by John Creasey
Copyright & Information
Inspector West Takes Charge
First published in 1942
Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1942-2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
0755117727 9780755117727 Print
0755118677 9780755118670 Pdf
0755125495 9780755125494 Epub
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.
Creasy wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:
Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.
Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.
He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.
1: The Kitten
The kitten rubbed against Roger West’s legs in the darkness, making him jump and switch on his torch. In the light two large eyes glowed. Then it stretched, and disappeared.
Roger continued his brisk walk, heels ringing on the pavement, until the white blur of a painted gatepost showed in starlit darkness. He turned into the gateway, taking out his keys and inserting one by sense of touch. He stepped into the dark hall, kicked against something which shouldn’t be there, and went sprawling.
The torch shot from his hand and fell on the carpet, the keys rattled, and as he flung out his hand to save himself he touched the top of an umbrella stand. That crashed, too.
A stream of light came from a door on the right of the small, square hall. Outlined against it was a woman with dishevelled hair. She wore a dark blue dressing-gown which covered her feet except for the points of red slippers. She stared at Roger accusingly.
‘Hallo, darling,’ he said. ‘Not in bed?’
‘Just as well,’ said ‘darling’. ‘What have you been up to?’
Roger stood up gingerly.
‘I think I’ve brought you a present,’ he said.
‘So I should think. It’s a quarter to one. Where is it?’
‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ sighed Roger, peering about the semi-darkness. ‘What’s that just behind you?’
His wife refused to look behind her.
‘I knew you had all the other faults but I thought you could hold your beer,’ she said. ‘Stop joking.’ Then suddenly she swung round. ‘What’s that? Something touched my leg, I know it did!’
‘I warned you,’ said Roger. ‘I know it touched mine, and I knew it meant trouble. Keep quite still, now, don’t move.’ He pulled the skirt of the dressing-gown up slowly, and a dark grey shape flew towards a chair. A plaintive miaow followed.
‘A cat!’ exclaimed Janet West. ‘Why on earth did you bring a cat home?’
‘Kitten,’ corrected Roger. ‘And it brought me. Puss, puss! Come and let’s have a look at you.’ He bent down on one knee and peered beneath the chair. ‘Scared out of its life,’ he remarked, standing up. ‘What happens now? A saucer of milk?’
‘We’ve hardly got enough for morning tea.’
‘We could open a tin. Sweetheart, did I tell you that you have the most adorable nose?’
‘Did I ever tell you that you have the most deplorable nerve?’ Janet looked round at the sound of another miaow, ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,’ she admitted.
Roger filled the kettle while Janet poured milk into a saucer and put it as near the kitten’s nose as it would permit. It examined the milk suspiciously, and began to lap.
‘It’s famished!’ declared Roger.
Janet carried the tea tray into the lounge, where a few embers glowed in a tiled grate. The kitten followed, arching its back, and then curling itself into a ball near the fire.
‘The kitten at home,’ remarked Roger. ‘What shall we call it?’
‘I don’t say I wouldn’t like a kitten,’ Janet admitted, pouring tea, ‘but someone will come looking for it in the morning. Did you really fall over it?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Roger. ‘I was drunk. My wife told me so. Ah, a cup of tea’s good. I had a snack at Mark’s,’ he went on, ‘but that was just after seven. We got stuck into this blasted Prendergast job then, and I didn’t realize it was so late.’
‘Before long I’m going to rule bachelor friends off your calling list,’ said Janet. ‘Mark can go to bed and get up when he wants to, but you haven’t time to spend chasing after imaginary crimes. I wish Mark had never put the idea into your head. Why shouldn’t three people die in the same family within six months? Just because you don’t like Prendergast’s taste in trousers that doesn’t make him a triple murderer. Only you and Mark ever think about it, and if the whole of Scotland Yard is satisfied I don’t see why it’s youngest Chief Inspector shouldn’t be.’
‘All of Scotland Yard except me?’ mused Roger. ‘I wonder. What it is to be a policeman!’ He eyed the kitten thoughtfully, and lit a cigarette. ‘You’re right in one thing, sweet, I don’t like Claude Prendergast’s trousers, and she’s too overpowering. Now they’ve inherited the money she’ll start buying sables, and he’ll invest in a Rolls-Royce.’
‘You’re much too bright for one o’clock in the morning,’ said Janet, stifling a yawn. ‘I must go to bed.’
‘Shut that thing in the kitchen first,’ Roger urged.
When Janet had gone, he leaned forward and stirred the embers, wooing a lick of flame. The Prendergast business was becoming an obsession, perhaps. Every time it began to fade, Mark Lessing gave it life and colour. Confound the Prendergasts!
Mrs Prendergast made two of her husband in size, and gave him no chance to wear the trousers, but flamboyancy and ghoulish enjoyment did not make her a murderess. Few would give either Claude or Maisie Prendergast - what a name for that female mountain - credit for cold-blooded murder; or rather
, three cold-blooded murders. If credit was the proper word.
Mark was right in one respect. It had been a peculiar series of accidents. First there was Septimus, drowned in his swimming pool with only the vaguest suggestion of a bruise on the back of his head, no real evidence that he had been hit. Sibley, the Home Office pathologist, refused to say that violence had been used, and the verdict at the inquest had been death by misadventure.
Septimus Prendergast’s fortune, nearly a million pounds, even after the death duties had done their damnedest, had been enjoyed by his son Monty for only three weeks. Then Monty had fallen over the edge of a cliff in Cornwall. No one knew why he had been in Cornwall, but everyone knew that he would not walk along a cliff on a bleak winter’s morning out of joie de vivre or a desire to slim. There had been no evidence of foul play, however. Death by misadventure again, and death duties took a few more hundred thousands from the Prendergast fortune before Waverley Prendergast inherited. Waverley had been knocked down by a car, and the driver did not stop. Death by misadventure, after police SOS calls over the radio had brought no response.
Claude Prendergast was the only known living relative. After death duties had hit the jackpot again, Claude took over something like four hundred thousand pounds, Delaware, the Surrey house, and 48 Braddon Square, the London house. Not to mention the business worth at least thirty thousand a year. In six months Claude had jumped from an allowance of two thousand a year, more than his father had really considered him worth, to a capital of four hundred thousand pounds plus the shares, and thus profits from Prendergast, Blight & Company Limited, far better known as the proprietors of Dreem cigarettes and Dream tobacco.
‘Dreem, the tobacco of your dreams’ cooed the commercials. No one stood to inherit after Claude, and there was a condition in the original will, Septimus’s will, which left the money to charities if it passed out of the family. Not one or two large charities, but seventy-four, no single one having more than 3 per cent of the final residue. No motive there, even if a reasoning and logical member of the CID ever allowed himself to think that the executive of any charity would commit murder for the profit of an organization. No one had had a motive except Claude and Maisie. The Dreem shares were innocent, too; they had to go on the open market.
‘There’s one possibility outside Claude and Maisie,’ Mark Lessing had said earlier that evening. ‘Someone might want to break up the company. But Maisie is clever behind that purple exterior of hers, she knew what was coming. Depend on it, she will have the money settled on her in the next few months, and then off will pop little Claude. We can’t stop a settlement; we don’t know what lawyer she will use.’
‘If we knew the lawyer we couldn’t stop anything,’ Roger had retorted. ‘I’ve learned one thing you’ll love. Maisie and Claude have been to see Gabby Potter several times.’
‘That old scoundrel Mark’s excitement had risen sky high. ‘There’s your chancel Dig up a reason for a search warrant and find what Potter’s had to do with the Prendergasts.’
‘What do you think I’m looking for? The sack?’
‘If I were at the Yard I’d have Potter in jug in five minutes. He’s the biggest crook in England. Ought to have been in Dartmoor years ago.’
‘There are other prisons than Dartmoor,’ Roger had pointed out.
Now, with Janet upstairs, waiting, Roger smoothed his pipe and tried to get the Prendergasts out of his mind. The thought of Potter handling any part of the Prendergast business was disturbing, but the idea that Maisie Prendergast, nėe Webb, had married Claude because he might eventually inherit the Dreem fortune was just a guess. Whatever Mark said, Maisie hadn’t the mental equipment required. But supposing someone wanted control of the Dreem Company through Claude, and planned to use Maisie as his instrument? Gabby Potter was exactly the man to handle dubious company work; many company promoters who side-stepped the law were amongst his clients.
The telephone was on a table behind him. He reached for it and dialled Mark’s Chelsea number. The Wests lived in Fulham, not twenty minutes walk away from Mark’s bachelor flat.
The ringing sound continued in his ears for more than a minute. He put the receiver down and dialled again, but only the burr-burr rewarded him, yet he knew there was a telephone next to Mark’s bed.
PC Diver, of the Division in which Mark Lessing lived, knew that Lessing was a friend of West of the Yard, and kept an eye on Lessing’s home. He knew, also, that Lessing was regarded by the Yard as a shrewd amateur. Diver had little time for amateurs, and the word criminologist never impressed him, but he knew Lessing fairly well, and liked him.
He was puzzled when he saw the little car standing outside the block of flats where Lessing lived, because it was in the early-hours, and the last time he had passed there had been no car there. Tenants always took theirs to the underground car park. True, there was nothing surprising in the situation itself; a resident could have been brought home by a friend. Friends of the residents of this particular block of luxury flats, however, seldom drove around in dilapidated pre-war Fords. This one looked much the worse for wear. Pondering over all this, Diver asked himself whether there was any possibility of a burglar. The thought half-scared and half-excited him. He considered hurrying away and telephoning the station, but if it was a false alarm he would look a proper Charley.
He decided to wait by the car and have a word with whoever came to claim it; if it was a man carrying a bag or a case, he P C Diver might pull off a single-handed capture which would bring kudos and might help towards promotion. His curiosity grew sharper, and he decided to walk towards the entrance of the flats to see if there were any obvious signs of trouble.
As he stepped inside, not exactly nervous but a little on edge, he did not see the man crouching behind the massive front door.
He heard a whisper of movement, swung round, and saw a man jumping at him. The man’s arm was upraised, and he held a weapon. Diver flung himself backwards. The weapon caught his shoulder, and sent him staggering, and he tripped over a rug. As he crashed down, he tried to pull his whistle from his pocket, but fumbled it. Alarm rose to screaming point, until he saw the man racing out of the entrance hall. He tried to scramble to his feet, but kept slipping. By the time he reached the street doorway, the old Ford was moving off, and all Diver could see was the silhouette of his head and shoulders at the driving window.
Diver wasted no more time. Hugging his shoulder and limping from a bruised knee, he stumbled across to the caretaker’s flat, woke the man, and telephoned the division.
‘The first place I’d try, sir,’ he said to the inspector who came at the double, ‘is Mr Lessing’s. You know, Chief Inspector West’s friend.’ Under his breath, he added: ‘That swine would have smashed my head in. God knows what he’s done.’
2: Quick Look Round
Mark Lessing was lying on his stomach. Through the sheet wound tightly about his head he could hear the ringing of the telephone clearly, but there was no other sound audible, not a single movement from the men in the next room. It was possible that they had gone without letting him know. He eased his position, but there was no chance of answering it. The devils had tied him to the bed too securely. At least they hadn’t smashed his head in.
The telephone stopped. He caught the sound of a drawer being opened; it was the middle drawer of the sideboard, which stuck and squeaked when being opened.
Silence followed, and seemed interminable. Had they gone? A sharp ring came, farther away than the telephone; the front door bell.
Whispered voices reached his ears, more stealthy sounds followed by the ring of his door bell. He thought he heard a door close and made frantic efforts to move, succeeding only in making the cords at his wrists and ankles more uncomfortable. He heard nothing more until a sharp voice exclaimed: ‘Well I’m damned!’
He did not recognize the voice, but he heard a door slam loudly enough to shake the bed and the pictures on the walls. Heavy footsteps followed, then a confusion of
sounds.
Then this door burst open, and a man exclaimed: ‘Good God!’
‘So Diver was right,’ another man said as he crossed swiftly, ‘Are you all right, Mr Lessing?’
Your friend’s all right,’ the Divisional Inspector assured Roger and Janet. ‘In fact he’s sitting up and taking nourishment. Two men broke in and knocked him out and then tied him to his bed. Then they searched the place. Turned it upside down I don’t know what he’ll say when he sees it.’
The door of the bedroom opened.
‘You’ll soon find out,’ Lessing said, and glared at Roger, then saw Janet. ‘And you?’ He pulled his dressing-gown together hurriedly. ‘Support me,’ he went on. ‘I bought a piece of Sevres yesterday, so fragile that a puff of wind would break it. I hope –’
He broke off, in front of the living-room door. The sight which met his eyes silenced him. Roger frowned. Janet felt nauseated. A beautiful room had been ransacked; nothing was in its right place.
Then Lessing’s face lit up.
‘The vandals missed it,’ he said, and stepped to a cabinet, opened the glass door, and took out a beautiful figurine in pale pinks and blues. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he crooned. The Divisional men looked faintly derisive.
Janet exclaimed: ‘It’s beautiful!’
‘Apart from china, what have you got that’s worth stealing?’ demanded Roger.
‘One half-finished manuscript explaining why the police always get their man,’ said Mark. ‘It’s in the study. I suppose they got that far.’ He led Roger to a door leading off the big room, and stopped short. ‘They certainly did.’
The study was small, with three walls lined with bookcases, the fourth behind a large leather-topped desk, A Mirzapore carpet and three hide armchairs seemed to set off several pieces of richly-coloured china, all on wall brackets. Only the china had been left untouched. The books had been tumbled from the shelves, the rest were lying on their sides. The chairs had been overturned arid the webbing ripped apart. Every drawer in the desk was out; papers from them littered it and the floor.
