Black Ship (20 page)

“Not much hope of that, Sergeant,” Warren put in with his accustomed gloom. “We’ve talked to every servant in the Circle, and you can bet they’re all comparing notes by now. However careful we’ve been, they’ll have a good idea of what it’s all about.”

“In any case,” said Daisy, “I should think Alec’s more likely to send you to do it, Tom. He doesn’t like the Bennetts any better than I do, and I expect they know it. Not that he’d let his dislike get in the way of the truth, but if he disbelieves them, they might make a fuss and start spreading nasty rumours about prejudice.”

“Sounds to me like they’ll do that anyway,” said Warren.

“Probably, but there’s no point adding fuel to the flames. One thing’s certain: Whatever they claim to have seen will be aimed at making trouble for someone. That’s what they live for. Don’t you think you should have a go at him, Tom?”

“It’s for the Chief to decide. In the meantime, now that I’ve talked to the Jessup household, I’ve a few questions for you, Mrs. Fletcher, before we go back to the Yard to report to him.”

“That was Alec I talked to on the phone just now, and he said he’s on his way here.” Daisy sighed. “He wants to ask me questions, too. So, since I’m so popular at the moment, why don’t we just wait till he arrives? We can have a cup of tea while we wait.”

She was pouring second cups all round when the front doorbell rang again. Elsie ushered in DC Ardmore. He looked somewhat nonplussed at finding himself in the middle of a tea party.

“Do sit down, Mr. Ardmore,” Daisy invited.

“Another cup, madam?” asked the parlour maid resignedly.

“Yes, please, Elsie, and some more hot water.”

“I telephoned in, Sarge,” Ardmore told Mackinnon, “and they told me the chief inspector left a message to meet him here.”

“That’s right. Any luck?”

“Depends how you look at it. No one at the Hampstead station recognised the passport photo. Me and a couple of the uniformed lads covered Well Walk, Flask Walk, and the High Street and we found four people who thought they might have seen him. Only not a one of ’em would swear to it, and they didn’t know anything about him anyway, just seen him about. We went to a couple of hotels and lodging houses, but no luck there. It’ll take more time or more men to check everywhere in the area.”

“And he could be staying anywhere,” said Tom. “Doesn’t have to be Hampstead. I expect we’ll have to circulate the picture to all stations. Go on.”

“The other American, your friend Lambert, Mrs. Fletcher—lots of people recognised the description, and the woman at the newsagent’s told me where he lodges. So I went along there and had a chat with the landlady—it’s a widow who lets out a couple of rooms. Hodge is the name.”

“He wasn’t there?” Mackinnon asked.

“No, nor he didn’t come in last night,” Ardmore said with heavy significance.

“She doesn’t know where he went?”

“No, but she does say he’s often away for a night or two,” the detective constable conceded, “so she wasn’t worried. She says she doesn’t usually let to foreigners, but he speaks English quite well, and he’s a nice young chap. Keeps his room tidy and very helpful about the place when he’s home.”

“That sounds like Lambert all right,” said Daisy. “Did he tell Mrs. Hodge why he’s here? In England?”

“It seems he said he’s in the import business and looking for suppliers.”

Daisy laughed. “It’s true, in a way.” She didn’t know how much of Lambert’s clandestine mission Alec had entrusted to the others, so she didn’t explain that he was in the business of preventing imports and looking for the suppliers of bootleggers.

The coincidences really were too much to swallow: A Prohibition agent who was interested in a wine merchant who was visited by a mysterious American who turned up dead a hundred yards from his house. Although Daisy couldn’t see Lambert as a cold-blooded killer, she couldn’t forget the irresponsible way he had waved his gun around at their first meeting, when she and Alec were in the States. Yet if anyone was going to get bumped off, an agent of the law seemed the most likely victim.

Into the middle of a discussion of which she hadn’t heard a word, Daisy dropped the question: “What if Lambert has been murdered, too?”

Everyone stared at her in silence.

Tom was first to recover. “Have you any reason to think he might be?”

“Alec didn’t tell you why he came to England?”

“Not just to visit you and see the sights, I take it.”

“No. Oh dear, if Alec didn’t, I’d better not. I can tell you that Lambert seemed to think it was a dangerous business. He even tried to smuggle a gun into the country. Well, not exactly smuggle, because he apparently didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to have one, and he was quite upset when Customs took it away. Admittedly, he’s given to exaggeration for the sake of excitement, but still, it does seem to me possible that he could be another victim.”

As she spoke the last few words, the dining room door opened and Alec came in, with DC Ross on his heels.

“Who could be another victim?” Alec asked sharply.

“Lambert. He’s disappeared, darling!”

“Not exactly disappeared,” Ardmore protested. “We found his lodgings, sir, and it’s true he didn’t come home last night, but his landlady said he often goes away for a few days.”

Alec sat down at the table and motioned to Ross to do likewise. “Lodgings?” he said. “A private house, not a flat or a hotel?”

“A furnished room, sir, let by the week. He’s paid up to the end of next week.”

“What’s the landlady like?”

“Uh, fiftyish, grey hair—”

With an impatient gesture, Alec said, “Her character, Constable! Is she likely to allow you to search Lambert’s room without a fuss? And preferably without telling all her neighbours.”

“Yes to the search, sir. She was quite friendly and helpful. About the neighbours, I dunno. She didn’t seem like the gossipy sort, but you never can tell with women. Oh, she did say she was glad I wasn’t in uniform, because she wouldn’t want people to know she’d had the police in the house.”

“Right-oh. Do your best to impress upon her that it’s best to keep quiet, and also that we have no reason to suspect Lambert of any wrongdoing. We’re just concerned for his safety.”

“Oh, darling, do you really think—?”

“You’re the one who started this hare, Daisy. We have to chase it.”

Ardmore stood up. “So you want me to search his room, sir? What’m I looking for? A gun?”

“Great Scott no! At least, I sincerely hope not, but if you find one, you’ll confiscate it, of course. No, see if he’s taken his toothbrush with him. If he has, we can stop worrying.”

“And if he hasn’t?” Daisy asked.

“Then we’ll start worrying. Ardmore, give Piper the name and address, if you haven’t already, then off you—No, come to think of it, a few more minutes won’t make much difference. You’d better stay and hear a bit more.”

Ardmore sat down again.

“Chief,” said Tom, “can you tell us a bit more about Mr. Lambert? Why we may be worried about him? Mrs. Fletcher decided she shouldn’t, as you hadn’t.”

“How uncommonly discreet!”

“Don’t be beastly, darling. He did make a point of telling us in confidence. If he’s missing, though …”

“You probably remember a good deal more of what he said than I do. Why don’t you explain.”

Daisy gave him a suspicious look. He was actually inviting her to get involved? It was true she knew Lambert much better than he did.

“Right-oh. Shall I start with New York?”

“Great Scott no! All that need be said about New York is that when you met him there, he was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“And a very enthusiastic one, but hopelessly incompetent. When he turned up here—or rather, in St. John’s Wood—we weren’t a bit surprised to find out he’d lost all his papers and his money. He said he’d transferred from the FBI to the—What was it, darling? Something to do with money.”

“Treasury.”

“That’s it. Though why they should put the Treasury in charge of enforcing their law against drinking is more than I can understand. Still, they did, and Lambert was working for them.”

“Over here? Not trying to stop
us
drinking, I hope, Mrs. Fletcher?” asked Mackinnon, only half joking. “The English might stand for it, but the Scots, never.”

Four English detective constables glared at him in outrage. Whether they were outraged by the idea that the Americans might try to keep them from their pints, or by the suggestion that they wouldn’t fight as hard for those pints as the Scots would for their drams, or both, Daisy didn’t wait to discover.

Hastily, she reassured them, “No, they couldn’t do that.”

“They better not try,” muttered Warren.

“Lambert was sent to try to stop the export of alcohol from England—Britain—to America.”

“Single-handed?” Tom asked dryly.

“Well, that’s the thing. Surely they must have sent more
than one agent. Suppose the dead man was another? What if a bootlegger unmasked both him and Lambert and murdered both of them?”

“What would a bootlegger be doing over here, Mrs. Fletcher?” asked Piper.

“It was something about codes, wasn’t it, Alec? I don’t remember exactly what Lambert said. Something about the Prohibition people intercepting the rumrunners’ radio messages, so the gangs are sending men here to arrange codes with their suppliers.”

“Gangs!” Ardmore exclaimed. “Don’t say they’re exporting their gangs now!”

“Not wholesale, and just visiting, I gathered.”

“And the enthusiastic but incompetent Lambert is supposed to stop them?” Tom enquired in a tone of deep interest. “By shooting them?”

“Heavens no! He’s supposed to identify them and follow them to see which English wholesalers they get in touch with. Oh, and try to find out what ships they use to deliver the stuff. You can imagine he was quite thrilled when we moved in next door to a wine merchant.”

“The Jessups,” said Tom.

“The Jessups,” Daisy confirmed. “He used to watch them through binoculars, believe it or not. Then, after he moved out, I’d see him lurking in the undergrowth, presumably still spying on them.”

“You never told me that, Daisy!”

“You were so relieved when he left. Besides, I couldn’t swear it was him. I never came face-to-face with him. But he’s such a rotten lurker, I’d catch glimpses now and then. It reminded me of the old days in New York.”

“We’ll have to find out if he’s been seen ‘lurking’ around the homes or business premises of any other large-scale licensed victuallers. Piper, that’s a job for you. Get a list of all the major wine merchants in London for a start, and call on them.”

“Right now, Chief?”

“Yes, let’s get cracking on this. Lambert’s been lurking in the bushes, Castellano’s body was found—”

“Castellano?” said three or four voices simultaneously.

“Michele Castellano,” said Alec, trying to be nonchalant but looking smug. “The chap at the British Museum read the name in the passport without the slightest difficulty.” He spelt it out and all the detectives wrote it down in their notebooks. “You’d better take his photo, Ernie, and make enquiries about him, too. He may have nothing to do with the booze trade, but we might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

“Right, Chief.”

“Ring up now and then to see if there have been any developments you need to know about.”

“Uh … where?”

Leaning back in his chair, Alec ran his fingers through his hair. Dark, thick and springy, it showed no signs of depredation. “Uh, Daisy,” he said reluctantly, “would it be very disruptive if we used this room as our headquarters, just until we finish our enquiries in the immediate area?”

Daisy quickly changed a burgeoning grin into a frown. “I haven’t planned any dinner parties for the next few days,” she said—she seldom did, never knowing when Alec would be home. “We could eat in the office or the kitchen, I suppose. It’ll mean extra work for the servants, though. They’re sure to kick up a dust.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t work—”

“But I expect I can talk them round,” Daisy interrupted before he could dismiss the idea out of hand, the last thing she wanted. “In fact, with half a dozen policemen in the house, perhaps Nurse Gilpin will stop declaring that the murderer will have to climb over her dead body to get at the babies. If she carries on much longer, she’ll end up giving them a complex. All right, darling, I should think we can manage.”

And just let them try to keep her out of her own dining room!

Ernie Piper
and Ardmore departed, the latter with instructions to search Lambert’s room for anything that might connect him with Castellano, as well as for his toothbrush and other overnight necessities.

Alec turned back to Daisy. “Any more revelations about Lambert?” he asked.

“Not that I can think of.”

“Can you, by any chance, remember how he found out that the Jessups are in the wine trade?”

“It was when they invited us, him and me, for cocktails. I’m sure I told you. He was helping me go over the house and decide what to do. It was an awful mess when Alec inherited it,” she informed Tom and the others in an aside. “Mrs. Jessup sent her maid to ask us over for a drink, under the impression that Lambert was my husband.”

“The Jessups knew Castellano, too, Chief,” said Tom, his voice carefully neutral. “Mrs. Fletcher recognised him.”

“What? Great Scott, Daisy—”

“I
told
you they had an American visitor, an unwelcome visitor. You just said so did we, and that it’s not against the law.”

“And forgot about it,” Alec admitted ruefully.

“No one showed me Castellano’s passport, not until Tom showed me a copy of the photo after lunch. How was I supposed to know it was the same man?”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Not absolutely. I didn’t get a really good look at his face. I wouldn’t swear to it in court, but if I wasn’t pretty certain, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.” Or rather, she wouldn’t have let Tom wring it out of her.

“How do you know he was unwelcome? Did they tell you so?”

“No, I overheard him trying to bully Mrs. Jessup. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I happened to be leaving and couldn’t help passing the door of the room where they were.”