Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (20 page)

“Hullo, Inspector,” Roger said at once. “Any news by the last post?”

The inspector regarded him benevolently. “Yes, sir; I’ve heard from headquarters.”

“Have you? Any luck?”

“Luck, sir?” said the inspector with maddening deliberation. “Well, it depends what you call luck, doesn’t it? Are you two gentlemen ready for supper? I’m so hungry, I could eat an ox. Funny thing, the heat always seems to make me hungry. My wife says –”

“Inspector,” Roger interrupted rudely, “I’m sorry for your wife and family. Very sorry. They must suffer a good deal. By the way, did you say you
had
heard from Scotland Yard?”

“Yes, sir; I have. Why?”

“I refuse to play mouse to your cat, Inspector Moresby,” Roger said with dignity. “So hand over that report, before I break your head. Even a mouse will turn, you know.”

“I thought we could talk about it after supper, Mr Sheringham,” the inspector remarked innocently.

“Did you? Well, think again. Report, please Inspector!”

“He’s an impatient sort of gentleman, your cousin, isn’t he?” the inspector observed to Anthony, grinning maddeningly.

“Yes, but he’s awfully dangerous when roused. We always humour him in the family.”

“Is that good for him though, in the long run?” asked the inspector with an air of earnest enquiry. “Now my experience of these impatient people is that you ought to –”

Roger opened the door and called downstairs. “Landlord, empty the flowing bowl! We shan’t want our supper till midnight!”

“I give in, sir,” said the inspector hastily. “Here’s the report!”

“Fill the flowing bowl, landlord,” Roger countermanded in stentorian tones. “We’ll have supper at once.”

The report was all that Roger could have desired. Its laconic wording ran as follows:–

The impression is of the right thumb of Sam Field,
alias
Slippery Sam,
alias
The Shrimp,
alias
The Sky Pilot,
alias
Herbert Peters,
alias
Herbert Smith, etc. etc. Served two years, 1909–11, for robbery with violence; three years, 1913–16, for burglary; five years, 1918–23, for fraud and embezzlement. Wanted now on three similar charges. Small, dark, mole on right cheek, blue eyes, large nose; good education, speaks well, ingratiating manners. Fond of disguising himself as a solicitor, clergyman or other member of the professional classes.

“Golly!” observed Roger, and handed the report to Anthony.

“I thought you’d be interested, sir,” said the inspector blandly. “So it’s the Rev. Samuel Meadows, is it? I thought I’d seen that man’s face before, if you remember. Must have had a photograph of him through my hands.”

“Herbert Peters!” Roger murmured raptly. “Do you know, I
guessed
right inside me that he’d turn out to be Mrs Vane’s husband, but I daren’t put it into words; it seemed too good to be true. But I thought you said you’d got no information about Herbert Peters?”

“Yes, that was a bad bit of routine work,” the inspector admitted handsomely.

“You’ve got no doubts about it now, I suppose?” Roger persisted.

The inspector did not reply directly. “What do you imagine his motive was?” he asked instead.

“Well, he was blackmailing her, obviously. It was a gift for him. She married the doctor when he was in the middle of that five years’ stretch, evidently hoping that he wouldn’t be able to trace her. Oh, yes; it was a gift for friend Peters.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question, sir,” the inspector pointed out mildly. “That would be a motive for her murdering him, not he her. What do you imagine
his
motive was?”

Roger helped himself to pickled onions. “Well, it’s impossible to say definitely, isn’t it? I dare say I could think of half a dozen perfectly good motives, but this one strikes me as the most obvious: she knew there were two or three warrants out against him, so she countered his threat of blackmail with a threat of her own, to hand him over to the police. He got the wind up and pushed her over the cliff in a sudden panic. How’s that?”

“That’s quite plausible,” the inspector agreed.

“After you with the potatoes, Anthony,” said Roger. “Well, what do you think about it, fair coz?”

“Seems clear enough to me. We know he was there, and as you say, he probably had plenty of motives. Perhaps he was really in love with her and frightfully jealous. Then he might have sort of seen red when she told him what she’d done, mightn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Roger agreed. “No blackmail at all, you mean. And that fits in with what Margaret said about her being frightened of somebody a week or two before her death. By the way, Anthony, you can tell Margaret now that she needn’t bother about searching any more in Mrs Vane’s papers.”

“What’s that, sir?” queried the inspector.

Roger explained how he had been trying to approach the identity of the mysterious stranger by two different routes.

“Going behind the backs of the official police, eh?” the inspector commented. “Well, well, reporters will be reporters, I suppose.”

“And officials will be official. Well, what are you going to do about it all, official one? You’ll arrest him, of course?”

“Am I talking to a reporter?” asked the inspector cautiously.

“Not unless you want to. ‘Important developments are expected at any minute.’ Is that what you mean?”

“For the time being, if you please, sir. I shan’t arrest him tonight, you see.”

“Not tonight?”

“No. I’ll go along and see a magistrate and get a warrant after supper, but I shan’t arrest him until tomorrow morning. There’s no hurry, and it’s more convenient in a little place like this. He can’t have taken alarm at your interview with him on Saturday, or he’d have cleared out before now, and I’ve already made sure he hasn’t done that.”

“But why trouble to traipse off to a magistrate and get a warrant?” Roger asked curiously. “I thought you didn’t need a warrant for an arrest on suspicion of murder.”

“But I’m not going to arrest him on suspicion of murder, sir.”

“You’re not?” Roger said in surprise. “Why not?”

“For several reasons,” the inspector returned non-committally. “For one thing it’s handier, when there are other reasons for arresting a man, not to do so on the murder charge. They’re more liable to give themselves away than if you’ve started off by frightening them to death already. We usually find it pays. And besides, it gives us an excuse for holding them when our murder evidence may not be quite complete.”

“I see. I’m learning things about our official criminologists.”

“We’re nasty people to get into the hands of, sir,” the inspector said jovially.

“You are indeed. I shall think quite seriously before committing my next murder. And you imagine you’ll be able to induce Meadows to give himself away?”

“We have our ways of making people talk,” observed the inspector darkly.

There was a short silence.

“Well, I must be getting along now,” said Anthony, and went.

Roger regarded the closed door for a moment. “It’s nice to be young,” he said, from the depths of his thirty-six years.

“Humph, yes; but there’s a rude awakening coming, I’m afraid,” replied the inspector with surprising gloom.

“Your profession seems to have made a pessimist of you, Inspector,” Roger smiled.

The inspector meditated this. “Well, perhaps it has; but there’s one thing I have learnt – things are seldom in reality as they appear on the surface! And that’s a thing youth never has and never will learn.”

“Hark to the disillusionment of middle age!” Roger laughed, refusing to echo the other’s sudden serious tone.

They settled down to a comfortable discussion of the case.

“There’s only one thing that still puzzles me,” Roger said a little later. “Everything else falls into place neatly enough, but what on earth is a pair of Mrs Russell’s shoes doing in the jigsaw?”

“I was wondering when you’d come to them,” the inspector agreed.

“There
are
ways in which the chap could get hold of them, of course,” Roger mused. “I did myself. Or I suppose he could have bought them at a jumble sale, or picked them out of the ash-bin. But why? And why Mrs Russell’s?”

“There are all sorts of ways of accounting for that pair of shoes, I take it,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “Your idea is that his object was to leave a female trail behind him, if he was going to leave any trail at all?”

“Yes; the same as with the coat-button. Substituting the Rev. Samuel’s name for Miss Williamson’s, by the way, I think the explanation you put forward to account for the coat-button must be the correct one, Inspector. It certainly seems the simplest.”

“Well, in that case, if all he wanted was to leave a female trail,” continued the inspector, who evidently preferred to deal with one point at a time, “the question of the ownership of the shoes becomes unimportant. All that matters is that they shall be female shoes, and large enough for him to be able to get into them more or less, after their sides have been split. Isn’t that what you mean?”

“Precisely.”

“Well,” said the inspector, with an air of clinching the topic, “as I said, then, there are all sorts of ways of accounting for his possession of that pair.”

“That’s perfectly true,” Roger assented.

A few minutes later the inspector left to seek his magistrate.

He had not been gone long before Anthony returned. Margaret had seemed a little seedy (reported the latter), admitting on pressure to a touch of hay fever or incipient influenza or something equally depressing, and had been unable to stop out long, nor had Anthony pressed her to allow him to accompany her indoors for a time; with reluctance both had agreed that she would be better in bed. However, he had been able to break the great news to her and was now the bearer of her heartiest and rapturous congratulations to Roger.

“Well, I’m not sorry you’re back, Anthony, I must say,” observed that gentleman, having elicited these facts. “Entrancing though my company should be, I was beginning to get just a trifle satiated with it. Besides, it’s a shame and an abominable thing to stay indoors on an evening like this. Let’s scroll down to the sea level and gloat over the moonlight on a rock somewhere, while your Uncle Roger tells you what a great man he is.”

Before letting him out of his sight, Roger had extracted a promise from the unwilling inspector, obtained by means of the most blatant threats in connection with his capacity as a reporter, to allow him to be in at the death on the following morning. Not altogether trusting to the efficacy of a promise won under such conditions, however, he was out of bed at least an hour earlier than usual and proceeded to watch the inspector’s door with lynx-eyed assiduity. He need not really have troubled. Inspector Moresby, while quite alive to the advantages of appearing to grant a difficult favour, had not the least objection to figuring on a million breakfast-tables as the hero of a thrilling arrest, complete with full details “from our special correspondent, who was an actual eyewitness of the scene”. Not the very least objection. Roger had lost an hour’s sleep for nothing.

They breakfasted and set out together, leaving Anthony to click his heels in the inn or meditate over the beauties of nature from the top of a convenient cliff as he saw fit.

The house in which the Rev. Samuel Meadows,
alias
Slippery Sam,
alias
Herbert Peters,
alias
etc. etc., had taken rooms, was in the centre of the village. The two walked briskly along to the front door, Roger on his toes with excitement at reaching the end of the chase, the inspector relating anecdotes of the
really
interesting arrests he had effected.

A stout woman opened the door to them and smiled as she recognised Roger. “Yes, he’s in the sitting-room,” she said, in answer to their inquiries. “I took his breakfast along not much over an hour ago, and he hasn’t gone out yet. Not but what he isn’t a quiet gentleman altogether, the Rev. Meadows; never does go out much, he doesn’t. Keeps ‘imself to ‘imself, as you might say. A better lodger I couldn’t wish for. Now the last gentleman who had these rooms –”

“Can we go along?” asked Roger.

“To be sure you can, sir,” agreed the stout woman with such heartiness. “You know the way, don’t you? Seeing as you were here only the other day, I mean. And you might tell him I’ll be down in a minute for the tray, will you, sir? Then you’ll be more comfortable-like, you see. I ought to have fetched it sooner, I know, but what with one thing and another, there! the time goes before you’ve ever noticed it’s gone, doesn’t it?”

“Long before,” Roger murmured mechanically, following the inspector down the narrow passage. Still discoursing, the stout woman disappeared into the upper regions.

The two stopped out of sight of the stairs and Roger indicated the door of the Rev. Samuel’s sitting-room. Dispensing with the formality of a knock, the inspector pushed it open and entered.

Just inside the threshold he halted so abruptly that Roger, following close on his heels, collided with his burly back. “Hullo!” he exclaimed softly. “Hul-
lo
!”

Roger peered over his shoulder. The Rev. Samuel Meadows was certainly there, for he could see him seated in a chair by the window, a copy of the
Courier
across his knees. But his head was sunk on his chest, one arm hung limply by his side, and his whole attitude was twisted and unnatural.

“Good God!” Roger exclaimed in shocked tones. “What’s the matter with him?”

The inspector strode forward, bent to peer into the half-hidden face, and thrust his hand inside the clerical coat. Then he stood up and tugged at his moustache, staring down at the still, crumpled figure.

“The matter, sir?” he repeated slowly. “He’s dead – that’s what’s the matter with him.”

For a moment there was silence. Then:

“
Dead
?” Roger echoed incredulously. “You say he’s
dead
?”

“As a doornail,” asserted the inspector without emotion. “Only just (he’s still warm), but dead right enough.”