independent enquiries. I always say that it is not fair to the man in
charge of the case to start nosing without telling him first. Very
often a reporter does a deuce of a lot of harm that way. I think I’ve
got the main facts. Is there any new development?”
Andy offered him his cigar case.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Downer, but you’re rather late. No, there is
nothing new.”
“No fresh clues of any description? Who is this Abraham Selim you are
after? I seem to know the name.”
“He is your story, Downer,” said Andy, pulling at his cigar and
watching the other from under his drooped lids. “All the other men have
missed it. And we’ve missed Selim.”
“Great. Maybe this is the best place to get hold of his tail. You can
trust me, Macleod. I’ll not go barging into your lines. I’m too much of
a fisher myself.”
It would be inaccurate to say that Downer was afraid of Andy. He was
not afraid of a hill of dynamite, but he would not have chosen its
crest as a place for a quiet smoke. He respected him, and, if possible,
avoided him. Andy was the only man he knew who could and would engage
in an intelligent vendetta against him if he were crossed. Downer
respected the capability of this antagonist. Nevertheless:
“You have Four-Eyed Scottie here, they tell me. He got past with an
alibi on some charge or other?”
“He is here now,” said Andy. “Some friends of mine are giving him
house-room.”
“You think he has a string to the story?” said Downer, nodding.
“Possibly. He is a sharp boy and I’ll give him a miss. I don’t believe
in interfering with regular police witnesses. I’ll be getting along.”
Andy watched him as he loafed aimlessly in the direction of Merrivan’s
house. He had been frank about Scottie, knowing that Downer would find
out sooner or later. Therein he had been wise, for the reporter had
visited Beverley Green the night before, and had trailed Scottie to his
home. Mentally ruling out Scottie as a source of sensation, Downer made
his leisurely way to the house. Ten minutes later he was discussing
with the fascinated sergeant the slowness of promotion in the county
police.
The inquest was held that afternoon, and the little court was crowded
to its fullest capacity.
Andy saw Mr. Boyd Salter in a privileged seat near the coroner and the
Justice beckoned him forward.
“I have brought Madding, the gamekeeper, down,” he said. “His evidence
may be of value as to fixing the time the murder occurred. I have been
trying to get you further particulars about Abraham Selim. He seems
to have begun his operations about thirty-five years ago, somewhere in
the west. A very old friend of mine, who of course does not want his
name mentioned, had some dealings with him when he was a young man at
college. He never saw Selim and never knew anybody who did. Selim seems
to have come to town twenty-five years ago and to have established a
profitable connection amongst shipping men, exporters, and agents,
about whose financial position he had an extraordinary knowledge. I am
afraid that is all I know.”
Andy thanked him and went back to his seat.
Shippers! Who were shippers? He had been in an agent’s office lately,
and then he remembered with a start—Wentworth & Wentworth, the decaying
firm whose offices were next door to Abraham Selim. It might only be a
coincidence, but it was well worth a second investigation, he decided,
as he settled himself down to the swearing-in of the jury.
His own evidence followed that of Mr. Arthur Wilmot, who had identified
his uncle and who had seen him on the night of the murder.
The butler followed him to the witness-stand and told the story he had
already told to a dozen reporters and to Andy.
The question which was exercising Mr. Andrew Macleod was whether Arthur
Wilmot would be recalled to testify as to the names of his uncle’s
women friends. No question had been asked him on this point when he
had been giving his evidence. The coroner made no special point of the
woman’s voice, but seemed much more interested in the incident of the
letter. The butler pointed out on a sketch-map exactly where the letter
had been found, and how he had picked it up and placed it mechanically
under Merrivan’s other papers.
“Had it been folded or was it open?”
The butler was not sure. He thought it was half-open when he picked it
up.
“Had an envelope been discovered?”
Here Andy was recalled, and stated that after a very careful search no
envelope was found. This had seemed strange to Andy at the time. The
letter was undated, and it might have been delivered earlier in the day.
“Did you discover anything that would lead you to believe that Mr.
Merrivan was in fear of his life?”
“I found a loaded revolver,” said Andy. “It was in a cupboard behind
the desk and was in easy reach of his hand. It had not been discharged
or touched.”
(He had found this weapon after Scottie had described to him the
location of the cupboard.)
The policeman who had first seen the body, Mr. Vetch, the dead man’s
lawyer, Madding, the gamekeeper, Merrivan’s cook and his hysterical
house-maid, who gave yet another exhibition of her weakness in this
direction and had to be carried out of court, and the calling of
Inspector Dane, concluded the proceedings; and the inquest seemed
well through when the coroner, who was a fussy old gentleman with a
defective memory, looked up from the papers he was examining, and:
“Dr. Macleod, I’d like to recall you again. There is a point here which
does not seem to be cleared up. It is in relation to the woman whose
voice was heard by the butler.”
Andy walked calmly to his place.
“There is a newspaper report to the effect that you saw a woman leaving
Mr. Merrivan’s house at eleven o’clock, and she passed under your
window at the guest house, on her way apparently to Beverley. Usually,”
said the coroner, “I do not take much notice of newspaper reports, but
here it is distinctly stated in an interview with you by one of the
reporters, and I do not remember any reference to the incident having
been made in the course of this enquiry.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A DIAMOND CLUSTER
It was a novel experience for Andrew Macleod to find himself standing
up in a court of law committing wilful perjury. He could hardly believe
that it was he who was speaking so calmly.
“Yes,” he said, “I saw the door of Merrivan’s house open, and a little
while after I saw a woman coming across the green.”
“At what time was this?”
“Eleven o’clock. The fact is, the clock of Beverley Church was striking
eleven as she passed.”
“You could not distinguish her features?”
“No, your honour; the moon was obscured that night.”
That concluded the evidence, and the jury retired. They returned in
half an hour with a verdict of wilful murder against Abraham Selim.
They had been practically directed to that verdict by the coroner.
Downer had not come to court. Andy had looked round in search of him,
but he was neither at the reporters’ table nor in the body of the
little hall where the inquest was held.
He stopped to chat a moment with Mr. Boyd Salter and a representative
of the Public Prosecutor’s department, and then he walked back to the
village, having very much the same state of mind towards Mr. Downer as
Stella had had towards him on the first day they had met.
He walked so slowly that Merrivan’s lawyer was able to overtake him.
“The story about Mr. Merrivan being in the clutches of a moneylender is
nonsense,” said that gentleman, whose name was Vetch. “Mr. Merrivan was
a rich man.”
“Did he leave a will? You did not mention that in your evidence,” said
Andy.
“None has been discovered,” said the other, shaking his head. “The
estate will go to Mr. Wilmot unless a nearer relative turns up.”
Andy wondered how much truth there was in the story that Merrivan was
married. A search had been made of the marriage registers, but no trace
of such a marriage had been unearthed.
“You described Merrivan as a merchant. What does that mean exactly? In
what particular branch of merchandise did he trade?”
Mr. Vetch shook his head.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. He was very reticent about his business
affairs and did not come to us until he had retired. I have an idea he
was in the tea trade.”
“What makes you think that?” asked Andy quickly.
“He was rather fastidious about tea. I think it was the only commodity
in his household in which he took the slightest interest. Often when I
have been up at his house and the tea has been brought in, he has asked
me what I thought of it, very much as a man who is a connoisseur of
wines would ask you to pass an opinion on some old port.”
They had turned into Beverley Green road when they came in sight of a
man who was strolling in the same direction.
“Isn’t that a reporter, a man named Downer? I saw him this morning. A
very intelligent fellow,” said Vetch. “We discussed that new judgment
in the High Court on the liability of agents. He seems very well read
in law.”
“In everything,” said Andy grimly. “I suppose he didn’t ask you
anything about Merrivan’s private affairs?”
“If he had I shouldn’t have told him,” said the lawyer. “I am too old a
bird to be caught discussing my clients’ affairs. The only subject we
did discuss was quite innocuous—the cost of living!”
“In what respect?” asked Andy curiously.
“He was suggesting that it must have cost Merrivan a lot of money to
run that house. It hadn’t occurred to me to check his expenditure, but
I did then. Of course, I didn’t show him the bills.”
“If you had the bills on the table you showed them to him,” said Andy.
“That fellow can read upside down. Was there any especial bill—any
exceptionally heavy bill amongst them?”
“One for £130,” said the lawyer. “It wasn’t exactly a bill, but a
memorandum written in Mr. Merrivan’s hand—‘Stelling Bros., £130.’ What
it was for I do not know. Who are Stellings?”
Andy did not enlighten him.
Stellings were the biggest jewellers in town, and that memorandum
which the methodical Mr. Merrivan had jotted down, probably after he
had destroyed the bill, was the price of the diamond cluster he had
purchased in anticipation of his easy conquest.
By this time they were within earshot of Downer, and Andy discreetly
changed the subject.
“No, I didn’t come to the inquest,” said Downer. “I had one or two
calls to make, and inquests bore me anyway. Nothing came out, I
suppose?”
“Nothing that would enlighten us and which is not already published,”
said Andy.
At this point the lawyer left them. He had to settle accounts with
Merrivan’s household.
“Has anything come out about a diamond cluster Merrivan bought four or
five days before his death?” asked Downer, slashing at the grass with
his walking-stick, and apparently interested in nothing more than the
decapitation of a daisy. “I think it must have been the ring that the
inspector found on the green,” he went on. “Queer thing, old Merrivan
buying a diamond cluster and then chucking it away. It looks almost as
if he bought it for somebody who hated him so much that as soon as she
got out of the house—say at about eleven o’clock at night—she pulled it
off her finger and threw it as far away from her as she could.”
“That idea occurred to me also,” said Andy. “The woman who passed under
my window may have done almost anything between the time she walked out
of Merrivan’s house and the time she came into view.”
There was a silence, and then:
“There was a policeman on duty at this end of Beverley High Street,”
said Downer. “He was waiting outside a house. A servant had brought him
out some coffee, and he was chatting to her from eleven to half-past.
Nobody passed from eleven until twenty minutes after.”
He was still engaged in decapitating wild flowers and did not once look
at Andy.
“She may have gone another way. There are two ends to the road,” said
Andy.
Another silence, and then Downer went on monotonously:
“A cyclist policeman started out at ten minutes to eleven from Hylton
Cross Roads—that’s the other end of the road—and pedalled into
Beverley. He saw nobody until he came up to the policeman who was
talking to the servant. He had a bright acetylene lamp in the front
of his machine, and the road is fairly narrow. She couldn’t even have
hidden in the shadow of a hedge, could she?”
“It is a curious case altogether,” agreed Andy. “The woman may have
retraced her footsteps after I went away from the window. I went to bed
a little later.”
“You mean, she may have gone back to Merrivan’s?” Downer raised his
eyes. “Gone back after she had thrown away her ring?”
“She may have lost it, that is an explanation,” said Andy, “and,
discovering her loss, may have gone back to look for it.”
“The ring was found near the road,” persisted the indefatigable Downer.
“She either threw it away or else she didn’t come straight across the
green, as you said. The centre of the green is about eighty-five yards
from the place where the ring was found.”
“Eighty-six,” said Andy gravely, and Downer laughed.
“I agree with you that there is not much in the woman incident,” he
said. “These elderly men have queer friends. She was probably some slut
from the village.”
He fixed the detective with his eyes, but Andy did not flinch. This
man knew. How he knew—whether it was clever deduction or information
received—he did not bother to speculate upon.
“I don’t think we ought to take away Merrivan’s character,” he said.
“The man lived a very wholesome life, so far as we know.”
“She didn’t commit the murder,” said Downer with conviction, “but she
ought to be cleared up. Scottie busy?” he asked abruptly, and Andy
laughed.
“Very. He is temporarily a reformed character. I believe he is posing
for Mr. Nelson, an artist who lives in these parts. But I needn’t
tell you anything about him, Downer. A sleuth like you will have his
biography at his finger-tips.”
“He has gone in for a course of reformation himself, hasn’t he?” said
Downer. “Yes, I’ve made enquiries in the ordinary way of business. A
very charming girl, Miss Nelson.”
“Very,” agreed Andy, “a very charming girl.”
Downer nodded.
“I suppose she is very upset about the murder. She was a friend of
Mr. Merrivan’s, wasn’t she? He lent her £300 about nine months ago.
Of course,” he added apologetically, “that is no business of mine or
yours. And it is not a very terrible thing for a lady to borrow money
from a man old enough to be her father.”
This was indeed news to Andy, but he knew that Downer was not speaking
at random.
“How did you get to know that?” he asked.
“I forget who told me,” said Downer with a yawn. “So long. I’ll see you
later.”
One of his own men had come down to help him prepare a report on the
crime, and to him Andy gave an urgent commission.
“Go into the town and find out whether Downer was here last night and
whom he saw. He probably stayed at the Beverley Hotel.”
Andy’s surmise was not far from the mark. Mr. Downer had arrived on the
evening train, and he had as a guest to dinner a clerk of the Micham
Farmers Bank.
“He is some sort of relation of Downer’s,” reported the detective on
the telephone. “The clerk hasn’t been in Beverley very long.”
“And he won’t be much longer,” said Andy grimly.
That was obviously the source of Downer’s information. The fact that
his relative would certainly be fired if he had betrayed the secrets of
the bank meant no more to Mr. Downer than if a similar misfortune had
overtaken his worst enemy.
Money was under discussion in the Nelson household that afternoon. Mr.
Nelson came in from his study wearing his long white coat, and the girl
had expected him. He had been very quiet all the morning, hardly spoke
at lunch, and she was a little apprehensive, because these signs of an
unquiet spirit usually had only one consequence.
He shut the door leading into the passage which connected with the
studio and then went back to make sure that it was shut.
“Stella,” he said, “I woke rather early this morning and I did a lot of
thinking. Do you remember that money we borrowed from poor Merrivan,
or, rather, that you borrowed?”
She nodded.
“Did we ever pay it back?”
She nodded again.
“Where did you get the money to pay it back? I remember that I was in a
tremendous hole when I sent you to get it.”
She did not reply.
“It was £300, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, father,” she said quietly.
“Where the dickens did we get £300 to pay him back? You are sure we did
pay him?”
“Oh, yes, father,” she said. “I have the receipt.”
He sat down and for a long time examined his nails, his forehead knit.
“I’ve only the vaguest idea about it,” he said. “It comes to me
like scraps of a dream. But was the repayment made during that”—he
hesitated—“that horrible week I gave you?”
He had not over-described those seven days of mental torture, during
which he had never once appeared in the house wholly sober.
“I got hold of a lot of money just about then, didn’t I? Where did I
get it from?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
He started drumming his fingers on the table nervously, irritatingly.
“It is strange,” he said. “I invariably associate that time with
some unpleasant happening—something that makes my blood run cold—and
I don’t know what it is. Of course, it may be just a realisation of
my beastliness, but I can’t think it was that. I did not do anything
particularly outrageous, did I?”
“No, father,” she said. The consequence of his outrageous deed had been
wiped out with its charred evidence.
“You know of nothing?” he insisted, watching her narrowly. “I used to
have my maudlin moments of contrition even in that period, didn’t I?
And if I had done anything wrong I should have told you. Where on earth
did the money come from?”
She did not help him to discover. The burden of his sin she had borne
at its heaviest. She would not share the memory of that crushing load.
At dusk Stella was watering a flower-bed under the shadow of the hedge
which separated the front garden from the road. Two men were walking
past, and she caught a scrap of their conversation. It was rather
one-sided, for the speaker gave his companion very little opportunity
of getting a word in.
“I thought when I saw you at first, Mr. Wilmot, that you were going to
be difficult. You quiet, deep men are always the most baffling to a
reporter——”
Mr. Downer was discussing a subject very dear to Mr. Arthur Wilmot,
namely, Mr. Arthur Wilmot.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHO WAS THE WOMAN?
Andy Macleod had ordered all the morning newspapers, and they were
brought up to him whilst he was in bed. He ran his fingers over their
folds and chose the _Megaphone_ because he had learnt it was on behalf
of the _Megaphone_ that Mr. Downer was conducting his investigations.
He opened the paper with a dull sense of apprehension and he discovered
that he had sufficient cause. The _Megaphone_ is not a journal that
deals with sensational news sensationally. It has a strong political
following, an excellent foreign correspondence, and a certain literary
quality. The record of crimes was usually relegated to interior pages,
but for once the _Megaphone_ had splashed the crime story on its
principal page.
Andy read the headline:
“THE MIDNIGHT WOMAN!”
but it was the second line which brought him to his feet with an oath:
“MISS NELSON’S RELATIONS WITH THE DEAD MAN.”
He did not read the paragraph which followed, but put the paper down on
the bed. His first feeling was one of consternation as he thought of
the girl and what she would feel when she saw that headline. His second
was of Mr. Downer. He had never strangled a reporter, but he felt that
in certain circumstances it would be rather a pleasant job.
He picked up the newspaper and read:
“Yesterday’s inquest at Beverley on the two men who were found
murdered in such sensational circumstances was (writes our special
correspondent) the merest formality. The proceedings neither revealed
facts unknown to the public nor did they bring us any nearer a
solution of the mystery.
“For some extraordinary reason the police pretend they do not know the
name of the woman who called at Mr. Merrivan’s house at half-past ten
and is alleged to have left the house at eleven o’clock. Dr. Andrew
Macleod, who is not only an eminent pathologist but a brilliant member
of that inner council of crime investigators which is the terror of
evil-doers, stated in evidence that he had seen a woman leave the
house at that hour. It is clear, however, from enquiries which have
been made, that the night was so dark—the moon was entirely hidden
behind clouds—that it was humanly impossible for Dr. Macleod to have
followed the woman across the green. That a woman did leave Beverley
Green I have established. She was a servant of Mr. Sheppard, who went
to the end of the lane to post a letter in a letter-box which stands
on the juncture of a lane on the main road. It is certain that this is
the woman whom Dr. Macleod saw, and not the woman who was heard by
Mr. Merrivan’s butler quarrelling with his employer. Who, then, was
this lady? It is generally known in Beverley that it was Miss Stella
Nelson, the daughter of that eminent artist, Kenneth Nelson, who
resides in Beverley Green.
“It is no secret that for this lady Mr. Merrivan entertained the
highest and, I might say without offence, the most affectionate
regard. He had offered her marriage, an offer which must have been
favourably entertained, for three days before the murder he purchased
an engagement ring from Stelling Bros. On the day following the
murder that ring was found in the grass within fifty yards of Miss
Nelson’s front gate. It is known, too, that, some time before, Miss
Nelson was in financial difficulties and secured a loan of £300 from
Mr. Merrivan, repaying this from the proceeds of two bills which she
successfully negotiated with the man who is cited as the murderer,
namely Abraham Selim.
“Those bills, which were in the house the day before the murder, have
vanished. How came the girl acquainted with Selim? So well acquainted
that, without any security whatever, he had advanced her a large sum
of money? The question of this acquaintanceship is yet to be cleared
up, but it is undoubtedly the fact that the name of Darius Merrivan
appeared on the bills as acceptor, and that the receipt of those bills
by the deceased man came as a thunderclap. The inference is that the
acceptances were forged. I am not suggesting that Miss Nelson knew
that these acceptances were false or that she was in any sense a
party to any fraud that may have been perpetrated. A week before the
tragedy Mr. Merrivan had shown his nephew, Mr. Arthur Wilmot, the
bills, which, together with the marriage certificate of an old servant
of his, which was probably preserved for sentimental reasons, and a
few other documents, were locked in a desk in the room where Merrivan
interviewed Miss Nelson, and where he met his death.
“Those documents have disappeared. There was in the fireplace when the
police came upon the spot a heap of burnt paper, and it is clear that
the murderer had ransacked the safe in search of these papers and had
burnt them before he made his escape. Who had an object in burning the
contents of the safe? Obviously one such was the person who had forged
Mr. Merrivan’s acceptances.
“Now, as to Miss Nelson’s movements on that night of the crime,
this fact is established, that whilst a witness exists who saw her
enter the house, there is no living person who saw her come out. Dr.
Macleod’s evidence can be dismissed as a pardonable mistake. He saw a
woman pass under his window; he fancied he saw somebody coming out of
Mr. Merrivan’s house—the writer has since been in the room from which
Dr. Macleod obtained this view, and can vouch for the impossibility of
anybody seeing Merrivan’s front door—and in his honest mistake has to
some extent increased his own difficulties.
“But the most remarkable feature of the case is the extraordinary
trouble he has taken to gloss over the important clue of the woman
visitor. To one person he had stated it was a neighbour—which hardly
goes with his story of a woman who passed under his window—to another
he has told a second story. The discovery of the ring he treated as
lightly. In one respect, however, he has been consistent. He has
steadfastly kept the name of Miss Nelson from discussion, and has
stood between her and those who, like himself, are endeavouring to
discover the murderer of Darius Merrivan.”
Andy read the account again. It was in a sense a masterpiece. The truth
was so dovetailed into the maliciously false that it was impossible
for anybody, other than one acquainted with all the facts, to see the
joints. This was, of course, Arthur Wilmot, presented by that expert
stater of cases, Mr. Downer.