Murder on the Short List (20 page)

“And he comes highly recommended by the Chief Constable,” Alix said. “We have to deal with this matter expeditiously.”

“But you didn't speak to me about this.”

“Because you were off doing other things. It's such a busy time.”

I looked at Francis Knollys and rolled my eyes. “Well, Sergeant Cribb, what do you have to tell us apart from the fact that we have a fine tree?”

“I'd like to speak to the estate manager, sir.”

“To Hammond? He's got nothing to do with it.”

There was a silence that would have done for a lying-in-state.

Eventually Cribb glanced towards Alix. She gestured to the footman. “Find Mr Hammond and tell him he's wanted here.”

I said, “It's the missing jewellery we're exercised about, not the damned Christmas tree.”

“There may be a connection, sir,” Cribb said.

“And I'm a Dutchman.”

Presently Hammond made his entry. He was looking mightily perturbed, and I was perturbed, too, when I saw the state of his boots. Containing my displeasure, I gestured to Cribb to ask his questions.

“Fine tree,” he parroted.

“Thank you, sir,” Hammond said.

I told him he had no need to address Cribb as if he was a gentleman.

“I think it's the biggest I've seen,” Cribb said.

Alix intervened to say it was a living tree still attached to its roots.

“Capital, ma'am,” Cribb said, and turned back to Hammond. “When I was being driven through the grounds I noticed a small group of evergreens not far from the carriage path. Was this tree dug from there?”

“Yes.”

“A home-grown tree. How charming.”

Alix lavished a sweet smile on Cribb. I was starting to doubt her loyalty.

“And now, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said, “I'm going to ask you to show me precisely where the tree was growing.”

“I can do that.”

“You'll ruin your shoes,” Alix said. “The snow's quite deep. Bertie, have you got some galoshes to protect Sergeant Cribb's shoes?”

What next? I thought. Gritting my teeth, I clicked my fingers and sent a flunkey for enough overshoes for the four of us men. Alix elected not to come. She hates the cold.

Suitably attired, we left the house, Hammond leading. Before we'd gone a few yards Cribb left the party and trotted over to the cab still waiting near the entrance. Attached to the front below the driver's seat was a spade.

“You might care to look at this, sir,” Cribb called out.

The insolence of the man. I know what a spade is. I've turned enough first sods in my time. But the other two went to look, so I joined them, not wishing to seem churlish.

Cribb said, “A necessary tool for a cabman in the depths of winter, a spade. You never know when you'll need to dig yourself out.”

Then he held it horizontally towards me as if he was passing across a stuffed salmon for my inspection. “Take a close look at the dried mud attaching to the shoulder. I'll pick some off for you.”

He scraped some off and I found myself constrained to look at fragments of dried mud lying in his palm.

“Do you see the pine needles?”

Now that he mentioned the fact, I did. I gave a nod.

“That's all right, then,” Cribb said, taking back the spade and shouldering it like a rifle. “We'll have a use for this, I think.”

Hammond had by now got some way ahead. We stepped out and caught up with him a short distance from the evergreen copse.

“Now, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said, “kindly show us precisely where the Christmas tree was growing.”

Hammond started to point and then drew back his hand and scratched his head instead. “Well, I'll be jiggered.”

To borrow the words of the carol, the snow lay
deep and crisp and even
.

Even
was the operative word.

“You dug out a large tree,” Cribb said to him, “so where's the large hole?”

“Caught out, Mr Hammond,” I said. “In spite of all the instructions to the contrary, you sawed the thing off at the base.”

“I swear I didn't, sir. It took six of us a morning and an afternoon to dig under the roots.”

“Perhaps you filled in the hole?” Knollys suggested.

“I wouldn't do that. Not when the tree has to be put back after Twelfth Night. May I borrow that spade?”

He started scraping away the layer of snow. Below it, the ground was even, but the soil was soft. “Someone else filled it in.”

“Keep at it, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said. “Dig out the soft stuff.”

Hammond went at it with a will. We all had to stand back as the spadefuls of earth flew about us.

Cribb said, “Wait. What's that dark material?”

“It's fabric.” Hammond bent down and scraped with his fingers and unearthed a brown bowler hat.

“Just the beginning,” Cribb said. “Dig some more, Mr Hammond.”

In only a few minutes Hammond exclaimed, “Oh, my Lord.”

He'd uncovered a human hand and part of a sleeve of yellow and green tweed.

“Horace Digby, poor fellow,” Garrard said.

I
n the warmth of the house I treated them to hot punch. We'd left some gardeners outside to warm themselves by extracting the rest of the corpse from the hole.

I waited for Alix to join us, and then said, “This is all very remarkable, Sergeant Cribb, but it hasn't brought back the missing jewels unless they're in the hole as well.”

“No, they're not, sir. I recovered them earlier. Excuse me a moment.” He left the room.

We were lost for words. We simply stared at each other until he returned carrying a valise and a large silver object that I recognised as an inkstand, Alix's Christmas present.

“What's that ugly thing?” Alix said.

“The murder weapon, ma'am,” Cribb said.

All my good intentions dashed in a couple of sentences.

“Then who is the murderer?”

“Gripper, the cabman,” Cribb said. “I have him cuffed, hand and foot. He's quite secure, lying on the floor of his own cab. It was a crime of opportunity and it happened on the 21st, before the snow came. Digby got into his cab at Lynn station and said he wanted to be driven to Sandringham. It was pretty obvious that the valise contained something valuable. All the way here the cabman planned the robbery. Inside the gates where it was quiet, he stopped and told Digby to hand over the booty. Digby put up a fight, but the cabbie grabbed something heavy – and I think it was that silver object – and brained him with it. He may not have intended murder, but that's what it became. It was his good luck that a hole big enough for a grave had been dug nearby. He dropped the body in and used his own spade to cover it with the excess soil beside the hole. That's how he got the pine needles in the mud. And there was more good luck for him when the snow came, levelling everything.”

“But bad luck when you came along,” Alix said, her voice overflowing with admiration.

“Yes, I got the gist of the story from the stationmaster at Lynn. It was a risk using the same cab, but I fancy the killer thought he'd got away with it. And he wasn't likely to attack me with nothing in my hands. I arrested him on suspicion as soon as I got here.”

“You're a brave man, as well as a fine detective,” Alix said, actually clapping her hands. “Isn't he a brave man, Bertie?”

“Where were the stolen jewels?” I asked.

“In the box seat he sits on.”

“Speaking of boxes, do we have a Christmas box for Sergeant Cribb?” Alix asked.

She looked to me, I looked to Knollys and he sniffed, sighed and took a couple of gold sovereigns from his pocket.

“And there's his fee, of course,” Alix said. “Twenty-five pounds, I suggest.”

Cribb looked as if his Christmas was just beginning.

As for me, I've never felt the same about Christmas trees. Before Papa made them popular, we had something rather better. The custom was to hang up a bough entwined with mistletoe, holly, ivy and other evergreens, candles, apples and cinnamon sticks. It was called the kissing bough and when I'm King I intend to reinstate it.

If the Queen allows.

W
e called him the Brigadier with the buggered ear. Just looking at it made you wince. Really he should have had the bits surgically removed. He claimed it was an old war wound. However, Sadie the Lady, another of our residents, told us it wasn't true. She said she'd talked to the Brig's son Arnold who reckoned his old man got blind drunk in Aldershot one night and tripped over a police dog and paid for it with his shell-like.

Because of his handicap, the Brigadier tended to shout. His “good” ear wasn't up to much, even with the aid stuck in it. We got used to the shouting, we old farts in the Never-Say-Die Retirement Home. After all, most of us are hard of hearing as well. No doubt we were guilty of letting him bluster and bellow without interruption. We never dreamed at the time that our compliance would get us into the High Court on a murder rap.

It was set in motion by She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced, our so-called matron, pinning a new leaflet on the notice board in the hall.

“Infernal cheek!” the Brig boomed. “They're parasites, these people, living off the frail and weak-minded.”

“Who are you calling weak-minded?” Sadie the Lady piped up. “There's nothing wrong with my brain.”

The Brig didn't hear. Sometimes it can be a blessing.

“Listen to this,” he bellowed, as if we had any choice. “‘Are you dissatisfied with your hearing? Struggling with a faulty instrument? Picking up unwanted background noise? Marcus Haliburton, a renowned expert on the amazing new digital hearing aids, will be in attendance all day at the Bay Tree Hotel on Thursday, 8th April for free consultations. Call this number now for an appointment. No obligation.' No obligation, my arse – forgive me, ladies. You know what happens? They get you in there and tell you to take out your National Health aid so they can poke one of those little torches in your ear and of course you're stuffed. You can't hear a thing they're saying from that moment on. The next thing is they shove a form in front of you and you find you've signed an order for a thousand pound replacement. If you object they drop your NHS aid on the floor and tread on it.”

“That can't be correct,” Miss Martindale said.

“Completely wrecked, yes,” the Brigadier said. “Are you speaking from personal experience, my dear, because I am.”

Someone put up a hand. He wanted to be helped to the toilet, but the Brigadier took it as support. “Good man. What we should do is teach these blighters a lesson. We could, you know, with my officer training and George's underworld experience.”

I smiled faintly. My underworld links were nil, another of the Brig's misunderstandings. One afternoon I'd been talking to Sadie about cats and happened to mention that we once adopted a stray. I thought the Brig was dozing in his armchair, but he came to life and said, “Which of the Krays was that – Reggie or Ronnie? I had no idea of your criminal past, George. We'll have to watch you in future.”

It was hopeless trying to disillusion him, so I settled for my gangster reputation and some of the old ladies began to believe it, too, and found me more interesting than ever they'd supposed.

By the next tea break, the Brigadier had turned puce with excitement. “I've mapped it out,” he told us. “I'm calling it Operation Syringe, because we're going to clean these ruffians out. Basically, the object of the plan is to get a new super-digital hearing aid for everyone in this home free of charge.”

“How the heck will you do that?” Sadie asked.

“What?”

She stepped closer and spoke into his ear. “They're a private company. Those aids cost a fortune.”

The Brig grinned. “Simple. We intercept their supplies. I happen to know the Bay Tree Hotel quite well.”

Sadie said to the rest of us, “That's a fact. The Legion has its meetings there. He's round there every Friday night for his g&t.”

“G&t or two or three,” another old lady said.

I said, “Wait a minute, Brigadier. We can't steal a bunch of hearing aids.” I have a carrying voice when necessary and he heard every word.

“‘Steal' is not a term in the military lexicon, dear boy,” he said. “We requisition them.” He leaned forward. “Now, the operation has three phases. Number One: Observation. I'll take care of that. Number Two: Liaison. This means getting in touch with an inside man, Cormac, the barman. I can do that also. Number Three: Action. And that depends on what we learn from Phases One and Two. That's where the rest of you come in. Are you with me?”

“I don't know what he's on about,” Sadie said to me.

“Don't worry,” I said. “He's playing soldiers, that's all. He'll find out it's a non-starter.”

“No muttering in the ranks,” the Brigadier said. “Any dissenters? Fall out, the dissenters.”

No one moved. Some of us needed help to move anywhere and nobody left the room when tea and biscuits were on offer. And that was how we were recruited into the snatch squad.

On Saturday, the Brigadier reported on Phases One and Two of his battle plan. He marched into the tea room looking as chipper as Montgomery on the eve of El Alamein.

“Well, the obbo phase is over and so is the liaison and I'm able to report some fascinating results. The gentleman who wants us all to troop along to the Bay Tree Hotel and buy his miraculous hearing aids is clearly doing rather well out of it. He drives a vintage Bentley and wears a different suit each visit and by the cut of them they're not off the peg.”

“There's money in ripping off old people,” Sadie said.

“It ought to be stopped,” her friend Briony said.

The Brig went on, “I talked to my contact last night and I'm pleased to tell you that the enemy – that is to say Marcus Haliburton – works to a predictable routine. He puts in a fortnightly appearance at the Bay Tree. If you go along and see him you'll find Session One is devoted to the consultation and the placing of the order. Session Two is the fitting and payment. Between Sessions One and Two a box is delivered to the hotel and it contains up to fifty new hearing aids – more than enough for our needs.” He paused and looked around the room. “So what do you think is the plan?”