Death in the Bathroom E-Book

Basil Thomson

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A BIG Sunbeam touring car was crawling along the concrete road of one of the new building estates bordering on Ealing. Its occupants were gazing at the fronts of the houses on either side of the road.
“I must explain that Christine is still under the spell of this new craze for modern houses, replete with all the gadgets which become your own property as soon as you have paid the first instalment to the building society,” said Herbert Mitchell to his friend Jim Milsom, who had undertaken to cart them round in his car on their house-hunting expedition.
They were friends of long standing. The Mitchells, who had been living in France from motives of economy, had lately been driven out by the persistent adherence of the French to the gold standard and the consequent high cost of living as compared with the cost in England.
“I’m not under the spell of these long rows of houses all exactly alike,” protested Christine. “I was thinking of a detached bungalow somewhere—”

Leseprobe

DEATH IN THE BATHROOM

Sir Basil Thomson

1936

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383835127

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

1

A BIG Sunbeam touring car was crawling along the concrete road of one of the new building estates bordering on Ealing. Its occupants were gazing at the fronts of the houses on either side of the road.

“I must explain that Christine is still under the spell of this new craze for modern houses, replete with all the gadgets which become your own property as soon as you have paid the first instalment to the building society,” said Herbert Mitchell to his friend Jim Milsom, who had undertaken to cart them round in his car on their house-hunting expedition.

They were friends of long standing. The Mitchells, who had been living in France from motives of economy, had lately been driven out by the persistent adherence of the French to the gold standard and the consequent high cost of living as compared with the cost in England.

“I’m not under the spell of these long rows of houses all exactly alike,” protested Christine. “I was thinking of a detached bungalow somewhere—”

“Oh, but think of the pleasure you would take in your neighbours if you lived in one of these. Think of the family washing gaily flapping from the clotheslines in the back gardens on either side of you. Think of five o’clock, when the fathers come home and turn on their wireless, all playing different tunes, and then, when the green timber begins to warp, and doors and windows stick fast, you have only to bang on the party wall to bring a hefty neighbour to your rescue.”

Mrs Mitchell laid a restraining hand on her driver’s arm and pointed to a low building on their left. “There! Mr Milsom, that’s the kind of bungalow I’ve been dreaming of.”

“But it has already been sold and occupied,” objected her husband.

“I know it has, but the architect is certain to have repeated his masterpiece somewhere else on the estate. Let’s go and dig out the estate agent and take him by the throat—”

“I believe that we passed a little shanty labelled ‘Estate Agency’ in the last street but one,” said Milsom. “I’ve plenty of room for turning the car. Shout when you see the notice board.”

The estate agent proved to be not a man, but a very forthcoming young woman. To her Mitchell explained what they were looking for. “I’m afraid,” said the young woman, “that you are too late. Eastwood was let six months ago, and the tenants are so pleased with it that they would never give it up.”

“Haven’t you another detached bungalow built on the same plan?” asked Christine Mitchell.

“As a matter of fact I have. It is let at present, but when I last saw Mr Miles Pomeroy, the tenant, he told me that he might be going abroad and if so he would ask me to find him another tenant to take the lease off his hands. I’ll ring him up and ask him whether you could go round and see it.”

She plied the telephone without success and looked at the clock. “I expect Mr Pomeroy has gone off to business, but Mrs Pomeroy ought to be there.”

“Couldn’t we go round in the car and see it?”

The agent looked at her engagement book. “It’s early. I’ll lock up the office and take you round. No doubt Mrs Pomeroy will let us go over the house; if not I’m afraid that there’ll be nothing doing, unless I can tempt you with one of our other houses.”

“My wife seems to have set her heart on that bungalow, Eastwood,” said Mitchell. “If we can’t have that or its twin sister I’m afraid that we must look elsewhere.” The agent took the seat beside Jim Milsom and guided him through a network of turnings until at last they reached a bungalow even more seductive to Mrs Mitchell than Eastwood itself. It stood quite detached from its neighbours.

“Of course it won’t always be so isolated,” said the agent. “According to the plan other houses are to be built at a little distance, but that need not worry you: it may be months before the company begins to build, and in the meantime you have a garden front and back, a garage and a lawn nearly big enough for a tennis court. Ah, we are in luck. There is Mr Pomeroy weeding his lawn. If you’ll let me out of the car I’ll go and ask him whether he would like to let.”

In three or four minutes she was back, followed by Pomeroy with his weeding spud in his hand. He was a man of between thirty and forty, with thinning hair and a studious look. His voice was pleasant.

“Miss Lane tells me that you would like to look over the bungalow with a view to taking it if I decide to let. I’m sure that my wife will be delighted to show you over it. She got up rather late this morning, and she may still be in the bathroom, but if you will wait for a few moments in the lounge I’ll see how the land lies.” He led the way into the lounge.

When they were left to themselves Mrs Mitchell looked round her. “I think that his lounge is perfect,” she said. “I do hope that the lady will forgive us for calling at such an early hour—”

Her words were cut short by an almost animal roar from the back regions followed by a cry of, “Miss Lane, come quick!”

“What can have happened?” exclaimed Christine Mitchell, trembling. “Herbert, go and see whether they want help.”

But Jim Milsom was before him. He halted at the bathroom door, from which the voices proceeded. He heard Miss Lane’s voice; she seemed to be a competent person in an emergency. “Pull up the waste and let the water out.”

“She’s dead,” groaned the man.

“Can I help?” called Milsom. They did not appear to have heard him. Pomeroy’s voice went on:

“She must have fallen and struck her head against the taps. Look, there’s blood everywhere.”

“Never mind about that now. What you have to do is to telephone to your doctor to come at once.”

Pomeroy passed Jim Milsom in the passage without speaking; he went straight to the telephone in the lounge and dialled a number. “Is that Dr Green? This is Miles Pomeroy speaking. I want you to come round to the bungalow at once…Yes, it’s very urgent…My wife’s had an accident— she’s fallen in her bath and hurt herself…You can? Thank you.”

He became suddenly aware of the Mitchells. “I’m sorry that you’ve come at such a moment. There’s been an accident in the bathroom: my wife has been hurt.”

“Can’t I help?” asked Christine.

“No thank you. Miss Lane is doing all she can. We can do nothing until the doctor comes.”

He left them and returned to the bathroom. Jim Milsom came into the lounge with Miss Lane.

“I can do nothing for her,” said the agent. “She’s quite dead, poor dear! We can only wait until the doctor comes.”

“Well, aren’t we rather in the way?” said Mitchell. “We had better go.”

“No,” said Milsom. “We can’t leave Miss Lane to walk back to her office.”

“It is very kind of you. I should be glad to have a lift back as soon as we know what the doctor says. I don’t think we shall be in the way. If you stay here I’ll go back to Mr Pomeroy.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Milsom in a low voice when he was alone with the Mitchells: “I looked into that bathroom. It’s a shambles— blood all over the bath. That couldn’t have come from banging her head on the tap.”

“Nonsense, my dear fellow,” said Mitchell. “That comes of all the thriller trash you have to read as a publisher; things don’t happen like that in real life.”

“Yes, but slipping in the bath and banging your head on the tap would make no more than a big bruise.”

Christine shuddered. “Well, I don’t want this bungalow now.”

A motor horn sounded at the gate; a car swished up the short gravel drive. From the window they saw Dr Green— a man nearing forty, with a keen face and an air of decision. Pomeroy had heard the car and came hurrying through the lounge to meet him.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll take you straight to the bathroom.”

In a very few moments Miss Lane returned to the lounge. “I’m afraid I may be kept for some minutes,” she said. “Dr Green has asked me to telephone for Dr Leach, the police surgeon.”

Milsom cocked his eye at the Mitchells. “Don’t hurry, Miss Lane,” he said. “We can wait.”

The agent got through and sent the message. She came over to the Mitchells. “I’m so sorry that this has happened,” she said.

“But you couldn’t help it.”

“I would have suggested your leaving me here, but Dr Green wouldn’t listen to me. He says that in all these mysterious cases no one ought to leave until their statements have been taken by the proper authorities.”

“He does think that there is a mystery about the case then,” said Milsom.

“Yes, according to him the poor woman could not have come by that dreadful injury by a fall.”

Christine Mitchell knit her brow. “But who could have done it? Could it have been a burglar?”

“Of course this house is very isolated— Oh! Here comes Dr Leach. Excuse me.” Miss Lane hurried to the door and admitted a rather hard-boiled-looking person of middle age.

“Well, what’s wrong here?” he asked. “I thought that you people in the garden suburb prided yourselves on your freedom from crime.”

“We hope there hasn’t been a crime, Dr Leach. If you’ll come this way I’ll take you to Dr Green in the bathroom. He’ll tell you how we found the body of Mrs Pomeroy.”

Having left the two doctors together she returned to the lounge with Miles Pomeroy. “The doctors sent us away; they said that in that tiny bathroom there wasn’t room for us if they were to do their work, but Dr Leach was careful to say that no one must leave the house for the present.”

“That won’t prevent me from going to the car for my cigarette case,” said Milsom, rising and going to the door. But he did not go to the car, for beside the steps he caught sight of the stub of a cigar. He picked it up and stowed it in an envelope. Then he made a perambulation of the house and garden, looking for any unusual feature, especially for scratches or heel marks on the stone window sills, for, he argued, no burglar could have got into such a house without leaving a mark. He smiled as he thought of the long face that his friend, Superintendent Richardson, would pull if he knew that he was treading on the ground that should have been sacred to the Criminal Investigation Department.

At that moment a taxi drew up as near to the gate as the other cars allowed. A young man alighted. Milsom went to meet him.

“Are you Mr Miles Pomeroy?” enquired the new arrival with a slightly patronizing air. There was a hint of a colonial accent in his speech.

“No, I’m not. Mr Pomeroy is in great trouble at this moment. Is your business with him pressing?”

“Well, as a matter of fact my business concerns Mrs Pomeroy, who is a sort of cousin of mine.”

“Then I’m afraid I’ve bad news for you. Mrs Pomeroy met with a fatal accident this morning.”

“Good God! Do you mean she’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. The doctors are with her now.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence. I’ve come all the way from New Zealand to break the news of a death, and now I find that she herself is dead.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “This has been a bit of a shock to me.”

“Well, I suppose you’d better come in and see Pomeroy.” Milsom led the way into the house. “That is Mr Pomeroy,” he said, pointing him out.

“I daresay you’ve heard of me. I’m Ted Maddox, Mr Colter’s adopted son. I came to tell your wife about her uncle’s death, but I’ve come at a bad moment. I’m sorry. Would you like me to go and come back to see you this evening?”

“Just as you like,” said Pomeroy in a dull voice.

The young man seemed quite ready to make his escape. Jim Milsom saw him to the gate.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“I haven’t an address yet. I only landed this morning and came straight on here.” He produced a bulky envelope from his pocket and displayed the address, “Messrs Jackson, Burke & Company, Solicitors, Southampton Street, London, W.C.”

“This contains Mr Colter’s will. I was charged to bring it over, but I thought it better to see Mrs Pomeroy first. I’ll go on to Southampton Street now.”

When Milsom got back to the lounge the two doctors came in.

“I understand from Miss Lane,” said Dr Leach, “that you were merely visiting the house as likely tenants when the body was found and that you would like to get away.”

Dr Green was at the telephone, and Milsom, who was nearest to him, caught the words, “Is that the C.I.D. office? Dr Green speaking.”

“Now you two gentlemen,” said Dr Leach, pulling out a sheet of official foolscap from his attaché case— “I should like you each to give your name and full address on this paper and a short statement of what brought you here.”

When they had finished, it came to Miss Lane’s turn, and her statement had perforce to be far more detailed since she was the second person to see the body. Dr Leach read her statement through and asked, “How long would it take you to get here from your office, if the police want to question you?”

“By car, less than five minutes; on foot, of course, longer.”

“Very well, then, you may go, all four of you. We can send for you if you’re wanted.”

As the four were taking their seats in Milsom’s car another car drove up and deposited the divisional detective inspector at the gate. He had brought with him a detective sergeant.

“Back to your office I suppose, Miss Lane?” asked Milsom, sitting at the wheel.

“Yes, please. I’m very sorry to have brought you all into this tragic business, but—”

“How could you have known what we were going to find?” asked Milsom. “As long as these local police people don’t keep hunting us to give evidence, I don’t mind. What sort of man is Pomeroy?”

“Oh, his family is well known here. They live in Ealing— most respectable people.”

“And his wife— the dead woman?”

“Oh, I never listen to gossip. If I did…”

Milsom understood. “If you did you could tell us a lot, I’ve no doubt. The extraordinary thing to me is to think that the husband could be quietly grubbing up weeds in his garden while his wife was being murdered in the house behind him.”

“Surely she must have screamed,” said Christine.

“Or she must have known the murderer,” said Milsom.

“One thing I feel sure of,” said Miss Lane: “it was not Mr Pomeroy; he would never have done such a thing.”

“Or, if he had, he wouldn’t have invited us into the house to find the body,” observed Milsom. “The type of man that I take him to be could never have acted so cool a part. He would have been straining every nerve to do a bunk.”

Having deposited Miss Lane at her office, Milsom turned to Christine. “Any more bungalows this morning?”

“No thank you, Mr Milsom. I’ve seen enough bungalows to last me a lifetime.”

2

THE TWO police officers were received at the door by Dr Leach.

“We’ve got a job for you, Mr Aitkin,” he said to the divisional detective inspector, “and I fancy that it’s going to take you all your time.”

“A case of murder, Doctor?”

“Yes, it’s a murder all right, but you’d better come through and see for yourself.”

The two disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Dr Green and Pomeroy in the lounge. After making a cursory examination of the bathroom and scribbling a number of notes, the inspector gave the order to remove the body into the bedroom. There they laid it on the bed and covered it with a sheet.

“Get to work in the bathroom and look for fingerprints or other identification marks left by the murderer,” said Inspector Aitkin to his sergeant. Then he turned to Dr Leach. “Who was the first person to find the body?” he asked.

“Why, the husband. He found it and called to the agent, Miss Lane. I don’t think that the other three people saw the body at all.”

“What other three people?”

“Here are their statements with their names and addresses.”

Aitkin read the statements carefully. “H’m,” he grunted. “It may not be a very complicated case after all. I’ll take charge of these statements. We may have to get these people down for the inquest. You’re quite satisfied, Doctor, that that wound on the head could not have been caused by a fall on the taps?”

“Quite.”

“There’s one thing which I daresay you noticed— that pair of slippers half kicked under the bath were of men’s size.”

“Yes, I noticed that, too, and they were sprinkled with blood.”

“Well, Sergeant Hammett is going over the bloodstains in the bathroom. Is it possible that the body was put into the bath after the blow was struck in order to make it appear that it was an accident?”

“A blow like that would have caused a lot of bleeding. Before I could accept that theory you’d have to show me another room with a trail of blood.”

“It won’t take us two minutes to go through all the rooms. Come along.”

There were only two other bedrooms, a small sitting room and the kitchen, and all of these were entirely clear of bloodstains.

“Well then, you can concentrate your attention on the bathroom. You’ll have nothing else to distract you,” said Dr Leach.

Sergeant Hammett emerged from the bathroom as they approached. “This bathroom is crawling with fingerprints, Inspector. I haven’t tested the walls for hidden prints, but there are quite a dozen prints made with bloody fingers. Everything points to there having been a struggle in this room: the bath mat, a brush and those slippers have all been kicked under the bath.”

“You’ve found nothing with which the blow could have been struck?”

“Nothing, and I looked everywhere.”

“You’d better have a good look round the garden outside. Now, Doctor, I shall have to take a statement from the husband. I suppose we can take it in the lounge.”

“Yes, you’ll find him there with Dr Green.”

The inspector pulled out from his attaché case some sheets of official stationery.

“I must take a statement from you, Mr Pomeroy. Please sit down there and reply to my questions. Your name is Miles Pomeroy, I think. And you are by profession…?”

“A clerk in the Union Bank.”

“Your age?”

“Thirty-six.”

“How old was your wife?”

“Thirty-two.”

Now, Mr Pomeroy, will you give me an account of what happened this morning. When did you last see your wife alive?”

“At half-past eight this morning.”

“Did you breakfast together at that hour?”

“No, I breakfasted alone at eight. I had taken her a cup of tea at half-past seven.”

“You say you last saw her at half-past eight?”

“Yes, she called to me and asked me to go to the town and buy her a grapefruit as she had no appetite for breakfast. I went, and I called in also at the newspaper shop for the Daily Mail. Then I came back, put the grapefruit in the dining room and called to my wife to say it was there.”

“Did she answer you?”

“No, but I assumed that she was in the bathroom, and I went out to do some weeding in the garden, where Miss Lane found me.”

“Where do you keep your slippers?”

“Ah! You found them in the bathroom, I suppose. The fact is that my wife was in the habit of using them in preference to her own.”

“Now, Mr Pomeroy, I must give you the usual caution: that anything you say may afterwards be used in evidence. What terms were you on with your wife?”

“Oh, the usual terms of husband and wife.”

“Affectionate terms?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you at home today? Is your bank closed?”

“No, but I wasn’t feeling very well this morning, and I telephoned to ask for a day’s sick leave.”

“What were you doing yesterday evening?”

“We attended a bridge party together.”

“Where?”

“At the house of some friends of ours, the Claremonts.”

“At what time did you get home?”

“Oh, it was a little past midnight. We walked home.”

“You had no quarrel?”

“Oh dear no. We don’t quarrel over games.”

“Do you occupy the same bedroom?”

“No, neither of us sleep very well, and for some months we have used separate rooms.”

“Well, Mr Pomeroy, I must ask you to stay here at the disposal of the coroner. You must on no account leave the neighbourhood.”

“Certainly, but I suppose I can go to the bank daily as usual?”

“Yes.”

Dr Green came forward. “If you don’t want me any longer, I feel that I ought to be seeing my patients.”

“Certainly, Doctor. We’ll let you know when you’re wanted for the inquest. I’d like a word with you, Dr Leach,” the inspector said to the police surgeon in a lower voice.

Pomeroy took the hint and showed Dr Green to the door.

“Everything points rather strongly to the husband,” said the inspector, “but I can’t very well detain him without charging him, and I shall have to consult higher authority before doing that.” As Pomeroy rejoined them he said, “You must have noticed, Mr Pomeroy, that there were a number of fingerprints on the wall of the bathroom. Would you have any objection to going through the formality of allowing me to take your fingerprints?”

“I fancy that the prints you noticed in the bathroom must all be mine. I had to put my hands on the wall when I was lifting my wife’s body; but by all means take my fingerprints if you have the materials here.”

Inspector Aitkin motioned to his sergeant, who took from his attaché case a slip of zinc, a bottle of printing ink, and a tiny roller of rubber with which to spread the ink evenly over the zinc.

“Now sir,” said Inspector Aitkin, “leave your muscles quite loose; it won’t take a minute.” Bringing the inked plate to the edge of the table and laying beside it a folded sheet of paper, Aitkin rolled each of Pomeroy’s fingertips on the plate and transferred the ink to the appropriate space on the paper. Having completed the right hand, he poured a few drops of benzine on a cloth and wiped off the ink. “Now sir, your left hand.” The operation was repeated. Aitkin had now a complete record of the rolled prints; there remained only to take a simultaneous print of the four fingers of each hand. This having been completed, Sergeant Hammett stowed away the apparatus in his attaché case while his inspector led the way to the bathroom. He pulled out a magnifying lens and compared the imprints on the wall with the prints he had just taken.

“Yes, Mr Pomeroy, you were right. These impressions were left by your fingers.”

“If you don’t want me any more just now, I’d like to go and tell my mother what’s happened.”

“Certainly, but you understand that you must not go anywhere without telling us where you can be found? “Yes, I quite understand that.”

“I must be off too, Inspector, if you can spare me,” said Dr Leach. “You and Hammett have work to do, I expect.”

Left to himself, Aitkin returned to the bathroom and was busy applying his reading glass to the marks on the walls when Sergeant Hammett appeared at the door.

“I’ve just found this in that little ornamental pond behind the house,” he said; “I got it out with the garden rake.” He held up a coal hammer still wet from immersion.

“Be careful how you handle it,” said Aitkin; “those brown stains on it will turn out to be bloodstains unless I’m much mistaken, and the question will arise whether they were made some time before immersion and, of course, whether the blood is human. Happily that is not a matter on which we shall be called to give evidence. What we have to verify first is how the murderer, whoever he may have been, got into the house.”

“The windows were all securely fastened; so was the back door: I’ve seen to that.”

“How does the front door open?”

“Apparently only with a latchkey. The man, if he was a stranger, could only have got in by having the door opened to him by someone from inside— of course Pomeroy would have had his own latchkey. Have you made up your mind, sir, in which room the murder was committed?”

“There’s not a shadow of doubt about that. It was here in this bathroom. The woman was standing when the blow was struck: you see the blood spurted up to the ceiling.” He pointed to one or two splashes on the whitewash.

“She wasn’t wearing her nightdress at the time. Here it is hanging on this peg and only a few drops of blood on it, so she must have been wearing nothing but her dressing gown when the murderer came in. It seems to me that the woman was just going to step into her bath when the doorbell rang or when someone came in with a latchkey, and she slipped on her dressing gown, which is drenched with blood, as you see.

“Now the next thing to do is to verify Pomeroy’s statement that he bought a grapefruit and a newspaper in the town this morning.”

“There is a grapefruit on the table in the dining room.”

“But we don’t know whether it was bought this morning.”

“No sir, but I’ll find out.”

“And while you’re about it get hold of the milk and the bread roundsmen and ask them if they noticed any stranger about. While you’re away I will go carefully round the house.”

Aitkin’s more minute search on the outside of the house produced nothing. The weather had been dry for some days and it was useless to search for footprints, but Aitkin did establish the fact that behind the garden lay a tract of undergrowth which ran down to the public road. This was thick enough to conceal any person approaching the bungalow from behind, or escaping from it into the public road. Clearly this undergrowth had been used for this purpose, for brambles had been trampled down or brushed aside. He had just completed a survey of this waste ground when something brown attracted his attention. A clumsy attempt seemed to have been made to conceal it by dragging or kicking the brambles into a kind of knot, but Aitkin was wearing stout boots and he found it easy to hook out the object with his toe. It was a raincoat which had seen wear. Some attempt had been made to fold it into as small a compass as possible, but it was discoloured by stains which Aitkin recognized at once as having been made by fresh blood: the stains were still red. He spread out the garment on the ground and found that it was one of those coats that are manufactured largely by machinery. One can buy them by the dozen in any clothier’s, and it is the exception for any of them to bear a label indicating the shop where it was sold. All that this particular coat bore was the heraldic sign of a white horse, but coats of this brand are sold everywhere, and it would be useless to attempt to find the shop that had any record of the purchaser. Aitkin returned to the bungalow carrying the coat and hung it up on a peg in the entrance lounge to await Pomeroy’s return. His sergeant was the first to appear. He reported that he had questioned the roundsmen who delivered milk and bread, and that they had seen no stranger hanging about the bungalow that morning. They said that Mr Pomeroy himself had opened the door to them.

“Did you find out where he bought the grapefruit?”

“Yes, the people at the shop knew him personally as a customer. He was there just before nine.”

“And the newspaper?”

“That was not so sure. The woman at the news agent’s wasn’t certain that she’d seen him this morning. Did you have any luck in your search, sir?”

“Yes,” said Aitkin, going to the coat pegs. “I found this. You see the blood has not had time to turn brown. It’s a common kind of coat.”

“Yes, in more than half the houses in this settlement you’d find a coat like that, but that’s the coat the murderer must have been wearing.”

“Yes, and if it belongs to Pomeroy it would be sufficient to account for the absence of bloodstains on the clothes he is wearing.”

“You think that Pomeroy did it?”

“I don’t see who else it could have been. At any rate we must assume that it was Pomeroy, but I doubt if Superintendent Richardson will allow us to arrest him on the evidence we have. Pomeroy mustn’t be allowed to get away, or we shall hear more of it. I don’t suppose he’ll come back here; he will stay and have lunch with his people in Ealing. I wonder if we can find another latchkey in his desk or somewhere?”

“Better look in his dead wife’s vanity bag: she is sure to have had one,” said Hammett. He was, at the moment, searching a bag which he had found lying on the kitchen dresser. “Here, try this key.”

“Right,” called Aitkin from the door; “it fits. Now come along, and we’ll call on the Pomeroy family.”

“Taking the coat with us?”

“No, you can take that down to the police station, and I’ll go alone to the Pomeroys and try to find out what plans Pomeroy has made. There’s one thing certain: he won’t want to pass another night in the bungalow after what’s happened. We’ve plenty to do. There’s the body to get down to the mortuary for the inquest; there’s the coroner to be notified and the undertaker to be seen. That must be done before we go to lunch.”

When Aitkin rang the bell at the house of the Pomeroy family it was clear that it was in a flutter. A rather grubby little maid came to the door.

“Missus can’t see no one,” she blurted out almost before Inspector Aitkin had intimated his wishes. It was the first time that this child had been mixed up in a case of murder, and she was enjoying it to the full.

Aitkin took a card from his pocket and said, “It is not Mrs Pomeroy that I have come to see, but her son.”

“You can’t see him neither. No, you can’t see him whoever you are.” She was for slamming the door in his face, but he put a foot against it and assumed an air of severity.

“Take that card to Mr Miles Pomeroy and tell him that I must see him at once.”

“You can’t see anyone in this house,” returned the damsel stoutly. “Them’s my orders.”

“Then I must give you fresh orders, young woman. Take that card in to Mr Miles Pomeroy and say that I’m waiting to see him in the hall.”

Very unwillingly the young woman retired to a sitting room on the ground floor, from which Miles Pomeroy emerged.

“I’ve called to ask you one question, Mr Pomeroy. Do you possess a fawn-coloured raincoat?”

“No. I had one until some days ago, and then my wife took it to send to some connection of hers in another part of the country.”

“Do you remember what label it had on the inside of the collar?”

“I don’t think it had any label; I don’t remember noticing one.”

“Do you know the address of the person your wife sent it to?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. It was someone who wrote to her for help.”

“I see. Thank you. That is all I want to ask just now.”

Inspector Aitkin left the house with a confident smile upon his features.

3

TWO DAYS after their adventure on the Ealing estate Jim Milsom rang up his friend Herbert Mitchell.

“Is that you, Herbert? Milsom speaking. You’re coming down to the inquest, of course?”

“No, they haven’t subpoenaed me.”

“What does that matter? They’ve left me out too, but we have a duty to perform. We’ve got to see that Pomeroy has a fair ‘do.’ I’ll come round with the car and drive you down. It’s a public enquiry, and we’ll jolly well see that justice is done.”

On the way down they discussed the case. “You’ll see,” said Milsom, “that the police have got together every scrap of evidence that bears against Pomeroy and haven’t worried themselves about any other possible malefactor.”

“Well, that’s quite natural, isn’t it? Who else could it be but Pomeroy? Oh, I know what you’ll say— that Pomeroy isn’t at all the kind of person to commit a murder— but remember that still waters run deep and these innocent-looking culprits are very often born actors.”

“I hope to goodness the coroner is a discriminating bloke. He may have something up his sleeve that we know nothing about.”