He warned Craddock, however, that a definite answer was doubtful. The area in question had not only been occupied by the Germans at almost exactly that time, but subsequently that part of France had suffered severe war damage at the time of the invasion. Many buildings and records had been destroyed.
“But rest assured, my dear colleague, we shall do our best.”
With this, he and Craddock took leave of each other.
III
On Craddock’s return Sergeant Wetherall was waiting to report with gloomy relish:
“Accommodation address, sir—that’s what 126 Elvers Crescent is. Quite respectable and all that.”
“Any identifications?”
“No, nobody could recognize the photograph as that of a woman who had called for letters, but I don’t think they would anyway—it’s a month ago, very near, and a good many people use the place. It’s actually a boarding-house for students.”
“She might have stayed there under another name.”
“If so, they didn’t recognize her as the original of the photograph.”
He added:
“We circularized the hotels—nobody registering as Martine Crackenthorpe anywhere. On receipt of your call from Paris, we checked up on Anna Stravinska. She was registered with other members of the company in a cheap hotel off Brook Green. Mostly theatricals there. She cleared out on the night of Thursday 19th after the show. No further record.”
Craddock nodded. He suggested a line of further inquiries—though he had little hope of success from them.
After some thought, he rang up Wimborne, Henderson and Carstairs and asked for an appointment with Mr. Wimborne.
In due course, he was ushered into a particularly airless room where Mr. Wimborne was sitting behind a large old-fashioned desk covered with bundles of dusty-looking papers. Various deed boxes labelled Sir John ffouldes, dec., Lady Derrin, George Rowbottom, Esq., ornamented the walls; whether as relics of a bygone era or as part of present-day legal affairs, the inspector did not know.
Mr. Wimborne eyed his visitor with the polite wariness characteristic of a family lawyer towards the police.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“This letter…” Craddock pushed Martine’s letter across the table. Mr. Wimborne touched it with a distasteful finger but did not pick it up. His colour rose very slightly and his lips tightened.
“Quite so,” he said; “quite so! I received a letter from Miss Emma Crackenthorpe yesterday morning, informing me of her visit to Scotland Yard and of—ah—all the circumstances. I may say that I am at a loss to understand—quite at a loss—why I was not consulted about this letter at the time of its arrival! Most extraordinary! I should have been informed immediately….”
Inspector Craddock repeated soothingly such platitudes as seemed best calculated to reduce Mr. Wimborne to an amenable frame of mind.
“I’d no idea that there was ever any question of Edmund’s having married,” said Mr. Wimborne in an injured voice.
Inspector Craddock said that he supposed—in war time—and left it to trail away vaguely.
“War time!” snapped Mr. Wimborne with waspish acerbity. “Yes, indeed, we were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at the outbreak of war and there was a direct hit on the house next door, and a great number of our records were destroyed. Not the really important documents, of course; they had been removed to the country for safety. But it caused a great deal of confusion. Of course, the Crackenthorpe business was in my father’s hands at that time. He died six years ago. I dare say he may have been told about this so-called marriage of Edmund’s—but on the face of it, it looks as though that marriage, even if contemplated, never took place, and so, no doubt, my father did not consider the story of any importance. I must say, all this sounds very fishy to me. This coming forward, after all these years, and claiming a marriage and a legitimate son. Very fishy indeed. What proofs had she got, I’d like to know?”
“Just so,” said Craddock. “What would her position, or her son’s position be?”
“The idea was, I suppose, that she would get the Crackenthorpes to provide for her and for the boy.”
“Yes, but I meant, what would she and the son be entitled to, legally speaking—if she could prove her claim?”
“Oh, I see.” Mr. Wimborne picked up his spectacles which he had laid aside in his irritation, and put them on, staring through them at Inspector Craddock with shrewd attention. “Well, at the moment, nothing. But if she could prove that the boy was the son of Edmund Crackenthorpe, born in lawful wedlock, then the boy would be entitled to his share of Josiah Crackenthorpe’s trust on the death of Luther Crackenthorpe. More than that, he’d inherit Rutherford Hall, since he’s the son of the eldest son.”
“Would anyone want to inherit the house?”
“To live in? I should say, certainly not. But that estate, my dear Inspector, is worth a considerable amount of money. Very considerable. Land for industrial and building purposes. Land which is now in the heart of Brackhampton. Oh, yes, a very considerable inheritance.”
“If Luther Crackenthorpe dies, I believe you told me that Cedric gets it?”
“He inherits the real estate—yes, as the eldest living son.”
“Cedric Crackenthorpe, I have been given to understand, is not interested in money?”
Mr. Wimborne gave Craddock a cold stare.
“Indeed? I am inclined, myself, to take statements of such a nature with what I might term a grain of salt. There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.”
Mr. Wimborne obviously derived a certain satisfaction from this remark.
Inspector Craddock hastened to take advantage of this ray of sunshine.
“Harold and Alfred Crackenthorpe,” he ventured, “seem to have been a good deal upset by the arrival of this letter?”
“Well they might be,” said Mr. Wimborne. “Well they might be.”
“It would reduce their eventual inheritance?”
“Certainly. Edmund Crackenthorpe’s son—always presuming there is a son—would be entitled to a fifth share of the trust money.”
“That doesn’t really seem a very serious loss?”
Mr. Wimborne gave him a shrewd glance.
“It is a totally inadequate motive for murder, if that is what you mean.”
“But I suppose they’re both pretty hard up,” Craddock murmured.
He sustained Mr. Wimborne’s sharp glance with perfect impassivity.
“Oh! So the police have been making inquiries? Yes, Alfred is almost incessantly in low water. Occasionally he is very flush of money for a short time—but it soon goes. Harold, as you seem to have discovered, is at present somewhat precariously situated.”
“In spite of his appearance of financial prosperity?”
“Façade. All façade! Half these city concerns don’t even know if they’re solvent or not. Balance sheets can be made to look all right to the inexpert eye. But when the assets that are listed aren’t really assets—when those assets are trembling on the brink of a crash—where are you?”
“Where, presumably, Harold Crackenthorpe is, in bad need of money.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have got it by strangling his late brother’s widow,” said Mr. Wimborne. “And nobody’s murdered Luther Crackenthorpe which is the only murder that would do the family any good. So, really, Inspector, I don’t quite see where your ideas are leading you?”
The worst of it was, Inspector Craddock thought, that he wasn’t very sure himself.
Fifteen
I
Inspector Craddock had made an appointment with Harold Crackenthorpe at his office, and he and Sergeant Wetherall arrived there punctually. The office was on the fourth floor of a big block of City offices. Inside everything showed prosperity and the acme of modern business taste.
A neat young woman took his name, spoke in a discreet murmur through a telephone, and then, rising, showed them i
nto Harold Crackenthorpe’s own private office.
Harold was sitting behind a large leather-topped desk and was looking as impeccable and self-confident as ever. If, as the inspector’s private knowledge led him to surmise, he was close upon Queer Street, no trace of it showed.
He looked up with a frank welcoming interest.
“Good morning, Inspector Craddock. I hope this means that you have some definite news for us at last?”
“Hardly that, I am afraid, Mr. Crackenthorpe. It’s just a few more questions I’d like to ask.”
“More questions? Surely by now we have answered everything imaginable.”
“I dare say it feels like that to you, Mr. Crackenthorpe, but it’s just a question of our regular routine.”
“Well, what is it this time?” He spoke impatiently.
“I should be glad if you could tell me exactly what you were doing on the afternoon and evening of 20th December last—say between the hours of 3 p.m. and midnight.”
Harold Crackenthorpe went an angry shade of plum red.
“That seems to be a most extraordinary question to ask me. What does it mean, I should like to know?”
Craddock smiled gently.
“It just means that I should like to know where you were between the hours of 3 p.m. and midnight on Friday, 20th December.”
“Why?”
“It would help to narrow things down.”
“Narrow them down? You have extra information, then?”
“We hope that we’re getting a little closer, sir.”
“I’m not at all sure that I ought to answer your question. Not, that is, without having my solicitor present.”
“That, of course, is entirely up to you,” said Craddock. “You are not bound to answer any questions, and you have a perfect right to have a solicitor present before you do so.”
“You are not—let me be quite clear—er—warning me in any way?”
“Oh, no, sir.” Inspector Craddock looked properly shocked. “Nothing of that kind. The questions I am asking you, I am asking several other people as well. There’s nothing directly personal about this. It’s just a matter of necessary eliminations.”
“Well, of course— I’m anxious to assist in any way I can. Let me see now. Such a thing isn’t easy to answer off hand, but we’re very systematic here. Miss Ellis, I expect, can help.”
He spoke briefly into one of the telephones on his desk and almost immediately a streamlined young woman in a well-cut black suit entered with a notebook.
“My secretary, Miss Ellis, Inspector Craddock. Now, Miss Ellis, the inspector would like to know what I was doing on the afternoon and evening of—what was the date?”
“Friday, 20th December.”
“Friday, 20th December. I expect you will have some record.”
“Oh, yes.” Miss Ellis left the room, returned with an office memorandum calendar and turned the pages.
“You were in the office on the morning of 20th December. You had a conference with Mr. Goldie about the Cromartie merger, you lunched with Lord Forthville at the Berkeley—”
“Ah, it was that day, yes.”
“You returned to the office about 3 o’clock and dictated half a dozen letters. You then left to attend Sotheby’s sale rooms where you were interested in some rare manuscripts which were coming up for sale that day. You did not return to the office again, but I have a note to remind you that you were attending the Catering Club dinner that evening.” She looked up interrogatively.
“Thank you, Miss Ellis.”
Miss Ellis glided from the room.
“That is all quite clear in my mind,” said Harold. “I went to Sotheby’s that afternoon but the items I wanted there went for too high a price. I had tea in a small place in Jermyn Street—Russell’s, I think, it was called. I dropped into a News Theatre for about half an hour or so, then went home—I live at 43 Cardigan Gardens. The Catering Club dinner took place at seven-thirty at Caterer’s Hall, and after it I returned home to bed. I think that should answer your questions.”
“That’s all very clear, Mr. Crackenthorpe. What time was it when you returned home to dress?”
“I don’t think I can remember exactly. Soon after six, I should think.”
“And after your dinner?”
“It was, I think, half past eleven when I got home.”
“Did your manservant let you in? Or perhaps Lady Alice Crackenthorpe—”
“My wife, Lady Alice, is abroad in the South of France and has been since early December. I let myself in with my latch key.”
“So there is no one who can vouch for your returning home when you say you did?”
Harold gave him a cold stare.
“I dare say the servants heard me come in. I have a man and wife. But, really, Inspector—”
“Please, Mr. Crackenthorpe, I know these kind of questions are annoying, but I have nearly finished. Do you own a car?”
“Yes, a Humber Hawk.”
“You drive it yourself?”
“Yes. I don’t use it much except at weekends. Driving in London is quite impossible nowadays.”
“I presume you use it when you go down to see your father and sister in Brackhampton?”
“Not unless I am going to stay there for some length of time. If I just go down for the night—as, for instance, to the inquest the other day—I always go by train. There is an excellent train service and it is far quicker than going by car. The car my sister hires meets me at the station.”
“Where do you keep your car?”
“I rent a garage in the mews behind Cardigan Gardens. Any more questions?”
“I think that’s all for now,” said Inspector Craddock, smiling and rising. “I’m very sorry for having to bother you.”
When they were outside, Sergeant Wetherall, a man who lived in a state of dark suspicions of all and sundry, remarked meaningly:
“He didn’t like those questions—didn’t like them at all. Put out, he was.”
“If you have not committed a murder, it naturally annoys you if it seems someone thinks that you have,” said Inspector Craddock mildly. “It would particularly annoy an ultra respectable man like Harold Crackenthorpe. There’s nothing in that. What we’ve got to find out now is if anyone actually saw Harold Crackenthorpe at the sale that afternoon, and the same applies to the tea shop place. He could easily have travelled by the 4:33, pushed the woman out of the train and caught a train back to London in time to appear at the dinner. In the same way he could have driven his car down that night, moved the body to the sarcophagus and driven back again. Make inquiries in the mews.”
“Yes, sir. Do you think that’s what he did do?”
“How do I know?” asked Inspector Craddock. “He’s a tall dark man. He could have been on that train and he’s got a connection with Rutherford Hall. He’s a possible suspect in this case. Now for Brother Alfred.”
II
Alfred Crackenthorpe had a flat in West Hampstead, in a big modern building of slightly jerry-built type with a large courtyard in which the owners of flats parked their cars with a certain lack of consideration for others.
The flat was the modern built-in type, evidently rented furnished. It had a long plywood table that led down from the wall, a divan bed, and various chairs of improbable proportions.
Alfred Crackenthorpe met them with engaging friendliness but was, the inspector thought, nervous.
“I’m intrigued,” he said. “Can I offer you a drink, Inspector Craddock?” He held up various bottles invitingly.
“No, thank you, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”
“As bad as that?” He laughed at his own little joke, then asked what it was all about.
Inspector Craddock said his little piece.
“What was I doing on the afternoon and evening of 20th December. How should I know? Why, that’s—what—over three weeks ago.”
“Your brother Harold has been able to tell us very exactly.”
“Broth
er Harold, perhaps. Not Brother Alfred.” He added with a touch of something—envious malice possibly: “Harold is the successful member of the family—busy, useful, fully employed—a time for everything, and everything at that time. Even if he were to commit a—murder, shall we say?—it would be carefully timed and exact.”
“Any particular reason for using that example?”
“Oh, no. It just came into my mind—as a supreme absurdity.”
“Now about yourself.”
Alfred spread out his hands.
“It’s as I tell you—I’ve no memory for times or places. If you were to say Christmas Day now—then I should be able to answer you—there’s a peg to hang it on. I know where I was Christmas Day. We spend that with my father at Brackhampton. I really don’t know why. He grumbles at the expense of having us—and would grumble that we never came near him if we didn’t come. We really do it to please my sister.”
“And you did it this year?”
“Yes.”
“But unfortunately your father was taken ill, was he not?”
Craddock was pursuing a sideline deliberately, led by the kind of instinct that often came to him in his profession.
“He was taken ill. Living like a sparrow in that glorious cause of economy, sudden full eating and drinking had its effect.”
“That was all it was, was it?”
“Of course. What else?”
“I gathered that his doctor was—worried.”
“Ah, that old fool Quimper,” Alfred spoke quickly and scornfully. “It’s no use listening to him, Inspector. He’s an alarmist of the worst kind.”
“Indeed? He seemed a rather sensible kind of man to me.”
“He’s a complete fool. Father’s not really an invalid, there’s nothing wrong with his heart, but he takes in Quimper completely. Naturally, when father really felt ill, he made a terrific fuss, and had Quimper going and coming, asking questions, going into everything he’d eaten and drunk. The whole thing was ridiculous!” Alfred spoke with unusual heat.
Craddock was silent for a moment or two, rather effectively. Alfred fidgeted, shot him a quick glance, and then said petulantly: