Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘You can’t see much of it from here.’

  ‘More than you think. You see the pavements, and if they’re not spotted, right off you know it isn’t raining. Then there’s something in the way people walk, you know what I mean, like it’s Christmas in the air.’ Mr Payne laughed indulgently. Now Danny was mildly reproachful. ‘You still haven’t brought me in that pair of black shoes, sir.’

  Mr Payne frowned slightly. A week ago he had been almost knocked down by a bicyclist, and the mudguard of the bicycle had scraped badly one of the shoes he was wearing, cutting the leather at one point. Danny was confident that he could repair the cut so that it wouldn’t show. Mr Payne was not so sure.

  ‘I’ll bring them along,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Sooner the better, Mr Payne, sooner the better.’

  Mr Payne did not like being reminded of the bicycle incident. He gave Danny half a crown instead of the ten shillings he had intended, crossed the road again and walked into the side entrance of Orbin’s, which called itself unequivocally ‘London’s Greatest Department Store’.

  This end of the store was quiet. He walked up the stairs, past the grocery department on the ground floor, and wine and cigars on the second, to jewellery on the third. There were rarely many people in this department, but today a small crowd had gathered around a man who was making a speech. A placard at the department entrance said: ‘The Russian Royal Family Jewels. On display for two weeks by kind permission of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Moldo-Lithuania.’

  These were not the Russian Crown Jewels, seized by the Bolsheviks during the Revolution, but an inferior collection brought out of Russia by the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, who had long since become plain Mr and Mrs Skandorski, who lived in New Jersey and were now on a visit to England.

  Mr Payne was not interested in Mr and Mrs Skandorski, or in Sir Henry Orbin, who was stumbling through a short speech. He was interested only in the jewels. When the speech was over he mingled with the crowd round the showcase that stood almost in the middle of the room.

  The royal jewels lay on beds of velvet – a tiara that looked too heavy to be worn, diamond necklaces and bracelets, a cluster of diamonds and emeralds, and a dozen other pieces, each with an elegant calligraphic description of its origin and history. Mr Payne did not see the jewels as a romantic relic of the past, nor did he permit himself to think of them as things of beauty. He saw them as his personal Christmas present.

  He walked out of the department, looking neither to left nor right, and certainly paying no attention to the spotty young clerk who rushed forward to open the door for him. He walked back to his bookshop, sniffing that sharp December air, made another little joke to Miss Oliphant and told her she could go out to lunch. During her lunch hour he sold an American a set of a Victorian magazine called The Jewel Box.

  It seemed a good augury.

  In the past ten years Mr Payne had engineered successfully – with the help of other, and inferior, intellects – six jewel robberies. He had remained undetected, he believed, partly because of his skill in planning, partly because he ran a perfectly legitimate book business and partly because he broke the law only when he needed money. He had little interest in women, and his habits were generally ascetic, but he did have one vice.

  Mr Payne developed a system at roulette, an improvement on the almost infallible Frank-Konig system, and every year he went to Monte Carlo and played his system. Almost every year it failed – or rather, it revealed certain imperfections, which he then tried to remedy.

  It was to support his foolproof system that Mr Payne had turned from bookselling to crime. He believed himself to be, in a quiet way, a mastermind in the modern criminal world.

  Those associated with him were far from that, as he immediately would have acknowledged. He met them two evenings after he had looked at the royal jewels, in his pleasant little flat above the shop, which could be approached from a side entrance opening into an alley.

  There was Stacey, who looked what he was, a thick-nosed thug; there was a thin young man in a tight suit whose name was Jack Line, and who was always called Straight or Straight Line; and there was Lester Jones, the spotty clerk in the Jewellery Department.

  Stacey and Straight Line sat drinking whisky, Mr Payne sipped some excellent sherry and Lester Jones drank nothing at all, while Mr Payne in his pedantic, almost schoolmasterly manner told them how the robbery was to be accomplished.

  ‘You all know what the job is, but let me tell you how much it is worth. In its present form the collection is worth whatever sum you’d care to mention – a quarter of a million pounds perhaps. There is no real market value. But alas, it will have to be broken up. My friend thinks the value will be in the neighbourhood of fifty thousand pounds. Not less, and not much more.’

  ‘Your friend?’ the jewellery clerk said timidly.

  ‘The fence. Lambie, isn’t it?’ It was Stacey who spoke. Mr Payne nodded. ‘Okay, how do we split?’

  ‘I will come to that later. Now, here are the difficulties. First of all, there are two store detectives on each floor. We must see to it that those on the third floor are not in the Jewellery Department. Next, there is a man named Davidson, an American, whose job it is to keep an eye on the jewels. He has been brought over here by a protection agency and it is likely that he will carry a gun. Third, the jewels are in a showcase, and any attempt to open this showcase other than with the proper key will set off an alarm. The key is kept in the Manager’s Office, inside the Jewellery Department.’

  Stacey got up, shambled over to the whisky decanter, and poured himself another drink. ‘Where do you get all this from?’

  Mr Payne permitted himself a small smile. ‘Lester works in the department. Lester is a friend of mine.’

  Stacey looked at Lester with contempt. He did not like amateurs.

  ‘Let me continue, and tell you how the obstacles can be overcome. First, the two store detectives. Supposing that a small fire bomb were planted in the Fur Department, at the other end of the third floor from Jewellery – that would certainly occupy one detective for a few minutes. Supposing that in the department that deals with ladies’ hats, which is next to Furs, a woman shopper complained that she had been robbed – this would certainly involve the other store detective. Could you arrange this, Stace? These – assistants, shall I call them? – would be paid a straight fee. They would have to carry out their diversions at a precise time, which I have fixed as ten thirty in the morning.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Stacey. ‘Consider it arranged.’

  ‘Next, Davidson. He is an American, as I said, and Lester tells me that a happy event is expected in his family any day now. He has left Mrs Davidson behind in America, of course. Now, supposing that a call came through, apparently from an American hospital, for Mr Davidson. Supposing that the telephone in the Jewellery Department was out of order because the cord had been cut. Davidson would be called out of the department for the few minutes, no more, that we should need.’

  ‘Who cuts the cord?’ Stacey asked.

  ‘That will be part of Lester’s job.’

  ‘And who makes the phone call?’

  ‘Again, Stace, I hoped that you might be able to provide – ’

  ‘I can do that.’ Stacey drained his whisky. ‘But what do you do?’

  Mr Payne’s lips, never full, were compressed to a disapproving line. He answered the implied criticism only by inviting them to look at two maps – one the layout of the entire third floor, the other of the Jewellery Department itself. Stacey and Straight were impressed, as the uneducated always are, by such evidence of careful planning.

  ‘The Jewellery Department is at one end of the third floor. It has only one exit – into the Carpet Department. There is a service lift which comes straight up into the Jewellery Department. You and I, Stace, will be in that. We shall stop it between floors with the Emergency Stop button. At exactly ten thirty-two we shall go up to the third floor. Lester will give us a sign. If e
verything has gone well, we proceed. If not, we call the job off. Now, what I propose … ’

  He told them, they listened and they found it good. Even the ignorant, Mr Payne was glad to see, could recognise genius. He told Straight Line his role.

  ‘We must have a car, Straight, and a driver. What he has to do is simple, but he must stay cool. So I thought of you.’ Straight grinned.

  ‘In Jessiter Street, just outside the side entrance to Orbin’s, there is a parking space reserved for Orbin’s customers. It is hardly ever full. But if it is full you can double park there for five minutes – cars often do that. I take it you can – acquire a car, shall I say? – for the purpose. You will face away from Oxford Street, and you will have no more than a few minutes’ run to Lambie’s house on Greenly Street. You will drop Stace and me, drive on a mile or two and leave the car. We shall give the stuff to Lambie. He will pay on the nail. Then we all split.’

  From that point they went on to argue about the split. The argument was warm, but not really heated. They settled that Stacey would get 25 per cent of the total, Straight and Lester 12½ per cent each, and that half would go to the mastermind. Mr Payne agreed to provide out of his share the £150 that Stacey said would cover the three diversions.

  The job was fixed six days ahead – for Tuesday of the following week.

  Stacey had two faults which had prevented him from rising high in his profession. One was that he drank too much, the other that he was stupid. He made an effort to keep his drinking under control, knowing that when he drank he talked. So he did not even tell his wife about the job, although she was safe enough.

  But he could not resist cheating about the money, which Payne had given to him in full.

  The fire bomb was easy. Stacey got hold of a little man named Shrimp Bateson, and fixed it with him. There was no risk, and Shrimp thought himself well paid with twenty-five quid. The bomb itself cost only a fiver, from a friend who dealt in hardware. It was guaranteed to cause just a little fire, nothing serious.

  For the telephone call Stacey used a Canadian who was grubbing a living at a striptease club. It didn’t seem to either of them that the job was worth more than a tenner, but the Canadian asked for twenty and got fifteen.

  The woman was a different matter, for she had to be a bit of an actress, and she might be in for trouble since she actually had to cause a disturbance. Stacey hired an eighteen-stone Irish woman named Lucy O’Malley, who had once been a female wrestler, and had very little in the way of a record – nothing more than a couple of drunk and disorderlies. She refused to take anything less than £50, realising, as the others hadn’t, that Stacey must have something big on.

  The whole lot came to less than £100, so that there was cash to spare. Stacey paid them all half their money in advance, put the rest of the £100 aside and went on a roaring drunk for a couple of days, during which he somehow managed to keep his mouth buttoned and his nose clean.

  When he reported on Monday night to Mr Payne he seemed to have everything fixed, including himself.

  Straight Line was a reliable character, a young man who kept himself to himself. He pinched the car on Monday afternoon, took it along to the semi-legitimate garage run by his father-in-law and put new licence plates on it. There was no time for a respray job, but he roughed the car up a little so that the owner would be unlikely to recognise it if by an unlucky chance he should be passing outside Orbin’s on Tuesday morning. During this whole operation, of course, Straight wore gloves.

  He also reported to Mr Payne on Monday night.

  Lester’s name was not really Lester – it was Leonard. His mother and his friends in Balham, where he had been born and brought up, called him Lenny. He detested this, as he detested his surname and the pimples that, in spite of his assiduous efforts with ointment, appeared on his face every couple of months. There was nothing he could do about the name of Jones, because it was on his National Insurance card, but Lester for Leonard was a gesture towards emancipation.

  Another gesture was made when he left home and mother for a one-room flat in Notting Hill Gate. A third gesture – and the most important one – was his friendship with Lucille, whom he had met in a jazz club called The Whizz Fizz.

  Lucille called herself an actress, but the only evidence of it was that she occasionally sang in the club. Her voice was tuneless but loud. After she sang, Lester always bought her a drink, and the drink was always whisky.

  ‘So what’s new?’ she said. ‘Lester-boy what’s new?’

  ‘I sold a diamond necklace today. Two hundred and fifty pounds. Mr Marston was very pleased.’ Mr Marston was the manager of the Jewellery Department.

  ‘So Mr Marston was pleased. Big deal.’ Lucille looked round restlessly, tapping her foot.

  ‘He might give me a raise.’

  ‘Another ten bob a week and a pension for your fallen arches.’

  ‘Lucille, won’t you – ’

  ‘No.’ The peak of emancipation for Lester, a dream beyond which his thoughts really could not reach, was that one day Lucille would come to live with him. Far from that, she had not even slept with him yet. ‘Look, Lester-boy I know what I want, and let’s face it, you haven’t got it.’

  He was incautious enough to ask, ‘What?’

  ‘Money, moolah, the green folding stuff. Without it you’re nothing, with it they can’t hurt you.’

  Lester was drinking whisky too, although he didn’t really like it. Perhaps, but for the whisky, he would never have said, ‘Supposing I had money?’

  ‘What money? Where would you get it – draw it out of the Savings Bank?’

  ‘I mean a lot of money.’

  ‘Lester-boy I don’t think in penny numbers. I’m talking about real money.’

  The room was thick with smoke; the Whizz Fizz Kids were playing. Lester leaned back and said deliberately, ‘Next week I’ll have money – thousands of pounds.’

  Lucille was about to laugh. Then she said, ‘It’s my turn to buy a drink, I’m feeling generous. Hey, Joe. Two more of the same.’

  Later that night they lay on the bed in his one-room flat. She had let him make love to her, and he had told her everything.

  ‘So the stuff’s going to a man called Lambie in Greenly Street?’

  Lester had never before drunk so much in one evening. Was it six whiskies or seven? He felt ill, and alarmed, ‘Lucille, you won’t say anything? I mean, I wasn’t supposed to tell – ’

  ‘Relax. What do you take me for?’ She touched his cheek with red-tipped nails. ‘Besides, we shouldn’t have secrets, should we?’

  He watched her as she got off the bed and began to dress. ‘Won’t you stay? I mean, it would be all right with the landlady.’

  ‘No can do, Lester-boy. See you at the club, though. Tomorrow night. Promise.’

  ‘Promise.’ When she had gone he turned over on to his side and groaned. He feared that he was going to be sick, and he was. Afterwards, he felt better.

  Lucille went home to her flat in Earl’s Court, which she shared with a man named Jim Baxter. He had been sent to Borstal for a robbery from a confectioner’s which had involved considerable violence. Since then he had done two short stretches. He listened to what she had to say, then asked, ‘What’s this Lester like?’

  ‘A creep.’

  ‘Has he got the nerve to kid you, or do you think it’s on the level, what he’s told you?’

  ‘He wouldn’t kid me. He wants me to live with him when he’s got the money. I said I might.’

  Jim showed her what he thought of that idea. Then he said, ‘Tuesday morning, eh. Until then, you play along with this creep. Any change in plans I want to know about it. You can do it, can’t you, baby?’

  She looked up at him. He had a scar on the left side of his face which she thought made him look immensely attractive. ‘I can do it. And Jim?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What about afterwards?’

  ‘Afterwards, baby? Well, for spending money ther
e’s no place like London. Unless it’s Paris.’

  Lester Jones also reported on Monday night. Lucille was being very kind to him, so he no longer felt uneasy.

  Mr Payne gave them all a final briefing and stressed that timing, in this as in every similar affair, was the vital element.

  Mr Rossiter Payne rose on Tuesday morning at his usual time, just after eight o’clock. He bathed and shaved with care and precision, and ate his usual breakfast of one soft-boiled egg, two pieces of toast and one cup of unsugared coffee. When Miss Oliphant arrived he was already in the shop.

  ‘My dear Miss Oliphant. Are you, as they say, ready to cope this morning?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Payne. Do you have to go out?’

  ‘I do. Something quite unexpected. An American collector named – but I mustn’t tell his name even to you, he doesn’t want it known – is in London, and he has asked me to see him. He wants to try to buy the manuscripts of – but there again I’m sworn to secrecy although if I weren’t I should surprise you. I am calling on him, so I shall leave things in your care until – ’ Mr Payne looked at his expensive watch – ‘not later than midday. I shall certainly be back by then. In the meantime, Miss Oliphant, I entrust my ware to you.’

  She giggled. ‘I won’t let anyone steal the stock, Mr Payne.’

  Mr Payne went upstairs again to his flat, where, laid out on his bed, was a very different set of clothes from that which he normally wore. He emerged later from the little side entrance looking quite unlike the dapper, retired Guards officer known to Miss Oliphant.

  His clothes were of the shabby nondescript-ready-to-wear kind that might be worn by a City clerk very much down on his luck – the sleeve and trouser cuffs distinctly frayed, the tie a piece of dirty string. Curling strands of rather disgustingly gingery hair strayed from beneath his stained grey trilby hat and his face was grey too – grey and much lined, the face of a man of sixty who has been defeated by life.

  Mr Payne had bright blue eyes, but the man who came out of the side entrance had, thanks to contact lenses, brown ones. This man shuffled off down the alley with shoulders bent, carrying a rather dingy suitcase. He was quite unrecognisable as the upright Rossiter Payne.