by John Creasey
Gideon’s heart dropped. “More?”
“Four more.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You’ve got enough on your plate.”
Gideon let that pass. “Where did they happen?”
“Different parts of London. There’s worse.”
“What?”
“One of our chaps had a hand blown off, and was blinded. He was trying to stop the explosion.”
Quite suddenly, Gideon went cold. Few things were more precious to him than the security and safety of his men, and this news came so unexpectedly that it hurt badly. It was several seconds before he asked, “Where did that happen?”
“St. Ethelreda’s, Wembley.”
“On the hill?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About eleven o’clock.”
Just after Kate had come in, Gideon remembered.
“A couple canoodling in the churchyard heard it, and sent for our chaps. They found Davies—”
“The injured constable?”
“Yes. Got him into hospital within twenty minutes.”
“Isn’t there any doubt about the injury to his eyes?”
Lemaitre answered wearily, “No, George.” He sat down on the arm of a chair opposite the desk. “I’ve just come from the hospital. Saw his wife there - plucky woman. I promised her we’d see she’s all right.”
“All right,” Gideon echoed bitterly.
“You know what I mean.”
“Sure you do. Anything to help us find who did it?”
“Nothing to help with any one of the four,” Lemaitre said. “George, I could do with a cuppa.”
“Sorry,” Gideon said. He lifted a telephone. “Tea, in a pot, and some breakfast for Mr. Lemaitre. Make it snappy.” He rang off before there was time for an answer and picked up a box of cigarettes kept for visitors. Lemaitre took one, and lit up. “Four separate crimes. Timing?”
“Two were undoubtedly short-time fuses, as in all probability were the others. The explosions were all within ten or fifteen minutes of eleven o’clock, so we must assume there were four different men.” When Gideon hesitated, Lemaitre drew deeply on the cigarette and said, “Okay, okay, or women.”
“None of them seen?”
“A car was heard to start off after each explosion, but that doesn’t mean much,” Lemaitre said. “No one’s come forward to say they saw prowlers about. There’s one thing, though. We found a girl who saw a man walk away from St. Denys the night before last. He was a small fellow wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella. She thinks he drove off in a pale-coloured Morris 1000. A pale-coloured Morris 1000 was seen parked in St. Ethelreda’s Road last night. I’m following that up.”
Gideon said heavily, “Four different churches at the same time. Lem, what have we struck? I hope to God—” He broke off.
Lemaitre frowned. “Now what?”
“Was it a mistake for me to go to St. Denys yesterday morning?”
“When it was on your route to the Yard? Been damned fishy if you hadn’t.”
Gideon said, “Something seems to have quickened the pace and worsened the nature of the crimes.” Frowning, concentrating, he was irritated when Lemaitre grinned.
“Jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?” Lemaitre quipped.
“What?”
“How do you know this is the same series of crimes? Could be imitative - these are much worse than any of the crimes on the Dean’s list.”
Gideon stared, then began to smile.
“You win,” he said. “We need to check a lot of things.” Before he could go on, the door opened and an elderly messenger brought in Lemaitre’s breakfast and an extra cup. Gideon motioned to a table beneath one wall and the messenger put the tray down. “Tuck in,” Gideon said, feeling hungry at the sight of bacon and eggs, sausages and fried bread. He poured himself a cup of tea and went to his own chair. “Morris 1000, and a man in a bowler hat carrying an umbrella. There must be thousands of the first and tens of thousands of the second. We need—” He broke off. “What do you recommend Lem?”
“Double watch on all churches tonight,” Lemaitre said. “Can’t keep anything quiet any longer. If the Dean had come to us weeks ago, we might have stopped this kind of nonsense. As it is we must keep a special look out for light-coloured Morrises, a check on every man who goes in or out of a church after dark tonight, and make an examination of the residual ash of the dynamite and of the container. As a matter of fact that was made by Hecht and Hecht, of Watford.”
Gideon said, “Sure?”
“Certainly I’m sure. Quarry and demolition blasting dynamite, available quite freely. They’ve got several hundred customers in the London and the Home Counties, and a couple of dozen wholesalers.”
“We want every dealer checked.”
“I started that last night,” Lemaitre mumbled through a mouthful of food.
Gideon said, “Good. Had any sleep at all?”
“Nope.”
“Get home as soon as you can.”
Lemaitre said, “I hope that’s not an order, Commander. I want to be busy this morning.”
Gideon smiled at him faintly, and said at last, “Not an order, Lem.”
“Ta,” said Lemaitre, and after a pause he went on. “How’s Mr. Acting New Deputy Commander Mr. Basket Alec Bloody Hobbs getting on?”
“I’ll find out when he comes in.”
“He’s been in for an hour,” said Lemaitre. “Your henchmen really work these days, George. You can take it easy.”
Gideon didn’t answer but thought bleakly that he did not see any likelihood of taking anything easy until the church crimes were solved. If five men had been involved, why not fifteen? Or fifty? That seemed to him the most significant question, and against it, all other investigations seemed negligible, for there was no telling where the sacrilege would stop.
So far, only the smaller churches had been seriously damaged. There was no guarantee that cathedrals were immune.
At that moment, a man of medium height and build was sitting at a kneehole desk in a large room in a flat overlooking Westminster Cathedral. There was coffee and toast on a tray at his left hand and a book open in front of him. The book, entitled The Churches of London, was open at the E section. In red ink, he placed a tick against St. Ethelreda’s, Wembley, and then turned the pages to the G section, and ticked off St. Giles, Camberwell. Next he marked St. Olaf s, Charlton, and finally St. Colomb’s, Putney. He was a pale, thin-faced man, with bony hands and anaemic-looking fingernails; the ink showed up darkly against an almost transparent colourlessness.
In all, there were two thousand churches, chapels, and synagogues listed, under the headings:
Church of England
Roman Catholic
Free Churches
Foreign Churches
Synagogues
Of the two thousand, only the four now marked off and St. Denys, Kensington, were ticked. He ran his eye down each list until his pen came to rest at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The pen hovered, then moved down a line to St. Paul’s, Clapham, and he wrote the name of this on a slip of paper, then seven more church names, each on a separate slip. He took eight plain envelopes from a drawer in the desk and addressed each to a different man, at an address in London. He slipped the names of the churches in these envelopes, sealed and stamped them.
Not once did he smile; not once did he pause on his way to a post box opposite the tall red tower of the Cathedral.
13: ANXIETY
Gideon knew that it would not be long before Scott-Marie wanted to know more about the raids on the churches and expected an urgent call from the Dean of St. Ludd’s. He ran through the reports which had accumulated during the night and that morning, then called Hobbs, who was still in his office on the floor above.
“Come down, Alec, will you.”
“Yes, at once.” Hobbs never wasted a word.
He was in Gideon’s office less than five minutes lat
er, alert-looking, immaculate as ever, somehow very different from any other detective Gideon had known. He managed to make Gideon feel momentarily ill at ease.
‘Td like you to do the briefing again,” Gideon said, and handed three files across his desk. “Seen Rollo’s latest?”
“No.”
“Henry Rhodes was shot in the back. There’ll be a post mortem this morning but Rollo says the wound was the cause of death. Signs of a motorcycle which had stood in a hedge near the gate where the body was found are the only clue. A little oil had leaked - Castrol 30. Rollo’s down at Southend, and Golightly’s handling the London end. The most important thing is to find out whether Sally Dalby visited Rhodes, and whether hers is one of the photographs on the cellar walls. Also, we want to interview the girl friend in whom Sally Dalby confided that she was going to model for a photographer.” Gideon paused, Hobbs nodded, and Gideon said, “All the rest speak for themselves.”
“One thing,” Hobbs said.
“Yes?”
“Golightly wants to know whether you want Entwhistle pulled in yet, or let him sweat.”
“Nothing else in?”
“No.”
“Let him sweat,” Gideon said.
In fact, Entwhistle was sleeping off the whisky.
Eric Greenwood, in a much brighter frame of mind, reached the office of Cox and Shielding earlier than usual, even before Bessie Smith. He dealt with a lot of shipments which he had neglected the day before, from Persian and Indian carpets to Chinese jade and rose quartz, ivory from Hong Kong and opals from Australia. When Essie came in, nose and cheeks an innocent gloss, he dictated at twice his usual speed. Twenty-five minutes later he said, “That’s the lot, Bessie.”
“I must say it’s plenty,” she said complainingly. “And I’m not at my brightest this morning.”
“You look fine,” Greenwood said heartily. “What’s the trouble?”
“I was up half the night, with—”
“I didn’t think it of you,” Greenwood interrupted with pretended shock.
Bessie sniggered dutifully. “As a matter of fact, the church opposite me was one of the four that were damaged last night - you know, St. Ethelreda’s. Didn’t you read about it?”
Greenwood said, “No, I’ve hardly looked at my newspaper.” He opened it, and read the headlines:
POLICEMAN BLINDED IN CHURCH EXPLOSION
FOUR ALTARS BLOWN UP
He scowled, his lips set tightly, and there was righteous anger in his eyes.
“The sons of Satan,” he said hotly.
“They’re devils, that’s what they are,” muttered Bessie. “Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? And where will they strike next, that’s what I want to know. The police don’t seem to have a clue.”
“The police? They’re no damned good,” Greenwood said.
He did not even look to see if there was anything new in the paper about Margaret Entwhistle’s death; it was almost as if he felt that he had received absolution, and the burden and the fear of his crime had been taken from him.
In the course of the morning, most of the department managers mentioned the church explosions. . .
In fact, during that morning, most of London talked about them. Overnight, it seemed, Londoners had become more church-conscious than they had been for fifty years. The blinding of P.C. Davies was mentioned with horrified sympathy, while the sacrilege at the churches was discussed with shock, shame, or anger. Vergers, priests, and churchwardens found their aisles thronged, the clink and rustle of money going into the offertory boxes was trebled and quadrupled, and churches which seldom saw a visitor had many throughout the day. The damaged churches were besieged with newspapermen and tourists.
At Wembley Hospital, Mrs. Davies sat and waited for news of the operation which would mean life or death to her husband. Her children were with their grandmother.
At Lewisham, Entwhistle’s mother-in-law had her grandchildren with her.
At their small suburban house, Sally Dalby’s mother and father were answering the questions which Golightly put to them.
All over London, the work of the police went on; and at Scotland Yard, Gideon, Lemaitre and Dean Howcroft met together in Gideon’s room.
Howcroft looked older and more frail.
Lemaitre, his eyes glassy and red-rimmed, had shaved, changed his shirt, and put on a blue and white spotted bow tie. He managed to look almost fresh.
Gideon, direct from Scott-Marie’s office, was at his grimmest.
“We do feel that some degree of priority is required for these crimes,” the Dean said, a note of reproof in his voice. “Unless we are assured you can give that we shall be very anxious indeed.”
“If you’d come to us weeks ago we might have found out enough to have stopped it,” Gideon remarked. “As it is, I think we’ve a major crisis on our hands. It will certainly get priority.”
The Dean, rebuked, spread his pale, brown-spotted hands.
“The obvious question is - which church or churches next,” Gideon went on. “Lemaitre is organizing the closest possible watch, but every church can’t be protected all the time without a lot of help.”
Lemaitre put in, “All the church authorities are being cooperative.”
Gideon nodded, and waited.
“What we can’t find is a common factor which might help us to anticipate the next churches likely to suffer,” Lemaitre said. “We’ve had a High Church, two Low Church Anglicans, a Roman Catholic and a Wesleyan. They’ve nothing in common in antiquity: one was built three hundred years ago, one only twenty-two years. They don’t seem to have a thing in common except that they’re churches.”
“Christian churches,” amended Dean Howcroft mildly.
“Of course they’re Christian, what else—” Lemaitre began, then stopped abruptly.
Gideon asked sharply, “What do you mean, Dean Howcroft?”
Again the old man spread his hands. “I was simply being specific,” he said. “The churches you mentioned are Christian.”
“Meaning, they’re not Jewish synagogues.”
“As you say, yes.”
“Nor are they Moslem mosques or Hindu temples,” Gideon went on. He looked forbidding, almost menacing. “I hope you won’t make a remark like that in the hearing of the Press.”
“My dear Commander, I stated a fact.”
“In a way which could be construed to carry an implication against the Jews or other religions,” said Gideon. “We’ve had far too much anti-Semitism in London. It’s died down a lot, and we don’t want it revived.”
Lemaitre fidgeted uncomfortably, sensing a conflict but unable to do a thing about it. Gideon, huge compared with the Dean, florid against the other’s pinkish pallor and silky white halo, sat glowering. The Dean met his gaze squarely, sternly unrepentant.
Utterly at a loss, Lemaitre said tentatively, “Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Of course they are,” said Gideon. “That is why we don’t want the wrong kind of slant.”
The Dean drew a long, slow breath. “Commander, I hope you are not refusing to consider every possibility?”
“All we can see are being considered.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. There is such a thing as anti-Semitism. And there are among the Jews young and fanatical individuals who hate the Christian church for it, just as there are fanatical, anti-Semitic Christians. We are not yet in an age of full religious tolerance.”
Gideon said, “There’s a lot of bitterness between High Church and Low in the Church of England. There are extremists in the Church of England as well as in the Roman Catholic Church. One group is no more suspect than another. If the Press gets hold of a remark like yours they may twist and distort it. Even a whisper could start a wave of religious hatred that could do great harm. Surely you can see that.”
Lemaitre had never seen Gideon so plainly angry, and now he kept silent, knowing that there was nothing he could usefully do.
Th
e Dean said, “Yes, Commander, I can indeed.”
“Then why—” Gideon began.
“Forgive me,” interrupted the Dean in a voice in which Gideon’s forgiveness seemed the very last thing for which he craved. “Perhaps my remark may be easier to accept if I explain at once that it was in fact a quotation from one of your own officers, heard this morning.”
Gideon felt as if he had been flung against a wall, the impact of that statement was so great. Lemaitre pressed his hands against his damp forehead. For a few seconds, no one spoke. Eventually, the Dean broke the silence.
“Commander, if we cannot solve this mystery quickly, there will be no stopping rumour of every kind. I am only too keenly aware that you should have been informed before, and deplore the fact that you were not. But - forgive me again - we have to deal with the situation as it is, not as it should be. Is there any clue?”
“None yet,” Gideon said, gruffly.
“I wouldn’t say that,” protested Lemaitre. “We know where the dynamite’s made. We’re on the ball there all right. We simply lack the motive.”
“Superintendent,” said the Dean, “there is no fanatic more dangerous than the religious fanatic. As Mr. Gideon has reminded us, there has been a long period of quiet on the issue of religious tolerance. This could bring that period abruptly to an end.”
Gideon said, “Dean Howcroft, are you being wholly frank?”
“In what way?”
“Do you have any reason to believe this is being done to stir up religious fanaticism?”
“I have no reason to believe it at all. It is an obvious possibility, however. The newspapers won’t fail to point it out, and gossip and rumour are no doubt already busy with it. If this were not enough, our churches, perhaps some of our most historic churches, are in danger of serious damage.” He paused, leaned forward, and asked earnestly, “Are you sure that nothing more can be done to find the perpetrators? Watching and guarding the churches is essential, of course, and invaluable - but the real preventative will be to remove the danger.”