Arthur Morrison - British Mystery Classics - Arthur Morrison Edition (Illustrated)

“Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen the place, but they can wait. What next?”

“Well,” Sir James pursued, “the next was a very trumpery affair, that I should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn’t been for one circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath’s disaster—in February of this year, in fact—Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had been a school-fellow of my daughter’s, stayed with us for a week or so. The girls don’t trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no town house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little in the dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was scarcely in the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with Eva—my daughter—to look up old people in the village that she used to know before she was married. So they set off in the afternoon, and made such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a small plain gold brooch—not at all valuable, you know; two or three pounds, I suppose—which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her dressing-table, and left a ring—rather a good one, I believe—lying close by.”

“This,” asked Hewitt, “was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied, I take it?”

“No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch went—taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs. Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the curious thing was that the ring—worth a dozen of the brooch—was left where it had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn’t remember whether or not she had locked the door herself, although she found it locked when she returned; but my niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it once—because she remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing near by—and found it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn’t know at the time, but who since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready to swear that nobody but my niece had been to the door while he was in sight of it—which was almost all the time. As to the window, the sash-line had broken that very morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or ten inches with a brush; and, when she returned, that brush, sash, and all were exactly as she had left them. Now I scarcely need tell you what an awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace it, with the brush, exactly as he found it.”

“Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?”

“Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search.”

“Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?”

“Well, yes,” Sir James replied; “yes, perhaps it would. It was a first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself—built it out from a smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the window from the billiard-room roof. But, then,” he added, “that couldn’t have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or two, taking a little practice.”

“Well, was anything done?”

“Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn’t hear of my calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of.”

“Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I’m doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?”

“Nothing whatever—for some months. They seemed quite of a different sort. But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton, and we talked, among other things, of the previous robbery—that of Mrs. Heath’s bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and, when I mentioned the match found on the table, she said: ‘How strange! Why, my thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor little brooch!’”

Hewitt nodded. “Yes,” he said. “A spent match, of course?”

“Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance. Still, it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and dropped, in each case, on the dressing-table cover an inch from where the article was taken. I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed that it seemed significant.”

“Scarcely,” said Hewitt, shaking his head. “Scarcely, so far, to be called significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches in the dark, you know.”

“Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot might be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the more serious robbery.”

“Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?”

“Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London—at a shop in Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean forgotten all about the woman’s appearance. The name and address she gave were false. So that was the end of that business.”

“Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost and the date of the pawn ticket?”

“No.”

“Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?”

“Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself.”

“Very good! What next?”

“Yesterday—and this is what made me send for you. My late wife’s sister came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch, containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the Croft. I’ll tell you the rest indoors.”

Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet’s arm. “Don’t pull up, Sir James,” he said. “Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of the whole case before we go in.”

“Very good!” Sir James Norris straightened the horse’s head again and went on. “Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her dress, she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her room, almost adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five at most, but on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table, had gone. Now the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with. Of course the door was open, but so was my daughter’s, and anybody walking near must have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and one that almost makes me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not, was that there lay a used match on the very spot, as nearly as possible, where the brooch had been—and it was broad daylight!”