Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (11 page)

Somewhat to Harbord's surprise, the inspector turned to the lady's first. The big wardrobe occupying the whole end of the room was full to overflowing. Frocks were hung on pegs, thrown over chairs, peeping out from the wardrobe.

The inspector looked at Harbord with a hopeless shrug of his shoulders.

“It would take hours to go through all this stuff. We will just take a squint at Dicky's, I think, and leave this for a bit.”

Like his wife's, Dicky's was distinctly untidy. The inspector's eagle eye glanced round, then he made straight for the boots and shoes, all with their trees inside. He picked up every one in turn and scrutinized them carefully.

“Sevens,” he said at last as he produced his sketch of the footprint and fitted one of the evening pair at the end of the row upon it. “Decidedly too small to have produced this print,” he said discontentedly. “Now we must –”

“I believe the service is over,” Harbord interrupted. “The parson has gone away and the people are crowding round the grave to look at the flowers.”

Stoddart followed him to the window. “You are right, they are coming up the drive now. We will go down.”

He closed the door behind him and then turned to find himself face to face with Dicky, who had apparently reached the house in advance of the other mourners.

Dicky put up his monocle and looked at the detectives with a quizzical smile.

“Well, my dear sleuths, on the war-path? I am afraid your investigations in my humble apartment have yielded you nothing but disappointment. Am I really suspected of being a murderer? Madame Tussaud's will have a notable addition.”

“Naturally I shall have to examine every room in the house,” Stoddart returned, his eyes fixed on the young man's face. It struck him that Dicky was not looking well, though his mercurial spirits were unchanged.

“Shall you really? Jolly interesting work I should think. Should there be any locked drawers in my wardrobe my keys are at your service. But I forgot, of course, a sleuth is always possessed of a master-key. He is like the Day of Judgment, in that there are no secrets hid from him. But you will tell me if there is anything I can do to help, won't you?”

“I certainly will,” the detective returned, unmoved by this witticism. “It is quite possible that I may be glad of a few minutes' talk with both you and Mrs. Richard before I go up to town this evening.”

“Go up to town!” Dicky repeated in simulated despair. “But why leave us – surely the root of the mystery is here?”

“I don't know where it is,” the inspector said slowly. “I am going to London to try and find that out. There is a small deed-box at the Bank. Possibly when we have got that open we may be in a position to tell you more.”

The Golden opened its doors the day after Charmian Karslake's funeral. It was impossible to mourn long even for the most delightful of actresses. A new lady, who had understudied the great American, was then in her place and the management could not be blamed for seeing clearly that poor Charmian Karslake's tragic end would probably for a short time fill the theatre almost to the same extent as her wonderful talent.

As a matter of fact, the demand for places was such that a queue had lined up in the box-office when Inspector Stoddart glanced through the glass doors. He hesitated a moment and then stepped inside. His “
fidus Achates
,” Harbord, was close behind.

The two men looked round. All the decorations were new, and, like everything else in the theatre, gold-coloured. Portraits of Charmian Karslake in her different part hung round the foyer. The inspector gave them a cursory glance, then he turned to a commissionaire resplendent in his gold livery.

“The manager. Give him this card.”

“Impossible,” the man began, then, as he looked at the card his manner changed. “There is a rehearsal now, sir. I don't know whether it will be possible to get at the manager.”

“Oh, I think it will,” the inspector said quietly. “Take that card to him at once, please.”

The man made no further demur and in a minute the detectives were admitted, and taken by devious ways to the great man's private room. One glance they had, as they passed, of the empty auditorium, and the stage with the actors and actresses standing about. As they passed out of sight someone began to speak.

The room into which they were taken looked like what it probably was, that of a business man. Papers were strewn about on the knee-hole writing-table, before which there stood a revolving-chair. The furniture was of the strictly utilitarian order. The only sign that the manager occasionally took an hour off was a big leather arm-chair, looking the worse for wear, that stood near the fire-place, together with a tobacco jar and pipe. On the mantelpiece were a few photographs of actors and actresses who had played at the Golden, conspicuous among them being, of course, Charmian Karslake.

The manager did not keep them waiting long. He was a tall, thin, clean-shaven man, with tired-looking eyes and clear-cut features. He glanced at the card he held in his hand.

“Inspector Stoddart,” he said. “Yes, we had your wire. Your instructions have been followed.”

“The dressing-room has been locked up?”

“It was locked up at once on the reception of your wire,” the manager told him. “This is a terrible crime, inspector. Have you any idea why it was committed or by whom?”

“I was hoping that you might be able to help us,” the inspector said equivocally. “I expect you know more of Charmian Karslake since her coming to England than anyone.”

The manager shook his head. “My knowledge amounts practically to nothing. My knowledge of Miss Karslake was of the slightest. She kept herself to herself, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, since her death, no member of the company here has had more than a casual acquaintance with her.”

“That so?” the inspector said in a disappointed tone.

The manager nodded. “Positively the fact. But I will send her dresser to you. Have a cigar, inspector, before you go.”

“No, thanks. I wonder if you formed any idea as to what nationality Miss Karslake belonged.”

The manager stared at him. “Why, everybody knows she came from the States.”

“Everybody appears to think she did,” the inspector corrected. “But in the course of my inquiries, limited though they have been as yet, I have still some reason to think she may be an Englishwoman.”

“An Englishwoman,” repeated the manager, sitting down in his amazement. “I have never heard such a thing even hinted at. Her accent was distinctly American.”

“An accent may be acquired purposely,” the inspector said. “Well, I will have a look at the dressingroom, Mr. Searle.”

“Do!” said the manager, rising. “And, as I said, I will send her dresser to you. Should there be anything known here that is likely to help you, Mrs. Latimer would be the one to know it.”

He gave them in charge of a boy, who took them by dark and devious ways to the dressing-rooms behind the stage. He stopped before one with Miss Karslake's name on the card on the door, and handed a key to the inspector.

“Please, sir, Mr. Searle said I was to give you this.”

The inspector took it with a word of thanks and opened the door.

The room looked small, but the inspector knew that it was large for the room of a theatrical star. It was dark, since the only window was high up, and apparently gave on to some inside passage. A large dressingtable occupied all one end of the room. There was a great mirror with side-wings that enabled the actress to view her face and head from all angles. Near at hand was a box of grease-paints, on the other side a case of brushes of all sizes, beside the proverbial hare's-foot. Tubes, partly or wholly squeezed out, lay about in all directions with various little pots of colouring matter at whose uses the two detectives could only guess. Frocks shrouded in dust sheets hung on the wall, and a great dress-basket stood at the left-hand side of the toilet-table, but at first sight there was certainly no sign of anything that could help the detectives.

Stoddart was smelling the great cut-glass scentbottle that stood on a shelf, with an assortment of lipsticks and different sizes of combs and pins, when there was a knock at the door and a little old woman appeared, looking something like the dame in a fairy story. Short and stout, she had bright, bead-like eyes that looked as if they would ordinarily sparkle with fun, but which today were filled with tears, while her pleasant, rosy face was drawn and lugubrious looking. She made a curious sideway inclination of her body, a sort of compromise between a bow and the old-fashioned curtsy.

“Sarah Latimer, gentlemen, at your service,” she said, in a high-pitched, rather squeaky voice. “Mr. Searle told me to come to you. I was Miss Karslake's dresser.”

The inspector put his scent-bottle down and turned round.

“I wanted to see you, Mrs. Latimer – to see whether you could help us. I feel sure that you, like us, must be anxious to clear up the mystery that surrounds Miss Karslake's death.”

“Me, sir,” Mrs. Latimer wiped away a tear. “I would like to hang the cruel brute that murdered her, if that is what you mean,” with a sudden accession of energy.

“Quite! I understand. That is what we should all like to do,” the inspector said soothingly. “And, somehow, I think you can help us materially, Mrs. Latimer.”

The old lady shook her head vigorously. “Folks that murder others don't come my way, sir. Nor I don't want them to, neither. If I knew who killed Miss Karslake he would be in prison now.”

“That is what we all feel,” the inspector assented diplomatically. “But there is a lot of spade work to be done before we manage that, Mrs. Latimer. But now if you could just help me by answering a few questions – first, as to any visitors who came to the theatre for Miss Karslake.”

“Which is soon answered,” Mrs. Latimer said hurriedly and ungrammatically. “She never had none at all. It has been a matter of talk with us at the wings that no one ever came to see Miss Karslake. At least, I tell an untruth. Odd times, folks have asked for her, but none of them ever saw her. The orders were that Miss Karslake saw no one, that she knew no one in England nor wanted to know anyone.”

“H'm! Sounds pretty sweeping,” the inspector commented. “Queer thing too, such heaps of Americans in town. One would have thought she would have known some of them.”

“If she did, she didn't want to see them,” Mrs. Latimer said.

“Well, anyhow,” Inspector Stoddart went on, “I want you to give me your attention altogether for one minute, Mrs. Latimer. Have you ever seen anything, do you remember having seen anything, any trifle however small, that might have indicated to you that Miss Karslake was not an American but an Englishwoman?”

 Mrs. Latimer did not answer for a minute. Her black beads of eyes glanced here, there and everywhere.

“Ah, now you are talking,” she said at last. “Many's the time I have asked myself that same question. For, though she wasn't much of a talker, there have been things she has had to say to me, and there have been bits of speech she has let drop that I could swear had come from the Midlands. I am a Meadshire woman myself, you know, sir.”

“Meadshire!” echoed the inspector, cocking his ears. “Anywhere near Hepton was it you came from, Mrs. Latimer?”

“Well, no, it wasn't. As a matter of fact, it is a matter of thirty miles away, I should say, right the other side of the county. But I thought it seemed strange like, her going down to Meadshire. The thought came to me that maybe her home had been at Hepton.”

“Did you say anything to her about it?”

Mrs. Latimer shook her head. “Miss Karslake wasn't one to encourage questions. Ten to one she would only have looked at me haughty-like and said nothing if I had mentioned Hepton.”

The inspector glanced at his notes.

“There are two more questions I should like to put to you, Mrs. Latimer. Did Miss Karslake ever give you any reason to think that she had been married?”

Mrs. Latimer's tears were forgotten now, her smile became expansive.

“It would be difficult to tell that, sir, with a theatrical lady. Most of 'em have tried it on four times, and there's not many hasn't had a shot at it at all. But as for Miss Karslake I don't know. She never said anything to give herself away.”

“Well, well! Some folks, even women, can keep their own counsel,” the inspector said with a grin. “Now, just one thing more, Mrs. Latimer. I have reason to think that Karslake was not the lady's real name. Can you help us there?”

“I don't think so –” Mrs. Latimer began. Then she paused and hesitated. “Well, only this, sir, and I don't know as it means anything. Miss Karslake wasn't much of a smoker, not like some ladies I have known, but she had a cigarette sometimes, just to soothe her nerves, and one day I picked up her cigarette-case, after rehearsal. Real silver it was, and a monogram on the back. S.G. or G.S. the letters were, not C.K. anyway. I gave it to her that evening and she said, ‘Oh, thank you, Mrs. Latimer, I wouldn't have lost it for anything. It was given to me on my eighteenth birthday.' Then she looked at it again and turned rather red as she put it in her handbag. I think she had remembered.”

While Stoddart was talking to the dresser, Harbord had been going over the toilet-table and its accessories, the frocks and the contents of the dress-basket. He stopped now.

“There appears to be nothing here, no letters or papers of any kind.”

“Which there isn't, sir,” the dresser said at once.

“Miss Karslake never had any letters here. At the stage door they were instructed not to take them in if any were brought there for Miss Karslake, nor flowers, or such-like. And I never saw her write a line from the time she came until the last night before she went down to Hepton.”

“Well, it seems to me there is nothing more to be said. I am much obliged to you, Mrs. Latimer. If you should think of anything that might help us later on, you will let us know.”