Michael Gilbert
Michael Francis Gilbert (1912–2006) achieved great distinction as a crime writer without ever becoming a household name. That was partly due to his personal reticence—he was a practising solicitor, and during his career, professional rules prevented any form of perceived ‘advertising’ by lawyers. It was also, perhaps, attributable to his unwillingness to stick to a single formula, far less keep writing about a single series character; in fact, he created more than half a dozen noteworthy series detectives, including Patrick Petrella, who features in this story, collected in Young Petrella (1988), but published in the 1950s.
Novels, plays, scripts, and non-fiction poured from Gilbert’s pen (prior to his retirement from the law, he wrote on the morning train to his office in Lincoln’s Inn), while there are few British crime writers of the last half-century who have written such accomplished short mysteries. Many of these first appeared in magazines that have long since vanished from the scene; happily, in recent years the critic and researcher John Cooper has gathered all Gilbert’s uncollected stories, as well as other material, in four volumes which amount to a treasure trove in which the author’s talent for the form is vividly displayed.
The door of No. 35 Bond Road opened and a thick-set, middle-aged woman came out. She wore a long grey coat with a collar of alpaca wool buttoned to the neck, a light grey hat well forward on her head, and mid-grey gloves on her hands. Her sensible shoes, her stockings, and the large, fabric-covered suitcase, which she carried in her right hand, were brown.
She paused for a moment on the step. Women of her age are often near-sighted, but there was nothing in her attitude to suggest this. She had bold, brown, somewhat protuberant eyes, set far apart in her strong face. They were not unlike the eyes of an intelligent horse.
She looked carefully to left and to right. Bond Road was never a bustling thoroughfare. At twelve o’clock on that bright morning of early April it was almost empty. A roadman, sweeping the gutter; a grocer’s delivery boy, pushing his bicycle blindly, nose down in a comic; the postman, on his mid-morning round. All of them were well known to her. She waited to see if the postman had brought her anything, and then set off up the pavement.
In the front parlour of No. 34, a lace curtain parted one inch and closed again. The man sitting on a chair in the bow window reached for the telephone which stood by his hand and dialled.
He heard a click as the receiver was lifted at the other end and said, ‘She’s off. Going west.’ Then he replaced the receiver and lit himself a cigarette. The stubs in the tray beside the telephone suggested that he had been waiting for some time.
At that moment no fewer than twenty-four people, in one way or another, were concentrating their attention on Bond Road and on Mrs Coulman, who lived at No. 35.
‘It’s a carrier service,’ said Superintendent Palance of S Division, who was in charge of the joint operation, ‘and it’s got to be stopped.’ Jimmy Palance was known throughout the Metropolitan Police Force as a fine organiser, a teetotaller, a man entirely lacking in any sense of humour, who worked with a Pawnbrokers’ List and the Holy Bible side by side on his tidy desk.
‘The first problem of a thief who steals valuable and identifiable jewellery is to get rid of it. What does he do with it?’
‘Flogs it?’ suggested Superintendent Haxtell of Q Division.
‘No fence’ll touch it,’ said Superintendent Farmer of X Division. ‘Not while the heat’s on.’
‘Then he hides it,’ said Haxtell. ‘In a safe deposit, or a bank. Crooks do have bank accounts, you know.’
‘Or a cloakroom, or a left-luggage office.’
‘Or with a friend, or at an accommodation address.’
‘Or sealed up in a tin, under the third tree from the corner.’
‘No doubt,’ said Superintendent Palance, raising his heavy black eyebrows, ‘there are a great number of possible hiding-places; I myself have listed twenty-seven distinct types. There may be more. The difficulty is that by the time the thief wishes to recover his loot, he is as often as not himself under observation.’
Neither Haxtell nor Farmer questioned this statement. They knew well enough that it was true. A complicated system of informers almost always gave them the name of the perpetrator of any big and successful burglary. ‘All we then have to arrange is to watch the thief. If he goes near the stuff we will be able to lay hands on the man himself, and his cache, and his receiver.’
‘True,’ said Haxtell. ‘So what does he do?’
‘He gets in touch with Mrs Coulman. And informs her where he has placed the stuff. Gives her the key, or cloakroom ticket, and leaves the rest to her. It is not even necessary to give her the name of the receiver. She knows them all, and gets the best prices. She gets paid in cash, keeps a third, and hands over two-thirds to the author of the crime.’
‘Just like a literary agent,’ said Farmer, who had once written a short story.
‘Sounds quite a woman,’ said Haxtell.
‘She has curious antecedents,’ said Palance. ‘She is German. And I believe, although I’ve not been able to check it, that she and her brothers were in the German Resistance.’
‘The fact that she’s alive proves she was clever,’ agreed Haxtell. ‘Now, I gather you want quite a few men for this. Tell us how you plan to tackle it.’
‘It’s going to be a complicated job,’ said Palance. ‘But here is the outline…’
At the end of the street, after turning into the main road, Mrs Coulman had a choice of transport. She could take a bus going south, or could cross the street and take a bus going north. Or she could walk two hundred yards down the hill to the Underground Station, or an equal distance up it to another. Or she could take a taxi. She was a thick woman of ample Teutonic build, and experience, gained in the last month of observation, had suggested that she would not walk very far.
Near each bus stop a man and girl were talking. Opposite the Underground a pair of workmen sat, drinking endless cups of tea. In a side street two taxis waited, a driving glove over the meter indicating that they were not for hire. A small tradesman’s van, parked in a cul-de-sac, acted as mobile headquarters to this part of the operation. It was backed halfway into a private garage, chosen because it was on the telephone.
Mrs Coulman proceeded placidly to the far end of Bond Road, waited for a gap in the traffic, crossed the main road, and turned up a side road beyond it.
An outburst of intense activity followed.
‘Still going west,’ said the controller in the van. ‘Making for Highside Park. Details one to eight, switch in that direction. Number one car straight up Loudon Road and stop. Number two car parallel. Details nine and ten, cover Highside Tube Station and the bus stops at the top of the hill.’
Mrs Coulman emerged, panting slightly, from the side road which gave onto the top of Highside Hill, paused, and caused consternation in the ranks of her pursuers by turning round and walking back the way she had come.
Control had just worked out the necessary orders to jerk the machine into reverse when it was seen that Mrs Coulman had retraced her steps to admire a flowering shrub in a front garden she had passed. Looking carefully about her to see that no one was watching, she nipped off a small spray and put it in her buttonhole. Then she turned back towards Highside Hill and made, without further check, for the Tube Station.
Details number nine and ten were Detective Sergeants Petrella and Wynne. They were waiting inside the station, at the head of the emergency stairs, and were already equipped with all-day tickets. When Mrs Coulman reached the station entrance, therefore, she found it deserted. She bought a ticket for Euston and took the lift. A young man in corduroys and a raincoat, and an older one in flannel trousers, a windcheater, and a club scarf were already on the platform, waiting for the train. They got into the coaches on either side of her.
Above their heads the machine jerked abruptly into top gear. A word was exchanged with the booking-office clerk and two taxis sped towards Euston.
Mrs Coulman, however, had disconcertingly changed her mind. Euston, Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road—station after station came and went and still she sat on. Her seat had been chosen to command the exits of her own and the two neighbouring carriages. She seemed to take a close interest in the people who got on and off. But if she noticed that the men who had come from Highside were still with her, she gave no sign.
It was nearly half an hour later when she quitted the train at Clapham Common Station and made for the moving staircase, looking neither to right nor to left.
Petrella had time for a quick word with Wynne. ‘It’s my belief the old bitch has rumbled us,’ he said. ‘Get on the blower and bring the rest of the gang down here, as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to keep on her tail.’
This proved easy. Mrs Coulman walked down the street without so much as a backward glance, and disappeared into the saloon bar of The Admiral Keppel public house. Petrella made a detour of the place to ensure that it had no back entrance, and settled down to watch. It could hardly have been better situated for his purpose. The doors of its saloon and public bar opened side by side onto the same strip of pavement. Opposite them stood a sandwich bar, with a telephone.
‘I don’t think we ought to crowd the old girl,’ said Petrella into the telephone. ‘It’s my impression she’s got eyes in the back of her head. If you could send someone—not Wynne, she seen too much of him already this morning—and put a man at either end of the street, so that we don’t have to follow immediately she goes—’
The voice at the other end approved these arrangements. Time passed. Petrella saw Detective Constable Mote ambling down the pavement, and he flagged him in.
‘She’s been there a long time,’ he said. ‘It must be nearly closing time.’
‘Sure she hasn’t come out?’ said Mote.
Petrella looked at his little book. ‘Two business men,’ he said. ‘One youth with a girl-friend, aged about seventeen and skinny. One sailor with a kitbag. That’s the score to date.’
The door of the public bar opened and three men came out and stood talking to the landlord, who seemed to know them. The men went off down the road together, the landlord disappeared inside, and they heard the sound of bolts being shut.
‘Hey,’ said Petrella. ‘What’s all this?’
‘It’s all right. There’s still someone in the saloon bar,’ said Mote. ‘I can see the shadow on the glass. Seems to be knocking her drink back.’
‘Slip across and have a look,’ said Petrella.
Mote crossed the road lower down and strolled up past the ground-glass window of the saloon bar.
‘It’s a woman,’ he reported. ‘Sitting in the corner, drinking. I think the landlord’s trying to turn her out.’
As he spoke the door was flung open and the last of the customers appeared. She was the same shape as Mrs Coulman; but she seemed to have changed her hat and coat, and to have done something to her face, which was now a mottled red.
She stood on the pavement for a moment, while the landlord bolted the door behind her. Then she ploughed off, straight and strong up the street, dipping very slightly as she progressed.
A thin woman coming out of a shop with a basket full of groceries was nearly run down. She saved herself by a quick side step, and said, in reproof, ‘Carnchew look where you’re goin’?’
The massive woman halted, wheeled, and hit the thin woman in the eye. It was a beautiful, coordinated, unconscious movement, as full of grace and power as a backhand passing-shot by a tennis champion at the top of her form.
The thin woman went down, but was up again in a flash. She was no quitter. She kicked her opponent hard on the ankle. A uniformed policeman appeared, closely followed by Sergeant Gwilliam, who had been waiting round the corner and felt that it was time to intervene. The massive woman, thus beset, back-heeled at her first assailant, aimed a swinging blow with a carrier-bag full of bottles at the Constable, missed him, and hit Sergeant Gwilliam.
Some hours later Superintendent Palance said coldly, to Superintendent Haxtell, ‘I take it that Sergeant Petrella is a reliable officer.’
‘I have always found him so,’ said Haxtell, equally coldly.
‘This woman, to whom he seems, at some point, to have transferred his attention, is certainly not Mrs Coulman.’
‘Apparently not,’ said Haxtell. ‘In fact she is a well-known local character called Big Bertha. She is also believed to hold the woman’s drinking records for both draught and bottled beer south of the Thames.’
‘Indeed?’ Superintendent Palance considered the information carefully. ‘There is no possibility, I suppose, that she and Mrs Coulman are leading a double life?’
‘You mean,’ said Haxtell, ‘that the same woman is sometimes the respectable Mrs Coulman of Bond Road, Highside, and sometimes the alcoholic Bertha of Clapham? It’s an attractive idea, but I’m afraid it won’t wash. Bertha’s prison record alone makes it an impossibility. During the month you’ve been watching Mrs Coulman, Bertha has, I’m afraid, appeared no less than four times in the Southwark Magistrates Court.’
‘In that case,’ said Palance reasonably, ‘since the lady under observation was Mrs Coulman when she started, Sergeant Petrella must have slipped up at some point.’
‘I agree,’ said Haxtell. ‘But where?’
‘That is for him to explain.’
‘It’s a stark impossibility,’ said Petrella, later that day. ‘I know it was Mrs Coulman when she went into the pub. There’s no back entrance. I mean that, literally. It’s a sort of penthouse, built onto the front of the block. The landlord himself has to come out of one of the bar doors when he leaves. And our local people say he’s perfectly reliable. They’ve got nothing against him at all.’
‘Could she have done a quick-change act? Is there a ladies’ lavatory, or some place like that?’
‘Yes. There’s a lavatory. And she could have gone into it, and changed into other clothes which she had ready in her suitcase. It’s all right as a theory. It’s when you try to turn it into fact that it gets difficult. I saw nine people coming out of that pub. The first two were business types from the saloon bar. The landlord didn’t know them, but they seemed to know each other. And anyway they just dropped in for a whisky and out again. Then there was a boy and girl in the public bar. They held hands most of the time and didn’t weigh much more than nine stone nothing apiece.’
‘None of them sounds very likely,’ agreed Haxtell. ‘And the three workmen were local characters, or so I gather. That leaves the woman and the sailor.’
‘Right,’ said Petrella. ‘And since we know that the woman wasn’t Mrs Coulman, it leaves the sailor. He was broadly the right size and shape and weight, and he was the only one carrying anything. Thinking it over, one can see that’s significant. He had a kitbag over his shoulder.’
‘Just how is a suitcase turned into a kitbag?’
‘That part wouldn’t be too difficult. The suitcase could easily be a sham. A fabric cover round a collapsible frame, which would fold up to almost nothing and go inside the kitbag with the wig and hat and coat and the rest of the stuff.’
‘Where did the kitbag come from? Oh, I see. She would have had it inside the suitcase. One wave of the wand and a large woman with a large suitcase turns into a medium-sized sailor with a kitbag.’
‘Right,’ said Petrella. ‘And there’s only one drawback. The sailor was a man, not a woman at all.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely and completely sure,’ said Petrella. ‘He crossed the road and passed within a few feet of me. He was wearing bell-bottom trousers and a dark blue sweater. There are certain anatomical differences, you know. And Mrs Coulman was a very womanly woman.’
‘A queenly figure,’ agreed Haxtell. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘It’s not only that,’ said Petrella. ‘A woman might get away with being dressed as a man on the stage. Or seen from a distance or from behind. But not in broad daylight, face to face in the street. A man’s hair grows in quite a different way, and his ears are bigger, and—’
‘All right,’ said Haxtell. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He paused and added, ‘Palance thinks you fell asleep on the job, and Mrs Coulman slipped out when you weren’t looking.’
‘I know,’ said Petrella. An awkward silence ensued.
Petrella said, ‘Will they keep up the watch?’
‘I should think they’d lay off her a bit,’ said Haxtell. ‘It’s an expensive job, immobilising a couple of dozen men. And a dinosaur would be suspicious after yesterday’s performance. I should think they’d let her run for a bit. There’s no reason you shouldn’t keep your eyes open, though—unofficially.’
Petrella devoted what time he could spare in the next six weeks to his self-appointed task. His landlady’s married sister had a house in Bond Road, so he spent a lot of time in her front parlour and, after dark, prowling round No. 35, the end house on the other side of the road. He also made friends with the booking-clerks at Highside Station and Pond End Station; and spent an interesting afternoon in the German Section of the Foreign Office.
‘One thing’s clear enough,’ he said to Haxtell. ‘When she’s on the job, she starts on the Underground. Taxis and buses are too easy to follow. If you go by Underground, the pursuit has got to come down with you. Or guard the exit of every Underground Station in London simultaneously, which is a stark impossibility. Anyway, I know that’s what she does. She’s been seen half a dozen times leaving Highside Station, carrying that trick suitcase. She books to any old station. She’s only got to pay the difference at the other end. She’s a bit more cautious, too, after that last fiasco. She won’t get onto the train if there’s any other passenger she can’t account for on the platform. Sometimes she’s let three or four trains go past.’
Haxtell reflected on all this, and said, ‘It seems a pretty watertight system to me. How do you suggest we break in on it?’
‘Well, I think we’ve got to take a chance,’ said Petrella. ‘In theory it’d be safer with a lot of people, but actually, I don’t think it would work at all. That kind can always spot organised opposition. There’s just a chance, if you’d let two or three of us try it, next time we get word that she’s likely to be busy—’
‘We’ll see,’ said Haxtell.
Three nights after these words were spoken, on a Saturday, the redoubtable twin brothers, Jack and Sidney Ponting, made entry into Messrs. Alfrey’s West End establishment by forcing the skylight of an adjacent building, picking three separate locks, cutting their way through an eighteen-inch brick wall, and blowing the lock neatly out of the door of the new Alfrey strong room. When the staff arrived on Monday they found a mess of brickwork and twisted steel. The losses included sixty-four large rough diamonds deposited by a Greek ship-owner. They were to have formed the nuptial head-dress of his South American bride.
‘It’s a Ponting job,’ said Superintendent Palance. ‘It’s got their registered trade mark all over it. Get after them quick. They’re probably hiding up.’
But the Pontings were not hiding. They were at home, and in bed. They raised no objection to a search of their premises.
‘It’s irregular,’ said Sidney. ‘But what have we got to hide?’
‘You boys have got your job to do,’ said Jack. ‘Get it finished, and we can get on with our breakfast.’
Palance came up to see Haxtell.
‘They certainly did it. They most certainly did it. Equally certainly they’ve dumped the diamonds. And none of them has reached a receiver yet, I’m sure of that. And the Pontings use Mrs Coulman.’
‘Yes,’ said Haxtell. ‘Well, we must hope to do better this time.’
‘Are you set on trying it on your own?’
Palance held the same rank as Haxtell. But he was longer in service, and older in experience. Haxtell thought of these things and paused. He was well aware of the responsibility he was shouldering, and which he could so easily evade. Then he said,
‘I really think the only way is to try it ourselves, quietly.’
‘All right,’ said Palance. He didn’t add, ‘And on your own head be it.’ He was never a man to waste words.
Four days followed, during which Petrella attended to his other duties as well as he could by day, and prowled round the curtilage of No. 35 Bond Road by night. Four days in which Sergeant Gwilliam, Wilmot, and Mote were never out of reach of a telephone; and Superintendent Haxtell sweated.
On the fifth night Petrella gave the signal: Tomorrow’s the day. And at eleven o’clock next morning, sure enough, the front door opened and Mrs Coulman peered forth. She was wearing her travelling coat and hat, and grasped in her muscular hand was the fabric-covered suitcase.
She walked ponderously down the road. However acute her suspicions may have been, there was nothing for them to feed on. For it is a fact that at that moment no one was watching her at all.
Ten minutes later she was purchasing a ticket at Highside Station. The entrance to the station was deserted. She waited placidly for the lift.
The lift and Sergeant Gwilliam arrived simultaneously. He was dressed as a workman, and he seemed to be in a hurry. He bought a ticket to the Elephant and Castle and got into the lift beside Mrs Coulman. In silence, and avoiding each other’s eye, they descended to platform level. In silence they waited for the train.
When the train arrived, Sergeant Gwilliam hesitated. He seemed to have an eye on Mrs Coulman’s movements. They approached the train simultaneously. At the very last moment Mrs Coulman stopped. Sergeant Gwilliam went on, the doors closed, and the train disappeared bearing the Sergeant with it.
Mrs Coulman returned to her seat on the platform and waited placidly. By the time the next train arrived, the only other occupants of the platform were three schoolgirls. Mrs Coulman got into the train, followed by the schoolgirls. Two stations later the schoolgirls got off. Mrs Coulman, from her customary seat beside the door, watched them go.
Thereafter, as the train ran south, she observed a succession of people getting on and off. There were three people she did not see. Petrella, with Mote and Wilmot, had entered the train at the station before her. Sergeant Gwilliam’s planned diversion had given them plenty of time to get there. Petrella was in the first and the other two were in the last carriages of the train.
It was at Balham that Mrs Coulman finally emerged. Two women with shopping-bags, who had joined her carriage at Leicester Square, went with her. Also a commercial traveller with samples, whom she had watched join the next carriage at the Oval.
Petrella, Mote, and Wilmot all saw her go, but it was no part of their plan to follow her, so they sat tight.
At the next stop, all three of them raced for the moving stairs, hurled themselves into the street, and found a taxi.
‘I’m off duty,’ said the taxi-driver.
‘Now you’re on again,’ said Petrella, and showed him his warrant card. ‘Get us back to Balham Station, as quick as you can.’
The taxi-driver blinked, but complied. Petrella had his eye on his watch.
‘She’s had four minutes start,’ he said, as they bundled out. ‘You know what to do. Take every pub in your sector. And get a move on.’
The three men separated. There is no lack of public houses in that part of South London, but Petrella calculated that if they worked outwards from the station, taking a sector each, they could cover most of them quite quickly. It was the riskiest part of the scheme, but he could think of no way to avoid it.
He himself found her.
She was sitting quietly in the corner of the saloon bar of The Gatehouse, a big, newish establishment at the junction of the High Street and Trinity Road.
There was no convenient snack bar this time; there was very little cover at all. The best he could find was a trolley-bus shelter. If he stood behind it, it did at least screen him from the door.
The minutes passed, and added up to a quarter of an hour. Then to half an hour. During that time two people had gone in and three had come out, but none of them had aroused Petrella’s interest. He knew, more or less, what he was looking for.
At last the door opened and a man emerged. He was a thick well set-up man, dressed in a close-fitting flannel suit which was tight enough across the shoulders and round the chest to exhibit his athletic frame. And he was carrying a small canvas bag of a type that athletes use to hold their sports gear.
He turned left, and swung off down the pavement with an unmistakable, aggressive masculine stride, a mature bull of the human herd, confident of his strength and purpose.
Petrella let him have the length of the street, and then trotted after him. This was where he had to be very careful. What he mostly needed was help. The chase swung back past the Underground and there he spotted Wilmot and signalled him across.
‘In the grey flannel suit, carrying a bag,’ he said. ‘See him? Then get right after him, and remember, he’s got eyes in the back of his head.’
Wilmot grinned all over his guttersnipe face. He was imaginatively dressed in a teddy-boy suit, and he fitted into the South London streets as easily as a rabbit into a warren.
‘Doanchew worry,’ he said, ‘I won’t lose him.’
Petrella fell back until he was a hundred yards behind Wilmot. He kept his eyes open for Mote. The more of them the merrier. There was a long, hard chase ahead.
He noticed Wilmot signalling.
‘Gone in there,’ said Wilmot.
‘Where?’
‘Small shop. Bit of the way up the side street.’
Petrella considered. ‘Walk past,’ he said. ‘Take a note of the name and number on the shop. Go straight on, out of sight, to the other end. If he goes that way, you can pick him up. If he comes back I’ll take him.’
Ten minutes went by. Petrella thought anxiously about back exits. But you couldn’t guard against everything.
Then the man reappeared. He was carrying the same bag, yet it looked different. Less bulky but, by the swing of it, heavier.
He’s dumped the hat and coat and the remains of the suitcase at that accommodation address, thought Petrella. Even if we lose him, we know one of the Ponting hide-outs. But we mustn’t lose him. That bag’s got several thousand pounds’ worth of stolen jewellery in it now.
Would it be best to arrest him, and give up any chance of tracing the receiver? The temptation was almost overmastering. Only one thing stopped him. His quarry was moving with much greater freedom, as if convinced that there was no danger. Near the end of the run he would get cautious again. For the moment there was nothing to do but follow.
The man plunged back in the Underground; emerged at Waterloo; joined the queue at the Suburban Booking-Office. Petrella kept well clear for he owned a ticket which enabled him to travel anywhere on the railway.
Waterloo was a station whose layout he knew well. By positioning himself at the central bookstall, he could watch all three exits. His quarry had bought, and was eating, a meat pie. Petrella was quite unconscious of hunger. His eyes were riveted on the little bag, swinging heavily from the man’s large fist. Once he put it down, but it was only to get out more money to buy an orange, which he peeled and ate neatly, depositing the remains in one of the refuse bins. Then he picked up the bag again and made for his train.
It was the electric line for Staines and Windsor. He went through the barrier and walked slowly up the train. There were very few passengers about, and it must have been near enough empty. He walked along the platform and climbed into a carriage at the far end.
Some instinct restrained Petrella. There were still five minutes before the train left. He waited. Three minutes later the man emerged from the carriage, walked very slowly back down the train, glancing into each carriage as he passed, and got into the carriage nearest to the barrier. The guard blew his whistle.
Two girls who had been sauntering towards the barrier broke into a run—Petrella ran with them. They pushed through the gate. The guard blew his whistle again; they jerked open the door of the nearest carriage and tumbled in together.
‘We nearly left that too late,’ said one of the girls. Her friend agreed with her. Petrella thought that they couldn’t have timed it better. But he didn’t say so. He was prepared to agree with everything they said. It was the quickest way he knew of getting on with people.
The girls were prepared to enjoy his company too. The dark vivacious one was called Beryl and the quieter mousy one was Doreen. They lived at Staines.
‘Where are you getting out?’ asked Beryl. ‘Or is that a secret?’
‘I haven’t made my mind up yet,’ said Petrella.
Beryl said he was a case. Doreen agreed.
The train ambled through dim-forgotten places like Feltham and Ashford. No one got out and no one got in. Petrella heard about a dance, and what had gone on afterwards in the car park. He said he was sorry he didn’t live at Staines. It sounded quite a place.
‘It’s all right in summer,’ said Doreen. ‘It’s a dump in winter. Here we are.’
The train drew up.
‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’ said Beryl.
‘Perhaps I will, at that,’ said Petrella. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that his man had got out and was making his way along the platform.
‘You’d better hurry up then. They’ll take you on to Windsor.’
‘That’d never do,’ said Petrella. ‘I forgot to warn her that I was coming.’
‘Who?’ said Doreen.
‘The Queen.’
His man was safely past the ticket collector now.
‘Come on,’ said Beryl. They went past the collector together. ‘Wouldn’t you like some tea? There’s a good place in the High Street.’
‘There’s nothing I’d like better, but I think I see my uncle waving to me.’
The girls stared at him. Petrella manœuvred himself across the open yard, keeping the girls between him and his quarry. The man had set off up the road without, apparently, so much as a backward glance, but Petrella knew that the most difficult part of the chase was at hand.
‘I don’t see your uncle,’ said Beryl.
‘There he is. Sitting in that taxi.’
‘That’s just the taxi-driver. I don’t believe he’s your uncle at all.’
‘Certainly he is. How are you keeping, uncle?’
‘Very fit, thank you,’ said the taxi-driver, a middle-aged man with a brown bald head.
‘There you are,’ said Petrella. ‘I’ll have to say good-bye now. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Family business.’
The girls hesitated, and then withdrew, baffled.
‘You a policeman?’ said the taxi-driver. ‘A detective something?’
‘As a matter of fact, I am.’
‘Following that man in the light suit? I thought as much. Very pretty, the way you got behind those girls. As good as a book.’
His quarry was now halfway up the long, straight empty road, which leads from Staines Station to the riverside. He had stopped to light a cigarette, and in stopping he half turned.
‘Keep behind my cab,’ said the driver. ‘That’s right, well down. He’s getting nervous. I’d say he’s not far from wherever it is he’s going to. Good as a book, isn’t it? Do you read detective stories?’
The man was walking on again now. He was a full three hundred yards away.
‘I don’t want to lose him,’ said Petrella. ‘Not now. I’ve come a long way with him.’
‘You leave it to me,’ said the cab-driver. ‘I’ve been driving round here for forty years. There isn’t a footpath I don’t know blindfold. Just watch which way he turns at the end.’
‘Turning right,’ said Petrella.
‘All aboard.’ The taxi shot out of the station yard, and the driver turned round in his seat to say, ‘Might be making for the High Street, but if he wanted the High Street, why not take a bus from the other platform? Ten to one he’s for the ferry.’
‘I say, look out for that dog,’ said Petrella.
The driver slewed back in his seat. Said, ‘Effie Muggridge’s poodle. Asking for trouble,’ and accelerated. The dog shot to safety with a squeal of rage.
‘Got to do this bit carefully,’ said the driver as they reached the corner. ‘Keep right down. Don’t show so much as the tip of your nose, now.’
Petrella obeyed. The taxi rounded the corner, and over it, in a wave, flowed the unmistakable smell of the river on a hot day—weed and water and tar and boat varnish.
‘He’s in the ferry,’ said the driver. ‘Got his back to you. You can come up for air now.’
Petrella saw that a ferry punt ran from the steps beside a public house. There were three passengers on her, standing cheek by jowl, and the ferryman was untying and pushing out. He realised how hopeless he would have been on his own.
‘What do we do?’ he said.
‘Over the road bridge, and back down the other side. Plenty of time, if we hurry.’
‘What were we doing just now?’
The driver chuckled throatily. Petrella held his breath and counted ten, slowly. Then they were crossing Staines Bridge.
‘Not much traffic just now,’ said the driver. ‘You ought to see it at weekends.’ They did a skid turn to the left, and drew up in the yard of another riverside inn.
‘There’s two things he could do,’ said the driver. ‘Walk up the towpath to the bridge. There’s no way off it. Or he could come down the path—you see the stile?—the one that comes out there. I’ll watch the stile. You go through that gate and down the garden—I know the man who owns it. He won’t mind. You can see the towpath from his summer-house. If you hear my horn, come back quick.’
With a feeling that some power much stronger than himself had taken charge, Petrella opened a gate and walked down a well-kept garden, full of pinks and roses and stone dwarfs with pointed hats. At the bottom was a summer-house. In the summer-house he found a small girl reading a book.
‘Are you coming to tea?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Petrella. ‘I might be going to the cinema.’
‘You’ll have to hurry then. The big film starts in five minutes.’
Behind him a hooter sounded off.
‘I’ll run then,’ said Petrella. He scooted back up the garden. The girl never raised her eyes from her book.
‘Just come out,’ said the taxi-driver. ‘Going nicely. We’ll give him twenty yards. Can’t afford too much leeway here. Tricky navigation.’
He drove slowly towards the turning, and stopped just short of it.
‘Better hop out and look,’ he said. ‘But be careful. He’s stopped twice already to blow his nose. We’re getting pretty warm.’
Petrella inched up to the corner, and poked his head round the wall. The man was going away from him, walking along the pavement, but slowly. It was an area of bungalows, some on the road, some on the river bank, with a network of private ways between.
The taxi-driver had got out and was breathing down the back of his neck.
‘Got to take a chance,’ he said. ‘If we follow him, he’ll spot us for sure. I’ll stay here. If he turns right, I’ll mark it. If he turns left he’s for Riverside Drive. You nip down that path, and you can cut him off.’
Petrella took the path. It ran between high hedges of dusty bramble and thorn; hot and sweet-smelling in the sun. It was the dead middle of the afternoon, with hardly a dog stirring. Petrella broke into a jog trot, then slowed for the road ahead.
As he reached the corner, he heard footsteps on the pavement. Their beat was unmistakable. It was his man, and he was walking straight towards him.
Petrella looked round for cover and saw none. He thought for a moment of diving into the shallow ditch, but realised that he would merely be attracting attention. The footsteps had stopped. Petrella held his breath. He heard the click of a latch. Feet on flagstones. The sudden purring of an electric bell.
The chase was over.
‘I’m not saying,’ said Palance, ‘that it wasn’t a success. It was a success. Yes.’
Haxtell said nothing. He knew just how Palance was feeling and sympathised with him.
‘We’ve got back the Alfrey diamonds, and we’ve got our hands on that man at Staines. An insurance broker, of all things, and quite unsuspected. Judging from what we found in the false bottom of a punt in his boat-house he’s been receiving stolen goods for years. And we’ve stopped up one of the Ponting middlemen at that tobacconist’s in Balham. A little more pressure and we may shop the Pontings, too.’
‘Quite,’ said Haxtell sympathetically.
‘All the same, it was a mad way to do it. You can’t get over that, Haxtell. How long have you known that Coulman was a man?’
‘We realised that as soon as we started to think about it,’ said Haxtell. ‘It was obviously impossible for a real, middle-aged buxom woman to turn into a convincing man. But, conversely, it was easy enough for a man dressed as a woman, padded and powdered and wigged, to whip it all off and turn back quickly into his own self.’
‘Then do you mean to say,’ said Palance, ‘that the Mrs Coulman my men were watching for a month—doing her shopping, gossiping, hanging out her washing, having tea with the vicar—was really a man all the time?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Haxtell. Observing symptoms of apoplexy, he said, ‘That was Mrs Coulman. She had a brother—two, actually. One was killed by the Nazis. The other one got over to England. Whenever she had a big job on hand, her brother would come along at night. The house she lived in was at the end of the row. There was a way in at the side. He could slip in late at night without anyone seeing him. Next day he’d dress up in his sister’s coat and hat and go out and do the job. She stayed quietly at home.’
‘When you realised this,’ said Palance, ‘wouldn’t it have been better to do the job properly? You could have had a hundred men if necessary.’
‘It wouldn’t have worked. Not a chance. You can’t beat a methodical man like Coulman by being more methodical. He’ll outdo you every time. The Underground, the change of clothes, the careful train check before he started for Staines, the long straight road, and the ferry. What you want with a man like that is luck—and imagination.’
‘Yes, but—’ said Palance.
‘Method, ingenuity, system,’ said Superintendent Haxtell. ‘You’ll never beat a German at his own game. Look at the Gestapo. They tried for five years and even they couldn’t pull it off. The one thing they lacked was imagination. Perhaps it was a good thing. A little imagination, and they might have caused a lot more bother.’