by John Creasey
Copyright & Information
Help from The Baron
First published in 1956
Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1956-2010
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
0755118545 9780755118540 Print
0755125541 9780755125548 Pdf
0755125568 9780755125562 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 BODY IN THE RIVER
Bodies seldom get into the River Thames by accident, although it is true that few days pass when at least one is not taken from the indifferent waters of London’s river. Most of these are found between Putney - where on a day in spring the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race starts and sixteen young stalwarts and two near-pigmies provide delight, excitement, exercise of lungs and larynx for a million partisan Londoners - and Tilbury Docks. Of every dozen bodies found between these two points, at least six are pulled from the river by the River Police within a short distance of that crowded stretch of water between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge.
These facts preoccupy very few people. The Press takes a hopeful interest, but only the police trouble to make a record and turn a corpse into a series of notes on an index card. The police are never surprised to find a corpse. To the river patrols it is almost a matter of course to change direction, use the boat-hook, haul the body in and proceed to the nearest landing-stage. The first thing they do, of course, is to make sure that they have in fact found a corpus, that life is truly extinct, and that artificial respiration will do nothing to resuscitate the unhappy victim of circumstances.
So rigid are the ways of the London police, whether of the River, the City or the Metropolitan area, that the deceased is not officially considered to have passed on until a police-surgeon or, in extremity, some other doctor, has formally pronounced that life is extinct. From that moment onwards the discovery is a matter for investigation; often some surprising facts are discovered about the circumstances which led to the extinguishing of life.
Few men knew more about the variety of contributory causes than Sergeant Worraby, of the River Police, Westminster Division. Youthful officers on patrol with him on one of the fast police launches frequently declare that Worraby must be able to smell death at a distance. They say this admiringly. He will nose the bows of the launch towards a certain spot, call for the searchlight to be switched on, and stand heavy-footed in the thwarts while the inexperienced ply the boat-hook under his directions. His varied, extensive and colourful vocabulary is never really abusive; simply expressive.
The truth is that Worraby knows the River as another man might know a country lane or the vegetable garden at the back of his house in Muswell Hill or Wembley. He knows each little eddy; each drift of the current; every spot where a body will fetch up at high tide; every spot where it is likely to be rolling at low-tide. Being a conscientious officer, he invariably inspects these prospective watery graves, and so helps his legendary reputation to become a little more fabulous.
Worraby seldom talks about his prescience, his knowledge or his discoveries, although after the third pint - or, at Christmas and festive occasions, his second port - he will sometimes start to confide. Once launched, he is difficult to stop, and it is perhaps as well that he is an abstemious man by training. To look at, he is just another police-sergeant, a little on the plump side, fifty-seven years old and three years off retirement; grey-haired, clean-shaven, heavy beneath the jaws, with tired, patient grey eyes.
Many things are said about Worraby, the most persistent being that he needs only to glance at a corpse beneath the demoralising light of the launch’s searchlight to be able to say - as he invariably does: “Obvious case of felo de se, my lad”, or “Homicidal victim, no one ever did that to himself”, or “Lay you ten to one that he wasn’t dead when he hit the water.” Like a doctor diagnosing childish complaints, one glance is all that Worraby needs. He is seldom proved wrong at public expense, doctors who are already far too busy with the living are nevertheless employed to dissect certain parts of the anatomy of the corpse, write out extensive reports, then give evidence at long and often wearisome inquests; and the verdicts almost invariably concur with Sergeant Worraby’s original: “I can tell you what happened to him, my lad - hit over the head and thrown in. Give you ten to one they tossed him in from Gimble’s Steps.” Or Fisherman’s Bottom, Tickerton’s Wharf, Moss Lane or any of a dozen romantically-named places. He has found by a mixture of experience and experiment that when a body or heavy object fetches up at a certain place, it enters the river at a point which could be specified.
Up and down the Thames, at the Thameside Divisions and at Scotland Yard, there is a kind of catch-phrase: “Ask Worraby, he’ll know.” And they ask, and he knows.
He was aware of and proud of his reputation, although, being a Cockney born and bred, and the sixth son of a family of eleven in the days when men were men and women had few opportunities to wear the trousers, he was not conceited.
Although he would never admit it, and probably would not even think of it, the truth is that he loves the Thames. He loves the smells - fish near Billingsgate, oil at Tilbury, spices at the Pool, where the ships come in from distant lands - from the Isle of Spices itself, or Mozambique, from the Gulf of Aden, from the hot-blooded lands of the Middle East and the dreamed-of countries like India and Pakistan, from little-known islands and from great continents. Fish, petrol and spices, then; or
tea being unloaded into bond, coffee from Brazil or Africa, wool from the Antipodes and cotton from Egypt, from Africa or from the United States, tobacco from Rhodesia and Virginia, or a dozen places. It was said that Worraby had only to sniff the river breeze as a laden cargo-boat passed to say where she came from and what she carried, what her tonnage was, whether her crew were lascars, Chinese, Malays, white men, Dutch or Greek, French or Madagascan.
There were the warehouses, some topped by flaming neon signs at night, others dark and gloomy. The broken skyline of the south bank, the more aristocratic outline of the north; the long bridges; the spots where small boys dived into the water on warm nights; the tiny beaches; the wharfs, docks, barges, pleasure boats, buoys, dinghies, the flotsam and jetsam, the places where the mist first gathered before fog spread in earnest over the river’s broad, soft bosom - all of these were part of Sergeant Worraby’s life, his past, his present and his future. It is unlikely that he ever thought of the word “romance” except in terms of boy and girl and the pictures, which he visited once a week with his capable wife, but he was part of the weft and weave of London’s romance; he was truly alive at the pulsating heart of the world.
On the night of March 11th, a misty one when the fog was unlikely to become thick enough to worry about seriously, Sergeant Worraby sat in the bows of the Police Launch, A45, called an order, and saw the muddy bank looming up slowly through the mist near Bad Man’s Steps. He called for the searchlight and, as it sprang out and struck the mist so that it looked as if a giant were breathing his hot breath over the river, he saw the body of the girl.
Worraby jumped up.
“Easy there! Jem, gimme that boat-hook, she hasn’t been in long. Swing her round, Charley.”
She was probably a pretty girl. She lay on her back, rolling very gently, as if floating in her sleep, bumping softly against the granite sides of Bad Man’s Steps. Her long, fair hair spread out on the water, mist enshrouded her, her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open. Scummy water lapped against her face, ran into her mouth and trickled out again.
“Hold it,” ordered Sergeant Worraby, boat-hook in hands and one foot on the gunwale. In spite of his sixteen stones, he could balance as neatly as any tight-rope walker. The boat-hook caught in the dress at the girl’s waist at the first attempt. Worraby drew her slowly towards the side of the boat, careful not to let her roll over.
Jem, otherwise Police-constable Norton, breathed on Worraby’s neck.
“Proper Sleeping Beauty you’ve hooked this time, Sarge.”
“Never you mind whether she’s a sleeping beauty or an ugly sister, you get on the radio-telephone and report.” Worraby spoke as he knelt down, held the girl and began to haul her into the launch. No beginner could have done it so swiftly; he had hauled hundreds of lightweights in exactly like this, and he was always gentle. “And listen, say there’s a chance she can be saved. I’m applying artificial respiration, better have a doctor at the landing-stage, get stimulants ready, all the usual drill. Report she’s about twenty, wearing a cocktail dress worth plenty, fair-haired, height about five-five, probably entered the river near Festival Hall Steps, and,” went on Sergeant Worraby, putting the girl gently in the narrow thwarts, “get to hell away from here and get a move on!”
As he knelt beside the girl, something rolled from the neck of her dress - looking like a little trail of silvery light. It caught the constable’s eye, as well as Worraby’s.
“What’s that?”
Worraby roared: “Do you want me to report you as being so ruddy inquisitive that you neglect . . .?”
“Okay, okay,” said Norton, “but what is it? Looks like a diamond to me.”
It looked like a diamond to Worraby, too. He didn’t pick it up, but began to work on the girl, glancing at the thing which had rolled away from her. It shimmered and scintillated, possessing a kind of fascination. It was as if life had gone out of the girl only to be trapped by the stone. It seemed too bright to be a phoney, Worraby mused, the size of a peanut, and worth a fortune if it were real.
He went on with the artificial respiration.
The launch was soon cutting through the water towards the landing-stage, half a mile up-river at Westminster Bridge.
Worraby didn’t think much about the girl or her chances of survival, but didn’t spare himself as he worked.
It should have been a happy day for Francesca Lisle. It was her twenty-first birthday.
It had begun so well. The only shadow had been one which she had known about for a long time. Her father had some secret worry. She was fond of him, and even devoted, for in a strange way, he won devotion. She did not know what secret fear he lived with, although she knew that one existed. He was too honest to lie. Whole weeks, sometimes whole months would pass when the shadow was so pale that she almost forgot it; now and again it grew dark, heavy and threatening - even frightening, although she did not know why it should frighten her.
The day had begun like this. . . .
2: DAY INTO NIGHT
Francesca’s bedroom overlooked the Thames Embankment and the river, and she loved it. Sitting up in bed, she could see the trees and the fields of Battersea Park, the massive yellow colossus of the Power Station, belching white smoke like some monstrous man-made giant, the shimmering river, river craft moving at stately speed, here and there white gulls riding the water, brought here in the trail of some ship.
The bedroom was large, and touched with the charm she gave to everything. Furniture, furnishings, pictures and decor were all of her choosing. They had lived in this top-floor flat for a year, everything was still fresh, and the excitement of being here, of having so much that she wanted, was still very real to Francesca. Until they had moved here, there had been a shabby furnished apartment in Bloomsbury, very little money - but a curious kind of contentment. Until then, she had known that it was a struggle for her father to help her at the Slade, but a sacrifice he wanted to make; she had always been quite sure of that. He believed that her talent could grow into genius, and she had hoped he was right.
She still hoped!
She could remember the day when he had told her that some old, almost forgotten and supposedly worthless shares had rocketed in value, transforming them from comparative poverty to comparative wealth. Not for months afterwards had she realised that the wealth had brought the shadow. Only recently had she begun to wonder why.
“The responsibilities of wealth, Franky!” her father would say, and laugh at her. He could laugh with his eyes. “Forget it, and think about your art.” He could scoff at that, too, without discouraging her.
There was a small attic room above the flat, used by earlier tenants as a studio, with a small north light. That was why they had chosen this particular place. On the night before her birthday, Francesca had worked into the small hours in artificial light she knew wasn’t good. Her father hadn’t disturbed her; when she had gone downstairs she had found a note saying he had gone to bed, and: “Don’t forget the party tomorrow.”
It was the first party they had thrown here; nearly all the guests were friends of hers, mostly from the Slade. There were one or two neighbours, too, particularly the Mannerings, from Green Street, which wasn’t far away. Lorna Mannering, whose exhibitions attracted exclusive crowds and won whole pages in the shiny journals like the Sphere, the Tatler and the Sketch, had admired Francesca’s Head of a Bus Driver, been friendly, invited her to her studio and introduced her husband. John Mannering’s reputation in other spheres was as great as his wife’s in the world of painting. Francesca had been to the Mannerings for tea two or three times, at cocktail parties twice.
She hadn’t told her father that she had invited them. He had left all arrangements to her and, for the past two days, been out most of the time. She had really invited the Mannerings and another couple of young middle age because most of the Slade students would be too young for her father.
She woke that day with a start, to find the room bright with sunlight, an
d her father standing by the side of the bed, tea-tray in hand.
“My goodness, is it late?” She struggled up.
“Not too late,” he said putting the tray down. He stood and looked at her, his eyes filled with a curious kind of hurt radiance. She often felt that he did feel hurt when looking at her, as if she reminded him of something precious but gone. She did, of course; her mother. Looking down at her like that, he was the most handsome man she knew, his hair touched with grey, his features so regular and distinctive; he didn’t look English, more Continental. “Many, many happy returns of the day, my darling.”
“Why, it’s - today!”
“She has the key of the door,” her father had started to sing, half-mockingly, “never been twenty-one before. Yes, the great day, Franky.”
He poured out tea.
At her place, when she went into the dining-room for breakfast, was a small packet, tied up with pink ribbon.
“Never mind that until you’ve had breakfast!”
“But I couldn’t eat!” She slipped the ribbon off, tore off the paper, found the small leather box and knew that this was a jewel, opened it - and saw a small jewelled cross lying against dark-blue velvet. The cross was so beautiful, so breathtaking, that she hadn’t known what to say. She had just looked at her father, feeling the tears stinging her eyes.
Eventually: “But it’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen! Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires . . .” She turned the gift this way and that, as if seeking to see every facet of its beauty. “But you shouldn’t have . . .”
“It was your mother’s,” he said.
Then he swept her into talk about the party, the day itself, newspaper headlines, the Slade, the wisdom of going to Paris for a year for more study. If she went to Paris she would have to live in a garret. If she could stand a garret she would probably become a genius; if she couldn’t . . .
