Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? (19 page)

“Well,” said Milsom as his friend rose to go, “I hope you're going to employ me in hunting down the lady who blazons her initials on her vanity bag, always providing that E does not stand for Edith or Emmie, because I have known ladies who answered to both those names and they sent shivers down my spine. I rather fancy myself as a lady-killer.”

H
AVING RECEIVED
no telephone message from Mr Jackson, the lawyer, by ten o'clock the following morning, Richardson decided to go via Southampton Street on his way down to Ealing. He found the senior partner as good as his word: he was in his chair by that hour.

“You've had no answer yet to your cable, Mr Jackman?”

“No, Mr Richardson, but I'm expecting one any minute. Have you anything to tell me about that young man?”

“The young man of studious habits? Yes, I have. A certain informant who knows him tried last night to interest him in discussing English literature. The young man had never heard of George Bernard Shaw, and he believed H.G. Wells to be an inventor of a cure for the liver. Further, he admitted that he never read anything but newspapers, and his companion upset his glass of beer, which seemed to be a preconcerted signal for covering up lapses on the part of the young man who represents himself as Edward Maddox.”

“That certainly suggests that he is an impostor, but we shall know as soon as I receive a reply to my cable.”

At that moment a junior clerk entered with a telegram. Mr Jackson, forgetting his usual legal precision of slitting open the envelope and pinning it to the document it contained, tore it open with an impatient finger and read the telegram.

“Listen to this, Mr Richardson. ‘Edward Maddox died July thirty-first.' So this young man has been obtaining money from me under false pretences.”

“Yes, Mr Jackson, but that may not be the only offence he has committed. He has probably landed in this country under a false name and with false papers. For these offences he could be charged on a summons at once, because I assume that a magistrate might hesitate to grant a warrant, and the offence is not a felony, but a misdemeanour.”

“Yes, and the offence of obtaining money from me under false pretences is also a misdemeanour. What do you think our procedure should be? Shall we both apply for summonses and get them heard together?”

“Before applying for the summons I think it would be well if I had an interview with Grant, the elder brother of that murdered woman, who is now living at the expense of the supposed Ted Maddox. He may be able to give me some clue to the real identity of this young impersonator. I can arrange to do this today, and we can apply for the summonses tomorrow morning.”

“Certainly. You will require this cablegram as evidence.”

“No, Mr Jackson, I shall subpoena one of the cable clerks from the post office to prove the telegram and one of your clerks to prove the receipt. But I'll see Grant first and then communicate with you.”

“You don't think Grant will alarm the other two rascals into leaving the country?”

“No, because we shall put their names on the gate.”

“You mean…?”

“We shall warn the port officers to stop them and send their passports to Scotland Yard. It may be that he produced his own passport to the port officers. I have knowledge that he was known as Maddox on board the boat coming over. Could he be a relation of the Ted Maddox who died on July thirty-first?”

“That is quite possible. I think that your idea of interviewing Grant is very good, but I assume that you'll be careful to see him apart from the other rascals.”

“Yes, I shall send a detective officer from Ealing, who will say that he is required down there to give some information about his dead sister and that he will not be detained for long.”

“Then I shall do nothing until I hear from you again.” From the office in Southampton Street Richardson drove down to Ealing, where, learning that the detective inspector was busily engaged upstairs, he despatched one of the detective patrols to the Palace Hotel with the message to Grant.

He found cause for regretting that advertisement about ladies' bags. The waiting room downstairs was half filled with impatient ladies. A harassed constable was endeavouring to deal with the applicants in order of arrival, but that did not prevent attempts by the ladies to “jump” their turns. For Inspector Aitkin the task was formidable. He required each applicant to give the colour and the material of her bag and then, if the description corresponded with a bag in his collection, to pick it out from the others. He was not compounded of soft clay, having, as he said, a wife at home, and most of the ladies left the station empty handed. Those who passed his interrogation came away even more indignant than those who had failed, because they valued the contents of their bags as highly as the bags themselves, and the contents were not there.

As Richardson entered the room a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman was being interviewed.

“Well sir,” she was saying, “of course it was my own fault. It was in the hat department of Giveen's, and the walls are plastered with notices that you put down your property at your own risk; that the shop is not responsible. But you know how it is in trying on a hat. You must have both your hands free when you go to the glass, so you put down your bag with your hat on top of it and turn to the glass, and when you turn round again your bag's gone. Lord, but there are some dishonest people in the world. But if you gentlemen have been picking up one of these bag thieves it struck me that I ought to come and see whether she had got mine.”

She proceeded to give a description of her missing property. Aitkin listened carefully and laid before her one of the bags. She pounced upon it. “Yes sir, that's mine. You see it's the same as the description I gave you, right down to the fastening.” She opened it. “Oh, what a shame! The woman who pinched it has taken out everything, and it isn't as if there were valuables, except for the money which I never thought to get back, but you see everything's gone—even the snapshots of my little nieces, which had no value for anybody but me. Well sir, I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure.”

“I'm sorry for the loss of the contents, madam, but you see a thief would naturally destroy any evidence that might bring the theft home to her.”

Richardson sat in the background, scrutinizing every claimant as she came in and listening to Aitkin's competent way of handling them. By midday all the bags had been given to their rightful, or pretended, owners, except the costly bag bearing the initial E. No claimant had come forward for that, and none of the claimants were of the class that would carry a bag of that kind.

“I see no claimant has come forward for that expensive bag marked E.”

“Not yet, sir, though a description of it was circulated in the list of lost property.”

“It is very significant, to my mind, that no one has come forward. There may have been something in it which the owner regarded as compromising. In that case an advertisement will never produce a claimant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it might have been drugs, or it might have been a compromising address which the owner would not like the police to have. One can only guess at it, but I can't help feeling that that bag has a strong bearing on our case. Most of the women lost their bags in the same way, by putting them down while they tried on a hat. That was evidently Stella Pomeroy's method of working. Many of the losers said that they made a complaint in the shop at the time. It's possible that the owner of the bag marked E also made a complaint when she first missed it. It will be worth while for you to send round to the big stores, asking whether they have had a complaint in connection with a bag of this description.”

“Very good, Superintendent. I will have this done.”

“I took the liberty of sending one of your patrols up to the Palace Hotel to bring Grant down to this office to answer one or two questions about his dead sister.”

“In connection with the murder, do you mean?”

“No, I want him to give us some information about this man who calls himself Maddox. We don't know at present who he is, because Ted Maddox, who we assumed him to be, died on July thirty-first.”

“Then this man's a fraud?”

“To the extent that he poses as Ted Maddox he is, but his name may be Maddox all the same, and I want to question Grant about him. Unfortunately one cannot clear up the murder as easily as that, because we now have evidence that the men who landed from New Zealand on September thirteenth had a perfect alibi for the hour of the murder.”

The station sergeant looked in. “The patrol has just arrived with that man Grant, sir. Where will you see him?”

“I'll see him in this room.”

“Very good, sir.”

While the men were mounting the stairs, Richardson took his seat at the table and assumed a magisterial air.

“Sit down there, Mr Grant. I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you.”

Grant glanced nervously behind him as if looking for support from the patrol who had brought him upstairs, but he found that he was alone with his interrogator, who proceeded: “You know that Mr Colter left half his fortune to your dead sister and that, as she died without making a will, her share will go to her husband for his lifetime.”

“Yes, I know, and it's a damned shame. Mr Otway told me that it was the law.”

“Oh, is Mr Otway an authority on wills?”

“I don't know that he's exactly an authority, but he's been looking up the law in the case to see whether I couldn't get my whack out of my uncle's estate.”

“Your uncle left you nothing? How long is it since you left New Zealand?”

“It must be about fifteen years.”

“Was Ted Maddox living with your uncle when you left?”

“Yes, he had just left college.”

“He was fond of study, I believe.”

“Yes, he was. He brought back a lot of prizes. I know that when my uncle talked to me about him he didn't think that he'd take kindly to farm life.”

“After you left New Zealand fifteen years ago, you never saw Ted Maddox again?”

“That's right. I didn't see him again until I met him at the cemetery at my sister's funeral.”

“And you found him a good deal changed?”

Richardson was watching him closely and caught the look of awakened caution in his face.

“Everyone changes in fifteen years.”

“Tastes and all, do you think?”

“Yes.”

“But two years ago Ted Maddox hadn't changed in his tastes. He still loved books.”

“How do you know?”

“I know it from letters that your uncle wrote to your sister.”

“They say that I ought to have the letters written to my sister.”

“Who are they?”

“Why, Ted Maddox and Otway.”

“Those letters are the legal property of your sister's husband, her next of kin. You will have to apply to him.”

“What I don't understand is why you've had me brought down here to be questioned like this. Have you got anything against me, because if you have you had better tell me so outright.”

“I've nothing against you. All I want from you is that you should help the cause of justice by answering one question quite truthfully. Are you satisfied in your own mind that Maddox is actually the Ted Maddox whom you knew at your uncle's sheep run in New Zealand?”

“Well, I couldn't swear that he isn't.”

“But on the other hand you couldn't swear that he is. Is that it?”

“Yes, if you put it that way, I suppose it is.”

“Have you ever mentioned your doubts to him?”

“Not in so many words, because Otway is always there, and whenever I seem to be getting near the point he cuts in and talks about Ted's loss of memory and then he shoves ten pounds into my hand and says, ‘You forget about his loss of memory.' And mind you, I can't be sure, because a boy of sixteen does change by the time he's thirty-one.”

“Do you know why your uncle adopted Ted Maddox?”

“Well, he was the son of an old friend, John Maddox, who hadn't been so successful as my uncle, and he was one of a large family, while my uncle had no son. Have you any reason for doubting that he is Ted Maddox?”

This was a difficult question for Richardson to answer, for if he replied in the affirmative what he said would almost certainly be passed on to the two rascals staying at the Palace Hotel. He replied by asking another question.

“Your sister did not leave New Zealand at the same time that you did?”

“No, not until five years later. You see your suspicion must be wrong, because the first thing that Ted Maddox did was to go down to Ealing with his adopted father's will to show it to my sister, and he must have known that she would recognize him at once.”

The obvious answer would have been to say that the object in visiting the heiress was to persuade her to become an accomplice in the deception, but Richardson did not suggest this to his visitor.

“I don't know that I need detain you any longer, Mr Grant,” he said, half rising from his seat. “But I'd like you to keep this conversation that we've had confidential. You can say that I'd sent for you to ask whether your sister had a hasty temper and other questions of that sort.”

“Well, as we're talking quite confidentially, I think I ought to tell you that neither Maddox nor Otway intends to go back to New Zealand. All they're waiting for is to get the money from those solicitors and then slip off with it to South America.”

By this time Richardson felt that there was little more to be learned about the character of the man before him. He was no criminal in intent, but he was a poor, weak-willed creature who would always take the line of least resistance. He decided that the moment had come for telling him the truth, but in such a way that even if he divulged it to the two men at the hotel there would be no danger of their escaping justice.