The Man Who Couldn't Lose

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘And Ron, tell Ahmed I want him to get me a run-down on Benjamin or Bozo Johnson on the PNC. I know he’s served time, but I want to know all there is to know. Also his known associates. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. By the way, there was no sign of a pot dog or any of Mrs Buller-Price’s stuff in Dolly Reuben’s shop.’

  Angel wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Well, we can’t put any more time into that. I’ll be back at the station shortly.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  He closed the phone and shoved it in his pocket as the clerk returned waving two printed pages of A4 and the visitor’s book. He handed Angel the pages and replaced the book on the desk.

  ‘Thank you very much for your help,’ Angel said as he folded the pages and put them in his pocket.

  The clerk nodded.

  Angel went straight back to the station and was charging up the green corridor towards his office when he bumped into Crisp sauntering out of CID carrying a file.

  Crisp’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Angel said, looking distinctly displeased. ‘How is it I can never find you? You haven’t told me how you got on with Edmund Gumme.’

  ‘Haven’t really had the chance, sir.’

  ‘You’ve got a quick chance now,’ Angel snapped. ‘Did he say he knew about his father’s death?’

  ‘Said his father’s solicitor, Carl Messenger, had phoned him. He was naturally cut up, but when he heard that he’d left everything to his new wife, he lost interest.’

  ‘Did he have an alibi for the time that—’

  ‘No, sir. Lives on his own. In a flat. He’s unmarried. Says he was in bed.’

  ‘What does he do all day, play croquet?’

  ‘He’s a teacher. Teaches English at a new school in York.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘Right then, carry on.’

  Crisp nodded and turned away quickly and started down the corridor.

  Suddenly Angel called out, ‘Hey, Crisp!’

  He turned back, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You haven’t seen a white pot dog on your travels, have you? A figure of a poodle sixteen inches high?’

  Crisp blinked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Benjamin Johnson, sir,’ Ahmed said, reading from the first of three pages he had printed out from the PNC. ‘December 29th 1999. Guilty of manslaughter of Colin Abelson. Hit him with a bar stool in a drunken brawl. Sentenced to twelve years. On appeal, sentence reduced to eight. Released from Durham, 10 January 2004, having served only four years.’

  Angel rubbed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb.

  ‘Anything else known?’

  ‘No, sir. Looks like a clean sheet after that.’

  Angel nodded.

  ‘Associates?’

  ‘Horace Harelip Makepiece.’

  Angel frowned.

  ‘Shall I read it up, sir?’

  ‘Aye. Make it snappy.’

  Ahmed selected the next sheet, cleared his throat and said, ‘Horace Harelip Makepiece, born 23 April 1957. There’s not much, sir. 1972. Three months’ probation for acting as look-out for robbers at an off licence. 1973. Six months’ probation for stealing by siphoning petrol from a parked car. 1975. Six months’ probation for stealing washing off a clothes line, also fined £100 for taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent.’

  Angel nodded.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Known associates?’

  ‘There aren’t any, sir.’

  ‘Right, Ahmed. Now, I’m expecting the PM report on Gumme by email from Dr Mac sometime this afternoon. Keep your eye open for it, and let me have a print of it as soon as it appears.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said. He went out and closed the door.

  Angel leaned back in the swivel chair and stared up at the ceiling. He was weighing up the progress he was making on the Gumme murder and was quickly arriving at the conclusion that it was very little. He hadn’t a motive, a suspect, a weapon or a clue. There wasn’t a scene of crime to mooch around because he didn’t know where the murder had been committed. This case was damned unusual. He was still awaiting Dr Mac’s and SOCO’s report, however. You could never be sure what they might throw up. He had interviewed the victim’s wife and the man’s chauffeur, but he had not interviewed his only progeny, his son, Edmund. That was clearly his next priority. He was also curious about the parcel left to Edmund by his father. He would like to kill two birds with one stone.

  There was a knock at the door. He lowered the chair abruptly

  ‘Come in.’

  It was DC Scrivens.

  ‘Come in, Ed.’

  ‘Is it convenient for me to report on that torched car, sir, Joshua Gumme’s Bentley?’ the young man said tentatively.

  ‘Yes. Make it quick, though. Who stole it and why?’

  ‘Don’t know that, sir. Mrs Gumme was very angry about it. She said that the Bentley had apparently been taken out of the garage during Wednesday night Thursday morning. She didn’t know about it being missing until uniform phoned her yesterday morning and she had to go out of the house to the garage to find out for herself. She hadn’t heard it being started and driven away. Her Jaguar is kept in the same double garage and that was perfectly all right. Not touched. The garage isn’t locked with a key. It’s one of those automatic jobs where you press a remote and it opens itself. The remote control and the car key were missing. There were duplicates of both in Mr Gumme’s desk. I checked on them; they are still there. She said that the key and the remote used by Mr Makepiece could have been on the carpet by the front door. They would have been dropped there by him, by arrangement, on Tuesday night, after he’d taken Mr Gumme to The Feathers. Maybe with everything happening, she’d not noticed them or forgotten all about them. I surveyed the scene, sir, and I reckon it might have been possible to sneak them out through the letterbox with a line and hook.’

  Angel frowned.

  ‘A thief would need to know they were there, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Could do it with a mirror on a stick, sir. We know it’s been done, sir, don’t we?’

  ‘Aye. What else? Any fingerprints, footprints, any forensic?’

  ‘No, sir. I had a SOCO have a look at the front door, the garage and the car. There was nothing.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘Terrible mess. Anything that would burn did burn … helped along with a can of petrol.’

  ‘Any prints on that?’ Angel said quickly.

  ‘No, sir. The kids are getting very streetwise.’

  Angel wondered. The door remote and the keys could certainly have been lifted from the hall floor via the letterbox, but he couldn’t quite see any of the suspects in the case busying themselves in that way. However, any one of them could have employed someone else to do it. Even so, he couldn’t at that point see any motive – only vengeance.

  ‘Right, Ed, that seems to be a thorough job. Ta. Now you can get back to your shoplifting case.’

  He nodded and went out.

  Angel didn’t spend any more time thinking about the torched Bentley, as significant as it might be. It was getting late into a Friday afternoon and there was something he really had to do. He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out the Bromersley phone book. He raced through it and found the number he wanted. He lifted the handset and dialled the number.

  A woman with a deep voice answered.

  ‘Carl Messenger, solicitor. Can I help you?’ she said in a voice ideal for selling shrouds.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Angel. Can I speak to Mr Messenger, please?’

  ‘One moment,’ she said. ‘Please hold on.’

  There was silence on the line for thirty seconds or so, then the woman said, ‘I am putting you through to Mr Messenger.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ the man said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Good afternoon, M
r Messenger. I am anxious to make contact with Mr Edmund Gumme. I have his number, but there is repeatedly no reply. I wonder if you know how I might contact him. I understand he is a school teacher, but I am not familiar with the name of the school.’

  ‘Nor am I, Inspector. However, I can tell you that he has changed his mind about accepting the small package his father left him. He telephoned me and I have arranged to see him here tomorrow morning. I do not open on Saturdays usually, but I am opening the office at ten o’clock tomorrow especially to accommodate him. Miss Goodchild, my secretary, has kindly agreed to come to the office at that time. You would also be welcome. If you were to attend, you could be one of the two witnesses I will need.’

  ‘If you would care to sign there, Mr Gumme?’ Carl Messenger said, handing him a pen. ‘Then Miss Goodchild, as witness that the package has been duly received by Mr Gumme … there … thank you…. then Inspector Angel … there…. thank you.’

  Angel signed and passed the pen to Messenger. The solicitor placed it on the pen rest and then reached down to the bottom drawer in the pedestal of his desk and pulled out a package, wrapped in brown paper securely sealed with an overabundance of Sellotape. Under the transparent tape, written by hand in black ink on a label, was the one word ‘Edmund’. He handed it across the desk to the young man.

  ‘There you are. The formalities are now completed,’ Messenger said.

  Edmund Gumme took the package with both hands, looked at it and held it reverentially for a moment; he blew across the label, creating a small cloud of dust, read his name written in his father’s hand, nodded, then quickly pushed it into his coat pocket.

  ‘I believe our business is concluded,’ he said, turning to the solicitor. ‘Thank you, Mr Messenger.’ He turned to Miss Goodchild. ‘Thank you.’

  She nodded, picked up her handbag and left the office.

  Messenger locked the middle drawer of his desk and withdrew the key.

  Gumme looked at Angel and said, ‘Perhaps I could have a private word with you, Inspector?’

  Angel nodded. He had been hoping for such a meeting. If Gumme hadn’t proposed it, he would certainly have suggested it.

  They made polite excuses to Messenger and went out of his dismal office, through the waiting room along the corridor to the main door. On the pavement outside, Angel suggested they could sit in his car and talk.

  Gumme agreed and when they were both in the car and the doors closed, the young man said: ‘I wondered if you had found out who murdered my father.’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Gumme. Not yet. But we will,’ Angel said. ‘It’s early days. Why? Do you have any idea who could have shot him?’

  Gumme smiled wryly.

  ‘No, Inspector, but of course, being who he was, he was bound to have lots of enemies.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, whoever the murderer is, my father probably cheated him in some way … either at cards or in his business dealings. My father had the gift of rubbing everybody up the wrong way. I could never get along with him.’

  Angel thought it was sad. He had good memories of his own father.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Gumme sighed and shook his head. ‘The trouble was, he wanted me to be a carbon copy of himself: a bullying, tyrannical, self-seeking cheat.’

  He paused. Angel said nothing. He went on: ‘He called me a “nancy boy” because I liked music, art and literature.… I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. And when he didn’t get his own way, he was intolerable. After Mum died he was impossible to live with. And when Ingrid moved in, my life was unbearable. I simply had to move out. She is a horrible woman, Inspector. You should be warned against her. She only married him for his money. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t bumped him off.’

  Angel listened carefully. He was hoping for some hard facts from young Gumme that would help him find the murderer.

  ‘It’s well known that Dad was like a money-making machine. He had the Midas touch. Everything he turned to made money. Of course, that’s all he thought about. She was the same. They were two for a pair. That’s at least one thing they had in common. She’s not my stepmother. I never accepted her as my stepmother. When she moved in, I moved out. I have not even spoken to her in her role as my father’s wife. As far as I am concerned she is a usurper. She should not be in my father’s house. She gets the lion’s share out of the earnings of his estate.’

  ‘That’ll be run presumably by Horace Makepiece.’

  ‘Anything that Horace Makepiece gets, he’s earned. My father has been walking all over him for more than twenty years. He’s bullied and abused him and made a fool of him in front of everybody. It’s time Horace was rewarded.’

  Angel nodded. He conceded that the son might be right about that.

  ‘Your father didn’t forget you entirely when he made his will?’

  Gumme’s face showed great sadness. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out the tightly wrapped package.

  ‘I already know that the value of my legacy at the time he made his will was six pounds. So I know that I have not even inherited my grandfather’s gold watch!’

  Angel said nothing.

  Gumme shook the packet angrily then suddenly said, ‘Have you a knife or a pair of scissors?’

  Angel nodded. He had a small two-bladed penknife in his jacket pocket. He opened the larger blade and passed it across to the young man.

  He took it eagerly and began to cut with a sawing action through the several layers of transparent tape around the packet. It took a while and he was getting quite excited as he reached the brown paper wrapper. His face was red, his breathing quicker. His hands were shaking as he made a neat opening in the paper. He handed the knife back to Angel, then he tore open the little parcel. Into his lap fell a pack of playing cards in its cardboard case, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses, and a small white card. On the card in his father’s hand were written the words: ‘To my son, Edmund. Enclosed is the secret to making a fortune. Be persistent, be diligent and you too will become a very rich man. The rest will follow. Your loving father, Joshua Gumme.’

  Edmund Gumme read the card again aloud, then pushed it in his pocket. His face showed his disappointment. He opened the packet and shook out the playing cards. He took the cards in his hands, fanned them and looked carefully at both sides of them. He selected one card and stared at the pattern, which was a pretty, colourful flower design. He selected another card and put the two side by side. They were identical. He opened up the spectacles and put them on. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust. Then he repeated the previous routine. The back of all the cards looked identical with and without the spectacles. He looked at the face side. There was nothing unusual to see there, with or without the glasses. He shuffled through the cards. Each card was identical at the back and different at the front. At length and with a sigh, he squared up the pack and pushed them back into the cardboard box. He removed the heavy, thick spectacles.

  ‘I cannot see anything unusual about these cards or the spectacles, Inspector Angel,’ he said. ‘If the cards are specially marked, I cannot detect it; neither with the spectacles nor without them. Whatever mystery these cards may hold is not apparent to me.’

  ‘Your father had some secret which he is clearly trying to pass onto you. There must be something special about the cards or the spectacles or both, Mr Gumme. I understand your father won two hundred successive games of pontoon; lately, I hear, he won every hand of cards he played, without exception. He obviously has left you these cards and these spectacles so that you can do the same.’

  ‘I expect he cheated throughout.’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s nevertheless remarkable. Horace Makepiece happened to say that your father told him that his method or system, or whatever it was, did not enable him to beat everybody at cards. There were some people, apparently, that your father could not beat and that he would not play against.’

  ‘He would have said
that to save his face for when he lost a game.’

  ‘No. Not at all. He never did lose a game. According to Makepiece, he made a point of observing prospective contenders playing with other people for a few minutes and from that he would know whether he could beat them or not. He would only play against those he could beat.’

  Gumme’s mouth was turned downwards at the corners. He picked up the wrapping that had fallen on the floor of the car, pushed the pack of cards and the spectacles into it and pressed the jumbled parcel into Angel’s hand.

  ‘Very well. You’re the detective. See if you can work it out. If I can help you further with your enquiries, Inspector Angel, you have my address. I want my father’s murderer caught.’

  SEVEN

  Angel was back home in a few minutes. He drove the car into the garage and locked it. He dashed into the house and told his wife, Mary, all about Edmund Gumme’s legacy and the note his father had left him. He offered her the pack of cards and the spectacles and asked if she could solve the mystery.

  She took up the challenge immediately.

  ‘I’ll certainly have a go, Michael,’ she said with a smile. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  Angel nodded.

  She examined the backs of some of the cards, sometimes wearing the spectacles and sometimes not. ‘The backs of the cards are exactly the same. It is the same pattern on all the cards … the same number of petals and leaves and so on … in exactly the same positions. There is no difference. They are identical.’

  ‘That’s what Edmund Gumme said. And that’s what I believe,’ Angel said.

  Mary thought for a moment. Then she made a suggestion.

  ‘I wonder, if in a certain light, some of the colours of the petals of the flowers in the design on the back of the cards, when seen through the spectacles, might look different, perhaps in some code, displaying the face value of the card.’

  Angel pursed his lips. He didn’t think that there had been any hand-colouring with special paints on the backs of the cards, but he could be wrong.

  ‘You mean the spectacles acting like a light filter?’

  ‘I don’t know technically what I mean, but I wondered if it was possible?’