Hardcastle's Frustration (14 page)

‘Dead?' exclaimed Hardcastle.
Everyone I'm interested in is turning up dead
, he thought, remembering that Daisy Benson's husband had also died. But he dismissed that fact as one of life's inevitabilities, considering that there was a war on.

Frobisher opened a docket that was in the centre of his desk. ‘Private Wilfred Rudd, regimental number 14923 of the Dorsetshire Regiment was killed in action on the twenty-ninth of June 1917. He was one of a raiding party that was sent out in an attempt to capture one of the enemy.' The APM glanced up. ‘It's something that is done from time to time, Inspector. A captured German soldier can often prove to be a very useful source of intelligence regarding the disposition of the enemy's forces.'

‘Is that so?' said Hardcastle, who did not really understand the finer points of military strategy and tactics. ‘But the matron was adamant that the details were correct.'

‘Did she have any documentary proof that this man calling himself Rudd had served in the Dorsetshire Regiment?'

‘Apparently not, Colonel. The authorities relied on the man's own statement. A bit slipshod in my view, but there it is.'

‘I'm not surprised.' Frobisher tapped the docket with a forefinger. ‘Mrs Molly Rudd, Wilfred Rudd's wife, was informed of her husband's death by War Office telegram on the fourth of July 1917.'

‘Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs,' exclaimed Hardcastle. ‘I wonder what the bugger's up to.'

Frobisher smiled. ‘There's an outside chance I might be able to help you there, Mr Hardcastle. On the day that Rudd was killed, a Private Eric Donnelly, a member of the same three-man raiding party, was reported missing believed killed. His body was not found, you see, although the bodies of Rudd and the third man were. That fact created some uncertainty about it and it was thought that Donnelly might've taken the opportunity, in the confusion of battle, to make himself scarce. It may be, therefore, that the man calling himself Rudd is in fact Donnelly and that he assumed Rudd's identity in order to desert.'

‘I suppose it's a possibility,' muttered Hardcastle, furious that he had wasted so much time on a deserter. Not that that precluded Rudd from his list of suspects for the murder of Ronald Parker. If anything, now that it was known that the real Rudd was dead, it moved the bogus Rudd higher up that list.

‘But I have to tell you that hundreds have been reported missing since the first of July 1916 – the day the offensive started in earnest – and are continuing to remain missing. I fear that some of them will never been found. For all we know, Donnelly might've been lost forever in the mud of Flanders. It's an awful and literally bloody battle.'

‘You said that Rudd's wife was informed of his death on the fourth of July last year, Colonel,' said Marriott. ‘Do you have an address for her?'

‘I suppose it's in Dorset,' muttered Hardcastle, ‘seeing as how he was in the Dorsetshire Regiment.'

Frobisher laughed. ‘That doesn't follow at all, Inspector. The old concept of local men joining local regiments went out of the window a long time ago. Nowadays conscripts are sent to whichever regiment is short. And these days that's all of them.'

‘Yes, of course,' said Hardcastle, remembering that Maud's friend Lieutenant Charles Spencer had been gazetted to the North Lancashire Regiment, despite coming from Windsor.

‘However,' continued Frobisher, glancing at his docket again, ‘the address we have for Mrs Molly Rudd is in Gresham Road, Brixton.' He wrote the details on a slip of paper and handed it to Marriott.

‘London!' exclaimed Hardcastle. ‘Thank the Lord for that,' he muttered irreverently.

‘Fetch Wood in here,' barked Hardcastle, when he and Marriott were back at the police station.

‘Sir?' Wood buttoned his jacket as he entered the DDI's office.

‘You're to come with me to Brixton, Wood. It concerns your observation when you tracked down Wilfred Rudd. I'll explain all about it on the way.'

The house in Gresham Road where Molly Rudd lived was three stories high with a basement area and a flight of steps leading to the front door. Pieces of concrete had broken away in places on the steps, and a ragged hedge fronted the property, the entirety of which was in poor repair. What had probably been a well-tended garden in years gone by was now covered in sodden cardboard boxes and an old mattress. The basement area had become one massive rubbish dump in which, among other things, were an old bath, a rusting bicycle frame and an abandoned bedstead.

‘Nice place,' commented Hardcastle, as he and Marriott carefully ascended the crumbling steps.

‘Yes, watcha want?' The grey-haired woman who opened the door in response to Hardcastle's knock was in her fifties and was wearing a black bombazine dress and a long apron. Her lank grey hair was tied back with a grubby piece of ribbon. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and gazed suspiciously at the two detectives.

‘We're police officers, madam,' said Hardcastle, as he raised his hat. ‘Am I addressing Mrs Molly Rudd?'

‘No, you ain't,' said the woman. ‘I'm Mrs Perkins, if it's any of your business. Watcha want, anyway?' she asked again.

‘Strangely enough, a word with Mrs Rudd,' snapped Hardcastle, his temper beginning to shorten quite dramatically.

‘Top floor, and mind you wipe yer feet.' Leaving Hardcastle to close the door, Mrs Perkins disappeared into a room at the back of the house.

Hardcastle and Wood climbed the two flights of uncarpeted stairs to the top floor, the odour of boiled cabbage increasing with every upward step. The DDI tapped on a door to which was pinned a card bearing the name ‘Mrs Rudd'.

The door was opened by a careworn woman probably in her thirties, but who looked older. She had a small child in her arms.

‘Yes, what is it?'

‘Mrs Rudd, I'm a police officer. Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division and this is Detective Sergeant Wood.'

‘Oh, and what do the police want with me? As if I ain't got enough trouble.'

‘It concerns your husband, Mrs Rudd. Your
late
husband, that is.' Hardcastle was careful to avoid raising the woman's hopes that Wilfred Rudd might still be alive. Since the war had begun, it was not unusual for men, originally thought to have perished, later to turn up alive and well.

‘You'd better come in, then, though I don't know what I can tell you other than he was killed on the Somme last year.'

‘So I understand, madam.' Hardcastle and Wood followed the woman into a sparsely furnished room. Apart from a table, two chairs, and a bed, there was little else. The floor was partially covered with a threadbare rug, leaving untreated wooden boards exposed around it. The table bore the remains of a meagre meal.

‘What's this about my Wilfred, then,' asked the woman, settling herself on the edge of the unmade bed, ‘apart from him having got hisself killed and leaving me to bring up a child on a war widow's pension that ain't enough to feed a sparrow? It ain't no wonder I has to take in washing.'

‘We have come across a man who we believe is pretending to be your husband, Mrs Rudd,' said Hardcastle. ‘He claims to have been discharged from the Dorsetshire Regiment on the day that your husband was reported killed in action.'

‘The cheeky sod. Who is this man, then?'

‘That's what we're attempting find out, Mrs Rudd,' said Wood.

‘If you have a photograph of your late husband, it would help to clear up this mystery,' said Hardcastle.

‘Just a minute.' Molly Rudd laid her child in the centre of the bed, and crossed to the table. Opening a drawer she took out an unframed studio portrait of a man in khaki service dress, puttees smartly wound, forage cap squarely set, and a swagger cane beneath his left arm. His right hand was resting on a torchère. ‘That's my Wilf,' she said, handing the picture to Hardcastle, ‘taken just before his embarkation in 1914. Three years he was out there afore he got hisself killed, and never a single day's leave, neither.'

Hardcastle handed the photograph to Wood. ‘Is that the man you saw, Wood?'

Wood made a careful study of the photograph before giving it back to the DDI. ‘That's definitely not the man I saw, sir.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Rudd,' said Hardcastle, returning the picture of Wilfred Rudd to his widow. ‘That solves the problem as far as I'm concerned.'

‘And you say you don't know who this man is, what's pretending to be my Wilf, Inspector.'

‘Not at the moment, Mrs Rudd, but you may rest assured, I'll soon find out. We think he might be a deserter.'

‘A
deserter
is he? Well, it's nothing but barefaced cheek if you ask me,' exclaimed Molly Rudd disgustedly. ‘I hope he gets hisself shot at dawn. There's my Wilf laying down his life for King and Country, and some dirty rat runs for it and then pretends to be him.'

‘Don't you worry, Mrs Rudd,' said Wood. ‘As soon as we find him, we'll hand him over to the provost.'

‘I'm sorry to have bothered you with such distressing enquiries, Mrs Rudd,' said Hardcastle, ‘and I'm sorry about your husband,' he added in a murmur, as usual stumbling over expressing words of condolence.

‘What now, sir?' asked Wood, once he and the DDI were in the street again.

‘Now, Wood, we find this here Mr Rudd, or whatever his name is, and we feel his collar.'

On the Thursday morning, Hardcastle decided to waste no more time in dealing with the matter of Wilfred Rudd, or whoever he was. Having cast a cursory glance over the crime book and finding nothing to arouse his immediate interest, he paused only to summon Detective Sergeant Wood. The two officers took a taxi to Waterloo railway station and thence a train to Norbiton.

‘I'll not bother the matron again, Wood,' said Hardcastle, who was still in awe of the great woman, and pushed open the door of the staff entrance at the Kingston Infirmary.

The doorkeeper looked up from his five-day-old copy of the
Sporting Times
, an enquiring look on his face.

‘Can I help you, sir?'

‘Yes, you can tell me where I can find Wilfred Rudd,' said Hardcastle.

‘He ain't here this morning, guv'nor. He's on the night shift, starts at eight o'clock.' The doorkeeper glanced at Wood, and recognition dawned. ‘Here, wasn't you the gent what was asking about him the other day? You said as how you thought you was in the Andrew with him.'

‘That's right,' said Wood.

The doorkeeper chuckled. ‘Brought your father with you today to have a glim at old Wilf just to make sure, have you?'

‘I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, unless you want me to have a word with the matron,' snapped Hardcastle. ‘Bloody cheek of the man,' he muttered as he turned on his heel.

‘Where to now, sir?' asked Wood, barely able to keep a straight face, and impatient to relay to his colleagues the exchange between the doorkeeper and the DDI.

‘We'll pay him a visit at this here place of his he's got in Queen's Road. Any idea how we get there, Wood?'

‘Yes, sir.' Wood had obtained the address from Marriott and looked it up on the street guide, knowing that, at some stage, Hardcastle would want to know. ‘It's only a short stride down this road, sir, across Kingston Hill, and Queen's Road is almost opposite.'

Hardcastle set off at a brisk pace, determined to waste as little time as possible on someone who would probably turn out to be a deserter and nothing more. Nevertheless, he did not lose sight of the fact that Rudd might be Ronald Parker's murderer.

The house where, according to the matron, Rudd had rooms, was a large dwelling.

Quickly ascending the steps, Hardcastle rapped on the front door. Eventually, it was opened by a woman who regarded the two men on the doorstep with undisguised disdain.

‘Whatever it is you're selling, I don't want it. And if you've come here to read me bits out of the Bible, I don't want to hear it. I give up religion after my Tom was killed on the Somme.' And with that short tirade, she made to close the door.

But Hardcastle placed a firm hand on the door and held it ajar. ‘We're police officers, madam,' he said. ‘And I want to see Wilfred Rudd who, I'm told, lives here.'

‘How do I know you're rozzers?' demanded the woman, unimpressed by Hardcastle's announcement. ‘For all I know you might be some of them walk-in burglars what you reads about in the paper.'

The DDI produced his warrant card, and the woman appeared satisfied.

‘I take it you're the landlady,' said Hardcastle.

‘Indeed I am, and this is a respectable house. Up one flight, first door on the right,' said the woman, ‘but he's probably sleeping on account of him working nights across at the infirmary.'

‘That's all right,' said Hardcastle, ‘we'll wake him up.'

When they reached Rudd's room, Hardcastle pushed open the door without bothering to knock, so hard that it crashed against the wall.

‘Here, who the hell are you?' The man in the bed was obviously awake, but had not, so far, risen.

‘Eric Donnelly?' asked Hardcastle, taking a chance on using the name that Colonel Frobisher had suggested might be that of a deserter.

The man acted with lightning speed. Twisting his body, his hand went under his pillow and he produced a revolver.

But Hardcastle did not hesitate. With no concern for his personal safety, he launched himself at the man, flattening him on to the bed and seizing his right wrist. There was a loud explosion as the revolver was discharged, but the bullet missed Hardcastle and flew into the ceiling. After a second or so, a piece of ornamental moulding crashed to the floor.

Wood leaped to the DDI's assistance, grabbing the revolver and wrenching it from the man's hand. He dropped the weapon on the floor, kicking it out of harm's way, and produced a set of handcuffs.