Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate

Author:Raymond Postgate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

7

Nobody answered the door of “Ewelme.” The house was silent and apparently unoccupied. The lady in the house next door said she thought they’d moved. Early in the morning a car had come for them and gone off with a lot of luggage on it. Them? Why, “them” was the foreign gentleman, tall, with fishy eyes, and his wife, at least supposed to be his wife, about forty-fiveish, plump, always well dressed, but with a veil and an old-fashioned hat. That morning she’d been dressed in a dark green coat and skirt, with a brown overcoat over it, and walking shoes and brown stockings, and a toque like Queen Mary’s, but still the same veil and brown gloves; but the informant hadn’t had time to have a proper look at her. They’d not been in the house more than a month, anyway.

The police had been all round the house: nevertheless the Inspector said: “Vansittart”—such was the improbable name of one of the constables—“I think if you went round the back you might find a window open.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll see, sir,” said the constable after a glance at David.

A few seconds later he opened the front door.

“I found a window open, sir,” he said without a trace of a smile.

“Very good,” said the Inspector. “Go round now to the station at Crawshalton Road, and tell them I’m here, and what for. If there’s an Inspector in charge, get him to come round here; if not, bring a sergeant. Tell him to bring along all the information about these tenants he can, and if he knows who the house agents are to bring the keys too.”

He marched into the front room, an ordinary suburban parlour, and stood with his arms folded, in a Napoleonic attitude. “We’ll have to tear this apart,” he said.

For a time David watched, marvelling at the meticulous care with which the police went over every square inch. But before long he got weary. The house had obviously been taken furnished, and the temporary inhabitants seemed to have left no trace. Except, indeed, fingerprints: the men with insufflators seemed to be the only satisfied persons. In the end he was glad to go back to his office, with the promise that the Inspector would see him in the morning.

“The name is Johnston,” said the Inspector with imperial condescension.

Next morning, when David called to see him he was still friendly, though magnificent.

“It was fortunate that you gave us that information,” he said approvingly. “We’ve got some fine sets of prints. There’s quite a mixed bunch, but two lots keep recurring. It’s reasonable to suppose that they belong to the man and his wife. Crooks will do one job in gloves, but fortunately nobody’s going to spend a whole month in a house with his gloves on. If this man’s come from abroad, it’ll help a great deal. They have no nonsense about getting fingerprints there. We are communicating with the police of Rome, Paris and Berlin—though, if your friend’s idea was correct, we won’t get much help from there.

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