The Bath Mysteries (3 page)

“I'm not the C.I.D. I'm a detective-sergeant, and a detective-sergeant is just an errand-boy running about where he's told. It's the big hats upstairs do the brainwork. If Cora's got anything to show...”

“I've this,” said Cora, and put a signet ring on the table. “It was Ronnie's.”

“It was offered me,” explained Lord Hirlpool, “by a dealer who had noticed the crest and motto and thought I might like to buy it for family reasons – it was a man in quite a small way out in Islington,” added Lord Hirlpool, explanatory, since it was obvious no West End dealer would ever have thought of Lord Hirlpool as a likely market for the purchase of anything whatever. “I thought the ring must be Ronnie's from the description, but to make sure I went to see. It had been pawned.”

“Oh, well, nothing in that,” observed Dick Norris as the speaker paused; for, indeed, to Norris, in spite of his present remarkable Park Lane affluence, the pawnshop still seemed the natural and indeed inevitable home for all unattached jewellery.

“Ronnie would never have parted with it,” Cora said, her long-extinguished cigarette still between her lips.

“Oh, well, when a chap's put to it,” Chris observed tolerantly. He himself was not without experience in such matters.

“Ronnie would have starved first,” Cora insisted.

“It was not Ronnie who pawned it,” Lord Hirlpool said. “It was his widow.”

“Widow?” repeated Bobby, a little uneasily.

“Widow,” repeated Cora. “But not me.”

“The pawnbroker made inquiries,” Lord Hirlpool went on. “The ring is of some value – he advanced £30 on it, and I suppose rings worth that much don't often turn up in Islington. He found it had been the property of a man on whom an inquest had been held a few days previously. The name was given as Ronald Oliver. If any of us saw the report of the inquest in the paper, that name wouldn't suggest anything. It was mentioned in the evidence that Mr. Oliver had recently taken out an insurance on his life for £10,000, as well as an accident insurance for another £10,000. Both amounts were paid.”

“Well, that couldn't have been Ronnie,” Chris pointed out. “Rotten heart, always getting knocked up, daren't even run for a bus. No company would have insured him for ten thousand pence.”

“Then why had he Ronnie's ring?” Cora asked, looking with an air of surprise at the cigarette-end she had just taken from her mouth, as if wondering how it had got there.

“When pawning the ring,” Lord Hirlpool went on, “Mrs. Oliver explained that the insurance was all taken up by business liabilities. Mr. Oliver was described at the inquest as a stock and share dealer, but apparently not a member of the Stock Exchange.”

“Well, that's nothing against him,” said Norris, somewhat defiantly. “Just as straight blokes outside as inside – straighter, if you ask me.”

“As well as the life policy there was an accident policy – both for ten thousand,” Bobby repeated thoughtfully. “Do you know if they were recent?” he asked.

“The accident policy had been taken out only three months before,” Lord Hirlpool answered.

“Nothing in that,” observed Norris. “I took one out myself for £20,000 only the other day.” He smiled, and seemed inclined to wink, but did not. “Useful in business sometimes, and blokes don't always spot the difference between an accident and a whole-life policy. You can always raise a bit of coin on a policy with a good company.”

“I suppose the company made some inquiries before they paid?” Bobby remarked. “What was the verdict at the inquest?”

“Death by misadventure.”

“What caused it?” Bobby asked.

Lord Hirlpool hesitated, and looked at Cora. She put both hands on the table before her, holding them firmly together. In a loud, clear voice she said:

“Boiling.”

“What?” said Bobby, thinking he had misunderstood. Cora got up and walked out of the room.

“Boiling,” repeated Lord Hirlpool.

“But, good Lord,” protested Chris, “you mean he scalded himself... kettle of boiling water...?”

“No, I don't,” said Lord Hirlpool. “The evidence showed he died in his bath from the effects of boiling water coming from a lighted geyser during approximately thirty-six hours.”

“I think I'll go and see what Cora's doing,” said Lady Hirlpool, getting up and following her niece.

“She means she's going to be sick somewhere,” said Lord Hirlpool gloomily. “It does make you feel a bit like that.”

“Yes, but hang it all,” spluttered Chris. “Well, I mean... how could it – happen?”

“The evidence,” said Lord Hirlpool, “was to the effect that Ronnie – Mr. Oliver – was the worse for drink when he returned on Saturday night to the flat he occupied alone. The charwoman he employed didn't come on week-ends. It was only when she arrived on Monday morning that what had happened was discovered. The flat is in a big new building, meant chiefly for working people, and the overflow from the bath ran off into a main waste-pipe, so there was nothing to attract attention there. Neighbours said that ‘the gentleman often came home jolly.' They thought nothing of it when he was seen like that on this occasion. It seems quite clear Ronnie was alone. There was a half-empty whisky bottle in the bathroom. The suggestion adopted was that Ronnie had decided to have a bath, possibly to sober up on; that he got ready – his clothing was lying about the room – and that he lighted the geyser and then, overcome by the steam perhaps, had managed to fall in his intoxicated condition into the bath in which the boiling water from the geyser continued to pour continuously for a day and a half.”

“I suppose it might happen like that,” Bobby said slowly.

“The jury thought so,” answered Lord Hirlpool. “The police were called in, and found papers showing that he was living separated from his wife, to whom under the deed of separation he had to pay £7 a week. The insurance policy was in her favour, to assure her a continuance of that income in case of his death.”

“I thought the money had to go to pay business liabilities,” interposed Bobby.

“There seems an inconsistency there,” agreed Lord Hirlpool. “The wife's name was given as Mary Oliver, at a Bournemouth address. The police communicated with her, she came to London, seemed decently distressed, made all necessary arrangements, collected the £20,000 insurance, and that's all.”

“Why does Cora think it was murder?” Norris asked. “It might have been a genuine accident.”

“Had Cora heard from him at all since – since the scandal?” inquired Bobby.

“Yes,” answered Lord Hirlpool. “At the time she told him she would never forgive him, and never wanted to see or hear of him again. He had the grace to be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and he went away accordingly. He took nothing with him except a few clothes and a little ready cash – not more than £50 at the most. He saw his lawyers and instructed them that Cora was to have everything else, and signed the necessary papers. Apparently as Mr. Oliver he took up some sort of stockbroker's business, and was doing quite well at it. He wrote once or twice to Cora, He gave no address. He said that was so she wouldn't be able to return his letters unanswered. He said he supposed she would never forgive him but he always read the
Announcer
, and if one day he saw his name in the agony column, with the word ‘Return' with it, he would give her a week to make sure she meant it and then, if there was no other advertisement to cancel the first, he would take it she was willing to have him back and he would come.” Cora had returned to the room. She had been listening intently and smoking furiously. Abruptly she said:

“Father hated cigarettes; he said they were poison.” Her father had been a doctor, and she herself, chiefly to please him, had begun medical studies. But she had never made much progress with them, and on his death she had abandoned them. A lingering regard for his teaching made her a rare smoker, but today she was helping herself to one cigarette after the other, though indeed it was more a case of burning them up than of smoking them. Bobby reflected her abrupt remark probably meant she was longing to have again her father's presence and advice. He said:

“Did the pawnbroker give any description of the woman who pledged the ring?”

“‘Tall, dark, slim, wearing a leopard-skin coat,' he said,” Cora answered. “I had one in ocelot fur once. I got rid of it long ago. It was one Ronnie gave me. I went to the shop. The man said it was someone like me but not me – someone older and darker, much darker skin. There was no one Ronnie knew like that.”

“Did you do what he asked about the advertisement?” Bobby inquired.

“At first I tore up the letters he sent,” she answered. “If I had known his address I would have sent them back. I hated thinking of him. One day in March last year I was near the
Announcer
office, and I went in and got them to put in the advertisement he wanted. I thought there was a whole week I could change my mind in if I liked. I didn't, and I waited, and he never came.” Her tone was monotonous and dull, but one felt the strong emotion in it. In the same carefully restrained voice she added: “It was that week-end it happened.”

“Perhaps Ronnie never saw the advertisement,” Chris suggested.

“There was an answer in the
Announcer
next morning. It said: ‘Thank God,' and there was his name, too – ‘Ron.' I always called him ‘Ron,'” answered Cora, and in the same passionless voice she added: “I got everything ready. I thought we would start fresh. He never came.”

“It may have been an accident. Why not?” Chris said. “There's nothing to show it was murder.”

“Apparently his death was worth £20,000 to somebody,” Bobby remarked.

“To a woman,” Cora corrected him. “I think she knew he was going back to me. She wanted to stop him. She took that way. She knew about the insurance. She was passing as his wife. It was my advertisement that made it happen.” She lighted a fresh cigarette, puffing at it till it glowed.

“It's all more than a year ago,” Bobby said musingly. “Makes it difficult. Hard enough to remember exactly what happened a fortnight ago, let alone fifteen months. It's a job to get at the truth when it's fresh. After a year's cold storage it's almost impossible. But there's something queer about that insurance. It's jolly certain no insurance company would have accepted Ronnie, with his heart in the state it was – not as a life risk. They might for accident. Besides, the woman who collected it wasn't his wife, and can't have had any insurable interest, and there can't have been any genuine deed of separation. There must have been some pretty tall forging going on. I think Cora ought to see her lawyers, and then, if they agree, they could put the whole thing before our people.”

“I've arranged all that,” Lord Hirlpool explained in a very satisfied tone. “I had a chat with the Home Secretary yesterday. He rang up the Commissioner while I was there, and you're to be seconded, or whatever you call it in the police, to look into the thing and find out what did really happen to poor Ronnie.”

Bobby received this announcement with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it seemed to promise him an independence in investigation that, so often fretted by the red tape inherent in the working of every large-scale organization, he had come to think of as an ideal never likely to be realized in actual experience. On the other hand, he disliked above all things any appearance of privilege due to family influence – he knew only too well the jealousy and anger that always aroused. He reflected, too, that the grounds for suspecting murder were of the slightest, and that in any case the time- lag would make the inquiry one of extraordinary difficulty, while failure in it would be what failure always is, no matter how inevitable. For, if nothing succeeds like success, it is even more true that nothing fails like failure.

However, it would look worse still to try to back out, especially now all arrangements were made. He began to ask questions, to note down replies and details, and he understood now why Dick Norris had been asked to be present. As Ronnie's most intimate friend, Norris was the most likely person to know something of his movements after his disappearance. However, Norris had no information to give. Ronnie had simply walked out of the court after listening to a severe, ecclesiastically minded judge's denunciation of his conduct, and since then none of his former friends or acquaintances had heard anything of him. Even the arrangements by which the whole of his capital had been put at his wife's sole disposition had been made beforehand.

“He must have gone straight to the lawyers,” Cora said in her dull, expressionless voice, “the day before, immediately after Mrs. Stanley's evidence in the divorce case, when I told him I never wanted to see or hear of him again – and I never did, I never shall.”

Lady Hirlpool had come back into the room. She was standing by the window, busy with her vanity case in an effort to repair the ravages certain recent events had made in her appearance. She said gently:

“We don't know anything for certain, Cora. Perhaps that poor man who died so dreadfully wasn't Ronnie at all.” Cora did not answer, but her slow gaze rested with a kind of blank despair upon the signet ring still lying on the table in front of the case of wax fruit, as if to emphasize artificially the dread reality the signet ring proclaimed.

“He walked sooner than any of the rest of you, before he was a year old even,” Lady Hirlpool said, trying to polish her nails with her lipstick and then looking in astonishment at the result. “Ronnie...” She turned abruptly and fiercely upon Bobby. “You've got to find out,” she told him, as nearly shouting as her thin old voice permitted.

“I'll try, granny,” Bobby answered.

He went on asking questions. He learned little more, however. Lord Hirlpool had already told all he knew. Chris explained that, like Norris, he had heard nothing of or from Ronnie since the scandal, but then he had never been on very intimate terms with Ronnie. Ronnie, like many other people, had a strong dislike for weaknesses to which he was not prone himself, and he had expressed open disapproval of some of Chris's business methods and of those dexterous flirtations by which occasionally he supported them. Cora was able to produce a few newspaper cuttings from which Bobby learned such details as the names of the life and of the accident insurance companies concerned, and the address of the flat that had been the scene of the tragedy; a photograph of Ronnie just before his disappearance she allowed Bobby to take possession of; and finally the name and address of the business in the City mentioned at the inquest as that of which the dead man had been the principal.