The detective was distinctly disappointed by this account. It was so very clear and certain, and gave no indication as to how the banker had received the fatal blow in his back. No amount of cross-questioning could shake the hat-lusher on that vital point.
Pondering over the problem which this evidence provided, Poole made his way to the Haymarket, where he found Mr. Ulred Tarker, a clerk in the offices of the Trans-Continental Railway Company. Mr. Tarker, interviewed in the manager’s own room, had not a great deal of light to throw on the subject. He had not noticed either the two bankers or the man who had stumbled against them before the occurrence; then, hearing a commotion behind him, he had looked round and seen what he believed to be two men supporting a third between them. Two of the figures were evidently elderly gentlemen of good standing, the third a younger man, dressed very much as ninety-nine men out of a hundred at that time and place, in the evening rush to one of the stations, would be dressed—a dark suit and either a bowler or a trilby hat—Mr. Tarker was not sure which. Although he had stopped for a second or two to see what the excitement was about, Mr. Tarker had soon realized that it was nothing interesting and had gone on his way, not noticing anything more about any of the three figures concerned. He had not seen any blow struck, but then he had not looked round till after the accident. The third man, the one not wearing a top-hat, had appeared to him middle-aged or getting on that way, and probably had a moustache. He had left the office soon after 6.15 and walked straight to the Duke’s Steps and so on to Westminster.
That was all, and Poole felt that he had wasted his time.
Katherine Moon, a cashier at the Royal Services Club, Waterloo Place, proved more interesting. She had waited for a minute or two in Waterloo Place for a friend to join her; half-past six was the time arranged; during that time she had noticed a man in a light overcoat waiting at the corner of Carlton House Terrace, to one side of the Steps; she had noticed him because for a second she had thought he might be the friend for whom she was waiting, though she had quickly seen that he was taller than her friend and wore a moustache, which her friend did not. That was all that she had seen; she had no real reason for connecting him with the tragedy and had not at first done so, but on hearing of the exhumation and having previously read Miss Fratten’s advertisement, she had put two and two together and wondered whether they could possibly make four. Poole thought her a particularly smart girl; there had been so very little really to connect the two incidents in her mind, and yet the detective felt that she might well be right.
Four more names remained on the Inspector’s list—three from the Haymarket neighbourhood, and one from Paddington Square. Poole was puzzled for a moment to find practically all the witnesses coming from such a conscribed area, till he realized that the number of people who would use the Duke of York’s Steps as a homeward route after the day’s work must be closely limited—it was a distinctly long way to Victoria or Waterloo and not too close even to St. James’s Park Underground Station.
Mr. Raffelli, owner of a small antique shop in Haymarket Passage, had not, it transpired, seen the accident at all, but had been present when Sir Garth’s body was carried to the car, arriving on the scene probably five minutes after he fell. More wasted time, thought Poole.
After a hurried luncheon at Appenrodt’s, the detective called on Mr. Julian Wagglebow, employed in the London Library. Mr. Wagglebow, a precise old gentleman who disliked being hurried, described how, after finishing his day’s work, which consisted of indexing a number of newly-purchased books, at 6 p. m., he had proceeded to Hugh Rees’s shop in Lower Regent Street, to buy a copy of The Fond Heart for his daughter, whose birthday it was. Leaving Hugh Rees’s he had walked down past the Guards Crimean Memorial and the new King Edward statue—a misleading representation, Mr. Wagglebow thought—to the Duke of York’s Steps. Being rather short-sighted he was descending the Steps slowly and carefully when he was startled by someone rushing down past him. “That man will have an accident if he isn’t careful,” he had thought to himself, and sure enough, at that very moment, the man had stumbled and lurched against a gentleman in a top-hat who was walking with another gentleman, similarly attired, just in front of him, Mr. Wagglebow.
Poole interrupted at this point, to impress upon his informant the extreme importance of an exact description of the accident. The exact description was forthcoming and it was as disappointing as that of Mr. Lossett, the hat-lusher. The man had lurched against Sir Garth—rather heavily, it is true, but he had not struck him. No, his shoulder had not struck Sir Garth in the back; it had been more of a sideways lurch against Sir Garth’s arm—perhaps at an angle of forty-five degrees, if the Inspector knew what he meant by that—between the back of the arm and the side of the arm. That was natural, because the lurch, although to a certain extent sideways—as if the ankle had turned over—had also been forwards, because of the pace at which the man was descending the steps. Mr. Wagglebow was able to be so precise because, as he had already explained, he had at that very moment been thinking to himself that if that man were not more careful he would have an accident, and sure enough he did have one—as Mr. Wagglebow was watching him.
This certainly was clear evidence and the detective saw that Mr. Wagglebow would be a difficult man to shake in a witness box. As to the man’s appearance, Mr. Wagglebow was less clear—he had not been particularly interested by the individual but rather by the incident, which had so exactly borne out his warning. He believed that the man wore an overcoat—he could not say of what colour, but probably not quite black—and a bowler hat. He had appeared to be of ordinary size and appearance—a young man, undoubtedly. At the foot of the Steps, Mr. Wagglebow had turned to the right towards St. James’s Park Suspension bridge, and had seen no more of the parties concerned. Allowing for the time spent in buying the book at Hugh Rees’s Mr. Wagglebow thought that he could not have reached the Steps before 6.30.
The last name in this neighbourhood was that of Hector Press, of Haymarket Court. Haymarket Court proved to be a block of bachelor flats just behind His Majesty’s Theatre, and Mr. Press, a valet employed in the flats by the management, to look after such of the residents as had not their own men to valet them. Mr. Press wore a neat black suit, well oiled hair, and blue chin. His voice was carefully controlled and he displayed a slight tendency to patronize a “policeman.” He had, he said, submitted his name as a witness since reading the account of the inquest in last night’s evening paper, because he had been struck by a possible discrepancy between the evidence there given and his own observation. On the evening in question (something after six—he couldn’t say nearer), he had been going from Haymarket Court to visit an acquaintance in Queen Anne’s Mansions—he usually had an hour or two off, between five and seven if he had got the gentleman’s dress clothes ready—but on reaching the top of the Duke of York’s Steps, he suddenly remembered that Captain Dollington required his bag packed for a visit to Newmarket. Shocked by his forgetfulness, he had whisked quickly round and had been nearly cannoned into by a gentleman walking just behind him. This gentleman had evidently been startled or annoyed by the check to his progress because he had sworn at Mr. Press in a manner that caused the valet to stare at him as he hurried on. So it was that Mr. Press had seen the gentleman break into a run down the steps and, a few seconds later, to stumble and knock against two gentlemen in tall hats who were about half-way down. The particular point that Mr. Press wished to make was that this gentleman had been referred to in the evidence as an Admiralty messenger, or, if not quite that, at any rate the impression had been given that he was a man of the clerk class, taking a message to the Admiralty. Now Mr. Press had had great experience of gentlemen and he not only knew one when he saw one, but still more when he heard one. The particular oath which had been hurled at him had unquestionably been a gentleman’s oath and the voice was a gentleman’s voice. Of that Mr. Press had no doubt at all and he was prepared to state his opinion on oath. Questioned by Poole, the valet was not prepared to say for certain that a blow had not been struck but he had certainly not seen one, though he had been watching the gentleman right up to the moment of the collision. As to appearance and clothes, he had no hesitation in saying that the gentleman was of medium height, about thirty-five years of age, and wore a dark moustache, together with a bowler hat and an overcoat of medium-grey cloth—the latter by no means new or well cared for. He had not gone down the Steps to see what had happened, as he was in a hurry to get back and pack Captain Dollington’s bag.