‘WHERE THE DEVIL IS he? He can’t just have disappeared.’
Chubb glared at Billy from behind his desk.
‘You’ve tried ringing the house, have you?’
‘Several times, sir, but there’s no reply. According to Jessup, Garner was going to get in touch with us after he’d spoken to a solicitor. But there’s been no word from that quarter, either.’
‘Could he have changed his mind, do you think?’ Chubb’s face darkened. ‘Sobered up?’
‘We’ll soon find out. I’ve asked Lofty Cook at West End Central to send a bobby round to his house to ring the doorbell, and to keep on ringing if he doesn’t respond. Of course, he could still be sleeping it off. According to Jessup he was reeling drunk when he left the club last night.’
‘Perhaps he never got home,’ Chubb suggested. ‘But whatever the explanation is, I want answers fast. I’ve already had a call from Cradock asking if Garner has been brought in for questioning yet. Get cracking.’
Happy enough to obey—answers were what he lacked at the moment—Billy left to return to his own office. He was thinking he might have to take the bull by the horns and ask Richard Jessup for the name of his solicitor. The fact that they hadn’t met made it difficult and he wondered whether he could turn to Madden for yet more help. He had still not resolved the question in his mind when he reached his office and found that Lily Poole was on the phone.
‘Hang on, guv.’ She spoke into the instrument when she saw Billy, and then beckoned to him urgently. ‘It’s Mr Cook,’ she said.
Billy took the phone from her. ‘Lofty . . . ?’
‘Hullo, Billy. I’ve got news for you. I’ve just heard from the bobby I sent round to that bloke’s house. . . . What’s his name?’
‘Garner . . . Rex Garner.’ Billy had caught a note in the other man’s voice that alerted him: something was up. ‘Did he speak to him?’
‘Hardly. If it’s the same bloke you want to talk to, he seems to be strung up inside.’
‘Strung up . . . ?’
‘Hanging by his neck.’ Cook’s tone was dry. ‘You’d better let me explain. The constable rang the doorbell, like he was told to, and went on ringing until it was plain no one was going to answer. The curtains at the front of the house overlooking the street were drawn, but there was still a small gap between them. By pressing his nose to the glass the bobby was able to peer inside the room, and what he saw gave him a shock. There was a man hanging from some sort of balustrade at the back of the room. He returned to the front door and tried to break it down with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t budge, so he rang the station. I’ve got a locksmith on his way over to the house now. I’ll meet you there.’
• • •
With the bell on their police car ringing, Billy and his two colleagues forged a passage through the scattered crowd of onlookers that had gathered in the street outside Rex Garner’s house. They drew up in front of the door, which stood ajar. As Billy climbed out of the car a uniformed officer with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve approached him.
‘Mr Cook’s inside, sir. He told the rest of us to stay out here.’ He pointed to the three other men posted on the pavement. ‘He said you’d be the officer in charge. Let me know if there’s anything we can do.’
‘Just clear the street for now, Sergeant. I’ll have a word with you later.’
Followed by Grace and Lily Poole, Billy went into the house. He found Lofty Cook standing just inside the door to the drawing-room, where he and Joe had interviewed Rex Garner only two days earlier. Beyond him was a grisly sight. The body of a man was suspended by his neck from the balustrade of the book-lined gallery above, which Billy remembered from his earlier visit. His feet were a foot or so off the floor and his body had twisted slightly away from the door so that his face wasn’t visible. Billy had little doubt that it was Garner, and having walked past Cook to the other side of the room and looked up at the contorted visage, he knew for certain.
‘It’s him, all right, Lofty.’ He reached up to touch the black rubber-sheathed wire that had cut so deeply into the man’s throat it was only partially visible. ‘What did he use, do you reckon?’
‘It looks like electrical flex.’ Cook had crossed the room to join him. ‘And you can see he doubled it.’ He pointed higher to where the separation between the two strands of rubber-coated wire was clearly visible. ‘He must have decided that a single strand wouldn’t take his weight. Have you any idea why he did it?’
‘Quite a few, as it happens. He was our new prime suspect for the Portia Blake killing—and he knew it. I had the feeling he might be close to cracking.’
Lofty whistled.
‘Does that mean your case is wrapped up?’
‘Not quite. We’re still looking for Stanley Wing, the chap Lily talked to you about.’
Cook looked reflective. ‘I know this is a Yard case, Billy. I’m not going to stick my nose in. But this is my patch, so if you don’t mind I’ll stay for a while and see how things work out.’
‘Please do, sir.’ Billy grinned. They had joined the Met at the same time, right after the end of the First World War, and although initially Billy had led the way in the race for promotions—he had secured his inspectorship earlier than Cook—Lofty had lately inched ahead; he was now a chief inspector. None of which had affected their friendship, which had remained solid over the years. ‘By the way, I called Richard Jessup before I left the Yard,’ he said. ‘He’s on his way over here now. He can formally identify Garner for us. And I rang Mr Madden, too. You remember him, don’t you?’
‘I should say so.’
‘He’s in London at present and I thought he might want to come down here and see this. He began looking into the Portia Blake murder before we did as a favour to Mr Sinclair. They’re neighbours in the country now.’
‘Wheels within wheels, eh?’ Lofty rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, it sounds as though you’re in luck, Billy. I wouldn’t mind having John Madden at my shoulder if I was working a case. He was special, wasn’t he? One of those blokes you don’t forget.’
• • •
‘I can’t say he was happy when I saw him last, sir. He was muttering to himself in the back of the car all the way from Pall Mall. I couldn’t hear what he said, except it seemed to be about some “damned Chinaman”, as he put it. And I had a hard time seeing him into the house. He was the worse for drink, but he wouldn’t accept any help. Each time I tried to take his arm he pushed me away. But I finally saw him to the door, and after some bother with his keys—he couldn’t seem to find the right one—he finally let himself in. And that’s how I left him.’
Every inch the old soldier, and looking smart in his chauffeur’s uniform, Ted Lennox stood to attention as he made his statement. At Billy’s request he had been summoned from the car where he was waiting outside by his employer to give an account of Garner’s movements the night before after Jessup himself had revealed that he had detailed his chauffeur to take his dinner guest home.
‘I’m afraid Rex was quite drunk and I didn’t want to send him home in a cab.’
He had arrived a few minutes after Madden, who had caught a taxi down from St John’s Wood. Together they had watched in silence as the body of the dead man was lowered gently to the floor. Billy had had to wait for the arrival of the police photographer before the operation could be carried out, but once he had done his work two detectives from the forensic crew who had been standing by had jointly taken hold of the corpse as one of their colleagues loosened the double strand of wire tied to the balustrade above. Clearly appalled by the sight of Garner’s livid features, Jessup had looked away.
‘I had been planning to return home to Hampshire myself,’ he told Billy, ‘but it had got so late that I changed my mind and decided to spend the night at my club. My chauffeur was standing by with the car, so I asked him to make sure that Mr Garner got home safely.’
When the pathologist arrived soon afterwards to examine the body—and after Lofty Cook had taken his leave of them—Billy led both men to a smaller sitting-room on the other side of the entrance hall.
‘We’re going to need a statement from you, sir,’ he told Sir Richard. ‘The coroner will want to know what Mr Garner’s state of mind was when you saw him last night. We can do that later—I’ll send a man over to your office—but it would help if you gave me some idea of how he was behaving.’
Jessup had needed a moment to collect himself. Pale and distraught, he had been standing a little apart from them, staring at nothing, hardly aware of what was being said. ‘Rex arrived a little after eight,’ he said, ‘and since it was clear he’d already been drinking, I thought it best to go into dinner straight away. He was angry . . . fractious and belligerent. . . . We’d hardly sat down when he started complaining about what he said was police harassment.’ He caught Billy’s eye. ‘Don’t worry, Inspector, I wasn’t taken in by that, but I let him ramble on for a bit, and then I asked him if there was anything he’d like to tell me—anything he wanted to get off his chest. Well, I’m afraid that set him off again, and he turned on me, accusing me of being on “their side”—he meant you, the authorities—and demanding to know why I wouldn’t stand by him. I assured him I’d do whatever I could to help, and it was then that he admitted he had given you a false alibi for the afternoon when Miss Blake was murdered. He hadn’t met the friend whose name he gave you; he had simply driven into Canterbury and spent the next few hours on his own. He and his wife were due to drive back to London later that afternoon and he timed his return to the house to coincide with their planned departure.’
Jessup rubbed his forehead.
‘I was shocked to hear that. I asked him why he’d done it. He said he had told Adele Castleton the same story years ago and thought he’d better stick to it . . .’
‘The same story . . . ?’ Billy broke in.
‘Exactly.’ Jessup had spread his hands. ‘It was no sort of explanation. I could understand why he concocted an excuse to tell Adele. I’d always thought it was possible that he knew Miss Blake better than he admitted and had simply wanted to avoid seeing her again after her behaviour at dinner the previous evening. But I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to tell the police a lie just to cover up what was only a small fib, after all. It was at that point that I began to get worried. I wondered if he had more to conceal.’
‘Did he at any point mention the woman he beat up in Hong Kong?’ Billy asked. ‘I believe you knew about that.’
Jessup nodded. ‘Rex didn’t refer to it directly, but it might have been on his mind . . .’
‘Why did you think that, Richard?’ Silent up till then, Madden had interrupted. Jessup turned to him.
‘It was when he told me that Wing had been in touch with him. I had asked if he’d seen the photographs published in the Daily Mirror and what he made of them. That set him off on another rant. He said the police were trying to frame him. But then he quietened down and admitted that Wing had telephoned him earlier that day and tried to get money out of him.’
‘Because of the photographs?’
‘I don’t know. Rex didn’t say. He was cursing Wing as he told me about it. He said he was a leech, a bloodsucker, and he’d never be free of him.’
‘And you wondered what he was talking about—whether it was the photographs, or something else?’
‘The thought did cross my mind.’ Jessup sighed. ‘We had left the dining-room by then. Fortunately there weren’t too many others there last night, but even so, Rex had made something of a spectacle of himself, banging the table with his fist and creating a disturbance. I had managed to get him downstairs where there’s a small waiting-room by the entrance hall, and after I’d ordered him a brandy—he insisted on it—I told him what I thought he ought to do.’
‘Which was to speak to us?’ This time it was Billy who put the question.
Jessup nodded. ‘I told him there was no way his false alibi would stand up and the wisest thing he could do would be to go to the police at once before they came to him and put the record straight. Then I added that if there was anything else he had to tell them he’d be well advised to take the opportunity to do so, and if he wished I could put him in touch with my solicitor.’
Jessup’s smile had a bitter edge.
‘I was expecting another explosion then, but to my surprise he gave in. He said he would do that. He said he’d had enough.’
‘Enough . . . ?’ Billy intervened quickly. ‘What did he mean by that?’
‘I can’t say for certain, Inspector. But it sounded as though he’d thrown in the towel. That was my impression. I should tell you that things had been going from bad to worse for some time in Rex’s life. He was deeply in debt. This place is mortgaged to the hilt. He owes money left and right. I was just wondering how I was going to get him home when I remembered that my chauffeur, Ted Lennox, was outside with the car. I’d told him we’d be driving down to Hampshire later. Instead I got him to take Rex home and to see him inside his front door safely; which I believe he did. But you can ask him that yourself. He’s waiting outside.’
• • •
‘What will the police make of this, John?’
Jessup stood on the pavement looking about him. The crowd that had gathered in the street earlier, drawn by the police presence, had largely dispersed, and those bystanders still tempted to remain were being gently but firmly moved on by the uniformed officers posted outside.
‘What will they read into it? Will they take it as confirmation of their theory that it was probably Rex who killed Miss Blake?’
‘They might.’ Madden had come outside to accompany the other man to his car, where Lennox stood waiting with the door open. ‘They certainly regarded him as a suspect. I told you that. But they were some way from making a case against him. However, there’s still that woman in Hong Kong to be considered. They’re waiting for word from the police there. So far they’ve found no trace of her in their records. It’s possible she didn’t survive the assault she suffered at Garner’s hands and somehow her body was disposed of; and it’s equally possible that Wing knew that and could pin the crime on him. We don’t know what passed between them when they spoke on the phone yesterday.’
Jessup pondered in silence. Although he appeared to have recovered from the shock of seeing Garner’s body lowered to the floor, he still seemed troubled.
‘Will the question of Miss Blake’s murder come up at the inquest?’ he asked. ‘I expect I’ll be summoned to appear as a witness.’
‘It may well do.’ Madden nodded. ‘As Inspector Styles said, the coroner will try to establish Garner’s state of mind prior to his suicide, and your testimony will be crucial. He’ll want to know why he was so upset. There’s no way you can avoid the subject.’
‘And what will the police say about it?’
‘Not a great deal, I imagine, and not until they have either found Stanley Wing or are satisfied that he has left the country. At that stage they might issue a statement to the effect that the inquiry remains open, or, if they’re satisfied that Garner was Portia’s killer, that they’re no longer looking into the case.’
‘I just hope they tread carefully,’ Jessup said. ‘I don’t like the idea of branding a man as a murderer when he can’t defend himself. It’s not as though anyone will ever know for sure who killed Miss Blake.’
‘Not unless the police catch up with Stanley Wing,’ Madden observed. ‘He’s the one person who might be able to answer these questions.’
Jessup reflected on his words. Then he sighed.
‘I can’t help feeling I let Rex down. I should have done more for him.’
‘Perhaps he was past help, Richard,’ Madden said gently. He sensed the other man’s distress. ‘It looks to me as though he’d backed himself into a corner, and took the only way out.’
• • •
Having seen Jessup off, Madden went back inside the house to find that Billy had returned to the drawing-room and was standing to one side with Grace and Lily Poole. They were watching the pathologist, who was still busy. On his knees now, he was bending over the body and peering closely at the dead man’s throat.
‘Isn’t that Ransom?’ Madden asked. It was years since they had met, but he recognized the pathologist’s face and recalled that he’d been regarded by the Met’s squad of detectives as something of a card.
‘It’s him, all right.’ Billy chuckled. ‘Do you remember how he used to get the chief inspector’s goat? Mr Sinclair couldn’t be doing with his shafts of wit. I can’t say he’s changed all that much. We’re wondering what he’s going to come up with today.’
As he spoke, the burly figure shifted. Sitting back on his heels, he hoisted himself slowly to his feet and then turned to face them.
‘I see business is picking up, Inspector. Am I right in thinking this is your second corpse in . . . how many days? Three, is it? I’m only thankful I was spared the most recent offering: I understand the lady met an unpleasant end.’
His solemn expression changed; his face brightened.
‘Isn’t that Mr Madden standing beside you? Don’t tell me you’ve returned to the force, sir. I thought you were happily retired.’
‘And you were right.’ Madden smiled. ‘I’m here on behalf of Mr Sinclair, who I’m sure would send you his regards if he could.’
‘I very much doubt it. The good chief inspector and I seldom saw eye to eye. But you can give him my best wishes if you like. Now, Inspector, as to your body . . .’
He turned his gaze back on Billy.
‘Death was caused by strangulation, as you can see, and I would estimate that it occurred some twelve hours ago: say, between eleven o’clock and midnight.’
He bent to buckle the straps on his bag.
‘And it was quite straightforward, was it?’
‘Straightforward . . . ?’ Red in the face from bending over, Dr Ransom stood up. ‘Well, that depends on your definition of the word; but yes . . . straightforward . . . after a fashion.’
‘Don’t be like that, Doctor.’ Billy heaved a sigh. ‘Just give me the authorised version: did the man hang himself?’
‘Once again, I very much doubt it.’ The pathologist chortled. He seemed to be enjoying a private joke. ‘Seeing as how he was almost certainly dead at the time; strangled, as I said.’
‘Strangled . . . ?’
‘Prior to being strung up, I mean. And since he could hardly have done it to himself, I’m inclined to think he was murdered.’
• • •
‘How’s it going, Lil? Have you found anything?’
Billy went over to the foot of the staircase leading up to the gallery, where Lily Poole was down on her knees.
‘Yes, I think so, guv. There are scuff marks at the edge of the carpeting—do you see?’
She pointed. Billy bent over her shoulder to look, and Madden, who was standing on the other side of the young policewoman, followed suit.
‘It looks like something was dragged up the stairs.’
‘Like a body, you mean?’ Billy nodded. He saw where the grain of the carpeting had been brushed back. ‘He must have been pulled up by his armpits. He would have been quite a weight.’ He glanced at Madden. ‘What do you think, sir?’
‘I agree. The scuffing could have been caused by the heels of his shoes catching on each step.’
Billy straightened.
‘We know that the curtains were drawn, so I don’t suppose anyone outside noticed anything.’
Having listened to Ransom’s explanation, Billy had detailed Joe Grace to organize a house-to-house inquiry using the uniformed officers stationed outside.
‘Joe has already spoken to a woman who lives across the street and saw Garner come home last night,’ he told Madden. ‘She confirmed what Lennox told us: she heard a disturbance in the street and saw Garner, obviously drunk, being shepherded to his front door. But I want people asked about what they might have seen earlier in the evening as well, since whoever killed him may have already been in the house when he got back.’
The pathologist had been succinct in his depiction of how the dead man met his end.
‘To put it bluntly, he was strangled twice. There are two separate marks on his throat. They lie at different angles, and are quite easy to spot. I would say that the first one was caused when he was throttled from behind. If Garner was standing or sitting when that happened, the mark would have been more or less parallel to the floor. And it’s thinner than the other one, which suggests he was first choked using a single strand of flex. The second mark, the one caused by hanging, lies at a quite different angle—it slants up towards his ears. I think he was either killed or rendered unconscious down here and then taken upstairs to the gallery and hanged by a double strand of flex from the balustrade. I will so state at the inquest.’
With the investigation headed in a different direction now, Billy had ordered the fingerprint specialists summoned from the Yard, who up till then had been standing idle, to go over the drawing-room inch by inch.
‘I want the bannisters and the balustrade covered in particular,’ he told them. ‘Lift all the dabs you can find. Take Garner’s prints before the body is removed.’
He glanced at Madden, who was standing beside him, observing, but saying nothing.
‘I’d say this was Stanley Wing’s work,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘What I’m wondering is how it came about,’ Madden said. ‘Why exactly did Wing kill him—and why now?’
Billy pursed his lips. He gave the question serious thought before replying.
‘Suppose Garner had already seen the photographs, ones with his face in them, I mean, when he met Jessup last night. I didn’t mention it before, sir, but the chemist who developed the negatives told us he made two prints of each at Miss Cooper’s request. So Wing must have a spare set, and he could have put them in the post right away, that same afternoon, and they would have been delivered next day. We have to remember he’s pushed for time. Garner told Jessup that Wing had phoned him. If so, then Wing would almost certainly have demanded money from him, and that could explain Garner’s state of mind when he met Jessup later.’
Although Madden showed no reaction, Billy saw he was paying close attention.
‘And what if Garner told him there wasn’t any—money, I mean?’ He continued with his train of thought. ‘That he was broke? Maybe Wing decided there was only one thing left he wanted to do, and did it.’
At that moment Billy became aware of a figure hovering at his elbow. It was one of the detectives from the forensic squad, a DC named Travis.
‘I’ve got something to show you, guv.’ He nodded towards the far end of the room, where several armchairs were grouped around a fireplace.
Billy accompanied him to the spot, with Madden at his heels. Travis bent down. He had a pair of tweezers in his hand.
‘I noticed there were some ashes in the grate,’ he said, ‘and that seemed strange. I mean, lighting a fire in this hot weather. So I had a look at them. I reckon they were photos.’
He reached into the grate with his tweezers and extracted a triangular shape charred along its base. He showed it to Billy, who was bending down, peering over his shoulder.
‘That’s a piece of a photograph, all right. There’s part of a woman’s face there . . .’ Billy peered closely at the fragment Travis was holding. ‘And a bit of her arm, too. Hang on! I think I’ve seen this.’
He stood up straight, looking round as he did so.
‘Lil . . . !’ he called to her across the length of the room. ‘Come over here.’
Lily hurried over from where she was standing at the foot of the stairs watching the fingerprint crew at work on the bannisters.
Billy stood aside so that she could see what the detective held in his tweezers.
‘Isn’t that the same face that was in that painting at the back of Portia’s bedroom? You said you recognized it.’
‘The Nude Maja?’ Lily brought her eyes up close to the fragment. ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s her. . . . Nice one, Mike.’ She patted Travis on the shoulder.
Billy looked at Madden.
‘We can assume it was Garner who burned them,’ he said. ‘But if Wing rang him like Garner said he did, he would have told him that he still had the negatives and there was no way Garner was going to escape this time.’
Madden grunted. ‘What I’m wondering is how Wing gained entry to the house last night,’ he said.
‘I thought about that.’ Billy nodded. ‘I had the windows checked. They’re locked from the inside. They don’t seem to have been fiddled with. I reckon he simply knocked on the door and Garner let him in. Granted, he wouldn’t have been pleased to see Wing. But he might have thought it worthwhile trying to reason with him: to explain that he couldn’t pay up.’
‘What about the flex Garner was hanged with, though? That’s got me puzzled. Do you think Wing brought it with him?’
Billy scratched his head. He could see that the question was bothering his old chief.
‘It’s more likely he found it here, in the house,’ he said. ‘I sent a couple of men downstairs to the basement. They said there was a lot of stuff lying around, including some tools. I think Wing found what he wanted down there.’
‘Leaving Garner up here in the drawing-room on his own, do you mean?’ Madden was still dubious.
‘On his own, but most likely passed out, or close to it. That’s what we’re forgetting. Garner arrived back here dead drunk. It wouldn’t have been hard for Wing to deal with him once he’d been let in. He can’t have been pleased when he found all his efforts had gone for nothing; that Garner wasn’t going to pay. He may not have come here intending to kill him. But he wasn’t going to let him off.’ Billy shrugged. ‘And who knows? Perhaps in the end Wing did him a favour.’
‘Meaning what?’ Madden frowned.
‘If Garner was guilty of Portia’s murder—and Wing knew it, and could prove it—then it was odds on Rex was going to end up the same way sooner or later: on the end of a rope.’