by Jim Eldridge
At the mention of Radley’s name, the man relaxed and gestured for them to come nearer.
‘Mason’s not here,’ he said.
‘We know,’ said Daniel. He introduced himself and Abigail. ‘We’ve come to verify what he told us about staying here with you.’
Cartwright studied them warily before asking: ‘Why would you need to verify it? Is this because of what it said in the papers? About some man being killed at the museum?’ He hesitated, then added: ‘They had a picture of Mason.’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘Miss Fenton and I are private investigators and we’ve been hired by the Natural History Museum to look into the tragic event that happened there. I don’t know if Mr Radley mentioned it to you?’
Cartwright shook his head. ‘Mason turned up and said he was having troubles with his business and he needed to get away from it for a while. Not just the business, London was making him ill. He said he needed somewhere quiet where he wouldn’t be bothered by people.’
‘He’d been here before?’
‘He used to come and stay when he was a youngster. That was when my parents were still alive.’ He gestured at the surrounding trees. ‘He loved the woods. He loved coming out into them and seeing badgers and foxes and the like. He was always happier in the country than the town.’
‘And since he was a youngster?’ asked Abigail.
‘Not so much,’ said Cartwright. ‘He’d maybe come down for a few days, then I wouldn’t see him or hear from him for a year or two. Then a letter would come from him asking if he could come down for a few days. Up till this time, the last was about two years ago. His business, see. It kept him busy.’
‘How did he seem he when he arrived this time?’
‘Upset,’ answered Cartwright.
‘Did he elaborate on why he was upset?’
Cartwright shook his head. ‘No. And I didn’t ask. That’s not my way, and Mason knew that. I never pressured him. I just got on with my work here and let him be. After a day he asked if he could help me, so we worked together.’
‘He enjoyed working with wood?’
‘I don’t know if he enjoyed it,’ admitted Cartwright. ‘It was harder than the work he was used to, so he was slow at it. But he said he felt better for doing it, which was why he came here. To feel better. Which he did, until Sunday when he walked down to the village and came back with a newspaper. Then he was all upset.’
‘Did he show you the newspaper?’
Cartwright nodded. ‘We get ’em later here than they do in London. If it’s in London’s papers on Saturday night, it’ll be with us for Sunday morning. The paper had his picture in it. He said, “I’ve got to go back to London, Dick. They’ve wronged my name, said I did something I didn’t do. I’ve got to go back otherwise the police’ll come here looking for me.”’
‘Why did he think the police would know he was here? He hadn’t told anyone in London where he was really going.’
‘Small village,’ said Cartwright. ‘People here knew Mason. Someone would have reported he was here, especially if they thought there was something in it for ’em. You know, a reward for him. So, he left.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Cartwright. ‘He caught the early train. And I can verify that because I took him to the station myself on my wagon.’ He gestured towards a shed partly hidden behind some trees and bushes. ‘It’s in there. My horse is grazing in the paddock at the back of the house.’
‘And when did he arrive?’ asked Abigail.
Cartwright thought it over, then replied: ‘Tuesday of last week. Sometime in the afternoon.’
‘So, he was here for almost a week?’
Cartwright nodded.
‘Did he leave here at any time to go back to London?’ asked Daniel. ‘Before yesterday, I mean?’
Cartwright shook his head. ‘No. He was here with me the whole time, here at the cottage. Every morning Mason walked down to the village to get a paper. He liked to know what was going on. And a couple of times we went down to the pub together, which is just a walk down a track. That was all. He didn’t even go into Borough Green or Wrotham Heath, just stayed here with me.’ He looked at them quizzically, then asked: ‘You’ve come all the way from London?’
‘Yes,’ said Abigail.
Cartwright looked at them apologetically. ‘You’ll have to excuse my manners,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to getting visitors. I should have offered you tea or something. I’ve got some cider. Home-made. Mason was very partial to it.’
‘Tea would be perfect, thank you, Mr Cartwright,’ said Abigail.
‘You just set yourself down there,’ said Cartwright, indicating a wooden table and benches they guessed he’d made himself. ‘Mostly I prefer to live outside. I’ll be out again as soon as the kettle boils.’
Daniel and Abigail sat and looked at the surrounding trees, watching the birds swooping from tree to tree.
‘It’s idyllic,’ mused Abigail. ‘The air’s so clean, certainly after London. You’ve spoken a few times about us living in the country. Is this the sort of place you mean?’
‘This is possibly a bit too rural,’ said Daniel. ‘There’ll be no running water here, just a well that runs dry in the summer. And what would I do?’
‘Work timber like Dick Cartwright?’ suggested Abigail. ‘We could do it together.’
‘Working timber is a hard and dangerous occupation. Notice the limp. My guess is a falling tree broke his leg at some time. Most people who work with cutting timber end up with some sort of damage.’
‘You worked with timber as well?’ asked Abigail. ‘Another aspect of your life in Kent?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘No, it’s an observation as a result of interviewing timber workers during my time in the police.’ He looked around at the dense woods, savouring the country atmosphere, the lack of noise. ‘But it’s worth considering. There are plenty of other ways to make a living in the country. And there’ll always be crimes to investigate.’
‘Yes, but would uncovering sheep stealing or apple scrumping earn us enough to keep us in comfort?’
‘There are rich people here. I’m sure that the lords of the manors are just as much in need of good detectives as museums.’ He saw that Dick Cartwright had appeared from the cottage bearing a tray with a teapot, cups and saucers, and a milk jug on it. ‘Ah, refreshments.’
‘Do you believe Mr Cartwright?’ Abigail asked as they walked back to Borough Green.
‘I do,’ said Daniel. ‘Mason Radley didn’t kill Erskine Petter.’
To get confirmation, when they arrived back at the railway station, Daniel quizzed the staff to see if anybody answering Mason Radley’s description had caught a train to London in the last week.
‘“Answering his description”.’ The booking officer clerk chuckled. ‘There’s only one man answering that description, with that big bushy ginger beard and that hair. We know Mr Radley and his cousin, Dick Cartwright, well enough, and I can assure you we saw him only twice. On the day he arrived, and the day he went back to London, which was by the early train yesterday morning.
‘In fact, old Harry who does the plants on the station lives in St Mary’s Platt and he said that Mr Radley never left it the whole time until yesterday.’
‘So, there we have it,’ said Abigail, as she and Daniel settled down in the train taking them back to London. ‘I assume we’ll be taking this to Inspector Feather and Superintendent Armstrong?’
‘We will,’ said Daniel. ‘We’ll call at the Yard tomorrow.’
‘They won’t release Mr Radley, though,’ said Abigail. ‘The superintendent will be determined to hang on to him, to have someone to impress the commissioner. And there’s still the murder of Raymond Simpson hanging over Mr Radley.’
‘He didn’t do that either,’ said Daniel.
‘Your policeman’s nose?’
‘That and my reading of people,’ said Daniel.
‘And you’ve never been
wrong?’ asked Abigail.
Daniel gave a rueful sigh. ‘Sadly, yes. More than once. But I’m just hoping that this isn’t one of those occasions.’
Inspector Feather stood in one of the holding cells in the basement of Scotland Yard. Beside him were two burly uniformed officers, both with their truncheons ready in their hands, because everyone at the Yard knew the reputation of the two Wardle brothers. Although, right now, Benny and Billy didn’t look as if they offered much of a threat. They stood as they’d been ordered to, but their postures showed their sense of defeat: their shoulders sagged, their heads hung down and their faces bore the bruises and marks from being beaten in the pub.
‘Erskine Petter,’ said Feather, accusingly. ‘His throat was cut. You went to his room.’
‘It weren’t us,’ burst out Billy. ‘He was dead when we got there.’
Benny scowled and threw a dirty look of disapproval at his brother, but then gave a grunt of agreement. ‘That’s the way it was. Someone got to him before us.’ Quickly, he added: ‘But we wouldn’t have killed him. Not that way, anyway. We’ve never used knives.’
‘Why were you looking for him?’ asked Feather.
‘He owed us money,’ said Benny. ‘He said he’d look after us while we was in prison, but he never did. So, we went to get what he owed us.’
‘Who killed him?’ asked Feather.
Both Benny and Billy looked at him in bewilderment.
‘How would we know?’ demanded Benny. ‘We wasn’t there when he got done. By the look of him, he’d been dead for a while.’ When Feather didn’t answer, he began to step forward, hands held out in desperate appeal. ‘Honest, Mr Feather.’ One of the uniformed officers stepped forward and gestured him back with his truncheon.
‘We didn’t kill him,’ added Billy, as Benny stepped away from the inspector.
‘So, who’d want him dead?’ asked Feather.
Benny shrugged. ‘I dunno. Anyone he’d crossed. Or taken money off.’
‘What about this dinosaur business?’ asked Feather.
‘What business?’ asked Billy, puzzled. ‘What’s a dino … whatever you said?’
‘Remember, I told you about it,’ said Feather to Benny. ‘The letters from Petter and Wardle about the dinosaur skeletons?’
‘What’s a dinosaur?’ asked Billy again.
‘Like I told you, Inspector, that was Erskine,’ said Benny. ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Who else was Erskine dealing with?’
‘Lately, we don’t know,’ said Benny. ‘We’ve been in the Scrubs, remember.’
‘Before you went in?’
Benny shook his head, helplessly. ‘Me and Billy was never involved in who he was dealing with. That was all Erskine. He liked to play things close to his chest. We only got involved when there was money owing. Our job was to put pressure on ’em.’
Feather spent a further fruitless quarter of an hour with the two Wardle brothers, pressing them for the names of any associates of Erskine Petter they knew of, but the two insisted they knew nothing about anything. Usually, Feather would have put their denial down to the pair keeping loyal to the underworld maxim of not informing, but in this case Feather knew it didn’t enter their thinking because both brothers were terrified they were going to be charged with Petter’s murder. At this stage, Feather wasn’t going to inform them that he knew they didn’t kill Petter, based on the medical evidence and the testimony from Jones about when he’d had his confrontation with the pair of thugs, he wanted them ready to spill any information they had to get themselves off the hook of a murder charge. But no names were offered, nor any other useful information. Erskine Petter really had kept his business arrangements to himself.
With a last warning to them that they were in danger of going to the gallows if they didn’t cough up, Feather left Benny and Billy locked in the holding cell and returned to his office, where he found Sergeant Cribbens waiting for him.
‘Any joy from the Wardle brothers, guv?’ enquired Cribbens.
Feather sighed. ‘Not a word. Except to insist they’re innocent of Petter’s murder. But well done for bringing them in, Sergeant. I’ll make sure you get a recommendation for it.’
‘Sergeant Bunn from Paddington nick earned one as well, sir,’ said Cribbens. ‘It was thanks to him that we were in the right place at the right time.’
‘I’ll make sure his name gets a mention.’ He shot an inquisitive look at his sergeant, aware that Cribbens seemed to have something else disturbing him. That was one thing about Cribbens, he thought, his face gave everything away, and his concern about something was very clear. The sergeant would make a terrible poker player, Feather decided. ‘Yes, Sergeant? I can tell there’s something else bothering you.’
‘Simon Purcell, sir. The lad we sent to Holloway on remand on that blackmail business.’
‘Yes, Sergeant. What about him?’
‘He’s dead, sir. Killed himself in his cell.’
‘How?’
‘Hanged himself from the bars of his cell window, using his shirt as a rope.’
Feather sat down, his expression thoughtful. ‘Was he alone in his cell?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So, there’s no suggestion of foul play?’
‘Not that I’ve heard, sir. One of the warders found him. No one else involved.’
Feather sighed. ‘This case has got one of the highest rates of people vanishing or dying I’ve ever known.’
‘Will you tell his family, sir?’
‘As I recall, he’s got – had – parents and a couple of sisters in the Holloway Road.’
‘That’s right, sir.’
Feather shook his head. ‘The prison was in charge of him. They can take the responsibility of telling his family. I know how some of the prison staff can be towards prisoners on remand. If there are any questions raised about why Purcell died, I’m making it quite clear his death was nothing to do with us.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Daniel and Abigail’s first visit the following morning was to Marylebone to talk to Mason Radley’s housekeeper. They’d both been aware the last time they’d seen her of her concern for Radley, and they doubted if anyone had bothered to contact her with the latest news of him. When she opened the door to them, they could see that the woman was suffering even greater distress than on their previous visit.
‘Good morning, Mrs Walton,’ said Abigail. ‘May we come in? We have some news about Mr Radley.’
‘Please do,’ said Walton, making no attempt to hide her obvious anxiety. She led them to the kitchen at the back of the house, saying as they went: ‘The kitchen staff are away at the moment, while Mr Radley is absent. There seemed no sense in them being here with no one to serve, though the maids still come in every day to make sure the place is clean for when he returns.’
In the kitchen, she gestured for them to sit at the large and spotlessly clean table. A copy of a newspaper lay on the table, open at the picture of Mason Radley.
‘This is dreadful,’ said Mrs Walton, pointing at the newspaper. ‘They are saying he committed a murder.’
‘The reports only say they are looking for him in connection with it,’ Daniel corrected her gently.
‘It’s the same thing,’ burst out Walton, angrily. ‘And everyone knows it. And it’s wrong. Mr Radley would never do such a terrible thing.’
‘We agree,’ said Daniel. ‘In fact, we met with Mr Radley the day before yesterday—’
‘You met him? Where?’
‘At the Natural History Museum.’
She stared at them, bewildered. ‘He is back from India?’
‘He never went to India,’ explained Abigail. ‘He’s been staying with a cousin of his in Kent. He returned to London on Monday to hand himself in to the police—’
‘The police? Were they at the museum?’
‘No. We met him at the museum, and he agreed that we would escort him to Scotland Yard where he would tell his
story to Inspector Feather.’
‘His story?’
Gently, Abigail related Radley’s ordeal as he’d told it to them: the deaths of the workers on his plantation in India, the blackmail by Simpson and fleeing London for fear he would be arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. And then the death of Erskine Petter, which the police believed he may also have been responsible for.
‘But we know for certain that was not the case,’ said Abigail. ‘Yesterday we went to see Mr Radley’s cousin, and he confirmed that Mr Radley didn’t leave Kent at all until his return to London on Monday.’
‘The poor man,’ said Walton, wringing her hands together. ‘What he suffered. Those deaths in India must have distressed him greatly. And he told no one.’ Then she looked sharply at the pair. ‘But where is he now? You say he came back to London on Monday. It’s now Wednesday.’
‘He’s being held on remand at Scotland Yard,’ said Abigail.
‘In a cell?’ asked Walton, shocked.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Abigail. ‘Unfortunately it was too late for us to go to Scotland Yard yesterday by the time we got back from Kent, but we’re on our way there now to tell Inspector Feather that Mr Radley could not have killed the man mentioned in the newspaper because he was in Kent the whole time.’
‘And then they’ll let him go?’ said Walton, her face showing the intensity of her hope.
Abigail shot a look at Daniel, who said: ‘We’d like to think so, but the police have their own procedures. They may have to check themselves rather than just taking our word for it.’ He hesitated for a second, before adding awkwardly: ‘And there is still the fact that he fled immediately after the body of the attendant, who was blackmailing him, was found at the museum, which was why suspicion was cast on him in the first place.’
‘But he’s innocent,’ insisted Walton. ‘I know Mr Radley. He couldn’t kill anybody.’
‘For what it’s worth, Mr Wilson and I both feel the same way you do,’ said Abigail. ‘The problem is convincing the police.’