After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery) (32 page)

Sir Douglas stared at him. ‘Good Lord!’

‘My thoughts exactly, sir. We can’t
prove
they’re the same, as the contamination is very extensive, but you’ll agree it’s a remarkable coincidence.’

‘It most certainly is.’ Sir Douglas reached out his hand for the police report and, pulling it towards him, read through it.

Jack lit a cigarette and waited.

‘Well, that is interesting,’ said Sir Douglas at last. He looked up and tapped the file thoughtfully. ‘As Inspector Rackham said, this isn’t proof, but it’s a remarkable coincidence.’

He reached for a cigarette and read the report through once more. ‘This has to be followed up,’ he said eventually. ‘We simply can’t ignore it. But if this body really is Mrs McAllister’s – the Mrs McAllister you saw at the exhibition – then how did she come to be in Signora Bianchi’s cottage? Who killed her? And how did her body turn up in a trunk despatched from Manchester?’

He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘And who, for heaven’s sake, is the woman who lived for three weeks as Mrs McAllister in Dorian House? Because I need hardly tell either of you gentlemen that
if
Miss Wingate is an innocent woman, then the Mrs McAllister from Dorian House is our prime suspect for the murder of John Askern.’

‘That’s exactly right, sir,’ agreed Bill. ‘I’d like to add something to that. Miss Wingate says she was invited to Dorian House by a letter purporting to come from John Askern. That letter disappeared. If Miss Wingate is innocent, then someone stole it. The only people who were in a position to steal the letter were the people with her that day. One of them has to be the fake Mrs McAllister.’

Sir Douglas’s eyebrows rose. ‘But that narrows it down to Mrs Lythewell and Mrs Askern. Of the two, Mrs Askern has by far the most compelling motive.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘Don’t you agree, Major?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Jack. ‘If that letter was stolen, it was stolen by someone in the same room as Betty Wingate. However, I wouldn’t exclude either of the men. They could be in cahoots with Mrs McAllister quite easily.’

‘I could get them all in for questioning,’ said Bill. ‘That should give us some answers.’

‘Yes, you could,’ agreed Jack. ‘The trouble is, that would tell the real crook that you don’t believe that Betty Wingate’s guilty. It’ll put them on their guard, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.’

‘But what
can
we do?’ asked Bill in exasperation.

‘Give me a day,’ said Jack. ‘Two days at the most.’ With his head to one side, he scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘You asked me if I had any ideas.’ His voice was hesitant. ‘The answer’s yes, but my ideas might come to nothing. If it proves to be a washout, I’ll have to try again, but one thing that struck me was the series of drawings that Cadwallader did of the chantry.’

‘There’s nothing special about them,’ said Bill. ‘I had a look at the drawings he’d worked on. He didn’t sketch a likely murderer if that’s what you’re thinking.’

Jack shook his head. ‘No, that wasn’t what I was thinking of.’

‘Well, what’s special about his drawings? They’re just details of the chantry. There’s nothing there you can’t see with your own eyes. What are you getting at, Jack?’

‘Just at the moment it’s all a bit vague,’ Jack admitted, ‘but I’m convinced the roots of this business go back a long way. I want to start by looking up the records of the Nordic Atlantic shipping company.’

‘The
who
?’ repeated Bill blankly.

‘The Nordic Atlantic. They’ve got an office on Cockspur Street. They operated the
SS Concordia,
the ship Daniel Lythewell came to England on in 1898. I want to see who else was onboard that ship with him. And then, I think, I might be able to tell you a bit more about our mysterious Mrs McAllister.’

That afternoon Jack met Bill outside 46, Purbeck Terrace, Paddington. ‘I got your message,’ said Bill. ‘Why did you want me to meet you here?’

‘I’ve got a little experiment in mind,’ said Jack. ‘Mrs McAllister lived here for a while. She was friendly with a Miss Sharpe, who knew her as well as anyone.’ He tapped the briefcase he was carrying. ‘I’ve brought my sketch pad and pencils, and I’m hoping that, my artistic talents permitting, by the end of the afternoon I’ll be able to get a working likeness of Mrs McAllister.’

‘That’d be useful. How did you get on at the shipping office, by the way? Was Mrs McAllister one of the passengers on board the
Concordia?
I presume that’s who you were looking for.’

‘Not exactly,’ said Jack. He grinned. ‘Just bear with me for a while, will you? I’ve already made one massive gaff in this case, by being so ruddy confident the slab in the chantry was made of platinum. I don’t know if I can stand another blow to the ego like that so soon. Mind you, I’ve had an idea about that, too.’ He walked up the steps and rang the bell. ‘I’ll let you know exactly what’s what as soon as I’m sure of it myself.’

The landlady, Mrs Kiddle, ushered them into the Resident’s Lounge, where, after a little while, Miss Sharpe joined them.

Her face brightened as she saw Jack. ‘It’s Mr Haldean, isn’t it? Did you find your Aunt Joan?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Jack with a funereal face.

Miss Sharpe clasped her hands together. ‘How sad! Families are so precious, aren’t they? I said to Miss Richardson – such a nice lady who’s taken your aunt’s old room – that it was so tragic to think of an entire family torn asunder over a sideboard.’

‘A … I beg your pardon?’ asked Bill, blinking.

‘The sideboard!’ said Jack hastily, a wayward memory coming to his aid. What on earth had he told the woman? ‘The sideboard my … my uncle quarrelled with my Aunt Joan about.’

‘You said it was your father who quarrelled,’ corrected Miss Sharpe, frowning at him.

‘Did I? The sideboard went to my uncle, of course. Miss Sharpe, d’you think you could help us?’ he went on quickly, before her inconveniently retentive memory could trip him up any further. ‘This is my brother, William,’ he added, indicating Bill with a wave of his hand.

Bill looked perplexed but accepting of the relationship.

‘William and I thought it would be much easier to find Aunt Joan if we had a picture of her.’

‘There aren’t any photographs,’ began Miss Sharpe worriedly, but Jack interrupted her.

‘No, I realise that, so I thought I’d try the next best thing.’ He opened his briefcase and took out his sketch pad. ‘Now, I’ve drawn as good a likeness as I can of my mother, as she was supposed to favour Aunt Joan, but, as you can see, I haven’t added any hair or eyebrows or any little personal touches. I was hoping, with your help, I could make the picture a lot more life-like.’

Miss Sharpe gave a murmur of surprise and, putting on her spectacles, which were on a chain round her neck, looked at the picture. She drew back in unspoken dissent. ‘That’s not very like her.’

Bill saw the picture and drew his breath in with a hiss. ‘Good God! She’s not what you’d call glamorous, is she? It’s a funny thing, though,’ he added with a frown, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before, but with no hair, it’s difficult …’

‘William,’ said Jack solemnly, ‘of course you’ve seen her before. This is our late mother you’re talking about. Show a bit more respect, please, both to the memory of our dear departed mother and to my art.’

‘Art, indeed,’ muttered Bill.

Miss Sharpe screwed up her face and tried hard. ‘I suppose it
could
be Mrs McAllister, but I really don’t know.’

‘Let’s try,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘Now, did Aunt Joan wear glasses?’

Details of glasses, hair, earrings and dress were added at Miss Sharpe’s direction. ‘She’s very like our mother,’ said Jack with a sentimental sigh when the picture was complete. ‘Isn’t she, William?’

Bill blinked at the picture. ‘That’s not how I remember my – our – mother, I must say.’

‘Is this a good likeness of Aunt Joan, Miss Sharpe?’ asked Jack. He gazed at her with wide, hopeful eyes. ‘Please say yes.’

Miss Sharpe studied the picture carefully. She clasped her hands together once more in an expression of sorrow. ‘Poor boys,’ she said woefully. ‘Such a
sweet
idea and yet … I’m sorry, Mr Haldean. I’m sorry to crush your hopes when you’ve gone to so much trouble, but I’m afraid this lady is nothing like your Aunt Joan.’

‘Well,’ said Bill, once they were free of Purbeck Terrace and Miss Sharpe. Miss Sharpe had been insistent they should drown their sorrows in afternoon tea with caraway seed cake, and it was only by adroit footwork and a plea of a prior engagement they had made good their escape. ‘That’s one idea come to nothing.’ He clapped Jack on the shoulder with a grin. ‘Never mind. I’m sorry Miss Sharpe didn’t recognise your – sorry,
our
– mother. How’s the ego bearing up?’

‘Very well,’ said Jack with undisguised satisfaction. ‘I gave Miss Sharpe every encouragement to identify Aunt Joan but I’d have been devastated if she had. That little experiment, Bill, old bean, was to demonstrate who Mrs McAllister
isn’t.
’

‘What’s the point of that?’ said Bill in exasperated disbelief. ‘Now, if you could find out a way of demonstrating who Mrs McAllister
is
…’

‘That’s part two of the experiment,’ said Jack. ‘I propose to carry out the next segment at Dorian House. Who’s the neighbour you mentioned? The one you said who’d spoken to Mrs McAllister the most?’

‘Do you mean Mrs Conway-Lloyd?’ asked Bill, after a few moments’ thought.

‘That’s the one. Now, we can’t be looking for Aunt Joan, of course, and she knows you, so I think you’d better be yourself.’

‘That’s a relief,’ grunted Bill. ‘I’ve got quite enough relatives to be going on with without adding you to their number, brother.’

Mrs Conway-Lloyd was at home and willing to co-operate. She remembered Bill perfectly well and Jack, introduced as ‘an artist’, produced his sketch pad in which he’d drawn a duplicate of the picture Miss Sharpe would’ve recognised as his mother.

‘I’ve managed to put together a basic outline of Mrs McAllister’s face from descriptions of people who met her,’ explained Jack to a fascinated Mrs Conway-Lloyd. ‘The main facial features are there, but the details of hair and eyebrows and even such seeming trivialities as jewellery and what sort of neckline she preferred on her dresses I’ve left blank to be filled in with your help. Those are the details that really make a difference to identification.’

Mrs Conway-Lloyd nodded in vigorous agreement. ‘Yes, indeed, Mr Haldean,’ she said, without stopping to reflect those were precisely the details any witness would’ve mentioned.

‘Now,’ said Jack, picking up his pencil, ‘did Mrs McAllister wear spectacles?’

The same litany of questions Miss Sharpe had answered earlier in the afternoon followed, with Mrs Conway-Lloyd’s enthusiastic help.

‘Don’t forget the lipstick, Mr Haldean. Mrs McAllister was always so careful about her make-up. She was very up-to-date. No, not that shade,’ as Jack reached for his vermilion coloured pencil. ‘A little darker, I think. Yes, that’s right. Quite a pale powder and rouge, of course, and her eyes rimmed with kohl – with mascara, too. Colour makes such a difference, doesn’t it?’

Eventually the picture was completed. Mrs Conway-Lloyd surveyed it in satisfaction. ‘You’ve really captured her likeness remarkably well, Mr Haldean. That’s exactly her.’

Bill took the sketch pad and gazed at it. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Conway-Lloyd, but are you sure?’

‘Absolutely, my good man,’ asserted Mrs Conway-Lloyd. ‘No doubt about it whatsoever.’

Bill did have his doubts, though. Before they left Dorian House, he showed the portrait to two more neighbours and the porter. They all identified the woman in the picture as Mrs McAllister.

Once they got outside, Bill looked at a justifiably smug Jack in bewilderment. ‘I just don’t understand, Jack. Why this elaborate charade? I’ll grant that’s a picture of Mrs McAllister. I don’t understand it, but I believe it. All those witnesses can’t be wrong, but how, in the name of goodness, did the real Mrs McAllister end up in a trunk despatched from Manchester? What’s it all about?’

‘I told you the roots of this case went back a long way,’ said Jack, suddenly serious. ‘Old Mr Lythewell, John Askern, Signora Bianchi and that poor trusting beggar, Daniel Lythewell – I feel especially sorry for him – they all played their part, but as to how Mrs McAllister ended up in a trunk? Well, if you’ll be in Whimbrell Heath tonight, I hope I can show you.’

The night-watchman’s lantern flickered round the yard of Lythewell and Askern. Overhead an owl hooted and, far in the distance, came the faint noise of a car changing gear.

Gilbert Stroud rattled the door of the despatch shed, then came a sound Jack had feared. A dog – a young, excited dog, by the sound of its bark – gave a high-pitched yip and scrabbled its paws against the door.

The door rattled once more as Stroud tried it again.

‘C’mere, boy,’ Stroud said in deep disapproval. ‘Down, I say! It’s locked. There’s nothing there.’

The puppy whined in disappointment as Stroud stumped away, the sound of his footsteps ringing on the cobbles.

On the other side of the door, Jack flicked on his torch, shielding the light with his hand. He’d been waiting for Stroud. When he and Bill had talked to the night-watchman a few weeks ago in the bar of the Guide Post, he said he made his rounds every couple of hours. It was just on midnight now so they should have until two in the morning. The dog was a ruddy nuisance though, with far better instincts than his master gave him credit for.

He opened the metal filing cabinet that stood against the wall and grinned as he saw the foreman’s clipboard and a pile of address and despatch labels. He shut the drawer and turned to the stack of waiting crates.

Working as quietly as he could, he man-handled a crate about five and a half feet long by two feet deep off the stack in the middle of the shed. It was heavy but manageable. That was good. It probably contained wood of some sort, which was a relief. He didn’t want to try shifting a stone pillar, say, single-handed.

Despite his care, it fell with a thump, end up, on the floor. Jack paused and listened.