Richardson Scores Again (5 page)

“If the print is in the collection at all, you always find it in the end?”

“I would not like to go as far as that. We may fail sometimes, but not very often, I fancy. The search may take five minutes, or it may take a couple of days, and sometimes, perhaps, it beats us. It is possible that we may have reported that a print is not in the collection when it was there all the time, but I don't remember such a case.”

“Of course the man who made the print may not be the burglar at all.”

“Quite true, and that is the reason for our rule that whenever such a fingerprint is brought in, the officer who brings it must submit to having his own fingerprints taken before we begin our search. I remember a case some years ago in which an inspector from the West of England brought me a polished stone axe from the local museum, which had been broken into. There was a beautiful fingerprint on it, but when we came to take the inspector's fingerprints, I was able to show him that it was the impression of his own thumb! He didn't seem to like it, but it saved us a lot of useless work. If, in the course of your work, you come across a good fingerprint, by all means bring it along, but make sure first that it isn't your own, or that of one of your colleagues in the case.”

Bearing this advice in mind, Richardson took from his pocket a little scent spray containing the fixative used by artists for fixing charcoal drawings, and sprayed the two prints on the sash-bar. Foster watched the operation with amused curiosity.

“One would think that you were one of Superintendent Wilkins' young men, Richardson. I must look out, or he'll be tempting you to leave me.”

“No fear of that, Mr. Foster. I'm only doing what they taught us in the detective class. Now, if you don't mind, I should like to take your prints as a precaution. You may have touched this window.”

“I might, if I had been near it, but I haven't. What you'll have to do is to take the fingerprints of Mr. Symington and the gentleman upstairs—Mr. MacDougal—but that can very well wait. What we've got to do now—”

“Excuse me for interrupting you, sir, but I've found something else.” He described the footprints of the drunken man he had found in the rose-beds bordering on the drive. Foster went with him to look at them.

“With your permission, sir, I should like to take a plaster cast of this footprint. You see the heelplate on the boot is broken.”

“It might be worth while, though the man who murdered that woman couldn't have been drunk when he shot her. A cast of the footprint couldn't lead to much, and it would waste valuable time if you go off to buy plaster of Paris and things.”

“It won't take five minutes, sir; I have the stuff with me.”

“Good Lord, Richardson. Is there anything you haven't brought with you in that bag of yours? Well, go ahead.”

Richardson opened his attaché-case and took out a paper bag containing plaster of Paris. He took off his coat and ran off to the kitchen, returning with a jug of water and a handful of straw from a wine-case. He broke straws to fit the length and breadth of the footprint, ran the powdered plaster into the jug, stirred it vigorously with a stick, and as soon as it was of the consistency of cream, poured a thin layer into the footprint and laid the straws on it. Then he continued pouring until the footprint was full to overflowing. He packed up his things and put on his coat.

“Now, sir, we can leave it to set. I'll just run back with the jug and wash it out, or Mr. MacDougal's new servant will be complaining, and then I'll be ready.”

Foster gazed at his retreating form with an amused smile. He was thinking that his subordinate would go far in his profession. As Richardson was returning at a run, a young man of medium height pushed back the gate and came in. There was a proprietary air about him as he advanced up the drive.

“What's all this?” he asked. “What are you men doing here?”

“I'm a superintendent from Scotland Yard, sir,” replied Foster. “May I ask you your name?”

“I'm Ronald Eccles, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.”

I
F
S
UPERINTENDENT
F
OSTER
was startled at the apparition of a young man who was in a position, as he thought, to clear up the mystery, he did not show it. “We've been looking for you, Mr. Eccles,” he said.

“The devil you have? What's it all about? Nothing's happened to my uncle, I hope?”

“You know that there was a burglary here on Tuesday night?”

“A burglary? You're joking?” Foster and Richardson were watching his face. If his astonishment and dismay were assumed, both decided that he was a loss to the stage of melodrama. “Did the burglars get away with anything?”

“With a large sum of money, we understand, but instead of standing here to talk I should be glad if you would come into the house with us and let me take a statement from you.”

“All right—though I don't see that I can tell you anything useful.” He began to lead the way to the front door.

“Not that way, sir, if you don't mind. We'll go round to the kitchen for our interview. This way, sir.”

“But I want to see my uncle first. Then I'll answer as many questions as you like to ask, and I'll ask you a few in return.”

“I'm sorry, sir. Your uncle is quite well and you shall see him in good time, but you will kindly do as I say, and come with me to the kitchen.” The claws had begun to peep out from under the velvet glove.

“Oh, very well—if you're so damned particular. Go ahead and let us get it over.”

They walked round the angle of the house, Richardson bringing up the rear with his attaché-case from which he abstracted a reporter's note-book as he went. His shorthand was not impeccable, but with occasional recourse to abbreviated longhand, aided by a good memory, he had found it equal to the task of taking down a statement. The three sat down at the kitchen table.

“Your name is Ronald Eccles,” began Foster; “a lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy. What is your age?”

“Twenty-six.”

“What ship are you serving on?”

“The
Dauntless
, but she's in dock now.”

“In dock at Portsmouth. When did you leave her?”

“Between nine and ten on Tuesday.” The replies were given sharply as if under protest.

Foster seemed to receive the last answer with surprise. 

“On
Tuesday
, and this is Thursday. Your uncle expected you here on Tuesday, to spend the night here. What were you doing in the meantime?”

“You may well ask me that. I've had a hell of a time.”

“Where have you been? You had better give me an account of all your movements.”

“I don't think that you have any right to ask. You are behaving as if I was under suspicion of something. Tell me what's behind all this and then I'll decide whether I ought to submit to this questioning.”

“All in good time, Mr. Eccles. I am sure that as a naval officer you don't want to obstruct me in my duty. It is my duty to ask you to account for all your movements after you left the ship.”

“I don't want to obstruct you. I was going to complain to the police in any case. The first thing I did on leaving the ship was to taxi out of the town to see a friend.”

“What was the name of the friend and his address?”

“I'm not bound to give you that.”

“May I take it that it was the lady who wrote to you asking for money?”

“It was, but how the devil did you know that?”

“We can leave that lady for the moment. You lunched with her, I suppose?”

“Nothing of the kind. We were not on lunching terms. After seeing her and trying to put some sense into her, I drove back into Portsmouth to lunch at the Crown Hotel. That was where all the trouble started. I was robbed there.”

“Robbed?”

“Yes. I parked my overcoat on a peg in the hall and forgot that I had left my note-case in the pocket. I lunched at a table alone. There were half a dozen other people in the dining-room, but I didn't notice any of them particularly. When it came to paying for my lunch I missed my pocket-book and realized that I had left it in my overcoat pocket. I explained to the waiter and went out to fetch it. It had gone: some blighter had pinched it. So there I was without a penny to pay for my lunch and my ticket up to town. I sent for the manager and kicked up a hell of a row. He said that he couldn't be held responsible for things left on the hat-rack. I threatened to sue him—in short, we had quite a nice little row. I suppose that I frightened him and that he telephoned to the Portsmouth police, for in a very few minutes I came into the hall with a telegram to my uncle, and found a queer-looking cove who said he was a detective sent to inquire into what he called the ‘alleged theft' of my pocket-book. He had a devil of a lot to say—that they had often had complaints of the kind; that he knew several of the hotel thieves in the town, but that he could not arrest and search them unless the owner of the stolen property was on the spot to identify it. Would I come with him? As there seemed nothing else to do, I went with him.”

“You didn't think of asking him to show his warrant-card.”

“I didn't know he had such a thing. Well, he took me from pub to pub in the lowest slums in the town, and left me waiting outside while he went in to look for the man he suspected. He didn't stay long in some of them—just looked in and came out again shaking his head; but in some of them he kept me hanging about for a good half-hour.”

“Why?”

“Oh, he said that he'd found suspicious characters there and had been interrogating them about their movements.”

“You really thought that he was a detective?”

“I was a little doubtful at one point when he had kept me hanging about for half an hour, but when I hinted my suspicions to him he turned nasty and said that I was hindering him in his duty. At the very next pub he arrested a man and came out with him in handcuffs. He said that it wasn't my man, but a man the police had been looking for for a long time. The man was inclined to be violent and I helped to hold him. Then Flaxton—that was the name the detective gave me—asked me to wait while he took him down to police headquarters. He was gone about ten minutes, and he told me when he came back that he had been commended by the chief and that the man had been lodged in a police cell.” 

“What time was that?”

“Oh, it was getting dark and I was fed-up. I said that I would go back to the ship and see whether I could borrow the money to pay my fare to London as I must get there that evening. You see, my uncle had made a point of that in his letter, and gave me a very good reason for it. Flaxton said, ‘If only I'd known that you wanted to get to London I'd have run you up there in the police car. I'll do it now if you'll wait while I bring it round.' He came round with quite a nice Austin and I got in. It was quite dark then, but the headlights were good and he said he knew the road all right. He drove as if the devil was after him. I couldn't see the speedometer in the dark, but it seemed to me that we went as fast through the villages and towns as on the open road. Twice we stopped to take in petrol. He kept assuring me that we should get to London in good time and that he could trust the car. When we were on a stretch of lonely road, all of a sudden the engine conked out. ‘Damn!' he said, ‘that's the second time she's done that,' and he got down and opened the bonnet. I couldn't see what he was doing, but he asked me to switch on and tread on the self-starter. It was no good: the engine wouldn't start. ‘Look here,' he said; ‘there's a garage not very far ahead. You stay by the car and I'll walk on to it and bring back a mechanic with me. He'll soon put her right.'”

“What time was it when you broke down?”

“Between nine and ten o'clock. I stuck by the car for hours waiting for him, but he didn't come: at last I got into the back seat and went to sleep, leaving the small lights on. I don't know how long I slept. I woke up with a light in my eyes: a policeman was pulling at my leg. ‘Here, wake up,' he shouted at me. ‘What are you doing with this car?' I told him what had happened. ‘D'you hear that?' he called out to his mate who was sitting on a motorcycle combination. ‘The bloke says he's on the way from Portsmouth to London with a detective—not bad for a bloke who's in Somersetshire in a stolen car. He might have told us a better one.' ‘What do you mean by saying it's a stolen car?' I said. ‘The car belongs to the Portsmouth police.'

“They burst out laughing at that, and said that they had had the number by telephone; that the car was stolen, and that I was wanted for driving at high speed through some tin-pot little town and neglecting to stop when the man on point duty blew his whistle; that I was to come along with them, and the less I said the better. The blighter on the motor-cycle got into the driving-seat and tried to start the car, but the engine wouldn't budge. He got down and began to fool about under the bonnet by the light of the other man's electric torch. They mumbled together in an undertone and then the first man called to me, ‘Here, young feller-me-lad, we've had enough of this fooling. You've got the carbon out of the dynamo in your pocket, and you've got to hand it over quick.' I told him that I didn't know what he was talking about. ‘Better search him,' said the other man. Then they began pulling me out of the car and I lost my temper. It was a silly thing to do.”

“Why, what did you do?”

“Hit one of them a crack on the jaw, and then the fun began. I got a crack on the head from a truncheon and the next thing I knew was that I was handcuffed and lying on the grass by the roadside. One of them went off on the motor-cycle and the other stayed with me. He was inclined to be chatty, but I wasn't taking any. He said, ‘When we get you to the station take a tip from me and drop that naval officer stuff of yours. It won't go down with the old man, and when they take your fingerprints and find a list of convictions against you as long as my arm, why—you'll look rather foolish.' In about twenty minutes the other man came back in a car. He pulled a new carbon out of his pocket, shoved it into the dynamo of my car and started her up. By that time it was daylight. They drove for miles and fetched up at a potty little police station in some one-horse town, and fetched a little tin god out of bed to deal with me—a superintendent they called him. The blighter was only half awake and had forgotten to shave the red moss off his chin. They took off the handcuffs and fetched a lot of things out of a cupboard—printing-ink and things—and took my fingerprints. Then the big chief sat down and cleared his throat. ‘I am going to charge you,' he said, ‘ and I must caution you that you are not obliged to say anything, but that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used against you at your trial. You are charged with stealing a motor-car (he gave me the number) and with assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty. Do you wish to say anything?' I said, ‘Not until you give me something to eat and drink. Then I shall have a lot to say.' That seemed to put the blighter's back up, but he sent one of his men round the corner for tea and bread and butter and I got outside of them in record time, I can tell you. They watched me do it, and when I'd done I let them have it—told them that I was a naval officer and all the rest of it—told them about the detective who'd left me planted in the car, which he said was a police car from Portsmouth, and that he was driving me up to London in it. They wrote it all down, read it over to me and told me to sign it. Then the big chief with stubble on his chin went to the telephone in another room. I heard part of what he said, but not all. He came back with a grin on his face and said that I'd have to appear before the local bench, and I could tell the beaks the same fairy-story that I'd put in my statement. Did I want a lawyer?