“I wish you would tell me why you asked that last question — up to what hour could she have been saved?” he said.
I replied:
“I was uneasy, you see. I was wondering whether Jill could have been saved if we had come up to this flat before our time. We had an appointment at half-past three. We have been kicking our heels downstairs with nothing to do. We were just marking time until half-past three.”
Certainly that possibility had crept uncomfortably into my mind. But it was the recollection of Letty Ransome with her face as patchy as a Spanish shawl which had prompted my question. Letty Ransome had been in this room at ten minutes to two — an hour and a half before Jill Leslie died. She had just snatched up her bag, she had said, from a chair by the door... only the knowledge that the indolent inspector seemed indolently to remark every ripple of my muscles stopped me from an obvious jerk. For there was no chair by the door. More, there could have been no chair by the door. The room was rectangular, and the door at the end of a wall within the angle. Open it and at your right elbow a side wall ran straight forward to the windows. There was no place for a chair there. It would have blocked the entrance had it stood there. Behind the door on the other side stood a long sideboard which occupied the whole space of the wall. Letty had lied. She had not picked up her bag from a chair by the door. From the table in the centre of the room, then? If she had, wouldn’t she have been contented just to say that and no more? Why embroider and falsify so natural and likely an action? I began to suspect that the bag had not been left behind in this room at all, but in the bedroom where Jill now lay dead and had then lain dying.
“You gentlemen did not breakfast here with Miss Leslie, I suppose,” said Carruthers.
So he knew about the breakfast-party! Then he knew, too, that Jill had not left her outer door open during the night. He had undoubtedly been setting a trap for us.
“No,” I answered.
“Several people did, and I want their names. For they will have to give evidence at the inquest.”
“Mr. Calhoun is the most likely person to be able to give them to you,” I said.
“But you both saw this young lady at the ball?” the inspector continued.
“Yes.”
“Well, then — I don’t like to ask it — but there is something which troubles me in spite of the doctors, who seem very confident.” Carruthers opened the door of the bedroom and looked in. Then he came back to us.
“Yes. I must trouble you, I am afraid. I want you to remember what Miss Leslie wore at the Albert Hall and to tell me anything which you notice.”
He led the way into Jill Leslie’s bedroom. The doctors had drawn a sheet up over her head. For the rest the room was in disorder. Jill’s gay frock and underclothes were thrown on to a couch, her stockings were tossed on to a chest of drawers, her shoes lay on their sides and apart as she had kicked them off, and about her bed chairs had been thrust aside as though the doctors had found them drawn up for the breakfast-party and had pushed them away. I looked at the dressing-table. There were pots of cream, a great crystal powder-bowl with a big puff on the top of the powder, bottles of scent, combs and hairbrushes all in disarray; and one open, empty, jewel-case. But what I, and no doubt Michael, looked for upon that dressing-table was not there. Inspector Carruthers made no suggestions and pointed to nothing. He left us to survey the room for ourselves, and when we had finished he took us back into the sitting-room.
“I wonder,” he said, “whether you gentlemen noticed what I noticed.”
“There were no ornaments,” said I.
“Exactly. Not one piece of jewellery however small or inexpensive. It doesn’t seem to me reasonable.”
“But there is a reason,” I explained. “Jill Leslie had a good deal of jewellery a few months ago. But Calhoun got into difficulties and she sold it.”
“Did she indeed? Calhoun was her lover?”
“Yes.”
“I remember something of Mr. Calhoun’s difficulties. We heard of them officially. You relieve my mind, Mr. Legatt, when you tell me that she sold everything to get him out of his scrape.”
The inspector laid just enough emphasis upon the “everything” to make sure that I could not disregard it. The question I had been anxious to avoid ever since I had looked about the bedroom was actually put to me and I had to answer.
“I didn’t say everything, Inspector.”
The inspector smiled.
“No, I did.”
“She kept one thing back.”
“Only one?”
“So far as I know, only one,” I replied.
“There was only one jewel-case on the dressing-table,” Carruthers agreed. “What was it she kept back?”
“A large square sapphire on a platinum chain.”
“Did Miss Leslie wear it last night?”
“Yes.”
Carruthers turned to Michael Crowther.
“Did you, too, notice it?”
“Yes,” said Crowther.
“And it has gone now,” said Carruthers.
There certainly had not been a sign of that blue stone on Jill’s dressing-table.
“I don’t like that,” said Inspector Carruthers. “Not one little bit.”
“Jill may have lost it,” I suggested. “At the ball, or on the way home.”
“Do you think she did?” the inspector asked.
I wished that he would not ask me questions like that. I expected him to say: “Yes, that is a possibility,” or “As an advertisement, isn’t that played out?” — something, at all events, which would lead us away on to the safe ground of general conversation. But he would not thus indulge me. We were not to ride off on the method of: “Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?” No — he must put the most inconvenient and direct question, and wait dumb until he got his answer.
“No,” I answered. “I do not think she did. I heard her once speaking of it. I saw her as she spoke of it. I am certain that if she had lost it she wouldn’t have gone to bed until she found it.”
“It was a valuable stone?” he asked.
Now, since my marriage I had learned a good deal more about the value of jewels than I had known previously. It was natural, therefore, that I should put on a few airs. One’s prestige as a man can be more or less measured by one’s knowledge of the value of things which women love. So I preened myself and answered:
“In the order of stones the sapphire stands below the pearl and the emerald and the diamond. It is nearest to the ruby. But if it is big enough and flawless, it can compete with any of them. Now, this particular sapphire was very big and quite flawless.”
“And of a beautiful colour, I suppose,” said Carruthers.
I smiled importantly.
“It was. But I must point out to you, Mr. Carruthers, what you with your experience must, indeed, already know, that the synthetic sapphire worth a shilling a carat may have a lovelier depth of colour than the genuine stone.”
“Oh!” said the inspector. I hoped that he was going at once to take out his pocket-book and make a note of that valuable fact. But he did not. He lifted himself once or twice upon his toes.
“It was valuable, then,” he said, “and Miss Leslie wore it last night, and Miss Leslie is dead this afternoon, and the valuable thing has disappeared.”
“And from that you infer — —” I said.
“That we mustn’t infer,” he replied. Then he flung out his hands and slapped them against his thighs. “Only we must hope that the doctors’ post-mortem confirms their first examination, and that we have only to deal with a case of theft.”
I was in one respect like Carruthers. I could say: “I don’t like that. Not one little bit.” For if the sapphire had been stolen again, I knew quite well who had stolen it.
Chapter 25 The Crown Jewel
CARRUTHERS OPENED THE door of the sitting-room and went out to the uniformed policeman in the corridor.
“Armstrong!”
“Yes, si
r.”
“I shall want to see the man who was in charge of the lift when Miss Leslie and her friends came back from the ball, and, if he was relieved afterwards, the liftman who has been on duty since. I shall also want to put a few more questions, now, to the chambermaid in charge of this room. Will you get those people here as soon as possible?”
“Very well, sir.”
Armstrong hurried off upon his errand and Carruthers turned towards us. A subtle change had come over the man since this plain and simple case had been complicated by the certainty of a theft and the possibility of a murder. His movements were quicker, his eye brighter, he was vitalised body and mind. He looked dangerous now.
“I want to know from you two gentlemen — —” he began briskly, but we were spared the question. For the door was burst open and Robin Calhoun tumbled rather than ran into the room.
My first sensation was one of relief. I felt sure that I could put into words the inspector’s interrupted demand. “I want to know from you two gentlemen whether you know of anyone else besides yourselves who had an appointment with the dead girl or any reason to visit her this morning.” It was not that I had any desire to spare Letty Ransome the consequences of what must have been on the most lenient view, a cruel and beastly crime. But I saw tremendous difficulties ahead for Michael Crowther and I wanted to talk them over with Imogen before I was forced into a decisive statement.
But when I saw Robin Calhoun’s face that sense of relief vanished altogether. It was ravaged with grief. He was unshaven, unwashed, and the colour of lead. His clothes were all tumbled as though he had jumped out of bed and slung on to his body the first habiliments which were handy. Of the sleek and debonair adventurer, neatly trimmed for the trimming of mankind, nothing was left. He was just an ordinary poor devil of a lover struck down by the death of his mistress. His words, too, were the words of melodrama.
“I can’t believe it. If such things can happen, there’s no God! But it’s not true, is it? This is a joke, of course. Jill’s played me up. We shall have a laugh over it — in a minute — shan’t we?” And he broke away from his pleading. “My God, how can you three stand staring at me like mummies? Hasn’t one of you a tongue?”
The inspector looked at me.
“Mr. Calhoun?”
“Yes,” I answered.
There was a good deal of curiosity in the inspector’s glance as his eyes turned again to Robin Calhoun. He obviously knew more than a little about Robin Calhoun and expected to find in his relations with Jill Leslie a business partnership rather than a union of passion.
“I am sorry to say that it’s true, Mr. Calhoun,” he said gently.
Calhoun dropped into a chair at the table and buried his face in his hands. Then he drew his hands down until his eyes looked over the tips of his fingers at the bedroom door.
“Jill’s in there?” he asked, and now very quietly.
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
The inspector opened the door and Calhoun rose and walked towards it. In the doorway he swayed a little as he caught sight of the small, shrouded figure upon the bed.
“Will you leave me here alone, please?”
“For a little while, Mr. Calhoun,” said Carruthers, and Calhoun went into the room and closed the door behind him.
By this time Armstrong, the policeman, had assembled two liftmen and the chambermaid in the corridor; and at a word from Carruthers he brought them into the room. But their evidence from the inspector’s point of view was unhelpful. One of the liftmen had come on duty at seven in the morning. He remembered taking up Jill Leslie and a party of friends soon after seven, to the third floor. No, he did not know any of their names, but one of the gentlemen he had taken up several times before and one of the ladies. He had been on duty until one o’clock. Although he had, during the six hours, taken up several people to the third floor, he had taken up no one who gave the number of Jill Leslie’s flat or asked in what direction it lay.
The second liftman had come on duty at one. He knew Miss Leslie by sight, of course, and some of her friends by sight and by name. Mr. Calhoun, for instance, Miss Ransome the entertainer, and this gentleman here, Mr. Crowther. He had brought none of them up since he had come on duty until just now.
The chambermaid, as she had told Mr. Carruthers already, had left the outer door open at Miss Leslie’s request. As far as her work had allowed her, she had kept an eye upon it, and she had seen no one at all enter it. But she had a number of flats to attend to and it was only now and then that she was within sight of it.
“Did you go in at all?” the inspector asked.
“No, sir. Miss Leslie did not wish to be disturbed.”
Inspector Carruthers nodded his head.
“That all seems clear enough. You will probably be wanted at the inquest. You’ll receive a notice.”
He dismissed the servants and sat down at the table and took his note-book from his pocket. He made a few notes in shorthand and looking up at Crowther, remarked:
“You said, I think, that you were not present at the breakfast-party.”
“I was not,” Crowther answered.
“Right,” said Carruthers.
He continued to write, and as I watched his fingers and the hieroglyphics forming on the page, I took the courage to make a suggestion.
“The sapphire might have been hidden by Jill Leslie in the chest of drawers amongst her linen.”
Inspector Carruthers observed:
“You are married, I take it, Mr. Legatt,” and he went on writing.
I drew myself up a little.
“I am. And what, then?”
“This, then. If the young lady had hidden it away in a drawer amongst her linen, wouldn’t she have put it back in its case first?”
The question stumped me.
“I suppose she would — unless she was too tired.” I saw an argument there. “And she must have been tired after dancing all night.”
“Tired enough, certainly, to take her bath and jump into bed before she had her breakfast. Where were her friends, do you think, when she was hiding her sapphire?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“All over the flat, I expect.”
Carruthers smiled — a rare thing with him that afternoon.
“I should think that’s just about the truth.” He looked up at me. “Do you really believe that she hid the jewel and left the jewel-case out?”
“I don’t say that I do,” I answered. “It’s only a suggestion and if it’s unwelcome, I withdraw it.”
Inspector Carruthers leaned back in his chair.
“You may be right, Mr. Legatt. But neither you nor I believe it. I certainly shouldn’t have left Mr. Calhoun in there alone if I had,” he said watching me shrewdly. “Anyway, we shall know very soon. As soon as that poor girl is taken away there will be the usual routine: search, finger-prints, photographs. If the sapphire is tucked away anywhere in that room it will be found this afternoon.”
He turned a page of his note-book and became at once very businesslike and brisk.
“And now, gentlemen, if you will kindly sit down, I’ll take from you a statement of the nature of the private business with Jill Leslie which brought you up to this flat at half-past three this afternoon.”
There was no question any longer of whether we would like to make a statement. We had to make it. Michael Crowther recognised the necessity as clearly as I did. And with the utmost simplicity of voice and word, he told the story of the sapphire, tracing it from Tagaung to the pagoda at Pagan, through Ceylon from Kandy to the rest-house on the road to Anuradhapura, and from the rest-house to England and Jill Leslie. Inspector Carruthers took it all down in shorthand, filling page after page of his book and lifting his eyes from time to time with a wondering glance at Michael Crowther.
“That brings us down to three o’clock this morning when you last saw the stone hanging on the chain round Miss Leslie’s neck.” He looked at me. “You have
nothing to add, Mr. Legatt?”
“No. Michael has told you everything.”
“Very well. I will have a copy of this statement made in longhand and I’ll ask you to sign it, Mr. Crowther, and you to witness it, Mr. Legatt. I have your addresses, I think. Yes. Then I need not detain you any longer.”
But we were not done with yet. For Robin Calhoun’s voice spoke from the doorway:
“Wait a minute, please.”
Crowther had been so occupied with the telling of his story, I so attentive to check it, and Carruthers at so much pains to keep his fingers up to the pace of it that not one of us had an idea how long the bedroom door had been opened and Calhoun listening. Calhoun came forward and drew a fourth chair up to the table. He was very quiet now, and his face a better colour. The greatness of his distress had draped him in a dignity which, I felt sure, he had never worn before. He commanded our respect.
He leaned forward on his elbows clasping his hands together, and he spoke to Michael Crowther.
“I heard everything,” he said. “It’s as queer a story as I’ve ever heard. But it comes out of the East where our standards don’t run. And hearing you we must know that what you said is true — —”
He looked down upon the table unwilling that we should see his face, and distrustful of his voice; and none of us interrupted him or hurried him.
“If Jill had been alive she would have given you her sapphire. She was the loveliest little girl... quick of heart... and too good for me. But in this one little thing which I can do, I shall do what she would have done. I shall give you her sapphire very willingly.”
And the man had not a farthing — and he had been living on Jill’s salary — and his prospects were of the poorest. If there were truth in Michael’s creed, surely Jill had earned the Great Release.
“But we think it has been stolen,” said Carruthers.
“It must be recovered,” Robin Calhoun replied.
The inspector folded up his note-book.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 658