Richardson's First Case (20 page)

“A case for you, Mr. Foster,” said the sergeant. “This man complains that when he was leaning over the parapet of the Embankment last night, someone caught him by the legs and tried to tip him over.” He winked as he gave this brief statement of the complaint as a hint to Foster that the condition of his visitor left room for doubts about the accuracy of any statement he might make. “We're busy downstairs. I'll leave him with you.” Foster was on the point of objecting that an Embankment case was a matter either for the A or E Divisions when he recognized the complainant. “Oh, it's you, Mr. Cronin. Sit down here” (pointing to a chair). “Come in and shut the door, Richardson—or stop! Call the clerk in to take a note,” he added in a lower voice. “Now, Mr. Cronin, let me hear your story.”

The old man appeared to be in a pitiable state of nerves. His hands were trembling, his teeth were chattering, but as far as clothing was concerned he was more sprucely dressed than when they had last seen him.

“They tried to murder me, sir, last night. My life's not safe; I've come to you for protection.” Foster's spirits rose at this opening to the interview. Cronin was in the state of mind when a witness becomes as clay in the hands of a potter.

“What were you doing down on the Embankment?” asked Foster.

“I was out for a little walk, sir; nothing more.”

“What time was it?”

“Big Ben had struck eleven about five or ten minutes and I was under the Charing Cross railway bridge taking a look at the river—just leaning my elbows on the parapet—when somebody gripped me by the ankles and tried to tip me over into the water. Of course, if I'd lost my balance it would have been all up with me; I've never learnt to swim, and you know what the water is at this time of year. Well, sir, somehow or other I got a grip with my fingers in the cracks in the masonry. He must have taken alarm at seeing someone coming, because when I was able to struggle back onto the pavement he had vanished in the darkness. If you doubt my word, sir, look at my fingers.” He displayed bloodstained fingertips with broken nails.

“Have you any idea who it was?”

“No, sir, I've no enemies that I know of.”

“Well, before we go any further with this assault upon you, I should like you to answer a few questions and
this
time to answer them truthfully. Why have you left your lodgings in the King's Cross Road, after my warning to you not to leave them without informing the police?”

The old man was trembling violently; Richardson thought that he was going to faint and roll from his chair.

“It was the drink, sir.”

“No, Mr. Cronin, it was not the drink. Think again.”

“Well. sir, one of my friends thought I'd better go for a change.”

“What was the name of your friend?” persisted Foster inexorably.

“He asked me not to give his name, sir. I should have called him an acquaintance, not a friend.”

“You mean the man who gave you the money to buy those clothes?”

Cronin looked down at his clothes and began to whimper. “Do you think it's fair, sir, to badger me like this when I come to you for protection?”

“When you've told me a lie and given me your word that what you said was true, it is quite fair to require you to tell the truth. If you had persisted in the statement that you made in this office a few days ago you might have found yourself standing your trial for perjury.”

“It was all true; every word of it, except one. I may have made a slip over the time.”

“You did make a very serious slip over the time, and you made that slip intentionally.”

“It made no difference that I could see, sir. Whether I was in the shop at quarter-past five or half-past six didn't seem to matter.”

“You think so? Now I want you to make a new statement, starting from the beginning, and I must warn you that if you swerve from the truth in the slightest particular, we shall know it. We know a good deal more about your movements than you think we do.”

“I will tell you the truth, sir. I want to get it all off my conscience. I sold that picture to Mr. Catchpool for fifty shillings, and then when the lady kept sending messages to me I went to him and asked him to let me buy it back and pay by instalments. At first he wouldn't listen to me, and then when I told him how I was being pressed for it he seemed to soften and said that he would let me have it for fifteen weekly instalments of ten shillings.”

“A profit of 300 per cent.?”

“Yes, sir, I know, but I had to have it back. I agreed, but I hadn't got the first instalment on me and he told me to go away and get it and call between six and seven. Well, sir, I managed to get the money. I got some wrapping paper at a public house where I knew the people—”

“The Red Lion?”

“Yes, sir. I got it just after six and went on down to the shop. The rest is exactly as I told you before.”

Foster took out the former statement and read over the latter part, sentence by sentence, in order that the clerk might take it down. “You don't wish to add anything to that?”

“No, sir; it's the truth.”

“In your first statement you said that you went only once that day to see Catchpool—namely, at five p.m. Now it appears that you went twice—once in the morning to bargain with him about the picture and again in the evening after six o'clock to pay the first instalment and receive delivery of the picture. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Now tell me this. Who told you to put the time at 5:15 p.m. instead of 6:30? Was it the same gentleman who advised you to go away for a change?”

“Yes, sir, it was.”

“I should like a description of him. Had you ever seen him before?”

“No, sir, never. He was a man of thirty-five to forty I should say, with a short beard and glasses.”

“Coloured glasses?”

“Yes, sir, tinted glasses. He was of medium height and rather slight build.”

“What name did he give?”

“I'm sorry, sir, I can't break my promise, I can't give you his name.”

“And yet you come to the police asking for protection. Well, putting the name aside for a moment, what did he say to you?”

“He asked me whether I was the man who had sold a picture to Mr. Catchpool. I thought that he was one of you gentlemen from Scotland Yard and that he'd a right to question me. Then he said, ‘I understand that you want to buy it back.' I told him that Mr. Catchpool had agreed with me upon terms and that I had actually gone to see him on the evening he was killed. He looked at me very straight through his glasses and said, ‘Were you in the shop when a murder was committed there?' And I was so frightened, thinking he had come from the police, that I told him everything just as I've told you. He asked me whether I'd made a statement to the police, and I said, ‘Do you want me to come down with you and make it?' That made him laugh. He said, ‘I'm not a police officer, but I think you'd be wise to go down and tell them what you know.' And then he sat down to talk things over and became quite friendly. He said, ‘If you go down and make a statement, there's one little point which doesn't affect the truth at all, but which might put quite a comfortable little sum of money into your pocket. Instead of saying that you were there at half-past six you've only to put the time an hour and a quarter earlier and call it quarter-past five and I'll see you don't suffer for it. After all, you'll be telling the truth just the same.' That's the history of it, sir, just as it happened.”

“You've been seeing him since?”

“Yes, sir, I've seen him more than once.”

“And he's been paying you money?”

“Not a great deal, sir—a pound or two.”

“That suit of clothes cost more than a pound or two.”

“Well, sir, call it from ten to fifteen pounds. I didn't keep an exact account.”

“And when he recommended you to go away for a change, I suppose that he gave you the travelling money?”

“He gave me something towards my journey, sir.”

“But you didn't go?”

“No, sir, I didn't feel equal to a journey. To tell you the truth, I've been lodging in a Church Army shelter.”

“And only going out at night—to keep out of the way of the police?”

“To keep out of the way of everybody, sir.”

“I suggest to you that this gentleman knew that you were still in London and that you were on the Embankment last night to meet him by appointment.”

There was no reply. Foster continued, “Remember you have undertaken this time to tell the truth.”

“Well, sir, I did receive a message from him. He asked me to call at the Charing Cross Post Office every morning in case there was a letter from him, and yesterday morning I found a letter card making an appointment for eleven o'clock that night on the Embankment under the Charing Cross Bridge, but he didn't come, and ten minutes later I was attacked as I told you.”

“Now, Cronin, I want the name that gentleman gave.”

The old man tried to wrap the rags of dignity round him. “I have told you, sir, that I cannot betray a confidence.”

“I want the name he gave you.”

“I cannot give it to you, sir.”

“You have asked the police to protect you. How are they going to protect you unless you tell them
everything
you know?”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“It is quite useless, your attempting to hide it, because we have means of finding it out, but that takes time and trouble, and we haven't at the present moment men to look after you and make the inquiries at the same time. I ask you again for the name.”

“Well, sir, I'm in your hands. The name he gave me was Harris.”

“Arthur Harris?”

“No, sir: Charles Harris.”

“Very well, Mr. Cronin, if you'll accompany that officer into the other room he'll give you your statement to sign. When you have signed it, an officer will accompany you to your home in King's Cross Road and another officer will be posted near the door to see that you are not molested.”

“This way, sir,” said the clerk.

“You'd better see him home, Richardson,” said Foster when they were alone. “You see that the plot is thickening.”

“I do, indeed, sir. The curious thing is that Mr. Harris senior has a beard and does wear glasses.”

“Yes, and if you will tell me what Mr. Harris senior had to gain by polluting the fount of justice I shall be quite ready, to spend a little time upon him.”

“No, sir; the only motive he could have had would have been to provide an alibi for his son, but now that we have fixed the time of the murder at half-past six, young Harris has an alibi already: he was with me.”

“Exactly. It isn't the name or the beard or the glasses that we have to look at: it's the motive. Who had a motive for putting the murder an hour earlier?”

“Yes, sir. The man who told you that he had been waiting half an hour outside the Harris house, and when you laid a trap for him he put the house on the wrong side of the street. I didn't like to say so at the time, sir, but by putting two and two together I reached the same opinion two or three days ago.”

“You were wise to keep it to yourself, Richardson. I don't mind admitting to you that that idea was suggested to me by a remark of the chief constable three or four days ago. It was about that blue paper we found in the letter box. He said that Harris couldn't have put it there because he'd nothing to gain. What we had to look for was someone who stood to gain from that blue paper being returned to the shop and so being passed into the hands of the executor.”

“I didn't know that you were actually working on that line, sir.”

“No, you didn't, and I didn't want you to. The beginning and the end of C.I.D. work is the collection of evidence that will be water-tight in a court of law. When you reach my age at the job you will realize that you will slip up unless you sweep up all the ragged ends before you attempt to go forward, otherwise you will have half a dozen lawyers pecking at these ragged ends. We had quite a number of ragged ends—that silly young fool, Harris; that naval officer, Lieutenant Sharp; the old man himself who was dead and couldn't be put up for cross-examination. We had to clear these all out of the way before we could put up a case for the D. of P.P.”

“The D. of P.P.?” Richardson was puzzled by the initials.

“The Director of Public Prosecutions. In a day or two you will find that we shall be turned over to him, and I can tell you that though Mr. Morden is pretty good at picking holes in a case and telling you what leak has got to be stopped, those lawyers in the D. of P.P.'s office are terrors. If you get through them unscathed, you needn't worry: your case is water-tight.”

“It's not quite water-tight yet, sir.”

“Far from it. We've a lot of work before us. Tomorrow we shall both be run off our legs. We haven't more than half the necessary evidence to lay before the D. of P.P., and we've
got
to get it within the next forty-eight hours. Now that we feel pretty sure of our man we know exactly what we have to do.”

I
NSPECTOR
F
OSTER'S
next step was to take Richardson back to the shop in High Street and there go over the ground again. “It's true that Sergeant Reed and you did your job pretty thoroughly; all the papers you found and all the money are sealed up in the superintendent's safe, but however good the search may be at the beginning of a case one may miss things that become of vital importance towards the end of it. There is that door key, for instance. If it was really the only key to the shop and we were to find it inside—”

“I don't think you will, sir. We searched everywhere for it.”

“Never mind: if we don't find that, we may find something else. Anyway, if we don't it won't be for lack of looking for it.”