Inspector Stoddart's Most Famous Cases. Annie Haynes
came in gingerly.
"You sent for me, sir?"
"Yes." The inspector waited a minute, then he shut up his book with a bang. "Yes, I want you to come with me to West Kensington." Harbord waited in an attitude of attention. The inspector fidgeted about with the papers before him for a minute, then he said suddenly:
"You will be surprised to hear that the visit I am about to pay is to Basil Wilton." He looked keenly at the younger detective as he spoke. "He is staying with his brother who has taken a furnished house in Kensington—West Kensington to be more correct."
Contrary to his expectations Harbord did not look surprised.
"Is he, sir?"
"I want to talk his story over with him, and see what I can make of it. I should like you to hear what he says."
"Certainly, sir."
Stoddart got up and taking a light overcoat from the peg threw it over his arm.
The house in which Basil Wilton was staying was one of those small houses that look as if they had been built when West Kensington was miles away from London proper, in the wilds beyond Tyburn. By some marvel it had survived when the craze for modern jerry-building surged round. It abutted on no thoroughfare, but was reached by a green door that opened into the little garden from one of those narrow alleys or courts that can only be found by people who know where to look for them. It was a bright-looking little house, though, with its gay window-boxes and the brilliantly coloured flowers in the herbaceous borders round. The detectives went towards the door without delay.
Basil Wilton watched them coming up the garden path from a window on the ground floor. They walked briskly up to the door and knocked authoritatively. It was opened by a respectable-looking, elderly woman of a dour expression who showed them straight into the dining-room.
Wilton came to them at once. Stoddart turned to him.
"I am much obliged to you for giving me this interview, Mr. Wilton."
"Well, I fancy it was rather a matter of Hobson's choice, wasn't it?" Wilton said with a wry smile as he sank wearily into the big leather arm-chair near the window.
"I am not very strong yet, you see," he said. "But do sit down."
The light fell full upon his face as the detective took the seat opposite him, while Harbord sat down farther away.
"This is all very informal and not perhaps strictly professional," Stoddart began. "And I am sure you understand that you need answer no questions unless you feel inclined."
"May be taken down and used in evidence against me? That is the correct formula, isn't it?" Wilton questioned in his tired voice. "Fire away, inspector. I have no secrets."
"What I want to do," the inspector went on, "is to help you, Mr. Wilton. You know that I am in charge of the inquiry into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Wilton?"
"That means you are trying to hang me, doesn't it?" Wilton questioned in that new, weary tone of his.
"No, it does not," the inspector contradicted abruptly. "It means that I want to hear your story of what happened on the night of your wife's death, or as much of it as you feel inclined to tell me. I think it is quite possible that I may be able to help you and you may be able to help me."
Wilton shook his head.
"It's no good, inspector. I did not shoot my wife, and I do not know who did, though I don't expect you to believe me."
The inspector looked him fairly and squarely in the face.
"Do you know, Mr. Wilton, it is precisely because I do believe you that I have asked you to see me this afternoon. I want you just to tell me the story of that day's happenings as simply and straightforwardly as you can, and perhaps to answer a few questions which I may put later. It is quite possible that I may find some clue just where you least expect it."
A gleam of hope came into Wilton's eyes.
"You are very kind, inspector. I scarcely thought any living creature had faith in me, least of all you."
"Ah, well! You see you do not know all your friends," the inspector said enigmatically. "Now, Mr. Wilton, if you will just begin at the beginning—"
"There is really not much to tell," Wilton said slowly. "I had not been well—not since before we were married, in fact. But I was beginning to feel better and I was anxious to bring my wife over here to see my brother and sister-in-law who had just come home. My brother had come home unexpectedly from Kenya on sick leave. I had a letter from him on the morning of my wife's death asking us to go over that same afternoon and spend the evening with them."
The inspector made a rapid note in his book, remembering Alice Downes's story of the letter Mrs. Wilton had been anxious to get.
"Was that the only letter that came to the flat that morning, Mr. Wilton?"
"I am sure I don't know," Wilton said, wrinkling his brows. "That did not come by post, at least not to Hawksview Mansions. It went to my old digs and my landlady sent it up by a special messenger. My wife had made that arrangement with her. I don't know why. But my correspondence is extremely limited, so it really didn't matter. Well, we arranged to accept the invitation, and my wife rang my sister-in-law up and told her we would come. But as the day wore on she began to complain of headache, and as it drew near five, the time she had appointed to start, it was so bad that she could not possibly go. I wanted to stay with her, but she utterly refused to allow me. She told me to take a taxi there and back, and said that being alone for a while would be the best thing for her. She was sitting in her own easy chair in the drawing-room when I left her, and said she should just have a cup of tea and then lie down until I came home."
"And what time exactly was it when you left her?" the inspector questioned.
"About five minutes past five, I should say. That is as near as I can get," Wilton answered. "I know she was rather angry with me for arguing with her and wanting to stay instead of getting off exactly at five. The maid had brought in tea, and my wife gave me a cup and hurried me away."
"You know that the murder is supposed to have taken place, according to the medical evidence, between five and half-past?"
"I know," Wilton assented, then with one of his curious twisted smiles he added: "Just at five minutes past five, isn't it, inspector?"
Stoddart ignored this sally. "You met no one on your way down? And you had no reason to think that Mrs. Wilton was expecting anybody?"
Wilton hesitated. "No—to the first question decidedly. With regard to the second, I had certainly no reason then to think that my wife was expecting a visitor, but I have wondered since whether a certain restlessness which I noticed all day, and which was distinctly not normal, did mean that she had some reason to expect some one or something. She was decidedly anxious to get me off to my brother's—it might be out of the way, or so I have fancied."
The inspector nodded. "Small doubt that it was so, I should say. Now, Mr. Wilton, I am going to put to you one or two questions of a rather intimate nature. If you can see your way to answering them, it may help us materially. But at the same time—"
"Fire away, inspector," Wilton said, leaning back in his chair and letting his shoulders droop as though he had not strength to hold them up. "If there is anything that I can do to help you, you may be sure I shall do it for my own sake as well as to track down the assassin who murdered my poor wife."
The inspector turned over one leaf of his note-book.
"The first is this: have you any idea from what source Mrs. Wilton's income was derived?"
Wilton shook his head. "Not the least. She always spoke of it as if it had been inherited, but I have no idea from whom."
The inspector made a rapid entry in his book. "Could you tell me roughly how much it was per annum?"
"No, indeed, I could not even roughly," Wilton said at once. "She always spoke as though she