Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? (17 page)

“Of course this window must have been very easy to break open: here are the marks of a penknife on the paintwork.”

“Yes—before I got Huggins to screw it up on the inside. We might now go in and have a look at the bedroom. Here's the key of the front door.”

The bedroom was exactly as it had been left on the previous night. Richardson slid back the curtains, letting in the sunlight. They stood for a moment in silence looking round the room.

“Well,” asked Richardson, “what do you make of it?”

“I think it was a bag he was looking for, or rather, something contained in a bag. If it had been merely a document he would have gone first to the writing table and made a mess of the papers there, but, as you see, the desk is not locked and the papers are not disarranged.”

“What could a lady carry in her handbag that would tempt a man to commit burglary to find it?”

“Well, if I may judge from my own wife, I should say that she carried everything in her handbag except the kitchen stove. Do you think it could have been drugs?”

“You mean that she was trading in drugs?”

“Why not? A woman who steals other women's bags, a shoplifter as this woman was, might descend to any kind of petty crime. At any rate I'm out to search this bungalow from rooftree to cellar. Drugs can be secreted in the smallest possible compass.”

“They can, and the bungalow hasn't been searched as minutely as that. Go ahead, and good luck to you. I shall take the opportunity to call on Miss Ann Pomeroy and find out whether she has ever suspected her cousin's wife of being a secret drug taker.”

On this occasion the little maid answered the bell and told Richardson that Miss Ann was upstairs in the sickroom. She was unwontedly communicative.

“You see, sir, Mr Pomeroy is going to get up this afternoon and he's got to go to his bank tomorrow morning, and that's why we're all so busy, but I'll call Miss Ann down if you like.”

In view of the gravity of his question Richardson told her to tell Miss Ann that he would like to speak to her in her study. The little maid trotted upstairs with the message, leaving him standing in the hall Ann came down and took him into her den.

“I didn't expect you until midday. Pat won't be free until then.”

“I came early because our search of the bungalow has raised a new and important question. Had you any suspicion, or has Mr Pomeroy ever hinted, that his wife took drugs?”

Ann looked shocked. “No, I never had that suspicion, and I'm sure that Miles would have told me if he suspected such a thing. Shall I go and ask him?”

“No, I shouldn't put the question point-blank like that.”

“Oh, you needn't be afraid. He knows that you're here, and he'll want to know the reason for your early visit. I'll run up and ask him. He is so much better this morning that he talks of going to business tomorrow. I won't be more than two minutes.”

The two minutes dragged on into five before a light step on the stairs announced her return.

“No, Mr Richardson. My cousin says that he has never suspected such a thing, and he doesn't think it possible that his wife could have been a drug addict without his knowledge.”

“Is it possible, do you think, that she could have been trafficking in them without his knowledge?”

“I think that that's quite possible: she was alone in the bungalow all day long, and I know that she had visitors.” She hesitated and then continued: “In view of all this I'm going to take you further into my confidence, Mr Richardson. Just recently Miles revealed to me that he was becoming alarmed at finding that Stella seemed to have some secret source of money, and he was terrified lest there should be some awful scandal of stealing money belonging to other people. I didn't mention it to him at the time, for fear of causing worse trouble between them, but I had a secret suspicion that she was accepting presents of money from Mr Casey.”

“I think it would be a good thing if I were to see Mr Casey again, but of course I can't do it until the evening, when he comes home, and I am booked to have another interview with Pat at twelve o'clock. In the meantime I should like to ask whether it would be possible for me to have another look through that suitcase of letters belonging to the dead woman. Are they still here?”

“They are actually in this room. I'm sure that my cousin would like you to look through them again for anything you may want.”

“I'm going to ask you to grant me a still greater favour—to allow me to go through them in this little room. I'm a tidy person: I shan't make any mess.”

“Of course. I shan't be using the room before twelve o'clock. You can sweep all these papers off the table and spread out the letters. Here's the key of the case. I'll leave you to your task.”

Richardson engaged in this new task with surprise that he had shirked it hitherto. He felt that somehow his old thoroughness was deserting him, that he was getting stale at his job—a sure sign that the curtain must be about to fall upon his efficiency as a detective as he had seen it fall upon so many of his colleagues. He remembered that when he last had these letters in his hands he had read but three of them, because he had ascertained, in the letter from Casey which he did read, that the man had been in the habit of calling at the bungalow each morning at the hour the murder was committed, and therefore it was probable that he had been there on that day. But on going into Casey's movements he had found that he had a satisfactory alibi for the thirteenth—that he had actually arrived at the office by an earlier train than usual. But that ought not to have absolved a detective of his experience from reading every letter, when he had the opportunity. Now was the moment for repairing the omission.

He read first the letters from the theatrical agencies; they were, of course, quite innocuous. Next the letters from the uncle in New Zealand: they proved no more than the fact, as he had discovered when he first read them, that they were calculated to arouse the dead woman's jealousy by their constant references to Ted Maddox in terms of affection and gratitude. But suddenly Richardson stiffened: one sentence had caught his attention:

A boy with such studious tastes; “Studious” was the last word that he would have thought of applying to young Maddox. If he was studious he was certainly giving his brain a rest while he was in England. He knew that Ann would excuse him if he used her telephone. He took up the receiver and called Jim Milsom at his publishing office.

“Is that you, Mr Milsom? Superintendent Richardson speaking. You have spent two evenings with Ted Maddox. Would you describe him as a young man of studious tastes?”

The reply was a guffaw reminiscent of a captive hyena at feeding time. “Who describes him as of studious tastes?”

“The man who adopted him as a son in New Zealand.”

“Then someone has blundered.”

“However that may be, I want you to bear this in mind when next you see him and study his character.”

“I'll probe it to the bottom. As a publisher I ought to recognize a studious bloke when I see him. I shall start probing this very evening, beginning, of course, with Roger Bacon and finishing with P. G. Wodehouse.”

“Do it seriously, because it may turn out to be a turning point in this case of ours.”

“I see. Enter an impostor; the woman points a finger at him in denunciation; he lays her out with a hammer. See the
Daily Thrill
. But don't let my flippancy worry you. I'll do my job tonight as you would have it done. Good-bye.”

Richardson returned to his chair and went meticulously through the remainder of the uncle's letters. They provided nothing more, and he turned to the bundle of Casey's letters. He had not read more than three before he understood Ann Pomeroy's comment that they made her sick. They were filled with greasy sentiment and poetical fantasy which went far from ringing true. He referred to her husband always as “the nuisance” or “the stumbling block.” And then a passage caught his attention.

The game! What game? The game of hide-and-seek of a guilty couple? Did he mean that? True, it would be a dangerous game for both of them, because Pomeroy was just the kind of man who might drag them into the divorce court, and such publicity wouldn't be good for Casey. On the other hand, in the light of his new suspicions, could the dangerous game be the selling of drugs? There must be no relaxation of the watch that must be kept on Casey. There could be no better position for acquiring a knowledge of where drugs could be obtained than that of a Fleet Street journalist. All this was pure conjecture, and Richardson felt that he must have far more evidence before he could venture to build upon this theory. He returned to his task of discovering other references to the “game,” but nothing more incriminating than that which he had already found came to light.

The front-door bell rang. The little maid came into the hall from the back regions but was stopped on her way by Ann, who opened the door herself and ushered Pat into her little den. The boy swelled with importance when he found himself alone with Richardson.

“Good morning, young man. I've got a few questions to ask you, and I mustn't keep you, or your dinner will get cold. You told Miss Pomeroy about your adventure at the bungalow last night. What made you so certain that the man who climbed in through the scullery window was Mr Casey?”

“Well sir, you see I was shadowing Mr Casey at the time.”

“Yes, but you took a shorter cut to the bungalow, and the man you saw getting in through the window had got there before you.”

“Yes sir, he had.”

“And last night it was dark: there was no moon. What could you have seen about him to distinguish him from other men?”

“I've been thinking over what happened, sir, and I think that I may have been wrong when I thought it was Mr Casey.”

“Why?”

“Well sir, Mike, my dog, knows Mr Casey, and he wouldn't bark at him.”

“But Mike may have been barking with joy at finding you in the bungalow.”

“At first he did, but then he began growling and sniffing, and when the man came out of the bedroom he flew at him and barked in a different kind of way, like he does at strangers.”

“Did you see a motorcar near the bungalow?”

“No sir, not a sign of one.”

“Of course you didn't look round very much. All you thought of when you saw a man getting in through the scullery window was to follow him in.”

“Yes sir, and if Mike hadn't barked I might have caught him in the act when he was rummaging the drawers in the bedroom.”

“Did you hear a car drive away?”

“No sir, but you see Mike was making such a noise with his barking that I mightn't have heard it.”

“And when you got out again through the window all you thought of was running after Mr Casey. In fact you legged it home as hard as you could go.”

“Yes sir.”

“And when you got home Mr Casey hadn't come in?”

“No sir, but he came in about half an hour later and went straight up to his room. He must have been there last night and seen me, because when he passed me on the stairs this morning he hissed in my ear, ‘You young devil! If you don't stop following me about I'll hand you over to the police.'”

“Well, Pat, here are my orders. You're to pretend that you're frightened at what he said and stop following him about, until I give you the word.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Pat in a dejected tone.

“And now you run away to your dinner and cheer up. I shall have something for you to do in the future.” As soon as the door had shut upon the boy Ann looked in.

“Well, what did you make of his story?”

“I believe it. He has been very useful, and he may be even more useful in the future.”

“But surely it wasn't Mr Casey that he saw?”

“No, it wasn't. The behaviour of the dog showed that. If you want to know my deductions from his story I will tell you what they are. The man whom he surprised in the bungalow, whoever he was, had come in a car, and when he got out through the window he made straight for that car and lay low in it with his lights switched off until the boy's footsteps died away. Then he drove off.”

“And so Casey had nothing to do with it?” said Ann in a flat tone.

“No, except probably as a spectator, for he is still taking a morbid interest in that bungalow.”

D
IVISIONAL
D
ETECTIVE
I
NSPECTOR
Aitkin had completed his search of the bungalow and was back in his office preparing to go to lunch when his chief came up the stairs two at a time.

“Well, what luck did you have?” he asked.

Aitkin shook his head ruefully. “The only drugs I found in that cursed bungalow consisted of this bottle of aspirin tablets—at least they're labelled aspirin and they look like it. But I did find this.” He pushed over to Richardson an antique seal of some red stone set in gold and inscribed with a double E interlaced.

“Where did you find it?”

“It was in this little purse at the back of one of the drawers in which that burglar had been rummaging last night.”

“H'm! We'll keep this. It may become important. E was not the dead woman's initial, but I believe you'll find it on one of those bags.”

“Yes, on that very expensive bag. This is the one, and the design on the seal is very like that on the bag.”

“Label it, and put it in your safe. We may have the luck to come across a letter sealed with it. You've noticed that the little purse is made of the same material as the bag.”