CHAPTER IV

Nobody came forward to identify the dead woman. The inquest elicited

the following facts.

Shortly after one o’clock on January 8th, a well-dressed woman with

a slight foreign accent had entered the offices of Messrs. Butler

and Park, house-agents, in Knightsbridge. She explained that she

wanted to rent or purchase a house on the Thames within easy reach

of London. The particulars of several were given to her, including

those of the Mill House. She gave the name of Mrs. de Castina and

her address as the Ritz, but there proved to be no one of that name

staying there, and the hotel people failed to identify the body.

Mrs. James, the wife of Sir Eustace Pedler’s gardener, who acted

as caretaker to the Mill House and inhabited the small lodge

opening on the main road, gave evidence. About three o’clock that

afternoon, a lady came to see over the house. She produced an order

from the house-agents, and, as was the usual custom, Mrs. James

gave her the keys of the house. It was situated at some distance

from the lodge, and she was not in the habit of accompanying

prospective tenants. A few minutes later a young man arrived. Mrs.

James described him as tall and broad-shouldered, with a bronzed

face and light grey eyes. He was clean-shaven and was wearing a

brown suit. He explained to Mrs. James that he was a friend of the

lady who had come to look over the house, but had stopped at the

post office to send a telegram. She directed him to the house, and

thought no more about the matter.

Five minutes later he reappeared, handed her back the keys and

explained that he feared the house would not suit them. Mrs. James

did not see the lady, but thought that she had gone on ahead. What

she did notice was that the young man seemed very much upset about

something. “He looked like a man who’d seen a ghost. I thought he

was taken ill.”

On the following day another lady and gentleman came to see the

property and discovered the body lying on the floor in one of the

upstairs rooms. Mrs. James identified it as that of the lady who

had come the day before. The house-agents also recognized it as

that of “Mrs. de Castina.” The police surgeon gave it as his

opinion that the woman had been dead about twenty-four hours. The

_Daily Budget_ had jumped to the conclusion that the man in the

Tube had murdered the woman and afterwards committed suicide.

However, as the Tube victim was dead at two o’clock, and the woman

was alive and well at three o’clock, the only logical conclusion

to come to was that the two occurrences had nothing to do with each

other, and that the order to view the house at Marlow found in the

dead man’s pocket was merely one of those coincidences which so

often occur in this life.

A verdict of “Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown”

was returned, and the police (and the _Daily Budget_) were left to

look for “the man in the brown suit.” Since Mrs. James was positive

that there was no one in the house when the lady entered it, and

that nobody except the young man in question entered it until the

following afternoon, it seemed only logical to conclude that he

was the murderer of the unfortunate Mrs. de Castina. She had been

strangled with a piece of stout black cord, and had evidently been

caught unawares with no time to cry out. The black silk handbag

which she carried contained a well-filled notecase and some loose

change, a fine lace handkerchief, unmarked, and the return half of

a first-class ticket to London. Nothing much there to go upon.

Such were the details published broadcast by the _Daily Budget,_

and “Find the Man in the Brown Suit” was their daily war-cry. On

an average about five hundred people wrote daily to announce their

success in the quest, and tall young men with well-tanned faces

cursed the day when their tailors had persuaded them to a brown

suit. The accident in the Tube, dismissed as a coincidence, faded

out of the public mind.

Was it a coincidence? I was not so sure. No doubt I was

prejudiced—the Tube incident was my own pet mystery—but there

certainly seemed to me to be a connection of some kind between the

two fatalities. In each there was a man with a tanned face—evidently

an Englishman living abroad, and there were other things. It was

the consideration of these other things that finally impelled me

to what I considered a dashing step. I presented myself at Scotland

Yard and demanded to see whoever was in charge of the Mill House

case.

My request took some time to understand, as I had inadvertently

selected the department for lost umbrellas, but eventually I was

ushered into a small room and presented to Detective Inspector

Meadows.

Inspector Meadows was a small man with a ginger head and what I

considered a peculiarly irritating manner. A satellite, also in

plain clothes, sat unobtrusively in a corner.

“Good morning,” I said nervously.

“Good morning. Will you take a seat? I understand you’ve something

to tell me that you think may be of use to us.”

His tone seemed to indicate that such a thing was unlikely in the

extreme. I felt my temper stirred.

“Of course you know about the man who was killed in the Tube? The

man who had an order to view this same house at Marlow in his

pocket.”

“Ah!” said the inspector. “You are the Miss Beddingfeld who gave

evidence at the inquest. Certainly the man had an order in his

pocket. A lot of other people may have had too—only they didn’t

happen to be killed.”

I rallied my forces.

“You don’t think it odd that this man had no ticket in his pocket?”

“Easiest thing in the world to drop your ticket. Done it myself.”

“And no money.”

“He had some loose change in his trousers pocket.”

“But no notecase.”

“Some men don’t carry a pocket-book or notecase of any kind.”

I tried another tack.

“You don’t think it’s odd that the doctor never came forward

afterwards?”

“A busy medical man very often doesn’t read the papers. He probably

forgot all about the accident.”

“In fact, inspector, you are determined to find nothing odd,” I

said sweetly.

“Well, I’m inclined to think you’re a little too fond of the word,

Miss Beddingfeld. Young ladies are romantic, I know—fond of

mysteries and such-like. But as I’m a busy man——”

I took the hint and rose.

The man in the corner raised a meek voice.

“Perhaps the young lady would tell us briefly what her ideas really

are on the subject, inspector?”

The inspector fell in with the suggestion readily enough.

“Yes, come now, Miss Beddingfeld, don’t be offended. You’ve asked

questions and hinted things. Just say straight out what it is

you’ve got in your head.”

I wavered between injured dignity and the overwhelming desire to

express my theories. Injured dignity went to the wall.

“You said at the inquest you were positive it wasn’t suicide?”

“Yes, I’m quite certain of that. The man was frightened. What

frightened him? It wasn’t me. But some one might have been walking

up the platform towards us—some one he recognized.”

“You didn’t see any one?”

“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t turn my head. Then, as soon as the body

was recovered from the line, a man pushed forward to examine it,

saying he was a doctor.”

“Nothing unusual in that,” said the inspector dryly.

“But he wasn’t a doctor.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t a doctor,” I repeated.

“How do you know that, Miss Beddingfeld?”

“It’s difficult to say, exactly. I’ve worked in Hospital during

the war, and I’ve seen doctors handle bodies. There’s a sort of

deft professional callousness that this man hadn’t got. Besides,

a doctor doesn’t usually feel for the heart on the right side of

the body.”

“He did that?”

“Yes, I didn’t notice it specially at the time—except that I felt

there was something wrong. But I worked it out when I got home,

and then I saw why the whole thing had looked so unhandy to me at

the time.”

“H’m,” said the inspector. He was reaching slowly for pen and

paper.

“In running his hands over the upper part of the man’s body he

would have ample opportunity to take anything he wanted from the

pockets.”

“Doesn’t sound likely to me,” said the inspector. “But—well, can

you describe him at all?”

“He was tall and broad-shouldered, wore a dark overcoat and black

boots, a bowler hat. He had a dark pointed beard and gold-rimmed

eyeglasses.”

“Take away the overcoat, the beard and the eyeglasses, and there

wouldn’t be much to know him by,” grumbled the inspector. “He could

alter his appearance easy enough in five minutes if he wanted

to—which he would do if he’s the swell pickpocket you suggest.”

I had not intended to suggest anything of the kind. But from this

moment I gave the inspector up as hopeless.

“Nothing more you can tell us about him?” he demanded, as I rose

to depart.

“Yes,” I said. I seized my opportunity to fire a parting shot. “His

head was markedly brachycephalic. He will not find it so easy to

alter that.”

I observed with pleasure that Inspector Meadow’s pen wavered. It

was clear that he did not know how to spell brachycephalic.