The Daffodil Mystery, Edgar Wallace [feel good fiction books TXT] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
Book online «The Daffodil Mystery, Edgar Wallace [feel good fiction books TXT] 📗». Author Edgar Wallace
He looked and laughed helplessly; for on the inside of the tongue was a tiny label bearing the name of a London shoemaker, and beneath, written in ink, "Miss O. Rider."
CHAPTER XXX WHO KILLED MRS. RIDER?The matron of the nursing home received Tarling. Odette, she said, had regained her normal calm, but would require a few days' rest. She suggested she should be sent to the country.
"I hope you're not going to ask her a lot of questions, Mr. Tarling," said the matron, "because she really isn't fit to stand any further strain."
"There's only one question I'm going to ask," said Tarling grimly.
He found the girl in a prettily-furnished room, and she held out her hand to him in greeting. He stooped and kissed her, and without further ado produced the shoe from his pocket.
"Odette dear," he said gently, "is this yours?"
She looked at it and nodded.
"Why yes, where did you find it?"
"Are you sure it is yours?"
"I'm perfectly certain it's mine," she smiled. "It's an old slipper I used to wear. Why do you ask?"
"Where did you see it last?"
The girl closed her eyes and shivered.
"In mother's room," she said. "Oh, mother, mother!"
She turned her head to the cushion of the chair and wept, and Tarling soothed her.
It was some time before she was calm, but then she could give no further information.
"It was a shoe that mother liked because it fitted her. We both took the same size...."
Her voice broke again and Tarling hastened to change the conversation.
More and more he was becoming converted to Ling Chu's theory. He could not apply to that theory the facts which had come into his possession. On his way back from the nursing home to police headquarters, he reviewed the Hertford crime.
Somebody had come into the house bare-footed, with bleeding feet, and, having committed the murder, had looked about for shoes. The old slippers had been the only kind which the murderer could wear, and he or she had put them on and had gone out again, after making the circuit of the house. Why had this mysterious person tried to get into the house again, and for whom or what were they searching?
If Ling Chu was correct, obviously the murderer could not be Milburgh. If he could believe the evidence of his senses, the man with the small feet had been he who had shrieked defiance in the darkness and had hurled the vitriol at his feet. He put his views before his subordinate and found Whiteside willing to agree with him.
"But it does not follow," said Whiteside, "that the bare-footed person who was apparently in Mrs. Rider's house committed the murder. Milburgh did that right enough, don't worry! There is less doubt that he committed the Daffodil Murder."
Tarling swung round in his chair; he was sitting on the opposite side of the big table that the two men used in common.
"I think I know who committed the Daffodil Murder," he said steadily. "I have been working things out, and I have a theory which you would probably describe as fantastic."
"What is it?" asked Whiteside, but the other shook his head.
He was not for the moment prepared to reveal his theory.
Whiteside leaned back in his chair and for a moment cogitated.
"The case from the very beginning is full of contradictions," he said. "Thornton Lyne was a rich man—by-the-way, you're a rich man, now, Tarling, and I must treat you with respect."
Tarling smiled.
"Go on," he said.
"He had queer tastes—a bad poet, as is evidenced by his one slim volume of verse. He was a poseur, proof of which is to be found in his patronage of Sam Stay—who, by the way, has escaped from the lunatic asylum; I suppose you know that?"
"I know that," said Tarling. "Go on."
"Lyne falls in love with a pretty girl in his employ," continued Whiteside. "Used to having his way when he lifted his finger, all women that in earth do dwell must bow their necks to the yoke. He is repulsed by the girl and in his humiliation immediately conceives for her a hatred beyond the understanding of any sane mortal."
"So far your account doesn't challenge contradiction," said Tarling with a little twinkle in his eye.
"That is item number one," continued Whiteside, ticking the item off on his fingers. "Item number two is Mr. Milburgh, an oleaginous gentleman who has been robbing the firm for years and has been living in style in the country on his ill-earned gains. From what he hears, or knows, he gathers, that the jig is up. He is in despair when he realises that Thornton Lyne is desperately in love with his step-daughter. What is more likely than that he should use his step-daughter in order to influence Thornton Lyne to take the favourable view of his delinquencies?"
"Or what is more likely," interrupted Tarling, "than that he would put the blame for the robberies upon the girl and trust to her paying a price to Thornton Lyne to escape punishment?"
"Right again. I'll accept that possibility," said Whiteside. "Milburgh's plan is to get a private interview, under exceptionally favourable circumstances, with Thornton Lyne. He wires to that gentleman to meet him at Miss Rider's flat, relying upon the magic of the name."
"And Thornton Lyne comes in list slippers," said Tarling sarcastically. "That doesn't wash, Whiteside."
"No, it doesn't," admitted the other. "But I'm getting at the broad aspects of the case. Lyne comes. He is met by Milburgh, who plays his trump card of confession and endeavours to switch the young man on to the solution which Milburgh had prepared. Lyne refuses, there is a row, and is desperation Milburgh shoots Thornton Lyne."
Tarling shook his head. He mused a while, then:
"It's queer," he said.
The door opened and a police officer came in.
"Here are the particulars you want," he said and handed Whiteside a typewritten sheet of paper.
"What is this?" said Whiteside when the man had gone. "Oh, here is our old friend, Sam Stay. A police description." He read on: "Height five foot four, sallow complexion ... wearing a grey suit and underclothing bearing the markings of the County Asylum.... Hullo!"
"What is it?" said Tarling.
"This is remarkable," said Whiteside, and read
"When the patient escaped, he had bare feet. He takes a very small size in shoes, probably four or five. A kitchen knife is missing and the patient may be armed. Boot-makers should be warned...."
"Bare feet!" Tarling rose from the table with a frown on his face. "Sam Stay hated Odette Rider."
The two men exchanged glances.
"Now, do you see who killed Mrs. Rider?" asked Tarling. "She was killed by one who saw Odette Rider go into the house, and did not see her come out; who went in after her to avenge, as he thought, his dead patron. He killed this unhappy woman—the initials on the knife, M.C.A., stand for Middlesex County Asylum, and he brought the knife with him—and discovered his mistake; then, having searched for a pair of shoes to cover his bleeding feet, and having failed to get into the house by any other way, made a circuit of the building, looking for Odette Rider and seeking an entrance at every window."
Whiteside looked at him in astonishment.
"It's a pity you've got money," he said admiringly. "When you retire from this business there'll be a great detective lost."
CHAPTER XXXI SAM STAY TURNS UP"I have seen you somewhere before, ain't I?"
The stout clergyman in the immaculate white collar beamed benevolently at the questioner and shook his head with a gentle smile.
"No, my dear friend, I do not think I have ever seen you before."
It was a little man, shabbily dressed, and looking ill. His face was drawn and lined; he had not shaved for days, and the thin, black stubble of hair gave him a sinister look. The clergyman had just walked out of Temple Gardens and was at the end of Villiers Street leading up to the Strand, when he was accosted. He was a happy-looking clergyman, and something of a student, too, if the stout and serious volume under his arm had any significance.
"I've seen you before," said the little man, "I've dreamt about you."
"If you'll excuse me," said the clergyman, "I am afraid I cannot stay. I have an important engagement."
"Hold hard," said the little man, in so fierce a tone that the other stopped. "I tell you I've dreamt about you. I've seen you dancing with four black devils with no clothes on, and you were all fat and ugly."
He lowered his voice and was speaking in a fierce earnest monotone, as though he was reciting some lesson he had been taught.
The clergyman took a pace back in alarm.
"Now, my good man," he said severely, "you ought not to stop gentlemen in the street and talk that kind of nonsense. I have never met you before in my life. My name is the Reverend Josiah Jennings."
"Your name is Milburgh," said the other. "Yes, that's it, Milburgh. He used to talk about you! That lovely man—here!" He clutched the clergyman's sleeve and Milburgh's face went a shade paler. There was a concentrated fury in the grip on his arm and a strange wildness in the man's speech. "Do you know where he is? In a beautivault built like an 'ouse in Highgate Cemetery. There's two little doors that open like the door of a church, and you go down some steps to it."
"Who are you?" asked Milburgh, his teeth chattering.
"Don't you know me?" The little man peered at him. "You've heard him talk about me. Sam Stay—why, I worked for two days in your Stores, I did. And you—you've only got what he's given you. Every penny you earned he gave you, did Mr. Lyne. He was a friend to everybody—to the poor, even to a hook like me."
His eyes filled with tears and Mr. Milburgh looked round to see if he was being observed.
"Now, don't talk nonsense!" he said under his breath, "and listen, my man; if anybody asks you whether you have seen Mr. Milburgh, you haven't, you understand?"
"Oh, I understand," said the man. "But I knew you! There's nobody connected with him that I don't remember. He lifted me up out of the gutter, he did. He's my idea of God!"
They had reached a quiet corner of the Gardens and Milburgh motioned the man to sit beside him on a garden seat.
For the first time that day he experienced a sense of confidence in the wisdom of his choice of disguise. The sight of a clergyman speaking with a seedy-looking man might excite comment, but not suspicion. After all, it was the business of clergymen to talk to seedy-looking men, and they might be seen engaged in the most earnest and confidential conversation and he would suffer no loss of caste.
Sam Stay looked at the black coat and the white collar in doubt.
"How long have you been a clergyman, Mr. Milburgh?" he asked.
"Oh—er—for a little while," said Mr. Milburgh glibly, trying to remember what he had heard about Sam Stay. But the little man saved him the labour of remembering.
"They took me away to a place in the country," he said, "but you know I wasn't mad, Mr. Milburgh. He wouldn't have had a fellow hanging round him who was mad, would he? You're a clergyman, eh?" He nodded his head wisely, then asked, with a sudden eagerness: "Did he make you a clergyman? He could do wonderful things, could Mr. Lyne, couldn't he? Did you preach over him when they buried him in that little vault in 'Ighgate? I've seen it—I go there every day, Mr. Milburgh," said Sam. "I only found it by accident. 'Also Thornton Lyne, his son.' There's two little doors that open like church doors."
Mr. Milburgh drew a long sigh. Of course, he remembered now. Sam Stay had been removed to a lunatic asylum, and he was dimly conscious of the fact that the man had escaped. It was not a pleasant experience, talking with an escaped lunatic. It might, however, be a profitable one. Mr. Milburgh was a man who let very few opportunities slip. What could he make out of this, he wondered? Again Sam Stay supplied the clue.
"I'm going to settle with that girl——" He stopped and closed his lips tightly, and looked with a cunning little smile at Milburgh. "I didn't say anything, did I?" he asked with a queer little chuckle. "I didn't say anything that would give me away, did I?"
"No, my friend," said Mr. Milburgh, still in the character of the benevolent pastor. "To what girl do you refer?"
The face of Sam Stay twisted into a malignant smile.
"There's only one girl,"
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