The Man in the Brown Suit

‘Undoubtedly you will be wanted at the inquest. You say no one else was near enough to see what happened?’

‘I had the feeling someone was coming up behind me, but I can’t be sure—and, anyway, they wouldn’t be as near as I was.’

The inquest was held. Mr Flemming made all the arrangements and took me there with him. He seemed to fear that it would be a great ordeal for me, and I had to conceal from him my complete composure.

The deceased had been identified as L. B. Carton. Nothing had been found in his pockets except a house-agent’s order to view a house on the river near Marlow. It was in the name of L. B. Carton, Russell Hotel. The bureau clerk from the hotel identified the man as having arrived the day before and booked a room under that name. He had registered as L. B. Carton, Kimberley, S. Africa. He had evidently come straight off the steamer.

I was the only person who had seen anything of the affair.

‘You think it was an accident?’ the coroner asked me.

‘I am positive of it. Something alarmed him, and he stepped backwards blindly without thinking what he was doing.’

‘But what could have alarmed him?’

‘That I don’t know. But there was something. He looked panic-stricken.’

A stolid juryman suggested that some men were terrified of cats. The man might have seen a cat. I didn’t think his suggestion a very brilliant one, but it seemed to pass muster with the jury, who were obviously impatient to get home and only too pleased at being able to give a verdict of accident as opposed to suicide.

‘It is extraordinary to me,’ said the coroner, ‘that the doctor who first examined the body has not come forward. His name and address should have been taken at the time. It was most irregular not to do so.’

I smiled to myself. I had my own theory in regard to the doctor. In pursuance of it, I determined to make a call upon Scotland Yard at an early date.

But the next morning brought a surprise. The Flemmings took in the Daily Budget, and the Daily Budget was having a day after its own heart.

EXTRAORDINARY SEQUEL

TO TUBE ACCIDENT

WOMAN FOUND STRANGLED

IN LONELY HOUSE

I read eagerly.

‘A sensational discovery was made yesterday at the Mill House, Marlow. The Mill House, which is the property of Sir Eustace Pedler, MP, is to be let unfurnished, and an order to view this property was found in the pocket of the man who was at first thought to have committed suicide by throwing himself on the live rail at Hyde Park Corner Tube Station. In an upper room of the Mill House the body of a beautiful young woman was discovered yesterday, strangled. She is thought to be a foreigner, but so far has not been identified. The police are reported to have a clue. Sir Eustace Pedler, the owner of the Mill House, is wintering on the Riviera.’

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_f8a2d2ff-724f-5ea7-91b6-7fabd3f836f4)

Nobody came forward to identify the dead woman. The inquest elicited the following facts.

Shortly after one o’clock on January 8th, a well-dressed woman with a slight foreign accent had entered the offices of Messrs Butler and Park, house-agents, in Knightsbridge. She explained that she wanted to rent or purchase a house on the Thames within easy reach of London. The particulars of several were given to her, including those of the Mill House. She gave the name of Mrs de Castina and her address at the Ritz, but there proved to be no one of that name staying there, and the hotel people failed to identify the body.

Mrs James, the wife of Sir Eustace Pedler’s gardener, who acted as caretaker to the Mill House and inhabited the small lodge opening on the main road, gave evidence. About three o’clock that afternoon, a lady came to see over the house. She produced an order from the house-agents, and, as was the usual custom, Mrs James gave her the keys to the house. It was situated at some distance from the lodge, and she was not in the habit of accompanying prospective tenants. A few minutes later a young man arrived. Mrs James described him as tall and broad-shouldered, with a bronzed face and light grey eyes. He was clean-shaven and was wearing a brown suit. He explained to Mrs James that he was a friend of the lady who had come to look over the house, but had stopped at the post office to send a telegram. She directed him to the house, and thought no more about the matter.

Five minutes later he reappeared, handed her back the keys and explained that he feared the house would not suit them. Mrs James did not see the lady, but thought that she had gone on ahead. What she did notice was that the young man seemed very much upset about something. ‘He looked like a man who’d seen a ghost. I thought he was taken ill.’

On the following day another lady and gentleman came to see the property and discovered the body lying on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms. Mrs James identified it as that of the lady who had come the day before. The house-agents also recognized it as that of ‘Mrs de Castina’. The police surgeon gave it as his opinion that the woman had been dead about twenty-four hours. The Daily Budget had jumped to the conclusion that the man in the Tube had murdered the woman and afterwards committed suicide. However, as the Tube victim was dead at two o’clock and the woman was alive and well at three o’clock, the only logical conclusion to come to was that the two occurrences had nothing to do with each other, and that the order to view the house at Marlow found in the dead man’s pocket was merely one of those coincidences which so often occur in this life.

A verdict of ‘Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown’ was returned, and the police (and the Daily Budget) were left to look for ‘the man in the brown suit’. Since Mrs James was positive that there was no one in the house when the lady entered it, and that nobody except the young man in question entered it until the following afternoon, it seemed only logical to conclude that he was the murderer of the unfortunate Mrs de Castina. She had been strangled with a piece of stout black cord, and had evidently been caught unawares with no time to cry out. The black silk handbag which she carried contained a well-filled notecase and some loose change, a fine lace handkerchief, unmarked, and the return half of a first-class ticket to London. Nothing much there to go upon.

Such were the details published broadcast by the Daily Budget, and ‘Find the Man in the Brown Suit’ was their daily war-cry. On an average about five hundred people wrote daily to announce their success in the quest, and tall young men with well-tanned faces cursed the day when their tailors had persuaded them to a brown suit. The accident in the Tube, dismissed as a coincidence, faded out of the public mind.

Was it a coincidence? I was not so sure. No doubt I was prejudiced—the Tube incident was my own pet mystery—but there certainly seemed to me to be a connexion of some kind between the two fatalities. In each there was a man with a tanned face—evidently an Englishman living abroad—and there were other things. It was the consideration of these other things that finally impelled me to what I considered a dashing step. I presented myself at Scotland Yard and demanded to see whoever was in charge of the Mill House case.

My request took some time to understand, as I had inadvertently selected the department for lost umbrellas, but eventually I was ushered into a small room and presented to Detective Inspector Meadows.

Inspector Meadows was a small man with a ginger head and what I considered a peculiarly irritating manner. A satellite, also in plain clothes, sat unobtrusively in a corner.

‘Good morning,’ I said nervously.

‘Good morning. Will you take a seat? I understand you’ve something to tell me that you think may be of use to us.’

His tone seemed to indicate that such a thing was unlikely in the extreme. I felt my temper stirred.

‘Of course you know about the man who was killed in the Tube? The man who had an order to view this same house at Marlow in his pocket.’

‘Ah!’ said the inspector. ‘You are the Miss Beddingfeld who gave evidence at the inquest. Certainly the man had an order in his pocket. A lot of other people may have had too—only they didn’t happen to be killed.’

I rallied my forces.

‘You didn’t think it odd that this man had no ticket in his pocket?’

‘Easiest thing in the world to drop your ticket. Done it myself.’

‘And no money.’

‘He had some loose change in his trousers pocket.’

‘But no notecase.’

‘Some men don’t carry a pocket-book or notecase of any kind.’

I tried another tack.

‘You don’t think it’s odd that the doctor never came forward afterwards?’

‘A busy medical man very often doesn’t read the papers. He probably forgot all about the accident.’

‘In fact, inspector, you are determined to find nothing odd,’ I said sweetly.

‘Well, I’m inclined to think you’re a little too fond of the word, Miss Beddingfeld. Young ladies are romantic, I know—fond of mysteries and such-like. But as I’m a busy man—’

I took the hint and rose.

The man in the corner raised a meek voice.

‘Perhaps if the young lady would tell us briefly what her ideas really are on the subject, inspector?’