Читать книгу The Shop Window Murders - Vernon Loder - Страница 9

AS they approached the lift, Devenish suddenly thought that it was sheer cruelty to take his companion with him any farther.

‘You have had a horrible morning, sir,’ he said to him, noticing how he now dragged his feet. ‘If I were you, I would go out and get some air; and have something to pull you together.’

He had already given instructions to the policemen on the various doors to follow any member of the staff who had been allowed to leave the premises, and felt quite safe in letting the manager go. Kephim thanked him weakly, and left. The detective advanced to where two subordinates stood before an open lift, in a recess at the back of the building.

One was his sergeant, who had brought it up to this floor, and he made way for Devenish, and pointed silently to a tiny spot of dry blood on the floor of the lift itself. The other man handed him a long and slender knife, the handle carefully wrapped in tissue paper, with the information that he had found it lying in the corner by the bloodstain.

Devenish examined the knife most carefully, then returned it. ‘Pack it with the other exhibits, Corbett,’ he said. ‘Where was this lift when you first saw it?’

‘It was down in the basement, sir.’

‘But it can be brought automatically to any floor, can’t it?—It can? Is it a very noiseless lift, or not?—Wonderfully quiet, eh?—Right. It is hard to say whether anyone was brought down in this, or simply came up in it.—Sergeant, I want to see the night watchman who patrols this section of the store. Send him here.’

The sergeant having gone off on this errand, Devenish knelt carefully on the floor inside, and fixed the exact position and dimensions of the blood-spot.

‘It seems to me a useful bit of evidence,’ he remarked, as he got up again, ‘but here is the watchman. Carry on! I am going to question him, but farther along the corridor.’

‘This is Mann, the night watchman, sir,’ said the sergeant.

Devenish nodded to the respectably dressed man of forty who had come up, noted that he looked like an ex-soldier, and motioned him to move a yard down the corridor.

‘Now, sergeant, I have a few jobs for you,’ he said. ‘First you must see the assistant-manager, and he must telephone to a director, if needs be, to have the Store closed. We can’t carry on with people trampling over the place; and if it remains open any longer, we shall have a drive of pressmen harrying us.’

‘But what of the assistants, sir?’ asked the sergeant.

‘My dear fellow, we can’t interrogate thirteen hundred odd men and women today. It doesn’t look like a job that one of them would do either. We must keep those in executive positions for the moment, but get the rest away, and the place closed.’

‘I’ll see to it, sir. Anything else?’

‘You must visit Mr Kephim’s flat in Baker Street, and Miss Tumour’s—I’ll give you both addresses. Find out all you can, and particularly when Miss Tumour left home last night. Also discover at what hour Mr Kephim went out and returned.’

‘Very well, sir.’

When the sergeant had gone, Devenish walked over to the waiting witness. ‘What exactly is your usual round when you patrol this section of the stores at night, Mann?’ he asked, while the ex-soldier kept a steady eye on his face.

‘I come on my shift at ten, sir,’ was the reply. ‘I walk round once, and see that it is all O.K. I have a box to sit in between rounds. They’re every hour, sir.’

‘How long does it take you to get round?’

‘Fifteen minutes. That is as I do it now, sir. But then I have only been here two months, and never seen anything suspicious.’

‘Then I may assume that you set out on your rounds at a quarter-past ten, a quarter-past eleven, a quarter-past—’

‘No, sir, it is an hour after finishing each round. I start the second round at a quarter-past eleven, and have it done by half-past eleven. I set out on the third at half-past twelve, and so on, sir.’

‘You are an ex-soldier, Mann—what branch?’

‘Finished as a sergeant, sir. I was an old regular, discharged unfit 1924.’

‘A man of method apparently, anyway,’ said Devenish. ‘Now, did you see or hear anything suspicious last night in the Store?’

He took out his note-book as he spoke.

‘Nothing at all, sir.’

‘No noise like a lift going up or down, no sound that might suggest an aeroplane engine?’

‘I didn’t hear any lift, sir, but then they are uncommon quiet. I did hear a faint sound like an engine up above, but I often hear that weekends, so I don’t count it suspicious.’

‘The dynamos in the basement were running? Why don’t these people take current from the mains?’

‘I don’t know anything about it, sir. I do know Mr Mander used to tinker with machines up above. I thought he was at it again last night; though it didn’t last long.’

Devenish nodded. ‘Let me see where this box of yours is, Mann,’ he said, and called softly to the detective at work in the lift, ‘I say, Corbett, run that lift up and down a bit for the next three minutes, will you, while I am away.’

Receiving an assent from his subordinate, he accompanied the watchman along the corridor, and down another at right angles, which ended in a sort of cabinet. This cabinet contained a seat, a switchboard and telephone, and the bell of a burglar-alarm. Devenish seated himself in the chair, and looked down the corridor. ‘You don’t see much of the Store from here,’ he remarked thoughtfully; ‘only a corner of it.’

‘So I’m not seen, either,’ replied his companion. ‘If I put on my torch, I might frighten any thieves, and if I keep the place dark I can’t see. But, dark or light, I can hear better than anyone else.’

Devenish smiled dryly. ‘You must have very acute hearing indeed, if you can hear slight sounds in a place as big as this, with partitions to cut sounds off or blur them.’

‘It isn’t that my ears are specially good, but this ear here, sir,’ said the man, with a quiet smile, and pointed to a tiny horn, like a gramophone-horn, at the level of his head, which projected slightly from the wall of the cabinet. ‘Mr Mander was great for the latest dodges. I just switch on this microphone here, and every sound comes my way. More than that, sir. There’s a kind of selective attachment to it, and it tells me from what quarter the sound comes, so I can take action.’

‘Royal Engineer?’ asked the detective gently.

‘Signals, sir. But you see what I mean.’

‘Turn on the switch now.’

Mann obeyed, then looked puzzled. The detective did not look so puzzled, but faintly startled.

‘Someone’s been monkeying with your buzz-saw,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t hear any of the noises magnified now.’

Mann had obviously some mechanical knowledge. He examined the horn and the switch, then looked at the electrical connections, and swore.

‘Cut a lead here, sir,’ he said.

Devenish took out his magnifier, and examined the thing closely, then he dusted the panelling in the region of the lead, and scanned it for finger-prints. None showed. Someone had interfered with the microphone, but he had left no traces while doing it.’

‘He must have been here while you went on one of your rounds. Did you not notice that there were no sounds coming through as loud as you would expect to hear them?’

‘I didn’t, sir, but you know how it is. I didn’t suspect anyone was here, and you aren’t so sharp after nothing has happened for two months on end.’

‘An unfortunate but truly human failing,’ agreed Devenish, ‘but I must admit to defects myself. For example, I have not been listening for the sound of the lift going up and down. I must get my man to keep it working.’

He went away, to return again in a minute, and raise a hand to command silence. It may have been the noises from the Store, but he could hear nothing of the moving of the lift, and realised that the experiment could not be made until the place was empty and perfectly quiet.

Explaining this to the watchman, he went off, and found himself in a couple of minutes in the shop window with the blind down, talking to his superintendent, who had just arrived from the Yard, and the surgeon, who sat smoking a cigarette, and watching the last efforts of the lower ranks, as they measured and surveyed and plotted the big space. When he had finished explaining what he had done, Devenish was rewarded by a nod of approval from the superintendent.

‘Any sign of the bullet yet, sir?’ he asked.

‘None at all,’ said the big man stolidly. ‘High-velocity bullet, Dr Grindley thinks.’

‘Knows,’ said the surgeon, puffing. ‘I saw enough of them during the war. Steel-jacketed, I should say.’

‘Not that Mauser?’ asked Devenish gently.

‘I ought to have been a gunner,’ said the surgeon, smiling. ‘I know all about ’em—all kinds. That Mauser is new, been fired once. But I think your experts will agree that it was fired with blank. I won’t swear, but that is my opinion.’

‘Possible,’ murmured Devenish. ‘A man who would take the trouble to set up his victims as specimens in the window here wouldn’t leave the gun on view.’

‘Was the shot fired at close quarters?’ said the superintendent.

‘I should say not. Not very close anyway.’

‘How long should you say he had been dead?’

The surgeon reflected. ‘It isn’t so easy to answer that as some people imagine. I should say roughly between twelve to fourteen hours, but I may be sadly out.’

‘And the young woman?’

‘Less, I should say, but I can’t tell you how much less. In neither case does the bleeding seem to have been extensive—a sporting bullet with a more or less soft nose would have been different. The other wound was made by a weapon that did not—’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Devenish. ‘If she was killed after him—’

‘Then he didn’t do it,’ said the surgeon. ‘I admit that! I don’t think either of them did it to each other!’

Devenish smiled faintly. ‘Well, you’ll have the P.M., and then we shall know more. I thought, superintendent, of going to see the man in charge of the aeroplane department. I see you have cleared most of the people out of the Store, but the executives will be here.’

‘I asked them to stay in Mr Mander’s private office,’ said the other. ‘I am going to have a talk to them. But if you care to see one alone—’

‘If he would come to me in his department above, sir,’ said the inspector, ‘I will go there now.’

The superintendent nodded. ‘Very well. I’ll send him.’

The inspector nodded to the surgeon, and went away. Taking one of the automatic lifts, which had upon a board outside ‘To Sporting and Aeroplane Departments’, he found himself on the first floor, and presently arrived in an immense room looking over a street at the side of the Stores building. Housed in this department (some ready for flight, and some in the various stages of folding that made the Mander Hopper such a boon to the private pilot without a hangar) were about six machines.

Devenish lit a cigarette, and walked round them thoughtfully until the sound of someone approaching told him that the manager of the department was arriving for his interview. He came in, and greeted the detective briefly. Devenish saw that he was an alert and handsome young man of about thirty, rather of a military cut, and obviously intelligent.

‘I was up on the roof just now, sir,’ the detective told him. ‘There were tracks that made me rather wonder if a machine had landed there lately.’

‘This is a pretty filthy business, inspector,’ said Mr Cane in reply. ‘Hardly bargained for a Wild-West shooting here. But what was that you said? A machine landed on the roof? Most unlikely, I should say. We had enough of that sort of thing a month ago.’

‘A certain amount of trouble, but also a good deal of advertisement, sir! I should like to have a list of purchasers of the “Mander Hopper”.

‘The first purchasers. But suppose they had been resold?’

‘No doubt we could trace them, said Devenish, offering his case to the young man, who took a cigarette and lit up.

‘I suppose you could. I’ll get you a list.’

‘Are these heavy machines?’

‘Yes, they are heavier than machines would be which were not fitted with the gyrocopter device, inspector.’

Devenish approached a machine which was ready for flight. ‘The tyres on the landing wheels are naturally wider when the machine rests on them than when they are removed,’ he said.

Cane grinned. ‘That is what “Punch” would call “another glimpse of the obvious”, inspector. I might even go further, and suggest that, at the moment when a machine lands, the impact makes the track even wider than that!’

‘Quite what I thought, sir,’ replied Devenish innocently. ‘Now could we get one of the wheels to make some sort of track here?’

Cane thought it over. ‘I might chalk the treads of the two tyres, and we could push the ’bus a bit along the floor, if that is any good to you.’

‘Splendid, sir. While you are doing that, I might be looking at your books, and taking down some of the names of purchasers of these machines.’

‘Come to my office in the corner there. You’ll find pens and paper, while I get the books out of the safe.’

There had been perhaps fifty purchasers of the ‘Mander Hopper’ since it had been put on the market, or rather, there had been promise of delivery of that number of machines. Devenish took down the names and addresses, and had completed his list when Cane called to him.

‘Palaver set, inspector.’

Between them, they pushed a machine along the floor, and the inspector not only measured the whitened track made by the tyres, but also the width of the treads pressed out by the weight above.

‘That will do nicely, sir,’ he said when he had finished. ‘Now I want to ask you a question about Mr Mander. He was interested in machines and aerodynamics, wasn’t he? I saw some sort of a laboratory, or workshop, above.’

Cane laughed a little. ‘He did tinker a bit, I believe; but I really know nothing about it. He said he always gave full charge of a department to a man, and never interfered.’

‘But who invented the machine here that is called by his name?’

‘It is assumed that he did.’

‘Well, didn’t he?’

‘Can’t say. He patented it, I know. I was only once up in his workshop, and he didn’t like that much. What I saw there of the jobs he did struck me as elementary. A fellow who invented this had to be a swell at other things than mechanics.’

Devenish’s eyes lit up. ‘You mean that he did not seem to you capable enough?’

Cane nodded. ‘I mean that, when I had to talk to customers once or twice before him, he never said a word. Can you imagine any chap who could invent a perfect gyrocopter standing mum while you were fiddling with his subject? I can’t! I know inventors. Perfect pests, poor devils, and ready to jaw your head off! That is about the only satisfaction they get out of their inventions.’

‘But someone must have invented it?’

‘Obvious again. But isn’t there just a hint that the man who did might have been on his uppers, and beam-ends, and so on, and been told he could get a purchaser if he kept his mouth shut?’

‘Ah!’ said Devenish heavily.

Then he thanked Cane for his help, and left him to go on the roof again, where he made fresh measurements and comparisons, emerging half an hour later, and going towards the lift, when he met a man he had not seen before, a pompous stout man, with a bald head, who introduced himself as the assistant-manager.

‘The Stores are now completely cleared, inspector,’ he informed Devenish. ‘Is there any way in which I can help you?’

The detective reflected, then: ‘Is this a private company?’ he asked.

‘No. Mr Mander was the sole proprietor.’

‘Really. But this is a very big organisation. Do you mean that he financed it himself?’

‘So far as I know. I can’t say.’

The interview got no further than that, for a constable came hurrying up to say that Mr Melis, an Assistant-Commissioner from the Yard, was in Mr Mander’s private office, and wished to see the inspector.