Major Hogg, the Chief Constable of West Surrey, had an appointment at Scotland Yard on the morning following double tragedy at Beechcroft. Among other things which he wanted to discuss with the Deputy Commissioner, there were the jewel robberies which had been taking place lately in his part of the county.
“You say you think the diamond necklace I ‘phoned to you about has been traced to Shoreditch,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s only one of the missing things. You think it’s three well-known cracksmen taking a country holiday, and combining a little business with their pleasure?...I wonder!”
“Superintendent Bradford thinks so, and he’s not often out,” Major Pelham said briskly, “but why don’t you like the idea?”
Hogg laughed. “I don’t dislike it, Pelham, but—I wonder, that’s all!”
“What makes you wonder?” Pelham pushed his best box of cigars across. The two army men were old friends.
“My Superintendent Tomlinson,” was the reply. “He’s quite a sound fellow, is Tomlinson, and he’s been hoping for a rather spectacular capture. Not of one of your old hands. Not at all!”
He said nothing more for a moment, but lit his cigar.
“Portentous silence!” murmured Pelham. “Well!! has he slipped up on his capture? Mournful note in your voice sounds like it.”
Major Hogg did not answer directly. “I suppose you’ve seen in the papers about the dreadful affair at a house called Beechcroft—a Major and Mrs. Moncrieff both dead?” he asked instead.
The A.C. signified that he had. He looked all interest at the question in connection with their talk.
“Well, Superintendent Tomlinson got an idea into his head that Major Moncrieff was connected, in some way, with those robberies. Frankly, I think Tomlinson’s wrong. But he claims to’ve found Moncrieff and his car very near some of the places where the thefts occurred, at odd hours of the night, which fitted. And the places were miles away from Beechcroft, and the Major’s explanation of what he was doing there—and then—was thin. Or rather was missing. He generally said he couldn’t sleep and wanted a bit of fresh air. Now, I think it may have been mere coincidence each time. And, of course, I told Tomlinson so, and also to go slow. Still, it is a fact that Moncrieff, and his car, and a very rangy looking chauffeur of his called Edwards, who talks like a gentleman, according to Tomlinson, certainly did turn up very frequently close to the houses where jewelery was afterwards missing…”
“Doesn’t sound much of a proof,” Pelham said.
“Of course not, or Tomlinson would have had him, or them, in quod long ago. He’s been on their tracks for the last month. Can’t get the proof. But now this affair—well, he’s rather broken up over it!”
“Lost his hoped-for capture?” asked Pelham.
“That, too, of course, but it’s much worse than that. Poor Tomlinson, who’s a good chap, fears that it was some bluff he put up which caused Mrs. Moncrieff’s death. He doesn’t think it was an accident at all. I mean that stabbing business. What happened was this. Tomlinson, keyed up at still finding no proof, and suspecting that the Major intended to stage a robbery of his guests at a coming jamboree they were to give tomorrow to all the neighborhood—“ Major Hogg broke off long enough to explain the reason for the tableaux, and the rest of the entertainment which Beechcroft was giving—“Tomlinson suspected this sudden burst of hospitality,” he went on, “and tried to put some of his men into the house. The Moncrieffs refused. Both of them. So the superintendent yesterday morning had a talk with Mrs. Moncrieff.”
“Does he think she was in the robberies too?” asked Pelham.
“Oh no. Quite definitely not. But he tried to get hours and dates out of her as to her husband’s absences at night. She seemed quite frank, he thought, but the hours she gave wouldn’t fit the times when that car was encountered, unless Moncrieff had an engine that could do ninety on third.”
“Has he?” Pelham asked at once.
Hogg did the equivalent of shrugging his shoulders. “No one can get into his garage. Unpickable lock—so at least burglars say,” he added virtuously, with a very grave face, and Pelham nodded equally gravely. “Tomlinson thinks that either she doesn’t know when Moncrieff slipped out of the house, or was too much under his thumb to speak. So he got another word in—alone with Moncrieff himself, and bluffed about what he had learnt from Mrs. Moncrieff—what she had let slip. Moncrieff only laughed in Tomlinson’s face, but now the super’s wondering whether it may not have been due to those words of his that the Major ran that knife into his wife.”
“Nasty position,” said Pelham with real gravity this time.
Hogg nodded. “Just so. He thinks Moncrieff may have believed him after all, thought the game was up, and revenged himself on his wife before blowing out his own brains.”
“Um—“ murmured Pelham doubtfully. “Moncrieff’s reputation seems to me to rather knock the stuffing out of your superintendent’s ideas…”
“Yes, I think it’s just coincidence,” the chief constable agreed. “I mean Moncrieff’s being near the houses in question on the nights in question. But Tomlinson’s an eager chap. Always longing to do a bit more than his duty.” His superior sighed. “And he evidently exceeded the speed limit himself in what he said to the wife first and then the husband. It’s rather weighing on Tomlinson, his idea that he put the wind up Moncrieff to such an extent. He liked Mrs. Moncrieff. He doesn’t for a moment think she was ‘in’ anything criminal. And it’s rather a beastly thought that, if her husband got suspicious through anything he—Tomlinson—said, and thought his wife had blabbed, this poor woman may have been murdered because of it. Or if not that, then he’s afraid that his questions may have set her off making some inquiries on her own which have brought this tragedy down on her head. Now, personally, I don’t think there’s anything in his fears. I mean, I don’t think he was right, in the first place. I, too, have looked very thoroughly into Major Moncrieff’s record, and it seems to rather put the idea of jewel robberies out of court. Though you never know!”
The A.C. waited. He felt sure that more was coming, and he could guess what it would be. “I rather wondered whether you could lend us a good man,” Hogg went on in accordance with Pelham’s guess, “just to run over things with Tomlinson. I don’t want to blacken the Moncrieffs’ names needlessly, for I don’t believe Tomlinson has got hold of the right end of the stick. As I say, I don’t myself think the tragedy is anything more than it appears to be—a dreadful blunder by a man who promptly took the only way out. But Tomlinson is a bit worked up…”
Major Pelham reflected a moment.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said finally. “I have a chief inspector free at the moment. Pointer by name, who can see farther into brick walls than most people. We’ll have him in, and find out whether, without knowing anything about your superintendent’s suspicions, he sees anything odd in the affair as related in all the papers. I mean anything to confirm Tomlinson’s theory that Moncrieff may have deliberately killed his wife before shooting himself—not from grief or horror, but because he felt the net closing around him?”
Hogg looked disappointed. “I don’t see how he can light on anything odd in the papers,” he said. “Now, if you let me explain about the jewel robberies…”
“We’ll try the other way first,” Major Pelham touched a hidden bell and spoke into a tube. A moment later the door opened. Tall, lean, sunburnt, with a grave, pleasant face, Chief Inspector Pointer stepped in. Something about him suggested personality in spite of his tranquil bearing.
“Look here, Pointer,” his own superior began at once, after making the necessary introduction, and waving him to a chair, “you’ve seen the account of the Beechcroft double tragedy in the papers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing to make one think there’s anything odd about the affair, is there?” Pelham asked in the tone of one sure of his answer.
The other’s fine grey eyes rested on him for a fraction of a second. Then Pointer said in his quiet, resonant voice, a voice that suggested great reserves.
“Frankly, sir, I can’t understand it at all.”
“Eh? What don’t you understand?”
“That a man should run a knife through his wife’s heart and not try to pull it out. One would expect that quite automatically he would snatch the weapon out, and fling it aside, as soon as he saw what he had done. I should call that an instinctive action with any normal person.”
“Um-m,” demurred the other. “The Major might have had his wits about him in spite of the shock of what he had done, and so be aware of the fact that it might be a fatal thing to do, to pull a knife out of a wound.”
“I still think, sir, that it would be the natural, the automatic thing to do. Nor, according to the account here, did he shout for a doctor, though there was one in the room, nor catch her up in his arms and try to staunch the bleeding, or find if she was still alive...No, sir, frankly, that rush off out of the room with a shriek and his hands up above his head sounds to me—well, the whole thing sounds odd.”
“That fits in with what my superintendent thinks. That he meant to kill her,” Major Hogg, who had kept silent with difficulty, now explained Tomlinson’s suspicions.
Pointer listened to them intently. But he said nothing. Nor did he nod as though what he was hearing confirmed his own ideas on the subject. That he had some idea of his own at the back of his mind, his superior was certain.
“You go down with the chief constable,” the A.C. said finally, “and make up your mind on the spot. Meanwhile Rogers can carry on with that affair of the missing bank manager.”
At the Edgware police station they found Superintendent Tomlinson waiting for them. He greeted Pointer, whom he had met before, warmly.
“Not much you can do to help,” he said rather sadly. “We’ve the motive all right, but the man has put himself where we can’t reach him. All I want are the proofs that he did kill her intentionally, and that he was mixed up in those jewel thefts; and, of course, we can only get negative ones. If he’s the Head, as he probably was, then they’ll end around here. But as to proving that he knew right well what he was doing when he ran that knife into poor Mrs. Moncrieff, I only wish it were possible! Perhaps the one will show the other. But as it is, why, it will have to pass as a terrible double tragedy, that’s all. One word as to our suspicions of his being implicated in those thefts, and away goes all chance of proving it. His chauffeur Edwards is still alive. He didn’t shoot himself.” Tomlinson spoke grimly. “The garage is well watched. I’m on my way for a word with the household. I’ve decided to take them this much into my confidence, sir,”—he was speaking to Major Hogg—“to show them that I’m not satisfied to let that conjuring trick pass as an accident. I shouldn’t wonder if I learnt a few facts, once they know that much of what’s in my mind.”
“Think so?” Major Hogg was skeptical. “What’s done’s done, most people would think, and would bottle up any suspicions they might have had themselves. However, you can but chance your arm,” and directing the superintendent where to meet him later in the day, Hogg said goodbye to Pointer and hurried on. Pointer would have preferred to view the bodies first of all, but Mr. Ayres had telephoned down that he wanted to go up to town, and Tomlinson thought it only fair on the household to have his talk with each of them first of all.
“Mrs. Moncrieff’s mother, lady of the name of Phillimore, a widow, lives abroad but home on a visit, might have been a lot of help, but she had to get herself run down in Baker Street yesterday afternoon,” Tomlinson spoke as though Mrs. Phillimore had done it on purpose. “They took her to a nursing home, and she isn’t well enough yet to hear the news. Two ribs broken and they are afraid of concussion. Now, as to the people in the house, there are only four men, and a young woman who took an overdose of sleeping medicine last night. All but passed out. Yes, I thought it funny,” Tomlinson met Pointer’s gaze on him questioningly, “but the doctor says possibly she wasn’t used to such things and it probably acted a bit too much. But it’s funny—funny! For she was the girl inside the door yesterday evening who kept insisting that she would find the key if we would only wait. Those locked doors! I hope to learn something about them in this talk. I let things slide last night. Didn’t want to be told I had rushed them, and also we had our hands full getting reports from the people who had lived around and had seen it all. Now then, I’ll tell you who the people are,” and Tomlinson ran over the five in outline. They lasted till the car drew up at Beechcroft. “Mr. Ayres is his partner in ‘Car Fitments Ltd.’ Never has paid a dividend yet, he says, but prospects are brightening, or were, until the Major’s death. This has knocked the Fitments sideways. Would you like to see Mr. Ayres first of all?” he wound up.
Pointer said he would, and a moment later the gentle-faced, soft-spoken Ayres was recommending the superintendent to try the chair here, it had better springs, and warning the chief inspector not to sit on that one over there as it had a habit of coming unstuck at intervals.
He seemed very frank, did Mr. Ayres, but he added nothing to their information. He apparently believed that Edwards was a gentleman down on his luck whom Moncrieff was helping with a job, a job which the other man filled splendidly.
Ayres spoke with apparently great regret of the Major. As to the money part of it, he said that Moncrieff’s death would end the firm, but that he, Ayres, had intended retiring from business some time ago, and though this would mean that he could not sell his partnership for anything worth having, yet thanks to money invested around his home at Enfield in land and houses, and the coming of the Tube, he did not consider himself a poor man, and was quite content to let his “Car Fitments” shares be written off.
Pointer said that he had been told that Mr. Ayres and Major Moncrieff were co-trustees for a couple of little girls who lived here at Beechcroft.
Mr. Ayres said yes, he would have to choose another co-trustee now, and intended to ask a young man to fill the post. He did not want to have to do it again, and the twins would be a long trusteeship, as they did not come “of age,” as far as getting any capital was concerned, until they were twenty-five.
“Wealthy?” Tomlinson asked. Ayres explained that three hundred a year between two young women would hardly bring its owners into that category.
Was Mrs. Moncrieff a fellow trustee? She was not. Was she in any way associated with “Car Fitments “? Again Ayres said no, and seemed amused at the idea. “Not that she wouldn’t have been a welcome addition to our board,” he added, “but Mrs. Moncrieff was not a business woman.”
He explained what little there was to be known of Lavinia Moncrieff, and referred to yesterday’s accident to Mrs. Phillimore. “Of course, in a way one would consider that a dreadful accident at her age, but as it is, in spite of the shock it will be to her to hear of it afterwards, one can only be thankful that she hasn’t got to be told the dreadful news now. She and her daughter and Moncrieff were devoted to each other. Moncrieff, as I happen to know, had just bought her a charming necklace. Her birthday is some time this coming month. Yes, they were devoted to each other, he and she.”
“By the way,” Mr. Ayres went on, in the tone of a man reminded of something, “I had a telephone talk with Moncrieff’s solicitor just now. Bird, Cage, and Graham is the firm, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Graham’s ‘phoned up to say,—of course it’s of no importance but there it is,—he’s ‘phoned up to say that the Major had written him only yesterday afternoon to the effect that he intended to alter his will. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Do you know how this present will stands?” Tomlinson asked.
Ayres said that he supposed it would leave everything to Mrs. Moncrieff, but that he had no idea, really. “And now, Superintendent, or should I ask it of the Chief Inspector?”
The man from the Yard explained that he was down here merely in an advisory capacity, that the superintendent was in charge of the case.
“Then, Superintendent, I suppose you will have no objection to my going up to town? There are several things that, in view of this dreadful affair, must be seen to urgently. I ‘phoned my brokers this morning, but there are other things that can’t be ‘phoned.”
“We have no objection,” Tomlinson said after a glance from Pointer; “but, before you go, Mr. Ayres, I think I should tell you that we are by no means satisfied that we have got to the bottom of this case yet.”
“Case? What case?” Ayres looked around the room as though expecting to see a wooden erection there.
“These two deaths,” Tomlinson said.
“But good Heavens—how do you mean? Not satisfied? What on earth—“ There was a pause. Ayres’s placid face showed consternation. “Oh, I see! But what a ghastly idea! You’re afraid that poor Moncrieff may have killed his wife and then himself in a fit of insanity?”
“We want to be quite sure exactly how it all happened,” Tomlinson said stolidly.
“You don’t mean to say that you think he intentionally killed her and himself in order to avoid some trouble—some money difficulty?” Ayres asked briskly. “Oh no, Chief Superintendent, no, no! Moncrieff was quite certainly not in any money difficulties. Of late, a thousand signs have spoken of a man who could afford to lose a hundred pounds or so with equanimity. No, no! Nothing of that kind.”
“Are you an executor to either will?” Pointer asked now. Mr. Ayres said that he was executor to both. The Moncrieffs had not asked him to read the wills, but had mentioned in conversation afterwards that they felt sure he wouldn’t mind taking on the responsibility. He was sole executor, he understood them to say, and, seeing that he and Moncrieff were associated, he thought it simplified things.
The chief inspector asked him if he would have any objection to their seeing the wills, provided Mr. Graham had no objection to opening them.
Mr. Ayres said that he would ask Graham to bring them down this very afternoon at an hour when he himself would be back, and they could have a look at them. Not that they would help to clear up the dreadful fancies of the superintendent. Here Ayres shot him a keener look than one would have imagined his mild eyes capable of, for, as they all knew, a man could write himself down in his will as the possessor of vast funds or actually own them, and yet die a beggar.
They agreed to this, but Tomlinson said that they would like to have an early, private glance at the wills if it could be arranged.
“I wish I understood exactly what your difficulty is,” Ayres said in his kindly way, looking at the two much younger men as though he yearned to help them.
Pointer said nothing. Tomlinson murmured that perhaps the difficulties would pass as the inquiries cleared up things more and more. “But I don’t understand!” complained Mr. Ayres, and still shaking his head over it, he left them.
They had a talk with Mr. Santley next. He was the only member of the household known to have actually witnessed the fatal “conjuring trick” from the front. He was questioned very closely on what happened on the stage, and he described accurately just what he saw. As to who else of the house was watching too, he could only say that he had no idea.
“Miss Bruton was at the door,” the superintendent reminded him, quite needlessly. Santley had not forgotten her. “Could she have had anything to do with locking the doors? Both doors were locked, we found.”
Santley only repeated exactly what the superintendent had heard her say through the door. He described her vaguely as groping round the door, apparently looking for the key.
“No one seems to know who locked those doors,” Tomlinson eyed Santley as though to say that if the young man were guilty, now was the time to confess. But Santley only said that in such a moment no one paid any attention to doors.
“On the contrary,” Pointer put in with a faint ironic smile, “the superintendent is complaining that someone seems to have paid too much attention to them.”
“What I’m driving at,” Tomlinson amplified, “is whether the Major himself locked them? Was it part of his show?”
Santley, startled inwardly, only said that they had not been locked at the first rehearsal of the trick, but that had been a very impromptu affair. He added that he could see no reason for them to be fastened.
“The keys were found in a broken jardinière this morning,” Tomlinson went on.
They questioned Santley closely as to the inmates of the house, and the last few hours. He told them nothing. The thing was done, was over, and he did not see how broadcasting his own horrible fear lest Lavinia’s death might not have been an accident would help matters. “Least said soonest mended,” was a wise old saw, and one which appealed to Santley always. He could offer no suggestions as to how those gay trappings came to be knotted on to the Spaniard’s sword, and finally he was thanked, and allowed to go.
“Seems to have no suspicions as to anything wrong,” Tomlinson said, but his voice was interrogative.
“He was watching his step,” was Pointer’s laconic comment. “In my opinion the people will be a great deal more helpful if you let them guess, as you did Mr. Ayres, that you aren’t satisfied that things yesterday were as they appeared to be. This Mr. Santley—I’ve seen his pictures shown at the Academy—he ought to be able to be a help to us. He’s not only observant far beyond the ordinary—I suppose every good artist is that—but he observes psychology as well. His portraits show that.”
“I’ll have Mr. Santley back, and just say to him what I said to Mr. Ayres,” said the superintendent, who proceeded to do so, and vastly increased Santley’s own growing horrible conviction that he had witnessed a murder, not an accident. But even so, the artist saw no reason to speak, to tell of Mrs. Phillimore’s tragic premonitions, of Lavinia’s dreadful race down the passage to him, while Moncrieff, open razor in hand, called after her—he saw no good too, in recounting to the police all these facts, which, told beforehand, might have saved Lavinia, but which were only tittle-tattle now.
And then there came a ringing of the telephone in the room, and the superintendent listened. “Mrs. Phillimore?” he repeated, looking exceedingly alert, “Yes, madam, I can hear you quite clearly. Yes?” He listened for some minutes, his face impassive, then he reached for his notebook. “Do you mind if I jot down what you say? Just a minute first, please.” He turned to Santley. “Would you be so kind as to go to the extension in the bedroom upstairs and listen to what Mrs. Phillimore is telling me. She is repeating a conversation which she had with you, she says.”
Santley rose reluctantly. What a pity, he thought, to bring in what could not help either of those two dead young people. The superintendent with a very grim face watched him go.
“Mrs. Phillimore has learnt of what has happened, and is trying to tell us something very important. She half guessed that this was coming, and she told this Mr. Santley as much! She really got him to come down here to protect Mrs. Moncrieff, she says. And yet he doesn’t cheep a word of all that to us!”
Tomlinson’s tone of disgust was almost comic. Then he became official again and took his hand off the mouthpiece. “That you, Mrs. Phillimore? Ready, up above, Mr. Santley? Now then, please, madam, you say that as soon as you arrived down here at Beechcroft—“ and Tomlinson launched Mrs. Phillimore afresh on her account of what had caused her to get Mr. Santley to go down to Beechcroft as soon as possible, and to add Miss Bruton to the household. Mr. Goodenough, she explained, was to be there in any case.