Man with the Dark Beard (16 page)

The inspector moved them to one side.

“No good looking for pockets. Women don't wear anything so sensible nowadays. They stick all their belongings in these stupid little handbags they are always leaving about and losing.”

*“You never know where they put their things,” Harbord observed. “I had a girl out with me the other day. She wanted her purse and where do you think it was? In her stocking. Just at the top poked in between those things – what do you call them? –suspenders.”

“My sister keeps hers there,” the inspector said, diving to the bottom of the wardrobe and emerging very red in the face. “And when she goes out with her young man she tells him to look the other way while she gets it out.”

“Mine didn't bother about that,” Alfred Harbord said in an abstracted fashion, while his eyes wandered appraisingly over poor Iris Houlton's dressing-table. “Just the usual things here, sir, powder, rouge, lipstick, and what is this dark stuff? Oh, what they put round their eyes, I suppose.”

The inspector's capable fingers were sorting and arranging the contents of the wardrobe.

“I never saw a woman who had so few personal belongings.”

“It is extraordinary!” Harbord said in a puzzled tone.

Both men worked on in silence for some time, then the younger uttered an exclamation.

 “I have got it, sir, I believe.” He held up a flat russia leather case. “There will be something in this, I reckon.”

The inspector took it from him.

“Where did you find it?”

Harbord pointed to the bed. “Between the mattress and the bolster. Rather cunningly tucked in the bolster-case – it is flat and I might easily have missed it.”

“Ay! But you don't miss much, my lad,” the inspector said approvingly. “Locked this is, and I suppose she thought it was safe. I dare say she has hidden the key. But it won't take us long to get it open.”

He took something that looked like a thin, twisted piece of wire from his pocket and, putting it in the tiny lock, turned it and had the case opened in a minute.

“Ah, I expected this,” he said as he looked at the contents.

There was a cheque-book of one of the well-known Joint Stock Banks and a pass-book. The inspector opened this first.

“Tells its own story, if we could only understand it,” he said as he handed it to Harbord.

The younger man turned over the leaf. The book was a comparatively new one and only dated back, as the inspector noticed at once, to the time of Dr. Bastow's death. The first entry showed that five hundred pounds in cash had been paid in to open an account for Iris Houlton. Another five hundred also in cash had been paid in since. On the other side – by the cheques paid out – it was evident that Iris Houlton had settled most of her bills by cheque.

“What do you make of it?” Stoddart questioned as Harbord looked up.

“On the face of it, I should say that Iris Houlton's fortune was the result of some previous connexion with some one who had very good reason for wishing his name kept out of the papers.”

The inspector coughed.

“If the connexion was with a married man, the most ordinary wife would supply an excellent reason for keeping the matter secret. But I don't fancy we shall find the solution quite so easy. So far Basil Wilton is the only man of whom we have been able to find a trace in his wife's life. And you may imagine I had her pretty well looked after at the time of Dr. Bastow's murder.”

Harbord nodded. “A good deal of suspicion attached to her then. I fancy people were pretty well divided between her and Dr Sanford Morris.”

“Yes, but the British public is not always right in its conclusions,” the inspector remarked.

Harbord looked at him.

“I always wish I had been with you in that case, sir. For I have fancied sometimes that your suspicion strayed to –”

“It is facts not suspicion that are wanted, as I have said before,” the inspector struck in. “As for you, I would have asked for no better colleague, but you were in the north, on the Bratson-Harmer case. Now before we go any further we must pay a visit to the Bank and see whether we can learn anything there.”

They went out, carefully locking the doors.

The branch of the Bank which Iris Wilton had used was some little distance away. The inspector beckoned a taxi.

“Time is money in these cases,” he observed to his subordinate.

Arrived, the inspector asked at once for the Bank manager and they were shown to his private room.

The manager came to them at once – a fussy, pompous-looking man. He held the inspector's card in his hand.

“You wished to see me?” he said, glancing at his visitors inquiringly.

“Yes. My card will have told you that I come from Scotland Yard,” the inspector said, taking the bull by the horns at once. “I want some information respecting the account of the late Mrs. Basil Wilton, formerly Miss Iris Houlton.”

The manager fidgeted beneath the detective's gaze. “It is not our custom to give information about our customers' private accounts.”

“Quite so,” the inspector assented. “In an ordinary case, I understand. But in this particular one, when your client was foully murdered, you must realize that you have no choice but to speak.”

“‘No choice but to speak,'” the manager echoed, knitting his brows. “Well, Inspector Stoddart” – glancing at the card – “the responsibility rests with you. What is it you want to know?”

The inspector took the pass-book from his breast pocket.

“I see there have been two large cash payments to Miss Iris Houlton's account. Can you give me any information as to who paid them in?”

“Certainly!” The manager's answer came with a readiness that surprised the detective. “Both sums were paid in by Miss Iris Houlton herself – in notes.”

“In notes!” The inspector took out his pocket-book. “You have the numbers, of course?”

“Of course,” the manager assented. “I can get them for you now.”

He turned to the speaking-tube and gave his directions in a perfectly audible voice.

There followed an awkward silence between the three men. At last the manager cleared his throat.

“I don't fancy that anything we can tell you will help you to discover poor Mrs. Wilton's murderer.”

“Perhaps not,” the inspector agreed blandly. “But I am sure –”

He was interrupted by the entrance of a boy with the numbers of the notes paid into the Bank. Stoddart frowned as he looked over the slips of paper the manager handed to him. The notes were for varying sums, from fifty pounds in one case to twenty pounds, ten pounds, even one pound – of this latter denomination there were one hundred and eighty. But no two of the numbers ran together as the inspector had half expected to find. He looked up.

“You knew Miss Iris Houlton personally, I presume?”

“Oh, yes,” the manager said at once. “She came here several times, as she invested a hundred or two in the new Argentine Loan. And she brought in these large packets of notes herself. I own I was surprised, though it is not my business to be surprised at our customers' doings. If there is nothing else I can do for you this morning, inspector –?”

The inspector took the hint at once.

“Nothing just now, I think, thank you.” Outside the two men walked along in silence for a few minutes, both apparently deep in thought. Stoddart was the first to speak.

“What do you make of it, Harbord?”

“I don't know, sir. Except that, wherever Iris Houlton got those notes, she took precious good care they should not be traced. There must be some strong reason behind it all.”

“She took care, or some one else took care, that they should not be traced,” the inspector corrected. “Do you see what that means, Harbord – blackmail?”

Harbord nodded. “I had thought of that, sir.”

“And now our first task must be to discover how far she or they have been successful in concealing their tracks,” Stoddart went on. “Though, as a matter of fact, I expect that we shall be up against a practical impossibility.” 

He stopped as he spoke, and going into a public call office rang up Scotland Yard.

“I have told them to put Fowler on the job at once,” he said, as he emerged. “If we could only trace one of them back to the source it might be all we want.”

Harbord cast a curious glance at his superior. That Stoddart had something in his mind was quite apparent. But at present, without the data upon which the inspector was working, the younger man was at a loss. Harbord, however, knew that the inspector always declared that nothing cleared his brain like a walk, and was not surprised when he found him setting off in the direction of Hawksview Mansions at top speed.

The inspector's brow was knit as if he were cogitating some knotty problem, and he took no heed of his companion, who had some ado to keep up with him. They scarcely spoke until they reached the Mansions, but as they went into the flat the inspector said:

“There must be something in this flat that will give us the clue we want; it must be here and we must find it. It is impossible that a woman could live a couple of months in a flat, be murdered there, and leave absolutely nothing to tell us what manner of woman she was, what sort of life she led, or how she came by her death.”

Harbord drew in his lips. “Has Wilton's room been searched?”

“Only in a superficial fashion. We will go into that directly; but first I want to turn out the other rooms thoroughly. Suppose we have a go at the drawing-room now.”

The drawing-room was at the right as they entered the lounge; the dining-room was farther along on the same side. The bedrooms were opposite and a door at the end gave access to the kitchen and bathroom.

At first sight the drawing-room was rather more hopeful from the detective's point of view than the bedrooms. The easy chairs looked as if they had been used, the cushions were crumpled in the chairs, there were flowers, withered now, in the vases. A novel from a circulating library lay face downwards on the hearthrug, and a pile of medical journals with a newspaper on the top were on a stand near the window. But the waste-paper-basket was empty, there were no letters in the rack and on the orderly looking writing-table that held an inkstand and a pen-tray and a blotting-pad upon which the inspector seized swiftly, only to relinquish it a moment later with a disappointed sigh.

“Never been used even to dry an envelope.”

Meanwhile Harbord had been conducting a voyage of discovery of his own. An almost invisible drawer at the end of one of the tables attracted his attention. There was no handle and no keyhole; but putting his hand underneath he forced the drawer out.

At first sight he thought it was empty, but his slim, capable fingers feeling round discovered a scrap of paper at the far end. On it there was typed – “Tonight, 5.30.” For a moment the terrible and sinister significance of it escaped him.

His silence as he stared at it attracted Stoddart's attention. Seeing what his assistant was holding he came quickly across the room and took it from him.

“The message that brought Iris Wilton to her death,” he said as he read it.

“But who sent it?” Harbord questioned.

The inspector looked at him.

“If we knew that, we should have elucidated the mystery of Iris Houlton's death and certain other strange occurrences too, I suspect.”

Harbord made no rejoinder. He was taking the drawer out entirely and examining every cranny, even getting under the table and feeling behind, but not so much as the tiniest scrap of anything rewarded his efforts.

 This time it was the inspector who was fortunate. He moved the cabinet, and behind it was a small square blotting-book, apparently much worn.

The detective pounced upon it with a sound of triumph.

“At last!”

He took it over to the table nearest the window. Harbord bent over it with him. It was just an ordinary common little blotting-book such as might be picked up at any stationer's for a few pence, but right across the blue cover was scrawled “I.M. Houlton.”

Inside there were several papers with little bits of the edges sticking out. The first that met their eyes as they opened it was a piece of common typing paper with the words “Five hundred – the old place” typed across. Beneath it was another, “As you wish. Tonight.”

“From the same person as the one you found in the drawer,” the inspector remarked as he turned over the next page.

Then he stopped as if petrified. There before him lay two or three sheets of notepaper of a texture and hue with which he was only too familiar. All of them were covered with words scrawled over and over again as if the writer had been trying to reproduce a sentence exactly and had been unable to satisfy herself.

“The – The – Man – Man –” in a curious printed style. It was slanted backwards and forwards, up and down. Then came other words at which the two men stared in silence for a minute. “– with – the – the –” Capital D's tried over and over again.

On the last sheet it was put together two or three times:

“It was the Man with the Dark Beard.”

“You know, Fee, Dr. Blathwayte said you ought to take eggs. And these are beautiful, fresh laid ones from the farm.”

“I don't care if they are. I hate eggs. I am sick of the sight of them,” Fee said sulkily. “And what is the use of talking about what Dr. Blathwayte says when you know I can't try his treatment?”

“Oh, Fee! Please don't,” Hilary said, as she set the egg-nog on the table beside him. “Indeed I will do my very best to make it possible for you.”

“No, you will not!” Fee contradicted, with a restless gesture that sent the light rug over his knees flying on to the grass.

The two were sitting under Hilary's favourite tree at Rose Cottage. It was a month since Iris Wilton's death and so far nothing very definite had been discovered with regard to it. The inquest had been adjourned time after time to give the police time to make their investigations. Suspicion of Basil Wilton was very strong and apparently deepening daily, but he was still at liberty. The papers were freely hinting at the supineness of the police and the superiority of the French methods and stating that across the Channel the Hawksview Mansions murderer would have been arrested weeks ago.