Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Kitty nodded. “I stuck up Mr. Levenheim,” she said. “He deserved it. He’d robbed Horman, after getting Horman to break into the Consolidated Syndicate’s place. You people got all the goods back from me. I’d only robbed a thief. There was no reason why I shouldn’t get off.”

Jim cried: “Kitty!”

She looked at him. She seemed very jaunty. “All right,” she said. “It’s true. But you can prove that I didn’t kill Bordington. I was with you at the time.”

“Oh, God!” murmured Jim.

Kitty’s lips were just a shade tighter when she looked at the policeman. “Because I was wanted over the Levenheim deal, and because I happened to be around at the moment Lord Bordington was killed, it isn’t up to you to start investigations on the premise that I did the killing,” she said. “A limping man shot Bordington, and the dug-over potato bed behind the hedge will prove it.”

“When I want you to teach me my duty I’ll ask you,” snapped the superintendent. “I want you to answer some questions.”

He elicited from her the fact that this was her second visit to Bordington, and that she was on friendly terms with Jim Lansdale, who, all the time, stood back against the wall, white and drawn.

At the finish the superintendent said: “Why did you come to Bordington, and why have you so sedulously cultivated Mr. Lansdale’s friendship?”

Kitty looked him straight in the eyes. “That’s not relevant to the crime,” she said. “I shan’t answer.”

The superintendent’s face flushed with anger. He knew that Kitty need not answer any of his questions unless she desired to do so; and she was correct in her assertion as to irrelevance, in so far as facts went up to that moment. She had a complete alibi. She had, beyond all doubt, been with Jim Lansdale when the shot was fired.

Suddenly the inspector turned to Smith. “These two people,” he said, indicating Jim and Kitty. “Where did they come from?”

Smith answered slowly. “They were running across the tennis courts when I saw them.”

This was true. The superintendent said: “Ah!” as though he had scored an important point.

They were all allowed to go. Kitty went out alone through the window. Jim Lansdale still stood by the wall. He did not look at her as she went. He was like a man stricken over the head, dazed and half stunned.

Bill Smith followed in Kitty’s footsteps. Somehow, Smith felt uneasy.

They traveled up to London together, but Kitty did not speak all the way, until, nearing the terminus, Smith said: “What’s got you? Wind up?”

“No. I was wondering why life always calls in its debts at the very worst moment.”

Chapter XIV Each Moves in His Way

A week later the superintendent made an interesting discovery. Bordington’s affairs were in perfect order, and so his will was quickly proved. It left everything to his wife save a section of his holdings in Che Fiangs — those shares he had bought cheaply from Jim Lansdale — and which he now left to Lansdale.

There was an explanatory paragraph, which said that he knew he had actually cheated Lansdale in the purchase of the shares, and that Lansdale must inevitably discover this. But the shares had been temporarily necessary to him for “private reasons of control,” and he left them to Lansdale as some compensation. They were now worth some two pounds each, and were still rising, and so Jim Lansdale found himself a comparatively rich man.

But the superintendent saw something else in it all. The man, William Smith, had said Lansdale and Willis had come running across the tennis courts immediately after the shot was fired. Beyond all doubt, the shot had been fired from beyond the courts. Willis was a notorious woman thief. Jim Lansdale had, on Bordington’s own statement, a reason for anger against Bordington; and by Bordington’s will he was likely to benefit immensely.

Was it possible that, as Bordington’s secretary, he had been able to learn the contents of the will, without Bordington being aware of this?

The superintendent was inclined to think it possible, even while he was unable to see how it might have been effected. Lansdale was consorting with a criminal. He had refused to make any statement regarding his relations with her, and became solidly and curiously dumb every time the police mentioned her name.

This was a fact the superintendent marked against him; for the superintendent had no romance in his soul.

He found himself facing this situation. A young man, poor, cheated by his employer, and yet possibly knowing that he would become wealthy should his employer die, on the friendliest terms with a woman who had no equal in the realms of crime.

There were all the ingredients there for a highly satisfactory murder.

Further, it had been cunningly done. They had shot Bordington from behind the hedge of the kitchen garden, and then come running across the tennis courts as though the shot had alarmed them.

The superintendent was building up a pretty theory. He got more and more excited and self-satisfied as he went on.