‘Oh, I’m sure it is linked, Mr Gordon of that ilk. But not in the way I once suspected – if this is to be believed.’ He held up the piece of paper which he had also retrieved from Jukes’s room.
‘What does that signify?’
‘It is not what I expected to find, and that’s a fact. But what it signifies, sir, is that one of our prime suspects for the murder of Edward Mizzentoft is an innocent man – all things being relative, of course, and just so long as the account contained within it proves an accurate one and this here legal company turns out to be equally legitimate ….’ Mr Bucket’s usually alert eyes clouded over and darkened for a moment in a way Gordon had not seen before. ‘It also signifies that my worst fears are one step closer to being confirmed.’ He let out a troubled sigh, then pulled back his shoulders in a determined fashion. ‘Be that as it may. Napper and Narkin of Lincoln’s Inn, Mr Gordon. Pay them a visit tomorrow and try to confirm their dealings with Alfred Jukes.’
He held the document closer for Gordon to examine, and he saw that it was an affidavit; the name Alfred Jukes was prominent in capital letters at the top, and again at the bottom, where a spidery ‘X’ was scrawled beside it.
‘No time to peruse at length now,’ he said, stuffing it into a pocket with the other items before making for the door.
‘Might I ask what those other letters are? Are they to do with the stolen ferns?’
Mr Bucket shook his head. ‘No. Not directly, at any rate. These epistles were never intended for anyone’s eyes other than a certain lady, and I shall be destroying them at the first opportunity. Now let us return to our homes and get some kip, Mr Gordon. There is work to do tomorrow!’
Inevitably, they encountered Baroness Sowerby as they exited the premises. Two constables who had been alerted by PC Garmory’s rattle were standing guard at the door and the baroness reminded Gordon of a little terrier straining against its leash as she waited to return to her home. The look on her face when she spotted them was worth a thousand words, and he was certain that she had discerned the truth of this whole charade. Mr Bucket smiled affably and raised his hat.
‘Madam will be pleased to know that all is now safe and well! I’m sure she will wish me to pass on her thanks to the policeman whose sharp eyes saved her home and belongings from certain destruction, and I shall be happy to oblige.’
He made to leave, but her sharp tones cut through the night. ‘What has he there? What has he in that sack?’
‘Nothing but a few plants, singed and wilted beyond saving, sadly. Don’t worry – Mr Gordon knows exactly how to dispose of them. Oh, and certain letters also perished in the inferno – but they looked like the sort that needed a-burning anyway. Now everything’s squared away and I feel sure our paths will never cross again. Good evening, ma’am!’ He touched the rim of his hat again, and they strode away feeling her glowering stare boring into their backs.
‘So, what next?’ Gordon asked Mr Bucket later when they emerged from Great Scotland Yard and prepared to retire to their own homes.
‘Once you have been assured of the veracity of that there affidavit, I should like you to pay a visit to Dr Scambles and discuss its contents with him. I have other matters to attend to.’
The drama of the fire had caused Gordon to quite forget about Mrs Scambles’ husband locked away in Coldbath Prison awaiting trial for murder – not least the fact that she was accusing him of the crime.
‘Perhaps we should wait until we have further investigated Mrs Scambles’ accusations before we say anything about it to him. After all, we have no proof – it is merely the word of a woman scorned, as you might say.’
‘But we do have proof, Mr Gordon. Proof of his innocence!’
‘Innocence? What about Dr Scambles’ bloodstained watch that Inspector Stope showed to us? His watch, his initials engraved upon it – found at the murder scene!’
‘His wife’s claims, as you indicated, are nothing but the caterwaulings of a bitter woman. The watch? Yes, the watch …. It will lead us to the real murderer, but it is not Dr Scambles. We have this case all but tied up and Dr Scambles is not our man. Bear with me. I have one more matter to attend to, and then we shall make our move.’
XXV
THE OFFICES OF Napper and Narkin were situated within the ornate red-brick building of Lincoln’s Inn Hall, and after locating their office and waiting for a few minutes in an outer room, a clerk summoned Gordon into the presence of Mr Narkin. He was a much younger and less solemn man than he’d expected. Of wiry build and fresh complexion, he came bounding towards Gordon with his hand outstretched.
‘Mr Gordon? Pray take a seat, and I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘It was hardly any time at all, and I’m sure you’re very busy.’
He pulled a face. ‘I wish we were … but that’s of no consequence to you and I’m only too happy to help the police in the course of their duties. I’ve read about the detective force in the newspapers and I must say I find it all very fascinating!’
‘As a matter of fact I’m new to it myself, and so do I!’
‘Would you like me to send for drinks, Mr Gordon?’
‘Thank you – but I have an urgent appointment as soon as I leave here. I only wish to ask you about one Alfred Jukes, who I believe visited these offices a few days ago. He’s a tall man, with—’
‘Oh, I remember Jukes!’ grinned Narkin. ‘Very strange affair. He wanted me to draw up an affidavit – without telling me what it was about!’
‘Can you describe it? I only wish to confirm that it is a legitimate document.’
‘Not much to describe – a single sheet of paper bearing our seal. Jukes himself is illiterate, so he scrawled an “X” beside his name.’
‘That certainly sounds like the document we found.’ Gordon had accomplished this particular mission, but since Mr Bucket had chosen not to divulge its contents to him, he couldn’t help asking more. ‘Are you at liberty to tell me what the affidavit was about?’
‘Ah, you put me in an awkward spot, Mr Gordon – confidentiality is paramount in our business, of course.’
‘Does the fact that Mr Jukes is dead make it any easier for you?’
‘Dead? Well, I suppose he couldn’t sue me! All I will say, sir, is that it was very brief and cryptic. The strangest thing I’ve ever had to deal with, in truth. He wanted me to write that he was being coerced into committing certain criminal acts against his will. The cause of this was that a particular person had some sort of hold over him, and the consequences of not obeying this person were too dire for him to contemplate – he even feared for his life. Quite rightly, as it turned out. He did name the individual, but working on the assumption that he isn’t also dead I’m afraid I would be exceeding my remit if I named him.’
‘That’s quite all right, Mr Narkin. You have been most helpful.’
As Gordon was walking away beneath the skeletal, leafless trees of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he tried to make some sort of sense of what he had just heard. Could Jukes’s fear and accusations regarding the controlling influence of this shadowy figure indicate that Mr Bucket and he had missed something? Was it possible that there was a Mr Big who had so far not figured in their investigations? A puppet master who had concealed himself so well that they weren’t even aware of his existence?
It was a thing Gordon should have thought impossible, but the Coldbath Fields House of Correction looked even grimmer and more foreboding than it had the first time he had laid eyes upon it. Then, the temperature had been freezing but at least the skies had been blue and bright. Now, it’s ugly bulk could be half seen through a thick, dirty, choking fog of the sort Gordon had only ever encountered in London and which emphasized its sinister grimness. Once he had gained entrance he was led again past the giant treadmill and the rows of hunched and broken men silently oakum picking until he came to the interview room in which he and Mr Bucket had first encountered Dr Scambles.
‘We offered to move him to a nicer pa
rt of the prison, sir,’ the warder who was guiding Gordon said. ‘Thought he might like to help out in the clinic, him being a doctor and all. But he refused.’
This didn’t surprise Gordon. Dr Scambles might not be a murderer – although until Mr Bucket could prove otherwise he still hadn’t completely dismissed the idea – but that didn’t make him any more likeable as a man. Mrs Scambles’ stories about his coldness rang true, and Mr Bucket and he had witnessed the power of his sudden wrath at close quarters.
‘Let me make something clear, Mr Gordon,’ said Scambles once they were seated opposite each other in the cold, drab office. ‘The only matter I shall even entertain discussing is my innocence and how you can prove it.’
His icy gaze was unnerving but Gordon made himself hold it, and he realized it was his anger on Eleanora’s behalf that, in part, fuelled his determination. ‘I have been instructed by my senior officer to tell you that we believe we do indeed have evidence that might secure your release.’
This was enough to dissolve even Dr Scambles’ cold-blooded demeanour. Now, Gordon saw a new Dr Scambles – one with his seemingly fixed, harsh, cold exterior suddenly breached. ‘New evidence? What? Pray tell me what it is? When shall I be out of here?’
Gordon raised his hands to calm him. ‘All is not decided yet. Mr Bucket is, as we speak, looking into things and frankly I know no more than you do at present. But I can tell you that he believes in your innocence ….’ He fought back the urge to say even if your own wife does not. ‘And that there are other strong suspects. I must also add that your connection with the unfortunate Mr Mizzentoft and your financial predicament has come to light. It would have been better if you had revealed this earlier.’
‘Ha! In order to furnish you with even more evidence against me?!’
‘But that might have led us more quickly to others who had dealings with him – such as the man known as the General.’
‘Was it him? Is he the real killer?’
‘That I cannot say at present. But it is true that you fought with him shortly before Mizzentoft died?’
‘I will not be bullied by any man.’
‘Still, it was relevant to the investigation to discover the real killer. Do you know of anyone else in debt to Mizzentoft who might have had reason to murder him?’
Scambles gave a sardonic snort. ‘It’s a little late for that, isn’t it, Sergeant?’
‘Do you mean to say that you were never asked when you were originally arrested?’
‘The big brute of a detective who arrested me merely informed me that I as good as had a rope around my neck, and I never so much as saw him again. And now I come to think of it, I assumed from what you said at our last meeting that you and Mr Bucket were not investigating the murder at all.’
‘That was true at that time. There has been a change of circumstances.’ Gordon answered rather absently because the news of how Mr Stope, an experienced and supposedly successful policeman, had dealt with this case had puzzled him. ‘Getting back to my question, do you know of anyone else who might have been angry with Mizzentoft?’
‘Anyone who is heavily in debt is liable to become angry at the exorbitant interest rates he charged and the methods he used to ensure payment was made, Sergeant. I was not angry with him, however. I was only angry with myself. We all knew what his terms were when we turned to him. I do recall that the General didn’t work alone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I met him on more than one occasion, and I saw him in various places at other times. Mizzentoft employed him simply as a thug to get the money he was owed. But I occasionally saw the General in the company of another man, someone who also seemed to provide him with work of some, no doubt, dubious nature.’
‘A tall man with long, oily hair?’
‘He was very tall, yes. Do you know him?’
‘He has cropped up several times during the course of this investigation.’
‘Another suspect! Things are looking better for me by the second!’
XXVI
THE FOG WAS so thick outside that Sergeant Raddle had to light the lamps in the Back Hall even though it was almost noon. He knew it was almost noon without even looking at the big clock on the wall by the staircase because of the hollow growl coming from his stomach. Soon, Constable Hacker would be here to relieve him and he could then repair to the Ten Bells for a spot of lunch. Just as he was tidying his belongings away, the double doors flew apart and two people arrive enveloped in a swirl of fog like some sort of Biblical manifestation. But as the vapour cleared, Sergeant Raddle’s heart sank. He could see that it was not two but three … beings that had entered the foyer.
Constable A43 Lush.
A man with a small body and an over-sized head topped with a ludicrously tall hat.
And a monkey.
Sergeant Raddle cast his face into an impenetrable mask to hide his dismay and coughed to drown out the urgent and alarmingly prolonged gurgle emanating from his belly. The small man in the constable’s clutches had a strong chin. A jutting chin, which spoke of determination, of indomitability. It was the look of one who Knows His Rights. These were attributes that would add many minutes to this encounter; Sergeant Raddle knew it. The mere presence of the monkey added incalculably more. He sank into his chair, trying to maintain a straight back.
‘A dip, Mr Raddle. Witnessed in the very act,’ announced Constable A43 Lush.
‘Why ’ee says dip?’ the small man with the annoyingly large head and the monkey on his shoulder loudly demanded to know, in an accent which the worldly Sergeant Raddle identified as Italian. ‘I no dippa da pockets! Why ’ee says dip?!’
The small man possessed an unconventional shape in every way. His ever-moving, oddly angular limbs seemed to jerk about in a variety of eccentric directions, which, in Sergeant Raddle’s opinion, they simply should not. In fact, he found the newcomer’s limbs inexplicably offensive.
‘Now, now, sir. Let us be calm and orderly about this and we’ll have it sorted out in a jiffy.’ Sergeant Raddle couldn’t help twitching his eyes to the clock again. ‘My officer here saw you picking the pocket of an innocent—’
‘Not me, sir, Mr Raddle.’
‘But you said—’
‘A witness, Mr Raddle. “Witnessed in the very act”.’
‘Then who saw it?’
PC Lush’s stiff, white fingers fumbled with the brass button securing a deep pocket of his uniform and produced a small, damp, black notebook with curled corners. ‘Mrs Emily—’
‘Amelia! Amelia!’ spouted the arrested man, waving his angular arms in – to Sergeant Raddle’s mind – a preposterously extravagant Latin manner. ‘I knowsa da woman. She a watercress girl in da Charing Cross. Amelia! She got it in for me because-a da money I owes her papa! Amelia!’
‘It says “Emily” here,’ the constable asserted defiantly, tapping the black cover of his notebook, ‘so Emily it is.’
Sergeant Raddle tried to expedite the matter and extracted his own much larger black book from the desk drawer. ‘So, we have a witness to this gentleman picking the pocket of an innocent—’
‘Not this gentleman, Mr Raddle.’
The mask of official inscrutability cracked for a moment and an agonized grimace fleetingly distorted the weary sergeant’s features.
‘Who, then, Constable? Who is your dip?’
‘Pippo, sir.’
‘Pippo?’
Constable Lush aimed the finger of indictment at the bored, fidgeting monkey perched beside the overly large head.
Sergeant Raddle ran a finger between his neck and the stiff, high collar of his uniform. ‘The monkey stole something.’
‘A pocket book, Sergeant Raddle, sir.’
‘So the animal, surreptitiously and with intent, removed a gentleman’s pocket book, handed it to this gentleman, and the witness then—’
‘Not him, sir.’
‘“Not him” what?’
‘The pocket book wasn’t hand
ed to this gent, sir.’
‘Then who?’
‘To a dog, Mr Raddle, sir.’ Sergeant Raddle didn’t even hear the clock chiming twelve times. His mind was in a deep, dark chamber of mortal cries and groans. He straightened himself up with an effort of will.
‘The monkey gave the pocket book to a dog.’
‘A Norwegian elkhound, sir. Which I know for a certain fact because my sister’s fiancé used to have one. Run over by an ’ansom, sir. ’Orrible mess. The said dog – this gent’s, not my sister’s fiancé’s – proceeded in an easterly direction towards Craven Street in …’ the constable read from his notebook, ‘… a determined yet shifty manner, sir. With the pocket book in its mouth.’
Sergeant Raddle slowly opened his big book. There was nothing for it – this was an incident which protocol dictated must be officially recorded. He produced a pen from his desk drawer, dipped the nib into the inkwell and prepared to write. It was a picture which captivated both Constable A43 Lush and his prisoner, for Sergeant Raddle was not a natural man of letters by any stretch of the imagination. He was poised with moist nib held aloft and his singular countenance, although actually one of supreme effort and concentration, was the frozen mask of one who had just been stabbed in the back by an unseen assailant. Constable Lush looked at his felon, and the felon, who feared that the man before him had entered a state of apoplexy, returned the glance.
But a new development saved the day. The double doors opened again and in walked Inspector Bucket. The lower half of his face was protected by an emerald coloured scarf from the noxious fumes pervading London’s streets, but it was definitely Mr Bucket. And then, from a different direction, came Constable Hacker. Since Sergeant Raddle was in the middle of dealing with Lush and his detainees, strictly speaking he should have completed the task before handing the reception desk over to Hacker. But Mr Bucket had unwittingly provided him with a way of escape.
‘Hi – Mr Bucket sir!’
Murder in Montague Place Page 20