A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  ‘Inspector Black, isn’t it?’ The man was nervous, that was clear enough. The handshake was too easily offered, the voice artificially hearty.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I didn’t expect that I’d be seeing you again.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Black answered, his voice purposely flat.

  ‘Still investigating?’ A quick smile that was almost a facial tic.

  Black wasted no time with small talk. ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Talbot? I’ve already told you that.’ Gurney kept on wiping his hands on the rag. ‘I minded his car.’

  ‘I don’t mean Talbot.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I meant the man who went away with him that day. The man you said must have come by train because he and Talbot went away in the Ford.’

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

  ‘Oh, yes, you do, Mr Gurney, oh, yes, you bloody well do.’ Black dropped any pretence of politeness. He was definitely taking a blindly aimed shot in the dark and the only way to make Gurney crack was by intimidation.

  Gurney took a step backwards, startled. ‘You’re being offensive, Detective Black.’

  ‘It’s “detective inspector.” And I get offended when I’m lied to.’

  ‘I think you should leave,’ Gurney answered stiffly. Sam the dog growled at his master’s feet.

  ‘Not until I have some answers.’ Black gave the dog one short glance. ‘If he comes any nearer, I’ll boot his arse up through his fucking ears. Understand, Mr Gurney?’

  ‘Yes.’ He snapped his fingers and the dog skulked away.

  ‘Now tell me about Talbot.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know. David Talbot was a customer, that’s all.’

  ‘I think he was more than that, Mr Gurney. You chatted, told him your life story, listened to his. Played chess. Not a customer, Gurney. Something else.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure I like your tone, Detective Black.’ It was all there now and in force. Plummy Oxford accent, Eton lurking close behind it. The crisp, down-the-nose tones of wealth and position.

  ‘Don’t bother playing the haughty lord with me, Gurney. It simply won’t do, old fellow.’ Behind the man and to his left Black could see the framed photograph on the desk. Another shot in the dark but not so blindly fired. ‘You lied to me about your wife and kids as well.’ He pushed brusquely past Gurney, went to the desk and picked up the photograph.

  Gurney followed. ‘I…,’ he began and stopped.

  ‘They didn’t leave on the Arandora Star, did they, Gurney?’ The blood had drained from the man’s face and Black could see the muscles in his jaw working. The detective kept on, following the freshly opened crack in the façade. ‘I asked about. The Arandora Star didn’t take regular passengers. Internees only.’ He stared at Gurney coldly. ‘She left you, didn’t she? Took the children off with her. Perhaps she went abroad as you said, home to mother, but not on the Arandora Star and not because you were worried for her safety.’ He was playing the bastard copper to the hilt now, not enjoying it, but using deliberate crudeness to widen the cracks in Gurney’s armour.

  ‘Please, I don’t…’

  Don’t let it go now, push hard, then harder still. ‘Was it because of David Talbot? Someone like him? Young. So handsome he was pretty? Did she find out and leave you?’ There was a long silence. There were tears in Gurney’s eyes now. Finally the blond man spoke again.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered, almost choking on the word. Black gave him a moment, turning to put the picture back on the desk.

  ‘Tell me,’ Black said quietly. Gurney nodded and dropped heavily into the chair in front of the desk. ‘Tell me about David Talbot.’ The Scotland Yard detective stood above him, waiting.

  ‘David and I were… friends, as you say.’

  Black pushed again, loathing himself for what he was doing, knowing that it had to be done and wondering what Katherine would say if she could hear him now. ‘Don’t beat around the bush, man. You were arse-fucking the boy.’

  Gurney paled. ‘Oh, God, please, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘No, I’m sure not. Damon and Pythias. Bosom friends for life, I suppose. Pals all round.’ Black snorted. ‘Get on with it. Tell me about Arthur Sidney Wilkes.’

  Gurney paled at the name. ‘How did you find out about that?’ That, not him? Black leaned forward. Something more here. Something deeper, darker than he’d expected.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what you know.’

  ‘Wilkes wasn’t his real name. I don’t know why he changed it.’

  ‘What was his proper name?’

  There was a long, fragile silence; Black could see Gurney being torn apart by this, right before his eyes. ‘Loudermilk,’ Gurney whispered faintly.

  ‘I didn’t hear,’ snapped the detective. Push. Hard. Squeeze the bastard dry for everything he knew. It was all attack now, no quarter given.

  ‘Raymond Loudermilk. I knew him. At school.’

  ‘Was he one of your favourites as well?’

  ‘Christ no!’ Gurney breathed. ‘It was nothing like that. Not with him.’

  ‘This was at university?’

  ‘Before that. Wick Hall.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Cold Dean. Stanmer Park. A few miles from Brighton.’

  ‘A public school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you knew him after that as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me.’ An order, harsh and direct.

  Gurney flinched, then nodded. ‘I had to leave Wick Hall. There had been some financial reverses at home.’

  ‘In other words your family couldn’t pay the fees.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lost track of Loudermilk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he popped up again.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When? Where?’

  ‘The first time was at STC.’ Gurney saw Black’s frown and explained. ‘Standard Telegraph and Cable. I was an engineer with them for a while.’

  ‘Why did he contact you?’

  ‘He needed work.’

  ‘You found it for him?’

  Gurney nodded. ‘Yes. I left STC shortly afterwards. It was several years before I saw him again.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘I was at the Post Office Research and Development Station at Dollis Hill. Loudermilk just appeared one day.’ Black nodded thoughtfully. He had no idea what the Dollis Hill research facility did but he remembered the name from the conversation with Hugh Alexander and Milner-Barry. Turing, one of their colleagues, had worked there as well. Perhaps something to do with Ultra. Another connection.

  ‘He needed employment again?’ the detective asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you found it for him.’

  ‘Yes. A little while after that I decided to get out of the engineering profession entirely.’

  ‘Because of Loudermilk?’

  ‘Yes. No. Partly. I was married to Karen. I…’ He stopped.

  Black pressed on. ‘You purchased this place?’

  ‘Yes. I had a small inheritance.’

  ‘But he followed you here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t want a job though, did he?’

  ‘No. He’d come by from time to time. Sometimes he’d take things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Machinery. Small motors. Tools and bits of wire. I didn’t ask why.’

  ‘He saw you with Talbot, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. At the Mandrake. He followed me back here. He met David. Jumped to the obvious conclusion. I think he was jealous.’

  ‘Was he blackmailing you?’

  ‘I suppose you’d call it that. He never asked for money.’

  ‘But he wanted David Talbot, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gurney lowered his head and brought his hands up to cover his face.
‘Oh, dear God!’ he whispered, sobbing.

  ‘When I came here, you thought that Loudermilk might have murdered David, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you said nothing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Sodomy is one thing, Gurney, murder is something else altogether.’

  The blond man looked up at Black. ‘I was afraid,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Because of what Loudermilk would say? To your wife?’

  ‘No, Karen had already gone by then.’ Gurney paused, a flush suddenly fevering his cheeks. ‘David wasn’t the first.’ Here it was, Black thought. The source.

  ‘Why did you keep silent?’

  ‘Because of… the other thing.’

  ‘What other thing?’

  ‘Exner.’

  ‘Who is Exner?’

  ‘Bernard Timothy Exner. He and I were in lower third together at Wick Hall. Loudermilk was in the fourth form.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Loudermilk… caught us.’

  ‘In flagrante?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His blackmail started that long ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were just boys. And probably not the only ones.’ Black remembered his own boarding school days; he knew the temptations and the frustrations well enough.

  ‘It wasn’t so much the… sex.’

  ‘Shame?’

  ‘Yes. And fear.’

  ‘Of disclosure?’

  ‘No. Worse.’ Gurney paused. ‘I thought Loudermilk would kill me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was insane,’ said Gurney, looking up at Black again. ‘I knew that even then.’

  ‘How?’ Another silence. Gurney looked as though his nerves were stretched to the limit. Black waited then spoke again, softening his tone. ‘Tell me how you knew.’

  ‘Because he was the one who killed Bernard,’ the man answered finally, all emotion drained from him now.

  ‘Bernard was killed?’ Queer Jack’s first victim, that long ago. Gurney had held the secret for half a lifetime.

  ‘Yes. The police said it had been a stranger. A vagrant. I knew better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Loudermilk told me he’d done it. When Bernard vanished, the entire school went searching for him. Loudermilk took me to the spot. Showed me.’ Gurney’s voice had begun to crack.

  ‘The body?’ said Black, speaking gently now.

  ‘Yes.’ Gurney nodded. ‘It was Loudermilk’s sacred place, or that’s what he called it. He said that one day it would be famous once again.’

  ‘Where exactly was this “sacred place”?’

  ‘A thicket on the edge of Stanmer Wood, not far from the school. We used to go to the old chapel there on special days. It was beautiful, actually. He’d… he’d buried him just at a spot where you could see the spire rising up through the trees. I remember thinking that Bernard would be able to listen to the bells. He wouldn’t be lonely.’

  ‘What did he mean when he said the place would be famous once again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sobbed Gurney. ‘I only know that he showed me the body and told me that he’d kill me if I said anything. He said he’d tell everyone that it was me.’ The tears began to roll down Gurney’s face again and he was shaking. ‘Oh, God! He made me…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He made me touch the body, touch Bernard’s… Oh, Christ!’ he moaned. ‘He said my fingerprints would prove that I’d been the one!’

  Black reached out and gently laid one hand on the anguished man’s shoulder. It wasn’t true, of course. As a boy Gurney’s fingerprints wouldn’t have been on file and even if they’d been taken at the time it wouldn’t have mattered since the dead child’s skin couldn’t have held the prints.

  A ten- or eleven-year-old child wouldn’t have known that, though. Queer Jack had set the hook deeply and well, then left it there to grow and fester until he came again to pick at the wound and make Gurney bleed once more.

  ‘You never said anything?’ Black murmured.

  Gurney shook his head. ‘Not until now.’

  ‘But you knew what he was capable of when he went off with David Talbot.’

  ‘Yes. God help me, I knew. But I was afraid. Terribly afraid.’

  Black left it there for the moment. ‘Do you know where Loudermilk was living?’

  ‘No. He never said and I certainly never asked.’

  ‘Any idea?’

  ‘Not really. At a guess I’d say nearby.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘One of the times he was here a chit dropped out of his trousers.’

  ‘What sort of chit?’

  ‘It was a receipt. From the Hampstead Subscription Library.’

  * * *

  Charles Tennant, closeted in the house on Cheyne Mews since his return from Cane Hill, paced back and forth across the large oriental carpet in his office, thinking hard. On his way back from the asylum he’d stopped in at several second-hand bookshops and gathered up what little information he could find on John Martin, including an illustrated catalogue of his work originally published by the Tate. The pile of texts now stood on his desk, next to the overflowing ashtray that had remained unemptied since the night before.

  After working his way through the books and taking down whatever morsels of information he thought might be useful in better understanding Loudermilk’s character, he found himself returning to the question of the man’s suicide. It seemed like an idiotic way to think but by the evidence of the Queer Jack killings it seemed almost impossible that Raymond Loudermilk wasn’t the killer.

  Everything pointed to him as the logical suspect from the Armenian’s suspicions about the death of Bernard Exner to Loudermilk’s obsession with the art and life of John Martin and the connection between both Martin and Exner to the game of chess.

  A dozen times in the last few hours Tennant had returned to the annual he’d stolen from Wick Hall, poring over the lists of names and scanning the small faces in the photographs, searching for some clue. There was nothing and it was telling that of all the pictures in the small volume there was none that showed Loudermilk.

  Ordinary shyness or some deeply rooted fear? The primal instinct of a savage who felt his soul would be snatched away by the photographer? Or a boy acting on a different instinct entirely, somehow knowing that he shouldn’t leave any passing images of himself behind?

  Suddenly, midway across the floor he came to an abrupt halt. All the evidence led to Raymond Loudermilk, therefore it was logical to assume that Raymond Loudermilk was the killer and the man who somehow knew the when and where of the Luftwaffe’s most secret plans. On the other hand, according to the records at the Cane Hill Mental Hospital, Raymond Loudermilk had committed suicide almost two decades ago. One set of truths denied the other.

  The answer, when it came, was absurdly simple, the sort of basic tenet favoured by Sherlock Holmes: with the possible dismissed only the impossible remained. Either the evidence did not point to Loudermilk or Loudermilk was not dead. Since the evidence most certainly did point to him, it followed that he had not committed suicide and was somehow still alive.

  According to the records that Hillman had shown him the previous day, including a perfunctory coroner’s report, Raymond Loudermilk had died as the result of self-immolation. Somehow the man had managed to find several gallons of flammable solvent used to clean the lavatories and had taken it to a small clearing beside the main building, screened from view by a dense stand of trees.

  The fact that Loudermilk was out of the building apparently had little significance. He was ambulatory, not subject to fits of any sort and had been a patient in the open wards for the previous year, rather than being kept in one of the euphemistically named, lower-level, high-security ‘confinement rooms.’

  According to Hillman, patients of this type were allowed regular periods outside since escape was highly unlikely. A
high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire ran all around the grounds, discreetly hidden from the road; the main gate was watched from an observation tower atop the administration block and the open heaths and valleys beyond Cane Hill were an added deterrent. The local constabularies were used to dealing with the occupants of places like Cane Hill and the occasional escapee seldom remained at large for long.

  None of which did anything to stop Raymond Loudermilk from killing himself. Once hidden from the main building he proceeded to douse himself with the cleaning solvent and set himself alight with a single match.

  By the time the guard in the observation tower noticed the plume of greasy smoke rising from behind the trees, Loudermilk’s corpse was little more than a charred stump. His remains had been identified by means of his clothing, several folded drawings and an unintelligible note found several yards away, the tidy pile neatly topped by a heavy stone. The note made several references to ‘Martin’s other self.’

  Hillman explained that the reference probably referred to one of Martin’s brothers, who, for some strange reason, had been given the same name – the younger John Martin had been an infamous arsonist in his time and had spent most of his life in places just like Cane Hill.

  Tennant went back to his desk and sat down. Arson. Fire. There had been a body burned at Cane Hill that day but it wasn’t Raymond Loudermilk’s. He reached for the telephone and dialled the asylum. Hillman was away for the weekend but the same administrative assistant who’d made his appointment on Christmas Eve was more than happy to help out Tennant now. He told the psychiatrist that he would go and fetch Loudermilk’s file as well as the logbook entries for that particular day and then call him back. Less than fifteen minutes later the telephone rang.

  ‘Was anyone released the day Loudermilk died?’ asked Tennant.

  ‘According to the logbook there were three releases that day.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Ellis, Taplow and Wilkes.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be any trouble but could you find their files for me as well? I’ll wait.’

  ‘Certainly. Glad to be of assistance.’ The man at Cane Hill went away and then came back on the line three or four minutes later.

  ‘You have them?’

  ‘Yes. Right in front of me, Dr Tennant. What would you like to know?’