Web of Discord (8 page)

The German military attaché gathered up his papers, and handed them to Napier. For the second time that morning Sir Charles saw the workings of a quite genuine anger which was
not directed against him or his country. The Germans were very clearly shocked and unsettled by recent events. Even if the Russian cables were hoaxes, it was very clear that the German authorities had no idea of their provenance.

‘These documents, Herr
Oberst
,’ Napier said, ‘will remain a close secret between our two organizations. I will undertake to share with you any reports that we receive from our own agents in the Baltic area. Our two countries have a joint interest in preventing any further Russian creeping down the Baltic shores.’

Colonel von Hagen stood up, and bowed stiffly. He seemed to be striving to say something – something which normally he would not have dreamed of saying. Finally, he brought himself to utter a formal, stilted little speech.

‘You will, I hope, accept my commiserations on the insult offered you recently by the drunken oaf Andropov. Such a thing is quite unacceptable in polite society. These Russians are pigs!’

Arnold Box hurried across the cobbles and up the worn steps of 2 King James’s Rents. A clock somewhere in Whitehall struck nine. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he saw the
blackboard
and easel standing by the stairs, and groaned. Charlie, the night helper, had written the word ‘Assignments’ in large curly chalk letters on the board, and had embellished his work with a wavy line beneath the word.

Most days, detectives would come in to work and resume the thread of cases where they’d left off, or wait to be summoned upstairs when requests came in for specialist help. ‘Assignments’ meant that Superintendent Mackharness had been inundated with emergency requests since he’d arrived that Monday morning. All pending work would be suspended while Box and the others investigated the cases that their superintendent assigned to them. Box hurried up the stone stairs.

Mr Mackharness had evidently been working himself up into a passion. His desk was covered with slim buff files and a number of hastily opened letters. His trim white side-whiskers stood out in contrast to his irascible red face. He rummaged through the files, picked one up, and fixed Box with a baleful glance.

‘Ah! There you are. I thought you weren’t coming in this morning. I’ve been here since half-past six. They were queuing
up here for attention. There’s been an assault on a Russian diplomat, which will cause the usual political fuss and flurry. There’s a suspicious death at Highgate, a body found bound on the tracks just outside Paddington Station, a drowning in the Regent’s Canal, this business out at Falcon Street – but you don’t want to hear all this. Why should
you
be bothered?’

‘Sir—’

‘We’re stretched to breaking-point,’ Mackharness continued, ignoring Box’s attempt to speak. ‘I’ve had to send out Wilson and Campbell, and I’ve begged two more inspectors from Kinghorn Street. The sergeants are all out, too, including your Sergeant Knollys, so you’ll not have
him
to hold your hand when you go now – immediately, you understand? – to Falcon Street.’

Superintendent Mackharness thrust a cardboard file into Box’s hand, and began a renewed search through the various objects on his desk. One of his hallmarks was extreme tidiness. It was obvious that the senior officer of King James’s Rents was having a very bad Monday morning.

‘Sir,’ Box ventured in as mild a tone as he could muster, ‘what am I to
do
in Falcon Street?’

‘Do? I thought I’d told you. These constant interruptions of yours break my train of thought. Go down to Falcon Street, and talk to a Sergeant Griffiths of City. He’ll show you the body of a man found dead in shop premises at number 14. Gabriel Oldfield, chemist and druggist. Found dead in “bizarre
circumstances
” according to this Sergeant Griffiths. Go and look into it. If it’s cut and dried from our point of view, give it back to City. Otherwise retain it— What are you peering at, Box? Aren’t you interested in what I’m saying?’

While the various diatribes were in progress, Box had been attempting to make out some of the many objects reposing on Mackharness’s mantelpiece. He counted the bobbles on the moth-eaten green velvet over-mantel, he examined the dried ferns in pots, and the framed photograph of a stern woman whom he knew to be Mrs Mackharness. Further along, there was a medal of sorts in a little glazed frame. One of these days
he would find out what that medal was.

‘I’m not peering, sir. I expect it’s a trick of the light.’

‘Very well. Now, when you get back from Falcon Street, I want you to make preparations to go down to Cornwall, to a place called Truro, and call upon an Inspector Tregennis. I’ve heard of him, and I think he’s a very capable officer. A young man was pushed to his death off a cliff down there, at a place called Porthcurno.

‘Porthcurno?’

‘Yes, yes. It’s in Cornwall. It looked like an accident, but Tregennis is not satisfied. It’s all in this report. Here, take it away with you, and read it. Now, there’s a stopping-train from Paddington at four-fifteen this afternoon, or you can go tomorrow by the ten-twenty. Sergeant Knollys will be back by one o’clock this afternoon, so he can go with you. That’s all, I think. Dismiss.’

Inspector Box looked down on the body of Gabriel Oldfield, chemist and druggist, and saw why the sergeant had used the world ‘bizarre’ to describe his fate. He lay on his back, his open eyes seemingly fixed on the ceiling of the simply furnished bedroom above his shop in Falcon Street, a bustling
thoroughfare
near St Martin’s-le-Grand. The sheet, neatly turned down, came up to his neck. His mouth was slightly open, but the face betrayed no kind of surprise. The morning sunlight that streamed through the bedroom window glittered and glanced from the large diamanté head of a woman’s hatpin thrust through the counterpane.

Box turned away from the bed, and addressed Sergeant Griffiths, a young, clean-shaven man, who stood rather awkwardly near the door, cradling in his arm the distinctive crested helmet worn by the City of London Police.

‘Your inspector did right to call the Yard in over this business, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘We know something about your Mr Oldfield, including the possibility that he had someone staying here with him – someone who isn’t here now.’

‘He
did
have a gentleman staying with him, sir. I’ve glimpsed
him once or twice. As a matter of fact, I passed the time of day with him just a couple of nights ago. A naval man, I’d say, in his forties, five foot ten or so. Very well spoken. If you come up to the attic floor, sir, I’ll show you the little room where that naval gentleman may have slept.’

The room occupied a space under the roof at the back of the premises. It was very simply furnished with a truckle bed, neatly made up with pillows and blankets. A narrow, grimy window, which looked down on the row of back yards behind the shops, stood wide open, its curtains flapping in the roof-top breeze.

‘Your man evidently camped, rather than lived, here, Sergeant. He slept in his clothes, as like as not, waiting for something to happen. Enright, his name was. Malcolm Enright.’

Box gazed out from the wide-open window across the uneven roofs. The great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral looked intimidating in its apparent nearness.

‘There’s a row of newly broken tiles over there on the right, Sergeant, which suggests that Malcolm Enright left the premises through this window. Presumably, he was able to clamber down a drainpipe and into one of the alleys behind these houses.’

‘Do you think this man Enright was the murderer, sir?’

‘No, Sergeant. Malcolm Enright isn’t our mysterious hatpin man. As a matter of fact, I’ve a pretty shrewd idea who he really is, but that’s not exactly a police business. Whoever went through that window did so in order to
escape
, even though it was dark. I say “dark” because I think the murder took place in the small hours. Enright was desperate to escape, and took the risk of falling.’

The two officers went downstairs and into the shop, where the wooden shutters still remained in place. Through the gloom they could see the three tall ornamental bottles of coloured water, the trade sign of a chemist, standing in the shop window. There was a strong balsamic odour in the air.

‘There’s nothing taken or disturbed, sir,’ said Sergeant Griffiths. ‘There are twenty-four sovereigns in the till, two cheques totalling four pounds ten, and five pounds thirteen and six in silver and copper.’

Box glanced at some of the items for sale on the neatly stacked shelves. ‘What’s this, I wonder? Hagel’s Pancreatine Emulsion. “Definitely prolongs life in cases of consumption”. Does it really? Aromatic vinegar – that’s a smelly stuff for ladies to dab on their temples. Arrhenius’s Universal Relaxant. The mind boggles.’

Inspector Box turned away from the shelves, and sat down on a tall stool near the counter. He glanced at the heavily bolted front door of the premises.

‘Sergeant Griffiths,’ he said, ‘tell me again about the discovery of this murder. You say that you were approached by a boy, out there in the street?’

‘Yes, sir. Just after eight-thirty, it was. I was walking back from the magistrate’s office in St Paul’s Churchyard, when I was accosted by a young lad crying blue murder. It was this Mr Oldfield’s shop boy He told me he’d been sitting on the doorstep for half an hour, wondering why his master hadn’t opened for business.’

‘And then he decided to take a look?’

‘He did, sir.’ Griffiths turned over a page on his notebook. ‘This is what he said to me. “I went into the shop, and found Mr Oldfield dead, upstairs. He’d been murdered! It’s not respectful to do a thing like that. I don’t want to go in there again”.’

‘Where is this boy, now? And what did he mean by murder not being respectful?’

‘I sent him over the road to Mr Palmer’s, the photographer. He’s a nice old cove, and he promised to look after the boy until he’s wanted. The boy’s name is Tom Slater. A very respectable boy, well dressed and well cared for. He told me that he was fourteen. I don’t know what he meant by murder not being respectful, but boys do say peculiar things these days. It’s on account of not listening properly at school.’

‘Sergeant, our murderous friend the Hatpin Man came here on purpose to murder both Mr Oldfield and Malcolm Enright. Enright managed to escape, and no doubt he’ll be in touch with the relevant authorities before the week’s out.’

‘The relevant authorities, sir?’

‘Yes. It’s a Secret Service affair, you see. I know something about it. That doesn’t mean that we don’t go after the Hatpin Man, because, of course, we do. But the whole matter needs to be left with Scotland Yard. I’ll leave you here, now, to hold the fort, while I go across the road to see this boy Tom Slater. I’m anxious to meet a young fellow who doesn’t think that murder’s respectful.’

Mr Palmer bowed Inspector Box into his spacious photographic showroom, which occupied the front upstairs rooms of his shop. There was a smell of polished mahogany in the air, mingled with the aroma of freshly made toast.

‘I saw you crossing the road, Inspector,’ Mr Palmer was saying, ‘and I knew you’d be coming up here. It’s a great honour to meet you, I must say. The whole town’s talking about your cornering of the blackguard who murdered Sir John Courteline. They say the Russians were behind that. And now they’ve sunk a German ship. Frightful! But what can I do to help you?’

Mr Palmer, an elderly man with curly white hair, was wearing, as far as Box could judge, some kind of artist’s smock. A red cravat drooped from the floppy collar of his Byronic shirt.

‘I’ve come to speak to Mr Gabriel Oldfield’s shop boy, Tom Slater. I believe you’re kindly looking after him for the
duration
.’

‘I am. He’s through there, beyond the beaded curtain, having a bite to eat. It’s not nice for a boy to discover a murder. Poor Oldfield! Whatever harm did he do to anybody? Poor young Slater – he’ll be thrown out of work, now.’

Box had crossed to the front windows of the shop, and was looking down across the crowded thoroughfare to the opposite pavement. Both the front door and the opening of a side entry beside the chemist’s shop were clearly visible from where he stood.

‘Mr Palmer,’ he said, ‘I wonder whether you saw anything
unusual from these windows of yours, late afternoon yesterday, or early evening, say? I see you’ve a telescope set up here, so I take it that you like to survey the passing scene in Falcon Street from time to time?’

‘I do, Inspector, and I frequently take test shots for the new lenses that I acquire for clients. I keep some fine specimens always to hand – Bausch and Lomb, Wrays, and so forth. I took some yesterday, as a matter of fact. Let me see, now, where did I put them after I developed them? Ah! Here they are. These are two bromide prints, which I think will interest you. I did them late last night. This first one shows a gentleman who’s been staying with Mr Oldfield for the last week or so. You’ll
understand
that I didn’t actually set out to photograph him. I was testing a particular camera, and it so happened that the man was just entering the shop as I uncapped the lens. It’s a very good image – instantaneous, you see.’

Box looked at the sharp print of the shop across the road. Although the man opening the door was in profile, and looking down towards the ground, there was no doubt whatever that it was the image of Malcolm Enright, mariner, aged forty-one.

‘And this one, Inspector – well, there’s a little story attached to it. I was looking out from that window yesterday evening, about seven o’clock, when the man in this second photograph stopped at Mr Oldfield’s shop, and looked in the window. I thought he was a remarkable kind of man – from a
photographic
point of view, that is. A portrait photographer’s point of view.’

Box looked at the second print that Palmer handed him. It showed a clean-shaven, middle-aged man in a black suit, just turning away from the shop window.

‘I had a fresh plate in that Ross camera you see standing over there in the bay. I caught this mysterious fellow just as he turned away from Mr Oldfield’s window. He was a very striking man, very pale, almost like chalk, and with very dark blue-black hair. He glanced up in this direction, and I saw that he had piercing light blue eyes. He had a foreign way of walking, if you know what I mean.’

‘A foreign way of walking? I’ll bear that in mind, Mr Palmer. You called him a mysterious fellow, sir. What was mysterious about him?’

‘Well, Inspector, he pushed open the door of the shop, and went in. I noticed that in particular, because it was late – Mr Oldfield closes at half past seven, and it had just turned seven when the man went into the shop. He’d already put the
shutters
up.’

‘Very interesting, sir. And what happened next?’

‘Nothing happened, and that was the odd thing. The man went into the shop, but he never came out. My windows up here were open, and I fancied I heard Oldfield shooting the bolts on his front door at closing time. But the chalk-pale man never came out.’