The Dorset House Affair (10 page)

The butler conducted Box along a series of corridors until he reached a green baize-covered door, which he pushed open, and stood back to allow the inspector to precede him into a long passage, the walls of which were covered to shoulder height in white tiles. They passed a number of glazed doors, through which Box could glimpse a series of kitchens and pantries, all lit by skylights. One or two cooks in white aprons were working at the ranges. The smell of roasting beef penetrated into the passage.

‘It’s very quiet down here, Mr Thomas,’ said Box. ‘Somehow, I thought there’d be a lot of noise and bustle in the working part of the house.’

‘Well, there’s only the family and ourselves to feed today, Mr Box,’ said the butler, smiling. ‘If it was noise and bustle you wanted, you should have come down here on Thursday evening! That door at the end will take you into the footmen’s closet. They’re all off duty at the moment, so you’ve chosen a good time to ask them questions.’

Thomas was an old, stooping man with abundant snow-white hair. He must have been well over seventy, thought Box, but was evidently still more than capable of supervising a large household.

‘Do you have any ideas of your own about what happened to poor Mr Maurice?’ asked Box. The old servant shook his head, and tears sprang to his eyes.

‘Don’t ask me anything about it, Mr Box,’ he said. ‘It’s too upsetting. I still can’t believe it. Go through that door at the end of the passage. You’ll find all the footmen there.’

Despite its name, the footmen’s closet was a spacious room, lit, like the kitchens, by a skylight. The six Dorset House footmen looked up in surprise as he entered their own special sanctum. Two of them, clad in their full scarlet livery, but smoking
cigarettes
, looked up from newspapers that they were reading, as they leaned against a wall. Another, who had removed his tail coat, and stood in his shirt and breeches blackening a pair of shoes, uttered a cheerful ‘’Afternoon, guvnor!’ The three remaining footmen, all fully dressed, were sitting at a table, drinking coffee. Box caught the look of faint resentment in their faces. Servants, like their masters, were entitled to moments of privacy.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Box, advancing into the room, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard, and I’m investigating the murder of Mr Maurice Claygate. Do you mind if I come in and speak to you for a while?’

In a moment, the footmen’s wary reception of a stranger had turned to a kind of anxious welcome. He was invited to sit down at the table, and one of the men poured him out a cup of coffee.

‘It’s a tragedy, that’s what, Mr Box,’ said one of the men. ‘Mr Maurice was to be married in just over a week’s time, and now he’s dead and gone. He was a lively young man, and the apple of his father’s eye. Maybe he was a bit wild, but so what? He was generous to a fault, as many of us below-stairs can tell you.’

‘He certainly was a kind-hearted gentleman,’ said another. ‘When I was took bad with fever last year, and couldn’t work for a month, Mr Maurice gave me five shillings a week in silver to tide me over. I’ll never forget him.’

‘Were you all on duty at Mr Maurice’s birthday party on Thursday?’ asked Box. ‘Did any of you notice another footman on duty that night? A stranger to you, I mean? You see, I was there myself, keeping an eye on things, and I saw a footman approach
Mr Maurice and hand him a note. I only had a glimpse of him from behind, but I recognized him. I don’t want to say too much, but I know for a fact that he’s not a real footman. In fact, he’s a regular villain on a small scale. Rather swarthy, he is, with a slight birthmark on his forehead. An older man than any of you.’

‘Yes, that’s right! I saw him,’ said another of the men, ‘and you did too, didn’t you, Bob? I wondered who he was, because Mr Thomas hadn’t asked for any hired help that day. So he was a villain, was he? Fancy that!’

‘How come he was dressed in the Dorset House livery?’ asked Box.

‘Well, there are a few spare sets of coats and breeches in that cupboard over there,’ said the man called Bob. ‘When extra hands are needed, they can choose a livery from there. I expect that’s what your man with the note did, Mr Box. It was pandemonium in here, and in the kitchens, for the whole of Thursday evening. Nobody would have noticed.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Box. ‘You’ve been a great help. I only saw the back of the man’s head on Thursday. Did any of you get a decent look at him?’

‘You did, didn’t you, Arthur?’ said Bob. ‘You mentioned him particularly as I remember.’

‘I did,’ said the man called Arthur. ‘I noticed him in particular, because I thought he was too old to be a footman. He was a foreign-looking chap, as you say, Mr Box – swarthy, and nearly bald, but he wasn’t a real foreigner, if you get my meaning. He spoke proper English, right enough. He may have had a
birthmark
, but I didn’t notice it in particular.’

So, thought Box, Harry the Greek’s involved in this Dorset House business. Well, Harry, Jack Knollys and I will call on you soon for a little chat. Harry the Greek was one of Pinky Wiseman’s crowd, and they always worked together. Hire one, hire all. What had the others been up to?

As Box left the footmen’s closet, he found Thomas, the butler,
waiting in the passage. He held a silver tray, upon which reposed a visiting card.

‘Mr Box,’ he said, ‘a gentleman friend of the late Mr Maurice has called, in order to offer his condolences to the Field Marshal. When he heard that you were on the premises, he told me to bring you his card. He is at present in the library, and if you would care to follow me, I will take you to him.’

Box looked at the card, and read the name printed on it:
Mr
Edward
Morton.

‘Yes, I would like to meet this Mr Morton,’ said Box, and followed the old butler out of the kitchen quarters.

As soon as Box entered the library, a fair-haired giant of a man rose from a chair near the fireplace. He had evidently been paging through a sporting magazine, which he threw down on a table, approaching the inspector with outstretched hand.

‘Inspector Box?’ said Teddy Morton. ‘Pleased to meet you. This is a sad business. Maurice Claygate and I were at school together, you know, and I was by way of being a close friend of his. So having him murdered like this is rather a tall order, don’t you know.’

‘It is indeed, sir,’ said Box. ‘Can I assume that it is in
connection
with poor Mr Claygate’s murder that you wish to consult me?’

‘What? Yes, though “consult” is rather a formal kind of word for just wanting to talk to you for a minute or two. I want to tell you about something that happened earlier this month – well, it was on the Sunday morning, the second, to be exact. Moggie – Maurice Claygate – had spent all Saturday night at the Cockade Club, in Pall Mall. He was a little under the weather when the time came for him to leave, and I saw him home to Dorset House in a cab.’

The young man paused for a moment, as though to order his recollections, and then continued his story.

‘At about eleven o’clock the next morning, I called here to see
how Moggie was getting on. We sat in his dressing-room, drinking coffee, and it was then that he told me about some friends that he’d made. I don’t know who they were, and he wouldn’t tell me, but it was from these friends that he apparently discovered
something
disreputable about that fellow De Bellefort. He’d been in Paris the week before, and it was there that these people he’d fallen in with gave him what he called “immediate proof” of De Bellefort’s perfidy.’

‘That’s very interesting, sir,’ said Box. ‘Did he give you any idea at all as to who these people were? You say he mentioned Paris. Did he refer to any other city on the Continent?’

‘No, Inspector. It was all very vague, but I thought you should be told. Of course, you don’t want to hear
my
opinion—’

‘Oh, but I do, sir. After all, you were Mr Claygate’s friend.’

‘Well, I think he’d fallen in with a bad lot, probably a group of card sharpers, or one of those extortion gangs that hang around the casinos. They may have been setting him against De Bellefort, because the Frenchman had unpaid debts. That’s just a guess.’

‘Was Mr Maurice Claygate in financial trouble?’

‘Decidedly not, Inspector! Moggie was a wealthy man in his own right. But he was a chap who very easily fell for hard-luck stories. He was generous, you know, by nature. I just have an uncomfortable feeling that these so-called “friends” of his in Paris had recruited him as someone they could use to make De Bellefort pay up.’

‘Well, sir,’ said Box, ‘I’m very grateful for what you’ve told me, and I’ll bear your suggestions in mind. Like you, I don’t much like the sound of these friends of the late Mr Claygate. You can be quite sure, Mr Morton, that as I conduct my investigation, I’ll be thinking about those mysterious friends of his.’

As Arnold Box entered the vestibule of 2 King James’s Rents, the duty sergeant stepped out of the narrow reception room near the front door. An elderly, heavily bearded man who walked with a
limp, he regarded Box through a pair of wire reading-spectacles perched near the end of his nose.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘there’s a young lady come to see you. She’s been here nearly half an hour. I settled her in your office, seeing as how she was in mourning.’

‘Did she give you a name, Pat?’

‘Maltravers, sir. Miss Julia Maltravers. She said that she was the fiancée of the late Mr Maurice Claygate.’

The sergeant walked back into the reception room, and Box pushed open the swing doors of his office. A tall, fair-haired young woman rose to greet him. She was dressed in full deep mourning, but she had thrown the long veil back from her face. Box saw a young woman in her twenties, with pleasingly regular features, a determined chin, and alert blue eyes that showed both grief and anger. When she spoke, her voice was firm and clear: it was the voice of someone with a mission.

‘Inspector Box,’ said Julia Maltravers, ‘the man who would have been my brother-in-law, Major Edwin Claygate, told me yesterday that you were the detective engaged on the investigation of my fiancé’s murder. Is that true?’

‘It is, miss. Of course, I know who you are, and I’d like to offer you my sincere condolences—’

‘No!’ The young woman waved Box’s words fiercely aside. ‘It’s very kind of you, but condolences are in the same category as wreaths, and mourning bands, and all the other appurtenances of a decent death. When the police have released Maurice’s body for burial, there will be a great to-do, but I won’t be there.’

‘Well, Miss Maltravers, I can understand that funerals can be very upsetting—’

‘I shan’t be there, Mr Box,’ Julia interrupted, ‘because I shall be in France, visiting that woman who would regard me as her deadly rival – the woman who, I’m told, made a vulgar fuss at Maurice’s birthday celebration. I intend—’

‘Sit down, Miss Maltravers,’ said Box, and he ensured that his
tone was that of a man who intended to be obeyed. He drew a sheet of paper towards him, and picked up a sharpened pencil. ‘When you have recollected yourself, miss,’ he continued, ‘I will be ready to hear what you have to say.’

Julia Maltravers had the grace to blush. She sat down at the table, and looked at Box as though she were seeing him for the first time.

‘If you think that I have been rude, then I am sorry,’ she said. ‘But you don’t know how difficult it can be for a woman, Mr Box, when all her ideas are dismissed with well-meaning but
ill-conceived
objections. Well, I am not the type of person to take that kind of thing lying down. As for Maurice – well, I am not a gullible woman, and I had no illusions that I would be able to redeem him from his little follies.’

‘Follies, miss?’

‘Yes. You know quite well what I mean. He would always have been a gambler, and no doubt he would have made a few
half-hearted
efforts to reform himself before abandoning the idea. But one thing I
do
know to be true: when he swore to me that he would give up all these other women with whom he amused himself, he would do so. I
know
that his words were true, and that’s why I will fight anyone who wishes to sully his memory by innuendo.’