From Murder To A Cathedral

by John Creasey

  “I’ve been at this game a long time,” Lemaitre said, picking his words very carefully. “The most difficult ones are the fanatics, the I’ll-die-for-a-cause type. If we’re dealing with that type, none of us will make ‘em talk. Not even the Gestapo could make ‘em. You’ll see.”

  “Probably,” Hobbs conceded.

  They were in his office, across the passage from Lemaitre’s and Gideon’s, with a view of the courtyard, the parked cars, and a corner of Cannon Row Police Station. It was a small, carpeted office, with a photograph of Hobbs’s wife on top of a bookcase and a clock over the mantelpiece. There were no pictures - although the C.I.D. chart showing the “family tree” of the Department, from the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner down, was centred on one wall. There was more than a touch of austerity, and nothing about the room, excepting the one photograph, was homely or personal.

  Lemaitre drew a deep breath. “You got any ideas?” he demanded.

  “Not at the moment,” Hobbs said. “If anything occurs to me, I’ll have a word with you.”

  “Do that.” Lemaitre put a hand on the door. “I’ll be out most of the afternoon. Going over to West Central, then up into the City. Gee-Gee’s worried about the Abbey and St. Paul’s.” He opened the door. “See you,” he said, and stepped out.

  He stood in the wide corridor for several seconds, watched curiously by a constable on duty in the hall and noticed by several inspectors and detective sergeants who passed. At last he went across to his own office and sat down. On his desk was a note: “Look in, Lem. —G.” For once, Lemaitre did not jump to a virtual command but stood at the window, glooming. He was becoming more and more worried about the undertone of criticism or disapproval that he sensed in Hobbs.

  “Be a bloody sight better if he’d come straight out with it and say he thinks I’m a clot,” he muttered.

  There was more to his mood than that. He knew that he was doing everything within his capacity on the church job, but he was beginning to feel out of his depth. He had a sense of impending crisis, a presentiment of danger. When he said that you could not make fanatics talk he knew what he was talking about, and the alarming growth of the sacrilege, the extremes to which its perpetrators were prepared to go, had all the indications of the worst kind of fanaticism. On the crest of a wave of optimism and achievement that morning, when the Divisional Superintendents had dispersed and he was on his own, Lemaitre now felt thoroughly depressed.

  Hobbs hadn’t helped.

  Hobbs never would. The fear of what would happen once he was a superior officer was deep in Lemaitre’s mind.

  “Better retire early, I suppose,” he muttered.

  There was a tap at the door. He spun round, as Golightly looked in.

  “Where’s Gee-Gee, Lem?”

  “Isn’t he in his office?”

  “No. I want a word before I finally pull Entwhistle in.”

  “Well, I don’t know where the great man is.”

  “Hobbs says go ahead without Gee-Gee. What do you think?”

  Lemaitre muttered, “Won’t do any harm. If you ask me, Entwhistle ought to have been charged a couple of days ago. Any special hurry?”

  “We had a tip-off that he’s planning to leave the country.”

  “Go get him, then,” said Lemaitre.

  Golightly, obviously satisfied, went out. Lemaitre tapped perfunctorily on Gideon’s communicating door and looked in: the office was empty. He fingered the “Look-in” note, said sotto voce, “It couldn’t have been very serious,” wrote across the note “Back six-ish” in his fine copperplate hand, and went out.

  Soon he was talking to church officials at St. Paul’s and the Superintendent-in-charge from the City Police, checking the security plans. North and West doors, all the chapels, all the altars, the pulpit, the font, the Whispering Gallery and the crypt where so many had worshiped were under constant supervision. His spirits rose. He left in better heart and reached Westminster Abbey, where he found the Superintendent from the Westminster Division. They made a slow, comprehensive tour, mingling unnoticed with parties of sightseers and their guides. Starting at the north entrance, they moved along the Statesmen’s Aisle, across to the south transept, passing the High Altar, with its magnificent mosaic of the Last Supper and the great carved stone screen. Wherever there was a thing of beauty or of antiquity, there were people, English and American, German and Japanese, travellers from all over the world, their guidebooks open, their cameras swinging. Past the poppy-framed tomb of the Unknown Warrior, past the memorial to Winston Churchill, beneath the great west window with its warrior figures, Lemaitre and his little party trod their vigilant way.

  The farther they went, the more troubled Lemaitre became.

  “It’s going to be a heck of a job,” he remarked.

  “We understand that, Superintendent,” said the gentle-voiced official with him, “but every spot is watched. We have a constant patrol going over the exact route we have taken, day and night. And we have watchers in the galleries, two men in the Henry VII chapel, two at St. Edward’s Shrine, four in the nave and the choir stalls. We also have a man in the Muniment Room and two in the Triforium Gallery. The watchers are in the guise of tourists, but each can be identified by the guide book he carries in his right hand - the only one with a green cover.”

  Lemaitre said to the Divisional man, “And our chaps?”

  “Eight dotted about inside, two at the north and west entrances. It couldn’t be covered more fully.”

  Lemaitre forced himself to give a satisfied and congratulatory smile. “Good. That’ll foil the beggars.”

  He thought: one stick of dynamite could do a hell of a lot of damage, though. My God, I wish I hadn’t taken this job on.

  It was twenty minutes to six when he left the Abbey, walked across to the Houses of Parliament and then along to the Yard.

  At twenty minutes to six, Chief Superintendent Percy Golightly looked into the face of Geoffrey Entwhistle and said with great precision: “It is my duty to charge you with the wilful murder of your wife, Margaret Entwhistle, and to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and later used in evidence.”

  Entwhistle said bitterly, “Okay, use it.”

  The sergeant with Golightly wrote swiftly in his shorthand notebook.

  “What do you mean?” Golightly demanded.

  “Use what I say. I didn’t kill her.”

  “That will be recorded.”

  “I don’t know who did kill her.”

  “That will be recorded.”

  “There’s a man wandering around London, laughing like hell at you and at me. He killed her.”

  “Your remark will be recorded.”

  “Oh, to hell with you,” rasped Entwhistle. “Let’s get going.”

  “You are at liberty at any time to call your solicitor,” Golightly said.

  As Entwhistle stepped into the police car which was to take him to Cannon Row Police Station, where he would spend the night before appearing in court next morning, Eric Greenwood walked briskly along Lower Thames Street. He passed the Custom House and Billingsgate Market, where only a few porters, wearing their solid topped hats and their striped aprons, worked on opening crates of frozen fish. He noticed the blueness of their hands, the harshness of their voices as their mallets smacked the marble slabs. Greenwood walked on, up a steep cobbled hill, to an odd-shaped church with threefold steeple. This was the Church of St. James, Garlickhythe. Across the road stood a policeman, who appeared to take no notice of him; but Greenwood was past worrying about policemen, he felt completely safe. He slipped inside the unusually light and lofty church, with its tall columns panelled as high as the gallery. He was looking up at the vaulted ceiling when a man in a dark suit came toward him.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Haven’t I seen you here before?”

  “I’ve certainly been here before - to the lunchtime service, usually.”

  “And
in the evenings, I believe.”

  “Yes,” said Greenwood. “I like to look in.”

  “You are very welcome, sir. Do you know anything about the history of the church?”

  Greenwood smiled faintly.

  “I was here when it was bombed. I used to fire-watch.”

  “Good gracious! I had no idea. I was overseas at the time.”

  “I often wished I was,” said Greenwood. “I came and had a look most days when the rebuilding was going on.”

  “I remember, sir.”

  “It took a long time.”

  “It did indeed. Excuse me - aren’t you Mr. Greenwood? From Cox and Shielding’s?”

  “That’s right,” said Greenwood, both pleased and surprised.

  “I was a seaman on the British-India line - I saw you come aboard occasionally.”

  “It’s a small world.”

  “It is indeed. Mr. Greenwood, I wonder if you could help us?”

  “If it’s possible, of course I will. What’s the trouble?”

  “We have some difficulty in the city in getting the evening volunteers we need to watch the churches,” the other said. “We are trying to establish a rota of fire-watchers again.”

  “You mean you think St. James might be attacked?”

  “There is no way of making sure,” said the verger. “The police have warned us of the danger, and so have the church authorities. The police are giving us as much help as possible but they can’t neglect their ordinary duties, can they?”

  “I suppose not,” said Greenwood. For the first time since entering the church he remembered the policeman he had seen outside St. Ludd’s; and he thought of Margaret. “It’d be dreadful if this place were damaged again,” he went on.

  “It would indeed,” agreed the verger. “Can you help?”

  “I’ll be glad to,” promised Greenwood. His heart swelled with a sense of righteousness he had not known for a long time. “What are the hours?”

  “If you will come along with me to the vestry, sir, I will show you the rota as far as we have completed it. We have all the help we need by day, thanks to the quick response, but between six o’clock in the evening and six in the morning we are in very great need.”

  “I wouldn’t mind one night, right through,” said Greenwood. “With time off for meals, of course.”

  The verger’s eyes lit up, and the warmth of his thanks made Eric Greenwood, murderer of his mistress, feel a very fine fellow.

  “I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Dalby said. “I really can’t imagine where she’s gone. She’s very naughty, isn’t she?” Dalby said in a taut voice, “Yes, very.”

  “It’s such a worry, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, a great worry.”

  “How long has she been gone now?”

  “Six days,” Dalby answered.

  “That’s too long, isn’t it?”

  “Much too long.”

  “Dear,” said Mrs. Dalby vaguely, her voice still sweet, her smile untroubled, “you don’t think anything could have happened to her, do you?”

  “I should hope not, Sarah.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Have you, then.”

  “Yes, dear. You know that policeman who came to see you this morning.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you ask him if he can find Sally?”

  Dalby nearly choked as he turned away from her.

  “That’s a very good idea, Sarah,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

  “I thought perhaps you would,” said Sarah Dalby with satisfaction.

  As they talked in their strange and unreal way, their daughter lay in the huge double bed, surrounded by mirrors, possessed by a strange tempest of desire which the man with her could not satisfy. This was one of the moods in which she had no fear, no sense of shame or decency, no thought of home.

  In the cellar, two stories below, were the photographs of thirty-two girls, twenty-nine missing and three known to be dead.

  20: NIGHT OF ALARM

  Gideon thought he heard a movement in Lemaitre’s room and opened the door. Lemaitre had just come in from the passage, and for a moment both men stood with fingers on the handle. Gideon saw at once that Lemaitre was worried, but he made no comment. This hour of the day was one for relaxation and as far as possible they would take advantage of it.

  “Come in and have a whisky, Lem.”

  “Oh, thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Did you know Entwhistle is across at Cannon Row?”

  “Denying it right and left,” Lemaitre said.

  “He was bound to.” Gideon went to a cupboard in his desk and took out a bottle, two glasses, and a siphon of soda water. “Have you heard about Hobbs?”

  Lemaitre’s lips tightened. He gulped down half his drink and stared at the glass, avoiding Gideon’s eye.

  “What about him?”

  “His wife died this afternoon. She’d been in a coma for several days.”

  Lemaitre, startled almost beyond belief, jerked his head and his glass up, spilling whisky over his hand. He did not appear to notice it. He stared, unseeing, at Gideon, who was gazing out of the window at the dark clouds behind which the sun was slowly sinking.

  “Dead,” breathed Lemaitre. “Dying for days?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he didn’t say a word to us - to me - about it.”

  “He didn’t tell me until he had to. Kate found out and I heard about it from her.”

  “Good God. What does he have for a heart?”

  Gideon said heavily, “Is that how it affects you, Lem?”

  “He certainly doesn’t wear it on his sleeve.”

  “Is he any the worse for that?”

  “I see what you mean,” muttered Lemaitre. “My God, if anything happened to Chloe - or if anything happened to Kate - we’d be off our heads.”

  “Think I would wear my heart on my sleeve?” Gideon asked.

  Lemaitre said, “I’d be able to see it, anyhow. The poor sod.”

  Gideon glanced out of the window.

  “And I nearly let fly at him this afternoon,” Lemaitre went on. “I thought he was being Mr. Flicking Hobbs, Deputy Commander before his time.” Lemaitre began to walk about the office. “Never talked about her, did he? I only saw her once, in that wheelchair - most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Been paralyzed most of their married life, I remember Kate telling me. Cor blinking strewth. I am sorry. I really am, George.”

  “We all are.”

  “Am I glad I didn’t let rip!”

  “Why did you come so near it?”

  “He was being supercilious, as I thought - hinting at things without coming out into the open. I began to wonder what the hell it would be like when he was officially promoted.”

  Gideon looked back from the river. Lemaitre finished his drink and Gideon waved to the bottle, in a silent “help yourself”. Lemaitre did so, drank again, moving restlessly as if he could not meet Gideon’s gaze.

  “Lem, I have to go to Paris for two or three days, starting on Sunday night,” Gideon told him. “There’s a police conference over drugs, and the Customs and Excise people will be there, too. I’ve been out, checking.” In fact he had talked to the Governor of the Bank of England at the club and was convinced of the man’s anxiety and insistence on secrecy. “Scott-Marie is bringing Hobbs’s promotion forward a couple of weeks, so he will be in charge while I’m gone. It will be a good opportunity for him to find his feet, although a lot of things will be strange to him. They won’t be to you.”

  Lemaitre stopped pacing, and stared.

  “I get you,” he said.

  “I know you do.”

  “Don’t worry, George.”

  “I’m worried only about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you won’t talk to Hobbs about any problems as freely as you would to me.”

  Lemaitre drew in a deep breath. “Hobbs will be your deputy, you know, which
means a second best, only a second best.” He tossed the last of the whisky down. “But you can trust us not to come to blows.” He stretched his arms dramatically. “Well, I want to visit half a dozen more churches tonight, George. I was saying to Hobbs, these people are cranks and even if we catch some they won’t talk.” When Gideon didn’t answer, Lemaitre forced a smile and went on. “Here I go, jumping to conclusions again. You mark my words, though. They won’t talk.” He went to the communicating door. “I’ll see you. Er - think there’ll be trouble tonight?”

  Gideon shrugged. “I hope not. Any idea how our P.C. Davies is?”

  “Off the danger list,” Lemaitre said. “I looked in at the hospital. No doubt of the blindness, though. What a hell of a thing to happen in a church!”

  London was shrouded in lowering skies and battered by a squally wind which made church-watching a more than usually unpleasant duty. All over London the police and the volunteers were alert, from the heart of Mayfair and from Westminster to the slums of the East End, from the sprawling suburbs with their houses cheek by jowl to the residential areas where houses stood in their own grounds; from Camberwell to London Bridge, from Trafalgar Square to Hounslow Heath, from Oxford Circus to St. John’s Wood, to Hampstead and beyond, from St. Paul’s and the city to Whitechapel and Wapping, Bethnal Green to Rotherhithe - the police stood shoulder to shoulder with Christians and believers as they watched over their churches, some built at the time of the Norman Conquest, some built in the last few years.

  The sages shook their heads. “There won’t be any trouble tonight. The weather’s too bad.”

  At the synagogue in Marylebone a careful watch was kept on the ark, and a policeman paced his beat, never out of sight of the watchers at the entrance for more than ten minutes. The precautions came easily to those who had long been in danger of vandalism and to whom the methods of defence were second nature. None of the watchers seriously expected trouble, for they did not really believe it would come from members of their own faith, and surely no gentile could get in by night.