“I insist Mrs. Colton is the murderer,” said Mr. Pinkerton.
They had discussed the case at dinner. Bull had told the little grey man about his interview with the Royces and their servants, and his seeing Agatha and Michael at the Strand Corner House. Then he remembered he had not told Pinkerton what he had done the day before, so he began at the beginning and went over everything again.
“I still insist that Mrs. Colton is the woman.”
Dinner was over and they were sitting upstairs in Inspector Bull’s dark brown den with the green desk lamp. It was fairly quiet. They could still hear the clatter of pots and pans in the scullery where “that girl”—as Mr. Pinkerton called her—was washing up.
Inspector Bull scowled.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “That’s what every clerk and shop assistant in London thinks. Go down and ask Crissie. She’ll agree with you. I don’t.”
Pinkerton had never known his friend to be so stubborn before. He took off his eyeglasses and wiped his pale little eyes. Then he polished his glasses and put them on again.
“Maybe you’re right, Inspector,” he said when he had determined by squinting and examining the title page of a book on the desk that his sight was in order. He looked cautiously at Bull.
“At the same time,” the Inspector continued soberly, “there is one thing that worries me.”
Pinkerton nodded eagerly.
“You mean the motorcycle?”
“How did you guess?”
“I thought of that at once,” Pinkerton replied hastily. “It was perfectly simple. There wasn’t a sign of a motorcycle in the entrance of that place in the road. And the evening papers said nobody had heard one anywhere on the road at that time.”
“In other words,” he went on, “there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever—except the word of Mrs. Colton and the chauffeur—that there was a motorcycle, or a man on it.”
A troubled frown clouded Bull’s simple, ordinarily placid face.
“I’ve been thinking of that all day,” he admitted. “It’s a possibility. If it’s true it means that Mrs. Colton and the driver are in it together. Then they’ll have the jewels stowed away somewhere.”
Mr. Pinkerton nodded brightly.
“And in that case, Mrs. Colton just fired her gun as a blind, and the chauffeur had a gun and killed Colton. But what did he do with it?”
Inspector Bull chewed the inside of his right cheek in the deepest meditation.
“That would be easy,” he replied. “He could have thrown it over the wall into the undergrowth and got it later. Or he just put it in his pocket—nobody searched him or the car either. They could have put his revolver in the side pocket and put the satchel of jewels under the rug on the floor. I’ll just have them search the garden by the wall tomorrow.”
He made a note on the pink paper pad on his desk. He had little use for notes. There was no danger of his forgetting even the minor details he was supposed to remember, but if you had a desk you should have pads on it, and if you had pads you should use them if you happened to remember it.
“But if there was a man, you’ve got several possibilities,” said Mr. Pinkerton, carefully fitting a cigarette into a long white bone holder and lighting it. “In fact, you’ve got four distinct possibilities.”
“Four?”
“Four.”
Inspector Bull’s mind was the type that could cope successfully with one possibility at a time. Four were a little overpowering. Not to Mr. Pinkerton, whose agile mind could build edifices that made New York a city of Lilliput. Especially if he had an audience, and Inspector Bull was listening to him with mild wonder in his eyes.
“If there was a man,” continued the little Welshman with a certain complacent eagerness, “if there was a man, four things are true about him.
“First, he knew about the diamonds.
“Second, he knew the car was going by way of Colnbrook—that it was not taking the by-pass.
“Third, he knew the chauffeur didn’t carry a gun. “Fourth, he knew—at least according to Peskett—that if he didn’t disguise his voice he’d be recognised.
“Now what does that give us?”
Inspector Bull was making diamonds, squares and circles on his pink pad.
“It gives us,” said Mr. Pinkerton, “the four possibilities.”
“Four?”
“Four.”
“How so?”
“The man and the driver working together,” said Mr. Pinkerton; “the man and Mrs. Colton; the man and Mr. Colton; the man and someone not the driver or Mrs. Colton who knew all about it.”
Bull gazed at his grey little friend with admiration. Mr. Pinkerton, having built his edifice, wanted no one to tamper with it. He hurried on.
“The man and the driver could have been in it together. From what you said the driver had plenty of time to telephone a confederate—if he wasn’t already in the Royce house. He knew Mr. Colton was never armed, and that the driver was not armed. He must have been surprised when Mrs. Colton fired—he lost his head, and fired too. The driver lied about not knowing about the diamonds until he saw the satchel in Mr. Colton’s hand, and about not knowing they were going to Colnbrook.”
“That’s right,” Bull agreed cautiously. “In that case the shooting was accidental. If it was Mrs. Colton and the driver it was premediated. But if it was Mrs. Colton and the murderer, then she wouldn’t have fired, would she?”
Pinkerton frowned. He didn’t like to appear too positive, however; so he let it go.
“If it were the bandit and Mr. Colton,” he began tentatively.
Bull shook his tawny head.
“That means that Colton was trying to steal Mrs. Royce’s jewels, and there’s no evidence for that.”
“There’s no evidence against it, on the other hand,” Mr. Pinkerton observed judicially. “You don’t yet know the real reason for his getting the diamonds.”
Bull scowled.
“You don’t know but what he may have been in bad shape. Say he got this man Gates to help him put on a robbery. He’d have the diamonds, Mrs. Royce would have £ 35,000.”
They looked at each other.
“Suppose it wasn’t Gates at all but Michael Royce,” said Bull. “Suppose Colton and he arranged it between them. If Royce got £ 35,000 out of it, and Colton sold the stones re-cut for £ 10,000, there’d be over £ 20,000 for each of them”
“At any rate,” said Mr. Pinkerton, “it’s clear that whoever the man was, if there was one, when Mrs. Colton shot, he thought Colton was double-crossing him. That was the end of Mr. Colton.”
They smoked in silence for several minutes.
“That’s three,” said Bull at last.
“The fourth,” Pinkerton said, “is more complicated.”
He prodded an infinitesimal stub of Woodbine from the holder, looked at it for some time and eventually decided that it could be thrown away. He remembered that once in Paris, in front of the Deux Magots, an old man picking up one of his stubs from the sidewalk had shaken his fist at him.
He put the long bone holder on the desk and leaned back in his chair.
“The man in league with somebody, not the driver or Mrs. Colton or Mr. Colton, is the fourth.”
“It could be Mrs. Royce, who stands to gain £ 20,000. Michael Royce’s interests are presumably the same. It could be Miss Agatha Colton, who apparently doesn’t like her father or stepmother.”
Bull shook his head.
“She wasn’t there. She didn’t know they were going through Colnbrook.”
Mr. Pinkerton examined his friend’s stolid visage critically.
“No?” he said. “You saw her with Michael Royce this afternoon? Couldn’t they have done it together?”
“That makes Royce shooting her father!”
Mr. Pinkerton shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been done before,” he said callously and rather pleased with himself for it
Bull chewed his moustache, unconvinced.
“It could be Michael and Mrs. Royce, or Michael and Miss Agatha, or Michael and Mrs. Colton.”
“Or it could be one of Mrs. Royce’s servants without anybody’s help.”
Bull brightened considerably.
“I thought of that,” he said. “That would explain why Peskett would think his voice was disguised but Mrs. Colton wouldn’t think of it. He knew him, she didn’t.”
Mr. Pinkerton smiled with pleasure. His pupil was improving in mental agility.
“Precisely,” he said eagerly. “And you can see that that holds for Gates too. Peskett probably knows him and Mrs. Colton probably has never heard him speak, or barely.”
“However,” Bull continued, “there’s another explanation of that disguised voice.”
Mr. Pinkerton decided to allow himself the extravagance of another cigarette.
“There,” he said complacently, “are your four possibilities.”
“Not four,” replied Inspector Bull, switching off the green shaded desk lamp. “Five.”