find it stowed away in the kitchen….'
The mist was clearing as they emerged from the restaurant. The theatre traffic had just begun to thin in the glare of Shaftesbury Avenue, and Hadley had some difficulty in manoeuvring his car. But, once out of the centre of town and across Oxford Street, he accelerated the big Daimler to a fast pace. Bloomsbury lay deserted under high and mournful gaslamps. They cut across into Great Russell Street, and turned left past the long shadows of the British Museum….
Tavistock Square was large and oblong in shape, not too well supplied with street lights. Along the west side the buildings were higher than on the others, and rather more imposing in a heavy. Georgian style. Tavistock Chambers proved to be a red-brick block of flats with four entry halls, two on either side of an arch beneath which a driveway led into the court. Into this court Hadley drove the car.
`So this,' he said, `is the way the woman escaped. I don't wonder she wasn't noticed.'
He slid from under the wheel and peered about. There was only one lamp in the court, but the mist was rapidly lifting into a clear, cold night.
`Lower parts of the windows frosted glass,' the chief inspector grunted. `I left instructions to question the tenants about her, but it's useless. A Red Indian in his war bonnet could have walked out of here without being seen. Let's see…. Those are the glass doors giving on the rear of the entry halls. We want the third- entry. There it is. That'll be Driscoll's flat, with the light in the rear window. Evidently my man hasn't left the place yet.'
He crossed to the glass door, stumbled over a rubbish can, and disturbed a hysterical cat. The others followed him up some steps into a red-tiled hall with brown distempered walls. Its only illumination was a sickly electric bulb in the cage of the automatic lift.' But a thin line of light slanted out from the door on their left, which was not quite closed, and they saw the splintered wood about the lock.
Flat 2. Rampole's eyes moved to the door facing it across the hall, where the watchful Mrs Larkin might be peering out from the flap of the letter-slot.
There was a crash, sudden and violent. The line of light in the doorway of Flat 2 seemed to shake, and the noise echoed hollowly up the lift-well. It had come from that door….
While the echoes were still trembling, Hadley moved swiftly across to the door and pushed it open. Rampole, peering over his shoulder, saw the disorder of Philip Driscoll's sitting-room as it had been described a short time ago, But there was another piece of disorder now.
In the wall directly opposite was a mantelpiece with an ornate mirror behind the shelf. And in front of this mantel piece, his back to the new-comers, a tall and heavy man stood with his head bowed., They saw past his shoulder a foolish plaster figurine standing on the mantelshelf; a woman painted in bright colours, with,a tight- waisted dress and a silver hair-net, But there was no companion figure beside it. The hearthstone was littered with a. thousand white fragments to show where the other figure had been flung down a moment before.
Just for a moment the tableau held — weird and somehow terrible in its power. The echo of that crash seemed to linger; its passion still quivered in the bent back of the man standing there.
Then his hand moved out slowly, and seized the other figure. And as he raised it his head lifted and they saw his face in the mirror.
`Good evening,' said, Dr Fell. `You're Mr Lester Bitton, aren't you?'
11. The Little Plaster Dolls
Never before that time, Rampole afterwards thought, had he ever seen a man's naked face. Never had he seen it as for a brief instant he saw Lester Bitton's face in the mirror. At all times in life there are masks and guards, and in the brain a tiny bell gives warning. But here was a man caught blind in his anguish.
He looked a little like his brother, though his face was inclined to be reddish and have heavy folds. But you could not tell now.
The lost, damned eyes stared back at them from the mirror. His wrist wobbled, and the figure almost slid through his fingers. He took it with his other hand and put it back up on the mantelpiece..
`Who the hell,' said Lester Bitton, `are you?'
His deep voice was hoarse, and it cracked. That almost finished him, but he fought his nerves. `What God damned right have you got to walk in… '
`Steady,' said Hadley, quietly. `I'm afraid it's you who have to make an explanation. This flat has been taken over by the police, you know. And I'm afraid we can't respect private feelings in a murder case. You are Lester Bitton, aren't you?'
The man's heavy breathing quieted somewhat, and the wrath died out of his eyes.
`I am,' he said in a lower voice. `Who are you?' 'My name is Hadley
'Ah,' said the other, 'I see.' He was groping backwards, and he found the edge of, a heavy leather chair. Slowly he lowered himself until he was sitting on the arm. Then he made, a gesture. `Well, here I am.'
`What are you doing here, Mr Bitton?'
'I suppose you don't know?' Bitton asked, bitterly. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the smashed figure on the hearthstone.
The chief inspector played his advantage. He studied Bitton without threat and almost without interest. Slowly he opened his brief-case, drew out a typewritten sheet — which was only Constable Somers' report, as Rampole saw — and glanced at it.
`We know, of course, that you have employed a firm of private detectives to watch your wife. And — he glanced at the sheet again- `that one of their operatives, a Mrs. Larkin, lives directly across the hall from here.'
`Rather smart, you Scotland Yard men,'' the other observed in an impersonal voice. `Well, that's right. Nothing illegal in that, I suppose. You also know, then, that I don't need to waste my money any longer.'
`We know that Mr Driscoll is dead.'
Bitton nodded. His heavy, reddish, rather thickly-lined face was assuming normal appearance.
`Yes,' he said, reflectively. `The swine's dead. I heard it when I went home to dinner. But I'm afraid it hasn't cut my detective agency off from much money. I was intending to pay them off and get rid of them to-morrow. Business conditions being what they are, I couldn't afford an unnecessary expense.!’
'That, Mr Bitton, is open to two meanings. Which of them do you imply?'
'Let's be frank, Mr…. er… Hadley. I have played the fool. You know I was having my wife followed. I owe her a profound apology. What I have discovered only does credit to her name.'
Hadley's face wore a faint smile.
'Mr Bitton,' he said, 'I had intended having a conversation with you tonight, and this is as good a place as any. I shall have to ask you a number of questions.
`As you wish'
Hadley looked round at his companions. Dr Fell was running his eyes over the small, pleasant room, with its dull, brown-papered walls, sporting prints, and leather chairs. One of the chairs had been knocked over. The drawer of a side-table had been thrown, upside down on the floor, its contents scattered. Dr Fell stumped across and peered down.
`Theatre programmes,' he said, `magazines, old invitations, bills…. H'm. 'Nothing I want here. The desk and the, typewriter will be in the other rooms somewhere. Excuse me. Carry on with the questioning'
He disappeared through a door at the rear.
Hadley removed his bowler, gestured Rampole to a chair, and sat down himself.
`Mr Bitton,' he said, harshly, `I suggest that you be frank. I am not concerned with your wife's morals, or with yours, except in so far as they concern a particularly brutal murder. You have admitted you had her followed. Why do you trouble to deny that there was an affair between your wife and Philip Driscoll?'
`That's a damned lie. If you insinuate.’
`I don't insinuate. I tell you. You can hardly be very excited by an insinuation which you made, yourself when you put a private detective on her movements can you? Let's not waste time. You have the 'Mary' notes, Mr Bitton.'
'Mary? Who the devil is Mary?'
