Troubled Midnight (8 page)

Cathy grinned and said, “Very tasty, very sweet.” Another catch phrase, from a double act who spent their time talking about food. Nan Kenway and Douglas Young: proper
à la carte
they were.

“Chief?” Cathy said, a little loudly.

“That was me last time I looked,” Tommy responded with one of his charming smiles. From where Suzie was standing it looked as though a flirtation was going on.

“Well, Chief,” Cathy moved closer to him and Suzie bristled. “That fellow Shepherd.”

“Yes.”

“He’s from the Home Office isn’t he?”

“Some kind of funny, yes.” Tommy said.

“Well, don’t know what he told you but he’d been down to have a look at the bodies.”

“He did?”

“Yes, the local DS – Stimpson is it? Yes, Stimpson told me. He had some official pass and Stimpson let him have quite a long gander, Chief.”

“Really, let’s not let on that we know. Right?” Tommy flashed his smile. The terrible one.

“That was a character out of that Tommy Handley show wasn’t it?” Tommy turned to address Suzie as they came to the big watermill, just past
The Shears
public house at the bottom of Mill Street.

“What character?” Suzie asked, bewildered at Tommy’s sudden change of subject.

“Curry Shepherd. When he left us. Here, in the nick before we went to lunch.”

She tried to strain her mind back a couple of hours. Curry Shepherd. The three of them with Shirley Cox after they had arrived back at the nick. Oh, yes, she recalled Curry leaving. “I go. I come back,” he had said.

“Yes, Chief. Yes, he said that fellow’s catch phrase. Yes, ‘I go. I come back.’ Fellow from ITMA.”

It’s That Man Again – ITMA
– the country’s all time favourite morale-boosting, must hear (Thursday evenings 8.30 pm BBC Home Service) radio show, far and away ahead of even the American
Jack Benny Show
now broadcast on Sunday lunchtimes.
ITMA’s
endless fund of catch phrases were repeated by people in queues, shops, waiting rooms, school play grounds and offices, everyone buoyed up by the many comic asides the show engendered – “Mr. Handley!” as Miss Hotchkiss bore down on the infamous Minister of Aggravation and Mysteries (at one time the Mayor of Foaming-in-the-Mouth); “I don’t mind if I do, sir,” from the bibulous Colonel Chinstrap; the cleaning lady, Mrs Mopp’s “Can I do you now, sir?” and “I go. I come back.” Ali Oop’s exit line.

“Ali,” said Suzie.

“Ali who?” asked Tommy.

“Oop,” Suzie said.

“Of course,” Tommy grinned. “After you, Claude.” He quoted.

“That was Claude and Cecil.” Suzie wondered if it was Tommy who was disturbing her. Why should it be? But he
was
changing. His attitude and manner altering. Why? No idea. She could read him like a book and if he’d stuck in his usual groove of not suffering fools gladly he would have gone off his chump over lunch. The manager of the Bear Hotel would normally have been blown out of his own dining room. Ten times out of ten Tommy detonated in the face of people behaving like idiots, or being what folk these days called ‘Little Hitlers’. But not today. She heard his voice in her head, “Don’t worry about it.” Quite out of character – except when he was on a charm offensive. So, could it be Tommy who was causing her uncertain confidence?

They made their way into the Mill Street Police Station, heading straight for the office they were setting up as the Murder Room, Tommy calling out to the desk sergeant that they’d like to interview Colonel Weaving’s sergeant if it wasn’t too much bother. If the unstable anger was gone, Suzie thought, at least the sarcasm was alive and doing well.

Shirley was waiting for them looking pleased with herself, the office neat and orderly.

“Got yourself a billet, WDS Cox?” Tommy asked, walking around, moving things about.

“Very lucky, Chief. Yes.”

“With the others at The Blue Boar, eh?”

“No, Chief. Private house.”

“Really?” Tommy back on his normal form, expecting Shirley to volunteer information. “Private house, eh? Another police officer?”

“Matter of fact, yes, Chief. Inspector Turnbull, Chief. He has a kind of flat in his house. Offered it to me.”

“Of course Sergeant Cox. Churlish to refuse, eh?”

“Quite, Chief.” Shirley agreed, and Curry Shepherd came into the room without knocking and hardly opening the door; sidling noiselessly in as though wearing brothel creepers as Tommy remarked later.

“Ah, you come back.” Tommy said now.

“What?” Curry smiled. A bit of a supercilious smile, Suzie thought, then realised that under her clothes she was blushing and that she couldn’t keep her eyes off Curry.

No, she thought. No. This is stupid. Curry Shepherd cannot be causing me this sense of indecision. No. No. And she heard her long dead father singing, ‘No! No! A thousand times no; I’d rather die than say yes.’ Like he used to when they had family get-togethers around the piano.

Almost under his breath, Tommy began to sing the closing lines of the
ITMA
signature tune:

When there’s trouble brewing,

It’s his doing,

That man,

That man again.

With Cathy’s help he had arranged a table with two chairs on one side and a single chair facing on the other.

“Thought we’d talk to the late Colonel Weaving’s sergeant. ‘One who found the bodies. Fancy that, Curry?”

Curry nodded. “Fine. Yes. Actually I’ve already had a few words with him myself.”

“Really?” Tommy sounded as though nothing in this world interested him less.

“Ali Oop,” Suzie said, not meaning to say it aloud and immediately feeling like a Bateman cartoon with them all staring at her.

“Ali what?” Curry asked.

“Oop,” she explained. “ITMA character. You said the catch phrase when you left. ‘I go. I come back.’”

“Did I?” Curry looking blank.

“Needs to lie down in a darkened room,” Tommy said, and the door opened again with the desk sergeant bringing in a short, blocky man with a tanned face, eyes that seemed out of proportion to the rest of him and a troublesome lock of hair that kept falling over his eyes, needed it cut off really.

“Sergeant Gibbon,” said the desk sergeant.

Sergeant Gibbon was in uniform, the lion with blue wings on his left breast – glider pilot – the Pegasus airborne badge on his arm above his sergeant’s stripes, below the parachute wings on his right shoulder, and his maroon beret sporting the Glider Pilot Regiment badge, the laurel wreath surrounding an eagle in flight and looking nasty enough to deserve its popular name of ‘shite hawk’. Not that you saw it much out and about. The Glider Pilot Regiment was not what you might call highly visible. The sergeant dressed exactly as Lieutenant Colonel Weaving, apart from the rank badges.

“Come in, Gibbon,” Tommy showing deference to a fighting man, standing up ushering him in. “Do sit down,” indicating the chair opposite at the table. “You got a Christian name at all?”

“Yes, sir. Roy…”

“Well, sit down, Roy.”

“… But people mostly call me ‘Monkey’. Monkey Gibbon, sir, if you see…”

“Yes, very droll.” Unsmiling: always a danger sign with Tommy.

Gibbon sat and the weak December light caught his face revealing him as a clear-eyed, hard-skinned man sitting silently, still, that watchful calm manner often present in good fighting men who have learned the art of remaining motionless for long periods, alert and listening.

Tommy said, “Must have been bad. Unpleasant.”

“Most unpleasant, sir.”

“What was most unpleasant?” Tommy showing he could be tricksy.

“Finding the Colonel and his lady, sir.”

“Right. Go on.” Then, almost to himself, “
His
lady?”

“How I found them, sir?”

“Good idea Sar’nt Gibbon.”

“I was due to pick him up at six o’clock, sir. This morning, six a.m. Punctilious he is, sir. The Colonel. Most punctilious. He was, I mean, sir. The Colonel
was.
”

“And you were there in good time?”

“I was there at a quarter to six, sir. When he didn’t come down by six-fifteen I got out to investigate. Went up the steps and found the door ajar. Just loose, you know, sir. Open about half-an-inch. Maybe less.”

“So you went in?”

“Pushed the door open and went in, sir, yes. I felt there was someone there so I called out. ‘Colonel Weaving,’ I called. Felt someone was upstairs and it didn’t feel right. You know how it is, sir.”

“No,” Tommy said with some kind of finality.

“Well, you can be out in the field, or clearing a house and you get this kind of second sight. Makes you twitchy, taps into your nerves, like. I was carrying a weapon, here, sir,” he swivelled slightly to reveal the holster on the left side of his webbing belt. Left side for the cross draw, lanyard attached to the butt going up and looped around his neck, under the lapels of his battledress blouse.

“So I drew my weapon and went up the stairs, slowly, making hardly any noise.”

“How exactly do you manage that, Roy?”

“Training, sir. Rubber soles on the boots. It’s the way you test each stair and transfer your weight to the riser. Takes practise. Sometimes the full foot, sometimes just the toe. Even an old staircase can be traversed without a creak if you’re careful.”

“And at the top?”

“I was wrong. There was nobody there. Upstairs anyway. I went through each room, as thought I was clearing it, ready at each door.”

“Nice bathroom, isn’t it?”

“Very nice, sir. Very tasteful. Victorian isn’t it, sir?”

“The whole house is Victorian, yes.”

Inwardly Suzie smiled, knowing the sergeant was taking Tommy for a bit of a ride. She got the impression that he knew the house pretty well: had been there before.

“Bathroom was the last room I did,” Gibbon continued. “I was just coming out when I thought I heard a noise from downstairs. I was on that landing again like a thunderflash, convinced someone had been through the hall. And they had. The door, the front door, was open wide. I had almost closed it. But it was as though I could sense someone had passed through the hall and out of the door. You know, as though I’d seen them.”

“You went after him?”

“I didn’t say it was a him…”

“No, but…”

“It probably was, but I don’t know how many. I don’t see how one person…” he trailed off.

“Go on. You can’t see how one person…”

“When I finally came across the bodies. I couldn’t see how one person on his own could’ve … Well, could’ve…”

“Could have killed them?”

“Quite, sir.”

“You were on the landing. You knew someone had left the house while you were up there: in the bathroom?”

“Yes, in the bathroom, sir.”

“You went down. Went after them did you?”

Gibbon nodded, head down, shaking his head, then nodded. “Of course, sir. Of course I went down, went after him … them. Out into the street, onto the pavement but there was no sign of anyone. I walked down to the Royal Oak and out into the road. Crossed the road. Nobody. Either way there was nobody about.”

“What was the time?”

“Must’ve been six-thirty, maybe a little after that. I can’t say I looked. I went back. There’d been nobody else out in Portway. The whole place was deserted. I mean you could see a fair distance. Cold though: very chilly. It was dawn, sir.”

“Coming up like thunder,” Tommy mused. Then, “And you went back into the house?”

“Of course, sir. I did notice the door to the cellar, on the left hand side before you go down the passage to the study and the kitchen. That was open, that door.”

“You didn’t investigate?”

“Not straight away, no, sir. I went into their front room and the dining room, then down the passage, looked in the study and the kitchen. Even went into the larder. The kitchen table had been laid for breakfast. Must’ve done that the previous night, last night.”

Tommy nodded.

“Then I went back and down the stairs to the cellar. I found them down there.”

Suzie thought of the Colonel’s head, like a bloodied loofah. Thought of it and yet again. Closed her eyes to banish it from her head, but it stayed there.

“And then?” Tommy asked.

There was a pause and Sergeant Gibbon didn’t look straight at anyone: looked down, then a glance to his left and right. A big intake of breath. “It shook me up, sir. Shook me up. I had to dash up the stairs again. Threw up in the downstairs toilet.”

“You recognised your commanding officer then? Colonel Weaving?”

“Immediately.”

“Even though he was lying on his face with the back of his head smashed in?”

“Immediately, sir.”

“And you also recognised Mrs Bascombe? Emily Bascombe?”

“I did sir. Yes.”

“You knew the lady well?”

“I knew her enough to recognise her. Yes.”

“You knew she was engaged in an affair with your CO?”

“Oh, indeed, sir, yes I did.”

“When had you last seen her?”

“Monday, sir. Monday 13
th
December, sir. When I brought the Colonel down and dropped him off. She asked me to come in for a cup of tea.”

“Her actual words?”

“You want to come in for a cup of char, Monkey?’ was what she said.”

Tommy nodded. “How many people knew of the affair between Colonel Weaving and Mrs Bascombe?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I never discussed it with anybody else. It wasn’t common knowledge, I’m sure. I never heard it off anyone else, except the odd jocular remark.”

“Jocular remark?”

“Yes, sir. Like, ‘The Colonel’s fond of Wantage. He got a pusher there?”

“A pusher?”

“A young woman. A bint. A bit on the side.”

“And how would you answer that?”

“I wouldn’t sir. Like I said, it was jocular. I would never discuss it. Only with the Colonel.”

“You had known him long? The Colonel?”

“About two-and-a-half years, sir. Since early ’41. I was with him at the formation of No 2 Commando. We both did the course together at Achnacarry. Then we were both sent to the Central Landing School, Ringway. Did the parachute course together, then worked on the ground training course, formulated it. He was a Major then. There was Sarn’t Mulford, Sarn’t Alexander, and Sarn’t Long – Pete Mulford, Pete Alexander and Chris Long. The officers were Major Weaving, Major Hutt – Shed, they call him, Shed Hutt – Captain Sharp, Wilson Sharp, and Captain Puxley, Bomber Puxley. We were all commando trained and had done the required jumps. We worked out what kind of course we should set up: training after the parachute course. Landed from the air, then fought on the ground. We worked out the best training. A lot of street fighting as I recall. A lot of section in defence and attack. A lot of working in pairs, map reading, navigating on the ground. Major Weaving was very antsy about the possibility of being dropped way off the LZ…”