the purloined parure 5

 

Chapter 5

 

“Hold your hat on, Mickey; I have some news for you,” said Alexander.

“Bad, or worse?” asked Mickey.

“Good, actually,” said Alexander.

“That’s ’ard to believe,” said Mickey.

“Straight up,” said Alexander. “The old woman’s will said whoever found her parure could have it – if he kept it for a year and a day.”

“Gawdstrewf, Mr. Armitage, now I’m gwine ter be worryin’ in case some ruddy tealeaf[1] gets ’is filfy ’ands on it.”

“I retrieved it from the coldframe, and registered your claim with your new solicitor, Mr. Pickle.”

“’Oo?”

“He’s the family solicitor for the Beauchamps. I said you’d pay him out of what you sell the parure for.  And he has placed it in my keeping. I will guard it for you with my life.”

“Gawd, I ain’t displeased, but why?”

“Because you deserve the protection of the law, too; because I’m setting myself up as bait to catch the man who could do that to an inoffensive fellow like Marty Beauchamp. We found some evidence of the torture in the house which I am glad to say I think you missed. And people like that offend me. Uh, you might be less pleased that you’ll get some time off for voluntarily giving up where you hid Mosh Cohen’s stuff.”

“I never did!”

“Really? It’s what my report says,” said Alexander. “Keep your nose clean, be polite to the screws, and you’ll be out in two.”

“Well, wiv a fortune to come out to, it’s worf givin’ up on the loot,” said Cosher, philosophically.

“Bear in mind that you’d be fencing it for a few tens of thousands, but selling it kosher as you might say, you’d get ten  times as much,” said Alexander.

Cosher’s eyes got very large.

“St...strite up?” he quavered.

“Straight up,” said Alexander.

“Gawdstrewf! Mr. Armitage, I ’oped I’d get four or five grand for it, you know, ten years not ’avin to do nuffink, or five years swell livin’ but... Mr. Armitage, I can’t ’andle that sort o’ money!” Cosher whimpered.

“Mickey, it’s all right; breathe. I’ll help you. I’ll show you how to get it all tied up in a trust, which pays you a fixed amount; that can be a fiver a week, or a tenner, or twenty. I’ll see you right with it, so it isn’t overwhelming.”

Mickey heaved a sigh.

“I’d like to buy  a little ’ouse, near enough the smoke to come up to tahn easy-like, on the tube; somewhere like that ’Arold ’Ill place they’re building, or Gidja Park.”

“You’d be my parents’ neighbour then, Mickey,” said Alexander. “You’d want a nice little garden plot big enough to grow vegetables?”

“And flaars,” said Mickey. “I likes flaars, but they don’t let yer grow them on the allotment.”

“And don’t you have a boy? I know a lot of your income goes to him,” said Alexander.

“Fancy you rememberin’!” said Mickey. “’E died las’ year. Infantile paralysis ’e ’ad, which is why it cost so much, but poor little sod, it took ’im off. It’s why I weren’t active in summer. Summer cold, asthma, and woosh!”

“I’m so sorry,” said Alexander. “And the wife?”

“Her!” said Mickey, with venom. “Farmed my boy out, she did, and took some fancy man. I’m glad she insisted on a divorce, she won’t ’ave a bleedin’ penny. Fact, I’ll adopt a boy wiv infantile paralysis, an’ ’e won’t replace my Jim, but ’e’ll ’ave as good a life as I can give him.”

“Bless you, Mickey. I’ll see if I can find someone suitable,” said Alexander, his eyes stinging suspiciously.

“Well, nah I got somethin’ to look forward to in stir,” said Mickey. “I was wonderin’ if it was worf it, but it can be. Jim’d like that.”

“He would,” said Alexander, and escaped, so he could go and blow his nose loudly and mop his eyes.

“What’s the matter, Armitage, lost a guinea and only found a quid?” Morrell’s voice sneered.

“I somehow doubt that you’d understand,” said Alexander. “I discovered that someone lost his young son to infantile paralysis, or rather, the complications it can cause.”

“It’s sad, but it happens,” shrugged Morrell. “I didn’t think you were such a sissy as to cry.”

“Oh, I’m man enough to cry at times, because I am sufficiently comfortable with my own manhood to show emotion,” said Alexander. “But if you want to call me a sissy, perhaps you’d fancy a bout in the gymnasium?”

“Why not, sissy?” sneered Morrell. “Posh boy, never faced the knocks of life, have you?”

“Whatever you say,” said Alexander.

They retired to the police gymnasium, and changed into boxers.

“Boxing rules, wrestling, or no holds barred?” asked Alexander.

“No holds barred,” said Morrell.

Ten minutes later, Morrell was wishing he had asked for something more limited. Fifteen minutes later, he was not thinking at all, being unconscious.

Alexander put him in the recovery position and left him there. He stopped by the man’s office to suggest that a junior might like to go and tend to Morrell, and went to his own office long enough for Mary to call to him.

“Those reports from the armed services are in, that you asked for, sir,” she said.

“Thanks, Mary, I’ll take them home to read,” said Alexander, taking them from her hand and stuffing them in his pocket. Then he picked up the empty parure case and was gone before his secretary could call him to book for cavalier treatment of documents.

 

“’Ome to Miss Ida?” asked Campbell, pointedly ignoring the bruise on Alexander’s head.

“To my flat, first,” said Alexander. “I want to leave this case there. If anyone steals it before I’m settled in as bait, which I think unlikely, I’ll still be bait for having emptied the box. But I don’t see why I should have to lug this dirty great thing around with me.”

“Nossir,” said Campbell. “And nobody ain’t gwine to foller me.”

“No, I don’t suppose they will. You have my permission to floor it on the straight when we leave London.”

“Yessir!” said Campbell, brightening.

The Lancia Lambda was, in all essentials, a racing car made over to seat four people. It cruised happily at just under seventy miles per hour, and if the top speed was officially seventy-two, Campbell  could attest to it being somewhat more.

How much more, he did not intend to mention to Alexander.

Alexander noted that it did not take long to get back to Essex.

Ida darted out to hug him.

“Madam,” said Alexander, kissing her, “That’s my sweater.”

“It’s lovely and warm,” said Ida.

“You be careful, or I shall steal your evening gown to wear to work,” said Alexander.

Ida giggled.

“You’d never get into it,” she said.

“Sadly, no,” said Alexander. “I’d love to see Morrell’s face if I turned up wearing a dress.”

“Who is Morrell?”

“Another  inspector. He is ten or twelve years older than me, and he rose from being a beat cop, and he resents me for rising quicker, for being richer than he thinks any policemen has any right to be, and for being cleverer than himAnd I suspect it’s the last which irks him the most. Barrett resents my wealth, but he mostly accepts it. . I let Morrell get to me enough that I accepted a brawl in the gym. And yes, it was a brawl. He knows some dirty fighting techniques; but I know more. I pasted him, and it felt so good, I’m sure it’s bad for my soul.  Ida, could you fancy a cruise? Barrett’s wife isn’t well, and he can’t really take time off to go with her, so I said I’d ask you.”

“Where?” asked Ida, who was investigating the bruises on Alexander’s face and head.

“Somewhere warm,” said Alexander. “Careful on that one, it’s tender. Mediterranean, probably; maybe a Nile river cruise.”

“That would put me ahead in the archaeology world,” said Ida, brightening.

“Oh, well, I’ll see what I can do.  I’ll see if I can pick you up any books on hieroglyphs as well so you can read pyramids and impress people.”

Ida giggled.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of script on pyramids.”

“Well, whatever,” said Alexander. “There’s supposed to be some fabulous tomb uncovered recently by Howard Carter, so maybe you can get a look at it. Some fellow called Toot and Come In or something. Howard Carter presumably tooted and came.”

“Tut-ankh-amun, I’ve been following it on the news. Not until you’ve caught anyone likely to torture you, Alex,” said Ida.

“No, I understand,” said Alexander. “I imagine it would be after Christmas.”

“Good,” said Ida. “What’s your next move?”

“I’m meeting the family,” said Alexander. “Papa, any news on those incunabulae?”

“Yes, I ran them to earth, explained that they were stolen goods, and told the bookseller I know exactly what he paid. They are to go to your Mr. Pickle, who will pay the three hundred he gave Cosher, and I put in an offer for the entire library.”

“That’s my pater,” said Alexander.

 

oOoOo

 

Alexander sat down in an easy chair to look through the military records.  Ida dropped a hat on his head, and poked Basil’s pipe into his mouth.

“Eh, what?” said Alexander.

“You were sitting there looking every inch the great detective, and you needed a deerstalker and meerschaum pipe.”

“Sherlock Holmes was a gentleman; he took his hat off indoors. And I don’t smoke.”

“I wish you will keep it, however; Basil said that sometimes a ‘dry smoke’ with nothing in it was also good for thinking, just chewing on the stem. I wiped it over with Dakin’s solution.”

“I would love to keep it, just to toy with, and think of Basil. Can I have one of his humorous depictions of me for my office?”

“Of course. Not the tank one; it’s too rude,” said Ida. “But maybe the page of studies of you; it’s very revealing.”

“Not too unkind, I hope.”

“Affectionate,” said Ida, rummaging in the folio of watercolours, and finding the one of which she was thinking.  Basil worked on foolscap size sketching pads, fourteen by eighteen-and-three-quarters inches, and he had filled it with seven colour sketches of Alexander, from one of him with his feet up on a desk, hands in his pockets, to one of him ticking off a terrified-looking nurse, in apparent fury, one of him apparently singing as he adjusted his tie,  one propped up on a doorpost, looking inanely foppish, one in uniform, looking starchy, one of him furtively giving a fish to a feral cat, and one of him holding Basil in his arms with a bleak background of no-man’s land, sketchy, but recognisable.

“I thought you’d like one with Basil in; was I wrong?” asked Ida, as Alexander’s eyes filled with tears.

“You picked a perfect one,” said Alexander. “I’ll leave this to be mounted on my way in to work. Now feed me with tea.”

“I can precis some of these for you as well,” said Ida.

“That would help,” said Alexander.

 

“Right, starting with Alec, who was a reserve naval lieutenant, an undistinguished but unblighted career in home waters, called up at fifty years old in a non-combatant capacity, sent to HMS Ganges, the training facility at Shotley point, where unspecified actions suggest that he may have been trading on the black market, causing the near mutiny in 1917 for the short rations, but there was no proof. Arthur, forty-four when the war broke out, avoided service until 1918 when the age was raised, and spent the war polishing a chair guarding records.”

“Wasn’t George the oldest?”

“Yes, but he was old enough to avoid any service, which makes it an irony that he died in the last months of the war, when an unexploded bomb blew up in a property where he was looting the library of the property damaged.”

“Well, so far, and taking Marty into account, they sound... how do you put it? A right shower,” said Ida.

“Yes, I can’t say I’m impressed,” said Alexander. “Marty, spent most of the war in the glasshouse for petty theft of one kind or another. Served in France, briefly, and was nicked for breaking and entering a French lingerie shop to steal ooh-la-la underwear which he was selling by mail-order using the despatches to send it, out of the regimental mess.”

“You have to give him credit for boldness,” said Ida.

“Yes, but so venally petty,” said Alexander. “No, poor little bastard did not deserve to be murdered. Though I suspect if I’d been his CO, I might have disagreed. I’d have put him on spud bashing until the natural end of the universe.”

Ida sniggered.

“I wager he’d have found a way to turn a profit,” she said. “Selling potatoes to a chippy or something.”

“Thank the Good Lord he wasn’t one of mine,” said Alexander. “Next, Alec’s three. Frederick, same age as Marty, jugged once for beating on his cousin.  I wager if I sent for the school records it would show Marty continually stealing from Fred, and Fred continually pounding him. Other than that, Fred seems fairly clean, citation for taking out a machine-gun nest single-handed, and gained the Military Medal for it. Thomas volunteered for naval officer training before being called up, served for a while at Ganges and may have been involved with Alec’s alleged peculation there. If so, they backed each other’s stories and held tight to their own. Eric was only fourteen when the war broke out, but he joined up at sixteen, lying about his age, and managed to serve bravely and well, and also received a Military Medal for evacuating his officer and several men under fire. He seems to be the best of the bunch.”

“Didn’t Arthur have two sons?”

“Yes, Charley and Joseph, both too young to serve. Charley is a fraction younger than you, and Joseph is four years younger.”

“I suppose any of them may have got hardened during the war, though I’d think it less likely of the sailors,” said Ida. “Don’t a lot of people who win medals find peacetime hard to cope with?”

“That can be true,” said Alexander. “But I’m also thinking of something Mickey said to me... but it can go either way. And cover a naval officer one step away from the violence. Well, we shall see.”

 

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[1] Cockney rhyming slang, thief