Part 39 (1/2)
Peter tried to distract the younger man, who appeared to listen, though his mind was far away and his thoughts brooding upon a grave.
”The French and Italian police resemble us in the States,” said Mr.
Ganns. ”They are much less reticent in their methods than you English. You, at Scotland Yard, are all for secrecy, and you claim for your system superior results to any other. And figures support you. In New York, in 1917, there were two hundred and thirty-six murders and only sixty-seven convictions. In Chicago, in 1919, there were no less than three hundred and thirty-six murders and forty-four convictions. Pretty steep--eh? In Paris four times as many crimes of violence are committed yearly as in London, though, of course, the population is far smaller. Yet what are the respective achievements of the police? Only half as many crimes are detected by the French as by the British. Your card index system is to be thanked for that.”
He ran on and then Brendon seemed to come to himself.
”Talk about poor Albert Redmayne,” he said.
”There's little to be added to what you know. Since Pendean chooses to keep dumb, at any rate until he's extradited, we can only a.s.sume exactly what happened; but I have no doubt of the details. It was Pendean, of course, you saw leave the villa, while his wife held you in conversation, and so ordered her falsehoods that you were swept away from every other consideration save how best to rescue her from her husband.
”She took good care to involve your own future and to say just what was most likely to make you forget your trust. My dear, dear Albert, forgive me if I am blunt; but when you look back, presently, you will see that the great loss is really mine, not yours. Michael Pendean, once out of sight, gets a boat, adopts his disguise--the false beard and mustache found upon him--and presently rows round to Albert's steps. He sees a.s.sunta, who does not recognize him, and says that he has come from Virgilio Poggi, who is at death's door at Bellagio.
”There was no weightier temptation possible than that. Redmayne forgets every other consideration and in five minutes has started for Bellagio. The boat is quickly in mid-lake under the darkness and there Albert meets his death and burial. Pendean undoubtedly murdered him with a blow--probably just as he murdered Robert and Bendigo Redmayne; then, no doubt, he used weights, heavy stones brought for the purpose, and sank his victim in the tremendous depths of Como. He was soon back again with a clean boat and his disguise in his pocket. He had an alibi also, for we found out that he had been drinking for more than hour at an _albergo_ before he came back to the villa.”
”Thank you,” said Brendon humbly. ”There can be no doubt that it was so. And now I will ask a final favour, Ganns. What happened has made my mind a blank in some particulars. I should be thankful and grateful if you would retrace your steps when you were in England. I want to go over that ground again. You will not be at the trial; but I must be; and, praise G.o.d, this is the last time I shall ever appear in a court of law.”
He referred to a determination that he had already expressed: to leave the police service and seek other occupation for the remainder of his life.
”That's as may be,” answered Peter, bringing out the gold snuffbox.
”I hope you'll think better of it. You've had a bitter experience and learned a great deal that will help you in business as well as in life. Don't be beaten by a bad woman--only remember that you had the luck to meet and study one of the rarest female crooks our mysterious Creator ever turned out. A face like an angel and a heart like a devil. Let time pa.s.s and presently you'll see that this is merely a hiatus in a career that is only begun. Much good and valuable work lies before you; and to abandon a profession for which you are specially suited is to fly in the face of Providence anyway.”
After a pause and a long silence, while the train sped through the darkness of the Simplon tunnel, Peter retraced the steps by which he had been enabled to solve the riddle of the Redmaynes.
”I told you that you had not begun at the beginning,” he said. ”It's really all summed up in that. You occupied an extraordinary position. The criminal himself, in the pride of his craft and by reason of the consuming vanity that finally wrecked him, deliberately brought you in. It was part of his fun--his art if you like--that he should involve a great detective for the added joy of making a fool of him. You were the spice in his b.l.o.o.d.y cup for Michael Pendean--the salt, the zest. If he had merely stuck to business, not a thousand detectives would ever have queered his pitch. But he was as playful as any other hunting tiger. He rejoiced in adding a thousand details to his original scheme. He was an artist, but too florid, too decadent in his decorations. And so he ruined what might have been the crime of the century. It is just the touch of human fallibility that has brought Nemesis to many a great criminal.
”The machinery he employed focussed attention from the first on the apparent murderer rather than his victim. It appeared impossible to doubt what had happened and Pendean's death was a.s.sumed but never proved. Particulars concerning Robert Redmayne were abundant; yet, during the whole course of the official inquiry, none was forthcoming concerning the supposed victim. Of him you had heard from his wife; and her original statement to you at Princetown--when she invited you, doubtless at Pendean's direction, to take up the case--was masterly because so nearly true in every respect.
”But from the time that I met and spoke with Albert's niece I began to reflect upon that statement, and my speedy conviction was this: that a great deal more concerning Jenny's first husband demanded to be known. Do not suppose that I was on the track of the truth at that period. Far from it. I only desired more data and regarded the history of Michael Pendean as being of doubtful value, since his wife alone was responsible for the details. It seemed to me absolutely necessary to learn more than she was prepared to tell. I had questioned her, but found her either ignorant of much concerning him--or else purposely evasive. Of her three uncles, only Robert had ever seen Michael Pendean. Neither Bendigo nor dear Albert had set eyes on him; and that fact, though of no significance at first, of course, became very significant indeed at a later stage of my study.
”I went first to Penzance and devoted several days to learning all possible particulars of the Pendean family. On examining Michael Pendean's ancestry, as a preliminary to finding out everything remembered of Pendean himself, I at once made a highly important discovery. Joseph Pendean, Michael's father, was often in Italy on his pilchard business for the firm, and he married an Italian woman.
She lived with her husband at Penzance and bore him one son, and a daughter who died in infancy. The lady seems to have given cause for a certain amount of scandal, for her Latin temperament and lively ways did not commend themselves to the rather austere and religious circle in which her husband and his relations moved.
”She visited Italy sometimes and Joseph Pendean undoubtedly regretted his marriage. He might have divorced her in the opinion of some with whom I spoke; but for the sake of his son he would not take this step. Michael was devoted to his mother and accompanied her frequently to Italy. On one of these occasions, when a boy of seventeen or eighteen, he met with an accident to his head; but I could glean no particulars of its nature. He seems to have been a silent and observant lad and never quarrelled with his father.
”When at last Mrs. Pendean died in Italy, her husband attended the funeral at Naples and returned to England immediately afterward with his son. The boy was subsequently apprenticed to a dentist, having expressed a wish to follow that profession. He promised well, pa.s.sed his examinations and practised at Penzance for a time. But then he ceased to be interested in the work and presently joined his father. In connection with the pilchard trade, he now visited Italy and often spent a month at a time in that country.
”Few could give me any information as to his nature, and pictures of him did not apparently exist; but an elderly relative was able to tell me that Michael had been a silent, difficult boy. She also showed me an old photograph of his parents, taken together with their son when he must have been a child of three, or thereabout.
His father didn't suggest a man of character; but Mrs. Pendean appeared to be a very handsome creature indeed, and it was at the moment I studied her features through a magnifying gla.s.s that I won my first conviction of a familiar likeness.
”It is a rule with me, when any sudden flash of intuition throws real or false light upon a case, to submit the inspiration to a most searching and destructive a.n.a.lysis and bring every known fact against it. Thus, on seeing a possible glimpse of Giuseppe Doria's beautiful countenance reflected upon my eyes from the photograph of the mother of Michael Pendean, I began to marshal all my knowledge to confound any deduction from that accident. But judge of my interest and surprise when I found nothing that could be pointed to as absolute refutation of the theory now taking such swift shape in my mind. Not one sure fact clashed with the possibility.
”Nothing at present was positively known by me which made it out of the question that Joseph Pendean's wife should be the mother of Giuseppe Doria. But none the less many facts might exist as yet beyond my knowledge, which would prove such a suspicion vain. I considered how to obtain these facts and naturally my thought turned to Giuseppe himself. To show you by what faltering steps we sometimes climb to safe ground, I may say that at this stage of my inquiry I had not imagined Doria and Michael Pendean were one and the same person. That was to come. For the moment I conceived of the possibility that Madame Pendean, a lady who had caused some fluttering in the Wesleyan dovecots of Penzance, might by chance have been the mother of a second son in her native country. I imagined that Michael and an Italian half brother might know each other, and that the two were working together to destroy the brothers Redmayne, so that Michael's wife should inherit all the family money.
”Having found out what Penzance could tell me, I beat it up to Dartmouth, because I was exceedingly anxious to learn, if possible, the exact date when Giuseppe Doria entered the employment of Bendigo Redmayne as motor boatman. Albert's brother hadn't any friends that I could find; but I traced his doctor and, though he was not in a position to enlighten me, he knew another man--an innkeeper at Tor-cross, some miles away on the coast--who might be familiar with this vital date.
”Mr. Noah Blades proved a very shrewd and capable chap. Bendigo Redmayne had known him well, and it was after spending a week at the Tor-cross Hotel with Blades and going fis.h.i.+ng in his motor boat, that the old sailor had decided to start one himself at 'Crow's Nest.' He did so and his first boatman was a failure. Then he advertised for another and received a good many applications. He'd sailed with Italians and liked them on a s.h.i.+p, and he decided for Giuseppe Doria, whose testimonials appeared to be exceptional. The man came along and, two days after his arrival, ran Bendigo down to Tor-cross in his launch to see Blades.
”Redmayne, of course, was full of the murder at Princetown, which had just occurred, and the tragedy proved so interesting that Blades had little time to notice the new motor boatman. But what matters is that we know it was on the day after the murder--on the very day Bendigo heard what his brother, Robert, was supposed to have done at Foggintor Quarry--that his new man, Giuseppe Doria, arrived at 'Crow's Nest' and took on his new duties.
”From that all-important fact I built my case, and you don't need to be told how every step of the way threw light upon the next until I had reached the goal. Robert Redmayne is seen on the night of Michael Pendean's supposed destruction. He is traced home again to Paignton. He leaves his diggings before anybody is up and, from that exit, vanishes off the face of the earth. But during the same day--probably by noon--Giuseppe Doria arrives at 'Crow's Nest'--an Italian whom n.o.body knows, or has even seen before.