Cleek, the Master Detective Part 32

"Move on, now--move on!" cautioned the constable on guard, waving her aside and making a clear pa.s.sage for the superintendent and his companion across the pavement and up the steps. And a moment later Cleek was in the house, in the morning-room, in the presence of Captain Harvey Glossop, his wife, and the young Duke of Heatherlands.

The lady was a pale, fragile-looking woman of about three-and-twenty, very beautiful, very well bred, low-voiced, and altogether charming. Her husband was some five or six years her senior, a genial, kindly man with a winning smile, an engaging personality, and the manners of one used to the good things of life and, like all people who really are used to them, making no boast of it and putting on no "side" whatsoever. As for the young duke--well, he was just an impetuous, hot-headed, hot-tongued, lovable boy, the kind of chap who, in a moment of temper, would swear to have your heart's blood, but, if you stumbled and fell the next moment, would risk breaking his neck to get to you and help you and offer you his last shilling to cab it home.

"Well, here I am, you see, Mr. Narkom," blurted out his impulsive Grace as the superintendent and Cleek came in. "If any of your lot want me they won't have to hunt me up and they won't find me funking it, no matter how black it looks for me. I didn't kill her, I didn't even get to see her; and anybody that says I did, lies--that's all!"

"My dear Heatherlands," protested the captain, "don't work yourself up into such a pitch of excitement. I don't suppose Mr. Narkom has come here to arrest you. It is just as black with regard to that mysterious Hindu fellow, remember. Perhaps a little blacker when you come to recall how suddenly and mysteriously he has disappeared. And, certainly, his motive looks quite as strong as yours."

"I haven't any motive--I never did have one, and I take it beastly unkind of you to say that, Glossop!" blurted out the young duke impetuously. "Just because I'm hard up is no reason why I should commit murder and robbery. What could I want with the Siva stones? I couldn't sell them, could I, marked things that every diamond dealer in the world knows? Oh, yes, I know what people say: I could have turned them over to the Hindu and claimed the reward; that perhaps I did and that that's why this particular Hindu has disappeared. But it's not true. I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't get into the room at all last night. And even if I had I couldn't have bolted it on the inside after I'd left it, could I? If you and your lot want me, Mr. Narkom, I'm here, and I'll face every charge they can bring against me."

"Pardon me, your Grace, but I'm not here for the purpose of apprehending anybody," replied Narkom suavely. "My errand is of a totally different sort, I a.s.sure you. Captain Glossop, allow me to make you acquainted with a great friend of mine, Mr. George Headland. Mr. Headland is an amateur investigator of criminal matters, and he has taken a fancy to look into the details of this one. It may be that he will stumble upon something of importance--who knows? And in such an affair as this I deem it best to leave no stone unturned, no chance untried."

"Quite so, Mr. Narkom, quite so," agreed the captain. "Mr. Headland, I am delighted to meet you, though, of course, I should have preferred to do so under happier circ.u.mstances."

"Thanks very much," said Cleek with an inane drawl, but a quick, searching look out of the corner of his eye at the young duke. "Awfully good of you to say so, I'm sure. Your Grace, pleased to meet you.

Charmed, Mrs. Glossop. Yes, thanks, I will have a cup of tea. So nice of you to suggest it."

"Must be rather interesting work, this looking into criminal matters on your own initiative, Mr. Headwood--pardon, Headland, is it? Do forgive me, but I have a most abominable memory for names," said the captain.

"Believe me, I shall be willing to give you any possible a.s.sistance that I can in the present unhappy case."

"Thanks--jolly kind of you, and I very much appreciate it, I a.s.sure you," returned Cleek in his best "blithering idiot" fashion. "Should be ever so much obliged if you'd--er--permit me to view the scene of the tragedy and the--er--body of the deceased, don't you know. Of course, Mr. Narkom has said I may, but--er--after all, an Englishman's house is his castle and all that, so it's only polite to ask."

"Oh, certainly, do so by all means, Mr. Headland. You will excuse my saying it, but I doubt if you will find any clues there, however, for the regular officials have already been over the ground."

"Searched the room, have they, in quest of the diamonds? Thieves do funny things sometimes, you know, and it's just possible that they got in a funk and hid the things instead of taking them away."

"Well, of all the blessed id----" began the young duke, looking over at him disgustedly; and then discreetly stopped and left the term unfinished.

"I fancy, my dear Headland," interposed Narkom, "I neglected to tell you that the captain had my men search the place from top to bottom, go through every cupboard, into every nook and corner, turn out the servants' boxes--even his own and Mrs. Glossop's, as well--so that it is certain the jewels could not have been concealed anywhere about the premises either by accident or design. Nothing was found--nothing. The Siva stones have utterly and completely disappeared."

"And no other jewels besides?"

"Not a solitary one, Mr. Headland."

"Rum sort of a thief, wasn't it, to cut off with only half the booty?

The d.u.c.h.ess must have had lots of other jewels and there were Mrs.

Glossop's, too. Those superb rings of yours, for instance, madam, fancy a burglar getting in and not paying his respects to those. Pardon me----" Her hand a-glitter with splendid flashing diamonds was resting on the edge of the tea table. He bent over and looked at them closely.

Naturally she resented this under the circ.u.mstances, but though her cheeks flushed she let the hand rest where it was until he had studied it to his heart's content.

"May I say, Mr. Headland, that all her Grace's jewels have been identified by her banker, to whose care the police have returned them,"

she said with just the shadow of an indignant note in her low, sweet voice. "These have been in my possession for years, thank you. A thousand people can testify to that; and the insinuation is not nice."

"My dear madam, I a.s.sure you I had not the slightest thought----"

"Very likely not. As a matter of fact, I don't see how you could, Mr.

Headland; but under these distressing and extraordinary circ.u.mstances it was an unhappy attention and a most suggestive one. Pray say no more about it. You are at liberty, Mr. Narkom, to show Mr. Headland over the house whenever he chooses to investigate it."

And as he chose to investigate it at that moment the superintendent led the way to the death chamber forthwith.

"I say, old chap, that was a bit thick, and no mistake," whispered Narkom as they went up the stairs. "To be talking about the dead woman's jewels and then to stoop and examine Mrs. Glossop's own--a woman worth millions!"

"Clear your mind of the idea that I meant to suggest anything of that sort at all, Mr. Narkom," Cleek replied. "It was the beauty of the rings themselves that appealed to me--that, and the wonder of the circ.u.mstances."

"Circ.u.mstances? What circ.u.mstances?"

"Two very extraordinary ones. First: why a woman of such evident taste, breeding, and position as Mrs. Glossop should choose to load her fingers with diamond rings in the daytime; and, second, why she should choose this particular day of all others to do so."

"Possibly she neglected to take them off when she went to bed last night and, in the excitement of the things which have happened since, has thought no more about them. But here's the room at last. Still on duty, I see, Hammond." This to the plain-clothes officer before the door of the death chamber. "Yes, going in; thanks. Come along, Headland."

Then the improvised door opened, closed again, and Cleek and the superintendent stood in the presence of it--the silent, immutable It which yesterday had been a living woman. Cleek went over and looked at the quiet figure, particularly at the wounds on the arms, both of them close to the shoulder, and immediately below the larger, muscle, then turned and looked round the room. It was richly appointed, indeed, the suite had been especially fitted up for her Grace's occupancy, and was, as might have been expected in such a house, in extremely good taste from the rich, dull-coloured Indian carpet to the French paper on the walls. This was a striped paper in two tones of white, one glazed slightly, the other dull, like two ribbons--a white velvet and a white silk one--drawn straight down over its surface from ceiling to floor at regular distances of half a yard apart. He admired that paper, and it interested him!

"Here, you see, old chap, not a possibility of anybody getting in or out save by the door which we ourselves have just entered," said Narkom, opening one door which led into a dressing-room, another leading to a s.p.a.cious and richly appointed sitting-room, and a third which gave access to a porcelain bath set in a marble-floored, marble-walled apartment lighted and aired by a window of painted gla.s.s. "All windows and all doors locked on the inside when the body was found, and everything as you see it now; no furniture upset, no sign of a struggle.

There is the bell-rope that was cut; there the noose that was made from it; and there on the dressing-table the bedroom candles that were found burning just as the maid left them when she went out and met the young duke coming up the stairs."

Cleek walked over and looked at the candles.

"If I remember correctly, Mr. Narkom," he said, "I believe you told me that her Grace retired to this room at half-past eleven, and that something like twelve or fifteen minutes later the young duke came up for the purpose of speaking to her. That would make it somewhere in the close neighbourhood of a quarter to twelve when the maid left her mistress; and it was three o'clock in the morning, was it not, when the murder was discovered? Hum-m-m! Singular, most singular, amazingly so!"

"What?"

"The condition of these two candles. Look at them," said he, taking one out of the silver holder and extending it for Narkom's examination. "One would suppose that candles which had been burning for three hours and a quarter would be fairly well consumed, Mr. Narkom; yet, look at these.

They are hardly an inch shorter than the regulation length, so that they cannot have burned for more than a quarter of an hour at most! Now, granting that the d.u.c.h.ess herself burnt them for ten minutes in undressing and imbibing her nightly whisky-and-water--and that would just about tally with the young duke's a.s.sertion that the door was locked and her Grace in bed when he reached the room--that would leave them to have been burning for just five minutes when the cook, G.o.dwin, says she discovered the light shining under the door and through the keyhole."

"By George, you're right. We must have a word with that cook, Cleek.

Either she lied about the time, or else---- Great Scott, man! What if she, that cook, that G.o.dwin woman, had a hand in it--was herself in league with the murderer--even let him out of the house before she gave the alarm? Good heaven, Cleek, we mustn't let that woman get away!"

"She won't--if she's guilty. I'll tell you that for certain if you can manage to find out what preparations, if any, have as yet been made for the d.u.c.h.ess's funeral."

"But, man alive, what can that have to do with it?"

"Perhaps a great deal; perhaps nothing at all. Just slip downstairs, will you, and, without giving the subject away, or mentioning anything about the candles, do a little quiet 'pumping' of the young duke. See if he knows, or has any plans. I seem to fancy that I have heard somewhere of a splendid mausoleum being built by the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Heatherlands and the young duke will know if it's so or not. Pump him, I'll stop here until you return."

It was a full twenty minutes before the superintendent got the information he wanted and came back with it.

"Well?" said Cleek, as he came in. "There is a mausoleum being built, is there not?"

"Yes. The murdered woman has been having it built for the past five or six months for the express purpose of having herself and her late husband entombed there, apart from all other Heatherlands and with all the pomp of dead royalty. The structure will not be completed for quite another half year. In the meantime, as this tragical affair has disorganised all arrangements and the body cannot be interred in the mausoleum until its completion, and it would be difficult to get an order to disinter it if it were once underground, Captain Glossop has consented to have it placed for a time in the new and as yet unused vault which he had erected last month in Brompton Cemetery."

"'A friend in need is a friend indeed,'" quoted Cleek sententiously; then, after a moment, "Mr. Narkom," he said.

"Yes, old chap?"

"Let's go down and have another cup of tea, I want to have a word or two with the young duke."

"My dear fellow! Good heaven, do you think----"

"No; I've got past 'thinking.' I know one thing, however; for I've been poking about while you were away. The cook's room is just over this one, but the cook didn't do it. A five-foot woman can't reach up and cut down eight and a half feet of bell-rope, and--look, see! She wouldn't be likely to do it with the blade of a safety razor if she could!"