CHAPTER VIII

THE TOP FLAT

At eight o’clock, not many hours after they had gone to bed, Desmond appeared in his brother’s room.

“You’ve got to get dressed at once,” he announced. “We’re off to London!”

“Oh, I say!” protested Francis, rubbing sleepy eyes.

“One of the confidential typists at the Air Ministry has been murdered . . .”

“But what . . . why . . .?”

“I know nothing about it except that Alec Bannington, the Chief of the Air Staff, has been on to me on the telephone in the most fearful state. I promised to go up and see him at once. You’re coming, too. Don’t stop to bathe or shave, but come!”

There was no twenty miles an hour about Desmond Okewood’s driving that morning. The rain had stopped, the wind had dried the sandy Surrey roads, and well within the hour they had reached Onslow Square, where the private house of Air-Marshal Sir Alexander Bannington was situated.

He received them in a small book-lined room on the ground floor, a florid, well-fed dapper man, whose shining, good-natured face was ill-suited to the look of care it now wore.

“Ah, Okewood!” he cried. “Thank God, you’re here. This your brother? How de do, how de do?” Then he clasped his red hands together in a gesture of anguish, which at another time would have been grotesque. “The most shockin’ affair! Miss Bardale, my confidential typist, was found dead—murdered—in her flat this morning. It’s a ghastly business, ghastly, and, what is more, unless you can do something it means ruin for me!”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us the whole story from the beginning, sir,” said Desmond. “It would help,” he added, “if you would omit nothing!”

Francis cocked a shrewdly admiring eye at his brother.

The large man sighed heavily. “I see you have already grasped that it is a confidential matter,” he remarked. “A State secret of the utmost importance is, in fact, at stake. As Chief of the Air Staff it has recently been my duty to draw up for submission to the Cabinet a comprehensive scheme for the aerial defence of the Empire. For this purpose I have attended many meetings with the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, as well as more than one sitting of the Cabinet. Upon the notes I made on these discussions I based my report. I finished it in the rough yesterday afternoon . . .”

“And gave it to your typist to make a fair copy? Is that it?” Desmond interposed.

“Exactly.”

“At the office?”

“I gave it to her at the Ministry at six o’clock yesterday evening. She was to take it home, type it out after dinner, and let me have it back this morning. You will say, gentlemen, that I was criminally careless in thus letting a vitally important document out of the office. But I thought . . . I never imagined . . .”

“It might be better, sir,” Desmond remarked soothingly, “if we got at the facts first . . .”

“Quite so, quite so,” agreed Bannington. “Well, first thing this morning the resident clerk at the Ministry rang me up to say he had heard from the police that Miss Bardale had been murdered and her flat ransacked . . .”

“And your report?”

“Gone!”

Desmond nodded. Then he asked: “How was the murder discovered?”

“By Miss Bardale’s daily servant when she arrived at the apartment about half-past six this morning. Miss Bardale occupies a small flat consisting of a sitting-room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen on the top floor of a house in Crewdwell Street, off Baker Street. It appears that last night she went out to dinner with a young man, a certain Captain Reginald Hollingway, who brought her back to the flat shortly after eight o’clock. When Miss Bardale’s servant, a certain Mrs. Crump, entered the flat this morning, she found Miss Bardale lying dead in the sitting-room and all the rooms in the wildest confusion . . .”

“How had she been killed?”

“Strangled. There are deep finger-marks on her throat. There had obviously been a desperate struggle, for the carpet is disarranged, the remains of a vase lie scattered about the floor, and a clock had been knocked off the table. This clock, by the way, furnishes an important clue, for it had stopped at sixteen minutes past eight, showing at what time the murder was committed.”

“And your report, you say, is not to be found?”

Bannington shook his head dismally.

“From what the police tell me, Miss Bardale was actually engaged in typing it out when she was attacked. The body was discovered lying beside her typewriter in the sitting-room. She had apparently reached the third page, for a sheet of paper bearing that number—just that and nothing else—was still in the typewriter. But the rest was gone.”

“You mean”—Francis Okewood spoke for the first time—“that the assassin simply snatched your manuscript and as much of it as Miss Bardale had copied out from where it lay beside the typewriter?”

“I suppose so, yes!” sighed the large man.

“Then why was the flat ransacked?”

It was Desmond’s turn to glance his appreciation at his brother.

“By George!” the Air Marshal exclaimed, “I never thought of that. Then Hollingway must have made hay in the rooms just to mislead us . . .”

“Hollingway?” ejaculated the two brothers simultaneously.

“I was coming to him. Captain Hollingway, gentlemen, is undoubtedly the murderer. He is a young man of good family with an excellent war record, but since demobilization has done no work. He is an exhibition dancer at night-clubs, and is in grave money difficulties, so the police inform me.”

“Is he under arrest?” asked Desmond.

Bannington nodded. “The porter at Crewdwell Street saw him leave the building in a state of profound agitation about twenty-five minutes past eight or shortly after the murder was committed. The police arrested him at his rooms this morning. The report, of course, had disappeared. With a clear start of twelve hours he had naturally passed it on. Ah!”

With a despairing exclamation the fat man dashed his fist into the palm of his hand and began to pace the room.

“There was some party, then, who had an interest in obtaining possession of this report?” asked Desmond.

Sir Alexander Bannington stopped in his stride and turned round. “Yes,” he said. “But in the present state of international politics it is hardly safe even to mention the name of the Power in question.” He leant forward and whispered something in Desmond’s ear.

“Ah! . . . yes!” was that young man’s brief comment.

The large man extended two shaking hands towards his visitors. “You must get this report back for me. If it’s a question of money you can draw on me up to any reasonable amount. Hollingway must be made to talk. The police will give you every facility: I have arranged that. I shall be here all day. I am not going to the Ministry. I can’t face them. Let me know to-day . . . soon . . . how you get on . . .”

Desmond and his brother had risen to their feet.

“One question before we leave you, sir,” said Desmond. “Are you quite satisfied that Miss Bardale was trustworthy?”

“Enid Bardale,” the Air Marshal replied in a voice that shook with emotion, “gave her life for her trust. She was a splendid girl and absolutely invaluable to me in my work. I trusted her as I would trust my own daughter. As a matter of fact, she was a relative of my dead wife. She may have been indiscreet in the matter of her friendship with this scoundrel Hollingway; but there was no question of collusion between them in this affair.”

They left him bowed over his desk, his face sunk in his plump, red hands.

The girl’s body lay on its side on the black carpet of the little sitting-room, the face an agonized mask in a frame of clustering brown hair. The sight was not pleasant, and they did not let their glance dwell on it, for, after all, their immediate business was not with the murdered woman. They looked long enough, however, to notice the deep bluish-black marks on the throat, indicative of a ferocious grip.

The flat, skyed at the top of a big mansion which had been converted into apartments, was tiny. The hall led into the small sitting-room, very gay with its primrose-yellow distempered walls and orange lamp-shades, with bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen beyond. Detective-Inspector Farandol, of Scotland Yard, who opened the door in answer to their ring, showed them the rooms. One of the most reliable and experienced officers of the older school of detectives, both Desmond and Francis had come across him more than once in the course of their work in the Secret Service. He was a self-opinionated person with a profound contempt for amateurs.

“Fourth floor,” remarked the Inspector. “Nothing above and nothing below, for this is the only flat in the building. The other floors are let off as offices, and after 6 P.M. the rest of the house is empty except for the porter who lives in the basement. No wonder no sounds of the struggle were heard.”

That a most violent and desperate struggle had gone forward was abundantly evident from the state of the sitting-room, which, as Farandol was careful to point out, was exactly as the police had discovered it. The black carpet was rucked up, and athwart it, in a mess of crushed petals and broken glass, the remains of a vase of daffodils was scattered. A string of crystal beads which the dead girl had been wearing had broken, and the beads, together with a number of hairpins, strewed the floor. The telltale clock, of which Bannington had spoken, had been retrieved and now stood upon the table beside the typewriter—a small French travelling-clock in a leather case. The glass was broken. They noticed that, as Bannington had said, the hands pointed at sixteen minutes past eight.

Farandol tapped the clock. “This is what is going to hang Master Hollingway,” he remarked.

“Humph,” commented Desmond. “That won’t bring us what we’re looking for, Inspector. I suppose you know what I mean?”

Farandol nodded impressively. “Aye. But he’s got rid of it by now, mark my words. He’s one of your deep ones is Master Hollingway. He thought he’d draw a red herring across the scent. Look at this room and the bedroom beyond! He’s even upset the flour-bins in the kitchen!”

The rooms were, indeed, in a state of remarkable confusion. In the sitting-room the sloping top of a little mahogany escritoire had been burst open and every drawer pulled out. The doors of the oaken buffet stood wide, and its contents, crockery and table linen, were in part spilled out on the carpet. In the bedroom a high-boy had been rifled and garments of all kinds flung about the room. The very bed had been pulled out from the wall, the bedclothes rolled up in a ball and the mattress dragged on one side.

“And all the time,” Farandol resumed, “this precious document was lying there beside the typewriter! All this”—he waved a contemptuous hand at the disordered room—“play-acting is meant to bolster up his story about the footstep on the back stair . . .”

“He’s made a statement, then?” queried Desmond. “I suppose he denies everything?”

“He’s the innocent babe all right, same as they all are at the first go-off,” observed Farandol, fingering his waxed moustache. “Briefly, his story is that he met Miss Bardale in Soho for dinner at a quarter to seven. They had arranged to dine early because of this work that the lady had to do. Hollingway brought her back shortly after eight, and, he says, escorted her upstairs as far as the door of her flat because she was feeling nervous. On the previous evening—according to what this Hollingway says she told him—she had heard a heavy step outside her kitchen on the back stairs . . .”

“Half a minute,” Desmond interrupted; “is there a back entrance? I didn’t notice it . . .”

Without replying, the detective walked through the bathroom into the kitchen and there lifted a chintz curtain, disclosing a door. He turned the handle and showed a series of iron staircases leading down.

“It’s really a fire-escape,” he remarked, “but apparently Miss Bardale used it as a tradesman’s entrance to the flat.”

It was chilly outside and they soon re-entered the flat where Farandol resumed his story.

“Hollingway left her at the door of the flat, he says. He declares he did not go in. He remained talking to the girl for about ten minutes at the top of the staircase outside her flat, and then went down while she went indoors. Webb, the porter, who is on duty all day long in the hall below—he’s an old man with a game leg and can’t get about much—saw them come in soon after eight and saw Hollingway leave alone about twenty minutes later. He knows Hollingway well, and states that he was struck by the change in the young man’s manner. He was pale and upset-like and made no reply when Webb bade him good-night. As far as the police is concerned, Major Okewood, the case is as clear as daylight; but it doesn’t bring you any nearer what you’re after; I quite realize that.”

With an abstracted air Desmond, who was poking about amid the confusion of the sitting-room, nodded.

“Does Hollingway attempt to account for his agitation?” Francis said to Farandol.

“Oh, rather!” The detective replied. “He’s got it all pat. Says he was in love with the girl, has been for years, and last night, when he again asked her to marry him, she turned him down good and hard, told him that a professional dancer was no good to her as a husband and all the rest of it. He tells it all very well,” the Inspector added, musingly. He picked up his hat and gloves. “They’ll be coming along presently to take the body to the mortuary,” he said. “I’m leaving one of my men to stand by. I shall be at the Yard all the morning if I can be of any assistance, gentlemen . . .”

“Right!” Desmond replied. “I’ll probably be telephoning you, Inspector. I should rather like to have a word with this porter fellow, what’s his name—ah, yes, Webb. Send him up, would you?”

Farandol laughed. “He’s a proper thickhead,” he observed. “That dense, you couldn’t hammer a tenpenny nail into his skull without blunting it. I’ll send him up!”

“Pompous ass!” commented Francis as the Inspector shut the front door behind him.

Then he swung round sharply. Desmond had called to him in a tense voice. His brother stood behind him holding a torn envelope in his hand. He thrust it, and with it a folded letter, at Francis.

“Look at that!” he exclaimed.

The envelope was addressed, in what seemed to be a woman’s hand, to Miss Enid Bardale, Flat 7, 31, Crewdwell Street, W.I. The letter, written from an address at Saint John’s Wood, and signed “Your affectionate Mother, M. Bardale,” was to remind “Dearest E.” that she was expected to dinner on the following Saturday at seven-thirty.

“I don’t see . . .” Francis began.

“The postmark, man, the postmark!” cried Desmond.

Francis turned to the envelope again. The postmark was unusually clear. It read:

“Yesterday’s date!” said Francis.

“I found that letter in the drawer of the typewriting table. It was posted at Saint John’s Wood before six o’clock yesterday evening,” Desmond exclaimed emphatically.

“It was, therefore, delivered here by the last post. Now what time is the last delivery in London?”

“Nine o’clock . . .” began Francis. Then broke off. “By George, Des.,” he said slowly. “I take my hat off to you. You can give us all points. Of course, this letter knocks the bottom out of old Farandol’s theory. The girl was alone in the flat, therefore to take this letter from the postman she must have been alive at 9 P.M., therefore the murder did not take place while Hollingway was here, that is to say, before eight-twenty. Unless Hollingway came back . . .”

“That,” said his brother, “Webb, the porter, must tell us. Here he is, I think!”

Webb was a forlorn-looking old man with a shining bald pate and a haggard face intersected with blue veins.

“Come in, Webb,” said Desmond, advancing to the front hall to meet him. “I want you to answer one or two questions. What time did Captain Hollingway leave here last night?”

“Captain ’Ollingway?” queried the old man.

“Yes, the gentleman that brought Miss Bardale home.”

The old man appeared to think. “It wor about twenty-five minutes past h’eight, Mister!”

“How do you know the time so exactly?” demanded Desmond.

Old Webb cast him a sly look. “’Cos for why from where I sets in the front ’all I kin ’ear the clock on Saint Jude’s strike. The quarter ’adn’t long gorn and the ’arf ’adn’t struck w’en the Capting come out. ‘Wish you good-night, Capting,’ I sez . . .”

“But why should you have noted the time so carefully?” Desmond broke in impatiently.

Old Webb’s rheumy eyes puckered up as a cunning grin slowly broke out over his face.

“I was a-waitin’ for my supper-beer,” he replied. “The gal brings it every night at ’arf-past h’eight!”

Desmond smiled. “I see!” he said.

“Were you on duty in the hall all the evening?” he asked.

“I wor, sir, till midnight, w’en I locks up, same as allus!”

“And you never left the hall?”

“No, sir!”

“Did Captain Hollingway come back?”

“No, sir!”

“You’re sure?”

“There worn’t nobody come the whole dratted evenin’ arter ’im, only the pos’man!”

“Oh, the postman came eh? At what time?”

“Round about nine o’clock or a bit arter!”

“Do you take the letters up or does he?”

“’E do! I can’t get around much along o’ my bad leg!”

“Do you know if there were any letters for Miss Bardale?”

“I dunno nothink about that!”

“Did the postman say anything?”

“’E wor put out ’cos, ’e said, there wor but the one letter and ’e ’ad to carry it to the very top!”

“To Miss Bardale’s, you mean?”

The old man shot his questioner a crafty glance. “’E didn’t say nuthin’ about _’er_!”

“How long was he up there?”

“Not above a minute or so, Mister. ’E’s a spry one for the stairs, is our postman!”

Desmond made a movement of impatience.

“Did you tell Inspector Farandol about the postman calling?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“’Cos ’e never arst me!”

“And now, old boy,” said Desmond to his brother when, with some difficulty, they had got rid of the ancient janitor, “let’s look at the facts. We’ve advanced things by half an hour. Hollingway is eliminated; the postman is eliminated, for we know that he was in the building only for a minute or two altogether. No one crossed the front hall downstairs after the postman’s departure, and at midnight the front door was shut. We therefore come back to our only other indication . . .”

“The heavy footstep that Miss Bardale heard on the back stairs on the previous evening?”

“Just so. I was wondering whether that point had struck you. We cannot assume that the murderer was hidden in the flat waiting for Miss Bardale’s arrival. He evidently followed the couple back from dinner, for he was sufficiently acquainted with their movements to make this rather able attempt to fix the guilt on Hollingway. You have seen the front staircase: there is nowhere to hide even a cat. And the floors below are untenanted after six o’clock. We return, therefore, to the back stairs.

“Back doors are usually kept locked. Not only is the back door in this flat, tenanted by a girl living alone, open, but the key is missing. There are no marks of violence on the lock outside: consequently, if the murderer entered by that way, he must have used a key; therefore he must be familiar with his surroundings.

“Did Miss Bardale open in person the last letter she was destined to receive in this life, or did the murderer, his ghastly job accomplished, do so? I think that Miss Bardale opened it, for I found it placed on the top of a neat pile of correspondence in the drawer of her typewriting table, where she was obviously accustomed to keep her letters. Therefore, at nine o’clock, or thereabouts, she was alive. When was she murdered? I will tell you . . .”

So saying, he lifted from the table the little travelling-clock in its case of morocco leather, lifted it out of the case, a dainty thing of glass and gilding, and handed it to Francis.

In the panel at the top was a small metal knob.

“This is not the original case of the clock,” said Desmond. “You see, it is a little too large for it. The new case does not contain the spring usually found to actuate the knob of the repeater . . .”

“The repeater?” exclaimed Francis. “The repeater, Des.?”

And he pressed the knob. There was a little whirr and a clear bell chimed nine times, then, on another note, the clock struck thrice.

“Nine-forty-five,” said Desmond, “showing conclusively that Miss Bardale was murdered, not between eight and eight twenty, but between nine-forty-five and ten o’clock. That case, concealing the repeater mechanism, escaped the notice of the murderer who set the hands back, as it escaped Farandol’s. Neither, of course, was looking for anything of the kind. What we have got to do now is to find out who was on the back stairs outside Miss Bardale’s flat between nine-thirty and ten last night, and, maybe, the night before as well. Whoever it was, he came from this or one of the neighbouring houses . . .”

“How do you know that?”

“If you will look out from the back door you will see that this house and the houses on either side are all furnished with these fire-staircases descending to a common well or court. Since we know that the murderer did not enter from the front, he must have come in from the back, either from this house or from one of the adjacent houses. Will you go off and explore the possibilities of this house and its neighbours? I’m staying on here for a bit. I’ll take a small bet that the murderer can’t be far off . . .”

“I’ll go,” said Francis, grabbing his hat; “but you’ll lose your money. He’s over the hills and far away with Bannington’s report by this time, whoever he is!”

“I wonder!” said Desmond enigmatically.