Crow's Inn Tragedy (22 page)

“I thought it would be, sir. And it was really all we had time for. Miss Hoyle is not an easy nut to crack.”

John Steadman was hard at work in Luke Bechcombe's study. He was finding his co-executor, the Rev. James Collyer, of very little use. It was rumoured that the rector had had a nervous breakdown, at any rate it appeared impossible to get him up to town and documents requiring his signature had to be sent to Wexbridge Rectory by special messenger.

Steadman was cogitating over this fact in some annoyance and deliberating the advisability of applying for the appointment of another executor, when he heard the sound of a taxi stopping before the door, and looking up he saw Inspector Furnival getting out. He went into the hall to meet him.

The inspector was looking grave and perturbed.

“Have you heard?” he questioned breathlessly.

“Nothing!” Steadman answered laconically.

“Mrs. Carnthwacke was murderously assaulted this morning in her own carriage in one of London's best-known thoroughfares!”

“What!” The barrister stared at him in a species of stupefaction.

Instead of answering the inspector stepped back to the open door of the study.

“One moment, please.”

But if to speak to John Steadman in private was his objective he did not obtain it. Mrs. Bechcombe came quickly into the hall with Cecily Hoyle close behind her.

“Inspector,” she cried, “what is it? You have discovered my husband's murderer? I heard you say ‘Mrs. Carnthwacke.'”

The inspector's face was very grave as he turned. Then he stood back for her to pass into the study. He did not speak again until they were all in the room, then he closed the door and looked at Luke Bechcombe's widow with eyes in which pity was mingled with severity.

“Mrs. Carnthwacke has nearly shared your husband's fate, madam,” he said very deliberately. “I think you must be convinced now of the absolute impossibility of the theory you have not hesitated to broadcast all along.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Bechcombe questioned sharply.

The inspector spread out his hands.

“As I was just telling Mr. Steadman, Mrs. Carnthwacke was murderously assaulted and left for dead in her own carriage this morning, in circumstances which leave small doubt in my mind that the miscreant who attacked her was Mr. Bechcombe's murderer.”

“I do not believe it! The Carnthwackes—one of them, murdered my husband,” Mrs. Bechcombe said uncompromisingly. “I have the strongest possible—”

She was interrupted by an odd sound, a sort of choking gasp from Cecily. They all turned. The girl was deathly white. She caught her breath sharply in her throat.

“It—it can't be true! I don't believe it! Why should he want to hurt Mrs. Carnthwacke?”

“Why should who want to hurt Mrs. Carnthwacke?” the inspector counter-questioned.

“Because—oh, I don't know— Oh, I know he didn't!” Cecily accompanied this asservation with a burst of tears. “Nobody could be so cruel.”

“Somebody has!” the inspector said dryly. “Is it any consolation to you to think that there are two murderers at large instead of one, Miss Hoyle?”

Cecily stared at him, twisting her hands about, apparently in an agony of speechlessness. She made two or three hoarse attempts to answer him. Then, with a wild glance round at the amazed faces of Steadman and Mrs. Bechcombe, she turned and rushed out of the room.

The inspector glanced at John Steadman—a glance intercepted by Mrs. Bechcombe.

“Hysteria!” that lady remarked scornfully. “I fancy she thinks that you suspect Anthony, and that naturally— But enough of Cecily Hoyle. What is this wild tale of yours about Mrs. Carnthwacke, inspector?”

“It is no wild tale, madam,” the inspector said coldly. “I have just come from the Carnthwackes' house, where Mrs. Carnthwacke lies at death's door. I came here by Mr. Carnthwacke's express desire to see whether I could induce Mr. Steadman to accompany me to consult with Mr. Carnthwacke as to the best measures to be taken now.”

“Of course I will come, inspector,” the barrister said readily. “As I should go anywhere where it was in the least probable that I should hear anything at all bearing upon our own case. One never knows from what point elucidation may come.”

Mrs. Bechcombe turned her shoulder to him.

“Oh, please don't prose, John! Now what has happened to Mrs. Carnthwacke, inspector?”

“Mrs. Carnthwacke, madam, was just taking a drive as you might yourself. She came up Piccadilly, left an order at a shop in New Bond Street, told her man to drive by way of Regent Street and Oxford Street to the Park, to go in by the Marble Arch and wait near the Victoria Gate until Mr. Carnthwacke who had been out for the night came from Paddington Station to join them. As it happened he was at the meeting-place first. When the car stopped he was amazed to see Mrs. Carnthwacke lolling back in a sort of crouching position against the side of the car. At first he thought she had had a fit of some kind, but there was an odour to which he was unaccustomed hanging about the car and then he discovered a piece of cord twisted tightly round his wife's throat. He cut it in a frenzy of fear and for some time they thought she was dead. But they drove straight to some doctor they knew close to the Park. He tried artificial respiration and brought her round to some extent, and then before they took her home, phoned to Scotland Yard for me.”

“What was the motive?” Steadman asked quietly.

The inspector raised his eyebrows.

“Only one person saw Mr. Bechcombe's murderer. Mrs. Carnthwacke was a witness to be feared.”

“But you say she is not got rid of! She is alive?” Mrs. Bechcombe interrupted hysterically.

“At present,” the inspector rejoined grimly. “Mr. Steadman, if you could come—? As I said before, Mr. Carnthwacke is most anxious to have your advice with regard to what steps should be taken to discover the would-be murderer. And there is no time to be lost.”

“I am at your service, inspector.” Steadman turned to the door. “You shall hear further particulars as soon as possible, Madeleine.”

In the taxi outside John Steadman looked at the inspector.

“Is this the work of the Yellow Dog, inspector?”

“It is the work of Mr. Bechcombe's murderer, sir,” the inspector replied evasively.

“You have some grounds for this conviction, I presume,” John Steadman rejoined. “At first sight it looks as though it might be an entirely independent affair. An attempt to steal any jewels that Mrs. Carnthwacke might be wearing. Or her money.”

“You wait until you have talked to Mrs. Carnthwacke, sir. You won't feel much doubt as to her assailant's identity then.”

“But is Mrs. Carnthwacke able to speak?” John Steadman questioned in great surprise. “I understood from what you said—”

The inspector looked him full in the face and solemnly winked one eye.

“It suits our purpose that the outside world and particularly Mrs. Carnthwacke's assailant should think her dying. But, as a matter of fact, when Mrs. Carnthwacke had rallied from the effects of the strangulation, except that she feels weak and ill from the shock, she was practically as well as you or I. She is perfectly able to discuss the matter with us, though by my advice she is keeping to her own rooms and it is being given out that she is still unconscious, lying between life and death.”

At No. 15 Blanden Square, they were received by Cyril B. Carnthwacke himself. He was looking pale and worried, but he greeted John Steadman warmly.

“Say, this is top hole of you, Mr. Steadman,” he exclaimed. “Come right away to my sanctum and I will put you wise as I can about this affair.”

He led the way to his study, a large room at the back of the house on the second floor. When they were inside he locked and bolted the door, somewhat to Steadman's surprise.

“Now,” he said, going to the opposite side of the room and unlocking another door, “we are going right away to Mrs. Carnthwacke and you shall hear what she says, Mr. Steadman.”

The door he opened led into what was apparently his dressing-room with a communicating door into Mrs. Carnthwacke's apartments. In this a couple of women dressed as nurses were sitting. They rose. Furnival murmured:

“Female detectives to guard Mrs. Carnthwacke. Even her own maid is not admitted.”

One of them opened the farther door and ushered them into Mrs. Carnthwacke's room. In spite of Inspector Furnival's report, Steadman was surprised to see how well she looked. She was lying back in a capacious arm-chair; some arrangement of lace concealed any damage there might be to her throat, and beyond the fact that she was unusually pale—which might have been put down to the absence of make-up—and that one side of her face was a little swollen, he would have noticed no difference in her.

He went forward with a few conventional words of sympathy. Mr. Carnthwacke drew up three chairs and motioned to the other men to be seated.

“Now, honey,” he said persuasively, “you are just going to make us all wise once more with what happened this morning.”

“I will do my best.” Mrs. Carnthwacke closed her eyes for a moment. “It is such a horrible ghastly thing. But—but I know that to let such a man be at large is a public danger. So I must tell you though every time I speak of it I seem to live through it again. Well, I left home this morning just as well as ever, Mr. Steadman. And really you wouldn't have thought I
could
be in any danger in my own car with two men on the front; now, would you?”

“I certainly should not,” John Steadman agreed.

“Such a thing never entered my head,” Mrs. Carnthwacke went on. “But first, perhaps, I had better say that I wore no jewellery that could possibly attract anybody's attention. None at all, in fact, but my wedding ring and the diamond half hoop was my engagement ring that which I have worn as a keeper ever since. I haven't even worn my pearls out of doors lately, because I thought it best to be on the safe side. Well, I went to my tailor's in New Bond Street. It was an awful bother getting there, because as you know Bond Street is up—any street you want to go to is always up—and we had to go very slow in the side streets because all the vehicles which turned out of Bond Street were crowding up in the narrower streets, and the traffic was generally disorganized. I was just hoping we should soon get out of the crush when the door of the car was opened and a young man got in. In that first moment I was not really frightened, for he looked like a gentleman and smiled quite pleasantly.”

“One minute, please,” Steadman interposed. “In what street were you now?”

“I don't know. I didn't notice. We didn't seem to have left New Bond Street very long! I really thought for the moment in a half bewildered way that he must be some one I had known very well in the old days when I was in England, and who had altered—grown as it were. He sat down opposite me. ‘I see you don't know me,' he said in quite a cultivated voice, ‘and yet it is not so very long since we met.' ‘Isn't it?' I said. ‘No, I don't seem to remember you. Where did we meet?' With that I put out my hand to the speaking tube, for I was beginning to think that all was not right. But he was too quick for me. He caught both my hands in his, then managing somehow to hold them both in one of his he sprang across and sat down beside me. I struggled, of course, and tried to call out, though I wasn't so awfully frightened, not at first, for it seemed unthinkable that I should really be hurt there in my own car in the broad daylight. But when I opened my mouth to cry out he stuck something into my mouth, something that burned and stung. Then in that moment I knew him—knew him for Luke Bechcombe's murderer, I mean. I struggled and struggled frantically, but he was putting something round my neck, pulling it tighter and tighter. I couldn't breathe. And then I knew no more till I was coming round again and my husband and the doctor were with me.” She stopped and put up her hands to her neck as if she still felt that cruel strangulating grip.

Cyril B. Carnthwacke's face looked very grim.

“That guy will have something round his own neck soon, I surmise. Something he won't be able to get rid of, either.”

John Steadman and the inspector had both taken out their notebooks. The former spoke first.

“You say you know your assailant to be the murderer of Luke Bechcombe. Will you tell us how you recognized him?”

“Because—because that day when I was talking to the man whom I thought to be Mr. Bechcombe, whom we now believe to have been the murderer, I noticed his hands. He kept moving them over the table in and out of the papers in a nervous sort of way, and I saw” Mrs. Carnthwacke's voice suddenly failed her. She shrank nervously to the side of the chair. “You are sure no one can hear me, Cyril?”

He sat down on the side of her chair.

“Dead certain, honey. Come now, get it off your chest and you will feel ever so much better.”

“And be ever so much safer,” Inspector Furnival interposed. “As long as you only know this secret, Mrs. Carnthwacke, Mr. Bechcombe's murderer has a solid reason for wanting to destroy the one person who can identify him. But, once this knowledge is shared with others, the reason disappears. If Mrs. Carnthwacke is disposed of and there remain others who share her knowledge, he is none the safer. You see this, don't you, madam?”

“Yes, yes! Of course I do,” she assented feverishly. “I wish now I had spoken right out at once. But I wanted a big American detective to undertake the getting my diamonds back. My husband had promised to engage him and I wanted him to have this exclusive information. Now, we will have everybody else knowing the secret too.”

“Never mind, madam, there will be plenty for him to do,” Inspector Furnival observed consolingly. “You were telling us you noticed the hands of the man in Mr. Bechcombe's office.”