This House to Let

“You astound me, Mr Davis. Yourself and both your sisters mixed up with what happened there! It sounds like a romance. Pray proceed!”

Davis told the story as Iris had told him, carefully concealing the names of the two men concerned in it for the moment. He was careful to point out that on the night of the suicide she could establish a complete and unquestioned alibi.

Bryant turned on him sharply. “It occurs to me that you don’t think it was a suicide, Mr Davis.”

“I don’t, sir, and at present I can’t quite tell you why.”

“But you must have some reason for thinking that,” said Bryant in the same sharp tone.

“My only reason is this – if the man who was buried under the name of Reginald Davis is the man I believe him to be, there was no earthly reason why he should commit suicide. To the best of my belief, he was murdered for some motive that I cannot guess, and the murderer, after cutting his throat, put the razor in his stiffening hand.”

“It is a theory worth thinking about,” said Bryant, who was beginning to appreciate his visitor very much. “And now, Mr Davis, the name of the man whom your sister met in the empty house?”

“I have kept that to the last, to surprise you. You will know the name, but I don’t suppose you ever came across the man. It was Major Hugh Murchison.”

At this startling announcement, the Inspector literally jumped from his chair.

“But I do know Major Hugh Murchison,” he cried. “He was in my office not so very long ago. Let me see, when was it?”

He turned to his diary and verified the date, and gave it to Reginald Davis. It was longer back than he thought.

“And you have not seen him since that day?”

“No,” answered the Inspector. “Wait a moment till I ring up my friend Parkinson. I couldn’t undertake the job he called on, as it was quite a private matter. I handed it over to Parkinson.”

He rang up his old friend and former colleague. Davis could gather enough from the conversation on Bryant’s side to be sure that a considerable interval had elapsed since Parkinson had seen his client.

Bryant sat down in his chair. “Mr Davis, I cannot say how much obliged I am to you for your visit, and the information you have given me. Now, I know a great deal more than you do about the proceedings and movements of Major Murchison, I know on what business he was engaged, in addition to that little matter of your sister’s. I will go into the inquiries concerning yourself, and please hold yourself at my disposal, give me an address where I can communicate with you readily.”

Davis did so, and said good-bye to the Inspector.

After he had left, Bryant gave instructions he was not to be disturbed for an hour. And during that hour he did the hardest bit of thinking he had ever done in his life.

And now that Davis had mentioned it, the man did bear a superficial resemblance to Hugh Murchison.

Chapter Twenty Three

It was a very hard nut he had to crack. Thanks to his peculiar position, he was in possession of reliable and exclusive information from more than one quarter. He held several threads in his capable hands, but would he be able to weave them into a net wide enough for his purpose?

His recent interview with Davis had established the fact that four persons were connected with the mystery of Cathcart Square – Davis himself, Caroline Masters (the elder sister), Iris Deane (the younger sister), and, most important of all, Hugh Murchison.

He dismissed, for the moment, the first three from his mind. But Hugh Murchison, with his resemblance to Reginald Davis, was the connecting link between them and another set of actors.

Murchison had consulted him with the view of identifying Mrs Spencer and George Dutton with the Norah and George Burton of those far-off days at Blankfield, and he had identified them as the same persons. He had then handed over the Major to the astute Parkinson, who would find out as much as he could with regard to the present relations between the precious pair.

Bryant had been very busy of late, and he had almost dismissed the Murchison episode from his mind. But when the Major had completed his investigations he would undoubtedly take steps to turn such a scheming and unscrupulous adventuress out of her husband’s house. As to the way in which he would proceed to accomplish that purpose, Bryant, of course, had no knowledge. Neither did he know which Murchison would approach first, the husband or the wife. Perhaps both together.

One thing stood out pretty clearly, from the evidence of Iris Deane, that she had met Murchison alone at the house in Cathcart Square a few days before the discovery of the dead body.

Another thing also stood out equally clearly, that the dead man bore a remarkable likeness to Reginald Davis. If not, Caroline Masters would not have dared to perjure herself as she had done. And he himself had recognised the superficial resemblance between the two men.

Assuming that it was a murder, and not a suicide, and Bryant was beginning to incline, like Davis, to the former theory, why had the murderer fixed upon the name of Reginald Davis, and forged a letter to the Coroner? He must have been somebody who had known Davis at some time, and was acquainted with his handwriting. Like Caroline Masters, he must have been inclined to do the hunted fugitive a good turn, and have trusted to his gratitude to keep a silent tongue.

An hour’s steady thinking had cleared his brain. The conclusions he arrived at were as follows: Hugh Murchison had been murdered by somebody, and buried as a suicide under the name of Reginald Davis. The next question was who was the murderer, and what was the motive for committing the murder? Here he could make a pretty shrewd guess. If Murchison had gone about his mission in a straightforward, but rather blundering, fashion the motive was clear enough.

With Bryant to think was to act. Davis was having a week’s holiday in London, staying with his sister, Mrs Masters. That same afternoon the young man was again in the Inspector’s room, in response to an urgent summons on the telephone.

“Now, Mr Davis, I have been thinking deeply over this rather complicated affair of Cathcart Square, and I am beginning to see a streak or two of daylight. I told you this morning I know a bit more about Major Murchison than you do, and there is just a chance you might help me. I take it you have had a somewhat adventurous career, your sister admitted as much at the inquest. She said in fact that you had been the black sheep of the family.”

Davis hung his head in a shame-faced fashion. “I have to admit it, sir. It’s no use attempting to deny it, when Carrie gave me away like that.”

“I have no desire to pry into your past, except so far as it helps me in my present quest. But I expect, in your time, you have associated with a few undesirable characters.” Reginald Davis admitted the fact quite frankly.

“Now, of course, it is only just a chance. But did you ever come across a man named George Burton, and a young woman who passed as his sister? My first knowledge of them is that they ran a gambling-saloon in Paris, she a good-looking girl, acting as decoy. Then he quitted the card-sharping game and went in for more criminal pursuits.”

“I did know them, sir. If I tell you what I do know, am I letting myself in for anything?” queried Mr Davis cautiously. “You see, since that awful thing happened, I have turned over a new leaf. Nobody could tempt me to go the least bit on the crook.”

“Make your mind quite easy, Davis. We have nothing against you. You know that, or you would have hardly dared to come to life again.”

“Well, sir, I did know George Burton pretty intimately at one time, after he left Paris. He was in the forgery business and he tried to drag me in, but I was clever enough to keep out of it. They used, in his own set, to call him ‘George the Penman.’”

“Good,” said Bryant; “and what did you know about the girl?”

“Not very much, sir. She passed as his sister, but one or two of his pals believed her to be his wife, although there was no evidence of it.”

“Did you ever learn anything of her origin?”

“Well, one chap who seemed to know more about them than their other pals, told me that she was by way of being a lady, the illegitimate daughter of a man well-known in London Society.”

“Do you know the name of the man?”

Davis tapped his forehead in the effort of recollection.

“It’s on the tip of my tongue, sir: it will come to me in a moment – a man who was mixed up in a gambling scandal, and had to leave the country. Ah, I have got it now, he was known familiarly as Tommie Esmond.”

Mr Bryant rose. He had got all he could out of his new acquaintance. The threads in his hand were drawing closer into a web.

“Well, Mr Davis, good-day. Many thanks for the information you have given me, it has been very helpful. I will keep in touch with you.”

“And you think, with me, it was a murder, and not a suicide?” questioned Davis as he left.

But Bryant was not the man to express a decided opinion until he was fully justified by the facts. He kept his thoughts to himself till the last moment.

He smiled pleasantly. “Time will show. I shall have that body exhumed, as soon as I have made a few further inquiries.”

Davis had to be content with this oracular utterance, and bowed himself out. He solaced himself by narrating all that had occurred to the wondering Carrie.

The matter had now become one for the activities of Scotland Yard. The first thing to be done was to ascertain the whereabouts of Hugh Murchison, that is to say, if he was still in the land of the living. Some time had elapsed since he had communicated with Parkinson. Of course, in itself, there would be nothing strange in that. Parkinson had got the information that was required, been paid for it, and with that payment, their relations had ended.

Bryant went to the hotel where the Major had stayed, at any rate up to the time that the detective had last seen him, and interviewed the manager, whom he had known for some years in his professional capacity. This person, a genial and cosmopolitan Italian, readily answered his questions.

Yes, the Major had stayed there for some little time. When he came, he explained that he was only paying a flying visit to London. Had he brought a servant with him? No, he had not. A somewhat strange omission for a man in his position, was it not? The circumstance was easily explained. The Major had had to dismiss his late valet for theft, and was not in a hurry, for the present, to suit himself with a fresh one. This he had told the manager and he was valeted at the hotel.

He had left some time. How long? The manager would find out the exact date. This he did. On the afternoon of the fourth of July. The Major had taken his things down to Victoria Station in a cab with the view of depositing them there, as he was going to take an evening train to Brighton.

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 shirked 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 pronounced. 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 identity 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 pronounced 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 associations.”

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 association 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 circumstances, 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 sturdily 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.