The Dartmoor Enigma (25 page)

“No, sir; I haven't done that.”

“Well then, do it at once.”

“I will, sir, as soon as I have got a good description of the suspect from someone who knows him well. I learned only this morning that the man is on his way home from Borneo, and I know where he would go if he lands in England.”

“I won't ask you what his name is at this stage as long as I know that you are doing everything in your power to get hold of him. It is always better to leave the officer in charge of a case to work it in his own way, but I trust you not to do anything highhanded which may lead to newspaper criticism of this department. I would rather that you failed than that. What do you think about the case, Mr. Witchard?”

“I suppose that Mr. Richardson had better go on with it now that he has got as far as this, sir.”

“So do I. If he does pull it off it will make a stir. I'd like to ask you one more question, Mr. Richardson. In what walk of life is this suspect of yours?”

“He's an official of a prosperous gold-mining company in Borneo, sir.”

“Then be careful what you are doing, or we shall have all the financial papers on our track.”

Superintendent Witchard was more friendly as they went down the stairs together. “If I had known how far you have got on with the case I shouldn't have pitched into you about your expenses,” he said.

“As long as you're satisfied, Superintendent, I'll stand any amount of fault-finding that you like to administer.”

“I wonder that you didn't think of communicating with the Port Officers from the Special Branch. Send me the name and description of the man you want and I'll get out a circular, not only to our Port Officers on both sides of the Channel, but to the officers at the landing stations of the air lines as well.”

“You shall have it this evening, Mr. Witchard.”

Richardson looked into the sergeants' room on the ground floor to collect Jago. He beckoned him out into the passage. “Come along,” he said; “we've got to go back to Bromley as quick as we can.”

“To Bromley again?”

“Yes, I'll tell you why when we are in the train.”

B
EYOND CALLING
Jago shortly that they were going to Bromley to get a personal description of Frank Willis for circulation to the Port Officers Richardson was not communicative. He was considering how he could obtain such information from Sutcliffe without arousing his suspicion that the police were becoming interested in his future brother-in-law. He did not relish the duplicity of his role. Fortunately he had with him the group photograph of the Willis family.

He found Sutcliffe working on the ignition circuit of a car—a comparatively clean job.

“We've put your advertisement in,” said Richardson, “and I hope it'll bring some response from the boy, Reddy. I've been thinking over what you told me about the mine yesterday. Have you made up your mind to go out?”

“I haven't got further than talking over the matter with Miss Willis. She is all for seeing new countries and says she doesn't mind roughing it in the least; but I'm afraid of the climate for her, and I'm certainly not going out there alone.”

“Of course, in the case of your brother-in-law-to-be he seems none the worse.”

“No, but it's different for a man.”

“He's a good deal older than his brother and sister?”

“Yes; let me see, he must be thirty-eight.”

Richardson pulled out the group photograph from his pocket. “I suppose he's not like this photograph now, after spending all these years in the Far East.”

“He was very sunburnt when he came home before my conviction. I shouldn't think that he's altered much—these fair men don't show their age, least of all if they have an easy-going nature like Frank's. I did him a terrible injustice in my mind. I thought that he had robbed me of practically all I possessed and that he was the man who had been killed on Dartmoor. When you were trying to get a description of him to fit that fellow, I quite forgot to tell you that he had a pronounced limp which he got from the kick of a horse.”

“Well, I shall be very much interested to hear what you decide about going out. Of course you won't go until all this business has been cleared up and the money embezzled by Instone has been returned to its rightful owners. I shall be at the Yard for the next two or three days. Please telegraph to me if you get any answer from the boy Reddy. Good-bye for the present.”

On the way back to London, Richardson pulled out pencil and paper and began to draft a description of the man who was to be stopped at the ports. If his surmise was correct and Frank Willis was the man who had had the fatal encounter with Instone, he might be in England still, and therefore must be stopped at the ports in whichever direction he was going. His draft description ran as follows. “A man of 38, fair hair, good features, very sunburnt, about five foot nine, walks with a marked limp. Name, Frank Willis, but may be travelling under another name. This man should be stopped at the ports either when leaving England or returning, and escorted to the Superintendent, C.I.D. Department, New Scotland Yard.” He tossed this over to Jago and asked him to make a fair copy of it, for Jago had acquired the knack of writing legibly in the train.

When the description was completed, Richardson cut the group photograph in such a way that only the elder brother appeared in it. This he attached to the notice with a pin. While he was thus engaged, Jago spoke.

“I've been thinking a lot over this case of ours, Mr. Richardson. You don't think that Mr. Sutcliffe's elder brother, the tea merchant, of Mincing Lane, was the murderer? He had a motive of course, if he knew that Instone had robbed his brother and helped to get him sent to penal servitude.”

“That idea did cross my mind and I made some inquiries about him, but he is a man who would naturally go to the authorities instead of taking the law into his own hands. Still it was as well to be sure and I asked his chief clerk at Mincing Lane for the date on which his employer left England on his honeymoon. It was on September 26—three days before the murder.”

Arrived at Scotland Yard, Richardson went straight to Superintendent Witchard's room. “Here is the notice for the Port Officers, sir. I thought they would prepare a block from the photograph at the head of the notice.”

Witchard read the description with a frown. “It's not as detailed as I should like to have it, but I suppose it was all that you could get.”

“Yes, sir; I've never seen the man myself.”

“There's the limp, of course, but a man who is conscious of it and thinks that he is being scrutinized can generally disguise his limp for a few paces. He can't disguise his sunburn. Why do you say that he is to be stopped going either way? Do you mean that he may be in England at this moment?”

“Yes, sir, because if he committed the murder he must have been here on September 29. On the other hand, if he is arriving direct from Borneo, as may be the case, I'll have to look elsewhere for a man who had a motive for the murder.”

Richardson and Jago spent a busy day at the Central Office working up their notes of the Winterton case for the final report. Richardson was not very hopeful that Peter Sutcliffe's advertisement would bring any response, but at ten o'clock on the following morning the messenger laid a telegram on the Chief Inspector's table. Richardson tore it open and read:

He tossed it over to Jago and said, “Shove all those papers into the drawer, lock it and get your hat. This may turn out to be our great day.”

They tore across to Westminster Underground station and were at Victoria in five minutes, taking their tickets to Bromley.

No one came forward to meet them when they entered the garage. One or two of the garage hands looked up from their work and that was all. The murmur of voices could be heard from the far end of the shed where two or three derelict cars formed a screen to what might be going on behind them. It was not until they turned the corner of this screen that they saw Sutcliffe, who was sitting on the footboard of one of the cars conversing with a youth with sandy hair and a face thickly covered with freckles. As Sutcliffe left his seat the youth slunk away from him.

“Don't go away, Reddy. I haven't half done with you yet. I want to introduce you to two friends of mine, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Jago.”

The youth made an awkward bow, but Richardson insisted on shaking hands with him.

“This is John Reddy, Mr. Richardson—my former office boy and the best I ever had. I think I must have told you about him.”

“Are you the young man who was hiking over Dartmoor in the summer and recognized Mr. Instone in the bar parlour of the Duchy Hotel?” asked Richardson.

“Yes,” said Sutcliffe,” he's just been telling me about it.”

“And afterwards you came to Winterton, and when you were told that Mr. Instone was dead you went away without asking any questions. You see, I know all about it,” said Richardson with a smile. “Come, come, there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I just happened to be in the neighbourhood,” said the youth.

“Look here, Reddy; you used not to be like this when I knew you at Bristol. Why not tell these gentlemen the whole story and keep nothing back. You see, it will all come out in the end, and if you have kept things back you will look rather foolish. People will think you have some motive for hiding the truth,” said Sutcliffe.

The boy looked as if it would take very little to make him burst into tears. “I don't want to keep anything back,” he blurted out.

“Well then, you knew that Instone was robbing me behind my back?”

“I didn't know that for certain, but I didn't trust him, and when I saw him on Dartmoor and the inn-keeper told me his name was Dearborn, I felt sure that something was wrong.”

Richardson's first instinct was to change the subject and give the boy time to recover himself. “When you left Bristol you went to work at Mr. Sutcliffe's in Mincing Lane, didn't you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I didn't much like the work, and of course when a better job was offered me at a shipping agency Mr. Sutcliffe advised me to take it. He was very nice about it.”

“You never thought then that the change would bring you into touch again with Mr. Frank Willis, did you?”

The boy gaped at him with round eyes. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Surely you remember that day at the docks when you were watching the passengers from the Dutch liner coming down the gangway. It gave you quite a start to see Mr. Willis among them. He had to pass you on the way to the Customs shed. That was the moment you spoke to him and asked him whether he had forgotten you.”

The youth's face had changed to a ghastly pallor.

“Let me see,” went on Richardson confidently; “I think I can give you the exact date if you have forgotten it. It was on the 26th or 27th of September.”

Speaking in a low voice, John Reddy said, “If you know so much about it as that, I don't see why you want to question me about it.”

“Don't you? Why, there are lots of things you can tell me that I don't know—for instance, I don't know where it was that you met Mr. Willis in the evening and told him all about Mr. Instone living at Winterton under a false name and…”

“It was at the Charing Cross Hotel, the same evening, if you want to know.”

“I thought it must have been there. And he told you that he had never trusted Instone and that he had more than half a mind to run down to Dartmoor and have it out with him; and you told him that you had heard from the innkeeper at Duketon that Instone was living at Winterton; that he had bought a granite quarry near Moorstead and that he motored out to it two or three times a week and generally stopped for tea at the Duchy Hotel on his way back. He said that it would give the man the shock of his life if he were to wait in the road for him and stop his car and then have it out with him.” John Reddy nodded.

“Well, now it's your turn to go on with the story. Didn't Mr. Willis say that he would do this before going home to his friends in Bromley, because he would like to get the thing off his mind before he saw them? Well then, I'm going to take down a statement from you which you will sign. You needn't be afraid; it's not going to land you in any trouble.”

“But…”

“Oh, I know what you're going to say. You're going to tell me that it would be a breach of faith with Mr. Willis, who is trusting you, but don't let that affect you at all; it's your duty to tell all you know, and that's a higher duty than any promise you may have made to Mr. Willis. You know his address?”

The boy was silent.

“Come,” said Sutcliffe. “You'll be doing more good to Mr. Willis by telling the whole truth than by letting it be dragged out of you like this. Of course you know his address—you're corresponding with him now.”

“His address is the Hotel Terminus, St. Lazare, Paris; that's where I write to him.”

“I can't understand why he doesn't come over,” said Sutcliffe.

“It's on account of what happened on September 29,” said Reddy reluctantly.

“Oh, we know what happened,” said Richardson; “and we've got the stick that Mr. Willis broke over Instone's head.”

Reddy fired up. “I can see,” he said, “that you believe it was a murder. It was nothing of the kind. Instone attacked Mr. Willis first and he was unarmed except for that stick. He had to defend himself.”

“And then he asked you to run down to Winterton again and find out whether Instone was much hurt,” said Richardson, “and you went down and asked a gentleman the way to ‘Mr. Dearborn's' house, and he said that you were too late because Dearborn was dead. That was what made you go straight back to London and send the news to Mr. Willis in Paris, and he's been staying there ever since.”