The Mortover Grange Affair

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THE MORTOVER GRANGE AFFAIR

THE MORTOVER GRANGE AFFAIR

BY

Chapter 1: The Handel Street Flat

THE MORTOVER GRANGE AFFAIR

CHAPTER ONE

THE HANDEL STREET FLAT

The third house from the Hunter Street corner of Brunswick Square was distinguished from its neighbour houses by a red lamp, hanging at its entrance, and beneath this lamp, about half-past seven o'clock of a misty October evening, a woman, breathless and frightened, was frantically knocking at the closed door. Had she looked more closely at her surroundings, she would have seen a small brass plate, fixed on the wall of the house, by which attention was directed to the surgery in a side-passage, and to certain periods of attendance thereat, one of which was just then in being. But the woman was much too agitated to notice anything; either from the haste she had made to the red lamp, or from some recent shock, she was trembling all over and muttering incoherently to herself, and when, in response to her beating on the panels, the door suddenly opened, and a young man in a white jacket appeared on the threshold, she had to make a visible effort before she could gasp out two words:

"The doctor!"

"I am the doctor!" answered the young man, quickly. "What is it?—an accident!"

The woman lifted her hand towards her heart and staggered a little against the door post. Again she made an effort at self control and speech.

"A—a—I don't know!" she said, jerkily. "A man—in my flat! Dead, I think—murdered!"

The man in the white jacket stepped straight out of his door, closing it behind him.

"Where is your flat?" he asked quietly.

"Just round the corner," replied the woman. "Handel Street. This man called on me. Business. I had to leave him in my flat a few minutes alone. When I went back I found him dead! Struck down by somebody."

"Have you called the police!" asked the doctor. He was already walking quickly towards the corner of the square, the woman hurrying at his side. "Or anybody else?—your neighbours?"

"Nobody! I gave one glance at him and ran for you," she answered. "But I'm sure he's dead. I—I saw blood! And he was so—so still!"

The doctor made no remark. He turned the corner and went swiftly along to the opening into Handel Street. There beneath a gas-lamp two policemen stood, talking, and he made up to them.

"This lady says a man is lying dead in her flat in this street—she believes he has been murdered there, in her absence," he said in matter-of-fact tones. "One of you had better come to the flat with me and the other report at the police-station. If your police-surgeon is handy, send him along."

The elder of the two policemen, who had sergeant's stripes on his uniform, gave the woman a keen glance, ending in sudden recognition.

"Miss Tandy, isn't it, ma'am?" he said. "Just so—did a bit of a job for you last year, Miss Tandy. In your flat, eh, ma'am—that's Number 3 in Number 5, I recollect." He turned to the other man and said a few words. "Well?" he continued, as the man moved off towards the adjacent police-station in Hunter Street. "We'd best go up, eh?"

Miss Tandy led the two men up the stairs that gave access to her flat: the doctor, sharp of perception, noticed that the street door of that particular house was open and was apparently always left so until some fixed hour of the evening. Flat Number 3 was on the second floor; its outer door was slightly ajar, as Miss Tandy had left it when she ran to the red lamp round the corner. And as she approached it now, she shrank back.

"You go in—first," she whispered to her companions. "I—I'm still frightened about it. Such a shock——"

The police-sergeant pushed open the door and strode in, followed closely by the doctor. They crossed a neat, orderly little hall, and entered a parlour in which the electric light was turned on at the full. In its white glare they saw the dead man—that he was dead the doctor realized as soon as he set eyes on him. He lay crumpled up across the hearthrug—a white skin rug on which there was already a rapidly spreading patch of darkening red—and near him was a light chair, on which he had evidently been sitting when assailed, and now lay overturned between a centre table and the fender.

The dead man's face was full in the light, and the two men took a careful look at him. An elderly man, this—probably sixty, at least. A good-looking man, somewhat worn, and grey-haired, with a well-shaped head and broad, high forehead; a man, decided the doctor, of considerable intellectual capacities. His attire was neat and quiet; his shoes good; his general appearance that of a man in comfortable circumstances. Out of the pockets of his light overcoat protruded a quantity of papers, written as well as printed.

"All over with him, I suppose, doctor?" asked the sergeant in a hushed voice. "Gone, eh!"

The doctor nodded, and rising from his knees pointed to the dead man's head. "Whoever attacked him must have done so most savagely!" he answered. "He's been struck down from behind by some heavy weapon with something of an edge, a sharp edge on it. Dead!—oh, yes, dead enough!"

"Instantaneous affair, doctor?" asked the sergeant. "Just so! Well, I don't see any weapon about. That poker, now—Lord no, that wouldn't kill a mouse. Carried his weapon off, I should say. But when did it happen? We shall have to get Miss Tandy to give us some information——"

Just then, Miss Tandy's voice was heard in the hall; she was directing somebody to the parlour. A police-inspector came in; a police-surgeon with him. And following them was a little, inconspicuous, unassuming man in plain clothes, who might have been a grocer, a draper, or an oil-and-colour merchant, but whom the other men knew as Detective-Sergeant Wedgwood, of the Criminal Investigation Department, attached at present to the Hunter Street Police Station.

Wedgwood listened quietly while the two medical men talked, but while he listened he was looking round the room in which they were all gathered, with the dead man at their feet. He nodded a silent approval when the inspector remarked that the next thing was to hear what the occupant of the flat had to say respecting the affair, and he slipped back into the hall where Miss Tandy was regaining her composure under the ministrations of her next door neighbour.

"You won't care about going in there, ma'am," said Wedgwood, with a significant nod at the parlour door. "Perhaps you'll be agreeable to tell us all about it out here. How did it come about, now, ma'am?" he went on, after signalling the other men to join him. "How came the man here in your flat, and who is he? Of course, some of us know you—you're Miss Tandy, a professional typist and stenographer, aren't you? Just so—and you carry on your business here? To be sure. But this man, now? Do you know him?"

Miss Tandy, whom the doctor now saw to be a middle-aged spinster of such well-regulated and decorous appearance that it seemed impossible to associate romance, tragedy, crime, or mystery with her, made a movement of head and hands that seemed to indicate assent and dissent at the same time.

"Well, I do, and I don't," she answered. "That is to say, I've known him, very slightly, by correspondence, for the last year or two, but personally, not at all. He has occasionally sent me work to do for him, by post. I never saw him, however, until this evening—and I wish I hadn't seen him! This thing to happen here——"

"Just so, ma'am!" agreed Wedgwood. "Very unpleasant! Then you know the man's name, Miss Tandy? And his address?"

"Mr. John Wraypoole, 89 Porteous Road, Paddington," replied Miss Tandy, with business-like promptitude. "That's where I sent his finished work to, anyway. But sometimes he wrote his letters from the British Museum."

"What was he, ma'am? Do you know that?"

"I should say he was a professional searcher—pedigrees—family history—genealogical stuff—all that sort of thing," said Miss Tandy. "That was the kind of work I typed for him."

"Well, and how came he here to-night, Miss Tandy?" asked Wedgwood. "And—what time did he come?"

"He came here a little before seven o'clock," answered Miss Tandy. "Perhaps ten minutes to—perhaps a quarter to. Of course, I didn't know him. When I opened the door to him, he told me who he was—Mr. John Wraypoole, for whom I'd done work now and then. I asked him into my parlour, and he told me that he'd come personally to see if I could type two copies—one a duplicate—of a certain manuscript, which he'd brought with him, by three o'clock to-morrow afternoon. I said that depended on its length and nature. He showed me the manuscript. It was of the usual pedigree stuff—stiff work. I said I couldn't possibly do it in the time named. He implored me to try, and offered me double prices. He was so insistent that I said I'd see if I could get assistance. So I went out to see a friend of mine, a few doors away, who is also a professional typist. Mr. Wraypoole, of course, stayed here: I left him sitting at my desk in the parlour, reading. I went to my friend's——"

"Her name and address, ma'am, if you please," interrupted the detective.

"Miss Amy Callender, Number 6 Flat, Number 8 House," said Miss Tandy. "That's on the opposite side. I arranged with her to help me; we decided that we could manage the job by the specified time. Then I came back here—and found Mr. Wraypoole … as you have seen him!"

"How long were you away, Miss Tandy?" asked Wedgwood imperturbably.

"Twelve to fifteen minutes," replied the typist. "A quarter of an hour at the very outside."

"Did you see anybody leaving the flats as you entered—when you came back?"

"No—no one!"

"Are those street doors always open—as we found them just now?"

"Always—until eleven o'clock."

"Then anyone can walk in, and up the stairs?"

"Oh, certainly!"

"Did you leave your door open when you went off to Miss Callender's?"

"Yes—I left it ajar. It was like that when I came back."

Wedgwood, who had been making shorthand notes, closed his pocket-book and put it away. He suddenly turned again to Miss Tandy.

"Where," he asked sharply, "is the manuscript this man brought to you?"

Miss Tandy pointed to the door of the parlour.

"He laid it on my desk," she answered. "It should be on the blotting-pad."

Wedgwood went into the room: within a moment he was back.

"There's no manuscript there," he said.

"It was there, when I left him to go to Miss Callender's," declared Miss Tandy. "I remember seeing it, distinctly. It lay just where it had been put down—right in the middle of the blotting-pad. A manuscript in a brown paper cover, with a white label on the front."

"Not there!" repeated Wedgwood.

"There are papers in his pockets," remarked the sergeant. "A quantity——"

Wedgwood again turned back to the parlour, followed by the police-inspector; the sergeant, after an exchange of whispers with the two doctors went after them. Almost as soon as he had got into the room he was out again: Wedgwood had sent him off on an errand. A brief errand—for within ten minutes he was back in the flat again and at the detective's elbow.

"That's quite correct," he whispered. "I've seen Miss Callender. Middle-aged lady, like this. She says Miss Tandy came to her about this typing business and was at her place the best of ten minutes, perhaps. Well, it's two minutes' walk there; two minutes back. That 'ud about make the quarter of an hour Miss Tandy spoke of." He paused, cocking an eye at a mass of papers which Wedgwood and the inspector had evidently been examining. "Found it?" he asked.

"No!" replied the detective. "No manuscript at all, such as she described." He, too, paused, as with intent, glancing at the inspector. "On the face of it," he said slowly, when he saw that the inspector was not going to speak, "on the face of it, the thing looks pretty evident. This man has been followed here by somebody who had an interest in that manuscript. Somebody who for some reason or other wanted to get possession of it. That somebody watched Wraypoole enter; saw Miss Tandy go out; came up; knocked Wraypoole on the head; seized the manuscript; vanished before Miss Tandy came back. Eh?"

"Seems uncommonly like it," agreed the inspector. "Got to be sought for, that somebody. Well—there are things to be done."

Wedgwood went into the hall, where, the two doctors having gone away, Miss Tandy sat whispering dolefully to her neighbour.

"Look here, ma'am," he said. "The body will have to be removed to the mortuary. Hadn't you better go somewhere with this lady, eh?—for an hour or so, while we manage all that. Unpleasant for you, being here, while that's going on. Leave matters to me. And if you come back in an hour, you'll find me here."

"The best thing Miss Tandy can do," remarked the neighbour, "is to come home with me for the night."

'Couldn't do better, ma'am," agreed Wedgwood.

He was presently alone in the flat—alone with the dead man, to make arrangements for whose removal the other men had gone away. But Wedgwood showed no particular interest in the dead man. He scarcely looked at him. He had wished to be alone in the flat, though, and as soon as he knew himself to be so, and secure from observation, he went straight to a corner of the room in which he had seen something lying when he first entered it. Now he picked up that something—a fine diamond, escaped from a ring or a scarf-pin.

Chapter 2: The Secret Man

CHAPTER TWO

THE SECRET MAN

Wedgwood was a quiet, stolid, reserved man, who had learnt how to hold his tongue. He had seen the diamond—or, at any rate, something which he fancied might turn out to be a diamond—on first entering the room, and had said nothing about it to his companions. Now that he held it in his hand, he knew it to be a diamond: he had had experience of diamonds in the course of his professional career. It looked like a good diamond, too—worth a fair amount of money. And it had undoubtedly dropped out of its setting in a ring or a pin. His assurance as to that fact made him examine the dead man's hands and his neck-wear. But Wraypoole had no ring on either hand, and there was no scarf-pin in his cravat. The detective put the diamond carefully away in his pocketbook, and when the police had removed the body from the parlour he locked up the flat and took the key to Miss Tandy. He said nothing to her about the diamond, but he asked her a question or two about Wraypoole.

"Porteous Road, Paddington, was the ad- dress, I think, ma'am?" he said. "I shall go along there. This manuscript, now, that was brought you to type?—did he give you to understand that it was at all valuable?"

"He said nothing about that," replied Miss Tandy. "His only concern was about it being done—typed, you know—by a certain hour tomorrow."

"He didn't suggest that it was something—shall we say important?"

"Important that the typed copy should be finished," said Miss Tandy. "Not of special importance in any other way, that I know of."

"Did you look it over?" asked Wedgwood.

"I just glanced it over. It was of the sort that I'd done before for him—genealogical stuff, pedigrees, and so forth."

"Just another question," said Wedgwood. "He didn't give you the impression of being in any fear of anything?—of being followed by anybody, for instance?"

"Oh, dear me, no!" exclaimed Miss Tandy. "He was quite ordinary—a quiet, well-spoken man—quite a gentleman, in fact—very good manners. No!—the only thing he was in any way what you might call anxious about was that I should do the work myself, or be helped with it by somebody I could trust."

"Ah!—he mentioned that, did he?" asked Wedgwood. "Trust, eh?"

"He did say 'I suppose she's to be trusted not to let it out of her hands?' when I told him I should have to give part of his manuscript to Miss Callender. Of course, I assured him he could trust her as he would trust me."

"Then there evidently was something of a secret nature about the work," said Wedgwood. "Well, ma'am, I think it's very obvious that the man who murdered him did so in order to get possession of the manuscript. And—he's got it! Now we've got to find—him!"

He went away on that, and after a brief look-in at the police-station close by, boarded a bus and journeyed to Paddington. And during his half-hour's journey Wedgwood occupied himself in speculating on his chances of bringing Wraypoole's assailant to justice. It was too soon to say whether they were good or bad, but of one thing he was already certain: this was no ordinary case of murder. But that it was murder, and intentional murder, there was no doubt. At first, Wedgwood had thought that possibly there had been no intent; that Wraypoole's assailant had merely meant to stun him in order to rob him of the manuscript. But the doctors had pointed out that Wraypoole had been struck again and again; there was plain, unmistakable evidence of at least four savage blows, any one of them of sufficient force to cause almost instantaneous death: the intent of the assailant was obvious.

"Not just the theft of that manuscript," mused Wedgwood, as he journeyed westward. "That was wanted, sure enough, but whoever wanted it—and got it!—wanted more: to silence Wraypoole. So it comes to this, as I figure it:—Wraypoole knew something—a secret—evidently a mighty important one. He put it, or something about it, on paper—that was the manuscript. Somebody affected by the secret knew of Wraypoole's possession of it, and of the manuscript. That somebody killed Wraypoole, not merely to get the manuscript but to prevent him from letting the secret out. Who is that somebody? Man?—or woman? However, to begin with—who was Wraypoole?"

Wedgwood was hoping to find that out at the end of his brief journey. Porteous Road was easily located—a short street running between St. Mary's Terrace and the Harrow Road. Although the daylight had gone long since and there was nothing but a feeble gas-lamp here and there Wedgwood sized up the character of the street before he had walked many yards along it; it was one of those streets of which, as of some people, you can safely say that they have seen better days. But there was still an atmosphere of shabby gentility about it—just as there was about the faded woman who presently opened the door of Number 89.

"Mrs, Creech?" enquired the detective, who, when he called in at the police-station had referred to the directory. "Thank you. Sorry to trouble you, ma'am—I'm a police-officer—Detective Sergeant Wedgwood. There's been a sad accident to your lodger, Mr. Wraypoole, Mrs. Creech. I came to tell you."

Mrs. Creech, one of those women who look as if ill news came to them at regular and periodical times as part of the accepted and necessary things of life, received this announcement with the sigh of one whom nothing surprises.

"Dear-a-dear!" she said. "And him unusual cheerful when he went out this morning! It'll be one of these motor accidents, I suppose? The streets are getting——"

"I'll come in a minute, Mrs. Creech," interrupted the detective. He followed the landlady into a dimly-lighted front parlour. "The fact is, ma'am," he went on, confidentially, "my news is about as serious as can be—Mr. Wraypoole's dead! And what's more, we've very little doubt he's been murdered."

Mrs. Creech, a tall, spare woman, indefinite in everything, opened her eyes and her mouth and stared hopelessly at her caller. Wedgwood saw that she was a very simple sort, with just enough brains to do her bit; he saw, too, that beyond surface facts he was not likely to get much out of her.

"You don't say!" she exclaimed at last in an awed whisper. "Murdered? Why, whoever would want to murder a quiet man like that?"

"He was a quiet man, was he?" asked Wedgwood.

"You couldn't have found a more peaceable!" declared Mrs. Creech. "Three years he's lodged with me—second floor back he had, and a very nice room, too—and I never had the least cause for complaint. Nor him with me. 'Mrs. Creech,' he said to me more than once, 'you and me just suits each other.' As landlady and lodger, of course he meant. Oh, yes, mister!—as regular in his habits he was as that clock!"

"What was he, Mrs. Creech—what did he do?" enquired Wedgwood.

"He did his work, mister, at the British Museum," replied the landlady. "What it was exactly, I couldn't say; writing work of some sort, I believe. Every morning at nine o'clock he'd set off there, with his little bag full of books and papers, and every evening he'd come home to his tea at six o'clock, and he'd be writing and reading in his room till ten or eleven. Always at that sort of work he was—studying I suppose."

"Do you know anything about his relations, or his friends?" asked Wedgwood.

"I don't, mister. He never had anybody to see him here—never! And I never heard him mention any relations. To be sure, he wasn't one for a great deal of talk. No—I couldn't say anything about that."

"How was he off as regards money?" enquired the detective.

"Well, he always paid me regular," said the landlady. "Every Saturday morning, after breakfast, there was his money, down on the nail! I never remember him being short. He seemed to be what you might call comfortable."

"Did he ever go away—for a holiday, or anything of that sort?"

"He didn't! All the three years he was here, I never knew him go away but once, mister, and that was recently. He was away the better part of a fortnight; in fact, he'd only just come home again. Business, he said—but of course I don't know where or what it was."

"I should like to see his room," said Wedgwood. "We want to find out if he has any relations, and where they're to be heard of."

Mrs. Creech conducted him to the second floor back and turned on the gas. A bed sitting-room; nothing in or about it at first sight to distinguish it from a thousand similar London lodging-house rooms of its sort, except that a recess was fitted with shelves and filled with books, and that a desk in the window was crowded with books and papers. The landlady looked round it with obvious satisfaction.

"A very comfortable room this is," she said.

"Mr. Wraypoole, he partly furnished it himself. That chair there, he said, once belonged to King George the Fourth, and that what he sat to write in was a real, genuine Chippendale. And the pictures on the walls were his."

Wedgwood saw at once that any examination of the desk and its papers would have to be put off till another day. He glanced at the books in the recess—they were all of an archæological or genealogical nature. The pictures were all old prints; one of some size, over the mantelpiece was a fine old copperplate; out of sheer curiosity Wedgwood read the lettering beneath it—Netherwell Church, Derbyshire.

"Was there no one about here that Mr. Wraypoole associated with?" he asked suddenly. "No one who knew him?"

Mrs. Creech shook her head.

"I couldn't say that there was, mister," she answered. "As I remarked previous, nobody ever came to see him. And he never went out o' nights, nor of a Sunday, 'cepting for a bit of a walk before his dinner. He was a retiring gentleman."

Wedgwood pursued his enquiries no further that evening. But next morning he went to the British Museum and had no difficulty in finding officials and attendants who knew John Wraypoole well enough.

"Wraypoole," said one of them, "has attended here for quite twenty years, regularly. He was an expert in pedigrees, though he didn't confine his attention entirely to that. He was a good all-round antiquary and I should say very well acquainted with the local history of his own county."

"What county's that?" asked Wedgwood.

"Derbyshire," replied the librarian. "I have discussed Derbyshire with him at times. He had a surprising knowledge of out-of-the-way information. Lately he has been investigating certain matters relative to Derbyshire, but I don't know their exact nature. What I do know is that of late he has had a lot of rare books, pamphlets, and so on, dug out for him, all of them dealing with Derbyshire."

"Do you know if he was writing anything?" enquired Wedgwood.

"He was not a writer. I have heard him say, often, that he had no instinct to write. That is, I mean, to write books, or even articles. He could draw up a pedigree with any man living, or prepare a table of statistics on one of his subjects, but that was as far as his writing went. I should imagine that this manuscript you mention as having been taken by him to Miss Tandy, and now missing, was some pedigree he had prepared. But whose, of course, one has no idea."

Wedgwood considered matters awhile. He was a leisurely thinker, and when any factor in a case was presented to him, liked to meditate on it before going further. "If he'd been coming here all these years, regularly," he said at last, looking round the great dome-topped library. "He must be pretty well known to other frequenters. I mean, there must be somebody here who knew him well, if not intimately."

"I don't think so," answered the man to whom he was talking. "He was a recluse—as far as I had knowledge of him. I never remember seeing him in conversation with anybody here. There," he continued, pointing to a table near at hand, "is the place he always occupied—you'd find him there from ten o'clock until five every day. But I question if he ever spoke to a soul here except to one of us, or to the attendants who fetched him his books. And by the by, on that table are the books he was busy with yesterday—you can look them over if you like."

Wedgwood saw little of value in this suggestion, but he was not the man to neglect any chance, and he moved over to the table and inspected a pile of volumes resting there.

"You see?" said his companion, turning the books over and directing his attention to the title-pages. "All relating to local history in Derbyshire. Every one! I told you—that's been his recent study. But why—heaven only knows! I should suggest you should get hold of some of his papers. Notes, you know—he was always making notes."

Wedgwood went away more than ever convinced that Wraypoole had been tracked to Miss Tandy's flat and done to death there by somebody who was so desirious of laying hands on the document Wraypoole had taken there for typing that he was resolved on stopping at nothing to secure it. If only Miss Tandy's memory was better about it—the description she had given of it was little more than general, and vague at that. And the murderer had got away with the document and there was no clue to his identity—unless the diamond was a clue. To be sure, Wedgwood already had a theory about that diamond. It seemed to him a reasonable thing to suppose that it had fallen, being already loose in its setting, from the murderer's hand as he struck down his victim. But … he couldn't go all over London searching for a man from whose finger-ring or scarf-pin a stone was missing…

He went round to Handel Street presently, and found Miss Tandy.

"You can't remember any of the wording of that manuscript Wraypoole brought you?" he asked abruptly. "Nothing of it, eh?"

"I remember one word," replied Miss Tandy, promptly. "Just one! Title, I suppose—in big letters, on the brown paper cover. A queer word—or name, Mortover."

Chapter 3: The Dead Man's Brother

CHAPTER THREE

THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER

Wedgwood, fingering his chin as if in deep reflection, slowly repeated the word which Miss Tandy had just pronounced.

"Mortover," he murmured. "Mortover, eh? As you remark, ma'am, an uncommon name that. Does it convey anything to you, now?"

"Nothing!" declared Miss Tandy. "Nothing at all!—never heard it before. But there it was, printed in big letters—his handwriting—on the back of the manuscript, which he'd laid down on my table. I glanced at the manuscript as we were talking about my doing it for him, and saw that word—as a matter of fact, it was the only word on it. At first I thought it was Mortgage—something legal, you know. Then I saw it was Mortover, M-o-r-t-o-v-e-r—Mortover. But whether it's the name of a place, or a person, of course I don't know."

"He said nothing about it?" suggested Wedgwood.

"Not a word!" replied Miss Tandy. "All he was anxious about, and all he spoke of, was having the thing done by three o'clock this afternoon." She paused, looking speculatively at the detective. "What's your theory about it?" she asked. "I suppose you have one?"

"Looks as if somebody followed him here to your flat, watched you leave it, came in, and knocked him down in order to get possession of that paper," said Wedgwood. "Some important secret in it, no doubt."