Dead March for Penelope Blow, page 15
As Cromwell made his way along the Mews to the kind of tunnel which gave access to the main street, he saw on his right a small wrought iron gate of beautiful design which gave on to the garden in which all the noisy mowing had been going on during his talk with Mrs. Buckley.
‘Might as well take a squint,’ he said to himself, for the hidden gems of London were very dear to him, as a Londoner himself, and he never failed to seek them out when he could. He found the gate unlocked and walked in.
The scene truly gave the sergeant a surprise. He whistled with pleasure. On three sides were high walls like the one which shut out Mrs. Buckley from this tiny paradise. The fourth side held a small house, with a forecourt of crazy paving and a lawn as flat and green as a piece of velvet. The front of the house had been treated with white cement, its steel casement windows were painted green, and a marvellous wrought iron screen closed a porch beyond which stood a solid oak door.
Sheltered by the surrounding tall buildings, from wind and weather, the lawn, in the middle of which stood another wrought iron masterpiece of a well-head, was sprouting with spring and the gardener was giving it its first cutting, gently and carefully with respect for the young shoots. He was an old man, who might, in better times, have been a coachman. His appearance, at any rate, spoke of horses and days when the Mews outside harboured fine coaches and equally fine animals to draw them.
‘Mornin’,’ he said to Cromwell in a drawling voice which spoke of Western places far enough away from London. ‘Takin’ a peek around?’
‘Yes,’ said Cromwell, edging up to the man. ‘This is a wonder. I never knew...’
‘You never know...That’s the pleasure of bein’ about London. You never knows what you’ll be findin’ next. Pretty, ain’t it?’
They stood quiet for a while enjoying it. Cromwell offered his new friend a cigarette. The man looked a countryman still. Grizzled hair, sideboards and a chubby red face.
‘You stayin’ in these parts?’ asked the man at length.
‘No, just visiting. Made a call on Mrs. Buckley. Business.’
‘Oh, that one. Ain’t got much use for ’er. Proper tartar, she is. Wouldn’t like to be one of her lodgers. Sleepin’ under that roof don’t appeal to me.’
‘Why? She doesn’t seem a bad sort.’
‘Hard as nails. They say she does a. kind o’ money lendin’ with her rooms. If you can’t pay one week, your rent goes up. Be that as it may, I don’t like the look of her.’
‘Bit hard-boiled, eh? Oily smile.’
‘Yes. But neither smile nor oil to them as she gets agen. Some of the neighbours could tell you a thing or two. I don’t know much about that, but I do see her actin’ suspicious-like now and then. Maybe, she does a bit o’ the old black market now and agen for customers as can pay extry for bacon and the like for their breakfasts. An’ I did see her follerin’...shadowin’, I believes they call it on the pictures, a poor old body who seemed to be stayin’ with her a few weeks ago...’
Cromwell pricked up his ears. He hadn’t seen Miss Blow, but from talk in Nesbury perhaps he could manage a passable description.
‘What was her lodger like?’
‘Oh, little oldish lady...’
‘Dressed in black and a bit scared looking...?’
‘That’s right. How did you know?’
‘The woman died later and I’m making some inquiries. That’s why I was there at Mrs. Buckley’s. I’m from the police.’
‘I knew that. No mistakin’ you once one gets to know you. Now, my lad’s in the Devonshire Constabulary. Only a constable as yet, but one day he’ll be more than that.’
‘I hope so. Maybe, you can help me, then.’
‘Oi, maybe. All I can say is I saw this little body comin’ out of old Buckley’s just as I was goin’ into the Unicorn at the end there for a drink. Thirsty work, gardenin’. I went in and stood at the counter with my half-pint, lookin’ over the screen in the window. No sooner had the little lady got goin’ along the street, than out comes Mrs. Buckley, dressed up, and follers her. I knew she was a-follerin’ of her on account the way she behaved. Once, when the little ’un turned round, Buckley stops and pretended to be lookin’ in an art shop. She’s no interest in art, that ’un. She was follerin’er. Next day, the same. Soon as I got me half-pint, one passes and then the other. What old Buckley was up to I can’t say, but it was no good I’ll warrant.’
‘I’ll bet it wasn’t...’
‘And a few days later, I was knocking off my work and leavin’ by that gate, when I sees a cab drawn up and the little ’un gettin’ in it. With her was a tall, fierce-lookin’ chap, and he was mad at her, too. Nearly threw her in the cab and off they druv. But it was the look on Buckley’s face as I see most. Cruel and evil, that’s what it was. Smilin’ at the gent and noddin’ at him as if she was approvin’ what he done. Ar, a bad ’un is that there Mrs. Buckley...’
Cromwell had heard enough, and they went on to talk of gardens and the West country, and he told his new friend that he married a girl from Truro, which sealed their friendship for good. Long after the case was closed, Cromwell visited the Mews and spent an hour when he could with Samuel Hawkins. At that time, however, they both thought that a call at the Unicorn, to seal their friendship and view the exact spot whence Sam had witnessed the ‘shadderin’’ of Penelope Blow, was the right thing to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Doubleday, Ward & Co.
Cromwell jumped from a bus at St. Paul’s Churchyard and looked around for the place he was seeking. There it was, between two more imposing blocks of offices, a humbler-looking, stone-fronted building, seeming anxious to efface itself, with tall windows screened by tasteful wrought iron grilles. ‘Central Bank, Limited, Doubleday, Ward & Co. Branch,’ said a brass plate on the right of the main entrance. On the left side another old brass plate, almost worn away by polishing, said simply, Doubleday, Ward & Co., Bankers. Established 1763.
Cromwell entered. It was like going to church. The banking-hall was lofty and austere. The cashiers were all dressed in morning coats and they and the clerks moved silently about as though barefooted or rubber shod. Now and then, someone coughed sedately and it echoed solemnly round the building. There were four tellers, all of them grey and past middle-age, and they dealt with customers calmly and quietly, with no haste or fluster. Clients, in their turn, approached the counter reverently; like making offerings on an altar. From somewhere far away came the dim noise of machinery. The large banking company which had digested the old firm had insisted on mechanised book-keeping, but this was properly muffled in remote regions. Here, in the public place, all was as it had been a century ago. You entered the foreign department by the next door down the street and did your commercial banking in the branch over the way. Doubledays’ Branch was for private business, and the last surviving Mr. Doubleday saw to it that it remained so.
The clerk who answered Cromwell’s ring at the inquiries counter, took his card, looked at it and turned pale. Scotland Yard! His eye ran from one to another of the four very respectable tellers. Which one…?
‘May I see the Manager, please?’
‘The Manager?’
The clerk looked surprised. The Manager here was rather small fry. He ran the office and looked after the profits. Mr. Doubleday was the big noise. Mr. Doubleday, the Director, the man who hobnobbed with the lords of the City and kept locked within his breast the secrets of great families, unknown to even the closest business associates of millionaires, ducal guinea-pig directors, and members of the wealthy and impoverished aristocracy. The clerk produced a slip of paper. Cromwell eyed it, took out a pen and filled it in.
Mr.Cromwell of Scotland Yard
To see Miss Penelope Blow.
When the clerk saw the name of Blow, he hastily scribbled ‘Director’ in the spot left bare by Cromwell, pulled himself together and sedately vanished into the interior.
He was back in a few minutes.
‘This way...’
The clerk lifted a flap in the inquiry counter, led Cromwell through a maze of mahogany and down a dark passage. He tapped on a heavy door at the end of a long turkey-red carpet.
‘Come,’ said a fruity voice. They went.
‘Detective Sergeant Cromwell, sir,’ said the clerk and vanished.
Cromwell took a second or two to recover his composure. It was the room which upset him. He didn’t know such places existed in the City, outside the films, of course. Red carpet again, with thick pile, on the floor; a great open fireplace with logs burning in it; fine, large portraits of dead and gone Doubledays and Wards looking down from the dark panelled walls; St. Paul’s itself towering through the leaded panes of a fine, large window; and, sitting at a large period desk which must have cost a fortune, Mr. Doubleday himself. He must have been around seventy, but the retainers of the office still called him young Mr. Doubleday or young Mr. Richard. He had a pink complexion, silky-white untidy hair, and a fine brow. His blue eyes sparkled with a sense of fun. There were papers on his desk, but he was reading Wisden when Cromwell entered. He spent a lot of time at Lords and the Oval in summer, and was sharpening his appetite for the cricket season to come.
He put down his vade-mecum and took off his shell-framed spectacles.
‘And what can we do for Scotland Yard, Sergeant? Sit down.’
Cromwell seated himself gingerly on a genuine Chippendale and put his bowler on the floor beside him.
‘It’s a little matter about one of your customers, Miss Penelope Blow...’
‘Ah! The late Miss Blow, eh? And what about her?’
‘She kept an account with you, I believe, sir.’
‘She did. Been a customer here for many years. Came of a good old bankin’ family. But that, of course, you know, Sergeant.’
‘Yes, sir. What I’ve come to ask may be a bit awkward, sir. I know that banks must respect their customers’ confidences...’
Mr. Doubleday smiled gently.
‘You do?’
‘Yes, sir. I know that as a rule, they can’t divulge information about accounts without the protection of the courts...’
‘Ah! Quite a man of the law, Sergeant.’
Cromwell, somehow, didn’t feel nonplussed by the comments. He felt there was no sting in them. In fact, just the old man having a bit of fun to himself.
‘Well...sir. I’ve been mixed up in a few such cases before. I found the banks a bit sticky...’
‘And you think I won’t be?’
‘Well, sir, I hope not. But let me tell you what happened so far.’
Cromwell thereupon told Mr. Doubleday of the case on which they were engaged in Nesbury. He told him of Miss Blow’s death and their suspicions of foul play and of William Blow’s religious conversion, and of his tucking away funds with Doubledays’ banking-house in his daughter Penelope’s name by way of recompense for the unfair Will he had made.
Mr. Doubleday listened courteously, saying nothing, playing with a jade paper-knife.
‘We were quite at a loss to think of a motive, sir. Who would want to kill such a harmless little body? And then, we found out about the large account at your bank. Thirty thousand pounds, I believe...’
‘How did you find that, Sergeant?’
‘She’d confided it in an old friend, sir, a parson she’d known all her life...’
‘I see...’
Mr. Doubleday rose. He was rather small and portly. Unlike his staff, he dressed comfortably. Well-cut, easy grey suit, cream shirt with soft collar attached and a silk tie slightly awry. He opened a Sheraton cabinet at his elbow.
‘Sherry? I usually take a glass at this time...’
Cromwell felt it would be very rude to decline even if he were on duty. Such a nice gentleman, Mr. Doubleday. Old school…He accepted. He’d never tasted sherry like it before. He wondered where it came from.
‘You wish for some particulars of the account, Sergeant?’
‘Well...If you’d be so good, sir.’
‘What kind of particulars, may I ask?’
‘We know, sir, that the account was opened about 1937 or 1938. We know, too, that during the War, Miss Blow withdrew about £5,000 to help the local Salvation Army build a sort of canteen...’
‘And then..?’
Cromwell felt a bit put-out. Littlejohn had asked him to call at the bank and find out what they knew about Miss Blow’s finances from their angle. An ordinary commercial bank manager would have said Yes or No without much ado. But Mr. Doubleday didn’t seem that sort. He had a paternal way with him. It reminded Cromwell of his boyhood when he tried to persuade a shilling out of his father for a football match or the films. A real inquisition into the whys and wherefores...
Mr. Doubleday looked at Cromwell with sparkling eyes. He seemed to see right into his mind and to be enjoying the mental sorting-out that was going on.
‘You want me to tell you if there’s been any jiggery-pokery going on in the account, that it?’
‘That’s it, sir...’ Cromwell was relieved.
‘But we don’t have jiggery-pokery in our accounts...’
Mr. Doubleday laughed outright this time. If only the policeman, sitting there with his hat by his side and sipping his sherry like a hen drinking, knew what he knew about some of the accounts on their books and what went with them! Jiggery-pokery! By God…! Mr. Doubleday laughed again. Then he pressed a button at his elbow. A young man rather like a tailor’s dummy entered. He wore a black jacket, striped grey trousers, a white shirt and starched white collar and his hair was plastered with brilliantine.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Get me Miss Penelope Blow’s account, please, Cudmore...’
‘Yes, sir.’
One minute Cudmore was there: the next he’d vanished with the rapidity of Aladdin’s genie of the lamp. He was back almost at once.
‘Right, thanks. Leave it there.’
Mr. Doubleday opened the ledger at the right page. From where he was now sitting on the other side of the desk Cromwell could see a large red label marked ‘Caution’ in black type fixed on the top of the page. From where the banker sat ‘Deceased’ could be plainly seen written on the ticket.
‘Ah, yes...We’ve already heard about this from her solicitor in Nesbury. Evidently, there’s going to be no evasion of Death Duties this time. Not that there’ll be much evasion here. The balance is under five hundred pounds...’
Cromwell sat up with a jerk.
‘So, besides the Salvation Army money, over ten thousand has gone as well...’
‘Your arithmetic’s a bit at fault, Sergeant. Over fifteen thousand pounds.’
‘I don’t understand it. From what we heard there were thirty thousand pounds to begin with...’
‘A little more, but that will do for our purpose…Yes?’
‘Then, Miss Katherine and her husband had Miss Katherine’s share of around ten thousand. Then, the Salvation Army five...Miss Honoria should have had ten...Miss Penelope regarded that as a sacred trust, I hear. Maybe, she gave it to Miss Honoria...’
‘I’m afraid not...With the exception of the two sums you mention, nothing was drawn until three years ago...Then the account went down by a series of withdrawals...’
‘Well, well...I don’t suppose you can give me any details, sir?’
Mr. Doubleday smiled and then grew serious again.
‘Within limits, I’m prepared to help you. Miss Blow is dead. Therefore, certain information will do neither her nor anyone else any harm. The sum of fifteen thousand pounds has been drawn over the past two and a half years from this account by cheques payable to “Self”. In other words, Miss Blow drew the money in cash.’
‘I don’t understand it at all. She must have given her sister her share, ten thousand pounds, then...’
‘Maybe. We must look further into this. She may have called here and taken the money. In that case, I haven’t seen her. Must have been away from the office. We’ll see...’
He rang the bell again. Cudmore came in like a shot.
‘Please send in Mr. Hobday...’
‘Yes, sir.’
A man in a morning coat followed quickly on the heels of the private secretary.
‘This is Mr. Hobday, our Manager. Mr. Cromwell, of Scotland Yard. He’s inquiring about Miss Penelope Blow’s account.’
‘Ah, yes. What can we do about it? She’s dead, I gather.’
‘She is. We want to know, Mr. Hobday, the circumstances under which these three items to “Self” were paid. Was cash withdrawn at our own counter…or what? Can you tell me?’
‘Just give me a moment, Mr. Doubleday. I’ll look into it. The files, you know...’
Mr. Hobday, tall, heavy, with the appearance of a successful K.C., withdrew. He was soon back.
‘Yes...A rather funny affair. Here’s the start of it...’
He passed a file to his Director, the top sheet of which was a typewritten letter. Mr. Doubleday read it hastily, turned over the rest of the papers and then, to Cromwell’s surprise and delight, and the Manager’s apparent consternation, passed the lot over to the Sergeant.
‘H’m. Look at the top letter, Cromwell. Then, another one of the same kind earlier, and yet another earlier still. All the same you see...’
The latter was dated from the Old Bank House, Nesbury, early that year, and typewritten, with Penelope Blow’s signature at the foot. The other two a year before and two years before. They were very similar.
To Central Bank, Ltd.,
Doubleday, Ward Branch,
St. Paul’s Churchyard.
Dear Sirs,
I shall shortly be investing in some property, for the settlement of which the solicitors will require five thousand pounds in cash. As I wish this matter to be confidential, I do not wish to make arrangements through our own bank. I shall, therefore, ask you to forward the amount in cash—banknotes by registered and insured mail—addressed to me at the above address.
