Death Has Deep Roots (5 page)

“Perhaps if you’d let me finish what I was going to say—” suggested McCann mildly.

“Go on, then. It won’t do any good. Say it by all means.”

“It was just this.
If
you have made a mistake over this case – you can put away your gun, I’m only saying ‘if’ – then it must be in the best interests of the people you serve to have the truth brought to light. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I don’t imagine that any police force enjoys its Oscar Slaters.”

“Agreed,” said Hazlerigg shortly. There was an unusual anger somewhere down behind his grey eyes.

“Well, then – on the other hand, if the girl
is
guilty – and that’s possible too, probable if you like – surely, even then, it’s to your advantage to have the thing properly contested. It’s only when the defence put up a proper fight that you can be sure of getting to the truth. However good the prosecution’s case is, unless it’s fought out you must be left with an uncomfortable feeling that the prisoner
may
be doing it out of bravado or lunacy, or a kink of some sort, or to shield a third party, or to get their name in the headlines, or—”

“All right, all right,” said Hazlerigg. “I admit it all. I still ask you, personally, to keep out of it.”

“Why?” said McCann bluntly.

“That’s not at all easy to explain. If it was a straightforward case, I’d be the first to say go ahead and do your damnedest. But it isn’t a straightforward case. And above all—” it was evident that the inspector was choosing his words with great care—“above all, it isn’t my case.”

“I see,” said McCann. “Yes. The man who’s doing the job – Inspector Partridge, I believe.”

“That’s the chap.”

“You think I ought to have a word with him.”

“You could do that, of course,” said Hazlerigg. “I don’t think you’d get much change out of him though.”

“A rough character?”

“No. He’s a man of very decided views.”

“I see,” said McCann again.

It was a surprising explanation, and surprisingly delicately put. It also made things extremely awkward. Before McCann could make up his mind as to exactly what he ought to say Hazlerigg went on:

“If the case is conducted on the lines you suggest, with Macrea at the wheel—” McCann was not so tactless as to inquire how Hazlerigg, if he had not heard of the change of solicitors, was yet fully informed of the change of counsel—“then one thing’s certain. There’s going to be a lot of mud thrown around. And since a good deal of the evidence in this case is police evidence – I’m not using the word in any derogatory sense – then it follows that a good deal of that mud will stick to the police witnesses – you follow me.”

“Very clearly,” said McCann.

“Well, then,” said Hazlerigg bluntly, “in a case like this I fight for my own side. If you and your friends want to take this up as a – a sort of private crusade – then I warn you that on principle I’m against you.”

“I’m sure,” said McCann steadily, “that you’ll do nothing but fight fair.”

There was a short and rather uncomfortable silence.

“I hope I shan’t disappoint you, then,” said Hazlerigg with an attempt at lightness which sat awkwardly on him. He leaned forward and pressed the bell.

Sergeant Crabbe appeared.

“Sit down, Sergeant,” said Hazlerigg. “This is Major McCann. I expect you remember him.”

Sergeant Crabbe, a sorrowful man, nodded heavily. He bestowed upon McCann the look which a St. Bernard might have given if; after a long trek through the snow, he had found the traveller already frozen to death. He then sat down dutifully on the edge of the hardest chair.

“Major McCann is interested in the Lamartine case, and has some questions to put to us – questions which I shall do my best to answer. I thought it might be useful if you made a note of the interview.”

“Very good, sir.”

“When you get it typed you might have a second copy taken for Inspector Partridge.”

“Very good, sir. Do you wish me to make a verbatim record?”

“Oh, no, Sergeant. Just the gist of what passes. Head, notes will do. Now then—”

He turned invitingly toward his visitor.

McCann was not to be intimidated. Moreover, the byplay had given him an opportunity to set his thoughts in order.

“There were one or two points,” he said, “that weren’t quite apparent on reading the papers. First of all, the hotel proprietor. I understood from our client that he was a compatriot – that he came from the same part of France.”

“That is correct. I understand that he was from Maine-et-Loire – that is the district of Angers – where Miss Lamartine was staying during the Occupation.”

“How does he come to be in England now?”

“I understand that he was granted an entry visa in 1946. He had had a good record during the war and put down the necessary security. The Foreign Office could tell you more about that, of course.”

“When you say ‘a good record,” said McCann, “you mean that he was a member of the Resistance—?”

“I suppose that any Frenchman who did not co-operate with the Germans could more or less be so described.”

“Quite so. Anyway, he might have had some previous contact with our client. He certainly knew about her, and sympathised with the ordeal she had been through.”

“I believe that is so. You could ask her about that yourself, of course.”

“Were there any other foreigners in the hotel?”

“The staff or the residents? None of the residents, I believe. The waiter is an Italian.”

“I take it,” said McCann, “that in the course of your ordinary investigations, everybody in the hotel would have been scrutinised.”

“That is correct.”

“And you had nothing on the proprietor or his staff.”

“If I understand your question, you mean had they at any time done anything to render themselves liable to criminal prosecution? The answer is No.”

“Could you take it a little further than that? Had you any reason at all – I wasn’t referring only to actual criminal offences – had you any reason to suspect that the proprietor or any of his staff might have had any hand in this murder?”

“On the contrary,” said Hazlerigg. “All the evidence we have scrutinized to date would seem to exculpate them. I have only read the evidence, you understand, but that is my opinion.”

“I see,” said McCann. “And the guests.”

“There were only seven guests at the hotel. A family party of three – who were coming into the hotel actually at the moment the crime was discovered – and two others, a clergyman and his wife, who came in later. We have not paid a great deal of attention to them – beyond the usual routine checkup. The two guests actually in the hotel – I think you have read their evidence.”

“Colonel Trevor Alwright and Mrs. Roper?”

“Yes. Well, if I may employ the expression you used a moment ago, we have certainly got nothing ‘on’ either of them.”

McCann thought this out carefully.

“I might add,” went on Hazlerigg, “that Colonel Alwright – now retired – has an extremely good record at the War Office, where he was in charge of interdepartmental postings for many years, and gained an O.B.E. for his valuable services during the war.”

The look with which Hazlerigg accompanied this statement halted McCann as effectively as a blow under the heart.

It had really, he reflected, been very neatly done.

Sergeant Crabbe’s report would be a beautifully innocuous document. It could be produced, at any time, in support of Hazlerigg’s discretion.

A straight tip had been passed, nevertheless.

“I tell you,” said Major McCann, “he practically shouted it in my ear. He wrote it in letters a yard high and pushed it right under my nose.”

“I still don’t see it,” said his wife.

She dipped some more glasses into a tub of hot water, pulled them out in a bunch, held them under the cold tap and handed them to McCann, who started to polish them.

“Listen, sweetest,” said McCann. “First of all I asked him if he had anything
on
any of the staff at the hotel. Before he would even answer that one, he carefully defined what he meant by ‘on.’ He made it mean ‘Had they ever been the subject of criminal proceedings.’“

“I understand that,” said Mrs. McCann. “Be careful with those port glasses, the price Mandelbaum charges for them, you’d think they were rare old crystal.”

“All right. Then we came to the guests at the hotel. There were seven of them, but five were more or less out of it. That left two.”

“Five from seven leaves two,” agreed Mrs. McCann, to show that her mind was on the job.

“Those two are Colonel Alwright and Mrs. Roper. Now first Hazlerigg said he’d nothing ‘on’ them. That is they neither of them had actual police records. He then went on to say that Colonel Alwright had a very good name – a very good general reputation. From what he let go it didn’t sound a terribly distinguished military career, but the gist of it was plain enough. He was a good type, an upright steady-going citizen, who might park his car on the wrong side of the road but wouldn’t otherwise bother the police from year’s end to year’s end.”

“We can’t all be commandos,” said Mrs. McCann. “I don’t suppose they were invented when he was young.”

“I don’t suppose they were,” said McCann, “but that isn’t the point. What about Mrs. Roper?”

“Well, she could hardly have been in the comm—all right,” she added hastily, seeing that McCann was showing signs of nervous instability. “I see what you’re getting at, only please put down those glasses first. You mean that Mrs. Roper, although she mayn’t have a record, may be known to the police in some way.”

‘That was rather my idea,” said McCann, “and I think that’s why Hazlerigg had Sergeant Crabbe in attendance. He was giving me a hot tip – the hottest tip he could. If there’s trouble about it, all he’s got to do is to call for the record.”

“What do you imagine she’d be up to?”

“I should say, just for guessing, that she’s on their ‘Further Inquiries’ list. That means that she associates with people who have got records, but either she’s managed, so far, to get away with it, or they just don’t think it’s politic to pull her in yet. Here she is – it was taken when she was leaving the police court.”

“She looks quite respectable.”

“So did Messalina. If she’s a hanger-on in an organised crowd – which I think is the likeliest thing – then it must be in one of four or five lines. I ought to be able to pick it up.”

“Are you going out tonight?”

“I thought I would.” McCann polished off the last of the glasses and removed his apron. “There isn’t much time to spare and there’s a lot of ground to cover. I thought I’d start at Philippino’s at King’s Cross and work back.”

He outlined his itinerary.

“I still think you may be imagining the whole thing,” said Mrs. McCann,

“If you’d heard Hazlerigg,” said McCann, “you wouldn’t think so. It was as deliberate as a dig in the ribs. In my experience, Hazlerigg always thinks before he speaks.”

“If he’d known you as well as I do,” said Mrs. McCann, “he’d have kept his big mouth shut.”

After her husband had gone she played with the idea of ringing up Inspector Roberts at the West End Central Police Station and telling him where her husband was going. This would have been quite a reasonable thing to do, because he was an old friend of theirs and would have refrained from asking any awkward questions.

Her hand was actually on the telephone when the barman came in with a panic about the gin supply and the project got shelved.

It made no difference, because McCann didn’t keep to his itinerary, anyway.

The Britannia Café stands in one of the uninspiring streets in the Goods Yard area which lies to the north of King’s Cross station. There is a ground-floor room, which contains six marble-topped tables, a tea urn and a specimen case containing withered sandwiches, geological rock cakes and tins of diced potato. There is also a flight of stairs, and at the top of them a frosted glass door. Nothing invites you to go up the stairs. On the other hand nothing forbids you.

McCann climbed the stairs, opened the door at the top, and went in.

Except that it had two big coffee percolators and no tea urn it looked exactly like the ground floor. There were half a dozen men and two women in the room. When McCann opened the door they all stopped talking and started looking at him.

There was a positive quality of hostility in their silence. It was the sort of silence that asks a question. McCann looked quickly round and saw the man he wanted; a middle-sized, thick man wearing a raincoat over blue-dyed battledress trousers. As their eyes met the man got to his feet and came forward. “Hullo, Major, fancy seeing you again.” His mouth was smiling but the rest of his face had a battered permanence that defied any change of expression.

“Evening, Gunner,” said McCann.

Conversation had started up again but McCann noticed that he was not invited to join any of the groups. The thick man came and sat down beside him at one of the empty tables.

“Have some coffee,” he said. “Coffee’s one of the things Philippino knows about.”

He knocked with a coin on the marble top of the table and a little brown man appeared. His face shone like a well-polished brogue shoe and he had very black hair and a very white smile.

‘Two coffees, Pino. This is my friend, Major McCann.”

“He’s welcome,” said the brown man. In less than a minute he had reappeared with two large cups of black coffee.

“He’ll know you now,” said Gunner. “If you happened to come here and – you know, if I wasn’t here.”

“Thanks,” said McCann.

They drank some of their coffee. Gunner had spoken no more than the truth; it was very good coffee.

McCann unfolded his evening paper on to the table and pushed it across. The photograph was lying between the sheets.

“Do you know her?” he said.

“Never met her.”

“Could you find out if she’s known in your crowd?”

“What’s in it?” said Gunner.

‘There’s a five in it,” said McCann. “Not more. It’s just a routine checkup.”