I
Dermot Craddock was fraternizing with Armand Dessin of the Paris Prefecture. The two men had met on one or two occasions and got on well together. Since Craddock spoke French fluently, most of their conversation was conducted in that language.
“It is an idea only,” Dessin warned him, “I have a picture here of the corps de ballet—that is she, the fourth from the left—it says anything to you, yes?”
Inspector Craddock said that actually it didn’t. A strangled young woman is not easy to recognize, and in this picture all the young women concerned were heavily made up and were wearing extravagant bird headdresses.
“It could be,” he said. “I can’t go further than that. Who was she? What do you know about her?”
“Almost less than nothing,” said the other cheerfully. “She was not important, you see. And the Ballet Maritski—it is not important, either. It plays in suburban theatres and goes on tour—it has no real names, no stars, no famous ballerinas. But I will take you to see Madame Joilet who runs it.”
Madame Joilet was a brisk business-like Frenchwoman with a shrewd eye, a small moustache, and a good deal of adipose tissue.
“Me, I do not like the police!” She scowled at them, without camouflaging her dislike of the visit. “Always, if they can, they make me embarrassments.”
“No, no, Madame, you must not say that,” said Dessin, who was a tall thin melancholy-looking man. “When have I ever caused you embarrassments?”
“Over that little fool who drank the carbolic acid,” said Madame Joilet promptly. “And all because she has fallen in love with the chef d’orchestre—who does not care for women and has other tastes. Over that you made the big brouhaha! Which is not good for my beautiful ballet.”
“On the contrary, big box office business,” said Dessin. “And that was three years ago. You should not bear malice. Now about this girl, Anna Stravinska.”
“Well, what about her?” said Madame cautiously.
“Is she Russian?” asked Inspector Craddock.
“No, indeed. You mean, because of her name? But they all call themselves names like that, these girls. She was not important, she did not dance well, she was not particularly good-looking. Elle était assez bien, c’est tout. She danced well enough for the corps de ballet—but no solos.”
“Was she French?”
“Perhaps. She had a French passport. But she told me once that she had an English husband.”
“She told you that she had an English husband? Alive—or dead?”
Madame Joilet shrugged her shoulders.
“Dead, or he had left her. How should I know which? These girls—there is always some trouble with men—”
“When did you last see her?”
“I take my company to London for six weeks. We play at Tor-quay, at Bournemouth, at Eastbourne, at somewhere else I forget and at Hammersmith. Then we come back to France, but Anna—she does not come. She sends a message only that she leaves the company, that she goes to live with her husband’s family—some nonsense of that kind. I did not think it is true, myself. I think it more likely that she has met a man, you understand.”
Inspector Craddock nodded. He perceived that that was what Madame Joilet would invariably think.
“And it is no loss to me. I do not care. I can get girls just as good and better to come and dance, so I shrug the shoulders and do not think of it anymore. Why should I? They are all the same, these girls, mad about men.”
“What date was this?”
“When we return to France? It was—yes—the Sunday before Christmas. And Anna she leaves two—or is it three—days before that? I cannot remember exactly… But the end of the week at Hammersmith we have to dance without her—and it means rearranging things… It was very naughty of her—but these girls—the moment they meet a man they are all the same. Only I say to everybody. ‘Zut, I do not take her back, that one!’”
“Very annoying for you.”
“Ah! Me—I do not care. No doubt she passes the Christmas holiday with some man she has picked up. It is not my affair. I can find other girls—girls who will leap at the chance of dancing in the Ballet Maritski and who can dance as well—or better than Anna.”
Madame Joilet paused and then asked with a sudden gleam of interest:
“Why do you want to find her? Has she come into money?”
“On the contrary,” said Inspector Craddock politely. “We think she may have been murdered.”
Madame Joilet relapsed into indifference.
“Ca se peut! It happens. Ah, well! She was a good Catholic. She went to Mass on Sundays, and no doubt to confession.”
“Did she ever speak to you, Madame, of a son?”
“A son? Do you mean she had a child? That, now, I should consider most unlikely. These girls, all—all of them know a useful address to which to go. M. Dessin knows that as well as I do.”
“She may have had a child before she adopted a stage life,” said Craddock. “During the war, for instance.”
“Ah! dans la guerre. That is always possible. But if so, I know nothing about it.”
“Who amongst the other girls were her closest friends?”
“I can give you two or three names—but she was not very intimate with anyone.”
They could get nothing else useful from Madame Joilet.
Shown the compact, she said Anna had one of that kind, but so had most of the other girls. Anna had perhaps bought a fur coat in London—she did not know. “Me, I occupy myself with the rehearsals, with the stage lighting, with all the difficulties of my business. I have not time to notice what my artists wear.”
After Madame Joilet, they interviewed the girls whose names she had given them. One or two of them had known Anna fairly well, but they all said that she had not been one to talk much about herself, and that when she did, it was, so one girl said, mostly lies.
“She liked to pretend things—stories about having been the mistress of a Grand Duke—or of a great English financier—or how she worked for the Resistance in the war. Even a story about being a film star in Hollywood.”
Another girl said:
“I think that really she had had a very tame bourgeois existence. She liked to be in ballet because she thought it was romantic, but she was not a good dancer. You understand that if she were to say, ‘My father was a draper in Amiens,’ that would not be romantic! So instead she made up things.”
“Even in London,” said the first girl, “she threw out hints about a very rich man who was going to take her on a cruise round the world, because she reminded him of his dead daughter who had died in a car accident. Quelle blague!”
“She told me she was going to stay with a rich lord in Scotland,” said the second girl. “She said she would shoot the deer there.”
None of this was helpful. All that seemed to emerge from it was that Anna Stravinska was a proficient liar. She was certainly not shooting deer with a a peer in Scotland, and it seemed equally unlikely that she was on the sun deck of a liner cruising round the world. But neither was there any real reason to believe that her body had been found in a sarcophagus at Rutherford Hall. The identification by the girls and Madame Joilet was very uncertain and hesitating. It looked something like Anna, they all agreed. But really! All swollen up—it might be anybody!
The only fact that was established was that on the 19th of December Anna Stravinska had decided not to return to France, and that on the 20th December a woman resembling her in appearance had travelled to Brackhampton by the 4:33 train and had been strangled.
If the woman in the sarcophagus was not Anna Stravinska, where was Anna now?
To that, Madame Joilet’s answer was simple and inevitable.
“With a man!”
And it was probably the correct answer, Craddock reflected ruefully.
One other possibility had to be considered—raised by the casual remark that Anna had once referred to having an English husband.
Had that husband been Edmund Crackenthorpe?
It seemed unlikely, considering the word picture of Anna that had been given him by those who knew her. What was much more probable was that Anna had at one time known the girl Martine sufficiently intimately to be acquainted with the necessary details. It might have been Anna who wrote that letter to Emma Crackenthorpe and, if so, Anna would have been quite likely to have taken fright at any question of an investigation. Perhaps she had even thought it prudent to sever her connection with the Ballet Maritski. Again, where was she now?
And again, inevitably, Madame Joilet’s answer seemed the most likely.
With a man….
II
Before leaving Paris, Craddock discussed with Dessin the question of the woman named Martine. Dessin was inclined to agree with his English colleague that the matter had probably no connection with the woman found in the sarcophagus. All the same, he agreed, the matter ought to be investigated.
He assured Craddock that the Sûreté would do their best to discover if there actually was any record of a marriage between Lieutenant Edmund Crackenthorpe of the 4th Southshire Regiment and a French girl whose Christian name was Martine. Time—just prior to the fall of Dunkirk.
He warned Craddock, however, that a definite answer was doubtful. The area in question had not only been occupied by the Germans at almost exactly that time, but subsequently that part of France had suffered severe war damage at the time of the invasion. Many buildings and records had been destroyed.
“But rest assured, my dear colleague, we shall do our best.”
With this, he and Craddock took leave of each other.
III
On Craddock’s return Sergeant Wetherall was waiting to report with gloomy relish:
“Accommodation address, sir—that’s what 126 Elvers Crescent is. Quite respectable and all that.”
“Any identifications?”
“No, nobody could recognize the photograph as that of a woman who had called for letters, but I don’t think they would anyway—it’s a month ago, very near, and a good many people use the place. It’s actually a boarding-house for students.”
“She might have stayed there under another name.”
“If so, they didn’t recognize her as the original of the photograph.”
He added:
“We circularized the hotels—nobody registering as Martine Crackenthorpe anywhere. On receipt of your call from Paris, we checked up on Anna Stravinska. She was registered with other members of the company in a cheap hotel off Brook Green. Mostly theatricals there. She cleared out on the night of Thursday 19th after the show. No further record.”
Craddock nodded. He suggested a line of further inquiries—though he had little hope of success from them.
After some thought, he rang up Wimborne, Henderson and Carstairs and asked for an appointment with Mr. Wimborne.
In due course, he was ushered into a particularly airless room where Mr. Wimborne was sitting behind a large old-fashioned desk covered with bundles of dusty-looking papers. Various deed boxes labelled Sir John ffouldes, dec., Lady Derrin, George Rowbottom, Esq., ornamented the walls; whether as relics of a bygone era or as part of present-day legal affairs, the inspector did not know.
Mr. Wimborne eyed his visitor with the polite wariness characteristic of a family lawyer towards the police.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“This letter…” Craddock pushed Martine’s letter across the table. Mr. Wimborne touched it with a distasteful finger but did not pick it up. His colour rose very slightly and his lips tightened.
“Quite so,” he said; “quite so! I received a letter from Miss Emma Crackenthorpe yesterday morning, informing me of her visit to Scotland Yard and of—ah—all the circumstances. I may say that I am at a loss to understand—quite at a loss—why I was not consulted about this letter at the time of its arrival! Most extraordinary! I should have been informed immediately….”
Inspector Craddock repeated soothingly such platitudes as seemed best calculated to reduce Mr. Wimborne to an amenable frame of mind.
“I’d no idea that there was ever any question of Edmund’s having married,” said Mr. Wimborne in an injured voice.
Inspector Craddock said that he supposed—in war time—and left it to trail away vaguely.
“War time!” snapped Mr. Wimborne with waspish acerbity. “Yes, indeed, we were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at the outbreak of war and there was a direct hit on the house next door, and a great number of our records were destroyed. Not the really important documents, of course; they had been removed to the country for safety. But it caused a great deal of confusion. Of course, the Crackenthorpe business was in my father’s hands at that time. He died six years ago. I dare say he may have been told about this so-called marriage of Edmund’s—but on the face of it, it looks as though that marriage, even if contemplated, never took place, and so, no doubt, my father did not consider the story of any importance. I must say, all this sounds very fishy to me. This coming forward, after all these years, and claiming a marriage and a legitimate son. Very fishy indeed. What proofs had she got, I’d like to know?”
“Just so,” said Craddock. “What would her position, or her son’s position be?”
“The idea was, I suppose, that she would get the Crackenthorpes to provide for her and for the boy.”
“Yes, but I meant, what would she and the son be entitled to, legally speaking—if she could prove her claim?”
“Oh, I see.” Mr. Wimborne picked up his spectacles which he had laid aside in his irritation, and put them on, staring through them at Inspector Craddock with shrewd attention. “Well, at the moment, nothing. But if she could prove that the boy was the son of Edmund Crackenthorpe, born in lawful wedlock, then the boy would be entitled to his share of Josiah Crackenthorpe’s trust on the death of Luther Crackenthorpe. More than that, he’d inherit Rutherford Hall, since he’s the son of the eldest son.”
“Would anyone want to inherit the house?”
“To live in? I should say, certainly not. But that estate, my dear Inspector, is worth a considerable amount of money. Very considerable. Land for industrial and building purposes. Land which is now in the heart of Brackhampton. Oh, yes, a very considerable inheritance.”
“If Luther Crackenthorpe dies, I believe you told me that Cedric gets it?”
“He inherits the real estate—yes, as the eldest living son.”
“Cedric Crackenthorpe, I have been given to understand, is not interested in money?”
Mr. Wimborne gave Craddock a cold stare.
“Indeed? I am inclined, myself, to take statements of such a nature with what I might term a grain of salt. There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.”
Mr. Wimborne obviously derived a certain satisfaction from this remark.
Inspector Craddock hastened to take advantage of this ray of sunshine.
“Harold and Alfred Crackenthorpe,” he ventured, “seem to have been a good deal upset by the arrival of this letter?”
“Well they might be,” said Mr. Wimborne. “Well they might be.”
“It would reduce their eventual inheritance?”
“Certainly. Edmund Crackenthorpe’s son—always presuming there is a son—would be entitled to a fifth share of the trust money.”
“That doesn’t really seem a very serious loss?”
Mr. Wimborne gave him a shrewd glance.
“It is a totally inadequate motive for murder, if that is what you mean.”
“But I suppose they’re both pretty hard up,” Craddock murmured.
He sustained Mr. Wimborne’s sharp glance with perfect impassivity.
“Oh! So the police have been making inquiries? Yes, Alfred is almost incessantly in low water. Occasionally he is very flush of money for a short time—but it soon goes. Harold, as you seem to have discovered, is at present somewhat precariously situated.”
“In spite of his appearance of financial prosperity?”
“Façade. All façade! Half these city concerns don’t even know if they’re solvent or not. Balance sheets can be made to look all right to the inexpert eye. But when the assets that are listed aren’t really assets—when those assets are trembling on the brink of a crash—where are you?”
“Where, presumably, Harold Crackenthorpe is, in bad need of money.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have got it by strangling his late brother’s widow,” said Mr. Wimborne. “And nobody’s murdered Luther Crackenthorpe which is the only murder that would do the family any good. So, really, Inspector, I don’t quite see where your ideas are leading you?”
The worst of it was, Inspector Craddock thought, that he wasn’t very sure himself.
Chapter Fourteen