‘I don’t think your wife would like that.’
‘She wouldn’t, Joe. The house seems empty now that Alice has moved out. If I start bedding down at Scotland Yard, I’m sure that Ellen would want to join me.’
Keedy rolled his eyes. ‘That would go down well with the top brass!’
‘As for the promotion, be thankful that I didn’t get it.’
‘But you deserved it, Harv.’
‘Think of the consequences.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If I was Superintendent Marmion, then you’d be travelling in this car with a certain Inspector Chatfield. How would you fancy that?’
Keedy grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t fancy it at all,’ he said. ‘I remember the way he used to treat his sergeants. They did the work and he took the credit. No wonder three in a row enlisted in the army to escape him.’
‘I hope that you’re not thinking of doing that, Joe.’
‘Of course not – I prefer to do my fighting on the home front.’
‘Then I can guarantee you’ll have your hands full. Cyril Ablatt is only the latest visitor to the police morgue,’ said Marmion, philosophically. ‘There’ll be plenty of others to keep us occupied and plenty of chances to explode the superintendent’s instant theories about each successive murder.’
‘Chat is a congenital idiot.’
It was Marmion’s turn to laugh. ‘And so say all of us!’
The house had a narrow frontage and stood at the end of a terrace in a grimy backstreet. On the side wall of the building, someone had painted patriotic slogans and outright abuse in large white capitals. They were illumined by the gas lamp nearby. Evidently, one of the neighbours objected to Cyril Ablatt’s pacifist leanings. Drawn curtains in the front bedrooms testified that most people were still asleep but there was a light downstairs in the Ablatt house as the car drew up outside it. Marmion and Keedy got out and took a deep breath. Passing on grim news always upset them because they had to inflict intense pain. There was no easy way to do it. Marmion used the knocker to give a gentle tap. There was an immediate reaction. Footsteps came scuttling down the passageway, then a bolt was drawn back. When the door swung open, they were confronted by the hunched figure of a bald-headed man in his fifties. In pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers, he had the fatigued look of someone who’d been up all night. Sensing disaster, he let out a deep sigh of resignation.
‘It’s about Cyril, isn’t it?’ he asked, biting his lip.
‘I’m afraid that it is, sir,’ said Marmion. ‘Are you his father?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I’m Inspector Marmion and this is Sergeant Keedy. Would it be possible for us to step inside, please? I don’t think you’d want to hear this on the doorstep.’
‘Of course, of course …’
Gerald Ablatt stepped back so that they could step into the dank passageway. Closing the door behind him, he took the detectives into the front room and motioned them to the settee. Removing their hats, they sat down. Ablatt himself was directly opposite, perched on the edge of an armchair. The room was so small that his knees were fairly close to theirs.
‘I’ve been dreading this,’ he admitted.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ warned Marmion, gently. ‘Do you think that your wife ought to hear it with you?’
‘My wife died three years ago, Inspector – diphtheria.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘It might be a blessing in disguise. Cyril was our only child. Mary doted on him. I’d hate her to have heard that he’s met with some kind of accident.’ His eyes widened quizzically. ‘That is why you’re here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Marmion, exchanging a glance with Keedy, ‘but it was rather more than an accident. A young man was attacked and killed last night. We’ve reason to believe that he may have been your son.’
For a few moments, Ablatt was stunned and looked as if he was about to fall over. Keedy sat forward in case he needed to catch the man, while Marmion felt guilty at having to administer the hammer blow. With a supreme effort, Ablatt steadied himself and managed to control his emotions. His hands were tightly clasped and his body tensed.
‘It must be Cyril,’ he said, sorrowfully. ‘He always let me know if he was staying the night somewhere. When he didn’t come home …’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘I knew that something terrible had happened.’
‘The two of you lived alone, then?’ asked Keedy.
‘Yes, Sergeant, we did. Lots of people complain about sons being a nuisance when they get to a certain age but Cyril wasn’t like that. He was no trouble. All he wanted to do was to stay in his room and read his books.’ A smile flitted across his face. ‘He was a librarian, you know.’
‘Then he’d have no shortage of reading matter.’
‘You’ve seen the sort of area this is,’ continued Ablatt. ‘Most of the lads around here follow their fathers into the same trade. What else is there for them to do? Well,’ he said, holding back tears, ‘I wanted more for my son. I wasn’t having him working as a cobbler like me. It’s a good trade because everyone needs to have their shoes soled and heeled, but it’s a hard life bent double over a last all day. So I paid for Cyril to go to night school. He was educated, you see.’ His face clouded. ‘This war changed everything. Until it started, people looked up to Cyril. They admired him. Then the other lads started to join up and everyone began to wonder why my son didn’t go with them.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t agree with what he believed. Let me be honest about that. In his place, I’d have been down at the recruiting office like a shot. But Cyril was entitled to his opinion. He had principles, you see. That’s why he went to that meeting yesterday.’ He slumped back into the chair. ‘Oh, I’m so grateful his mother didn’t live to hear this. It would’ve broken her heart.’
‘We’ll need someone to identify the body,’ said Marmion, softly.
Ablatt stiffened. ‘I’ll go,’ he volunteered. ‘He’s my son. It’s my duty.’
‘There’s no rush, sir. We’ll wait until you’re good and ready. Meanwhile, there’s something you might do for us. You’ll appreciate that we know very little about your son. Anything you can tell us would be valuable. Which library does he work at, for instance? We’ll need to speak to his employers. And what about his friends – did he go to that meeting alone or was he with someone else?’
‘Oh, all four of them went, Inspector – Gordon, Fred, Mansel and Cyril.’
‘Could you give me those names again, please?’ asked Keedy, taking out a notebook and pencil. ‘We’ll need the addresses as well.’
‘They all live in Shoreditch.’ As Ablatt reeled off the names, Keedy wrote them down. ‘Gordon Leach, Fred Hambridge and Mansel Price. Gordon works at the bakery two streets away. Fred is even closer.’
He provided the addresses and explained that the three of them often came to the house. Ablatt had no young lady in his life. Encouraged by the detectives, he then talked about his son with a kind of doomed affection, shuttling between pride in his achievements and despair at his murder. They let him ramble on, garnering an immense amount of information as he did so. The corpse in the police morgue began to take on life and definition. When the recitation finally came to an end, Marmion asked the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since he entered the house.
‘Did your son have any enemies, Mr Ablatt?’
The older man blinked. ‘No, he didn’t,’ he answered, resentfully. ‘Not the way you mean, Inspector. People didn’t like it because he refused to join up and some of them called him names. Then there are those things painted on the side wall. They hurt us at the time but we got used to them. But there were never any real enemies. Nobody hated Cyril enough to kill him.’ The question had unnerved him somehow and he was trembling. ‘I know you want me to come with you but I’ll need to get dressed and I’d like a little time to myself first, if that’s all right.’
‘Take as much time as you like, sir,
’ said Marmion, sympathetically. ‘And thank you for being so helpful. Oh, there is one more thing. We’ll need a recent photograph of your son.’
‘I’ll find one.’
‘Thank you. Could the sergeant and I take a look at your son’s room, please?’
Ablatt was defensive. ‘Why do you want to do that?’
‘We’re still trying to build up a picture of him.’
‘But I’ve told you all you need to know.’
‘His room might be able to add a few salient details.’
‘Yes,’ said Keedy. ‘You told us that he spent a lot of time in it.’
Ablatt gazed upwards. ‘He used to read up there – and practise his speeches.’
‘You didn’t mention any speeches, sir.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘What sort of speeches were they?’
‘The kind he was going to make at the meeting yesterday. Cyril had studied public speaking, you see. It’s what gave him his confidence. He could talk the hind leg off a donkey.’ He looked suspiciously from one to the other. ‘All that you’ll find up there is a pile of books.’
‘Their titles might tell us something about him,’ said Marmion. Well?’
It took Gerald Ablatt a long time to reach his decision. Part of him wanted to protect his son’s privacy while another part of him was eager to do anything that would help the police. In the end, realism won the battle against family sentiment. Ablatt pointed upstairs.
‘It’s the room at the back,’ he said.
Without another word, he went slowly upstairs, grief visibly weighing him down. In the short time they’d been with him, he seemed to have aged ten years.
‘I felt so rotten having to tell him the news,’ confessed Marmion. ‘It was like sticking a knife into him.’
‘He bore up very well – better than most people do.’
‘Did you believe everything he told us about his son?’
‘Yes,’ said Keedy. ‘He’d have no reason to lie, would he?’
‘Let’s go and find out.’
Having given the father time to get to his bedroom, they ascended the stairs. As they did so, they could hear the sound of sobbing coming from behind the first door they reached. They walked along the landing to the room at the rear. Marmion led the way in and put on the light. There was barely enough space for the two of them to get inside. Crammed into the room was a single bed, a bedside table, a wardrobe and a bookcase filled to overflowing. Books also stood on the window sill, the top of the wardrobe and the floor. Many of them were dog-eared and had tattered covers. On the bedside table was a large Bible.
Marmion’s eye went to the framed photograph on the wall. It showed Cyril Ablatt and what he assumed was his mother, both smiling at the camera. He knew that it must have been taken at least three years ago when Mrs Ablatt was still alive.
‘Nice-looking lad,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d looked like that at his age. It would have made me more popular among the ladies.’
‘Yet his father said he didn’t have one,’ recalled Keedy. ‘What does that make him – a mother’s boy?’
‘I don’t know. How would you describe someone who spends most of his time alone in his bedroom?’
‘I’d say he was a silly fool. He’s missing all the fun.’
‘This was fun to him, Joe. He loved his books.’
‘All work and no play …’
‘Why did he stay up here when he could have been reading downstairs? It would have been far more comfortable to sit in an armchair. There has to be a reason why he preferred being up here.’
‘Tell me what it is.’
‘He was secretive,’ said Marmion. ‘That’s what this bedroom says to me. There are things in here that he didn’t want anyone else to know.’
‘What sort of things?’
They conducted a quick search, opening the wardrobe to check its contents, examining the items on the little mantelpiece and even looking under the bed. Keedy reached out a long arm to retrieve a scrapbook. He flicked it open and saw newspaper cuttings pasted neatly inside it. Most related to the war and to those who campaigned to bring it to an immediate end. Ablatt had also kept photographs of people he admired. One of them showed an old, bearded man in the garb of a Russian peasant.
‘Who the devil is this?’ wondered Keedy.
‘I think it’s Tolstoy. He’s the man who wrote War and Peace.’
‘Even I have heard of that. It doesn’t make sense, Harv. Why cut out a photo of someone who writes a book about war? Cyril Ablatt was against it.’
‘So was Tolstoy,’ said Marmion. ‘In later life, he had a kind of spiritual crisis and developed his own version of Christianity.’
Keedy was impressed. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Ablatt wasn’t the only one who enjoyed reading – not that I get much time for it nowadays. What I do remember is that Tolstoy drew a lot of inspiration from the Sermon on the Mount. He believed in renouncing violence, wealth and sexual pleasure.’
‘I agree with him about violence. Our job would be a hell of a lot easier if everyone turned his back on that. But I’m not so sure about wealth. And as for sexual pleasure …’
They shared a muted laugh. Marmion then took a closer look at the volumes in the bookcase. There were a few novels and some poetry anthologies but most were related to Christian teaching. There were also two books on public speaking and some political pamphlets. Keedy took down a book from the top of the wardrobe.
‘The Water Babies,’ he noted.
‘It’s by Charles Kingsley. He was a clergyman.’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘We read bits of it to Alice when she was younger. She loved stories. You’d never get her to sleep unless you read something to her.’
Keedy bit back the comment he was about to make and replaced the book on the wardrobe. The room had light-green wallpaper with a floral pattern. He noticed how faded it had become and felt sad that a young man in his twenties had chosen to spend so much of his leisure time locked up in the depressing little room. Keedy’s mental scrapbook had much more colourful and exciting illustrations in it than anything found under the bed. In his opinion, Cyril Ablatt had missed so much.
‘We still haven’t found any real secrets, Harv,’ he said.
‘But we have a much clearer sense of his personality. There aren’t many young men who sleep in the middle of a miniature library.’
‘The only book I had in my bedroom at his age was one about embalming. That’s what comes of working in the family undertaking business. I was so glad to escape it and join the police force.’
‘Yet it’s brought you back where you started, Joe – dealing with dead bodies.’ He picked up the Bible and turned to the page with the bookmark in it. ‘I wonder what he was reading. Ah, it’s Matthew, chapter five,’ he said with a nod of recognition. ‘That’s no surprise, is it?’
‘Why not?’
‘It contains the Beatitudes, Joe. One of them had a special meaning for him – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” If only that were true! Ablatt was a peacemaker and you can imagine the names he must have been called. War puts poison into some people’s mouths.’ He was about to put the book down again when a photograph slipped out from between the pages and floated down to the carpet. Marmion picked it up. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what do we have here?’
‘It’s not another picture of Tolstoy, is it?’
‘No, it’s a photo of a rather striking lady.’ After studying it, he showed it to Keedy. ‘It’s certainly not his mother, so who is it? Someone dear to his heart?’
Keedy snorted. ‘She must be fifteen or twenty years older than him.’
‘I think you’re being unkind, Joe. She’s in her thirties, at most – and she’s married. You can see her wedding ring. Well,’ he continued, ‘we may have stumbled on another motive for murder. What if the killer was a jealous husband?’
‘She mig
ht be a widow.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Marmion, turning the photo over so that he could read the writing on the back. ‘See for yourself.’
Taking it from him, Keedy read the message.
Until my husband is on night shift again – think of me.
In place of a signature were several kisses.
‘You were right,’ said Keedy. ‘He was a secretive little so-and-so, wasn’t he?’
CHAPTER THREE
The day started early for Gordon Leach. While most of Shoreditch was slumbering quietly, he was helping his father to bake the daily assortment of bread. The one saving grace of a job that rousted him out of bed in the small hours was that it kept him warm on a viciously cold day. The pervasive aroma of bread was always pleasing and a world away from the industrial stink that so many Londoners had to endure at their places of work. Leach’s father was a big, taciturn man with a walrus moustache who left him to get on with his work in silence. He’d inherited the bakery from his own father and expected his son to take it over in time. Franklin Leach was no pacifist. Indeed, he was a man with few opinions on any subject and was content to live his life in an intellectual vacuum. He simply wanted to keep his trained assistant beside him throughout the war. When they heard a loud knock on the shop door, he looked up and spoke for the first time in an hour.
‘Tell them we’re closed,’ he said.
Leach wiped his flour-covered hands in a cloth and opened the door to the shop. Through the glass, he could see the familiar outline of Mansel Price. On his way to work, his friend had come in search of information rather than bread. Leach unlocked the shop door and opened it so that Price could step inside.
‘Is there any news?’ asked the Welshman.
‘No, there isn’t.’
‘Something must have happened to him.’
‘That’s my worry,’ admitted Leach. ‘I mean, Cyril is always so reliable. If he said he’d be somewhere, he’d never let you down. When I called at the house last thing at night, his father said he wasn’t at home.’
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