Crime in Kensington

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  Eventually speculation wore itself out, and Winterton found the silence oppressive. He broke it. “Well, Inspector,” he said cheerily—he hoped, “what can I do for you?”

  Bray hesitated. “Mr. Winterton,” he said, and he looked fixedly at his glass and not at the darting eyes of the other, “I should like to speak to you for a little as a legal adviser rather than as an officer of the law.”

  Bray’s eyes were fixed on the swirling amber fluid, but he sensed the other tensing himself with suspicion.

  “It happens repeatedly that a citizen by some indiscretion or slip in his past places himself in the power of another. If that other takes advantage of the situation to extort a valuable thing from his victim, then I cannot make it too clear that the law regards the affair with such abhorrence that there is almost no step it will not take, and no offence it will not condone, in order that the guilty shall be brought to book and his victim safeguarded.”

  Bray raised his eyes to Winterton’s and he held them. They were like black lumps of toffee—completely expressionless.

  “I cannot give you any official guarantees or assurances of indemnity, but speaking to you as man to man, I say to you that if you wish to reconsider the statement you made to me yesterday, no jot or tittle of harm can come to you, but that if you do not”—the detective’s voice grew stern—“you will retard but not obstruct the progress of justice. The police can have no consideration for the member of society who wilfully persists as accessory after the fact in a capital charge.”

  The lumps of toffee swivelled and a pale tongue shot out and licked a pale mouth. Then Winterton broke out in high-pitched, metallic laughter.

  “Really, Inspector, what a humorous situation. I believe you have a fixed conviction that I have been blackmailed into giving poor old Budge an alibi! God bless my soul, what incurable romanticists you detectives are! I had no idea Scotland Yard was so like the pictures!”

  Bray felt as if he had been slapped in the face. His eyes snapped fire. “As you prefer. If we get Budge, as we probably shall in the end, we shall see you in the dock as accessory. If we don’t, then you can go on paying him tribute for the rest of your life.”

  The detective slammed the door. Above the slam he heard the crackle of Winterton’s high-pitched cackling.

  Left to himself, Winterton was still amused. “Blackmail! That’s a good one,” he said to himself, and tottered to the sideboard.

  V

  Miss Mumby was not amused, she was annoyed. Bray approached the subject with such careful skirmishing that she professed to be unable to understand what he was driving at. When she did, her face was a mask of cunning fury. Bray had noticed that people grew like animals if they lived too much with them, and now Miss Mumby looked like a gaunt grey tabby, surly with age, spitting rage at a boy who had been tormenting her.

  “I see,” she hissed. (Bray realized for the first time that it was possible to hiss—the sibilance of her s’s made the cat, which was lying on her lap, leap on to the floor.) “The law must have its victim and so I am to be accused of perjury, and not content with that, it is suggested that there are incidents in my past I am ashamed of.” Her grey eyes glittered with scorn. “I’m a lonely woman now, and I suppose you policemen think you can ride rough-shod over me. I can tell you that if General Mumby had been alive he would have horse-whipped the man who made the suggestion you have made to me, policeman or no policeman. We may not be one of the great families of the world, but no one has ever said a word against the respectability of the Mumbys of Wick.” She snorted indescribably, and her voice rose two octaves. “Let me tell you General Mumby knew Superintendent MacEwan of Scotland Yard, and if I tell him how the daughter of his friend has been treated, we’ll see if he won’t have your coat off your back.”

  “I think you must know there is more justification for my questions than you affect to believe, madam,” replied the detective stiffly, when her invective had overflowed and subsided. “However, I withdraw any remarks I may have made in the course of my duty.”

  Bray did not stand upon the order of his going, but went.

  “Dangerous old cat. I’m quite sure her annoyance was acted. What a hell of a case! Every time I think I’m on the right road I come up against a brick wall! I would give up all hope of promotion and pay for the opportunity of putting some of these people on the rack and getting the real truth out of them. I’ve never felt so sympathetic with the Inquisition. I suppose I must try Budge now.”

  VI

  Budge was genially impertinent. “Really, Inspector, I have the fullest sympathy with your zeal, and am more anxious than you are to see my wife’s murderer brought to book, but why it should help you to pry into our affairs, I don’t know.”

  The detective was woodenly persistent. “Why do some of your guests pay £2,000 a year for staying in a small residential hotel in Kensington?”

  The other adopted an attitude of engaging candour. “Ah, there you have me, Inspector. If we were as rich as Miss Mumby, for instance, it would be gay Paree for us.” He winked familiarly. “But my wife was a far-seeing woman, and she realized that there were some rich people who wanted quietness and home comforts and would pay anything in reason for it.”

  The Inspector exploded. “And yet Mr. Venables and Lady Viola and Miss Sanctuary and Miss Arrow and Mr. Blood paid a tenth of the price for the same thing!”

  “Ah, there you are,” went on Budge shamelessly. “My wife realized that the poor things would be dull if there was no one else, so we took in a few charming souls at prices that didn’t really pay us, in order to make up a happy little party. After all, we aren’t very different from Harley Street, which charges you and me five guineas and Lord This or That a hundred guineas.”

  Bray was forced to admit himself beaten, but he did not press the matter.

  “If you have any doubts,” went on Budge, following up his advantage, “I suggest you speak to the people themselves. Miss Mumby and Mr. Winterton, for instance, would put in their own words what I have just been telling you.”

  VII

  Charles on his part was doing a little investigation. One name on Bray’s list of the guests from whom the Budges were exacting tribute had puzzled him. “Now what is lovely Mrs. Walton doing in that crowd?” he thought. He decided he must have a talk with her, and drifted slowly towards the little room known as the drawing-room, in which he had heard Mrs. Walton was sitting.

  He was about to drift out again when he saw a stranger with Mrs. Walton, but his blank stare was transformed to a start of semi-recognition. He jammed in his eyeglass. “Hello, Addington,” he said. Charles, whose métier as a gossip-writer it had been to know everyone slightly, knew St. Clair Addington well.

  “Oh, I never realized you knew my fiancé!” exclaimed Mrs. Walton cordially.

  “Fancy your being in this den of thieves,” remarked Addington. “You didn’t do the deed, by any chance? I never trust these journalists.”

  Charles realized that tact and criminal investigation do not go together. Instead of retiring gracefully, he drew his chair into the circle and talked. And while he talked he watched.

  At the finish Charles was frankly puzzled. Mrs. Walton was in love with Addington, so much was very plain, and Addington, the pious and darling son of the Law Lord whose onslaughts on the second revised Prayer Book had split the Church of England in twain, was completely bewitched by that throaty voice and that shepherdess pink and whiteness. Charles, on the whole, preferred something a little more fine drawn… Charles realized with a start that it was an ominous sign when he thought of another girl when talking to anything so charming as Mrs. Walton.

  But Mrs. Walton was afraid, desperately afraid. When she looked at St. Clair, her eyes sparkled, but when she looked away there was a hunted thing peering out, and it cowered as if it was hard pressed.

  All three went in to dinner together, and sat at the same table. Worry apparently did not affect Mrs. Walton’s appetite. She ate with the na
tural, unaffected gusto which Charles maintained was the glory of true womanliness. But she crumbled her bread and jiggled her cutlery with the incessancy of long-repressed nerves. What with one thing and another, Charles was puzzled. “Perhaps I am a complete ass after all,” he sighed resignedly to himself…

  Afterwards he dropped into Bray’s rooms, on the edge of Chelsea, for a drink. They discussed the case from every angle, but Charles reserved his bombshell for the last.

  “By the way, Bray,” he said at the door. “You’d better watch Budge. Since this murder he’s locked his door and window at night and carried a revolver in his pocket during the day. If you aren’t careful you’ll have his murder on your hands as well.”

  “I only hope they don’t murder him before I succeed in hanging him,” replied Bray grimly.

  Chapter Twelve

  Budge Versus Bray: Charles Intervening

  I

  AT one a.m. that night, or rather, next morning, the curious observer might have seen a long dressing-gown and carpet slippers creeping down the corridors of the hotel. Enveloped in the dressing-gown and peering over the collar was Charles.

  Nothing is more difficult of accomplishment than moving quietly at night. Charles, as he overturned the second chair in twenty yards, realized that he needed a great deal of practice in the technique of his art if he were to become a criminal investigator. Very cautiously he crept down the stairs from his floor to the first floor. Suddenly he stepped on something soft. It wriggled, and Charles felt a sensation like five wasp stings on his bare skin. He and the cat screamed together, and he fell down the flight with a series of thuds.

  He waited for ten minutes, mopping his scratched ankle and cursing silently. But apparently the residents in the Garden Hotel slept the sleep of the just. He felt his way to Mrs. Salterton-Deeley’s suite and entered.

  Behind the bedroom door the lady snored decorously. Charles switched on the reading-lamp and looked around him. Mrs. Salterton-Deeley shared the untidiness of her sex. Her hat lay on the sofa, her coat was thrown over the arm of a chair, and her handbag and gloves were on the bureau. Charles took up her bag and shot the contents on the table. One object only he examined, and then shot it back into the bag with the rest.

  “So far, so good,” he said to himself. “My theory seems to have been sound.”

  His next visit was to Mr. Winterton’s room. Here a quick search located the goal of his investigation in a chest of drawers. His search of Miss Mumby’s rooms was more prolonged, but he ran to earth something that satisfied him in one of the lady’s shoes—a beautifully brocaded pair which looked as if they had never been worn.

  In neither case did he remove anything, but he went back to his cold bed satisfied and slept the sleep of the completely righteous.

  II

  Charles turned up at Bray’s office next day and parked himself in the only comfortable chair with an air of permanency.

  “About Budge’s alibi,” said Charles.

  Bray looked up.

  With maddening deliberation the other paused while he placed his monocle on the edge of the desk, and with a deft push sent it spinning to the limit of its lanyard.

  “I believe I could break that,” he murmured.

  “Good,” said the detective sarcastically. “That would be sweet of you.”

  Charles went on unheedingly. “Now here’s a case where I can be useful to you. Hampered as you are by red tape, you cannot take the fairly obvious steps necessary to prove that the Mumby bird and old what’s-his-name are liars. I can, with your co-operation.”

  “How can I co-operate? I am all eagerness,” said Bray, unimpressed. “It is not often that Scotland Yard has the chance of helping a brilliant amateur of your gifts.”

  Charles smiled. “I only want you to lock up Budge.”

  The detective gaped. “Only! On what charge?”

  “Any old charge,” the other replied cheerfully. “He probably hasn’t a licence for his revolver.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Charles. You know perfectly well that we can’t throw people into prison on the off-chance of what will follow.”

  The other dropped his air of gaiety and became serious. “Look here, Bray, I’m not joking. I can’t tell you what is in my mind because my way of dealing with the situation isn’t going to be strictly legal. But if you can get Budge here and give the impression that he is arrested, I guarantee that I can dispose of that alibi which has caused you so many sleepless nights.”

  Inspector Bray scratched his head and thought deeply. At last he spoke. “Look here, I disclaim all responsibility for the whole business in advance. But I have been impressed by one or two hits you have made in this case, and I’m ready to admit that in certain points the outsider has advantages over the Yard. We shall send for Budge and ask him to come here to answer a few questions—of his own free will, of course—and it is up to you to make as much or little of it as you please.”

  Charles grinned. “Good boy. I’m on. Send as early as you can and stand by for developments.”

  Bray watched him jump to his feet and hurry out, not without a certain amount of misgiving. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He devoted his attention to clearing up his desk.

  III

  Bray’s voice was cooingly polite as he rang up Budge and asked if he would come to Scotland Yard to answer a few questions. Budge willingly agreed, and ten minutes later a Scotland Yard Invicta drew up at the door, and two policemen arrived. A timid chambermaid peeped out at them and saw them escorting Budge with exaggerated cordiality, one each side, to the car. Budge looked uneasy.

  The little chambermaid came from a home where such visits were not unknown. She fled down the stairs to the kitchen, where the head waiter was engaged in solemn conference with the cook. He frowned at her as she burst into the room, but her news buoyed her up and onwards.

  “Mr. Budge has been arrested,” she screamed.

  “Nonsense, you little fool,” said the head waiter automatically.

  “He has, he has. Two coppers came and pinched him in the hall—didn’t give him time to collect anything even, they didn’t.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” her immediate superior rebuked her loftily. “He has been consulted by the police and has gone over to the Yard to give evidence.”

  “Ow, I didn’t know that,” answered the chastened girl. “I thought as ’ow they’d pinched him, coming the way they did.”

  “Well, keep yourself under better control,” replied the other, and going upstairs to the Budges’ room, he rapidly got together all the movable property he could find that seemed valuable. In spite of his calming words, he foresaw the imminent collapse of the Garden Hotel.

  IV

  “Hello, Colonel,” said Charles gaily as he blew into the hotel. “You’re just in time to hear a red-hot exclusive story before it’s ’phoned through. Budge has been arrested for the murder of his good lady.”

  Cantrip whitened. “Arrested? Surely you’re joking, Venables!”

  “It’s a fact. Two burly officers of the law came and whisked him off, and you won’t see him again unless you can squeeze into the Old Bailey.”

  Cantrip showed no surprise, but he showed great irritation. His veined hands stole to his ragged moustache and tugged it nervously. “It’s most inconsiderate,” he moaned; “how will the hotel be run without him?”

  “How, indeed?” asked Charles cheerfully. “Supplies running low, what?” He winked.

  Cantrip started. “Good Lord, I didn’t realize that you were——” He broke off expressively.

  “Even so, I am,” answered Charles mendaciously.

  “H’m, h’m,” boomed the Colonel, worrying his moustache. “I feel so helpless after all these years. We must have a chat about this matter later. Yes, we must have a chat.” And the Colonel strode away, deep in thought.

  At lunch that day Charles was late. But he had time to see Viola before the gong sounded.

  “Look
here, Viola,” he whispered, “things are breaking. Scotland Yard has invited Budge over to answer some questions, but I want the rumour to go round that he has been arrested—mind, not a soul must know otherwise at lunch.”

  “Right oh, Charles. This sounds most exciting. You can rely upon me to back you up. I shall swear I saw the warrant, if necessary.”

  Whatever the nature of the business that made Charles late for lunch, it took him to the rooms of Miss Mumby and Winterton, and this time he abstracted the small objects for which he had searched the night before. He went in to lunch with both in his pockets, and calmly met the eyes of his unconscious victims.

  “A bad business,” remarked Charles in a loud voice. “I hear from a friend in Scotland Yard that the fellow’s confessed.”

  The head waiter looked staggered, and a waitress dropped a knife with a clatter.

  “Goodness knows what will happen here,” Charles went on.

  The case was discussed from every angle—why, when and how.

  “I cannot understand it,” said Miss Mumby, turning to Charles and mechanically stroking the kitten which sat with its paws on her bread plate. “I understand that the police view was that it was impossible for Mr. Budge to have done it, because both Mr. Winterton and myself saw him just about the time of the murder. I don’t trust that young man Bray,” she went on darkly. “I believe he’s looking for someone to fix it on, and he’s chosen Mr. Budge.”