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

"What are you going to do when Mr. Heilbronner has signed? I suppose he will sign the papers?"

"I fancy he will. Mr. Beale is the strong man in that team." And Christine did not notice that he left the first part of her sentence unanswered.

"And what about that clerk?"

"Daru? Oh! M. Bonnot is letting him off very well. He will have to leave his present post, of course, but a place will be found for him at Lyons, where he can work up again. Mr. Beale offered what was a fortune to him, and he has a wife in hospital, so altogether M. Bonnot inclined to a very merciful view of things." Christine herself waited in desperate anxiety. She could not go to England without knowing. The slip with "Yes" had been dispatched to Carter, but she had been told to say nothing of the unexpected turn of events which Mr. Beale's detection had brought about.

The next day's post brought the papers signed by Mr. Heilbronner. Mr. Beale delivered the papers to M. Meunier with a wry smile.

"Satisfied now? Can I go to my hotel and leave this blank, blanked country?"

M. Meunier nodded, and Mr. Beale stalked from the room and drove off to his own suite in the Meurice. As he entered his sitting-room a figure rose from a chair. It was Pointer.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Beale."

"What does this mean? What the devil are you doing in my rooms?" There was no mistaking the fact that Mr. Beale's nerves were getting frayed.

"A few questions that we want cleared up," said Pointer imperturbably. "Shut the door, Watts. These papers, Mr. Beale, were found in your flat at Lyons."

"Well, suppose they were?"

"May I ask how they came into your possession, sir?"

"Bought 'em."

"From whom, sir?"

Mr. Beale's eyes travelled slowly from the papers to the officers and back from them to the papers.

"Off an agent of mine. His name would mean nothing to you."

"I must ask for it all the same, sir."

"Godard."

"I think not. Godard—Levinsky is his real name—told us, when we interviewed him at Lyons, that the papers in question were shown him by you, and that he made copies of them from which he worked."

Mr. Beale looked sallower than usual.

"I suppose it's got to be the truth. I took them out of Carter's bag."

"We have been in telegraphic communication with Carter about them. He says that these papers belonged to Robert Erskine."

"Quite possibly. But I got them out of Carter's bag just the same."

"Carter denies that absolutely. Mr. Beale, your situation seriously calls for frankness, as I'm sure you see for yourself. Things are very awkward. You have no satisfactory alibi for the hours from four to six on August fourth. Those screws which were found in Carter's box must have been put there by you. M. Meunier and two of his engineers give Mr. Carter an absolutely satisfactory alibi. They were with him all that Saturday afternoon and went down to Ostend in the train with him and saw him off on the boat. Those screws, these papers of Erskine's, and his note-book, look very ugly, taking into consideration the reason your firm had for getting Carter and Erskine out of the way, and the fact that you and the manager, together or separately, were in No. 14 for a considerable time on that Saturday afternoon."

Mr. Beale's sallowness became tinged with green.

"It's like a Sunday-school story," he said after a pause, "illustrating the way of the transgressor. I guess I know when the ice won't bear me. Chief, those papers and that note-book are Erskine's. You're right there. But I didn't get them off his dead body, nor yet kill him, either before or after. I bought them from the manager. Yes, sir, from the manager, and for one thousand five hundred pounds in notes. I had the sum on me, for I hoped to meet Carter and do a deal with him. Now, as to the motive—you're talking nonsense and you must know it. Carter was our man. Erskine staked him, but Erskine's death wouldn't have helped us any. It did quite the other way. We didn't want all that limelight turned on us, I do assure you. As to the screws—well—I, possibly I did let them drop into Carter's box by mistake. We wanted him fixed up a bit, as he wouldn't deal. Mind you, he only had to speak out to've left his prison the next day. If he chose to stay there that wasn't my fault. I guess he was afraid to speak, for if you really think Carter had no hand in Erskine's death—well, your brains aren't what I assess them at. As to my alibi...I spent the time exactly as I told you. Trying to locate Carter, who was in one of the Southampton Street hotels. I gave up trying to find his name, guessed that he was using another, and, acting on a belief of my man's that he had seen him go into the Enterprise, tried there. I took room number fourteen without an idea as to whose it really was, and the rest happened exactly as I told you, except that I lifted the top off the wardrobe after what I had seen through that knot-hole, but I couldn't see Erskine's face because it was turned sideways and downwards, as you remember. Also my torch had given out. Had I guessed whose corpse was in—but there...The match I lit I took from those vestas on the mantelpiece, and I dropped one into the wardrobe. I saw you salvage it, Chief."

"Did you wash your hands in the basin?"

"Sure, and threw the water on to the balcony. It looked as though I had washed my boots in it. The top of that wardrobe would have made a first rate flowerbed. Well, to continue my tale of sin, curiosity made me have a look among the dead man's effects. I carry a pass key because of that damned Carter. I saw nothing interesting, and went for the manager, whom I found prowling about outside in the corridor. He seemed fairly knocked off his perch, but I sometimes wonder—However, he certainly would have had to have a nerve to put me into a room with a murdered man, if he knew anything about it. Yet—well, I don't quite know what to think; he and Carter may have had an understanding of some sort."

"Humph!" There was a long silence. "You hadn't been to the hotel earlier in the day, then?"

"No."

"Did you step out on to the balcony at all?"

"Not once, but I thought I heard someone moving outside the window while the manager and I were talking, just before you arrived, and I pulled up the blind. As I did so I think a window clicked shut beside me."

"Beside you? Which side?"

"The Enterprise side. It sounded like the next room, but I couldn't swear to that."

"Humph! How did you come to buy those papers from the manager?"

Mr. Beale thought a while.

"He offered them to me. I said that though I didn't know Eames personally yet I knew that he was mixed up in a business swindle. Said I'd be mighty glad, had I known who he was, to've had a look through his papers. He sat still a moment, then went out and came back with that pocket-book and those papers you have there, done up in a neat little green and white packet. Didn't say how he got them, and I didn't ask. No, sir, I didn't ask!"

"Humph! Well, Mr. Beale, you've only yourself to thank for your position. I shall leave two of my men to accompany you till we look into matters a little more, and you'll have to stay in England."

"Under arrest, am I?"

"Not at all, sir. Under close supervision—at present. Of course, if you were to try to escape..." The Chief Inspector left the consequences to Mr. Beale's alert imagination; "but you'll find Watts here and Duncan know their work, and will cause you as little inconvenience as possible."

"I see. Well, I know when a game's lost," the American retorted bitterly. "Say, you spoke of Carter's alibi just now. I suppose he's free, and all that?"

"He will be by tomorrow"; and Pointer, after reading over Mr. Beale's account and getting it signed, made off for the nearest telegraph office, while the American looked after him with an ironical smile. "Carter to be set free tomorrow. Well, well, the brains of the British police!"