Читать книгу The Bedford Row Mystery - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 7

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Before Richard could make any remark on this announcement, a man whom he had noticed on his visit to the hotel that morning, and who seemed to be a person of authority, came up to him with an inquiring look.

“Friend of Mr. Lansdale, sir?” he asked quietly.

“Of Miss Lansdale,” replied Richard. “I called to ask for her, and I hear she is out.”

The man nodded and looked as if he might say more, as if he wanted to say more, but was a little uncertain of his ground.

“You have no idea, I suppose, when Miss Lansdale will return?” asked Richard.

“None, sir,” replied the other emphatically. “Er—the fact is, there seems to be some mystery afoot. That is why I asked if you knew Mr. Lansdale. I may say that I know the man with whom you came here this morning—Detective-Sergeant Liversedge, of the Yard. I have had business with him before. He appeared to be very anxious to know something of Mr. Lansdale’s doings, sir.”

“Mr. Lansdale is missing from his usual haunts in the City,” said Richard.

“So I gathered, sir. And from here—he left here last night rather hurriedly. Now his daughter appears to be missing, too. Er—I don’t know if you were acquainted with—with the family, if I may put it so? Mr. Lansdale appears to be rather a mysterious person.”

He was speaking with obvious guardedness and watching Richard closely. But Richard wanted to know more.

“How?” he asked.

“Mr. Lansdale,” said the other, “has been here a few weeks—six, I think. He appears to be—appears, perhaps is not the right word—I suppose I ought to say he is a very wealthy man, and a very busy man. But during the whole time of his stay in this hotel he has never had a single letter or telegram delivered here! I conclude from this that Mr. Landsale must have an office in the City—or another address.”

“In point of fact, you are somewhat suspicious about him?” suggested Richard.

“One likes to know with whom one is dealing,” said the man. “The detective who came with you this morning was certainly suspicious. And”—he paused suddenly, as he glanced in the direction of the entrance near which they were standing—“there he is again!” he added with a smile. “I thought we should see him this evening!”

Richard turned and saw Liversedge coming in. The detective caught sight of him and his companion and made towards them. He showed no surprise at seeing Richard.

“I reckon from the fact that you’re standing there, Mr. Marchmont, that Miss Lansdale is not in,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “If she’d been in, you’d have been upstairs, of course. Any news of Mr. Lansdale?” he went on, glancing at the other man. “No? Just so! I want a word or two with you, Mr. Marchmont—come aside here a moment.”

He led the way to a quiet corner of the entrance hall and dropped into a chair as if he were tired.

“Bit wearying, this running up and down!” he remarked. “Well, Mr. Marchmont, I’ve had a scrap of news about Lansdale. After you left me I heard that he was sometimes seen at the Cannon Street Hotel, and occasionally dined there. So I made some inquiries, and got some information. Lansdale dined there last night at six-thirty, and was there until close upon eight o’clock. He had with him a man who met him there—a man who had been waiting some little time for him in the smoking-room of the hotel. And there’s no doubt that he was the man who afterwards called on Lansdale here and with whom he went away.”

“You got a description of the man?” asked Richard.

“Just so, Mr. Marchmont, and it tallies exactly with the description I had here this morning of Lansdale’s late caller,” replied Liversedge. “We must find out who that man is. But—any news here?”

“Miss Lansdale has—I don’t know what to say about it,” answered Richard, and went on to tell him what he had heard. “Of course, she may have gone somewhere for the day——”

“No, sir!” interrupted Liversedge, shaking his head. “That’s all part of the game, whatever it is! Miss Lansdale has gone to join her father. That telegram this morning was all a piece of bluff! Lansdale has made himself scarce and got his daughter after him. You can call here again last thing to-night, Mr. Marchmont, and again to-morrow morning, but you won’t find either father or daughter! They’re off!”

“You don’t imply that Miss Lansdale was deceiving me this morning?” exclaimed Richard, half angry and half suspicious, in view of Liversedge’s cynical tone. “Is that——”

“Come, come, Mr. Marchmont, don’t be too ready to take offence!” answered the detective, with an understanding smile. “If you were in my profession—but you aren’t, so what’s the good of saying what you’d do! I’m not implying that Miss Lansdale deceived us, though I shouldn’t blame her if she had done—a girl’s a perfect right to do her best for her own father if he’s in a hole. What I say is that the telegram was a bit of bluff, perhaps not on Lansdale’s part, but on somebody’s, and that you’ll not see either Lansdale or his daughter at this hotel again!”

“Look here!” said Richard, with characteristic desire to get at plain issues. “Do you really think Lansdale shot my uncle?”

“I’m not such a fool, Mr. Marchmont, as to have formed any opinion, yet,” replied the detective. “But I’m perfectly certain that Lansdale’s sudden disappearance, and now his daughter’s, have both sprung out of, first, your uncle’s recognition of him at that little dinner night before last, and, second, your uncle’s murder. And you know, Lansdale’s name can’t be kept out of the affair, now. The inquest on your uncle is fixed to begin at two o’clock to-morrow afternoon, and though the first stages will necessarily be of a formal sort, there’ll be enough evidence given before the coroner and his jury to make Lansdale’s name and his disappearance known all over England before night falls! It’ll be in all the evening papers, anyway!—and there are plenty of ’em.”

“But—whose evidence?” demanded Richard. “What evidence?”

Liversedge looked at him half-pityingly.

“Simpson’s!” he replied dryly. “Just Simpson’s!”

“You mean to say that Simpson will have to tell the coroner and the jury all that he told you—about what my uncle told him about Lansdale?” exclaimed Richard—“everything?”

“Why, of course!” answered Liversedge, “every word! Most important evidence, Mr. Marchmont. And I shall have to tell that I’ve made preliminary inquiries for Lansdale—and that he’s not to be found! Perhaps, too, the old caretaker woman, Capstick, may be called, to have her say.”

“And then?” asked Richard.

“Oh, then the coroner will adjourn for a week or a fortnight, leaving us police to go on with the matter,” answered the detective carelessly. “Usual procedure—all cut and dried. And of course, our first job—my first job—is to get hold of Lansdale. Well, as I said, there’ll be plenty of publicity about him in to-morrow evening’s papers and more in the papers next morning, and if he doesn’t come forward voluntarily—well, we’ll just have to comb him out!”

“He must be somewhere,” said Richard abstractedly.

“I think you can take that for granted, Mr. Marchmont!” agreed Liversedge, with a sidelong glance at Richard’s perplexed face. “But I know what’s troubling you, sir! It’s the thought that the young lady’s father is suspected of having killed your uncle! Very unpleasant thought to have—very! I understand—oh, yes! And the very best thing you can do, Mr. Marchmont, is either to clear this man by finding out who actually did kill your uncle, or to get him to come forward and prove that he didn’t! At present, though, I don’t see how you or I, or anyone’s going to get hold of Lansdale, for a man with ample means at his command can do a great deal in the way of hiding himself, and I also foresee that if Lansdale does come forward he’ll have a stiff job to clear himself—that is, if he actually did go to Bedford Row last night, as I certainly believe he did. However,” concluded the detective, as he rose, “the present situation is that Lansdale and his daughter have cleared out of this hotel—and you’ll see they’ll not come back!”

Richard felt that Liversedge was right, but he called again at the hotel just before midnight and again early next morning. There was no news of either Angelita or her father, and none had come in either to the hotel people or to the police when the inquest on Henry Marchmont was opened in the afternoon. At that grim business things went precisely as Liversedge had said they would, and before seven o’clock that evening the extra-specials of the newspapers were full of the murder of a well-known London solicitor and the extraordinary disappearance of the man against whom there was certainly a prima-facie case for suspicion. It was all there, in every damned paper—and Richard, who had the well-bred young Englishman’s loathing and hatred of intrusion upon private matters, turned hot and cold and fumed and raged when he saw Angelita’s name dragged into it in an account of her disappearance from the hotel in supplement of another telling how her father had vanished from the same place a few hours previously. He poured out the vials of his wrath freely before Simpson and Liversedge when he met them next morning in Bedford Row, for consultation. But the detective only smiled and shook his head.

“It’s all very well talking, Mr. Marchmont,” he remarked, “but what else can you expect, or indeed do, in a case like this? You want to know who murdered your uncle, don’t you? It’ll be very unfortunate, very sad, if it’s found out that Lansdale’s guilty—but the truth often is unpleasant. And publicity is highly useful—I believe in making use of the press. Anyway, all the world and his wife are acquainted with the business now, and let’s hope something will come out of this widespreading of the facts. I know what you’re feeling about it, Mr. Marchmont, but you know, when all’s said and done, you can’t get away from this—there’s a strong foundation on which to build up a case against Lansdale. I guess Mr. Simpson sees what I mean?”

“Motive!” said Simpson laconically.

“Just that!” continued Liversedge. “Motive! Whenever I strike a murder case—and this is the seventh I’ve been engaged in—the first thing I try to find out is—what motive had the murderer? Well, there’s a strong motive here. Silence! Put it to yourself. Lansdale meets Mr. Henry Marchmont. He knows Mr. Marchmont can give him away. He’s obviously very much upset—Mr. Marchmont told Simpson he was, anyway. What did he say?—according to what your uncle repeated to Simpson? ‘For God’s sake, Marchmont, let me have a word with you in private! Let me come and see you! I want to! I want to explain!’ Do you realise the significance of that, Mr. Marchmont? Those words are the words of a frightened man—of a man who’s desperately upset at the unexpected meeting with another man who knew an old, bad secret—of a man who might be ruined by that secret coming out. What do you think?”

“I’d rather hear what you think,” replied Richard. He had a clear recollection of Henry Marchmont repeating the words which the detective had just repeated; evidently Henry told Simpson exactly what he had told Richard at the restaurant after lunch. “You know more of these matters than I do.”

“It’s not what I think—I’m merely explaining where motive comes in,” said Liversedge. “Mr. Marchmont gives Lansdale an interview—fixes it for next evening at his own private office. Lansdale has twenty-four hours to face it. Probably he believes that Mr. Marchmont won’t mention it to a soul—that the secret’s between them—and that—well in short, that if he puts Mr. Marchmont out of the way, the secret’s safe. I’ve known men hanged on much poorer theories than that!” concluded the detective. “And there’s another aspect of the matter—consider the circumstances! An elderly man, alone in his home—the dark time of the year—the meeting well after night had fallen—a street which isn’t a thoroughfare, and in which, after business hours, scarcely anybody but a caretaker or two lives—come!”

“What I want to know is—what’s going to be done?” asked Richard impatiently. “That is—what are you, what are the police going to do?”

“Well, if you want my personal opinion about the case, Mr. Marchmont,” answered Liversedge, “I feel that, quite apart from all we know, there’s a good deal of mystery around this murder! My idea is that we ought to go pretty deeply into the past. Hark back!—as they do in fox-hunting when they get off the scent. I’d like to know a good deal more about those doings at Clayminster five-and-twenty years ago. That’s my notion!—I don’t know what my superiors will say. Of course, the search for Lansdale will go on. What does Mr. Simpson think?” he added, turning to the managing clerk. “No doubt he’s some plan or project in his head.”

“Yes,” replied Simpson, “I have. I think it would be a very good thing to offer a reward. A substantial reward!”

“For Lansdale?” asked Liversedge.

“That’s more for you police,” said Simpson. “You ought to do that—a bill saying that he is wanted, or is lost, or has disappeared. No—I mean a reward for anyone who can give information which will lead——”

“To the arrest and conviction, etcetera, etcetera,” broke in Liversedge. “Yes—it comes off, sometimes. There are people, of course, who won’t give a scrap of information unless they know they’re going to be well paid for it! But that’s a matter for Mr. Marchmont.”

“I’d cheerfully offer a very large reward if you think it would lead to a satisfactory result,” declared Richard. “I would, indeed!”

“Especially if it cleared Lansdale, eh, sir?” observed Liversedge in an aside. “Well, you could try it. And I should have it extensively circulated in this neighbourhood—after all, there may be something close at hand that we’ve as yet never even heard of—you never can tell!”

“How would you word it—and what amount should be offered?” asked Richard, turning to Simpson. “If you’ll draft it——”

Before the managing clerk could reply, the door opened, and a junior clerk came in, carrying a copy of the noon edition of a leading evening newspaper. He handed it to Simpson, at the same time pointing to two staring headlines in bold black letters:

THE BEDFORD ROW MURDER

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD!