Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels

“Apart from what I had seen it seemed to me that folks wouldn’t be out for any good in that weather, and at that hour and place; and when the noise of the clap rumbled away I caught the sound of the tail end of a scream which made me sure of it. I turned my lantern towards the place and hollered back, running to get over the fence and down to the canal as I did so.

“As I came near to where I’d seen the pair, two successive flashes coming close one after the other showed them up again no more than a few yards away, and they saw me in the same instant. The man had got a great spade in his hand, and when he caught sight of me he lifted it up sideways and aimed a fearful blow at the woman with the edge of it. She ducked and dodged again – very active she was, poor thing – and he missed, so that the blade glanced off her shoulder and he as near as possible lost his balance. But he recovered himself at once and threw up his arms again with the spade clutched in both hands, as I saw by the second flash, and brought it down with all his force flat on the top of her head.

“I didn’t see her go down, for the light went before the blow had fallen, and in the dark I lost him, and he got clear away.

“While I was groping about with my lantern, I fell over the body of the girl, lying where he had struck her to the ground, and at the first start off I thought he had done for her sure enough. So I let her lie for a few minutes, while I blew my whistle and kept on searching around for the scoundrel. Two more of our men came up after a time and we had a regular hunt, but he’d got a good start and we never saw him. On turning our attention to the girl again, we found that she was still alive, though unconscious, so we got an ambulance and took her to the hospital. There was nothing to show who she was, but from her clothes I judged her to be one of the lowest and poorest class. I reported the occurrence at the time, and made a further search by daylight on the spot. I picked up the spade near by, where the fellow had evidently dropped it as he ran; it had a piece of stout cord attached to the handle about four or five feet long, but was otherwise without distinguishing mark of any kind. It’s outside, if you wish to see it, sir.”

Jennins told him to bring it in.

“Of course,” he said to Gimblet, “no one ever thought of connecting this story of violence and brutality with the two missing ladies. The report didn’t come my way, as it happens, but I don’t suppose for a moment I should have been a scrap the wiser if it had. Still, it makes one feel a bit foolish now, I’ll own.”

Matterson returned with the spade and cord, which proved to be very ordinary; and Gimblet’s inquiring lens could discover nothing about them in any way remarkable.

“What was the man like?” he asked the policeman.

“I didn’t have much time to take notice, sir,” replied Matterson, “but he was a dark fellow with a black beard, and tall.”

“Did you see if he wore gloves?”

“Come to think of it, now you ask me, sir, I believe he did. I saw his hands plain enough as he lifted the spade, and I ought to know. But I couldn’t swear to it, I’m afraid, though my impression is that he did, and that it struck me as curious at the time, in the sort of way a thing will strike you for a moment and then slip out of your memory like a dream does.”

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