Red aces Being three cases of Mr. Reeder
“There is nothing to tell, my dear Mr. Gaylor; merely suspicion, bred,
as I said, in my peculiarly morbid mind, having perhaps no foundation
in fact. Those two cards, for example--that was a stupid piece of
bravado. But it has happened before. You remember the Teignmouth case,
and the Lavender Hill case, with the man with the slashed chest? I
think they must get these ideas out of books,” he said, bending over
to stir the embers of the fire. “The craze for that kind of literature
must necessarily produce its reaction.”
Gaylor took the cards from his pockets and examined them.
“A bit of tomfoolery,” was his verdict.
Mr. Reeder sighed and shook his head at the fire.
“Murderers as a rule have no sense of humour. They are excitable
people, frightened people, but they are never comic people.”
He walked to the door and pulled it open. Snow had ceased to fall. He
came back.
“Where is the policeman you propose leaving on duty?” he asked.
“I’ll find one,” said Gaylor. “There are half-a-dozen within call. A
whistle will bring one along.”
Mr. Reeder looked at him thoughtfully.
“I don’t think I should. Let us wait until daylight--or perhaps you
wish to go? I don’t think anybody would harm you. I rather fancy they
would be glad to see the back of you.”
“Harm me?” said Gaylor indignantly, but Reeder took no notice of the
interruption.
“My own idea is that I should brew a dish of tea, and possibly fry a
few eggs. I am a little hungry.”
Gaylor walked to the door and frowned out into the darkness. He had
worked with Reeder before, and was too wise a man to reject the advice
summarily. Besides, if Reeder was entering or had entered the Public
Prosecutor’s Department, he would occupy a rank equivalent to
superintendent.
“I’m all for eggs,” said Gaylor, and bolted the outer door.
The older man disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a
kettle, which he placed upon the fire, went out again and returned
with a frying-pan.
“Do you ever take your hat off?” asked Gaylor curiously.
Mr. Reeder did not turn his head, but shook the pan gently to ensure
an even distribution of the boiling fat.
“Very rarely,” he said. “On Christmas Days sometimes.”
And then Gaylor asked a fatuous question; at least, it sounded fatuous
to him, and yet subconsciously he felt that the other might supply an
immediate and dramatic answer.
“Who killed Wentford?”
“Two men, possibly three,” said Mr. Reeder instantly; “but I rather
think two. Neither was a professional burglar. One at any rate thought
more of the killing than of any profit he might have got out of it.
Neither found anything worth taking, and even if they had opened the
safe they would have discovered nothing of value. The young lady, Miss
Margot Lynn, could, I think, have saved them a lot of trouble in their
search for treasure--I may be mistaken here, but I rarely fall into
error. Miss Margot is----”
He stopped, looked round quickly.
“What is it?” asked Gaylor, but Reeder put his finger to his lips.
He rose, moving across the room to the door which led to the tiny
lobby through which he had made his entrance. He stood with one hand
on the knob, and Gaylor saw that in the other was a Browning pistol.
Slowly he turned the handle. The door was locked from the inside.
In two strides Reeder was at the front door, turned the key and pulled
it open. Then, to the inspector’s amazement, he saw his companion take
one step and fall sprawling on his face in the snow. He ran to his
assistance. Something caught him by the ankle and flung him forward.
Reeder was on his feet and assisted the other to rise.
“A little wire fastened between the door posts,” he explained.
A bright beam shot out from his electric torch as he turned the corner
of the house. There was nobody in sight, but the window, which he had
fastened, was open, and there were new footprints in the snow leading
away into the darkness.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Gaylor.
J.G. Reeder said nothing. He was smiling when he came back into the
room, having stopped to break the wire with a kick.
“Do you think somebody was in the lobby?”
“I know somebody was in the lobby,” he said. “Dear me! How foolish of
us not to have had a policeman posted outside the door! You notice
that a pane of glass has been cut? Our friend must have been listening
there.”
“Was there only one?”
“Only one,” said Mr. Reeder gravely. “But was he the one who came that
way before--I don’t think so.”
He took the frying-pan from the hearth where he had put it and resumed
his frying of eggs, served them on two plates and brewed the tea. It
was just as though death had not lurked in that lobby a few minutes
before.
“No, they won’t come back; there is no longer a reason for our
staying. There were two, but only one came into the house. The roads
are very heavy, and they may have a long way to travel, and they would
not risk being anywhere near at daybreak. At six o’clock the
agricultural labourer of whom the poet Gray wrote so charmingly will
be on his way to work, and they won’t risk meeting him either.”
They had a solemn breakfast, Gaylor plying the other with questions,
which in the main he did not answer.
“You think that Miss Lynn is in this--in the murder, I mean?”
Reeder shook his head.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that.”
Daylight had come greyly when, having installed a cold policeman in
the house, they plodded down the lane. Reeder’s car had been retrieved
in the night, and a more powerful machine, fitted with chain-wheels,
was waiting to take them to Beaconsfield. They did not reach that
place for two hours, for on their way they came upon a little knot of
policemen and farm labourers looking sombrely at the body of Constable
Verity. He lay under some bushes a few yards from the road, and he was
dead.
“Shot,” said a police officer. “The divisional surgeon has just seen
him.”
Stiff and cold, with his booted legs stretched wide, his overcoat
turned up and his snow-covered cap drawn over his eyes, was the
officer who had ridden out from the station courtyard so
unsuspectingly the night before. His horse had already been found; the
bloodstains that had puzzled and alarmed the police were now accounted
for.
Gaylor and Reeder drove on into Beaconsfield. Gaylor was a depressed
and silent man; Mr. Reeder was silent but not depressed.
As they came out into the main road he turned to his companion, and
asked:
“I wonder why they didn’t bring their own aces?”
CHAPTER VI
The most accurate account of the double tragedy appeared in a late
edition of the _Evening Post-Courier_.
“At some hour between eight and ten James Verity, a member of the
Mounted Branch of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary, and Walter
Wentford, an eccentric, and, it is believed, a rich recluse, were done
to death in or in the vicinity of a lonely cottage in the
neighbourhood of Beaconsfield. At a quarter past nine Constable Verity
was patrolling the road and came upon a body which was afterwards
identified as that of the late Mr. Wentford, who lived in a small
cottage some hundred yards from the spot where the body was found. Mr.
Wentford had been brutally bludgeoned, and was dead when the discovery
was made. Simultaneously with the discovery there appeared upon the
scene Mr. Walter Enward, a well known Beaconsfield solicitor, and his
clerk, who, at Mr. Wentford’s request, were on their way to visit him.
It is believed Mr. Wentford intended making a will, though no
documents were found in the house to support this supposition.
“Leaving Mr. Enward to watch the body, Constable Verity rode toward
Beaconsfield to summon assistance. He was never seen alive after that
moment.
“The dead man’s niece, who also acted as his secretary, Miss Margot
Lynn, had been summoned from London, and she, arriving at the cottage
a few minutes after the body had been taken away by the unknown
murderers, discovered the place in disorder, though she did not at
that time suspect a tragedy.
“The mystery was still further complicated in the earlier hours of the
dawn, when a cow-boy, on his way to work, discovered the dead body of
Constable Verity on the Beaconsfield side of the lane where Mr.
Wentford’s body was found. He had been shot through the heart at close
range. No sound of the shot had been heard, but it may be explained
that there are very few houses in the neighbourhood, and snow was
falling heavily. A carter in the employment of a neighbouring farmer
thought he had heard a shot fired much earlier in the evening, but
this may be accounted for by the fact that snow was falling so thickly
on the railway line, which is situated a mile away, that fog signals
were being used.
“Chief Detective-Inspector Gaylor has been called in by the
Buckinghamshire police, and he is being assisted by Mr. J.G. Reeder,
of the Public Prosecutor’s Department.
“The time-table, so far as can be ascertained, is as follows:--
“7.0. Constable Verity left police station on patrol.
“9.14. Constable Verity discovers the dead body of Mr. Wentford.
“9.15. Mr. Enward and his clerk drive up by motor-car, and are stopped
by the constable, who rides into Beaconsfield for assistance.
“6.45 am. The body of Constable Verity is found shot dead 120 yards
north of where the body of Mr. Wentford was found.”
Mr. Kingfether, the sub-manager of the Beaconsfield branch of the
Great Central Bank, read this account and was rightly agitated. He got
to the bank very early that morning, for he had a letter to write, and
his managerial office gave him the privacy he required. He was a
serious man, with serious-looking spectacles on a pale, plump face. He
had a little black moustache and his cheeks and chin were invariably
blue, for he had what barbers call a “strong beard.”
The newspapers arrived as he was writing. They were pushed under the
closed outer door of the bank, and, being at the moment stuck for the
alternative to an often reiterated term of endearment, he rose and
brought the newspapers into the office, put a new coal on the fire and
sat down to glance through them. There were two papers, one financial
and one human.
He read the latter first, and there was the murder in detail, though
it had only occurred the night before. The discovery of the
constable’s body was not described, because it had not been discovered
when the paper went to press.
He read and re-read, his mind in a whirl, and then he took the
telephone and called Mr. Enward. That gentleman was also in his office
that snowy morning, though the hour was eight.
“Good morning, Kingfether… Yes, yes, it’s true.… I was practically a
witness--they’ve found the poor policeman… dead… yes, murdered… yes,
shot.… I was the last person to speak to him. Dreadful, dreadful,
dreadful! That such horrors can be--I say that such horrors can be.… I
said that such… What’s the matter with your phone? He banks with you?
Really? Really? I’ll come over and talk with you…”
Mr. Kingfether hung up the telephone and wiped his face with his
handkerchief. It was a face that became moist on the least
provocation. Presently he folded the newspaper and looked at his
unfinished letter. He was on the eighth page and the last words he had
written were:
“… can hardly live the day through without seeing your darling face,
my own…”
It was obvious that he was not writing to his general manager, or to a
client who had overdrawn his account.
He added “beloved” mechanically, though he had used the word a dozen
times before. Then he unfolded the paper and read of the murder again.
A knock at the side door: he went out to admit Enward. The lawyer was
more important than usual. Participation in public affairs has this