Petrella at 'Q' (9 page)

“He was one of her babies.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

“Not really. She’s delivered half the borough in her time.”

“I suppose there’s a moral to it.”

“The moral,” said Petrella smugly, “is always trust your own staff.”

Mrs. Prior had had her eye on the grey-haired woman ever since she came into the shop. Not that there was anything obviously suspicious about her. Fifty-ish, Mrs. Prior guessed. Quite expensively dressed, carrying an over-sized shopping bag. It was something about her manner. The unobtrusive way she sidled into the shop; the quick look which she cast around, a look which was not directed at the merchandise on the counters, but at the people.

Melluish & Sons was the most expensive of the three shops that Mrs. Prior had to watch, and the most difficult to guard, dealing as it did in smallish luxury goods for women. They had lost a lot of stuff in the past twelve months and were beginning to talk about closed-circuit television.

Was that woman hanging about unnecessarily near the handbag counter? The attendant had turned her back to deal with another customer. A gloved hand flashed out. Mrs. Prior was too far off to see exactly what happened, but the grey-haired woman was making for the door. It was the moment of decision.

As the woman was stepping out on to the pavement Mrs. Prior intercepted her. “Excuse me, madam,” she said. “I wonder if you’d mind showing me what you have in that bag?”

The standard reactions. Shock, anxiety, an assumed bewilderment. “Oh! Who are you? Why should I?”

“I am a member of the shop security staff,” said Mrs. Prior. “If I have made a mistake, I am quite prepared to apologise.”

But no apology was going to be needed. She was sure of that.

Which brought Detective Chief Inspector Petrella into the story. He listened to what Mrs. Prior had to say, and to the comments of Mr. Jacklin, managing director of Melluishes, and to the few incoherent remarks of the grey-haired woman.

“We can’t force you to identify yourself,” said Petrella. “But you realise that if you refuse to give us your name and address we shall have to detain you until someone does identify you.”

“Detain me? In prison?”

“You will be placed in charge of a woman police officer.”

“Oh!”

Petrella said, in his kindest voice, “This isn’t doing you any good, madam. Sooner or later we shall have to know who you are. Someone will miss you, and come along to make enquiries.” He tried a long shot. “When your husband gets home from work—”

The word husband seemed to be the key. The woman broke down into a fit of gulping sobs. When she could speak, she said, “I’m Mrs. Kent-Smith. I live at Mapledurham Mansions.”

“Mrs. Kent-Smith, eh?” said Sergeant Blencowe when she had been charged and sent home in a police car, the driver having instructions to bring her straight back if there was any doubt about her being who she said she was or living where she said she did. “Her old man’s not going to like this. He’s in business. House property and things like that.”

Mr. Kent-Smith arrived just when Petrella was thinking of going out to lunch. He was a man in his middle fifties, a little paunchy, but alert enough and with a useful pair of shoulders on him. Petrella had been making enquiries, and knew that he had to deal with a formidable man. Rumour said that he had been a sergeant major in the R.A.S.C. In the years since the war, he had prospered. Starting with a bombed site at the Elephant and Castle and some luck with a war damage claim, he had built up a chain of shops and offices and flats, held in a honeycomb of interlocking companies which he controlled.

“I’d like to know what all this is about,” he said. “I couldn’t get much out of the wife.”

The sergeant major was buried, deep down under layers of the self-made tycoon. But he was still there, thought Petrella.

He said, picking his words carefully, “A woman, who identified herself as your wife, was detected leaving Melluish & Sons this morning with one of their crocodile-skin handbags”—Petrella unlocked the drawer of his desk and took it out”— which there was no record of her having paid for. Her explanation was that she had put it into her shopping bag, meaning to pay for it, and had forgotten about it.

Mr. Kent-Smith had picked up the handbag. He said, “Silly thing to do. She could easily have bought it if she’d wanted it.” The price tag was still on it. “Eighteen pounds. I understand from Jacklin that if I pay for it, he’s prepared to call it a day.”

“If he’d said that before she was charged,” said Petrella, “it might have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“Can’t you withdraw the charge?”

“We could decide not to proceed with it. But we’d only do that if there was insufficient evidence. That’s not the case here. Far from it.”

“Who decides on these matters?”

“In this case, I do.”

“I see.”

Mr. Kent-Smith was weighing him up in the thoughtful way a boxer might weigh up his adversary in the ring. He said, “I’d better explain why this means so much to me. In the ordinary way I think I’d let it go. It’s a first offence, so I assume it’d be a fine and bound over. Which would teach my wife a lesson. But I can’t chance it. Not at this moment. I don’t know if you follow the financial Press, Inspector?”

“I don’t have much time for that sort of thing.”

“Well, I’m on the point of my first public flotation. You’ll see the advertisement in the papers next week. Or you would have done.”

“You mean this will stop it.”

“It’ll kill it. Stone dead. The whole thing depends on my good name. It’s me they’re buying. If my wife’s up on a charge of shoplifting, I might just as well call the whole thing off.”

Petrella started to say something, but Mr. Kent-Smith raised his hand to stop him. He said, “Let me finish. Shares in my holding company stand right now at a nominal one pound each. They’re mostly held by me and my friends. When we get a quotation they’ll go to three pounds. I can let you have five thousand shares at par. There’s nothing illegal about it. That’s the price at the moment. You could borrow the money from your bank.”

“I’ve been offered bribes before,” said Petrella to his wife that evening. “All policemen are. But I’ve never been offered ten thousand pounds.”

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘no’.”

“Quite right,” said his wife firmly.

“I’m trying hard to think so. Actually, I’m much sorrier for his wife than I am for him. I don’t believe this is going to stop him. He might have to put off this flotation, or whatever it is, for six months. It’ll be a nuisance, and it’ll cost him more than the ten thousand he offered me. But he’ll take it out on her. She’s an odd woman. She came to see me before I left the station this evening. Do you know why?”

“To beg herself off the charge.”

“On the contrary. She came to apologise.”

“Apologise? For what?”

“For giving us all such a lot of trouble. She said she knew how overworked the police were.”

“It’s not true!”

“Then we had a long talk about it and about her husband. How he’s so busy with his work he never gets in until ten o’clock at night and goes off first thing in the morning and she never really sees him.”

“This is the first evening
you’ve
been in before nine this week,” said his wife pointedly.

“And how he seems to be growing away from her.”

“What were you supposed to do about it? You’re a policeman, not a psychiatrist.”

“And how sorry she is she never had any children. She blames herself for it.”

His wife thought about the scrap asleep in his cot upstairs who was the centre of their existence. She had nothing to say to that.

It was on the following morning that a very worried Mr. Jacklin arrived at Patton Street Police Station. The managing director of Melluish & Sons had another man with him. He said, “Yesterday evening I thought I’d make a check of our stock of handbags. I was afraid we might have lost more than one.”

“And had you?”

“No, we hadn’t.”

“That’s all right then, isn’t it.”

“I mean,” said Mr. Jacklin slowly, “that we hadn’t even lost one.”

Petrella stared at him.

“Stock purchased, stock sold, stock remaining. The items balance exactly. That’s when I began to wonder. Do you mind if I look at that handbag again?”

Petrella unlocked the drawer of his desk and got it out. Mr. Jacklin took out a magnifying glass, opened the handbag, turned back the silk lining, and peered into it. He said, “Just what I thought. This isn’t one of ours. We mark them with a very small symbol. It’s really just a few pinpricks.” He said to the other man, “It’s what we thought, Sam. This is one of yours, isn’t it?”

The other man took over the glass and made a brief examination. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s our shop mark. Carson & Begg. Mr. Jacklin thought it might be us. We’re the only other store in the district which handles this sort of line.”

“And have you lost one?”

“Not that I know of,” said the man. “But I can tell you who had that one. I sold it myself three days ago. To Mrs. Kent-Smith. She buys a lot of stuff from us from time to time.”

“And she paid for it.”

“Naturally.”

“Then I suppose she’d better have it back,” said Petrella weakly.

“And it won’t be necessary to go on with the charge against her now,” said Mr. Jacklin. “I’m glad about that. Mr. Kent-Smith’s an important man in these parts, you understand.”

Petrella said he understood perfectly.

“So,” said Mr. Kent-Smith. “The whole thing was a bloody box-up. My wife gets charged with stealing something which is her own property. She’s dragged round to the police station like a common criminal.
And
taken home in a police car, so that all the neighbours can get an eyeful of it.”

“If she’d given her name and some evidence of identity, none of that need have happened,” said Petrella.

“Why should she? She hadn’t done anything.”

“If she hadn’t done anything,” said Petrella, “why did she tell us that story about putting the handbag into her shopping bag and forgetting about it?”

“There’s no mystery about that. She said it because she was scared. And who’s going to blame her. Being dragged along to the police station and bullied by a crowd of louts who call themselves policemen and don’t even take the trouble to check up whether something they say has been stolen, has really been stolen or not before bringing charges. And if you think you’ve heard the end of this, Mr. Chief Inspector bloody Petrella, you can bloody well think again. I’m going straight round to my solicitor.

“I seem to be in trouble with the law again,” said Petrella sadly. “Last month it was libel, now it’s false imprisonment.”

“Never rains but it pours,” said Chief Superintendent Watterson. “I’ve been accused of a lot of things myself in my time, arson, fraud, perjury. I don’t know that it ever ran to libel. You’d better warn our legal chaps.”

“What I really dislike about these law suits,” said Petrella, “is the way they go on for months and months.”

Here, however, he was wrong. It was on the following morning that Mrs. Kent-Smith called in to see him. She seemed to be in excellent spirits. She said, “I’ve good news for you, Inspector. My husband is dropping his complaint against you.”

“That’s certainly good news,” said Petrella. “I wonder what made him change his mind.”

“I did.”

Petrella knew that this was the point at which he ought to stop asking questions, but the temptation was too great. He said, “I wonder if you’ll mind me asking you. How did you do it?”

Mrs. Kent-Smith giggled. She said, “I told him that if he didn’t, I’d confess to three other cases of shoplifting. I gave him all the details. And showed him the things.”

She sounded as proud as a child displaying her birthday presents.

“There was a little scarf from Simpsons. A pretty thing in pink and green. A powder compact from Greenways. Not expensive, and not in very good taste. And a cookery book from Simmonds.”

“And
had
she stolen those things?” said his wife.

“I’m afraid,” said Petrella, “that at that point I lost my nerve.
I simply daredn’t ask her.
Luckily she changed the subject. She wanted my advice about some new curtains she had bought. She had the patterns with her. I’m not very clever about colours, so I just said I thought they were a little bright. She said she thought so too. She was going to change them.”

“I see,” said his wife.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Petrella. “But if you mean that you can make some sense out of it, you’re a lot cleverer than I am. Why on earth should she go through all the rigmarole of buying a handbag in one shop and pretending to steal it in another?”

“Simple. She wanted her husband to pay some attention to her.”

Petrella thought about it and said, “It’s plausible.”

“It’s obvious. Don’t you remember that woman who set her house on fire because her husband didn’t take enough notice of her?”

“If that’s right,” said Petrella, “why didn’t she let him get on with his complaint against me?”

“That’s easy too,” said his wife. “You’re the son she never had.”

“Good God!” said Chief Inspector Petrella.

It was seven o’clock on a misty November evening when the convoy reached the corner of Jamaica Road and Tunstal Passage. The corner block was the building belonging to Merriams, who are manufacturers of anchors, cables and other massive maritime iron-work. First came a police car then the articulated lorry carrying the new cable press, a squat piece of machinery weighing about five tons, then Mr. Fawke, the managing director of Merriams in his private car. He spotted that there was some sort of hold-up ahead and jumped out to investigate.

The doors of Messrs. Merriam’s private goods hoist were at the side of the building and opened onto Tunstal Passage. Above them there jutted out a short fixed overhead crane. The plan had been to use this crane to lift the press off the lorry and draw it into the hoist, which would then take it up to the second storey, where a gang of men waited with rollers to coax it into its final resting place. The whole plan, including a modification in the width of the press to enable it to get into the hoist, had been worked out with meticulous care.