Hardcastle's Frustration (16 page)

Donnelly sank down on to the bench and put his head in his hands.

‘Thank you, Sergeant Mooney.' Hardcastle turned to the station officer. ‘You can lock Donnelly up again until I decide what to do with him, Skipper,' he said.

‘My adjutant told me that Colonel Frobisher said that you'd be charging Donnelly with attempting to murder you, sir,' said Mooney, as they returned to Hardcastle's office.

‘I don't really think he intended to kill me, Sergeant Mooney,' said Hardcastle airily. ‘As I told my Sergeant Wood only yesterday, the best he'd get for that is ten years in the nick.' He forbore from mentioning that Donnelly was still a suspect for Ronald Parker's murder. ‘It's a much better and cheaper solution if the army shoots him.' He paused. ‘D'you think they will?'

‘Without a doubt, sir. Leaving his dead comrade on the field of battle and then slinging his hook is despicable, sir, and that's a fact. Field Marshal Sir Douglas ‘Aig won't find no problem in confirming a sentence of death. Not that it'll be down to him, I s'pose,' he added thoughtfully, ‘because they'll likely court martial Donnelly here in the Smoke. Don't matter, though; either way they'll top the bastard.'

‘What now, sir?' asked Marriott, once Sergeant Mooney had left the police station to return to Dorchester.

‘We wait until we hear from Mr Franklin about the tests he's doing on the revolver we seized from Donnelly when Wood and me nicked him, Marriott.' Hardcastle thought about that for a moment or two. ‘Go across to the Yard, Marriott, and see if Mr Franklin can tell us anything now.'

But fifteen minutes later, Marriott returned with disappointing news.

‘Inspector Franklin said that the weapon you seized from Donnelly, sir, is definitely not the revolver that was used to murder Parker.'

‘Sod it!' exclaimed Hardcastle. ‘What did Mr Franklin say about the revolver?'

‘It's a service issue, sir. He could tell because it's got the broad arrow on it. As you suggested, Mr Franklin thought that Donnelly probably picked it up on the battlefield when he ran. I wonder when he got back here from France.'

‘No doubt the army will be interested to find out
how
he got back here, Marriott, but I'm damned if I am.' And with that, Hardcastle immediately lost interest in Donnelly. ‘Get on to Colonel Frobisher and tell him he can have the prisoner and the sooner the better. You'd better arrange for the revolver to be returned to him, as well.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And now, Marriott, we're back to the beginning with this damned murder. It's too bloody frustrating for words, that's what it is.'

Saturday morning found Hardcastle ill-tempered and dissatisfied. He had convinced himself that Eric Donnelly, alias Wilfred Rudd, was responsible for Ronald Parker's murder. But now it appeared that he had done nothing more than pick up with Mavis Parker at a time when she was vulnerable and she and her late husband had been experiencing some difficulty in their marriage. And he wondered whether the death of the Parkers' child from diphtheria had had something to do with her straying from the straight and narrow of acceptable married life. On the other hand, working in the paint shop of Sopwith Aviation had perhaps introduced her to new friends and, to her, an exciting and liberated new world.

‘It's high time we had another word with Mavis Parker, Marriott,' said Hardcastle, taking out his watch and peering at it.

‘But she's working today, sir, and doesn't finish until six o'clock. What's more, she might be going out, seeing that it's a Saturday.'

‘I dare say, Marriott, but she'll go home first to change into her glad rags. I don't know of any woman who'll go out for the evening in the clothes she's been to work in.'

‘D'you want to see her today, sir?'

‘Certainly, Marriott. We've wasted enough time already on this enquiry.'

‘Very good, sir.' Marriott had promised to take his wife Lorna out for a meal. She had arranged for Meg Lewington, the sergeant's wife who lived next door to their Regency Street quarters, to look after the Marriotts' two children James and Doreen. It looked as though Lorna would be disappointed yet again, but that, regrettably, was the lot of a policeman's wife.

‘In the meantime, Marriott, what've you found out about the owner of the Hispano-Suiza that Daisy Benson couldn't wait to jump into after Parker's funeral?'

‘A check with the licensing people shows the owner of the vehicle to be a man called Vincent Powers, sir. I've set Wilmot to finding out what he can.' Fred Wilmot was one of the older detective constables at Cannon Row, and could be relied on to carry out an enquiry that was both discreet and thorough.

‘We'll have wait and see what he turns up, I suppose.'

Fred Wilmot was very good at finding out things. For the task that Marriott had set him, he had attired himself in an outfit that was well worn, but hinted at the gentility of a man who had fallen on hard times.

Early on the Saturday morning, he approached the house called The Beeches on Kingston Hill with the intention of carrying out a preliminary survey, but luck was with him. A young maid was outside the gates polishing the brass nameplate of the house.

‘Good morning, miss,' said Wilmot, touching his worn cap, and approaching the girl with a feigned limp.

‘Hello,' said the girl, pausing in her work. ‘I've not seen you around here before.'

‘I suppose the gent who lives here isn't in need of a good handyman, is he?' Wilmot was an accomplished carpenter, a trade he had followed prior to joining the police. ‘I've been given me ticket from the navy after getting me leg busted up at Jutland, and I haven't been able to find much in the way of work.'

‘I don't think there's any vacancies for that sort of post,' said the girl, casting a nervous glance at the house. ‘But you wouldn't want to work here anyway.'

‘Why's that? Isn't the mistress good to the staff, then?'

‘There ain't no mistress, leastways not permanent. There's just the master and he ain't good to us. He's got a very nasty temper and I'm thinking of packing it in, even though jobs in service is hard to come by, especially without a character. And Powers wouldn't give me one.'

‘Is that his name?' asked Wilmot innocently.

‘Yes, Mr Vincent Powers, that's who he is.'

‘What have you done to upset him, then?'

The girl moved a little closer. ‘He's too free with his hands, is that one,' she said, emphasizing her point by holding up her hands with the fingers spread. ‘I'll tell you this straight, mister, two or three times he's tried to get me into his bed. That's when he ain't entertaining some tart what he's brung in and who we're supposed to call “madam”. Well, what with him being in the theatre an' all, I s'pose he's got the pick of the chorus, as you might say.' She lowered her voice. ‘It's happening all the time and only this morning one of his fancy women left the house in a taxi. Seven o'clock it was, and she'd been here all night. It ain't decent.'

‘The master's an actor, then, is he?'

‘So he says. He reckons he's in that show at the Alhambra in Leicester Square at the moment.
The Bing Boys on Broadway
it's called. I'd love to see it, but getting a free ticket out of him is like getting blood out of a stone.'

At midday, Wilmot arrived in the DDI's office.

‘It's about Vincent Powers, sir.'

‘What have you found out about him, Wilmot?'

‘He's an actor, sir.'

‘How did you know that? Wearing a dickey without a shirt, was he? That's how you can usually tell an actor.'

‘Not quite, sir.' Wilmot laughed and went on to recount the conversation he had had with the maid at The Beeches, and related the story of the woman who had left in a taxi that morning.

‘Any idea who this woman was, Wilmot.'

‘No, sir. I asked the girl what she looked like, but the description wasn't any help. It'd fit any one of a dozen ragtime girls.'

‘It could've been Daisy Benson, I suppose,' said Hardcastle thoughtfully. ‘Although from what you said, it could've been anyone. All right, Wilmot, you can leave it there. Sergeant Marriott and I will look into it when we have time.'

‘T
here she is, Marriott.' Hardcastle had stationed himself near the greengrocer's shop opposite the factory gates at a quarter to six that same evening. Mrs Parker had emerged at just after six o'clock and turned towards her house in Canbury Park Road. The two detectives followed at a discreet distance.

Once Mavis Parker had entered her house, Hardcastle and Marriott waited a few yards down the road. At twenty past six, the two of them marched up the path and the DDI hammered on Mrs Parker's door.

‘Yes?' At first, the woman failed to recognize the two CID officers, but then she said, ‘Oh, it's you, Inspector. I was just going out.'

‘I won't hold you up for long, Mrs Parker, but there are a few questions that I need to ask you.'

‘You'd better come in, then,' said Mavis, and somewhat reluctantly showed them into the parlour.

‘I've made enquiries at the Ministry of National Service, Mrs Parker,' said Hardcastle, immediately getting to the nub of the matter, ‘and they told me that a letter was sent to your late husband on Monday the eighteenth of February this year. That letter informed Mr Parker that he'd been exempted from military service due to ill health.'

Mavis Parker looked extremely guilty at this announcement, but endeavoured to cover it up. ‘Oh, um, well, I don't know anything about that.'

‘Are you sure that Mr Parker didn't mention anything about having received such a letter?' asked Marriott.

‘If he did get it, he didn't say anything to me about it.' Mavis Parker seemed flustered by the question.

‘Do you know where your husband kept his correspondence, letters, bills and that sort of thing?' queried Hardcastle, who was finding it hard to believe that Parker would not have told his wife about such a letter.
Unless, for some reason, he had not seen it.

Mavis Parker did not immediately answer the question and covered her confusion by asking one of her own. ‘Why are you so interested in this letter, Inspector?'

‘Very simply, Mrs Parker,' said Hardcastle, ‘because someone murdered your husband, and I intend to find out who that person was. The ministry assured me that the letter was sent, but you told me that your husband was attempting to get to Holland in order to avoid military service. That, to my way of thinking, seems to imply that he didn't see this here letter, and I want to know why.'

‘He sometimes put letters and bills in the drawer of the kitchen table,' said Mavis. ‘I'll go and have a look. Not that I think he ever got it, because I'm sure he would've told me if he had.'

‘Go with Mrs Parker, Marriott,' said Hardcastle, ‘in case she needs some help. She might not know what a letter from the Ministry looks like. And he might've put it anywhere. I've known of people hiding things in the strangest of places.'

Marriott had worked with Hardcastle for long enough to understand that the DDI wanted him to take his time, and to delay Mrs Parker's return for as long as possible.

Once Marriott and Mrs Parker had left the room, Hardcastle began a quick search of the parlour. Being an experienced detective, he did not look in the most obvious places first. He examined the back of the pictures, the underside of the two occasional tables in the room, and finally lifted the top lid of the upright piano.

There, tucked in between a couple of the strings, he found an envelope marked ‘On His Majesty's Service'. Carefully removing it with the tips of his fingers, he saw that it was addressed to Mr Ronald Parker and had already been opened. Inside the envelope was a letter which he imagined to be the original of the carbon copy he had been shown by Mr Makepeace, the official at the Ministry of National Service. But he did not remove the letter from the envelope, aware that it might bear the fingerprints of whoever had opened it. And that, according to Parker's widow, was unlikely to have been Parker himself. But it might well have been his killer.

By the time that Mavis Parker and Marriott returned to the room, Hardcastle was, once again, seated on the sofa.

‘No luck, I'm afraid . . .' began Mavis, but then paused as she saw the envelope that the DDI was holding between finger and thumb. ‘Oh, have you found it?'

‘Yes, I've found it, Mrs Parker.'

‘Where was it?'

‘Curiously enough, it was in the top of the piano.'

‘Whatever made you think of looking there, Inspector?' said Mavis, avoiding the DDI's gaze.

‘My old father always used to put things in the top of the piano,' said Hardcastle, ‘particularly when he didn't want anyone else to find them. But we all knew that that's where he hid them, because when we played chopsticks on it, it sounded strange. He never found out that we knew though.'

‘How funny,' said Mavis. ‘I'd never have thought of looking there.' But her attempt at innocence was belied by the flush rising steadily from her neck. She held out her hand. ‘May I have it?'

‘I'm afraid not, Mrs Parker. You see it could be valuable evidence in the matter of your husband's murder.' Hardcastle put the letter in his inside jacket pocket. ‘I'll let you have it back in due course.'

‘What sort of evidence?' Mavis Parker was obviously loath to let the letter out of her possession.

‘I don't know. I'm only a simple policeman, Mrs Parker,' said Hardcastle blithely, ‘but our scientists like to have a look at these things. You'd be surprised what they can find out these days.' In fact, it was his intention to hand the letter to Inspector Collins in the hope that there might be some useful fingerprints on it.