CREEPING JIMMIE had invested one shilling on a cigar and nine shillings on a first-class ticket to Townsford. Both of these events advertised an exceptional occasion, for he was a careful man. Besides, he did not like cigars. He preferred cigarettes.
Nevertheless, one must keep up appearances. What was a shilling cigar—what, for the matter of that, was a nine-shilling fare—with the rosy prospect of £5000 or its equivalent in diamonds in the imminent distance?
So Jimmie, ponderous and prosperous, strode the platform at Waterloo, his little beady eyes alert and a comfortable glow of anticipation beneath his well-cut lounge jacket. For many long weeks he had been an habitué of Hatton Garden cafés, and the fruits of that vigil were ripening at last.
Mr Lawrence Sheet and Mr R. K. Adhurst stepped into the picture at the same moment. But Sheet was then the only person who interested Jimmie. He breathed out a thankful cloud of smoke and picked up his suit-case.
Now the senior partner of a Hatton Garden firm of diamond merchants who travels third class is a mean man. He is not only mean but cautious, since the publicity of the more democratic carriage is a safeguard usually as effective to the bearer of a precious burden as steel bars. Jimmie was too old a hand to swear aloud, but he was chagrined. It was at least a clean loss of four-and-sixpence, and, as if with deliberate perversity, Mr Sheet had selected a non-smoker.
Jimmie dropped ninepennyworth of cigar on the asphalt, and with a sigh followed an athletic young parson into Sheet’s carriage. But R. K. Adhurst, sauntering slowly by, came to a dead halt. Jimmie’s luck was dead out.
‘Why, Jimmie, lad. Fancy meeting you.’ There was a joyousness in Mr Adhurst’s voice that aroused no response in Jimmie’s face.
He stared blankly at the detective. Beneath that round mask of a face he was swiftly considering the best way to meet the situation. He met Adhurst’s greeting blankly, with a stony stare of non-recognition.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said frigidly. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’
Adhurst grinned confidently. ‘Not on your life, Jimmie. Never mind. There’s nothing doing.’ And he sauntered away.
There is coincidence sometimes in the affairs of the Criminal Investigation Department, but it is coincidence born of organisation. Jimmie mentally cursed the luck that had brought about the conjunction of Sheet and Adhurst. Casting his mind back he could see no flaw in the arrangements he had made for the relieving of Sheet of the small tissue-paper parcel stowed away somewhere on the person of the dapper diamond merchant. He had spent much time and patience in selecting a man who lived out of town, and who followed a not unusual custom among the jewel firms of carrying his stock about with him instead of entrusting it to a safe. By methods all his own he had found out the day when Sheet’s cargo was likely to be more valuable than usual—and now everything looked like being spoilt. Sheet—whom he knew held a first-class season—was perversely travelling third, and to crown it all Adhurst had butted in.
Shrewd as he was he did not connect the two events. How should he have known that his discreet inquiries had reached the ears of the destined victim, and that Sheet was travelling third-class on the advice of Adhurst?—that, in fact, the divisional detective-inspector was there by request, merely to see Sheet off and, incidentally, to observe who were his fellow passengers. The engine gave a preliminary snort and the train drew smoothly out. Two hours later a white-lipped porter at Townsford was babbling incoherently to the station-master that Mr Lawrence Sheet, of the Red House, was dead in a third-class compartment with a bullet through his heart.
If you had scooped twenty or thirty men haphazard out of the street you would not have found a more mixed lot. There was not a pair of handcuffs among them. At the risk of discrediting an estimable body of men it must in candour be added that there was probably nothing more efficacious for purposes of disguise than a pocket comb.
As they lounged about the lofty room, distempered in two shades of green which Scotland Yard affects, you—if you are an astute reader of detective fiction—would readily have diagnosed them as butchers, bakers, barristers, stockbrokers, actors, or millionaires—anything you chose except the hawk-eyed sleuth.
In the mass they looked eminently commonplace respectable men—fathers of families who lived in trim suburban villas and played golf, motored, or rolled the lawn on Sundays, according to their means.
Yet this was a big council of crime—the fortnightly meeting of divisional heads of the detective force of London—at which any newspaper man would have given his ears to be present. They were placid business men everyone, and their business happened to be matters of crime. In every respect they were very much human beings with, outside of business, diverse tastes and interests. Only in office hours were they enthusiasts. One does not become even a divisional detective-inspector without enthusiasm and many years of experience.
Experience—and the qualities begot of experience—were there in plenty. There was not a corner of the world, however remote, which someone in that room had not visited, not a civilised language which was not understood. But first of all there was not a man who did not know where to go for information on any point that was ever likely to concern him. The super-detective who knows everything is a rarity in the Criminal Investigation Department.
Now and again Foyle, the spruce blue-eyed superintendent who presided, would join in some discussion, and the talk ranged widely from the recent release of Banjo Pete, to the suspicion that, somewhere in London, Russian paper currency was being forged and to the possibilities underlying the recent epidemic of burglaries at Brixton. This informal comparison of notes had more than once had deadly effect on the promising operations of some ingenious scoundrel.
It was on this gathering that Adhurst entered—a lank, stoop-shouldered man, with greying moustache and untidy brown hair. He moved straight to the superintendent with a sheet of paper in one hand, a yellow A.B.C. in the other. Even among his colleagues a long-cultivated habit of caution prevailed and he lowered his voice.
‘Home Office message,’ he said laconically. ‘Job for someone. It looks like Creeping Jimmie.’
Foyle wrinkled his brows as he read: ‘Chief Constable Blankshire requests assistance Scotland Yard officer in connection with murder of Lawrence Sheet found shot in train today. Wire time arrival Blake Townsford.’
‘There’s a train from Waterloo in quarter of an hour, sir,’ said Adhurst. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi.’
The superintendent wasted no unnecessary words. ‘You’d better catch it yourself, old man,’ he said crisply. ‘You’ll want some money. Let’s go and raid the war-chest.’
They moved out together. In the big safe in Foyle’s room there was always sufficient money to take a man to the ends of the earth if need be, and there was a musical tinkle as the inspector slipped twenty sovereigns in his pocket.
Foyle paused long enough to write a message with the mystic letters ‘A. S.’ in the corner. That message told a great deal of Creeping Jimmie. In five or ten minutes the tickers in the two hundred police stations of London would be insistently calling twenty thousand men to find him if he was anywhere within the seven hundred square miles of the metropolis. The superintendent strolled back to the conference.
‘Bad case of murder broken loose at Townsford.’ he observed calmly. ‘Anyone running across Creeping Jimmie had better detain him on suspicion. Adhurst has gone down. You’d better handle the thing from this end, Grenfell.’
In the ordinary way a murder in the provinces has no more to do with Scotland Yard than a burglary in Timbuctoo. Only by request of the local police through the Home Office does a metropolitan detective investigate a criminal case that has occurred outside London. Even then, technically, he is only an adviser to the local police.
Adhurst, as he took his seat in a second-class smoker, was not enamoured of his job. Human nature being what it is—even in police circles—it was a toss-up whether the executive officers of the county constabulary would resent his intrusion or work loyally in co-operation with him. Luckily the case looked simple. Although pre-conceived opinions are apt to be dangerous to a police officer he had little doubt that Jimmie was the murderer, and equally little doubt that he would almost instantly be hunted down.
It was five o’clock on a blazing summer’s day when he reached Townsford, and a little group of men moved forward as he descended to the platform. He held out his hand to an erect soldierly looking man he diagnosed as the chief constable.
‘Major Borden, I presume. My name’s Adhurst. My people wired you I was coming.’
The chief constable shook hands. ‘Yes. I’ve just been speaking to Foyle on the phone. I’m afraid you’ve had rather a wasted journey.’
‘Oh?’ Adhurst’s tone was interrogative.
‘That man you saw—er—Creeping Jimmie, was arrested as he returned to Waterloo. You must have actually passed him on the line on your way down.’
Adhurst sucked in his under-lip thoughtfully. ‘That’s not like Jimmie,’ he said, ‘unless he absolutely lost his head. I can’t imagine him rushing back to London by the next train and putting his head straight away in the lion’s jaws. Were the diamonds found on him—or a weapon?’
‘Nothing; but he’d hardly keep them about him in the circumstances. By the way, I was forgetting. Mr Adhurst—Superintendent Trelway, Inspector Penn. This is Mr Livrey, Mr Sheet’s brother-in-law.’
The detective gravely acknowledged the introductions. As he gripped Livrey’s hand it lay for a second very cold in his own, and he surprised a keen flicker of surmise in the other’s eyes.
‘This is a terrible business, Mr Adhurst. Fortunately I was staying here on a short visit. My sister is naturally much distressed.’
‘Naturally,’ agreed Adhurst.
‘She asked me to say that, should you care to stay at the Red House during your investigations here, she would be most pleased.’
‘That is very kind of her. If it is not inconvenient I shall gratefully take advantage of the offer. It is unlikely, however, that I shall be here long. The case seems very straightforward.’ He turned to the chief constable. ‘And now, sir, it might save time if I had a look at the railway carriage in which the body was found.’
‘Shall I be in the way if I come?’ asked Livrey deprecatingly. ‘I have a motor here, and we might go back together.’
‘By all means,’ agreed Adhurst. ‘I don’t expect to be free for some little time, though. We’—he spoke significantly in the plural, so that it should not be assumed that he was running the affair—‘must fix up one or two matters before I can take it easy. I’ll get you to take my bag back, though, if you will.’
The carriage had been detached from the train and lay in a siding. Headed by the stationmaster the group of men moved down across the metals towards it. Once again Adhurst, apparently languidly indifferent, caught Livrey surveying him with a certain quality of speculation in his gaze.
The chief constable and Adhurst climbed aboard. ‘Nothing much to be learned here,’ said Borden perfunctorily. ‘Sheet was sitting in that corner. The murderer must have been sitting in that farther corner on the opposite side when he fired. The bullet passed clean through Sheet’s head and then through the window. There’s the bullet-hole in the glass.’
‘H’m,’ grunted Adhurst. His forehead corrugated into a frown, and, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, he dropped lazily into the corner that had been occupied by the murdered man. He turned his eyes wearily to the window and stood up again with a yawn.
‘You’re right. This doesn’t seem to carry us far. I think, though, it might be locked for a while and a man put here to see that it isn’t interfered with till after the inquest. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll see the doctor, and perhaps we can hunt up one or two passengers who came by this train.’
For an hour or more Adhurst kept those officers of the local police who were available hard at work, though he was very careful to pass all orders through the superintendent. He knew that a little loss of tact might result in blunders and difficulties which would be hard to counter. They were able, intelligent men, but a provincial force gets small practice in detective work, and their perspective had to be continually adjusted. He sighed for the trained men who would have been available in London or any other big city. Only the fashionable amateur detective of the romances can work effectively single-handed.
In a dozen or twenty towns along the line the telephone stirred police inquiries, for Creeping Jimmie had not been seen to alight at Townsford. Also there was the young clergyman he had seen in the carriage with the two of them to be found. So far as London was concerned Adhurst was easy. Grenfell could be relied on to pick up every fact there—from Sheet’s office, his solicitors, his bank, and any by-line that might suggest itself.
Once a wire interrupted him. It came from Grenfell. ‘Bringing our man down 7.40 train,’ it said. Adhurst passed it across to the chief constable without comment.
Borden raised his eyebrows. ‘Kind of him to take that trouble,’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t they have held him till we sent an escort?’
‘I reckon,’ said Adhurst slowly, ‘that Dicky Grenfell has stumbled across something and wants to put us wise. There’s no other reason why he should want to bring the prisoner down. And now, sir, about the doctor? It seems to me that a great deal is going to turn on the medical evidence.’
‘Eh? What’s that? I thought everything was plain enough. You got a statement from the doctor, didn’t you, Trelway?’
Instantly Adhurst saw his mistake. By no means had he intended to hint that any routine matter had been insufficiently covered. The grizzled superintendent could not repress a sneer. ‘Perhaps I’m not quite up to Scotland Yard mark, sir. I saw him myself when he examined the body. Mr Adhurst has seen the statement I took.’
Behind his untidy moustache the detective hid a smile. He dropped a friendly hand on the provincial man’s shoulder. ‘We’re old hands, both of us, Mr Trelway,’ he said genially. ‘You know how it is. They might ask me up there’—he jerked a thumb vaguely over his shoulder to indicate superior authority—‘why I didn’t see the doctor person myself. Just a matter of form, that’s all. Well, I can’t help you any more just now, can I? I’ll see the doctor and cut along to the Red House for an hour or two. I’ll be back in time to meet Grenfell.’
He went out. The chief constable turned an inquiring eye on his subordinate. ‘Now what the devil does he mean?’ he demanded.
Trelway shrugged his shoulders. He was too wise to express an opinion.
A genial country practitioner, to whom murders were rare, had received the Scotland Yard man with cordiality and importance. Adhurst mingled half a dozen crisp questions with a flood of generalities, and went his way with his brain working at high tension, though his face did not betray that he had a care in the world.
He walked the one and a half miles to the Red House with deliberation. He wanted to get the bearings of his problems, for, since his arrival at Townsford, it had not seemed so simple. He was a sociable soul, and more than once he stopped to lean over the railings of a cottager’s garden and admire the sweet peas. He went so far once as to buy a bunch of flowers, which he dropped into a ditch when he was out of sight. Nevertheless, by the time he passed up the gravel drive of the Red House he had assimilated a large amount of local gossip.
Livrey met him on the veranda. ‘My dear man!’ he exclaimed, ‘you don’t mean that you have walked out? If I’d have known I’d have sent the car—’
Adhurst flashed a disarming smile at him. ‘I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the walk, thanks. This is a beautiful district.’
‘Very. Well, come along in. You won’t trouble to dress for dinner. You are just in time.’
It was at the dinner-table that the detective caught his first glimpse of Mrs Sheet. Somehow she was different to the type his imagination had conjured up. She was beautiful—there was no gainsaying that—but it was with a vivacious Southern beauty, now marred by the dark rings that encircled the dulled eyes. She could not have been more than twenty-five, and her voice was low and musical as she spoke to the detective.
‘I can’t realise it,’ she said. ‘I can’t realise that he is gone—that I am—’
A crash interrupted her, and Livrey, with an apology, rang for a servant to pick up the knives which he had accidentally swept off the table.
‘They say that you have got the man who did it?’ She went on with a quick catch of her breath, ‘You think you will be able to prove that he did it? It is dreadful of me, I know, Mr Adhurst, but’—for the moment her face flamed and she clenched her fist passionately—‘I could kill him myself … For the sake of a few paltry jewels …’
She rose abruptly and left the table.
Livrey seemed little affected either by her emotion or her abrupt departure. ‘Sad, very sad,’ he observed perfunctorily, and applied himself to the soup. Adhurst followed his example without comment. There were one or two things he would have liked to have asked Mrs Sheet, but they could wait.
This tête-à-tête meal with Livrey had a certain piquancy for him, for he had begun to conceive that the place he occupied in the family affairs of the dead man might be worth considering.
There are always possibilities of surprise in even the most ordinary case of murder, and Adhurst had had too much experience ever to feel sure. Creeping Jimmie—though things on the face of it were against him—might be able to prove definitely his innocence. And if Jimmie was not guilty it was advisable to find out what other person might have a motive for wishing Sheet out of the way. The bunch of flowers that the detective had bought on his way outwards had gained for him the local gossip that there had been talk of a separation between Mr and Mrs Sheet, and that his brother-in-law was an infrequent and unwelcome visitor to the Red House. Still, it might all be country scandal without foundation.
Yet here he was, with the body of Lawrence Sheet scarcely cold, assuming all the airs of a host in the house, and reposing within the detective’s breast-pocket was a cipher wire to Scotland Yard requesting inquiries might be made into his career. It was all very hazy and indefinite, and Adhurst knew that he had to walk warily.
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Livrey, ‘is where the diamonds have gone. It is possible, I suppose, that this man you have arrested has passed them to a confederate or hidden them?’
‘Easily possible,’ agreed Adhurst. ‘We can’t say till inquiries have got a bit closer.’
Livrey glanced at him sharply. ‘You have no doubt you have got the right man?’
‘Not the least in the world,’ lied the detective glibly. ‘It is only a matter of collecting evidence now. We don’t often make mistakes.’ That last touch of brag was unusual with Adhurst. In the ordinary way he would no more have spoken of his efficiency than of his honesty.
He believed he saw the least trace of relief in Livrey’s face. Yet it might have been the passing of a shadow.
‘I shall be glad, for my sister’s sake, to get it all over,’ said the other. ‘By the way, I must run up to town tomorrow to see about his affairs—that is, unless you are likely to need me down here for anything.’
‘Not at all likely. You’ll be required for evidence at the inquest, of course, but that isn’t till the day after tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I shall be back before then. You will make your headquarters here, I hope, while you remain—eh? My sister would wish you to do absolutely as you please. If the car will be of any use to you in getting to and fro I will leave orders that it is to be at your disposal.’
‘That is very good of you.’ Adhurst had been wondering how he should lead up to the proposal that had been volunteered. ‘In point of fact it would be most useful. I have to meet a colleague tonight, and if I might venture—’
‘Certainly. I will tell Cody—that’s the chauffeur—to have it ready.’
Creeping Jimmie, very chastened and with handcuffs spanning his broad wrists, cast a reproachful glance on Adhurst as he was assisted to alight on Townsford platform.
‘I thought you would ha’ known better than this, Mr Adhurst,’ he said dolefully. ‘I had no more to do with croaking that guy than the babe unborn.’
‘So you say, Jimmie,’ assented the inspector. ‘Hullo, Grenfell. Shake hands with Mr Trelway. There’s a couple of men and a cab waiting to take Jimmie to the station. Suppose we go and have a pow-wow at the hotel.’
He had foreseen the necessity of a conference and arranged for a private room at the hotel adjoining the station. Grenfell caught him by the arm as they entered. ‘Adhurst, old son,’ he said quietly, ‘this is a mess-up.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that Jimmie isn’t the man.’
Adhurst kicked the door to. ‘My bright young friend,’ he said blithely. ‘You’re a day behind the fair. We knew that an hour ago, didn’t we, Mr Trelway. I’ve got Jimmie’s alibi in my pocket.’
Grenfell’s grip tightened. ‘I don’t stand for any mystification stunt,’ he declared. ‘Now cough it up. Have you got the right man?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got hopes. Sit down and I’ll order drinks and we’ll get to the agenda.
‘Well,’ he went on, when the waiter had answered the ring and gone out, ‘Mr Trelway and I have been busy for quite a while. We know that Jimmie got out thirty miles up the line—at Gillington—and that Sheet was alive then, and that Jimmie couldn’t have gone back to the compartment. The Gillington police have cleared all that up.’
‘That’s what’s brought me down,’ interrupted Grenfell. ‘Jimmie’s story is that there was a clergyman in with him and Sheet, and that the jewel merchant seemed a bit uneasy when the parson began to get out. He whispered something to the parson through the window, who stared at Jimmie hard. Taking that in conjunction with your turning up at Waterloo, Jimmie decided that it was not his day and got out, took a stroll round the town, had some food and returned—to find us waiting for him.’
‘That’s so. The Gillington people have found the parson—a local curate. Sheet had asked him to take a good look at Jimmie, as he was carrying valuables and believed the other to be a crook. The parson saw Jimmie get out, and later noticed him in the town, so he couldn’t have committed the murder. All the same, we’ll hold him for a while. What do you think, Mr Trelway?’
‘That’s best,’ agreed the superintendent sagely. ‘Better not let Livrey have an idea we’ve got the slightest suspicion that we’ve got the wrong man.’
Grenfell held up his hands. ‘You people are forgetting I don’t know anything of this side of the case. Suppose we be a bit clearer.’
Adhurst began to unstrap a small attaché case which he carried. Like all Scotland Yard men he relied largely on method, and he had systematised the various reports gathered by the local men and sent in by telegraph and telephone, so that he could instantly lay his hands on anyone.
‘My dear Watson,’ he quoted, ‘it’s very simple—or will be, I hope. Listen!’
For an hour the three talked. Then Adhurst flung up his arms and gave a prodigious yawn.
‘Heigho,’ he sighed, ‘I’m tired. I think that clears us up. You’ll keep an eye on Livrey, Grenfell, and you’ll arrange about another man meeting you at Waterloo. Mr Trelway will swear out a search warrant, and I’ll arrange with the stationmaster, if possible, about a dummy train.’
Punctually at twenty minutes past nine next morning Livrey leaned from the window of a first-class compartment to say good-bye to Adhurst, who had come to see him off. Three compartments behind Grenfell was immersed in a daily paper, but no sign of recognition had passed between his colleague and himself. He had sauntered once or twice along the platform, and he knew he could make no mistake about the suspect, who henceforth would never be out of sight until he was arrested or cleared. No bloodhound could hold more tightly to a trail than Grenfell.
As the engine gave a preliminary cough Trelway and the chief constable sauntered up. ‘Everything going smooth, I hope?’ said the latter.
‘Quite, thanks,’ said Adhurst. ‘Well, good-bye, Mr Livrey. See you tomorrow.’ The train glided out and he turned to the chief constable. ‘I have a car waiting outside, sir. You’ve got the map?’
Major Borden pulled an ordnance survey chart from his pocket and unfolded it. ‘This is the thing.’ His forefinger traced the course of a line in red ink that had been run along one of the roads and stopped at a cross. ‘There we are, I think. It won’t be long before we’re able to test your theory. What time’s this special?’
Adhurst looked at his watch. ‘A matter of ten minutes now. I think I’ll be moving. We don’t want to hold up traffic more than we can help.’
With a nod he strode away to where Cody the chauffeur, an alert little Cockney, was waiting with Livrey’s, or rather Sheet’s, car. To the chauffeur he produced a map marked in similar fashion to that which the chief constable had possessed.
‘There, Cody,’ he said, pointing to the cross. ‘That’s where we’ve got to make for. How long is it going to take us?’
‘Stoner’s Cray. That’s twelve miles. It’s a bad road, sir, and the tires on this old jigger are none too good. Mr Livrey has cut ’em about something awful this last day or two. ’E don’t know ’ow to treat a decent car, ’an that’s a fact, if I may say so, sir.’
‘Well, do your best and take the last mile or two easy.’
It was a picturesque drive, but the detective had no eye for scenery. Just at that time his mind was on hard business. He had achieved that perilous thing in detective work, a theory, and he had pinned himself to work it out.
They stopped at last at a point where the road for a matter of a couple of hundred yards ran side by side with a railway line. Clumps of bushes and gorse grew on the open strip of waste land between the roadway and the line, and over this strip Adhurst quested to and fro like a hound at fault. Presently he called Cody to desert the car and aid him.
The keen little Cockney, though he had no idea of the ultimate object at the back of the detective’s brain, joined enthusiastically, and in a little gave a yelp of triumph and pointed to a tangle of brambles and furze.
‘Good boy,’ said Adhurst, and his eyes roved swiftly over the ground in the neighbourhood. He gave a subdued chuckle as he observed a footprint in the sandy soil. ‘Cody,’ he remarked, ‘be virtuous, and Providence will always be good to you. Neither you nor I made that footprint.’
‘Is it a cloo, sir?’ asked Cody breathlessly. This adventure with a real live detective was thrilling him.
‘Something of the sort. Now we passed a house a mile or two back. You dodge along there with the car and ask if they can lend you a box or something to put over it till we’re able to take a plaster cast.’
A puff of smoke warned Adhurst that the special which held the local police was coming. It advanced very slowly and Adhurst waved a handkerchief. The signal was answered, and he dropped behind a clump of bushes and sighted along his stick as though it were a rifle. Then he rose and, taking a ball of twine from his pocket, fastened one end to the bush, and, carrying it forward, tossed the ball to Major Borden through the open window of one of the compartments.
The train halted. Borden cut his end of the string and threaded it through a bullet hole in one of the side windows. Adhurst leapt on the foot-board and the train crawled in until he held up his hand. ‘How’s that, sir?’ he demanded.
At the other end of the compartment Trelway was holding the string above his head. The chief constable jumped on a seat and, closing one eye, squinted along the line.
‘Correct!’ he ejaculated. ‘That explains why there was only one bullet mark.’
‘Tie a knot in the string and we can work out the distance afterwards. Now, sir, if you like to get out, I’ll show you something else I have found.’
He took the chief constable and the superintendent back to the clump of bushes, winding up the string as he proceeded. Then he pointed out the footprint. ‘I don’t know whether we really need it,’ he observed, ‘but it may be calculated to help. Whoever killed Sheet lay under those bushes. You’ll observe he could not be seen from the line or the road.’
‘What’s worrying me,’ said Trelway, ‘is why no one heard a shot.’
‘That doesn’t greatly worry me. When we raid the Red House that may be cleared up. We’ve got everything in broad outline now, and by tomorrow we ought to be close enough up to decide. Suppose we finish here. Will you have a talk with the nearest signalman, Mr Trelway?’
Well after midnight it was before Adhurst returned to the Red House, accompanied by his colleagues and four uniformed constables. There had been a hundred things to do, and they had been content to leave matters at the Red House till the last. There was no particular hurry, and Adhurst had wanted many details filled in.
The house was in darkness, save for a thin glimmer of light in the hall, and a sleepy-eyed servant answered the detective’s ring. His face betrayed his astonishment as he saw Adhurst’s companions. Adhurst, however, deigned no explanations.
‘Your mistress has retired, I suppose? Will you tell her maid to let her know that we wish to see her at once? Hurry up, my man, and don’t stand there like a dummy. We’ll wait in the dining-room. Come in, gentlemen. Will you post your men, Mr Trelway? It may be advisable that no one should leave the house till we are finished.’
Mrs Sheet came to them in a few minutes, her dark hair tumbling about the scarlet dressing-gown she had hastily donned. She stood at the door for a second looking from one to the other of the men. Adhurst bowed gravely.
‘Sorry to have disturbed you. There are one or two points of importance on which it is essential to see you.’
She advanced into the room and mechanically sat in the chair which he offered. There was an involuntary tightening of her brows, and she put one hand to her heart.
‘Well?’ she said.
It was Trelway who answered. ‘You are aware that we are police officers. We want to inform you that we hold a warrant to search this house.’
‘I do not understand what you mean. Why should you search the house?’ Her lips were white, and Adhurst judged that it was only by a great effort at self-control that she did not faint.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you must understand your position. We suspect you of being concerned in the murder of your husband. You will be arrested. You need say nothing unless you choose, but anything you do say may be used as evidence. I should advise you to consult a solicitor—later.’
The deliberate warning, which at least had the effect of putting an end to any suspense she may have suffered, seemed to act on her like a tonic.
‘This is absurd,’ she said in a strained whisper. ‘I did not kill him.’
‘You will dress at once,’ said Trelway.
‘In this room,’ said Adhurst quickly. ‘We shall leave it at the disposal of your maid and yourself, but’—his tone was significant, for he had the possibility of poison in mind—‘everything that is brought in to you will be searched.’
Her head dropped on to her arms on the table.
‘Oh, my God!’ she moaned. The police officers passed out.
The systematic search of a house for evidence in a matter of crime is not a thing airily undertaken, and daylight had long dawned ere the officers had finished. An urgent message brought in by a cycle constable had taken the chief local officers back into town about nine o’clock, carrying with them a man’s shoe, a powerful air-rifle, and a bundle of letters.
Adhurst, who saw no sense in wearing himself out unnecessarily, stretched himself on a couch and seized the opportunity for a nap. To him there entered, a couple of hours later, Grenfell, who woke him by the simple process of inclining the sofa at an angle, so that its occupant rolled with a thud to the floor.
‘That’s a tom-fool trick,’ said Adhurst irritably, dusting himself. ‘What did you want to do that for?’
‘Do you know what the time is?’ asked his colleague. ‘Livrey was arrested an hour ago.’
‘I know. There was a brass band and a procession to welcome him at the station, of course.’ Adhurst had not quite recovered his good humour.
‘Something of the sort. The whole village seemed to know about the arrest. Your pal Trelway is in his glory. He told me how he had elucidated the case, though he was good enough to say that you had been of some trifling assistance. And now, since I’ve been your errand-boy in this affair, you might tell me something about it. I see they’ve let Jimmie go. He’s made back to London in a cloud of dust. How’d you get on to Livrey anyway?’
‘Oh, blazes! How’d you find out anything? Gun-play didn’t quite agree with Jimmie’s record, but it seemed a smashing case against him till I had a look at the compartment in which the murder took place. The local people here had taken the chief’s wire, that Sheet had been seen travelling with a notorious crook, too much at its face value. If Jimmie hadn’t complicated matters, the possibility of the murder having been committed by someone who was not travelling on the train might have occurred to them. There was only one bullet hole in the window, and I suppose a natural conclusion would be, that if a bullet passed through a man’s head from the outside of the train it would have left a hole somewhere else. But that hole in the window seemed suspiciously low down, and when I came to look at it, there were tiny shreds of glass inwards.
‘Well, it seems that they had carried the body to the doctor instead of bringing the doctor to the body. If he had known which way the man had been sitting he could have told them at once that it was no one inside the compartment who fired the shot, for the bullet had entered from the right and not from the left.
‘That cleared Jimmie in my mind. That left two possibilities. One was that it was an accidental shot fired by some fool near the line; the other, that someone had an interest in removing Sheet. It was worth looking into. So I made some inquiries both through our people in town and down here. I found that Sheet had married a girl much younger than himself about whom very little was known, and that they did not get on well together. You know your own inquiries about Sheet in town showed that both Livrey and his sister had none too savoury a reputation before they entrapped Sheet into marriage. That confirmed local gossip about quarrels.
‘Then I heard that Mrs Sheet and Livrey were out on a motor drive by themselves and did not return till after the murder had been discovered. I bought a shilling ordnance map and studied it out. Where the line ran by a lonely road some miles out seemed a likely spot, and when I heard that the down train was sometimes held up there, I gathered I was on a scent.
‘The further I went the more it fitted in. There were people along that road who had seen the two in a car—and others who had seen Mrs Sheet waiting in the car a mile away from the stretch where the murder took place.
‘We searched the place and found a clump of bushes where someone had been recently lying. A yard or two away was a footprint, of which we took a plaster cast. It corresponded with Livrey’s boot. We ran out a train, as you know, and with a little juggling with a line found that from the spot where the murderer lay to the approximate position in which the train would have stopped, a bullet would have travelled through one window and out through the open window on the other side.
‘When we reached this place we found a powerful air-rifle in the gun-room, and some letters from Livrey to Mrs Sheet which more than hint at the scheme of the whole tragedy.’
‘But,’ objected Grenfell, ‘where are the diamonds that Sheet was carrying?’
‘In a secret pocket in the waistband of his trousers. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Well,’ said Grenfell, ‘I’ll reckon you’ll have to stay down here to give evidence.’
Adhurst winked. ‘Not me, sonny. The official arrests were made by Trelway. All the other facts are proved by different experts and witnesses. Little old London is good enough for me. I should fall a victim to mental paralysis if I had to stay in Townsford a week.’