Blood and Judgement (14 page)

“That’s what we thought too.”

“And yet I don’t know that I am so surprised. Ricketts was an odd sort of chap. Superficially very friendly, but I doubt if he had any real friends. He was a good deal older than the ordinary run of chaps in the battery. When he went out he usually went alone.”

“A self-contained sort of person,” suggested Petrella.

“That’s right.”

“Do you think he might have had some sort of past?”

Lundgren reflected. “It’s easy to imagine things like that, after the event,” he said. “But now that you put it to me, I shouldn’t be entirely surprised. I don’t necessarily mean anything criminal. I mean that one just got the impression that he was a bit of a man of mystery.”

“Was he married?”

“I think he drew a marriage allowance. Although that’s not always the same thing. I’d have said, he was the sort of man who was quite attractive to a certain sort of woman. You know how they go for the quiet, grey-haired, fatherly type.”

“Yes,” said Petrella. He found a very different picture building up in his mind from the rough Water Board labourer he had started by visualizing.

“Army records should be able to give you some information about that. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help you more.”

“On the contrary,” said Petrella.

This time the War Office were able to be more helpful. Their 1939–45 records were in good order and, given proper particulars, they turned up Ricketts’ paybook and identity documents without trouble.

Petrella ran his eye down the page. There was something there that might be useful. Next of kin. “Wife. Dorothy Mabel Ricketts, Forge Cottage, Bearsted, Kent.”

“That would only be a wartime address, I expect,” said the officer in charge of records. “She was probably evacuated there.”

“Never mind,” said Petrella, “it’s a start.”

He took the afternoon train from Victoria to Maidstone, and a local train brought him to the pleasant Kentish village of Bearsted, which huddles round a green where cricket is still played in the summer and the dogs and children from the nice houses nearby chase each other all the year round. Forge Cottage stood in a side turning, south of the green. It was a quiet, clapboarded affair buried up to the neck in a garden which had spilled over onto the roadway.

The woman who opened the door to him was, he guessed, about fifty; thickset, grey-haired, and unsmiling.

Petrella introduced himself.

“It’s a long time ago,” he said apologetically. “Someone who may have been evacuated here during the war. A Mrs Ricketts.”

“You’d better come in,” she said, and called out, “Mother.”

An old lady in black appeared from an inner room. “It’s a gentleman from the police, Mother. He’s asking for Mrs Ricketts.”

They both stared at him, and Petrella felt uncomfortable under this convergent gaze.

“If you have any information–” he said.

“I’m Mrs Ricketts,” said the grey-haired woman. “I’ll tell you anything I can, but if it’s my husband you’re looking for, I warn you, it won’t be much, for I haven’t set eyes on him for more than twenty years.”

“Another dead end,” said Petrella. “She was as helpful as she could be but it didn’t amount to much. They got married in 1924. When she was eighteen. They never had any children. He was away from home a lot, and pretty soon she began to think he’d set up a second home of his own somewhere.”

Haxtell looked up sharply, and Petrella said, “Yes. That’s the type that seems to be emerging. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? By the time war broke out in 1939, she hadn’t seen Sydney – that’s his name, apparently – for two or three years. He’d been sending her a little money from time to time. She was back with her mum. When he joined the army he put her down as his wife and next of kin and the marriage allowance went to her. He had to do that. She’d have gone up to the War Office and raised hell if he hadn’t. She knew her rights.”

“And when the war was over–?”

“As soon as he was out of the army, the money stopped.”

“Didn’t she do anything about that? He was still her husband.”

“I asked her that,” said Petrella. “And she said, ‘I’d got a job and I didn’t need the money. But to tell you the truth I was glad to see him go. He wasn’t really a good man.’”

“She said that?”

“As near as I can remember it.”

“She might have been right, at that,” said Haxtell. “Where do we look next? Time’s getting short.”

It was on his way home that night that Petrella saw the card. He had given up visiting Collins’ shop, having drawn a blank there so often. But since he had to go past it he stopped to look.

“The person,” said the card, “who was asking about a job at the reservoir. Inquire within.”

The little shop was lit by one economical bulb, and smelled like the inside of an empty biscuit tin. Petrella waited, then shuffled his feet, then coughed; none of this having any effect he took a half-crown out of his pocket and rapped it sharply on the wooden counter.

At this magical sound an inner door flew open and an old woman looked out.

“We’re shut,” she said. “I ought to have locked the door.”

“I’m not a cash customer,” said Petrella. “I came about one of your advertisements.”

“It’s my husband does them. He’s at the doctor’s. The time you have to waste at the doctor’s since they came on the rates, it’s a disgrace. In the old days you had to pay for ’em, but they were there when you wanted ’em.”

Petrella picked the card out of the window and showed it to the old woman, who read it disinterestedly.

“I can’t make head or tail of ’em,” she said. “My husband does them.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“Might be hours, yet. You’d better come back tomorrow. I’ve known him sit in that waiting-room till eight o’clock. All those people, sitting in a room together, with different illnesses. It’s not right. No wonder people catch things.”

“I expect that’s why the doctors do it,” said Petrella. “To make more work for themselves.”

The old woman looked at him suspiciously.

“But as it happens, this is rather urgent. So I’ll come back in an hour’s time.”

The old woman had opened her mouth to protest when she was saved the trouble by the return of her husband.

“Got away quicker this time,” he said. “Nothing but wind, Dr Maddison said. I wonder. It didn’t feel like wind to me. What can I do for you, sir? We’re shut.”

“I came about this.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, here I am,” said Petrella patiently. “It says ‘Inquire within’. I’m inquiring.”

“The party that left this card,” said the man, “was most particular that her message should only be given to a – dang it, but I’ve gone and forgotten it – a foreign name.”

“Petrella.”

“Right. A Detective Sergeant Petrella.”

Petrella produced his warrant card, which the man examined carefully.

“All right,” he said. “That looks all right. You’re to go to Flat 5, Number 74 Parsons Road – that’s off Westbourne Grove. You know it?”

“I can find it. When do I go?”

“Any evening this week between six and seven, the lady said. She’d be there, if you wanted to talk to her. Come to think of it, that was Monday, and it’s Thursday now, and nearly ten to seven, so it looks as if you’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”

“I told him he’d better wait till tomorrow,” said the old lady.

Next morning there was an unexpected message for Petrella. It was from Messrs Carver, Harrowing and Livermore of Lincoln’s Inn.

“Solicitors,” said Gwilliam, who had taken the message. “An old aunt’s died, I wooden be surprised, and left you a packet.”

“The only old aunt I’ve got’s ten years younger than I am,” said Petrella, and dialled the number he had been given.

He was put through to Mr Harrowing, who introduced himself.

“I saw you in the Magistrate’s Court,” he said. “I don’t think you were at the Old Bailey, were you? We’re instructed on behalf of the prisoner.”

“Oh, yes,” said Petrella cautiously. He remembered, now, where he had seen the name.

“We wondered if you could come down and have a word with us. Or we’ll come up and see you, if that’s more convenient. There’s a certain amount of urgency. The appeal in this matter comes on next Thursday.”

“Well,” said Petrella, “I’ll have to find out if it’s all right.”

“I don’t see why your bosses should make any difficulty about it,” said Mr Harrowing. “After all, presumably we’re both interested in the same thing, and that’s to get at the truth.”

“That’s right,” said Petrella. “All the same, I think I’d better check up. I’ll ring you back.”

“I can’t say I like the idea,” said Haxtell, when it was put to him, “but if you’re going at all you’d better go willingly. They could subpoena you if they really wanted to.”

“But why me? All they can know about me is that I gave evidence on one or two fairly unimportant points in the Magistrate’s Court.”

“And
didn’t
give evidence at the Old Bailey.”

“Yes. He mentioned that. You don’t suppose–”

“I don’t know,” said Haxtell. “The thing to do is to go and find out what they’re after. You needn’t commit yourself. You can always pass the buck by saying that you have to refer to higher authority.”

“What I really don’t want is for anyone to think that I’ve been running off on my own bat, proffering information to the defence. I wouldn’t–”

“No,” said Haxtell, looking at him curiously. “No. That’s all right. I don’t think anyone thinks that. And by the way, I didn’t tell you. Mote found Bancroft.”

“He
what?”

“I don’t mean he found him in person. I mean he traced his 1914–18 record, or what was still left of it. Here’s a copy.”

He pushed a typewritten flimsy across the table and Petrella read:

“Robert Lowry Bancroft. Enlisted, January 1918. Age at enlistment, 18. Passed fit for General Service. France, May 1918. Posted 9th Royal South London Regiment. Acting Lance Corporal, July 1918. Rank confirmed August 1918. Mentioned in Dispatches, August 1918. (London Gazette, September 8th, 1918.) Next of kin, Sister. Eileen Joyce Harman, 14 Countess Road, Upminster, Essex.”

“It’s a good record for a youngster,” said Petrella. “They put them into the thick of it pretty young in those days, didn’t they?”

“I should think that by the spring of 1918 the army were glad to take anyone with two arms and two legs. The point is, is it Ricketts?”

“It easily could be,” said Petrella slowly. “It fits in most of the essential points. Ricketts was in his late fifties, and was known to have a good First War record. The only thing is, that I’m pretty certain Lundgren said he had the MM. Wouldn’t that be in his papers? I mean, wouldn’t it be in Bancroft’s papers if Bancroft later changed his name to Ricketts?”

“It ought to be. But if Ricketts was a crook, he could easily have put up a medal ribbon he wasn’t entitled to. But we’re getting somewhere, now. If this next-of-kin ‘sister’ was already married, she must have been a few years older than Robert. So a search among the Bancrofts at Somerset House for a few years back may turn her up. Then perhaps we can get her marriage certificate. If she was married in church we can get the names of the witnesses and parents-in-law and so on. Plenty of possibilities there.”

Petrella said, “Suppose we do find Bancroft and he isn’t Ricketts?”

“I refuse to think about it,” said Haxtell. “You get on down to Lincoln’s Inn and remember that all lawyers are the natural enemies of the police.”

“Well now, Sergeant Petrella,” said Mr Harrowing. “I asked you to come down and have a chat, because I understand that you were not entirely satisfied with the police case.”

Mr Harrowing had served for several years, during the war, in the Royal Navy, and was aware of the value of the attack direct.

Petrella blinked a couple of times, and said, “Oh, I think that’s an exaggeration. Who told you that?”

“These things get about,” said Mr Harrowing, pushing a large box of cigarettes in Petrella’s direction. He did not feel able to explain that the information had first reached him through the indiscretion, at the lunch table, of a Metropolitan Police solicitor, so he said, “We couldn’t help noticing that they didn’t trust you in the box at the Old Bailey.”

This was accompanied by a smile which robbed the remark of offence.

“There’s nothing in that,” said Petrella. “All that I could say about the body could be much better said by Dr Summerson.”

“Quite so. You can no doubt tell me one thing, without being indiscreet. Is the police investigation still going on?”

“Yes. It’s still going on.”

Mr Harrowing leaned back in his chair. He had a long, brown, serious face with a good mouth and jaw at the bottom of it. The thinning hair was the only sign of his long desk life.

“I’m going to be quite frank with you,” said Mr Harrowing, who apparently liked what he saw of Petrella, too. “In fact, I’m going to start by throwing away my best card. I have no intention of calling you to give evidence under subpoena. Indeed, how can I? I have no idea what you could be likely to say, and until I know that, I have no idea whether you wouldn’t do my client’s case more harm than good.”

“I see,” said Petrella. “It hadn’t occurred to me – I’m no lawyer, of course – but I didn’t imagine that any further question of giving evidence arose.”

“In the ordinary way, it wouldn’t. In nineteen cases out of twenty, the Court of Criminal Appeal considers the record and listens to what counsel has got to say.”

“And doubles the sentence.”

“Well, that’s the popular idea. However, it has full power to listen to fresh evidence. It doesn’t happen often, I agree. A great number of cases go before it merely on points of law. That the judge misdirected the jury, or something like that. And in murder cases the prisoner may anyway feel that the sentence he has received cannot easily be doubled.”

“There’s something in that,” said Petrella.

“But there are rare cases in which the court will listen to fresh evidence. Evidence which has come to light since the trial.” Mr Harrowing leaned back in his chair. “I think this might be one of them.”

Petrella said nothing.

Mr Harrowing said, “I wonder if the man in the street realizes quite how difficult it really is to defend a person who is charged with murder. I don’t mean that the police are unfair. It’s just that they have a monopoly. There’s only the one investigating machine, and they’re running it.”

Petrella felt himself going red. He said, “They are bound to answer any questions the defence asks them.”

“Quite so,” said Mr Harrowing gently. “But how are they to know
what
questions to ask?” He paused, and added, “In books it is of course quite simple. I believe that private detectives of great ability abound. Very often, having been invited down for the weekend, before the murder occurs, they are handily on the spot before the police arrive. They have friends in every walk of life, private laboratories at their disposal, and unlimited money. I can only say that I have never had the good fortune to meet one. The private detectives that I have been called upon to deal with have been different.” Mr Harrowing paused again, and added, “Quite different.”

Petrella said uncomfortably, “I do know exactly what you mean. You’ll understand that I’m not a very senior member of the police force, and I couldn’t give you any information or help without permission.”

“Of course. I understand that.”

“I can tell you – I have told you already – that investigations are still going on. They haven’t reached any sort of conclusion, and strictly speaking they are not investigations of your case at all. But obviously, if anything does come of them, it’s going to be to your advantage.”

Mr Harrowing nodded.

“And it’s just occurred to me that there’s a way you can help. I shall probably get into trouble for even suggesting it, but I’m in such hot water already that a pint or two more’s not going to make much difference. Could you arrange for an advertisement – it’s the sort of thing solicitors always seem to be doing, so it wouldn’t necessarily arouse any suspicion – one of those things that says that if Mr A will get in touch with a certain firm of solicitors he will hear something to his advantage?”

“Times
and
Telegraph,”
said Mr Harrowing, making a note. “I can do that. Who’s your Mr A?”

“He’s a Robert Lowry Bancroft.” Petrella spelled it out and Mr Harrowing wrote it down carefully. “He was last heard of in 1918 when he was serving in the 9th Royal South London Regiment, in which he attained the rank of lance corporal and was mentioned in dispatches. “

“I suppose you can’t tell me what it’s all about.”

“Not at the moment. But if you should happen to find him, I can assure you of this. It will be the best day’s work you’ve done for your client yet.”

When Petrella got back to Crown Road he found an official letter waiting for him. It was impressed with the stamp of the Commissioner’s Office, and it said that Detective Sergeant Petrella was to call at New Scotland Yard on the Monday following, at half past four in the afternoon, in case he wished to exercise the right open to him under Regulation 16 of Police Regulations of making an explanation personally to the chief officer of police of the matters alleged in the Misconduct Form of which particulars had already been supplied to him. The letter went on to say that Petrella would be well advised to consult his superior officer, who would inform him of his rights in the matter.

Petrella took this straight in to Haxtell, who said, “Damn. I thought there was a chance that we had succeeded in killing this. Evidently I was wrong. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m certainly not going to put anything in writing,” said Petrella. “What’s likely to happen?”

“It’s a sort of preliminary skirmish. They want to hear what you’ve got to say–”

“So that if they don’t like it, they can give me the whole works later.”

“That’s right. My own feeling is that if you apologized to Kellaway and promised not to try to fight the war on your own in future, they’d let you off with a caution.”

“Nothing doing,” said Petrella. “In fact, I may have added another large blot to my copybook this morning.”

He told Haxtell about the suggestion he had made to Mr Harrowing. If he thought this was going to provoke an explosion he was wrong.

“It’s not a bad idea,” said Haxtell. “In fact, it’s a good one. There’s something about an advertisement from a firm of solicitors, saying that if you get in touch with them you’ll hear something to your advantage. All the same, if Bancroft’s Ricketts, and if Ricketts is the sort of man I’m beginning to picture him as, I don’t see him coming forward to stick his head into a noose.”

“He
won’t. But what about his relations, or old army friends? A lot of them must still be living. People do see you from time to time, however carefully you try to avoid them. What’s to stop one of them coming forward?”