The Phantom Hollow, page 8
part #1 of Trevor Lowe Series
‘What can I do for you, Mr. Lowe?’ he said, rising and holding out his hand.
‘I want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Wishart,’ said the dramatist, gripping the extended hand. ‘I’m looking into this matter of Mr. Ogden’s death on behalf of my friend, Inspector Shadgold. I presume you’re carrying on the business?’
The other nodded and waved him to a chair. ‘Yes,’ he said as Lowe sat down. ‘I was his chief clerk, and I’m looking after things until the solicitors have wound up the estate. It’s a terrible business, isn’t it? The murder, I mean. Why anybody wanted to kill Ogden is beyond me. He was a most popular man, and as far as I know, hadn’t an enemy in the world. What happened at the inquest? I was expecting a subpoena, and was rather surprised that I didn’t get one.’
He pushed a box of cigarettes across the desk, and Lowe took one. ‘The whole inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight,’ said the dramatist. ‘There isn’t sufficient evidence at present to put before the coroner that would enable him to bring in a satisfactory verdict. The adjournment will give the police time to make further investigations. Now, Mr. Wishart, I’ve come to see you because I presume that you’re almost as well acquainted with the business as Mr. Ogden himself.’
‘You mean this estate business?’ said the young man. ‘Yes, I think I can say that I am. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind telling you — in confidence, of course — that I have already applied to the solicitors for permission to make an offer to buy the goodwill and run the business myself.’
‘Excellent! Then you’ll be able to supply me with the information I require. You were, I believe, responsible for the letting of Monk’s Lodge?’
Mr. Wishart nodded and leaned back in his chair. ‘That is so,’ he said.
‘The place, I understand,’ Lowe continued, ‘belongs to a certain Mr. and Mrs. Cheply, who are at present on holiday in America?’
‘Perfectly correct,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘To be exact, they are in Philadelphia.’
‘How long has Monk’s Lodge belonged to them?’
‘Some years, I believe,’ answered the younger man. ‘I can’t be quite sure of that because it was before my time. I’ve only been with this business for a little over three years.’
‘You don’t know, then, whether anybody else owned the property prior to it coming into the Cheplys’ possession?’
Mr. Wishart shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied; ‘it’s been theirs as long as I can remember.’
‘Have you got a copy of the title-deeds or the lease, or whatever it is that proves their possession of the place?’ asked Lowe.
Again Mr. Wishart shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. They’re in the hands of the Cheplys’ solicitors.’
‘Would it be possible to see them?’
‘If you could get Mr. Cheply’s authorisation, there should be no difficulty. I doubt very much if they would let you see them without that. They’re a rather old-fashioned firm. I’m not speaking without a certain amount of reason,’ he went on. ‘Mr. Ogden wanted to see them himself some time ago in connection with a clause regarding some repairs. The solicitors refused without the authority of Mr. Cheply, but as they were able to supply Mr. Ogden with the information he wanted, we didn’t bother to get the necessary permission.’
‘I see.’ Lowe considered for a moment. ‘I suppose you have Mr. Cheply’s address in Philadelphia?’ he asked.
The other replied in the affirmative.
‘Then I should be very glad,’ went on the dramatist, ‘if you would cable them asking them to instruct their solicitors to let you have all the documents relating to their ownership of Monk’s Lodge. I will, of course, pay any expenses that may be incurred.’
The young man hesitated. ‘Can you give me your reasons for wishing to see these documents?’ he asked.
‘I could,’ Lowe replied candidly; ‘but if you’ll excuse me I’d rather not at the moment. I don’t mind telling you this much, however: it is merely to destroy or substantiate a rather vague theory that I’ve got at the back of my mind.’
‘Connected with Mr. Ogden’s death?’ inquired Wishart.
‘Very closely connected if I’m right,’ answered Lowe.
Stretching out his hand, Wishart pressed a bell on his desk. ‘All right; I’ll send the cable,’ he said, and Lowe thanked him.
The bright-faced office-boy appeared in answer to the summons, and Mr. Wishart asked him to bring the Cheplys’ address. While the lad went to search for it, he drew a sheet of paper towards him and wrote rapidly, pushing it across to the dramatist when he had finished. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked.
Lowe read the brief message and nodded. ‘That’ll do admirably, Mr. Wishart,’ he replied. ‘It’s exceedingly kind of you. I’m passing the post office on my way back, so I’ll dispatch this myself in order to save time.’
The boy returned with a filing-card. Adding the address to the draft of the cable, Lowe rose to take his leave.
‘I hope you’ll let me know if this leads to anything,’ said Wishart as they shook hands. ‘Naturally I shall be interested to hear of any discovery that will throw a light on poor Ogden’s tragic death.’
Lowe promised and left the offices.
The post office was at the end of the High Street and was empty when Lowe handed in the cable, but as he was gathering up his change the swing-door was pushed open and a man came in hurriedly. He stopped dead as he saw the dramatist, and his face went white. At that moment Lowe looked up and caught sight of the stranger. For a fleeting second he merely thought the man had suddenly been taken ill, and then something oddly familiar about the face struck him. It was the man who had driven the car the day he had arrived at King’s Hayling Station!
Chapter Eleven – The House in York Road
For the tenth part of a second, the man stared at Trevor Lowe as though he had seen a ghost. Then, swinging round on his heel, he bolted for the exit and disappeared through the swing doors into the street.
When Lowe reached the steps of the post office, he was walking rapidly on the other side of the road, glancing back quickly every now and again over his shoulder. The dramatist’s brain worked swiftly. He wanted to find out who the man was and where he lived. As far as he could see, there were only two alternatives by which this result could be achieved, and neither appealed to him.
The first was to follow the man and have him arrested, in which case it was very doubtful whether he would learn anything, since he had no proof to offer the police that would warrant them detaining him. The second was to shadow the man himself and find out where he went — which was equally futile, for it could not be carried out without his quarry becoming aware of the fact. And then, as he watched the receding figure hurrying away down the street, a third suggestion offered itself in the shape of a rather ragged youth who was approaching, carrying a parcel. Lowe beckoned him into the shadow of the post-office doorway.
‘Wotcher want?’ asked the lad doubtfully.
‘Listen,’ said Lowe quickly. ‘Here’s half-a-crown. I want you to follow that man hurrying down the street there — the one in the brown overcoat and cap. Don’t let him know you’re following him, but find out where he goes and then come back and report to me here. I’ll give you ten shillings for your trouble.’
The ragged youth’s eyes opened wide. ‘’Alf a quid!’ he exclaimed incredulously. ‘Do yer mean it, guv’nor?’
‘Of course I do!’ rapped Lowe swiftly. ‘Now hurry, or you’ll miss him.’
‘All right, I’m on!’ said the lad. He pocketed his half-crown and, without waiting for a second bidding, was off in the wake of the man with the brown coat.
From the cover of the post-office doorway Lowe watched them both disappear round a side turning, and then considered what he should do next. Until the boy returned, he could not leave the vicinity of the post office, otherwise he might miss him. And how long the lad was likely to be was impossible to conjecture. It rested entirely on where the man in the brown coat was going. The look of shocked surprise when he had come face to face with the dramatist in the post office had convinced Lowe that he knew all about the attempt of the previous night to drown him in the River Loam. The man had looked as though he had seen a ghost, and for a brief moment he probably considered that he had! Without knowing that the dramatist had been rescued, it must have been a shattering surprise to suddenly come upon the man he believed to be at the bottom of the river, alive and well and in the flesh.
A thing that puzzled Lowe and occupied a good deal of his thoughts while he waited for the return of the boy was that he was certain he had seen the man somewhere before, apart from the time he had driven the car from King’s Hayling to Monk’s Lodge. His face struck a chord of memory, and although it set it vibrating, no coherent picture resulted. Somewhere and at some time Lowe had run across the man and he racked his brains vainly to try to recollect where it was and under what circumstances. It was like searching for a word that for a moment eluded him — he knew it perfectly, but for the life of him could not grasp it. Sooner or later it would come to him. It was useless trying to force his memory to work.
Crossing over to a little paper shop on the opposite side of the road, he bought a local paper and returned to his position on the post-office steps. He had read nearly the entire contents of the paper before the ragged youth put in an appearance.
‘I’ve found out where he went all right, guv’nor,’ he said, with a look of relief at finding the dramatist still there. ‘He went into a house at the end of a lot of new ones they’re building in York Road — Number 31 it was.’
Lowe took a ten-shilling note from his pocket and placed it in the boy’s eager palm. ‘You’ve done very well, my lad,’ he said. ‘How far is York Road from here?’
‘About two mile, I should think, sir,’ the boy answered, after a lengthy calculation. ‘It’s right outside the town — almost in the country. Yer can’t mistake it, though, ’cause the road’s up and there’s piles of bricks and slates and things where they’re building.’
‘All right; I’ll be able to find it from that,’ said Lowe with a nod of dismissal, and the ragged youth scampered away clutching his newly acquired wealth.
Lowe folded his paper, put it in his pocket, and walked slowly along the High Street in the opposite direction. He had, at any rate, learnt the destination of the man in the brown coat, but he decided to wait until darkness had fallen before making any personal investigation of the place. Should No. 31 York Road prove to be the headquarters of the men who had twice made an attempt on his life, and who were in some way bound up with the mystery surrounding Monk’s Lodge, he did not want to scare them away by allowing himself to be seen in the neighbourhood of their retreat in daylight. Darkness would offer a friendly cloak to conceal his movements.
The question now was how to while away the time until it was sufficiently dark for his purpose. It was a long way from Dryseley to Monk’s Lodge, and Lowe felt no very great inclination to do the double journey twice, for the only means of getting there and back again was to walk. It was true he could have used the car on the return journey, but then he would have to find somewhere to leave it, and a far simpler method was to remain in Dryseley until he had completed what he proposed to do. A slight feeling of hunger suggested to him how a portion of the time at least could be put to good use.
On the outskirts of the town he found an unpretentious but very comfortable-looking inn, and succeeded in obtaining an excellent meal of cold beef, homemade pickles, bread and cheese, and a pint of beer. By the time he had finished this repast it was nearly three o’clock, and he spent the rest of the afternoon in the bar-parlour chatting to the host, a genial man who was filled with a stream of local gossip concerning Friar’s Vale, Dryseley and King’s Hayling, which he was not averse to pouring forth on the slightest encouragement.
During that afternoon Lowe acquired a considerable amount of out-of-the-way knowledge regarding the locality and certain of the inhabitants. About Monk’s Lodge the landlord was voluble. There was something queer about the place, and he said there always had been. He had not been at all surprised to hear that a murder had been committed there; in fact, it was just the sort of thing he would have expected in a place like that. Look where it was built: on the site of an old monastery, the ruins of which could still be seen. No wonder the place was haunted. No, he had not seen anything himself, but he had heard stories, and he knew several people who had seen the ghostly monk that was supposed to wander about the place. About four or five years ago Monk’s Lodge had been a favourite spot for the courting couples of the district, but one or two scares and tales of the things they had seen soon made it unpopular.
Lowe listened to this and a lot more like it. Apparently the ghostly gentleman who wandered about in a monk’s robe had got tired of his nocturnal rambles, or had been engaged elsewhere for a long period, for he learned that nothing had been seen or heard of him from the time of the first scare until just recently — in fact, just before Jack and Tony had arrived at the cottage.
He stayed at the inn for tea and was served with an epicurean repast of hot scones, homemade jam, and a large dish of cream. By the time he had eaten a portion of this and smoked several pipes thoughtfully — for the landlord’s conversation had supplied him with several things that were worth thinking about — dusk was beginning to fall, and he concluded that it was time to set off on his voyage of discovery to York Road.
York Road, he found after an hour’s brisk walk, was merely the embryo of a road. In other words, it was a road that was in the process of construction. The beginning of it consisted of a long row of uniform villas with neatly tended patches of front garden, their brick and paint work so new that it was obvious they had only recently been built. A short distance on, however, these houses ceased abruptly, though the presence at odd intervals of scaffolding and piles of red bricks and slates tended to show that in the near future this orderly array of desirable residences would be extended.
Among none of these did Lowe find the house he was seeking, and it was not until he had passed a blank open space and come to a row of much older houses that he found it. These houses were larger and infinitely gloomier, and had apparently been in existence for some years. Lowe watched the numbers as he walked in a leisurely fashion on the opposite side of the road. 26, 29, 30, 31—that was it! Passing slowly, Lowe glanced over covertly at the building. There were no lights, and the windows were curtainless.
‘Odd,’ he muttered as he stopped in the shadow of a clump of trees. ‘The place looks deserted. Could that fellow have discovered that the boy was following him and led him here as a blind?’
He stood pondering for a moment before he made up his mind, and then walking further along, he crossed the road and came back on the other side. At the dilapidated gate of No. 31 he slowed, and, with a quick glance up and down the road, slipped into the weed-choked front garden.
There were three worn stone steps leading up to the front door, which had once been painted green but was now a nondescript colour that blended with the dust and grime that covered the frosted glass panels on either side. Standing on the threshold, Lowe took stock of the lower front part of the house. There was a basement window not visible from the pavement owing to the high growth of the straggling hedge, and behind this window the dramatist caught a glimpse of dirty white shutters, one of which was half off its hinges and hanging at a drunken angle. He examined the front door closely and saw that the keyhole could not have been used for at least several weeks, for an enterprising spider had built a web across it that was unbroken.
He frowned. The wild goose chase theory seemed to have been borne out. The man had evidently guessed that he was being trailed and had led the boy to this empty house in order to throw him off the scent.
And then, just as he had reached this conclusion, Lowe discovered something that made him alter his mind.
Happening to glance down, he saw in the half-light that preceded the approaching night a clear track of footprints in the soft mould. There was not merely one trail, but many, and they all led to the basement window with the broken shutter.
The dramatist left the front doorsteps and dropped cautiously into the well of the basement. Pressing his hand against the protruding framework of the lower half of the window, he pressed gently upwards. The window slid up noiselessly, and a touch of his fingers in the grooves told him that they had been carefully oiled. Hoisting himself gingerly over the sill, he stepped into the darkness beyond and carefully closed the window behind him. Standing motionless for a second, he listened intently, but no sound reached his ears; and, after a momentary hesitation, he took his torch from his pocket and pressed the button.
As he had half expected, he was standing in an empty kitchen. There was no furniture of any kind, but the trail of footprints was still plainly visible in the thick dust that coated the floor. They led to a door at the far end, and Lowe made his way over to it. Pushing it open, he found on the other side a flight of narrow stairs leading upwards. Ascending these, but keeping to the sides to avoid them creaking, he came to another door, which he found opened into the hall and faced the front entrance. This area, like the kitchen, was bare and unfurnished, and a glance into the two rooms that occupied either side of it showed him that they, too, were empty and uninhabited.
He decided to see what lay in the upper part of this gloomy and silent house and went on up the stairs. On the first floor there was nothing beyond accumulated dust and two broken chairs that had evidently been left behind by the previous tenants. There was now only one more floor to explore, and Lowe made his way cautiously up the last flight of stairs. There were two doors on this narrow landing, one on the right and one on the left, and Lowe chose the one on the right.
Turning the handle, he pushed it softly open and then paused with a stifled exclamation, for this room was furnished and there was distinct evidence that it had been recently occupied. In the centre was a plain deal table and three chairs, and on the table stood a couple of glasses that had been used during the past few hours, for they still contained the dregs of drink. There was no carpet on the floor, but the window on the far side had been carefully screened by having several old sacks nailed across it.
