Hardcastle's Quandary

by Graham Ison

  ‘The man you spent the weekend with was Rupert Holroyd, pretending to be Guy Stoner. Guy Stoner was murdered sometime before that, and from what you’re saying about having known this man you were thinking of marrying, it would appear that Stoner had been dead for some time.’

  Lavinia Quilter’s face suddenly lost much of its colour, but she managed to maintain the sangfroid for which the aristocracy is renowned. ‘I think you must be mistaken, Sergeant,’ she said in rather superior tones, and drained her glass in one gulp before replacing it on the cabinet.

  ‘Ironically, it was Rupert Holroyd who identified the remains of Guy Stoner after his body was found.’

  Lavinia sat down in her armchair rather heavily. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed and ran her hands through her bobbed hair.

  Marriott produced the photograph of Stoner that the vicar had given Hardcastle. ‘Guy Stoner’s uncle said that his nephew claimed to have met you.’

  ‘I don’t know him at all,’ said Lavinia, returning the photograph after a few seconds. ‘One meets so many people. I suppose I might have danced with him, but most evenings out end in a blur.’

  ‘If we asked you to attend an identification parade, would you be able to pick out the man you believed to be Guy Stoner?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly would. Why did this Holroyd pretend to be Guy?’ Suddenly, Lavinia grasped the implications of what Marriott had been saying. ‘Oh my God!’ she said again. ‘You think this Holroyd murdered Guy and then pretended to be him.’

  Marriott did not answer.

  FIFTEEN

  Before leaving the mews flat that Lady Lavinia Quilter shared with Sarah Carmichael, Marriott had telephoned Hardcastle and secured his agreement for an identification parade to be held the following day.

  On the Tuesday morning, uniformed constables scoured the streets in and around Whitehall to find seven men of similar appearance to Rupert Holroyd. By eleven o’clock, these men had assembled in the parade room of Cannon Row police station and were joined by Holroyd who earlier that morning had been escorted from Brixton prison by two warders.

  Promptly at eleven o’clock, Lady Lavinia Quilter arrived at the police station. She was the very picture of elegance in a beige cloth wrap with matching cloche hat and suede gloves. In one hand she held a leather handbag, and in the other an en-tout-cas umbrella.

  The uniformed inspector who had been deputed to conduct the parade escorted her to the station yard and explained what she should do if she recognized the man she knew as Guy Stoner.

  Handing her umbrella to the inspector, she moved speedily along the line of men and unhesitatingly, and without uttering a word, placed her hand firmly on Holroyd’s chest.

  Holroyd was stunned to be confronted by Lavinia Quilter and was rendered momentarily speechless. He had no idea why the identification parade had been held, but he was even more surprised when she picked him out. What really worried him was the possibility that he was about to be accused of another crime of which, thus far, he was unaware.

  Once the parade had been dismissed, and Holroyd was on his way back to Brixton prison, Marriott showed Lady Lavinia up to Hardcastle’s office and introduced her to the DDI. Divesting herself of her wrap, she handed it to Marriott, along with her umbrella and gloves, and waited until a chair had been brought in for her.

  ‘D’you mind if I smoke, Inspector?’ she asked, and took a small gold case from her handbag, having made the assumption that Hardcastle could not possibly refuse. Then she waited until he leaned across his desk and applied a flame to her cigarette.

  ‘Are you quite certain, Lady Lavinia, that the man you picked out was the man who pretended to you that he was Captain Guy Stoner?’

  ‘I most certainly am.’

  ‘And did he spend the weekend of the eleventh to the fourteenth of March with you in Kings Worthy?’ Hardcastle blew out the match and dropped it into the ashtray which he then moved closer to his visitor.

  ‘Yes, I’m positive, Inspector. He left Durlston Park early on the Monday morning.’ Lady Lavinia blew a smoke ring and shot a quick smile in Marriott’s direction as if sharing her indiscretion with him. ‘But has he been accused of some crime?’

  ‘On the contrary, Lady Lavinia,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You have just prevented him from being charged with the murder of Guy Stoner and a woman named Celine Walker.’

  ‘But why should you have thought that Rupert what’s-his-name had committed murder?’

  ‘I’m not in a position to tell you about that, ma’am. It is what we call sub judice,’ said Hardcastle, even though he was uncertain whether he was correct in his assertion. ‘No doubt the newspapers will report it all in due course, but that won’t be until after the trial. Thank you for agreeing to attend the parade, and now Sergeant Marriott will show you out and call a cab for you.’ But as the young woman reached the door, the DDI asked, ‘As a matter of interest, Lady Lavinia, where did you meet the man you thought was Guy Stoner?’

  ‘At the Twilight Cabaret Club.’

  ‘In Brewer Street?’

  Waving a hand vaguely in the air, Lady Lavinia gave a gay laugh. ‘You may well be right, Inspector. I must admit that I rely very much on taxi drivers to get me to where I want to go.’ Marriott helped her into her wrap and returned her umbrella. At the door, she gave Hardcastle a gay wave. ‘Toodle-oo, Inspector.’

  Marriott walked Lady Lavinia up Derby Gate to Parliament Street and called a cab for her.

  With one foot on the step of the taxi, she paused and turned. ‘Your inspector’s a bit of an old stick-in-the-mud, isn’t he, Charlie?’ She laughed. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Charlie, do you?’

  ‘Not at all, Vinny.’

  ‘I suppose you’re married, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, very happily.’

  ‘Dammit! All the best ones are.’ Lady Lavinia blew him a kiss and climbed into the cab.

  Marriott slowly ascended the stairs to Hardcastle’s office, still chuckling at the extent to which young women like Vinny Quilter behaved since the end of the war, but at once thought that it was that war that had caused the change. Or maybe the aristocracy always did behave like that.

  ‘Well?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘That rules Holroyd out of the murders of Stoner and the girl, sir.’

  ‘You think so, do you, Marriott?’

  ‘If he spent that weekend with the earl’s daughter, sir, I don’t see how he could possibly have murdered Stoner and the French girl. Sir Bernard Spilsbury was adamant that the murders had taken place that weekend.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Marriott. She might just be saying that to protect him. Did she honestly think he was Stoner?’

  ‘I don’t know what she thought, sir,’ said Marriott, becoming a little irritated by Hardcastle’s doubts. It was as though the DDI was looking for a loophole, and with it a reason to clear up two murders, even if it meant seeing the wrong man hanged. ‘We mustn’t overlook the fact that the Earl of Wilmslow was at Kings Worthy that weekend and also met Holroyd. Do you want him to come up to London to attend an identification parade as well?’

  Hardcastle glared at his sergeant. ‘I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Marriott.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I really do think that the evidence is strongly in favour of Holroyd being innocent.’

  ‘He’s a bank robber, Marriott.’ It was Hardcastle’s belief that once a man ventured into the world of serious criminality, he would thereafter commit any felony, including murder.

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer, sir,’ said Marriott, as if reading Hardcastle’s thoughts. He had been trying to dissuade the DDI from that blinkered view ever since he had started working with him.

  ‘I think you need to concentrate on this here Twilight Cabaret Club, Marriott.’ As Hardcastle so often did when he could find no justification for one of his wild theories, he changed direction. ‘It seems to me that it crops up too often. First there’s Walker bribing a waiter so as he
could meet Celine and eventually marry her, and now the Lady Lavinia says that’s where she met Holroyd masquerading as Stoner. I still think that Holroyd might have had something to do with them toppings down at Ditton. Who was it who made enquiries at this here club?’

  ‘Catto and Ritchie, sir.’

  ‘Send ’em up there again. And this time tell ’em to dig deeper.’

  Despite Hardcastle switching his interest to the Twilight Cabaret Club, Marriott was sure that the DDI still had doubts about Holroyd. Being a younger man, and aware that changes were taking place in law enforcement, Marriott relied on evidence to a far greater extent than Hardcastle and was more than satisfied that Rupert Holroyd was not responsible for the Ditton murders. He knew that these days defending counsel were unlikely to accept evidence simply because it was given by a senior detective officer, as had been the case in former days, and would challenge it rigorously.

  As he had tried to explain to Hardcastle, the Earl of Wilmslow had also met Holroyd and believed him to be Stoner. Not that he had met either him or the real Stoner before, and therefore had no reason to be suspicious of the identity to which Holroyd had laid claim. But the fact remained that Lord Wilmslow actually saw Holroyd in the flesh that weekend and could testify to the fact that he was nowhere near Ditton some sixty or so miles away.

  Marriott’s job now was to overcome the DDI’s intransigence and persuade him not to waste any more time in speculating about how he could find Holroyd culpable. Marriott’s own view of the man was that he was an ex-officer who had enjoyed the life of what the army scathingly termed a temporary gentleman, with a servant and mess life, and all that went with it. It was unsurprising that he wanted to continue with that mode of life, but he was soon to discover that robbing a bank was not the solution. The reality, of course, was that Holroyd had seen very little of the real life of an army officer, having spent most of the war knee-deep in mud tending his guns. Colonel Patmore, the Assistant Provost Marshal, had said that after the war Holroyd had applied for a permanent commission but had been rejected. He had gone on to say that Holroyd was not exactly ‘top drawer’, implying that the army had no room for a former water company clerk in the peacetime officer corps.

  ‘Henry!’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant?’ Henry Catto rose from his place at the detectives’ table and crossed the office until he was in front of Marriott’s desk.

  ‘Pull up a chair, Henry.’ When Catto was settled, Marriott continued. ‘The DDI wants you and Ritchie to go back to the Twilight Cabaret Club and find out as much as you can about this business of waiters being bribed to put clients in touch with the showgirls. Don’t hesitate to make a few threats, but we’ve got to get to the bottom of this damned murder. If you get any trouble from the owner of the place, let me know.’

  Catto laughed. ‘I don’t foresee having any trouble with him, Skip.’

  Marriott laughed too. ‘No, I think you’re right, Henry.’

  The immaculately attired man who greeted the two detectives when they arrived at the club at seven o’clock was the same man who had been on duty the last time they called. The owner had described him as the admissions manager, rather than the doorman.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, with his customary suavity. ‘Unless I’m much mistaken, you are the gentlemen from the police. Doubtless you’ll be wanting a word with the major.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Catto.

  ‘I’ll just advise him that you’re here.’

  A minute or so later, Major Leo Craddock limped into the foyer. Hooking his walking cane over his left arm, he shook hands with the two CID officers. ‘No trouble, I hope, gentlemen.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Catto, as he and Ritchie followed Craddock in his slow progress upstairs to his office.

  ‘Scotch, gentlemen?’ Without waiting for a reply, Craddock poured three stiff measures of Laphroaig. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ he asked, as the detectives sat down. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Catto and Detective Constable Ritchie, if memory serves me correctly.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ Catto succinctly described the reason for his visit and emphasized that there seemed to be a link between the Twilight Cabaret Club and the murders of Guy Stoner and Celine Walker. ‘I’m not suggesting that your establishment was involved in any way, Major, but it just happens to be the venue where the principals met.’ He went on to repeat the story that Gerald Walker had told about bribing a waiter to pass a note to Celine Fontenau, as she had been then, and how Walker had subsequently married her.

  ‘This is all very disturbing, Sergeant Catto,’ said Craddock. ‘I think I said, the last time you were here, that I try to dissuade the girls from fraternizing with the guests. Marjorie Hibberd does her best and the waiters are scared stiff of her, but human nature being what it is, a man and a woman will always find a way of meeting if there’s a mutual attraction.’ From downstairs there came a sudden burst of lively music, interrupting what Craddock was saying. ‘Dixieland jazz,’ he commented with a shrug. ‘Our younger guests are very keen on it.’ Returning to the matter in hand, he asked, ‘Would it be helpful if I found the waiter who passed that note, Sergeant Catto?’

  ‘It would certainly be a start,’ said Catto. ‘D’you think you can find him? Presumably he’ll be facing the sack.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll get the sack all right.’

  ‘In that case, he’s bound to deny any misconduct. So how are you going to identify him?’ asked Ritchie.

  Craddock laughed. ‘My head waiter is an Irishman and is very good at winkling out the truth.’ He paused. ‘At one time, he was my squadron sergeant major and a few years after the war he called here quite by chance looking for work. He was obviously down on his luck and I gave him a job. He turned out to be just as good a head waiter as he had been an SSM.’

  ‘Would it be asking a lot if I requested you not to sack this waiter, whoever he is, Major?’ said Ritchie. ‘We might need to speak to him again on other matters connected with these murders.’

  ‘Surely to God you don’t think that one of my waiters is mixed up in a murder, Mr Ritchie?’ Craddock sounded appalled at the very thought of it.

  ‘Not at all, Major,’ Catto answered hurriedly. He was annoyed that Ritchie had gone in with his customary bluntness and intended to remind him of Baden-Powell’s oft-quoted maxim: ‘Softly Softly Catchee Monkey.’

  ‘I think it’s time that I sent for Patrick Lynch. As I said earlier, if anyone can find this chap, he can.’ Craddock leaned across to his desk and made a telephone call.

  Two minutes later, the door opened and a man appeared on the threshold. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ Ramrod straight, his thumbs aligned with the seams of his trousers, he was immaculate in a tailcoat upon which was a row of miniature medals, worn at Craddock’s insistence.

  ‘These two gentlemen are from the police, Sarn’t Major.’

  ‘Are they indeed, sir?’ Lynch nodded briefly in the detectives’ direction. ‘Not from Vine Street, I hope.’

  ‘No, Mr Lynch, I’m Detective Sergeant Catto and this is Detective Constable Ritchie, and we’re from the Whitehall Division, investigating two murders.’ Catto assumed that Lynch had made the acquaintance of Station Sergeant Goddard and had probably taken an instant dislike to the man.

  ‘That’s all right, then.’ Lynch spoke as though murder was an everyday event. But for a man who had daily witnessed death on the Western Front, that came as no surprise.

  Craddock explained to Lynch what the two police officers hoped to discover.

  ‘Ah, I see, sir.’ Lynch glanced at Catto. ‘Can you tell me this gentleman’s name and the date he sent this note to Celine Fontenau, Sergeant?’

  Although Catto knew the date, he checked by referring to his pocketbook. ‘It was a Mr Gerald Walker and the incident took place on the ninth of October 1926.’

  ‘I know who that would be, sir,’ said Lynch to Craddock. ‘I’ve had my eye on him for some time now. A bit of a crafty spalpeen is that one
. Are you going to give him his cards, sir?’

  ‘Very likely, Sarn’t Major,’ said Craddock, ‘but I’ll see what he has to say for himself. As you are well aware, I’ll not stand for that sort of conduct. I’ll ring down for him.’

  ‘I could go and fetch him, sir.’

  ‘No, I’ll not have my senior staff running about after waiters, Mr Lynch. What’s the man’s name?’

  ‘Albert Higgs, sir.’

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Sarn’t Major?’ said Craddock, as he lifted the telephone from his desk.

  ‘Rather stand, sir, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ Albert Higgs did not so much enter the office as appear to insinuate himself around the edge of the door. He was a weaselly little man with a pencil moustache, pomaded hair and the rounded shoulders of one of life’s perpetual servants. He glanced apprehensively at Major Craddock, and with a sweeping gaze took in the head waiter and the two men he knew instinctively to be police officers.

  ‘On the ninth of October last year, Higgs,’ began Lynch, ‘you accepted a substantial sum of money from a Mr Walker to pass a note of assignation to Celine Fontenau, one of the dancers.’

  ‘You must’ve got me mixed up with someone else, Mr Lynch.’ Higgs’s nervous and unconvincing reply was almost a whine.

  Lynch took a step closer to Higgs. ‘I don’t think you know how much trouble you could be in by lying to me, Higgs.’ He spoke in low menacing tones. ‘We’re not talking about taking bribes – that’s bugger all – but these two officers are investigating a murder.’ He paused for effect. ‘The murder, in fact, of Celine Fontenau. If I was in your shoes, Higgs, I’d be falling over myself to tell these gentlemen everything I knew.’

  ‘Well, it’s not something I usually do, Mr Lynch.’ Already Higgs was beginning to formulate his defence.

  ‘How many times did you pass notes to Celine Fontenau?’ Lynch had now moved so close to Higgs that their faces were almost touching.