Читать книгу The Hampstead Mystery - John R. Watson - Страница 12

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Crewe had well-furnished offices in Holborn but lived in a luxurious flat in Jermyn Street. Although he went to and fro between them daily, his personality was almost a dual one, though not consciously so; his passion for crime investigation was distinct—in outward seeming, at all events—from his polished West End life of wealthy ease. Grave, self-contained, and inscrutable, he slipped from one to the other with an effortless regularity, and the fashionable folk with whom he mixed in his leisured bachelor existence in the West End, apart from knowing him as the famous Crewe, had even less knowledge of the real man behind his suave exterior than the clients who visited his inquiry rooms in Holborn to confide in him their stories of suffering, shame, or crimes committed against them. His commissionaire and body-servant, Stork, had once, in a rare—almost unique—convivial moment, declared to the caretaker of the building that he knew no more about his master after ten years than he did the first day he entered his service. He was deep beyond all belief, was Stork's opinion, delivered with reluctant admiration.

Although Crewe did not allow the externals of his two existences to become involved, his chief interest in life was in his work. He had originally taken up detective work more as a relief from the boredom of his lot as a wealthy young man, leading an aimless, useless life with others of his class, than by deliberate choice of his vocation. His initial successes surprised him; then the work absorbed him and became his life's career. He had achieved some memorable successes and he had made a few failures, but the failures belonged to the earlier portion of his career, before he had learnt to trust thoroughly in his own great gifts of intuition and insight, and that uncanny imagination which sometimes carried him successfully through when all else failed.

Serious devotees of chess knew the name of Crewe in another capacity—as the name of a man who might have aspired to great deeds if he had but taken the game as his life's career. He had flashed across the chess horizon some years previously as a player of surpassing brilliance by defeating Turgieff, when the great Russian master had visited London and had played twelve simultaneous boards at the London Chess Club. Crewe was the only player of the twelve to win his game, and he did so by a masterly concealed ending in which he handled his pawns with consummate skill, proffering the sacrifice of a bishop with such art that Turgieff fell into the trap, and was mated in five subsequent moves. Crewe proved this was not merely a lucky win by defeating the young South American champion, Caranda, shortly afterwards, when the latter visited England and played a series of exhibition games in London on his way to Moscow, where he was engaged in the championship tourney. Once again it was masterly pawn play which brought Crewe a fine victory, and aged chess enthusiasts who followed every move of the game with trembling excitement, declared afterwards that Crewe's conception of this particular game had not been equalled since Morphy died.

They predicted a dazzling chess career for Crewe, but he disappointed their aged hearts by retiring suddenly from match chess, and they mourned him as one unworthy of his great chess gifts and the high hopes they had placed in him. But, as a matter of fact, Crewe's intellect was too vigorous and active to be satisfied with the triumphs of chess, and his disappearance from the chess world was contemporary with his entrance into detective work, which appealed to his imagination and found scope for his restless mental activity. But if detective work so absorbed him that he gave up match chess entirely, he still retained an interest in the science of chess, reserving problem play for his spare moments, and, when not immersed in the solution of a problem of human mystery, he would turn to the chessboard and seek solace and relaxation in the mysteries of an intricate "four-mover."

He had once said that there was a certain affinity between solving chess problems and the detection of crime mystery: once the key-move was found, the rest was comparatively easy. But he added with a sigh that a really perfect crime mystery was as rare as a perfect chess problem: human ingenuity was not sufficiently skilful, as a rule, to commit a crime or construct a chess problem with completely artistic concealment of the key-move, and for that reason most problems and crimes were far too easy of detection to absorb one's intellectual interests and attention.

It was the morning after Crewe's visit to Riversbrook, and the detective sat in his private office glancing through a note-book which contained a summary of the Hampstead mystery. Crewe was a painstaking detective as well as a brilliant one, and it was his custom to prepare several critical summaries of any important case on which he was engaged, writing and rewriting the facts and his comments, until he was satisfied that he had a perfect outline to work upon, with the details and clues of the crime in consecutive order and relation to one another. Experience had taught him that the time and labour this task involved were well-spent. If an unexpected development of the case altered the facts of the original summary Crewe prepared another one in the same painstaking way. The summaries, when done with, were methodically filed and indexed and stored in a strong room at the office for future reference, where he also kept full records of all the cases upon which he had been engaged, together with the weapons and articles that had figured in them: huge volumes of newspaper reports and clippings; photographs of criminals with their careers appended; and a host of other odds and ends of his detective investigations—the whole forming an interesting museum of crime and mystery which would have furnished a store of rich material for a fresh Newgate Calendar. It was an axiom of Crewe's that a detective never knew when some old scrap of information or some trifling article of some dead and forgotten crime might not afford a valuable clue. Expert criminals frequently repeated themselves, like people in lesser walks of life, and Crewe's "library and museum," as he called it, had sometimes furnished him with a simple hint for the solution of a mystery which had defied more subtle methods of analysis.

Crewe, after carefully reading his summary of the murder of Sir Horace Fewbanks, and making a few alterations in the text, drew from his pocket the glove which Inspector Chippenfield had handed him as a clue, took it to the window, and carefully examined it through a large magnifying glass. He was thus engrossed when the door was noiselessly opened, and Stork, the bodyguard, entered. Stork belied his name. He was short and fat, with a red mottled face; a model of discretion and imperturbability, who had served Crewe for ten years, and bade fair to serve him another ten, if he lived that long. In his heart of hearts he often wondered why a gentleman like Crewe should so far forget what was due to his birth and position as to have offices in Holborn—Holborn, of all parts of London! But the awe he felt for Crewe prevented his seeking information on the point from the only person who could give it to him, so he served him and puzzled over him in silence, his inward perturbation of spirits being made manifest occasionally by a puzzled glance at his master when the latter was not looking. It was nothing to Stork that his master was a famous detective; the problem to him was why he was a detective when he had no call to be one, having more money than any man—and let alone a single man—could spend in a lifetime.

Stork coughed slightly to attract Crewe's attention.

"If you please, sir," he said, "the boy has come."

While Crewe was busy with his magnifying glass Stork returned with the boy who had accompanied Crewe on his visit to Riversbrook on the previous day.

The boy, a thin white-faced, sharp-eyed London street urchin, seemed curiously out of place in the handsomely furnished office, with his legs tucked up under the carved rail of a fine old oak chair, and his big dark eyes fixed intently on Crewe's face. The tie between him and the detective was an unusual one. It dated back some twelve months, when Crewe, in the investigation of a peculiarly baffling crime, found it advisable to disguise himself and live temporarily in a crowded criminal quarter of Islington. The rooms he took were above a secondhand clothing shop kept by a drunken female named Leaver; a supposed widow who lived at the back of the shop with her two children, Lizzie, a bold-eyed girl of 17, who worked at a Clerkenwell clothing factory, and Joe, a typical Cockney boy of fourteen, who sold papers in the streets during the day and was fast qualifying for a thief at night when Crewe went to the place to live.

Crewe soon discovered, through overhearing a loud quarrel between his landlady and her daughter, that Mrs. Leaver's husband was alive, though dead to his wife for all practical purposes, inasmuch as he was serving a life's imprisonment for manslaughter. A fortnight after he had taken up his temporary quarters above the shop the woman was removed to the hospital suffering from the effects of a hard drinking bout, and died there. The girl disappeared, and the boy would have been turned out on the streets but for Crewe, who had taken a liking to him. Joe was self-reliant, alert, and precocious, like most London street boys, but in addition to these qualities he had a vein of imagination unusual in a lad of his upbringing and environment. He devoured the exciting feuilleton stories in the evening papers he vended, and spent his spare pennies at the cinema theatres in the vicinity of his poor home. His appreciation of the crude mysteries of the filmed detective drama amused the famous expert in the finer art of actual crime detection, until he discovered that the boy possessed natural gifts of intuition and observation, combined with penetration. Crewe grew interested in developing the boy's talent for detective work. When the lad's mother died Crewe decided to take him into his Holborn offices as messenger-boy. Crewe soon discovered that Joe had a useful gift for "shadowing" work, and his street training as a newspaper runner enabled him not only to follow a person through the thickest of London traffic, but to escape observation where a man might have been noticed and suspected.

"Well, Joe," said Crewe, as the boy entered on the heels of Stork, "I have a job for you this morning. I want you to find the glove corresponding to this one."

Crewe, having finished his examination of the glove, handed it to the boy, whose first act was to slip it on his left hand and move his fingers about to assure himself that they were in good working order in spite of being hidden. It was the first occasion on which Joe had worn a glove.

"It was found in the room in which Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered," continued Crewe. "The other one was not there. The question I want to solve is, did it belong to Sir Horace, or to some one who visited him on the night he was murdered? The police think it belonged to Sir Horace because it is the same size as the gloves he wore, and because Sir Horace's hosier stocks the same kind—as does nearly every fashionable hosier in London. They think he lost the right-hand glove on his way up from Scotland. It will occur to you, Joe, though you don't wear gloves, that it is more common for men to lose the right-hand glove than the left-hand, because the right hand is used a great deal more than the left, and even men who would not be seen in the street without gloves find there are many things they cannot do with a gloved hand. For instance, to dive one's hand into one's trouser pocket where most men keep their loose change the glove has to be removed."

"Then the gentleman would take off his right glove when he paid for his taxi-cab from St. Pancras," said Joe, who was familiar through the accounts in the newspapers with the main details of the Fewbanks mystery.

"Right, Joe," said his master approvingly. "And in that case he dropped the glove between the taxi-cab outside his front gates and his room, and it would have been found. I have made inquiries and I am satisfied it was not found."

"He might have lost it when he was getting into the train at Scotland," suggested the lad. "He had to change trains at Glasgow—he might have lost it there."

"That is a rule-of-thumb deduction," said Crewe, with a kindly smile. "It is good enough for the police, for they have apparently adopted it, but it is not good enough for me. What you don't understand, Joe, is that an odd glove is of no value in the eyes of a man who wears gloves. He doesn't take it home as a memento of his carelessness in losing the other. He throws it away. Therefore if this is Sir Horace's glove he took it home because he was unaware that he had lost the other. He would put on his gloves before leaving the train at St. Pancras. And he would pull off the right-hand one—he was not left-handed—when the taxi-cab was nearing his home so as to be able to pay the fare. Therefore, if it is Sir Horace's glove the fellow to it was dropped in the taxi-cab, or dropped between the taxi-cab and the house. If the glove had been lost at the other end of the journey in Scotland Sir Horace would have flung this one out of the carriage window when he became aware of the loss. As I have told you no glove was found between the gate at Riversbrook and the room in which Sir Horace was murdered. I got from the police the number of the taxi-cab in which Sir Horace was driven from St. Pancras, and the driver tells me that no glove was left in his cab. So what have we to do next, Joe?"

"To find the missing glove? It's a tough job, ain't it, sir?"

"Yes and no," replied Crewe. "It is possible to make some reasonable safe deductions in regard to it. These would indicate what had happened to it, and knowing where to look, or, rather, in what circumstances we might expect to find it, we might throw a little light on it. In the first place, it might be assumed that if the glove did not belong to Sir Horace it belonged to some one who visited him on the night he returned unexpectedly from Scotland. That indicates that his visitor knew Sir Horace was returning; a most important point, for if he knew Sir Horace was returning he knew why he was returning—which no one else knows up to the present as far as I have been able to gather—and in all probability was responsible for his return, say, sent him a letter or a telegram which brought him to London. So we come to the possibility of an angry scene in the room in which Sir Horace's dead body was subsequently found. We have the possibility of the visitor leaving the house in a high state of excitement, hastily snatching up the hat and gloves he had taken off when he arrived, and in his excitement dropping unnoticed the right-hand glove on the floor."

"And leaving his gold-mounted stick behind him," said Joe, who was following his master's line of reasoning with keen interest.

"Right, Joe," said Crewe. "That was placed in the stand in the hall, and when the visitor left hurriedly was entirely forgotten. But at what stage did the visitor become conscious of the loss of his glove? Not until his excitement cooled down a little. How long he took to cool down depends upon the cause of his excitement and his temperament, things which, at present, we can only guess at. He would probably walk a long distance before he cooled down. Then he would resume his normal habits and among other things would put on his gloves—if he had them. He would find that he had lost one and that he had left his stick behind. He would know that the stick had been left behind in the hall, but he would not know the glove had been dropped in the house. The probabilities are that he would think he had dropped it while walking. But if he felt that he had dropped it in the house, and he had the best of all reasons for not wishing anyone to know that he had visited Sir Horace that night, he would destroy the remaining glove and our chance of tracing it would be gone. The fact that he had left his stick behind was a minor matter that he could easily account for if he had been a friend of Sir Horace who had been in the habit of visiting Riversbrook. If anything cropped up subsequently about the stick he could say that he had left it there before Sir Horace closed up his house and went to Scotland.

"But the problem of the glove is a different matter, Joe. There are three phases to it: first, if the visitor thought he had dropped it in the house and wanted to keep his visit there a profound secret from subsequent inquiry he would take home the remaining glove and destroy it—probably by burning it. Secondly, if he thought he had dropped it after leaving the house he would not feel that safety necessitated the destruction of the remaining one, but he would probably throw it away where it would not be likely to be found. In the third place, if he had no particular reason for wishing to hide the fact that he had visited Riversbrook he would throw it away anywhere when he became conscious that he had lost the other. He would throw it away merely because an odd glove is of no use to a man who wears gloves. The man who doesn't wear gloves would pick up an odd glove from the ground and think he had made a find. He would take it home to his wife and she would probably keep it for finger-stalls for the children."

Crewe put down his notes and got up from his chair. "Your job is this, Joe. Go to Riversbrook and make a careful search on both sides of the road for the missing glove. I do not think he threw it away—if he did throw it away—until he had walked some distance, but you mustn't act on that assumption. Look over the fences of the houses and into the hedges. Walk along in the direction of Hampstead Underground. Search the gutters and all the trees and hedges along the road. Take one side of the street to the Underground station and if you do not find the glove go back to Riversbrook along the other side. Make a thorough job of it, as it is most important that the glove should be found—if it is to be found."

After Joe had departed Crewe put on his hat and left his office for the Strand. His first call was at the shop of Bruden and Marshall, hosiers, in order to find out if any information was to be obtained there about the ownership of the glove. He was aware that the police had been there on the same mission, but his experience had often shown that valuable information was to be gathered after the police had been over the ground.

On introducing himself to the manager of the shop that gentleman displayed as much humble civility as he would have done towards a valued customer. He could not say anything about the ownership of the glove which Crewe had brought, and he could not even say if it had come from their shop. It was an excellent glove, the line being known in the trade as "first-choice reindeer." They stocked that particular kind of article at 10/6 the pair. They had the pleasure of having had the late Sir Horace Fewbanks on their books. He was quite an old account, if he might use the expression. He was one of their best customers, being a gentleman who was particular about his appearance and who would have nothing but the best in any line that he fancied. On the subject of Sir Horace's taste in hose the manager had much to say, and, in spite of Crewe's efforts to confine the conversation to gloves, the manager repeatedly dragged in socks. He did it so frequently that he became conscious his visitor was showing signs of annoyance, so he apologised, adding, with an inspiration, "After all, hose is really gloves for the feet."

Crewe ascertained that a large number of legal gentlemen were customers of Bruden and Marshall. He innocently suggested that the reason was because the shop was the nearest one of its kind to the Law Courts, but this explanation offended the shopman's pride. It was because they stocked high-class goods and gave good value in every way, combined with attention and civility and a desire to please, that they did such an excellent business with legal gentlemen. In refutation of the idea that proximity to the Courts was the direct reason of their having so many legal gentlemen among their customers the manager declared that they received orders from all parts of the world—India, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, to say nothing of American gentlemen who liked their hosiery to have the London hall-mark. Their orders from the Colonies came from gentlemen who found that these things in the Colonies were not what they had been used to, and so they sent their orders to Bruden and Marshall.

Crewe's interest was in the legal customers and he asked for the names of some. The manager ran through a list of names of judges, barristers and solicitors, but the name Crewe wanted to hear was not among them. He was compelled to include the name among half a dozen others he mentioned to the manager. He ascertained that Mr. Charles Holymead was a customer of the firm, but it was apparent from the manager's spiritless attitude towards Mr. Holymead that the famous K.C. was not a man who ran up a big bill with his hosier, or was very particular about what he wore. The world regarded some of the men of this type famous or distinguished, but in the hosier's mind they were all classed as commonplace. But the manager would not go so far as to say that Mr. Holymead would not buy such a glove as that which Crewe had brought in. He might and he might not, but, as a general rule, he did not pay more than 8/6 for his gloves.

Crewe took a taxi to Princes Gate in order to have a look at the house in which Holymead lived. It occurred to him that if Holymead was not particular about what he spent on his clothes he was extravagant about the amount he spent in house rent. Of course, a leading barrister earning a huge income could afford to live in a palatial residence in Princes Gate, but it was not the locality or residence that an economically-minded man would have chosen for his home. But Crewe had little doubt that the beautiful wife Holymead possessed was responsible for the choice of house and locality.

After looking at the house Crewe walked back to the cab-stand at Hyde Park Corner. He had arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to settle beyond doubt whether the K.C. had visited Riversbrook the night Sir Horace had returned from Scotland. If the K.C. had done so, he was anxious to keep the visit secret, for not only had he not informed the police of his visit but he had kept it from Miss Fewbanks. Crewe had ascertained from Miss Fewbanks that Mr. Holymead when he had called at Riversbrook on a visit of condolence had not mentioned to her anything about having left his stick in the hall stand on a previous visit. On leaving Miss Fewbanks Mr. Holymead had gone up to the hall stand and taken both his hat and stick as if he had left them both there a few minutes before.

Crewe reasoned that if Holymead had gone out to see Sir Horace Fewbanks at Riversbrook and had desired to keep his visit a secret he would not have taken a cab at Hyde Park Corner to Hampstead, but would have travelled by underground railway or omnibus. In all probability the Tube had been used because of its speed being more in harmony with the feelings of a man impatient to get done with a subject so important that Sir Horace had been recalled from Scotland to deal with it. He would leave the Tube at Hampstead and take a taxi-cab. He would not be likely to go straight to Riversbrook in the taxi-cab, if he were anxious that his movements should not be traced subsequently. He would dismiss the taxi-cab at one of the hotels bordering on Hampstead Heath, for they were the resort of hundreds of visitors on summer nights, and his actions would thus easily escape notice. From the hotel he would walk across to Riversbrook. But the return journey would be made in a somewhat different way. If Holymead left Riversbrook in a state of excitement he would walk a long way without being conscious of the exertion. He would want to be alone with his own thoughts. Gradually he would cool down, and becoming conscious of his surroundings would make his way home. Again he would use the Tube, for it would be more difficult for his movements to be traced if he mixed with a crowd of travellers than if he took a cab to his home. It was impossible to say what station he got in at, for that would depend on how far he walked before he cooled down, but he would be sure to get out at Hyde Park Corner because that was the station nearest to his house. Allowing for a temperamental reaction during a train journey of about twenty minutes, he would feel depressed and weary and would probably take a taxi-cab outside Hyde Park station to his home. That was a thing he would often be in the habit of doing when returning late at night from the theatre or elsewhere, and therefore could be easily explained by him if the police happened to make inquiries as to his movements.

As Crewe anticipated, he had no difficulty in finding the driver of the taxi-cab in which Holymead had driven home on the night of Wednesday last. The K.C. frequently used cabs, and he was well-known to all the drivers on the rank. Crewe got into the cab he had used and ordered the man to drive him to his office, and there invited him upstairs. He adopted this course because he knew that the driver, who gave his name as Taylor, would be more likely to talk freely in an office where he could not be overheard than he would do on the cab-rank with his fellow-drivers crowding him, or in an hotel parlour where other people were present.

"Tell me exactly what happened when you drove Mr. Holymead home on Wednesday night," said Crewe. "Did you notice anything strange about him, or was his manner much the same as on other occasions that he used your cab?"

"Well, I don't see whether I should tell you whether he was or whether he wasn't," replied the taxi-cab driver, who was as surly as most of his class. "What's it to do with you, anyway? He's a regular customer of mine on the rank, and he's not one of your tuppenny tipsters, either. He's a gentleman. And if he got to know that I had been telling tales about him it would not do me any good."

"It would not," replied Crewe, with cordial acquiescence. "Therefore, Taylor, I give you my word of honour not to mention anything you tell me. Furthermore, I'll see that you don't lose by it now or at any other time. I cannot say more than that, but that's a great deal more than the police would say. Now, would you sooner tell me or tell the police? Here's a sovereign to start with, and if you have an interesting story to tell you'll have another one before you leave."

The appeal of money and the conviction that the police would use less considerate methods if Crewe passed him over to them abolished Taylor's scruples about discussing a fare, and it was in a much less surly tone that he responded:

"I didn't notice anything strange about him when he called me off the rank, but I did afterwards. First of all, I didn't drive him home. That is, I did drive him home, but he didn't go inside. When I drew up outside his house in Princes Gate, I looked around expecting to see him get out. As he didn't move I got down and opened the door. 'Aren't you getting out here, sir?' I said, in a soft voice. 'No,' he said. 'Drive on.' 'This is your house, sir,' I ventured to say. 'I'm not going in,' he replied, 'drive on.' I was surprised. I thought he was the worse for drink, and I'd never seen him that way before. But some gentlemen are so obstinate in liquor that you can't get them to do anything except the opposite of what you ask them. I thought I'd try and coax him. 'Better go inside, sir,' I said. 'You'll be better off in bed.' 'Do you think I am drunk?' he said sharply. You could have knocked me down with a feather. He was as sober as a judge, all in a moment. 'No, sir, I didn't,' I said. 'I wouldn't take the liberty,' I said. 'Then get back on your seat and drive me to the Hyde Park Hotel—no, I think I'll go to Verney's. But don't go there direct. Drive me round the Park first. I feel I want a breath of cool air.'"

"Go on," said Crewe, in a tone which indicated approval of Taylor's method of telling his story.

"Well, I turned the cab round and drove through the Park. But I was puzzled about him and looked back at him once or twice pretending that I was looking to see if a cab or car was coming up behind. And as we passed over the Serpentine Bridge I saw him throw something out of the window."

"A glove?" suggested Crewe quickly.

The driver looked at him in profound admiration.

"Well, if you don't beat all the detectives I've ever heard of."

"He tried to throw it in the water," continued Crewe, as if explaining the matter to himself rather than to his visitor. "Did you get it?"

"Hold on a bit," said Taylor, who had his own ideas of how to give value for the extra sovereign he hoped to obtain. "I couldn't see what it was he had thrown away, and, of course, I couldn't pull up to find out. I drove on, but I kept my eye on him, though I had my back to him. As we were driving back along the Broad Walk I had another look at him, and bless me if he wasn't crying—crying like a child. He had his hands up to his face and his head was shaking as if he was sobbing. I said to myself, 'He's barmy—he's gone off his rocker.' I thought to myself I ought to drive him to the police station, but I reckoned it was none of my business, after all, so I'll take him to Verney's and be done with it. So I drove to Verney's. He got out, and paid me, but I couldn't see that he had been crying, and he looked much as usual, so far as I could see. I thought to myself that perhaps, after all, he'd only had a queer turn; however, I said to myself I'd drive back to the bridge and see what he'd thrown out of the window. It was a glove, sure enough. It had fallen just below the railing. I looked about for the other one, but I couldn't find it, so I suppose it must have fallen into the water."

"No, it didn't," said Crewe. "I have it here." He opened a drawer in his desk and produced a glove. "It was a right-hand glove you found. Just look at this one and see if it corresponds to the one you picked up."

Taylor looked at the glove.

"They're as like as two peas," he said.

"What did you do with the one you found?" inquired Crewe. "I hope you didn't throw it away?"

"I'm not a fool," retorted Taylor. "I've had odd gloves left in my cab before. I kept this one thinking that sooner or later somebody might leave another like it, and then I'd have a pair for nothing."

"Well, I'll buy it from you," said Crewe. "Have you anything more to tell me?"

"I went back to the rank and one of the chaps was curious that I'd been so long away, for he knew that Mr. Holymead's place isn't more than ten minutes' drive from the station. But he got nothing out of me. I know how to keep my mouth shut. You're the first man I've told what happened, and I hope you won't give me away."

"I've already promised you that," said Crewe, flipping another sovereign from his sovereign case and handing it to Taylor, "and I'll give you five shillings for the glove."

Taylor looked at him darkly.

"Five shillings isn't much for a glove like that," he said insolently. "What about my loss of time going home for it? I suppose you'll pay the taxi-fare for the run down from Hyde Park?"