I glanced at the barmaid and back at him in some confusion.
“About the crime, Watchman.”
I blinked. Here was my chance. I had to come up with a theory. But I had nothing better in my head than Mrs Pearson’s surmise. “One of the servants,” I hazarded.
“Oh, yes?” he said, tucking in. “Why?”
I looked at him blankly. “They needed money?”
“No, no, no.” He didn’t look up from his plate. “Why do you think it’s one of the servants?”
I coughed. “If entry hasn’t been forced, the theft can only have been done by someone already inside the house.”
He frowned. “Not necessarily.”
My heart was pounding. Stupid, really. I would have thought I’d developed some kind of self-confidence by now, but here I was, acting like a schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework. “Somebody with a contact in the house, then. Who knew one of the servants.”
“Or the family.”
“Yes.”
“Or someone who happened,” he went on, mouth full of pie, “to have a key. Delivery boy. Service man. Local keycutter.”
I was on firmer ground here. “Mrs Pearson was quite clear, sir, that there were no other keys.”
“Was she now?” He wiped his mouth thoughtfully. “Good. Mrs Laing too.”
As he fell to thinking, I searched for something intelligent to contribute. I was annoyed with myself for being so green after all this time.
“Whoever it was, Watchman,” he said, suddenly quiet and intent, “why did they take such a risk?”
I considered. “Maybe a servant is in need of ready money.”
“A few shillings?”
“They couldn’t find more. They stole things to sell.”
“A footstool? There’s things easier to shift.”
“They weren’t thinking clearly. They took it on the spur of the moment.”
“And left the clock?”
I felt my cheeks smarting. Had I really made such a fool of myself?
Wardle began mopping up his gravy with a monstrous doorstop of bread. “Possible. If they’re that desperate, we’ll have them soon enough.”
“How, sir?”
“It’s not so hard to instil confidence, Watchman, and confidence inspires loyalty.”
“Right, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I don’t follow.”
“Mrs Laing took to us.” He sat back and belched contentedly. “The lady of the house didn’t much like the cut of my jib, but you charmed her good and proper. Good work. If there’s anything amiss, we’ll hear of it.”
I nodded, somewhat taken aback.
“Happy household, do you think, Watchman?”
I thought of Mr Pearson’s gentle words and Mrs Pearson’s elegant smile. “Yes, sir.”
“Would you risk your position in a household like that for a few pennies and a joint stool?”
Had Mrs Pearson been mistaken? He didn’t suspect the servants after all, unless there were other gains that would have made it worth the risk. Think, Campbell, think. Wardle had asked about documents. “They wanted something else.”
“Like what?”
“Something easily stolen, but valuable, in the right hands.”
Wardle pushed away his plate and snapped his fingers for pudding. “Go on.”
“Something of Mr Pearson’s. He’s an important man.”
“Well-connected too.”
“Some kind of industrial theft. Someone paid one of the servants—bribed them, whatever you want to call it—to steal something important. There’s money to be made in stealing plans. Designs. Even ideas.”
“Not spur of the moment?”
“No. On the contrary. Well-planned. They’d need to know exactly what to look for. They’d need to know Pearson had the documents in the house. So what went wrong?”
Wardle licked his fingers methodically. “Who says it went wrong? We’ll see. I’ll wager Pearson discovers something has gone missing after all.”
“Why steal the cash, then, sir? Why the chair?”
He just looked at me.
The barmaid plopped the ginger pudding in front of us and I snapped my fingers. “To make it look like an ordinary break-in.”
“Good, son. And the bone?”
“To throw us off the scent. Make it look like they didn’t know the household.” Now I was talking with my mouth full. “Hadn’t we better speak to him, sir?”
“I’ll have a word. He seemed very confident of his security. But if they didn’t get what they wanted, I’ll wager they’ll have another go within the week. Can’t solve crimes before they’re committed.” He drew the pudding towards him. “One other notion. Is our thief a dolt or a fool?”
I felt more confident now. “Well, he left no trace, and he has the household thrown off the scent. Smart enough, I’d say.”
“Who is the cleverest man in that house?”
“Mr Pearson, I imagine. Sir! You’re not suggesting that—” I looked around, and lowered my voice. “That Mr Pearson is our thief? He’s stealing from himself?”
He stirred his pudding around with quiet relish. “I was chasing a theft a few years back. Irish financier, dabbled in politics. Two hundred and thirty thousand pounds went missing from a Tipperary bank he happened to be manager of. Tricky one, that.”
“He did it himself?” I stared at my pudding. “Did you get him, sir?”
“In a manner of speaking. He took prussic acid on Hampstead Heath before we could send him down. It was me that found the suicide note tucked away with his papers.”
I blinked, trying to imagine it all. “But, sir—Pearson?”
“Keep an open mind, son. Like as not, we’ll never know.” He saw my look of surprise. “Don’t misunderstand me, son. Nothing we can do, that’s all. I’ve forty years of cases in my head. What does it help to fret about them? Drive yourself barmy.”
The second sharpest mind in the country started shovelling pudding into his mouth. I sat spooning at mine, agog at his way of thinking, blunt and incisive.
“Like being a copper, do you?”
Taken aback by the question, I hesitated.
He coughed, and spat a lump of pudding back on to his plate. “That bad, is it?”
“It isn’t quite what I was expecting, sir.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an object wrapped in canvas. The bone. His face clouded over a moment, then he thrust it back in his pocket, unopened, and looked at me squarely. “What did you expect? Violence? Mystery?”
He was right, of course, however I would have liked to deny it. If he could tell as much from my hesitations as he’d gleaned about the crime, there was no point in hiding anything. But I had rid myself of illusions now, trying instead to find some kind of dignity, or satisfaction at least, in my everyday tasks. I sighed. “I may have had a few foolish notions, yes.”
He thought for a moment, picking strands of ginger from his teeth. Then he smiled, which caught me quite off guard, and raised his glass. For a moment I thought he was about to propose a toast, but he simply finished his beer and said, “Thought of joining the Yard?”
* * *
After that lunch, I was tired. I had started my shift at Brunswick Square before six, which meant rising at four, near enough. The walk from Lambeth back to Scotland Yard wasn’t so far, but the examination Wardle had put me through in the pub left me exhausted, and I was glad that he kept silent most of the way. He led me to his office, sat me down and gave me some paper.
“Don’t need a literary masterpiece, mind.” He sat down at the larger desk and prepared his pipe.
I was enthralled to be there, in his office, if a little confused as to what was going on. But, as I tried to focus on my task, I felt muddle-headed and stupid. I glanced over at him every so often. He had gone into a kind of reverie. So that was genius at work. I sat there dumbly, struggling to get the pen to work.
The thing seemed so unresolved. At Brunswick Square, things always s
eemed clear-cut. Someone damaged this, someone stole that. Anything more complex was sent up to the Superintendent. Now, although I had been to the scene of the crime myself, everything seemed temporary. I forced myself to jot notes before attempting to put anything coherent on paper. Three times I started and bungled. My greatest achievement came near the day’s end, when I worked up the courage to ask him where the paper was kept.
Wardle made nothing clear. Every so often, he wandered out of the office for fifteen minutes. On one of these occasions, a cheery face popped around the door.
“All right? I’m Darlington. Next door. How you doing?”
I introduced myself, glad to be greeted as if I belonged there. I admitted I was struggling with my report.
Darlington hopped into the office. He was a bright-eyed sort, always hopping and popping and hovering in doorways. He looked over what I had written and made a face. “I’d have another go, old man,” he said, tugging an old report from the filing cabinet. “More like this, see?”
I flushed with embarrassment, staring at it. The style was simplistic; the details were minimal. “I don’t mention suspects?”
This seemed to trouble him. “I wouldn’t.”
“No theories? Nothing speculative?”
“Want to solve it all at once, do you?” He laughed. “No, my friend. I’d stick to solid facts. Write it, file it, let the big man worry about the rest. Good to have new blood around, though. Oops, here’s himself.” And, as swiftly as he’d appeared, he vanished.
“That Darlington prying already?” said Wardle. “Watch out for him. There’s to be nothing told him or anyone else, not without my say-so. All right?” Selecting some papers from his desk, he made ready to leave. He glanced over my pages of scribbles. “What’s all this, eh? Justifying God’s ways to man?”
I managed an anxious smile. I was finding it hard to concentrate. After all, I had no idea where I stood. Would I be working with him again? Or was this it, another one-off, then back to night shifts at Holborn?
Wardle paused at the door. “Tomorrow I’m out at Windsor. Get your things and settle in. I’ve sent word to Brunswick Square. Finish up that report and go home.”
NOBODY TO BLAME
At eight o’clock next morning, I bade farewell to Brunswick Square and headed for the Yard. One day fixing mainsprings on night shift; the next, assistant to a renowned detective. Within the week, I signed papers awarding me the rank of sergeant and the princely sum of £58 per annum. I was to assist Wardle principally with legwork and paperwork. The tag in my jacket was changed from Holborn to Whitehall, and I swore a silent oath that he shouldn’t regret his choice.
There was a certain interest in me as an outsider. Though not unheard of, bringing in someone from outside meant passing over the constables within the Yard. I chose to say as little as possible. This proved wise. Darlington decided that my silence hinted of secret experience; he broadcast impressive rumours about past successes, of which I was not permitted to speak. He frequently asked about my work with Wardle. The questions were harmless, born of curiosity and fun, but I thought it best to parry them, remembering Wardle’s injunction that first day. Darlington thought this secrecy a hoot. “You tight Scotsman,” he would say, “aiming for the top, are you? You’ll be in the foreign service before long!” He was also kind enough to invite me out every so often. I occasionally went for a drink after work; but I refused weekend invitations, afraid that if I got to know him off-duty I would be found out as a fraud and a new boy. He soon decided that I was a cold fish and stopped asking.
* * *
Every so often, Wardle would summon me along to a case, in the main little different from Brunswick Square affairs; but it all seemed grander to me. I took to making assiduous notes so that future reports might not cause me so much anguish.
These outings gave me the chance to see the great man at his work. Throughout, he would keep his hands thrust deep in those coat pockets. Shaking hands he did rarely, as if wary that some ague might assail him. Writing was anathema to him. When there were notes to be taken, it was I who took them. Though some found him a difficult little man, he always seemed to get the answers he wanted. He was disarmingly dogged: though a man of few words, those few words were intense enough to make you feel he knew all about you. It was thus bootless to conceal what he already knew. Impressed from the first, I strove to anticipate his requests and to please him, though it took me a time to fathom his methods.
He required from me a daily synopsis of events across the capital. Studying the newspapers thus became dignified as work. I took pleasure in keeping up with current affairs, and skimming the cream off the news for him. The papers were full of triumphalist trumpeting and apocalyptic clamour. Election fever swept the nation every five minutes or so. The columns were full of questions: the Irish Question, the Reform Question, the Slavery Question. People wrung their hands over the Whitechapel garottings, only for that to be eclipsed by new scandals about Middle Eastern canals or East Midlands cotton.
The leading articles exalted rationality and condemned passion and profiteering. The other pages glamorised the same, especially the theatre reviews. Mr Darwin’s book was de rigueur on the coffee table, though I never met a soul who read it. Anticipation of the underground train gave way to boredom. And the Queen’s array of mid-European quacks sparked rumours that her forefathers’ madness was descending upon her.
Besides all this, Wardle had an ongoing task for me. “I want to put my house in order,” he told me. “There’s years of rubbish in these cabinets. When I retire, I want everything left straightforward for the man who steps into my boots.”
So, on quieter days, I set to work whittling down the paperwork from forty years of cases. Of closed cases I was to throw out everything but the final report. If a case was not closed, I was to close it, that is, tidy up loose ends and write the report.
Some cases solved themselves. Complaints were outdated, debts invalidated, or infringements irrelevant. Some gave of obvious action. Missing persons were frequently no longer missing, and if the necessary letters were written and answered, they could be tied up in a matter of days.
Other cases were less clear. I learnt that many investigations are never concluded. This took me aback at first. I gradually came to realise how much tramping about town each scrap of paper in the files represented: questioning here, corroborating there. It was no wonder there were so many loose ends.
* * *
Only when bewildered could I trouble Wardle, and he would always choose the simplest way to be done with it. I learnt to propose my own plan of action for each case. At the end of quiet days in the office, I would run through the files while he stood at the window, gazing out into the grubby courtyard at the heart of the Yard buildings. New reports drew an approving murmur. To my plan for cases outstanding, he would listen impatiently, snapping, “Nobody weeps over the likes of them, Watchman. Spare us the Celtic indignation and lighten the burden.”
It was a peculiar process, dispensing with history thus. I would flick through the material painstakingly transcribed and fastidiously labelled by Jackman, dash off a summary reprise, then throw out the rest, refiling the nice, slim envelope in a drawer marked “Cases Closed.” Not that I didn’t make mistakes. Unsolved murders, I quickly learnt, he was content to leave open.
“Bodies have a way,” he said, “of lingering. You never know when a skeleton’ll fall out the closet and point a bony finger at someone.”
Nor had it occurred to me to take into account the persons involved. A caution for drunkenness against Billy Broad of Barking could go straight into the wastepaper basket; but, should Baron Burlington of Belgravia’s china vases turn up in a Sotheby’s catalogue, we would need the full details of their disappearance. I got a roasting for throwing out a theft at Charles Dickens’ house.
“Use your nous, Watchman. A public figure. Writer. Experienced with the courts. Suppose he pops in, writing some new serial, and asks us to check the
files?”
I fished the papers out of the bin and left the Dickens theft open.
* * *
It was a happy time for me. Wardle stomped in and out, shrouded in gravitas, which impressed me greatly. I never could work out quite how he was so busy. Either he was involved in cases of which I knew nothing, or else, through years of grind, he had earned himself one of those positions of such respect that nobody knows what your responsibilities are any more.
I worked at the smaller desk—nonetheless a broad affair with drawers and an inkwell. He decreed that I start working back through the files from the previous New Year; more recent cases might yet admit of progress. Christmas had been busy, and it took several weeks to sift through December of ’59, trying to find a sure-footed style for my reports.
We soon fell into a routine. On Fridays, we lunched together at the Dog and Duck, and he went home early, leaving me to put the office in order. The rest of the week, I chose between wandering out to a street stall and sandwiches in the back room, where Darlington bombarded me with stories about the Yard. He told me that Wardle was an expert in unmasking frauds and cracking gambling rings. That Irish financier investigation, for instance, was the famous Sadleir suicide, an undercover coup that scandalised the business world; the story went that the man had left such a revelatory suicide note, the police had been obliged to cover it up and forge a less explosive document. Darlington saw this as a touchstone of Wardle’s genius. His own department was much more mundane, he complained, and I realised he envied me my post.
Thus occupied, I managed for nearly a month to resist looking up the spout case, more through fear than self-denial. If Wardle caught me looking at it, it would be obvious I had ditched chronology for curiosity. I had no greater dread than stepping out of line and finding myself back at Brunswick Square under Glossop’s mocking eye.
One Friday, when Wardle had gone to the doctor with a pain in the gut I found myself pulling out the envelope marked “Euston Square, 9th November.” It was marked as closed. Seized by excitement, I flicked through it urgently, the porter’s statement, and Roxton Coxhill’s; my own report, in pristine condition; Jackman’s summary. Of Wardle’s previous sergeant I knew little, beyond the sour impression I’d received when handing in my report. From his paperwork he seemed a dab hand in calligraphy, but no visionary with the bigger picture. A few comments around the Yard had given me the impression that he had departed under a cloud. “Wardle’s new boy? Good luck. You’ll need it.” I didn’t ask for details.
Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square Page 6