The Charing Cross Mystery, J. S. Fletcher [portable ebook reader .txt] 📗

covered the lower part of his face as well. Between the rim of his hat and the collar of his coat it was all muffler and spectacles!”

The coroner looked disappointed. His interest in the witness seemed to evaporate.

“Did you notice anything else?” he asked.

“Only that the newcomer took Hannaford’s arm and that they walked away towards the left-hand entrance hall, evidently in earnest conversation. That was the last I saw of them.”

“There’s just one question I should like to put to you in conclusion,” said the coroner. “You say that you are confident that the photograph in the newspapers is that of the man you saw at Victoria. Now, have you seen the dead man’s body?”

“I have. The police took me to see it when I volunteered my evidence.”

“And you recognised it as that of the man you saw?”

“Without doubt! There is no question of that in my mind.”

Five minutes later the inquest stood adjourned, and those chiefly concerned gathered together in the emptying court to discuss the voluntary witness’s evidence. Matherfield manifested an almost cheerful optimism.

“This is better!⁠—much better,” he declared, rubbing his hands as if in anticipation of laying them on something. “We know now that Hannaford met, at any rate, two men that night. It’s easier to find two men than one!”

Rhona, whom Hetherwick had escorted to the coroner’s court, looked her astonishment. “How can that be?” she asked.

“Mr. Hetherwick understands,” answered Matherfield with a laugh. “He’ll tell you.”

But Hetherwick said nothing. He was always wondering⁠—always wondering⁠—about the woman whose picture lay in his pocket.

IV The Diamond Necklace

The conviction that there was more than met the eye in Hannaford’s cutting out and putting away the handsome and distinguished woman’s photograph grew mightily in Hetherwick’s mind during the next few days. He recalled all that Hannaford had said about it in the train in those few short minutes before his sudden death. Why had he been so keen about showing it to the other man? Was he taking the other man specially to his hotel to show it to him⁠—at that time of night? Why did the recollections which his possession of it brought up afford him⁠—obviously⁠—so much interest and, it seemed, amusement? And what, exactly, was meant by the pencilled words in the margin of the cutting?⁠—“Through my hands ten years ago!” Under what circumstances had this woman been through Hannaford’s hands? And who was she? The more he thought of it, the more Hetherwick was convinced that there was more importance in this matter than the police attached to it. They had proved utterly indifferent to Hetherwick’s account of the conversation in the train⁠—that, said Matherfield, with official superiority, was nothing but a bit of chat, reminiscence, recollection, on the ex-superintendent’s part; old men, he said, were fond of talking about incidents of the past. The only significance Matherfield saw in it was that it seemed to argue that whoever the man who had disappeared was, he and Hannaford had known each other ten years ago.

At the end of a week the police had heard nothing of this man. Nor had they made any discovery in respect of the other man whom Ledbitter swore he had seen with Hannaford at Victoria. The best Scotland Yard hands had been hard and continuously at work, and had brought nothing to light. Only one person had seen the first man after he darted up the stairs of Charing Cross calling out that he was going for a doctor; this was a policeman on duty at the front of the Underground Station. He had seen the man run out; had watched him run at top speed up Villiers Street, and had thought no more of it than that he was some belated passenger hurrying to catch a last bus in the Strand. But with that, all news and trace of him vanished. Of the tall man in the big blue spectacles and white muffler there never was any trace, nor any news beyond Ledbitter’s. Yet Ledbitter was a thoroughly dependable witness, and there was no doubt that he had seen Hannaford in this man’s company. So, without question, Hannaford, during his last few hours of life, had been with two men⁠—neither of whom could be found. Within twenty-four hours of his death several men came forward voluntarily who had had dealings or conversation with Hannaford since his arrival in London. But there was a significant fact about the news which any of them could give⁠—not one knew anything of the tall man seen by Ledbitter, or of the shabby man seen by Hetherwick, or of the secret which Hannaford carried in his sealed packet. The story of that sealed packet had been told plentifully in the newspapers⁠—but nobody came forward who knew anything about it. And when a week had elapsed after the ex-Superintendent’s burial, the whole mystery of his undoubted murder seemed likely to become one of the many which are never solved.

But Hetherwick was becoming absorbed in this affair into which he had been so curiously thrown headfirst. He had leisure on his hands; also, he was well off in this world’s goods, and much more concerned with the psychology of his profession than with a desire to earn money by its practice. From the moment in which he heard that the doctors had found that Hannaford had been poisoned, he felt that here was a murder mystery at the bottom of which he must get⁠—it fascinated him. And all through his speculations and theorisings about it, he was obsessed by the picture in his pocket. Who was that woman⁠—and what did the dead man remember about her?

Suddenly, one morning, after a visit from Matherfield, who looked in at his chambers casually, to tell him that the police had discovered nothing, Hetherwick put on his hat and went round to Surrey Street. He found Rhona Hannaford busy in preparing to leave Malter’s Hotel: she was going to live, for a time at any