The Ponson Case · Chapter 8 (1/2)

VIII

Tanner Finds Himself Duped

Twelve o’clock next day saw almost the same company assembled at the adjourned inquest in the long narrow room at Luce Manor, as had sat there on the morning following the discovery of the tragedy. But on this occasion a few additional persons were present. Some members of the outside public had gained admission on one pretext or another, while, as Tanner noted, both Austin and Cosgrove Ponson were now legally represented.

The proceedings were formal and uninteresting until the doctors were called, but the medical evidence produced a veritable sensation. In the face of it only one verdict was possible, and without leaving their seats the jury returned that of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.

Both Austin and Cosgrove were evidently anxious and upset, and both showed relief when the proceedings were over. But, considering his interviews with them, and the inquiries he had made, Tanner did not think these emotions unnatural or suspicious.

Though the Inspector had hardly hoped to learn additional facts at the inquest, he was yet disappointed to find that not one single item of information had come out of which he was not already aware. Nor had any promising line of inquiry been suggested.

He was now of the opinion that the real clue to the tragedy must lie in the letter Sir William had received a week before his death, but as he could see no way of learning its contents, his thoughts had passed on to the deceased’s visits to London. About these visits one or two points were rather intriguing.

Firstly, they had occurred almost immediately after the receipt of the letter, and it was at least possible that they were a result of it. Secondly, Sir William had travelled to town two days running, or at least two weekdays running. This was not in accordance with his habit and pointed to some special and unusual business. The third point Tanner thought most suggestive of all. Though it was Sir William’s custom and preference to go to town by car, and his motor was available on these two occasions, yet he had travelled in each case by train. Why? Surely, thought Tanner, to enable him to make his calls in private⁠—to avoid letting the chauffeur know where he went.

At all events, whether or not these conclusions were sound, Tanner decided the most promising clue left him was the following up of Sir William’s movements in the city on these two days.

Accordingly, when the business of the inquest was over and he was once more free, he returned to the railway station at Halford. Here he was able after careful inquiries to confirm the statement made by Innes, the valet, as to the trains Sir William had travelled by on the two days. He went himself to town by the 4:32, determined that on Monday morning he would try to pick up the trail at St. Pancras.

But before Monday morning his thoughts were running in an entirely different channel.

He had gone home on Sunday determined to enjoy a holiday. But Fate ruled otherwise. The grilling afternoon had hardly drawn to a close when a note was sent him from the Yard. It read:

“Re Ponson Case.⁠—Halford sergeant phones important information come to hand. You are wanted to return immediately.”

Tanner caught the 7:30 train, and before nine was seated in the Halford Police Station, hearing the news. The sergeant was bubbling over with importance and excitement, and told his story with an air of thrilled impressiveness which considerably irritated his hearer.

“About four o’clock this afternoon a young woman came to the station and asked for me,” he began. “She was a good-looking girl of about five-and-twenty. She gave her name as Lucy Penrose, and said she was typist and bookkeeper in Smithson’s, the grocer’s in Abbey Street. I didn’t know her, and she explained that she lived three miles out in the country, and had only got this job since the beginning of the month. Then she said she had just read about the inquest in the evening paper, and that she knew something she thought she ought to tell.”

The sergeant paused, evidently delighted with the attention the London officer was giving him.

“She said,” he went on after a moment, “that about half-past nine on the Wednesday evening of the murder, she and a young man called Herbert Potts were walking in the spinney belonging to Dr. Graham, on the left bank of the river, and just opposite the Luce Manor boathouse. They saw a boat coming down the river with a man in it. He stopped at the boathouse, and seemed to try the water gate, but apparently couldn’t get in, for after a moment he pulled on to the steps and went ashore, making the boat fast. In a couple of minutes he came back with another man and got in the boat again, and then went in through the water gate. The other man stood on the steps and watched him, and then he went round seemingly to the door of the boathouse. That was all they saw, but, sir, they knew the men.”

Again the sergeant paused to heighten his effect.

“Get on, man. Don’t be so darned dramatic,” growled Tanner irritably. “Who were they?”

“Mr. Austin Ponson and Sir William!” The sergeant reached his climax with an air of triumph.

Tanner was genuinely surprised.

“Couldn’t have been,” he said after a moment. “I went into all that. Mr. Austin was halfway to the Abbey ruins at that time.”

“She was quite certain, and she said the man Potts was certain too.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, sir. He is a bookseller’s assistant in London⁠—to Evans & Hope, in Paternoster Row. His people live here, and he was down on a couple of days’ holidays.”

Tanner noted the address.

“How was Mr. Austin supposed to be dressed?”

“In bluish grey clothes that looked like flannel, and a white straw hat.”

“And Sir William?”

“In a black cape and felt hat.”

“They didn’t see either of them leave the boathouse?”

“No, sir. They were passing on down the river towards the girl’s home.”

Tanner was silent. If this news were true, though he could hardly credit it, the alibi must be a fake after all, and Austin must have duped him. And yet, how could it be a fake? He had tested it thoroughly, and he had been satisfied about it. He did not know what to think.

“Why did this girl not come forward before?” he asked.

“She didn’t know till she read the account of the inquest that there was any question of foul play.”

Inspector Tanner was considerably perplexed. The more he thought over what he had just heard, the more disposed to believe it he became, and at the same time more puzzled about the alibi. But one fact at all events appeared to stand out clearly. If Austin had really been to the boathouse that night, it surely followed that he must be guilty of the murder? His presence there would not of course prove it, but would not the alibi? If he had merely omitted to mention the visit it would have been suggestive, but if he had invented an elaborate story to prove he was not there, it undoubtedly pointed to something serious.

But, as had always happened up to the present, his own next step was clear. He must see the girl and hear her statement himself, and afterwards visit Potts, the bookseller’s assistant. If he was satisfied with their story he must once again tackle Austin’s alibi and not drop it till he either found the flaw or was so convinced of its soundness as to conclude the new witnesses were lying.

Next morning he was early at the grocery establishment of Mr. Thomas Smithson, in close conversation with a tall and rather pretty girl in a cream-coloured blouse and blue skirt. She repeated the sergeant’s statement almost word for word, and all Tanner’s efforts could neither shake her evidence nor add to it. She was quite sure the man in the boat was Austin; she had seen him scores of times; he was a well-known Halford figure. So was Sir William; she had seen him scores of times also. No, it was not too dark to see at that distance; her sight was excellent, and she was quite certain she had made no mistake.

She was very shamefaced about the cause of her presence on the river bank, and begged Tanner to respect her confidence. He promised readily, saying that unless absolutely unavoidable, her name would not be brought forward.

He returned to town by the next train, and drove to Paternoster Row. Here he had no difficulty in finding Herbert Potts. He was a man on the right side of thirty, with a dependable face, and a quiet, rather forceful manner. He seemed considerably annoyed that his excursion with Miss Penrose should have become known, fearing, as he said, that the girl would get talked about, and perhaps have to give evidence in court. But about the events on the night in question he corroborated her entirely. He also was positive the man in the boat was Austin. Though now employed in London, he was a Halford man and knew Austin’s appearance beyond possibility of mistake. The Inspector left him, feeling that in the face of these two witnesses he could no longer doubt Austin had been at the boathouse, and therefore had faked his alibi.

But how? That was the question he must now set himself to solve.

It seemed clear that Austin’s statement up to the time of his leaving the boat club pavilion, and after his arrival back there, was true. The testimony of the boatman Brocklehurst, Miss Drew, and Austin’s butler was overwhelming. The flaw therefore must lie in the evidence of what took place between those hours. Tanner went over this once again.

It hinged, as he had recognised before, on the shoes. And firstly, had the prints at the Abbey been made by those shoes? He had thought so at the time, and on reconsidering the matter he felt more certain than ever that he was right. A very trifling dint in the edge of one of the soles, evidently caused by striking a sharp-edged stone, was reproduced exactly in the clay. It was unthinkable that another pair of precisely similar shoes should have a precisely similar dint in the exact same place. No, when or by whom worn, Austin’s shoes had made the tracks. So much was beyond question.

Then with regard to the time at which the prints had been made. On this point the evidence of the butler corroborated Austin’s story. The butler had stated the shoes had been in Austin’s dressing-room in his, the butler’s, charge during the entire time from the Monday on which they were purchased till the Friday, with the single exception of this particular period on Wednesday evening. If this were true it followed that some person other than Austin wore the shoes, and made the tracks during this period. But was it true?

Tanner recalled point by point his interview with the butler. Invariably he reached his conclusions quite as much from the manner and bearing of the persons he interrogated as from their statement. And in this case he was forced to admit the butler seemed to speak as a perfectly honest man. The Inspector felt he did not possess sufficient intelligence to make his story sound as convincing as it had, unless he himself believed it to be true.

But might not the man have been mistaken?

Obviously the liability of humanity to err must be kept in view. At the same time it was difficult to see how a mistake could have occurred. The matter was not one of opinion, but of fact. Was Austin wearing the shoes when he went out and returned on the Wednesday evening? Were they clean before he started and muddy after he reached home? There did not seem to be any possibility of error on these points. More important still, were they worn at any other time? The butler had stated he always knew what shoes Austin was wearing, as all his master’s footwear was in his charge. It seemed to Tanner that if Austin was away from the house for so long as a journey to the Abbey would involve, in dirty weather, the butler would expect a pair of shoes to have been soiled, and would therefore be bound to know if those in question had been worn.

But there was corroborative evidence which vastly strengthened the man’s statement, and that was the apparent age of the footmarks. Tanner could not tell to an hour when prints were made, but he felt certain he could say to within twelve. And in the case of these particular marks at the Abbey their appearance told him unmistakably they must have been made on or about Wednesday night. That the shoes came in wet and muddy that night, and that on Thursday morning they had dried by just the amount that might reasonably have been expected, was also strongly corroborative.

The more Tanner pondered over the matter, the more he felt himself forced once more to the conclusion that the footprints at the Abbey were made on that Wednesday evening between the hours of nine and eleven. If Austin was now proved to have been at the boathouse between these hours, who then had made them?

And again, if so, what shoes had Austin worn at Luce Manor? On that night the butler had gone over all his footwear, and all except the shoes in question were there in Austin’s room.

Tanner was genuinely puzzled. This whole matter of the shoes seemed so clear and straightforward, and yet, if Potts and Miss Penrose were to be believed, it was all a fake. As he sat smoking after lunch in the corner of a quiet restaurant he kept racking his brains to find the flaw. But he could get no light, and he did not see just where to look for it.

At last he decided he would try to trace Austin’s movements, from the time of his visit to Luce Manor on the Sunday evening previous to the murder, right up to the time he handed over the shoes to him, Tanner, on the following Friday. If Austin had arranged for a confederate to make the tracks for him he must have had communications with him, and it was possible Tanner might thus learn his identity.

As he was in London, the Inspector thought he might as well begin with Austin’s visit to town on the Monday previous to the murder. Of that, the only thing of which he knew was the purchase of the shoes. He had noted the maker’s markings, “Glimax B 10735 789647S Hunt & Co.”

Messrs. Hunt’s was a very large firm, with perhaps a score or more of shops in the metropolis, and probably hundreds throughout the three kingdoms. “Glimax” was one of the three or four “lines” advertised in every paper. Tanner borrowed a directory and looked up their head office. Half an hour later he was seated with their manager.

Having introduced himself as an Inspector from Scotland Yard, he went on to business at once.

“I am endeavouring,” he said, “to trace the movements of a man who, on Monday, the 5th, this day fortnight, purchased a pair of shoes from one of your shops⁠—probably a West End branch. The shoes were marked Glimax B 10735 over 789647S. Now, can you oblige me by suggesting how I might obtain a record of the sale?”

“With the best will in the world, I don’t know that we can give you that information,” the manager returned slowly. “We get weekly statements from all our branches which show the total sales of each class of shoe during the period. But, unfortunately for you, though fortunately for us,” the manager smiled deprecatingly, “many shoes of the fitting in question would almost certainly be sold at each of our branches during each week. If, therefore, you were to go through our returns you would find yourself no further on⁠—it would still mean inquiries at each individual branch. How do you propose to identify your man?”

“I have his photograph.”

“I am afraid you will have to depend on that. Some of the salesmen will probably remember him. Can I help you in any other way?”

“Two things, if you will be so good; to give me, first, a list of your West End branches and second, a note to your managers, asking them to assist me.”

“I will do both with pleasure.”