Black Ship

by Carola Dunn

  “So Castellano was a bootlegger!” Alec exclaimed. He sent Ross and Ardmore out, shutting the front door after them against an icy draught. As he turned back, Warren reappeared, receiver at arm’s length.

  “Do you want him to go on, sir? Seems there’s a list as long as your arm.”

  “Not now. Tell him to meet me at Jessup and Sons at quarter past six.”

  Warren retreated again. After a brief muffled colloquy, he once again reappeared, without the receiver this time.

  “Get this, sir: Piper says one of the blokes is already exporting to America. At least, he admits he’s sent one smallish shipment. Castellano tried to bully him into selling to a diff’rent gang over there. He says he told Mr. Lambert he didn’t want to get mixed up in a battle between gangs and he was getting out of the transatlantic trade.”

  “Good heavens,” said Daisy, “Lambert won one. If only by default!”

  Daisy went off upstairs to visit the twins.

  Leaving Warren to man the phone, Alec went out. As Daisy had said, the clouds had cleared. In the west, the sky was still pale blue; a cold wind blustered, already drying out and scattering the neatly raked piles of fallen leaves. He wished he had put on his overcoat. He nearly went back for it, but his men were waiting. It had been a long day and the end was not in sight.

  Far from clarifying matters, Ernie Piper’s report amounted to confusion worse confounded. It meant Castellano had had a motive for killing Lambert, yet Castellano was the one who had ended up dead.

  Self-defence? The bootleggers’ emissary had been done in with cool deliberation. Pending the autopsy report, Alec reminded himself. Ridgeway had been pretty certain, though.

  Alec was utterly unable to see Lambert as a cold-blooded murderer, or even a hot-blooded one, except by mistake.

  And where did the Jessups come into all this?

  Time enough to puzzle over that when Tom arrived. For the moment, Alec was glad of something practical to do.

  Ross and Ardmore were down by the fountain, in the centre of the garden. He could see them quite clearly from his own front steps. There was a lamp standard opposite the house, at the top of the path, and another at the bottom, but none in the middle. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t recognise the men from here if he didn’t know who they were. The glow of their cigarettes was not visible, though he could tell from their gestures that both were smoking.

  The Bennetts had field glasses, of course. Alec wondered whether they had really seen anything.

  He waved. The motion caught the eye of Ross, the taller of the two. He waved back. They went round to the far side of the fountain, nearer to the trail where the body had been dragged across the lawn. There followed an ambiguous melée. Alec had told them to do whatever came to mind, as they didn’t know what had really happened. He could make out that they were involved in a struggle, but not exactly what was going on. Then one dropped to the ground. The other followed suit.

  The first was supposed to lie on his back, the second to kneel over him, hands to throat. What with the twilight, the marble maiden with her urn, and the eighteen-inch-high rim of the pool, Alec could only assume they were sticking to his orders.

  By the time he reached them, both were standing again, Ardmore brushing himself off.

  “Get down again. I want to take another look from below.”

  “Have a heart, sir,” protested Ardmore. “It’s bloody freezing lying on the flagstones.”

  “It’s Ross’s turn. You can just freeze your knees. Wait till I get down to the lamppost.”

  From the bottom of the slope, though Alec made allowances for the deepening dusk, the scene was even less intelligible. He could see the kneeling figure silhouetted against the pale marble and the paving beyond, but Ross, lying on the flat at just about his eye level, was virtually invisible.

  Alec looked back at the Bennetts’ house. Their ground floor was only a couple of steps above street level. The view from their first floor, however, would be considerably better than his own from down here.

  The best he could do was to take anything they said with a pinch of salt. Perhaps they’d decide they didn’t have anything to say after all.

  He walked back up.

  “Any help, sir?” asked Ross.

  “Not really. Certainly not enough to narrow the time frame. I take it you could see each other well enough to proceed with whatever nefarious business took your respective fancies?”

  “Easy,” Ardmore averred.

  “It’ll have to be tried again in full darkness, when the only light comes from the streetlamps. Does either of you know whether there’s a moon tonight?”

  “Quarter moon,” said Ross promptly, “rises after midnight.”

  “Perfect. How do you know?”

  “I’m a sort of amateur astronomer, sir,” Ross explained as they walked up the hill. “Very amateur. My great-uncle left me his telescope. Trouble is, you can’t see much in London skies, what with smoke and fog and clouds, but I keep a track of the moon’s phases, in case there’s a good viewing night. You’d be surprised how often knowing comes in handy.”

  “Good for you. I hope that’s Sergeant Tring,” Alec said, lengthening his stride as a taxi pulled up in front of number 6.

  The cab rose perceptibly on its springs as its passenger climbed out. Definitely Tom.

  When they reached the pavement, he had just paid off the cabbie. “Hope that’ll go down on expenses, Chief.”

  “Certainly. I ought to have told you to take a taxi if you were successful.”

  “Right here in my pocket, Chief.” Tom patted the relevant part of his extensive anatomy. “Signed, sealed, and delivered.”

  They went into the house. Warren’s scarlet face peered out from his telephone cubby.

  “Any phone calls?”

  “Not a whisper, sir.”

  “Did my wife come down yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  Heavy Teutonic thoughts of Kinder, Küche, Kirche crossed Alec’s mind. But much as she loved the babies, Daisy could barely boil an egg and was by no means a regular churchgoer. Besides, she was occasionally helpful in his work, and he was a modern husband, content to allow her hers. Still, he didn’t send someone up to invite her to join them.

  “All right, Warren, you’d better come and listen to this. Leave the door open in case the telephone rings.”

  They went into the dining room. Tom extricated the search warrants from an inner pocket and spread them on the table. “I managed to get hold of old Fanshawe,” he said. “He’d give you a warrant to search Buckingham Palace if you asked him nicely.”

  Alec looked them over. “Very good. Tom, you’ll take Ardmore next door. Ross will go with me, and Piper’s meeting us in New Bond Street at six-fifteen. I have to interview the Jessups, père et fils. The search there will concentrate on their papers, so Ernie’s the best one for that. We have a Yard car, but we’ll have to leave in a minute, so let’s fill you in quickly on what you’ve missed. Discussion will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  He gave a succinct exposition of the results of their enquiries to date. Ross, Ardmore, and Warren also listened closely, he was pleased to see. “Have I missed anything?” he asked them.

  Ross spoke up. “About Sergeant Mackinnon going to Lincolnshire after the young lady, sir?”

  “Thank you. Yes, he’s on his way. It’s not to be mentioned to any of the rest of the family. Apparently, there’s no telephone at the farm, but I don’t want to risk their somehow getting a message to Audrey Jessup. Tom, just run through what you’ll be looking for next door.”

  “Most important, I reckon, Chief, is clues to just what happened last night, though what they might be is anyone’s guess. Also, any indication of where Mr. Aidan went. Some sort of weapon Castellano could’ve been hit with—that’ll be difficult till we get a better description from the pathologist.”

  “And Castellano’s gun,” put in Ardmore.

  “Ah!” said Tom. “That’d put
the cat among the pigeons, right enough!”

  “Wait till half past six,” said Alec, ignoring the ring of the telephone, which Warren dashed to answer. “Ask permission to search before you start waving the warrant. If I’m not back when you’re finished, go round the Circle and see if you can catch those who were out this morning. And have another go at the visibility question—Ardmore, you can explain that to Mr. Tring. Warren’s to stick to the telephone. When you get home tonight, Tom, you’ll have to present my apologies to Mrs. Tring! Come along, Ross; we’d better get a move on.”

  They went out to the hall. Daisy was coming down the stairs. She waved and called, “Are you leaving? Toodle-oo, darling. See you—”

  “Sir!” Warren popped out of the cubby. “Sir, it’s Superintendent Crane, and he doesn’t sound too happy!”

  NINETEEN

  “Oh Lord! I can’t talk to the Super now,” Alec groaned. “Daisy, tell him I’ve left, will you, and see what he wants now.”

  “Me!” said Daisy in ungrammatical outrage.

  But her outrage was wasted on the closing front door. With a sigh, she went to the telephone.

  “Spitting fire!” Warren warned her, disappearing into the safe haven of the dining room.

  She picked up the phone, held the receiver at what she hoped was a safe distance from her ear, and raised the transmitter to her mouth. “Mr. Crane?” she said cautiously.

  “Who the …?” Even at arm’s length, his bellow was deafening. “Mrs. Fletcher?” The voice moderated, and Daisy ventured to move the receiver towards her ear. “This is Crane. I must speak to your husband.”

  “I’m afraid he isn’t here, Superintendent. I believe he’s gone to interview some suspects. Can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure anyone can,” he said bitterly. “But you can transmit a message to Fletcher, if you would be so kind.”

  “Of course, Mr. Crane. Just let me get something to write on.” She had left her notebook in the dining room, but there was always a pad in the drawer of the telephone table, and usually a sharpened pencil. Yes, here they were. She sat down, so that she could set the daffodil phone on the table and have a hand free to write. “Right-oh, go ahead.”

  “I have just had an extremely uncomfortable interview with the Assistant Commissioner. He, in turn, had just received an extremely uncomfortable telephone call from the Home Secretary. You are aware, I dare say, Mrs. Fletcher, that the Home Secretary oversees all of this country’s police forces?”

  “Yes.” Daisy might not know much of politics, but she could hardly help knowing that, being married to a fairly senior policeman. She stopped trying to scribble down every word, realising that Crane was blowing off steam as much as trying to convey important information.

  “The Home Secretary,” he continued, “had just spoken—or perhaps I should say ‘been spoken to’—by the Foreign Secretary.”

  “This is beginning to sound like The House That Jack Built” Daisy said unwisely, and went on to compound her error. “It’s Oliver’s favourite book at the moment.”

  There was an ominous silence at the other end of the line. Then: “This, Mrs. Fletcher, is nothing like The House That Jack Built, which, as I recall, has a happy ending. If I may continue … The Foreign Secretary had just received a telephone call from His Excellency, the Ambassador of the United States of America.”

  Daisy managed just in time to stop herself saying brightly, “I expect they talk to each other quite often.” For some reason, Superintendent Crane’s grimness was making her feel more frivolous than she had felt since Nana found the body that morning. Who, she wondered, had told the ambassador what? No doubt she was about to be informed. “U.S. Amb.,” she wrote down.

  “The embassy,” Crane continued relentlessly, “had received a cable from the State Department, which, I gather, is their equivalent of our Foreign Office. The State Department had received an enquiry from the Federal Bureau of Investigation—to be precise, from your husband’s friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation—regarding a certain American passport.”

  “Castellano’s. Michele Castellano’s.”

  “Oh, so there’s a name attached, is there?” The superintendent’s gloom seemed to have lifted a little. At least he had some information to pass back along the chain. “Would you mind spelling that? You see, the FBI had only a number, and it happens to be the number of a passport that was stolen, along with several more blanks.”

  “It was faked?” said Daisy. “That would explain the ink.”

  “Ink!” exploded from the receiver. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Or rather, Fletcher can explain when he reports at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. On the dot.”

  “I’ll make sure to set the alarm clock. But Mr. Crane, why—”

  “The Americans take as serious a view as we do of the sacrosanct nature of passports. Naturally, the State Department wanted to know why Scotland Yard had asked the FBI about a stolen passport. They asked the embassy, and the embassy wanted to know why they had not been notified that the police had found an American passport. How it reached the ambassador’s august ears, I have no idea, but he, naturally, approached the Foreign Office and—”

  “Please, let’s not go back through the whole rigmarole! I’m sure Alec had very good reasons not to get in touch with the embassy right away, which no doubt he’ll explain to you tomorrow.”

  “He’d better! I authorised the damn—dashed cable he sent to the FBI. I could swear he told me the U.S. embassy would have to be notified. Surely he didn’t expect me to do so, with no information! I ought to have my head examined. I want to know what it’s all about.”

  “He’s been rushed off his feet all day, and he’s still working,” she reminded him. “I’ll give him your message.”

  “Is he getting anywhere?”

  “You’ll have to ask him, Mr. Crane,” Daisy said demurely. “You know he doesn’t like me to get involved.”

  “Pah!”

  Daisy was sure only the courtesy due to the offspring of a viscount enabled the superintendent to say a choked good-bye before he hung up. She wondered whether she ought to have told him Lambert was missing. But no, it would only mean more fuss if he felt obliged to notify the AC and the AC notified … et cetera.

  She had scarcely replaced the receiver on its hook when the bell rang again. Sighing, she picked it up again and said, “Hampstead three nine one three.”

  “This is the Scotland Yard exchange,” said an impersonal female voice. “May I speak to DCI Fletcher, please?”

  “He’s not here, I’m afraid. May I take a message? This is Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher!” The change in tone was obvious. Daisy was famous at the Yard—or infamous, depending on how high up the hierarchy one went—as the wife who kept falling over bodies. Sometimes her fame was useful, sometimes the reverse. “I have a cable for the chief inspector, from New York. He left a message to let him know at once. Shall I read it out?”

  “Yes, please.” Daisy tore the top sheet off the pad. “Not too fast.”

  “‘Mitcheel’—spelt MICHELE—‘Castellano,’ open quotes, ‘enforcer,’ close quotes, ‘for Luckcheese’—spelt LUCCHESE—‘family bootlegger gang,’ stop, ‘delighted news Rosenblatt NYDA.’ Got that, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  District Attorney Rosenblatt. She and Alec had saved him from making a serious mistake a couple of years ago. Now, apparently, he was pleased to learn that they had found a New York gangster dead in London.

  What was an “enforcer”? American gangs must be alarmingly well organised if they had rules to be enforced.

  Daisy decided she didn’t really want to know how they did their enforcing. “Tough guys,” she recalled Lambert mentioning when regretting the loss of his gun. Could there be others of Castellano’s ilk in England?

  Alec ought to have the information as soon as possible. She glanced at the long-case clock. He would still be on the way to New
Bond Street. If she waited till he reached the shop to ring up, she’d probably interrupt his interrogation of the Jessups. He hated having interviews interrupted. Too bad, the news would have to wait till he came home.

  “What happened to Castellano’s gun?” Alec pondered aloud as Ross drove down the hill.

  “I don’t know, sir. I think maybe I missed a bit, coming in later than the others like I did. He was wearing a shoulder holster?”

  “With no gun in it. Suppose Castellano drew the gun, either to threaten his assailant or in self-defence. Why did the murderer not simply put it back in the holster, thus eliminating a link between him and his victim?”

  There was silence while Ross negotiated the tricky five-way intersection in Camden Town, competing with four omnibuses and half a dozen taxis. Safely buzzing down Albany Street, he said, “Prob’ly he wasn’t thinking too clearly, sir.”

  “He was thinking very clearly when he pressed his thumbs on exactly the right spots in Castellano’s throat. He knew what he was doing all right. Let’s say the gun got lost in a struggle and the darkness prevented his finding the damn thing. Why didn’t we find it next morning in broad daylight, in the course of an intensive search?”

  Again, Ross had the excuse of traffic and the even more complicated multiple intersection of streets at the southeast corner of Regent’s Park. Having made it safely into Great Portland Street, he ventured, “I s’pose they looked in that pond thing?”

  “Raked it out thoroughly. Can you think of any conceivable reason why Castellano might have gone out wearing the holster, an uncomfortable contraption, without his gun?”

  “No, sir.”

  Nor could Alec. Customs might have confiscated Castellano’s gun when he entered the country—did Customs keep records of such things?—but unless he’d managed to acquire another, he’d have packed away the holster. And if he’d managed to acquire a gun, the question remained: Where was it?