Crime in Kensington

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  “If that was the route followed by Mrs. Budge,” remarked Charles, “she must be an angel or an acrobat.”

  “Socrates is certainly on the scent of something,” declared Miss Mumby positively. “His tail was twitching, and it never does unless he is on a trail.”

  In a few moments Socrates’ black body slunk into the rays from the window, which lit the head of the fire-escape. Once again he got on the drain-pipe cover, swarmed up the pipe itself to the cornice, and from here manœuvred his way to the verandah.

  “By Jove,” said Charles, peering intently through his monocle, “the little blighter’s carrying something!”

  And so he was. Socrates bounded to his mistress’s feet and, with every appearance of acute self-satisfaction, deposited there the relics of a haddock, which, to judge from its appearance, he had retrieved from a dust-bin encountered on his journey.

  V

  “And that is all we know at the moment,” concluded Colonel Cantrip, as he finished giving his résumé of the happenings of the evening to Sergeant Noakes.

  Police Sergeant Noakes was a conscientious, deliberate policeman, well versed in the technique of his job. He was not intelligent, if intelligence demands a nimble acuteness of perception, but he could be trusted to pursue the tenor of his way without being side-tracked. Charles felt that this ruddy-faced, calm individual was sufficiently representative of the stubborn will and patient driving power of the British police. He made no comment until Colonel Cantrip had finished.

  “I should like to hear what the nurse and Mr. Budge have to say,” said the Sergeant, after writing for a moment in his notebook.

  The Sergeant was sitting in the chair vacated by Cantrip, and he motioned the nurse and Mr. Budge into the chairs opposite him on the other side of the table.

  “Will you tell me exactly what happened, Nurse,” he said, “in your own words and time? Tell them exactly as they happened to you without including anything you learned of afterwards.”

  In a toneless voice the nurse described Miss Sanctuary’s offer, and how she left the kind old lady by the patient’s bedside. Yes, she had noticed the condition of the patient when she left. Mrs. Budge had fallen into a deep sleep. The nurse explained how she had slept for half an hour by her repeater. She had accustomed herself, she explained, to dropping off instantly anywhere. She had been awakened at half-past nine, and had then seen the horrifying assault on Miss Sanctuary.

  “I thought that I might be able to see into the room from the bedroom next door and rushed into it. Mr. Budge had just left it.” (She paused as if expecting a contradiction, but none came.) “The window was wide open, but I could see nothing, except that the light had been turned out.”

  “Thank you for a very clear statement, Nurse,” said the Sergeant. “Did anything occur afterwards of which the Colonel would not know—I mean which might in any way throw light on the disappearance of Mrs. Budge?”

  After consideration the nurse thought, “No.”

  “Now, Mr. Budge,” said the Sergeant, snapping the band of his notebook, “would you kindly tell us your story in the same way?”

  “Nurse Evans shouted to me as I was on the stairs,” answered Mr. Budge, “and I came along——”

  “One moment,” interrupted the Sergeant. “Would you begin from the beginning? I understand that you were in this room next door.”

  “Oh,” replied Mr. Budge, staring at his boots. He hesitated a moment, and then climbed down completely without any explanation. “I did not think that had anything to do with the case. However, about half-past nine—I am not sure of the time—I went to the room next door, which I am using as a bedroom at present, to fetch a newspaper I had left there. I was only in there for a couple of minutes.”

  The nurse snorted, but made no comment.

  “Did you see or hear anything strange from Mrs. Budge’s room during that time?” he was asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you notice whether the light was on or off?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Was the window up?”

  “I cannot remember.”

  “Thank you. You were saying Nurse Evans called to you…?”

  “I followed her back to my bedroom. She was staring through the window. We went back to the sitting-room and found that my wife’s door was locked, as she said, and the key apparently in it on the other side. We could still get no answer to our shouts, and I remembered an automatic that was in our bureau.”

  The Sergeant raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

  “I haven’t a licence for it, I’m afraid,” Budge added, interpreting the look. “I thought it better not to risk trying to climb in through the window, so I locked the door of the other bedroom to cut off one channel of escape, and then blew the lock off the door in here. The rest Nurse Evans has already told you. Then I fetched the Colonel, and he has told you how we found Miss Sanctuary. I went round the hotel searching for any trace of my wife. We found none. At the same time I warned the guests and told them to assemble in the lounge until the police came.”

  “I noticed them as I came in,” said the Sergeant dryly.

  “They appeared to be alarmed. As I say, I found no trace of my wife,” went on Mr. Budge, “and no one, so far as I could gather, had seen or heard anything strange.”

  Mr. Budge gave his evidence very much as if he were describing the plot of a play he had seen. As he sat there, with his dry, rasping voice, his Adam’s apple bobbing industriously behind his white collar, he reminded the observer more than ever of some pillar of a Nonconformist chapel. The Sergeant was familiar with his type, but had to admit that the coolness of his action in the emergency was unexpected. That revolver, too...

  Charles, remembering the conversation overheard the previous day, believed that his story had been carefully rehearsed and might conceal anything or nothing, but that, at any rate, Budge was consciously feeling his way across slippery places.

  The Sergeant made no comment, but turned to the constable with him. “’Phone the Station,” he said, “and ask them to send up six more men.”

  During the conversation Charles had been making notes of the leading points of the statement in a slim notebook. He had caught the Sergeant’s eye upon him once or twice, but had consciously evaded it. The Police Sergeant now stared hard at him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but what might those notes be for?”

  “For my story for the Mercury,” replied Charles calmly.

  Noakes looked disconcerted.

  “I propose to ’phone through my story,” went on Charles, “but I should like you to hear the main points before I do so.”

  “Now then, Mr.——”

  “Venables.”

  “Mr. Venables, you know perfectly well I can’t give you any official release at this stage of the investigation. I can’t stop you putting anything you like in your paper, but you’re responsible for it.”

  “I realize that, Officer,” Charles answered. “I merely want to know whether anything I am going to say is likely to hinder you in any way.”

  “All right,” said the Sergeant, somewhat mollified, “fire away.”

  A few minutes later Charles rose to go. Just before he went out he turned to the Sergeant. “In your own interests, Sergeant,” he said dramatically, “there is one thing I must draw your attention to. “Have you examined the top right-hand panel on that door?”

  Following his pointing finger, the occupants of the room gazed in unison at the panel to see what had attracted Charles’s attention. He took advantage of the lull to sweep off the side table a silver-framed photograph of Mrs. Budge, and passed quietly out of the room to the nearest telephone.

  VI

  The men the Sergeant had sent for soon arrived. Two he placed on guard at the back and front doors to replace the voluntary guards posted by the Colonel. Viola, Eppoliki, the Colonel and Budge he sent downstairs to join the crowd in the lounge, whose fear by this time had been completely ov
ercome by their curiosity. The new-comers were fully occupied in endeavouring to communicate a truthful account of the events of the evening.

  The Sergeant went in to Miss Sanctuary with the nurse. Miss Sanctuary was feeling very ill indeed now, and the shock of her experience, as so often happens, was beginning to manifest itself some time after the event.

  With an obvious effort she pulled herself together for a moment, and told the Sergeant the story which she had told before but which the Sergeant had only heard from hearsay.

  When he had heard out her story the Sergeant proceeded to interrogate her.

  Have you any ideas as to the identity of your assailant?”

  “None.”

  “Man or woman?

  “I feel certain it was a man,” said Miss Sanctuary. “I have no definite reason, but the grip of the hands, the material of the cuffs that brushed my cheek when I was bound, and the tread, make me positive it was a man.”

  The Sergeant put many leading questions, but he was able to extract nothing which gave any definite pointer to the size or even the build of the intruder. Any conclusions he would form were based on deduction, and the Sergeant loathed deduction.

  “Would you swear in a court of law that it was a man?”

  Miss Sanctuary remained silent for a moment. The Sergeant could watch, in the alterations of her expression, her reconstruction of the sudden attack.

  “No,” she said at last. “I would not swear more than that I had the impression that it was a man.”

  “When you were locked in the cupboard what could you hear?”

  “I have a faint recollection of hearing a tramp of feet, and a dragging noise,” she said. “I believe I could also hear Nurse Evans shouting and banging on the door. Then it was that I fainted again, I think.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sanctuary,” said the Sergeant, “that will be all for the moment. Would you like to go back to your room?”

  “I’ll stay here till I feel a bit stronger,” she said. “I am afraid my old bones are rather shaken.”

  Going into the sitting-room, the Sergeant put his best man in charge of a search-party to turn out every inch of the hotel, accompanied by Mr. Budge.

  The Sergeant returned and made a methodical search of the room. Four possible hiding-places struck his eye. He looked under the bed, under the sofa, in the wardrobe, and in a large laundry basket which stood beside it.

  Mr. Budge was not content to be the hotel proprietress’s husband. He ran a laundry, which every guest of the Garden Hotel was expected to use. A laundry basket of gargantuan dimensions and ornamental design stood in each bedroom, and the Sergeant reflected that it would be an ideal place to hide in for a small man, but difficult to get out of quickly and quietly. The verandah came in for close inspection, and in the same way he examined the sitting-room and then went into the next-door bedroom. He flashed a torch round the balustrade and examined the likely hiding-places.

  It was plain from his puzzled expression when he returned to Miss Sanctuary that he had seen nothing which formed a plausible basis for a working theory.

  “The cupboard is the most obvious place to hide in,” he concluded. “Ten to one that’s where he was.”

  “Have you found anything, Sergeant?” she asked with a pale smile.

  “I have found lots of things,” he replied cheerily. “But I am not yet prepared to say whether they have any bearing on the case! I am going downstairs now to see the rest of the residents, and afterwards I may want another word with you.”

  Miss Sanctuary’s smile went, and she rose painfully from the bed. “Don’t leave me alone,” she said. “I feel that awful man is still around.” She shuddered.

  “You needn’t worry,” he replied. “It is obvious that Mrs. Budge, and not you, was the object of the attack. In any case, it is unlikely that he is still in the building. However, there will be a man on duty in the corridor at the door, and at a word from you he will come in. As soon as you feel better I should go back to your room.”

  Miss Sanctuary seemed relieved. “Thank you,” she smiled. “I think I shall feel safer if I lock the doors all the same.” She lay back.

  The Sergeant walked out of the room, and after a few words of instruction to the man on duty outside the suite, went downstairs to the rest of the residents.

  VII

  “Up to a late hour,” Charles ’phoned, “not a sign, not the faintest clue to the whereabouts of Mrs. Budge has been discovered. The mystery bids fair to be one of the most baffling of modern times. Our special correspondent, who was first on the spot, and who interviewed Miss Sanctuary, is in close touch with the police, and is playing a part in the investigations.”

  “Right,” said Meredith, at the other end of the wire, as he tore the last page of copy out of the silent typing machine and handed it to the sub behind him.

  Three minutes later it was in front of the linotype operator.

  “Hold on a moment,” said Meredith, “Mr. Bailey wants to speak to you.”

  Charles heard the news editor’s congratulations with real elation.

  “A first-rate story,” grunted Bailey. “You’re wasted on society stuff. Get your nose on the scent of this story and keep it there. Oh, by the way, the art editor’s at my elbow and says can you get a photo of Mrs. Budge?”

  “I’ve got one in my pocket now,” replied Charles proudly. “I pinched it in full view of the police. Send round a messenger in a taxi and it will be waiting.”

  “Stout fellow,” commented Bailey.

  Even as they spoke the papier mâché flong was being pressed on to the gleaming type to make the matrix. Soon the stereos would be fixed to the great rollers and the huge cylinders of “British Paper for the Mercury” would be converted into penny messengers which would bring to over 1,635,432 homes (excluding all free and unsold copies) the first breath-taking news of the Garden Hotel Mystery; news soon to be followed by developments which would make Charles’s first crimson story pale to a watery pink.

  Less hurried, but more conscientiously, the process of the law was taking its course. Patiently the Sergeant was examining the crowd in the lounge, endeavouring to extract from them some useful and valid framework of times and places on which to found subsequent investigations. Slowly the search-party combed out the Garden Hotel…

  It was well on into the small hours of the morning that the Sergeant returned to his rooms in Glossop Road. His wife had left a thermos flask of hot coffee and a plate of sandwiches, and with these by his side he composed the report which, allied with subsequent developments, was sufficient to bring Detective Inspector Bernard Bray of Scotland Yard to investigate the mystery personally.

  Chapter Four

  Scotland Yard is Interested

  I

  Extracts from Sergeant Noakes’s Report

  “AT 21.45 of October 29th, I was rung up by a man, who said he was speaking from the Garden Hotel, to report the disappearance of proprietress. Accompanied by Police Constable Chingley I went round, and at 22.00 arrived at the scene of the alleged disappearance...

  (Here followed a summary of the events already recorded.)

  “…Although I have interviewed the residents and obtained a rough idea of their movements at the time, the problem mainly centres round the Budges’ suite. This, it should be explained, occupies the top floor, which rises out of the main mass of the building and has only three rooms.

  “Somebody gained entrance to Mrs. Budge’s bedroom or was already in the room at 21.30. If he or they were not already in the room (and the possible hiding-places are such that this supposition is doubtful), entrance must have been effected either past the sleeping nurse, or else through the adjoining bedroom via the verandahs.

  “The intruder (assuming it a one-man show for the sake of simplicity) must have either carried Mrs. Budge off and escaped through the verandahs and adjoining bedroom again, or through the sitting-room while the nurse was out of it.

  “Either hypothesis argues an extrao
rdinarily strong and swift worker, aided by luck.

  “In a case of this sort, of course, it is possible that the disappearance is a voluntary one. It is conceivable, for instance, that it was Mrs. Budge herself who attacked Miss Sanctuary, and then escaped. Mrs. Budge was ill with pleurisy at the time, and in addition Miss Sanctuary is of the opinion that her assailant was a man.

  “It may be that Mrs. Budge voluntarily accompanied the man who attacked Miss Sanctuary.

  “While any hypothesis of Mrs. Budge accompanying him voluntarily makes simpler the rapidity of the escape, it makes it more remarkable that they were able to get clean out of the building without detection. Also from my conversation with the doctor, I cannot believe it likely that Mrs. Budge was sufficiently well to leave her bed voluntarily, and go skylarking over verandahs.

  “All stations have been circulated with a description of Mrs. Budge, and the usual routine inquiries have been made.

  “An examination of the rooms and the hotel produced no clues of significance so far. If Mrs. Budge has been forcibly abducted therefore, the only help likely to be forthcoming inside the hotel is from information about Mrs. Budge, which may bring out some plausible motive. As in most of these cases of disappearance, however, the source from which information is most likely to come is the Force’s routine investigation.

  “Two men are at present on duty in the hotel, at the request of Mr. Budge.

  “(Signed) STANLEY NOAKES, Sergeant,

  “Metropolitan Police, Division X.”

  II

  The report in the circumstances was a creditable concoction. So thought Detective Inspector Bernard Bray, C.I.D., as he read it next day sitting in his tiny office at Scotland Yard. Nothing in the policeman’s purview is more monotonous, however, than a disappearance, which always starts so dramatically and ends so tamely. People rarely disappeared for any but strictly personal reasons. There were remarkable features in the case certainly, and the press were playing them for all they were worth. That was why the report had come direct to Bray, and why his lean face, with its good profile—the face of a barrister rather than of a policeman—was furrowed with a frown of concentration. At four o’clock he would have to see Superintendent Etherton and give an opinion on the case. Meanwhile he literally pigeonholed it in his capacious desk in favour of an expert’s autopsy report.