Partners in Crime (Tommy & Tuppence 2)

He ran upstairs and made a quick but efficient search of the premises. But there was no one concealed anywhere.

Then he spoke to Ellen. After breaking the news to her, and waiting for her first lamentations and invocations to the Saints to have exhausted themselves, he asked a few questions.

"Had anyone come to the house that afternoon asking for Miss Glen? No one whatsoever. Had she herself been upstairs at all that evening? Yes, she'd gone up at six o'clock as usual to draw the curtains-or it might have been a few minutes after six. Anyway it was just before that wild fellow come breaking the knocker down. She'd run downstairs to answer the door. And him a black hearted murderer at the time."

Tommy let it go at that. But he still felt a curious pity for Reilly, an unwillingness to believe the worst of him. And yet there was no one else who could have murdered Gilda Glen. Mrs. Honeycott and Ellen had been the only two people in the house.

He heard voices in the hall, and went out to find Tuppence and the policeman from the beat outside. The latter had produced a notebook, and a rather blunt pencil which he licked surreptitiously. He went upstairs and surveyed the victim stolidly, merely remarking that if he was to touch anything the Inspector would give him beans. He listened to all Mrs. Honeycott's hysterical outbursts and confused explanations, and occasionally he wrote something down. His presence was calming and soothing.

Tommy finally got him alone for a minute or two on the steps outside, ere he departed to telephone headquarters.

"Look here," said Tommy. "You saw the deceased turning in at the gate, you say. Are you sure she was alone?"

"Oh, she was alone all right. Nobody with her."

"And between that time and when you met us, nobody came out of the gate?"

"Not a soul."

"You'd have seen them if they had?"

"In course I should. Nobody come out till that wild chap did."

The majesty of the law moved portentously down the steps and paused by the white gate post which bore the imprint of a hand in red.

"Kind of amateur he must have been," he said pityingly. "To leave a thing like that."

Then he swung out into the road.

It was the day after the crime. Tommy and Tuppence were still at the Grand Hotel, but Tommy had thought it prudent to discard his clerical disguise.

James Reilly had been apprehended, and was in custody. His solicitor, Mr. Marvell, had just finished a lengthy conversation with Tommy on the subject of the crime.

"I never would have believed it of James Reilly," he said simply. "He's always been a man of violent speech, but that's all."

Tommy nodded.

"If you disperse energy in speech, it doesn't leave you too much over for action. What I realise is that I shall be one of the principal witnesses against him. That conversation he had with me just before the crime was particularly damning. And in spite of everything, I like the man, and if there was anyone else to suspect, I should believe him to be innocent. What's his own story?"

The solicitor pursed up his lips.

"He declares that he found her lying there dead. But that's impossible, of course. He's using the first lie that comes into his head."

"Because, if he happened to be speaking the truth, it would mean that our garrulous Mrs. Honeycott committed the crime-and that is fantastic. Yes, he must have done it."

"The maid heard her cry out, remember."

"The maid-yes-"

Tommy was silent a moment. Then he said thoughtfully:

"What credulous creatures we are, really. We believe evidence as though it were gospel truth. And what is it ready? Only the impressions conveyed to the mind by the senses- and suppose they're the wrong impressions?"

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh! we all know that there are unreliable witnesses, witnesses who remember more and more as time goes on, with no real intention to deceive."

"I don't mean only that. I mean all of us-we say things that aren't really so, and never know that we've done so. For instance, both you and I, without doubt, have said some time or other 'There's the post,' when what we really meant was that we'd heard a double knock and the rattle of the letter box. Nine times out of ten we'd be right, and it would be the post, but just possibly the tenth time it might be only a little urchin playing a joke on us. See what I mean?"

"Ye-es," said Mr. Marvell slowly. "But I don't see what you're driving at?"

"Don't you? I'm not sure that I do myself. But I'm beginning to see. It's like the stick, Tuppence. You remember? One end of it pointed one way-but the other end always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of it by the right end. Doors open-but they also shut. People go upstairs, but they also go downstairs. Boxes shut, but they also open."

"What do you mean?" demanded Tuppence.

"It's so ridiculously easy, really," said Tommy. "And yet it's only just come to me. How do you know when a person's come into the house? You hear the door open and bang to, and if you re expecting anyone to come in, you will be quite sure it is them. But it might just as easily be someone going out."

"But Miss Glen didn't go out?"

"No, I know she didn't. But someone else did-the murderer."

"But how did she get in, then?"

"She came in whilst Mrs. Honeycott was in the kitchen talking to Ellen. They didn't hear her. Mrs. Honeycott went back to the drawing-room, wondered if her sister had come in and began to put the clock right, and then, as she thought, she heard her come in and go upstairs."

"Well, what about that? The footsteps going upstairs?"

"That was Ellen, going up to draw the curtains. You remember, Mrs. Honeycott said her sister paused before going up. That pause was just the time needed for Ellen to come out from the kitchen into the hall. She just missed seeing the murderer."

"But Tommy," cried Tuppence. "The cry she gave?"

"That was James Reilly. Didn't you notice what a high pitched voice he has? In moments of great emotion, men often squeal just like a woman."

"But the murderer? We'd have seen him?"

"We did see him. We even stood talking to him. Do you remember the sudden way that policeman appeared? That was because he stepped out of the gate, just after the mist cleared from the road. It made us jump, don't you remember? After all, though we never think of them as that, policemen are men just like any other men. They love and they hate. They marry. . . .

"I think Gilda Glen met her husband suddenly just outside that gate, and took him in with her to thrash the matter out. He hadn't Reilly's relief of violent words, remember. He just saw red-and he had his truncheon handy. . . ."

13. THE CRACKLER

"Tuppence," said Tommy, "we shall have to move into a much larger office."

"Nonsense," said Tuppence, "You mustn't get swollen headed and think you are a millionaire just because you solved two or three twopenny halfpenny cases with the aid of the most amazing luck."

"What some call luck, others call skill."

"Of course if you really think you are Sherlock Holmes, Thorndyke, McCarty and the Brothers Okewood all rolled into one there is no more to be said. Personally I would much rather have luck on my side than all the skill in the world."

"Perhaps there is something in that," conceded Tommy. "All the same, Tuppence, we do need a larger office."

"Why?"

"The Classics," said Tommy. "We need several hundreds of yards of extra book shelf if Edgar Wallace is to be properly represented."

"We haven't had an Edgar Wallace case yet."

"I am afraid we never shall," said Tommy. "If you notice he never does give the amateur sleuth much of a chance. It is all stern Scotland Yard kind of stuff-the real thing and no base counterfeit."

Albert, the office boy, appeared at the door.

"Inspector Marriot to see you," he announced.

"The mystery man of Scotland Yard" murmured Tommy.

"The busiest of the Busies," said Tuppence. "Or is it 'Noses?' I a

lways get mixed between Busies and Noses."

The Inspector advanced upon them with a beaming smile of welcome.

"Well and how are things?" he asked breezily. "None the worse for our little adventure the other day?"

"Oh! rather not," said Tuppence. "Too, too marvellous, wasn't it?"

"Well, I don't know that I would describe it exactly that way myself," said Marriot cautiously.

"What has brought you here today, Marriott?" asked Tommy. "Not just solicitude for our nervous systems, is it?"

"No," said the Inspector. "It is work for the brilliant Mr. Blunt."

"Ha!" said Tommy. "Let me put my brilliant expression on."

"I have come to make you a proposition, Mr. Beresford. What would you say to rounding up a really big gang?"

"Is there such a thing?" asked Tommy.

"What do you mean, is there such a thing?"

"I always thought that gangs were confined to fiction-like master crooks, and super criminals."

“The master crook isn't very common," agreed the Inspector. "But Lord bless you, sir, there's any amount of gangs knocking about."