Death in the Dentist’s Chair: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “Of course, sir,” she agreed, in surprise. “It’s the living spit of him. When did he get it done?”

  “In London, the day before he disappeared. Where was this group taken, do you know?”

  “In China, I believe. He was a missionary there for years till he retired.”

  “And this brother, where is he?”

  “He’s out there now, sir. Mr. Cattistock gets letters from him regular.”

  “Is he a missionary too?”

  “No, he’s a merchant.”

  “What kind of merchant?”

  She hesitated.

  “I don’t rightly know, sir. He doesn’t seem to have a shop, as it were. The master’s told me about his house and the lovely things he’s got. He’s always buying silks and china and jewels. He sells them in England and America, so far as I can make out, more than in China.”

  Arkwright nodded.

  “An Export House. Has your master ever had any connection with the jewellery trade, d’you know?”

  “Oh no, sir. He’s been in the Church all his life, Mr. Cattistock has. But he knows a lot about jewels and china and things through his brother. He told me that the most beautiful jewellery in the world was in China.”

  Arkwright slipped the photograph out of its frame and placed it in the folder.

  “I’ll take this for the present,” he said. “It may be useful if we run across him. Has he ever gone off like this before?”

  Again she shook her head.

  “He always gives me his address and lets me know when to expect him back. He said this time he wouldn’t be gone more than a week. I don’t understand it at all, sir.”

  “Does he often go up to London?”

  “Hardly ever, unless there’s a Missionary Meeting or something of that sort. He went up once to meet a missionary gentleman he’d known in China, but he lives very quiet down here, as a rule. You don’t think any harm could have come to him, sir?”

  There was a quiver of anxiety in her voice and Arkwright smiled down at her reassuringly. Whatever Cattistock’s faults might be he was evidently a good master.

  “I don’t think you need worry yourself,” he said. “Though there is a possibility he may be suffering from loss of memory. Does he suffer from his nerves at all?”

  She denied this emphatically.

  “He’s a very quiet, peaceful sort of gentleman, but no one would call him nervous. Very liable to colds, he is, but he says that’s from living so long in the East.”

  Her work-roughened fingers were beginning to pluck restlessly at the strings of her apron. Not too quick at the uptake she was only just beginning to realise that there must be something seriously wrong if the police were concerning themselves with the matter. Arkwright extended a huge hand and covered both hers.

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, giving them a reassuring little shake. “We’ve got the matter in hand and in a day or so we shall be able to tell you where he is, if you haven’t heard from him by then. He may have paid a visit to someone and gone down with a touch of flu there.”

  There was something capable and protective about his very largeness and she felt vaguely comforted as he went on:

  “There’s one thing you can do for us. If you do get word of him, just go around to the police station here and let the sergeant know. He’ll pass it on to us. Meanwhile, if we hear anything, we’ll advise you.”

  He did not tell her that a watch would be kept on the house and that, should her master return unexpectedly, he would not leave again without the knowledge of the police.

  He dropped into the police station to make certain arrangements and then caught the next train back to London. On his arrival there he went straight to Illbeck Street and showed Davenport the photographs. He identified them unhesitatingly.

  Arkwright then returned to the Yard, only to find that there had been no startling developments there. The murdered woman was still unidentified and the man he had sent to Victoria had so far drawn a blank. He gave him one of the Cattistock proofs and told him to circulate it among the station officials on the chance that he had been seen there on the night of the murder.

  Late that evening a cable containing a more detailed report on Miller arrived from the Cape Town police. After studying it he rang up Constantine and arranged to call on him on his way home. He knew the old man too well not to realise the concern Sir Richard Pomfrey’s predicament was causing him, and if there were any comfort to be gained from the results of his day’s work, he did not grudge it to him.

  On his father’s death Constantine had sold the huge, unwieldy mansion in Bayswater, divided the bulk of the treasures it contained among various museums, and established himself in a roomy and comfortable flat in Westminster.

  Arkwright, as he stood waiting outside the familiar green door, pondered gratefully on the chance that had thrown him and the old Greek together in an old inn one snowy Christmas. Arkwright, a bachelor, whose heart and soul was in his job, had been rapidly falling into a dreary rut when Constantine had rescued him and introduced him to that curious and cosmopolitan fraternity that gathers round the chess board.

  The man who opened the door was by now an old friend of his.

  “Dr. Constantine all right, Manners?” he asked.

  Manners permitted himself to smile.

  “Dr. Constantine is opening a new box of Halva, sir,” he said, as though that were more than sufficient answer to the question.

  Arkwright, who shared his host’s predilection for that sticky Eastern sweetmeat, took the stairs two at a time and peered round the door just as Constantine had finished extracting a last generous slice from the tin. He held the plate out in silence, with the result that the opening paragraphs of his guest’s report were delivered with a diction reminiscent of a small boy at a school treat.

  There was a glint of triumph in the old man’s eyes when he had finished.

  “So?” he said. “We seem to be getting somewhere. China, and a brother with unlimited opportunities for disposing of a stolen pendant. It fits in almost too well, Arkwright! There’s a flaw somewhere!”

  “The flaw’s there, right enough,” answered the detective. “For one thing, we haven’t got Cattistock and he’s had time to get through to Marseilles by now. We’re having the seaports watched, but we didn’t get onto the job till after the two o’clock boat train had gone. We can use wireless, of course.”

  “You can get to work at the other end.”

  “And meanwhile the whole thing will hang fire for months. You’ve been notified as to the inquest tomorrow, I suppose? We shall get it adjourned of course. There’s the other unfortunate woman, too. We’re neither of us involved in that, thank goodness. In any case, they are waiting for identification.”

  “Nothing further cropped up, I suppose?”

  “This. We’ve got the name of that manager of Miller’s.”

  Arkwright took an envelope from his pocket and produced a cablegram which he handed to Constantine.

  The old man ran through it.

  “Greeve,” he quoted, “discharged July nineteen fifteen. Believed to have left Cape Town in the course of the last year, but no record of anyone of that name having sailed. Probably travelling under an assumed name.”

  Constantine glanced at the detective.

  “He’d need a passport,” he suggested.

  “That wouldn’t worry him,” said Arkwright. “If he’s served a sentence he’ll have come across a dozen people who could have put him in the way of getting one. There’s only one thing we can bank on. He’s not Cattistock!”

  “Unless he’s done Cattistock in and taken his name,” suggested Constantine, with a smile. “And that seems rather too far-fetched to be true!”

  Arkwright straightened himself, a piece of Halva halfway to his mouth.

  “There’s something in that, all the same!” he exclaimed. “If Cattistock’s a wrong ’un, they may have been in it together, Cattistock didn’t come in or leave by the lava
tory window, remember. I said there were flaws and this is the worst of them.”

  “Not to mention that Cattistock’s a respectable member of the Church of England. You got onto him through the Clergy List, didn’t you?”

  “Time enough for him to convince us of that when we catch him,” was Arkwright’s sceptical rejoinder. “The Cattistock in the Clergy List may have died in China for all we know and this man may have been impersonating him at Guildford. That’s an old game and far easier to pull off than you might think. The crux, from the beginning, has been that business of the next door house. Someone came in or left that way!”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Constantine slowly. “What have we really got to go on? The fact that the key of the consulting room door was found on the leads outside, the traces outside the lavatory window and the open window in the house next door. But, remember, the only traces of blood were inside Davenport’s house. Taking into account the fact that the house next door has been uninhabited for months, is there any reason why the entry into Davenport’s house should not have been made any time within the past week and for some reason quite unconnected with the murder? I admit that it would be a coincidence, but stranger things than that have happened. There has been no rain for a week and nothing to disturb the traces. An open window in an empty house might not be discovered for a long time.”

  “The thing’s not impossible,” Arkwright agreed reluctantly. “We can find out from Davenport whether he’s got reason to think his house has been entered at any time, but he’s hardly likely to have had anything in the shape of a burglary without mentioning it. If he has, that will wash out the idea of an accomplice. All the same, we’ll have a try at locating Greeve.”

  Constantine returned to the cablegram.

  “I see that Miller came to Cape Town in nineteen eleven,” he observed, “and left immediately after his acquittal in nineteen fourteen. He seems to have returned again in nineteen twenty-six and to have left the same year for England. Where was he in the interval?”

  “I’ve got my own theory as to that,” said Arkwright darkly. “We’ll have his passport verified, but I’m willing to bet that he’s down as a naturalised South African. That doesn’t prevent his being a foreigner.”

  “And nineteen fourteen is a significant date!”

  Arkwright nodded.

  “Miller may have had his own reasons for leaving Cape Town just then,” he said, “and, if he did offer his services, say, to the Germans, his nationality would make him doubly useful, from their point of view. His own account is that he was in Switzerland, but I’d give something to know what he was doing there, if only in the hope of establishing a motive.”

  “Aren’t you rather ignoring the theft of the pendant?”

  “If Cattistock, or anyone else, for the matter of that, murdered Mrs. Miller for the sake of her jewels,” said Arkwright slowly, “why did he confine himself to the pendant? He could have got away with a bigger haul than that and, given this Chinese connection, he would have had no difficulty in disposing of it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Though Constantine attended the inquest on Mrs. Miller he did not have to give evidence. Knowing that the police were applying for an adjournment, the Coroner saw to it that only essentials were dealt with, in spite of which it was past lunch time before Arkwright managed to escape and snatch some food on his way back to the Yard.

  He found the detective he had sent to Victoria waiting for him. He reported that he had struck oil at last.

  “Got a man here, sir, a railway porter,” he said, “who identifies the body as that of a woman who arrived on the seven fifteen boat train. He’s been off duty since the murder or we should have got onto him before. He’s positive that it’s the same woman.”

  “Shown him the Cattistock photograph?” demanded Arkwright.

  “Yes, sir. He declared he’s never set eyes on the man. The photograph doesn’t bear any resemblance to the person that met her.”

  Arkwright grabbed the report the detective had placed on his table. This looked like business at last.

  “Send him along,” he commanded briskly, as he read it.

  His satisfaction deepened when, a few minutes later, the man was ushered into the room. Gnarled, grizzled and thickset, his shoulders bowed by a life spent in the lifting of heavy weights, it was easy to place him as a porter of the old school, who had probably been for years in the Company’s service. Arkwright knew the type, slow of brain and almost childishly observant of detail, a born gatherer of unimportant facts. He gave his name as Joseph Osborne.

  “You were on duty at Victoria Station on the evening of Monday last?” said Arkwright.

  Osborne considered the question.

  “That’s right,” he admitted huskily. “I come on at seven and went off at eleven, an hour early on account of me cough. ’Orrid bad, it was. I didn’t get back Tuesday nor yet Wednesday, owin’ to bein’ laid up. Reported this mornin’ I did, that’s ’ow I come to ’ear about that there enquiry.”

  Having said his say he passed the back of a horny hand across his mouth and waited. Arkwright, who had had experience of this kind of witness, shot another leading question at him and left him to tell his story in his own way.

  “I understand that you recognised this woman when you were taken to the mortuary today. Know anything about her beyond the fact that you saw her at the station?”

  The man shook his head.

  “I carried ’er luggage, but I never see no name on the labels. Shouldn’t ’a noticed it, likely, if I ’ad. It’s ’er, all right, though. She come in on the seven fifteen. Three minutes late she were.”

  “You didn’t hear the address she gave the taxi?”

  “I didn’t,” was the deliberate answer, “because she didn’t take no taxi. A gent met ’er and took ’er off in ’is car.”

  Arkwright leaned forward.

  “What was this gentleman like?” he asked. “Is there any thing special you can remember about him?”

  “There wasn’t nothin’ special, so far as I can remember,” was the answer. “Of course, I didn’t take special stock of ’im, if you understand me. ’Adn’t got no reason to. Not too short, nor yet too tall, dressed in one of them Burberrys, or else a mackintosh, I’m not sure which. Think ’e must ’ave ’ad a soft ’at on. If it’d been a bowler or a cap I’d likely ’ave noticed, bein’ as ’ow you don’t often see ’em nowadays. Anyway, I’d say ’e was dressed quite ordinary. I didn’t see much of ’is face, ’im bein’ occupied with the lady, like, but I see ’is little grey beard. That I do remember, but it’s the best I can do for you.”

  “A grey beard. You’re sure of that?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be, seein’ as I saw it?”

  “What sort of beard?”

  Osborne gave the matter his full attention.

  “Smallish,” he said at last. “Cut to a point, like. Very neat and tidy. Neat lookin’ sort of gentleman ’e was altogether, now I come to think of it.”

  Arkwright visualised a certain, not uncommon type of Frenchman.

  “Was he a foreigner, do you think?” he asked.

  Osborne scratched his head.

  “They was askin’ me that at the station,” he said, “but I told ’em as I couldn’t say, one way or the other. ’E was talkin’ English, that I do know. So was the lady. She looked foreign, all right, but she didn’t talk foreign. I’d put ’er down as English, if you ask me.”

  “Did you hear what they said?”

  “Not a word. I was follerin’ up with the luggage, if you understand me, and, anyways, what with the noise in the station, you wouldn’t ’ear nothin’. The gentleman’s English seemed all right when ’e spoke to me.”

  “When was that?” Arkwright caught himself up and amended his question. “Wait a second. Better tell the story from the beginning in your own way.”

  “From where I first set eyes on the lady?”

  “From the moment she engaged
you. You actually saw her get out of the train, I suppose?”

  “Couldn’t ’elp it, seein’ as I got out ’er luggage for ’er. A suit-case and one of them week-end cases. She was in a second class coach. I got ’em down from the rack and asked ’er if she’d got anythin’ in the van. She said she ’adn’t and would I get a taxi for ’er. I was just goin’ after a keb when she ’ollered after me and I see this gentleman talkin’ to ’er. So I waited and then follered them along to ’is car.”

  “Open or closed?”

  “Closed, it was. ’E put ’er in and shut the door, then ’e told me to take the luggage to the cloak-room and bring back the ticket to ’im. So I off with it to the cloak-room. ’E’d got the door of the car open and was talkin’ to ’er when I got back and when ’e see me ’e come to meet me and took the ticket.”

  “You’ve no idea where they went?”

  “Didn’t even see ’em drive off. ’E give me ’alf a crown for me trouble and that’s the last I see of ’em.”

  Arkwright picked up the telephone on his desk and took off the receiver.

  “Hullo, Atkins, is Gordon there? That you, Gordon? About this luggage in the cloak-room at Victoria. Is it still there? Right. Send someone down for it and have it brought to my room.”

  Arkwright consulted the detective’s report once more.

  “It’s a pity you can’t describe the car she went away in,” he said. “Nothing special you can remember about it, I suppose?”

  “Don’t know nothin’ about cars,” was Osborne’s emphatic rejoinder. “Don’t want to. Nasty things. I ’ardly looked at it. Dark, I think it was and I know it ’ad one of them tops on because ’e ’ad to ’old the door open to talk to ’er.”

  “Had he got a driver?”

  “’E was drivin’ it ’imself. That was the last I see before I turned away, ’im sittin’ down in the driver’s seat behind the wheel.”

  “Do you know what time they left Victoria?”

  “If they drove off at once it would be round about seven thirty-five, seein’ as I went straight off from there to meet the seven thirty-seven, and she was on time.”

  Arkwright looked up from his notes with a friendly smile.