While young Mr. Harte had been pursuing his matrimonial plans, and while various interested persons wondered uneasily why the Chief Inspector had not again descended upon them, Hemingway had not been idle. Upon Inspector Grant's return from his singularly barren visit to Mr. Seaton-Carew's Bank, both men had visited Mr. Godfrey Poulton's mansion in Belgrave Square. Admitted by a stately butler, who regarded them with patent distaste, they were ushered into a morning-room at the back of the house a little before lunch-time, and left to kick their heels there while the butler went to ascertain his mistress's pleasure. When he reappeared, he gave Hemingway the impression of one suffering from an acute attack of nausea. "Her ladyship will receive you," he said, overcoming his feelings sufficiently to enable him to utter these degrading words. "Be so good as to follow me, if you please!"
"Will you stomach the like of this?" muttered the Inspector, touched on the raw.
"That's all right, Sandy," said Hemingway consolingly. "You'll get used to it! It's not a bit of good thinking you can muscle into the best houses: they don't entertain the police. You come quietly, or we shall have this poor fellow bursting a blood-vessel!"
The butler's bosom swelled, but his countenance remained wooden. "This way, if you please, gentlemen!" he said.
He led them majestically up a broad stairway to the drawing-room on the first floor, and paused outside it to demand their names. He appeared to think poorly of them, but declared them meticulously: "Chief Inspector Hemingway and Inspector Grant, my lady!"
The two detectives passed into the room, and the door was closed behind them.
"Good-morning," said Lady Nest, from a chair by the fire. "Won't you sit down?"
The room smelled of Egyptian cigarettes and hothouse roses, bowls of which stood on several tables and chests. It was furnished with a mixture of careless good taste and evanescent vulgarity. Nailed to the wall above a superb example of XVIIth century cabinet-making was the coloured plaster-head of a slant-eyed female, obviously the product of a disordered imagination; cheek by jowl with a charming piece of Wedgwood stood a bowl of ornate barbola-work, filled with potpourri; a portrait resembling nothing so much as the jumbled pieces of a jig-saw puzzle hung beside a Girtin water-colour; and enormous photographs of persons seen through a fog stood in ranks upon several spindlelegged tables. While his chief trod across the Aubusson carpet, with its design of sprawling flowers, to the fireplace, Inspector Grant retired discreetly to a chair beside one of these tables, and surveyed with dispassionate interest the portraits standing upon it. One of them, depicting the head of a handsome man, whose excellent teeth were displayed in a flashing smile, caught and held his attention. It bore little resemblance to the distorted features the Inspector had seen in Mrs. Haddington's boudoir, but it was inscribed across one corner, in dashing characters: "Ever yours, Dan Seaton-Carew."
Hemingway, meanwhile, had seated himself opposite Lady Nest, uttering a conventional apology for troubling her.
"Oh, not at all! I don't mind!" said Lady Nest. "It's about poor Dan Seaton-Carew, isn't it? Do you think I can help you? I will, if I can, but I don't quite see how."
"We have to check up, you see, Lady Nest," Hemingway explained. "I understand that you knew Mr. Seaton-Carew very well?"
She brushed some cigarette-ash from the skirt of her exquisitely plain black frock; her thin, beautiful hands had a brittle appearance, and seemed always to be fluttering. It occurred to Hemingway that he had seldom met a more restless woman. She made him think of a butterfly, at the lag end of the season, its wings a little tattered, but still flitting aimlessly here and there. "Oh, yes! Quite well!" she said.
"Perhaps you can tell me something about him?" Hemingway suggested. "What, for instance, was his profession, or was he in business?"
She looked startled. "Oh! Oh, I don't think so! I mean, I really have no idea! I suppose he was some kind of a financier. It didn't interest me: I never asked him."
"How long had you known him, Lady Nest?"
"I don't know - some time now. I never remember dates. I'm sorry!"
"Would it be a matter of months, my lady, or years?"
She gave her light laugh. "How persistent you are! Will anything I say be taken down and used in evidence? I shall be had up for perjury, or something dreadful. They used to say of me that I should end on the gallows, you know. Such a long time ago! You wouldn't think it - at least, I hope you wouldn't! - but I shall never see fifty again. So disheartening! The only thing is to make no secret of it. Terribly ageing to pretend to be younger than one really is!"
The Chief Inspector had called to interview Lady Nest more as a matter of routine than with any very real expectation of learning anything from her of value; but this speech made him suddenly alert. Not only was it artificial, but he did not think it was customary for ladies in her position to talk in that strain to police officers. She had cast the butt of her cigarette into the fire, and was already fitting another into a little jewelled holder. She had twice shifted the cushions behind her back and three times crossed and uncrossed her nylon-covered legs; her face twitched from time to time; and never were her hands still: one incessantly flicked ash from her cigarette; the other either pressed the feathery curls above her ears, or fidgeted with the row of pearls round her neck, or pleated a fold of her dress.
"Well, as a matter of fact I knew you must be over fifty, my lady, because I used to look at your photos in all the shiny papers," said Hemingway brazenly.
"No, did you? How sweet! What fun they were, those days! I sat for somebody's face-cream, once, which maddened all my family, poor darlings! They paid me the earth for it, but of course I wouldn't really have put the stuff on my feet!"
"I'm sure every lady bought the cream," said Hemingway. "Did you say it was years since you first met Mr. Seaton-Carew, my lady?"
"No, I didn't say anything, and well you know it! Must I be accurate? I don't think I can. I never have been: accurate people are such bores, and say, let me see, was it Wednesday, or Tuesday? just as though it mattered! Years. Oh dear, how many? I don't know! Three, perhaps. Or even longer. Not a bosom friend of mine, of course: devastatingly attractive, but just the teeniest bit off-white!"
"Were you acquainted with any of his family?"
"Good heavens, no! Had he any family? I expect they are quite impossible: he never spoke of any relations. Not to me, at any rate. Why don't you ask Mrs. Haddington? She knew him so much better than I did!"
"Yes, I understand they were very old friends?"
"Oh, rather more than that, I think! Don't look so shocked! I told you he was very attractive, but not, of course, a marrying man. I don't blame Lilias at all: I daresay I should have done the same in her shoes. But that's the worst of that kind of an alliance. Enchanting while it lasts, but it doesn't generally survive the first wrinkle. And then to have a raving beauty for a daughter! I'm so thankful I never had any children: I should never have survived losing a lover to my daughter. No woman could! It would make one ridiculous. I do so much admire Lilias Haddington for managing to ignore the whole thing in that wonderfully cool way. Marvellous, isn't she? She never turns a hair!"
"She's a great friend of yours, isn't she?" said Hemingway.
"Oh - ! Such an exaggerated term to use! One knows her socially, just as one knows so many people!"
"You presented Miss Haddington last year, I think. At least, that's what I seem to remember being told."
"Yes. Yes, I rather took them up. Such a pretty girl, Cynthia Haddington!"
"Well, if you don't mind my saying so, Lady Nest, they must both of them feel they owe you a debt! Everyone knows that what you say goes in High Society."
She smiled uncertainly, and put up a hand as though to shade her eyes from the light. "How kind of you! I think someone must have asked me to call on Mrs. Haddington: it's always happening. So difficult to refuse! Then one drifts into a certain degree of intimacy, really without knowing it!"
Hemingway's eyes travelled to Inspector Grant's face. The Inspector rose, and with a murmured excuse, walked out of the room. Following the intuition which he so often told his exasperated fellows never failed him, Hemingway said: "We don't always take down what is said, and use it as evidence, my lady: particularly when we're working on a case like this, which might turn out to be a bit delicate. Now, I don't want to start something which, properly speaking, is none of my business; and I don't at all want to go asking Mr. Poulton a whole lot of questions which might stir up trouble."
"My husband! What's it got to do with him?" she said sharply. "What questions? Is it so extraordinary that I should be friendly with Lilias Haddington?"
"Well, yes, my lady, I think it is!" replied Hemingway frankly. "I thought so at the outset. I don't move in High Society myself, but in my job one gets to learn a few what-you-might-call elementary facts. Why did you introduce Mrs. Haddington to your friends, and what was the tie-up between you, and her, and Seaton-Carew?"
She sat up jerkily from the sofa, and moved away to the window. "Absurd!"
"Was it Mrs. Haddington who introduced Seaton-Carew to you, my lady?"
"No!"
"Other way around?" suggested Hemingway.
She put up a hand to her brow, pressing it. "No. How can this help you? Do you mean to ask my husband these - foolish questions?"
"Not if I can help it. If ever there's any suspicion of blackmail, we're as discreet as we know how to be."
She stared at him over her shoulder. "You're very acute! Who told you this?"
"No one told me."
"What makes you think - ?"
"Mrs. Haddington isn't your sort, my lady. Nor, from what I can make out, was Seaton-Carew."
She said quickly: "Put that out of your mind! There was never any question of such a thing between Seaton-Carew and me! Just an acquaintance! A man I asked to my parties!"
"And he was pretty closely tied-up with Mrs. Haddington?"
"That had nothing to do with it! I met him in the South of France - before I knew of her existence!"
"I see. And you met Mrs. Haddington - ?"
Her thin chest heaved; she said breathlessly: "I need not account to Scotland Yard for my friends, I suppose!"
"No," replied Hemingway. "You needn't, but it might be a good thing if you did, my lady. Of course, I don't know, but it did occur to me that you might - in a manner of speaking - have been forced to take Mrs. Haddington up. Just because you didn't want any truck with Scotland Yard." He smiled. "I often get funny ideas into my head," he offered. "You'd be surprised the number of times ladies of position go and do something indiscreet, and then don't like to say anything about it to the police. Some of them would rather be bled white, in fact. Silly, but there it is!"
She burst out laughing. "Me? No one has ever bled me for a penny, Chief Inspector!"
"You do sometimes come across blackmailers that want something other than money," said Hemingway thoughtfully. "Not often, of course, but I have heard of it."
"You are quite, quite mistaken!" she said, gripping the back of a chair with both hands.
"Well, if that's so, I won't trouble you any longer, my lady," he said, getting up.
"I'm glad to hear it! What - what do you mean to do now?"
"Pursue my investigations," responded Hemingway promptly.
Her face twitched. "You'd better not hint at these really rather insulting ideas of yours to my husband," she said. "He is old-fashioned in his outlook, and I fear he might resent it - quite violently! That's just a friendly warning!"
"I'm very grateful, my lady."
"You're supposed to be enquiring into a case of murder," she pointed out, still gripping the chairback. "Neither I nor my husband had anything to do with that - indeed, how should we? I suggest you turn your attention to another household. Naturally, I don't wish to say anything against Lilias Haddington, but she is the person most closely linked with Seaton-Carew, not I! I ought perhaps to mention that my husband was barely acquainted with him."
"Yes," said Hemingway, "so he told me. Still, it was quite right of you to tell me, my lady, if you thought perhaps he'd forgotten to."
He then bade her a civil good-morning, to which she made no answer, and withdrew.
He found Inspector Grant in the hall, gravely studying a large oil painting. At a little distance, the butler stood, eyeing him austerely.
"Wester Ross," said the Inspector. "But forbye I know where it was done, it is not good. I would not hang it in my house."
"Well, that's a good job!" returned Hemingway. "You wouldn't have a chance of pinching it, not with Faithful Fido about, you wouldn't. Come on!"
Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did the butler betray that this shaft had gone home. He trod majestically to the door, and opened it, and stood impassively by it until the two detectives had passed out of the house. His feelings found expression only in the celerity with which he closed the door behind them.
"Almost shut my heel in it," remarked Hemingway. "Now then, my lad, what did you make of that little outfit?"
"I should not have known what to make of that lady, had I not seen what I did," replied the Inspector. "I am thinking now that we have stepped into a deal of wickedness, perhaps."
"If by that you mean that she looked suspiciously like a drug-addict, I agree with you," retorted Hemingway. "I don't know that it helps us much, though."
"When I was sitting in that room," said Grant, "I cast my eyes over the photographs on the table beside me. There was one with Dan Seaton-Carew signed on it. I recognised it: I had seen that face before."
"Well, of course you had!" said Hemingway, irritated. "You saw it last night!"
"When I saw it last night, I did not recognise it," said Grant. He added apologetically: "It would be some years before the War that I met him, and it was not Seaton-Carew he called himself, but Carew alone. And a man that has been strangled -"
"Spill it, Sandy, spill it!" Hemingway adjured him. "What was he? An old lag?"
"He was not. There was not a thing you could charge him with. I was no more than just made a Sergeant, and set to work with Superintendent Darliston. You will mind that he was given -"
"One of these days you'll drive me nuts!" said Hemingway. "Of course I know! Dangerous Drugs! Was that bird under suspicion?"
"I am telling you: if he was concerned in that droch business, we could not discover it. There was not enough evidence against him to warrant pulling him in for interrogation. He had a sgeul that might have been true. Since then I have never heard tell of him. Indeed, I had forgotten the man until I saw the picture of him in that house."
Hemingway walked on beside him in silence for some fifty yards. "Growing, isn't it?" he said at last. "Ever add two and two together and get five for the answer? No, you wouldn't, because you've got no imagination, but it's what I can see myself doing. All the same, taking your bit of dirt with what I gathered from Lady Nest's way of carrying on, I think this'll bear looking into. When I gave you the Indian sign to clear out, I was backing a hunch. I thought there was a chance Lady Nest might talk, if there was no one but me to listen. She didn't - at least, not as much as I'd have liked; but the hunch was all right. Something Terrible Timothy said put me on to it: I believe she pushed the Haddingtons into society because Mrs. Haddington had a screw on her. Plenty of indiscretions in the Lady Nest's past, I shouldn't wonder. What you tell me makes me ask myself if that mightn't have been it. If Mrs. Haddington knew she was getting drugs from Seaton-Carew - ?"
"Och, mo thruaighe! You never asked that lady if she had had the black put on her?" Grant exclaimed.
"Well, seeing she'd been so open and friendly, I thought I'd take a chance on it," replied Hemingway coolly. "If you're thinking she'll lodge a complaint, you're wrong. She's scared white - particularly of her husband's getting to know anything about it."
The Inspector thought it over for a moment. "If that one knew that his wife was getting drugs - ach, now you have me making two and two five!"
"We won't try to add it up yet. This is a job for Cathercott and his merry men: he can go over Seaton-Carew's flat. Sometimes I think those chaps can smell the stuff."
"If I had recognised the man when I saw him dead, we could have had an officer posted to keep an eye on the flat!"
"Don't take on about it! If you're thinking that that curly-headed mistake we saw at the flat was in the racket, your psychology's rotten! Drug-peddling isn't a game for little play-boys. I reckon Seaton-Carew would have been caught years ago, if he'd used that kind of an assistant."
"Ma seadh! But where, think you, would Mrs. Haddington stand? Mind, there was nothing proved, nor found out against the man!"
"Look here, I don't mind you making two and two five, but when you start making it six you're going too far, Sandy!" expostulated Hemingway. "I don't think Hardfaced Hannah would stand anywhere. This Seaton-Carew bird was a sight too downy to take in a female in his little games. Besides, why should he? What's more, drug-peddling wouldn't get her into all the best houses, under Lady Nest's wing. You don't take up one of the most dangerous crime-rackets just to get into Society, my lad! Yes, I know you're being very cagey about Seaton-Carew, but I've known Jim Darliston any time these past fifteen years, and if he thought Seaton-Carew was worth watching, that's enough for me! We'll get back to the Yard at once, and set Cathercott on to that flat. Meanwhile, did you get Beulah Birtley Meriden's dossier for me?"
"I did, sir. It was one of Underbarrow's cases."
"You don't say! Yes, now I come to think of it, I remember that it was. Ran it hard, did he?"
"It is his way," the Inspector said.
"It is, and one of these days it'll get him into trouble. Go on!"
"The jury were out above an hour," said Grant carefully. "You would say, looking at the evidence, that there was nothing to keep them away so long, but I have had a word with Bingham - you'll mind he was attached to that Division! - and by what he tells me, the Chairman's summing-up left the matter in a good deal of doubt. Now, in Scotland -"
"If you think I'm going to waste my time arguing with you about whether Not Proven is a good thing or not, you're mistaken!" interrupted Hemingway. "Why did the Chairman sum up in the girl's favour?"
"That," said Grant, "I do not know, but from what Bingham was telling me he treated young Mr. Maxstoke rough - verra rough, he treated him, when he stood in the witness-box! I should say that it was with the firm of Maxstoke's the lassie had employment. She was fresh out of one of these Commercial Colleges, and young Mr. Maxstoke took her for his secretary. He is the nephew of Jasper Maxstoke, and at that time he was a partner in the firm, the old man having no sons, and -"
"At that time?"
"I am told," said the Inspector, "that it is a matter of three months since he left the firm. Why, I do not know."
"Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you!" said the exasperated Hemingway. "What was the girl charged with?"
"It was alleged," said Grant, "that she had forged Mr. Harold Maxstoke's signature on various cheques, and cashed them; and it was proved that she had in her possession some bank-notes, of which the numbers had been taken. You would say that it was an open-and-shut case."
"Which means, I suppose, that I shouldn't have said anything of the sort. I don't think I was in Court when this Maxstoke gave his evidence. What sort of a bloke was he?"
"I have not seen him. Sergeant Bingham tells me - but," added the Inspector, with a touch of austerity, "he is a vulgar man, that one! - that he would be the man to pinch and cuddle a lassie! A droch duine, is what he called him."
"That I'll be bound he never did! I don't know what it means, nor I don't want to, but the idea of you putting words like that into poor old Bingham's mouth! The inference being that the whole affair was a plant? Well, I have heard of such things, but not often, and I'm bound to say I didn't take to the fair Beulah. Looked as if she'd murder her own grandmother for sixpence. But one of her fellow-convicts sent her to Seaton-Carew, thinking he could use her; and it looks very much to me as though he pretty soon found out he couldn't - not in the way that was meant, anyhow. Now, that's very interesting, Sandy! If you ask me, drug-peddling wasn't his only racket, not by a long chalk! He didn't want an agent for that! It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he ran a blackmailing business, by way of a side-line. That's where the tie-up between him and Hard-faced Hannah may have come in. I don't say it did, but you want to bear it in mind, as a possibility. If she didn't put the black on Lady Nest, I'll eat my hat! She's got a lot of money, too: much more than she ought to have, in these days, when honest people can't possibly have a lot of money."
"I was not hearing from the servants anything that would bear that out," observed Grant doubtfully.
"I don't suppose you were. What they had to say, by what I can make out, they might as well have kept to themselves, for all the good it's likely to do us. They've none of them been with her above two years, and most of 'em not half as long. She's a bad mistress, but that doesn't make her a criminal."
"It does not. But they think she is not a lady, for all such grand people visit her house."
"One up to you," agreed Hemingway generously. "If they say that, they're right: they always know!"
He ate his supper that evening in the cosy little house in Bromley in which Ex-Superintendent Darliston had retired. While this meal was in progress, and Mrs. Darliston sat presiding over a teapot almost as enormous as herself, nothing was talked of but the prospects of the Ex-Superintendent's three sons, the amazing intelligence of his five grandchildren, the iniquitous behaviour of his hens, and the success he had enjoyed at the last local Show with his tomatoes; but when the Ex-Superintendent had let his belt out a hole or two, and had drawn a pipe and an aged pouch from his pocket, his spouse heaved her massive form out of her chair, piled all the crockery on a tray, and said: "Well, I'll go and wash up. If Stanley came out here to talk to you about the new greenhouse, Herbert, I didn't marry a policeman, thirty years ago, more fool me! No, I don't want any help, Stanley, thanking you all the same! Just open that door for me, and give over doing the polite!"
So saying, this admirable woman picked up the tray, and sailed off with it to the scullery.
"You can't fool Mother," observed Mr. Darliston. He pushed his pouch across the table. "Here, have a fill of mine! Now, what's eating you, young fellow?"
"Come to pick your brains, Super," said Hemingway.
"Ah!" said Mr. Darliston, leaning back at his ease. "I daresay I've forgotten more than you'll ever know."
"Well, have a shot at remembering, will you, granddad?" retorted Hemingway disrespectfully. "Going on as if you were Methuselah, and me in my first pair of long trousers!"
Mr. Darliston's bulk quivered slightly as he chuckled. He jerked his thumb suggestively towards the beer jug, and invited his guest to unburden himself. He heard the Chief Inspector out in silence, remarking at the end of his discourse: "Yes, I remember young Grant. A good lad: how's he getting on?"
"Fine, for a toddler like him!" said Hemingway. "I'll tell him you remembered him. That'll please him a lot more than it does me. What 1 want you to remember -"
"Slow, but careful," pursued the Ex-Superintendent. "Of course, he owed a lot to the training he had under me. Get on with him all right?"
"I've known worse. In fact, if it wasn't for him breathing that Gaelic of his all over me, I wouldn't have a thing against him."
"Garlic?" repeated Mr. Darliston, staring. "What's he want to eat garlic for? Tell him to stop it!"
"He doesn't eat it: he talks it. At least, that's what he says it is. He's got a shocking outbreak at the moment. They went and gave him Christmas leave, and he jumped on to the first train up to Inverness. By what I can make out, it took him the best part of twenty-four hours to get to this village of his, but he seems to think it was worth it. Never mind him! Do you remember this Seaton-Carew, alias Plain-Carew?"
"Yes, I remember the chap, and I'll tell you this, Stanley: you've got a real slippery customer in him!"
"Well, if he slips out of the mortuary, I'll know you were right. Meanwhile, I'd be glad if you'd tell me if you were playing a hunch when you tailed him, or whether you had any tabs on him?"
"Not to say tabs. Call it a lot of leads. Not one of them led me to his front-door. I could look out my old casebooks, if you like, but they wouldn't tell you much."
"No, that's all right. When you cleared up that particular gang, what became of friend Carew?"
"I don't know. He faded out, and I was under the impression that he skipped over to France."
"Never had any enquiries about him from the Surete?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"I see. Now, I've put Cathercott on to his flat, but drugs aren't my line, and I'd be grateful for a tip or two. Would he be likely to keep the stuff there?"
"He'd probably keep it there, any time he had some to dispose of- though I once met a fellow that used to dump it in a safe-deposit. That's how I caught him: seemed an unnatural sort of thing for a chap to be going two and three times a week to his safe-deposit."
"Could he hide it in a small flat, so as his man wouldn't find it?"
"Easy. If he's been selling it to people like this Lady Nest of yours, it's white drugs he's handling - probably snow, might be heroin, might even be morphia, but that's unlikely. You don't want to go looking for a consignment of hemp, you know. The stuff's worth a blooming sight more than its weight in gold, and the amount he'd have on the premises he could hide pretty well anywhere. Take any cigarettes you find - but Cathercott knows the ropes! Probably handed it over to his customers in neat little packets of powder, anyway. One of the cleverest rogues I ever arrested used to paste chemist's labels on his packets, with Boric Acid written on 'em, and the ends sealed up with red sealing-wax. Life-like, they were."
"That 'ud be more in this bloke's line than handing out boxes of cigarettes," said Hemingway shrewdly. "If that was his trade, it's my belief he'd have done his handing over at all those parties he used to go to. There were no flies on him, and, unless I find he's got a secret deposit for his papers, he's been careful to destroy every last bit of written evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if that was your fault, Super. You went and frightened the poor fellow, and a nice mess that leaves me with!"
"Well," said Mr. Darliston, reaching out his hand for the beer jug, "I don't blame you for wanting to pinch the man that murdered him, Stanley, because that's your job; but I've seen something of the horrors him and vermin like him batten on, and what I say is that whoever did him in did a good job, and ought properly to be given a medal. In fact," he added, refilling the Chief Inspector's glass, "it's those bastards which make me believe in hell! If I didn't think they were roasting down there, I wouldn't be able to sleep o' nights!"