Black Cat Weekly #14

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOURInspector Bull was in his small room on the Embankment before eight o’clock the next morning.

The papers he had gathered in on his way from Hampstead were unpleasantly full of sensational news.

“Lone Bandit Robs and Murders Jeweller.”

“Scotland Yard Powerless to Cope with New Conditions, says Expert.”

Bull put them aside wearily. He especially disliked the constant comparison of London and certain well-known American cities. To accuse Scotland Yard of inefficiency was one thing—after all it wasn’t necessarily inefficient not to have caught a murderer or a bandit within twelve hours of the act. It was quite another thing to liken London to Chicago. Englishmen should have more pride.

He had to admit, however, that reports were not encouraging. Nineteen motor bicyclists had been picked up during the night. One in Maidstone was a hairdresser, coming back from seeing his young woman in Pimlico. One in Staines was a draper returning from he preferred not to tell where near Kingston. Near Oxford an undergraduate out without permission had been first detained and then turned over to the proctors. In Hounslow William Archer, occupation and age uncertain, had been playing darts to such an extent that he had forgot his way home. But no one who, as far as could be seen, had been within three miles of Colnbrook since Midsummer.

“They’ll be cabling to say they’ve got him in Canada before noon,” Inspector Bull groaned, pushing the reports aside and wondering how soon he could decently call on Mrs. Colton.

* * * *

When Chief Inspector Dryden objected to the Commissioner’s putting Bull in charge of what the papers came to call “the Colnbrook Outrage,” he was objecting on purely professional grounds. Inspector Bull’s position at the Yard was, in a sense, unique. Like all professional policemen and unlike all amateur detectives of fiction, Bull was sober, matter-of-fact, infinitely painstaking, and as shy as a colt of anything that smacked of the brilliant or the miraculous. He did not believe in mysteries. To Humphrey Bull the world was about as plain as a pikestaff. When the brilliant amateur of Jermyn-street showed, by the closest marshalling of the facts and the most logical deduction from them, that Queenie La Mar could not have been poisoned by arsenic because she had not taken any, Inspector Bull, being reliably informed that her symptoms were precisely those of arsenical poisoning, very ploddingly had her exhumed and analysed, and found arsenic in her hair, nails and internal organs. He then proceeded to go over her diet again. In thus examining into what she ate, he corroborated the discovery of the brilliant amateur that like most modern young women she ate practically nothing. Still, the facts were the facts; and Inspector Bull recalled what he had learned by observation of Mrs. Bull, that even if modern young women avoid all other forms of fat, they steadily eat small but adequate quantities of lip stick. And Queenie La Mar (whose real name is not important) used more lip stick than any woman in London. Bull confiscated the cosmetics from Queenie La Mar’s sealed rooms, and soon after a man ended his life in the small house in Pentonville. As Bull explained to his wife, “You see, if it isn’t one thing it must be something else.” It was all plain.

As a matter of fact Bull, for all his simple and matter-of-fact attitude towards his occupation, was at heart both credulous and romantic. His wife, in the fashion of wives, was unable to see how he ever managed as well as he did. Anyone could sell him anything, for instance. A manly fear of his wife’s amusement was all that kept him safe from every dealer in old china in town. And he had deeply ingrained in him the prejudices of his class and of his profession. For example, one of the maxims he had learned when he first became a member of the Metropolitan police was “Be careful of women in a house of trouble.” Yet with all his experience of that truth, he was never convinced that a woman, in any of his own cases, had played any rôle but that of mouse to someone else’s cat. When Mr. Pinkerton had forced him to admit, in one of his most celebrated and puzzling cases, that the vicar’s widow had poisoned the choir master, he convicted her. No one was more relieved when that sweet-faced old lady died a natural death before she was hanged; and in his heart of hearts Bull was convinced that it was the choir master’s own fault.

In his way Inspector Bull was a specialist. He knew the impulses and motives of the great middle class, from which occasionally a great criminal springs, more unerringly than any other man at the Yard. As they used to say at the Yard, Bull was useless in St. James’s or St. Giles, Mayfair or Whitechapel. But in his own field no one reached so infallibly into the inner motives of those who had broken the law of God or man. Queenie La Mar was Drury-lane—but her father was a draper in Earl’s-court; and Tito Mellema’s father (Titus Mellinovski) had brought up Tito, very inadequately, in the area of his interior decorating and wall paper establishment in Camden-town. Inspector Bull knew, though he could never have said it, that a middle class soul is a middle class soul, and when it commits murder in Drury-lane, Elephant and Castle or Half Moon-street, it does it from middle class motives and usually with middle class weapons.

That was why Chief Inspector Dryden did not want Bull to have the Colnbrook Outrage. It was clearly outside his field. But the Commissioner had decided it; and at ten o’clock, when Bull called on Mrs. George Colton, he was well launched into dangerous seas.

* * * *

Mrs. Colton was in her sitting room when Bull was announced. He looked hesitatingly at the slim graceful young woman with clear hazel eyes and smoothly waved ash-blonde hair standing by the fire-place.

“Is Mrs. Colton . . . ?”

“I am Mrs. Colton.” Her voice was slightly husky and vaguely disturbing. “Will you sit down?”

Inspector Bull was slightly embarrassed. He realized how many preconceived notions he had brought with him. Quite unconsciously he had made up a picture of George Colton’s home life, built around the image of the plump, pink, well-nourished jowls of the dead jeweller. The discreet complacency, the shrewd respectability of that dead face were in the oddest contrast with the pale lovely woman in black sitting across from him, regarding him thoughtfully out of calm sad eyes. She could not be more than twenty-seven or eight, Bull thought. As he sat down he forgot, with admirable adaptability, the fat, weeping, bejewelled old lady he had expected to meet.

He got out his notebook.

“I’ve heard the principal facts about this, Mrs. Colton,” he said a little awkwardly. “I would like to know first, now, how many people knew your husband had the jewels with him last night.”

Mrs. Colton showed no surprise. She thought for a moment.

“I knew it,” she said then. “I don’t know surely how many others did. Mrs. Royce, of course. And her son too. That’s all I’m sure of.”

“Your chauffeur?”

“I think he didn’t know. Surely if he had he wouldn’t have stopped the car.”

“Do you think it’s out of the question, madam, that he knew the man in the road?”

She looked at him quickly.

“Oh, that’s absurd. He’s been with us over two years. My husband trusted him in everything.”

“What about the other servants?”

“That’s out of the question too. My husband never discussed his affairs with anyone. I knew quite by accident that he had the jewels with him. I came into the drawing room at Mrs. Royce’s when she was taking his receipt for them. I tried to persuade him to send a guard out for them today. Mrs. Royce thought I was silly and so did Mr. Colton.”

“Yes. Who is Mrs. Royce, please?”

Inspector Bull was writing industriously in his notebook, but he was thinking about something else.

“She is an old friend of my husband’s. I think her husband and Mr. Colton went to school together. He died many years ago and left her well-to-do. Then someone else died about ten years ago and left her more money. My husband of course thought diamonds were a sound investment and persuaded her to buy. The gold-in-the-stocking theory of economics, I suppose you call it.”

Inspector Bull looked up at her.

“Yes. I understand from your statement last night that she was thinking of selling. Had she decided that diamonds were not such a good investment, or did she need money?”

Mrs. Colton smiled faintly. “I don’t know, Mr.—Inspector—Bull. She doesn’t need money, however, and of course diamonds have gone down considerably. Perhaps she thought she’d better unload before they went down more. In fact I remember now my husband did say he’d advised her to sell.”

“When was that, madam?”

“On the way to Colnbrook. After we’d left Windsor. They have gone down four shillings in the pound, I think he said. Something of the sort.”

“Yes. Do you know if they had agreed on last night, previously, as the time he was to get them?”

“I suppose they had. They were to be appraised in Hatton-garden this morning.”

“Who by?” asked Bull quickly.

She thought a moment.

“Would it be Mr. Steiner?” she asked. “I barely heard the name mentioned. It seems like a good name.”

A half-smile appeared for a fleeting second on her lips. Inspector Bull looked at her placidly. The occasion of her amusement passed him by. He noted down two words: “Albert Steiner.”

“Then Mr. Colton was arranging a sale?” he went on.

“I think so. I suppose he probably had a purchaser. Say an American.”

“Oh,” said Bull.

“I don’t know that,” she went on a little hastily. “But my husband was a careful business man. While he was very fond of Mrs. Royce, I don’t think he would have undertaken to sell some old-fashioned stones for her unless he could do it easily. If it was just an idea they’d have done it long ago—I should think. That’s why I think he had a buyer in mind. And I suppose it was an American because everyone else is poor. It’s just guess-work.”

Inspector Bull wrote in the black notebook.

“If it is true, Mrs. Colton,” he said, “there are a good many people who could have known he had the jewels that night.”

She hesitated, and looked reflectively out of the window.

“Yes . . . and no, Inspector. Mr. Steiner, if that’s his name, knew they were to be brought to him this morning, I suppose. I don’t know that he knew my husband was bringing them personally from Windsor last night. Or even that he knew they were in Windsor.”

“What about your husband’s clerks, madam?”

Again the half-smile, quickly vanishing.

“My husband’s clerk is Mr. Smith,” she said very seriously. “He would probably know about it. He’s seventy-four and he’s been with the firm longer than my husband had. Then there’s the boy. His name is Gates. He wouldn’t know.”

Inspector Bull only looked his question.

“Because he only polishes the silver and opens the door. You see, he’s just fifty.”

In spite of himself Bull glanced up at her. In his earnest fashion he had thought he detected an unbecoming levity in her voice. But she was perfectly composed. There was even a trace of distinct unhappiness in the calm eyes.

Then as she caught his glance she said impulsively, “Oh, you see it’s always seemed so absurd to me—all the fuss and bother about shop and important clients and all of it. I only persuaded my husband to stop wearing a top hat and dress like a human being a few months ago. Oh, it’s ghastly, all of it.”

The mask of composure had slipped a little, and Inspector Bull was glad of it. The eyes flashed, and again there was a glint of pain in them.

“I see,” he said soberly. “How many people are there in Mrs. Royce’s household?”

“There’s her son. He, by the way, brought the jewels from the vault in the Midland Bank in Windsor yesterday afternoon.”

“Then he knew her plans about them?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“If he did, that makes five people who knew about them, including yourself. Steiner of Hatton-garden; Mrs. Royce; her son; your husband’s clerk Smith. Your driver makes a possible sixth, and I suppose there are servants in the Royce house who could have overheard something. Then there’s a chance that somebody at the bank talked about it.”

The telephone at the low table beside Mrs. Colton’s chair rang.

“Hello. Oh, yes, Mr. Field. Yes, if you will. I didn’t want to disturb you last night. Very well. Thank you.”

She turned to Bull.

“It’s my husband’s solicitor. He’s coming out now. He can tell you about my husband’s affairs. I suppose he might even know who was going to buy the stones.”

“I’ll have to see him later, madam,” Inspector Bull said, getting to his feet. “Just one more point. Please give me the best description you can of the man who stopped you in the Colnbrook Road.”

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

“I’ve tried so hard to remember what he was like! But I can’t, except vaguely. He was about my husband’s height and not so heavy; and that’s really all I can think of about him. If I’d only not tried to help! When we started out my husband took the revolver out of his pocket and said, ‘You see how silly it is to be alarmed. I’ll put this here in sight.’ He put it in the pocket by the arm rest. When he didn’t take it I reached for it. I thought I could frighten the man. Then I nearly fainted. That’s really all I know.”

Bull put his notebook in his pocket.

“Thank you. I’ll trouble you as little as I can. I’d like to see the chauffeur now, please.”

She rang the bell, “Do you want him to come here?”

“I’ll see him in the garage, please.”

Mrs, Colton directed the maid to take Inspector Bull to see the chauffeur. Inspector Bull followed the trim little maid mechanically, thinking of several things very hard. They went out a side door towards the back of the house. Bull suddenly noticed that the maid was surreptitiously looking at him, as they went along, with intense curiosity, shaking with excitement. They came around a corner of the house.

“Ah!” the maid whispered suddenly. “There’s Peskett now, talking to Miss Agatha.”

Bull saw a man of middle size standing by a large Daimler in the driveway. He was looking sullenly at the ground and kicking pebbles along the drive. A young woman was talking urgently to him.

As Bull advanced the girl turned quickly around and came forward. She was about twenty-five, Bull thought, rather pretty, with black eyes, dark curling hair and a mouth closed as tightly as a steel trap. Without looking at Bull she went quickly into the house by an open f rench window.

“Who’s that?” Bull said to the maid, who was standing by the corner of the house.

“Oh, sir, that’s Miss Agatha. The master’s daughter, sir.”

Bull went along to the driveway where Peskett was polishing the windows of the big car. He could not see the two pairs of eyes that were watching him through lace curtains. One pair of calm hazel eyes upstairs, one pair of burning black eyes behind the french window.

“I’d like to talk to you a minute, Peskett,” he said. “I’m Inspector Bull of Scotland Yard.”