Waxwork

by Peter Lovesey

  He knew if she heard about this she would jump to the wrong conclusion. She would think the Commissioner had singled him out because he was the best detective in the force. Millie had never doubted it, always believed they were on the point of promoting him. It was no use telling her Warren had gone to Jowett because he was the Judas of Monro’s team and Jowett in a blue fit had blurted the first name that sprang to his lips.

  Cribb was a realist. After seventeen years on a sergeant’s rank, it would take fireworks on the Crystal Palace scale to get him lifted.

  He had decided to start with Inspector Waterlow. When he looked up the address of the police station at Kew he found an asterisk against the entry. The footnote below stated Not continuously manned. A memory of Waterlow as a constable excusing himself from the beat flitted into Cribb’s mind. He drew a long breath, picked up the valise containing the papers on the Cromer case and walked out of Scotland Yard with a maltreated look in his eye.

  He took a train from Waterloo on the London and South Western.

  He was the only passenger to alight at Kew Gardens. The platform was deserted. Nobody collected his ticket. It was a good thing he needed no help with directions. The address was Station Approach.

  Before leaving the booking hall his eye caught a name among the posters advertising local businesses.

  HOWARD CROMER

  PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST

  PARK LODGE, KEW GREEN

  The highest class of photographs reproduced under

  ordinary conditions of light. Sittings by appointment.

  Portraits, cabinet and carte-de-visite, family

  groups and wedding parties a speciality.

  In pencil, somebody had added Funerals Arranged.

  Station Approach was broad and shaded by trees. The police station was located above a chemist’s. Access was up an iron staircase at the side. Cribb opened a door badly in need of paint.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ said a tall, callow constable holding a large ginger cat in his arms. ‘Not a bad day at all. Capital for Ascot. What can we do for you?’

  ‘You can tell Inspector Waterlow, if he is in, that Sergeant Cribb of Statistics would like a word with him.’

  The cat was dropped like a stone.

  ‘Statistics. Yes, Sergeant. Very good. I’ll tell him this minute.’ He opened a door behind the desk just enough to put his head and shoulder round. A murmured, agitated exchange took place. He closed the door and turned back to Cribb. ‘The Inspector won’t be a moment, Sergeant.’ He busied himself with some pieces of paper.

  ‘This your animal?’ Cribb inquired. The cat was leaning on his shins.

  ‘Just a stray, Sergeant,’ the constable answered unconvincingly. ‘We get a lot of them, being next to the butcher’s. When you came in, I was ascertaining whether it had a collar, for identification.’

  ‘I hope you’ve got it in the occurrence book,’ said Cribb tartly.

  A bald head and shoulders appeared round the door, hands fastening the top buttons of an inspector’s tunic. ‘Cribb, it really is you,’ said Inspector Waterlow. ‘What are you waiting there for? Come inside, man.’

  The cat was inside first. It hopped on to the window sill and settled proprietorially in the sun. Inspector Waterlow made no attempt to remove it.

  Slimly built, with ferocious eyebrows to compensate for baldness, he had altered little in the ten years since Cribb had seen him. The set of his head on an over-long, narrow neck still unaccountably irked.

  ‘Stoke Newington, wasn’t it?’ he said unnecessarily. ‘By George, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those days. Busy times. Sit down, won’t you? Have a spell in the armchair. I don’t suppose you get much time for that. Where are you now?’

  The chair was warm from a recent sitter. ‘The Yard. Statistics Branch, sir.’ Some evasion was necessary with Waterlow.

  ‘Out of the action, then? My word, you’ve earned a turn behind a desk if anyone has. Do you mean to say they haven’t made you up to inspector yet?’

  ‘I had two commendations a couple of years back. That’s all.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Inspector Waterlow, more to the cat than Cribb. He was stroking its head with his forefinger. ‘Confidentially, promotion in the force is a lottery, old boy. I’m the first to admit I was no great shakes as a copper. Got my name mentioned in the right quarters just the same—hang it, there had to be some compensation for all the paper-work I did. Soon after you left, I got my stripes. But I didn’t see myself as a sergeant, so I er’—he removed his forefinger from the cat and tapped the side of his head—‘submitted a practical suggestion to the Commissioner: to give up issuing truncheon-cases and have a truncheon-pocket sewn into the uniform instead. As you know, it was acted upon two years ago, and I was made up to inspector.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a lottery to me.’

  ‘You’re right. I owe it to my inventive mind,’ said Waterlow smugly.

  ‘Where did you go as inspector?’

  Waterlow grinned sheepishly. ‘I did a rather calamitous tour of duty at Bow Street. After that they sent me to Kew. I must say, I find it more agreeable than central London.’

  Cribb murmured agreement from the armchair and pondered the vagaries of fate.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Waterlow casually inquired. ‘No problem over my statistics, I hope? There isn’t a great amount of crime here, you will appreciate. A few incidents in the Royal Botanic Gardens—pilfering orchids, and so forth. We had an indecent exposure in the Water Lily House last month, but I can’t in all conscience say we make many arrests. The most exciting thing in years was the poisoning in Kew Green last spring. No doubt you heard. I sorted it out myself. The wife did it, of course. She confessed before the trial. Facing facts, you see. By then I had a cast-iron case against her.’

  ‘Nice work, sir.’ Cribb beamed at Waterlow. This was the opening he needed. ‘As it happens, the Kew Green poisoning is what brings me out here. Someone in the Yard has the notion that we could detect crime more efficiently if we kept a fuller record of felonies committed in the past. As you know, the present practice is to list the number of felonies committed under different headings—housebreaking, robbery with violence, arson and so on. That’s a help, but it doesn’t tell us what time most burglaries are committed, or what class of person raises fires.’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘It could be useful, sir. We don’t know if it’s feasible yet. Between ourselves, it’s going to mean the devil of a lot of work in Statistics Branch. Be that as it may, I’ve been asked to see if I can get the salient facts about a crime and reduce them to a row of columns. If we can get our columns right, we can do anything in Statistics. I’m starting with murder. From all I’ve heard, your Kew Green case was a copybook investigation.’

  Waterlow went pink. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that. It’s decent of you to say so, of course.’

  ‘A classic of its kind,’ eulogised Cribb. ‘Ideal for my purpose. You won’t find it tedious telling me how you nabbed Mrs Miriam Cromer?’

  Benignly, Waterlow answered, ‘I am gratified to know that my little investigation is of any consequence.’

  ‘The cornerstone, so far as I am concerned,’ said Cribb, seeing there was no limit to the flattery Waterlow could absorb. ‘Will it trouble you, sir, if I take notes?’

  ‘Not in the least. Where would you like to begin?’

  ‘At the point when the police were called to the house. I understand you personally were the first member of the force on the scene.’

  ‘Yes, I had a hand in this from the outset,’ Waterlow confirmed, and his voice took on the compelling tone of the anecdotist with a good tale to tell. ‘It was a Monday afternoon in March, towards five o’clock, a fine day, as I remember, still light. I was clipping my front hedge. I have my own house in Maze Road, if you follow, and I generally take Monday afternoon to catch up on my gardening. The station is not continuously manned, thank Heaven. There I was, then, tidying
up the privet, when a girl in servant’s dress came running up the road and told me I was wanted urgently at Park Lodge. Fortunately Dr Eagle knows my habits and sent the girl direct to my house with the news that the man Perceval was dead. It’s a matter of two or three minutes from Maze Road to Kew Green, so I was there directly. When I arrived, Eagle was attending to Mrs Cromer in her room. It seems she had passed out from the shock. I went straight to the processing room where the body was. All in all, Cribb, my career has not brought me face to face with death too often, but I saw at once that Perceval had not gone peacefully. The poor fellow had kicked off a shoe and torn his clothes in his agony, besides rucking up the carpet and knocking over a chair. I found a wine glass lying on its side on the floor, so the possibility of poison suggested itself to me even before Dr Eagle came in and gave his diagnosis. He’s an old stager, you know, sharp as a winkle-pin. “Hold on to that glass,” he said. “I’ll stake my reputation there’s cyanide in it.” He took me to the poison cabinet and showed me the bottle of the stuff, more than half empty.’

  ‘Was the cabinet unlocked?’

  ‘No. We had to take the keys out of the dead man’s pocket to get the damned thing open. But old Eagle told me he had already had the cabinet open once. As soon as he had sniffed the cyanide, the old boy had asked Miriam Cromer where it was kept. She had shown him. He had to take the keys out of Perceval’s trouser pocket for her to unlock the cabinet. You know, that struck me as peculiar at the time, that a man committing suicide would put the poison bottle back in the cabinet and lock it again. Anyway, after Dr Eagle had checked the contents of the cabinet he locked it and put the keys back in the pocket, to leave the scene of the crime exactly as he found it. For my benefit, you see.’

  ‘And you presumed it was a case of suicide?’

  ‘Just as you would have done, Sergeant,’ said Waterlow, piqued. ‘Perceval had been alone in the studio all afternoon. But make a note of this for your columns. I took possession of the wine glass and the poison for analysis, and—most importantly, as it turned out—the three decanters. They weren’t in an obvious position, you know. I found them locked in a small sideboard—chiffonier, I remember they called it in court. Two days later I heard from the analyst that the madeira was laced with cyanide. It quite transformed the course of my inquiry. Up to then I had taken it that Perceval had done away with himself. I was busy collecting evidence about his financial affairs. He was in deep with the bookies at the time of his death. Seventy pounds, give or take a few. That’s half a year’s wages for a fellow in his job.’

  ‘Mine, too.’

  Waterlow was too deep in his narrative to take note of Cribb’s admission. ‘Plenty have committed suicide for less. I think it would have satisfied a coroner’s jury. But once I heard there was poison in the decanter, I had to ask myself what could account for that. Am I going too fast?’

  ‘I’m keeping up,’ said Cribb. ‘You realised someone else was responsible for the poisoning.’

  ‘Exactly. If Perceval had poisoned himself, he wouldn’t have put cyanide in the decanter. He would have put it straight into the wine glass. There was no question of it, Cribb—I had a case of murder on my hands. That’s a devil of a thing to discover when you’re the man in charge of a station, with other responsibilities and precious little assistance. Possibly I should have asked the C.I.D. for help, but, dash it, I didn’t want the Yard taking over my office. And candidly I considered I was capable of handling the case myself. As I saw it, the murderer had to be a member of the household at Park Lodge. Already I had checked that there were no visitors on the day of the murder. Mr Howard Cromer was in Brighton. Unless he had tampered with the decanter before he left, only his wife or the servants could have done it. I made an appointment to visit Park Lodge, asking that every member of the household should be available to answer questions.’ Waterlow gave a sigh. ‘In retrospect, I can see that I should not have let them know that I was coming.’

  ‘Was someone not available?’

  ‘No, they were all present, but so was Allingham, the family solicitor. I would have got a lot more done without him. He knows his job, does young Allingham. I had met him already on the day of the murder. He was present when I interviewed Miriam Cromer the first time. I believe Dr Eagle had sent for him, the wily old cove. Well, on this occasion Allingham raised so many objections to my questions that he came close to obstructing me in the course of my duty. You may find this difficult to believe, but it took over an hour to establish who had filled the blasted decanter, and at what time.’

  ‘Miriam Cromer?’

  Waterlow nodded. ‘By sheer persistence I managed to extract the information. She admitted it was a regular task of hers—responsibility, she called it—filling the decanters after the wine arrived on Monday mornings. By Friday they were empty, so there was a standing order with the wine merchant. On the day of the murder the wine arrived at noon and she went with it to the studio as usual.’

  ‘Was Perceval working there?’

  ‘So she told me. In the next room, the processing room, where the poison cabinet was situated. It was obvious that she couldn’t have obtained the cyanide while he was working there—if she was telling the truth. As Perceval was dead, I could not confirm the statement. Clever. The solicitor made damned sure she didn’t say any more. Anything else would have to be discovered by patient detective work.’

  ‘Did you question the others, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I told you Cromer spent the day in Brighton at a conference. The three servants, all females, didn’t venture upstairs until they felt they couldn’t ignore the racket Perceval was making in his convulsions. Cromer doesn’t like his clients to see the domestics, so they were supposed to keep below stairs. By the time they got to him, the poor beggar was paralysed and bereft of speech. That’s about all I got from the servants, except the alibis they provided for each other. Oh, they did confirm that there wasn’t a visitor to the house all day, apart from tradesmen. There was only one conclusion I could draw, and that was that Miriam Cromer was a murderess.’ Waterlow paused for dramatic effect. ‘You can imagine my predicament, Cribb. Here was a respectable married woman of the genteel class, or not far short of it. Their neighbours are people like the Duchess of Cambridge. A Major-General lives next door and the Director-General of Kew Gardens is close by. You can’t ask people of that class whether they have noticed anything irregular.’

  ‘You must have gone back to the servants.’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming to that,’ Waterlow peevishly said. ‘I did, and I don’t mind telling you that I managed it without creating the least suspicion in the family. Two of the servants lived in, but a third, a housemaid of thirteen named Margaret Booth, resided in Brentford. “Resided” isn’t quite the word now that I recall the squalor of the street, but that’s of no importance. Margaret had been warned by Allingham in peril of her job not to make a statement of any kind to the police.’ He gave a belly-laugh. ‘Young Margaret wasn’t prepared for me to be seated in her own parlour beside her father when she came home. The old man describes himself as a docker. If you ask me, the only dock he regularly sees is the one at Brentford Police Court. He is habitually drunk. I was lucky to find him vertical, more or less, when I picked him up at the pub on the corner. By the time his daughter Margaret came home, I made sure Albert Booth was a sober and frightened man, and so was his wife. They were convinced I would get him sent down for three months’ hard if I didn’t get cooperation. Margaret’s resistance didn’t last long. She gave me what I wanted: a tolerable account of Miriam Cromer and her dealings with Josiah Perceval.’

  ‘She knew about the blackmail, did she?’

  ‘Lord, no, nothing so helpful as that. She told me that it was no secret below stairs that Mrs Cromer had a strong dislike for Perceval. Nobody knew why exactly, just that it had got worse in recent weeks. There were sometimes arguments upstairs when Mr Cromer was out, and Perceval seemed to get the better of them, which surprised the servants. T
hey had thought of their mistress as iron-willed, more than a match for the likes of Perceval. What was said was not audible in the servants’ quarters, but they could tell when voices were raised, and they also knew by the state of Mrs Cromer’s eyes when she had been reduced to tears. That was as much as I got from Margaret Booth about what went on upstairs, but’—Waterlow beamed in self-congratulation—‘I persuaded her to talk about the other servants.’

  Cribb tried to appear impressed. Waterlow in the old days had put in less time on the beat than anyone at Stoke Newington. The titbits of gossip any bright young constable picked up automatically from making conversation at doorways were outside his experience. He had never been invited in for a slice of rabbit pie in his life. So it was a triumph to have coaxed a few confidences from Margaret Booth. Cribb listened and made an occasional note. He could raise no interest in how the housekeeper embezzled the accounts and what the parlourmaid got up to with the grocer’s boy. He wanted to know about Miriam Cromer.

  What was she like, this woman who would hang unless he found a flaw in her confession? In any regular investigation he would have started by interviewing her, forming an impression of her character. There was more to detective work than clues and statements. It involved people, their ambitions and fears, innocence and guilt. You needed solid evidence to determine the truth, but you could divine a lot by meeting them face to face. Whatever had happened that afternoon in Park Lodge, the question for Cribb was whether Miriam Cromer had done what she claimed. She was the focus of his investigation, but because authority deemed it inappropriate he was prevented from meeting her. He was obliged to glean what he could at second hand, from people whose recollection would be coloured by their own conceits and prejudices. Waterlow was the first.