Death Among the Sunbathers (6 page)

‘You go in for sun-bathing then, Mr Keene?' Mitchell observed, and Keene nodded a somewhat sulky response.

But it was not a subject he seemed to want to say much about. He had been there. It was a very well-conducted place. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. In the first place he went there because Mr Esmond Bryan, who ran it, had become a client of his, and had interested him in it. Personally he was sure it was good for him; Horry Hunter thought the same. He and Horry both felt all the better for their visits to Leadeane.

‘Horry Hunter's a chap I know,' he explained to Mitchell.

Mitchell saw that Ferris, always busy with his note-book, had looked up quickly, and guessed that he, too, had noticed this fresh coincidence of names. Mitchell said,

‘Is it the Mr Hunter who has a wholesale fur business in Howland Yard?'

Keene looked rather startled, even uneasy, as he answered in the affirmative.

‘Mrs Curtis know him, or Mr Curtis?' Mitchell inquired.

‘No, not that I know of. Why?'

‘We have information Mrs Curtis was seen in Howland Yard this morning,' answered Mitchell.

But both the two young people looked blank at this, and thought there must be some mistake. It was possible Mr Hunter's name might have been mentioned before her, but that was all. They were fairly certain she had never met him; there was no conceivable reason why she should wish to see him, or why she should go to his place of business.

‘The only time I ever mentioned Mr Hunter that I remember,' Sybil said, ‘was once when something was being said about our going to Kenya. Jo always said we should never be able to sell the business for enough to give us a start there, and I told her we knew Mr Hunter was thinking of doing exactly the same thing – getting rid of his business here, I mean, and starting fresh somewhere else.'

‘Had the same idea as you, Mr Keene?' Mitchell remarked, while Ferris's pencil wrote steadily on.

‘Oh, I don't know,' mumbled Keene. ‘We talked about it sometimes when we met at Leadeane.'

They were interrupted by a sound of someone calling, and Sybil said quickly,

‘That's mother, I must see what she wants.'

She left the room quickly and Mitchell asked Keene again – he had put the same question to him before – ‘You are sure you can't think of anything to throw light on this affair? If we could get a hint of any motive...'

‘I wish I could,' declared Keene emphatically, ‘it's an awful business... I can hardly realize it yet... it'll pretty nearly kill old Mrs Frankland... Sybil, too, awful for her... I can't imagine why anyone... most people liked Jo, one of the jolly sort, got on with people... of course she hated me, but that was only because she thought I wasn't good enough for Sybil and didn't believe in the Kenya idea... thought it wasn't possible. It was though, and so she would have found out before long.'

‘Do you mean you were openly on bad terms?' Mitchell asked. ‘Had there been any serious quarrel between you?'

‘Oh, no, we were always civil enough when we met... of course, we weren't pals exactly, because I knew she wanted Sybil to break it off, but I didn't care because I knew Sybil wouldn't... besides I knew it was only because of the money and she thought I wouldn't have enough to make a start in Kenya and so it was cracked to go there. As a matter of fact I have a purchaser at a good price in view, and if it comes off we shall be all right.'

‘That's good,' said Mitchell heartily, just as Sybil came back into the room, looking flushed and excited.

‘Mother thought she heard someone in the garden,' she said. ‘I told her it would be only one of those awful newspaper people, but I went to look and it was that dreadful man, Maurice,' she added to Keene, using his first name, ‘you know, Bobs-the-Boy, I saw him just as plainly as ever. What can he be here for?'

‘I'll go and look,' Keene exclaimed.

Mitchell and Ferris went with him, but there was no one in the garden. No one, in fact, was visible at all, for even the journalists had retired by now to hand in their reports, except Mitchell's own car with Jacks dozing at the wheel and the plain-clothes man strolling up and down. Jacks's testimony was not very valuable perhaps, for he admitted having been half asleep, but the plain-clothes man protested he had been keeping a sharp look-out; he certainly seemed alert enough, and he was positive no human being could have gone by without being seen. And it was quite certain there was no one now in the garden.

‘If anyone was there,' said Mitchell emphatically, ‘he was only playing the fool, and if you see Bobs-the-Boy you can tell him so.'

‘That's what I think, too,' declared Ferris. ‘Playing the fool.'

The plain-clothes man saluted.

‘If Bobs-the-Boy is seen, message shall be delivered, sir,' he promised, ‘but I am ready to swear no human being could have gone into the garden or come out again without my seeing him.'

Sybil, however, insisted that she had seen the man clearly in the light of the street lamp at the corner; and as they were all four returning to the house, leaving Jacks to continue his dozing at the wheel and the plain-clothes man his watch, Keene said to Mitchell,

‘Do you know anyone who calls himself that? I thought your man out there... and you, too...'

‘Well,' Mitchell explained, ‘we didn't see anyone, did we? so it's hard to be sure, but there's a ticket-of-leave man, name of Ford, Robert Ford. He was sent away for ten years for burglary last time he was up, but some months ago he was let out on licence. He brags a lot, and he has a trick of saying if there's any job to be done, “Bob's the Boy for that”. So he often gets called by that name. It sounds as if it might be the same man.'

They were back in the house by now, and Sybil looked very much alarmed.

‘Oh, a burglar,' she said. ‘Oh, Maurice, you won't have him any more, will you? Mr Hunter ought to be warned, too.'

‘If he's earning an honest living...' Mitchell protested mildly. ‘Does Mr Hunter employ him?' he added to Keene.

It appeared that this Bobs-the-Boy was sometimes employed by Mr Hunter at the fur warehouse as an odd job man. He had also recommended him to Keene, who occasionally employed him as a porter.

‘I saw him there once,' Sybil explained; ‘he was the most awful-looking man you ever saw, just like a... a murderer,' she said with a shudder. ‘It was the way he walked, I think – and he was in the garden,' she added with conviction, ‘for I saw him, and I don't care what that man of yours outside says. I know what I saw.'

‘So far as the lady's description goes,' observed Ferris, ‘I'm quite of her opinion – regular bad lot so far as looks go.'

‘Make a note of it and I'll sign it as the unanimous opinion of all present,' said Mitchell cheerfully, ‘but anyhow he's not in the garden now, and he's certainly not in the house, and there was no sign of him in the street, and nowhere he could hide – except our own car, and even if Jacks was half asleep no one could get inside without his knowing – that's certain. So where was he?'

Sybil still looked dissatisfied, though she had no answer to make, since it was clear that neither in garden, street, nor house, was there any trace of the man she thought she had seen. And when Mitchell and Ferris took their departure, as they soon did – though not before once again the Chelsea flat had been rung up without response – she was a good deal relieved by Mitchell's promise that the policeman on the beat should be instructed to keep a careful watch and arrest Bobs-the-Boy at sight if he were seen.

‘We can always pull him in if we want to,' Mitchell explained confidentially as they left, ‘because he is on licence, and that can always be cancelled if thought desirable.'

Hours are long, the work strenuous at Scotland Yard, when a case so complicated and mysterious as the tragedy on the Leadeane Road has to be dealt with. On their departure from Ealing, Inspector Ferris was indeed free to seek his bed; but Superintendent Mitchell had first to return to his office at the Yard, there to make certain that all the machinery at the disposal of the authorities was ready to be set in motion first thing in the morning in an endeavour to discover what had become of Mr John Curtis.

‘And in my humble opinion,' declared Ferris, ‘it's odds on, he won't be found alive. Jealousy, drink, murder, suicide – that's what it looks like to me, and common enough, too.'

‘It looks a bit like that,' Mitchell had agreed, ‘but there's a lot still that'll bear looking into. We haven't got this young Keene placed yet, and there's Mr Hunter, too – is it for nothing his name keeps popping up, or does he come into it somewhere? You notice, too, that the sun-bathing place at Leadeane Mrs Curtis visited before her murder, Hunter and Keene are also apparently in the habit of visiting. Besides, though we knew before that Hunter wanted to get an ex-convict and burglar, with not much ex about it, for his odd job man, we've still no idea why. Why should a business man, a wholesale fur merchant, want a convict out on licence in his employ? Something fishy about Mr Hunter, but is there any connexion with Mrs Curtis's murder? Then there's the jealous husband–'

‘On the booze,' interpolated Ferris.

‘On the booze,' agreed Mitchell, ‘and also an unknown motor-cyclist seen quarrelling with Mrs Curtis – none of it seems to fall properly into place yet, not even the sun bathing.'

They parted then, Ferris returning straight home, and Mitchell reaching the same destination by way of his office. And when at last, near morning, he did reach home, full of luxurious thoughts of bath and bed for at least an hour or two, he found his wife waiting for him in the hall, looking very sleepy and clad in her dressing-gown.

‘I heard the phone going,' she explained, ‘so I got up.' She had written the message down on the pad. It read, ‘Curtis seen entering Frankland's, Ealing. Watching house. Owen.'

Mitchell read it with mixed feelings, very mixed feelings indeed. Mrs Mitchell said,

‘Isn't Owen that good-looking, nice-spoken young man who was here a week or two ago?'

‘Good-looking and nice-spoken?' repeated Mitchell bitterly. ‘Is that the way to describe a man who turns in a message like this to a senior officer who hasn't been near his bed for twenty-four hours or so? Well, anyhow, it's one on Ferris, too. I can smash up his beauty sleep.'

He took down the receiver and proceeded to do so, and, though not very hopefully, Mrs Mitchell suggested that he should ring up someone else to accompany Ferris, so that he himself would not need to go. But the Superintendent shook his head. The case had taken hold of him, there was still vivid in his memory that last look the murdered woman had given him; he would not even wait for a cup of tea, though some was ready for him in a vacuum flask.

‘Had some and some biscuits at the office,' he explained. ‘I must hurry off; can't risk letting Ferris get there first.'

Ferris was there first all the same, but, as instructed, he waited till Mitchell arrived. Together they went up to the door and knocked. Sybil answered their summons and hardly looked startled when she saw who it was.

‘Oh, it's you again,' she said.

‘Mr Curtis is here, isn't he?' Mitchell asked.

‘Tell them to come in,' a voice called.

Sybil stood aside and the two men walked down the passage into the drawing-room. In it was standing a tall, strongly-built man, with fair hair and eyes and regular, well-cut features. At the moment, however, there was a wild distressed look about him. He was unshaven, with bloodshot eyes, his clothing tumbled and disarranged, one trouser leg showing a gaping tear over the knee. He said to them,

‘You are police? I've only just heard about – about –' He paused and did not complete the sentence. He said again, ‘I've only just heard... Sybil rang me up.'

Sybil had followed them into the room.

‘I told him to come here,' she said. ‘I felt I couldn't tell him on the phone.... I said he must come here.'

‘Mr Curtis rang you up first, then, I suppose?' Mitchell asked.

‘Oh, no,' she replied, ‘I had been ringing up the flat all night, and as soon as I got an answer I said he must come here, so I could tell him what had happened.... I couldn't on the phone.'

‘Sybil told me the flat was being watched,' Curtis explained, ‘and I saw fellows in the street – your chaps, I suppose, or newspaper men. So I got out by the fire escape at the back. It leads down into the yard, but near the bottom you can just grab a tree in the garden at the back and swing down there and out into the street behind. But I knew before I got here, for I bought a paper on the way.'

In fact, a copy of that morning's issue of the
Announcer
was lying on the floor. Mitchell noticed that on the front page was conspicuous a photograph of Mrs Curtis.

‘Where have you been all night, Mr Curtis?' Mitchell asked.

‘In the flat at Chelsea,' he answered moodily.

‘We got no answer when we knocked,' Mitchell remarked.

‘I heard nothing,' Curtis answered; and then after a pause, as the police officers looked doubtfully at him, ‘I was dead drunk. That's why I heard nothing.'

He sat down abruptly, but continued watching them from his heavy, bloodshot eyes, from time to time shivering a little as if he felt cold. He gave the impression that only by a tremendous effort of self-control did he save himself from breaking down completely. He saw them looking at him, and he said,

‘You know, it's a bit of a shock to read in the paper your wife's been found murdered.' Then he said, ‘I suppose I do look it.'

‘Look what?' Mitchell asked.

‘A murderer,' he answered, and Sybil gave a little soft wail of uttermost distress.