Man with the Dark Beard (6 page)

The inspector drummed with his fingers on the table.

“It might. At any rate it would establish the fact that some one had a motive for watching the doctor and his visitor. What do you know of this woman – Taylor?”

Wilton looked surprised at the sudden question “Nothing at all. She was parlourmaid here. And quite remarkably good-looking, but I should hardly think I had spoken to her half a dozen times.”

“Did you ever suspect that she was on friendly terms with Dr. Bastow?” the inspector rapped out.

“Certainly not!” Wilton answered with decision. “Dr. Bastow was not that sort of man at all – not the sort of man to be on friendly terms with one of his servants.”

“That is, as far as you know,” the inspector said with one of his sardonic smiles. “Nobody is that sort of man, as you call it, until he is found out, you know, Mr. Wilton. Cases have come under my observation in which the worst offenders in this respect have been absolutely unsuspected even by their own wives. You know that Taylor has bolted.”

Wilton nodded.

“Miss Bastow told me so just now.”

“And an innocent girl does not run away from a house where a crime has been committed,” the inspector went on almost as if he were arguing the case out with himself.

“She might have other reasons – her own reasons for not wanting to be recognized,” Wilton suggested.

The inspector stared at him. “You have foundation for this?”

Wilton shook his head.

“Not the least. But Miss Priestley hinted to me just now that she fancied she had seen Taylor in different circumstances.”

“She did not say where?”

“No; she said she could not remember.”

“Hm!” The inspector wrinkled up his nose into the semblance of corrugated iron. “I must have another word with Miss Priestley. In the meantime there are two questions I must put to you. First, did you notice anything unusual in the state of the room when you got in through the window?”

“Absolutely nothing. The room was precisely as I had seen it hundreds of times.”

“What shoes were you wearing?”

Wilton looked surprised at the sudden change of subject.

“My ordinary indoor shoes. I was not expecting to go out again that evening.”

“And you wore those shoes to go round to the garden door and to cross the grass to the window?”

“Certainly I did.” Wilton smiled faintly. “I should hardly stop to change.”

The inspector shut up his small notebook quickly and snapped the elastic round it.

“That is all, then, Mr. Wilton. For now, at any rate. I must have another word with Miss Priestley, though.”

“I will tell her,” Wilton volunteered. An errand to Miss Lavinia would probably mean a word or two with Hilary.

The inspector looked half inclined to object, but finally decided to say nothing.

Wilton went in search of Miss Priestley. He found her, as he expected, in the drawing-room with her niece, but his brow contracted as he saw Sir Felix Skrine sitting beside Hilary. Miss Lavinia did not look pleased at this second summons to the morning-room. She flounced off with the expressed intention of giving the policeman a piece of her mind. Without a second glance at Hilary and disregarding a piteous glance she cast at him, Wilton went back to the consulting-room.

Miss Lavinia entered the morning-room door.

“Well, Mr. Detective, what now?” she began unceremoniously. “Found something out that makes you think I shot my brother-in-law?”

The detective rose and placed a chair for her, which she declined with an emphatic gesture. He ignored her question.

“I want to ask what you know about the missing parlourmaid, Mary Ann Taylor, ma'am.”

“Don't know anything,” Miss Lavinia responded bluntly. “Except that she no more looked like Mary Ann Taylor than you or I do. Don't suppose for a minute she was christened Mary Ann.”

Inspector Stoddart permitted himself a slight smile.

“Unfortunately we do not know what children will grow up like when they are christened, madam.”

“Rubbish!” Miss Lavinia retorted uncompromisingly. “That girl Taylor was a minx in her cradle I am certain, and made eyes at the parson who baptized her. But I can't tell you anything about Mary Ann Taylor; I only know what my niece says about her – that she was a very good parlourmaid.”

“Mr. Wilton has informed me that you thought you had seen Mary Ann Taylor in a different position.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Miss Lavinia sniffed. 

“That young man says considerably more than his prayers. I did fancy I had met the girl in different circumstances when I first saw her, and I suppose Mr. Wilton heard me say so, but I have never been able to place her, so I have come to the conclusion that I must have been mistaken. After all, what with lipsticks and rouge and legs, most of the girls are pretty much alike nowadays.”

The detective looked disappointed.

“You cannot give me any idea where you may have seen her?”

Miss Lavinia shook her head vigorously.

“Haven't I just told you I believe it must have been a mistake? Still” – she wrinkled up her brows until they threatened to disappear altogether – “if I did see her or some one like her I think it must have been abroad. Probably at one of these casinos or places. But what it matters I can't imagine. Wherever I saw her or whatever she was doing if I did see her, one thing is certain – she had nothing to do with my brother-in-law's death.”

“Madam, I am certain of nothing,” said the inspector, fixing his penetrating eyes upon her.

She gave a short laugh.

“Anyhow, my good man, you won't get me to believe a good-looking girl – parlourmaid or not – shot her master in cold blood without any provocation whatever. A master, moreover, upon whom, I guess, she had cast the glad eye.”

The inspector pricked up his ears.

“The only thing I have heard is that Dr. Bastow was not at all that sort of man.”

“What sort of man?” Miss Lavinia said satirically. “If there is any sort of man that does not like being made much of by a pretty woman, I have never encountered the species. Why, even Sir Felix Skrine remarked to me just now that Taylor was a good-looking girl. Oh, I dare say she had her own reasons for not wanting her past to be looked into, but those reasons had nothing to do with Dr. Bastow's death. You may take my word for it.”

The inspector fingered the tip of his ear meditatively. Evidently there was nothing much to be gained by questioning Miss Priestley further about Mary Ann Taylor. He changed the subject.

“You know Miss Iris Houlton, of course, madam?”

Miss Lavinia sniffed – snorted would perhaps be the better word.

“Well, I do and I don't. Nasty, sly-looking little cat! Nobody ever knows what she is up to. Now, if you suspected her of the murder you might be nearer the mark. Not but what I believe she was safely off the premises long before the murder took place,” she finished grudgingly.

“So I understand,” Inspector Stoddart assented. “Well, Miss Priestley, I don't know that there is anything else at present. The inquest, of course, will be opened tomorrow morning, but I expect only formal evidence will be taken and it will be adjourned for a week or so to give us time to make inquiries. After the adjournment you will be one of the first witnesses called.”

“Well, I shall not be much use to them,” Miss Lavinia said as she turned to depart. “Not that that will stop them asking me all sorts of idiotic questions!”

“Hilary, my dear child, you must not cry like this.”

Sir Felix Skrine was the speaker. He put his hand caressingly on Hilary's shoulder as he spoke.

“You will make yourself quite ill.”

He had been talking to the girl about his long friendship with her dead father, and Hilary had been listening with the same apathetic calm with which so far she had listened to all the discussion of her father's death, when quite suddenly to Sir Felix's dismay her face began to twitch and she burst into a passion of tears.

“Oh, father, father!” she sobbed.

Skrine's own face began to work.

“I wish to God I could bring him back to you,” he breathed. “But, Hilary, how it would grieve him to see you crying like this.”

“Not a bit of it! He would know it was the best thing for her,” a third voice, Miss Lavinia Priestley's, interrupted at this juncture. “Come, Sir Felix, you will do no good here now. Go and talk to Fee. The poor boy is miserable enough and he has no young man to console him.”

Sir Felix drew his brows together. It was obvious that the allusion to the understanding between Hilary and Basil Wilton had displeased him. But consoling Hilary in Miss Lavinia's presence was not quite what he wanted. He went out of the room but he did not go upstairs to Fee. Instead he paced up and down the hall, his hands behind him, that furrow in his forehead that always showed when some knotty problem was perplexing him.

So Inspector Stoddart found him, when ten minutes later he came in through the surgery entrance, followed by a man unmistakably of the street lounger type – a man who slunk along with furtive eyes and loose, damp mouth across which he continually drew a grimy, hairy hand.

Sir Felix looked at him in disgust as he responded to the inspector's greeting.

“I was hoping for a word with you this morning, Sir Felix,” the inspector began. “But first I should like you to hear what this man has to say.”

As he spoke he opened the door of the morning-room which was now practically given up to him.

The expression of distaste on Sir Felix's face deepened as he followed. The inspector beckoned the man he had brought in up to one window.

“This man is a licensed police messenger, Sir Felix, and his pitch includes this street, Upper Mortimer Street and the right side of Park Road and Rufford Square. He manages to scrape a living out of it somehow, and on the night of Dr. Bastow's death he was walking round as usual, hoping to pick up a job.”

“Oh!” Sir Felix's face changed. He looked again at the licensed police messenger, for the first time noticing the badge on his arm. “Well, what do you know of Dr. Bastow's death?” he inquired. “For I suppose he does know something or you would not have brought him here, inspector.”

The inspector nodded.

“Speak up, Turner,” he said encouragingly. “Just tell this gentleman what you have told me.

The police messenger swallowed something in his throat two or three times as he drew his hand across his mouth.

“I was just walking down this side of Rufford Square,” he began, “when I see a tall man come across –”

“When was this?” Sir Felix interrupted.

The man hesitated, standing first on one foot, then on the other.

“Last Tuesday night, as ever was, sir, it were.”

“And what time?” Sir Felix pursued, adopting his cross-examining manner.

“About half-past nine, sir, putting it as near as I can. Leastways it couldn't have been more than a few minutes past, for I hear it strike the half-hour from St. Michael's Church after I come into the Square. Looking out for a job, I were, for I had had a lean time last week, and I see –”

“Rather late to be looking for a job, wasn't it?” Sir Felix again interposed.

“Well, no, sir. There's often new folks coming in with boxes then and I picks up a copper or two.”

“Well, now go on. What did you see?”

“I see a tall gent come into the Square from St. Michael's way; right across out into Benbow Street he went, and across to Lower Park Road. I kep' on the same way thinking he might want a taxi or some'at. But in Lower Park Road he opens the green door in the wall as I know were Dr. Bastow's.” He stopped, drawing in his breath.

“Well, well, go on!” said Sir Felix impatiently.

“I were surprised, sir, for I knowed that door was not opened, 'cept for something very special an' I stood an' waited, thinking it looked like a job. Then a woman came along and went in, an' I –”

“A woman – what sort of a woman?” Sir Felix interposed.

The man stared round vaguely.

“A – just a woman, sir.”

“Old or young?”

“Well, I couldn't rightly say, sir. She didn't look old, not as I could see. Her petticoats was short and her stockings was light like.”

“Everybody's are,” the inspector remarked. “Was she tall or short – this woman?”

“Well, short-like, sir. I call to mind I thought she looked a little 'un, going in after the man. He were tall.”

“Now, can you tell us what he was like?” Sir Felix was resuming his cross-examination.

Turner scratched his head.

“Well, he was tall, sir. As tall or maybe taller than yourself. An' he had a darkish beard, which I noticed, not so many folks wearing 'em nowadays.”

Sir Felix nodded.

“Sure enough! You seem to be a man of observation after all, my friend. Now can you tell us anything more you noticed? His clothes, for example?”

Turner hesitated a moment, taking out a grimy pocket-handkerchief and blowing his nose noisily.

“He 'ad a bowler 'at on, sir – my lord, and dark clothes – one of them short jackets what everybody wears.”

“And you heard nothing while you were waiting there? No opening or closing of doors, or talking, as if this man and woman had met?” the inspector interrogated sharply. He was not disposed to leave quite everything even to Sir Felix Skrine.

“Not as long as I was there, sir,” the man answered. “But I were in luck's way that night. I had a call from the other side of the road. And I hear no more from Dr. Bastow's. Nor give the man another thought, not even when I heard the doctor was dead. Not till this morning when the policeman come asking me questions like.”

“Well, I think that is all, for now, my man,” the inspector finished. “You will be wanted later.”