‘You don’t eh? Well, the impression of that glass was still moist.’
‘Yes, I noticed that. So what?’
‘Yet there was no glass or bottle in the room which could have made it. Someone took that glass away. Who was it?’
Richardson stared at his chief more subdued and crestfallen than ever. He paid sincere tribute to Inspector Price’s alertness.
It looks as though we have to find out the answer to your question,
‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be very easy,’ said Richardson dolesfully. ‘All I can hope, sir, is that your foresight in having the Science Section on the job before anything was disturbed will produce something to help us.’
‘So do I,’ said Price grimly.
A little later they found that the only assistance the Science Section could offer them was several sets of unidentifiable fingerprints.
‘Those of the left hand were taken just here on the floor,’ explained Sergeant Jarman. ‘You will see from the plan that they were near to the old cushion Pansy used for a pillow. And just here we got a full impression of the right hand. There are a couple of smudged prints from the oilcloth, but they had been rubbed over. They might have been anybody’s, but these are clear enough and they don’t belong to you, or Richardson, or Bailey, the uniformed man.’
‘And it’s too much to hope that they belong to somebody we know, of course, Sergeant?’ asked Price.
Jarman nodded. ‘Sorry, Inspector. That does happen to be the case, worse luck for you.’
Price stared at the photographs. ‘It’s plain enough, I think,’ he said, ‘that the prints of the right hand were made when he rested his weight on it to lift up her head while he gave her the drink of poison. The left hand prints would be from resting his weight on that hand while he put down the glass on the box she used for a table.’
‘Yes, that’s the way we reconstructed it,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘There was nothing in the room which could have left an impression identical with that left by the glass on the oilcloth. There was evidence of cyanide in that smear, but the glass itself was gone. It proves it’s a clear case of murder all right. Now, I wonder who would want to murder old Pansy, and why?’
Sergeant Jarman left the room happily aware that this knotty problem was not his pigeon, and pleasantly unconscious of the indignant glare his final remark evoked from Richardson.
‘Well, now we’ve got to face up to it, I suppose,’ said Richardson gloomily. ‘Nothing else to help us, I suppose?’
‘Only one thing which seems a bit out of the ordinary,’ replied Price. ‘At the morgue they found that in spite of old Pansy’s dirty outside rags, her underclothes were of much better quality and her body was amazingly clean. Can we make anything out of that?’
If something could be made out of it, it would not be by Richardson, and he admitted as much.
He was relieved when Price suggested that he start at once questioning everybody who lived in the immediate neighborhood of the murdered woman, and devote himself entirely to getting on the track of the man who had entered her room the previous night.
‘Well, that’s something definite to track up, anyhow,’ he said, and was pleased when Price added, ‘And it’s most important that you find someone who saw him. When we find out who he was, we shall need that identification as well.’
As Detective Richardson departed he was amazed at Inspector Price’s cheerfulness, and thought Price would not be so jaunty when their investigations had failed to locate the mysterious visitor to a frowsy old nobody who bade fair to furnish an insoluble problem for the C.I.B.
Richardson had not yet absorbed Inspector Price’s confidence in the belief, based on records, that the great majority of crimes are solved in due course.
That evening and the whole of the next day Richardson devoted to questioning people in Hutchinson Alley where old Pansy had been found dead.
They told him that they ‘would never have known old Pansy from her picture in the papers. It made her look like a bloomin’ toff, and no error.’ Richardson thought so, too, and wondered why Price had had the photo so much touched up.
To describe the photograph as ‘touched up’ was to put it mildly. Under Inspector Price’s instructions, an artist had made an entirely new picture out of the photograph of old Pansy, while, at the same time, contriving to leave a resemblance which seemed grotesque to the young detective.
It was as though old Pansy had had a twin sister, one who had closely resembled her in features while differing from her in habits. He found it impossible to believe that old Pansy could have looked like this, even if she had never taken to drink and the other weaknesses which had made her face a tragic caricature of the picture reproduced under the deft brush of the artist working under Inspector Price’s careful instructions.
To the young detective, it seemed a foolish bit of business on Inspector Price’s part. What could be the value to police detection of pandering in this way to a drunken old flibberty-gibbet – and a dead one, at that?
If she had been alive, Price’s motive would have been understandable, for the young detective was well aware of an aptitude of Inspector Price for indulging in flattery, and the flattery did not always have to be subtle.
Richardson banished this aspect of the matter from his mind, writing it down as just one more of Price’s whimsicalities, and devoted himself assiduously to the more practical side.
Early in his inquiries he had been exhilarated on learning from several of them that a man had been seen to enter the dwelling and had also been seen to leave again within a few minutes.
This information whetted his interest and he devoted his whole attention to the task of building up a clear impression of this individual, who undoubtedly was the murderer.
But persist as he would, he could get no detailed description of the visitor. All agreed that he was a man about 5 ft 10 ins. and walked with a slight limp.
‘All I have to do now is go round and find the right one out of about 5,000 men who walk with a slight limp in the left leg,’ said Richardson sourly as he returned to the C.I.B. to report.
But Inspector Price appeared pleased with the results, scantry though they were.
‘Good work, my boy. You’ve been very patient and thorough, and that’s the only way to solve a difficult police case,’ he commended. ‘Now you can come along with me and I think we might take the investigation a step further. It will please you to have a drink with an up-and-coming public man who intends getting into Parliament at the next elections.’
In the police car they called at the large and comfortable hotel in Camperdown. In a few minutes they were seated in the proprietor’s private office, just off the saloon bar.
‘I think you know Richardson, Mr Dalton.’
Mr Dalton was a very handsome man. He was also well groomed, and his voice was exceedingly pleasant.
Richardson liked him at once. Seated in his office, the proprietor shook hands affably with the detectives and discussed a burglary which had occurred, so Price said, in the neighborhood the previous night.
But Mr Dalton was unable to help them, as he had noticed no strangers of the type to excite suspicion within the past few days. Price insisted on taking out the tray himself for the second round of drinks, after which the C.I.B. men departed.
‘Dafton’s a nice chap, even if he couldn’t help us,’ said Richardson.
‘I hope he doesn’t miss his whisky glass I pinched,’ replied Price. ‘It’s a very serious offence to steal glasses from hotels, and there’s been a lot of it going on lately. I feel like a criminal.’
Inspector Price did not appear contrite. In fact, there was an undeniable smirk on his face.
While Richardson stared, he gently withdrew from his coat pocket a whisky glass which was held carefully between two fingers distended within the glass itself.
‘His fingerprints will be plain on the outside of it, you see,’ said Price. ‘I hope they’ll tell us something.’
‘But where the devil does the publican come into it?’
‘Maybe you’ll be surprised – and maybe I will,’ detorted Price. ‘Anyhow, we’ll soon find out.’
Within a couple of minutes after their return, Jarman was able to assure them that Dalton ’s fingerprints were identical with those on the floor. ‘You’ve got your man,’ he said.
