Four Strange Women (21 page)

The shop was empty; and though a bell on the door loudly announced his entry, no one appeared. He waited and then knocked on the counter, but still there was a pause before a woman emerged from the door at the back, stood for a moment looking at him with evident mistrust and fear, and then came on to face him from behind the counter.

“She knows who I am,” he thought, and, a good deal worried, he asked himself how that could be.

Impossible, he thought, for certainly he had never seen her before and yet it was very certain that she knew him. She was about forty, he guessed, with a pleasant, homely face that at the moment bore a very worried and even alarmed expression, and that he now began to think reminded him vaguely of someone else, though of whom he could not be sure. But there was something faintly familiar about the general cast of the features, especially in the small mouth now so tightly closed above the small, pointed chin. Perhaps only a casual resemblance, he thought, or perhaps one that presently he would be able to identify. He bought a packet of cigarettes by way of a propitiatory opening, and then said:—

“You are Mrs. Reeves, I think?” She nodded and he went on:—“I think your sister, Mrs. Reynolds, lives with you. Could I have a few moments' talk with her?”

“I'll go and ask her,” Mrs. Reeves answered.

She went back behind the shop and was away some minutes. No other customer appeared. It was a slack hour, too late for people going to work, or for children on their way to school, too early for the morning shoppers. Even the street outside seemed quiet, with little traffic passing except for an occasional car and once for the unnecessarily loud hooting of a motor-cycle that sped by with an arrogant, triumphant ‘honk honk' as though it shouted satisfaction with itself and scorn of all the rest of the world. Mrs. Reeves came back into the shop.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Jinnie's not feeling very well.”

Bobby produced his credentials. Mrs. Reeves did not seem either very surprised or very impressed, and thought it very unlikely Mrs. Reynolds would make the effort to see him that Bobby suggested. He asked what doctor was attending her and Mrs. Reeves said her sister wasn't one to run to a doctor every time she had a bad sick headache, but that didn't mean she was in a fit state to talk to strangers. Bobby said it was very regrettable, but, in the interests of justice, it was necessary he should see Mrs. Reynolds. He would therefore, he supposed, have to wait till her headache was better. In order to lose no time, he would arrange for a constable to call every hour or even oftener to ask how she was. This suggestion, of course, was no better than blackmail and quite unjustifiable—as he made it, Bobby could almost hear defending counsel thundering a denunciation of police persecution and every national paper in the land taking up the cry. All the same it was quite evident that Mrs. Reeves liked the suggestion of such frequent visits by constables in uniform no better than Bobby had expected. She said angrily:—

“It's no good your doing that. If you must know, Jinnie's gone. She's miles away by now.”

“Is she, though?” said Bobby. “Well, now then. Miles away, you said? Quick work.”

“She's fed up with your sort and I don't wonder, either,” Mrs. Reeves went on in the same angry, indignant tones. “Worrying her out of her life, and me, too, and bad for the business as well, with plain clothes police hanging about in every corner waiting for Ted, as if he would be such a fool as to come here.”

“Natural to expect a man to try to get in touch with his wife,” Bobby pointed out.

She made no comment on this, but turned away to put some cigarette boxes straight and then said over her shoulder:—

“What's the good? why can't you leave us alone? Ted's safe enough from you, you'll never find him.”

“There's no place in all the world where a man is safe from a police search,” Bobby told her.

“There's one place where he's safe,” she answered in a low voice, “one place where you will never find him.”

“You mean he is dead?” Bobby asked, for he believed that he had read that meaning in her eyes. “It's possible.  I thought of that, too. Difficult for a living man to disappear so completely as he has done. What makes you think so?”

She did not answer to that, but went on with her work of unnecessarily arranging and re-arranging her stock.

“I thought of it,” Bobby told her, “because there are so many dead men in this affair.”

“What do you mean?” she said then, pausing in her work to turn and look at him.

“If that's what Mrs. Reynolds believes,” he went on, “why did she run away the moment she saw me?”

“She's been driven nearly crazy with questions and questions and questions, and so have I,” Mrs. Reeves retorted. “Sick and tired of it we are, and not as if we knew anything, either of us. How could we? I don't and Jinnie doesn't and you lot watching and staring and following, and questions and questions all the time till we were sick and tired. When Jinnie saw you, she came in and told me she couldn't stand any more, and I don't blame her. ‘There's another of them outside,' she said. ‘It's the Midwych lot this time,' she said, and off she went and no wonder.”

“Miles away, now, you said?”

“That's right,” Mrs. Reeves answered defiantly.

“Quick work,” Bobby said again. “Motor-cycle, I suppose?”

“How do you know?” Mrs. Reynolds asked, looking a little startled this time.

“Well, you said she was miles away by now, and that sounded like a car or a motor bike, and somehow I thought of a motor bike first, because I seem to be always coming across motor bikes in this affair. One hooted rather loudly, too, as it passed a minute or two ago. It almost sounded like a motor bike's way of pulling a face at you. A woman's trick, perhaps, when she feels she's scored for once.”

“I don't know what you are talking about,” Mrs. Reeves muttered uneasily.

“Well, I don't either, so that's no wonder,” Bobby answered. “How did she know where I was from and that I was a policeman?”

“We've had plenty like you here,” she retorted, “enough to know when she saw you.”

“But she hadn't seen me,” Bobby protested mildly. “Oh, yes, she had. Doing the window she was, and saw you staring, and knew at once.”

“I see,” said Bobby. “Well, will you give her a message from me?” He put a card on the table with his London address. “Tell her I would like to see her. Tell her I'm not looking for her husband. It's not my case. But I think she might be able to help me with another, that of a man named Baird who was found dead recently in Wychwood forest. I daresay you've read about it in the papers?”

“What's it to do with Jinnie?” Mrs. Reeves asked, looking now not only suspicious but puzzled as well.

“I don't know,” Bobby answered. “I want to find out.”

“Is it a trap?” she asked, more distrustfully than ever.

“No,” he answered. “Besides, I think you are right and that most likely we shall never find Ted Reynolds because I think, like you, that he is dead.”

Mrs. Reeves said nothing. After a pause Bobby added:— “Only, you see, we don't want any more men dead in the same way.”

“I don't know what you mean,” she repeated. After a pause she added:—“I expect it's just a clever trap.”

“I wish you would get that out of your head,” Bobby said. Then he asked: “Was your sister very fond of him?” The only answer she made was a slight affirmative movement of the head. But it carried much meaning. Bobby took a cigarette from the packet he had just bought and tapped it thoughtfully on the counter.

“That makes it bad,” he said. “I'm sorry. Funny,” he said, “how, when a woman cares for a man it never seems to make much difference what he does.”

“He wasn't worth it,” Mrs. Reeves broke out. “Men are like that. You can never trust them. I told her so. Never. It's not their fault. Led they are. You'll pay for it, I told her, when I saw how she used to look at him. It's always like that, if you get that way with a man, you'll pay for it. It's the way men are, you can't trust them, but Jinnie always stuck to it, it was her he put first.”

“First?” Bobby repeated. “Who was second then?” She did not answer, and for a moment or two they looked steadily at each other across the counter. She said slowly:—

“Jinnie never knew.”

Bobby waited. Mrs. Reeves went on:—

“Jinnie knew there was someone, but she was always sure he would come back to her. Because she always knew that she was really first, that the other didn't count, she was ready to wait. The other wasn't real, she said, only a mistake, like getting lost in the dark. But she was the light he would come back to, and she waited, and then it happened about the diamond ear-rings and she knew she would never find her man again.”

Again there was a long silence in the little shop, and so softly that Bobby could hardly hear it, she murmured:— “Poor Jinnie.”

“Poor Jinnie,” he repeated after her, and she looked at him in surprise, as though something in his voice astonished her.

He went away then for he felt that he had learned as much as Mrs. Reeves was willing, or perhaps able, to tell him. One highly interesting detail, however, seemed now to be clearly established, though of its significance, or indeed of its importance, he did not feel at all certain. Nor did he feel certain whether Mrs. Reynolds—or Mrs. Reeves for that matter—was more likely to prove helper or opponent, or perhaps, and perhaps more probably, merely indifferent.

He found a good and convenient train and was back in London in time to get to Bond Street before the closing hour. Half way down that proud street of luxury and display stand the discreetly imposing premises of Messrs. Higham, who are not so much the ‘well known' jewellers as just simply ‘the' jewellers. They will, of course, sell you a cheap ring or bracelet for ten or twenty pounds, if you happen to want one for any reason, but they are obviously slightly bored by such transactions they merely carry out for the convenience of their more eccentric customers. They prefer to deal in diamond tiaras, pearl necklaces, rubies at least as large as a pigeon's egg, or indeed, for after all they are tradespeople and have to live, in any form of jewellery of which the value approaches four figures. Transactions over the four figures are, however, those that really interest them, and these, if sufficiently above that kind of dead line, are generally dealt with by the senior partner, old Mr. Higham, a dignitary whom otherwise few customers see.

To-day, though, it was with that scarcely less imposing dignitary, the gigantic commissionaire with a double row of medal ribbons on his tunic, with whom Bobby wished for a little conversation. To him, after producing his credentials, for the commissionaire was not a man to gossip with any casual stranger, Bobby showed that photograph he had instructed an itinerant photographer to secure of Count de Legett—an excellent snap shot it was, too. It was, Bobby went on to explain, important that Scotland Yard should be informed at once if the original of the photograph called at Messrs. Higham's. Especially important was it to know, if the caller came, if he were alone or accompanied by a lady.

The commissionaire listened carefully and promised to report at once any such appearance, and Bobby went on to the Yard. There he explained what he had done, obtained a promise that if the commissionaire did report a visit by Count de Legett in the company of a woman, then every effort would be made to follow and identify her.

“You can trust us for that all right,” said the Yard man. “I'll put two of our best men on the job if you really think it so important.”

Bobby winced slightly, for the promise to put two men on the job meant there would be two men's time to pay for, and Midwych wouldn't at all like paying for two—especially if ‘best men' meant both would be sergeants and so a higher rate of pay and expenses charged. He suspected, no doubt most unjustly, that the Yard was slack at the time, and quite willing to get two men's pay out of a provincial authority. However, it couldn't be helped, and he thanked the Yard cordially and the Yard looked down its nose and said:—

“Mind you, it's your responsibility, and a long shot if you ask me. And don't run away with the idea that we are going to risk getting into hot water, doing your job for you. There'll be strict orders that the lady is not to be interfered with in any way whatever.”

“That's all right,” Bobby said. “Annoying her or interfering in any way is the very last thing I want. All I want to know is, who is she—and a pretty big all, too. It may mean a lot if I can find out.”

“Well, if that's all,” declared the Yard man, grinning a little, “it oughtn't to be difficult. That is, if this Count de Legett chap wants to marry her. When a chap's engaged, he generally likes to spill the good news all round, poor devil. Wants 'em all to know he's nibbled the cheese and the trap's shut down.”

Bobby requested the Yard not to be so beastly cynical, and the Yard said he wasn't cynical a bit, only he had been through it and he knew, and therewith Bobby took his leave.

His next visit was to the ‘Cut and Come Again', that newly reorganized and, at any rate as far as was known at the moment, highly respectable night club supposed to be doing well on the flavour of an ancient though now abandoned wickedness that still clung to its redecorated walls. There Bobby succeeded in obtaining a good deal of miscellaneous information, partly from a prolonged questioning of an eagerly obliging staff most anxious to assist the police so far as unhappily defective memories and a press of business that prevented them from noticing almost anything, allowed them the felicity of so doing.

The books, however, the list of subscribing members, the names of their guests, proved more interesting, and kept Bobby busy to a late hour. When at last he had finished he had a notebook nearly full of information he felt he must submit to careful examination and analysis before he could tell which of the facts he had collected were significant, which irrelevant. But that task had to be postponed, for, as so often happens in such investigations, next morning information came to hand that had to be followed up, that occupied a very great deal of most valuable time, but whereof no details need be given here since in the end it proved to be entirely unfounded and of no value or significance whatever.