by Graham Ison
A Selection of Recent Titles by Graham Ison from Severn House
The Hardcastle Series
HARDCASTLE’S BURGLAR
HARDCASTLE’S MANDARIN
HARDCASTLE’S SOLDIERS
HARDCASTLE’S OBSESSION
HARDCASTLE’S FRUSTRATION
HARDCASTLE’S TRAITORS
HARDCASTLE’S QUARTET
HARDCASTLE’S COLLECTOR
HARDCASTLE’S RUNAWAY
Brock and Poole Series
BREACH OF PRIVILEGE
ALL QUIET ON ARRIVAL
LOST OR FOUND
GUNRUNNER
MAKE THEM PAY
RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT
EXIT STAGE LEFT
SUDDENLY AT HOME
HARDCASTLE’S RUNAWAY
Graham Ison
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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
Copyright © 2017 by Graham Ison.
The right of Graham Ison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8701-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-804-0 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-868-1 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
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GLOSSARY
‘A’ FROM A BULL’S FOOT, to know: to know nothing.
APM: assistant provost marshal (a lieutenant colonel attached to the military police).
BAILEY, the: Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London.
BAILIWICK: area of responsibility.
BEF: British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders.
BLACK ANNIE: a police or prison van.
BLADE: a dashing young man.
BLIGHTY ONE: a wound suffered in battle that necessitated repatriation to the United Kingdom.
BLIGHTY: the United Kingdom (ex Hindi Bilayati: far away).
BOB: a shilling (now 5p).
BOCHE: derogatory term for Germans, particularly soldiers.
CAGMAG: unwholesome meat; offal.
CAT’S PAW: a dupe.
CID: Criminal Investigation Department.
CLOBBER: clothing.
CLYDE (as in D’YOU THINK I CAME UP THE CLYDE ON A BICYCLE?): to suggest that the speaker is a fool.
COCK-AND-BULL STORY: an idle, silly or incredible story.
COMMISSIONER’S OFFICE: official title of New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.
COPPER: a policeman.
CULLY: alternative to calling a man ‘mate’.
DAPM: deputy assistant provost marshal.
DARTMOOR: a remote prison on Dartmoor in Devon.
DDI: divisional detective inspector.
DERBY ACT or DERBY LAW: Military Service Act 1916, formulated by Lord Derby, that introduced conscription.
DING-DONG: a fight or argument.
DOOLALLY TAP: of unsound mind (ex Hindi).
DPP: Director of Public Prosecutions.
EARWIGGING: listening.
FORM: previous convictions.
FOURPENNY CANNON, a: a steak-and-kidney pie.
FROCK COAT: term adopted by the military in the Great War to describe politicians.
FRONT, The: theatre operations in France and Flanders during the Great War.
GANDER, to cop a: to take a look.
GILD THE LILY, to: to exaggerate.
GUV or GUV’NOR: informal alternative to ‘sir’.
JIG-A-JIG: sexual intercourse.
KATE CARNEY: army (rhyming slang: from Kate Carney, a music-hall comedienne of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).
KATE short for KATE CARNEY: see above.
LASH-UP, a: a mess.
MANOR: a police area.
MC: Military Cross.
NICK: a police station or prison or to arrest or to steal.
OCCURRENCE BOOK: handwritten record of every incident occurring at a police station.
OLD BAILEY: Central Criminal Court, in Old Bailey, London.
PEACH, to: to inform to the police.
PICCADILLY WINDOW: a monocle.
POT AND PAN, OLD: father (rhyming slang: old man).
PROVOST, the: military police.
QUID: £1 sterling.
RECEIVER, The: the senior Scotland Yard official responsible for the finances of the Metropolitan Police.
RIC: The Royal Irish Constabulary.
RNVR: Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
SAM BROWNE: a military officer’s belt with shoulder strap.
SAPPERS: the Corps of Royal Engineers (in the singular a member of that corps).
SHILLING: now 5p.
SKIP or SKIPPER: an informal police alternative to station-sergeant, clerk-sergeant and sergeant.
SMOKE, The: London.
STAGE-DOOR JOHNNIE: man who frequents theatres in an attempt to make the acquaintance of actresses.
STANHOPE: (usually with a lower case ‘s’) a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage for one person.
SWADDY: a soldier. (ex Hindi).
TOPPING: a murder or hanging.
TURNIP WATCH: an old-fashioned, thick, silver pocket watch.
TWO-AND-EIGHT, in a: in a state (rhyming slang).
TITFER: a hat (rhyming slang: tit for tat).
TUPPENNY-HA’PENNY: a contraction of twopence-halfpenny, indicating something or someone of little worth.
UNDERGROUND, The: the London Underground railway system.
WALLAH: someone employed in a specific office (ex Hindi).
WAX to be in a: to be in a rage.
ONE
The euphoria that had engulfed the nation with the signing of the Armistice in November 1918 did not last for very long. By March 1919 the full effects of the Great War were beginning to take their toll. Factories producing the shells that had rained down on the enemy were, at best, now equipping their workshops to cater for the demands of peace. Others stood idle, their employees made redundant. Mills that had manufactured huge quantities of army uniforms, and those plants producing food or other necessaries for the military were suddenly faced with the disappearance of those markets and the real possibility of bankruptcy. It meant that in many cases war workers were now without jobs, but as many of them were women, and returned to their pre-war life of domesticity, the impact was not as great as had been feared.
And there was another problem. Sir Robert Horne, the Minister of Labour, decided that skilled men,
essential to post-war industry, would be released from the armed forces first. But as they were often the last to have been conscripted, the long-serving men were incensed; riots followed, and in some cases mutinies. To resolve this wave of discontent and disorder, Winston Churchill instituted the principle of ‘first in, first out’.
Nevertheless, blind men and men with missing limbs thronged the streets in search of work that was not there, and many discharged officers were persuaded to invest their meagre savings in dubious ventures that inevitably failed. Rudyard Kipling’s evocative poem Tommy sprang to mind when it became apparent that ‘our brave boys’, who had ‘fought the good fight’ were in many cases regarded as an embarrassment.
The Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands where that ambivalent nation – one that had remained stolidly neutral throughout the war – charitably afforded him asylum. Attempts to extradite him for war crimes were thwarted by Queen Wilhelmina. And in Versailles the victors raked over the ashes of war, argued about the terms of a seemingly elusive peace treaty and attempted to calculate how much a bankrupt Germany could be expected to pay in reparations. When it came to it, they paid very little. In the meantime, British soldiers were deployed in support of the White Russians, who were hoping vainly to turn the flood tide of Bolshevism.
These troubles were serious enough, but they were now in danger of being overshadowed by a threat far graver even than the Great War and its consequences. The death toll of the influenza pandemic looked set to exceed the total of fatalities that the world had inflicted upon itself during the ‘war to end all wars’.
Divisional Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle, head of the CID for the A or Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police, had his office on the first floor of Cannon Row police station. He was fully aware of the impact that the depressing state of the nation was having on crime. Figures were already reflecting an increase in burglaries, larceny and in some cases even smash-and-grab raids, principally on jewellers’ shops and other purveyors of high-value goods.
Pawnbrokers did not escape this onslaught of crime either. In many cases, pawned goods were unlikely to be redeemed, their owners getting deeper into debt as the weeks passed without work. Occasionally, though, those owners had other ideas, and the police strongly suspected that they were repossessing their goods and chattels by way of shop-breaking, it being the only way in which they could lay hands on them again.
However, none of this occupied Hardcastle’s mind on the morning of Monday the third of March, 1919.
‘Good morning, sir.’ Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott stepped into the DDI’s office. Marriott was the first-class sergeant who oversaw the work of the junior detectives in the Cannon Row subdivision. He was also the officer whom Hardcastle invariably chose as his assistant whenever he investigated a murder. At thirty-six years of age, the six-foot tall Marriott had a youthful appearance and the sort of chiselled features that caused many women to afford him a second glance and a hopeful smile. But they hoped in vain; Marriott was happily married to Lorna, a striking blonde only an inch or two shorter than her husband. And he adored their two children.
‘What is it, Marriott?’ Hardcastle, hands in his pockets, had been staring down into Westminster Underground station, but turned from the window as his sergeant entered the room.
‘Detective Superintendent Wensley’s clerk telephoned, sir. You’re to see Mr Wensley as soon as possible. His clerk stressed the urgency, sir.’
‘He stressed the urgency, did he, Marriott? Prone to panic, is he, this clerk of Mr Wensley’s, eh? Still a PC, is he? Or have they made him a sergeant?’
Marriott permitted himself a brief smile; his chief was clearly in a jocular mood this morning. ‘I don’t think so, sir. He’s been Mr Wensley’s clerk for some time.’
‘That’s the trouble with these tuppenny-ha’penny pen-pushers, Marriott; they’ve been in the job so long they think the trumpets are sounding for them as well. Time they were sent back to the streets to find out what real police work’s like.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Marriott, sensing the onset of one of Hardcastle’s tirades about those he called ‘office-wallahs’, decided that a monosyllabic reply was the safest form of response.
Hardcastle glanced at his chrome half-hunter, wound it briefly and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Better see what he wants, I suppose.’ Putting on his bowler hat and grabbing his umbrella, without either of which he would never be seen outside, he made his way across the narrow roadway between Cannon Row police station and Commissioner’s Office, as policemen are wont to call New Scotland Yard.
When Hardcastle had joined the Metropolitan Police twenty-eight years ago, he had stared in awe at Norman Shaw’s impressive building. Then but a year old and already being referred to colloquially as ‘the Yard’, it had been built of Dartmoor granite hewn by convicts from the prison situated on that bleak moorland. Dominating Victoria Embankment, the Yard towered over most of the nearby buildings. But Hardcastle was no longer impressed by it; he had visited it too often.
‘All correct, sir.’ At the top of the flight of steps leading to the main entrance, a constable opened the heavy door and saluted.
Hardcastle grunted in reply; he was always irritated by the routine reports which uniformed officers were obliged to make, and which they made whether everything was all correct or not. But, perversely, he would be just as annoyed if a junior officer omitted so to report.
It was only a short walk along the stone-flagged corridor to Wensley’s office. Removing his bowler hat and hooking his umbrella over one arm, Hardcastle knocked lightly and entered without awaiting a response.
Detective Superintendent Frederick Wensley was an imposing figure, always immaculately dressed in a dark suit, laundered white shirt with wing collar and a pearl tiepin. He had been dubbed ‘Ace’ by the popular newspapers on account of his detective prowess, but to the officers under his command he was known by the irreverent sobriquet of ‘Elephant’ – an acknowledgment of the size of his nose. When he had started his career in the CID he had been a teetotaller, but that changed when he found that informants would not trust a detective who refused to take a drink with them. Now fifty-four years of age, he had been a policeman for thirty-one years and was in charge of all the detectives in a quarter of the capital, including most of East London and Bow Street.
‘Does the name Austen Musgrave mean anything to you, Ernie?’ asked Wensley, having told Hardcastle to sit down.
‘I can’t say it does, sir.’
‘He’s a member of parliament and lives in Vincent Square on your manor.’
‘Has he been murdered, sir?’ Hardcastle was already formulating the severe reprimand he would deliver to Detective Inspector Alexander Neville, the officer in charge of the CID for the Rochester Row subdivision, for failing to report this murder to him, news of which had somehow reached Mr Wensley before Hardcastle had learned of it.
‘No, he’s very much alive, but Mr Musgrave is worried about his seventeen-year-old daughter. Apparently she’s a bit of a wayward girl and has been missing for three days now. He’s asked for police assistance in tracing her.’
‘But the Uniform Branch deals with missing persons, sir,’ protested Hardcastle. ‘It’s hardly a job for—’
‘I know, Ernie,’ said Wensley, raising a staying hand, ‘but Mr Musgrave happens to be a friend of the Commissioner and he telephoned him this morning asking for assistance. Sir Nevil sent for me and asked me to put my best detective on to the matter. And now, Ernie, you’re about to meet him.’
‘Mr Musgrave, sir?’
‘Not immediately,’ said Wensley. ‘You’re to see the Commissioner first.’
Walking further along the corridor from Wensley’s office, the two detectives mounted the several flights of stairs that led to the Commissioner’s turret office overlooking the River Thames.
‘Go in, Mr Wensley,’ said the Commissioner’s secretary. ‘Sir Nevil is expecting you.’
Although Hardcastle had never met the man still referred to as the ‘new’ Commissioner, he knew something of his background. A professional soldier and now fifty-six years of age, General Sir Nevil Macready had spent the first two years of the Great War in France with the BEF, but in 1916 he had been appointed Adjutant-General to the Forces and transferred to the War Office in London. Unusually for a general, he was clean-shaven, but one of Macready’s first acts in his new appointment was to rescind the order requiring all soldiers to have a moustache. Once that order was signed, Macready visited a barber and had his own ‘unsightly bristles’, as he termed them, shaved off.
‘So you’re Ernie Hardcastle.’ After spending a few seconds appraising the A Division DDI’s stocky figure and affording his bushy moustache an amused glance, Macready stood up and skirted his desk to shake hands with him. ‘Mr Wensley says you’re one of his best detectives.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Hardcastle was stunned that the Commissioner had addressed him so informally. But that familiarity bore out what was already known throughout the Force – that Macready was not averse to talking to constables and sergeants in order to better assess the morale of the rank and file. And in an attempt to discover whether there was likely to be a repeat of the abortive police strike that had taken place last year. Macready preferred to call it a mutiny and it had brought about his appointment following the resignation of the former commissioner, Sir Edward Henry.
‘I imagine that Mr Wensley has told you that Austen Musgrave is a friend of mine.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Austen Musgrave made a great deal of money during the war manufacturing uniforms. He earned it honestly, which makes a refreshing change, and has contributed a substantial sum to soldiers’ charities. But, like so many busy men, he had little time to devote to his only daughter and I gather, from what he’s told me, that she’s rather gone off the rails. Now, it seems, she’s gone missing.’
‘I see, sir.’ Hardcastle was still overawed by the Commissioner’s affable approach, which was unlike his predecessor’s somewhat formal and starchy character, though Hardcastle had never met Henry. ‘Am I to take it that Mrs Musgrave is deceased, sir?’