Читать книгу THE MAELSTROM & THE GRELL MYSTERY (British Mystery Classics) - Frank Froest - Страница 7

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Weib, Menzies fitted his form to the big armchair that flanked Foyle's desk, and dragged a handful of reports secured by an elastic band from his breast pocket. Foyle snipped the end off a cigar and leaning back puffed out a blue cloud of smoke.

"It's been quick work, though I say it myself," observed Menzies complacently, "especially considering it's a night job. This night work is poisonous no way of getting about, no certainty of finding the witnesses you want, everyone angry at being dragged out of bed, and all your people knocked out the next day when they ought to be fresh."

Foyle flicked the ash from his cigar, and a mischievous glimmer shone in his blue eyes. "It's tough luck, Menzies. I know you hate this kind of thing. Now there's Forrester he's got nothing in particular on: if you like--"

Menzies' heavy eyebrows contracted as he scrutinised his chief suspiciously. Untold gold would not have induced him to willingly relax his hold of a case that interested him. "I'm not shifting any job of mine on to anyone else's shoulders, Mr. Foyle," he said acidly.

"That's all right," said Foyle imperturbably. "Go ahead."

Menzies tapped his pile of statements. "As far as I can boil down what we've got, this is how it stands. Old Greye-Stratton was a retired West Indian merchant dropped out of harness eight years ago, and has lived like a hermit by himself in Linstone Terrace Gardens ever since. It seems there was some trouble about his wife she was a widow named Errol when he married her, and she had one son. Five years before the crash there was a daughter born. Anyway, as I was saying, trouble arose, and he kicked his wife out, sent the baby girl abroad to be educated, and the boy he would then be about twenty with his mother. Well, the woman died a few years after. Young Errol came down to Greye-Stratton, kicked up a bit of a shindy, and was given an allowance on condition that he left the country. He went to Canada, and thence on to the States, and must have been a bit of a waster. A year ago he returned to England and turned up in Linstone Terrace Gardens; there was a row and he went away swearing revenge. Old Greye-Stratton stopped supplies, and neither the lawyers nor anyone else have seen anything of Errol since."

Foyle rolled a pencil to and fro across his blottingpad with the palm of his hand. He interrupted with no question. What Menzies stated as facts he knew the chief inspector would be able to prove by sworn evidence, if necessary. He was merely summarising evidence. The inference he allowed to be drawn, and so far it seemed an inference that bade fair to place a noose round young Errol's neck.

"We have got this," went on Menzies, "from people in Linstone Terrace Gardens, from Greye-Stratton's old servants, from the house agents from whom he rented his house, and from Pembroke, of Pembroke and Stephens, who used to be his solicitors. Greye-Stratton was seventy years old, as deaf as a beetle, and as eccentric as a monkey. I don't believe he has kept any servant for more than three months at a stretch we have traced out a dozen, and there must be scores more. But it is only lately that he has taken to accusing them of being in a plot to murder him. The last cook he had he made taste everything she prepared in his presence.

"He had no friends in the ordinary way and few visitors. Twice within the last year he has been visited by a woman, but who or what she was no one knows. She came evidently by appointment and was let in by him, himself; remained half an hour and went away. Practically all his business affairs had been carried on by correspondence, and he was never known to destroy a letter. Yet we have found few documents in the house that can have any bearing on the case, except possibly this, which was found in the grate of the little bedroom he habitually used."

He extracted from the pile of statements a square of doubled glass, which he passed to Foyle. It contained several charred fragments of writing paper with a few detached words and letters discernible.

"J. E. Gre.... Will see... Id you... lies... mother to her death... ous swine... let me hea...."

"Errol's writing?" queried Foyle.

"I haven't got a sample yet, but I've little doubt of it. Now here's another thing. It was Greye-Stratton's custom to lock up the house every night at dusk, himself. He would go round with a revolver and see to every one of the bolts and fastenings, and no one was allowed in or out thereafter. It was one of the grievances of the servants that they were prisoners soon after four o'clock each day in winter. And though he always slept with that revolver under his pillow, we can't find it.

"There's another thing. Greye-Stratton had a little study where he spent most of the day, and there was a safe built in to the wall. It may mean nothing, or anything, but the safe was open and there was not a thing in it. Now we have been able to discover no one who has ever seen that safe open before. It's curious, too, in view of Hallett's story about the cheques, that we have not been able to lay our hands on a single thing that refers to a banting transaction not so much as a paying-in book or a bunch of counterfoils.

"The doctors say the old man was shot about three hours before we got there. That would be about halfpast nine. I don't know how Hallett struck you, Mr. Foyle, but according to his own account he must have arrived at Linstone Terrace Gardens at nine."

Foyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You mean he may have been there when the shot was fired."

Menzies made an impatient gesture. "I don't know. I own freely I don't quite take in this yarn, and yet the man struck me as genuine. He's got good credentials, and if he's mixed up with the murder, why did he 'phone to me?"

"Search me," said Foyle. "What about the daughter? You said there was a girl."

Menzies stuck his thumbs in the sleeve holes of his waistcoat. "That's another queer point. She was brought up abroad, and scarcely ever saw the old man. Pembroke says she spent her holidays with an old couple down in Sussex, to whom he had instructions to pay three hundred pounds a year. When she left school he had the allowance paid to her direct. She had a taste for painting and was apparently quite capable of looking after herself. For two years she has not called or given any instructions about it. He wrote Greye- Stratton, who retorted it was none of his business that the allowance would be paid over to his firm, and that if the girl did not choose to ask for it, it could accumulate. He did not seem at all concerned at her disappearance. Take it from me, Mr. Foyle, we shall run across some more damned funny business before we get to the bottom of this. There's not even a ghost of a finger-print. If only we can find Errol

Foyle was too old a hand to offer conjecture at so early a stage of the case. Nor did Menzies seem to expect any advice. Hard as he had driven the investigation during the night, the ground was not yet cleared. Until he had all the facts in his possession it was useless to absolutely pin himself to any one line of reasoning. There was now one man who, en known facts, might liave committed the murder. But plausible as was the supposition that Errol was the man, the detectives knew that at best it was only a suspicion. And suspicion nowadays does not commit a man. It does not always justify an arrest. There must be evidence, and so far there was not a scrap of proof that Errol had been within a thousand miles of Linstone Terrace Gardens on the night of the murder.

Menzies went away with his bundle of documents, to have them typed, indexed, and put in order, so that he could lay his hand on any one needed at a moment's notice. He was in for a busy day.

Two advertisements he drafted in the sanctuary of his own office. One was to check Hallett's own account of the evening before, and to identify, if possible, the street in which the cheques had been forced on him.

" REWARD. The taxi-cab driver who, on the evening of , drove a fare from the West End to 34, Linstone Terrace Gardens, Kensington, will receive the above reward on communicating with the Public Carriage Office, New Scotland Yard. S. W."

The other ran differently, and seemed to give him more trouble. Several sheets of note-paper he wasted, and discontentedly surveyed his final effort.

"If James Errol, last heard of at Columbus, Ohio, U. S. A., will communicate--"

He crushed the sheet up, flung it in the waste-paper basket, and lifted a speaking-tube. "Any newspaper men there, Green? Right. Tell 'em I'll see 'em in half an hour. Send me up a typist."

The newspaper press, if deftly handled, may be a potent factor in the detection of crime. Moreover, the ubiquitous reporter is not to be evaded for long by the cleverest detective living. The wisest course is to meet him with fair words to guide his pen where there is a danger of his writing too much, and put him on his honour on occasion. Many a promising case has been spoilt by tactless treatment of a pressman at a wrong moment.

Menzies dictated an account of the murder, in which he said just as much as he wanted to say and not a word more. The conclusion ran :

"The stepson of the deceased gentleman, a Mr. James Errol, left England for the United States many years ago, and his present whereabouts are unknown. The police are anxious to get in to touch with him, in order that certain points in connection with his father's career should be cleared up."

The chief detective inspector knew that the simple paragraph would throw into the search for Errol the energies and organisation of every great newspaper an aid he did not despise. It was not intended as an official statement. The Criminal Investigation Department does not issue bulletins officially. It was an act of courtesy, and incidentally a stroke of policy to maintain the good-will of the Press. The reporters might paraphrase it as they would.

He received the newspaper men pleasantly, parried their chaff and too adroit questions with unruffled goodhumour, and told them little anecdotes which had not the slightest bearing on the murder or Greye-Stratton. They read the typewritten sheets he handed them greedily and cross-examined him as mercilessly as ever he had been cross-examined at the Old Bailey. A clerk brought a card to him and he read it without a change of countenance.

"In a minute," he said to the waiting clerk, and put the card in his waistcoat pocket. "Well, gentlemen, you know as much as I do now. If there's anything else you want to know, just drop in and see me when you like. Good morning."

They accepted their dismissal, and he took another glance at the card. "Miss Lucy Olney," he read; and underneath, written in pencil: "Peggy Greye-Stratton."