A SHADOWED LIVERY
Inspector James Given Mysteries
Book One
Charlie Garratt
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Epilogue
A NOTE TO THE READER
HISTORICAL NOTES
ALSO BY CHARLIE GARRATT
Prologue
At precisely twelve o’clock on Thursday, 29th September 1938, Peter Bishop fell five feet ten inches to his carefully calculated demise. Beneath the hood, his blood vessels burst as the rope choked the murderous life out of him. His neck snapped.
There had been six of us in the small observation room. I’d arrested the man and was trying to push out of my mind the horror I imagined on his concealed face. The prison governor was scrutinising the hangman’s preparations, the chaplain was leafing through his Bible and the newspaperman stared fixedly at Bishop, probably wondering how he might write this up for the late edition. Alongside us was the doctor, fidgeting all the while, repeatedly pulling his watch from his pocket as if he was late for the theatre. Our final companion was a young warder, who had been given the job of recording the events for posterity. He stood apart from the rest and made copious notes on a pad. His scribbling and the doctor’s shuffling feet were the only sounds to be heard above the ticking of the clock.
Bishop’s knees had failed him briefly when the noose was put in place but his composure soon returned after Mr Markham made the final adjustments and whispered a few concluding words in his ear. The executioner knew Bishop’s weight to the last ounce and the exact length of drop it would take to kill him quickly and with minimal suffering. But it wouldn’t be painless.
One minute before noon, Mr Markham placed his hands on Bishop’s shoulders a final time, stepped clear of the trapdoor and took hold of the metal lever which rose from the floor beside it. The condemned man stiffened. Governor Jackson lifted a telephone receiver, spoke a few short words, then nodded to his colleague on the other side of the glass. In the remaining seconds, as the clock moved to the appointed hour, I envisioned the same scene a hundred miles further north at Strangeways Prison, where the murderer’s accomplice, Harold Stack, was facing an identical fate.
It might be ten minutes before Bishop’s heart would stop beating, even though the life had already gone from him. This allowed sufficient time for the doctor, Governor Jackson, the note-taker and the hangman to descend to the silent chamber where Bishop’s still-warm body now waited.
The prison chaplain, the editor of the Birmingham Post and I tried to share a few words but we were all affected by what we’d witnessed. I believed the man had been treated justly, much more so than the poor shopkeeper he and his mate had kicked to death on the street. Even so, I couldn’t help feeling some compassion. I’d seen death many times and in many forms over the years and I’d never get used to it. Perhaps I was in the wrong job.
After a short while the Governor and doctor returned, telling us that Bishop had been formally declared dead. Hands were shaken and the cheerless party took tea in Governor Jackson’s private rooms; it was an awful affair. I was thankful when, after a decent interval had elapsed, I was able to leave. The young warder accompanied me down the dark corridors until I exited through the lodge gate into the daylight on Winson Green Road. I was never happier in my life to feel the sun on my face and the clean air in my lungs.
Superintendent Dyer’s office was on the third floor of the squat red-brick building in Warwick, which had been home to police headquarters in the county for the last half century. I’d been sitting in the canteen, drinking strong tea and playing a hand or two of crib, when a message arrived for me to go up to see him.
Henry Dyer rose from his seat as soon as I entered his room, stepped around his massive desk and offered me his hand. He was a great bear of a man, barrel-chested and six or seven inches taller than me. We looked like two different species. He was smiling, which was a relief. You only needed to be wary when the smile wasn’t there.
‘Come in, James, take a seat. You’re well, I hope?’
I nodded, though I felt far from well. This case had been taking it out of me and the pointlessness of the hanging had made me feel sick, despite knowing Bishop would have carried on his vendetta if I hadn’t caught him. Hopefully it would serve as some kind of deterrent to his pals, but I doubted it.
Dyer’s office was as expansive as the man. The oak-panelled walls were decorated with certificates and photographs of him with local dignitaries, and I wondered if he changed them around depending on who might be invited in. The desk-top held only a single file and a framed photograph of his wife and daughter. They both looked happy, but that was before the girl, Sarah, had been knocked down and killed by a drunken driver. Seventeen years of age and her whole life taken away. Dyer never talked about it, yet, on occasions, I’d see the sadness cloud his eyes.
Our paths hadn’t crossed much in my early days, when I was a lowly copper plodding the streets of Kenilworth. I’d worked hard and shown my aptitude for investigating beyond the obvious, so made Detective Sergeant in a little over five years. Dyer and I then met more often, as he preferred to be kept updated directly on cases which interested him, receiving information “from the horse’s mouth”, as he liked to put it. We got on well and I’m convinced it was on his insistence I was promoted to Inspector a couple of years ago. When my Chief Inspector, Mark Blackwell, decided to take some time off to look after his sick wife, Dyer pulled me in to his team.
‘Thanks for coming over to see me. I’d have called in to Kenilworth but I’ve been up to my eyes in it here since you finished up with Bishop and Stack. How did it go?’
‘Unpleasant, sir. I wouldn’t want to see that too many times. The case itself was nasty enough and having to go to the hanging put the lid on it.’
‘Something I’ve never had to do myself, I’m glad to say.’
‘Unfortunately, those two are only the tip of the iceberg, the foot-soldiers. There are some very nasty individuals tied up with that lot, and clever with it. Too clever to leave a trail from the likes of Peter Bishop, and I think it’s going to get worse. They hate Jews and, sadly, shopkeepers like Shapiro make it too easy for them. I don’t know why he couldn’t just try to fit in more, be less obvious.’
‘Easier said than done, James, don’t you think? They look different from us and most of them seem to have some kind of foreign accent. Even if they changed their names and dressed as we do, we’d be able to spot them a mile off.’
‘It doesn’t mean they should be beaten up by mindless thugs, though, does it, sir?’
‘No, of course not. Are you any nearer to finding who’s behind it?’
I ran through the main possibilities with him but had to admit I was no closer to a breakthrough. Bishop and Stack hadn’t revealed who was giving the orders and I doubted they even knew. A message would be passed down the line and the fools would willingly do as they were told. Dyer nodded and probed as I went through my explanation, but I could see he had something else on his mind.
‘So how can I help you, sir?’
‘Always to the point, James. How do you know I didn’t invite you in for a cup of tea and a
friendly chat?’
Now I was embarrassed. He was right though, why didn’t I just wait for him to act out being a good boss?
‘Sorry, sir. I thought you’d be busy and would want to be getting on.’
He leaned back in his chair, stretched and laughed; a terrifying, booming sound.
‘You’re right there. As you’ve guessed, I do have something I’d like you to take a look at. With any luck it won’t be as harrowing as what you’ve just been through.’
One
The taxi swung out of the avenue and I got my first view of Grovestock House, its blindingly white stucco frontage gleaming in the autumn sunlight. The drive curved gently round a neatly manicured lawn and our wheels crunched on the gravel as we pulled up outside the front door.
As I stood outside waiting for the doorbell to be answered, I wasn’t sure if there would be anything challenging in this case.
‘Just go through the motions,’ Dyer had said to me. ‘There needs to be the appearance of a complete investigation, but we already know what happened. And remember, it’s not me wanting another look at it, it’s the Chief Constable. He’s getting pressure from the press, who think we should have investigated the deaths more thoroughly. They’re suggesting the case wouldn’t have been tied up quite so quickly if the family wasn’t so well connected.’
Briefly, we went through the file together. I recognised the outlines of the case from the newspaper coverage. “Warwickshire House of Death” had screamed one headline, followed by every grim detail of the tragedy. Lady Isabelle Barleigh had killed her wheelchair-bound son with a shotgun before turning the gun on herself. This had been quickly followed by the suicide of the young man’s fiancée. What made the whole affair more chilling was that the couple were to have been married two days later. Instead, they were now sharing a graveyard. I’d felt ill reading the article but, on the face of it, the facts had looked clear. Nevertheless, I was hardly surprised when questions started to be asked about why the whole matter was despatched so quickly. The deaths had only occurred a few days earlier and, somehow, strings had been pulled to convene a quick inquest and then a funeral to replace the wedding celebrations.
Now I was wishing I’d argued more against being assigned to this one, especially as Dyer had taken me off the Jewish beatings investigation and passed it to that idiot Terry Gleeson. If what happened at Grovestock House was as clear-cut as the preliminary work suggested then why give it to me? I’d told him that there were plenty of other good coppers around who’d adequately tie up the loose ends. I think Dyer knew the Bishop and Stack case had given me a good deal of pain and he was trying to do me a favour. Or perhaps his instincts told him that the initial enquiry had been a bit cursory and, perhaps, unreliable.
Anyway, I hadn’t resisted much so I’d left, briefly calling in to my station in Kenilworth, then home to collect a few things, arriving at Grovestock House before lunch. On the way I’d re-read the file and acquainted myself with the facts as they’d been recorded so far. It was unfortunate that a few days had passed and allowed the trail to cool but it couldn’t be avoided in the circumstances.
The local constable, Sawyer, had been pretty thorough in his approach. He’d been telephoned about the deaths around midday, cycled over as soon as he could, arriving an hour later. By then, the body of the fiancée had been discovered; she had shot herself with the dead man’s revolver. First thing he did was make sure the gates were guarded. Nothing to be done for Tom Barleigh, his mother or girlfriend, so he set about photographing the scenes and interviewing witnesses, several of whom told Sawyer that Lady Isabelle had been increasingly set against the marriage, though none knew why. He’d written his notes up swiftly and gone through them with Gleeson, who hadn’t bothered to interview anyone himself. Just like him, idle bugger.
The local doctor decided there was no need for a post-mortem and Sawyer presented his evidence to the inquest, which made the same conclusions he had. It was starting to bother me that everything had been despatched so quickly, so neatly.
I had done my research on the family prior to my visit. Grovestock House had been built sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century when Thomas Barleigh had wanted a new home to reflect his recently acquired status as a Privy Councillor to King George III. He’d been appointed following his generous support to the monarch in a series of conflicts with France, particularly in the Americas. Thomas was no soldier though, he was one of the new breed of industrialists, building up a fortune manufacturing muskets and pistols. Items put to good use by George’s army in its attempts to suppress uprisings across the empire.
Thomas’s grandson, having become a regular drinking partner to the Prince Regent, was raised to a baronetcy when the prince ascended the throne in the early eighteen hundreds and the house had been refurbished and extended to celebrate. Shifts in political allegiance over the next two centuries meant Sir Arthur Barleigh, the present incumbent, no longer had the power and influence his ancestors enjoyed. Nevertheless, the family was still important in the social merry-go-round of the county, hence the newspapers’ interest and the Chief Constable’s newly-found desire to make sure the job was done thoroughly.
A man in his late forties swung open the door. He wore a dark jacket and pin-stripe trousers, and his hair was greying at the temples. He gave off the unmistakeable smell of brilliantine as he looked at me enquiringly over the rim of his glasses. He was beyond question a butler and I remembered from Sawyer’s report that his name was Jervis.
‘Inspector James Given, Warwickshire Constabulary. I believe you’ve been expecting me.’
‘We have, sir. Sir Arthur asked me to prepare a room for you so I’ll take you up if you’ll follow me.’
‘There’ll be no need, thank you, Mr Jervis, I won’t be staying here tonight. I’ve already booked a room in the village. However, you can look after my overnight bag for now if it’s not too much trouble.’
He took it and asked if there was anything else I needed. I told him I’d like to have a look at where the deaths took place.
‘Very good, sir, would you like me to accompany you?’
‘No thank you, that won’t be necessary, just show me where Lady Isabelle and her son died.’
He pointed to the left of the house. ‘The shootings took place down there, sir, on the side lawn.’
I let the butler go about his business, instructing him to tell everyone in the house I’d arrived and would be conducting interviews later in the day. I didn’t think for a moment I’d get through many but it would do no harm to put them under a little pressure.
Before heading to the side of the house I turned on the step and surveyed the grounds. It wasn’t a grand estate by any means and I suspected it had once been much grander. Perhaps a profligate ancestor had squandered too much of the family fortune on high living. It still remained a couple of hundred acres at least, judging by the distance from the gate to the main house. A lawn, directly in front of the main door, was circled by the drive and bordered by several dozen rose bushes, whose scent would have been breath-taking in the height of summer. At its centre stood a magnificent cedar, fully thirty feet across and towering well above the roof top. The whole garden was walled or hedged on the two sides, with openings to further gardens, woods or fields beyond. The entire landscape sloped down to a lake sculpted into the fields below.
When I turned again and stepped back, I was able to take in the full grandeur of the house. There were two enormous bays rising to the roof and there were roughly twenty windows, all in the Georgian style. Ruefully, I compared this with the single window on each floor of my own little cottage in Kenilworth. The gravel crunched beneath my feet as I walked to the side lawn and through the gate. High walls and hedges surrounded the area and it was obvious that whatever had taken place here wouldn’t have been seen from anywhere in front of the building. Not unless someone was close enough to the gate. I noted there was no other access, or exit, apart from a side door into the house.
The side walls were of much plainer red-brick and of a much earlier period, the grand frontage being merely a façade. I wondered what else in this case might be not what it seemed on the surface.
‘Good afternoon, constable.’ I looked at my notes. ‘Sawyer, isn’t it?’
‘Yes sir, John Sawyer.’
‘I’ve had a chance to have a look at your report but there are a few things I need to go over with you, to get them clear. Well done with the photographs, by the way, a very thorough touch.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He’d joined me at Grovestock a few minutes after my inspection of the front gardens. He was tall even for a copper, towering over me when I stood to shake his hand. His blond hair and fresh features, accompanied by the flushed cheeks when I praised his work, gave the impression of an overgrown schoolboy in a policeman’s uniform.
‘I had my Brownie with me, sir; I tend to put it in my saddlebag when I’m out in case I see anything interesting to photograph on the way. There’s not usually much use for it in my work round here, though. Lost cats, neighbour disputes, that kind of thing. I’m lucky enough to have a darkroom at home so was able to develop them myself as well.’
Sawyer’s boyish enthusiasm was naive, but clearly he was smart and not afraid of using his own initiative. I was certain it would have been the first murder he’d looked at so he’d done well to keep calm and record everything as fully as he had.
‘Why did you conclude Isabelle Barleigh had shot Tom and then herself?’
‘Well, it all looked very obvious on the day, sir. The two of them were lying on the ground with the weapon between them. He’d been shot in the chest from close range, toppling him out of his wheelchair, and she’d shot herself under the chin, really the only way she could have done it with a shotgun.’ Sawyer turned green as he remembered. ‘Also, people from the house and the estate were there in minutes, so it seemed unlikely that anyone could have carried out a murder then disappeared down the road without being noticed.’
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