Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  Mrs. Prior said, “I did think of one thing. After it was all over. Too late to be any use. Taylor was very thick with our other mechanic, Beardoe. They used to go out drinking in the evenings. He might have let slip something, talking to Len.”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Mercer. “Where’s Beardoe now?”

  “What brought it into my mind was that I ran into him in Staines a few weeks ago. He’s got a job there. It’s not a garage. It’s a light engineering works. Carcroft was the name.”

  “My wife has a marvellous memory,” said Mr. Prior. “I’m getting terrible. Not long ago, I woke up in the night, and I couldn’t remember my own middle name.”

  Mercer found Mr. Brattle knocking out his pipe. He offered Mercer the punt pole. He said, “Like to try your hand on the way back?”

  “I’ll have a shot.”

  “Can you swim?”

  “Well enough,” said Mercer. “But I hope it won’t come to that.”

  He didn’t fall overboard, but it was almost the only mistake he didn’t make. He put the pole in too far back, and got no propulsion. He put it in too far ahead, and stopped the boat altogether. He put it too far out, and turned in a solemn circle, until he was facing the landing stage again.

  “Want to give up?” said Mr. Brattle.

  “I’m going to get this bloody thing across if it kills me,” said Mercer.

  “You don’t want to lift the pole quite so high,” said Mr. Brattle. “When you raise it up like that the water runs down your sleeve.”

  “I had noticed.”

  In midstream he turned another complete circle, nearly running down a canoe. The girl who was in it took prompt evasive action, shouted, “Port to port, you oaf,” and shot off upstream. Mercer gritted his teeth.

  Five minutes later, damp but exhilarated, he rammed the bank only a yard above the landing stage, and Mr. Brattle, who had been watching his moment, jumped nimbly ashore with the painter.

  “I hope I haven’t damaged her.”

  “A well-built punt,” said Mr. Brattle, “will stand up to almost anything. You didn’t do too bad. A few years’ practice, and you might be good. You’ve got the shoulders for it.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mercer.

  “You want someone to teach you, you could do a lot worse than take lessons from that girl in the canoe you nearly hit. Miss Slade, her name is.”

  “I recognised her,” said Mercer.

  “You know them, perhaps.”

  “I know of them.”

  “Her brother now, he thinks he’s good. But he’s all brawn and no brain. She’s got the better head of the two. Handle any sort of craft. The only thing I’ve never seen her bother with is one of them things.”

  He jerked a contemptuous thumb at the motor launch which was coming downstream. Mercer noticed that it was being steered by a man wearing a Panama hat and smoking a cigar.

  Mr. Brattle refused to take any payment for the trip. Mercer drove home, changed his shirt, and made his way back to the station, where he found an air of subdued excitement in the C.I.D. room.

  “Guess what?” said Rye. “Tell him, Bob.”

  Massey said, “I talked to that Henniker. He was one of Sweetie’s real steadies. He recognised the bits and pieces. But that’s not all. He said there was one missing. It sounded like the only really valuable piece. A twisted gold filigree ring with three small but quite nice diamonds in it.”

  “Is he sure about that?”

  “He gave it to her himself. He says it set him back sixty quid.”

  “It looks as though Mr. Jeejeeboy must have flogged it.”

  “Which raises a question, dunnit?” said Mercer. “How did he know Sweetie wasn’t coming back to claim it? Get a proper description of the ring from the shop that sold it to Henniker and put it on the pawnbroker’s list. I’ll go and have a word with that Pakistani prune-pedlar.”

  Chapter Seven

  “But I assure you, Inspector,” said Mr. Jeejeeboy earnestly, “that what I am telling you is entirely the truth. I know the ring well. It never left her finger.”

  “It wasn’t on her finger when we found her,” said Mercer.

  “Pray don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is so dreadful. I cannot bear to think of her in the grave. She was so vital. Just a child, Inspector, but a vital child.”

  Mercer looked at him. He was either genuinely moved or he was a very good actor. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Was this where she kept her stuff?”

  “I allowed her to do so. She could not take it back to that—that den where her father lived. I will show you.”

  They were in the room behind the shop. It was crammed with cartons, crates, boxes and bottles and smelled pleasantly of coffee and spice and sawdust. They threaded their way down a narrow passageway among the clutter to the far end, where there was a wall-cupboard. Mr. Jeejeeboy opened it with a flourish. Except for a couple of wire coat-hangers it was quite empty.

  “That was her very own cupboard,” he said. “The only private place she had in the world.”

  The tears were coming down fast now.

  “I suppose she kept it locked.”

  “Of course. My assistants are frequently in this room. I know them to be trustworthy, but you cannot blame her for being careful.”

  “Who had keys?”

  “She had one, and I had another.”

  “One of these?”

  Mercer took out of his pocket the keys they had found in the red plastic bag. Hard work with emery paper and a nail file had got most of the rust out of the wards.

  “Yes. That is the one. The long one.”

  Mercer tried it in the lock. It was stiff, but it worked. He said, “The afternoon she disappeared. That’s to say, the last afternoon anyone saw her. Was she in here?”

  “That afternoon, she could not have been in here. Because it was the early closing day.”

  “How do you know?”

  Mr. Jeejeeboy looked surprised. “Wednesday is always the early closing day.”

  “How did you know she was last seen on a Wednesday?”

  “How did I know? Of course I knew.”

  “How?”

  “Everyone was talking about it.”

  “Talking about what?”

  Mr. Jeejeeboy started to look harassed.

  “When she did not appear, Inspector, her friends started to ask themselves, ‘When did we see her last?’ Someone said, I saw her on Monday. Another said, Tuesday. Then it was remembered that she had been seen in the town, walking down the street, on the late afternoon of Wednesday speaking to a clergyman. After that, nothing.”

  Mercer listened critically. He had long ago concluded that it was not so much what witnesses said, but the way they said it. He thought that the thin brown anxious little man might be telling the truth.

  He thought about it as he drove the five miles along the new by-pass to Staines.

  The Carcroft Engineering Works was a small place, out on the Chertsey Road. He had a word with the manager, and Beardoe was brought into the office. He was a middle-aged man, who hid his apprehensions about life behind a large moustache and a gruff manner. He thawed a little when he found what the Inspector wanted.

  “Taylor? I wouldn’t say I knew him all that well. We got on all right. Tell you the truth I was a bit surprised Mr. Prior took him on. He didn’t seem to have had much experience.”

  “That was the point I was interested in,” said Mercer.

  “He must have talked sometimes about other jobs he’d done. It’d be a natural thing to do. Where he’d been before. That sort of thing.”

  “He may have done, but it was a good time ago, Inspector. Three years and more. I do seem to recollect he told me he’d worked at a place in Southwark.”

  “The Crescent Garage.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “He didn’t mention any other place?”

  Beardoe ra
n a black engrained finger nail down the flank of his moustache and started to say something and then stopped and thought about it again. “I do recollect,” he said, “one night. He must have been pissed at the time or he’d never have said it, but we were talking about stolen cars. He said, if ever you were lumbered with a hot job, the place to take it to was—”

  “Was what?”

  “I’m damned if I can remember. It was a foreign name. Sounded like Italian or Greek. He gave me the address too. I wasn’t very interested, you understand.”

  “I quite understand. But if you could remember it – either the name or the address – it would be very helpful.”

  “You know how it is,” said Beardoe. “When you try to remember a thing, you can’t. When you’re not trying, it comes back to you.”

  “If it should come back to you,” said Mercer, “ring me at this number at once.”

  He drove back to Stoneferry in the dusk, devoting only a quarter of his attention to the road and the rest to a consideration of the question of whether he might not be chasing a wild goose. Possibly it was this preoccupation that prevented him from noticing a small black saloon car, which had kept two cars behind him on the way out and was maintaining the same respectful distance on the return journey.

  At about this time, Mrs. Prior had a shock. She had come back from an afternoon of shopping and gossiping, had parked the car, and opened the front door. Her husband was standing in the hall. She saw at once that something was wrong. His face was unnaturally white, and when he stretched his hand out and put it on her arm, she saw that it was shaking. “Henry, my dear!” she said. “You’re ill. I’ll put you straight to bed.”

  It was the effort he made to control his voice which told her that something really serious had happened.

  He said, “You remember that man who came this morning.”

  “The Police Inspector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he been here again?”

  “He hasn’t been here again. And listen to me. If he does come here again, he’s not to be allowed inside the house. If he rings up, you don’t answer the telephone.”

  His voice was rising. She took him by the arm and led him back into the sitting room. She said, “Sit down, there. By the fire. I’ll get you a drink.”

  She took as much time as possible in pouring out the drink, and by the time she came back with it, her husband had recovered some of his self-possession. As she handed him the glass, her hand brushed his hair. She said, “Your hair’s quite wet. What on earth have you been doing? Bathing?”

  Mr. Prior started shivering again.

  On the following Monday morning the formal inquest was opened on what the newspapers now referred to as ‘The Body on the Island’. The coroner, Mr. Byfold, a sleepy-looking man with three chins and a dimple, said, “I take it, Inspector, that you will ask for an adjournment. We appreciate your difficulties in this case. How long would you like?”

  “The police would ask for an adjournment of seven days.”

  “I’d be happy to give you longer than that.”

  “It seems probable that we should be able to offer evidence of identification within that period.”

  “Very well, Inspector. Adjourned until September 20th.”

  “Weren’t you sticking your neck out a bit?” said Superintendent Clark.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mercer. “We’ve got a prima facie identification already. There’s no doubt the handbag was hers. The powder compact made it pretty certain and the keys clinched it. She disappeared two years ago. And we’ll get Dr. Champion to say that’s about the time he estimates the body had been buried. And another thing – it’s only negative evidence – but as far as I can make out Sweetie had never been near a dentist.”

  “We’d better warn Champion that we shall be relying on his evidence. Well, what’s happened now, Tom? You’re looking damned pleased with yourself.”

  Inspector Rye, who had come in without knocking, said, “We’ve got an answer about that ring. In fact, we’ve got the object itself. Turned over to us by a pawnbroker at Slough.”

  He put the ring on Clark’s desk and the three men looked at it curiously. It was a pretty thing, and clearly quite valuable.

  “Has he got a record of the deposit?”

  “He certainly has,” said Rye. “He was so suspicious of the whole transaction that he made a note, in his own handwriting, in the margin of the ledger. ‘Calls himself Smith. Old man. Dressed like a respectable tramp.’ “

  “Sowthistle.” Mercer and Clark said it together.

  “Get us a positive identification,” said Clark, “and we’ll pull him in.”

  “I’ve done it, sir. You remember when there was all that fuss with the Local Authority. Hedges’ picture was in all the papers. I took the pawnbroker straight down to the Slough Gazette Office and showed him some of the photographs.”

  “And he identified him?”

  “Not a shadow of doubt.”

  “He’s an unmistakable sort of character,” said Mercer.

  “All right. We can organise a proper identification parade afterwards. If it comes to that. Meanwhile I imagine you’ll pull him in and charge him.”

  “With theft? Or murder?”

  “I must leave that to your judgement after you’ve questioned him.”

  “We shall have to make our minds up which horse we’re backing before we charge him.”

  “I am acquainted with Judges’ Rules,” said Clark. “I also believe that any detective officer worth his salt knows how to get round them.”

  Mercer said equably, “You wouldn’t care to give me that in writing, sir?”

  “No. I would not.”

  “Because we really are in a bit of a cleft stick. If we charge him with theft, he’ll put up some story. Sweetie was going away and gave him the ring. Why? To pay for board and lodging, or because she loved the old bastard, or for any other reason he puts forward. The point being that if Sweetie isn’t here, she can’t deny it.”

  Clark said, “Mmm.” He didn’t sound pleased.

  “On the other hand, if we go the whole hog and charge him with murder, it could misfire badly. There’s a lot of suggestive evidence. He wouldn’t have dared to sell the ring unless he was sure she wasn’t coming back. But it’s not direct evidence. We may get there in time, but if we go off at half cock, the whole thing may blow up in our faces. You remember what a lot of sympathy he got out of the papers last time. We don’t want a second campaign of that sort, do we?”

  The Superintendent was spared the trouble of answering by Detective Massey, who put his head round and said, “Sorry to interrupt. But we’ve had a message from the box out on the Staines Road. They’ve pulled in Hedges.”

  “Pulled him in. What for?”

  “Assault, sir.”

  “What happened?”

  “From what I gather, he was walking along the road and he flagged a lorry. He had a big knapsack on his back, and the driver thought at first he was a hiker, and stopped. When he saw Hedges—”

  “Smelled him, you mean.”

  “Yes. Well, anyway, he said ‘no’. Hedges was pretty tight, and he got mad, and tried to clamber on board, and there was a bit of a fight and in the middle of it, one of our patrol cars came along. Then Hedges hit the policeman.”

  “That solves one of our difficulties, doesn’t it,” said Mercer. “By the way, what was in the knapsack?”

  “All his clothes and things.”

  “You mean he was scarpering?”

  “It certainly looked like that. He told the lorry driver he was heading for the West Country.”

  The Superintendent said, “Well, I think that’s very satisfactory. You’ll take over, Mercer.”

  “I’ll take over,” said Mercer. The scar on the side of his face showed up red for a moment.

  Sowthistle was brought in at midday. The events of the morning had not improved his appearance. He was taken straight up to the C.I.D. room.
Coming in from the street, at about three o’clock, Inspector Medmenham stopped and said to Station Officer Tovey, “What on earth’s all that noise? Where’s it coming from?”

  “Up in the C.I.D. room,” said Tovey with a wooden face. “They’re questioning that old man they brought in for clocking Peters.”

  “Has it been going on for long?”

  “About an hour.”

  Medmenham said, “Oh!” and walked upstairs and along the corridor. He was making for the Superintendent’s office.

  At four o’clock Tom Rye came into the C.I.D. room with three cups of tea on a tray. He looked curiously at Sowthistle, who was crouched on a chair, his face in his hands, and his whole body shaking.

  Rye said, very quietly, “The Chief ’s getting worried.”

  Mercer said, “Then tell him from me to stop worrying. I haven’t laid a finger on the old sod, and I’ve had Massey here all the time to watch me not doing it. Right, son?”

  Massey, who was sitting in a corner with a notebook balanced on his knee, nodded.

  “Then what’s he been screaming about?”

  “It’s a defensive mechanism. When I ask him a question he can’t answer, he opens his mouth and screams.”

  “Do you think he knows something?”

  “He knows something, and we’re going to get it out of him if we sit here all night asking questions. And all tomorrow, and the day after.”

  “Would you like me to give you a spell?”

  “Not right now,” said Mercer. “We’re just beginning to get to know each other.”

  The ragbag in the chair showed no sign of hearing what was said. Now he looked up and Rye could see two eyes, startlingly alive within their red circumferences, and spittle at each corner of the loose mouth.

  “He’s not having a fit, is he?”

  “If you want my honest opinion,” said Mercer, “it’s ninety per cent put on. He knows bloody well what we want, don’t you, grandpa?”

  Sowthistle snarled at them.

  “That’s more like it,” said Mercer. “Stop playing the idiot boy. Just be your own filthy self. Then we shall get on. Let’s start again. When did you say you saw Sweetie last?”

  Rye went back again at six o’clock with tea and at eight o’clock with yet more tea. At half-past nine Mercer came out and walked along to the Superintendent’s office. Clark was still at his desk. He looked as if he was feeling the strain more than Mercer.