Four Strange Women (36 page)

The inspector said:—

“Cleared out. We shan't get much here.”

Bobby, who had found the electric switch, pressed it, again without result.

“There must be lights somewhere,” he said, “if bills have been paid.”

He pushed open the nearest door. This time pressure on a switch produced a flood of light. There was shown a bathroom, comfortably, even luxuriously, fitted up, and with traces of recent use. There were even clean towels ready. The water was evidently heated by electricity. Convenient cupboards held all accessories, which included a large jar of expensive bath salts.

“Quite dinky, eh?” said the chief constable.

Bobby opened a second door. It showed a well-fitted kitchen, with an expensive-looking electric range. Again there were signs of recent use, and there was a supply of tinned and other preserved provisions in the cupboards. There was even a small electric furnace for disposing of rubbish “Very nice, too,” said the superintendent. “My old woman would appreciate it.”

“Any one could have lain doggo here for long enough,” said the inspector. “Must have got an idea we might be round.”

Bobby did not say anything, but he wondered how that could be, since there could have been no knowledge that Lord Henry had lived to tell his story.

They went on to the third door. It opened on a large bed-sitting-room, again comfortably and even luxuriously fitted up. Everything was in the most modern style of glass and shining metal. The general effect should have been austere and cold, but somehow was not. For one thing the bed was a splash of colour with a great red crimson covering, and then the rich, heavy hangings on the walls were crimson and black.

“Very stylish,” said the chief constable approvingly. “All the latest.” He walked over to the gleaming dressing table and picked up a comb mounted in silver and mother of pearl. “Hair,” he said. “Woman's. Been used recently.”

“Too much like a dentist's, if you ask me,” said the superintendent, looking round disapprovingly. “Smells, too,” he added, and in fact there was a strong, slightly intoxicating odour of perfume in the air.

“A bit—what do you call it?—austere,” said the inspector. “Not what you would expect for goings-on like we've heard about.”

“Contrast is sometimes effective,” Bobby observed. “Cold can burn, too. Touch metal at forty below and see.” They all trooped back to the landing. Bobby opened the door opposite. It admitted to a large room, running the whole length of the house, from party wall to party wall, possibly originally intended for entertaining at a time when it was considered smart to have the reception rooms on the first floor so that the hostess could stand at the head of the stairs to receive guests and be seen by them.

Bobby found the switch and pressed it. There sprang into light all round the room a number of small electric candles fitted in pairs before a series of small brackets, like tiny altars. On each stood a framed photograph of a man, beneath each hung a piece of rare jewellery, shining faintly in the dim radiance from the little electric candles that only half illumined the enormous room, but showed so clearly each different photograph. In the middle of the room stood a great crimson divan. There was no other furniture. Great black velvet curtains covered the windows, the walls were hung in black, the rich, luxurious carpet was black, even the ceiling had been painted black. Around the walls twinkled the small candles, showing clearly the photographs they framed. Beneath sparkled and shone those different pieces of jewellery against the black background of the wall hangings. In the doorway stood that little group of men and stared and were silent—for how long they never knew.

The chief constable was the first to speak. He muttered:—

“Photographs... all of them... is it?... how many?—”

Bobby moved forward, his feet sinking deeply into the soft pile of that dark, luxurious carpet. He paused before the first.

“Byatt,” he said. “Young Lord Byatt, I think. Those are the Byatt sapphires underneath.”

He went on to the next.

“Mr. Andrew White,” he said. “I've seen his photograph before. That's the great diamond necklace Higham's sold him hanging there.”

He went on to the third.

“Baird,” he said. “Diamond and ruby bracelet this time.”

He came to the next—the last on that wall.

“I don't know who this is—a foreigner, I should think,” he said, looking at it closely. “South American for a guess. Those pearls look good.”

In fact the photograph was never identified, the pearls never claimed. 

Bobby went on to the next wall.

“Henry Darmoor,” he said, “but he's alive.”

The next was a photograph that Bobby recognized at once, though he had never seen the original. But one like it had been circulated to all police forces, had appeared in all the papers underneath the caption: ‘The Missing Chauffeur'.

“Ted Reynolds,” Bobby said now. “Those are the earrings and the pendant he stole. He couldn't buy for her so he stole instead.”

“Does it mean he's dead?” asked the chief constable. “No body was ever found, was it?”

“No, but I think I know where it is,” Bobby answered. He went on to the next on that wall.

“Another I don't know,” he said. “Looks young.” Afterwards the photograph was identified as that of a young Englishman who had vanished in the Swiss Alps. His body has never been found. Probably it lies at the bottom of some crevasse. A consideration of dates makes it probable he was the first.

The inspector said slowly:—

“Hell.”

The superintendent said:—

“God.”

Perhaps they both meant the same.

The chief constable said:—

“If I can wangle it, I'll get permission to be there to see her hang.”

Bobby said:—

“We haven't got her yet.”

The chief constable glared at him. He said:—

“She won't get away with it, not if all the force do nothing else but chase her till they get her.”

Bobby said:—

“I think there's someone else who wants her just as badly.”

The chief constable said abruptly:—

“I've had enough.”

He was, in fact, looking very pale. He went down to the waiting car and sat there. The others could carry on. They knew the necessary steps to take. Bobby came presently to the car where the chief constable was sitting. He said to him:—

“I have been trying to think where she may be.”

“Run for it,” said the chief constable. “Knew the game was up and ran. We'll get her.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby mechanically, because he always said ‘Yes, sir,' to superiors, before he contradicted them. “Yes, sir, only what made her think the game was up? She didn't know Lord Henry was still alive to tell us things.”

“There's that,” agreed the chief constable. He added:— “That's right. This business has got me so I can't think straight. Well, where is she? There's all that jewellery she's got up there in that ghastly room of hers. You mean she'll be coming back for it?”

“It's possible,” agreed Bobby. “Do you remember, sir, I said I was thinking of trying a spot of burglary?”

“Here?”

Bobby shook his head. He said:—

“I guessed she had a hide out. That flat of hers I went to once was evidently only a blind. But I never found this place. I was thinking of Mountain Street.”

The chief constable said nothing. He was thinking it out for himself. He said presently:—

“I suppose I can guess what you have in mind.”

“I was thinking of burglary because I wasn't at all sure,” Bobby explained. “I feel more certain now. I thought if you would come, sir, and used your authority, we could persuade the caretaker to let us have the keys.”

“All right,” said the chief constable. “Jump in. Collect a uniform man or two first.”

Bobby obeyed. He secured one of the uniform men—a sergeant. He explained to the superintendent what they had in mind, and that gentleman then went off back to the Yard, there to begin the organization of the nation wide, world wide search Bobby in his own mind felt would be useless, but that nevertheless had to be begun because no possibility must ever be neglected. Then the chief constable's car started and they were so far in luck as to catch the Mountain Street hall caretaker in that brief interval he allowed himself between closing time and bed. But he was a good deal less impressed than Bobby had expected by the information that the tall, stout man in plain clothes was a chief constable. To the caretaker a chief constable was someone somewhere between an ordinary constable and a sergeant. The sight of the sergeant in uniform accompanying them was much more effective. Sergeants the caretaker understood, and on the strength of those three stripes he yielded up his keys.

To the hall therefore the three of them, the chief constable, Bobby, the sergeant, forthwith proceeded, and when they entered saw at first nothing in any way unusual or of interest.

“We'll have a look at the basement,” Bobby said, and led the way.

He found the door at the head of the stone steps leading to the basement, and when he opened it—it opened towards him—he threw forward the light of the electric lamp he carried. As well he had remembered to be careful. A string was stretched across the head of the stairs, so that any one descending them without first looking would almost certainly trip and fall.

“What's that for?” the chief constable asked.

No one answered and they descended carefully. At the bottom of the stairs lay a woman's stocking, half filled with sand.

“I've seen one like that before,” Bobby said. “Those stairs aren't very high. A fall might not be effective enough and perhaps a knockout was necessary, too. Nothing overlooked.”

He found the light switches and turned them on. Lights sprang up.

What the darkness had hitherto concealed was now plainly visible.

In one corner the door of that small compartment walled off from the main cellar and hitherto kept locked, was now open. On the threshold lay open a big packing case that still seemed largely filled with lime. In the middle of the main cellar a dead man in a chauffeur's uniform was seated on a chair. A belt kept the body in position. In one dead, shrivelled hand had been placed the end of a rope. The other end was round the neck of Gwen Barton, who, her hands strapped behind her, her feet some inches from the ground swung slowly from one of those hooks in the ceiling beams that Bobby had noticed before.

Once again Bobby was in Cardiff, and this time when he entered the little shop that did so good a trade in cigarettes and sweets, the woman behind the counter, though she had watched his approach, made no attempt at avoidance.

She had been busy dusting and re-arranging some of the stock. When Bobby entered she laid down the light feather brush she had been using and turned gravely towards him. For a moment or two they stood and looked at each other, her gaze as steady and direct as his. She was the first to speak. With a gesture that was half sombre, half mocking, she pointed towards the feather brush she had been using.

“My job is finished,” she said, and then again: “I have done what I had to do.” In the formal tone of the shopkeeper to the customer, she said:— “What can I get for you?”

Bobby said:—

“What job have you finished?”

She did not answer, but again their eyes met, and his were doubtful and questioning, but hers were dark and strange; and he had the idea that though it was at him she looked so straightly, it was something else she saw He said:—

“You are Mrs. Ted Reynolds. The first time I saw you you said your name was Jones, Jane Jones, wasn't it?”

“Did I?” she asked indifferently, and as though with an effort she withdrew her gaze from whatever it was she had seemed to see.

“You were pretending to be a street singer?”

“Why ‘pretending'?” she asked. “It's what I was.”

“A woman was murdered in London two evenings ago,” Bobby told her.

“Was it a woman?” Mrs. Reynolds asked. “Was it a murder? Or do you mean a vampire was put out of existence?”

“I mean murder,” Bobby answered steadily. “Except in self-defence, killing by a private person for private reasons is always murder.”

“Have you come to tell me that?”

“No. To ask you where you were two evenings ago?”

“In bed,” she answered promptly. “Influenza cold. Ask the police. We've had quite a lot of custom from them lately. Cigarette sales gone up a lot. Very nice, too. Sis tried to sell them sugar candy sometimes, but it was always cigarettes they wanted. Very often when they were in the shop, they heard me call from my room upstairs. ‘There's Jinnie calling,' Sis would say; and as it was a policeman, she wouldn't mind leaving him alone for a minute or two in the shop while she ran up to see what I wanted. Very sympathetic those policemen were, wanted to know who my doctor was.”

“Who was he?”

“I was never bad enough for a doctor. With what they charge for a visit, you think twice about getting one in. I'm not insured, you see. Sis looked after me herself, and old Mrs. Reynolds came in to help sometimes. She stayed the night once or twice. My mother-in-law, I mean, Ted's mother. She felt it a lot when Ted disappeared. You go to her. She'll tell you.”

“What you are telling me,” Bobby said, “is that you have an alibi.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “Why should I want an alibi? But if I did, there's Sis, and old Mrs. Reynolds, and the neighbours Sis told about me, and the police who heard me calling—quite enough, I think.”

Bobby thought so, too. The voice supposed to be hers the police had heard could easily have been arranged. Old Mrs. Reynolds, perhaps, or even such a cheap gramophone record as is often manufactured—‘while you wait'—at popular seaside resorts or at country fairs. Direct testimony from the sister and mother-in-law as well, and very likely confirmatory evidence from neighbours. A watertight tale constructed by a very clever and determined woman, Bobby told himself, and when he looked up he saw how fiercely blazed those dark, gleaming eyes of hers, fixed full on his, almost like blows.