter of the Union Bank of London for a five-thousand-pound cheque over ten years ago. And that cheque was drawn by the murdered woman’s husband.”

  “Mr. Hannaford!”

  “No; her first husband—Mr. Charles Drayson.”

  When Dorcas Dene told me that the £100 note Flash George had handed to the bookmaker at Kempton Park was one which had some years previously been paid to Mr. Charles Drayson, the first husband of the murdered woman, Mrs. Hannaford, I had to sit still and think for a moment.

  It was curious certainly, but after all much more remarkable coincidences than that occur daily. I could not see what practical value there was in Dorcas’s extraordinary discovery, because Mr. Charles Drayson was dead, and it was hardly likely that his wife would have kept a £100 note of his for several years. And if she had, she had not been murdered for that, because there
were no signs of the house having been broken into. The more I thought the business over the more confused I became in my attempt to establish a clue from it, and so after a minute’s silence I frankly confessed to Dorcas that I didn’t see where her discovery led to.

  “I don’t say that it leads very far by itself,” said Dorcas. “But you must look at all the circumstances. During the night of January 5 a lady is murdered in her own drawing-room. Round about the time that the attack is supposed to have been made upon her a well-known bad character is seen close to the house. That person, who just previously has been ascertained to have been so hard up that he had been borrowing of his associates, reappears on the turf a few weeks later expensively dressed and in possession of money. He bets with a £100 note, and that £100 note I have traced to the previous possession of the murdered woman’s first husband, who lost his life in the disastrous fire in Paris, while oh a short visit to that capital.”

  “Yes, it certainly is curious, but—”

  “Wait a minute—I haven’t finished yet. Of the bank-notes—several of them for £100—which were paid some years ago to Mr. Charles Drayson, not one had come back to the bank before the murder.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Since the murder several of them have come in. Now, is it not a remarkable circumstance that during all those years £5,000 worth of bank-notes should have remained out!”

  “It is remarkable, but after all bank-notes circulate—they may pass through hundreds of hands before returning to the bank.”

  “Some may, undoubtedly, but it is highly improbable that all would under ordinary circumstances—especially notes for £100. These are sums which are not passed from pocket to pocket. As a rule they go to the bank of one of the early receivers of them, and from that bank into the Bank of England.”

  “You mean that it is an extraordinary fact that for many years not one of the notes paid to Mr. Charles Drayson by the Union Bank came back to the Bank of England.”

  “Yes, that is an extraordinary fact, but there is a fact which is more extraordinary still, and that is that soon after the murder of Mrs. Hannaford that state of things alters. It looks as though the murderer had placed the notes in circulation again.”

  “It does, certainly. Have you traced back any of the other notes that have come in?”

  “Yes; but they have been cleverly worked. They have nearly all been circulated in the betting ring; those that have not have come in from money-changers in Paris and Rotterdam. My own belief is that before long the whole of those notes will come back to the bank.”

  “Then, my dear Dorcas, it seems to me that your course is plain, and you ought to go to the police and ask them to get the bank to circulate a list of the notes.”

  Dorcas shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m going to carry this case through on my own account. The police are convinced that the murderer is Mr. Hannaford, who is at present in Broadmoor, and the bank has absolutely no reason to interfere. No question has been raised of the notes having been stolen. They were paid to the man who died over ten years ago, not to the woman who was murdered last January.”

  “But you have traced one note to Flash George, who is a bad lot, and he was near the house on the night of the tragedy. You suspect Flash George and—”

  “I do not suspect Flash George of the actual murder,” she said, “and I don’t see how he is to be arrested for being in possession of a bank-note which forms no part of the police case, and which he might easily say he had received in the betting ring.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Follow up the clue I have. I have been shadowing Flash George all the time I have been away. I know where he lives—I know who are his companions.”

  “And do you think the murderer is among them?”

  “No. They are all a little astonished at his sudden good fortune. I have heard them ‘chip’ him, as they call it, on the subject. I have carried my investigations up to a certain point and there they stop short. I am going a step further to-morrow evening, and it is in that step that I want assistance.”

  “And you have come to me?” I said eagerly.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “To-morrow morning I am going to make a thorough examination of the room in which the murder was committed. To-morrow evening I have to meet a gentleman of whom I know nothing but his career and his name. I want you to accompany me.”

  “Certainly; but if I am your assistant in the evening I shall expect to be your assistant in the morning—I should very much like to see the scene of the crime.”

  “I have no objection. The house on Haverstock Hill is at present shut up and in charge of a caretaker, but the solicitors who are managing the late Mrs. Hannaford’s estate have given me permission to go over it and examine it.”

  The next day at eleven o’clock I met Dorcas outside Mrs. Hannaford’s house, and the caretaker, who had received his instructions, admitted us. He was the gardener, and an old servant, and had been present during the police investigation.

  The bedroom in which Mr. Hannaford and his wife slept on the fatal night was on the floor above. Dorcas told me to go upstairs, shut the door, lie down on the bed, and listen. Directly a noise in the room below attracted my attention, I was to jump up, open the door and call out.

  I obeyed her instructions and listened intently, but lying on the bed I heard nothing for a long time. It must have been quite a quarter of an hour when suddenly I heard a sound as of a door opening with a cracking sound. I leapt up, ran to the balusters, and called over, “I heard that!”

  “All right, then, come down,” said Dorcas, who was standing in the hall with the caretaker.

  She explained to me that she had been moving about the drawing-room with the man, and they had both made as much noise with their feet as they could. They had even opened and shut the drawing-room door, but nothing had attracted my attention. Then Dorcas had sent the man to open the front door. It had opened with the cracking sound that I had heard.

  “Now,” said Dorcas to the caretaker, “you were here when the police were coming and going—did the front door always make a sound like that?”

  “Yes, madam. The door had swollen or warped, or something, and it was always difficult to open. Mrs. Hannaford spoke about it once and was going to have it eased.”

  “That’s it, then,” said Dorcas to me. “The probability is that it was the noise made by the opening of that front door which first attracted the attention of the murdered woman.”

  “That was Hannaford going out—if his story is correct.”

  “No; Hannaford went out in a rage. He would pull the door open violently, and probably bang it to. That she would understand. It was when the door opened again with a sharp crack that she listened, thinking it was her husband come back.”

  “But she was murdered in the drawing-room!”

  “Yes. My theory, therefore, is that after the opening of the front door she expected her husband to come upstairs. He didn’t do so, and she concluded that he had gone into one of the rooms downstairs to spend the night, and she got up and came down to find him and ask him to get over his temper and come back to bed. She went into the drawing-room to see if he was there, and was struck down from behind before she had time to utter a cry. The servants heard nothing, remember.”

  “They said so at the inquest—yes.”

  “Now come into the drawing-room. This is where the caretaker tells me the body was found—here in the centre of the room—the poker with which the fatal blow had been struck was lying between the body and the fireplace. The absence of a cry and the position of the body show that when Mrs. Hannaford opened the door she saw no one (I am of course presuming that the murderer was not her husband) and she came in further. But there must have been some one in the room or she couldn’t have been murdered in it.”

  “That is indisputable; but he might not have been in the room at the time—the person m
ight have been hiding in the hall and followed her in.”

  “To suppose that we must presume that the murderer came into the room, took the poker from the fireplace, and went out again in order to come in again. That poker was secured, I am convinced, when the intruder heard footsteps coming down the stair. He picked up the poker and then concealed himself here.”

  “Then why, my dear Dorcas, shouldn’t he have remained concealed until Mrs. Hannaford had gone out of the room again?”

  “I think she was turning to go when he rushed out and struck her down. He probably thought that she had heard the noise of the door, and might go and alarm the servants.”

  “But just now you said she came in believing that her husband had returned and was in one of the rooms.”

  “The intruder could hardly be in possession of her thoughts.”

  “In the meantime he could have got out at the front door.”

  ‘Yes; but if his object was robbery he would have to go without the plunder. He struck the woman down in order to have time to get what he wanted.”

  “Then you think he left her here senseless while he searched the house?”

  “Nobody got anything by searching the house, ma’am,” broke in the caretaker. “The police satisfied themselves that nothing had been disturbed. Every door was locked, the plate was all complete, not a bit of jewellery or anything was missing. The servants were all examined about that, and the detectives went over every room and every cupboard to prove it wasn’t no burglar broke in or anything of that sort. Besides, the windows were all fastened.”

  “What he says is quite true,” said Dorcas to me, “but something alarmed Mrs. Hannaford in the night and brought her to the drawing-room in her nightdress. If it was, as I suspect, the opening of the front door, that is how the guilty person got in.”

  “The caretaker shook his head. “It was the poor master as did it, ma’am, right enough. He was out of his mind.”

  Dorcas shrugged her shoulders. “If he had done it, it would have been a furious attack, there would have been oaths and cries, and the poor lady would have received a rain of blows. The medical evidence shows that death resulted from one heavy blow on the back of the skull. But let us see where the murderer could have concealed himself ready armed with the poker here in the drawing-room.”