Collected works of j s f.., p.784
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 784
“What I’m wanting to get at, Mr. Rosenbaum, is the actual worth of these diamonds. What was it?”
“Put it at something between the two figures,” said Rosenbaum.
“Mr. Maxton might have found some other gentleman in your trade to give him forty thousand?”
“He might, but the other fellow wouldn’t have made much profit.”
“Well, did you renew your offer when you encountered Mr. Maxton at Euston station?”
“Yes, I said I was willing to buy at the price I’d formerly named.”
“And — he replied what?”
“Think it over while he was away.”
“You are positive about his carrying the diamonds off with him on that journey to Monkseaton?”
Mr. Rosenbaum smiled.
“Unless he threw them out of the window or left them on the carriage floor or on his table in the restaurant car, he had them when he reached Monkseaton,” he answered. “The last thing he did while I was there was to put them back in his old leather wallet and place that in his right-hand hip pocket. And,” added Rosenbaum, slapping the ledge of the witness-box, “whoever murdered him has got them — of course!”
“Can you give any description of these diamonds, Mr. Rosenbaum?” inquired the Coroner.
“A rough, general one, sir. Some of the stones — most of them — were uncut; a few were cut; I shall be happy to give any information in my power.”
“There’s just one matter I might refer to,” continued the Coroner. “Hatton Garden, I believe, is the centre of the diamond trade in London. Did you ever see Mr. Maxton there?”
“Never, sir. Indeed, he told me he did not know its whereabouts. As I told you, he had a letter of introduction to me, and instead of presenting it in person, he forwarded it by post and asked me to call on him.”
“And you don’t know if he had any transactions with any other person in London?”
“I do not.”
The Coroner turned to the jurymen.
“I think this will be a convenient stage at which to adjourn,” he said. “Mr. Rosenbaum’s evidence puts a fresh aspect on the case—”
Sir Stephen Maxtondale was whispering to his solicitor; the Coroner paused. The solicitor rose.
“Before Mr. Rosenbaum leaves the box, sir, I should like to ask him another question. Mr. Rosenbaum, during your conversations with him did Mr. Maxton tell you anything about his past? Did he, for instance, say where he had lived?”
“Only that he had lived for some years in South America — Brazil chiefly. He evidently knew Brazil very well — the diamond mines there — Minas Geraes, Paraná, and so on.”
“But nothing else — nothing as to his private affairs?”
“No, no, nothing!”
“And — he didn’t confide to you that he was really Sir John Maxtondale?”
“He certainly did not tell me that!” replied Rosenbaum. “Oh, no!”
The Coroner formally adjourned the inquiry at this point, and Mr. Rosenbaum presently went away with Mallwood to identify Sir John Maxtondale’s dead body, Sir Stephen and Mr. Ellerthorpe following them. Chaney and I, walking back across the park, fell to discussing Rosenbaum’s evidence and its value and significance in relation to the murders.
“What do you make of all that, Camberwell?” he asked, as we left the village and its still gaping and wondering crowds— “taking the diamond man’s word for it.”
“I saw no reason to doubt his word,” I answered. “I watched him closely, and I should set him down as a thoroughly reliable witness.”
“Very good — all gospel truth,” he said. “Then — what’s it amount to?”
I had been thinking that question over ever since Rosenbaum stepped out of the box. For what did his evidence amount to? — or, rather, what did it imply?
“I suppose,” I replied, “that it really amounts to a suggestion that somebody in London knew that Sir John Maxtondale — Mr. Maxton — carried a pocketful of diamonds, followed him down here, murdered him, and robbed him. Is that about it?”
“That’s precisely about it!” agreed Chaney. “Well? — I’m wanting to know what you think of that little theory?”
“I can’t adopt it,” I answered.
“Why?”
“Because of the subsequent murders, Chaney. If some man followed Maxton, as we’ll call him, down here and murdered and robbed him, why should that man hang about for more than twenty-four hours to murder Robson and Mrs. Kitteridge? I think the murderer of Maxton would have got away with his booty there and then. What on earth should a man who knew of Maxton’s possession of diamonds, and who killed Maxton to get them, know of Robson or the old woman?”
“Sure, I agree with you,” he said. “But that doesn’t prove that Maxton was not followed from London, watched, tracked next morning to Dutchman’s Cut, and there murdered and robbed. That, Camberwell, in view of Rosenbaum’s story is quite a good theory.”
“What of the other murders, then?” I asked.
“Ah, now we come to the really big question!” he replied. “Just this — had the murders of Robson and Mrs. Kitteridge any relation whatever to the murder of Sir John Maxtondale? See what I’m after?”
“Coincidence, I suppose,” I answered. “The long-arm business.”
“There’s a lot more of coincidence than most people would believe,” he said. “I’ve seen no end of it in my time. It would be a coincidence, of course, that these two murders followed so quickly on the other, in the same neighbourhood. But it is possible that the murders of Robson and Mother Kitteridge have no relation whatsoever to the murder of Sir John Maxtondale.”
“Possible, yes,” I agreed. “But what do you really think, yourself, Chaney?”
He hesitated a little before replying.
“I should like to know a lot more,” he answered at last. “I should like to know about Sir John’s doings in London between his arrival there and his visit to Mr. Marston. I should like to know more about Robson, and about Mrs. Kitteridge, and Mrs. Kitteridge’s lodger, Batty. I should like—”
Here we turned a corner of the woods and encountered Mallwood’s car bringing him and Rosenbaum back from Heronswood. We all stopped.
“Mr. Rosenbaum has positively identified the body,” announced Mallwood.
“Oh, no doubt about it!” said Rosenbaum. “That is the man I knew as Mr. Maxton. Not a doubt!”
“What do you make of this, Mallwood?” asked Chaney. “In view of Mr. Rosenbaum’s evidence, I mean.”
Mallwood had evidently made up his mind. He spoke with decision.
“What I think,” he replied, “is that Batty shot Sir John and robbed the dead body; that somehow Mrs. Kitteridge got possession of the secret; that Batty suspected her of splitting to Robson; and that, catching them together, he shot them both and decamped.”
“You feel sure of that?” suggested Chaney. “That’s your line?”
“That’s my line! And,” concluded Mallwood, “I shall catch Batty!”
Chaney turned to the diamond merchant.
“You’ll be returning to town, Mr. Rosenbaum, at once, I suppose?” he said. “Well, if you’ll be so kind, you can help us. Make all the inquiry you can amongst your friends and business acquaintances as to whether Sir John Maxtondale, or Mr. Maxton, showed those diamonds to others. And if you learn anything, let me and my partner know — here’s our address in town.”
He gave Rosenbaum our professional card; Rosenbaum promised his aid; and he and Mallwood drove off. And Chaney gave me one of his knowing looks.
“Now we know Mallwood’s line!” he said, chuckling. “Of course, it’s the one and only line Mallwood would take. Well — let’s wait a bit.”
We had not to wait long. That evening we got a telephone message from Mallwood, informing us that Batty had been arrested at Winckley and was being brought to Monkseaton.
CHAPTER VIII. THE RESTAURANT CAR
CHANEY’S FIRST PROCEDURE on hearing of Batty’s arrest was to inquire as to the whereabouts of Winckley. Winckley, we were told, was a small place about twenty miles away. Whereat Chaney shook his head, and I knew what the gesture meant. Batty, in Chaney’s opinion, had he been murderer and thief, would have put more than twenty miles between himself and the scene of his misdeeds in the time available.
We went into Monkseaton next morning as interested spectators of whatever might happen. The court-house, of course, was packed and the magistrates’ bench full, but what interested me more than anything else was a group of men, all evidently roughish characters, but dressed in their best clothes, which had arranged itself in a prominent position and was being marshalled and generally superintended by a sharp-looking young fellow who was, we were told, clerk to a certain Monkseaton solicitor of great reputation with the ne’er-do-well portion of the community.
“I’ve a pretty good idea as to what’s going to happen,” muttered Chaney, watching this group. “Mallwood has been a bit too previous. If he’d made some quiet inquiry—”
The magistrates came in, packing the bench; Batty’s case was called at once. And Batty appeared in the dock. I came to the instant conclusion that Batty, however innocent he might be of this charge, was a particularly bad lot — a low-down, swaggering, defiant, and truculent no-good. He came into view with all the arrogance and conceit of a stage villain and accompanied his plea with a smothered expletive which, luckily, caught nobody’s ear. I could see, too, that for two pins the group of men I have already referred to would have burst into cheers on his behalf; it was only the strenuous efforts of the solicitor’s clerk in charge of them that kept them quiet.
And now what was there against Batty? Mallwood had raked up some evidence. Batty had been discharged from his employment on the Heronswood estate for bad conduct and drunkenness. There was evidence that instead of going away he had hung about, lodging with Mrs. Kitteridge, and was hard up for funds — two men proved that he had tried to borrow money from them just previous to the date of the first murder. Then there was the fact of the Wheeley and Chesson cartridges — a Monkseaton tradesman dealing in such things said that he had sold Batty a box of such cartridges not very long before.
This was the only witness that Batty’s solicitor — the aforesaid practitioner highly popular with local offenders — condescended to question.
“Look at that cartridge!” commanded this gentleman. “Take it in your hand — look at it well! Now, on your oath, is that a cartridge you sold to the accused? On your oath, now!”
The witness turned a somewhat indignant glance in the direction of his peremptory questioner.
“How on earth can I say that?” he demanded, almost angrily. “How can I tell one cartridge from another?”
“Answer my question! Did you sell that cartridge to the man in the dock?”
“I can’t say! — you know I can’t say. I sold him a box of cartridges. This may have been—”
“Never mind may have been! Can you swear that you sold him that particular cartridge? Yes or no?”
“No, then! I sold him—”
“Attend to me! Do you, in the course of your business, sell a lot of these cartridges — Wheeley and Chessons?”
“Yes — in large quantities.”
“Used for sporting guns, aren’t they?”
“Of course! That’s what they are for.”
“Lots of customers in the neighbourhood, then?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll mention a few names. Lord Winckley? Sir Charles Topdale? Sir William Bivers? Supply all of ’em, eh? And a lot of other people, too, no doubt. Do you supply Sir Stephen Maxtondale?”
“Yes, occasionally.”
“And his son, Mr. Rupert Maxtondale?”
“Yes.”
“And Sir Stephen’s gamekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“And Sir Stephen’s steward, Mr. Weekes?”
“Yes.”
“All with this particular sort — Wheeley and Chesson?”
“Yes, I’ve said already those cartridges have a big sale round here.”
“But these people I’ve mentioned, Sir Stephen Maxtondale, his son, his steward, his gamekeeper, buy them regularly?”
“Yes, that’s so, certainly.”
“Then it wouldn’t surprise you at all to hear of a Wheeley and Chesson’s cartridge being picked up at any time, anywhere, on the Heronswood estate?”
The witness smiled.
“I should think thousands of empty cartridges are picked up there in the course of a year,” he replied. “They buy plenty!”
The solicitor held out a hand.
“Give me that cartridge-case back!” he said. The next instant with a contemptuous gesture he had tossed the case across the table and had turned to the bench. “Your Worship,” he began, “I am going to show that this is one of the most ridiculous and foolish prosecutions which the obstinacy and stupidity of the police authorities have ever urged them to undertake; in plain language, my defence is an alibi, and of such a nature that it will be absolutely impossible to disregard it. Call Superintendent Mallwood!”
Mallwood obeyed this summons with every appearance of disapproval and surprise, but his ordeal was very brief. All the defending solicitor wanted was to get from him, officially, the exact dates, times, and whereabouts of the murders. And having got what he wanted, he proceeded to prove, in the most unmistakable fashion, that from five o’clock in the afternoon of the day preceding Sir John Maxtondale’s arrival at Sedbury Manor until the moment of his arrest at Winckley, Batty was never within so many miles of Dutchman’s Cut or Heronswood home farm. One by one some eight or ten men were called into the witness-box; the alibi, as its setter-up had said, was not to be challenged. True, the police tried to challenge the credibility of good faith of certain of these witnesses, but there were two or three — of whom one was the landlord of a Winckley inn at which Batty had put himself up — whose testimony was unimpeachable. And in the end Batty was discharged, and he left the dock and the court with his body-guard of friends openly derisive of Mallwood and his satellites.
And now came an episode which, though none of us guessed it at the time, was to have an important influence on the development of these problems — and of their ultimate solution. It was, I suppose, Batty being what he was, only natural that in the first flush of his triumph he and his phalanx of supporters from Winckley (he was a Winckley man, as it turned out, and evidently a popular one amongst his fellow-townsfolk of a sort) should turn into the nearest public-house to celebrate the discomfiture of the police. That, at any rate, was what they did, with the result that an hour later they emerged into the street still more flushed. And then Batty, by ill luck, came across Weekes, the steward, and, after abusing, fell upon him. Half an hour later, Batty found himself back in the dock, for the magistrates were still sitting, and the police put their man up at once. And that night Batty did not return to Winckley; instead, he went off to a month’s hard labour at the county jail, swearing vengeance on Weekes, Mallwood, and everybody concerned.
We appeared now to be exactly where we were before the arrest of Batty, but on the very next day we got some fresh information. While Chaney and I were consulting with Sir Stephen Maxtondale and Mr. Ellerthorpe as to our next procedure, Mallwood rang us up, asking if we would at once go over to Monkseaton. Arrived at his office, we found him closeted with a smart, alert, well-dressed young fellow whom I thought I recognized and who turned out, on introduction, to be a waiter attached to the restaurant car of the noon train from Euston to Monkseaton.
“This young man has got a day off to come and give some information,” said Mallwood. “I thought you’d like to hear it. His name’s Albert Strepp, and he’s on the first-class restaurant car on that train by which Sir John Maxtondale travelled when he came down to see Mr. Marston. He remembers him — and a good deal else. Tell your tale again, Strepp.”
Strepp, who had been making a shrewd-eyed examination of Chaney and me, smiled, as if in depreciation of his powers of narrative.
“Why, I don’t know that there’s so very much to tell, gentlemen,” he said. “Of course, I’ve read the newspapers about this affair, and as soon as I’d seen the first accounts there, I knew the murdered gentleman was one that came down here to Monkseaton by my train — I remembered him well enough for more than one reason.”
“Gave you a good tip, no doubt?” suggested Chaney.
Strepp smiled again — knowingly.
“Well, he certainly did that, sir — he gave me two tips, as a matter of fact — one when he paid his bill for lunch, and the other when I saw him out of the car at Monkseaton. But there were other reasons. He came early to the train — it’s always drawn up at Number One platform some time before it’s due to start; he came at about twenty minutes to twelve, which is the scheduled time. And he had a gentleman with him who wasn’t travelling—”
“How did you know he wasn’t travelling?” asked Chaney.
“Because I asked them if they’d be taking lunch, sir. The first gentleman said he would, but the other said no, he wasn’t going on; he’d just got in to talk to his friend till the train was due out. I made a mental note of that because the train was very full that morning, and I knew I should want the seat which the second gentleman had sat down in.”
“Well, that second gentleman — can you describe him?” inquired Chaney.
“Yes, sir — he was, I should say, a Jew gentleman — middle-aged, dark, very well dressed — City man, I should have taken him for.”
“Did you notice anything that happened while he remained in the carriage?”
“Just a bit, sir: I was passing up and down, finding seats for people — some of the seats were already engaged. Once, in passing them, I saw the first gentleman showing the other what looked to be diamonds. They had them spread out on the table between them.”
“A lot of diamonds?”
“Well, I couldn’t say as to a lot, sir. They was diamonds, anyway — sparkled like ’em, at any rate.”
“Diamonds such as you see in jewellers’ shop-windows, eh?”
