Death and the Princess (20 page)

‘Garry,’ I said, when he came in, ‘does the name Tucker mean anything to you?’

He thought.

‘Not in isolation. Shall I get the computer on to it?’

We have a computer at the Yard, with all manner of names and aliases used by all manner of villains over the
last thirty or forty years. Mostly it isn’t working; when it is, it feeds you back so much info that you spend weeks sorting through it for the nugget you actually want.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I leave the mechanized future to the younger boys. I’ll remember in a second . . . Do you remember that entry in Bill Tredgold’s notebook: “Treasurer”. We thought it might refer to one of the local government cases he was also dealing with at the time, but I think we were wrong. Garry, it’s an off-chance, but could you get me the Shropshire telephone directory?’

Off-chance it may have been, but there it was:

‘Tucker, Henry S., 9, Clunbury Lane, Knightley.’ And it was then that I remembered.

‘Garry — I’ve got it. It was before your time — mostly before mine too, but there was a marvellous little crook, confidence trickster, call him what you like, who had as many aliases as the Queen has titles, but who as often as not used the name Tucker.’

‘Would that be Jimmy Hopgood?’ asked Garry.

‘You’re right. How on earth did you know about him?’

‘I heard about him from my Dad. He was in the force, you know. He nabbed him absconding with a load of bets from Aintree.’

‘That’d be Jimmy.’

So we sat down and chewed the cud over everything we could remember about Jimmy Hopgood.

He was first and foremost a master of disguise. Not the crude stuff, with dark glasses and false moustaches. When Jimmy Hopgood took on a new name and a new game, he took on a new personality. I remembered him as Simeon B. Tucker, a slow, anxious, humourless creature, pathetically willing, working for a multi-national with offices on the Embankment. Dim Sim, the other bright sparks in the office called him. Dim Sim had diddled the Nordica Oil Company of something like thirty thousand pounds before that day when he failed to turn up at work
and uncharacteristically didn’t send in a doctor’s certificate either. They never got him. Before that he’d been Harold G. Tucker, tetchy, meticulous, slightly military, a stickler for doing things according to the regulations. He had been employed by the London Northern Bank, and had even risen in a short time to being temporary manager in a small branch in Balham. They got him that time, and got back most of the loot too. Hopgood did four years, and was a model prisoner. He rose to be trusty librarian, and when he left he took with him a disregarded first edition of
Scenes of Clerical Life,
donated and signed by the author. That was his last jail sentence, and since then nothing much seemed to have been heard of him. Earlier on there had been Roger Dashwood Tucker, the Second World War flying ace, down on his luck, Gerald Fitzjames Tucker, the man-about-town with a flair for the Stock Exchange, and Honest Harry Tucker, The Bookie You Can Trust. The changes to his appearance were minimal, which was a disadvantage at identification parades, but an advantage in almost every other way: I have never known false moustaches inspire real confidence. He was a frustrated actor, of course, an actor of the Alec Guinness type; one who submerges himself totally in the character he is playing. I’m quite sure that when he was Simeon B. Tucker he made himself a bedtime cup of cocoa every night, and when he was Honest Harry Tucker he went to bed slightly pissed and didn’t aim too well at the loo. There are criminals (even murderers) in the contemplation of whom even the most law-abiding can only stand back and admire; here is an artist. Jimmy Hopgood was one of these.

‘And Jimmy Hopgood, I wouldn’t mind betting, is now living in semi-retirement in Clunbury Lane, Knightley,’ I said.

‘Turning a dishonest penny,’ agreed Garry. ‘If it’s him,
how old would he be?’

‘Sixty-five or so, at a guess. You wouldn’t expect Aid for the Elderly to employ a young man.’

‘I guess he regards Aid for the Elderly as a charity just made to keep him in a comfortable retirement.’

‘Hmmm. Well, I’m afraid that’s going to come to an end. But it’s not him I’m really interested in, Garry. It’s obvious that Hopgood is just a tool. What’s more, as I remember him, he was as unlikely a murderer as they come. Still, I’m looking forward to meeting him. I wonder what percentage they give him. Pretty bloody low, if I know my noble families. Well, well, I think today is the day I take off for the Midlands again, Garry.’

Which is what I did. I took the Inter-City to Birmingham, picked up a car from the central police pool, and drove over to Knightley, arriving in good time for afternoon tea. It struck me again as a pleasant village to retire to. The weather was still rather nippy, but some of the good people of Knightley (few of whom were young) were out in their gardens getting on with the little jobs that precede the coming of spring. Henry Shorthouse Tucker was not one of them. If he had been, I suspect he’d have been round the back and out the back gate before I’d got my key out of the ignition. But his garden was neat, the paths well cared for, the roses (which must have been a picture last year) well pruned back. He was obviously in one of his meticulous phases.

I went up the weedless crazy-paved path, and rang the doorbell.

The man who opened the door of the stone-dashed, symmetrical little bungalow was dressed in a neat grey cardigan and well-creased grey flannels, and he peered short-sightedly through rimless spectacles. He was the spit-and-image of the professional gentleman, the professional financial gentleman, in retirement.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Good afternoon,’ I said cheerily. ‘It’s Jimmy Hopgood, isn’t it?’

‘I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong house,’ he said, beginning to shut the door. ‘I think there are Hopgoods at number twenty-nine.’

‘While you do a bunk out the back gate, eh, Jimmy? Come off it, old chap. I was on duty at the Old Bailey when you were sent down in ’seventy-four. You were Harold S. Tucker then, remember, and you’d just overreached yourself with the London Northern.’

‘I assure you — ’

‘ — you can’t think what I’m talking about. Well, you can play it like that if you want to, Jimmy. I can take fingerprints, and we can match them up, and we can go through all the old dance routines. It’s just that that kind of game takes time, and I don’t think we have it. I’m here to save you from a heap of trouble, Jimmy, so I do think you might invite me in.’

‘Trouble?’

‘A murder charge, Jimmy.’

It gave him to pause, and he looked straight at me.

‘I think you’d better come in.’

I had to stoop to get into the door of that little pre-war bungalow. We stood for a moment in the dark little hall, and as my eyes got accustomed to the gloom, I saw a suitcase standing by the door into the kitchen.

‘All ready for a getaway, I see, Jimmy?’

‘I had contemplated a short vacation,’ he said with dignity. His voice, for this role, was high, precise, and replete with a genuine middle-class respectability.

‘I can’t make any promises about duration,’ I said. He sighed.

‘Come into the sitting-room.’

We sat down in comfortable, auction-sale armchairs, in a neat, rather characterless room, the furniture solid, at the window, lace curtains, those guardians of the
middle class’s secret life, or lack of it.

‘I suppose it’s no use offering you a cup of tea?’

‘Not if there’s a back door. Come on, Jimmy. Let’s get this over as soon as possible. It’s obvious you’ve been expecting a call.’

Jimmy sighed again. ‘I supposed it was too much to hope that your last visit here would indeed be your last.’

‘Ah, you heard about that?’

He looked cagey. ‘News gets around in a village. I drank elsewhere than the Wrekin on the evening in question, but I should have been wise and got out then, for good. There were considerations, however . . .’

‘I bet there were. You saw yourself being set up for the fall guy, and saw that that was even more likely if you made a dash for it. You were very wise. Look, Jimmy, we both know what I’m talking about. Let’s get things straight: I’m here to do you a good turn.’

‘I have a friend,’ said Jimmy, still in his high, articulate voice, ‘who maintains that when a policeman says that to you, you should prepare yourself for a stiff sentence.’

‘You have cynical friends. Let’s face it, Jimmy, you’re in trouble. If there was ever anyone set up for a murder charge, it’s you: here you are, under a false identity, the Treasurer of a large and rich charity, from whom you are peculating funds. Along comes an investigative journalist, specializing in social abuses of one kind or another. He’s done to death in your local pub, in a manner that would have been particularly easy for you to manage. You see — we’re half way to making a case already.’

‘I admit none of the early part of what you have said,’ said Jimmy Hopgood, with lawyer-like pedantry. ‘The latter part you clearly don’t believe yourself.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t think you’ve got the nerve for murder, or the sheer evil-mindedness. But you’re caught in an age-old trap. Present the court with an old lag with a record — albeit not half so long a record as he
deserves — and give them a choice between him and a noble Lord with an impeccable career of public service, and clean hands all his life — not to say four or five noble Lords — and who do you think they’re going to choose to send down? In a way, you can hardly blame them. But I don’t want you landed in the stir while those titled con-men get away with it.’

He looked at me quizzically: ‘Hard words, Inspector, about men with impeccable reputations.’

‘I don’t have Snobby Driscoll’s respect for the upper crust,’ I said. ‘What was the Snobby Driscoll connection, by the by?’

‘An act of charity,’ Hopgood enunciated after a pause, ‘most ill-repaid, it now seems. In fact, I gave him a bed for the weekend, as one old friend to another. He was eighteen months from his earliest parole date, but when cancer was diagnosed they gave him short periods of compassionate leave. His family were mostly dead, or in the stir, and he was always particularly fond of Shropshire.’

‘You’re all heart, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘And it really wasn’t Snobby gave you away. Now let’s get down to the nitty. You’ve been set up by a ring of particularly clever crooks, and any other policeman would have you in this moment for questioning on a murder charge. With a bit of luck that lot could even manage to wriggle their way out of a peculation charge. I imagine they’ve been super-circumspect.’

‘They have, of course,’ agreed Jimmy Hopgood, a slow, sly smile wafting over his face. ‘Fortunately, the thought had occurred to me, and I have been still more circumspect. From the beginning I have taken elementary precautions.’

‘Good. I’m glad of that. What sort of precautions?’

‘Tape-recordings, in point of fact. We communicated only by phone, and I was told to use a public box. I rang
them regularly once a week, and otherwise only if an emergency turned up. Such as Bill Tredgold writing to ask for an interview. Unfortunately for them, I usually took along a portable recording machine. Tapes are dicey evidence, of course, but there was also one single letter, with “Burn this” at the bottom. It has no crest, but it is written in the noble gentleman’s hand. I treasure it.’

‘So you should. Are these things safe?’

‘Lodged at my bank. I am a great believer in using the correct procedures. I’ve got good and trusted friends, but a good friend is never quite as reliable as a good bank.’

‘Well, it’s nice that with your experience you still believe that. Now, come on, Jimmy, let’s have the story from the beginning. There’s no point in holding back. We know who you are. We know you’re claiming to be a Chartered Accountant, which you’re not — ’

‘I’m a sight better than most of them — ’

‘ — I don’t doubt that. And we know you’re acting in an official capacity for Aid for the Elderly (and possibly other charities) under a false name. That’s quite enough to pull you in for, with more to follow when we go through the books. Wouldn’t it be sensible to come clean? As I say, it’s not you I’m after, and I’ll go all out to get you off as lightly as possible.’

Jimmy, whose Henry S. Tucker personality was thawing off him, but very gradually, screwed up his face in thought.

‘I’ve no cause to do that lot down. They’ve treated me right, by and large. But if it’s murder — ’

‘It’s murder, Jimmy. Two murders.’

‘Cripes! I never thought they’d have it in them. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, would you?’

‘I’ve not seen them.’

‘You’ve seen one of them. You met Lord Nuneaton, when you went with the Princess to that Old Folks’ Home
in Birmingham. You stood there talking about horses and dogs.’

‘Good God! Was that Nuneaton? I never suspected. You mean you were there too, Jimmy? What were you doing?’

‘Merging into the background. I wasn’t one of the nobs. Just there in my official capacity.’

‘Right then, Jimmy, are you going to come across with it, or shall we get in my car and drive back to the Yard?’

‘I’ll tell you it, as it happened, though God help me if I rely on your word as a cop. Well, this is it: it’s a good luck story really. With an unhappy ending. It started when I was in Churston — you know, the open clink just outside Coventry. Very nice class of place, mostly business frauds and your once-off domestic kind of murder. Well, I’m not getting any younger, you know, and it occurs to me I ought to be looking round for a nice little niche to retire to. They take all the good class papers there for the business frauds, and I see all these ads for Aid for the Elderly, telling the good middle-class readers what a good job they do, and how many pathetic old pieces of won’t-lift-a-hand-to-help-themselves they assist to live in happy independence. And just for a lark I writes them a note — pardon me,
write;
how mixing with the police does lower one’s standards — I write them a note, on prison paper. All above board — dignified, you know, plain-speaking and honest. Fairly honest. How I’d strayed from the path, but how I was getting old, and was terrified by the thought that I might have to live my last years in gaol, and how I was looking for a humble and honourable retirement. Could they help me?’