Chapter Six

MACDONALD WAS awakened very early in the darkness of a December morning by the promised phone call from the ever-wakeful meteorologists: he was told to cheer up---the fog was lifting. Officially and unofficially the grimy pall was yielding to a westerly air stream. You could see the stars over Salisbury Plain and a waning moon had been hailed from the Wolf Rock Lighthouse, he was told by his friendly informant, who ended by chanting: “Rise and shine! Six o’clock on a perishing winter morning.”

Macdonald did his best to make his thanks sound enthusiastic, switched on the electric fire and kettle, and tried to feel grateful. While the kettle was boiling he rang C.O. to find out if any reports had come in during the night and was told about young Henry Brown. While the chief inspector was considering this further headache for his Paddington colleagues, he was told that Reeves was also on the line, and in a moment or two the latter was switched through to Macdonald.

“What woke you up at six ack emma?” demanded Macdonald.

“The fog’s cleared, so I reckoned you’d be off to an early start,” said Reeves. “I just thought I’d find out if there’d been any doings in the night so we could have a word before you beat it. About young Henry Brown, Jock. Leave him to me. It may not be anything to do with our little game, but I promise I won’t miss anything.”

“I’m quite sure you won’t, but do you know anything about him?”

“Henry? Yes. I know his dad. Henry’s a good chap, but he’s got too much confidence in himself. He’s made a mucker of it this time, but it may turn out to be useful. Anyway, you leave me to the back streets while you go and find out about Waterloo. He’s the linchpin in this contraption.”

“I have a feeling he is,” agreed Macdonald. “Well, I’ll make you a present of Henry and I’ll be off in half an hour. It’s about seven hours’ hard driving, or may be less with luck. Anyway, I shall make Plymouth in time to get some useful work in this afternoon, provided the westerly air stream keeps doing its stuff.”

Macdonald enjoyed that drive. London was still murkily sluggish as to atmosphere, but in comparison with the previous few days it seemed miraculous that so much solid filth could be shifted by a vague and fitful breeze from the west. Every mile westward brought improved conditions, and by the time a pale wintry sun gleamed over the summit of the Wiltshire Downs Macdonald was logging a steady fifty m.p.h. and thanking heaven for the cold clear air and the incredible cleanliness of a winter countryside. Andover, Amesbury, Mere---a hundred miles knocked off in three and a half hours, including getting out of London: midday saw him in Exeter, thankful for a stretch, a drink, a bite, and off again on the last lap by Bovey Tracey, Ashburton, and Ivybridge, with a feeling of regret at not taking the road over the moor by Moreton Hampstead, Two Bridges, and Yelverton. Macdonald knew that road, with the long series of hills, climbing all the way from Moreton Hampstead across the moor near Princetown---not a road for a man who was driving against time. He crossed the River Plym and ran into the famous battle-scarred town just as the clocks were striking two. It had been a good drive: very few drivers would have done it in the time and Macdonald had every reason to feel satisfied.

>>2
The next six hours were spent by Macdonald in the patient, detailed enquiry which is the mainstay of detection. First at Plymouth Station, then up the branch line towards Yelverton Macdonald went: with a description of “Waterloo,” followed by enquiries about passengers on the train which had reached Plymouth at midday the day before yesterday. The chief inspector talked to stationmasters, porters, and guards at Marsh Mills, Plym Bridge, Bickleigh---and drew a blank at all of them. It was at Clearbrook, after leaving the Plym Valley, that he got his first hopeful response. Clearbrook Halt was in the Meavy Valley, but away to the west rose the heights of Roborough Down, and Roborough was one of the place names Sally Dillon had mentioned. It was a farmer, collecting gear from the station, who joined in the conversation, saying:

“Sounds to me like young Dick Greville. He’s got darkish red hair. His folks used to farm hereabouts, way up on Roborough. They moved over to Sheepstor a few years ago. You ask at Yelverton---they’ll know him there. Been doing his army service, the boy has, and maybe he’s been home on leave or such like.”

Macdonald drove on to Yelverton as the short winter afternoon faded into darkness. In front of him rose the heights and tors of Dartmoor Forest, and to his right was the great stretch of wild moorland rising to sixteen hundred feet at Petres Cross.

At Yelverton he phrased his question rather differently, and the answers he got made him pretty certain that he had traced “Waterloo” home. The boy lived on one of the moorland farms near Sheepstor.

“Are you going up there tonight, sir?” a railway man asked him. “It’s not too easy to find, and a rough road at that. Mrs. Greville, she’s been poorly, I hear. ’Tis her heart. She’ll be upset to hear of Dick getting hurt. Thinks the world of him, she do.”

Macdonald thought a moment: he had been on the go since six o’clock that morning, driving hard most of the time. If he hadn’t found out what he needed to know, he would have gone on, but he felt averse from turning up at a remote farmstead on a dark winter evening to question the boy’s mother, especially if she were suffering from heart trouble.

“I think the morning will do,” he said. “I don’t want to upset his mother more than I can help, and things never seem so bad in the morning.”

“That’s true enough,” the other replied, “and I doubt if you’d ever find the place in the dark, it’s that hidden away, and there’s no real road, just farm tracks and confusing at that. It’s easy enough to get lost on the moor if you don’t know it, and some of them tracks lead to nowhere.”

Thanking the man for his help, Macdonald turned back to his car, yawning as he went. The keen moorland air was making him so sleepy that he was glad he had decided against hunting for Moorcock Farm in the dark: he had got to the stage when he could easily fall asleep over the wheel. He went and found quarters for the night---Yelverton was well served by hotels---and then put through a trunk call to headquarters to find out what Reeves had been up to.

>>3
When Reeves first heard that Henry Brown had been knocked out by a method which was becoming all too familiar---the cosh---he gave some detailed consideration to Henry’s own character. Henry was the son of a prosperous small shopkeeper in northwest London, and Reeves had known the boy for some years; in fact it was probably on account of admiration for Reeves that Henry had joined the Police Force. He was a clever boy and a hard-working one, and he had soon got his wish and been transferred to the borough C.I.D. Reeves knew that Henry was conscientious and that he had the sort of practical loyalty which would prevent his setting out deliberately to score credit for himself by following up information which should have been reported to his superior officers.

“He was off duty when he copped it,” meditated Reeves. “He was wearing filthy old slops and he was dirty and mucky. That means he was gloating around on some game of his own, getting experience and information in his own way. Can’t blame him, we all do it, all the keen ones, anyway. But I don’t think he’d have gone butting into a case C.O. was handling---he’d got too much sense of discipline: so it looks as though he tumbled into trouble on one of his own private games.”

Reeves had just finished shaving when an idea came into his astute head. “Henry used to be one of those kids who liked writing his facts down, keeping diaries and all that. I wonder if there’s anything at his digs. I don’t think he’d’ve been mug enough to take his private notebook in his pocket when he was doing overtime on his own account at the back of Westbourne Park.”

By seven o’clock that morning (when Macdonald had already got clear of Chiswick,) Reeves was busy cooking breakfast, a job he did for his wife when opportunity permitted, and by eight o’clock he was out of the house, praising heaven in his own way (in company with some nine million other residents of Greater London) that the fog had cleared. He went first to Scotland Yard (“to tie up the red tape”), and then hastened off to consult with the Paddington authorities and to get their detailed report.

The dead-end (or cul-de-sac) where Henry Brown had been discovered was railway property. It had once been a stable yard, but one side of it was now let as a warehouse. The other side was occupied by a firm who dealt in firewood---kindling and logs, with peat and “nutty slack” as side lines. The wall at the end divided the yard from the permanent way near Westbourne Park Station. The thing that really mattered about all this was that no one lived in the yard, no one had any reason to enter it after business hours, and the proprietor of the firewood business saw to it that one of his own vans obstructed the fairway so that it could not be used for free parking by the owners of other vehicles: it was, as Reeves put it, “as good a place to leave a chap you’d just coshed as you could hope to find.”

After a glance at the yard, and a quick reckoning up concerning the dreary locality and its approaches, Reeves went off to Henry Brown’s lodgings in Carlton Vale.

Henry’s father had sold his business in Kilburn a few years ago and had moved out to Mill Hill, and Henry’s mother had seen to it that her son found a comfortable and respectable lodging in the borough which he served. Henry had been uncommonly fortunate, for he had a big airy bed-sitter overlooking the level sward of Paddington Recreation Ground.

Looking around Henry’s room (after a few reassuring words to the decent body who “did” for him), Reeves couldn’t help grinning a little. This room showed the unofficial Henry, a “choosey” young man who had a liking for pictures and who possessed quite a selection of books; a few of the latter dealt with “crime and punishment,” but most of them were very remote from sneak thieves, cosh boys, con men, and those other gentry against whom the police waged war. Reeves found matter for satisfaction in the bookshelves. Henry, obviously, was still a studious fellow, and in Reeves’s experience studious young men liked “putting things down on paper.”

There was a writing table under the window, and Reeves dealt with its locked drawers with an ease which was almost pathetic, and for the next half hour he examined Henry Brown’s diary, notebooks, and occasional essays.

When Reeves first opened the diary he swore vigorously, for the entries were in code and looked a bit formidable, but Reeves knew that Henry was still young and, though intelligent, not educated up to the higher flights. It took Reeves a very short time to find out that the codes were of the simplest variety: one consisted of inverting the letters of the alphabet—A became Z, B became Y, C became X, etc. The numerical code consisted of numbering the letters of the alphabet, taking an arbitrary number for A and then carrying on consecutively.

It took Reeves about half an hour to spell out the names of streets, shops, and pubs in which Henry Brown had taken an (unofficial) interest. “DSRHGORMT KRT” looked a discouraging collection of symbols at first sight, but by writing two alphabets, one above the other, the lower one in reverse, Reeves soon interpreted Whistling Pig---and then he sat back and whistled himself.

Reeves had spent two hours yesterday evening in a West Hampstead local, cadging information from a well-informed crony on the subject of probable haunts of race-course hangers-on in the vicinity of Paddington. His informant was an expert in this peculiar byway of knowledge (and had indeed lost the equivalent of his shirt on account of it at one stage in his career), and the Whistling Pig had been mentioned as one of the resorts of the cleverer tipsters. If Henry Brown had spent some recent evenings at the Whistling Pig, it looked to Reeves as though Henry might have acquired more information than was good for him.

Sitting there, staring out over the sooty grass in “Paddington Rec,” Reeves racked his brains over the best way of dealing with this development. He knew it would be useless for himself to go and “do an act” at the Whistling Pig. If Henry had been there and got marked down as dangerous, any stranger would be suspect. And Reeves knew what he would be up against, officially or unofficially: the blank denial, corroborated by every habitué: a solid wall of ignorance, of noticing nothing, recognising nobody, remembering nothing. “I wonder if shock tactics might be best: rush him, so to speak, before he’s got his intelligence squad going,” thought Reeves.

Packing young Brown’s notebooks into his own case, Reeves hurried along to the Bakerloo Tube and was soon consulting with his Paddington colleagues. After a few cogent words of explanation, Reeves said:

“The job’s this---rattling Albert Hodgeson up so that he thinks it’d be wiser to co-operate a bit than to go on saying: ‘I don’t-know-I-never-noticed,’ ad infinitum.”

Seeing the rather scandalised expression on the face of the sergeant in charge, Reeves went on: “Now don’t you get worrying, chum. I know the rules as well as you do, and if Albert Hodgeson puts in a complaint about Gestapo methods, I’ll resign from the Force and apply for a job as a coal miner. What I want from you is this: details of any incident you haven’t tidied up in the last twenty-four hours---traffic accidents’d ditto, stolen car, bag snatching---don’t tell me you’ve got a clean sheet on every beat.”

The sergeant chuckled: “We’ve got the very thing you want, mate. Traffic accident---or what looked like an accident. A lorry driver backed into his usual yard and ran plumb over some chap he didn’t see. The casualty’s name was Barney O’Flynn.”

“Was?” demanded Reeves.

“Yes. Was. The hospital just rang through. Mr. B. O’Flynn died without regaining consciousness. If you ask me, late lamented was just the sort of customer to patronise the Whistling Pig. He lived in a street off the Portobello Road, in a house that prides itself on not asking questions. I’ve sent a man along to seal his room and see there’s no interference. Like to pop along there?”

Reeves considered for a moment. “No. I’ll go to that pub first, before the landlord’s had time to find out what’s what. I don’t approve of too much guessing in our job, but if these doings don’t tie up somehow I’ll eat my hat.”

“Well—it’s up to you,” said the sergeant non-committally.

>>4
Albert Hodgeson was in the bar, putting things to rights before opening time, when Reeves knocked on the door. Old Charlie Tucker had got the door on the chain, for he had just finished cleaning the floor. Hodgeson went to the door and snapped out: “Now, then, what’s your game? You know the opening time, don’t you?”

“I should,” said Reeves, flicking open his wallet. “C.I.D. inspector. Any objection to my coming inside?”

“No---and no need to ’ave,” replied Hodgeson dourly. He loosed the chain, let Reeves in to the neat, well-cleaned bar, fastened the doors behind them, and waited.

“Just a matter of corroborating evidence,” said Reeves. “An alibi, if you like to put it that way. I want to know what time Mr. Barney O’Flynn was here last night: when he arrived and when he left.”

It was a simple-sounding gambit, but Reeves knew just the problem he had presented to the publican, assuming that the latter did know Barney O’Flynn. Reeves, sceptical of psychologists’ methods and jargon, used one of their most reliable methods himself---the time reaction. If Hodgeson did not know O’Flynn, his answer would come out pat, in a split-second “Never heard of him.” But if Hodgeson did know O’Flynn, he was bound to play for time; never let a customer down would be an inviolable rule in a joint like this one, and Reeves, cunning in all the lawbreakers’ manners of thought, had chosen his gambit with extreme care. He knew at once that his long shot had come off, knew it with the certainty of experience.

“Mr. O’Flynn,” repeated the publican slowly. “Is ’e a big ’eavy chap---grey ’air and grey moustache?”

“You should know,” snapped Reeves, “or don’t you? If not, say so.”

“Now you look ’ere, and don’t be so smart,” parried Hodgeson. “ ’Ow many customers do you think I ’ave in ’ere of an evening?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” retorted Reeves. “I’ve asked you a plain question. If you don’t know the answer, say so. Perhaps you weren’t here yourself last night.”

“No perhaps about it. I was ’ere all the time we was open, but I don’t keep my eyes on the door checking the times customers comes in and out.”

“That’s all right,” said Reeves easily. “You’ve answered my question, haven’t you. You can’t call O’Flynn to mind because you don’t know him by sight.”

He was driving the other into a corner, and he waited for the next move.

“I didn’t say so,” retorted Hodgeson. “Likely I know him as well as I know a few ’undred others, but me memory for names isn’t what it was. If you’d remind me what ’e looks like, I might be able to oblige. I never forget a face, I’ll say that.”

“That’s fine,” said Reeves, smelling his way along like a hound on a doubtful trail. “What was the row about?” he shot out. It was always worth trying, that one, and it often worked. He was watching Hodgeson’s eyes: they were light-coloured eyes, easier to judge than dark ones, because you could see the pupils dilate or contract. When a man was rattled, the pupils of his eyes often contracted: Reeves knew that, though he didn’t call it a nervous reflex.

“What yer talkin’ about?” demanded Hodgeson.

“A row,” said Reeves promptly. “Barney O’Flynn and that little argument he had. Now you needn’t go telling me you don’t have any fighting in your bar. I know that already. But there was an argument.”

“Dozens of ’em,” said Hodgeson. “What do you reckon this is? An ’ome for deaf mutes? If you’ve ever been in a bar before, you ought to know a bar’s a place where chaps get their opinions off their chests.”

“I didn’t come here for opinions,” said Reeves crisply. “I’ve given you the chance to give a straight answer to straight questions, and you haven’t taken the chance.”

“I’m not going to give no answers unless I know who I’m talking about, and that’s straight enough,” said Hodgeson. “Maybe I do know this O’Flynn, maybe I don’t.”

“That’s O.K. by me,” said Reeves, pulling out his notebook: “You don’t mind signing a statement, do you? Say if we put it like this: ‘I don’t remember the name Barney O’Flynn. If he’s a customer here I can’t call him to mind. I can’t say if he was here last night or not.’ That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

But Albert Hodgeson wasn’t going to let his customer down; that word “alibi” often worked wonders. Reeves had succeeded in implanting in the publican’s mind a belief that O’Flynn had given Hodgeson as a reference for an alibi, and Hodgeson wasn’t going to sign any statement which would leave O’Flynn in the lurch.

It was at this moment that old Charlie Tucker chimed in. He had been on his knees all this time, assiduously polishing the brass plating that reinforced the bottom of the door.

“If you’ll pardon me butting in, boss, Mr. O’Flynn’s that big gent wot beat Jamie Potts at darts. Irishman, Mr. O’Flynn is. No mistakin’ that. ’E was in last night around nine and ’e stopped till closin’ time. It was Mr. O’Flynn was talkin’ to you about dirt-track racing.”

Hodgeson responded immediately. “Why couldn’t you say so before, Charlie? You ’eard this detective officer asking questions, didn’t you?”

“E wasn’t asking ’em of me, boss. But I tell you what: you ask Mr. Baines when ’e comes in this evening. ’E’ll remember, Mr. Baines will.”

Reeves heaved a good deep histrionic sigh. “The time you chaps waste,” he said. “D’you think I’d have wasted my time coming here if I didn’t know that O’Flynn had been here? I ask for corroboration of a plain statement---we always look for independent witnesses, you know---and you argue around in circles like a mothers’ meeting.” He turned to old Charlie. “Now you seem to have your wits about you. What about a quiet young chap who sat in the corner, there? Been in several times before: knows a bit about the dogs. Thin, weedy-looking chap, not much colour, unhealthy-looking cuss.”

“Arr . . . can’t tell you who ’e is: they call ’im ’Enery,” said Charlie. “Quiet, as you say. But ’e went out earlier. I do know that. I’d been meaning to ask ’is opinion about Black Velvet. That’s a likely dawg, I’m told.”

Reeves’s quick brain recognised at once that Charlie thought it quite safe to be forthcoming about ’Enery. ’Enery wasn’t really a regular, not one of those patrons whose interests must be accorded priority.

“Never noticed ’im meself, but being be’ind the bar all the evening I don’t see as much as Charlie does,” said Hodgeson amiably. “Tell you what, Inspector. If you’ll look in about closing time this evening, after I’ve had a word with Mr. Baines and some of the regulars, I ought to be able to tell you just when that Mr. O’Flynn was ’ere last night. No unpleasantness, I ’ope?”

“Depends . . .” said Reeves judicially. “Well, thanks for your help. I’ll look in later.”

Reeves left the Whistling Pig with his brain racing at top speed. He hadn’t learnt a great deal, but what he had learnt seemed likely to fit in the jigsaw puzzle he was devising.