by Jim Kelly
5th January 1880–12th February 1940
Loved by his family, respected by his fellow officers
We trust in the few
Brooke had always thought it typical of Edwardes, who had been his mentor at the Spinning House between the wars, to choose the motto of the Borough for his epitaph. It was, after all, one of the smallest police forces in the country, but under Edwardes’ guidance it had built a reputation for honest and even inspired detection.
‘A summer’s night, Frank. It’s cool and balmy. I don’t know what the temperature is like where you are.’
Edwardes had never given any hint of belief in the presence of a God, still less the existence of the Devil. It was the kind of joke Brooke knew he’d appreciate, given the remote possibility his old friend was listening. A long, slow, final illness had marred his life, but in his prime he’d been a gifted detective because he knew his manor, the real city outside the college walls, and its everyday life. He’d seen in Brooke a fellow enthusiast for the dark streets and the crooked alleys.
‘You’ll have surmised by my presence that I’m stuck,’ said Brooke, sitting.
He liked talking out loud, because it inspired logical thought. In the two decades after he’d joined the Borough he’d often turned to Edwardes when a puzzle defied solution. He had never needed his help more urgently.
‘I have a series of events which seem to lack any coherent sense of cause and effect. An elderly woman is murdered during a burglary at her house which has just been bombed. The next evening – the next evening, Frank – her granddaughter is murdered cycling home from Marshall airfield, the body eventually found in the river. Both were strangled, the killer standing in front of the victim.’
Brooke lit a cigarette. It was disturbing the extent to which once he’d started one of these soliloquies he felt that Edwardes was listening, and that therefore he couldn’t simply stop talking.
‘So, Frank, who is my man?’
He laughed at the silence. ‘I know, Frank. Claire will remind me that the killer might be a woman. And I am trying to keep that in mind. There is no shortage of women in this case, but they’re all victims of one sort or another.’
Brooke stood and rummaged in his pocket. Edwardes had two passions: his bank of transmitters and receivers, which had sustained his double-life as a radio ham, especially in his last months; and his trees, planted around the house which looked over Fenner’s, the university cricket ground. One of the finest was a great walnut, too big to embrace, and Brooke on his midnight walks had pocketed a small sample of this year’s harvest for the kitchen at Newnham Croft. He set a single nut on the top of the stone, knowing it would blow away, and possibly roll into the fertile soil, and maybe one day provide more shade for the grave.
‘Three suspects, Frank, all very different: the dashing pilot, the shifty spiv and – just possibly – the romantic Italian everyone was so keen to blame in the first place.’
He laughed out loud at the line-up.
‘The Eyetie’s in Cell 5. If his story pans out we’ll have to let him go.
‘Pilot Officer Vale enjoys a healthy private income, which I need to double-check too, because he’s up to something illicit with his fast car. He plays the innocent boyfriend but my guess is he thinks the girls have a duty to make his life as much fun as possible. And he might have got the poor girl pregnant. The Eyetie was keen to claim fatherhood, but then that serves his purposes.
‘The spiv has to be the prime suspect. He’s an ARP warden, which means he can come and go and nobody notices. It’s the perfect cover. And if I’m right, and he’s a fence, he fits neatly into organised petty crime, including adulterated petrol. And, once his wife left him, he’s been playing the field in Earl Street. Chatted Peggy up – bought her drinks. I’ve got a radio car watching the house. And the magistrates have issued a warrant so we’ll knock on his door first thing. Back in Earl Street where it all began.’
Birdsong was beginning to herald dawn.
Sometimes he felt that he could hear Edwardes’ voice.
They’d probably worked on ten murder cases together in the decades after the Great War – leaving aside domestic violence, and killings where the culprit was immediately to hand, like pub brawls.
The chief superintendent’s mantra was always the same when the case seemed intractable.
‘It’s the passion of the moment, Eden. That’s what you’ve got to nail. To kill someone, to snuff out a life, the motivation must be overwhelming. Identify that compelling emotion and the light floods in: is it greed, hate, love or fear? Try to share that moment with the killer, try to feel it too. Step into their shoes, Eden.’
Walking home along leafy streets, and later lying in bed alone, he thought about the victims, and the passions of killers; and when he imagined Nora’s pale face and her butchered fingers he thought of greed, and when he saw Peggy’s – robbed for ever of its beauty, the blood running freely – he thought of unrequited love. He saw the killer then, propelled from one violent emotion to another, and wondered what he was feeling now, at this moment, and if that too would lead to murder.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The trap in Earl Street was easy to set. Brooke stationed one constable at the end of the cul-de-sac, outside the Wellington Arms, and one in the back alley, cutting off the only other means of escape. A radio car was parked around the corner, its driver on lookout in the distance, in case they had to make a rapid pursuit.
Satisfied with his deployments, Brooke, noting a clapped-out van parked at the kerb, knocked smartly. It was not quite seven o’clock, and the neighbourhood was still quiet, so the triple tap echoed. Like most policemen Brooke had a sixth sense for an empty house; this wasn’t one of them.
He heard a footfall on the stairs and Joe Miller, ARP warden, and spiv of the Kite, opened the door by two inches, revealing a spotless white vest and suit trousers, bare feet on bare boards, his face partly obscured by the suds of a shaving stick.
Brooke showed his warrant card. ‘A minute of your time, Mr Miller.’ The sizzle of bacon in a pan came from the direction of the kitchen.
‘Just off to work,’ he said, but Brooke simply pushed his way in.
‘I have the necessary paperwork, Mr Miller. A serious crime has been committed. We can take a ride downtown if you wish.’
Brooke took off his hat and placed it carefully on the stand in the hallway, shifting a large brown paper parcel under his arm. ‘That your vehicle outside?’
‘Yeah. What of it?’
‘You don’t own a bicycle?’
‘I buy and sell goods. I need to shift stuff. Bike’s no good to me.’
‘As I say, I have some questions …’
‘I’m shaving,’ said Miller. The muscles in his shoulders and arms were tightly flexed. At some point in his life he’d done heavy manual work, or lifted weights.
‘Give me a second,’ he said, jogging quickly up the stairs and out of sight. ‘Make yourself at home,’ he called down.
Brooke went into the front room, which had a radio and two armchairs, and a drying frame, mostly crowded with shirts and socks, although there was a pair of nylons too. Brooke parted the net curtains: the view opposite was dominated by the blackened ruin of the Pollards’ house, the windows blind.
A couple walked past on the pavement, heads down, sleepy after a night in the shelter.
‘I didn’t get much shut-eye,’ said Miller, appearing, tightening a tie at his throat, a newly ironed white shirt immaculately creaseless. ‘I need my breakfast. What’s this about?’ he said.
The frying pan held three rashers and an egg. There was one chair at the kitchen table, and a single mug.
‘I understand you live alone?’ said Brooke, placing the brown paper parcel on the table.
‘Missus ran off with a soldier. I’m not bothered. I don’t go short …’ He had an odd mannerism, a sharp sideways movement of the jaw, a tic certainly, which made him look shifty. He eyed the brown paper package as he slid the
contents of the pan onto a plate and sat down, setting the cigarette in an ashtray beside a bottle of brown sauce.
‘And your work is?’ asked Brooke, lighting a cigarette to divert his senses from the crisp fatty rind of the bacon.
‘Wholesale supply. Buying and selling. I’ve got a stall on Market Hill of a Friday. Electrics is the big thing, but you know, I can shift anything. Look. I don’t want to be awkward, but what is this about?’
‘What was wrong with the army?’ asked Brooke, unkindly.
‘The old ticker’s faulty,’ said Miller, egg yolk spilling over his bottom lip. He sipped his tea with a steady hand. The man was a curious contradiction. The heavy build, the smooth patter, jarred with the face, which was oddly weak. He reminded Brooke of a school friend who’d been bullied mercilessly and had responded with boxing lessons. It was a dangerous combination, weakness and the potential for violence.
Brooke noted the new kettle, a bottle of beer on the sideboard, a paper carton of cigarette packets.
‘Business is good, then.’
Miller finished the bacon and set his knife and fork aside. As he smoked he bit small corners off a slice of fried bread.
‘I’ve got to go, you know,’ he said. ‘Some of us have work to get on with …’
‘Where today? Norwich – they’ve got a good market. We’ve been watching a few of the stalls, and the lock-up shops, because they’ve been flogging stolen stuff. Not just stolen. Looted.’
Miller blinked, slowly, as if he’d been expecting the accusation. ‘I wouldn’t touch that.’
‘You touched this, though, didn’t you?’
Brooke slid the silver salver from the package.
‘Stallholder even had a receipt,’ added Brooke. ‘Your name – no address, so we had to track you down. You are AA Supply, I presume?’
Miller nodded. ‘What of it?’
‘It was Arthur Pollard’s. It’s on the list of items stolen after the bomb fell. The night Nora was murdered.’
Miller leant back in the chair, smoking.
‘I think the man who killed Nora, and looted the house, passed the stolen goods on to a fence. I think that’s you. Or are you the thief yourself? That’s what you do for a living, surely – cut out the middleman.’
Miller shrugged. Brooke wondered if this was how he’d got through life, sliding past every tricky question by pretending it didn’t apply to him.
‘You said you got the receipt for the silver, have you?’ asked Miller. ‘I’d take a closer look if I was you.’
Brooke took it out of his wallet.
Silver salver, worn. £2 6s 8p.
‘Date?’ asked Miller.
Brooke took off his glasses but the vital data was smudged.
‘Unclear,’ he admitted.
‘I’ve got me own records somewhere. I flogged that silver two weeks ago, more.’
Brooke hadn’t asked when the market trader had bought the salver, which was a cardinal error: he’d simply assumed that because the salver wasn’t in the house it must have been stolen on the night of the bomb. It was an amateur mistake, and he felt Frank Edwardes’ often-repeated reprimand: One step at a time, Eden.
‘I would have got more but the inscription cuts the value. They have to smooth it away – takes hours.’
‘I can check with Norwich, Mr Miller.’
‘Go ahead. Be my guest.’
‘How’d you get it?’ Brooke tried to keep his anger under control, but it was a losing battle, because he was angry with himself.
‘Favour for Nora and Arthur.’
‘That’s convenient.’
‘Money was short. All that talk about Nora’s nest egg was just that – talk.
‘Who needs a silver salver in the Kite? I think Arthur had spent too much in the Cricketers and they needed to pay off the pawnshop. It wasn’t the first thing I shifted for them.’ Miller lit a fresh cigarette. ‘I didn’t mind helping them out. They’re virtually family anyway. I’ve got me feet under the table there.’
‘How’s that?’
Miller went over to the drying frame and, parting two shirts, picked up the pair of stockings and ran them through his hand.
‘These are Elsie’s. We don’t make a big deal of it. Some people love a bit of malicious gossip. My wife’s got her own life now, but I like to keep me head down. But Elsie’s my girl.’ He blew an elaborate smoke ring across the kitchen table.
‘I see. How long has that relationship been going on?’
‘Six months. She doesn’t want the old girl to know – Alice. Sour-faced cow. Least Nora knew how to have a good time. So it’s been hush-hush.’
‘Peggy turn you down, did she?’ said Brooke.
A muscle flexed in Miller’s jaw and he tried to laugh, and Brooke thought it was an old trick, getting close to the plain sister when the real target was the pretty one: was that Joe Miller’s game?
‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he said.
‘I heard you were keen. Make yourself a nuisance, did you?’
‘Look, I’ve got blood in my veins. Every bloke was keen. Elsie’s my girl – and she’ll vouch for the silver salver.’
‘I hope so. But the thief got away with a lot more than a bit of silver on the night of the bomb. I’m going to ask you to stand aside while we search the house for stolen goods, sir.’
‘It’s an Aladdin’s cave upstairs,’ he said. ‘Help yourself. But you’ll find nothing of Arthur and Nora’s, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The line of villas on Midsummer Lane had been designed with a touch of playful Gothic, the shutters painted gaily in green, mustard yellow and even white. The iron-work railings sported lance-heads and crouching griffins. A fretted lamp over the door looked Middle Eastern. More than a year of the war had left some of the houses looking tired, with overgrown gardens and peeling paintwork. But Gardenia House, the home of Dr Elizabeth Vale, was in a disreputable class of its own. One shutter was missing and another hung at an angle. A thicket of rose and bramble obscured the small front lawn. Curtains were drawn upstairs, while downstairs they stood open by an inch or two, revealing a dark, lifeless interior.
Brooke knocked smartly on the door, straightening his tie, brushing house dust off his suit. It had taken two hours to work through the goods in Miller’s house, and he’d left Edison to supervise the final sortie into the attic. So far there had been no correlation with any items on the Spinning House register of stolen goods, but Brooke still had hopes. The upper bedrooms had been crammed with tea-crates loaded with canned food, bric-a-brac, pots and pans (used), and a quantity of lead piping. A radio car had picked Elsie Wylde up outside the furniture factory during her lunch hour. She’d confirmed Miller’s story that Nora and Arthur Pollard had asked for his help in selling the silver salver a week before the fatal bombing raid. She’d removed her nylons from public view and, rolling them up, had stuffed them in her overalls pocket. Then she’d asked for a lift back to work.
Zeri’s story that he’d been set upon by a lorry driver near Scotch Corner was still being checked out by police at Durham. Which left Brooke with his other suspect: Pilot Officer Tim Vale, and more precisely his ample private income.
Brooke knocked again, and this time the simple force of his knuckles opened the door, to reveal a cool marble floor and a set of fine mahogany stairs rising up into the gloom. A cat’s bowl was in the shadows, and he could smell sour milk.
‘Timothy?’ The voice was certainly aged but not feeble, and carried a cut-glass edge.
Brooke pushed open a door into the front room.
A woman sat at a large table spread with documents. As his eyes accommodated the gloom, he saw that she was in a bath-chair.
‘I’m sorry, I thought it was my son. I’d get up but … Tim’s at the airfield on standby. He won’t be back ’til the day after tomorrow. God willing.’
The room itself was as dilapidated as the exterior of the villa. A threadbare ca
rpet revealed the floorboards beneath. A sofa and chairs sprouted clumps of horsehair. In one corner a bed had been set up, which was neatly made.
He saw now the remains of a breakfast on the table: toast, jam and a bottle of milk.
‘I’m sorry. I’m Doctor Vale – and you are?’ Her voice carried a brisk professional authority.
Brooke showed his warrant card and said he was investigating the murder of Peggy Wylde – her son’s former girlfriend.
‘Yes. Terrible,’ she said, her hand extending to lie on an open newspaper. ‘Tim’s started getting the local rag every day so I’ve followed developments. Father always took The Times, but there we are. I can’t offer you tea, I’m afraid. The kettle’s in the kitchen and I can’t get this thing down the hallway. I’m trapped. This is my entire world, Inspector. In private I crawl around like a baby.’
She offered him a chair and he moved a pile of books to sit down. ‘Did you meet Peggy?’
‘Yes. Pretty girl. Stunning, really. Tim was stricken. But she gave him the heave-ho. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead but I felt she was a bit disappointed with all this …’ She indicated the general squalor. ‘I think she thought we might be a bit wealthier than we are. Fact is, we are on what my late husband used to call “our uppers”. Neither of us got anything from our parents and I can’t do much …’
She swept her hand over the desktop. ‘I have a few loyal patients. And I do a little research for the Ministry of Health. And a little teaching for the university. But it’s pennies.’
Brooke noted a locked glass cabinet stacked with pillboxes, and a sink, a set of scales and, attached to the ceiling, the guiderail for a set of curtains.
‘We’d sell this place at the drop of a hat but no one’s buying, you see. And it needs a lot of work. The roof’s a colander. Tim earns his money, at least he will, and I don’t want him wasting his life looking after me.
‘Why do you want to speak to him, Inspector, if I may ask? He’s up at Marshall’s as I say, in fact he’s rarely home now. He has to wait for one of the others to give him a lift home – so he often sleeps over.’