While Macdonald was at the house in Park Village South, Robert Grenville sat hunched up over his fire in Furnival’s Court, smoking furiously, and trying to puzzle out some reasoning for the sequence of events in which he had been involved. During the day he had had visits both from the C.I.D. (plain clothes) and Metropolitan Police (uniformed branch) and his landlady was beginning to look anxious. The C.I.D. had informed him of the discovery of a corpse in the Belfry Studio, and warned him that his presence would be required at the inquest, though it was not certain if any evidence would be taken except that of the officers who had discovered the body. Grenville’s immediate inquiry as to the identity of the dead man had brought him no satisfaction. The matter was not beyond doubt, to use the phrase of the polite young detective who had called (“to give me the once over again,” as Grenville believed).
“Well, you must surely know if it’s Attleton or not,” burst out Grenville.
“It’s uncertain, sir. Deceased was shockingly injured,” was the reply.
“Look here, you might jolly well tell me what you mean,” persisted Grenville, but the officer refused to be drawn, adding:
“The Chief Inspector told me to warn you, sir, that it would be unwise for you to attempt any further investigation of the man Debrette, whom you saw at Charing Cross. The matter is being looked into.”
The uniformed branch washed for further details concerning Grenville’s collision with a motorcyclist in the Strand, as the unfortunate rider, who had got mixed up with a taxi, owing to Grenville’s intrusion into his front wheel, was lying in hospital with concussion and a broken leg.
“He’ll probably bring a case against you for damages, sir,” said the genial and portly sergeant. “You’d no business to barge through the traffic with the lights against you.”
“Look here, if there’s a law prohibiting His Majesty’s subjects from walking on the King’s highway, tell me when it was put on the statute book,” said Grenville indignantly. “If my arms aren’t broken it’s only because they’re unbreakable. I tell you I’m damaged all over, and I’ve ruined a new pair of bags and my second best hat.”
“You should have thought of that first, sir,” replied the other. “The other gentleman’s got a wife—very strong-minded lady, sir, and she says she’s going to take out a summons against you.”
“Be damned to her!” groaned Robert. “I shall plead I was assisting the law, and look here, sergeant, I shall be in to tea all right, and if any of you chaps like to look in for a cup, don’t stand on ceremony, but I’d be awfully obliged if you didn’t come in uniform. My landlady’s beginning to get suspicious. She’s a very high-minded woman.”
“Very good, sir,” grinned the sergeant.
Grenville was sorely perplexed, in spite of his back-chat to the police. He wanted to see Elizabeth, or to telephone to her, but with this grim news about the corpse in the Belfry, he hadn’t the heart to do so. Sucking away at his pipe, he realised that there wasn’t any glamour about a murder case in which you knew the parties involved. Moreover, it was so difficult to know what to wish. If Bruce Attleton were not identified as the “shockingly-injured corpse” of the Belfry, he would almost certainly be a fugitive from justice, branded as a murderer who had carried out a crime in a particularly ghastly manner.
Even his professional enthusiasm failed him. He had begun a write-up of the Belfry Studio, and he knew that he was in a position to become persona grata with Fleet Street, but the fact that Bruce Attleton was Elizabeth’s guardian, and that Elizabeth had lived in the Attletons’ house, robbed even this situation of its piquancy. Grenville guessed what certain editors would pay him for a description of that evening’s conversation in Sybilla’s drawing-room—Elizabeth’s brainwave about committing a murder and concealing the body, and Bruce’s prophetic phrase about “plastering him up.”—Very nasty indeed, when turned into actual fact. Going to the telephone, Grenville got through to Rockingham.
“Look here, who is it they’ve found at the Belfry?” he demanded eagerly, and Rockingham snapped back:
“For God’s sake don’t go spreading yourself over the telephone. It’s bad enough without having exchange listening in. I’ll come round and see you after tea. It’s no use asking me questions. I don’t know, neither does Macdonald, yet. Sorry to be surly, old chap, but I’ve had about as much as I can stand to-day. Good-bye.”
Baulked in this direction, Grenville set out to do just what he had been told not to do—to see if he could get a line on the bearded man, whose queer countenance he had glimpsed the evening before. Having a journalist’s sense of how to set about things, he covered a certain amount of the ground traversed by Detective Reeves before him, and consequently his activities were reported to Scotland Yard before the day was up.
Returning to Furnival’s Court at tea time, having got much less far in his researches than Reeves had got, but with a much larger expenditure of money and energy, Grenville sat and drank large quantities of strong tea, and then sat over the fire to ponder, when his long-suffering landlady opened the door, saying, “A young person to see you, sir,” in accents of obvious disapproval. The entrance of Elizabeth Leigh brought Grenville to his feet with a whoop of joy.
“Angel!” he exclaimed fervently, but Elizabeth only made a face at him.
“I don’t approve of coming to see comparatively young men in their own rooms,” she announced haughtily. “Not on moral grounds, but because it gives them swelled head. However, my club’s no place for a good talk. There’s always some long-chinned spinster listening in from behind a pillar, and restaurants are the same, so I just came here. Bobby, where on earth is every one now? Sybilla’s back—I just rang up and Weller told me, and Neil Rockingham rang me up last night and said that Bruce was all right. It’s all really rather comic, with old Neil R. tearing out what hair he’s got left because he went barging to the police when he needn’t have, and Sybilla rolling up to look superior just when we were making up the most ghastly stories about her. Why, what’s the matter with you, goop-face?” she ended up, looking at Grenville’s amazed countenance.
“Rockingham said Bruce was all right!” gasped Grenville, “darling, are you certain? You’re not feverish, or having hallucinations or something, are you?”
“No, and I’m not half-seas-over, if that’s what you mean,” she responded severely. “I mean what I say. Neil rang me up last night to say that Bruce had phoned him, and the whole thing was a mistake.”
“Jiminy Jenkins!” Grenville threw up his arms in an astonishment which left him speechless. “Bruce is all right, and…Darling, it’s the most incredible business. I was simply sitting here saying funeral services and misereres…oh, confound old Neil R. What the blooming deuce does he mean, leaving me stewing in my own miseries.”
“—And imagining corpses and all that,” said Elizabeth. “Give me a gasper, Robert, and let’s think it all out. I was certain they’d find a corpse in that baleful Belfry.”
“But they have found one!” cried Grenville. “That’s the whole point, and they don’t know who it is. It’s not Bruce, angel head, and it’s not Debrette. I know, because I saw him in Trafalgar Square last night, and got biffed by a blasted motorbike trying to hare after him.”
Elizabeth’s eyes grew as round as saucers; with her hat in her hand, and her red curls rumpled up like a baby’s, she looked as angelic as a modern young woman could look, with her lips pursed like a Raphael cherub.
“A corpse, in the Belfry? But Bobbie, who corpsed him?”
“I don’t know, bambina, and the cops don’t know either. Old Neil rang me up just now, simply bleating…I know, the blighter!” A light of comprehension dawned in his eyes. “That blinking Macdonald told Neil R. not to let me know anything. Confound him! He’ll be trying to tie the beastly unknown round my neck, like an albatross. He took my finger-prints, and now he’ll say he found ’em plastered all over the Belfry, and run me in for doing an anonymous murder. I always said the chap looked too much like Cassius, lean and hungry, and all that.”
Elizabeth looked appalled. “Bobbie, he can’t!”
Robert Grenville had never seen the girl’s eyes look concerned before on his account, and he forgot his own misgivings in the triumph of the moment.
“Can’t he!” he said darkly. “He’s out for a sensational arrest. All these chaps are.”
He got no further with slandering one of the most upright men in the English police, for the door opened and a much-tried voice said:
“A gentleman to see you, and there’s this letter.”
Grenville wheeled round with an exclamation, ready to curse Rockingham to his face for interfering in such an ill-timed manner, but indignation over the way his friend had treated him got the better of his annoyance at being interrupted.
“You old blackguard, you!” he said severely. “You’re a nice one, you are! I wonder you’ve got the nerve to look at me, let alone come to see me. You and your private corpses, and obliging that tombstone of a Scotsman by telling me the exchange might listen in! Next time you want any dirty work done, you can damn well do it yourself!”
Rockingham came into the room and put his hat and gloves on the table very deliberately. It was the expression of his face that brought Grenville’s cheerful tirade to a stop.
“Oh! For God’s sake, leave off trying to be funny,” said Rockingham wearily. “I beg your pardon, Miss Leigh. I came in for a talk with Grenville. The fact that it’s a serious matter must condone my ill-manners. Can I reverse your car for you?”
“No, you can’t,” said Elizabeth, very decidedly. “I don’t know what you’re crying wolf over next, Neil Rockingham, but did you or did you not ring me up last night and tell me that Bruce was all right?”
“Yes. I did,” said Rockingham, and then added, slowly and painfully, “It seems that I was mistaken. I’m sorry. I acted in good faith.”
The trio stood and looked at one another, Elizabeth and Grenville aghast, Rockingham with a face bereft of all its normal cheerful colour, his eyes as miserable as a man’s could well be. It was Elizabeth who broke the silence. Slipping her hand into Rockingham’s arm with the confiding gesture of a child, she said:
“You poor old thing. Come and sit down, Neil R, and tell us about it. After all, I’ve got to know some time, haven’t I? You’d far better tell us both now.”
Rockingham patted her shoulder.
“It’s no sort of story to tell to a child like you,” he said gently, but Robert Grenville burst out:
“Then it was Bruce after all—the dead man in the Belfry?”
“I’m afraid so.” Rockingham sat down by the fireside, with Elizabeth perched on the arm of his chair, and related the sequence of events since he had last spoken to Robert over the telephone at the time the latter rang up from Charing Cross. “I did try to get you on the ’phone after Macdonald had left, to tell you about Bruce’s call,” said Rockingham to Grenville, “but you were either out all the evening or your line was out of order. I rang Elizabeth here—and then when I was having breakfast this morning Macdonald came in with his story about the discovery at the Belfry, and from what he said it was obvious that he believed I’d been spoofed by that phone call of Bruce’s. I felt too sick to want to ring you up then.”
“Are they certain yet—about the identity?” asked Grenville, his voice very low and flat-sounding.
Rockingham nodded. “Yes. They got on to Jennings, Bruce’s masseur. There doesn’t seem to be any room left for doubt.”
He turned to Elizabeth. “Look here, my child, this is a beastly story for you to hear. I’m more sorry than I can say.”
“I’d got to hear it some time,” said Elizabeth. “Never mind about me. The point is—who rang you up and pretended to be Bruce?”
“There can only be one answer to that,” replied Rockingham. “It means that the murderer knows Bruce well enough to simulate his voice.”
“It must be Debrette, it can’t be any one else,” said Grenville excitedly. “After all, he probably talked to Bruce quite a lot and got to know his voice, and just imitated it to you over the phone, Rockingham. Look here! I’ve found out quite a lot about the blighter. I went routing round about Charing Cross way this afternoon and found the chap who runs an all-night café in Villiers Street. He knows Debrette by sight, and says he believes he’s been an actor. That’d explain it, you know—being able to imitate Bruce’s voice. It’s just what an actor could do quite easily.”
Elizabeth gave a little cry. “Oh, Bobbie, how beastly! Don’t you remember what I said about Sybilla getting some old actor on to pretending to blackmail Bruce? Mr. Rockingham, have you seen Sybilla?”
“No. Of course I haven’t. If you know where she is, Elizabeth, you ought to say so.”
“Know? She’s at home! She came back this afternoon. I phoned Weller and he told me.”
Neil Rockingham took out his handkerchief, and mopped his broad forehead unashamedly.
“If only I could see some sense in this ghastly mix-up,” he groaned. “Didn’t Sybilla say she wouldn’t be back in town before the 1st? What made her come back? Did I tell you they’d arrested Burroughs in the grounds of the Belfry last night?”
Once again there was a horror-stricken silence, and then Elizabeth cried, “I’d believe anything of that man! I always loathed him! I never disliked Sybilla so much until she took to trailing round with her Thomas. I know he’s batty over her, I’ve seen him pawing her. Beasts, both of them!”
“Well, I’d never have believed it,” said Grenville, in slow tones of astonishment. “Why on earth did they do it? They could have—oh, Lord, what a beastly business!”
He got up from his seat and started wandering about the room, while Rockingham was suggesting to Elizabeth that it might be a good thing for her to go away, to those friends in Juan les Pins for instance, until the whole grisly business was settled. Seeing the letter which his landlady had brought in when Rockingham entered, Grenville picked it up and opened it. A moment later his exclamation of astonishment caused the other two to look round with a jump.
“It’s from Debrette!” yelled Grenville. “The beggar’s had the nerve to write to me!”
Rockingham jumped up and almost snatched the sheet from Grenville’s hand. Holding it in fingers which shook with excitement he read it while Elizabeth leaned across to catch a glimpse of it:
Monsieur, it ran. I am in great trouble, being put under a cloud of suspicion in the matter of the Belfry murder. I am innocent. I dare not go to the police, for they would not believe my story, but I can prove to you that I took no part in this terrible crime. I beg of you, Monsieur, in the cause of justice, to meet me, and learn my story. I will await you on the steps of Dowgate Wharf, close to Cannon Street Bridge, at seven o’clock on the evening of Sunday next. Do not, I implore you, fail to meet me there. I am but the unhappy tool of malevolent persons. Monsieur, I put myself in your hands. I trust you. Do not, I beg, betray an innocent man.
—Louis de Vallon de Brette
Elizabeth made a snatch at the paper in her impatience to see the letter more clearly, but Rockingham held it above his head, out of her reach.
“No! No!” he cried. “This letter must go to the police, to the Chief Inspector, and it must go at once. Don’t touch it again, either of you. There may be finger-prints on it.”
“There certainly are. There are mine, all over it, and some of yours as well,” put in Grenville. “Lay it on the table, Rockingham. We won’t touch it. Damn it, you can’t expect us not to read it.”
Rockingham laid the thin grey sheet on the table, then, “fussing like an old hen,” as Grenville complained, he kept guard over it, anxiously insisting that neither of the others must touch it.
Elizabeth bent eagerly over the table, rereading the spidery, foreign-looking writing, and Grenville leant forward too, his square, brown head pleasantly near her red curls. Rockingham, excited though he was, was almost moved to chuckle at Grenville’s quickness to take his opportunity.
“Look here, my dear young idiots,” said the older man. “Realise this. Whether this letter is a leg-pull, or a transparent effort to nab Grenville, I can tell you one thing. It goes to Scotland Yard. And Robert, don’t go doing anything idiotic. You’ve had one knock over the head and a collision in which you might well have lost your life already. Don’t go making an ass of yourself over this.”
“Keep your wool on, old sermon-face,” growled Robert Grenville. “It’s my letter, anyway. I say, I wish the blighter hadn’t said he trusted me. If Liza’s idea’s anywhere near right, and this blighter’s been employed as cat’s paw—”
“Don’t be such a damned young fool!” roared Rockingham, in a voice which fairly made both the others jump. “If this chap is innocent, as he protests, the police will be the first to recognise it. Do you think your addled pate is a superior reasoning instrument to Macdonald’s, you crass donkey? If this chap were honest, he wouldn’t write asking you to meet him alone God knows where—”
“Yes, just where?” put in Elizabeth. “If God knows, I don’t. Where is Dowgate Wharf?”
“In Limehouse, I expect,” said Rockingham disgustedly. “Some filthy cut-throat waterside hole in the docks. What a fool the chap must be! That letter wouldn’t take in a child of ten.”
“It’s not in Limehouse,” said Robert. “He says it’s near Cannon Street Bridge. That’d be the railway bridge. Dowgate? Isn’t there a Dowgate Hill somewhere near that Wren church—the Walbrook one. St. Stephens, that’s it.”
“Has it a crypt?” asked Elizabeth weakly, but Rockingham interposed:
“No matter where it is. Grenville’s not going there—and don’t you go trying to be funny,” he added severely to Elizabeth. “I’ve had enough horrors the past few days. It’d be the last straw if you went poking your pretty nose into criminal haunts. Do, for heaven’s sake, go away, as I suggested, my child. At least, promise you won’t go being silly over this disgusting piece of effrontery.”
He pointed again to the letter, and Elizabeth replied with dignity:
“I’m not such a goop as you think. I don’t want to be chucked in the river, thank you very much. Nothing heroic about me. Bobby, you won’t go, either, will you? Promise?”
“It wouldn’t be much good if I did, not with the old Dominie over there running us all in leading strings,” grumbled Robert. “I’m puzzled over this Debrette chap, all the same, Rockingham. The café bloke, who’d seen him mooching around, said he was a bit balmy. Didn’t sound like a desperate criminal to me.”
“He’s not your business,” urged Rockingham. “Leave it alone. Now look here. Let me put this letter in an envelope and seal it up and take it to Scotland Yard. You can come, too, if you want to, and then both of us can explain how it arrived.”
“Said he magnanimously,” retorted Grenville. “I’m not at your prep. school, thanks very much, my dear chap, although you do remind me of the dear old head. I’m quite capable of finding my own way to Cannon Row Police Station, and presenting the authorities with this valuable piece of evidence, but I want to think it over a bit first. There’s more in this than meets the eye at a casual perusal.”
He made a face at Rockingham, and Elizabeth exclaimed, “Cannon Row? Is that where your Dowgate place is?” and Robert explained in superior tones:
“Cannon Row Police Station is the headquarters of the C.I.D. Amateurs with a taste for the dramatic refer to it as ‘the Yard’—just like that.”
Rockingham ignored the jibe. “I don’t care two hoots what you call it. This letter’s got to be sent to the proper authorities.”
“It shall be, all in good time,” replied Grenville. “Don’t be in such a feverish haste, my dear chap. It betokens panic and lacks dignity. I wonder if you observed one interesting point in it—the writer refers to the murder at the Belfry. How does he know there’s been a murder there? I only knew myself this morning.”
“Because he committed the murder,” said Rockingham, and his voice sounded a little terse as though his temper were giving way. “It’s no time for clowning, Grenville. The thing’s deadly serious.”
Hearing the weary note in his voice, Grenville promptly relented, saying, “Sorry, old chap. Don’t you worry. I’ll see this bright little production goes to the proper quarter long before Sunday.”
Elizabeth gave a little exclamation of dismay.
“Goodness, how awful! It’s nearly six o’clock, and I’ve promised to dine with the Morton female and go on to Lady Precious Stream. I think I shall cut it. I don’t feel like theatres and eating.”
“Don’t you be so foolish, my child,” said Rockingham. “A good dinner and a play are the very things you need. Off with you! Go and get into your most frivolous frock and forget all about these grisly topics. It won’t do anybody any good for you to stay here and get more and more morbid—Besides, it’s not done to cut appointments. Off you go, Liza. I saw you’d left your little runabout in Fetter Alley. The City Police will be summonsing you to-morrow morning if you leave it there much longer.”
“Well, if I’m going, I’d better go,” said Elizabeth. “Bye-bye, Bobbie. Ring me in the morning and don’t go doing heroics on lonely wharves. You’ll look after him, won’t you, Neil R?”
“I will,” said Rockingham heartily, and Elizabeth was out of the door in a flash.
“Call yourself a friend!” exclaimed Grenville wrathfully. “You’re a damned old wet-blankety-mollycoddle of a moth-eaten schoolmaster. Damn it, Rockingham, I could understand it if some one batted you over the head!”
“Sorry, old chap! I’m too fed up to be tactful,” replied Rockingham. “You’ll have plenty of time for courting when all this is over, and do, for God’s sake, try to avoid entangling that nice child in this very nasty story. About that letter of Debrette’s—are you sure you won’t let me take it along?”
“No. I won’t, and that’s flat,” retorted Grenville. “I’m quite old enough to manage my own affairs. I know you’ll go rushing to the nearest phone, I can see it written all over your virtuous face, but that letter’s mine. See?”
“Oh, all right, all right. They say confidence men make their fortunes because the world’s full of mugs,” replied Rockingham. “I expect Bruce was a mug—and he paid for it. If I have to attend an inquest on you I shall say you asked for all you got. Good-bye.”
He strode out with his chin in the air, and Grenville returned to the table and leant over the Gothic-looking script of Louis de Vallon de Brette.