Fifth Column

by Mike Hollow

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. That’s probably not much help to you, but it’s all I know.”

  “Not at all,” said Jago. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  Jago held out his empty cup and saucer towards Cradock, who got up from his chair and took it. He placed it on the tray that the girl had left on the desk, then collected Angela’s and did the same. Jago kept his eyes on Angela.

  “Just one other thing,” he said. “Talking of photos, we haven’t been able to get hold of a recent photograph of Mary. Do you have one by any chance?”

  “Well, yes, I do, as it happens. A rather nice young man took a picture of us at a dance a few weeks ago – a different dance, that is – and he sent me a copy. I think I’ve got it here in my bag.”

  She rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a small photo which she handed to Jago.

  “There,” she said. “Do take it. See – it shows both of us together. We had a good time that night. But could I have it back when you’ve finished with it, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Jago put the photograph in the inside pocket of his jacket and stood up.

  “We must go now,” he said, “and let you get back to your work. But thank you – you’ve been most helpful.”

  Angela jumped up from her chair and looked at him nervously.

  “Wait,” she said. “Before you go, Inspector, can I ask you something?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It’s just that I’m puzzled. You say Mary’s been killed in an air raid, but then you ask me all these questions about her private life. Why is that necessary?”

  Jago gave her a reassuring smile.

  “Actually, I think that’s what Miss Hornby told you, not me.”

  “But that’s what happened, isn’t it? She was killed in an air raid?”

  “No, Miss Willerson. I’m afraid we believe she was murdered.”

  Angela clapped her left hand over her mouth, her eyes staring wide. Two or three seconds elapsed before she slowly let her hand fall to her side.

  “Murdered? No – it can’t be true.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Jago checked his watch as they stepped out of the Everson Engineering building into the pale morning sunlight.

  “Ten past ten,” he said. “Plenty of time to fit in one more visit before lunch.” He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Cradock. “I think it’s time we got to know Mr George Fletcher.”

  Cradock scrutinized the details on the paper.

  “That’s on the way back to Rita’s too,” he said. “Sounds perfect.”

  They got into the Riley and headed north in the direction of Forest Gate. Ten minutes later they were driving eastwards along Romford Road. As they passed the Gothic Revival flint and red brick of the Congregational church, Jago slowed the car so that Cradock could count down the numbers to Fletcher’s office address.

  “There it is,” said Cradock. He pointed to a three-storey house on their left.

  Jago parked the car at the kerbside. He and Cradock got out, crossed the pavement and mounted a flight of ten stone steps to the front door. So this was Fletcher’s place of work, thought Jago. The black paint on the front door was scratched, and at the bottom it was chipped back to the wood. A dull brass plaque screwed to the wall to the right of the door was engraved with the words “Empire Office Services”. He ran a sceptical eye over the building.

  “Doesn’t quite fit, does it?” he said.

  “What do you mean, guv’nor?” said Cradock.

  “The name and the place. ‘Empire Office Services’ – sounds like they sail off in pith helmets with vital supplies of carbon paper and typewriter ribbons to every last dot on the map that’s coloured pink, but when you get here it’s just a converted Victorian semi, and they don’t even keep their brass polished.”

  Cradock looked the old house up and down. It had clearly seen better days.

  “Yes, sir. Not what you’d call loved. Could do with a lick of paint on those window frames too. Maybe they spent all their money on the inside instead.”

  “We’ll see,” said Jago. He pressed the bell button beside the door, and soon it was opened by a young man in a cheap-looking suit who admitted them. Cradock was wrong: the inside of the building was as shabby as the outside. They were standing in a hallway where little daylight penetrated. The green dado running along the walls had a battered look, as if the victim of careless assaults during office furniture moves. The space above it was distempered white, while below it the wall was papered with heavily embossed Lincrusta that looked as though it had been painted over once every ten years since about 1880. A miserable place, he thought.

  “Is Mr Fletcher here this morning?” he said. “We’d like to have a word with him. We’re police officers.”

  He saw the surprise on the man’s face.

  “Don’t worry, we haven’t come here to nick him. We just need to have a word with him about something we’re investigating.”

  “Yes, he’s here,” the young man said. “Come this way.”

  They followed him up a creaking staircase to the next floor and along a narrow corridor until they reached an open door that gave into a small office. Inside it a man was sitting at a wooden desk with his back to a window flanked on both sides by steel shelves loaded from floor to ceiling with cardboard box files.

  “Visitors for you, George,” said the man, and left them.

  The man at the desk stood up and extended his right hand towards Jago.

  “George Fletcher,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Detective Inspector Jago and Detective Constable Cradock,” said Jago, shaking the hand offered to him. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ah,” said Fletcher, “this must be to do with Susan’s sister. She told me last night that you’d called. Terrible business.”

  He was not as Jago had imagined him. Tall and slim, with a touch of elegance, he looked as though he might still be on the right side of forty, although only just. There was a relaxed and confident air about him. With a brief smile he reached into his inside jacket pocket and brought out a silver-coloured cigarette case, which he opened and held out towards the two policemen.

  “Cigarette?” he said. “Turkish or Virginian?”

  “No, thank you,” said Jago.

  Fletcher took one for himself and turned away while he lit it with a matching cigarette lighter. He drew deeply on the cigarette and blew smoke towards the ceiling. Jago caught the tang of it in his nostrils and was thankful that judging by the smell it was a common or garden Player’s or Piccadilly. He didn’t like the cloying, sweet-scented smoke of Turkish cigarettes, and his father had always said they weren’t the kind of thing any self-respecting Englishman would smoke.

  Fletcher slipped the lighter into his trouser pocket and waved his right hand casually towards a couple of simple wooden chairs.

  “Do take a seat, please. I’ve got the room to myself today, and I’m just catching up on some paperwork. We won’t be disturbed here.” He returned to his seat behind the desk.

  Fletcher seemed out of place in these surroundings, thought Jago as he sat down. Carefully tended black hair, oiled in a rakish and slightly foreign-looking way, and a well-cut suit, not the kind of off-the-peg job he’d expect to find a man wearing to work in a place like this. Handsome, too, he supposed – in the way that women seemed to find attractive but that tended to leave him feeling wary. The man’s manner was certainly a lot more charming than the building he worked in.

  Jago glanced at the coat-stand in the corner of the room and noticed a homburg hanging at the top – black felt, silk-brimmed, it was clearly a good-quality Anthony Eden, and no doubt expensive. Just what he would expect now that he’d met the man. Mr Fletcher was a regular Anthony Eden himself, although presumably achieving the effect without the benefit of the breeding – and salary – of the Secretary of State for War.

  “I
understand you work with typewriters, Mr Fletcher.”

  “Yes, I’m a typewriter mechanic. It may sound simple to the layman, but in fact there’s more to it than meets the eye. A typewriter is a complex piece of machinery and it takes a pounding every day in a busy office. It needs to be properly maintained and adjusted, and then of course there’s the huge variety of models that one has to be familiar with.”

  “I’m sure. How did you become a typewriter mechanic?”

  “I suppose I just fell into it really. I was in the merchant navy in my younger days, during the war – a seafaring man.”

  “But not sailing the seven seas as a typewriter mechanic, I imagine.”

  “No, of course not. I was a wireless operator. It was all quite new then, and an important job. We had to learn Morse code, and how to take and send messages. It was revolutionary – all they had before that was flags and semaphore.”

  “You should join the police. Wireless cars are all the rage now. Not enough to go round, of course, now there’s a war on, but it would certainly make our job a lot easier if we didn’t have to find a police box or public telephone every time we wanted to contact the station, let alone if they wanted to contact us.”

  “I’m very rusty now – I’ve forgotten most of what I knew. But sitting in a car would be a damn sight more comfortable than when I last did it, tossing around in the South-West Approaches waiting to be sunk by a U-boat. I wasn’t in at the beginning of the war, of course – I was too young. By the time I was sixteen, though, it was 1917 and they were crying out for wireless operators. The Navy had pinched all the merchant ships’ operators, you see, when the war started. I was trained by Marconi at their place in the Strand, then went straight out to sea on one of Sir John Ellerman’s freighters. Those were the days, I can tell you. Some people say that if it wasn’t for us the Fleet would never have been able to bottle up the German Navy in port like they did.”

  “Yes, well I can see you had an exciting time of it, but I’d like to get back to the present.”

  “It wasn’t all excitement, as I’m sure you’ll know, Inspector, if you served your country in those days.”

  Fletcher reached across the desk to bring the ashtray closer to him. He caught Jago’s eyes, which were focused on his left hand, and stopped.

  “This?” he said, raising his hand before him. “Nothing to worry about. Can’t say I miss them. Three fingers are as good as five for most things.”

  “A war wound?” said Jago.

  “Yes, we had a run-in with the Imperial German Navy. One of their destroyers put a few shots our way and one hit the superstructure. Didn’t sink us, and luckily some of our ships turned up and the Germans withdrew – but not before a shell splinter had taken these two fingers off. Lucky it was my left, not my right, otherwise it would have been the end of my signalling career, and I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do now. But I’m a lucky man, Mr Jago. Why, only this week –”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr Fletcher, but as I said, I’d like to get back to the present. Tell me, how long have you been a typewriter mechanic?”

  “Well, after the war I could see there was no future in the merchant navy…”

  “I think we’ll have to have the short version, if that’s all right, Mr Fletcher.”

  “What? Oh, I see. Well, I went into manufacturing.”

  “With your own company?”

  “No, working in a factory, making gramophones, telephone receivers and suchlike. Then I worked for a typewriter manufacturer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making typewriters, in a factory. After four or five years of that there wasn’t much I didn’t know about them, so I went to work for an office services company as a typewriter mechanic. Been doing it now about nine years on and off.”

  “On and off?”

  “Well, I’ve worked for a few different companies, with a bit of a gap now and then, as you do. I’ve been with my present employer for about a year. Nice people, and the job suits me – I cover a patch round here and East Ham, travelling from customer to customer during the day. The company give me a little van to get about in, so I’m my own master in a way. As long as I get through my list of appointments for the day, no one minds how much time I take for lunch.”

  “And I understand you and Mrs Fletcher are fairly recently married?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact we are. We got married on the last Saturday in July – the twenty-seventh.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Well, it was an interesting story. It was a blind date, you see, at a dance – at the Ilford Palais, in the High Road. Someone I knew through my work knew her and introduced us, and we just seemed to hit it off. We –”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Fletcher, but time is pressing and I don’t want to get in trouble with your employers for keeping you from your work. As you know, we’re here in connection with the death of your sister-in-law. We’ve spoken to your wife already, of course, but I wondered what you might be able to tell us about her.”

  “About my wife, or about her sister?”

  Jago wasn’t sure whether there was a hint of sarcasm in this remark. Fletcher’s air of charming bonhomie seemed to have faded, and he wondered why.

  “About her sister, please.”

  Fletcher shrugged his shoulders.

  “Next to nothing, really. I’ve never met her.”

  “I understand she wasn’t at your wedding.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I don’t know. I just have the impression that for some reason Mary didn’t like my wife. Susan made all the wedding arrangements, and it was only quite late on that I discovered she hadn’t invited her sister.”

  “And why do you think that was?”

  “I’ve no idea. I tried to ask once, but I got that look that women do: the one that means ‘No further questions will be permitted’.”

  “You said your impression was that Mary didn’t like your wife. Did you ever consider the possibility that it might have been the other way round, that your wife didn’t like Mary?”

  “No, that’s not like Susan. I don’t know what might have gone on between them, but I do know Susan’s a gracious and gentle creature, and I can only assume Mary must have hurt her in some way in the past.”

  “Badly enough for Susan not to want to see her at her own wedding?”

  “I don’t know: I’m just guessing.”

  “Badly enough for her to want to hurt Mary back?”

  Fletcher rose from his chair, an angry frown crossing his face.

  “Now hang on,” he said. “What are you suggesting? You’re not saying Susan had anything to do with Mary’s death? That’s ridiculous. I’ve told you: Susan wouldn’t harm a fly. In fact it’s not just ridiculous, it’s outrageous.”

  “I’m only asking questions, Mr Fletcher,” said Jago. “That’s my job.”

  Fletcher sank back onto his chair.

  “Yes, yes, I understand. You’re trying to dig up some dark secret, but I tell you you’re digging in the wrong place. Haven’t you asked enough questions yet?”

  “I’m almost finished, Mr Fletcher. Just a few more. Now, I understand your wife and her sister jointly inherited the family home when their parents died. Is that correct?”

  “I believe so. But you’d better talk to Susan if you want chapter and verse.”

  “I visited the house, and I must say it’s a very fine property.”

  “Spacious enough for the two of us, yes.”

  “So presumably Mary’s death means that now it will all belong to your wife.”

  “Yes, I assume so.”

  “That should ensure a secure future for both of you.”

  Fletcher gave Jago a quizzical look, as if surprised by the implication of his words.

  “Wait a minute. What are you getting at? The house will be Susan’s, not mine. Married women are allowed their own property these days, Inspector, or had you for
gotten that? I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  “Just an observation, Mr Fletcher, not an accusation. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your sister-in-law?”

  “Well, no, of course not. I’ve already told you: I’ve never even met the woman.”

  “And just one final question: can you tell me where you were between nine o’clock on Thursday evening and half past five on Friday morning?”

  “At home, of course – and in bed for most of that time. In the cellar, to be precise: we go down there when the air raids are on.”

  “With your wife?”

  “Yes, of course with my wife.”

  Jago rose from his chair, followed by Cradock.

  “Well, that will be all for now, Mr Fletcher. You’ve been most helpful. If you do think of anything, please get in touch with me.”

  “Yes, I will,” said Fletcher. “They may not have been close, but she was still my wife’s sister. I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Hello, Mr Jago. How lovely to see you. And this is your Detective Constable Cradock, isn’t it? Such a nice young man. You know, if I were twenty years younger… But hark at me – I’m getting carried away.”

  Rita’s voice was warm and welcoming as they entered the café.

  “And, er…” She leaned back slightly and looked askance at their companion, eyeing her up and down as if the woman in the smart grey woollen suit were applying for a waitressing vacancy. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “This is Miss Appleton, Rita – Miss Dorothy Appleton. She’s a journalist, reporting in London for her newspaper. She’s from America.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Rita, continuing her examination. Jago followed her gaze and noticed it seemed to be particularly focused on the fitted waist of Dorothy’s jacket – a cinched look that he could not imagine Rita attempting.

  Rita gave Dorothy a thin smile.

  “It’s not often we see a real American in here,” she said. “In fact, come to think of it, you might be the first. Friend of Mr Jago, are you? I don’t recall him mentioning you before.”