Crime in Kensington

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  “Blood was cleverer than I thought,” Charles admitted. “When I found that the titles of three monographs written by him were ‘Heroin Immunization,’ ‘Narcotics and the Amœba,’ ‘Paralysis and Local Anæsthetics,’ I realized he had managed to combine the two successfully. A part of his bacteriological work, at any rate, was carried out deliberately in a field where he could order, without suspicion, large and regular quantities of drugs.”

  “What an extraordinary story!” commented the Inspector. “I don’t think I have ever heard of a case remotely resembling it.”

  “The Bureau came across something very similar in Monaco,” said Charles. “In that case, however, it was a bogus nursing-home, specifically run for curing addicts. No attempt was made to cure them, however. On the contrary, they were kept regularly supplied.”

  “I don’t know that it was altogether a wise move to mix their paying guests with normal individuals,” Bray remarked. “Of course, it was sheer bad luck entertaining unawares an angel in the person of an ex-member of the Narcotics Bureau, but bad luck apart, I should have thought it was risky.”

  “I don’t know,” said Charles. “I think, on the whole, it was the safest move. People like Lady Viola and Miss Sanctuary and Miss Arrow are so patently nice and pleasant that freaks like Miss Geranium and Eppoliki simply sink into the background as the sort of quaint fauna one does meet in a Kensington hotel.”

  “I notice that the sheep were only mingled with the goats some time after the show had been running,” the detective admitted. “Probably something happened which induced the Budges to camouflage their business a little.”

  “What I am really interested to know,” Charles speculated, “is what the police attitude to the affair is going to be.”

  Bray thought for a moment. “I shall have to discuss it with the Commissioner, of course, but I fancy we shall drop the matter, beyond keeping an eye on these people. The Garden Hotel will disintegrate now, and the real criminals have met their Nemesis. The law looks with comparative pity on the victims of the narcotic habit. It is the panders that must be made to pay, and here they have already paid the extreme penalty. Blood, we could take action against, of course, but the poor devil was blackmailed, and I fancy he has purged his offence many times over in fear and hate. I can see the greatest difficulty in proving he was the actual channel, too, now that the Budges are dead. No! It seems to me that unless Headquarters have different views, the whole business can be left to liquidate itself.”

  “I agree with you absolutely,” said Charles. “Remains the more important problem—By Whose Hand? The problem is immensely complicated by this new development, in that it supplies a completely new crop of people, all absolutely devoid of moral fibre, and therefore absolutely untrustworthy. At the same time it robs us of the obvious motive, since why should any one of them want to dry up that beneficent source of supply, their alma mater, Mrs. Budge?”

  “Why, indeed? I can’t help feeling,” grumbled the detective, “that the whole drug business is a red herring which Providence has drawn across the trail on purpose to make a fool of me. I’m damned if I’ll sit here speculating myself silly. There are about a hundred new lines on which I can start work, and the sooner I get on to one of them, the better.”

  Rising to his feet with a jerk, the detective strode off.

  II

  Charles poured himself out another cup of coffee. “My beautiful chain of evidence has one weak link,” he thought to himself. “Luckily, Bray didn’t spot it. That link is Mrs. Walton. Poor child, if ever innocence was in any look it is in those misty eyes. She’s frightened, horribly frightened of something. Yet she’s no more a drug addict than Viola. What the devil could she have been buying with her two thousand a year? If I could find that out, I might be nearer the essential motive.”

  “Is the coffee so bad, Charles?” asked Viola. “You’re scowling at it as if it were a bowl of poison.” She dropped into a chair behind him. “What is happening here?” she asked. “This suicide of Budge’s—is it the end?”

  “Only the beginning, I’m afraid,” he answered gravely. “It isn’t suicide, it’s murder.”

  Viola listened to his explanation with amazement.

  “It seems incredible that one of those people we play cards with, and have our meals with, is a murderer,” she said at the end. “Yet that’s what it amounts to, doesn’t it?”

  “It isn’t the only thing you are going to find incredible,” he answered, and he told her of the secret behind the Garden Hotel, the subtle filaments which bound Blood, the Budges and the guests into one sinister organization.

  “Poor creatures,” said Viola at the finish. “Well, of course, I knew there was something weird lurking just round the corner all the time. When I went into a room, it was as if the conversation had stopped suddenly and started hurriedly on a new subject. I felt like an interloper—except, of course, with Miss Arrow and Miss Sanctuary—and Mrs. Walton.”

  “Yet somehow or other, Mrs. Walton is on the other side of the fence,” said Charles. “She doesn’t dope, but yet she was in the grips of the Budge organization.”

  “I can’t understand it,” Viola answered, shaking her head. “She is essentially nice, and although she keeps me a little at arm’s length, I think she is delightful.”

  “So do I.”

  Viola smiled. “You needn’t be quite so hearty,” she teased him. “I shall begin to feel a little jealous.”

  “Don’t trifle with me,” he said sternly. “My heart is thine. Mock me not. There is no more susceptible time than twelve o’clock in the morning, when one has just got up and one’s vitality is at its lowest ebb. It ill becomes you to put on that fetching little chain dog-collar and torment me with unrequited pangs.”

  Viola smiled. “I had a frantic telegram from my father this morning. He’s just realized that this Garden Hotel, which has been in the headlines of the papers for the last week, is the one at which I am staying.”

  “Highly undesirable,” the Earl had wired, “stay Garden Hotel while murder stop Suggest move Cecil or return home immediately. Love—DAD.”

  “I think ‘while murder’ is beautifully expressive, and how like your father not to know that the Cecil has been pulled down. Are you going to take his advice?”

  “No,” said Viola. “I know it’s ghoulish of me, but I must stay on to the end.”

  “Good. Now give your close attention to the question of Mrs. Walton. Somewhere, chasing round the back of my head, is some vague, elusive memory. I’m sure I’ve seen her before.”

  Viola wrinkled her eyes in intense concentration. “How funny—I’ve had that idea, too. I can’t decide whether I really have seen her before, or whether it is one of those illusions one gets, you know. Two sides of the brain business. I forget how the explanation goes.”

  “The more I try to think where I have seen her face, the less I can place it,” confessed Charles. “If I don’t think about it, it will probably come back.”

  III

  “You lazy blighter,” interjected Bray’s voice behind him. “Haven’t you stirred from where I left you?”

  “I favour the static school of detection,” Charles grinned. “It is no more unsuccessful than the dynamic school, and much less exhausting.”

  “I’ve just been speaking to the manager Tarr has put in,” Bray said. “His horror when I told him about the history of the hotel could not have been more intense if he had been asked to take charge of a house of ill-fame. However, he is carrying on, with a look of quiet distaste on his face. Meanwhile, the hotel is slowly emptying. Miss Mumby left with her retinue of cats an hour ago. Cantrip and Winterton are already packing, and Mrs. Salterton-Deeley will go as soon as she has recovered from a nervous breakdown. Nothing will move Miss Geranium, however. She is sitting in her room waiting for the final judgment of the Lord, which she asserts is near at hand.”

  “And Blood?”

  “Blood came to me and made a clean breast of the
whole thing,” Bray answered. “You were right. He was the source of supply. He has closed his laboratory and is realizing all his worldly goods. I thought at first he was trying to tell me that he was going to leave the country, but it appears that he is going to fulfil his secret longing and join the Community of the Pauline Brothers at Tooting.”

  “He will be happy,” Charles said decisively. “The habit of the Pauline Brothers is the most decorative and varied of any of the Anglo-Catholic Orders. Poor Blood,” he went on seriously, “I am afraid he is a little too yielding for this wicked world. A contemplative life will give more scope to the better side of his nature than an active one.”

  “I am not too keen on all this scattering,” the Inspector said, “but I can’t very well prevent it. It’s going to mean more work keeping an eye on them all. Still, Twing and Eppoliki and Mrs. Walton are staying on for a little. Twing and Eppoliki are looking for somewhere to go. Twing, by the way, is abjectly afraid that I may breathe something about his little weakness in the issuing house of whom he is the honoured partner, and even Eppoliki had the grace to hope that nothing would come to the ears of his rich father in Cairo, of whom he is apparently the spoiled and extravagant darling.”

  The three were silent for a moment. Charles saw the Garden Hotel as a sinking ship from which the rats were already running. Its trim stucco exterior still gleamed as brightly as ever. Thanks to the loyal executorship of Tarr, the tiled doorsteps were still spotless, but the water was gushing inside, and her doom was sealed. She was a slave ship at the best, thought Charles, one of the strangest and most outrageous craft that had ever burdened the grey and dingy bosom of Kensington. Yet before, with flags flying, she took the final, irrevocable downward plunge, Charles felt determined to solve the mystery that had so far obstinately defied his searching. The chill of neglect and failure was already hovering in the corridors of the place; the servants slouched, with the consciousness of their house’s doom, but he felt determined to remain until he knew what assassin had walked through to Mrs. Budge’s bedroom and strangled her on her bed, and what avidity of slaying had anticipated the gallows and the hangman.

  Viola broke the silence. “I suppose nobody is really what they seem,” she said at last. “My fellow-residents dope fiends, my hotel proprietress and her husband complete rascals and blackmailers, and even Charles, the most innocuous-looking of mortals, and transparently honest, had concealed from me the romantic fact that he was a detective for two years. Really, I shouldn’t be surprised after all if Mrs. Walton isn’t the soft-hearted angel she looks.”

  “Don’t get cynical,” admonished Charles. “It looks bad in one so young. Nobody who can eat treacle roll with the gusto shown by Mrs. Walton can be altogether bad. Certainly it absolves her from the charge of doping.”

  He turned to Bray. “I want to have another look at the Budges’ suite,” he said. “Will you come along with me? There is a certain little theory whose possibility, or rather whose impossibility, I should like to make certain of, and I want someone to help me by holding the other end of a tape measure.”

  Bray assented, but Viola elected to stay behind.

  Charles paused outside the door, his fingers on the handle. “There’s someone in here,” he said.

  Bray frowned. “They’ve no business to be,” he said. “No one is supposed to go in there without my permission. There’s a seal on the door which has been broken.”

  He listened. They could distinctly hear a rattling of drawers being opened and papers fluttered.

  Silently Charles turned the handle, and then twitched the door open. A figure was bending over the bureau in the corner, sorting the papers with the energy of despair.

  “Can I help you?” said Charles clearly and distinctly.

  The figure wheeled round with a cry of fright.

  “You!” said the detective in surprise.

  It was Mrs. Walton.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Net Closes

  I

  MRS. WALTON said nothing. There was a long silence.

  “Can we help you?” Charles repeated his question with a reassuring smile.

  The colour slowly returned to Mrs. Walton’s face. She nervously clasped her fingers but spoke in a level voice. “I suppose I shouldn’t really have done this, but I was looking for a private paper which Mr. Budge took care of for me.”

  “We have been through all those papers,” the detective said coldly. “If you will describe it I can tell you whether it was there.”

  “It was a private paper. I—I expect it has gone—been destroyed.” Her voice died away unconvincingly.

  Bray did not answer. He fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced an envelope. With his eyes on her face he inserted his thumb and drew out the marriage certificate which had been among the papers given by Mrs. Budge into her solicitor’s safe keeping.

  “Was this it?” he said, unfolding it.

  Impossible not to notice the horrified start that she gave, impossible not to see the skin on her temples bleach ivory, drained of its blood! But she met his eyes bravely.

  “No, oh, no! I’ve never seen that before.” With hands locked behind her, she achieved a laugh.

  Bray tried an appeal. “Mrs. Walton, we are only anxious to help. If we seem to pry into secrets it is with no intention of using them against whomever confides in us. Can you not be a little more frank?”

  Mrs. Walton inclined her head. She spoke slowly. “You are evidently suffering from some delusion. I am sorry if I was going through the bureau without permission, but I happened to remember this small private matter and hardly thought it was worth troubling you. The paper I was looking for had a sentimental interest—nothing more.”

  Charles stood aside and let her pass. As the door closed the two exchanged glances. “Not a very convincing liar,” observed Charles. “Are we right in presuming it was her marriage certificate and that she was either Mary Church or was married under that name?”

  “I suppose so,” said the detective, “and now she has emerged as Mrs. Walton. There are a good many possibilities here.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose I shall have to go up to Coventry to see if we can trace either of the parties mentioned from that end.”

  “The most obvious deduction—and therefore perhaps a dangerous one,” said Charles, “is that there is something about this first marriage which would make dear old Addington—the soul of respectability—cry off if he knew. In which case we must put down some real, honest-to-goodness blackmail to the discredit of the Budges as well as dope-peddling. I wish to the Lord I could remember where I had seen her before, because I’ll swear that her face is familiar.”

  That night Bray took the train to Coventry.

  II

  The little Egyptian had something of importance to say. That was evident from the way in which he had drawn Charles aside, casting a furtive monocular glance around him before speaking.

  “Still no trace of the murderer, eh?” he asked.

  “Lots of traces,” Charles answered. “But devil a murderer.”

  Eppoliki grinned. “Not easy by any means. Easier sometimes trailing dope fiends than finding murderers.” He gave a friendly grin.

  Charles started. “And how do you know that I have any experience of trailing dope fiends?”

  “Your friend Cunningham, father’s pet aversion,” he explained verblessly. “My father high up in narcotic trade—captain of the industry, eh?—and he have little album photographs of ‘Cunningham’s Chicks.’ I had to learn faces by heart when I was in business. Recognize you at once, of course.”

  Charles laughed. “So that was it! I am afraid I scared you when I arrived.”

  “I knew then that Garden Hotel was ended. I admire very much neat way you murder Mrs. Budge.”

  “Well I’m damned! Are you accusing me of polishing off the old lady as part of my professional duties? As a matter of fact, I left the Bureau years ago and I came here with no idea that it was anything but what
it purported to be.”

  Eppoliki lifted a restraining hand. “No, no. I see later impossible you commit it. Then I say who? Now one very suspicious circumstance there is. Diagnosis is dangerous, of course, but I say ‘Here symptom that point very favourably to conclusion—clear, clinical picture perhaps.’”

  Eppoliki again glanced round the room apprehensively. Then he whispered in Charles’s ear.

  “You are absolutely certain?” Charles answered incredulously.

  Eppoliki nodded. “Use it how you like. If right, then at trial you can give Eppoliki credit—failed M.B., perhaps, several times, but still notice something that prove not too bad doctor.”

  “Not only shall it be mentioned at the trial,” Charles answered him, “but it will receive prominent treatment in the Mercury.”

  The Egyptian’s white teeth flashed. “One other request—more important,” he said. “If you should meet my father, professionally perhaps, keep dark about son taking narcotics. That would be very very sad to him, he thinking son becoming great professional man in London at expense of profits in drug trade.”

  The white teeth flashed again and Eppoliki shuffled away. That evening he left the Garden Hotel.

  III

  Sitting by herself in the lounge, Viola sketched idly on a pad. There was quite a lot of work for her to do—a poster for the Anthrax Collieries, a carton for an old-established brand of suet, and a cover for a newly established fashion paper, but she could not concentrate on any of these things. Her thoughts insistently returned to what the world knew as the Garden Hotel Mystery.