A Case of Spirits (8 page)

‘He’d given me the slip, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘The next I heard from him was the creaking of a floorboard upstairs after we discovered what had happened in here. He couldn’t get out through the basement because Captain Nye was down there switching off the current, so he went upstairs instead.’

‘As we discovered,’ said Probert.

‘As I did,’ his wife corrected him.

‘What nobody has made clear,’ said Alice, ‘is why Professor Quayle came into the house at all. If it wasn’t to assist Mr Brand, as now seems clear, what
was
the purpose of his presence here?’

Cribb shot an inquiring glance at his superior. ‘I was rather hoping to extract that information from the professor himself, miss. If Inspector Jowett was proposing to collect statements from you all, I wondered if I might be spared to put some questions across the kitchen table downstairs. Only, of course, if you were planning things that way, sir.’

Jowett nodded, the first positive thing he had achieved in ten minutes. ‘That was precisely what I was coming to, Sergeant.’

‘Thank you, sir. It looks like being a long night, so while I’m down there, I’ll put the kettle on, if I may. I’ll stand it on the range beside the professor and see which one sings first.’

‘Sit down, sir,’ he said, poking the professor in the chest with sufficient firmness to park him in the flirtation settee. ‘I shan’t join you. Nothing personal intended, but I like to see a man’s eyes when I ask him questions. In case you wondered, we ain’t here to look at the ladies on the wall, and I don’t propose to compete with ’em.’ He pulled the draw-string at the side of one of Dr Probert’s naked goddesses, who was partially in view, then smartly turned about, pointed a finger at Quayle and asked ‘What have you done with the Etty?’

‘The what?’ asked Quayle, in a voice so thin nobody would have believed it had harangued an audience from the platform of the Store Street Hall.

‘
Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs.
Occupied a place on the wall behind you until last Friday week. Dr Probert wants it back. I hope it ain’t mutilated.’

‘I don’t know anything about this, Constable.’

‘Sergeant, if you please. Cribb’s the name. Don’t waste my time. I want some sleep tonight. Etty was the artist, you see.’

‘I don’t think I have heard of him.’

‘That’s evident,’ said Cribb, ‘or you wouldn’t have walked out with the canvas you did. There’s better things on these walls than Ettys, I can tell you. You and I might say there isn’t much to choose between buxom wenches in the buff, but we’d be wrong. There’s some here worth ten of your Ettys. French ones. No man of culture would have helped himself to an English nymph when there was madamoiselles to be had. And why take only one, when you could have had an armful? You gave so much away, you see. You’re no picture-thief. You can’t even cut a canvas neatly off its frame. You’re a raw beginner, Professor, no doubt of it.’

Quayle said nothing, but his tongue raced nervously round his lips, moistening them.

‘It was the same at Miss Crush’s,’ Cribb went on. ‘You took a piece of common Royal Worcester when you could have had a priceless Minton. It was plain to me that you knew as much about china as you did about nudes, or housebreaking. You made a shocking mess of Dr Probert’s pantry, climbing in through all the biscuits and pearl barley, didn’t you? So it didn’t take a Scotland Yard man to work out that the thief wasn’t a professional cracksman.

‘How did I come to suspect you? Well, at first I did what you intended—I suspected Peter Brand instead. It was obvious the thief was primed. He knew the only favourable times to rob the houses: when the owners were out visiting. Consider the sequence of events. On October 15th there’s a seance at Miss Crush’s at which Brand and Dr Probert are guests. The doctor very civilly invites Miss Crush back to his house for a return seance on October 31st. She attends, and so does Brand. During the evening Dr Probert makes reference to a lecture he is going to give, which his wife and daughter will attend. The seance comes to an end, Brand leaves, and an hour later so does Miss Crush. When she gets home she discovers the theft of her vase. On November 6th, the night of the lecture, the Proberts’ house is broken into, and a picture stolen. Who can I suspect but Brand, the only person other than the doctor and Miss Crush who was present at both seances and knew when to execute the burglaries?’

‘It seems a reasonable inference to make,’ said Quayle, guardedly. ‘He is of humble extraction, as you must have gathered from his occasional lapses of speech. His father was a common cabman, I believe. A person of that class admitted suddenly to the residences of the well-to-do is subject to certain temptations, is he not?’

‘Ah,’ said Cribb, putting up a forefinger. ‘That’s what you wanted me to think, and so I did for a short time. Until I clapped my eyes on you, Professor.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Don’t look so alarmed. It wasn’t in Probert’s garden. It was legitimate enough at the time—your lantern lecture at the Store Street Hall.’

‘You were there?’

‘My assistant is Constable Thackeray, the man with the handcuffs.’

‘I might have guessed.’

‘You might, sir. You looked a trifle worried when Peter Brand removed the handcuffs from the envelope, as I recall, but so did Brand, of course. I must be fair. Before that, though, I was already starting to turn things over in my mind. It seemed to me that Peter Brand was a young man with ambition. He was earning something of a reputation in the metropolis. What was it? Spirit-writing in Camberwell and the levitation of a suite of furniture in Hampstead? At any rate, there can’t be many mediums of twenty capable of sharing the billing with you at the Store Street Hall.’

‘It was only at my invitation,’ insisted Quayle.

‘The whole point is,’ Cribb continued, ‘that he was starting to earn fat fees, and the prospects were even better. Why should he queer his own pitch by robbing the clients when he was fleecing them handsomely already? It made no sense.’

‘Fleecing them?’ repeated Quayle. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Simply that I class young Brand with any other sharp, and it’s my experience that the needle-pointed fraternity don’t play two games at once.’

‘I hope you are not equating spiritualism with racecourse practices.’

‘It’s all a way of lining your pocket, as I see it,’ said Cribb. ‘You don’t find your thimble-rigger picking pockets at the same time as he works the cups. When young Brand picked the handcuffs out of the envelope at the meeting, he was terrified, I could see that. But it wasn’t on account of the Etty or the Worcester vase; it was because he was afraid we’d tumbled to the fact that he already knew Miss Crush and all about her Uncle Walter.’

‘Oh that,’ said Quayle dismissively. ‘Pure opportunism. It was perfectly legitimate.’

‘I’d like to hear you justify that to your audience,’ said Cribb. ‘However, Brand, for whatever reason, took the first opportunity of dashing for the exit. We caught up with him a few yards short of Tottenham Court Road. Do you know, Professor, he didn’t even know the vase had gone from Miss Crush’s house, and when I mentioned it, he thought it was the Minton that must have been taken. Unlike you, you see, he can tell the value of a piece of china. He also talked about you.’

Quayle’s eyes flashed with fury. ‘Did he? The little guttersnipe!’

‘Yes. Called you a regular pal, if I recall correctly. Said that you took him in and taught him the rudiments of table-tapping.’

‘Oh, did he?’ Quayle rapidly switched to a conciliatory tone. ‘That’s perfectly true, of course. I gave him introductions to some of the best addresses in London.’

‘So I heard,’ said Cribb. ‘Just when you were slipping out of public favour, too. It takes a generous-hearted man to lend a helping hand to an up-and-coming youngster at a time like that.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate the fact.’

‘I asked myself why you did it.’

‘From altruism, Sergeant.’

Cribb walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of water from the flask there. ‘You’ve got all the answers ready, haven’t you? No, a man in your shoes doesn’t hand his livelihood over to an upstart for no good reason. I know why you did it. You gave him the helping hand to let him get ahead of you so that you could stab him in the back. Figuratively speaking, of course,’

Quayle shook his head so vigorously that his cheeks quivered. ‘Arrant nonsense!’

‘In that way there was far more chance of winning back the favour of your patrons. Have you ever studied prizefighting? You’ve got a lot in common with the great Jem Mace. Do you know, Professor, there’s only one thing that the Fancy like better than a novice who comes fresh to win a championship, and that’s the old’un who comes back to knock him out. It’s a sound principle, and it would have worked for you if you hadn’t been such a poor hand as a thief. All the conditions were right. Brand didn’t have the slightest notion of what you were planning, so he fed you all the information you needed. You broke into the houses when everyone was out and found the things of value without trouble. Unhappily, that’s where your plan ran into difficulties, because you picked the wrong things to steal. The objects didn’t matter to you; it was the act of theft that was important. That was all that was necessary to scotch Peter Brand’s career. Far better to do it that way, you decided, than expose him as a fraudulent medium, which would have raised doubts about mediums in general.’

‘This is all very ingenious, Sergeant, but where is it leading us?’ said Quayle in a bored voice. ‘You can prove nothing except that I was in this house tonight. My presence here is quite contrary to your theories, in fact.’

‘It is indeed, sir. I fully expected you to break into the empty residence of one of the guests. I’ve got Constable Thackeray on duty at this moment at Miss Crush’s place.’

‘Really? How ridiculous!’

‘Yes, I didn’t expect you here tonight, but since you came, I felt obliged to follow you. And now I am arresting you on suspicion of entering this dwelling house tonight with intent to commit a felony. That’s just a start, sir. I expect to bring several charges later, including the theft on November 6th of one picture entitled
Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs,
the property of Dr Probert.’

‘I deny it! You have no proof.’

‘But I have,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s in this glass of water.’ He held the still half-full tumbler six inches in front of the professor’s eyes. ‘See the small white object lying on the bottom? I put it in the glass a few minutes ago. It’s swelling nicely, ain’t it? I removed several like it from your trouser turn-ups when we carried you downstairs after Mrs Probert knocked you senseless with her book.’

‘What is it, for God’s sake?’

‘I don’t go in for stews over-much, sir, but I think I know what that is. There’s a lot of ’em still lying where you knocked ’em over climbing in through Dr Probert’s pantry. Devilish little things. Pearl barley, Professor, pearl barley.’

Here’s a choice birth o’ the supernatural,

He should have been in bed. Eleven hours he had squatted behind a tree opposite Miss Crush’s house in Eaton Square. Eleven hours on one of the bleakest nights in November. By dawn he could have passed for Uncle Walter, he was so blanched by frost. And what had it achieved, apart from the likely onset of chronic pneumonia?

Nothing.

Not a living soul had approached the terrace until eight in the morning, when Cribb appeared and gave the sort of whistle a dog-owner gives when his animal lingers too long in the bushes. ‘I’ve got a job for you, Thackeray,’ he said, as if eleven hours behind a tree had not been employment at all. ‘Cut along to Sloane Square and take the Metropolitan line to Praed Street. It’s a short step from there to Homer Court. Here’s the key to number 10, Professor Quayle’s house. Let yourself in and locate Dr Probert’s missing picture in the umbrella stand. Miss Crush’s vase should be in a cabinet in the bathroom. No need to look surprised, Constable. Quayle confessed to me six hours ago. Oh, and make a list of Peter Brand’s personal effects, will you? He won’t be in his rooms. Died in mysterious circumstances last night. Lord, yes, I’ve been busy since I last saw you. I’m off to get some sleep now. Report to me at two o’clock, will you? Sharp, mind.’

As usual, there was no answering Cribb. He climbed back into a waiting cab before Thackeray had a chance to put two words together. All a man could do in the circumstances was brush off the worst of the frost and hobble away to the station, trying not to mind the chilblains.

Cribb had not mentioned it, but Thackeray decided to assume his orders included a short stop at the soup-stall in Sloane Square for a bowl of ox-tail. He would make sure the twopence went into his diary as legitimate expenses, too, and if he had to buy wintergreen ointment for his toes he was going to put that down as well, whatever anyone said.

Quayle’s house was large and detached, not so fashionably situated as Miss Crush’s, but certainly no slum. Remarkable that an occupation concerned with spiritual things should be so productive of worldly comforts. Thackeray had let himself in, removed the rolled-up Etty from a collection of walking-sticks and umbrellas and carried it upstairs to the second floor, collecting the Royal Worcester from the bathroom on the way. Both now lay on the floor of Peter Brand’s sitting-room, the painting still unfurled. There was not the slightest doubt that it was Dr Probert’s nymph. Cribb was sickeningly unlikely to have made a mistake. And Thackeray with his chilblains felt no overmastering urge to gaze at a naked form of either sex.

It was a salutary experience to occupy a dead man’s room and see the evidence of recent occupation, a discarded shirt over a chair-back, the collar on the floor, orange-peel in the grate and unwashed plates on the table. That it was a bachelor establishment was clear from the reek of stale tobacco. The picture over the mantelpiece was of a racehorse and there were betting-tickets strewn about the floor.

Thackeray had withdrawn his notebook and was starting to record the contents of the room when his work was interrupted by a clatter at the front door downstairs. He went to the window and peered out. A cab was drawn up outside. Uncertain what to expect, he descended the two flights of stairs and opened the door.

A cabman was standing in the porch, a barrel-shaped man in a brown bowler and one of those enormous greatcoats that reached from chin to bootlaces, the hallmark of the trade. The number 469 was prominently displayed on his badge. What was visible of his hair was grey, and his moustache protruded over his lips and was damp at the extremities.

He touched his hat. ‘Morning, sir. I’ve come for Mr Brand’s things.’

‘His things?’ repeated Thackeray. ‘ ’E’s dead, ain’t ’e? Won’t be wanting ’em now.’

‘How do you know he’s dead?’

The cabby shrugged his shoulders. ‘Common knowledge by now. News travels fast in my occupation. I ’eard about it at the cab shelter by Paddington station. ’Ad a fatal accident in Richmond, didn’t ’e? Who are you, if you ain’t the undertaker?’

‘I was about to ask the same question,’ said Thackeray.

‘Charlie Brand, sir. Father of the deceased.’

‘I see. I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be. ’E wasn’t much to me.’

‘Is that so? I’m a police officer. Detective-Constable Thackeray. Plain clothes duty.’

‘What you doing ’ere, then? Picking up a fresh set of plain clothes?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Thackeray with dignity. ‘I’m here to make a list of the deceased’s possessions.’

‘And I’m ’ere to collect ’em,’ said the cabman. ‘Next of kin, you see. Prior claim. I think I ’ave the right to look over that list of yours. There should be a silver watch somewhere. It wouldn’t be in your pocket by any chance, would it?’

‘It would not,’ said Thackeray firmly. ‘I have a watch of my own with my personal number scratched on the back. If you want to come inside you’d better keep a civil tongue in your head, cabman. How am I to know you’re Brand’s father, anyway?’

The cabman tapped his badge. ‘This is
my
personal number, and you can check it in the ’Ackney Carriage Licensing Department, right under your police office in Great Scotland Yard. Brand, Charles Edgar, on the box for forty-six years, excepting three in the Crimea. When I started, there wasn’t no detectives to speak of. The thief-takers was the Runners, and a fine body of men they was.’ He peered closely at Thackeray. ‘I suppose you wasn’t one, by any chance?’

‘Lord, no!’ said Thackeray. ‘I was just a babe in arms in them days. You’d better come in, then, Mr Brand. I can’t allow you to cart anything away, but I suppose I ought to let you see what’s there.’

‘Rubbish mostly, if you ask me,’ Brand senior remarked, as he followed Thackeray upstairs. On the first-floor landing he paused to gather breath for the second flight. ‘You ’aven’t come across the watch, then?’

Thackeray turned. ‘I have not, cabman, and I swear I’ll lay one on you if I hear another word about it.’

In Brand’s room they paused just inside the door. The cabman had not endeared himself much to Thackeray so far, but he was entitled to the respect that is due to any bereaved parent. It was impossible not to respond to the numerous reminders in the room of the life so suddenly cut short.

The response, in Brand Senior’s case, was unsentimental: ‘I suppose the picture might raise a pound or two, but I don’t see much else ’ere. You don’t suppose the landlord’s been round already and ’ad the pick of the stuff, do you?’

‘Impossible,’ said Thackeray. ‘The landlord’s been in custody all night.’

‘Copped ’im, ’ave you? What was ’e doing—keeping a disorderly ’ouse?’

‘That’s no concern of yours, cabman,’ Thackeray retorted. ‘If you’re quite sure there’s nothing here worth having, don’t let me delay you any longer. I’ve got my work to do.’

Brand Senior seemed to interpret this as an invitation to stay and watch. He lowered himself into an arm-chair, took out a pipe, filled it, thrust it between his moustache and his muffler, lighted it and was temporarily lost to view in the resulting smoke. ‘This don’t surprise me in the least,’ he said, clearing a shaft in the cloud with his hand. ‘The boy’s been keeping bad company for years. It wasn’t the way ’e was brought up, I can tell you. ’E was reared with the end of my belt, was that boy. I was mother and father to ’im for ten years—ten years, Officer. Taught ’im the Ten Commandments and ’is numbers and ’ow to groom the ’orse and look what ’e came to! I might as well ’ave saved meself the exercise.’

‘Did his mother die young?’ inquired Thackeray, trying to dredge up a scrap of sympathy for this peculiarly unsympathetic old man.

‘Still alive, so far as I know,’ said Brand unhelpfully.

‘You parted company, then?’

‘Company?’ Brand laughed with such an eruption that it brought on a fit of coughing. ‘It never got as far as company. Blimey no, it was nothing like that.’ He produced a large red handkerchief and dried the corners of his eyes. ‘Now we’ve started, I’d better tell you about it, or you’ll go on asking your cock-eyed questions till it’s time for me to go. Did you see my ’orse as you opened the front door just now?’

‘I can’t say I noticed him particularly,’ admitted Thackeray, uncertain what the horse had to do with the story.

‘That’s my fourth out there,’ continued Brand Senior. ‘Nine year old gelding, and a very fine shape for a cabber, too. Twenty year ago the beast between them shafts was a bag o’ bones, Officer, I don’t mind admitting it. I called ’im Ezekiel, after the prophet what told the story of the bones that came to life. If you’d seen my Ezekiel standing in the cab-rank in The Strand you’d say ’e was the living proof of that story. You might think ’e got like that from poor feeding, and I suppose there’s a grain of truth in that, because I was up against ’ard times in them days, but I’m inclined to think ’e was sparely built, same as certain ’umans are. Ezekiel just
looked
pathetic, but ’e was given the nosebag as often as any other animal on the rank.’

‘Get to the point, for God’s sake, cabman,’ requested Thackeray. ‘I didn’t get any sleep last night.’

‘All right. ’Old on, mate. Now one spring morning I’m waiting in the rank as usual when a flunkey of some sort comes walking along the pavement sizing us up, like. ’E takes a long look at Ezekiel and after a bit ’e comes up to me and says, “You’ll do. I’m ’iring you for the hour.” Now if there’s one thing certain to start a riot in a cab-rank it’s jumping the line, so I tells the flunkey ’e must go to the front and take the first cab in the rank. “Not on your life,” says ’e. “I want you, and if I ’ave to wait ’alf an hour for you that’s all the same to me.” Sure enough ’e waits for twenty minutes, till it’s my turn at the front, then ’e climbs aboard, giving me an address in Russell Square. “That won’t take an hour,” says I. “Never you mind,” says ’e. So I cracks me whip and old Ezekiel gets us there inside ten minutes. “Wait ’ere, cabby,” says the flunkey, and disappears inside a big ’ouse. Presently out ’e comes with a young lady, got-up to the nines. A stunner she was, I promise you. ’E ’ands ’er into the cab and tells me to take ’er round Regent’s Park, driving slow. Now I don’t ’ave to tell you that it weren’t the thing at all in them days any more than it is now for a single woman to drive alone in a four wheeler.’

‘Not a respectable woman,’ said Thackeray.

‘That’s my point,’ said Brand, blowing another cloud of smoke in Thackeray’s direction. ‘I could see she was well turned-out, but so was Skittles—remember ’er, Officer?—and ’alf-a-dozen others at that time. Mine was a respectable cab and I didn’t want no part in anything irregular.’

‘All right,’ said Thackeray. ‘You don’t need to convince me. Get on with the story.’

‘Well, I’m sitting on me box wondering what she’s ’ired me for, when she taps on the roof with ’er parasol. I opens the ’atch and she tells me to stop the cab. “This ’orse of yours,” she says, when I’ve pulled Ezekiel’s ’ead back and stopped. “It’s in a pitiful condition. I’d like to give it a carrot.” “Well, Miss,” says I, “if you ’ad one with you, I’d be appy for Ezekiel to ’ave it.” “I ’ave,” says she, and bless me if she don’t fetch one out of ’er bag and push it through the ’atch. “Give it to ’im now,” she says, “and I’ll give you a shilling extra with the fare.” So I obliged the lady and Ezekiel got ’is carrot. That old ’ack never ’ad a bigger surprise in all ’is life. When I’d fed ’im she said she’d like to come down and stroke ’is nose. I wasn’t too ’appy about that, because Ezekiel was an evil-tempered brute at the best of times, even after ’e’d been fed, but ’appily there wasn’t no incident. She climbs back into the cab and we completes the turn round the Park and back to Russell Square. “Call for me at the same time tomorrow,” she says, and gives me three and six, I tell no lie.’

‘Did you go?’

‘Of course I did. A cabby don’t say no to that sort of money. The same thing ’appened for the next five days and Ezekiel was getting quite a frisky look to ’im as we bowled into Russell Square each morning. The lady told me she belonged to some society for the welfare of cab-’orses and she’d sent ’er servant out to find the most broken-down old cabber on the rank. Then one morning she says, “Let’s go up to ’Ampstead today. We can take Ezekiel up to Parliament ’Ill Fields. There’s some long grass there and we’ll give ’im the time of ’is life.” So off we trot through Camden and Kentish Town and sure enough there’s a lovely stretch of grass behind Gospel Oak Station. “Ain’t you going to unbridle ’im?” she asks me, when I’ve led ’im off the road, and I swear it now, Officer, there was a look in that young woman’s eye that was beginning to unbridle
me,
never mind the ’orse. Anyway, I got ’er down from the cab and let Ezekiel out of the shafts, and we walked a little way to a quiet spot, where she suggested we sat down. We was still in view of Ezekiel and the cab, but out of sight of the road, if you understand me.’

‘I’m beginning to,’ said Thackeray.

‘After a bit she says, “Ezekiel already looks a better ’orse. You can’t see ’is ribs quite so easy now, can you?” “No,” says I, “you’ve spoilt ’im proper. I suppose you’ll be looking for another starving old cabber soon.” “That’s my mission in life,” she says. “I want to rescue all the cab-’orses I can. Yes, I think this will ’ave to be the last outing I ’ave with Ezekiel, but I want you to treat ’im proper from now on, cabman. Feed and water ’im regular, or the Society will get to ’ear of it. And don’t put inferior stuff into ’is nosebag. ’Orses like oats. But you’re a kind man, I can see. You’ll treat Ezekiel well.” And with that she leans across and plants a kiss on my cheek. Now being the way I am, Officer, I’m not one to let a chance slip by. I put my arms around the lady and returned the compliment. One thing led to another and, to phrase it delicate, Ezekiel ’ad to wait a long time for ’is oats, but I got mine that afternoon.’ The cabman slowly formed another dense cloud of smoke as he recollected the occasion. ‘It was the last time I was to see ’er for over a year, and being a man of honour I didn’t even ask for the fare when we got back to Russell Square.’