The Gold Masters

by Norman Russell

  ‘It wasn’t his lucky day, was it, Mahoney?’ said Curteis with a smile.

  ‘There’ll be worse days for him, Mr Curteis, if he ever crosses my path again. You’d better come into the house. I suppose he’s sent you?’

  ‘He has. There’s a job he wants you to do for him before the twenty-eighth.’

  Curteis followed the big brute along the side-alley, and the two men entered a wretched hovel of a house through its rear yard.

  ‘Now then, Mahoney,’ said Curteis, when they had sat down at a rickety table in the back kitchen of the house, ‘I want you to listen carefully to what I have to tell you. I’m just the mouthpiece, as you’ll appreciate: all these instructions come directly from him. He wanted me to take you back with me to Medici House, but I persuaded him that you’d be happier talking to me.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion, Mr Curteis. Me and old Strange get along fine, but you’re a dangerous kind of cove. Very fancy and gentlemanly you are, but I wouldn’t care to turn my back on you!’

  ‘You’re hardly a beauty yourself, Mahoney,’ Curteis replied with a dangerous smile. ‘That ugly face of yours would crack a mirror, always supposing you were foolish enough to look into one, and no one would describe your character as pure and unblemished. I could mention the names of three men now lying in their graves—’

  With an oath, the brute lunged at the smiling secretary, but in a moment he found himself crashing from the table and flat on his back, with the other man standing over him. Mahoney suddenly laughed, and Curteis hauled him to his feet.

  ‘You and your Japanese tricks,’ the big man grumbled. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you, Mr Curteis. Anyway, you’d better tell me what he wants.’

  ‘He wants you to go out to Duppas Park House, in Croydon, which is the residence of Lord Jocelyn Peto, and there indulge your genius for breaking and entering. Peto has a kind of sanctum on the third floor, where he displays some of the choicer items in his private collection. On the wall facing the window there hangs an old Tudor tapestry, representing Daphne and Apollo—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What a pity, Mahoney, that you’re so ignorant and unlettered! Let’s just say it’s a tapestry hanging on the wall. You know what a tapestry is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And if there’s any more of your lip, Mr Curteis, I’ll flatten you against that wall behind you, Strange or no Strange. I suppose there’s a safe behind this tapestry?’

  ‘How clever of you! Yes, there’s a nice modern Milner safe, five bolts, two locks, and inside it there should be a parcel of six old books, wrapped in green baize and tied with string. You’re to take those books, and deliver them to Sir Hamo Strange via the usual channels. Here’s a little something to make the job easier for you.’

  He passed Mahoney a small packet done up in brown paper, and secured with sealing-wax. The big brute smiled rather grimly, and slipped it into one of his pockets.

  Curteis reached into an inner pocket of his overcoat, and produced a sheaf of notes and diagrams, which he handed to Mahoney.

  ‘These notes will give you the lie of the land. Duppas Park House is a new building,’ he said, ‘and there’s an iron fire escape to one side of it, with access to all floors. Very convenient, in more ways than one. He wants the job done on this coming Monday, the twenty-fourth.’

  ‘Monday? What’s the matter with the old fool? Monday’s too near the twenty-eighth for comfort. We’re going to need to concentrate on the twenty-eighth. Incidentally, why has he gone to all these lengths to lure that PC Lane away from Carmelite Pavement on the day? I could have arranged an accident for Lane. It’d have been cheaper than calling in Spooky Portman to arrange all that rigmarole about ghosts.’

  ‘Sir Hamo Strange has his reasons, Mahoney. PC Lane has done excellent work guarding his bank vaults for the last three years. He’s a good man, hence all the rigmarole, as you call it. Well, he’s already been told that another officer has volunteered to stand in for him next Friday, while he rushes off to the magical lady in Belsize Park. And as for Spooky Portman – well, he’s doing valuable work stirring up doubts in the City about Peto’s Bank. One way or the other, Sir Hamo means to cook Lord Jocelyn’s goose.’

  Curteis rose from his chair, and glanced around the kitchen. A heavy serge police uniform hung on a peg behind the door.

  ‘I see you’ve got your togs for Friday,’ he said. ‘Really, Mahoney, I wonder that you don’t blush to wear that suit. You’re such an evil villain. So you’ll do the job?’

  ‘Well, of course I’ll do the job. Milner’s five-and-twos are child’s play to me, though I’m grateful for the little packet you gave me, all the same. Am I to be paid? Or does he want me to chalk it up on the slate?’

  ‘Here’s a hundred pounds in Bank of England notes. You’ll get twice that when you’ve delivered the goods. I’ve had enough of this vile den of yours, so I’ll bid you good day.’

  As Curteis walked towards the back door that would take him out once again into the alley, Mahoney made a sudden lunge, and pinned him, breathless, to the wall. His brawny right forearm straddled the secretary’s throat, and his eyes, the eyes of an ungovernable savage, glared at the elegant secretary with a momentary hatred. Curteis only smiled.

  ‘Did you want to tell me something?’ he said. ‘I wish you weren’t so emphatic.’

  He made a sudden hooking movement with his left foot, and the giant thug slid with a shout of anger to the dirty kitchen floor. He uttered a rueful laugh, and sat up, rubbing the back of his head with a ham-like hand. Curteis hauled him to his feet.

  ‘This is becoming a habit,’ Mahoney muttered. ‘But it makes me think. If ever things go wrong for you and me, Mr Curteis, we could team up, and go into business on our own account. You’d provide the fancy front and the nimble brain, and I’d be the enforcer. Protection, that’s what I have in mind.’

  Curteis paused with his hand on the door latch, and looked appraisingly at the big, pockmarked brute still sitting on the floor.

  ‘I’ll think about it, Mahoney,’ he said. ‘It’s an idea. Yes, decidedly, it’s an idea’

  At the ornate entrance to The Pen and Wig in Carter Lane, Mr Arthur Portman smiled to himself, then pushed open the swing doors, which afforded him entrance to yet another haunt of the hungry and thirsty denizens of the City at lunchtime.

  ‘Portman!’ cried a cheery voice from a crowded table in the corner. ‘Come and join us. Have the spirits been giving you any further investment tips? Not that you need them, working at Peto’s. You look very smart, today, if I may say so.’

  ‘I may look smart on the outside, Joe,’ said Portman, sitting down at the crowded table, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m feeling smart inside. Don’t judge a book by its cover! As a matter of fact,’ he confided, ‘I’m thinking of a change….’

  *

  ‘You can take my word for it, Vickers,’ said Dr George Freeman to the rector of St Jerome’s, Duppas Park, in the leafy suburbs of Croydon, ‘that what you’re suffering from is dyspepsia, combined with the kind of sleeplessness that comes with advancing years. There’s nothing wrong with your heart, so you needn’t frighten yourself to death by imagining that every twinge is the onset of something fatal. Take those cachets I’ve given you as directed. I’ll call round tomorrow morning, after ten, to see how you are.’

  Doctor Freeman put back his stethoscope into his black case. As he picked up his hat and stick from the table of the rector’s study, a clock somewhere in the room struck eleven.

  ‘You should have more trust in Providence, Vickers,’ said the doctor, an old friend who knew that his attempt at humour would not be taken amiss. ‘Why, even your name shows that you were destined to become a clergyman, so try to behave like one! A very apt name – Vickers.’

  The Reverend Edwin Vickers smiled with amused resignation. He was nearer seventy than sixty, and had listened for fifty years to countless people who had felt impelled to say that Vickers was an apt name for a
clergyman.

  ‘Yes, Freeman,’ he said, ‘so apt, indeed, that no one in the church’s hierarchy ever thought fit to promote me out of a parish. Not that I’m complaining, of course. Croydon is a remarkably pleasant town, and Duppas Hill’s a healthy situation. So, I’ll submit myself to your strictures, take my medicine, and exercise due patience. Good night, and thank you for coming out at so unconscionable an hour.’

  When the doctor had gone, Edwin Vickers settled himself into his big chair in the window of his study. It was a quiet, orderly room at the front of his yellow-brick rectory on the opposite side of the vast expanse of grass separating his parsonage from Duppas Park House, the imposing modern mansion of Lord Jocelyn Peto, rising in all its opulence above Jubilee Road.

  Sleeplessness was a wretched condition. It would keep him in this chair, looking out across the dark scene towards the blazing lights of Duppas Park House, until dawn, though there would be bouts of fitful dozing and uncomfortable jerks into renewed wakefulness.

  Odd, how one’s eyes could play tricks. On Saturday, he’d seen a hulking brute of a man lurking in the narrow rear garden of Lord Jocelyn’s house, and had felt at once that the man had been up to no good. The figure had reminded him strongly of a former parishioner, a giant of a young man who had joined the local Croydon police, and then had been poached, apparently, by Scotland Yard. But, of course, young Jack Knollys would never have skulked around in that fashion.

  The man had appeared again on Sunday, towards dusk, but he had soon lost sight of him. Oh, well, he’d best close his eyes, and go through the motions of sleeping!

  The Reverend Edwin Vickers dreamt that he was adrift on an ice floe, his right side pressed hard on the gunwale of the boat, which was adrift in the Arctic Ocean. Gradually, the majestic icebergs, and the dark sky, brilliant with freezing stars, dissolved into his silent study, where he had slumped against the hard side of his chair. The cold was real enough. How long had he sat, cramped and confined in his chair?

  He sat up, felt for his matches, and lit the candle standing ready on a little table close at hand. The room leapt to life, and he let his eyes wander across the many shelves crammed with well-thumbed books, then over his desk, where his sermon notes from Sunday still lay among other papers, and finally to the staid grandfather clock near the door, which showed him that it was nearly three o’clock in the morning.

  He levered himself out of his chair, and wandered rather aimlessly around the room. His old housekeeper, he knew, had retired hours ago. He caught sight of himself in a mirror, and paused to look critically at the large-boned frame of a man who had been formidably strong in his youth.

  He smiled ruefully, and shook his head. Those heady days were long gone, when he had been one of the last hackers under the old rules at Rugby School. He’d gone on to win himself a place in the famous Oxford side which had thrashed the Light Blues at Blackheath in ‘61. Young Knollys had been a promising rugby player, one of those massively strong lads who made good lock forwards….

  Edwin Vickers crossed to the window, and pulled back the curtains. A strong summer moon was climbing down the sky, vying with the long line of gas lamps running along Park Road, the leafy thoroughfare skirting the park. Across the green, he could see Duppas Park House bathed in moonlight.

  As he looked, the light of a lantern moved across one of the windows on the third floor. It disappeared, only to reappear in the next window to the right. Surely those were the windows of Lord Jocelyn Peto’s gallery? Vickers seized a pair of binoculars from their place on the window sill, and trained them on the distant house. Like many clergymen, he was an amateur ornithologist; tonight, though, he was spying on a more deadly species than rare garden birds.

  A figure suddenly appeared on the top level of the iron fire escape, a huge, burly man, carrying a heavy sack. The man’s head turned slowly, surveying the scene, and then he disappeared once more into the house. A burglar! No doubt it was that brute whom he’d seen lurking about over the weekend.

  Now fully awake, Edwin Vickers hurried out into the hallway, chose a heavy stick from the hall stand, and left the house, pulling the door to behind him. Lord Jocelyn was a decent, public-spirited man, entitled to keep what was his. As he strode along Park Road, he thought to himself, this impudent thief may find an insomniac former Rugby Blue rather more than a match for him!

  He arrived, breathless, at the foot of the fire escape, and stood in the grass, which was damp with the night dew. Common sense suddenly prevailed. He was an old man, no match for a strong young villain. He would walk on to Hatchard Street, and knock up the constable.

  He had just turned to make his way silently across the grass to Jubilee Road when the burglar, who had emerged on to the top platform of the fire escape, threw his sack of loot down to the ground. It caught Vickers squarely on the shoulders, and with a cry he fell down on to the grass. He could hear the remorseless clattering of the man’s boots as he ran down the steps and, as he raised himself on one arm, his senses were assailed by the fellow’s fierce, angry breathing. If he could get up in time, he would be able to run for it. If not, then he had his stick, and he would make a valiant effort to defend himself. Here he was, now!

  ‘Inspector Box, and you, Sergeant Knollys,’ said Superintendent Mackharness, ‘I’ve called you up here because I have just received a note by special messenger from Inspector Price at Croydon. As you know, the Croydon force are quite separate from us, but they do co-operate in a very welcome fashion. Would that could be said of every provincial force! But there. This is not a perfect world.’

  Superintendent Mackharness had summoned both men to his first-floor office at the Rents soon after nine o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 25 July. He sat at his massive desk, immaculate as always, but with a worried expression in his normally fierce eyes. He kept glancing enigmatically at Knollys, as though something in the note that he had received applied specifically to him.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Mackharness continued. ‘Yes. I – what was I saying, Box? That attentive look of yours, rather like an over-eager spaniel, makes me forget what I was going to say.’

  ‘About Inspector Price’s note, sir.’

  ‘Yes. This is a very bad business, Box. Just after six o’clock this morning, in the grounds of Duppas Park House, Croydon, the dead body of the Reverend Edwin Vickers was found. He had been bludgeoned to death. Sergeant Knollys—’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ve known Mr Vickers all my life. I’m a Croydon man myself, as you know, and it was Mr Vickers who baptized me. He was a wonderful man, sir, a famous rugby player in his youth. Bludgeoned, you say…. Murdered?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sergeant, murdered without a doubt. I’m very sorry that you knew the victim personally, and I know you’ll not take offence if I remind you that no personal considerations must interfere with the impartiality of your investigation. There, I have to say that, though I know it’s quite unnecessary. I want you both to go straight away to Croydon, and associate yourselves with Inspector Price, if that is his desire.’

  ‘Duppas Park House, sir,’ said Box. ‘That’s the residence of Lord Jocelyn Peto—’

  ‘It is, Box, and I share what is evidently your unease at that fact. On Friday of this week the bullion of the Swedish Loan is to be moved, and now one of the principal furnishers of that loan has a murder in his back garden. See if you can clear the matter up, will you? There was a robbery at the house – Price tells me in the note that it involved a successful assault on Lord Jocelyn’s safe. I think it more than likely that the unfortunate clergyman was struck down in trying to prevent the robber’s escape.’

  The superintendent drummed on the desk with his stout fingers for a while, gazing rather mournfully into space.

  ‘It might be one of the usual riffraff – Croaker Mullins, or Killer Tom Dacey. They’re both out of prison at the moment. Or it might be— Get out there, will you, Box, before the trail goes cold. Try to clear it up if you can, or at least so far as to hand the business back compl
etely to Croydon before you leave. I want a clear run, if possible, up to the twenty-eighth.’

  They left Mackharness’s office, and made their way downstairs. It was one of the rare moments when the entrance hall was deserted, and Box had time to notice the oblique rays of sunlight thrown across the bare wooden boards from the tall, barred window at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Croydon! It’s a far cry, Sergeant Knollys,’ he said, ‘from the hub of the Empire, by which I mean the crowded canvas stretched between King’s Reach and Pentonville Road. Still, it’s your native place, and you’ll be able to guide me through its complexities, and show me its many delights.’

  Knollys smiled to himself. The guvnor, he knew, was trying to cheer him up. That was like him. Old Mr Vickers had been an integral part of Knollys’ early years. He had never expected the man who had christened him, taught him in Sunday school, and later encouraged him on the rugby field, to meet a brutal end in the pleasant purlieus of his own parish.

  Within a quarter of an hour Box and Knollys were sitting in a cab that would take them across the river to London Bridge Station, and the Croydon train.

  7

  A Thief in the Night

  Box and Knollys walked swiftly along Croydon’s narrow high street, and past the imposing town hall in its attractive gardens. Both men appreciated the Surrey town’s provincial charms and open aspect, particularly as the streets were bathed in the strong morning sunlight.

  ‘We’ll cross here, sir,’ said Knollys, ‘and cut through Laud Street. That’ll take us up Duppas Hill and into the park.’

  They threaded their way through the traffic in the main street, and reached the narrow thoroughfare named in honour of the only Archbishop of Canterbury to be beheaded. A few minutes’ brisk walk brought them on to the open prospect of Duppas Park, where a few tall houses of good quality rose behind painted railings on the edge of the green expanse.