What was once seen, grows what is now described.
The Ring and the Book, R. Browning.
Half an hour later, Woods and Riley sat facing each other across a temporary table, set up in the empty box-room. Woods did not want to quit the premises as yet, but so far the body had not been removed. There being no relations, indeed no other occupants of the flat, to be considered, he had decided to leave everything as it had been found for another half-hour or so, until he had completed his preliminary investigation.
Leaving the drawing-room, with its dead owner still lying where he had fallen, and with a man on guard at the door, Woods had, therefore, retreated upstairs. Riley had returned from the station, whence the circular had now been sent out. Brown, having helped Woods in the meticulous search of the drawing-room, had now joined the conference.
“Well,” remarked Riley, gazing at what now lay on the table before them, “that’s one thing cleared up—Motive. This fellow knew this stuff was here, and that’s what he came for. Knew better than to touch the jade and so on. That wasn’t marketable—this is.”
Woods nodded. Almost idly, his fingers played with the veritable heap of jewellery. Pearl necklaces, diamond bracelets, brooches, rings, all lay scattered before him in profusion. A perfect castle of empty cases was built up at one end of the table. They had formed the contents of the tin box.
“Yes. Now let’s just think about this a bit more. Of course a large amount of jewellery like this must have been insured. There’ll be a detailed list, probably, at the bank. Riley, you’re something of an expert; give me a rough estimate, to be going on with, of what you think this is worth.”
Riley glanced at the shining heap, picked up a string of pearls and laid it down again. “Well, of course you know I can only give you a rough idea, but I’d say, myself, between £10,000 and £12,000. It rather depends on the value put on a few special items, like these pearls here.”
Woods nodded. “A good figure too, even if the thief only cleared 10 per cent of the value. Now, you two, just listen here a moment. I think the thief was after these things. He hadn’t gone for the jade, valuable as that is. None of the cabinets had been unlocked, no fingerprints on the keys or doors, except what are probably Mr. Ewing’s—for they’re all over the flat. This jewellery was in the tin box in the drawing-room, but the box was down on the floor in the corner by the fireplace, and some of that brown paper and the pieces from the waste-paper basket had slipped and covered it up.
“Actually, the body fell very near the hearth, and some of the blood had spattered out on to the brown paper. I think that accounts for the murderer not lifting it up. He clearly didn’t suspect there was anything behind the waste-paper basket, and perhaps didn’t want to risk staining his fingers. I think, too, it’s pretty clear he never waited to search the drawing-room. He was interrupted before he could do so. He returned up here. Possibly to hide, as Riley suggests. But I think he’d been up here already, before that. The burnt candles suggest that to me. I think he knew Mr. Ewing had valuables in here. For one thing”—nodding to a small tallboy which stood to the left of the empty fireplace behind him—“all the private papers dealing with the collection are there. And see here!” Rising, he went, followed by the two officers, over to the old-fashioned wardrobe. He threw the beam of a torch on the polished wood by the keyhole. Faint smudges and smears, and a few fingerprints showed up in the beam.
“That wardrobe has been opened very recently. Those marks are fresh. Haddon tells me he is pretty sure the fingerprints are Mr. Ewing’s. The smudges, of course, are the marks of someone wearing gloves. Now look here!” Taking the edge of the wardrobe door in his fingers, he swung it open, and threw the light of the torch within. On the dull, stained floor of the interior there was a fairly clearly defined patch.
“That’s where this tin box has stood. I’ve measured it up, and the details correspond. I think that box has been kept in here, and, quite recently, Mr. Ewing came and took it out, and removed it to the other room.
“We must try to discover, of course, why that was done. But it’s pretty clear to me that the murderer’s knowledge told him the box was usually kept here, and this is where he expected to find it. He’d made no great search in Mr. Ewing’s bedroom. There were no signs of anything having been disturbed there. He had come in here. That match and those candles show that. There are no wax vestas anywhere else in the house. So we’re this much farther on: the murderer knew the house, and he knew about the tin box and its contents. We’ve got to get on to every man connected or acquainted with Mr. Ewing—every man who might be familiar with the flat, and who answers at all to the description we’ve got. We’ve got to find out where every one was, and then perhaps we’ll see our way clearer.”
“One thing, sir,” interrupted Riley, “which joins up with what you’re saying. How did the man get in? If he was someone known to Mr. Ewing, of course he’d let him in without suspecting anything, I suppose?”
“We can’t be dead sure of that, Riley, yet,” replied his superior officer. “He may have had access to the flat as a cleaner or a workman, and had the opportunity to make false keys. This flat is a ‘service’ flat, you know, with a restaurant attached, and the cleaning of the rooms, bringing up of coal, cleaning of windows, is all done from the central block.”
“If that is so,” put in Brown, “and the old gentleman went down to his meals, why didn’t the murderer wait till he was at dinner? These chaps don’t usually kill if they can avoid it.”
“Well, Mr. Ewing very often didn’t go down to his meals. I’ve talked to the proprietress of the flats. She tells me he liked to get down to the restaurant when he could, but if his arthritis was bad he’d have his meals up here. She says he’d been better lately, but she doesn’t remember if he’d been down yesterday. The nurse will know, but I can’t see her yet. And, in any case, the proprietress says she believes he never left the flat empty for long. He’d come down to the restaurant with the nurse, but when she’d seen him to his table she’d come back up here. The flat would only be left while she was taking or fetching him from the restaurant, and not for more than five minutes at a time.”
“Why did he do that, sir?” queried Riley.
“Well, as far as I can make out, this collection of jade is a good one. It’s very valuable in itself, and the individual pieces, some of them, are worth a lot. It’s portable too, and a thief getting in could make a good haul if he were in touch with the right people. That’s another point—the collection was quite well known to a lot of people. Now the murderer didn’t go for the jade. It seems probable, to put it at the lowest, that he was after this jewellery in the tin box. We’ve got to find out about the jewellery, of course, but it looks to me as if it had been the property of the late Mrs. Ewing. That being so, it wouldn’t be used, nor, most likely, looked at. That box probably stayed in here for months on end without being opened.” He paused, and glanced interrogatively at his companions. Both nodded their agreement, and he continued: “If that were so, the thief, if he came just to rob, might reckon he’d get away quietly with the box, and the theft not be noticed for a while. Jade taken from the shelves would, of course, leave gaps which would be noticed straight away.”
“That’s an indication that he meant to rob, but not murder,” put in Riley. “He may have thought he’d get in here, and away, without being heard.”
Woods nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. But, of course, when he came up here to-night the box wasn’t in its place.”
Then, turning to the sergeant: “Well, Riley, you’d better start checking up all the hotel staff, I think. Find where this stuff is insured, and get an inventory and so on.”
“H’m! Plenty of routine work for me,” said Riley grimly. “Well, sir, I’ll be off, and start. There’ll be a night staff on now round at the hotel. They come in at 8.30, I’m told, and I’ll take the opportunity of going through there straight away.” He glanced at the clock, which marked nearly 9 o’clock. Woods experienced a faint sensation of surprise. Less than four hours had passed since the discovery of the crime, and yet so much had been fitted in. He had the familiar sensation which often accompanied his investigations, as if he had picked up a roll, which, slowly unfolding before him, gradually brought into view the lives, the habits, the personalities of people who, only a brief while before, had been totally unknown to him. Already he had a conception of the life lived by the dead man, of his tastes, his wealth, his way of life. Now he desired to unroll the scroll still farther, and obtain a knowledge of his friends, his associates, and the various people, of all ranks of life, who had, in the past, entered the flat.
Anne Godfrey, in the flat below, was conscious of something of the same sort, as she sat, vainly trying to compose her distracted mind by tidying up her room.
Poor Nurse Edwards had gone to some relations, for the doctor had judged that it would give her nerves a better chance of recovery if she moved right away from the neighbourhood of the crime. Anne was busily putting away sal-volatile, rolling up bandages, replacing pots of boracic ointment, restoring her aunt’s well-stocked medicine cupboard to its usual neatness, but all the while her brain ceaselessly reverted to Henry, who, with his wife, had now gone off to their own home.
The tension of his nerves had given way to violent irritability once the police had been and gone. Doreen’s inane exclamations and repetitions, and Mrs. Dutton’s ceaseless lamentations, had maddened him beyond bearing, and, after one furious outburst, which reduced them all to silence, he had bidden Doreen get her things on, and they had taken their departure. Peace had descended once more on the flat. Mrs. Dutton had gone to bed, and Anne had set herself to efface the signs of Nurse Edwards’s presence. She, and Inspector Woods in the next flat, and Henry himself in his own home, were now all really thinking along the same lines.
“Poor Henry,” thought Anne. “I can’t help being sorry for him. If only he’d stopped that man. If only he’d even shut the door behind him. Or if he had only had a better view of his face! I’m afraid everyone will be down on him, and think—and say—he behaved like a fool!”
She sighed, for she knew Henry had enough to embitter his temper as it was, and she envisaged a marked increase in its violence in the course of the next few weeks. “Doreen will only make this worse too,” she reflected. “Why on earth did he ever marry her! Life’s going to be more difficult for them both than ever. In fact we’re all of us in for a bad time,” she thought. With a very shadowed face, she finished putting the room to rights.
“Curse it all!” ran Henry’s meditations. “Now I’m in for the devil of a lot of unpleasantness! Everyone’ll call me a fool or a coward! ‘What! You saw the man, and didn’t stop him? Didn’t ask him his business? Was he a very formidable sort of person?’ Oh! devil take it all! What a damned beastly affair!” and maddened by the endless questioning, police, press and lawyers, which he saw stretching ahead of him for days and even weeks, he jumped up and began restlessly pacing up and down, until his wife, her nerves badly shaken by the events of the evening, took refuge in early bed, leaving him to the gloom of his own thoughts.
Woods, pondering over the case as he sat making up his notes in the spare-room of Ewing’s flat, also considered the conduct of Henry, though from rather a different angle.
“Mr. Godfrey”—he looked at the name heading a page in his notebook—“ought to be a good witness. He’s cool enough, and steady enough, I’m sure. Lucky he was on the spot; he ought to be able to help us to fix up times.” For Woods had already decided that an exact time-table was going to be a very important feature of the case.
“Now, let’s see. His wife had been at Mrs. Dutton’s flat since 3 o’clock. Neither she, nor Mrs. Dutton, nor Miss Godfrey noticed any noise or anything above. Mr. Godfrey came in to tea before 5 o’clock. They all agree it was within ten minutes of the hour. Heard the fall approximately 5.15. Nurse Edwards came in at about 5.25. She and Mr. Godfrey went up—5.25–30. Saw the man in the flat then.
“Now, Nurse Edwards had been out since 4 o’clock. Mr. Ewing had been alone since then, as far as is known. Murder definitely took place between 4 and 5.30, probably at 5.15. That crash must have been the body, I suppose?”
Up to the present, the flat had remained exactly as it had been when the police first entered. Search had been made for a possible weapon, but everything had been left, as far as possible, in its original position.
Again Woods visualized the room. It had shown no signs whatever of disorder; nothing had fallen over; nothing had been broken, no door or cupboard had been smashed open.
He rose and went down to the room below, still guarded by the man on duty in the flat itself. He decided to go over, for one final time before sending for the ambulance, the exact state of affairs in the drawing-room. He felt that personalities must wait. He must get the details of the scene imprinted on his mind while everything was fresh.
The body still lay where it had been found, awaiting his instructions for its removal. Mr. Ewing had, he surmised, been seated in his arm-chair, presumably tidying up after dispatching letters or parcels. Woods noted the scraps of brown paper, ends of string, pieces of sealing-wax. He observed that ordinary Bryant and May’s matches of the large size had been used, and the burnt-out ends had been neatly laid in a pen tray.
A chair had been pushed to one side, one of rather a beautiful set, solid, heavy Chippendale. The body lay on the ground, so close to it that the legs were spattered with blood. He observed that the chair had been turned round, so that the back legs were nearest the corpse.
Clearly the murderer had done his work either kneeling, or standing by the body, in the place where his victim had first fallen. Blood had spurted towards the fireplace, on to the fire-irons, some on to the coal scuttle. But there was none towards the table, none anywhere else at all. Pools had soaked in round the head, but otherwise the room was extraordinarily free from any signs of disturbance. Woods felt it was almost uncanny. With the body out of sight behind the table, anyone coming in would see only a beautiful, peaceful room, gay with flowers, well lit, well warmed. Yet once step round that table, catch but one glimpse of what lay on the floor, and that peaceful room surpassed in horror any shambles or place of execution.
Struck afresh by the concentration of the area where blood was to be found, Woods bent down to scrutinize the rug. Turning to his notes, he saw that Godfrey and the nurse had found the body covered up. The rug lay, where Woods himself had thrown it, across an arm-chair. It was a silk Persian rug, of beautiful design and texture—the main colouring being a deep rose red.
Picking it up, Woods found it was deeply stained on both sides. He could not decide whether this was due to the blood having actually soaked right through. Considering the fact that the rug was thick and close, and that it could not have lain over the body for any very great length of time, he decided that this was a point which must be looked into.
He noted that the hands of the corpse were uninjured. As Dr. Carr had said, the victim had apparently offered no resistance. Probably he had been stunned by the first blow. There were no rings on his fingers, but, peering very closely, Woods thought he could perceive on the left hand a sort of callus or indentation, as if a ring or rings had been habitually worn and had marked the finger. Noting that this point must be verified by the doctor, and having now satisfied himself that he had let no detail of what was actually presented to his eyes escape him, he at length gave the order for the ambulance men to be notified and for the body to be removed to the mortuary.
It was getting late, but, before going off duty for the night, he felt there was one more task to be done. He wanted to obtain some light on the possible ways in which the murderer might have entered the flat.
He discovered two things almost at once. The front door of the flat itself was opened by a Yale lock of the ordinary pattern. There were bolts as well and a chain, but, clearly, as in most flats, the door was usually opened by the Yale lock. The catch was set back, so that the door could be opened by the simple insertion of the key; the safety catch was pressed back out of action.
Going down the staircase to the main exit to the street, Woods examined the front door there. This was a new one, put in when the house was converted, and made to match the Duttons’ door, which adjoined. Both doors were solid, new, and the paint in good condition. The lock, again, was Yale, with the catch set back. It had not been forced, or tampered with. Inquiries from the porter at the hotel, and from Mrs. Dutton, had elicited the fact that this lower door was left open during the day, and only closed at night. Thus, anyone visiting Mr. Ewing’s flat could go in from the street, mount the stairs, and there be unperceived and unheard from the street, while, as the flatlets above were both empty, there would be no interruption from that quarter. Once Mr. Ewing were left alone, with the nurse out, anyone would have had ample time and opportunity to get into the flat. Assuming, too, that the old man were suffering from his arthritis, it might be anticipated that he would be more or less stationary in his room, he would not be likely to have been moving about the flat itself.
Woods realized that for the present he had done all that could be done. Further details must wait until the morning, when it was to be hoped Nurse Edwards would be sufficiently recovered to give him accurate information on the many points where he felt she could enlighten him.
He had very little hope that the circular, now issued to the police, would bring in any information as to the fugitive, and with the conviction that the probable solution as to his identity lay in the circumstances and staging of the murder itself, rather than in any possible identification from outside, he turned his face thankfully away from No. 5B Clevedon Street. When next he had occasion to visit that flat, at least it would no longer contain the grim presence, formerly Simon Ewing.