WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT
When Carol Marks left the office of the man whom she had married but a few hours before, she announced to her horrified hearers that her husband was dead. Enquiries elicited that both Carol's father and her aunt, Miss Barman, had previously called upon the dead man. The motive for murder in the case of each was strong, and suspicion hesitatingly wavered between Carol, her father and her aunt.
Finally Miss Barman was arrested and at the trial Carol electrified the Court by confessing to the murder. An even greater sensation followed when Miss Barman walked into the witness-box and swore that she was the murderer. Later, when it was established that there had been a fourth visitor to Razor Street, the case took an unexpected twist to produce a tense and highly exciting climax.
This crime story, containing one of the most realistic and dramatic murder trials in modern fiction, is unquestionably the finest of Sydney Fowler's many excellent novels.
CONTENTS
BOOK I - CRIME
| I. | THE MURDER OF ABEL MARKS |
| II. | EVIDENCE OF THE BRIDE |
| III. | EVIDENCE OF A NEWSVENDOR |
| IV. | MISS BARMAN REMOVES THE BRIDE |
| V. | THE VACANCY OF MISS BARMAN'S FLAT |
| VI. | MISS BARMAN PREPARES TO TALK |
| VII. | MISS BARMAN HAS MUCH TO SAY |
| VIII. | THE QUESTIONS OF INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE |
| IX. | INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE COLLECTS STATEMENTS |
| X. | ATTITUDE OF MR. JOHN COLVIN |
| XI. | OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL |
BOOK II - TRIAL
| I. | ARREST OF CAROL BARMAN |
| II. | RETICENCE OF MR. JOHN COLVIN |
| III. | CONFERENCE WITH MISS BARMAN |
| IV. | MR. JELLIPOT WILL NOT FIGHT |
| V. | SIR HENRY BLACKETT TAKES A LEAN BRIEF |
| VI. | INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE HAS A NEW WITNESS |
| VII. | THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL STATES THE CASE |
| VIII. | WILLIAM MERRITT ENTERS THE BOX |
| IX. | HESITATIONS OF MR. MERRITT |
| X. | QUESTION FOR MR. JELLIPOT |
| XI. | SERGEANT SOLOMON OVERHEARS |
| XII. | RECOGNITION OF MR. JOHN COLVIN |
| XIII. | SURPRISING STATEMENT OF CAROL MARKS |
| XIV. | THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL HAS LUNCH |
| XV. | CROSS-EXAMINATION OF CAROL MARKS |
| XVI. | EVIDENCE OF MR. JOHN COLVIN |
| XVII. | MISS BARMAN ADVISES HERSELF |
| XVIII. | MISS BARMAN GIVES EVIDENCE |
| XIX. | THE JURY RETIRE |
| XX. | IN THE JURY-ROOM |
| XXI. | VERDICT |
| XXII. | INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE IS ASKED TO LUNCH |
| XXIII. | TRUTH |
| XXIV. | MRS. WOOLCOTT EXPLAINS |
FOUR CALLERS IN RAZOR STREET
BOOK I.
CRIME
CHAPTER I
MURDER OF ABEL MARKS
"IT looks," Inspector Combridge said, with excusable irritation, "as though I shall be late again. There ought to be a law against the discovery of murdered bodies after 2.30 p.m. on Saturday afternoons."
Superintendent Davis was sceptical of the utility of this proposal. "Considering," he said, "that we're dealing with people who break the law - - "
"Not the discoverers. They're often quite decent folk. And, besides, they'd get fined if they did. There'd be some consolation in that. . . Razor Street is in the Hatton Garden district, isn't it?"
"Yes. North side. Mostly manufacturing jewellers and allied trades about there."
"Nothing residential?"
"Am I a directory of London?"
"There's not much about it you don't know."
The superintendent, a large, slow man, with a delusively sleepy manner, was not insensible to flattery, as few men are. He responded with the information that his subordinate sought. "Yes, more or less, I should say it is. Some of manufacturers still live on their premises in the old style, though not many, and there must be a number of caretakers, and houses which are occupied by private residents. What's the point?"
"Only, being Saturday afternoon, I wondered what they were doing there."
"It may have been morning when he was killed."
"Has the brilliant young constable expressed any opinion on that point?"
"I didn't say Decker was brilliant. I said he had acted with promptitude and discretion. All he said when he rang up was that he was called in by a woman who took him to an upstairs office, where she said she'd found her husband dead a few minutes before. The man had evidently been the subject of a murderous attack, and was quite dead, so he thought he'd better ring us up here at once, and stay on the spot to see that nothing was disturbed. He added that the woman said she knew nothing about it, and he saw no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. But he told her she'd better stay till you should arrive, which she readily agreed to do."
"The dead man's the head of the firm?"
"So she said. Proprietor, I understood."
This conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the police-surgeon, Dr. Dillinger, for whom the inspector had been waiting. He ended it with: "Well, it's no good guessing. I shall know a bit more when I get on the spot." He went out with the doctor to the waiting car. . . .
The streets between New Scotland Yard and the Hatton Garden district are congested with traffic during five and a half days of the week, but from the early afternoon of Saturday until Monday morning they are comparatively clear, and it was in little more than ten minutes that the police-car entered Razor Street, and drew up at the door of No. 33, the double-fronted premises of A. Rosenbaum & Co., a firm that specialised in the manufacture of rings, brooches and pendants, as its sign-board testified.
"It may be a murder," Dr. Dillinger commented as he got out of the car, "but it looks more like a hoax to me."
He glanced up at the premises that, like most of those in the street, appeared quiet and vacant, as though they had been abandoned for the weekend by their human occupants. He looked round on a pavement equally quiet and bare. He had expected, from numerous previous experiences, that there would be a curious crowd round the door: that people would be leaning out of open windows along the street.
"My instructions are," Inspector Combridge smiled in reply, "that Constable Decker has the matter in hand, and that he is a discreet and capable man."
While they spoke, and ignorant of the good opinion of himself that Superintendent Davis had scattered abroad, P.C. Decker opened the door.
The discreet constable showed himself to be a lean man with an exceptionally long neck, and with a manner of solemnity suitable to the occasion. "I suppose," he said, as he led the way to the first floor, "you'll take a look at the body first; or will you see Mrs. Marks?"
"We'll see the murder first, if that's what you've got to show us," Dr. Dillinger, who was always willing to take the lead in conversation, replied.
The policeman opened the door of a large front room that was of the whole breadth of the premises. It was furnished well, if not sumptuously, as a business office. In the centre of the floor, facing the double windows, was a large mahogany desk. A swivel armchair stood before it, that had been pushed slightly back at a slant, as though for its occupant to rise, and by its side on the floor, as though he had fallen from it, a man lay.
He was a thin, rather small man, bald, approaching middle age, rather carefully dressed. By the attitude in which he lay it was hardly necessary that Dr. Dillinger should give his expert opinion that he was dead. He lay somewhat on his left side, showing no evidence of violence until the police-surgeon turned him over and revealed a depressed wound on the left temple, from which a small jagged fragment of bone protruded whitely. There was a little dried blood going backward toward the ear, and on the carpet was a dark stain.
"Scarcely needs a post-mortem here to tell how the beggar died," Dr. Dillinger exclaimed, with his usual cheerfulness. I suppose this is just how he was found?"
"Unless Mrs. Marks interfered with him before she called me in," Decker replied with precision, "he hasn't been touched at all."
"And the murderer," Inspector Combridge remarked, "was kind enough to leave the weapon behind. A few finger-marks from this, and there oughtn't to be much trouble in proving the case when we run him in."
"First catch your hare," the police-surgeon quoted. "But that's your business, not mine. . . . You've got the weapon all right. There's no doubt of that."
The inspector had lifted, in a handkerchiefed hand, a round metal bar, small but heavy, from the carpet on which it appeared to have been carelessly dropped after the fatal blow had been struck. He looked round the room, and observed a safe that stood open. Its cash-drawer was pulled out.
"Looks like robbery," he commented. "Mr. Marks if that was the gentleman's name, stayed a bit too long after the staff had gone, and had his head bashed in when the thief saw him, and they both got a surprise."
"That's about it," the doctor agreed. "But that's your business. All I want is an ambulance. I suppose there no objection to using the telephone? A man's afraid to put his hands anywhere since this finger-print business - - "
"No. You can do that. I don't suppose the murder used it to ring up his friends; and, anyhow, the discreet Decker must have pawed it over already."
Inspector Combridge thought that if the murderer had been one of those careless amateurs who leave finger-prints for the assistance of the police, he would find them in a more probable place. He added: "And now I'll have a few words with the mourning widow."
The words had a callous sound, and Inspector Combridge was not an unfeeling man, but the fact was that Abel Marks was not of an appearance to suggest that his loss would be the cause of inconsolable grief.
CHAPTER II
EVIDENCE OF THE BRIDE
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE had a surprise. He had expected to meet an elderly Jewess, probably of the broadly full-blown variety, for his observation was that the meagre type of the male of that race will prefer weight in a wife. He saw a girl of about twenty, slimly built, and with no suggestion of Hebrew blood in her freckled face, or her auburn hair. He had anticipated a woman expensively dressed, as the wives of wholesale jewellers are likely to be. He saw one who was clothed with a simplicity suggestive at once of good taste and an empty purse. He felt vaguely that something was wrong.
The incongruity suggested the unusual situation, from which is bred the unusual crime, and with this thought there came his first doubt that the murder might not be as commonplace in its occasion, nor its solution as simple as he had first been inclined to think. Not that he felt any suspicion of the girl who now faced him. There was nothing murderous in her appearance, and her ruddy hair alone would have disposed him to conclude her innocence in the absence of evidence of directly incriminating quality. Inspector Combridge himself had red hair. So had his five children. In common with all others who are similarly adorned, he had heard and resented the general aspersion that red-headed people are quick-tempered, and prone to strife. He knew himself to be just, cool, and particularly slow to wrath. He was prepared, on any appropriate occasion to enter into a heated argument that most red-headed men are of this disposition, and that red-headed women have even more admirably angelic qualities
Now he saw a young girl who did not look as though Mrs. Marks was likely to be her name. In fact, but for a new wedding-ring on her hand that he had been quick to observe, he would have called her Miss with no hesitation at all. In his own phrase, she had not "the married look."
Neither did she appear to be affected by grief, even to the extent that the widow of such a man as lay on the floor of the opposite room should be expected to feel, or at least display. Then why assume a relationship improbable on so many grounds? Even if Mrs. Marks were her name, she might be no more than a daughter-in-law, or a married niece. The assumption of the discreet Decker might have gone leaping beyond the fact. Inspector Combridge had learnt that the less you assume the less unlearning you have to do. He said cautiously: "You are Mrs. Marks, I believe?"
The girl who faced him was quiet in manner, but, though she showed no sign of grief, the inspector's experience was aware of bewilderment, perhaps anxiety, perhaps fear, which she was restraining with more success than all young women similarly placed would be able to do. Had she been a darkly-passionate girl, or one of those notoriously dangerous blondes - - ! It was curious that she looked at him now for one blankly puzzled second as though not recognising the name. But after that she said: "Yes. I suppose there's no doubt he's dead? The policeman I called in said that there was no doubt about that." She added, as though her continued presence needed to be explained: "He asked me to wait here till you came."
"Yes," he answered, "I'm afraid there's no doubt he's dead. Do you live here, or are these premises only used for business?" The inspector looked round as he spoke at a scene that puzzled him. It was a living rather than an office-room, but singularly free from any aspect of femininity. It looked like a room where a single man of some means, but of no fineness of aesthetic taste, might live, and in which his meals would be served in a utilitarian manner. A bird, or a cut from a good joint, but the mustard might not always be freshly made. . . . The question did no more than approach the outskirts of the enquiry on which he was engaged, but he had found that central facts may often be reached more quickly by a quiet commencement some distance away. It appeared to be one which should be easy to answer, but he noticed that the girl hesitated again before she said: "Oh, they're the business premises. Mr. Marks lives here, as well. There's nowhere else, if you mean that."
"Was there anyone else, as far as you know, likely to have been in the house when the murder occurred?"
"No. I shouldn't think there would be. I don't really know. I came in, and came upstairs, and found him - like he is now."
"You mean you've no idea who did it, or how it occurred?"
There was again that curious, hardly perceptible half-second of hesitation before she answered: "No. Not the least. I can hardly believe it now." And yet when the words came Inspector Combridge felt that they sounded sincere - unless, of course, she were the one who had struck the blow, in which case the moment's hesitation, followed by denial in a woman's convincing tone, might be the natural reaction as courage or desperation roused itself to face the ordeal on which liberty or life itself might ultimately depend.
But Inspector Combridge knew the danger of speculating in advance of the facts he possessed. In the prosaic course of his investigations, he had found that a crime is most often what it appears to be. Here was a plain case of murder and robbery under such circumstances as were natural to such a crime. It was asking for trouble to look round for less probable solutions before the obvious one had been negatively probed. Yet there was a shade more of official distance, a shade less of natural friendly humanity in his manner, as he asked: "As there was no one else in the house, I suppose you were able to let yourself in?"
"Yes. Mr Marks - Abel - gave me a latchkey this morning."
"This morning? For some special purpose today?"
"We were only married this morning."
Inspector Combridge paused upon this second surprising though it might be absolutely irrelevant fact. Actually, it explained some things which had seemed puzzling before. But it raised other questions that must be asked. The assumption that he was investigating a simple case of warehouse-breaking, with an incidental murder arising therefrom, lessened as he considered the girl before him in the light of a bride of a few hours.
He remembered having noticed that the dead man had been rather carefully dressed for one who was at the end of a business week. Well, that was explained now. But the girl who had married him, though it might be said that she was no worse dressed (or even better) in her way, had certainly not been hard to please in her choice of bridal attire. And married people usually remain together during their wedding-day. Violently bereaved brides must, he supposed, commonly show more emotion than this girl appeared to consider appropriate to the event. But he knew that the investigation of such a crime will often involve the exposure of awkward or unseemly matters which have no more than a fortuitous connection therewith. An innocent man may find an alibi impossible to establish without disclosing privacies of most unexpected kinds. It is as when a sudden earthquake rends away the side wall of a house, and the astonished occupants are exposed in instantaneous nakedness of love or quarrel, of sloth or prayer, of prying meanness or private grief. . . . "You'd better tell me about it," he said, "in your own way."
He left it to her to guess what he wished to know. There might be no little significance in what she took the question to mean.
She paused a moment, perhaps having her own doubt of the implications of what he asked, but when the answer came, it was brief and clear.
"We were married at the registrar's office this morning. After that I went home to fetch some things that I needed to have. I had arranged to get here at about half-past two, but it must have been later than that. About three. I came straight upstairs, and into this room first. I waited here for a time - perhaps twenty minutes. The place seemed horribly quiet. I'm sure it must all have happened before then. I was waiting and listening. I should have heard every sound. . . . After that, I got restless. He told me to come straight up to this room, in case I got here first, but he'd expected me to be sooner than that, and I thought, suppose he hadn't heard me come in, and might be waiting in another room as quietly as I was here. So I went across the landing and looked into the next room - and when I saw him I thought that he was dead from the way he lay, and I ran downstairs to fetch someone at once. There was a policeman on the other side of the street, and - well, he came back with me, and then asked me to wait here. That's really all that I know about it."
"You came in a taxi, or your own car?"
"No. By bus. I didn't have much to bring." She glanced, as she spoke, at a suit-case, cheap, light, and small, which stood on a chair by the door. Certainly, if that were all, her personal property had not been difficult to convey. It occurred to Inspector Combridge that, if the dead man were the owner of a prosperous business, the two events of morning and afternoon might have made an enormous difference to her worldly prosperity. The question of a will could hardly arise. Wills are annulled by the ceremony of marriage. Abel Marks would not be likely to have made one in the two or three hours that had intervened between marriage and death. But if he had. . . . He asked: "Was the front door fastened when you came in?"
"Yes. I think so. I'm - well, practically sure. Of course, I wasn't noticing particularly. I just put the key in the lock, and the door opened."
Given with some hesitation, this yet had the sound of a truthful, and indeed natural reply. Yet the inspector saw that, if she were herself the criminal, it was clever, too. It did not risk the downright lie of the assertion that she had found the door open, which might be refuted, or discredited in ways she had no time to consider, but it left the possibility there. She had not said with precision: "I unlocked the door when I came in."
"May I see the key?"
"Yes, of course." She handed him a Yale key of ordinary pattern and size, which he did not return. He said: "I can judge better when I've had a look at the door. . . . I suppose you'll be staying here?"
"No. I shouldn't like to do that. I shall go back."
He saw it as a natural decision. She would hardly be likely to wish to stay alone in this place of death. But would it have been alone? Had Abel Marks meant to bring his bride to a servantless home? Or perhaps they would have been leaving together in the next hour?
"I suppose," he said, "you don't know this place very well? You can't tell me whether there's a caretaker or anyone who ought to be here?"
"No. I've only been here once - no, twice before. But one of those times was a good many years ago. I don't know it at all."
"You would have been going away together this afternoon?"
The answer hesitated again. "No. . . . Well, yes. I expect we should. There hadn't been anything arranged. I can't say what Mr. Marks intended to do."
"I'd better have a look round now. You can come with me, if you like, or wait here. I may want to ask you one or two questions after that."
"I'll come with you, if you don't mind. I've had enough of being alone here. I'm afraid I've not been very much help."
"You can't tell me what you don't know," Inspector Combridge answered reasonably. He was still disposed to regard her as an innocent woman, perhaps not the less because she had admitted freely that she had been in the house long enough to have committed the murder herself before calling P.C. Decker in. Yet that again might be no more than the calculated candour of a woman too shrewd to make any statement which might be disproved by the observation of others.
As he opened the door of the room, they heard the sound of the telephone bell in the front office, and a moment later Dr. Dillinger met them on the landing with the words: "There s someone on the phone wanting to speak to Mrs. Marks."
"I'll answer that," Inspector Combridge said quickly.
But, for the first time, and with a surprising sharpness, Mrs. Marks asserted herself against him. "I'll take my own calls, if you please."
As she spoke, anger, or some other emotion, gave a quick flush to her freckled cheeks. She stepped forward, entering the room where the dead man lay. To be first, the inspector must have used actual violence to push her aside.
He knew that he had no shadow of legal right to insist on taking the call, but that deficiency might not have deterred him had he felt assured that it would have assisted his investigation to do so. His trouble was that he was as yet quite unsure, like a hound on a doubtful scent. He might have wasted twenty minutes already talking to a woman who could give him no more help than she had done in the first sentences they had exchanged, and who was as innocent as himself of any responsibility for the crime, or connexion with it. Still there was a contrary possibility. She had been the one to announce the discovery of the death. She had been alone in the house with the murdered man. Violent and fatal blows have been struck before in the world's history by attractive young women of innocent appearances. Even, it is immensely probable, by some whose hair has been neither blonde nor black. And there had been those curious momentary hesitations before she spoke - - Inspector Combridge remembered seeing a switchboard in the office below.
Doubtless, Mr. Marks would have the telephone switched through to his own office when the premises were otherwise vacated at midday. Doubtless, also, the conversation which was now to begin could, at that switchboard, be either interrupted or overheard. With this thought, the inspector descended the stairs with such celerity that by the time Mrs. Marks (taking the longer way round the desk to avoid the dead man, though the doctor observed that she looked down at him as she passed with unblinking eyes) had lifted the receiver to her ear, he was already in a position to overhear the conversation, and with a pencil poised over the operator's note-pd to take it down.
"Is that you, Carol?" a man's voice asked, rather thin and high-pitched. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm here, and - - "
"Oh, Dad," the girl's voice interrupted. "I'm so glad you've rung up! I'm all right, but a dreadful thing's happened. Mr. Marks has been killed."
"Killed? Good God! Are you sure? It can't be much more than two or three hours since - - What's happened?"
"He was dead when I got here, in the office upstairs. I didn't find out at first. He'd been shot, or hit on the head. It was a horrible sight. The safe was open, as though he'd caught someone clearing it out. The police are here now. . . . Where did you say you are?"
"Didn't I tell you? I'm at your Aunt Carol's. We - - "
"I'll come to you," she interrupted again, "as soon as the police finish here. I don't see what they think they can do. The man who did it isn't likely to come back to be caught."
"No, he wouldn't do that. But I don't know what their procedure is. I don't think we'd better wait here for you. I'll come over at once. You'd better wait till I arrive. What a dreadful thing for you to find!"
"Yes, it was rather a shock. Well, good-bye, Dad. I'll wait here, of course."
Inspector Combridge made a full shorthand note of this conversation, and then frowned over it with a vexed conviction that he had been wasting his time. And yet - did not father and daughter take the bridegroom's sudden decease in an exceptionally heartless, almost casual way? It was a shock, of course! An unpleasant shock for a girl to come upon the body of a man violently slain. But that would be so without the important addition that it was the man to whom she had pledged herself till death did them part a few hours before. "What a dreadful thing!" her father had said, but it had been in no more than a flurried tone, as being the appropriate words which such an event required. . . . And yet might it not be argued that this absence of pretence, of aping grief or other emotions they did not feel, was an indication rather of innocence than of guilt? Would not a bad conscience have felt the need of demonstrating in a different way? Suppose that this young girl had married a much older and certainly unattractive man for the money which such a bargain brings, which was, in itself, the simplest, most probable explanation of such a union, was she (or her father either) likely to be overwhelmed with grief at such a tragedy as had occurred? Was the fact that they made no false parade of feelings that were not theirs to be counted against them as evidence that they were responsible for the crime? The law requires different proof from that - which is fortunate for innocent men.
But then again - when an older man of substantial income, if not of actual wealth, marries a girl who is young and poor, in an endeavour to buy her love, does he not seek to show her the advantages of the comfort that money gives? Does he leave her at the door of the registrar's office to fetch her suitcase herself, and bring it by bus to her new home?
It was more after the manner in which a new housemaid would be engaged and arrive. . . . Inspector Combridge, climbing the stairs in less haste than he had gone down, decided that there were still some things that he would like to know before he could put an attractive red-headed girl finally out of his mind as a candidate for the condemned cell.
The red-headed one, whether or not she were responsible for her own bereavement, showed no disposition to linger beside the body of the husband she had lost so quickly. She was already crossing the landing as the inspector reached it. She said at once: "It was my father. When he heard what had happened, he said he'd come here at once."
Inspector Combridge must recognise this to be a frank and sufficient summary of the conversation he had overheard, but he resolved that he would remain on the premises long enough to meet the father-in-law of the murdered man, and that he would occupy the intervening time in an examination of exits and entrances which had been too much delayed already. He said "I'm going to have the look round which I mentioned before, and which was interrupted by your telephone call." Mrs. Marks followed him down the stairs.
CHAPTER III
EVIDENCE OF THE NEWSVENDOR
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE locked and unlocked the door several times, while Mrs. Marks looked silently on. He tried putting the key from the outside into the unlocked door, which opened before it could be turned. In fact, unless the heavy bolts on the inside were shot, or a larger key turned, the door, which had no other fastening, would not remain closed against the slightest outside pressure.
"I think," he said, "that it must have been locked when you came in."
"Yes," she agreed, with no apparent reluctance, "I should say it was."
She added a moment later: "It looks as though the man got in some other way."
"Unless Mr. Marks knew him, and let him in."
She made no comment on this suggestion, to which he silently added: "Him - if not her," and a sense of equity influenced him to add aloud, as though in rebuke of the unspoken thought: "Of course, he might have hidden on the premises before they were closed at midday."
He thought that she controlled relief at this suggestion to reply tonelessly: "Yes. It does sound rather more likely."
Its probability was not decreased as they went round the rear of workshops, the windows of which were strongly barred, and their outer sills coated with ancient dust. They found the yard-door to be not only locked, but bolted and chained on the inside. They could observe no other means of entrance or exit. "However, he may have come in," Inspector Combridge concluded, "he must have gone out by the front door." Unless, of course, he - or she - were still there, which he did not say. But there was no reason that the murderer should not have walked out by the obvious exit. A Yale lock fastens itself when the catch is loose, and he would only have had to close the door quietly for Mrs. Marks to have found it locked when she arrived.
Still, the inspector felt that he had taken a first step forward along the slow path of investigation he knew so well. A man - probably a stranger - leaving business premises during Saturday afternoon when they are normally closed, is very likely to be observed. He remembered having noticed a newspaper-stand at the street corner, which was only four doors away. He decided that enquiry there should not be longer delayed. As he thought this, there was a sound of cars pulling up at the pavement outside. He said: "This will be the photographers, and the ambulance. You won't want to see them take him away. You'd better go back to the sitting-room upstairs, and wait there. I'll bring your father up to you, if he should come before they get off. By the way, what name will he give?"
"Merritt."
"Very well. I suppose he won't be long now? Had he far to come?"
"About half a mile. It was Isabel Street he spoke from Clanranald Mansions. He was at my aunt's flat."
She retired to the sitting-room, as he had proposed, and he turned his attention to giving instructions that there should be no avoidable disturbance of the scene of the crime. Being satisfied on this score, he ran rapidly downstairs, and out of the house. Arriving on the pavement, he strolled to the corner with the air of one to whom time was of no value at all, and paused before the wooden trestle on which were displayed the penultimate editions of the evening papers, together with a thin background of the residue of morning publications, and a few commercial and other journals for which there were customers in that business district.
The proprietor of this stall was so short and slender, and of so youthful a manner in his brisk alertness, that a casual observer might have taken him for a half-grown boy, unless a closer inspection had disclosed the greying hair, and the many wrinkles at the corners of the dark, quick eyes. He greeted Inspector Combridge in a way that showed that he was either able to recognise him personally, or was at the least aware of the profession to which he belonged. "Afternoon, Inspector. Anything I can do for you today?"
"Yes. You might tell me who you've seen going in and out of Rosenbaum's during the last three or four hours."
The dark eyes looked at him dubiously. "I might not have noticed particularly."
"Or again you might. I don't suppose you miss much that's going on round here."
"There isn't much going on to miss. Not on Saturday afternoons. It wouldn't be worth while to keep on if other days were the same."
"Which makes it easier to notice anything that does I happen?"
"It might if you wasn't mostly looking the other way."
Inspector Combridge observed some reason in this reply. Upper Lot Street, at the corner of which they stood, is a much busier thoroughfare than Razor Street on any day of the week, and on Saturday afternoons this difference is at its highest point. It was reasonable that the man's eyes should be turned most often in the direction from which his customers came. But the inspector felt also that the replies he had received, though good-humoured in tone, might easily have been of a more helpful quality. He concluded that the news-vendor did not mean to tell him anything without knowing why he was asked, and that frankness concerning that which must soon be publicly known was the best card for him to play.
"Happen to know anyone on the press?" he asked, in his most casual tone. "I might know one or two."
"You might know one who'd give you something for the first tip of a murder not far from here?"
"Exclusive? I'd say he would." Very well. Give me what help you can, and in five minutes you can be ringing him up. By the way, what s your name?"
"I'm called Dick mostly round here."
"Very well. That'll do. How long have you had this stall?"
"Most of twelve years."
"And you must know the people by sight who go in and out of the places round?"
"I don't suppose there's over many I don't."
"Nor I. You know Rosenbaum's?"
"Yes. I know Mr. Marks. It's been his business the last six years."
"Do you know anything about his movements today?"
"I should say he's there now."
"So he is. What I want to know is whether you've seen anyone else going in or out there during the last three or four hours."
"You mean since the workpeople left at one?"
"Yes. Since then."
"Well, I've seen one or two."
Dick's reply seemed to be the prelude to information which must be important, and might be of vital quality. But, having said it, he paused, and stared at the inspector as though suddenly realising the significance of the questions he was asked.
"You mean," he said, "that Marks has killed someone this afternoon?"
"I didn't say so. Why do you suppose that?"
"If he'd killed them, they couldn't have come out."
"Obviously not. It's Marks who's been killed. He's been murdered, and most probably robbed. So you see why I look to you to give me all the help that you can."
"Well, I'll do that. There was a man who went in about one-thirty. I couldn't say to ten minutes one way or other. He stayed a good bit. Say half an hour."
"What sort of man was he?"
"Shabby. Not young. Fifty or more. Rather tall. Bowler hat. Not much to look at, if you know what I mean."
"You'd know him again?"
"Yes. I reckon I should. I should if I saw him walk."
"How did he come out? As though he didn't want to be seen?"
"Not to notice. Not special. I didn't look at him that careful."
"Naturally not. Which way did he go?"
"He came right past me, along here."
"So that you got a good look. . . . Anyone else go in?"
"Yes. A lady went in a few minutes after. She came out
quicker."
"You mean she came out in a hurry?"
"No. I didn't mean that. I meant that she didn't stay long."
"A young lady was it?"
"No. More what you'd call middle-aged. About the same age as the man, but a bit different style. Not so much under the weather, as you might say."
"Know her again?"
"Yes. Anywhere."
"And after that?"
"That's the lot that I know of."
The reply was disconcerting. If he had seen nothing of Mrs. Marks either going in or coming out in agitation to summon P.C. Decker, it discounted the quality of his previous observation, though its value might not be entirely destroyed. Or if he had seen her and could describe her as an elderly lady of fifty-five, it made him even more unreliable in memory of what he saw. Apart from that discrepancy, his evidence was almost exactly what the inspector had hoped, though hardly expected to hear.
He would have proceeded at once to probe the defect in observations which seemed otherwise to have been so exactly made, and were stated so confidently. But even as he considered how best he could frame a further query which would test the value of the replies he had already received, a taxi came round the corner at which they stood, and pulled up as nearly before the front of Rosenbaum & Co.'s premises as the ambulance allowed. Guessing who it would most probably contain, he hurried back, intent upon having a few words with Mr. Merrit before he should meet his daughter, or, at the least, of making sure that it would be in his presence that that meeting would take place.
As he approached the taxi, two people descended from it. The man, who got out first, was thin and of somewhat nondescript appearance. He stooped slightly. By the way he peered at the dial, it might be inferred that he was short-sighted: by the way he fumbled and hesitated over paying the fare, that a taxi was not a vehicle that he was accustomed to use.
The woman who followed was as tall as he, and looked taller. She stood on the pavement, quiet and self-possessed, waiting for her companion to discharge the fare, and watching the detective's approach. Inspector Combridge, using his wits, observed a woman who, though of a generation older than that to which Mrs. Marks belonged, and nearly a head taller, was not without some resemblance to the younger woman. He remembered that Mrs. Marks had said that her father would be coming from her aunt's flat. Evidently this was the lady, who had decided to come to her niece's assistance. The inspector, who had been puzzling himself for two previous seconds as to why it should have taken Mr. Merritt such a considerable time to come half a mile by taxi, saw that there might be a sufficient explanation in the fact that he had had someone for whom to wait.
"Mr. Merritt, I expect?" he asked, in his more genial, less official manner. Even if Mrs. Marks must be under the vague suspicion attaching to one who has announced the finding of a murdered man until some other person can be indicated as responsible for the corpse - a suspicion which had been appreciably lessened by the newsvendor's evidence - that was no sufficient reason why her relatives should be treated with the reserve appropriate to those who are on the doubtful border of criminality. "And, I suppose - - ?" He looked at the lady, who announced herself without waiting for her companion's lagging introduction. "I am Miss Barman - Carol Barman - Miss Merritt's - I should say Mrs. Marks's aunt."
"I am Chief Inspector Combridge. I believe you have heard already that Mr. Marks has been murdered this afternoon. Mrs. Marks is upstairs. If you'll come in here, I'll give you a few details before you see her."
He had spoken to Miss Barman, rather than to her companion, as though recognising the stronger character, and while he did so he led them into the warehouse that was at the back of the ground floor. The offer to give them information was not one to which they would be likely to object, though it might be no more than a pretext for gaining it from themselves - information which might prove to have no importance beyond enabling him to eliminate Mrs. Marks from the case in a final, orderly way.
CHAPTER IV
MISS BARMAN REMOVES THE BRIDE
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE discovered a single chair, of the cane-seated variety, for Miss Barman's use, and a stool for Mr. Merritt. He decided that a table-corner would be sufficient for his own use. Miss Barman said: "You'd better take the chair, William," and seated herself on the high stool. Her brother-in-law obeyed her in a bewildered, preoccupied manner. He appeared to be overwhelmed by events which had passed either beyond his comprehension or his control.
Inspector Combridge was brief and lucid in description of the tragedy which he had been called in to investigate, but it was not his habit to distribute information with a promiscuous liberality, and he saw no reason to mention the conversation which their coming had broken off. He concluded: "That's how it is, and I expect you'll be prepared to take charge of Mrs. Marks, and probably get her to return to her own home. It couldn't be very pleasant for her to remain here, especially as I shall be leaving a constable on the premises. But I needn't tell you that everything will be safe with us. . . . What I wondered was whether either of you could tell me anything that would throw light on the crime."
Miss Barman answered for both: "No. I don't think either of us would be likely to do that. Perhaps I ought to tell you that we have never known much about Abel Marks' private affairs. And though, of course, you might call it a dreadful thing, happening in this sudden way, I don't want you to think that it's any great grief to us. We consider Mrs. Marks first, as you'd expect us to do, and there's no doubt that Carol's had a very lucky escape."
The inspector saw that he had met a lady who was prepared to talk, and in a downright manner. He still wished to hold an open mind between the more probable theory that Abel Marks had been killed by a warehouse-breaker, with no other incentives than fear of capture and greed of gain, and the alternative possibility that he had been struck down by a personal enemy (perhaps through jealousy of the morning's marriage?), on which theory it was possible that these people might be able to give him information of greater value than they would be aware. Anyway, a little further knowledge could not be harmful to have. "I gather," he said to Miss Barman, "that the marriage did not have your approval?"
She still answered for both: "We did all we could to prevent it, from first to last."
"Young people," he sympathised, "won't take much advice these days. They prefer to find out for themselves."
But Miss Barman wouldn't accept this explanation. "No," she said with emphasis. "It wouldn't be fair to her to put it like that. Carol thought first of her father all along. A bit too much, if you ask me. But we'd better tell you the whole tale now we've begun."
Inspector Combridge prepared himself to listen patiently, though in a fresh doubt of whether he might not be losing time during which the murderer would be making his traces harder to find. The talkative lady had already said that there was no information regarding the crime to be had from them, and his experience was that tales which the police are anxious to hear are usually those which others are slow to tell. Still, on the balance of doubt, he would have listened to the offered narrative, if Mr. Merritt had not obtruded himself for the first time.
"No, Carol," he said. "The Inspector won't want to be hindered with all that now. He's got this murder to investigate, and his hands must be full with that. Carol can come home now, and that's all that matters to us."
The inspector, only momentarily confused by the fact that aunt and niece had the same name, judged correctly that the offered tale would have contained particulars of Edward Merritt's actions or circumstances which he preferred should remain untold, but it did not follow that they would assist the enquiry he had on hand. Anyway, here was information which could be had, if it were required, at a later hour. It might be of far greater urgency to obtain a fuller description from the newsvendor of the man who had called upon Abel Marks during the afternoon, and to start it circulating through the usual channels. Mr. Merritt's interposition tipped a doubtful scale.
Inspector Combridge rose briskly from the table. "Yes," he said. "I don't want to be rude, but I have got my hands full at the moment, as Mr. Merritt is good enough to observe. You'd better take Mrs. Marks home with you, as you propose. You must let me have the address where she can be found. 19, Clanranald Mansions? That's quite sufficient. I know where they are. . . . We shall want a short statement from her, but I'll arrange about that tomorrow."
Miss Barman said: "Oh, well!" and shut her mouth firmly upon the words. The exclamation was in a tone which
made him vaguely uneasy, and inclined to wish that he had reached an opposite decision a moment before. But he must not blow hot and cold.
Five minutes later he saw William Merritt, with the two Carols, old and young, depart in a taxi which he had himself been obliging enough to stop for them in Upper Lot Street, and walked back himself to the street corner to complete the conversation which their arrival had interrupted.
The newsvendor was still there. "I tried to tell you," he said. "But you'd gone too quick. Them was the two that I saw going in before."
"You mean that those were the people who called on Mr. Marks separately during the afternoon? You are quite sure about that?"
"I'd take my Bible oath on the man."
"And the woman?"
"I'm about as sure."
"You're quite certain that the second wasn't a smaller woman a girl of about twenty?"
"You mean her that's gone off with them now? No, I can't say that I ever set eyes on her before."
"I'm not trying to trap you. I think you're telling me all you know, and as accurately as you can. But it's a fact that, whether she went in or not, that young woman came out and called a constable in from the other side of the street about an hour before I got here."
Dick Skimmer heard this without appearing to be either surprised or abashed. "Well," he said, "what of that? I didn't tell you nothing happened I didn't see. It might have been when I was away having some tea."
"You were away part of the time?"
"About ten minutes."
"Or more?"
"Not much."
"Did anyone take your place?"
"No. There's never anyone here except me."
"You just leave the papers?"
"Yes. If a customer takes one, he puts a penny down. It's too public for them to steal, even if they'd be mean enough for a try. I don't lose tuppence a month."
Inspector Combridge considered this. It was possible that Carol Marks might have entered, and come out to call the policeman, within the time that the man had been away from his stall. - Possible, but no more. Her own account made the two events somewhat further apart, but he considered that time may go slowly while a woman waits in an empty room, and perhaps not least so when she is a nervous, if not an unwilling bride; and the man's absence, for all he knew, might easily have been for twenty minutes rather than ten. It was possible. But one thing was certain. It could not be stretched to leave a margin for another individual to have entered, murdered, robbed, and left before Mrs. Marks had arrived. If the man's evidence were to be relied on at all, it seemed to follow that Abel Marks had been killed either by William Merritt or Carol Barman, or that they had called, one after the other, gazed at a murdered man, and gone silently away, which was not an explanation easy to entertain.
Inspector Combridge cursed himself that he had not listened to the tale which Miss Barman had been so willing to tell. It was ten to one, or even much higher odds, that, if she had any guilty knowledge, she would have given herself away, either by statements the falsity of which would have been demonstrated subsequently, or by omission to mention some damning fact, such as that of her earlier call.
Well, it was useless to lament an error already made! It was through such inevitable blundering that the truth would often be reached by a patience that did not tire. He went back to give some instructions for the guarding of the premises during his absence, and for a brief telephone conversation with Scotland Yard, and then took a taxi to Clanranald Mansions with a determination to listen with greater patience to whatever Carol Barman might have to stay.
CHAPTER V
THE VACANCY OF MISS BARMAN'S FLAT
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE pressed a bell and had the satisfaction of hearing it ring. That, in fact, was all the satisfaction he had, for, though he rang more than once, no one opened the door.
He lifted the letter-box flap, and his temper was not improved by a vision of uncarpeted boards. It appeared that No. 19, Clanranald Mansions was not only empty of human life, but bare of the furnishings by which residence is probably, if not certainly, indicated. How great a fool had he been? It was a question on which speculation was unpleasant, and its answer was not easy to guess.
"Well," he thought, "there's the man in the lift. I suppose I shall soon know. I wonder what sort of fairy tale I should have heard if Merritt hadn't tipped her off to keep a shut mouth?" He remembered that he had first had this address, as her aunt's residence, from the younger woman. It appeared to indicate that she also was in the plot. Wholesale robbery, by marriage and murder, it seemed to be, with an audacity that he had seldom met. Doubtless it had been the younger woman's allotted part to give the alarm, after the major criminals had cleared off. The simulated plundering of the safe was calculated to be sufficient to put him on a false scent, which, but for the newsvendor's observation, it might have done.
Yet, if so, why give the address of an empty flat? Surely that was to invite a suspicion which might otherwise glance aside. It seemed so pointless a folly that the inspector recognised the possibility, even the certainty, that the explanation must be less simple than that which had suggested itself to his mind at his first instinctive resentment against the trick which appeared to have been played upon him; and which had been sharpened by the suspicion that he had had the actual murderers in his hands, and had allowed the whole party to escape together, leaving him with no better means of tracing them than a false address which they had combined to foist upon him. Why, it had actually been his own proposal that they should take the younger woman away!
Yet - if the whole tale of the marriage were not a hoax, the meaning of which was not easy to read - if there had been any hope that the bridegroom might be murdered without the guilt being traced to the bride or her accomplices (relatives or not, yet a relative he judged the elder woman to be) - what could be the object of the false address, of the unfurnished flat? Perhaps they had taken fright at something he had done or said, and fled suddenly in consequence of that panic fear? Had they seen him talking to the man at the corner, and been conscious of that sharp-eyed individual's observation when they had left the premises of the murdered man during the earlier afternoon?
Yet - if that were so, had they prepared the false address in advance, and why had the younger Carol used it when first she did? If it had been her aunt's legitimate home, there was the difficulty that it could not have been cleared in an hour, even if murderers in flight would be likely to burden themselves with the furniture of a four-roomed flat.
All these thoughts passed through the detective's mind as he waited at the door of the lift, with the whining noise of its approach in his ears.
The liftman, on his appearance, proved to be uncommunicative at first. No. 19 was occupied by Miss Barman. It was not to let. He would say no more until his tongue was relaxed by the sight of the detective's card, and the details which he then added did nothing to reduce the mystery. Miss Barman was a single lady of whom he spoke with respect. She had been a tenant for several years, possibly longer. In fact, longer than he had held the position of caretaker to the premises. She was quiet in her habits, and punctual in her payments.
But, two days before, Messrs. Loames & Prideaux, the second-hand furniture dealers in Easter Street, had sent a van and removed most of her effects, with her consent and assistance. He had informed the landlords by telephone of this event, as he was instructed to do under such circumstances, and they had replied that there was no rent outstanding and that they had no occasion to interfere. He had had no subsequent instructions from them to offer the flat for reletting, and, when he had asked Miss Barman whether she were leaving, he had received no more than a curt negative in reply. He believed (though he was only able to judge from what he had seen removed) that the contents of the kitchen, and probably a few other essential articles were still in the flat.
Miss Barman, he said, had been at home until about two hours earlier, when she had left with a gentleman. Mr. William Merritt? He could not say. He knew no one of that name. In fact, he had scarcely seen her visitor, who had come up the stairs, avoiding the lift. They had gone down together by the same way, but there was no singularity in that. Miss Barman was a lady who used the lift to come up, but would often descend by the stairs rather than ring for it to take her down.
Inspector Combridge found that he had to adjust his mind once again. It appeared that the address was genuine, and to that extent Mrs. Marks must be acquitted of any deception. So, perhaps, should the other two. The episode of the vanishing furniture, strange though it was, might have no connexion whatever with the murder of the Razor Street jeweller, nor was it a matter which Miss Barman would be likely to disclose to strangers whom it did not concern. Besides, he must not forget that he had rejected her offer to explain something to him, and what it was he might never know. But the death of the man whom she and her brother-in-law were said to have visited during the afternoon, and whom her niece had married earlier in the day, still awaited solution, and he must lose no time in the effort to retrieve whatever blunders he had already made.
How then was he to proceed? The essential question was whether Miss Barman were now in flight, or would shortly return to her empty flat. He decided that an inspection of it might go far toward answering that question. He asked the caretaker for permission to go over it, and received the reply that he must refer to his employers, who would not be normally at their offices at so late an hour on Saturday. Perhaps, if the inspector would look in again on Monday morning, he could obtain the necessary permission, or Miss Barman might then be in, and able to speak for herself.
It was a delay to which Inspector Combridge was not prepared to agree, though he recognised that he was proposing a trespass which, if Miss Barman were an innocent woman, might be very hard to defend. He said "Come now, Mr. - Mr. McAdam, is it? I knew you were Scotch at the first glance. So is my wife's sister-in-law. Born in Kirkcudbright. One of the nicest women I ever met. - You're not going to tell me that you don't know of any way of getting in touch with the owners or their agents during the weekend? Suppose the place were on fire?"
"I could get through to Mr. Ritchie, at his house," McAdam admitted, "but that would be a trunk-call."
"Well, I'm willing to pay."
"I'm not allowed to ring him up without something serious happens.
"I haven't asked you to. Give me the number, and I'll do that in the name of Scotland Yard, and you can hear his reply."
The caretaker wavered, but the three-fold influences of respect for the law, the personal magnetism of Inspector Combridge, and his somewhat nebulous connexion with Kirkcudbright, were too strong to resist. The Scotsman looked at his watch. "It's nigh a shilling," he said seriously, "up to two, sevenpence from that time till seven, and five-pence after that hour. It's six-fifty-three now, so I suppose you'll - - "
"No. I think not. As a matter of fact, there'll be no charge for this call. I'll get through at once, if you'll give me the number, and come with me to the box. I suppose you've got one where we can get through?"
They were on the ground floor, standing at the door of the open lift, as the conversation came to this point, and McAdam would have led the way across the hall to a telephone-box that was concealed by the foot of the curving stairs, had they not been interrupted by the approach of a white-aproned vanman, who held out a dirty envelope. "Mr. McAdam?" he said. "I suppose that'll be you?"
The liftman tore open the envelope, and glanced at the few lines that it contained. He said to the vanman: "Yes, that's right; you can bring it in."
He handed the note to the inspector. "I don't see," he said, "that you'll be wanting to make that call."
Inspector Combridge read a pencilled note:
Please let the bearer have access to my flat to deliver some furniture. I shall be grateful if you will tell him where to put the things. as well as you can, if he isn't sure.
Carol Barman.
He followed the vanman, who was already moving toward the street, to ask: "When did you get this?"
The man looked puzzled. "It's all right," he asked, "isn't it? We're not wanting to clear anything out. The lady wrote it while we were loading up."
"How long ago?"
"Well, about two hours back, or it might be a bit more."
"You're not usually working at this hour?"
"No, we don't reckon to deliver at this time of day. Not on Saturdays, anyhow. The guv'nor wanted to put it off, but she said she needed some things special for the weekend, and she'd pay time-and-a-half rather than wait."
"She said this not more than two hours ago?"
The man showed some irritation at the pressure of these seemingly pointless questions, but did not refuse reply. "No, I didn't say that. She gave her orders when she came at three o'clock, more or less. She called to write the note while we were loading up, and she said she'd found she mightn't be here when we were bringing it in."
They were in the street before this explanation concluded. A tarpaulin-covered lorry stood at the pavement, showing the name of Loames & Prideaux along its side. The vanman said: "Right you are, Tom. Carry on," to his mate, who commenced to throw off the cover, disclosing a number of articles of domestic furniture. The inspector observed that though they were solidly made, and in reasonably good condition, they were not new. He remembered the name on the lorry as being that of the firm who were said to have removed the lady's furniture two days before. "Not the first time you've been here?" he suggested.
The man looked at him doubtfully, and his tone had become surly as he replied: "The guv'nor says if the lady likes to sell her things and then buy them back, it's no business of his."
The manner in which this was said suggested that there might be others who would do well to adopt the guv'nor's attitude of aloofness to a maiden lady's eccentric ways, but the man had already given the information that the inspector sought.
Two days before Miss Barman had been in such need of money that she had sold the furniture of her flat. The call had been so urgent that she had not been able to wait the advantages of a public auction, but had accepted whatever a firm of second-hand dealers could be persuaded to give; and the inspector had sufficient knowledge of such transactions to conclude that she must have received much less than the things were worth.
Today, she had bought them back, at whatever profit to Loames & Prideaux they had had conscience to ask, and she had been willing to pay. She must have called to arrange the transaction after her afternoon call upon Mr. Marks, and made the second visit when on her way to Razor Street with her brother-in-law, to fetch Carol Marks away.
That she had obtained the means of redeeming her furniture from Mr. Marks appeared to be a most probable guess. On the most innocent interpretation of her share in the events of the afternoon, she had lost no time in reaping advantage for herself from her niece's marriage. And the father appeared to have acted separately with an equal promptitude. - And after that, when the father had telephoned to enquire concerning his daughter's welfare, and in professed ignorance of the tragedy which had occurred, the two had been together in the almost empty flat.
In its simplest, most innocent aspects, and even if (which was becoming increasingly difficult to believe) it had no connexion with the bridegroom's death, the conduct of the two older people appeared to furnish an extreme example of instant begging by the impecunious relatives of the young bride of an elderly, and presumably affluent man; but even this explanation did not clear the event of some very puzzling features. There was Miss Barman's gratuitous statement that they had both done their utmost to oppose the marriage. That might be no more than a bold lie: a denial hurriedly made before the accusation arose. But there was also the fact that the married pair had separated immediately, the bride of the wealthy man going off to fetch her clothes, and then travelling by bus, with the weight of her suit-case on her own arm as she came to her husband's door. This was not, perhaps, beyond some simple, reasonable explanation. But it was certainly queer. And when murder and queer events go hand-in-hand (as they often do) their relations to each other, in the inspector's experience, would prove to be of more than a casual kind.
So he wondered and thought, as he returned to Miss Barman's flat, not by the lift, but following the slower course of the stairs. For he was resolved to take the opportunity of entering it, and he had been quick to take the caretaker's hint that he might now do so by a method which would have no sanction from him, but with which he would not interfere.
He found that the flat consisted of a lounge, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small but sufficient kitchen. Clanranald Mansions is not one of the newest blocks of flats. It has no central heating. It cannot boast of hot-and-cold in its bedrooms. But the rooms are larger and better-proportioned than has been the more recent mode, and Miss Barman's lounge, when fully furnished, had been one into which no gentlewoman need have been ashamed to invite a guest. But now it contained little besides a fender, and some artistic but commercially valueless pictures upon the walls. One of the bedrooms was in a state of almost equal nudity. The other contained a bed, a chest, and a few minor articles upon its carpetless floor. The kitchen appeared to have retained its furniture and equipment undisturbed, and the debris of a meal for two, on its small deal table, revealed that it had been used as a living-room earlier in the day, when Mr. Merritt had received his sister-in-law's hospitality, presumably after their separate visits to the Razor Street premises.
Inspector Combridge concluded from what he saw that, whether Miss Barman had regarded the departure of the more valuable of her effects as being of a permanent character, or had foreseen how quickly they would return, she had intended to hold her ground in the flat she rented, for which purpose she had retained the first necessities of civilised existence, though its comforts had been removed.
The redeemed goods were now commencing to arrive, some by the lift and some by the stairs, and the vanman, seeing the inspector to be walking about the flat with the confidence of one who is conscious of his own right, very naturally concluded that he had spoken previously with an authority which he certainly did not possess, and when he asked: "You're not going to tell me that you've brought back all Miss Barman's furniture on that lorry?" the man answered readily: "No, sir. Only some things that she wanted particular. It's mostly bedroom stuff that we've brought now. The rest is to come on Tuesday. We're full up on Monday with other jobs."
"You seem to know where to put it without asking McAdam?"
"Well, sir, we get some practice in seeing where stuff is most like to be fitted in. And it's only two days since I took this lot away."
"You must have a good memory, all the same," Inspector Combridge replied genially, as he moved toward the door. He had decided to give Miss Barman a call at a later hour, when she would presumably have returned, and to use the interval for a much-needed meal. But before his eyes had come round to the entrance, he was greeted by the voice of the lady herself: "I'm sorry that I was out, Inspector; but you seem to be making yourself quite at home."
CHAPTER VI
MISS BARMAN PREPARES TO TALK
"I BEG your pardon," Inspector Combridge said, in regrettably mendacious self-justification, "but I thought I'd better wait as you were out; and seeing these men bringing the things in - - "
"I'm sure your professional curiosity was aroused."
It was not the way in which he had intended to complete the sentence, which was one of those which may be advantageously broken short, and he recognised that she had the better of this opening exchange. Yet he did not think she was quite at ease, and he had leisure himself for a thought that there might be self-exposure in the asperity which her words contained. Would it not have been wiser, more natural, to have greeted him in a more indifferent manner, if her own conscience were clear? But, against that, was not the condition of the flat itself a sufficient reason for her annoyance? Whatever explanation there may have been for the movements which her furniture had suffered she might resent the observation by one whom (unless it were of a criminal character) it certainly did not concern.
But whatever annoyance she may have felt appeared to have left her mind as she went on in a quieter voice: "I suppose you want to see me again about my niece's trouble?"
"I did want to have a few words with you."
"I'm afraid I can't ask you to sit down, except in the kitchen. I've been having some of my things moved." She added with a smile: "But I expect you've been able to deduce that for yourself."
He thought: "She's either an innocent woman, or one with an exceptionally good nerve." He said aloud: "I'm sorry to have to trouble you at an awkward time, but I shall be quite comfortable here."
They were in the kitchen as he concluded this sentence, and she offered him one of the two chairs which it contained, and then began to clear the table. "I don't know how you're feeling," she said hospitably, "but it's a long while since I had a meal. There's not much here, but I'm going to make myself a cup of tea, and you're welcome to anything I can dig up."
He hesitated in his reply, a feeling of satisfaction that she was evidently prepared to talk being complicated by another which required him to maintain some formality of distance between himself and a woman whom it might be his duty at any moment to take into custody on a capital charge. He was not one of those officers who will endeavour to establish friendly relations with suspected persons that they may entrap them the more easily. But he reminded himself of the doubtful axiom (which was not doubtful to him) that if she were innocent she would have nothing to fear from the justice of English law, and answered: "Well, just a cup, thanks. If you're sure it's no trouble to you." And then went on at once, while she continued to busy herself with the crockery and the electric kettle: "In a case of this kind, we always ask everyone who's been in immediate contact with it to make a statement of what they know. They're not legally obliged to comply, but it saves a lot of trouble to us if they do, and sometimes to them as well."
"I tried telling you once," she said, but with amusement rather than hostility in her voice, "and I understood that you were too busy to hear."
"Well, we all make mistakes sometimes. I didn't know then that you'd seen Marks during the afternoon."
She showed no surprise at this statement, nor did she attempt denial. She said simply: "And now I suppose you'd like to know what I was doing there."
"Yes, I should."
"I went to get back £80 17s. 10d., which I'd paid two days before."
"You mean paid to Abel Marks?"
"Not exactly. Though it was going to him."
"And he gave you the money?"
"Yes. He did that." Her voice as she said this was quiet and matter-of-fact, but he thought he detected an under-current of grimness, as though it would have gone ill with Abel Marks, had he declined to disburse the money.
"And do you know that Mr. Merritt also called on Mr. Marks during the afternoon?"
"Yes, I know that."
"And did he also call to collect an outstanding debt?"
"No. His account wasn't the kind that anyone would be able to pay. . . . If you'll just wait till the kettle boils, I'll tell you several things that you don't know, and that it would take you some time to find out, if you ever could. But what it's got to do with you, or with Abel Marks' death - well, it wouldn't be any use for me to say it's just nothing at all. You'll say you've got to decide that for yourself, and don't want advice from me. . . . But I'll tell you one thing. I'm one who likes to talk straight, and I'm glad he's dead. And if you can find anyone who'd wish to see him alive again, you'll have done a harder thing than finding out how he died."
"I had understood already," Inspector Combridge concurred, "that you hadn't any strong affection for him."
"Not a shred. As a matter of fact, I met him this afternoon for the first time, though I'd heard talk enough about him during the last three years, and off and on before that."
"But your niece looked at the matter rather differently?"
"So you'd think, seeing what she's just done. But you'd better let me tell the tale from the start. If we don't get the beginning first, we shall be a long while reaching the end."
"Well, I'm ready to listen."
But Miss Barman said no more till the kettle boiled, and an improvised meal of the oddments the larder held, but with an unexpected daintiness of service, had been laid out. Then she sat down opposite her uninvited guest, and started her narrative.
CHAPTER VII
MISS BARMAN HAS MUCH TO SAY.
"WILLIAM MERRITT," Miss Barman commenced "married my sister Sylvia, about twenty-two years ago. He was a harmless worm of a man then, as he is now, and if you think he'd got the backbone to kill Abel Marks, for which you may see, before I've done, that he had cause enough, you'll save time if you begin making another guess.
"He was a traveller for Aaron Rosenbaum then - the old man's been dead these seven years - and Abel Marks was another. But Will had some money his uncle left coming to him when he was twenty-five, and he used it to go into the retail trade. I remember my sister saying some nasty things about Abel then. Nothing serious, but he used to call her Miss Barmaid, which he seemed to think a good joke, and she didn't agree. I don't suppose he'd have come on the scene again only that, after they were married, he used to call on William for orders, and William gave all the trade he could to his old firm.
"Carol was born when Sylvia had been married about two years, and three years later my sister died. William's business did well up to that time, and a good bit longer, but there came a time when it began to go down.
"I wouldn't say that was William's fault. He worked hard enough, and he didn't spend; but the fact was that people were moving away. The world was changing round him, and he went on as though things would always be just the same.
"Things had changed at Rosenbaum's too. Abel had given up travelling, and became general manager. Aaron Rosenbaum was an old man, and he was nearly blind in his last years. He used to trust everything to Abel, and when he died Abel came forward with an offer to buy the business, and the money was in his hands.
"No one knew where it had come from, though it was easy to make a guess. Things were said, but nothing could be proved, and the end was that the business passed into Abel's hands, though he didn't alter it's name.
"William was still buying from Rosenbaum's, and when he began to do badly it was natural that he was slower to pay, so that the account grew bigger from year to year. Other firms pressed him if he got much behind, and so he dealt more and more where he could still get credit, having been on the books so long.
"By this time, Carol had left school. She hadn't gone on to college, as her father had first meant her to do. Times had got too bad for that. She went to serve in the shop.
"Of course Abel watched how William's debt was increasing from year to year, and though he didn't reckon to do the travelling now, he took to calling on William himself, and talking over his business with him. You can't blame him for that. There came a time when he wouldn't let William have more goods, beyond the amounts that he paid off. You can't blame him for that either. They'd done business for many years, but if William couldn't make the shop pay, he couldn't expect Abel to go on for ever filling the hole.
"But Abel Marks saw Carol when he called, and began to talk more about old times, in a friendly way, and less about the cheques that he didn't get. William found that if he made out his order, and then asked Abel to stay to tea, the fact that he hadn't paid anything for a week or two mightn't be mentioned at all, and of course it was clear that it wasn't William but Carol he stayed to talk to.
"That might have been well enough if she'd taken the fancy to him that he did to her. Of course, he was twice her age, and a good bit more, but I don't say there need have been overmuch trouble for that. It was a difference on the right side, and I've seen it work well enough. But Carol didn't look at it in that way. She said he made her feel sick, and if he touched her she wiped her hand
"Of course, matters couldn't go on like that very long. Abel tried to get Carol to go out with him, and when her excuses got too many to be believed he stopped pressing her, and began pressing her father another way.
"If you think I'm going to tell you that Carol made up her mind to marry him just to save her father from going broke, it's because you don't know the girl, nor did her father ask her to in a straight-out way. I daresay he looked at her sometimes like a begging dog, but he wouldn't go beyond that, and when he saw how she felt he began to look round for another way of escape.
"This is where John Colvin comes in. John travels for Kohn & Auster in ladies' handbags, and he got to know Carol over the counter, in the same way as Abel, only she soon found time to meet him outside, and after a few weeks there wasn't much of the position he hadn't heard."
Miss Barman paused at this point, as though considering her words, or hesitating upon how much of the climax of these events it would be needful for her to tell. Inspector Combridge was aware of a sympathetic interest in the narrative which threatened to deviate perilously from the attitude of official aloofness which should be observed by those who represent the impartial implacable law. The importance of legal retribution for Abel Marks' violent end had receded before the problem of why Carol Merritt, with the disposition she had, and the loathing she had expressed, had become his wife; and of how John Colvin had resigned her to him. Yet he was not so negligent of his duty as to fail to observe an increasing probability that the fatal blow might have been struck by the hand of the younger woman. Well, if it were a fact! Even young, attractive, red-headed girls must not be permitted to marry men they dislike, and then free themselves with a hard blow from a metal rod.
"I don't know," he said, "that I have often heard a clearer statement than you have given me of what happened up to that point. But you're feeding me, and eating nothing yourself. There's no such hurry that you need to go on like that. That is, unless you're anxious for me to get away."
If Miss Barman had any guilty knowledge in her own mind, or had been fearful of the object which had caused the inspector to follow her so quickly, she must have felt some satisfaction at the implications of this remark. She may have felt that the deadly searchlight of the law, if it had paused ominously upon her, was now disposed to move on, to cast its penetrating light on other potential victims of the blind justice that it proposed. If she thought this, she may have recognised it as the consequence of the clear truthfulness of the narrative she had so far given, and this may, or may not, have encouraged her in concluding the tale to its more dramatic, or what might even be called its more tragic end. - But a shadow of tragedy, she might have said, which the event of the afternoon had lifted away.
She showed no sign of such thoughts, or of anything beyond a mild and natural satisfaction in the praise that she had received, as she answered: "Oh, well, it's a good listener makes a good tale! It isn't often you meet anyone who'll just listen without asking questions that make you wander about. But there's no particular hurry for you to go. I've got no callers, and nothing more to do for tonight. I thought I might be putting up Mr. Merritt when I hurried that bedroom furniture back, but now they've decided to go back home together. - I mean Mrs. Marks and him. It seems queer calling her that!"
"I gathered," Inspector Combridge admitted, with the candour that candour breeds, "that there was a special reason for getting the second bedroom furnished tonight."
"Yes. I supposed you'd have got all you could out of the men. But it wasn't much they could tell. I've no doubt you've been puzzling over what I've been up to during the week, but it's all part of the same tale, and we'll have it in its place, if you don't mind."
"I'm quite willing for it to wait its turn."
"Well, where was I? I'd told you something about John Colvin, and how it was plain to see that Carol preferred him to Abel Marks, or anyone else, for that matter, and how Abel was pressing her father to find some means of discharging his debt, and hinting at bankruptcy as the best way out, which he knew that William hadn't the courage to face as a man should; and William's mind was going round and round like a trapped mouse, trying to find a way out.
"William knew that John Colvin had money, though it turned out to be less than he had hoped, and he must have got the idea into his head that John might buy the business, and enable him to pay Rosenbaum's off. The young people had the same idea, but John's got a cautious side, and he wasn't sure that he'd got enough capital to carry the deal through, and then to set the business up with the kind of stock that would give it a fresh start.
"But he was in love with Carol, and he was misled in two ways. In the first place, Carol knew that there was a large sum owing to Rosenbaum's, but she thought it was much less than the true figure. That was William's fault. If he had to tell the truth, he always did it in a mean way, as though he were giving away something he ought to sell. He'd had to own to her that he owed Abel a lot more than he was able to pay, and she thought she knew what the figure was, but she was miles out.
"Then, William began to talk in a mysterious way of a rumour that one of the multiple stores wanted the row of shops where his business is. I don't believe there was a word of truth in it from first to last. I believe it started in William's own talk, and was whispered from mouth to mouth till it came back to him, and he came to half believe it himself. Anyway John got to think there was something in it, more likely than not, and that may have influenced him. He knew that if he married Carol something had got to be done, or it would be the signal for her father's business to close in a i way that neither of them wished to see.
"So with one thing and another, John raised all the money he could, and they went to a lawyer together. The lawyer, a Mr. Jellipot - - "
"Jellipot?" the inspector interposed. "In Basinghall Street? Yes, I know him. Well, they went to a good man."
"So it sounded to me. Anyway, he wouldn't do anything until proper accounts had been prepared, and when John saw them he had a shock, but I suppose he thought he'd gone too far to draw back. He bought the business for a lot more than it was worth, and thought he'd given William enough money to clear his debts, which weren't much except the one big amount that was owing to Abel Marks.
"William was to go on managing the business on a weekly salary, but John took the buying and the financial management into his own hands. It was all done so quietly that there mayn't have been a dozen people who knew that there'd been any change at all.
"The best of it, from John's point of view, was that Carol thought she was free now to marry the man she chose, without any fear that her father would suffer, and her engagement to John was announced to their friends even before Abel got a cheque which must have been one of the biggest surprises he ever had. The worst of it was that John had cleared himself out so completely that they had to put off the idea of marriage for six months, which might seem all for the best, Carol being as young as she was, but she didn't see it in that way, and though she didn't say much to John, and let him think she agreed that it was the best way, I know from what she let out to me that a little less caution would have pleased her a lot more.
"This was about five months ago, and it's not many weeks since it's been known that they were taking a house, and were to be married about this time, though they'd have to furnish on the hire system, which John hated doing. But meanwhile things hadn't been going smoothly at all. There had been constant quarrelling between William and John, with Carol trying to make peace between them, and finding every week that it got harder to do.
"The fact was that William had got fixed in his ways, and didn't like the younger man interfering, as he felt it to be, and expecting to know all that went on, and saying that it must be done differently more likely than not. And John found that the business was going even worse than he had been told - and he'd thought that had been bad enough - and he saw he'd made himself responsible for its future debts, which he took in a very serious way, particularly as his own money had gone.
"I daresay it might have been different if there'd been fresh capital to put into it, but when Rosenbaum's had been paid there hadn't been much margin for that. Practically all the money that John had been able to find had gone into Abel's bank, and, apart from the fact that that debt was paid, everything was about the same as before, except that John's money was gone, which wasn't pleasant for him.
"Then the wholesale stores didn't show any sign of coming forward to buy them up, and altogether John Colvin felt that he had been rather badly let in, and that if William had been franker with him, or even with his own daughter (which would have come to the same thing), the whole matter would have been dealt with another way.
"It's necessary to explain all this because, if John hadn't been feeling rather bitter to William, it isn't likely that things would have happened quite as they did, but up to ten days ago it looked as though it would all end well enough.
"John was keeping on his job at Kohn's - he'd been too cautious to give that up for the risk of a business that didn't pay - and it had been agreed that if William's accounts showed a loss at the end of the year the shop should be closed down, or sold for anything it would fetch - and then Carol came round here in a dreadful state to say that her father had been arrested, and was in Brixton jail."
"You mean he'd been arrested for debt?"
"Yes. That was what it was. It turned out that there had been an old account of nearly £100 owing to Rosenbaum's that William hadn't disclosed, even when they'd had an accountant in to make up the books, as Mr. Jellipot had insisted they should."
"You mean he had concealed it deliberately? It sounds an almost impossibly silly thing to have done."
"He persists that he overlooked it completely. But he says that that was because it had been agreed with Abel some years before that if he kept up his payments on later accounts he wouldn't press him for that. There may have been truth in that, or he may have been afraid that John would back out altogether if he had disclosed more debt than he did, and just hoped for the best. He always did go along in that muddled way.
"But even if there had been an understanding that he wouldn't be pressed for the old amount if he kept later accounts paid up, I'm told that it wouldn't have been any good in law, and, anyway, William didn't try fighting it out. As soon as Abel Marks understood what the position was he had a writ issued, and when William got it he just kept it in his pocket, and said nothing to anyone.
"I suppose he'd got enough trouble with John by then, and he may have thought that Abel couldn't do him any more harm now that the business was sold, and he had accepted the position by taking John's money for the bulk of the debt.
"Anyway, that's what he did. I mean he didn't do any thing, and Marks went on - I expect you'll understand the legal proceedings better than I do - and in the end William had an order from the court to pay three pounds a month, which he did for two months without telling anyone, saving it out of the salary he got from the shop, so he says, but the third month he left it a bit too long, and next thing there were two men in the shop who'd been sent to take him to Brixton prison.
"Well, Carol told me this - or as much of it as she knew then - and I said that if it was no more than a matter of three or four pounds I could manage that. So we got into a taxi together, and cashed a cheque at the bank, and then drove on to the jail.
"But when we got there we had a shock. They were very polite, and seemed sorry that Carol took it so much to heart, but they said William had got to stay there for six weeks unless the whole debt were paid.
"Then we went on to see Mr. Jellipot, and he was very kind too, but he said that William had been a fool, and if he'd brought the writ to him he could have dealt with it in a much better way. He explained to us that he wasn't being imprisoned for debt, but contempt of court, and there was no way of getting him out by then except paying the whole debt. Only, if Mr. Marks would take less, the court wouldn't mind the contempt, and William could come out at once. Perhaps you can make sense of that.
"So he got Abel's solicitors on the phone, and they said their instructions were that he wouldn't budge till the last penny was paid, which was just what we had expected to hear.
"Well, I'd done all I could, and Carol wired to John, who was away travelling for his firm, to come home at once. I don't say she was wrong, but he had to come back from Newcastle, and explain to his firm, which he didn't like doing, and they were rather nasty about it, which didn't improve his temper.
"Carol wanted to sell the stock anything - to get her father back home - you can understand how she felt - and John said point-blank that it shouldn't be done. He said they'd have to part with three hundred pounds' worth of stock at a forced sale of that kind to raise the needed amount, and how was the shop to be carried on, or the debts paid, after all the best of the stock were gone. As it was, he told me after, there was a quarter's rent due, and not nearly enough in the bank to pay it, so that he'd have to use part of his next month's salary cheque to make up the amount.
"He said that he'd about ruined himself helping her father already, and he wouldn't do any more. He'd got himself into the mess, and he must just stick it out like a man. After all, six weeks wasn't a year.
"The end of it was that they had a row. Carol said that if her feelings meant nothing to him, she was glad she'd found it out before it was too late, and she gave him back the engagement ring; and he told her that she only cared for her father, and didn't care that she ruined him, and she could sell the stock, and do what she liked with the money, but she needn't expect to see him again, and he walked out.
"Well, she came to me to know what she should do, and in the mood she was in then I think she'd have liked me to advise her to take John at his word, and sell the stock for anything it would fetch, but I told her that it was John's property, and as she was the one who had broken off the engagement she certainly couldn't go on robbing him any more. The fact was that I thought that there was a lot to be said for John's point of view, and that William had got about what he deserved. I told her the best thing she could do would be to make it up with John, and tell him she'd been in the wrong, but she wouldn't listen, and went off nearly as angry with me as she was with him."
"And so she decided to marry Marks, as the only way of getting her father free?"
"Yes. But I didn't know that. I never guessed she'd be such a fool till I got a letter from her today by the second post. If I'd had it two hours earlier, I reckon I could have stopped the marriage. But not thinking that her temper - or perhaps that and her love of her father together - would make her go so far, I worried over it after she was gone, and though I didn't think William had got more than he deserved, I didn't like the idea of Abel Marks thinking the family couldn't pay him off, nor of John Colvin looking at it in the same way. I felt very sorry for Carol, too, and I can't say I liked to think of William shut up where he was, especially during the nights.
"I don't know what motive was strongest to make me do it, and I felt that I was being silly all the time, but the end of it was that, after worrying for two or three days without being able to make up my mind, I decided to raise the money myself.
"I didn't think I should have much difficulty. I'd only got about seven pounds in the bank, but I have £45 quarterly from my trustees, and I thought, even without explaining more than I cared to do, that I could get an advance from them. So I could have done if one of them hadn't been abroad, but, as it was, I found I should have to wait at least as long as the mail would take from Chicago and back, and there wasn't much use in that.
"I tried other ways that didn't succeed, and like a fool I didn't let Carol know what I was doing, meaning to give her a pleasant surprise, but the harder I found it to be, the more obstinate I got, and, in the end, I sold almost all the furniture here. But you'll have guessed that before now."
"Yes," Inspector Combridge admitted, "I thought you would be coming to that. So it was your money that got Merritt out?"
"I got Loames & Prideaux's cheque yesterday afternoon, and took it round to Mr. Jellipot, as I wasn't clear how I ought to proceed. Unfortunately, it was after banking hours before I could get to see him, and he said that the best he could do would be to get William released first thing this morning. When I got Carol's letter at about ten-thirty today, I thought of nothing at first but stopping the wedding, but she hadn't said where it would be and I was too late to catch her at her own home, and then too late when I got to the registrar's office.
"When I found that the marriage had actually taken place, I thought that at least I'd have that money back. If Carol had sold herself for £80, which was what she had, Abel Marks wasn't going to have it from me as well, while I ate on bare boards. I meant to have that money back from him, even though I - - "
Miss Barman checked the half-spoken words, with an obvious realisation of the sinister implication which they might bear, in view of the condition in which the body of Abel Marks had been subsequently found.
The inspector had followed her graphic narrative with a trained perception of its straightforward sincerity, and a consequent sympathy which might hardly have observed her last exclamation as being more than the ordinary currency of indignant feeling, had she not checked it so abruptly. Did it indicate a temper which, if it were thwarted in that which it was determined to have, might express itself in a sudden murderous blow? Or might it be argued that only innocence would express itself so rashly, knowing what she did, and to whom she spoke?
Inspector Combridge asked himself these questions, and was unsure what the right answer should be. He looked at the woman who was now clearing away a meal of which she had taken no more than a perfunctory share, with light, firm, capable hands, and was uncertain again. She had courage, he had no doubt. Perhaps hardness - not normally, but when anger arose, or indignation was stirred. Physically, she was better fitted than her niece for a deed of violence such as that which had been fatal to Abel Marks.
He sat silent, reviewing the tale she had told, and reminding himself of the damning fact (if the newsvendor were to be believed) that she must almost inevitably have been the last to leave before Carol Marks arrived. Certainly there were questions that must be asked. But ought he to caution her first? He waited until the table was cleared, and she came and sat down again. "And now," she asked, "is there anything more you would like to know?"
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUESTIONS OF INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE.
"I WANT," Inspector Combridge answered, "to know a lot more than I do now, but whether the tale you've been telling me is a matter for further enquiry depends upon whether it had anything to do with the man's death."
"I thought," she said, "that you ought to know that I was there this afternoon, and why I called upon him, and I didn't see how I could explain it a shorter way."
"Yes. I see that. I am much obliged to you for explaining it so fully. It clears a number of matters that I might have had to check up. And I'll say this. I believe you've told me a lot of truth, which we don't always get. And I don t think you'd be the sort to kill anyone without more reason than you seem to have had.
"But there's the fact that, if one witness is to be believed, you were the last caller that Abel Marks had before his wife says that she found him dead. I don't say that's the case, and we don't accuse anyone of such a crime without enough evidence to make us feel sure that we're on the right track, but, on the other hand, we don't assume anyone's innocent till we're equally sure.
"There are some questions I should very much like to ask, but I think I ought to say first that you're not bound to answer them, if you'd rather not, and that any replies you give may be used in evidence if a charge should be made."
Miss Barman took this warning coolly, seeming, indeed, slightly amused. "You mean," she said, "that if I killed Abel Marks, and you ask me whether I did, I should be silly to give an affirmative answer? As if anyone would!"
But there was no reflection of that amusement in Inspector Combridge's eyes as he replied: "No. I shouldn't say you'd be silly at all. You'd be saving time. If you did it, we should find out in the end. It's a slow business at times, but we reckon to end up at the right address."
"And if I were to refuse to talk, after the way you've warned me, it would be almost like saying the same thing?"
"No. I couldn't go quite that far. You're not bound to talk. There's no getting over that. But it's a fact that innocent people don't often object."
"Well, I don't object at all. You can ask what you like and I'll answer you, unless it's something I don't know."
"Then I'll ask what time it was when you called on Marks this afternoon?"
"I didn't notice the time. But as nearly as I've been able to reckon since, I should say about two-thirty."
"And when you left?"
"About ten minutes later."
"He couldn't have made much difficulty about giving you the money back?"
"Oh, but he did! He refused altogether at first."
"But you were very quickly able to find a convincing argument?"
"I told him that he wouldn't like Carol to know that he hadn't been responsible for letting her father out - that I had already done it, before he got round to the jail."
"And you wouldn't tell her that, if he gave you the money back?"
"Yes. What good would it have been?"
"I suppose it had been his bargain with Mrs. Marks that he should arrange for her father's release as soon as the ceremony had been performed?"
"Yes. I believe he drove straight from the registrar's office to his lawyers to arrange that, and found that he was about two hours too late."
"In what form did he pay you the money? I suppose it would be a cheque for such an amount"
"No. It was all in cash from the safe."
"You mean in notes?
"Yes. One of £50, four of £5 each, and the rest in notes, and small change."
"And you went straight on to the place where you'd sold your furniture to buy it back?"
"To buy as much of it back as they'd let me have."
"And I suppose you paid the notes over to them?"
"I paid them £70, and kept the £1 notes, and the small change."
"And when you saw them you arranged for as much as possible to be delivered this evening?"
"Yes."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I thought when William came out, and found what Carol had done, he might prefer to stay here with me rather than be alone. I didn't know quite what state he'd be in after being shut up where he was."
"And after that you saw them again?"
"I called a second time after Carol telephoned."
"You mean after her father had telephoned to her?"
"Yes. After she said that Abel was dead, and I decided to go back with him to Razor Street, to see if there were anything I could do. I thought they might get here while I was away, and take the things back, and, apart from whether I should want them or not, there'd be a second cartage to pay if they did that."
"When did you make the second call?"
"We stopped the taxi on the way to Razor Street."
"I should have thought that both you and her father would have wanted to go straight to Mrs. Marks when you heard what had happened."
"It didn't make many minutes' difference."
Well, Inspector Combridge reflected, that was true enough, and her answers had agreed with the vanman's tale. He had observed before that no two people placed in the same position will act exactly alike. But he asked himself whether it had not more the appearance of a plan already thought out than the natural reaction to so startling and tragic a call. The doubt prompted the apparent banality of his next question.
"Until Mrs. Marks told her father on your telephone, you had no idea that anything was wrong?"
"I thought that things were about as wrong as they could be. I should have said a good bit worse than they are now. I didn't know that Abel was dead, if you mean that."
"You say that he paid you the exact amount that it cost you to get Mr. Merritt out of jail?"
"Yes. I wouldn't have taken a penny less, nor accepted a penny more."
"Yes. I see how you felt. . . . You know that Mr. Merritt called on him before he came on to you?"
"Yes. He went home first, and when he found what Carol had done he went to find Abel, and have it out with him, and after that he came on to see me. I found him here when I got back."
"Do you know with what object he called on Marks?"
"I never know why William does anything. I doubt whether he knows himself more often than not. I expect he'd got worked up while he was in Brixton (I suppose you know they treat men like cattle there?) and wanted to let off steam, so to speak. And he wasn't likely to feel any better about it when he heard what Carol had done. He went to quarrel, of course. He says he gave him a father's curse. It sounded silly, but it certainly seems to have worked faster than most curses do."
"There's just one other question. When Marks gave you the money, I suppose he went to the safe to get it?"
"Yes."
"Then do you remember whether it was unlocked, or did he unlock it, and - more particularly - did you see him lock it again?
Miss Barman did not reply to this question with the promptitude that she had shown previously. Inspector Combridge hesitated between the idea that she was making a genuine effort to recall something she had not noticed, or that she was considering what reply could be safely made without the danger of incriminating herself. But after that moment's pause she answered with apparent frankness: "I'm sure he opened, and I'm almost sure he unlocked it. I remember how the door swung back. But if you remember how the safe stands in relation to his desk and the chair by it, where I was sitting, you'll see that he would have had his back to me when he opened it, and I shouldn't have seen clearly what he did - not if I wasn't noticing very particularly.
"But as to closing it afterwards - well, I can't remember! I can only say that I think I should have noticed if he had. I think he took the money out of the drawer, and counted it, and came straight over to me. But of course he might have closed it as I was going out. It would have been a sensible thing to have done."
Inspector Combridge did not dispute that. He said: "I should be glad if you would hold yourself in readiness to come to New Scotland Yard on Monday morning, when we may send for you, and ask you to make a statement of what you have told me, in a more formal manner."
Miss Barman received this request with a moment of rather grim silence, and Inspector Combridge would not have been greatly surprised had she refused. She may have heard before then that people are sometimes "invited" to the head-quarters of the metropolitan police who find themselves unable to leave when they have finished the statements which they have been so politely encouraged to sign. But she said at last: "You won't need to trouble to send. I'll be there at ten-thirty, if that will do."
She said good-night with a recovered cordiality, and Inspector Combridge went thoughtfully away.
CHAPTER IX
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE COLLECTS STATEMENTS.
INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE collected statements. By the Saturday following the abrupt exit of Abel Marks from the human life which he had not greatly adorned, the inspector had a total of nine, and his trouble was that they were so straightforward in themselves, and so consistent with one another that he was constrained to the belief that they were substantially true. Truth is not often present to excess in such documents, nor is it an ingredient normally likely to irritate the mind of a conscientious detective, which the inspector certainly was. The trouble with these statements was that they explained everything except the one fact that he was determined to get - the cause and culprit of the killing of Abel Marks.
In addition to the collection of these nine documents of varying length and importance, there had been a great deal of systematic enquiry which may be dismissed briefly, as its results were of an entirely negative character. A number of professional warehousebreakers who happened to be out of jail at the time were invited to explain their movements between 1 and 4 p.m. on the Saturday afternoon, which they did with an alacrity and thoroughness more satisfactory to themselves than to the inspector. It may seem unreasonable that men against whom there was no charge whatever should be subjected to such inquisition, and improbable that they would respond to enquiries which they well knew to be made without legal right, but the fact was that they were too well aware both of the importance of maintaining friendly relations with the police, and of clearing themselves of a suspicion which (if the actual criminal should not be discovered) might otherwise remain a black shadow upon their names, concentrating upon themselves from that day the unwelcome watchfulness of the police, and probably (or so they believed) increasing the severity of the sentences they would be likely to receive at their next convictions.
But while these enquiries appeared to establish that the crime had not been committed by any of the likely professionals, a minute examination of the premises failed to discover any traces such as a bungling amateur would be expected to leave. An exhaustive search for finger-prints had discovered none which could not be identified as belonging to those who had legitimate access. These included some which had been made by William Merritt, by Carol Barman and Carol Marks, but these were not inconsistent either with their innocence or the statements which they had signed. The weapon with which the blow had evidently been dealt bore no marks whatever, which proved no more than that the murderer had had sufficient coolness and forethought either to protect his hand or to wipe it clean.
A similarly exhaustive examination of doors and windows had established beyond reasonable doubt that whoever had entered or left during the afternoon must have done so by the front door.
From another angle, the idea that the crime was one in which robbery had been the primary intention was reduced from its original plausibility to the extremely improbable by the fact that the cash was short by no more nor less than the exact amount which Miss Barman said that the dead man had handed over to her. But this, while discounting the probability that the crime had been the work of one who had entered with the intention of robbery, also supported the veracity of Miss Barman's story in an essential particular. The banknotes which she had paid to Loames & Prideaux that afternoon were also identified as having come from Rosenbaum & Co.'s safe, and while these facts did not amount to proof that she had not murdered Abel Marks, they did conclusively demonstrate the truth of the account she had given of the object of her call upon him.
It remained a conceivable explanation that an intending thief, after striking the fatal blow (perhaps in a sudden panic at finding himself discovered) had been so appalled in the next moment at what he had done that his first motive had left his mind. But was this theory consistent with the coolness that must have paused to clean a weapon hastily snatched up on the unexpected entrance of Abel Marks? Bank-notes of substantial value, of which there had been some still left in the safe, he might have felt that it would be too dangerous to touch, but there were also a quantity of £1 notes, and a bag of silver which was plainly visible in the open drawer.
Systematically checking every possibility, the inspector went over the list of the firm's employees, considering the possibility that one of them might have secreted himself on the premises with the intention of pilfering from the safe, after the departure of the rest of the staff, and then been interrupted by his employer's unexpected return. But here again he drew in an empty net. One by one, he was obliged to eliminate them, as being outside suspicion, or on obtaining conclusive evidence of their movements during the afternoon. A young foreman of aggressive personality, and extreme and militant communistic opinions, against whom a conviction had been recorded for violence in a street brawl, might have received more particular consideration had his virile activities not included that of centre-half-back for the Clerkenwell Wanderers, and had there not been about three thousand potential witnesses to the fact that he had left a Gravesend football field at 3.17 p.m. after a difference of opinion with the referee.
So on the following Saturday morning Inspector Combridge found himself reduced to his nine statements, three possible criminals, and a remote alternative which he expected to be able to probe before the end of the day, when he would have the pleasure of putting a few questions to John Colvin, whom he had not yet interviewed.
Against John Colvin there was only the argument that he had as much cause for quarrelling with Abel Marks as the other three - if not more, and the fact that, while he was said by his landlady to have an established habit of returning to his weekend lodgings on Saturdays at 1.30 p.m., at which hour she would have a hot lunch ready to be dished up, he had not appeared on the last occasion until nearly nine, and had then been in a state of agitation which she thought he had endeavoured to conceal when she made some comment upon it.
Reserving that shadowy possibility, Inspector Combridge had first to decide in his own mind between three potential culprits, and then to face what might prove to be the harder task of arraying the evidence in a form which would satisfy the requirements of the criminal law, and the scruples of an average jury, by whom a unanimous verdict of guilty on the capital charge is not always readily given. The second might be the harder task, but at present the first was giving him a most tiresome difficulty.
Taking the three in the order in which they had called at Razor Street, he considered William Merritt first. He had, perhaps, more bitter causes of enmity than either his sister-in-law or his daughter, and he had admitted that his visit to Abel Marks had been with the sole object of quarrelling of expressing himself in words to which blows might seem an almost natural sequel. He had admitted, in his signed statement, that he had denounced the offender in phrases of concentrated bitterness on which he had brooded in the enforced solitude of his Brixton cell. It might be argued that such a crime was more likely to be a man's than a woman's work. And against this solution there was only the fact that Carol Barman said that she had found Marks to be alive when she had called subsequently.
But was this conclusive? Suppose that she had found him dead, and guessed - or even known - that it was by William Merritt's hand that he must have died? Would she have roused alarm at a moment when it must have given her brother-in-law to the hangman's rope? Would not a woman of her character and coolness have decided to leave as quietly as she had come, and would she not have had the wit to see that she would both be constructing a stronger defence of her brother, and a better tale for her own use, if she should take the money to obtain which had been the object with which she came, and which she had been determined to have?
There was, of course, the difficulty here that if Abel Marks were already dead he could not have come downstairs to open the door, but the importance of this point largely disappeared not only from the statements of William Merritt and herself, but on the supporting witness of Miss Miriam Aaronson, Mr. Marks's personal secretary, from whose statement the following relevant abstract may be conveniently given:
I left at about twenty-minutes past one, Mr. Marks having come in a few minutes before. It is the custom to close at 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and the workpeople and the office staff, excepting myself, had left at or immediately after that hour, but I stayed until Mr. Marks returned, as I had to report to him on various matters, and there were letters requiring his signature.
When he came in I noticed that his manner was unusual. He appeared to be rather excited. He was hurried and pre-occupied. He signed the letters I had ready, but I noticed that he did not read them with his usual care. When I tried to make my reports to him, he said: "Never mind now. Tell me on Monday. You need not stay." I left him seated at his desk in the front office on the first floor. To the best of my knowledge and belief, there was no one on the premises when I left.
I have a duplicate key of the safe, but I did not lock it before leaving. Mr. Marks would do that when he put the cash book away, which, after I had balanced it, I had placed on his desk for inspection, this being the usual routine. I cannot say certainly, but I believe that the door of the safe was open. I am sure that the cash drawer was closed, though it may not have been locked.
When I left, I did not close the front door, as Mr. Marks was still there. It frequently stood open under such circumstances after the staff had left. I do not see that there is anything surprising in that, in view of the fact that there is a counter in the hall, the flap of which must be lifted and the half-door unbolted to enter.
I know that Mr. Marks lived on the premises, but it was generally believed that he was often away at night, and almost invariably so during the weekends, but Mrs. Wibble, who waited upon him, would know more about that.
I had no idea that he had been married that morning, which he did not mention. He certainly spoke of being at the office on Monday. There was nothing unusual in his staying after I left.
I recognise the metal rod which I have been shown. It had lain on the desk for several years. I believe Mr. Rosenbaum used it as a ruler. I do not remember Mr. Marks using it in that way. I did not use it myself, as it was inconveniently heavy.
In view of this evidence, which Mrs. Wibble corroborated in the particulars of which she was cognisant, there was little force in the argument that if the murder had been committed by William Merritt, Miss Barman would have been unable to enter; and even if the statement of Carol Marks that she had found the door locked on her arrival were accepted as true, it showed no more than that Miss Barman must have pulled it shut when she left, which, if she were leaving a murdered man on the floor above, whether he had died by her own or her brother-in-law's hand, was a very natural thing for her to have done.
Considering these circumstances, Inspector Combridge had concluded that the evidence in his possession, though it might not point to William Merritt, was not such as could relieve him of all suspicion. It was true that Miss Barman had shown the manner of a downright and truthful witness, and that all she had told him on matters antecedent to the actual afternoon of the crime had proved to be true But if he were to exonerate her from having invented her interview with Abel Marks for the sake of concealing the guilt of William Merritt, must he not consider her in the role of the actual criminal, with an equal mendacity and a far heavier guilt?
That she had either been paid by Abel Marks, or herself taken the money which she considered to be due to her, had been finally proved when the bank-notes which she had paid over to Loames & Prideaux had been identified as being part of a payment received by Rosenbaum & Co. from a customer on the morning of the crime. But suppose and it was at least not an improbable supposition - that Abel Marks had refused to make a refund which he could have been subject to no legal compulsion to do? Suppose he had made a jest of the payment which had been at such heavy sacrifice and so abortively made? Suppose she had struck him in sudden anger with the heavy rod which must have lain so close to her hand? Suppose she had then taken the money, and gone out, closing the door behind her, and probably without knowing at that time either that her brother-in-law had called earlier, or that her niece might be the next to arrive? Surely, in view of the time of her own call, and the discovery which Mrs. Marks was to make when she arrived, this was the simplest, most probable solution?
And yet - what had Mrs. Marks encountered when she entered the building, which contained only herself and a bridegroom whom it was certain she did not love? What proof was there that, perhaps in a revulsion against the bond she had undertaken a few hours before, he had not died by her frantic hand?
Inspector Combridge was glad to feel that he could defer his choice among these conflicting theories, which, to those concerned, might be literally an issue of life and death - he had still to meet John Colvin, and hear what he had to say.
CHAPTER X
ATTITUDE OF MR. JOHN COLVIN
JOHN COLVIN had been travelling during the week in the Eastern Counties, but he had not passed beyond the unobtrusive watchfulness of the police. Inspector Combridge knew that he had ar