Mystery of Mr. Jessop (17 page)

The Cut and Come Again rented the first and second floors of the fine old house he was looking at. The ground floor and basement were occupied by a restaurant entirely unconnected with the club, though it is true that there seemed somehow a good deal of traffic through a door leading from the rear of the restaurant dining-room to the passage at the back, whence rose the back stairs constructed recently as an additional means of escape in case of fire. But, then, that door led also to the cloakrooms, where the restaurant customers could wash their hands or powder their noses or perform other necessary toilet operations. Nor did the restaurant waiters grumble so much as might have been expected if their customers mysteriously vanished for a time – even for a long time. A police raid on the club – there had been one or two, but none recently – was apt to find the restaurant crowded with guests innocently chatting over glasses of lemonade or barley-water or admiring the surrealist paintings with which the walls were adorned; for the restaurant had quite a name as a centre of surrealist art, and odd-looking people often wandered in just to admire the pictures on exhibition.

On the half-landing was a telephone call-box and a small cloakroom in charge of a former police constable, a Mr. Isaac Finch, who had at one time been much favoured by his superior officers as likely to bring the police boxing championship to their division, but who had afterwards proudly resigned rather than face the indignity of a threatened inquiry into certain entirely personal transactions.

The top floor was a flat in private occupation, though the tenant, Mr. John Smith, was seldom seen, nor did a knock at his door often secure an answer. Occasionally club members wandered up there just to try, but knocking was always vain, though, on the other hand, at times the door would swing open as of its own accord, so that there was no need to knock, and visitors could pass through unheralded and unannounced.

As Bobby approached this intriguing institution there emerged from the ever-open door that gave admission both to the restaurant – on the right – and to the stairway directly in front that led to the club premises, a little thin old woman with a small, shrivelled face, well known to Bobby himself, to the police in general, and in all the more disreputable haunts in town, as Magotty Meg. It was a sobriquet frequently misunderstood and invariably misspelt, for it was in no sense personal, but was due merely to her habit – she was partly of French extraction – of referring to her
magot
, by which she meant her little private store of savings that, with the prudence of her maternal ancestors, she was endeavouring to accumulate so as to be able some day to retire to that little rose-embowered country cottage, at the thought of which she would shed tears on those comparatively rare occasions when she was really drunk. Age had forced her to abandon a profession she had formerly – adorned is hardly the word perhaps – practised lavishly, freely, even generously indeed, and still there was little that went on in the underworld of London that she was not aware of, and wherefrom she did not manage somehow or another to glean for her own use a few ears of ill-gotten corn. In criminal circles she was universally respected, for her silence was that of the brooding pyramids, even though there was hardly a rogue in London against whom she could not have given damning evidence. But what she knew was as inaccessible to the police as the summit of Mount Everest to the aspiring climber. Her
magot
, too, remained comparatively small, since a certain innate generosity of soul prevented her from refusing any demand for assistance. She took, but she gave as well.

“If you're looking for T.T.,” she greeted Bobby abruptly, “he isn't there, and if you find him anywhere, tell him I want him.”

It was said regally, as by one who had a right to command, and Bobby wondered a little.

“Why?” he asked, though he knew the question was useless.

“To talk about the weather,” she retorted.

“Or diamonds?” he asked.

“That's it; you've hit it.” She beamed on him. “He promised me a diamond bracelet once, and I want to know when I'm to have it.”

“I see,” said Bobby drily. “Is Wynne at the club?”

“Who's that?” she asked, assuming now her expression of bland ignorance police interrogators knew so well.

“The Count de Teirney,” Bobby answered.

“Ah,” sighed Meg, “I knew a Count de Teirney forty years ago – a lovely man. I remember –”

“Sorry, Meg; haven't time now,” interrupted Bobby, for Meg's reminiscences, though both diverting and entirely incredible, were apt to lead far from the subject supposed to be under discussion.

“Perhaps it's his son,” mused Meg. “Or even mine,” she added thoughtfully; for one of her most embarrassing habits was that of claiming the possible procreation of almost anyone of suitable age – she had even advanced the claim once to a scandalised, indignant, and blushing Assistant Commissioner of Police.

“You've heard about the Jessop murder?” Bobby asked her.

“It's in the stop press,” she said, and gave him a sudden and a different look from her small, beady old eyes. “I don't hold with murder,” she said, and walked away, and Bobby told himself it might be as well to remember how she had said that – it might be that if she knew anything, as was entirely probable, since there was so little that she did not know or guess, she might be willing for once to drop her usual impenetrable guard of silence and assumed forgetfulness.

But that would be, Bobby knew well, in her own good time, if at all; and he walked on through the open door and up the stairs leading to the Cut and Come Again premises.

Mr. Finch, in charge of the cloakroom, knew Bobby well enough, and greeted him with a friendly grin.

“Hullo, hullo,” he said. “Here's the white hope of the C.I.D. Hope you're off duty or what'll the Home Sec. say?”

Bobby went white with rage. He had a naturally equable temper, and he had trained himself to keep it in the strictest control, but this reference to the loathsome legend that he was a special friend and favourite of the Home Secretary's was always too much for him. He said between his teeth:

“All right, all right. You wait, Finch, I'll remember that.”

There was an energy of anger about him as he spoke that fairly scared Finch, who had meant no more than a little friendly chaff. After all, no night-club porter wishes unnecessarily to antagonise a “busy,” even if only because a night raid offers too many opportunities for a clip on the jaw from some unidentifiable but substantial fist.

“No insult or offence intended, mate,” he said earnestly, “and hope none such is took.”

Bobby took his temper in hand. Even the most deadly insults a policeman must learn to ignore. He said abruptly: “When was the Duke of Westhaven here last?”

Finch was one of the readiest and most accomplished liars in the world – made perfect by long practice – but his look of surprise at this question was pretty plainly genuine. Then he rallied.

“Oh, he often looks in,” he said. “One of our regulars. Every night almost. Only don't you let on I said so. He calls himself Mr. Smith here. ‘Finch, my boy,' he said to me, friendly like, not more than half an hour ago, ‘you let on this is my home from home and I'll have your blood. Meanwhile, here's a quid for you.' Jolly little cuss, the duke.”

“That was half an hour ago, was it?” asked Bobby, fully appreciating this reference to the stiff and pedantic duke as a “jolly little cuss,” and the suggestion that he, who had the reputation of being the meanest man in town, gave pound notes away so freely.

“There or thereabouts,” asserted Finch, and Bobby was convinced by these replies that Finch knew nothing of the duke, and that that maligned peer had never in his life been near the place.

“Heard about the murder of Mr. Jessop?” Bobby asked. “It's in the stop press this morning.”

Finch shook his head.

“Didn't notice it,” he said. “Why? The duke done it? I thought I noticed a dark, suspicious stain on his left trouser-leg.”

“Don't try to be funny,” snapped Bobby. “Was Jessop a member?”

“No,” answered Finch. “Visitor sometimes. You'll find his name in the visitors' book.”

“Miss Hilda May a member?”

“Couldn't rightly say,” answered Finch. “There's some I know when I see 'em, but not by name. Ask Mr. Dillon. He's secretary. He'll know. He keeps the member list.”

“So he does,” agreed Bobby, who knew well that list, comprehensive, and, in a very real sense, more than complete. “Mr. Jessop used the 'phone here on Saturday?”

“Did he?” countered Finch. “I couldn't say, I'm sure. Anyone can slip in and use the call-box without me knowing. I don't notice; no call to.”

“Mr. Dillon in his room?”

“I'll ask,” Finch said, and, using the house 'phone, reported that Mr. Dillon was there and would be happy to see Sergeant Owen.

Bobby went on accordingly to a little room at the top of the stairs, observing with interest, as he passed, the grooves which showed where a light steel netting could be dropped at a second's notice to bar all ingress, so as to prevent, as the authorities had been carefully informed, any attempt by the roughs, who at times infest West End districts, to rush the club premises.

“Keep 'em out until we've time to get you fellows of the police round to protect us,” Mr. Dillon had explained blandly. “Everyone knows big money changes hands here sometimes when members settle up the bets they've been making between themselves on any of the big races.”

And that big money did change hands at the Cut and Come Again was indeed well known, though not racing was the reason, but baccarat,
chemin de fer
, roulette, poker, and other such devices.

Mr. Dillon, waiting for Bobby at his desk in the small bare room that was his office, was a little wizened elderly Irishman about whose past various picturesque and possibly untrue tales were told. He had a sad and solemn personality, and his almost superhuman ability to absorb whisky without limit or pause was often accounted for by the copious tears over the wrongs of Ireland he was accustomed to shed after beginning his second bottle. How, indeed, could man get drunk when from his eyes moisture poured out in proportion as he poured liquid in by the throat. Curiously enough, when sober – that is, nearly every morning before noon – he never showed a sign of having even heard of Ireland; towards the small hours he could recite in length and in detail every wrong Ireland has suffered since St. Jerome wrote a careless phrase calumniators of the country have interpreted as a suggestion that the saint believed cannibalism was practised there in his day.

He expressed himself as delighted to see Bobby. Any visit from his friends of the C.I.D. afforded him always intense pleasure, a pleasure heightened when his visitor was Sergeant Bobby Owen, who no doubt would now join him in a mouthful of the best. Bobby declined, and Dillon said he knew what slaves the C.I.D. men were to duty, and having absorbed Bobby's share, and his own, of “the best,” set himself to work to evade, deny, or profess complete forgetfulness or ignorance of everything Bobby asked. He had to admit that Hilda, Denis Chenery, and Charley Dickson were all members, but protested that none of the three ever visited the club except on the rarest occasions. Of course, members often drifted in and out without his seeing them. Bobby could ask Ted, the barman, if he liked. Ted was pretty sure to see – and serve – any member who did look in. In any case, he, Mr. Dillon, was fairly sure none of the three mentioned had been in the club on the Saturday. Finch and Ted were likely to know if they had been. Wynne was a name entirely unfamiliar to Mr. Dillon. Bobby could look through the members' list and the visitors' book, too, if he liked. As for any gossip about the Fellows necklace having taken place in the club, all Mr. Dillon could say was that he had heard none, and had certainly never heard of the Fellows necklace or of Miss Fay Fellows herself, except vaguely as a film star whose name flared occasionally on placards outside cinemas. But of course Ted might have heard something; members chatted freely both to him and between themselves while indulging in a little refreshment. A reference to the Duke of Westhaven brought a look of such mingled longing and surprise to Mr. Dillon's usually inexpressive countenance that Bobby was again forced to the conclusion that wheresoever it might be that the duke had heard of Jessop's gambling propensities, it was not here.

Another question brought an admission that Mr. T.T. Mullins occasionally visited the club as a friend of one or other member. Apparently he knew several. But the visits were very few and at long intervals. Mr. Dillon did not think he had been there for months, possibly years.

Bobby asked for the members' list, and, looking through it – it was admirably kept, showing the most meticulous observance of all the very strict club rules about the admission of new members – noticed presently with interest the name of the Count de Teirney, his address being given as the Hotel Magnifique. Bobby took a note of the names of his proposer and seconder, one of whom, Mr. Dillon regretted to say, had now resigned, while the other was at present travelling abroad. To Bobby's request for a 
description of the Count, Mr. Dillon replied that he didn't think he had ever seen him.

“He hardly ever comes,” Mr. Dillon declared.

“Odd thing about your members,” Bobby commented. “They all hardly ever come.”

“You know, sergeant,” protested Dillon mildly, “I resent that. I resent that very much. It's an aspersion on the club. Most of our members are very regular; they look upon it as a second home, but a home free from all the worries and troubles a householder has to put up with.”

“Well, if the Count de Teirney turns up here, let us know,” Bobby said. “He might be able to give us some information about a man named Wynne we are looking for. Wynne was there shortly before Jessop was shot, and we want to interview him.”