Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (21 page)

The solicitor was sitting in a revolving chair at a kneehole writing-table in the middle of the room. He held out his hand with a friendly smile.

“Well, inspector, it did not take long to execute your commission this time. Mr. John Gossett was soon lured into the net.”

The inspector smiled responsively.

“It's not a net this time. My advertisement is perfectly genuine. Mr. John Gossett may hear of something to his advantage. And, on the other hand, he may be able to give us some information we are very anxious to obtain.”

“Ah, I see. Cuts both ways. Sit down, inspector.” Mr. Turner pointed to the chair opposite. “I believe Mr. John Gossett is here now. I thought so,” as a tiny electric bell at his side tinkled sharply. He took up his speaking tube. “Send Mr. Gossett in at once.”

The inspector fidgeted, looking across at Harbord.

John Gossett was shown in by a clerk. Shabby and down-at-heel as he was, he yet bore the traces of former good looks. From his place in the background Harbord studied his features and came to the conclusion that there was a certain resemblance to the beautiful actress of the Golden Theatre.

“Mr. John Gossett?” Mr. Turner said inquiringly.

Mr. Gossett turned his hat about in his hands.

“Yes, that's my name right enough. I've come because of that advert in the ‘Daily Wire.' But I didn't think of all these –” His glance was antagonistic as he looked from Mr. Turner to the detectives.

“Sit down, Mr. Gossett,” said the solicitor affably, indicating a hard-looking office chair with the point of his pen. “These two gentlemen have come about your business. It was they who inserted the advertisement you saw.”

“Was it?” Mr. Gossett sat down awkwardly, balancing himself on the edge of his chair. “Well, if it is good news I shall be downright glad to hear it,” he said with the sing-song intonation of the counties bordering upon Wales. “I've had bad luck long enough.”

“It is a long lane that has no turning,” the solicitor observed sententiously.

He drew a paper towards him and made a note upon it. The inspector took out his pocket-book.

“You are John Robert Gossett, of Hepton, Meadshire,” Mr. Turner went on. “Your mother's name, please.”

“Sylvia Mary Gossett,” the man said sullenly.

“Your father's?”

“Robert Henry Gossett. But I don't know anything about him, never did. He was a bad lot, he was.”

“Dead or alive?” Mr. Turner went on.

“Oh, dead. Leastways I should think so. He would be a pretty big age if he was alive. We never knew what became of him. Bad lot, he was.”

“Do you know where he came from?”

“West Hever, on the other side of the county. Mother and Father both come from there,” Mr. Gossett proceeded with the same sulky air that had characterized him all through the interview. “I did hear he was seen there some time back. Living with the woman he went off with, he was. But that's some years gone.”

“Still, it ought to be a comparatively easy matter to prove his death, if dead he is.” Mr. Turner scrawled something on his paper.

“Oh, he'll be dead safe enough. Besides, we don't want to see anything of him if he should be alive.”

“Nevertheless it might complicate matters,” Mr. Turner said thoughtfully. “Now!” He looked across at Stoddart. “There are various questions to be answered. If you will ask Mr. Gossett –”

“Thank you, sir.” The inspector drew his chair nearer Mr. Gossett. “You have brothers and a sister, I believe?”

“One brother and a sister,” Gossett corrected. “Three brothers I had, but two of ‘em were killed in the war. There's only me and the youngest but one left, and I haven't seen anything of him for years.”

“Your sister?”

Gossett shook his head.

“Nor I don't know anything of her. I don't know where she is. But I am the eldest right enough. Anything as there may be is bound to come to me.”

“That so?” The inspector took an envelope from his pocket-book. From it he extracted a photograph – one of those taken of poor Charmian Karslake as she lay in her last long sleep. “Do you recognize this?” Gossett took it.

“Why, yes. That's Sylvia right enough. A bit older maybe, but it's her. Why does she look like this, as if she was asleep or maybe – dead?”

“She is dead,” the inspector said briefly. “And it is because we want to know how she died that we are here today.”

“Ah, so that's it.” Mr. Gossett drew a deep breath. “Well, it's no good coming to me. I know nothing about what she's been doing for years. But I call it a swindle to get a hard-working man like me here of a morning thinking to hear of something good when this is what you want him for.” He got up. “I have had enough of it,” he said truculently. “If I hadn't have thought there was money in it, I shouldn't have been here today. And now –”

“And now –” The inspector put out his hand.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Gossett. I haven't told you there is no money in it. If this lady is your sister and you can prove it and you can answer a few other questions there may be a great deal of money in it.”

Mr. Gossett's face cleared. “Ah, now you are talking. That's more like it. That's Cissie right enough. The very spit of her mother she is. How was it as she came to die?”

The inspector held out another photograph – one of those taken of Charmian Karslake in the height of her glory at the Golden. John Gossett stared at it in a puzzled fashion.

“Yes, I think it's Cissie. But she is mighty dressed up. Looks as if she wasn't any better than she might be.”

“On the contrary, nobody has ever breathed a word against her,” the inspector said, still keeping his eyes fixed on the man's face. “You have heard of Charmian Karslake, the beautiful actress who used to be at the Golden Theatre, I don't doubt.”

John Gossett was still looking at the photograph.

“Ay, I've heard of her. Shot, down at old Hepton, she was. The mystery at Hepton Abbey they call it in the papers. But you do not mean that Sylvia –”

“I have every reason to believe that Charmian Karslake was your sister,” the inspector told him gravely. “In fact, I think your identification puts the matter beyond doubt. In that case an informal Will in her own handwriting leaves everything to her brothers.”

“And how much is that likely to be?” Gossett broke in eagerly. “Not but what I should have said it all ought to have come to me, being the eldest.”

“Oh, the eldest does not get quite everything.” The inspector's face was stern. “But the sooner we can trace your sister's murderer the sooner her affairs will be settled. So if you will help us, Mr. Gossett –”

“I don't know as I can,” Mr. Gossett said doubtfully. “Not but what he ought to be laid by the heels, the murdering ruffian. But I ain't seen much of Sylvia to speak of since we left Hepton. Kids we were then. Leastways me and Bill, the next boy, we were getting a bit running errands, but when Mother died in the Cottage Hospital we heard talk about us being sent to the workhouse an' we all made up our minds to do a bunk. So we ran off in the night and we had the luck to fall in with a travelling circus and they took us on – me and the other boys we could run and carry, and Sylvia she was to dance. We came on to town and me an' Bill did another bunk and got jobs both of us sweeping out shops in the East End and running errands and sleeping in a cellar. Half starved, but we were free, we weren't penned up in a workhouse.”

“What did your sister do?” the inspector inquired.

“Sylvia, she stayed on with the circus. Thought a lot of her, they did, for she was a clever kid, danced and sang and what not. Got good money too and often sent us a bit. Then, when she got older, she was mad to get on the real stage. I cleaned shoes and knives then and carried up coal at a little private hotel in Bloomsbury. Me and the other boys had got an attic together then and we were fairly comfortable. Cissie came to see us and told us she'd got a job in a touring company.” Mr. Gossett stopped, apparently for want of breath.

“And was that the last you saw of her?” the inspector questioned.

“Well, no, it wasn't. She came once after that and told us she had got on well with the play-acting and she was thinking of getting married. That was the last time I saw her.”

“Whom did she marry?” The inspector found it impossible to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

Gossett shook his head. “I don't know. I have never known. I asked her then who the chap was and she laughed and said we should be surprised if we knew.”

“What did she call herself then?”

“Sylvia Gossett. She said that was good enough for the stage. I never knew anything of this Karslake business.”

The inspector studied his notes in silence for a moment.

“That was the last you saw of your sister, you say. How was that?”

Gossett looked stupid.

“Well, it isn't a matter I care to talk about, for I've lived it down, but I got into a bit o' trouble, though I never did anything, mind you, but I got into the cops' hands and got put away for two years. When I came out I reckon Sylvia was ashamed of me, for I've never heard any more of her from that day to this.”

“And your brothers?” Harbord, who knew every inflection of the inspector's voice, recognized the disappointment in it now.

‘‘Well, Bert – him that was killed at Ypres – he was the youngest and he'd always been Cissie's favourite. He saw her two or three times after that. Living in a couple of rooms she was off the Marylebone Road, somewhere. Very comfortable she was, Bert said, and living with another girl called – now what was it? – Forester, Joan Forester, and two or three young men running after her, but which she married he didn't know.”

“How long ago was this?”

Mr. Gossett bit his lip.

“Oh, a matter o' sixteen years more or less I should say.”

“How old would your sister be now?”

Gossett apparently went through some elaborate calculations in his head.

“Thirty-six or thirty-seven she'd be,” he announced at last. “Getting on, we all are. I was forty last March and there's Bill and a young un that died between me and Cissie.”

“Why did your sister call herself Karslake?” pursued the inspector.

Gossett stared at him. “I'm sure I don't know.”

“You don't think she married one of the Hepton Carslakes?”

“I don't fancy as she ever knew anything about them. They always looked on us as just dirt.”

“What about Peter Hailsham?”

“Peter Hailsham? Old Peter!” Gossett broke into a laugh. “You ain't thinking Cissie would have married him? Besides, he died a year as we left Hepton.”

“And his relatives?”

“Never heard he had any kin belonging to him,” Gossett responded with an air of finality. “Should think they would have been ashamed of him if he had. He was a rum un to look at was Old Peter.”

“Would you be surprised to hear that your sister is known to have spoken to some one whom she addressed as ‘Mr. Peter Hailsham'?”

“I should that,” Mr. Gossett responded emphatically. “Come to it, we never gave him the ‘Mister' down at Hepton. Old Peter he always was. But there was a funny story Bert told me, though I'd forgot all about it till this minute. You know the folks at the Abbey.”

Unconsciously the inspector's hand grasped his pencil more closely, the knuckles showed white through the tightening skin. He looked up.

“The Penn-Moretons, do you mean?”

“That's them.” Gossett scraped his feet about on the carpet. “Well, Bert told me once when he was going to see Sylvia there was a fine car standing before the door, and while he waited not liking to go in, Sylvia came out and there was one o' these Penn-Moretons with her, the youngest, not the one as came into the title.”

“Ah!” Inspector Stoddart drew in his lips. “Was your sister acquainted with him in Hepton?”

“No, that she wasn't. Just as like to be acquainted with the King, I should say.” Mr. Gossett nodded at the detective.

“I suppose your brother would be sure of young Penn-Moreton?”

Gossett laughed.

“We'd have sworn to a Penn-Moreton anywhere – me or Bert. They used to be always up and down the Canal with their boats in the holidays. An' me an' Bert were always about on the bank. Many's the errand I've done for 'em and had a copper chucked to me like as if I was a dog.”

“Tell Mr. Harbord to come here as soon as he reports.”

The constable saluted and departed.

Inspector Stoddart was seated in his private room at the Yard, industriously writing in his case-book. More than once he had glanced impatiently at the clock before he heard the familiar tap at the door.

“Come in!” he called out in an irritable tone. “You have been much longer than I expected, Alfred.”

“I have,” Harbord said, taking a paper from the long envelope he held. “I am sorry you have been waiting, but it is quite impossible to hurry the official cattle.”

“I am sure it is,” the inspector agreed, holding out his hand.

Harbord still kept the papers.

“This is the certificate of marriage, solemnized in St. Mary's Church, Marylebone, on August 18th, 19—, between Sylvia Mary Gossett, spinster of full age, daughter of Robert Henry Gossett, farmer of Hever, Meadshire, deceased, and” – he paused and looked full at the inspector as he made his dramatic announcement – “Peter Hailsham, bachelor of full age. Father's name, Peter Hailsham, occupation chemist, West Croydon, deceased, and the witness are two officials of the church. The vicar's name is Thompson.”

“Peter Hailsham,” the inspector repeated. He took the papers from Harbord. “Pretty much what I expected. Now, the thing is to find out who Peter Hailsham was, or who passed as Peter Hailsham?”