by James R Benn
“Indeed,” Great Aunt Sylvia said. “It would be a silly way to go, in any case. Tell me, Baron Kazimierz, have you family in Poland? It must be quite difficult for them, from what I hear.”
“No, Lady Pemberton,” Kaz said in a low voice. “I do not.” The only sound that followed was Edgar tapping the shell of his soft-boiled egg. After a few minutes, the idle chitchat picked up again. Kaz and I excused ourselves and made for the jeep.
Family was a hard subject for Kaz. His was wiped out by the Nazis after the invasion of Poland. They had been wealthy—far wealthier than the residents of Ashcroft House—and his father had had the foresight to transfer the family fortune to a Swiss bank in case of war. He hadn’t foreseen how quickly the war would be at his doorstep, however, and had missed his chance to leave the country. The Kazimierz family had been murdered as part of the Nazi plan to exterminate the intelligentsia. Businessmen, aristocrats, lawyers, and anyone who might resist were ruthlessly slaughtered. Kaz had had no relatives to squabble with and no one but me to confide in since he was maimed in the explosion that had killed Daphne Seaton.
It was our first case together. Kaz lost the love of his life and got that scar as a daily reminder. He took chances and sought death after that, but he was too damn lucky to find it. Since then, he’s hung around to keep me out of trouble, I think. It’s a good thing for him that trouble seems always to be right around the corner.
Maybe I should revise that bit about Kaz having no one else but me. There is a princess in Rome, but she’s part of the underground, and he won’t be seeing her anytime too soon. Again, it’s a long story, but she deserves a mention. Sometimes broken hearts do heal.
“A hospitable bunch, but strange nonetheless,” I said, if only to break the silence as we headed down the long driveway.
“I admit there are undercurrents of tension within the family,” Kaz said. “That is clear. The question is, does it have anything to do with why David wanted me to visit?”
“It wasn’t just for old times’ sake?” We drove through the muddy streets of North Cornworthy, and I noticed the mill this time, down from the bridge that spanned Bow Creek. That was where Great Aunt Sylvia’s grandfather supposedly put his own sweat into the construction.
“I do not know,” Kaz said. “I think there must be something he wants to talk about. He seemed to relax when we said we’d stay, did you notice? Or it could have been the strain from his injuries. He is recuperating, after all, and still on sick leave. Perhaps it was a wave of pain that passed.”
“Having a wife who can’t look you in the face could cause a lot of pain,” I said. “You didn’t know Helen at all?”
“No,” Kaz said. “I hadn’t met her before. Whenever David mentioned her in his letters, it was what you’d expect. She was wonderful, he couldn’t believe how lucky he was, that sort of thing.”
“Some people are fine when the going is easy,” I said. “Wealthy girl gets a dashing, blond-haired RAF pilot who went to Oxford. Fairy-tale stuff. As long as the fairy tale plays out, she’s the perfect wife. But then reality comes along when his fighter goes down, and the charming prince isn’t quite so charming anymore. Life gets tough, and she doesn’t know how to handle it, so she hides out on his left side.”
“You could be correct,” Kaz said. “And if so, I don’t know what David might expect me to do about it. Perhaps he doesn’t want her to look at his burns, did you think of that?”
“It didn’t look that way to me,” I said. “She was the one moving around to his good side, far as I could tell. Either way, he might want a shoulder to cry on. Ashcroft may not provide many sympathetic listeners, especially when it concerns one of their own.”
“We shall see,” Kaz said. We drew closer to the River Dart and heard the blast of a steam locomotive from the opposite bank. The green hills rose above the rail line as the engine pulled its long load toward the coast. “You know, our dead chap could have come from anywhere. He could have come from the north of England on that very train, got into a dispute, and been shot and dumped in the water that same day.”
“Meaning we should widen the search?”
“Yes,” Kaz said. “Contact Scotland Yard as well. If we assume he wasn’t in the military, that narrows it down quite a bit. About thirty years of age, in decent condition, and engaged in a business that involves violence.”
“You’re right,” I said, following his lead. “He might have had a criminal record that would have kept him out of the service. Good thinking, Kaz. Let’s see what Inspector Grange has to say, and then we’ll follow up, maybe call Inspector Scutt at the Yard.”
I’d worked with Detective Inspector Horace Scutt of Scotland Yard a while ago. We hadn’t seen eye to eye at first, but he was a good cop, and I trusted him. He was beyond retirement age, staying on for the duration. It had to be tough, dealing with a war and thousands of rowdy servicemen when you should have been tending roses or doing whatever coppers do when they turn in their badges.
We threaded our way through Dartmouth traffic, mostly military, and sought out Inspector Grange at the Devon Constabulary. This time we were lucky.
“Glad to help, for what it’s worth,” Inspector Grange said when we’d explained our assignment. He gestured toward two chairs in front of his desk and flopped down into his own. He was stout, with a thick grey moustache and even thicker eyebrows. He looked tired as he fired up his pipe. “I heard you chaps got caught up in that mess at Slapton Sands. God-awful.”
“The only good thing is that it was a rehearsal, not the real thing,” Kaz said. “Do you have any further information on our corpse from the beach?”
“I suspect you know as much as I do, if you’ve talked to Dr. Verniquet.” He puffed to get the bowl hot and blew out a stream of smoke that filled the room with an aroma of ashtrays and wet socks.
“Guy about thirty, shot in the arm and then the head, in the water for three to four months,” I said. “No missing person reports that match?”
“None from Devon, that much we know,” Grange said. “Of course, that could be meaningless. It could be a local no one cared to report, or an outsider no one wanted to.”
“Do you know many male civilians of that age who wouldn’t be missed?” I said. “It’s not like he was an old man off in the woods.”
“I agree, Captain Boyle,” Grange said. “If he had been local and unmarried, there would certainly have been a lady or two who noticed, what with most of the eligible men gone.”
“And if he were married, his wife would have reported him,” Kaz said.
“Yes,” Grange said. “Although perhaps not, if she was the one who killed him.”
“A wife would be more likely to shoot him in the heart,” I said. “Not the head.”
“I’ll take your word for that, Captain,” Grange said with a friendly smile. “But as it stands, I have nothing of value to report. I sent out word to the rest of the constabulary to ask around again about any man missing for a month or more. Pity there wasn’t enough of the face left to use for a description.”
“I know Detective Inspector Scutt at Scotland Yard,” I said. “Would you mind if I contacted him to see if he has any information about anyone fitting the description?”
“Go ahead, if he’ll act on it,” Grange said, waving his pipe. “It’s doubtful our chief constable would request assistance from the Yard for a minor case like this, but if you can get Scutt to assist informally, I’m all for it.”
“Thanks, Inspector,” I said. “I don’t want to cause any problems.”
“No problem if we get some help on this, Captain Boyle. We’re short-staffed here, and we have it better than most.”
“Why is that?” Kaz asked.
“Oh, the South Hams,” Grange said. “When the government evacuated those villages, we absorbed the constables to help us cover the rest of Devon. Even so, we’re short of younger men. Plenty of oldtimers like me, not short on experience. But stamina, that’s harder to come by. Many
of our lads enlisted as soon as they could, and I can’t blame them. But it leaves us in the lurch, especially with so many army and navy chaps coming in. Royal Navy, US Army, it doesn’t matter, they all want to have a good time when they get a pass, and there’s the devil to pay some nights. Plus we’ve had a rash of burglaries lately. A few well-to-do ladies have had their jewelry pinched.”
“What about the War Reserve Constables?” I asked. “Tom Quick seems pretty sharp. He was a constable before the war, he said.”
“Ah yes, Tom Quick is a good man,” Grange said.
“Why is he not a regular constable?” Kaz asked. “His limp did not appear too bad.”
“Limp?” Grange said. “Oh, his limp. I couldn’t tell you. Dr. Verniquet decides who’s fit enough for what. Now, anything else I can do for you?”
There wasn’t. Not that he had done anything in the first place.
“That was odd, about the limp,” Kaz said as we left the building.
“Yeah. He acted as if he’d never heard that was the reason Quick wasn’t on the regular force,” I said.
“And then he covered his tracks,” Kaz said. “Not that it matters. But it bothers you?”
“Everything that doesn’t make sense bothers me, Kaz. What’s the story with Tom Quick? Where does all the tension at Ashcroft come from?”
“Not to mention our dead body,” Kaz said as we got into the jeep.
“No,” I said, my hand draped over the steering wheel as I looked out over all the ships anchored off Darmouth harbor. Destroyers clustered at the center of the river, and smaller landing craft huddled close by the docks. Fairmile Motor Torpedo Boats cruised out toward the Channel, the throaty rumble of their engines echoing against the hills across the wide river. “The body doesn’t bother me. A guy was killed, floated around for a while, and then washed up at Slapton Sands. It makes sense. All we need to do is reconstruct what happened before he took a couple of slugs. Quick and the crew at Ashcroft, they’re all unanswered questions and confusion. They all have secrets. The dead body is just an unknown. There’s a big difference.”
“I see your point,” Kaz said. “But it is none of our business, really. Whether Quick has a limp or not, what David wants, why the overall tension at Ashcroft: these are all merely curiosities. Colonel Harding will want a report on our progress on the actual case, Billy.”
“We’ve been going about this all wrong,” I said, turning to look at Kaz. I think he’d been lecturing me, but I hadn’t listened too much after the word business. “Most murders are about love or money. Assume money in this case. A criminal enterprise. So who should we talk to? A county detective is going to be as much help as a fisherman. We need to talk to a crook.”
“Not that fellow in London,” Kaz said. “The one who has the gang in Shoreditch?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what sort of reception I’d get. I’m thinking of Razor Fraser.”
“The solicitor?” Kaz said.
“Yep. And he’s closer than London, to boot,” I said. Stanley Fraser was a lawyer whose clients were mainly known criminals. I’d questioned him on our last case, but it had turned out he had nothing to do with the crime in question. There’s always a first time.
“Why would he help?” Kaz said.
“I’ll try the carrot, and carry a big stick,” I said. Fraser was based in Hungerford, more than halfway to London, but it was the only idea I had. He was connected to several major gangs, according to the police inspector who had come along for that last interview. Razor—so called because he got a client declared innocent after witnesses had seen him slit the throat of his victim—knew things. And one thing I’d picked up on was that he craved respectability. Maybe I could use that. If he knew anything—and it didn’t mean selling out a rich client—he might go for it.
“We should get started,” Kaz said. “It’s a long drive.”
“I’ll go. You can spend some time with your buddy and snoop around Ashcroft,” I said with a grin. I wanted Kaz to know I was joking, but I wouldn’t mind if he dug up anything on the cast of characters in that family, just for laughs.
Kaz went to check the train schedules, and I returned to the police station. I told Grange I needed to use the telephone. He probably assumed I was calling Scotland Yard, because he let me use his office, telling the switchboard operator to put my call through. The operator made the connection, and after Fraser calmed down and I explained that this was strictly off the record, he agreed to see me that afternoon.
“You’re in luck,” Kaz said as we rendezvoused at the jeep. “A ferry leaves in ten minutes, and the train stops at Hungerford. If you don’t spend too long there you can make it back this evening.” The Dartmouth ferry shuttled people across the river directly to the station at Kingswear, which cut down on travel time. I figured two hours in Hungerford would be more than enough, so Kaz planned to pick me up later that night.
I paid my fare at the Dartmouth ticket booth and half an hour later settled in to a Great Western Railways car with the local newspaper. The big news was that the British government had banned travel and communications for all neutral diplomats. No more coded messages in diplomatic pouches, no flights to other countries where secrets could be passed on. The government had given no reason, but they didn’t have to. D-Day. No one was taking any chances on a neutral diplomat friendly to the Germans getting out with any information about where or when.
It made me feel better about our case. If Great Britain was violating centuries of international law for security purposes, then maybe identifying this corpse was worth our time. It remained to be seen whether Razor Fraser agreed.
CHAPTER TEN
FRASER’S PLACE WAS a short walk from the train station on a quiet residential street. I still had a bit of a limp, and my arm was stiffening up, but a brisk walk felt good. Fraser worked in one side of a semi-detached and lived in the other. A gleaming brass plaque marked the office entrance, and as I opened the door I tried to recall the name of his receptionist. What I did remember was her manicure. She’d spent most of her time filing her nails, and I doubted she did much typing with them.
It didn’t matter. Sitting at the receptionist’s desk was Mrs. Fraser herself. Her nails weren’t as perfect as her predecessor’s, but she was actually working, typing away at a rapid pace.
“Right on time, Captain Boyle,” she said. “So nice to see you again.”
“Same to you, Mrs. Fraser. I didn’t expect to see you at work. You’re pretty fast with those keys.”
“I worked in an office before we were married,” she said. “And I got bored sitting around, doing nothing. Now Stanley and I are together all day, and we save on the expense, of course.” She smiled, queen of her domain, having vanquished the competition.
“That sounds great,” I said, wondering what Stanley thought about the staffing change. “Is he available?”
“Yes, go right in. But you’ve only got twenty minutes. We’ve got a new client coming in and you’ll have to be done by then. A local, law-abiding client, I am pleased to say.” She looked quite pleased indeed.
“They’re the best kind,” I said, and went in.
“What’s this all about?” Fraser said as I sat across from him.
“What happened to the previous receptionist? Too receptive?” I figured if he was going to give me a hard time, I’d give it right back.
“She went off with a Yank,” he said. “Dorothy and I decided to put her skills to use. It’s worked out well for us.”
“That must be dandy,” I said. Stanley Fraser was a man with too much around the middle and not enough on top, but he dressed up well. He adjusted his cuff links and straightened his tie. His suit looked expensive; he certainly wasn’t making do with worn-out clothes. “Actually, I’m here to ask for your help.”
“Do you need a lawyer, Captain Boyle? If not, then I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Listen, Mr. Fraser,” I said, hoping to score points for not calling
him Razor. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m not here to cause trouble for you. I’m only seeking your assistance.”
“All right,” Fraser said, sighing and leaning back in his chair. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I’m trying to identify the body of a man about thirty years old, probably a civilian. He washed up on the beach at Slapton Sands a few days ago.”
“What makes you think I would know about a dead body?” Fraser said. “Are you accusing me?”
“No, not at all,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s imperative that we find out who this person is, in order to rule out any possibility of an enemy agent having gained access to a highly restricted area.” That got his attention.
“Did this person drown?” Fraser said.
“Murdered,” I said. “Shot.” I went over what we knew from the body and the movements of the tides.
“So if this was a German spy, the worry is that others might have been in the restricted area as well?” He leaned forward in his chair, caught up in the drama.
“Exactly. We can’t find any record of a missing person who matches his description. The problem we have is obvious, Mr. Fraser. Was this person a spy? If so, we must assume his confederates saw or learned things we don’t want the Nazis to know, especially with the invasion of France right around the corner.”
“Therefore,” Fraser said, steepling his fingers in front of him, “if he was a spy, you’ll have to put a lot of man power into the hunt for others. But if you can determine that he was something else, then that takes the heat off you.”
“It’s for the war effort, Mr. Fraser, not me. The boys who will be storming the beaches.”
“Yes, yes, quite,” Fraser said, waving away the distinction. “This is where I must say I have no idea why you’ve come to me, and that none of my clients would be involved in any sinister criminal activity.”
“Consider it said.”
“You’ve talked about wanting to identify this body,” Fraser said. “Nothing about apprehending the killer.”
“That is secondary at this point,” I said. I thought Fraser might pick up on that distinction, with his lawyer’s gift for legal nitpicking.
