Dorothy Fielding - Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries

"Can I see the covering letter to his will?"

The solicitor held it out. It was the briefest of notes headed from a Toronto hotel and dated June 4.

Dear Mr. Russell,

I shall be much obliged if you will take charge of the enclosed. It is my last, and only will. Should I die, kindly act on it at once.

Faithfully yours,

Robert Erskine.

"You have the will with you, too, sir?"

"Aye, I have." But Mr. Russell made no motion to produce it.

"Under the circumstances, as you have definitely identified the body as that of Robert Erskine, you would save us all a great deal of trouble, and yourself a long detention in London, by letting us have it now."

The lawyer pondered this for a moment. Then he drew out and broke the seals of a grey envelope. In it was a half-sheet of notepaper, by which Robert Erskine, on June Fourth, had left everything of which he might die possessed, to one Henry Carter, of 10401 Street, Calgary.

"Alias Cox," was Pointer's silent comment as he passed it on to Watts. Then he compared it carefully with a letter which he took out of his safe, the note found on Eames' body. The writing tallied. He handed the note to the lawyer, who read it with emotion. For he and the young fellow in whose name it stood, were about of an age, and had known each other as children.

"To think of it! To think of the Perthshire Erskines ending like this! All their money and all their land to come to no better finish!"

Pointer pressed a button and had the will handed over to the Yard's experts to be photographed and enlarged.

"Now about this Henry Carter, who is he?"

"I never heard of him before in my life. He won't be a Perthshire man."

The Chief Inspector played with his fountain pen for a while.

"Do you think Mrs. Erskine could come over for the adjourned inquest? It won't be till a week from Tuesday?"

"I doubt it might kill her. She is a very delicate woman. Robert was her only child, you remember. Nor can I see the point. In his letter he says clearly enough that his intention is to commit suicide. And as for identification—she hasn't seen him since I have. He's never been back to Europe before. I know that."

"Did you know that he was coming?"

"My dear sir, I know as little of Robert Erskine's movements these last years as I do of the Pope. Barring that receipt for the thousand pounds, and that envelope with his scrap of a will inside, we haven't heard from him since his father died these many years ago. And at that time it was my father who transacted the winding up of the estate. I was but a lad."

"Well, I hope Mrs. Erskine will come. I must run over to France, if not. She may be able to throw some light on the reasons for her son's—ah—end. Now, Mr. Russell, do you happen to know whether Mr. Robert or Mr. Ian Erskine took any interest in politics out in Canada?"

"I do remember a letter my father read me, in which Mr. Erskine—Mr. Henry Erskine—spoke of difficulties his brother was having with some Communist settlers near by; but what would that have to do with young Erskine's suicide?"

"Nothing probably, but we must leave no stone unturned. Well, Mrs. Erskine may know more. I should like to find out what Robert Erskine's attitude on labor questions was."

"But his letter—! Man, a young fellow is hardly likely to kill himself for such like whimsies."

"True again, Mr. Russell; but as there doesn't seem any reason lying around on the surface why a wealthy young man should kill himself, we must poke about for one. By the way, do you know how much his uncle left him?"

"Mrs. Erskine wrote to the effect that he was now wealthier than she. That's all I know."

"Thanks." The Chief Inspector drew Watts into another room.

"Cable to the Toronto police for full particulars of young Erskine and Cox. And repeat to Calgary police." Pointer turned to his desk with the air of a man who has still a full day's work before him, whatever the hands of the clock might say about it.

Mr. Russell cleared his throat, but his courage apparently failed him, as with a bow and a "See you tomorrow at your hotel, Mr. Russell—at eleven, if that hour suits you," the Chief Inspector was gone.

Mr. Russell cleared his throat again.

"Mr. Watts—I wonder, now—I'm wishful to see the room where poor Robert Erskine took his life. I knew him as a boy, you see." There was genuine feeling in the Scotsman's face.

The detective opened the door. "Chief Inspector!" he called, but his superior was out of earshot.

Watts rubbed his chin.

"Well, sir, of course, strictly speaking, I should say no. But as you're in the case as it were, and a friend of the family—well, as it happens, I shall be at the Enterprise Hotel within the hour on business. I'll pick you up in the lounge there if you like, and let you just have a look at No. 14. The hotel doesn't intend to let it till Monday."

He was as good as his word, and took the solicitor up with him to the threshold of the fatal room. Mr. Russell shook his head slowly. "Pitiful, aye, pitiful indeed, to think of Robert Erskine come to such a pass that he was glad to take poison and shut himself up in yon box. Do you think there was a wumman at the bottom of it?"

"There often is," agreed Watts. Not until the adjourned inquest did the Yard intend a word to leak out which might suggest that the "suicide" was a murder.

"Aye, just so," murmured Mr. Russell as he tiptoed from the room.

On the stairs they met Pointer, who gave them both a baleful glare. Watts would have explained, but his superior silenced him with a gesture.

"Not out here. Mr. Russell, don't let us detain you, sir;" and the lawyer left the detective to a grim little interview back in No. 14.

"My aim was to keep the man's identity a secret, as I told you." The Chief Inspector's voice lost none of its edge for being carefully lowered; "and you bring the family solicitor to the hotel! Suppose the criminal is still in the house—you give him notice that we know who Eames was. Beale, or Cox, may both of them be staying under this very roof as Jones or Smith for aught we know!"

Watts bent to the blast, and apologetically took himself off, inwardly swearing that never again would he yield to a kindly impulse.

Pointer walked swiftly downstairs and knocked at the manager's door. He was greeted with rather forced cordiality.

"Mr. Manager, I asked you once before if Mr. Eames left anything in the safe. You said no. We have learned today that he may have had some hundreds of pounds with him. Are you sure of the honesty of your booking clerks?"

"Oh, quite! Absolutely." There was no mistaking the conviction in the manager's tones, but also no mistaking the fact that he had turned very pale.

"You have the only key to the safe, I understand?"

"That is so."

"I see." Pointer was watching him intently and not disguising the fact. "The night-clerk, Biggs, says that he happened to see you open the safe several times during the days Eames was here, and noticed a small sealed box, wrapped in green and white striped paper, on the top shelf to the right. He is certain that he saw it last on the night of the third—Saturday—when you opened the safe to give a Dutch gentleman back his deposit. On Sunday morning the safe was opened at nine o'clock to let a lady put in her jewels, and the box was gone. Can you tell me anything about that box?"

"That box? Oh, yes, I remember now. That box belonged to me. I often keep spare cash in the safe."

Both men looked at the safe facing them cemented into the wall of the manager's sitting-room.

"And the green and white striped paper? I showed the clerk the piece I found in this room the morning after Mr. Beale's—ah—departure, and he positively identifies it as similar to that which he saw in the safe. Yet when I questioned you, sir, about that same piece you expressly stated that it was not yours?"