The Milliner's Hat Mystery (7 page)

“Yes, you've described them exactly.”

“How long did they hire the car for?”

“They said they wanted it for the inside of a week and so I let it to them by the day.”

“Well, I should lose no time in telephoning to the police at Newquay to find out when you can have your car back. I suppose you made them pay a deposit?”

“Did I not? That's the rule with everyone who hires a car, unless he's personally known to me, and Mr Pitt was not.”

“In what form did Mr Pitt make his deposit with you?”

“In treasury notes. Thirty pounds was the amount of the deposit. To tell you the truth I didn't much like the look of those two Americans. They seemed to be slippery customers somehow, and if it comes to that, Pitt himself was a queer fish. What had a bank cashier to do with a big house full of foreigners up in Hampstead? I suppose you could tell me something about that.”

“What I'm concerned with is to find the murderer,” said Vincent, ignoring the last remark. “Can you remember anything that would be likely to help me—for example any conversation between the three men?”

“No, but after they'd gone a man came in; he said that he had a garage and that the three men had been round to him but that he didn't have a car smart enough for them. He asked me what kind of car I'd lent them and I told him; that was all.”

“He didn't say where his garage was?”

“No, he didn't. I'd never seen him before, but there are lots of little garages about here.”

Vincent decided that for the moment it was not worth while to hunt up this second garagist. He thanked the man and left, hoping to head off his sergeant. To his relief he saw him coming down the street.

“It's all right, Walker: this is where the car was hired and the description of the men tallies with the description of the fellows who embarked from Newquay. I shall have to see Mr Richardson and let him decide the step that ought to be taken. While I'm at the Central Office you might make it your job to find out whether those two rascals have registered as aliens. The landlady gave you their initials.”

“Yes, I have them: G. Lewis and R. Blake. I'll be off now.”

Chief Constable Richardson was startled when his messenger announced that Chief Inspector Vincent wanted to see him.

“I thought that the chief inspector had been lent to the Berkshire constabulary. Well, show him in.” Vincent presented himself and Richardson looked up. “I thought you were down in the wilds of Berkshire, or was it Cornwall?”

“Both, sir,” replied Vincent, with a smile, “but my enquiries indicate two Americans as having been guilty of murder in this country. In order to get further evidence I am asking your leave to go over to Paris.”

“To Paris? I'm rather out of touch with what you've been doing. Before I authorize you to go so far afield I think you had better give me a verbal resumé of the case as far as you have got in it.”

Vincent had a gift for terse narrative. He omitted nothing from his story and yet he reduced it to reasonable length.

“You didn't yourself see the motor launch at Newquay?”

“No sir.”

“And yet you are satisfied that it could cross the Channel even in rough weather without danger?”

“I had to depend on what the sailors at Newquay said about her, but they satisfied me that she was a safe sea boat and I gathered that they were competent judges.”

“One has to be careful or the Receiver may get on his hind legs. All the expenses you have incurred for the Berkshire constabulary now come out of the Metropolitan Police Fund, and if we add your expenses abroad without special authority, he may have a good deal to say. Why not go and explain the case personally to him, saying that I have sent you.”

“Very good, sir, I will.”

“You may quote me as saying that personal enquiry in the country itself is a secret of success in cases like this. He will remember that it was in this way that I succeeded in clearing up two of our biggest cases.”

The man who had come from the Home Office as Receiver was no dry-as-dust accountant. On the contrary he was keenly interested in police work and ready to make any concessions that seemed likely to bring about success. In the hands of Vincent the story was convincing: it was evident that without this visit to Paris the ship would be spoiled for a ha'porth of tar, but when Vincent suggested taking a subordinate with him he drew the line.

“I can quite understand your case, Chief Inspector, that when you are making enquiries you must have someone with you to do the fetch and carry jobs in a big case, but to take a sergeant, ignorant of French, across the Channel would be in my opinion an indefensible waste of money. If you find it necessary to go, you'll have to go alone.”

“Very good, sir,” said Vincent with a sigh. He returned to Richardson's room and was fortunate enough to find him alone.

“Well?” asked his chief, looking up with keen eyes. “Did you melt the hard heart of the Receiver?”

“No sir, but he was very nice about it. I'm sure that he would have given way if he could. I can go over to France myself, but I cannot take a junior officer with me. Happily I'm on very good terms with an officer of the Sûreté with whom I worked during the war.”

“That's all right then. You can go over to Paris as soon as you like; in fact the sooner the better. While you are there you had better call upon two friends of mine, M. Bigot and M. Verneuil, both of them members of the Paris police. They will remember having worked with me and I trust you to give them the usual friendly messages.”

Vincent found Sergeant Walker waiting for him at the basement entrance. There was an expectant look on his face which his chief dispelled by a shake of the head.

“Nothing doing for you, my friend. I have to go alone to save expenses.”

“That's all right, Mr Vincent. I was never one for foreign travel. You look such a fool in a country where you don't even know how to ask for a light for your pipe. The good old Metrop is where I belong. I've made enquiry about those two men: they didn't register.”

“All the better for us, because if they show up here again we shall have something to hold them on.”

“Another thing I've found out is that the passport carried by the dead man had been tampered with. According to the Foreign Office records it had been issued to Bernard Pitt and the name had been obliterated with chemicals and ‘John Whitaker' had been substituted.”

“I know the stuff they use; they employed it a lot during the war. It will take out ink from any document without leaving a trace. Well, keep your eyes open while I'm away and if you hear anything that I ought to know, write to me at the Hotel du Louvre. I'll write it down for you. I ought to be back at latest in two days.”

It chanced that during the war Vincent had had to work with a very intelligent and well-educated French commissary of police named Goron, who had lately married. They had since kept up a desultory correspondence and the Gorons had invited Vincent to come over and enjoy their hospitality. It was certainly an opportunity, since a ladies' hat shop in the rue Duphot which demanded 100,000 francs for a hat was new to his experience. He telegraphed to his French friend to expect him on the following morning, and he crossed the Channel by the night boat. Arrived at St Lazare Station, he took a taxi to the little apartment in the rue St Georges and found a warm welcome from Goron and his wife, a lively little woman from Normandy, who spoke a pretty broken English. Goron spoke no language but his own.

“To what are we indebted for the pleasure of seeing you, my friend?” asked Goron.

“It's a long story,” began Vincent in French that was fluent but not impeccable.

“Pardon,” interrupted Jacqueline Goron; “we can have no long stories until you have been fortified by a cup of my coffee after your journey.”

“I must explain,” said her husband in a whisper that was intended to be overheard, “that the salic law does not hold good in this flat: it is ruled exclusively by a female sovereign.”

“Be careful,” admonished Jacqueline, shaking her forefinger at him; “or I will tell Monsieur Vincent home truths about you that you will not be able to contradict because you are too lazy to learn English. As for example…”

“Enough! I capitulate.” He held up both hands above his head.

“Take care what you say, my friend,” put in Vincent. “We must do nothing to offend Madame when I am so soon to beg her help. This is the only clue I have for solving the problem that has brought me over to Paris.”

He showed them the milliner's bill from the Maison Germaine.

Goron knitted his brows over it. “Whatever this is for it is not a hat,” he said emphatically.

 “Don't be so positive, Edouard,” protested his wife. “I have seen hats for which I would willingly give a hundred thousand francs if I had had them to give.”

“The question is,” said Vincent, “whether Madame will consent to go to that hat shop and see who is running it and what their real business is.”

“I can answer for her that she will,” said her husband. “The only danger is that Madame Germaine may bribe her with a new hat.”

Jacqueline made no answer to this gibe; she was in deep thought. “
Ecoute
,” she said suddenly; “my plan is made. You, Edouard, will be loitering on the opposite pavement looking into shop windows or what you will. Monsieur Vincent will be standing irresolute at the corner of the rue St-Honoré. I shall enter the shop boldly to investigate and shall choose a hat—I need one—but before buying it I shall have to seek the approval of my husband who is waiting for me outside. He will accompany me to the shop to pay for my hat and draw his own conclusions about the saleswoman. This concluded, we shall walk together to the rue St-Honoré and Monsieur Vincent, posing as an Englishman exploring Paris, will ask us the way to the Invalides. We shall then show him the way and walk with him down the rue Cambon and give him our impressions. Does my plan please you?”

She was evidently so pleased with it herself that Vincent would not have dared to pour cold water on it, but her husband had something to say.

“Your plan is admirable with one exception. It is not necessary to buy a hat: you could take me over to the shop and I could declare that the hat doesn't suit you.”

“But that would be a manifest statement. The hat I shall choose will be most becoming. We will start immediately.”

They shared a taxi to the Boulevard Madeleine, where Jacqueline left the two men and walked down the street by herself looking for the Maison Germaine. She stopped for a moment to look in the window and then went in. The opening of the shop door rang a bell. The little shop itself was empty, but the persistent ringing of the bell until the door was closed brought from an inner room a tall, good-looking woman in the thirties, beautifully dressed and groomed. Jacqueline proceeded to business at once and pointed to a hat in the window and asked its price. The modest sum quoted convinced her that this was not the shop where vast sums were spent on hats. She detected a slight foreign accent in the saleswoman and asked whether she were English.

“I myself am learning English and I love to practice it,” she explained.

“No,” said the lady pleasantly. “I am Austrian and I speak no English.”

By this time, Jacqueline had fitted the hat on her head before a glass and was given up to the strange ecstasy which takes possession of every well-dressed woman when she tries on becoming headgear with a competent saleswoman at her elbow. She felt a prick of conscience when she thought of her husband and his English friend waiting for her to come out full to the brim with information, and put a tentative question:

“Surely, you have not been here very long, madame. I have often passed down this street and I could not have failed to see the ravishing hats displayed in your window.”

“I have been here six months.”

“With such talent as yours, I feel sure that you will succeed—unless this lamentable crisis affects you.”

“On the contrary, madame, the crisis aids me, for clients accustomed to pay five hundred francs for a hat are glad nowadays to come to me and be supplied with hats to their taste at a far more moderate figure.”

Jacqueline was so much interested that she continued the conversation for her own satisfaction until the sight of her husband pacing up and down on the opposite pavement brought her back to realities with a start.

“Oh, there's my husband!” she exclaimed. “I cannot finally decide on a hat without his approval.”

She ran down the street to Goron. “Madame Germaine herself is serving me. She's an Austrian and her hats are a revelation and so inexpensive. I'm quite sure she must be all right, but come and see for yourself.”

They spent about twenty minutes in the shop, finally buying a hat at a quite moderate price, and Jacqueline walked proudly out wearing the new hat and leaving the old one to be sent home.

“Well,” she asked her husband eagerly, “am I not right about her? Such an artist could not be a criminal.”

“In my career,” said Goron, “I have had to deal with ladies quite as disarming as your Austrian friend and found them steeped to the lips in duplicity. I agree with you that it is hard to believe that this one is not up to her face value, but we must join our English friend who is waiting for us yonder.”

H
AVING
acquainted Vincent with the experience of Jacqueline in the hat shop, Goron made a suggestion.

“I propose,” he said, “that we send Jacqueline home in a taxi and that you and I visit the police of the eighth arrondissement to inquire about the status of Madame Germaine.”

Vincent jumped at the suggestion and the two men betook themselves to the police office in the Exhibition building. They had one disappointment. Monsieur Bigot, the chief, was absent on holiday, but Monsieur Verneuil, who was acting for him, could be seen if the business was in any way urgent. They were ushered into the acting chief's room, who rose to receive them.