Instrument of Slaughter

by Edward Marston

  After switching off the light, he put the fireguard in the grate then followed her upstairs. When he’d been to the bathroom and changed into his pyjamas, he clambered into bed beside her.

  ‘What sort of a case is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a very baffling one at the moment.’

  ‘Do you have any suspects?’

  ‘We might have. It’s too early to tell.’

  ‘And is this the sort of time you’ll be coming home from now on?’

  ‘Think yourself lucky, Ellen,’ he said, snuggling under the bed sheets. ‘Your loving husband will actually get some sleep tonight. That wouldn’t be the case if you were married to Joe Keedy. He’s got to stay awake until dawn.’

  When he left the Weavers Arms, Keedy had first walked to the lane where the body had been discovered. The police had gone now, so it was possible to go to the spot where Cyril Ablatt had lain. By the light of his torch, he saw that the blood had been washed away to deter sightseers from finding the exact place. He imagined the shock that the courting couple must have felt when they stumbled on the corpse. It might have had an adverse effect on their romance. Before he returned to his vantage point, he walked around the vicinity to familiarise himself with it. These were the streets that Ablatt and his friends knew by heart. Hiding in one of them, he believed, was the killer. Their job was to root him out.

  The Haveron sisters were delighted to see him again and pressed food and drink on to him. They were like a pair of eccentric aunts who’d just encountered a nephew they never knew they had and wanted to make up for lost time.

  ‘Do you do this kind of thing often?’ asked Rose.

  ‘As it happens,’ said Keedy, ‘I don’t. This is an exception.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly an exception for us,’ Martha chimed in, ‘isn’t it, Rose? Who’d ever have thought that we’d play host to a detective?’

  ‘It’s rather exciting,’ said Rose.

  ‘I do hope it’s not a waste of time.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Keedy, touched by their sweetness. ‘But at least I’ll be comfortable in your front room. The last time I did this all night, I had to hide in the back of a cattle truck and look through the slats. You can imagine the stench.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Martha.

  ‘You won’t have that problem here,’ Rose assured him.

  Fortunately, the sisters went to bed early every night and even the presence of a detective did not alter their routine. They wished him well, then withdrew upstairs. When he adjourned to the front room, Keedy could hear one of them walking about in the bedroom above his head. He’d politely declined their offer to light a fire for him. It was evident that Rose and Martha Haveron were ladies of limited means. He didn’t wish to make inroads into their coal supply nor did he want to make the room too snug. A warm fire might send him off to sleep. Cold air would keep him awake. Even with the blankets around him, he could feel a bracing chill.

  The Ablatt house was diagonally opposite. When he sat beside the window on an upright chair, he could look through a chink in the curtains. It would be impossible to miss anyone who came to add something to the already well-decorated wall. Keedy settled down for what might be a long and fruitless wait. He staved off boredom by going through all the evidence so far gathered. He thought of the conversations he’d had with Hambridge and Price, young men of fundamentally different character who’d been united by a single purpose. He’d liked the carpenter and distrusted the cook on sight. When they came before a tribunal, he suspected, the quiet certainty of the Quaker would be more effective than the Welshman’s truculence. The person who really interested him was Horrie Waldron. How on earth had such a reprobate aroused affection in Maud Crowther? Given the size and muscularity of Stan Crowther, both of them were tempting fate. The discovery that Waldron was making secret visits to his mother would enrage the landlord. If he dared to put his head into the pub after that, the gravedigger would need his spade to defend himself.

  Hours drifted by and tiredness slackened his muscles. Every so often, his eyes would close for a couple of minutes and he’d have to shake himself awake. Having lost all track of time, Keedy stood up, walked around the room and took off the blankets so that he could feel the piercing cold. It served to galvanise him just in time. From outside the house, there was a loud yell then he heard something thud onto the pavement. Charging across to the window, he pulled back the curtain. A ladder was standing against the wall of the Ablatt house. Beside it was an upturned tin of paint. In the middle of the road, two figures were grappling wildly. Keedy jumped into action. He ran to the front door, let himself out and raced across to the two men. In the course of a fierce struggle, one of them threw the other to the ground and dived on top of him. Keedy grabbed him from behind and pulled him off.

  ‘That’s enough!’ he shouted.

  The man on the ground leapt to his feet, punched Keedy in the face and pushed him against the other man. He then fled off down the street and vanished around the corner. Before the second man could run after him, he was overpowered by Keedy and held in a vice-like grip.

  ‘You silly bastard!’ howled Mansel Price. ‘You let him get away.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Knowing that he wanted to make an early start, Ellen Marmion was up before her husband in order to make sure that he went off to work with a cooked breakfast inside him. When he came down from the bathroom, it was waiting for him on the kitchen table. He gave her a smile of gratitude and sat down.

  ‘How much did you eat yesterday?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Not enough, if I know you.’

  ‘I grabbed something on the hoof,’ he said, picking up his knife and fork and attacking a sausage. ‘Regular meals are a luxury in my job.’

  ‘You must have food, Harvey.’

  ‘I survive somehow.’

  Ellen sat opposite him and clicked her tongue when he began to wolf it down. She poured two cups of tea and added milk and sugar to both before stirring them. Marmion laughed.

  ‘I can spare the time to stir my own tea, love.’

  ‘I was only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Then you can eat my breakfast for me as well.’

  ‘Harvey!’

  ‘There’s no need for you to be up this early,’ he said. ‘It’s not six yet.’

  ‘I can’t lie in bed when you have to be fed. It’s my contribution to this case. I know that it’s on your mind. You were talking about it in your sleep.’

  He was jolted. ‘Was I? What did I say?’

  ‘I couldn’t really tell. You just came out with odd words like “gravedigger” and “librarian” and there were some initials – NFC, I think.’

  ‘It must have been the NCF – that’s the No-Conscription Fellowship. It’s an organisation for people who – for one reason or another – find themselves unable to take part in the war. They come in all shapes and sizes.’

  ‘Are they too afraid?’

  ‘Some of them are, Ellen, but the majority do have a genuine conscientious objection. Look at the murder victim, for instance. Cyril Ablatt was a deeply religious young man with an aversion to taking a human life.’

  ‘I must say that the idea of it worries me as well,’ she said. ‘I know that Paul had to join the army but it troubles me that our son will have to shoot someone.’

  ‘It’s only in self-defence, love. It’s a case of kill or be killed.’

  She grimaced. ‘What a horrible expression!’

  ‘It’s an accurate one,’ he said, reasonably, ‘and you just have to accept it. War turns every soldier into a licensed killer.’

  ‘What happens to them afterwards?’

  ‘When the war is over, you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, frowning. ‘What will it have done to them? Will Paul still be the same person when he comes home or will the war leave its mark on him?’

  ‘The experience is bound to have changed him, love.’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s my fear.’

  ‘I’ll just be glad if he comes back in one piece.’

  ‘Mrs Hooper’s son didn’t. He lost a leg at Ypres. According to her, he keeps boasting about a German he shot dead. He goes on and on about it. Mrs Hooper is worried stiff about him.’ She bit her lip. ‘I do hope that Paul doesn’t do anything like that.’

  ‘He’ll have seen terrible sights,’ said Marmion, reaching for his tea. ‘It won’t be easy to get them out of his mind.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence as they ate their breakfast. When she eventually broke it, Ellen found another source of anxiety.

  ‘I’m praying that Alice doesn’t go over there as well,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no danger of that, surely.’

  ‘There might be, Harvey. She mentioned it yesterday. A couple of her friends in the WEC went off to France as dispatch riders. That could be dangerous.’

  ‘They’ll be kept well behind the lines, love.’

  ‘I don’t want our daughter following Paul over there. Talk to her.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing!’

  ‘Alice won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Did you listen to your mother at that age?’

  She smiled. ‘If I had, then I probably wouldn’t have married you.’

  Marmion grinned then forked the last piece of fried egg into his mouth. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, he suddenly accelerated, swallowing his food, draining his cup in a series of gulps and getting to his feet. He went out into the hall and reached for his hat and coat off the peg. As he put them on, he gave a sigh.

  ‘The war has been a disaster for us,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost a sizeable number of men to the army and all of our best horses are serving in cavalry regiments. This murder would have been so much easier to solve if I could call on more detectives.’

  ‘They didn’t all volunteer. Some of them like Joe Keedy have stayed.’

  ‘Oh, I think he was tempted to enlist, Ellen, but he felt that there was important work to do on the home front. Also, of course, endless months in the trenches would play havoc with his social life. Joe is a ladies’ man and there aren’t many available young ladies in the war zone.’

  ‘You know quite well that that wasn’t the main reason he didn’t join up.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ said Marmion, winking at her. ‘He couldn’t resist the privilege of working with me. That’s why he stayed. Mind you,’ he went on, chortling, ‘after being forced to spend the whole of last night keeping a brick wall under surveillance, he might be wishing that he was in the army, after all.’

  Keedy was annoyed with himself. He’d not only been distracted when the midnight artist had first appeared, he’d accidentally contrived to rescue the man from a beating and to assist his escape. Once he realised what had happened, he and Mansel Price had scoured the streets but there was no sign of the fugitive. It was wrong to blame the Welshman. He deserved credit. While Keedy had had shelter and a degree of comfort in someone’s front room, Price had spent hours crouched in a doorway. It enabled him to attack the man before he had time to paint anything else on the wall. The situation was not irretrievable. Keedy had the abandoned ladder and the tin of white paint. On the lid of the tin was a sticker with the name of the shop where it was bought. By first light, he’d sought help from the nearby police station. Two uniformed constables were put at his disposal and a third was waiting to take the paint back to the shop to see if anyone could remember to whom it was sold.

  The long trudge began. It reminded Keedy of his days in uniform when he sometimes spent an entire day knocking on doors. Having seen the direction in which the man had run off, he had a measure of guidance. While Keedy carried the ladder, the policemen went down either side of the street at the same time in search of its owner. In the first twenty minutes, they got a negative response on every doorstep. Then they saw a postman coming towards them. Keedy caught his attention and beckoned him over. When he identified himself as a detective, he got instant cooperation.

  ‘Is it to do with this murder?’ asked the postman, breathlessly.

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘Then I’ll help all I can.’

  ‘We’re trying to find the owner of this ladder,’ said Keedy.

  ‘It probably belongs to Bill Prosser. He’s a window cleaner. You’ve already come past his house. Did you try there?’

  ‘We’ve knocked on every door in the street. The window cleaner had an alibi for last night. He’s not our man.’

  ‘Then it must belong to someone else,’ said the postman, thinking. ‘There aren’t many people with a ladder that size. In fact, the only other one I can think of round here is Robbie Gill.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘It’s the next street on the left, Sergeant – number thirteen.’

  Keedy’s hopes rose. ‘That could be unlucky for Mr Gill.’

  Thanking the postman, he and the two policemen walked to the address given. Since there was no knocker, Keedy used his knuckles to rap on the door. After a delay of a few seconds, he heard someone coming. When the door was unlocked and opened, a stringy man in his forties came into view. There was bruising around his eye and his unshaven cheek was grazed.

  ‘Mr Gill?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said the man, gruffly.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Keedy and I’ve come to return your ladder.’

  Gill resorted to bluff. ‘Oh, you found it, did you? Thank you very much, Sergeant. It was stolen yesterday. I’m so glad to get it back.’

  ‘Why is that, sir? Did you intend to paint slogans on other walls?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you do,’ said Keedy. ‘Apart from anything else, you assaulted a police officer last night and I take exception to that. You’re under arrest, Mr Gill.’ He parked the ladder up against the front wall of the house. ‘I’ll leave this here. You won’t need it where you’re going.’

  Well fed and eager to take up the reins of the investigation once more, Marmion arrived at Scotland Yard and went straight the superintendent’s office. Chatfield was poring over the map of Shoreditch.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Marmion.

  ‘Ah, you’re here at last, are you?’ observed the other, making it sound as if the inspector was late rather than an hour earlier than his designated starting time. ‘It’s going to be another long day. We should have the post-mortem results soon and, with luck, we might get a response to our appeal for witnesses.’

  ‘It hasn’t happened so far.’

  ‘That was because the details in the Evening News were very sketchy. It’s different with this morning’s editions. The papers will carry a photograph of the victim and description of the route he would have taken home from that meeting. It will also tell them much more about Cyril Ablatt. And another thing,’ he said, folding the map up. ‘The killer will read the reports. He’ll start to panic.’

  ‘I beg leave to doubt that, Superintendent. I think he’s a cold-hearted swine who might enjoy the publicity he’s aroused.’

  ‘That’s arrant nonsense.’

  ‘Is it?’ retorted Marmion. ‘He deliberately left the body where it could be found. Doesn’t that tell you something about him? Many killers go out of their way to conceal their handiwork in order to delay discovery. Why dump the corpse in a lane when he could have hidden it in the woods or buried it somewhere?’ He remembered Horrie Waldron. ‘He might have buried it in a cemetery, perhaps. Who would think of looking for it there?’

  ‘You’re being fanciful, Inspector.’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. When he put the victim there, the killer was making a statement. He wanted us to know.’

  ‘What I want to know is how we catch the devil.’

  ‘We stick to procedure, sir. We gather evidence, sift it, follow every lead and maintain relentless pursuit. If we get help from witnesses, all well and good, but we shouldn’t rely on anyone coming forward. My
men went from house to house in the area yesterday and they didn’t pick up a snippet of useful information. Shoreditch was asleep when the corpse was moved. Nobody saw or heard a thing.’

  ‘I remain more sanguine.’

  ‘Then I hope your optimism is justified. Coverage will be extensive. We gave them plenty to bite on at the press conference.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chatfield, offering a rare compliment. ‘I thought you handled them very well.’ He added a caveat. ‘Though there was no need to be quite so friendly towards them.’

  ‘We need the press on our side, sir. We should never antagonise them.’

  Chatfield bridled. ‘Are you suggesting that that’s what I did?’

  ‘Of course not – you’ve had far too much experience.’

  ‘I certainly have.’

  He inflated his chest and pulled himself upright. Marmion waited while the superintendent struck a pose, lost in thought about what he considered to be the triumphs in his career, the latest of which was his promotion to a higher rank. He seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was there. When he finally noticed Marmion, he snapped his fingers.

  ‘I’ve been remiss,’ he confessed. ‘Do forgive me. Not long before you came, there was a telephone call for you.’

  ‘Did anyone leave a message?’

  ‘It was Sergeant Keedy.’

  ‘Then he probably yawned down the line at you,’ said Marmion.

  ‘On the contrary, Inspector – he sounded almost chirpy. As a result of an incident during the night, he’s made an arrest. It’s a man who was caught trying to paint something on a wall.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Somebody had to, Sergeant.’

  ‘Did you know Cyril Ablatt?’

  ‘I knew of him – that was enough.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My wife uses the library. She saw him there lots of times and heard him arguing with people about why he didn’t join the army.’

  ‘How did you know where he lived?’