Richardson's First Case (13 page)

“What was he wearing?”

“He was wearing a soft hat and a mackintosh.”

“A black one?”

“No, fawn-coloured—you know the sort—and he had on a blue tie.”

“Did you notice anything about his voice?”

“Oh, he had quite an Oxford accent—like the B.B.C. announcers.”

“How long was it after the accident?”

“Oh, just two or three minutes, I should think. We were still talking about it at the door when he came.”

“Well, now, call your sister and I'll award the prize.”

“Bertha!” yelled the flapper. “Come on, he's going to give the prize.”

“I haven't got it in my pocket, but there's a shop close by. What kind of chocolate do you like best?”

“Peter's milk,” said the flapper promptly, “but tell us who's won before you go and get it.”

“No,” said Richardson; “the prize first and the decision afterwards. Wait in the shop till I come back.” He was not long away. He returned with a packet of “Peter's milk” in each pocket. The girls were in the midst of a heated argument about the kind of overcoat and the kind of hat that the man with the umbrella had been wearing; each stuck firmly to her own recollection.

“Now, young ladies, I have to award the prize. Your descriptions of that gentleman were so good that it's impossible to say which is the best.”

The flapper's eyes grew round with amazement. “But Bertha's was all wrong.” Bertha tossed her head and scorned defending herself.

Richardson continued, “In my opinion they were both good, and so I shall award a prize to each of you.” He suited the action to the word. “I'm not going to ask for your photographs, but I want you to give me your names, because I keep a diary, and whenever I see the names in it I shall think of you.”

Bertha simpered and gave their names as Bertha and Alice Cunningham.

“You don't live here?”

“No, but we're here every day. The owner comes in in the evening to lock up, and we come in at nine o'clock in the morning.”

“Good evening, Miss Cunningham, I'm very much obliged to you.”

Richardson tried two more shops without success and then returned to the police station to report progress. Inspector Foster listened to Miss Bertha's description eagerly. It seemed to fit Arthur Harris, but when Richardson proceeded to read the flapper's version the inspector wilted in his chair.

“Isn't that like the girl witness? One calls him youngish, and the other middle-aged. One says he's wearing a bowler and a dark overcoat, and the other a soft hat and a fawn-coloured raincoat. One says that his voice was just ordinary, and the other that he talked like a B.B.C. announcer. What can you make of it? The elder girl's description would fit Arthur Harris as far as it goes.”

“It would, sir, and, after all, the younger one is little more than a child, and to a child any man over seventeen is middle-aged. You notice one point of agreement: they both mention that he was carrying an open umbrella.”

“Like thousands of others on a wet night.”

Neither could foresee at that moment how important the evidence of that umbrella was to prove.

A
T ELEVEN
o'clock next morning Sir William Lorimer received a telephone message from the Admiralty, announcing that Lieutenant Sharp had just reported himself and was on his way to New Scotland Yard. He sent for Morden and suggested that the first interview with him should take place in his room in Morden's presence. “You know exactly how the case stands, and we had better not have too many people in the room.”

They had scarcely settled upon the line of questions to be put to the sailor when the messenger came to announce his arrival and was told to show him in.

Morden had pictured him as a debonair young man of the type of his friend, Guy Kennedy; he was not prepared for a serious person, with well-cut features and an air of determination about the mouth. Sir William shook hands with him and introduced him to Morden. “I must ask you to forgive us for dragging you off your ship by telegram like this, Mr. Sharp, but we had no choice. I suppose you know the reason.”

“I know nothing except that the Admiralty ordered me home. No one at the Admiralty could tell me anything beyond the fact that Scotland Yard wanted urgently to see me.”

The two police officials exchanged glances. Someone had to break the news of his aunt's death to him.

“I hoped that your friends had telegraphed to prepare you for bad news. Your aunt, Mrs. Catchpool, died on the evening you left London.”

“Died? Surely there must be some mistake. I saw her alive and well at six o'clock that evening.” He had turned very white under his tan, and his eyes were filling with tears.

“I'm afraid there is no mistake. It was worse than a simple death. She was murdered.”

“My God! Where? How?”

“She was found next morning in her husband's shop, and the doctors certified that she had been strangled.”

Unless the young man was a consummate actor, thought Morden, watching him, he could never have produced so convincing an appearance of shock.

When he had recovered a little he said, “What could have taken her there? Was it about that nonsense of turning her out of her flat? Besides, she had no enemies.”

“A great deal turns upon the time at which she was killed, and that is why we asked the Admiralty to send for you. We understand from the young lady, Miss Summers, that you thought you saw her at the Marble Arch at about six.”

“I didn't think I saw her; I did see her.”

“But in a crowd like that one might easily be mistaken.”

“I couldn't possibly have been mistaken. She was a very remarkable-looking woman, taller than most women, and besides, she was wearing clothes that I recognized, and I knew her walk and her way of turning her head. I was so certain of her that I jumped off the bus to overtake her. I had to hustle my way through the crowd.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Her new fur coat. I noticed it particularly. I had gone with her to the shop where she bought it, and she was like a young girl trying it on before the glass. I chaffed her about her extravagance, and she said, ‘This kind of fur wears for ever; it'll last my time. Besides, I shall only wear it on bright cold days.'” His voice broke for a moment; then he continued, “That is what makes it so certain that I wasn't mistaken; she was wearing the coat on a wet, foggy evening.”

“Was it a brown fur coat?”

“Yes. Was she wearing it when you found her?”

Morden nodded. “And you did overtake her?”

“Well, no, I didn't. My God! If I had she might be alive at this moment.”

“How did you miss her?”

“I can't tell you exactly. I forced my way through the crowd and thought that I must be ahead of her. I waited a second or two to give her time to come up, and then, as she didn't, I set off after her again. Whether she turned off into Portman Street and into Baker Street by Granville Place or Portman Square I can't tell you. When I lost her I made the round of all those side streets, but if you say that she was found at the shop in High Street, Marylebone, I suppose that she took a bus up Baker Street and that was how I missed her.”

“I think that Mr. Morden may like to ask you a few questions about what you did afterwards—that is between six-thirty and the time you left London.”

Morden took the hint. He was better posted in detail than his chief. “Did you go on to your aunt's flat to see whether she had gone home?”

“No, she was going in the opposite direction when I saw her, and, she could scarcely have turned back without running into me.”

“Well, then, how long did you keep up the search?”

“I didn't look at my watch, but it must have been a good half-hour, to judge from the number of streets I covered.”

“Then we will call it half-past six. What did you do then? Go back to your hotel?”

“Well, no, not at once. I walked about.”

“At what time did you get to your hotel?”

“Just before dinner. I dined at about a quarter to eight.”

“So you were walking about the streets without any definite object for an hour and a quarter.”

“Something like that.” Lorimer, watching him, noticed that his face flushed under this fire of questions. Morden continued relentlessly:

“You must have covered a considerable distance in an hour and a quarter. Do you remember where you went?”

“Vaguely. I walked about the neighbourhood thinking that I might meet my aunt.”

“When were you last at your uncle's shop?”

“My uncle? Oh, you mean old Catchpool. I've never been there in my life.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“I've heard my aunt say that it was in High Street, Marylebone, but it didn't interest me.”

“Didn't it occur to you, when you saw your aunt going in that direction, that she might be going there?”

“No, because it was the last place I should have expected her to go to.”

“Do you know whether she had a key to the shop?”

“No, I feel pretty sure that she hadn't. Her husband wasn't the sort of man to trust anyone with a key—least of all his wife.”

“Do you know whether your aunt left a will?”

“No, I don't. She had a solicitor—a man named Settle—somewhere near Charing Cross. He might know, but she had very little to leave. She told me once that most of her income would die with her. It came from annuities bought by her father.”

“You had an hour and a quarter on your hands; I can't understand why you did not go to your aunt's flat to see whether she had come home.”

The young man thought for a moment, frowning, and then replied, “As I didn't meet her I took a bus.”

“You took a bus? Where did you take it, and where was it going to?”

The flush became deeper. “I think that I must have taken it in Baker Street. I was tired of walking, and I wanted a lift on my way to the hotel. The bus was going southward.”

Morden noticed that his replies had become evasive in this latter part of his story. He began to press his questions. “Look here, Mr. Sharp, it is necessary for us to have a full and very frank account of your movements after you saw your aunt. It is very important that nothing should be kept back. What happened during that hour and a quarter? What you tell us will be kept quite confidential.”

And then the young man proceeded to tell a story so incredible that Sir William Lorimer found it hard to restrain a smile, and harder still to conceal his incredulity. At the end of this story there were no questions left to ask.

“Well, Mr. Sharp,” said Sir William, “we are very much obliged to you. Your coming here has been very useful to us, and no doubt it will prove even more useful in the future. We understand that you are invited to stay with your friends, the Kennedys; they are expecting you. If you make other arrangements, please let us know, as we must keep in touch with you.”

“Thank you; I will. Good morning.”

The two police officials looked at each other and then gave vent to their suppressed amusement. “What I couldn't get over,” laughed Morden, “was the solemnity and earnestness of the gentleman while he was telling that cock-and-bull story.”

“But, seriously, I don't like the look of this: no one tells a story like that unless he's got something to hide. And there could have been so many better stories. Why tell a yarn like that and then let it tail off at the end? He could so easily have rounded it off.”

“You don't suspect our young friend of murder, I hope?”

“I don't pretend to say which of the commandments he had been breaking, but I think it must lie between the sixth and seventh.”

Michael Sharp hailed a taxi, picked up his luggage at Victoria cloakroom, and drove to the Kennedys' flat. He received a boisterous welcome; they had had his telegram from Paris and were expecting him to lunch.

“Where have you been all the morning?” Michael flushed angrily. “Nan, come quick! Here's Michael in a towering rage. They put him on the rack in the Tower of London.”

Nan greeted her guest prettily; she was accustomed to her husband's badinage.

“Seriously, Michael, what have they been doing to you?”

“Putting me through the third degree like a common pickpocket. The head man was all right, but he'd got with him a cadaverous, watery-eyed blighter who put me through the hoop.”

“Steady,” said Guy. “You're talking most disrespectfully of my old friend, Morden, one of the best fellows in the world.”

“I can't help whose friend he is. He behaved like a blighter of the first water.”

“If it had been possible, Guy would have met you at the station and broken the news to you, instead of leaving you to hear it in that cold-blooded way. I've been thinking of you all the morning.”

“Thank you,” said Michael, and couldn't trust his voice to say more.

“Of course we went to the funeral, and we saw that there was a wreath sent in your name.” She gave him no chance of replying, but went on quickly, “You must be starving. Come to lunch.”

During the meal Guy did most of the talking and described his new life ashore as naval instructor. It was over the coffee and cigarettes that Michael referred to the subject that had brought him home. “I wish you would tell me why I was sent for. I can't understand it.”

“It was my fault,” said Guy. “Some paper came out with a penny plain and tuppence coloured account of the tragedy, which said that it had taken place at some time before five. Joan came round to us with the paper and told us that you had seen your aunt alive after six, and what ought she to do about it. I stepped into the breach at once; I didn't want poor old Morden to make an ass of himself and get pilloried in the press, but when I got down to the Yard they showed me in to the Great Panjandrum himself. So I said my piece and he summoned his privy council—as queer-looking a collection as ever you clapped eyes on. They began running round in circles. Some of them had quite made up their minds that old man Catchpool was the guilty one.”