Lingering behind with the sergeant left in charge of the derelict house, Bream fell heir to a titbit of news volunteered by a woman-resident from across the square. Shortly before ten the previous night this woman had noticed a taxi standing before Number Seventeen, with the driver at the house door, ringing the bell and pounding with the knocker. Obtaining no response, the man had at last driven away.
This taxi Bream, without difficulty, traced to the King’s Cross rank. It had been ordered in person by a woman easily identifiable as Elsie Dilworth, who had asked that herself and her luggage be collected in half an hour’s time. Now it was no longer necessary to inquire about the bag. With a thrill of triumph Bream realised that his tentative suspicion had been correct. Elsie, on leaving the house, had no immediate intention of suicide.. On the contrary, she meant to quit London, planning merely to come back and get together all her belongings. So far, so good; but then came the paradox. There had been no flight. Instead, one was faced with the fact that inside half an hour she had turned on the gas and already succumbed to unconsciousness!
What had caused the swift alteration of plan? Or had it been altered for her? The sergeant still doggedly stuck to it that nothing had been found to upset the original belief. Bream toured the square in hope of hearing that some loiterer had been seen outside Number Seventeen, but his luck was out. Apart from the testimony of the cab he learned nothing, nor did the dismayed return of Mrs. Eales, at nightfall, assist save in one minor direction. He now understood how, in the landlady’s absence, Elsie had got possession of the latchkey.
“So it’s you, sir!” Mrs. Eales faltered nervously. “Are you connected with the police?”
Bream explained his position, and somewhat sternly inquired why he had not been informed of certain matters. The woman excused herself for her failure to write to him, coming out with a meagre story which neither he nor the sergeant saw reason to disbelieve.
“You see, Mrs. Dixon—or wasn’t she Mrs. Dixon? I’m sure after reading about it in the evening paper I’ve been too upset to know what to think! Anyhow, she sent me two pounds, and said she wanted to keep the room on. By registered post, it was, from some place in Surrey—Redhill, was it?—I’ve got the letter in my bag, but there was no address in it. I meant to let you know, only my mother being down with pleurisy I’ve had so much to worry me. I rushed off to her, you know. That’s why I was gone when—”
“Never mind that. Did you expect Miss Dilworth back?”
“Just as I was leaving—yes. I’d a card from her to say she might be coming to town the next evening, and in case I had to be out would I put the key in the usual place? Well, I did—so that’s how she got in.”
“Better show us where you put it,” said the sergeant, with a glance at Bream.
Mrs. Eales led the way to the tiny area and pointed to a crack between two worn flagstones.
“I see,” murmured Bream, glancing over his shoulder into the dusk of the square. “I suppose you pretty often hid the key there?”
“I’ve had to, what with no maid and having to dodge in and out.”
“Of course. And now may we see the two communications you received from Miss Dilworth?”
Mrs. Eales produced them, and when Bream had noted down the postmarks and dates the sergeant took them over.
Bream toyed briefly with the idea of the key having been taken from its hiding-place and used before Elsie’s arrival. It could easily have been put back for her to find, only this would mean the intruder must have remained concealed in the house during Elsie’s interview with Diana Lake. Was there any objection to this theory? The overhearing of that interview might have settled the secretary’s doom; but Bream decided against it. Why, if it were so, had Elsie been allowed to go out on a problematic mission? If she had suddenly been deemed dangerous, the obvious course was to put an end to her then and there, the first moment she was alone.
“Oh, what’s the use?” the agent pulled himself up. “She wasn’t doped, stunned or throttled. She died from the effects of gas. Will any jury believe some individual whose presence can’t be proved stood over her with a revolver and forced her to gas herself? Not much—and I’m dashed if I can see how else it could have been contrived.”
As he quitted the house he was struck by the particularly dense shadow the plane tree opposite cast over the entire front. Some one might have got in unobserved, he argued, and setting aside all idea of foul play turned his attention to a different solution. Suppose his hypothetical intruder entered to find the victim already dead, but having left some written statement incriminating to himself? Such a statement could have been taken and destroyed without leaving anything behind to reveal the fact.
“But can that be proved any more than the other notion? No! As matters stand, there won’t be an autopsy or even a remand for further inquiry. If I’m any judge, we’ve reached another dead-end.”
His prophecy was correct, although actually the inquest was delayed for three whole days in order that Inspector Headcorn could push investigations to their uttermost point. Diana Lake’s account, now made public, substantially helped towards the verdict foreseen by all concerned—that of Suicide while of Unsound Mind. An hysterical imagination, played upon by remorse and dread of personal consequences, had led to mental derangement. The woman had first played with the thought of further disappearance, then abandoned it in favour of death.
Would the strong emphasis laid on insanity weaken the charge against Somervell? Bream saw it could not, for whatever the victim’s mental condition at the last she had at that crucial moment put her finger unerringly on the spot. It would never now be known whether or not it was she who placed the aconite in Somervell’s pocket, nor if her futile, frantic efforts to “atone” had sprung from a guilty conscience. By her final act she had drawn a curtain over one entire phase of the puzzle; thinking which, Bream left the quietly conducted coroner’s inquest in a tornado of helpless rage.
“Blast her to hell!” he swore. “Alive she was a pest. Dead she’s fastened her talons on Somervell, and will drag him down with her!”
Nothing for it now but to work again on the activities for a short while suspended, the foremost being his attempt to check the late Haji’s movements over a given period. He found half a dozen Indian students who had been the boy’s intimates, but although a carefree, joyous lot they tended when their dead friend was mentioned to shut up like clams. The question: “Did they consider that Haji had sufficient reason for taking his life?” met with a sphinx-like: “Maybe. His father was a hard man—very hard.” Only Mr. Mirza Ahmed continued to shrug and to repeat his belief that Abdul flush of money—as certainly was the case—would have been quite content with his existence. Where that money had come from was a puzzle. Haji Senior, on being cabled, declared that he had ordered his son home three months ago. Abdul might have been spending his passage money in the meantime, but that did not explain how he came by more passage money when he required it. No further cheques had been passed through his bank.
The death of Frieda Klapp proved another hard nut to crack. The house in Red Lion Street where the event had happened was now demolished and being replaced by an office-building. The landlady, when traced, could not—or would not—add anything to the published account; the lodgers, mostly foreign, seemed impossible to locate. Armed with a list of their names, Bream wrote letters, some of which were returned, while none, as yet, had been answered. He was reduced to inserting appeals for information in the personal columns of the newspapers, and this he did in regard to Elsie Dilworth as well. So far, nothing had come of them.
One other matter he might have investigated, but, certain that Headcorn would cover it, he left it alone. Every spare moment at his disposal he devoted to an exasperated study of the newspapers lodged in Michael Hull’s safe. Despite the fact that the barrister, Headcorn, Diana and even Sir Kingsley Baxter himself, were engaged in the same unprofitable pursuit, he went back to it again and again, searching every inch of the barren print, not excluding the advertisements. Cynically he came to conclude that the coroner’s verdict had not erred. Elsie Dilworth had been mad—and here was the last, clinching proof.
Inspector Headcorn, meantime, was doing precisely what Bream supposed—that is to say, striving to establish beyond a doubt the whereabouts of Nicholas Blundell on the night of November first. If he could find the hour between eleven and midnight suitably occupied he would clear his mind at once of one tentative theory regarding Margaret Fairlamb’s murder. A slight haziness about that hour would not, it was true, enable him to make out a case; but still it would encourage him to press further.
Interviewing the solicitor’s two servants, he was told, once the date was recalled to their minds, that their master on the stated evening had dined at home, in the company of two of his most distinguished clients—Lord Limpsfield and Sir Norbury Penge, neither of whom had left till about one o’clock. Gaylord remembered this well, for the gentlemen had dismissed their cars, and at the time of their departure he had called them a taxi. During the evening it was quite impossible for Mr. Blundell to have quitted the flat. Gaylord, in the kitchen and with the door open, would have been sure to hear, and so would the cook, who was a very light sleeper. The outer door closed softly, but the door of the flat itself was—as Headcorn himself proved—a fair treat for banging.
The cook was not detained. With Gaylord the Inspector spent a longer time, hoping to give the conversation a friendly tone by attention to side issues. Already he had roused antagonism, but the butler-chauffeur became slightly mollified when asked if the clients just named dined here often.
“Not together,” was his answer. “I believe this was the first time since his lordship introduced Sir Norbury to Mr. Blundell. That would be about a twelvemonth ago, when Sir Norbury had just got his title.”
“I suppose a fair amount of business is conducted in the flat?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Some of these busy gentlemen seem to prefer it. Come to that, they wouldn’t find better whisky and cigars, not even in Buckingham Palace—and they get away with a lot too.”
Headcorn remarked that Mr. Blundell seemed a most hospitable man.
“There’s nothing small about him,” replied Gaylord, “nor underhand,” he added with meaning. “I’ve worked for him four years, and I ought to know.”
Now to secure confirmation; but first Headcorn took measures calculated to reveal any concerted attempt to support Blundell’s alibi. He arranged that while he called on Lord Limpsfield his colleague, Inspector Baynes, should do the same with Sir Norbury Penge. Each officer was to put his questions in a certain way, after which they would compare results. It seemed doubtful if the two visits could be made to coincide in point of time. Actually, they did do so admirably well, in each case the official card ensuring its bearer prompt attention.
The newspaper proprietor was seen at his palatial residence in Belgrave Square. Headcorn was ushered into a handsome but business-like office, where a beautiful blonde secretary was taking dictation.
“You may leave us, Miss Gale,” said Lord Limpsfield, whereupon, with a curious but patronising glance from lashes heavy with mascara, the vision withdrew, and Headcorn for the first time found himself face to face with the man who, from having begun life as a Natal farmhand, had climbed by his own efforts to the eminence of a power in the British Empire. He noted the brisk but affable gesture so often commented upon in the press, the keen alertness of the blue eyes set in the broad, rubicund face, and recalled the peer’s well-advertised qualities of swift appraisal, courtesy to the Law, and ruthlessness in displeasure.
“Well, Inspector!” The plain man’s voice, with its sub-flavour of Colonial drawl, addressed him heartily. “And what can I do for you? Smoke?” A big hand, immaculate, but not over-manicured, pushed forward a box of Coronas. “No? Duty call, I see! Well”—with a comfortable laugh—“shoot it over.”
Now it was that Headcorn grew aware of what a less highly trained observer might easily have missed—a faint watchfulness, hardening the pleasant face into a mask. Without appearing to do so, he took in every movement of his host, who, lounging back in his chair, surveyed him through spirals of smoke. Purposely he heightened the suspense by a short delay, then proceeded to state his business after the manner planned.
“A mere detail of routine, sir, which I dare say you’ll be able to settle for me in a few sentences. I should like very much to know what you happened to be doing on the evening of November first, with especial regard to the hour between eleven and twelve. Could you tell me where you spent that time, and with whom?”
Lord Limpsfield’s gaze, never stirring from the speaker’s face, had grown cold and steely, like an iceberg in midocean. Very deliberately the cigar was removed from his lips and tapped against a Lalique ash-tray. To Headcorn it seemed as if the brain which was said to keep tab of a hundred diverse enterprises just as a master juggler rotates a dozen plates without letting one fall, was reviewing in lightning succession every eventuality the question involved before committing itself to an answer.
Was this delay made in hope of further explanation? If so, the hesitating peer was doomed to disappointment. Headcorn waited. He was determined to wait, if necessary, all day, rather than add one word to his polite but terse demand. Inside he was asking himself with one of his rare spasms of skin-prickling if, at last, he had struck ore.
And then Lord Limpsfield spoke.