Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  Cathy and Dennis Free were banished to quarters in the rear of the hotel, but Tommy said all four of them would lunch together in the large dining room. “One-ish.” He told them. The others, at The Blue Boar, would have to fend for themselves.

  While Tommy was welded to the telephone in his room, giving instructions and talking to Scotland Yard, Suzie was content to slip away and join Cathy Wimereux for a pre-lunch glass of sherry in the long Coffee Room: the place where she had taken tea with Tommy on their visit back in August.

  For the first time that day Suzie relaxed and found herself pouring out her reasons for joining the Met, talking about her rise to a responsible position in the Reserve Squad.

  She had joined the Metropolitan Police almost in a fit of pique. In the late 1930s her beloved father had died in a road accident within sight of his Georgian house, Larksbrook, outside Newbury. With his death the spoiled idyll of Suzie’s pampered middle class life came close to destruction. A year later, her mother, Helen, announced she was going to marry for a second time, her choice being the totally unsuitable ‘Galloping Major’ as Suzie and her sister Charlotte called the portly, strutting, fussy little Ross Gordon-Lowe DSO.

  Charlotte was already away from home, married with two children – one of them gravely handicapped – and Suzie, goaded by her dislike of her mother’s new husband, and after a furious row with him, took the easy way out by enlisting in the Met (“I can always arrest the little bugger”). She rose quickly through WPC to a posting with CID as a Woman Detective Sergeant, and from there to Tommy Livermore’s Reserve Squad, discovering on the way that she had been earmarked for promotion by an unlikely cabal of senior officers with an eye to what would most benefit the force in future years.

  Cathy already knew about the events of Christmas 1940 when Charlotte had tragically died, the children now cared for by Helen and the odious Gordon-Lowe.

  Now in spite of some pointed questions, Suzie did not go into the details of her long affair with Tommy Livermore, and the fact that she shared her London bolthole in Upper St Martin’s Lane, with her boss. Suzie, however, got the impression that Cathy already knew most of the details of that side of her life and merely wanted them confirmed.

  It was only when Tommy and Dennis Free arrived for lunch that she realised how Cathy had quietly loosened her tongue and drawn out her life story with a minimum of fuss, proving that Cathy Wimereux was a skilled and cunning copper: one to be watched, Suzie thought.

  At just before one o’clock they sat down to lunch under the careful ministrations of the head waiter – in fact the only waiter – the saturnine Harris who, after he’d served the first course, told Tommy the manager would like a word.

  “I’m free at the moment if he’d like to interrupt my lunch.” Tommy snapped as Harris removed his soup plate. Like the Demon King in pantomime the manager – a short, plump man in need of a haircut, and with a moustache that seemed to be wearing him instead of vice versa – arrived in the dining room just as Tommy looked at the menu to identify what had been set before him by way of an entrée. The menu said Jambon Extraodinaire.

  “It certainly is most extraordinaire,” Tommy muttered as the manager gave a small cough to indicate he was there, shifting from foot to foot beside Tommy’s chair.

  “Yes?” Tommy barked and the manager coughed again.

  “Detective Inspector Livermore…?” he began and Cathy raised her head, ruffled as though she had visible hackles rising rapidly. “Detective Inspector?” she all but shouted, while small spots of crimson appeared on Suzie’s cheeks: she never could stand public unpleasantness and they both knew the Detective Inspector error would illicit rage from Tommy.

  “Detective Chief Superintendent if you don’t mind,” Cathy glared at the preening little manager, very much aware of DCS Livermore’s reputation for accuracy and his treatment of fools: Tommy Livermore, it was said, became riled more easily than a bull faced with a cardinal’s hat.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tommy, who would normally be furious, turned on the quiet charm, immediately angering both Cathy and Suzie.

  “What can I do for you?” The terrible smile aimed straight at the manager and neatly at the two women detective sergeants at the same time, a trick performed with oily skill.

  “Well, Detective Chief Superintendent…” he began and Suzie, now furious at her Chief’s decision to play things out of character, tried to score one for the girls by muttering, “Detective Chief Superintendent, the Honourable Tommy Livermore…”

  Tommy shot her a glance containing several daggers as he unlocked his eyes from her’s and told the manager to speak up.

  “It’s simply the ration books,” the man smiled a ludicrous smirk. “We don’t know how long you’re here for, sir, and we need the ration books.” Hands spread wide, like a man claiming to be at the mercy of petty bureaucracy – which of course he was.

  Again they all waited, the pause laced with the hiss of a smouldering fuse.

  “Think nothing of it,” the terrible smile again, then, for reasons of his own, Tommy lapsed into a kind of stage cockney, “Down the nick,” he grinned, eyes glittering. Darn the nick. “Down the bottom of Mill Street. That inspector down there, give him a bell, eh? Tinkle him and he’ll see to it, right? Got an entire office up the Yard to deal with the petty restrictions of wartime: ration books, identity cards, rail warrants all that bumf. That Inspector – Turnbull. He’ll see you right. Right?” Which was good coming from Tommy who, when in a hotel, was not above sending for provisions to be driven in from the Home Farm at Kingscote Grange, where his parents, the Earl and Countess of Kingscote, lived out their gilded country lives.

  Tommy liked to disappear into characters of his own invention: west country folks who called you, ‘my dove’ or ‘my robin’; Geordies who sprinkled their conversation with ‘hinnies’; ‘bottles of beer’; and ‘why ayes’; and of course, the cheeky cockney sparrow they’d just heard. “Know what I mean?” He added now.

  “Certainly, sir. Yes, sir.” The manager backed away, adding that there was a nice rabbit stew for tonight, as though hinting that Tommy Livermore would be served with the lion’s share of the rabbit which was a kind of mixed metaphor.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Tommy called, a little loudly. “If it’s rabbits you need I’ll have some sent over from my father’s farm. Just say the word.” He turned towards Cathy and spoke in almost a whisper, “Remind me to give Billy a bell. He can call the farm and we’ll have a consignment of dead bunnies down here quicker than you can say ‘twelve bore’.”

  Several people looked up from their food and scowled. The word had already got out of course. Mrs ‘Bunny’ Bascombe lay dead in her cellar and her husband, Bobby, the hero winner of the VC would be coming home from the desert to bury her. Not really done to joke about ‘dead bunnies’.

  Billy was Billy Mulligan, Tommy’s executive sergeant, who dealt with the business and office side of the Reserve Squad. Like Brian, Billy had been familiar with the Kingscote estate long before Tommy Livermore even considered becoming a copper.

  Lunch finally having been digested, with the aid of a cup of filthy coffee, they walked back down Mill Street, Suzie and Cathy pondering Tommy’s pronunciation of ‘darn’ for ‘down’ when he was in his cockney mode. “That was a real meal,” Suzie said. A reel meel, one of Jack Warner’s catch phrases, like Mind my bike and My bruvver Sid.

  Cathy grinned and said, “Very tasty, very sweet.” Another catch phrase, from a double act who spent their time talking about food. Nan Kenway and Douglas Young: proper à la carte they were.

  “Chief?” Cathy said, a little loudly.

  “That was me last time I looked,” Tommy responded with one of his charming smiles. From where Suzie was standing it looked as though a flirtation was going on.

  “Well, Chief,” Cathy moved closer to him and Suzie bristled. “That fellow Shepherd.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s from the Home Office isn’t
he?”

  “Some kind of funny, yes.” Tommy said.

  “Well, don’t know what he told you but he’d been down to have a look at the bodies.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes, the local DS – Stimpson is it? Yes, Stimpson told me. He had some official pass and Stimpson let him have quite a long gander, Chief.”

  “Really, let’s not let on that we know. Right?” Tommy flashed his smile. The terrible one.

  “That was a character out of that Tommy Handley show wasn’t it?” Tommy turned to address Suzie as they came to the big watermill, just past The Shears public house at the bottom of Mill Street.

  “What character?” Suzie asked, bewildered at Tommy’s sudden change of subject.

  “Curry Shepherd. When he left us. Here, in the nick before we went to lunch.”

  She tried to strain her mind back a couple of hours. Curry Shepherd. The three of them with Shirley Cox after they had arrived back at the nick. Oh, yes, she recalled Curry leaving. “I go. I come back,” he had said.

  “Yes, Chief. Yes, he said that fellow’s catch phrase. Yes, ‘I go. I come back.’ Fellow from ITMA.”

  It’s That Man Again – ITMA – the country’s all time favourite morale-boosting, must hear (Thursday evenings 8.30 pm BBC Home Service) radio show, far and away ahead of even the American Jack Benny Show now broadcast on Sunday lunchtimes. ITMA’s endless fund of catch phrases were repeated by people in queues, shops, waiting rooms, school play grounds and offices, everyone buoyed up by the many comic asides the show engendered – “Mr. Handley!” as Miss Hotchkiss bore down on the infamous Minister of Aggravation and Mysteries (at one time the Mayor of Foaming-in-the-Mouth); “I don’t mind if I do, sir,” from the bibulous Colonel Chinstrap; the cleaning lady, Mrs Mopp’s “Can I do you now, sir?” and “I go. I come back.” Ali Oop’s exit line.

  “Ali,” said Suzie.

  “Ali who?” asked Tommy.

  “Oop,” Suzie said.

  “Of course,” Tommy grinned. “After you, Claude.” He quoted.

  “That was Claude and Cecil.” Suzie wondered if it was Tommy who was disturbing her. Why should it be? But he was changing. His attitude and manner altering. Why? No idea. She could read him like a book and if he’d stuck in his usual groove of not suffering fools gladly he would have gone off his chump over lunch. The manager of the Bear Hotel would normally have been blown out of his own dining room. Ten times out of ten Tommy detonated in the face of people behaving like idiots, or being what folk these days called ‘Little Hitlers’. But not today. She heard his voice in her head, “Don’t worry about it.” Quite out of character – except when he was on a charm offensive. So, could it be Tommy who was causing her uncertain confidence?

  They made their way into the Mill Street Police Station, heading straight for the office they were setting up as the Murder Room, Tommy calling out to the desk sergeant that they’d like to interview Colonel Weaving’s sergeant if it wasn’t too much bother. If the unstable anger was gone, Suzie thought, at least the sarcasm was alive and doing well.

  Shirley was waiting for them looking pleased with herself, the office neat and orderly.

  “Got yourself a billet, WDS Cox?” Tommy asked, walking around, moving things about.

  “Very lucky, Chief. Yes.”

  “With the others at The Blue Boar, eh?”

  “No, Chief. Private house.”

  “Really?” Tommy back on his normal form, expecting Shirley to volunteer information. “Private house, eh? Another police officer?”

  “Matter of fact, yes, Chief. Inspector Turnbull, Chief. He has a kind of flat in his house. Offered it to me.”

  “Of course Sergeant Cox. Churlish to refuse, eh?”

  “Quite, Chief.” Shirley agreed, and Curry Shepherd came into the room without knocking and hardly opening the door; sidling noiselessly in as though wearing brothel creepers as Tommy remarked later.

  “Ah, you come back.” Tommy said now.

  “What?” Curry smiled. A bit of a supercilious smile, Suzie thought, then realised that under her clothes she was blushing and that she couldn’t keep her eyes off Curry.

  No, she thought. No. This is stupid. Curry Shepherd cannot be causing me this sense of indecision. No. No. And she heard her long dead father singing, ‘No! No! A thousand times no; I’d rather die than say yes.’ Like he used to when they had family get-togethers around the piano.

  Almost under his breath, Tommy began to sing the closing lines of the ITMA signature tune:

  When there’s trouble brewing,

  It’s his doing,

  That man,

  That man again.

  With Cathy’s help he had arranged a table with two chairs on one side and a single chair facing on the other.

  “Thought we’d talk to the late Colonel Weaving’s sergeant. ‘One who found the bodies. Fancy that, Curry?”

  Curry nodded. “Fine. Yes. Actually I’ve already had a few words with him myself.”

  “Really?” Tommy sounded as though nothing in this world interested him less.

  “Ali Oop,” Suzie said, not meaning to say it aloud and immediately feeling like a Bateman cartoon with them all staring at her.

  “Ali what?” Curry asked.

  “Oop,” she explained. “ITMA character. You said the catch phrase when you left. ‘I go. I come back.’”

  “Did I?” Curry looking blank.

  “Needs to lie down in a darkened room,” Tommy said, and the door opened again with the desk sergeant bringing in a short, blocky man with a tanned face, eyes that seemed out of proportion to the rest of him and a troublesome lock of hair that kept falling over his eyes, needed it cut off really.

  “Sergeant Gibbon,” said the desk sergeant.

  Sergeant Gibbon was in uniform, the lion with blue wings on his left breast – glider pilot – the Pegasus airborne badge on his arm above his sergeant’s stripes, below the parachute wings on his right shoulder, and his maroon beret sporting the Glider Pilot Regiment badge, the laurel wreath surrounding an eagle in flight and looking nasty enough to deserve its popular name of ‘shite hawk’. Not that you saw it much out and about. The Glider Pilot Regiment was not what you might call highly visible. The sergeant dressed exactly as Lieutenant Colonel Weaving, apart from the rank badges.

  “Come in, Gibbon,” Tommy showing deference to a fighting man, standing up ushering him in. “Do sit down,” indicating the chair opposite at the table. “You got a Christian name at all?”

  “Yes, sir. Roy…”

  “Well, sit down, Roy.”

  “… But people mostly call me ‘Monkey’. Monkey Gibbon, sir, if you see…”

  “Yes, very droll.” Unsmiling: always a danger sign with Tommy.

  Gibbon sat and the weak December light caught his face revealing him as a clear-eyed, hard-skinned man sitting silently, still, that watchful calm manner often present in good fighting men who have learned the art of remaining motionless for long periods, alert and listening.

  Tommy said, “Must have been bad. Unpleasant.”

  “Most unpleasant, sir.”

  “What was most unpleasant?” Tommy showing he could be tricksy.

  “Finding the Colonel and his lady, sir.”

  “Right. Go on.” Then, almost to himself, “His lady?”

  “How I found them, sir?”

  “Good idea Sar’nt Gibbon.”

  “I was due to pick him up at six o’clock, sir. This morning, six a.m. Punctilious he is, sir. The Colonel. Most punctilious. He was, I mean, sir. The Colonel was.”

  “And you were there in good time?”

  “I was there at a quarter to six, sir. When he didn’t come down by six-fifteen I got out to investigate. Went up the steps and found the door ajar. Just loose, you know, sir. Open about half-an-inch. Maybe less.”

  “So you went in?”

  “Pushed the door open and went in, sir, yes. I felt there was someone there so I called out. ‘Colonel Weaving,’
I called. Felt someone was upstairs and it didn’t feel right. You know how it is, sir.”

  “No,” Tommy said with some kind of finality.

  “Well, you can be out in the field, or clearing a house and you get this kind of second sight. Makes you twitchy, taps into your nerves, like. I was carrying a weapon, here, sir,” he swivelled slightly to reveal the holster on the left side of his webbing belt. Left side for the cross draw, lanyard attached to the butt going up and looped around his neck, under the lapels of his battledress blouse.

  “So I drew my weapon and went up the stairs, slowly, making hardly any noise.”

  “How exactly do you manage that, Roy?”

  “Training, sir. Rubber soles on the boots. It’s the way you test each stair and transfer your weight to the riser. Takes practise. Sometimes the full foot, sometimes just the toe. Even an old staircase can be traversed without a creak if you’re careful.”

  “And at the top?”

  “I was wrong. There was nobody there. Upstairs anyway. I went through each room, as thought I was clearing it, ready at each door.”

  “Nice bathroom, isn’t it?”

  “Very nice, sir. Very tasteful. Victorian isn’t it, sir?”

  “The whole house is Victorian, yes.”

  Inwardly Suzie smiled, knowing the sergeant was taking Tommy for a bit of a ride. She got the impression that he knew the house pretty well: had been there before.

  “Bathroom was the last room I did,” Gibbon continued. “I was just coming out when I thought I heard a noise from downstairs. I was on that landing again like a thunderflash, convinced someone had been through the hall. And they had. The door, the front door, was open wide. I had almost closed it. But it was as though I could sense someone had passed through the hall and out of the door. You know, as though I’d seen them.”

  “You went after him?”

  “I didn’t say it was a him…”

  “No, but…”

  “It probably was, but I don’t know how many. I don’t see how one person…” he trailed off.

  “Go on. You can’t see how one person…”

  “When I finally came across the bodies. I couldn’t see how one person on his own could’ve … Well, could’ve…”