Honourable Intentions (10 page)

Almost in unison, McDaniel and Lacoste shook their heads.

“You never know,” the assistant insisted.

“That’s right,” McDaniel agreed. But his expression didn’t.

The surgeon stepped back. He was a placid, late-middle aged man with smooth white hair. “Do you want to take fingerprints before I start cutting, Inspector?”

“If you please, doctor.” McDaniel waved and the two men from the shadows came forward with their equipment.

The surgeon lit a large cigar, which slightly surprised Ranklin but certainly improved the immediate neighbourhood. “I can’t give you much at this stage, Inspector.” He consulted his notebook. “He was five foot ten tall, and his live weight would be around eleven stone. Ummm, say seventy kilograms,” he converted for Lacoste. “Does that fit your missing witness?”

The two inspectors conferred by look, and McDaniel nodded. “Could well be. I know it’s tricky, but can you suggest any time of death?”

The surgeon shook his head firmly. “After this time and the water, temperature’s no help. I’ll probably end up saying between twelve and twenty-four hours ago.”

McDaniel hadn’t hoped for enough to be disappointed. “Anything yet on cause of death?”

“If he drowned, I
may
be ready to testify to that. That apart, I don’t see any obvious bullet or stab wounds, but there’s thirteen separate cuts on the body, not counting the ones that took off his arm, foot and face. I think they all happened after he was dead, but I may change my mind when I’ve had a look inside. Now, is there anything special you want me to look for?”

“Apart from identification, he’s not my case. But we don’t think he went into the river on his own accord.” A small nod from Lacoste backed this up. “We don’t think he’s the type for suicide.”

Ranklin had to stop himself nodding as well.

The surgeon said: “People often fall into the river drunk.”

McDaniel looked to Lacoste; this time he got a shrug.
Ranklin might have helped here: when he last saw Guillet the man hadn’t been drunk and hadn’t been drinking in that direction. Still, that wasn’t evidence anyway.

“And when a man falls,” the surgeon went on, “he just falls. He often hits something before the water, like the wall or a moored boat. So there might well be broken bones, or a fractured skull, even with a genuine accident.”

“You mean you might not be able to tell even if he’d been hit over the head first?”

“I’ll do my best, but quite possibly not, unless it were well before.”

McDaniel nodded heavily. “Like I say, not my case even if there is a case.”

The surgeon smiled sympathetically. “Can I get back to him now?”

“Please do, sir.” McDaniel went for a word with the fingerprint men, who were packing up their equipment.

He came back looking satisfied. “We should know in a couple of hours. And have a medical preliminary by midnight. No point in hanging around here.”

Lacoste said: “I think we should return to Ma’mselle Collomb now.”

McDaniel turned to Ranklin: “Now you know everything we do, sir. I’m sure your people can get any of our reports through Special Branch at the Yard. So if there’s nothing more we can do for you . . .”

“No, no. Thank you.” But Ranklin’s mind was churning. They had picked up Berenice Collomb, then. Perhaps the hotel had recalled her coming round the night before the trial opened – had she been fool enough to try the next night, too? In fact, had she succeeded in getting to Guillet and . . .

He took a last glance at the cold, mostly shadowed room with its little group bending to their jobs in the one pool of light. And I’m here for the honour of the King, he reminded himself. Then he followed McDaniel and Lacoste out.

*           *           *

It was quiet both outside and inside Whitehall Court. This part of London was mostly government offices by now, closed since five o’clock, and nobody could afford a flat in this building until they were past the age of noisy parties. The outer door to the Bureau’s offices was locked but that was usual enough. Ranklin let himself in and walked through the dark, deserted outer office to the agents’ room. That was dark too, but the door to the Commander’s office was open and spilling a little light.

“Ranklin?”

“Sir.” He called the Commander “sir” the first time they met each day, but otherwise only when he was tired and instincts for rank took over. There was a solitary green-glass-shaded lamp alight on the Commander’s writing-table; Ranklin flopped into the most comfortable chair and fumbled for his pipe.

“Was it the meat porter?” the Commander asked.

“Probably. But badly cut up by barges and tugs and things.”

“Was he pushed?”

“Again probably, but they may never find evidence.” They spoke softly and without hurry.

“Hm. It would be nice if it were a proper murder. It would be a
fact
and excuse all sorts of interest. Unless, of course, you did it yourself.”

“Bloody hell.”

“It would be quite understandable. The chap wouldn’t talk, you lost your temper, one shove—”

“The river’s half a mile away from—”

“The Bureau will have to stand by you – in spirit, anyway. I can easily find a couple of chaps to say you were dining with them at a club at the time. Absolutely honest, unimpeachable men, convince any court in the land. You haven’t got a thing to worry about.”

“The man was younger, heavier . . . a meat porter, for God’s sake.”

“Ah, but you’re cleverer. Well, remember you’ve got witnesses if you need them.”

Ranklin glowered. “And the police have got the Collomb girl for questioning about it.”

“Have they?” The Commander thought about this. “You don’t find that embarrassing? Good man. What will she tell them?”

“At a guess, nothing. Police are just the sheepdogs of capitalism to her.” He had a feeling he’d improved that phrase somehow. “And she doesn’t speak any English; that should help.”

“Could she get round to her lover’s alleged parentage?”

Ranklin shrugged. How could he know?

The Commander was fretting. “But if you didn’t do it, could she have done?”

Ranklin rested his head back and closed his eyes. “Same objections as for me. She’s just a slip of a girl. Tough as nails, I’m sure, but no match for Guillet. And the river’s just as far for her as for me – if she knew where it is.”

The Commander would be glaring at him, but he couldn’t be bothered to open his eyes and confirm this.

But there was a glare in the Commander’s voice. “But
you
know where it is.”

“Yes. Too bloody far.”

The Commander switched back to Berenice. “I suppose there’s no reason for her to mention the other thing.”

“I don’t see why the police should ask her. From their point of view the story’s complete without it. She loves Langhorn, Guillet was bearing witness against him, she killed Guillet. Simplicity begets convictions. You should hear O’Gilroy on the subject.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure . . . I just hate doing nothing.”

That made Ranklin, who felt he had actually done a day’s work, open his eyes. “D’you really want to save her from the jaws of the capitalist sheepdogs?”

“Can you do it?”

“I can try, if I can involve an outsider.”

“Involve anybody except us.”

“Are any of your telephones switched on?”

The Commander had four on his table; the agents had one between them all. “This one’s still alive.”

Ranklin called Corinna’s number. She took a long time to answer and then said a sleepy: “Hello?”

“Is that the beautiful Corinna Finn?” Ranklin asked.

“God Almighty, you.”

“Me. How’s your fund?”

“Jesus . . . Not a word for days, then you ring up in the middle of the night to ask How’s my fund. D’you mean of goodwill? At zero and falling, is what.”

“Sorry, I’ve been busy and it’s all your fault really. I mean the fund for hauling destitute Americans out of trouble. Does it apply to their girl-friends too?”

“What?
What
girl-friend?”

“A French lass called Berenice Collomb. She’s a bit of a guttersnipe, but Grover Langhorn loves her. At least she does him. And the police are questioning her about a missing witness who was hauled out of the Thames this afternoon, very deceased.”

There was a long silence. “This witness . . . was he testifying against young Grover?”

“That’s right. Not very well, I’d say, but Noah Quinton should tell it better.”

“Quinton? Who said anything about Quinton?”

“Sorry.”

Another long silence. Then she said “All right. Get off the damn line so I can call him—Oh, where’ve they got her?”

“Scotland Yard, or the little police station next to it, probably. I’ll call you tomorrow. And thanks.” Ranklin hooked the earpiece on again. “That’s the best I can do.”

The Commander, who had been unashamedly eavesdropping, grinned with satisfaction. “I don’t think we could have done better. You can sleep with a clear conscience, even if you did kill that porter.”

Ranklin ignored that but, as he turned to go, hesitated. And after a time, he said: “Just suppose, by the grace of God, that we
bring all this off. Suppose we stuff the skeletons back into the cupboards; that’s going to leave us knowing what skeletons and which cupboards.”

“You know, that thought never occurred to me,” the Commander said, looking as if that were true.

7

Ranklin was waiting in Noah Quinton’s outer office when the solicitor bustled in at a quarter past nine the next morning. He stopped abruptly when he saw Ranklin, then said: “Yes, you’d better come in,” and bustled on through.

As Ranklin had half expected, Quinton’s office was not just grand, but self-consciously so. There was nothing in it that a long-established and successful solicitor might not have in the way of antique desk, Turkish carpet, silver ashtrays and client chairs covered in dark green plush, but they should have been stained and worn, as if the owner didn’t think or care about them. Quinton obviously cared, and you didn’t want to be the first to spill coffee or drop cigar-ash.

“I suppose,” Quinton said, unpacking papers from a briefcase on to his desk, “that I have you to thank for a new client. I’m getting a little too old to be hauled from my bed in the early hours, but the Mrs Finn connection is . . . welcome, shall we say?”

Ranklin, sitting uneasily in an easy chair, just smiled.

“I suppose you want to know what happened.” Quinton sat down and automatically shifted his chair by fractions of an inch to just how he liked it. “Well, it’s not privileged . . . The police haven’t charged Ma’mselle Collomb with anything, they’d only detained her but were clearly going to hang on to her for as long as they could. I got her released on bail, put up by Mrs Finn, who’s now looking after her.”

Ranklin frowned; he hadn’t expected that, and Corinna wouldn’t have, either. He was going to hear more about it. Considerably more.

“The police objected to Ma’mselle Collomb going back to her Bloomsbury address. They made it out to be a
community
–” a very suspect word, that, “– of intellectual depravity. My own brief impression of Ma’mselle Collomb is that she could teach any Bloomsbury intellectual more about depravity than he could stomach – but that’s neither here nor there. So she’s now officially in the care of Mrs Finn.”

“Did Ma’mselle Collomb say anything interesting?” Ranklin asked casually. “Or tell the police anything?”

Quinton looked at him warily, but Ranklin was all boyish innocence. So Quinton said: “I wouldn’t say so . . . The police didn’t even seem certain that Guillet’s death was murder.”

“They can’t be,” Ranklin said. “Death was due to a mixture of asphyxia and shock. Not enough water in the lungs and stomach for drowning. There had been a heavy blow to the head, above the right ear, some time before death, but it’ll take more time to work out if it was long enough to suggest he’d been deliberately whacked. It might have been him hitting a moored boat or river steps – they don’t even know where he went into the water. He hadn’t got enough alcohol in him to have been drunk.”

After a time, Quinton said: “I suppose I hadn’t better ask you where you got such remarkably exact information.”

“Take it as some small recompense for having to get up so early.” And for what was to come.

Quinton nodded, quickly, birdlike. “So it may be that the police can persuade the coroner to write it off as an accident if they can’t induce anyone to confess to it. Or does your behind-the-scenes knowledge give you a different opinion?”

“We have professionally suspicious minds,” Ranklin said, “so naturally we incline to murder. But I suppose accidents do happen, even to important witnesses in the middle of a case. And concerning that, what’s going to happen now Guillet’s dead?”

Mention of the case made Quinton look at his watch; there was a clock on the wall, but it looked too expensively antique
to be trusted. “That’s up to the magistrate. The French will fight tooth and nail to keep Langhorn in custody until they can come up with something, and I shall fight just as hard to have the matter wound up. Knowing this magistrate, I think he’ll adjourn until Monday now, and hope for divine guidance over the sabbath.

“But remember, even if Langhorn’s freed, he won’t have been declared innocent. Extradition isn’t about guilt or innocence, so there’s no double jeopardy involved. The French could ask for him to be re-arrested on new evidence – if they can find it.”

“And if they can find him,” Ranklin mused. “I’d think he’d be off home to America like a shot from a gun.”

Quinton nodded. “And America won’t extradite one of its own citizens.”

But did the Bureau want young Grover – and presumably his mother – landing in America stony-broke and looking to raise cash from the American scandal sheets? Incautiously, he said: “I’m not sure we’d like that, either.”

“I’m sorry if that displeases you,” Quinton said, dryly sarcastic. “Does that mean that you’ve been investigating further, and found there was something to investigate?”

But it had to come to this anyway, and this was one of the reasons Ranklin had come, though it still wasn’t going to be easy. “I was down in Portsmouth yesterday looking for traces of Mrs Langhorn, the boy’s mother. There was a Portsmouth address on the marriage certificate. I had to have some sort of excuse so I, er, said I was working for you.”