Hardcastle's Quandary

by Graham Ison

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, Sergeant. We only have one telephone number here, and all calls go through the switchboard. The telephone number that you have there is nothing to do with Hudson and Peartree, I can assure you.’ Miss Marsh dismissed the idea with a wave of the hand.

  ‘Mr Walker also told us that he had an apartment in Chapter Street, a turning just off—’

  ‘I know where Chapter Street is,’ said Miss Marsh, who disliked being patronized.

  ‘And he said that it was paid for by his employers.’

  The receptionist scoffed. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked here for thirty-five years and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that there are very few people who know more about the workings of Hudson and Peartree than I do. The very idea of a clerk being provided with accommodation by the company is, well, preposterous.’

  Catto put his pocketbook away. ‘I think you’re right, madam. I’ve clearly been misinformed.’

  ‘Is it possible that Mr Walker did work here at some time in the past but has since resigned?’ asked Ritchie.

  ‘No,’ said Miss Marsh firmly.

  ‘Where are we going now, Skipper?’ asked Ritchie as he and Catto walked down Vauxhall Bridge Road.

  Catto glanced at his watch. ‘The Grosvenor Hotel, Stuart. They’ve got a decent bar and I need a pint after that fiasco.’

  Once the two detectives were ensconced at a quiet end of the bar in the saloon of the old railway hotel, Ritchie asked, ‘What d’you make of this story that Walker told us, then?’

  ‘We’ve been conned,’ said Catto.

  ‘Yeah, I appreciate that, but so has the guv’nor.’

  Catto laughed. ‘Maybe, but I can’t see the DDI admitting it. He’ll put it on someone else, you mark my words. However, I’ll speak to the GPO and get details of the subscriber to the telephone number that Walker gave us. Provided Walker is his real name,’ he added gloomily.

  ‘It’s looking more like he was the bloke who owned the bawdy house at Brighton, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe, but what I’ve got to do now is get as much information about Walker, and anything else that we can find out about Marjorie Hibberd, before we speak to the DDI. He’ll still go bloody mad when we tell him about the fast one that Walker’s pulled, but if we’ve got something to give him, it’ll at least soften the blow.’

  Ritchie bought another round of beer. ‘I’ve got a suggestion to make, Skip,’ he said tentatively, ‘but it rather depends how quickly we can get the address of that telephone number Walker gave us.’ He went on to outline what he had in mind.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Catto, when Ritchie had finished. He drained his beer. ‘Gerald Road nick is only a short walk from here. We’ll get round there and use their telephone to speak to the GPO.’

  After the usual chaffing when the station officer told Catto that B Division was always willing to assist officers of the Royal A Division, Catto got in touch with the GPO. Within minutes, he had the address. And it was not an apartment in Chapter Street.

  ‘That number belongs to a house in Charlwood Place, which runs parallel with Belgrave Road.’

  ‘Do we go there, Skip?’

  ‘Now is as good a time as any, Stuart. We don’t know what he does for a living, but sure as hell he’s not a clerk at Hudson and Peartree.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The Georgian town house in Charlwood Place was clearly an expensive dwelling, certainly for someone who had professed to be a clerk, although that was now in serious doubt. Catto hammered on the heavy brass knocker and after about five minutes the door was opened by Gerald Walker attired in a long Paisley-patterned silk robe. The first thing Catto noticed was that his hair was dishevelled, as though he had just got out of bed, even though it was now two o’clock in the afternoon.

  ‘Oh, Sergeant Catto!’ Walker was unable to disguise his shock at seeing the detective on his doorstep and sensed that it boded ill. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘You told us that the company you work for – Hudson and Peartree – had provided you with an apartment in Chapter Street, not Charlwood Place.’

  ‘Quite right, but since our last meeting they offered me this house and I could hardly refuse, could I?’

  ‘It seems rather grand accommodation for a clerk,’ said Ritchie who, like Catto, was playing along with Walker’s fiction.

  ‘May we come in?’ asked Catto. ‘There are one or two things we’d like to discuss with you.’

  ‘Er, yes, but I hope it won’t take long because I am rather busy.’ There was no denying that Walker was reluctant to admit the two detectives and he ushered them hurriedly into the temple-tiled hall. He was about to open the door of a side room when a barefooted woman came down the stairs.

  ‘Who is it, Gerald?’ Marjorie Hibberd was also wearing a robe, but it was much shorter than Walker’s, and she had taken time to arrange her hair. ‘Oh, Sergeant Catto. What are you doing here?’ Her surprise was as apparent as Walker’s had been.

  ‘I might ask you the same question, Mrs Hibberd.’

  ‘Mr Walker and I live together, and I think I’m right in saying that our living arrangements, although perhaps not regarded as socially acceptable, are not illegal and have nothing to do with the police.’ Marjorie Hibberd immediately went on the offensive. It was not her first hostile meeting with the police and, doubtless, she had learned a few tricks from the other inmates at Holloway, the north London women’s prison where she had served her sentence.

  Following Marjorie Hibberd’s lead, Walker now became more assertive. Suddenly, the downtrodden character who had been interviewed by Hardcastle vanished and was replaced by what Catto took to be the man’s true persona. ‘What d’you want?’ he demanded truculently.

  Catto had had enough. ‘You told us that you were a clerk with Hudson and Peartree.’

  ‘And so I am,’ said Walker, beginning to sound a little less confident.

  Catto laughed. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that a company as big as Hudson and Peartree would allocate expensive accommodation like this to a clerk? And the telephone number you gave us has nothing to do with the company or taking orders, and before you start arguing the toss about what I’m saying, I’ve checked it with the GPO. In fact, that’s how I found out where you lived. Furthermore, Detective Constable Ritchie and I visited the head office of the company this morning and a Miss Marsh informed us that nobody by the name of Gerald Walker worked there and never had. In short, they’d never heard of you.’

  ‘She was wrong,’ said Walker lamely. ‘Whoever Miss Marsh is.’

  ‘I think you’d better leave, Sergeant,’ said Marjorie Hibberd. ‘Mr Walker lost his wife not long ago, as you well know, and is still grieving.’

  ‘By living with an old Brighton friend, I see,’ commented Ritchie quietly.

  ‘What d’you mean by that?’ demanded Marjorie, the pitch of her voice rising slightly.

  Ritchie laughed. ‘You can come down off your high horse, Mrs Hibberd. We know all about the brothel you were running in Albert Road, Brighton, and we also know that you were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment as a result.’ He then took a chance. ‘And the house in Albert Road was owned by you, Mr Walker, wasn’t it?’

  Both Catto and Ritchie were expecting a denial from Walker, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘So what? I owned a house in Brighton. Is that against the law?’ Walker’s reply was heavy with sarcasm.

  ‘And presumably you rented it out to Mrs Hibberd.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Walker was beginning to get a little edgy. He was uncertain what Catto was driving at, but he had a feeling that it would not be to his advantage.

  ‘How much did she pay you in rent?’

  But before Walker had a chance to answer, Marjorie Hibberd intervened.

  ‘Don’t answer that, Gerald,’ she snapped. ‘And if I were you, I’d refuse to answer any more questions without a solicitor being
present.’

  Catto made a decision. ‘Gerald Walker, I am arresting you for living on the immoral earnings of prostitution in Brighton on divers dates in 1922.’ To which awesome announcement he added the usual Judges’ Rules caution.

  ‘I’ll go out and call a cab, Sergeant,’ said Ritchie.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ protested Marjorie Hibberd. ‘I’ll get a lawyer for you, Gerald, darling.’ Judging by the expression on her face, it was obvious that she regretted her initial intervention. Too late, it occurred to her that Catto was bound to infer, from that slip of the tongue, that Walker had been involved with her in the running of the Brighton brothel. Furthermore, despite his brief show of bravado, Walker was a weak character and there was no telling what he might say to the police when she was not there to guide him. And that worried her.

  Catto escorted Walker to his bedroom and waited while he dressed. He had known prisoners to escape from a first-floor window before, and he had no intention of being held responsible for allowing Walker to do so.

  Ritchie returned, and he and Catto conducted Walker out of the house to the waiting cab.

  ‘Where to, guv?’ asked the cab driver as he yanked down the flag of the taximeter.

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ said Catto, mindful of Hardcastle’s maxim that if you tell a cabbie to take you to Cannon Row, you are just as likely to finish up at Cannon Street in the City of London.

  The moment that Walker had been lodged in a cell, Catto made his way to the DDI’s office.

  ‘You’ve done what?’ demanded Hardcastle, once Catto had explained about the arrest of Gerald Walker.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling that he knows something about the murders of Celine Fontenau and Guy Stoner, sir.’ Catto refused to be browbeaten by Hardcastle’s bullying outburst.

  The DDI ignored that comment. ‘Have you informed Brighton police that you’ve got him in custody for one of their jobs?’

  ‘No, sir. I thought you might think there was not enough evidence to justify nicking him, so I held off telling them.’

  Hardcastle grunted. ‘I’ll see what he’s got to say for himself about the murders before I decide whether to give him to Brighton. Get him up to the interview room, and then you can start writing a report about your visit to Charlwood Place. Tell Sergeant Marriott to join me downstairs.’

  Walker continued to lounge in his chair when Hardcastle and Marriott entered the room. It was a churlish attempt to convey that he had nothing to worry about. ‘Why have I been arrested?’ he demanded truculently. There was no repetition of the servility he had displayed on the occasion of his last interview with Hardcastle.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Catto told you the reason,’ snapped the DDI, ‘but I want to talk about something else.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Walker tried to hide his fear with that overweening comment, but this man frightened him. Suddenly, he suspected that Hardcastle was aware of his involvement in the murders.

  ‘We have fingerprint evidence in connection with the murder of Captain Guy Stoner and your wife, Mr Walker,’ said Marriott mildly.

  ‘Well, they’re not mine,’ Walker blurted out. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You know who Captain Stoner is, then.’ Marriott spoke softly. His approach often produced more positive results than did the DDI’s hectoring.

  ‘I, er, no, but you mentioned him when I came to see you following the report in the newspaper.’

  ‘No, we didn’t, Mr Walker.’ Marriott thumbed through the statement he had made following the DDI’s first interview with Walker, and the later one following his identification of Celine Fontenau who, Walker had claimed, was his lawfully wedded wife. ‘Where did you get married to Celine Fontenau, Mr Walker?’

  ‘Er, Marylebone register office.’ Walker named the first office that came to mind, but he was not the first man to underestimate the thoroughness of police enquiries.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Marriott. While Catto had been doing a lot of the legwork, Marriott had been delving into Walker’s background. He had searched the marriage records at Somerset House from the date of Celine Fontenau’s arrival in the United Kingdom and found no trace of a marriage between her and Walker. Now, he glanced down at the report from the Assistant Provost Marshal’s office that he had received only that morning in response to his request for any details of Walker having been a soldier. There had been no time to inform Hardcastle, but whatever the DDI might say later, there was no doubt in Marriott’s mind that this was the moment to put it to Walker. ‘It seems that your army career was not very distinguished.’

  ‘I wasn’t in the army. I told you, I was in a reserved occupation for a firm making field kitchens.’

  ‘Marriott, what the hell are you playing at?’ Hardcastle demanded, turning on his sergeant with an expression of annoyance on his face. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘Let me finish, sir, and I’ll explain in a moment.’ Marriott faced Walker again. ‘You were certainly associated with kitchens. You were a cook attached to the Army Ordnance Corps at the base depot in Boulogne for the entire war.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Walker was aghast that the police knew so much about him.

  Marriott briefly nodded in Hardcastle’s direction, the accepted signal that it was time for the DDI to take over the questioning.

  ‘We know you murdered Guy Stoner and Celine Fontenau, Walker. Your fingerprints were found on a crowbar that was used, and I’ll see you dancing on the hangman’s trapdoor before the year is out.’ For a change, the DDI had spoken almost as mildly as Marriott. In fact, Hardcastle was in error. No discernible fingerprints had been found on the crowbar, only on the car-jack handle.

  Walker went white in the face and for a moment it seemed that he might faint again, as he had done when identifying Celine’s remains at St Mary’s Hospital.

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was Marjorie.’ Walker blurted out his accusation almost as a reflex action.

  ‘I’m sorry, Walker, I didn’t quite hear that.’ Hardcastle made a little pantomime out of leaning forward and cupping a hand around his ear.

  ‘It was Marjorie Hibberd who did for them.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I was there.’ Walker made it sound as though a great weight had been lifted from him, without realizing that he had just implicated himself in the crime. ‘And I want to turn King’s evidence.’

  ‘Oh, you were there, were you?’ Hardcastle ignored Walker’s desperate plea for immunity in exchange for testifying against his lover. ‘That makes you an accomplice, if not a principal in the second degree. But before we go into that, you can tell me exactly what happened.’

  Marriott, already concerned about the admissibility of evidence, scribbled a note and passed it across to the DDI. It bore the two words: ‘Judges’ Rules.’

  Hardcastle glanced at the note and irritably brushed it aside. ‘Tell me about Marjorie Hibberd, Walker.’

  ‘It’s true what you said about me owning the house at Brighton, and I was involved in recruiting the girls who worked there. After the Brighton business collapsed, and when Marjorie came out of prison, we set up at Charlwood Place.’

  ‘Are you admitting that you’re running a brothel at that house?’

  ‘Yes. And one of the girls we recruited was Celine Fontenau. In fact, we have six girls working there at the moment.’

  ‘Haven’t there been any complaints from the neighbours? They must have seen men coming and going,’ suggested Marriott.

  ‘Marjorie wasn’t greedy. She made sure that men only came by appointment, and the appointments were spaced out – only on some days of the week – so as not to arouse suspicion.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the night of your fortieth birthday party at the Twilight Cabaret Club, Walker,’ said Marriott.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The head waiter at the club is a man who’s well aware of what’s going on, and he doesn’t remember anything about a party where you and your friends al
l got drunk on champagne. The night you sent a note to Celine.’

  ‘There wasn’t a party,’ admitted Walker miserably. ‘It was Marjorie’s idea to recruit the girl. She made me do it. I sent a note up to Celine and invited her out to dinner. Afterwards, I took her back to Charlwood Place and Marjorie set her up as one of the girls.’

  ‘So, how did she meet Guy Stoner?’

  ‘He was a client, but he made the mistake of falling in love with her.’

  ‘Why was that a mistake?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘It often happens, Inspector. A customer thinks he’s in love with a tom and wants to take her away from her sordid way of life.’

  Marriott smiled at the reasons Walker had put forward. It was well known among prostitutes in the West End that some of their tricks often fell head over heels in love with one of them and expressed the desire ‘to take you away from all this’.

  ‘But these girls sometimes gave up the game and got married, anyway,’ said Hardcastle. ‘What was different this time?’

  ‘Marjorie was furious about losing one of her best performers. I’ve never seen her so mad. She told Stoner that she’d put it about that he picked up tarts. But Stoner was a nasty bastard, Mr Hardcastle. He told Marjorie that he was going to shop the whole set-up to the police and that she’d finish up in prison.’

  ‘You were privy to this conversation, I take it.’

  ‘No, but Marjorie told me afterwards what Stoner had threatened her with. She’d been inside before and she told me that she’d had a terrible time. The other prisoners beat her up because she spoke nicely – hoity-toity, they called her – and they’d go into her cell and steal all her clothes and leave her naked and shivering. She’d have done anything to avoid going back to Holloway, particularly as she knew it would be a lengthy sentence next time. She’s a tough bird is Marjorie, but that lot in Holloway were tougher, and she didn’t fancy going back inside again.’

  ‘She won’t,’ said Hardcastle. ‘At least only long enough for them to measure her for the drop. Go on.’