by Tessa Dale
“I see,” Neil replied. “Perhaps I should have suggested draughts instead.”
“That wouldn’t help, I‘m afraid. There are only so many combinations of moves, and I memorised them all.”
“Poker?”
“I can card count,” Clever admitted, “which gives me a big edge in most games of chance. I once memorised four decks of cards as they went into a shoe, and predicted every hand as it was dealt.”
“A useful party trick.”
“I never get invited to parties.”
“I’m not surprised,” Neil McFarland said. “Winner pays for the coffee?”
Chapter Twenty
Richard Clever was pleasantly surprised at his new friend’s skill at the game, and it was almost an hour before he was forced to pay for their coffees.
“You surprised me when you adopted the Alekhine Defence like that,” he enthused. “It was quite a masterful approach, and it caught me off guard for a moment.”
“Alexin?” the pathologist said. “Who is he?”
“Alexander Alekhine, the world’s greatest chess grand master,” Clever replied. “He defeated José Raúl Capablanca a couple of years back. You used his classic defence on me.”
“Never heard of him,” McFarland said. “I just make it up as I go along.”
“Rather like our murderers,” said the DCI. “From Vancleur’s death, right up to the latest death, I get the feeling that they are making it up as they go along. They could never have imagined that Peter Kerr would turn up, nor could they have known Ginnie Thrower had something incriminating on them. They must be running scared right now, and that can only be to our advantage.”
“Another game?”
“No, I need to get back to the office,” Clever told him. “I left my chaps poring over society pages, trying to see what Ginnie saw in those old Daily Mirrors.”
“Try looking through the eyes of a mad woman,” the forensic expert suggested. “See what she sees.”
“What’s this, advice from a man who has never heard of the great Alekhine?” The DCI smiled and dropped a couple of shillings onto the table. “Playing against you is going to bankrupt me!”
Stan Stanton was studiously pondering the old photographs and society gossip when his DCI came into the office. He listened to the news about the murder weapon, shaking his head and making a sort of low tutting noise.
“Then Peter Fornell was not guilty,” he said. “This will ruin the Chief Constable’s career. He’ll have to admit he was wrong, and quit his job.”
“I doubt it,” Clever replied. “Alan Herbert is a fearsome sort of chap. I think he’ll hang on and try to ride out the storm.”
“It isn’t fair, Guv,” Stan Stanton complained. “Most of the fellows I work with are decent and law abiding. Why should we be run by a bent copper like him?”
“It’s not our concern, just yet, constable. Have there been any further developments since last night?”
“Not with these newspapers, Guv. We’ve read every word ten times over. Sergeant Jones was called away about ten minutes ago, to take a telephone call from one of his contacts.”
“I see. My eyes are fresher than yours, Stanton. Go grab a cup of tea and a bite to eat, and I’ll return to scanning the papers.”
DC Stanton did not need to be told twice. He had been in for six hours, and was beginning to suffer from double vision. As he left, his DCI settled down in a chair and closed his eyes. It disconcerted the young constable to know that Clever Dick was working, even behind closed eyelids.
Richard Clever’s unusual brain had gone unnoticed, until his fourth birthday, when an old uncle gave him a colourful storybook containing popular fairytales. The tot had flicked through the pages and, having closed the book, recited the tales word for word. The uncle was astonished, and suspecting some sort of trickery, set up another simple experiment.
The old man produced his pocket diary and gave it to the child. It was packed with cryptic messages, initials, addresses and meaningless notes, all made by Richard’s uncle. The boy spent two minutes turning the small book’s leaves, then recited the contents of the pages, suggested at random by the old man.
“The boy is going far,” Uncle Wilbur told his parents. “I shall make provision, upon my death, for his schooling.”
Ten years later, the old man died, leaving his favourite nephew with enough money to support himself through university and set him up with cash to spare. Richard accepted his good fortune and procured the best education he could.
He found his chosen subjects to be easy enough to master, and obtaining two firsts was a forgone conclusion. To fill in his spare time, he attended lectures in every subject, absorbing vast amounts of general knowledge. Unfortunately, there was not a course in how to behave like a ‘normal’ young man. As a human being, Richard passed, seamlessly, from childhood to adulthood, without any stop for adolescence on the way.
His years at university passed without him making either any friends, or taking out a single girl. It was not that Richard disliked girls, or despised friendship; he simply could not understand their value. It was plain to see, his senior tutor observed, that the young man was a fine example of a sociopath. He would make either the worst criminal in the world, or the finest detective.
The choice was obvious. The freshly graduated young man had a flair for crime, but no wish to spend his life evading justice. It was simply too tiring Richard would much rather be at liberty to go home each evening and read a good book. Protecting the crown jewels was preferable to stealing them, and the thrill of uncovering a crime was more enjoyable than trying to concoct one.
After a few misunderstandings, his skills were recognised, and the young PC rose swiftly through the ranks, until he was a DCI. His superiors realised that further promotion would turn him into an administrator, rather than a solver of cases, and hoped he would be satisfied with his present post for many years.
Having no wish to stop investigating interesting crimes, Richard Clever quietly accepted his sidelining. Secure in the knowledge that no one would try and force promotion upon him, he got on with his prime motivation… the solving of crime.
Behind his closed eyelids, the DCI was bringing up picture after picture, studying each in his mind’s eye. It was as he started his second run through that his half formed thought coagulated into a tangible idea. Each picture featured the dead man and his wife, but what about all the other faces, milling about in the background?
He shunted through each mental photograph and overlaid the background faces. After a few minutes he had come up with a set of faces that were common to more than one picture. He opened his eyes and, taking a pencil, carefully ringed the six faces who had been hovering close to the dead man and his wife.
“There,” he declared, just as Dan Jones came back into the office. “Virginia Thrower kept those photographs because someone important to her was in them. I think we might be on to something, Dan.”
“Yes, Guv,” Jones said, almost unable to contain himself. “I’ve just got off the phone to Coventry. They kept digging away, like I asked, and guess what?”
“They have found Peter Kerr’s real mother.”
“What! How the hell could you know that, Guv?” Dan Jones said, feeling deflated.
“Deductive reasoning,” Clever replied, unaware that he had temporarily taken the wind out of his sergeant’s sails. “What else was there to find? We knew his place of work, and we knew he was an abandoned child. With his father dead, only his mother remained to be found.”
“I assumed she was already dead,” Jones admitted, “but the Midland’s boys found her. They must have worked their way through a mountain of paperwork. You’ll never guess what his mother is called.”
“Catesby.”
“How could you know that?”
“A well reasoned assumption,” the DCI rejoined. “Peter Kerr had lost his foster mother, and went looking for his past. He found his real mother, who told him about his fat
her. We all thought he chose Catesby because of a tenuous historical connection, when it was, in actual fact, his mother’s maiden name. Peter Kerr really was Peter Catesby.”
“I suppose he could have claimed to be Peter Fornell too,” Dan Jones said. “No wonder that fall addled his brains. I’ve asked the Coventry lot to organise a trip up for Miss Catesby.”
“She might object,” Clever said. “We can’t compel her to come all the way up to Castleburgh.”
“When my pal went around to visit her, he found Eleanor Catesby running four girls out of her house.”
“Running?”
“She was operating a brothel, Guv. She’s in no position to turn us down. The Coventry police will put her on the one thirty train today. I’ll collect her from the station at four forty five.”
“How will you recognise her?” the DCI asked.
“Easy. My contact said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. I doubt many like that will be getting off the Coventry to Aberdeen overnighter, Guv.”
Dan Jones was not disappointed.
Eleanor Catesby stepped from the train with two young men fighting to carry her luggage for her, and the policeman had to scare them off with a display of his warrant card, and a few, well chosen words.
“How very Anglo Saxon of you, officer” the woman said, grinning at the big, authoritative looking man. Jones took in the perfect, white teeth, the almost luminescent skin, and the divine figure with one sideways glance, and almost forgot to reply.
“Sorry, Miss Catesby,” he said. “That’s the only way to deal with a couple of fresh buggers like that. Begging your pardon for the language.”
“I forgive you, mister….?”
“Jones. Detective Sergeant Dan Jones.”
“Very well, Dan. Now you have me where you wish, exactly what do you need from me?”
“My boss would like a word,” Jones replied. “There are just a few things to clear up about your son’s death.”
Eleanor Catesby’s eyes fluttered, then rolled upwards, as she sank to the railway station’s concrete platform, in a dead faint.
“I thought the Coventry lads had told her, Guv,” Dan Jones reported, sheepishly to DCI Clever. “So I came right out with it. The poor woman fell in a heap at my feet.”
“But she’s recovered now?” his boss asked.
“Yes, Guv. She’s in Interview Room 3 with a hot cup of tea.”
“Then let’s speak to her. It seems odd, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“A hardened lady of the night, collapsing over the death of a son she had only met a couple of times.”
“She’s not like that,” Jones told him. “She seems to be a very nice sort of woman. A lady, in fact.”
“And very lovely?”
“Yes, but that hasn’t clouded my judgement.” Dan Jones, however, knew it had. Eleanor Catesby was, quite simply, the loveliest creature he had ever met. The woman, who must have been in her early forties, at least, could have strolled onto any film set in the world, and held her own. “Do you want me to sit in?”
“Yes. She might faint again,” DCI Clever said, rather sarcastically, but changed his tune when he entered Room 3. He stood and stared at the woman for long moments before holding out his hand in welcome.
“This is Miss Eleanor Catesby, sir. Miss Catesby… this is Detective Chief Inspector Clever.”
“I know,” Richard Clever said. “We’ve met before, haven’t we, Miss Catesby?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You were several years younger then,” Clever persisted. His memory was already clicking through all the possibilities. Then his face lit up, and he slapped the table in delight. “No, I’m wrong! You have no idea who I am, but I know you. You are one of the girls in the photographs. In two of them, to be precise.”
“What are you going on about?” Eleanor Catesby was genuinely puzzled. “You drag me here without an explanation, tell me my son is dead, then introduce me to a madman.”
“Then you admit Peter Kerr was your son?”
“What?” Her face was transformed from misery to joy in the space of a second. “You meant Peter Kerr? Ralph is still alive?”
“Ralph?” Dan Jones could feel his stomach churning as he perceived his double mistake.
“My son. He’s at Castleburgh Academy,” Eleanor replied, relief flooding through her slender body. “He’s not dead?”
“My God, I don’t know what to say,” Jones spluttered. “I assumed you knew about Peter Kerr.”
“Peter is dead?” she said. “I’m not surprised. I told him to keep his nose out of things that didn’t concern him, weeks ago. My face must have been a picture when he came knocking on my front door. ‘Hello mum,’ he said. Just like that. I told him what I could, then gave him some money and told him to leave me alone. I didn’t want any bad memories coming back to haunt me.”
“My apologies, Miss Catesby. This must all seem like a nightmare of confusion to you,” Richard Clever told her. “Let me explain what I meant about us meeting. I’ve been looking at some old society pages, and your face appears in some of them. You are in the background, with the Earl of Castleburgh up front.”
“Oh, them?” The woman began to visibly unwind. “Good Lord, but you are going back a lot of years now. If Charlie Vancleur was in them, they must have been taken at one of the big London social evenings.”
“They were. What can you tell us about them?”
“Nothing much. You must know that I was walking out with Vancleur’s son, Peter Fornell at that time.”
“His illegitimate son,” Dan Jones put in.
“He kept that bit quiet from me. I thought he was in line for an earldom and a few million quid. I was young and foolish, back then. Peter took me to a couple of high society functions, hence me being in the pictures.”
“I see.” the DCI began to pace the room, furiously polishing his already spotless spectacles. “Did you know many people in that circle, Miss Catesby?”
“Hardly. Peter seldom introduced me, and old Charlie didn’t want me mixing with his friends and family too often. The man was unpleasant, to say the least.”
“How so?”
“Peter took me to the big house, to impress me, I think. I had my own room, and a borrowed maid. I was getting dressed for dinner the first evening, when Charlie Vancleur let himself in to my room. He had polished off a bottle of brandy, and tried to force himself on me. I struggled, but he was a strong old swine. He pulled my underwear down, and was about to rape me, when the maid walked in and started to beat him across the back. The old man fled, with his trousers around his ankles. Me and the maid couldn’t help it, but we just sat on the bed and started laughing.”
“Do you remember the maid’s name?” Clever asked.
“Yes, I do. She was called Ginnie.”
“Virginia Thrower?”
“She was just Ginnie to me. She seemed to think I was some kind of socialite beauty. Followed me around the whole weekend, she did. Poor, silly girl. I wonder what ever became of her?”
Dan Jones caught his DCIs warning glance, and remained silent. It was no concern of Eleanor Catesby that the girl who saved her from a brutal attempted rape was sitting in a cell, having confessed to infanticide.
“I’d like you to stay over,” Clever said. “Will that be a problem for you, Miss Catesby?”
“Not really. The police in Coventry have closed my house down, and my girls have vanished into the night,” she replied. “Even though I never knew Peter Kerr, he was my son. I was a bad mother. Perhaps helping find out about who killed him… and his dad… will put their souls at rest at last.”
“You never believed Peter was a killer, did you?” the DCI asked.
“No. Despite him deserting me after the marriage, I always knew he was not a murderer,” Eleanor Catesby told them. “I think it’s time the real culprit paid for their sins, don’t you?”
Chapter Twenty One
&nbs
p; “That was enlightening, Dan,” Richard Clever said, once they had left the interview room. “Can you please arrange for Miss Catesby… or rather… Mrs. Fornell … to stay overnight, please? I will need to speak to her again, sometime tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Guv,” Sergeant Jones replied. “I’ll book her in to the Station Hotel. It’s the best in town, so she can’t complain.”
“Very well. Then can you call the Castleburgh Academy and establish if Miss Catesby does have a son boarding there. After that…no, before that, ring the editor of the newspaper Ginnie collected, and demand copies of all the photographs we have been looking at. Press on him that this is a murder investigation, and we will pay any charges incurred… within reason.”
“Yes, Guv,” Jones hesitated. “Do you think Eleanor had anything to do with the murders?”
“No, not directly,” his DCI replied. “She was being shown a good time by Fornell, and ended up in some society snaps. I think Ginnie was impressed with her, and collected papers to see if she was in them. She throws an entirely different light on the case though.”
“How so?”
“Charles Vancleur is drunk, he attempts to rape her, and ends up murdered, presumably by her gentleman friend. What if Her Ladyship found out that her husband was a lecher? What if Charles Vancleur was the father of Ginnie’s child, and Peter Fornell found out? You see… too many ingredients in the stew, Dan! Now, get off and ring the Daily Mirror.”
Dan Jones was pleasantly surprised to be put through to the Daily Mirror’s Editor within a few minutes. Cecil Thomas proved to be both affable, and helpful; promising to have new prints run off and sent by the fastest method possible. Nothing, it seemed, was too good for the police, and the editor’s no nonsense response pleased the sergeant immensely.
“One of my newsroom chaps will be on the midnight sleeper to Glasgow,” the editor told him. “It only stops at Wolverhampton and Carlisle. Can one of your men meet him around three thirty a.m at Carlisle station, and take him on to Castleburgh?”
