The Missing Gun

by W H Oxley

The interior design of the English pub reached its high point at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the lounge bar was a splendid example. With its wooden panelling, carved mahogany furniture, etched mirrors and nickel plated electric light fittings it resembled more a gentleman’s club than a pub. Hawker was reclining in one of the dark leather armchairs, smoking a big fat cigar, when Brightwell placed a large whisky on the table next to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, reaching out for the siphon and squirting a dash of soda into the glass. Sitting back wreathed in cigar smoke, he gazed appreciatively at his surroundings. ‘Ah, Brightwell, you must admit that it is magnificent: this is what we are really fighting for!’

  ‘I thought we were fighting for Poland, sir.’

  ‘The Poles are stuffed! Everyone knows that. No, what the nation is fighting for now is to avoid a fate worse than boredom: having to sit in beer cellars drinking ghastly German ersatz beer.’

  ‘Really, sir … but to get back to the gun, you were about to explain how Purvis managed to lay his hands on it.’

  ‘Ah yes…’ Hawker took a sip of whisky before proceeding. ‘First, I had to eliminate the impossible. One way for him to have got hold of a gun would be the criminal fraternity, but could you ever see that overgrown schoolboy mixing in such company. He’d have stuck out like a sore thumb. The lad had “play up play up and play the game” and “jolly good show” written all over him; they would have eaten him alive. His only real hope of finding his way into the underworld would have been to ask Mitzi – and she’s a snout. So, even if she didn’t tip off the local CID, she would have certainly told me.

  Next, I considered the more likely possibility that the gun was in the possession of someone he knew, probably a war veteran who’d kept it as a souvenir. Since it was illegal for them to have a gun in the first place, they’d have kept quiet about it if it disappeared. The two most obvious contenders would be his father and Carter, the newsagent. Both served on the front line in the last war, and had ample opportunity to get their hands on one. But there was a problem: neither of them were in England when the gun was used in that shooting ten years ago, Carter in Australia and Purvis senior with his regiment in Ireland.’

  ‘How did you find that out, sir?’

  ‘An old army pal of mine works in the records department at the War Office. It saves a lot of time.’

  ‘A bit like Nurse Williams, sir.’ Brightwell grinned.

  ‘Hmm, I never thought of old Bert that way… Anyhow, having eliminated the impossible in our search for the vigilante’s gun, we are left with the improbable.’

  ‘And what is the improbable, sir?’

  ‘Goldstein…’

  ‘Goldstein!! You’re joking, sir.’

  ‘I never joke; you should know that by now.’ Hawker drained his glass. ‘Think about it while I’m replenishing this. Do you fancy a scotch?’

  ‘No thanks, sir. I’ll stick to Guinness.’

  ‘Guinness it is. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Let me know what you’ve come up with.’

  ‘Yes, sir…’ sighed Brightwell, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes.

  He’d barely had time to light one before Hawker was back. ‘Well?’ he said, placing a bottle of Guinness in front of him.

  ‘He’s certainly the most improbable, sir: he’s far too mild mannered. Do you have any evidence?’

  ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night. So I spent most of the night mulling over the missing gun. Obviously, I disregarded Purvis’s own story as a pack of lies and concentrated on what little I knew to be true. First, his cryptic comment about a gun being safe, and secondly the fact that he was spending a lot more money than he was earning. If the money was stolen, then the most likely victim would be his employer.’

  ‘But wouldn’t Goldstein have noticed if the money went missing, sir?’

  ‘If Purvis took it from the till, yes, but Goldstein wouldn’t be the first businessman to have a bundle of fivers hidden away from the taxman. And where would he keep it? The same sort of place he’d keep a gun: tucked away at the back of his safe. Purvis wasn’t babbling on about a gun being safe but being in the safe. Somehow or other he must have managed to get his hands on a duplicate key, which left me with another problem: what was a nice old gentleman like Goldstein doing with a gun in the first place. Then I remembered he had a tin leg.’

  ‘I didn’t notice that, sir.’

  ‘Neither did I initially, but there was a metallic clank when the door of the safe knocked against it as he was opening it. So, first thing this morning I contacted my source at the War Office and ask him to check up on Goldstein and Purvis senior. His information not only eliminated the impossible, Purvis senior, but made the improbable, Goldstein, very probable.’

  ‘But he’s too old to have been in the war.’

  ‘Not if he volunteered. His first wife and their son were killed by a bomb dropped on London from a Zeppelin in 1915. He promptly joined the army and got to France just in time to take part in the first battle of the Somme. It was also his last: he was badly wounded, but not before he’d killed a trench-full of Germans.’

  ‘He sounds like a very brave man.’

  ‘Or a man bent on revenge…’

  ‘But he lives in Hampstead and the vigilante attack was–’

  ‘He was living in Golders Green ten years ago! And he had three daughters at school there.’ Brightwell remained silent as Hawker continued. ‘None of it was conclusive, but it would have been enough to confront young Purvis with. I wasn’t too sure what to do when I found out he was dead, but when the ward sister told me that within moments of wishing us goodbye Goldstein had journeyed through one of the worst fogs we’ve had in years to the hospital, I was convinced that that my deductions were correct, particularly when I learnt from the father how was anxious he’d been to get hold of the keys.’

  ‘Was the key to the safe with them, sir?’

  ‘I doubt it. Purvis would be unlikely to keep it on the key ring. He’d hid it somewhere.’

  ‘You mean like in his shoe?’

  ‘I suppose so, and if we could just find that key…’

  ‘Would this be the key you’re looking for, sir?’ Brightwell held up a small key. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat with a bowl of cream.

  Hawker took the key and examined it closely. ‘A key to a Chubb safe – Goldstein’s safe is a Chubb! Where did it come from?’

  ‘Inside one of Purvis’s shoes, sir.’

  Hawker sighed. ‘Nurse Williams I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I managed to have a quick word with her while you were talking to Purvis’s father.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me about it?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Brightwell grinned, ‘you’ve always kept me in the dark – and as you said you’d already solved the case…’

  ‘I can see a bright future for you at Scotland Yard, Brightwell,’ Hawker grunted, as he raised his glass and emptied it. ‘You’ll probably turn out to be an even bigger bastard than I am!’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll take that as a compliment. Same again?’

  ‘Please! And make sure it’s Johnny Walker.’

  When Brightwell returned with the drinks Hawker was toying with the key. ‘So what are we going to do with this then?’

  ‘Confront Goldstein I suppose, sir.’

  Hawker shook his head. ‘He’s a respectable member of the community, not Bertie Smalls. We can’t just smash his door down and kick him in the goolies, and you can bet your life he’s cleaned house: if there was anything incriminating in that safe, it’s long gone.’

  ‘So we can’t prove anything?’

  ‘Oh I probably could if I wanted to…’ Hawker sat back in his chair and puffed away at his cigar. ‘Purvis’s fingerprints weren’t the only ones on that gun. There was also an unidentified print that could have been anyone’s, but I’m prepared to bet a bottle of Johnny Walker that it’s Goldstein’s.’

  ‘In tha
t case, sir, if it is his fingerprint on the gun and this is the key to his safe, we’d then have very strong case against him.’ Brightwell tapped on the table with his cigarette lighter to emphasize the point.

  ‘So you think we should turn up at his daughter’s wedding next week and put the handcuffs on him do you?’

  ‘Then what do suggest we should do, sir?’

  ‘Let sleeping dogs lie. After all, there is a war on.’

  ‘The papers are saying it’ll be over by Christmas, sir.’

  ‘I don’t mean that war. I mean the real war: the war on crime. We’ve got the gun and Purvis has spent most of Goldstein’s ill-gotten gains on Mitzi. I’m fed up with this case, and bored with all these respectable people – the dregs of society are a lot more interesting. Let’s just file the report, forget about it and get back to doing what we’re supposed to be doing: catching real criminals!’

  Brightwell smiled. ‘Would Sherlock Holmes have let him off, sir?’

  ‘He did so in quite a number of his investigations: even murder. In two of his adventures, when the murderer confessed, Holmes decided not to inform the police, telling one to go back to Australia, and the other to disappear back into the jungles of Africa, and on another occasion actually witnessed the murder of a blackmailer but kept quiet about it.’

  ‘You mean to say that Holmes was actually there when the murder was committed?’

  ‘Yes, he was burgling the blackmailer’s house at the time. Would you like to know which story?’

  ‘I’d rather not, sir: I might want to read it one day.’

  ‘I’d recommend that you do…’

  ‘What about the key, sir, do we tell Goldstein?’

  ‘Good lord no! Let him sweat a bit: it’ll teach the blighter a lesson.’

  ‘So what shall I do with it?’

  ‘Got your penknife handy?’

  ‘Here, sir.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Brightwell watched gloomily as Hawker proceeded to hack away at the key. ‘You’ll ruin the blade,’ he muttered.

  ‘All in a good cause, Brightwell, all in a good cause… There that’s fixed it! I’ll dump it down the nearest drain.’

  ‘Pardon me for asking, sir, but is the case closed now?’

  ‘Not until I’ve finished this cigar, why?’

  ‘Well, I promised to take Anastasia out one evening, and you told me not to tamper with witnesses…’

  ‘Anastasia? And who, might I ask, is Anastasia?’

  ‘Dr Greenslade, sir…’

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