Blood and Judgement

by Michael Gilbert

  Petrella blinked a couple of times, and said, “Oh, I think that’s an exaggeration. Who told you that?”

  “These things get about,” said Mr Harrowing, pushing a large box of cigarettes in Petrella’s direction. He did not feel able to explain that the information had first reached him through the indiscretion, at the lunch table, of a Metropolitan Police solicitor, so he said, “We couldn’t help noticing that they didn’t trust you in the box at the Old Bailey.”

  This was accompanied by a smile which robbed the remark of offence.

  “There’s nothing in that,” said Petrella. “All that I could say about the body could be much better said by Dr Summerson.”

  “Quite so. You can no doubt tell me one thing, without being indiscreet. Is the police investigation still going on?”

  “Yes. It’s still going on.”

  Mr Harrowing leaned back in his chair. He had a long, brown, serious face with a good mouth and jaw at the bottom of it. The thinning hair was the only sign of his long desk life.

  “I’m going to be quite frank with you,” said Mr Harrowing, who apparently liked what he saw of Petrella, too. “In fact, I’m going to start by throwing away my best card. I have no intention of calling you to give evidence under subpoena. Indeed, how can I? I have no idea what you could be likely to say, and until I know that, I have no idea whether you wouldn’t do my client’s case more harm than good.”

  “I see,” said Petrella. “It hadn’t occurred to me – I’m no lawyer, of course – but I didn’t imagine that any further question of giving evidence arose.”

  “In the ordinary way, it wouldn’t. In nineteen cases out of twenty, the Court of Criminal Appeal considers the record and listens to what counsel has got to say.”

  “And doubles the sentence.”

  “Well, that’s the popular idea. However, it has full power to listen to fresh evidence. It doesn’t happen often, I agree. A great number of cases go before it merely on points of law. That the judge misdirected the jury, or something like that. And in murder cases the prisoner may anyway feel that the sentence he has received cannot easily be doubled.”

  “There’s something in that,” said Petrella.

  “But there are rare cases in which the court will listen to fresh evidence. Evidence which has come to light since the trial.” Mr Harrowing leaned back in his chair. “I think this might be one of them.”

  Petrella said nothing.

  Mr Harrowing said, “I wonder if the man in the street realizes quite how difficult it really is to defend a person who is charged with murder. I don’t mean that the police are unfair. It’s just that they have a monopoly. There’s only the one investigating machine, and they’re running it.”

  Petrella felt himself going red. He said, “They are bound to answer any questions the defence asks them.”

  “Quite so,” said Mr Harrowing gently. “But how are they to know what questions to ask?” He paused, and added, “In books it is of course quite simple. I believe that private detectives of great ability abound. Very often, having been invited down for the weekend, before the murder occurs, they are handily on the spot before the police arrive. They have friends in every walk of life, private laboratories at their disposal, and unlimited money. I can only say that I have never had the good fortune to meet one. The private detectives that I have been called upon to deal with have been different.” Mr Harrowing paused again, and added, “Quite different.”

  Petrella said uncomfortably, “I do know exactly what you mean. You’ll understand that I’m not a very senior member of the police force, and I couldn’t give you any information or help without permission.”

  “Of course. I understand that.”

  “I can tell you – I have told you already – that investigations are still going on. They haven’t reached any sort of conclusion, and strictly speaking they are not investigations of your case at all. But obviously, if anything does come of them, it’s going to be to your advantage.”

  Mr Harrowing nodded.

  “And it’s just occurred to me that there’s a way you can help. I shall probably get into trouble for even suggesting it, but I’m in such hot water already that a pint or two more’s not going to make much difference. Could you arrange for an advertisement – it’s the sort of thing solicitors always seem to be doing, so it wouldn’t necessarily arouse any suspicion – one of those things that says that if Mr A will get in touch with a certain firm of solicitors he will hear something to his advantage?”

  “Times and Telegraph,” said Mr Harrowing, making a note. “I can do that. Who’s your Mr A?”

  “He’s a Robert Lowry Bancroft.” Petrella spelled it out and Mr Harrowing wrote it down carefully. “He was last heard of in 1918 when he was serving in the 9th Royal South London Regiment, in which he attained the rank of lance corporal and was mentioned in dispatches. “

  “I suppose you can’t tell me what it’s all about.”

  “Not at the moment. But if you should happen to find him, I can assure you of this. It will be the best day’s work you’ve done for your client yet.”

  When Petrella got back to Crown Road he found an official letter waiting for him. It was impressed with the stamp of the Commissioner’s Office, and it said that Detective Sergeant Petrella was to call at New Scotland Yard on the Monday following, at half past four in the afternoon, in case he wished to exercise the right open to him under Regulation 16 of Police Regulations of making an explanation personally to the chief officer of police of the matters alleged in the Misconduct Form of which particulars had already been supplied to him. The letter went on to say that Petrella would be well advised to consult his superior officer, who would inform him of his rights in the matter.

  Petrella took this straight in to Haxtell, who said, “Damn. I thought there was a chance that we had succeeded in killing this. Evidently I was wrong. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m certainly not going to put anything in writing,” said Petrella. “What’s likely to happen?”

  “It’s a sort of preliminary skirmish. They want to hear what you’ve got to say–”

  “So that if they don’t like it, they can give me the whole works later.”

  “That’s right. My own feeling is that if you apologized to Kellaway and promised not to try to fight the war on your own in future, they’d let you off with a caution.”

  “Nothing doing,” said Petrella. “In fact, I may have added another large blot to my copybook this morning.”

  He told Haxtell about the suggestion he had made to Mr Harrowing. If he thought this was going to provoke an explosion he was wrong.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” said Haxtell. “In fact, it’s a good one. There’s something about an advertisement from a firm of solicitors, saying that if you get in touch with them you’ll hear something to your advantage. All the same, if Bancroft’s Ricketts, and if Ricketts is the sort of man I’m beginning to picture him as, I don’t see him coming forward to stick his head into a noose.”

  “He won’t. But what about his relations, or old army friends? A lot of them must still be living. People do see you from time to time, however carefully you try to avoid them. What’s to stop one of them coming forward?”

  “I said it was a good idea,” said Haxtell, “and I meant it. But I think you should have told me what you meant to do, and let us fix it through one of our own contacts.”

  “If I’d stopped to think about it,” said Petrella, “I expect I would have, but it doesn’t make a great deal of difference. Not to me personally, I mean. As soon as this case is finished I’m getting out.”

  Haxtell looked for ten whole seconds at the furious young man opposite him, and said, at last, “I think I should wait and see, first, what they do want to say to you down at headquarters.”

  “You know exactly what they’ll say. Some stuffy old chief superintendent, who’s lived with one finger in the Rule Book ever since he worked his way up off a beat, is going
to point out that I have infringed sixteen different rules and regulations by daring to think for myself, and–”

  “All right,” said Haxtell placidly. “Don’t take it out on me. And don’t let’s chuck the hand in before it’s finished. I’m as keen as you are to know what really happened up at the reservoir. Let’s find out that first and worry about your future afterwards.”

  When Petrella had taken himself off, Haxtell got up, kicked the waste-paper basket with beautiful accuracy up on to the mantelpiece, and said, “Damnation take the silly young idiot.”

  That evening, at six o’clock, Petrella was ringing the bell of Flat 5, 74 Parsons Road. The door was opened, and he was not surprised to see the white-faced girl. Under the lights of the tiny hall she looked younger and ghastlier than she had done in the street.

  “Jean’s inside,” she said. “I’d better leave you alone now.”

  “I hope I’m not driving you out.”

  “It’s not really big enough for three,” said the girl.

  She opened the door. It was the tiniest flat he had ever seen. Really, it was one small room, most of which was taken up by a bed, and the rest by two chairs, arranged in front of an electric fire. A cupboard, opening out of one of the side walls, was the kitchen. And at the far end an alcove, curtained with sea-green waterproof material, suggested a bathroom. The furniture, carpet and curtains looked as if they had been bought as a job lot in the Tottenham Court Road by someone with a robust taste in colours.

  “I’m off,” said the girl. “I’ve got to be back here at seven.”

  “This won’t take long,” said Jean. She was sitting in one of the armchairs, and had hardly looked round when Petrella came in. She sounded as if she had started the day tired, and had then got a lot tireder, and now was so tired that it had ceased to matter.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’m sorry about all this secrecy. But you’ll understand when I tell you, I daren’t be seen talking to you.”

  “I’m sorry my reputation’s as bad as that,” said Petrella.

  She took no notice of it. She was past the point where conversational gambits were picked up and tossed back again. There was something she had to say and she would say it, and that was all.

  “You remember when you came to see me before the trial and asked me a question about Rosa. Whether she’d ever met Ricketts?”

  Petrella said he remembered.

  “Well, it was a pretty good guess. She’d been going with him for months. He was her boyfriend.”

  “He was what?”

  “What I said. Sydney Ricketts. He was all her idea of what a man should be. Grey hair, good manners, plenty of money. Of course, he was a phoney. Most of the money was hers anyway. But she couldn’t see that, not at first. I’m not sure you can blame her. She’d only got people like her husband and Boot to compare him with. He must have seemed quite something after that pair.”

  “Are you telling me that they were sleeping together?”

  “That’s right. When she went out nights, that’s where she went. And another thing, he was looking after her ‘stocking’ for her. All the stuff she was meant to be keeping an eye on for Monk.”

  “Of course,” said Petrella. “Of course. Under the floorboard in the kitchen. Don’t mind me. Please go on.”

  “That’s all there is, really. When I heard she’d been shot, I thought he might have done it. She’d been getting the idea that he’d been fiddling her over the jewellery. Selling it on his own account. If Monk got out, there’d have to be a showdown, wouldn’t there?”

  “Yes,” said Petrella. Curtain after curtain was being ripped down, layer after layer of obscurity dispersed. The puppet figures growing harder and clearer. “Yes, of course there would. Why on earth didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Why?” she said. “Because I was scared, of course. What do you think?”

  “Scared of whom?”

  “Of Howton, first of all. He’d been smelling round my place ever since you found the body. Then–”

  “Yes,” said Petrella. “But after we’d charged him you couldn’t have done him anything but good by speaking.”

  “I didn’t owe him anything. Besides–”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t want to talk against Ricketts. I believe Rosa was more scared of him than she was of Boot. And she was a girl who didn’t scare easily.”

  Petrella said nothing. She could feel the anger and contempt in him, and she said, “Why should I take any chances? I didn’t want anything more to do with either of them. I was sorry for Rosa, but she wasn’t part of my life. You don’t understand. How can you?” Her voice went up. “What it is, to be a woman, without much money, in London, on her own. Particularly when you get mixed up with those sort of people.”

  Petrella said, “You’d get protection.”

  “I would if I was rich, or important.”

  “That’s not true,” said Petrella furiously.

  “All right,” she said, “don’t blow your top. I’m not saying anything about ‘one law for the rich, and another for the poor’. That’s daft. The law’s the same for everyone. It’s just that there isn’t enough of it to go round. I’ve seen protection for people like me. It means the bobby on the beat being told to keep an eye out for trouble. That’s all they can do. There isn’t even a lock on our street door. Did you know that? And Boot had a key to my flat. Rosa gave him one. And if I’d asked the landlord to change the lock, I’d have had to tell him why. And I’d have been out of the flat at the end of the month. You don’t understand. People like Boot and Ritchie don’t have to use a razor on a girl. They make a little row where she lives and she’s out in the street, or come along and kick up a fuss at work, and she’s out of a job. What’s the use of police protection then?”

  “If that’s right,” said Petrella, as if he hated it, but had to say it, “I understand why you wouldn’t want a character like me calling round too much at your flat, but there’s still one thing I can’t understand. Why are you willing to tell me this now?”

  “But of course,” she said. “None of it matters now. Boot’s booked, isn’t he? And Ricketts is dead.”

  In the sudden silence she looked up sharply.

  “Isn’t he?” she said.

  15

  Petrella’s Version

  Petrella woke at four o’clock that morning. London is never entirely silent. In the far distance an all-night lorry grumbled as it changed gear on the hill, heading for the Barnet bypass and the Great North Road. Nearer at hand a shunting engine fussed as it pulled a line of freight cars out of a siding at Helenwood Junction. Footsteps rang on the pavement. One of London’s millions was going to or from his work under the pale street lamps.

  Petrella turned over for the hundredth time. His head was full and felt hot, and he fancied he was running a temperature. He was trying to recapture a memory. It was not so much a dream as a picture, something visualized on the fringes of waking and sleeping.

  He was looking down from above on to the bank of the reservoir. It was late afternoon, but still very warm. They had had a true St Martin’s summer that year. The gnats were singing a descant to the bumbling of the bees. In among the long, sun-dried grass, high up on the slope, a woman was lying. She was lying on her back, staring up at the unclouded sky. A butterfly drifted past and settled on her outstretched hand. He wanted to see whether she would move. Her hand stirred. The butterfly flew off. The woman rolled over onto her side.

  There was a movement down on the path. Someone was coming. She raised herself on one elbow, to listen. Petrella forgot about the woman and concentrated his gaze on the point in the bushes at which the newcomer must appear. He had an urgent desire to see who it was. So had the woman. She craned forward so far that she obscured his view.

  “Damn her,” he said angrily. “She ought to take her hat off in the cinema.” Then someone was shaking his arm, and it was broad daylight.

  “You don’t often oversleep,�
� said Mrs Catt, his landlady. “I thought I hadden heard you on the move yet. You’ll hardly have time for breakfus as it is.”

  Luckily Haxtell was late that morning too, so Petrella’s defection escaped notice. The superintendent had had a telephone message and had gone straight from his house to the office of the director of public prosecutions, where he had spent half an hour with the director himself and had learned, without surprise, that the medical report on the killer of Corinne Hart had made it clear that he was unfit to plead.

  As he was leaving, the director said, “I hear that Howton’s solicitors have been nobbling one of your young men.”

  “That’s right,” said Haxteil cautiously. “He asked me about it, and I said he could go.”

  “I’ve no objection to his going,” said the director, beetling his formidable eyebrows, “as long as he tells us anything he tells them.”

  “I’m sure he’d do that,” said Haxtell.

  “I hope so. I gather that he is acquiring a reputation for being an independent-minded animal.”

  “He’s an extremely hard-working and loyal officer,” said Haxtell.

  The director said “Hmmph,” which Haxtell felt to be unfair as it might have meant anything at all.

  Back at Crown Road Petrella was waiting for him, and he quickly learned what had happened the night before.

  “Do you think she was telling the truth?” he said.

  “Why, yes,” said Petrella. In fact, he had not even thought about it. “Why should she lie?”

  “She might have been put up to it by Howton’s friends. As a last desperate move to get him off. Sow a bit of doubt.”

  “I don’t think they would have had the wit to think it up and I don’t think she would have done it if they had.”

  “All right,” said Haxtell. “You’re more likely to know if she’s telling the truth than I am. You’ve seen her. I haven’t. Let’s start from there. Ricketts was Mrs Ritchie’s lover, and she was carrying his child.”