The Man in the Brown Suit
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"1 7 . 1 2 2 Kilmorden Castle"]
On the face of it, it certainly did not appear to be of any
importance. Still, I hesitated to throw it away. As I stood there
holding it, I involuntarily wrinkled my nose in displeasure. Moth
balls again! I held the paper gingerly to my nose. Yes, it smelt
strongly of them. But, then——
I folded up the paper carefully and put it in my bag. I walked home
slowly and did a good deal of thinking.
I explained to Mrs. Flemming that I had witnessed a nasty accident
in the Tube and that I was rather upset and would go to my room
and lie down. The kind woman insisted on my having a cup of tea.
After that I was left to my own devices, and I proceeded to carry
out a plan I had formed coming home. I wanted to know what it was
that had produced that curious feeling of unreality whilst I was
watching the doctor examine the body. First I lay down on the floor
in the attitude of the corpse, then I laid a bolster down in my
stead, and proceeded to duplicate, so far as I could remember,
every motion and gesture of the doctor. When I had finished I had
got what I wanted. I sat back on my heels and frowned at the
opposite walls.
There was a brief notice in the evening papers that a man had been
killed in the Tube, and a doubt was expressed whether it was
suicide or accident. That seemed to me to make my duty clear, and
when Mr. Flemming heard my story he quite agreed with me.
“Undoubtedly you will be wanted at the inquest. You say no one else
was near enough to see what happened?”
“I had the feeling some one 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 to 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 STABBED 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, M.P., 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 IV
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 as 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 of 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 connection 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 don’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 the young lady would tell us briefly what her ideas really
are on the subject, inspector?”
The inspector fell in with the suggestion readily enough.
“Yes, come now, Miss Beddingfeld, don’t be offended. You’ve asked
questions and hinted things. Just say straight out what it is
you’ve got in your head.”
I wavered between injured dignity and the overwhelming desire to
express my theories. Injured dignity went to the wall.
“You said at the inquest you were positive it wasn’t suicide?”
“Yes, I’m quite certain of that. The man was frightened. What
frightened him? It wasn’t me. But some one might have been walking
up the platform towards us—some one he recognized.”
“You didn’t see any one?”
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t turn my head. Then, as soon as the body
was recovered from the line, a man pushed forward to examine it,
saying he was a doctor.”
“Nothing unusual in that,” said the inspector dryly.
“But he wasn’t a doctor.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t a doctor,” I repeated.
“How do you know that, Miss Beddingfeld?”
“It’s difficult to say, exactly. I’ve worked in Hospital during
the war, and I’ve seen doctors handle bodies. There’s a sort of