Читать книгу Death of His Uncle - C. H. B. Kitchin - Страница 4

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When I was at school, and had to do Latin Verses, I used to find that if I slept on them they would be almost ‘done’ when I awoke the next morning—not necessarily well ‘done,’ but sufficiently knocked into shape to serve up to my form master.

It was with something of this sort in my mind that I let Dick’s problem ‘cook’ all night in the ‘oven’ of my subconsciousness. When I awoke however, the first thing I recalled from our long conversation of the night before was an apparently aimless scrap of information—the address of Dick’s cousin, William Hicks: Cantervale Nurseries, Sedcombe, Surrey. I had an almost blank notebook by my bed, and wrote the address down in it, resolving to dedicate the notebook to the ‘case.’

But was there a ‘case’? While I was sipping my morning tea, another thought occurred to me. So far, the only real ground for assuming that there was a ‘case,’ lay in Uncle Hamilton’s failure to turn up for dinner with Dr. Fielding on Tuesday night. Was it not possible that Uncle Hamilton had written both to Dr. Fielding and Dick or Mrs. Pressley, saying that he was extending his holiday, and cancelling the dinner. It was perhaps too much to suppose that both letters must have been lost in the post. Well, one letter would have been enough. He could have said to Dick or Mrs. Pressley, please ring up Dr. Fielding and put him off till next week. Even so, it wasn’t necessary to assume that this one letter had been lost. Perhaps it was never posted, either through absentmindedness on Uncle Hamilton’s part or through the carelessness of someone, a hall porter or a chambermaid, to whom he gave it to post. I resolved to ask Dick if his uncle was absentminded. But even if he wasn’t, I could fall back on a careless hall porter.

I became quite convinced that when we went to Falmouth we should come across Uncle Hamilton ambling round the harbour, or sitting on the beach. Of course, every day he failed to turn up, the situation became a little graver. He certainly ought to write another letter towards the end of the week, and it would be too much of a coincidence to suppose, if such a letter were not received, that it had been written, but again had not been posted for some innocent reason.

When I was in my bath I expected to hear the telephone any minute, with Dick at the other end telling me that his uncle had written, or returned in person. But the telephone, which is specially fond of ringing when I am in my bath, did not ring that morning.

I reached the office, and while I performed my dull little tasks there, I still expected Dick to ring up and say that all was well. I was hoping he would, for despite the way in which he had both flattered me and won my sympathy, I was not greatly looking forward to our Cornish trip. With another companion I might have enjoyed it, but I still had misgivings about spending forty-eight hours or more in Dick’s exclusive society.

I had to answer the telephone several times, but no Dick spoke to me. Instead, it was Miss A., asking why she hadn’t got the interest on her War Loan (which she had sold six months before), Colonel B., complaining that our commission was too high (yet we had charged him the minimum allowed), and Lady C., whose daughter wanted to put twenty-five pounds into tin shares (but, of course, they mustn’t be speculative).

I took the opportunity, during the morning, to make sure that I could be away from the office on Monday and Tuesday, without inconveniencing anyone. Luckily my partners decided that they could refrain from Ascot till the Wednesday. At five minutes to one I went downstairs and waited in the vestibule. I felt that Dick, in his rather nervous condition, wouldn’t want to run the gauntlet of the office upstairs. He arrived exactly to time.

I said, ‘Well?’ and he said, ‘Still no news. Mrs. Pressley’s getting rather out of hand. She wants me to go to the police at once. I still think we ought to nose about in Cornwall first, don’t you?’

I agreed, and as we walked to the restaurant I told him my idea of the lost letter, or the letter which had never been posted. He said it would have been quite “out of character” for his uncle to forget to post a letter, but admitted that we couldn’t rule out forgetfulness on the part of a hall porter. But, even so, his uncle wasn’t the person to give his letters to other people to post. ‘He is incapable,’ Dick said, ‘of behaving in the rather lordly way in which you or I might behave. He can hardly bring himself to leave his hat and coat in a cloak-room. When he travels, he likes to carry his own bag. Not, of course, because he thinks it wrong to demand personal service from other people, but because he’s suspicious and afraid that someone will do him down. The fact that his envelope had a stamp on it would have been quite a sufficient incentive to make him post it himself. In his view, all strangers are capable of stealing three ha’pence. That’s why, of course, the little man could never really pretend to be a gentleman.’

This last remark shocked me a little, but I had to admit that from a psychological point of view Dick was probably quite right. Uncle Hamilton wasn’t the type to say airily to a flunkey: ‘Here’s a shilling. Please see that this letter goes at once’—as Dick himself would have done in his salad days. No. The letter had either been lost in the post, or it had never been written. To Cornwall we must go.

During our indifferent luncheon—and nowadays luncheon in the City is apt to be a most indifferent meal—we made arrangements about the expedition. He suggested calling for me at nine with his car. Was that too early? No, I would make an effort. He suggested we should stay at the Greenbank Hotel, and I asked him if we ought to wire for rooms. He said he didn’t think it necessary, as the holiday season was still a long way from beginning. I asked him what we should do if we found his uncle was staying at the Greenbank. He said that before taking rooms we must make sure that Uncle Hamilton wasn’t there. Another reason for not wiring beforehand. Besides, the Greenbank was too good for Uncle Hamilton, and, being down by the harbour, was at the opposite end of the town to the parts which Uncle Hamilton might be expected to visit—the rather characterless area of the bathing beaches.

I asked him if Uncle Hamilton would tend to stay in a pub or a boarding-house, and he replied, ‘boarding-house,’ with great conviction. No hotel could be too boarding-housy for Uncle Hamilton’s taste. I said I supposed Uncle Hamilton was a teetotaller, though I remembered a modicum of alcohol eking out the evening I had spent at Tylecroft. But apparently it wasn’t so bad as all that. Uncle Hamilton drank a little sherry, cheap claret, sweet port, and a whisky-and-soda before going to bed. He disapproved of cocktails, white wines and liqueurs. I foresaw that in course of time I should get to know as much about Uncle Hamilton’s habits as a personal maid does about her mistress. It seemed a pity that the object of my study was so unworthy.

We sat talking over our coffee till a quarter-past two, and I said au revoir to Dick by the Old Broad Street entrance of the Stock Exchange. The afternoon, like many Friday afternoons, was uneventful.

Before dinner that day I had to go to a cocktail party given by one of my clients, who lived north of the Park. I arrived there about half-past six, having called at my flat first and changed into a less shiny suit. It was a big party; I knew hardly anyone, and as so often in the houses of the rich, the cocktails were bad. I was thankful to make my escape at a quarter-past seven.

On my way home I passed the end of Westbourne Terrace, and an impulse came over me to walk up it, as Uncle Hamilton must have walked up it when Dick had said goodbye to him. It was really the morbid curiosity of the sightseer who goes to see the house in which a tragedy has occurred, even though no trace of the tragedy is visible. Indeed, I could hardly hope to find the spot where Uncle Hamilton stepped out of Dick’s life marked with a cross, like one’s bedroom on a picture postcard.

I walked the whole length of that broad thoroughfare on the western side of the road. Dick had been coming from South London and must therefore have driven on the western side. Needless to say, I found nothing in the nature of a ‘clue,’ nor was I seriously looking for one. At the end of the street, however, it did occur to me that by walking on vaguely in the direction of Paddington Station I might see an hotel in which I could conceive Uncle Hamilton spending the night. There was no harm in making sure that he did spend the night in the neighbourhood of the railway, even if I couldn’t trace him to the train he was supposed to have taken to Cornwall on the Saturday. I resolved that if I saw a really suitable hotel I would go in and make inquiries. It would give me a little practice in detection, which I badly needed. Perhaps my cocktails, weak though they were, emboldened me.

I have always maintained that when an ordinary member of the public is confronted with a crime or a mystery he bases his conduct on the detective stories he has read. I have read a good many detective stories and find them a sedative for the nerves. Oddly enough, what I like in them isn’t so much the puzzle of the plot, still less sensational hairbreadth escapes, but precisely the element which you would least expect to find in such stories—the humdrum background, tea at the Vicarage, a morning in an office, a trip to Brighton pier—that microscopic study of ordinary life which is the foil to the extraordinary event which interrupts it. A good detective story, I have found, is often a clearer mirror of ordinary life than many a novel written specially to portray it. Indeed, I think a test of its goodness is the pleasure you can derive from it even though you know who the murderer is. A historian of the future will probably turn, not to blue books or statistics, but to detective stories if he wishes to study the manners of our age. Middle-class manners perhaps. But I am old-fashioned enough to enjoy the individualism of the middle class.

I hoped very much, as I wandered round the purlieus of Paddington, that if by a lucky chance I succeeded in finding Uncle Hamilton’s hotel, the porter or receptionist would live up to detective-story standards, just as I hoped that I should live up to the standard of a detective, be nippy with my half-crown (which in detective stories never fails to work wonders), put my questions ingratiatingly but firmly, and not look too sheepish if I met with a rebuff.

I passed two or three dirty-looking hotels without going inside. They seemed too ‘pubby’ for Uncle Hamilton. Then in a side street I came across the Strafford Royal, drab but respectable, so far as I could tell from the façade. I went up a flight of indifferently cleaned marble steps, through a swing-door into a lofty dark hall. No one was in sight, and I rang a big brass bell, which said ‘press,’ by a little glazed enclosure. A voice in the darkness said, ‘Who can that be, Flo?’ and a moment later a small henna-haired lady darted in and sat on a stool behind the glass partition, as if she had been sitting there for ever.

Was it a case for the nimble half-crown? I thought not.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said, ‘but have you a Mr. Hamilton Findlay staying here?’

‘Hamilton Findlay,’ she said, probably trying to sum me up. ‘No, we’ve nobody of that name.’

She produced a book and gave it a quick glance.

‘I believe he arrived here late last Friday night,’ I suggested.

‘Last Friday night,’ she repeated, consulting another book. ‘Oh, but he left early on Saturday morning. Here’s the name.’

She showed me the hotel register, and I saw under the heading, ‘Friday, June 4th,’ the rather copperplate signature: E. Hamilton Findlay.

‘That’s quite right,’ I said as determinedly as I could. ‘That’s the gentleman I want to see. May I ask if it was you who received him?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t arrive till after ten. It would be Timpson, the porter, who let him in.’

‘I wonder if I could have a word with Timpson,’ I said tentatively. (Have a word with—that’s a real detective-story phrase.)

‘Well, I dare say you could,’ she said rather sniffily, ‘though I’m sure I don’t quite know what your business is.’

‘I’m a friend of Mr. Findlay’s,’ I answered, improvising hurriedly, ‘and I thought he was still here. I see, now, there was a misunderstanding. I should be very grateful if you could fetch Timpson for me.’

‘Well, I suppose I can,’ she conceded. ‘Will you wait here?’

I waited, full of eagerness to try my half-crown on Timpson. After a few minutes he arrived—an elderly little hunchback. Evidently the henna lady didn’t find me interesting enough to come with him.

I displayed my half-crown at once, blushing as I did so.

‘I wonder if you could give me any information,’ I asked, ‘about my friend Mr. Hamilton Findlay, whom, I’m told, you admitted here last Friday night, a week ago to-day. Do you remember?’

The hunchback scratched his head, and turned up the register.

‘E. Hamilton Findlay,’ he said laboriously. ‘A little bald man with horn spectacles?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘that doesn’t sound very like him.’

He meditated for a moment and said: ‘Oh, I remember. It was getting on for eleven, or maybe it was after. A gent with a bag which he carried himself. Tallish. Wore a wig, I thought. Can’t remember much else.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the man.’

‘Well, he went straight to No. 9. Said he was leaving next morning from Paddington by the 8.15 for Cornwall. Asked for breakfast in his bedroom at a quarter-past seven. I said that would be a shilling extra, but he said all right. I showed him up to his room, and that’s the last I seen of him.’

‘You weren’t here when he left the next day?’

‘No, not on Saturdays. Miss Elder would have been here to take the cash. She’s the young lady you saw. Would you like to see her again?’

My heart failed me. I gave Timpson the half-crown, with which I had been making excessive demonstrations, and said: ‘No, if you say he went the next morning, that’s good enough for me. Thank you very much, and good-night.’

I walked quickly through the swing-door and down the steps, almost as if I were a guilty party. Then, as I moved at a more contemplative pace towards the Park and home, I began to congratulate myself on my beginner’s luck. Or was I really rather good? No, I wasn’t very good. I had only traced Uncle Hamilton into the hotel. I hadn’t traced him out again. That was because I was frightened of the supercilious henna lady. She could never have unnerved a real detective. Still, for the time being there didn’t seem much need to pursue this investigation much further. In twenty-four hours I should be trying my skill in Cornwall, and if I was able to trace Uncle Hamilton there I could certainly assume that he had travelled from Paddington by the 8.15.

Half-way across the Park I sat down on a seat, took out my notebook, now grandiosely entitled ‘Warren’s Third Case,’ and wrote:

Friday, June 11th.—Discovered that Hamilton Findlay arrived at Strafford Royal Hotel, Paddington, ‘getting on for eleven or maybe after’ on the night of Friday, June 4th. Had Room No. 9. Ordered breakfast in it, and announced his intention of catching the 8.15 for Cornwall the next morning. Witness, Timpson, hotel porter. Possible further witness, Miss Elder, assistant manageress. Saw Hamilton Findlay’s signature in visitors’ book. Slightly shaky copperplate.

Then I walked home, had an excellent little dinner cooked by my housekeeper, Mrs. Rhodes, read a depressing book about international affairs, did The Times cross-word puzzle, and went to bed.