A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  The room held nothing for them. It was small, neat, the room of a quiet man. On the walls were half-a-dozen watercolours of London scenes, Swiss Cottage, Piccadilly Circus, London Bridge. From the door, where he stood behind his wife, Halliwell told them that Sonny had won prizes at school for art and had thought of going to art school, but they decided there was no future in it. Devenish looked up from the drawer containing socks, handkerchiefs, shirts in restrained stripes and delicate colours.

  ‘There wasn’t too much future in working for Freddy Williams either.’

  He ignored Halliwell’s obscene reply. Beside the bed there was a photograph of Charlie Reynolds, and beneath it cuttings praising Charlie’s acting in a TV play. Halliwell commented.

  ‘An actor named Reynolds, a friend of Sonny’s, a nice young feller.’

  ‘Did Sonny have any other friends like him? Anyone who might have been jealous.’

  ‘That’s a filthy insinuation, a terrible thing to suggest.’ The words bubbled in the man’s mouth, he wiped away spittle.

  ‘It’s too late at night to play games. We’re not worried about Sonny’s morals.’ Devenish moved quickly across the room, brushed past the bulk of Mrs Halliwell, gripped her husband by the shoulders. ‘I want to know if somebody had a personal reason for knocking him off.’

  ‘You’re hurting me, Super, you don’t know your own strength.’

  ‘That was an assault,’ Mrs Halliwell cried. ‘I saw it. You try it again, and I’ll see a lawyer.’

  ‘You do that.’ Devenish glared at her. ‘And I’ll see this old lush inside a cell. By God, you’d think I was putting you through some sort of torture instead of trying to find out who killed your son.’

  ‘I don’t like the smell of police. They make a house stink.’

  Brewster was sniffing a small tobacco jar. He held it up. ‘Pot.’

  ‘He used it sometimes,’ Halliwell said. ‘And why not, there’s no harm in it.’

  ‘We’re not looking for pot.’ Devenish was not looking for anything in particular, just to see if there was an obvious personal reason for Sonny’s death. He didn’t expect to find it, and so was not disappointed. There was nothing to contradict his belief that this was a gang killing, possibly the first move in a war.

  To get out they had to pass the fat woman. ‘You’ve finished. And you’ve found nothing.’ Her voice was triumphant.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Halliwell.’ The detectives were at the head of the stairs. She came close to Devenish. He could smell her.

  ‘You turn over my boy’s things, prying. Snooping and prying, it’s all you do, shoving your filthy great thumbs into everything.’ They began to move down the stairs, Halliwell with them. Her voice followed, rising as though caught in a wind, with only phrases audible. ‘Filthy dirty polis…trailing their slime…my boy’s memory…never again without a warrant…his sacred memory…shut the door.’ And then an eldritch screech. ‘Don’t let them in again.’

  ‘I’m sorry for that,’ Halliwell whispered as he opened the front door on to a night of frost and wind. ‘She gets excited, you know, and that’s bad for the old ticker. Sonny used to see that she never got excited. He was a good lad.’

  In the car Brewster said, ‘He must have been, to live in the same house with them. It’s the Claber brothers and Williams, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  ‘Looks like it. Certainly a chat with Freddy Williams is indicated.’

  Chapter Ten Freddy Williams

  In the morning Devenish got a report on the accident in which Sonny had been involved. It had taken place at night, at a traffic junction near Marble Arch. His car had been in collision with a Mini driven by John Purvis, an advertising copy writer who lived in Islington. The cars had met in the centre of the junction, the TR 6 catching the Mini broadside on. A charge had been brought against Halliwell of driving dangerously while under the influence of drink or drugs. He had elected to go for trial by jury, and at the trial two witnesses had given evidence that they saw the Mini cross after the light was red, although Purvis maintained that it was green. Charlie Reynolds, Halliwell’s passenger, confirmed this. The two witnesses had turned up after the original police court hearing at which Halliwell had chosen to go for trial. Both of them said that they had read about the case in the papers, and had come forward to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice. The medical evidence was not conclusive. The police doctor was emphatic that Sonny had taken a sufficient quantity of some drug, probably amphetamine pills, to make him unfit to drive. On the other hand Sonny’s own doctor said that his story of taking a pill for a mild migraine attack was perfectly consistent with what he had found, and that Sonny was quite fit to drive.

  The jury was out for over an hour before bringing in a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict.

  Devenish sent Brewster to see Purvis, and visited Freddy Williams himself. The two men had met a couple of times, once in connection with a raid on a gaming club, and once at the Lord Mayor’s Summer Banquet, where they sat opposite each other. He suspected that the table placings had somehow been arranged, and was not best pleased by the sophisticated badinage to which Williams subjected him. It gave him a feeling of inferiority, and he did not like feeling inferior to a crook.

  Freddy’s criminal kingdom was not run like that of the Clabers. In one part of his operations he was not a crook at all, but a legitimate dealer in works of art. He specialised in nineteenth-century painters, French and English, and was the author of a standard work called English Painting from Crome to Turner. He was very proud of his expertise and of his unflawed reputation. Yet there was no doubt that, if you used such old-fashioned phrases, Freddy had emerged from his good public school and his subsequent five years with a City finance house to become a King of Crime. He was Fifth City and Sporting Ventures and Contemporary Books, although it would have been hard to get behind the fences of interlocking companies and dummy directors put up by his accountants, so that you could prove it. It would have been difficult, indeed, to prove Freddy’s direct connection with anything except his art gallery. His secrets lay in Bermuda based companies and Argentinian multiple trusts. He had never been in prison, never even been charged, and it was unlikely that he had ever raised a hand in anger when somebody displeased or defied him. Devenish thought he might have liked the man better if he had. He liked a crook to behave like one, and really preferred the Clabers to Freddy Williams.

  The gallery was showing an exhibition of nineteenth-century English watercolours. Devenish glanced at the paintings, which seemed to him quite pretty but rather wishy-washy. Did people really pay a lot of money to put such things on their walls? He had a feeling of being conned, which was not dispelled when he was shown into the black and white study upstairs, in which all the furniture was egg-shaped. Williams also looked like a benevolent egg. He had a bald head which narrowed at the top, pinkish well-shaved cheeks, and a swelling bulb body, tapering down to elegantly-shod small feet. He wore gold-rimmed glasses with large lenses, which gave him an innocent expression.

  ‘A glass of Madeira, Chief Superintendent? I always take one at this time in the morning. An old-fashioned taste, but the Victorians knew what they were doing. Something sweet in mid-morning, a dry aperitif before a meal, spirits not on any account until after food. To be properly in period I should be offering you a slice of cake, but I’m afraid there are only these water biscuits.’

  The glasses had cut glass stems, the decanter was cut to the same pattern. Devenish would sooner have had beer, but was determined not to be put down on a matter of taste. Williams sipped, nodded approval, waited attentively. There was a slight smile on his rosebud mouth.

  ‘You’ve got an interest in an organisation called Contemporary Books.’

  ‘Have I, now? That’s something you would find it hard to prove.’

  Devenish took a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘Your nominees are a man named Sebastian Harris and a Polish-born crook named Soltyk, who managed to get himself naturalised. They’re also on
the board of Fifth City and Sporting Ventures, together with a very smart accountant named Quinn and a couple of stooges. Your connection is through your solicitor, Evelyn Prinkish. He controls a company called–’

  Williams held up a hand soft as a baby’s. ‘Let’s concede for the sake of conversation that I have an interest. You said on the telephone that you wanted to see me about something important.’

  The room and the man annoyed Devenish, the ridiculous room with its black ceiling and white carpet, its two black walls and two white ones, its low chairs with their wide curved bases and almost pointed tops, and the complacent man dressed to tone with the room, an untouchable crook with soft white hands. He knew that part of his annoyance sprang from a feeling of inferiority, inability to understand how people even thought of rooms like this, or why a man like Williams was allowed to exist. Why didn’t everybody want to live comfortably in suburbs like Wimbledon? He controlled the annoyance, but let it show.

  ‘A man of yours named Halliwell was knocked off last night in Soho. He was killed because the Clabers have been trying to move into your territory by opening up shops selling films and hard porn. Three of their shops have been done over by your boys, and this was a way of getting back at you. I’ve come to tell you not to start a gang war with the Clabers.’ Williams began to speak. Devenish’s voice overrode him harshly. ‘If you do, I’ll personally see to it that life is made so uncomfortable for you that you’ll be glad to get out to Bermuda or the Argentine or wherever it is you’ve piled your dirty money.’

  The art dealer had stopped smiling. ‘A policeman with moral feelings about money, that’s something new. Has it occurred to you that if what you say is true, and what you call a man of mine has been killed, you should be talking to the Clabers and not to me?’

  ‘Don’t try to tell me my business. You knew Sonny Halliwell.’

  ‘Yes, I knew him.’ The smile came back. ‘He was a painter of sorts, not a good one I’m afraid, but I gave him a little encouragement.’

  ‘I’m not talking about paintings. He worked for you.’

  ‘Not for me. It was Sebby Harris who employed him.’

  ‘But you approved it.’

  ‘I liked Sonny, he was a pleasant lad. I did what I could for him. He had a father who was employed by one of Sebby’s companies. The old man had fallen on bad times, from what I heard, and Sonny looked after him. It was rather touching.’

  ‘Did he have anything to do with smashing up the Clabers’ shops?’

  ‘Sonny? You can’t have known him. Sonny was timid and easily frightened. A gentle person. That’s why I liked him.’

  ‘You looked after him when he was in trouble?’ A crease lined Williams’ brow. ‘He was in a car accident with a man named Purvis, and a case was brought against him. He was acquitted.’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes, I remember. Fortunately two witnesses appeared who happened to have been on the spot. Wasn’t that lucky?’

  ‘Very. No doubt they were both respectable.’

  ‘I should be disappointed if they were not. What’s that got to do with Sonny’s death?’

  ‘I don’t know that the accident has anything to do with it, I just wanted to clear it up. I’m warning you, Williams. If I find you or Harris or anybody else is making more trouble with the Clabers, you’ll be sorry. I won’t have it, you understand. You leave them to us. You get the message?’

  He got up. Williams got up too. He looked a little quizzical, a little sad.

  ‘You’re a forceful man, or do I mean a forthright one. Both, perhaps. Anyway, I admire that. I’ve had the pleasure of entertaining members of the force at select little dinner parties, some of them even your superiors in rank. I don’t suppose that would interest you? No, I see it wouldn’t. I’ll pass on what you say to Sebby, but he’s impetuous. Forceful, rather like yourself. Of course, you know what would be the very best thing for everybody concerned? Putting somebody in prison for killing poor Sonny boy.’

  ‘It was a put-up job,’ Brewster said. He had seen Purvis, who was still wearing a steel corset to support his back. Purvis insisted that the light had been green for him when he crossed, and also that the witnesses had not been there at the time of the accident. He said some bitter things about inefficiency and corruption. Brewster had also talked to the witnesses, an electrician and an out-of-work garage mechanic, both local men, neither of them with a criminal record. The electrician’s name was Arnold Dollman, and Brewster had remembered that a chucker-out named Gus Dollman worked at the Brompton Gaming Club. It turned out that he was Arnold’s brother. Arnold Dollman had admitted nothing, but he was shaken.

  ‘We’ll soon have it out of him if we bring him in, but I don’t see the point. It was a put-up job to get Halliwell off the charge all right, but what’s it got to do with his being killed? This was a straight gang killing, one of the Claber lot did it. And they did Gladson too. It stands to reason.’

  Devenish nodded, not necessarily in agreement. ‘What about the first one, Pole?’

  ‘My idea is they read about that in the paper, Harry Claber remembered that one of his boys was a karate expert, and thought he’d use the old karate chop to get rid of Gladson. Then the same man was used for Halliwell, and the same method.’

  ‘A bit obvious, wouldn’t you say, using the same method twice? Advertising it.’

  ‘Crooks have got obvious minds.’ Brewster grinned. ‘Like me.’

  ‘You could be right, and Harry Claber managed to kid me. But there are car accidents in two of these cases, that’s what sticks in my mind.’

  ‘So what? Do you mean Purvis killed Halliwell? You wouldn’t say so if you talked to him. And you said yourself that those two old people thought the sun shone out of Gladson’s backside.’

  Devenish nodded again. ‘I’ll tell you what else sticks in my mind. That bit of conversation Reynolds heard on the phone.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Halliwell opened up the shop after it was shut. And yet according to the conversation, it wasn’t to anyone he knew. Who’s the most likely person he’d have opened up to when the shop was shut?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll buy it.’

  ‘A policeman.’

  Chapter Eleven On the Studio Floor

  ‘Bless you all, my loves, and good luck,’ Richard Spain said through the mike. He settled down in his seat in the control room, looking down on the studio, the four screens each showing a different camera in front of him, together with the master picture. Willie, in the chair beside him, lighted a cigar. The floor manager said, ‘Absolutely quiet now, please,’ the opening titles were shown over the familiar room in Baker Street, with the camera panning from the Pall Mall Gazette to the Persian slipper, and then to Holmes and Watson eating breakfast, with Watson reading the letter from Percy Phelps.

  ‘Listen to this, Holmes,’ Watson said. The taping of the forty-ninth Holmes episode, The Naval Treaty, had begun.

  It went badly from the start. In the middle of the second scene some of the lights fused, so that there was a half-hour delay. Then the actor playing the Foreign Minister, Lord Holdhurst, who had a sore throat, lost his voice almost completely. His throat was sprayed, and then all the scenes in which he appeared were taped, so that he could be sent home to bed. This meant taking several scenes out of order, and that in turn meant long conferences between Richard, the floor manager, and the technicians on the floor. By the time Lord Holdhurst had been sent home and they broke for a quick meal, tempers were fraying.

  Sher sat with Willie, Richard and Basil Wainwright at one of the plastic-topped tables, eating what seemed to be plastic chicken and salad. Willie was making his usual jokes, and laughing at the stories Basil told in the camp style that was his customary way of talking, but Sher barely heard them. The taping of an episode always excited him, so that the images occupying his mind were much more vivid than the scenes in which he was actually taking part. Now the rather inadequate actor who had been playing Joseph Harrison was re
placed by Conan Doyle’s Joseph, a man so slimy with deceit that treachery could almost be detected in the touch of his damp hand. He saw also the drawing-room not as a mere studio mock-up, but as part of that large detached house among the fir-woods and the heather of Woking. Words came to him, although he could not have said who had written them. ‘Out of these shadow shapes, these flummeries of paint and patchwork, we body forth a real world. That is the actor’s art.’ It was the real world he saw, a reality so palpable that an outstretched finger could have touched it.

  He became aware that they were all looking at him. Richard smiled.

  ‘I was saying, Sher, we’ll go straight ahead now as it’s scripted. There shouldn’t be any more problems.’

  ‘Sher’s being Sherlock, didn’t you know?’ Basil said in his fluted voice. ‘He’s solving the Karate Killings, isn’t that right, Sher?’ The little eyes in the misleadingly square solid face twinkled at him mischievously.

  ‘No.’

  Basil took no notice. ‘I mean, they’re getting rather too close to home for comfort. This last boy who’s been killed, Sonny Halliwell, I knew him. He used my club, the Carrousel. I mean, we’ve actually had a drink together at the bar. They’re saying he had something to do with gangsters, but he was so nice I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Why do they make so much fuss?’ Willie asked. ‘One gangster kills another, so there’s one less.’

  ‘Ah, but was it gangsters? On the Carrousel grapevine they say it might have been something personal. Of course, we know Sherlock could solve it in an hour if he put his mind to it, isn’t that so?’ He peered at Sher and repeated on a higher note, ‘Isn’t that so, Sherlock?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve been talking about.’

  ‘Well, I mean, in that interview we all read with such fascination you said Sherlock could solve the Karate Killings, so why not do it? And confide the answer to your poor old puzzled Watty.’