Hardcastle's Soldiers (19 page)

When DS Wood entered the office, Hardcastle put his pipe in the ashtray. ‘Wood, you got the details of Nancy Utting née Mansfield from Somerset House, didn't you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good. Have a word with Vine Street nick and see if they've any record of her being knocked off for soliciting prostitution. I've a feeling in my water that she's the sort of woman who puts herself about. And with Jack Utting being out of work, she might be the family's only breadwinner. Her previous landlady seemed to think so.'

‘Right, sir,' said Wood.

‘By the way, Wood, did you make those enquiries at the other barracks about Lieutenant Mansfield?'

‘Yes, sir. I called at Wellington, Chelsea and Hyde Park Barracks. I even tried Kingston Barracks, but Mr Mansfield hadn't registered with any of them.'

‘I thought as much. All right, Wood, carry on. And now, Marriott, I think we'll go and have another chat with Miss Isabella Harcourt,' said Hardcastle, once Wood had left to undertake the DDI's enquiry. ‘See if she can shed some light on what's been going on.'

‘D'you think she'll be able to help in any way, sir?' Marriott was often puzzled by his DDI's sudden decisions, but could not for the life of him understand what Hardcastle hoped to achieve by interviewing Lieutenant Mansfield's fiancée again. ‘After all, we've established that it wasn't her fiancé we spoke to on the day of the murder.'

Hardcastle said nothing, but merely smiled and tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.

I
t was a pleasant, sunny afternoon, and Detective Sergeant Herbert Wood decided that he would walk from Cannon Row to Vine Street Police Station. It was only about a mile if he went via Cockspur Street and then cut through the back streets to Piccadilly. Being a sergeant, he did not get to do much patrolling, and the opportunity for a stroll in the fresh air was more than welcome.

The constable on duty at the door of the police station, his thumbs tucked under his tunic pocket buttons, looked up in surprise as he saw DS Wood's figure approaching. ‘Well, I'm damned, if it ain't Bert Wood.'

‘Good grief, “Pincher” Martin,' said Wood, as he shook hands with the PC. Ten years previously, Douglas Martin and Wood had been among the first recruits at the newly opened Peel House, the Metropolitan Police training school in Victoria.

‘Where're you doing it, Bert?' asked Martin, using the police shorthand for enquiring where someone was serving.

‘On A at Cannon Row.'

Martin laughed. ‘Come up to Vine Street to see how proper police work's done?'

‘I can see you're not doing much of it, standing on the front door of the nick sunning yourself,' said Wood.

‘It's to stop idle callers troubling the high and mighty station officer,' said Martin. ‘Anyway, what are you really doing up here?'

‘I've come to have a look at your toms' register, Pincher. I'm working on a murder with my DDI.'

‘What, the one at Victoria Station? Nasty business that.' Martin half bowed and swept a hand towards the police station entrance. ‘Be my guest, Bert. Don't want to hold up detective officers on an important mission for their DDI.'

Once inside the police station, Wood explained to the station officer what he was seeking. ‘Anything you've got on a Nancy Utting, or maybe in her maiden name of Mansfield, skip,' he said.

The sergeant quickly produced one of a plethora of bound volumes that were on the shelf behind his desk, and handed it over. ‘Help yourself, mate,' he said.

It did not take Wood long to find what he was looking for, or, more to the point, what Hardcastle wanted. He made a few notes, thanked the station officer, and went on his way.

‘How about a beer some time, Bert?' suggested Martin as Wood left the station.

‘Yeah, why not? You earlies next week?'

‘Yes, six-to-two all week.'

‘See you Friday at the Coal Hole pub in the Strand, Pincher. That's about halfway between your nick and mine.'

‘Look forward to it, Bert,' said Martin, and turned to deal with a young woman approaching the station door.

It was three o'clock that same afternoon when Hardcastle and Marriott arrived at the Westbourne Terrace house where the Harcourts lived.

This time it was a severely countenanced butler who answered the door.

‘Yes?' The butler looked down his nose, obviously recognizing the two detectives as not of the class of visitor usually calling at the Harcourt residence.

‘I'm a police officer,' said Hardcastle. ‘I wish to see Miss Isabella Harcourt.'

‘May I enquire what it's about?' asked the butler, still maintaining his haughty attitude.

‘No, you may not,' snapped Hardcastle. He had had dealings with supercilious butlers before, and dismissed them as having ideas above their station.

‘One moment.' Leaving the two detectives on the doorstep, the butler retreated.

‘Toffee-nosed bugger,' muttered Hardcastle. ‘He thinks the bell tolls for him,' he added, misquoting John Donne, the sixteenth-century poet.

The butler reappeared at the front door. ‘This way,' he said, crooking a beckoning finger.

Hardcastle handed his bowler hat and umbrella to the butler, and signalled to Marriott to do the same. The two detectives followed the Harcourts' flunky into the drawing room at the front of the house where they had previously interviewed Isabella Harcourt.

Geoffrey Mansfield's fiancée appeared almost immediately.

‘The two police persons, Miss Isabella,' murmured the butler disdainfully, by way of introduction.

‘Thank you, Hoskins,' said Isabella. She waited until the butler had departed, and had closed the door firmly behind him, before speaking again. ‘Please take a seat, gentlemen. I presume you have some more questions for me, Inspector.' She sat down on the sofa opposite the two detectives and arranged her skirt.

‘No, miss, no questions. But I thought that you'd wish to know that I'm now quite satisfied that your fiancé, Lieutenant Mansfield, was not the officer we spoke to at Victoria Station on the morning of the murder.'

‘I can't say I'm surprised, Inspector,' said Billie Harcourt. ‘What you said about him waiting at Victoria to meet me off a train was obviously nonsense, but what does it all mean? Who was this man, and why should he have impersonated Geoffrey?'

‘That's what's puzzling me at the moment, miss,' said Hardcastle, with an unusual candour. ‘The man I spoke to that morning, gave your fiancé's name, knew that he was in the North Staffordshire Regiment – in fact, was dressed in the uniform of such an officer – and also knew that he'd served at Arras. Now, that makes me wonder who would've known Lieutenant Mansfield well enough to have all those facts at his fingertips. And why should he have claimed to have a fiancée, by whom he presumably meant you? Although he didn't mention you by name.'

‘I'm afraid I'm unable to help you with that, Inspector.' Billie Harcourt chewed briefly at her bottom lip in vexation. ‘It is rather worrying, isn't it?'

‘Can you think of anyone who might've known all these things, miss?' asked Marriott.

Billie Harcourt remained silent for a few moments before replying. ‘As far as I'm aware, only his parents might know that much about him. His father's in the army, something to do with military bands, I think. And then there's his sister, of course. Her name's Nancy, and I believe she's an actress.'

‘I suppose she lives with her parents,' suggested Hardcastle in an offhanded manner. He was playing his usual game of teasing facts from someone when he already knew the answer. But he always liked to have those facts confirmed.

‘Oh, no, she's married to someone called Jack Utting, and has a baby.' Billie Harcourt lowered her voice. ‘To be perfectly honest, Inspector, I don't much care for Nancy's husband. He's a bank clerk, so Geoffrey told me, but I gather that he's a bit of a disreputable character.'

‘Have you met him, then?'

‘No, but from what Geoffrey's told me about him, he's a bit of a ne'er-do-well.'

‘Surprised he's not in the army,' said Hardcastle, ‘but what d'you mean by a disreputable character?'

‘It's only what Geoffrey has told me. Jack Utting got mixed up with the stage at one time, before he got a job with a bank, and that's where he met Nancy. I think he was a stage manager at the theatre where she was appearing, but apparently he hops from one job to another, never staying in one for any length of time.'

‘Well, Miss Harcourt,' said Hardcastle as he stood up, ‘if your fiancé does return in the near future, perhaps you'd be so good as to ask him to contact me at Cannon Row Police Station. He might just be able to shed some light on this whole business.'

The butler reappeared, and proffered the two police officers their hats and umbrellas. But it was out of duty to Billie Harcourt, rather than a courtesy to the detectives.

‘Thank you, Hoskins,' said Hardcastle.

‘Well, Marriott, we didn't learn much there,' said the DDI, hailing a taxi with his umbrella. ‘Apart from discovering that Jack Utting seems to be a bit of a layabout. But we'd guessed that already.'

‘No, sir.' Even before their visit to Westbourne Terrace, Marriott had decided that it would be a waste of time, but caution had prevented him from expressing that view to Hardcastle. After all, the DDI moved in mysterious ways, and often brought a murder enquiry to a successful conclusion. And the fact that Billie Harcourt had said that Jack Utting was a ne'er-do-well more or less confirmed the opinion that both he and the DDI had formed. An opinion to which Hardcastle had just given voice.

‘Scotland Yard, cabbie,' said Hardcastle to the taxi driver, and in an aside to Marriott, added, ‘Tell 'em Cannon Row and half the time you'll finish up at Cannon Street in the City.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Marriott wearily.

Detective Constables Catto and Lipton did not relish spending all night keeping observation on the Utting residence in Francis Street. But both were resourceful officers, and it was Gordon Lipton who made the decision to foreshorten their tedious duty.

‘It's damned near ten o'clock, Henry,' said Lipton, glancing at his watch. ‘I don't reckon the bugger's going anywhere now.'

‘If he's there, Gordon,' said an equally dispirited Catto. ‘We could be hanging about here until tomorrow morning with nothing to show for it.'

For nine hours now, the two officers had attempted to maintain a discreet surveillance of Jack Utting's house. It was not an easy task, apart from which both officers were certain that they were fairly obvious. It was a self-consciousness shared by all officers attempting a discreet observation. There was little cover, and they had maintained their watch on Utting's house by walking up and down Francis Street. But they had convinced themselves that if Utting had spotted them, he had decided to stay indoors. Either that or he had been out, had spotted them before they saw him, and had no intention of going home until the detectives had gone.

‘Well, I'm going to make a duff call,' announced Lipton.

‘I don't think the DDI would like us to do that, Gordon,' said Catto nervously. As the senior of the two constables, he bore responsibility for the conduct of their particular duty, and knew that if anything went wrong, Hardcastle would blame him. Henry Catto laboured under the constant fear that the slightest transgression on his part would result in a return to uniformed duty, and the monotony of walking a beat in what Hardcastle termed ‘a pointed hat'. What he did not know, and would never be told, was that he had a champion in Detective Sergeant Marriott who regarded him as an efficient detective.

‘Well, I'm going to give it a go,' said Lipton, ‘and to hell with the DDI.' With that disregard of any sanction that Hardcastle might care to impose, Lipton marched up to the door of number seventeen, and hammered loudly on the brass knocker.

Nancy Utting opened the door a fraction, and peered apprehensively at the man on her doorstep. ‘Yes, what is it?'

‘Sorry to call so late, ma'am,' said Lipton, at the same time raising his straw boater. He was slightly taken aback by Nancy Utting's somewhat revealing dress, the same dress that she had been wearing when the DDI called. ‘I represent the Durham Life Insurance Company. Is the man of the house at home?'

‘Are you selling insurance?' asked Nancy.

‘I'm offering a very cheap life policy, ma'am. They've proved to be very popular, particularly since the war started.'

‘I'm sorry, but my husband deals with all that, and he's away in the army in France.'

‘Ah, I see, ma'am,' said Lipton, raising his boater once again. ‘I'm sorry to have troubled you.' He turned and paused. ‘I hope your man will be safe over there,' he said.

‘Thank you,' said Nancy Utting, and closed the door.

Lipton rejoined Catto at the corner of the street. ‘Well, that's that, Henry, old son. She reckons her old man's in the army, and I bet the DDI didn't know that. So we'll be wasting our time hanging about here any longer. I suggest we have a pint, and push off home.'

The following morning, a nervous Catto hovered outside Hardcastle's office door.

‘Well?' barked the DDI.

‘It's about the observation on Jack Utting, sir.'

‘What about it?' Hardcastle sat down behind his desk, and filled his pipe.

‘Nothing happened, sir.'

‘Nothing?' Hardcastle stared at the young DC.

‘No, sir. There was no sighting of him at all. Gordon Lipton and me kept discreet observation on the house in Francis Street, but there was no sign of Utting.' Fearing some reproof, Catto spoke apprehensively before uttering his next sentence. ‘Lipton knocked on the door, and—'