The D'Arblay mystery

by R. Austin Freeman

“Well, there was the time—the small hours of the morning—and the man was carrying a good-sized hand-bag, which seemed to be pretty heavy and which would have held the stuff that was missing. But the most important point was the man’s appearance. He was described as a smallish man, clean-shaved, with a big hooked nose and very heavy eyebrows set close down over his eyes.

“Now this put Bendelow out of it as the principal suspect, because the description didn’t fit him at all” (here I caught Thorndyke’s eye for an instant and was warned afresh, and not unnecessarily, to make no comment); “but,” continued the Superintendent, “it didn’t put him out altogether. For the man whom the description did fit—and it fitted him to a T—was a fellow named Crile—Jonathan Crile—who was a pal of Bendelow’s and was known to have worked with him as a confederate in the receiving business and had been in prison once or twice. So the police started to make inquiries about Crile, and before long they were able to run him to earth. But that didn’t do them much good; for it turned out that Crile wasn’t in New York at all. He was in Philadelphia; and it was clearly proved that he had been there on the day of the murder, on the day before and the day after. So they seemed to have drawn a blank; but they were still a bit suspicious of Mr. Crile, who seems to have been as downy a bird as his friend Bendelow, and of the other chappie, too. But they hadn’t a crumb of evidence against either.

“So there the matter stuck. A complete deadlock. There was nothing to be done; for you can’t arrest a man on mere suspicion with not a single fact to support it. But the police kept their eye on both gents, so far as they could, and presently they got a chance. Bendelow made a slip—or, at any rate, they said he did. It was a little trumpery affair, something in the receiving line, and of no importance at all. Probably, a faked charge, too. But they thought that if they could get him arrested they might be able to squeeze something out of him—the police in America can do things that we aren’t allowed to. So they tried to pounce on him. But Mr. Bendelow was a slippery customer, and he got wind of their intentions just in time. When they got into his rooms they found that he had left—in a deuce of a hurry, too, and only a few minutes before they arrived. They searched the place, but found nothing incriminating, and they tried to get on Bendelow’s track, but they didn’t succeed. He had managed to get clear away, and Crile seemed to have disappeared, too.

“Well, that seemed to be the end of the affair. Both of these crooks had made off without leaving a trace, and the police—having no evidence—didn’t worry any more about them. And so things went on for about a year, until the Van Zellen case had been given up and nearly forgotten. Then something happened quite recently that gave the police a fresh start.

“It appears that there was a fire in the house in which Bendelow’s rooms were, and a good deal of damage was done, so that they had to do some rebuilding; and in the course of the repairs, the builder’s men found, hidden under the floor-boards, a small parcel containing part of the Van Zellen swag. There was nothing of real value; just coins and medals and seal-rings and truck of that kind. But the things were all identified by means of Van Zellen’s catalogue, and, of course, the finding of them in what had been Bendelow’s rooms put the murder pretty clearly on to him.

“On this, as you can guess, the police and the detective agencies got busy. They searched high and low for the missing man, but for a long time they could pick up no traces of him. At last they discovered that he and Crile had taken a passage nearly a year ago on a tramp steamer bound for England. Thereupon they sent a very smart, experienced detective over to work at the case in conjunction with our own detective department.

“But we didn’t have much to do with it. The American—Wilson was his name—had all the particulars, with the prison photographs and finger-prints of both the men, and he made most of the inquiries himself. However, there were two things that we did for him. We handed over to him the Van Zellen guinea and the particulars of the D’Arblay murder; and we were able to inform him that his friend, Bendelow, was dead.”

“How did you find that out?” Thorndyke asked.

“Oh, quite by chance. One of our men happened to be at Somerset House looking up some details of a will when in the list of wills he came across the name of Simon Bendelow, which he had heard from Wilson himself. He at once got out the will, copied out the address of the executrix and the names and addresses of the witnesses, and handed them over to Wilson, who was mightily taken aback, as you may suppose. However, he wasn’t taking anything for granted. He set off instantly to look up the executrix—a Mrs. Morris. But there he got another disappointment, for the Morrises had gone away and no one knew where they had gone.”

“I take it,” said Thorndyke, “that probate of the will had been granted.”