Miss Marple and Mystery (12 page)

She stared at him incredulously.

‘You are not Conrad Fleckman?’

‘No.’

‘Oh!’ she cried, with a deep accent of distress. ‘And I kissed you!’

‘That’s all right,’ Mr Eastwood assured her. ‘The early Christians made a practice of that sort of thing. Jolly sensible. Now look here, I’ll tool off with these people. I shall soon prove my identity. In the meantime, they won’t worry you, and you can warn this precious Conrad of yours. Afterwards –’

‘Yes?’

‘Well – just this. My telephone number is North-western 1743 – and mind they don’t give you the wrong one.’

She gave him an enchanting glance, half-tears, half a smile.

‘I shall not forget – indeed, I shall not forget.’

‘That’s all right then. Goodbye. I say –’

‘Yes?’

‘Talking of the early Christians – once more wouldn’t matter, would it?’

She flung her arms round his neck. Her lips just touched his. ‘I do like you – yes, I do like you. You will remember that, whatever happens, won’t you?’

Anthony disengaged himself reluctantly and approached his captors.

‘I am ready to come with you. You don’t want to detain this young lady, I suppose?’

‘No, sir, that will be quite all right,’ said the small man civilly.

‘Decent fellows, these Scotland Yard men,’ thought Anthony to himself, as he followed them down the narrow stairway.

There was no sign of the old woman in the shop, but Anthony caught a heavy breathing from a door at the rear, and guessed that she stood behind it, cautiously observing events.

Once out in the dinginess of Kirk Street, Anthony drew a long breath, and addressed the smaller of the two men.

‘Now then, inspector – you are an inspector, I suppose?’

‘Yes, sir. Detective-Inspector Verrall. This is Detective-Sergeant Carter.’

‘Well, Inspector Verrall, the time has come to talk sense – and to listen to it too. I’m not Conrad What’s-his-name. My name is Anthony Eastwood, as I told you, and I am a writer by profession. If you will accompany me to my flat, I think that I shall be able to satisfy you of my identity.’

Something in the matter-of-fact way Anthony spoke seemed to impress the detectives. For the first time an expression of doubt passed over Verrall’s face.

Carter, apparently, was harder to convince.

‘I dare say,’ he sneered. ‘But you’ll remember the young lady was calling you “Conrad” all right.’

‘Ah! that’s another matter. I don’t mind admitting to you both that for – er – reasons of my own, I was passing myself off upon that lady as a person called Conrad. A private matter, you understand.’

‘Likely story, isn’t it?’ observed Carter. ‘No, sir, you come along with us. Hail that taxi, Joe.’

A passing taxi was stopped, and the three men got inside. Anthony made a last attempt, addressing himself to Verrall as the more easily convinced of the two.

‘Look here, my dear inspector, what harm is it going to do you to come along to my flat and see if I’m speaking the truth? You can keep the taxi if you like – there’s a generous offer! It won’t make five minutes’ difference either way.’

Verrall looked at him searchingly.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said suddenly. ‘Strange as it appears, I believe you’re speaking the truth. We don’t want to make fools of ourselves at the station by arresting the wrong man. What’s the address?’

‘Forty-eight Brandenburg Mansions.’

Verrall leant out and shouted the address to the taxi-driver. All three sat in silence until they arrived at their destination, when Carter sprang out, and Verrall motioned to Anthony to follow him.

‘No need for any unpleasantness,’ he explained, as he, too, descended. ‘We’ll go in friendly like, as though Mr Eastwood was bringing a couple of pals home.’

Anthony felt extremely grateful for the suggestion, and his opinion of the Criminal Investigation Department rose every minute.

In the hall-way they were fortunate enough to meet Rogers, the porter. Anthony stopped.

‘Ah! Good-evening, Rogers,’ he remarked casually.

‘Good-evening, Mr Eastwood,’ replied the porter respectfully.

He was attached to Anthony, who set an example of liberality not always followed by his neighbours.

Anthony paused with his foot on the bottom step of the stairs.

‘By the way, Rogers,’ he said casually. ‘How long have I been living here? I was just having a little discussion about it with these friends of mine.’

‘Let me see, sir, it must be getting on for close on four years now.’

‘Just what I thought.’

Anthony flung a glance of triumph at the two detectives. Carter grunted, but Verrall was smiling broadly.

‘Good, but not good enough, sir,’ he remarked. ‘Shall we go up?’

Anthony opened the door of the flat with his latch-key. He was thankful to remember that Seamark, his man, was out. The fewer witnesses of this catastrophe the better.

The typewriter was as he had left it. Carter strode across to the table and read the headline on the paper.

‘
THE MYSTERY OF THE SECOND CUCUMBER
’

he announced in a gloomy voice.

‘A story of mine,’ explained Anthony nonchalantly.

‘That’s another good point, sir,’ said Verrall, nodding his head, his eyes twinkling. ‘By the way, sir, what was it about? What
was
the mystery of the second cucumber?’

‘Ah, there you have me,’ said Anthony. ‘It’s that second cucumber that’s been at the bottom of all this trouble.’

Carter was looking at him intently. Suddenly he shook his head and tapped his forehead significantly.

‘Balmy, poor young fellow,’ he murmured in an audible aside.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ said Mr Eastwood briskly. ‘To business. Here are letters addressed to me, my bank-book, communications from editors. What more do you want?’

Verrall examined the papers that Anthony thrust upon him.

‘Speaking for myself, sir,’ he said respectfully, ‘I want nothing more. I’m quite convinced. But I can’t take the responsibility of releasing you upon myself. You see, although it seems positive that you have been residing here as Mr Eastwood for some years, yet it is possible that Conrad Fleckman and Anthony Eastwood are one and the same person. I must make a thorough search of the flat, take your fingerprints, and telephone to headquarters.’

‘That seems a comprehensive programme,’ remarked Anthony. ‘I can assure you that you’re welcome to any guilty secrets of mine you may lay your hands on.’

The inspector grinned. For a detective, he was a singularly human person.

‘Will you go into the little end room, sir, with Carter, whilst I’m getting busy?’

‘All right,’ said Anthony unwillingly. ‘I suppose it couldn’t be the other way about, could it?’

‘Meaning?’

‘That you and I and a couple of whiskies and sodas should occupy the end room whilst our friend, the Sergeant, does the heavy searching.’

‘If you prefer it, sir?’

‘I do prefer it.’

They left Carter investigating the contents of the desk with businesslike dexterity. As they passed out of the room, they heard him take down the telephone and call up Scotland Yard.

‘This isn’t so bad,’ said Anthony, settling himself with a whisky and soda by his side, having hospitably attended to the wants of Inspector Verrall. ‘Shall I drink first, just to show you that the whisky isn’t poisoned?’

The inspector smiled.

‘Very irregular, all this,’ he remarked. ‘But we know a thing or two in our profession. I realized right from the start that we’d made a mistake. But of course one had to observe all the usual forms. You can’t get away from red tape, can you, sir?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Anthony regretfully. ‘The sergeant doesn’t seem very matey yet, though, does he?’

‘Ah, he’s a fine man, Detective-Sergeant Carter. You wouldn’t find it easy to put anything over on him.’

‘I’ve noticed that,’ said Anthony.

‘By the way, inspector,’ he added, ‘is there any objection to my hearing something about myself?’

‘In what way, sir?’

‘Come now, don’t you realize that I’m devoured by curiousity? Who was Anna Rosenburg, and why did I murder her?’

‘You’ll read all about it in the newspapers tomorrow, sir.’

‘Tomorrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s ten thousand years,’ quoted Anthony. ‘I really think you might satisfy my perfectly legitimate curiosity, inspector. Cast aside your official reticence, and tell me all.’

‘It’s quite irregular, sir.’

‘My dear inspector, when we are becoming such fast friends?’

‘Well, sir, Anna Rosenburg was a German-Jewess who lived at Hamp-stead. With no visible means of livelihood, she grew yearly richer and richer.’

‘I’m just the opposite,’ commented Anthony. ‘I have a visible means of livelihood and I get yearly poorer and poorer. Perhaps I should do better if I lived in Hampstead. I’ve always heard Hampstead is very bracing.’

‘At one time,’ continued Verrall, ‘she was a secondhand clothes dealer –’

‘That explains it,’ interrupted Anthony. ‘I remember selling my uniform after the war – not khaki, the other stuff. The whole flat was full of red trousers and gold lace, spread out to best advantage. A fat man in a check suit arrived in a Rolls-Royce with a factotum complete with bag. He bid one pound ten for the lot. In the end I threw in a hunting coat and some Zeiss glasses to make up the two pounds, at a given signal the factotum opened the bag and shovelled the goods inside, and the fat man tendered me a ten-pound note and asked me for change.’

‘About ten years ago,’ continued the inspector, ‘there were several Spanish political refugees in London – amongst them a certain Don Fernando Ferrarez with his young wife and child. They were very poor, and the wife was ill. Anna Rosenburg visited the place where they were lodging and asked if they had anything to sell. Don Fernando was out, and his wife decided to part with a very wonderful Spanish shawl, embroidered in a marvellous manner, which had been one of her husband’s last presents to her before flying from Spain. When Don Fernando returned, he flew into a terrible rage on hearing the shawl had been sold, and tried vainly to recover it. When he at last succeeded in finding the secondhand clothes woman in question, she declared that she had resold the shawl to a woman whose name she did not know. Don Fernando was in despair. Two months later he was stabbed in the street and died as a result of his wounds. From that time onward, Anna Rosenburg seemed suspiciously flush of money. In the ten years that followed, her house was burgled no less than eight times. Four of the attempts were frustrated and nothing was taken, on the other four occasions, an embroidered shawl of some kind was amongst the booty.’

The inspector paused, and then went on in obedience to an urgent gesture from Anthony.

‘A week ago, Carmen Ferrarez, the young daughter of Don Fernando, arrived in this country from a convent in France. Her first action was to seek out Anna Rosenburg at Hampstead. There she is reported to have had a violent scene with the old woman, and her words at leaving were overheard by one of the servants.

‘“You have it still,” she cried. “All these years you have grown rich on it – but I say to you solemnly that in the end it will bring you bad luck. You have no moral right to it, and the day will come when you will wish you had never seen the Shawl of the Thousand Flowers.”

‘Three days after that, Carmen Ferrarez disappeared mysteriously from the hotel where she was staying. In her room was found a name and address – the name of Conrad Fleckman, and also a note from a man purporting to be an antique dealer asking if she were disposed to part with a certain embroidered shawl which he believed she had in her possession. The address given on the note was a false one.

‘It is clear that the shawl is the centre of the whole mystery. Yesterday morning Conrad Fleckman called upon Anna Rosenburg. She was shut up with him for an hour or more, and when he left she was obliged to go to bed, so white and shaken was she by the interview. But she gave orders that if he came to see her again he was always to be admitted. Last night she got up and went out about nine o’clock, and did not return. She was found this morning in the house occupied by Conrad Fleckman, stabbed through the heart. On the floor beside her was – what do you think?’

‘The shawl?’ breathed Anthony. ‘The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers.’

‘Something far more gruesome than that. Something which explained the whole mysterious business of the shawl and made its hidden value clear . . . Excuse me, I fancy that’s the chief –’

There had indeed been a ring at the bell. Anthony contained his impatience as best he could and waited for the inspector to return. He was pretty well at ease about his own position now. As soon as they took the fingerprints they would realise their mistake.

And then, perhaps, Carmen would ring up . . .

The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers! What a strange story – just the kind of story to make an appropriate setting for the girl’s exquisite dark beauty.

Carmen Ferrarez . . .

He jerked himself back from day dreaming. What a time that inspector fellow was. He rose and pulled the door open. The flat was strangely silent. Could they have gone? Surely not without a word to him.

He strode out into the next room. It was empty – so was the sitting-room. Strangely empty! It had a bare dishevelled appearance. Good heavens! His enamels – the silver!

He rushed wildly through the flat. It was the same tale everywhere. The place had been denuded. Every single thing of value, and Anthony had a very pretty collector’s taste in small things, had been taken.

With a groan Anthony staggered to a chair, his head in his hands. He was aroused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened it to confront Rogers.

‘You’ll excuse me, sir,’ said Rogers. ‘But the gentlemen fancied you might be wanting something.’

‘The gentlemen?’

‘Those two friends of yours, sir. I helped them with the packing as best I could. Very fortunately I happened to have them two good cases in the basement.’ His eyes dropped to the floor. ‘I’ve swept up the straw as best I could, sir.’

‘You packed the things in here?’ groaned Anthony. ‘Yes, sir. Was that not your wishes, sir? It was the tall gentleman told me to do so, sir, and seeing as you were busy talking to the other gentleman in the little end room, I didn’t like to disturb you.’