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‘By the way, Mr Kephim,’ said the inspector, as they walked slowly across the roof, ‘November is rather an off month for the river.’
Kephim looked at him resentfully. ‘I did not say we went boating. I meant up the Thames valley in my car. You can check that, I think.’
But Devenish seemed suddenly to have forgotten the point. He looked down at the roof, and raised his eyebrows.
‘Speaking as a layman, those look to me remarkable like the tracks of an aeroplane, which took off from a rather clayey field,’ he said.
Kephim stared at the tracks indicated. ‘That is odd. We have, as you know, had wonderfully dry weather for the past fortnight.’
Devenish went down on his knees, and carefully collected some of the dry clay with the blade of his pen-knife. When he had collected enough he put it in a little box he took from his pocket.
‘It will be interesting to know when that was deposited here,’ he said. ‘I think we shall go down to the workroom again.’
They descended, locked the door behind them this time, for the key was still in the lock, and visited the other room where were the stores of metal and spare aeroplane parts.
‘Ah, here we are,’ said Devenish, going to a large table in a corner, and pointing to two rubber-tyred wheels that lay there, ‘I take it that these belong to a gyrocopter, and we shall be able later to compare their tracks with those above. I shall have the whole of Mr Mander’s part of the flat locked up. No one must enter until we have given permission.’
‘I shall see to it,’ said Kephim. ‘We shall probably pay off his servants, later on, and close the flat.’
Devenish led the way out, locked the door of those two rooms, and put the keys in his pockets. He went back to the drawing-room, and now Kephim was beginning to show signs of restlessness.
‘Well, sir, I suppose, since you are here, you can tell me what your movements were from eight last night until you arrived this morning in your office?’ said the inspector.
Kephim sat down gloomily. ‘That’s an awkward question to answer,’ he said abruptly.
‘I am afraid I must ask it, sir,’ said Devenish calmly.
Kephim bit his lip. ‘I left Miss Tumour, and had supper at my flat in Baker Street—I have dinner in middle day on Sundays. I read a book until ten, and then sat and smoked, and tried to work out a crossword puzzle till eleven.’
‘And after that, sir?’
‘Well, that is the annoying part. I didn’t feel sleepy, so I went out at about a quarter-past eleven, and walked up to Regent’s Park. Mr Mander was a great man for novelties, and he had asked me to try to think of a novel advertising campaign. I always find my brain works best in the open air. At any rate, I did not get back till about two. I let myself in, and went to bed. My trouble is that I am afraid I did not see anyone who could identify me. I suppose that is what I should have had?’
‘It would seem better,’ Devenish replied mildly, ‘but think again, sir. Surely there was a policeman? They are more or less trained observers, and notice people at night. Or there might be lovers somewhere about. Take your time, sir.’
‘I saw various people, but no policeman,’ said Kephim, ‘but I did not see anyone look at me, and I was not always under a lamp.’
‘A policeman in the shadows may have seen you, sir. They do sometimes see without being seen. I’ll make inquiries, if you give me a sketch of your route.’
Kephim repeated from memory what he thought had been his route. He looked weary and dejected now, and Devenish was about to dismiss him, when someone rang the bell of the flat, and on opening it they saw the detective-sergeant who had accompanied Devenish to the Stores.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but something rather important has been discovered,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the goods lifts. Seems to have traces of the murder.’
Kephim started. The inspector nodded. ‘We can’t apparently get to it from this floor, and I don’t want to examine it below. Have it sent up to the floor below this. Now Mr Kephim, how do we get to the floor below?’
‘We take this lift, inspector. One floor down, we can get along a passage to the goods-lift landing.’
They got into the lift together. The sergeant let them out at the next stop, and then descended in the lift to carry out his instructions.
The inspector was in plain-clothes, and no one took any particular notice of him as he walked at the manager’s side.
As they turned into the corridor, running parallel with the back of the building, and clear of the selling departments, Devenish turned to his companion.
‘I am sorry to speak of it again, sir, but could you tell me how Miss Tumour was dressed when she left you yesterday evening?’
Kephim was very pale, and began to tremble again, but he found voice to reply.
‘As—as we saw her just now, inspector.’
Devenish nodded. He did not say what both of them thought; that Effie Tumour might have gone almost straight from her flat to the flat above them—just waited, perhaps, for her lover to go out of sight!
CHAPTER III (#u474989ed-3b48-5e19-a6a2-7d8124bf7696)
AS they approached the lift, Devenish suddenly thought that it was sheer cruelty to take his companion with him any farther.
‘You have had a horrible morning, sir,’ he said to him, noticing how he now dragged his feet. ‘If I were you, I would go out and get some air; and have something to pull you together.’
He had already given instructions to the policemen on the various doors to follow any member of the staff who had been allowed to leave the premises, and felt quite safe in letting the manager go. Kephim thanked him weakly, and left. The detective advanced to where two subordinates stood before an open lift, in a recess at the back of the building.
One was his sergeant, who had brought it up to this floor, and he made way for Devenish, and pointed silently to a tiny spot of dry blood on the floor of the lift itself. The other man handed him a long and slender knife, the handle carefully wrapped in tissue paper, with the information that he had found it lying in the corner by the bloodstain.
Devenish examined the knife most carefully, then returned it. ‘Pack it with the other exhibits, Corbett,’ he said. ‘Where was this lift when you first saw it?’
‘It was down in the basement, sir.’
‘But it can be brought automatically to any floor, can’t it?—It can? Is it a very noiseless lift, or not?—Wonderfully quiet, eh?—Right. It is hard to say whether anyone was brought down in this, or simply came up in it.—Sergeant, I want to see the night watchman who patrols this section of the store. Send him here.’
The sergeant having gone off on this errand, Devenish knelt carefully on the floor inside, and fixed the exact position and dimensions of the blood-spot.
‘It seems to me a useful bit of evidence,’ he remarked, as he got up again, ‘but here is the watchman. Carry on! I am going to question him, but farther along the corridor.’
‘This is Mann, the night watchman, sir,’ said the sergeant.
Devenish nodded to the respectably dressed man of forty who had come up, noted that he looked like an ex-soldier, and motioned him to move a yard down the corridor.
‘Now, sergeant, I have a few jobs for you,’ he said. ‘First you must see the assistant-manager, and he must telephone to a director, if needs be, to have the Store closed. We can’t carry on with people trampling over the place; and if it remains open any longer, we shall have a drive of pressmen harrying us.’
‘But what of the assistants, sir?’ asked the sergeant.
‘My dear fellow, we can’t interrogate thirteen hundred odd men and women today. It doesn’t look like a job that one of them would do either. We must keep those in executive positions for the moment, but get the rest away, and the place closed.’
‘I’ll see to it, sir. Anything else?’
‘You must visit Mr Kephim’s flat in Baker Street, and Miss Tumour’s—I’ll give you both addresses. Find out all you can, and particularly when Miss Tumour left home last night. Also discover at what hour Mr Kephim went out and returned.’
‘Very well, sir.’
When the sergeant had gone, Devenish walked over to the waiting witness. ‘What exactly is your usual round when you patrol this section of the stores at night, Mann?’ he asked, while the ex-soldier kept a steady eye on his face.
‘I come on my shift at ten, sir,’ was the reply. ‘I walk round once, and see that it is all O.K. I have a box to sit in between rounds. They’re every hour, sir.’
‘How long does it take you to get round?’
‘Fifteen minutes. That is as I do it now, sir. But then I have only been here two months, and never seen anything suspicious.’
‘Then I may assume that you set out on your rounds at a quarter-past ten, a quarter-past eleven, a quarter-past—’
‘No, sir, it is an hour after finishing each round. I start the second round at a quarter-past eleven, and have it done by half-past eleven. I set out on the third at half-past twelve, and so on, sir.’
‘You are an ex-soldier, Mann—what branch?’
‘Finished as a sergeant, sir. I was an old regular, discharged unfit 1924.’
‘A man of method apparently, anyway,’ said Devenish. ‘Now, did you see or hear anything suspicious last night in the Store?’
He took out his note-book as he spoke.
‘Nothing at all, sir.’
‘No noise like a lift going up or down, no sound that might suggest an aeroplane engine?’
‘I didn’t hear any lift, sir, but then they are uncommon quiet. I did hear a faint sound like an engine up above, but I often hear that weekends, so I don’t count it suspicious.’
‘The dynamos in the basement were running? Why don’t these people take current from the mains?’
‘I don’t know anything about it, sir. I do know Mr Mander used to tinker with machines up above. I thought he was at it again last night; though it didn’t last long.’
Devenish nodded. ‘Let me see where this box of yours is, Mann,’ he said, and called softly to the detective at work in the lift, ‘I say, Corbett, run that lift up and down a bit for the next three minutes, will you, while I am away.’
Receiving an assent from his subordinate, he accompanied the watchman along the corridor, and down another at right angles, which ended in a sort of cabinet. This cabinet contained a seat, a switchboard and telephone, and the bell of a burglar-alarm. Devenish seated himself in the chair, and looked down the corridor. ‘You don’t see much of the Store from here,’ he remarked thoughtfully; ‘only a corner of it.’
‘So I’m not seen, either,’ replied his companion. ‘If I put on my torch, I might frighten any thieves, and if I keep the place dark I can’t see. But, dark or light, I can hear better than anyone else.’
Devenish smiled dryly. ‘You must have very acute hearing indeed, if you can hear slight sounds in a place as big as this, with partitions to cut sounds off or blur them.’
‘It isn’t that my ears are specially good, but this ear here, sir,’ said the man, with a quiet smile, and pointed to a tiny horn, like a gramophone-horn, at the level of his head, which projected slightly from the wall of the cabinet. ‘Mr Mander was great for the latest dodges. I just switch on this microphone here, and every sound comes my way. More than that, sir. There’s a kind of selective attachment to it, and it tells me from what quarter the sound comes, so I can take action.’
‘Royal Engineer?’ asked the detective gently.
‘Signals, sir. But you see what I mean.’
‘Turn on the switch now.’
Mann obeyed, then looked puzzled. The detective did not look so puzzled, but faintly startled.
‘Someone’s been monkeying with your buzz-saw,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t hear any of the noises magnified now.’
Mann had obviously some mechanical knowledge. He examined the horn and the switch, then looked at the electrical connections, and swore.
‘Cut a lead here, sir,’ he said.
Devenish took out his magnifier, and examined the thing closely, then he dusted the panelling in the region of the lead, and scanned it for finger-prints. None showed. Someone had interfered with the microphone, but he had left no traces while doing it.’
‘He must have been here while you went on one of your rounds. Did you not notice that there were no sounds coming through as loud as you would expect to hear them?’
‘I didn’t, sir, but you know how it is. I didn’t suspect anyone was here, and you aren’t so sharp after nothing has happened for two months on end.’
‘An unfortunate but truly human failing,’ agreed Devenish, ‘but I must admit to defects myself. For example, I have not been listening for the sound of the lift going up and down. I must get my man to keep it working.’
He went away, to return again in a minute, and raise a hand to command silence. It may have been the noises from the Store, but he could hear nothing of the moving of the lift, and realised that the experiment could not be made until the place was empty and perfectly quiet.
Explaining this to the watchman, he went off, and found himself in a couple of minutes in the shop window with the blind down, talking to his superintendent, who had just arrived from the Yard, and the surgeon, who sat smoking a cigarette, and watching the last efforts of the lower ranks, as they measured and surveyed and plotted the big space. When he had finished explaining what he had done, Devenish was rewarded by a nod of approval from the superintendent.
‘Any sign of the bullet yet, sir?’ he asked.
‘None at all,’ said the big man stolidly. ‘High-velocity bullet, Dr Grindley thinks.’
‘Knows,’ said the surgeon, puffing. ‘I saw enough of them during the war. Steel-jacketed, I should say.’
‘Not that Mauser?’ asked Devenish gently.
‘I ought to have been a gunner,’ said the surgeon, smiling. ‘I know all about ’em—all kinds. That Mauser is new, been fired once. But I think your experts will agree that it was fired with blank. I won’t swear, but that is my opinion.’
‘Possible,’ murmured Devenish. ‘A man who would take the trouble to set up his victims as specimens in the window here wouldn’t leave the gun on view.’
‘Was the shot fired at close quarters?’ said the superintendent.
‘I should say not. Not very close anyway.’
‘How long should you say he had been dead?’
The surgeon reflected. ‘It isn’t so easy to answer that as some people imagine. I should say roughly between twelve to fourteen hours, but I may be sadly out.’
‘And the young woman?’
‘Less, I should say, but I can’t tell you how much less. In neither case does the bleeding seem to have been extensive—a sporting bullet with a more or less soft nose would have been different. The other wound was made by a weapon that did not—’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Devenish. ‘If she was killed after him—’
‘Then he didn’t do it,’ said the surgeon. ‘I admit that! I don’t think either of them did it to each other!’
Devenish smiled faintly. ‘Well, you’ll have the P.M., and then we shall know more. I thought, superintendent, of going to see the man in charge of the aeroplane department. I see you have cleared most of the people out of the Store, but the executives will be here.’
‘I asked them to stay in Mr Mander’s private office,’ said the other. ‘I am going to have a talk to them. But if you care to see one alone—’
‘If he would come to me in his department above, sir,’ said the inspector, ‘I will go there now.’
The superintendent nodded. ‘Very well. I’ll send him.’
