Murray had been extraordinarily decent. “No,” said Grant; “it was Sorrell who was found dead in the queue.”
“Great heavens!” said Murray, and digested the news in silence for some time. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I never knew the fellow, but every one seems to have liked him.”
And that was what Grant had been thinking too. Bert Sorrell, it seemed, had been no villain. Grant longed more than ever to meet the Levantine.
Chapter 8
MRS. EVERETT
Brightling Crescent was a terrace of red-brick three-story houses of the Nottingham lace and pot-plant type of decoration. Their stone steps were coaxed into cleanliness and hideousness by liberal applications of coloured pipeclay. Some blushed at finding themselves so conspicuous, some were evidently jaundiced by the unwelcome attention, and some stared in pallid horror as at an outrage. But all of them wore that Nemo me impune lacessit air. You might pull the bright brass bell-handles—indeed, their high polish winked an urgent invitation to do so—but you passed the threshold only at the cost of a wide-stepping avoidance of these constantly refurbished traps of pipeclayed step. Grant walked up the street that Sorrell had trodden so often, and wondered if the Levantine knew it too. Mrs. Everett, a bony, shortsighted woman of fifty or so, herself opened the door of 98 to him, and Grant inquired for Sorrell.
Mr. Sorrell was no longer there, she said. He had left just a week ago to go to America.
So that was the tale some one had told.
Who said he had gone to America?
“Mr. Sorrell, of course.”
Yes, Sorrell might have told the tale to mask his suicide.
Had he lived alone there?
“Who are you, and what do you want to know for?” she asked, and Grant said that he was a plain-clothes officer and would like to come in and talk to her for a moment. She looked a little staggered, but took the news calmly, and ushered him into a ground-floor sitting-room. “This used to be Mr. Sorrell’s,” she said. “A young lady teacher has it now, but she won’t mind us using it for once. Mr. Sorrell hasn’t done anything wrong, has he? I wouldn’t believe it of him. A quiet young man like him.”
Grant reassured her, and asked again if Sorrell had lived alone.
No, she said; he shared his rooms with another gentleman, but when Mr. Sorrell had gone to America the other gentleman had had to look out for other rooms because he couldn’t afford these alone, and a young lady had wanted to come into them. She was sorry to lose both of them. Nice young men, they were, and great friends.
“What was his friend’s name?”
“Gerald Lamont,” she said. Mr. Sorrell had been a bookmaker on his own account, and Mr. Lamont was in his office. Oh, no, not a partner, but they were great friends.
“What other friends had Sorrell?”
He had had very few, she said. He and Jerry Lamont went everywhere together. After some strenuous thinking she recollected two men who had once come to the house, and described them well enough to make it certain that neither was the Levantine.
“Have you any photographs of Sorrell or his friend?”
She thought she had some snapshots somewhere, if the inspector wouldn’t mind waiting while she hunted. Grant had had hardly enough time to examine the room before she came back with two amateur photographs of postcard size. “These were taken last summer when they were on the river,” she said.
The snapshots had been taken obviously on the same occasion. They both showed the same willowy background of Thames bank and the same piece of punt. One was a photograph of Sorrell in flannels, a pipe in one hand and a cushion in the other. The other was also a photograph of a young man in flannels, and the man was the foreigner.
Grant sat a long time looking at that dark face. The photograph was a good one. The eyes were not a mere shadow as in most snapshots; they were eyes. And Grant could see again the sudden horror that had lit them as they lighted on him in the Strand. Even in the pleasant repose of the moment on the river the eyes had an inimical look. There was no friendliness in the hard-boned face.
“Where did you say Lamont had gone?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Mrs. Everett did not know.
Grant examined her minutely. Was she telling the truth? As if conscious of his suspicion, she supplemented her statement with another. He had got rooms somewhere on the south side of the river.
Suspicion filled him. Did she know more than she was telling? Who had sent the money to bury Sorrell? His friend and the Levantine were one, and the Levantine, who had had two hundred and twenty-three pounds from him, had certainly not sent the money. He looked at the woman’s hard face. She would probably write like a man; the handwriting experts were not infallible. But then, the person who had sent the money had owned the revolver. No, he corrected himself; the person who had posted the money had had the revolver.
Had either of the men owned a revolver? he asked.
No; she had never seen such a thing with either of them. They weren’t that type.
There she was again, harping on their quietness. Was it mere partisanship, or was it a feeble attempt to head him off the track? He wanted to ask if Lamont were left-handed, but something held him back. If she were not being straight with him, that question in relation to Lamont would alarm her immediately. It would give away the whole extent of his investigations. She would give warning and flush the bird from cover long before they were ready to shoot. And it was not vital at the moment. The man of the photograph was the man who had lived with Sorrell, was the man who had fled at sight of him in the Strand, was the man who had had all Sorrell’s money, and was almost certainly the man of the queue. Legarde could identify him. It was more important at the moment to keep Mrs. Everett in the dark as to how much they knew.
“When did Sorrell leave for America?”
“His boat sailed on the 14th,” she said, “but he left here on the 13th.”
“Unlucky day!” said Grant, hoping to bring the conversation to a less formal and less antagonistic level.
“I don’t believe in superstition,” she said. “One day is very like another.”
But Grant was thinking hard. The 13th was the night of the murder.
“Did Lamont leave with him?” he asked.
Yes, they had left together in the morning. Mr. Lamont was going to take his things to his new rooms and then to meet Mr. Sorrell. Mr. Sorrell was going down to Southampton with a boat train at night. She had wanted to go to see him off, but he had been very insistent that she shouldn’t.
“Why?” asked Grant.
“He said it was too late, and in any case he didn’t like being seen off.”
“Had he any relations?”
No, none that she had ever heard of.
And Lamont, had he any?
