Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (6 page)

“As far as I can tell, nosing else, monsieur,” Celeste said decidedly. “Dat is, no jewels. Of her money I do not know. But I hear that there is not much found. Zen I sink I see some in her little morocco case, but then Miss Karslake have her cheque book.”

The inspector stood up. “Then, that is all just now, mademoiselle. I must thank you for your courtesy.” Celeste got up too. “1 also will tank you for yours, monsieur.” She dropped him a little stage curtsy. “I bid you good-bye, monsieur,” she said as she turned to the door.

The inspector opened it for her. “Not good-bye,” he said politely. “Only
au revoir
, mademoiselle.”

A policeman stood before the room in which Charmian Karslake had been murdered. He saluted as the inspector and Harbord came up.

“Anyone been here since you came?” the inspector said, looking at the smashed door which had been pushed back on one side.

“No, sir.”

The inspector frowned, looking into the room. It was obvious that Charmian Karslake had not yielded up her life without a struggle.

“Some sounds surely ought to have been heard,” he said. The furniture was overturned, the ornaments from the mantelpiece and the knick-knacks from the dressing-table lay about in the direst confusion.

As was the case in most of the rooms in the Abbey, the floor was polished and beautiful old rugs were laid beside the bed, before the fire-place and the window. These were tossed aside, the silk eiderdown lay upon the floor. Quite evidently the bed had not been slept in, but in the struggle the bed-clothes had been torn off and lay half on the ground. Where Charmian Karslake had fallen the pool of blood, even now hardly dry, lay on the floor, and the rug beyond was stained at the edges.

The inspector looked around. “Not a great deal to be learned here at first sight, eh?”

Harbord did not answer. He was giving all his attention to the door, examining the lock with care. The panels of the door had been forced and the lock hung useless, but still locked. The bolts on the inside had not even been shot. Of the key there was no sign. Harbord was examining the door handle and the lock through his microscope. The inspector stepped past him and went over to the dressing-table. The necklace of pearls still lay there, and there were the usual accessories. After a cursory glance the inspector went to the dressing-room. Here poor Charmian Karslake's gold frock lay over the back of a chair as she had thrown it. He went across and felt it over. Harbord came in and stood beside him.

“You won't find anything, sir. All the women have given up pockets, confound them!”

“Yes. And the bags they carry instead they never can remember,” the inspector added. “It is always – ‘Where is my bag?' What they do it for I can't imagine. Fancy a man having his pockets fastened up and carrying his keys and money and everything in a bag which he dangles about by the handle.”

“Some of 'em haven't got handles either,” Harbord said, as his sharp eyes glanced about the room. “My sister's hasn't. She just carries it about tucked under her arm, a pochette she calls it. She told me handles had gone out of fashion, the other day.”

“So have brains, I should imagine,” grumbled the inspector.

He was standing before Miss Karslake's nearly empty dressing-bag. Celeste had taken out most of the actress's belongings. At the bottom of the bag was the usual debris of papers. The inspector went on his knees and picked out the only thing with writing on. But there were no notes that appeared to be of the slightest value. A bill or two, a couple of receipts, a pencilled line from the manager of the Golden, torn-up scraps out of which the inspector and Harbord could make nothing. Then just as they were clearing out the last the inspector bent down with a sharp exclamation:

“What is this?”

Harbord stopped beside him. The inspector held the paper towards him.

“Look at this.”

Harbord looked. The paper appeared to have been torn out of some book. On it had been scrawled over and over again in a bold characteristic writing: “Paula Galbraith Paula Galbraith.”

“What does this mean?” the inspector said, staring at it. “Paula Galbraith. Has Miss Karslake met her before? If it had been the other girl, the American – Mrs. Richard Penn-Moreton – I shouldn't have been surprised. But Paula Galbraith. How could the two have come across one another? Well, that is another question we have to find the answer to.”

“Another?” Harbord repeated, raising his eyebrows.

“Why did Charmian Karslake come down to Hepton?” the inspector went on. “Not, I think, because she had taken a fancy to Lady Moreton, and the latter sent her an invitation to the dance.”

“You think she had some private reason for wishing to come to the Abbey?”

The inspector nodded. “As far as I can see it is perfectly obvious that she had. It is our job now to find out what that reason was. Another question that will suggest itself to my mind is, Was Charmian Karslake really an American, or was she an English girl who, making name and fortune in America, had some motive for throwing off her nationality and taking on that of the United States?”

Harbord looked at him. “What motive could she have had?”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “That we have to find out.

“That is the box the maid spoke of.”

He pointed to a small morocco case standing on a little table with one or two other belongings of Miss Karslake's.

“We had better see if the money is intact as far as we can.”

The little lock, which Charmian Karslake probably thought absolutely safe, was soon opened. The inspector felt in his pocket and produced a curious looking little instrument. He applied this to the lock and in a minute the morocco case lay open before him – open, but empty! Of the notes of which Celeste had spoken there was no sign.

“H'm! what do you make of that?” the inspector said, glancing at his assistant.

Harbord did not speak for a minute, then he said slowly:

“I imagine Miss Karslake took them out herself. It is scarcely likely that the murderer spent much time in the room after the crime was committed. Doubtful, too, even if he had possessed himself of Miss Karslake's keys, whether he would have guessed that that little box contained money. And, granted that he did, would he have stopped to open the box? He would have been more likely to put the whole thing into his pocket.”

Stoddart clapped the young man on the back. “Well thought out, Harbord. Now we must 'phone the Bank – the Imperial Counties – and see if they have kept the numbers of the notes. I don't think we shall do very much good by looking further round here. We are more likely to find the clue, without which we are wandering round in a maze, either in one of the other rooms in the Abbey or in Charmian Karslake's flat. At the present moment I feel inclined to put a few questions to Miss Paula Galbraith. But first the Bank –”

He led the way out of the room and, with a word to the policeman at the door, he and Harbord made their way to the station.

As they reached the gallery, from which they could see down into the hall, they heard the sound of voices. One was a woman's, low, but tense with feeling:

“No, I tell you I will not listen.''

Then came a man's:

“By Heaven, Paula, I will not let you go, you shall explain.”

Stoddart laid his hand sharply on Harbord's shoulder, but quickly as the detectives stopped some sound had evidently betrayed their approach to the two in the gallery. They stopped. The woman came quickly towards the detectives, her golden head uplifted; the man disappeared in the opposite direction. Harbord drew back. Stoddart stepped forward.

“Miss Galbraith, I believe.”

The girl looked at him, unseeing for a moment, then she started violently as if suddenly waking up.

“Yes.”

“I am Inspector Stoddart of Scotland Yard,” the detective went on.

Was it a momentary gleam of fear that flashed into the girl's blue eyes?

“Yes. I knew you were coming to – to –”

“To investigate the mystery of Miss Karslake's death,” the inspector finished. “I should be glad of a few minutes' talk with you.”

The girl frowned. “It would not be of the least use. I could not tell you anything that could possibly help you.”

“You must let me be the judge of that, I think,” the inspector said lightly, but with a certain firmness in his tone.

Miss Galbraith bit her lip. “Will it do in the morning?”

“I am afraid not. If you will kindly come into the library, which Sir Arthur has placed at our disposal, I shall probably keep you only a very short time.”

The girl hesitated a moment, glancing at him as though wondering whether refusal were possible.

“Very well,” she said at last, with a certain sullenness in her tone, “but it will be time wasted for you.”

“Will you come to the library, then?” The inspector drew back and motioned her to precede them.

Once more the girl hesitated perceptibly. Then, shrugging her shoulders as though making the best of a bad job, she walked quickly past him and down the stairs. The inspector had some ado to keep pace with her hurrying footsteps as they crossed the hall. But he managed to reach the library door first and held it open for her.

She frowned as she saw Harbord following him in. “I thought you wished to see me alone?”

“Mr. Harbord is my trusted assistant,” the inspector said quietly, as he set a chair for her. “You may speak quite freely before him.”

“Only, as I told you, I have nothing to say,” Miss Galbraith said as she sat down.

The inspector took the chair at the head of the table and, taking his notebook from his pocket, laid it open before him.

“Were you acquainted with Miss Karslake before her coming to Hepton?”

“Not in the least. I had not even seen her on the stage.”

“When did you first see her? I understand that, like her, you came down from town that afternoon.”

“Yes. But not by the same train. I reached Hepton about half-past two. Miss Karslake and the majority of the guests from town travelled by the four o'clock express. I just saw Miss Karslake when she came in with the others to tea, which we had in the hall.”

“She was a good-looking woman, wasn't she?”

“Every paper in the country tells you so,” Miss Galbraith responded.

“And your opinion?”

“I don't know that my opinion is important or even relevant to the inquiry you are making,” Paula Galbraith answered coolly. “But, yes, of course I thought her beautiful. It would be impossible to think otherwise. But I did not care for her face particularly.”

“Did you have much conversation with her?” The girl smiled a little. “None at all. We were not even introduced. Of course a crowd of people wanted to be introduced to her. Lady Moreton had her hands full. And as I was not particularly anxious to know her I remained where I was.”

“Where was that?”

The faint, ironic smile that had been playing round the girl's lips ever since she entered the room deepened now.

“I was sitting on the big oak settle to the right of the door.”

“Alone?” the inspector said sharply.

“Certainly not!” the girl said in her turn, with a slight asperity. “I was with Mr. John Larpent.”

“Was he introduced to Miss Karslake?”

“No. He remained with me until I went upstairs to dress. Miss Karslake had gone up some little time before, so that I know there was no introduction.”

“And at the scratch dinner, as Lady Moreton phrases it, you were not near the actress.”

“She did not come down,” Miss Galbraith said at once. “She said she was very tired and would prefer to rest in her own room until the dance.”

“I see.”

The inspector leaned forward and fixed his penetrating glance upon the girl's mobile face.

“Miss Galbraith, I wonder whether it will surprise you to hear that among the few papers found here in Miss Karslake's trunk was a piece of paper with your name written on it over and over again.”

“It would surprise me very much,” she said at last. “In fact it would surprise me so much that I do not think I should be able to bring myself to believe it.”

“Yet it is so,” the inspector said, still keeping his eyes on the girl. “You can give no explanation, Miss Galbraith?”

“None at all,” the girl said with a puzzled air.

“I am to take it, then, that you saw practically nothing of Miss Karslake.”

“I saw her, of course, at the dance.”

It did not escape the inspector's keen gaze that the girl's eyes no longer met his in the same frank fashion, that a faint touch of colour flickered in her pale cheeks.

“Did you speak to her then?” he questioned sharply.

“No, I told you that I did not speak to her at all.” Miss Galbraith's voice was as firm, as decided as his, but some quality there was in it that made Stoddart regard her even more closely.

“You can give us no help at all, then, Miss Galbraith?”

The girl shook her head. “None at all, I am sorry to say.”

The inspector rose. “Then, I will not keep you longer now. It is just possible that I may want to see you later.”

He opened the door for her. But her proudly poised head and her firmly compressed lips did not hide from him the shadow of the fear that lurked in her blue eyes.

When they were once more alone and the door had closed behind Miss Galbraith, Stoddart looked across at Harbord.

“What do you make of that young woman?”

“I think she knows more than she says. She is obviously scared. But yet” – Harbord's voice dropped and he looked worried and puzzled – “it is difficult to believe that a girl like that could be implicated in a horrible murder.”

“She may not be implicated, but she may know, or guess, somebody who is,” the inspector said with a far-away look in his eyes. “Anyway, guesses and surmises will not help us, and it strikes me there is a jolly lot of spade work in front of us before the mystery of Charmian Karslake's death is elucidated.”