Chapter 7 #2
“Not exactly. That is, she swears he does—says she’s prepared to swear to it in court if she has to—but when you ask how she knows, it all comes down to a ‘feeling.’ Could be
she just hasn’t worked out what gives her that feeling, or could be plain spite. She detested Talmadge.”
“So I gathered. To the point of doing him in?”
Tom’s boundless forehead creased in a frown.
“I don’t think so. I mean, if she’d caught him knocking his wife about she might’ve picked up a poker and whopped him over the head.
Not the sort of nasty, cold-blooded business we’ve got here, even if she knew how.
But if Mrs. Talmadge did it, Hilda Kidd would cover up for her like a shot.
She’s kicking herself for having mentioned Creighton. Tried to make out she’d been joking.”
“So you didn’t get anything useful from her? What about the other girl, the housemaid?”
“Quite a bright girl, that. She reckoned she’d have noticed if there was any carrying-on going on here in the house.
The Talmadges never had a row, not that she heard, just mostly went their own ways.
They never spent an evening at home together unless they were entertaining.
She did say Miss Kidd and Cook likely know more than she does.
They often stopped talking when she went into the kitchen. ”
“When is the cook due back?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Right-oh, Tom, you wait here for her, and in the meantime take a look around the rest of the house. I wish I could talk to Mrs. Talmadge. Failing that, I’ll have a go at Creighton. Mackinnon is checking with the neighbours. When Ernie gets back, he can start on the patient files.”
“Making a list of all the eligible females?”
“All those between eighteen and forty, at least. Though
unfortunately it has been suggested that Talmadge probably wouldn’t fall for a patient.”
“Pity! Where do we start looking?”
“We may have to ask the press for help,” Alec said reluctantly. “See if you can find a photograph of Talmadge so that we don’t have to use one of the body. He was distinctive enough for people to remember seeing him and with luck someone will be able to describe his companion.”
“Let’s hope.”
“We won’t do it unless we have to.”
“You going to have a word with the press boys out front now?”
“No, it can wait till tomorrow. Maybe by then we’ll have more idea of whom we’re looking for. Anything else?”
“When Mrs. Fletcher rang up about the bonfire, she also told me there’s an alley out the back that errand-boys use for a shortcut, and she gave me the name of the employer of a lad she met there. I took a look at the path, but it’s paved, so no help there.”
Alec checked his watch. “The shops’ll be closing any minute. You’d better get on to the boy first thing in the morning.”
“Right, Chief.”
Tom went off to search the rest of the house. While Alec waited to hear from Ernie Piper, he had a closer look at the contents of the cabinet. At the end of the top shelf, he found two file boxes marked Personal.
One contained documents pertaining to the ownership of the house, showing that Mrs. Talmadge had inherited the freehold from her father. The other contained various other
papers, including Talmadge’s discharge from the Royal Army Medical Corps and two wills. The latter were dated just after the beginning of the War, nearly ten years ago. Raymond Talmadge’s left everything to his wife; hers left everything to him except for two hundred pounds to Hilda Kidd.
Alec wondered whether either had made a new will since then. He was noting down the solicitor’s name when the ’phone rang. It was Piper, reporting that Lord Henry Creighton, youngest son of the Marquess of Addlestoke, resided in a service flat in Mayfair.
“I talked to the man who valets Creighton, Chief. He says his lordship is generally home between six and half past seven, preparing for an evening out. His lordship dines out practically every evening during the Season. A very popular and sociable gentleman, his lordship is.”
Always willing to make up a hostess’s numbers at the last minute, Alec guessed cynically. “Good job,” he said. “I’d better get over there right away. And I want you back here to go through the files.”
“Now, Chief? Have a heart, it’s rush hour.”
“Get something to eat in the canteen before you come. It’s going to be a long evening.” Alec explained what he wanted Ernie to look for, then hung up.
He went to tell Tom he was leaving. Tom had found a studio portrait of Talmadge in Medical Corps uniform. The cap hid the pale hair which was his most conspicuous feature.
“It’ll do in a pinch, but see if you can find something without a hat. I’m off to see Creighton. Ernie should be
here soon. When Mackinnon comes in, he’d better go back to his station and write up a report. Do you think you can work with him?”
“Seems like a good enough lad. As long as he exhibits the deference due to the position of a Yard man—”
“And to your age and girth, of course. Right-oh, I’ll put in a request to have him seconded to me for the case. I’ll ’phone here after I’ve talked to Creighton, and either come back here or meet you at the Yard, depending on what we’ve discovered.”
“Why do these things always happen on steak-and-kidney pud night?” Tom mourned.
“Be nice to Mrs. Thorpe,” Alec advised, “and maybe you’ll get whatever she’d planned for the Talmadges.”
He had left the Baby Austin in the street at the front, so he had to leave that way. A glance from the window of the study had shown him that the throng of gentlemen of the press had thinned somewhat.
Assisted by Constable Atkinson, Alec ploughed through the diminished crowd.
He placated them with confirmation that Scotland Yard was investigating a suspicious death and a promise of a statement in the morning.
As he drove off, they scattered to quiz the neighbours.
In this affluent neighbourhood they were not likely to get much satisfaction except, perhaps, from the servants.
Thinking back on the faces he had recognized, he realized that those who had departed earlier were the evening rags’ reporters.
The late editions’ stop-press columns would be full of the death of a dentist, sinister or mysterious, according to taste.
Neither the Evening Standard nor the Evening News was noted for waiting for official confirmation.
They would undoubtedly announce that the Yard was on the spot.
If Creighton was involved in Talmadge’s death, he would surely have bought a paper. By now he knew that—largely thanks to Daisy, Alec admitted—the police had not been fooled into dismissing murder as an unfortunate but foreseeable accident.