Mystery of Mr. Jessop (13 page)

“Well, I'll have to pop something,” decided Charley. “Won't be the first time. Have to be the last, though,” he said, shaking his head gravely at himself. “Gave me a scare when I heard you were police. What's up?”

“I have asked to be allowed to see the duke for a few minutes,” Bobby answered.

“The old boy been up to something?” demanded Charley, grinning. “I say, what a lark if we both turn up in the dock together! Got tight, too, did he? Was that the trouble Saturday night?”

“Why? What trouble? What do you mean?” Bobby asked quickly, startled in spite of himself. “What happened Saturday night?”

“That's what we all want to know,” returned Charley, and added, bestowing upon Bobby a most portentous wink: “Especially the old girl.”

“You mean the duchess?”

“I do that,” answered Charley. “Wish I knew where hubby was – might do a spot of blackmail. It was somewhere about eight or nine last evening when the American Ambassador rang up – wanted him badly; some sort of hands-across-the-sea tommy-rot they've got on. Fisher rang up the club. He wasn't there. Rang up every other place they could think of. Couldn't get in touch with him. Came home in the small hours. The old girl waited up for him with the rolling-pin – metaphorical rolling-pin, of course, but just as nasty as the real thing. Scene.” Charley grinned again, and made a gesture of which the meaning was not to be mistaken. “At his age, too – the gay old dog!” he said. “He covers up his tracks jolly well, though. No one even knows who the lady is, except that she must be a real tip-topper. I say, you'll keep all this to yourself, won't you? I should get it in the neck if they knew how I had been gassing.”

Privately Bobby thought that very probable. Aloud he said:

“The first thing you learn in the police is absolute discretion – subject to duty, of course.”

“That's all right, then,” said the ingenuous and communicative Charles, and vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

Bobby was still wondering whether Charley babbled like this to all comers all the time, or whether his communicativeness was a result of a kind of “hangover” from last night's escapade, of which, however, his clear eyes and healthy skin showed no effects, when the door opened again and there entered the duke himself.

He was a small man, small boned, thin and stooping, with small, distrustful eyes, a generally worried expression, and curious claw-like hands that seemed somehow prominent in his personality, as though expressive of a continuous subconscious desire to grasp and hold. At a first glance he might well have been taken for an uneasy clerk or shopman precariously hanging on to an uncertain post held only at the whim of an employer. But as soon as he spoke or moved he showed in every tone or gesture that unconscious authority, poise, self-assurance, that comes from a universal deference paid since earliest childhood to a great position held by right of birth – and “no damned merit about it,” as was once said of the Garter.

For birthright's a fact, but merit only an opinion, an idea, one of the mere imponderables.

In those oddly prominent hands of his the duke held Bobby's card, and even that he held as though he would never let it go again. But it was not that on which Bobby's eyes fastened, nor was it that which gave him the sudden shock and thrill he now experienced as he recognised in the half-smoked cigar the duke also held the exact replica of that found by the side of a murdered man. A mere coincidence, of course, but Bobby had grown to have a passionate hatred for coincidence, and in his thin and precise tones the duke said:

“Sergeant Owen, I see? I think you have been here before. You have been able to get some information at last about that insolent intrusion I mentioned?”

“Well, sir, it's really another matter I've come about,” Bobby answered hesitatingly.

How clearly he remembered the emphasis with which Ulyett had enjoined upon him the necessity for tact, and how exactly the duke looked a man with whom tact – oceans of tact, all the tact that ever was or could be – would be required; and how jolly to be a superintendent, and push off dirty jobs like this upon unfortunate subordinates. Quite clearly Bobby realised that it was because Ulyett had shirked the job himself that it had been passed on to him. The duke, for instance, evidently didn't feel it necessary to “report” or “complain” or “request” or anything like that; he merely “mentioned” a thing, and that, he felt, was enough for all relevant machinery to be set zealously in motion. And that was the man – Personage, rather – he had been landed with the job of putting through a kind of third degree – a ducal third degree that would emphatically need tact.

“It is rather a complicated affair, sir,” he said desperately. “It will need a lot of explaining.”

“Indeed,” said the duke, loftily surprised. “Was it necessary to see me in person? I should have thought my secretary... my lawyers... however, as you are here...” He indicated a chair, and set the example by seating himself, choosing an arm-chair for himself but not for Bobby, who now continued slowly:

“It is a serious matter I have to trouble you about, sir – a case of murder. We are fortunate in knowing that we can rely upon a gentleman of your position for every possible help.”

Tactful Bobby thought this speech, but the duke did not seem to notice.

“Murder,” he said, a little as he might have said “Kamchatka” or “Timbuctoo” as something vaguely familiar but unutterably remote. “I am at a loss to conceive...” he said stiffly, for, indeed, he was a man from whom tact poured as ineffectively as water from a duck's back. “Utterly at a loss...” he repeated.

“Yes, sir, naturally,” agreed Bobby. “Your grace knows a firm of jewellers in Mayfair Square – Messrs. Jessop & Jacks?”

“Extremely worthy – er – tradespeople,” conceded the duke, to whom the head of an old-established firm of West End jewellers and a grocer's assistant selling quarter pounds of sugar and cheese in Islington were much of a muchness.

“They have been trying to sell a valuable diamond neck-lace,” Bobby went on. “It belongs to a film actress – Miss Fay Fellows. She wants to get rid of it, and she asked Jessop & Jacks to see what they could do. I believe you inspected it yourself, sir, on one occasion, with a view to purchase?”

“They asked an absurd price,” declared the duke, with a touch of irritation in his dry and precise tones, and Bobby, who could not keep his eyes from that half-smoked cigar, saw, too, how the long and claw-like fingers twitched and half closed, as though involuntarily eager, instinctively disposed, to snatch and seize even a mere memory. “I did not consider it for one moment,” the duke asserted.

“Last night,” Bobby continued, “Mr. Jessop was found shot in a house at Brush Hill. He died almost immediately.”

“Jessop?” repeated the duke. “You mean – Jessop?” 

He seemed really astonished. “Shocking! Most shocking! A most respectable man, I always thought. Brush Hill, did you say? A suburb, no doubt? How did it happen? You have arrested the murderer?”

“No, sir,” answered Bobby. “There is nothing yet we can act on. It is because it is thought your grace might be able to give us information...”

“I am unable to conceive...” said the duke coldly. “Is there any possible connection?”

Bobby had decided by now that tact was about as useful as, to quote Sydney Smith's famous simile, stroking the dome of St. Paul's was likely to please the dean and chapter. He continued:

“By Mr. Jessop's body was a half-smoked cigar, presumably left behind by the murderer. It is believed to be one of those made specially for him, in his own factory, of Mr. Patterson, an American gentleman and a friend of yours, recently staying with you, sir. The cigar seemed to show his monogram.”

And, as he said this, Bobby could not for the life of him prevent his eyes from resting on the half-smoked cigar in the duke's hand. Then he looked away again quickly, and that was even worse – not a bit tactful, and just as well he had decided to give up tact. He went on hurriedly, ignoring the startled anger gathering on the ducal brow:

“It was thought your grace might be able to give us the names of any persons likely to be in possession of any of Mr. Patterson's cigars.”

The duke paused. It was fully a minute before he replied. Then he said coldly and precisely:

“The inquiry seems to savour of insolence.”

“I regret more than I can say,” answered Bobby, “that your grace should think so. I am, of course, acting on the instructions of my superior officers. It was felt that a gentleman of your position would be willing in such a case to give every possible assistance, in spite of any inconvenience or annoyance caused.”

“I am quite unable to understand,” replied the unplacated duke, “why you should come to – Me.”

“We understood that Mr. Patterson had close business relations with your grace,” Bobby answered. “Our information is that he returned to America last week.”

“As a matter of fact,” remarked the duke, “he seems to have left the boat at Cherbourg. I understand he was in Paris last week.”

“Oh, indeed,” Bobby exclaimed, startled, for this, he thought, might mean a good deal.

But then he dismissed the idea as absurd. At any rate, it would be for his superiors to follow up, if they thought fit. So far as was known, Mr. Patterson was a man of high standing in business circles, even if it might be as well to look up his record and make sure that he had stayed in Paris during the week-end. Though sometimes, Bobby reflected again, it does happen that agents are employed who go far beyond their instructions, and it might be too well known in certain circles that Mr. Patterson offered for the necklace a ready market in which few questions would be asked.

So Bobby decided that it would be worth suggesting that, some attention should be paid to Mr. Patterson; and, while he was silent, as these thoughts raced through his mind, the duke also was silent, absorbed in his own train of thought.

“I very much doubt,” he said at last, “whether the steamship company would refund his fare.” Then he seemed to remember Bobby: “I take it, then,” he said, “you have nothing more you – er – wish to question me about?”

How full were those last few words of a dignified and condescending rebuke! Bobby felt that on hearing them he ought to bow and retire – backwards. Instead he said:

“Well, sir, what we specially wanted to know was about Mr. Patterson's cigars. I mean, those he manufactures himself with his monogram on them. We thought you might be able to tell us if he left any of them behind, or if he was in the habit of distributing them freely, and, if so, to whom?”

“To everyone he met, I think,” the duke answered. “He insisted on leaving me several boxes. Mr. Patterson is a very keen, experienced business man. He was by no means unaware of the advantage to his cigar factory if it became generally known that its products were smoked by – Me.”

“I can quite understand that,” murmured Bobby, thinking to himself that his grace of Westhaven was probably also not altogether unaware of the advantage of getting free smokes.

“Mr. Patterson,” continued the duke, “offered his cigars freely to all his friends – at the club, everywhere he went. He even consulted me as to the possibility of introducing them into – er – the highest circles, the Very Highest. In that respect I could not assist him, and I believe those particular plans came to nothing. At one or two business conferences held here to discuss matters we were both interested in, he insisted on putting an open box on the table.”

He paused, and Bobby realised that all this meant Mr. Patterson had been conducting a very clever advertising campaign by way of what amounted to a liberal distribution of free samples. But that meant the cigars might have found their way almost anywhere, and the significance of the clue seemed to fade into the air.

“I have even seen,” continued the duke, dry disapproval in every tone, “Mr. Patterson give a couple to Fisher, my butler. Americans have very often very little sense of what is Due to Themselves. It is no doubt the result of the lack of a true Native Aristocracy.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby. “Very regrettable; very unfortunate,” he could not help adding, and was rewarded by what was almost like a passing gleam of approval in the duke's small and troubled eyes. “It means there's a wide circle of casual friends and acquaintances who might have been in possession of these cigars?”

“Exactly,” agreed the duke, and, apparently regretting having given way to so weak a sentiment as a passing moment of approval, he added: “It was, I think, totally unnecessary to insist upon a personal interview to learn that. The information could have been obtained otherwise.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “More satisfactory, if I may say so, to get information at first hand, and from sources we know can be trusted. When Mr. Jessop was found, immediately after he had been shot, he was still conscious. Just before death occurred, he tried to speak. He could not finish his sentence – he died first – but two words he uttered were ‘the duke.' They were distinctly heard.”

“Jessop – Jessop said – said that?” demanded the duke, evidently feeling that so insufferable a liberty was almost beyond the limits of the possible. “There is some mistake,” he said. “I do not believe that Jessop – a most respectable man – would ever... some mistake... some misunderstanding on your part...” He waved it aside.

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, “only there it is. What he said was quite plain. He died almost in the act of speaking. It was impossible to ask what he meant. It was thought there was just a chance your grace might be able to suggest an explanation?”

“Certainly not,” said the duke firmly. “I am not responsible for what you inform me this unfortunate man said when I gather he was not in a condition to know what he was saying – at least, I hope not.”