by John Creasey
On the bed, Ada Lee lay in a kind of coma, not really unconscious, not really conscious.
At Eastbourne, several local police constables and a gravedigger cursed Superintendent Warr of the Yard, because he chose that evening for the exhumation of a man who had been dead for six months. It was done successfully, and attracted little attention; it wouldn’t be long before the Press took the exhumations up in a big way, Warr believed, not knowing that the Press had a huge story coming with the murder of Frisky Lee.
What Warr didn’t know, and no one yet knew, was that the housekeeper of four dead men, Martha Smallwood, had slipped quietly to church that evening, and walked away afterwards, in the darkness, when a Detective there to watch her was distracted by a busty girl.
Martha Smallwood had a comfortable place to go.
She had an elderly friend, a gentleman in the late seventies, who lived alone in a bungalow near Bognor. He was nearly blind, and could not read or see the newspapers. He had few friends, and did not even know about the death of the four other old men who had been so like himself.
He was fond of Martha, who was known to him as Martha Smith.
She had promised to come and keep house for him.
11
REMANDS
The atmosphere at Scotland Yard could change almost overnight, sometimes in the course of an hour or two. No place was more rife with rumour, few people outside listened with such close attention to it. Few people were more sensitive, either, in the sense that the police were aware of both criticism and hostile comment. All except the very new men in the Force were hardened to it, all pretended that it did not matter what the Press said, the public thought, and Parliament blathered about; but in fact it mattered a great deal. Undoubtedly the Press stimulated the C.I.D., even if at times the newspaper angles caused annoyance and occasionally anger.
Things had been flat for most of the Yard during the past few weeks. Sunday’s events transformed the situation.
The little back room door on the Embankment was thronged with newspapermen from noon on Sunday onwards. Any officer believed to be engaged on the Lee case, and the subsequent arrests, was stopped and questioned by a reporter. The Monday morning headlines brought a glint to every policeman’s eye, and probably gave Hemmingway his greatest day while in the Force – his greatest day in thirty-five years.
POLICE SWOOP ON EAST END
ran the headlines.
WAR AGAINST CRIME FLARES UP
20 ARRESTS AND MORE TO FOLLOW
THOUSANDS OF POUNDS WORTH OF STOLEN PROPERTY RECOVERED.
The stories differed but the hard core was the same. The murder of Frisky Lee had given the police a chance to stage a great clean-up in the East End, and the police had been ready. Under the direction of Superintendent Hemmingway, with Commander Gideon in the background, hundreds of houses had been visited, thousands of people questioned, many more arrests could be confidently expected.
Every man at the Yard read this, and the change in the atmosphere was remarkable. Men walked more briskly, Squad drivers drove with more pep, men on the beat paid closer attention to any slight detail which might be suspicious. The mood spread quickly from the Yard to the Divisions. The Old Man was summoned to the Commissioner’s office, where a pundit from the Home Office had come in person to congratulate the Criminal Investigation Department.
Gideon would have been at this jam session but for the fact that he was at the East End Magistrate’s Court. Sixteen men were accused of having stolen goods in their possession, and the police asked for a remand in each case. The magistrate granted eight days, in custody. No solicitor spoke for any of the men, only two asked for bail, and that more from impudence than hopefulness. Gideon looked round the court and saw the worried faces of the women in the public gallery, the nods and smiles from the men in the dock to these women. He sensed the gloom and the tragedy and the impending misery, yet in spite of the problems unsolved, he felt the stimulus of what had happened, and shook hands warmly with Hemmingway at the request of the Press photographers who swarmed round. There were even two newsreel cameras.
And Gideon could not find it in himself to question Hemmingway’s judgment openly. The inquests on Lee and Ratsy would be held tomorrow, anyway. He drove back to the Yard, and among the messages waiting for him was: “Mr. Gabriel Lyon called, and will call again at twelve noon.”
“Didn’t say what he wanted, did he?” Gideon asked Lemaitre.
“Said he wanted to talk to you personally,” Lemaitre told him. “Let him wait; Warr’s back, and if you ask me, Smooth-faced Sydney’s got a load of worry.”
“Oh, lor’,” said Gideon. It was then twelve noon exactly, and the telephone rang. He lifted it, but spoke to Lemaitre. “What about?”
“He wants to keep it for your ears alone,” said Lemaitre.
“Gideon,” said Gideon, into the telephone. “Oh, yes, put Mr. Lyon through.” He saw the door begin to open, and watched the big, plump man as he came in, slowly, soft-footed, smiling. Warr was always worried when he gave that set smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Lyon.” Gideon decided to be affable.
“Ah, Commander,” said Lyon. “I’m glad I’ve caught you. I have to go out of town for a day or two, and I was anxious to speak to you first. I talked about that matter to Mrs. Lee, and she assured me that she has no reason at all to fear that harm might come to her child. I do assure you that you have been misinformed. Both she and her mother have, however, told me – and the police, I’m glad to say – about the quarrel which her husband had with Arthur Roden during the early hours. Apparently Roden was caught stealing some loose change, and Mr. Lee dismissed him summarily. Roden appears to have had a brainstorm. A great tragedy, but—” Lyon left the rest in the air.
Gideon could take it or leave it.
“Mr. Lyon,” he said.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Mr. Lee had a reputation which wasn’t exactly enviable, and we now know for certain that he engaged in criminal activities. The circumstances of this crime make it not only possible but imperative that we conduct a thorough search and inventory at the house in Medd Alley. We shall be in possession for about a week. I don’t know whether you will advise Mrs. Lee to leave for that period, or not. I want to make absolutely sure that there is no evidence that others had motives for killing Mr. Lee, and that Roden, if he actually killed Mr. Lee, wasn’t paid to do so by someone else.”
“I quite see your point of view,” said Lyon easily. “I shall advise Mrs. Lee and her mother to leave the house entirely at your disposal. Good-bye.”
Gideon hung up, pushed the telephone away, and said to Lemaitre: “Take anything that comes in, Lem.” He handed cigarettes kept for visitors across the desk to Warr. He had to switch his attention completely, emptying his mind of the Lee affair, and because he did not particularly like Warr as a person, he made a special effort to be both fair and friendly. And he realised one thing which not everyone admitted: Warr was exceptionally conscientious, probably much more so than many better and more likeable officers.
“Something gone wrong?” Gideon asked.
“George, I’m worried about two things, and part of it is my own fault.” The confessional. “Martha Smallwood went to church last night, and the local chap watching her didn’t keep his mind on the job, and didn’t see her come out. Two or three elderly women were dressed more or less alike, and he followed the wrong woman. Martha S. must have gone through the vestry, or a side entrance.”
“Oh, hell,” thought Gideon, as he said: “She shouldn’t be so hard to pick up.”
“That’s what I thought. I set the local chaps looking everywhere for her, felt sure that she’d only gone to a neighbour. I couldn’t think she’d have the nerve to disappear, so I didn’t report at once. She’s still missing.”
“Want a general call, eh?” said Gideon,
and looked across at Lemaitre, who was listening eagerly. “Fix that, Lem, you’ve got the Smallwood woman’s description.”
“Okay.”
“Think she might throw herself in the river or off a pier?” Gideon asked Warr.
“I shouldn’t think she’s the suicide type, although you can never tell,” said Warr. He hadn’t really got everything off his chest yet, although he was a little easier in his manner. “I’ve dug up several more things I kept to myself, thought I might as well make a comprehensive report when I made one.”
Here came the really bad news.
“What else have you found?” asked Gideon.
“She’s made a habit of taking on several jobs at the same time,” said Warr. “She’d be officially housekeeper to one old man, and go and do a bit of reading during her time off for someone else. That way she’s got a circle of old men acquaintances, all of them thinking she’s wonderful. She’s benefited from at least four old people’s wills, and there may be more, because she’s used at least three names. The worst”—Warr gulped—”the worst of it is that the furthest back I’ve been able to trace is seven years.”
“Seven years!” echoed Gideon.
Lemaitre was trying to give instructions over the telephone and listen in at the same time. In the middle of a request for the call for Martha Smallwood, he ejaculated: “Seven!”
“No telling when she really did start, either,” added Warr gloomily.
The easiest thing in the world would be to tell him what to do, tell him to hurry, make him feel that he had really lost the initiative. Gideon’s mind was racing over this, but he sat there as stolidly as ever, fingering the rough bowl of his pipe after that one outburst.
“What do you want to do?” he asked at last.
“I’d like Martha S.’s picture in every newspaper as well as the general call, and an invitation to the public to tell us about any elderly men who’ve known her,” Warr said. “That’s going to be a hell of a job, we’ll need two or three men on it all the time, just sifting the correspondence, but—”
“Needs doing,” agreed Gideon. “Lem, who’ve we got?”
Lemaitre had finished his telephone calls.
“Charley Rowe,” he said. “Him and Freddy, they’ll be just right for this job.”
“Can you spare them?” Warr asked Gideon, and had never shown greater eagerness.
“I’ll tell ‘em to drop whatever they’re doing, and work with you on this,” said Gideon promptly. “The quicker we can pick Martha S. up the better.” He soft-pedalled almost to a point of pomposity. “Anything else, Syd?”
“It depends,” said Warr, and he smoothed his white forehead with his damp, pale hand. “No doubt that the three bodies we’ve exhumed tell a tale, George. Some damn bad post-mortem work in one, and in two the doctors gave a death certificate in good faith. I will say this, she only seems to finish off those who are on the point of going, anyhow.” He stood up. “Thanks a lot, George.”
Now the newspapers had more banner headlines, and the stories of the wholesale remands in East London were squeezed off most of the front pages.
YARD SEEKS MISSING HOUSEKEEPER
Scotland Yard Superintendent Sydney Warr and Chief Inspectors Rowe and Wildsmith are working on one of the most remarkable investigations of the century. The bodies of four men, each of whom was old and frail, have been exhumed, following investigations into the death of Charles Henderson, eighty-year-old retired bank manager. Henderson’s housekeeper, Mrs. Martha Smallwood, is being sought by the police, as she may be able to help them in their inquiries. Mrs. Smallwood was last seen at Evensong on Sunday, when . . .
“Here we go,” said Lemaitre, reading the newspapers next morning. “No sign of Martha yet, though. Wonder where the hell she’s gone?” Gideon grunted.
“How anyone can have the bloody nerve to kill people off like this I don’t know,” said Lemaitre, “and it’s no use telling me I’m jumping to conclusions, she bumped these old boys off.”
“Looks like it,” agreed Gideon. “After the first one or two, it must have seemed so easy she probably didn’t think twice. It’d become habit. Warr thinks she might be with an old man, now.”
“She’d never do it again!”
“Is she sane or is she mad?” asked Gideon. “All I know is that Warr’s going to have to organise a countrywide visit to every man over seventy who lives alone, and that’s going to be some job.”
“And last week you took time off,” marvelled Lemaitre. “How many over-seventies do you think there are? Half a million? Well, that’s only about five or six calls per copper, on the national average.”
“I know one thing we can do,” said Gideon. “We can run this with a search for Sheila Crow and her father.”
“Could do,” agreed Lemaitre.
Then his and Gideon’s main telephones rang, and they lifted them at the same moment.
Gideon found himself with a split-second hope that this was more news from Lee’s place, and a lead to the children’s training school; it was a routine question, that was all. Routine, routine, routine.
At Bognor, not far from the sea, in one of a colony of little bungalows which looked very like one another, an elderly man, frail and nearly blind, sat basking in the window, with the sun shining gently on him. Close to his chair was his white stick. Close to his hand was a radio, playing light music. It was nearly one o’clock, and before long the news would be on. He heard his new housekeeper bustling about in the kitchen, and when she came in, he smiled round at her.
“Everything all right, Martha?”
“Course it is, why shouldn’t it be?” Martha said, and began to lay the table. He could not see her expression when the B.B.C. announcer began the news, he did know that she stayed in the room longer than he expected, while the headlines were being read; all he liked to hear were the headlines. He preferred her to read the news to him from the newspapers, later in the day.
“Scotland Yard officers . . .” began the announcer.
Flick! And his voice went dead.
“I can’t bear hearing about these murderers,” Martha said, “there are so many of them these days it’s enough to give you the creeps. Now turn your chair round, Percy, and wheel it up to the table. I’ll have lunch in a brace of shakes.”
She went bustling off.
The radio stayed dead.
For Gideon and the Yard it was a week of exceptional activity. The East End job, preparing cases against so many known thieves, getting witnesses, taking statements, making raid after raid on people named by the men who were charged, would have been enough in itself, but was nothing compared with the daily task of sorting out the negative reports about the housekeeper and the Crow father and daughter. Friday was the record day; one thousand and twenty-seven different reports were received, saying that a woman answering Martha Smallwood’s description had worked for old men who had since died. To anyone unused to the avalanche of reports which sometimes came in from the public, it would have been almost frightening. At the Yard, the two C.I.s and a staff of two elderly Detective Officers and a girl typist sorted out the reports, the dates, the places, the names of the men, the ages, details of when and how they had died, all relevant information. On that day, Friday, two hundred and fifteen photographs of different women were received, and each of them tallied approximately with the description of official “photograph of Martha Smallwood”. By that day, also, over ten thousand calls on private houses had been made by policemen throughout the country in search for the woman, and no trace of her had yet been found. No incidental news came of the missing Sheila Crow, either.
“If you ask me,” said Lemaitre, “Martha’s changed her appearance a lot, that’s easier for old women than anyone else; no one’s surprised if an old girl wears a wig.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She must go and eat somewhe
re.”
Martha Smallwood was still missing at the week-end.
Sheila Crow and her father were missing, too.
Marion Carne was happier than she had ever been, for she had seen the showrooms and offices they were to rent for the new business.
Sparrow pondered most days over Reginald Dennis, but Eve Dennis was buried, and there seemed no justification for making any more inquiries.
Peter Wray had a bad week, spending in all twenty-three hours in the cupboard. In the seven days since the Petticoat Lane morning, he had eaten nine “meals”, three of them of dry bread and water.
The search of Frisky Lee’s house led nowhere; dozens of known pickpockets were questioned and none admitted knowing a thing. One complained bitterly about the kids working on his beat. There were no adult prints on the stolen goods, but prints of four children already caught were identified. Few women had visited Lee’s house, nothing suggested that it had been used to train the children.
None of the thieves had ever dealt direct with Frisky Lee; none admitted having known his wife. They simply “knew” Lee was the fence. All had taken their goods to Petticoat Lane, in the middle of the Sunday morning rush, and unloaded there.
Hemmingway asked the same questions a hundred times.
“Who took the stuff and who handed you the money?”
Invariably the answer was the same: a woman. Some said she was in her early thirties, some said she was in her fifties. That wasn’t a case of confused descriptions: different women, acting as Lee’s agents, had bought the stolen jewels.
And different women trained their children . . .
“That’s a new line,” Gideon said, eagerly for him. “Lem, tell every Divisional Super to have these mothers questioned, try to find a connection with Lee or Lee’s wife.”