Catching sight of Lily’s expression, she had burst out laughing.
‘Don’t be shocked. I can say anything I like to Billy. I’ve known him all my life. He used to take me for long walks in the woods when I was small. I can still remember those afternoons.’
‘So can I.’ Billy caught Lily’s eye and winked. ‘I learned a lot, especially about the flora and fauna. You see, when Lucy realised I was a city boy and didn’t know a warbler from a water rat, she made up a lot of names to tell me and I went off thinking I had it all sorted out. It came as a bit of a shock later when I learned there was no such thing as a hooter bird and that stoats didn’t really build their nests in trees. Or anywhere else, come to think of it. I see she’s already been to work on you.’ He looked pointedly at Lily’s eyes. ‘So a word to the wise: mind how you go with this young lady.’
‘Billy, you promised!’ Lucy’s cheeks had turned scarlet. ‘You swore you’d never tell anyone about that.’
‘No, I didn’t. I said I’d think about it.’
He had started to laugh then.
‘But I know you’re curious about this case—your dad told me—and if you ask me nicely, I might just tell you a little more about it over supper.’
‘Billy, Billy . . .’
Madden had shaken his head in despair.
• • •
Lily glanced at her watch again, and as she did so the telephone rang.
Madden got to his feet.
‘That must be Jessup,’ he said. ‘Do you want to speak to him?’ He put the question to Billy, who shook his head.
‘I don’t think so, sir. You can tell him I’m here, if you like. But he’s always been open with you, and he might feel he has to choose his words carefully if he’s speaking to a police officer.’
With a grunt Madden left them. They heard him pick up the phone in the hall, but his voice was barely audible as he spoke to his caller and he quickly fell silent. A long pause ensued. Then they heard him speak again, and this time they caught the words.
‘Thank you, Richard. I’ll pass that on.’
He returned to the kitchen looking thoughtful.
‘Well, it seems Lucy may be right. It could be over.’
He sat down.
‘It sounds as though Garner’s in a bad way. According to Sir Richard he was half drunk when he got to the club and in even worse shape when he left a few minutes ago. But he’s come to a decision. He’s going to get in touch with you tomorrow morning.’ He looked at Billy. ‘He wants to make a statement, Jessup says. But he’ll do it in the presence of a solicitor.’
‘Ah . . .’ Billy took a deep breath. ‘That could be it, then. Did he say anything else—Garner, I mean?’
‘Only that he’d heard from Wing.’
Billy pursed his lips in a silent whistle. ‘That must have come as a nasty shock.’
‘Garner declined to say what had passed between them. But it had clearly upset him. “I thought the bastard was in prison.” That was his only comment, according to Jessup. He said Garner was very much the worse for drink by that time and not making much sense. But it was clear he was worried sick.’
‘Did they talk about Portia Blake?’
‘Her name certainly came up.’ Madden frowned. ‘But Garner didn’t admit to killing her, if that’s what you’re wondering. What he did say was that he’d given you a false alibi for the day she was murdered. At that point Jessup urged him to make a clean breast of things and told him it would be best if he went to the police on his own initiative and set the record straight. He offered to put him in touch with his own solicitor. My guess is you’ll hear from Garner in the morning.’
‘And if we don’t, Joe Grace and I will pay him another visit, like we planned to.’ Billy’s eyes narrowed. ‘I take it there was no reference made to the girl in Hong Kong?’
Madden shook his head. ‘Sir Richard didn’t mention it.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I’m just wondering what it was that got Garner so worried. Was it something Wing said to him?’
‘He could have told him about the photos,’ Billy suggested. ‘That would have been enough to send Rex reaching for the bottle.’
‘Always supposing the man in the bed is him,’ Madden pointed out. ‘But it’s not evidence. It doesn’t link him to the killing.’
He pondered the question in silence for a few moments. Then he turned to Lily. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
Caught off guard, Lily collected herself quickly. She hadn’t expected to be asked her opinion.
‘Well . . . well, we don’t know what Wing knows, do we?’
It sounded like a feeble reply to her, but Madden appeared to think otherwise.
‘What cards he may be holding, you mean? Yes, that’s very true. We shouldn’t forget that. For all we know he may be in possession of other evidence incriminating Garner. He may even have enough to tie him to Portia’s murder.’
‘Or to that girl in Hong Kong,’ Lily pointed out.
‘Who may or may not have survived the assault she suffered at his hands.’ Madden nodded thoughtfully. ‘To one or other, you mean?’
‘Or both.’
20
‘WHERE THE DEVIL IS he? He can’t just have disappeared.’
Chubb glared at Billy from behind his desk.
‘You’ve tried ringing the house, have you?’
‘Several times, sir, but there’s no reply. According to Jessup, Garner was going to get in touch with us after he’d spoken to a solicitor. But there’s been no word from that quarter, either.’
‘Could he have changed his mind, do you think?’ Chubb’s face darkened. ‘Sobered up?’
‘We’ll soon find out. I’ve asked Lofty Cook at West End Central to send a bobby round to his house to ring the doorbell, and to keep on ringing if he doesn’t respond. Of course, he could still be sleeping it off. According to Jessup he was reeling drunk when he left the club last night.’
‘Perhaps he never got home,’ Chubb suggested. ‘But whatever the explanation is, I want answers fast. I’ve already had a call from Cradock asking if Garner has been brought in for questioning yet. Get cracking.’
Happy enough to obey—answers were what he lacked at the moment—Billy left to return to his own office. He was thinking he might have to take the bull by the horns and ask Richard Jessup for the name of his solicitor. The fact that they hadn’t met made it difficult and he wondered whether he could turn to Madden for yet more help. He had still not resolved the question in his mind when he reached his office and found that Lily Poole was on the phone.
‘Hang on, guv.’ She spoke into the instrument when she saw Billy, and then beckoned to him urgently. ‘It’s Mr Cook,’ she said.
Billy took the phone from her. ‘Lofty . . . ?’
‘Hullo, Billy. I’ve got news for you. I’ve just heard from the bobby I sent round to that bloke’s house. . . . What’s his name?’
‘Garner . . . Rex Garner.’ Billy had caught a note in the other man’s voice that alerted him: something was up. ‘Did he speak to him?’
‘Hardly. If it’s the same bloke you want to talk to, he seems to be strung up inside.’
‘Strung up . . . ?’
‘Hanging by his neck.’ Cook’s tone was dry. ‘You’d better let me explain. The constable rang the doorbell, like he was told to, and went on ringing until it was plain no one was going to answer. The curtains at the front of the house overlooking the street were drawn, but there was still a small gap between them. By pressing his nose to the glass the bobby was able to peer inside the room, and what he saw gave him a shock. There was a man hanging from some sort of balustrade at the back of the room. He returned to the front door and tried to break it down with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t budge, so he rang the station. I’ve got a locksmith on his way over to the house now. I’ll meet you there.
’
• • •
With the bell on their police car ringing, Billy and his two colleagues forged a passage through the scattered crowd of onlookers that had gathered in the street outside Rex Garner’s house. They drew up in front of the door, which stood ajar. As Billy climbed out of the car a uniformed officer with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve approached him.
‘Mr Cook’s inside, sir. He told the rest of us to stay out here.’ He pointed to the three other men posted on the pavement. ‘He said you’d be the officer in charge. Let me know if there’s anything we can do.’
‘Just clear the street for now, Sergeant. I’ll have a word with you later.’
Followed by Grace and Lily Poole, Billy went into the house. He found Lofty Cook standing just inside the door to the drawing-room, where he and Joe had interviewed Rex Garner only two days earlier. Beyond him was a grisly sight. The body of a man was suspended by his neck from the balustrade of the book-lined gallery above, which Billy remembered from his earlier visit. His feet were a foot or so off the floor and his body had twisted slightly away from the door so that his face wasn’t visible. Billy had little doubt that it was Garner, and having walked past Cook to the other side of the room and looked up at the contorted visage, he knew for certain.
‘It’s him, all right, Lofty.’ He reached up to touch the black rubber-sheathed wire that had cut so deeply into the man’s throat it was only partially visible. ‘What did he use, do you reckon?’
‘It looks like electrical flex.’ Cook had crossed the room to join him. ‘And you can see he doubled it.’ He pointed higher to where the separation between the two strands of rubber-coated wire was clearly visible. ‘He must have decided that a single strand wouldn’t take his weight. Have you any idea why he did it?’
‘Quite a few, as it happens. He was our new prime suspect for the Portia Blake killing—and he knew it. I had the feeling he might be close to cracking.’
Lofty whistled.
‘Does that mean your case is wrapped up?’
‘Not quite. We’re still looking for Stanley Wing, the chap Lily talked to you about.’
Cook looked reflective. ‘I know this is a Yard case, Billy. I’m not going to stick my nose in. But this is my patch, so if you don’t mind I’ll stay for a while and see how things work out.’
‘Please do, sir.’ Billy grinned. They had joined the Met at the same time, right after the end of the First World War, and although initially Billy had led the way in the race for promotions—he had secured his inspectorship earlier than Cook—Lofty had lately inched ahead; he was now a chief inspector. None of which had affected their friendship, which had remained solid over the years. ‘By the way, I called Richard Jessup before I left the Yard,’ he said. ‘He’s on his way over here now. He can formally identify Garner for us. And I rang Mr Madden, too. You remember him, don’t you?’
‘I should say so.’
‘He’s in London at present and I thought he might want to come down here and see this. He began looking into the Portia Blake murder before we did as a favour to Mr Sinclair. They’re neighbours in the country now.’
‘Wheels within wheels, eh?’ Lofty rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, it sounds as though you’re in luck, Billy. I wouldn’t mind having John Madden at my shoulder if I was working a case. He was special, wasn’t he? One of those blokes you don’t forget.’
• • •
‘I can’t say he was happy when I saw him last, sir. He was muttering to himself in the back of the car all the way from Pall Mall. I couldn’t hear what he said, except it seemed to be about some “damned Chinaman”, as he put it. And I had a hard time seeing him into the house. He was the worse for drink, but he wouldn’t accept any help. Each time I tried to take his arm he pushed me away. But I finally saw him to the door, and after some bother with his keys—he couldn’t seem to find the right one—he finally let himself in. And that’s how I left him.’
Every inch the old soldier, and looking smart in his chauffeur’s uniform, Ted Lennox stood to attention as he made his statement. At Billy’s request he had been summoned from the car where he was waiting outside by his employer to give an account of Garner’s movements the night before after Jessup himself had revealed that he had detailed his chauffeur to take his dinner guest home.
‘I’m afraid Rex was quite drunk and I didn’t want to send him home in a cab.’
He had arrived a few minutes after Madden, who had caught a taxi down from St John’s Wood. Together they had watched in silence as the body of the dead man was lowered gently to the floor. Billy had had to wait for the arrival of the police photographer before the operation could be carried out, but once he had done his work two detectives from the forensic crew who had been standing by had jointly taken hold of the corpse as one of their colleagues loosened the double strand of wire tied to the balustrade above. Clearly appalled by the sight of Garner’s livid features, Jessup had looked away.
‘I had been planning to return home to Hampshire myself,’ he told Billy, ‘but it had got so late that I changed my mind and decided to spend the night at my club. My chauffeur was standing by with the car, so I asked him to make sure that Mr Garner got home safely.’
When the pathologist arrived soon afterwards to examine the body—and after Lofty Cook had taken his leave of them—Billy led both men to a smaller sitting-room on the other side of the entrance hall.
‘We’re going to need a statement from you, sir,’ he told Sir Richard. ‘The coroner will want to know what Mr Garner’s state of mind was when you saw him last night. We can do that later—I’ll send a man over to your office—but it would help if you gave me some idea of how he was behaving.’
Jessup had needed a moment to collect himself. Pale and distraught, he had been standing a little apart from them, staring at nothing, hardly aware of what was being said. ‘Rex arrived a little after eight,’ he said, ‘and since it was clear he’d already been drinking, I thought it best to go into dinner straight away. He was angry . . . fractious and belligerent. . . . We’d hardly sat down when he started complaining about what he said was police harassment.’ He caught Billy’s eye. ‘Don’t worry, Inspector, I wasn’t taken in by that, but I let him ramble on for a bit, and then I asked him if there was anything he’d like to tell me—anything he wanted to get off his chest. Well, I’m afraid that set him off again, and he turned on me, accusing me of being on “their side”—he meant you, the authorities—and demanding to know why I wouldn’t stand by him. I assured him I’d do whatever I could to help, and it was then that he admitted he had given you a false alibi for the afternoon when Miss Blake was murdered. He hadn’t met the friend whose name he gave you; he had simply driven into Canterbury and spent the next few hours on his own. He and his wife were due to drive back to London later that afternoon and he timed his return to the house to coincide with their planned departure.’
Jessup rubbed his forehead.
‘I was shocked to hear that. I asked him why he’d done it. He said he had told Adele Castleton the same story years ago and thought he’d better stick to it . . .’
‘The same story . . . ?’ Billy broke in.
‘Exactly.’ Jessup had spread his hands. ‘It was no sort of explanation. I could understand why he concocted an excuse to tell Adele. I’d always thought it was possible that he knew Miss Blake better than he admitted and had simply wanted to avoid seeing her again after her behaviour at dinner the previous evening. But I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to tell the police a lie just to cover up what was only a small fib, after all. It was at that point that I began to get worried. I wondered if he had more to conceal.’
‘Did he at any point mention the woman he beat up in Hong Kong?’ Billy asked. ‘I believe you knew about that.’
Jessup nodded. ‘Rex didn’t refer to it directly, but it might have been on his mind . . .’
‘Why did you think that, Richard?’ Silent up till then, Madden had interrupted. Jessup turned to him.
‘It was when he told me that Wing had been in touch with him. I had asked if he’d seen the photographs published in the Daily Mirror and what he made of them. That set him off on another rant. He said the police were trying to frame him. But then he quietened down and admitted that Wing had telephoned him earlier that day and tried to get money out of him.’
‘Because of the photographs?’
‘I don’t know. Rex didn’t say. He was cursing Wing as he told me about it. He said he was a leech, a bloodsucker, and he’d never be free of him.’
‘And you wondered what he was talking about—whether it was the photographs, or something else?’
‘The thought did cross my mind.’ Jessup sighed. ‘We had left the dining-room by then. Fortunately there weren’t too many others there last night, but even so, Rex had made something of a spectacle of himself, banging the table with his fist and creating a disturbance. I had managed to get him downstairs where there’s a small waiting-room by the entrance hall, and after I’d ordered him a brandy—he insisted on it—I told him what I thought he ought to do.’
‘Which was to speak to us?’ This time it was Billy who put the question.
Jessup nodded. ‘I told him there was no way his false alibi would stand up and the wisest thing he could do would be to go to the police at once before they came to him and put the record straight. Then I added that if there was anything else he had to tell them he’d be well advised to take the opportunity to do so, and if he wished I could put him in touch with my solicitor.’
Jessup’s smile had a bitter edge.
‘I was expecting another explosion then, but to my surprise he gave in. He said he would do that. He said he’d had enough.’
‘Enough . . . ?’ Billy intervened quickly. ‘What did he mean by that?’
The Death of Kings Page 26