CONCERNING A WEDDING
WHEN Inspector French felt really up against it in the conduct of a
case, it was his invariable habit to recount the circumstances in the
fullest detail to his wife. She, poor woman, haled from the mysterious
household employments in which her soul delighted, would resignedly
fetch her sewing and sit placidly in the corner of the Chesterfield
while her lord and master strode up and down the room stating his
premises, arguing therefrom with ruthless logic and not a few gestures,
sifting his facts, grouping them, restating them. . . . Sometimes she
interjected a remark, sometimes she didn’t; usually she warned him to be
careful not to knock over the small table beside the piano, and
invariably she wished he would walk on the less worn parts of the
carpet. But she listened to what he said, and occasionally expressed an
opinion, or, as he called it, “took a notion.” And more than once it had
happened that these notions had thrown quite a new light on the point at
issue, a light which in at least two cases had indicated the line of
research which had eventually cleared up the mystery.
On the second evening after his return from Spain, the Inspector was
regaling her with a by no means brief _résumé_ of the Hatton Garden
crime. She had listened more carefully than usual, and presently he
found she had taken a notion.
“I don’t believe that poor old man was out to do anything wrong,” she
declared. “It’s a shame for you to try to take away his character now
he’s dead.”
French, stopping his pacing of the room, faced round.
“But I’m not trying to take away his character, Emily dear,” he
protested, nettled by this unexpected attack in the rear. “I’m only
saying that he’s the only person we know of who could have got an
impression of the key. If so, it surely follows he was out to rob the
safe.”
“Well, I believe you’re wrong,” the lady affirmed, continuing with a
logic as relentless as his own, “because if he was out to rob the safe,
he wasn’t the sort of man that you described, and if he was the sort of
man that you described, why, then, he wasn’t out to rob the safe. That’s
what I think about it.”
French was a trifle staggered. The difficulty he had recognised from the
beginning, but he had not considered it serious. Now, put to him in the
downright, uncompromising language in which his wife usually clothed her
thoughts, it suddenly seemed to him overwhelming. What she said was
true. There was here a discrepancy. If Gething really bore the character
he was given by all who had known him, he was not a thief.
He ceased his restless movement, and sitting down at the table, he
opened his notebook and began to look up what he had actually learned
about the dead man. And the more he did so, the more he came to believe
that his wife was right. Unless all this cloud of witnesses were
surprisingly mistaken, Gething was innocent.
His mind reverted to the other horn of the dilemma. If Gething were
innocent, who took the impression of the key? It was not obtained from
that in the bank, therefore it was copied from that in Mr. Duke’s
possession. Who had done it?
No one at the office, at least not unless Mr. Duke was greatly mistaken.
And he did not believe the principal could be mistaken on such a point.
The breaking through of his regular custom in a matter of such
importance would almost certainly be noted and remembered. No, French
felt that he might rely on Mr. Duke’s statement so far.
But with regard to his assertion that no one in his house could have
tampered with the key, the Inspector saw that he was on more shaky
ground. In the nature of the case, the diamond merchant would be less
alert in dealing with the members of his own household than with his
business acquaintances. Believing he was surrounded by friends, he would
subconsciously be more ready to assume his precautions adequate. Was Mr.
Duke’s belief that no one would touch the key not the real basis of his
statement that no one had done so?
It seemed to French that here was a possibility that he had overlooked,
and it was in the nature of the man that the moment he reached such a
conclusion he began to consider a way of retrieving his error.
At first he thought of taking Mr. Duke into his confidence and asking
him to assist him in some subterfuge by which he could enter the house.
But presently he saw that it would be better if the old gentleman knew
nothing of his plan, lest he might inadvertently warn a possible
criminal.
For the same reason—that Mr. Duke might get to know of it—he decided
he would be wiser not to undertake the business in person. But he knew
the man for the job—a certain detective-sergeant named Patrick Nolan.
This man was something of a Don Juan in his way, and had a positive
genius for extracting confidences from the fair sex. If he could scrape
acquaintance with the maids of the establishment, it would not be long
before he knew all they had to tell.
Accordingly next morning he sent for Sergeant Nolan and explained his
idea, and Nolan, who, where his superiors were concerned, was a man of
few words, said, “Yes, sir,” and withdrew.
The following day he returned with his first report. It seemed that,
changing into the garb of a better-class mechanic and taking a small kit
of tools with him, he had called at Mr. Duke’s in the character of an
electrician who had been sent to overhaul the light fittings.
Miss Duke happened to be out, and the rather pretty housemaid who opened
the door, charmed with the newcomer’s manner, admitted him without
hesitation. He had gone all over the house, paying particular attention
to Mr. Duke’s bedroom. In the middle of the day he had asked and been
granted leave to heat his can of soup at the kitchen fire, and to such
purpose had he used the opportunities thus gained that before he left he
had prevailed on the pretty housemaid to go with him to supper and the
pictures on her next evening out. “Once I get a drop of spirits into her
I’ll get all she knows,” he concluded, “though I doubt if it’ll be
much.”
“That’s all right so far as it goes,” French admitted, “but what have
you actually found out?”
“Well, there’s first of all the family. It’s a small one; there’s only
the father and the daughter, Miss Sylvia. The mother’s alive, but she
has been in a lunatic asylum for years, quite incurable, they said. Miss
Sylvia is a nice-looking young lady and well liked, by what Rachael
says—that’s the housemaid. Then there’s the servants; this Rachael, and
another girl, Annie, and Sarah, the cook, and there’s a shover they call
Manley. I didn’t see him, but the girls seem all right—not the kind
that would be after the keys of jewel safes anyway.”
“What’s the house like?”
“It’s a middling big house, and the furniture’ll have been good when it
was bought, though it’s getting a trifle shabby now. Mr. Duke’s bedroom
is at the end of the left wing, and Miss Duke’s is in the front of the
house, so anybody could go through Mr. Duke’s room without being seen.
Anybody could get a mould of that key if he left it in his room, say,
while he was having his bath.”
“Did you find out any possibilities; any tradesmen in, like yourself, or
any one staying in the house?”
The Sergeant shook his head.
“I did not, sir,” he admitted. “I thought I had maybe done enough for
one day. I didn’t want to be after starting them wondering about me. But
I’ll get that out of Rachael to-morrow night.”
“Better see that Manley, the chauffeur—or no, I shall see him myself.
You stick to what you’re at. Anything else?”
“No, sir, I think not. What the girls talked most about was Miss
Sylvia’s engagement. It seems she was engaged to some friend in the City
and they were to have been married at the end of the month, and now
they’ve had some bust up and the whole thing’s postponed, if not off
altogether.”
“That so? They didn’t tell you the reason?”
“They did not, sir. But I can likely find out from Rachael if you want
to know.”
“I don’t suppose I do,” French returned, “but you might as well find out
what you can—on spec. You know who the young man is?”
“No, sir. They didn’t say.”
French looked up his notebook.
“I seem to know a deal more about it than you do,” he grumbled. “He is a
clerk in Mr. Duke’s office, name of Harrington—Stanley Harrington. I
interviewed him with the others in the office on the day after the
murder, and he told me about the engagement. It seemed to be going
strong then. When did they postpone it?”
“They didn’t say that either, sir.”
“Well, find that out, too. That’ll do for the present.”
That evening French, in the guise of an out-of-work mechanic, took up
his stand near Mr. Duke’s house, and presently saw the old gentleman
arrive back from business in his car. An hour later he followed the
chauffeur from the garage to a house in a small street off Esther Road.
There French hung about for perhaps another hour, when he had the
satisfaction of seeing the quarry emerge again, pass down the street,
and disappear into the Rose and Thistle bar. This was just what the
Inspector had hoped for, and after a few minutes he followed him in.
To scrape acquaintance was easy enough. French, as a motor mechanic out
of work, was provided with a ready introduction to any chauffeur, and
over a couple of glasses of beer he learned first of the chances of jobs
in the district, and secondly, by skilful pumping, many details of his
new companion’s work and of the Duke menage. But he heard nothing that
seemed in the slightest degree suspicious or interesting. The man
himself, moreover, seemed of an honest, harmless type, and much too
stupid to be concerned personally in enterprises with keys of safes.
For a day the inquiry hung fire, and then Sergeant Nolan brought in a
report which turned the Inspector’s thoughts into still another channel.
Nolan had, it appeared, taken the pretty housemaid, Rachael, first to
the pictures and then to supper at a popular restaurant. The girl had
what the Sergeant called “the gift of the gab,” and it had only been
necessary for him judiciously to supply an occasional topic, to have a
continuous stream of more or less relevant information poured into his
receptive ears.
First he had tried to ascertain whether any one had recently had access
to Mr. Duke’s dressing-room during the night or early morning, and he
soon learned that, prior to his own visit, no tradesmen had been in the
house for many months. Moreover, the only visitor who had stayed
overnight for a considerable time was Mr. Stanley Harrington, Miss
Duke’s _fiancée_. The two young people had been feverishly engaged in
rehearsals for a play given by a local amateur dramatic society, and for
the four nights previous to the entertainment Miss Duke had refused to
allow her swain to waste time in going to and from his rooms, and had
insisted on his putting up with them. This occurred about a month before
the murder, and Harrington had slept in a room just opposite to Mr.
Duke’s. It was obvious, therefore, that had the key been left in the
dressing-room at any time, Harrington could easily have taken the
necessary impression.
Nolan then went on to tell what he had found out as to the postponed
wedding, and in this French felt he had food for thought. It appeared
that the trouble, whatever it was, had come suddenly, and it had taken
place on the day after the murder. On the evening of the crime, so
Rachael had said, Mr. Duke was not at home for dinner, but Mr.
Harrington had turned up. He and Miss Duke had dined together, and then
everything was _couleur de rose_. They had gone out together after
dinner. About ten, Miss Duke had returned and had gone straight to bed.
Almost certainly, therefore, she had not known that night of Mr. Duke’s
call to the office. Next morning she had breakfasted with her father,
and had presumably then learned of the tragedy. But not five minutes
after breakfast began she had slipped out of the room and had made a
telephone call, and directly Mr. Duke had left the house she had put on
her things and followed him. She had been absent for about twenty
minutes, and had then gone direct to her bedroom, where, on the plea of
a headache, she had spent the day. When Rachael had had occasion to
enter, she found her lying down, but the girl had heard her hour after
hour pacing the room, and in her opinion, her mistress’s indisposition
was more mental than physical. About four o’clock that afternoon Mr.
Harrington had called. Miss Duke saw him in her own sitting-room, and
during the interview some terrible quarrel must have taken place. Mr.
Harrington left in about half an hour, and Rachael, who had opened the
door to let him out, said that he looked as if he had received his death
warrant. His face wore an expression of the most acute consternation and
misery, and he seemed like a man in a dream, stupefied by some terrible
calamity. He usually spoke pleasantly to the girl when leaving, but on
this occasion he did not appear to notice her presence, but stumbled
blindly out of the house and crept off like a broken man. Later the same
evening she had seen Miss Duke, and she noticed that her eyes were red
and swollen from crying. Since then, the young lady had changed out of
all knowing. She had become silent, melancholy, and depressed. She had
grown thin and old looking, and was eating nothing, and, Rachael had
opined, if something were not done, they would soon see her in a
decline.
Inspector French was not a little intrigued by all this information.
That there was a connection between the murder of Charles Gething and
the postponed wedding he could scarcely believe, and yet some of the
facts seemed almost to point in that direction.
If Miss Duke had first learned of the tragedy from her father at
breakfast, was this knowledge the cause of her telephone call? To whom
was the call made? What had she done during her twenty-minute absence
from the house? What had taken place at the interview between Miss Duke
and Harrington, and, most important of all, why had the wedding been
postponed? French felt that he could not rest until he had obtained
answers to all these questions, and it seemed to him that the only way
he could do so would be to trace the girl’s movements in detail during
the whole period in question.
For a long time he continued sitting at his desk as he considered ways
and means. At last he telephoned once more for Sergeant Nolan.
“Look here,” he began, when the man presented himself, “I want you to
get something more out of that girl. When can you see her again?”
“Sunday, sir,” said the charmer. “I left an opening for meeting her for
fear it would maybe be wanted.”
“And this is Friday. Well, I suppose I shall have to wait. Better see
her on Sunday and find out these things in this order. First, in what
vehicle Miss Duke drove to her friend’s girls’ club on the night of the
crime; secondly, what vehicle she came back in, and thirdly, whether she
received any note or message between the time she returned that night
and Mr. Harrington’s call next day, other than what she might have
learned during her telephone call and absence from the house after
breakfast. Got that?”
Nolan, signifying that he had, left the room, and French turned his
attention to his routine work, which had got sadly behind.
On the following Monday morning, Sergeant Nolan made his report. He had
taken his fair quarry up the river on Sunday afternoon, and there he had
got his information.
Miss Duke and Mr. Harrington had left in Mr. Duke’s car shortly before
eight. Manley, the chauffeur, had mentioned to Rachael that his young
mistress had told him he need not wait for her, as she expected that Mr.
Duke would want him later in the evening to take him home from his club.
She had returned about ten in a taxi, and had come in quickly and gone
to her room. So far as Rachael knew, she had received no caller, note or
other message from then until Mr. Harrington arrived next day, other
than those excepted in the question.
French was anxious to keep secret the fact that he was looking into Miss
Duke’s doings, and he was therefore unwilling to question Manley on the
matter. He had learned from Harrington the address of the girls’ club,
and he thought inquiries there might give him his information.
Accordingly an hour later saw him standing before a somewhat dilapidated
church school-house in a narrow street of drab and depressing houses in
the Shadwell district. The school was closed, but inquiries next door
produced the information that the caretaker lived in No. 47.
He betook himself to No. 47, and there found a pale, tired-looking young
woman with a baby in her arms, who, when he asked for a few moments’
conversation, invited him into an untidy and not overclean kitchen. She
told him, in reply to his questions, that the club was run by a number
of ladies, headed by a Miss Amy Lestrange. It was open each evening, but
she, the speaker, was not present, her duty being only to keep the rooms
clean. But her husband, the caretaker, was there off and on every
evening. He might have been there when the young lady in question
arrived, she did not know. But he worked in the factory near by, and
would be in for his dinner in half an hour, if the gentleman liked to
wait.
French said he would call back presently, and strolled out through the
depressing neighbourhood. In forty-five minutes he was back at No. 47,
where the caretaker had just arrived. French told him to go on with his
dinner, and sat beside him as he ate. The man, evidently hoping the
affair would have its financial side, was anxious to tell everything he
knew.
It seemed that he had been present at the club on the evening in
question, and when French had described his young couple, he remembered
their arrival. It was not usual for so fine a motor to penetrate the
fastnesses of that dismal region, and its appearance had fixed the
matter in his memory. The gentleman had got out first and asked him if
this was the Curtis Street Club, and had then assisted his companion to
alight. The lady had called to the chauffeur that he need not either
wait or return for her. She had then gone into the club, leaving the
gentleman standing on the pavement. About half-past nine a taxi had
driven up, and the same gentleman had got out and sent him, the
caretaker, in to say that Mr. Harrington was waiting for Miss Duke. The
young lady had presently come down with Miss Lestrange, the head of the
club. The three had talked for a few minutes, and then the strangers had
got into the taxi and driven off.
“She’s a fine girl, Miss Duke,” French observed, as he offered the
caretaker a fill from his pouch. “I never have seen her anything but
smiling and pleasant all the years I’ve known her.”
“That’s right,” the man returned, gloatingly loading his pipe. “She’s a
peach and no mistake.”
French nodded in a satisfied way.
“I should have laid a quid on it,” he declared, “that she would have
been as smiling and pleasant going away as when she came. She always
is.”
“Well, you’d ha’ pulled it off. But, lor, guv’nor, it’s easy for lydies
as wot ’as lots o’ money to be pleasant. W’y shouldn’t they be?”
French rose.
“Ah, well, I expect they’ve their troubles like the rest of us,” he
said, slipping half a crown into the man’s eager hand.
If the caretaker was correct and Miss Duke was in good spirits on
leaving the club, it followed that the upset, whatever it had been, had
not up to then taken place. The next step, therefore, was obviously to
find the taxi in which the two young people had driven to Hampstead, so
as to learn whether anything unusual had occurred during the journey.
He returned to the Yard, and sending for some members of his staff,
explained the point at issue. But, as he would have been the first to
admit, it was more by luck than good guidance that on the very first day
of the inquiry he gained his information. Taximan James Tomkins had
driven the young couple on the evening in question, and by five o’clock
he was at the Yard awaiting French’s pleasure.