The Murder in Torquay (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 9) Read online

  “She ran back into the room. You asked her to share the winnings of your bank. She consented eagerly. And you lost. That’s point number two. A little later, as she was going away, you asked her whether she would be in the room the next night—yesterday night—the night when the murder was committed. She hesitated. I had this idea she saw up against what she was planning to do the next night.

  “Now,” he asked, “do you still ask me to get Poiret involved in the case?”

  “Yes, and at once,” cried Reece-Jones.

  Haven threw his hands in the air. “Ok, let’s talk to Poiret. It’s his decision.”

  Captain Haven led Reece-Jones to the restaurant of the hotel, where Haven saw the great detective fuss with a waiter over his breakfast. Jules Poiret was small and round, with a well-kept moustache. In his meticulously cut suit he looked like a cross between a Michelin man and a dandy.

  He came forward with a smile of welcome, extending both his hands to Captain Haven.

  “Ah, mon ami,” he said, “it is pleasant to see you. And Baronet Jack Reece-Jones, n’est pas?” he exclaimed, holding a hand out to the young Baronet.

  “You remember me, then?” said Reece-Jones gladly.

  “It is my profession to remember people,” said Poiret with a laugh. “You were at that amusing tournament of Captain Haven in Grosvenor Square.”

  “Sir,” said Reece-Jones, “I have come to ask your help.”

  The tone of appeal in his voice was loud and serious. Poiret pointed to a chair at his table and motioned to Reece-Jones to take it. He pointed to another, with a bow of invitation to Captain Haven.

  “Let me hear it,” he said.

  “It’s the murder of Lady Charingbridge,” said Reece-Jones.

  Poiret moved his head.

  “And in what way, Monsieur,” he asked, “are you interested in the murder of Lady Charingbridge?”

  “Her companion,” said Reece-Jones, “the young woman—she’s a friend of mine.”

  Poiret’s face grew serious. Then came a sparkle of anger in his eyes.

  “And what do you wish me to do, Monsieur?” he asked coldly.

  “I wish you—no, I implore you, Mister Poiret,” Reece-Jones cried, his voice ringing with emotion, “to take up this case, to discover the truth, to find out what has become of Rosette.”

  Poiret leaned back in his chair with his hands against each other as if in prayer. He did not take his eyes from Baronet Reece-Jones, but the anger died out of them.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “This affair is in the hands of the police.” He leaned forward and started eating his breakfast as a sign of his decision to decline taking up the case.

  “But if you offered them your help it would be welcomed,” cried Reece-Jones. “And to me that would mean so much. There would be no bungling. There would be no waste of time. Of arresting the wrong person.”

  Poiret shook his head gently. His eyes were softened now by a look of pity. Suddenly he stretched out a forefinger.

  “You have, perhaps, a photograph of the young lady?”

  Reece-Jones blushed, and, took a card holder out of his pocket, opened it and handed a photo to Poiret. Poiret looked at it carefully for a few moments.

  “How long have you known, uh…?” he asked.

  Reece-Jones looked at Poiret with a certain defiance.

  “Miss Rosette Dereham. For a fortnight.”

  Poiret raised his eyebrows.

  “You met her here?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the casino, I suppose? Not at the house of one of your friends?”

  “That is so,” said Reece-Jones quietly. “A friend of mine who knows Lady Charingbridge introduced me to her at my request.”

  Poiret handed back the portrait and pushed forward his chair nearer to Reece-Jones. His face had grown friendly. He spoke with a tone of respect.

  “Monsieur, Poiret knows something of you. Our friend, Captain Haven, told me your history; I asked him for it when I saw you at his tournament. You are one of those about whom one does ask questions, and Poiret, he knows that you are not a romantic boy, but who can say that he is safe from the appeal of beauty? Poiret, he has seen women, Monsieur, for whose purity of soul he would have stood security, condemned for complicity in brutal crimes on evidence that could not be repudiated; and he has known women turn foul-mouthed, and hideous to look at, the moment after their just sentence had been pronounced.”

  “No doubt, Sir,” said Reece-Jones, with perfect quietude. “But Rosette Dereham is not one of those women.”

  “I do not say that she is,” said Poiret. “I read the newspapers. The affair is dark, Monsieur, I warn you.”

  “How dark?” asked Baronet Jack Reece-Jones.

  “I will tell you,” said Poiret, pulling his chair still closer to the young man. “Understand this in the first place. There was an accomplice within the villa. Someone let the murderers in. There is no sign of an entrance being forced; no lock was picked, there is no mark of a thumb on any panel, no sign of a bolt being forced. There was an accomplice within the house. We start from there.”

  Reece-Jones nodded his head. Haven pushed his chair closer towards the others. But Poiret was not interested in Haven.

  “Well, then, let us see who there are in Lady Charingbridge’s household. The list, it is not a long one. It was the habit of Lady Charingbridge to take her luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was all that she required to get ready her ‘petit dejeuner’ in the morning and her ‘liqueur’ at night. Let us take the members of the household one by one. There is first the driver, Thomas Emerson.”

  “Ah!” said Haven. Reece-Jones did not move. He sat still as a stone, with a face deadly white and eyes burning on Poiret’s face.

  “But wait,” said Poiret, holding up a warning hand to Haven. “Emerson was in Exeter, where his parents live. Poiret, he has read the newspapers thoroughly. The driver, he travelled to Exeter by the two o’clock train yesterday. He was with them in the afternoon. He went with them to a cafe in the evening. A telephone message was sent to the police in that town, and Emerson, he was found in bed. It is not impossible that Emerson, he was involved in the crime. That we shall see. But it is quite clear that it was not he who opened the house to the murderers, because he was in Exeter in the evening, and the murder, it was already discovered here by midnight.

  “Then besides the driver there was the charwoman, a woman of Torquay, who came each morning at seven and left in the evening at seven or eight. Sometimes she would stay later if the maid was alone in the house, because the maid, she is nervous. But she left last night before nine—there is evidence of that—and the murder did not take place until afterwards. That is also a fact. We can leave the charwoman, who for the rest has the best of characters, out of our calculations. Then there remain the maid, Harriette Carter, and”—he shrugged his shoulders—”Mademoiselle Rosette.”

  Poiret took an engraved, golden lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette.

  “Let us take first the maid, Harriette Carter. Thirty-six years old, the daughter of a Cornwall farmer—they are good people, the Cornwall peasants, Monsieur—avaricious, no doubt, but on the whole honest and most respectable. We know something of Harriette Carter, Monsieur. See!” and he took up a newspaper from the table. The paper was folded neatly lengthwise. “Harriette Carter has served Lady Charingbridge for seven years. She has been a confidential friend rather than the maid. And remember this, Monsieur Reece-Jones! During those seven years how many opportunities has she had of committing the crime of last night? She was found chloroformed and bound. There is no doubt that she was chloroformed. On that point the doctor, he is certain. Besides those people, there is Mademoiselle Rosette. Of her, Monsieur, nothing is known. She comes suddenly to Torquay as the companion of Lady Charingbridge—a young and pretty woman. How did she become the companion of Lady Charingbridge?”

  Captain Haven nodded. He thought that was from the beginning the most i
nteresting problem of the case.

  “I don’t know,” answered Reece-Jones, with some hesitation, and it seemed immediately that he was ashamed of his hesitation. His voice gathered strength, and in a low but clear tone, he added: “But I say this. You’ve told me, Mister Poiret, of women who looked innocent and were guilty. But you also know of women, who can live their lives untainted and unspoiled by deprivation and the low-lives surrounding them.”

  Poiret listened, but he neither agreed nor denied. He looked back at the newspaper.

  “Now, Lady Charingbridge,” he said. “Let us not go back beyond her marriage twenty-one years ago to a wealthy manufacturer, whom she had met in London. After many years of hoping and praying she gave birth to a daughter, who was sickly all her life and sadly died at the young age of nine. Lady Charingbridge was inconsolable and spent three years under the care of doctors in Vienna, famous for their examination of the psychology. During her time there Lady Charingbridge found solace in the talking to the dead. Her husband, a man of Leeds did not approve. Seven years ago Monsieur Charingbridge, he died, leaving her a very rich widow.

  “Bon! Take Lady Charingbridge as we find her—rich, ostentatious, and foolishly superstitious. For seven years Harriette Carter stands beside her. Suddenly there is added to her—your young friend, and she is robbed and murdered.”

  Reece-Jones shut his eyes in a spasm of pain and lost the color in his face.

  “Suppose that Rosette was one of the victims?” trying hard not to lose control and scream.

  Poiret glanced at him with a look of commiseration.

  “That perhaps we shall see,” he said. “But an accomplice, he or she may have only agreed to a robbery. An accomplice may only have discovered too late that murder would be added to the theft.”

  Meanwhile Haven’s theory of what happened stood out clearly now before his eyes. He was surprised by hearing Reece-Jones say, in a firm voice to Poiret: “Captain Haven has something to add to what you’ve said.”

  “I!” exclaimed Haven.

  “Yes. I have nothing to hide. You saw Miss Dereham on the evening before the murder.”

  Haven stared at him. It seemed to him that Baronet Jack Reece-Jones had gone out of his mind. Here he was asked to corroborate the suspicions of the police by the facts he witnessed himself—damning and incontrovertible facts.

  “On the night before the murder,” continued Reece-Jones quietly, “Miss Rosette lost money at the baccarat-table. Haven saw her in the garden behind the room, and she was hysterical. Later on that same night he saw her again with me, and he heard what she said. I asked her to come to the room on the next evening—yesterday, the night of the crime—and she said, ‘No, we have other plans for tomorrow.’“

  Poiret sprang up from his chair.

  “And you tell me these two things!” he cried.

  “Yes,” said Reece-Jones. “You were kind enough to say to me I was not a romantic boy. I am not. I can face facts.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Poiret stared at his companion for a few moments.

  “You have won, Monsieur,” he said. “I will take up this case. But,” and his face grew serious and he brought his fist down on the table with a bang, “I shall follow it to the end now, be the consequences bitter as the noose of the hangman to you.”

  “That is what I wish, Monsieur,” said Reece-Jones.

  Then, with a remarkable air of consideration, Poiret bowed.

  “D’accord. On y va! To the Villa Argyle.”

  Haven saw a man approach them. Inspector Watkins was a powerfully built man, with a red face and big, sad hound dog eyes. He came into the restaurant with an air of self-confidence.

  “I say what are you doing here, Watkins? Are you here for the murder?” asked Haven.

  “Captain Haven and Mister Poiret, I shouldn’t be surprised. No, I was sent to the South Coast last month to instruct some of the local police departments in the newest investigative techniques.”

  “Mon ami!” said Poiret, with a smile shaking his hand. “You are in the newspapers all the time in London. Inspector Watkins solves another case. Maybe Poiret, he is to have the honour of seeing your great intellect at work in this case?”

  Inspector Watkins laughed awkwardly.

  “It wasn’t me who called myself intelligent,” he said in a thick Cockney accent. “Though I would like to be, for the good God knows Mrs. Watkins reminds me daily I don’t look it.”

  Poiret clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Then congratulate yourself, mon ami! It is a great advantage to be intelligent and not to look it. Come!”

  The four men descended the stairs, and as they walked towards the villa Inspector Watkins told them, concisely and clearly, what the local police inspector, a very capable man named Inspector Jeffrey Edgar had witnessed that night.

  “He passed the gate of Villa Argyle around half-past nine on his way to inspect the troops. Probably making sure the policemen made a good impression on the big city copper.” he said cynically. “The gate was closed then. Above the wall and bushes of the garden he saw a light in the room on the first floor which faces the road. More than an hour afterwards he came back, and as he walked past the villa he noticed that there was now no light in the room on the first floor, but that the gate was open and no one was around. He thought this suspicious and went into the garden and pulling the gate, let it swing and latch closed. But it occurred to him as he did this that there might be visitors at the villa who had not yet left, and for whom the gate had been left open. He followed the drive which winds around the house to the front door. The front door is not on the side of the villa which faces the road, but at the back. When he came to the open space where the cars turn, he saw that the house was in complete darkness. The wooden latticed doors in front of the French windows on the ground floor were closed. He tried one and found the locks secure. The other windows were also closed. No light to be seen anywhere. Seeing noting out of order, he left the garden, closing the gate behind him. He heard the church clock strike the hour a few minutes afterwards. It was eleven o’clock. He came round a third time an hour after, and to his surprise he found the gate once more open. He had left it closed and the house shut up and dark. Now it stood open again! He looked up to the windows and saw that in a room on the second floor, close beneath the roof, a light was burning. That room had been dark an hour before. This light and the gate opened and reopened aroused his suspicions. He went again into the garden, but this time with greater caution as he’s been trained to do. He noticed immediately that the shutters of one of the French windows were open. Now, Inspector Edgar is one of my more intelligent pupils and he knew immediately that something terrible had happened.”

  “Oui, oui. Bien sur,” said Poiret. “Go on, mon ami.”

  “The interior of the room was dark,” Inspector Watkins resumed. “He turned his flashlight on and a good thing he did, because he saw footprints in the grass in front of the open window. Making sure not to disturb the footprints in the grass he moved to the open window. He pointed his flashlight into the room, saw nothing and walked inside, again making sure his footsteps did not disturb any evidence on the floor. The light of his flashlight showed him a chair overturned on the floor and to his right a woman lying on the floor. It was Lady Charingbridge.”

  He stopped for a moment. Poiret nodded. Haven looked at him with unabated attention. The Baronet looked sick.

  “She was dressed. There was a little mud on her shoes, as though she had walked after the rain had stopped. Mister Poiret will remember that two heavy rains fell last evening between six and eight.”

  “Yes,” said Poiret listening intently as though his world class intellect, was copying the information and organising it in the correct order of importance.

  “She was dead. A piece of rope was tied around her neck.”

  “I say. What happened then?” asked Haven. “Were the murderers still in the house?”

  “Well he slowly crept upstairs without makin
g any noise, trying the doors as he passed them. It’s a big house. There were many doors. And behind any door there could be a murderer hell bent on not getting into the arms of a policeman. He saw nobody until he reached the room under the roof where the light was burning; there he found Harriette Carter, the maid, snoring in bed. Inspector Edgar went to the telephone which was in the hall and telephoned the police.”

  The four men turned a bend in the road. A few steps away a group of local busybodies stood before the gate leading to Villa Argyle. A policeman guarding the gate saluted.

  “Here we are at the villa,” said Inspector Watkins.

  They all looked up and saw a young man looking from a window at the corner on the first floor.

  “That’s Inspector Edgar,” said Inspector Watkins. “And that’s the window of that room in which the bright light was burning at half-past nine on his first round.”

  They walked through the gate and into the garden of the villa. The drive curved between trees and high bushes towards the back of the house. They saw Inspector Edgar come out of the house and walk towards them.

  “You’re coming then, to help us, Mister Poiret!” he cried excitedly, extending his hand. “You will find no jealousy here. As I told Inspector Watkins, we’re all eager to learn here. All we wish for is that the murderers get caught. What a crime! And so young a woman to be involved in it!”

  “So you have already made up your mind on that point!” said Poiret sharply, but Haven heard a certain friendliness for the young policeman shine through.

  The Inspector shrugged his shoulders.

  “Examine the villa and talk to the witnesses yourself Mister Poiret. Any other explanation is impossible,” he said; and turning, he waved his hand towards the house. “You’ll find that nothing at the villa has been disturbed. I gave instructions that all should be left as we found it.”

  Poiret bowed in reply.

  “But who are these gentlemen?” asked the inspector, waking, it seemed, now for the first time to the presence of Baronet Jack Reece-Jones and Captain Harry Haven.

  “They are both friends of mine,” replied Poiret. “If you do not object, their assistance may be useful. Mr. Reece-Jones, for instance, was, how do you say, acquainted with Mademoiselle Rosette.”