Capital Crimes: London Mysteries

by Martin Edwards

  ‘Now, there is no pump, so far as I know, in Jockey’s Fields, but there is one in Bedford Row close to the corner of the Fields, and exactly opposite the end of Brownlow Street. And by Mr Brodribb’s account, Uyenishi, in his flight, ran down Hand Court and returned up Brownlow Street, as if he were making for the pump. As the latter is disused and the handle-hole is high up, well out of the way of children, it offers quite a good temporary hiding-place, and I had no doubt that the bag of pearls had been poked into it and was probably there still. I was tempted to go at once and explore; but I was anxious that the discovery should be made by Miss Bonney, herself, and I did not dare to make a preliminary exploration for fear of being shadowed. If I had found the treasure I should have had to take it and give it to her; which would have been a flat ending to the adventure. So I had to dissemble and be the occasion of much smothered objurgation on the part of my friend, Brodribb. And that is the whole story of my interview with the oracle.’

  ***

  Our mantelpiece is becoming a veritable museum of trophies of victory, the gifts of grateful clients. Among them is a squat, shapeless figure of a Japanese gentleman of the old school, with a silly, grinning little face—The Magic Casket. But its possession is no longer a menace. Its sting has been drawn; its magic is exploded; its secret is exposed, and its glory departed.

  The Holloway Flat Tragedy

  Ernest Bramah

  Ernest Brammah Smith (1868–1942), who wrote as Ernest Bramah, was a reclusive writer who achieved literary fame with three distinct types of fiction. His tales about Kai Lung, an itinerant Chinese story-teller, enjoyed a considerable vogue, while his dystopian novel What Might Have Been was a distant influence on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Turning to crime fiction in 1914, he created Max Carrados, perhaps the genre’s most effectively realised blind detective.

  Carrados is a wealthy and urbane fellow, and his other gifts make up for his lack of sight. He too has his own ‘Watson’, in this case Louis Carlyle, who set up as a private investigator after being struck off the solicitors’ Roll. This story couples a neat puzzle with a reminder that there is nothing new about buy-to-let property investment in London.

  ***

  A good many years ago, when chance brought Max Carrados and Louis Carlyle together again and they renewed the friendship of their youth, the blind man’s first inquiry had been a jesting, ‘Do you unearth many murders, Louis?’ and the private detective’s reply a wholly serious, ‘No; our business lies mostly on the conventional lines among defalcation and divorce.’ Since that day Carlyle’s business had increased beyond the fondest dreams of its creator, but ‘defalcation and divorce’ still constituted the bulwarks of his prosperity. Yet from time to time a more sensational happening or a more romantic course raised a case above the commonplace, but none, it is safe to say, ever rivalled in public interest the remarkable crime which was destined to become labelled in the current Press as ‘The Holloway Flat Tragedy.’

  It was Mr Carlyle’s rule to see all callers who sought his aid, for the very nature of their business precluded clients from willingly unbosoming themselves to members of his office staff. Afterwards, they might accept the discreet attention of tactful subordinates, but for the first impression Carlyle well knew the value of his sympathetic handshake, his crisply reassuring voice, his—if need be—humanly condoning eye, and his impeccably prosperous person and surroundings. Men and women, guilty and innocent alike, pouring out their stories felt that at last they were really ‘understood’, and, to give Louis Carlyle his due, the deduction was generally fully justified.

  To the quiet Bampton Street establishment one September afternoon there came a new client who gave the name of Poleash and wished to see Mr Carlyle in person. There was, as usual, no difficulty about that, and, looking up from his desk, Louis registered the impression of an inconspicuous man, somewhere in the thirties. He used spectacles, wore a moustache, and his clothes were a lounge suit of dark material, cut on the simple lines affected by the prudent man who reflects that he may be wearing that selfsame garment two or three seasons hence. There was a slight air of untidiness—or rather, perhaps, an absence of spruceness in any detail—about his general appearance, and the experienced observer put him down as a middle-class worker in any of the clerical, lower professional, or non-manual walks of life.

  ‘Now, Mr Poleash, sit down and tell me what I can do for you,’ said Carlyle when they had shaken hands—a rite to which the astute gentleman attached no slight importance and invariably offered. ‘Some trouble or little difficulty, I suppose, umph? But first let me get your name right and have your address for reference. You can rely on this, Mr Poleash’—the inclination of Mr Carlyle’s head and the arrest of his lifted pen were undeniably impressive—‘every word you utter is strictly confidential.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be all right, I’m sure,’ said the visitor carelessly. ‘It is rather out-of-the-way all the same, and at first —’

  ‘The name?’ insinuated Mr Carlyle persuasively.

  ‘Albert Henry Poleash: P-o-l-e-a-s-h—twelve Meridon House, Sturgrove Road, Holloway.’

  ‘Thank you. Now, if you will.’

  ‘Of course I could tell you in a dozen words, but I expect you’d need to know the circumstances, so perhaps I may as well begin where I think you’ll understand it best from.’

  ‘By all means,’ assented Mr Carlyle heartily; ‘by all means. In your own words and exactly as it occurs to you. I’m entirely at your service, so don’t feel hurried. Do you care—’ The production of a plain gold case completed the inquiry.

  ‘To begin with,’ said Mr Poleash, after contributing a match to their common purpose, ‘I may say that I’m a married man, living with my wife at that address—a smallish flat which suits us very well as we have no children. Neither of us has any near relations either, and we keep ourselves pretty much to ourselves. Our only servant is a daily woman, who seems able to do everything that we require.’

  ‘One moment, if you please,’ interposed Mr Carlyle briskly. ‘I don’t want you to do anything but tell your story in your own way, Mr Poleash, but if you would indicate by a single word the nature of the event that concerns us it would enable me to judge which points are likely to be most vital to our purpose. Theft—divorce—blackmail —’

  ‘No—murder,’ replied Mr Poleash with literal directness.

  ‘Murder!’ exclaimed the startled professional. ‘Do you mean that a murder has been committed?’

  ‘No, not yet. I am coming to that. For ordinary purposes I generally describe myself as a rent-collector, but that is because official Jacks-in-office seem to have a morbid suspicion of anyone who is obviously not a millionaire calling himself independent. As a matter of fact, I have quite enough private income to serve my purpose. Most of it comes from small house property scattered about London. I see to the management of this myself and personally collect the rents. It takes a few days a week, gives me an interest, keeps me in exercise, and pays as well as anything else I could be doing in the time.’

  ‘Quite so,’ encouraged the listener.

  ‘That’s always there,’ went on Mr Poleash, continuing his leisurely narrative with no indication of needing any encouragement, ‘but now and then I take up other work if it suits me—certain kinds of special canvassing; sometimes research. I don’t want to slave making more money than we have the need of, and I don’t want ever to find that we haven’t enough money for anything we may require.’

  ‘Ideal,’ contributed Mr Carlyle. ‘You are a true philosopher.’

  ‘My wife also has no need to be dependent on anyone either,’ continued Mr Poleash, without paying the least attention to the suave compliment. ‘As a costume designer and fashion artist she is fully qualified to earn her living, and in fact up to a couple of years ago she did work of that kind regularly. Then she had a long illness that made a great change in her. This brings m
e to one of the considerations that affect whatever I may wish to do: the illness left her a nervous wreck—jumpy, excitable, not altogether reasonable.’

  ‘Neurasthenia,’ was Mr Carlyle’s seasonable comment. ‘The symptom of the age.’

  ‘Very likely. It doesn’t affect me—at least it doesn’t affect me directly. Living in the same house with Mrs Poleash, it’s bound to affect me, because I have to consider how every blessed thing I do will affect her. And just lately something very lively indeed has come along.

  ‘There is a girl in a shop that I got friendly with—no, I don’t want you to put her name down yet. It began a year or eighteen months.…But I don’t suppose that matters. The only thing I really think that I’m to blame about is that I never told her I was married. At first there was no reason why I should; afterwards—well, there was a certain amount of reason why I shouldn’t. Anyhow, I suppose that it was bound to come out sooner or later, and it did, a few weeks ago. She said, quite nicely, that she thought we ought to get married as things were, and then, of course, I had to explain that we couldn’t.

  ‘I really hadn’t the ghost of an idea that she’d take it so terribly to heart as she did. There’s nothing of the Don Juan about me, as you can see at a glance. The thing had simply come about—one step leading to another. But she fainted clean away, and when she came to again she was like a solid block of ice to everything I said. And then to cap matters who should appear at that moment but a fellow she’d been half engaged to before I came along. She’d frequently spoken about this man—his jealousy and temper and so on—and begged me never to let him pick a quarrel with me. ‘Peter’ was the only name I ever heard him called by, but he was a foreign-looking fellow—an Italian, I think.’

  ‘“Pietro”, perhaps?’ suggested Mr Carlyle.

  ‘No; ‘Peter’ she called him. ‘Please take me back home, Peter,’ was all she said, and off they went together without a word from either to me. Whenever I’ve seen her since it’s been the same. ‘Will I please leave her as there is nothing to be said?’ and I’ve been trying to think of all manner of arrangements to put things right.’

  ‘The only arrangement that would seem likely to do that is the one that’s out of your power to make,’ said Mr Carlyle.

  ‘I suppose so. However, this Peter evidently had a different idea. This is what happened two nights ago. I woke up in the dark—it was about three o’clock I found afterwards—with one of those feelings you get that you’ve forgotten to do something. It was a letter that I should have posted: it was important that it got delivered some time the next day—the same day by then—and there it was in my breast pocket. I knew if I left it that I should never be up in time for the first morning dispatch, so I determined to slip out then and make sure of it.

  ‘It would only be a matter of twenty minutes or so. There is a pillar-box nearer, but that isn’t cleared early. I pulled on a few things and prepared to tiptoe out when a fresh thought struck me.

  ‘Mrs Poleash is a very uncertain sleeper nowadays, and if she is disturbed it’s ten to one if she gets off again, and for that reason we use different rooms. I knew better than wake her up to tell her I was going out, but at the same time there was just the possibility that she might wake and, hearing some noise, look in at my door to see if I was all right. If she found me gone she would nearly have a fit. On the spur of the moment I pushed the bolster down the bed and rucked up my dressing gown—it was lying about—above it. In the poor light it served very well for a sleeping man, and I knew that she would not disturb me.

  ‘In less time than I’d given myself I had done my business and was back again at the building. I was entering—my hand was on the knob of the outer door in fact—when the door was pulled sharply open from the other side and another man and I came face to face on the step. We both fell back a bit, I think, but the next moment he had pushed past me and was hurrying down the street. There was just enough light from the lamp across the way for me to be certain of him; it was Peter, and I’m pretty sure that he was equally sharp in recognizing me.

  ‘Of course I went up the stairs in double quick time after that. The door of the flat was as I had left it—simply on the handle as I had put up the latch catch, never dreaming of anyone coming along in that time—and all was quiet and undisturbed inside. But one thing was different in my room, although it took me a few minutes to discover it. There was a clean cut through my dressing gown, through the sheet, through the bolster. Someone, Mr Carlyle, had driven a knife well home before he discovered his mistake.’

  ‘But that was plain evidence of an attempt to murder,’ declared Mr Carlyle feelingly—he disliked crimes of violence from every point of view. ‘Your business is obviously to inform the police.’

  ‘No,’ replied the visitor slowly, ‘no. Of course I thought of that, but I soon had to let it slide. What would it mean? Visits, inquiries, cross-examinations, explanations. Everything must come out. After a sufficient exhibition of nervestorm Mrs Poleash would set about getting a divorce and I should have to go through that. Then I suppose I should have to marry the other one, and, when all’s said and done, that’s the last thing I really want. In any case, my home would be broken up and my whole life spoiled. No, if it comes to that I might just as well be dead.’

  ‘Then what do you propose doing, may I ask? Calmly wait to be assassinated?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I came to see you about. You know my position, my difficulty. I understand that you are a man of wide experience. Putting aside the police and certain publicity, what should you advise?’

  ‘Well, well,’ admitted the expert, ‘it’s rather a formidable handicap, but we will do the best for you that is to be done. Can you indicate exactly what you want?’

  ‘I can easily indicate exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want to be murdered or molested and I don’t want Mrs Poleash to get wind of what’s been going on.’

  ‘Why not go away for a time? Meanwhile we could find out who your man is and keep him under observation.’

  ‘I might do that—unless Kitty took it into her head that she didn’t want to go, and then, of course, I couldn’t leave her alone in the flat just now. After Tuesday night’s business—this is what concerns me most—should you think it likely that the fellow would come again or not?’

  Mr Carlyle pondered wisely. The longer he took over an opinion, he had discovered—providing he kept up the right expression—the greater weight attached to his pronouncement.

  ‘No,’ he replied with due authority. ‘I should say not—not in anything like the same way. Of course he will naturally assume that you will now take due precautions—probably imagine that the police are after him. What sort of fastenings have you to your doors and windows?’

  ‘Nothing out of the way. They are old flats and not in very good repair. The outer door is never kept locked, night or day. The front door of our flat has a handle, a latch lock, and a mortice lock. During the day it is simply kept on the latch; at night we fasten the other lock, but do not secure the latch, so that the woman can let herself in when she comes—she has one set of keys, I another, and Mrs Poleash the third.’

  ‘But when you were out on Tuesday night there was no lock fastened, I understand?’

  ‘That is so. Simply the handle to turn. I purposely fastened the latch lock out of action as I found at the door that I hadn’t the keys with me and I didn’t want to go back to the room again.’

  ‘And the inner doors?’

  ‘They have locks, but few now work—either the key is lost or the lock broken. We never trouble about them—except Kitty’s room. She has scrupulously locked that at night, since she has had burglars among other nerve fancies.’

  Mr Carlyle shook his head.

  ‘You ought at the very least to have the locks put right at once. Practically all windows are fitted with catches that a child can push back with a table-knife.’


  ‘That’s all very well, but, you see, if I get a locksmith in I shall have to make up some cock-and-bull story about house-breaking to Mrs Poleash, and that will set her off. And, anyway, we are on the third storey up.’

  ‘If you are going to consider your wife’s nerves at every turn, my dear sir,’ remarked Mr Carlyle with some contempt, from the security of his single state, ‘you will begin to find yourself in rather a tight fix, I am afraid. How are you going to account for the cut linen, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve arranged all that,’ replied Mr Poleash, nodding sagaciously. ‘My dressing gown she will never notice. The sheet and bolster case—it was a hot night so there was only a single sheet fortunately—I have hidden away in a drawer for the present and put others in their place. I shall buy another of each and burn or lose these soon—Kitty doesn’t keep a very close check on things. The bolster itself I can sew up well enough before it’s noticed.’

  ‘You may be able to keep it up,’ was Mr Carlyle’s dubious admission. ‘At all events,’ he continued, ‘as I understand it, you want me to advise you on the lines of taking no direct action against the man you call Peter and at the same time adopting no precautions that would strike Mrs Poleash as being unusual?’

  ‘Nothing that would suggest burglars or murder to her just now,’ assented Poleash. ‘Yes; that’s about what it comes to. You may be able to give me a useful tip or two. If not—well, I know it’s a tough proposition and I don’t grudge the outlay.’

  ‘At least let us see,’ replied the professional man, never failing on the side of lack of self-confidence. ‘Now as regards —’