by Rennie Airth
The assistant commissioner directed Sinclair to the polished oak table by the windows where he was in the habit of conducting his business conferences: gatherings which these days seemed to involve only tortuous bureaucratic wrangling. As they sat down facing each other, Sir Wilfred observed, not without a pang, his visitor’s clear grey eyes and air of alertness. Despite having turned sixty, Angus Sinclair looked like a man who still had an appetite for his work.
There was a knock on the door and the chief superintendent entered. He was a heavy-set man in his mid-fifties, blunt-featured and sporting a suntan.
‘Good morning, Holly. Welcome back.’ Bennett rose and shook his hand. ‘I trust you had a good holiday.’
‘Thank you, sir. The weather was excellent. I always say there’s no place quite like the Scilly Isles at this time of year.’ The chief super’s soft burr betrayed his rural origins. For years now the Met had done much of its recruiting in the West Country, considering native-born Londoners too fly and streetwise, too clever by half to be suitable for training as policemen. Sturdy country men with open, malleable minds, on the other hand, were regarded as ideal material, and Chief Superintendent Holly was a prime example of the breed.
‘My word, Arthur, you’ve put on weight.’ Sinclair eyed his colleague askance. ‘I shall have to speak to Ethel. We must get you on a diet.’
Holly blushed. He was now the senior superintendent on the force and nominally Sinclair’s superior. But he could never forget that he had once worked under the chief inspector; had felt the sting of his sometimes acid tongue and striven to earn his approval. It was several years now since Angus Sinclair had declined any further promotion, letting it be known that he was satisfied with the rank of chief inspector. There were five such officers on the Yard’s strength and they had something of the cachet of specialists, being held in reserve to handle the most difficult and challenging investigations. Holly was relieved that Sinclair chose to call him by his first name and knew from bitter experience that when the chief inspector wished to correct him he would address him as ‘sir’.
‘So you went down to Guildford last Sunday, did you?’ Bennett had waited until they were all settled before speaking. Pale of face, with dark, thinning hair, he had a quick, decisive manner that mirrored the mind behind it. ‘I hope you trod carefully, Chief Inspector.’
‘As though on eggshells, sir.’ Sinclair opened his file. ‘Jim Boyce is an old friend. We agreed to treat my visit as unofficial.’
‘I can sleep easy, then, can I? I won’t open the newspaper tomorrow and read that Scotland Yard detectives have been prowling the Home Counties uninvited.’ Bennett spoke with a smile. He’d developed a warm regard over the years for the dapper chief inspector. They had not only cooperated on cases in the past, they were also allies in a broader sense, having laboured, each in his own sphere, to bring the institution for which they worked into the modern world, a task which Sir Wilfred had been known to compare with trying to move a reluctant mule.
Sinclair made no comment, merely lifting an eyebrow in response. It so happened that the file he was holding, with its sheaf of neatly typed pages, was the fruit of an initiative which he and the assistant commissioner had jointly pursued some years previously. Scotland Yard now boasted a registry where civilian staff compiled dossiers of cases from material supplied by detectives, sparing the latter this time-consuming chore.
‘Guildford?’ Arthur Holly frowned. ‘That rings a bell. Wasn’t there a child murdered in the district recently? I seem to remember reading something about it in the newspaper.’
‘Yes, a young girl. She was raped and strangled. It happened while you were away.’ Bennett settled himself in his chair. ‘The chief inspector drew my attention to it. There are aspects of the murder which he feels can’t be ignored.’ He gestured to Sinclair, inviting him to continue.
‘It was the nature of the crime, Arthur, as well as the circumstances.’ Sinclair addressed his remarks to his colleague. ‘The injuries inflicted on the child’s body after death were unusually severe. Her face was destroyed, demolished in fact. After due consideration, the pathologist determined that the killer used a hammer for this purpose, a stonemason’s tool, to judge by measurements taken of the imprint.’
‘My God!’ The shock showed on Holly’s face. ‘I’ve not heard of that before.’
‘Among the various conclusions one might draw from such an act, the most disturbing to me is that the assault appears to have been planned in advance. If he had a hammer with him, he must have intended to use it. It’s one of the reasons why I believe this crime merits our attention. There may be more to it than meets the eye.’
Silence followed his words. After a moment’s pause, the chief inspector continued, ‘For the present, all I can tell you is that the Surrey police are actively searching for a tramp in connection with the assault, a man whose travelling name is Beezy. He was known to have been in the wood where the girl’s body was found round about the time she was killed. His description has been circulated in Surrey and the surrounding counties, and to the Metropolitan Police, as well.’
‘What do we know about him?’ Holly asked.
‘A fair amount.’ Sinclair drew a page from his file. ‘I received this information from Guildford yesterday. His real name is Harold Beal. He’s a Londoner by origin and once had a job as an insurance clerk. Twelve years ago his wife died suddenly. He began to drink heavily, lost his job and finally took to the road. He’s been a tramp ever since, and, like many of them, a man of habit. Until this year he used to spend his summers in Kent, working on farms there, returning to London for the winter. He’s been found drunk and disorderly a number of times and has one other conviction on his record. Last year he was convicted in a Canterbury magistrate’s court of indecent exposure.’
‘Was he, now?’ Holly sat up. ‘What do you make of that?’ And when Sinclair failed to respond at once. ‘It’s a pointer, isn’t it?’
‘It could be. But I’m not sure.’ The chief inspector eased a muscle in his back. ‘Petty sexual offenders are ten a penny, after all. Between unbuttoning your flies in public and what was done to that poor girl, there’s a vast distance. An enormous leap.’
‘True. But they all start somewhere.’ The chief superintendent pursued his point. ‘Look at the record of any serious offender, Angus, and chances are you’ll find he was once a peeping Tom, or something of the kind.’
‘I accept that.’ Sinclair nodded. ‘But let me tell you a little more about Beal’s case. A Canterbury schoolmistress alleged that he exposed himself on a public road while she was walking by with a crocodile of schoolgirls. Beal said in court that he was simply relieving himself and hadn’t been aware of their approach. He claimed to be hard of hearing, which seems borne out by the court record. He kept asking for questions to be repeated. On the face of it, I’d say it was a charge that should never have been brought, but the magistrate found him guilty and sentenced him to two months’ imprisonment. It’s there on the record.’ The chief inspector tapped the file with his forefinger. ‘I don’t dismiss it, Arthur.’ He caught the chief super’s eye.
‘Perhaps that’s why Beezy chose to come to Surrey this year instead of going to Kent,’ Bennett remarked dryly. ‘Wherever he is now he must wish he hadn’t. What does Boyce think? Does he believe this tramp is their man?’
‘Not as strongly as he did at first. Not after hearing John Madden’s views on the subject.’
‘Madden?’ Holly’s eyebrows shot up. ‘How does he come to be involved?’
‘He happened to be the one who found the body. He was helping the local bobby search the wood. I had a word with him in Highfield on Sunday.’
‘Good man, John Madden.’ The chief super rumbled his approval. ‘You should never have let him go, Angus.’
‘I can’t imagine why you think I had any say in the matter.’ Stung by the remark, the chief inspector responded sharply. ‘It was his wife who persuaded him to quit the force. I d
on’t believe you’ve ever met her, Arthur.’
‘I have,’ Bennett chipped in. ‘At a dinner party in London a few years back. I remember the occasion well. It was soon after Parliament had agreed to allow women into the civil service at last and I asked her if she was pleased by the vote. “Speechless with gratitude”, was her reply, but I don’t think she meant it.’ He chuckled. ‘Dashed fine-looking woman, too… So Madden saw the murder site? What did he make of it? I take it he doesn’t hold with the tramp theory?’
Sinclair shook his head. He tugged thoughtfully at an earlobe. ‘Madden’s always had a way of seeing things clearly, of seeing through them, or rather beyond them. I used to think it was a kind of sixth sense when we worked together, but now I wonder if it isn’t just that he understands what he sees better than most. The meaning of it…’ He shrugged. ‘No, Madden doesn’t believe Beezy murdered that young girl. When he saw the child’s face, what remained of it, he got the scent of another kind of killer. One that may be much harder to track down.’
‘Why so?’
‘He thought the damage inflicted on the girl’s features was deliberate, the work of a man who might have done that sort of thing before, rather than the aberration of some old tramp who’s come across an unsupervised child and suddenly taken leave of his senses. What’s more the pathologist’s findings tend to support his view.’
Holly scowled. ‘I’m not aware of any recent crime that fits this pattern, Angus. Have you found something in the files?’
‘No, nothing.’ The chief inspector shook his head. ‘Not even a hint of a connection, I’m afraid. But that’s not quite the end of the story. Something else has come to my attention, a straw in the wind, you might say, but I feel I should share it with you.’
Holly and Bennett exchanged glances.
‘Please do,’ the assistant commissioner said dryly.
Sinclair eyed his two listeners.
‘Three years ago – in July of 1929, to be precise – a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Susan Barlow went missing in Henley-on-Thames. Her body wasn’t discovered until this year: six weeks ago, in fact. She’d been presumed drowned in the river – the last sighting of her was near the bank – and her body was recovered from the water. It had got trapped in an inlet under a log which itself was wedged into the bank. Needless to say, the girl’s corpse was in an advanced state of decomposition.’
‘You’re not telling us she’d been raped.’ Holly scowled. ‘Surely they couldn’t know that.’
‘Indeed not. Nor whether she’d been strangled, if we’re going to compare it with the Brookham crime. Lodged in fresh water, the flesh would have turned into adipocere after only six months. But her face told a different story.’
‘Was it damaged?’ The chief superintendent’s features darkened.
‘Beyond question. But not to the same extent as at Brookham, which may be an important point. The nose and one of the cheekbones had been fractured and the skull cracked.’
There was silence for some moments. ‘Yes, but a body lying in the water that long… there might be any number of ways injuries like that could be caused,’ Holly growled.
‘It’s a mystery, certainly,’ Sinclair acknowledged. ‘One which is exercising the minds of the Oxfordshire police as we speak. I should tell you, too, that we’ve not been officially informed of this matter. No murder inquiry has been instituted. I heard of it by chance.’
He paused, squaring a piece of paper from his file on the table in front of him, then turned to Bennett.
‘Do you know who I mean by George Ransom, sir? He’s a pathologist at St Mary’s in Paddington.’
‘I’m familiar with the name.’
‘I bumped into him by chance this week and he told me about the body taken from the river at Henley. He offered it more as a curiosity than anything else, but with the Brookham case fresh in my mind, I pricked up my ears. How Ransom came to hear about it was through a dinner he’d attended, some annual medical get-together. You might think it a curious mealtime subject, even for pathologists, but he happened to be sitting next to the doctor who’d performed the autopsy – an Oxford medico named Stanley – so he got the whole story. Stanley said he was convinced the injuries were caused by blows struck to the face – he marked half a dozen at least from the bone evidence – which points to an assault. He told Ransom the Oxfordshire police were holding back for the moment, looking for another explanation.’ Sinclair rubbed his chin. ‘I can’t blame them. We don’t seek out murder, do we?’ He glanced at his listeners. ‘We look for a natural explanation first. But it’s hard to find one in this case, or so Stanley thinks.’
‘River traffic?’ Bennett shifted in his chair. ‘That’s a busy stretch of the Thames. Half the year round it’s jammed with pleasure craft.’
‘A boat’s propeller, you’re thinking, sir? It would have to be several blows.’ Sinclair nodded. ‘They’ve considered that. But Stanley gave it as his opinion that the marks on the bones weren’t consistent with the shape of propeller blades. He wouldn’t go beyond that.’
‘What about a paddle steamer?’ the chief super suggested.
‘It’s the Thames, sir, not the Mississippi.’
Crushed, Holly muttered, ‘Still there must be other things that could have caused it. We can’t be sure it’s murder.’
‘No, we can’t. That’s true.’
‘And aren’t there are two quite separate questions here?’ The chief superintendent’s tone was gruff. He’d not yet recovered his poise. ‘First, was it murder at all? And second, is it connected to the Brookham assault?’
‘Quite right, Arthur.’ Sinclair sought to soothe his superior. ‘And I’m not for a moment insisting that it is. But we can’t ignore the common factors in these cases: I mean the ages of the girls involved and the damage inflicted to their faces.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, there’s a problem with the time lag, as well. A gap of three years between crimes of this type is most unusual. I’m having a check made of prison records on the off chance that he may have been inside during this period – that’s assuming it’s the same man – but I’m not overly optimistic. I’m sure if he’d been arrested for a serious sexual offence we would have heard about it by now.’
He caught the assistant commissioner’s eye. ‘That’s all for the present, sir.’
‘Good.’ Bennett glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve another meeting in five minutes. But let’s see if we can reach some interim conclusions before we part.’
Rising, he went to the window and stood there, hands on hips, gazing out. The other two watched him in silence.
‘The tramp’s still the key, isn’t he? Beezy? We must wait till they find him, I think. Until he’s been interviewed, until we know whether he’s responsible for the Brookham murder. The Surrey police are quite capable of handing a straightforward inquiry, if that’s what this turns out to be. I don’t want the Yard butting in and seeming to steal their thunder. All the same, I want to be kept informed of the progress of the investigation. They’ve no objection to the interest we’re showing, I take it?’ He glanced over his shoulder.
‘Quite the contrary,’ Sinclair assured him. He closed his file. ‘After listening to Madden, Jim Boyce is as nervous as a cat. Any hint that the case might stretch beyond his domain and he’ll be on the phone to me.’
‘Still, you seem unsatisfied, Chief Inspector.’
‘Oh, no, sir. Not that.’ Sinclair shed the frown his superior had noticed. ‘By all means let them search for Beezy. What’s more, if he can be shown to have been the killer, I’d be inclined to let the whole matter drop, at least as far as the Yard is concerned.’
‘You don’t think he could have been involved in the Henley business?’
‘Hardly. Beal’s a man in his fifties. He’s known to have spent these past ten summers in Kent. I can’t see him suddenly transporting himself to Oxfordshire.’ Sinclair shook his head. ‘No, if Beezy’s their man, I’d be disposed to let this inquiry lapse.’
The chief inspector sighed. ‘It’s what Madden thinks that worries me. He feels we’ve only touched the surface of this case: that there’ll be worse to come. And if past experience is anything to go by, I have to tell you his instincts in these matters are usually right.’
9
The Maddens’ house stood at the end of a drive shaded by lime trees. Alerted by the sound of the approaching car, Helen was waiting in the portico to greet Sinclair when he drew up in front.
‘Angus… how lovely to see you.’
She was wearing an apron, the sleeves of her white blouse rolled to the elbow, and as they exchanged kisses, the chief inspector was prompted to reflect that in years gone by, when Helen’s father was still alive and sharing the house with his daughter and son-in-law, visitors had invariably been met at the door by a uniformed maid: the times were indeed changing.
‘Mary’s busy in the kitchen helping Mrs Beck,’ she explained, as though in answer to his unspoken thought. ‘We’ve been bottling all morning. Come inside. I’ve got a surprise for you. Franz Weiss is here. He’s spending a few days with us.’
‘Is he really?’ Sinclair’s face brightened at the name. A psychoanalyst of note, Weiss had been a friend of Helen’s late father. Born in Vienna, but now living in Berlin, he was a man for whom the chief inspector felt not only affection, but uncommon respect. ‘I had no idea. How is the good doctor?’
‘Well enough, but worried. The situation in Germany’s so unsettled. They should never have left Vienna.’
She drew him into the house and they passed through the hall to the drawing room.
‘Come outside. He’s waiting to see you.’
As they stepped out on to the stone-flagged terrace, a figure emerged from the shade of the vine-covered arbour that stood at one end of it. White-haired, and somewhat stooped now – he was in his early seventies – Franz Weiss paused in his tracks to bow with old-world courtesy.