Chapter Eleven

Interest In Ruth Endicott

 

“May I say this, sir,” said Owen, after he had waited for Roger to finish on the telephone, “that I very much appreciate the chance you’ve given me, and I’ll do all I can to justify it.”

“May I say this,” said Roger, drily, “you wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t think you had the qualifications for this particular job. And according to your Superintendent, you’ve probably got the guts, too.” Roger picked up the telephone nearer him, said: “Keep all calls away from me for ten minutes, will you?” and put the receiver down with a bang. “Sit down, Owen—Cyril Owen, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t have to take the job I’m offering you,” said Roger, “and I don’t want you to take it unless you feel there’s a fifty-fifty chance of pulling it off. In the first place, it’s bloody dangerous.”

“If it’s this shop robbery job, I can see that.”

“That’s the job,” said Roger, and looked the young man up and down. Owen was probably in the late twenties; Roger hadn’t checked that yet. He was lean, with a rather lantern jaw, and cheeks which sank in a little; his lips were full, if anything a trifle over-full, perhaps faintly Jewish. He had big, very clear, chestnut brown eyes, and reddish hair. Had he been introduced as a University don, Roger would not have been surprised; he had that kind of look about him, but his voice rather spoiled the impression, being a little rough and slightly nasal. “Now here’s a question only you can answer. How do you get on with women?”

Owen exclaimed: “With women?”

“Do they fall for those big eyes?”

Owen gulped. “I—er—I see what you mean, sir. Well, I’ve never regarded myself as Don Juan, but I can’t complain at being left out in the cold.” He coloured. “As a matter of fact, on the whole I think I’m quite a success with the ladies.”

“Good. Remember how we found the man Endicott, who murdered Mrs. Stone?”

“Very well, sir.”

“See any pictures of his widow?”

“There was a whole page of them in the Weekly Revel,” Owen said. “She’s quite an eyeful. Everywhere, I should imagine!”

“Her husband was probably murdered to stop him from talking, or to make sure he couldn’t give the game away. I’ve never been satisfied that she told me all she could about his friends. I’d like someone to try to find out, but if she knows it’s a policeman, she’ll dry right up. I’ve had some. I’ve also had authority from the Assistant Commissioner to offer you the job of getting to know her, and trying to find out what she knows. If her husband’s murderers find out what you’re doing, they might cut your throat, and they might cut hers. See what I mean by dangerous?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you feel about it?”

Owen looked at Roger very steadily for what seemed a long time, then said with great deliberation: “Can I have a night to think about it, sir?”

“Yes,” said Roger at once. “But you aren’t to say a word to anyone about the job or anything I’ve told you about it.”

“No, sir.”

“Want to know anything else?”

“I don’t think that there’s anything else I need to know unless I’m going on with the job,” said Owen. “I hope you won’t think I’m being over-cautious …”

“A chance to sleep on it is a good idea,” Roger said. “Right—I’ll see you in the morning. Go down to the Map Room meanwhile, and ask the D.I. there to let you help sticking in pins on the shop robberies and the shop robbery potential. You’ll get a clearer idea of the kind of problem we’re up against.”

Owen was wise to take the cautious attitude, of course, but if he was over-cautious on the job, he might miss a big chance if it came. Roger shrugged the disquiet away. He went downstairs and along to that section of the Criminal Investigation Department which was devoted to women officers. Chief Inspector Ethel Winstanley was an old friend of his, and it didn’t surprise him that as soon as he entered, she rang the bell for tea; and when tea was on the desk, with two fragile bone china cups, she said: “Milk, no sugar, and you want someone to find out where Jim Stone goes, don’t you?”

“Bellew been bellowing?” Roger inquired.

“Loud enough,” answered Ethel Winstanley. She was a stocky, square-shouldered woman who had come into prominence during the Cyprus troubles when she had been out in the island to help the military police, for she had a good knowledge of Greek and of Turkish. No one knew quite what strings she had pulled to get into the Metropolitan Police, but once in, her career had been almost sensational. “I think I’ve just the girl for you, Superintendent, and I’ve been thinking about the best way for her to go about it.”

Roger sipped his tea.

“This gets better and better,” he said. “Did anyone happen to mention the possibility of flick knives and blunt instruments?”

“I think the girl I have in mind should pose as a sob sister on one of the lesser-known women’s magazines,” said Ethel, without answering the question. “I can fix it with the Home Talk editor, and I’m pretty sure this man Stone will simply say no when she first asks him for a heart-throb story. But if he sees her following him about, he won’t be too surprised.”

Roger took a long drink of his tea, put the cup down, and said: “She’s my girl, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Her job is to watch Stone, and tell us where he disappears to, to make a complete log of his movements. Her job is not to attempt to find the murderer of Endicott or Gantry.”

“She’s a sensible girl and she won’t want her throat cut,” Ethel Winstanley said. “I don’t know whether you’ve met her before. I’m thinking of Detective Sergeant Dawson.”

“I know her,” Roger said. “The Plain Jane who helped with that gold smuggling job last year. Is she handy?”

“I can send for her.”

“I want to read her the riot act on what she can and can’t do,” Roger said. “But I’ll have another cup of tea, first.” He finished the tea, and a few minutes afterwards Detective Sergeant Dawson was summoned. He had called her Plain Jane, and there was a lot of justification for it; no one would ever call her attractive insofar as attractiveness meant beauty, but she had quite a figure, nice legs, very nice hands, and if her nose was a bit lumpy and her mouth too full and plummy, there was intelligence and humour in her clear blue eyes.

Roger read his riot act.

“I will follow your instructions closely, sir,” promised Bella Dawson. “If there is the slightest indication of physical danger, I shall send for male help.”

Her eyes weren’t actually twinkling.

Ethel Winstanley’s were.

 

On the following morning, a little after ten o’clock, James Stone returned to the shop in Kemp Road, Clapham. He had not given Airs. Klein or Gwen, the assistant, any warning, and Gwen was there alone, making up orders, her cluster of auburn curls quite lovely as she bent over her order book; she was a little short-sighted. She looked up quickly as the door opened, started, and said: “Mr. Stone!”

“Hallo, Gwen,” Stone said. “Is Mrs. Klein in?”

“She isn’t this morning, as a matter of fact,” said Gwen, “she’s gone to get her hair done.”

“She’s done what?”

“She’s gone to get her hair done, it was ever so greasy, and I’m quite all right—”

Stone said harshly: “I don’t want either of you to be alone in this shop again—ever. If I’m not here, get a neighbour, or hire someone else, but don’t stay here alone. Understand that?”

“I—I’m perfectly all right, Mr. Stone,” Gwen protested.

He stared at her, and he thought: “That’s what Mabel believed.” He was always thinking about Mabel, blaming himself for ever leaving her alone, and hating himself for what he had allowed to happen to her and to the unborn child. There were so many things he wished he had done during their marriage, the many things she would have liked, the places she would have visited; but he had always been so careful, so anxious to save. Now he had plenty of money, all the money he could want, and no one to share it with, and the feeling that in a way he had robbed Mabel.

It hurt to think of her.

It had been like a savage torture in the early days, when he had talked to West, fighting for self control, somehow making it appear as if he were taking the loss well, actually aflame with anger and hatred. Then West had said something which had stung him into saying that he would hunt the murderer down, and that had eased his tension and his agony. Nothing else did. He could not talk to his mother, to Gwen, or to anyone; but he could make promises to Mabel almost as if she were alive.

“I’ll make them pay for it, Mab.”

“Don’t worry, pet, I’ll kill them for killing you.”

“I’ll kill the devils, Mab.”

After the discovery of the murderer’s body, he had been stunned, and for a few hours the hurt of Mabel’s loss had been greater than ever, but then his thoughts had carried him to a different mood; a newspaper, he did not remember which one, had first suggested that Endicott had been murdered to stop him from talking, and implied that there was a gang involved – a gang of men organised to go round to rob shopkeepers, to attack and to murder defenceless women.

And the police did nothing.

Stone felt no personal animosity towards West; in fact he rather liked West. But he also sensed that there was nothing that the Yard man could do to help him. As he had told West, he had spent days at the local library looking up back copies of newspapers, and had been amazed and appalled by the number of attacks on shopkeepers which were reported and the few which seemed to be solved by the police. The determination to search for the murderer of Endicott, and so for the real murderer of Mabel, had come slowly, yet once he had accepted the need, it seemed a normal, natural objective. It did not matter what it cost, he must find the man who had killed Endicott. He could spend everything he had, all Mabel’s money, on seeking vengeance.

He had seen his mother only once since the funeral, and had a bitter quarrel because she had obviously seen Mabel’s death as a good thing for him; she had never liked Mabel, and never understood his love for her.

The newspapers helped in his task, chiefly the Globe, the paper which had employed the clever artist. The Globe had told the story of Endicott’s death “through the eyes of his lonely widow” and he had read that closely and then read everything he could find about this woman, Ruth Endicott. By far the biggest and most informative article had been in a popular weekly magazine, the Home Talk. That had concentrated on her face, and she was quite nice looking, and on her figure; it had shown pictures of her in bathing suits, bikinis, almost in nothing at all. The captions had meant little, but reading between the lines Stone had come to one conclusion.

Endicott’s widow must know who had employed her husband, and therefore who had killed him.

So Stone had set out to get to know Ruth Endicott, so that he could learn everything she could tell him. He knew exactly what he had to do, and he also understood the dangers. If those employers knew that he was interested in her, then they were quite ruthless enough to kill her as they had her husband; or to kill him. It had to be something very clever, something which no one would suspect; he had to make the woman’s acquaintance soon, but quite naturally.

Then he thought: “I wonder where she shops?”

One of his tasks had been to go to the neighbourhood where she lived – that sordid, squalid part of the East End – without being recognised, for his photograph had been in all the newspapers. The answer to that had come simply and, like the answer to everything else, quite logically. He must disguise himself. The simple way was to wear a beard. No one was committing a crime by doing that. He could get one from a theatrical make-up place, what did they call them? – theatrical costumiers. He could have one fitted, could find out how it was done, could pretend that he was going to take part in some amateur theatricals. They wouldn’t care what he was going to do with the beard, all they would want was the sale.

It had cost ten guineas. When he fitted it on, it altered his appearance completely, and there was no risk of anyone recognising him unless they knew him well. With it, he could go where he liked in the Whitechapel district, and the first time he went there – without saying a word to anyone – he concentrated on finding out where Ruth Endicott shopped, especially where she bought her groceries and oddment shopping.

It did not take him long to find out that she patronised two places.

Once he knew that, the next step was quite logical and quite natural; he had to buy one of the shops.