Crow's Inn Tragedy Read online

  “I hope so, I am sure,” Mr. Steadman said as he shook hands. “This is a most terrible and mysterious crime, but there are several valuable clues. I do not think it should remain undiscovered long.”

  “I hope not!” the rector sighed. “And yet we cannot bring poor Luke back, we can only punish his murderer.”

  “And that I mean to do!” Mrs. Bechcombe said passionately. “I have sworn to devote every penny of my money and every moment of my life to avenging my husband.”

  “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” murmured Aubrey Todmarsh.

  “Yes, I never professed to be of your way of thinking,” Mrs. Bechcombe returned with unveiled contempt. “I prefer to undertake the vengeance myself, thank you.”

  Mr. Steadman looked at Anthony. “I understand that you called at the office yesterday morning.”

  “Yes, I did,” returned Anthony defiantly. “And, when old Thompson told me I couldn’t see Mr. Bechcombe, I was fool enough to say I would go round to the private door and get in to him that way.”

  “And did you?” questioned Mr. Steadman quietly.

  “Yes, I did, but I did not go in and murder my uncle,” returned Anthony in the same loud, passionate tone.

  “Did you see him?” Mr. Steadman inquired.

  “Yes. He came to the door and told me to go away. He was expecting an important client.”

  “Tony, you did not ask him for money?” his father said piteously.

  Anthony’s face softened as he looked at him. “I was going to, but I didn’t get the chance. He wouldn’t listen to me. I went on to ask a friend of mine in the next room to come out to lunch with me. As we were passing my uncle’s room he came to the door. ‘I want you, Tony,’ he said sharply. My friend went on, telling me to follow to the Field of Rest. Uncle Luke kept me a few minutes talking. He told me that if I had a really good opening he would go into it, if it were really promising the lack of money should not stand in the way. He said I was to come and see him that night and talk things over. I meant to go, of course. But then I heard this—” and Anthony gulped down something in his throat.

  “Did you keep your friend waiting?” inquired Mr. Steadman.

  “Yes, I did!” Tony answered, staring at him. “Uncle Luke kept me a minute or two. But then I missed my way to the Field of Rest, and was wandering about the best part of half an hour. I suppose you don’t call that a very satisfactory alibi,” he added truculently.

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Tony!” Mrs. Bechcombe interposed fretfully. “Of course we are all sure that you would not have hurt your uncle. We want to know if you saw anyone—if you met this wicked woman.”

  “What wicked woman? What do you mean, Aunt Madeleine?”

  “The woman who left her glove in his room, the woman who killed my husband,” Mrs. Bechcombe returned, her breath coming quickly and nervously, her hands clenching and unclenching themselves.

  “My dear Madeleine,” Mr. Steadman interrupted her, “I do not think it possible that the crime could have been committed by a woman.”

  “And I am sure that it was,” she contradicted stormily. “Women are as powerful as men nowadays and Luke was not strong. He had a weak heart.” And with the last words she burst into a very tempest of tears.

  Her cousin looked at her pityingly.

  “Well, well, my dear girl! At any rate the police are searching everywhere for this woman. The finding her can only be a matter of a few days now. I am going to send your maid to you.” He signed to the other men and they followed him out of the room. “Do her all the good in the world to cry it out,” he remarked confidentially when he had closed the door. “I haven’t seen her shed a tear yet. Now I am going to see Inspector Furnival before the inquest opens. That, of course, will be absolutely formal, at first. Can I give any of you a lift?”

  “I think not, thank you,” Mr. Collyer responded. “There must be some—er—arrangements to be made here and it’s quite possible we may be of some real service.”

  Both young men looked inclined to dissent, but the barrister proffered no further invitation and a minute or two later they saw him drive off.

  He was shown in at once to Inspector Furnival, who was writing at his office table, briskly making notes in a large parchment bound book. He got up as the door opened.

  Mr. Steadman shook hands. “You haven’t forgotten me, I hope, inspector?”

  The inspector permitted himself a slight smile. “I haven’t forgotten how you helped me to catch John Basil.”

  “Um! Well, my cousin—Mrs. Bechcombe is my cousin, you know—has insisted on my coming to you this morning,” Mr. Steadman went on, taking the chair the inspector placed by the table. “This is a terrible business, inspector. It looks fairly plain sailing at first sight, but I don’t know.”

  The inspector glanced at him. “You think it looks like plain sailing, sir? Well, it may be, but I confess I don’t see it quite in that way myself.”

  Mr. Steadman met the detective’s eyes with a curious look in his own. “What of Thompson’s disappearance?”

  The inspector blotted the page in his ledger at which he had been writing and left the blotting-paper on.

  “Ay, as usual you have put your finger on the spot, Mr. Steadman. What has become of Thompson? He walked out of the office and apparently disappeared into space. For from that moment we have not been able to find anyone who has seen him.”

  “The inference being—?” Mr. Steadman raised his eyebrows.

  The inspector laid his hand on a parcel of papers lying on the table at his elbow.

  “There wasn’t much about the case in the papers this morning,” he said, replying indirectly to the barrister’s question, “but the one that comes out at ten o’clock—Racing Special they call it: selections on the back page, don’t you know—in almost every case gives a large space on its front page to ‘The Murder of a Solicitor in his Office,’ and every one of them mentions the disappearance of his managing clerk. The inference, though the paragraphs are naturally guarded in the extreme, is unmistakable.”

  Mr. Steadman reached over for one of the papers.

  “Don’t take any notice of these things myself; they have to write up the sensation. Um! Yes! No doubt what they’re hinting at, but they’re generally wrong. What should Thompson want to kill his employer for, unless—”

  “Ay, exactly; unless—” the inspector said dryly. “That was one of my first thoughts, sir. John Walls is going through the books with an auditor this morning. And Mr. Turner, who was in the firm until last year, is going over the contents of the safe. When we get their reports we shall know more.”

  The barrister nodded. “Thompson had been with the firm for many years.”

  “Eighteen, I believe,” assented the inspector. “He seems to have been a great favourite with Mr. Bechcombe, but it is astonishing how little his fellow-clerks know of him. Only two of them have ever seen him out of the office, and none of them appear to have the least idea where he lives.”

  Mr. Steadman did not speak for a moment, then he said slowly:

  “The fact that so little is known seems in itself curious. Is there no way of ascertaining his address?”

  “One would imagine that there must be a note of it somewhere at the office,” the inspector remarked, “but so far we have not been able to find it.”

  “How about the woman visitor?” the barrister inquired, changing the subject suddenly.

  “We haven’t been able to identify her at present.” The inspector opened the top drawer at his right hand, and took the white glove that had been found by the murdered man’s desk from its wrapping of tissue paper. The most cursory glance showed that it was an expensive glove, even if the maker’s name had not been known as one of the most famous in London and Paris. About it there still clung the vague elusive scent that always seems to linger about the belongings of a woman who is attracted by and attractive to the other sex.

  Mr. Steadman handled it carefully and inspected it thoroug
hly through his eyeglasses. “Yes. We ought to be able to find the mysterious woman with the aid of this.”

  “Ah, yes. We shall find the wearer,” the inspector said confidently. “But will that be very much help in solving the mystery of Luke Bechcombe’s death?”

  The barrister looked at him.

  “I don’t know that it will. Still, why doesn’t she come forward and say ‘I saw Mr. Bechcombe the morning he was murdered. My business with him was urgent and I saw him by special appointment.’ She is much more likely to be suspected of the crime if she refuses to come forward. Mrs. Bechcombe seems certain of her guilt, and women do have intuitions.”

  “I’m not much of a believer in them myself,” remarked Inspector Furnival, shrugging his shoulders. “I would rather have a penn’orth of direct evidence than a pound’s worth of intuition. And I don’t believe that Mr. Bechcombe was murdered by a woman. A woman doesn’t spring at a man and strangle him. She may stab him or shoot him, the weapons being to hand, but strangle him with her hands—no. Besides, this was a premeditated crime. There was an unmistakable smell of chloroform about the body, faint, I grant you, but unmistakable. No, no! It wasn’t a woman. As to why she doesn’t speak—well, there may be a dozen reasons. In the first place she may not have heard of the murder at all. It doesn’t occupy a very conspicuous place in the morning’s papers. It will be a different matter to-night. Then, she might not want her business known. And, above all, many a woman—and man too—hates to be mixed up in a murder case, and won’t speak out till she is driven to it.”

  “Quite so!”

  The barrister sat silent for a minute or two, his eyes staring straight in front of him at nothing in particular. Inspector Furnival took another glance at his notes.

  “Spencer, the only person we have been able to trace so far who has seen this mysterious woman, fancies that her face is familiar to him, but does not know in what connection. I have suggested to him that she is possibly an actress, and he is inclined to think that it may be so. I have sent him up a quantity of photographs to see if he can identify any of them. But don’t you see, Mr. Steadman, Mr. Spencer’s evidence tends rather to exonerate Thompson. Spencer went out after Thompson and met this woman on It therefore appears probable that Thompson was off the premises before the woman came on.”

  Mr. Steadman shook his head.

  “It isn’t safe to assume anything in a case of this kind. We do not know that Thompson went off the premises. We do not know where he went or where he is.”

  “Very true! I wish we did,” asserted the inspector. “At the same time—”

  The telephone bell was ringing sharply over his desk. He took up the receiver.

  “That you, Jones? Yes, what is it? Inspector Furnival speaking.”

  “Thompson’s address has been found in one of Mr. Bechcombe’s books. There are several other of the clerks’ addresses there all entered in Mr. Bechcombe’s writing, and all the others we have verified.”

  “What is it?”

  “Number 10 Brooklyn Terrace, North Kensington.”

  “Um! I will see to it at once.” And the inspector rang off sharply.

  CHAPTER VI

  “Can’t hear of Brooklyn Terrace anywhere, sir.” The speaker was Mr. Steadman’s chauffeur.

  He had been going slowly the last few minutes, making ineffectual inquiries of the passers-by. Inside the car Mr. Steadman had Inspector Furnival seated beside him.

  “Better drive to the nearest post-office and ask there. They will be sure to know.”

  “Call this North Kensington, do they?” the barrister grumbled, as the car started again. “Seems to me in my young days it used to be called Notting Hill.”

  The inspector laughed. “Think North Kensington sounds a bit more classy, I expect. Not but what there are some very decent old houses hereabouts. Oh, by Jove! Is this Brooklyn Terrace?” as the car turned into a side street that had apparently fallen on evil days. Each house evidently contained several tenants. In some cases slatternly women stood on the doorsteps, shouting remarks to their neighbours, while grubby faced children played about in the gutter or crawled about on the doorsteps of their different establishments. It scarcely seemed the place in which would be found the missing managing clerk of Messrs. Bechcombe and Turner’s establishment.

  No. 10 was a little tidier than its neighbours, that is to say, the door was shut and there were no children on the doorstep.

  The chauffeur pulled up.

  “This is it, sir.”

  Mr. Steadman eyed it doubtfully.

  “Well, inspector, I expect this really is the place.”

  “It is the address in Mr. Bechcombe’s book right enough, sir. As to whether Mr. Amos Thompson lives here—well, we shall soon see.”

  He got out first and knocked at the door, the barrister following meekly. The car waiting at the side was the object of enormous interest to the denizens of the street. There was no response to the knock for some time. At last a small child in the next area called out:

  “You’ll have to go down, they don’t never come to that there door!”

  Mr. Steadman put up his glass and peered over the palings. A slatternly-looking woman was just looking out of the back door.

  “Can you let us in, my good woman?” the barrister called out. “We want Mr. Thompson.”

  The woman muttered something, probably scenting a tip, and presently they heard her clattering along the passage.

  “Mr. Thompson, is it?” she said as she admitted them. “His room is up at the top.”

  “Is he at home?” Inspector Furnival questioned.

  The woman stared at him. “I don’t know. If you just like to walk up you will find out.”

  The stairs were wide, for the house had seen better days, but indescribably dirty. Up at the very top it was a little cleaner. There were several doors on the landing but nothing to show which, if any, was Thompson’s. As they stood there, wondering which it could be, an old man came up behind them.

  “Were you looking for anyone, gentlemen?” he asked, in a weak, quavering voice that told that, like the house, he had fallen on evil times.

  The inspector turned to him. “I want Mr. Amos Thompson.”

  The old man pointed to the door just in front of them.

  “That is his door, but I doubt if you will find him in. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. I don’t think he slept here.”

  “Do you often see him?” the inspector questioned as he applied his knuckles to the door.

  The old man looked surprised at the question.

  “Why, yes, sir, I have only been here a month, but I have found Mr. Thompson a remarkably pleasant gentleman. He always passes the time of day with me and often stops for a word over the day’s news. An uncommonly nice man is Mr. Thompson. It has often crossed my mind to wonder why he stayed here, where there is no comfort to speak of for the likes of him.”

  The inspector and Mr. Steadman wondered too, as they waited there, while no answer came to the former’s repeated knocking.

  A room in No. 10 Brooklyn Terrace certainly seemed no fitting home for Amos Thompson with his handsome salary.

  “We must get in somehow,” the inspector said to Mr. Steadman. Then he turned to the old man opposite who was watching them with frightened eyes. “Has anyone else a key to these rooms, a charwoman or anybody?”

  The man shook his head.

  “We all do for ourselves, here, sir. We don’t afford charwomen and such-like. As for getting in—well, I expect the landlord has keys. He is on the first floor. But I do not think he would open Mr. Thompson’s door without—”

  “Is this landlord likely to be at home now?” the inspector interrupted.

  “He is at home, sir. I saw him as I came upstairs.”

  The inspector took out his card. “Will you show him this and say that Mr. Thompson cannot be found. He disappeared under peculiar circumstances yesterday and, since he is not here, we must enter his room to see wh
ether we can find any clue to his whereabouts.”

  The man visibly paled as he read the name on the card. Then he rapidly disappeared down the stairs. Mr. Steadman looked across at the inspector.

  “Queer affair this! What the deuce does the fellow mean by putting up at a place like this?”

  “Well, he isn’t extravagant in the living line!” the inspector said with a grin.

  John Steadman raised his eyebrows. “Not here!”

  At this moment the landlord arrived with the keys. Quite evidently his curiosity had been excited by the advent of the visitors to his lodger. Probably he had been expecting his summons. He held Inspector Furnival’s card in his hand.

  “I understand I have no choice, gentlemen.”

  “None!” the inspector said grimly.

  The landlord made no further demur, but unlocking the door he flung it open and stood back. The others waited for a minute in the doorway and looked round. At first sight nothing could have been less likely to give away the occupier’s secrets than this room. It was quite a good size with a couple of windows, and a small bed in a recess with a curtain hung over it, an oil lamp stood before the fireplace. The floor was covered with linoleum, there was no carpet, not even a rug. A solid square oak table stood in the middle of the room and there were three equally solid-looking chairs. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a movable corner cupboard standing at the side of the window. The inspector went over and threw the door open. Inside there was a cup and saucer, a teapot and tea-caddy, a bottle of ink, and a book upon which the inspector immediately pounced. He went through it from end to end, he shook it, he banged it on the table; a post card fell from it; the inspector stared at it, then with a puzzled frown he handed it to Mr. Steadman. The barrister glanced at it curiously. On the back was a portrait of a girl—evidently the work of an amateur.

  “Do you know who that is?” questioned the inspector.

  Mr. Steadman shook his head. “It is no one that I have ever seen before. Do you mean that you do?”

  “That is a likeness—very badly taken, I grant you—but an unmistakable likeness of Miss Hoyle, the late Mr. Bechcombe’s secretary.”