Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

He touched his hat to Dickens and Collins and turned from the room.

Dickens stood rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.

Collins sighed and picked up the lamp. Its crystal hangings tinkled a little as he did so.

“That’s that. I think we should return to our decanter of port.”

Dickens was staring at the lamp. There was an odd expression on his face.

“Let’s take that lamp into the office where we can have a look at it under the gaslight.”

Collins frowned but did not argue.

Dickens stood, appearing to examine the dangling crystals for a while, and then he grunted in satisfaction. He instructed Collins to put the lamp on the table, turn it out, and then he bent forward and wrenched one of the crystals from its slight chain with brute force, wrenching the links of the chain open. He held up the crystal to the gas burner. Then he walked to the window and drew it sharply across the surface. The score mark had almost split the glass pane.

“And that, dear Charley, unless I am a complete moron, is the missing diamond. By heavens, it’s quite a big one. No wonder anyone would get light-fingered in proximity to it. I suspect that on the proceeds of a sale to an unscrupulous fence, even allowing for such exorbitant commission that such a person would take, one could live well for the rest of one’s life.”

His son-in-law frowned. “What made you spot it?”

“Look at the crystals-clear, pure white glass. When this bauble was hanging by them, it emitted a strange yellow luminescence, a curious quality of light. If it was crystal, then it could not be the same crystal, and it is entirely a different shape. Round and yellow. When I peered closely at it just now, I saw that its fitting on the chain was unlike the others. My dear Charley, if you are going to hide something, the best place to hide it is where everyone can see it. Make it a commonplace object. I assure you that nine times out of ten it will not be spotted.”

Collins grinned. “I’ll tell Wilkie that. My brother likes to know these things.”

“Well, let’s follow the redoubtable Sergeant Cuff. I think that this will take the main plank out of his theory that Wraybrook was murdered for the sake of the diamond.”

As they left the late Eugene Wraybrook’s rooms, a thickset man was hurrying down the stairs. He moved so quickly that he collided with Dickens, grunting as he staggered with the impact. Then, without an apology, the man thrust him aside and continued on.

“Mr. Bert Hegeton,” muttered Dickens, straightening his coat. “He seems in a great hurry. Oops. I think he’s dropped something.”

Indeed, a small thin leather covering of no more than two and a half inches by three and a half inches lay on the top stair where it had fallen from the man’s pocket.

“What is it?” asked Collins.

Dickens bent and retrieved it. “A card case, that’s all. Visiting cards. Not the sort of thing one would expect a schoolteacher in this area to have.” He was about to put it on the wooden three-cornered stand in the corner of the landing when he paused and drew out the small pieces of white cardboard inside. He grimaced and showed one to Collins.

They were cheaply printed and bore the same legend as on the handwritten pasteboard on Wraybrook’s door. Dickens smiled grimly.

They ascended the stairs. They could hear Sergeant Cuff’s gruff tones and Beth Hexton’s sobbing replies.

Sergeant Cuff looked annoyed when they entered the room unannounced.

“You’ll excuse me, Sergeant.” Dickens smiled, turning directly to the girl. “Does Mr. Hegeton live in this tenement?”

The girl stared at him from a tearstained face.

“Mr. Dickens…,” began the sergeant indignantly, but Dickens cut him short with a gesture. “I need an answer,” he said firmly.

“On the next floor above this,” the girl said, trying to regain some of her composure.

“A jealous type?”

“Jealous?”

“Come, Miss Hexton. You said that he was attracted to you and you rejected him. Isn’t that so? In turn, you were attracted to Mr. Wraybrook?”

The girl nodded. “Gene was a gen’leman.”

“So you have told us. But Bert Hegeton was not?”

“He was a beast. Yes, he and Gene had an argument this morning over me.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Bert said he would do for Gene. ‘E said that. Told Gene that he wouldn’t stand for him pinching ‘is girl. I was never Berts girl. Straight out, I wasn’t.”

Sergeant Cuff was shaking his head. “Come, Mr. Dickens, this won’t do at all. We know that whoever killed Wraybrook robbed him and the cause was-”

He stopped because Dickens was holding out his hand toward him. On his palm lay the diamond.

“It was where we could all see it, in the crystals of the lamp,” explained Collins.

Dickens then held out the visiting card case. “Hegeton just brushed past me on the stairs and dropped this. I think he killed Wraybrook in a jealous passion, removed certain items from the corpse to make it look like the work of dredgers, and left him in the river. He came back here, and then he found Sergeant Cuff and us in the house and panicked. Instead of hiding the things that he had taken from the body in his room, he decided to go to dispose of them in the river. Fortunately, for you, Cuff, he dropped Wraybrook’s visitors cards on the way out.”

He paused while Sergeant Cuff digested his words.

“Jealousy, over the girl?”

“Exactly so.”

Sergeant Cuff was thoughtful.

There came the sound of footsteps ascending.

“Then we won’t have long to see if your theory is a reality,” Sergeant Cuff said grimly. “I have had a couple of constables outside with strict orders not to let anyone leave the house until I gave permission. If Hegeton has Wraybrook’s personal possessions on him, then he would have been unable to discard them, and he should still have them on him now.”

They turned as a police constable came through the door, ushering the white-faced Hegeton before him.

“What’s all this?” he cried angrily. “You can’t-”

“I can and I do,” Sergeant Cuff said calmly “Empty your pockets.”

Hegeton needed a little persuasion, but after a short while a number of items lay on the table before him, including a silver hunter watch.

Cuff picked it up and glanced at it. “Bert Hegeton? That’s your name?”

The thickset man nodded resentfully.

“Then you would not be bearing the initials EW , would you. The inscription on the watch is ‘EW from his friends, Advocates Club. Bombay’ You are right, Mr. Dickens. This is our man.”

Beth Hexton gave a little scream and lunged toward the schoolteacher but was held back by Sergeant Cuff.

“You killed him, you swine. You killed him!” she cried.

Bert Hegeton turned a pleading face to her. “I did it to protect you, Beth. He wouldn’t marry you. Not him with his high-and-mighty airs. He only wanted one thing. He would have discarded you after that. I love you, Beth. I-”

The girl again leaped forward, beating at him with her fists.

The constable and Sergeant Cuff separated them.

Half an hour later Dickens and Collins were back in the Cozy of the Grapes, sipping their port. Dickens had been frowning in concentration ever since they had returned. Suddenly his features dissolved into a rare smile of satisfaction.

“Damn it, Charley! I can feed parts of this little drama into my book and use it to make the tale come alive.”

Collins was cautious. “You’ll need to change the names, surely?”

“Nothing simpler. Bert Hegeton now…” Dickens paused in thought. “Why, I do believe that is easy enough. Hegeton in Old English means a place without a hedge. Do you know there is such a place name in the county of Middlesex, which has now been corrupted into the name Headstone? So let us have Bert… no Bradley, sounds more distinguished, Bradley Headstone.” He smiled in satisfaction.