Late Delivery, page 9
‘I don’t want to do or say anything that he might take as a reprimand,’ Piet said. ‘Privately, I think that he ought to have considered the shop doorbell, and gone more thoroughly into the lack of blood stains on the money, but it’s easy to be wise with hindsight. I feel we need fresh brains on the case – and it is not easy to see how to get them without upsetting the men who did the original investigating.’
‘I can deal with Inspector Gray,’ Begbroke said. ‘I can send him on a course, and then he won’t be available for inquiries at Netherwick. As Sergeant Clifford has left the Force, we can have a clean field.’
‘My own view is that we need another crime,’ Piet said. Stevenson was startled. ‘We can scarcely lay on crimes to order,’ he said.
‘I don’t mean quite that. Assume for a moment that the boy is telling the truth, and that Mrs Denny was not killed by his bush knife, but by some other heavy implement – perhaps the poker. If so, it will be vitally important to find it –at least I think we ought to try. But I don’t want anybody else to know that we’ve reopened the Marshall case. If there’s another assault at Netherwick we can look for pokers or hammers, and make all the inquiries we need without mentioning the Post Office murder. It needn’t be a real assault. I thought of taking that nice old ex-Colonial Governor, Sir Gordon Gregory, into our confidence, and I’m sure he’d agree to be assaulted. He’d have to disappear for a bit –perhaps he could go to America to see that friend of his, and get firsthand information about the purchase of the postcard and the stamp.’
‘I’m with the Chief. I think it’s a splendid idea,’ Begbroke said. ‘I’ve often thought I could do a better job than most of the criminals we catch. Now’s the chance to have a go.’
‘I don’t like it, Piet,’ said the Assistant Chief Constable. ‘But you’re the boss, and if you want to do it of course I’m on your side. There are some practical things you don’t seem to have thought of, though. If you engineer the disappearance of Sir Gordon Gregory, how on earth are you going to bring him back?’
‘I have thought of that, and there are several things we might do. He may suggest something himself. Can we leave it for the moment, and navigate, as they say, by guess and by God?’
VI
Another Crime
PIET TELEPHONED Sir Gordon Gregory and arranged to call on him in the morning. He asked Simon Begbroke to go with him. ‘When it comes to arranging crime it may be as well to have a witness,’ he said.
On the drive to Netherwick they discussed a plan of action. ‘Assuming Sir Gordon is willing to play, I suppose we can announce his disappearance tomorrow,’ Begbroke said.
‘I think so. There can be some suspicious blood patches at the entrance to his drive. Once we’ve found those, and Sir Gordon is out of the way, you, Simon, can get down to work.’
‘I’ve fixed up a course for Gray. There’s a convenient training school in small arms handling, starting next week. It’s being run by the Army, at an infantry training place in Kent, and they’ve offered half a dozen places to the police. Gray was rather pleased to be selected. It’s a fortnight’s course, and I’ve given him a couple of days leave before it starts, so that seems to clear the ground all right. It’s a pity the Assistant Chief isn’t more enthusiastic about your criminal activities.’
‘You couldn’t expect him to be – they go against all his tradition of police respectability. But he’ll be all right. I’m not going to criticise your superiors, Simon, but you know Grahame Stevenson as well as I do, probably better. He’s completely loyal. I’m going to get him to take a Press conference about Sir Gordon’s disappearance. He’ll do it splendidly.’
*
Sir Gordon received them in the pleasant morning-room of the Old Rectory. Piet introduced Begbroke, and Sir Gordon said, ‘I’m delighted to see you, gentlemen, but I’m sure you won’t misunderstand me if I doubt that your visit is a purely social call. What can I do for you?’
‘We wondered if you would mind being murdered,’ Piet said.
Sir Gordon’s diplomatic training showed. ‘It would be a distinguished murder by two most senior police officers,’ he remarked calmly. ‘Is the victim permitted to ask why?’
Piet laughed. ‘I should say at the outset that the all-powerful police propose to restore you to life after a suitable interval.’ He gave a quick summary of what he had done since Sir Gordon brought him the postcard, and added ‘You will see that this makes the reopening of the Marshall case inevitable. But I don’t want to reopen the Marshall case as such – I want another crime that we can investigate in Netherwick, with reason for looking for a heavy weapon that may have inflicted injuries. I don’t say that the evidence about the stamp, and the missing poker from the Post Office grate – if there ever was a poker – imply the innocence of the Marshall boy. If there was criminal intention concerning the stamp, he may have been mixed up in it. I don’t want to raise your hopes of proving that he was convicted wrongly. I do say that matters cannot be left as they are, and that many things that were not gone into, or did not seem relevant, at the time must now be gone into as thoroughly as possible. The best way of doing this seems to me to be the investigation of an imaginary crime, which can be given any detail we want without telling anyone who may be involved in the Post Office case that the police are still suspicious of what happened then.’
‘You are right about the poker,’ Sir Gordon observed. ‘I go into the Post Office almost every day, and I recall it well – indeed, I have used it in winter to poke the fire for Mrs Denny when she was serving a customer. I wonder why I haven’t noticed its absence? How unobservant I am.’
‘Not necessarily. We were looking at different things. You were seeing a familiar picture, saw most of what you expected, and your imagination filled in the rest, just as a man who reads a good deal seldom actually sees more than the first two or three letters of each word. I was studying an unfamiliar picture, an unexpected one, for you don’t often see old-fashioned grates in Post Offices nowadays, and I looked for everything there was. That is why I noticed what there wasn’t.’
‘Well, I think you were more observant than I was. When do you want to murder me?’
‘We haven’t quite got there yet. I want a crime, and you would be a good victim, because your diplomatic past would give your disappearance political overtones, which would justify a big police search, and the employment of senior officers. But we could have some blood stains and an imaginary victim. How many people will be deeply worried by your disappearance?’
‘Not many. My wife died six years ago, and our only son was killed in the war. I haven’t got any close relatives. I should be sad, though, to cause distress to my housekeeper, Mrs Morgan. She is a Netherwick woman, and has worked for us ever since we came here. Could she be taken into our confidence? She is utterly to be trusted.’
Piet considered this. ‘I don’t want anybody, least of all a Netherwick woman, to know that we are still interested in the Post Office murder,’ he said. ‘But there would be certain advantages in your Mrs Morgan’s knowing what to do –she could report your disappearance, for instance, at a time to suit us. Would you mind if we told her a rather different story – that the police want you to disappear in connection with a search for the leaders of a terrorist group who are known to be out to kidnap ex-members of the Colonial Service?’
‘Yes, you can tell her that. It will worry her, I’m afraid, but considerably less than a police hunt for my body. Shall I call her now?’
‘Please do.’
Mrs Morgan was a dumpy little woman in her sixties, apple cheeks offsetting her grey hair, and with hands that had done a lifetime of hard work showing something of the strength of her rather thickset arms. Sir Gordon introduced Piet and Simon Begbroke, told her that they had come on a most important matter, and that she was to be entrusted with a secret that might affect the safety of many prominent people. She looked piteously alarmed, and stood twisting and untwisting her work-roughened hands.
‘Try not to be frightened,’ Piet said gently. ‘We are asking you to help us. I understand that you have worked for Sir Gordon for many years?’
‘I went into service at the Rectory, sir, when the old rector lived in it. That was a while ago, when I was just turned fourteen. I was a housemaid till I married. Jim, my husband, had a smallholding. The old rector and his wife – they’re long dead now – were always good to me, and when times were hard I’d come back and clean for them, part time. My husband, he was a lot older than me, and we had no children, died just about the time Sir Gordon and Lady Gregory came here. They wanted someone to look after the house for them, and I wanted work, so I came, and I’ve been here ever since. I don’t gossip, sir, but I’d sooner not know any secrets.’
‘This is one that rather concerns you,’ Piet said. ‘I’m not going to go into the kind of work we do, but you’ll have heard on the radio, and read in the papers, of international gangs who kidnap politicians.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well there’s one of these gangs that we know a good deal about. They call themselves anti-imperialists, accuse Britain of being still an imperial power, and they want to kidnap some eminent member of the old Colonial Service to put forward various ransom demands. We want to be a jump ahead. Sir Gordon has agreed to disappear for a time, and we shall announce that we fear he has been wounded and kidnapped, or even murdered. That will give us a chance to investigate all sorts of things that we suspect, but at the moment don’t know enough about. I’m telling you this at Sir Gordon’s request, because he doesn’t want you to be worried.’
‘Who could help worrying about kidnappers, sir?’
‘He won’t really be kidnapped. He’ll be staying abroad somewhere. The more you can pretend that you are very much worried about him, the more you will help us. Newspaper reporters will come to see you, and you must tell them that Sir Gordon didn’t come home, that you were worried and called the police. You can tell them anything you like about Sir Gordon as an employer, of course.’
‘I can tell them nothing but good about him, sir. Next to the old rector he’s the best employer anyone could have. In some ways he’s better than the old rector, more of a friend, like. The old rector was a good man, sir, but you couldn’t forget he was gentry. Sir Gordon is gentry, too, of course, but he can make you forget it. When do you want me to call the Hungerford police, sir?’
‘Probably tomorrow morning, but Sir Gordon will let you know all about that before he goes off. You are being very brave about things, Mrs Morgan.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir. I can’t promise more than that.’
*
‘You couldn’t ask for a better testimonial,’ Piet said, when Mrs Morgan had gone.
‘I couldn’t ask for a more faithful friend. Thank God we don’t have to leave her sick with anxiety.’
*
They turned at once to arranging Sir Gordon’s disappearance. ‘It would be best if you could go off today. Then you don’t return this evening. Tomorrow morning Mrs Morgan finds that your bed has not been slept in, gets very worried and rings the police. Can you go to that friend of yours in America, the man who sent you the postcard?’
‘Easily. I’ll telephone him now.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. Transatlantic calls can be traced, and it would be a tiresome complication. Couldn’t you just go to London Airport and get the first flight you can? I may say that I can arrange for your costs to be refunded.’
‘I don’t much like London Airport,’ Begbroke said. ‘When there’s a hue and cry for Sir Gordon Gregory, someone at the airport will recall that he has just flown to the United States.’
‘There’s less danger than you think,’ Sir Gordon said. ‘I still travel on a diplomatic passport – it’s one of the privileges of my old Service – and I don’t have to go through the normal checks, either here or at the other end.’
‘Still you have to have a ticket. We could get you a passport in another name, but it would waste time.’
‘Suppose I go by train and boat to Paris and went on to the United States from France. There’s less fuss about buying a train ticket than an air passage. If I fly from France there would be no direct link with England.’
‘That seems fine,’ Piet said. ‘When can you start?’
‘As soon as I’ve packed a bag. Can you drive me to Reading for the train? It wouldn’t do for my car to be found at Reading.’
‘Of course. We’d better have another word with Mrs Morgan.’
*
Mrs Morgan was much less discomfited this time. ‘I’ve made the gentlemen some tea,’ she said. ‘Shall I bring it in?’
Over the tea Sir Gordon explained briefly that he was going to go away almost at once, and would not be coming home that evening. ‘I shall be perfectly safe, Mary,’ he said, ‘so you mustn’t worry about anything.’
‘I shall be worried, sir, until all this is over. But I’m glad you told me what is happening.’
‘The more worried you can seem, the better,’ Begbroke said. ‘When you telephone Hungerford they’ll send an officer to see you. Remember that he won’t know anything about our plans. Other policemen will come later, and they won’t know either. Only the Chief Constable and I know what is really going on. You must answer questions as if Sir Gordon had really disappeared.’
‘It would be a good idea if Mrs Morgan could say that you went out for a walk in the afternoon, and that was the last time she saw you,’ Piet said.
‘I could say he went out to the Post Office,’ she suggested. ‘He does that most afternoons, and it would be quite natural, like.’
‘Excellent. Oh, and one more thing. Have you an old hat that you often wear, which could be found at a suitable moment?’
‘Shall I get it back?’
‘I don’t know. It may be damaged in a struggle.’
‘Oh well, I suppose you can have my hat. But I’m very fond of it. That shows more than anything else how far I’m prepared to go along with you.’
*
A few minutes after Piet got to his office Simon Begbroke came into his room. ‘The Duty Inspector at Hungerford has been on,’ he said. ‘He tells me that they got a rather muddled call from Mrs Morgan at Netherwick around 8 a.m., and sent a constable to see her. She’s bothered because her employer, an ex-Colonial Governor called Sir Gordon Gregory, didn’t come home last night and she doesn’t know where he is. The PC’s first thought was that there’s no reason why a man should come home if he doesn’t want to. He was polite and told Mrs Morgan he was sure there was nothing to worry about, but he’s got his wits about him, that man. On leaving the Old Rectory he thought he’d look round a bit, and in a sort of shrubbery just outside the entrance to the drive he noticed what might be signs of some sort of struggle. There were some blood stains on the grass, and a few yards away he found a hat with Sir Gordon Gregory’s name inside it. He didn’t take the hat back to the house because he didn’t want to upset the old woman. He took it to the police station and reported, and the inspector thought he’d better ring us.’
‘I know about the hat and the blood stains because I put them there at six o’clock this morning. I took a razor blade, and the blood came from my left arm,’ Piet said. ‘I’m afraid some blood got on the hat.’
‘Not for the first time, Chief, you shatter my confidence by letting me tell you things you already know about,’ Begbroke said. ‘Why on earth didn’t you let me do things?’
‘Because I didn’t want you to cut yourself.’
‘Chief, you’re incorrigible. But I’m still proud to work for you.’
‘We’ve got a lot to do. Can we reasonably take over now without upsetting the local men?’
‘Well, we can play the political angle. I can say I thought it right to inform the Special Branch in London, and that they are concerned because of the old man’s diplomatic past. It would be reasonable for both of us to go over to Hungerford, I think.’
‘Tell them we’re on our way,’ Piet said.
*
PC Bell and the hat were awaiting them at Hungerford police station. The inspector was a little nervous, but also pleased that his report had brought such immediate reaction from the high-ups. ‘Seems a queer business,’ Piet said. ‘What do you know of Sir Gordon Gregory?’
‘He’s lived at Netherwick for years, always well spoken of. Runs some kind of private charity for helping black people. Nothing against it, so far as I know, but it brought to the village that black youth who murdered the Postmistress.’
‘You can scarcely hold that against Sir Gordon,’ Piet said.
‘No. And as I say, he’s got a good name for being a thoroughly decent old boy.’
Simon Begbroke picked up the hat. ‘Well worn, but a good hat-maker – still got his label inside, with Sir Gordon’s name woven on it,’ he said. ‘These marks on the brim look suspiciously like blood. We’ll have to send it for analysis.’
‘You did well to spot the hat, Constable,’ Piet said. ‘Can you come over to Netherwick now and show us precisely where you found it?’
‘Of course, sir.’
*
The inspector came too, and the four of them examined the shrubbery outside Sir Gordon’s drive. It was a sunny morning after a dry night, and there were several dark purple smears on the grass near the bushes. One bush, a straggly rhododendron, certainly looked as if someone had fallen, or been knocked, into it. ‘The hat was on the ground, about a yard from that bush,’ the constable said.
‘These marks could be blood,’ Begbroke observed. ‘Have you got a trowel or anything we could dig up some of the grass with?’
‘I’ve got a camping spade in the boot of my car – always carry it in case of having to dig a way out of snow,’ the inspector said. He fetched the spade and dug round about a square foot of grass, lifting it out like a piece of turf.
