Crime at Tattenham Corner (12 page)

She took out a small packet that had lain under the frock and unrolled its contents – the long, jagged piece of satin that had once been white, and was now stained, almost all over, an ugly reddish brown.

The inspector took it from her, and placing the frock on the table fitted the strip into it. Then he glanced at Harbord.

Forbes looked at them both. “Well, can I have the thousand pounds?” she demanded.

The inspector smiled. “Not quite so fast, Miss Forbes. This evidence of yours may probably be of great assistance to us, and, if we ultimately trace the murderer through your agency, you may rely upon it the reward will be yours. Is this all you can show us?”

“I should have thought it would have been quite enough,” Forbes said. “Can't you see that her ladyship and Sir Charles –”

“No, no!” The inspector interrupted her. “What you may think and what I may surmise is one thing, and a definite proof is another. And you must remember that there is such a thing as a libel action, Miss Forbes. Of course what you say here is privileged; but if you mention names outside –”

“I am not such a fool!” Forbes observed shortly. “And I do not speak without the book as I am going to show you.”

The inspector looked at her. “Ah, now you are talking. If you have any further proof –”

“That her ladyship has been carrying on with Sir Charles Stanyard?” the maid said tartly. “What do you think of this?”

She produced another packet from among the folds of brown paper on her knees and unwrapped it. Inside was another packet, of old letters labelled from “C.S.” and a photograph: an old photograph, but easily recognizable as that of Stanyard.

The inspector took the packet of letters and glanced at it, turning back the envelopes without untying the string that bound them together.

“These may be from Sir Charles Stanyard, but they were all written before Lady Burslem's marriage. They are addressed to Miss Sophie Carlford.”

“Anyway, this was not written before she was married.” Forbes brandished a piece of paper from her handbag. “I found this in her ladyship's blotter the other day when Mr. Weldon and Lord Carlford came in and wanted to see her at once, so she went down and left it.”

The inspector held out his hand.

Forbes did not look inclined to surrender her find. “I ought to get good money for this. Her ladyship or Sir Charles –”

“Blackmail!” the inspector snapped. “Better stick to the reward, Miss Forbes.”

“Um! Well, if I get it,” the maid said, putting the paper in his hand with obvious reluctance.

The inspector held it up to the light and beckoned to Harbord. The paper was good, but unstamped and undated. “My own dearest,” the letter began in the big, rather childish-looking writing with which the inspector had taken care to familiarize himself with of late as that of Lady Burslem. “I shall hope to see you before long in the place we know. Everything is going on well. There is no suspicion, and the only danger I really fear is that Ellerby may –” There it broke off suddenly. The inspector turned it round and looked at it this way and that; but there was nothing further to be gleaned from it.

“Well,” Forbes said impatiently, “what do you say now?”

The inspector went over to his writing-table and sitting down made an entry in his big book of notes. Then he put the piece of notepaper in one of his drawers and shut it up.

“What can I say but that these discoveries of yours will probably be of the greatest assistance to us. As soon as anything definite can be settled I will let you know.”

“And the reward?” the maid said blankly.

The inspector looked at her. “Matters are hardly forward enough for us to think of that yet. When they are, well, you may be sure that we will bear you in mind.”

“I thought you would give it to me today.”

The inspector nearly laughed. “You are rather anticipating matters, Miss Forbes. There is a good deal to be done yet before Sir John Burslem's murderer is found.”

Forbes got up with a jerk. “Then I don't see that I have done much good by coming. It seems to me that I might have taken my goods to a better market.”

“Oh, come, come!” the inspector said soothingly. “You have done the very best thing you could, Miss Forbes. And you will find that matters will be all right in the end. Only you ladies always do want to hurry matters, don't you? You trust everything to me.

Forbes looked mollified. “Oh, well, if you put it that way –”

“That is the only way to put it,” the inspector rejoined. “And you may be sure that I shall do my best for you. I should for any lady, but, Miss Forbes, for you –” He stopped a minute. “Now I wonder whether you could help me a bit about something else?”

“Well, if there is anything I can do –”

“I suppose in the exercise of your duties you saw a good deal of Ellerby, in your position and his in the Burslem household?”

“Yes, of course I saw a good deal of him. In the housekeeper's room, and so on. But he was a man who kept himself to himself.”

“Was he really? I had got the idea, but I dare say I was wrong –” The inspector looked at his book again. “Did it occur to you that Ellerby was the sort of man to have – well, shall we say a friendship for any woman other than his wife?”

“My hat! I should think not. I should not think that any woman would look at him if he had. Dried up old fossil! I wonder he ever got married at all. Only I suppose any man can pick up somebody.”

“Dear me, do you think so, Miss Forbes? Then there is hope for us all,” the inspector remarked politely. “Then I may take it you do not think Ellerby has gone off with any woman? I wonder what you do think has become of him?” 

A curiously scared expression crept into Eleanor Forbes's eyes. “I – I don't know. We don't know what to think, any of us.”

“If he died in 15 Porthwick Square, his body must be there,” the inspector said thoughtfully.

The maid shivered. “Oh, however can you talk like that? I am sure I shall be frightened to go upstairs tonight. There's none of us going to sleep alone. I shall have the head housemaid with me. Nobody will be alone – except her ladyship, and she says she is not frightened at anything. Perhaps she has her reasons,” she finished significantly.

“I should have thought that perhaps Miss Burslem –”

“Miss Pamela – not much! She hates her stepmother like poison. She will have her own maid with her.”

“You saw and heard nothing the night before last?”

“Nothing – nothing at all. I wish I had,” Forbes assured him.

“Well, then, perhaps I had better think things over,” the inspector said, standing up. “But I shall want another long talk with you very soon, Miss Forbes, for more reasons than one.”

Harbord smiled to himself as he saw how the woman bridled under the inspector's gaze as he escorted her politely to the door.

Stoddart came back when he had seen her safely off the premises. 

“Well, what do you think of Miss Forbes?”

“Not much of her personally, but of her story a good deal,” Harbord said at once. “She has confirmed me in my – I will not say belief, but my very strong feeling that Sir John Burslem never returned to 15 Porthwick Square – that it was his murderer made up to impersonate him who came back with Lady Burslem and forged the will.”

“Ah, the will is a nasty snag in your theory. Experts say it is in Sir John Burslem's writing – hurried, carelessly written, but his unmistakably.”

“Don't believe 'em!” Harbord said bluntly. “No, sir, I shall stick to my theory until I hit on a better. Sometimes I have thought you have –”

He looked searchingly at the inspector.

Stoddart frowned. “Theories are no use. If sometimes a faint gossamery suspicion has dawned upon me – well, I don't know that Miss Forbes's discoveries help me much.”

“We will go right through the Park. I like to have a look at the swells sometimes,” Mrs. James Burslem remarked as she said “Home” to the chauffeur.

Pamela was going to pay her promised visit to her aunt by marriage. Somewhat to her surprise her stepmother had made no objection to the plan, and the girl was now on her way to spend the week-end in Mrs. Jimmy's house in Kensington.

The séance, the principal attraction offered to Pamela, was to come off that afternoon. A friend of Mrs. Jimmy's, Winnie Margetson, was to be the medium, and Pamela was in a terrible state of excitement at the prospect of getting into touch with her much-loved father. This had been definitely promised to her by Mrs. Jimmy, who had bidden the girl prepare a list of questions which would be a test of the reality of the communication established with the other world. This Pamela had done, and she now clutched the paper feverishly in her hand as she sat in the car beside her aunt. In the Park, Mrs. Jimmy directed the man to draw up under the trees near Hyde Park Corner.

“Now, I expect we shall soon come across some of your fine friends,” she remarked to Pamela.

“I don't know. I have very few friends in town now.” Pamela looked inclined to be restive. She was anxious to get on to the séance with as little delay as possible, and at the bottom of her heart she was conscious, in spite of her expressed affection for her new-found relative, of a shrinking from the attention that lady's frequent laugh and loud speech attracted. Rather to Mrs. Jimmy's disappointment, as Pamela could not help recognizing, no acquaintance of the girl's passed for some time, and Mrs. Jimmy was reluctantly agreeing to make a start when a man who had been leaning against the railings lower down raised himself and came towards them. His face brightened as he caught sight of the pair in the car, and he quickened his steps.

“Well, this is luck!” he exclaimed, as he shook hands with Pamela and the girl introduced him as Mr. Richard Leyton to her aunt.

Mrs. Jimmy surveyed him in a puzzled fashion.

“Can we give you a lift?” she inquired at last. “We are on our way to the other side of the Park.” The man hesitated and began to refuse; then, catching sight of the pretty, flickering colour of Pamela's cheeks, he rapidly changed his mind, got into the car and seated himself opposite.

“We are on our way to a séance,” Pamela said with an excited thrill in her voice.

“A séance!” the man repeated. “What on earth for?”

“I want to get through to my father,” Pamela told him. “I want him to tell us who murdered him. And where Ellerby is, and – and several other things.”

A pitying look came in the man's eyes.

“I have never known any useful information given at those
séances
.”

“Oh, haven't you?” Mrs. Jimmy interrupted, turning her head. “Well, I can tell you I have. I got some messages through for Lady Burslem, the other day, that surprised her, didn't I, Pam?”

“She – she said so. But I did not hear what they were,” the girl said in an unwilling tone.

“Ah, well! Perhaps they were secret,” Mrs. Jimmy said with an odd smile. “But I think we shall get something for you today, Pam. I told my friend to concentrate on you.”

Pamela clasped her hands. “Oh, how sweet of you, Aunt Kitty!”

The man said nothing as he glanced from one to the other.

He knew a little of Mrs. James Burslem's reputation, and also knew that her husband was popularly supposed to have deliberately chosen ruin hunting in Tibet to the lady's society. He had gathered too from the gossip of the day, which of late had greatly concerned itself with the Burslems and their affairs, that Sir John Burslem and his wife had had little to do with Mrs. Jimmy. It was distinctly a surprise therefore to meet Pamela in the society of, and apparently on such intimate terms with, her aunt. Mrs. Jimmy looked perturbed and puzzled and there could be no doubt that her expression was one of relief when Mr. Leyton expressed a desire to be set down near the Broad Walk. She turned when the car had started again and looked after the young man's tall figure as he strode along Bayswater Road.

“Well!” she exclaimed, as she threw herself back in her corner. “You seem to know him very well, and you call him Richard Leyton, but if it had not been for you I should have said his name was –”

“What?” Pamela inquired curiously as her aunt stopped.

“Something quite different,” that lady answered, closing her mouth with a snap.

They made their way along crowded Notting Hill Gate and Church Street and so to the Royal Borough. Mrs. Jimmy's house was some distance from any of the main streets, in one of those little backwaters which are a survival from the days when Kensington stood miles from the metropolis.

Outside, with its little garden gate, the fastidiously cleaned steps and the green door with its bright brass knocker, there was a conventual air strangely incongruous taken in connexion with Mrs. Jimmy. But inside, as Pamela soon found, everything was quite different. The small lounge into which the door opened was strewn with cushions and papers, debris of all description covered the table, a stray cup and saucer stood on the sofa.

In the midst of it all a flashy-looking maid appeared to be trying to restore some semblance of order.

“Miss Margetson come yet, Marian?” Mrs. Jimmy inquired.

The maid tossed her head.

“Yes, madam. She has, and making herself at home in the drawing-room. Altering the furniture just when I had arranged it. And shutting the windows when I should have thought she would have liked a little fresh air.”

“Ah, well, I know what that means.” Mrs. Jimmy looked mysterious. “It is all right, Marian. Come along, Pamela.” She opened the door at the left.

There was very little light in the drawing-room. Middle of the afternoon though it was, not only were the windows closed as the maid had said, but the dark blinds were closely drawn, and Miss Margetson appeared to be arranging some further sort of covering. She was a small, thin woman with closely cropped hair which evidently owed its blackness to art.