Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (23 page)

“Quite!” There was a curious look in the inspector's eyes as he assented. “I might pick a hole or two in your theory, Alfred.”

“But where does the snag come in? Yes, I see: supposing Richard Penn-Moreton married Charmian Karslake and then shot her, so that Mrs. Richard shouldn't know, he wouldn't have assaulted his wife in that savage way, and left her for dead. He would have been killing the goose that laid the golden eggs with a vengeance.”

“I thought that would come to you presently,” the inspector said, taking out his cigarette-case. “That's the weak point in your argument, my boy. And but for that Dicky might have found himself in prison sooner. That and one other. Why should Dicky burden himself with the sapphire ball? He has sense enough to know that he could not possibly dispose of it without giving himself away hopelessly, and its possession could be nothing but a source of danger. No, Alfred, we have not got to the bottom of the Hepton Abbey murder yet. But we are a good deal nearer than we were last week, though not so near as we shall be in a few days.”

“Why a few days?” Harbord inquired.

“Because the ‘White Wings' with Richard Penn-Moreton on board will be back at Southampton, and Mr. Dicky will have a few explanations to make – What's that? Was there a knock at the door?”

A constable opened it.

“There's a lady to see you, sir, sent in from the broadcasting, she says.”

“Miss Forester.” The inspector sprung up. “Events are moving, Alfred. Here she is!”

They heard the constable's returning footsteps in the passage, and in a moment he opened the door and ushered in a remarkable looking individual. Short and stout, with extremely short skirts which, as she walked, displayed a pair of fat legs which irresistibly reminded Harbord of tree trunks. Her head was big, so was her painted face; quantities of dyed, permanently waved ends of hair protruded from a hat much too small for the head it was supposed to cover. Her jumper was embellished by quantities of paste buttons and strings of artificial pearls were hung round her fat neck.

The two detectives stared as she advanced towards them with mincing steps; but Stoddart soon recovered himself and stepped forward.

“Miss Joan Forester, I presume?”

The lady smiled, exhibiting a wide, expansive set of teeth. “Which I was born, or plain Jane, but Joan being more fashionable I took to it. Still, that's all a long time ago, and you'll know me well enough now, I expect, as Tottie Villiers of the Grandene Music Hall. A big crowd I draw, I can tell you. All the boys love Tottie.” She chanted the last words in a kind of monotone.

“Of course.” The accent and the admiration in the inspector's eyes were a
tour de force
of acting. “Miss Tottie Villiers, the very lady I always look to when I feel dull. Many the time you have cheered me up. But this is an unexpected pleasure this morning. Now if you will sit down.” He drew forward the only comfortable chair the room possessed.

Miss Villiers sat down, preening herself and bridling beneath the inspector's gaze.

“And who is the friend who is asking about me? I declare you might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard you had been asking for Joan Forester on the wireless.”

“If I had known Joan Forester was Miss Tottie Villiers I shouldn't have had to ask,” the inspector said, surveying her with an admiring smile as he took the opposite chair.

“That's right. I bet you wouldn't,” Miss Villiers returned complacently.

“I expect you remember Sylvia Gossett who lived with you years ago,” the inspector said, keeping his eyes fixed upon her.

Miss Villiers tossed her head. “Remember her, I should think I do. Regular pal of mine when we were at Hoffmeyer's together, me singing catchy bits of songs and she dancing. But she got too stuck up for me, did Sylvia.”

“Do you know whom she married?”

Miss Tottie Villiers raised her eyebrows and smiled meaningly. “I didn't know she was married. That's news to me. But she always had plenty of chaps after her, for she was a good-looking girl was Sylvia.”

“I wonder whether you could remember the names of any of the young men?”

Miss Villiers wrinkled her brow. “Can't say as I do. I have heard a good many young men's names since then,” she giggled.

The inspector looked knowing. “I guess you have. Was there anybody that Miss Gossett favoured? I don't suppose she would have the choice you did, you know.”

“Now, what are you getting at?” Miss Villiers looked as if she would have liked to have given Stoddart a playful dig in the ribs. “What do you want me to give Sylvia away for? You, I suppose, aren't getting up divorce proceedings or anything of that, eh?” The inspector took a sudden resolution. “No,” he said gravely, “I am not. Miss Gossett has gone to the land where she cannot be troubled by earth's worries.” Miss Villiers stared at him, her prominent, light eyes open to their fullest extent.

“You don't mean to tell me that Sylvia Gossett is dead?”

The inspector answered her question by another:

“You must have heard of Charmian Karslake?”

“Why, of course I have. Her that was done in by some blighter in the country, wasn't she? But I never saw her. The Golden is a bit too highbrow for me.”

“If you had seen her I think you would have recognized her,” the inspector said quietly. “Your old friend, Sylvia Gossett, had not changed so much.”

“Sylvia Gossett!” Miss Villiers stared at him, her colour fading gradually until the rouge on her cheeks stood out in ghastly red patches. “You don't mean that Sylvia Gossett was Charmian Karslake! I did see one picture of Charmian in the paper, and I did fancy it looked a bit like Sylvia, but that it should be herself, I never dreamed. And who killed her?”

“Ah,” the inspector said slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the streaked and raddled face before him, “that is what we want you to help us find out, Miss Villiers.”

“Help you to find out! Me!” Miss Villiers raised her voice almost to a scream. The inspector glanced across at Harbord apprehensively. It appeared to him that there was a probability of the lady going into hysterics. “How the devil can I help you?” she inquired profanely. “I've never seen anything of Sylvia Gossett for over twelve years. It will be fourteen next October. How she got on to be Charmian Karslake or why she changed her name is more than I can tell. Help you indeed! You have come to the wrong person for that, you will find out.”

“I hope not.” The inspector took out the photographs of Dicky Penn-Moreton and John Larpent that he had shown to Mrs. Sparrow. “Do you recognize either of these two men, Miss Villiers?”

Miss Villiers looked at them in his hand. She made no motion to take them into her own. After a minute she brought out a pair of
pince-nez
and perched them rather precariously on the bridge of her snub nose.

“Seems to me I've seen 'em both,” she said at last. “I believe they are two of the boys who used to be after Sylvia. But she was always about with one or other of them.”

“One or other of these two, do you mean?” the inspector inquired, rapping the photographs with his left hand.

“Lor'! Bless your innocence! No, I don't mean one of these two,” Miss Villiers retorted. “She'd go about with one of these two or with anybody else that came along would Sylvia. Wasn't in a position to turn up her nose at any decent sort of chap that would take her out and stand her a supper and a glass of wine. Oh, she was not in a position to be too particular!”

The inspector ignored the compliments to Sylvia Gossett. He stuck his hand in front of Miss Villiers and singled the photographs out.

“Can you tell me if she married either of these two men?”

“Guess she did if she got the chance,” retorted Miss Villiers. “Gord bless your life! You are an innocent sort of ninny for a peeler! Men like these two – real gents they were, though I only set eyes on them once or twice – they don't go marrying your Sylvia Gossetts. Having a bit of a fling with a girl is one thing. Getting married is quite a different pair of shoes.”

“Well, I can't contradict you,” the inspector went on, putting his photographs on the table beside him and drawing his chair nearer Miss Villiers. “Though we have some reason to think Miss Gossett did marry, and probably married either while you knew her or immediately afterwards.”

“Well, if she did she didn't tell me,” Miss Villiers said with an air of finality. “And I should think it very doubtful myself – the marriage I mean. Plenty of girls in the profession call themselves ‘Mrs,' when they ought to be ‘Miss.'”

“Well, that may be,” the inspector said, dismissing the subject. “But, Miss Villiers, we are trying to solve the mystery of Charmian Karslake's death, and so far everything brings us back to her early days on the stage and the time she was first acting in London. Now can you recall anything, however slight, that may show she had a disagreement with anyone, or had given anyone reason to bear a grudge against her? Could she have stood in anybody's way?”

“I don't see how she could,” Miss Villiers said, with a tiny pause between each word, as though she were carefully recalling the past that the inspector had spoken of. “But, talking of disagreements,” she went on, “the only thing I can remember is – and I don't suppose it will help you – that she did have a row with someone once when we were staying in some shabby little rooms at the back of Marylebone Road. I'd only got an afternoon job, and Sylvia was just resting, so things were none too prosperous with us. But I had heard of something that I thought might suit us both, and I was feeling tremendously bucked when I let myself in with my latch-key. I was surprised to hear voices in our room, for I will say that for Sylvia, she didn't often bring men home with her, however she larked about with them outside. This was a man, though; and as I went in I heard him say – ‘I've told you I will not stand it and I mean it. I will kill you before you shall do it!'

“Sylvia just laughed in an aggravating way she had. ‘You'll find you can't,' she says, teasing like. ‘I'm going to do just what I like, as you will find out.'

“The man made an odd sort of sound in his throat. ‘You'll keep your promise,' he said, ‘or you know the end of it.' ‘Oh, promises!' Sylvia says, ‘they are just made to be broken.' Then I think they heard me in the passage, for they stopped dead. I went straight upstairs to the little bedroom we shared, for I was dog tired, and presently I heard the door slam, and somebody go down the path outside, for the house stood back from the road like all the apartment houses do, you knew.

“Then Sylvia came running upstairs. Her face was red and she was excited. ‘What did you hear when you came in, Joanie?' she says. ‘Oh! nothing much,' I told her, just to put her mind at rest. ‘But it sounded to me as if someone wasn't half angry with you.'

“She laughed again, and then she told me that it was a man that lived near them when she was a child, and he'd come to town and seen her dance and had made himself known to her. Then she said, he expected too much, and she was going to finish with him. That's the only quarrel I ever knew of Sylvia having, for she was a good-tempered girl.”

As Miss Villiers spoke the inspector was making rapid notes in his book. Now he looked up.

“You don't know this man's name, I understand.”

Miss Villiers shook her head. “I never heard it. I don't know as I ever heard the name of any of Sylvia's men. Though we were quite good friends, she could be as close as wax.”

“And you never saw any of them?”

Miss Villiers nodded at the photographs. “I saw those two men more than once. And I did just catch sight of this man that she quarrelled with as he walked down the path outside.”

“Oh, you did!” The inspector drew his notebook towards him again. “Now, can you tell me whether this man whose threats you heard was either of these two?” He flicked the photographs as he spoke.

“I don't know who he was,” Miss Villiers said in a puzzled tone. “I only saw the back of him. He was tall and thin like those two, I remember that, but I can't say any more. Now, inspector, if you've done with me I must be off, for I've got a matinee on this afternoon, dancing and what not. And though I'm a star and not obliged I like to turn in when I can. It's encouraging for the younger ones.”

She got up, twirling her short skirts as though she were on the stage there. The inspector rose too.

“I am more than grateful for your kind help. That will be all for this morning. If I should have to ask you anything further I shall give myself the pleasure of seeing you at the Grandene.”

Miss Villier's face altered. “Oh, I don't know as I could have the police inquiring for me at the Grandene. Folks'd think I had been shoplifting or something of that. But if you'll send me a card there it will always find me. And I would always come to the Yard if I could do anything to help hang the blighter that did Sylvia in. Maybe, though, you would like to see our show. I'll send you a couple of stalls for you and that young man,” with a glance at Harbord, who had refrained from taking any part in the conversation.

She opened her handbag and taking out a tiny mirror and a powder-puff began to powder her nose.

“You are very good. I don't often go to theatres, but if it was to see you I know I should enjoy it,” the inspector gallantly said.

Miss Villiers finished with her powder-puff and looking as if she had been well floured restored it to her bag. Then, smiling and smirking at the inspector, she held out her hand.

The inspector held it a moment longer than was necessary as he opened the door. Then he escorted her to the car that was waiting outside.

When he came back he threw himself back in his chair and mopped his forehead.

“Oh, well, I always find ladies of the Lottie Villiers type exhausting, but they are very helpful sometimes. Now I think Mr. Larpent and Mr. Richard Penn-Moreton will have to speak out.”