the purloined parure 16 bonus just because it's Friday

 

Chapter 16

 

Alexander could see what was meant by people moving back in; though some of the tenement buildings had sightless bare windows, some had defiantly gay curtains back up, and the signs of being lived in.

“If I was on the run, holed up in a derelict block, what would I do?” muttered Alexander. “Actually, I’d put up curtains, and appear as normal as possible. But what would Barty and Bertie do? I wager they’d pick an unoccupied house, and try to make it seem still unoccupied. But it’s almost Christmas... bless the poor buggers who have crept back, there’s a Christmas tree in that house, and hand-made decorations in that one. And there’s smoke out of the rear chimney of that one with no curtains, and no signs of life at the front. They need a fire, it’s perishing.”

Whistling ‘with cat like tread’ under his breath, Alexander went to the front door with nonchalance rather than furtively, and utilised a tool which would have been frowned upon by Barrett, and would have occasioned his arrest had any bobby on the beat known about it and had the temerity to search an officer of Scotland Yard; though actually Alexander could have applied for the right to carry it to search supposedly slum unoccupied properties. He slid through the front door which yielded to his skeleton key and closed it quietly.  He passed silently down the short hallway and walked into the kitchen, where a seedy and unshaven little man sat, huddled in a greatcoat over the smoky range.

“Merry Christmas, Bertie,” said Alexander.

“Oh, bollocks,” said Bertie, in resignation.

“You’ll be safer on the inside. And warmer,” said Alexander. “Is Barty here too?”

“’E’s in the outhouse,” said Bertie.

“Well, let’s douse this fire, and we can collect him on the way out the back,” said Alexander. “He’d be a fool to run, with Harry Shearer’s men out looking for him,” he added, raising his voice.

The back door opened and the unkempt figure of Barty Tolliver came in, a far cry from his usual spruce appearance.

“We’ve got bags upstairs,” said Barty.

“Go and get them; I’ll see they’re dropped off with Vera,” said Alexander, naming Barty Tolliver’s long-term girlfriend.

“I was ’oping to ’ave Christmas outside,” said Bertie, gloomily.

“We do run to turkey or goose over Christmas,” said Alexander.

Bertie brightened.

“Oh, well, that’s somethin’,” he said. “An’ the chow is better nor what Barty cooks.”

“Lord Above!” said Alexander.  He led the two out of the back of the house and installed them in the plain car.

“Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,” he said to the driver.

“My given name is Charles and we’re in an automobile,” said the constable.

“It’s a figure of speech,” said Alexander.

When they got back to Scotland Yard it was to find a few of the office staff making an effort to decorate with paper-chains, tinsel, and, with some very naughty words as the bulbs insisted on blowing, fairy lights.

“You need a step-down transformer,” said Alexander, helpfully.

“Where am I to get one of those two days before Christmas?” demanded the frustrated WPC trying to put up the lights.

“Tell you what,” said Alexander, “There’s a car out of commission in the garage – burst radiator. If you get someone to nick the battery, the lights should run off that.”

“Cheers, sir,” said the WPC.

Barty Tolliver and Bertie Briscowe were duly booked for bunco, and Alexander wandered back up to his office. To his delight, the painting of the seven scenes of him had been mounted.

He went into the outer office and kissed Mary on the cheek.

“Thanks for collecting my painting,” he said. “Your Christmas present and that of your husband is under the tree. In case I’m not there for Christmas day.”

“Where are you likely to be?” asked Mary, suspiciously.

“Possibly in hospital,” said Alexander. Or the morgue, he thought. He was desperately afraid, but it was not something he could ask of anyone else, and unless caught in the act, nobody would believe a pair of fresh-faced lads, neither of them even adults, would do anything so gruesome.

 

He could not put off going home any longer. Moreover, he had an obligation to Campbell not to leave him in danger.

Alexander took the tube from St James’s Park, it making no odds if the train he took was District or Circle as he was only going two stops to Embankment to get out and change to the Northern Line for Goodge Street. He hated changing on the tube, the inexorable noise and bustle, the pushing and shoving reminding him of the trenches. The thick smell of humanity jam-packed into a confined space allied with the odd ozone smell of the trains, and thick grease of machinery made his nose wrinkle. But he did it, and came gladly up the steps to walk the four minute walk to his flat. At least nobody was likely to jump him at the tube station, not one of those much frequented, as he was known to have a car.

He walked up Store Street, and reflected that he must be on the lookout to purchase one of the three storey buildings there, as close to the Southern Crescent as possible, with its grand buildings at odds with the plainer ones in Store Street, and make a way through to Gower Mews. He thought, whimsically, of the grand houses in Bedford Square the other side; but he needed a house like that, even grander than the house in Orme Court, like he needed a hole in the head. But a bolt-hole rather than having to go all the way to Gower Street and as far back, almost, to the far end of the Mews left him vulnerable. And it was a terrible fire trap.  Alexander shuddered. If they set the place on fire to see if he went for the parure, it would be the death of him, and of Campbell.

But it would be a trap for his quarry, too, so hopefully they were intelligent enough to avoid that.

He unlocked the garage door and went in. Here, on a camp bed, dozed Sergeant Claud Eustace Teal. Harris was indoors. There was a door into the passage from the front door to his flat upstairs, which he would leave unlocked for Teal. A quick tuneful whistle was answered by the next phrase of the pirate king’s song, and he ran upstairs.

“No problems yet,” said Campbell.

“Which, beings as it’s only been dark a couple of  hours, ain’t surprising,” added Harris.

Alexander made stuffed cabbage leaves served over rice with a sauce he whipped up from tomato ketchup with added garlic, onion, and sour cream and called Teal up to join in the repast.  The other men regarded it suspiciously.

“I likes a bit o’ meat for my dinner,” said Harris, plaintively.

“The leaves are stuffed with lamb mince,” said Alexander. “We have our Russian relatives staying with us in Essex, and Dmitro cooked this for us, and I asked for the recipe.”

“It’s good!” said Campbell, in surprise. “Cor, ’Oo’d of thunk it. Russian, eh? You wouldn’t fink they ’ad time between revoluting.”

“It’s a lot older than the revolution,” said Alexander. “I wanted to make something so nobody could guess how many people I have here.”

“It’s nice, and you made it really quickly; can I have the recipe?” asked Teal, who was more cosmopolitan and better educated than some of his fellows.

“Certainly,” said Alexander. “I’ll write that out whilst you are digesting; just in case I’m unavailable tomorrow.”

“None o’ that, sir,” said Campbell, gruffly.

“If they blip me on the bean first, I might be half silly in hospital,” said Alexander, more lightly than he felt.

Teal, happy with stewed pears and custard as a pudding, and with his recipe in his pocket, retired back to the garage with a hot water bottle, to tuck himself under the heavy quilt there, hidden behind a tarpaulin seemingly carelessly thrown over one of the bare joists. Campbell and Harris retired behind the breakfast bar in the kitchen area, on piles of cushions, taking turns to doze. And Alexander retired to bed. They had re-checked all cupboards and small rooms as a matter of course.

 

Alexander did not think he would sleep, so he put on the beside lamp to read ‘Nicolette,’ a newly-published novel by Baroness Orczy, supposedly based on an old French satire, but taking more liberties than her usual fare of the French in the Scarlet Pimpernel books, with much fraternity and equality unlikely in the period of the time. Still, the Baroness was incapable of writing a bad book, and Alexander enjoyed it until relaxation and tiredness combined to overwhelm him in sleep, or as the Baroness would doubtless have put it, the inexorable forces of exhaustion from strain, combined with a comfortable position, drew him without protest into the arms of Morpheus.

 

Alexander awoke to the sound of breaking glass.

He sat up, his heart hammering. His light was on and his book had fallen off the bed. He bent down to pick up the book and put on the side stand, and turned off the light.  It would not have penetrated his thick curtains; and the breaking glass had not been in this room.

He lay back down, pretending to sleep, and then thought, perhaps I should get up to call out about what is going on; a policeman isn’t going to ignore the sounds of breaking glass.

He went downstairs, stealthily, and was in time to see a figure leaning out of the window, having broken one of the six panes of glass in the sash window, to unlock and open it in order to get in. They were lucky; the other window stuck.

Cold air blew in, and a few flakes of sleet. A figure was leaning out of the window, and Alexander heard a whisper, ‘Here, catch it!’ There was the sound of something landing somewhere, and Alexander decided it was time to make his presence known.

He turned on the light.

The figure at the window started, and banged his head on the lower edge of the upper sash, making it rattle.  He was wearing a mask.

Before Alexander could approach him, he sprang over the sill, and by the sounds of slithering and a brief burst of invective, slid down the ladder with more haste than wisdom, collecting a crop of splinters.

Alexander decided to act as he would if he had been robbed in the normal way. He snatched up a police whistle from the sideboard, and sounded  it loudly out into the night.

Campbell and Harris emerged.

“We didn’t do nuthin’ because you said leave it until they seized you,” said Campbell.

“Quite right.  Well, our little thieves decided they would rather do it the easy way than to indulge their dubious fun,” said Alexander. “Get Teal up here; he might as well thaw out. We’ll have bobbies all over the place presently, and the fingerprint boys, and they won’t be coming back tonight.”

It was a prediction which proved to be no less than the truth, and Alexander, wrapped in a dressing-gown of gaudy quilted silk, with a pattern of dragons and phoenixes on it, brewed endless cups of tea for bobbies on night duty, glad of a hot drink on a night with stinging, spiteful wind, and a precipitation between fog, rain, and sleet which showed a stubborn determination to work its way inside any clothing. Capes hung up on the drying rack in the kitchen, lowered for the purpose, steaming gently to add some warmth to the thawing bobbies when they must, reluctantly, leave, to get on with their duties.

Teal, Campbell, and Harris had been banished to Alexander’s bedroom so that no bobby talking out of turn might mention that the inspector had a veritable army with him who might have been expected to stop or at least deter robbers.

He did admit that they had taken an empty jewellery case which he was keeping for his own purposes.

The fingerprint squad came out by car, complaining about the hour, and the weather, and discovered that the housebreakers had worn gloves.

“Too much crime fiction,” said one, gloomily. “Chummies these days know about dabs.”

“And you can’t describe them, sir?” asked another.

“Slender, boyish figure, definitely not female, quite athletic, about five-foot ten,” said Alexander.

“Hair? Appearance?”

“Hood, black. Mask, black,” said Alexander. “Clothes, black. I conjecture that the clothing was army surplus, dyed.”

The constable nodded, making a note of this.

They finally got rid of the excess police at around five in the morning, and Alexander was permitted to shut his window, and tape brown paper over the hole. The gas fire finally started to make a difference.

“Gawdstrewf,” said Campbell.

“I’ll be a bit more sensitive with victims in future,” said Teal, meditatively. “That sounded a bit rough.”

“I am going to be ribbed unmercifully for being robbed,” said Alexander ruefully. “But then, I can’t say I mind being robbed, not tortured.”

“But they are going to find out it’s empty, and then they’ll be as mad as ’ornets,” said Campbell.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “But their costume is distinctive, and if they don’t try questioning me, if we can get enough doubt for a warrant to search, I wager we’d find it. Which doesn’t get them sent down for anything but petty theft, but it would be something.”

“And then they’ll wait for Cosher to get out, and go after ’im,” said Campbell.

“You’re right,” said Alexander. “Very well, same show tonight, gentlemen; I doubt they’re likely to delay long. They are not patient, and Joseph will be back at school in two weeks time.”

“Why don’t you put a tail on them, sir?” asked Teal.

“You know, that might not be a bad idea,” said Alexander. “I also need to telephone my folks and get Freddy to call his mother to reassure her that he is safe.  Actually, Teal, can you handle setting up the tail? I can’t ask you to spend another day in the cold.”

“I don’t think I’m much good in there, anyway,” said Teal.  “I’ll join the others.” He brightened. “You could teach me how to make that stuffed cabbage; I wouldn’t mind it again.”

“It’s a deal,” said Alexander.