by Graham Ison
Quilter suddenly detected a warning signal. ‘Good heavens, no! I can’t be responsible for what my clients do, Sergeant. They are adults, after all, and I certainly wouldn’t brook that sort of behaviour in the club. I mean, it’s only tittle-tattle that I’m repeating. If I was aware of such goings on I’d clamp down on it immediately.’ He knew enough of the law to understand that there was a thin line between the legal definition of a brothel and a nightclub where liberal behaviour was acceptable.
‘Perhaps you’d make some discreet enquiries among your, er, guests, Major,’ said Hardcastle. ‘See if anyone knows whether Miss Musgrave left with anyone last Thursday evening.’
‘I can hardly go about questioning my guests, Inspector.’ Quilter chuckled and brushed his moustache.
‘I suppose not,’ said Hardcastle thoughtfully. ‘It looks as though I’ll have to do it myself. Of course, I’d have to bring in a few more policemen to help me.’
‘Ah! Probably be better if you left it me, eh what?’ Quilter’s smile vanished along with his supercilious attitude. The thought of a crowd of uniformed policemen interrogating his guests would sound the death knell to his business. It was not as if his was the only club in the West End; competition in the immediate post-war months was exceptionally keen, if not cut-throat. In some cases, literally so.
‘Yes, I thought so. If this young woman should reappear in the meantime, Major Quilter, I’d be obliged if you’d let me know straight away. You’ll find me at Cannon Row police station, immediately opposite Scotland Yard.’ Hardcastle and Marriott stood up.
‘Yes, of course, Inspector. Are you sure you won’t stay for a drink?’ asked Quilter.
‘Have you ever spent the weekend with Lily Musgrave yourself?’ demanded Marriott suddenly. ‘To take advantage of her “easy virtue”, as you described it.’
‘Good God, no, Sergeant.’ Quilter conjured up an expression of injured innocence.
‘In that case, we’ll bid you good evening,’ said Hardcastle.
‘D’you reckon he’ll come up with any information, sir?’ asked Marriott once the two detectives were in the street.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised, Marriott. I don’t think the galloping major would want a bunch of coppers swarming all over his establishment, and the slightest hint to the licensing authorities that all is not well at the VanDoo Club would shut him down a bit tout de suite.’ Hardcastle hailed a cab. ‘Scotland Yard, cabbie.’ In an aside to Marriott, he added, ‘Tell ’em Cannon Row and half the time you’ll finish up at Cannon Street in the City of London, you mark my words.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Marriott, attempting to keep the weariness out of his voice. It was a piece of advice that the DDI offered on almost every occasion the two of them took a cab back to the police station.
‘How old d’you think Quilter is, Marriott?’
‘I’d say about twenty-six or twenty-seven, sir.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought. He was very quick to tell us that Lily Musgrave was a young lady of “easy virtue”. And he’s a bit of a suave bugger – a man for the ladies, I’d have thought. Despite his quick denial, I wouldn’t put it past him to have had a bit of jig-a-jig with her himself. Otherwise, how would he know she was easy, Marriott?’
Taken aback by the DDI’s uncharacteristically naive comment, Marriott chose to remain silent.
Ernest and Alice Hardcastle had lived at 27 Kennington Road ever since their marriage in 1893. There was nothing to distinguish this particular road from others in that part of south-east London save that Charlie Chaplin had once lived at number 287. But this piece of inconsequential information had no impact on Hardcastle for he had other things on his mind this morning: he was still thinking about the task he had been set by no less an officer than the Commissioner himself and how he was to resolve it.
As was his custom, Hardcastle was up at just after six o’clock on the morning after his interview with Sir Nevil Macready and was ready to sit down for breakfast by seven.
‘There’s not much butter left, Ernie,’ said Alice. ‘We’re almost at the end of the week’s ration. You wouldn’t have thought we’d won the war. We’re still short of food and if we go on at this rate we’ll finish up eating cagmag.’
‘We haven’t won the war yet, Alice,’ responded Hardcastle, glancing up from that morning’s edition of the Daily Mail. ‘Not according to that bunch of politicians who are still arguing the toss in Versailles. That’s the trouble when you get frock coats sitting down at a table: they go on forever. They should’ve taken a leaf out of Queen Victoria’s book. She always made the Privy Council stand up for meetings so they wouldn’t go on too long. And another thing,’ he continued, stabbing a forefinger at an article in the newspaper, ‘coal’s gone up to sixpence for two hundredweights. That’ll be the Welsh miners wanting more money, and on top of that they’re demanding a six-hour day. But Lloyd George will let them get away with it, what with him being Welsh as well. Scandalous, I call it.’
‘Really, dear?’ Realizing that she had inadvertently set her husband off on another of his diatribes about the effects of the war, and not wishing to encourage him further, Alice confined herself to a non-committal response. Nevertheless, despite the shortages that still obtained, she managed to produce two fried eggs, a couple of rashers of bacon, two pieces of fried bread and a sausage for her husband’s breakfast, without which he claimed he could not face a day’s work. This substantial first course was completed by two slices of toast and marmalade, and washed down with three cups of tea, each of which contained two spoonfuls of sugar.
On more than one occasion, Hardcastle had thought that Alice was able to provide such a sumptuous repast because her husband was a senior police officer and received a few favours from the grocer in Lambeth Road. But he did not care to enquire too deeply into the matter.
At half past seven he donned his overcoat and bowler hat, picked up his umbrella and kissed his wife.
‘Take care of yourself, Ernie,’ cautioned Alice. It was something she said every morning when her husband was leaving for work.
Closing his front door firmly, Hardcastle made off down Kennington Road towards Westminster Bridge Road with the intention of catching his usual tram.
‘Morning, guv’nor.’ The Hardcastles’ milkman gave a cheery wave. ‘I hope you ain’t thinking of getting a tram this morning ’cos they’re all out on strike.’
Hardcastle stopped. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Positive, guv’nor,’ said the milkman. ‘Just like your lot was last year.’ And with that sarcastic comment he directed a derisory cackle at the DDI.
Hardcastle confined himself to glaring at the milkman. It still rankled with him that some twelve thousand police officers had mutinied the previous August, albeit for only a couple of days. More to the point, Hardcastle was now faced with a walk to work of nearly two miles. Hardly a prospect to put him in a good mood.
But fortune was with him. As he passed Kennington Road police station a despatch van emerged from the station yard. A small wagon with a box at the back, it was drawn by a single horse and driven by a constable in uniform. This officer must have been approaching sixty years of age, sported a beard and was clearly overweight.
‘Oi, you, lad!’ shouted Hardcastle, waving his umbrella. ‘Hold on.’
‘Whoa, girl!’ The constable brought the conveyance to a standstill and, leaning down from his high seat, pointed his whip at Hardcastle. ‘Who the ’ell d’you think you’re talking to, cock?’ he demanded. ‘I’m not a bleedin’ cab, yer know.’
‘I’m DDI Hardcastle of A. Are you taking that thing to Commissioner’s Office?’
‘Oh, begging your pardon, sir, yes, I am.’
‘Good,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Then you can give me a lift. All the trams are on strike, so I’m told.’
‘Yes, they are, sir, and you’re welcome to climb up here and take a seat alongside of me, but I warn you, sir, this contraption ain’t got no springs.’
>
‘Any port in a storm,’ muttered the DDI as, somewhat unceremoniously, he clambered aboard the despatch van, almost losing his bowler hat in the process.
Having been shaken about and obliged to hold on for dear life as the despatch van sped over the uneven roads, Hardcastle was not in the best of moods when he arrived at New Scotland Yard. It was a mood not improved by the fact that the PC on duty in the courtyard recognized him and afforded him a textbook salute, followed by the routine, ‘All correct, sir.’ Hardcastle was convinced he detected a smirk on the constable’s face.
‘Stop chewing your bloody chinstrap, lad,’ Hardcastle responded and, alighting thankfully from the despatch van, made his way into the police station and upstairs to his office. The moment he settled behind his desk and began to fill his pipe, Detective Sergeant Marriott knocked and entered.
‘How did you manage to get here so early, Marriott? All the trams are on strike.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference to me, sir,’ said Marriott. ‘I always come in on my bicycle. It’s no distance at all from my quarter in Regency Street. I even walk it sometimes. You ought to get a bike, sir. Save you coming in on the M Division despatch van,’ he added, risking a reproof.
‘Not something I make a habit of, Marriott.’ Discovering that his sergeant was aware of how he had arrived at work that day, Hardcastle knew that the story – in all probability suitably embellished – would be all around the division by lunchtime. ‘But are you seriously suggesting that a DDI ought to come to work on a bicycle, Marriott? Anyway, I couldn’t afford one.’
‘Mine only cost three pounds at Gamages, sir. Mind you, that was before the war.’
‘How could you afford that on a sergeant’s pay?’ the DDI demanded. He knew that there were corrupt policemen in the Force but had never suspected Marriott of being one of them.
‘Hire purchase, sir. A bob a week.’ Marriott decided that the discussion about bicycles and a pointed enquiry about his finances had gone far enough. ‘Major Quilter telephoned just before you arrived, sir. He’d like to see you at the club. Apparently he’s got some important information for you.’
‘Oh, he has, has he? And who the hell does Major Quilter think he is, sending for me as if I was some swaddy? He ought to realize that he’s not in the Kate Carney any more.’ Hardcastle lit his pipe. ‘I suppose we’d better get round there, Marriott,’ he continued, softening his irascibility slightly. ‘He might have something useful to tell us. If he ain’t, I’ll likely get a warrant and give the place a thorough going over. Missing persons,’ he muttered. ‘It’s a job for the Uniform Branch.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Marriott came to the conclusion that the DDI was in a worse mood than usual and, like Alice Hardcastle, decided that it would be unwise to provoke him any further.
The front door of the VanDoo Club in Rupert Street was wide open when Hardcastle and Marriott arrived.
Inside the club, the bar area had the tawdry look of the morning after the night before. The tables, now without their tablecloths, were seen to be cheap wooden affairs, and the air was heavy with an excess of stale cigar and cigarette smoke, a result of poor ventilation. In the harsh daylight it was hard to believe that by evening the club would be converted into a form of respectability by discreet lighting, plush curtaining and attentive waiters in evening dress.
‘Can I ’elp you, gents?’ A scruffy and unshaven individual, clearly a scullion of some sort, leaned on his broom and peered at Hardcastle and Marriott through finger-marked spectacles.
‘Where’s Major Quilter?’ asked Marriott.
‘Up here,’ shouted a voice from the top of the stairs leading to the dancing area. ‘Is that you, Inspector?’
‘It is,’ replied Hardcastle and, followed by Marriott, mounted the stairs.
FIVE
Max Quilter was as immaculately attired as he had been the previous evening, but this morning he was wearing a grey flannel suit of a style much favoured by the Prince of Wales.
‘Come and have a cup of coffee, Inspector,’ said Quilter as the two detectives mounted the staircase. He led them across the dance floor and past the tiny platform where last evening a lively band had been playing ragtime. But now, in the harsh reality of daylight, the whole area looked like a tatty storeroom.
No sooner had the three men sat down in Quilter’s office than a waiter appeared with a tray of coffee.
Somewhat pointedly, Hardcastle pulled out his watch and examined it. ‘I am extremely busy, Major Quilter,’ he said, briefly winding the watch before replacing it in his waistcoat pocket. ‘I understand from my sergeant that you have some important information for me. Can we get on with it?’
‘Last night, Inspector, you asked me if I knew who Lily Musgrave had left with on Thursday.’
‘And do you?’
‘As you suggested, I asked around, and eventually someone said they thought young Lily had gone off with Oscar Lucas in his Lagonda.’
‘When was this?’ asked Hardcastle.
‘Around five o’clock, I suppose,’ said Quilter.
‘D’you know this man Lucas yourself, Major?’ asked Marriott, noting the name in his pocketbook.
‘Only in passing. I’m told he was a captain during the war and I believe he was in the Connaught Rangers.’ Quilter pulled a wry face as though there was some stigma attached to a regiment raised in the west of Ireland. ‘I’m told he was somewhere in Mespot – that’s what the army called Mesopotamia, Inspector – but his battalion was moved to the Somme just in time for the infamous first day of the battle. It seems that Lucas copped a Blighty one in the first ten minutes but was back to duty in time for the triumphal march into Cologne just before last Christmas. Then, like the rest of us, he got chucked out when they didn’t need him any more.’
There was an element of bitterness in Quilter’s comment and Hardcastle was forced to agree that the army had been treated shabbily once the hostilities were over. Not that he was about to say so. Quilter appeared to have done rather better than a lot of ex-officers, many of whom had actually been reduced to begging, and he doubted that Oscar Lucas was obliged to solicit alms in the streets, given that he owned a Lagonda.
‘How old is Lucas?’ asked Marriott.
Quilter adopted a thoughtful expression and lit a cigarette while he was thinking about the answer. ‘Around twenty-two, I should think,’ he said eventually. ‘Give or take a year or so.’
‘And do you have a home address for him?’ Marriott opened his pocketbook.
‘Good Lord, no,’ said Quilter airily. ‘We don’t bother too much about home addresses, and to be frank half these chaps are living in places they’d rather no one knew about.’
‘Have you seen Lucas since Thursday?’
‘No, I haven’t, Sergeant.’
‘If he comes in tonight, I want to know immediately,’ said Hardcastle forcefully. ‘You can contact me at Cannon Row police station. Sergeant Marriott will give you the telephone number. Is that understood?’
Quilter bridled at that. ‘Now look here, Inspector, I’ve been as cooperative as I can but our member’s activities are private. We don’t tell just anybody what they get up to.’
‘I’m not just anybody, Quilter, I’m a divisional detective inspector of the Metropolitan Police and right now I’m tempted to close this place down and seize the books. In my view it’s beginning to look as though you’ve got something to hide, what with young women being picked up for the sole purpose of sexual intercourse. Come opening time tonight, I’ll have policemen crawling all over your precious club until I find what I’m looking for.’
‘You don’t have any reason to do that,’ said Quilter arrogantly. ‘I defy you to find any cause for closing me down.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ said Hardcastle mildly. ‘I’ll find something.’
‘I shall complain about this,’ spluttered Quilter, now red in the face. ‘Your Commissioner will hear of your high-handed attitude. I’m not without inf
luence, you know. As a matter of fact, I served under General Macready on the Western Front during the war and got to know him quite well.’
‘When was that?’ Hardcastle’s question sounded as though it had only been posed out of interest.
‘Oh, about 1917, I suppose.’ Quilter waved a hand in the air.
‘On the Western Front?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I assumed that you’d been at a base camp in Boulogne for most of the war,’ said Hardcastle, with no justification for the comment save wishing to rile the major. Although Station Sergeant Goddard at Vine Street had suggested Boulogne, Hardcastle was ill-disposed to trust the man. ‘But apart from that, it might interest you to know, Major Quilter,’ said Hardcastle, ‘that in 1917 General Macready was stationed at the War Office in London, and had been there since 1916. Furthermore, these enquiries are being made on his express orders and he instructed me in person yesterday morning. So I suggest you do as I ask, otherwise by this time tomorrow you won’t have a club. And that is more likely to be General Macready’s decision than mine.’
‘Most ex-officers give their club as an address – if they’ve got one – so that they can be contacted if necessary,’ said Quilter, rapidly yielding in the face of Hardcastle’s threat and his knowledge of the Commissioner’s military background. He did not know whether Macready had ordered Hardcastle to undertake his enquiries but was not prepared to take the chance of having his establishment closed down. ‘I believe Oscar’s a member of the In and Out.’
‘The In and Out?’ For a moment, Hardcastle wondered what the ex-major was talking about and could not immediately think why the owner of the VanDoo Club would want to contact one of his patrons anyway.
‘The Naval and Military Club, Inspector. So-called because of the signs on the gates. It’s in Piccadilly.’
‘I know where it is, Major,’ snapped Hardcastle. He swept out of Quilter’s office and, followed by a hurrying Marriott, sped down the stairs.
