The White Cottage Mystery (10 page)

W.T. nodded.

‘Most extraordinary,' he said. ‘Deadwood must be off his head. I ought to have heard of that at once – the girls coming to Paris, too – and not a word from him – I don't know what he's doing over there.'

‘Maybe he was relying on your arresting Cellini,' said Jerry.

W.T. frowned. ‘Very likely,' he said gloomily. ‘Still, he ought to have let me know – especially about the money. I wired for a copy of the will as soon as I got in this afternoon, of course. We shall get it in the morning.'

Jerry sat forward in his chair, clasping his knee.

‘She – she
couldn't
have done it,' he said at last.

‘Who – Mrs Christensen?'

‘Of course.'

W.T. was silent for some moments. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘When a woman is goaded beyond all endurance, there's nothing she couldn't do.'

‘She
couldn't,'
the boy repeated. ‘She couldn't!'

‘What makes you think that?'

The old man put the question casually, and the boy answered it with his thought.

‘Well – I mean to say – a woman with a sister like that – ‘He broke off short before the expression on the old detective's face.

‘My dear boy' – W.T. spoke inoffensively – ‘that is an argument that may convince you in your present state of blissful lunacy, but you can't expect it to have the same effect on me.'

‘Why, d'you think she did it?'

W.T. rumpled his hair, making himself look somehow like a festive owl.

‘'Pon my soul, Jerry, I don't know,' he said. ‘There are times when I could believe anything – I'm going to bed now, anyway.'

He prepared to rise from his chair, but the boy, leaning across the table towards him, kept him seated.

‘Dad,' said Jerry, clipping his words in his earnestness; ‘that chap Crowther – he deserved to be killed. What does it matter who killed him?'

‘What does it matter?' repeated W.T. blankly.

Jerry nodded; his young face became suddenly hard.

‘Yes,' he said; ‘whoever killed that man did it in self-defence – mental if not physical. Why don't you leave him alone?'

W.T.'s eyes narrowed.

‘What do you mean?' he demanded.

‘Chuck up the case,' said Jerry. ‘Leave it. Don't try to find out any more.'

‘Throw up the case!'said the old man, an expression of horror growing on his face. ‘Throw up the case? My dear boy, you're mad!'

‘I'm not – I feel it would be best, honestly – I feel we ought not to find out any more.'

The old man shook his head.

‘Jerry,' he said, ‘in our business one must never be afraid to know the truth. You want me to throw up this case – a thing I could never do for my own self-respect's sake – because you're afraid to face what you believe to be true. You believe Mrs Christensen fired that shot – don't interrupt me – I repeat you believe she murdered Eric Crowther, and you're afraid to prove it. That's no good, my boy – a doubt is always dangerous. For her sake as well as for everyone else's we've got to find out all we can. Crowther had some hold over her – some secret which old Estah shared. We've got to find out what that was. We've got to find out why he left a will in her favour: we've got to find out if she is innocent or not.'

Jerry sighed.

‘Then you won't give up.'

‘Certainly not – I have never heard such a suggestion.' W.T. spoke vigorously and rose to his feet. ‘Do you think I'm going
to put four or five innocent people under suspicion because in your opinion a suspected woman has a pretty sister? If you weren't in love and therefore insane I should punch your head, my boy.' And the old fellow stalked off to bed.

As for Jerry, he sat there late thinking of Norah.

The morning found W.T. fuming over the English breakfast that a whole army of scandalized French waiters could not have shamed him into forgoing, and when Jerry came down he scowled fiercely at the boy across the table.

‘Has it come?' said Jerry, his mind on the will.

‘No,' said W.T. ‘This'll hold us up another day. They couldn't get hold of it at once, I suppose.'

‘Oh, well, you'll get it tonight, no doubt. Anything else?'

‘No,' said the detective explosively, ‘only a damn silly letter from Deadwood in reply to my report.'

Jerry grinned. He began to see the occasion of his father's irritation. Inspector Deadwood was a well-meaning man who was invariably full of bright suggestions about other people's cases, and no one else on earth had a surer gift of rubbing W.T. up the wrong way.

‘Oh!' said Jerry. ‘What does he think?'

‘He doesn't,' said the detective acidly. ‘That's his trouble.'

W.T. shook his head.

‘No,' he said; ‘it wasn't an accident. The gun didn't suddenly decide to go off on its own. And I don't think a passing monkey did it, nor a man who owed Crowther a grudge in India and happened to be in the Christensens' dining-room at the moment unknown to anyone. I don't think any of these things. This is as clear a case of long-meditated but actually impulsive murder as ever I've seen.'

Jerry nodded.

‘You're still determined to go through with it?' he said doubtfully.

‘Absolutely,' said W.T. firmly. ‘I've never left a case unfinished in my life. The idea of doing such a thing horrifies me. It's my job.'

The boy frowned.

‘I can't think why you don't retire,' he said. ‘You've got plenty of money – you're not waiting for a pension and you don't like the life. You told old Doc Cave so the other day.' He paused, and then added, as the other did not speak, ‘What's the idea of sticking to it like this?'

‘There are many parts of my business that are repellent to me, naturally,' said old W.T. sedately, ‘but the main thing, the instinct of the chase, is still there. I shall go on grumbling and carrying on until I'm too old.'

Jerry said no more.

Late in the afternoon, the eagerly awaited copy of Eric Crowther's will arrived.

W.T. carried it off to his room immediately, and shut himself up with it. Jerry gave him time to read it, and then went in.

‘Any luck?' he said as he closed the door behind him.

W.T. looked up.

‘No,' he said. ‘Not really – there's one curious thing, though. Listen to this: “All moneys in stock, War Loan, and other securities, besides the balance at my bank, I leave unreservedly to Mrs Roger Christensen of the White Cottage, Brandesdon, Kent,
who ought to have it
”'

‘“Who ought to have it”?' repeated Jerry.

W.T. nodded.

‘Now what does that mean – exactly?' he said. ‘You see, my boy, we must go into this. If that woman is innocent of the actual murder she must know something about it.'

‘“
Who ought to have it
”,' Jerry repeated, the phrase fascinating him. ‘Does that mean that she is some – some relative of his?'

W.T. shook his head. ‘I don't know. It may, of course, but I hardly think so. Anyway, we shall know before long. Before I left London I put the research department on to Crowther. We shall get a full report of his life, as far as it can be traced, within a day or so. That ought to tell us something. Meanwhile, we must concentrate on Mrs Christensen. You see, there's one rather significant point about this will …' Jerry glanced up quickly.

‘What's that?'

W.T. looked at him.

‘The date of it,' he said. ‘It was made six years ago.'

Jerry caught his breath.

‘What's our next move, then?'

W.T. glanced at his watch.

‘The night train for Marseilles and the Mediterranean coast starts at seven o'clock from the Gare de Lyon,' he said. ‘We must catch it. They're only twelve hours ahead of us.'

Jerry sighed and began to pack his bag in silence. Life was beginning to present problems more difficult than he had ever dreamed possible.

They caught the train without fuss.

It was still early autumn, and the Mediterranean ‘season' had not yet begun, so there were comparatively few travellers on the train, and father and son secured a compartment to themselves.

Jerry was very silent, however; the situation did not appeal to him. For the last twenty-four hours at least Norah had filled up his horizon, and all else seemed comparatively small and insignificant.

W.T. sat in his corner, his ‘pillow' behind his head and his arms folded upon his breast.

Gradually the long night wore away and the morning brought a new country of olive trees and red soil, and at last the great black rock jutting up against sea and sky as they came into Marseilles.

The rest of the journey along the coast to Mentone interested Jerry in spite of himself. The fairy-story mountains with castles a-top on one side, and the everlasting succession of incredibly blue bays on the other, appealed to him irresistibly. It was hot, too, by the time they reached the railway station at Mentone.

They chose a quiet hotel in the busier and unfashionable quarter of the town.

It was Jerry's first visit to the south coast, and the gaiety and colour of the scene enchanted him. The crazy carrier's carts from the mountains, with their noisy, villainous-looking drivers, the girls with their marvellous coiffures, the brightness everywhere – it was all new and delightful.

They were walking down one of the narrow streets, the
jabbering throng pressing about them, when W.T. suddenly touched his son's arm.

‘Who's that?' he murmured.

Jerry followed the direction of his father's glance and saw a man seated at one of the many little tables upon the pavement outside a café.

His blue suit was very new, and fitted his meagre form abominably, his bright brown shoes swung a good two inches off the ground, and his pale-grey hat was set well on the back of his bony head. Jerry stared at him.

The clothes were different, of course, but there was something familiar about those red-rimmed eyes and that revoltingly sticky-looking, yellow-grey moustache.

‘Good Lord!' he murmured. ‘Clarry Gale!'

W.T. nodded, and taking the boy's arm, led him gently in the opposite direction.

‘Don't look back,' he said. ‘I don't want him to see us. Now what in blazes is
he
doing here?'

‘No, Jerry, my boy, I think our best plan is still to lie low until we get that record from home. We want all the information we can get before we interview anyone.'

Old W.T. sat back in a chair on the balcony outside his bedroom window in the hotel, and puffed his cigarette thoughtfully as he spoke. They had been in Mentone two days now, without making much progress.

It was a typical southern night, the air warm, and noisy with the far-off buzz of the town. The sky was fretted with stars, and not a breath of wind stirred the scalloped frills of the striped awnings over the café windows. The old man's voice sounded soft and deep in the semi-darkness.

Jerry stirred.

‘Well, we know where they are,' he remarked.

W.T. nodded.

‘That's something done, anyway,' he said. ‘But now we must wait for the record. That phrase “who ought to have it” worries me.'

‘Clarry Gale, too,' said Jerry slowly. ‘He seems to have come into money. One curious thing about Crowther's murder is the sudden wealth of the folk who were associated with him.'

‘I thought that.' W.T. stirred, and his chair creaked in the darkness. ‘Gale wasn't mentioned in the will, though,' he went on after a pause. ‘No, you bet your life, Jerry, if he's come into money it is through his own dishonest endeavour. The sight of him astounded me. It must have something to do with the two girls being here, of course.'

‘Why?'

‘Well' – W.T.'s tone was expressive – ‘a man like Clarry
Gale doesn't come to Mentone for fun. He might possibly go to Blackpool. I believe he'd go to Monte Carlo without a motive, but Mentone – never!'

‘But what could he have to do with Mrs Christensen and Norah? Do you suggest he's employed by them?' Jerry put the question aggressively.

W.T. raised his eyebrows.

‘That hadn't occurred to me,' he said, ‘and it doesn't seem likely, for I don't see what he could be doing for them; but he might be employed by someone else to watch them. I don't know enough yet to judge of that.'

There was silence for some moments then Jerry spoke:

‘Of course,' he said, ‘we don't know yet what hold Crowther had over Gale, do we?'

‘No, not exactly,' the detective admitted, ‘but I think I've a a pretty shrewd idea. I sent for the report of the last case he was in.'

‘Oh?' Jerry spoke with new interest. ‘What was that?'

W.T. lit another cigarette before he replied.

‘A burglary, you know,' he said. ‘A rather nasty affair – several people were implicated. A man called Grant had a house in Feering Park Crescent, W., where he lived alone with his two servants, a man called Briggs and a cook, a Mrs Phail. One night a gang broke in on them – Gale, Abrahams and Goody. Grant slept in the front of the house and heard nothing, but Briggs and Mrs Phail, who had rooms over the kitchens, were awakened. Briggs crept downstairs and surprised the three. Abrahams made a bolt for it with Briggs after him. The other two climbed out of a side window, Goody first, right into the arms of a waiting constable. When they went back to the house, it was found that Mrs Phail, hurrying down the kitchen stairs after Briggs, had slipped and, falling, cut her head open on a zinc bath standing at the foot of them. She was dead. There was a theory at the time that her fall was not entirely due to accident, and there was a lot of talk, but no one could prove anything and the three got off with stiff sentences.' He paused.