by Molly Thynne
“You said there was nothing against him here,” said Constantine. “Was there anything known to his disadvantage elsewhere?”
“There were rumours,” admitted the old man cautiously. “I can only give them to you for what they are worth. The diamond people from the Cape declare that he was mixed up in a scandal there and was actually arrested and they are of the opinion that he made a cat’s paw of his assistant, who was convicted and served his sentence. One of the De Beers men who was here not long ago declared that he had met the man shortly after his release from prison and that he had sworn to get even with Miller. He also said, by the way, that this man had left the Cape for Europe shortly before he did. I know nothing, myself, of Miller’s past, but I must say that the story is generally accepted as true.”
“Do you know the name of this man?” asked Constantine.
The Greek shook his head.
“I have never heard it, but it would be easy to trace.”
“He would have had time to get over here?”
“Oh, yes. It is a month, at least, since I spoke to the De Beers agent and he had been to Berlin and Paris on his way to England. There has been plenty of time, but, my friend, it was Mrs. Miller who was killed! If it had been Miller, now!”
“Too oblique a form of revenge, you think?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed.
“If it had been a peasant vendetta in our own country, no. It would have been as good a way as any other. But, in England, and in the case of a man whose relations with his wife were notoriously unfriendly?”
“The murderer may not have known that,” put in Constantine quickly.
The jeweller shrugged his shoulders.
“It was common talk. If you ask me, I do not think he would try to hit him in that way. But the fact remains, this man had a grudge against him and he may be in England.”
Constantine assented absently.
“Miller has assured the police, who, by the way, are aware of the arrest in Cape Town, that he knows of no one who could possibly wish him ill,” he said.
“If you were in Miller’s place would you voluntarily allude to that little episode in your past?”
Constantine’s eyes twinkled.
“I suppose not,” he admitted. “What is his standing here?”
The jeweller smiled.
“His reputation is unblemished. But he has been caught, once, remember, and he is very careful now. He is a clever man, Miller, and I think he has discovered that, in this country, honesty is the best policy. Certainly he has made it pay. He has built up a good business.”
Constantine stayed to drink a cup of Turkish coffee with the old man, then took his leave. This time his thirst for information carried him to a very different quarter.
Old Lady Farnborough had never, even in her prime, been either beautiful or accomplished and now, in her extreme old age, enthroned beside a blazing fire in her stuffy, over-furnished drawing room, she would probably have had to depend on her two aged and obese fox terriers for companionship had it not been for two qualities that had survived the years and made her one of the most sought-after and detested old women in London. She was possessed of a retentive memory and a curiosity as vivid as Constantine’s own. In the course of her long life she had known everybody worth knowing and never, so it was said, had she either failed to hear, or forgotten, the slightest whisper to the detriment of any one of them. Daughter of a famous politician and wife of one of the Stewards of the Jockey Club, she had two richly manured fields from which to cull her harvest and, as a result, her drawing room had become the haunt of those who love gossip for its own sake and the reference library of such writers of spicy memoirs who depend on “good stories” for the sale of their books. Of the Miller crowd she would, of course, know nothing. They belonged to a class of which she barely acknowledged the existence, but Constantine realised that, for the present, he had got as far as he was likely to get along that line. His object now was to forestall any information that might reach Arkwright’s ears later.
Lady Farnborough was at home, which was hardly surprising, in view of the fact that she never went out if she could possibly help it. She received Constantine graciously. In her eyes he was still a “foreigner” and a nobody, whose charm, good looks and money had won him the entree into a magic circle that she would never realise had practically ceased to exist. But she liked him and would store up some of her choicest bits of scandal for his delectation.
“It is a long time since I’ve seen you,” she panted gustily. “Betty Culmer tells me you’ve got yourself mixed up in this unsavoury business in Illbeck Street. Sit down and tell me all about it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than you’ve seen in the papers,” answered Constantine, bending down to scratch the elder of the terriers cunningly behind the ear.
“Nonsense. Never look at the papers nowadays. My maid reads me as much as she thinks I can stand. It isn’t good for me to get in a temper at my age. According to Betty, your dentist murdered some woman one’s never heard of. How you were mixed up in it I couldn’t make out. What’s it all about? Dentists didn’t murder people in my day.”
Constantine chuckled.
“They don’t now. Poor Davenport had nothing to do with it, but I was there when he discovered the poor woman. She was a Mrs. Miller, the wife of a rich jeweller.”
“Extraordinary the people one meets at one’s dentist’s,” murmured his hostess. Then, briskly: “Well, who did do it, if the dentist didn’t?”
“That’s what everybody would like to know. I fancy, however, you have heard of Mrs. Miller. She was Lottie Belmer before she married.”
The old lady frowned.
“Wait a minute. It isn’t like me to forget names. Of course, Lottie Belmer was that fat chorus gell Billy Anker tried to get into the Enclosure at Ascot. The old duke had to buy her off in the end. Cost him a pretty penny. And then, on the top of it, Billy married an appalling woman from Chicago, whose father kept a sausage shop. Rich as Croesus until just after the wedding. Then there was a corner in something and he lost every penny!”
“I remember now,” said Constantine. “But there was somebody else, wasn’t there?”
“Dozens, one would imagine,” agreed Lady Farnborough airily. “She was Vallon’s mistress for a time, I believe.”
Constantine’s hand paused in its progress down the dog’s back.
“Is that a fact, do you think?” he asked.
“Can’t say. Everybody seemed to know it. I never saw the woman myself. So someone’s killed her? Well, that’s the way most of those women end, isn’t it? Hush, pets, it’s only Cooper,” as the two dogs burst into an asthmatic duct on the entrance of the butler with the tea.
Constantine waited till he had been provided with a cup and very buttery muffins before reverting to the subject of Lottie Belmer.
“Richard Pomfrey never got into her clutches, did he?” he asked.
“Whose? The Belmer gell’s? Not he. He was otherwise engaged,” she answered drily. “He used to be seen about with her though. Those gells all hang together.”
“He went the pace while it lasted,” said Constantine reminiscently. “Curious how he steadied down when he came into the property.”
“Pity he didn’t give up racing as well as the other things,” retorted the old lady. “I hear he dropped a lot last year. Algie tells me he’s giving up his stables.”
This was news to Constantine.
“Selling, do you mean?”
She nodded.
“Getting rid of them, lock, stock and barrel. I knew he was hit pretty heavily. Poor Richard. If anyone had told me he would ever give up racing I should have refused to believe them, but I gather there’s a counter attraction now! Curious that he can’t keep his nose on this side of the footlights!”
“Mrs. Vallon, you mean?”
“Who else? He’s been dangling round her for the last three years. Since her husband died it’s only been a
question of time before she led him by the nose to the nearest Registry Office. You’d have thought that other affair would have taught him a lesson!”
“Mrs. Vallon’s a very charming woman,” objected Constantine. “You can hardly class her with the Pagoda girls.”
“Who was she?” came the swift retort, and Constantine had perforce to admit that he did not know.
When that night Arkwright dropped in on him, he did not tell him of his visit to Lady Farnborough nor repeat what she had said, but salved his conscience by making a detailed report of his interview with the old Greek jeweller. Arkwright was interested to hear of the release of Miller’s former manager, but sceptical as to his possible connection with the murder.
“Unless Cattistock ...”
He hesitated.
“Unless Cattistock is the name he adopted on his arrival in England,” finished Constantine. “Well, it’s up to you to find out. Have you got on the track of that illusive gentleman yet?”
“Not a trace of him. It’s an uncommon name, too. We’ve followed up two Cattistocks and drawn a blank. One is an auctioneer’s assistant, who was in Liverpool at the time of the murder, the other’s a bed-ridden old gentleman of ninety-two, a retired lawyer’s clerk, who hasn’t walked a step for the last five years. They’ve neither of them got any male relatives. We’ve had one piece of good luck, however. They’ve heard nothing at the hotel, but these arrived there for him by post today.”
He untied the string of a flat package he was carrying and revealed a photographer’s folder containing three unmounted prints, obviously proofs.
“Is this the man you ran into on the steps of Davenport’s house?” he asked.
Constantine examined the three photographs. Each was taken from a different aspect and could hardly have been bettered from the point of view of identification. The trouble was that Constantine’s glimpse of the man had been so fleeting. He said as much.
“If this isn’t the man I met it is extraordinarily like him, but he was wearing a hat and only took his handkerchief away from his mouth for a moment as he passed me. I believe this to be the same man, but that’s as much as I dare say. What about the photographers?”
“They know no more of him than we do. He simply went in, had his portrait taken and told them to send the proofs to his hotel. That was on the afternoon of the thirteenth, the day before the murder. Another blind alley.”
He cast a side-glance at Constantine’s face and went on more soberly.
“I got a curious bit of information from Mrs. Miller’s maid. That diamond thing she was wearing when she was killed was given to her by Sir Richard Pomfrey.”
But Constantine did not rise to the bait.
“That does not surprise me,” was all he said. “There was money to throw away in those days before the war and Richard did his share of the throwing. It’s probably Rue de La Paix stuff and a relic of some supper party or other at which all the girls got extravagant presents. I’ve given parties of that sort myself in my day. By the way, I suppose you’ve checked Miller’s movements on the night of the murder?”
Arkwright flashed a surprised glance at him.
“Yes,” he said. “He went straight home in the afternoon after leaving Illbeck Street and did not go out again until I called on him at ten o’clock at night. He left the house about ten thirty to meet a friend at Victoria. The servants and his secretary corroborate this. Why this interest in Miller?”
Constantine shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t like him, that’s all. And, sorry as I am for Mrs. Miller, there must have been a certain temptation to get rid of her!”
Arkwright frowned and stretched his long legs out to the fire.
“About that woman,” he said. “I got Miller to come down and have a look at her. He couldn’t help us. Didn’t know her. But he got me guessing. The man’s all to pieces.”
“He’s been through a good deal in the last twenty-four hours.”
“There’s something he hasn’t told us and, unless I’m imagining things, it isn’t shock or grief he’s suffering from now,” insisted Arkwright stubbornly. “There’s something on his mind, I’ll swear, and, if I know anything of the symptoms, he’s badly frightened.”
CHAPTER SIX
“How did you get onto him? Where? Guildford? Right. A widower, living alone. Sounds as if he might fit the billet. No, I’ll see to it myself.”
Arkwright slammed the receiver onto its hook, stretched out a long arm for the time-table and flicked over the pages till he came to the one dealing with the Guildford line.
Half an hour later his train was bumping over the points outside Waterloo and he was well on his way in pursuit of his third and most hopeful Cattistock suspect.
On his arrival at Guildford he went first to the police station. There he presented his credentials and arranged for help should he find it necessary to detain his man. This Cattistock, it appeared, was known to the police, though not in the derogatory sense the phrase usually conveys. Their account was that he had turned up in Guildford two years before and had leased a small house not far from the police station, establishing himself there with an elderly housekeeper, a local woman of undoubted respectability. He was known as the Rev. Charles Cattistock and was generally understood to be a missionary who had been obliged to retire on account of his health. He had twice spoken on Eastern Missions at a neighbouring Parish Hall and one of the constables had attended a lecture and was of the opinion that “the gentleman knew what he was talking about.” Both the constable and the station sergeant recognized the photographs Arkwright showed them and he began to feel certain that he was on the right track at last.
“Anything been seen of him lately?” he asked.
Come to think of it, nothing had, according to his informants, and Arkwright’s suspicion that his luck had been too good to last looked as though it was being verified. There seemed nothing for it but to interview the housekeeper and try to get some clue as to the man’s whereabouts. Arkwright accordingly made his way to the neat little villa situated in one of the new streets that were already beginning to spread their tentacles round the old town.
The housekeeper, a pleasant looking elderly woman, opened the door and regarded him with just that shade of suspicion that a good servant who knows the house is empty feels towards the stranger.
“Mr. Cattistock is away, sir,” she said, in answer to his enquiry.
“Can you tell me when he will be back?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. I’ve been expecting to hear from him.”
Her voice was frank and untroubled.
“Can you give me his address?”
By this time the woman seemed to have convinced herself of his respectability. Leaving the door open, she turned her back and took a postcard from the hall table.
“It’s here, sir,” she said, as she handed it to him.
Even before his hand closed on it Arkwright recognised the familiar paper heading of the Pergolese Hotel. Apart from the fact that the station sergeant had given her an excellent character, the woman’s manner had been so natural and her response so ready that Arkwright found it difficult to suspect her of complicity and he decided to beat about the bush no longer. He stepped briskly across the threshold.
“I’m from the police,” he said, “and there are one or two questions I must ask you. Is there anywhere where we can talk?”
The woman changed colour.
“Has the master had an accident?” she gasped, her hand going involuntarily to her throat. Arkwright let his eyes rest on her face for a moment before replying, but he read genuine concern, rather than fear in it, and he answered her frankly.
“We’ve reason to believe that he is quite safe,” he said, “but he has left his hotel and we cannot trace him. We need him as a witness and I’ve come in the hope that you may have some idea where he’s gone.”
Through an open door he could see into a neatly furnished sitting room. Followed by the h
ousekeeper he stepped into it, casting a keen glance round him as he turned and faced her.
“Are there any relatives or friends he would be likely to go to unexpectedly?” he asked.
She stared at him in utter bewilderment.
“I can’t understand it, sir,” she said. “His not being at the hotel, I mean. His instructions were to forward any letters there and he was to send me a card when he was to be expected back. The card I showed you came the morning after he left. There’s nowhere else I can think of that he’d go to.”
“No relatives or friends?” he repeated.
She shook her head.
“He hadn’t got a soul belonging to him in this country. He belonged to an Australian family, so he told me, and there’s only himself and a brother left. That was why he decided to settle in England when he came back from the East. His brother’s out there still, so he said.”
“Has he no friends over here?”
“Not that I’ve heard of, except the ones he’s made since he came here. He’s very well thought of in the town, let me tell you!”
Arkwright liked her all the better for the note of defiance on which she ended.
He crossed to the writing table and picked up a framed photograph that stood there. It portrayed a group of earnest, rather depressed looking gentlemen in clerical garb and he noticed, with a certain feeling of elation, that there were three Chinamen in native dress among them.
“Is your master among these?” he demanded. “Can you point him out?”
The woman laid her finger on a spare, middle-aged man in glasses in the centre of the group. Arkwright opened his packet of proofs and compared them with the photograph. The housekeeper peered over his shoulder.
“That’s Mr. Cattistock,” she exclaimed. “Where did you get it, sir?”
“You’re prepared to identify that as your master?”