‘You left it on the shelf in the cloakroom, where no one, not even Mrs Haddington, happened to catch sight of it.’
‘So likely that anyone would admit to having seen it! And if Mrs Haddington didn’t, it must have been the only thing that did escape her eye in the house! She saw that one of the unfortunate servants had put out the wrong kind of towel in the cloakroom fast enough!’
‘Oh, she saw that, did she? Careful housewife?’
‘Extremely so! Capable of drawing her finger along the tops of things to be sure there’s no dust there!’ said Beulah, with a short laugh. ‘Anything more?’
‘Not at present. You go home, Miss Birtley, and think things over a bit! Then perhaps we’ll get on much better when next we meet.’
Inspector Grant rose quietly, and opened the door. Beulah hesitated, looking from him to Hemingway, and then went quickly from the room.
The Inspector closed the door with deliberation. His chief, regarding him with the eye of experience, said: ‘All right, I can see you’re bursting with something! Let’s have it!’
‘A verra dour witness,’ said the Inspector.
‘Well, if that’s all – !’
The Inspector’s slow, shy smile lit his eyes. ‘Och, I saw nothing you did not see yourself ! You will not thank me for pointing out to you that Mrs Haddington stated that she had not entered the cloakroom; nor that she has it in her, that lassie, to murder a man.’
‘She’s got it in her all right, but I’m damned if I see the motive. Look up her case, will you, Sandy?’
‘I will, of course. It’s verra interesting: no one had a motive.’
‘Someone had. Our trouble is that we don’t know the first thing about any of them – barring that girl. All we’ve got is a bunch of classy people, all moving in the best circles, all to be handled carefully, and only one of them known to the police.’ He scratched his chin meditatively. ‘You can just see a chap like Mr Godfrey Poulton putting up a beef to the Assistant Commissioner about the rude way he’s been handled, can’t you? And they’ve all of them got such nice manners they won’t talk about each other! To think I should ever be glad to run up against Terrible Timothy in a case! It all goes to show, doesn’t it?’
‘That would be Mr Harte?’
‘It would.’
‘I do not think he would strangle a man.’
‘I’m dead sure he wouldn’t – at least, I would have been before the War, but now I come to think of it he’s just the sort of young devil to have got himself into a Commando, and the parlour-tricks they taught those lads were enough to make your hair stand on end! All the same, Terrible Timothy isn’t even an Also Ran in my humble opinion. Which is why, Sandy, I am going to call on him in these chambers of his, and get him to give me the low-down on these people! He was very keen on helping me when he was fourteen: well, now he can help me!’ He rose, and added: ‘And what his father and mother would say, if they knew of the highly undesirable bit of goods he’s got his eye on, is nobody’s business!’ He shut his notebook, and restored it to his pocket. ‘We’ll go and see what the backroom boys have discovered in the way of finger-prints. It won’t help us, but we may as well go by the book. After that, we’ll give Mr Seaton-Carew’s flat the once-over, and see what we can get out of that. No use my hauling some housemaid out of bed to get the story of the wrong towel out of her: that’ll keep.’
‘What, Chief Inspector, did you make of Mrs Haddington?’
‘I’m no judge of snakes, but she seemed to me a good specimen! I didn’t like her, I didn’t like her story, and I don’t like her any the better for the latest disclosure. Come on!’
The finger-print experts had only one thing to show the Chief Inspector that interested him. As he had supposed, no prints could be obtained from the wire twisted round Seaton-Carew’s neck; the prints on various objects in the room included only those which would naturally be found there. The telephone-receiver showed several rather blurred prints, a clear impression of Miss Birtley’s fingers, and not a trace of the murdered man’s.
‘Which is a very significant circumstance,’ said Hemingway. ‘It’s no use asking me why it’s important, because so far I don’t know. I know it is, because I’ve got flair. That’s French, and it’s what made me a Chief Inspector, whatever anyone may tell you.’
‘It means,’ said Inspector Grant, ‘that the murdered man never touched the receiver.’
‘How long did it take you to work that one out?’ demanded Hemingway offensively.
The Inspector continued, unmoved: ‘And it means that either the instrument was knocked from the table in a struggle, or that someone lifted it, and dropped it. For why?’
‘You can rule out the struggle: there wasn’t one. If that
had been how that receiver came to be hanging down to the floor, the whole table would have been kicked over, and it wasn’t. It looks as if someone deliberately lifted it off the table, and let it hang.’ He laid down the photograph he had been studying. ‘Why? Fair-sized chap, Seaton-Carew, wasn’t he? Whoever planned to do him in wanted to be sure of getting him in what you might call a convenient position. If you were called away in the middle of a game of Bridge to take a telephone-call, what would you do?’
‘I do not play Bridge.’
‘Well, shinty, or whatever your unnatural game is called! You’d pick up the receiver, standing! You might even be facing quite the wrong way for the assassin. But if you found the receiver hanging down beside the table, the way it was, what would be the easiest way for you to pick it up? To sit down in the chair, placed so handy, of course! That would bring your neck well within the reach of a shorter person. And don’t tell me that every one of the suspected persons, barring Terrible Timothy, was shorter than Seaton-Carew, because I’ve seen that for myself ! I told you this wasn’t going to do us any good. What’s the time? Seven o’clock? Let’s make a night of it, and have some breakfast! After that, we’ll go round to this Jermyn Street address, and startle Mr Seaton-Carew’s man.’
Before they set forth on this mission, the Inspector was obliged to present his disgusted chief with the infor mation that the call from Doncaster had come from a public call-box.
‘Which isn’t at all the sort of thing I want to be told at this hour of the morning,’ remarked Hemingway, pouring himself out another cup of very strong tea. ‘Not that I’m surprised. The only thing that would surprise me about this case would be if I was to get a real lead.’
‘Whisht now, it is early yet!’ said the Inspector soothingly.
‘It isn’t too early for me to recognise a thick fog when I see one!’ retorted Hemingway. ‘To think I told Bob I was glad it wasn’t another Pole getting funny with a knife! Now, that was easy!’
‘Ay,’ agreed Grant. ‘There were so many motives you said there was no seeing the wood for the trees, I mind well. And three of the suspects with records as long as from here to the Border. Ah, well!’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Hemingway, ‘but whenever I get an assistant detailed to me he can’t ever find anything better to do than to remember a lot of things I’ve said which it would do him more good to forget. I had a young fellow once with just that same habit, before the War it was, and do you know what happened to him? He had to leave the Force!’
‘If it’s Wake you’re meaning,’ said Grant patiently, ‘I know well he left the Force, for he married a widow with a snug business, and already they have three, or it may be four, bairns.’
‘Well, let that be a lesson to you!’ said Hemingway. ‘Stop trying to annoy me, and come to Jermyn Street!’
The morning papers were on sale by this time; as the police-car paused, in a traffic hold-up, before a news agent’s shop, flaring headlines caught the Chief Inspector’s eye. One of the more popular journals sought to attract custom by the caption, written in arresting capitals: Murder at a BridgeParty! Inspector Grant slid quickly out of the car, procured a copy of this enter prising news-sheet, and jumped back into the
car as it moved forward.
‘That,’ said Hemingway grimly, ‘must have been sent in before two o’clock this morning – if not earlier! Nice times we live in!’
Scanning the somewhat meagre information contained in the paragraphs beneath the headlines, Grant said: ‘I doubt this is the butler.’
‘Well, I don’t!’ said his superior. ‘There isn’t any doubt at all about it! Come to think of it, butlers must make a pretty penny on the side. I wonder what they gave him for this tit-bit?’
‘I do not know,’ said Grant conscientiously. ‘But it is in my mind that he would not have done this if he had been in the service of his last employer. Mind, I do not, myself, set any great store by a Sassenach, but I would say that Lord Minsterley was a gentleman-born, and would be respected by his servants! It is as I told you: they have no respect for Mrs Haddington. There was a telephone in the butler’s pantry. Content you, he sent the news before ever we arrived at that house.’
‘Why you should suppose that should content me I don’t know, but never mind!’ said Hemingway. ‘It only means the crime reporters will be badgering us a bit sooner than we looked for.’
Mr Seaton-Carew’s flat, in a block of bachelors’ chambers, was on the third floor. An electric lift bore the two police officers to this floor; and the door of the flat was opened to them by a willowy manservant, who, if he did not appear to be startled by their arrival, was certainly nervous. He said that he had been advised earlier of his master’s death; and made haste to usher them into the sitting-room.
The flat was not extensive, consisting merely of two bedrooms, a dining-room, a sitting-room, and what were known as ‘the usual offices’. It was furnished in an expensive but undistinguished style, its amenities including mirrored panels in the bedroom, and the tiny hall; a plate-glass dining-table; numerous deep chairs covered in oxhide, and lavishly provided with velvet cushions; a glass-fronted bookcase, containing sets of standard authors in tooled calf bindings, which bore all the appearance of having been bought to form part of the room’s decoration; an opulent radio-cabinet; several pictures in slightly exotic taste; and such repellent adjuncts as a standard lamp, upheld by a naked bronze female, an alabaster ashtray, surmounted by a silver aeroplane, and a cocktail-cabinet, furnished with an interior light, a bewildering array of bottles, and a complete set of glasses, all of which were embellished with erotic designs.
‘In fact,’ said Hemingway, ‘the sort of décor that puts very funny ideas into one’s head.’
A cursory inspection of the flat yielded no clue to SeatonCarew’s profession. It was strangely impersonal, nor did a rapid survey of his pass-sheets, discovered in a drawer of the desk, provide Hemingway with an explanation of his obvious wealth. His investments seemed to be few and orthodox, but on the credit side were numerous sums briefly described as Cash.
‘Up to no good,’ said the cynical Hemingway. ‘Or perhaps
he was only bilking the Inland Revenue,’ he added charitably. ‘This place tells us nothing at all, Sandy.’
The Inspector, who had gazed with an affronted eye upon the pictures adorning the walls of Mr Seaton-Carew’s bedroom, and who had been noticeably affected by the sybaritic aspect of his bathroom, replied austerely that it told him a great deal.
‘That’s only prejudice,’ said Hemingway. ‘The trouble with you is that you’re not broadminded. Ever noticed that all pansies have exactly the same kind of man servant? Funny thing: you can spot ‘em at a glance! We’ll go and have a nice heart to heart with this specimen!’
But it was soon made manifest that Mr Francis Caister had not been admitted into his master’s confidence. Smoothing his thick, curly locks with one unquiet hand, he said that he had been in Seaton-Carew’s employment for eighteen months, and that it had been a very pleasant situation, Mr Seaton-Carew being a gentleman as was often out to meals. He did not think that his master had been in business. If he might, he would describe him as a gentleman of leisure. Questioned, he was a little vague on the subject of Seaton-Carew’s visitors: he had had so many. He recalled Mr Butterwick, however, and said, with a genteel cough, that that was a young gentleman as took things to heart, as one might say. Quite hysterical sometimes, he had been, particularly if he found another young gentleman, or, as it might be, a lady visiting Mr Seaton-Carew.
‘Did Mr Seaton-Carew entertain many ladies?’ asked
Hemingway.
‘Well,’ replied Caister coyly, ‘not what one would properly term ladies. But,’ he added, with a touch of vicarious pride, ‘he used to visit in very nice houses.’
‘Had he any relatives?’
Mr Caister was unable to answer this: he had never seen any; nor could he oblige the Chief Inspector with the name of Seaton-Carew’s solicitor. A search through the desk in the sitting-room yielded little result: Mr Seaton-Carew had apparently made a habit of destroy ing his correspondence, nor did he keep an address-book. A cheque-book, however, furnished Hemingway with the name and address of his Bank. Leaving Inspector Grant to visit the Manager of the Branch patronised by Seaton-Carew, Hemingway went off to ring up Mr Timothy Harte, at his chambers in Dr Johnson’s Buildings. Mr Harte, not being engaged in Court that morning, most obligingly said that he would be happy to entertain an old acquaintance there and then, but suggested (since he shared a small room with another budding barrister) that the rendezvous should be at his home address, in Paper Buildings. Thither the Chief Inspector wended his way.
He was admitted to Timothy’s chambers by a middle-aged man, who had Old Soldier written clearly all over him, and ushered into a comfortable room overlooking the garden, which smelt of tobacco and leather, and was lined with bookshelves. Most of these carried ranks of depressing Law Reports, and other legal tomes, some of which, having been acquired at second or third hand, had a slightly mildewed appearance. An aged Persian rug covered most of the floor, and a large knee-hole desk stood in the window. Young Mr Harte, in the black coat and striped trousers of his calling, was seated at this, smoking a pipe, and glancing through a set of papers, modestly priced on the covering sheet at 2 guas. He threw these aside when Hemingway came into the room, and got up. ‘Come in, Chief Inspector! Welcome to my humble abode!’ he said. ‘Chuck those things off that chair, and sit down! Sorry about the general muddle: that’s the way I like it!’
‘Well, I’m bound to say I like it better than the last set of gentleman’s apartments I was in, sir!’ responded Hemingway, shaking hands.
‘You do? Whose were they?’
‘Mr Seaton-Carew’s.’
‘Fancy that now!’ said Timothy. ‘I should have thought he would have done himself very artily.’
‘He did,’ said Hemingway, removing The Times, a paperbacked novel, a box of matches, two bundles of papers tied up with red tape, and a black cat from a deep chair, and seating himself in it. ‘Quite upset Inspector Grant. But then, he’s a Scot! I’m more broadminded myself. No, thanks, sir, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll light my pipe. I thought I’d just look in to have a crack with you about old times.’
‘Having the morning on your hands,’ agreed Timothy. ‘Come off it! What am I? Chief Suspect, or Information Bureau?’
‘Yes,’ said Hemingway, ‘you always were about as sharp as a bagful of monkeys, sir, weren’t you? I daresay it’ll get you into trouble one of these days. I do want some information, but I’d like to know what you’ve been up to since I saw you last.’
‘School – War – Cambridge – Bar,’ replied Timothy succinctly.
‘I’m glad to see you came through the War safe and sound, anyway. Where were you?’
‘Oh, all over the place!’
‘I’ll bet you were. Don’t tell me you weren’t in that Commando gang, because I shouldn’t believe you! Right down your street that must have been!’
Timothy laughed. ‘I did end up with them,’ he admitted.
‘I knew it! In fact, if I’d found a nasty-looking knife stuck into Mr Seaton-Carew I’d have
arrested you on the spot.’
‘Ah, I was too clever for you, wasn’t I? Beer, or whisky?’
‘I’ll take a glass of beer, thank you, sir. Now, joking apart, you could help me a bit on this case, if you wanted to. I don’t mind telling you that I’m all at sea. Very unfamiliar décor. What I want is some kind of an angle on a few of the dramatis personae, so to speak. Well, here’s your very good health, sir!’
Timothy returned the toast, and sat down on the other side of the fireplace. ‘I don’t promise to answer you, but what do you want to know?’
‘I want first to know what sort of a man this Seaton-Carew was, and what he did for a living.’
‘Search me!’ replied Timothy. ‘I’ve often wondered. I thought the breed was dead. In fact, how anyone can live in these piping times as what used to be known as a gentleman of leisure has me beat. No visible means of support. Lives at a good address, dressed well, drove a high-powered car, generally to be seen at first-nights, Ascot, the Opera, the Ballet, and at quite a number of slightly surprising houses. Women were inclined to fall for him; men very rarely. That,’ added Timothy, ‘is not to be understood to include what we will politely term The Boy Friends. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Melchizedek!’