Crow's Inn Tragedy (15 page)

“The diamonds certainly provide a very adequate motive,” John Steadman said slowly, taking part in the conversation for the first time. “But there are some very weak points in your story, Mr. Carnthwacke. You must remember that the rubber gloves worn by the assassin as well as the chloroform used seem to prove conclusively that the murder was planned beforehand.”

There was a pause.

“That may be, but I don't see that it precludes the motive being the theft of my wife's diamonds,” said Mr. Cyril B. Carnthwacke truculently.

“You spoke of Mrs. Carnthwacke's being followed, and of the ‘follower' assaulting Mr. Bechcombe and strangling him in the struggle. That rather suggests an accidental discovery of Mrs. Carnthwacke's errand to me,” John Steadman hazarded mildly.

“It doesn't suggest anything of the kind to me,” the American contradicted obstinately. “Of course somebody had discovered my wife's errand, what it was and what time she was to be there, and followed her there for the express purpose of getting them.”

“I should have thought it would have been easier to snatch them from Mrs. Carnthwacke than to get them from Mr. Bechcombe,” John Steadman went on, his eyes watching every change of expression in the other's face.

“You wouldn't have if you had heard the strength of Mrs. Carnthwacke's lungs,” Mr. Carnthwacke contradicted. “It would have been devilish difficult to get the diamonds from her. She only left the car at the archway, too, and she carried the jewels concealed beneath her coat. It would have been a bold thief who would have attacked her, crossing that bit of a square in front or coming up the steps to the office. No. It was a wiser plan to wait and take them from Mr. Bechcombe.”

“I don't think so, and I think you are wrong,” John Steadman dissented. “The most probable thing would have been for Mr. Bechcombe to have deposited the diamonds in the safe while Mrs. Carnthwacke was there. That he did not do so is one of the minor puzzles of the case. I cannot understand why he should put them in the cupboard pointed out by Mrs. Carnthwacke, and why he should call it his safe I cannot imagine. He might almost have intended to make things easy for the thief.”

“I wonder whether he did,” Cyril B. Carnthwacke said very deliberately.

His words had all the force of a bombshell. The other two men stared at him in amazement.

“I do not understand you,” John Steadman said at last, his tone haughty in its repressive surprise.

But Cyril B. Carnthwacke was not to be easily repressed.

“Wal, I reckoned I might as well mention the idea—which is an idea that has occurred to more than me. But then I didn't want to put up the dander of you two gentlemen, and you in particular”—with a polite inclination in the direction of Mr. Steadman—“being a cousin of the late Mr. Bechcombe. But I was at a man's dinner last night, and it was pretty freely canvassed. It is hinted that Mr. Bechcombe might have been in difficulties in his accounts—I understand that there are pretty considerable deficiencies in his balance. And though they are all put down by the police to that clerk that can't be found—well, doesn't it pretty well jump to your eye that the late Mr. Bechcombe himself knew all about them, and that it might have suited his book to have my wife's jewels stolen, perhaps by a confederate—the clerk Thompson or another—”

“And arranged to get himself murdered to get suspicion thrown off himself?” Mr. Steadman inquired satirically as the other paused for breath.

“No, not that exactly, though I guess he was pretty slick,” returned Mr. Cyril B. Carnthwacke equably. “But I am inclined to size it up that the two had a quarrel and that the other one killed Mr. Bechcombe.”

“Are you indeed?” questioned John Steadman, a glitter in his eye that would have warned his juniors that the old man was going to be nasty. But the K.C. had rarely lost his temper so completely as to-day. “I can tell you at once that your idea is nothing but a lie—a lie, moreover, that has its foundation in your own foul imagination!” he said very deliberately. “Luke Bechcombe was the soul of honour. I would answer for him as I would for myself.”

“That is vurry satisfactory,” drawled Cyril B. Carnthwacke. “Most satisfactory, I am sure. Weel, since that question is settled I will ask another. Was Mr. Bechcombe's face injured at all?”

The other two looked surprised at this question.

“Why, no,” the inspector answered. “There was not even a scratch upon it. Why do you ask?”

“Another idea!” responded Mr. Carnthwacke cheerfully. “Another idea. But my last wasn't a success. I guess I will keep this to myself for a time.”

“One cannot help seeing that the rubber gloves and the chloroform pretty well dispose of your idea, as they have disposed of a good many others,” the inspector remarked. “No, I believe the murder to have been deliberately planned, but I don't think it was the work of one man alone. There have been more jewel robberies in London in the past year than I ever remember and I am inclined to believe that most of them may be set down to the same gang.”

“The Yellow Gang!” interjected the millionaire. “I have heard of it.”

“The Yellow Gang, if you like to call it so,” acquiesced the inspector. “But then there comes up the question, how should they know that Mrs. Carnthwacke was taking her jewels to Mr. Bechcombe that morning?”

“And why does that puzzle you?” Mr. Carnthwacke inquired blandly.

The inspector glanced at him keenly.

“Mrs. Carnthwacke informed me that no one at all knew that she was thinking of parting with her jewels, and that her visit to Mr. Bechcombe that morning had been kept a profound secret.”

Mr. Carnthwacke threw himself back in his chair and gave vent to a short, sharp laugh.

“I guess you are not a married man, inspector, or you would talk in a different fashion to that! Is there a woman alive who could keep a secret? If there is, it isn't Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke. Nobody knew! Bless your life, I knew well enough she was in debt and had made up her mind to sell her jewels to Bechcombe. I didn't know the exact time certainly. But that was because I didn't take the trouble to find out. Bless your life, there are no flies on Cyril B. Carnthwacke. When she brought the empty cases to me to put away in the safe after she'd worn her diamonds the other day, she saw me lock them up in the safe and was quite contented, bless her heart. But I guess I was slick enough to look in the cases afterwards, and when I found them empty I pretty well guessed what was up. Then I took the liberty of listening one day when she was talking down the telephone and after that she hadn't many secrets from me. As for nobody else knowing”—with another of those dry laughs—“it would take a cleverer woman than Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke to keep it from her maid.”

“That may be,” the inspector said, smiling in his turn. “But to be as frank with you as you have been with us, Mr. Carnthwacke, we have taken steps to find out what the maid knows, with the result that we are inclined to think Mrs. Carnthwacke's statement practically correct.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Carnthwacke inquired with a satiric emphasis that made John Steadman look at him more closely. “Wal, I came out on the open and tackled Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke myself this morning; we had a lot of trouble, but the upshot of it all was that I got it out of her at last that she had told nobody but that she had just mentioned it to Fédora.”

“Fédora, the fortune teller!” Steadman exclaimed.

“The Soothsayer—the Modern Witch,” Mr. Carnthwacke explained. “All these Society women are just crazed about her of late. They consult her about everything. And I feel real ashamed to say Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke is as silly as anyone, I taxed her with it and made her own up. ‘You'd ask that fortune-telling woman's advice I know,' I said. And at last she burst out crying and the game was up. She swore she didn't mention names. But there, it is my opinion she don't know whether she did or not. Anyhow, gentlemen, I have given you something to go upon. You look up Madame Fédora and her clients. It's there you will find the clue to Luke Bechcombe's death if it took place as you think.” He got up leisurely. “If there is nothing more I can do for you gentlemen—”

The inspector rose too.

“I am much obliged for your frankness. If all the witnesses in this most unhappy tangle were Mr. Cyril B. Carnthwackes, we should soon find ourselves out in the open, I fancy.”

The millionaire looked pleased at this compliment.

“I know one can't do better than lay all one's cards on the table when one is dealing with the English police,” he remarked. “Well, so long, gentlemen. Later on I want to take Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke for a cruise to get over all this worry and trouble. But I guess we will have to stop here awhile in case you want her witness. And so if you want either of us any time—I reckon you know my number—you can ring us up or come round.”

With a curiously ungraceful bow he turned to the door. A minute or two later they saw him drive off in his limousine.

John Steadman drew a long breath.

“Well, inspector?”

For answer the inspector handed him his notebook. The last entry was: “Inquire into C.B.C.'s movements on the day.”

John Steadman glanced curiously at the inspector as he handed it back.

“Do you think he did not realize? Or is he trying to screen some one?”

“I don't know,” the inspector said slowly. “With regard to your second question, that is to say. With regard to your first, to use his own phraseology, I don't think there are any flies on Cyril B. Carnthwacke.”

“Twelve minutes to one.” Anthony Collyer turned into the Tube station. He was lunching with Mrs. Luke Bechcombe and the Tube would get him there in time and be cheaper than a taxi. Anthony was inclined to be economical these days. He paused at the bookstall to buy a paper.

The tragic death of a London solicitor was beginning to be crowded out. A foreign potentate was ill. There were daily bulletins in the paper. There were rumours of a royal engagement. A great race meeting was impending, the man in the street was much occupied in trying to spot the winners. Altogether the general public was a great deal too busy to have time to spare for speculations as to the identity of Luke Bechcombe's assassin. Still, every few days there would be a paragraph stating that the police were in possession of fresh evidence, and that an arrest was hourly expected; so far, however, there had been no result. Still, the very mention of the Crow's Inn Tragedy held a morbid fascination for Anthony Collyer. The heading caught his eye now and he paused to turn the paper over.

Standing thus by the bookstall he was hidden from the sight of the passers-by. For his part he was thinking of nothing but his paper, when two sentences caught his ear.

“I tell you, you will have to go to Burford.”

“Suppose I am followed?”

Both voices—a man's and a woman's—sounded familiar to Anthony Collyer. The former he could not place at the moment, the latter—the blood ran rapidly to his head, as he gazed after the retreating couple who were now walking quickly in the direction of the ticket office—surely, he said to himself, it was Cecily Hoyle's voice!

Cecily Hoyle it undoubtedly was. He recognized her tall, slim figure and her big grey coat with its square squirrel collar. Her companion was a man at whom Tony could only get a glance; of medium height wearing rather shabby-looking clothes, and with grey, hair worn much longer than usual, his face, as he turned it to his companion, was clean-shaven and rosy as of a man who lived out of doors.

Anthony had not seen Cecily since their meeting in Kensington Gardens now more than a week ago. It was evident that she intended to abide by her words; she had not answered any of Tony's impassioned letters, she had refused to see him when he had called at Hobart Residence, he had asked for her when visiting Mrs. Bechcombe. Now it seemed to him that Fate had put in his hands the clue to the tangled mass of contradictions that Cecily had become.

Hastily thrusting his paper in his pocket he hurried after the couple. But, short as the time was since they passed him, already a queue had formed before the ticket office. As he reached it Cecily and her companion turned away and walked through the barrier. It was hopeless to think of going after them without a ticket. Anthony chafed impatiently as he waited. When at last he was free to follow them they were out of sight and he ran up to the lift just in time to hear the door close and to see the lift itself vanish slowly out of sight. For a moment he felt inclined to run down the steps and then he realized that there was nothing to be gained by such a proceeding and nothing for him to do but wait for the next lift with what patience he could. It seemed to him that he had never had to wait so long before; when at last it did come and he had raced along the passage and down the few remaining steps to the platform, it was only to find the gate slammed before him. Standing there, he had the satisfaction of seeing Cecily's face at the window of the train gliding out of the station while beside her he caught a vision of the silvery locks of her companion.

As he stood there realizing the utter futility of endeavouring to overtake Cecily now, a voice only too well known of late sounded in his ear.

“Good morning, Mr. Collyer. Too late, like myself.”

He turned to find Inspector Furnival beside him. A spasm of fear shot through Tony. Was this man ubiquitous? And what was he doing here?

“Going to Mrs. Luke Bechcombe's, sir?” the inspector went on. “Mr. Steadman has just left me to go on there in his car. A family party to celebrate Mr. Aubrey Todmarsh's engagement.”

“Yes, to Mrs. Phillimore,” Tony assented.

The gate was thrust aside now, the inspector and Tony found themselves pushed along by the people behind. They went on the platform together, the inspector keeping closely by Tony's side.