Collected works of j s f.., p.747
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 747
Mr. Chancellor, Miss Starr, and I remained silent for a minute or so, considering what Chaney had advanced. Miss Starr spoke first.
“If some person we know nothing about murdered Dengo,” she said, “how did that person become possessed of Mr. Nicholas’s sword-stick?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Chaney, glancing appreciatively at Miss Starr, as if in acknowledgment of her acuteness. “Now, that is a mystery, for I don’t think there’s much doubt that that sword-stick was the weapon which the murderer used! You think it practically certain that Mr. Nicholas selected that stick when he left the house after dinner that evening?”
“Mr. Nicholas,” replied Miss Starr, “had a lot of walking-sticks, canes, and umbrellas in a stand in the hall at Wrides Park: there must be at least twenty or twenty-five canes and sticks. But in nine cases out of ten when he wanted a cane or stick he selected that sword-stick. I have more than once asked him why he always chose it, or nearly always. He merely replied that he had got into the habit-it was a stick he had kept for a great many years. Because of this, I think it is pretty certain that he took the sword-stick with him when he went out that night.”
“Well, there are more ways than one in which it would be possible for the stick to pass from Mr. Nicholas’s hand to that of the murderer,” observed Chaney. “It is, I suppose, absolutely impossible to get any further information from Mr. Nicholas as to where he went and what he did that night?”
“Mr. Nicholas has no recollection of any of the events of that night,” I replied. “He remembers nothing of it-from the time he left the house.”
“Well, we must investigate,” said Chaney. “But if I am to be of any use, there is something I wish doing at once. Miss Starr-I am told you are Mr. Nicholas’s niece and have been his daily companion for years. Can you induce your uncle to tell you what the secret is about this man Dengo? Can you get him to tell you what hold Dengo had on him? For that Dengo was blackmailing Mr. Nicholas there isn’t the least doubt. And I want to know why.”
Miss Starr shook her head in a way that suggested hopelessness.
“My uncle never refers to the past,” she replied. “His past, at any rate.”
“But his life’s in danger!” persisted Chaney. “Or, if not quite that, he’s in a very unfortunate situation. Surely-”
“I can try-if I’m allowed to see him,” said Miss Starr. “But I don’t think it’s the least use.”
“Miss Starr and I had better see him together,” remarked Mr. Chancellor. “The police superintendent here struck me as being a very good fellow-I’ll go and arrange the matter at once.”
He went away, and returned almost immediately, to conduct Miss Starr to her uncle’s presence. They were not away very long, and when they came back, the solicitor looked not only discomfited, but annoyed.
“Here’s a pretty state of things!” he exclaimed testily. “Nicholas must really be talked to most seriously-if he says to the police what he’s been saying to us, it will make it impossible to help him!”
“What has he said?” inquired Chaney.
“Far too much!” replied Mr. Chancellor. “To begin with, he flatly refuses to tell us anything about the secret, though he admits that there is one. And to end with-never knew anything so foolish!-he says that he doesn’t know that he didn’t kill Dengo!”
“Ah! He says that, does he?” exclaimed Chaney. “Positively says so!”
“He says he doesn’t know whether he did or he didn’t,” growled Mr. Chancellor. “He doesn’t know what he did that night. But he says he may have done-quite unconsciously. Of course, in my opinion, it’s simply foolish to talk in that way-and there were police officials present, too!”
“It all depends if he went out with some such intention,” said Chaney, thoughtfully. “But I should have taken Mr. Nicholas for a very mild-mannered gentleman.”
“Mr. Nicholas wouldn’t hurt a black beetle!” remarked Miss Starr. “I don’t suppose he ever had a thought of injuring Dengo in any way-not he! He’s simply puzzled to know what he did and where he went that night.”
At this point the superintendent came into the room which he had lent us. He held a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Here’s some news!” he said. “This is a letter, just received, from a woman who thinks she can identify the dead man.”
CHAPTER IX. LITTLE COPPERAS STREET
I HAVE COPIED out from my case-book the letter which the superintendent laid before us-an illiterate document written in an unformed hand, in pencil, on cheap note-paper.
53 Little Copperas Street
Kingsland Road, London
May 5th
DEAR SIR,-Having read the newspaper piece about that inquest on a man found dead in a wood which is called by the name of Dengo, no other name being known, beg to say that in my belief same is my lodger, Mr. Ogden, which is missing from his room in my house since more than a fortnight ago, and have heard him called by that name Dengo by one of his friends occasional. Mr. Ogden went out one morning about the time mentioned saying as how he was going into the country but never come back which I have wondered where he was his things being left here and hoping no ill had befallen him which it now seems he was done in though a quiet peaceable man what’s living with me which is above a year and paying regular every week. Hoping this may be satisfactory and am
Yours respectful,
SUSAN PETTIGO
P.S.-A neighbour having advised me to write.
“This seems to be a bit of useful information,” remarked Chaney. “Dengo is, of course, a transposition of the name Ogden. I suppose you’ll inquire into it-at once, eh?”
“I’m sending a man along by the next train,” replied the superintendent. “It will be something to establish the dead man’s identity.”
Chaney turned to the rest of us.
“I suggest that Mr. Camberwell and I go, too,” he said. “For Mr. Nicholas’s sake, we must find out all we can. And here is an opening!”
“An excellent idea!” assented Mr. Chancellor. “Go, Camberwell!-and let me know of anything you discover.”
Chaney and I went off at once, in company with one Willerton, a detective attached to the police force at Havering St. Michael. All the way to town he and Chaney discussed the case from various angles; as for me, I was wondering about Mr. Nicholas, whose attitude and behaviour seemed incomprehensible-I mean as regards his saying to Mr. Chancellor and Miss Starr that he wasn’t certain that he hadn’t killed Dengo! That on the night of Dengo’s murder Mr. Nicholas was in such a state that he didn’t know what he was doing or where he went I was very well aware, but to make the suggestion that he might have killed his blackmailer was, to say the least of it, inopportune and foolish-especially when it was made in front of the police. And Willerton, as I soon learnt, was full of the police theory.
“Clear case, I call it!” he said as we journeyed along to Waterloo. “We see it from start to finish-everything being nicely added up. Whether he remembers it or not, Nicholas makes another appointment with Dengo for that evening. That’s why Nicholas left his house after dinner; that’s why Dengo turned up at the Wagon and Horses. Nicholas and Dengo met in the park; perhaps they’d a row; perhaps Nicholas saw that as long as Dengo lived, Dengo was going to blackmail him, never leave him alone, give him no peace. So he just ran his sword through Dengo and put him comfortably away in that ditch. That’s what we think-and I don’t see there’s any mystery about it.”
“What’re you going to London for, then?” asked Chaney, cynically.
“Oh, just to make sure who Dengo was,” replied Willerton, twiddling his thumbs. “We must establish his identity, of course. It don’t matter two pins to us what secret there is or was between Nicholas and Dengo. All we’ve got to prove is that Nicholas killed Dengo. And I reckon there’s no doubt whatever about that! What are you going for, pray?”
“Ah!” replied Chaney. “That’s asking!”
Little Copperas Street, where Mrs. Pettigo lived, proved to be at the farther end of the dull and dreary Kingsland Road; it was as dreary and dull as the thoroughfare from which it turned off. Uniformly built little houses of grey stone, made greyer by years of contact with smoke and grime; lifeless windows with dirty blinds and curtains framing a vase of artificial flowers or a miserable aspidistra, this was not the sort of place in which one would expect to find romance, though one might encounter mystery, But there was very little mystery about things at Number 53. Mrs. Pettigo, a wisp of a woman who seemed in no wise surprised to see us, was ready enough to talk, once she had admitted us to her house.
“I felt sure as how somebody would come today, me having sent that letter, which Mrs. Pelband, as lives next door, advised strong,” said Mrs. Pettigo. “Which, of course, I knew it would be police gentlemen, not as how you look particular like that sort, to be sure, though, as I always say, not to be judged by appearances. And of course-”
“Just give us a description of that lodger of yours, will you, Mrs. Pettigo?” said Willerton, cutting short what promised to be a flood of eloquence. “Tell us exactly what he was like.”
Mrs. Pettigo obliged-at considerable length. To add force to her description, she produced a recent photograph of her late lodger, taken as a snapshot by her daughter, who, we learnt, was in the millinery and amused herself in spare moments and fine weather with a Kodak camera. It was a sufficiently good photograph to convince me that Mr. Ogden-Christian name, James-and Dengo were one and the same person.
“How long had you known him?” inquired Willerton-Chaney and I left him to do all the questioning. “When did he first come here?”
“It’ll be about fifteen months,” replied Mrs. Pettigo after musing a little. “Just about the time that Serena Green-which is my daughter’s name, gentlemen, and as good a girl as ever walked!-went to Straw and Sizer’s millinery. He come looking for rooms, and I let him my front parlour and front bedroom, which he paid a month in advance for them there and then. And I will say this for Mr. Ogden, that a more regular gentleman in his payments never breathed. There it was, down on the nail, as they say, to the very minute!”
“Plenty of money, eh?” suggested Willerton.
“Always seemed so, mister,” assented Mrs. Pettigo. “Never stinted himself of anything-in reason, of course.”
“What did he do? Work at anything?”
Mrs. Pettigo shook her head as if shocked.
“Oh, dear me, no mister!” she answered. “He didn’t work at nothing, didn’t Mr. Ogden! He was quite the gentleman, you understand-just did nothing at all.”
“How did he spend his time, then?”
“Well, sir, he were that regular in his habits that you might ha’ set the clock by him! He weren’t one for getting up early-he’d have his breakfast about half past nine. Then he’d set quiet in his room, a-reading the papers; he was a great hand at the papers, specially them as has pieces about sporting in ’em; they was left for him every morning, you see, from the shop at the corner. Then he’d take a walk out before his dinner at one o’clock. Then he’d have his pipe, or his cigar, and his bit of a nap; then he’d go out again before tea. And he went out every evening between tea and supper-I fancy he used the Dog and Pot, round the corner; I know he used to take his glass there. But he was always in to supper at nine o’clock, and by ten he’d go to bed. Uncommon regular man was Mr. Ogden.”
“Steady man, Mrs. Pettigo?”
“I never saw him no other, sir. Which he took his beer and his drop of spirits very regular, but never no more than you’d expect of a gentleman. Which there’s near on to a couple of dozen of bottled ale in his cupboard at this minute, and two or three bottles of spirits, just as he left ’em, me never touching nothing of that sort, though to be sure I have had a taste with him, on occasion-perhaps you’d like to see his sitting room, gentlemen?”
We followed Mrs. Pettigo into the front parlour, which, she assured us, was precisely as the late Mr. Ogden had left it, except for its having been dusted and tidied. And the first thing that struck me was that Mr. Ogden had evidently a great taste, not merely for sport, but for sporting literature. On the top of a low cupboard, let into a recess, were two big piles of sporting newspapers of all types. Mr. Ogden, said Mrs. Pettigo, kept all his papers and read and re-read them. And in a corner bookcase were rows and rows of sporting novels from cheap editions of Surtees and Whyte Melville to sixpenny reprints of Nat Gould. On the chimney-piece between two china dogs stood a row of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf, obviously purchased second-hand.
Willerton made a perfunctory examination of the room, opening drawers, cupboards, and an old writing-desk, and made no discoveries.
“Did he have many letters?” he asked.
“Which he did not, sir,” replied Mrs. Pettigo. “He was a lonely gentleman.”
“Nobody come to see him?”
“Never but once, sir. That was a little man which I never heard his name, but he was the man as I heard apply the name Dengo to Mr. Ogden. And that,” added Mrs. Pettigo, “was not long before Mr. Ogden went out that morning, never to return!”
“Did Ogden ever tell you anything about his past?” inquired Willerton. “Ever tell you what he’d been?”
“No, sir, he did not. Which my own impression about him, gentlemen, was that he’d used the sea.”
“What made you think that, now?”
“Well, sir, it was his appearance-he was that big and hearty. And rolled in his walk, as sailors does. Which my husband, dead these many years, was of that persuasion,” added Mrs. Pettigo. “But I never heard Mr. Ogden say anything definite.”
We presently left the house. Outside, Willerton looked at his watch.
“Well, I’m off,” he said. “Got all I want. I know who the man was, now-sufficiently, at any rate. Going back with me?-we can get a taxi at the corner.”
“No!” replied Chaney, contriving to nudge my elbow. “We’re going to take a look round this pleasant quarter of the town.”
Willerton laughed, a little sneeringly, as if in deprecation of any further efforts, and, saying goodbye, went away to seek a cab-rank. Chaney waited until he’d gone, and then turned to me.
“Now, Mr. Camberwell,” he said, “we’ll begin. And we’ll begin at the Dog and Pot. I saw it, as we came round the corner.”
We walked back to the Dog and Pot, a tavern which stood where the dismal street opened on the dreary highway. It was, of course, the most attractive building anywhere in sight, and the saloon bar into which Chaney led me was bright and cheery. There were only two or three men in the place; behind the bar a smart-looking fellow in a white apron was busily polishing glasses. Ordering a drink apiece, for the good of the house, as Chaney put it, we sat down in a corner.
“Now, Mr. Camberwell,” said Chaney, pulling out a well-worn briar pipe and proceeding to fill it from his pouch, “we’ll do a bit of talking. Let Willerton and the Havering people go their own way-we’ll go another. I’m not satisfied with the mere knowledge that the man who called himself Dengo was really one James Ogden, who lodged with Mrs. Pettigo in Little Copperas Street! I want to know more than that. I want to know who James Ogden was; what his past was; where and when he knew Mr. Christopher Nicholas; what hold he had on Mr. Nicholas; why Mr. Nicholas is so determined not to tell what he knew of Ogden. I want to know all that-and I’m going to know!”
“How do you propose to acquire your knowledge?” I asked.
Chaney lifted his pipe and, before throwing away the match, used it to point at the barman.
“I’m going to ask that chap a few questions presently,” he answered. “Mrs. Pettigo says that Dengo used the Dog and Pot-this is the Dog and Pot. If Dengo came in here pretty regularly, that barman will remember him. He’ll be able to tell us if Dengo had any pals here-if he talked with other men-if there were any men that Dengo was in the habit of meeting here. I think that last’s a very likely thing. I’ve formed an opinion about Dengo from what I saw in his lodgings. He was in all probability a turf man-interested, at any rate, in horse-racing. Perhaps he backed horses. More likely, he’d a share in a street bookmaking concern. This is the sort of place in which he’d meet his pals-if we can trace any pal of his, we can get some information about Dengo. And if we’re going to clear Mr. Nicholas, we must have that information.”
