Murder in the Museum, A British Library Crime Classic (11 page)

“This the man, Harry?” asked Cunningham, and Harry looked doubtful.

“Well,” he said, “I really didn't get a very good view of him, and I wouldn't swear to it. It might well be him, for all I could tell.”

“And that,” said Cunningham, as he sped back to Shelley to give an account of his evening's work, “is about as unsatisfactory a piece of identification as I could imagine.”

Chapter XIV

The Case Against Moses Moss

Cunningham grinned. He had given Shelley a full account of his investigations in the wild hinterlands of Streatham and Pinner, and Shelley had expressed his very real pleasure and satisfaction that the sergeant had been enabled to get so far in such short time.

“Mind you, Cunningham,” he added in warning tones, “I don't say that we've really got anywhere yet; it's much too soon to start theorising. Still, I think that we can congratulate ourselves on having got past a very tasty red herring without wasting much time.”

“Red herring?” Cunningham was not always able to follow the workings of his chief's somewhat nimbler mind, and on these occasions he was compelled simply to wait for the explanation which he knew would shortly be forthcoming from Shelley.

“Yes,” smiled his chief. “Red herring, I said, and red herring I meant—i.e., namely, and to wit, Mr. Baker.”

“Baker's innocent, of course.”

“Of course. As pretty a piece of framing-up as I've ever encountered. And, by Jove,” added Shelley, “we very nearly fell for it.”

He rang the bell on his desk, and the waiting constable from outside the door came in.

“Message for all stations,” said Shelley, and the constable's note-book and pencil were produced as if by magic.

“Pull in at once, man with black beard and black greasy hair,” Shelley dictated. “He is in a racing car, believed to be making north, and is accompanied by a young lady…” And he went on to give a detailed description of Violet Arnell. “Add that photograph of the young lady will be following,” he said, “and add that the man may be armed and is certainly a dangerous character—probably a murderer. He has killed twice and may kill again.”

“That all, sir?” murmured the constable in almost bored tones, treating this sensational matter as merely part of the everyday routine—as indeed it was to him, being nothing more unusual than a business letter to a typist in an office.

“Ye-es,” said Shelley thoughtfully. “I don't think I've missed anything essential—or how does it strike you, Sergeant?”

“Strikes me as being perfectly all right, sir,” said Cunningham.

“Good. Then get that on the wires to all stations,” snapped Shelley briskly. “And tell them to send first to all stations north of London—up as far as Manchester and Sheffield, say. I shouldn't think they could have got much further than that, although they have managed to get several hours' lead on us.”

The constable left, and Shelley smiled grimly. “Well, we now sit and wait for news, Cunningham,” he said. “If I were you I should go home and try to snatch a few hours' sleep. We may well have an exciting piece of chasing ahead of us tomorrow.”

“You think so, sir?”

“I hope so.”

“Hope?”

“Well.” Shelley looked serious. “If we don't get some news within a few hours, I'm afraid we shan't get any,” he said.

“Whatever do you mean, sir?”

“Don't forget that Moss is a murderer.”

“And you think he'll murder Miss Arnell?”

“I don't think he'd hesitate for a moment. I can't understand why he didn't kill her in London as soon as he had managed to get her into that car of his—he may even have done so, though somehow I think not.”

“But what do you think has happened, sir?”

“You really mean that you'd like to hear me talking about this confounded case, O my Cunningham?”

Cunningham grinned. “Yes,” he said.

“Then it shall be on your own head,” said Shelley. “I will tell you what I think has happened. You know my weakness for arguing the whole thing out like this, and, anyhow, I want you to have all the facts before you. You don't know what I've been doing in the time while you were dashing about the respectable suburbs.”

“Carry on, sir,” said Cunningham, and Shelley willingly complied.

“I think that the will was a forgery. Moss was in a desperate position—for a reason which I will tell you presently and which I have only discovered quite recently—and he saw that the only way of putting things right was to get old Professor Arnell's money left to him. But he scarcely knew Professor Arnell—he had merely heard him referred to as his rich uncle. How was he to ensure it?”

“How?” murmured Cunningham.

“He could forge a will. But a will needed to have two witnesses. Then there came the chance of Dr. Wilkinson's death at the British Museum. Moss had seen Wilkinson as one of Arnell's friends, and there was one witness ready made.”

“It doesn't matter, then,” said Cunningham, “if a witness to a will dies before the testator.”

“Not a bit,” said Shelley. “If that made a will invalid half the wills in the country would be wrong.”

“I see.”

“Well,” said Shelley, “that disposes of one witness. The other witness—Crocker—very nearly muddled the whole affair for Moss. I looked through the files of
The Times
today, and I found that Crocker's death was wrongly reported a few weeks ago. There was an error. Another man of the same name, also living in Oxford, had died, and it was reported as being the man whose murder we so nearly witnessed.”

“I suppose Moss found out his mistake only just in time?” Cunningham suggested.

“Yes. So Crocker had to die. But Moss had already tried to inveigle Miss Arnell's young man in the case, and he saw in Crocker's death the ideal opportunity of killing two birds with one stone. So he wrote that note, bringing young Baker up to town, and made sure that he would be in the vicinity of the murder. I have no doubt that he inveigled his victim to the neighbourhood of the British Museum by some similar means. It all sounds very complicated when I describe it to you like this, but it's quite simple really.”

“And why make the will to benefit Miss Arnell and himself after her death?” asked Cunningham.

“It does seem rather curious, I must admit,” said Shelley. “Still, the main point would be to distract the immediate suspicions as to himself, which would naturally arise if the Professor had left the money to an almost unknown cousin, and had disinherited his only daughter.”

“H'm.” Cunningham did not seem to be altogether convinced by this explanation.

“And I have a vague suspicion that Moss hoped to marry the young lady himself, when her fiancé had been hanged for the murder of her father.” Shelley paused to see what would be the effect of this revelation upon his colleague.

Cunningham seemed to take this as probable, and agreed that it appeared to be quite a likely attitude for the murderer to take up.

“I think, though,” he added, “that you said something about new facts.”

“Oh, yes.” Shelley recalled himself to the present. “This evening, while you were getting hold of those useful facts about the kidnapping of Miss Arnell, I made some enquiries as to Moss's financial status.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. And he was practically bankrupt. Up to the eyes in debt, didn't know where to turn for cash. So that explains a whole lot more, gives him an adequate motive, and shows that he wanted to get out of the hands of the money-lenders who had a pretty tight grip on him.”

“Money-lenders?”

“Yes. Remember Victor Isaacs, the moneylender of Ludgate Hill?”

“Can't say I do.”

“Maybe you haven't met him professionally. Nasty piece of work. Greasy little fellow, who will do anything for a few pounds. He's one of those unpleasant people whom the Fascists are so fond of portraying as the typical Jew. Nothing of the sort really, of course, and to call him such is a libel on the Jewish race.”

“And Moss owed him money?”

“Yes; to the tune of several thousands. I went around to Isaacs's office, and, though Isaacs himself wasn't on duty—only turns up for an hour or two a day, I imagine—I managed to scare his assistant into giving me full details of the transactions in which Mr. Moss was concerned. They didn't have any indication of the security offered, which is itself pretty suspicious. But there was no doubt at all that Moss owed him a pile—and he was pressing for, at any rate, a partial settlement. And there's the motive!”

“But who do you think actually did the kidnapping?” Cunningham objected.

“Moss himself,” answered Shelley promptly.

“In disguise?”

“Naturally.”

“That's possible, but we shall have the very devil of a job to prove it,” said Cunningham.

“Think so? Why?”

“Well,” said Cunningham with a sheepish grin, “you can't say that those busmen were precisely ideal witnesses to identify Moss, can you?”

“No. But identification should be easy enough when we get him with Miss Arnell a prisoner in the north of England somewhere—for I imagine that's where they're making for. A criminal always makes for the part of the country that he knows best. When he's on the run he thinks that he has a better chance of avoiding the police there.”

“Moss knows the north of England?”

“Yes. He lived in Leeds for several years, and I think that it's in Leeds that we shall catch him.”

“Well, I hope so,” said Cunningham, and then another thought struck him.

“Wilkinson was not murdered at all, then?” he asked.

“Oh, no. I should have mentioned that. The autopsy on Wilkinson, as you know, showed that no poison was present. He died of heart failure, and had suffered from valvular disease of the heart for many years. It was merely coincidence that he had died at the British Museum. It is possible, indeed, that this was what gave Moss the idea of his plot.”

“I see,” said Cunningham. “And what do we do next?”

“As I said, wait for the results to come in. There's nothing else that we can do, really. Every policeman in Great Britain will be looking for them by now, and within the next few hours we shall know something about it.”

The telephone rang, and Shelley eagerly grasped the receiver.

“What's that?” he said excitedly. “Put them through to here at once. This sounds important.”

He waited for a moment and then spoke again. “Where?” Cunningham heard him ask. “Outskirts of Sheffield? Yes. On the main Manchester road? Yes. What time? Right. Your men chasing them? Right. We'll follow straight away.”

“Found them, sir?” asked Cunningham.

“Yes,” said Shelley. “They were seen half an hour ago by a man on point duty in Sheffield. Apparently they were making for Manchester—out on the main Manchester road from Sheffield, anyway. Look up trains for Sheffield, Cunningham. It looks to me as if we are soon to be in at the death.”

Feverishly Cunningham took up a time-table and began searching it.

“Mr. Moss, we have you!” Shelley exclaimed, giving way to the somewhat melodramatic vein which was occasionally to be detected in him.

Then a constable entered. “A gentleman to see you, sir,” he announced. “He wants to speak to you about the Arnell case—or so he says.”

“Who is he?” asked Shelley.

“Won't give a name, sir.”

“Train in forty minutes from St. Pancras, sir!” said Cunningham.

“I can give the gentleman ten minutes,” snapped Shelley. “I only hope it isn't that little fathead Henry Fairhurst again.”

The constable retired, then came back and threw open the door. Shelley and Cunningham gazed at each other as if they doubted their sanity. Shelley's case had been so carefully constructed that neither of them doubted that it was accurate in every detail. The kidnapper of Miss Violet Arnell was now somewhere outside Sheffield, speeding along in a fast car, and closely pursued by the Yorkshire police. Yet…yet…their visitor was none other than
Mr. Moses Moss
!

Chapter XV

The Adventures of Violet Arnell

Violet had felt a considerable access of pleasure when she made her way from Henry Fairhurst's home out to the place where she was to catch a bus for home. It really seemed as if they were on the track of something, and as if her young man had some chance of getting free before long. All the way home she went over the situation in her mind. The whole matter seemed incredibly complicated, and she felt little doubt that Harry Baker had been “framed-up” by some unknown but implacable enemy. That she herself might be in any danger never occurred to her, and it was with considerable surprise that she greeted the strange-looking man with greasy black hair and a ragged black beard who accosted her in the bus as it drew up in Pinner High Street. He seemed quite a young man, and she was surprised at the apparent carelessness in his personal appearance.

“Miss Arnell, I think,” he said in the guttural tones of one to whom English is a foreign language.

“Yes,” said Violet. “Who are you?”

“I,” he said in tones which seemed to suggest the urgency of complete secrecy, “am your friend. I want to tell you that our mutual friend Mr. H. B. is in trouble, and he has sent me to fetch you.”

“Has he escaped?” asked Violet excitedly.

“I cannot answer any questions just yet,” replied the man. “In any case, we can't talk here. If you'll just come a little way with me I can assure you that I'll lead you straight to him.”

He suddenly grasped her wrist in fingers of iron, and, almost before she came to any realisation of what was happening, Violet found herself being led off the bus, and into the waiting car—a low, rakish model of the aggressive kind. Almost without opposition she let herself be led into it. It was possible, she told herself, that this was a trap, that there was really something curiously “fishy” about the whole affair, and yet she did not hesitate, for if Harry really was in trouble she could not hesitate. Her duty, after all, was to be by his side.

As soon as they had moved off, however, she felt qualms of distrust sweeping over her. The personality of the queer man by her side was not precisely such as to inspire her with much confidence, and she began to ask him questions.

“Has Harry escaped, and are we going to him?” she asked, but her companion shook his head grimly.

“I fear that I can answer no questions,” he said. “My orders are to drive you to our destination without telling you anything about where we are going, or why.”

“But that's just nonsense!” exclaimed Violet in angry tones. “You don't think that I am going wherever you like to take me, knowing nothing about it, do you? You don't think I am going to put myself utterly in your hands without some sort of indication of what is happening?”

He chuckled. His chuckle, too, was of a queer, eerie kind. It seemed to echo in the car as it rushed through the streets of London, the long rows of lamps streaming past.

“You
are
in my hands already, my dear young lady,” he said with a grin. “Whether you like it or not, you are coming with me to where I am ordered to take you. That is final, my dear young lady, and I have nothing more to say about the matter.”

“But I demand to know where I am being taken,” Violet announced. “You have no right to take me away like this, no right whatever.”

Again he chuckled, and again Violet felt a little shiver of apprehension run down her spine at the sound. It was as if he had announced some dreadful fate for her, a fate which he, in a perverted, insane manner, found infinitely amusing and promising in prospect.

“You may demand whatever you wish,” he said in his strangely foreign accent. “But I do not guarantee that you will succeed in getting what you demand.”

“But this is monstrous,” Violet was beginning to say, but he interrupted her, turning towards her with teeth bared in a hideous, humourless grin.

“Will you please oblige me by keeping quiet?” he said fiercely. “If you will not do so I shall be obliged to take means to silence you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should think my meaning is clear enough.”

“I'm afraid,” said Violet, “that it is not.”

“Well, then, if I must be explicit. If you do not keep quiet and cease to worry me by your foolish chatter, I shall be obliged to tie you up and gag you, so that there shall be no danger of your so distracting me that there will be a very serious accident.”

“Oh!” Violet shrank back into her corner of the car, her head spinning at this revelation of the malignancy of her companion. Into what dreadful company had she stumbled? What on earth had happened to turn the man so bitterly against her? Or had he been her enemy from the start? Bravely she forced herself to the realisation that this was a trap, after all; that she was being whisked off to some unknown place for some unknown purpose; and that, though Harry Baker might well be freed when the information which she and Mr. Fairhurst had ferreted out was brought to the attention of the police, it seemed very unlikely that she would be there to welcome him on his release from prison.

She glanced out of the car as it sped along the streets. She could not, however, make out where they were. All London streets look pretty much alike at night, and there seemed no chance of identifying any particular one in passing through it. Her hope was that the car might be driven too fast. It certainly seemed as if they might well be exceeding the speed limit. If a policeman stopped the driver she felt that it might easily happen that she could utter some protest. And, surely, her captor (for as such she now thought of him) would not dare to stop her from speaking.

This did not happen. It seemed that he must have known precisely what he was doing, and carefully refrained from driving at more than thirty miles an hour in any built-up area.

Once they stopped at a crossing, where the traffic lights were against them, and she moved as if to get out. But her companion gripped her wrist in his fingers. He hissed into her ears: “Stay still!” Almost petrified with fright, she was unable to get free, and helplessly acquiesced in her continued imprisonment—for such, she decided, this really was.

On they sped, the night getting ever blacker, and the rain, which had caused Sergeant Cunningham such trouble in his attempt to find her, coming down in sheets. It struck the windscreen of the car as if with malice aforethought, but splashed off helplessly into the road.

By now they had left the last straggling houses of the outer suburbs of London behind, and were sweeping along a fine, broad road, where many cars passed them, and great lumbering lorries had to be passed in their turn.

“Is this the Great North Road?” she asked, and her companion nodded.

“It is,” he said. “But I warn you: talk no more, or it will be the worse for you.”

She subsided into silence. Clearly this man who had kidnapped her so fearlessly was absolutely without scruple. Obviously he was the murderer, she told herself, and her heart made a wild leap into her mouth at the thought.

At last, however, she thought of a way of leaving, at any rate, some sort of clue behind. It might never be picked up, but it did give her the satisfaction of knowing that she was doing her best to give the police—who would, she hoped, do their best to track this dreadful man to his lair, wherever that might be—some sort of chance of discovering her. So she cautiously opened her handbag, taking out her handkerchief and ostentatiously wiping her nose. Then she pretended to replace it in her bag, but really retained it in the palm of her hand, screwed into a little ball. As they swung around a corner in the road, she leaned towards the window, and gripped the little handle that opened it.

But her manœuvre had not passed unobserved. Again she felt the iron grip of the man's hand close around her wrist, and he muttered in her ear.

“Window's shut, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“This.” He leaned across her, turned a little key which was in the door of the car, and then sank back in his seat. His eyes had been glued to the road ahead. He had not for a moment looked either at her or at the door, but she now found, when she tried to open the window of the car, that it was locked.

She could have cried with vexation. Her only chance of leaving some sort of clue behind her, some little thing (for her hand-kerchief, though tiny, was marked with her full name) which would enable Harry Baker or Mr. Fairhurst or the police, or all the three in collaboration, to get on her trail and rescue her before it was too late!

Now they swung into some big town. She gazed out of the window helplessly, trying to see where it could be, but was unable to catch any glimpse of a post office or anything else which would enable her to identify the town or city through which they were passing.

“Where are we?” she asked at length, but her companion merely shook his head, never uttering a word. Violet had never felt so helpless in her life. Where on earth could they be? What on earth could be the meaning of this wild dash through the night? It seemed the craziest thing, and yet, when she looked at the grim, determined face of her captor, the black beard on his chin waggling as he muttered to himself disjointed words in some uncouth Eastern tongue, she felt that he would not do anything unless it was in complete accord with some preconceived plan. It seemed utterly impossible that he would catch her and take her away like this unless there was some very real method in his madness, unless he had every intention of carrying out a plan matured to the last detail.

What could it be? She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and peered out into the darkness ahead. The rain had stopped now, but the roads still shone like sheets of polished glass in the vivid light of the car's headlamps. Not so many cars passed them now, though an occasional lorry rumbled past, its burly weight almost shaking the road as it rattled along.

Surely, she thought to herself, they could not be going for long like this. Then they came to another town, and this time she determined to make an effort to attract attention. Although they were going at a fair speed, she thought that it would not be too dangerous to throw herself out. She felt so desperate that anything would be better than to continue in this forced captivity, hurtling across England to an unknown fate in an unknown destination.

She gripped the handle of the car's door tightly, scarcely conscious that the car was coming to a standstill in a lonely street. As she managed to get the door open her captor, a rubber truncheon in his hand, hit her smartly across the back of the head. Violet did not know what had happened. She merely saw the flashes of vivid light which so often prelude violent unconsciousness, and then oblivion descended on her.

She came to in broad daylight. She was lying on a dirty bed in an untidy room. She sat up, but at once collapsed into a prone position again. Her head ached, and her every limb felt as if it had been passed through some machine which had mangled them terribly.

Gradually, however, she mastered her nausea, and sat up. She was in a small room, white-washed long ago, but now with walls of an indeterminate grey.

Besides the bed, the room contained merely a chair and a small occasional table. It was uncarpeted, and there was merely a small piece of oilcloth, of a grotesquely ugly pattern, beside the table, and was obviously meant for her to stand on when performing her toilette, for on the table there was resting a large jug of water and a basin, in which she splashed her face and hands, then feeling considerably better to face whatever might be coming her way.

She staggered to the window, which was barred on the outside, and then looked around. She was in the country, but what country she could not tell. Before her eyes was stretched a wide panorama of hill and vale. The hills were of an uneven brown colour, fading away into black in the distance, save where outcrops of cruel granite stuck grey fingers through the sparse, brown grass. A brown road stretched its ribbon length away into the distance, and immediately below her, outside the front door of the house, she supposed, was a low, racing car—presumably that which had brought her here from London.

There was only one grain of comfort to be extracted from the situation. She was still in England, for they would never have dared to take the car out of the country. The risk of shipping it would have been too great. Still, she might be almost anywhere. Certainly she had never seen anything like this bitter, grim landscape in her life before. It even exceeded in cruelty the Mendip Hills of her childhood and the Dartmoor village where she had once, in her schooldays, spent a holiday.

The door opened, and a man entered. It was the man who had captured her the night before. His hair was now brushed more or less tidily. His beard was a little more neatly trimmed. In fact, he looked almost civilised. But still the fire of enmity burned in his steady eyes.

“My dear Miss Arnell,” he said in sarcastic tones, “I trust that we have made you comfortable in our humble way, and that you have no complaints to make as to our north-country hospitality?”

“I demand,” replied Violet with some dignity, “to be released at once.”

“Certainly,” he said, smiling at her. “You shall be released very shortly; but there are a few little formalities which will, I fear, have to be complied with before that no doubt desirable consummation can be achieved. Our conditions are, I assure you, the merest formality; but I think that I shall have to give you a little rest before I go on to discuss them with you.”

“Conditions?”

“That, my dear young lady, was the word that I have used.”

“What are they?”

“That, as I said a moment ago, will have to wait until you are just the wee-est bit more able to discuss matters of business.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well,” he explained, “you have gone through a somewhat difficult and trying experience; and I feel that I owe it to you to give you time to rest.”