Hardcastle's Runaway

by Graham Ison

  It was some twenty minutes later that Austen Musgrave entered the room. ‘I’m most awfully sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,’ he said affably. ‘I presume you’re some of Mr Hardcastle’s chaps?’

  ‘We are, sir. I’m Detective Constable Catto and this is Detective Constable Keeler.’

  To Catto’s surprise, Musgrave shook hands with each of them. ‘How can I help you, gentlemen? And please do take a seat.’ He indicated a settee under the window.

  ‘This won’t take a moment, sir,’ said Catto, declining to sit down. ‘I understand from my inspector that Miss Musgrave returned home at about eight o’clock last night.’

  ‘That’s correct. I telephoned the police station earlier today to let Mr Hardcastle know.’

  ‘My inspector would like to have a few words with the young lady, sir.’ Catto refrained from mentioning that Hardcastle had flown into a towering rage at the belated and seemingly casual way in which the police had been informed of Lily’s return. ‘He’s asked me to escort Miss Musgrave to the police station,’ he said in such a way that brooked no refusal. ‘I have a cab waiting, sir.’

  But rather than demur, Musgrave greeted the request with enthusiasm. ‘What an excellent idea,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mr Hardcastle can talk a bit of sense into the girl. Between you and me, Mr Catto, she doesn’t take a blind bit of notice of anything I say, and her mother, Marie Faye, the actress, has left home and is treading the boards somewhere on the south coast. Or was, the last time I heard from her.’ He crossed the room and rang for the butler.

  ‘Sir?’ Crabb entered the room within seconds, almost as if he had been waiting for such a summons, possibly in the hope that he would be asked to eject the two policemen.

  ‘Ask Miss Lily to come down, if you please, Crabb.’

  As the butler left, a woman swept into the room making what is best described as a grand entrance. She was tall and slender, probably in her late thirties. Barefooted, her long blonde hair was in disarray and she was wearing a peignoir. Despite her careless appearance, there was no doubt that she was an extremely handsome woman.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, affording the two detectives a fetching smile and raising her arms as if making an impassioned appeal to the gallery, ‘but I didn’t realize we had visitors. I’m Sarah Gillard.’ The woman, who spoke with a noticeable American accent, was quite unembarrassed by her state of undress and was making a point of directing her remarks to Catto.

  ‘Miss Gillard is an American theatre actress, gentlemen,’ volunteered Musgrave hurriedly, as if that was sufficient to explain her attire, ‘but she’s appearing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and is staying with me for the time being.’

  ‘My dears, you would not believe how awful some theatrical diggings are,’ said Sarah, continuing to address the two detectives. ‘You’re not in the profession by any chance, are you? Austen is a great patron of the arts, although he seems to think that this cinematograph business will be the death of the theatre once they’ve worked out how to put sound on to the film. Personally, I don’t think it’ll ever come to anything. There’s nothing like live theatre.’ She laughed, a gay, tinkling laugh. ‘Can you imagine seeing Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Bioscope in Vauxhall Bridge Road? It’s too laughable for words.’

  ‘These gentlemen are detectives, Sarah,’ said Musgrave, in an attempt to slow the woman’s inane prattling. ‘They’ve come to take Lily to the police station for an interview.’

  ‘Oh, how delightfully thrilling, Austen my dear,’ said Sarah, laughing gaily. ‘Has young Lily been a naughty girl again?’

  ‘Again, madam?’ Catto did not miss the implication.

  ‘Oh, she’s a real little minx, isn’t she, Austen?’

  ‘In what way?’ Catto wanted to know.

  ‘Going off to nightclubs and that sort of thing,’ said Sarah carelessly, ‘but it’s what young people do these days. The war has much to answer for, you know, Detective.’

  Crabb appeared in the doorway. ‘Miss Lily, sir,’ he said, ushering the young woman into the room.

  ‘The policeman who was assigned to find out where you were over the weekend wants to talk to you, Lily. He is Inspector Hardcastle.’

  ‘I really don’t know why you had to make such a fuss, Pops,’ said Lily, pouting. ‘It was silly to involve the police.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t talk to your father like that, Lily, dear,’ said Sarah Gillard.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Sarah,’ said Lily haughtily, and turned back to her father. ‘Why does this inspector want to see me, Pops?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Musgrave, ‘but no doubt you’ll find out soon enough. Now be a good girl and run along with these two nice policemen. They’ve a cab waiting outside. And don’t be late back for dinner. You know how Sarah and I hate to be kept waiting, apart from the inconvenience to the staff, and especially Mrs Briggs.’

  ‘I’ll be out for dinner this evening so I can’t spend too much time hanging around in police stations,’ Lily announced. ‘I’ll just get my coat.’ She shot a contrived coy smile at Catto and Keeler and swept from the room.

  ‘We won’t hold you up any longer, sir,’ said Catto. ‘We’ll be outside with the cab when the young lady’s ready.’

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll send her straight out.’

  The pair had reached the pavement before Keeler posed the question that had been nagging him ever since he had seen Sarah Gillard. ‘What did you think of the actress who’s staying with Mr Musgrave, Henry?’ he asked. ‘Very attractive, I thought.’

  ‘Actress, my foot!’ scoffed Catto. ‘She might be an actress, Baz, but I reckon she’d just tumbled out of Musgrave’s bed. Did you see the state of her? And did you notice how long it took Musgrave to come into the drawing room? I reckon he had to get dressed in a bit of a hurry once Crabb told him we were waiting.’

  ‘I’m here, boys.’ Lily Musgrave appeared at the top of the steps, struck a pose and blew a kiss at the waiting detectives. ‘Ready when you are.’ If it was an attempt at seduction it failed as far as Catto was concerned, and Keeler failed to recognize it as such.

  ‘What is it, Marriott?’

  ‘Catto and Keeler have arrived with Miss Musgrave, sir.’

  ‘Send Catto in.’

  Moments later, an apprehensive Henry Catto appeared in the door of the DDI’s office.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘What have you to report? Any trouble from the Musgrave family?’

  ‘No, sir. In fact, Mr Musgrave thought it was a good idea for you to give the girl a bit of a talking to, sir.’

  ‘Did he indeed,’ replied Hardcastle, chuckling.

  ‘I reckon Lily Musgrave’s a bit of a handful, sir,’ continued Catto, now regaining some of the confidence he usually only displayed out of Hardcastle’s presence, and went on to tell the DDI about Sarah Gillard’s intervention and Lily’s reaction. He described her little performance at the top of the steps. ‘She’s not above making eyes at any man who talks to her, neither, sir.’

  ‘Is that so, Catto? Very well.’

  ‘By the way, sir, she did say she’d got an appointment for dinner this evening.’

  ‘Did she really?’ said Hardcastle sarcastically. ‘Well, Miss Musgrave will have to learn that a divisional detective inspector don’t respond to the whims and fancies of a seventeen-year-old floozy. It won’t hurt that young lady to cool her heels for a bit. She needn’t think she can flick her fingers and get what she wants. It might work with her father but it don’t work in here.’ He began to fill his pipe slowly, as if deliberately wasting time. ‘Ask Sergeant Marriott to enquire if Mrs Cartwright is free for half an hour or so. If she ain’t too busy, that is. If she is, then La Belle Musgrave will have to sit and twiddle her thumbs for a bit.’

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ said Bertha Cartwright as she and Charles Marriott entered Hardcastle’s office a few minutes later.

  ‘Come and sit down, Mrs Cart
wright. I have a job for you, if you’re willing to assist me and you’re not too busy. You stay here as well, Marriott.’ Hardcastle lit his pipe and watched the smoke spiral towards the nicotine-stained ceiling.

  Bertha Cartwright, a state-registered nurse, was a buxom, widowed woman of some fifty summers. For several years now she had been the matron at Cannon Row police station and, in Hardcastle’s view, made the best cup of tea on the division. She may have appeared nervous when in the DDI’s office, but it was in fact deference to Hardcastle, a man she greatly admired. However, anyone making the mistake of thinking that she could easily be intimidated was in for a surprise. In a murder case in which she was called as a prosecution witness, she gave evidence at the Old Bailey and had surprised even Hardcastle in the way she had countered Sir Rowland Storey’s cross-examination. Storey, an eminent King’s Counsel, was appearing for the defence and Bertha Cartwright had answered all his questions confidently and firmly. Realizing that she was not to be browbeaten, he gave up and sat down.

  ‘How’s your boy Jack getting on, Mrs Cartwright?’

  Jack Cartwright was the apple of his mother’s eye. While serving in the Royal Garrison Artillery he had been fortunate to survive the entire war without so much as a scratch. Within weeks of the hostilities beginning, Jack had been promoted to lance bombardier, an elevation that had delighted his mother more than the meagre promotion merited. Hardcastle had been kept informed of the boy’s progress from time to time and, the last he had been told, Jack Cartwright was about to be promoted to regimental sergeant-major.

  ‘He’s been made a captain, sir.’ Mrs Cartwright beamed with the obvious pride she had in her son’s success as a soldier.

  ‘That’s a splendid achievement,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but no doubt he’ll be pleased to get home and find a decent job somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, no, not Jack, sir. You see, he had a bit of luck, although I shouldn’t call it that in the circumstances. After he got made RSM, the colonel said he ought to be an officer. Well, sir, when he was a second lieutenant there was a terrible accident when a shell exploded in the breech of a Howitzer. It so happened that the brigade commander, the very colonel who’d recommended Jack for a commission, was standing nearby and was killed instantly, along with the battery captain. Well, these things happen in war and before he knew where he was, Jack was a captain himself. Anyway, sir, to cut a long story short, Jack wants to stay on in the army and he’s hoping to be given a regular commission.’

  ‘That’s good news, Mrs Cartwright. Give him my congratulations.’ Although Hardcastle had never met Jack Cartwright, he felt that he knew him.

  ‘Oh, I will, sir, and thank you kindly. But I didn’t come here to talk about my boy Jack,’ said Bertha Cartwright, despite having gone on at some length about him. ‘You wanted me to do a job, you said.’

  Hardcastle explained about the sort of life Lily Musgrave led and went on to relate what Catto had told him about the girl’s behaviour in the presence of young men.

  ‘She strikes me as a thoroughly spoiled young woman, Mrs Cartwright, but I have to satisfy myself that she was a willing party to spending a weekend with this ex-officer down at Epsom in some racing stables. Otherwise, the ex-officer concerned may be facing charges.’

  ‘I think I know what sort of lass you’re talking about, sir.’

  ‘I’m about to question her in here, Mrs Cartwright, and I’d like you to be present because I don’t want any silly behaviour from her.’ In truth, Hardcastle did not wish to be the subject of any allegations of improper conduct. Police officers had discovered over the years that such allegations are easily made but difficult to disprove.

  ‘Oh, I quite understand, sir,’ said Bertha Cartwright, who was shrewd enough to have guessed the real reason. ‘D’you want me to say anything?’

  ‘If she gets a bit uppity I’ll rely on you to put her in her place, Mrs Cartwright, and I don’t care what you say to her. She’s more likely to take notice of you.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I’ll see she behaves herself.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Mrs Cartwright.’ The DDI was under no illusion but that a word from the matron would put the fear of God into the girl. He had seen it happen before. ‘Very well, Marriott, fetch her in here.’

  The description of Lily Musgrave that Austen Musgrave had given Hardcastle did not prepare him for the young woman who entered his office. And the photograph that Musgrave had produced could easily have been of an entirely different girl.

  Her shapeless dress, a mixture of black and bronze silk, had a hemline that stopped just above the knee but a fringe continued for another four inches, doing nothing to lessen the effect. She had a string of beads that fell to below her waist and that, together with the bandeau and its accompanying feather, made the entire ensemble the epitome of modern fashion. At least, in Lily’s view, and in the view of her peers. Hardcastle thought that the entire get-up looked rather ridiculous.

  ‘I don’t have very much time, you know.’ Lily did not look directly at either Hardcastle or Bertha Cartwright, but instead gazed superciliously around the office.

  ‘You’ll have as much time as I decide, young lady,’ said Hardcastle brusquely. ‘Sit down.’

  Lily was taken aback by the DDI’s abrasive manner, if not a little scared. It was probably the first time that anyone had ever spoken to her like that and she promptly sat down on the hard, straight-backed chair that was in front of Hardcastle’s desk. He had deliberately placed it at an angle so that the matron, from her place at the side of the desk, would be able to observe the young woman closely.

  ‘For a start, you can tell me where you spent last weekend,’ Hardcastle began.

  ‘I don’t see that it has anything to do with—’ Lily said arrogantly.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, girl, you’ll just answer the inspector’s question,’ snapped Bertha Cartwright loudly.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Lily Musgrave to whom this office, and its hostile occupants, was an alien environment, and she was now unsure what would happen to her. Was she about to be arrested? Although the men she had consorted with had told her there was nothing to worry about, perhaps what she had been doing was, after all, against the law.

  ‘Well?’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘I spent it with a friend.’

  ‘I asked you where you had spent the weekend, not who you spent it with.’ Hardcastle was already losing patience with the spoilt brat seated in front of him. Marriott, who was sitting behind the girl, hoped that the DDI would not lose his temper. He had seen it happen before and knew it was usually counterproductive.

  ‘In London.’ And then, sensing that this was not enough to satisfy the coarse policeman opposite her, she continued, ‘At Albany in Piccadilly. My friend’s father has a lease on an apartment there.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a man.’ Lily Musgrave still managed to display a little arrogance, but when the DDI’s fingers began to play a slow tattoo on the edge of his desk, she promptly clarified the statement. ‘Captain Oscar Lucas. His father is Lord Slade.’

  ‘Is that the only time you’ve spent a weekend with Lucas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think of Lord Slade’s stables at Epsom?’ asked Hardcastle mildly, as if he was taking but a casual interest in the girl’s activities.

  ‘Wonderful, and I loved the horses.’ Lily paused. ‘Oh dear!’ she said, and blushed to the roots of her hair.

  Satisfied that he had confirmation the girl had spent the weekend at Epsom, Hardcastle now changed tack.

  ‘Where did Max Quilter take you after you had dinner with him at Bellini’s on Saturday the twenty-second of February?’

  The suddenness of the question and its complete change from the matter in which Hardcastle had been interested previously, came as a shock.

  ‘I, er, I don’t know what you mean.’ Lily’s reply was halting and nervous.

&
nbsp; ‘And then there are …’ Hardcastle paused to flick his fingers. ‘What was them names, Marriott?’

  ‘Colonel Rendell, Major Toland, Mr Kelsey and a Lieutenant Frampton of the RNVR, sir.’

  At this revelation, Lily Musgrave burst into tears, and whatever black stuff she had put on her eyes started to run down her cheeks.

  ‘Now, Miss Musgrave,’ said Hardcastle, using the girl’s name for the first time, ‘I think it’s time we had the truth. For a start, how old are you?’ He knew the answer but wanted to see what the girl had to say.

  ‘Twenty.’ Despite her tears, there was a note of defiance in Lily’s answer.

  ‘I think you’re seventeen. The reason I have had you brought here, Miss Musgrave, is that I am investigating these men because I believe they may have taken you away for the purpose of knowing you carnally.’

  ‘What on earth does that mean?’ demanded Lily, slowly recovering from the realization that this brutal detective seemed to know the answers to all the questions he was asking her.

  ‘It means for the purpose of having sexual intercourse with you.’

  The bluntness of the statement shocked the young girl. Despite her unconventional attitude, she was nowhere as sophisticated as she thought she was and was not yet old enough to realize that mature adults could see through her charade.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, Musgrave,’ snapped Mrs Cartwright.

  ‘I take it you have had sexual relations with these men, Miss Musgrave?’

  ‘What if I have?’

  ‘Willingly?’

  ‘What the inspector means, girl,’ said Bertha Cartwright, before Lily had a chance to reply, ‘is whether you knew that was the intention of these men when you went out with them.’

  ‘Of course I knew. It’s part of having a good time.’

  Hardcastle emitted a sigh. ‘You can go but I’ll probably send for you again,’ he said. ‘One of my officers will take you home.’ He glanced at Marriott. ‘Arrange for Catto to take her back to Vincent Square.’ After a pause, he added, ‘And make sure Keeler goes too.’