A Capital Crime (2 page)

‘What will you do?’ he asked.

‘Oh, you know,’ Diana tried to keep her tone light, ‘there’s lots of things I can do. I can type, and organise … I can even cook a little. I’m sure I can make myself useful to somebody.’

Guy nodded. ‘You’re different, now.’

Yes, thought Diana, I am: older, wiser, tougher and more practical. A small voice in the back of her mind warned her that the toughness and practicality remained to be tested – war-work was one thing, a peacetime job quite another.

‘You are different too,’ she said. ‘It isn’t surprising.’

‘I suppose not.’ Guy stared at her with a sort of miserable wonder. ‘You’re very beautiful, you know. I’ve always thought that.’ He’s trying to tell me I’ll find another husband, Diana thought. Right at the moment she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted one. ‘I’m sorry I can’t give you more money, but …’ Mentally, Diana completed the sentence –
but Evie won’t allow it
.

‘It’s all right, Guy,’ she said. ‘The first thing I’m going to do is
go up to Gloucestershire and see what can be done with Hambeyn House, now that the army’s finally decided to relinquish it.’

‘These big places …’ said Guy doubtfully. He didn’t need to complete that sentence, either, as both of them knew that Diana’s childhood home was unlikely to fetch more than the small amount that a builder would pay for the raw materials. ‘Well …’ He glanced around the room. ‘I can see you’ve got things to do, so I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘It might be best,’ said Diana, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘The taxi’s due in half an hour.’

Guy acknowledged this with a nod, but made no move to leave. After a few moments, looking more awkward than ever, he cleared his throat, said, ‘Well…’ again and held out his hand. Mechanically, she held out hers, and they shook for what felt like an age. Then the sheer absurdity of the gesture, coupled with the desire to make it clear that she was well aware of her mother-in-law’s machinations, got the better of her, and looking Guy straight in the eye she said, ‘I’m sure that you and Genevieve and Evie will be very happy.’

Blushing, he jerked his hand free of hers. ‘Yes, well …’ He swallowed. ‘No hard feelings, I trust.’

‘Not at all.’

Conscious that in this exchange at least she was the victor, Diana watched him squeak his way back across the room. He paused in the doorway and turned back, an almost beseeching expression on his face. ‘You will say goodbye to Evie, won’t you?’ he asked.

Diana, who had asked herself several times in the past twenty-four hours if it were possible to slide away without saying anything to her mother-in-law, treated Guy to what she knew was her haughtiest expression. ‘Of course.’

When he’d gone, closing the door behind him as gently and quietly as if someone had died, she thought, with a rush of confidence, I shall say goodbye to Evie, but I shall do it with my head held high. Suddenly, she found herself looking forward to the encounter, and with swift, sure movements, set about finishing her packing.

Chapter Three

Number ten was at the end of Paradise Street, hard against the wall of the goods yard, with a manhole directly outside the downstairs bay window. At a nod from Stratton, Ballard squatted down and tried to lift the lid. After a few moments he looked up, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, sir. Can’t move it. It doesn’t look as if it’s been disturbed recently, does it?’

‘Not really, no.’ Stratton, kneeling beside him, put his fingers under the rim and heaved, but, try as they might, the two men couldn’t budge the iron slab. ‘It’s no good,’ said Stratton, finally, standing up and easing his back. ‘He’d have to be Charles Atlas to get that up on his own.’

‘Perhaps someone gave him a hand,’ said Ballard, mopping his face.

‘Mmm …’ Sensing that he was being watched, Stratton turned towards number ten. The curtains were closed but a face was peering round them, a bald-pated, feeble-looking middle-aged man in a cardigan, blinking through pebble glasses. ‘Him?’ said Stratton derisively, jerking his head at the window.

The man made a curious sideways sucking motion with his mouth and withdrew his head. ‘He does look a bit of a maiden aunt, doesn’t he?’ said Ballard.

‘We’d better have some help,’ said Stratton. ‘Take the car back to the station and get some reinforcements. Try and find someone with a bit of muscle, like Canning. And a crowbar.’

Ballard went off to telephone, leaving Stratton outside the house. A semicircle of neighbours, mainly putty-faced women and children, had gathered to stand at a discreet distance. The women, several of whom had their hair in curlers, wore cretonne overalls, and the children, snotty-nosed, concave-chested and wearing an assortment of ill-fitting clothing and gumboots, trailed skipping ropes, sticks, and a broken tennis racket. The constant rumble of trains travelling along the line to Euston was counterpointed by an assortment of hollow, tubercular coughs and the thin, high wail of a baby, but no-one spoke. Instead, they watched warily, ready to back away and scatter, reminding him of a herd of cows.

When Stratton turned back towards number ten he saw the man again, standing in front of the still-drawn curtains, this time with a cup and saucer held in a dainty manner, little finger slightly raised. Ballard’s description of a maiden aunt was spot on, he thought. The man blinked at him for a moment, then withdrew.

Stratton wondered if that were Norman Backhouse, the man who’d taken Davies’s baby into his care, and why he did not come out to see what was going on outside his home. Time enough for that later – the contents of the drain must come first. He squatted down once more to look at the manhole cover. Nobody was
that
strong, thought Stratton. Six foot three, broad-shouldered and a former boxer, he wasn’t exactly a weakling, and neither, despite his slimmer physique, was Ballard. It would take at least three men, maybe four, to lift the thing. He lit a cigarette and wondered how many people lived in Paradise Street. They were little more than doll’s houses, really – there couldn’t be more than two rooms per storey, with one out the back on the ground floor – but he’d have bet that each building was inhabited by at least two families, plus the usual assortment of jobless ex-servicemen, part-time prostitutes, and forlorn elderly widows who eked out their meagre pensions in tea and bread and marge.

Ballard returned after ten minutes, followed by the towering, barrel-chested form of PC Canning, who was holding a crowbar, with old Arliss, the station’s most incompetent policeman, grumbling along in the rear. Stratton issued instructions, but even with the four of them (not that Arliss did much more than complain about his back) it took a lot of grunting and heaving before they were able to move the cover aside sufficiently for Canning to shine his torch down the hole. When he looked up, he was shaking his head.

‘What’s up?’ asked Stratton.

‘See for yourself, sir.’ Canning handed him the torch.

Stratton leant over the opening and looked. The shaft was empty. ‘I don’t believe there’s ever been a body in there,’ he said.

‘There aren’t any other drains nearby,’ said Ballard.

Stratton turned to look down the road and found himself, instead, looking into a pair of round, pale blue eyes, blinking rapidly behind thick glasses. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, stepping back smartly. ‘Can I help you?’

The man, who Stratton now recognised as the chap who’d been watching them from inside the house, gave a soft cough. ‘I think, Inspector,’ he said in a voice so quiet that Stratton had to strain to hear it, ‘that it might be more a question of how
I
can help
you
.’

‘I see.’ Wondering why he hadn’t heard the man approach, Stratton looked down and saw that he was wearing plimsolls. Must have crept up behind us, he thought.

The man made the peculiar sideways movement with his mouth that he’d noticed before. Up close, it was accompanied by a small wet sucking noise. He looked, Stratton thought, like a bad ventriloquist. ‘My name’s Backhouse. I saw you through the window. Of course, I didn’t want to obstruct you in the course of your duties – I know all about that because I was a special. In the recent war. Volunteered in nineteen thirty-nine and served for several years at West End Central. In fact …’ he ducked his head, modestly, ‘I had the honour to be commended on two occasions.’ He stopped, clearly expecting a response. When none was forthcoming, he said, ‘I
wondered … are you looking for something?’ During the course of this little speech, Backhouse’s voice had risen in volume, so that by the end it was almost normal. He had the vestiges of a northern accent – Yorkshire, Stratton thought – eroded, like his own Devonian one had been, by years of contact with Cockneys, and spoke with exaggerated precision, taking great care with his consonants.

Stratton introduced himself, and then, drawing Backhouse to one side, said, ‘Perhaps you can help us with some information about the Davieses.’

‘They’re not here now,’ said Backhouse. ‘They’ve left.’

‘When was that?’

Backhouse considered this for a moment. ‘The second week of November. I remember that because we had workmen here. The last time I saw them was the Tuesday of that week.’

‘And you haven’t seen them since?’

‘Not Muriel – Mrs Davies, that is – or the baby. They went off then, you see, to stay with some friends in … Bristol, I think it was. That’s what he told us.’

‘Mr Davies told you that?’

‘Yes, that’s right. He said they were going for a holiday, and he was joining them later in the week. He told me he was going to find a job up there. Has something happened to them, Inspector?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

‘Well, you’ll not find them in the drain.’ Backhouse spoke as if it were a perfectly normal place to look for someone, such as their home or the local pub.

‘No,’ agreed Stratton. ‘Did Davies leave the baby with you at any time?’

Backhouse stared at him in surprise. When he spoke, it was barely more than a whisper. ‘No. My wife used to listen out for her from time to time if Muriel went out, but that was all.’

‘So you didn’t tell him you’d find someone to look after the baby?’

‘Tell him …? I’m sorry, Inspector, I don’t understand.’

‘Mr Davies made a statement to the police in Wales, saying you told him you’d find someone to look after the baby.’

‘Find someone? That’s nonsense.’ Backhouse cleared his throat and continued at normal pitch, ‘He left some of her things with me, but that was all … but I don’t understand. You said he’d made a statement?’

‘Yes. He said he’d put his wife’s body in the drain.’

‘Oh, dear …’ Backhouse shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t know anything about that. I’m sure we’d have noticed, if … There was nothing like that. He just gave me the things to look after. He’d sold the rest of his furniture, you see, before he left.’

‘All of it?’ asked Stratton, remembering the telegram.

‘Yes. A man came for it a few days later.’

‘Did Davies collect the baby’s things?’

Backhouse shook his head. ‘We’ve still got them. Would you like to see?’

‘Yes, please.’

Stratton told the others to put the drain cover back in place and followed Backhouse inside number ten.

‘Lucky I was here,’ he said. ‘I’d normally be at work, but I suffer with my back. It’s so bad now I’ve had to have a certificate from the doctor.’ Ignoring this, Stratton peered down the dim hallway. It was narrow, with a solitary gas bracket for lighting and a flight of stairs halfway back with a passage alongside which led to the back door and, adjacent to that, the door of what Stratton guessed must be Backhouse’s kitchen. Glancing through a half-open door on the right, he caught sight of the corner of a table with a dark bobble-edged cloth on it and the edges of a couple of framed photographs. Faded sepia, he imagined, dead Victorians in all their dour glory. He was proved right about the kitchen when a plump, large-bosomed woman stepped out of it, tea towel in hand. Clad in a flowered cretonne overall, she had a placid, almost bovine expression. ‘What is it, Norman?’ Her accent was Yorkshire, too, but more pronounced.

‘This is my wife,’ explained Backhouse. ‘It’s the police, Edna. The ones who were looking down the drain.’

‘Inspector Stratton,’ added Stratton, by way of introduction.

‘Is there something wrong with the drain?’ Mrs Backhouse looked worried. ‘Only we’ve not touched it.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it, but I’d like to see the things that Mr Davies left with you, for the baby.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘As I explained to Mr Backhouse,’ said Stratton, feeling foolish, ‘we aren’t really sure at the moment.’

‘Oh dear …’ Mrs Backhouse put a hand over her mouth. ‘They’re in the kitchen. But they’re not ours, so I don’t know if—’

‘Don’t keep the inspector waiting, Edna,’ said Backhouse. ‘He’s got to do his job.’

The Backhouses’ kitchen was a cramped, cluttered room, no more than ten feet square, containing a gas stove, a range, a stone sink, shelves, a table and two chairs and an odd-looking deckchair, its canvas replaced by a home-made sling of knotted ropes. Mrs Backhouse opened a wooden cupboard door in the back wall. ‘It’s all here,’ she said. ‘We haven’t interfered with it.’ Peering inside, Stratton saw an alcove stretching back about six feet, which, by the looks of it, had once been used to store coal. Now, it held a pram, a baby’s high chair, and two suitcases. Lifting the nearest case out, Stratton set it on the floor and, kneeling down, opened it. Inside was a grubby cot blanket, and underneath that, baby clothes.

‘Do you recognise these?’ he asked Mrs Backhouse, who was peering over his shoulder.

‘Yes. That’s one of Judy’s frocks.’

Stratton took out his notebook. ‘Judy’s the baby’s name, is it?’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Backhouse frowned. ‘But I thought you knew … I mean, if you’re looking for them.’

‘We don’t have much information,’ said Stratton. ‘We just want to make sure she’s safe.’

Mrs Backhouse shook her head. ‘Poor little thing …’

‘If there’s anything more we can do to help, Inspector,’ said Backhouse, ‘you’ve only to ask. As I said, I was with the police during the war, so I know—’