Hardcastle's Quandary

by Graham Ison

  ‘That would appear to be the case, sir.’

  ‘Well, I’m not waiting until the twenty-third of May to see if he turns up at court,’ said Hardcastle furiously. ‘No, you mark my words, Marriott: the bugger’s done a runner. Surely to God it wasn’t Sir John Hanbury who let the damned man out on bail, was it?’

  ‘No, sir, it was one of the more junior stipendiaries.’

  ‘How on earth are we expected to maintain law and order if magistrates go around letting criminals out?’

  ‘Apparently, the magistrate took the view that forging a couple of cheques was not a grave enough charge to warrant keeping Holroyd in custody, sir.’

  ‘I’ll put money on him still being in London, Marriott. Send out an All Stations message on that telegraph thing you’re so fond of and arrange for his details to be circulated in the Police Gazette. Again! Maybe my son will find the bloody man for us for a second time. The Flying Squad must wonder if we know what we’re doing.’

  It was reasonably early, at least by CID standards, when Charles Marriott parked his bicycle in the hall of his police quarters in Regency Street, Westminster.

  He walked through to the kitchen where his wife Lorna was preparing supper.

  ‘Any news, love?’ Lorna asked the same question every evening. She was, of course, keen to know whether his promotion to inspector had been announced.

  ‘Not yet, pet. Ernie Hardcastle keeps telling me that it could be years yet, but he’s only being his awkward self.’ He took his wife in his arms and gave her a lingering kiss.

  ‘Oh, please!’ Doreen, the couple’s sixteen-year-old daughter, appeared in the doorway. ‘Aren’t you two a bit too old for canoodling in public?’

  Lorna broke away from Marriott’s embrace. ‘It’s what keeps a marriage going, young lady, as you will find out one day, if you’re lucky enough to find a man as decent as your father.’

  ‘Are you an inspector yet, Dad?’ Doreen asked, realizing that there was no point in pursuing that particular discussion, albeit light-hearted, with her mother.

  ‘No,’ said Marriott, ‘but you’ll know as soon as I am.’ He turned to Lorna. ‘I’ve been thinking, pet, that it’s time we thought about moving house.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘There are some nice little properties in Catford. There are some on the market for about three hundred pounds.’

  ‘Where on earth would we find three hundred pounds, Charlie Marriott?’ Lorna turned from the cooker and placed her hands on her hips.

  Marriott knew that stance and laughed. ‘We’d get a mortgage, pet.’

  ‘And what would that cost?’

  ‘I’ve priced it. When my promotion comes through, my pay will go up to about four pounds a week. We could easily afford it and, quite frankly, pet, I’m sick of living in police quarters.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should wait until we find out where you’re posted to, love? It’s no good buying a house in Catford if you finish up somewhere like Staines.’

  Marriott laughed. ‘Ever the practical one, eh, pet?’ He took her in his arms and kissed her once more.

  ‘Oh, God! Not again,’ exclaimed Doreen. ‘I’m going to my room.’

  THIRTEEN

  London is a big place when you are looking for someone who probably does not wish to be found. Although a population of about eight million made searching for Rupert Holroyd rather like looking for a single needle in several haystacks, Hardcastle’s men did their best.

  The DDI had already lodged a request with the Assistant Provost Marshal for details of Rupert Holroyd’s service in the army. Two days later, he received a call to say that the records were now available.

  Hardcastle and Marriott entered the APM’s office by way of Horse Guards Arch. As was so often the case, the dismounted sentry, rather than risk being reprimanded for failing to salute an officer, assumed that Hardcastle was an army officer, came to attention and brought his sword to the salute. Hardcastle solemnly raised his bowler hat in acknowledgment of a compliment to which he was not entitled.

  The APM’s clerk, Staff Sergeant Turner, looked up as Hardcastle entered the anteroom. ‘Go in, Inspector, the colonel’s expecting you.’

  Lieutenant Colonel Roland Patmore was an officer of the Royal Fusiliers seconded to the Corps of Military Police. He was a tall, slim and distinguished man with a full head of jet-black hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and a hook nose.

  ‘Ah, Inspector. How d’you do? Not met before. Patmore’s the name. Just been sent here from the Tower. Tower of London, of course. Regimental headquarters, don’t you know.’ The APM shook hands with the two police officers. ‘Have a seat, me dear fellah, and you too, er, Sarn’t Marriott, is it? Yes.’ He sat down himself and reached for a manila docket. ‘Captain Rupert Holroyd. Late of the Royal Field Artillery. Hostilities-only commission. Temporary gentlemen, we called ’em. Applied to stay on. Unsuccessful.’ The APM had a tendency to speak in short staccato sentences. Hardcastle assumed it resulted from issuing orders during intervals in the gunfire during the war. ‘Reading between the lines of his personal reports, not exactly top drawer, eh, what?’ He turned over a page in the docket. ‘Was a clerk in a water company before the war. Somewhere called Oakham, wherever that is. Still, we had to take what we could get. Such a dreadful drain on officers, don’t you know. Getting killed left, right and centre.’ He closed the docket. ‘Anything else, Inspector?’

  Detective Sergeant Henry Catto was particularly diligent in his attempts to track down the errant Holroyd. He went to the Langham Hotel to make certain that they had not been mistaken when they told Marriott that Holroyd had not stayed there. But the head receptionist was adamant that Holroyd had never been a guest of the hotel. He also revisited the Ritz where Holroyd had claimed that he had once stayed but, as with the Langham, the staff denied all knowledge of the man.

  Catto went to the Salvation Army refuge in Vandon Street, the address Holroyd had given the clerk of the court at Bow Street, only to discover that Holroyd had never been there at all. If achieving nothing else, Catto was proving that Holroyd was a habitual liar.

  But then he came up with an idea. He walked across the road to New Scotland Yard and sought out Detective Sergeant Walter Hardcastle, son of his DDI, and the man who had arrested Holroyd at Kempton Park.

  ‘Is DS Hardcastle about?’ he asked as he entered the Flying Squad office. He did not know the younger Hardcastle by sight.

  ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ DS Hardcastle was a tall, stocky man with black hair, and had been a keen rugby player until the new head of the Flying Squad, the deceptively cherubic DCI Charles Cooper, had told him to choose between the Squad and rugby. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m DS Henry Catto from A—’

  Hardcastle interrupted Catto with a hoot of derisive laughter. ‘Bad luck, mate. You must be working for my old man. Looking for an escape route, are you? There aren’t any vacancies on the Squad at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t knock the guv’nor. He’s all right.’ Catto was not a particular admirer of the Flying Squad, whose members he regarded as glory-seeking mavericks, and he instinctively leapt to his DDI’s defence.

  ‘Only joking, mate,’ said Hardcastle. ‘My name’s Wally, by the way. Have a pew, Henry, and tell me all your troubles, apart from complaining that my old pot and pan keeps your nose firmly to the grindstone.’

  ‘D’you remember nicking a geezer called Rupert Holroyd, Wally?’

  Walter Hardcastle hesitated for only a moment before replying. ‘Yeah, got it. Kempton Park on the ninth. It’d been pissing with rain for two days and the racing was off. We only managed to nick half a dozen, including Holroyd. What’s the problem, then?’

  ‘We’re pretty sure he’s done a runner,’ said Catto, and briefly explained the circumstances surrounding A Division’s interest.

  ‘And you think this topping’s down to him, do you?’

  ‘Yes, because I don’t believe this cock-and-bull yarn Harold Bar
ton, his brother-in-law butcher, spun us about finding two dead bodies and chopping ’em up, just in case we thought Holroyd was the bloke who’d topped ’em.’

  Hardcastle laughed. ‘I don’t believe it either, and I don’t suppose my old man does.’

  ‘I’m not too sure about that,’ said Catto, ‘but I think we’re bringing him round to our way of thinking.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with toffee-nosed ex-officers like Holroyd. They think that can get away with murder, literally.’

  ‘I’d have agreed with you but for the fact that he’s not toffee-nosed at all. His family’s on its beam ends. Hardly got two ha’pennies to rub together. It’s surprising he ever got a commission. According to army records, he was a clerk at the water board in Oakham before the war started.’ Catto went on to tell Hardcastle about Holroyd defrauding Stoner by forging cheques.

  ‘I know. That’s what I nicked him for. You put him in the Police Gazette. Anyway, what d’you want me to do? Arrest him again?’

  ‘In a word, yes. We’re not prepared to wait until the twenty-third of May on the off-chance that he’ll turn up at Bow Street for committal proceedings, because we’re bloody sure he won’t. I thought that you blokes were best equipped to find him, seeing as how you’ve got a roving commission.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with the guv’nor,’ said Hardcastle, ‘and he’ll brief the teams to keep an eye open. Any idea where he usually hangs out?’

  ‘No idea at all. We know he was in the habit of frequenting West End nightclubs, but I dare say his money’s run out by now. On two occasions he claimed to have stayed at the Ritz Hotel and the Langham Hotel, but he hasn’t been at either of them. He also told the clerk at Bow Street that he was living at the Sally Ann in Vandon Street, but never went near the place.’

  ‘If he’s been used to the high life, and he’s already been nicked for fraud, it wouldn’t surprise me if he turns to crime. Serious crime, I mean. He’s bound to be short of the readies. Leave it with me, Henry. Give me your telephone number and I’ll give you a call if anything crops up.’

  It so happened that Catto’s decision to speak to Wally Hardcastle, done without the A Division DDI’s knowledge, proved to be a wise move. His plea for help from the Flying Squad came to fruition a week later.

  It was due in no small part to the network of informants that the Flying Squad was so good at cultivating. Word was put out that Detective Sergeant Hardcastle would be very interested to know of any jobs that were likely to come up involving an ex-officer called Holroyd. Generally speaking, the villainous underworld of London is very resentful of what they see as ‘toffs’ muscling in on crime, thereby preventing the working-class villain from earning an honest living. Wally Hardcastle was confident that if Holroyd turned to crime, he would learn about it very quickly.

  In the spring of 1927, it was finally admitted that the Crossley tenders used by the Flying Squad were too slow for pursuing stolen motor cars. They were also too easily recognized by the criminal fraternity because of the wireless aerial on the roof of the vehicles that resembled a bedstead. Authority was given for the acquisition of six Lea-Francis tourers boasting a twelve-horsepower engine under their bonnets, and capable of reaching speeds of seventy-five miles per hour.

  Almost one of the first cases in which these high-powered cars were used in a chase began at a bank in Brompton Road, not far from Harrods’ world-famous emporium.

  There was only one female customer in the bank when the man entered at eleven o’clock that Friday morning. Making sure that he kept his back to the woman and the staff by pretending to write a paying-in slip at a counter beneath the window, he waited until the customer had left.

  The man immediately pulled up a tightly knotted scarf to cover the lower part of his face and drew a revolver. Meanwhile, and ensuring that the engine was kept running, his accomplice waited outside in the Lanchester saloon that the pair had stolen earlier that day. The man inside the bank approached the senior cashier and, brandishing the heavy firearm, demanded all of the money the bank was holding. As it was a Friday, the robbers had assumed that there would be more money in the bank than usual, it being payday. What they had not realized was that many of the customers of the Brompton Road branch were salaried and paid by cheque once a month.

  Even so, the robbers netted about a thousand pounds before making good their escape. It was the bank’s policy not to resist any attempt at robbery, but to hand over cash rather than risk the death of a member of staff. However, the senior cashier discreetly pressed a silent alarm button positioned beneath the counter. The alarm sounded in the distant control room at New Scotland Yard to inform them that a bank robbery was in progress at the Brompton Road bank.

  Within minutes, Scotland Yard had circulated details of the robbery to the crew of every one of the patrolling Flying Squad cars. It was no stroke of luck that one of those cars had been parked in Brompton Road about fifty yards east of the bank – the result of a guarded telephone call to Wally Hardcastle informing him that word was out about a couple of ‘toffs’ who were planning a raid on the bank in question.

  The message from the Yard went on to say that the stolen vehicle was moving in a westerly direction towards Fulham. The Squad driver promptly started the engine of his Lea-Francis and accelerated past the bank until he sighted what the Squad described as ‘the bandits’.

  Although the Lanchester was a vehicle with a horsepower of nearly twice that of the Lea-Francis, its driver was not a match for the Flying Squad driver, whose expertise had been honed on the famous Brooklands racing track.

  The pursuit was a short one. The bandits’ Lanchester got as far as Earls Court Exhibition when it spotted the Lea-Francis on its tail. The driver saw the police sign that the detective inspector in the passenger seat had lowered at the same time as he heard the strident ringing of the police car’s gong.

  In his panic, the Lanchester driver attempted to take the sharp right-hand turn into North End Road much too fast and, with a loud rending of metal, finished up wedged against the wall of a chapel. The two occupants of the vehicle, apparently unhurt, fled.

  ‘Bless you, my son, for being such a God-awful driver,’ muttered the inspector, as he and the two officers with him quit their car and gave chase on foot.

  The two bandits now made the mistake of running into Fane Street. Ignoring the lane on the right that would have taken them into Star Street and some chance of outrunning the police, they found themselves in a cul-de-sac. Turning to face the approaching detectives, they held up their hands in surrender. Although possessing firearms, they were only too aware of the hangman’s noose, and to murder a police officer would have guaranteed their execution.

  Two of the detectives ran their hands expertly over the two robbers and seized a Webley & Scott revolver from each of them. Many of these weapons were in circulation in the years following the war and had been retained by the officers to whom they had been issued.

  ‘You’re nicked, gentlemen,’ said the detective inspector, ‘for robbing a bank.’

  The two prisoners made a miserable picture seated in the interview room at Walham Green police station in Heckfield Place, Fulham. The speed with which they had been captured shocked them but, not being habitual criminals, they were unfamiliar with the practices of the Flying Squad. It was almost as if they had read Ernest Hornung’s creation Raffles, the gentleman cracksman, and assumed that being ex-officers they were clever enough to outwit the bumbling police.

  ‘My name is Prosser, Detective Inspector Prosser of the Flying Squad.’ The tough-looking policeman sat down opposite the two luckless criminals and lit a cigarette. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Allenby. And in case you were thinking of pulling strings, he’s no relation to the famous Field Marshal,’ he added, with a sarcastic cackle. ‘Turn out your pockets.’

  Each of the men placed a wallet, a handkerchief, a cigarette case and some loose change on the table. The police had already taken possession of the money that th
e pair had stolen.

  ‘And now we’ll have your names.’ Prosser turned to DS Allenby. ‘Get your notebook out, Charlie.’

  ‘Horace Beauchamp,’ said the man who had been driving the Lanchester. ‘Major Horace Beauchamp.’

  ‘And you?’ Allenby pointed his pencil at the other man.

  ‘Captain Rupert Holroyd.’

  ‘If I were in your shoes, gentlemen, I should keep quiet about your past glory,’ said Prosser mildly. ‘The judge will likely tack a few more years on to your sentence if he hears that you held a commission during the war. He’ll say you should’ve known better.’

  ‘Dates of birth?’ asked Allenby, and the two robbers promptly provided them.

  ‘What d’you think we’ll get?’ Beauchamp posed the question nervously, almost as if he feared the answer.

  Prosser lit another cigarette from the butt of the first and leaned back in his chair, contemplating the dingy ceiling of the interview room. Eventually, he returned his gaze to Beauchamp. ‘From my recent experience at the Old Bailey,’ he began, ‘the going rate for robbery with violence is about ten years’ hard labour.’

  ‘But it’s our first offence,’ said Holroyd pitifully. ‘And Horry here only drove the car.’

  Prosser laughed loudly. ‘Don’t make any difference,’ he said. ‘You’re both principals in the first degree. Anyway, it was first offenders I was talking about,’ he continued mercilessly. ‘Of course, if you’re unlucky enough to appear before Mr Justice Avory, you’ll probably cop a round dozen. His Lordship doesn’t care much for gentlemen robbers.’

  ‘Anything else, guv’nor?’ Allenby asked his DI.

  ‘Not for the moment, Charlie. Time to take our friends along to the charge room and introduce them to the station officer so he can put ’em on the sheet. Come along, lads.’

  The station sergeant entered the charge room clutching a large book and a few sheets of official paper. Placing himself behind the charge-room desk, he glared at the two prisoners.

  ‘Stand over here,’ he said, gesturing to the space in front of his desk.