Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels

CHAPTER XXI

“I bet it’s our man,” said Gimblet, as Jennins dismissed the constable.

“Well, he must have altered his appearance if he is Mr. West, the gentleman from South America, unless Matterson’s account is very wrong indeed,” was Jennins’ only comment. “Aren’t you going a bit out of your way, Mr. Gimblet,” he asked, “to see any connection between this violent attempt on Miss Turner’s life and the actual murder which has taken place at 13 Scholefield Avenue? For my part I don’t see any reason to think the two affairs have anything to do with each other. I admit it looked as if Miss Turner and Mrs. Vanderstein had been in the house, but surely that theory is disposed of now and it is clear that your friend the actress was mistaken in thinking it was them she saw. Remember, she didn’t even know them by sight, but merely guessed at their identity from the description in the advertisement: two ladies in white, one wearing a red cloak and the other a mauve one. Why, there may have been dozens of couples dressed in these colours going about London on Monday, or any other night!”

“But the jewels,” said Gimblet, “she saw them too, you know.”

“Mrs. Vanderstein hasn’t a monopoly of diamonds. And besides, at that distance, and at the pace Miss Finner was going, she could only have received the vaguest impression, in any case.”

“I suppose I have got my head full of Scholefield Avenue,” said Gimblet. “I admit that I find it very hard to remember that Mrs. Vanderstein, at all events, is a very long way from that spot. And I daresay you are right, and Miss Turner never was much nearer to it. Still…” Gimblet fell into an introspective silence from which he soon roused himself with a start. “Tell me what you think, Jennins,” he said. “Have you any theory?”

“I haven’t any theory about the Scholefield Avenue business,” replied Jennins reluctantly, “but there doesn’t seem much mystery about the other affair, to my way of thinking. Surely it is clear that when Mrs. Vanderstein went off so secretly to Boulogne, for some reason she wished it to appear that Miss Turner went with her, while as a matter of fact the young lady remained in London. Ten to one we shall find that Mrs. Vanderstein had a more compromising companion with her in France than she left in England. Miss Turner, no doubt, retired to some secluded spot till her presence should be again required, probably to lodgings near Regent’s Park. Very likely she stayed indoors all day for fear of meeting acquaintances who might call for troublesome explanations as to her presence there, and being in want of exercise and fresh air went for a walk at night in order to procure them. Is it surprising that this ruffian of whom Matterson caught a glimpse, meeting her at such an hour and in so lonely a place, should not have spared her his unwelcome advances? Matterson saw him trying to put an arm round her neck, and it was very natural for her to scream in such circumstances. On our man running up, the black-bearded loafer, thinking himself caught, struck out at the girl in a fit of temper, and then took to his heels just in time to save himself.”

“All very fine, Jennins,” said Gimblet, “but I can pick holes in that theory till you’ll take it for a sieve. To put aside the question whether such a young lady as Miss Turner is said to be would lend herself to the deception you suggest, is it conceivable that, if she did go out to seek fresh air after dark, she should defer doing so till two in the morning and then choose a particularly violent thunderstorm to walk about in? Would her desire for exercise have led her to stand half way up the embankment of the canal when the rain was falling in torrents, and had been doing so since midnight? There is another thing as inexplicable, and that is the attire in which she took this midnight ramble. The clothes we saw at the hospital were mere rags. It seems incredible that this young lady, whom we know to have been clad on Monday night in purple and fine linen, should have been going about on Wednesday morning in garments which were not only threadbare and indescribably ancient but actually dirty. The battered state of the hat may be due to the blow from the spade, and all the garments were of course drenched by the rain, but there is something beyond that in their repulsiveness. I can’t imagine how she can have brought herself to wear such things.

“Apart from this behaviour of hers, which is in itself a mystery, what was the black-bearded one doing in the same place and hour and in the same unpropitious conditions? They could hardly both have been wandering there for the innocuous purpose you attribute to Miss Turner. And, mark you, the man was no destitute waif devoid of the means of procuring himself shelter from the rain. He carried a good serviceable spade which would have got him the price of a night’s lodging whenever he liked to pawn it. Now the kind of rough you are thinking of does not carry a spade or anything so suggestive of hard and honest labour. On the other hand, who does use that implement in a town like this? A gardener might have one, or a scavenger; or one or two other people. I think one of the most likely, especially at night, would be a gravedigger.”

“There you go!” exclaimed Jennins; “your mind is running on bodies buried in the flower pots! I suppose you think this fellow was going to bury the girl in one of the beds in the park!”

“It’s all very strange,” mused Gimblet, unheeding the inspector’s jeering tones. “The rope now. That is a puzzle. What could he be going to do with a rope? And why was it tied to a spade? Had he got the thing in his hands when he was trying to put his arms round Miss Turner’s neck? It must have hampered him a good deal and perhaps helped her to avoid his clutches.” Gimblet, with unseeing eyes, stared fixedly at his companion, his mind busy with the problem. Suddenly a light seemed to fall upon it. “By Jove!” he cried, “I believe I see the whole thing. If only Matterson were certain about the gloves.”

“What is it?” asked Jennins eagerly.

“No, no,” said Gimblet. “It is too wild an idea at present, though indeed I do not think I can be mistaken. But you have all the facts before you, Jennins, and are as able to come to the right conclusion as myself. I will leave you to think over the puzzle, while I go back to my flat and see if the answer to the wire I sent to Mrs. Vanderstein has yet arrived. It ought to be there by now.”

But he found no telegram awaiting him. He was annoyed and surprised at this, but the time taken by foreign telegrams is always uncertain, and Mrs. Vanderstein might have been out when his reached Boulogne. Lunch was being kept warm for him, and he made a hearty meal of Scotch woodcock and asparagus; with which he drank iced coffee and ate sponge cake instead of bread. There were strawberries to finish up with, and he left the dining-room with a peaceful smile on his face.

It was three o’clock, and the telegram was still undelivered.

Gimblet decided to wait in for it, and, having now leisure to think of others, rang up Sidney on the telephone and told him of the discovery of Barbara Turner’s whereabouts.

Incoherent questions came to him over the wire, but after a minute or two Sidney said “good-bye” and rang off hastily. The detective smiled as he hung up the receiver. In his mind’s eye he saw the young man dash out and drive swiftly in the direction of the hospital, and indeed the picture his imagination drew for him could not have been more accurate.

The afternoon passed and the evening wore away, and yet no wire came from Mrs. Vanderstein. It was tiresome, and Gimblet felt irritated with the lady for her lack of courtesy. Surely she might have replied by now. He felt that she held the clue to many things which perplexed him, and he could not understand her failure to give it to him. His own telegram had been very urgent. Well, the police were sending a man to see her; he was to go over by the 2.20 from Charing Cross, and by now he would be arriving at Boulogne. There could not be much more delay, telegram or no telegram.

Gimblet gave up waiting and went out again. He felt he must go to Scholefield Avenue once more. The tragedy that had taken place there filled his thoughts; and, being convinced in spite of Jennins’ contemptuous incredulity that the two mysteries were in some remote way connected, he was inclined to go and see if there were not some trifling point about things at No. 13 which he had overlooked, instead of waiting longer for the minute glimmer of light which Mrs. Vanderstein might be able to throw upon the darkness with which the whole affair was enveloped.

Scholefield Avenue looked very quiet and peaceful in the evening light; the few boys who still hovered about the gate, survivals of the crowd which the report of the murder had gathered there earlier in the day, wore the tranquil air of those to whom time is no object, and Gimblet, looking up and down the road, where the shadows lay long and the air was cool in the green twilight of the overhanging trees, thought again what a good place the murderer had chosen for his deed. Who would ever suspect evil in so calm and bright an oasis among the mazes of dusty, traffic-worn streets which surrounded it on every hand?

The house was in charge of a couple of policemen, who let Gimblet in without demur when he showed them his card, and followed him with their eyes with looks in which curiosity and admiration were blended. He went over the garden again, examining half-obliterated footmarks, and poking about between flowering plants lest something should be thrust away there and had escaped his notice. Then into the house, where he renewed his search, but without result. He looked into the drawing-room again, where all was as he had left it except that the body had been removed to a bedroom, then went into the library and gazed again at the dirty finger marks on the white paint of the door. Whose fingers were they, he wondered, which had left so many imprints? Was it the murdered woman who had been shut up in that room? Had Mrs. Vanderstein and her companion been there too, or was Jennins right, and their presence in that vicinity on Monday night been a figment of Miss Finner’s excited imagination?

His thoughts reverted to the powder puff and the forged note, and he took the folded paper from his pocket book and sniffed at it again. The odour of scent, now faint indeed, but still clinging sweetly to the impassioned words, was unmistakably that which hovered about the house in Grosvenor Street. Arome de la Corse, it was called, he remembered, and Amélie had said that Mrs. Vanderstein had it sent to her direct from Paris. Such extraordinary things happen every day that anything short of a miracle hardly attracts attention, but surely it would be a strain on the long arm of coincidence to suppose that, having strayed on to the scene of a murder owing to the mistaken idea that he was on the track of Mrs. Vanderstein, he should then find that not only did the dead woman resemble that lady and wear similar clothes but that she even used the same uncommon perfume! Gimblet’s whole soul revolted at such an impossibility. In the name of common sense, he said to himself, it must be Mrs. Vanderstein who had been seen on the doorstep on Monday night, and none other, in spite of all probability to the contrary; though what she was doing in that galère certainly seemed incomprehensible from nearly every point of view.

No contingency was ever dismissed by Gimblet as too wild for consideration, and the only reasonable explanation of her presence, he felt, was that she was in some way mixed up with the murder, an accomplice at least, if not the actual author of the deed; but this view involved so complete a shifting of ideas, that he put it aside for further consideration in the light of the information which the man sent by Scotland Yard to Boulogne might be able to furnish. If only the walls could speak! he thought, as he finally realised that nothing more was to be gathered, and, before leaving the room, strolled over to the mantelpiece in order to have a nearer look at the picture which hung there, and which he had noticed the day before.

It was a small oil painting, dark with dirt and age, and much of the detail lost in a general blackness. Still the figures, those of a man in blue and another in greenish brown in the act of lighting a long pipe, could be clearly enough distinguished, together with enough of the background to make it plain that this represented an interior. Gimblet studied it with the keenest appreciation; it was just the class of picture he most delighted in. A longing took him to remove it from its nail and carry it to the light, and with rather a guilty glance back at the door, which he had, however, shut as he entered, he put up his hand and lifted it off.

As he delicately lowered his prize he caught sight of something which made him very nearly drop it.

On the square of wall paper which had been hidden by the picture was some pencilled writing, scrawled irregularly in a large round hand:

“I am locked in this room. I write this hoping it may be the means of delivering these people to justice, for I am sure they intend no good. I can see that by the fact that the man with the black beard has promised to help me to escape. Why should there be need to escape? But I do not believe he will keep his word. I have been here so long, I do not know how long, but many hours, perhaps days, and God knows what dreadful thing they are doing in the drawing-room to Mr”

The writing broke off abruptly about half way down the square of darker colour, where the paper had been prevented from fading by the protecting picture. Gimblet gazed at it with all the emotions of the scientist whose theory has stood the decisive test. His hands fumbled in his excitement, as he hastily snatched out his notebook, and sought in it for the telegraph form Higgs had obtained from the Piccadilly office. He flattened it against the wall below the pencilled words, more in order to gloat over this proof of the soundness of his deductions than for the sake of comparing the two handwritings, for it had only needed the first glance to make it plain to him that they were one and the same. The writing on the wall was larger; the letters followed each other unevenly, and while some of the lines drooped lower and lower as they advanced, others rose crookedly to meet them, so that one or two actually overlapped and were rather hard to decipher, but the essential character of the hand was clearly identical with that of the telegram. There was no mistaking the slant of the short line of the h’s or the oval converging lines of the w’s and the low crossing of the t’s, besides a hundred other small points which left the trained eye in no doubt as to the authorship of the message.

“I wonder what Jennins will say to this,” thought Gimblet, as he copied down the words on a page of his notebook. “That Scholefield Avenue has got on my brain, I suppose.”

Excited as he was, he did not forget his original purpose in taking down the painting, but carried it to the window and examined it closely by the now diminishing light. On nearer inspection it proved to be of less interest than he had expected, and he hung it up again with the less regret.

“But even Jennins will have to admit that a leaning towards Art comes in very useful sometimes,” he thought, as he once more hid the scrawled message from view.

It was long past eight when the detective returned to his flat, only to find that there was still no answer to his telegram to Boulogne.

“Nothing has come and no one has been to see us since you went out, sir,” Higgs told him.

Higgs always spoke of himself as “us” when he was engaged on Gimblet’s affairs, just as he alluded, with a fine impartiality, to matters in which his master alone was concerned as “ours.”

“They’ve been ringing us up from the Yard,” he went on, “been ringing every few minutes for the last half-hour, and said I was to ask you to speak to them on the telephone the minute you come in. There they go again,” he concluded, as the bell tinkled violently in the library at the same moment as there came a ring at the front door.

Gimblet hurried to the instrument and Higgs went to answer the door.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, is that Mr. Gimblet? Hold the line, please, sir.”

In a moment Jennins’ voice sounded in his ear.

“Mr. Gimblet, that you? Oh, Mr. Gimblet, our man has wired from Boulogne and it appears that things have taken a very unexpected turn. I daresay you’ve seen an evening paper?”

Gimblet had heard so much when the library door burst open, and Sir Gregory rushed into the room.

“Look at this,” he almost screamed, evidently beside himself with some painful emotion. “Look at this!”

He waved an evening paper.

“Oh, do go away, Sir Gregory,” said Gimblet; “can’t you see I’m busy? Hullo, Jennins! Jennins, are you there?”

But Sir Gregory would not be denied. Seizing Gimblet’s arm he tore him away from the telephone, and holding the newspaper under his eyes pointed to it with a shaking hand. He would have spoken, but sobs choked his utterance, and, glancing at him for the first time and in no very friendly humour, Gimblet was surprised to see that tears were rolling down the kindly pink face.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he said, but Sir Gregory only pointed to the unfolded sheet. The detective’s eyes at last followed the outstretched finger, and he read:

CHAPTER XXII

“What do you think about going over to Boulogne, Mr. Gimblet?”

It was the following morning, and Jennins was sitting in Gimblet’s rooms. He had come round to talk matters over and discuss plans and methods of carrying them out.

“I think I may be more useful if I stay here,” Gimblet said, in answer to his question. “Your fellow, Burford, who is over there, is a good sound man who will, at least, not overlook the obvious, and Bonnot, the French detective, who is said to have been summoned, is a master of his profession. These murders are certainly the work of the same gang, and it may be easier to trace them here in London, if it is, as it appears to be, their starting point, than it will be to do so in a foreign country. There is no more news from Burford, I suppose?”

“Nothing new since last night. And no more than the papers have, anyhow. These reporters are the deuce.”

“They are,” Gimblet agreed. “Let’s see again what they say about it.” He took up a paper, turned to the sinister headline, and read aloud:

“A startling sequel has followed the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner, who left their home early in the week and whose whereabouts were only yesterday discovered. One of these ladies, Mrs. Vanderstein, who, it will be remembered, we ascertained to be staying at Boulogne, was found dead in her room at the Hôtel de Douvres yesterday afternoon, and foul play is strongly suspected. Traces of violence were plainly to be seen and it is thought likely that the poor lady was strangled to death. A curious feature of the affair is that though Mrs. Vanderstein had with her a large quantity of her valuable jewellery, some of which was actually lying on the table at the time, so far as is at present known none of it has been stolen.

“A page in the service of the hotel reports that he showed a visitor to Mrs. Vanderstein’s room soon after luncheon, and this stranger, who is described as a tall man with a black beard, left the hotel shortly before three o’clock, after delivering a message from the lady to the effect that she did not wish to be disturbed again that day. The order was duly given to the domestics of the hotel, and if a messenger from London had not arrived by the five o’clock boat on important business and insisted on penetrating to Mrs. Vanderstein’s presence, it is probable that the murder would not have been discovered until to-day. The authorities are investigating the affair with the utmost energy, and it is believed that they are on the track of the man with the black beard.”

Gimblet put down the paper. “There are various other paragraphs saying the same thing in different words,” he remarked.

“It certainly looks as if you were right again,” observed Jennins reflectively, “about all this being the work of the same gang, I mean.”

“There’s not a doubt of it,” said Gimblet. “I was sure of it from the first, though I admit that I had not much to go on. A mere whiff of perfume. Let us see how much we know now. To go back to Monday night, Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner voluntarily entered the house in Scholefield Avenue, though whether in response to an invitation from the so-called West or not we do not know, in spite of a theory I have on the subject. They then presumably separated, Miss Turner being imprisoned in the room on the ground floor, very much against her will and to her alarm since she broke a window in the hope of escaping, and when that attempt failed wrote a despairing message on the wall, in which she stated her fear that something dreadful was being done to somebody in the drawing-room. You will, I am sure, agree with me that, though the message says that her alarm was for ‘Mr’ and then stops, an s would have been added if Miss Turner had not been interrupted, and it was her intention to write ‘Mrs.’ But whether this would have referred to the woman who was buried in the flower stand or whether she was thinking of her friend, Mrs. Vanderstein, is not clear.

“Was Mrs. Vanderstein in the drawing-room at the time of the murder, and if so what was her business there, is the next question where our knowledge fails us. We know she was in that room at some time or other – I knew that the moment I smelt her perfume on the powder puff and note – but whether or no she was there at the moment of the crime we cannot tell. In either case her subsequent proceedings are extraordinary. If she was detained in the house against her will and made her escape by some unknown means, why did she fly to Boulogne, instead of to her own house or to the nearest police station? Why, when she got to Boulogne, did she not communicate with her friends until yesterday? It is true she said she had written previously, but it would have been more natural if she had telegraphed, and if she received no reply had telegraphed again. Why did she display no anxiety on Miss Turner’s account? Her actions seem at present to be inexplicable and strange to the last degree. Had she suddenly gone off her head? That is the most probable solution, to my mind. If so, it may well be that it was she who committed the terrible crime I discovered in Scholefield Avenue, and then, with the mixture of cunning and recklessness common to lunatics of a criminal type, retired to Boulogne to wait till the affair should have blown over. There are, however, several drawbacks to such a theory, and one of them is that it does not account for the black-bearded man, unless he was a lover, and indeed it seems most likely that he was.