Before rummaging for the tire lever he sat on the running board, uncertain how and where he would use it. A moonbeam revealed that a window of the sitting-room had been left open for ventilation. He stepped over the flower bed and wriggled through.
His nerve faltered as he groped for the light switch. He wanted to see nothing but Isobel’s letter. He stopped groping for the switch and took out his pocket torch. He found the letter at once, snapped off the torch. He did not need it in order to reach the window.
With one leg over the sill he hesitated. The torch had shown him not only the letter but a coffee cup. The Ashwinden set. It might not be valuable, but it was an original model and the Ashwinden people probably had a record of it.
Isobel’s father — Isobel’s suicide — Webber — Isobel’s husband. He turned back. He could still manage with the torch.
Cups and saucers, two: sugar bowclass="underline" milk jug: he had some difficulty with the coffee pot and nearly knocked it over. He laid the torch on the table while he assembled the items on the tray. He would not be able to manage the tray through the window. He carried it out through the front door. This time he shut it gently.
He set the tray on the floor of the car and drove home. The garage of the block of flats was a converted stable yard, with individual lock-ups. No one saw him with the Ashwinden set.
He went to bed, slept better than he had slept for years, did not wake up until mid-day.
The block provided a seven day service. His breakfast, laid as usual, was cold and uneatable. He would have an early lunch.
“Where’s that coffee set?”
He had put it on the hall table, had gone to wash and had forgotten it.
He found it on a shelf in the kitchen. The maid had washed it up.
If he were to destroy it now, the incident would be impressed in her memory.
Detective Inspector Rason, of the Department of Dead Ends, had never seen a calculating machine in action until one morning nearly a year after the murder of Webber. He had called at a city office about lunch time and found a solitary typist manipulating one in an outer office.
Young women of all classes were apt to discover in Rason the essential qualities of an uncle, and the girl was soon enjoying herself explaining the machine. There was actually only one thing Rason wanted to know about it.
“If you were to poke it without understanding it properly, it would sound like a sort of typewriter, wouldn’t it?”
“You don’t poke it at all!” giggled the girl. “It’s quite easy. Try it if you want to.”
“Then I’ll show you something!” Rason became conspiratorial. “But it’s secret. You know what my job is. I’m trusting you.”
He dialled the Yard and asked for Karslake.
“Rason speaking. Listen a minute, please!” On the machine Rason slowly tapped out three short, three long, three short.
“All right,” said Karslake. “You’ve come out without any money. Where are you?”
“Hold that kind thought,” chirped Rason. “I’ll come along to your room this afternoon. Goo’bye!”
Rason turned back to the machine and studied the superscription. Ashwin Comptometers Ltd. He wrote the name and nearby address in his notebook. Then he called on the Ashwin Company, unscrupulously suggested that he was a potential customer and obtained advertising matter.
Karslake did not return to the Yard until three. Rason had time to turn up the dossiers of the Webber case which, after a Coroner’s verdict of murder by person or persons unknown, had come to him.
Then occurred one of those pieces of “luck” which often misled him but never surprised him.
In the inventory supplied by the Repository which had stored Webber’s furniture while he was in Canada was the item Ashwinden Set (agreed £20).
“Webber case, sir. I’ve got a line. Only one end of it so far, but it’s a line. You thought I was using a typewriter on the telephone this morning. I wasn’t! I was using a comptometer.” Misled by a movement of Karslake’s jaw, he explained: “It’s a sort of typewriter that’s very good at arithmetic. Look here! I’ve got the literature. That’ll show you the keyboard. Note the name of the firm. It’s going to be important!”
“I’m glad that’s important,” grunted Karslake. “Webber used a comptometer instead of a typewriter. And so what?”
Rason smiled indulgently.
“Here — is the inventory of Webber’s bungalow which your staff took. No mention of a comptometer! Here — is the inventory of goods stored while Webber was in Canada. That item I’ve marked with a cross.”
“AshwinDEN set!” shouted Karslake. “AshWIN comptometer!”
“Ford car — FordSON tractor!” returned Rason. “It’s probably a fancy model.”
“It’s a comptometer, is it? Then why do they list it under ‘china’?” said Karslake. “You run along and consult your niece. She’ll tell you that ‘Ashwinden set’ means a set of china made by a world famous Pottery. Ask that telephone girl whether what she heard was not a machine but somebody tapping with a teacup. Better take a box of chocolates with you.”
Rason picked up his papers and departed. Karslake, he thought, was a good man, but he always took a narrow view. After all, there might be lots of firms called Fordson of whom Henry Ford had never heard. Perhaps Mr. Ashwin had never heard of the Ashwinden Potteries. And anybody might list anything under the wrong heading.
He decided to call on the Repository people.
His official card took him straight I to the managing director, who passed him to the assessments department with instructions that he was to be given the utmost assistance. The correspondence with Webber was turned up.
“It all comes back to me now,” said the head of the department. “Webber declared the value at a hundred and fifty pounds. We communicated with the Pottery—”
“It was teacups, then?” asked Rason, crestfallen.
“A coffee set. They told us the model had been scrapped and never put into production. As such, it might have a collector’s value but not a very high one — they put it at twenty to fifty pounds.”
So that, decided Rason, was that! The comptometer was definitely out of it. Back to the typewriter. Over a cup of tea, he reminded himself that Karslake had scored heavily. With a muddled idea of salvaging his day’s work, he alarmed the waitress by tapping the cup on the saucer in a vain attempt to produce a noise like a typewriter.
While he was tidying his desk, replacing the invoices in the Webber dossier, it occurred to him that the real coffee set had, in one way, taken the place of the imaginary comptometer.
The Ashwinden set was in the Repository’s inventory and not in the police inventory!
Webber might have sold it in the interval. But Webber had no need to sell his household effects. He had died with several thousands in the bank, a share in the business, and no dependents.
Rason decided to have a chat with the woman who had cleaned Webber’s bungalow.
“I used to do his breakfast every day except Sundays,” she told Rason. “He took his other meals in London, which meant I finished my work by mid-day.” Pressed as to his coffee habits: “I never had nothing to do with that except buy the coffee for him. He made it himself — used to wash up too, making a rare mess on my sink. I suppose he thought I’d be sure to have an accident with his precious china, which I wouldn’t have, knowing he kept it in that cabinet in the sitting-room.”
“You told the police you thought there was nothing missing from the bungalow. Did you see his precious china he made all that fuss about when they let you go in on the Monday morning?”