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- Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In the hall he found the body of his maidservant, Helen Dunn, aged about fifty, lying on the floor near the telephone. She had bled profusely from a wound in the head and her body was cold. Richardson's second case begins with a murder and robbery at a quiet house in Laburnum Road, and goes on to include an escaped parrot and a seemingly perfect crime which threatened a scandal to shock all England. Follow with Detective-Sergeant Richardson the fantastic story of an antiquarian's nephew, a pseudo policeman, and a stolen car…search with him for a man wanted for murder…another who fainted at a political meeting…the Treasury note which, because of the name written on it, was a warrant of death. Packed with clues, excitement and humour, this mystery will be certain to thrill and satisfy even the most ardent devotee of detective fiction. Richardson Scores Again was first published in 1934. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes a new introduction by crime novelist Martin Edwards, author of acclaimed genre history The Golden Age of Murder. "Sir Basil Thomson's tales are always good reading, and he has the knack of being accurate about Scotland Yard. His book is full of agreeable people, and his case is neatly put together." Dorothy L. Sayers, Sunday Times "Few authors can claim such an intimate knowledge of Scotland Yard and criminals as Sir Basil Thomson, one-time Assistant Commissioner at the Yard. He provides subtle intrigue, clever deduction, and bright dialogue, and the whole combines to make easily the best mystery yarn that has come my way in recent weeks. No words are wasted in the fast-moving plot…This book must not be missed." Referee
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Basil ThomsonRichardson Scores Again
In the hall he found the body of his maidservant, Helen Dunn, aged about fifty, lying on the floor near the telephone. She had bled profusely from a wound in the head and her body was cold.
Richardson’s second case begins with a murder and robbery at a quiet house in Laburnum Road, and goes on to include an escaped parrot and a seemingly perfect crime which threatened a scandal to shock all England.
Follow with Detective-Sergeant Richardson the fantastic story of an antiquarian’s nephew, a pseudo policeman, and a stolen car…search with him for a man wanted for murder…another who fainted at a political meeting…the Treasury note which, because of the name written on it, was a warrant of death. Packed with clues, excitement and humour, this mystery will be certain to thrill and satisfy even the most ardent devotee of detective fiction.
Richardson Scores Again was first published in 1934. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes a new introduction by crime novelist Martin Edwards, author of acclaimed genre history The Golden Age of Murder.
“Sir Basil Thomson’s tales are always good reading, and he has the knack of being accurate about Scotland Yard. His book is full of agreeable people, and his case is neatly put together.” Dorothy L. Sayers, Sunday Times
“Few authors can claim such an intimate knowledge of Scotland Yard and criminals as Sir Basil Thomson, one-time Assistant Commissioner at the Yard. He provides subtle intrigue, clever deduction, and bright dialogue, and the whole combines to make easily the best mystery yarn that has come my way in recent weeks. No words are wasted in the fast-moving plot…This book must not be missed.” Referee
Contents
Introduction
SIR BASIL THOMSON’S stranger-than-fiction life was packed so full of incident that one can understand why his work as a crime novelist has been rather overlooked. This was a man whose CV included spells as a colonial administrator, prison governor, intelligence officer, and Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. Among much else, he worked alongside the Prime Minister of Tonga (according to some accounts, he was the Prime Minister of Tonga), interrogated Mata Hari and Roger Casement (although not at the same time), and was sensationally convicted of an offence of indecency committed in Hyde Park. More than three-quarters of a century after his death, he deserves to be recognised for the contribution he made to developing the police procedural, a form of detective fiction that has enjoyed lasting popularity.
Basil Home Thomson was born in 1861 – the following year his father became Archbishop of York – and was educated at Eton before going up to New College. He left Oxford after a couple of terms, apparently as a result of suffering depression, and joined the Colonial Service. Assigned to Fiji, he became a stipendiary magistrate before moving to Tonga. Returning to England in 1893, he published South Sea Yarns, which is among the 22 books written by him which are listed in Allen J. Hubin’s comprehensive bibliography of crime fiction (although in some cases, the criminous content was limited).
Thomson was called to the Bar, but opted to become deputy governor of Liverpool Prison; he later served as governor of such prisons as Dartmoor and Wormwood Scrubs, and acted as secretary to the Prison Commission. In 1913, he became head of C.I.D., which acted as the enforcement arm of British military intelligence after war broke out. When the Dutch exotic dancer and alleged spy Mata Hari arrived in England in 1916, she was arrested and interviewed at length by Thomson at Scotland Yard; she was released, only to be shot the following year by a French firing squad. He gave an account of the interrogation in Queer People (1922).
Thomson was knighted, and given the additional responsibility of acting as Director of Intelligence at the Home Office, but in 1921, he was controversially ousted, prompting a heated debate in Parliament: according to The Times, “for a few minutes there was pandemonium”. The government argued that Thomson was at odds with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir William Horwood (whose own career ended with an ignominious departure from office seven years later), but it seems likely be that covert political machinations lay behind his removal. With many aspects of Thomson’s complex life, it is hard to disentangle fiction from fact.
Undaunted, Thomson resumed his writing career, and in 1925, he published Mr Pepper Investigates, a collection of humorous short mysteries, the most renowned of which is “The Vanishing of Mrs Fraser”. In the same year, he was arrested in Hyde Park for “committing an act in violation of public decency” with a young woman who gave her name as Thelma de Lava. Thomson protested his innocence, but in vain: his trial took place amid a blaze of publicity, and he was fined five pounds. Despite the fact that Thelma de Lava had pleaded guilty (her fine was reportedly paid by a photographer), Thomson launched an appeal, claiming that he was the victim of a conspiracy, but the court would have none of it. Was he framed, or the victim of entrapment? If so, was the reason connected with his past work in intelligence or crime solving? The answers remain uncertain, but Thomson’s equivocal responses to the police after being apprehended damaged his credibility.
Public humiliation of this kind would have broken a less formidable man, but Thomson, by now in his mid-sixties, proved astonishingly resilient. A couple of years after his trial, he was appointed to reorganise the Siamese police force, and he continued to produce novels. These included The Kidnapper (1933), which Dorothy L. Sayers described in a review for the Sunday Times as “not so much a detective story as a sprightly fantasia upon a detective theme.” She approved the fact that Thomson wrote “good English very amusingly”, and noted that “some of his characters have real charm.” Mr Pepper returned in The Kidnapper, but in the same year, Thomson introduced his most important character, a Scottish policeman called Richardson.
Thomson took advantage of his inside knowledge to portray a young detective climbing through the ranks at Scotland Yard. And Richardson’s rise is amazingly rapid: thanks to the fastest fast-tracking imaginable, he starts out as a police constable, and has become Chief Constable by the time of his seventh appearance – in a book published only four years after the first. We learn little about Richardson’s background beyond the fact that he comes of Scottish farming stock, but he is likeable as well as highly efficient, and his sixth case introduces him to his future wife. His inquiries take him – and other colleagues – not only to different parts of England but also across the Channel on more than one occasion: in The Case of the Dead Diplomat, all the action takes place in France. There is a zest about the stories, especially when compared with some of the crime novels being produced at around the same time, which is striking, especially given that all of them were written by a man in his seventies.
From the start of the series, Thomson takes care to show the team work necessitated by a criminal investigation. Richardson is a key connecting figure, but the importance of his colleagues’ efforts is never minimised in order to highlight his brilliance. In The Case of the Dead Diplomat, for instance, it is the trusty Sergeant Cooper who makes good use of his linguistic skills and flair for impersonation to trap the villains of the piece. Inspector Vincent takes centre stage in The Milliner’s Hat Mystery, with Richardson confined to the background. He is more prominent in A Murder is Arranged, but it is Inspector Dallas who does most of the leg-work.
Such a focus on police team-working is very familiar to present day crime fiction fans, but it was something fresh in the Thirties. Yet Thomson was not the first man with personal experience of police life to write crime fiction: Frank Froest, a legendary detective, made a considerable splash with his first novel, The Grell Mystery, published in 1913. Froest, though, was a career cop, schooled in “the university of life” without the benefit of higher education, who sought literary input from a journalist, George Dilnot, whereas Basil Thomson was a fluent and experienced writer whose light, brisk style is ideally suited to detective fiction, with its emphasis on entertainment. Like so many other detective novelists, his interest in “true crime” is occasionally apparent in his fiction, but although Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? opens with a murder scenario faintly reminiscent of the legendary Wallace case of 1930, the storyline soon veers off in a quite different direction.
Even before Richardson arrived on the scene, two accomplished detective novelists had created successful police series. Freeman Wills Crofts devised elaborate crimes (often involving ingenious alibis) for Inspector French to solve, and his books highlight the patience and meticulous work of the skilled police investigator. Henry Wade wrote increasingly ambitious novels, often featuring the Oxford-educated Inspector Poole, and exploring the tensions between police colleagues as well as their shared values. Thomson’s mysteries are less convoluted than Crofts’, and less sophisticated than Wade’s, but they make pleasant reading. This is, at least in part, thanks to little touches of detail that are unquestionably authentic – such as senior officers’ dread of newspaper criticism, as in The Dartmoor Enigma. No other crime writer, after all, has ever had such wide-ranging personal experience of prison management, intelligence work, the hierarchies of Scotland Yard, let alone a desperate personal fight, under the unforgiving glare of the media spotlight, to prove his innocence of a criminal charge sure to stain, if not destroy, his reputation.
Ingenuity was the hallmark of many of the finest detective novels written during “the Golden Age of murder” between the wars, and intricacy of plotting – at least judged by the standards of Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, and John Dickson Carr – was not Thomson’s true speciality. That said, The Milliner’s Hat Mystery is remarkable for having inspired Ian Fleming, while he was working in intelligence during the Second World War, after Thomson’s death. In a memo to Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Fleming said: “The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thomson: a corpse dressed as an airman, with despatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that has failed. I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but, of course, it would have to be a fresh one.” This clever idea became the basis for “Operation Mincemeat”, a plan to conceal the invasion of Italy from North Africa.
A further intriguing connection between Thomson and Fleming is that Thomson inscribed copies of at least two of the Richardson books to Kathleen Pettigrew, who was personal assistant to the Director of MI6, Stewart Menzies. She is widely regarded as the woman on whom Fleming based Miss Moneypenny, secretary to James Bond’s boss M – the Moneypenny character was originally called “Petty” Petteval. Possibly it was through her that Fleming came across Thomson’s book.
Thomson’s writing was of sufficiently high calibre to prompt Dorothy L. Sayers to heap praise on Richardson’s performance in his third case: “he puts in some of that excellent, sober, straightforward detective work which he so well knows how to do and follows the clue of a post-mark to the heart of a very plausible and proper mystery. I find him a most agreeable companion.” The acerbic American critics Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor also had a soft spot for Richardson, saying in A Catalogue of Crime that his investigations amount to “early police routine minus the contrived bickering, stomach ulcers, and pub-crawling with which later writers have masked poverty of invention and the dullness of repetitive questioning”.
Books in the Richardson series have been out of print and hard to find for decades, and their reappearance at affordable prices is as welcome as it is overdue. Now that Dean Street Press have republished all eight recorded entries in the Richardson case-book, twenty-first century readers are likely to find his company just as agreeable as Sayers did.
Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
Chapter One
DIVISIONAL DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR SYMINGTON was checking the expense sheets of his men in his little barely furnished room at the Hampstead Police Station when the telephone rang. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the instrument without speaking, and his clerk went to it, leaving him free to wrestle with columns of figures. Arithmetic, as all his staff knew, had never been his strong suit. He had a pathetic habit of doing his addition sums aloud, and he was thus engaged when phrases in the one-sided telephone conversation caught his ear and he broke away from his brain-torture to listen.
“Spell the name, please. M-a-c-D-o-u-g-a-l—MacDougal…Yes, Mr. MacDougal?…You think she was murdered?…Has any doctor seen her?…Oh, a window was open?…You think he got in and went out through the window? Well, stay where you are, and whatever you do, don’t touch the body or anything else until an officer comes. Stop, don’t go away…Have I got your address right?—23 Laburnum Road. Is that right? Very good, Mr. MacDougal—an officer will be at the house within ten minutes.”
Symington pushed back his papers and started to his feet. Burglary and murder were matters that he understood better than columns of figures. He listened with impatience to the level voice of his subordinate while he recounted the substance of the telephone message. “Are any of the men back?” he asked.
His clerk opened the door into the adjoining room and glanced in. “Only Porter, sir. He’s writing his report on that house-breaking case in Claremont Terrace.”
Symington went to the peg for his hat. “I’ll go myself. Make a note of the name and address for me: tell Porter to come along with me, and while we are gone, repeat the message to C.O.” By these initials he meant the Central Office at New Scotland Yard.
It was the practice in that grim building for telephone messages reporting serious crimes from a Division to be brought down by one of the operators upstairs to the Chief Constable’s messenger, and if that functionary happened to be otherwise engaged, to hand it to one of the detective-sergeants to speed it on its way to the proper authority. It chanced that the only man in the sergeants’ room that morning was Detective-Sergeant Richardson, a young Scotsman, whose rise from a uniform constable to a detective-sergeant had led to some grumbling from colleagues over whose head he had passed. It would have led to more if he had been less popular. But being, as he was, one of those young men who never pushed himself forward, nor attempted to take credit for his successes even when the credit was due, he disarmed hostile criticism.
“Here’s something for you to get on with, Richardson,” said the telephone operator, planking the message down on his desk.
“Another daylight raid?”
“Not this time. It’s a murder up in Hampstead. The D.D.I. is on the job. A report’s following.”
Richardson read the message and sighed. A plain-sailing murder case in one of the divisions was unlikely to come his way. For weeks he had been condemned to interview indignant ladies who had written in to complain that their handbags had been snatched from them in broad daylight, in several cases only to find a little later that they had left them lying on the counter of the last shop they had visited; or to pacify imaginative persons of both sexes who were convinced that they were being shadowed by members of a criminal gang. The least humdrum job that had come his way during the last few weeks had been to squeeze himself into an office cupboard a size too small for him to listen to the threats of a blackmailer who imagined that he was alone with his victim.
He read the message—that at 11.13 a.m. James MacDougal of 23 Laburnum Road, Hampstead, had telephoned to the Hampstead Police Station to report that on reaching home at 11 a.m. he had found the front door locked and bolted; that he rang repeatedly without effect and then went round to the back, where he found a window open. In the kitchen the gas-oven was alight: it had burnt a hole through the saucepan over it; the table was laid for the maid’s supper. On going up to the hall above he found the body of his maidservant, Helen Dunn, aged about fifty, lying on the floor near the telephone. She had bled profusely from a wound in the head and her body was cold. D.D. Inspector Symington and P.C. Porter (C.I.D.) have left for the scene of the crime.
Richardson carried the message to the Chief Constable’s room.
“What is it?” growled Beckett, who was wading through a thick file of papers and jotting down notes as he read.
“A case of house-breaking and murder in Hampstead, sir. D.D. Inspector Symington is now at the house.”
Beckett put out his hand for the message, glanced at it, initialed it and threw it into his basket before resuming his work. From that basket it would go automatically to Morden, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, and from him to Sir William Lorimer. As Richardson knew, no action would be taken by Headquarters until Symington’s report was received.
No. 23 Laburnum Road was a square, ugly Victorian house standing in its own garden; a semi-circular carriage drive led from the gate to the front door. In answer to Symington’s ring the door was opened instantly. “I am Divisional Detective-Inspector Symington from Hampstead Police Station,” he announced. “I have had your telephone message. You are Mr. MacDougal?”
“Yes, that is my name. I’m very glad you’ve come. This terrible affair has been a great shock to me.”
Symington required no corroboration of that statement: the old man was pale and his mouth was twitching. He was a tall, spare man with stooping shoulders and dreamy eyes that seemed short-sighted, and he looked like a professor of some kind—the sort of man who is ill-fitted to deal with the hard facts of life. In fact, as Symington came afterwards to know, he was one of those stay-at-home archaeologists who make a hobby of the modern excavations in Palestine and their bearing on the Jewish history of the Pentateuch; a F.S.A. who attended every meeting of the Society and occasionally took part in the discussions.
The first step to be taken was to summon the police surgeon to examine the body, which was lying on the floor only three feet from the table on which the telephone stood: indeed, when Porter went to the instrument, he had to step over the body and avoid treading on the patch of coagulated blood which had flowed from the head. Symington did not touch the body: he asked MacDougal to show him the window which he had found open when he came home. He was taken down stone steps to the kitchen. There, as had already been reported on the telephone, he saw that a saucepan of aluminium which was standing on the gas-stove had been split open by the heat and partly melted.
“You found the gas still burning when you came in this morning?”
“Yes, and I turned it off. The gas-tap was the only thing I touched, except the door of my library. Naturally I had to see that my books and manuscripts were safe.”
“You found the front door bolted on the inside?”
“Yes, my latch-key wouldn’t open it. I went round the house and found that window open, and I climbed in.”
The contents of the saucepan had burned into black, greasy ash, but some of the liquid had boiled over, and it was easy to gather from the dried stains on the stove that it had been cocoa. There was no sign of any struggle in the kitchen: everything was tidy and scrupulously clean. But the lower half of the window had been pushed up; one of its upper panes was broken. Symington took out a reading-glass and examined the pane, especially near the fracture; then he leaned out to examine the flowerbed underneath. There were footprints in the soft earth—the prints of boots. Mentally he made a preliminary reconstruction of the crime. The maid had been preparing her supper at the stove with her back to the window when the window-pane had been smashed with a hammer or a stone, leaving an aperture wide enough to admit a hand to draw back the catch. Probably the dead woman had screamed, but the nearest house was too distant for the cry to have been heard. Then, seeing a man getting in through the window, she had run upstairs to telephone for help, but before she could reach the instrument he had overtaken her and killed her by some means which it would be the police surgeon’s business to determine. He invited MacDougal to sit down and answer a few questions while they were waiting for the doctor.
“You were away when this happened?”
“Yes, I had to attend the funeral of my brother-in-law at Redford.”
“What was his name?”
“Thomas Ilford. My sister wrote to tell me that he had left me executor to his will—sole executor.”
“He had property to leave?”
“Yes, he owned a good deal of house property in Redford as well as invested money.”
“What time did you leave home?”
“It must have been a few minutes after nine. I had to catch the ten-thirty train.”
“Your servant did not mind being left alone in this big house?”
“No, but she was not going to be alone all night. My nephew landed at Portsmouth the day before yesterday, and was coming to stay with me. He was really not due until to-day, but I sent him an express letter asking him to come and sleep here last night.”
“His name?” (Symington was taking notes.)
“Ronald Eccles.”
“Is he still serving, or has he retired?”
“He’s still serving. His ship is the Dauntless, just back from the West Indies to refit.”
“Had you any particular reason for asking him to come a day earlier?”
“Well, yes, I had. There was a considerable sum of money in the house in Treasury notes—two thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds to be exact.”
“As much as that? Do you always keep such large amounts in the house?”
“Certainly not. It worried me, but there was no way out of it. You see, I had just sold a dairy farm to the tenant who had rented it for years. You know what these farmers are. They don’t trust banks, but keep their money in an old stocking.”
“The farmer’s name?”
“Edward Jackson.”
“And the name of the farm you sold?”
“Two Ways Farm. That is the name in the title deeds and the Ordnance Survey, but everyone in Redford knows it as ‘Jackson’s Farm.’”
“And this Mr. Jackson paid you in cash for it? Why did he not pay the money to your lawyer in Redford?”
“I can’t answer that question. The old man was very anxious, he said, to complete the sale, and he doesn’t trust lawyers any more than he trusts bankers. He wanted to pay the money and get my receipt for it, so he did not waste money on a telegram. He got my letter accepting his offer for the farm on Monday morning, and he arrived here on Monday afternoon at four o’clock—too late for me to pay the money into my bank.”
“Why didn’t you pay it in yesterday morning before you went to Redford for the funeral?”
“Because I couldn’t be in two places at once. If I had waited until the bank opened I should have been too late for the funeral, and that would have distressed my poor sister terribly. I did the next best thing. I have no safe in the house, so I hid the money and wrote an express letter to my nephew telling him to come up yesterday and sleep in the house last night, instead of coming up to-day as he intended.”
“Did you tell him the reason?”
“Yes, and I told him where the money was. I took the letter to the Hampstead Post Office myself and expressed it. He must have received it yesterday morning.”
“But he didn’t come?”
“Apparently not. I suppose that he had difficulty about getting leave. But it was unlike him not to telegraph and say so.”
“How did you address the letter?”
“To his ship, the Dauntless, in Portsmouth Dock.”
“Where did you hide the money?”
“In my bedroom.”
“But where?”
“In a chest of drawers, under my clothes.”
“And you found it all right?”
“I haven’t been upstairs to look yet.”
“You haven’t looked?” Symington’s tone showed his astonishment.
“No. In the face of the awful thing that’s happened I did not give a thought to the money. I suppose it was the shock.”
“This must be cleared up at once, Mr. MacDougal. We’ll go upstairs and see whether the money is in the place where you hid it. You lead the way.”
They passed through the hall where Porter was standing on guard over the body, and went upstairs to a bedroom on the first floor. MacDougal recoiled with an exclamation when he opened the door. The room was in confusion. The drawers in the chest had been pulled out and were lying on the floor, which was littered with clothing. MacDougal began a feverish search among the litter, kneeling on the floor, the better to assure himself that the precious bag was not lying under the pile of clothes. He rose and faced Symington. “It’s no use digging any further at that pile. It’s gone.”
“You mean the money you hid in one of those drawers? Are you quite sure?”
“Yes,” he said in a hopeless tone. “It’s gone.”
“Was it enclosed in a box?”
“No, it was in a dirty calico bag, just as the farmer brought it to me. I counted it over with him and gave him a receipt. I tied up the bag with the same string and hid it under my clothes in the bottom drawer and locked the drawer.”
“Then let us get the drawers back and you can show me exactly where you hid it. Quick, or the doctor may be here before we’ve finished.”
It was the best treatment for frayed nerves. The old man fell to work. When the drawers were back in their places MacDougal pointed to the centre of the bottom drawer at the back.
“This drawer was packed with clothes, inspector. It was a tight fit to get the drawer shut.” He lugged a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. “I locked every drawer with this key, but you see what the man did—forced the locks of all three drawers! “
It was true. The chest, which purported to be solid mahogany, was a sham; the mahogany was thinly veneered on deal; the locks were cheap and were secured to the wood by inadequate little screws; a sharp jerk on the handles had sufficed to tear out the topmost screws, and the locks were hanging useless by their bottom screws. Symington cast an eye round the room and went to a cupboard. It was locked: nothing else in the room appeared to have been touched.
“Listen to me, Mr. MacDougal. How many people knew that the money was in that drawer? Did your servant know?”
“Certainly not. If I had given her a hint that there was so much money in the house, she would have refused to stay the night here. She was very independent, poor thing. She would have gone off to spend the night with her married sister in Hammersmith.”
“Did the farmer, Jackson, know?”
“No, I told him nothing. All he wanted was for me to count the money in his presence, get a receipt and be off.”
“But you told your nephew?”
“Yes, because I had to give him a good reason for coming up a day earlier.”
“Tell me exactly what you said in your letter.”
“I can’t say that I remember the exact words I used. I told him that Jackson had called after banking hours on Monday and had paid over the money; I told him the amount and said that I should have to leave for the funeral in Redford before the bank opened on Tuesday, and that it wouldn’t do to leave my maidservant alone in the house with such a sum lying in a drawer; that I had no safe in the house to put it in. I begged him to come up one day earlier so as to sleep in the house.”
“You didn’t tell him the exact hiding-place?”
“No, I’m certain of that.”
“And you are quite certain that you didn’t tell anyone else. Think before you answer.”
“I’m quite certain.”
A bell rang faintly in the basement. The inspector pricked up his ears. “What bell was that?”
“The front-door bell, I think.”
Symington went to the door to listen. He heard Porter go to the front door and the voice of the visitor, which sounded familiar.
“It is the police surgeon, Mr. MacDougal. I must go down, but you can stay here or come down with me, whichever you wish.”
“I would rather come down.”
Symington greeted the newcomer as “Dr. Macnamara.” He was a stout little man of about forty, with an air of business about him. He put his attaché-case on the hall table. “What have you got for me to-day, Mr. Symington?”
“If you’ll look behind you, Doctor, you’ll see.”
“Tck, tck!” clicked the doctor, going down on hands and knees beside the body and gently turning it over, giving special attention to the head. They let him work in silence for some minutes. Then he rose and faced Symington.
“This woman has been shot through the head from behind, and the bullet passed clean through the skull. The shot must have been fired at close quarters. You can see that from the clean point of entry at the back of the head and the mess it made of the forehead at the point of exit. If you look about you ought to be able to find the bullet.”
“The man who fired the shot got in through the kitchen window. He must have run after her up the basement stairs and fired at her from about where I am standing,” said Symington.
“Ah, then I should look for the bullet in that wall.”
“I think I see it, sir,” said Porter. “Here, where I am pointing, there is a hole in the plaster.”
Symington hurried over to him and pulled out his knife. After a few seconds’ probing he prised out something that fell on the boards. It was a small bullet slightly flattened by its impact against the wall. Porter slipped it into an envelope and labelled it.
“Now, Mr. Symington, you can ’phone for the ambulance and get the body down to the mortuary for the post-mortem, while I get back to finish my lunch, if you don’t mind.”
“Very good, Doctor: it shall be done. Ring up the station for the ambulance, Porter, and then come down with me to the kitchen. We won’t trouble you any more for the present, Mr. MacDougal, but don’t go out.”
When Porter reached the kitchen after sending his message he found the room empty and the back door open. His chief came in from the garden.
“I want you to get through to the Portsmouth Dockyard police on the trunk—Portsmouth 356 is the number. Ask them to send round to H.M.S. Dauntless and inquire whether Lieutenant Eccles is on board, and if not, at what time he left the ship. Tell them to telephone their report to our office.”
While his subordinate was wrestling with the trunk call, Symington betook himself to the garden again in the hope of finding some clue to the number of persons who had made a felonious entry overnight. It would be easy, of course, to compare the soles of MacDougal’s boots with the booted footprints: it might be well to get a photograph of the others before a shower of rain obliterated their outlines. Symington walked round towards the entrance gate and made a cast into the laurel bushes on his left. His heart beat fast when five yards from the drive he came upon a laurel leaf, fresh-plucked, lying on the ground, and close to it a clear footprint.
He stepped back into the drive and looked towards the house. Porter had come out. He seemed to be looking for him. Symington waved an arm and the man came to him, almost at a run.
“Did you get through to them all right?”
“Yes, sir. They told me—”
“You can tell me that later. I want you to look at this.” He led his subordinate to the footprint. “A pretty clear print that, wouldn’t you say? We’ll take a cast from it presently, but in the meantime I want you to measure it carefully.”
“Very good, sir. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed how thin the sole is. It looks like the kind of shoe that gentlemen wear in town. Oh, and here’s another.”
“H’m! It’s the same shoe all right, but I doubt whether it’s clear enough for a cast.”
“I’m afraid not, sir, but the man who made it must have been walking away from the drive, because here’s another. And look there, sir!” Porter was pointing to something lying on the ground: he pounced on it and passed it to his chief. It was a black leather pocket-book or note-case.
Symington opened it eagerly. The flaps were full of memoranda scribbled on slips of paper, a letter or two, and—biggest prize of all—three or four visiting-cards.
“Look at this, Porter.” He handed him one of the visiting-cards bearing the name “Mr. Ronald Eccles,” and in the left lower corner—“H.M.S. Dauntless.”
“This is something like a clue, sir.”
Chapter Two
THERE WAS a difference of opinion in high quarters at New Scotland Yard when Symington brought down the report of his visit to Laburnum Road. Charles Morden and Chief Constable Beckett did not see eye to eye on the question whether the inquiry should be put into the hands of one of the superintendents or left in the quite competent hands of Divisional Detective-Inspector Symington.
“He’s begun quite well,” said Beckett. “Why take it out of his hands? I should let him go through with-it. They’re having a quiet time in S Division just now.”
Morden fell back upon the tradition that whenever a case entailed work in several divisions of the Metropolitan area, or help was to be invoked from provincial police forces, a superintendent or a chief inspector from the Central Division was the man to undertake the case; and further, that if some public official was involved (and a naval officer came under the head of a public official), it was the immemorial practice for Central to handle the case. “You see,” he said, “this may grow into a big case when the newspapers get hold of the details. A naval officer’s pocket-book found on the scene of the crime! The naval officer on leave at the time. How did the pocket-book get there? I’ve just been looking through its contents. Besides the visiting-cards and the letters in feminine handwritings, there is the very letter which the uncle sent by express to his ship. I don’t suppose you’ve had time to read it. Just run your eye over it.”
Beckett went through the letter with knitted brow, murmuring its contents aloud.
“DEAR RONALD,
“I am delighted to hear that you are back and that you are coming to me for a few days—as you say—to ‘refit.’ I am much looking forward to your visit, my dear boy, but I want you to make a slight modification in your dates. I want you here to-morrow (Tuesday) instead of Wednesday for a very special reason. I think I told you that Jackson of Two Ways Farm was worrying me to let him buy the farm outright. After a lot of haggling he agreed to my price, and this afternoon, instead of going to Pringle, my Redford lawyer, the old fool turned up here with a bag stuffed full of Treasury notes. It was too late for the bank, and I have to start for Redford to attend poor Harry Winter’s funeral before the bank opens to-morrow morning and I can’t get back before Wednesday at about eleven.
“So I, too, have been driven to the stocking method of hoarding! I’ve had to hide the money-bag under the clothes in my chest of drawers under lock and key, and trust to no one knowing about it except you. If poor old Helen knew that she was to be left alone in the house with nearly £3,000 to guard, she’d bolt, and then good-bye to that cunning pastry of hers to which you have been looking forward.
“Seriously, my dear boy, I do want you to come and sleep in the house to-morrow night without fail. It will make my mind much easier. It is easier already because I feel sure that you will.
“Yours ever,
“UNCLE JIM.”
Beckett handed the letter back and went to the window to think. “The captain of the Dauntless told the dockyard people that the nephew got leave on urgent private affairs and left the ship early on Tuesday morning. If he took the next train, he ought to have been in London by lunch-time. It’s funny. And then his pocket-book is picked up in the garden on the morning after the murder! And no one has seen or heard of him since! But so far there’s nothing in the case that Symington couldn’t handle. He’s started with the advantage of knowing MacDougal and the house and grounds, and he’s a regular ferret for getting to the bottom of his cases.”
“He is, but when he comes to a sticking-point, as he’s bound to, we shall be made to take over the case in Central, so why not begin now? Probably there’ll be questions in the House, and the Home Office people will want to know who’s in charge of the case. We shall have to get the inquest adjourned—”
