Mystery of Mr. Jessop (15 page)

“Miss Fellows wore it at the Film Star Ball a year or two ago,” the duchess answered. “I remember noticing it. A wonderful thing,” she said, and could not quite prevent such a soft, passionate longing in her voice as others use when they speak of their heart's desire. “She wore it in some of her pictures, too. People often said they went to see it as much as anything.”

“There was some idea that you might be induced to purchase it, I think?” Bobby said to her.

“Certainly not,” answered the duchess. “I'm not a film star. I can't afford things like that.”

“I understood the firm had it sent specially for your inspection?” Bobby persisted.

“Oh, that,” said the duchess. “Oh, that was just for me to see it. I thought you meant had I asked for it to be sent on approval. It must be six or eight weeks ago Miss May brought it to show me. A lovely thing,” she said, and again the note of longing in her voice was very marked.

“I think your grace,” Bobby went on, “gave a garden-party at Hastley Court about a month ago?”

The duchess stared.

“Yes. Why?” she asked.

“A statement has reached us,” said Bobby, “that on that day Mr. Jessop was present and again produced the necklace to you for your further inspection?”

“Good gracious!” said the duchess. “But that's silly. Who on earth told you that? Why, my good man, that day I hadn't a moment to myself, much less to spare for looking at necklaces.”

“I shall require,” said the duke portentously, “to know from what source you receive these utterly preposterous statements. And I consider that this has gone quite far enough. I see no reason to put up with any more of this official – badgering.” And Bobby was quite sure a stronger word had been intended. “I shall communicate with your superiors, young man. I shall inform them that I resent it. Resent it,” he continued impressively. “Dickson, see that Fisher shows this person out.”

Therewith he and the duchess retired with a dignity that was slightly impaired by a certain suggestion of haste in the ducal movements, and Charley bestowed upon Bobby a sympathetic smile.

“Old boy gone in off the deep end,” he said. “Good and mad he is. Luckily he don't do much about it as a rule; he feels that his having been annoyed is punishment enough in itself to any bloke who upsets him. What in blazes made you talk about the Cut and Come Again? You promised not to.” And a very reproachful note crept into Charley's voice.

“I only promised not to say anything about you if I could help it,” Bobby answered, “and I didn't. But in a case of murder – well, everything's got to give way, even dukes and duchesses. If you get a chance, you might point that out.”

“Not me,” said Charley frankly. “Don't want to lose my job before I've got to. If the American stunt pans out O.K., I might perhaps – I've got a kind of a half-chance of a job with a film agency out in Hollywood,” he explained. “If I get that, I'll tell the old boy anything you like – and then some. But not before.”

It was spoken jestingly and with a laugh, but with a gleam in those soft-looking girlish eyes, with their long lashes and their drooping lids, that made Bobby think this youngster was capable of more than showed on the surface. And with those looks of his – a little on the pretty-pretty side, perhaps, but striking all the same – surely he ought to have a good chance on the films.

“Ever done any film work?” Bobby asked, on the general principle that the more you knew the more likely you were to know something useful.

Charley looked at him a little queerly.

“Ever hear of
Heavenly Gates
?” he asked.

“The film?” Bobby asked. “Rather. Saw it, too. Jolly good. Why?”

“It was mine,” Charley answered.

“Eh?” said Bobby, very surprised. “You mean you had something to do with it? I thought it brought in pots of money for everyone concerned?”

“So it did, except me,” Charley answered, a hardness and bitterness in his tone that Bobby felt could be understood. “I didn't write the story, but I found it – bought all rights from the silly ass of an author for £100 down. He jumped for joy to get it, too; money out of the blue for him. But pretty near all the rest was mine – they shot it just the way I had it worked out.”

“But –” began Bobby, and paused.

“Froze me out,” Charley explained. “Another gamble gone west. I put every penny I had in it.” His soft, almost pretty-pretty look had gone now; his eyes were fierce and hard, his mouth set in a straight, thin line. “Frozen out,” he repeated. “Lesson to me.”

The door opened and Fisher appeared as Charley said this.

“His grace seems anxious –” Fisher began.

“For you to throw me out?” Bobby completed the sentence. “Right-oh. I'll go quietly, though I don't say some of us won't be back before long – not me, though, if I can help it.” He nodded to Charley, who, lost in his own dark thoughts, took no notice, and, following Fisher into the hall, he added: “Don't bother about the lift. I'll walk down.”

“There's a lot of stairs,” Fisher warned him in a surprised tone.

“I expect there are,” agreed Bobby. “Nothing like exercise. I might have another look at that outside door, too, just to make sure it can't be opened from without, even with the key.”

“It's that sort of patent automatic bolt does that,” Fisher explained. He led the way down a passage through the portion of the flat given over to the domestic staff. Safely out of sight and hearing, he allowed his dignity to drop, became more human, and remarked:

“Bit of bad luck for Mr. Dickson about his film.”

“I hadn't heard about that; treated him badly, apparently,” Bobby remarked.

“Lost his head, that's what it was,” Fisher explained. “I heard all about it from a young lady who goes on as an extra sometimes. Had a drop of drink too much, most likely.”

“He doesn't look as if he drank,” Bobby observed, wondering if this was an oblique reference to the young man's recent lamp-post-climbing exploit.

“He doesn't,” answered Fisher. “He knows it don't do for him. But if he gets in a jam, then he has a bit extra to brace him up, and then it goes to his head, not his legs, so he hardly knows what he is doing. Acts anyhow, so to say. If he had just hung on and signed nothing, they couldn't have done a thing. As it was, they had him out in quick sticks.”

“Couldn't he have brought an action or something?” Bobby asked.

“Well,” answered Fisher cautiously, “I don't think he dared – been sailing just a bit too near the wind. Handling some of the cash careless like. Nothing wrong, of course, only accountants wouldn't have wanted to pass it. Not that I know anything about it,” he added hastily, as if afraid he had said too much; and, evidently wishing to change the subject, he went on: “Our old man in a bit of a paddy, wasn't he?”

“I had to ask a lot of questions, and he got bored and worried,” explained Bobby lightly. “I thought I did enough ‘your gracing' to make the wheels go round, too.”

“Used to it,” observed Fisher; “not used to being asked questions.”

“I suppose that was it,” agreed Bobby. “He seems frightfully down on gambling.”

“Fad of his,” Fisher said. “Much as your place is worth if he knows you've even put half a crown on the dogs. So, of course, none of us do.”

“Of course not,” agreed Bobby, and winked.

He had often found that a sympathetic wink was curiously effective in promoting confidences, more so even than the standing of a drink, behind which act of generosity all know that more may lurk. But a wink's a friendly, suspicion-disarming, confidence-creating thing, and now Fisher winked back, and forthwith good relations were in being.

“I suppose it's genuine with him,” Bobby asked. “He doesn't go in for it himself on the sly, does he?”

“Not him,” declared Fisher with emphasis. “He's that mean the thought of losing half a quid would turn his hair white.”

“Doesn't he go a good deal to the races, though?”

“Only when it's Ascot and such-like and his old woman says it's a social duty,” Fisher explained, “and then I expect he's asleep half the time. Talks about it in public, too, spouts about the Evil of Gambling, the Canker of Betting, and all that rot.”

“Probably he thinks it's due to his position,” Bobby suggested. “After all, a duke's a duke, and his example counts. The American Ambassador rang him up last night, didn't he? Somewhere about eight or nine, wasn't it?”

“Nearer nine, I think. Couldn't get in touch with him, though; the Ambassador had to wait. Can't think where he had got to. Late in, too.”

“Good thing the duchess isn't jealous,” observed Bobby, laughing.

Fisher laughed, too, genuinely amused.

“Jealous of that dried-up old stick?” he asked. “Why, I don't believe he could tell a pretty girl from a cold in the head.” Unconsciously Fisher straightened himself, smiled, put up a hand to smooth hair of which not one was out of place, very evidently feeling that as much could not be said of him. “Oh, he's not that sort,” he said. “Mean as you like, and keen on money as a dog on a juicy bone, and you've got to jump, all of you – the missus, too – when he speaks. But, taking him all round,” said Fisher tolerantly, “there's worse.”

“The missus? Oh, the duchess, you mean?”

“That's right. Proper scared of him, she is, but gets her own way in the end; that's her. He rules her with a rod of iron, as the saying is, but she takes care it's the way she wants to be ruled. Manages him O.K., if you know what I mean. But perhaps you're a married man yourself, and then you will.”

“Not me,” said Bobby. “No time in our job to think of it.”

“You wait,” said Fisher darkly; “you wait.”

At the bottom of the stairs on the first landing he reached, Bobby sat down, though less to rest than in order to think things over quietly, as, too, his preference for the stairs over the lift had been due less to a desire for exercise than to secure an opportunity for his chat with the butler that had turned out so suggestive.

It had confirmed, for instance, the fact that there was some mystery about the duke's movements on the Saturday night, and that his grace's refusal to say where he had been was not merely due to pique and offended dignity, but had some solid reason behind it. Natural, perhaps, that a somewhat lively youngster like Charley Dickson should jump to the conclusion that there was a woman in the explanation. But Fisher evidently thought that highly improbable, and he was an old family servant who might be presumed to know a good deal about his employers, as is the manner of old family servants. But, then, a private secretary, especially a private secretary to the wife, might know things hidden from even the oldest of family servants.

“One thing jolly certain,” Bobby decided, thoughtfully lighting a cigarette, “is that his grace will have to be asked some more questions, and they'll have, thank goodness, to turn one of the big pots on the job – the A.C. himself, perhaps,” mused Bobby, smiling happily at the thought of the dignified and important Assistant Commissioner interviewing the duke so conscious of his own dignity and importance – a little like the meeting of the irresistible force and the immovable object, Bobby told himself.

Of course, the duke's wish to preserve secrecy about his movements that evening could not possibly have any connection with the necklace or the murder. Still, an investigation is an investigation, and there you are, and no getting away from it.

Another point was, how did the duke know Jessop was a gambler used to risking large sums? And why had he chosen to offer an explanation almost certainly false?

Once more, why had he dwelt so persistently on the exorbitance of the price asked for the necklace, as though that were in some way a personal grievance?

Odd, too, that while it was admitted the duke had been to Mayfair Square to inspect the necklace, and had actually made an offer for it, and that the duchess had had it sent to the Park Lane flat for her inspection there, yet the Hastley Court visit was firmly denied. Yet there seemed no doubt it had been made.

One thing became very clear to Bobby. He would have to draw' up his report with extreme care, bringing out all these points and yet avoiding any direct accusation against people of such influence and importance, and of such high social standing. He had no wish to ruin his chance of promotion by getting known to his superiors as the lad who couldn't tell a duke from a crook.

“Tact,” he reflected mournfully, “tact, my boy, that's what you want”; and he found himself wondering whether already the telephone was not conveying a stream of acid complaints to Prime Ministers and others of the Great and the Powerful.

“All the same,” Bobby concluded finally, as he continued the long, long trail down the stairs to the street, “there's something about the Westhavens, wife and hubby, too, that's got to be dug out, and, if possible, before they start pulling strings to get it hushed up – even though it's inconceivable dukes and duchesses should go in for theft and murder.”

But, though he told himself this, none the less he remembered how oddly the duke had dwelt upon the exorbitance of the price demanded, how in the duchess's voice as she had spoken of the necklace had been a soft yearning as of a lover for his mistress, as of an exile for his home.

His thoughts turned again to the minor point of how it was the duke knew that Jessop gambled for large sums. Fisher – that had been a useful little chat – denied that his master went often to the races, and in any case it was not likely the duke would have there noticed, or paid the least attention to, Mr. Jessop's activities, or, indeed, had any opportunity to do so, since there was no reason why duke and jeweller should have seen each other, even though both had been on the same racecourse the same day. That explanation was certainly an afterthought, and, though there seemed no obvious connection with the murder, all the same Bobby felt he would like it cleared up. It struck him that it was believed to be from the Cut and Come Again club that the dead man had rung up to make his agitated complaint about the lost necklace; and it was just possible, though highly improbable, that the duke knew more of the place than he pretended. Gambling went on there for high stakes, as Bobby – and others – knew well enough, and there was just the chance that there the duke had picked up his knowledge.