Blood and Judgement (8 page)

“No,” said Barstow. “It won’t do. Get something to tie him to the reservoir. Get something to tie him to the jewels. Then we’ll take a chance and charge him.”

Superintendent Haxtell spoke for the first time. He had been sitting so quietly on his bed in the corner that they had all forgotten he was there.

“Corinne Hart,” he said, “was killed three streets away from the reservoir.”

They stared at him.

“You’re not suggesting,” said Barstow, at last, “that there’s any connection between the two cases?”

“No, sir. But in the course of that investigation we’ve taken statements from more than a thousand people, including every soul living in Ogilvie Street and Mearns Street – those are the streets that run to the south and southwest of the reservoir, between it and the filter beds. And, you’ll remember, we didn’t just ask them about the night Corinne disappeared. We went back weeks, sometimes months. We wanted to find out if any strange man had been pestering the kids in the neighborhood.”

“That’s a damned good idea,” said Barstow. “And it’ll save a lot of time. Get a man going through those reports now, to see if he can pick up anything that’ll help us in this case.”

When the conference broke up, Petrella had a quick word with Dodds.

“Are you sure they haven’t got these prints mixed up?” he said.

“It’s an idea,” said Dodds, “but I’m afraid it won’t wash. The four prints off the window are a set. They belong to Howton. No doubt at all. Burrell doesn’t make mistakes about fingerprints. The one on the gun’s a single print. They don’t even know which hand. It’s going to take a lot longer to get anything out of that.”

“But whoever it was, it wasn’t Howton. At least, that’s what Blinder told me.”

“Burrell says that, too.”

“But it certainly belonged to the man who loaded the gun.”

“It isn’t always the person who loads a gun that fires it,” said Dodds.

Petrella digested this in silence.

“What’s Kellaway going to do now?”

“If I know our Chris, he’s kicking his desk and wishing it was Barstow’s bottom. Hullo, there’s the bell. We’d better go and see what he wants.”

Whatever may have been his private feelings, Kellaway had them well under control.

“I’d like you,” he said to Petrella, “to see if you can get a line on that jewellery. You know all your local jewellers and pawnbrokers. And I suggest you get a bit of co-operation from Luard in S. Between the two of you you might be able to turn something up. I’ve had Records make me some copies of Howton’s photograph. Take one with you. It might help to stir people’s memories.”

Which brought Petrella back again to where it had all started: to the back room of Mr Robins, Pawnbroker, Jeweller and Silversmith, with its built-in safe and its mighty, brass-bound ledger. When he saw Petrella, Mr Robins groaned.

“I knew it,” he said.

“You knew what?”

“That you’d be back. I suppose they told you.”

“No one’s told me anything,” said Petrella. “What have you been up to? Receiving stolen goods?”

Mr Robins smiled faintly. “Really, it almost looks like it,” he said. “After you’d gone I took a copy of that list, the one that had all the Colegrave stuff in it, and went carefully through my deposits. I’ve identified six different pieces, besides the clasp you were asking me about. None of them are very large – here’s the list I sent to the station. I’d have thought they’d have passed it on to you.”

“I’ve been a bit elusive these last two days,” said Petrella. He cast his eye down the list. The money given by Mr Robins for the six items totalled just over a hundred pounds, which meant that they were probably worth from twice to three times as much.

“Were they all deposited by the same person?”

“That’s what’s so difficult. I deal with – thirty, forty people every day.”

“Does this do anything to your memory?”

Petrella took out the photograph of Howton. It was a good photograph. Not one of those close-up profiles taken in a strong light which would make the Archbishop of Canterbury look like an axe murderer, but an informal snapshot of Howton stepping off the pavement, taken, Petrella guessed, with a candid camera, buttonhole attachment, and enlarged.

“Why, yes,” said Mr Robins at last. “I’d say I’d seen him in here. It’s not a common sort of face, is it?”

“But do you associate it with these particular pieces of jewellery?”

“All those pieces were deposited here in the last two months. I know that’s right, because my book says so. And it’s in the last two months that I’ve seen – what’s his name?–”

“Howton.”

“–I’ve seen Howton about. The last time was about a week ago, and that reminds me. Dicky!”

A thin, white-faced, gristly boy put his head round the door and said, “Wassup?”

“It was you took in the eardrops a week ago yesterday.”

“’Sright.”

“Can you remember what the customer looked like?”

“Man with a limp, would it be?”

The evening suddenly seemed brighter to Petrella; a lot brighter and a lot warmer.

“Yes,” he said. “It could have been a man with a limp. Was he anything like this, Dicky?”

The boy held the photograph carefully up to the light and looked at it inscrutably. Then he put it down again, and said, “Do you mind my asking my dad something?”

“Not a bit.”

“Alone.”

“We’ll leave you here,” said Mr Robins, and went out of the door, taking the boy with him.

The minutes dragged by. Then Mr Robins reappeared.

“That’s all right,” he said. “He identified him. The eardrops, and a lady’s watch the week before. He’s a sharp boy, Dicky. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

“What was he worried about?”

“He didn’t quite know who you were or what you were after. Don’t you worry, he’ll make a good witness for you.”

“Yes. I rather imagine he will,” said Petrella slowly.

Back at Crown Road we went straight in to report to Dodds. He found the sergeant in high good humour.

“That’s the stuff, boy,” he said. “We’re getting our feet on the ground in all directions now. Just listen to this. Here’s Rebecca Gurney. She lives – I beg your pardon, resides – at 17A Ogilvie Street, occupying the ground floor, and has a bow window overlooking the gates of the reservoir, and very little to do in life except look out of it. She deposes: ‘On the evening of Saturday, September 22nd, which I remember because it was my elder sister’s birthday, or would have been if she had been alive, she died twenty-five years ago and never have I allowed September 22nd to go by without thinking of her, and how I remember it was a Saturday, because the reservoir gates were shut when the men go after lunch. It was about eight in the evening but still light enough to see. I saw two men get out of a car which drove off to the top of the road and turned round and waited. The men walked up the road on the opposite pavement and disappeared. An hour later, they came back. It was dark by then but they were on my pavement this time and I saw them both clearly. One of them seemed to be keeping watch. The other climbed over the gate into the reservoir.’ Question, ‘Why did you not report this?’ Answer, ‘I was alone in the house and have no telephone. I was afraid to go outside. I did not like the look of the men.’ Question, ‘Do you recognize this photograph?’ Answer, ‘I do. That was one of the men. I have never forgotten his face. I considered it to be an evil face. I was unable to sleep that night. I have often thought of it since.’”

“Excellent,” said Petrella, who recognized hard evidence when he heard it.

“It’s a great thought,” said Dodds, “that in almost every street in London an old observant girl is sitting in a chair, in a bay window, noticing everything that goes on. All you’ve got to do is to find her.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“We’re waiting for a telephone call. As soon as it comes, we’re going to start the ball rolling. I don’t suppose we shall any of us get a lot of sleep tonight.”

The call came at half past eight, and it was evidently satisfactory, for Kellaway appeared for a moment in the CID room to confer with Dodds.

“I’d better wait by the telephone,” he said. “Then anyone who has got anything can reach me. Take Patrick with you. The exercise will do him good.” He disappeared back into his room with a flash of his great white teeth.

Petrella could not afterwards have mapped out or set down the course they took that evening. It remained in his mind as a succession of sights and sounds and smells as they went from café to café and later, when the cafés were closed, from club to club. From private clubs to members’ clubs, and finally to clubs so exclusive that they masqueraded as flats and apartments. The smells, particularly. The back alleys in which most of the clubs stood smelled of cats; and the clubs themselves of gin.

Their mission in these places, a mission which could sometimes be accomplished without actual eating or drinking, was to talk. Dodds did the talking. It was mostly in undertones, but in the end Petrella understood what was being said. The word was out against Howton. Information as to where he was lying would be paid for, in hard cash. And immunity from reprisals was absolutely guaranteed.

They visited Pino’s and found Luard already busy. Evidently there were many workers in the field that night. Luard grinned at Petrella, and they plunged straight out again into the darkness. There was no time to waste on a place that was already covered.

And so the whisper ran, from street corner to street corner, from coffee stall to coffee stall. Telephones woke sleepy men in their beds who listened, and grunted. Many turned over and went to sleep again. A few decided that a stay in the country would suit their health and packed their bags and left London on very early trains.

At four o’clock in the morning, when the streets were quiet and the blood was thin, the telephone on Kellaway’s desk sounded. He put down his cigarette quietly, balancing it on the rim of the ash-tray before he picked up the receiver. It was a woman’s voice that spoke, briefly, without introduction or preamble. Kellaway, for his part, said nothing at all. When the woman had finished what she had to say, he replaced the receiver gently and got up from his chair. There was nothing in his movements to suggest that he had been sitting there, on and off, for seven hours. He walked across to the wall cupboard, opened it, and took out a new, soft black hat and placed it carefully on his head, the brim tilted very slightly forward and to the right.

Then he left the room, walked down into the courtyard, and woke up a dozing driver.

Ten minutes later he stopped the car at the end of a small street, spoke to the driver, who nodded, and got out, leaving the door open behind him. He walked along the pavement, his crêpe-soled shoes making no noise, and stopped at a doorway. As he got there, the door opened. A middle-aged woman, a dressing-gown round her shoulders, was crouching inside.

“First floor, back room,” she said. “There’s no lock on the door. The light switch is on the left as you go in. They promised–”

“Any promise that was made will be kept,” said Kellaway. “Do your stairs creak?”

“Not a lot.”

He went up them, drifted along the corridor, and threw open the end door, slamming down the light switch.

Boot Howton was up, on one elbow; but both his hands were visible.

“Get dressed,” said Kellaway, “and come along.”

The barrister briefed by the director of public prosecutions was young and very painstaking. His wig was white and his soul was pure.

‘There’s no call to make heavy weather of it,” said the head of his department. This is only the police court. You’ll have Younger to lead you when you get to the Old Bailey.”

“
If
we get to the Old Bailey,” thought Mr Horsey, in a moment of panic, for it was his first big case. Two nights earlier he had woken his wife at midnight by sitting up in bed and beginning his opening speech. The next evening, being a woman of resource, she had slipped a couple of phenobarbitone tablets into his coffee.

“Your Worship,” said Mr Horsey, “this is a case in which the Crown charges capital murder against the prisoner, Thomas Albert Howton.”

“Capital murder, Mr Horsey?”

“That is so. Murder by shooting, contrary to subsection l(b) of Section 5 of the Homicide Act, 1957.”

Even this arid formula could not conceal the real meaning of his words, and all eyes swivelled round, for an uncomfortable moment, to the man in the dock. The old beast of Capital Punishment had been driven into retreat, but here was one human being who still stood within reach of his claws.

“Very well, Mr Horsey,” said the magistrate.

“It is my duty to adduce the evidence on which this charge is founded and to show a” – Mr Horsey swallowed briefly – “prima facie case for committal.”

“I think we’d better have that window shut,” said the magistrate. “Why the County Council must constantly operate a pneumatic drill when my court is sitting is something I have never been able to understand. Surely with a little co-operation they could do the work at weekends?”

The clerk said he would make a note of it.

The interruption enabled Mr Horsey to arrange his brief more conveniently, and he now proceeded with increasing confidence.

“The body of a woman, subsequently identified by the dental surgeon and the doctor who had treated her during her lifetime, as Mrs Rosa Ritchie, was discovered by some boys, lying among the bushes which overlook the Binford Park Reservoir, on the evening of November 5th.”

“This year, or last year, Mr Horsey?”

“Oh, this year, sir.”

“It’s as well to be clear about these things.”

Thus rebuked, Mr Horsey temporarily lost his place, but was given a further respite when the magistrate decided to have one of the radiators turned off.

Very gradually, as a small boat, its mast bent, its sail taut, will make headway on a succession of short tacks and violent jibes, so did Mr Horsey manage to unfold the prosecution’s story. An additional source of discomfort to him was the presence, in the bench in front, of the grizzled wig, tipped at a sharp angle over the leathery face of Mr Claude Wainwright, QC. Mr Wainwright had appeared from nowhere, at the last moment, and announced that he was instructed on behalf of the prisoner. With him, Mr Clayesmore.

This, felt Horsey, was unfair. He had been clearly given to understand that senior counsel were not to take any part in the preliminary proceedings. It was not that Wainwright had done anything or said anything, but the presence of his stringy neck and indestructible wig was an affront.

“It seemed unnecessary to produce the boys themselves as witnesses,” concluded Mr Horsey, “since they immediately, and very properly, sent for help in the form of the police. I will therefore call, as my first witness, Detective Sergeant Petrella.”

“Detective Sergeant Petrella,” boomed the uniformed usher, and Petrella, who had up to this moment been sitting in the company of the other Crown witnesses, on a nine-inch wide, worn, pinewood bench in an adjoining room, now stepped through the door and took the stand.

He described briefly how he had found the body, how it lay, and how it appeared to him that some effort had been made to cover it with leaves. He mentioned the finding of the newspaper with its missing centre pages, and he produced a large-scale plan of the reservoir, which was handed up to the magistrate, who kept the court waiting for several minutes while he examined it the wrong way up.

“One or two more questions, Sergeant,” said Mr Horsey, “relating to a later date in this investigation. Do you identify these six pieces of jewellery?”

Petrella agreed that he did so.

“Have they been identified as the property of Messrs Colegraves, Jewellers of Oxford Street?”

Mr Claude Wainwright’s wig rose about two inches, vertically, and the magistrate said, “I think, Mr Horsey, you ought to call a representative of Messrs Colegraves on that.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr Horsey, blushing again. “I intend to do so. I merely wished to establish with this officer that the pieces of jewellery in question were noted in the police pawn list as the property of Messrs Colegraves.”

“The alleged property of Messrs Colegraves,” said Mr Wainwright.

“Very well,” said Mr Horsey patiently, “the alleged property of Messrs Colegraves.”

Petrella admitted that this was so, and described his two visits to Mr Robins’ shop. Mr Wainwright did not cross-examine, and he was released. He departed through the doors at the rear of the court, waited until he judged that Mr Horsey had got his teeth into the next witness, and then came quietly back and slipped into one of the public benches. The uniformed policeman on duty saw him come in and winked at him.

He had never really appreciated before what a very large number of witnesses, most of them quite unimportant, the law demanded before it would accept the simplest fact.

The next man in the box was the draftsman from New Scotland Yard who had actually drawn the plan to which Petrella had referred. There followed the compiler of the pawn list, a representative of Messrs Colegraves, Mr Robins, and Mr Robins’ son, Richard.

Claude Wainwright, who had been apparently asleep, now woke up for a moment.

“When you were asked to identify the man who, it is suggested, had deposited these articles with you some time previously,” he said, “how was the matter transacted?”

Young Robins, who had lost his bearings about halfway through the question, gaped at him.

“I mean,” said Mr Wainwright, “what happened? Did the police officer produce Howton to you in person, eh?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Showed you photographs then?”

“That’s right, sir. He had a photograph.”

“I’ve no doubt,” said Mr Wainwright, “that being a conscientious officer, who knew his duty, he showed you six or eight different photographs and asked you to pick out from them the person you recognized?”

“Well, no, sir. He just showed me one.”

“Indeed,” said Mr Wainwright. “And what did he say? Did he say, ‘That’s the man who left the jewellery here, isn’t it?’”

“I can’t remember exactly what he did say.”

“Something like that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr Wainwright subsided into his gown like an old, tired balloon deflating.

The next witness was Dr Summerson. He told, in his high-pitched, impersonal voice, of the finding of the body, of his observations as to the probable time it had been there, of the autopsy subsequently conducted by him in the Highside Mortuary, and of his conclusion that Mrs Ritchie had been killed by a bullet, fired from a pistol actually pressed against her body.

“I removed,” he concluded, “from the neighborhood of the spinal column, at a point seven inches below the fourth cervical vertebra, a cupronickel-cased lead bullet which I placed in a plastic envelope. I sealed and initialled the envelope and subsequently handed it to Superintendent Causton of the Forensic Science Laboratory at New Scotland Yard together with certain other exhibits.”

Dr Summerson proceeded to detail in precise tones, which somehow robbed his words of offense, exactly those portions of poor Mrs Ritchie that he had removed, labelled and handed to Superintendent Causton. At the moment when he seemed to be about to step down from the box, Mr Horsey asked, “Were there any other points of general interest about your examination which might assist the court?”

“My examination,” said Dr Summerson, “also revealed that the deceased was three months pregnant at the time of her death.”

The reporters’ pencils scurried and squeaked. Summerson was always news. And here, at least, was a simple fact. Something that the reading public could grasp, and speculate about. The woman had been found in November. Her husband went to prison – when? About the previous Christmas. Now they were getting somewhere.

Disappointingly, Mr Wainwright seemed unmoved and unsurprised. He broke off a low-voiced conversation with Mr Clayesmore long enough to indicate that he had no questions to ask, and Dr Summerson stepped smartly from the box and was driven off in the direction of Greys Hospital, where he was due to deliver a lecture on gallstones as an aid to identification.

His place was taken by Superintendent Causton, who deposed that he had handed over the bullet handed to him by Dr Summerson to another authority for microphotographic examination, and he, in turn, was replaced by Charles Fenwick (“the well-known ballistics expert”), who expressed the view that the bullet found in the body had been fired from a
P
38 pistol, a high-velocity weapon used by the German Army.

“Normally,” said Mr Horsey, “a bullet fired from such a weapon might pass right through the body of the person it struck?”

Mr Fenwick agreed that it might, but said that if the pistol were actually pressed against the body of the victim, as Dr Summerson had suggested, this would decrease its momentum and velocity.

Mr Fenwick then described, in considerable detail, a series of experiments he had made, by firing bullets from a
P
38 pistol handed to him (Exhibit Six) and discovered, so he understood, adjacent to the scene of the crime.

At the end of all this Mr Wainwright rose to his feet and observed that the defence did not intend to contest the fact that the bullet found in the deceased’s body had been fired from the automatic pistol (Exhibit Six). It occurred to Petrella that if he had said so earlier, it would have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble but Mr Horsey seemed to be gratified by the admission.

“I now propose,” he said, “to deal with the question of identity.”

“After lunch,” said the magistrate, and rose to his feet and disappeared. The court emptied. Petrella wanted time for thought, and ate a solitary meal at a snack bar round the corner. There were, no doubt, a number of little routine jobs which he could have been doing, but technically he was still engaged, full time, on the Rosa Ritchie case and he could think of no more useful place to study that case in its entirety than the back of the Highside Magistrate’s Court.

In the somnolent hour which followed lunch the court disposed of Mrs Ritchie’s doctor and dentist, who were able to set at rest, from their careful records, any doubts as to identity. After them came Mrs Fraser.

“It was with this witness,” explained Mr Horsey, “that the deceased was lodging at the time she met her death. She was the first person to identify her, but her evidence, as to clothing and shoes and so on, is not, perhaps, necessary in view of the witnesses you have just heard.”

The magistrate agreed that this was so.

“I shall ask her, then, first to tell us what she can about the deceased’s movements on the day she met her death.”

“Is presumed to have met her death,” said Mr Wainwright. “We have at the moment no evidence on the point beyond an evening paper, which, even if it belonged to the deceased, she may easily have purchased some days before and carried about with her.”

Mr Horsey’s mind was not flexible enough to deal, on the spot, with the possibilities opened up by this comment, so he merely repeated submissively, “Very well – is presumed to have met her death. Now, Mrs Fraser–?”

There was not, after all, a great deal that she could tell. Rosa had not left the flat when she herself went out to work. That would have been before half past eight. She had to be at work by nine. Being Saturday, she had her lunch at a place near her work, did some shopping, and got home about three. Rosa was gone. Her handbag and coat and hat were gone, but there was nothing to show that her departure was intended to be permanent.

“But in fact you never saw her again.”

“Never.”

“She had her own key?”

“She had a front-door key and a flat key.”

“Which were found in her handbag and later identified by you?”

“Yes.”

“Was she often out late at night?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes all night?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you ever ask her where she had been?”

“Certainly not, why should I?”

“No reason at all,” agreed Mr Horsey. “Only, if you had asked her, and she had told you, it might have been interesting for us to know.”

This did not appear to be a question, so the witness made no attempt to answer it.

“I should like you to look at the accused.”

Mrs Fraser twisted round and looked unwillingly at Howton, who glared back at her out of his single eye.

“Have you ever seen him before today?”

“Once or twice, yes.”

“In what circumstances?”

It was clear that she was pausing to choose her words.

“He seemed to be some sort of acquaintance of Rosa’s.”

“Someone she was intimate with?”

“Really!” Mr Wainwright exploded like an expensive cracker.

“I meant, was he an intimate friend?”

“Intimacy, Mr Horsey,” said the magistrate, “is a word which, when used in court, for some reason I have never been able to understand, almost always implies impropriety. Is that what you are alleging?”

It was clearly what Mr Horsey would have liked to allege; it was also quite clearly outside his brief, so he shook his head sulkily.

“If not,” continued the magistrate, “I would suggest that you merely ask the witness to describe what occurred within her own observation.”

It amounted, again, to very little. Howton had called once or twice. She could not be pinned down to dates, but certainly not more than six times during the period that Rosa had lodged with her.