White Wig Page 5

  ‘The whole thing reached a crisis when we were faced with a distraint summons for rent, and I was pretty desperate. Neither of us had had anything to eat for a day and a half, and I didn’t know what to do. Then I met a chap I’d known before the war. He was an engineer, like myself, and instead of fighting, stayed at home and made money. Although I hated doing it, I asked him if he could help. I won’t tell you what he said, because it makes me see red now even to think of it, but I knew where he lived and I made up my mind to burgle his place that night.’

  He paused and licked his lips. ‘I was such a fine burglar,’ he went on, ‘that I was caught in the act and got two years. Lonsdale heard of it, and came and looked after my mother while I was inside. He’d been luckier than I and got back his original job. When I came out he told me he’d saved a bit of money and suggested that we should become partners in a bus. I was to do the driving and he was to look after the fares. That’s all.’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘I see,’ said Paul. ‘You don’t appear to be a very hardened criminal, Mace. Did you ever hear Lonsdale mention his parents?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I believe they both died when he was very young.’

  ‘You never heard him mention the name of Leslie Craven?’

  ‘No, never. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name before.’

  ‘I think that’s all I want to ask you at the moment,’ said Paul.

  Mace looked enquiringly at Mr. Robin. ‘What about you? Is there anything I can tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not for the moment,’ answered the inspector. ‘Maybe I’ll have a lot to ask you later.’ He signalled to the constable, and Mace was led away. ‘Well, I hope you learned what you wanted,’ he granted when the prisoner had gone. ‘Personally, I’m going to have that story of his verified.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that he was speaking the truth,’ said Paul. ‘He gave me that impression.’

  ‘You’re too impressionable, that’s your trouble. What are you going to do now? I’m going back to town.’

  ‘A very good idea,’ replied Paul. ‘Bob can drive you back.’

  Bob looked up in surprise. ‘Aren’t you coming too?’ he asked.

  Paul shook his head. ‘Not till later, old chap. I’m going for a walk. I haven’t had a lot of exercise lately, and I think a walk will do me good.’

  Mr. Robin sniffed. ‘Perhaps you’ll run into the man with the red wig,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘Perhaps I shall,’ answered Paul good-humouredly. ‘If I do, I’ll ring you up.’

  He filled his pipe, lit it, and set out at an easy pace, allowing his thoughts to come as they would. Presently he found himself mentally repeating the name Leslie Craven over and over again. After a time, subconsciously other names became attached to it. Harry Mace. Dick Lonsdale. Richard Warne Lonsdale. Mace. Lonsdale. Warne. Craven. Round and round in his brain they went, monotonously, sometimes in one order, sometimes another. They seemed to be knocking steadily at the door of his mind, asking to be allowed to enter and tell a story.

  He stopped suddenly with an exclamation. ‘I believe I’ve got it!’ he said aloud.

  The vague memory that had been bothering him suddenly materialised into crystal clearness. Lonsdale. Warne. Craven! There in those three names lay a clue. He conjured up before his eyes a faded newspaper cutting, and the picture was so vivid that he could almost imagine he was reading it. It was an account of the robbery of the Southern Bank of Canada by three men, and the names of the three men had been Lonsdale, Warne, and Craven. It had been exceedingly well-planned, and should have succeeded, but the police had got wind of the affair at the last moment. They had arrived on the scene after the men had committed the robbery and were leaving the bank. There had been a fight, during which Warne and Lonsdale had escaped with the proceeds of the robbery. Craven, however, had been taken, and in the struggle had killed one of the policemen. He had been tried for the crime, found guilty, and hanged.

  Paul racked his brains to try and recollect some further details, but without success. He made up his mind, however, to look up that faded newspaper cutting as soon as he got back to Hampstead.

  He had reached this decision, and was in the act of climbing over a stile, when his eyes were attracted by a peculiar figure in the field which ran parallel with the one in which he was himself. It was the figure of a woman, and she was walking rapidly down a path that crossed the field at right angles. A thick-set hedge intervened, and but for the fact that he had mounted the stile he would not have been able to see her at all. But now as he looked he felt a sudden quickening of his pulse, and into his mind came Dick Lonsdale’s description of the female passenger who was supposed to have left the bus at Homesdale Road.

  ‘She was tall, gaunt, and angular, with huge feet encased in hobnail boots, and she carried in her hand a knotted ash-stick.’

  Paul gazed after the rapidly vanishing figure. The description fitted. Had he by sheer chance found the one person who could supply him with vital information concerning that fatal night?

  10

  Emily Boulter, Laundress

  Paul Rivngton made up his mind to keep the woman in sight. Dropping down on the other side of the stile, he hurried along the field path, trying to find a break in the hedge. He failed to find even the smallest gap, and by the time he had reached the end of the field and found a gate which gave onto the path along which the woman had been walking, she was out of sight.

  He came to a halt and looked around him rather irritably. Apparently he had lost her after all. He was trying to make up his mind as to his next move when he noticed a little way down the road, on the opposite side to where he was standing, a small shop which, from the sign on the window, offered tea at a modest price.

  Paul felt that a cup of tea was just what he needed at that moment, and crossing the road, he entered the shop. A bright middle-aged woman, obviously the proprietor, came forward and took his order, instructed someone in a back room to carry it out, and returned to her place behind the counter. While he waited for his tea, Paul began to draw her into a conversation. He found that this was by no means a difficult matter. After a few preliminary remarks about the weather, he introduced the subject of the bus murder. Immediately she became voluble.

  ‘It’s what you’d expect ridin’ in one of them pirate buses,’ she averred. ‘’Ow are you to know who the driver or the conductor might be? On the ordinary buses it’s different — a man ’as to produce references before he gets his job. But anybody can buy an omnibus and murder defenceless people.’

  Paul pretended to agree with her, and then suggested that as there were so many gipsies in the neighbourhood, perhaps one of them had had something to do with the crime.

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘They’re an ’armless lot, really. They might steal something if they got the chance, but they’re too scared of the police to do anythin’ really bad. An’ most of them are better off than you think. Why, one way and another, they make a good living.’

  ‘I saw one this afternoon that I shouldn’t like to meet on a dark night,’ remarked Paul as he poured out the tea which a girl of about sixteen placed before him. ‘She was as big as a guardsman, and carried an ash-stick that looked as though it could do considerable damage to one’s skull if its owner were not in a good humour. She was a gaunt, angular woman, and wore a pair of men’s hobnail boots. Not at all a prepossessing specimen.’

  A smile of amusement crept across the woman’s rosy face. ‘That sounds like Emily Boulter,’ she said. ‘But she ain’t no gipsy, sir. She’s a laundress, and a very good laundress too.’

  ‘I don’t think the woman I’m speaking about is a laundress,’ said Paul, shaking his head. ‘At any rate, I certainly wouldn’t trust her with mine.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get the chance, sir,’ was the reply, ‘if it was Emily Boulter. She’s worked for certain families in this town for more than thirty years. If any of ’em dies or
moves away, she’ll take on a fresh customer, but I’ve ’eard tell there’s a waiting list a yard or more long. You see,’ she explained, ‘there ain’t many people now, what with all this chemical cleaning, that’ll take the time and trouble to launder like Emily does.’

  ‘She certainly sounds an interesting character. Where does she live?’

  ‘She lives just down the road and round the corner in Prospect Place. There’s a notice on ’er front door. But if you’re thinkin’ of tryin’ to get ’er to do any work for you, sir, I’m afraid you’ll only be wastin’ your time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking her after what you’ve told me,’ said Paul, and he changed the subject.

  He finished his tea, paid the small bill, and, leaving the teashop, set out to find Prospect Place. He had no difficulty in doing this, for it was not a stone’s throw away, and about halfway down on the right-hand side in a row of small cottages he saw on one of the doors the brass plate he was seeking. It was so well-polished that the name was almost obliterated by rubbing. But Paul could just make out the words ‘Emily Boulter’, and beneath in smaller letters ‘Laundress’.

  He passed by, taking stock of the house as he did so, and continued to the end of the road. He found that the place was a cul-de-sac blocked at the end by a large garage. The brightness of the day had clouded over. Big rain clouds were piling themselves over the blue of the sky, and even as he began to retrace his steps he felt a splash on the back of one of his hands. It was followed by another and another, and then suddenly down came the rain in earnest.

  He opened the small gate of the house in which Miss Emily Boulter presumably laundered, and, walking up the short path, knocked on the door.

  ‘Pull the string and come in,’ commanded a deep voice, rather to his astonishment.

  Glancing down, Paul noticed a small end of string protruding from the letter-box, and giving it a tug, he heard the click of a latch. He pushed the door, which opened under his hand to reveal a small sitting-room, barely furnished but scrupulously clean, in which the gaunt woman he had seen crossing the field was standing, busy with an iron and an ironing board.

  Paul closed the door behind him. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

  Emily Boulter looked him up and down in the light of an incandescent gas-burner that projected from the wall. She did so deliberately, the squint in her eyes giving her face a curiously ferocious and malevolent expression. And then without speaking, she went on with her ironing.

  Paul felt a little embarrassed and rather like a small boy who had done something wrong and been found out. He cleared his throat and sought an opening. ‘I’m very sorry to interrupt you —’ he began.

  ‘You’re not!’ said the strange woman without looking up from her work. ‘What do you want?’

  He decided that it was useless beating about the bush with this woman. ‘I’m a detective,’ he said bluntly. ‘My name is Rivington, and I’d like you to answer a few questions.’

  Emily Boulter carried her iron over to the fireplace, took another from a small gas-ring, and replaced it with the one that was growing cold. Bringing it back to the ironing board, she set it down on the stand and, putting her hands on her hips, regarded him frowningly. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘sit down and explain yourself!’

  Paul sat down.

  ‘Now, what is it you want to know?’ she asked. ‘And be quick, because I’ve got a lot of work to do!’

  ‘The first thing I want to know,’ said Paul, ‘is why, when you were advertised for, you didn’t come forward and say what you knew about the murder?’

  ‘What murder?’ She stared at him unflinchingly as she put the surprising question to him.

  He scrutinised her carefully. She was either completely sincere in her innocence or an excellent actress, and he couldn’t make up his mind which. ‘The night before last,’ he said, speaking very deliberately, ‘a man was murdered while travelling in a pirate bus between Charing Cross and the Barley Mow. You must have seen an account of it in the papers.’

  ‘I never have a paper,’ she replied simply. ‘I can’t read!’ Her voice held a ring of truth, but her face was still immovable.

  ‘But surely someone must have mentioned the crime to you?’ said the amazed Paul.

  She shook her head. ‘I seldom meet anyone, and I never gossip. I’m far too busy.’

  ‘But you were on the bus — the Blue Moon — the night before last?’ he said.

  ‘I got on a bus, yes,’ she replied, ‘but whether it was called the Blue Moon or not I couldn’t tell you. I went to Lewisham shopping, and I went to a picture theatre after.’

  ‘And you got on the bus at the Obelisk?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘After the bus left Bromley Station, how many passengers were there inside?’

  ‘Me, and an old man who was sitting up near the front,’ she answered without hesitation.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I only saw his back. I wouldn’t know him again if I saw him.’

  ‘You won’t see him again,’ said Paul quietly. ‘He was the man who was killed.’

  The rain was pattering on the windows, and the wind, which had suddenly risen, rattled the old frames and, creeping in through the chinks, fluttered the gas mantle, causing the flame to flicker. It threw queer shadows across the face of Emily Boulter with its squinting eyes, and made her look like some evil witch of old as her deep harsh voice asked: ‘Who killed him? The conductor or the man with the onyx ring?’

  11

  The Onyx Ring

  In that shabbily furnished room with its grotesque shadows, a silence fell.

  ‘I think,’ Paul said, looking steadily at the strange woman opposite him, ‘that it was the man with the onyx ring.’

  She gave a quick, sharp nod. ‘I think you’re right,’ she replied with conviction.

  He leaned forward eagerly. ‘Tell me why you think that?’ he said.

  ‘Because,’ said Emily Boulter, ‘a man who was about to do murder wouldn’t have been so interested in my feet as that conductor was!’

  Paul smiled as she lifted the iron from the gas-ring and continued her work.

  ‘That is rather a pertinent observation,’ he said. ‘Now will you tell me all you can concerning this man who wore the onyx ring?’

  She turned over the flimsy garment she was carefully ironing before replying. ‘It’s little enough. I only saw him for a few minutes. As like as not I shouldn’t have noticed him at all, only I thought he must be soft to ride outside on such a night.’

  ‘What was he like?’ asked Paul as she paused.

  ‘His face was rather pale,’ she replied, ‘and he had on a soft hat pulled down over his eyes. There was a patch of white hair showing at one side, and his eyebrows were white and rather bushy. Instead of getting off the bus as I thought, he made to go inside, and it was then that I saw the ring.’

  ‘Which finger was it on?’

  ‘The wedding finger.’

  ‘What kind of ring was it?’

  ‘It was a funny ring; that’s what made me notice it. The gold band was broad and the stone was cut in the shape of a cross.’

  ‘Then it shouldn’t be difficult to recognise,’ murmured Paul.

  ‘You couldn’t mistake it.’

  ‘Did you notice what the old man did when he got inside?’

  ‘He sat down on the opposite side of the gangway to the old gentleman,’ she answered, ‘and then the bell rang twice and I got off the bus just as it started, and hurried home.’

  ‘You didn’t look back?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it was as much as I could do to force my way along against the wind,’ she said.

  He was silent, and the woman went on with her ironing as though he wasn’t in the room at all.

  He had established one important point. The outside passenger had been alone with Hooper during the run from Mason’s Hill to Homesdale Road. Sufficient time for him to have committed the crime
and to spare.

  ‘There’s nothing else you can think of about this man’s appearance that would be likely to help in tracing him?’ he said at length.

  She thought for some time before she answered. ‘No,’ she said, and then: ‘Except that as he brushed past me to go inside, I noticed a funny smell like methylated spirit.’

  Paul’s eyes sparkled. ‘You’re sure of that?’ he asked eagerly.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. At first I thought he’d been drinking, then I was certain it wasn’t that kind of smell at all. Though it was like some kind of spirit.’

  Paul rose to his feet. ‘You’ve been a great help,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘and now I won’t disturb you any longer. Perhaps if there’s anything else I wish to ask you, I may come again?’

  Emily Boulter shook his hand with a grip that was like a man’s. ‘Come whenever you want to,’ she said. ‘If ever you think of living in Bromley, I’ll do your washing for you!’

  He took his departure, feeling rather as he might have felt had the King bestowed a decoration on him at Buckingham Palace.

  When he got to Hampstead, he searched through his books of press cuttings for the account of the robbery of the Southern Bank of Canada. He had some little difficulty in finding it, but eventually ran it to earth in a volume marked ‘Miscellaneous’. The cutting was yellow with age, and below it was another referring to the same matter. He carried the book over to the chair and settled himself comfortably.

  Both paragraphs were very short. The first one was a brief account of the robbery and the shooting of the police officer, and Paul found that his memory had not been at fault. Craven had been caught and arrested, but the other two, Warne and Lonsdale, had got away — and got away with the money — two hundred thousand dollars. The second cutting gave an account of Craven’s execution. The man had apparently gone to his death swearing vengeance against his two associates. There was nothing to say whether Warne and Lonsdale had ever been caught, or whether the money had ever been recovered.