Trent, with a vivid memory of Silvester’s vein of unexpurgated anecdote about people of importance, said that this was easy to believe. ‘But you say there’s still nothing wrong with this heaven-sent job of yours. Marion, you blast my hopes. I thought I was going to hear that Kozicki had made dishonourable proposals to you, or that he drinks laudanum, or that he has a private delusion that he is a weasel. Well, it’s all very capital for you, and I am gladder than I can say – and here we are at 43 Reville Place.’
This was an old-fashioned, high-roofed, stucco-fronted house with a basement and three other floors; like all its neighbours, slightly dingy in appearance, though not dilapidated. They mounted the steps, and Marion opened the door with a latchkey. It could be seen, as they went up the stairs, that each floor had been partitioned off to form a self-contained flat; and Marion’s own door, like the front door, was fitted with a Yale lock.
‘Well, here’s my top floor,’ she said as they entered. There were four rooms opening off the landing, all fairly lofty and well lighted.
‘And a very good top floor too,’ Trent observed when he had been shown the living-room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. ‘Much better than the top floor in my own place; and furnished, as I think you said, with faultless taste. If ever you want to get rid of that little tallboy you might let me know. And that mahogany writing-table? It was a spinet when it was young, wasn’t it – you want to keep that, I suppose.’
Marion laughed. ‘Are you setting up an antique shop? But now, let me tell you what it was I wanted your advice about. To begin with, look at the top of that table.’
He bent over it. ‘You mean these faint scratches here and there – as if something hard and heavy had been shifted about on it. Curious! The scratches are in four lots – making the four corners of a square. Was it done when the furniture was moved here from Wallingford?’
‘No, it was done fairly lately – three weeks ago, say; perhaps more. That table was as smooth as glass till then. I rub it over with a duster every day, so I noticed it at once. And it wasn’t done by the charlady who comes in two mornings a week. She is a very careful, neat-handed woman; and besides, I first saw the scratches on a Thursday, and her days are Tuesday and Friday. Of course, I don’t like having my table scratched, but what I like much less is not knowing who did it, and how anyone could have been here to do it. The entrance door is locked when I’m out, of course; and the street door always is. And don’t look as if you thought I was worrying about a trifle. There are other things that tell me plainly someone comes into this place when I’m not here.
‘You see the velvet cushion in that armchair – it’s embroidered a prettier pattern on one side than on the other, and I always leave it showing that side, as it is now. But several times I have come in and found it turned the other way round. Anyone who had been sitting in that chair, and had punched the cushion into shape again before going away, would be as likely as not to leave it wrong way round. Then again there is that old writing-table you covet so much. There is nothing of value in either of the drawers – I keep father’s notes for his memoirs in the left-hand one, and as much as I have done of the fair copy in the other – but three times someone has been at them.’
‘They are not locked?’ Trent asked.
‘No – nothing in the place is locked except the door of the flat. Now, look at these drawers. You see’ – she opened both and shut them again – ‘they both push in a little too far when you close them, and I always pull them back so as to be just level with the woodwork round them. I’m fussily particular, perhaps, you think; anyhow, I am absolutely certain I have never left those drawers pushed right in as I found them three days running not long ago. And now here’ – she led the way into the kitchen – ‘I’ll show you the thing that makes me quite certain, and that is this sink. When I’ve washed up after breakfast I leave it not only perfectly clean, but quite dry, bottom and sides as well.’
‘Why?’ Trent wondered.
‘Because I’ve been well brought up,’ Marion said conclusively. ‘Well, every day for some time past I have come home and found it perfectly clean, but not dry – drops of water on the sides, which you get from the splashes when you’re running the tap. Look! You see those drops? A man wouldn’t, I suppose, unless they were pointed out to him. They weren’t here when I left this morning.’
Marion and her guest looked at one another in silence for some moments; then Trent remarked, ‘You say nothing about having missed anything – jewellery, or any other sort of portable property.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing has ever been stolen, I am sure. I often leave money in my dressing-table drawer, and my jewellery, such as it is, is kept there, too, and nothing has been taken. What food I have had in the place has never been touched, nor any of the household things.’
Trent rose and paced the floor. ‘It all sounds pretty mad, I must say,’ he observed. ‘And it doesn’t make it seem any saner to suggest that one of the people on the lower floors may be your visitor, as they haven’t got your private key.’
‘Yes, and besides, why should they? As for my keys, they are always in my handbag, which is with me all the time. The only duplicates are a pair I keep in the dressing-table drawer, and a pair the charwoman has; and if you ever saw Mrs Kinch you would know she was incapable of doing anything eccentric or not respectable. She worships the Vicar of St Mark’s, just round the corner, and she sings hymns while she is doing out the place, as she calls it; and she has a son in a solicitor’s office, and likes to let you know it. There have been other things, too, which you can’t possibly connect with Mrs Kinch. There’s that window you saw me shut when we came in. She knows I always leave it open, to air the room. Well, several times I have come home and found it shut. You see?’
Trent went to the window and opened it for a moment. ‘Yes, there might be a draught that anyone sitting in this armchair would feel. I agree; it does look as if somebody has been coming in here while you were away – in particular, sitting in your armchair, and plumping up the cushion when he leaves the place.’
An exclamation of disgust came from Marion Silvester. ‘And that’s a nice thing to think of; isn’t it? I prefer to know something about people who visit my flat and sprawl in my armchair. And it’s no use going to the police about it, as you can see. What have I got to tell them? The place hasn’t been broken into, nothing has been stolen. I’ve no actual proof that anyone has been making themselves at home here. They’d only grin, and say – or think – I was fancying things.’
Trent considered. ‘Yes, I suppose they would. By the way, what time do you leave here in the morning?’
‘Nine-fifteen; and get back about seven, usually.’
‘Much at home during the weekends?’
‘No, not a lot. I spend a good deal of the time with friends – Paula Kozicki and other people I know in London. On Sundays I get out into the country if the weather’s decent, and have a day in the open air, with or without a companion. I don’t have at all a dull life, Phil. The one bad spot is this silly little mystery.’
‘Perhaps,’ Trent said, ‘the best thing you can do, Marion, is to leave it to me. I must be on my way now, but I will let my giant intellect play round the subject, and make a few inquiries and see you again very soon.’
She jumped up. ‘Heaven bless you, Phil! That’s what I hoped you would say.’
‘Before I go, would you like to trust me with those spare keys of yours?’
She fetched them from the bedroom. ‘If you use them, you must promise not to pilfer anything, or smash up the furniture.’
Trent expressed the hope that he would be able to overcome his lower nature. Before he left the house, he tried each of the keys in its lock, and found that they fitted easily.
In the Cactus Club most ways of life are represented, and there are few subjects on which some information cannot be gleaned from fellow-members whenever there is a large muster. Lunching there next day, Trent was able to
draw upon more than one source for facts about Dr Kozicki. He was an orthopaedic specialist with certain methods of his own devising and a fancy for making his own surgical appliances. He had built up a large practice in his native city of Posen, and made a European reputation. The afflicted grandson of Jason B Rhodes, the sulphur magnate, had been brought across the ocean to him for treatment, and had been cured.
An ex-patient of the doctor, who had attended him at his own house, gave some more intimate details. Kozicki was a widower. His son and daughter had been sent to school in England, so as to escape the influence of German culture, of which the doctor disapproved, for he had been an ardent Polish patriot under the German rule. This had not been a success in the case of the son, who had turned out a hopeless waster.
Some ten years ago Dr Kozicki had, it was vaguely known, ‘got into trouble’ with the German authorities, and had found it advisable to transfer himself to London, where he had resumed his practice, and was doing more than well. The son, going from bad to worse, had turned his attention to forgery, and had been sent to penal servitude. The doctor was entirely wrapped up in his daughter, who was a Slade art student. He had not succeeded in spoiling her, and everyone thought her charming.
Beside his liking for Marion Silvester, Trent had another motive for taking up her ‘little mystery’. He thought there might be something more in the affair than she imagined, and his curiosity was awake. It might be worthwhile to look further into the affairs of Dr Kozicki; and there was one line, at least, that could be followed up. After leaving the Cactus Club, he spent a fruitless hour searching the files in the offices of the Record for a report of the trial of the younger Kozicki; and he was still at this task when Homan the paper’s regular crime expert, came into the library.
‘If you’re hunting for the name Kozicki,’ Homan said, ‘you won’t find it. I remember the case. He was prosecuted under the name of Jackson, by which he was known to the police as being mixed up with a bad lot. He had forged a stolen cheque and collected the money. It didn’t come out till afterwards that he was the doctor’s son, and the fact was never made public. He was informed on by a man he had quarrelled with; and his evidence got Jackson five years.’
Thus put on the right track, Trent soon turned up the report of the case. It was colourless enough; but Trent noted that the name of the informer was given as Whimster, that he had been on intimate terms with Jackson before their quarrel, and that his going to the police had the air of an act of treachery rather than of dauntless public spirit. A public house called the Cat and Fiddle, in the Harrow Road, had figured in the evidence as a rendezvous of Jackson, Whimster, and their associates. A comparison of dates showed that Jackson-Kozicki’s sentence had still six months to run; but as Homan pointed out, it might be shortened considerably as the reward of good conduct.
The landlord of the Cat and Fiddle, whose beer Trent found to be in excellent condition, had known Whimster very well. Jackson had been before his time. When the landlord first came to the place, three years ago, Whimster had been using the Cat and Fiddle regular. He was a racing tipster, and seemed to do pretty well out of it, taking good times with bad. Last year Whimster had left the district saying nothing to nobody; but Joe Chittle, being over in Woolwich not long ago, had seen him in the street. Joe could swear it was Whimster; but when he spoke to him he said that wasn’t his name, and he had never seen Joe in his life – quite nasty about it he was, Joe said. Well, what could you make of it?
Funny, but Trent was not the first to be asking after Whimster, the landlord said. There had been a gent in not long ago wanting to get in touch with the same party, and the landlord had told him the same as he had told Trent.
‘Would you know that man again?’ asked Trent.
Yes, the landlord would; it was a face that gave you a funny feeling, you couldn’t easily forget it. But what, the landlord wondered, was the reason for all this interest in Whimster?
Trent could only tell him that he thought Whimster might have some information that would be useful to him. What was the landlord having? The landlord’s was a toothful of old Jamaica – good stuff this chilly weather. Happy days, sir!
Chief-Inspector Bligh, receiving Trent in his little office at Scotland Yard, pushed the cigarette-box across the table.
‘Yes, I can tell you something more about Ladislas Kozicki, alias George Jackson,’ Mr Bligh said, when Trent had set forth the extent of his own information. ‘I’m glad you got the landlord of the Cat to talk; his evidence will be useful. We hadn’t got on to that line, because, you see, the man you know as Whimster has called himself Barling since he went to live in Woolwich. They must be the same man; I can see that. We have got plenty on Jackson as it is, but you can’t have too much.’
‘Why, is he in trouble again?’
‘You might call it that,’ the inspector said grimly. ‘He came out of prison five weeks ago. He’s wanted now for attempted murder. Last Tuesday night Barling passed two men who knew him walking up Foxhill Street, where he lives. There was nobody else about. They exchanged greetings as they passed; and then the two chaps met another, whose face they say they didn’t like. This fellow was staring after Barling, and looked as if he was following him. Well, out of curiosity they turned and followed too.
‘Just as Barling was approaching a pub called the Red Cow, which he was probably on his way to, they saw the follower catch him up and take him by the arm. They were too far behind to hear what was said, but the other man seemed to steer Barling into the entry of a builder’s-yard at the side of the pub. Then they heard Barling yelling for help, and as they ran up, the other man came bolting out of the entry and made off in the opposite direction, towards the main road.
‘They found Barling lying in his blood, apparently dead; he had been stabbed twice. His injuries were serious, but not fatal. Next day he was able to state that the man who had knifed him was George Jackson, who had done time for forgery. We looked him up in the Rogues’ Gallery, and showed the two witnesses his picture, which they recognised at once. Barling refuses to say anything more.’
Trent, his elbows on the table, had followed this terse narrative with kindling eyes. ‘And Jackson is still on the run?’
‘He is. He probably slowed down when he got to the main road, seeing he wasn’t being pursued; and he could have boarded any one of a dozen buses or trams. It was easy for him to vanish. His description has gone out, of course, with his prison photo; but there’s no trace of him as yet. As we knew his real name and history, Dr Kozicki was called on and interrogated; but he could tell us nothing – didn’t even know his son was at liberty, he says. He had had six months knocked off his sentence, you see, for being a good boy. He shed his virtue with his convict’s uniform – they often do.’
Trent eyed the inspector thoughtfully for a few moments, then looked away. ‘It all fits in,’ he said as if to himself. ‘I don’t like it, but it can’t be helped.’
‘What’s on your mind?’ Mr Bligh demanded. ‘Is it another of your bright ideas? They are usually worth something, so let’s have it.’
‘Well, I have an idea – I don’t know if you’ll call it a bright one – about where you can lay hands on your man. But it means more tragedy for someone, if I’m right.’
‘It’ll mean tragedy for you, my lad, if you connive at the escape of a dangerous criminal,’ the inspector said briskly, drawing his chair up to the table. ‘Come on; let’s hear it.’
Trent let him hear it.
At the corner of Reville Place next morning Trent met Mr Bligh, who was followed at some distance by another plain-clothes officer, already known to Trent as Sergeant Borrett. A closed car was waiting there, and as they passed it the inspector and its driver exchanged almost imperceptible nods.
‘You’ve told her what to do?’ Mr Bligh asked.
‘She will have got my letter this morning,’ Trent said. ‘As we arranged, I didn’t tell her anything – only asked her to leave at her usual time, not to take
any notice of us when she sees us at the door, and to go straight off to her job as if nothing was happening.’
‘Right.’
They came to the door of No. 43, and Trent opened it with Marion’s latchkey. When the sergeant had joined them in the entry, they went quietly up to the top floor and waited before the entrance to the flat. ‘Probably nothing will happen until she’s been gone some time,’ the inspector remarked, ‘but we don’t want to have this door opening and shutting more than it usually does.’
At 9.15 precisely Marion, equipped with hat and handbag, opened the entrance door and came out. She was flushed and bright-eyed as she took in the sight of the three tall figures waiting on the stair-head. ‘I got your note,’ she murmured to Trent; then hurried down below.
The three men entered quietly, shutting the door behind them, however, not so quietly. Mr Bligh, after a glance into each of the four rooms that opened upon the landing, led the way into the largest, the living-room in which Trent had listened to Marion’s story; and there they waited in silence with the room door open, for what seemed to Trent the longest half-hour his watch had ever told.
At last a sharp, slight noise came from without, and the inspector motioned the others to stand farther back from the door. Other faint sounds followed; and then there came into view through the doorway an object which was slowly descending from the ceiling outside the room. It was a small suitcase, dangling from a cord fastened to its handle. This came noiselessly to rest on the landing; the cord dropped beside it; and then, with a dry rattle, a rope-ladder with rungs of cane unrolled itself swiftly from above until its end just cleared the floor.
The ladder began to thresh about and to creak, and two feet appeared. A man was feeling his way down by this awkward means; a short, strongly-made man with disproportionately broad shoulders. But just before the head on the shoulders came into the watchers’ field of vision the two officers were out of the room with a rush.
Trent Intervenes and Other Stories Page 18