Читать книгу Murder at Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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It was Roger Sloane who gave the luncheon party at the Hôtel de Paris on the morning of Luke Cheyne’s funeral. Lord Bradley, however, did most of the talking. The guests consisted of Mr. Terence Brown, a Major Thornton introduced by the former as liaison officer between a certain branch of the Foreign Office and Scotland Yard, who had come down to Marseilles in charge of some Indian princes and was having a few weeks’ holiday in Monte Carlo before returning, Prince Savonarilda, Erskine and Bradley. The latter would have liked to have made a more formal affair of the gathering but was overruled.

“After all, you know,” Roger pointed out, as he tasted the vodka which was being served with the caviar, “there’s no harm in talking over anything we want to at luncheon. The police here might get raw with us if we held anything in the shape of a meeting.”

“The lad is right, without a doubt,” Terence Brown observed, making secret signs to the waiter to indicate an unsatisfied appetite for caviar. “The authorities here are touchy. Very touchy sometimes.”

“That’s all very well,” Lord Bradley commented guardedly, “but we’re the people who keep the place going and we’ve got to have a word or two to say sometimes. For instance,” he went on, “we none of us want to find fault with the laws of the Principality or the policy of the Casino, but we have to look after ourselves. The policy of the Casino dictates that every crime which happens should be covered up, so far as possible, and given as little prominence in the news as may be. The police and the Press are hand in glove with the administration.”

“That’s all very well, so far as regards suicides,” Terence Brown pointed out; “but when it comes to the case of the murder of a friend like Luke Cheyne, something has got to be done about it. It’s an ugly thought that a man can be murdered and robbed of half a million francs in this very hotel and that the murderer can get away with it. What do you think, Major Thornton? You’re the man who has had experience in such matters.”

Thornton was lean and grey, slow of speech, with steely blue eyes and a strangely shaped mouth, owing to his long upper lip. His voice was soft and pleasant. He had the air of an absent-minded man—which he certainly was not.

“Well, there isn’t much to be said just now, is there?” he remarked. “I can tell you this, if it is of any interest. We know for a fact in London, and they know it in Paris too, that a larger number of criminals than usual—mostly internationals—are working along the coast between Biarritz and San Remo. The French police are on to them in Nice and Marseilles. This little spot we’re in at present always seems to me a trifle unguarded. I don’t like their police methods and I tell you so frankly.”

“Tell us what you find fault with chiefly, Major Thornton?” Terence Brown enquired.

Thornton sipped his wine and found it of a pleasant flavour.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he confided. “The murder, as most of us know, took place on the stairs by the last lift, but the body was discovered by the police, when they arrived, in Mr. Cheyne’s bedroom, with a revolver lying upon the carpet, from which the shots might have been fired but certainly were not! This, I suppose, was done to suggest suicide. It was a clumsy effort and, of course, makes the discovery of the criminal more difficult.”

“What about the half million francs?” Erskine asked.

“There wasn’t a mille note left,” Thornton replied. “Although, when enquiries were made, it transpired that Mr. Cheyne had a large balance at the bank here and a larger one still in Paris, not a word of this appeared in the Press.”

“Going a trifle too far, you know,” Lord Bradley muttered.

“Furthermore,” Thornton continued, “the lad who was chloroformed whilst asleep in the chair by the side of the lift was summarily dismissed by the hotel authorities for inattention to duties and has disappeared. I make no comment upon that fact, but he has disappeared.”

“Disgraceful!” Erskine exclaimed.

Terence Brown leaned across the table. He was a handsome, elderly man who had once been a great beau, American by birth but a thorough cosmopolitan. He was probably amongst the most popular visitors to the Principality.

“As I daresay you all know,” he said, “I am a great supporter of the administration here. I know intimately most of the officials of the place and I admit frankly that I love Monte Carlo. Ugly things happen here sometimes. Suicides, for example. When they do happen, I am all for the policy of the authorities. I believe in keeping them quiet. I believe in hushing them up. In my experience, the class of person who commits suicide here would be just as likely to do it anywhere else, if he had losses on the Stock Exchange or horse racing.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Terence,” Lord Bradley admitted.

“It’s a very reasonable point of view, anyhow,” Erskine observed.

“But,” Terence Brown continued, shaking his forefinger, “when it comes to a murder like this—of a man we all knew, too—it’s a horse of a different colour. I disagree with the official attitude altogether and I don’t mind telling you gentlemen that I have called upon some influential friends of mine this morning and told them so.”

Prince Savonarilda dropped his eyeglass and abandoned with reluctance his admiring contemplation of a planked loup.

“The murder of a man like our friend Cheyne in the most important hotel of the place gives one unpleasant thoughts,” he remarked. “If no arrest is made, one cannot but believe that other crimes will follow. We shall have to go about in threes and fours for the sake of safety. They speak of the brigandage and the crimes passionels in the villages and mountains of my own country but indeed I begin to wonder whether there would not be greater safety there.”

Terence Brown, who had been favoured with a sight of the loup, helped himself plentifully.

“I am bound to confess,” he said, “that my country stands behind much of this increase in ruthless crime. Bootlegging started it, of course. Here was a law one felt justified in disobeying. And from that one moved onwards. Crime began to appeal to a different sort of mentality. At the present moment, I am perfectly convinced that some of the most dangerous criminals in the world are men of brains and position. Explorers who used to shoot lions, bully and kill natives, and hoist the flag of their country in the far-away places are indulging in very similar instincts nearer home. ... Jean,” he added, turning to the sommelier, “another glass of that delicious white wine, please.”

“I don’t like Mr. Terence Brown’s theory,” Thornton remarked grimly. “The one thing we dread at the Yard is the educated criminal. The Bill Sykes type scarcely exists any more.”

A messenger boy from the hall approached the table and handed a note and card to Terence Brown. With a glance of apology towards his host he tore open the envelope and read.

“My dear Sloane,” he said, lowering his voice a little. “This comes in the nature of a coincidence. The note is from my friend Monsieur Pleydou, the commissaire of police here on whom I called this morning. He desires to impart some information at once. May I invite him to join us?”

“By all means,” Sloane agreed.

Monsieur Pleydou was ushered in, a grave-looking man with black beard and imperial, dark clothes and a general air of solemnity. He shook hands with Terence Brown, bowed to the others to whom he was introduced and accepted a glass of wine. He took the déjeuner always, he explained, at midday.

“Gentlemen,” he announced, “I bring you news. The murderer of Luke Cheyne has confessed. The mystery is solved.”

There was a murmur of interest. Monsieur Pleydou continued.

“A letter was brought to the Police Station this morning signed by a certain Samuel Crowley, confessing to the crime and giving particulars as to how it was executed. It was apparently partly an act of personal vengeance on the part of this man who had had unfortunate business transactions with Mr. Cheyne in New York and partly an ordinary robbery. Our police at once visited the small ketch upon which Crowley had been living in the harbour and found that he had disappeared. His body was discovered only an hour ago.”

There were a few moments of curious silence. Somehow or other to one or two of the auditors at any rate the story seemed to lack substance.

“Did the confession which Mr. Crowley left,” Roger asked, “contain any particulars as to how he committed the crime?”

“They were scarcely necessary,” the police commissary replied, “but as a matter of general interest he did leave some particulars. He entered the hotel by the front way, muffled up, and walked straight ahead. It was a perfectly simple thing to do as it was past four o’clock in the morning. A great many of the guests are in the habit of coming home at that time from the night clubs and naturally the members of the staff who were about were sleepy. He found the lift boy, for instance, fast asleep, which made his task easier. He chloroformed him, pulled him out of sight and sat just at the bend of the stairs with his hand upon the electric switch waiting for Mr. Cheyne, of whose impending departure from the Club he had been advised by a confederate.”

“And the money?” Erskine enquired.

“A certain amount of it—quite enough to confirm Crowley’s story—was found in his cabin. The remainder will doubtless be recovered later. That is an affair between us and the administration. It is a sad story, gentlemen, and the only satisfactory part of it is that it clears up the mystery of Monsieur Cheyne’s death.”

Every one seemed to feel that there was little else to be said. Monsieur Pleydou accepted coffee, a liqueur and cigar and the conversation drifted away to the always interesting subjects of the unreported suicides and robberies in the Casino. When the luncheon broke up Thornton, who seemed to have taken a fancy to Roger, walked with him and Erskine to the courtyard where the latter’s car was waiting to take them to the tennis courts.

“You own a villa in the neighbourhood, I understand?” Thornton enquired of his late host. “When are you leaving?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Roger confided, “that I shall leave at all for the present. Things seem to me as though they might become too interesting down here. I am returning to my villa for luncheon to-morrow, but I am keeping my room here and I shall probably stay on for some time.”

“I am not sure that you’re wise,” Thornton reflected. “If there is any gang work going on down here, you would probably be a marked man after your luncheon to-day. You’ll be safer at the villa, Mr. Sloane.”

“That may be so, but I don’t think I shall stay there. Am I allowed to ask you one question?”

“Just one,” was the rather grudging reply, “and I think I can guess what it will be.”

Roger clambered up to Erskine’s side in the car and waved the porter away. He leaned towards Thornton.

“You are not accepting whole-heartedly this solution of Luke Cheyne’s murder?”

Major Thornton smiled frostily. His voice had sunk almost to a whisper, although they were alone in the courtyard.

“I am not,” he admitted. “I am wondering whether the police here are trying to be very clever indeed or whether you are up against a gang of criminals with new ideas.”