Black Ship

by Carola Dunn

  And speaking—or rather, thinking—of the Americans, next in Alec’s pile was a lengthy tirade from Superintendent Crane explaining exactly what the U.S. State Department had said to the U.S. embassy had said to the Foreign Secretary had said to the Home Secretary had said to the Assistant Commissioner (Crime)…. Alec skimmed through it. They were all unhappy.

  He sent for a cup of tea.

  The last of the new reports was Tom’s interview with the Bennetts. They had not changed their story in any material way. They had seen Patrick Jessup, accompanied by—

  “Bloody hell!” Alec swore aloud. The constable just entering with his tea slopped it in the saucer. “How could I have forgotten?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Daisy had done her best to convince the Jessups that, though probably more conversant with police procedure than the average law-abiding citizen, she was not an expert on the subject. Nonetheless, they hung on her words.

  She didn’t want to give false hope, nor to crush all hope. It was very difficult.

  “It’s true that the police don’t usually ask a person to go to the Yard, or the nearest police station, to answer questions unless they have strong grounds for suspicion,” she said. “But sometimes it’s just for convenience’ sake or to avoid interruptions, or something like that.”

  “Then it doesn’t mean Patrick has been arrested?” Mrs. Jessup asked, hands clasped in supplication.

  “No, though it quite often precedes an arrest,” Daisy admitted. “But he did move Castellano’s body, didn’t he? That’s an offence, I believe. I don’t know if it’s a felony or a misdemeanour, but surely it can’t be terribly serious.” She looked at Irwin, who sat with lips pursed, saying nothing. No help there. “They can hold him for twenty-four hours without charging him, I think.”

  “If that’s all they’re asking Patrick about,” said Audrey, clinging to her husband, who looked pretty much all in, “does it mean they still might arrest Aidan for killing him? When he’s recovered?”

  “I really can’t—”

  “Please, madam …” The parlour maid turned pink as everyone looked at her.

  “A message from Mr. Patrick?” Mr. Jessup asked eagerly.

  “No, sir. It’s my sister, sir, from next door. There’s a gentleman come to call and Mrs. Dobson—that’s Mrs. Fletcher’s housekeeper—said Elsie better come over right away ‘cause the gentleman’s already come by twice when no one’s home and he says it’s urgent. If you please, madam,” she added with a bob towards Daisy.

  “Mr. Lambert?” Daisy asked, resigned, and quite glad of an excuse to escape the unhappy Jessups, if only temporarily.

  “Yes’m.”

  “I’d better go, Mrs. Jessup. I’ll come back if I can, if you’d like me to.”

  As she rose, Mr. Jessup followed suit, saying, “We mustn’t trespass on your kindness any longer this evening, Mrs. Fletcher. We all greatly appreciate your willingness to give us the benefit of your experience in … in such matters.”

  To a general murmur of thanks, he escorted her to the door of the room. The whole debacle was essentially his fault, Daisy thought. He might have nothing to do with Castellano’s death, but he was responsible for the illegal trade with America that had brought his family into the orbit of the bootleggers.

  Enid showed her out. In spite of a biting wind, she paused on the Jessups’ porch, gazing down across the garden. Where could Castellano’s gun be, if a thorough search had not discovered it? Finding it was vital to the Jessup brothers’ defence. She had to persuade Alec to search again.

  The Greek maiden in the fountain was silhouetted against a light in the Bennetts’ front room, a light not obscured by a curtain. They must be watching through their binoculars, gloating over their neighbours’ misfortune.

  They couldn’t spend all their time spying. What rotten luck that they happened to see Patrick coming home…. Patrick and … That’s what she’d been forgetting! Patrick and a man with his hat pulled down …

  Oh Lord, she thought, not Lambert!

  Had Lambert somehow found out Patrick was on his way home, from a trip involving precisely the business it was his business to prevent? Had he accosted him, or simply followed him? Had he recognised Castellano as a bootlegger, even as a thug belonging to the “Luckcheese” gang? Could he have …?

  No, Lambert was no more capable of cold-blooded murder than Patrick was, or Aidan. He wouldn’t know how to set about it, in the first place, and if he did, he couldn’t carry it out effectively. The pathologist had to be mistaken!

  Daisy hurried down the Jessups’ steps and up her own.

  Alec strode into the room, leant with both fists on the desk, and loomed threateningly over Patrick Jessup. “You blazing fool!” he snarled. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me there was someone with you?”

  Patrick blinked up at him. “What …? Oh, Callaghan. D’you know, I’d almost forgotten about him.”

  Alec dropped into the chair behind the desk, hastily vacated—without comment—by Tom Tring, who in turn dispossessed Ernie Piper. Ernie leant against the wall and selected a fresh, well-sharpened pencil from his endless supply.

  “Callaghan,” Alec said sarcastically. “We progress. Why did you not tell me about your friend Callaghan?”

  “He’s no friend of mine,” Patrick protested. Alec just looked at him. He wriggled under that hard, cold gaze. “Actually, there were several reasons.” Alec let him wriggle. “Well, he wasn’t a friend, but he looked after me in America. Sort of like a guide, but he called himself my ‘protector.’ He worked for the man I was dealing with.”

  “Name?”

  “I’m not supposed to … Well, all right, he calls himself Frank Costello, but I think he’s Italian, not Irish. He’s not our customer. He runs the bootlegging for him. Callaghan—Mickie Callaghan, but that may not be his real name—he is Irish, though—he came to England with me. I don’t think Michael Callaghan was the name in his passport, actually. Customs took away his gun. I didn’t know he’d brought it, or I’d have told him they wouldn’t allow it into the country.”

  In which case, Alec thought, forewarned he’d have taken precautions and smuggled it in. One must thank heaven for small mercies. He waited.

  “It didn’t seem fair to get him mixed up in our troubles when … when Aidan accidentally killed that man.”

  “Lord preserve me from chivalrous fools!”

  Patrick flushed. “Anyway, he skedaddled pretty quick.”

  “You saw him go?” Alec asked sharply.

  “Well, no. But when I looked for him to ask him to help me get Aidan into the house, he wasn’t there.”

  Alec exchanged a glance with Tom, who nodded with a look of enlightenment.

  “I was quite glad, as a matter of fact,” Patrick went on. “I didn’t really want to take him home.”

  “Not the sort you’d want to introduce to your mother?”

  “No. That was another reason for not mentioning him, keeping him out of things altogether.”

  “And? You had other reasons?”

  “Well, once I’d not told you about him, it seemed best not to complicate matters. There didn’t seem to be any point, and I thought you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  “It didn’t cross your mind … No, why should it? You believed your brother had killed Castellano.”

  “Accidentally!”

  “Accidentally. As it happens, Castellano did not die from the crack on the head. He was murdered, deliberately, probably while he lay unconscious.”

  “And you think … You thought … No wonder …” Patrick’s mouth dropped open as realisation dawned. “Oh Lord, you think Callaghan did it? While I was taking care of Aidan?”

  “And then scarpered. You’re not off the hook yet, but it seems likely. If you had informed us right away of his existence, we might have had a chance to catch him. Still, however long the odds, we’ll have to give it a shot. Let’s have all the details.”

  Elsie
had left Lambert standing in the hall, a mark of disapprobation with which Daisy heartily concurred. It was quite the wrong time to drop in without an invitation.

  Lambert seemed uncharacteristically pleased with himself, as Daisy could see, because he had hung his hat on the coat tree and his coat collar was for once turned down. Nana fawned adoringly about his ankles, obviously remembering all those wonderful walks she had taken him on.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Fletcher. I thought I’d never catch you home.”

  “Good evening.” She hoped he hadn’t had his wallet pinched again and come looking for a bed. Then she remembered that he had rescued her from a sticky wicket next door, albeit inadvertently. “Do come in, Mr. Lambert, and tell me what I can do for you.”

  She led the way to the small sitting room and waved him to a chair. “May I get you a … Oh, no, of course, you don’t drink. I’ll ring for coffee.”

  “Never mind that.” He was too excited to sit down. “I’ve collared him!” he announced triumphantly, striding back and forth.

  Daisy was not too excited to sit down. She slumped into a chair and enquired, “Collared whom?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “The murderer, of course.”

  Daisy sat up. “The murderer?” she asked incredulously. “You mean the man who killed Castellano?”

  “The guy in the park out there. That’s his name?” His eyes gleamed behind the horn-rimmed glasses. Daisy noticed a bruise on his cheek. “Oh wowee! That’s one of the guys I was sent to find. I’ve seen him about, but I never could discover his name. Oh wowee!”

  “Mr. Lambert, you didn’t kill him yourself, did you?”

  “Gosh, no, Mrs. Fletcher.” He gave her a look of reproach. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that, not even for the Government. I saw Callaghan strangle him and I’ve been tailing him ever since. Didn’t you wonder where I was the last couple of days?”

  “No. Who the blazes is Callaghan?”

  “He’s a heavy for the Luciano family.”

  Daisy thought of the Lucchese family. “Is that the same as an enforcer?”

  “More or less.”

  “You saw him kill Castellano? Why on earth didn’t you come straight to Alec? What do you mean, you ‘collared’ him?”

  Lambert went for the first question first. “I saw Castellano pull a gat and the Jessup guy tackled him—boy, that was some neat tackle—and both of them went down.”

  “What happened to the gat? The gun?”

  “Geeze, I don’t know. It flew up in the air, but I didn’t see where it landed. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, but never mind now. Go on.”

  “The other two, Callaghan and the guy with him, they knelt down. I didn’t know what was going on, and I couldn’t properly see what they were doing, so I worked my way around. When I got to where I had a better view, Callaghan had his hands around Castellano’s neck. I was trying to figure out what to do, when up he jumped and ran off, so I followed. Geez, Mrs. Fletcher, d’you think I should’ve stayed?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. No, I suppose you did the right thing. Especially if you’ve really caught him.”

  “I have!” Lambert sat down at last. “See, I tailed him for two days. He never stopped moving except to get a meal in cheap cafés. I couldn’t collar him in public, so—”

  “You could have stopped a policeman.”

  Lambert looked sulky. “These British bobbies, they didn’t take me seriously when I got here. I know Mr. Fletcher doesn’t have much of an opinion of me. I wanted to show them I could do the job.”

  Daisy had been brushed off by police officers—American as well as English—often enough to sympathise, to a degree. “Right-oh. But now you’ve caught him, you should have gone to Scotland Yard. Where is he?”

  “And get sent home with a pat on the head and a dime for bus fare? Sure!”

  “Where is he?” Daisy repeated.

  “He took a room at a hotel in a lousy part of town, the sort of place where you pay up front and they don’t ask too many questions. I slipped the porter a pound to give me his room number and I went up there and knocked on the door. I put on a limey accent and I said I was the manager and he’d been overcharged. Told him I had some change for him.”

  “Brilliant! Who wouldn’t open the door for that?”

  “I thought it was kind of cute,” Lambert said modestly. “We had a bit of a roughhouse. He got in a lick or two.” He touched his cheekbone and winced.

  “So I see.”

  “But I floored him and tied him up with an electrical cord and a ripped-up towel. It had a tear in it already,” he assured her. “I know I’m not allowed to arrest anyone here, so I locked him in the closet. Wardrobe. I stuck a sign on the door saying ‘Do Not Disturb.’ I’ve been back a couple of times to check and tighten the knots, and he was still there, quiet as a mouse. I don’t figure he’ll be making a lot of noise that might make the hotel people call in the cops.”

  “Well done!” said Daisy warmly. “And now it’s time we called in the cops.”

  Piper answered the knock on the door. There was a murmur of voices; then he turned back. “It’s Mrs. Fletcher on the telephone, Chief.”

  “I said no interruptions!”

  “Seems it’s about the case and it’s desp’rately urgent. I bet she’s worked out who did it, Chief.”

  Alec gave in and went to the phone.

  “Darling,” said Daisy, “you’ll never in a million years guess what …”

  The Jessups’ dinner party in honour of Lambert was a small affair. They didn’t want to broadcast their troubles to their friends and acquaintances, even now Patrick and Aidan were cleared of all but minor offences. The Fletchers were invited, of course, and, at Daisy’s request, Mrs. Jessup kindly included the Pearsons.

  “They’re frightfully discreet,” Daisy promised. “He’s a lawyer, after all. As they saw poor Lambert’s disastrous arrival, it’s only fair that they should witness his triumph.”

  Over the meal, Patrick, Aidan, and Lambert told their stories. Alec finished up with the extrication of Callaghan from the wardrobe and his arrest.

  Madge was thrilled. “What an adventure!” she exclaimed. “What a terrible time you had, Mrs. Jessup, and Audrey.”

  “I know you don’t need to specify motive in court, Fletcher,” Tommy Pearson objected, “but what I don’t see is why Callaghan killed Castellano. And come to that, why Castellano aimed the gun at Patrick in the first place.”

  “He didn’t, sir,” Lambert blurted out. He blushed as everyone looked at him, but he continued gamely, “He was aiming at Callaghan.”

  “You may remember, Pearson,” said Alec, “when Mr. Lambert appeared among us, we were talking about the bootleggers organising themselves into gangs? It would appear to have come to open warfare among them.”

  “Castellano belonged to the Lucchese family,” said Lambert, “and Callaghan to the Luciano mob.”

  “Castellano was poaching—or attempting to poach—on Luciano territory,” Alec explained. To Mr. Jessup, he added, “That’s you, sir. Callaghan was actually sent here to rectify the situation—that is, to deal with Castellano. He nearly got potted first, but thanks to Aidan’s tackle, he was presented with the opportunity to turn the tables.”

  “I have a question, too,” said Madge. “What happened to the gun?”

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Daisy. “I think I’ve guessed—”

  “Great Scott, Daisy!” Alec exploded.

  “Well, Mr. Lambert says it flew up into the air. No one’s been able to find it. Don’t you think it might have landed in the fountain’s urn?”

  Patrick stared at her. “Gosh, Mrs. Fletcher, what a pity I wasn’t aiming at it. That would have been the throw of a lifetime!”

  Alec said repressively that he’d send a man to check in the morning.

  Champagne came out with dessert. At the head of the table, Mr. Jessup rose to propose a toast to Lambert. After an effusive expression of gra
titude, he continued: “And I may add that I’ve come to a decision. Jessup and Sons will no longer be shipping to America. There’s just too much risk involved. Mind you, we shan’t refuse to deal with any customers who come along, no matter their country of origin, but what they do with their purchases is up to them. So there’s another success for you, Mr. Lambert.”

  He raised his glass and everyone drank to the blushing American.

  “Speech!” cried Tommy Pearson.

  “Speech!” Patrick seconded him.

  “Who, me?” Lambert spluttered.

  “Yes, do please say a word, Mr. Lambert,” said Mrs. Jessup.

  Lambert stood up. His mouth opened, and closed again. Then he leant forward and picked up the unused Champagne glass that Enid had set at his place.

  “The heck with seltzer!” he said recklessly. “Pour me Champagne!”