‘Maud’s throwing them down the stairs Charlie and I are carrying them through.’
‘You know where everything is upstairs. Go back up and I’ll help Charlie,’ Bethan ordered, bumping into him as she ran out of the washhouse into the kitchen.
A jumble sale-sized pile of clothes, shoes and hats lay at the foot of the stairs.
‘The shoes?’ she asked.
‘Dump everything in,’ Megan shouted as Charlie picked up a second indiscriminate bundle.
‘We all knew it would come to this.’ Sam, still buttoning his shirt, bounded out of the front room and scooped up a pile of hats.
‘Take the hats over the back,’ Megan shouted at him as soon as he walked into the washhouse. ‘Dump them somewhere. Get Will to give you a hand.’
‘They’re all knocked off, aren’t they?’ Bethan asked Charlie, looking to him to confirm her suspicions.
‘Of course they’re bloody well knocked off.’
It was the first time she’d heard him swear.
‘How else do you think she manages to sell clothes like these at the prices she’s been charging?’
Bethan collected an armful, and following Charlie’s example she scrambled into the washhouse and threw them into the tub. Andrew was still standing in front of the range totally mystified by the proceedings.
A hammering on the door was followed by a shout. ‘Open up. Police!’
‘I’ll deal with it.’ Charlie walked slowly towards the front door.
Maud and Diana, clutching their nightdresses, raced along the landing back into Diana’s bedroom.
‘That’s the last of it.’ Diana scooped up a tie from the banisters and threw it at Bethan as she disappeared into her room. Bethan opened the stove and tossed the incriminating article on top of the coals. She heard Charlie talking to the police at the door.
Red-faced, William appeared in the washhouse. ‘Coppers got there same time I did,’ he panted. ‘They’re pulling Betty’s house apart. Judy’s not faring much better.’
A stranger’s voice, loud, officious, spoke in the passage. ‘We have a warrant, Mr Raschenko. So, if you’ll kindly step aside?’
The sound of hobnailed boots echoed into the kitchen from the passage.
‘Mrs Powell, police to see you.’ Charlie entered the kitchen and stood aside. A sergeant and two constables pushed past him into the room; two more hovered just outside the door.
‘Mrs Powell?’
‘Sergeant?’ White-faced, Megan looked up, but she continued to stir the soup of cold water and clothes in the boiler with a wooden spoon.
‘You recognise my rank, Mrs Powell?’
‘I should. I’ve enough family in the force.’
‘Then you know what this is?’ He pulled a warrant out of his pocket.
She stepped as far as the washhouse door and glanced at it. ‘It appears to be in order.’
‘You’ve no objection to us searching the house then?’
‘It would be pretty pointless objecting when you’ve brought one of those with you,’ she retorted tartly.
‘Right,’ the sergeant turned to his men. He pointed to the two outside the door. ‘Upstairs. Search everywhere and I mean everywhere. Under the beds, and the pillows, bolster and eiderdowns. Pick up any loose floorboards, go into the attic. Open all the drawers, the wardrobes; pull the furniture away from the wall. You know what we’re looking for.’
They nodded acknowledgement before thundering up the stairs.
‘May I ask what’s going on?’ Andrew interrupted.
‘That’s what we’re here to find out …’ The sergeant looked at Andrew for the first time since he’d entered the room, and instantly changed his tone from hectoring to polite. ‘Aren’t you young Dr John?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Andrew replied shortly, suddenly realising the implications if it became known that he’d been in a house that the police had seen fit to raid.
‘May I ask what you’re doing here, sir?’
Andrew hesitated, uncertain how to answer.
‘I asked him to come and take a look at my sister,’ Bethan lied promptly. ‘She’s recovering from pleurisy, and I’m worried about her.’
‘Is that right?’ the sergeant asked.
‘It is,’ Andrew agreed.
‘Strange time to make a house call isn’t it, sir?’ the sergeant pressed.
‘Not really,’ Andrew replied brusquely, angered by the man’s officious tone. ‘Nurse Powell here is the duty night nurse on the maternity ward in the Graig Hospital. I was called there early this morning to deal with an emergency, and when she told me of her concern for her sister I offered to examine the girl. I’ve never heard a doctor’s dedication to his patients labelled as strange before, Sergeant. And as for the time, when you’ve been up most of the night another half hour is neither here nor there.’
Maud chose that moment to creep down the stairs. She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, her face flushed from her recent exertions. She began to cough, a rough hacking cough that shook her whole body. Bethan couldn’t be sure whether the outburst was real or skilful acting.
‘Maud, what are you thinking of? You’ve only got a thin nightdress on and you’ve no shoes on your feet.’ Bethan went to her and put her arm around her shoulders. ‘Come on, back up to bed.’
‘There are men in our bedroom.’ Maud began to cry weakly.
‘I’ll come with you.’ Glad of an excuse to leave the kitchen Bethan steered her gently up the stairs.
‘Hadn’t you better examine your patient, Dr John?’ the sergeant asked.
‘He already has,’ Bethan answered for Andrew from the stairs. ‘Thank you very much for coming, Dr John, especially after a night of emergencies. It was very good of you. I’ll see that she gets plenty of rest, and I’ll get the prescription made up in the hospital pharmacy tomorrow.’
‘Don’t forget to do that. And it was no trouble to come here, Nurse Powell. Now if you’ll excuse me, Sergeant, I have other calls to make.’
‘Just a minute, sir, if you don’t mind. I won’t keep you much longer. You,’ he pointed to one of the two constables standing in the room, ‘search the front room.’
‘That’s my lodgers’ room,’ Megan protested.
‘This warrant covers the whole house.’
‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Nothing, Mrs Powell?’ The sergeant lifted his eyebrows. ‘What kind of nothing?’
‘The same kind of nothing that’s in this whole house,’ she snapped angrily.
‘Then you won’t mind if we take a look.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Powell,’ Charlie walked to the door. ‘I’ll go with him.’
‘Same thing,’ the sergeant said briskly to the constable. ‘Leave nothing unopened, no piece of furniture unmoved.’
‘And you,’ the sergeant turned to the one remaining constable, ‘you start here beginning with that dresser.’
The policeman went to the dresser and pulled out the drawers. He tipped them upside down on the floor, checking the backs before rummaging through the contents.
‘There’s a book here, Sarge.’ He held up Megan’s exercise book.
Megan gripped the wooden spoon so hard her knuckles turned white as the sergeant flicked through the pages.
‘Lot of transactions in here, Mrs Powell. Lot of money changing hands. Business good?’ The sergeant raised his eyes slowly and stared at Megan.
‘I can’t grumble. I’m an agent for Leslie’s stores.’
‘Some of your customers have been seen in model frocks. The kind of clothes you can’t buy in Leslie’s.’
‘My aunt sells clothes that the local dressmakers make up on spec,’ Bethan said defensively as she returned from upstairs.
‘That so?’ The sergeant closed the book and laid it on the table in front of him. ‘Now that’s not what I heard. But then I hear a lot of funny things. Know what the “fortiesˮ are, Nurse?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Bethan
said coldly.
‘You surprise me. Never heard of Ali Baba and his forty thieves? I thought every kiddy had either read the book or seen the pantomime. And then again,’ he paused for a moment as he opened a box that the constable had lifted out of the dresser. It was Megan’s cosmetics box. Crammed full of lipsticks, perfumes and powder. ‘You have your very own “forties” here on the Graig. Thieves one and all, and we’re well on our way to rounding them up. It’s just Ali Baba’s cave of goodies that we’re looking for.’ He picked up a handful of lipsticks and allowed them to run through his fingers back into the box.
‘There’s nothing stolen in there,’ Megan began hotly.
‘Did I say there was?’ the sergeant continued conversationally.
‘Now what was I talking about? Oh yes, these forty thieves. They’re good, you know. If not the best.’ He walked over to the small window and peered out the back. ‘Shop detectives tell us they can get a frock off a display stand in the window of Howell’s in Cardiff. Even a twelve guinea red silk frock. Isn’t that right, Mrs Powell?’
Andrew blanched as he recalled the dress that Bethan had worn to the hospital ball.
‘They can go into a shop, act pleasantly, even innocently, and walk out with a dozen shirts or blouses tucked into their bags or under their skirts. Coats, costumes, make-up, lipsticks, face powder, perfume …’ He took the box from the table, rattled it, and carried it over to the window. ‘All child’s play to them. They even manage the odd man’s suit, or rug. Nothing’s sacred, too hot or heavy. Isn’t that right, Mrs Powell?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She picked up a thick bar of green soap from the windowsill above the sink and began to grate it over the water.
The washhouse door banged and William walked in, still barefoot, his hair ruffled.
‘And who might you be, young man?’ the sergeant asked, stepping over the constable who was still rummaging in the dresser cupboard.
‘William Powell. Mr Powell to you,’ William asserted full of bravado.
‘He’s my son,’ Megan said defensively.
‘Where’ve you been, lad?’
‘Out back. Is it a crime now for a man to visit his own outhouse?’ He looked to the ceiling as a loud crash resounded from upstairs.
‘That depends on what a man keeps in his outhouse.’ The sergeant nodded to the constable. ‘Out there, quick. Check the coal shed, the outhouse and anything else in the garden.’
‘What right do you have …’
‘They’ve a warrant, William,’ Megan warned.
‘They’ve no bloody right to wreck our things.’ He picked up the dresser drawers from the kitchen floor.
‘Less of that language, young man,’ the sergeant warned heavily. ‘Or we’ll be arresting you for profanity. And for your information we’ve every right to search any household where we’ve reason to believe stolen goods are being concealed.’
‘You’ll find nothing stolen here.’
‘That’s not what we heard.’
‘If you wanted to turn our house over why didn’t you ask one of my uncles?’ William asked angrily. ‘They’re all po-faced coppers, just like you …’
‘William,’ Megan admonished.
‘Not just like me, lad. They’re related to you. That’s why we had to draft the Cardiff boys in to do this little job.’
Boots thundered down the stairs. The two constables came in with the entire contents of Megan’s wardrobe in their arms. They threw the clothes on top of the box of cosmetics on the table.
‘Good-quality clothes, Sarge, just like they showed us.’
‘So they are. You have anything to say, Mrs Powell?’
‘Those are the only clothes I possess.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. Do you expect me to walk around naked?’
‘Not naked,’ he fingered a silk blouse, ‘but not dolled up to the nines either. Where did you buy these?’
‘Local dressmakers, mostly. Women on the Graig may not have the money of the crache, but we’ve eyes in our head. We buy material on Ponty market and copy what’s in the shops.’
‘Copy?’ He took a closer look at the stitching on the blouse.
‘Cheap sewing machines can sew as well as expensive ones,’ Megan pronounced bitterly.
‘Let’s get this straight.’ He held up the blouse. ‘You’re saying this was made here, on the Graig?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘What do you mean, you’re not sure?’
‘I don’t keep books on where I get all my clothes. Some of them are presents from friends,’ she snapped.
‘Gentlemen friends?’
‘You mind what you’re saying to my mother,’ William broke in hotly.
The constable barged into the washhouse from the garden.
‘Nothing, back’s clean,’ he announced.
‘Sure nothing’s been pushed down the toilet?’ the sergeant demanded.
‘Nothing I can see, Sergeant.’
‘Put your hand down, did you?’ William enquired snidely.
‘No patches of loose earth, no signs of recent burial? Nothing under the coal in the coal house?’ the sergeant continued, ignoring William’s question.
‘Nothing, Sarge,’ the constable insisted. ‘I looked. And there’s precious little of anything in the coal house. Even coal.’
‘Price it is, are you surprised?’ Megan prodded as many of the clothes under water as she could.
‘You two, back upstairs,’ the sergeant ordered the two constables who’d carried Megan’s clothes into the kitchen. ‘And you, back to the dresser.’ He pointed to the policeman in the washhouse.
The constable pushed past Megan’s washtub. As he did so he looked down.
‘My Mam never does that,’ he criticised abstractedly.
‘What, lad?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Put dark clothes in with light. She says they run.’
The next thirty minutes crawled past at a snail’s pace. Bethan stood, frozen to the wall that separated kitchen and passage, too shocked and too shamed to look Andrew in the eye, as the policemen pulled garment after garment from the boiler. All were dripping wet. Some had shrunk. On some the colours were running but most were still recognisable as quality clothes. And each and every one matched a description on a long list that the sergeant constantly referred to and checked them off against.
Megan stood still and silent, a pale effigy as they dragged the clothes from the tub. She didn’t even object when they heaved the sopping, soaking mess of cloth over the rug and table in the kitchen, through the passage and out of the front door.
Only when the tub contained nothing but water did the sergeant ask if she had anything to say. She lifted her head, looked at him once before turning to William and Bethan.
‘Only that I and I alone am responsible for this. No one in this house except myself knew where my stock came from.’
‘Your suppliers?’
‘I’m not prepared to say any more,’ she said sternly, lifting her chin defiantly.
‘You won’t tell us who did your thieving for you, yet you expect us to believe that your family are innocent? That they lived here, saw you sell these clothes to your cronies day after day, without knowing where they came from?’
‘It’s the truth,’ Megan insisted fervently.
The sergeant studied her. Cool, calm, unflustered, she showed no signs of emotion and he knew he would get no further with her while they remained in the house. He shouted for the constables to finish whatever they were doing in the front room and upstairs.
Charlie left the position he’d taken up in the hall while they’d carried out the clothes, and returned to the kitchen. William put his hand on his mother’s shoulder.
‘Go to Diana, William,’ she said abruptly. ‘You’ll have to look after her now.’
‘Mam …’
‘Just do it,’ she said harshly. ‘Go on, Will,’ she added in a softer tone. ‘For me.
’
He pushed his way past the policemen on to the stairs where Diana and Maud, still wearing their nightdresses, were huddled together. He stepped over them. Sitting one step behind, he put his arms around their shoulders.
‘Dr John,’ the sergeant addressed Andrew, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you here, sir, but it’s against regulations for anyone to enter or leave a house during a search, excepting police officers.’
‘Of course.’
‘I hope you understand.’
‘I understand,’ Andrew said hollowly, looking anywhere but at Bethan.
‘You’re free to go.’
Andrew walked over the soaking wet linoleum and rug towards the door.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?’ the sergeant asked as Andrew reached the door.
‘Like what, Sergeant?’
‘Don’t all doctors carry a bag?’
‘Only sometimes, Sergeant.’ He turned on his heel, walked out of the house, and straight into a tightly packed crowd of people. The pavement was jammed for a good twenty yards either side, with women, children and men craning their necks, desperate to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside the house. A sudden loud screaming to the left caught everyone’s attention.
The sea of heads turned as though pivoted on an extension of a single neck. Three large, red-faced, burly policemen were dragging a plump, dishevelled woman from the house next door. She was completely hysterical.
A man stood behind her, hemmed in the doorway by another policeman. He was holding a baby in his arms and a toddler by the hand. He shouted something to the woman, but the sound of her cries drowned out his words.
Three other children of various ages and sizes tried to keep a grip on the woman’s skirt, all of them bawling at the top of their voices. Two of the policemen uncurled their fingers as the third bundled the woman into the van. The door slammed, the engine started and the van careered off up the street. Someone threw a stone. It hit the side of the van and rebounded into the crowd.
‘Next one to pull a trick like that gets arrested,’ an authoritative voice shouted. ‘Man, woman or child. It makes no difference.’
Andrew recognised the imposing figure of Superintendent George Hunt who ran Pontypridd police station with military precision.
Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold Page 31