“Then Miss Leslie made a will,” he said, and Robin Calhoun stared at him.
“A will?”
“Yes, leaving all that she possessed to you.”
“A will!” Calhoun repeated scornfully. “Of course she made no will. I should have heard of it if she had.” For a moment he smiled. “Jill making her last will and testament! I can see her sitting on one foot with her tongue in her cheek, writing out her will like a schoolgirl writing an essay — —” And as the picture which he described rose up in front of him, he broke off with a sob.
Carruthers, however, could not leave the matter there.
“If she made no will,” he said, “the sapphire will go of necessity to her next of kin.”
“She has no next of kin,” cried Calhoun. “Who they are I don’t know. She didn’t know. Someone paid for her schooling in the convent — we don’t know who it was. Since she came away with me none but the friends she herself made have had anything to do with her. Not a visit. Not a letter. She was alone.”
Inspector Carruthers was troubled. He frowned, he drummed on the table with the butt of his pencil in a real exasperation.
“The position becomes more difficult than ever,” he said.
“Why?” Robin Calhoun demanded.
“Because, you see — —” I never expected to see Carruthers so uncomfortable as he was then. “You see, Mr. Calhoun, if Miss Leslie made no will and has no next of kin, the sapphire, with everything else which she possesses, belongs to the Crown.”
We all sat back in our chairs. Michael’s high, slender pagoda spire which had just begun to show white with a gleam of sunshine in a cavern of the clouds, faded again behind the mists.
Chapter 26 Crooks All
MICHAEL AND I walked away from the Semiramis in a gloomy mood and were near to the top of the Haymarket before either of us spoke.
“Do all the jewels left to the Crown go to the Tower?” he asked.
“Oh, Michael! Michael!” I said. “Even Nga Pyu and Nga Than would fight shy of the Tower. The days of Captain Blood are past.”
History was not Michael’s long suit. Mundane history, I mean, for he was thoroughly well up in the history of the bo-tree and its ramifications.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said simply. “Do all the jewels which fall to the Crown go to the Tower?”
“No, Michael. Very few of them. Most of them go to Christie’s.”
Michael stopped.
“To be sold?” he cried, his face lighting up.
“To the highest bidder,” I answered, and gloom resumed its sway. “We’ll go and talk it over with Imogen.”
We were still living in the hotel by the Green Park, and whilst Imogen gave us some tea we told her of Jill’s death and the disappearance of the sapphire. Imogen was shocked by our narrative.
“Jill was a child,” she said, “and just when her troubles, for the moment at all events, were over — —” She did not finish the sentence and was silent until Crowther took his leave. She went with him to the door of our set of rooms.
“You needn’t be down-hearted, Michael,” she said as she let him out. “This is our affair now. We’ll see what we can do.”
But though she spoke valiantly, there was something quite mouselike in her quietude when she returned. She threw that off, however, very soon.
“Martin, let’s push it all away for a few hours. Couldn’t we go out and dine together alone — not too early — nineish? And we could talk things all over and hammer out what we are to do.”
“Splendid, darling. Where shall we dine?” And I had a brain-wave. “Oh, I know!”
“Where, then?” Imogen asked.
“Le Buisson,” I replied triumphantly. For was it not at that little discovery of Imogen’s in Soho that we had first got to know Jill Leslie?
But Imogen frowned. Le Buisson had ceased to mean anything to her for many a week. It was just one in a monotonous row of restaurants, all low-roofed and narrow and frowsty, all with little green trees in little green tubs at the door, all once, each in turn, declared to be the last word of Bohemian witchery, all now condemned as tedious and shoddy.
“Not Le Buisson,” she said. “No, Martin.”
I waited for her choice with some anxiety. There was a new bar in Oxford Street, painted bright red, with high stools and a counter. Imogen had lately been setting her friends up on those high stools and forcing them to munch sandwiches and drink dark beer. I was determined not to dine that way even if my refusal involved a divorce on the ground of mental cruelty. Happily Imogen was in a mood for fine clothes and chose the Embassy.
“Meanwhile, Martin, dear, before you sit down to lose money at your stuffy old Club, do you think that you could find out where Letty Ransome lives?”
“I’ll try,” said I.
Periodicals and newspapers exist in which the people of the stage advertise their addresses. A dramatic Who’s Who is published each year. If these means should fail me, Michael Crowther might help, and, indeed, in the end it was from Michael Crowther that I got the information. Letty Ransome had rooms in Cambridge Terrace.
I had this piece of news to my credit at dinner. We talked ways of using it through the meal and after it. We came to two definite conclusions. We must at all costs see Letty Ransome before the inquest and we must leave our line of argument to be settled after we knew whether we or one of us was to be called into the witness-box, or whether neither of us was wanted at all.
This latter question was settled for us the next morning. I received a letter from Inspector Carruthers, stating that the post-mortem examination proved conclusively that Jill Leslie had died from cocaine poisoning and that since the inquest was only concerned with the manner of her death, it was proposed to call only those who had been present at the breakfast-party.
“Letty Ransome, then,” said Imogen.
“Yes, surely,” said I. “Now, how to get hold of her?”
“I think that you had better leave that to me, darling,” said Imogen.
“I will, indeed,” I agreed fervently.
Leave the dirty work to the woman is the golden rule of married life, and I went off to my bath. I heard the telephone at work whilst I was soaking in hot water, and I was still wrapped in towels when Imogen began to shout through the door.
“Martin! Martin! Letty Ransome’s coming here after her rehearsal.”
“When’s that?”
“At five this afternoon.”
“But, Imogen, I’m not sure that I can get away.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Imogen. “Darling, if half a dozen old teak trees stand up one day more, it can’t really matter so very much.”
Imogen’s conceptions of the work of my very important Company were at once primitive and contemptuous. But I consented to be at home by five and actually Letty Ransome and I met on the stroke of the hour at the entrance to the hotel. It was an embarrassing moment for both of us but Letty carried it off the better of the two. She had more nerve or less shame.
“Come up and have some tea, won’t you?” I said brightly as though we had met by the merest chance and this grand idea had suddenly dawned on me.
“But I can only stay for a moment, I’m afraid. I’m so busy,” Letty answered, all smiles and dimples. She was looking pretty enough to melt an iron heart and though her tailored suit, the fur round her neck, her shoes and stockings and the rest of her dress were just what other girls were wearing, she herself made them different. She gave them a special distinction. Imogen’s judgement failed to recognise the distinction although, believe me, it was there. People turned and gazed when Letty passed. Imogen used barbed words instead — words spoken with the gentlest voice, but definitely barbed. However, the barbed words were reserved for me; to Letty Ransome she was sweet. For instance, as she poured out the tea, she said to Letty — she said, her voice dropping sugar:
“You came up in the lift this time, I suppose.”
Letty turned pale and
pushed her chair back. If I could have sidled unnoticed from the room I should certainly have done so. The only one of the three who was at ease was Imogen. And she had battle in her eyes, and enjoyment in her face.
“You haven’t mentioned that!” said Letty leaning forward, her face strained, her fingers twitching.
“No! No!” said I.
“Not yet,” said Imogen.
Letty chose to ignore the “yet.”
At the same time she took no notice of me whatever.
“I was sure of that,” she declared.
“Why?” asked Imogen.
“You wouldn’t have sent for me if you had,” Letty replied rather shrewdly, I thought. The invitation would never have been sent had not some accommodation been contemplated. It was a threat and an offer to deal in one. Letty had scored a small point for what it was worth. But she must needs spoil it. For she added:
“Besides, you wouldn’t break a promise.”
“I hope not, if I made one,” Imogen answered. “I remember that you asked for one. I can’t remember that we gave one.”
Letty now turned appealingly to me but before she could speak Imogen got in something very nasty.
“On important occasions, of course, my husband speaks for himself. On a trumpery little sordid affair like this, I venture to speak for him. He gave you no promise. Did you, darling?”
“I did not, Imogen,” I said stoutly in the tone of one who adds: “And God defend the right!”
“No promise was made,” Imogen resumed.
Letty changed her ground. She took the way of pathos but I cannot think that she was wise. If a woman wants to act pathos to anyone she should select a man. Letty’s eyes filled with tears. She said in a voice of studious resignation:
“You must do what you think best, of course, but you can’t have realised what this affair means to me. I am beginning to make a little position for myself — —”
“So you told us,” Imogen interrupted, never without a sweet kind smile.
“And if it’s known that I was mixed up with a little singing-girl who doped — well, you can see the harm it must do me.”
Imogen looked at once utterly perplexed.
“But I can’t see,” she said. She hitched her chair forward. She was just asking earnestly and innocently for a little information which — oh, she was certain about it — would clear away all her mystifications in a second. “You are going to give evidence at the inquest, anyway.”
Letty stood up as though a spring had been released. But the spring had no strength and she sank down again.
“Oh, you know that!” she said.
“Of course I know that,” Imogen returned. “How could I help knowing it?”
There was a delicate suggestion here that she was being called herself.
“You have to allow that you had breakfast with — what did you call her? — the little singing-girl who doped. What additional harm to you could it do to admit that you left your handbag behind and went to fetch it at luncheon-time?”
“I can’t admit that,” said Letty stubbornly.
“But why?” Never was a woman at such a loss to understand. “You must see how awkward it is going to make it for me! What am I to say?”
Oh, Imogen, Imogen! I admired her nerve and deplored her duplicity. So frank and ingenuous she was, Letty Ransome could not but believe that she was to be summoned as a witness.
“Say nothing,” said Letty Ransome.
“To a coroner as busy as a little bee? My dear! And a jury of ironmongers sniffing at a scandal in theatrical life? Not so easy to say nothing. I should just be seeing you in front of me as you joined us with your bag in the grill-room. You haven’t an idea how strange you looked! And on top of that, your asking us to promise never to mention it! You see, they would be certain to ask why we hadn’t told the inspector-man about it at once. Of course, if we understood — but as things are, it’s bewildering.”
All the natural colour ebbed from Letty Ransome’s face. From a pair of frightened eyes she stared at Imogen.
“I see,” she said slowly.
And we all saw. No one was puzzled any more. Imogen’s last sentences meant nothing if they did not mean a threat. Letty Ransome, to borrow the jargon suitable to the subject, had got to come across with a history of what she did between a quarter and five minutes to two on the afternoon before at the Semiramis Hotel. If she held her tongue she must run whatever risk there was to run that we should inform the police and the coroner of her visit to Jill Leslie’s flat.
Letty Ransome came across.
“I think that I had better tell you everything,” she said, passing her tongue between her lips.
“It would be wise, I think,” said Imogen.
“When I went into Jill’s flat she was still living.”
It was the statement which we expected, yet it shocked us both as if it had been some dreadful news flung at us unexpectedly over the wireless.
“Yes,” said Imogen. “Then you went into Jill’s bedroom.”
“I had left my handbag there,” Letty answered.
“Yes,” Imogen agreed. “There wasn’t any chair near the door of the sitting-room.”
“I didn’t look,” said Letty Ransome. “I told you a chair by the door as, at that moment in the lounge, I would have told you anything.”
“Except the truth,” Imogen remarked.
“I was frightened out of my life,” Letty pleaded.
“Naturally,” Imogen explained to her, “since you had left your friend to die alone without calling for help.”
Letty Ransome shrank back in her chair. I got an impression that the chair had widened and grown higher and that Letty had dwindled. She looked so small, so diminished from the arresting figure I had seen not half an hour ago on the door-step of the hotel.
“It would ruin me if that were known,” she whispered; and some comprehension of the abominable nature of her excuse entered her mind as she heard herself utter it. “Oh, there was nothing to be done,” she cried. “Jill was unconscious. She was breathing — horribly. Her breath was roaring — yes, roaring in great long gasps, and her chest rose and fell beneath the bedclothes with a violence which I didn’t think any heart could stand. I didn’t dare to go near her. For a few moments, too, I couldn’t run away. I was held there as if my feet were chained. It was awful. That room — the sun outside — and the horrible sound from the bed — I was frightened out of my wits. I was suddenly mad to get away. I snatched up my bag from the dressing-table — —”
“Oh!” Imogen interrupted. “It was on the dressing-table?”
“Yes,” Letty ran on, hardly noticing the interruption. “I snatched it up. I remember that I had seen no one in the corridor, that I had run up the stairs instead of using the lift. I wondered if I could get away. I looked into the corridor round the edge of the front door. It was still empty. So I ran — oh, I ran! I didn’t say anything to you. It couldn’t have done any good.”
“Why not?” asked Imogen.
“Jill was actually dying.”
“How do you know?” asked Imogen. “How do you know that she wouldn’t be alive now if you had called for help at once?”
Letty did not answer. She sat and stared and stared at Imogen, and then a little sigh fluttered from her lips. I was just in time, I think. In another second she would have slipped off the chair on to the floor.
“We must get her some water,” I said, and Imogen ran for it.
“She’d better have some brandy, too,” said Imogen.
We had, therefore, an adjournment of the witness’s cross-examination whilst the waiter was summoned, sent to fetch brandy and brought back with it. During that adjournment, Imogen and I both and quite separately came to the conclusion that Letty Ransome had not realised in the slightest degree that there might, by prompt action, have been a chance of saving Jill Leslie’s life. I don’t even know that there was a chance. The police-surgeon, with all his experience, would not c
ommit himself. I had no doubt that Letty, standing in that room with the sunlight coming in at the window and all the summer sounds of birds and insects, and with the shrouded figure on the bed gasping out its life like some overwrought machine, never dreamed but that Jill was actually dying and beyond recall. The conviction certainly made a difference in our judgement of Letty. We were able, if not to believe, to assume that had Letty imagined that Jill could have been saved, she would have roused the whole of the Semiramis Court rather than let her friend die. Letty’s next words, indeed, strengthened our assumption.
“Do you mean to say that Jill could have been saved?” she asked in a shaking voice.
“No one can say that,” Imogen answered gently; and at once our assumption began to lose its strength. For with the utterance of those words Letty’s assurance began to return. Her eyes became less guilty and more wary.
“Then I don’t think you ought to have suggested it,” she cried on a note of indignation.
“Let’s go back to the handbag,” said Imogen coldly; and the suggestion brought Letty Ransome low.
“Why the — the handbag?” she stammered, and was lost.
“Because Jill’s big sapphire was stolen from her dressing-table that morning, and the police know it,” said Imogen, deftly mingling fact and probability to make one convincing indictment.
“Jill’s big sapphire!” Letty repeated with round, incredulous eyes.
“And the platinum chain,” said Imogen.
Letty shrugged her shoulders.
“They had better search the chambermaid’s trunks,” she said disdainfully. I had been somehow quite sure that this would be Letty Ransome’s reply. No doubt Imogen was prepared for it too, for she was ready with her rejoinder.
“And your handbag, Letty.”
“You think I stole it!”
“I’m sure you stole it.”
“You dare — —” Letty Ransome rose to her feet. “I’ll not stay here another moment.” She whisked across to the door. “It’s outrageous!” She laid a hand upon the door-knob, and then she stopped and looked round. She saw me drawing the telephone instrument nearer to me. It stood upon a side table and I had only to turn my chair to reach it.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 659