Hardcastle's Quandary

by Graham Ison

  ‘About four times, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘And who were these gentlemen who were so keen to meet the young lady, apart from Mr Walker, eh? The truth now.’

  Higgs hesitated, as though about to claim that he did not know the identities, but seeing the expression on Lynch’s face, he yielded.

  ‘There was a Captain Stoner, a Major Beauchamp and a Mr Talbot.’ The names came out in a rush, as though revealing them would somehow purge Higgs of guilt.

  Catto had not interrupted Lynch’s interrogation of Higgs but sat silently absorbing all that the waiter had reluctantly divulged. If the Beauchamp that Higgs had mentioned was Major Horace Beauchamp, then he was almost certainly the man now standing accused of bank robbery with Rupert Holroyd. Interestingly, the other name mentioned was probably Holroyd. He had used the name of Oliver Talbot for letters arriving at the Paddington newsagent when he was trying to sell the Ditton garage.

  ‘And how much did these fine gentlemen give you for passing a note, Higgs?’ asked Lynch. When the waiter paused, he added, ‘I’m getting a little impatient, man.’

  ‘They each give me a pound, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘A pound!’ Lynch was amazed. ‘God give me strength.’

  ‘Wait outside, Higgs, until I send for you,’ said Major Craddock. He was clearly furious about the man’s conduct. Patrick Lynch was beside himself and probably regretting that Field Punishment Number One, which involved tying a defaulter to the wheel of a limber for two hours a day, was no longer within the major’s power.

  ‘I really cannot keep this man in my employment, Sergeant Catto,’ said Craddock. ‘He sets a very bad example. Receiving tips is one thing and is an accepted part of a waiter’s income, but to endanger the welfare of the young women we employ is quite unacceptable.’

  ‘I agree, sir,’ said Catto. ‘As far as I’m concerned, Higgs is unlikely to be of any further assistance to the police.’

  ‘Good. Fetch him in, Sarn’t Major.’

  When the miserable Higgs returned, his expression indicated that he knew what was about to happen next.

  ‘Your conduct is quite unacceptable, Higgs,’ said Craddock. ‘You are dismissed with immediate effect.’ He turned to the head waiter. ‘I’ll thank you to see Higgs off the premises, Sarn’t Major.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure, sir.’

  SIXTEEN

  It was now just over two months since the fire at the Ditton garage, and more than a month since the discovery of the two bodies, both of which had been identified. Hardcastle was becoming increasingly irascible about the lack of progress, but the irony of the situation was that he was involving himself less and less in the day-to-day enquiries. Although this rather pleased his junior officers, particularly Marriott and Catto, it at once laid them more open to blame when results did not satisfy the DDI’s demanding and often unreasonable expectations.

  On the morning following their visit to the Twilight Cabaret Club, Catto and Ritchie reported to Hardcastle.

  ‘You’d better go and see this Beauchamp, then, Catto, and find out what he knows about it all. Where is he?’

  ‘Wormwood Scrubs, sir.’

  ‘Best place for him,’ muttered Hardcastle. ‘Report back when you’ve seen him.’

  Leaving the police station, Catto and Ritchie crossed the narrow roadway to Commissioner’s Office and made for the Flying Squad office.

  ‘Is DI Prosser here?’ asked Catto, looking around.

  ‘That’s me,’ said a thickset man who had the appearance of being useful in the event that he was involved in a rough-house. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘DS Catto, A Division, sir. DDI Hardcastle has directed me to interview Horace Beauchamp up at the Scrubs. I thought I should let you know as a matter of courtesy.’

  ‘What’s that about, then?’

  ‘My DDI fancies him for a couple of murders, guv.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Wally Hardcastle told me about that,’ said Prosser. ‘But don’t ask Beauchamp any questions about the bank robbery in Brompton Road. I don’t want you buggering up my job, because Beauchamp’s a sly bastard. Anyway, you know the form. Incidentally, Skip, I had a word with the military about him. It seems he was court-martialled and cashiered. Something to do with nicking mess funds. Bloody amateurs,’ he added scornfully.

  The forbidding façade of His Majesty’s Prison Wormwood Scrubs was not a welcoming sight, even for visiting police officers.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Catto, Metropolitan Police,’ said Catto, displaying his warrant card to the gate warder, ‘and this is Detective Constable Ritchie,’ he added, indicating his colleague.

  ‘And what can I do for you two upstanding officers of the law?’

  ‘We’d like a word with one of your remand prisoners, a Horace Beauchamp.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Coughing affectedly, the gate warder ran a finger down the large ledger on the shelf that did duty as a desk. ‘Ah, we’ve only got a geezer called ’Orace Bowchamp. Is that the fellow, Sarge?’

  ‘That’s him.’ Catto was not sure whether the warder was making an attempt at humour or whether he really did not know how to pronounce Beauchamp’s name.

  ‘I’ll get one of my colleagues to escort you up to the interview room, Sarge.’

  Horace Beauchamp was typical of many regular army officers. About forty years of age, he had the bearing of someone who had spent all his adult life in the army, rather than being a hostilities-only officer. He had a red face – possibly due to an excess of gin – and a moustache, and bushy eyebrows from beneath which piercing blue eyes studied the two policemen.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Catto and this is Detective Constable Ritchie. We’re from the Whitehall Division investigating crimes that you might know something about.’

  ‘I know you.’ Beauchamp ignored Catto’s allegation and instead pointed a finger at Ritchie. ‘I’m sure I bumped into you in Wipers in 1915. You’re Captain Stuart Ritchie, Grenadier Guards.’ He paused. ‘Ah, got it. In the mess at Poperinghe when we were in rest.’

  ‘The bloody war’s over and I’m not in the army any more,’ said Ritchie tersely. He was a firm believer in leaving the past where it belonged: behind him.

  ‘A copper, eh?’ Beauchamp gave a humourless laugh that was almost a sneer. ‘Bit of a comedown after the Household Brigade, eh, old boy?’

  ‘Not as much of a comedown as awaiting trial for robbing a bank,’ said Ritchie drily, before adding a final condemnation. ‘Weren’t you gazetted to the Connaught Rangers, the regiment that mutinied in India in 1920?’

  ‘You gave a waiter at the Twilight Cabaret Club a pound to pass a note to Celine Fontenau, Beauchamp,’ said Catto, cutting swiftly through military reminiscences that were showing signs of developing into an unseemly slanging match.

  ‘It’s Major Beauchamp.’

  ‘Not any more,’ put in Ritchie. ‘According to the military, you were court-martialled and cashiered for stealing from the mess funds.’

  ‘That was all a mistake,’ protested Beauchamp. ‘I only borrowed the money.’

  ‘You should fit in nicely with everyone else in here, then,’ said Ritchie. ‘They’re all innocent, too.’

  ‘Getting back to what we were talking about,’ said Catto, ‘did you in fact meet Celine Fontenau later on?’

  ‘Have you seriously come all the way out to Wormwood Scrubs to ask me that?’ Beauchamp gave another of his sneering smiles. ‘Not that it’s got anything to do with you, but yes, I took the filly out a few times. But why are so interested in my love life?’

  ‘Because I’m trying to discover who murdered her,’ said Catto mildly. ‘And as you were intimately acquainted with her, you seem to be a good individual to start with.’

  ‘Christ, man! Murdered her?’ Beauchamp’s jaw dropped and he stared at Catto. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, very good, Beauchamp!’ said Ritchie sarcastically. ‘That was a really convincing performance.’

  ‘I hope you’re not ac
cusing me of having killed her.’ Beauchamp did not make any comment about the omission of his rank this time. ‘I only took her out the once—’

  ‘Just now you said you’d taken her out a few times,’ said Ritchie, after glancing down at his pocketbook. ‘Which is it?’

  ‘All right, it was just the once, and that was what you might call a business arrangement. I took her to a hotel and had it up with her.’ Beauchamp glossed over the fact that he had been caught out in a lie, or perhaps it was arrogant boasting. ‘When we’d finished, I sent her on her way five pounds the richer. Lively little filly was Celine, and I had hoped to bed her a few more times, but she was fully booked, so she said.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Celine Fontenau was a prostitute?’ Catto had no problem keeping the surprise from his voice. This was something he had come to expect during the course of his enquiries. ‘How could you afford to give her five quid?’ he asked unwisely.

  ‘He robs banks,’ said Ritchie quietly.

  ‘Some of us have private incomes,’ commented Beauchamp with another of his irritating, sneering laughs. He was, of course, boasting again, and there was little doubt in Catto’s mind that he had acquired the money illegally.

  ‘Who else went out with Celine?’ asked Catto.

  ‘There must have been dozens. As I said, she told me she was fully booked for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Did Guy Stoner go out with her?’ Catto thought that even a prostitute would object to having sexual intercourse with an overweight, bombastic individual like Beauchamp whose breath probably smelt permanently of tobacco and alcohol.

  ‘Oh, yes. He was very keen on her.’

  ‘How did you come to know Stoner?’

  ‘He was a friend of Holroyd’s, and he introduced me to Stoner at the club. There were quite a few of us who got together there. But why all these questions? Don’t you know who murdered the girl?’

  ‘Not yet,’ admitted Catto reluctantly, ‘but we’ll find out.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d ask Stoner. He was the chap who went with her most often. I think the damned fool was even talking about marrying the girl, but God knows what they’d have lived on, because I don’t think he had any money. Anyway, one doesn’t marry one’s tart. It’s not the done thing.’ Beauchamp sneered again.

  Catto was unsure whether Beauchamp was professing ignorance just to annoy the police or whether he really was unaware that Stoner also had been murdered. It was unlikely Holroyd had told Beauchamp that Stoner was dead, because he would have to explain how he knew, and most certainly he would not have mentioned that he had emptied Stoner’s bank account.

  ‘Does the name Gerald Walker mean anything to you?’ asked Catto.

  ‘No. Who’s he and what’s he got to do with this fairy tale of yours?’

  ‘Only that he was married to Celine Fontenau.’

  ‘You find me a prostitute who doesn’t claim to be married.’ Beauchamp laughed. ‘“Husband” is usually a euphemism for her pimp.’

  ‘The Twilight Cabaret Club was where you made your first contact with Celine Fontenau, was it?’ asked Ritchie. ‘You hadn’t previously met her somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s where I first set eyes on her.’

  ‘And you slipped Albert Higgs a pound to pass her a note, did you?’

  ‘Who the devil’s Albert Higgs?’

  ‘The waiter you bribed.’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’ For some inexplicable reason, Beauchamp seemed disconcerted that the police had discovered how Celine’s clients arranged to meet her. Perhaps it was the apparent depth of their enquiries that worried him, and he wondered what else they might have discovered.

  ‘We always find out these things when someone has been murdered,’ said Ritchie quietly. ‘It helps us to track down the killer.’

  ‘Well, don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with it. When did it happen, anyway?’

  Ritchie did not answer that question, but Catto posed one of his own. ‘Where were you during the weekend of the eleventh to the fourteenth of March this year?’

  ‘Good God, man! I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, you’d better start thinking because I’ve got you on my list of suspects for the murder of Celine Fontenau, cully.’

  ‘Now, look here. Just because you’re a copper, you can’t make a wild accusation like that or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers, whom I shall instruct to issue a writ for slander.’

  ‘Have you forgotten where you are, Beauchamp?’ asked Catto mildly. ‘In case you have, I’ll remind you. You’re in Wormwood Scrubs on remand for armed robbery. You haven’t got two ha’pennies to bless yourself with, so don’t start talking about lawyers and actions for slander, because you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. If I decide to charge you with the girl’s murder, your armed robbery will pale into insignificance.’ He stood up and banged on the interview room door. ‘You can take Beauchamp back to his flowery dell, mate,’ he said, when the escorting warder appeared.

  ‘Right, guv’nor. Move yourself, Bowchamp.’

  Henry Catto was not in a good mood when he and Ritchie set off on their walk down Du Cane Road towards East Acton Underground station.

  ‘In future, Ritchie, when you’re with me, you don’t go in for verbal fencing like you were doing with Beauchamp just now. I don’t give a damn which regiment you were in, or which one he was in, or the circumstances under which he left it. It has no relevance to whether he murdered Stoner and the girl. Don’t rise to his sarcasm; just ignore it. You’ll find that it’ll annoy men like Beauchamp even more. He’s the sort who hates to be ignored. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Ritchie. ‘It’s just that men like him infuriate me. I met a few in the army, and—’

  Catto stopped and turned to face Ritchie. ‘There you go again, Ritchie. Just forget you were in the bloody army, will you? You’re in the Metropolitan Police now and you’ll do as you’re told. If you don’t like it, perhaps you ought to consider a change of career.’

  Neither officer spoke again during the remainder of the journey back to Cannon Row.

  Catto knocked on Hardcastle’s door the moment he got back to the police station.

  ‘According to Beauchamp, sir, Celine Walker was well known to the punters at the Twilight Cabaret Club as a prostitute.’

  Hardcastle remained silent as he considered the implications of the report Catto had just made. He went slowly through the procedure of filling his pipe as though it had some cathartic effect on his thought process. Finally, he lit it and expelled a plume of smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘I wonder if Craddock knew what his chorus girls were up to.’

  ‘He professed ignorance, sir,’ said Catto. ‘He claimed that Marjorie Hibberd, his choreographer, kept an eye on the girls to make sure they stayed on the straight and narrow. She certainly seemed to be genuine enough, and while I was there, Craddock sacked the waiter who’d admitted passing notes to Celine from clients wanting to make an assignation.’

  Hardcastle laughed. ‘An assignation, Catto? You mean from men who were after a bit of jig-a-jig. Anyway, waiters are expendable. There are hundreds on the dole, so sacking one of ’em wouldn’t hurt Craddock’s business one little bit, and it’ll have made him look as though he was an upright club owner who wasn’t prepared to stand for any hanky-panky.’

  ‘What d’you suggest we do next, sir?’ Catto knew what he would do, but the case was the DDI’s.

  ‘You and I will visit this here Twilight set-up, Catto, and have a few words with Master Craddock. I think he needs to be put right on a few things.’

  It was a quarter to eight that same evening when Hardcastle and Catto arrived at the Twilight Cabaret Club.

  ‘I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle and I want to see Craddock, and I want to see him now.’

  The man whom Craddock called the admissions manager took an instant dislike to Hardcastle’s brash approach, his view being that courte
sy costs nothing, even if you are a policeman. ‘I’ll see if the major is free.’ Raising his head slightly as if he had suddenly detected an offensive smell beneath his nose, he turned to the telephone and made a brief call. ‘There is a person called Hardcastle wishing to speak to you, sir,’ he said when Craddock answered. ‘He says he’s a detective inspector.’ Replacing the receiver on its hook, he turned back to Hardcastle. ‘The major will be down shortly.’

  ‘Leo Craddock at your service, Inspector.’ The club’s dinner-jacketed owner limped into the foyer a minute or two later. ‘And Sergeant Catto, too, I see. Good to see you again, Sergeant. Perhaps you’d care to follow me, gentlemen.’

  As Craddock and the two detectives skirted the dance floor, Hardcastle stopped in amazement. He stared at the dancers who appeared to be performing a number of physical jerks to the accompaniment of ragtime music.

  ‘What on earth are they doing?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘It’s called the Charleston,’ said Craddock. ‘Another import from the United States. In fact, it’s named after Charleston in South Carolina, but I’ve no idea why. Doubtless it’ll be replaced by another craze before long.’

  Once the two detectives were seated in Craddock’s office, he offered them a drink. Hardcastle refused, leaving Catto no option but to refuse as well.

  ‘How may I help you, Inspector?’ Craddock poured himself a stiff measure of Laphroaig and sat down.

  ‘It’s come to my notice that Celine Fontenau was a prostitute, Major.’ Hardcastle made the accusation bluntly and without any preamble. ‘Furthermore, I have been told that she was well known as such by quite a few of the patrons of this establishment. What have you to say to that?’

  ‘I can hardly believe it, Inspector.’ The look on Craddock’s face clearly indicated that this news came as a complete shock and that he was unaware of the woman’s activities. ‘May I ask where this information came from?’

  ‘You know better than to ask me that, Major.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, but could I at least ask if it came from one of my employees?’

  ‘No, it didn’t. It came from one of your clients, but that’s all I’m telling you.’ Hardcastle, like all detectives, jealously guarded his informants, even though he did not place Beauchamp in that category. To reveal that the allegation had come from a cashiered army officer currently awaiting trial for robbery would undoubtedly cast doubt upon the veracity of the information. But Hardcastle was not above using any ploy available to him to get reliable information. He called it using a sprat to catch a mackerel.