“Extensive defalcations. A system of fraud that must have been carried
on for many years,” repeated Aubrey Todmarsh. “Well, that pretty well
settles the matter as far as Thompson is concerned.”
“I don't see it,” contradicted Tony Collyer. “Thompson is a defaulter.
That doesn't prove he is a murderer. I don't believe he is. Old chap
didn't look like a murderer.”
“My dear Tony, don't be childish!” responded Todmarsh. “A man that
commits a murder never does look like a murderer. He wouldn't be so
successful if he did.”
“Anyway, if Thompson is guilty, it pretty well knocks the stuffing out
of your pet theory,” retorted Tony. “Thompson didn't go to the War.”
“No, but the lust for killing spread over the entire country,”
Todmarsh went on, his face assuming a rapt expression as he gazed over
Anthony's head at the little clouds scudding across the patch of sky
which he could see through the windows above. “Besides, there were
murders before the War, and there will be murders when, if ever, it is
forgotten. But I do maintain that there have been many more brutal
crimes since the War than ever before in the history of the country.
Teach a man through all the most impressionable years of his life that
there is nothing worth doing but killing his fellow-creatures and
trying to kill them, and he will——”
“Oh, stow that—we have heard it all before,” Tony interrupted
irritably. “According to your own showing the murder might just as
well have been committed by one of your own dear conchies as anyone
else. Anyway, I don't believe Thompson killed Uncle Luke. Why should
he? He had got the money. He had only to make off with it. Why should
he kill the old chap?”
“Well, Uncle Luke may have taxed him with his shortcomings and
threatened to prosecute him, perhaps he tried to phone or something of
that sort. And Thompson may have sprung at him and throttled him.”
“Don't believe it!” Tony said obstinately.
Todmarsh's eyes narrowed.
“I wouldn't proclaim my faith in Thompson's innocence quite so loudly
if I were you, Tony. I imagine you have no idea who the world is
saying must be guilty if Thompson is innocent.”
“I imagine I have,” Tony returned, his tone growing violent. “I am
quite aware that the world”—laying stress on the noun—“is saying that,
if Thompson didn't murder Uncle Luke, I did, to gain the money my
uncle left. But I am not going to try to hang Thompson to save my own
neck. By the way, I come into some more money when Aunt Madeline dies.
You will be expecting me to murder her next! You had something left
you too. You may have done it to get that!”
Aubrey Todmarsh shook his head.
“My legacy is a mere flea-bite compared with yours. And I trust that
my life and aims are sufficiently well known——”
Tony turned his back on him deliberately.
“Bosh! Don't trouble to put it on for me, Aubrey. I have known your
life and aims fairly well for a good while. Take care of your own
skin, and let everything else go to the wall. That's your aim.”
His cousin's dark eyes held no spark of resentment.
“You do not think that, I know, Tony. But, if the world should
misjudge my motives, I cannot help it.”
The cousins were standing in the smaller of the two adjoining
waiting-rooms in the late Luke Bechcombe's flat offices. The inquest
had been held that morning and the auditors' report on the books that
had been in Thompson's charge and the contents of the safe had been
taken. Their statement that there had been a system of fraud carried
on probably for years had not come as a surprise. The public had from
the first decided that Thompson's disappearance could only be
accounted for as a flight from the charge of embezzlement that was
hanging over him. Ever logical, rumour did not trouble to account for
the chloroform and the covered finger-prints or the lady with the
white gloves.
The auditors' report had brought both Aubrey Todmarsh and Tony to the
office this afternoon, and as usual the cousins could not meet without
contradicting one another or quarrelling. Inspector Furnival and Mr.
Steadman had also given their account of their visit to Thompson's
room and the mystery mongers were more than ever intrigued thereby.
There could be no doubt that, whatever might be their opinion of his
guilt, Thompson's disappearance was becoming more and more of an
enigma to the police. Not the faintest trace of him could be
discovered. When he left the clerks' office in Crow's Inn, he
apparently disappeared from the face of the earth; no one had met him
on the stairs, no one had seen him in the vicinity of the square.
After an enormous amount of inquiry the police had at last discovered
a small restaurant where he generally lunched, but he had neither been
there on the day of the murder nor since, and the railway stations had
been watched so far without success. In fact, Inspector Furnival had
been heard to state that but that they could not find the body he
would have thought that Thompson had been murdered as well as his
chief.
Thompson was described at the restaurant as always taking his meals by
himself and speaking to no one, and always at the same table. Then the
waitress who had waited on him for the last two years had never heard
him say more than good morning, or good afternoon. He always lunched
_à la carte_, so that there was no ordering to be done. Still with the
precautions taken, with his description circulated through the
country, it seemed that his capture could only be a matter of time.
But the inspector was frankly puzzled. At every point he was baffled
in his attempt to discover anything of the real man. The very mystery
about him was in itself suspicious.
The inspector and Mr. Steadman were in Mr. Bechcombe's private room
this afternoon. Everything remained just as it had been when the
murder was discovered, except that the body had been removed to the
nearest mortuary now that the inquest had been adjourned, and the
funeral was to take place at once.
The inspector had been over the room already with the most meticulous
care. To-day he was trying to reconstruct the crime. The dead man's
writing-table was opposite the door into the ante-room, which opened
into the clerks' room. The door into the passage opened upon Mr.
Bechcombe's usual seat. Supposing that to have been unlocked, it
seemed to the inspector that, when Mr. Bechcombe had received his
expected visitor, he might have been thinking over some communication
that had been made to him, and the assassin might have entered the
room silently from behind, and strangled him before he was aware of
his danger. But there seemed no motive for such a crime, and the
inspector was frankly puzzled. There was no view from the window, the
lower panes being of frosted glass, the upper looking straight across
to a blank wall. The safe was locked again now as it had been in Mr.
Bechcombe's lifetime. Mr. Turner had finished his examination. But,
try as the inspector would to reconstruct the crime, he could not
build up any hypothesis which could not be instantly demolished, or so
it seemed to him. Mr. Steadman stood on the hearthrug with his back to
the ashes of Luke Bechcombe's last fire. For the lawyer had been
old-fashioned—he had disliked central heating and gas and electric
contrivances. In spite of strikes and increasing prices he had adhered
to coal fires.
At last the silence was broken by Mr. Steadman:
“You have the experts' opinion of the fingerprints, I presume?”
The inspector bent his head.
“It came this morning. It was not put in at the inquest, for it is
just as well not to take all the world into our confidence at first,
you know, Mr. Steadman.”
“Quite so,” the barrister assented. “Do you mean that you were able to
identify them?”
“No,” growled the inspector. “They will never be identified. The
murderer wore those thin rubber gloves that some of the first-class
crooks have taken to of late.”
“Phew!” Mr. Steadman gave a low whistle. “That—that puts a very
different complexion on the matter.”
The inspector raised his eyebrows. “As how?”
“Well, for one thing it settles the question of premeditation.”
The inspector coughed.
“I have never believed Mr. Bechcombe's murder to have been
unpremeditated. Neither have you, I think, sir.”
“Well, no,” the other conceded. “The crime has always looked to me
like a carefully planned and skilfully executed murder. And yet—I
don't know.”
“It is the most absolutely baffling affair I have come across for
years,” Inspector Furnival observed slowly. “It is the question of
motive that is so puzzling. Once we have discovered that I do not
think the identity of the murderer will remain a secret long.”
“The public seems to have made up its mind that Thompson is guilty.”
“I know.” Inspector Furnival stroked his clean-shaven chin
thoughtfully. “But why should Thompson, having robbed his master
systematically for years, suddenly make up his mind to murder him? For
he didn't have the rubber gloves and the chloroform by accident you
know, sir.”
“Obviously not.” Mr. Steadman studied his finger nails in silence for
a minute, then he looked up suddenly. “Inspector, to my mind absolute
frankness is always best. Now, we do not know that Thompson went to
Mr. Bechcombe's room at all on the morning of the murder. But there is
another whose name is being freely canvassed who certainly did go to
the room.”
“Ay, Mr. Tony Collyer,” the inspector said, frowning as he looked over
his notes again. “The obvious suspect. Motive and opportunity—neither
lacking. But here the question of premeditation comes in again. Young
Collyer would not have known he would have the excellent opportunity
that really did occur. Would he have come on chance provided with
chloroform and rubber gloves? Would he not have fixed up an
opportunity when he could have been certain of finding Mr. Bechcombe
in? And also when his fiancée, Miss Cecily Hoyle, was out of the way?
Then, when he did put his rubber gloves on is a question. According to
Miss Hoyle's testimony he had not got them on when she left him. He
could hardly bring them out while Mr. Bechcombe was talking to him.
No, so far as I can see nothing conclusive with regard to either of
these two is to be found, Mr. Steadman. What do you think yourself?”
“Personally I shall find it always a very difficult matter to believe
Tony Collyer guilty, strong though the evidence seems against him,”
Mr. Steadman said frankly. “Thompson, I must confess, seems a very
different proposition. Then we must remember the third person in the
case, the lady of the white gloves.”
“The owner of the white glove did not strangle Mr. Bechcombe,”
Inspector Furnival said positively. “Though she may have been an
accomplice. The experts' evidence decided that the fingers of the hand
that killed Mr. Bechcombe were considerably too large to have gone
into that white glove.”
“So that's that!” said the barrister. “Well, it is a curious case. It
seemed bristling with clues at first. And yet they all seem to lead
nowhere.”
“One of them will in time, though,” the inspector remarked
confidently. “The thread is in our hands right enough, Mr. Steadman.
We shall find the other end before long.”
“You don't mean——” the barrister was beginning when there was an
interruption.
There was a knock at the door. Mr. Steadman put up his pince-nez as
the inspector opened the door. To their surprise Aubrey Todmarsh stood
in the passage. He stepped inside, his face paling as he glanced round
the room in which his uncle had met his death.
“Ugh!” He shivered. “There is a terrible atmosphere about this room,
inspector. Even if one did not know it, I think one would
unconsciously sense the fact that some horrible crime had been
committed here.”
“Um, I am not much of a believer in that sort of thing,” Mr. Steadman
answered. “It is easy enough to sense crime, as you call it, when you
know that it has been committed.”
Aubrey shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I don't know. You may be right, but I shall stick to my
convictions. There are subtler emotions that cannot be shared by
anyone. But I am here on business to-day. One of my men, my most
trusted men—Hopkins by name—has been doing some work in the East End
up by the docks. He met with a man whom he believes to have been
Thompson.”
“When?” Mr. Steadman questioned sharply.
“Two days ago.”
“Then why didn't he speak out sooner?”
“He did not see any description of Thompson until this morning. Then
he saw one outside a police-station and he remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“This man,” Aubrey responded impatiently. “A man that answered to
Thompson's description. He came down to the docks and tried to get a
job on some distant cargo boat. Said he could do anything; but Hopkins
noticed that his hands were smooth and carefully manicured. Like a
gentleman's hands, Hopkins described them.”
“Did he get his job on the cargo boat?”
“Hopkins thinks that he did, or, at any rate, if not that he managed
to get taken as a passenger. He went off somewhere.”
“Where was the cargo boat bound for?” Mr. Steadman seemed more
interested than the inspector who was making notes in a desultory
fashion.
Aubrey shook his head.
“Hopkins doesn't know. You see he had no particular reason to notice
anything about the man. He would not have done so at all but for the
hands, I think.”
“You said just now that Hopkins recognized him from the description
when he saw it,” Mr. Steadman pursued. “I must say I thought it
delightfully vague. A study in negatives, I should call it.”
“It wasn't very definite, of course. And Hopkins may have been
entirely mistaken. But he said he particularly noticed the short brown
beard and the defective teeth.”
“Um!” Mr. Steadman stuck his hands in his pockets. “I am inclined to
think Hopkins' identification a flight of the imagination. The
police-station description tells what Thompson was like when he left
here. I should look out for a clean-shaven man with regular teeth
now.”
Todmarsh did not look pleased.
“I suppose I am particularly stupid, but I really fail to understand
why the police should circulate a description when they want something
entirely opposite.”
“My dear man, you don't imagine that a man who could hide his traces
as Thompson did would be foolish enough to leave his personal
appearance unprovided for? No. We must have every cargo boat that left
the docks overhauled at its first stopping-place, but I don't fancy we
shall find Thompson on any of them.”
“Well, he has managed to get away somehow, and I thought you might be
glad to hear of something that is a possible clue,” Todmarsh said
sulkily.
At this moment the telephone bell, Mr. Luke Bechcombe's own telephone
bell, rang sharply. Todmarsh stopped and started violently, staring at
the telephone as if he expected to see his uncle answer it.
The inspector took up the receiver; the other men watched him
breathlessly.
“Yes, yes, Inspector Furnival speaking,” they heard him say. “Yes, I
will be with you as soon as it is possible. Detain her at all hazards
until I come.”
He rang off and turned.
“What do you think that was?”
“Thompson caught at the docks,” Aubrey Todmarsh suggested.
Mr. Steadman said nothing, but a faint smile crossed his lips as he
glanced at the inspector.
“The message is that a lady is at Scotland Yard asking to see the
official who is in charge of the Bechcombe case,” Inspector Furnival
said, glancing from one to the other of his auditors as if to note the
effect of his words on them. “A lady, who refused to give her name,
but who says that she saw the late Mr. Luke Bechcombe on the day of
his death.”
His words had the force of a bombshell thrown between the others.
Aubrey Todmarsh did not speak, but his face turned visibly whiter. He
moistened his lips with his tongue. Even the impassive Mr. Steadman
started violently.
“The lady of the glove!” he exclaimed.
The inspector caught up his hat.
“I don't know. I must ascertain without delay, Mr. Steadman.”