Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel

by Zenith Brown

  Mr. Pinkerton rubbed his own dry hands together in his lap.

  “And my husband, who had the lowest opinion in the world of women anyway, didn’t like it at all. He liked women and horses with spirit, but he liked to know there was a good man on hand to curb it.”

  Lady Atwater smiled faintly.

  “Then, of course, Pamela couldn’t see that my husband was truly—underneath—devoted to Jeffrey. Just as she couldn’t see that she drove him almost frantic with her well-meaning but utterly maddening cups of Bovril and mustard footbaths if he happened to sneeze. Pamela hasn’t a great deal of tact, and a mustard footbath takes considerable of it.”

  She pressed her hands together in her lap. Mr. Pinkerton, quite fascinated, wondered how he had thought she was as mild as he had done. She was a woman of spirit, too, and not only that, he added, but with a sense of humour too.

  “I think Pamela felt she and Darcy would be better in my husband’s position, with his wealth and hers, than Jeffrey,” she said quietly. “Although she never discussed it with me, I know she did once or twice with Mr. Fleetwood, my husband’s solicitor—this young man’s father—who is a very old and intimate friend as well. I believe she even went to far as to discuss it with my husband. Which I imagine was a mistake, since no one likes to be presumed dead before—”

  She stopped abruptly, and went quietly on.

  “Of course he didn’t tell me she had done it. But I always seemed to know when anything had upset him, and usually what it was about.”

  “And Mr. Darcy Atwater, ma’am,” Bull said. “Does he—”

  “Want the collection?” Lady Atwater finished for him. “No. I’m sure it’s the last thing he does want. That carries a kind of responsibility with it. But the estate—I fancy that will come in very usefully. Though he was as distressed as . . . as anyone, when his father cut Jeffrey off. It’s true, of course, the actual possession of a great deal of money may change him.”

  “Make him . . . more serious?” Bull asked.

  “Oh, no, I don’t mean that. May make him less—less opposed to Jeffrey’s not having it. Money does odd things to people.”

  Lady Atwater looked at him with pale shuttered eyes, the faint shadow of a smile on her lips.

  “I never presumed to question my husband’s decisions, Inspector,” she said, gently but quite finally. She moved as if about to rise and dismiss them.

  Inspector Bull did not move. He hesitated an instant. He said placidly, “There is just one other matter, Lady Atwater. About a girl here who used to be a scullery maid at Atwater House.”

  Lady Atwater looked a little blank, and a little amused.

  “The housekeeper employs all the lower servants, Inspector. I probably shouldn’t know anything about her.”

  “She came with a letter of recommendation from the cook, one from the housekeeper, and one from yourself,” Inspector Bull said. “It’s just a routine matter of checking up on a servant who might have been disgruntled, possibly. The girl’s name is Kathleen Rawls.”

  Lady Atwater was mildly perplexed.

  “I do seem to remember the name. Yes, I think I do. Quite sweet, as I recall her. I did give her a letter, of course. Her mother was in a home maker’s class I help with in the parish. But you can dismiss her from your mind at once, Inspector. She certainly wasn’t disgruntled. We’ve had lots of servants who were—gardeners and grooms and the like—mostly because my husband fancied himself as horticulturist and as veterinary. He didn’t concern himself with the house, except the cellars. He really did know about wine. There have been a number of very disgruntled valets, and butlers—but never a scullery maid, I assure you.”

  She rose. “Now if that’s all, Inspector, I’d like to see my son.—Is Rawls the maid who is ill today?” she asked, as Inspector Bull, preceded by Mr. Pinkerton, reached the door.

  “Yes, she has a chill, ma’am,” Bull said.

  “Will you ask Mrs. Humpage if I might go see her? I’d like to tell her mother what I have done, when I go home.”

  “I’ll tell her, ma’am,” Bull said.

  They went along the hall, Mr. Pinkerton looking up at him anxiously. Bull smiled, quite abruptly. It was something he did so seldom that Mr. Pinkerton stared.

  “Her ladyship is a smooth article,” he said, almost offensively, Mr. Pinkerton thought, though he realized it represented a kind of grudging admiration, in a way.

  “About . . . her daughter-in-law?” he ventured, a little puzzled as well as annoyed. Lady Atwater had seemed to him not only sincere and direct but extremely moderate.

  “About . . . everything,” Bull said. “Mostly about Kathleen Rawls.”

  Mr. Pinkerton blinked.

  “I’m sure I don’t catch your meaning, Inspector,” he said, rather flatly for him.

  “You didn’t happen to hear the two of them talking together, I expect,” Bull said placidly. “Not half a minute before I opened the door. I did. That’s why I say her ladyship is a smooth article.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Pinkerton said. As it was all he could think of to say at the moment, he said it again. “Oh.”

  “Her ladyship doesn’t happen to know, of course,” Bull went on—and Mr. Pinkerton knew he’d ordinarily never have done it, except that he was human, and that human nature couldn’t forego a little neat if quite harmless triumph, under the circumstances—“that I talked to the housekeeper this morning. She remembered Kathleen perfectly well, and told me all about her.”

  Mr. Pinkerton winced.

  “What is it . . . about her, I mean?” he inquired, as calmly as he could manage.

  “She had a dust-up with Sir Lionel Atwater about a young man, and ran away.”

  Mr. Pinkerton, following down into the lounge, steadied himself against the narrow bannister. His lips were quite dry and his knees rather watery.

  “And . . . the young man?” he asked.

  “Oh . . . he was transferred,” Bull said vaguely. “They lost track of him.”

  Mr. Pinkerton was silent for a moment.

  “Did he . . . did he work in a bank?” he asked then.

  Bull looked back and down at him with a litle surprise, and a quizzical twinkle in his mild blue eyes.

  “There you go asking questions, Mr. Pinkerton,” he said patiently. He moved across the lounge. Mr. Pinkerton followed anxiously, and plucked at his coat sleeve.

  “No, but Inspector, did he? I mean, did he work in a bank?” he insisted.

  “He did, and he still does,” Bull said. “Now, let’s have an end of that.”

  “Oh, very well,” Mr. Pinkerton thought. “If that’s the way you go about investigating murder, go ahead, and see where it gets you.”

  It at least absolved one Evan Pinkerton from what had been troubling his conscience badly. He followed Bull across the lounge. Mrs. Humpage, who had on spectacles and had apparently been going through her books, came out to the little office door.

  “They’re in the parlour lounge, Inspector,” she said. Her face was troubled. She took a key out of her pocket. “You’re welcome to use it as long as you’ll be wanting it, sir.”

  She hesitated. “And, sir—it is murder you’re investigating, isn’t it?”

  Bull took the big old iron key, looking at her with a kind of bovine deliberation. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and turned away. Mrs. Humpage watched him for an instant, sighed heavily and went back into her office. Mr. Pinkerton trotted along after Bull to the door of the lounge that opened off the narrow passage to the bar. Through the opened bar door he could see Mr. Darcy Atwater, sitting dejectedly in the chimney corner, staring at a glass. The glass had a double jigger of whisky in it. Beside it was a small bottle of soda, untouched.

  Inspector Bull turned in at the door of the small lounge. Mr. Pinkerton, at his heels, stopped and stared open-mouthed, blinking his eyes. Sitting uneasily on the stiff oak settle under the window was the young man from the bank. Opposite him, by the bookshelf against the old linenfold panell
ed wall was the detective-sergeant from Scotland Yard. He got up as the Inspector came in.

  “This is Harry Ogle, Inspector,” he said. “He came—”

  The young man, who had gone a sickly grey at the sight of the little Welshman blinking at him from the door, interrupted sharply.

  “I don’t know what you want with me. I haven’t done anything. I haven’t got anything to do with murdering Sir Lionel Atwater.”

  Bull sat down comfortably and took out his pipe.

  “Now just take it slowly, Ogle,” he said. “Nobody said you’d got anything to do with it. It is just ordinary routine we’re doing. Calling in everybody, hoping they’ll be able to give as a bit of help finding out who had got something to do with it.”

  Mr. Pinkerton, stationing himself in a stiff-backed Jacobean chair, glanced furtively at Mr. Ogle. He was on the pasty side, though his obvious terror at finding himself in the hands of the police may have accounted for that. His white collar was a little too high above his seedy black clerk’s coat. His striped black trousers were neatly pressed and clean except where the mud from the street had spotted them. Mr. Pinkerton couldn’t tell whether they were too tight or too short or whether all striped black trousers on clerks just looked that way. They always did to him, at any rate. Mr. Harry Ogle’s hair was blond and straight and plastered down with pomade; his hands, a little ink-stained, were holding tightly to the hard brim of his black bowler hat. Looking at him, Mr. Pinkerton thought he might actually be called good-looking, in a clerky undistinguished sort of way, if his colour had been better, and there had not been a trace of weakness about his eyes and mouth.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said shortly.

  The sharp edge on his voice was muted, but still showed.

  “That’s all we want to find out,” Bull said, in his unruffled tones . . . which boded no good for anybody, Mr. Pinkerton thought dejectedly. Though he knew that if it hadn’t been for Kathleen Rawls he’d not have thought twice about this young man.

  “All we want you to do is tell us what you were doing last night.”

  It was apparent to Mr. Pinkerton that the young man was prepared for that question.

  “I was visiting my girl friend,” he said promptly. “A chap’s allowed to do that without the police butting in, isn’t he?”

  Mr. Pinkerton felt himself go hot and then cold all over. He blinked rapidly, so angry, suddenly, for he seldom got angry, that he could hardly contain himself.

  “If you don’t believe it, you can ask her,” Ogle went on. “But you’d better not let Mrs. Humpage get on to it or she’ll give her the sack.”

  Mr. Pinkerton saw that Inspector Bull’s face had gone a little duller red than it normally was. His blue eyes fixed on the bank clerk’s face were not changed, and when he spoke it was in his most deceptively mild tones.

  “Where did you work before you came here. Ogle?”

  “At Swickley, in the branch there.”

  Bull nodded. “What time did you leave here, last night?”

  Ogle nodded at the detective-sergeant. “He ought to know—he was following me, wasn’t he?”

  “I asked you what time you left,” Bull said quietly.

  “I didn’t look. It was about half-past twelve. You don’t expect a chap to clock himself when he’s visiting a friend, do you?”

  Futile perspiration stood out on Mr. Pinkerton’s dry little forehead. He was mortified, hurt and disheartened. It was this young bounder that Kathleen had run away from Atwater House for. It made him sick in the pit of his stomach to think of it. He glanced at Bull, and at the detective-sergeant, whose name, he suddenly recalled, was York. Sergeant York was staring at Ogle in a very unpleasant manner indeed.

  “Sir Lionel Atwater lived near Swickley,” Bull said. “You knew who he was, I expect?”

  Ogle nodded.

  “Of course. He was the high chief mucky muck of our bank. I knew who he was, all right. He didn’t know I was on earth.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Bull enquired. “He hadn’t got anything to do with your transfer?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Not because you were walking out with one of the maids at Atwater House—Kathleen Rawls?”

  Ogle hesitated.

  “He knew she was crazy about us fellows at the bank,” he said easily. “He never knew it was me. I asked to be transferred. It wasn’t my fault she followed me here.”

  Sergeant York made a quick involuntary gesture. Mr. Pinkerton saw Bull’s eyes rest on him warningly for an instant.

  “From all we can make out, Ogle,” the Inspector said placidly, “you left the inn just after Sir Lionel was murdered.”

  The young man’s nerves frayed again.

  “Then why don’t you warn me anything I say will be used against me,” he said angrily. “You’ve got no right badgering a chap. I told you where I was. You can ask Kathleen Rawls. She knows where I was.”

  Mr. Pinkerton closed his dry lips tightly, and could not refrain from stealing a glance at Sergeant York again. He was sitting there, still looking very unpleasantly at the young man, his large fists clenched. Mr. Pinkerton, pleased, also wondered. Surely, he thought, the police weren’t all as sensitive as that, not coming up with the kind of people they were constantly coming up with. It wasn’t as if the Sergeant knew Kathleen, the way he did. She’d not been about at all today, Sergeant York hadn’t been there the day before. Mr. Pinkerton was glad, nevertheless.

  Inspector Bull was raising himself slowly out of his chair. He put his pipe back in his pocket and looked at his watch.

  “You’ll stop on a bit. Ogle,” he said stolidly. “You may be called in at the inquest. I’ll explain to your manager.”

  Harry Ogle ran his ink-smudged finger round the inside of his collar, stretching his chin.

  “If I’m called, do you want me to say where I was?”

  There was an odd kind of crafty quality in his voice.

  Bull looked down at him silently for a moment. “I’ll let you know when I’ve seen Miss Rawls,” he said.

  “She won’t tell you anything I’ve not already.”

  “Then there’s no point in my seeing her,” Bull said. “I’ll let you know. I’ll let Mrs. Humpage know you’re to stop here, in this room. Come along, York.”

  Outside he looked oddly at his sergeant.

  “The swine,” Sergeant York said curtly.

  “I’ll send you back to town, if you keep on with this,” Bull said.

  York flushed. “But you’re not going to let him—”

  “I said I’d send you back to town.”

  He went calmly on down the passage. In the lounge he tapped on the door of the office. Mrs. Humpage’s chair inside grated on the floor, her solid comfortable step sounded. Bull went inside as she opened the door.

  Mr. Pinkerton, standing there with Sergeant York, did not quite know what to do. He looked up at the sergeant, not ever having noticed him particularly before. He was quite young, Mr. Pinkerton noticed, and his brows were still drawn together, his jaw set.

  “He won’t let him . . . really?” Mr. Pinkerton asked.

  “He’d hang his own sister, if it was his job to do,” Sergeant York replied shortly. “And I’ll get that dirty rat if I lose my tunic for it.”

  He strode out. Mr. Pinkerton stood there helplessly for a moment. Then he peered down the crooked passage to the bar. Mr. Darcy Atwater was still sitting there. Whether it was the same glass of whisky in front of him or another, Mr. Pinkerton had no way, of course, of knowing. He glanced about nervously, hurried quickly across the lounge and into the bar.

  CHAPTER 12

  Darcy Atwater looked up blankly at the grey little man peering at him, rather like a starved mouse, from under the barrage of pewter plates plastered about the door frame. Then he said,

  “Oh. You’re one of the johnnies from Scotland Yard, aren’t you. Come in. What’s happening? Sit down. Have a drink—have this drink.”


  He pushed the glass with four large fingers of clear golden liquid across the table.

  “—The thought of it turns my stomach.”

  It turned Mr. Pinkerton’s, too. The late Mrs. Pinkerton had been a fanatical teetotaler. Indeed, except medicinally, Mr. Pinkerton had never in his life touched spirits, nothing beyond a tall cool glass of lager, from time to time, and that not because he really liked it, but to show he could have it if he wanted it. He pushed the glass back a little, firmly, and sat blinking at Mr. Darcy Atwater. His blond hair and blond mustache and slender face and blue eyes were very like his mother—except, naturally, Mr. Pinkerton amended, the mustache—just as his brother’s were like the old knight. The corners of his mouth drooped a little when he wasn’t smiling. His whole attitude now was one of complete dejection. Mr. Pinkerton felt suddenly quite sorry for him, in spite of all the money he had coming in. And yet . . . he hadn’t, he really hadn’t, never on this earth, the slightest intention of saying what he heard himself with frozen horror actually say.

  “My . . . wife was Welsh, too,” was what it was, and it sounded so utterly fantastic and unbelievable that he didn’t believe it. Not until Darcy Atwater, looking blankly at him for at least half a minute, thrust out his hand suddenly and said, precisely as they did in the pictures,

  “My pal!”

  He shook Mr. Pinkerton’s nerveless hand as if it were the old town pump behind the flying buttresses of the church along the road. Then he dropped it, eyeing him intently.

  “But, of course, she wasn’t rich, was she?”

  Mr. Pinkerton blinked and swallowed.

  “She was pretty rich,” he said meekly.

  Darcy Atwater shook his hand feelingly again.

  “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “She . . . she died,” Mr. Pinkerton stammered . . . adding, as the Americans said, “I hope, I hope, I hope,” though of course only to himself.

  “I say, that was sporting of her. What did she do with the money?”