The Mad Hatter Mystery

by The Mad Hatter Mystery (retail) (epub)

  “But, by God!” said Rampole, “I don’t mind telling you it was good.” He stared across at the smashed plaster on the hearthstone. “You had to do that. Otherwise you’d never have got Mrs. Larkin’s testimony. If she followed Mrs. Bitton, she knows all Mrs. Bitton’s movements, but—”

  Hadley glanced over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed.

  “Exactly. But she would never tell them to the police. This afternoon she swore to us she had seen nothing. That was a part of her job; she took the risk. She couldn’t tell us she was following Mrs. Bitton without exposing the whole thing and losing her position. More than that—and a much sounder reason—I think she has tidy blackmail schemes in her mind. Now we’ve knocked that on the head. She’s already told Bitton, of course. So if she won’t tell, he will—to clear his wife. But I’ll promise to forget what she said this afternoon if she gives us a signed statement. Bitton does all the work of persuading her to talk. Let him apply the third degree; we couldn’t.”

  Rampole pushed back his hat.

  “Neat!” he said. “Very neat, sir. Now, if your plan to persuade Arbor to talk works as well—”

  “Arbor!” The chief inspector sprang up. “I’d forgotten it. I’ve been sitting here explaining my own cleverness, and I clean forgot that. I’ve got to telephone Golder’s Green, and do it quickly. Where the devil is the phone? And, incidentally, where’s the man who was supposed to be guarding this flat; how did Bitton get in here, anyhow? And where, by the way, is Fell?”

  He was answered without delay. From beyond the closed door, somewhere in the interior of the flat, there was a scrape, a thud, and a terrific metallic crash.

  “It’s all right!” a muffled voice boomed out to them from some distance away. “No more plaster figures broken. I’ve just dropped a basket of tools off the shelf in the kitchen.”

  Hadley and Rampole hurried in the direction of the voice. Beyond the door through which the doctor had gone, a narrow passage ran straight back. There were two doors in either wall; those on the left leading to a study and a bedroom, and those on the right a bath—and a dining room. The kitchen was at the extreme rear of the passage.

  To add to the confusion of the room, Driscoll had never been especially neat in his habits. The study had been cluttered up long before the woman’s frantic search that afternoon. The floor was a drift of papers; rows of shelves gaped where whole sections of books had been tossed out; and the drawers of the desk hung out empty and drunken. A portable typewriter, its cover off, had become entangled with the telephone, and the contents of several brass ashtrays were sprayed across carbon paper, pencils, and an overturned bottle of ink. Even the green shade of the hanging lamp, which burned dully above the typewriter, had been knocked awry, and the iron fender pulled away from the fireplace. Apparently the intruder had concentrated her attention on the study.

  Hadley glanced quickly into the other rooms as Dr. Fell opened the door of the kitchen. The bed was still unmade in the bedroom. The disarranged bureau was a gallery of large cabinet photographs of women, most of them with rather lurid inscriptions. This Driscoll, Rampole considered, had been a young man to be envied, even though his conquests seemed mostly of the housemaid type. The search here had been more perfunctory, confined to the bureau. And the dining room had not been touched at all. It had seldom or never been used for eating purposes, but there had palpably been a use for it. Two gigantic rows of empty soda-siphons had been lined up on the sideboard. Under a mosaic dome of lights over the table there mingled in confusion empty bottles, unwashed glasses, a cocktail shaker, ash trays, and several sportive pieces of orange peel. The whole had a dry, sticky appearance. Hadley grunted and switched off the light.

  “The kitchen also,” Dr. Fell observed at his elbow, “seems to have been used chiefly for mixing drinks. My estimation of the late Mr. Driscoll would have been considerably improved if I had not spotted a tin of that unmentionable substance known as cocoa.” He swept his arm about. “You see? That sitting room he kept tidy for casual visitors like his uncle. This is where he really lived. H’mf.”

  He was wheezing in the kitchen doorway. Over his arm he carried a large market-basket which jingled with iron.

  “You said tools?” inquired Hadley, sharply. “Was that what you were looking for? You mean a chisel or a screwdriver used to force open the outer door of this flat?”

  “Good Lord, no!” snorted the doctor, with a grunt that rattled the basket. “My dear Hadley, you don’t seriously suppose the woman got into the flat, came back here, found a chisel, and went out again so that she could break open the door for sheer amusement, do you?”

  “She might have done just that,” said the chief inspector, quietly, “to give the impression it was some outsider who had burgled the flat.”

  “It’s entirely possible, I grant you. But, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t interested in the breaking or entering. It was an entirely different sort of tool I was looking for.”

  “It may further interest you to know,” the chief inspector pursued, rather irritably, “that while you have been poking about in the kitchen we’ve learned a great deal from Bitton.”

  The doctor nodded several times, and the black ribbon on his glasses swung jumpily. His shovel hat shaded the top of his face, so that he looked more and more like a fat bandit.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “I thought you would. He was here to get information from his private detective, and you’ve scared him into forcing her to tell what she knows by making out a thundering case against his wife. I imagined I could safely leave that to you. I wasn’t needed. H’mf.” He blinked curiously round the passage. “I know you have to get it down for the records, and keep everything in order. But from my point of view it wasn’t necessary. I’m rather sure I can tell you what the Larkin woman knows. Come over here to the study for a moment, and have a look at Driscoll’s character.”

  “You infernal old stuffed-shirt bluffer!” said Hadley, like one who commences an oration. “You—”

  “Oh, come,” protested the doctor, with a mildly injured air. “Tut, tut! No. I may be a childish old fool. I admit that. But I’m not a bluffer, old man. Really, I’m not. Let’s see, what was I talking about? Oh yes; Driscoll’s character. There are some rather interesting photographs of him in the study. In one of them he—”

  Sharply and stridently through the silent passage the telephone in the study rang.

  XII

  Concerning XNineteen

  “THAT,” SAID Hadley, whirling about, “may be a lead. Wait a moment. I’ll answer it.”

  They followed him into the study. Dr. Fell seemed about to launch some sort of protest, whose nature Rampole could not imagine, but the chief inspector picked up the telephone.

  He said, “Hello! . . . Yes, this is Chief Inspector Hadley speaking. . . . Who? . . . Oh, yes. . . . It’s Sheila Bitton,” he said to the others over his shoulder, and there was a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “Yes. . . . Yes, certainly, Miss Bitton.” A long pause. “Why, I suppose you may, but I shall have to have a look at everything first, you know. . . . No trouble at all! When will you come over?”

  “Wait!” said Dr. Fell, eagerly. He stumped across. “Tell her to hold on a second.”

  “What is it?” the chief inspector asked in some irritation, with his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “She’s coming over here tonight?”

  “Yes. She says there are some belongings of Philip’s that her uncle wants her to bring to the house.”

  “H’m. Ask her if she’s got anybody to bring her over here.”

  “What the devil? Oh, all right,” Hadley agreed, wearily, as he saw on the doctor’s face that almost fiendish expression which people wear when they want a message transmitted by phone and have to keep silent themselves. Hadley spoke again. “She says she’s got Dalrye,” he transmitted after a moment.

  “That won’t do. There’s somebody in that house I’ve got to talk to, and I’ve got to talk to him o
ut of the house or it may be no good. And this,” grunted the doctor, excitedly, “is the chance of a lifetime to do it. Let me talk to her, will you?”

  Hadley shrugged and got up from the desk.

  “Hello!” said the doctor, in what he evidently meant for a gentle tone suitable to women. It actually sounded as though he were gulping. “Miss Bitton? This is Dr. Fell, Mr. Hadley’s—um—colleague. . . . You do? Oh yes; from your fiancé, of course. . . . HEY?”

  “You needn’t blow the mouthpiece out,” Hadley observed, sourly. “What tact! What tact! Ha!”

  “Excuse me, Miss Bitton. Excuse me. I may be, of course, the fattest walrus Mr. Dalrye has ever seen, but . . . No, no, my dear; of course I don’t mind. . . .”

  They could hear the phone tinkling in an animated fashion; Rampole remembered Mrs. Larkin’s description of Sheila Bitton as a “little blonde,” and grinned to himself. Dr. Fell contemplated the phone with an expression of one trying to smile in order to have his picture taken; presently he broke in.

  “What I was trying to say, Miss Bitton, was this. You’ll undoubtedly have a number of things to take away, and they’ll be quite bulky. . . . Oh! Mr. Dalrye has to be back at the Tower by ten o’clock? . . . Then you will certainly want somebody to handle them. Haven’t you somebody there who could? . . . The chauffeur’s not there? Well, what about your father’s valet? What’s his name?—Marks. He spoke highly of Marks, and . . . But please don’t bring your father, Miss Bitton; it would only make him feel worse. (She’s weeping now!” the doctor added, desperately, over his shoulder.) “Oh, he’s lying down? Very well, Miss Bitton. We shall expect you. Good-bye.”

  He turned about, glowering, and shook the tool-basket until it jangled. “She burbles. She prattles. And she called me a walrus. A most naive young lady. And if any humorist on these premises makes the obvious remark about the Walrus and the Carpenter—”

  He set down the tool-basket with a clank.

  “Dr. Watson—” Hadley muttered. “Thanks for reminding me. I’ve got to put a call through to the police station at Golder’s Green. Get up from there.”

  He began a series of relay-calls through Scotland Yard, and finally left his orders. He had just finished informing some mystified desk sergeant on the other wire to phone him here after he had made sure the message was delivered to the guard at Arbor’s cottage, when they heard footsteps in the sitting room.

  Evidently it had taken some time for Lester Bitton to persuade Mrs. Larkin that it would be advisable to talk. Bitton was pacing the front room, looking flushed and dangerous. Mrs. Larkin, a straight figure with a face more square than ever, was holding back the curtain of the front window and peering out with extreme nonchalance. When she saw Hadley she examined him coldly.

  “You tecs,” she said, her upper lip wrinkling; “pretty damn smart, ain’t you? I told his nibs here you’d got nothing on his wife. He should have sat tight and let you go ahead, and then we could both have got a sweet piece of change out of you for false arrest. But no. He had to get scared and spill the beans. But I’ve been promised my pay for speaking out loud in meeting. So,” concluded Mrs. Larkin, lifting her shoulders, “what the hell?”

  Hadley opened his briefcase again. This time he was not bluffing; the printed form he opened carried two decidedly unflattering snapshots, one of which was a side view.

  “‘Amanda Georgette Larkin,’” he read. “‘Alias Amanda Leeds, Alias Georgie Simpson. Known as “Emmy.” Shoplifting. Specialty, jewelry, large department stores. Last heard of in New York—’”

  “You needn’t go through all that,” interrupted Emmy. “There’s nothing on me now. I told you that this afternoon. But go on and get his nibs to tell you what agency I work for. Then you’ll tell them, and, bingo! I’m through.”

  Hadley folded up the paper and replaced it. “You may be trying to make an honest living,” he said, “if I can be so polite about your profession. We’ll certainly keep an eye on you, Mrs. Larkin. But if you give us a clear statement, I don’t think I need warn your employers about Georgie Simpson.”

  She put her hands on her hips and studied him.

  “That’s fair enough. Not that I’ve got a lot of choice in the matter. All right. Here she goes.”

  Mrs. Larkin’s manner underwent a subtle change. That afternoon she had seemed all tight corsets and severe tailoring, like an especially forbidding schoolmistress. Now the stiffness disappeared into an easier slouch. She dropped into a chair, saw some cigarettes in a box on the taboret beside her, selected one, and struck the match by whisking it across the sole of her shoe.

  “Those two,” she said, with a spurt of something like admiration, “were havin’ one hell of a time! They—”

  “That’s enough of that!” Lester Bitton cut in, in a heavy voice. “These—these men aren’t interested.”

  “I bet they’re not,” said Mrs. Larkin, with cool skepticism. “How about it, Hadley?”

  “What we want to know is everything you did today, Mrs. Larkin.”

  “Right. Well, in my profession a man we always look out for is the postman. I was up bright and early, ready for him. He always puts the letters in the box of Number One, my place, first, and then goes across the way. I can time it so that I’m picking up the milk bottle outside my door when he gets out the mail for Number Two. And that was easy. Because XNineteen—that’s the way we have to describe people in the confidential reports—XNineteen always wrote her letters on a sort of pink-purplish kind of paper you could see a mile off.”

  “How did you know,” inquired Hadley, “that the letters were from XNineteen?”

  She looked at him. “Don’t be funny,” said Mrs. Larkin, coldly. “It’s not healthy for a respectable widow to get into people’s flats with a duplicate key. And it’s a damn sight less healthy to be found steaming open people’s letters. Let’s say I overheard them talking about the first letter she wrote him.

  “All right. I’d been warned XNineteen was coming back to London Sunday night, and so I had my eyes open this morning. Well, I admit that I was kind of surprised when I went out to pick up my milk bottle and found Driscoll picking up his milk bottle just over the way. He never gets up before noon. But there he was, all dressed, and lookin’ as though he’d had a bad night. He had his door open, and I could see the inside of the letter box.”

  She twisted round, and pointed with her cigarette at the wire cage just below the slot in the door.

  “He didn’t pay any attention to me. Then, while he had the milk bottle under one arm, and still holding the door open with his foot, he stuck his hand in the letter box. He pulled out the pink letter, and sort of grunted, and put it in his pocket without opening it. Then he saw me, and let the door slam.

  “So I thought, ‘What ho!’ And I knew there was going to be a meeting somewhere. But I wasn’t to watch him. I’d only been planted opposite so I could catch XNineteen with the goods.”

  “You seem to have been a long time in doing it,” said Hadley.

  She made a comfortable gesture. “Well, we detectives have to take our time, don’t we, and be pretty sure before we act? No use finishin’ off a good assignment too quick. But all the times she’s been there I never saw anything. The best chance I had was the night before she went away, about two weeks ago. They come in from the theatre or some place, and they was both pretty tight. I watched the door, and everything was all quiet for about two hours, so I knew what was up. Then the door opened, and they both come out again for him to take her home. I couldn’t see anything; it was black as pitch out in the hall, but I could hear. By this time she was tighter yet, but he was as drunk as a hoot-owl. And they stood there swearing eternal love to each other; and he was saying how he was going to do a piece of work that would get him a good newspaper job, and then they could get married—and, oh, they had a hell of a time.

  “But I wasn’t certain,” explained the practical Mrs. Larkin, “because that’s what they all say when they’re drank. And besides
, I heard him telling the same thing to a little red-head he had here while XNineteen was away, so I didn’t believe he was as gone on XNineteen as she was on him. But that night, of course, I wasn’t on duty. I was just getting home myself, and he came staggering down the steps with his arm around the red-head, and she was trying to hold him up, and he slipped and fell and said ‘Jesus Christ.’”

  “Stop it!” Lester Bitton suddenly shouted. The cry was wrung from him. He had been standing at the window, staring out, with the window curtain over his shoulder and hiding him. Now he whipped round, started to speak, and sagged. “You didn’t,” he said heavily, “you didn’t put into your report—you didn’t say this—”

  “Time enough. But I am off the subject, ain’t I?” said Mrs. Larkin. She studied him. Her hard, square face, which was neither young nor middle-aged, relaxed a trifle. She straightened the puffs of hair over her ears. “Don’t take it so hard, mister. They’re all like that, mostly. I didn’t mean to give you the works. You seem like a pretty decent guy, if you’d come off your dignity and be human.

  “I’ll go on about today. Oh yes; I know where I was. I’ve got to tell the slops, ain’t I?” she said, petulantly, as he turned away again. “Well, I got dressed and went up to Berkeley Square. It’s a good thing I did, because she come out of the house fairly early. And believe it or not,” said Mrs. Larkin in an awed voice, crashing out her cigarette, “that woman walked all the way from her place to the Tower of London! I damn near died. But I didn’t dare take a cab, for fear I’d get too close and she’d see me or I’d lose her in the fog.