Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? (25 page)

“I think I told you that these people are like ordinary criminals in that they do things in the same way and at approximately the same hour. You were last at that sink of iniquity at eight o'clock or thereabouts. They'll probably be found there each evening at the same hour.”

“Right! I'm starting off now, and I'll expect you at half-past nine.”

Richardson put in the time by writing up his notes on Mrs Esther, who was becoming so important a factor in the case. At nine-thirty precisely he was rapping at his friend's door. Milsom had returned; his tone was portentous.

“Come in, my friend, and let me unburden myself. Your knowledge of the psychology of these Johnnies is startling. What beats me is why they haven't more imagination. Why frequent the same gambling hell at the same hour night after night? It must be so deadly dull, and they stretch themselves out on the operating table for you police quite oblivious of the danger they are running.”

“It all depends on whether they guess that they're being followed. When they are put on the alert you'd be surprised at the variety of artifices that they have up their sleeves. I gather from your buoyancy of manner that you found our two friends in the same place as on the last occasion when you saw them.”

“Yes—sitting on the self-same chairs, I could bet.”

“After seeing them for the second time what is your opinion? Are they friends or just casual neighbours?”

“Friends; I'd stake my life on that. And what's more, I'd stake my life on the other man being the one I spotted in the photograph album of Sergeant Thoms— Bertram Townsend alias Frank Wills.” 

“And as Thoms told us, Townsend always works with Burton, and Burton, I find out, has been doing what I think are shady transactions with Mrs Esther. A jeweller I have seen this evening gave me the description of a man who, I think, is Burton: tall and slim, very well dressed, with a slight—very slight—cast in one eye.”

“That's the blighter to the life, the fellow who was there this evening with Townsend.”

“And in some way which I have not yet got to the bottom of, Townsend and Burton are mixed up with that fellow Otway.”

“Yes, of course; I saw them make signals to one another.”

“More than that, they've sent Grant down to get hold of Mrs Esther's bag on the excuse of wanting a memento of his dead sister.”

“I'm glad that I haven't got you on my heels. I should never sleep soundly again if I had. You must be nearing the end of the puzzle.”

“We're getting on,” said Richardson, “but we've several bad patches to cross before we get home on the murder.”

“I refuse to attempt to cross any bad patch until I've fed. Let me ring the bell.”

A waiter appeared in obedience to the summons, and Milsom gave the order with a look of enquiry at his guest at every dish on the menu.

As soon as the first pangs of hunger were assuaged, Richardson related the results of his tour round the jewellers' and his discoveries about the proceedings of Mrs Esther.

“You see, this wretched woman, by letting Burton into her confidence, has delivered herself into the hands of the gang.”

“Do you think that murdered woman was one of the gang?”

“Not the Burton gang. I think that she came into it by accident—the accident that she stole Mrs Esther's bag with something compromising in it.”

“What?”

“Probably we shall find that it was nothing more than the bill of the jeweller for having substituted cultured pearls for real ones.”

“So this poor Mrs Esther is up to her neck in a sea of troubles. These ruffians are blackmailing her with the jeweller's receipt by threatening to show it to her husband. Then another happy home will be broken up, for her husband will never forgive her. Jewels are the apple of his eye. He inherited the passion from a long line of Jerusalem ancestors.”

“I'm going to try and squeeze a confession out of her in her own interests, poor wretched woman. Her husband, I learn, is away. I'll get as much as I can settled before he comes back.”

“Well, more power to your elbow. Don't let my telephone number slip your memory.”

R
ICHARDSON
was in the superintendent's office at New Scotland Yard the following morning, when his telephone bell rang. It was a message from Sergeant Hammett to say that he was speaking from a call office. He had just returned from Harringtons, where he had verified the fact that Mrs Esther had changed two notes of large denomination for bundles of treasury notes.

This report was sufficient to warrant Richardson's calling on Mrs Esther, and he was just putting on his overcoat when the telephone bell rang again.

“I want to speak to Superintendent Richardson,” said a man's voice. “I am Principal Warder Parker, speaking from Brixton Prison.”

“Superintendent Richardson speaking.”

“We have a prisoner here, sir, who has applied to the governor for a private interview with you.”

“What's his name?”

“James Maddox, sir.”

“A private interview?”

“Yes sir. That means in sight but out of hearing of a prison officer, but that does not preclude you from bringing a second police officer with you to act as a witness, because I might tell you confidentially that the prisoner is not a man whose word can be trusted.”

Richardson decided that Brixton Prison should be his first port of call in order to give time to Mrs Esther to be up and dressed: a lady might object to be called on by a police officer at half-past nine. Huggins was directed to drive to Brixton Prison. He parked the car at the gate, and Richardson asked the gatekeeper to keep an eye on it while he and Huggins were in the visiting room. They had to wait for a few minutes while the prisoner was brought from his cell.

When the warder had brought him to the wire screen and had withdrawn out of earshot, Richardson said,

“I understand from the governor that you wish to see me.”

“Yes sir, I do. I've made a fool of myself, and I deserve anything the Court may give me, but I'm not the worst in this business. I was put up to it by another chap, and I think there's dirtier work behind all this that you ought to look into.”

“If you like to make a statement I'm ready to take it down.”

“Well, I'll begin right at the beginning. Just as Mr Colter died in New Zealand, my brother Ted met with a serious accident out motoring. He was too ill to travel, but he sent for me and gave me all the letters and the will and asked me to take them over to the lawyers in England. Well, I started, but when I got down to Wellington I got a telegram to say that poor Ted was dead. I'd got my ticket by then, and so I came just the same. We were one day out when I ran across Otway in the smoking room. He got very friendly, and I told him all about my brother's death and the legacy. Well, then he got me playing cards, and it was uncanny the way that man had all the luck. One night he kept plying me with drinks until I didn't know where I was or what I was doing, and the next morning he showed me an IOU, signed by me in a very shaky hand, for five thousand pounds. I was knocked all of a heap, but he was very nice about it, and said that there was no hurry and he wouldn't have pressed me at all if it wasn't that he himself was being pressed to pay a gambling debt.

“He used to ask me about my family. I told him that there were seven of us until Ted died, and he said, ‘What a pity: you'll have to share the estate with five brothers and sisters.' And then a day or two later he said, ‘I've been thinking over your affairs. If you had been your eldest brother you would have inherited the lot. Why shouldn't you impersonate your brother Ted when you see the lawyers in England? They won't know the difference, and you'll get the lot. Mr Colter had quite a big fortune, and you can be generous to your brothers and sisters.'”

“But Stella Pomeroy knew your brother Ted,” said Richardson.

“Yes, and that was the snag, but that devil had an idea for getting over that. There was a codicil to the will about founding an agricultural college for emigrants. He said that he could cut that off in such a way that no one could spot it; that I ought to go straight to Stella Pomeroy with the will and tell her that if she'd agree to say that I was Ted we'd cut that off and share the whole lot between us. As luck would have it, when I got to the bungalow I found that she was dead, so it all seemed plain sailing.”

“What about her brother?”

“Well, I met him at the funeral and he didn't seem to know that I wasn't Ted, but Otway said we had better keep him under our thumb. It wasn't difficult, because the lawyers unbelted and paid out cash by the week. Otway was a trial all this time. He was clamouring for the five thousand on my IOU, and sometimes he was quite threatening about it.”

“Why did you send Grant down to the bungalow to get a lady's black handbag mounted in gold?”

“I didn't send him: it was Otway; and that's what I was coming to. There's something dirty behind that business of the bag. I don't know what it is: it's for you to find out; but Otway's got some shady friends.”

“Didn't he tell you why he wanted the bag?”

“Oh, he told me a cock-and-bull story about a friend of his who was supposed to have given it to Stella Pomeroy and was afraid that his wife might get to hear of it.”

“Did he introduce you to a man named Burton?”

“Yes. He told me that they had met in New Zealand when Burton was on a trip round the world. Burton said, ‘Are you the man who was co-heir with Stella Pomeroy?' I said, ‘Yes, but how did you know?' ‘Oh,' he said, ‘it was all in the papers—how you had gone to her bungalow with the news that she had come into a fortune and found that she had been foully murdered half an hour before your arrival. They made quite a song and dance of it.'”

‘‘Well, this ought to be a lesson to you: you can't get away with frauds of this kind in England.”

“Of course if I told you that I don't care two pence about becoming a rich man you wouldn't believe me, but that's the fact, and as long as I don't have to pay Otway his five thousand I don't care. The funny thing is that when we came out of chapel this morning I found myself walking just in front of him. He whispered, ‘A still tongue, remember, makes a wise head.' I wonder what he'd think if he knew what I've been telling you this last twenty minutes?”

Richardson made a sign to the warder that the interview was at an end. The prisoner saw the signal and said, “Mind you, I haven't been telling you this with the idea of doing myself a bit of good. It was because I feel sure that there's a crime more serious than mine behind that black bag, and I think that you ought to know it.”

“Very well, I won't forget it.”

He and Huggins returned to the car and drove to Parkside Mansions, where Richardson learned that Mrs Esther had not yet gone out. He was whisked up in the lift to the third floor and shown into the sitting room to wait while the maid carried his card to her mistress. He was kept waiting an unconscionable time, and when Mrs Esther did make her appearance he saw that the cause of the delay was the extra coating of rouge she had administered to her cheeks to conceal her pallor.

She had screwed up her courage to the point of opening the attack.

“If you've come to worry me again about that wretched bag I shall write to headquarters to complain about you.”

Richardson adopted his suavest manner. “I shouldn't have ventured to call again about that bag if it hadn't been for your own mistake in describing it.”

“My mistake?” she exclaimed indignantly.

“Yes, madam. At the stores where you complained of having lost it you described it as being mounted in gold; to me you said that it had ivory mountings.”

“My bag has ivory mountings. I can show it to you.”

“I have no doubt that you can show me a bag with ivory mountings, but the bag that you lost and that we have recovered for you has gold mountings.”

The look of a hunted animal came into her eyes. “Supposing that it was my bag, why are you interested in it?”

His manner changed. He was grave as he said, “Mrs Esther, I must impress upon you that behind the loss of your bag lies a very serious crime, and it is out of a desire to protect you from the consequences that I am visiting you this morning. I beg you to tell me the whole truth.”

“I'll tell you nothing,” she said defiantly.

“Then I must tell you,” said Richardson, drawing a bow at a venture. “In that bag was the jeweller's account for exchanging pearls of high value for imitations.”

All her bravado deserted her. She licked her dry lips and tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible. Near the window was a cocktail cabinet. Richardson went to it and poured out a glass of brandy, which he brought over to her and induced her to swallow.

“That's better,” he said. “Now, Mrs Esther, let me repeat once more that my sole desire is to help and protect you. If you will tell me the whole truth you will never regret it.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“When did Stella Pomeroy begin to blackmail you about the contents of your bag? Tell me the whole of your transactions with her as far as you remember them.”

“Well, to begin at the beginning. I had my bag stolen in the hat department at a big store. I made a complaint at the office downstairs. A day or two later I received a letter signed ‘Stella Pomeroy.'”

“Have you kept the letter?”

“Yes.”

“Will you show it to me?”

She rose and went to her writing table and returned with several letters, one of which she handed to him. Richardson frowned as he read it.