“Thank you,” he said. “I—I’ve got a date.” He seized his hat and made for the door. The waiter stood politely aside.
At that moment, Luigi, with superb showmanship, released the balloons.
They floated down from the ceiling in a shining cascade of red and green and silver, and a yellow balloon bounced off Sparks’s head as he shot out of the front door, blasted on his way by the gust of laughter behind him.
It was very late when Hazlerigg finished his dinner. Luigi had found some old brandy and it was a celebration.
“Morelli is a good boy,” said Luigi. “He is my cousin’s son. One day he will be lightweight champion of the British Isles.”
“You can’t keep a man like that permanently on hand to deal with things,” said Hazlerigg, sleepily.
“It will not be necessary,” said Luigi. “You heard how they laughed. Sparks will not come here again.”
Hazlerigg looked up at the plump, smiling, Napoleonic face. There was a gay determination about it.
“I’ve got a feeling you might be right, Luigi.”
John Bull, May 12, 1951.
THE AWKWARD CUSTOMER
WHEN CHIEF INSPECTOR HAZLERIGG was a young constable, his duty took him to most of the magistrates’ courts in London. Later, as a Divisional Detective Inspector, his official appearances became rarer, but he made a point of visiting them when he could.
The greater part of London’s criminal population passes through these courts. An inspector can learn a lot by sitting quietly in the back and observing the faces and listening to the voices of the men in the dock.
On that particular morning it was largely sentiment that brought him to the Marsham Street Police Court. In that court, thirty-five years before, his first evidence, given in a voice that had not long broken, had led to the imposition of a five shilling fine on a drunken cab driver. Mordaunt had been magistrate in those days. The bearded bullfrog, as the junior members of the police force had called him. Now it was the gentle and experienced Sharpe.
Hazlerigg pushed open the swing door and looked in.
“I said to him,” said a large man with a brown face and a craggy nose, “if you don’t like my roses, you can go chase yourself up the Nelson Column.”
Hazlerigg deduced that it was the prisoner who was giving evidence.
“Roses?” said Mr. Sharpe patiently. “In March?”
“On the wallpaper.”
“Oh, he objected to your wallpaper?”
“That’s right. This joker comes bustling into my office and starts talking about my wallpaper.”
From his voice, Hazlerigg guessed a New Zealander. “And then what happened, Mr. Cooper?”
“What happened?” said Mr. Cooper. “Why I busted him right on the nose.”
“That seems rather drastic,” said Mr. Sharpe.
“He’d got no right to go calling down my wallpaper. I chose it myself.”
“I see.”
Mr. Sharpe glanced at the witness who had suffered the assault. He was a big, red-faced man, and from the way in which he had given his evidence Mr. Sharpe judged that he might be an irritating customer.
However, it wouldn’t do to allow art criticism to develop into a vulgar brawl.
He imposed a fine of forty shillings and bound Mr. Cooper over.
Hazlerigg attached himself to the New Zealander as he left the court. A man who feels himself to be in the right, and has had to fork out £2 is usually ready for a drink. Mr. Cooper was no exception.
Presently he was steaming gently over a pint of beer.
“It was just a lot of hooey about nothing,” he said. “Way back in Auckland we don’t set all that store by a punch on the nose. I keep this hotel, see – the Commodore in Endell Street. I’ve had it since the war, and it’s doing all right. Then one evening this joker comes along. We give him the best room. I chose those roses myself, and roses are something I know about, and the man who says the contrary—”
Hazlerigg hastily ordered more beer.
“Then, about nine o’clock, he comes along and wants to change his room. If he’d had a reason, I wouldn’t have minded, see. But picking on my roses—”
When he got back to his office at Scotland Yard Hazlerigg sat and reflected for a bit.
There was nothing in the story at all. Absolutely nothing. It was wasting time to think further about it.
All the same, he rang his bell and said to Sergeant Crabbe, when that mournful man appeared, “At Marsham Street Police Court this morning a gentleman with a red face gave evidence against the proprietor of the Commodore Hotel in Endell Street, who had hit him on the nose for objecting to his roses.”
“Roses, sir?”
“Yes, yes. I can’t explain it all now. I just want to know the name and address of the man who made the complaint. And see if we’ve got anything on him.”
Sergeant Crabbe reported back an hour later. “The gentleman’s name is Mitcham. Leslie James Mitcham. He’s an ironmonger. Lives in Streatham.”
“Mr. Mitcham of Streatham.”
“That’s right, sir. And nothing known.”
“Did he register at the Commodore under that name?”
Crabbe didn’t know. He said he’d find out. This time he used the telephone to save his feet and was back in five minutes.
“That’s right,” he said. “Registered as Mitcham of Streatham. English subject. Intended duration of stay, one night. Actual stay, three hours.”
“Oh I see. He cleared out when the proprietor hit him. Can’t blame him really. But if he’s got a home at Streatham, why trouble to put up for the night in Endell Street? He could get home in half an hour.”
“I couldn’t say,” said Sergeant Crabbe.
“All these hotel registrations are checked from time to time, aren’t they?”
“They’re supposed to be.”
“Well, chase it up.”
“Chase what up, sir?”
“I want to find if Mr. Mitcham has registered in a London hotel anywhere during the last three years.”
“Yes, sir. Would there be anything else, sir?” inquired Sergeant Crabbe sounding as insubordinate as he dared.
“On second thoughts,” said Hazlerigg, “I’ll make if five years.”
It was nearly a week before Sergeant Crabbe reported.
“Shocking state these hotel registrations have got into,” he said. “I’ve had to do most of it on my feet.”
Hazlerigg made a sympathetic noise.
“Any luck?” he said.
“It depends,” said Sergeant Crabbe, “what you mean by luck.” He pulled out his note book. “Twelve months ago Mitcham stayed at the Enderby Hotel – that’s off Bedford Square. Six months before that at the New Berkley, in Albany Street. And that isn’t all.”
“Ah,” said Hazlerigg.
“Three days after he’d been at the Enderby they had a big robbery. Chap cleared the valuables out of about a dozen bedrooms.”
“I see,” said Hazlerigg. “Same story at the others, too?”
“Not quite. The day after he left the Collingridge it was burned down. It’s been rebuilt now. The New Berkley went bust and sold up.”
“He doesn’t seem to have brought much luck with him, our Mr. Mitcham,” said Hazlerigg softly. “What do you make of it?”
“Coincidence,” said Sergeant Crabbe promptly.
“Two may be a coincidence,” said Hazlerigg. “Three’s too many.” He rang up Mr. Cooper at the Commodore and reintroduced himself. “I just wanted to find out,” he enquired, “if anything has happened to you in the last week.”
“What sort of thing,” said Mr. Cooper, suspiciously.
“Fire – burglary—”
“Not yet, it hasn’t.”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Hazlerigg, and went off to see the proprietors of the Enderby and the Collingridge, and the ex-proprietor of the New Berkley.
When he came back he found Sergeant Crabbe waiting for him.
<
br /> “One more,” said the sergeant, “Mitcham stayed three years ago at the Family Hotel in Euston Lane. And it’s a funny thing. Three days after he left—”
“They had a big burglary. Cleared out all the bedrooms.”
“Someone told you,” said Sergeant Crabbe resentfully.
“I guessed. You told me the Enderby had a burglary. Well so did the New Berkley. They were under-insured. That’s one of the reasons they went bust.”
“No one burgled the Collingridge,” said Crabbe.
“Have a heart,” said Hazlerigg. “It burned down the day after Mitcham left. Fault in the electric wiring. You can’t burgle a heap of charred cinders. In both the other cases our Mr. Mitcham had been staying in the hotel two or three days before the burglary. In both cases he objected to the wallpaper in his room.”
“Wallpaper?”
“In one case he didn’t like the stripes. In the other case it was the dots that put him off. In both cases the proprietors being effete Englishmen, not trained in the rougher school of Auckland, New Zealand, didn’t give him a punch on the snoot. They merely gave him a new room.”
“That’s right,” said Crabbe. “He changed his room at the Family Hotel, too. It wasn’t the wallpaper. He didn’t like his bed running north to south.”
“Well, that’s quite plain now.”
“It isn’t plain to me,” said Sergeant Crabbe.
“Use your head. Why does a man stay at different hotels at regular intervals, and always makes a point of changing his room? Ironmonger.”
“Oh, that lark,” said Sergeant Crabbe. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Warn all hotels. He failed at the Commodore. He may try again quite soon.”
Three months later a Mr. Mitcham duly turned up at the Blackwater Hotel in Dorset Square. He booked a room on the second floor, and seemed quite satisfied with it, but before the evening was out he had changed his mind.
He wanted one with running water, he explained. The proprietor was quite agreeable. He allotted Mr. Mitcham a room on the first floor. He also got busy on the telephone.
The next morning, Mr. Mitcham left, and Chief Inspector Hazlerigg arrived. He made a tour of the premises, seeming to be particularly interested in service doors and backstairs. He left a man behind.
Two days later, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the door into the court at the back of the premises opened quietly and a nondescript man came through. He had a small laundry basket under his arm.
He made his way confidently up the servants’ stairs, and out into the corridor where he knocked at a bedroom door. Receiving no reply he took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door and went in.
When he came out, the basket seemed heavier. He moved along to the next door and repeated the performance.
When he came out this time he was quite upset to find three men waiting for him. One was the manager. The other two were policeman.
“What beats me,” said the manager, “is where he got that key. Do you realise it’s a master key, and will open any bedroom in the hotel?”
“Of course it’s a master key,” said Hazlerigg soothingly. “I should have been very disappointed if it hadn’t been. Why do you suppose Mr. Mitcham changed his room?”
“Even so—”
“A master key is a combination of all the other keys, with the unnecessary bits left out. Anyone who knows about keys can construct it if he get hold of any two keys in the set. Simple, isn’t it. Practically infallible.”
“Not quite,” said Sergeant Crabbe. “God bless New Zealand.”
London Evening Standard, April 9,1953.
FOLLOW THE LEADER
NIGHT DRIVING WAS TOFFEE. Sam did fifty hours of it every winter week of his life. Fog was a minor nuisance. Ice could be bad. Ice made his ten-ton lorry wag her tail like a dog.
Night, fog and ice together were unprintable. And now he had them all. The fog had come up with the dusk. The ice was a fixture.
If anyone could get along in bad conditions, Sam could do it. Perched high in his cab astride the powerful foglight slung between his front wheels, he was a lot better equipped than any private motorist.
Now even Sam was beginning to wonder. It hadn’t escaped his notice that not a single vehicle of any sort had passed him in the last quarter of an hour, which could mean that bad though things were, they were a lot worse ahead.
A dim shape on his left – the piston ring factory. Sam sucked at his teeth. Half a mile to Grandpa’s. He’d got to stop there anyway. Maybe he’d knock off for three or four hours and give the fog a chance. When it was foggy at dusk, it often cleared, he had noticed, before midnight.
Grandpa’s place was a pull-in well known to all lorry drivers and not unknown to the snob traffic. Grandpa had a way with ham and eggs that would have made him a small fortune in London’s Soho. He didn’t seem to be doing too badly in his lonely outpost beside the Great North Road. Grandpa was a warm man.
The lights of the diner were suddenly ahead, very dim, to the right just off the road. The run-in was half left down a slight incline into an open, gravelled yard. Sam could have done it with his eyes shut. He slowed for the entrance, touched his wheel, and felt his lorry slithering down the slope which the ice had turned into a slide.
He levelled off, ran to the far end, and stopped. As he stopped he felt something bump gently but firmly into him from behind. Then another bump, more distant. Then another.
It was like a freight train coming to a halt. Clank, clank, clank.
Sam climbed out to investigate.
“Blow me down,” he said. “I’ve brought ’em all in with me.”
Touching his tailboard was a shiny saloon car. Behind the saloon, a little two-seater. Behind the two-seater stood an old family model.
Sam had been vaguely aware for some time that he had picked up a “tail.” Driving in fog he sometimes had a couple of dozen followers, and accepted their presence as a tribute to his skill.
It hadn’t occurred to him that they would all follow him into Grandpa’s for a cup of tea. As he stood, disconcerted more than amused, car doors begin to open. First a man and then a girl stepped out of the two-seater. They were stiff with cold. A fat, red-faced commercial traveller type climbed out of the saloon. He looked cheerful. Probably his car had heating. Finally the door of the family model opened and a third man joined the party. He was on the young side of middle age, and, as far as he looked like anything, he looked like a farmer.
“Here we are,” said the red-faced man. As soon as he opened his mouth, a further cause of his cheerfulness became apparent.
“Where exactly are we?” asked the man from the two-seater. He and the girl both looked cold and nervous.
“It’s a pull-in,” said Sam. “Known to the trade as Grandpa’s. Does a good cup of coffee.”
“W-what are we w-waiting for, then?” asked the girl, through chattering teeth.
“What indeed?” said the farming type. They surged indoors.
Grandpa and his assistant, a lout of twenty addressed as “boy,” were sitting in front of the fire. They rose to greet the company. Sam they knew.
“Just followed me in,” said Sam, helplessly.
“Did they, though?” said Grandpa. He, too, seemed a little disconcerted. “What’ll it be?”
“Coffee,” said Sam.
The man and the girl nodded. The Commercial said, “And I’ll have a drop of rum in mine.”
Grandpa looked at him under his grey eyebrows and said, “You’ll lose me the licence I haven’t got, sir. I might have a drop in the medicine chest. I’ll go and see.”
“Never known a time when you hadn’t,” said the Commercial.
“Come out and give us a hand with the lashings,” said Sam to the boy. “They started slipping at Baldock but I couldn’t stop.”
They went out. The man and the girl sat in front of the fire.
“Sugar?” asked the man. The girl shook her head. She was very you
ng, the farmer decided. Under twenty, he’d have guessed. The man was in his middle thirties, a powerful-looking brute.
“Smashing place this,” said the Commercial. “Get anything you like. Drink. Smoke. Eat. When rationing was on, I always stopped here. Rationing!” His face grew redder. “Never knew the meaning of the word, did you, Grandpa?”
Grandpa, who had come back with a medicine bottle full of dark brown liquid, poured some into the Commercial’s coffee and said: “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
The man and the girl had finished their coffee. The man took out a cigarette case and they both helped themselves to a cigarette. There was a box of spills on the mantelpiece. The girl stood up to get one, but before she had lit it the man had taken out a handsome solid silver lighter and snapped it.
Sam and the boy came back, and Sam got on with his coffee. Grandpa tipped a dose out of the medicine bottle into his cup, too.
“What’s that? Cough mixture?” said Sam, innocently.
“That’s right,” said Grandpa. “I keep it for the boy.”
The warmth and the light were thawing people out. The thought of facing the road outside seemed doubly distasteful.
“Doesn’t run to a bed, I suppose?” said the Commercial, hopefully.
“We’ve got one,” said Grandpa, “but it’s full of me most nights. What about a nice shakedown on the divan?” He indicated a couch in the corner.
“I wouldn’t say no to that,” said the Commercial. “I could get in touch with my old lady. Are you on the phone?”
“We’ve got a telephone.” said Grandpa. “But it’s not working,” he added sharply, as though someone had nudged him.
“There’s one back down the road,” said the girl. “How far would you say?” She seemed to be addressing this remark to the farming type, who had been sitting very quietly in the corner.
“I—well – I don’t think that I noticed it,” he said.
“Noticed it!” said the girl. “But you were using it. We were behind you. That’s when we passed you.”
“Ah, yes,” said the farmer. “So I was. I’d forgotten.”
The spotlight of popular interest focused on him. Remarkable man. Stopped to telephone. Forgot about it ten minutes later.
The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries Page 6