Man with the Dark Beard (7 page)

Turner touched his forehead awkwardly and shambled out of the room.

The inspector looked at Sir Felix.

“Well, Sir Felix?”

“Well!” Sir Felix looked back.

“What do you make of that?” the inspector went on.

“I don't know,” Sir Felix said slowly. “It is a curious statement. But it bears out the paper on the desk, if it is true.”

“Why, you don't doubt it?” The inspector's tone was staccato, quite evidently this decrying of his witness did not please him.

Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.

“He will not be much of a witness to produce, will he? And it seems strange that he should say that he saw a man and a woman go into the garden. I cannot believe the murderer would take anyone 'with him. I know that sort of street lounger pretty well, inspector, and I must confess that my experience has taught me that no sort of reliance whatever can be placed on the word of one of them; moreover, if any inquiry is going on, they thoroughly enjoy telling some sort of a yarn – I fancy they imagine it will make the police regard them more favourably.”

“Do they?” The inspector's smile was grim. “But there is one little item that you have not heard yet, Sir Felix.”

“What is that?” Sir Felix asked quickly. The inspector was evidently enjoying the impression he had created.

“Turner spoke of seeing the man with the dark beard who entered Dr. Bastow's garden coming across the north side of Rufford Square.” Sir Felix nodded.

“Well?”

The inspector waited a moment.

“Well,” he said slowly at last, “Rufford Square, like most of the streets in this neighbourhood, is built on clay. The roads, of course, have been macadamized far past any recognition of this fact. But some repairs to the water main have been going on the north side of Rufford Square. The ground is strewn with red clay. In Dr. Bastow's consulting-room, by the door and behind his chair, I found tiny fragments of red clay – particles, perhaps I should say, but perfectly visible under the magnifying-glass. Dr. Bastow's murderer came across the north side of Rufford Square, for it is the only place in this neighbourhood where any red clay is to be found. So Turner's story
is
corroborated, you see, Sir Felix.”

Skrine nodded.

“I see what you mean. Yes, it is strong corroboration. Now we have to find this man – which seems about as hopeful as looking for the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay.”

“The man with the dark beard – and the woman,” the inspector corrected. “I am by no means hopeless, Sir Felix.”

Skrine shrugged his shoulders.

“On the face of it you seem to have only a slender clue to work upon. But you have done some wonderful work, inspector, and I think – more, I believe, that this case will be one of your successes.”

“I think it will be,” the inspector said confidently. “‘It was the Man with the Dark Beard'; that didn't seem much of a clue when we found those words written, did it, Sir Felix? But see how it is developing. It mightn't have anything to do with the murder, we both thought at first. But now here comes a witness who actually saw a man with a dark beard go into the doctor's garden on the very night of his death.”

The great lawyer's brow was furrowed, he passed his hand over it wearily. Since his friend's death he had begun to look his real age.

“With Turner's evidence we ought to be able to find him. Not, as I have said before, that he will be a satisfactory witness. Still, it is not as if every second man you meet wore a beard nowadays. Bar the King, and a few members of the admiring aristocracy who follow his lead, nearly everybody is clean-shaven nowadays. The beard is certainly a clue. But it may be shaved off now.”

“Yes,” assented the detective. “The shaving may help ultimately to identify our man too. But what makes me more hopeful than anything else is that some one knows who he is, Sir Felix.”

“What?” Skrine stared at him. “I don't seem able to follow you this morning, Stoddart. Perhaps it's because it is my greatest friend who has been foully done to death. You mean that there is more than one in it – that this woman –”

“I don't know.” The detective hesitated. “No, I think not. But I am certain that some one knows who the man with the dark beard is. And I am pretty sure also that that some one is living or at any rate is some one; who comes in and out of this house.”

“Why? What ground have you for making; such an assertion?” Sir Felix had resumed his best cross-examination manner now. His blue eyes were focused upon the detective as though they would wring the truth out of him.

“Well, Sir Felix, I only heard this morning, so there has not been much chance of telling you yet,” the detective began slowly.

Sir Felix made an impatient sound.

“Telling me what? Make haste, Stoddart. This man has got to be found, and his accomplices too, if he has any.”

Stoddart hesitated.

“I don't know about accomplices, Sir Felix! I don't think, as I said a moment ago, that anyone was concerned in the actual murder except probably the man with the dark beard. But some one knows who he is and that someone we have got to find –”

“Yes, you said that before. But your reasons?” interrupted Sir Felix.

“The paper with the words ‘It was the Man with the Dark Beard' that was found on the desk,” Stoddart went on with exasperating slowness. “It has been taken for granted that it was Dr. Bastow's writing, but I thought it better to make certain, and I sent it to Thornbow. I had his report this morning.”

“What is it?” Sir Felix questioned eagerly. “Well, as you will have guessed, he says the words were not written by Dr. Bastow. They are a forgery – have been intentionally forged. There can be no doubt of that. But the question is, who wrote them? Thornbow gives it as his opinion that the writer was a woman.”

“A woman!” Sir Felix repeated in surprise. *“That seems to me most unlikely. And my experience has taught me not to place too much reliance on expert evidence. Who was it who said there were three kinds of liars – liars, damned liars and experts? I am inclined to stick to my opinion that the words are in Dr. Bastow's writing. And I am as familiar with it as most people. Besides, what object could anyone else have had in writing just that?”

“The object of giving us a clue to the murderer. The writer knew who he was.”

“Pity not to have been a bit more definite about it, then,” said Skrine.

“Guess
she
had her own reasons for not wanting to come out in the open,” said Stoddart with an emphasis on the pronoun that made the lawyer look at him.

“Have you any idea who she is?”

The inspector permitted himself a sardonic smile.

“Well, rather. Though how she managed to place the paper on the desk I can't say. Who could it be but that girl who has decamped – Mary Ann Taylor?”

“Out of the question,” Skrine said sharply.

There was dead silence for a few minutes; broken at last by Stoddart.

“Don't you think it is time to speak out, Sir Felix? Was the secret of which Dr. Bastow spoke connected with this girl?”

“I don't know,” Skrine said slowly. “I have guessed – I have thought that perhaps it was. But I really know nothing.”

“But you had some reason for thinking it might be, I expect.”

Stoddart was in a difficult position. He held a very responsible post at Scotland Yard; but Skrine was one of the greatest – some said
the
greatest – criminal lawyers of his day. Stoddart dared not deal with him as he would have liked – could not force from him the secret which he expected had led to Dr. Bastow's death, as he would have done from a different man.

Skrine had been leaning against the mantelpiece. Instead of answering the detective's question at once, he dropped the arm with which he had been supporting himself, pulled himself together and began to pace up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent, his blue eyes thoughtful. At last he came to a stop before Stoddart.

“When I first saw Mary Ann Taylor as the parlourmaid here I recognized that I had met her in very different circumstances some years before. Do you remember the Carr case?”

“Tried in Edinburgh five years ago,” the inspector rejoined eagerly. “It was out of our jurisdiction. But I always regretted it did not occur in London. I think we should have brought Major Carr's murder home to his wife. To allow that verdict of ‘Not proven' is a tremendous mistake.”

“I don't think so,” Sir Felix said shortly. He went back to the mantelpiece, leaning his elbow on the high wooden shelf and resting his head on his hand, with his face averted from Stoddart. “After all, it comes to the same thing when our juries fail to agree upon a verdict.”

“Not quite. Because in that case the prisoner can be, and generally is, tried again,” the inspector argued shrewdly. “In Scotland ‘Not proven' is final.”

Sir Felix nodded.

“Quite. I had forgotten. Well, to return to the Carrs. About a year before the tragedy I was staying with Sir Donald Ferguson in Perthshire; there was a big house party, and the Carrs were there among others. I took a violent dislike to him – he was a first-class sort of brute, and whoever killed him ought to be forgiven, but I do not for one moment believe his wife was guilty. She was a good-looking woman and he led her a dog's life. She bore with him like an angel.”

“Angels, like worms, probably turn sometimes,” the inspector remarked with a grim smile. “But you surely don't mean, Sir Felix, that Mary Ann Taylor was –”

“Mrs. Carr,” Sir Felix finished. “Whether that was the discovery Dr. Bastow made I don't know. But that is and was the only thing I can think of.”

“Would that have worried him?” debated the inspector.

“Depends on how he looked at the case,” Sir Felix answered. “If he believed her guilty, and had only just discovered her identity, the thought that he had introduced a murderess into his family, however unwittingly, would not be a pleasant one.”

“But he could have got rid of her at once. He need not have worried himself about it,” the inspector argued.

Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.

“Well, it is the only secret I can think of. It appears to me too that there we have the reason for her disappearance. Mrs. Carr did not wish to be recognized as Mary Ann Taylor. She must have thought it probable that in the case of any murder occurring in a house of which she was an inmate she was an obvious suspect. And, if she knew or guessed anything and gave evidence, she would have been recognized and scarcely believed.”

“Why should Mrs. Carr be masquerading as a parlourmaid?” the inspector said thoughtfully. “She was left quite well off. In that fact was supposed to lie the motive for the crime. But, Sir Felix, doesn't a curious similarity between the two murders strike you?”

“There is a certain resemblance,” assented Sir Felix. “But Major Carr was shot out of doors, in a wood. My dear old friend was murdered by some fiend as he sat quietly in his consulting-room. The likeness between, the two lies in the fact that both were shot through the brain.”

“Exactly!” the inspector agreed. “But it goes a little further than that, Sir Felix. In both cases the revolver must have been held quite close to the head, since the edges of the wound were blackened and discoloured, the inference being that the murderer was some one known and trusted, I would rather say ‘not feared,' by the victim.”

Sir Felix held up his hand.

“Not quite so fast, Stoddart. In Carr's case it was assumed that he was shot by some one walking with him, some one who quietly fell back a pace and fired the shot without having raised any suspicion in Carr's mind. In the case of Dr. Bastow, everything goes to show that the doctor was quietly writing when the assassin stole into the room unobserved. Far from his assailant being some one known and trusted by Dr. Bastow, I feel sure that he never saw his assailant and knew nothing of anyone else being in the room.”

“Well, it may be so – probably it was,” the detective acquiesced. “But what do you take to have been the motive in Dr. Bastow's case, Sir Felix?”

“I cannot imagine.” The lawyer's tone was puzzled. “I should have said that he had not an enemy in the world. In spite of the disappearance of the Chinese box, I don't believe it was robbery, the doctor's watch and pocket-book being left intact seem to decide that. While as to Mrs. Carr –”

“The crime would be absolutely motiveless,” the detective interrupted.

“Even if the secret the doctor spoke of referred to her – of which I am doubtful – it explains nothing. Even if she were a proved murderess, she would hardly shoot a man for discovering her identity. But what about the assistant, inspector?”

“Well, he would hardly shoot a man for refusing to let him marry his daughter,” countered the detective. “And he has not a dark beard.”

Sir Felix took his arm from the mantelpiece and drew himself up.

“I don't believe in your man with the dark beard, inspector. I believe the words on the paper are just a scribbled note in Dr. Bastow's own writing. While as for Turner – well, he isn't a witness I should care to put in the box. But now, inspector, if there is nothing else this morning, I am a busy man, you know. And I must see Miss Bastow before I go.”

Left alone, the detective sat down again at the table and applied himself afresh to his notes of the case.

Outside, just coming out of her office, the K.C. encountered the dead man's secretary. Iris Houlton was wearing the plain workaday frock she had worn in her late employer's lifetime. She looked a dowdy little person with her shingled brown hair all tousled. She did not raise her eyes, though she stopped and drew back as Sir Felix came out of the morning-room. Sir Felix stopped too.

“Good morning, Miss Houlton. You had my letter this morning, I expect?”