by R. N. Morris
There was something inviting about the entrance, Quinn felt. He was aware of a desire to find out what lay on the other side of it.
Sergeant Inchball was next to Quinn in the rear of the Model T. Quinn felt the press of Inchball’s considerable bulk as he leaned over to get a better look at the view. ‘What’s tha’? A bleedin’ church?’ Inchball sounded outraged by the possibility.
‘The church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart,’ said Macadam from the front. ‘Blackley has never been able to get rid of it – unlike all his other neighbours, or anyone else who has got in his way. So he has been forced to build his empire around it.’
‘How comes you know all this?’ Inchball’s tone was resentful, as if he took Macadam’s knowledge as a personal affront.
‘Don’t you read The West End Whisperer?’
‘Wouldn’t wipe my arse on it.’
‘There was a piece about Benjamin Blackley in there the other day.’
Quinn had seen the article. There had been a copy of The West End Whisperer left in the lavatory at his lodging house. He had glanced idly at the scurrilous exposé. He did not feel inclined to admit to it, however. In truth, it was not the first time he had read about goings-on at the House of Blackley. He remembered being mesmerized by the graphic accounts of the fire that had destroyed the store several years ago. It was possible that he had seen them in the same publication.
Macadam evidently felt the need to justify his choice of reading matter. ‘Mrs Macadam is a frequent visitor to the House of Blackley. I have accompanied her on more than one occasion, for my sins.’ The driver craned his neck to direct his remarks more to Quinn. ‘You would not believe it, sir – to see the change that comes over her. Most unseemly, it is. Generally speaking, I would say she is a quite sensible woman, is Mrs Macadam. But the moment she walks inside that store it’s like she loses her wits, Lord help me. It’s a frenzy comes over her. Ber-serk, she goes. Berserk. You are familiar with the word, sir?’
‘I am, Macadam.’
In the back of the car, Sergeant Inchball rolled his eyes and mouthed an oath.
‘So anyhow,’ continued Macadam, oblivious to Inchball’s silent abuse. ‘I was curious to read about the man who exercises such a hold over my wife. Normally I would not bother myself with the tittle-tattle of such a low publication.’ He slowed the car to a virtual standstill. ‘Speak of the devil.’
There he was, Benjamin Blackley, in position at the main entrance, welcoming shoppers with a cheery shake of the hand. He was recognizable from the pictures of him that had appeared in the newspapers over the years. The mutton-chop whiskers, the affable smile, the clear air of confidence and command . . . it couldn’t be anyone else. And of course, it was well known that whenever possible he liked to greet visitors to his store in person, the humblest and the most elevated alike.
Quinn studied the famous commercial genius closely. He pondered the question that he always asked himself whenever he encountered someone new: could this person be a murderer?
Seeing the unshakeable smile on the man’s face, Quinn felt himself stirred by an emotion somewhere between admiration and horror. ‘After what has happened? After a girl has died?’
‘Begging your pardon, sir?’ said Macadam.
Inchball watched his guv’nor closely, his expression guarded, anxious.
‘Take us round to the house where the girl was found, Seven Caper Street. You can drop Inchball and myself off there. Then come back for Mr Blackley. Bring him to us at the house.’
‘Very well, sir.’ After a moment, Macadam added: ‘Sir, you will be careful, won’t you?’
‘What are you talking about, Macadam?’
‘We don’t want any unfortunate accidents, do we, sir?’ said Macadam warily.
‘If by unfortunate accidents, you are referring to the criminals who are alleged to have met their deaths in the course of my investigations, I will remind you that these were for the most part ruthless and desperate men. We may be sure that the overwhelming majority of them would have died on the scaffold anyhow. It must be assumed they preferred to fight to the death than surrender.’
‘Must it, sir?’ asked Macadam a little sadly.
‘Yes, it must,’ insisted Quinn. ‘Besides, you need not worry. I shall have Inchball to keep me on the straight and narrow.’
‘That is precisely what worries me, sir.’
‘Cheeky bugger!’ came from Inchball.
‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, sir,’ said Macadam, ‘but the commissioner had me in his office.’
Inchball sniggered.
Macadam pressed on earnestly. ‘He asked me to keep an eye on you. For your own sake, was how he put it, sir. He intimated that if there were any further incidents such as . . . well, I think we all know the kind of incidents we are talking about. At any rate, he said that if there was any more of that kind of thing . . . any more . . .’
‘Spit it out!’ cried Inchball.
‘Well, sir, he said that the command of the Special Crimes Department would be taken away from you. You would still be on Special Crimes, but he has it in mind to bring another officer in over you, sir. A safe pair of hands was how he described the fellow.’
‘I see. I am grateful to you, Macadam. And did Sir Edward divulge to you whom he had in mind for this post?’
‘No, sir, he did not. And he was most insistent that I should not say a word to you. He did not wish it to put you off your stroke.’
Inchball sniggered again. Quinn flashed a warning glance, which prompted a well-what-do-you-expect shrug.
This was a disturbing development. In the first place, he did not expect the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to speak directly to his sergeants. Without telling him, it should be said. It just wasn’t done. Second, why had Sir Edward not warned him about this at their tête à tête earlier? It was all very well dropping dark hints, but he could just as easily have given it to him straight.
It could only be because he wanted Quinn to come a cropper. In that case, why tip the wink to Macadam?
Perhaps Sir Edward himself had been caught in a cleft stick: told by those above him (which could only mean the Home Secretary and his faceless civil service mandarins) that Quinn was to have his authority usurped if he slipped up again; warned also not to say a word about it to Quinn. Being an honourable man, Sir Edward could not disobey a direct order. Quinn wouldn’t put it past them to make the commissioner swear an oath on the Bible. They knew every man’s weakness.
And so Sir Edward had found a way to stick to the letter of the command, while at the same time putting Quinn on alert. First there was the talking-to this morning. Then the word in Macadam’s shell-like. Sir Edward must have counted on Macadam’s fierce loyalty to his guv’nor. He knew that telling Macadam was the same thing as warning Quinn.
Quinn had to accept that there were other less comforting ways of looking at it. It was possible that he had lost even Sir Edward’s confidence, and that Sir Edward was now on the side of those who wished to see him fail. These latest manoeuvrings were designed to unsettle him, making it more likely that he would stumble.
Even if the more positive interpretation were true, it was worrying. The last thing he wanted was a by-the-book stickler brought in over his head. He had encountered enough of those in the course of his career. Worse would be the kind of egoist who always believed he was in the right. It would be bad enough for Quinn to have his every move questioned, but to have some pompous idiot telling him what to do didn’t bear thinking about. And the man would be an idiot, that was a given.
The simple fact was that there was no better detective in the whole of the Metropolitan Police Force than Silas Quinn. Sir Edward knew that. Why else would he have put him in charge of the Special Crimes Department, a unit that at times seemed to have been created purely to accommodate Quinn’s unique talents and idiosyncratic methods?
But whichever way you looked at it, what it came down to was that there were powerful i
ndividuals out to get him. On balance, he felt that he could trust Sir Edward. He had to believe that the commissioner was looking out for him. The important thing was not to let Sir Edward down. This case – everything hinged on how he handled this case. He would crack it quickly, without any serious mishap.
Quinn turned in his seat to continue watching Blackley through the rear window of the car as Macadam accelerated away. ‘Is it a sign of guilt or innocence that he continues as if nothing has happened, I wonder?’
The question went unanswered. Either his sergeants had not heard or they knew from experience when not to intrude on the governor’s musings.
Hear No Evil
A uniform on guard at the front door marked out the house. He watched suspiciously as Quinn and Inchball got out of the Model T, then stiffened and bridled at their approach, as if readying for a fight. But when Quinn introduced himself, the uniform relaxed. They were his kind. Coppers. He touched his helmet in salute. ‘We’ve had some journalists sniffing round, sir,’ he explained distastefully. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘Indeed,’ said Quinn. ‘Who is the senior CID officer on the case?’
‘That’s DCI Coddington, sir.’
‘DCI?’ Quinn was thrown by Coddington’s rank. He immediately began to speculate whether this was the man earmarked to be his boss. But Sir Edward had said that the locals were turning themselves into a laughing stock. It was hardly likely that they would put someone they knew to be a fool over him; or that they would prepare for it by having Quinn go in to sort out the aforementioned fool’s botched case. Unless it was all part of a strategy to unnerve him, and their ultimate plan was to close down Special Crimes completely. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s already inside, sir. Like a bloodhound off the leash, he is. We couldn’t hold him back if we wanted to.’ The constable paused momentously, as if he was remembering the one time they had tried to hold DCI Coddington back and how much they had all regretted it. ‘Going over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb, he is, sir.’
‘A bloodhound with a fine-tooth comb? What an arresting image!’
Quinn’s irony was lost on the constable. ‘That’s right, sir. He has a terrific record for arrests. I’ll ring the bell for you. The housekeeper will let you in.’
A primly dressed middle-aged woman opened the door, blocking the threshold with her solid frame. She regarded Quinn and Inchball with an expression of imperturbable calm. Quinn was reminded of Blackley’s determined cheerfulness outside the store.
‘You will take these gentlemen to Chief Inspector Coddington.’ Quinn noticed that the constable raised his voice to a shout to address her. It seemed unnecessarily rude. But then the bobby confided out of the side of his mouth: ‘She’s deaf as a post, sir.’
At the whispered aside, Quinn thought he noticed an involuntary contraction of the woman’s brows. He could not say for certain what it signified. One possibility was that she was not as deaf as she liked to appear.
She indicated Quinn and Inchball with a curt nod. ‘I cannot admit just any Tom, Dick or Harry to this house. Mr Blackley is very particular.’ Her own voice was raised to the stifled shout of the deaf.
‘I am Detective Inspector Silas Quinn of the Special Crimes Department, Scotland Yard.’ Quinn enunciated the words clearly, moving his mouth with exaggerated precision. ‘This is Sergeant Inchball.’
‘Policemen?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘We’ve got more than enough policemen inside already.’ This was as if to say she hadn’t ordered any more policemen. Her gaze was strangely unfocused; either she was not quite all there, or she was working hard not to meet anyone’s eye. Perhaps it was simply the stress of recent events, although ‘stress’ was not quite the word that came to mind looking at her. Far from it. Stolid, that was the word for her. Quinn felt she lacked the imagination – or any empathetic faculty – necessary to suffer stress. But behind her stolidity he detected an air of suppressed excitement.
‘This is a very grave case,’ said Quinn. ‘As you can see, we’re taking it very seriously.’
‘It’s hard enough keeping this place tidy without all you lot clomping through with your big boots on.’
‘I quite understand. Regrettably, however, after a crime such as this it is necessary for a certain amount of clomping through of policemen. We will do our best to minimize the inconvenience.’
‘It is too late for that!’ cried the housekeeper. ‘The damage has already been done.’
‘Damage? I am very sorry to hear that there has been damage. I shall speak to DCI Coddington about it. What exactly has been damaged?’
‘A girl is dead!’
Quinn was about to object when he thought better of it. There was no logic to her complaint, and yet he felt it would be futile to point that out to her.
The flicker of a smile: he could not dismiss the possibility that she was playing with him.
She turned abruptly and led the way inside. Quinn took off his bowler hat as he entered and gestured for Inchball to do the same.
Somehow the house had a soulless feel to it. From his cursory glance he could see that everything was smart and well-maintained. No expense had been spared. But it seemed to lack the loving touch. Perhaps this was to be expected of a lodging house. But when he compared it to the lodging house where he lived, which bore the imprint of his landlady, Mrs Ibbott’s personality, he found Seven Caper Street strangely wanting. There was too much calculation, he decided, in the choice of furnishings and decor. Who was responsible for the calculations, and what result they were intended to achieve, he could not yet say.
As they walked the length of the narrow hall, a cracked glass in a picture frame caught his eye.
Miss Mortimer caught him looking at it. ‘Oh, that was that young man’s fault.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The young man Mr Blackley sent round. Mr Arbuthnot, I think his name was. I was in the middle of hanging these pictures for Mr Blackley – he had expressly asked that they be put up. It was very inconvenient to have him coming round here asking for Amélie when I had work to do.’
‘I don’t quite understand. How did Mr Arbuthnot break the picture?’
‘He knocked it over. I hadn’t hung it up yet. He was very clumsy.’
‘You’ve hung it now? Broken?’
‘I thought it was best to get it out of the way, with all these policemen clomping about.’
On cue, Quinn heard the unmistakeable tread of policemen’s boots above. The sound acted as a spur, reminding him of the presence of that other detective, his senior in rank, against whom he already saw himself as pitted. Coddington had a head start on him. He had better not waste any more time.
The housekeeper had turned to lead on. ‘So it was you and Arbuthnot who found the body?’ he enquired of her back. She carried on without answering. Quinn reached forward and tapped her on the shoulder.
The woman turned sharply. ‘What’s that?’
‘Who found the body?’
She repeated the question back to him. ‘Who found her?’
Perhaps the woman was stupid, after all. It was a simple enough question. It was possible that she could be both stupid and deaf. ‘Yes, who found her? I presume it was you and Arbuthnot?’
‘If you presume that then you would be correct. And I don’t see the need to go around tapping folk on the shoulder.’
Her eyes had a glazed detachment. But he decided she was not stupid. Far from it. She was undoubtedly cunning. Her repetition of his question had simply been a delaying tactic to give her time to formulate her answer. But why would she feel it necessary to do that unless she had something to hide?
Perhaps he was being unfair. He knew that he had a tendency to over-analyse. The simplest explanation often proved to be the correct one. Quite possibly the woman was still in shock after discovering the victim. What he had taken to be a hint of enjoyment might have been something quite different. Terror was a f
orm of excitement. He must not underestimate the emotional bonds that existed between the housekeeper and the girls in her protection. To some of the younger ones, she would have been like a mother. She would have felt the girl’s death severely, especially as she had found her.
And yet, somehow, looking at her calm demeanour, he had trouble imagining her feeling anything. Was that the secret she guarded – an unimagined depth of feeling in the most private part of her being?
Quinn himself was no stranger to buried secrets. His police work was the camouflage he used to conceal them, from himself as much as from others. This realization brought him back to the task in hand. ‘Where is Mr Arbuthnot now?’
‘Back at work, I should imagine. Mr Blackley would not countenance his remaining idle for no reason.’
‘Doesn’t the intrusion of death into the working day constitute a reason?’
‘Not as far as Mr Blackley is concerned.’
‘Yes, I saw him myself, standing in front of the store, greeting his customers as if he hadn’t a care in the world.’
The housekeeper made no comment. At that point, a man with an undersized bald head and oversized moustache appeared at the top of the stairs and peered down. Quinn was dismayed to see that he was wearing a herringbone Ulster. That’s what I wear! was his first thought. Naturally he had left the garment at home today as it was shaping up to be fine, with not a drop of rain in sight.
If this was Coddington, Quinn was not impressed. No doubt he thought the herringbone Ulster made him look more of a detective. Why else would he insist on keeping it on inside? Perhaps he had even heard that it was something of a trademark garment with Quinn, and was seeking to emulate him. Quinn was surely not flattering himself to think that he was known for his herringbone Ulster, at least amongst the detectives of the Met. But this was ridiculous. They could not both wear herringbone Ulsters. If it should happen to rain one day and they were working together, they would look like a couple of idiots.
