Inspector Stoddart's Most Famous Cases. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ some effect on the jury."

      "Dare say it would," Stoddart growled. "Juries—or the folks that serve on them—are mostly fools."

      "Quite!" Harbord agreed. "But Sir Felix Skrine would hardly defend Wilton if he thought he was guilty, especially since Skrine is engaged to Miss Bastow."

      "Eh—what?" the inspector interrupted.

      "What is that you're saying? Skrine is not engaged to Miss Bastow."

      "He is!" Harbord said positively. "Didn't you know?"

      "I did not!" the inspector said emphatically. "I always took it for granted that she was sweet on Wilton."

      "Not much good being sweet on him when he had married Miss Houlton."

      "Well, no, it was not. That's a fact. And young women do change their minds nowadays," the inspector said thoughtfully. "Always did for that matter. But I would not give much for her chance of marrying Skrine."

      The two men were in the inspector's office at Scotland Yard. The inspector had been down in the country on some mysterious business for the last day or two, and on his return to town this morning had been met by Harbord with the foregoing piece of information.

      The Hawksview Mansions Case was coming on at the Michaelmas Assizes, to be held in a fortnight. Basil Wilton had appeared before the magistrates and had been charged with murdering his wife, and had in due course been committed for trial. The coroner's inquest that had sat upon poor Iris Wilton's body had returned a verdict of "Wilful Murder against Basil Wilton." Public opinion, never too charitable, had long since decided that Wilton was guilty not only of murdering his wife, but also of killing Dr. Bastow. In most quarters Wilton's trial was looked upon as a mere formality, and many people opined that he might have been hanged without it.

      "Ruthven is to be the judge," Harbord went on. "I expect he will pretty well turn Wilton inside out. I suppose he will give evidence himself, sir?"

      "Oh, I suppose so," Stoddart acquiesced, "if the trial comes on. But I doubt whether he can tell us anything we don't know already."

      Harbord opened his eyes. "If the trial comes on, sir?"

      "It will, if the real murderer is not discovered before the time," the inspector said irritably. "Basil Wilton is not guilty, Harbord."

      "I have doubted it myself sometimes," the younger detective said thoughtfully. "But the evidence is very strong against him. The question of the time is so difficult. According to the medical evidence Mrs. Wilton died within a few minutes of Wilton's leaving the flat, either a few minutes before or a few minutes after. That brings it rather close. If he is not guilty, who is?"

      "You know as well as I do that the defence is not called upon to answer that question," Stoddart said, standing up and reaching for his hat. "If Wilton can be proved innocent, it does not matter to the defence who is guilty."

      Harbord glanced keenly at his superior.

      "Sometimes I have fancied that you have some definite suspicion, sir."

      The inspector met his eyes squarely.

      "Have you none?" he asked meaningly.

      Harbord considered a minute.

      "If sometimes a hazy suspicion has crossed my mind, I have no proof whatever."

      "Ah! That," said the inspector, "is a very different matter."

      As the last word left his lips there was a tap at the door.

      "A lady, sir, wants to speak to you. Leastways she said she must see the officer in charge of the Hawksview Mansions Case. Quite the lady, sir, but she wouldn't give her name. Said you wouldn't know it."

      "There," the inspector said quickly, "she is probably mistaken. Ask her to walk in, Miles."

      Harbord looked puzzled.

      "Who can it be?"

      "Probably the maid at the flat. Maids and ladies look all alike nowadays with their silk stockings and shingled heads. Miles would not know the difference. I dare say that girl did not tell us all she knew."

      "They will get it out of her at the trial," Harbord began, just as the constable ushered in a tall woman whom both men knew at once to be a stranger to them.

      Little as could be seen of her face with the black hat pulled low over it, and the collar of her coat turned up high all round, the detectives recognized at once that Miles's description had been correct enough. This was unmistakably a lady.

      She looked from one to the other.

      "You are in charge of the Hawksview Mansions Case?"

      Stoddart bowed.

      "I am, madam. If you have anything to tell us—"

      "I should have preferred to see you alone," the newcomer said in a clear, musical voice.

      "Mr. Harbord is my trusted assistant, madam."

      The inspector drew forward a chair. She took it with a word of thanks.

      "I have come here this morning, inspector, because I understand that Basil Wilton is supposed to have killed Dr. Bastow and then to have murdered his wife in order to get her money and marry Miss Bastow."

      "That is one theory, I believe, madam," the inspector assented. "But we are here to deal with facts, not theories."

      "Well, it is to disprove this theory which I hear constantly put forward that I am here today," the stranger went on. "Basil Wilton did not kill Dr. Bastow."

      The interest in the detective's eyes deepened, grew absorbed.

      "You can prove that, madam? If you can tell us who—"

      "Ah, no, I can't do that. But I can tell you that Basil Wilton was in the surgery copying out a prescription when the doctor was murdered."

      "And how do you know that?" the inspector questioned sharply. "Were you with him as a patient?"

      "No," said the visitor calmly. "I was not a patient. I was Dr. Bastow's parlourmaid." The inspector looked at her.

      "You are—?"

      "Mary Anne Taylor," she finished.

      "Are you aware," the inspector said as he took the seat opposite her on the other side of his desk, "that you have been searched for, advertised for?"

      "Quite! But it did not suit me to come forward until I knew that an innocent person was accused. Then—then I had to. There were reasons before why—"

      "It will save time, I think, if I tell you at once that we know that you are Mrs. Carr," the inspector said very deliberately.

      "You know that!" Mrs. Carr was obviously completely taken aback at first, but she speedily recovered herself. "Then possibly you can understand that, having been accused of murder once, it seemed all important to get away from a house in which another murder had been committed. I felt certain that I should be suspected. No story СКАЧАТЬ