‘She does, eh?’ Roger cried, suddenly apprehensive. ‘Good man. Rack your brains. I want her placed, badly.’
The other bent over the snapshot again. ‘Can’t you help me?’ he asked. ‘In what connection would I have come across her? Is she an actress, or a mannequin, or a titled beauty, or what?’
‘She’s not a titled beauty, I can tell you that; but she might have been either of the other two. I haven’t the faintest notion what she is.’
‘Why do you want to know if we’ve ever had a photograph of her through here, then?’
‘Oh, it’s just a personal matter,’ Roger said evasively. ‘Her people haven’t heard from her for a week or two and they’re beginning to think she’s been run over by a bus or something like that. You know how fussy the parents of that sort of girl are.’
The other shook his head and handed back the snapshot. ‘No, I’m sorry, but I can’t place her. I’m sure I’ve seen her face before, but you’re too vague. If you could tell me, now, that she had been run over by a bus, or had some other accident, or been something (anything to provide a peg for my memory to hang on) I might have been able to—wait a minute, though!’ He snatched the photograph back and studied it afresh. Roger looked on tensely.
‘I’ve got it!’ the bespectacled one proclaimed in triumph. ‘It was the word “accident” that gave me the clue. Have you ever noticed what a curious thing memory is, Sheringham? Present it with a blank surface, and it simply slides helplessly across it; but give it just the slightest little peg to grip on, and—’
‘Who is the girl?’ Roger interrupted.
The other blinked at him. ‘Oh, the girl. Yes. She was a chorus-girl in one of the big revues (I’m sorry, I forget which) and her name was Unity Something-or-other. She—good gracious, you really don’t know?’
Roger shook his head. ‘No. What?’
‘She was a friend of yours?’ the other persisted.
‘No, I’ve never met her in my life. Why?’
‘Well, you see, she hanged herself four or five weeks ago with her own stocking.’
Roger stared at him. ‘The deuce she did!’ he said blankly. ‘Hell!’
They looked at each other.
‘Look here,’ said the photographer, ‘I can’t be certain it’s the same girl, you know. Besides, this one seems to be called Janet. But I tell you what: there was a photo of Unity Something published in The Picture at the time, a professional one. You could look that up.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger, his thoughts on the letter he would have to write to Dorset if all this were true.
‘And now I come to think of it, I seem to remember something rather queer about the case. It was ordinary enough in most ways, but I believe they had some difficulty in identifying the girl. No relatives came forward, or something like that.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Picture didn’t pay much attention to it, beyond publishing her photo; rather out of our line, of course. But I expect The Courier had a report of the inquest. Anyhow, don’t take it for certain that I’m right; it’s quite possible that I’m not. Go down and look up the files.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger glumly, turning on his heel.
‘I will.’
ACUTELY disappointed, and not a little shocked, Roger made his way downstairs. His thoughts were centred mainly upon that pathetic household in Dorsetshire, to whom his letter must bring such tragedy; but Roger, like most of us, while able to feel for other people strongly enough, was at heart an egoist, and it was this side of his nature which prompted the sensation of disappointment of which he was conscious. It was, he could not help feeling, most unfortunate that just when his help had been solicited as that of an able criminologist, the problem should be whisked out of his hands in this uncompromising way.
The truth was that Roger had been longing for an opportunity to put his detective capabilities into action once more. The letter had acted as a spur to his desires, coming as it did from one who evidently held the greatest respect for his powers in this direction. Roger himself had the greatest respect for his detective powers; but he could not disguise from himself the fact that others were obtuse enough to hold dissimilar views. Inspector Moresby, for instance. For the last nine months, ever since they had parted at Ludmouth after the Vane case, Inspector Moresby had rankled in Roger’s mind to a very considerable extent.
And those nine months had been, from the criminologist’s point of view, deadly dull ones. Not an interesting murder had been committed, not even an actress had been deprived of her jewels. Without going so far as to question whether his detective powers might be getting actually rusty, Roger had been very, very anxiously seeking an opportunity to put them into action once more. And now that the chance had come, it had as swiftly disappeared.
He began gloomily to turn back the pages of The Daily Picture file.
It was not long before he found what he wanted. In an issue of just over five weeks ago there was, tucked neatly into a corner of the back page, a portrait of a young girl; the heading above it stated curtly: ‘Hanged Herself With Own Silk Stocking’. The letterpress below was hardly less brief. ‘Miss Unity Ransome, stated to be an actress, who hanged herself with her own silk stocking at her flat in Sutherland Avenue last Tuesday.’
Roger pored over the picture. Like amateur snapshots, the pictures in an illustrated paper are considered fair game for the humorist. Whenever a painstaking humorist has to mention them he prefixes one of two epithets, ‘blurred’ or ‘smudgy’. Yet the pictures in the illustrated dailies of today are neither blurred nor smudgy. They were once, it is true, perhaps so late as ten years ago, when the art of picture-printing for daily newspapers was an infant; nowadays they are astonishingly clear. One does wish sometimes that even humorists would move with the times. Roger had no difficulty in deciding that the two faces before him were of the same girl.
He turned to The Daily Courier of the same date.
There he found, unobtrusive on a page lined with advertisements, a laconic account of the inquest. Miss Unity Ransome, it seemed, had been a chorus-girl in one of the less important London revues. There was evidence that this was her first engagement on the stage, and she had obtained it, in spite of her inexperience, on the strength of her good looks and air of happy vivacity. Prior to this engagement, nothing was known about her. She shared a tiny flat in Sutherland Avenue with another girl in the same company, but they had met at the theatre for the first time. This girl, Moira Carruthers, had testified that she knew less than nothing about her friend’s antecedents. Unity Ransome not only volunteered no information concerning herself, but actively discouraged questions on that subject. ‘A regular oyster,’ was Miss Carruthers’ happy description.
This reticence the coroner had not been unwilling to emphasise, for on the face of it there appeared no reason for suicide. Miss Carruthers had stated emphatically that, so far as she knew, Unity had never contemplated such a thing. She had appeared to be perfectly happy, and even delighted at having obtained an engagement in London. Her salary, though not large, had quite sufficed for her needs. Pressed on this point, Miss Carruthers had admitted that her friend had more than once expressed a wish that she had been able to earn more, and that quickly; but, as Miss Carruthers pointed out, ‘Unity was what you might call a real lady, and perhaps