The Milliner's Hat Mystery (15 page)

Once inside the room she removed first the coarse apron and then an overall, revealing a graceful figure in ordinary morning dress. Lastly she removed the mob cap and then all doubts about her identity were removed.

“Are you taking me far?” she asked in polite tones. “Because, if so, I must run upstairs for my hat.”

“We'll send for your hat,” said Verneuil, bluntly. “You may not want it for some time.”

“You mean that I am to be taken to prison?”

“You will be taken to a place where they supply coverings for the head.” 

She flushed. “This is an outrage. Of what am I accused?”

“I understand that the charge is trafficking in drugs, but all that can be discussed at the place to which you are going.”

“You have no right to take me. No doubt you have searched my shop and, naturally, without result. I have never had drugs there.”

“May I suggest, madame,” said Goron, “that an innocent woman does not escape from her shop in a laundry basket.”

“That was a theatrical joke on my part. You were having my shop watched, although you had no grounds for suspicion. I knew you expected a
dénouement
and so I gave you one. Also it gave me an opportunity for showing that your subordinates are not from the top drawer in the matter of intelligence.”

“I fear that you will have now to pay for the fun you have had,” said Goron. Turning to Verneuil he said: “We will leave you to escort this lady, comrade.”

As the two friends left Vincent said: “But you forget that I must get from that woman the addresses of those two men and I must follow them up with all haste and get back to London.”

“Have no fear, Vincent. We may safely leave that to Verneuil, who has his own rather rough-and-ready methods of getting the truth out of people, and you might not approve of them. We will call on him later in the day. Meanwhile I am sure that Verneuil will not object to our going round to see whether the postman has dropped any other letter into Madame Germaine's letter box. The man who is keeping observation will be able to tell us.”

They walked to the rue Duphot and Goron engaged the watcher in conversation. He said that no one had visited the shop except the little employee who came each morning to see if her employer had returned and couldn't understand her absence.

“I suppose that Verneuil is satisfied that the employee knows nothing,” said Vincent.

“Yes, and if Verneuil is satisfied we can take that as proved. It takes much to satisfy Verneuil; he has a distrustful nature.”

The man who was keeping observation opened the shop door for them, telling them that the postman had dropped a letter in the box.

The letter bore a London postmark and was addressed to:

Goron did not scruple to tear the envelope open. The letter was in French, written in an uneducated hand. It ran as follows:

“What address does she give?” asked Vincent eagerly.

“None.”

“Then give me the envelope.” He examined the postmark, which was not very clear, but he was able to make out W.11. “I must get back to London at once. August 1st is the day after tomorrow.”

“But not without seeing Verneuil?”

“No. I'll make my preparations and be at his office at two o'clock. Will that be convenient to you?”

“Quite. You take the letter.
Au revoir
, at two o'clock.”

W
HEN
V
INCENT ARRIVED
at the rendezvous he found Goron waiting at the bottom of the stairs; Verneuil had not yet returned from lunch.

“I should be glad if you'd give me an expert opinion on this letter,” said Vincent; “as you see it is written in an illiterate hand, but the composition of the text strikes me as being anything but illiterate, considering that French is a foreign language to the writer.”

Goron studied the letter and handed it back. “The handwriting is certainly illiterate, but I judge that the letter has been copied from a text supplied to the writer by a well-educated woman.”

“That coincides with my opinion. At any rate I will try to locate Alice Dodds as soon as I get to London and get from her some information about Lewis.”

“Alice Dodds may not be easy to find,” suggested Goron. “You have only a postmark giving the postal district.” 

“Quite true, but there is a division of police in each of these postal districts and through them I shall find the woman.”

Verneuil entered the lobby at this moment and greeted them in his usual petty officer's manner. They climbed the stairs to his office and when the door was shut Goron enquired without preamble: “Did she talk?”

“Yes, at great length. She gave me information, but I doubt whether any of it was true. According to her version she did nothing in this business but supply hats to the wives of those two men. They were exacting clients—returning over and over again for trifling alterations in the trimmings. When I pointed out that their requirements amounted to converting ribbons, she said that she had nothing to do with the eccentricities of her customers. She admitted having received letters at her shop for them but it was natural for her to oblige customers in this way. Finally, my friends, I decided that if we were to get any further a short sojourn at La Roche would be the only method of persuasion.”

“Your method was an inspiration,” said Goron, “but we are to lose our British colleague almost immediately.”

“Impossible!” said Verneuil. “Just at this moment when our efforts are so soon to be crowned with success. Surely your chiefs can spare you a little longer.” 

“It is that I have another clue to follow in London. This drug business seems to have wide ramifications, but as you know my main task is to discover the whereabouts of those two Americans. This clue may help.” He handed the letter found in Madame Germaine's letter box to the ex-petty officer, who read it with growing excitement.

“A double quantity on the first of August? I suppose that you will take steps on your side of the Channel to intercept this merchandise.”

“Indeed we will.”

“Of course, we have given orders to all the French ports about these two men, but that is not to say that they won't slip through. Duprez is not the only man who has a fast motorboat.”

“I shall arrange for orders to be circulated on our side of the Channel, but, as you say, these motorboats can slip in anywhere.”

“Well,” said Goron, “your plans are settled and while you're away we shall not be inactive on our side. You remember that the mayor of St Malo told us of a deputy who was protecting these young people, for a consideration that is well understood. We must make it our business to find this gentleman and hear what he has to say on the subject.”

“That will be a task for you, my friend,” said Verneuil. “Deputies are quite outside my province; they require delicate handling.” 

“Very well,” said Goron; “I will occupy myself with the search for him and also I will send instructions to the Sûreté officer stationed at Cannes to interview those two women and see what he can get out of them.”

“If you should come across the tracks of their husbands I hope you will not fail to send me a telegram,” said Vincent; “and if I find them I shall, of course, let you know at once.”

They parted with mutual expressions of good will. Vincent, who had already booked his passage by air, was in time to catch the afternoon airplane to Croydon. He had telegraphed to Sergeant Walker asking him to meet the plane at Croydon and bring with him the latest reports bearing on the case in which they were interested.

“I have a car here,” said the sergeant.

“Very good; then we will talk as we go.”

“Well, I haven't been idle while you were away. I have been interviewing the bank officials. Pitt's defalcations amounted to a large sum. The enquiries are not yet complete, but he had certainly made away with a good many thousand pounds. On the other hand, the amount was not large enough to cover the expenses he incurred in his way of living and we've been wondering whether he had not got some other source of supply.” 

“He had,” said Vincent. “I discovered that while I was abroad. He was dealing in drugs.”

Sergeant Walker whistled. “That explains a good many things. In following up the tracks of Bernard Pitt, of Hampstead, I found that he had another banking account at the National Insurance Bank, which account he closed on the day before he was murdered. The money was paid to him in Bank of England notes, of which the numbers were known, and one of these notes for ten pounds was brought into a Hammersmith bank and changed for treasury notes. The woman who brought it was made to sign her name on the back—Alice Dodds.”

It was now Vincent's turn to whistle. “This is a lucky coincidence. I am hunting that woman at this moment. Have you found her?”

“No, not yet; the information reached me only half an hour ago. Why are you interested in Alice Dodds, Chief Inspector?”

Vincent gave him a brief account of his own doings in Paris. “This woman must be found and made to account for the possession of that note. A C.I.D. officer at Holland Park will do that for us; you see the postal district is W.11. Will you attend to that part of the enquiry while I am seeing Chief Constable Richardson? You can take this letter.”

“I'll drive you straight to the Yard and then go on to Holland Park. You'll be in time to catch the chief constable; he very seldom leaves his table before eight o'clock.”

On being admitted to his chief's room, Vincent delivered all the polite messages from France with which he had been charged by Verneuil.

“My friend Verneuil is a rough diamond, but he has a warm heart and an unrivalled knowledge of the French criminal, particularly the Parisian variety. How did he strike you?”

“Well, sir, I can't imagine how he would behave in a drawing room, but he is a good man for a British police officer to know. He can be very useful.”

When Richardson had heard his chief inspector's report, he said: “Of course, you did quite right in coming over, but I don't think that those two men that we want will venture to set foot in this country. I agree with you that the woman Dodds must be found; she may prove to be very useful to us. Have you any other plan to work upon now you have come back?”

“Yes, I thought of rounding up the friends of the murdered man—that is, Bernard Pitt, of Hampstead. He must have been supplying some of them with drugs and they might very well give shelter to Blake and Lewis now that the country is getting too hot to hold them.”

“You have, of course, warned the port officers?”

“Yes, Sergeant Walker is doing that, but they won't try to come in in the ordinary way; they will come in a motorboat and may land anywhere.”

“What about the coast guard?”

“Sergeant Walker is seeing to that also.”

“Yes, because it is quite possible that one of the coast guard may spot this motorboat and report the landing of these people. They would, of course, be passed on to the police as having landed illegally, but we ought to be told of it.”

“The Newquay police got into touch with their local coast guard about the motorboat that the two men escaped in, but so far no information has come in.”

“You have seen Sergeant Walker and he has posted you in the developments on this side of the Channel?”

“Yes sir, he has. My present idea is to get hold of the servants who were at the Hampstead house— the man Anton for choice and the chauffeur.”

Richardson consulted the file of papers lying on his table. “This is the file of the Bernard Pitt case and it gives all the information we have. You had better run through it.”

“Very good, sir, I will. The dead man's chauffeur is the person most likely to be able to give me the information I want—the names and addresses of Pitt's associates. I did not interview one of his friends at the beginning of the case, but in the light of the drug-traffic information I ought to see others.”

“That's the right line of enquiry. See if we have his address in that file; I haven't yet had time to go through it.”

Vincent took the file and ran through it with a practised eye. “I see by this that Anton has been allowed to remain in the Hampstead house as a kind of caretaker. I suppose we shall have to pay him something out of ‘incidentals.'”

“Yes, he can't live on air.”

“I don't see the chauffeur's address in this file, but no doubt Anton will be able to give it to me when I see him. I shall go straight out to Hampstead now.”

Vincent did not stop to pick up Sergeant Walker. He took a taxi straight out to the house in Hampstead and rang the bell. Anton, who answered it, was wearing a worried look.

“The telephone has been ringing many times today,” he said. “Some ask for Mr Blake and some for Mr Lewis. I tell them they are not here, but oh, sir, it is anxious work for me all alone in this big house. This was not what I came to England for.”

“No, but you will have to endure it for a little longer, my friend,” said Vincent.

“I ask myself why these people ring up Mr Blake and Mr Lewis when it is known now that my master, their friend, is dead.”

“Probably they think that these men, Blake and Lewis, may be hiding in this house now that it is empty. I suppose that none of these people would give their names?”

“No sir, though I always ask them; some of them were ladies.”

“You told me the other day that your master never entertained ladies. Are you quite sure of this?”