“Good morning, Miss Hoyle.” Inspector Furnival rose and placed a chair
for the girl, scrutinizing her pale face keenly as he did so.
Cecily sat down.
“You sent for me,” she said nervously.
The inspector took the chair at the top of the table that had been
Luke Bechcombe's favourite seat.
His interview with Cecily Hoyle was taking place by special
arrangement in the library of the murdered man's private house, where,
by special desire of Mrs. Bechcombe, Cecily was now installed as
secretary to her late employer's widow.
The canny inspector had taken care to place the girl's chair so that
the light from the near window fell full upon her face. As he drew his
papers towards him and opened a capacious notebook he was thinking how
white and worn the girl was looking, and there was a frightened glance
in her brown eyes as she sat down that did not escape him.
The door opened to admit John Steadman. After a slight bow to Cecily
he sat down at the inspector's right.
“Yes,” the inspector said, glancing across at Cecily, “I want to ask
you a few questions, Miss Hoyle. It may make matters easier for you at
the adjourned inquest if you answer them now.”
“I will do my best,” Cecily said, looking at him with big, alarmed
eyes. “But, really, I have told you everything I know.”
John Steadman watched her from his lowered eyes. She would be a good
witness with the jury, he thought, this slim, pale girl, with her
great appealing eyes and her pathetic, trembling lips.
“A few curious sidelights have arisen in connexion with Mr.
Bechcombe's death,” the inspector pursued. “And I think you may be
able to help me more than you realize. First, you recognize this, of
course?” He took from its envelope of tissue paper the picture post
card he had found in Amos Thompson's room in Brooklyn Terrace and
handed it to her.
Cecily gazed at it in growing amazement.
“It—it looks like me! It _is_ me, I believe,” she said
ungrammatically. “But how in the world did you get it?”
“I found it,” the inspector said slowly, watching every change in her
mobile face as he spoke, “in Amos Thompson's room in Brooklyn
Terrace.”
Cecily stared at him.
“Impossible! You couldn't have! Why should Mr. Thompson have my
photograph? And where was this taken, anyway?”
“That is what I am hoping you may tell us.”
“But I can't! I don't know!” Cecily said, still gazing in a species of
stupefaction at her presentment. “It—it is a snapshot, of course, but
I never saw it before, I never knew when it was taken.”
“You did not give it to Amos Thompson, then?” the inspector
questioned.
“Good heavens, no! I knew nothing about Mr. Thompson. I have just seen
him at a distance in the office. But I have never spoken to him in my
life. I should not have known him had I met him in the street.”
“You can give no explanation of his treasuring your photograph then?”
Cecily shook her head. “I can't indeed. I should have thought it a
most unlikely thing to happen. I cannot bring myself to believe that
it did. This thing”—flicking the card with her forefinger—“must have
got into his room by accident.”
The inspector permitted himself a slight smile.
“I really do not think so.”
Cecily shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I give it up. Unless—unless”—an
accent of fear creeping into her voice—“he wanted to implicate me, to
make you think that I had been helping him to rob Mr. Bechcombe.”
“In that case he would surely have thought of some rather more sure
plan than leaving your photograph about in his room,” said the
inspector. “You do not think it likely that seeing you so much in the
office, he has taken a fancy to you—fallen in love with you, in fact,
as people say.”
“I do not, indeed!” Cecily said impatiently. “As I tell you, I know
nothing of Mr. Thompson, and he did not see much of me in the office.
I never went in to Mr. Bechcombe's room through the clerks' office. I
never had occasion to go there at all. My business concerned Mr.
Bechcombe, and Mr. Bechcombe only, and by his wish I always went to
him by the private door.”
“I see.” The inspector studied the photograph in silence. “You know
where this was taken?” he said at last.
Cecily looked at it again.
“It looks—I believe I am sitting in my favourite seat in the Field of
Rest. I suppose I must have been snapshotted without my knowing it—by
some amateur probably.”
“Mr. Thompson?” the inspector suggested.
“I do not know!” Cecily tip-tilted her chin scornfully. “It was a mean
thing to do, anyway.”
The inspector wrapped the photograph in its paper.
“No use bothering about that any more,” he said somewhat
contradictorily putting it away carefully in his pocket as he did so.
“Now, Miss Hoyle, once more, you adhere to your statement that you
heard someone moving about in Mr. Bechcombe's room when you passed the
door on your return from lunch—that return being some little time
after one o'clock.”
“Half-past one, I dare say,” Cecily corrected. “As I came down the
passage I heard the door into Mr. Bechcombe's room close rather
softly, as I have heard Mr. Bechcombe close it heaps of times. Then
just as I passed I heard someone move inside the room distinctly. It
was a sound like a chair being moved and catching against something
hard—table leg or something of that sort.”
“And you are aware that the doctors say that Mr. Bechcombe's death
must have occurred about twelve o'clock?”
“I have heard so. You told me so,” Cecily murmured, then gathering up
her courage, “but doctors make mistakes very often.”
“Scarcely over a thing of this kind,” the inspector remarked. “I
suppose you realize the inference that will be drawn from your
testimony?” he went on.
A little frown came between Cecily's straight eyebrows.
“Inference? No, I don't!” she said bluntly.
“If Mr. Bechcombe died at twelve o'clock, and you heard someone moving
about when you came back about half-past one o'clock,” the inspector
said very slowly, giving due weight to each word, “the inference is
that the person you heard moving about when you came back was the
murderer.”
Cecily shivered as she stared at him.
“Oh, no, no, surely it could not have been! I do not believe it
could!”
The inspector made no rejoinder. He glanced at his notebook again.
“Most probably you will be among the first witnesses called at the
adjourned inquest on Friday, Miss Hoyle. I think that is all for
to-day. Your name and address, please.”
“Cecily Frances Hoyle, Hobart Residence, Windover Square.”
The detective wrote it down.
“I think that is only a temporary address, though, you said, Miss
Hoyle. Will you let me have your permanent one, please?”
Cecily hesitated in obvious confusion.
“I—I—that is my only address—the only one I have at present. I came to
Mr. Bechcombe straight from school.”
The inspector scratched the side of his nose with his pencil.
“That is rather awkward. It will be necessary that we should be in
touch with you for some time. And you might leave Hobart Residence at
any moment.”
“Then I could let you know,” Cecily suggested.
“That would not quite do,” the inspector said mildly. “No. Just give
me some address from which letters could be forwarded to you. Some
relatives, perhaps!”
“I don't know any of my relatives—yet,” Cecily faltered, a streak of
red coming in her pale cheeks. “But Miss Cochrane, Morley House,
Beesford, Meadshire, would always forward letters.”
The inspector wrote the address down without further comment.
Cecily got up. “If that is all, I think Mrs. Bechcombe wants me,
inspector.”
“Yes, thank you.” The inspector and Mr. Steadman rose too. John
Steadman moved to the door.
“I must introduce myself, Miss Hoyle,” he said courteously. “I am the
late Mr. Bechcombe's cousin and, as your post with Mrs. Bechcombe is
of course only temporary, it has struck me that you might possibly be
looking out for another engagement. Now, a friend of mine is in urgent
need of a secretary, and we thought you might like the post.”
The red streak in Cecily's cheeks deepened to crimson.
“I—I don't mean to do anything else at present, thank you.”
John Steadman looked disappointed.
“Oh, well! Then there is no more to be said. Should you change your
mind perhaps you will let us know,” he said politely.
When he had closed the door behind Cecily he looked across at the
inspector.
“Well, you were right.”
“I was pretty sure of my ground,” returned the inspector. “What do you
think of young Mr. Collyer's choice, Mr. Steadman?”
“Well, she looks a nice girl enough,” the barrister returned somewhat
dubiously.
“It is easier to look nice than to be nice nowadays,” the inspector
returned enigmatically. “What do you make of this, Mr. Steadman?”
throwing a torn telegram form on the table. “And this, and this,”
placing several odd pieces of writing paper beside it.
The barrister bent over them. The used telegraph form had been torn
across and crumpled, but as the inspector smoothed it out the writing
was perfectly legible.
“Do not mention home address. Father.”
“Um!” John Steadman drew in his lips. “Handed in at Edgware Road
Post-Office at 12.30, March 4th,” he said. “Well!”
He turned to the scraps of paper. The inspector leaned forward and
pieced them together. The whole made part of a letter.
“Will see you as soon as possible. In the meantime be very careful. A
chance word of yours may do untold harm. Say as little as possible—all
will be explained later. Further instructions will reach you soon.”
Then came a piece that was torn away, and it ended in the corner—“5
o'clock, Physical Energy.”
John Steadman's face was very stern as he looked up.
“It is obvious the girl knows—something. How did you get these scraps
of paper, inspector?”
“One of our most trustworthy women agents has been doing casual work
in Hobart Residence,” said Inspector Furnival with a quiet smile.
“These were found in Miss Cecily Hoyle's room there, in the
waste-paper-basket.”
“Have you taken any steps in the matter?”
“Not yet! Of course we have had ‘Physical Energy’—the statue in
Kensington Gardens, you know—watched since yesterday morning, but so
far there has been no sign of Miss Cecily Hoyle, or of anyone who
could be identified as the writer of that letter.”
“Have you any idea who that is likely to be?”
“Well, ideas are not much use, are they, sir? It is not young Mr.
Collyer's writing, so much is certain, I think.”
Was the inspector's reply evasive? Used to weighing evidence, John
Steadman decided that it was. He made no comment, however, but bent
his brows over the paper once more.
“Of course the temporary help has been chatting with the regular staff
at Hobart Residence,” the inspector pursued. “But there is little
enough to be learned of Miss Hoyle there. Hobart Residence is a sort
of hostel, you know, sir; all the inmates are supposed to be ladies in
some sort of a job. They have a bedroom varying in price according to
its position, and there is a general dining-room in which meals are
served at a very reasonable price. Miss Hoyle usually took her
breakfast and dinner there and was very seldom absent from either
meal. She was looked upon as a very quiet, well-conducted girl, but
she made no friends—and nothing was known of her private life. It was
impossible to get at her home address there. Then I rang up Miss
Watson, her old schoolmistress, but found that Cecily Hoyle's father
had always paid her school bills in advance. He is an artist and has
never given any settled address; sometimes he took his daughter away
in the vacation. If he did not Miss Watson was asked to arrange a
seaside or country holiday for her. Miss Watson only knew the Hobart
Residence address.”
“Extraordinary! I should have thought Cecily Hoyle one of the last
girls about whom there would be any mystery,” was the barrister's
comment.
“Well, having drawn both those coverts blank, yesterday I made an
exhaustive search of her room at Mr. Bechcombe's offices,” the
inspector proceeded. “For a long time I thought I was going to have no
better luck there. There were no letters; no private papers of any
kind. Then just at the last I had a bit of luck. Right down at the
bottom of the drawer in Miss Hoyle's desk I found a time-table. I ran
through it, not expecting to discover anything there when I noticed
that one leaf was turned down. It was a London and South Western
Railway Guide, I may mention, and it was one of the ‘B’ pages that was
turned down. I ran down it and saw in a minute that some one had been
doing so with a lead pencil—there were several marks down the page—and
one name, that of Burford in the New Forest, was underlined.”
“Burford, Burford!” John Steadman repeated reflectively. “Why, of
course I have been there for golf. There are some very decent links.
My friend, Captain Horbsham, rented a house in the neighbourhood, and
I have been over the course with him.”
“Many burglaries down there?” the inspector said abruptly.
The barrister emitted a short laugh. “None that I ever heard of. Why,
do you suspect Miss Hoyle——?”
“I don't suspect anybody,” the inspector returned. “It isn't my place
to, you know, sir. But I am going down to Burford to-morrow morning.
Do you feel inclined to come with me?”
“I don't mind if I do,” said the barrister cheerfully. “I can always
do with a day in the country. We will drive down in the car, and I
might take my clubs.”