Hardcastle's Quandary

by Graham Ison

  ‘I don’t want to buy it,’ said Hardcastle curtly. ‘I’m a police officer. Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division, and this is Detective Sergeant Marriott.’

  ‘Oh!’ Chapman was unable to hide his disappointment, but that expression quickly turned to one of anxiety. ‘Is there a problem of some sort?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me,’ said Hardcastle. He was unimpressed by estate agents who seemed to think that they were in a professional class on a par with lawyers.

  ‘What exactly did you want to know?’ Chapman’s original sycophantic attitude had now been replaced by one of grave concern. Once the police began to look into the affairs of this particular estate agency, there was no telling what they might find. The manager’s principal worry was the slightly illegal way in which he had ‘assisted’ some of his clients to obtain a mortgage. And that involved a solicitor of doubtful repute, who happened to be a member of the same lodge as the one to which Chapman belonged. He began to ‘wash’ his hands again, but this time it was an indication of his anguish.

  ‘I’ve been given to understand that the property is owned jointly by Guy Stoner and Rupert Holroyd.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me for a moment, sir, I need to consult the file.’ Chapman crossed to a cabinet and withdrew a manila folder. ‘You’re quite correct, sir,’ he said, having quickly perused the few sheets of paper the folder contained.

  ‘How can I find those two gentlemen, Mr Chapman? I need to contact them urgently.’

  ‘I don’t have an address for them, sir, because they appointed an agent to act on their behalf, but I do have an address for him. Well, an address of sorts.’ Chapman took a slip of paper from a nearby desk and scribbled a few lines on it. ‘There we are, sir,’ he said, handing the note to Hardcastle.

  ‘But that’s a newsagent’s shop in Paddington,’ protested Hardcastle. ‘What good’s an accommodation address?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s all we have, sir. Our instructions are that in the event of someone showing genuine interest, we are to write to the agent, a Mr Oliver Talbot, at that address.’

  ‘Most unsatisfactory,’ muttered Hardcastle. ‘Have any enquiries been made by the …’ He paused. ‘What was the name of that insurance company, Marriott?’

  ‘The Surrey, sir.’

  ‘That’s it. Have any enquiries been made by the Surrey Insurance Company?’

  Chapman shook his head. ‘Not of this office, sir. I suppose they might have contacted this Mr Talbot, but they certainly haven’t spoken to me. Is there anything I should know about?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask them,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Come, Marriott.’

  The two policemen left, leaving behind a very worried estate agent. The possibility had suddenly occurred to him that he might be attempting to sell a piece of land that was the property of an insurance company and not the people for whom the mysterious Mr Talbot claimed to be acting. If that turned out to be the case, the police would most certainly start looking into the affairs of Chapman’s office, and that worried him considerably.

  The manager of the Surrey Insurance Company’s branch in Kingston was more helpful. He introduced himself as Dudley Forester, and invited the two detectives to take a seat in his office.

  ‘To cut a long story short, Mr Hardcastle,’ Forester began, ‘head office sent a fire investigator down from London. Whenever there’s an incident like that, the company wants to make sure that everything’s above board before they pay out. It’s not the first time that ex-officers have invested in chicken farms that have gone bust, and then looked for something else to do. And if the second business goes bankrupt and the third enterprise is followed by a fire, we tend to look at it closely.’

  ‘And had the garage business gone bankrupt, Mr Forester?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘Look at this way,’ said Forester in matter-of-fact tones. ‘We knew from local information that Ditton Garage did hardly any business in the few weeks it was open. There wasn’t enough motor trade to keep it afloat.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, Mr Forester,’ asked Marriott, ‘how much was the garage insured for?’

  ‘Ten and a half thousand pounds, Mr Marriott.’

  ‘Having visited the site, I’d think that was well in excess of its value.’

  ‘Our view, too,’ said Forester.

  ‘What did your fire investigator find that caused your company to refuse to pay out?’ asked Hardcastle, getting to the nub of his enquiries.

  ‘Although the fire had been out for nigh on seventy-two hours by the time our man went down there, he’s very skilled at his job, and when he found two separate seats of fire a good distance apart, that settled the matter. That’s as good an indication of arson as anything you’re likely to find.’

  ‘Did your insurance company refer the matter to the police?’

  ‘We sent them a report, Mr Hardcastle, which stated that the company wasn’t satisfied that the fire had begun accidentally and left it at that. If they chose not to pursue the matter of arson, it’s no concern of ours.’ Forester gave an expressive shrug. ‘I think those two will have great difficulty getting cover in future, cooperation among underwriters being what it is.’

  ‘What was Holroyd’s reaction when he was told that his claim had been refused?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Forester airily. ‘We sent a letter to someone called Oliver Talbot, whom Holroyd had appointed his agent, but we got no reply.’

  ‘What address did you send this letter to?’

  ‘Some newsagent in Paddington.’ Forester laughed. ‘Well, that tells you there’s something not quite right, doesn’t it, Inspector?’

  After a pork pie and a pint or two of best bitter at the Three Fishes, Hardcastle and Marriott took a cab back to Surbiton police station. Hardcastle said nothing, but Marriott, from his long experience of working with the DDI, could tell that he was seething with anger that the local police had apparently done nothing about Forester’s allegation of arson.

  It was DC Mitchell who was the first to receive the brunt of Hardcastle’s ill temper.

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir. I never saw any report from the insurance company. A serious allegation of that sort probably went straight to divisional headquarters at Wandsworth. I’ve no idea what would have happened to it there. As you probably know, sir, Mr Fitnam’s been off sick for some time now. Maybe he was going to deal with it when he got back, or maybe he handed it to Mr Robson.’ Ted Robson was the V Division detective inspector who deputized for Fitnam when the latter was away but, as the Chief Constable CID had pointed out, he was heavily involved with a fraud enquiry. Hardcastle knew Robson to be a reliable officer, and he could not imagine him allowing an allegation of arson to be ignored. However, that was not his problem; his concern was the missing Guy Stoner. And, for that matter, the mystery of the absent Rupert Holroyd too. ‘Mr Granger was the reporting officer, sir, and he’s on duty this afternoon,’ continued Mitchell, in the hope of getting this irascible inspector off his back.

  Hardcastle found Inspector Granger in his office next to the communications room.

  ‘I understand that you dealt with the fire at Ditton Garage, Mr Granger,’ said Hardcastle, having introduced himself and Marriott.

  ‘Yes, sir, I did.’ Granger stood up. He was a grey-haired man in his fifties, with a stooped posture and a repetitive cough. The DDI assumed that he had fetched up at Surbiton because he was unfit for the rigours of a Central London division.

  ‘What were the circumstances?’

  ‘I got the docket out ready, sir. Mitchell said you might be coming in.’ Granger opened the folder on his desk, donned a pair of spectacles and spent a few moments scanning through it. ‘Now then. Ditton Garage fire, Monday the fourteenth of March.’ He looked up at Hardcastle. ‘I was the reporting officer. It always has to be an inspector who reports a fire, you see, sir.’

  ‘And you had to travel from Surbiton in order to do so, I suppose
, Mr Granger.’ Hardcastle forbore from pointing out that he was a police officer too and knew the regulations about fire reporting.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And so did the fire brigade, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. There’s no fire station in Surbiton, although there’s talk of building one. I did hear mention that a volunteer steam fire engine was kept somewhere near Victoria Road, but I don’t know much about it. No, the station at Ditton dealt with it. But it’s a volunteer station, so they had to call out their members from home. Even so, it only took them about twenty minutes to get there after the alarm. They’re very keen.’

  ‘Who raised the alarm, sir?’ asked Marriott, breaking off his note-taking to glance at Granger.

  Granger ran a finger down his report. ‘That was Captain Rupert Holroyd, Skipper. One of the owners. He ran to a telephone box at the corner of the road.’

  ‘He was lucky to find one,’ said Marriott. ‘Most of them are in London.’

  ‘Was there no telephone at the garage, Mr Granger?’ asked Hardcastle, cutting across his sergeant’s comment.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. It may have been that there was one in the office and it was destroyed by the conflagration.’

  ‘Was Captain Stoner present when you arrived, sir?’ asked Marriott.

  ‘If he was, I didn’t see him.’

  ‘What about Holroyd?’

  ‘He’d returned to the site of the incident after calling the brigade, sir, and when I questioned him, he said he’d no idea how the fire had started. He’d been with a young lady in London, where he’d taken her for luncheon, so he said. When eventually he got back to Ditton, he found the garage on fire.’

  ‘I spoke to the insurance company earlier today and they’ve refused to pay out,’ said Hardcastle. ‘The manager talked of the fire being suspicious. Any idea why? Did you see anything suspicious?’

  ‘No, sir, but the fire brigade was there, as I said, and they never said a word about anything being wrong. In fact, their leading fireman put the cause down to possibly a cigarette or a careless flame associated with petroleum spirit fumes – it being a garage, like. And that’s what I put in my report.’

  ‘But there were two fires quite a distance apart, Mr Granger,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Did you not find that a bit odd?’

  ‘Thinking back on it, I probably did, but I was guided by what the fire brigade said. Unfortunately, they are amateurs, sir, and don’t have the same training as the regular firemen.’

  ‘There’s one more thing you can do for me, Mr Granger,’ said Hardcastle, who was beginning to think that it was not only the fire brigade who were amateurs.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Get someone to call me a cab to take me to Surbiton railway station. I’ve had enough for one day.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure, sir,’ said Granger, and received a sharp glance from Hardcastle.

  THREE

  On Saturday morning, Hardcastle decided to visit the Paddington newsagent’s shop that the manager of the Kingston estate agency had said was the accommodation address used by Oliver Talbot.

  An overweight, bald-headed man, with a ragged moustache and finger-marked spectacles, looked up when Hardcastle and Marriott entered.

  ‘Help you?’ he asked, wiping his hands down the front of his cardigan.

  ‘Are you the owner of this establishment?’ demanded Hardcastle.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ The man had initially decided that the two men who had just entered his shop were bailiffs. He had good reason for thinking that – indeed, had been expecting them – but his concerns were about to get worse.

  ‘Police.’

  ‘You won’t find anything wrong here, guv’nor.’ Suddenly, the newsagent became sycophantic.

  ‘I asked you if you were the owner.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Hardcastle persisted.

  ‘Sam Cox.’

  ‘Would that be Samuel Cox?’ asked Marriott, taking out his pocketbook.

  ‘S’right.’

  ‘Where and when were you born?’

  ‘What d’you want that for?’

  ‘I suggest you answer my sergeant’s questions, Cox, because you are on the verge of being arrested for committing an offence under the Official Secrets Acts of 1911 and 1920.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know nothing about no official secrets. Anyway, the war’s long since over.’

  ‘I think we will take Cox into custody, Sergeant Marriott. He is clearly being evasive,’ said Hardcastle, appearing to give the matter great thought.

  ‘I was born on the seventh of January 1865 in Whitechapel, sir.’ Cox gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m sorry, guv’nor, it’s just you took me aback, going on about official secrets an’ that. I thought you was being serious for a moment.’

  ‘I was,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but now we’ve got that out of the way, at least for the moment, you can tell me about a man called Oliver Talbot who uses this shop as the address for any letters that are written to him.’ He took out his pipe and began to fill it.

  A shifty-looking man sidled into the shop, put a penny on the counter and took a copy of the Daily Mirror. Belatedly realizing that the two men who were talking to the shop’s owner were obviously policemen, he was about to scurry out when he was stopped by Hardcastle’s stentorian voice.

  ‘Bates!’

  The man turned. ‘Oh, hello, Mr ’Ardcastle. I never saw you there.’

  ‘What are you doing on this manor, eh, Bates?’

  ‘I live just round the corner, guv’nor.’

  ‘Well, just you mind you keep your nose clean.’ Hardcastle turned to Marriott as Bates hurried out of the shop. ‘Spotter Bates was a look-out man for a team of pickpockets who robbed tourists at the Changing of the Guard at Buck House. Got sent down for five years’ hard labour about seven years ago.’ He turned back to Cox. ‘Now then, about this man Talbot, Cox.’

  ‘Mr Talbot’s only come in the once since he paid for the arrangement, guv’nor,’ said Cox, ‘just to see if there’s anything for him, but there was only one and there ain’t been nothing since.’

  ‘How long has he had this arrangement with you, Cox?’ asked Marriott.

  ‘Getting on for a fortnight, I s’pose.’

  ‘So, we can assume that he intends to come in once a fortnight, or maybe once a week,’ said Hardcastle, half to himself. ‘Did he leave an address where he could be reached if something turned up?’

  ‘No, he never.’

  ‘He didn’t?’ Hardcastle raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, but it was the answer he had expected. ‘Let’s have a look at your record book, then, Cox.’ He took out a box of Swan Vestas and lit the tobacco in his pipe.

  ‘What record book?’ A hunted look appeared on Cox’s face.

  ‘When you registered your business as an accommodation address with the police, you were told to keep a book in which to record the name and address of each person who was having mail sent here.’ Hardcastle looked around for an ashtray; not finding one, he dropped the match on the floor.

  Sam Cox looked decidedly unhappy at Hardcastle’s latest revelation. ‘Well, I, um …’

  ‘So, you’re not registered,’ said Hardcastle accusingly.

  ‘No, well, I never knew I had to.’

  ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Cox. You’ll be reported for a summons, and you could get six months’ imprisonment for breaching Section Five of the Official Secrets Act 1920.’ There was no need for Hardcastle to quote the statute, but he did so to ensure that Cox would do as he was told from now on.

  ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ exclaimed Cox. ‘I never knew, guv’nor, as the good Lord is my witness.’

  ‘There’s no need to take the oath yet, Cox. Save it for your appearance up the Old Bailey. Now, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. If any letter comes for this Oliver Talbot, you won’t give it to him. And if he asks, tell him that nothing’s arrived for him. Then you�
��ll immediately telephone Detective Sergeant Marriott here, and tell him, and he’ll come and collect the letter. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, guv’nor,’ said Cox. After a moment’s thought, he added plaintively, ‘but I haven’t got a telephone.’

  ‘Haven’t got one?’ said Hardcastle. ‘I’m amazed. Well, you’d better get one.’

  Marriott turned away, almost choking with suppressed laughter at Hardcastle’s perverse statement. For years the DDI had expressed his abhorrence of the telephone and swore that it was a new-fangled device that would not last. It’s a flash in the pan, like all the other things the Metropolitan Police has tried, he would frequently tell Marriott.

  ‘D’you want me to swear an information and get a summons for Cox, sir?’ asked Marriott, as he and Hardcastle left the shop of the distressed newsagent.

  ‘No, Marriott. Just write a brief report and send it to Special Branch. They deal with Official Secrets Act matters. They’ve got nothing else to do, and while you’re at it, you might as well tell ’em how to get to court.’ Over the years, Hardcastle had developed an animosity towards Special Branch, mainly as a result of the attitude of Superintendent Patrick Quinn, its wartime chief. Hardcastle believed that Quinn had always treated him like some sort of common-or-garden dogberry. What he did not realize was that Quinn treated everyone in much the same way. And to add to Hardcastle’s irritation with the man, Quinn had received a knighthood when he retired.

  On Monday morning, Hardcastle made another instant decision. ‘We shall go to the Old Bailey, Marriott.’

  ‘The Bailey, sir? What for?’

  ‘To get a warrant under the Bankers’ Books Evidence Act, Marriott, that’s what for. I want to have a gander at any cheques young Stoner might have drawn on his account. Knowing how sniffy bank managers are about anyone wanting information about a client, it’s best to have a warrant.’

  Deciding that the weather was warm enough not to bother with an overcoat, Hardcastle seized his bowler hat and umbrella, and made for the stairs. ‘Come, Marriott.’