Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart's Murder Mysteries (4 Intriguing Golden Age Thrillers)

"Well, I shall not be much use to them," Miss Lavinia said as she turned to depart. "Not that that will stop them asking me all sorts of idiotic questions!"

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"Hilary, my dear child, you must not cry like this."

Sir Felix Skrine was the speaker. He put his hand caressingly on Hilary's shoulder as he spoke.

"You will make yourself quite ill."

He had been talking to the girl about his long friendship with her dead father, and Hilary had been listening with the same apathetic calm with which so far she had listened to all the discussion of her father's death, when quite suddenly to Sir Felix's dismay her face began to twitch and she burst into a passion of tears.

"Oh, father, father!" she sobbed.

Skrine's own face began to work.

"I wish to God I could bring him back to you," he breathed. "But, Hilary, how it would grieve him to see you crying like this."

"Not a bit of it! He would know it was the best thing for her," a third voice, Miss Lavinia Priestley's, interrupted at this juncture. "Come, Sir Felix, you will do no good here now. Go and talk to Fee. The poor boy is miserable enough and he has no young man to console him."

Sir Felix drew his brows together. It was obvious that the allusion to the understanding between Hilary and Basil Wilton had displeased him. But consoling Hilary in Miss Lavinia's presence was not quite what he wanted. He went out of the room but he did not go upstairs to Fee. Instead he paced up and down the hall, his hands behind him, that furrow in his forehead that always showed when some knotty problem was perplexing him.

So Inspector Stoddart found him, when ten minutes later he came in through the surgery entrance, followed by a man unmistakably of the street lounger type—a man who slunk along with furtive eyes and loose, damp mouth across which he continually drew a grimy, hairy hand.

Sir Felix looked at him in disgust as he responded to the inspector's greeting.

"I was hoping for a word with you this morning, Sir Felix," the inspector began. "But first I should like you to hear what this man has to say."

As he spoke he opened the door of the morning-room which was now practically given up to him.

The expression of distaste on Sir Felix's face deepened as he followed. The inspector beckoned the man he had brought in up to one window.

"This man is a licensed police messenger, Sir Felix, and his pitch includes this street, Upper Mortimer Street and the right side of Park Road and Rufford Square. He manages to scrape a living out of it somehow, and on the night of Dr. Bastow's death he was walking round as usual, hoping to pick up a job."

"Oh!" Sir Felix's face changed. He looked again at the licensed police messenger, for the first time noticing the badge on his arm. "Well, what do you know of Dr. Bastow's death?" he inquired. "For I suppose he does know something or you would not have brought him here, inspector."

The inspector nodded.

"Speak up, Turner," he said encouragingly. "Just tell this gentleman what you have told me."

The police messenger swallowed something in his throat two or three times as he drew his hand across his mouth.

"I was just walking down this side of Rufford Square," he began, "when I see a tall man come across—"

"When was this?" Sir Felix interrupted.

The man hesitated, standing first on one foot, then on the other.

"Last Tuesday night, as ever was, sir, it were."

"And what time?" Sir Felix pursued, adopting his cross-examining manner.

"About half-past nine, sir, putting it as near as I can. Leastways it couldn't have been more than a few minutes past, for I hear it strike the half-hour from St. Michael's Church after I come into the Square. Looking out for a job, I were, for I had had a lean time last week, and I see—"

"Rather late to be looking for a job, wasn't it?" Sir Felix again interposed.

"Well, no, sir. There's often new folks coming in with boxes then and I picks up a copper or two."

"Well, now go on. What did you see?"

"I see a tall gent come into the Square from St. Michael's way; right across out into Benbow Street he went, and across to Lower Park Road. I kep' on the same way thinking he might want a taxi or some'at. But in Lower Park Road he opens the green door in the wall as I know were Dr. Bastow's." He stopped, drawing in his breath.

"Well, well, go on!" said Sir Felix impatiently.

"I were surprised, sir, for I knowed that door was not opened, 'cept for something very special an' I stood an' waited, thinking it looked like a job. Then a woman came along and went in, an' I—"

"A woman—what sort of a woman?" Sir Felix interposed.

The man stared round vaguely.

"A—just a woman, sir."

"Old or young?"

"Well, I couldn't rightly say, sir. She didn't look old, not as I could see. Her petticoats was short and her stockings was light like."

"Everybody's are," the inspector remarked. "Was she tall or short—this woman?"

"Well, short-like, sir. I call to mind I thought she looked a little 'un, going in after the man. He were tall."

"Now, can you tell us what he was like?" Sir Felix was resuming his cross-examination.

Turner scratched his head.

"Well, he was tall, sir. As tall or maybe taller than yourself. An' he had a darkish beard, which I noticed, not so many folks wearing 'em nowadays."

Sir Felix nodded.

"Sure enough! You seem to be a man of observation after all, my friend. Now can you tell us anything more you noticed? His clothes, for example?"

Turner hesitated a moment, taking out a grimy pocket-handkerchief and blowing his nose noisily.

"He 'ad a bowler 'at on, sir—my lord, and dark clothes—one of them short jackets what everybody wears."

"And you heard nothing while you were waiting there? No opening or closing of doors, or talking, as if this man and woman had met?" the inspector interrogated sharply. He was not disposed to leave quite everything even to Sir Felix Skrine.

"Not as long as I was there, sir," the man answered. "But I were in luck's way that night. I had a call from the other side of the road. And I hear no more from Dr. Bastow's. Nor give the man another thought, not even when I heard the doctor was dead. Not till this morning when the policeman come asking me questions like."

"Well, I think that is all, for now, my man," the inspector finished. "You will be wanted later."

Turner touched his forehead awkwardly and shambled out of the room.

The inspector looked at Sir Felix.

"Well, Sir Felix?"

"Well!" Sir Felix looked back.

"What do you make of that?" the inspector went on.

"I don't know," Sir Felix said slowly. "It is a curious statement. But it bears out the paper on the desk, if it is true."

"Why, you don't doubt it?" The inspector's tone was staccato, quite evidently this decrying of his witness did not please him.

Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.

"He will not be much of a witness to produce, will he? And it seems strange that he should say that he saw a man and a woman go into the garden. I cannot believe the murderer would take anyone 'with him. I know that sort of street lounger pretty well, inspector, and I must confess that my experience has taught me that no sort of reliance whatever can be placed on the word of one of them; moreover, if any inquiry is going on, they thoroughly enjoy telling some sort of a yarn—I fancy they imagine it will make the police regard them more favourably."

"Do they?" The inspector's smile was grim. "But there is one little item that you have not heard yet, Sir Felix."

"What is that?" Sir Felix asked quickly. The inspector was evidently enjoying the impression he had created.

"Turner spoke of seeing the man with the dark beard who entered Dr. Bastow's garden coming across the north side of Rufford Square." Sir Felix nodded.