The Clifford Affair. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ on his head at Ispahan. On the real, solid head. Duly delivered. That's why the descriptions we get from there are so vague. All we know of his appearance is that he has unusually small feet, and really beautiful hands."

      "First thing I noticed about the corpse." Maybrick was sorting his notes. "Here it is. Par seven."

      "Yes," Tindall was talking half under his breath, "Mirza Khan is over here, we know. He's the Shah's secret agent. It's his head or Etcheverrey's, I understand. We know that Etcheverrey is in London again. Sir Edward Clifford rather inclines to the belief that he's been here for years, carefully hidden in some commonplace identity, and that he only leaves London for some swift flight and one of his lightning efforts, and then comes back again and takes up his seemingly everyday existence. I don't agree with him, but that's Sir Edward's view."

      Sir Edward Clifford was Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

      "Every man jack of us has been living on a volcano, with the King of Spain on his way here next month." Maybrick drew a deep breath.

      "Etcheverrey nearly got him in Spain last year," Tindall went on, "just as he had a hard try for our Prince of Wales in South America." He was examining the room carefully as he talked. There was little to discover. A smallish, still damp splotch of blood on the thick carpet near a little table on which stood a reading-lamp. A few drops of blood had dried on the wooden edge of the table. Smaller ones yet were found on the parchment lamp-shade, and a hint of a trickle down one leg of the arm-chair standing near.

      "There's been no struggle?" Tindall looked at Pointer.

      "No sign of any," Pointer said cautiously.

      "Just so. Yet the man summoned by such a letter as that would have been on the alert and would have struggled. Etcheverrey, on the other hand, would not dream that the tables could be turned on him. He was either shot, or more probably slogged on the head. Dragged to the tub, beheaded, and the head's now on its way to distant Ispahan in the care of that good old hater, Mirza Khan. But all that's for me to find out."

      "Well, sir," Maybrick slipped a band over his bulging note-book, "as you're quite sure that the murder was political, I hand it over to you."

      The Superintendent was aware that he had done very well. But he knew when he was out of his depth. Nor had he any intention of wasting his time over a case of which the honours would all go to the Foreign Office. They had their own men. It was all very well for the Chief Inspector, who had already, young though he was, risen so high, but he, Maybrick, had more paying matters from the point of view of promotion waiting for him at his police station. And so with a salute, he passed from the scene—to his never dying regret.

      "Now for the porters," Tindall continued, when the two were alone. They learnt nothing which could explain the crime itself from them, though they gained a clear idea of how the flat could have been entered and left by any one unobserved. The building had several lifts, the corner ones being automatic and worked by the residents. There were many staircases. There was a restaurant on the ground floor open to the public. There were billiard rooms and reading rooms.

      The estate agent, for whom they telephoned, repeated in fuller detail what Maybrick had already told them about the taking of the flat. Monsieur Tourcoin had paid for the four weeks in twenty-four one-pound notes, and the transaction had been completed on the spot.

      "No references asked for?"

      "Not in a case of this kind. A furnished flat let for a month. The porters here keep their eyes open. And undesirable people would be asked to leave at once. We find that simpler and better than bothering with references," the house-agent explained.

      "Now as to this Mr. Marshall—"

      "We know all about Mr. Marshall. Our firm has known him and his parents, they lived in one of our houses, for twenty years. Just as we've known the head porter here about that long. There's nothing wrong with Mr. Marshall, I'll go bail, any more than there is with Soulyby, the head porter."

      "How did this Mr. Tourcoin learn of the flat?" Pointer asked.

      "Saw our advertisement in the paper, I suppose."

      "When was it advertised?"

      "Friday morning for the first time."

      "And the paper?"

      "The Times."

      "And he spoke broken English," Tindall murmured.

      The agent laughed. "Rather!" He gave them a very good copy of the man's accent.

      "On leaving, he nipped into a taxi which some one was just paying off, and called to the chauffeur. 'To the station at Charing Cross. Arrest yourself there for one little minute while I learn what time train for Paris he start.' The driver winked, and said he'd arrest himself all right if need be."

      "What clothes was the man wearing?" Pointer asked.

      "Motor cap—he apologised very civilly for keeping it on, but he had a bad attack of head neuralgia—big brown and orange check motoring coat. That's all I remember."

      "Young man?"

      The agent thought so, but as he had seen many men yesterday afternoon he could not be quite sure. The whole affair was so small compared with most of their business that he had not paid much attention.

      "Do you remember his hands, when he signed those papers," Pointer went on, "were they large hands?"

      The estate agent could not remember anything about them. More details of the conversation were asked, and as far as possible, given. Then the agent took his leave—a very agitated leave.

      The head porter had not noticed the appearance of the M. Tourcoin to whom he had shown the flat, except that the man wore a motoring ulster of orange and brown tweed, and a brown silk scarf. He had an impression of a young man, but as he had already on Friday afternoon shown the flat to several friends of Mr. Marshall's, he could not even be sure of that.

      The man had barely glanced over the flat.

      "I never thought he meant what he said about taking it, but within half an hour the agents phoned up to me that the flat was gone. Taken by the monseer for a month. As to seeing him again— not unless that's him in there. But the chap I showed the flat to, looked a bigger chap. Bigger and brawnier, though I never saw his face. Not to see it."

      "Was he smoking?" Pointer asked.

      "Yes, sir. Briarwood pipe. One of these new comfort pipes?

      "What kind of tobacco? Any kind you knew?"

      "Yes, sir." It was a kind that the head porter particularly liked when he could afford it. A well-known British make. "I says to myself," the man went on, "France is all very well for wines, but when it comes to pipes and baccy—there's nothing like Us!"

      "Umph," Tindall murmured, when the two were alone. "Tourcoin takes the flat for a Captain Brown. He or this captain Brown can be seen in it therefore. If need be. One of the two is Etcheverrey. Almost certainly he would be Brown. The Unseen. Now is Tourcoin the man to whom the summoning letters were sent? Is he the man who killed Etcheverrey? Is he, in fact, Mirza Khan, who speaks French—and English too for that matter—like a Frenchman?" There was a short silence broken by the Chief Inspector, who had been standing looking down at the toes of his shoes, hands loosely clasped СКАЧАТЬ