“Oh, me dear friend, whatever I do for you you’ll pay ’andsomely,” he said, laughing. “Rest assured of that. What’d you do, mate, to need a ’oliday so quick like?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Ey, too shy to share the story with your friend Bill? You cuckold some poor bloke? You owe a sack of lolly to a gambler?…” Then Sloat squinted and laughed harshly. “But no, m’lord. You’re too bald and too skinny to get a married bird to shag. And your cobblers ain’t big enough for you to go wagering more’n a farthing. So, who’s after you, mate?”
“I can’t say,” he whispered.
Sloat sipped more of his bitters. “No matter. Get on with it. It’s me dinnertime and I ’ave a ’unger.”
Goodcastle looked around and his voice lowered even further. “I need to get into France. Nobody can know. And I need to leave tonight.”
“Tonight?” The ruffian shook his head. “Lord love me.”
“I heard you have connections all over the docks.”
“Bill’s got ’is connections. That ’e does.”
“Can you get me onto a cargo ship bound for Marseille?”
“That’s a bleedin’ tall order, mate.”
“I don’t have any choice.”
“Well, now, I might be able to.” He thought for a moment. “It’ll cost you a thousand quid.”
“What?”
“It’s bloody noon, mate. Look at the clock. It ain’t easy, what you’re asking, you know. I’ll ’ave to run around all day like a chicken without its ’ead. Blimey. Not to mention the risk. The docks’re lousy with guards, customs agents, sergeants at arms — thick as fleas they are…. So there you ’ave it, guv’nor. A thousand.” He skewered another brown apple wedge and chewed it down.
“All right,” Goodcastle said, scowling. The men shook hands.
“I need something up front. ’Ave to paint some palms, understand.”
Goodcastle pulled out his money purse and counted out some coin.
“Crikey, guv’nor.” Bill laughed. The massive hand reached out and snatched the whole purse. “Thank’ee much…. Now, whendo I get the rest?”
Goodcastle glanced at his pocket watch. “I can have it by four. Can you make the arrangements by then?”
“Rest assured I can,” Sloat said, waving for the barmaid.
“Come by the shop.”
Sloat squinted and looked the man over warily. “Maybe you won’t own up to what you done, but tell me, mate, just ’ow safe is it to be meetin’ you?”
The shopkeeper gave a grim laugh. “You’ve heard the expression ‘giving somebody a taste of their own medicine’?”
“I ’ave, sure.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Don’t worry. I know how to make sure we’re alone.”
Goodcastle sighed once more and then left the Green Man.
Sloat watched him leave, thinking, A thousand quid for a few hours’ work.
Desperation, he thought, is just plain bloody beautiful.
* * *
At five minutes to four that afternoon, Peter Goodcastle was uneasily awaiting Bill Sloat’s arrival.
While he’d made his arrangements to evade the law, Goodcastle had kept up the appearance of going through his business as usual. But he’d continued to observe the street outside. Sure enough, he’d noted several plain-clothed detectives standing well back in the shadows. They pretended to be watching the construction work on the street but in fact it was obvious that their attention was mostly on Goodcastle and the store.
The shopkeeper now put his plan into action. He summoned the craftsman, Markham, and one of the men he regularly used for transporting furniture to and from clients’ houses. Purposely acting suspicious, like an actor in a one-shilling melodrama, Goodcastle slipped the young deliveryman a paper-wrapped package, which contained a music box. He gave instructions to take it to Goodcastle’s own house as quickly as possible. Witnessing the apparently furtive mission, and probably assuming that the box contained loot or damning evidence, one of the detectives started after the young man as soon as he left the shop.
Goodcastle then dismissed Markham for the day and gave him a similar package, with instructions to take it home with him and make sure the music box mechanism was dependable. The remaining detective observed the craftsman leave the shop, clutching the parcel, and, after a moment of debate, appeared to decided it was better to pursue this potential source of evidence rather than remain at his station.
Goodcastle carefully perused the street and saw no more detectives. The workers had left and the avenue was deserted except for a married couple, who paused at the front window, then stepped inside. As they looked over the armoires, Goodcastle told them he would return in a moment and, with another glance outside into the empty street, stole into the office, closing the door behind him.
He sat at his desk, lifted aside the Turkish rug and opened the secret panel then the safe. He was just reaching inside when he was aware of a breeze wafting on his face, and he knew the door to the office had been opened.
Goodcastle leapt up, crying, “No!” He was staring at the husband of the couple who’d just walked into the shop. He was holding a large Webley pistol.
“Lord in heaven!” Goodcastle said, gasping. “You’ve come to rob me!”
“No, sir, I’m here to arrest you,” he said calmly. “Pray don’t move. I don’t wish to harm you. But I will if you give me no choice.” He then blew into a police whistle, which uttered a shrill tone.
A moment later, beyond him, Goodcastle could see the door burst open, and in ran two Scotland Yard inspectors in plain clothes, as well as two uniformed constables. The woman — who’d obviously been posing as the first inspector’s wife — waved them toward the office. “The safe is back there,” she called.
“Capital!” called one inspector — the lean, dark man who’d been in the store earlier, masquerading as a customer. His fellow officer, wearing a bowler, was dressed similarly, a greatcoat over a morning suit, though this man differed in his physique, being taller and quite pale, with a shock of flaxen hair. Both policemen took the shopkeeper by the arms and led him out into the store proper.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Goodcastle blustered.
The white-faced inspector chuckled. “I warrant you know right well.”
They searched him and, finding no weapons, unhanded him. The inspector who’d entered with the woman on his arm replaced his Webley with a notebook, in which he began taking down evidence. They dismissed the woman with effusive thanks and she explained that she’d be back at the police precinct station house if they needed her further.
“What is this about?” Goodcastle demanded.
The pale officer deferred to the lean one, apparently a chief inspector, who looked Goodcastle over carefully. “So you’re the man who burglarized Robert Mayhew’s apartment.”
“Who? I swear I don’t know what you’re speaking of.”
“Please, Mr. Goodcastle, don’t malign our intelligence. You saw me in your shop earlier, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“During that visit here I managed to collect a sample of furniture wax from several wooden pieces. The substance is identical to the wax we found traces of in Lord Mayhew’s dressing chamber — a material that neither he nor his servants had ever been in contact with. We found too a horse hair that matched one that I extracted from your chair.”
“I’m at a loss—”
“And what do you have to say about the fact that the brick dust in front of your store is the same as that which we found on the rungs of the ladder used to break into Lord Mayhew’s first floor? Don’t deny you are the thief.”
“Of course I deny it. This is absurd!”
“Go search the safe,” the chief inspector said to a constable, nodding toward the back office. He then explained, “When I was here earlier I tried to ascertain where you might have a hiding place for your ill-gotten gains. But your shop boasts far to
o much inventory and too many nooks and crannies to locate what we are seeking without searching for a week. So we stationed those two detectives outside on the street to make you believe we were about to arrest you. As we had anticipated, you led them off… I assume in pursuit of two parcels of no evidentiary value whatsoever.”
“Those deliveries a moment ago?” Goodcastle protested. “I sent one music box home for myself to work on tonight. Another, my man was taking with him to do the same.”
“So you say. But I suspect you’re prevaricating.”
“This is most uncalled for. I—”
“Please, allow me to finish. When you sent our men on a goose chase, that told us that your flight was imminent, so my colleague here and a typist from the precinct house came in as customers, as they’d been waiting to do for several hours.” He turned to the policeman who’d played the husband and added, “Capital job, by the way.”
“Most kind of you.”
The chief inspector turned back to Goodcastle. “You were lulled to incaution by the domestic couple and, prodded by the urgency of escape, you were kind enough to lead us directly to the safe.”
“I am, I swear, merely an antiques merchant and craftsman.”
The pale detective chuckled again, while the “husband” continued to take everything down in his notebook.
“Sir,” the constable said as he stepped from the office. “A problem.”
“Is the safe locked?”
“No, sir. The door was open. The trouble is that ring is not inside.”
“Ring?” Goodcastle asked.
“What is inside?” the lean officer asked, ignoring the shopkeeper.
“Money, sir. That’s all. About five hundred pounds.”
“Are they guineas?”
“No, sir. Varied currency but notes mostly. No gold.”
“It’s the receptacle for my receipts, sirs. Most merchants have one.”
Frowning, the head detective looked into the office beyond them and started to speak. But at that moment the door opened again and in strode Bill Sloat. The ruffian took one look at the constables and inspectors and started to flee. He was seized by the two coppers and dragged back inside.
“Ah, look who we have here, Mad Bill Sloat,” said the bowlered inspector, lifting an eyebrow in his pale forehead. “We know about you, oh, yes. So you’re in cahoots with Goodcastle, are you?”
“I am not, copper.
“Keep a respectable tone in your mouth.”
Goodcastle said uneasily, “By the queen, sir, Mr. Sloat has done nothing wrong. He comes in sometimes to view my wares. I’m sure that’s all he’s doing here today.”
The chief inspector turned to him. “I sense you’re holding back, Goodcastle. Tell us what is on your mind.”
“Nothing, truly.”
“You’ll be in the dock sooner than we have planned for you, sir, if you do not tell us all.”
“Keep your flamin’ gob shut,” Sloat muttered.
“Quiet, you,” a constable growled.
“Go on, Goodcastle. Tell us.”
The shopkeeper swallowed. He looked away from Sloat. “That man is the terror of Great Portland Street! He extorts money and goods from us and threatens to sic his scoundrels from the Green Man on us if we don’t pay. He comes in every Saturday and demands his tithe.”
“We’ve heard rumors of such,” the flaxen-haired detective said.
The chief inspector looked closely at Goodcastle. “Yet today is Monday, not Saturday. Why is his here now?”
The villain shouted at the shopkeeper, “I’m warning you—”
“One more word and it’ll be the Black Maria for you, Sloat.”
Goodcastle took a breath and continued. “Last Thursday he surprised me in my shop at eight a.m. I hadn’t opened the doors yet, but had come in early because I had finished work on several pieces late the night before and I wanted to wax and polish them before I admitted any customers.”
The chief detective nodded, considering this. To his colleagues he said, “The day of the burglary. And not long before it. Pray continue, Goodcastle.”
“He made me open the door. He browsed among the music boxes and looked them over carefully. He selected that one right there.” He pointed to a rosewood box sitting on the counter. “And he said that in addition to his extortion sterling, this week he was taking that box. But more, I was to build a false compartment in the bottom. It had to be so clever that no one examining the box, however carefully, could find what he’d hidden in there.” He showed them the box and the compartment — which he’d just finished crafting a half hour before.
“Did he say what he intended to hide?” the senior Yarder asked.
“He said some items of jewelry and gold coins.”
The villain roared, “’E’s a flamin’ liar and a brigand and when—”
“Quiet, you,” the constable said and pushed the big man down roughly into a chair.
“Did he say where he’d acquired them?”
“No, sir.”
The detectives eyed one another. “So Sloat came here,” the senior man offered, “selected the box and got wax on his fingers. The horsehair and brick dust attached themselves to him as well. The timing would allow for his proceeding directly to Lord Mayhew’s apartment, where he left those substances.”
“It makes sense,” the third offered, looking up from his notebook.
The pale detective asked, “And you have no criminal past, Goodcastle? Don’t lie. It’s easily verified.”
“No, sir. I swear. I’m a simple merchant — if I’ve done anything wrong, it was in not reporting Sloat’s extortion. But none of us along Great Portland Street dared. We’re too frightened of him…. Forgive me, sirs, it’s true — I did send the police across the street on a merry chase. I had no idea why they were present but they seemed like detectives to me. I had to get them away from here. Mr. Sloat was due momentarily and I knew that if he noticed the law when he arrived he would think I’d summoned them and might beat me. Or worse.”
“Search him,” the pale-visaged detective ordered, nodding toward Sloat.
They pulled some coins, a cigar and a cosh from his pockets, as well as the money purse. The white-faced detective looked inside. “Guineas! Just like the sort that Lord Mayhew lost.”
The Royal Mint had stopped producing gold guineas, worth a pound and a shilling, in 1813. They were still legal tender, of course, but were rare. This was why Goodcastle had not taken many from Lord Mayhew’s; spending them could draw attention to you.
“That purse is not mine!” Sloat raged. “It’s ’is!”
“That’s a lie!” Goodcastle cried. “Why, if it were mine, why would you have it? I have mine right here.” He displayed a cheap leather pouch containing a few quid, crowns and pence.
The constable holding the pouch then frowned. “Sir, something else is inside — hidden in a pocket in the bottom.” He extracted two items and displayed them. “The cravat pin, like the one Sir Mayhew reported missing. Most surely the same one. And the ruby broach, also taken!”
“I’m innocent, I tell you! Goodcastle ’ere come to me with a story of ’aving to get his arse to France tonight.”
“And what was the motive for this hasty retreat?” the inscribing detective asked.
“’E didn’t say,” Sloat admitted.
“Convenient,” the pale detective said wryly. It was clear that they didn’t believe the ruffian.
Goodcastle tried to keep a curious and cautious expression on his face. In fact, he was wracked by anxiety, wondering if he could pull off this little theater. He’d had to act fast to save himself. As he’d told Sloat he was going to treat Scotland Yard to a taste of their own medicine — but not to forsake his homeland and flee to France, which he’d decided he could never do. No, he’d use evidence to connect Sloat to the burglary — through a fabricated story about the music box with the hidden compartment on the one hand and, on the other, making certain Sloat took t
he incriminating money purse from Goodcastle at the Green Man.
But would the police accept the theory?
It seemed for a moment that they would. But just as Goodcastle began to breathe somewhat easier, the chief inspector turned quickly to him. “Please, sir. Your hands?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I will examine your hands. One final test in this curious case. I am not yet completely convinced the facts are as they seem.”
“Well, yes, of course.”
Goodcastle held his palms out, struggling to keep them steady. The detective looked them over. Then he looked up, frowning. After a moment he lowered his head again and smelled Goodcastle’s palm. He said to Sloat, “Now yours.”
“Listen ’ere, coppers, you bloody well ain’t—”
But the constables grabbed the man’s beefy hands and lifted them for the chief inspector, who again examined and sniffed. He nodded and then turned slowly to Goodcastle. “You see, the Westphalian ring is of a unique design — silver and gold, unusual in metal craft. Gold, as you know, needs no polishing to prevent tarnish. But silver does. Mayhew told us that the ring had been recently cleaned with a particular type of silver polish that is scented with perfume derived from the lily flower. It is quite expensive but well within Mayhew’s means to buy liberally for his staff to use.” Then he turned toward Sloat. “Your hands emit a marked scent of lily and display some small traces of the off-white cream that is the base for the polish, while Mr. Goodcastle’s do not. There’s no doubt, sir. You are the thief.”
“No, no, I am wronged!”
“You may make your case before the judges, sir,” the light-haired policeman said, “from the dock.”
Goodcastle’s heart pounded fiercely from this final matter — about the polish. He’d nearly overlooked it but had decided that if the detectives were now so diligent in their use of these minuscule clues to link people to the sites of crimes, Goodcastle needed to be just as conscientious. If a burglar could leave evidence during the commission of a felony, he might also pick up something there that might prove equally damning. He thought back to the ring and Mayhew’s dressing chamber. He recalled that he’d recognized the scent of Covey’s Tarnish-Preventing Cream in the velvet-lined boxes. On the way to the Green Man, he’d bought some, slathered it liberally on his palm. Shaking Sloat’s hand to seal their agreement had transferred some to the ruffian’s skin. Before returning to his shop, Goodcastle had scrubbed his own hands clean with lye soap and discarded the remaining polish.
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II Page 6
