Crime at Tattenham Corner (17 page)

“Inspector Stoddart of Scotland Yard, and we hold a search-warrant for this house. You have no choice but to stand aside; you cannot obstruct the police in the discharge of their duty.”

The woman stared at him for a moment, then with an extraordinary sound between a howl and a sob she threw her apron over her face.

“I wish I hadn't come here,” she wailed. “If I hadn't heard that all the fuss with the police about Sir John was over I wouldn't. But it was good money and my husband said we could not afford to refuse. But now – now –”

“Now, no harm will come to you if you are a sensible woman and keep a still tongue in your head,” the inspector told her. “Now, I think we will begin with one of the rooms on the first floor.” He looked at Harbord. “And then we will have a look at the basement. I shall want all the keys of the kitchens and the cellars, please.” 

The caretaker threw out her hands. “I haven't got them. You don't think that their grand butler would trust me with his keys.”

“I am sure they could not have been in better hands,” the inspector said politely. “But we shall manage without them, I dare say.”

He stepped sharply across the hall and up the stair-case, followed by Harbord and pursued by a volley of exclamations from the caretaker.

“Here we are,” he said, turning to Lady Burslem's sitting-room. The door was unlocked. The inspector raised his eyebrows. “We shall not find much here. They will have taken care of that. But one never knows what may have been overlooked or” – he paused a moment – “put ready for us to find.”

Lady Burslem's delicate furniture was all enshrouded in brown holland; the curtains and the tapestry had been taken down, and the carpet rolled up. The writing-table and the bookcase alone were uncovered. The inspector went over to the former and tried the drawer, pinching in his lips as though about to whistle when he found it open. Inside there was nothing but a mother-of-pearl blotter. He opened it and held it out to Harbord with a slight smile. The blotting- paper was clean and untouched.

“Knows a thing or two, doesn't she?”

Harbord made some inarticulate answer. He was on his knees before the small bookshelf taking out each book and shaking it in turn. Presently he spoke: 

“There are several books here about Argentina and its exports and imports. One about South America, taken more as a whole; another on shooting in the southern Andes and – yes, still another about Santa Fe. What can they have been wanted for?”

“Ah, there you are!” There was a curious expression on the inspector's face as he gazed at his young confrere. “Peep o' Day was sold to an Argentine, you must remember,” he added.

“Yes. But these books will not give much information about Peep o' Day.” Harbord fetched one of them out and opened it. “Pretty well read too, I should say.”

The inspector took it from him.

“Yes. Well, Argentina is a good place to start from, if you want a hiding-place.”

“They fetched Jabez Balfour back,” Harbord reminded him.

“I said to start from,” the inspector remarked, turning over the pages of the book he held. “Chili and Peru and Bolivia. Lots of little places, scarcely heard of here, in Brazil, and the Pampas themselves give plenty of scope. This fits in very well with a little discovery I made the other day. Lady Burslem is gradually investing large sums of money in different South American securities.”

“The price of Peep o' Day,” Harbord suggested.

“Pish!” the inspector said contemptuously. “Peep o' Day's price would be a flea-bite to what I have heard. Even if Señor da Villistara has paid up yet, which I doubt – Spaniards are notoriously dilatory.
Mañana
is probably all Peep o' Day has brought in at present.”

“H'm!”

Harbord again applied himself to his task of shaking books, and the inspector strolled round the room. Presently he turned to the door.

“We shall not find anything more here, I think. We will go to the cellars now. They have intrigued me considerably ever since Ellerby – went away.”

“You do not think –” Harbord began; then he checked himself and followed his superior in silence.

Right at the back of the entrance hall a green baize swing-door opened into a wide passage. The inspector looked round. To the right the passage evidently ran by the dining-room, with the kitchens beyond. To the left lay the housekeeper's room and the butler's pantry, then past the servants' hall the passage narrowed and they came to a low, nail-studded door. The inspector tried it.

“Ah! Locked, of course. Now we shall see.”

He took a curious looking steel implement from his pocket and with a few dexterous manipulations the door swung back. The short flight of steps before them led down to what was evidently the wine-cellar, the one probably in general use.

“Makes one feel thirsty to look at the bottles,” Stoddart remarked jocularly as he unfastened the door at the farther end. “Curious, rambling cellars these houses in Porthwick Square have. And some of them are very old.” And then he said what in Harbord's ears had an odd and very sinister significance, “I should not ask for a better hiding-place.”

The second cellar was pretty much like the first, save that down one side ran long, brick thralls with huge barrels on them held in place by wooden logs, and further, in some cases, chained to staples in the wall behind.

The inspector tapped one of them. “Empty! Umph! Well, we shall have to try them all. And maybe find out what is in some of them.”

The first two cellars had been lighted dimly enough by gratings high in the wall, probably communicating in some way with the old paved court at the back of the house. The next one into which they penetrated was pitch-dark; yet that there was some sort of opening was proved by the fact that the air was not vitiated beyond endurance.

The inspector turned on his electric torch. This cellar was rather smaller than the preceding ones and seemed to contain nothing of importance – a few bottles, a cask standing on one end in the corner. There were two small, arched doors at one side. The inspector's sharp eyes turned to them at once.

“Notice anything particular about these cellars, Harbord?”

“Vaults, I should call 'em,” his subordinate answered, sniffing about him. “Well, first I notice that they are not as stuffy as they might be. Secondly, visitors have been here before us.”

“And how do you deduce that?”

“Well, there are some cobwebs about,” Harbord said thoughtfully, “but not as many as there would have been if some one had not been in in the last few months. Then the dust of the floor has been disturbed.”

“The butler may have come in, you know,” Stoddart reassured him. “Quite in the way of legitimate business.”

“H'm! Yes, he might,” Harbord acquiesced. “But this was not the butler. It was a woman.”

“How do you know that?” inquired the inspector. “Not” – with a grin – “from her skirts trailing on the ground, I presume?”

Harbord grinned responsively. “Hardly! A fool of a woman told me the other day her staircase was haunted. She always felt her skirts caught by unseen hands when she went up it. ‘My dear girl,' I said, ‘it must be a clever spook to get hold of your skirts!'”

“Quite!” the inspector agreed. “But what made you feel sure it was a woman, then?”

“The footprints. The shoes that made them were small and narrow-soled and pointed, with high heels.”

“Well done,” was the inspector's comment. “You have your head screwed on the right way, Alfred. I will say that for you. Now did you notice anything else?”

“No, I can't say I did,” Harbord answered, looking at him. “Was there anything else?”

“Well, in the second cellar something had been dragged or laid down. There was a big, confused mark near the wall on which the casks were chained. Still, as I said a moment ago, it may have been done by the butler, though judging from the state of things I should not think that worthy pays these farther cellars many visits. Now for those two small doors. As far as I can judge from the look of them, they have not been opened for years. But appearances are deceptive so here goes.” He applied himself to the lock of the nearest, which was very stiff and was moved with great difficulty. “Heard once of a place like this,” the inspector said as he pushed the door open. “New servants going into the house found a quantity of bones supposed to belong to the skeleton of a young woman. The last tenant was an old lady who had lived there for fifty years. They never found anything out about the skeleton.”

“Well, there is nothing of that kind here,” Harbord observed as the electric torch disclosed a small, vaultlike apartment apparently quite empty and with the floor deep in dust, which looked as if it had lain undisturbed for centuries.

“Not to be found at sight,” the inspector said, as he went on to the second door.

This was not so difficult to open as the first, and inside, though there were no very distinct footmarks, it did look as if the dust had been disturbed in some way; otherwise the small, rather damp-smelling apartment was a facsimile of the first.

The inspector rubbed his nose reflectively. “Now, where shall we begin? Every bit of these floors will have to be sounded. But we haven't got the wherewithal to-day.”

“The dust is a pretty good guarantee that the floors have not been troubled,” Harbord remarked.

“In these last two it is,” the inspector assented. “But in the first three it is not. One can see that somebody has been in, and that is about all. And I am not taking any risks. We are up against no common criminal, you must remember. The scattering of dust or the laying of false trails is no very difficult matter. But I think – I think, for to-day, we will begin with the second cellar, the one with the casks. I have a feeling, a very strong feeling that if we find anything it will be there.”

They went back, leaving the doors open, and taking care not to disturb any traces of other visitors.

The second cellar, the one upon which the inspector's suspicion had fixed, was quite as large as the first, and differed from it only in having the brick thralls on the one side. In front of the big chained barrels there was a quantity of dust mixed with sawdust, and it was here that the traces of disturbance were most apparent.

The inspector attacked the barrels first. He tapped them, examined them through his glass, even managed with Harbord's help to move them a little.

At last he gave a dissatisfied grunt. “Nothing there! The barrels have not been interfered with. I scarcely expected to find that they had.”

Harbord began to poke about under the thrall.

“Plenty of room beneath here,” he said as he passed one of the supports. “And, by Jove, there is something!”

The inspector knelt down beside him, turning on his electric torch as he did so.

“You are right,” he said quietly. “But it looks like a roll of dark cloth or something of that kind.”

“You remember the parcel Lady Burslem carried on the night of Ellerby's disappearance,” Harbord suggested.

The inspector nodded. “She never came down here by herself that night, though. She could not have got the keys and come down here without being heard.”

“Perhaps those who heard kept their own counsel,” Harbord observed significantly, poking more energetically with a stick he had brought down. “It is coming now, sir. There, if you could catch that end –”

The inspector caught and pulled. The thing, whatever it was, was closely wedged up at the back of the thrall. A short, rather thick bale of drab cloth, very dirty, it looked to be as the inspector pulled it forward. 

“What on earth –” he began, as he started to unroll it. Then he uttered a sharp exclamation as he held up a man's light overcoat – an overcoat that, crumpled and begrimed though it was, plainly showed large, ominous, dark stains down the front. The inspector touched them with his finger; he smelt them. Then he glanced at Harbord. “Don't want a microscope to say what they are.”

“No,” Harbord assented. He looked at the collar. “One of the best tailors in Savile Row,” he said. “The pockets, sir?”

The inspector was already feeling in them. He held up a fine, white handkerchief also with those sinister stains upon it, and pointed first to that and then to the initials at the corner – J.V.B. He put in his hand again and brought out a crocodile cigarette-case mounted in gold and enamelled with a monogram – J.V.B.

The inspector stood up and shook the coat.

“Nothing more. But enough for our purpose perhaps. Do you realize what this is, Harbord?”

“It is, I should say, one of Sir John Burslem's coats,” the younger detective responded.

“Right! But it is more than that,” the inspector said quietly as he felt the lining over. “It is the one in which he started out on that fatal 2nd of June, which he carried over his arm when he came back with Lady Burslem; and which we have never been able to trace since; for you remember the attendant at the parking ground said the man who brought in Sir John Burslem's car, and whom he identified from a photograph as Sir John Burslem himself, wore a dark overcoat.”

Harbord had been poking again under the thrall. He got up now and dusted his trousers down.

“How in the world did that coat get here after he was murdered?”

“Yes,” said the inspector. “That's the puzzle.”

Amelia Burslem was staying with the Stanmore-Greens at their place in Perthshire. The Stanmore-Greens were very rich, at least Mrs. Stanmore-Green was. She was an American, the daughter of Woodruffe B. Larnack, sometimes quoted as among the six greatest multi-millionaires of the world. She was very young, very pretty and very smart, and had taken an instant fancy to Pamela Burslem when she had met her as the schoolgirl friend of her younger sister. The liking had been mutual. A long visit to the Stanmore-Greens' Highland home had been owing since the preceding year, and the Burslem Mystery had given Pamela an added charm in Mrs. Stanmore-Green's eyes.