Richardson's First Case (11 page)

“I've nothing recorded against him, mind you, but that's what he is—a probationer—and when you've done with him he'll be too big for his boots, a promising constable spoilt. But there it is—C.O. butting in again and all discipline going to the dogs.” But Foster had a quiet way with him, and he could count upon the superintendent to back him up.

In fifteen minutes Richardson was on his way to make a round of the garages nearest to Wigmore Street. Representing himself as a possible purchaser of Arthur Harris's car, he drew blank at the first two garages and ran his quarry to earth in the third. Here he learned that Mr. Arthur Harris certainly garaged his car in the establishment, but had given no instructions about selling it; that they would not be justified in letting it go out for a run, but the visitor could have a look at it if he liked. Richardson was conducted to a scarlet-painted terror, made up to look like a racing car, and he noticed at once a dent on the off-side wing. He shook his head, verified the distance run from the speedometer, and observed that the last run had been fifty-five miles.

“She's hit something,” he said.

“Yes, did that the last time she went out—early in the week—but that can easily be blocked out and made as good as new.”

“Do you know where he took her the last time?”

“He didn't say. He's a wild driver—is young Harris—goes like hell. I've often told him that the car would end in the scrap heap if he wasn't more careful.” Richardson thanked the man, but said that it wasn't the car for him, especially at the price asked for her, and took his leave.

His next visit was to Catchpool's charwoman, who looked doubtful about making a signed statement, “not,” she hastened to explain, “because I can't write my name, but I shouldn't like to be made to go and swear in court. I've never been in a police court in me life, except once and then the police officer made a mistake about me singing and dancing in the street when I was as sober and quiet as the old duck on the bench, who gave me five shillings or seven days innocent.”

Richardson overcame her scruples, wrote out the statement, and read it over to her.

“Did I say all that? Well, if you say so I suppose I did. Not that it isn't true—every word of it. Yes, I'll sign it to oblige you. I wouldn't do it for any other officer in the force, but I will for you.”

Information began to come in from the A.A. scouts. Nothing had been seen of a car numbered AA 6493 on the Oxford road on the day in question, but a car bearing that number had passed a scout on the Portsmouth road at about 3 p.m. going very fast in the direction of Guildford. As far as the scout could remember, the car was empty except for the young man at the wheel. An hour or two later came a message from the Surrey police. No accident had been reported on the afternoon in question, but a bicycle, since identified as having been stolen from Leatherhead, had been crumpled up as if by collision with a car; the police had found the tracks of the wheels locked by brakes for some ten feet and a little blood on the ground. But early the next morning there was a later message: the cycle thief had been traced to Leatherhead. He was a boy of fifteen, who confessed that he had stolen the bicycle outside the post office; that he had been knocked down by a red motorcar which had driven on without stopping; that not being an experienced cyclist he had wobbled towards the car; that he heard the screech of the brakes, and then he was shot off the bicycle into the side of the road, but being only bruised and scratched he had managed to limp home, where he pretended that he had hurt himself jumping over a hurdle.

“That sounds like Harris's driving,” said the first-class sergeant when he read it. “We must get hold of him somehow. Here, Richardson, you're the man for this. You know him by sight. Let us see what you are made of.”

“Very good, sir. I'll do my best.” It was one of the jobs that Richardson had been told off to do, but he did not say so; he had already noticed a certain reserve towards him on the part of his new colleagues, as well as of the chief inspector and the station sergeant downstairs, as if they resented the favour shown to him by the mandarins at C.O., as the Central Office was called. He had a definite plan in view. He knew that it would be useless to apply to any member of the Harris family, but now that the father had himself asked the police to find his son, a visit to the house in Wigmore Street in quest of further information could not be resented. What the family upstairs did not know, the servants might guess at. He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock, the hour at which the family would scatter—the father to his City office, the mother to her shopping or her daily conference with the cook. He walked rapidly to Wigmore Street. As he had hoped, the door was opened by the butler, to whom he introduced himself as the police officer who was employed to find the missing son and heir.

“You may be able,” he said, “to give me a hint about Mr. Arthur's friends. It would save a lot of publicity and trouble. Had he any lady friends?”

The butler's air of professional discretion melted into a smile of reminiscence, but he made the noncommittal answer that most young men of Mr. Arthur's age had friends of the other sex.

“I don't mean only friends of his own station in life.”

The butler looked behind him cautiously for possible eavesdroppers. “Come into the smoking room for a moment. I may be able to tell you something, but we can't talk here.” He showed him into the room on the ground floor and shut the door. “I've been round to the garage and seen Mr. Arthur's car. He didn't take that with him,” said Richardson.

“No, I know that. I've been round there myself. I have an idea where he may have gone, but being, as you might say, to some extent in the young gentleman's confidence, it wouldn't have been cricket to tell them upstairs. But I want him to be found, and if you give me your word never to say where you got the information, I think I should be doing right in telling you. Did you ever hear of a young woman named Stella Martin? No? Well, she's one of the typists in his father's office—quite a respectable girl, I believe—and they are both very much attached to one another. He used to take her out for runs in his car, and he's hinted to me more than once that they're engaged. I advised him to tell his father and have no more hole-and-corner business about it, but he said that if he did that she would lose her job, and he would be bound in honour to find her another, which is none too easy in these days.”

“Where does she live?”

“Down at Abbey Wood with her mother. Her salary keeps them both.”

“Did he tell you her address?”

The butler looked down his nose. “I can't say that he actually told me her address, but I happen to know it.”

“I see. You have to post the letters in the pillar box?”

“Exactly. The address is ‘Miss Stella Martin, 13 Rosewear Road, Abbey Wood.'”

Richardson noted the address, shook hands warmly with the butler, and took his leave, murmuring his hope that his young master would return within the next twenty-four hours.

No. 13 Rosewear Road proved to be one of a row of semi-detached little red-brick houses, all exactly alike, each with its little front garden and its hen house behind it. An enterprising builder had provided them for the aristocracy of the Arsenal foremen, and they were all tenanted. The door was opened by a middle-aged lady, whom he rightly assumed to be Miss Martin's mother. She seemed to take him for a commercial drummer of some kind, and as life is monotonous in Rosewear Road in the mornings, she was quite ready for a chat and even invited him into the sitting room. He found himself regretting that he had not brought a sample carpet sweeper with him. When he said that he had come to see her daughter, “Miss Stella,” she bridled. Miss Stella, it appeared, was not at her office in the City that morning. She was not very well.

Richardson expressed concern, but explained that his business would not take him more than three minutes if she was well enough to come down.

“Can't I take her a message?” asked the mother.

“I would rather see her myself if you don't mind. It is about something rather private,” explained Richardson.

“Well, I'll go and see,” said the mother reluctantly.

Left alone, Richardson sniffed the air. The mother did not look like a woman who smoked good cigarettes, yet there, in the fireplace, lay a half-smoked cigarette with a gold tip, still emitting the incense that perfumed the room. He rose and approached the fireplace. On the shelf above it, among the dried flowers and the pottery, lay a cigarette case bearing the initials “A. H.” His spirits rose at the sound of a light step running down the stairs. He had just time to get back to his chair when the door opened and a tall, fair girl entered the room. She was very pretty, and if she had risen from a bed of sickness, she must have gone to bed in a very neat costume and with her nose delicately powdered.

“You wish to speak to me?”

Richardson had risen to his feet. “Yes, Miss Martin. May we sit down?” Whoever he might be, there seemed to be nothing terrifying about this mysterious visitor. She sat down.

“May I smoke a cigarette,” he asked pleasantly, “or does your mother object to the smell of tobacco? Oh, no, I see that she smokes too.” He pointed to the half-smoked cigarette in the fender. “It was alight when I first came into the room. I see that she smokes better cigarettes than mine.” He saw her change colour, and her eyes grew wide with alarm. She laughed nervously. “She didn't expect a visitor,” she said lamely.

“No, and I must apologize for bursting in upon you like this. The fact is that I have been asked by the Harrises to find their son, Arthur, who left home the day before yesterday without saying where he was going. They are in great trouble about him—especially his poor mother.” This was a random shot, but it seemed to tell. Richardson had an intuition that Arthur was the kind of youth that owed his instability of character to the indulgence of a doting mother.

“Why do you come to me? How should I know where he is?”

“I came to you because you often meet him and I thought he was sure to write to you. I think, Miss Martin, that you have seen him since he left home.”

She flushed angrily. “What makes you think that?”

“Only because his cigarette case is lying on that mantelpiece.” This remark threw her into confusion.

“I don't see what right you have to question me like this,” she stammered. “My only right is the anxiety of his poor mother. For all she knows he may have been run over and killed by a motorcar. Think of that poor woman not sleeping at night for anxiety about him!”

“Oh, he's all right.”

“It will relieve her very much to know that you have told me this.”

“Oh, you mustn't tell her that I said so. It would cause endless trouble.” There was real alarm in her tone. “Promise me that you won't.” She laid her hand on his arm in her anxiety.

“I need say nothing at all about you if you can manage for me to speak to him for a moment.” Richardson knew now that he was actually in the house.

“I know how I can communicate with him. If you could come back at about five o'clock, I could give you his answer.”

“That would make me rather late, Miss Martin. Can't you make it earlier? It's nearly twelve now. Shall we say half-past two?”

“Very well, half-past two—that is, if I can find him in the time.” She seemed nervously anxious to get away.

Richardson rose. It was awkward having to go without his lunch, but duty was duty, and he did not intend to lose sight of the house for an instant in the intervening two hours and a half.

She came to the door with him to show him out. “Let me see, do I turn to the right or left?” he asked. “Is there a way out at the bottom of the road?”

“No, you can't get out that way,” she laughed. “There is only one way out of Rosewear Road. Turn to your left.”

He took off his hat in farewell and strode off to the left without looking back. What she had told him about Rosewear Road made his task easier. He had only to watch one end of the road and need not risk discovery by keeping the house in sight, and if the young man attempted to bolt he would be ready for him. He smiled to himself as he thought of the conversation now in full flow in No. 13 and hoped that the artless Stella would not be unduly blamed by the object of her affections. The foremen now began to pass him by twos and threes from the Arsenal to their homes for dinner. They seemed too hungry to notice him, or perhaps they took him for a young man waiting to walk out with a neighbour's daughter. After that the time hung heavily. When the foremen, full-fed and pipe in mouth, came back from dinner he avoided them by walking down the road in the opposite direction from the Arsenal.

At three minutes before the appointed time he rang the bell at No. 13. He must have been seen from the window, for the door was opened instantly, not by the mother this time, but by the daughter, who was in a nervous flutter.

“He thought it better to come back with me,” she whispered mendaciously. “He's in there!” She opened the sitting-room door for him and fled upstairs. Arthur Harris, looking like a condemned prisoner, rose from his chair.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Harris. You remember me? No? I was the constable who took you to the mortuary at the hospital. Let us sit down and talk things over comfortably.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not at all. I came down here to find you and bring you back to London. Your parents are in a great way about you. They think that you may have met with an accident.”

“I'm not going back.”

“Oh, come, Mr. Harris, there you're mistaken; you're coming back with me. In fact”—looking at his watch—”we're going to start in ten minutes.”

“Where are you taking me to?”

“To Marylebone police station to make a statement and then back to your home in Wigmore Street—at least, I hope so.”