Inspector West Takes Charge Read online

  Janet, peering over their shoulders and hugging the figurine, said: ‘I should think they wanted to find something.’

  ‘I can’t stand that humour just now,’ Lessing protested. ‘It will take a week to put this room straight. And look at the manuscript!’ Pages were all over the place, but none were torn. ‘The vandals, they’ve trodden on some.’ He bent down to pick up some sheets of paper covered with closely-written matter, while Roger looked about the room, examining the drawers of the desk closely.

  He straightened up.

  ‘Two locks forced by a man who knows his job,’ he said. ‘This wasn’t a burglary by chance, they were after something specific. I wonder who’s out and could do this job,’ he added, as he looked down at the desk. ‘I saw Charlie Clay last week. Abie Fenton but we won’t get anywhere that way.’ He watched as Divisional men came in to check for fingerprints and other clues. Large men moved about the study soft-footed and gentle.

  ‘Better leave them to it,’ Roger thought, and went with Mark and Janet into the living room, where the police had finished.

  ‘Might as well have a drink,’ Mark said. ‘Give that fire a poke, Jan.’ The fire was a dull reddish glow, but sparks flew when Janet thrust with the poker.

  ‘Nothing for me,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t take too much whisky or your head will ache even more,’ Roger said.

  ‘Your head’s all right, I presume,’ Mark said sarcastically. He poured out. ‘What brought you?’

  ‘A cat’

  ‘Kitten,’ corrected Janet ‘And a tom-cat who came home late.’

  ‘What?’

  Janet explained.

  ‘What brought the burglars is more to the point,’ Roger said. ‘One was seen to go, after clouting a local copper who had his suspicions about a car parked outside. There were two, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they say what they wanted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any idea what it was?’

  ‘Not the faintest.’

  ‘You’ve made yourself thoroughly unpopular with Prendergast and his Maisie. All the world knows that you think you have a peculiar prescience about crime, particularly murder, and you will insist on making your suspicions known.’

  ‘You’ve never known Mark get his teeth into a case like this without there being some cause,’ Janet interrupted. ‘And you know that he’s been attacked before for poking his nose in.’

  ‘There’s no obvious connexion between the burglary and the Prendergast case suspicions,’ said Roger. ‘We don’t even know that Mark knows anything that the imaginary murderer of the Prendergasts might want.’

  ‘Had you found anything, Mark?’ asked Janet.

  Lessing rubbed his nose.

  ‘Nothing specific, but I talked too much in a television interview and hinted that I knew a lot,’

  ‘You’ll get yourself in dock for slander.’

  ‘Not a hope. I’ve ideas, mind you, thousands of ideas floating about like clouds of ectoplasm and I put them all down on paper, I left the notes in the right-hand top drawer of my study desk. My God, do you think –’

  They moved together. The police had finished in the study, but the top right-hand drawer of the desk was wide open. The contents had been emptied on to the floor. Roger rummaged through them, picking up a sheaf of papers covered with Mark’s meticulous handwriting. The top sheet was headed: ‘Death by Misadventure –?’

  ‘It’s all there,’ Mark confirmed, a minute or two later. ‘So they didn’t come for that. No connexion with the Prendergast virtuoso proved.’

  ‘Don’t misuse big words,’ said Janet.

  ‘No misuse, sweetie. Murder is a fine art, and three Prendergasts have been murdered. I’m assuming the killer in each case was the same man, woman, or spirit. I had this beautifully-written treatise on the case in that drawer, and my visitors could have read it. The fact that they might have deliberately left the notes behind doesn’t prove anything. Could the Prendergasts killer have lost something he’s anxious to get back?’

  ‘You stolen something?’ demanded Roger.

  ‘No. But the P K might think I have if he’s lost anything of significance.’

  ‘Sheer guess work,’ Roger said. He stifled a yawn. ‘We’ll leave a man on duty outside your door, so that you can have a good sleep without being afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ Mark declared. ‘I just want a few hours rest.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Roger. ‘Then you’ll be fit enough to call on Gabby Potter in the morning. If you do, you’ll make it obvious you connect him with this burglary. You might get an, interesting reaction.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Janet cried.

  ‘Damned good idea,’ enthused Lessing. ‘He knows I’m Prendergast case crazy. If he has any nefarious designs on the Prendergast money, we’ll find out.’

  ‘Do you really think he’s right?’ Janet asked Roger, as they drove home.

  ‘If Potter’s involved or the Prendergasts have been murdered, Mark’s stirring up the mud. If he scares anyone they might get careless. That’s Mark’s real motivation; of course he can do what the Yard can’t. But don’t ask me whether I think he’s right about Potter.’

  At the time when Roger and Janet were driving home, Mr Gabriel Potter, Solicitor & Commissioner for Oaths, was sitting up in a four-poster bed in a large, high-ceilinged room in a very large house on the outskirts of London, and listening in to the telephone. A man with a gruff voice was saying: ‘Not a thing there, Guv’nor. There wasn’t nothing about you, neither. I saw the bit he’d written about Prendergast, though. Guesswork, that’s all. I took a photo of each page, nearly got nabbed staying so long. I’ll send the film over in the morning. The other stuff just wasn’t there. I don’t make mistakes like that.’

  ‘I trust not,’ said Potter. He was a thin man in feature, figure and voice. ‘I would like that film as soon as possible, please. Goodnight.’

  He replaced the receiver, put out the light and slid down in the bed, but he did not get to sleep at once. Yet Potter’s nights were usually so serene and untroubled; tonight he was preoccupied and uneasy.

  In a darkened room some miles away, Claude Prendergast blinked. He was restless because of a noise he could not get accustomed to; his wife’s heavy breathing in the next bed. Now and again she raised her voice clearly in coherent speech. It was strange and to Claude a little improper to have a woman sleeping in the same room. Thought and contemplation of Maisie did not comfort Claude; he did not fully understand how he had come to marry her, but he had not yet reached the stage of wishing that he had resisted her.

  Quite loudly she said: ‘I wonder if he found them?’

  Then she heaved her heavy body over, and fell silent.

  3: Photographs and Things

  Janet West awakened first, stirred, stretched, and snuggled down to look at Roger’s profile. He was on his back, with his lips closed, and was absurdly good-looking. There had been a time when she had doubted whether good looks could go with good sense, a keen brain, and the more attractive human traits. In Roger they did. If there was anything the matter with him it was that he took his work too seriously. Occasionally, he was inclined to take Mark too seriously, also.

  ‘And yet, they scare me at times,’ admitted Janet. ‘What does Mark call it? . . . Prescience? Last night, for instance. What made Roger decide to go over?’ In a louder voice she demanded: ‘Do you know anything you haven’t told me?’

  ‘Er,’ said Roger. ‘Was time?’

  ‘Half-past ten,’ answered Janet, pushing the sheet back and taking a hold on his left ear. ‘Roger, why did you go to Mark’s last night? What are you keeping from me?’

  ‘Er,’ grunted Roger, and widened his eyes. ‘Ten? Half-past ten? Good Lord!’ He flung the clothes back and jumped out of bed, then caught a glimpse of the clock on the dressing-table. He slumped down. ‘It’s not much past eight.’

  From downstairs came a faint but distinctive miaow.


  ‘Of course, we’ve got visitors,’ went on Roger, pulling, on a dressing gown. ‘I’ll make the tea; you lie in for a few minutes.’

  By the time he had brushed his teeth, the kettle was boiling. He made the tea, and then found Janet doing her hair in front of the mirror. He liked to watch her fingers twisting and turning in the curls at the nape of her neck. He liked what the movement of her arms above her head did to her figure, too.

  He poured out the tea, and Janet asked: ‘Do you know anything about the Prendergast business that I don’t?’

  ‘Nothing I can tell you,’ answered Roger. ‘Nothing I’ve told Mark, either. If you’re wondering why I went over to Chelsea, I just felt uneasy.’

  ‘Do you think Mark’s in any danger?’

  ‘Good Lord, no! If he had been we wouldn’t have found him tied up last night, he would have been ready for a post mortem. It’s puzzling though. I don’t think he’s working on anything but the Prendergast affair, the odds are that it’s connected with that. If it is –’

  ‘Then it’s a murder investigation.’

  ‘Multiple murders,’ Roger agreed. ‘Well, I must be off.’

  He planted a kiss on her forehead, promised to be home by half-past seven, turned away and tripped over the kitten. He saved himself from falling completely, while the kitten darted off, squawking.

  ‘Poor little thing!’ cried Janet.

  ‘You might try to find its owner,’ said Roger bitterly. ‘If it’s still around tonight, don’t let it out of the kitchen until I get in. I don’t feel safe opening a door.’

  Half-a-dozen uniformed men at the gates, in the hall and along the passages of New Scotland Yard wished Inspector West good morning. In the office which he shared with four other Detective Inspectors a sergeant was talking to a big, fat man at the next desk to Roger’s. The fat man was Eddie Day, whose special subject was forgery.

  ‘Hallo, hallo,’ said Day, in an unexpected falsetto and with a slight over-emphasis on the aitches. ‘How’s Handsome Harry?’

  The sergeant smiled dutifully.

  ‘I took over from Sergeant Sloane, sir. He said you’d want to see these as soon as you were in. They’re the fingerprints found at Mr Lessing’s flat.’ ‘These’ were a sheaf of buff coloured forms which he handed over; two white ones were on the top.

  The white sheets were decorated with grey fingerprints. Roger eyed them without enthusiasm.

  The sergeant went on: ‘One of them might be Charlie Clay’s. There’s just enough to line it up, but not strong enough to do anything. We know Clay’s free.’

  ‘Are you looking for him?’

  ‘He’ll be brought in for questioning if you give the say-so.’

  ‘I say so,’ said Roger. ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing of any use, sir.’

  Roger nodded, the sergeant went out, and Eddie Day breathed wheezily over a file of papers.

  There was no trace of the car which had driven off from Mark’s place the night before. Only one set of prints had been found. The opening of the drawers had certainly been the work of experts. Charlie Clay, Abie Fenton, and three or four other cracksmen known to be in London were named as possibles. Clay would probably prove the right man, if they could break the alibi he would doubtless have ready. Clay had a peculiarity common to no other cracksman. He always took off his gloves some time during a job, and three times had been ‘sent up’ on the evidence of fingerprints he need not have made.

  Roger considered what he knew of Clay. A big man who spoke in a thick, gruff voice, whom it was always difficult to identify. There was a vagueness about Charlie’s personality which helped him considerably. The head and shoulders description give by P C Diver might or might not fit Clay.

  Roger put the papers aside and went to a green filing cabinet, opening a drawer containing the ‘C’s and pulling out a stiff folder. A brief summary of Charlie Clay’s dossier was there; one note said: ‘Solicitors at last trial: Gabriel Potter &. Son’.

  Roger said: ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Why don’t you keep quiet?’ implored Eddie Day, looking up from two bank-notes which he was examining through a watch-maker’s glass. ‘How do you expect me to concentrate?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Roger. ‘Where are you going today?’

  ‘Old Bailey,’ said Eddie. ‘And you?’

  ‘Marlborough Street,’ said Roger. ‘A remand in custody, I hope.’

  At Marlborough Street he spent two hours in an oak-panelled court-room while the preliminary evidence against one Joseph Wright was taken. It was an unsavoury case; Wright was being charged with living on the immoral earnings of women. Roger found his mind only half on the evidence he heard and had to give. He was thinking of Gabriel Potter and Mark Lessing. Had Mark gone to see the solicitor?

  The office of Gabriel Potter was large, untidy, and dusty; Potter himself was as neat as he was thin. He was a solicitor who believed that the older and mustier his office the more reassuring it was to his clients. He sat at a roll-top desk poring over the photostat copies of Mark’s ‘Death by Misadventure?’ unsmiling, occasionally twitching his nostrils. The telephone, which served as a paperweight, rang sharply.

  ‘Yes?’ said Potter.

  ‘There is a Mr Lessing to see you, sir,’ said a girl in a piping treble. ‘Mr Mark Lessing.’

  ‘Ask him to wait,’ said Potter. He frowned, replaced the receiver, and continued to read Mark’s report on the Prendergast deaths. Finished, he folded the copies up and tucked them in an envelope. He put them into a pigeon-hole in the desk, without any attempt at concealment, and pressed a bell. He could hear it ring in the outer office.

  Lessing came in almost immediately, carrying a homburg, a cane, and gloves. Potter’s large blue eyes had an innocent, wondering look. He half-rose from his chair.

  ‘Take a seat, Mr Lessing. What can I do for you?’ There was no false bonhomie about him, and his voice was cold. A high starched collar with a cravat increased the impression of thinness; his neck looked scraggy and unhealthy. His complexion was bad, and he shaved only half way up his lean cheeks.

  ‘Tell you the truth, I don’t yet know,’ said Lessing amiably He could give the impression of trying to repress impatience. He had good features and a look of strength, without geniality ‘There are one or two things you might be able to help with We’ve got one thing in common, at least. We don’t see eye with the police and their conventional methods of investigating crime.’

  ‘In what way have you been crossing the police?’ demanded Potter.

  ‘They’re crossing me. I’m not satisfied that they’re right about the verdicts in the Prendergast deaths.’

  Potter said acidly: ‘Mr Lessing, if you have come to try to discuss anything concerning the Prendergasts you are wasting your time. I am acting on behalf of Mr and Mrs Claude Prendergast. They are fully satisfied with the verdicts returned, and with the attitude of the police. I am, too.’

  ‘Are you indeed?’ said Mark. ‘Claude P. is in capable hands, that’s something to know. Rather a pathetic little person, isn’t he? Money, money everywhere, and no idea how to spend.’

  ‘I have no doubt that Mr Prendergast would be grateful for your interest in him,’ said Potter, ‘I am equally sure that you have no reason for it. Mr Lessing, I have often noticed how you apply yourself to other people’s business. I must express the hope that in this instance you will break the habit. Your questioning of friends of Mr Prendergast, and of his servants, has become most unwelcome. I am contemplating an application for an injunction to stop you from annoying my client. The idea is his own.’

  ‘Not Claude’s. He doesn’t have any ideas beyond the colour of his neck-ties and the cut of his trousers, plus the advantages of a piece of lemon or an onion Manhattan over a Martini. Maisie, though –’

  Potter leaned forward.

  ‘I shouldn’t go any further, Mr Lessing. By calling here you have saved me the trouble of writing to you. I must ask you to stop this per
secution forthwith. If you don’t, I shall use every legal means to make you.’

  ‘Legal?’ echoed Mark. ‘You’ve improved.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent!’ Potter’s eyes and his voice rose. ‘Get out of my office at once. If you don’t I’ll have you thrown out’

  As he spoke, the door opened and a very large man appeared in the doorway. Large though he was, he was a difficult man to describe, being neither shapeless nor hulking, but vaguely like every other large man in the world. He had hair and eyebrows between-colours. His eyes were an indeterminate grey-blue. His voice was gruff as if he were suffering from a cold.

  ‘Trouble, Guv’nor?”

  ‘I may need you,’ Potter said sharply. ‘Wait outside.’

  Charlie Clay nodded, and backed out of the office. Potter turned his angry gaze towards Mark, who now sat on the corner of the big desk. His elbow was actually touching the envelope containing the photostat copies of his treatise.

  ‘You know,’ said Mark, ‘life is full of coincidences. Last night my flat was burgled. Now I find Charlie Clay acting as your muscle man. I wonder if the police also know he’s free, and know where he was last night.’

  Potter said: ‘I won’t warn you again.’

  Mark smiled, and went out.

  Near Clay another large man was standing. He was dressed in morning clothes and carrying a grey topper. The dress and the hat were incongruous, for the face of the wearer was rugged and chunky. He was Gabriel Potter’s managing-clerk, according to the salary list, but in fact he had a variety of jobs, including that of bank messenger.

  ‘Hallo, gents,’ said Mark. He ignored two scowls as he went out of the large general office. He dallied on the stairs, hearing approaching footsteps heavy and deliberate. There was a lift at Potter’s office, but it was not working. In Mark’s experience the lift never worked if anyone wanted to get to Potter’s office in a hurry.