Hardcastle's Soldiers (25 page)

Marriott leaped across the room and scooped the slender young woman into his arms and laid her gently on the settee on which he and Hardcastle had been sitting.

‘Perhaps you'd get a glass of water, Mr Utting,' said Hardcastle.

By the time that William Utting returned, Cora had partially recovered.

‘I'm sorry to have to break the news to your daughter like that, Mr Utting,' said Hardcastle, ‘but there was no other way.'

‘It's all this bloody war,' said William Utting, a sad expression on his face. ‘The world'll never be the same again, Inspector.'

‘I fear you might be right, Mr Utting,' said Hardcastle, who had expressed the same view many times himself.

‘Why didn't you tell me straight away, instead of letting me carry on like that?' demanded Cora, dabbing at her tears with a lacy handkerchief.

Hardcastle ignored the question. ‘When did Adrian shave off his moustache?' he asked.

‘What a funny question,' said Cora. ‘He hasn't, as far as I know.'

‘When did you last see him, Miss Utting?' asked Marriott.

Cora paused in thought for a few moments. ‘It must've been about three weeks ago, I suppose. He told me he'd be away on some special training.' Although the girl gave the impression of being still in a state of shock, she was doing her best to put a brave face on the news she had just received. ‘It looks as though I'll be a war widow before I was even wed,' she said sadly. Albeit a contradiction in terms, it was a remarkably mature comment for an eighteen-year-old to have made.

Hardcastle and Marriott glanced at each other. The period of time since Cora had last seen her fiancé was significant. If she was telling the truth, the last occasion they had met was just before the Victoria Station murder.

But the DDI was not wholly convinced. She had made a very quick recovery from her fainting fit, and was once again bright and cogent. All of which made him wonder if she had been putting on an act, and knew all along what Adrian Nash had been doing. She might even have worked out that it had been her fiancé who was involved in what the press had called the ‘siege of Francis Street'. The early editions of today's
Star
had carried lurid accounts of the shooting although no mention was made of Nash; even the police had not known who he was until now.

‘Mr Utting,' said Hardcastle, ‘I have a warrant to search this house in connection with the murder of Herbert Somers at Victoria Station on the eleventh of this month.'

Utting's face expressed astonishment. ‘What on earth makes you think that anything in this house is connected with that, Inspector?'

‘I have not only arrested Adrian Nash, Mr Utting,' said Hardcastle, ‘but I've also arrested your son Jack in connection with the same murder.'

‘My God!' exclaimed Utting, sitting down suddenly. ‘I don't believe any of this, Inspector.' He was clearly taken aback by Hardcastle's latest announcement, coming so quickly after news of his prospective son-in-law's arrest. ‘You'd better do what you have to do, then,' he said, in a voice that had taken on a pitch of despair, as though he was unable to grasp the extent of the crisis that had suddenly beset his family, or the reasons for it. ‘I don't know what you expect to find.'

‘We'll start upstairs, perhaps with your room,' said Hardcastle to Cora Utting. He noticed that she seemed quite nervous at the prospect.

‘Let me go and tidy it up first,' said Cora, swinging her legs off the settee and standing up. ‘It's in a bit of a mess.' She seemed fully recovered.

‘That won't be necessary, Miss Utting,' said Marriott, as he followed the DDI out of the room. ‘But it might be as well if you came with us.'

It was a small bedroom at the back of the house. A crucifix hung over the single bed, and far from being untidy, as Cora Utting had implied, it was clean and orderly. A hairbrush and comb were neatly arranged on the dressing table, and there was a woman's magazine on a small table next to the bed.

Hardcastle looked around, as if trying to decide where to start. He moved towards the small wardrobe and opened the door. Inside was an army uniform. The DDI took it out and laid it on the bed.

‘What d'you know about that, Marriott?' When it came to military matters, Hardcastle always deferred to his sergeant.

‘The collar badges are the North Staffordshire Regiment, sir. You can't mistake the Staffordshire knot.'

‘I thought as much,' said Hardcastle, as he looked closer and examined the two Bath stars on each of the shoulder straps. He turned to Cora Utting. ‘And who does this belong to, miss?'

‘It's my fiancé's.' But from the hesitant way in which she replied, it was obvious that Cora was lying, or at least uncertain.

‘But I thought you agreed that he was in the Army Service Corps, miss.' Hardcastle gave a masterful performance of being completely puzzled by the whole thing. ‘Or has he transferred to another regiment of late? And been promoted?'

Cora Utting blushed scarlet, and spread her hand across her neck. ‘I don't know anything about the army,' she said. ‘All I can tell you is that Adrian said it was his spare uniform, and he wanted to keep it here ready for the wedding.'

‘Really?' Hardcastle sounded surprised.

‘Your brother Jack is married to a woman called Nancy, isn't he?' asked Marriott.

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘And Nancy Utting's brother is Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield, of the North Staffordshire Regiment. So I would suggest, Miss Utting, that this is his uniform.'

‘Well, if that's the case, I don't know what Adrian was doing with it. Perhaps he's looking after it for this …' Cora paused. ‘What did you say his name was?'

‘It won't do, Miss Utting,' said Hardcastle. ‘I'm arresting you on suspicion of being an accessory to the murder of Herbert Somers. I shall now take you to Cannon Row Police Station.'

Predictably, Cora Utting burst in to tears. But her father, who had been standing on the landing during this exchange, exploded with fury.

‘Now look here, Inspector,' protested William Utting, ‘my daughter had nothing to do with this awful business. To suggest that she was somehow involved is outrageous.'

‘If she wasn't involved, Mr Utting, she has nothing to worry about,' said Hardcastle. ‘But I have to say that there appears to be no reasonable explanation for her possession of a uniform that may have been used in a murder.'

‘Aren't you going to search the rest of the house, then?' asked Utting sarcastically.

‘Not at this stage,' said Hardcastle. ‘I've found what I was looking for.' He glanced at his sergeant. ‘We'll take that uniform with us, Marriott. There may be blood stains on it.'

‘Bloody marvellous, isn't it? There's me risking life and limb fighting on the Western Front, and damned near getting killed, and all you people can do is make a young woman's life a misery. I don't know why I bothered. I should have joined your lot when I had my health.'

And with that caustic tirade following them, Hardcastle and Marriott escorted Cora Utting out to the street.

Hardcastle's ‘unknown' prisoner affected the same surly countenance when, once again, he was escorted into the interview room. He flopped into one of the chairs and took out a packet of Capstan cigarettes.

‘Well, Second Lieutenant Adrian Nash of the Army Service Corps,' said Hardcastle, ‘I've just found something else to charge you with. Desertion. And I understand that you'll likely get shot at dawn for that.'

Nash jerked upright, almost as if he were a marionette whose strings had been suddenly tightened. ‘Not me,' he protested.

‘Furthermore,' Hardcastle continued, ‘I shall charge you with unlawful possession of an officer's uniform, and wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross to which you weren't entitled.' Not that the DDI was going to bother with either of those summary offences, given that Nash was facing two charges of murder.

‘If, as you say, I am an officer,' sneered Nash, ‘how can I be in unlawful possession of an officer's uniform?'

‘Because it's a uniform of an officer in the North Staffordshire Regiment.'

‘I don't know anything about it. I've never had such a uniform. What would I be doing with a North Staffs officer's uniform?'

‘Do you deny ever possessing it, then?' asked Marriott.

‘Of course I do.' But Nash was nowhere near as confident as when he had entered the interview room, and his hands had started twitching on the table.

‘In that case,' said Marriott mildly, ‘we'll have to charge your fiancée with its possession. We found it in her wardrobe at her father's house in Acre Lane.'

‘What fiancée?'

‘The young lady we've got locked up here,' said Hardcastle. ‘In case you've forgotten, Nash, her name's Cora Utting, and I'm about to charge her with being an accessory to the murder of Herbert Somers.'

Nash's face drained of colour. ‘You leave her out of this. She had nothing to with it.'

‘Nothing to do with what?' Hardcastle asked the question gently, rather like a skilled fisherman reeling in a prize salmon.

‘She had nothing to do with any murder, and neither did I.'

Hardcastle leaned back in his chair and studied the young renegade officer. ‘I am going to charge you with the murder of Herbert Somers at Victoria Station. That was when you cunningly thought to deflect any suspicion from yourself by pretending to be Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield, and telling me all about the soldier who didn't salute you, and who ran away. And, on behalf of another police officer, namely Divisional Detective Inspector Arthur Fitnam of the Wandsworth Division, I shall likely be charging you with the murder of a prostitute, Ivy Huggins, at Kingston upon Thames. Mr Fitnam will probably charge you with stealing a motor van as well.' Hardcastle did not think that Arthur Fitnam would bother with that, but, as with the question of the uniform and the medal ribbon, he never avoided putting such psychological pressure on a prisoner.

‘I had nothing to do with any of that,' said Nash lamely, but his protestation carried no conviction.

‘You see, Nash, your fingerprints were on the revolver which you used to club Somers to death.' Hardcastle spoke as though Nash had not denied any involvement. ‘And they were also on the knife with which you stabbed Ivy Huggins, and they were all over the van you stole from the lock-up at the baker's shop in Cowleaze Road, Kingston upon Thames.'

‘I want a lawyer,' said Nash.

‘Yes, I think you do,' commented Hardcastle. ‘And when you see him perhaps you'll tell him I shall also charge you with the attempted murder of a police officer in Francis Street on Friday the twenty-seventh of this month. Incidentally, where did you get the revolver you used to shoot at my officers?'

‘I was issued with it, of course.' The reply was surly.

‘And the one you used to club Herbert Somers to death?'

‘Find out.'

It was nearing nine o'clock that evening by the time that Hardcastle turned his attention to Cora Utting.

Languishing in a cell for nigh on two and a half hours had terrified Adrian Nash's eighteen-year-old fiancée, and she had spent most of the time sobbing. It was a combination of fear, and the certain knowledge that her fiancé was to be hanged.

‘Well, young lady,' Hardcastle began, as he and Marriott entered the interview room, ‘I think it's time you told us all you know.'

‘I don't know anything,' said the tearful Cora, staring imploringly at the DDI with red-rimmed eyes.

‘Let me explain the situation to you, then,' said Hardcastle. ‘Your fiancé has been arrested for murder. That much I told you before.'

‘I don't believe he had anything to do with a murder.'

‘Just listen.' Hardcastle spoke softly, and tried to bear in mind that the young woman opposite him was only a year younger than his daughter Maud, and he was aware of how immature, on occasion, she could be, despite nursing wounded soldiers. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Adrian Nash was responsible for two murders, and one of the victims was a prostitute who he'd picked up in Kingston after stealing a van from a lock-up garage.'

‘A prostitute?' Cora could not disguise her shock at this revelation. ‘I don't believe it.' But it was obvious that she did, and was starting to realize that Adrian Nash was not the man, resplendent in an officer's uniform, whom she thought would make a dashing and gallant husband.

‘He will be charged with those murders, and doubtless your brother Jack will also be charged as an accessory.' Hardcastle was by no means sure that Jack Utting
was
involved in any way with the killings, but saw no reason to share those doubts with Utting's sister. ‘Now, unless you want to join your fiancé and your brother in the dock at the Old Bailey, it would be best if you told me all you know.'

Cora Utting plucked a handkerchief from her sleeve, and began to cry again. ‘I don't know anything about it, honestly,' she blurted out between sobs.

‘You know nothing about the uniform we found at your house, then?' asked Marriott.

‘No, honestly, I thought it belonged to Adrian.'

‘But it had different badges on it, and two stars on the shoulder straps,' said Marriott. ‘Your fiancé is a second-lieutenant, and that merits only one star.'

‘I told you, I know nothing about the army. All I can tell you is they made Adrian an officer, and I was very proud of him.'

Marriott glanced at Hardcastle and sighed. ‘What d'you think, sir?'

Hardcastle leaned back in his chair, and lit his pipe. Then he spent a little while studying the young woman on the other side of the table. ‘Release her, Marriott,' he said eventually. He looked closely at Cora Utting. ‘But if I find out you've been lying to me, miss, I'll come after you. D'you understand?'