Inspector French and the Box Office Murders. Freeman Crofts Wills

pay and I offered to lend her what I could; it wasn’t very much. But she said it wouldn’t help her; that the man had her in his power and that she was frightened. I begged her to tell me particulars, but she wouldn’t. But she was frightened all right.’

      ‘I don’t want to suggest anything bad about the poor young lady, but doesn’t it look as if he had found her out in something that she shouldn’t have done? Tampering with the cinema cash, for example?’

      Miss Darke looked distressed.

      ‘That was what I feared,’ she admitted, ‘but of course I didn’t let her know I suspected it. And of course I don’t know that it was that.’

      French was frankly puzzled.

      ‘Well, but if all that’s true, it surely supplies a motive for suicide?’

      ‘It might have with another girl, but not with her. Besides there was the letter.’

      ‘Yes, you mentioned the letter before. Now how does the letter prove that it wasn’t suicide?’

      Miss Darke paused before replying and when at last she spoke it was with less conviction.

      ‘I looked at it like this,’ she said. ‘From the letter it would be understood that some man had got her into trouble and then deserted her. From what she told me that wasn’t so, and from what I know of her it wasn’t so. But if that’s right there couldn’t have been any letter—not any real letter, I mean. I took it the letter had been written by the murderer and left in her bag to make it look like suicide.’

      In spite of himself French was interested. This was a subtle point for a girl of the apparent mentality of this Miss Darke to evolve from her own unaided consciousness. Not, he felt, that there was anything in it. The probabilities were that the unfortunate Eileen Tucker had been deceived and deserted by the usual callous ruffian. Naturally she would not tell her friend. On the other hand he considered that Miss Darke was surprisingly correct in her appreciation of the psychological side of the affair. The older French grew, the more weight he gave to the argument that X hadn’t performed a certain action because he ‘wasn’t the sort of person to do it’; with due reservation of course and granted an adequate knowledge of X’s character.

      ‘That’s a very ingenious idea, Miss Darke,’ he said. ‘But it’s only speculation. You don’t really know that it is true.’

      ‘Only from what she said,’ returned the girl. ‘But I believed her.’

      ‘Now, Miss Darke,’ French said gravely, ‘I have a serious question to ask you. If you knew all these material facts, why did you not come forward and give evidence at the inquest?’

      The girl hung her head.

      ‘I know I should have,’ she admitted sadly, ‘but I just didn’t. I did not hear of Eileen’s death till I saw it in the paper the day after and it didn’t say where the inquest would be. I ought to have gone to Caterham and asked but I just didn’t. No one asked me any questions and—well, it seemed easier just to say nothing. It couldn’t have helped Eileen any.’

      ‘It might have helped the police to capture her murderer, if she was murdered,’ French returned. ‘And it might have saved you from your present difficulties. You were very wrong there, Miss Darke; very wrong indeed.’

      ‘I see that now, Mr French,’ she repeated.

      ‘Well,’ said French, ‘that’s not what you called to talk about. Go on with your story. What can you tell me about the man? Did Miss Tucker mention his name or describe him?’

      Miss Darke looked up eagerly, while the expression of fear on her features became more pronounced.

      ‘No, but she said there was something horrible about him that just terrified her. She hated the sight of him.’

      ‘But she didn’t describe him?’

      ‘No, except that he had a scar on his wrist like a purple sickle. “A purple sickle” were her exact words.’

      ‘H’m. That’s not much to go on. But never mind. Tell me now your own story. Try to put the events in the order in which they happened. And don’t be in a hurry. We’ve all the day before us.’

      Thurza Darke paused, presumably to collect her thoughts, then went on:

      ‘The first thing, I think, was my meeting Gwen Lestrange in the train.’

      ‘What? Still another girl? I shall be getting mixed among so many. First there is yourself, then Miss Jennie Cox, Mr Arrowsmith’s typist, then poor Miss Eileen Tucker, who died so sadly at Caterham. And now here’s another. Who is Gwen Lestrange?’

      ‘I met her first in the train,’ Miss Darke repeated. ‘I go to my work most days by the Bakerloo tube from the Elephant to Oxford Circus. One day a strange girl sitting beside me dropped a book on to my knee and we began to talk. She said that she came by that train every day. A couple of days later I met her again and we had another talk. This happened two or three times and then we began to look out for each other and got rather friends. She was a very pleasant girl; always smiling.’

      ‘Did you find out her job?’

      ‘Yes, she said she was a barmaid in the Bijou Theatre in Coventry Street.’

      ‘Describe her as well as you can.’

      ‘She was a big girl, tall and broad and strong looking. Sort of athletic in her movements. She had a square face, if you know what I mean; a big jaw, determined looking.’

      ‘What about her colouring?’

      ‘She was like myself, fair with blue eyes and a fair complexion.’

      ‘Her age?’

      ‘About thirty, I should think.’

      French noted the particulars.

      ‘Well, you made friends with this Miss Lestrange. Yes?’

      ‘The thing that struck me most about her was that she seemed so well off. She was always well dressed, had a big fur coat and expensive gloves and shoes. And once when I lunched with her we went to Fuller’s and had a real slap-up lunch that must have cost her as much as I could spend in lunches in a week. And she didn’t seem the type that would be getting it from men.

      ‘I said that I couldn’t return such hospitality as that and she laughed and asked me what I was getting at the Milan. Then she said it was more than she got, but that there were ways of adding to one’s salary. When I asked her how, she smiled at first, but afterwards she told me.’

      French’s quiet, sympathetic manner had evidently had it’s effect. Miss Darke had lost a good deal of her terror and her story was coming much more spontaneously. French encouraged her with the obvious question.

      ‘She said she had got let in on a good thing through a friend. It was a scheme for gambling on the tables at Monte Carlo.’

      ‘At Monte Carlo?’

      ‘Yes. It was run by a syndicate. They had a man there who did the actual play. They sent him out the money and he sent back the winnings. You could either choose your number or colour or you could leave it to him to do the best he could for you. If you won you got your winnings less five per cent for expenses; if you lost of course you lost everything. But the man did very well as a rule. He worked on a system and in the long run you made money.’

      In spite of himself French became more interested. The story, he felt, was old—as old as humanity. But the setting was new. This Monte Carlo idea was ingenious, though it could only take in the ignorant. Evidently it was for this class that the syndicate catered.

      ‘And that was how Miss Lestrange had made her money?’

      ‘Yes.’ Apparently Miss Darke had not questioned the fact. ‘She said that as a rule she made a couple of pounds a week out of it. I said she was lucky and that I wished that I had an obliging friend who would let me