Hardcastle's Traitors (7 page)

‘She did, but I still don't see what that has to do with me.' Despite repeating that disclaimer, Villiers appeared to be a little anxious, as though unsure where Hardcastle's line of questioning was leading.

‘Let's get down to brass tacks, then, Captain. Have you used your father's car at any time since coming home on Christmas Eve?'

‘No, I haven't. I admit I've used it in the past, but only with the guv'nor's permission. As a matter of fact, I haven't been to see him this time round.'

‘But he told us that he received a letter from you only two days ago. And that led him to believe you were still in France.'

‘It's probably the one I wrote to him a fortnight ago,' said Villiers. ‘The army postal service is a bit hit and miss. It can sometimes take days if not weeks to get the troops mail moving across the Channel. And vice versa,' he added.

‘Is there a particular reason why you haven't visited him on this occasion?' enquired Hardcastle.

‘I'm afraid that he and I don't always see eye to eye,' said Villiers. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, my father is a bully.'

Haydn Villiers's mother had mentioned that Sinclair Villiers enjoyed being in control, and it was probably that that caused his son to be disinclined to visit his father.

‘Where were you on New Year's Eve, Captain Villiers?' demanded Hardcastle, getting straight to the point.

‘With respect, I don't see that that's any of your business, Inspector.' From the way he replied, the young officer was clearly irritated at what he saw as an unwarranted intrusion into his private life.

‘I would remind you that I'm investigating a particularly brutal murder, Captain,' said Hardcastle sharply. ‘Perhaps you'd be so good as to answer the question.'

‘I was with a lady.' Villiers brushed at his moustache and smiled.

‘What's the lady's name, Captain Villiers?' asked Marriott, opening his pocketbook and taking out a pencil.

‘I'm sorry, but I'm not prepared to tell you. It's a rather delicate situation, don't you know.'

‘In other words, you're not willing to tell me where you were.' Hardcastle placed his pipe in the ashtray and leaned forward linking his hands on his desk, and fixing Villiers with a steely gaze. ‘You appreciate that your refusal to name this lady makes me suspicious.'

‘Then you'll just have to be suspicious, won't you, Inspector? I do have the lady's reputation to consider.' A faintly supercilious expression crossed Villiers's face. ‘Now, if there's nothing else, I do have an appointment.'

‘Thank you for calling in, Captain Villiers.' Hardcastle paused. ‘I understand that you're returning to France on Friday.'

‘Yes, that's correct.'

‘Keep your head down,' said the DDI.

‘You've no need to worry about that, Inspector. Being at the Front tends to develop one's innate ability to sense danger.' It was an enigmatic statement that was not lost on the DDI.

‘I may have to see you again, Captain Villiers.' Hardcastle did not think that to be the case, but merely said it to see Villiers's reaction.

‘You'll have to come to Neuve Chapelle, then.' And with that pithy rejoinder, Captain Villiers put on his cap, turned abruptly and left the office.

‘Our young captain seemed more than a little anxious when I was asking him about his father's car, Marriott.'

‘I suppose he could've been involved, sir. Either that or he's bedding a married woman.'

‘Or he's got something else to hide,' said Hardcastle. ‘Fetch Catto in here.'

Seconds later, Henry Catto hovered nervously in the DDI's doorway, apprehensive as always in the DDI's presence.

‘You wanted me, sir?'

‘I've got a following job for you and Watkins, Catto.' For a moment or two, Hardcastle studied the junior detective, wondering whether he had made the right decision in selecting him for the job he had in mind. ‘Captain Haydn Villiers has just left my office. He said that he spent New Year's Eve with a lady. I want you to find out who she is.' He picked up his pipe. ‘Although I've got my doubts that such a lady exists.'

‘Do we know where this Captain Villiers lives, sir?' Catto was taken aback at the enormity of the task that the DDI had just set him and Watkins.

‘He's staying with his mother in Battersea while he's on leave, Catto. Sergeant Marriott will give you the address and a description of the man. But he was away from that address last night, and he claimed that he was with a lady. If that was the case, it's an odds-on chance that he'll be there again tonight. Follow him. Discreetly.'

‘What time d'you want us to start the observation, sir?'

‘In time to make sure you're bloody well there when he sets off, Catto.' Hardcastle waved an impatient hand of dismissal.

‘Yes, sir.' The DDI's reply left Catto with a dilemma. If he and Watkins arrived too early, there was a good chance of them being seen loitering; and they did not want to arouse suspicion. To arrive too late might mean missing the captain altogether.

‘And don't make a Mons of it, Catto.'

‘No, sir.'

Marriott followed Catto out of Hardcastle's office and into the detectives' office opposite.

‘Catto.'

‘Yes, Sarge?' An unhappy Catto turned to face Marriott.

‘You and Watkins take up the observation at six o'clock, and if that turns out to be too late, you can tell the guv'nor that was when I told you to take it up.' Marriott had much more faith in Catto than did Hardcastle. He knew that he was a good hard-working detective, and only ever lost his self-confidence when confronted by the DDI. Apart from which, he was irritated that the DDI had not given Catto specific instructions. Not that he would say as much to a junior officer. Before dismissing the detective constable, Marriott gave him a description of Haydn Villiers and drew a rough sketch of the cap badge that the army officer wore.

‘Thanks, Sarge,' said a relieved Catto.

‘And the rank is sergeant, not sarge, Catto,' said Marriott, and returned to the DDI's office.

Hardcastle glanced at his watch, briefly wound it and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Time we were getting up to Paddington, Marriott. Dr Spilsbury's conducting the post-mortem on Gosling this afternoon.'

‘I've just finished, Hardcastle.' Spilsbury took off his rubber apron and tossed it on to a side bench. ‘I haven't found anything that you don't know already, my dear fellow. And that is that Gosling died as a result of several severe blows to the head causing multiple cranial fractures of the skull associated with contusion of the brain. I found six lacerated wounds on the scalp showing dents from one to two inches long, some on the front and some on the back of the head.' The pathologist paused. ‘I would say that your attackers intended to kill the poor man.'

‘D'you think it was the sash weight we found that did for him, Doctor?'

‘Almost certainly,' said Spilsbury. ‘If you care to let me have the weight, I'll be able to tell you for sure. I've also analysed the blood sample that was found on the showcase, but I'm sorry to have to tell you that it was blood group O-plus.'

‘Is that no good, then?' Hardcastle was not too well versed in medical matters.

‘I don't think that it will be of any assistance to you. It's the most common blood group there is. Probably forty per cent of the population have it running through their veins.' Spilsbury paused, smiling. ‘And their arteries of course.'

‘If he used a sash weight, he must've brought it with him,' said Hardcastle. ‘And that, to my mind, shows intent to murder.'

‘Very likely,' said Spilsbury, ‘but that's your province rather than mine, Hardcastle.'

It was a tortuous journey from Whitehall to Battersea by public transport, but Henry Catto and Cecil Watkins knew that they would not be reimbursed for a cab fare just to get there. To make matters worse it had started to rain by the time the two detectives arrived at Prince of Wales Drive, and a quite sharp breeze was blowing across from Battersea Park.

Dispirited, they hunched their shoulders beneath their overcoats and began to amble up and down trying to appear inconspicuous. There was no cover and no shop doorways in which they could shelter and be hidden from any curious eyes that might be watching them from the mansion flats. But at least their umbrellas shielded their faces. For what good that was.

For an hour and a half the two detectives wandered disconsolately up and down the street, grateful that it was now dark and that, thanks to wartime restrictions, some of the street lamps were unlit; those that were alight had been dimmed.

Their enforced patience was rewarded at half past seven when they saw an army officer emerge from one of the grand entrances.

‘D'you think that's him, Henry?' asked Watkins.

‘I hope so, Cecil. Is he a captain?'

‘Yes, he's got three pips on the shoulder straps of his greatcoat and what looks like an artillery badge on his cap, but I can't see it clearly. But it looks a bit like the one that Sergeant Marriott drew for you.'

‘He certainly fits the description that the skipper gave me.' Not that that was any great help; to Catto and many other civilians, one army officer looked much like another.

Fortunately for the watching detectives, two cabs came along Prince of Wales Drive one after the other. The army officer hailed one, and Catto hailed the following one.

The gunner officer's cab crossed Albert Bridge, turned into King's Road, Chelsea, and finally stopped outside a three-storied dwelling in Elm Park Gardens.

Catto and Watkins remained in their cab until they saw which house the army officer had entered.

‘I hope to God that was him,' said Watkins.

‘So do I,' said Catto. He paid the cab driver and took a note of the plate number without which details the DDI would disallow his claim. It was not unknown for the Receiver's clerks to question cab drivers about particular fares, but they almost always confirmed them. Cabbies had no wish to upset the police officers who used them. And might use them again. The police and cab drivers were never good friends, even at the best of times.

‘What do we do now, Henry?' asked Watkins. ‘Do we wait?'

‘If Villiers has gone there for what the guv'nor thinks he's gone there for, he won't be out until tomorrow morning, Cecil. No, we'll pack it in and hope for the best.'

‘I s'pose we'd better find a bus that'll take us back to the nick, then, Henry.'

At eight thirty on the Tuesday morning, Marriott stepped into Hardcastle's office. ‘Catto and Watkins seem to have done a good job, sir,' he said.

‘Remains to be seen,' grunted Hardcastle, unwilling to offer praise to detectives who were only doing their jobs. ‘Do we know who lives at this Elm Park Gardens address?'

‘I got Carter to do a check on the burgesses' register last night, sir, and there appears to be only one eligible voter there. His name's Valentine Powell. It could be his wife that Villiers has been visiting, but of course she's not shown on the register.'

‘She wouldn't be, Marriott,' said Hardcastle testily. ‘Women don't have the vote. Good God, you've seen enough of those damned suffragettes to know that.'

Marriott did know that, only too well, but he knew better than to reply to the DDI's observation; it would set him off on one of his diatribes about votes for women. ‘Valentine Powell's shown as an absentee voter, sir.'

‘Probably in the army or the navy, I suppose,' suggested Hardcastle. ‘One way to find out: we'll go and speak to whoever is there now.'

‘But what do we hope to achieve, sir?' Once again Marriott was mystified by the DDI's proposed course of action; an action that seemed to be straying from the main thrust of the murder enquiry. Nevertheless, he knew from previous experience, how often Hardcastle's ‘flights of fancy', as he called them, produced a useful result.

‘To find out whether the bold Captain Villiers is lying to us, Marriott,' said Hardcastle. ‘Or whether he really was there on New Year's Eve. Or perhaps he was somewhere else,' he added significantly.

‘You surely don't think he had anything to do with Reuben Gosling's murder, do you, sir?'

‘You know me, Marriott. Everyone's a suspect until I have evidence to the contrary.'

The cab set Hardcastle and Marriott down in Elm Park Gardens at a little after eleven o'clock, Hardcastle having decided that Captain Villiers would have left by then. Assuming, of course, that it was Villiers whom Catto and Watkins had followed, and if it was Villiers that he
had
spent the night in Mrs Powell's bed.

The door was opened by an attractive woman, probably in her early thirties. To Hardcastle's surprise, she was wearing a Japanese silk kimono and satin slippers. Her long jet-black hair tumbled around her shoulders and she displayed not the slightest embarrassment at being in a state of comparative undress.

‘Mrs Powell?' asked the DDI, certain that a housemaid would not be dressed with such casual elegance as the woman now facing him.

‘Yes, I'm Annabel Powell.' The woman gazed enquiringly at the two detectives. ‘Who are you?'

‘Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division, madam, and this here's Detective Sergeant Marriott.'

‘Oh my God!' Mrs Powell put a hand to her mouth. ‘Is it about Valentine?'

‘Valentine, madam?' queried Hardcastle, pretending innocence.

‘Colonel Powell, my husband. Has he been killed?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' said Hardcastle, somewhat piqued at being obliged to carry on a conversation on the doorstep. ‘It's certainly not what I've come about.'

As if sensing Hardcastle's irritation at her discourtesy, Mrs Powell hurriedly invited the two detectives into the house and led them into the drawing room. Waiting until she had settled herself in an armchair, Hardcastle and Marriott sat down on a sofa facing her.