Man with the Dark Beard (15 page)

He turned to the drawing-room door as he spoke and inserted a key, dropping the latchkey back in his pocket as he spoke.

“The poor creature's own,” he remarked. “Wilton hadn't one on him when he was searched – seemed amazed at being asked about such a thing. Yet it is not an uncommon possession. He had one at Dr. Bastow's.”

“He lived in, there, didn't he?” Harbord inquired.

“No, he lodged with the doctor's chauffeur just over the road. He appears to have had a good many meals at the house, though, incidentally falling in love with the doctor's daughter.”

“And the secretary,” Harbord finished.

Stoddart did not answer. His quick eye wandered round the lounge, then without further comment he turned into the drawingroom.

Harbord went over to the hearthrug.

“This is where she was found, of course.”

The inspector nodded.

“Her head was on the steel curb. You can see the dried blood on the tiled hearth. Everything in the room is just as it was when she was found, except that the body was moved to the mortuary when the medical examination was over.”

“Suicide out of the question, of course?”

“Quite!” The inspector's tone was emphatic. “The medical evidence makes that plain, and death must have taken place before six o'clock, probably before 5.30 which, as you see, keeps it perilously near the time when the porter thinks he saw Wilton come downstairs.”

Harbord went over the tea-table.

“The cups have been used. Only two, I see, sir.”

The inspector was measuring the distance from the hearthrug to the different objects in the room.

“I should say she was standing by this table when she was shot and she fell rather to one side, striking her head on the curb, just above the temple. Probably death would have resulted anyhow. But her assailant was not taking any risks. He must have either stooped over her or knelt beside her and shot her through the ear. A more cold-blooded murder has seldom come my way.”

“On the face of it, it looks curious that people should be shot in two houses in which Wilton lived,” Harbord said slowly. “Still, the pistol with which Dr. Bastow was shot was found in Rufford Square, I remember it was taken as pointing to Dr. Sanford Morris. He might have gone home that way.”

“That wasn't the pistol that shot Dr. Bastow,” Stoddart said quietly. “Cruikshanks said that from the first. The papers chose to assume that it was, but you know well enough, Harbord, that we don't tell them everything.”

Harbord nodded.

“Quite, sir. I understand. I do not know that it makes much difference whether it was the same pistol or not.”

“Very little!” the inspector assented.

He took a small pill-box from his pocket and shook a powdering of fine dust over the table he had indicated, then blew it away.

“Ah!” he said in a disappointed tone. “Only her finger-prints. Well, I expected nothing else, but there was just a chance. She stood there, Harbord, supporting herself by one hand on the table. You see the mark of the right thumb and of the tips of three fingers. The murderer must have stood over here, the bullet entered in front and passed right through the body, by some miracle missing all the vital parts and went – where did it go, Harbord? That is one of the minor points that will have to be cleared up. But to-day the main issue is, to my mind, was there any third person in the flat on that fatal 12th of July? Or were there only Iris Wilton and her husband?”

Harbord looked at his chief.

“You have formed a definite opinion, I think, sir.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows.

 “It is facts, not opinions, that I am looking for now,” he said shortly.

“Finger-prints are pretty hopeless it seems to me,” Harbord said slowly. “Unless the saucer – if the murderer had tea I suppose he would take that in his hand. Door handles are never much good – too many people hold them.”

“No, I fancy the saucer is our only chance,” the inspector said, as he went towards the tea-table and gingerly lifting out the cups, sifted his powder over both saucers and blew it away. “We don't know which he used,” he said, as Harbord looked across. “Ah! Just what I thought.”

Harbord peered forward. No finger-print of any kind was visible. A confused mark seemed to run all round both.

“Shows you what sort of a criminal we're up against,” the inspector said. “He has rubbed both saucers round. We shall find no finger-prints here, Harbord. Now I think we will have the maid up. When we have heard her story the flat must be searched and we may be in a better position to know what to look for.”

Harbord went to the speaking tube outside. While they waited for Alice Downes's appearance, he walked over to the window and stood perfectly still, his keen eyes glancing from one piece of furniture in the room to another as he mentally reconstructed the crime.

The inspector had concentrated on the mantel-piece, going over it meticulously with a tiny microscope which he produced from some mysterious pocket.

At last the maid, Alice Downes, appeared. Her hat was drawn down low over her brow, her eyes were swollen, and this morning they had a curious, sidelong, fashion of glancing here, there and everywhere. When the inspector beckoned her into the drawing-room she threw up her hands before her face.

“Oh, sir, I can't – really I can't! I – I came in last night and saw – her – it. I couldn't speak a word, sir, if you make me come into that awful room.”

“I should be the last to do that. I would not hurt any lady's feelings,” the inspector said politely. “But you will understand Miss Downes, that there are certain questions that must be put to you. Still, we can talk outside.”

He passed into the lounge as he spoke and put one of the two oak chairs that stood by the wall for the girl, taking the other himself.

“Now we will hear what you can tell us of this dreadful affair,” he said persuasively.

“But I don't know anything, sir,” the girl said, twisting her handkerchief about in her fingers, and casting furtive glances at the halfopen door of the drawing-room through which she could see Harbord as he moved quietly about. “Not a thing! I left Mrs. Wilton as well as you and me when I went out, and I came back to find her stretched out there – dead,” with a dramatic gesture at the drawing-room door.

“And she must have died within a short time of your leaving,” the detective said quietly. “Tell me first exactly who was in the flat when you went out.”

“Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Wilton, sir. I am certain of that.”

“Then, when you had your evening off, there was no one to take your place. Mrs. Wilton answered the door and did anything that was required in the way of getting a meal herself?”

“There was not much to do,” Alice Downes said. “I brought tea in before I left, and they would only have a cold supper. That is if Mr. and Mrs. Wilton did not dine out. Mrs. Wilton always did before she was married – at a restaurant.”

“But not after?”

Alice Downes's eyes glanced at him in an oblique fashion from beneath their heavy lids.

“Well, you see, Mr. Wilton was more or less of an invalid,” she said slowly. “He was not often able to go out at all. Only now and again in a car.”

And now Alice Downes spoke quickly and volubly as if anxious to give all the information she could.

“What was the matter with him?” the inspector inquired.

“I don't know, I'm sure, sir. Mrs. Wilton she called it a nervous breakdown. She said he had been working too hard and that he had had some sort of shock, and it had been too much for him. He always seemed to me dull and halfdazed like. But Mrs. Wilton thought the world of him. She waited upon him hand and foot before they were married and after.”

“Who was his doctor?”

Alice Downes paused.

“I don't know, sir. No one ever came to the flat, but sometimes I have thought Mrs. Wilton took him to consult one when they went out.”

“I see!” The inspector glanced at his notes. “You say no one ever came to the flat. Do you mean that Mrs. Wilton had no friends?”

Alice Downes gave him that odd, fleeting glance again.

“None of them ever came to the flat if she had, sir. That is all I can say.”

The inspector stared at her.

“Do you mean that she had no visitors – not even before she was married?” And all the time he had a strange, extraordinary feeling that Alice Downes was not speaking the truth. That in spite of her apparent anxiety to tell him all, she was keeping back something which might be of vital importance to him.

She shook her head.

“Never to my knowledge. Mrs. Wilton was not much at home before she was married. She had most of her meals out. And the only visitor I ever saw at the flat was Mr. Wilton. And when he came he stayed on until they were married.”

“No visitors at all for a young woman like Mrs. Wilton seems an extraordinary state of things,” the inspector cogitated as if speaking to himself, though his keen eyes were watching her face. “Did she have many letters?”

Again there was that odd, flickering smile.

“Not many, sir. One now and again. And – and I think Mrs. Wilton mostly knew when they were coming. She was generally up and picked them out of the box as soon as the postman came. Once since I came here I took in a letter to her, and that was all.”

“Did you notice that one? Was the writer a man or a woman?” the inspector questioned quickly.

The malicious glint in Alice Downes's eyes deepened.

“I can't tell. The address was typed.”

For a moment the inspector was nonplussed. From the first he had felt certain that the girl was keeping something back; now what had been only suspicion became a certainty.

“When did this letter come – lately?” he asked sharply.

Then Alice Downes's face became curiously contorted. She tried to speak, but for a moment no words came; when they did it was with a loud indrawn breath.

“It was just the day before she died.”

“How was it you got it?”

“Well, I don't think Mrs. Wilton expected it. And I heard the man put it in, so I got it out and took it to the dining-room where Mr, and Mrs. Wilton were having breakfast.”

“Did you see Mrs. Wilton open it?”

“No. She put it in the black satin bag she always carried, without opening it or saying anything about it.”

The inspector looked at his notebook again.

“Now, Miss Downes,” he said after a pause. “I am taking it that you have your share of your sex's failing – curiosity. Now, have you no idea who that letter came from? I am asking you in the interests of poor Mrs. Wilton – in the interest of us all, for we must all wish her murderer to be discovered. Did you see nothing of this letter or of any former letters in the waste-paper-basket or elsewhere?”

Again the maid shook her head.

“Never was there a bit of one in the waste-paper-basket. Never a bit of one anywhere – unless you could call a few ashes on the hearth a bit of one. There was not much Mrs. Wilton didn't know. She had been a secretary herself, she told me, and it wouldn't have been any good trying to take her in.”

“Her name before she was married was Houlton – Iris Houlton,” the inspector said. “Do you know where she came from, or anything about her friends or relatives?”

*“Nothing at all!” The girl raised her eyes openly enough now. “And there is not a photograph or anything about the flat. I have often said to my mother it seemed very queer.”

“Ah! You must give me your mother's address, please,” the detective said, scrawling an indecipherable hieroglyphic in his notebook. “I presume you will go there for a time anyway when you leave here.”

Alice Downes flushed darkly red.

“Now what has my mother's address to do with you?” she demanded wrathfully. “She knows nothing about this – this affair. Never set foot in the flat, nor saw Mrs. Wilton in her life, she didn't. And I can't have the police going round there again, nor yet worrying her, and I won't, so that's flat.”

The inspector looked at her over the top of his glasses. That one little tell-tale word which he felt sure Alice Downes had let fall accidentally had explained something that had been puzzling him ever since he came into the flat.

“You must know that you will have to keep in touch with the police, Miss Downes. Your previous experiences must have taught you that.

Alice Downes turned from red to white.

“Previous experiences!” she repeated. “I'd like to know what you mean! I have never been mixed up with murders, anyway.”

“Ah, no! Shoplifting is a very different thing, is it not?” the inspector assented blandly. “Now, Miss Downes, don't upset yourself. Your mother needn't know anything about it, if you are a sensible girl and keep in touch with me. But your evidence may be wanted at any time. You will most certainly have to give it at the inquest, and at the trial should there be one.”

“Trial!” Alice Downes echoed. “And who is going to be tried, I should like to know? Mr. Wilton never did it, I'll swear to that. A kinder-hearted gentleman never breathed. He wouldn't have hurt a fly.”

“Quite possibly not,” the inspector assented, thinking that flies would probably not have offered much inducement to Iris Houlton's murderer.

“And now we must have a look at the poor thing's room.”

The inspector unlocked the door of the largest bedroom. Poor Iris Wilton's body had been taken to the mortuary. The bedroom remained as it was when she left it. Both men instinctively stepped quietly as they went in, and lowered their voices when they spoke.

*“If there is any clue to be found, I rather fancy we shall find it here,” the inspector said, as he looked round.

The furniture was very modern and obviously new. The bedstead stood against the wall near the door that opened into the dressing-room, which had evidently been occupied by Basil Wilton. The wardrobe door was half open, and the bright-coloured frocks hanging inside were a pathetic reminder of their murdered owner.