by Carola Dunn
‘She’s certainly blossomed out, though, in the short time since I told her he won’t be coming back!’
‘Some of them are a wee bit shocked at how lightly she took his disappearance, and now his death, however much they disliked him.’
‘Some people want to be shocked,’ Tom observed tartly. ‘Good luck to her, I say.’
‘I rather liked her,’ said Alec. ‘She has considerable force of character. The colonel must have been a real tartar to keep her subdued.’
‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘he’d have got the upper hand when she was young and unsure of herself, I dare say. Then he went off soldiering and she discovered her own strength, but, like she said, the habit of kowtowing was too strong for her.’
‘That sounds a lot like what you usually call psycho-rubbish, Sarge.’
‘You watch your cheek, laddie. Common sense, that’s what it is.’
‘Common sense or psycho-rubbish, given her obvious feeling of liberation, would any of you consider her a suspect in his death?’
‘No,’ Ernie said promptly. ‘For one thing, the servants swear she never went out the evening he didn’t come home. She was knitting and listening to the wireless. And then, why would she want to murder Devine and Halliday? Doesn’t seem likely she even knew of their existence.’
‘Unless he talked about them. She told me, if something’s repeated often enough, it sinks in even if you’re not listening.’
‘I can’t see it, Chief,’ said Tom. ‘All the plotting and planning it must’ve taken to bag the other two. And what for? What could he have said about them that’d make her want them dead?’
‘I ought to have asked the neighbours if she’d been away from home when Devine and Halliday were killed.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Mackinnon. Even if she was responsible, for some unfathomable reason, I can’t imagine her carrying out the kidnapping and killing herself. Nor can I see her hiring someone, or even beginning to have any idea of where to look for a hired killer. The whole thing strikes me as extremely unlikely.’
‘Me, too,’ Tom agreed.
‘I asked the servants,’ Ernie said smugly, ‘and Mrs Pelham hasn’t spent more than a few hours away from home in years. The colonel had enough of travel in the army and wouldn’t stand for any more.’
Alec laughed. ‘That looks like that, then. Now that we have the colonel’s army service information, someone’ll have to go and check the records to find out if Halliday and Devine were in the same unit.’
‘Saturday, Chief,’ Piper reminded him.
‘Damn! It’ll mean sending a request up the chain: the super, the AC, the commissioner, the home secretary, and, assuming they can all be got hold of tonight, hoping Joynson-Hicks will agree to talk some brass hat in the army into getting a clerk in to find the bumf for us.’
‘Shouldn’t think we’ve got a hope, Chief,’ Tom said.
‘I wadna be so sure, Mr Tring. Whilst I was in charge at the Yard, Jix telephoned the AC twice to find out what was going on. There’s nae doot he’s verra consairned. A fourth murder wad be a blot on his record.’
‘And mine,’ said Alec grimly. ‘The trouble is, it may take a fourth to provide us with a useful connection.’
‘At the rate he’s been bumping them off,’ Piper pointed out, ‘it could be months before he does another.’
‘Nor is he likely to bury the body in the same area,’ said Mackinnon. ‘It might never be found.’
‘There’s always the possibility that he’s come to the end of his list. Even if not, unless he’s stupid enough to do the target trick again, we might never connect a fourth with the first three. Then the case would eventually be written off as unsolved, bad, but not quite so bad for our reputations.’
‘Only if we don’t solve it, Chief,’ said Tom. ‘I’m betting we will, though it may take a while.’
Piper was thoughtful. ‘I’m betting the Justice! Revenge! target is too important to him to leave off. Otherwise, why would he do it? Unless he’s a madman.’
‘In which case, all bets are off,’ said Alec. ‘Catching a madman who appears sane under most circumstances is a matter of sheer luck. Of course, we have no evidence that there were three identical targets. The first and second safety-pins could have been something quite different for all we know. What I would like is some bit of tangible proof of something!’
‘Let’s hope we get something to go on from the army records,’ said Tom, ‘even if we have to wait till tomorrow.’
‘Or Monday! Yes, if we knew they were all together during the war, we could look for other veterans of the same battalion, or regiment. Someone might know of a particular incident the three were involved in. It must have been something out of the ordinary to incite such a desire for vengeance. Also, we might be able to find out if anyone else was mixed up in whatever it was, in time to protect him.’
‘Tell that to Sir William Joynson-Hicks and he’ll fall over himself to help.’
‘I’ll make sure Mr Crane passes it on. One thing we haven’t done – I admit it slipped my mind – is a thorough search of the burial area for bullets. Knowing what kind of gun was used might be useful.’
‘We did a pretty thorough search, Chief,’ Tom protested.
‘In the rain, in the twilight. And I don’t recall anyone checking the trunks of trees. The way the victims were tied up, he might have put them up against a tree to shoot them. Don’t worry, Tom, I shan’t send you, any of you three. It’s a job for a couple of DCs. You’re needed at the Yard this evening. What I’m betting on, is that we’ll be faced with a lot of tips from the public, since the papers printed the names this morning. I assume Cavett’s done some preliminary sorting, but it’s up to us to decide which are worth following up.’
The big room set aside for their use at Scotland Yard looked as if a multicoloured snowstorm had floated through. On every desk and table were drifts of official memo slips with telephone messages; blue, beige and even violet notepaper; pink telegram forms; and scribbled scraps of all sizes and shapes. Over these pored Inspector Cavett and his men. A couple moved about the room, transferring sorted piles from one place to another.
Cavett looked up as Alec, Tom, Mackinnon and Piper entered.
‘Bloody impossible, sir,’ he said bluntly. ‘Three men, each of them apparently known to half the population of southern England and every newspaper-reading nut in the whole country. Plus a whole year since the first disappearance for people to let their imaginations run riot in, if they can’t actually remember anything about last week.’
A messenger brought in a new stack. ‘Who gets this lot?’
A man with a nearly clear space on the table in front of him raised a weary arm. ‘I’ll take ’em.’
Alec sat gingerly on the corner of his desk. ‘It looks as if you have everything under control, Inspector, but it must be about time you went home. I’ll want you here for a meeting at ten thirty tomorrow. If you’d be so kind as to explain what’s going on and your sorting system to DS Mackinnon, he’ll take over.’
‘The CID never sleeps,’ said Piper.
‘To start with, give your “most likely” pile to Piper here. He can get started on it. I’ve got to talk to Superintendent Crane.’
‘He’s gone home, sir.’
‘So they told me downstairs. Can’t be helped, I’ll try to get him on the phone. Tom, you’d better come with me.’
They went up another floor to Alec’s office, where Tom had his own desk and phone.
‘Mind if I ring me old dutch, Chief?’
‘That’s what I brought you up for. You know I live in terror of Mrs Tring’s displeasure. As the super’s at home, it’s best if I call him direct.’ He slid his telephone towards him and unhooked the receiver. Connected to the switchboard, he asked for Crane’s home number.
‘Mr Crane left word he’s dining out, sir—’
‘Great Scott!’ What he meant was ‘Bloody hell!’ but he spared the ears of the switchbo
ard girl.
‘—But he gave a telephone number where he can be reached in an emergency. Would you classify your call as an emergency, Chief Inspector?’
Did he? He wouldn’t have been talking earlier about rousting out the home secretary on a Saturday evening if he didn’t consider the matter urgent. The possible army connection was their only real lead, and the sooner they found out whether it actually led anywhere, the better. It would take time to dig through the mounds of paper below, to cross-check tips and contact tippers.
‘Urgent enough to risk interrupting his evening, miss.’ And then the super could decide whether it was urgent enough to disturb the AC. ‘I’ll stay on the line.’
‘Very well, sir.’
He listened in as she spoke to a very hoity-toity butler. A few minutes passed before Crane came on the line.
‘Fletcher? News?’
‘Not exactly, sir. I need some information.’ He explained.
A long, windy sigh blew down the wire. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but you realise that even getting hold of these people on a Saturday evening may be impossible, let alone getting their cooperation.’
‘I’m aware of that, sir. I wouldn’t ask if—’
‘I know you wouldn’t. I’ll get right to it. With my hostess’s permission …’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Never mind. Er, Fletcher, Mrs Fletcher still well out of the way, is she?’
‘Yes, she’s in Saffron Walden. North Essex.’
‘Not far enough,’ Crane said gloomily.
Alec didn’t consider it the right moment to inform him that it was Daisy who had first suggested the possibility of a military connection.
CHAPTER 12
By the time Alec and Tom returned to the big room, Mackinnon had sent off a couple of detective constables to hunt for bullets at the scene of the burials while daylight lasted. He had arranged for the local bobby, PC Elliott, to show them the way. A stenographer was typing up the reports of the day’s interviews, while a somewhat reduced crew continued to sort the thinning stream of incoming paper. Mackinnon was now skimming through the pile of tips that Cavett had classified as unlikely to be of use but not impossible.
‘Good work. Keep at it.’ Alec went over to Ernie Piper.
Piper had divided about half of his ‘most likely’ pile into three and was puzzling over the scribble on what appeared to be the back of a betting slip.
‘If you ask me, Chief,’ he grumbled, ‘this one ended up getting passed on because no one could tell what it says so they didn’t dare to discard it.’
‘Give it to Tom and get on with the ones you can read.’
‘I’m no handwriting expert, Chief!’ Tom protested.
‘If after five minutes you still don’t know whether it’s worth keeping, we’ll set it aside in case we reach the point where we’re desperate enough to take it to the experts. Ernie, which of these is the lot we need to get in touch with?’
‘Dunno that we need to get in touch with all the writers, but this lot’s worth following up one way or another.’ He pushed the smallest pile across the desk, then pointed at the other two in turn. ‘This lot maybe, these prob’ly not.’
Alec sat on the corner of the desk and started reading. The first was a three-page diatribe, unsigned, from a man who had served under Pelham in the Boer War. Full of venom and a sense of bitter injustice, the writer wished he had met his well-deserved fate much sooner. He did not, however, mention what Pelham had done to earn such opprobium. The shaky handwriting suggested an elderly man, and he didn’t mention either Devine or Halliday, so the lack of either name or address wasn’t important. Alec wondered why Piper had set it aside.
Then he noticed that at the bottom of the third sheet of ivory notepaper, upside down, was the reverse side of an embossed address. The old man had presumably not noticed it. His large writing also suggested poor eyesight. Turning the page over, Alec saw that the address was that of a residential hotel in Hounslow. Easy to find him – and he might shed light on Pelham’s conduct in the army, on the sort of action that could have led to enmity enduring long enough to result in murder years later.
Tom came over with the letter he had been trying to decipher.
‘Greek, or maybe Russian,’ he announced.
‘What!’ Alec took it from him.
‘Well, it’s some kind of foreign alphabet. I’d recognise Chinese, having seen plenty of it in Limehouse, and Arabian’s all sort of twirly—’
‘How on earth do you know that? We don’t have an Arab colony in London, do we?’
Tom’s face and head turned a rosy pink, an impressive sight. ‘The missus saw that film, The Sheik, with Rudolph Valentino. Very keen on it, she was. So when she read about an exhibition of Arabian stuff at the V and A, she talked me into taking her. There was that squirly-twirly writing all over the place.’
‘All right, so it’s not Arabic. But you’re right, it’s not the Roman alphabet. It’s hard to credit that anyone would write to us in Russian or Greek – if he doesn’t know English, how did he find out we’re asking for information? – but I suppose we’d better get it translated. Next week, if we’re not getting anywhere.’
‘File and forget, laddie,’ Tom advised Piper as Alec laid the paper, which was indeed a betting slip, on the desk.
‘I never forget anything, Sarge,’ Ernie retorted.
‘Right now, Tom, I want you to read this, and go down to Hounslow for a chat with the chap who wrote it. See if you can find out what he’s still all steamed up about a quarter of a century later.’
‘No peace for the wicked.’
‘You’d rather help with this lot?’ Alec gestured at the room full of coppers reading and writing reports.
‘Not bloody likely.’ Tom preferred – and was much better at – dealing with people than paperwork. ‘I’m on my way.’
‘Ring up after you’ve talked to him, just in case there’s something else to be done out that way.’
‘Not in that lot you’ve got, Chief, there isn’t,’ said Piper.
‘Too much to hope for. The next little job’ll be in Harrow or Clapham, one of those “you can’t get there from here” places as far as Hounslow is concerned, if it’s not out of town altogether.’
As far as Tom was concerned, ‘out of town’ meant not on the Tube, and ‘can’t get there from here’ meant having to go into central London to change Tube lines. He carried a map of the underground railway system in his head.
So did Ernie. ‘Cheer up, Sarge,’ he said. ‘Hounslow’s on the District Line, a straight run from Westminster. As long as you don’t hop on the wrong train.’
‘Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs,’ Tom growled. ‘I’m not quite in my dotage.’ He went out, walking with less than his customary lightness of foot.
Not in his dotage by a long chalk, Alec thought, watching him with concern, but no longer able to take a run of late nights in his stride. If nothing further had come up in southwest London by the time he phoned, he could go home for the night.
A constable brought over a chair. Gratefully, Alec sat down. He wasn’t growing any younger himself. He used to be able to perch comfortably on the corner of a desk for as long as he chose, but now he could feel a distinct ache in his lower back. It had been another long day, and it wasn’t finished yet.
He turned to the next missive in his handful. Paperclipped to it was a note that it had been handed in at a police station in Southwark – M Division – just across the river. Written in an uneducated hand on a sheet of lined paper that looked as if it had been carefully cut from a school exercise-book, it was mercifully brief. The writer had served for a few weeks under a Lieutenant Devine and a Captain Halliday, though he didn’t know ‘nobody’ by the name of Pelham. He’d always been a law-abiding man, and if the police was to want to talk to him, he was their ‘obdt. servant, Robt. Thomson.’ The signature was followed by an address, also in Southwark.
‘Devine and Halliday
served together!’
‘Pelham, too, Chief. You’ve got a couple there that was with all three in France. Sorry, I didn’t get round to sorting in order of importance.’
Damn! thought Alec. With a little patience, he could have avoided requesting immediate access to War Office records and thereby disturbing a number of important people. On the other hand, he could make a persuasive case for needing official confirmation of whatever these witnesses had to say. What was more, reports from the battlefields might reveal whatever it was the three officers did that had eventually led to their murders, not to mention who else had been involved and could now be in danger.
After all, a fourth murder was the nightmare of everyone from the man in the street to the home secretary.
While these considerations passed through his head, Alec had flipped through the rest of his collection and found the two messages Piper referred to. The three names jumped out at him at a glance.
One of the tips was a letter. The other, unfortunately, came in a telegram from Newcastle upon Tyne. Unless the investigation dragged on to unthinkable lengths, in which case he’d probably be taken off it, he couldn’t send someone up there. No telephone number was given. If a number to match the name could be found in the relevant directory, he’d have to make an expensive trunk call to interview Mr Peter Chivers, who had served in Colonel Pelham’s regiment with Halliday and Devine. If not, he’d have to ask the Newcastle police to help, not only ringing them up at equally vast expense to explain what he needed, but more than likely finding himself on the other end of the line from someone with an absolutely impenetrable accent.
No, surely they must have men on the force who spoke the King’s English! The case was getting him down. He had to stop worrying about beating the killer to the next victim and concentrate on catching him.
‘Ernie, get hold of a telephone number for Peter Chivers, Newcastle, if there is one. And train timetable for Gerrards Cross.’