The Mad Hatter Mystery

12. Concerning X—19

`That;' said Hadley, whirling about, `may be a lead. Wait a moment. I'll answer it.'

They followed him into the study.

He said: `Hello!… Yes, this is…. Chief Inspector Hadley speaking… Who?… Oh yes.. It's Sheila Bitton,' he said to, the others over his shoulder, and there was a tinge of disappointment in his voice. `Yes…. Yes, certainly, Miss Bitton.' A long pause. `Why, I suppose you may, but I shall have to have a look at everything first, you know. No trouble at all! When will you come over?'

`Wait!' said Dr Fell, eagerly. He stumped across. `She's coming over here to-night?'

`Yes. She says there are some belongings of Philip's that her uncle wants her to bring to the house.'

`H'm. Ask her if she's got anybody to bring her over here.'

`What the devil…! Oh, all right,' Hadley agreed, then spoke again. `She says she's got Dalrye,' he transmitted after a moment.

`That won't do. There's somebody in that house I've got to talk to, and I've got to talk to him out of the house or it may be no good. Let me talk to her, will you?'

Hadley shrugged and got up from the desk.

`Hello!' said the doctor. `Miss Bitton? This is Dr Fell, Mr Hadley's colleague.You do? Oh yes; from your fiance.

HEY?'

'You needn't blow the mouthpiece out,' Hadley observed, sourly. `What tact! What tact! Ha!'

'Excuse me, Miss Bitton. I may be, of course, the fattest walrus Mr Dalrye has ever seen, but… No, my dear, of course I don't mind….'

they could hear the phone tinkling in an animated fashion; Rampole remembered Mrs Larkin's description of Sheila Bitton as a `little blonde,' and grinned to himself. Dr Fell contemplated the phone with an expression of one trying to smile in order to have his picture taken, presently he broke in.

`What I was trying to say, Miss Bitton, was this. You'll undoubtedly have a number of things to take away, and they'll be quite bulky…. Oh! Mr Dalrye has to be back at the Tower by ten o'clock? Then you will certainly want somebody to handle them. Haven't you somebody there who could?… The chauffeur's not there? Well, what about your father's valet? What's his name? — Marks. He spoke highly of Marks, and… But please don't bring your father, Miss Bitton; it would only make him feel worse. Oh, he's lying down? Very well, Miss Bitton. We shall expect you. Good-bye.'

He turned about, glowering, and shook the tool-basket until it jangled. `She burbles. She prattles. And she called me a walrus. A most naive young; lady. And if any humorist on these premises makes the obvious remark about the Walrus and the Carpenter…'

`Dr Watson… ' Hadley muttered. `Thanks for reminding me. I've got to put a call through to the police station at Golders Green. Get up from there.'

He began a series of relay-calls through Scotland Yard, and finally left his orders. He had just finished informing some mystified desk sergeant on the other wire to phone him here after he had made sure the message was delivered to the guard at Arbor's cottage, when they heard footsteps in the sitting-room.

Evidently it had taken some time for Lester Bitton to persuade Mrs Larkin that it would be advisable to talk. Bitton was pacing the front room, looking flushed and dangerous. Mrs Larkin was holding back the: curtain of the front window and peering out with extreme nonchalance.' When she saw Hadley she examined him coldly.

`You tecs,' she said, her upper lip wrinkling; `pretty damn smart, ain't you? I told his nibs here you'd got nothing on his wife. He should have sat tight, and let you go ahead, and then we could both have got a sweet piece of change out of you for false arrest. But no. He had to get scared and spill the beans.'

Hadley opened his brief-case again. This time he was not bluffing; the printed form he opened carried two decidedly unflattering snapshots.

"Amanda Georgette Larkin",' he read. "`Alias Amanda Leeds, Alias Georgie Simpson. Known as 'Emmy' Shoplifting. Speciality, jewellery, large department stores. Last heard of in New York …

'You needn't go through all that,' interrupted Emmy. `There's nothing on me now. I told you that this afternoon. But, go on and get his nibs to tell you what agency I work for. Then you'll tell them, and, bingo! I'm through.'

Hadley folded up the paper and replaced it. `If' you give us a clear statement, I don't think I need warn your employers about Georgie Simpson.'

She put her hands on her hips and studied him.

`All right. Here she goes.'

Mrs Larkin's manner underwent a subtle change. That afternoon she had seemed all tight corsets and severe tailoring, like an especially forbidding schoolmistress. Now the stiffness disappeared into an easier slouch and she dropped into a chair.

`What we want to know is everything you did to-day, Mrs Larkin,' Hadley told her.

`Well, in my profession a man we always look for is the postman. I was up early, ready for him. He always puts the letters in the box of Number 1, my place, first, and then goes across the way. I can time it so that I'm picking up the milk bottle outside my door when he gets out the mail for Number 2. And that was easy. Because X19 — that's the way we have to describe people in the confidential reports — X19 always wrote her letters on a sort of pink-purplish kind of paper you could see a mile off.'

`How did you know,' inquired Hadley, `that the letters were from X19?'

She looked at him. `Don't be funny,' said Mrs,Larkin, coldly. `It's not healthy, for a respectable widow to get into people's flats with a duplicate key. And it's a damn sight less healthy to be found steaming open people's letters. Let's say I overheard them talking about the first letter she wrote him.

`All right. I'd been warned X19 was coming back to London Sunday night, and so I had my eyes open this morning. I was kind of surprised when I went out to pick up my milk bottle and found Driscoll picking up his milk bottle just over the way. He never gets up before noon. He had his door open, and I could see the inside of the letter-box.

`He stuck his hand in the letter-box, pulled out the pink letter, and sort of grunted, and put it in his pocket without opening it. Then he saw me, and let the door slam.

'So I thought, "What ho!" And I knew there was going to be a meeting somewhere. But I wasn't to watch him. I'd only been planted opposite so I could catch X19 with the goods.'

`You have been a long time in doing it,' said Hadley.

She made a comfortable gesture. `No use finishin' off a good assignment too quick…. But all the times she's been there I never saw anything. The best chance I had was the night before she went away, about two weeks ago. They come in from the theatre or some place, and they was both pretty tight. I watched the door, and everything was all quiet for about two hours, so I knew what was up. Then, the door opened, and they both come out again for him to take her home. And they stood there swearing eternal love to each other and he was saying how he was going to do a piece of work that would get him a good newspaper job, and then they could get married..

`But I wasn't certain,' explained they practical Mrs Larkin, kin, `because that's what they all say when they're drunk. And besides, I heard him telling the same thing to a little red-head he had here while X19 was away. But that night, of course, I wasn't on duty. I was just getting home myself, and he came staggering down the steps with his arm around the red-head, and she was trying to hold him up… '

`Stop it!' Lester Bitton suddenly shouted. `You didn't,' he said heavily — `you didn't put into your report you didn't say this'

`Time enough. But I am off the subject, ain't I?' said Mrs Larkin. She straightened the puffs of hair over her ears. `Don't take it so hard, mister. They're all like that, mostly. I didn't mean to give you the works.

`I'll go on about to-day. Oh yes; I know where I was. Well, I got dressed and went up to Berkeley Square. It's a good thing I did, because she come out of the house fairly early. And believe it or not, that woman walked all the way from her place to the Tower of London!

`Well, I seen her buying tickets for all them towers, and I had to buy 'em all, too, because I didn't know where she'd, go. But I thought, this is a hell of a place to pick for rendy-voo, and then I tumbled to it. She was wise to being watched. I thought probably that trip to the country tipped her off, and her husband had maybe said something to let her guess….'

`They had never gone there together before?' interrupted Hadley.

`Not while I was watching them'

She was more subdued now when she spoke, and she told her story without comment. It was ten-minutes past one when Laura Bitton arrived. After buying her tickets and a little guide, she, had gone into the refreshment-room and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. All the time she ate she watched the clock with every sign of nervousness and impatience. `And, what's more,' Mrs Larkin explained, 'she wasn't carrying that arrow-thing you had on your desk this afternoon.'

At twenty minutes past one Laura: Bitton left the refreshment-room and hurried away. At the Middle Tower she hesitated, looked about, and presently moved along the causeway, and hesitated again at the Byward Tower. There she consulted the map in her guide-book and looked carefully about her.

`I could see what was in her mind, Mrs Larkin told them. `She didn't want to hang around the door, like a tart or something; but she wanted to be sure she saw him when he got there. But it was dead easy — Anybody who came in would've had to walk straight along that road — up towards the Traitors' Gate place and the Bloody Tower. So she walked along the road, slow, looking all around. Then when she got near the Traitors' Gate place she turned to the right and stopped again….'

So that, Rampole reflected was what Philip Driscoll saw when he kept looking out of the window in the general's quarters, as Parker had described. He saw the, woman waiting for him down in Water Lane. And soon afterwards he said he would take a stroll in the grounds, and hurried out.

`She'd moved back,' Mrs Larkin went on, `in a doorway on the right-hand side of the Traitors' Gate. I'd flattened myself against the same wall, a little distance back. Then I saw a little guy in plus-fours come out from under; the arch of the Bloody, Tower. He didn't see er — X19 because she was back in the door; I thought it was Driscoll, but I wasn't sure. Neither was she, I guess, for a minute, because she'd expected him to come the other way. Then he starts to walk back and forth, and next he goes over to the rail. I heard him use a cuss-word, and there was a sound like a match striking.

`Now, here's the joker in the deck. I don't know whether you noticed. But that archway thing„where all them spikes in the gate are, sticks out about seven or eight feet on either side of the rail. If you're in that roadway, and looking down it in a straight line, you can't see the rail in front of the steps at all. For the time being it was fine for me, because I could get within a couple of feet of them without being seen.

`So X19 knew it was Driscoll all right. She slipped out of the door and turned the corner towards the rail. The first thing he said was, "Laura, for God's sake what did you want to bring, me down here for? I've got friends here. Is it true that he's found out?" What she said at first was something about that was the reason why she had said to come here, because if either of 'em was seen they could be calling on people they knew. Then he said that was a crazy idea, and was it, true that he'd found out; he asked that again. She said yes. And she said, "Do you love me?" And he said, "Yes, yes, but I'm in a frightful mess." They was both pretty upset and got to talking louder. He said something about his uncle, and all of a sudden he stopped and said, "Oh, my God!"

`She asked him what was the matter. Here's what he said. "Laura, there's something I've got to do here or 'I'm ruined." 'His voice was shaking. It sounded bad. He said, "Don't stay with me. We might be seen. Go in and look at the, Crown jewels, and then walk up to the parade ground. I'll join you there inside five minutes."

`I heard her walk up and down; for a second or two, then she whirled around and started, towards the Bloody Tower, and I followed. I didn't see him; I suppose he'd gone on ahead. That was about twenty-minutes to two.'

Hadley leaned forward. `You say you, followed?' he demanded. `Did you see her bump into anybody?'

`Bump into anybody?' she repeated, blinking. `No. But then I mightn't have. I slipped inside that big arch of the Bloody Tower and up against the wall, in case she turned back. I have a kind of idea that some man passed me; but it was foggy, and under that arch darker than hell…’

`I heard her speak to one of them birds in the funny hats and say, "Which way to the Crown jewels?" and he directed her to a door not very far on the other side of the arch, and I was still there. - That's all. He didn't come near her, because somebody killed him just after he'd left her. But I know she didn't, because I took a look in that place there to keep quiet. It's money well earned. But don't try to earn any more. That's blackmail, you know.'

`Oh, that's all right,' Mrs Larkin agreed, patting the puffs of hair over her ears. `If you birds are on the level with me, I'm on the level with you'… Well, I'm off to the pub. G'night. See you at the inquest'