Hardcastle's Traitors (16 page)

Hardcastle laughed. ‘Fat chance of that,' he said. ‘I don't kowtow to the right people.'

‘That's a fact, Ernie, but perhaps you ought to try.'

‘What, and change the habit of a lifetime? I don't think so, love.'

‘No, I don't think so either,' said Alice. ‘I've grown used to you the way you are. And I've no doubt the Metropolitan Police has as well. And you know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks.'

At nine o'clock on Saturday morning, Hardcastle and Marriott arrived at the room in Bow Road where Peter Stein had been murdered. DI Collins and DDI Sawyer were already waiting.

‘I left the PC on duty here, Ernie,' said Sawyer.

‘Thanks, Tom,' said Hardcastle, ‘but once we're done today you can let the chandler downstairs have the room back.'

‘I'll make my way back to the nick, then, Ernie. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.'

‘Thanks, Tom. By the way, how's your boy getting on?'

‘He's in Gallipoli,' said Sawyer.

‘In Gallipoli? What's he doing out there? I thought he was in France.'

‘He's with the Highland Light Infantry, and they got sent.'

‘How did he finish up in a Scottish regiment, Tom? You're not a Scotsman, are you?'

‘Bethnal Green, born and bred, so's the lad, but that's got nothing to do with it. They put 'em in any regiment that's short of men, whether they like it or not. But that's the army for you.'

‘Bit like the Job, Tom.' Hardcastle spoke with feeling; unpalatable postings had happened to him over the years. ‘I hope he keeps his head down.'

‘So do I, but I have heard they're pulling our lads out of there in the next few days. General Monro took over from Hamilton last October, and straightaway began talking about evacuating our boys and the Anzacs.'

‘Bloody good job, too. It was a daft idea of Churchill's, thinking we could sort out the Turks on their own patch.'

‘Couldn't agree more, Ernie,' said Sawyer, ‘but Squiffy has a lot to answer for in that regard.' The prime minister, Herbert Asquith, was invariably known as Squiffy because of his fondness for alcohol. ‘Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Anything you need, just let me know.'

‘I'll get to work, then, Ernie,' said Collins, once Sawyer had departed.

‘Right you are, Charlie. In the meantime, I'll have another word with the shopkeeper downstairs. What was his name again, Marriott?'

‘Percy Dyer, sir.'

‘Yes, that's the fellow.'

The two detectives entered Dyer's shop from the rear door and found the chandler dealing with a crowd of customers.

‘Won't keep you a moment, sir,' said Dyer, over his shoulder. ‘There's always a rush on of a Saturday morning.'

‘Take your time, Mr Dyer.' Hardcastle gazed around the shop, and realized that Dyer was more than just a chandler. Candles, brooms and brushes and mops, boxes of black lead and furniture polish and bars of soap vied with each other for space on the groaning shelves. On the floor on the customers' side of the counter were several oil heaters and a
Star
vacuum cleaner. An overpowering odour of vinegar pervaded the entire shop and, Hardcastle had noticed earlier, it was a stench that permeated even the floor above.

Dyer filled a can with methylated spirit from a drum at the end of the counter, and handed it to a small boy in exchange for a few pennies.

‘Now, sir,' he said, wiping his hands on his apron, and turning to face the DDI as the last customer left the shop, ‘how can I help you?'

‘How long had Peter Stein been occupying the room upstairs, Mr Dyer?'

The chandler turned to a calendar on the wall behind him. ‘He moved in a few days before Christmas, sir. Monday the twentieth, to be precise.' He paused and rather shamefacedly added, ‘It wasn't really meant for living in. I used it as a storeroom, but Stein was desperate for somewhere to live, so I took him in. But he said he wouldn't be here for long.'

‘He wasn't,' observed Hardcastle.

‘Where were you on New Year's Eve, Mr Dyer?' asked Marriott, cutting into the chandler's conversation with Hardcastle.

‘Upstairs with Queenie, sir. That's the missus. We toasted the New Year at midnight and then went to bed.'

‘D'you happen to know if Stein was in at that time?'

‘No, he wasn't, sir. He went out … now let me see. Yes, about nine o'clock or thereabouts. It was just as I was closing up and he asked if he could go out the front way in time to catch the next tram. Well, I hadn't locked up, so I let him out through the shop.'

‘Did he say where he was going on this here tram?' asked Hardcastle.

‘No, he never said, but I s'pose he was going up the West End somewhere. Trafalgar Square's quite the place to see the New Year in. Not that it's ever taken my fancy. Too many people, if you know what I mean.'

‘I do indeed,' said Hardcastle, but for a different reason. There were always crimes to investigate arising out of the Trafalgar Square festivities which seemed to act like a magnet to pickpockets.

‘How was Stein dressed, Mr Dyer?' asked Marriott.

‘He had on that reefer jacket what he always wore. I don't think he owned an overcoat. Leastways, I never saw him in one.'

‘Was he wearing a scarf?'

‘Come to think of it, he was, sir,' said Dyer.

Marriott produced the scarf found in Sinclair Villiers's precious Haxe-Doulton, and showed it to the chandler. ‘This one?'

Dyer took hold of the scarf and examined it closely. ‘I couldn't say for sure, sir, but I must say it looks very like the one he had on at the time.'

A young ragamuffin entered the shop and touched his cap. ‘Please, Mr Dyer, ma says can she have two candles.'

‘You must be burning 'em all night, young Willy,' said Dyer, taking the candles from a shelf and wrapping them in newspaper. ‘A ha'penny to you, my boy, and give your ma my regards.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said the lad, and ran from the shop.

‘Should've charged him a penny, sir,' said Dyer, ‘but his pa's doing time for burglary and the family's a bit short of the readies.'

‘Very charitable of you, Mr Dyer,' said Hardcastle. ‘Did Stein have any visitors that you know of?'

‘None that I ever saw, sir. Mind you, if there was any, they'd likely have come in from the alley off of Harley Grove and in the back door. Of course, he had a visitor on the day he was killed.'

‘Yes, I gathered that,' said Hardcastle drily, ‘but you don't know of any other callers at any other time.'

‘I did hear a bit of a barney going on on Christmas Eve,' said Dyer, ‘so I s'pose he must've had a visitor then. I thought it was high jinks on account of it being the festive season, but then I heard raised voices like they was having a bit of a bull and cow. It only lasted a couple of minutes, and then I heard the back door slam and it was all quiet after that.'

‘Marriott, take a statement from Mr Dyer,' said Hardcastle, ‘and I'll go back upstairs and see how Mr Collins is getting on.'

‘I've already made a statement to Mr Sawyer,' said Dyer.

‘Well, now you'll be making another one,' said Hardcastle.

‘I'm just about finished, Ernie,' said Collins, when Hardcastle joined him in the room once occupied by Stein. ‘Got a few dabs and on a quick examination I reckon one or two of them match those found at Gosling's shop and in Villiers's car. But I can't be absolutely certain until I get back to the Yard.'

‘D'you mean you can remember what they look like, Charlie?' Hardcastle, to whom the comparatively new science of fingerprints was still largely a mystery, was surprised and at once sceptical about Collins's claim.

‘I get to know prints like you get to remember faces, Ernie, but like I said, I'll have to make sure.'

‘I hope you're right, Charlie, because if you are, it might've solved who did for Reuben Gosling.'

‘I thought you said there were two of them,' said Collins, and laughed.

‘Yes, I did. Trust you to ruin my day.'

‘I don't think I have, Ernie. I found two distinct sets, so one of them could belong to Stein's accomplice. Your problem is finding the bugger. But I should be able to let you know before the day's out.' Collins packed up his equipment and made his way back downstairs.

It had only taken Marriott twenty minutes or so to take another statement from Percy Dyer regarding Stein's tenancy and movements, and by twelve thirty he and Hardcastle were being set down from a cab in the courtyard of New Scotland Yard.

‘Time for a wet, Marriott,' said Hardcastle, and led the way to the downstairs bar of the Red Lion on the corner of Whitehall.

‘Morning, Mr Hardcastle. The usual?' Albert, landlord of the Red Lion, knew all the Cannon Row detectives as well as those at Scotland Yard.

‘Yes, and a couple of fourpenny cannons, Albert.'

‘You must be busy with this Gosling murder, Mr Hardcastle. You too, Mr Marriott.' Albert placed two pints of best bitter on the bar together with two hot steak and kidney pies.

‘Enough to keep us burning the midnight oil, Albert,' said Hardcastle, taking the head off his beer. ‘But nothing I can't cope with.' He drained the last of his beer and glanced at his watch. ‘Still, I think we can make time for one more pint, please, Albert.'

After each had downed a further glass of beer, the two detectives made their way back to the street. ‘Time we were getting up to St Mary's, Marriott,' said the DDI, and they walked the short distance into Whitehall.

Dr Bernard Spilsbury was at work on another cadaver when Hardcastle and Marriott arrived at the mortuary attached to the hospital in Paddington.

‘I won't keep you a moment, Hardcastle, my dear fellow. I'm just dealing with a prostitute who clearly offended someone in Praed Street late last night.' Spilsbury carefully removed the liver from the body and placed it in a bowl alongside a heart. ‘Judging by the state of her liver, I would say that this young whore consumed far too much alcohol,' he said. ‘Not that she'll have to worry about that any more.'

Tossing his bloodstained rubber gloves into a medical waste bin, the pathologist removed his rubber apron and placed it on a bench.

‘I've recovered the round that did for your poor fellow, Hardcastle.' Dr Spilsbury picked up a pair of forceps and used them to point at a solitary bullet resting in a kidney-shaped enamel bowl. ‘Straight into the heart. The killer was either an excellent shot or a damned lucky one. Whichever way it was, it took only a single round to send your man Stein off to wherever the dead go.' He laughed cheerfully. ‘I'll let you have my statement by first thing tomorrow.'

‘I'm much obliged to you, Doctor,' said Hardcastle.

At a quarter past four, when Hardcastle was in the process of metaphorically tearing one of Catto's reports to pieces, Detective Inspector Charles Collins almost bounced into the DDI's office.

‘They tally, Ernie,' he said, sitting down in one of Hardcastle's chairs and opening a folder.

‘What tally, Charlie?' Hardcastle put the cap on his fountain pen.

‘The prints I found at Bow Road are a match for the prints I found in Villiers's Haxe-Doulton down at Wandsworth,' said Collins. ‘An unknown set were on the steering wheel, and Peter Stein's were on the dashboard. And I found Stein's in Gosling's shop,' he added triumphantly.

‘All I need to do now, Charlie, is to find the man whose prints you couldn't identify.'

‘Yes,' said Collins gloomily. ‘There's nothing in my records that's a match. Looks as though he's kept his nose clean up to now. If there's anything else I can help you with, Ernie, you know where to find me.'

‘There's one thing that's vexing me in all this business, Marriott.' Following DI Collins's departure, Hardcastle leaned back in his chair and began to fill his pipe.

‘What's that, sir?' There was, in fact, more than one thing puzzling Marriott about the murders of Reuben Gosling and Peter Stein.

‘Why was Sinclair Villiers's car used in the robbery and murder at Gosling's shop?'

‘A coincidence, sir?'

‘Coincidence my arse,' exclaimed Hardcastle vehemently. ‘Haydn Villiers is up for a court martial for selling out to the bloody Germans. And it looks as though the information he passed to Benoit, the Jewish farmer in France, was sent on to Stein. And Stein finished up dead. Where's the coincidence in that, Marriott?'

‘D'you think that Sinclair Villiers lent his car to the killers, sir?'

‘Either that or he's the owner of the fingerprints that Mr Collins can't identify.'

‘There's not much we can do about that, sir. Anyway, we know that Villiers was at home for all of New Year's Eve. In fact, he said that Henwood the butler woke him at just after seven o'clock the next morning.'

‘But do we know that for sure, Marriott?'

‘Villiers's butler said that his master was at home all night, sir. And he claimed to have noticed that the car had disappeared at about the time he took Villiers his tea the next morning.'

‘Of course he did,' said Hardcastle. ‘If Henwood didn't back up his master, Villiers would likely give him the sack. And that'd mean that Henwood would be in the trenches before you could say Jack the Ripper.'

‘So what do we do now, sir?'

‘We get Henwood on his own and scare the living daylights out of him, Marriott, that's what we do,' said Hardcastle.

‘But won't Sinclair Villiers kick up a fuss, sir? He's got plenty of money and could probably afford to brief an expensive lawyer, even to defend his butler.'

Hardcastle laughed. ‘D'you see anything wrong in requiring Henwood to come to the nick to make a statement about the loss of Sinclair Villiers's motor car, Marriott?' He paused. ‘But Monday morning will do for that. Go home and take tomorrow off.'