Corridors of Death

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  Amiss resisted the temptation to thump him. He could do that later—when he had extracted whatever Phil had on offer.

  ‘I mean what makes you think he’s a poofdah, you narg?’

  ‘I ’aven’t got where I am today wivout bein’ able to spot a poofdah when I see one. Besides, I used to listen to ’im on the phone talkin’ to ’is poofdah friends. ’Eard ’im cooin’ down the phone at some feller called Billy makin’ dates to go dancin’ in one of them gay discos up West.’

  ‘Sir Nicholas can’t have liked that much.’

  ‘Nigey baby seemed to be keepin’ it pretty quiet from what I could hear of his arrangements. ’E never knew I was listenin’. Didn’t realize how good my ears are,’ said Phil modestly.

  ‘You should have been a detective, you nosey little bugger.’

  ‘The only pigs I want anyfink to do with are the ones I eat for breakfast,’ said Phil, turning over to the Business News. The conversation clearly was closed.

  Amiss let ten minutes go by before slipping out to find a private telephone. He wasn’t going to risk using the extension in the next office with Phil around. Mrs Milton wasn’t in, he was informed by a helpful secretary, but he might try just before lunch. He swore to himself. There was no point in trying Milton. He had said he wouldn’t be in all morning. Nigel would have to wait his turn.

  Later in the morning, Sanders called for Amiss to discuss the brief for the Secretary of State’s Question Time in the House the following day. ‘Have the police been back?’ he asked, as Amiss rose to leave.

  ‘No. They said last night they’d finished with the room.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case I’ll move back in this afternoon. And, by the way, would you mind sorting out Sir Nicholas’s private papers? I think you’d know your way around them better than I should. Use your own discretion about what should be destroyed.’

  There was still no Mrs Milton. Amiss went back to his office and decided he might as well deal with Sir Nicholas’s papers before lunch. He worked quickly through the desk drawers. Everything there that Sanders wouldn’t need could be chucked out. Then he turned his attentions to the small cabinet with the combination lock in which were kept all confidential papers.

  As he had expected, there was very little there. Sir Nicholas didn’t hold on to departmental papers. He either took them home with him or sent them back for Amiss to deal with. Amiss leafed through the solitary folder marked ‘Personal’. It consisted mainly of neat accounts of personal expenditure incurred while travelling on departmental business. There was a small batch of receipts from restaurants which Sir Nicholas used for official entertaining. Amiss wondered idly why he locked up innocuous stuff like this. Still, it was in character. He had even insisted that his staff lock up the departmental telephone directories at night on the grounds that they were confidential. Amiss supposed that it would be proper procedure to send in a claim for these expenses to the Accounts Division, asking them to forward the cheque to Lady Clark. Perhaps he had better ask Sanders if he thought it would be too tactless. Probably depended on how much money was involved.

  He was flicking through the receipts to estimate the amount to be claimed when he came on one headed:

  J. RITCHIE

  confidential investigations

  Dated a week previously, it recorded that the bill of £300 for professional services had been paid in full. Amiss stood for a moment thinking. He put his head through the connecting door and saw that Phil had disappeared. He went back into Sir Nicholas’s room and rang Milton’s office.

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Milton was in a rage, as much with himself for failing to make a simple routine check, as with the P.C. involved, who had been one of those investigating the Monday lunchtime movements of all the staff in Embankment Tower, government employees or otherwise (the building housed a number of unrelated enterprises).

  ‘Why in Christ’s name didn’t he let us know the minute he found out that Nigel Clark worked in that building?’ he yelled at Romford.

  ‘I suppose he thought we’d know.’

  ‘And why didn’t we?’

  ‘Because no one told us,’ said Romford reasonably.

  Milton’s fairmindedness reasserted itself. Romford was right. It was more his own fault than anyone else’s; he had made an unwarranted assumption: tight security would have stopped any outsiders getting through the net unobserved, true, but why had he blindly categorized Nigel Clark as such an outsider? The rawest recruit, given the opportunity Milton had had, would have asked Nigel about his movements on Monday—a matter of routine, whether or not the hypothetical investigator had known that Embankment Tower housed other enterprises besides offshoots of government.

  ‘Seems a bit odd, sir, that he didn’t mention it to you this morning.’

  Are you rubbing my nose in it, Romford? ‘It does indeed. He doesn’t have an alibi, and he must have known that if I knew where he worked I’d have questioned him about what he was doing. That young man is going to regret being shifty with me. Ring him up and tell him I want to see him here at 4.00 this afternoon. I should be finished with Jenkins well before that. Don’t accept any excuses, but don’t put the wind up him. You know how to handle it.’

  He returned to his papers, still fuming with himself. He wondered glumly how he was going to explain it away to the Assistant Commissioner. It wouldn’t be easily forgiven if he didn’t come up with a murderer pretty quickly.

  It was one o’clock—time he sent out for a sandwich. No, better make it two. He wouldn’t be eating until late that evening. Oh, Christ, it would be curry again. This was getting beyond a joke. Surely it wasn’t impossible to think of an alternative unfashionable restaurant with dim lighting and foreign waiters.

  Ten minutes later, he was biting into a soggy salad sandwich when his telephone rang.

  ‘May I speak to Superintendent Milton, please? It’s Robert Amiss here from the Department of Conservation.’

  ‘Good Lord, Robert. Aren’t you breaking cover?’

  ‘No, Jim. I’ve found something I can tell you about formally, for once. As you’re obviously alone, however, I’ll be able to pass on as well the illicit information I’ve been trying to speak to your wife about this morning.’

  Amiss was brief and to the point. J. Ritchie’s confidential investigations came as a bombshell to Milton. ‘Where did you find this?’ he choked, when he had taken details.

  ‘In the security cabinet in Sir Nicholas’s room.’

  ‘But we checked that. There was nothing of any importance in it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jim, but you overlooked this.’

  Milton’s humiliation was complete. ‘That’s the second bloomer I’ve made already on this case. I must be getting past it.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Jim. The receipt was buried in a pile of restaurant bills. I wouldn’t have spotted it if I hadn’t had a reason to go through them one by one.’

  Milton wasn’t much cheered up. ‘What’s your other information? Did we miss a signed confession lying on the floor beside the corpse?’

  Amiss told him what Phil had said about Nigel’s sexual proclivities. Milton toyed with the idea of blaming himself for not guessing that morning, but decided he had had enough self-flagellation for one afternoon.

  ‘It does give Nigel a possible motive, doesn’t it, Jim? Sir Nicholas would have gone wild if he had found out about this. He was incredibly bigoted about gays. Called them queers and believed they should all be locked up. Have you found out anything more about where Nigel was Monday lunchtime?’

  ‘I have indeed. Would you believe that he was in the building? He’s worked there for the last three months. He’s employed by a computer services company—they lease the tenth floor.’

  ‘Does he have an alibi?’


  ‘We don’t think so. No one from his office saw him around during the period we’re interested in. The constable who was checking the movements of the tenth-floor staff hadn’t been able to get hold of him. He hasn’t been to work since his mother rang him with the news on Monday afternoon, and his home telephone wasn’t being answered.’

  ‘Won’t he be with his mother?’

  ‘He is. I talked to him at her house this morning. The first bloomer I mentioned was that when I saw him I didn’t know where he worked and didn’t ask. I’ve been kicking myself about that for the last half-hour.’

  Amiss muttered sympathies and rang off. He felt thankful that he was working in a job where a minor cock-up didn’t usually threaten one’s career. Milton would be in deep trouble if it emerged that Nigel was the double murderer. There were those who would blame the police for Gladys’s death.

  He spent the time before Sanders’s arrival dealing with routine paper work with an attention to detail which was uncharacteristic of him. Normally the polished pointlessness of most of the prose he had to read led him to skim it at maximum speed. At present, though, he couldn’t afford any lapses which might draw attention to his preoccupation with the murders. The civil service expected its staff to work normally, whatever was happening around them. It didn’t matter if your wife was having a baby, the government had fallen, there was a threatened war or your clerical assistant had been murdered. Your job was to maintain an impassive exterior and carry on as usual; displays of emotion made you suspect. Amiss had a mental image of the kind of bureaucracy which would emerge in the bunkers after a nuclear holocaust. He could see the surviving civil servants sitting round drafting and redrafting emergency instructions, with as fine an attention as ever to detached prose and literate wording.

  Phil had been despatched for sandwiches. He returned, grumbling about being ‘a bloody body-servant’. Amiss enquired politely if the pressure of work was too much for him.

  ‘There’s sod-all to do. I’ve spent an hour looking for the appointments diary. Can’t find it anywhere. Do you fink they’re burying it wiv Gladys so she can carry it into the next world?’

  ‘It’s probably in Sanders’s office.’

  ‘I’ve looked.’

  ‘Well, it’ll turn up,’ said Amiss absently. ‘It’s probably been stuffed in a drawer.’ His mind had gone back to Nigel Clark. He could hardly wait to hear how Milton’s interview with him went. He didn’t know how he could get through the afternoon meetings when all he could think about was what Milton would have to tell him that night.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Milton had better things to do than think about the evening. He was on his way to see J. Ritchie. This meant yet another alteration to his time-table. Jenkins and Nigel Clark had each had to be postponed by an hour, and Alf Shaw, who had already been put off twice, had agreed rather peevishly to be interviewed the following morning. He couldn’t manage the early evening.

  Milton wondered if he wasn’t making a mistake in insisting on seeing all the principals himself. He could have used one of his inspectors for Ritchie and Shaw. But he was stubbornly convinced still that only by seeing all these people himself could he build up the picture of Sir Nicholas which was essential to understanding why he was murdered. He’d better be right. The Assistant Commissioner had said a few ominous words about the time he was taking to see everyone concerned. Milton had had to fudge the issue of why he had been apparently knocking off work at between eight and nine o’clock every evening. The A.C. would have been happier if he could point to a record of activity going on to midnight, he thought sourly. He had been only partially mollified by Milton’s excuse—that he was spending his late evenings going over the day’s evidence and devising his questions for the next day’s interviews. The A.C. had admitted grudgingly that this policy had paid off and that Milton’s homework and intuition seemed to be having unexpectedly good results.

  Ritchie’s office was rather less squalid than Milton had expected. He was obviously a rather up-market private ­detective. He inhabited a small set of rooms in a slightly decaying Edwardian office block in Kensington. But, if a trifle shabby, they were at least clean and comfortable. Ritchie himself was a tall, bland young man, dressed in the jeans, sweater and parti-coloured crepe-soled shoes that constituted the work, weekend and evening dress of the young Kensington male.

  He looked vaguely familiar. As Milton introduced himself and sat down he became convinced he had seen Ritchie before—wearing a rather more formal outfit. Ritchie smiled.

  ‘You won’t remember me, Superintendent, but I was briefly a C.I.D. sergeant when you were an inspector working on the Rutland Square murders.’

  Milton wondered if Ritchie was another disgraced copper setting himself up in the only trade he knew. No, he couldn’t be. Sackings were so rare at the Yard that the people involved became a nine days’ wonder. He now remembered Ritchie slightly as an unremarkable but reasonably efficient officer.

  ‘You left about five years ago, then?’

  ‘Four, actually. I couldn’t stand it any more. I’ve never enjoyed having to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”. And besides, there wasn’t much money to be made in the police force. I set up on my own with my gratuity and I’m making twice as much now as I’d be making as an inspector.’

  Milton decided he didn’t like him. Too bloody cocky. He didn’t like private detectives at the best of times. Most of them made their money out of that very messing with people’s private lives that caused Milton his occasional bouts of self-disgust.

  He forced a smile. ‘I’m glad things have worked out well for you.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve been luckier than I expected. You’d have thought that the liberalizing of the divorce laws would have spoiled the market, but you’d be amazed how many people still prefer the good old-fashioned contested divorce with mud being flung in all directions. There are enough suspicious wives in Kensington to keep me in work for years.’

  ‘Well, as I told you on the telephone, I’ve come to find out what work you’ve been doing for Sir Nicholas Clark, who, I suppose, was a suspicious husband.’

  ‘And father,’ laughed Ritchie.

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Yeah. He had me trailing the two of them.’

  ‘Can you tell me about it from the beginning?’

  ‘O.K. I don’t mind breaking confidentiality to help the course of justice.’

  Milton thought Ritchie would be more likely to break it for the good of his wallet. ‘If you’re that keen, why did you wait for us to find you?’

  Ritchie looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, yeah. Fair point. But I didn’t see anything in the paper about the wife or son having been around when he was murdered, so I thought my info would be irrelevant.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Milton. ‘Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if you cooperate fully now. I’m sure you’ll recognize the value of maintaining good relations with the police.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Ritchie. ‘Here goes. He was a funny fellow, Sir Nicholas. Rang me up out of the blue. Said he’d got my number from the yellow pages. Started by asking me if I was one of those seedy little fellows in a dirty mac who could be spotted a mile away by anyone they were trailing. I had to use my poshest accent to convince him he wouldn’t be soiling himself by employing me.’

  ‘Did you meet?’

  ‘No. It was all done by phone and post. He sent me photographs and said he’d ring me in a few days to check progress.’

  ‘When did he first approach you?’

  Ritchie consulted his diary. ‘The Wednesday before last.’

  ‘You must have worked fast to have had your bill in and paid last week.’

  ‘I did. It only took a couple of days. I was able to give him the goods on the two of them when he rang me last Monday week. It was all very easy. I trailed the w
ife first, and, as luck would have it, spotted her holding hands with a fellow over dinner in a secluded restaurant. Followed him home after that and was waiting outside the next morning when he went off to work. It was easy to get his name. When he had gone into his office building I just asked the doorman who he was. Said I thought he was familiar looking. Sir Nicholas got a nasty shock when I told him his wife was all lovey-dovey with Martin Jenkins. I didn’t think there were still people around who used words like “gutter-snipe”.’

  ‘He didn’t want you to find out if they were having an affair?’

  ‘No. I offered to go on trailing her in the hope of getting some real dirt—hotel registers and that sort of thing. But he didn’t seem interested. I thought that was funny. I’d assumed he was looking for divorce evidence.’

  ‘What about Nigel?’

  ‘That was easy, too. Sir Nicholas was at home on the Friday night, so I knew his missus wouldn’t be likely to sneak off again. I followed Nigel instead. Landed up at a gay pub off the Charing Cross Road. Young Nigel spent most of the evening gazing into the eyes of a big butch guy. Saw them kissing once. I followed his boyfriend home and got his address. Then all I had to do was wait till Monday and ring up my mate in the Post Office who helps me out sometimes and ask him to get me the name of the subscriber who lived there. Ronald Maitland, it was. Sir Nicholas seemed to recognize that name too.’

  ‘Do you think he had suspected that Nigel was involved with a man?’

  ‘I suppose so. All he had asked me to do was to find out where Nigel went in the evenings and who he was socializing with. When he heard he’d been kissing Maitland he didn’t want me to do any more work for him. Said he’d got all he wanted, and would I send in the bill.’

  ‘Three hundred pounds seems a bit high for the amount of work you did.’

  Ritchie was confident enough by now to let a smirk pass over his face.