G. D. H. Cole · Chapter 16 (1/2)

XVI

A Link in the Chain

Fred Thomas came away a good deal dissatisfied from his discussion with his client. Walter Brooklyn, he felt, had given him little enough to go upon. He persisted in affirming that he had not been in Liskeard House that night, and in denying absolutely that he had either rung up his Club and given a message or left his walking-stick in Prinsep’s room. Yet surely, Thomas argued, the police, if they had proceeded to the drastic step of an arrest, must have some definite proof that he had been in the house, or at any rate some clear indication of his complicity. He did not believe that his client was being frank with him; and, while he had not said this outright, a hint of what he thought had produced a violent outburst of bad temper from Brooklyn, and almost caused him to tell his legal adviser to clear out and come back no more. This had served to confirm Thomas’s idea that Brooklyn was lying, and his thought, as he went away, was that, if he tried again, probably Brooklyn would tell him the truth when he cooled down and came to realise more fully what his position was. In his experience imprisonment had a wonderfully sobering effect. Meanwhile, Thomas made up his mind to see Carter Woodman, and try to find out from him more definitely how matters stood. Woodman, presumably, would want Walter Brooklyn to get off, even if he believed him to be guilty. He would probably not want a member of the Brooklyn family to be convicted of murder, whatever the truth might be.

Thomas had not long left Walter Brooklyn when Joan arrived to see him. She had come into the police-station alone, leaving Lucas and Ellery outside in the car to wait for her return. While they waited, Ellery told his guardian more about his engagement to Joan, and received from him very hearty congratulations. “You didn’t take my advice, my boy,” Lucas said; “but now that things have come out right, I’m most heartily glad that you didn’t. I have hoped for this for a long time. I’m very fond of you both, and I can see there’s no doubt about your being fond of each other.” Which was very pleasant hearing for Ellery; for he had a great liking for his guardian, and he knew that his friendly countenance would be likely to stand him in good stead with Sir Vernon Brooklyn, of whom he was more than a little afraid. “You must back me up with Sir Vernon,” he said; and Lucas readily promised his help.

It was three-quarters of an hour before Joan came out of the police-station. She seemed well satisfied, smiling back at the policeman who accompanied her to the door. “He has told you?” asked Ellery, as he held open the door of the car.

“What he had to tell,” Joan replied. “It was not very much; but it makes everything different. Let us go back and talk it over.”

Lucas drove straight back to Liskeard House, and there, in Joan’s room, the three held a consultation. “He was not here at all,” she told them. “I mean he did not come back to the house on Tuesday night. The telephone message must be all a mistake.”

“Do you mean that he knows nothing at all about it?” asked Ellery.

“I am quite sure that he knows nothing. He has told me exactly what he did after leaving here and up to the time when he went back to his Club.”

“You may think I ought not to ask this, Joan,” said Lucas; “but are you quite sure of what you say?”

“Absolutely sure. He was telling me the truth, I know.”

“Then I suppose,” Ellery put in, “we can produce witnesses to prove that he was somewhere else when he was supposed to be here. But who the devil did send that telephone message if he did not?”

Lucas put in a word. “Never mind that for the moment. The main thing now is to prove that he did not send it. Who was with him and where was he?”

“Ah, that’s just the difficulty. He has told me exactly where he went; but I don’t see how we can find anyone to prove it.”

“Do you mean that he was alone all the time, and no one saw him?” asked Ellery.

“Well, not quite that; but something very like it, I’m afraid.”

Then Joan was allowed to tell her story. Walter Brooklyn, after being refused an interview with Sir Vernon, had left Liskeard House at about a quarter past ten. He had stopped for a minute or two outside the Piccadilly Theatre, wondering what to do next. Then he had walked slowly along Piccadilly and into the Circus. There again he had hung about for a few minutes, and had then gone slowly along Coventry Street as far as Leicester Square. He had walked round the Square, and outside the Alhambra had stopped for a few minutes to talk to a woman of his acquaintance⁠—“not at all a nice woman, I am afraid⁠—and he knows no more about her than that her name is Kitty, and that she is often to be found about there. He doesn’t even know her surname. It was about a quarter to eleven when he met her.”

Then he had gone on past the Hippodrome and up Charing Cross Road as far as Cambridge Circus. He had stopped for a few minutes outside the Palace, but had not spoken to anyone, and then he had walked down Shaftesbury Avenue and back into Piccadilly Circus. In Cambridge Circus he had lighted a cigar with his last match; but it had gone out. Just outside the Monico he had stopped a man he did not know⁠—“fellow came out of the place, he looked like a waiter, don’t you know”⁠—and had borrowed a match and re-lighted his cigar. Then he had crossed the Circus again, and walked back down Piccadilly as far as the turning leading to Liskeard House. He had half a mind, he said, to go in and ask to see Prinsep; but after hanging about for a few minutes he had given up the idea, crossed the road, and walked down St. James’s Street with the idea of looking in at his other Club. But he had decided not to go in, and had walked past the door down Pall Mall and into Trafalgar Square. At the top of Whitehall he had looked at his watch, and the time had been 11:45. Just before that, he had hung over the parapet on the National Gallery side of the Square for a minute or two; but he had no conversation with anyone. On leaving the Square, he turned up Regent Street and made his way, walking a good deal faster, along Jermyn Street and up St. James’s Street, and so back to his Club in Piccadilly. He had thus again passed Liskeard Street, but on the opposite side of the road. When he got in, he had gone straight to bed.

This account of Walter Brooklyn’s movements was quite convincing to Joan and her two listeners; but they had to admit that there was not much in it to persuade others of its truth. According to his own account, he must have been in the neighbourhood of Liskeard House at 11:30 when the phone message was supposed to have been sent; and not one of his movements between 10:15 and midnight seemed to be at all easy to confirm by any independent testimony. When Joan had finished her narrative, they all felt that, if Walter Brooklyn’s vindication was to depend on an alibi, his chances were not particularly good. Still, if he had not been in the house, the police could after all have very little against him beyond a suspicion.

At this point Mary Woodman came into the room to say that Sir Vernon would be very pleased if Mr. Lucas would come and sit with him for a while, and Lucas, promising to obey her order to be very quiet and not to allow the patient to excite himself, was led off to the sick room.

“I tell you what, Joan,” said Ellery, who had been sitting still, with a prodigious frown on his face, trying to think the thing over, “we’ve jolly well got to establish that alibi. We don’t know what else the police may have; but we’re safe enough if we can prove that he wasn’t here that evening. Unless we can establish positively that he wasn’t there, the circumstantial evidence will go down with a jury.”

“But how can we establish it? I only wish we could.”

“We’re going to. We’re going to find those people he spoke to, and we’re going to hunt London for people who saw him strolling about. After all, he’s very well known, and lots of people must have seen him. I know we shall be able to prove he’s telling the truth.”

“You’re a dear to say so, and I don’t see what we can do but try. How do you propose to set about it?”

“First of all, I propose that we make a map of the wanderings of Ulysses⁠—shall we call it?⁠—showing exactly where he went, whom he spoke to and when, and so on. That will help us to see exactly what’s the best way of getting to work.”

So Ellery took a sheet of paper, and they sat down side by side at the table. Under Joan’s directions, Ellery made a map of Walter Brooklyn’s journeyings on Tuesday evening. It took an hour to do, and this is what it looked like when it was done, with notes to help them in prosecuting their inquiries.

“It isn’t very hopeful, I’m afraid,” said Joan, as they looked together at the finished plan; “but I’m afraid it is all we have to go upon.”

“Not quite all, I hope. Did he tell you what the man he spoke to looked like⁠—I mean the chap who gave him a match outside the Monico?”

“Yes, he was a tall, dark man, clean-shaven and very blue in the chin, wearing a long black overcoat and a squash hat. And he almost certainly had some trouble of the eyes. He wore glasses; but he kept blinking all the time behind them.”

“That ought to help. Now what about this woman, Kitty? What is she like?”

“He says she is about forty, but dresses⁠—and paints⁠—to look younger. She’s getting fat, has bright golden hair⁠—certainly dyed⁠—and wears a great many rings. She’s fairly tall, and walks with a bit of a waddle. Her eyes are dark and piercing, he says, and she has a smile that looks as if it was switched on and off like an electric light.”

“I must say she doesn’t sound attractive.”

“But he says she is⁠—extraordinarily; and, what is more, she’s very well known. He has heard her other name, but he can’t remember it. He thinks she has had several surnames.”

“That seems to be all we can get to start with. What I propose to do is to follow your stepfather’s route, trying to find someone who saw him at each point where he stopped.”

“Yes, but you can leave a bit of it to me. We know that Marian and Helen and Carter all saw him coming here at a few minutes past ten, and the servants here say he left at about a quarter-past. He tells me he stopped outside the theatre just after that. If so, someone very likely saw him. I’ll see about that, and I’ll try to find out as well whether anyone saw him passing again later. He must have passed at about 11:20 to half-past⁠—I mean when he stood at the corner of Liskeard Street, and again just before twelve on his way back to the Club.”

“Very well. You take this end and I’ll follow the rest of his wanderings. And there is no reason why I shouldn’t get to work at once. It will be best to go over the ground in the evening, just as he did.”

They sat and talked of the case for a while longer; and then they sat for a time without talking at all, happy in each other’s presence despite the tragedy in which they were involved. At length Ellery started up, saying that he must go out and get some dinner, and then go to work seriously.

“And by the way, Joan,” he added, “why shouldn’t you come out and have dinner with me? I’m sure Mary would look after Sir Vernon.”

“My dear boy, does it occur to you that I’ve left him to himself for a good long time already⁠—or rather left poor Mary alone to look after him? I couldn’t have done it if Marian had not promised to come in and help.”

“I’m sure Mary wouldn’t mind,” Ellery began, pleading with her to come.

“Oh, of course, Mary’s an angel. She never minds anything. But that’s no reason why she should be put upon. No, my boy, you go and have your bachelor dinner, and I’ll get Winter to send me up an egg.”

“Mayn’t I share the egg?”

“Certainly not. Get along with you.” And Joan sped her lover on his way with the taste of her kiss fresh on his mouth. It seemed a profanation to eat anything after that; but all the same, while Joan ate her egg and then took her turn in watching over Sir Vernon, Ellery, seated alone in the grill room at Hatchett’s was making a very solid and satisfactory meal. Somehow, love seemed to give one an appetite, he reflected, as he lighted a cigar. Then he set forth upon his quest, walking slowly down Piccadilly towards the Circus. He had no fixed plan of action. As he put it to himself, he was following the route Walter Brooklyn had taken and just keeping his eyes open, in the hope that something might turn up. Nothing did turn up till he reached Piccadilly Circus. There, as he knew, Walter Brooklyn had hung about for a few minutes, but had spoken to no one.

The quest certainly did not seem to be hopeful. Piccadilly Circus was crowded with people, some hurrying this way or that in pursuit of some definite object, others standing or strolling about as if they had nothing to do and nowhere in particular to go. The flower-women who sit on the island in the middle of the Circus in the daytime had already left their posts, and would presumably have done so on Tuesday before Walter Brooklyn took that disastrous walk. But before long Ellery picked out two persons who remained at fixed spots while the rest of the crowd changed from minute to minute. The one was a policeman regulating the traffic and the queues at the point where the buses stopped by the island: the other was a night-watchman in his little hut, keeping guard over a piece of the roadway which was under repair. These were the most likely of all the crowd to have been there on Tuesday night, and with them he determined to begin his inquiries.

The policeman was quickly disposed of. He had not been on duty on Tuesday; but a little persuasion in tangible form soon secured the name of the constable who had, and the news that he had only been kept away that night by a misadventure, and would be on duty again the following night. Ellery made a note of the name, and said to himself that he must see the other policeman later. For the present he strolled over towards the watchman, whom he found reading a tattered book in his little cabin, by the light partly of the lamps and sky signs, and partly, though it was a warm summer evening, of a blazing fire in a pail. He was a little, old man with a pair of steel spectacles, which had carved a deep rut in his nose, and he seemed to be reading with extraordinarily concentrated attention. Ellery managed to see what the book was. It was Sartor Resartus. The man was clearly a “scholar,” and probably a homely philosopher of the working-class.

It seemed best to use the opening which providence had provided. “That’s a fine book you’ve got there,” said Ellery, casting his mind back to the days at school, when he had first and last read his Sartor, only to forget all about it and Carlyle as he reached years of discretion.

The little old man peered up at him over his glasses. “It is the book for me,” he said. “That Carlyle, sir, he was a man.”

“I dare say you manage to read a great deal at your job.”

“I do that. You see, I had a accident ten years ago. ’Fore that, I was a navvy; but that finished me⁠—for heavy work, I mean. At first, I was wretched at this job; the company gave it me, when doctor said I was fit for light work. And then it came to me I’d take up reading, like. I hadn’t hardly ever opened a book till then⁠—not since school. I can tell you, it’s been a revelation to me. I don’t ask nothing better than to sit here with a good book now. But it isn’t often one of you gentlemen seems to notice what I’m reading.”

The old man spoke slowly, and rather as if he was thinking aloud. He seemed almost to have forgotten that Ellery was there.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have noticed, unless there had been something I wanted to ask you. A man’s life may depend on it, and I wanted your help.”

The old man peered up at him again, and a little gleam of excitement came into his eyes; but he only nodded to Ellery to go on.