Читать книгу The Secret of Sheen - John Laurence Pritchard - Страница 11
ОглавлениеLORD ROWMANDS TALKS
Inspector Lanner, in the course of his examination of the guests of Lord Rowmands and his search of the bedroom of the murdered man, had learnt many things which were not only to worry him considerably before he fitted them into their proper places in the jig-saw puzzle, but were to make him proceed with the greatest possible caution.
There were the positions of Avril Abbleway and her brother, for example, perhaps the most worrying of all. Lanner was not the type of man to shirk his duty, but he knew that sometimes a too strict attention to duty might lead to disastrous results, so far as his future was concerned.
He found it hard to believe that the son and daughter of the Commissioner at Scotland Yard had anything to do with the murder of Bilsiter. But he did not make the mistake of thinking it to be impossible. The inspector had had more than one shock in the course of his official life, and he had grown a little cynical.
That Egyptian scarab under Bilsiter’s bed, now. How did it get there? Not for one moment did Lanner believe that Avril Abbleway had lost it as she suggested, or that Bilsiter had found it and had later dropped it there. Nor did he believe her statement that the murdered man had only grumbled at the incompetence of Scotland Yard over their failure to discover the identity of the mysterious Sheen. Avril’s sudden defence of Sheen, her quick denial that he was the kind of man to commit murder had, Lanner was convinced, put him on the right track. Tommy Abbleway and Charity Sheen looked like being one and the same man. There were several things pointing that way.
First all, it was clear that Abbleway had had an appointment with the dead man at midnight. The entry in Bilsiter’s notebook pointed definitely to that. No other member of the Rowmands household shared those initials. Somehow or other Bilsiter had made the guess which the police had failed to make, but, unlike the police, he made use of his knowledge for his own ends. The inspector had no doubt at all, knowing Bilsiter’s record, that some threat, some quid pro quo for his silence, had been held out to Avril Abbleway and to her brother. Before Avril had strolled in the garden with Bilsiter she had attacked Sheen vehemently at the dinner table. Now she was defending him. The conclusion he had reached seemed to the inspector, on the whole, to be sound. The attitude of young Abbleway when it was suggested that papers incriminating Bilsiter’s victims might be found, was the attitude of a frightened man, a man who had overlooked a vital point against himself.
And here, in his reasoning, the inspector pulled himself up sharply, as he repeated the last phrase in his own mind, “a man who had overlooked a vital point against himself.”
“That is exactly what Sheen has never done,” he murmured to himself. “The trouble is he has never overlooked any point which might really tell against him. He’s not likely to make a slip where murder is concerned. That paper would be a mistake, then, so why the devil did he leave it behind and risk his neck?”
He spread the paper out that he had found on Bilsiter’s bed:
“Received with thanks, in full settlement, Charity Sheen.”
There was no mistaking the signature. Lanner, like most of the chief police officials throughout Great Britain, knew the signature too well to mistake it. But a thought had occurred to him which, if true, would upset all the theories that had begun to form in his mind. He opened the folio of Sheen which he had had sent to him from the police station. In it were a number of facsimile reproductions of the messages Sheen had brazenly sent to the police and the newspapers after each of his exploits. He compared the typewritten slip, with its bold signature below, carefully with those in the official dossier.
“The same broken capital ‘R,’ ” he murmured to himself. “The same ‘e’ and ‘s’ out of alignment, the same uncrossed ‘t.’ No, it’s not a forgery, to put the suspicion on him. That’s genuine enough. And as Charity Sheen never makes mistakes, where have I gone wrong?”
For the first time doubt crept into the inspector’s mind. He began to realise that the problem he had to solve was not quite so simple as he had tried to make it appear. He put away the papers again and tabulated briefly, in his notebook, the results of his morning’s work. The entries read as follows:
1.A.A.—Avril Abbleway. Scarab. When lost? Why change of attitude towards Sheen? What did Bilsiter say to her.
2.T.A.—Thomas Abbleway. Sheen? Doubtful. What did he and Bilsiter talk about at midnight?
3.If Sheen is not T.A., is Sheen a guest?
4.Who opened the pantry window?
5.What was the paper Bilsiter had that Sheen wanted and is now apparently missing?
6.To whom was Bilsiter talking when he was killed? Abbleway?
7.Whose knife killed him?
“That will do for a beginning,” he murmured, closing his notebook.
As he did so the door opened and Lord Rowmands entered.
“I have ordered some lunch to be brought in here, inspector,” he said quickly. “I thought perhaps you would prefer to stay on rather than——”
“Rather than go down to the station yet?” continued the inspector. “I would. I am grateful to you for thinking about my inner man, my lord. I hope I did not worry your guests too much this morning?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Rowmands, “though of course it is all very upsetting, to say the least of it. Have you made any arrangements?”
“About the inquest and so on?” asked the inspector. “Yes. Kintock, who came up from the station to bring me some things, has all that in hand. I expect they will hold it Monday morning. I am afraid I must ask your guests to stay till then, in case the coroner wishes to ask them any questions. But I expect it will be purely formal—just identification of the body so that it can be moved as soon as possible. There will have to be a post-mortem.”
The other shrugged his shoulders and frowned. He was much too courteous to make even a suggestion of interfering, but it was plain that he felt very greatly the publicity which Bilsiter had brought upon his house. Lanner was quick to notice the expression on the peer’s face.
“After Monday I don’t suppose you will be troubled much, my lord—here, at any rate,” he said soothingly. “It has made it worse coming at the week-end, as it were.”
“I am surprised the dead man did not attempt to defend himself,” said Lord Rowmands. “He told me he was a light sleeper, and kept a revolver under his pillow, and——”
The inspector looked up sharply.
“He kept a revolver under his pillow?” he interrupted. “I found no revolver in his room, and I can assure you I searched pretty thoroughly.”
“He told me about it last night,” continued the other. “There had been some talk round the dinner table about the man who calls himself Charity Sheen. Bilsiter said that he had been threatened over a letter he was carrying.”
“Did Bilsiter mention the revolver at the dinner table?” asked Lanner.
“No. He said something about being prepared, that was all. I had a chat with him later in the evening, and it was then he told me he always kept a loaded revolver under his pillow. I pointed out to him that I thought it was a dangerous habit. He might wake up suddenly and use it half unconsciously before he was fully awake.”
The inspector nodded. The news that the murdered man carried a revolver came as a surprise to him, and added to the puzzle. What had happened to it? Where was it now?
“Do you mind telling me exactly what Bilsiter said to you, my lord?” he asked. “Even the smallest hint might put us on the right road.”
Lord Rowmands hesitated for some moments before replying.
“Your question puts me in some difficulty,” he said at last. “And I should like to reply to it with another. Do you suspect anyone at all, even in the slightest way?”
Lanner shook his head.
“At present I have no more idea who murdered him than you, my lord. But why do you ask?”
“When I talked to—to Mr. Bilsiter last night,” he replied slowly, “he told me something I—I rather wished he hadn’t told me. He told me that the paper he had in his pocket concerned one of his fellow guests.”
“Did he give you the name?” asked the inspector eagerly.
“I am sorry to say that I did not learn the name of the person concerned,” said Lord Rowmands, “especially as Bilsiter was a guest of mine and now is dead; but—but he wasn’t a gentleman.”
“So I gathered,” answered Lanner in disappointed tones. He wanted to add that he was wondering why this courteous gentleman had invited Bilsiter to stay the week-end.
“You are sure he threw out no hint who it was? What I mean is this, that something he might have said might have half suggested who it was.”
Lord Rowmands shook his head.
“I have worried about it myself,” he confessed. “And I have thought carefully over all he said, considered all my guests in turn. I do not believe any of them would have committed this terrible crime.”
Inspector Lanner had different beliefs, but he did not allow his face to betray his thoughts. He was well aware what it had cost the other to say what he had said. Lord Rowmands was clearly the kind of man who did not believe evil of any man until the evidence was overwhelming. The inspector was all the more puzzled, therefore, why Bilsiter should have been asked to stay at Rowmands. The next remark of his companion, however, enlightened him.
“I expect you are wondering why I asked Bilsiter down,” he said at last, speaking slowly and labouring under emotion. “Sooner or later that question will be asked, and I—I would rather it were not asked in public, if that is possible.”
Lanner waited without making any comment. He was not going to commit himself to keeping silent if what the peer was going to tell him was vital evidence.
“I—I owed him money,” continued Rowmands, avoiding Lanner’s eyes. “I ought to have parted with this house some years ago but—well, it has been in the family since the days of Elizabeth, and I struggled on to keep it despite heavy taxation. Finally I was compelled a few years ago to raise a heavy mortgage on it. The money was advanced by Bilsiter, whom I did not know and did not actually meet at the time. Little by little the interest became too heavy for me, and Bilsiter threatened to foreclose. Last week he asked me to invite him down for the week-end, telling me that he had a suggestion to make which would enable me to pay off the interest owing to him and perhaps some of the capital sum.”
Lord Rowmands paused for a minute and walked up and down the room agitatedly. His hands were clenched and once he shook one angrily, involuntarily as it were at some recollection, and his eyes blazed. Then, almost as quickly as it had arisen, his anger seemed to subside, and he regained control of himself. But the episode had left its impression on the inspector, left him with the knowledge that even the most gentle-minded of men held hidden fire which might momentarily become beyond their control. When he spoke again, however, it was in the same calm, kindly tones which were more natural to him.
“Last night he made an infamous suggestion to me—before dinner,” he continued. “It was no less than that I should act as his—his tout, introduce him to friends of mine who were in need of money. And for that he offered to forego the interest on the mortgage, offered even to lessen the amount. I—I told him that I could not entertain the suggestion for one moment.”
“And then?” asked the inspector quickly.
“He told me I could have till Sunday night to think it over. If I didn’t agree he—he would use the power he had.”
He stopped suddenly, looked in front of him with unseeing eyes for a moment, and then added: “If you will excuse me I must see to my guests. Luncheon will be waiting.”
When Rowmands had closed the door behind him Lanner opened his notebook again and added to it:
8.Where is Bilsiter’s revolver? Who, besides Rowmands, knew he kept it under his pillow?
9.Who is the guest Bilsiter was threatening?
Over his solitary lunch he pondered on the questions he had put down, trying to form a theory which would fit in with the facts he had gleaned. As he drank his coffee and smoked his pipe he came to one, and only, one conclusion, which he voiced aloud:
“It’s a devil of a tangle,” he said, idly drawing geometrical figures on the paper in front of him. “And I don’t fancy yours truly is going to unravel it in a hurry.”
