A Three Pipe Problem Read online

  The death of Charles Pole had been worth no more than a paragraph in the national press. Sir Pountney Gladson, in death as in life, made headlines. It was natural that crime reporters should notice that the murder method was identical, that they should connect the two cases, and that they should ask questions of Roger Devenish. The Superintendent, who did not regard himself as vain, but still got a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw his name in the papers, was friendly but non-committal. His most persistent questioner was Phillips of the Globe.

  ‘Can you confirm that just the same karate chop was used in both cases?’

  ‘Karate is your word, not mine. Both men were killed with blows on the neck, that’s right.’

  ‘Do you know of any link between Pole and Sir Pountney?’

  ‘Obviously we’re working on the assumption that there is a connection between the two cases.’

  ‘But so far you haven’t discovered it?’

  ‘I said, we’re making that assumption.’

  ‘It might be, though, that the two murders are completely unconnected? It might be some madman going round practising karate?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll comment on that suggestion.’

  ‘Leaving the first case aside, do you have any leads to Gladson’s killing?’

  Devenish smiled. ‘I have a dozen.’

  A reporter from the Enquirer, a sensational tabloid, leaned forward. ‘Has it struck you Superintendent, that there was just a week between these murders? So that if it were a sequence, we might expect the next one on the night of the fourteenth or the early morning of the fifteenth?’

  ‘I had noticed the length of time between the two cases.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s of any significance, that there will be another–’

  ‘I don’t go in for that sort of speculation,’ Devenish said sharply. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘If it was strangulation, I know who I’d put my money on,’ the Enquirer man said afterwards to the man from the Mirror. ‘Thumbs himself.’ Devenish’s thumbs were indeed gigantic, quite out of proportion to his well-shaped hands, and they had earned him the nick-name, which he did not much like. The Mirror man responded with a joke about the size of Devenish’s thumbprint. They agreed that he obviously had no real lead.

  They were right, in the sense that the inquiries put in hand had turned up no connection of any kind between Pole and Gladson. On the other hand, there were a good many people who had reason to dislike Sir Pountney. One was the actress with whom he had spent the evening before his death, Sarah Peters. Brewster had talked to her in her Paddington flat. The sergeant was a painstaking, methodical man, an opponent of the permissive society.

  ‘Just let me go over it again, miss. Sir Pountney called for you here at about seven o’clock, you had a drink here, and then he took you out to dinner at Veglio’s restaurant, Dean Street. Have I got that right, V-e-g-l-i-o? Good. Then you met two friends of his, Mr Lancelot George and Mr Wilmer Traven, and you all went to the Over and Under Club. Mr George and Mr Traven were American, and you say they were keen to see what this club was like, because they were interested in getting into gambling over here?’

  Sarah Peters was tall and dark. ‘Right. They were all joking about it. Pow owned part of the Over and Under, I don’t know how much.’

  ‘And these two gentlemen weren’t too impressed?’

  ‘They liked the club, but they kept saying it didn’t give enough scope, they’d need half a dozen like it.’

  ‘Then they left at about two a.m. and after that you quarrelled with Sir Pountney.’

  ‘For God’s sake, I’ve told you all this.’

  Brewster’s face was square and red. The eyes, large, brown and reproachful, might have belonged to somebody else, even some other species, perhaps an ox. ‘I didn’t quite understand why it was you quarrelled, Miss Peters.’

  ‘Pow was in a filthy temper when they’d gone. He wanted to leave at once and go back to my place. I was on a winning streak at baccarat and I said no. Do you know, from that moment I began to lose.’ She looked at her nails, then up again. ‘At the Over and Under I played with Pow’s money. It was understood that if I won I kept it, as long as it wasn’t too much. If I lost I gave an IOU, but I never paid them. Once a month Pow would tear them up.’

  ‘Very generous.’

  She looked at him sharply, continued. ‘But that night he said I was on my own. I asked what he meant, and he said I could pay my own losses. I was more than fifty pounds down then, and five minutes later it was a hundred. I stopped playing, and told Pow what I thought of him.’

  The sergeant looked at his notes. ‘Ferguson, the manager, said you told Sir Pountney you had friends who would look him up. Did you say that?’

  ‘I might have done.’

  ‘What did it mean? Who are the friends?’

  Her gaze slid away. ‘Just words. I was angry because he was so bloody mean. Then I cleared out and left him to it, and went home.’

  ‘That was just before three a.m. After you got home, what did you do? Ring up your friends?’

  ‘Of course I bloody didn’t.’

  Inquiries showed that some of Sarah Peters’ acquaintances might have been ready to look anybody up. She knew Jack and Harry Claber, two brothers who ran the best-organised of South London’s gangs. When she was not working she sometimes went to race meetings with them. Harry Claber was said to have been sleeping with her, but it was a long step from that to ordering the death of a man as well known as Gladson. Devenish did not think that Claber would have done it. And in any case, why would Claber have wanted Charles Pole killed?

  A lot of other people disliked or detested Sir Pountney Gladson. He was on the Extermination list compiled by a group who called themselves the Black Beastlies, a man named Reynolds had threatened him after losing a court case in which he claimed to have been cheated in relation to an agreement for the commercial development of a disused Cornish tin mine, there was another recent case in which Gladson had driven his Lamborghini up on to a pavement, injuring an old woman. All of these were investigated. The Black Beastlies expressed pleasure at the extermination of this particular rat, but denied any connection with it. Reynolds was living down in Cornwall and had a convincing alibi, and the victim in the car case could not say too much in praise of Sir Pountney. Devenish saw her himself. She was the wife of an old-age pensioner named Page, and they lived in a couple of rooms in North London off the Marylebone Road.

  ‘A real gent,’ Mr Page said. ‘One of the old school. Out of his car in a flash, he was, ’ad the wife in ’is arms, got ’is suit all bloody. There was a lot of blood.’

  Mrs Page took up the theme. ‘And travelled with me in the ambulance to the hospital. Sent flowers. Oh yes, a real gentleman, Sir Pountney.’ She indicated her leg, which was in plaster. ‘Of course, they say it’ll be a long time before I can walk again properly. I mean, you have to expect it at my age.’

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘I was at the bus stop, see, and Bert was just a few feet away, when this car came round the corner like that, and then it seemed to go out of control like, and the next I knew I was on the ground, with Bert and Sir Pountney bending over me. I recognised him at once, mind you, from seeing his picture.’

  ‘What sort of speed was he going at?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it was fast, I should say–’ A warning glance from husband to wife.

  ‘–It was inside the limit,’ Page said. ‘I saw it. The thing was ’e skidded, that’s what caused it, a greasy road, couldn’t ’elp it.’

  ‘That’s what you said when the police came? You didn’t want to make a charge.’ Page muttered something. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said, we didn’t want any trouble. Not with someone like him. I mean, I belong to the Union Jack League myself. There’s too many foreigners here already.’

  ‘What did he pay you to keep quiet?’ When the man started to protest, Devenish said
, ‘You may as well tell me, I’m not saying you did anything you’ll be in trouble for.’

  A glance between the two of them, then he nodded. Mrs Page said in a hushed, reverential tone, ‘Two hundred.’

  The trouble with the working class, Devenish quoted afterwards to Brewster, is the poverty of their desires. And their ambitions, he added. If they’d put it into a solicitor’s hands, Gladson would have been pleased to pay a thousand to avoid a charge of dangerous driving when he’d knocked somebody down. Brewster, who thought the workers were too uppity anyway, and also that Gladson had had some good ideas, did not comment.

  In any case, it was clear that Page was not in the running as an executioner. And there was no other obviously suitable candidate.

  Chapter Three Enter Mr Sherlock Holmes

  Sherlock Holmes closed the door of the living-room, walked along the passage, opened the door of his Baker Street rooms and walked down the stairs to the world outside. On the way he paused, as he often did, to look at the mementoes of the past that lined the walls. Here, preserved under glass, were the crumpled piece of paper, the key, the metal discs and the peg of wood, that were reminders of almost his first case, that of the Musgrave Ritual. There was a letter of thanks from James Ryder, whose felony he had forgiven in the affair of the Blue Carbuncle, the small sealing-wax knife used in the matter of the Golden Pince-Nez, and – upon the whole most pleasing of all – relics also of half a dozen cases unrecorded by Watson. Among them were the envelope involved in the Tropoff affair, which if it had been opened at the time of its receipt would have meant death. The seal was still intact, although of course the poison that impregnated the envelope had long since lost its venom. Here was a fragment of the curiously flexible crutch that had played a part in the unveiling of the Austrian Monster, a newspaper picture of Vigor the Hammersmith Wonder, a photograph of Baron Maupertuis inscribed: ‘To Mr Sherlock Holmes, who brought about my ruin. With undying hatred. Maupertuis.’ The great detective contemplated this last with something between a smile and a frown. It was satisfying to possess a unique relic, regrettable that the story relating to it would never be told.

  As he descended the stairs he reflected how attractive and tellingly descriptive was the word ‘rooms’, in relation to his lodgings. I left my Baker Street rooms – splendidly appropriate. Why did wretched house agents insist upon using not the word rooms, nor apartment, nor even flat, but the atrocious maisonette? I left my Baker Street maisonette – abominable!

  Within the rooms, double glazing restricted the traffic noise to a continuous but not unpleasant hum. Now, however, a blast of sound from Baker Street met him as he opened the door. He stood in the street for a minute, taking it all in, hating it. The cars were bad enough, sleek vulgar vehicles filled with vulgar people, heavy-jowled men reminiscent of that worst of blackmailers Charles Augustus Milverton, or hard-faced women with hair of brass, all of them manoeuvring for advantage. But worse, because noisier, were the shiny red buses, cattle-trucks going from nowhere to nowhere, and worst of all the great thundering lorries with their cargoes of mechanical rubbish, much of it blessedly unknown in Holmes’ day. He stood there as he did every morning, soaking it all up, and the grim reality of modern Baker Street had its usual effect. The image of Sherlock Holmes faded, and he became again Sheridan Haynes.

  The day was frosty but fine, and he decided to walk to the rehearsal rooms in St John’s Wood. Such a walk was almost always a pleasure. It was common for him to be stopped by somebody who recognised him as the actor playing Sherlock Holmes in the TV series. Sometimes they called him Mr Haynes, sometimes they asked if he was Sherlock Holmes, a suggestion he did not exactly deny. On half-a-dozen occasions people had told him of troubles and problems in their own lives, and although he had been able to do nothing more than offer advice, experiences like these warmed his heart.

  But first, as he turned the corner to get out of Baker Street, he was greeted by a man wearing a blue jacket and serge trousers. On the jacket was a yellow flash which said ‘Traffic Warden’ and gave a number. A peaked yellow and blue cap completed an outfit familiar to all Londoners. The man’s name was Cassidy. He had a long horse-face which accorded well with what seemed a miserable disposition. Traffic wardens were often regarded as snoopers, because part of their job was giving parking tickets to motorists, but most of them seemed happy in their work.

  ‘Morning, Mr Haynes. And a cold one.’

  ‘Good morning, Cassidy. That doesn’t seem to get any less.’ He jerked a thumb behind him at Baker Street. ‘I wonder we have any hearing left. Filthy things, belching out poison.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with cars, just too many of them, that’s all,’ Cassidy said gravely, as though enunciating a profound truth.

  ‘If I had my way I’d have special roads made. All these things could go along them, but they’d never be allowed to move off. Don’t ask me how we’d manage, we managed very well without cars in the past.’ He smiled. ‘Back in my day.’

  ‘Things were different back in Sherlock Holmes’ day, right enough.’

  ‘And better, Cassidy.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right. Are you off to rehearsal, sir?’

  ‘I am. First day.’

  ‘I’ll wish you luck then. Not that you’ll need it, no fear of that.’ The warden had been glancing at meters as they strolled along, and now he stopped beside one, wrote out a ticket, put it under the windscreen wiper. ‘Twenty minutes over. People complain, but we’re only carrying out the law.’

  ‘Exactly. If they don’t want to be fined, let them park their cars for the right time. Or get rid of them.’ He walked on. Cassidy raised a hand to his cap in what could almost have been interpreted as a salute.

  The rehearsal rooms had formerly been a Christian Mission. On the ground floor a blackboard said, ‘Sherlock Holmes, The Naval Treaty,’ with an arrow pointing upwards. In the room upstairs the studio area was marked out with tapes on the floor, and a group of actors huddled round a table with the producer of the series, an energetic little Pole named Willie Lowinsky, and Richard Spain, who was directing this episode. Willie flung his arms wide in greeting.

  ‘Sherlock is here, now we can solve the problem.’ He came close to Sheridan Haynes, whispered, ‘The puzzle is, what has happened to the central heating. We are all freezing.’ He rolled the ‘r’ emphatically. At that moment a young man with a small face lost in a forest of hair put his head round the door and said in a hoarse voice, ‘Okay now, it was an air bubble, we’ve bled the rads.’

  ‘Ron, you are an angel.’ Willie blew a kiss to the face, which vanished, and beamed round the table. ‘Now you are all warmer, or you will be in a minute, let’s get on. If you’ll sit here, Sher, we’ll read it through. Ready, Basil? Go ahead.’

  ‘“Listen to this, Holmes.”’ Basil Wainwright said. He began to read the letter from Percy Phelps. ‘“My dear Watson, I have no doubt that you can remember ‘Tadpole’ Phelps, who was in the fifth form when you were in the third…”’

  Sheridan Haynes read the script almost automatically, but as it continued he found that he could not help being annoyed by Basil. In appearance Basil Wainwright was a perfect Watson, with a square honest face framed by mutton-chop whiskers, a splendidly bewildered look when Holmes made a surprising deduction, and a general air of dogged stupidity that was just right. When he was Basil Wainwright rather than John H. Watson, however, he camped about outrageously. Sheridan Haynes had met a lot of queer actors in his time, and told him-self that he didn’t mind them, but during this read-through Basil seemed to go out of his way to try to make the story sound ridiculous.

  He was annoyed also by the introduction of Irene Adler. When the series began, the idea had been that they should stick to the themes and characters of the original stories as closely as possible. Through three series of thirteen episodes that plan had been adhered to. When the fourth set of thirteen was planned, however, it was decided that the formula must be varied to provide Holmes with an o
pponent, who should appear in several stories. Moriarty had been considered, but Irene Adler was preferred. She was played competently enough by Sarah Peters, but her presence in stories where she had no place set Sher’s nerves jangling. Irene had been turned into an international spy, who in this story was the agent to whom Joseph Harrison hoped to sell the secret of the naval treaty. At the end of the reading, when Willie asked for comments, he could not refrain from saying something.

  ‘I hope Basil won’t go on talking like that when we rehearse.’

  The Watsonic look of bewilderment appeared. ‘But Sher, love, it was only a read-through. You don’t expect me to act.’

  ‘If we all camped about, there’d be no point in reading through at all.’

  ‘Well, Sher, you’d never camp it up, we all know that.’

  Willie intervened. ‘Remember you’re a straight man, Basil. Anything else?’

  ‘I’m still worried about Sarah. That scene where I try to kiss her and then Basil comes in – it’s right out of character. In fact, her whole presence is wrong.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ Sarah said.

  Willie waved an arm. ‘We’ll talk about it. Any queries, Richard? No? Right then, break for lunch. All back at two o’clock, please.’

  Most of them went round to the local pub for lunch. Willie steered Sher and Sarah to the table he had booked. The men drank pints of beer, Sarah a Bloody Mary. Over nondescript food, Willie deployed his smoothing-over technique.

  ‘Darlings, I love you both. I hope you aren’t going to cause any fuss and bother for Richard.’

  ‘Am I causing it?’ Sarah pushed away her plate, and lighted a cigarette.

  ‘Sher, I have to tell you. It’s very naughty of you to say things like that in public. Very naughty indeed.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sher said, and meant it. ‘Sarah, I apologise. I let Basil get under my skin, and I shouldn’t have done. But, Willie, I’ve told you before how it does outrage my sense of what’s right for a Sherlock Holmes series to have a master spy appearing in half of them. We made a success by sticking to the originals, and now–’