Hardcastle's Soldiers

by Graham Ison

  ‘Yes, six-to-two all week.’

  ‘See you Friday at the Coal Hole pub in the Strand, Pincher. That’s about halfway between your nick and mine.’

  ‘Look forward to it, Bert,’ said Martin, and turned to deal with a young woman approaching the station door.

  It was three o’clock that same afternoon when Hardcastle and Marriott arrived at the Westbourne Terrace house where the Harcourts lived.

  This time it was a severely countenanced butler who answered the door.

  ‘Yes?’ The butler looked down his nose, obviously recognizing the two detectives as not of the class of visitor usually calling at the Harcourt residence.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I wish to see Miss Isabella Harcourt.’

  ‘May I enquire what it’s about?’ asked the butler, still maintaining his haughty attitude.

  ‘No, you may not,’ snapped Hardcastle. He had had dealings with supercilious butlers before, and dismissed them as having ideas above their station.

  ‘One moment.’ Leaving the two detectives on the doorstep, the butler retreated.

  ‘Toffee-nosed bugger,’ muttered Hardcastle. ‘He thinks the bell tolls for him,’ he added, misquoting John Donne, the sixteenth-century poet.

  The butler reappeared at the front door. ‘This way,’ he said, crooking a beckoning finger.

  Hardcastle handed his bowler hat and umbrella to the butler, and signalled to Marriott to do the same. The two detectives followed the Harcourts’ flunky into the drawing room at the front of the house where they had previously interviewed Isabella Harcourt.

  Geoffrey Mansfield’s fiancée appeared almost immediately.

  ‘The two police persons, Miss Isabella,’ murmured the butler disdainfully, by way of introduction.

  ‘Thank you, Hoskins,’ said Isabella. She waited until the butler had departed, and had closed the door firmly behind him, before speaking again. ‘Please take a seat, gentlemen. I presume you have some more questions for me, Inspector.’ She sat down on the sofa opposite the two detectives and arranged her skirt.

  ‘No, miss, no questions. But I thought that you’d wish to know that I’m now quite satisfied that your fiancé, Lieutenant Mansfield, was not the officer we spoke to at Victoria Station on the morning of the murder.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, Inspector,’ said Billie Harcourt. ‘What you said about him waiting at Victoria to meet me off a train was obviously nonsense, but what does it all mean? Who was this man, and why should he have impersonated Geoffrey?’

  ‘That’s what’s puzzling me at the moment, miss,’ said Hardcastle, with an unusual candour. ‘The man I spoke to that morning, gave your fiancé’s name, knew that he was in the North Staffordshire Regiment – in fact, was dressed in the uniform of such an officer – and also knew that he’d served at Arras. Now, that makes me wonder who would’ve known Lieutenant Mansfield well enough to have all those facts at his fingertips. And why should he have claimed to have a fiancée, by whom he presumably meant you? Although he didn’t mention you by name.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m unable to help you with that, Inspector.’ Billie Harcourt chewed briefly at her bottom lip in vexation. ‘It is rather worrying, isn’t it?’

  ‘Can you think of anyone who might’ve known all these things, miss?’ asked Marriott.

  Billie Harcourt remained silent for a few moments before replying. ‘As far as I’m aware, only his parents might know that much about him. His father’s in the army, something to do with military bands, I think. And then there’s his sister, of course. Her name’s Nancy, and I believe she’s an actress.’

  ‘I suppose she lives with her parents,’ suggested Hardcastle in an offhanded manner. He was playing his usual game of teasing facts from someone when he already knew the answer. But he always liked to have those facts confirmed.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s married to someone called Jack Utting, and has a baby.’ Billie Harcourt lowered her voice. ‘To be perfectly honest, Inspector, I don’t much care for Nancy’s husband. He’s a bank clerk, so Geoffrey told me, but I gather that he’s a bit of a disreputable character.’

  ‘Have you met him, then?’

  ‘No, but from what Geoffrey’s told me about him, he’s a bit of a ne’er-do-well.’

  ‘Surprised he’s not in the army,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but what d’you mean by a disreputable character?’

  ‘It’s only what Geoffrey has told me. Jack Utting got mixed up with the stage at one time, before he got a job with a bank, and that’s where he met Nancy. I think he was a stage manager at the theatre where she was appearing, but apparently he hops from one job to another, never staying in one for any length of time.’

  ‘Well, Miss Harcourt,’ said Hardcastle as he stood up, ‘if your fiancé does return in the near future, perhaps you’d be so good as to ask him to contact me at Cannon Row Police Station. He might just be able to shed some light on this whole business.’

  The butler reappeared, and proffered the two police officers their hats and umbrellas. But it was out of duty to Billie Harcourt, rather than a courtesy to the detectives.

  ‘Thank you, Hoskins,’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘Well, Marriott, we didn’t learn much there,’ said the DDI, hailing a taxi with his umbrella. ‘Apart from discovering that Jack Utting seems to be a bit of a layabout. But we’d guessed that already.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Even before their visit to Westbourne Terrace, Marriott had decided that it would be a waste of time, but caution had prevented him from expressing that view to Hardcastle. After all, the DDI moved in mysterious ways, and often brought a murder enquiry to a successful conclusion. And the fact that Billie Harcourt had said that Jack Utting was a ne’er-do-well more or less confirmed the opinion that both he and the DDI had formed. An opinion to which Hardcastle had just given voice.

  ‘Scotland Yard, cabbie,’ said Hardcastle to the taxi driver, and in an aside to Marriott, added, ‘Tell ’em Cannon Row and half the time you’ll finish up at Cannon Street in the City.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Marriott wearily.

  Detective Constables Catto and Lipton did not relish spending all night keeping observation on the Utting residence in Francis Street. But both were resourceful officers, and it was Gordon Lipton who made the decision to foreshorten their tedious duty.

  ‘It’s damned near ten o’clock, Henry,’ said Lipton, glancing at his watch. ‘I don’t reckon the bugger’s going anywhere now.’

  ‘If he’s there, Gordon,’ said an equally dispirited Catto. ‘We could be hanging about here until tomorrow morning with nothing to show for it.’

  For nine hours now, the two officers had attempted to maintain a discreet surveillance of Jack Utting’s house. It was not an easy task, apart from which both officers were certain that they were fairly obvious. It was a self-consciousness shared by all officers attempting a discreet observation. There was little cover, and they had maintained their watch on Utting’s house by walking up and down Francis Street. But they had convinced themselves that if Utting had spotted them, he had decided to stay indoors. Either that or he had been out, had spotted them before they saw him, and had no intention of going home until the detectives had gone.

  ‘Well, I’m going to make a duff call,’ announced Lipton.

  ‘I don’t think the DDI would like us to do that, Gordon,’ said Catto nervously. As the senior of the two constables, he bore responsibility for the conduct of their particular duty, and knew that if anything went wrong, Hardcastle would blame him. Henry Catto laboured under the constant fear that the slightest transgression on his part would result in a return to uniformed duty, and the monotony of walking a beat in what Hardcastle termed ‘a pointed hat’. What he did not know, and would never be told, was that he had a champion in Detective Sergeant Marriott who regarded him as an efficient detective.

  ‘Well, I’m going to give it a go,’ said Lipton, ‘and to hell with the DDI.’ With that disregard of any sanctio
n that Hardcastle might care to impose, Lipton marched up to the door of number seventeen, and hammered loudly on the brass knocker.

  Nancy Utting opened the door a fraction, and peered apprehensively at the man on her doorstep. ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘Sorry to call so late, ma’am,’ said Lipton, at the same time raising his straw boater. He was slightly taken aback by Nancy Utting’s somewhat revealing dress, the same dress that she had been wearing when the DDI called. ‘I represent the Durham Life Insurance Company. Is the man of the house at home?’

  ‘Are you selling insurance?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘I’m offering a very cheap life policy, ma’am. They’ve proved to be very popular, particularly since the war started.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but my husband deals with all that, and he’s away in the army in France.’

  ‘Ah, I see, ma’am,’ said Lipton, raising his boater once again. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you.’ He turned and paused. ‘I hope your man will be safe over there,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nancy Utting, and closed the door.

  Lipton rejoined Catto at the corner of the street. ‘Well, that’s that, Henry, old son. She reckons her old man’s in the army, and I bet the DDI didn’t know that. So we’ll be wasting our time hanging about here any longer. I suggest we have a pint, and push off home.’

  The following morning, a nervous Catto hovered outside Hardcastle’s office door.

  ‘Well?’ barked the DDI.

  ‘It’s about the observation on Jack Utting, sir.’

  ‘What about it?’ Hardcastle sat down behind his desk, and filled his pipe.

  ‘Nothing happened, sir.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Hardcastle stared at the young DC.

  ‘No, sir. There was no sighting of him at all. Gordon Lipton and me kept discreet observation on the house in Francis Street, but there was no sign of Utting.’ Fearing some reproof, Catto spoke apprehensively before uttering his next sentence. ‘Lipton knocked on the door, and—’

  ‘He did what?’ exclaimed Hardcastle, pausing with a lighted match in his hand. ‘Fetch him in here at once.’

  Catto fled, and returned almost immediately with Lipton.

  ‘What’s this about you knocking on the Uttings’ door, Lipton?’ demanded Hardcastle.

  ‘I told the woman who came to the door that I was selling insurance, sir, and asked if the man of the house was there.’ Lipton spoke hesitantly, expecting an outburst from the DDI.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The woman – Mrs Utting, I suppose she was – said that her husband was away in the army and she didn’t know when he’d be coming home.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ Hardcastle waved a hand of dismissal. ‘All right, you two, you can break off the observation for the time being. The bugger’s up to something,’ he said, for the umpteenth time since the murder had occurred. ‘Ask Sergeant Marriott to come in.’

  ‘A rum business, sir,’ said Marriott, as he entered the DDI’s office. Catto had already informed the first-class sergeant of the outcome of his and Lipton’s abortive observation. ‘D’you think he has joined the army, sir?’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ said Hardcastle. ‘If Nancy Utting thought that being a bank clerk was too risky, I doubt she’d let her husband join the army. Of course, I suppose it’s possible that he got caught up in Lord Derby’s conscription scheme. Not that I think the authorities would’ve found him, especially as he was at pains to cover his tracks when he left Gloucester Street. Anyway, as far I know, he ain’t eligible, what with being married and having a sprog.’

  ‘A search warrant, sir?’ suggested Marriott.

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing myself, Marriott. Get up to Bow Street a bit jildi, and swear one out.’ Hardcastle placed his pipe carefully in the ashtray. ‘And I wouldn’t mind betting that we’ll find the young bugger skulking in a wardrobe when we get there.’

  ‘By the way, sir, DS Wood has some information for you. I’ll send him in.’

  ‘Well, Wood, solved it for me, have you?’ asked Hardcastle jocularly, when the detective sergeant presented himself.

  Wood smiled. ‘Not exactly, sir, but you were right about Nancy Utting.’

  ‘I’m usually right about such things, Wood,’ said Hardcastle mildly.

  ‘As Nancy Mansfield she had several convictions for prostitution on Vine Street’s ground, sir, mainly Piccadilly and Shepherd Market.’ Wood paused. ‘And she has one in the name of Nancy Utting three weeks ago, sir.’

  ‘Has she, by Jove?’ exclaimed Hardcastle. ‘So I suppose Jack Utting looks after the nipper while Nancy’s out hawking her mutton. Seek and ye shall find, Wood. Seek and ye shall find.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Wood, and left the office.

  It was half past eleven before Marriott returned from Bow Street Police Court with a search warrant for the Uttings’ house. Hardcastle decided that they would execute it after lunch. In Hardcastle’s case, and therefore in Marriott’s also, lunch consisted of a pint of bitter and a fourpenny cannon in the downstairs bar of the Red Lion in Derby Gate, just outside Scotland Yard.

  At around three o’clock, the two detectives arrived once more at the Francis Street house of the errant Jack Utting.

  Once again, it was Nancy Utting who answered the door. She looked anxiously at the two police officers, and sighed.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘May we come in, Mrs Utting?’ asked Hardcastle, doffing his bowler hat.

  ‘I suppose so.’ The woman seemed resigned to frequent visits from the police. ‘We’re still in a muddle after moving, though.’

  The parlour was in reasonable order, but there were cardboard packing cases on each of the chairs, and a tea chest in front of the hearth. As a result, the two CID officers were obliged to remain standing.

  ‘Where is your husband, Mrs Utting?’ demanded Hardcastle.

  ‘Like I told you the last time, he’s out looking for work.’

  ‘Not found anything yet?’

  ‘No. Things are a bit hard these days.’

  ‘Really?’ Hardcastle raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘I’d have thought that with so many men at the Front, he’d’ve found a billet without too much trouble.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ said Nancy Utting, flicking her long, blonde hair over her shoulders.

  ‘I was led to believe he was in the army,’ said Hardcastle smoothly, making the entirely fallacious statement without preamble.

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ Nancy Utting was plainly surprised by the DDI’s comment.

  ‘One of my policemen stopped a man who was calling door-to-door yesterday. We’ve had reports of confidence tricksters working in the area, and talking people out of precious antiques for a knock down price. However, I was informed that the man was a legitimate insurance salesman, and that he called here yesterday. Apparently, he was told that your husband was in the army.’ Hardcastle had no intention of revealing that the ‘insurance salesman’ was, in fact, Detective Constable Lipton.

  Standing beside Hardcastle, Marriott had great difficulty in preventing himself from smiling at the way in which the DDI was weaving his fanciful tale.

  ‘Oh, that.’ Nancy Utting smiled, but did not seem at all surprised that Hardcastle’s enquiries should have extended to the questioning of callers at her house. ‘I only say that to people who come to the door. It stops them pestering me. Anyway, we couldn’t’ve afforded any insurance.’

  ‘I believe you’re an actress, Mrs Utting,’ said Marriott.

  ‘Yes, but I’m resting at the moment. I have to look after young Archie. I’ve had parts on the West End stage, though. I was in Chu Chin Chow at His Majesty’s Theatre last year.’

  Yes, and in Shepherd Market last month, thought Hardcastle, who completely ignored the woman’s tenuous claim to fame. ‘I see you’ve had time to unpack the family photographs,’ he said, having spent the last few seconds studying the framed prints that were lined up, somewhat untidily
, on the mantelshelf. ‘And there’s one of an army officer there. A relative, is he?’

  ‘That’s my brother Geoffrey,’ said Nancy proudly. ‘He won the Military Cross in Arras, you know.’

  ‘Very commendable.’ Hardcastle nodded amiably. ‘Is that where he is now, in Arras?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said that they get moved around quite often, so he could be anywhere.’

  ‘Have you seen him lately?’ asked Marriott, posing his question as casually as Hardcastle had posed his.

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, he was on leave just over a fortnight ago. He popped in to see us, but he could only stay for an hour.’

  ‘What did he think of your husband not being in the army?’

  Nancy Utting paused. ‘I think he said something about how Jack should stay out of the army for as long as he could. Otherwise he’d stand a good chance of getting killed, the way things are going.’

  Hardcastle made no comment about those he regarded as scrimshankers, and peered yet again at the gallery of photographs. ‘Is that you?’ he asked, pointing to a wooden-framed print.

  ‘No, that’s my sister-in-law Cora, Jack’s sister. She’s two years younger than me.’

  ‘She looks very much like you,’ commented Hardcastle.

  ‘Yes, it’s often mentioned, the likeness between us.’

  ‘Does she live here?’

  ‘No, she lives with Jack’s father in Clapham.’

  Hardcastle turned from his study of the photographs. ‘Did you give your husband my message, Mrs Utting?’ Having tired of making polite conversation, he almost barked the question.

  ‘Your message?’

  ‘Yes, last time I was here, I asked you to let him know that I’d like a word with him at Cannon Row Police Station.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I told him. Hasn’t he been in yet?’

  ‘No, and it is rather urgent.’

  ‘I’ll tell him as soon as he gets home.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t think we need to bother you any longer.’ Hardcastle turned towards the door. ‘You will impress on your husband that it is urgent, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Once again, Hardcastle paused. ‘When your brother called here, did he mention anything about a murder at Victoria railway station earlier this month?’