by J. J Marric
"I'm wondering whether I ought to have the shock," said Gideon. His thoughts had flown to the absent nurse. If Borgman had any reason to fear the police, would he invoke the Yard on a comparatively small matter?
"Now what?" Bell asked.
"Would he send for us if—" Gideon began, and then shrugged his shoulders.
"His first wife died nearly five years ago, and he's probably almost forgotten her already," Bell said. "If you're right about Borgman, he doesn't look backward."
Gideon spread his hands.
"It'll give Appleby a chance to size him up, and soon I'll send Fred over. Between them, they're not likely to be far wrong in their judgment. If I'm not here when Appleby comes, send round for me—I won't be out of the building."
"Can't wait for it, eh, George?"
"That's right," said Gideon.
"I suppose you're right about Fred?"
"I've been waiting the chance to try him out for a long time," Gideon said, "and this is just his kind of job. If anything is going to get him back on form, it's his memory for details, and he was in the early inquiries into Mrs. Borgman's death. I know he doesn't trust his memory so much since Richmond proved that he'd slipped up once, but I trust it."
"Okay, George," Bell said.
They did not have to wait for long for news about Borgman. After Gideon had seen three of the officers in charge of current investigations and had talked to HI about the murder of the man Robson, there was a perfunctory tap and the door was thrust open. It was Appleby. Appleby, when tired and jaded, looked an old man, every day of his sixty-four. Appleby, when something had gone right, was a sprightly fifty, and now he was at his brightest. There was a glow at his cheeks, and he raised his hand to Gideon in a mock salute.
"George," he announced, "I think you're right."
"Quick change, Jim." Gideon hid his fresh misgivings.
"First time I've ever been face to face with Borgman and I wouldn't trust him as far as I would Red Carter. That man goes deep and nasty."
"Think so?"
"I know so. I've only met two or three of them in my natural, and you can take it from me Borgman won't let anything get in his way. I don't say you won't be a fool to have a shot at him, but having met him—boy, oh boy, would I like to see him in dock."
"I know what you mean," remarked Gideon dryly.
"There's the poor devil of a cashier," went on Appleby, and in brisk sentences explained what had happened. "I don't know the background, and fraud's fraud, but the old man looked as if he could die on the spot. Borgman talked to him as if he were a louse. He talked to me," added Appleby, cautiously, "as if I were a dog. I've met that ash-blond secretary—she has the longest, shapeliest legs you ever saw, too. I think I would start checking on her, and the situation between Borgman and his present wife."
"You ought to know Gee-Gee by now," said Bell. "Always something up his sleeve."
"What have you done so far, Jim?" asked Gideon.
"Taken the details—looks as if the fraud goes back about thirteen years—and told Borgman that we would be in touch with him. He seemed to think that I ought to clap the darbies on old Samuel right away, and, when he found I wasn't going to, he sent the old man packing without even a chance to take his personal belongings from his desk. There isn't much doubt about the fraud—Samuel admitted it, anyhow—but Borgman doesn't seem to think we need to check anything. He barks 'arrest that man!' so we ought to jump to it. He's the original pocket dictator, George, but—"
"Don't spoil it," urged Bell.
"I wouldn't like to take him on myself," said Appleby reflectively. "He's as crafty and clever as he's deep. Don't know when it was I was last impressed so much by a man's potential." Appleby rubbed his hands together, and then finished, "I'd like to see you come head on with him, though, Gee-Gee! What happened at the conference today?"
"If there's a lot of morphine at the autopsy, we go right ahead."
"Last night I hoped you wouldn't find boracic powder," Appleby said, "but today—you heard me first time. Mind if I stick my big nose in?"
"Not in your present mood."
"Well, this is the kind of job Fred Lee would be good at," said Appleby, almost diffidently. "You know how it is with Fred. He's happier with columns of figures and pounds, shillings, and pence than I am with my fork and spade, and that's saying something. When he's studied accounts he remembers all the details, too. You could send him over to the Borgman empire and let him take root for a few days. Fred would be just the man to keep thinking up awkward little queries, and telling Borgy that, as he's called us in, we have to make a job of it. And the longer Fred was there the more he'd find out about Borgman and the blonde. Also," Appleby went on, rather doggedly, because he had won no response, "if we got Borgman, and Fred had a finger in the pie, it might pull him round." He stopped, scowled, and demanded gruffly, "What's the matter now? Since when has Fred Lee's name been poison?"
"It's just that we're bored," Bell said. "George decided to send Fred there five minutes after he heard about this. Now you know why you were never a commander."
"Good old Gee-Gee," Appleby brayed.
Gideon was shifting his chair back.
"We'll see about that later. About this old man, Samuel, Jim. Did you say he looked all in?"
"One foot in the grave already."
"And sent packing?"
"Minute's notice."
"Got his address?"
"Yes, and you're not the only one who can see further than his nose. I sent a chap after him, too. Don't want him to throw himself under a bus before we can get to work on his boss, do we?" Appleby was looking very pleased with himself. "I've asked the Division to check on Samuel and his family, and asked for a report before you go home tonight; we should be able to get a good picture of the situation. I know one thing: Samuel's down as far as a chap can go, and Borgman enjoyed kicking him."
Gideon didn't speak.
"You want to know something?" Appleby asked, in a marveling tone. "It was only this afternoon that I saw anything funny about the name of Borgman's yacht. Funny peculiar, I mean. You seen it?"
Bell said, "The Lucretia."
"Lucretia Borgia, the famous Italian poisoning family," Appleby hammered home his point. "You seen that before, George?"
"Yes," Gideon said, and remembered how the name had affected him when he had first suspected that Borgman had poisoned his wife, and wondered whether a man with a name like Borgman could be so brazen as to christen a ship like that. But the yacht, nine years old, had been named before Borgman had bought it, and there was a superstition against changing the name of boats. "Tell me more about this blonde, Jim."
"Very cool and poised, very efficient, very nice, very bed worthy. If I were you, I'd have Fred find out what the staff at the Borgman empire think about her."
"I'll lay it on," Gideon said. "Put all this down on paper, Jim, will you?"
"Yep."
"And ask Fred to come in."
"Okay," Appleby said, and went out, letting the door close itself on his heels.
Almost immediately afterward, a messenger brought in a sealed envelope. Gideon opened it at once and had a moment of triumph; this was the exhumation order for Borgman's first wife. He was about to tell Bell, when a telephone rang on Bell's desk. As he lifted it, Gideon's nearest telephone rang, and he picked it up; and almost at once an interoffice telephone rang. He said, "Hold on," into the first mouthpiece, and "Gideon," into the second. It was Rogerson, who said:
"Can you come and see me right away, George?"
"I'd rather have ten minutes."
"Make it as soon as you can."
"Right," Gideon promised, and put one receiver down and picked up the other. "Gideon. . . . What's that, Hugh? . . ." He began to smile, and Bell, putting his receiver down, glanced across as if puzzled. "Fine," he said. "Got 'em just where we want 'em. Wonder how Tiny got hold of it? . . . Yes, I know we're going to miss Tiny." He replaced the receiver and called across
to Bell, "There was a plan of the furrier's in Red Carter's wallet, no doubt he was going to lay on that job. You got anything new?
"Three cars stolen from Piccadilly this lunch hour."
"Bet they weren't locked," Gideon said. "What do motorists think keys are for? How many is that from the West End this week?"
"Twenty-nine in the West End, a hundred and four in our whole area."
Gideon pursed his lips. "Looks more than ever as if it's organized. We'll have a couple of dummy cars laid on and watched; better check the actual places where most of the thefts are from, first." He got up and went to a small map of Central London which was hanging on the wall, and Bell came across. "Can you mark 'em?" Bell picked up some red-headed pins and stuck them in. "Makes a pattern," Gideon mused. "See how near a corner each job has been—all from short streets, all one-way streets to make fairly sure the way couldn't be blocked . . . lay on a special watch at all corners, will you?"
"Right."
"And we'll go down and have a look at the big map," Gideon said. "Might be worth more thought than we've given to it. I've got—" A telephone rang on his desk, and he gave a lugubrious kind of grin. "Looks as if things are really waking up." He turned round and picked up the receiver. "Gideon. . . . What? . . . Oh, God."
The tone of his voice was so bleak that Bell stood watching and waiting. He knew how keenly Gideon felt about so much that happened; how readily he took the responsibility for things which went wrong although other people had caused the trouble. The curious thing about Gideon was a kind of sensitiveness which would have made many people bad policemen, but made him exceptional. "Tell you what," he said decisively, "ask Borgman to come here to see me. . . . No, he doesn't have to, but it would be worth trying." He held on for a moment, then said, "All right, Jim." He rang off, looked silently at Bell for some minutes, and then said, "The cashier Samuel killed himself and his invalid wife as soon as he got home today."
6. Killer car
For a few moments Gideon sat quite still and silent. He had never seen Samuel and knew little about him, but a weight of gloom lay heavy upon him when Bell asked :
"How did he do it?"
"Cyanide from a weed-killer."
"So Jim didn't watch 'em closely enough," Bell said.
"Ought to have brought him here," Gideon growled. "I was a bit afraid of it. The first few hours are always the most dangerous." He did not add that he knew that Appleby had not brought Samuel here for questioning because Borgman had expected him to; Appleby's dislike of Borgman would cut both ways.
"Think Borgman will come here?" Bell wondered.
"It's anyone's guess," Gideon said, and was in no mood to tell Bell that he had the exhumation order. "The Old Man wants—"
His telephone bell rang.
"I'll answer it," Bell said, and came across, while Gideon went to the door and waited, looking round; he was never easy in his mind at walking out on a telephone call. He saw Bell's expression harden, saw the quick glance which seemed to say, "Don't go," and went back to the desk. "Hold on," said Bell, put a hand over the mouthpiece, and said, "Another car theft from the West End. One of our chaps saw it and blew his whistle. The thief drove onto the pavement to get away, and knocked down a youngster."
"Hurt badly?"
"Dead."
"Catch the killer?"
"No."
"Get our chap's description of the driver out as fast as you can make it," Gideon ordered. "I'll be in the map room in half an hour." He went out, his jaw clamped, angry at this senseless death, angry at the viciousness which could make a car thief take such a wild chance. "A youngster"; and behind the youngster, a mother, father, girl friends, brothers, sisters—the aftermath of death, which was often grief and sometimes despair. The car thefts from the West End had been nagging him for weeks, he should have given them more attention. If he had, perhaps this—
It was no use flagellating himself.
He tapped cursorily on the door marked Assistant Commissioner and went in. Rogerson was alone at his desk, writing. He glanced up, waved to a chair, finished what he was doing very quickly, and then pushed his chair back. His expression told Gideon that he did not like what he had to say.
"Done anything about that exhumation yet, George?"
"The Borgman one?"
"Don't be obtuse."
"I've laid on the job. The Home Office order came through an hour ago."
"Lay it off," said Rogerson.
Gideon checked a question and sat there solidly, his face expressionless, thought of the death of the youngster pushed aside. It was remarkable how often thought of Borgman did push everything else aside.
"Don't you want to know why?" asked Rogerson, and tried to look genial.
"Don't I know?"
"It wasn't Plumley."
"If Plumley agreed to work on the result of the exhumation, he wouldn't back out. Someone high-up doesn't want to risk a smack-down."
"That's right."
"Who?"
"Don't ask me where it started," said Rogerson. "I suspect the Home Secretary had second thoughts after he'd signed that order, but it would be worth a kick in the pants to say so. The Commissioner's non-committal, but he says that the Home Office doesn't want to delve into a case four or five years old, when it's so speculative, in view of public unrest about the present rate of crime." Rogerson was speaking with great deliberation, and badly; at heart he was angry. Gideon was beginning to feel angry, too, as he often did when he came up against the brick wall of the high authorities, but his was a slow anger; and already he was trying to see a way of getting round this embargo. "The official attitude is that as we are understaffed, and as we can't really cope with the crop of car thefts, housebreakings, shoplifting, and general indictables, and since we can't hold back the steadily worsening crime figures, even though big stuff's on the down graph, this is no time to have several men delving back into a case which might be imaginary."
"That old nurse wasn't imaginary."
"You'll only be wasting your time, George," Rogerson said. "Lay off it."
Gideon said flatly, "I've asked Borgman to come and see me today."
Rogerson actually gaped.
Gideon told him why in some detail, including the suicide and wife murder. Rogerson nodded, made no comment, but pushed some papers across his desk and said, "I'll have a look at him while he's here. Take those papers with you, they're not so hot." Gideon saw that they were the latest Home Office statistics, and he was reasonably sure that the number of indictable offenses had gone up by nearly 20 per cent over last year. He had been over optimistic. In spite of the lull of the past few weeks because so many of the big boys were inside, there was more crime than ever. A youngster run down and killed; Tiny Bray, beaten to death; the Gully girl, all but drowned; the crop of thefts of cars and from cars, of housebreaking, of pocket-picking—there was no end to it. One of the troubles was that at the Yard one came almost to accept the inevitability of a rise in the crime figures; to accept the inevitability of failure in a battle which was being waged so bitterly.
"I'll study 'em," Gideon said. "Anything else?"
"No, George. I'm sorry about Borgman."
Gideon grunted, still making no comment, still brooding.
He went into his office and asked Bell, "Anything in from Borgman?"
"No."
"I'm going to have a look at the places where these car thefts have been from," Gideon said, picking up the exhumation order and putting it into his inside coat pocket. "If I'm wanted, I should be back about half-past four."
He did not explain why he was going out, but Bell knew him better than most, and almost certainly realized that he was brooding over some rebuff that he wanted to ponder and on his own. He had to decide what to do about that exhumation order, and he was the only one now who could make the decision. He could lift a telephone and stop the Berkshire Police from proceeding—he had persuaded them to start preparing on his assurance that the order would be coming a
long; they wouldn't actually start to dig until they got it. If he sent it down to Berkshire, "forgetting" to cancel it, and the body was exhumed and the autopsy finished, then he would know whether he could hope to force the hand of the men who had ordered "no action." He no longer felt angry, just a little sore; and that because it seemed as if Borgman, not the politicians, was to blame for this.
He entered the map room, where a uniformed sergeant and a plain-clothes man were on duty, sticking pins in the huge maps of London which were spread out on the walls and on the stands between the walls. It was like a huge library, with bookcases at intervals so that every London Division had a big section map of its own. In each map were pins of many colors: red for fatal accidents, pink for accidents without fatalities, black for car thefts, brown for thefts from cars, gray for housebreaking . . . a color for all the common crimes. Seen like this, it seemed as if no square inch of London was free from serious crime; and as if few spots were free from car accidents and car thefts. He hadn't been down here for a week, and he should have been, because the number of car thefts had gone up so much; he had noticed the trend, of course, and sent for special reports.
The uniformed sergeant was standing by one of the maps as Gideon walked round.
"How many car thefts reported this month, Ted?" Gideon asked. "In the whole Metropolitan Police area, I mean?"
"Four hundred and thirty-one, sir."
"God! How many up on last week?"
"Seventeen."
"Week before?"
"Nineteen, sir."
"How many found?"
"One in every two, sir, usually stripped of everything that can be moved. Some are used for joy-riding, of course, quite a few for thefts and smash-and-grab jobs."
"Yes. What's the proportion of Central and Outer districts?"
"One in every four's inside the Square Mile," the sergeant said, and meant the very heart of London's West End.
"Any special trends?" asked Gideon.
"Well, I dunno, sir." The sergeant looked at the brown-headed pins, and then picked up his notebooks. "I haven't noticed anything, but have a look for yourself."