Richardson's First Case (9 page)

“You mean—?”

“I mean his going off without a word to anybody and without luggage. I've wired and telephoned to all his relations and friends; none of them has seen him.”

The two officials exchanged glances: the visitor continued: “Now your man frightened him away and you have got to find him.”

“Certainly, we shall do our best to find him. We have a description of him to circulate. Have you any objection to our getting the B.B.C. to broadcast him?”

“Urn! The loss-of-memory stunt, I suppose?”

“You think that's not better than the all-will-be-forgiven stunt?”

“I don't like either of them. The boy would never forgive me if his pals nicknamed him ‘loss-of-memory' Harris. No, I won't have publicity. You people have your own machinery for finding people. Just find him and bring him home. And, of course, if you have expenses send the bill to me.”

“Very well, Mr. Harris,” said Sir William, rising to intimate that the interview was at an end. “And, of course, you'll let us know by telephone if your son returns home.”

“Of course I will,” said the other, as he stumped out of the room.

“So the bird's flown, Morden. What do you make of that?”

“I'd like to know what Foster said to him before I start guessing. I believe I heard his voice in Beckett's room when you sent for me. Let's see whether he's still in the building.”

Sir William rang for the messenger, who returned with Inspector Foster immediately. “I was just leaving, sir. I gave my report to Mr. Beckett,” he explained to Morden.

“I'm glad we caught you in time,” said Sir William. “Did you know that this young man Harris has bolted?”

Foster's face exhibited no surprise. “I didn't know it, Sir William, but I'm not altogether surprised to hear it.”

“Why?”

Foster related the facts about Harris's false alibi and how he had taxed him with it.

“I suppose that you never said anything to him that might lead him to think that he was suspected of the murder.”

“Not a word, sir.”

“Has any other police officer seen him?”

“Not since the evening of the murder, Sir William. The uniform constable, P.C. Richardson, saw him then, and young Harris assured him that he had never seen the dead man in his life. When I taxed him with that, he said that he didn't want his father to know that he'd been borrowing money.”

“I wonder whether we could get Richardson down here.”

“Yes, Sir William, quite easily. He's on relief this afternoon.”

“Then will you go and telephone to Marylebone to send him down at once? Say that I want to see him.”

When Foster had left them alone, he said, “I can understand why his father came down and tried to be rude to us. Probably he's having a thin time at home. These bullying turkeycocks are generally being bullied by someone else; this time it's the doting mother. The turkeycock's tail gets lower with every step he takes from his office to his front door, and he slinks in with all the bounce out of him like a deflated tire. But why should the boy have tried to prove that false alibi if he was innocent? He must know more than he cares to tell us. Anyhow, we must circulate his description by A.S. message and the provinces. You'll see to that?”

Foster slipped quietly into the room at this juncture. “P.C. Richardson is on his way down, Sir William. I've asked Mr. Beckett to let me have my report in case you would like to glance through it.”

There was silence for a few minutes while Sir William Lorimer read the report. “This will interest you, Morden, especially the part about the picture cleaner. I see, Mr. Foster, that you describe him as a weak, drunken old man, but even a weak, drunken old man may be driven by fear to commit violent crimes. I don't think that you can dismiss him entirely from the case on account of his physical appearance.”

“That's very true, Sir William, and I haven't dismissed him. That paper and string we found in the shop needs explaining. I shouldn't be surprised to find that he was on the premises either that day or just before it.”

They discussed the various aspects of the case for some minutes, when the house telephone tinkled on the desk. “It's Richardson,” said Sir William, putting down the receiver. “I told them to send him in.” The door opened and P.C. Richardson stood at attention; though oppressed by the feeling that this was the greatest opportunity of his life, he maintained his Scottish composure.

“I want to ask you a few questions, Richardson,” said Sir William, kindly. “You were the first police officer to see that young man Harris?”

“I was, Sir William.”

“How did he strike you?”

“Not at all favourably, sir. He seemed frightened, and as you will remember, he lied to me. He seemed to have something he wished to hide.”

“Yes, he lied all the way through—rather stupidly, it seems. You may not have heard yet that his alibi for that afternoon has broken down.”

“I didn't know that, sir, but I understand that his alibi only covered the afternoon up to five. If I may say so, sir, and if it's true that Mrs. Catchpool was seen alive just after six o'clock, I've got the best alibi for him. He was with me about that time.”

Sir William looked towards Morden, who nodded.

“That is certainly a point, Richardson. It reminds me of that false alibi in the Camden Town murder, which went a good way towards getting Wood acquitted.”

“Yes, sir, I've read of the case. If Harris had been guilty of this murder, he would have known what time it was committed and made his false alibi cover it.”

“Probably you have not yet heard that Harris has disappeared.”

A light seemed to break in upon Richardson, but he held his peace.

“Does that suggest anything to you, Richardson?”

“Yes, sir, it seems to support what struck me last night when I was thinking over the case. Harris had something to hide when he produced that alibi. Did he think that the police were after him for some other offense? He had his car out that afternoon, and said that he had been to Oxford. Suppose that he had been on another road altogether and knocked someone down and went on without stopping, thinking he had killed him?”

This was a new light upon Harris's motive for disappearing. “What do you say to that, Mr. Foster?” The inspector's face wore a quizzical expression. His Scottish caution was tempered with indulgence for a young fellow countryman.

“It's worth inquiring into, I think, Sir William. We might ascertain whether any of the A.A. scouts on the Oxford road recorded the number of Harris's car: if not, we might inquire whether any accidents occurred on the other roads out of London. Will you see to that, Morden? I suppose that you have formed some view of the case yourself, Richardson.”

“One can't help forming views, sir; when I'm on point duty, the servant of the old man is always pestering me. She comes up and asks whether the police have found out who did the murder and keeps on insisting that there was only one key to the shop and that the old man wouldn't even allow his nephew to have one.”

“Yes, that key would unlock the whole mystery if we could find it. I suppose, Mr. Foster, that the bodies of the two dead people and every corner of the shop were searched for that key?”

“Yes, Sir William; we couldn't find a trace of it.”

“Well, sir, if I may be allowed to speak,” said Richardson, “I questioned the woman this morning as to who made the lock; she told me that it was a locksmith in King's Cross Road. During this dinner hour I made a round and found three locksmiths and an ironmonger who might have supplied it, and fortunately one of them—a man named Pleydell—remembered supplying and fixing the lock about eighteen months ago. He gave a pretty good description of the customer who ordered it, and I have no doubt that it was Catchpool himself. I asked him how many keys he supplied. He said that all these locks are supplied with two keys, but that this customer would only take one and made him destroy the other in his presence by heating it red hot in the forge and beating it out of shape with a hammer. I have his address here, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Sir William, handing the address to Foster. “Let me see, you are not long out of Peel House, are you?”

“About two months, sir.”

“So you haven't had time yet to apply for the C.I. Department?”

“No, sir, but I've always wanted to.”

“Because of the higher pay?”

“Not altogether that, sir, but because I am keen on the work.”

“Well, then, you shall have your chance. Instead of doing winter patrol I shall attach you to Inspector Foster for this case and see how you get on. You can apply for the plain-clothes allowance.”

“Thank you, sir.” Richardson's face reddened with joy. It was more than he had ever dared to hope for.

“Wait for me outside,” murmured Foster, as his new assistant saluted and turned to go.

“You think I am playing fast and loose with the system of choosing patrols, Mr. Foster, but new blood with talent is badly wanted. If young Richardson makes good, we'll send him through the instruction class. All that will depend upon your report upon his work. Now you good people have your work cut out, and you must be longing to get on with it. There's the finding of young Harris, the verifying of Richardson's report about that key and the new hare he started about a possible motor accident. Let me know how the case goes on.”

It was a polite dismissal. The A.C.C., as they both knew, had a remarkable gift for seizing the essential point in the papers put before him. That was why his table was never littered with files of official papers. When Morden rallied him about his empty table, he replied that it was because his business habits had never been impaired by practice at the bar, though, as a matter of fact, he had been “called” and was, like Morden, a member of the Inner Temple. He stopped Morden as he was leaving the room.

“Unless I'm a very poor judge, that young constable may go far. You might keep a fatherly eye on him.”

“I will. I admire your courage in breaking all the routine rules. There'll be a lot of grumbling among the winter patrols if this lad is passed over their heads.”

“I haven't done it yet, but if he comes to the front over this case I shall. Then they can grumble as much as they like. That's what I'm here for—to get the best available men into the department and promote them by talent. When they get to understand this they'll all buck up. Promotion by routine is the ruin of every public service. I know only one thing worse, and that is the promotion of a ‘dud' into some other service because he stands in the line of promotion. All the public offices, from the F.O. downwards, are guilty of it.”

Inspector Foster found his new recruit waiting for him. “You've had a stroke of luck today, young feller-me-lad; don't get your head turned.”

“No fear of that, Mr. Foster. If you notice anything of that kind, I hope you'll pull me up sharp. All I want is to make myself useful to you.”

“You might have told me about that lock.”

“You'll find a note on your table telling you all about it when you get back, Mr. Foster. I came straight down to tell you at the station, but you were out. And there's another thing I meant to tell you. That charwoman of Catchpool said this morning that a young gentleman called at the shop on that Tuesday morning and had a longish talk with her master. She was dusting out the shop and must have kept her ears flapping. She said that she distinctly heard her master call him ‘Mr. Harris,' and just before he came out of the office she heard him say, ‘I'll give you till five o'clock this evening to pay up. If you don't I shall call at the house and ask to see your father. This shilly-shally has been going on long enough.'”

“Did she say that? Then the first thing you can do when you've got into plain clothes is to take a statement from her and get her to sign it. That and the fact that his receipt is the only one missing from the file are against our dismissing young Harris too readily. I wonder—” He fell into a train of speculation as they walked together to the tube station. “Do you think it possible that Harris met the old man and robbed him of his key, and when Catchpool ran across the road to complain to you and was knocked down, he made for the shop and abstracted his receipt? That would account for what that bystander told you she overheard: ‘Very well, then, I'll call a policeman.'”

“I thought of that, sir, but a highway robbery of that kind in a crowd would have caused a considerable disturbance, and I must have noticed it. The crowd would have grabbed Harris as a pickpocket, as a London crowd always does.”

“Well, we'll see what Harris says when we find him. We must see whether he took his car. You'd better clear that up before taking the statement from that charwoman.”

I
NSPECTOR
F
OSTER
was engaged with his first-class sergeant checking the diaries of his staff when he heard a halting step upon the stairs—evidently not that of any police officer. There was a timid rap on the door; he recognized his visitor as the artist picture cleaner, Frank Cronin, whom he had last seen attired in nothing but his shirt and overcoat. Today he was respectably but not extravagantly dressed in a suit of threadbare garments decked out with the kind of necktie that used to be flaunted in the Chelsea studios.

“Good morning, Mr. Cronin,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The artist looked doubtfully at Sergeant Reed. “Could I see you alone, sir?” Reed took the hint and retired to the adjoining room with his pile of diaries.

“Sit down, Mr. Cronin, and take your time.”

“The fact is that I was so much upset that I omitted to tell you something last night that may be important. You know, sir, I'd been very anxious to get back that picture entrusted to me by Mrs. Kennedy to clean. It was so important that I should have it, that last Tuesday afternoon I made up my mind to go to that shop in High Street and ask Mr. Catchpool to let me have it back.”