Who Killed Stella Pomeroy? (16 page)

“I must have an interview with this budding young detective. You know that at his age fancy plays a considerable part. I don't suggest that he was consciously lying, but one has to guard against unconscious exaggeration.”

“I made an appointment for him to see me in the dinner hour tomorrow, and you could be present and question him as much as you like, but I thought that the quickest way of verifying his story would be for us both to go to the bungalow. We need not climb in through the scullery window, because I have the front-door key. If we find nothing disturbed, then you will have something to go upon when you question him.” The car pulled up. Richardson led the way round to the back of the building to look at the scullery window. Thus far the story was borne out: an entry had been forced through that window, which was still ajar.

“Now, Miss Pomeroy, let us use your front-door key and see whether anyone has been in the bedroom.” Richardson stood aside to allow Ann to precede him. She uttered a sharp exclamation when she entered. The boy's story seemed to be amply supported. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents scattered over the floor. A little apart from the wearing apparel of the dead woman lay three women's handbags, all gaping open. Silver coins and a few coppers were scattered on the floor near them and a powder puff or two. Ann was stooping to pick them up when Richardson intervened.

“Please don't touch them. Don't touch anything in the room. The driver of my car is quite competent to draw a plan, and he has a foot rule with him. I'll call him in.”

He returned a moment later with the driver. “Huggins, I want you to make a rough plan of this room to scale. Be careful not to shift anything, and set out the exact position of those three handbags. While you're taking your measurements we'll get out of your way.” To Ann Pomeroy he said, “We'll have a look round the other rooms and see whether anything has been stolen. Here's the dining room.”

He pulled out a drawer in the sideboard and counted the spoons and forks. “No, the cutlery and plated ware appears to be intact—one dozen of each.”

“It couldn't have been an ordinary burglar. The money out of the handbags in the other room was lying on the floor. The thief must have been after something else—letters, perhaps.”

“Presuming the intruder to have been Mr Casey,” said Richardson with a smile. “Well, now let's have a look at the marks in the scullery. It rained pretty heavily this afternoon, and you saw the mud outside the scullery window. What have we inside? Footprints. If you'll stand back I'll show you with my hand lamp. Here's a man's footprint, the boy's print is touching it, and the little dog has left his prints all over the place.”

“That shows that Pat was speaking the truth, doesn't it?”

“Yes, it does, but I want you to look at the man's print. That's not the print of a man's outdoor shoe, it is the print of an evening shoe. The man who made it must have been wearing dress clothes. In that case we may find the prints of car wheels.” While he was speaking he was taking the measurements of the footprint.

“Pat didn't mention a car; he would have told me if he had seen one standing near the bungalow.”

“A car might easily have been parked on the other side of the bungalow without the boy noticing it. I'll go and look for wheel prints after you are gone. We'll go now and see whether Constable Huggins has finished his plan of the room, then he shall drive you home and come back for me. I'll bring the key of the bungalow to you tomorrow morning.”

Ann hesitated as if she had something further to say. At last it came: “I suppose that you will take charge of those bags.”

“Yes, the poor woman seemed to have a weakness for handbags.”

Ann looked at him apprehensively. “Oh, it's no good having secrets from you, Mr Richardson. We are both thinking the same thing. You heard the evidence given at the inquest—about there having been a charge of shoplifting against Stella—a charge that came to nothing. Well, it's been a terrible worry to my cousin. You remember the evidence about that bridge party on the night before her death; every member of the party felt convinced that it was she who had secreted that ring when the lights went out. There are people who cannot resist the temptation to secrete pretty things.”

“Yes, it is a form of mental weakness. We have instances of it every day. I see that Huggins has finished his plan. He shall take you home now, and I'll see you again in the morning.”

Having conducted her to the car he went back to the bedroom and picked up the handbags, of which two appeared to be quite new. He then made a systematic search of the drawers and cupboards, and was rewarded by finding three more handbags and a parcel wrapped in tissue paper containing a bag bearing the initial E. Even Richardson's inexpert eye could judge that it was of high intrinsic value, and this was borne out by the hallmarks of the mountings. He decided to carry them all back to the police station with him and subject them to an intensive search. Before the return of the car he took out his hand lamp and made a careful search for car tracks outside the bungalow. Here there was no room for doubt. A car had been parked on the opposite side of the road, where it might easily have escaped the notice of an excited boy. Clearly some man in evening dress had come down by car and had broken into the bungalow to search for a lady's handbag. No one would have thought it worth while to take the risk of doing this unless the bag contained something of great value. What could the dead woman have had in her bag that was of sufficient value to tempt someone to break in? Had this any connection with the murder which he was investigating? The case was now taking on a new aspect.

As soon as Huggins returned with the car they went to the scullery window to make it secure against other intruders. Huggins' verdict after examining the fastening was, “The man who planned the security of this house was asking for trouble. No trained burglar would feel proud of getting into it. Look at this, Superintendent. Why, a child could slide back these bolts with a pocketknife. The wonder is that the place hasn't been broken into before. The burglars must have thought that there was nothing worth stealing.''

“Yes, as you say, the men who fixed these catches on the window were asking for it. While you've been away I have discovered one thing—that the man who broke in was looking for something special. He may not have found it, and he may come back before morning for a second try. I suppose that you have screws and a screw driver in your tool kit?”

“Yes sir.”

“Very well, then, we'll run a couple of two-inch screws diagonally into the window frame from inside: that'll stop them. Now help me to carry these bags to the car.”

“Where to, sir?” asked Huggins as he took his seat at the wheel.

“Back to the police station.”

Aitkin proved to be still in his office. Huggins followed his chief with an armful of ladies' handbags and spread them out on the table.

“You look as if you'd been robbing a bag shop, Mr Richardson,” said Aitkin; “what's it going to lead to?”

“I can't promise to tell you that offhand, but it's going to lead somewhere. These bags all came from that bungalow.”

“Why, the dead woman must have been a kleptomaniac.”

“I think she was, but I think also that something more may come to light over this obsession of hers.”

“A new clue to the murder, do you mean?”

“It might lead to that. We must take these bags and go through them. This evening a man broke into the bungalow, apparently in search of a particular bag or something that it contained.” Richardson went on to describe what had happened. “These three bags were lying on the floor open. The money they had contained was scattered all over the carpet, which gave me the idea that it was a letter or paper of some kind that he was in search of. The other bags I found in the drawers. “Well go through them very carefully; even a visiting card in one of the pockets may help us.”

“What I can't understand is why, when you were searching the bungalow with Hammett, you didn't notice the number of handbags in the woman's bedroom.”

“We did notice them, but we put them down to feminine vanity.”

The bags taken out of the drawers had every appearance of being new. Indeed, in one case there was a price ticket attached.

“This didn't cost nothing,” said Aitkin, holding up the bag with the initial E; “but there's nothing in it.”

Richardson took it from him and put it to his nose. “It's been used, though, and used by a lady who has a nice taste in scent. I suppose we could find the owner by advertising for her. As a matter of fact, we might describe all these bags in an advertisement and invite the owners to come forward. It might lead to something. Get one of your sergeants to draw up an advertisement for our police news, and we can get authority for inserting it elsewhere.”

“Do you think the burglar found what he wanted?” asked Aitkin.

“I should think it doubtful whether he had time.”

“Women are like magpies,” observed Aitkin with reminiscence in his tone: “they hide things in funny places. I suggest that we go up to the bungalow tomorrow morning and search for a hiding place of a letter or paper, and as it was a woman who hid it we'll look in all the unlikeliest holes and corners.”

“A woman who takes to living by her fingers, shoplifting, I mean, is sometime referred to as a kleptomaniac, as if she couldn't help it. No doubt she lacks some moral sense, but she knows perfectly well what she is doing and she trades upon her appearance as a protection against being found out. That was the case of this murdered woman, I have no doubt. From hints that I had this evening from Miss Pomeroy, the husband knew her weakness and knew that it was growing upon her: that was why he was meditating a separation by getting himself transferred to a foreign branch of his bank.”

“She may have had an accomplice,” suggested Aitkin.

“She may, but we've got no trace of one yet. My idea is that the intruder this evening is in some way connected with the murderer.”

“You discovered that the man who broke in this evening had come in a car. That would account for our difficulty in tracing a strange visitor on the morning of the murder. A private car might easily have left the main road and drawn up within reach of the bungalow without being seen by anybody.”

“Yes. All the enquiries about taxis in the Public Carriage Office have drawn blank. But even a D.D. Inspector must sleep at times, and your night's rest is long overdue. I'll pick you up in the car at nine tomorrow morning, and well go down together to the bungalow.”

On the drive home, Richardson did some hard thinking. Had he been wasting his own and his friend Milsom's time in chasing the wrong people? True, Otway had a reputation to hide, and clearly Maddox's manner was that of a doubtful personage, but one thing stood out—neither of these two men could have been the man who broke into the bungalow that evening, because they had a perfect alibi: they had been shepherding Jim Milsom to a gambling club. There remained only Grant to account for. Grant! The thought of that miserable weakling sent a shiver down his spine, for what could be more likely than that he should conceive the idea of crawling into an empty bungalow which had belonged to his dead sister in order to help himself to anything of value? At this thought the hope of a new clue, which had seemed so promising at first sight, began to fade. Richardson wisely resolved to dismiss the whole question from his mind until he should see what new light sunrise should bring on the morrow.

T
HE WEATHER
favoured them next morning. The sun rose in a halo of autumn mist; the sky was cloudless. Richardson stopped the car a hundred yards short of the bungalow.

“Now, Mr Aitkin, I want you to look round. The murder took place on a morning very like this and at about the same hour. You and I get out of the car and make for the bungalow. Who would see us? There isn't a soul in sight. Who would even notice the car unless he were looking for it?”

“Schoolboys seeing a smart car would stop to have a look at it, but schoolboys don't come in this direction: they're to be found at the other end of the settlement.”

“So that's one point established. A stranger could have arrived at the bungalow that morning without being seen. Now let us have a look at the wheel tracks of the car that came here last night. They've been drying pretty fast during the last couple of hours, but here they are clear enough. The man took his car off the road and parked it here in the soft ground, no doubt without lights. It was a biggish car—a twenty-horse to judge by the depth of the print in that soft ground at the roadside. And here's a point that might be useful for identification purposes. Here, where the car was backing off the road, we get the imprints of all four tires: the front tires are worn nearly smooth; there is a brand-new tire on the off side back wheel. Did you have a careful look at the car tracks on the morning of the murder?”

“It wasn't any good, Superintendent. By the time I arrived there were car marks all over the place—the people who had come to view the bungalow, to say nothing of the two doctors and a taxi.”

“Yes, it would have been pretty hopeless to make any deductions that morning, but while we're inside the bungalow I'll get Huggins to have a careful look at those car tracks and see if they suggest anything. Before we go in let's have another look by daylight at the footprints outside the scullery window. Here we are. What do you make of them?”

“Well, these belong to the boy and these to the dog, of course. These others—h'm—I should say that they belonged to a man wearing a very light town shoe.”

“Such as an evening shoe?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, when one passes to the other side of that window one finds exactly the same footprint on the tiles.”