A few minutes later he turned the car into the main road, and two figures emerged from the shadows.
“The Yard, and step on it,” he said, heaving himself across to the passenger seat. “We may be on to something. Toye, do you remember that old boy Doubleday saying that he’d seen Corden sitting in his car on the Thursday evening soon after five, marking something on a map? It’s a longish shot, but I managed to nick the Crockmouth and Fulminster Ordinance sheets when you chaps were chatting up Corden just now. It’s remotely possible that we’ve got a lead.”
On their arrival in Pollard’s room at the Yard the Crockmouth sheet was hastily spread out under a strong light. Bending over it, Pollard and Toye exclaimed in chorus. A rough dark circle, sketched in with a certain panache, was centred on Whitesisters.
Pollard brought down his hand with a crash on the top of the desk.
“Those mouldering outbuildings behind Whitesisters! Old Ormiston said they only used one or two of them. In that set-up months could go by without anyone going into the others.”
“It’d be taking a colossal risk,” objected Toye, looking incredulous.
Pollard slumped down on a chair. “Would it, though? Let’s try to work things out. One’s got to keep on remembering that if only Peplow hadn’t hit on that particular night for his stunt, Corden’s little game at Brent would probably have gone according to plan. Another Stately Home robbery, and what the hell are the police doing? But having killed Peplow — almost certainly accidentally — he suddenly finds himself up to the neck in a hideous crisis, which he makes worse by getting rattled and biffing the Crunchaway van as he drives out of the sandpit. He now realises that the damage to his own car could be circumstantial evidence against him, and decides that somehow or another he’s got to get rid of it. He’s anything but a fool, and soon sees that his best chance is to claim that it has been stolen. When it eventually turns up, he can swear that the damage has been done by the thief.”
Toye and Longman, following with rapt attention, made assenting noises.
“Well, then,” Pollard went on, “having a plan of action steadies him. He also sees that the danger of being linked up with the van is greatest in the Brent — Crockmouth area, and that it will be safer to ‘lose’ it on the way back to London. In the meantime, the less he’s seen around in it, the better. Do you get me?”
“So he dumps it overnight in a big free car park, instead of turning up in it at the hotel?” contributed Toye.
“I think so. He’s got to risk driving out to Whitesisters in it the next day, but when he gets there he has an unexpected run of luck. First of all, the people themselves — elderly and unsuspicious. Then the lie of the land and the garage he’s given, which help to hide the scraped side of the car. Then that rabbit warren of derelict outbuildings which he explores perfectly legitimately in the course of his survey. It strikes him that here is a perfect hiding-place for the car, with a sporting chance of its not being discovered for months.”
“With any reasonable luck, giving him time to make his getaway?” asked Longman.
“This is it. He realises that when it is found, it will obviously be a pointer to himself, but by then he will have unobtrusively faded out while on a holiday abroad, having taken the best of his handy small-stuff loot with him. I’m quite sure he’ll have had this part of the programme arranged all along. That’s why I’m edgy about him at the moment. He’s a clever devil.”
“The chaps are sticking around like limpets, sir,” Longman reassured Pollard. “He won’t slip through.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. What’s biting you, Toye?”
“How did Corden get the car into one of these outbuildings without being spotted, sir? We know he left the place — Doubleday saw him — and to get back he’d have to drive right round the front of the house.”
“You’ve forgotten one small but vital fact, old son. The Ormistons were going out to drinks at some place on the far side of Crockmouth, and were due there at six. This would have come out in conversation when Corden’s visit to Brent on Thursday morning, and the temporary hold-up in his survey of Whitesisters, were discussed, perhaps at breakfast on Thursday. Corden would have been reasonably sure that Doubleday would knock off at about five, and that the place would be empty. So he reshaped his original idea of abandoning his car on the way to London, and worked out the shortest possible circular route which would bring him back to the deserted Whitesisters. Let’s have a look at it.”
They all three followed the marked route eagerly. It turned right off the valley road beyond Steepleford, crossed the ridge, bore right for a short distance along the coast road, and turned right once more, re-crossing the ridge by a very minor road which re-joined the valley immediately above Whitesisters.
“What about the time factor, though?” asked Toye.
“He could have cut back across the ridge,” Pollard said, still staring at the map. “It’s barely a mile — less, if he took the footpath through the woods. There’s a good bus service along that coast road between Crockmouth and Wythe Bay, and between Crockmouth and Fulminster. We’ve only Corden’s word for it that he was in Fulminster by ten to eight. He didn’t report the missing car to the Fulminster police till a quarter to nine.”
“Could have pinched a car in Crockmouth,” Longman suggested.
“Anyway,” Pollard said, reaching for the telephone, “we’d better leave the details till we’ve actually landed the car… Get me the Crockmouth police station, will you? Priority.”
After some delay Superintendent Perry was forthcoming.
“Sorry to rout you out at this hour, Super,” Pollard said, “but I think we know where Corden’s car is.”
The Super was gruffly congratulatory, concealing obvious disappointment that his own men had failed to bring off the coup.
“You’ll handle the next stage at your end, won’t you?” Pollard said. “Go along and search the place, and take possession of the car, always assuming it’s there. Then ring us from the house, if you will.”
“OK. First thing tomorrow do? Bit late for tonight, isn’t it? You say you’ve got Corden covered?”
It was finally settled that the search party should arrive at Whitesisters by eight o’clock on the following morning.
“We’d better make tracks for home and a few hours’ sleep,” Pollard said as he rang off. “Tomorrow could be quite a day.”
Heading for Wimbledon through the blessedly empty streets, he experienced a feeling of anti-climax. After all, even the car was to some extent purely circumstantial evidence. Wouldn’t Corden have gone to all possible lengths to remove every possible trace of the van’s paintwork from the scraped area? There mightn’t be enough left for the forensic chaps to get a decisive result. And he would have done that last drive in gloves. The defence could argue, even if implausibly, that a car thief could have known about the Whitesisters outbuildings. Even if all the stolen property were recovered, it wouldn’t clear up the Brent case.
Pollard’s mind went back uneasily to Corden’s remark about going down to Sussex to see a potential client. For Sussex, read Gatwick, he thought. Could a flight have been booked under an assumed name, Corden having managed to get a forged passport? Airports and ports had better be alerted, he decided, as he turned into his road.
He let himself into the house noiselessly, and crept upstairs. Jane roused, but only momentarily as he slipped into bed. He kissed the top of her head, and lay staring at the curtains as they swung gently against the faintly luminous windows. He felt teased by kaleidoscopic uncertainty. If only Corden could be startled into betraying himself about Brent…
Astonishingly it was daylight, and there was emptiness at his side. As he sat up in bed Jane came in, Andrew, wide awake and perky, on her arm.
“Coffee’s ready when you are,” she told him. “I had a hunch that you’d want to be off early.”
By a quarter to eight he was at his desk, having dealt with the alerting of airport and po
rt authorities. In front of him lay the warrant for Corden’s arrest, and another authorising a search of the flat. A report had come in that no attempt had been made to leave the flat during the night. Toye and Longman arrived together, and Pollard began to discuss alternative courses of action. If the car turned up at Whitesisters, the first essential would be to send down a forensic expert. Then —
The burr of the telephone cut in.
“Crockmouth,” he told the other two. “Ahead of schedule. Couldn’t wait to get out there, I suppose.”
There were a few seconds of tense waiting, and Superintendent Perry came through.
“Hand it to you!” he bellowed, in a voice clearly audible to Toye and Longman. “It was stowed away in a tumble-down outhouse full of junk and cobwebs. Where do you want us to go from here?”
There was a brief jubilant exchange, and discussion of Safeguards until the Yard expert could get down. Then Pollard rang off, and immediately put through a request for assistance to the Forensic Department.
“Someone’ll be along right away,” he said. “Now, then, what we’ve got —”
He was interrupted once again by a report from the car shadowing Maurice Corden’s movements. Corden had left Robertson Road in his hired Austin, and was heading eastwards, as if making for his office. A suitcase and a briefcase had been brought from the flat and put into the car.
“OK,” said Pollard. “Over.”
He turned again to Toye and Longman, but had barely begun to speak when the telephone rang. He snatched up the receiver impatiently. Watching him, they saw his face go suddenly tense as he barked a curt question. There was a brief exchange, and he slammed down the receiver.
“Stately Homes office,” he said, reaching for the two warrants, and making for the door. “Pern’s found out that while they were gooping at the car, that fool of an Ormiston woman rang the office and left a message for Corden, giving him the good news. We’ve got to beat him to it. Anything could happen.”
The journey had the genuine nightmare touch, Pollard thought, sitting rigid at Toye’s side at the height of the morning rush hour. His ears strained for another radioed report of the Austin’s progress, while his eyes were rivetted by the inhuman despotism of the traffic lights. The close-packed mass of cars produced a sensation of claustrophobia, and the calculated risks taken by Toye during the brief periods of mobility were frankly terrifying.
As they emerged on to the embankment, Corden was reported in a big traffic block on the west side of Piccadilly Circus.
“Bar accidents, we’ll make it,” Toye muttered.
All the time, beneath his immediate preoccupations, Pollard found himself rehearsing the arrest. Properly handled it could — just conceivably — spark off a reaction that was an admission.
He was still undecided when he leapt out on to the pavement outside the Aldwych office block which housed Stately Homes Limited, on its fourth floor. Leaving Toye to enlist the help of a traffic warden over the parking of the car, he joined the stream of men and women passing through the doors into the entrance hall. After a hasty glance round he went across to make himself known to the startled porter at the Reception desk.
A minute or so later he returned to Longman and Toye, conscious of a longing for the business to be over.
“The porter says Corden’s almost always in by nine,” he told them. “We’ll take him in the lift. It’s less public than up in his office. The lift’s self-operating, and the porter’s going to divert anybody who tries to follow us in. You go in after Corden, Toye, keeping your face turned away, and your thumb on the ground floor button, for God’s sake. Longman and I will come in after you.”
They waited, for what seemed an eternity, Pollard watching the entrance from behind a newspaper, Longman and Toye ostensibly reading the noticeboards. The flow of arrivals thinned to a mere trickle as the minute hand of the clock on the wall crept up to the hour in a series of jerks. At last Corden came briskly up the steps, swinging his briefcase.
Toye crossed the hall and brought down the lift. On its arrival he stepped inside, followed by Corden, Pollard and Longman. The latter shut the gates, and the three detectives faced inwards for the moment of recognition.
“Maurice Corden,” Pollard heard himself saying, slowly and deliberately, “I hold a warrant for your arrest. I have to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence. You are charged with —”
In the harsh, unshaded light of the lift cage Corden was white and sweating. He moistened his lips as Pollard spoke.
“It was an accident,” he broke in hoarsely. “I swear it was.”
“You are charged,” Pollard resumed, keeping steadily on course, “with the theft of property from Admiral Miller, of Great Loveridge House, the Honourable Mrs. James Crabtree of —”
With a shrill scream of fury Corden flung himself forward, to be seized and pinioned by Toye and Longman.
“You vile devil, you’ve tricked me… But it was an accident, I tell you. I never meant to kill the fool. He came up out of that bloody hole like the dead in that ghastly thing in the church. He’d got a gun, I tell you… I only meant to kick it out of his hand…”
EPILOGUE
The news of Maurice Corden’s arrest exploded in a blaze of publicity. It was pre-eminently a story. In addition to the sensational charges on which he was committed for trial, there was the incomparable background of titled families and stately homes. The unidentified victim found in the romantic setting of a priest’s hole was almost an embarras de richesses.
Photographs of Brent blossomed in the papers and on the nation’s television screens. So, too, did those of the other country houses which Corden was alleged to have robbed, and even some of those to which he had merely rendered his normal professional services. There were interviews with those of their owners and owners’ employees who could be prevailed upon to give them. Experts wrote articles on the architecture and contents of the houses, one of which started up a passionate correspondence in The Times about the date of a famous refectory table at Wonbridge Castle, in which Giles Tirle took a heated part.
Pollard himself was accorded a measure of recognition which surprised him.
“It’s got its comic side,” he remarked to Jane, throwing down an evening paper. “Suppose they knew I’d unearthed Lambrooke into the bargain?”
“That’s all officially shelved, I take it?” she asked, holding up and critically inspecting the frock she was smocking for Rose.
“Yes. The A.C. sent for me this afternoon. They’ve had a top-level hush-hush conference with the Director of Public Prosecutions and others. It was agreed that as it’s a sheer impossibility to get conclusive evidence of the identity swop, or that any of the family recognised Lambrooke for sure, the only course is to let the whole thing drop.”
“Sensible,” Jane commented. “Do you suppose there’ll be an inspired leak to Lord Seton that the file is closed?”
“I wouldn’t know. Such a matter would be much too exalted for a mere C.I.D. Super. Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary. I’m convinced that he worked it all out for himself almost from the word go, and isn’t losing any sleep over it.”
“Did you see that they’re extending the open season at Brent by a fortnight?” she asked.
“No!” exclaimed Pollard incredulously, retrieving the newspaper. “Where was it? Oh, I see… I must say I hand it to them.”
Lord Seton’s insistence on cashing in on Brent’s spell of phenomenal popularity had carried the day, in spite of strong opposition from Lady Arminel on the grounds of the excessive wear and tear to the lawns. The latter part of the summer was gruelling to all concerned, but highly remunerative, and effective in discouraging any inclination to dwell on the immediate past. It struck Pollard, however, that the family had shown a centrifugal tendency, once Brent had closed its doors. During a flying visit to Crockmouth in connection with the preparation of the case against Maurice Corden, he learnt from Inspector Diplock that Lord and
Lady Seton were on a visit to British Columbia, and that Mrs. Giles was with her French relatives. After having no end of returfing done, Lady Arminel was away on a golfing holiday at St. Andrews, up in Scotland. They could all do with a break, in the Inspector’s opinion, after the nasty time they’d had, and then the thousands of visitors on top of it all.
Pollard reflected that Giles and Robert Tirle would be back in Oxford for the start of the university term. He wondered briefly how Caroline was getting on at her secretarial college, and if she had gained her point about being a Third or Fourth Girl in a London flat.
Time slipped by, and the Brent case came on at the Old Bailey in November. Connoisseurs of crime were heard to remark that, for a case with such a spectacular beginning, the trial was disappointingly tame. Maurice Corden pleaded Not Guilty to the manslaughter charge, alleging that he had been threatened with a gun, and merely tried to kick it out of the deceased’s hand. The fact that a revolver had been found in his flat, and identified by George Snell as the property of the deceased, carried considerable weight with the jury. They brought in a verdict of Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances, and the sentence was a relatively light one of three years. The temperature was further lowered by the accused’s plea of Guilty to five charges of robbery, and one of attempted robbery at country houses where he had been employed. The defence made great play of the fact that he had voluntarily disclosed to the police the whereabouts of all the stolen property, all of which was being returned to its rightful owners. After some scarifying remarks about breach of trust, the judge passed a five-year sentence, to run concurrently with the other, and Maurice Corden duly disappeared from the public scene.
Pollard witnessed his exit with relief, and proceeded with the task of getting the recovered property identified by its owners, and duly handed over to them. Their reactions varied. Admiral Miller, in addition to an official letter of thanks reciprocated with a brace of pheasants. Colonel Potter meticulously checked over his collection of coins at the Yard, signed a receipt, departed, and was heard of no more. The Hon. Mrs. James Crabtree, who proved to be an old friend of the Assistant Commissioner’s, issued an edict that Pollard should bring her icons to Corridon Manor in person, and take luncheon with her.
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