A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  ‘And you draw social security?’

  ‘You got to try and make ends meet with the cost of living what it is,’ the young man said seriously. ‘You got no idea what Whisky costs. Sometimes I worry that I’ll have to go out to work. I mean, my girl can’t boil an egg. Here we are at the East India Dock Road. Sure you’re all right now, squire? Then I’d better get back to guarding all that paint.’

  As he walked along looking for a taxi, Sher reflected that even night watchmen were not what they had been.

  Chapter Sixteen A Trap Unsprung

  ‘You’re a fool,’ Harry Claber said.

  ‘I could have carved him there in the house. Can you imagine, he gave the shiv back to me.’

  ‘He took it away from you first. Chrissie told me.’

  ‘Ah, it wasn’t like that. He caught me unexpected, that’s all.’

  ‘He walked into this office last night, picked up that phone and answered a call for me. Then he saw Shorty with Joey.’

  ‘Who’s Joey?’

  ‘Driving the van for the job,’ Harry said impatiently. ‘Knows nothing. So Shorty just put a scare in him. He showed a bit of sense. There’ll be another time.’

  ‘Why don’t you let me get after him, no reason for anybody else to be around, I’m just passing him in the street and–’ Drummond made an upward gesture, accompanied by his theatrical laugh.

  ‘You think I want that kind of trouble with a man like him? So that it’s plastered all over the papers? You want to grow up, sonny boy.’

  ‘Chrissie thought you might want to call the deal off.’

  ‘It isn’t a deal, it’s a little job of work she’s done for me. She’s been paid for it.’

  ‘The thing is I wouldn’t want her to get in any trouble over it. With this Sherlock Holmes poking his nose in–’

  ‘She’ll be in no trouble, and neither will you. Not unless somebody’s gabby.’

  ‘You know me, Harry.’

  ‘I know you.’

  ‘What is it then, this, some sort of joke?’

  ‘I’ll be laughing. I don’t know about other people. I’ve got a sense of humour.’

  ‘So what about this Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘You think I like him coming in here, sitting in my chair, using my phone? That’s a liberty, I don’t like someone to take a liberty.’

  ‘So I might have a chance at him? Sherlock Holmes versus Bulldog Drummond, I fancy that.’

  ‘You get after him when I tell you. Till then you leave him alone.’ Claber rose, patted Drummond on the head. ‘He won’t do anybody any harm.’

  At just about the time Claber was speaking those words, Sher was on the telephone, trying to prove him wrong.

  ‘East London Transport Company? I’m calling for Mr Williams. He wants to know when the job you have in hand for him is going to be carried out.’ His voice had the slightly pettish note often heard in the tones of personal assistants to well-known men, when they are speaking to those they regard as inferiors.

  The girl said, ‘What’s the job, please, and where’s it going?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Mr Williams is out now, and that’s all the information he gave me. Oh, one other thing. He mentioned the name of the driver. Joey Lines.’

  ‘Joey, yes, that’s a help. I’ll check on his jobs.’ He waited half a minute. ‘Four o’clock this afternoon, Mr Williams, Ryder Street Gallery, that right?’

  He said it was right, and rang off. Then he called the Warden Centre, and talked to Joe Johnson. Betty Brade was on the ten to seven shift, and so was Johnson himself, but Cassidy would be free, and owned a car. He would be in Ryder Street with it at a quarter to four.

  Sher was there at half past three. He walked briskly past the Ryder Street Gallery, which looked to him an art gallery much like any other, and was staring into the window of a snuff and tobacco shop when a van marked East London Transport Company drove up, and red-haired Joey got out and went in the gallery. There was no sign of Cassidy. Five minutes later Joey came out again, with a gallery attendant. They were carrying what from its size and shape was a fairly large picture.

  Joey got into the back of the van and Sher, free from observation, saw the picture lifted in. It was wrapped in canvas and protected by a wooden frame battened down at the edges, with a blue label stuck on the left-hand top edge. The gallery assistant jumped up into the van after the picture, and then down again. Sher turned away as Joey got out and signed a piece of paper, presumably a receipt.

  Where was Cassidy?

  A small maroon car, high-bodied and square-topped, looking like an entry in the London to Brighton race for vintage cars, turned the corner into Ryder Street, and came shakily up it, followed by a trail of blue smoke from its exhaust. With dismay, Sher saw Cassidy’s long horse face behind the wheel. He moved to open the door, but Cassidy did it from the inside.

  ‘Sorry to be late, had a bit of bother starting. Better not switch off now.’ The car shook slightly under them. ‘Have to slam that door.’

  The door shrieked protestingly as Sher pulled it shut. ‘That van’s what we want, the one pulling away. Can you follow it?’

  ‘Nothing easier.’ The Austin leapt forward in a series of jerks, like a horse trying to buck its rider. Sher banged his kneecap against a projecting bit of dashboard. ‘The clutch is a bit fierce, should have warned you.’

  As they went along Piccadilly Sher found himself shaken from side to side like a man using a slimming belt. ‘How old is–’

  ‘Nineteen thirty-eight. She’s a good girl, Miranda. Tends to boil going up steep hills, that’s all.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll be able to keep that van in sight?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. Shouldn’t have any trouble. Not unless there’s a big hill.’

  The door and roof interiors, and the dashboard, were covered with photographs. Sher looked upwards and sideways to inspect them, and saw that they were all of Cassidy. Miranda also often appeared. There was Cassidy sitting in Miranda, standing by her, inspecting her engine, Cassidy with large collie dog and Miranda, Cassidy with large collie dog on hillside, Cassidy in police uniform with the rest of his squad. Three or four pictures had been taken at what were presumably police sports, with Cassidy, gawky but athletic, in the long jump and fighting at singlestick. The dashboard showed Cassidy with a girl standing by Miranda, both man and car looking a good deal younger. There were half-a-dozen other photographs, mostly of Cassidy and the dog. The girl was in one of them. He looked up to see that they were keeping within comfortable distance of the van.

  ‘Pretty girl,’ he said, although she wasn’t.

  ‘Just a girl I played tennis with. I only keep it to show what Miranda was like when she was young. I’m not married. Never felt the need for it, always got on perfectly well on my own. People think that’s strange, but I ask them why, seems to me the strange thing is a man and a woman living in the same house for ever, sharing the same room.’

  The remark echoed much of what he had been feeling about Val. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘All you need is a friend, just a friend. But if you lose him–’

  Sher feared that he might be about to receive some homosexual confidences but Cassidy said nothing more, perhaps because they were going up a slope, and Miranda showed signs of disliking it. The engine thudded like an exhausted runner’s heartbeat, and the whole car shuddered as though about to come apart. Cassidy bent forward over the wheel, crooning unintelligible words. When they had reached the top he straightened up. ‘We made it. Good girl, Miranda.’ Fortunately, the van also had crawled up the incline, and was not much more than a hundred yards ahead.

  ‘You like cars?’

  ‘I like Miranda. She’s been a good and faithful servant, and I’ve looked after her. That’s the way it should be. There’s nothing wrong with cars, only with the way people drive them.’

  ‘I hate the thing itself, the internal combustion engine. If I could, I’d sweep it away. It’s d
estroying everything I know and love about England.’ The words put him in mind of a poem by Philip Larkin that he had read in a BBC radio programme. Afterwards he had learned the poem by heart, and now he recited one verse:

  And that will be England gone,

  The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,

  The Guildhalls, the carved choirs.

  There’ll be books; it will linger on

  In galleries; but all that remains

  For us will be concrete and tyres.

  Cassidy was silent for a few moments. Then he said, ‘I don’t agree. You’ve got to have machines, otherwise everything would run down. But you’ve got to have order too, and rules. That’s what they taught me in the police, and I’ve never forgotten. Obedience to rules, that’s what counts.’

  ‘You won’t like Sherlock Holmes then. He often broke the rules.’

  ‘But he was doing it for the rest of us, isn’t that right? That’s the way it seems to be, watching your programmes. And that’s not what I mean at all. Some people break the rules for nothing.’

  ‘Watch it, Cassidy, he’s pulling in.’

  They were in North London. The road was wide and tree-lined, the houses elegant early Victorian structures, each with its semi-circular front drive. The van had pulled in to one of these.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Drive past half-a-dozen houses, then stop.’ He felt in his pocket for paper, found none, took an old envelope addressed to Cassidy from the dashboard shelf and wrote the house number on it, and the van’s number as well. Cassidy pulled up sharply, with the aplomb of a rider stopping a runaway horse.

  ‘What happens now?’ His slightly curled lip showed, in the friendliest possible way, the professional’s doubts about the amateur. And what did happen now? What was he expecting to find? It was heartening to have an ex-policeman with him.

  ‘I’m going along to that house. If I’m not back in ten minutes, come and ask at the front door.’

  ‘I’ll do that. And I’ll bring the policeman’s friend.’ From his side of the dashboard shelf he showed a miniature police truncheon. ‘Less than half standard size, but it can be useful.’

  When he walked up the drive, Joey was talking to a middle-aged woman at the door. The picture stood beside him, wrapped in canvas and protected by a wooden frame battened down at the edges.

  ‘I told you Mr Rochester is expecting it,’ the woman said. ‘I can take it in for him. He’s busy, he can’t see you now.’

  ‘They said it was for personal delivery, but I suppose that’s all right.’

  Sher’s steps sounded on the frosty gravel. The woman looked beyond Joey. ‘Did you want Mr Rochester? I’m afraid he’s busy. Can I help you?’

  Joey turned and saw Sher. The red left his cheeks as though the blood had been drained away. Sher was almost at the door. He bent to look at the wrapped picture, then straightened up.

  ‘I don’t think you can.’ He nodded to them both, and turned. It was his first successful exit during the investigation.

  On the way back to central London he was monosyllabic in answer to Cassidy’s questions as to what it was all about. By the time he had reached Baker Street he had decided that he ought to report what he had discovered to the police.

  He saw Devenish on the following morning, and found him in a bad temper. The Detective Chief Superintendent had just finished talking to DC Graham and Detective-Sergeant Edwards, the two karate experts. Graham was a cocky young man who had a theory that the killer was Japanese, and thought that he was being asked to join the Flying Squad when he was asked questions about cars. Edwards, by contrast, was a family man with three children, a good solid policeman, so law abiding that it was hard to imagine him having a drink after hours. Graham had no car, Edwards owned a Hillman. No connection with the Clabers had been turned up. They were both ruled out, and Devenish thought that only a lack of elementary good sense by Brewster had ever let them in. But Brewster’s view was that the idea had been a crackpot one to start with, and it was possible that he had been demonstrating the fact. Devenish tucked away the thought of somebody who had been taking lessons in karate, rather than discarding it. After all, it was hardly the kind of thing you would advertise.

  He saw the man Haynes chiefly because Sue, who was devoted to the TV series, had irritated him by saying that it would be extraordinary if Sheridan Haynes turned up something, and then asking whether he thought that it was really possible to use Sherlock Holmes’ methods. She had even made one night a dish called Eggs Sherlock Holmes, in which perfectly good eggs were ruined by being made into a sweet-tasting mess with the help of Tokay, which she said was mentioned in the Holmes stories. So he saw Haynes, and listened to his story. The man seemed to him less impressive in appearance than he was on the screen, and rather actorish as though he were playing a part. He told the story in a dramatic manner that added an edge to the DCS’s annoyance.

  Sher on his side was disconcerted to find Devenish younger than he had expected, perhaps ten years younger than himself.

  He noticed the gigantic thumbs, and was made a little uncomfortable by them. The detective was a silent, but not particularly receptive listener. No Lestrade, obviously, more intelligent than that. Perhaps he would be on a level with young Stanley Hopkins, that promising detective for whose future Holmes had at one time held high hopes.

  When he had finished Devenish said, ‘You’re certain there was no blue label on the picture this man was delivering?’

  ‘Yes. I was close enough to see the other side as well.’

  ‘The label might have come off in the van. Or it might have been on the bottom of the frame so that you couldn’t see it.’ Sher shook his head. ‘You’re saying it was a different picture.’

  ‘That seems the only logical conclusion.’

  ‘And what do you expect me to do about it?’

  Sher was taken aback. ‘I thought you would be interested. It’s said the Clabers are connected with the killings.’

  God preserve me from amateur detectives, Devenish thought ‘Who’s said that? Not the police. You come here and tell me a story about entering Claber’s office illegally, getting into a punch-up, following a van which was delivering a picture from an art gallery to somebody who’d no doubt bought it. You say the van driver was shaken when he saw you, and no doubt he was if he was the man you’d been fighting the night before. And you say the picture was different, which may or may not be true. So I’m asking what you expect me to do about it. Are you telling me a crime’s been committed?’

  Sher could only shake his head. He had expected praise, and was meeting hostility.

  ‘You don’t know. Neither do I. I’ll tell you what I will do, and that’s give you some free advice.’ Devenish’s blue eyes stared directly into Sher’s brown ones, his voice was hard and level. ‘I’ve read some of the things you’ve said about what people call the Karate Killings. They may be good publicity for you, but they don’t make my job any easier. You’re entitled to make any investigations you like, it’s a free country, but if I find you’re getting in my hair you’ll wish you’d never started playing Sherlock Holmes.’

  That, he thought afterwards with some satisfaction, had seen Sherlock off with a flea in his ear. At the same time it was an odd story, and he talked about it to Brewster. The sergeant was modestly triumphant.

  ‘I said Claber was up to something.’

  ‘Obviously, but what? Williams sells a picture to this man Rochester. He runs his art gallery perfectly straight, it’s his pride and joy, so what’s in it for our Harry?’

  ‘Why don’t we talk to Williams, find out what the deal is?’

  Devenish twiddled his thumbs while he considered. It was a fearful sight. ‘No. I think we take it from the other end. Find out who Rochester is, what he does, whether he’s got form.’

  ‘He’s just bought a picture, that’s all. What makes you think–’

  ‘I don’t think anything. Harry Claber takes a hand in s
eeing a picture is delivered to this man Rochester, and our Sherlock says it wasn’t the same picture taken from the gallery, because of the label. Maybe he’s mistaken, but then again perhaps he isn’t.’

  ‘Could be this actor’s just a nut, out for the publicity.’

  ‘Perhaps, though he didn’t impress me that way. If he’s right, Harry’s playing some tricks on Williams.’

  ‘Should we care?’

  ‘There’s nothing I’d like more than to see Freddy Williams get his comeuppance, but not if it means a gang war. I’ll have the gen on Rochester quick as you like.’

  Just after lunch Brewster put on his desk a memo about Sammy Rochester’s career. ‘It smells,’ he said. ‘You could say it stinks.’

  ‘Yes, but what does it stink of?’

  Half an hour later he knew what the stink was, when the afternoon edition of the Evening Standard was put on his desk and he read the headlines:

  ‘HE SOLD ME FAKE COROT.’

  Businessman Accuses Art Dealer

  Now that he knew what the game was, he went to see Freddy Williams. The art dealer was quite shaken out of his usual complacency. Devenish had never known a crook so pleased to see a policeman.

  ‘Mr Devenish, you’ve seen the paper? I shall sue, of course, but something like this is devastating. My good name will be destroyed, utterly destroyed.’ He ran a hand over his egg head, his little feet beat a tattoo on the carpet. A girl brought in tea. Devenish felt the thinness of fine china against his lips.

  ‘I can see you’d be concerned about your good name.’

  ‘You may find it hard to believe, but I am. I value the paintings I sell here more than anything else in my life. I would no more sell a painting I knew wasn’t genuine than–’ He waved his hand to indicate the impossibility of finding an adequate comparison.

  ‘I’m crying for you. This man Rochester says you sold him a fake, right?’