The Milliner's Hat Mystery (3 page)

“We have something that will interest you, Inspector, and we brought it back from a garage a few miles down the road for you to see.”

“What is it?”

“A car window with what looks like a bullet hole clean through it.”

T
HE THREE
 police officers jumped out of their car.

“Where is this window?” asked Miller.

“We took it into the police station and left it with your station sergeant.”

Miller hurried into the building, followed by the others. Griffith constituted himself showman. The window was standing propped again the wall.

“Now you can see what a car window looks like when it's had a bullet through it.”

“Yes,” said Vincent; “there's been dirty work at the crossroads. Do you see what started the fracture—that round hole with little cracks radiating from it in every direction. This is no ordinary break: that window was broken by a pistol shot. Where did you find it?”

“At a garage about four miles down the Bath Road. Here is their card. They told us that the window came out of a sixteen-horse Daimler. Here's its number. It was quite by chance that we went into the garage at all; one of our plugs was missing fire badly and it was a case of any port in a storm. While they were changing the plug, Powell began poking about and saw this window propped up against the wall. He spotted at once that it was no ordinary break and after a little difficulty we got the garage people to let us have it for a bob.”

“Did they give you a description of the driver?” asked Vincent.

“No, because we thought that if we started questioning they might take us for detectives and shut up like oysters. We did find out that the car came in on Saturday. I would offer you a seat in our little bus if there was room and run you down to the garage.”

“Thank you very much, but I weigh over twelve stone and I should prove to be the last straw for your little car. Happily Inspector Miller has a car, and if you will wait until I've sent my sergeant back to London with this broken window we can start whenever you like.”

“If you like to give me a seat in Inspector Miller's car I can act as your guide to the garage and let my friend follow us. It'll save time.”

“It's very kind of you,” said Vincent; “I'll be ready in three minutes.”

He was as good as his word; in three minutes he was at the wheel and had started up the engine. As soon as they were clear of the traffic, Griffith began to talk: he was prone to conversation.

“You'll excuse my curiosity, but I don't think you can belong to the county constabulary.”

“No, I come from further afield.”

“I felt sure you did: you must be from Scotland Yard. They've sent you down to take charge of the case. You must be one of the big four.”

“You mean the big four of newspaper notoriety? I'm Chief Inspector Vincent.”

“You're starting in this case with practically no clue at all, I gathered from the evidence at the inquest —not even the man's identity.”

“That is so.”

“I've often envied you your job when I read of criminal cases in the papers; it must be an exciting kind of life.”

Vincent smiled. “It's all right when there are exciting episodes, but much of the work is the dreary business of elimination.”

“Elimination?”

“Yes, because we suffer from too much rather than too little help from the public. In any sensational crime letters pour in from well-meaning people, not only in this country but abroad, and one cannot afford to neglect any of them for fear that there may be a grain of wheat among the chaff. The discouraging part of the job lies in the sifting of this mass of information.”

“It must require a lot of patience.”

“Yes, it does. Sometimes one gets so discouraged that it is all one can do to carry on.”

“The garage is only about a couple of hundred yards from here. I suppose you'd like to conduct your enquiry alone?”

“Not at all, but you will want to stop your friend when he arrives and you might look after my car while waiting for him.”

Griffith assented with a sigh and watched the lithe figure enter the garage.

Vincent asked for the foreman, who was found in a pit under a car, busily engaged in examining the pinions in the gear box.

“You're wanted, Harry,” a mechanic called down to him.

“Who wants me?”

“The police.” And then in a hoarse whisper the youth added: “It's a blooming 'tec from Scotland Yard, so he says.”

The foreman, a youth little older than his own mechanics, crawled out of his lair and faced Vincent, wiping a smear of oil from his countenance with a swab of cotton waste.

“I'm sorry to interrupt you in your work, foreman, but I want some information about that car that came in with a broken window two days ago. How many men were there in the car?”

“Two, I think it was. It was two, wasn't it, Charlie?”

“Yes; there was the fellow with his arm in a sling and the other bloke that kept looking at his watch.”

“Did they say where they were going?”

“Oh, they made no secret about that. They said that they were going to Cornwall.”

As the foreman turned back to his work the young mechanic became confidential. “If you are wanting information about those two men I can tell you something. When I was tuning up their car and they didn't know I could hear them I heard them talking about a motorboat that they were to catch at Newquay. I could see that the feller that kept looking at his watch was in a great stew about being late. ‘God knows,' he said, ‘what we'll do if he's gone off without us,' and the other one said: ‘He's swine enough to do anything.' Then one of them caught sight of me and nudged the other, and they dried up.”

Having gleaned all possible information from the garage, Vincent returned to his car. He found that Griffith's companion had arrived in his tiny overloaded conveyance and the two young men were talking.

“Ah, here comes the chief inspector,” said Griffith. “Now we shall be free to go on.”

“Your discovery is going to prove very useful to me,” said Vincent. “I found out that those two men were bound for Newquay to meet a motorboat and I must go on there, although they've had two days' start of me.”

“We are bound for the west coast, too: we are going to Bude, which is not so very far away from Newquay, but you will travel much faster than we do and I suppose we must say good-bye.”

“I'm afraid so. You will understand that I've no time to lose. Thank you once more for your help.”

He started up the engine and slid away. As soon as he had cleared the built-up area and could let his car out, he began to think of what lay before him. He had the number of the car, that was something. He had Newquay as its destination; it might prove to be a difficult case if motorboats took part in it, but Vincent was not the man to welcome easy cases; the more difficult a case was, the better he liked it.

His first concern on arriving at Newquay was to make a round of the hotel garages in search of the car which had changed its broken window. He tried every hotel garage without success and then visited those which advertised the fact that they carried out repairs. In one of these, inconveniently situated in a narrow side street, he found what he was looking for—a sixteen-horse Daimler, with the number given by the garage in the Bath Road. It had a deep dint and scrape on the offside wing, exposing the metal. Vincent called the foreman.

“Who left this car here?” he asked.

The man was inclined to be jocular. “That would be telling,” he said. “You've heard of the proverb: ‘Ask no questions and they'll tell you no lies.'”

“Come,” said Vincent, “I can't waste time bandying proverbs. I'm here to ask questions and you're here to answer them truthfully.” He produced his official card and the young foreman stiffened with apprehension. “Now, perhaps you'll answer. Who left this car here?”

“Two gents who said they were leaving on a sea trip and would call for it when they came back. Is there anything wrong about them?”

“You can ask that question again when I've looked over the car.”

The man stood back while Vincent made an examination of the seats and cushions of the interior. He was using a small square of damp blotting paper to soak up what he thought might be bloodstains, when the foreman, who was watching him keenly, interposed with a question:

“What are you looking for, sir?” he said.

“For bloodstains.”

“Funny you should say that. The gent who left the car was fussing about the same thing. Very fussy he was, using a sponge and cotton waste to get it all off. He said there was nothing that damaged the fabric of the leather more than blood if it was allowed to dry on. It was his own blood, he said, from his elbow when he banged it through the window. It must have been a mighty bang to break triplex glass. He said that that was why he had his arm in a sling.”

“Which arm was it?”

“Lord! To tell you the truth I couldn't say which. I remember thinking that it was funny that he should break one of the windows at the back of the car if he was at the wheel, as he was when he brought her in. He said that he had to drive in spite of his injured arm because the other chap couldn't.”

“What did they look like?” asked Vincent.

“Oh, one was a big, heavy man, between thirty and forty, and the other a tall thin chap, a bit older.”

“Well, I want you to put this car aside and not let anyone touch her—not even the owner if he turns up again—without letting me know. I shall be at the Raven Hotel and I'll come down at once if you ring up. You can't lock it up because, I suppose, the owner has the key, but you can stop any of your mechanics from interfering with it.”

“Very good, sir; you can trust me to see that your orders are carried out.”

While speaking Vincent had been trying to open the box at the rear of the car, which was locked.

“Do you want to get that open, sir?”

“Yes, but I suppose the owner has that key also.”

“I daresay that I could manage to open it.”

“What?” asked Vincent. “Have you fellows got duplicate keys for the boxes of every kind of car?”

The foreman laughed. “No sir, it's not as bad as that; but I served my apprenticeship with one of the firms that supply car manufacturers with these boxes and I've still got the tools for making both locks and keys. You needn't worry about my doing any damage: I'll open it all right and lock it up again.”

“Very good, foreman; I'll be back again in about half an hour.”

Vincent now decided to make enquiries at the quay. There he found the usual knot of fishermen and loafers in nautical costume. One of them, a bright-eyed man of about forty, constituted himself the mouthpiece of the party. Vincent knew the type—a type to beware of when one wants an exact register of facts, but quite useful where drama of the film complexion is sought. At first he avoided him and accosted a saturnine-looking ex-sailor who was smoking a foul clay pipe. He did not appear to be a man of many words, but that mattered little, for the others drifted up, the loquacious sailor with them.

“I hear you had a motor launch in here on Saturday and it picked up two men and went away with them.”

The mariner nodded sourly without removing his pipe from the corner of his mouth, but the chatterbox, who was now within hearing, hastened to fill the breach.

“I saw those two gents; one of them had his arm in a sling. They kept asking us whether we'd seen their motorboat come in and go out again. I told them that it had been in, hanging about the best part of the day, and had then gone out again. That's right, isn't it, mates?” The rest nodded their assent. “I can tell you that the two gents were in a fine taking when they heard that she'd been in and gone out again—friends of the skipper, I suppose they were.”

“But did she come in again?” asked Vincent.

“Yes, she did, and a bloke was standing up, sweeping the quay with his glasses. When he made out the two gents waving to him he brought the launch up to the steps, keeping the engine running. He hardly waited for them to step aboard, but pushed off and went full speed ahead.”

“Do you know which way they went when they'd cleared the harbour?”

“No, one can't see that from here, but when the two gents were stepping aboard I heard the skipper say: ‘Hurry up, Rupert, there's a southerly gale springing up, and if you're not nippy you'll be seasick like you were last time.' So I suppose she was bound for somewhere lying southwest of us.”

“What kind of a boat was she?”

“Oh, she was a smart-looking craft, as fresh as paint could make her and big enough for any kind of sea.”

“How many hands had she?”

“I only saw a boy besides the skipper, but the cabin looked as if there was accommodation for six at least.”

“H'm! Quite a big boat,” said Vincent, musing. “Anyway she could cross the Channel all right. Had she a name painted on her?”

“No, now I come to think of it she'd no name at all. That's funny. A craft like that generally has some fancy kind of name like Sunbeam painted all over her, but this one had nothing at all.”

The taciturn smoker removed his pipe from his mouth, spat into the sea and spoke for the first time. “Shouldn't be surprised if there was something crooked about that boat—smuggling or something like that. The boy was a Frenchy—I heard him talking the lingo that those onion boys talk.”

“And the skipper? Did he talk French, too?”

“When he spoke to the boy he did, but not when he took those two coves on board: then he spoke English all right, but it sounded funny.”

“Thank you,” said Vincent. “I think that must be the boat I wanted; I'm sorry they left before I got here.”