‘Then you don’t share the general belief in his guilt?’
‘I did at first, but I don’t now.’
‘You have discovered the guilty party?’
‘No – not yet – but I hope to.’
‘Tell me exactly all that has happened – there may still be a chance for your “assistant”.’
‘Yes, it is quite possible that now I may be able to avail myself of your services. You say you have studied the details of this case – let us just run through them together, and see what you think of my plan of campaign so far as it has gone. When old Mrs Hannaford came to me, her son had already been declared insane and unable to plead, and had gone to Broadmoor. That was nearly a month after the commission of the crime, so that much valuable time had been lost. At first I declined to take the matter up – the police had so thoroughly investigated the affair. The case seemed so absolutely conclusive that I told her that it would be useless for her to incur the heavy expense of a private investigation. But she pleaded so earnestly – her faith in her son was so great – and she seemed such a sweet, dear old lady, that at last she conquered my scruples, and I consented to study the case, and see if there was the slightest alternative theory to go on. I had almost abandoned hope, for there was nothing in the published reports to encourage it, when I determined to go to the fountain-head, and see the Superintendent who had had the case in hand.
‘He received me courteously, and told me everything. He was certain that the husband committed the murder. There was an entire absence of motive for anyone else in the house to have done it, and the husband’s flight from the house in the middle of the night was absolutely damning. I inquired if they had found anyone who had seen the husband in the street – anyone who could fix the time at which he had left the house. He replied that no such witness had been found. Then I asked if the policeman on duty that night had made any report of any suspicious characters being seen about. He said that the only person he had noticed at all was a man well known to the police – a man named Flash George. I asked what time Flash George had been seen and whereabouts, and I ascertained that it was at half-past two in the morning, and about a hundred yards below the scene of the crime, that when the policeman spoke to him he said he was coming from Hampstead, and was going to Covent Garden Market. He walked away in the direction of the Chalk Farm Road. I inquired what Flash George’s record was, and ascertained that he was the associate of thieves and swindlers, and he was suspected of having disposed of some jewels, the proceeds of a robbery which had made a nine days’ sensation. But the police had failed to bring the charge home to him, and the jewels had never been traced. He was also a gambler, a frequenter of racecourses and certain night-clubs of evil repute, and had not been seen about for some time previous to that evening.’
‘And didn’t the police make any further investigations in that direction?’
‘No. Why should they? There was nothing missing from the house – not the slightest sign of an attempted burglary. All their efforts were directed to proving the guilt of the unfortunate woman’s husband.’
‘And you?’
‘I had a different task – mine was to prove the husband’s innocence. I determined to find out something more of Flash George. I shut the house up, gave out that I had gone away, and took, amongst other things, to selling cards and pencils on racecourses. The day that Flash George made his reappearance on the turf after a long absence was the day that he backed the winner of the second race at Kempton Park for a hundred pounds.’
‘But surely that proves that if he had been connected with any crime it must have been one in which money was obtained. No one has attempted to associate the murder of Mrs Hannaford with robbery.’
‘No. But one thing is certain – that on the night of the crime Flash George was in the neighbourhood. Two days previously he had borrowed a few pounds of a pal because he was “stony broke”. When he reappears as a racing man, he has on a fur coat, is evidently in first-class circumstances, and he bets in hundred-pound notes. He is a considerably richer man after the murder of Mrs Hannaford than he was before, and he was seen within a hundred yards of the house at half-past two o’clock on the night that the crime was committed.’
‘That might have been a mere accident. His sudden wealth may be the result of a lucky gamble, or a swindle of which you know nothing. I can’t see that it can possibly have any bearing on the Hannaford crime, because nothing was taken from the house.’
‘Quite true. But here is a remarkable fact. When he went up to the betting man he went to one who was betting close to the rails. When he pulled out that hundred-pound note I was at the rails, and I pushed my cards in between and asked him to buy one. Flash George is a “suspected character”, and quite capable on a foggy day of trying to swindle a bookmaker. The bookmaker took the precaution to open that note, it being for a hundred pounds, and examined it carefully. That enabled me to see the number. I had sharpened pencils to sell, and with
