Richardson's First Case (12 page)

“Is he dead?”

“You mean the boy that you knocked off his bicycle on the Guildford Road last Tuesday? I can relieve your mind on that score: he's not dead.”

“It was entirely his fault; he wobbled into me.”

“Yes, it's always the other fellow's fault, but you drove on without stopping.”

Harris bit his lip; there was no answer to that. “Well, what were you doing down at Guildford?”

“I went there to see a friend.”

“Was that after or before you saw Mr. Catchpool that day?”

“After, of course. I saw the old boy in the morning, and he told me that unless I paid up twenty pounds before five he'd go round and tell my father. So I ran down to Guildford and got a pal to lend me twenty pounds. Of course, I had to drive fast; I had to get to the old man before he started for Wigmore Street, and naturally I couldn't afford the time to stop when that young fool wobbled into me.”

“Did you go to the shop when you got back?”

“I did, but I was too late. I suppose the old blighter had started; at any rate, the shop was locked up. So I went back home and lay in wait for him with my twenty pounds, and I was going to give the old swine a bit of my mind, and the next thing I knew was that
you
blew in.”

“Then why did you say that you'd never seen old Catchpool before?”

“What did you expect me to say? Hadn't I been taking all this trouble to keep it from my father?—dashing down to Guildford, worrying my pal for a loan, risking my life as you might say—and then you expect me to give the whole show away by saying I knew him! Now look here, if I do come with you will you give me your word of honour never to say where you found me?”

“I give you my word that I'll tell nobody but my chief, and, of course, all such information is confidential. It won't get to your friends, if that's what you mean. Get your hat now: we'll start.”

Getting his hat seemed to be a more complicated process than usual. Unless Richardson's ears deceived him there were sounds of osculatory exercises from the back regions, but at last the young man tore himself away and joined him.

“S
IT DOWN
there,” said Richardson, when they arrived at Marylebone police station, and as he passed the station sergeant's table he murmured, “Don't let him leave.”

He found Inspector Foster in his room. “Back already? No luck, I suppose?”

“I've brought Arthur Harris with me, sir.”

“You haven't! Where did you find him?”

“Down at Abbey Wood, sir, staying with his young lady.”

“Did he come willingly?”

“Not very eagerly, sir. He says he ran away because of that boy he knocked over on the Guildford Road; thought he might have killed him.”

“Then that's one up to you, Richardson: that was your theory from the start. We'll have to go into all that presently. What we have to do now is to take a statement from him. You'd better be in the room, and if he goes back on what he said to you, you can nudge me. Bring him up.”

But Arthur Harris went back on nothing. To Foster, his statement did not sound like a made-up story. He answered every question readily and without reservation; he had every address on the tip of his tongue and, what seemed more convincing, there was a sense of injury in his tone; clearly, he thought that he had been shabbily treated.

“Did you sign any acknowledgment of your loan from Catchpool?” asked Foster.

“Trust the old Shylock for that; he made me sign a blue paper.”

“Which you took away with you?”

“How could I take it away? He stuck to it.”

“And you've never seen it since?”

“Never.”

“Well, now, Mr. Harris, you must go home, and as your father applied to the police to find you, Constable Richardson will accompany you to the door.”

Arthur Harris looked sheepish. “Perhaps you won't mind telling me what sort of mood my father was in when you saw him about me.”

“I didn't see him myself, sir, but I understand that he did not seem resentful against you.”

“Put the whole blame on the police, you mean? Just like him; he always must blame somebody.” He turned to Richardson. “Well, I'm ready if you are.”

As he led the way downstairs, Foster detained Richardson to say, “I'm going down to C.O. with this statement. Come on there when you've seen him safely into the house.”

The chief constable was busy with expense sheets when Foster knocked at his door. He growled at the interruption but pushed his work aside when he saw who the visitor was. “Oh, it's you, is it? Anything new?”

“Yes, sir, we've found young Harris.”

“H'm! That hasn't taken long. Who found him?”

“P.C. Richardson, sir. It was smart work. I've taken a statement from Harris, if you'd like to look at it.”

Beckett read the statement, initialled it, and threw it into the registry basket. “Well, that seems to clear Harris out of the way.”

“You think so, sir? I'm not so sure. All the early part of the statement may be true; it hangs together, but I'm not so sure about what happened after he knocked at the door of the shop and found it locked. At all hazards he wanted to prevent Catchpool from seeing his father. Suppose that he went down Baker Street pretty quickly in order to get to the house first, and overtook Catchpool, he might have seen that blue paper sticking out of his pocket and snatched it. That would fit in with the eyewitness of the accident who said that he overheard Catchpool say ‘Very well, then, I'll call a policeman.' Catchpool would have been taking that blue paper with him when he went to see the father.”

“How you Scotsmen do stick to your theories! Even if you are right there's no proof of the murder, whatever that old artist of yours said, and besides, he's not the sort of man you'd care to bring forward as principal witness in a capital case, is he?”

“No, sir, he is not, and besides he never saw the murderer, so he says.”

“Exactly. I keep an open mind myself, but so far you've produced nothing to shake my theory that old Catchpool strangled his wife and then got himself run over and killed. By the way, Mr. Morden left a message that he would like to see you if you came in. I'll tell him you're here.” He opened the communicating door and passed Foster in.

“Well, Mr. Foster, I hear that you've found the missing man and restored him to his sorrowing family.”

“Yes, sir, it was a good piece of work on the part of that young uniformed constable, and I've taken a statement from Harris which will come before you in due course.”

“A true statement, do you think?”

“It hangs together, sir. Whether it is all true or only part of it, it is too early to say.”

“Did he explain why he ran away?”

“Yes, sir, he'd knocked over a boy on the Guildford Road, and he thought that the police were after him for that.”

“Young fool! Didn't he stop?”

“No, sir, he said he hadn't time. He had to get back to stop Catchpool going to his father.”

“I can see that you still cling to your theory that he was concerned in the murder. You think that Catchpool was taking the lad's note of hand to the father and that Harris met him in the street and got hold of it. Well, it's a plausible theory, I admit. The note of hand is missing from the file, and Arthur Harris was the only person who had a strong interest in getting hold of it, and yet I can't help the feeling that the murder took place after six o'clock, when young Harris was with P.C. Richardson.”

“Well, sir, I suppose we must each have our own theories and see how they fit in with the new bits of evidence that may come in.”

“I saw Catchpool's lawyer yesterday, and he told me that, if it came to a scrap, the wife would have been a better man than the husband. Of course, a quick grab at the throat may be successful against a prize fighter; but he also said that a man like the nephew, Michael Sharp, could not have been mistaken when he says that he saw the woman alive at six-ten. It seems that the other theory that the husband was guilty originated with the other nephew, Herbert Reece.”

“Yes, sir, and Mrs. Catchpool's servant thought the same. I think that Mr. Beckett has held that theory all along.”

“Well, Mr. Foster, my advice to you is to keep an open mind and in your further inquiries not to exclude evidence that points to the woman having been alive after six. You see the difficulty. If she was alive at six, how did she get into the shop unless she had a key, or unless someone who had a key got there before her and let her in?”

“Yes, sir, everything seems to turn on that key. The charwoman saw him lock up the shop and go off with the key; no one touched his body except P.C. Richardson after the accident, and Richardson found no key in his pocket. We know that there was only one key which he guarded jealously. In the short distance between the shop and the scene of the accident, he was very unlikely to have dropped it or to have been robbed of it.”

“There is just a chance that it fell out of his pocket when he was knocked down. Sometimes people pick up keys in the street and foolishly take them into the nearest shop in case the owner should come and search for them, instead of taking them to a police station. Wouldn't it be worth while to make house-to-house inquiries in the shops nearest to the scene of the accident?”

“Perhaps it would, sir,” replied Foster, looking doubtful.

“Even if we don't find the key we may get some scrap of useful information. Why not put young Richardson onto that?”

“I will, sir; it's an idea, certainly.”

Richardson was waiting in the passage. Foster explained to him rapidly what he was to do, and the young policeman went off at once with an unhappy feeling that his inquiry would prove fruitless. At the first two shops—a cake shop and a hairdresser's—he drew blank. They remembered the accident, certainly, but they had been too busy to notice more than the usual crowd round the injured man and a policeman's helmet in its midst. The next shop specialized in baby linen. The saleswoman, a young lady of unripe years, looked a little surprised at receiving a customer of the opposite sex, but when he explained the object of his visit she summoned a girl rather older than herself.

“What did I tell you, Bertha!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Here's a gentleman called about that accident on Tuesday week—you remember when that old gentleman was knocked down by a car—wants to know whether anyone came in here with a doorkey he'd picked up.”

“No,” said Bertha, cautiously. “Someone did call in about the accident, but he didn't leave a key.” A hint of suspicion clouded her countenance. “You're not the insurance agent, are you? You've not come about a claim for damages?”

“No, I'm in search of a key which the poor old gentleman must have dropped when the car knocked him down.”

“Oh, on a dark afternoon like that, with the streets all muddy, no one would think of picking up a key; probably it got swept up by the broom cart next morning, or got picked up by the scavenger.”

“You say that someone did call about the accident?”

“Yes, a gentleman it was.”

“Let's be careful about this. I'm going to test your memories, young ladies.”

“Test our memories?”

“Yes, I'm going to ask each of you to describe him; it's rather an amusing game, because I fancy that I know the gentleman and I don't mind betting that your description will be quite different.”

The flapper entered into the spirit of the game and retired laughing, calling over her shoulder, “All right, you take Bertha first.”

“Now then, Miss Bertha, what was he like? I'll write down what you say, so that there can be no mistake, and the one that gives the best description shall have a box of chocolates.”

“Well,” said the girl Bertha, “of course, one couldn't see him well on a night like that; besides, he had his umbrella up and didn't put it down when he spoke to us through the door; just held it over his shoulder, but he was a man of middle height, youngish, not bad-looking, and spoke rather fast.”

“What time was it?”

“About a quarter of an hour after the accident, I should say.”

“What did he come about?”

“He said did we know where they had taken the old man who was knocked down by a car, and did we know whether he'd been badly hurt. I told him that we heard someone in the crowd say that he was dead; that they were taking him away in the ambulance to the hospital, but what was the use of taking a dead man there. He seemed a good deal upset and asked what hospital he'd been taken to. I could tell him that, because the man who spoke to us at the time said that it was the Middlesex, and I told him that a policeman went with the ambulance. Then he just said ‘Thank you' and went on.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Let me see; he had a bowler hat, I remember that, and a dark overcoat. I didn't notice anything else very particular about him.”

“What sort of voice had he?”

“Oh, just ordinary.”

Richardson was taking down her answers in his notebook. “Now, I'll take your sister's description.”

Bertha shouted for Alice and withdrew; the flapper stood before him bursting with importance.

“Now, young lady, tell me what you remember.”

“I remember quite a lot. He stood in the doorway there with his umbrella open on his shoulder, so that it blocked the shop door. He asked us if we'd seen the accident. Bertha said no, but she'd seen the crowd round it, and that we'd heard people say that the poor old man was for it, and that they'd taken him off in the ambulance to the Middlesex, but he was sure to be dead when he got there if he wasn't dead already.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well, he was a middle-aged man—fifty, I should think—clean-shaved and very tall.”