Hardcastle's Secret Agent

by Graham Ison

  ‘You may. And I hope you catch the devil incarnate who did this. I never held the Ropers in any high respect, but they didn’t deserve that. I live in Hudson Road, Inspector. Number six, it is.’

  Taking their leave of the informative charlady, Hardcastle and Bradley walked out to Kingston Hill just in time to catch a bus.

  ‘We’ll call in at the nick and see if DI Black has anything to report from the house-to-house enquiries, Jack.’

  ‘There’s a Mrs Wright, who lives opposite the Ropers’ place,’ said DI Kenneth Black. ‘She seems to have known them quite well. Jock Campbell spoke to her and she said Campbell ought to talk to her husband who wasn’t there at the time. He’ll be home this evening, though. I could have a word with them unless you’d like to talk to them yourself, guv’nor? It’s Trevor and Catherine Wright.’

  ‘I’ve learned quite a bit about the Ropers already, Ken, and it’d be a good idea if I spoke to the Wrights. It would help to verify – or not – what I’ve learned already. In the meantime, Jack and I will have a run down to Windsor and find out what the management there can tell me about the Ropers.’

  It was midday when Hardcastle and Bradley arrived at Alan Moore and Company’s factory at Windsor. The DDI had telephoned in advance of their visit and they were greeted at the main entrance by the managing director’s secretary, a vivacious young woman who introduced herself as Sheila Maskell.

  ‘If you come this way, Inspector, I’ll show you to Mr Hughes’ office.’

  They followed her up a flight of stairs, which gave them the opportunity to admire her shapely legs. She knew they would, and turned at the top and smiled at them. ‘This way, gentlemen.’

  The managing director looked up from his desk upon which there was a large blueprint that he carefully rolled up. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘For some unknown reason things seem to be happening faster since the outbreak of the war.’ He chuckled at his attempt to make a joke and handed the blueprint to his secretary. It was noticeable that he had a strong North Country accent. ‘Perhaps you’d take that back downstairs, Sheila, lass, and tell ’em it’s OK as far as I’m concerned.’ Skirting his desk, he shook hands, first with Hardcastle and then with Bradley. ‘Tom Hughes, gentlemen. Do take a seat and tell me how I can help you? Oh, Sheila, love,’ he said, as his secretary reached the door. ‘See if you can rustle up some tea when you’ve delivered that blueprint.’

  ‘Has Howard Austin been in touch with you, Mr Hughes?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘No, I can’t say he has. At least, not lately. Is there a reason why he should have done?’

  Less than ten minutes later, Sheila Maskell returned to the office with tea on a tray.

  ‘By heck! That were quick,’ said Hughes. ‘She’s a magician, this girl, Inspector. Produces tea at the drop of a hat. You haven’t taken any calls from Howard Austin, have you, Sheila?’

  ‘Yes, first thing this morning, but you were on the shop floor and he said he’d ring back. I did leave a note on your desk.’

  ‘Aye, happen you did, lass. I really must sort this lot out.’ Hughes shuffled through the dozens of pieces of paper that littered his desk and picked up one or two that were on the floor, but then gave up.

  ‘I’d clear all that up for you, Mr Hughes, if only you’d let me,’ said Sheila, an element of criticism in her voice. It was not the first time she had made the offer.

  ‘All right, lass. Received and understood.’ Hughes held up both his hands in a demonstration of surrender.

  Once Sheila had poured the tea and handed it round, she left the men to their discussion.

  ‘She keeps me in order, does that girl,’ commented Hughes. ‘Now then, you obviously haven’t come here to listen to me.’

  ‘It’s about Frank Roper—’

  ‘Who’s Frank Roper, Inspector?’ Hughes was immediately attentive, and a frown creased his forehead.

  ‘I understand from Howard Austin that he is a designer here,’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’ve been misinformed, Inspector. Not only is there no designer called Frank Roper, but as far as I know there’s no one in the company by that name. But just to make absolutely certain, I’ll have it checked.’ Hughes walked to the door. ‘Sheila, come in a moment, lass.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hughes.’ Sheila Maskell appeared, holding a shorthand notebook as if expecting a letter to be dictated to her.

  ‘Sheila, would you slip along to the personnel department and check if there’s anyone on the payroll by the name of …’ Hughes turned to Hardcastle. ‘What was the name again, Inspector?’

  ‘Frank Roper,’ said Hardcastle, and spelled out the surname.

  ‘That’s it. Just making sure I got the name right. Do that as quickly as possible, Sheila, there’s a good lass. By the way, there’s no need for ’em to know it’s a police enquiry.’ Turning back to Hardcastle, Hughes asked, ‘As a matter of interest, why are you making enquiries about this individual anyway?’

  ‘He’s been murdered, along with his wife, Helen,’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘Good God! And you say that Howard Austin told you he worked here?’

  ‘Not only did Howard Austin say that Roper worked here at Windsor, but that he and Helen Roper were among the Austins’ close friends,’ said Bradley. ‘And Mrs Austin was genuinely shocked when we told her of the murders.’

  There was a knock at the door, followed immediately by the entry of Sheila Maskell. ‘There is no one on the staff with the name Roper, Mr Hughes. I asked the head of personnel himself to check it.’

  ‘Thank you, Sheila. Well, I don’t know what to make of it, Inspector,’ said Hughes, once Sheila had departed. ‘Both branches of Moore’s have their own personnel department. I think I’d better have a word with Howard Austin and ask him where he got the idea that this fellow Roper worked here.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that, Mr Hughes,’ said Hardcastle. ‘There may be more to this business than meets the eye, and other departments might become involved in the matter.’

  ‘Ah, like MI5, you mean.’

  Hardcastle just smiled. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Hughes. We’d better try and get to the bottom of this story.’

  ‘Oh, for a nice, simple murder,’ said Hardcastle, as he and Bradley arrived at the Wrights’ house situated opposite where the Ropers had lived.

  ‘Is there such a thing, guv’nor? asked Bradley, as he rang the doorbell.

  ‘Mr Wright, we’re police officers,’ said Hardcastle, when the door was opened. ‘I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle and this is Detective Sergeant Bradley,’ he continued, once they were in the hall with the front door closed and the hall light turned on again. ‘We’d like to talk to you about the Ropers.’

  ‘Of course. Catherine told me someone would be calling here this evening. Do come into the sitting room.’

  A blazing fire was keeping the room warm and comfortable, and the two detectives were invited to take a seat.

  ‘Would you like coffee?’ asked Catherine Wright, a woman of about forty. She was dressed in a skirt and jumper and had allowed her long brown hair to follow the peek-a-boo style adopted by Veronica Lake, the American cinema and stage actress.

  ‘Or something stronger?’ asked Wright, whose tweed suit had obviously been made to measure.

  ‘No, coffee would be most welcome,’ said Hardcastle.

  During the ten minutes it took Catherine Wright to prepare the coffee, Trevor Wright and the two CID officers discussed the war, a topic that was becoming more common than the English people’s usual opening discussion about the weather.

  Once they were all settled, each with a cup of coffee, Hardcastle said, ‘I understand from the officer who came to see you yesterday that you have something to tell us about the Ropers.’

  ‘He was a charming Scotsman, Inspector, that detective who called here,’ began Catherine Wright. ‘But there wasn’t a great deal I could tell him about the Ropers.’

  ‘You’d be
surprised, Mrs Wright,’ said Bradley. ‘Our job is to discover who murdered the Ropers and anything you and your husband can tell us, however unimportant it might seem to you, could well be useful in achieving that object when put with other information.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Catherine glanced at her husband.

  ‘What Catherine is trying to say, Inspector,’ said Trevor Wright, ‘is that she formed entirely the wrong opinion of Frank Roper.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘He came over one morning,’ began Catherine, ‘just before lunchtime, it was, and started by saying that he knew Trevor was away and if there was anything I needed or anything he could do for me, just to shout. They’d only moved in a few weeks previously and this was the first time I’d met him face-to-face. I have to admit that I assumed he’d timed his visit for when Trevor wasn’t here. He looked the sort who would make a pass at any woman he met. I’m sure you know the sort of thing: excessively polite, always rushing to open a door. The desire to be seen as a gentleman. But I have to admit I was completely wrong. His visit was nothing more than a neighbourly gesture, like being prepared to mend a fuse or something of that sort. Naturally, I invited him in and offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted. We sat here, in this room, and had a long conversation. But the strange thing about it, when I think back, was that he never said anything about himself. We talked about the war, obviously everyone does, but when I thought about it afterwards, I knew no more about him when he left than when he’d arrived.’

  ‘So, you’ve no idea what he did for a living, for example?’

  ‘No. I asked him if he worked locally, but he avoided the question very neatly. It was only afterwards that I realized that I’d asked a few quite natural questions but never got a straight answer. It was almost as if he’d been trained to avoid telling anyone anything. But it didn’t stop him asking me questions, again without giving the impression of prying, if you know what I mean. For instance, he asked about that.’ Catherine Wright pointed at a curved ceremonial sword that was above the mantelshelf, held in place by two brass hooks.

  ‘It’s a talwar, Inspector, a sword used mainly by the military in India,’ volunteered Wright. ‘We brought it back from India when we finally decided to come home to the old country in 1937.

  ‘I told him it was Indian and, straight away, Frank asked if Trevor and I had ever worked in India, and we had quite a long chat about the sub-continent. On looking back, I’m sure he knew what the talwar was and used it as a convenient means to ask another question. I got the impression that he’d worked there himself at some time, but I never really learned much about him. It was all done so cleverly and I didn’t realize until later that, like I said just now, I didn’t learn anything about him or his wife, but he must’ve learned a lot about Trevor and me.’

  ‘Were you working in India, Mr Wright?’ asked Bradley.

  ‘Yes, I was the editor of a newspaper in Bombay, but then they decided they wanted a native Indian to do the job. Reasonable enough, I suppose, and if you know anything about India, Inspector, you’ll know they’ve been agitating for self-rule for some time. That fellow Gandhi is one of the agitators. Anyway, we decided it was time to come home to England, just to be on the safe side. There was talk before we left that the Japanese might have their eye on India.’

  ‘Are you still in the newspaper business?’ asked Hardcastle, ever wary of saying too much to the press.

  ‘No. I’d had enough anyway, so I got myself a job as a whisky salesman. Very convivial, travelling from pub to pub, and it’s not awfully demanding. I also try to drum up business by visiting gentlemen’s clubs and doing what I can to sell them our particular brand of Scotch. Not sure whether I’ll be able to keep it up, mind you. If there’s a crackdown on petrol, I might have to give up travelling my bit of the country. And there’s a rumour that Scotch will be in short supply very soon. I’ll probably finish up in the fire brigade or something to do with the war effort, I suppose. Might even get conscripted unless they think that forty-five is too old.’

  ‘To sum up, then,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Frank Roper learned quite a bit about you two, but you learned very little about him.’

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Wright, ‘but oddly, I saw him a week or so later when I went to London to have lunch with a client, and it seemed completely out of character. I’d taken my client to Kettner’s in Romilly Street and, lo and behold, there was Frank Roper sitting in a booth with some brassy tart who looked as though he’d just picked her up in Piccadilly.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘No. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Having learned from Catherine what an unrevealing chap he was, I wondered whether he was on some sort of war work and the woman he was with was perhaps an informant.’ Wright shrugged. ‘On the other hand, perhaps I’ve read too many spy novels.’

  Bradley asked whether they’d ever set foot inside the Ropers’ house and, receiving a negative response, he and Hardcastle left feeling none the wiser about the couple.

  EIGHT

  Rather than waiting until the evening to speak to Howard Austin at home, Walter Hardcastle decided that he would instead call on him at the Kingston offices. He had not made an appointment, but in view of the urgency he hoped that Austin would be able to see him. Unlike the first time he had visited the company’s offices, he received a respectful salute from Baldwin, the gatekeeper.

  Miss Lovell, Austin’s secretary, served Hardcastle and Bradley with coffee and explained that Austin was engaged on a lengthy telephone call, but would see the detectives the moment he was free.

  Ten minutes later, Austin emerged from his office. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,’ he said, ‘but the Admiralty is getting a bit twitchy. They always want something yesterday. It must be something to do with Winston Churchill becoming First Lord of the Admiralty. However, enough of my complaining, do come in.’

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you again so soon,’ began Hardcastle, ‘but we spoke to Tom Hughes, the managing director at Windsor.’ The three of them sat down: the two CID officers in armchairs and Austin behind his desk. Miss Lovell appeared with fresh coffee.

  ‘Oh, yes, and what did Tom have to say about Frank Roper?’ Austin asked, once Miss Lovell had departed and closed the door.

  ‘He said he’d never heard of him,’ said Jack Bradley.

  Austin froze, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. ‘What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘We can’t put it any plainer than that, Mr Austin.’ Bradley took a sip of his coffee. ‘We told him that we were investigating the murder of the Ropers and that you had told us that Frank Roper was a close friend of yours and that he worked at the Windsor plant.’

  ‘But when I telephoned Tom Hughes this morning to let him know you’d enquired about Frank—’

  ‘When you telephoned this morning, you were unable to speak to Mr Hughes because he was out of the office.’ Hardcastle was beginning to get a little suspicious of the whole story and particularly Austin’s part in it.

  ‘Yes, that’s quite right. His secretary, Sheila Maskell, said he was on the shop floor and suggested I rang back later, but unfortunately I was sidetracked and when I rang again, Tom was off somewhere else. But I don’t understand why he’d never heard of him.’

  ‘He had Sheila Maskell check with the head of personnel and there is no one at the Windsor plant by the name of Roper. No one at all. What made you believe that he was employed there?’

  ‘Frank told me that’s where he worked, and he seemed to know the principals there, people like Tom Hughes and the location. All the things I’d expected someone who worked there to know about.’

  ‘How did you meet him, Mr Austin, if it wasn’t at one or other of the Alan Moore and Company locations?’ asked Bradley.

  ‘At my golf club. He was a member.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Austin stared at the ceiling as if seeking the answer there. Eventually, he lo
oked down again. ‘It must have been about ten or twelve weeks ago, I suppose. I bumped into him one Sunday morning. Eunice, my wife, was supposed to play a round of golf with me, but cried off at the last minute with an awful headache. I wandered up there on the off chance of finding someone who fancied eighteen holes before lunch. It seemed that Frank Roper was in a similar situation and was delighted to join me. We got talking and I was astonished to hear that he worked for the same firm as me, albeit at Windsor.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ said Bradley, his tone of voice verging on the sarcastic. Together with the DDI, he was beginning to find this entire tale a little unlikely, to say the least.

  As Austin’s account unfolded, Hardcastle’s doubts grew even stronger. He was not a Special Branch officer, but any detective would have found Austin’s chance meeting almost unbelievable. That Austin had not found the encounter remarkable either demonstrated his naivety or indicated that his background needed a very close examination. Furthermore, that Roper had told a complete stranger that he worked at the same establishment engaged in top-secret war work as the stranger seemed extremely unlikely.

  ‘Presumably, you met often at the golf club after that,’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, Frank’s wife, Helen, was a golfer too, and it soon became the norm for us to play a foursome every Sunday. Of course, one thing led to another and Frank and Helen invited us to dinner at their house, and we returned the compliment by inviting them to our house.’