by Mike Hollow
‘She can’t have done it, Inspector,’ she said at last. ‘Elsie got home last Sunday night at twenty to nine, and an hour later Derek went off to do his fire watching – or whatever else it was he had in mind to do that night. As soon as he’d gone, Elsie said she needed a word with me. She told me what her husband had been up to, and we talked about it. We were together for the rest of the evening, and we didn’t get to bed until after midnight.’
‘So,’ said Jago to Marwell, ‘you set off to your fire watching at twenty to ten?’
‘Yes.’
Jago now addressed Elsie. ‘And can you confirm that was the time your husband left?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Mrs Lewis, you say you and your daughter were together, just the two of you, from then on until after midnight, when you retired to bed for the night?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But Mrs Ballantyne has told me you stayed with her that night, at her house.’
He turned back to Vera, who was looking very worried.
‘Mrs Ballantyne,’ he said, ‘that’s correct, isn’t it? You told me Audrey was with you that night. But she can’t have been here with Elsie and with you at your house at the same time, can she? I’d like the truth now, please.’
The medium seemed to have lost the power of speech. Her eyes flitted around like those of a cornered animal.
‘I, er … I-I …’ she stuttered, then fell silent again.
Audrey Lewis stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the mantelpiece and drew herself up with a straight back.
‘All right, Inspector,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you the truth. I’m a mother, and I can’t abandon my daughter. Can you blame me for wanting to protect her? But she asked me to tell you she hadn’t killed Joan. I said what I said to protect her, but it was a lie. Yes, a lie, and I don’t care. I admit I wasn’t with Elsie.’
Marwell spun round to glare at his wife.
‘So it was you,’ he said. ‘You killed her, you evil witch.’
He flung himself towards Elsie and grabbed her by the throat.
‘You murdered my poor Joanie,’ he said, choking on his tears as he shook her back and forth.
Cradock leapt forward and prised the man off her, pinning his arms behind his back. Marwell collapsed like a rag doll, weeping uncontrollably. Elsie staggered back, rubbing her hands against her throat.
‘It’s not true, Inspector,’ she gasped. ‘I never laid a finger on her.’
Jago was silent. Elsie looked at her mother uncomprehendingly.
‘But Mum,’ she cried, ‘what are you saying? Don’t do this to me!’
‘Don’t worry, my love,’ said Audrey. Then turning to Jago she said calmly: ‘It’s true, Inspector. I was not with Elsie that night. But I can assure you with all my heart that I know Elsie did not kill her. Because I did.’
‘Mum?’ said Elsie again. She scanned the room, her eyes wide with pain and confusion.
‘Inspector Jago,’ said Audrey, her voice steady and measured, ‘I have only one true friend in this world, and that’s Vera. I’d always had my doubts about my son’s wife and the quality of her commitment to him, but it was only when dear Vera told me what one of her clients had said that my worst fears were confirmed. As you so astutely suspected, Vera was visited in her professional capacity by a young woman who works at the cinema, and during their consultation this young lady let slip that a colleague of hers was expecting a baby. That would normally be of no interest to me, but then Vera said the girl had revealed that the colleague in question was my daughter-in-law, Joan. She’d said the pregnancy wasn’t showing yet. I imagine that to her this was just another salacious detail, but to me it was clear as day that if Joan was indeed pregnant the child could not be my son Richard’s. I discussed with Vera what we should do about this, and we decided we should confront Joan with what we’d learnt and ask her if it was true.’
‘So you went to Joan’s flat on Sunday evening,’ said Jago.
‘Yes, we went there together. As we got near the flat we saw a man leaving, in the moonlight. We weren’t close enough to see who he was, but he seemed unsteady on his feet, and when he said something Joan giggled like a schoolgirl. She was behaving no better than a common prostitute. When he’d gone she closed the door, but we went over and rang the bell, and she opened it. We went in and confronted her – I told her I knew she was pregnant, and demanded to know who the father was.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said it was my daughter’s husband, Derek. I couldn’t believe it – that she could stand there as bold as brass and say such a wicked thing. I told her she’d betrayed both my son and my daughter. She had the nerve to stand there, looking down her nose at me, and laugh in my face. She called me something I cannot repeat, and said Vera was a witch. Then she flew at me like a cat, her fingers like claws. It took both of us to fight her off. She ran into the bedroom and tried to shut the door, but we pushed our way in. We struggled together and I tripped her so she fell to the floor. Vera sat on her and slapped her face. There was a chair knocked over beside me, with a pair of stockings draped over it. They looked expensive, and all I could think of was stories I’d read in the newspapers about prostitutes who’d been murdered by an unknown man using a stocking. Then Vera said, “Get one of those harlot stockings and let’s teach this bitch a lesson.”’
‘No!’ gasped Vera. ‘Audrey!’
Audrey ignored her. ‘I grabbed it,’ she went on, speaking faster, ‘and wrapped it round her neck to frighten her, but all she did was spit in my face. I don’t know what happened next – all I remember is feeling a terrible anger raging inside me. I remember screaming at her, and the next thing I knew the stocking was tight round her neck – and she wasn’t moving any more. I looked at Vera. I said, “She’s dead. What are we going to do?” She said, “We’ll do nothing – just leave her here and go. No one’ll see us in the blackout, and we’ll go back to my place. I’ll say you were with me there all evening and all night.” So that’s what we did.’
A look of horror crossed Vera’s face.
‘No, no, it wasn’t like that,’ she said, backing away towards the wall. ‘You’ve got to believe me, Inspector. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. She’s lying.’ She looked around helplessly. ‘It wasn’t me, I tell you. It was her – she made me do it.’
Her words became unintelligible through her tears. Jago beckoned to Cradock, and they crossed the room together. Jago took hold of Audrey’s arm, and Cradock Vera’s.
‘You’re both under arrest,’ said Jago.
Vera’s voice turned to a subdued and pitiful moaning, but Audrey stood motionless, her face fixed in an icy glare.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
When Jago arrived at work the next morning, Station Sergeant Tompkins drew him to one side.
‘Someone’s come to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘He was here first thing – Mr Ballantyne, husband of one of those women you brought in last night. Young Cradock’s got him in the CID office, waiting for you.’
‘Thanks, Frank,’ said Jago.
He went straight to the office. As soon as he entered the room, Ballantyne jumped to his feet, clutching his hat with both hands before him in a beseeching manner.
‘Good morning, Mr Ballantyne,’ said Jago. ‘How can we help you?’
‘Help me?’ said Ballantyne, his voice drained of its former confidence. ‘There’s only one thing you can do to help me. Let me see my wife – I beg you. I must see her.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Ballantyne. That won’t be possible at the moment.’
Ballantyne’s already distressed face crumpled. He seemed to be fighting back tears.
‘That’s what I feared you’d say. But I can’t just stay at home waiting. She’s my wife, Inspector, my wife – can you understand? She’s all I have. I can’t imagine living without her.’
‘She’s been arrested in connection with a very serious crime, Mr Ballantyne.’
‘I kn
ow, I know. I’d give anything just to turn the clock back and prevent this terrible thing happening. Our home’s like a grave without her – my grave.’
‘Actually,’ said Jago, ‘there’s something I need to ask you about your home.’
Cradock slipped a piece of paper across the desk to Jago, who picked it up. He scanned what was written on it, then looked up, noticing a hint of wariness in Ballantyne’s eyes.
‘When we spoke to you on Wednesday,’ he continued, ‘you said you bought the house last year with a legacy you’d received.’
‘Yes.’
‘A legacy of two thousand, one hundred and sixty pounds?’
‘Er, yes. But how did you—’
‘How did we know? We checked with your bank, and that’s the only large sum that’s been paid into your account in the last five years. The curious thing is that you deposited the money in cash. But I assume the solicitor didn’t pay you the legacy in cash. Am I right?’
‘Yes, well … It was actually a loan of sorts.’
‘Of sorts?’
‘It was a loan from my cousin Charles.’
‘Mr Lewis?’
‘Yes, that’s right, but it was what you might call an informal loan, unofficial.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How can I explain? You have to understand – we’d lived in theatrical digs all our lives, moving from one cheap lodging house to another, barely getting by, with no security for the future. We’d saved a little, but nothing like enough to have a comfortable retirement in a home of our own. Then my cousin asked me to look after a bag of his. Well, I say asked, but in fact he told me, and he wasn’t a man to say no to. Just for a few weeks, he said, so I agreed, although I suspected there was something fishy about it. He was a somewhat unorthodox businessman, if you know what I mean. The bag was locked, too. He insisted that we tell no one he’d given it to us, and if anyone asked, we were to say we knew nothing about it. The next thing we knew, he’d had a heart attack and died.’
‘And I suppose your curiosity got the better of you?’
‘Well, yes, naturally I opened the bag – he wasn’t to know, so I forced the lock, and found it packed full of five-pound notes. A small fortune. Knowing Charles, I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone would know he’d left it with me, probably not even his family, but still I waited for a month, just in case. When nothing happened, I paid the money into the bank. I reasoned to myself that he was a moneylender, and he’d given me this money temporarily, so in a way he’d loaned it to me, and since no one was likely to know about it, now that he was dead I wouldn’t have to pay it back – it’d effectively become a gift. That was just over a year and a half ago.’
‘During which time I believe Audrey has enlisted the help of your wife to hold seances in order to try to find her late husband’s missing money.’
‘Er, yes. But I think Audrey imagined it was a far greater sum. Vera was unable to establish through her gifts where such an amount might be, and she agreed with me there was no point in complicating matters by mentioning this comparatively small sum that he’d, er, loaned us.’
‘So she deceived Audrey?’
‘Well, er, I cannot vouch for my wife’s gifts, Inspector. I’m sure she, er, acted in good faith.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure she did – good faith that made sure his little nest egg remained safely in your little nest.’
Ballantyne looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, there’s nothing I can say. I feel as though I’ve let you down – and let your father down, too. I was foolish. Having that money in my hands and thinking that with my cousin dead probably no one knew I had it was just too great a temptation. I know I should’ve resisted it, but I failed, and there it is. But whatever may happen to me now is nothing compared with what poor Vera’s facing. I just can’t believe it, Inspector.’
Watching the miserable scene playing out before him, Jago felt sorry for Ballantyne: just a weak man overcome by temptation. He felt a bitter regret too that this man had been a link with his own father which would now be broken.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I wish it hadn’t worked out like this, but both you and your wife will have to give an account of yourselves before the law.’
By mid morning, Divisional Detective Inspector Soper had returned from one of his occasional meetings at Scotland Yard with his fellow DDIs from the other twenty-two Metropolitan Police divisions, the four area superintendents, and the chief constable of the CID. When Jago reported to his boss’s office with Cradock it seemed to him that an hour spent in this elevated company had left Soper feeling rather more elevated than usual himself.
‘Come in, John,’ he said grandly, as if inviting him into the Throne Room in Buckingham Palace rather than this gloomy office that stank of cigarette smoke and hadn’t seen a paintbrush since the Wall Street Crash.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Jago, as he and Cradock entered the room.
‘Now, John, I understand you’ve got a couple of women in the cells for that murder, so I just want to know the main points before I see your full report. Just the headlines, though – I’m a busy man.’
‘Yes, sir. The women are Audrey Lewis and Vera Ballantyne, also known as Madame Zara, and they’ve both been charged with murder.’
‘Madame Zara? Sounds a bit foreign to me.’
‘No, she’s not a foreigner, sir. She’s a medium, and a friend of Audrey Lewis. It turned out the murder was nothing to do with prostitution, and nothing to do with the Welshman Evans, except that he stole her rings. He’ll be up before the bench on Monday morning for that.’
‘Good. We need to make an example of looters. I don’t understand why the courts seem to be letting them off with just a few months in prison – the Defence Regulations say they’re supposed to be shot.’
‘Yes, sir. In Evans’s case, however, we’ve recovered the rings, and he’s just lost his wife in an air raid, so I’m hoping the magistrate won’t be too hard on him.’
‘I see, right. You mentioned something about finding a sailor’s cap at the scene of the murder. Was that anything to do with it?’
‘The sailor had visited Joan Lewis at her flat and left it there by mistake, but he didn’t kill her. Joan’s sister-in-law, Elsie Marwell, tried to make something of it because she thought her husband, Derek, was the murderer. She accused him of stealing the cap from the sailor while he was lying drunk on the street so he could leave it in the flat to incriminate him, but she didn’t know Ted Watson had already moved the man on before that, so he couldn’t have.’
Soper appeared to be struggling to digest this information. Jago wondered whether it was his own fault – perhaps in trying to be concise he’d created some uncertainty in his boss’s mind as to whether Derek Marwell himself was lying drunk on the street while allegedly stealing the cap – but the DDI had asked for the main points only, so that’s what he was doing his best to give him.
‘We’ve also interviewed Vera Ballantyne’s husband, Greville, in connection with some missing money that Audrey Lewis was trying to find,’ he continued. ‘It was salted away somewhere by her late husband. She doesn’t know where, and neither do we, but what we do know is that Charlie Lewis entrusted a bag stuffed full of cash to Greville, who was his cousin. Vera Ballantyne knew Audrey was looking for it, because Audrey’d asked her to enlist the help of the spirit world in finding it, but Vera wasn’t going to tell her about the money Charlie had left with them, because she and Greville intended to keep it for themselves. We haven’t charged Ballantyne yet, because he maintains it was a loan, but I think he fraudulently converted the money to his own use, so we’re probably going to be charging him with larceny.’
Soper nodded his head in a sign of understanding as Jago finished this account, but his eyes looked tired.
‘And what about that safe-blowing job at the cinema?’ he asked. ‘Just briefly.’
‘We’ve got two men in custody, sir. Martin Sullivan, who I mentioned before,
and his father, George.’
‘Jolly good.’
‘They’re both going to be charged under the Explosive Substances Act, 1883. The son hid in the cinema and let his father in. They stole the weekend’s takings from the safe, and also a packet of photographs that belonged to Mr Conway, the manager, and which we later found at the Sullivans’ house. The photos were a bit saucy, so we’ve got to break it gently to one of the ladies concerned that we’ve got what she probably thought was a private photograph. She’s Conway’s secretary, so it’s a delicate business, but I’m sure we’ll manage.’
‘And the stolen money?’
‘We haven’t found it yet but we’re expecting to receive an order to search from the superintendent later today so we can go through the house. If we find some explosives too it might be enough to put them away for ten years. We also found some Irish Republican documents. It turns out that although the two Sullivans are English, they’re IRA sympathisers.’
‘What did Superintendent Ford make of it?’
‘He’s pleased. He thinks they might’ve stolen the money because the IRA’s short of funds at the moment, but they’re probably not bomb-makers, although I expect Special Branch’ll join us when we do the search.’
‘So I was right, then, wasn’t I?’ said Soper, his voice brightening.
‘About what, sir?’
‘About it all being the work of Irish Republicans.’
‘Yes, sir – and I did mention to Mr Ford that you were the second person in West Ham CID to suspect an IRA connection.’
‘Second? What do you mean? I said that from the very beginning.’
‘Not quite, sir. In my report to Mr Ford I noted that it was Detective Constable Cradock who first drew my attention to that possibility. Isn’t that right, Peter?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cradock, a broad grin creasing his face as he drew himself up to his full height.
A hint of an amused smile tugged at Jago’s lips, but he regained his impassive expression as he turned back to Soper.
‘So as you can see, sir, DC Cradock has done very well.’