Free Mystery of Mr. Jessop by E.R. Punshon Page B

knew?”
    â€œCharley Dickson told me – the bounder that took on Miss May’s job. He seemed to think it very funny. He said Jessop had been at Hastley Court the day of a big garden spree there was there, and at their London flat as well, only on the strict q.t. Struck me that meant Jessop was up to funny work of some sort.”
    â€œDid you tell Miss May?”
    Denis shook his head.
    â€œNo good,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t know. It might have been O.K. My idea was Jessop was trying to plant the necklace on her without the duke knowing.”
    Bobby thought the idea possible, though he did not see exactly where it led. Nor could he afford to spend any more time just then asking questions more or less at random. At any rate, he had now in his mind some idea of the background against which the victim had moved, and at the moment it was more important – or so his superiors would probably think – to get in touch with Mr. Jacks as soon as possible. If Mr. Jacks arrived home before Bobby got there, and rang up Scotland Yard to ask why he was being inquired for, Bobby would certainly be asked to explain his delay in reaching Bayswater. Besides, it was really the business of his superiors to decide the lines interrogations should follow, and Denis, moving towards the automatic lift, remarked:
    â€œSomeone will be making a row if we stand gassing here.”
    Bobby, following him, said:
    â€œI must get on to let Mr. Jacks know what’s happened. But you might give me your card. I expect our people will want to see if there’s anything more you can tell them.”
    â€œDon’t suppose there is,” Denis remarked, but produced his card accordingly, and the lift conveyed them downwards to the street.

CHAPTER 7
MR. JACKS IS AFRAID
    As Bobby had known to be the case before, the bark of headquarters proved worse than its bite, and a cruising police car had been told to look out for him. It picked him up accordingly soon after he left Hilda May’s flat, its occupants in a very discontented mood.
    â€œOrders to look out for a bird called Wynne,” one of them grumbled, “and they give us a description to fit half London. Seem to think there’ll be a label, ‘Wynne – wanted,’ on his back. Murder case, isn’t it? And what are you got up like that for? Gone back to uniform for keeps?”
    Bobby explained briefly the circumstances, and how his uniform was the outcome of a not very brilliant plan to get near the watchful T.T. Mullins without rousing his suspicions, filled in as best he could from the brief glimpse he had had of him the scanty description supplied of Wynne, and then relapsed into silence, for his long interview with Hilda had left him in a very worried and doubtful frame of mind.
    He had a troubling memory, for instance, of that expression she had used when she had spoken of herself as “outside the law,” a phrase, as it seemed to him, of so many implications.
    She had spoken, too, of Denis Chenery as if she had a certain fear of his “violence” of temperament, as if she were not sure how far his self-control was to be trusted. And he, on his part, had spoken of the dead man with what was plainly a deeply felt anger and resentment.
    Then, too, it appeared that Denis was in an extremely difficult social position – a probable heir to great possessions who yet was not likely to enter into his inheritance for many years; who might, indeed, never do so. Bobby thought it a cruel situation for any young man, and one likely to affect any character except the strongest. Of course, it could and should have been alleviated by some sort of recognition and allowance made by the present holder of the title and estates of Westhaven, but that, Bobby gathered, had not been done, and, in fact, the general reputation of his grace of Westhaven did not suggest that any idea of the kind was likely to occur to him.
    Nor did Bobby