Black Ship (26 page)

“I’m afraid he isn’t here, Superintendent. I believe he’s gone to interview some suspects. Can I help you?”

“I’m not sure anyone can,” he said bitterly. “But you can transmit a message to Fletcher, if you would be so kind.”

“Of course, Mr. Crane. Just let me get something to write on.” She had left her notebook in the dining room, but there
was always a pad in the drawer of the telephone table, and usually a sharpened pencil. Yes, here they were. She sat down, so that she could set the daffodil phone on the table and have a hand free to write. “Right-oh, go ahead.”

“I have just had an extremely uncomfortable interview with the Assistant Commissioner. He, in turn, had just received an extremely uncomfortable telephone call from the Home Secretary. You are aware, I dare say, Mrs. Fletcher, that the Home Secretary oversees all of this country’s police forces?”

“Yes.” Daisy might not know much of politics, but she could hardly help knowing that, being married to a fairly senior policeman. She stopped trying to scribble down every word, realising that Crane was blowing off steam as much as trying to convey important information.

“The Home Secretary,” he continued, “had just spoken—or perhaps I should say ‘been spoken to’—by the Foreign Secretary.”

“This is beginning to sound like
The House That Jack Built
” Daisy said unwisely, and went on to compound her error. “It’s Oliver’s favourite book at the moment.”

There was an ominous silence at the other end of the line. Then: “This, Mrs. Fletcher, is
nothing
like
The House That Jack Built
, which, as I recall, has a happy ending. If I may continue … The Foreign Secretary had just received a telephone call from His Excellency, the Ambassador of the United States of America.”

Daisy managed just in time to stop herself saying brightly, “I expect they talk to each other quite often.” For some reason, Superintendent Crane’s grimness was making her feel more frivolous than she had felt since Nana found the body that morning. Who, she wondered, had told the ambassador what? No doubt she was about to be informed. “U.S. Amb.,” she wrote down.

“The embassy,” Crane continued relentlessly, “had received a cable from the State Department, which, I gather, is their equivalent of our Foreign Office. The State Department had
received an enquiry from the Federal Bureau of Investigation—to be precise, from your husband’s friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation—regarding a certain American passport.”

“Castellano’s. Michele Castellano’s.”

“Oh, so there’s a name attached, is there?” The superintendent’s gloom seemed to have lifted a little. At least he had some information to pass back along the chain. “Would you mind spelling that? You see, the FBI had only a number, and it happens to be the number of a passport that was stolen, along with several more blanks.”

“It was faked?” said Daisy. “That would explain the ink.”

“
Ink!
” exploded from the receiver. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Or rather, Fletcher can explain when he reports at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. On the dot.”

“I’ll make sure to set the alarm clock. But Mr. Crane, why—”

“The Americans take as serious a view as we do of the sacrosanct nature of passports. Naturally, the State Department wanted to know why Scotland Yard had asked the FBI about a stolen passport. They asked the embassy, and the embassy wanted to know why they had not been notified that the police had found an American passport. How it reached the ambassador’s august ears, I have no idea, but he, naturally, approached the Foreign Office and—”

“Please, let’s not go back through the whole rigmarole! I’m sure Alec had very good reasons not to get in touch with the embassy right away, which no doubt he’ll explain to you tomorrow.”

“He’d better! I authorised the damn—dashed cable he sent to the FBI. I could swear he told me the U.S. embassy would have to be notified. Surely he didn’t expect
me
to do so, with no information! I ought to have my head examined. I want to know what it’s all about.”

“He’s been rushed off his feet all day, and he’s still working,” she reminded him. “I’ll give him your message.”

“Is he getting anywhere?”

“You’ll have to ask him, Mr. Crane,” Daisy said demurely. “You know he doesn’t like me to get involved.”

“
Pah!
”

Daisy was sure only the courtesy due to the offspring of a viscount enabled the superintendent to say a choked good-bye before he hung up. She wondered whether she ought to have told him Lambert was missing. But no, it would only mean more fuss if he felt obliged to notify the AC and the AC notified … et cetera.

She had scarcely replaced the receiver on its hook when the bell rang again. Sighing, she picked it up again and said, “Hampstead three nine one three.”

“This is the Scotland Yard exchange,” said an impersonal female voice. “May I speak to DCI Fletcher, please?”

“He’s not here, I’m afraid. May I take a message? This is Mrs. Fletcher.”

“Mrs. Fletcher!” The change in tone was obvious. Daisy was famous at the Yard—or infamous, depending on how high up the hierarchy one went—as the wife who kept falling over bodies. Sometimes her fame was useful, sometimes the reverse. “I have a cable for the chief inspector, from New York. He left a message to let him know at once. Shall I read it out?”

“Yes, please.” Daisy tore the top sheet off the pad. “Not too fast.”

“‘Mitcheel’—spelt
MICHELE
—‘Castellano,’ open quotes, ‘enforcer,’ close quotes, ‘for Luckcheese’—spelt
LUCCHESE
—‘family bootlegger gang,’ stop, ‘delighted news Rosenblatt NYDA.’ Got that, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“Got it. Thanks.”

District Attorney Rosenblatt. She and Alec had saved him from making a serious mistake a couple of years ago. Now, apparently, he was pleased to learn that they had found a New York gangster dead in London.

What was an “enforcer”? American gangs must be alarmingly well organised if they had rules to be enforced.

Daisy decided she didn’t really want to know how they did their enforcing. “Tough guys,” she recalled Lambert mentioning when regretting the loss of his gun. Could there be others of Castellano’s ilk in England?

Alec ought to have the information as soon as possible. She glanced at the long-case clock. He would still be on the way to New Bond Street. If she waited till he reached the shop to ring up, she’d probably interrupt his interrogation of the Jessups. He hated having interviews interrupted. Too bad, the news would have to wait till he came home.

“What happened to Castellano’s gun?” Alec pondered aloud as Ross drove down the hill.

“I don’t know, sir. I think maybe I missed a bit, coming in later than the others like I did. He was wearing a shoulder holster?”

“With no gun in it. Suppose Castellano drew the gun, either to threaten his assailant or in self-defence. Why did the murderer not simply put it back in the holster, thus eliminating a link between him and his victim?”

There was silence while Ross negotiated the tricky five-way intersection in Camden Town, competing with four omnibuses and half a dozen taxis. Safely buzzing down Albany Street, he said, “Prob’ly he wasn’t thinking too clearly, sir.”

“He was thinking very clearly when he pressed his thumbs on exactly the right spots in Castellano’s throat. He knew what he was doing all right. Let’s say the gun got lost in a struggle and the darkness prevented his finding the damn thing. Why didn’t we find it next morning in broad daylight, in the course of an intensive search?”

Again, Ross had the excuse of traffic and the even more complicated multiple intersection of streets at the southeast corner of Regent’s Park. Having made it safely into Great Portland Street, he ventured, “I s’pose they looked in that pond thing?”

“Raked it out thoroughly. Can you think of any conceivable reason why Castellano might have gone out wearing the holster, an uncomfortable contraption, without his gun?”

“No, sir.”

Nor could Alec. Customs might have confiscated Castellano’s gun when he entered the country—did Customs keep records of such things?—but unless he’d managed to acquire another, he’d have packed away the holster. And if he’d managed to acquire a gun, the question remained: Where was it?

Customs had confiscated Lambert’s gun, to that young idiot’s disgust. Lambert had disappeared. Castellano’s gun had disappeared. Had Alec completely misread Lambert’s character?

He shook his head. Lambert was a young idiot, but no cold-blooded killer. Which left the Jessups.

Oxford Street, left into New Bond Street, and then Ross pulled alongside the kerb just beyond Jessup & Sons, Purveyors of Fine Wines and Spirits. The fashionable shops were still open, though most of their clientele would be people of leisure, able to shop earlier in the day. The biting wind whistling down the street was icy enough to deter pedestrians, and passersby were few.

The nearest plate-glass shop window, next door to the Jessups’, displayed five skeletally thin celluloid mannequins elegantly posed in jewel-toned, elaborately beaded silk with jagged hemlines. They looked to Alec as if sharks had been at them. Not for the first time, he thanked heaven that Daisy didn’t care two hoots about the latest modes.

In the Jessups’ window stood a rustic pergola with artificial vines climbing it. The bunches of purple grapes peeping coyly from among the vine leaves looked like trimmings for an Edwardian hat. Under the pergola stood an equally rustic wooden table and three chairs, and on the table were three wineglasses and two bottles. It was a most inviting scene, though probably the bottles were empty, with the corks forced back in. A shop window was not exactly an ideal storage place for wine, and
Alec felt sure the Jessups’ vintage wines were stored under ideal conditions.

He wondered what their markup was. Pretty hefty, certainly. New Bond Street leases must cost a fortune, and the sort of people who shopped there didn’t cavil at high prices. Pity it was quite impossible to accept Jessup’s offer of wholesale prices, especially now he was investigating the family for murder!

Still, since inheriting his great-uncle’s fortune, he could afford a bottle of good wine now and then. The difficulty was finding time to sit down and enjoy it.

“There’s Piper, sir,” said Ross, nodding towards a 125 bus just coming to a halt nearby.

Ernie Piper swung down and came hurrying over to them. “Hope I’m not late, Chief. I was in the City.”

“Did you notify the City force? You know how touchy they are.”

“Had a word with a mate of mine. All I did was ask a few questions. It’s not like I was looking to arrest someone on their patch. They’ll prob’ly never know, and if they find out, he’ll cover for me.”

“I hope so. Right, you’re going to be doing the search.”

“Single-handed!”

“I want you to start with their papers.”

Piper was extraordinarily good at noting and remembering details and picking up discrepancies, though it wouldn’t do to tell him so too often. Alec was guiltily aware that he didn’t give the young detective as much credit in that line as he deserved, because he didn’t want to lose him to Fraud. He justified himself with the certainty that Ernie would hate working in Fraud.

He made sure Ernie knew what he was looking for, adding, “Of course, if you happen to notice a gun among the files, you can abandon them temporarily to let me know. Discreetly.”

“You think they’d be that careless, Chief? Knowing we’re coming?”

“They don’t know about the search warrant. If you’re still at it when we’re finished asking questions, we’ll lend a hand.”

Alec saw a sarcastic “Cor, ta, Chief!” on Piper’s lips. He’d say it aloud if Ross were not there, but Ross, though they had often worked together, was not one of Alec’s usual team.

The glass shop door displayed a
CLOSED
sign, but it opened to Alec’s push. The clock on the tower of St. George’s, Hanover Square, struck the half hour as the three detectives stepped over the threshold. Alec noted an inner security door, standing open.

It was immediately obvious that this was no ordinary off-licence. The floor was paved with flagstones. The long narrow room had brick arches along each wall, framing trompe l’oeil vistas of more arches and rack after rack of bottles, row after row of wine tuns stretching into the illusory distance. A few real racks of bottles added to the illusion.

“Blimey!” said Piper. “Reminds you of that mirror room at the house, don’t it, Chief?”

“Mr. Jessup certainly has an exotic taste in interior decor.” Alec could imagine the younger Jessups at once embarrassed and proud of their father’s exuberant imagination.

Spaced along the walls were several desks disguised as rustic tables, like the one in the window, each with a bottle and a couple of glasses. No one was there, but opening the door must have rung a bell in the back premises. Beneath a pergola against the rear wall, the twin of the one in the window, a door opened. Mr. Jessup came through, and with him his long-absent younger son.

Patrick was taller than his father, and very much slimmer, his leanness not willowy, but fit and athletic. He looked as Irish as his name, with black hair, blue eyes, and a scatter of freckles. He had not, however, inherited his mother’s acting talent: His face was troubled and wary.

So was his father’s, the expression sitting uneasily on Jessup’s genial features.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me here,” said Alec. “I’m sorry you had to close early. Your wife—”

“Moira rang up to explain. It’s we who should thank you.
The Bennetts …” He grimaced. “Let me introduce my son Patrick. Our next-door neighbour, Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher.”

“How do you do, sir?” Patrick didn’t hold out his hand, relieving Alec of the eternal quandary of whether shaking hands with a suspect was appropriate.

“I’m sorry to make your acquaintance in such circumstances.”

“Believe me, so am I. It’s not exactly the homecoming I was looking forward to.”

“These are my assistants, DCs Piper and Ross. Mr. Jessup, I’d like to have a word with you first. Is there somewhere we can go—”