Call Back to Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

Fusil carefully folded the paper. ‘We’ll return to the garage with you and take samples for the experts to compare.’ He brought from his coat pocket the plastic bag with the strips of red Baroni-sulphate sensitised paper. He took out a strip. ‘Put this on your right hand.’

  Slowly, Downring raised his hand and turned it over and Fusil dropped the paper on to it. They all watched the strip gradually change to a colour that was mid-way between red and green.

  ‘It hasn’t really gone green,’ claimed Downring.

  ‘You wore gloves, but handled the gloves after they’d been in contact with the TTX,’ said Fusil.

  ‘I told you, I never left this house.’

  Fusil put the strip of paper back into a separate envelope and wrote out time and place. ‘Search the rest of the house,’ he ordered Kerr.

  They found nothing of any significance and they were in the hall, with both Downring and Valerie, when there was a knock on the front door. Fusil nodded at Downring, but it was Valerie who opened the door.

  Yarrow entered the house. ‘I’ve some information which I thought you should know immediately, sir,’ he reported.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The numbers of the ten-pound notes identify them as having come from the Portesgate bank. Near the bushes where they were, I found a tyre impression in a patch of wet clay. The tyre had certain peculiar characteristics and a check by me on the pick-up truck belonging to Downring shows the near-side front tyre bears characteristics that exactly match.’

  Yarrow was no fool, thought Fusil—resentfully —not for the first time. He turned and was about to tell Downring he was taking him in when Valerie suddenly burst into violent weeping that racked her body. She shouted at Kerr: ‘You bastard!’

  What was it Kerr had said? thought Fusil. No woman as much in love as Valerie Downring could be betrayed by her husband. He opened the door and led the way out.

  ‘Then you’re not taking him in, sir?’ said Yarrow, in tones of great surprise, as they reached Fusil’s car.

  ‘Obviously not,’ snapped Fusil. He silently cursed himself for becoming incredibly soft in his advancing middle age.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fusil had an uneven conscience. It could be quite dormant one moment yet very active the next, without fresh stimuli: it could nag him over small matters, yet remain silent over large ones: it could approve of violence yet disapprove of softness. Right now, it was disapproving of softness.

  Valerie Downring had been tormented by grief. He had seen grief before, countless times, and had himself inevitably contributed towards it, yet this was the first time when its impact on him had been so great that it had deflected him from what he’d been intending to do. He’d let emotion rule him and his conscience insisted on repeatedly pointing out that he’d failed his duty.

  He swore aloud and reached down into his pocket for his pipe. Josephine would approve of what he’d done, he thought—without really gaining any comfort from that fact. In any case, had he done anything but delay’ the inevitable? Kerr argued that Downring was being put on the spot and the circumstances surrounding the handkerchief and coat thread in the attempted bank robbery could be said to lend this theory some support, but . . .

  His thoughts were interrupted when Braddon came into the room, a newspaper in his hand. He put down the newspaper on the desk. ‘I was talking to an old mate of mine, sir, who’s up at H.Q., working directly under Detective Chief Superintendent Menton. Apparently Mr. Menton was having a chat with his nephew over the phone one day about the case concerning Mr. Percy Selby and Mr. Menton was saying . . .’ Braddon coughed and looked quickly at Fusil. ‘Well, this mate of mine comes from Penpotter, in Cornwall, and his mother sends him the local paper every week. In last Thursday’s paper he noted an announcement which he reckoned might interest us on account of what he heard Mr. Menton saying . . . It’s under the heading of Penpotter, sir.’

  Fusil read that the members of the church choir had presented Miss Angela Gilmore, who had sung in the choir for twenty-one years, with an antique silver candlestick to mark her coming marriage to Mr. Percy Selby, who until recently had been living in Fortrow.

  Fusil looked up. If this was the same Percy Selby, and who could really believe otherwise?, then here surely had to be the motive for murder. Ironic to think that Yarrow’s criticisms of his D.I.—Braddon’s cough had been an explicit one—had led to the disclosure.

  ‘Get a positive identification,’ he said. ‘Then we’re going to have to work out how.’

  *

  Mr. and Mrs. Barley had gone out for the evening to visit friends, but for once Kerr was not taking advantage of their absence.

  ‘John,’ Helen said, after a long silence, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘In a nutshell, I’m so ashamed of myself that I feel like blowing out my brains,’ Kerr answered.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  He told her how he had had to betray Valerie’s confidence and the terrible distress she had suffered as a consequence.

  Helen’s pity was immediate, since it was in her nature to suffer vicariously. ‘It must be ghastly for her.’

  He gestured with his hands. ‘What alternative had I? If her husband is in with the bank mob . . .’

  ‘But you’ve just said you felt certain he wasn’t.’

  ‘I was talking about before today. The evidence says there can’t be much doubt he blew the strong-room in the bank at Portesgate. The only thing is . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Suppose everything he told her is the truth. Then the odds are he was forced into blowing the safe at Portesgate.’

  ‘How are you going to discover what is the truth?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s Fusil’s pigeon.’

  She spoke sharply. ‘It’s no good leaving everything to him—you’ve got to find out for yourself.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘She confided in you and asked for your help and what you did in reply was to use her information to hurt her husband. Now, you’ve got to try and help her and make up for what happened.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t do anything on my own with Fusil in charge. He’d chop my neck off.’

  ‘But I thought you were worried about this poor, desperate woman?’

  ‘It’s just not that simple. Look, I can’t . . .’

  ‘Can’t. Is that the word you’d keep using if I needed help?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t understand . . .’ She stopped, then looked at him with her brown eyes filled with an expression of pleading. ‘Please, John. Think what it would be like if it was me in such awful trouble.’

  He slowly stood up.

  ‘I knew you’d go and help her.’

  As he drove in the C.I.D. Hillman from Prior Lane to Entington, Kerr became more and more gloomily convinced that thanks to Helen’s emotional attitude he was behaving like the original village idiot. What would Fusil have to say about a D.C. who was stupid enough for the second time—on this occasion on his own initiative—to make direct contact with the main suspect? . . . Could he drive around for a while and then return to Helen and say he’d done all he could, but to no effect? She’d never learn it was a lie. But he couldn’t lie to her.

  When he parked in front of the Downrings’ house there was a light on in the downstairs front room. He walked quickly up the front path and knocked on the door.

  Downring opened the door and when he saw Kerr his expression tightened, he hunched his shoulders, and he balled his fists.

  ‘Mind if I come in?’ asked Kerr.

  Downring looked past him, expecting to see a second detective.

  Kerr stepped inside. The door was slammed shut with unnecessary force. Downring’s hatred had almost a physical intensity to it and Kerr was under no illusions about how thin was the other’s self-control.

  ‘You splits can’t leave a guy alone, can you?’ said Downring, his vo
ice thick. ‘Kick him where you know it hurts, hammer him until he’s in the nearest nick.’

  ‘I’m here to try and help you.’

  ‘You’re what? D’you think I’m right soft? . . . Here, Val,’ he shouted.

  She stepped into the hall and stared at Kerr with a hostility at least as great as her husband’s.

  ‘D’you know what they’re up to now, Val? He’s come to help. A bleeding split with a kind heart!’

  Kerr chose his words with the greatest care. ‘I believe you did have something to do with both bank jobs, but were forced into helping.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘On top of that, I think you’ve also been picked out as the fall guy—which was why your handkerchief and the thread from your coat were in the bank vault.’

  Valerie’s expression had changed. Gone was the open hatred and now she looked at Kerr with intense perplexity.

  ‘I ain’t been near neither job,’ said Downring loudly.

  ‘If you won’t give me the facts, I can’t help you.’

  ‘Tell you the time of day and you’ll nick me.’

  ‘I swear you can trust me.’

  ‘Do what? I’d as soon borrow a million quid from an Ikey.’

  Valerie spoke in a low voice. ‘What made you come here at this time of night?’

  Kerr looked straight at her. ‘I was with my fiancée and she wanted to know why I was so upset. I said it was because of the terrible distress you were suffering. She said I’d got to come out here to try all I could to help you.’

  Valerie said: ‘Tell him, Conrad.’ She knew there was no real alternative although she was against putting her trust in a man who had betrayed it.

  Downring hesitated, moved uneasily from foot to foot, and kept looking at her.

  ‘For me and Lindy,’ she murmured.

  He turned suddenly and went into the front room, where he stood with his back to the fire. In harsh, violent terms, he told Kerr all that had happened, hiding nothing about his part in the bank raid at Portesgate.

  ‘You’ve no idea who the mob are?’ asked Kerr.

  Downring shook his head.

  ‘Or who could be trying to put you on the spot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you crossed someone hard, some time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can help, can’t you?’ Valerie demanded desperately.

  ‘I’ll do all I can,’ Kerr answered. He turned and put the question a second time to Downring. ‘There must be someone who’s got cause to hate you enough to fix you?’

  ‘D’you think I ain’t spent hours trying to think who the bastard is so I can smash him?’

  ‘Can there be a lead through Joe Cannon?’

  ‘That creep? Forget it.’

  ‘Not even though you were in the same cell with him in Fortrow nick?’

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve bunked with him, not nohow: sooner have spent time in chokey. He was a brown hatter.’

  ‘Yet I’m sure there must be some sort of lead there. . . . Did none of the voices of the bank mob sound familiar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The man who guarded you was called Wings and he limped slightly?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There’ll be a lead there.’

  Downring made no comment.

  ‘Were they real professionals?’

  ‘They were in the big league. Cool, smart, organised.’

  ‘Describe the boss.’

  ‘Large, my size. Tough. No one tried to argue with him.’

  ‘Could you get any impression of his face under the stocking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you notice any peculiar physical characteristics?’

  ‘He was left-handed, but that’s all.’

  ‘And what about the others?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did their style of work tell you anything?’

  ‘Only they was good.’

  ‘Did you meet up with many big mobs when you were working?’

  ‘All my blow jobs were for big mobs, but this wasn’t any of ’em.’

  Had he learned a single fact of any value? wondered Kerr.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Detective Sergeant Braddon rang his opposite number in the division which covered the village of Penpotter and asked if the other detective sergeant had made an identification?

  ‘It’s your Percy Selby, all right. We showed the photo to three of the local tradespeople and each of ’em identified him immediately.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. What can you tell us about Miss Gilmore?’

  ‘She’s thirty-five, not bad-looking, and no one quite knows why she hasn’t been married before since she’s an only child and her parents are rolling in the necessary. Seems like the parents didn’t take much of a shine to Selby, but Angela Gilmore is a determined woman and she’s also a fair amount of money in her own right. Still, the parents did pin Selby down and that’s when the engagement was announced. In the district, he’s always been known as a widower.’

  ‘What was the date of the engagement?’

  ‘Back in May: the fourteenth.’

  Four months before the fire and the moment when Selby did in fact become a widower, thought Braddon. ‘Does anyone know what he’s doing between now and the wedding?’

  ‘He’s living in the next village.’

  Braddon thanked the other for the information and rang off. He went through to Fusil’s room and reported.

  Fusil leaned back in his chair. ‘So he murdered his wife because he wanted something younger, healthier, softer, and richer. But how? How did he set fire to the house when we can be certain he was hundreds of miles away and hadn’t been near the place for six weeks?’

  ‘Some sort of mechanical device set under the floorboards and stacked up with something highly inflammable.’

  Fusil spoke with obvious impatience. ‘We’ve covered all this ground before. What mechanical device can you think up that comes into operation weeks after it’s set and at a time when she’s bound to be in bed? Whatever you do with a clock, you can’t make it operate in more than twelve hours’—exceptionally twenty-four—time and not before.’

  ‘Yet it’s got to be a timing device . . . And you remember Miss Johnson saying that Mrs. Selby had been complaining she couldn’t find her electric clock?’

  ‘Of course I remember,’ lied Fusil. When it seemed impossible Selby could have murdered his wife, a missing clock had been of no consequence. But now that they could be virtually certain he had murdered her because they had discovered the motive, a missing clock had to assume an importance. But still the problem remained—how to make the clock operate an incendiary bomb only after weeks? He spoke with renewed impatience. ‘We’re overlooking something. For any mechanical device to work it either had to be going all the time and yet only start the fire weeks later—which can’t be on—or it was set in motion weeks afterwards. What do you do in a house at intervals of weeks, early in the morning, when you’re fast asleep? . . . That’s bloody mad on the face of it,’ he said.

  Braddon, showing an ease of manner that never bordered on familiarity, hooked over a chair with his foot and sat down.

  ‘Something must have changed, making Mrs. Selby use electricity which until then she hadn’t. Yet that still doesn’t . . .’ Fusil stopped.

  After a while, Braddon said: ‘The weather changed, didn’t it? I seem to remember it got cold all of a sudden.’

  Fusil stared at him for several seconds and then suddenly slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘By God, the temperature! We know Mrs. Selby was always complaining about the cold and so she’d respond immediately to a change in the weather—which had to come in September or early October. And there were two storage heaters in the rubble under her bedroom so that it’s more than likely that one of ’em came from upstairs.’ Fusil stood up and began to pace the floor.

  Braddon watched him.

  Fusil came to a stop. ‘Selby left this country in the middle
of August when it was hot. He knew he wouldn’t be returning until middle or late October, by which time there must have been a spell of much colder weather. His wife felt the cold to an unusual degree and the first thing she’d do on a change of weather would be to turn on the electric storage heaters . . . How did he make certain the fire would start when she was in bed? Obviously, he linked up the storage heater in the bedroom with the missing electric clock to activate a fire bomb of some sort. The cold spell started on the twenty-first of September, the storage heaters were switched on, and . . .’ He stopped speaking and returned to his chair. ‘How did he know at what time of the day the storage heaters would be switched on, which he had to know to start the fire to catch her in bed?’

  He almost immediately answered his own question. ‘He didn’t have to, of course. Storage heaters work on off-peak electricity, with their own time clocks. There’s usually a boost period around mid-day and then they come on for several hours early on in the evening. So he set the clock to start the fire at a predetermined number of hours after the storage heaters began to work. If the heaters were switched on in time to catch the mid-day boost, the clock would work for two hours, then stop until it started again in the evening. If it didn’t catch the mid-day boost, it just kept going until firing time.’

  Fusil pulled the nearer telephone to him, dialled county H.Q. and spoke to an assistant in the forensic laboratory. What method of arson was the most foolproof with such a long interval of time before it had to be put in operation? The assistant suggested an electric bulb of high wattage wrapped in chiffon, which would quickly raise a temperature of five hundred degrees. The bulb could be surrounded by celluloid which ignited at three hundred and fifty degrees.

  Fusil replaced the receiver. ‘Get Yarrow pounding the pavements, looking for shops that supplied Selby with a high-wattage bulb, electric cable, electric connections, celluloid, or any other readily ignitable substance.’

  ‘That’ll be a long, boring task for just one man,’ observed Braddon.

  *

  Kerr telephoned Records for the third time at mid-day. ‘Any joy yet?’

  ‘Haven’t you blokes in Fortrow anything better to do than worry the guts out of us?’ grumbled the sergeant.