Watterson grunted. He had no great opinion of solicitors. Tiresome people who cross-examined policemen and threw dust into the eyes of magistrates.
“The second thing is that no one except Mrs. Key has had more than two or three. And she must have had nearly a hundred.”
“You mean that all the others were cover for the attack on her?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“And the object?”
“The object,” said Petrella, “was to finish her. And it succeeded. The letters were written, and the envelopes were typed out by a Miss Eileen Fairweather. She is secretary to young Mr. Mellors, junior partner in Mellors and Rapp. I’m told that she was a conscientious girl, and sometimes stayed behind to finish Mr. Mellors’s letters. This gave her the run of six different typewriters in the general office. She used different machines, and different envelopes, so that Mrs. Key would be bound to open the letters.”
“Clever.”
“Too clever. She didn’t realise that the print of a typewriter can be identified as certainly as a fingerprint.”
He laid six sheets of typing paper and six envelopes on the table, and said, “Central are quite definite about it. There’s not the least room for doubt. Those envelopes were typed on the six machines in the office of Mellors and Rapp.”
“Why did she do it?”
“She did it for forty thousand pounds. She’s engaged to Ronald Blanshard, who is Mrs. Key’s only surviving relative, and inherits that sum under her will. She just couldn’t wait for the old lady to die in the natural way.”
Watterson brightened up. “That’s better,” he said. “That’s something a jury will understand.”
“I’m afraid it won’t come to a jury.”
“Why not? It seems a clear enough case.”
“A case of what?”
The Chief Superintendent started to say something, changed his mind, and said, “Hmm. Murder? Manslaughter? Conspiracy to procure suicide? I see there might be difficulty there. What about demanding money with menaces?”
“She was careful never to ask for money.”
“Public mischief then? Misuse of Her Majesty’s mails?”
“That’s more like it. A fine for a first offence.”
“It doesn’t seem adequate.”
“It will be quite adequate,” said Petrella grimly. “Once her name is mentioned in the papers, there’ll be fifty people round here after her blood.”
Watterson considered the matter. He said, “Do we charge Blanshard as well? Do you think he was in it?”
“There’s no direct evidence against him, but we’ll soon know, won’t we?” When Watterson looked puzzled he said, “As soon as the truth comes out. If he was in it with her, you may be sure he’ll stick to his guns, brazen it out, and marry her. They’ll have to move away and live somewhere else. But they’ll go through with it. On the other hand, if he didn’t know about it, he won’t touch her with a barge pole. He’ll refuse to have anything more to do with her. He’s got no other course open to him.”
Here Petrella was wrong.
Three days after the preliminary hearing in the Magistrates’ Court had been adjourned for the defence to consider the technical evidence, a patrolling policeman found Ronald Blanshard’s little car parked in a quiet turning behind Woolcombe Park. Eileen Fairweather was in the front seat. She had been shot through the head. Ronald was slumped over her. After killing her, he had shot himself. He had used a German automatic which his father had brought home as a souvenir on one of his leaves from North Africa.
Woolcombe Park is not in Q Division, and Petrella only learned about it when he read it in the paper the following morning. Hard on the heels of the report came Mrs. Oldenshaw. She was so upset that it was a few minutes before Petrella could gather what she was trying to tell him.
She said, “What shall I do with it? The money, I mean. They say I shall have it all now. I don’t want it.”
“You’d better consult the solicitors,” said Petrella. “They’ll tell you what to do.”
“Oh, them. They just say it’s mine, and I’ve got to have it. I wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to a little bit. That’s what Mrs. Key meant me to have. She didn’t mean me to have it all.”
“If you really want to get rid of some of it,” said Petrella, “why don’t you give it to Father Amberline, at St. Marks.”
His mind was on a very different sort of problem. In front of him on the table was a telex message. “Important. Repeated to all Stations in Q Division and for information to all other Divisions. Arthur Lamson’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal at three o’clock this afternoon.”
Why Tarry the Wheels of his Chariot?
That morning, because his wife and small son were away at the seaside, Detective Inspector Patrick Petrella cooked his own breakfast. He should have been with them, but his stand-in had broken his wrist in an argument with an Irish lorry-driver and his second-in-command had mumps.
As he walked through the sun-baked streets, from his flat in Passmore Gardens to the Divisional Sub-Station in Patton Street, there was an ache at the back of his neck and a buzzing in his ears, and his tongue felt a size too large for his mouth. Any competent doctor would have diagnosed strain from over-work and packed him straight off on holiday.
The morning was taken up with a new outbreak of shoplifting. In the middle of the afternoon the telex message was brought into his room.
“Important. Repeated to all Stations in Q Division and for information to all other Divisions. Arthur Lamson’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal at three o’clock this afternoon.”
Petrella was still trying to work through all the unpleasant possibilities of this message when Chief Superintendent Watterson arrived.
He said, “I see you’ve had the news, Patrick. It was that ass Downing who did it.”
He referred, in this disrespectful manner, to Lord Justice Downing, one of the more unpredictable of Her Majesty’s judges.
“I was afraid it might happen,” said Petrella.
He spoke so flatly that Watterson looked at him and said, “You ought to be on leave. Are you feeling all right?”
“It’s the heat. A decent thunderstorm would clear the air.”
“What we want,” said Watterson, “isn’t a decent thunderstorm. It’s a decent bench of judges. Not a crowd of nitpicking old women. I wonder if they’ve got the remotest idea of how much damage a man like Lamson can do.”
“There’ll be no holding him now,” said Petrella.
Arthur Lamson was once described by the papers as the unofficial mayor of Grendel Street. He ran a gymnasium and sporting club, was a big donor to all local charities and had a cheerful word and a pat on the head for any child, or a pinch of the bottom for any pretty girl. He was also a criminal, who specialised in protection rackets, employing the youths who hung around his gymnasium to break up the premises – and occasionally the persons – of anyone who refused him payment.
Since he took no part in these acts of violence himself he had been a difficult man to peg. Indeed, he might have continued untouched by the law for a very long time if he had not fallen out with Bruno.
Bruno was a fair-haired boy, with a deceptively open face and a smile which showed every one of the thirty-two teeth in his mouth. He was a great favourite with the girls, and it was over a girl that the original trouble arose. There were other differences as well. Bruno had an unexpected streak of obstinacy. When he was not paid as much as he had been promised for a job he had done for Art Lamson, he spoke his mind, and spoke it loudly and publicly.
Lamson had decided that he must be disciplined. The disciplining took place in a quiet back street behind the goods depot.
Whilst Bruno was in hospital, having his jaw set and the bottom half of his right ear sewn back on, he came to certain conclusions. He told no one what he proposed to do, not even Jackie, the girl he was secretly engaged to. He went one evening to a
quiet public house in the Tooley Street area, and in a back room overlooking the river he met two men who looked like sailors. To them he talked, and they wrote down all that he said, and gave him certain instructions.
A month later Bruno said to Jackie, “I don’t think any of the boys know you’re my girl, so you ought to be all right, but you’d better lie low for a bit. I’m going to have to clear out of London.”
Jackie said, “What are you talking about, Bruno? What’s going to happen? What have you done?”
“What I’ve done,” said Bruno, “is I’ve shopped Art Lamson. The Regional boys are picking him up tonight. With what I’ve been able to tell them, they reckon they’ve got him sewn up.”
Jackie put both arms round Bruno’s neck, her blue eyes full of tears, and said, “Look after yourself, boy. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I should do.”
Very early on the following morning two cars, with four men in each of them, slid to a stop opposite Lamson’s house. Two men went round to the back, two men watched the front, and four men let themselves into the house, using a key to unlock the front door. Petrella was one of them. Grendel Street was in his manor and it was his job to make the actual arrest, and to charge Lamson on information received, with the crime of conspiring with others to demand money with menaces and to commit actual bodily harm.
The nature of the information received became evident at the preliminary hearing in the Magistrates’ Court. It was Bruno. And it was noticed that never once, whilst he gave his evidence, did he look at Lamson or Lamson at him.
This was in March.
The trial started at the Old Bailey in the first week of June. Bruno was brought to the court, from a safe hideaway in Essex, in a police tender which had steel bars on its windows and bullet-proof glass.
On the second afternoon, he gave his evidence to the Judge. Under the skilful questioning of his own counsel he repeated, even more clearly and comprehensively, the facts which he had already stated to the Magistrate. At four o’clock he had finished, and the Judge said, “It will be convenient if we break now. We can begin the cross-examination of this witness tomorrow morning.”
Counsel bowed to the Judge, the Judge bowed back, the Court emptied, and Bruno was taken down a flight of steps to the basement where the van awaited him.
As he stepped out of the door, a marksman on the roof of a neighbouring building, using an Armalite rifle with a telescopic sight, shot him through the head.
“And that,” said Watterson, “was that. The jury had heard Bruno’s evidence, and they convicted Lamson. Of course, there was an appeal. The defence pointed out that although plenty of people had given evidence of being intimidated, the only witness who actually identified Lamson as the head of the organisation was Bruno.”
And Bruno had not been cross-examined.
“How can you accept his evidence,” said Mr Michaelson, Q.C., in his eloquent address to the Court of Criminal Appeal, “when it has not been tested, in the traditional way, by cross-examination. Bear in mind, too, that the witness was himself a criminal. That he had, by his own admission, taken part in more than one of the offences with which the accused is charged. The law is slow to accept such evidence, even when it has stood the test of cross-examination—”
And so, at three o’clock on that hot afternoon in August, Arthur Lamson descended the stairs which lead down from the dock in the Court of Criminal Appeal and emerged, a free man.
A considerable reception awaited him. The committee of welcome consisted of a number of reporters, mainly from the sporting papers, but a scattering from the national Press as well; one or two very minor celebrities, who didn’t care where they went as long as they got into the photograph; members of the Grendel Street Sporting Club, friends and hangers-on of both sexes.
The party started immediately in the bar of the Law Courts, but this was too small to contain everyone who wanted to get in on the act. A move was made to a small club behind Fleet Street which was broad-minded about membership and seemed to observe its own licensing hours.
By six o’clock the party was larger than when it had started, and much louder. Lamson had a six-month thirst to quench, and he stood, at the centre of the noisiest group, a schooner of whisky in his large right hand, the sweat running in rivulets down his red face, a monarch unjustly deposed, returning in triumph to his kingdom.
“I got a great respect for the laws of England,” he announced. “They don’t put an innocent man in prison. Not like some countries I could name.”
“That’s right, Art,” said the chorus.
“I’m not saying anything against the police. They’ve got their job to do, like I’ve got mine. If they’re prepared to let bygones be bygones, I’m prepared to do the same.”
This treaty of friendship with the police force was felt to be in the best of taste, and a fresh round of drinks was ordered.
Back in Grendel Street extensive preparations had been made for the return of the hero. Streamers had been placed in position, from top-storey windows, spanning the street, and banners had been hung out with, “Welcome Home Art” embroidered on them in letters of red cotton-wool. The two public houses, the Wheelwrights Arms at one end of the street and the Duke of Albany at the other end, were both doing a roaring trade, and the band of the Railway Recreational Club was starting on its favourite piece which was the William Tell Overture.
The organiser of these festivities was seated at her bedroom window, in a chair, looking down on the street. This was old Mrs. Lamson, Art’s mother, the matriarch of Grendel Street. Ma Lamson was a character in her own right. She had married, out-drunk, out-talked and out-lived three husbands, the third of whom was Art’s father. A stroke had paralysed her legs, but not her tongue. Confined to a wheelchair, and rendered even more impatient by her confinement, her shrill voice still dominated the street.
“Fix the end of that streamer, you big git,” she screeched. “It’s flapping like a lot of bloody washing on a line. That’s better. My God, if I wasn’t here to keep an eye on things, you’d have the whole bloody lot down in the bloody street. And Albert”— this was to a middle-aged man, one of her sons by her first marriage, himself a grandfather—”clear those buggers back onto the pavement.” She indicated the drinkers outside the Wheelwrights Arms who were sketching an informal eightsome reel to the strains of William Tell. “We want Art to drive straight down the street when he comes home, don’t we? He can’t do it if they’ve toned it into a pally-de-dance, can he?”
By eight o’clock the original party had moved from the Fleet Street club, and re-established itself in the back room of a public house near Blackfriars Station. Its constituents had gradually changed. The journalists had slid away, to write up their impressions of the event for next morning’s papers. The very minor celebrities had gone in search of the next happening to which they could attach themselves. What remained was a hard core of serious drinkers, a few friends of Art’s, but mostly friends of friends, or those complete strangers who seem to have a knack of attaching themselves to any party which has reached a stage of general euphoria.
One of the few men there who knew Art personally said, towards nine o’clock, “You ought to be getting back sometime soon. Your old lady’ll be expecting you.”
“That’s right,” said Art, “she will.” He made no attempt to move.
“She’s got a sort of reception organised, I understand.”
“She’s a lovely person,” said Art. “I’m lucky to have a mother like that. Have you got a mother?”
The friend said that he had a mother, and she was a lovely person, too.
Towards ten o’clock the black clouds, which had been piling up from the west had blotted out moon and stars and the air was electric with the coming storm.
The party was showing signs of disintegrating. There were no formal farewells. People drifted out and did not reappear. For some time now, Art had been conscious of the girl. To start with, there had been quite a few g
irls in the party. This one had sat quietly in the background drinking whatever was put into her hand and minding her own business. Nobody knew exactly who had brought her, but nobody minded because she was a good-looking chick, with blue eyes, black hair, and lots up top. Not obtrusive, but enough to catch the eye comfortably.
Art found his thoughts centering on the girl. Drink was not the only thing he had been deprived of for the past six months. When she looked up at him and smiled, what had been vague ambition became clear desire.
How it happened, he was not clear. At one moment he was putting down an empty glass on the counter, at the next he was on the back seat of the taxi with the girl.
He slid one arm round her waist. She said, “Don’t start anything here, love. The taxi driver’ll sling us out. Wait till we get there.”
“Where are we going?”
The girl sounded surprised. “Back to my place, of course,” she said.
Art was happy to wait. He was three out of four parts drunk. One thing was puzzling him. If this chick really had been knocking back all the drinks that had been offered to her, she should have been blind drunk, but she sounded sober. A bit tensed up, he thought, but cool. Perhaps she had a very hard head. She certainly had a beautiful little body.
Her place was a surprise too. It was certainly not a tart’s pad. It was on the third floor of an old-fashioned house and had the look of a working girl’s flat, small but neat. She sat him down on the sofa, and said, “What about a bite of food, eh?”
This seemed to Art to be an excellent suggestion. He needed something to absorb the alcohol he had put into himself. The girl poured him out a drink from a bottle on the sideboard.
She said, “I won’t be a minute,” and disappeared into the small room next door which was evidently the kitchen.
Art sipped his drink, and lay back on the sofa. He had had so much luck lately that this little extra bit seemed a natural bonus. The only trouble was that he was feeling damnably sleepy. It really would be a bad joke if, with this gorgeous chick offering herself to him, he couldn’t stay awake to do anything about it.
Petrella at 'Q' Page 5