The Cases Of Detective Reggie Fortune. H. C. Bailey
was not much more than an hour before a policeman was letting them into Sir Arthur Dean’s flat in Westminster. An inspector of police led the way to the study. “Anything of interest, Morton?” Lomas said.
“Well, sir, nothing you could call out of the way. When we came, the servants had heard of the death and they were upset. Sir Arthur’s man, he opened the door to me fairly crying. Been with him thirty years, fine old-fashioned fellow, would be talking about his master.”
Lomas and Reggie looked at each other, but the inspector swept on.
“Then in this room, sir, there was Sir Arthur’s executor, Colonel Osbert, getting out papers. I had to tell him that wouldn’t do. Rather stiff he was. He is a military man. Well, sir, I put it to him, orders are orders, and he took it very well. But he let me see pretty plain he didn’t like it. He was quite the gentleman, but he put it to me we had no business in Sir Arthur’s affairs unless we thought there was foul play. Well, of course, I couldn’t answer that. He talked a good deal, fishing, you might say. All he got out of me was that I couldn’t allow anything to be touched. So he said he would take it up with the Commissioner and went off. That’s all, sir.”
“Who is he?” said Reggie.
“His card, sir. Colonel Osbert, late Indian Army.”
“Do you know if he was who he said he was?” Lomas asked.
The inspector was startled. “Well, sir, the servants knew him. Sir Arthur’s man, he let him in, says he’s Sir Arthur’s oldest friend. I had no reason to detain him.”
“That’s all right, Morton,” said Lomas. “Well, what time did you get here?”
“Your message came two o’clock, sir. I should say we were here by a quarter past.”
Lomas nodded and dismissed him. “Quick work,” he said with a cock of his eye at Reggie.
“We can time it all by the King. He drove up the course at ten past one. Till the procession came Sir Arthur was alive. We didn’t pick him up till five minutes after, at the least. No one knew he was dead till you had examined him. No one knew then but me and my men. And yet Colonel Osbert in London knows of the death in time to get round here and get to work on the dead man’s papers before two-fifteen. He knew the man was dead as soon as we did who were looking at the body. Damme, he has very early information.”
“Yes. One to you, Lomas. And a nasty one for Colonel Osbert. Our active and intelligent police force. If you hadn’t been up and doing and sent your bright boys round, Colonel Osbert might have got away with what he wanted. And he wouldn’t have had to explain how he knew too much.”
“When was the poison given? Say between five to one and ten past. At that time the murderer was in the Royal Enclosure. If he had his car waiting handy, could he get here before two-fifteen?”
“Well—if his car was a flier, and there were no flies on his chauffeur and he had luck all the way, I suppose it’s possible. But I don’t believe in it. I should say Osbert didn’t do the job.”
Lomas sprang up and called the inspector. He wanted to know what Colonel Osbert was wearing. Colonel Osbert was in a lounge suit of grey flannel. Lomas sat down again and lit a cigarette. “I’m afraid that will do for an alibi, Fortune,” he sighed. “Your hypothetical murderer was in the Royal Enclosure. Therefore——”
“He was in topper and tails, same like us. The uniform of respectability. Of course, he could have done a change in his car. But I don’t think it. No. Osbert won’t do. But what was he after?”
Lomas stood up and looked round the room. It had the ordinary furniture of an old-fashioned study and in addition several modern steel chests of drawers for filing documents. “Well, he set some value on his papers,” Lomas said.
“Lots of honest toil before you, Lomas, old thing.” Reggie smiled, and while Lomas fell to work with the keys he wandered about picking up a bowl here, a brass tray there. “He kept to his own line,” he remarked. “Everything is Asiatic.”
“You may well say so,” Lomas groaned, frowning over a mass of papers.
But Reggie’s attention was diverted. Somebody had rung the bell and there was talk in the hall. He made out a woman’s voice. “I fancy this is our young friend the daughter-in-law,” he murmured.
Lomas looked up at him. “I had a notion you didn’t take to her, Fortune. Do you want to see her?”
“God forbid,” said Reggie. “She’s thin, Lomas, she’s too thin.”
In a moment or two a discreet tap introduced Inspector Morton. “Mrs. Dean, deceased’s daughter-in-law, sir,” he reported. “Asked to see the man-servant. I saw no objection, me being present. They were both much distressed, sir. She asked him if Colonel Osbert had been here. Seemed upset when she heard he was here before us. Asked if he had taken anything away. The servant told her we weren’t letting anything be touched. That didn’t seem to satisfy her. She said something nasty about the police being always too late. Meant for me, I suppose.”
“I rather fancy it was meant for me,” said Reggie. “It’s a bad business.”
“I don’t think the Colonel got away with anything, sir. He was sitting down to the diary on the table there when we came in.”
“All right.” Lomas waved him away. “Damme, it is a bad business. What am I to do with this, Fortune?” He held up papers in a strange script, papers of all sorts and sizes, some torn and discoloured, some fresh.
Reggie went to look. “Arabic,” he said. “And this is Persian.” He studied them for a while. “A sort of dossier, a lot of evidence about some case or person. Lomas old thing, you’ll have to call in the Foreign Office.”
“Lord, we can translate them ourselves. It’s the mass of it!”
“Yes, lot of light reading. I think I should have a talk to the Foreign Office. Well, that’s your show. Me for the body.”
Lomas lay back in his chair. “What’s in your head?”
“I won’t let anything into my head. There is no evidence. But I’m wondering if we’ll ever get any. It’s a beautiful crime—as a crime. A wicked world, Lomas old thing.”
On the day after, Reggie Fortune came into Lomas’s room at Scotland Yard and shook his head and lit one of Lomas’s largest cigars and fell into a chair. “Unsatisfactory, highly unsatisfactory,” he announced. “I took Harvey down with me. You couldn’t have a better opinion except mine, and he agrees with me.”
“And what do you say?”
“I say, nothing doing. He had no medical history. There was nothing the matter with the man, yet he died of heart failure and suffocation. That means poisoning by aconitine or a similar alkaloid. But there is no poison in the price list which would in a quarter of an hour kill quietly and without fuss a man in perfect health. I have no doubt a poison was injected into him by that puncture on the hand, but I don’t know what it was. We’ll have some analysis done, of course, but I expect nothing of that. There’ll be no trace.”
“Unique case.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You remember I thought General Blaker was poisoned. He was mixed up with Asiatics too. There were queer circumstances about the death of that Greek millionaire in Rome two years ago. The world’s old and men have been poisoning each other for five thousand years and science only began to look into it yesterday. There’s a lot of drugs in the world that you can’t buy at the chemist’s.”
“Good Gad,” Lomas protested, “we’re in Scotland Yard, not the Arabian Nights. What you mean is you can’t do anything?”
“Even so. Can you? Who wanted him dead?”
“Nobody but a lunatic. He had no money to leave.