Capital Crimes: London Mysteries

by Martin Edwards

  ‘I don’t think you made any mistake,’ he urged. ‘I don’t think you really think so either.’

  ‘I’m that mithered I don’t rightly know what to think,’ she declared. ‘That isn’t him.’

  ‘Is it the frame? No, don’t touch it—that might be unlucky, you know—but you can remember that.’

  ‘It’s the frame, right enough. I ought to know, the times I’ve dusted it.’

  ‘Then the photograph has been changed: there’s nothing unlikely in that. When was the last time that you noticed the other one there?’

  Quite recently, it would seem, but taking refuge behind her whirling head Mrs Jones held out against precision. It might have been Friday or it might have been Saturday. Carrados forbore to press her more exactly, and she departed, sustained by the advice of Authority that she should have nothing to say to nobody, under the excuse, if need be, that she had answered enough questions already for one day.

  ‘While we are here,’ said the sergeant—they were still in the ‘little room’, the only one that looked out on the front—‘you might as well see where he got in.’ He went to the window and indicated certain marks on the wood- and stone-work. ‘We found the lower sash still a few inches up when we came.’

  ‘Went the same way as he came, I suppose?’ suggested George.

  ‘Must have done. All the keys are accounted for, and Mrs Jones found the front door locked as usual. And why not; why shouldn’t he? There’s the balcony, and you hardly have to lean out to see the stairway window not a yard away. Why, it’s as easy as ring-a-roses. Might have been made for it.’

  ‘Tshk! Tshk!’ fumed Mr Carlyle unhappily. ‘After what I said. And not one of the locks has been seen to.’

  ‘Locks?’ echoed the young policeman, appearing that moment at the door. ‘Why, here is a chap with tools, says he’s come to repair and fit the locks!’

  ‘Well, if this isn’t the fair nefus ultra!’ articulated the sergeant. ‘However, show him in, lad.’

  The locksmith, looking scarcely less alarmed than if he had fallen into a den of thieves, had a very short and simple tale to tell. His shop was in the Seven Sisters Road, and on Friday afternoon a gentleman had called there and arranged with him to come on Monday and repair some locks. He had given the name of Poleash and that address. The man knew nothing of what had taken place and had come as fixed.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t happen to make it Saturday, Mr Hipwaite,’ said Inspector Beedel, as he took a note of this new evidence. ‘It might—I don’t say it would, but it might—have prevented murder being done.’

  ‘But that’s the very thing I was not to do,’ declared Hipwaite, with some warmth. ‘“Don’t come on Saturday because the wife is very nervous, and if she thinks burglars are about she’ll have a fit,” he said—those very words. “She’ll be away on Monday, and then by the time she comes back she mayn’t notice.” Was I likely to come on Saturday?’

  Plainly he was not. ‘That’s all right,’ it was conceded, ‘but there’s nothing in your line doing today.’ So Mr Hipwaite departed, more than half persuaded that he had been hardly used and not in the least mollified by being concerned in so notable a tragedy.

  ‘Before I go,’ resumed the sergeant, leading the way back to the kitchen, ‘there’s one other thing I must hand over. You heard what Mrs Jones said about the fire—that there hadn’t been one for weeks as they always used the stove?’

  ‘That’s what I asked her,’ George reminded him. ‘Someone has had a fire here.’

  ‘Correct,’ continued the officer imperturbably. ‘It’s also what I asked her a couple of hours before you came. Someone’s had a fire here. Who and what for? Well, I’ve had the cinders out to see and now I’ll make over to you what there was.’

  ‘Glove fasteners,’ commented the inspector. ‘All the metal there was about them. Millions of the pattern, I suppose.’

  ‘Burned his gloves after the job—they must have been in a fair mess,’ said George. ‘“Audubon Frères” they’re stamped—foreign make.’

  ‘That reminds me—there’s one thing more.’ It was produced from the sergeant’s pocket-book, a folded fragment of paper, charred along its edge. ‘It’s from the hearth; evidently a bit that fell out when the fire was made. Foreign newspaper, you will see; Italian it looks to me.’

  Mr Carlyle, Inspector Beedel, and George exchanged appreciative glances. Upon this atmosphere of quiet satisfaction there fell something almost like a chuckle.

  ‘Did anyone happen to notice if he had written ‘Si parla Italiano’ in red on the wall over the bed?’ inquired the guileless voice.

  The young constable, chancing to be the nearest person to the door, rose to this mendacious suggestion by offering to go and see. The others stared at the blind man in various stages of uncertainty.

  ‘No, no,’ called out Mr Carlyle feelingly. ‘There is no need to look, thank you. When you know Mr Carrados as well as I do you will understand that although there is always something in what he says it is not always the something you think it is. Now, Max, pray enlighten the company. Why should the murderer write ‘Italian spoken’ over the bed?’

  ‘Obviously to make sure that you shouldn’t miss it,’ replied Mr Carrados.

  ‘Well,’ remarked the sergeant, demonstrating one or two simple exercises in physical drill as a suitable preparation, ‘I may as well be going. I don’t understand Italian myself. Nor Dutch either,’ he added cryptically.

  Mr Carlyle also had nothing more to stay for. ‘If you have done here, Max—’ he began, and turned only to find that Carrados was no longer there.

  ‘Your friend has just gone to the front room, sir,’ said the constable, catching the words as he passed. ‘Funny to see a blind man getting about so—’ But a sudden crash of glass from the direction referred to cut short the impending compliment.

  It was, as Carrados explained, entirely his own preposterous fault. Nothing but curiosity about the size of the room had impelled him to touch the walls, and the picture, having a weak cord or an insecure nail…had it not brought something else down in its fall?

  ‘Only the two frames from the sideboard, so far as I can see,’ replied Carlyle. ‘All the glass is shattered. But I don’t suppose that Mrs Poleash will be in a condition to worry about trifles. Jolly good thing you aren’t hurt, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course I should like to replace the damage,’ said the delinquent.

  Inspector Beedel said nothing, but as he looked on he recalled one or two other mischances in the past, and being of an introspective nature he continued to massage his chin thoughtfully.

  ***

  Three days later the inquest on the body of Albert Henry Poleash was opened. It was of the merest formal description, proof of identity and a bare statement of the cause of death being the only evidence put forward. An adjournment for a week was then declared.

  At the resumed inquiry the story of Poleash’s death was taken forward, and the newspaper reader for the first time was encouraged to see in it the promise of a first-class popular sensation. Louis Carlyle related the episode of his unexpected client. Corroboration of that wildly romantic story was forthcoming from many sides. Mr Hipwaite carried the drama two days later by describing the dead man’s visit to his shop, the order to repair the locks, and his own futile journey to the flat. Mrs Jones, skilfully piloted among dates and details, was in evidence as the discoverer of the body. Two doctors—a private practitioner called hurriedly in at the first alarm and the divisional surgeon—agreed on all essential points, and the police efficiently bridged the narration at one stage and another and contrived to present a faithful survey of the tragedy.

  But the most arresting figure of the day, though her evidence was of very slight account and mainly negative, was the unhappy widow. As she moved into the witness-box, a wan, graceful creature in her unaccustomed, but, it may
be said, not unattractive crêpe, a rustle of compassion stirred the court and Mr Carlyle, who had come prejudiced against her, as an automatic reflex of his client’s fate, chirruped sympathy.

  Mrs Poleash gave her testimony in a low voice, not particularly attractive in its tone, and she looked straight before her with eyes neither downcast nor wandering. Her name, she said, was Katherine Poleash, her age twenty-nine. She knew nothing of the tragedy, having been in Torquay at the time. She had gone there on the Saturday afternoon, her husband seeing her off from Paddington. Their relationship was perfectly friendly, but not demonstrative. Her husband was a considerate but rather reserved man with no especial interests. Up to two years ago she had been accustomed to earn her own living, but a nervous break-down had interfered with her capacity for work. It was on account of that illness that she had generally occupied a separate bedroom; it had left her nervous in many ways, but she was surprised to hear that she should have been described as exacting or ill-tempered.

  ‘“Not wholly reasonable and excitable” were the precise terms used, I think,’ put in Mr Carlyle gallantly.

  ‘It’s much the same,’ she replied apathetically.

  Continuing, she had no knowledge at all of any intrigue between her husband and a shop-girl, such as had been referred to, nor had she ever heard of the man Peter, either by name or as an Italian. She could not suggest in what quarter of London the shop in question was likely to be as the deceased was accustomed to go about a good deal. The police already had a list of the various properties he owned. At the conclusion of her evidence Mrs Poleash seemed to be on the point of fainting and had to be assisted out.

  There was nothing to be gained by a further adjournment. The cause of death—the real issue before that court—was reasonably clear. The jury brought in a verdict of ‘Wilful Murder against Some Person or Persons Unknown.’ Before the reporters left the police asked that the Press should circulate a request for anyone having knowledge of a shop-assistant who had been friendly with a foreigner known as Peter or Pietro, or with a man answering to Mr Poleash’s description, to communicate with them either at New Scotland Yard or to any local station. The Press promised to comply and offered to publish photographs of Mr Poleash as a means towards that end, only to learn that no photograph possessing identification value could be found. So began the memorable paper-chase for an extremely nebulous shop-assistant and a foreigner whose description began and ended with the sobriquet ‘Peter the Italian’.

  ***

  ‘I was wondering if you or Inspector Beedel would come round one day to see me,’ said Mr Carrados as George was shown into the study at The Turrets. Two full weeks had elapsed since the conclusion of the inquest and the newspaper value of the Holloway Flat Tragedy had sunk from a column opposite the leader page to a six-line fill-up beneath ‘Home and General’. ‘Your uncle used often to drop in to entertain me with the progress of his cases.’

  ‘That wasn’t his way of looking at it, Mr Carrados. He used to say that when it came to seeing through a brick wall you were—well, hell!’

  ‘Curious,’ remarked Mr Carrados. ‘I don’t remember ever hearing Inspector Beedel make use of that precise expression.’

  George went a trifle red and laughed to demonstrate his self-possession.

  ‘Well, perhaps I dropped a word of my own in by accident,’ he said. ‘But that was what he meant—in a complimentary sense, of course. As a matter of fact, it was on his advice that I ventured to trouble you now.’

  ‘Not ‘trouble”,’ protested the blind man, ever responsive to the least touch of diffidence. ‘That’s another word the inspector wouldn’t use about me, I’m sure.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ said George, accepting a cigarette, ‘and as I had to come this way to see another—oh, my Lord, another!—shop-girl, why, I thought—’

  ‘Ah; how is the case going?’

  ‘It’s no go, Mr Carrados. We’ve seen thousands of shop-girls and hundreds of Italian Peters. I’m beginning to think,’ said the visitor, watching Mr Carrados’s face as he propounded the astonishing heresy, ‘that there is no such person.’

  ‘Yes?’ replied Carrados unmoved. ‘It is always as well to look beyond the obvious, isn’t it? What does the inspector say?’

  ‘He says, ‘I should like to know what Mr Carrados really meant by ‘Italian spoken’, and what he really did when he smashed that picture”.’

  Carrados laughed his appreciation as he seemed actually to watch the blue smoke curling upwards.

  ‘How easy it is to give a straightforward answer when a plain question is asked,’ he replied. ‘By ‘Si parla Italiano’ I ventured to insinuate my own private opinion that there was no Italian Peter; when I broke the picture I tried to obtain some definite evidence of someone there was.’

  George waited in the hope of this theme developing, but his host seemed to consider that he had said all that was necessary, and it is difficult to lead on a man into disclosures when you cannot fix him with your eye.

  ‘Poleash may have been mistaken himself,’ he continued tentatively; ‘or he may have purposely misled Mr Carlyle on details, with the idea of getting his advice but not entirely trusting him to the full extent.’

  ‘He may,’ admitted the placid smoker.

  ‘One thing I can’t understand is however the man set about keeping company with a girl without spending more on her than he seems to have done. We found a small pocket diary that he entered his current expenses in, and there isn’t a single item for chocolates, flowers, theatres, or anything of that sort.’

  ‘A diary?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t keep a diary; only entered cash, and rents received, and so on. Here it is, if you care to—examine it.’

  ‘Thank you, I should. I wonder what our friend Carlyle charged for the consultation?’

  ‘I don’t remember seeing that,’ admitted George, referring to the pages. ‘Thursday, the 3rd, wasn’t it? No, curiously enough, that doesn’t appear.…I wonder if he never put down any of these what you might call questionable items for fear of Mrs Poleash seeing?’

  ‘Not unnaturally,’ agreed Carrados. ‘You found nothing else of interest then—no addresses or new names?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Oh, that page you’ve got is only his memorandum of sizes and numbers and so on.’

  ‘Yes; quite a useful habit, isn’t it?’ The long, vibrant fingers touched off line after line without a pause or stumble. ‘When he made this handy list Albert Henry Poleash little thought—Boots, size 9; hat, size 7 1/8; collars, size 16; gloves, size 8 3/4; watch, No. 31903; weight, 11st. 8lbs. There we have the man: Ex pede Herculem, as the motto has it—only in this case of course the hat and gloves are more useful.’

  ‘Very true, sir,’ said George, whose instinct was to keep a knowing front on all occasions.

  When Parkinson was summoned to the room some time later he found his master there alone. Every light was blazing on, and, sitting at his desk, Mr Carrados confronted a single sheet of paper. With his trained acuteness for the minutiae of every new condition, Parkinson immediately took mental photographs of the sheet of paper with its slim written column, of the position and appearance of the chair George had used, of the number and placing of cigarette ends and matches, of all the details connected with the tray and contents, and of a few other matters. It was his routine.

  ‘Close the door and come in,’ said Carrados. ‘I want you to carry your mind back about four weeks to the last occasion when we called at Mr Carlyle’s office together. As we sat in the waiting-room I asked you if the things left there belonged to anyone we knew.’

  ‘I remember the circumstances perfectly, sir.’

  ‘I want the articles described. The gloves?’

  ‘There was only one glove—that for the right hand. It was a dark grey suède, moderately used, and not of the best cut. The fastening was a press button stamped �
��Audubon Frères”. The only marking inside the glove was the size, 7 1/2.’

  Carrados made a note on the sheet before him. ‘The hat?’ he said. ‘What size was that?’

  ‘The size of hat, printed on an octagonal white ticket, was 6 3/4, sir.’

  ‘Excellent, so far. When the caller passed through you saw him for a moment. Apart from clothes, which do not matter just now, was there any physical peculiarity that would identify him?’

  ‘He had a small dark mole beneath the left eye. The lobe of his right ear was appreciably less than the other. The nail of the middle finger of the right hand was corrugated from an injury at some time.’

  Carrados made a final note on the paper before him.

  ‘Very good indeed, Parkinson,’ he remarked. ‘That is all I wanted.’

  ***

  A month passed and nothing happened. Occasionally a newspaper, pressed for a subject, commented on the disquieting frequency with which undetected murder could be done, and among other instances mentioned the Holloway Flat Tragedy and deplored the ease with which Peter the Italian had remained at large. The name by that time struck the reader as distantly familiar.

  Then one evening early in November Beedel rang Mr Carrados up. The blind man happened to take the call himself, and at the first words he knew that the dull, patient shadowing of weeks was about to fructify.

  ‘Yes, Inspector Beedel himself, sir,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘I’m speaking from Beak Street. The two you know of have just gone to the Restaurant X in Warsaw Street. The lady has booked two seats at the Alhambra for tonight, so we expect them to be there for the best part of an hour.’

  ‘I’ll come at once,’ replied Carrados. ‘What about Carlyle?’

  ‘He’s been notified. Back entrance in Boulton Court,’ said the inspector. ‘I’m off there now myself.’

  It was the first time that the two the blind man ‘knew of’ had met since the watch was set, and their correspondence had been singularly innocuous. Yet not a breath of suspicion had been raised, and the same elaborate care that had prompted Mr Carrados to bring down a picture to cover the abstraction of a small square of glass had been maintained throughout.