CHAPTER FIFTY
Headquarters, Metropolitan Police Service/New Scotland Yard, Criminal Investigation Department [CID], Victoria Embankment, August 31, 1962
Eugene’s next call in the series was made the following day to New Scotland Yard, where he asked to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Lincoln Crandall-White, the New Scotland Yard senior homicide detective who had the lead in another recent case—the murder of Lieutenant-General Sir Cyril Goeffrey Robert Hill-Brownwell, RA, Ret.
“This is Crandall-White,” the detective answered crisply—his usual professional telephone pattern.
“Thank you for taking my call, Detective Chief Inspector. I am Eugène Dentremont, Senior Detective Chief Superintendent of INTERPOL. I am calling in regards to your investigation of General Hill-Brownwell. I believe I can be of some help.”
“How would that be, Senior Detective Chief Superintendent?”
“Before we get down to details, would it be possible to do this on a first name basis, Inspector? The titles are awkward and tedious, in my opinion.”
“Efficiency is always best. My name is Lincoln, but people who know me call me, Linc.”
“I am Eugène.”
“What do you have for us, Eugène?”
“I will be very brief on the phone, Linc, but I can telex a ream of material on a series of murders that may well be related to yours. Would that be all right?”
“Of course. And I presume you intend the information to be kept in confidence?”
“Indeed, as both of us do in police matters; but especially in this case. I have recently learned of murders in Argentina, France, Germany, the USSR, and the United States that are very similar to yours. It is entirely possible that there are more to be found as we go along. While there are almost infinite possibilities that could be part of the cases and almost that many persons of interest, we at INTERPOL have formed a loosely arranged committee of fellow police officers to winnow down the field and to make all of our investigations more manageable. This is what we have learned thus far that seems to have pertinence to all of the cases.”
Inspector Dentremont gave Detective Chief Inspector Crandall-White a succinct description of each of the murders and of the history of the victims—all of whom seemed to have made a great many enemies during their careers. He stressed the tentativeness of the information dredged up during the investigations in the several countries, but gave Linc the benefit of his long law enforcement experience’s hunch.
“I think the main thread is something that happened during or especially shortly after the war. There may be ties to organized crime; but, more likely, these killings are assassinations related to war time or to POW experiences. We are not neglecting the mountain of evidence that is accumulating about multiple avenues of investigation, but our group is moving in the direction of the military careers holding the secrets that are most germaine to all of our inquiries.”
“And you would like us Brits to join you with INTERPOL as the lead, is that about it?”
“Only as a central clearing house. We will serve and not be in the news, if you get my meaning. We have no desire or need to take credit or to interfere. I think a brief chat with some of your mates in the law enforcement community around the world will confirm how I work.”
“I am aware, Eugène. Your reputation precedes you, and we will be happy to join you. What can I do now?”
“Please bring me up to date on your case thus far, and then telex the larger amount of details to my office in Lyon. When you finish your communication, I will give you the name of my people who are receiving and collating the information and will ask that you get them in touch with one individual on your team who can link up with us. We want to keep this as tidy as possible.”
“All right Eugène, on the twenty-first of August, last, a call came in to the CID at the Metropolitan Police Service/New Scotland Yard reporting a witnessed murder in an exclusive men’s establishment—the London Army and Navy Club. As the name implies, it caters almost exclusively to military men—both past and current. As the detective chief inspector, I was assigned the case. DI Angela Snowden, DI Anthony Bourden-Clift, and I proceeded directly to the London club. There we found an elderly male victim, identified as Lieutenant-General Sir Cyril Goeffrey Robert Hill-Brownwell, RA, Ret. We interviewed an eyewitness, Major Algernon Donelly, and learned that the general was assassinated with an ice pick to his brain by a man the major presumed was one of the help because he was dressed in the uniform of the club attendant staff. Major Donelly attempted to capture the assailant, but was knocked unconscious in the struggle. The killer was not seen by anyone else and was not apprehended.
“We interviewed the only other person in the establishment—the majordomo—a man named Clifford Brewster. He informed us that he did not really know the general personally. However, in his capacity as a senior servant at the club for more than ten years, he did pick up a nugget or two from the other members, and the majordomo himself had a history of having suffered a serious setback to his career by the actions of the general. He clearly had reason to resent the man. Overall, Gen. Hill-Brownwell was not popular, not well thought of. Brewster learned that the general served on the western front in the first war, and one member confronted him in Brewster’s presence some years back for his behind-the-lines service. The gist of the heated conversation was that the lieutenant general was quick to order men to charge out of their trenches to what he must have known were near-suicidal and futile attacks, and the men serving under him despised the man. Sir Hill-Brownwell’s response was a counter accusation—essentially that the man confronting him might well be one of the cowards who had conspired to assassinate him as the commander. The staff had to come between the two. Sir Hill-Brownwell’s position in the club was of such an elevated nature that his accuser was forced to resign.
“Our investigation turned up the name of the accuser—an elderly former colonel by the name of Matthew Templeton. Unfortunately, Templeton died nearly five years ago. Along that same line, the majordomo reported overhearing conversations among the enlisted men who frequented the same pubs as him. He gleaned enough to know that Sir Hill-Brownwell was a highly unpopular officer in both wars. The general gist was that the man enjoyed his comforts in the safety of his command post while keeping well out of harm’s way, if you get my drift. He was deemed to be reckless with the lives of the men in the ranks. In addition, he was deemed to be an extremely harsh disciplinarian, even an unfair one by many officers and enlisted alike.
“Our questioning of Major Donelly revealed an area of interest, one that we are actively pursuing at present. He and the general both served in the postwar occupation internment camps for German POWs. It was the major’s opinion that the general had little sympathy for the German prisoners. They had returned from Soviet prison camps, and the general was of the opinion that the ‘huns’—as he always insisted on calling them—deserved every ill treatment they received. On more than one occasion–according to the major–Gen. Hill-Brownwell’s stated purpose in dealing with the POWs was to ensure that they would never to be allowed to occupy significant positions in the new Germany being created by the Allies.”
“I presume you have followed up on that lead,” Eugène commented.
“Indeed. We learned—to our chagrin and shame as a matter-of-fact—that the British-run camps like those of the Americans and the French were no better than the Nazi camps or the Soviet gulags. We have delved into that sordid subject sufficiently to be convinced that any survivors would be prime persons of interest to our investigation. All of the camps kept good records, which is surprising given the nature of the conditions existing there. We are quite certain of the names of those men who entered the camps; but the death rate was high; and it is not quite so clear which of those men were alive when the camps were finally closed in the late fifties.
“We do have a list, but it is undoubtedly incomplete. The most difficult part of the investigation is locating the whereabouts of the released men today. We have succeeded in locating approximately thirty-two hundred of them, and are going through the tedium of contacting every one of them. We are less than a quarter of the way through the task.”
“Any names catch your attention?”
“A few we have not been able to trace after the final release. It is as if they vanished into thin air. Our attention was drawn to several SS officers with French names, which seemed odd to us. They had all been interned in a couple of those especially wretched gulags in far north Siberia and were among the very few who survived what our Soviet ‘allies’ termed ‘special treatment.’ I have a list of those men whom we intend to track down if it is possible. It should be interesting to learn what they are about. I will telex the list as soon as I can find it in the pile of clutter on my desk. Neatness is DI Snowden’s forte, not mine. I will probably have to enlist her help as I usually do. She is indispensable.”
Eugène laughed. “I know what you mean. I would be lost without my senior INTERPOL technician, Forensic Specialist Marianne de la Reynie. She maintains my sanity at the office the same way my wife keeps me from complete chaos at home. We are of the opinion from several of our investigators that you may well be on a productive track. Keep me posted through Marianne; she is the central data coordinator for now. At the rate information is coming in, we will have to hire a significantly larger staff pretty soon. Thank you for your cooperation, Linc. We will talk again soon.”
After the conversation, Linc sat lost in thought and pondered the ramifications of his conversation with the INTERPOL superintendent. It was his way to think a problem through thoroughly, weighing and analyzing every scrap of information. His critics believed that he was prone to overthinking and were annoyed by his periodic lapses of attention to them and to their brilliant discoveries. Detective Chief Inspector Lincoln Crandall-White was professorial in appearance and in his thought processes. He was the quintessential Oxford tweedy, tieless, brown- or gray-shirted, wool pants, and brogans, thinker and lecturer. He seldom spoke unless he had something to say, and that something was usually directly on target to open an avenue of investigation in a fruitful direction. When asked for his opinion, he almost always came back with the nut of the issue and the investigation.
He was forty-seven years old, had bushy gray-brown hair, eyebrows, mustache and sideburns, and intense riveting eyes partly because one of them was hazel and the other blue. He used his unusual eyes skillfully to keep his listener looking at his face and then hearing what he had to say. The first thing his thinking produced at this point in time was that this investigation could either be the making of his career or a colossal international failure which would force his retirement. Linc was not inclined overmuch towards caution, and he vowed to pursue his case and its relationship to the other murders until the truth—the whole truth—was known. For the moment, it was time for lunch.
British Pub Recipes
Welsh Rarebit
Ingredients
-2 tbsps unsalted butter, 2 tbsps all-purpose flour, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce, ½ tsp kosher salt, ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper, ½ cp porter beer, ¾ cp heavy cream, 6 oz (~1½ cps) shredded Cheddar cheese, 2 drps hot sauce, 4 slices toasted rye bread.
Preparation
-In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Cook, whisking constantly for 2–3 mins., being careful not to brown the flour.
-Whisk in mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper until smooth. Add beer and whisk to combine. Pour in cream and whisk until well-combined and smooth.
-Gradually add cheese, stirring constantly until cheese melts and sauce is smooth; this will take 4–5 mins. Add hot sauce. Pour over toast; garnish with bacon, diced tomatoes, and chives before serving.
Ploughman’s Lunch
Ingredients
-1 tbsp kosher dill relish, assorted English cheeses: Cotswold, Huntsman, Stilton, Shropshire Blue, English Cheddar, substantial chunk of crusty bread, pickled onions, bull pickled onions, assorted cold cuts like Black Forest Ham and pâtés, a variety of sliced apples, several hard-boiled and pickled eggs, and a pint of good dark English ale.
Preparation: Eat and drink.
Shepherd’s Pie
Ingredients
3 lg peeled and quartered potatoes, 1 stick salted butter, 1½ cps onion, 1–2 cps diced carrots, corn, peas mixture, 1½ lbs lean ground sirloin, ½ cp beef broth, 1 tsp Worcestershire, salt, pepper, garlic, hot sauce to taste.
Preparation
-Place the peeled and quartered potatoes in medium-sized pot and cover with 1+ in. cold water. Add tsp salt and bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook until tender.
-While the potatoes are cooking, melt 4 tbsps butter in a large sauté pan on med. heat. Add chopped onions and cook until tender. Add vegetables separately (best to cook them individually according to their cooking times to achieve al dente firmness).
-Add ground beef to the pan with the onions and vegetables. Cook until no longer pink. Season with salt and pepper. Add the Worcestershire and beef broth. Bring the broth to a simmer and reduce heat to low. Cook uncovered for 10 mins. Add more beef broth at intervals to prevent meat from drying out.
-When the potatoes are done cooking (soft), remove them from the pot and place them in a bowl with the remaining 4 tbsps butter. Mash and season with salt and pepper to taste.
-Preheat oven to 400° F. Spread the beef, onions, and vegetables in an even layer in a large baking dish and spread mashed potatoes over the top of the ground beef. Rough up the surface of mashed potatoes with a fork so there are peaks that will get well-browned.
-Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese over the top of the mashed potatoes before baking. Cook in oven at 400° F until potatoes are brown and bubbling~30 min. May have to broil for the last few mins. to help the surface of the mashed potatoes brown. Serve hot with stout British ale (wine is for sissies).