The Ornamental Hermit

by Olivier Bosman

  At around a quarter to eleven, after Billings had already been pacing the hallway for five hours, one of the guests suddenly emerged from the ballroom. He was a small, wiry fellow who looked drunk and exhausted. He walked past Billings to the front door, which was open, leaned against the doorway and took a few deep breaths of fresh air. His face was streaked with sweat and locks of his red hair were stuck to his clammy forehead. He turned to look at Billings with an amused glint in his eyes.

  “Don’t mind me, officer,” he said. “I just need a bit of air, that’s all. I have been swirling and twirling for the last two hours and that’s never a good idea when your belly is full of champagne.”

  Suddenly Billings recognized him. It was Etherbridge. And Etherbridge recognized him too, because his eyes instantly lit up.

  “I say, you’re that chap, aren’t you? That led us into the dungeons.”

  “I am Detective Sergeant Billings, sir.”

  “Yes! What a singular coincidence. What are you doing here?”

  “Security Service, sir.”

  “How remarkable! I saw your boss only yesterday.”

  “My boss?”

  “The other fellow we spoke to at the police station. Joseph or Abraham or...”

  “Jacobs?”

  “That’s the one. Chief Inspector Jacobs. He came to our house to return this.” Etherbridge held out his hand and showed Billings a large cameo ring on his finger. The ring was engraved with a picture of a Greek warrior. “It’s the ring which was stolen from Lord Palmer,” he said. “Together with a gold watch. I’d given them to him as a present. They don’t really have much value, but as the chap went through all that trouble of retrieving them, I thought I might as well wear them tonight.”

  The cameo ring with the Greek warrior and the gold watch with the date palms! thought Billings. The very items Clarkson had been struggling to locate. Of course, that’s where he had heard about them before.

  “I should tell Lady Palmer you’re here,” Etherbridge continued. “She may want to thank you. Although she’s probably too busy chasing after the Prince of Wales. She came here in her mourning clothes, dressed up as the Queen, the silly thing! I’m sure her whole scheme will backfire. She’s determined to meet the Prince of Wales, but he seems equally determined to avoid her. And who can blame him when she’s dressed like his mother. I say, may I give you a cigar?”

  Etherbridge kept nattering on, but Billings had stopped listening. All sorts of thoughts were rushing through his head. How did Lord Palmer’s jewels end up in the Russian counterfeiter’s stash? How long had Jacobs known about them? Why did he wait until Billings was out of sight to return them?

  Etherbridge tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re not listening to me.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “I want to give you a cigar. As a token of my appreciation.” He took a silver case out of his jacket pocket and pulled out a long cigar. “You’re not allowed to accept money, but I’m sure your superiors will not object to a cigar.” He placed the cigar in the detective’s breast pocket and tapped it in place. “There. You can have that when your shift is over.”

  *

  It had been the Prince’s explicit instruction to leave the front door open at all times, in order for fresh air to enter the building and circulate around the rooms. It was nearly midnight and the frosty outside air had completely filled the room. Billings had been pacing the hallway for hours trying to keep himself warm. He kept pondering and worrying about Jacobs. Why was significant progress on the Lord Palmer case constantly being made when he was away? First there was the confession and now the identification of the jewels. It was almost as if Jacobs was deliberately sending him away all the time. Could Jacobs somehow be involved in all this?

  Billings hadn’t taken his morphine dose that day and he was shivering all over. There wasn’t much he could do about that. The reception was going to last well into the small hours of the morning and he had to remain sober throughout. The only way of controlling his urges was to slip into the wardrobe from time to time and sniff the fumes from an ampoule he had hidden in his coat pocket. He was doing just that when suddenly he heard a man out in the hallway crying for help.

  “Hello! Is anyone there? Please, I need some help!”

  Shocked by this sudden call, Billings dropped the ampoule on the floor and rushed out of the wardrobe, his nose still wet with morphine. He saw a rough-looking man standing in the doorway, wearing mud-splattered clothes and looking anxiously around him. The man was in his fifties and had long, messy side whiskers and greasy hair. He was wearing an old black hat with a worn and frizzled brim and a long black leather coat which reached down to his ankles.

  “Officer, please!” the man said, looking at Billings with frightened eyes. “Tha must come with me at once, there’s been an accident!”

  “What kind of accident?” Billings responded alarmed. “Who are you?”

  “I’m one of the grooms! My companion’s been kicked by a horse! He’s lying unconscious by th’road!”

  “By the road? What road?” Billings rushed to the doorway to look out.

  “Th’road yonder!” said the man pointing into the dark. “That leads to th’house!”

  “What’s he doing there? Why aren’t the horses in the stable?”

  “We were exercising it.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “T’is a restless one this. It’s not used to staying in an unknown stable and it were spooked by owt. Please, tha must come with me at once!”

  “I can’t leave this place unattended. Where are the stable boys?”

  “I don’t know, officer. They’re all gone.”

  “Have you been to the stables?”

  “Aye!”

  “There are other officers patrolling the grounds. You must go to one of them for help.”

  “There’s no one there, officer! I’ve been runnin’ around calling for help for th’ last ten minutes! You’re the first person I’ve seen!”

  Billings continued to peer out into the darkness. His heart was pounding. Where is everybody? he thought. He couldn’t see or hear a soul.

  “Please, officer! Tha must come with me at once! My companion is lying on th’ road dying while we’re here talkin’.”

  “I should alert my supervisor,” Billings said and turned towards the ballroom. But the groom grabbed his arm and stopped him.

  “There’s no time for that, officer!” he yelled. “Come with me now, or my companion will be dead!”

  The groom ran out of the house and towards the drive. Billings followed and ran after him. He kept looking around him as he ran, hoping to bump into one of the other officers along the way, but he couldn’t find anyone. Where was everyone?

  The sky was cloudy and moist, and the torches which illuminated the drive had all gone out. It was pitch black. Billings continued to follow the groom over the lawn towards some trees by the side of the road. Suddenly he caught sight of a lone horse pacing the lawn by the trees. The horse was saddle-less and restless, and it kept shaking its head nervously from side to side. Then, behind the horse, by the side of the road, Billings suddenly saw a man lying on the ground. The groom pointed at him.

  “That’s him, officer! Over there!”

  Billings rushed towards the wounded man and knelt down on the ground before him. He grabbed the wounded man’s arm and started feeling for his pulse.

  “Hello, can you hear me? What’s your name?” He looked at the man’s face. He was a young man. Not yet twenty. His eyes were closed and there was a dark, sticky wound on his forehead. Billings loosened the man’s collar and, unable to feel a pulse, put his ear to the man’s chest. He could hear the man’s heart beating. And he could also feel his body shiver.

  “We must get him inside where it’s warm,” he said to the groom, then immediately got up and started lifting the man up by his shoulders.

  The groom did not reply.

  “You must help me,�
� Billings repeated, urgently. “Grab his legs. I’ve got his shoulders.”

  Still there was no reply. Billings looked back towards the house, but couldn’t see him.

  “Hello? Where’ve you gone?”

  All he could see were the illuminated windows of the reception rooms on the ground floor, but there was no sign of the groom. His heart started pounding again. Had he been conned after all? He laid the man gently back down on the ground and paced around in the darkness, looking for the groom.

  “Hello? Where are you?” he kept calling.

  As he made his way slowly back to the house, he suddenly heard a noise behind him. He turned back and saw the wounded man jump up on his feet.

  “Hey!”

  Billings rushed towards him, but the man ran towards the horse, jumped on it and galloped off. Billings made a half-hearted attempt at chasing him, but it was pathetic and futile. The wounded man had galloped off into the darkness and was now long gone.

  “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” Billings ran back towards the house, cursing all the way. “Where the devil is everyone!”

  As he approached the house, Billings could see the groom’s footsteps in the gravel. His boots had carried pebbles into the hallway and his dusty footprints led all the way into the wardrobe. Billings approached the wardrobe and looked in. Sure enough, he could see several frock coats lying on the ground with the pockets sticking out. And it was immediately apparent to him that there were some furs missing too.

  He went back towards the door and peered desperately out into the darkness for signs of the thieving groom. But there was no one there. Billings took a deep breath, put his hand on his trembling chest and hung his head.

  This is the end of my career, he thought, when suddenly he saw three figures approaching the house from the drive. They were Detective Sergeant Cooper and Detective Constable Stanton and they were dragging a wounded young man between them.

  “We caught an intruder!” called Cooper.

  “Where the devil were you?” Billings asked as the detectives brought the wounded man into the hallway. “You were supposed to be patrolling the drive.”

  “We were at the gate,” Cooper replied. “Caught this little ruffian trying to jump over the wall.” He pulled the young man’s head up by his hair and looked menacingly into his eyes. “That wall’s much too high for your horse, boy!” he said. “Now sit down in that corner, while we get someone to take you to the police station.” He pushed the young man down to the ground. The man winced with pain as he dropped to his knees.

  “He’s in pain,” said Billings, looking at the man with concern. The man was still bleeding from his forehead.

  “Got thrown off his horse, didn’t he?” Cooper replied. “And fell on his ribs. Well, serves him bloody right!”

  “There’s another one,” Billings said. “He has a companion.”

  “A companion?”

  “They played a trick on me. Came here calling for help. Claimed to be one of the guest’s grooms. Said his partner had been kicked by a horse and needed my assistance. He led me out there towards those trees. While I was attending to the injured man, his partner crept back in here and stole some furs.”

  “You abandoned your post?” Cooper asked accusingly.

  “What else was I to do?” Billings cried out defensively. “There was no one else around! You were supposed to be patrolling the drive! I couldn’t find you anywhere! What the devil where you doing at the gate?”

  Cooper didn’t answer and turned to look guiltily at his partner. “Where is the other man now?” he asked, avoiding the question.

  “I don’t know,” Billings replied. “Out there somewhere?”

  “You!” Cooper suddenly pointed at the wounded man on the floor. “What’s your name?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Oi! I’m talking to you!” He kicked the man in the ribs.

  “I say, steady on, Cooper!” Billings interjected.

  “What’s your name?” Cooper asked the man again.

  “Oswald,” the man replied.

  “Oswald what?”

  “Oswald Crooke.”

  “And who’s your partner?”

  “He’s my father.”

  The young man’s face was turning paler as he talked.

  “What happened to your head?” Billings asked concerned.

  “My father hit me with a rock.”

  “Why?”

  “To make it look like I’d been kicked by a horse.”

  Suddenly the man leaned forward and vomited right on Cooper’s boots.

  “Jesus Christ!” called Cooper as he danced away from the splutters.

  “He’s got a concussion,” Billings concluded. “We need to get him to a doctor.”

  “Doctor, my arse! A good hiding is what that hookem needs!”

  “You two had better go and look for the boy’s father,” Billings suggested. “And try and retrieve those furs he’s stolen, or we’ll all be getting a hiding. I’ll alert Chief Inspector Wright and get one of the waiters to clean up this mess.”

  *

  Oswald Crooke was escorted to Dersingham Police Station later that night, but despite the fact that the whole Security Service was used to comb the vast estate until ten o’clock the following morning, the groom and the stolen furs were never found. CI Wright was forced to concede defeat and make his apologies to the Prince and his three furless guests.

  Meanwhile, Billings, DS Cooper and DC Stanton faced a bruising debriefing at the White Swan later that same day. Billings was reprimanded for not alerting his superior before abandoning his post, but Cooper and Stanton fared worse. It transpired that they had been playing dice at the gate with two Norfolk officers instead of patrolling the drive, and were given a week’s unpaid suspension from the force.

  The three of them were back on the train to London at five o’clock. They shared the same carriage and remained quiet and subdued throughout the journey, just staring out the window and pondering their shame and humiliation.

  When the train stopped at King’s Lynn Station, Billings picked up a copy of the evening’s edition of the Norfolk Chronicle and read the following article:

  Theft At Sandringham

  Two sable cloaks and one mink scarf were stolen from Sandringham House last night during the Prince of Wales’s annual Christmas reception. The sable cloaks belonged to Mrs Astrid Nielsen, the wife of the minister of the Danish church in Norwich, and Mrs Fenella Dixon-Wright of Tamblick Hall. The mink scarf was the property of Lady Alice von Trier. The furs were stolen by a pair of petty criminals known as Barnabas and Oswald Crooke. The villainous duo, who are father and son and originally hail from Lancashire, have been pickpocketing and burglering their way through the country for the last ten years and have already served time in several of Her Majesty’s prisons. Oswald Crooke has been caught and is currently in King’s Lynn hospital under heavy guard recovering from a serious wound to his head, but Barnabas Crooke is still at large. The Norfolk Constabulary believe he may be heading towards London, where he will undoubtedly hope to dispose of his stolen ware in a profitable manner.

  Billings now remembered where he had heard those names before. It was at Whitehaven police station. “Barnabas Crooke and his son Oswald. Crooke by name and by nature,” the Whitehaven inspector had called them. They were the men Sebastian got involved with after he’d been expelled from the priory.

  15. The Ruffian on the Bridge

  “’Ere, Billings, what you doing ’ere so early?”

  Clarkson was sitting at his desk, beady-eyed and yawning, rounding off his night shift. Billings marched past him without replying and headed towards the filing room. He had arrived back in London at a little over one that morning and he hadn’t slept a wink. So many thoughts and reflections raged in his head, battling each other for his attention, that no amount of morphine could silence them. At six o’clock in the morning, tired of tossing and turning, he eventually decided to get up, splash some wa
ter on his face, get dressed and make his way to Scotland Yard.

  As soon as he entered the filing room, he started ruffling through the files. He searched under ‘R’ for ‘Russians’, then under ‘C’ for ‘counterfeiters’, then under ‘D’ for ‘Deptford’ but, not knowing how the case had been named, he was unable to find anything of use.

  “What are you doin’?” asked Clarkson who had followed him to the filing room and was now standing behind him, leaning against the doorway with a mug of coffee in his hands. “You’re not supposed to be in until after noon. ’Ow was Sandringham?” he asked.

  “Where’s the Russian counterfeiters file?”

  “What do you want that for?”

  “I need to check something.”

  “Jacobs has it.”

  “Jacobs?”

  “He takes it home with him every night.”

  “Why?”

  Clarkson shrugged. “’Ere, did you meet the Prince of Wales? What was he like?”

  “Those jewels that were found in Deptford...”

  “They’ve been returned now. Jacobs returned the last batch while you were away. I swear to God, Billings, if I read one more report about stolen jewels...”

  “How did those jewels end up in Deptford?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I? The Russians probably bought them.”

  “How were those jewels found?”

  “I told you all about that, Billings. That was my doing. It’s that man I’d spent the whole day shadowing. The one with the long red coat.”

  “The Cossack.”

  “That’s right, the Cossack. A man called Bhodan Krym. That was the lead the Russians gave us. He was suspected of running a counterfeiting operation in London and he led us to that warehouse. I told you all about this, Billings, but you never listen to me.”

  “So what happened to the counterfeiters?”

  “Well, they were gone when we stormed the building. And they’d taken all their money with them. But they left behind the jewels. And then I spent three long, boring days collating reports, which is why I qualify for a share of the reward. Speaking of which, I went to visit Mr Boogledug yesterday.”