Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue, page 1
part #8 of Mr. Pinkerton and Inspector Bull Series
MR. PINKERTON HAS A CLUE WAS first copyrighted in 1936 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. Mrs. Zenith Brown, an American author also wrote under the name of David Frome and Leslie Ford. This edition has been edited for the American reader but the essence as out-lined by the author remains unchanged.
PINKERTON HAS THE CLUE
A MYSTERY BY DAVID FROME
Edited by D.L. Roberts
I
MR. EVAN PINKERTON scurried, breathlessly anxious, through the barrier onto the platform at Paddington. He saw immediately that the great Spa Express was still there, that there was no conspiracy between the hundreds of London clocks, his own large silver watch and the time table of the Great Western Railway to make him miss it, and that a lot of other people were also going to Bath.
He put down his bag and mopped his little grey forehead. At least he started to mop his forehead, and then stopped, suddenly struck with the affected, self-conscious voice coming obviously from the blond handsome young man not a foot from him with the stick and the lemon-yellow gloves.
"Oh, it's all right for you. But a person like me, in that ghastly lounge, with all those perfectly incredible old petrifactions?"
Mr. Pinkerton put his handkerchief back in his pocket and stole a glance at the girl he was talking to. She was quite young, and she had red-gold hair and odd smoldering yellow eyes.
"You don't have to come to Bath," she said.
Mr. Pinkerton felt his little gray spine thrill with the warm low tones of her voice.
"You'd love that, wouldn't you? I mean, for me to clear out and leave the old girl's brass to you. She'd probably be found dead in her bed some morning. I wouldn't put it past the lot of you, except Gillian."
Mr. Pinkerton blinked his watery grey eyes and adjusted his lozenge shaped steel rimmed spectacles with some interest. He realized, naturally, that he had got no business standing there, eavesdropping in the most shameless fashion. But nothing short of the Last Trump or the train whistle could have got him away.
He did hope that nobody was noticing him. He glanced apprehensively at the short thick set man in grey Harris tweeds coming energetically through the barrier with a liver-and-white spaniel tugging on a leash. If ever coming events cast their shadows before, Mr. Pinkerton decided later, thinking it all still wondering about the girl and the blond young man as he settled himself in the corner of a third class carriage, his bag securely stowed away under the seat. (Mr. Pinkerton did not put his luggage on the rack up above since a woman had been allowed damages because somebody's bag had lurched off and hit her on the head.) He found it impossible to get them out of his mind. At least the girl, or perhaps it was just her extraordinary voice and the sudden ironically bitter inflection in it. The young man was obviously a conceited opinionated young puppy, with his blond wavy hair and his lemon gloves and general air of superiority. Mr. Pinkerton shook his head with distaste. Such a young man had better mind his step, he thought. He was just the sort of young man who could very easily wake up some morning and find himself in a good deal of trouble.
Mr. Pinkerton shook his head again and looked out of the window. A lad with tea, buns and chocolate was moving along the platform. Mr. Pinkerton wondered whether it would be suitable to buy a sandwich on a train like the great Spa Express. He was just tentatively feeling in his pocket for a couple of pennies when what might be called the second event of his Bath adventure—and it was in every way the most startling adventure that he had ever had, with or without Inspector Bull—happened with surprising abruptness. The short thick set man and the liver-and-white spaniel bolted into the carriage. The man tossed his bag up on the rack. The spaniel burst up onto the seat beside Mr. Pinkerton, virtually turning himself inside out with joy, and licked Mr. Pinkerton's cheek with the most extraordinarily wet exuberance. Mr. Pinkerton, cowering in his corner, tried to protect himself with one arm while he pushed the spaniel off with the other.
The thickset man came to his rescue with a roar. "Down, Crippen, down!" he bellowed. "For shame!"
Mr. Pinkerton's hand stopped midway in the business of wiping off his face. He stared open mouthed.
"Somebody said Death is like a spaniel, you can't beat him off," remarked the man genially. He settled himself at the corridor end of the carriage opposite Mr. Pinkerton. "Lie down, boy."
Mr. Pinkerton blinked. "Did I hear you call him ... I mean, did I . . .?" he began tentatively. The man nodded.
"Dr. Crippen," he said. "That's his name. Ha, ha!"
"That's what I thought you said," Mr. Pinkerton replied.
The man nodded again and unfolded the Morning Telegraph. Dr. Crippen watched him out of the corner of his eye a moment, then nipped up on the seat beside him and went to sleep, his chin on his two feathered paws.
Mr. Pinkerton watched the two of them out of the tail of his eye a moment. He also glanced up at the communication cord, though he knew he would never have the courage to pull it, and settled closer in his corner. The train raced through smoke blackened suburbs, then through smiling suburbs and tiny villages.
"Because he tore a pair of pajamas to bits and left nothing but the label," said the man suddenly, putting aside the Telegraph. "Ha, ha, ha!"
Mr. Pinkerton laughed uncertainly. He remembered very clearly the tiny deadly label preserved in the Black" Museum in the damp cellar below the Embankment. He glanced askance at Dr. Crippen, sleeping as peacefully as an angel. It was a little odd. Still, they were just leaving Swindon. Bath couldn't be very far off.
"Live in Bath?" the man demanded abruptly. He eyed Mr. Pinkerton with suddenly sharpened clear blue eyes.
"No, no. I'm . . . I'm just visiting."
"Do you have Rheumatism?"
"No, no. I just—"
"It’s a first rate place."
"Do you live there?"
The thick set man nodded.
"You . . . you haven't got rheumatism, have you?" Mr. Pinkerton ventured.
"Ha, ha, ha, no!" said the man. "No! I give people rheumatism—and worse! Ha, ha, ha!"
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed, and laughed too. He felt a little chilled inside. Still, it might just be eccentricity. Then suddenly he brightened with an idea.
"Do you happen to know anybody named Ellen Crosby?" he asked.
The man's eyes sharpened again.
"Dame Ellen Crosby? Yes indeed. Lives at Blandford House. Pulteney Street. Going to see her?"
"No, no!" said Mr. Pinkerton. "I ... I was just wondering about her. Is she . . . very arbitrary?"
"Ha, ha, ha!" said the man. "Arbitrary? Ha, ha, ha!"
He literally rocked with the violence of his mirth.
"Most people don't call it that. Especially her relatives. You a relative?"
"Oh, no, not a relative, I just—"
"You're lucky. I know her brother. Major Peyton. Fine old chap—ha, ha, ha! Well, here we are. Come along, Cripps."
He snapped the leash on the delighted Dr. Crippen and pulled down his bag.
"Cheerio!"
"Cheerio," said Mr. Pinkerton weakly.
II
FEELING rather as if he had been on a mountain top in a high wind, Mr. Pinkerton dragged his suitcase out from under his seat, settled his brown bowler on his head with a sort of tentative firmness, and followed the rest of the people through the corridor onto the platform.
The jovial "Ha, ha, ha!" sounded ahead of him above the rattle of hurrying luggage carts and the excited babble of voices. Everybody seemed to be greeting somebody. A large woman with a stout thorn stick, a wet fur coat and a wide hat tied on with an old-fashioned chiffon motoring veil pushed him roughly aside.
“My son!" she boomed. It was a deep contralto voice—a magnificent voice once, Mr. Pinkerton thought, before its edges had got so rough. But there was not only that about it: in quality it was so like the voice of the girl whom he had listened to on the platform at Paddington that he glanced round quickly. He was just in time to see the old woman embrace the blond young man, nod to the girl, and then greet practically everyone else in sight.
Mr. Pinkerton hesitated. He would have stayed to see more, but a porter had his luggage and before he knew it he was scurrying down cold dank stairs to a bleak half empty street.
"Do you need a taxi, sir? Where to, sir?"
Mr. Pinkerton felt suddenly very strange and alone and rather frightened. He had not thought of Bath as being an enormous and unfriendly place. He stood staring up through the drizzling rain at the city, rising like some gigantic amphitheatre in tier after tier of beige-colored stone, studded with spires and domes and towers. He had not got the faintest idea where to go.
He looked desperately back at the station. The driver, a ruddy chubby-cheeked man with a comic air and a breath that had nothing to do with water, scratched his head.
"There's the Grand Pump Room 'Otel, sir. The toffs stop there. Or the Pulteney. The Juke of Connaught stops there. Or—"
Mr. Pinkerton blinked and looked at him with some dignity. He did not like being made fun of. Certainly not by taxi drivers.
"Blandford House I expect will do," he said firmly.
"Right you are, sir."
Mr. Pinkerton got in the cab. He had a curious doomed sensation in the pit of his stomach. "Oh, dear!" he thought miserably. "I shouldn't have done that." There must be hundreds of reasonable hotels in Bath, of course, and these people would want an enormous sum for bed and breakfast. He felt anxiously in his inside pocket for his wallet, not being ever able really to bring himself to believe
He hardly noticed the streets he went through until they came into a broad open space overlooking a little park on the banks of the Avon. They turned left past the mediaeval Abbey, past the Guild Hall, and turned right so that Mr. Pinkerton thought they must have crossed the river, though he did not see it again—only a lane of tiny one storey shops; tobacconists, green grocers, stationers, and a silver smith's with a pair of Georgian candelabra in the window.
Then suddenly they were in a circle with a fountain playing in the centre, and in front of them a broad lovely tree lined street with a row of imposing houses with fine Palladian facades.
Mr. Pinkerton's heart sank. They had stopped in front of one of them, half-way down on the right side. Stretched across three of the Georgian residences was a large gold sign—"Blandford House, Private Hotel"—and before he could lean forward, forgetting his pride, and say "Take me somewhere much cheaper, please," a porter in shirt sleeves and leather apron appeared and got his bag. "One and four, please, sir," the driver said.
Mr. Pinkerton followed the porter up the stairs, his heart a cold lump in his breast, staring miserably at the luxurious edifice he was about to enter. There was no way by which he could have known that in only one more day the papers throughout the kingdom would be carrying photographs of that very house in that famous street. Nor could he know that the tall lean man with the rich auburn beard and slightly Svengalish appearance, coming down the steps as he went up, had just been there to tell Dame Ellen Crosby that he had seen a new symbol hovering in the prism that was her bright aura.
The bearded man passed Mr. Pinkerton without looking at him. "I'll get the Manageress," the porter said.
The grey little man looked dubiously about him, felt once more for the reassuring presence of his wallet, sat down gingerly on the oak settle against the wall just inside the great green door, and peered round him.
At the end of the hall a narrow passage led off to the left, and a narrow staircase up to the right. A transverse passage went through, a few steps from where he sat. To the right he could hear a subdued rattle and clatter of dishes, and smell the familiar odor of cabbage. A servant girl giggled, and somebody dropped a cup.
"Now you'll catch it!"
"Not with what I know about Mrs. Fullaway I won't."
The girls giggled again. A middle aged woman appeared in the passage at the end of the hall. Mr. Pinkerton rose.
Except that she had irregular teeth and mousy brown hair, and a too bright and too shrewd eye, she was rather pleasant, Mr. Pinkerton thought.
"You want a room?"
She gave him a swift calculating glance. Mr. Pinkerton knew that glance well; she was figuring how much he was worth. He had seen the same look in Mrs. Pinkerton's eye whenever a prospective lodger had appeared.
"I expect I've got one upstairs that would do you quite nicely. How long would you be stopping on?"
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed. "I . . . I . . . perhaps I'd better—"
"This way, then," said Mrs. Fullaway. Mr. Pinkerton swallowed again and gave in. He knew he should have bolted the minute the porter said "Manageress," and he was in for it now. It was quite obvious that no guest got away from Blandford House easily.
He followed meekly along the narrow hall through a curtained door into an empty lounge. A coal fire was burning on a curious arrangement that looked more like an altar than a hearth. Above it was a bust of a wild looking woman with a few vine leaves in her hair. They went on through the lounge and up a wide carpeted staircase. At the first floor the Manageress paused and opened a wide mahogany door decorated with parquetry arabesques.
"This is the drawing room. We have tea here. And downstairs too, of course."
Mr. Pinkerton stared, blinking his watery grey eyes, into the most elaborate room he had ever seen. The windows were hung with crimson brocade falling from a richly gilded cornice that extended across the whole front of the house. A pier glass, dim with age and mildew, filled the space between the two broad high windows. On one side of the room was a carved marble fireplace with a tall gilded mirror above it. Reflected in it was a pair of gold Corinthian columns leading into another room—except that, as Mr. Pinkerton realized, it was not another room but an endless repetition of the same one, in quite the biggest mirror he had seen. Endlessly reflected too was another marble bust of a woman, without the vine leaves and not as wild looking as the one below.
At first he had thought the room was empty. There were a good many empty chairs and sofas about, and he had not in some way associated the square monotonous face in the pier glass with an actual head. But as the Manageress stepped back into the hall the face moved, ducked almost, out of sight behind the wing of a fireside chair, and Mr. Pinkerton was left with a queer fleeting image of something vaguely unpleasant, even malevolent. He could not have said whether it was a man or woman he had seen there; just something square and unfriendly with short white hair.
"This is usually kept shut," Mrs. Fullaway was saying. She closed another door at right angles to the one that Mr. Pinkerton had looked through. It was marked "Private."
"We cut this door through so Dame Ellen Crosby could get back and forth into the lounge without going downstairs. The three houses that were made into this hotel were originally quite separate, of course. Do you smoke, by the way? Dame Crosby doesn't like smoking, so most of the gentlemen usually smoke in the downstairs lounge. Not in the drawing room."
Mr. Pinkerton nodded. "I don't smoke, not . . . usually," he said. He was beginning to wonder if Dame Ellen Crosby wasn't rather like the late Mrs. Pinkerton.
Mrs. Fullaway led the way up another flight of carpeted stairs, narrower but still impressive, to the second floor. Three doors opened onto the landing, one at the end opposite Mr. Pinkerton and two to his right, and two staircases; one, blocked off with a barrier, going to the upper floor, one up a few steps to a door marked "W. C."
She opened the door facing the stairs. The room was narrow, exactly the width of the hall. There was a single bed in it, a wardrobe, a bureau, a gas fire.
"There's running hot and cold, you see, sir. It's really a very nice room. And it's very cheap."
Mr. Pinkerton could see her glancing at him again—just to make sure. He looked about him. It was a nice room—small but nice. Nevertheless he had not been the husband and the scullery and boot boy of a lodging house keeper in Golders Green for some terrible years for nothing.
"Is there something wrong with the drains?" he inquired timidly.
"Oh no, no indeed," said Mrs. Fullaway. She stooped to pick up a bit of fluff from the green carpet. "No, it's . . . it's just a bit noisy at times."
At the moment it was as quiet as the grave.
"What kind of noise?" Mr. Pinkerton asked, hesitantly. "It's not haunted, or anything, is it?"
"No, no. It's just that Major Peyton—that's Dame Crosby's brother—is a bit odd at times. He's got the next room. Miss Margolius is in No. 31. She doesn't mind. And of course, we allow for any inconvenience. Normally we'd get six guineas a week for this. That includes everything, of course. But you see ... on account of Dame Crosby ... I can let you have it for five."
Mr. Pinkerton gulped. He had never paid that much, or dreamed of paying it, for a week's lodging in his life. Not even Mrs. Pinkerton would have charged so much for such a cubby hole. If he had said No at once, everything might have been very different. But he hesitated for an instant, and the instant was too long.
"Lunch is at one," said Mrs. Fullaway. "You'll hear the bell. Just come along down."
She closed the door behind her. Mr. Pinkerton crossed his room to the window and looked down into Pulteney Street. For a moment he almost forgot the five guineas. It was raining harder. In the front of the hotel an old fashioned Rolls with a high chassis and shining aluminum bonnet had drawn up. The chauffeur was helping a large old woman to alight. It was the old woman with the wet fur coat and swathed hat, and Mr. Pinkerton knew that it was undoubtedly Dame Ellen Crosby in the flesh. The girl and the blond young man were with her. Mr. Pinkerton watched them. The old woman took the young man’s arm—her son, she had called him at the station, but the girl had said not at Paddington, so Mr. Pinkerton was not sure about it. The girl followed them and the chauffeur followed her with the luggage.
