This House to Let Part 36

Bryant brightened up at this information. The discovery of the dead body at Cathcart Square had taken place early on the morning of the fifth.

Now arose the question, had the Major got through his business with the Spencers before the fourth of July? In that case Mrs Spencer was hardly likely to be still living at Eaton Place with her husband.

Inquiries at Eaton Place soon established the fact that Mrs Spencer was still there. What had happened? Had the Major communicated the result of his research to the husband, with the result that, infatuated with his wife, that husband had refused to credit the story and accepted Stella's denials?

It was a fairly plausible theory. When men are deeply in love, women can twist them round their little finger. In that case, it was easy to understand that, disgusted with the failure of his intervention, the Major had made up his mind to leave London at once.

One other thing was to be done, to ascertain if the Major had intimated to any of his friends his intention of leaving London so abruptly. For this purpose, Bryant sought out the brother Roderick, who had rooms in Jermyn Street.

Yes, Roderick had met the Major in Bond Street in the morning, and learned of the proposed journey to Brighton. The young man added that his brother was very erratic in his movements, and sometimes would disappear for weeks at a stretch without communicating with any of his friends or relatives.

There was now one of two theories that stood out: the first one that Guy Spencer had been told, and refused to believe the true facts about his wife. The second was, that the Major had s.h.i.+rked the unpleasantness of a personal interview of such a delicate character, and had gone down to Brighton intending to write privately to Spencer from there.

Further inquiries elicited the fact that the Major had never made that projected journey to Brighton. His belongings had never been claimed, they were still lying in the cloak room at Victoria Station.

There was now no further doubt as to what steps had to be taken. The Major had disappeared at a date practically coinciding with the discovery of the dead body at Cathcart Square, the dead body which had been wrongly identified as that of Reginald Davis, whose likeness to the Major was so p.r.o.nounced. Of that fact, Bryant himself was aware.

The authorities were applied to, and gave permission for the body to be exhumed. As the living Reginald Davis had established his ident.i.ty to the satisfaction of Scotland Yard, it was necessary to find out, if possible, that of the man who had been mistaken for him.

The body was exhumed and p.r.o.nounced by half-a-dozen people, including Guy Spencer, to be that of the Major.

It had now become clearly a case of murder, and although those in charge of the case had little or no doubt as to the guilty persons, it might have been very difficult to prove, but for one convincing fact, supplied by the murdered man himself.

But this evidence, which was overwhelming, the police kept to themselves for some little time, for their own good reasons.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

The luggage which had been left at Victoria Station on the fatal day was, of course, seized by the police. They searched it thoroughly in the hope that they would find something useful to them in the shape of letters or memoranda.

Of letters there were only two, brief ones from Iris Deane, in which she expressed her determination of sticking out for her ten thousand pounds.

As we know, in the end she gave way and accepted seven.

But they did find one priceless thing, and that was a diary, bound in red leather, a small volume as to the size of the page, but very bulky.

It had evidently been the dead man's habit to keep a fairly close record of his doings, for it was numbered, and contained entries from some date in May 1919 up to July 3rd, the day before he left the hotel, and announced to the manager that he intended to take a late train to Brighton.

For the twentieth time since he had discovered this important piece of evidence, Mr Bryant sat in his room at Scotland Yard, reading and re-reading the entries which he knew almost by heart.

With the entries before the visit to London, Bryant had no concern.

They recorded trifling events which had no reference to the tragedy at Cathcart Square. There was, of course, allusion to the letter from Roderick which had so startled his family, the letter announcing his engagement to the chorus-girl, Iris Deane, and his fixed resolve to make her his wife. There was a note of a family council, in which the elder brother was deputed to approach the young woman herself, with the object of buying her off.

There were a few records of his first days in London, after a long absence, his visits to his clubs, his meeting with old pre-war acquaintances, his first interview with Iris Deane, the difficulty of arranging further interviews either at his hotel or her flat, owing to the fear of Roddie popping in unexpectedly.

Then came the whimsical record of his strolling round Kensington, halting opposite the house with the board announcing that it was to be let furnished, his interview with the accommodating caretaker who, in return for a very handsome _douceur_, gave him a duplicate key to enter the house at any time he liked. He had casually mentioned to Miles that his name was Sanderson.

The Major seemed childishly pleased over what he considered a very astute move, especially the giving of another name. Here in this quiet backwater of the world, for so it would seem to a man of his wealth and position, he could continue his negotiations with the somewhat obstinate Iris. In the portion of the diary concerned with the grasping and frivolous young chorus-girl, Bryant was not greatly interested. He had learned this already from Iris Deane, whom he had interviewed a few times, and Reginald Davis.

He turned from the bulky little volume, the pages of which were covered with the Major's small, rather methodical handwriting, to a slenderer book lying beside him. Into this had been copied all the extracts bearing on the relations between the dead man and Mrs Spencer, otherwise Stella Keane, otherwise Norah Burton.

The first entry recorded the dinner-party at Carlton House Terrace, when he had been struck by the remarkable likeness of his friend's wife to the pretty adventuress at Blankfield, who had driven his old friend, Jack Pomfret, to his death; his endeavours to startle her by allusions to that garrison town.

An important entry was that of his interview with his old acquaintance at the club, Gilbert Fairfax, from whom he had learned something of the atmosphere of the L'Estrange flat in Elsinore Gardens, the branding of Tommie Esmond as a card-sharper, the flight of the fat little man to the Continent, the visit of Stella Keane to Charing Cross Station to bid the detected cheat farewell. There was a comment upon this fact: "Whether she is Norah Burton or not, her intimacy with the L'Estrange set, her solicitude for Tommie Esmond, are sufficient to make her unfit to be the wife of a straight, honest fellow like my old friend Guy Spencer."

There followed further entries, relating his interview with Bryant, the confirmation by the detective that Stella Keane was Norah Burton, that George Dutton, the keeper of the obscure little bucket-shop in the City, was the same George Burton who had been arrested at Blankfield on a charge of forgery, and who, thanks to one of the cleverest advocates at the criminal bar, had got off with a very light sentence.

There was a full record of the long interview with Mrs Spencer, in which she had been finally confounded, and forced to confession, of her acceptance of his terms, of the words she had uttered when, while rather regretting that things could not go on as they were, lamenting the fact that her accuser had ever been born, she was not at all satisfied with her present environment, and would experience a certain measure of relief in quitting it for a more congenial sphere.

On the day he had parted from her, the day on which she had yielded to his inflexible determination that she must remain under her husband's roof as short a time as possible, he recorded the fact that, up to the present moment, he had not made up his mind as to the precise way in which he was going to bring about the separation. He wanted to choose the way which would least hurt Guy.

There had flashed through his mind that, in addition to the confession she was about to make to him of her whole career, she should confess to her husband that she was not legally his wife, being in reality the wife of George Burton, alias George Dutton. There followed here a note. "I am convinced she and this rascal were married, the sister and cousin dodges were always a fake. I must see Parkinson to find out if he can ferret out anything on that point. But the time is short. In a week I must be ready for action."

A further entry showed that he had called on Parkinson with this object, only to learn that the detective had gone on an important mission abroad, and could undertake no further work till his return, which would be some ten days hence. That idea therefore had to be dismissed. He must think out some other plan.

Then came the last and most important entry of all, dated on the fourth of July, written no doubt a few hours before he took his luggage to Victoria Station.

"I meet Norah Burton, I always think of her by that old name, at Cathcart Square at six o'clock to-night. I have given the caretaker a holiday to keep him out of the way. I have drawn up two copies of the confession, one of which she is to sign. I have also drawn up an undertaking on my part to keep her from want in case Guy should prove obdurate. But this I am sure he will not do. Besides, if she is his wife, and thinking it over, I have my doubts as to whether she was ever really married to Burton, he would have to support her, in spite of her unsavoury a.s.sociations."

Bryant paused for a moment as he finished this paragraph to reflect a little. Personally, he did not believe that she was the wife of George Burton; in his opinion, their a.s.sociation had been the result of mutual interests. With this knowledge hanging over her head, she would hardly have been daring enough to go through the ceremony of marriage with two other men. Anyway, it was a debatable point.

Moreover, Burton, like most criminals, would be very wide-awake and calculating. To marry her would be to handicap himself. He could get more out of her by marrying her to a rich man.

Then came the last paragraph of all.

"Now, for my action after the final interview of to-night, when she has signed the confession. I may do one of two things, forbid her to return to her husband's house, and go myself straight to Eaton Place, and break the news to Spencer without any preamble. In that case, I shall take with me some ready money to hand to her, as she will probably have very little upon her.

"And yet I rather shrink from this course; it would be painful for me to watch his agony while I struck such a terrible blow. I will run down to Brighton, drop him a note telling him that an important letter will reach him at his club by registered post to-morrow, that he is on no account to let his wife know he has heard from me till he has read the contents of that registered packet.

"I shall post him the copy of the confession, telling him he can inspect the original at any time he likes, meeting me either in Brighton or London, leaving him to deal with her as he chooses. After all, his is the right to dispose of his private affairs, my duty really ends when I have put him in possession of the facts. My first method must have the effect of creating open scandal at once, by my insisting upon her not returning to Eaton Place.

"He may wish to devise some plan that will create a scandal less open, to save, as far as he can, the disgrace to himself and his family. If I know the man, and here, perhaps, I am arguing from the knowledge only of my own temperament, I should say his love would turn to hatred after he reads that confession. Jack Pomfret was a weaker man than Guy, but he acted as I should have done under the circ.u.mstances, and refused all farther communication with her, refused to give her the opportunity of denial or explanation.

"Still, there is no knowing to what lengths a deep-rooted infatuation for a fascinating woman will lead a man. In this respect, Guy may be less adamant than Pomfret, although I am sure he will never imitate poor Jack's final weakness. He is too st.u.r.dily built for that.

"When confronted with that confession she may plead artfully, and, perhaps to him, convincingly, that while she admits everything contained in it, she was more sinned against than sinning, that she tried to escape from her odious bondage by marrying Jack, and that with his suicide and the frustration of her hopes, she was compelled to return to an environment which she loathed. He might consent to believe and forgive, although to me such a thing seems incredible, impossible."

Bryant closed the book on the last entry. That little red-leather volume threw a lurid light on the mystery of Cathcart Square. The exhumed body was found to be that of Major Murchison, wrongly identified in the first instance as that of Reginald Davis. It was all very clear.

That meeting had taken place, and the unfortunate man had been done to death by the precious pair, Norah Burton and the scoundrel brother, cousin or life-long lover, whichever he was. Reginald Davis was an old acquaintance of theirs, had been possibly a more intimate one than the cautious Davis was prepared to admit. They took with them letters addressed to their old friend, they forged a letter from him intimating his intention to commit suicide.

If Davis read of all this in the papers, he was too concerned with his own danger to emerge from his hiding-place and publish the truth to the world. He would be thankful that, through the villainy of others, he could take a new lease of life, unmenaced by detection. Of course, they had never thought of the possibility that Davis would be cleared by the confession of the real criminal. Like Scotland Yard, they were sure he was guilty, and his silence was a matter of certainty.

And slowly Bryant, drawing from the stores of his vast experience, began to construct in his own mind the details of the murder, executed by two desperate criminals, almost driven to the verge of madness by the knowledge that their carefully-laid plans were about to be frustrated by the action of one man.

The woman, the weaker of the two, was probably more disposed to yield to the force and strength of circ.u.mstances. Once before, in her marriage to Jack Pomfret, she had had the cup s.n.a.t.c.hed from her lips, and bowed to the inevitable. From the few words recorded in the Major's accusing diary, it would seem that, secured of a modest competence, she was ready a second time to accept her fate.

And then, in that week's interval, it was easy to guess what had happened. She had consulted her old partner in crime, George Burton.

He had reasoned, as it turned out, a little shallowly, remove Murchison, and the danger will be past. The resemblance of Murchison to Reginald Davis had occurred to the pair, hence the cunningly prepared letters.

And how was the actual murder accomplished? Had they gone to Cathcart Square together, or had Burton followed her, getting in by means of that broken window-pane at the back? And did they know the Major was alone?

In that last interview with Mrs Spencer, had he let out the fact that he had given the caretaker a holiday, so that they should not be disturbed?