Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  Thoroughly despondent, he walked a little while up the street and then sat on a low wall to ponder what to do next. He had been so sure that he would be invited in to Widow Horsefield’s kitchen where he would spot some clue that indicated that her son Bruce was hiding out there – two places set at the kitchen table, a pair of men’s shoes in the hearth, a jacket draped on the back of a chair or even the grey felt hat hung behind the door – but nothing. This failure was completely unexpected and he had not thought beyond it.

  After wallowing in his disappointment for ten minutes or so, he shrugged his shoulders, realising that as a detective one must overcome setbacks all the time. Johnny would certainly not be beaten by such an outcome. He would have to persevere.

  Houndsditch was Horsefield’s stamping ground and it seemed to Peter that a man on the run, like a wounded animal, would return to his own lair. If not his family home, some gaff in the vicinity. So, he would pound the streets, pound the scruffy streets of Houndsditch, in the hope of… something.

  And so hauling himself to his feet, Peter began his trek. It was now mid-morning and the streets were fairly empty: those who had jobs were at work, night shift fellows were in bed and housewives were inside doing what housewives do. In one of the streets there were a few kids who like Peter were bunking off school and were involved in an impromptu game of cricket. He hung around and watched and waited and after retrieving the ball from the gutter a couple of times, managed to get himself involved in the game. This led to idle chatter which at length he was able to swing his way. Eventually, he felt comfortable to ask if they knew the local villain who had been in the papers for robbing a bank. A geezer called Horsefield. The query met with blank stares. Even when he described Horsefield, including the detail of his felt cowboy hat, the stares remained blank. Another dead end. Realising that there was nothing to be gained from this particular cricket match, he quickly dropped out and began to mooch his way along another street.

  At lunchtime he called in a café for a mug of tea and a piece of cake. He gazed around at the customers, mostly folk on their own, pale-faced and lost in thought. They all looked respectable and sad. No sign of a felt hat anywhere.

  The afternoon was spent drearily tramping around streets of the area once more. He passed the Horsefield house again and even scouted around the lane at the back to no avail. Tired and fed up, Peter reckoned he’d better go home. It was nearly five o’clock and he needed to be back for tea or the Horner sisters would get worried. And anyway, it had been a futile mission. Nothing was going to present itself to him now.

  But he was wrong.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Horsefield reached the end of the platform, he dropped over the edge and began to cross the railway tracks. I was tempted to shoot at him, but I knew that I was no Wyatt-Earp type sharp shooter and I was probably too far away from the target to be successful. However, unlike my quarry, I was an able-bodied fellow – no wound to hinder me – and I reckoned I could soon catch up with him.

  In copycat fashion, I slipped over the edge of the platform too and began picking my way across the tracks. By now Horsefield had progressed past the end of the next platform and further out, beyond the confines of the canopy of the station. In turning to see how far I was behind him, he stumbled and fell full length with a sharp cry. Now was my chance. But it was foiled by the appearance of a goods train that seemed to loom out of thin air and shudder slowly past me on the line between Horsefield and myself. The clanking, thundering monster rattled by at a snail’s pace while I stood impotently immobile, unable to move or indeed see my man.

  When the train had passed in a cloud of gritty smoke, I peered ahead. There was no sign of Horsefield. ‘Damn,’ I cried out loud and set off across the tracks again in the direction my quarry had been heading. Every so often I saw a splash of red on the iron or the sleepers: blood from his wound. I stopped for a moment and gazed around me. I suddenly realised how bizarre this situation was. Here I was standing in the middle of a tracery of railway lines searching for a wounded man who was escaping with a fortune in stolen notes. I had a vision of myself as viewed from above – a solitary human figure staggering across a series of interconnecting silver rails like some vision created by Salvador Dali or some other crazy surrealist painter.

  My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a shot. On instinct I dropped to my knees. One shot, the bullet pinging onto the rails some yards ahead of me. I scanned the scene before me: signals, static rolling stock and those hypnotic silver rails sliding off into the distance – but there was no sign of Horsefield. Where had the shot come from?

  And then I spied him. Or rather his legs. I saw a movement behind one of the goods trucks some hundred yards away to my right. In the gap between the wagon and the ground, I saw two legs shifting slightly.

  Adopting a low crouch which that fellow from Notre Dame would have been proud of, I made my way as quickly as I could towards the wagon while keeping my eyes focused on those legs. As I grew nearer, I saw Horsefield move to the corner of the truck and peer around the corner. On seeing the loping figure bearing down on him, he fired again. As he did so, I threw myself sideways. Just in time, as it happened, for the bullet thudded into the sleeper where seconds earlier I had been crouching.

  Now the legs disappeared altogether. Maybe the devil was climbing up the side in order to get onto the roof for a better view. Certainly, I’d be a much easier target from up there.

  I ran the rest of the distance and on reaching the goods wagon I pressed my body to its side. I listened carefully for any sound which may give me a clue as to Horsefield’s actual whereabouts. Had he clambered on to the roof or was he just around the other side clinging on? I could hear nothing, but as I moved stealthily towards the right corner of the truck, I heard the sounds of raised voices. I turned quickly and saw in the distance behind me, three men racing in my direction. One was a uniformed policeman, and the other two appeared to be railway officials, guards or something like that. They were raising their hands in the air and shouting loudly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I caught the word ‘Stop!’ It was clear they were some kind of posse and by their demeanour, it seemed I was their quarry.

  I had stared at them too long for suddenly I was conscious of a shadow and then a presence near me. I turned quickly but too late. I saw Horsefield. I saw Horsefield with his arm raised high. I saw Horsefield bring the butt of the gun down towards me. I saw blackness.

  * * *

  When I awoke, I found myself lying on a small utility bed with screens around me. As I tried to sit up, a hand grenade went off in my head. I groaned. The screens parted and a young woman in a nurse’s outfit appeared and smiled gently.

  ‘So you have returned to the land of the living, eh?’

  It was a pleasant voice, low in register and with an accent. Middle European. I guessed that, but I had no idea where I was.

  ‘Where am I?’ My voice escaped like a tired mole into the daylight.

  ‘You are in the First Aid room at Victoria Station. You have been hit on the head.’ The explanation was succinct and explanatory and was accompanied by a warm smile.

  ‘I can feel it. Where… where is the other man? The one who hit me?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, no. I must be going.’

  ‘You’ll be going nowhere.’ This injunction came from a second figure who appeared beside the nurse. It was a police sergeant: a robust red-faced fellow with a comfortable girth.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, my lad,’ he said as though he was admonishing a youngster for breaking a window with his cricket ball.

  ‘Horsefield – did he escape?’

  ‘If you mean the bloke what dinted your skull; yes, he legged it.’

  ‘He’s a killer.’

  ‘Is he now? And was it him that did for the bloke in the lavatories?’

  Salter. I had forgotten about him. ‘Oh, he’s de
ad, then.’

  ‘As a doornail.’

  ‘The man that I was chasing, a fellow called Horsefield, was the dead man’s accomplice in a bank robbery… I’m a private detective.’

  The sergeant held up his hand. ‘Whoa. Save your breath, son. You can tell it all to Inspector Sullivan. He’s on his way here now.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ said the nurse, ‘how about that cup of tea and a couple of aspirins?’

  I nodded in acceptance and another hand grenade exploded in my skull.

  The sergeant disappeared, but the nurse sat with me as I drank my tea. She told me her name was Ivana and she was Russian. She was originally from Stalingrad but had left the city at the outbreak of the war and made her way to England. Her family had perished in the terrible battle for the city in 1942 and now she was alone in the world. She seemed to gain some comfort telling me her story – a stranger whom she would never see again. A stranger whom she expected to be carted off to prison any moment now.

  Her eyes misted as she spoke of her parents and the terrible atrocities that the Nazis had wrought in Stalingrad. She had a strong face, mannish almost, but a lovely smile and deep expressive brown eyes.

  I liked her.

  Suddenly there was a rustle behind the screens and then Inspector Bernard Sullivan appeared.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

  * * *

  Sullivan knew me from my days as a serving policeman. He was a copper of the old school: fair, scrupulous and down to earth.

  ‘I’d heard you’d gone private. A ladies detective. Spying through keyholes on naughty husbands. So how come you get mixed up in a murder and a nasty affray in a railway station?’

  ‘Just luck,’ I said and he laughed.

  ‘O.K. Johnny. Give me the low-down,’ he said pulling up a stool.

  As succinctly as I could I filled him in him on the scenario involving Malcolm Salter and Bruce Horsefield. Sullivan listened intently, his eyes twitching all the while, a sign I knew that he was making a mental note of all that I was telling him. He was that kind of copper.

  After I’d finished, he rubbed his chin sagely. ‘A bit of a mess all round. You O.K.?’

  I touched my head where Horsefield’s gun had landed and found to my surprise that it was bandaged. ‘I’ll live,’ I said.

  ‘A good night’s kip and a stiff brandy, as my old granny used to say.’

  ‘So Salter’s dead.’

  ‘The bloke in the lav. Yes. He hung on for a while but he didn’t make it.’

  ‘And the money.’

  ‘Well Sergeant Morris found a bag but it was empty. That’d be the one, I reckon.’

  ‘Yes. It had two thousand pounds in it.’

  Sullivan whistled. ‘Nice little horde. So it looks like your mate Horsefield got away with it after all.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said disconsolately. ‘It looks like it.’

  Sullivan gave a wry chuckle. ‘Not your finest hour, then; eh, Johnny? Perhaps you’d better get back to one of those keyholes, watching those naughty married people.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ I replied, for want of a wittier or more acerbic response. ‘Does that mean I can go?’

  ‘Well, I reckon so. We know where to pick up you up if needed. You say it’s Herbert whose handling the Chelmsford robbery?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sullivan beamed. ‘Well, it will be my pleasure to dump this little lot in his lap. You may find him on your doorstep in the morning. The grin converted into a chuckle. He rose from the stool. Before he disappeared behind the screens he turned back and gave me a friendly nod. ‘Look after yourself, lad,’ he said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tired, disheartened and hungry, Peter dragged his weary bones towards the bus stop. It was time for him to return home. His search had been fruitless. His bright hopes had been dashed. Perhaps detective work wasn’t as satisfying as he thought it would be. It was a little devil of a thought and he quelled it. You need perseverance and determination to succeed as a private investigator, he told himself firmly. You don’t give up if at first you don’t succeed. He knew this was true but it was hard to accept when his feet hurt and his tummy rumbled.

  ‘Perseverance and determination,’ he muttered, almost as a mantra. ‘Perseverance and determination. And luck,’ he added as an afterthought. Yes, luck was what he had lacked today. ‘If only I’d had a bit of luck…’

  And then he did. It came out of nowhere and pinned him to the spot. He froze like a statue as he observed a tall thin man turn the corner, walking in a slow awkward fashion towards him. Peter could not see his face clearly because it was shielded by a large grey felt hat.

  His heart almost stopped at the excitement of this encounter. Surely, here was the man himself. The one that he’d been searching for. He rubbed his eyes to make sure this wasn’t an hallucination. It wasn’t. Here was Bruce Horsefield. In the flesh. He was sure of it. He stared at him as he walked past and noticed that there was a dark stain on one of his trouser legs below the knee – the leg that seemed to be giving him some discomfort.

  The man was injured – that explained his rather clumsy gait.

  Horsefield took no notice of Peter as he slipped past him, making slow but steady progress along the pavement. Peter waited only a few seconds before turning and following the man.

  After some ten minutes when Horsefield had led Peter into the maze of small streets lying behind Middlesex Road, he reached a row of down at heel terrace houses. Here Horsefield paused and gazed around him as though he was checking he hadn’t been followed. Peter had the presence of mind to push his body into the tangle of an overgrown privet hedge, some of the prickly branches getting up his nose.

  Believing himself safe from shadows, Horsefield mounted the steps of one house and disappeared inside.

  Peter gazed at the gaunt shabby building, its mildewed façade and blank windows darkened by the blackout shutters which were still in place, and smiled. The villain’s hideout, he thought. He had found it. All on his own.

  He must inform Johnny and how proud he would be in doing so. He remembered passing a telephone box a few streets away and sprinting he retraced his way there. Frustratingly, it was occupied by a young woman with a brightly coloured turban and large dangly earrings. She was in full flow. He could hear her voice in high-pitched moaning mode as her left hand fluttered wildly like a trapped bat. He couldn’t catch her words but one didn’t have to in order to know she was expressing some grievance in a grumpy tirade.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ murmured Peter in frustration, glancing at his watch. He was well aware that it was quite possible that Horsefield would only stay in the house a short time before moving on. The woman in the box sensing his presence and his impatience glowered at him and then turned her back without a pause in her diatribe.

  Seconds ticked by into minutes. Then to his great dismay, he saw the woman put more coins into the slot. God, she was going to tell all the world about her grievance.

  Peter was joined by a tall smartly dressed man outside the box. A queue was forming.

  ‘Has she been in long?’ he asked.

  ‘Forever,’ said Peter.

  The man leaned forward and tapped on the glass of the telephone box. The woman turned abruptly, scowled and mouthed some obscenity at him.

  ‘Charming,’ he said.

  At last, the woman put the phone down, but made no real effort to leave the box.

  The man pulled the door open. ‘Have you done?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she returned scowling. ‘This is private in here. You should wait.’

  ‘I have been waiting. I have an important call to make.’

  With a belligerent shove, she brushed past him. ‘It’s all yours,’ she said.

  The man turned to Peter. ‘It is rather important, sonny. I hope you don’t mind if I go before you.’

  Peter’s nerves along with his temper were somewhat frayed by now and he wasn’t going to have this. He had waited his turn and his turn it
was.

  ‘Yes, I bloody do mind,’ he found himself saying, swearing out loud in front of a grown up for the first time in his life. Without waiting for a reaction, he yanked the door from the man’s grasp and entered the box.

  As his nervous fingers pressed the coins into the slot, he prayed that Johnny would be in his office. It was teatime. Surely, whatever he’d been dong all day, he’d be back for a cuppa and his usual makeshift evening meal.

  But the phone kept on ringing.

  In his mind’s eye, Peter saw the lonely instrument on Johnny’s desk, the dim shadows of evening falling softly onto it as it vibrated gently in the gloom, but there was no arm there to reach out and pick up the receiver. Eventually, he gave up and pressed button B.

  With a sigh, he dialled another number. This time the call was answered.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice in a tone that intimated that the caller had interrupted something of vital importance.

  ‘Benny. It’s Peter.’

  ‘Oh, Peter, hello, my boy. What a pleasure to hear from you.’ The voice was sweeter, friendlier now, rich in warmth.

  ‘Benny, is Johnny there at the café?’

  ‘Not unless he’s the invisible man. He doesn’t come here as often as he used to… not since…’ The voice trailed away.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘How should I? Trailing some hoodlum maybe or taking a drink at the Velvet Cage. Your guess is as good as mine.’

  Peter ruffled his hair with his free hand. ‘Look, Benny, it’s important I get a message to him. It’s about his latest case.’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘I’ve tracked Horsefield to his lair. It’s 23 Commercial Street, Houndsditch.’

  ‘Let me write this down. Hey, wait a minute, what do you mean you tracked this horseperson to his lair. Are you in danger? What’s going on?’