Richardson's First Case (2 page)

Martin Edwards

www.martinedwardsbooks.com

A
DECADE
ago, in his famous book,
My Experiences in Scotland Yard
, Sir Basil Thomson wrote:

This, then, is the book written from within the sacred precincts. It is the lowdown, the inside dope, the detective story that every mystery writer has wanted to write and every mystery reader to read. It is the tale of a detective who works without intuition, without a magnifying glass, without a comprehensive knowledge of ancient Greek art and seven foreign languages; in a word, a detective who works as a detective works. The incomparable common sense of England is at his command, and the incomparable facilities of that magnificent octopus of the sea of crime, New Scotland Yard. And, as the Yard so unfailingly does, he gets his man. In the pages that follow, you will watch him do it.

Only a glacier in its irresistible path down a mountainside is comparable to the Yard in action. From the swift wheels of the famous Flying Squad, pursuing their lightning way across the face of London, to the dusty quiet of the Index Room, every unit operates with deadly effect. Neither fear nor favor affects the strong-faced men in control. No politician calls a halt. The halt comes, but it comes only when a criminal stands before the bar of justice and the Yard goes on to other things.

Out of all this wealth, this flowering of the art and practice of criminology, writers have drawn with increasing frequency and effect since the turn of the century. From the Yard's personnel Edgar Wallace borrowed heavily, for men like Inspector Bliss and the immortal Superintendent Surefoot Smith; H.C. Bailey found there Lomas, Reggie Fortune's hard-hitting foil; there Freeman Wills Crofts must have first seen Inspector French, tracking down some poor wretch of a murderer with the obstinate pertinacity of a demon. There, as a matter of fact, lie the men and machinery of a million tales, in the Big Four, the Flying Squad, the men in the ranks. There lies half the fascination of the detective novel.

There have been, at one time and another, discussions as to whether the efficiency of the Yard created the modern detective story (for in the days of Sherlock Holmes the Yard held no very estimable place in literature), or whether the modern detective story created the Yard. Like the justly celebrated enigma of the chicken and the egg, that is a question no man may answer. But it is safe to assume that the Yard's efficiency, a byword in police circles from Shanghai to Valparaiso, was of its own creating; built out of the mind and character of men like Sir Basil Thomson.

Sir Basil's father was the Archbishop of York, a distinguished, if a strange, ancestry for a criminal administrator. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and after a time was called to the bar. From that to the far-flung Colonial Service was only a step. Shortly he found himself, at 29, Prime Minister of Tonga, the “Friendly Islands” of Captain Cook. He has farmed in Iowa, and he has been governor of that fabulous prison outside whose walls Dr. Watson shivered on an historic night—the prison of Dartmoor. He has been governor, too, of Wormwood Scrubs, that house of detention whose name rings so oddly in American ears. With this background of administrative and criminological experience, he took over, in June of 1913, the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. His predecessor was the great Sir Melville Macnaghten, and on the splendid structure he had built, Sir Basil raised the organization we know today. For eight years, through the difficult and perilous days of the war, his firm hands guided the C.I.D. and the Special Branch (the little-known section that has in its charge such delicate matters as political crimes). Through murders and spy scares, the post-war wave of robbery and violence, the vast spawning of small crimes and great, he pursued his course with skill and efficiency.

Out of his rich experience and his profound knowledge of crime and crime's detection, he has written this tale of young P.C. Richardson, who stood one misty November morning at a corner on Baker Street and decided that he would be a detective in the sacred ranks of the C.I.D. There are few such novels on the long shelves of the literature of crime.

“M.J.”

O
N A
depressing November afternoon, when the street lights scarce sufficed to pierce the wet mist, a young policeman stood at his post in Baker Street at the point where Crawford Street joins the main thoroughfare. Moisture dripped from his helmet and glistened on his waterproof cape; the stream of traffic had splashed him with mud to the knees. People have been heard to wonder what passes through the minds of policemen during their long hours of point duty when they gaze on the stream of traffic with the detachment of a cow looking at a passing train. Are there human emotions behind those impassive features? Do they ever unbend? In the case of young P.C. Richardson, posted in Baker Street that November afternoon, we are in a position to answer these questions. Newly posted to the D Division of the Metropolitan Police after a strenuous course of training at Peel House, he was not ruminating upon the frailty of human nature or regretting the change from his native Arbroath to a section house in central London. He was wondering how he could win admission to the Criminal Investigation Department where, as he knew, hours were long, meals irregular, failures frequent, and pay but little higher than he was receiving while in uniform; but the work was varied, interesting, and sometimes exciting, and hard work was what he wanted. From what he had heard from his comrades there was only one royal road into the C.I.D. and that was by putting in his name to be a winter patrol; but winter patrols were posted mostly in the outer divisions of London during the burglary season, and it was too soon for him to apply for a transfer to one of those divisions. His mind then began to explore the future when, by a happy combination of hard work and good luck, he would rise in promotion by rapid steps. He might even solve crime mysteries which puzzled all his seniors as well as the “crime experts” of the Sunday newspapers, just as amateurs are wont to do in the detective stories, for which, by the way, he had a lofty contempt, knowing even from his short experience how far they are from reality.

He had just reached the rank of superintendent when he heard a shout and the grinding of brakes: a big car skidded sideways and stopped dead, blocking the traffic: a huddled object looking like a bundle of old clothes was lying in the roadway entangled with the spring and the front axle. He was the first to reach the spot and direct the removal of the man, who had been knocked down, to the pavement, and to summon a doctor and an ambulance while he kept the crowd back and inquired into the cause of the accident. The driver of the car protested that it had not been his fault: he said that the old man had dashed off the pavement without looking to right or left to see whether it was safe to cross—“just dashed across as if the devil was after him, as you might say.”

The usual particulars went down in the notebook; the car was got into the nearest side street. A crowd had assembled round the policeman; another crowd round the doctor who was examining the injured man. P.C. Richardson had to stride through it and move it back from the prostrate body. While he was doing this a woman said, “I was quite close to him, officer: he was running over to where you were standing. I heard him say, ‘Very well, then, I'll call a policeman'—just like that—and then off he ran, right in front of the car, poor old man!”

“Who did he say it to?”

“I don't know. I didn't see anyone with him. In fact, I wasn't taking any particular notice till I heard them words.”

Richardson addressed his next question to the crowd at large. “Did any of you see him before the accident happened? Was there someone with him?” There was no reply; these were all people who had stopped on their way at the sight of a growing crowd and the thrill of an accident. Richardson took the woman's name and address down in his notebook; she might have to be called as a witness at the inquest.

The doctor was kneeling over his patient. He looked up when Richardson asked him what the injuries were.

“He's unconscious and I can't get his name, but he's alive. We ought to get him along to the hospital as quick as we can.”

“Right, sir; the ambulance ought to be here in less than a minute.”

At this moment the crowd gave way and the ambulance was wheeled up to the curb. Willing hands lifted the body gently onto the canvas, and with Richardson at its side it was wheeled off to the Middlesex Hospital. The hospital porter rang a bell to the accident ward and the ambulance drew up at the door, but in that brief journey the passenger had ceased to be a “case” but had taken a longer journey and become a “body.” His destination was not the accident ward, but the mortuary. Here P.C. Richardson's work began. The body was carried to a vacant slab; it was that of an old man between sixty and seventy, poorly but respectably dressed, such as may be found by the thousand in London shops. The first thing to do was to search the pockets for any address that might lead to identification—a letter, an addressed envelope, a business card—but there was nothing. A pencil, a bunch of keys, and a slip of paper represented the whole contents of the pockets. The underclothing, which was none too clean, bore a laundry mark and that was all. The slip of paper was the only clue; it bore the address Arthur Harris, 7 Wigmore Street. The hospital telephone was put at Richardson's service, and he rang up the police station to report the accident and obtain leave to visit the address and establish the identity. The house was but a step from the hospital. A butler opened the door and told him that Mr. Arthur Harris lived there and that he would convey any message if he would be good enough to say what the business was; but Richardson was quite undaunted by the apparent opulence of the surroundings and said firmly that he had come for a personal and private interview with Mr. Arthur Harris.

“Is it a case of dangerous driving?” murmured the butler in concern. “Because if so I think you'd better see the young gentleman in the smoking room without letting the whole house know about it.”

“Very well, the smoking room will do.” He was shown into a luxurious room on the ground floor—a den apparently sacred to the father and son. Richardson had not long to wait. Apparently Mr. Harris's ordinary gait in descending stairs was to take four or five steps at a bound. He was a little breathless, not because of the exercise, but because the visit of a uniformed constable boded ill for a young man who considered that all public roads were intended for speed trials. He was a thin, weedy kind of youth, who looked as if late hours and cocktails disagreed with him. His pale cheeks assorted ill with his rather gaudy plus fours.

“You wanted to see me, constable?”

“Yes, sir. An old man was knocked over by a car in Baker Street this afternoon.”

“It wasn't me, constable. I haven't been in Baker Street today. I can show you my journey on the map and bring a witness to prove it.”

“That is not the point, sir. In the old man's pocket we have found this paper. It has your name and address. He was an old man approaching seventy, with a short grey beard and a bald head. He looked more like a shopkeeper than anything else. Perhaps as he was carrying your address you may be able to identify him.”

Young Harris's expression showed his relief, but he shook his head and said that he could make no suggestion as to who would be likely to carry his address in his pocket.

“Had you an appointment with anyone this evening?”

“No. If I had I should tell you at once.”

“Then, sir, I'm afraid I must ask you to come with me to Middlesex Hospital and see whether you can recognize him.”

“Right, constable! I'll do anything you ask me to, but I can tell you beforehand that I shan't be able to recognize anyone of that description. Wait a second while I get my hat and coat.”

Richardson watched him narrowly when they entered the mortuary together and thought that his complexion changed from white to green as he came within sight of the body, but he ascribed the change to the surroundings of the grisly building in which derelict human bodies are laid out like the wares in a fishmonger's shop. He looked fixedly at the body for many seconds and then shook his head.

“You've never seen him before, sir?”

“No; never.”