A Backwards Jump Read online

  Ada Lee stayed with her mother during the police “occupation”, and had no visitors. She still seemed to be grieving, but her baby flourished.

  The coroner’s inquest verdicts were what the Press and the police expected: that Mark Matthew Lee had been murdered by some person or persons unknown, but there was insufficient evidence to say by whom, and that Ratsy Roden had died from natural causes.

  There were the cases of cruelty, the suicides, the wife murders, the wife beaters, the Teddy Boy outrages, the cruelty to animal cases, the small felonies like shop-lifting and bag-snatching and pocket-picking – everything was exactly the same; it was a rubber stamp of a week.

  “No one would ever think it of you, George,” Kate Gideon said on the Sunday evening, “but you take it too much to heart. You can’t work miracles.”

  “Don’t want to work miracles,” Gideon said, pulling at his pipe. The television play was a dead loss. “I’d just like to find that Crow child, I want the Smallwood woman, and I want to find out the truth about the Lee business, and whether kids are still being trained for the pickpocket jobs. As a matter of fact I’m more worried about the Smallwood woman than anything else at the moment. Do you know how many men we know she’s worked for, now?”

  “How many?”

  “Twelve, over an eight-year period,” Gideon said. “Now tell me I ought to read a nice book.”

  Kate said practically: “Well, sitting there brooding won’t help, and it’s possible that they’ll have found her by the morning.”

  “Martha,” said the old man.

  “What is it, dear?”

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Of course I feel all right.”

  “I don’t think that fish we had for supper was as fresh as it could have been.”

  “Nonsense,” Martha said, “it was as fresh as a daisy.”

  Quick Joe Mann’s daughter had three women working in her back room that day, and Quick Joe became an even better tutor. He always finished with the same piece of advice: “The younger your kids are the better they become, and the younger they are the more sentimental people feel towards them. In my experience, if you start training’ them at six or seven, by the time they’re eight or so, they never make a mistake, and never get caught. Now, there’s one other thing. You aren’t to take any stuff to Petticoat Lane until I tell you, hold on as long as you can, and if you’re really hard up, I’ll buy some goods off you.”

  12

  THE THIRD MONDAY

  Depression seldom lasted with Gideon for long. At ten o’clock, Pru the violinist and Penelope came in together, flushed and excited over a concert they’d been to with their boyfriends, attractive and eager, both of them favouring Kate more than Gideon. It was one of the evenings when he realised that his elder daughters were young, marriageable women, and Penelope, who looked more like him, would be soon. Matthew, all set for his first year at a University, and determined, he insisted, to join the Metropolitan Police when he’d finished with all this nonsense of education, came in just afterwards, after seeing a film. He had a gift for mimicry, especially of Americans, and soon began to act the fool. Gideon found himself laughing almost against his will; and then found the arms of contentment closing about him.

  He needn’t keep his job at home with him all the time.

  He woke early on that third Monday in the month, with a sense of keen anticipation, for fourteen of the East End cases were coming up, and the case against each crook was ready; there was no doubt that each of the accused would be committed for trial, the evidence made sure that none could hope for acquittal. There was a kind of exhilaration in getting so many charges together, and if no more good came out of the death of Frisky Lee, this was good cause for satisfaction.

  The magistrate almost used a rubber stamp.

  The crowd outside the court was the largest Gideon could remember, and among the people present was Gabriel Lyon. Gideon was getting into his car, with a battery of cameras trained on him, when a sleek young man came up, and said: “Excuse me, sir, Mr. Lyon says if you could spare him half an hour later in the day, he would be grateful.”

  “Where?”

  “Would Mrs. Lee’s house be convenient, sir?”

  “Three to three-thirty,” Gideon said.

  “That will be all right, sir, any time.”

  Gideon drove straight back to the Yard, made a note of the appointment, and checked the messages on his desk. Only one managed to switch his thoughts from Lyon and the Lee business:

  P.C. William Smith, 27532, telephoned and will telephone again at 12.45.

  It was then 12.30. Smith and the peaky, pale-faced and frightened lad who was almost certainly being taught to pick pockets. Nothing else that really interested Gideon came in, until a telephone rang, and he lifted the receiver almost without thinking, and said: “Gideon.”

  “George.” This was the rather nasal voice of a Divisional man in FI Division, on the south-eastern fringe; there was only one voice like it in London.

  “Hallo, Fred?”

  “Got some bad news for you.”

  “You being transferred to the Yard?”

  “I’m serious,” the Superintendent said, “you being you, this is bad. We’ve found Sheila Crow and her father.”

  Number 41, Crystal Street, London, N.E., was like thousands of other houses in the vicinity. They had been built between the wars, and the builder had thrown them all up, much as one would rabbit hutches, and many had been the complaints of jerry-building. After thirty to forty years, and after some of the severest bombing of the Second World War, all except those houses which had received a direct hit were still standing firm. A few walls were slightly cracked, and some plaster was cracking, but the gardens were mostly gay.

  The one thing which made Number 41 stand out was its garden, which was ill-kept. The lawn hadn’t been cut for over a month, bushes were overgrown, early spring flowers were leggy. The windows needed cleaning, too, and no one quite understood why there wasn’t a for sale or to let notice showing in the front garden. The owner did not live in the district, and that perhaps explained it. All kinds of rumours were spread, including the “fact” that the owner was going to live in it himself, or that his “daughter” was going to get married and come and live there. The nearer neighbours, who felt that the unkempt garden was a reflection on their own efforts, were annoyed by all this, but small children found that the garden was a useful place for cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and hiding from their parents.

  A woman from four doors away could not find her six-year-old son, and she called and then went to look for him and, as a consequence, was the first adult to pass the back door of Number 41 for two weeks. The curtains were drawn. She also noticed that there was a kind of packing at the windows which looked a little odd, and there was one thing which really vexed her. One of the windows was broken, obviously with a stone or a cricket ball. She saw her son and two other children pretending to hide behind bushes at the end of the garden, and called crossly:

  “Keith, come here!” Keith started at once. “Did you do this?” She watched him hang his head, and blessed the fact that he would not lie. Her heart warmed so much that it was difficult to keep the stern note in her voice. “Keith, why do you throw stones near houses? I’m always telling you, and what your father will say I just don’t know.”

  Keith came on more boldly, and the other children appeared, apparently quite carefree.

  She scolded them.

  It was while she did so that she smelt the gas.

  She had noticed a peculiar smell before, but hadn’t really identified it; now suddenly she realised that it was gas. All at once, the packing at the window made sense. Cautiously she went nearer to the window, and the smell of gas became much stronger. She pushed the curtain aside gingerly, and a moment later saw the man and the girl c
hild lying on the floor.

  Then she knew why the smell had been peculiar.

  “Come on, all of you,” she said to the children, and tried not to give way until she was in the street, safely away from horror. “Keith, the front door is open, go straight in and get washed in time for”—she almost choked—”supper. Tommy, you and Kathy must go home at once, your mother will be so worried. I’m just going to have a word with Mrs. McKeon.”

  Mrs. McKeon’s house had a telephone.

  The police were at Number 41 within ten minutes, quickly followed by the ambulance and a police surgeon.

  “. . . yes, it’s Crow, all right,” said the FI Divisional Superintendent. “He and the kid have been there ever since they disappeared, our medic, says that they’ve been dead at least fourteen days. Crow owned the house, apparently, but told no one. He went there and put the child to sleep and then pushed her head in the gas oven, and laid down beside her. They’d had a meal, some milk and some chocolate, I don’t expect the kid knew anything about it. Hell of a thing, gas ought to be turned off in all empty houses, can’t understand why it wasn’t in this one.”

  Gideon said: “All right, thanks.”

  “Job out at Hammersmith,” Lemaitre said, a few minutes afterwards. “Treasurer of a thrift club tried to drown himself, one of our chaps pulled him out of the river. He’d pinched fifty quid. Who’d kill hisself for fifty quid?”

  “Hmm.”

  “George.”

  “Yes?”

  “Think I could take a day off tomorrow?”

  Gideon looked up. “Why not, Lem? Take a couple, if you want ‘em.”

  “One’s enough.” Lemaitre almost smirked, and Gideon half wondered why, but he couldn’t get Mrs. Crow’s face out of his mind’s eye. Then Dick Sparrow telephoned, taking him from one form of failure to another; a worried and reluctant Sparrow, who said: “All right for five minutes, George?”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’ve gone over the evidence in the Dennis case with a fine-toothed comb, half a dozen times,” Sparrow said. “I still think Dennis knows something, but I don’t see how we can make a case. There’s just that footprint or two, the scraped shoes, and the fact that Dennis inherits – not that that’s surprising. I think we’ll have to drop it, George. But will you have a look at the papers, if I send ‘em over, and let me know if you think there’s anything we might follow up?”

  “Yes, Dick, right away.”

  “Thanks. Anything up?”

  “Found that Crow girl and her father, he seems to have killed her and committed suicide,” Gideon said.

  There was a pause.

  “What goes on in a man’s mind to do it, that’s what I can’t understand,” Sparrow said. “Why, my kids—” He broke off. “Okay, George. ‘Bye.”

  “’Bye.”

  Gideon rang off. One thing that Sparrow had said made him ponder: it wasn’t surprising that Dennis inherited his young wife’s fortune, because she had died intestate. She hadn’t willed it to him. The clever ones didn’t plan to benefit through wills, it often looked too obvious. The clever ones tried to get their hands on the money first, and the accident or mysterious death happened afterwards. God knew how many times a thing like the Dennis affair passed unsuspected.

  “There it is,” said Marion Carne, her face so happy and her eyes so bright. “The Carne Agency – Everything for Motor Cars. And there’s our joint account, darling, and the estate agent says he’s sure we can have those showrooms and offices if we want them. I know the rent is a bit high, but you’ve always said yourself that it’s no use spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. I like them very much.”

  “Yes, they’re the right premises,” Robert Carne agreed. “All right, darling, we’ll go and see them about it in the morning.”

  “Lovely!” Marion said eagerly. “Now I must go and get my hair done, it won’t do if I start looking a wreck, will it?”

  Carne laughed, kissed her, and went to the door with her.

  He returned to the small room in the hotel where they were staying, drew up an armchair, lit a cigarette, and frowned at his reflection in the dressing-table mirror. He began to think aloud, in a very low-pitched voice.

  “I can take that twelve thousand and clear off with it, and the worst she could do is to kick up a fuss – it’s mine now, as well as hers. Or I can hold on for a bit, and fix her, and have the lot. Thirty thousand quid isn’t to be sneezed at. The trouble is, how to do it and get away with it? There must be a way;”

  Gideon said: “Gideon here,” as he lifted the telephone, and remembered almost at once that P.C. William Smith had summoned up enough courage to telephone him. Smith obviously believed that he knew something of importance, or he wouldn’t have dared to call the Commander. Gideon knew exactly what attitude to adopt: not over-friendly, or it might encourage the man too much and make him big-headed; not stand-offish, or it might make Smith freeze up.

  “That you, Smith?”

  “Yes—yes, sir,” Smith said, and undoubtedly he was very much on edge. “Hope it’s all right to call you, sir, but I didn’t quite know what else to do.”

  “What’s on your mind?” Gideon asked.

  “It’s that boy, sir – you remember.”

  “Yes, of course. Found him?”

  “Well, I haven’t found him, sir, but one of the plainclothes chaps – a friend of mine, as a matter of fact – found out his name. Wray. He was following the mother, and someone used the name, sir. That was in Petticoat Lane, yesterday morning.”

  So the boy had been there two Sundays running.

  “Is that all?” Gideon tried not to sound as if it was hardly worth the fuss.

  “Well, no, sir, as a matter of fact—” Smith hesitated at the crux of his story, probably because he was afraid that it wasn’t much of a climax. “Apparently the woman who talked to the boy’s mother is a well-known pickpocket, sir, and—”

  Ah.

  “Yes?” Gideon uttered the single word in such a way that it gave Smith all the encouragement he could want, and he spoke much more freely.

  “She’s known to train children in the game, sir, she’s been inside twice for that. Of course it may mean nothing, but I’m not sure what I should do next. It’s not on my beat, but over at Aldgate, and the woman hasn’t been in the park for a couple of weeks.”

  “I see,” said Gideon, “and you’ve been checking in your own time and don’t want to poach. That it?”

  “Exactly, sir!” The answer came more brightly.

  “Put in a report to your own plainclothes branch,” said Gideon. “Give them full details, tell them that I first asked you to keep your eyes open. I’ll fix it with Mr. Hemmingway of NE, and he won’t mind whether you’ve been poaching or not. Right, Smith.”

  “Thank you very much, sir!”

  “S’all right,” said Gideon, and rang off. He made a note to talk to both Smith’s Divisional Chief, at AB, and Hemmingway, to get things moving. With luck, the Wray woman would be known. There was a spark of hope that she might lead them to the main training source.

  The telephone bell rang.

  “Gideon.”

  “Mr. Warr is on the line, sir, from Brighton.”

  “Put him through . . .” There was a brief pause. “Hallo, Syd, had any luck yet?”

  “If you mean, have we found Martha, no,” said Warr, but he did not sound as glum as that seemed to warrant. “What we have found is her bank, and the name she goes by there. She paid in three hundred and seventy-five pounds under that name the day after Henderson’s death, and the bank still has some of the notes, they were put aside in a reserve stock. They’re quite positively part of Henderson’s money. And what’s more—”

  “Yes?” Warr obviously wanted prompting.

  “She transferred her acco
unt to Brighton from Hastings, two years ago,” said Warr, “so I’m asking the Hastings people to step up the pace a bit.”

  “Fine,” said Gideon. “Keep after ‘em.”

  But Hastings was a long way from Bognor.

  Old Percy Whitehead, in his Bognor cottage, had recovered from his indisposition after eating the fish, and had almost forgotten the incident. But he was a little puzzled. It was true that he wasn’t overfond of the news, but he had little to do but take notice and think, and could hardly fail to notice that Martha always switched off the radio just before the news, or before the headlines were finished.

  He was not consciously suspicious; not consciously uneasy. He just wondered why.

  He wondered about another thing, too.

  A lot of people were fooled into believing that because he was so nearly blind, he did not notice things. He probably noticed much more than people with good sight, because anything in an unfamiliar place was a puzzle and sometimes an inconvenience; it could even be a danger. Now he knew that most of the things in his bedroom had been moved; even the corners of the carpet had been turned up. Of course, Martha might have been cleaning the bungalow without telling him, but usually she was full of talk, explaining what she was planning to do and what she had just finished, and how badly the bungalow had been kept.

  She was nice and cheerful and friendly, but she was a human being, and Percy Whitehead knew a great deal about the frailty of human nature where money was concerned. He wondered if she was looking for anything, and whether at any time he could have been fool enough even to hint to her that he had nearly a thousand pounds in cash hidden in the bungalow.

  13

  HONEST MAN?

  Gideon, being far too big a man to pass unnoticed anywhere, made no attempt to hide the fact that he was going to Medd Alley that afternoon. As it happened, the Press and the local police were surfeited with the morning’s East End Court news, the official watch had now been withdrawn from Medd Alley, and no one took much notice when his car turned into the lane, and he got out and stepped quickly to the door of the middle of the three which had been recently painted. This was a collector’s museum of a house, with its tastefulness and its smell of death and the three-month-old child and the beautiful woman who lived here.