Part 11
Mr. Fortune came out of the shadow. “I don’t take to Albert Edward,” he said. “I fear he’s a bit of a bully.”
Bell nodded. “That’s his measure, sir. A chap generally shows what he’s made of when you get him in the charge room. I never could understand that. You’d think any fellow with a head on him would take care to hide what sort he is here. But they don’t seem as if they could help themselves.”
“Most of the fellows you get in the charge room haven’t heads. I doubt if Albert Edward has. He looks as if he hadn’t thought things out.”
Inspector Oxtoby came back in a hurry. “My oath, Mr. Fortune, you’ve put us on the right man,” he said. “Look what the beggar had on him.” It was a small gold cigarette-case. It bore the monogram S.S., and inside was engraved “Sylvia from Bingo.”
“That’s done him in,” said Bell. “Any explanation?”
“He wouldn’t say a word. Barring that he cursed freely. No, Mr. Albert Edward Loveday wants to see his solicitor. He knows something.”
“Yes. Yes, I wonder what it is?” Reggie murmured.
“He had some pawn-tickets for jewellery too. Pretty heavy stuff. We’ll have to follow that up. And a hundred and fifty quid--some clean notes, some deuced dirty.”
Bell laughed grimly. “He’s done himself proud, hasn’t he?”
“Some clean, some dirty,” Reggie repeated. “He got the dirty ones from the pawnbroker. Where did he get the clean ones? Still several unknown quantities in the equation.”
“How’s that, sir?” said Inspector Oxtoby.
“Well, there’s the body, for instance,” said Reggie mildly. “We lack the body. You know, I think we might ask Miss Darcourt to say a few words. Send a man up in a car to tell her she’s wanted at the police-station, because her chauffeur has been arrested. I should think she’ll come.”
“That’s the stuff!” Inspector Oxtoby chuckled and set about it.
“You always had a notion she knew something, sir,” said Bell reverently.
“I wonder,” Reggie murmured.
She did come. The little room seemed suddenly crowded, so large was the gold pattern on her black cloak, so complex her sinuous movements, as she glided in and sat down. She smiled at them, and certainly she had been handsome. From a white face dark eyes glittered, very big eyes, all pupil. “Oh, my aunt,” said Reggie to himself, “drugged.”
“Miss Rose Darcourt?” Inspector Oxtoby’s pen scratched. “Thank you, madam. Your chauffeur Albert Edward Loveday (that’s right?) has been arrested loitering about Miss Sheridan’s house. He was found in possession of Miss Sheridan’s gold cigarette-case. Can you explain that?”
“I? Why should I explain it? I know nothing about it.”
“The man is in your service, madam.”
“Yes, and he is a very good chauffeur. What then? Why should you arrest him?” She talked very fast. “I don’t understand it at all. I don’t understand what you want me to say.”
“Only the truth,” said Reggie gently out of the shadow.
“What do you mean by the truth? I know nothing about what he had. I can’t imagine, I can’t conceive”--her voice went up high--“how he could have Miss Sheridan’s cigarette-case. If he really had.”
“Oh, he had it all right,” said Inspector Oxtoby.
“Why, then perhaps she gave it him.” She laughed so suddenly that the men looked at each other. “Have you asked him? What did he say? I know nothing about Miss Sheridan.”
“You can tell us nothing?” said Reggie.
“What should I tell you?” she cried.
There was silence but for the scratching of the Inspector’s pen. “Very good, madam,” he said. “You have no explanation. I had better tell you the case will go into court. Thank you for coming. Would you like to have the car back?”
“What has Loveday said?” She leaned forward.
“He’s asked for his solicitor, madam. That’s all.”
“What is this charge, then?”
The Inspector smiled. “That’s as may be, madam.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not alone, I’m afraid, ma’am,” said Bell.
“What?” she cried. “What do you mean?”
“The car’ll take you back, ma’am.”
She stared at him a long minute. “The car?” she started up. “I don’t need your car. I’ll not have it. I can go, can I?” she laughed.
Bell opened the door. “Phew!” he puffed as he closed it. “She looked murder, didn’t she?”
“Nice young woman for a quiet tea-party,” Reggie murmured. “I wonder. I wonder. I think I’ll use that car.”
As it drew out upon the bridge he saw the tall shape of Miss Darcourt ahead. She was going slowly. She stopped. She glanced behind her at the lights of the car. She climbed the parapet and was gone.
“Oh, damn!” said Mr. Fortune. “Stop the bus.” He sprang out, looked down for a moment at the foam and the eddies and dived after her.
Some minutes afterwards he arrived at the bank with Miss Darcourt in tow and waddled out, dragging her after him without delicacy and swearing in gasps. She was in no case to protest. She did not hear. Mr. Fortune rolled her over and knelt beside her.
“What’ll I do, sir? Can’t I do something?” cried the chauffeur.
“Police-station,” Reggie panted. “Bring down the Inspector or the Superintendent. Quick! Damn quick!” And he wrought with Miss Darcourt’s body. . . .
He looked up at the large shape of Superintendent Bell. “Suicide, sir?”
“Attempted suicide. She’ll do, I think. Wrap her in every dam’ thing you’ve got and take her to hospital quick.”
“I know this game, sir,” Bell said, and stooped and gathered the woman up: “you run along home.”
“Run!” said Reggie. “My only aunt.”
In the morning when he rang for his letters, “Superintendent Bell called, sir,” said the maid. “About eight it was. He said I wasn’t to waken you. He only wanted to tell you she was going on all right. And there’s a message by telephone from Mr. Lomas. He says you should be at Paddington by twelve, car will meet you, very urgent. And to tell you he has the body.”
“Oh, my Lord!” said Reggie. He sprang out of bed. Superintendent Bell was rung up and told to commit himself to nothing over Albert Edward Loveday and his mistress.
“Remanded for inquiries--that’ll do for him, sir,” said Bell’s voice. “And she can wait. Hope you’re all right, Mr. Fortune.”
“I’m suffering from shock, Bell. Mr. Lomas is shocking me. He’s begun to sit up and take notice.”
Inadequately fed and melancholy, Mr. Fortune was borne into Paddington by a quarter-past twelve. He there beheld Lomas sitting in Lomas’s car and regarding him with a satirical eye. Mr. Fortune entered the car in dignity and silence.
“My dear fellow, I hate to disappoint you,” Lomas smiled. “You’ve done wonderfully well. Arrested a chauffeur, driven a lady to suicide--admirable. It is really your masterpiece. Art for art’s sake in the grand style. You must find it horribly disappointing to act with a dull fellow like me.”
“I do,” said Mr. Fortune.
Lomas chuckled. “I know, I know. I can’t help seeing it. And really I hate to spoil your work. But the plain fact is I’ve got the body.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Fortune.
“And unfortunately--I really do sympathize with you--it isn’t dead.”
“When did I say it was?” said Mr. Fortune. “I said you hadn’t a corpse for me--and you haven’t got one now. I said it was all muddled--and so it is, a dam’ muddle.”
“Don’t you want to know why the fair Sylvia left home?”
“Yes. Do you know, Lomas?”
“She’s gone off with a man, my dear fellow,” Lomas laughed.
“Well, well,” said Reggie mildly. “And that’s why the Darcourt’s chauffeur had her cigarette-case in his pocket! And that’s why the Darcourt jumped into the river when we asked her to explain! You make it all so clear, Lomas.”
“Theft, I suppose, and fright.” Lomas shrugged. “But we’ll ask Sylvia.”
“Where is she?”
“I had information of some one like her from a little place in the wilds of Suffolk. I sent a fellow down and he has no doubt it’s the lady. She’s been living there since she vanished, with a man.”
“What man?”
“Not identified. Smith by name,” said Lomas curtly. “You’d better ask her yourself, Fortune.”
“Yes. There’s quite a lot of things I’d like to ask her,” said Reggie, and conversation languished. Even the elaborate lunch which Reggie insisted on eating in Colchester did not revive it, for Lomas was fretful at the delay. So at last, with Reggie somnolent and Lomas feverish, the car drew up at the ancient inn of the village of Baldon.
A young fellow who was drinking ginger-beer in the porch looked up and came to meet them. “She’s done a bunk, sir,” he said in a low voice. “She and her Mr. Smith went off half an hour ago. Some luggage in the car. Took the London road.”
“My poor Lomas!” Reggie chuckled.
“Damme, we must have passed them on the road,” Lomas cried. “Any idea why she went, Blakiston?”
“No, sir. The man went into Ipswich in their car this morning. Soon after he came back, they bolted together. I couldn’t do anything, you know, sir.”
“You’re sure Mrs. Smith is Miss Sheridan?”
“I’d swear to her, sir.”
“It’s damned awkward,” Lomas frowned. “Sorry, Fortune. We’d better be off back.”
“I want my tea,” said Reggie firmly, and got out: and vainly Lomas followed to protest that after the Colchester lunch he could want no more to eat for twenty-four hours. He was already negotiating for cream. “If it hadn’t been for your confounded lunch we should have caught her,” Lomas grumbled. “Now she’s off into the blue again.”
Reggie fell into the window seat and took up the local paper. “And where is he that knows?” he murmured. “From the great deep to the great deep she goes. But why? Assumin’ for the sake of argument that she is our leading lady, why does she make this hurried exit?”
“How the devil should I know?”
Reggie smiled at him over the top of the papers. “This is a very interestin’ journal,” he remarked. “Do you know what it is, Lomas? It’s the Ipswich evening paper with the 2.30 winner. Were you backing anything? No? Well, well. Not a race for a careful man. I read also that Miss Darcourt’s chauffeur was brought up before the Stanton magistrates this morning and Miss Darcourt jumped into the river last night. It makes quite a lot of headlines. The Press is a great power, Lomas.”
Lomas damned the Press.
“You’re so old-fashioned,” Reggie said sadly. “My child, don’t you see? Mr. Smith went to Ipswich, Mr. Smith read the early evening paper and hustled back to tell Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Smith felt that duty called her. Assuming that Mrs. Smith is our Sylvia, where would it call her? Back to Stanton, to clear up the mess.”
“I suppose so,” said Lomas drearily. “She can go to the devil for me.”
“My dear chap, you do want your tea,” said Reggie. Then Lomas swore.
It was late that night when a dusty car driven by Mr. Fortune approached the lights of Stanton. Mr. Fortune turned away from the bridge down a leafy byway and drew up with a jerk. Another car was standing by Miss Sheridan’s gate. The man in it turned to stare. Reggie was already at his side. “Mr. Smith, I presume?” he said.
“Who the devil are you?” said a voice that seemed to him familiar.
The night was then rent by a scream, which resolved itself into a cry of “Thieves! Help, help! Police!” It came from the house.
Reggie made for the door and banged upon it. It was opened by an oldish woman in disarray. “We’ve got burglars,” she cried. “Come in, sir, come in.”
“Rather,” said Mr. Fortune. “Where are they?”
“On the stair, sir. I hit him. I know I hit one. It give me such a turn.”
Reggie ran upstairs. The light was on in the hall, but on the landing, in the shadow, he stumbled over something soft. He ran his hand along the wall for a switch and found it. What he saw was Sylvia Sheridan lying with blood upon her face.
“It’s all right. You’ve only knocked out your mistress,” he called over the stairs.
“Oh, my God!” the housekeeper gasped. “The poker on her poor head! Oh, sir, she’s not dead, is she?”
“Not a bit. Come along, where’s her room?” Reggie picked her up.
The man from the car was at his elbow. “Thank you, I’ll do that,” he said.
“Why, it’s Mr. Woodcote. Fancy that!” Reggie smiled. “But why should the dramatist carry the leading lady?”
“I’m her husband,” said Woodcote fiercely. “Any objection, Mr. Fortune?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Smith. I beg pardon, Mr. Woodcote. But you’ll want me, you know. If it’s only to sew her up.”
He bore the lady off to her bedroom.
* * * * *
The case ended as it began, with a morning voyage in a punt. Lomas brought that craft in to the landing-stage and embarked Reggie, who laid himself down on the cushions elaborately and sighed. “My dear fellow, I know you were always a lady’s man,” Lomas remonstrated. “But you’re overdoing it. You’re enfeebled. You wilt.”
Reggie moaned gently. “I know it. I feel like a curate, Lomas. They coo over me. It’s weakening to the intellect. Rose holds my hand and tells me she’s sorry she was so naughty, and Sylvia looks tenderly from her unbandaged eye and says she’ll never do it again.”
“Have you got anything rational out of them?”
“I have it all. It’s quite simple. Sylvia heard that Rose was trying to do her out of the part. She was pained. She went round in a hurry to talk to Rose. In the garden she saw Albert Edward, the chauffeur, who told her that Rose was on the boat-house balcony, her favourite place on a fine evening. Sylvia went there straight. Hence none of the servants but Albert Edward knew that Sylvia had called that night. Sylvia and Rose had words. Sylvia says she offered Rose quite a good minor part. Rose says Sylvia insulted her. I fear that Rose tried to slap her face. Anyway, Sylvia tumbled down the boat-house steps and there was a splash. Rose heard it and thought Sylvia had gone in and was delighted. Albert Edward heard it as he had heard the row, and thought something could be done about it. But he saw Sylvia rush off rather draggled round the skirts, and knew she wasn’t drowned. Rose didn’t take the trouble to see Sylvia scramble out. She was too happy. Sylvia was annoyed, but she has an ingenious mind. It occurred to her that if she did a disappearance Rose would get the wind up badly and it would be a howling advertisement for Miss Sylvia Sheridan and Woodcote’s new play. Yes, Lomas dear, you were quite right. Only Bell was too. Sylvia scurried off to London and let herself into her flat and telephoned to Woodcote and told him all about it. He was badly gone on Sylvia before. He gave way to his emotions and those two geese arranged their elopement that night. She went off at break of day and he got a special licence. Meanwhile Albert Edward was getting busy. He collected the cigarette-case from the boat-house first thing in the morning, he found out Sylvia hadn’t gone home and he started blackmailing Rose. That was why we saw her looking desperate. She got more and more funky, she paid that bright lad all the money she could spare (the clean notes) and most of her jewellery (the pawn-tickets). The only thing that worried Albert Edward was when Sylvia would turn up again. Hence that interest in the parlourmaid which gave him away. Poor Rose tried to drown her sorrows in morphia, and when she found Albert Edward was in the cells, she wanted to go under quiet and quick.”
“I have a mild, manly longing to smack Sylvia,” said Lomas.
“Well, well. The housekeeper did that. With a poker,” Reggie murmured. “Life is quite just to the wicked. But wearing to the virtuous. I am much worn, Lomas. I want my lunch.”
CASE VII
THE UNKNOWN MURDERER
ONCE upon a time a number of men in a club discussed how Mr. Reginald Fortune came to be the expert adviser of the Home Office upon crime. The doctors admitted that though he is a competent surgeon, pathologist and what not, he never showed international form. There was a Fellow of the Royal Society who urged that Fortune knew more about natural science than most schoolboys, politicians and civil servants. An artist said he had been told Fortune understood business, and his banker believed Fortune was a judge of old furniture. But they all agreed that he is a jolly good fellow. Which means, being interpreted, he can be all things to all men.
Mr. Fortune himself is convinced that he was meant by Providence to be a general practitioner: to attend to my lumbago and your daughter’s measles. He has been heard to complain of the chance that has made him, knowing something of everything, nothing completely, into a specialist. His only qualification, he will tell you, is that he doesn’t get muddled.
There you have it, then. He is singularly sensitive to people. “Very odd how he knows men,” said Superintendent Bell reverently. “As if he had an extra sense to tell him of people’s souls, like smells or colours.” And he has a clear head. He is never confused about what is important and what isn’t, and he has never been known to hesitate in doing what is necessary.
Consider his dealing with the affair of the unknown murderer.
There was not much interesting crime that Christmas. The singular case of Sir Humphrey Bigod, who was found dead in a chalkpit on the eve of his marriage, therefore obtained a lot of space in the papers, which kept it up, even after the coroner’s jury had declared for death by misadventure, with irrelevant inventions and bloodthirsty hints of murder and tales of clues. This did not disturb the peace of the scientific adviser to the Criminal Investigation Department, who knew that the lad was killed by a fall and that there was no means of knowing any more. Mr. Fortune was much occupied in being happy, for after long endeavour he had engaged Joan Amber to marry him. The lady has said the endeavour was hers, but I am not now telling that story. Just after Christmas she took him to the children’s party at the Home of Help.
It is an old-fashioned orphanage, a huge barrack of a building, but homely and kind. Time out of mind people of all sorts, with old titles and new, with money and with brains, have been the friends of its children. When Miss Amber brought Reggie Fortune under the flags and the strings of paper roses into its hall, which was as noisy as the parrot house, he gasped slightly. “Be brave, child,” she said. “This is quiet to what it will be after tea. And cool. You will be much hotter. You don’t know how hot you’ll be.”
“Woman, you have deceived me,” said Mr. Fortune bitterly. “I thought philanthropists were respectable.”
“Yes, dear. Don’t be frightened. You’re only a philanthropist for the afternoon.”
“I ask you. Is that Crab Warnham?”
“Of course it’s Captain Warnham.” Miss Amber smiled beautifully at a gaunt man with a face like an old jockey. He flushed as he leered back. “Do you know his wife? She’s rather precious.”
“Poor woman. He doesn’t look comfortable here, does he? The last time I saw Crab Warnham was in a place that’s several kinds of hell in Berlin. He was quite at home there.”
“Forget it,” said Miss Amber gently. “You will when you meet his wife. And their boy’s a darling.”
“His boy?” Reggie was startled.
“Oh, no. She was a widow. He worships her and the child.”
Reggie said nothing. It appeared to him that Captain Warnham, for a man who worshipped his wife, had a hungry eye on women. And the next moment Captain Warnham was called to attention. A small woman, still pretty though earnest, talked to him like a mother or a commanding officer. He was embarrassed, and when she had done with him he fled.
The small woman, who was austerely but daintily clad in black with some white at the neck, continued to flit among the company, finding everyone a job of work. “She says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh. And who is she, Joan?”
“Lady Chantry,” said Miss Amber. “She’s providence here, you know.”
And Lady Chantry was upon them. Reggie found himself looking down into a pair of uncommonly bright eyes and wondering what it felt like to be as strenuous as the little woman who was congratulating him on Joan, thanking him for being there and arranging his afternoon for him all in one breath. He had never heard anyone talk so fast. In a condition of stupor he saw Joan reft from him to tell the story of Cinderella to magic lantern pictures in one dormitory, while he was led to another to help in a scratch concert. And as the door closed on him he heard the swift clear voice of Lady Chantry exhorting staff and visitors to play round games.
He suffered. People who had no voices sang showy songs, people who had too much voice sang ragtime to those solemn, respectful children. In pity for the children and himself he set up as a conjurer, and the dormitory was growing merry when a shriek cut into his patter. “That’s only my bones creaking,” he went on quickly, for the children were frightened; “they always do that when I put the knife in at the ear and take it out of my hind leg. So. But it doesn’t hurt. As the motor-car said when it ran over the policeman’s feet. All done by kindness. Come here, Jenny Wren. You mustn’t use your nose as a money-box.” A small person submitted to have pennies taken out of her face.
The door opened and a pallid nurse said faintly: “The doctor. Are you the doctor?”
“Of course,” said Reggie. “One moment, people. Mr. Punch has fallen over the baby. It always hurts him. In the hump. Are we down-hearted? No. Pack up your troubles in the old kit bag----” He went out to a joyful roar of that lyric. “What’s the trouble?” The nurse was shaking.
“In there, sir--she’s up there.”
Reggie went up the stairs in quick time. The door of a little sitting-room stood open. Inside it people were staring at a woman who sat at her desk. Her dress was dark and wet. Her head lolled forward. A deep gash ran across her throat.
“Yes. There’s too many of us here,” he said, and waved the spectators away. One lingered, an old woman, large and imposing, and announced that she was the matron. Reggie shut the door and came back to the body in the chair. He held the limp hands a moment, he lifted the head and looked close into the flaccid face. “When was she found? When I heard that scream? Yes.” He examined the floor. “Quite so.” He turned to the matron. “Well, well. Who is she?”
“It’s our resident medical officer, Dr. Emily Hall. But Dr. Fortune, can’t you do anything?”
“She’s gone,” said Reggie.
“But this is terrible, doctor. What does it mean?”
“Well, I don’t know what it means. Her throat was cut by a highly efficient knife, probably from behind. She lingered a little while quite helpless, and died. Not so very long ago. Who screamed?”
“The nurse who found her. One of our own girls, Dr. Fortune, Edith Baker. She was always a favourite of poor Dr. Hall’s. She has been kept on here at Dr. Hall’s wish to train as a nurse. She was devoted to Dr. Hall. One of these girlish passions.”
“And she came into the room and found--this--and screamed?”
“So she tells me,” said the matron.
“Well, well,” Reggie sighed. “Poor kiddies! And now you must send for the police.”
“I have given instructions, Dr. Fortune,” said the matron with dignity.
“And I think you ought to keep Edith Baker from talking about it.” Reggie opened the door.
“Edith will not talk,” said the matron coldly. “She is a very reserved creature.”