Collected works of j s f.., p.567
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 567
Hetherwick hastened into the lounge, and found a keen-faced, friendly-eyed man of forty or thereabouts stretching out a hand to him.
“Kenthwaite wired me this afternoon that you were coming down, and asked me to look you up here,” he said. “I’d have asked you to dine with me, but I’ve been kept at my office until just now, and again, I live a good many miles out of town. But to-morrow night — —”
“You’re awfully good,” replied Hetherwick. “I’d no idea that Kenthwaite was wiring. He gave me a letter of introduction to you, but I suppose he thought I wanted to lose no time. And I don’t, and I dare say you can tell me something about the object of my visit — let’s find a corner and smoke.”
Installed in an alcove in the big smoking-room, Hollis read Kenthwaite’s letter.
“What is it you’re after?” he asked. “Kenthwaite mentions that my knowledge of Sellithwaite is deeper than his own — naturally, it is, as I’m several years older.”
“Well,” responded Hetherwick. “It’s this, briefly. You’re aware, of course, of what befell your late Police-Superintendent in London — his sudden death?”
“Oh, yes — read all the newspapers, anyway,” assented Hollis. “You’re the man who was present in the train on the Underground, aren’t you?”
“I am. And that’s one reason why I’m keen on solving the mystery. There’s no doubt whatever that Hannaford was poisoned — that it’s a case of deliberate murder. Now, there’s a feature of the case to which the police don’t seem to attach any importance. I do attach great importance to it. It’s the matter of the woman to whom Hannaford referred when he was talking — in my presence — to the man who so mysteriously disappeared. Hannaford spoke of that woman as having been through his hands ten years ago. That would be some experience he had here, in this town. Now then, do you know anything about it? Does it arouse any recollection?”
Hollis, who was smoking a cigar, thoughtfully tapped its long ash against the edge of his coffee-cup. Suddenly his eyes brightened.
“That’s probably the Whittingham case,” he said. “It was about ten years ago.”
“And what was the Whittingham case?” asked Hetherwick. “Case of a woman?”
“Of a woman — evidently an adventuress — who came to Sellithwaite about ten years ago, and stayed here some little time, in this very hotel,” replied Hollis. “Oddly enough, I never saw her! But she was heard of enough — eventually. She came here, to the ‘White Bear,’ alone, with plenty of luggage and evident funds. I understand she was a very handsome woman, twenty-eight or thirty years of age, and she was taken for somebody of consequence. I rather think she described herself as the Honourable Mrs. Whittingham. She paid her bills here with unfailing punctuality every Saturday morning. She spent a good deal of money amongst the leading tradesmen in the town, and always paid cash. In short, she established her credit very successfully. And with nobody more so than the principal jeweller here — Malladale. She bought a lot of jewellery from Malladale — but in his case, she always paid by cheque. And in the end it was through a deal with Malladale that she got into trouble.”
“And into Hannaford’s hands!” suggested Hetherwick.
“Into Hannaford’s hands, certainly,” assented Hollis. “It was this way. She had, as I said just now, made a lot of purchases from Malladale, who, I may tell you, has a first-class trade amongst our rich commercial magnates in this neighbourhood. Her transactions with him, however, were never, at first, in amounts exceeding a hundred or two. But they went through all right. She used to pay him by cheque drawn on a Manchester bank — Manchester, you know, is only thirty-five miles away. As her first cheques were always met, Malladale never bothered about making any inquiry about her financial stability; like everybody else he was very much impressed by her. Well, in the end, she’d a big deal with Malladale, Malladale had a very fine diamond necklace in stock. He and she used to discuss her acquisition of it: according to his story they had a fine old battle as to terms. Eventually, they struck a bargain — he let her have it for three thousand nine hundred pounds. She gave him a cheque for that amount there and then, and he let her carry off the necklace.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Hetherwick.
“Just so!” agreed Hollis. “But — he did. However, for some reason or other, Malladale had that cheque specially cleared. She handed it to him on a Monday afternoon; first thing on Wednesday morning Malladale found that it had been returned with the ominous reference to drawer inscribed on its surface! Naturally, he hurried round to the ‘White Bear.’ But the Honourable Mrs. Whittingham had disappeared. She had paid up her account, taken her belongings, and left the hotel, and the town, late on the Monday evening, and all that could be discovered at the station was that she had travelled by the last train to Leeds, where, of course, there are several big main lines to all parts of England. And she had left no address: she had, indeed, told the people here that she should be back before long, and that if any letters came they were to keep them until her return. So then Malladale went to the police, and Hannaford got busy.”
“I gather that he traced her?” suggested Hetherwick.
Hollis laughed sardonically.
“Hannaford traced her — and he got her,” he answered. “But he might well use the expression that you mentioned just now. She was indeed through his hands — just as a particularly slippery eel might have been — she got clear away from him.”
CHAPTER V
THE POLICE RETURN
HETHERWICK NOW BEGAN to arrive at something like an understanding of a matter that had puzzled him ever since and also at the time of the conversation between Hannaford and his companion in the train. He had noted then that whatever it was that Hannaford was telling, he was telling it as a man tells a story against himself; there had been signs of amused chagrin and discomfiture in his manner. Now he saw why.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “She was one too many for him. Then?”
“A good many times too many!” laughed Hollis. “She did Hannaford completely. He strove hard to find her, and did a great deal of the spade-work himself. And at last he ran her down — in a fashionable hotel in London. He had a Scotland Yard man with him, and a detective from our own police-office here, a man named Gandham, who is still in the force — I’ll introduce you to him to-morrow. Hannaford, finding that Mrs. Whittingham had a suite of rooms in this hotel — a big West End place — left his two men downstairs, or outside, and went up to see her alone. According to his own account, she was highly indignant at any suspicions being cast upon her, and still more so, rose to a pitch of most virtuous indignation when he told her that he’d got a warrant for her arrest and that she’d have to go with him. During a brief interchange of remarks she declared that if her bankers at Manchester had returned her cheque unpaid it must have been merely because they hadn’t realised certain valuable securities which she’d sent to them, and that if Malladale had presented his cheque a few days later it would have been all right. Now, that was all bosh! — Hannaford, of course, had been in communication with the bankers; all they knew of the lady was that she had opened an account with them while staying at some hotel in Manchester, and that she had drawn all but a few pounds of her balance the very day on which she had got the necklace from Malladale and fled with it from Sellithwaite. Naturally, Hannaford didn’t tell her this — he merely reiterated his demand that she should go with him. She assented at once, only stipulating that there should be no fuss — she would walk out of the hotel with him, and he and his satellites could come back and search her belongings at their leisure. Then Hannaford — who, between you and me, Hetherwick, had an eye for a pretty woman! — made his mistake. Her bedroom opened out of the sitting-room in which he’d had his interview with her; he was fool enough to let her go into it alone, to get ready to go with him. She went — and that was the very last Hannaford ever saw of her!”
“Made a lightning exit, eh?” remarked Hetherwick.
“She must have gone instantly,” asserted Hollis. “A door opened from the bedroom into a corridor — she must have picked up hat and coat and walked straight away, leaving everything she had there. Anyway, when Hannaford, tired of waiting, knocked at the door and looked in, his bird was flown. Then, of course, there was a hue-and-cry, and a fine revelation. But she’d got clear away, probably by some side door or other exit, and although Hannaford, according to his own account, raked London with a comb for her, she was never found. Vanished!”
“And the necklace?” inquired Hetherwick.
“That had vanished too,” replied Hollis. “They searched her trunks and things, but they found nothing but clothing. Whatever she had in the way of money and valuables she’d carried off. And so Hannaford came home, considerably down in the mouth, and he had to stand a good deal of chaff. And if he found this woman’s picture in a recent paper — well, small wonder that he did cut it out! I should say he was probably going to set Scotland Yard on her track! — for, of course, there’s no time-limit to criminal proceedings.”
“This is the picture he cut out,” observed Hetherwick, producing it from his pocket-book. “But you say you never saw the woman?”
“No, I never saw her,” assented Hollis, examining the print with interested curiosity. “So, of course, I can’t recognise this. Handsome woman! But you meet me at my office — close by — to-morrow morning, at ten, and I’ll take you to our police-station. Gandham will know!”
Gandham, an elderly man with a sphinx-like manner and watchful eyes, laughed sardonically when Hollis explained Hetherwick’s business. He laughed again when Hetherwick showed him the print.
“Oh, aye, that’s the lady!” he exclaimed. “Not changed much, neither! Egad, she was a smart ‘un, that, Mr. Hollis! — I often laugh when I think how she did Hannaford! But you know, Hannaford was a soft-hearted man. At these little affairs, he was always for sparing people’s feelings. All very well — but he had to pay for trying to spare hers! Aye, that’s her! We have a portrait of her here, you know.”
“You have, eh?” exclaimed Hetherwick. “I should like to see it.”
“You can see it with pleasure, sir,” replied the detective. “And look at it as long as you like.” He turned to a desk close by and produced a big album, full of portraits with written particulars beneath them. “This is not, strictly speaking, a police photo,” he continued. “It’s not one that we took ourselves, ye understand — we never had the chance! No! — but when my lady was staying at the ‘White Bear,’ she had her portrait taken by Wintring, the photographer, in Silver Street, and Wintring was that suited with it that he put it in his window. So, of course, when her ladyship popped off with Malladale’s necklace, we got one of those portraits, and added it to our little collection. Here it is! — and you’ll not notice so much difference between it and that you’ve got in your hand, sir.”
There was very little difference between the two photographs, and Hetherwick said so. And presently he went away from the police-office wondering more than ever about the woman with whose past adventures he was concerning himself.
“May as well do the thing thoroughly while you’re about it,” remarked Hollis, as they walked off. “Come and see Malladale — his shop is only round the corner. Not that he can tell you much more than I’ve told you already.”
But Malladale proved himself able to tell a great deal more. A grave, elderly man, presiding over an establishment which Hetherwick, unaccustomed to the opulence of provincial manufacturing towns, was astonished to find outside London, he ushered his visitor into a private room, and listened to the reasons they gave for calling on him. After a close and careful inspection of the print which Hetherwick put before him, he handed it back with a confident nod.
“There is no doubt whatever — in my mind — that that is a print from a photograph of the woman I knew as the Honourable Mrs. Whittingham,” he said. “And if it has been taken recently, she has altered very little during the ten years that have elapsed since she was here in this town.”
“You’d be glad to see her again, Mr. Malladale — in the flesh?” laughed Hollis.
The jeweller shook his head.
“I think not,” he answered. “No, I think not, Mr. Hollis. That’s an episode which I had put out of my mind — until you recalled it.”
“But — your loss?” suggested Hollis. “Close on four thousand pounds, wasn’t it?”
Mr. Malladale raised one of his white hands to his grey beard and coughed. It was a cough that suggested discretion, confidence, secrecy. He smiled behind his moustache, and his spectacled eyes seemed to twinkle.
“I think I may venture a little disclosure — in the company of two gentlemen learned in the law,” he said. “To a solicitor whom I know very well, and to a barrister introduced by him, I think I may reveal a little secret — between ourselves and to go no further. The fact of this matter is, gentlemen — I had no loss!”
“What?” exclaimed Hollis. “No — loss?”
“Eventually,” replied the jeweller. “Eventually! Indeed, to tell you the truth plain, I made my profit, and — er, something over.”
Hollis looked his bewilderment.
“Do you mean that — eventually — you were paid?” he asked.
“Precisely! Eventually — after a considerable interval — I was paid,” replied Mr. Malladale. “I will tell you the circumstances. It is, I believe, common knowledge that I sold the diamond necklace to Mrs. Whittingham for three thousand, nine hundred pounds, and that the cheque she gave me was dishonoured, and that she cleared off with the goods and was never heard of after she escaped from Hannaford. Well, two years ago, that is to say, eight years after her disappearance, I one day received a letter which bore the New York postmark. It contained a sheet of notepaper on which were a few words and a few figures. But I have that now, and I’ll show it to you.”
Going to a safe in the corner of his parlour, the jeweller, after some searching, produced a paper and laid it before his visitors. Hetherwick examined it with curiosity. There was no name, no address, no date; all that appeared was, as Malladale had remarked, a few words, a few figures, typewritten: —
Principal . . . . . . . . . . £3,900
8 years’ Interest @ 5% . . . . 1,560
—— —
£5,460
Draft £5,460 enclosed herein: kindly acknowledge in
London Times.
“Enclosed, as is there said, was a draft on a London bank for the specified amount,” continued Mr. Malladale. “£5,460! You may easily believe that at first I could scarcely understand this: I knew of no one in New York who owed me money. But the first figures — £3,900 — threw light on the matter — I suddenly remembered Mrs. Whittingham and my lost necklace. Then I saw through the thing — evidently Mrs. Whittingham had become prosperous, wealthy, and she was honest enough to make amends; there was my principal, and eight years’ interest on it. Yet, I felt somewhat doubtful about taking it — I didn’t know whether I mightn’t be compounding a felony? You gentlemen, of course, will appreciate my little difficulty?”
“Um!” remarked Hollis in a non-committal tone. “The more interesting matter is — what did you do? Though I think we already know,” he added with a smile.
“Well, I went to see Hannaford, and told him what I had received,” answered the jeweller. “And Hannaford said precisely what I expected him to say. He said ‘Put the money in your pocket, Malladale, and say nothing about it!’ So — I did!”
“Each of you feeling pretty certain that Mrs. Whittingham was not likely to show her face in Sellithwaite again, no doubt!” observed Hollis. “Very interesting, Mr. Malladale. But it strikes me that whether she ever comes to Sellithwaite again or not, Mrs. Whittingham, or whatever her name may be nowadays, is in England.”
“You think so?” asked the jeweller.
“Her picture’s recently appeared in an English paper, anyway,” said Hollis.
“But pictures of famous American ladies appear in English newspapers,” suggested Mr. Malladale. “I have recollections of several. Now my notion is that Mrs. Whittingham, who was a very handsome and very charming woman, eventually went across the Atlantic and married an American millionaire! That’s how I figured it. And I have often wondered who she is now.”
“That’s precisely what I want to find out,” said Hetherwick. “One thing is certain — Hannaford knew! If he’d been alive he could have told us. Because in whatever paper it was that this print appeared there would be some letterpress about it, giving the name, and why it appeared at all.”
“You can trace that,” remarked Hollis.
“Just so,” agreed Hetherwick, “and I may as well get back to town and begin the job. But I think with Mr. Hollis,” he added, turning to the jeweller, “I believe that the woman is here in England: I think it possible, too, that Hannaford knew where. And I don’t think it impossible that between the time of his cutting out her picture from the paper and the time of his sudden death he came in touch with her.”
“You think it probable that she, in some way, had something to do with his murder — if it was murder?” asked Mr. Malladale.
“I think it possible,” replied Hetherwick. “There are strange features in the case. One of the strangest is this. Why, when Hannaford cut out that picture, for his own purposes, evidently with no intention of showing it to anyone else, did he cut it out without the name and letterpress which must have been under and over it?”
“Queer, certainly!” said Hollis. “But, you know, you can soon ascertain what that name was. All you’ve got to do is to get another copy of the paper.”
