Death of an Author, page 4
“May be. May be not,” said Bond, and walked towards the house. The window, he found, was only pushed to; opening it he found himself in a long low room, furnished as a study. A kneehole desk stood at right angles to the window, on his right as he stood looking round; in the wall on his left was a fireplace with an electric “log fire,” a big easy chair on either side of it. Facing the window was a typist’s desk, with the typewriter neatly covered; bookshelves, well filled, covered most of the walls to half their height, and a few etchings hung on the creamy space above the bookcases. It was all perfectly neat and peaceful; the parquet floor was polished, the rugs in place, and there was no indication of the unusual, save in that broken window pane.
Bond, after a careful glance at the polished floor, walked across the room, pressed down a switch with his handkerchief in his hand, and looked round again. He told Hewitt to stay where he was, and then proceeded to look under the desk, behind the chairs, under a settle which stood against the wall and behind the portière across the door in the corner.
“Nothing here,” he said curtly. “You can come in. Walk in my traces as closely as you can.”
Hewitt had already observed one fact. The floor was polished so well that Bond’s footsteps—dusty from the dry roads and garden paths—showed perfectly clearly on that immaculate surface, but other footmarks there were none.
Following Bond closely, he crossed the room and went out of the door in the corner, and the two men stood in a pleasant little hall, rather dark until Bond switched on the light. There was a carved black oak chest, a table holding a gong, and a couple of chairs. A man’s top coat hung on a peg by the door and some sticks stood in a corner. Opening another door, Bond looked into a small dining-room, furnished with a square table, four chairs, sideboard and wagon. Pewter plates gleamed on the sideboard, and a row of tankards stood in front of them. A few blue and white plates hung on the plain grey walls, and wrought iron candelabras held electric candles on either side of the chimney space. Once again all was orderly and polished. The remaining rooms on the ground floor were a small sitting-room, furnished with what Hewitt called “just bits of things,” comfortable enough, but with furniture that was mainly odds and ends, a good deal worn and showing little of the taste of the other rooms,—and a kitchen and scullery. These latter were comfortably fitted, well kept, and showed an abundance of crockery and plate.
Still silent, Bond went upstairs and examined the four rooms on the first floor. The first one he entered was above the study and was a comfortably furnished bedroom. A man’s brushes lay on the dressing-table, with a few odds and ends of manicure things and a bottle of bay rum. Pyjamas lay neatly folded on the bed, and a man’s dark blue dressing-gown hung on the door. There was a large wardrobe with several suits, and a chest of drawers held socks and shirts, underwear, ties, collars and all the impedimenta of a man’s clothing. Bond examined the drawers critically but without enlightenment. Everything that one might have expected to see was there and nothing else.—Neatly treed shoes, slippers, suspenders, braces, studs, links and tie-pins. “No shaving tackle,” murmured Hewitt, but toothbrush and washing things were all in order. Hurrying into the other rooms, Bond found that only one of them was furnished. This held a dressing-table, a divan and easy chair, wardrobe and washstand, but no bed. A powder pot and face cream stood on the dressing-table, together with brush and comb. The wardrobe held only a woman’s cardigan, umbrella, rain coat and slippers. Towels hung neatly folded on the rails, and soap and nail brush lay in the soap dish. Two smaller rooms were completely empty, and the bathroom with its big polished geyser was as innocent looking as the rest.
“What do you make of it, sir?” enquired Hewitt eagerly, but Bond only shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing,” he said. “That hole in the window is the only thing that’s unusual, and that could have been made with a small stone or a pop gun. Go out by the front door and tell Miss Clarke to come in. You can send the van men away with the ladders and stand by in the garden door yourself until I want you.”
Hewitt let himself out as bidden, and found that a path of crazy paving led to a door in the wall against the road. There were bolts at the top and bottom of the door but they were undrawn. An unusually large letter-box, fastened by a padlock, hung on the door, and there was a little grille with a sliding panel for observing those who sought to gain admittance. Hewitt also noticed that this door was the only means of access to house and garden. Tradesmen leaving goods at the kitchen door on the further side of the house would have had to pass the front door to reach the back entrance.
Opening the door in the wall by means of the Yale knob, Hewitt saw Eleanor Clarke looking eagerly out of the car at him, her face white and large eyed. The constable was a kindly soul, and he forgot the Inspector’s suspicions of his informant, as he looked at the troubled face below him.
“Seems all right inside, Miss,” said Hewitt cheerfully. “The Inspector wants you to step in and have a word with him.”
She jumped out of the car with a look of relief, and fairly ran down the little paved path and in at the open front door. Finding Bond in the hall she burst out:
“Then everything’s all right? I’ve just made a fuss for nothing?”
“There’s no sign of any disturbance in the house,” replied Bond, “but why did you throw a stone through the study window?”
If he hoped to catch her out, he failed.
“I haven’t thrown any stones through anything,” she retorted, “and if you think I’m hysterical or a lunatic, you’ve guessed wrong. I’m as reasonable as you are. What do you mean by throwing stones?”
Bond preceded her into the study and stood aside so that she could see the starred pane of glass. She stood staring intently with frowning face and then turned to him.
“How was that glass broken? If you had broken in when you got here, there would be glass on the floor,—and the hole’s not large enough…”
“It was like that when we arrived, and the french window was open,” replied Bond. “Apart from that, everything in the house is in order, and we have discovered nothing and nobody.”
She drew a deep breath. “Mr. Lestrange would not have gone away and left the window open,” she said. “Something must have happened to him. I knew there was something wrong when I couldn’t find Mrs. Fife.”
Bond stood and rubbed his head thoughtfully.
“It’s all a bit vague,” he said. “That window is the only evidence that anything is amiss. There is nothing illegal in the fact of a man going away suddenly and shutting up his house.”
“But no man would willingly leave his study window open when he went away,” she said quietly. “If Mr. Lestrange wanted to go away, or to disappear quietly, he would have either told me he was going away, or dismissed me. He wouldn’t have left me to go to the police because I was afraid something awful had happened.”
“Probably not,” agreed Bond. “Do you know if there was anything of value in the house,—anything which might have been an incentive to robbery with violence?”
She shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. Mr. Lestrange kept a certain amount of ready cash, but not a great deal. He banked at the Westminster Bank, and I think Mrs. Fife cashed his cheques for him.”
Bond heard this with some satisfaction. Apparently there would be some corroboration at the Bank of Lestrange’s existence, and the Inspector thawed a little.
“Perhaps you’d sit down and tell me all that you can about your employer,” he said, “and then we can look round and see if you notice anything out of order. At present, as you can judge for yourself, we have no case against anybody. You were quite right in informing us if you thought there was anything suspicious, but we shall have to be very careful. It’s all somewhat obscure at present.”
She flashed a smile at him, as though in relief that he had admitted at last that she had behaved reasonably, and pulled off her close fitting hat as she sat down at the typist’s table, running her fingers through her close cropped hair.
“If the circumstances of my job had been less queer, I shouldn’t have come to you,” she said, “but everyone has a right to think of themselves, and I am in a difficult position. At Mr. Lestrange’s request, I had passed myself off for him to his publishers, and if anything awful had happened in here, and I hadn’t come to you, I should have been in an impossible position. If I had not come to you immediately, I should never have dared to come at all. You’ve only my word for anything.”
“Yes,” said Bond. “That’s the position in a nutshell; and now you’d better tell me everything you can. How did you come to be employed here?”
“I answered an advertisement in the local paper three years ago. An author who gave his name as Thomas Browne wanted a competent typist and secretary. I applied for the job and was asked to call here. When I arrived, Mrs. Fife showed me into this room, and I saw Mr. Lestrange sitting at that desk. He was a fairly big man, but thin and bent, with grizzled brownish hair and a small beard. He had two sticks beside him, and he wore gloves on both hands. His hands were stiff and awkward, like those of a man half crippled with rheumatism. He had a pleasant voice and nice eyes, and I liked him. He said that he was a writer, and that he needed an amanuensis and typist. After testing my speed at shorthand and asking a good many questions, he said that I would suit him very well if I would promise not to discuss him or his affairs with anybody. I was a bit terse over this, for I’m not a gossip or scandal-monger, but he went on and told me that he had a loathing for any sort of personal publicity, and the only secretary who would be any good to him was one who was capable of keeping her own counsel and not mentioning a word about her job to other people.”
Bond studied her closely while she talked; he liked the quiet voice and the straightforward way in which she told her story, and he found himself getting interested.
“At first I put him down for a neurotic of sorts,” she went on. “His insistence on anonymity seemed to me rather pathetic. I knew of no Thomas Browne in the literary world of today,—and I’m quite fairly well read. I thought he was probably a crank, some obscure scholar who over-estimated his importance in a world which gives little heed to serious writers. Anyway, I managed to reassure him as to my own trustworthiness, he wrote to the people whose names I gave as references, and I started work here a week later.”
“You knew then that Thomas Browne was Vivian Lestrange, and vice-versa?” enquired Bond, but Eleanor Clarke shook her head vigorously.
“No. I didn’t learn that for nearly a year. At first he employed me in quite trivial stuff,—short stories and articles. He dictated, and I took down in shorthand and then typed. Sometimes he gave me a completed manuscript to type; his handwriting was rather difficult to decipher, crabbed and awkward, but I managed it and soon got used to it. I realised, of course, that he wrote amazingly well, even his slightest things had distinction, but I didn’t know who published them. I was kept pretty busy during the day, and as I don’t read magazines I never came across any of the shorter stuff he got published. I think during all that time he was trying me out,—deciding whether I was to be trusted and if he wanted to keep me on permanently.”
“And he decided that he did?” enquired Bond.
She nodded. “Yes. We got on very well together, and one day, about six months after I came here,—he gave me a pile of manuscript and said that it was part of a novel he was writing. It was extraordinarily interesting, especially as he wanted to discuss part of it and get a woman’s point of view concerning the women he had written about. It was after the novel was finished that he told me his real name was Vivian Lestrange. All those months I had been calling him Mr. Browne. After that he seemed to trust me altogether; I typed all his correspondence with his publishers, discussed his contracts, and helped with his business generally. Also, as I told you, I went to Langston’s—Mr. Lestrange’s publishers—and pretended that I was he, quite successfully.”
“But why did he want you to do that?” demanded Bond. “It put you in a very invidious position, and I’m surprised that you agreed to it.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It was all a bit difficult. Langston’s were being rather fussy, and Mr. Lestrange was afraid one of them would come poking an unwanted nose in here. I can’t explain his complex about concealing himself; it always seemed to me that he was a bit dotty on that one point. Anyway, he said that Langston’s were worrying him, and that he’d get no peace until they knew who he was, and that I could be the perfect secretary and save him from being bothered. He was rather pathetic over it, and I’d got so much into the habit of saving him the hundred and one small bothers that beset a writer, that I took him at his word and played Vivian Lestrange for him as a sort of joke. I took it quite light-heartedly, and it wasn’t until later that I came to the conclusion that I’d landed myself in a rather questionable position.”
“Was there any special reason to account for your qualms over what had seemed a very good joke?” enquired Bond, but she replied,
“No, nothing. It was just that Mr. Marriott and Mr. Bailley—the directors of Langston’s—had been very nice to me, and I realised they’d consider my behaviour pretty low down. Everything went on quite placidly here until this morning and then as I told you I got frightened.”
“I’m trying to get your position quite clear,” said Bond. “If you were worried why didn’t you consult your people at home?”
“Because I haven’t any people to consult,” she replied. “I simply have not got a relation in the world, that I know of, neither have I any intimate friends. I have only lived in London since 1920, I was brought up in Australia. I lived with my mother until she died in 1930, and we didn’t get to know many people as she was rather an invalid. When she died I went to a Secretarial School and I made a few friends there, but there was no one I cared much for. My mother’s old lawyer was a very good friend to me when I first came to London, but he died over two years ago. I live in a small service flat in Finchley Road. There was no one to whom I could go for advice. I thought about it all day, and at last I decided it was the police or nothing. I came to you for my own peace of mind.”
“Yes, yes,” said Bond, “but you knew your employer was eccentric. Any man who could behave as he did over asking you to impersonate him must be regarded as odd, to say the least of it. Going away suddenly like this might just be considered another piece of eccentricity.”
“It might,” she said slowly, “but I don’t believe it. I know he was odd,—nobody knows it so well as I do. He lived this queer hidden life, never seeing anybody, never showing himself. Nobody would behave like that if they weren’t afraid of something. When I couldn’t get any answer here this morning, and I couldn’t find Mrs. Fife either, I was certain something was wrong. I felt it in my bones. Now I’ve seen that window I know I was right. Something has happened… If the tradespeople had told you this house had been shut up for a week, and that nobody had counter-ordered the milk and papers, wouldn’t you have done what you’ve done this morning—broken in and searched? And wouldn’t you have looked for me, and asked why I hadn’t let you know?”
“Quite so,” said Bond sedately. “I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t natural for you to feel worried, but there are often quite natural explanations to mysterious sounding stories. Now I think it’d be a good thing for you to have a look round the house with me and tell me if you notice anything missing, or out of order, and then we’ll make a few enquiries. I should like to get into touch with this Mrs. Fife, too.”
“Yes,” said Eleanor Clarke, rising to her feet, “and so would I. I don’t know if you believe in hunches, Inspector, but I’ve got one now. No one will ever see Mrs. Fife or Mr. Lestrange again. They’ve just gone,—and left me guessing… Would you like to write me a testimonial, Inspector, as a hard working, sober and respectable secretary? You might omit the fact that my employers occasionally disappear in an unaccountable manner.”
“I think that you are too fond of indulging your imagination, Miss Lestrange,” said Bond coldly, and she fairly jumped.
“And you’re too fond of guessing,” she retorted, “and your guess is a rotten one, anyway.”
Chapter IV
“The fact is, I’m in a cleft stick, sir,” said Inspector Bond ruefully.
It was a week after Eleanor Clarke had paid her visit to the police station, and Bond, who had done a steady week’s work investigating the disappearance of Vivian Lestrange, had come to Scotland Yard to report his case and discuss the whole matter with Chief Inspector Warner of the Criminal Investigation Department. The latter was a tall, fair, well-built fellow, with a tanned face, and clear-cut profile;—just the type of man who might be seen mounted on a fine horse, directing the traffic at Hyde Park Corner, eliciting the comment that “these London cops are good lookers” from the ubiquitous American visitor. In mufti, Warner looked just as spruce and well groomed as he did when he wore a uniform coat; he was pleasant to look at because his appearance was clean and cool and competent, and his shrewd grey eyes were amused as he looked at Bond’s crestfallen face.
“No, not a cleft stick,” he answered. “The analogy’s too static. You’re on the horns of a dilemma, oscillating between the points, like a compass suffering interference. The evidence leads you to expect foul play,—of a nature not specified,—and your private judgment insists that the Force is having its leg pulled by a young woman with imagination and no principles. Say if you give me the main points of your investigation, and I’ll tell you if I see a snag.”
Bond settled to his tale.
“According to Miss Clarke’s evidence, the household at Temple Grove consisted of three people,—her employer, Vivian Lestrange, who lived there, Mrs. Fife, the housekeeper, who came every day from eight in the morning until eight in the evening, and herself, who came at ten in the morning and left at five o’clock. Vivian Lestrange is described as a tall bearded man, age between fifty and sixty, a bit lame and very stiff, whose hands were slightly crippled with rheumatism, and who always wore gloves. That’s Miss Clarke’s description of him, but we can’t find anybody else who has seen him; we have only her word for it that he existed—or exists. Mrs. Fife is undoubtedly real. She is known to the tradespeople as a dour competent woman of fifty, who knew her own mind, was a good shopper, and settled the household bills in cash every week. She is described as a stout, dark-haired woman of fifty, and the tradespeople in Heath Terrace gossiped about her a good bit because she never let any of the errand boys come inside the gate of Temple Grove. The only people who ever got inside the house—as far as I can make out—were the men who read the gas and electric meters, and while they did that Mrs. Fife stood over them like a dragon. The tradesmen’s books were all in the name of Mr. Thomas Browne,—the name under which Miss Clarke’s employer is said to have originally engaged her.”
