Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 6. Whole No. 211, June 1961

Nigel Morland All in the Niqht's Work

Constable Gill stood on the corner of Curzon Street, peacefully surveying the quietness of the midsummer night — and in the comparative backwater of Mayfair, London can be very quiet indeed.

Younger constables might have sneered as Gill rocked slowly in that time-honored motion beloved of some policemen. But Gill would not have minded; he was an old-fashioned man who clung faithfully to a drooping, curtain mustache which went well with a large and corpulent body. If he could serve as the cartoonist’s idea of a uniformed policeman, he also epitomized the Metropolitan Police.

There was nothing to attract his attention. He resumed his steady beat, moving in complete silence. His large hand tested shop doors as he passed, considerately ruffled the heads of occasional cats on their night journeys, but all the time his right hand was free to switch on the beam of the powerful Wootton lamp attached to his belt — if emergency should require it. As usual, nothing did happen and he moved under the arch into a small and deserted square.

Gill was due to make his point with his opposite number at the north end of the next street and this he did at a punctual ten minutes after the hour, nodding amiably when Cowley appeared out of the murk.

“Ah, Tom. Anything doing?”

“No, sir.”

“Here!” Gill dug the younger man’s ribs. “You know you don’t 'sir’ anybody under an Inspector, and that I never shall be.”

“Sorry, Gill.” Cowley rubbed his chin, grinning. He was still a probationer with another year to serve. Gill’s gray hair and air of mature experience had fooled him again, as it fooled many of the younger men. “See you an Inspector yet, Gill.”

The big constable chuckled.

“Pension in three years, son. I’ve seen everything and done everything, just by slaying on the beat.” He sighed faintly. “Not that I haven’t an ambition. Like putting one over on Mr. Dane, for instance — not that I’ll ever have the luck.”

“Dane of the C.I.D.? Cocky, he is, don’t you think?”

“Now, son. A clever rookie doesn’t have opinions like that, not if he wants to get on.” Gill winked amiably. “Everything quiet?”

Cowley grinned and retailed some events which seemed important to him. These Gill put in their proper place with the ready kindness he always gave to new recruits. Cowley was briefed regarding empty houses on the second half of his beat, then Gill headed toward Park Lane, the border of his own beat.

Halfway along Hertford Street the door of a large house suddenly opened and a man appeared on the porch. He stepped forward at the sight of Gill, and began to chatter hurriedly.

“You gave me a start, Officer. I was just coming out to find you.”

“Ah, sir?" Gill's large, bovine face wore a mask of professional blankness that was intended to convey his helpful impartiality. “Anything wrong, sir?”

“Yes, I’m afraid there is.” The man glanced at the constable’s steady blue eyes, shifting in that embarrassed fashion typical of Londoners when they seek official help. “My friend inside… it’s dreadful…”

“I see, sir. Want me to come in?”

“Yes, please.” The man stepped back into the bright hallway. “I can’t very well stop you, can I?” His little chuckle was a combination of discomfort and a fear of appearing foolish.

“Well, I can’t come in unless the householder invites me.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Silly of me — I forgot that an Englishman’s home… But come in, come in. This way, please.”

Gill was led into a bright room where the lights blazed from a central chandelier. The furniture was expensive and in keeping with aristocratic Hertford Street. A small table stood in the middle of the floor, the covers being laid for one. A man sprawled across the white cloth.

With gentle hands Gill turned the head of the sprawled man sideways, taking care not to disturb anything on the table. He wet one large forefinger and placed it under the man’s nose, nodding as he straightened his back.

“’Fraid he’s dead, sir.”

“Good God!” The other man stepped back with a gesture of horror. “But he was all right only a few minutes ago!”

“Yes, sir. Got a telephone I can use?”

“Yes, this way, please.”

Gill followed the man into the hall where the telephone stood behind the door to the basement. He dialed phlegmatically, half smiling at the small, nondescript dog that appeared when the door was opened.

The man patted the dog hurriedly, muttering a friendly, “Down, old boy, down!”

Savile Row Police Station came on the line, and Gill reported briefly. С-Divisional Headquarters thanked him and promised immediate attention.

The dog was pushed away and the door closed behind it, and then Gill returned to the lighted room, taking out his notebook.

“Now, just a few questions, if it’s all the same to you, sir.”

The man’s name was Farrar; he was the owner of the house and had returned after going to a theater with a friend who had missed his dinner — which explained the supper for one.

“Marshall” — Farrar nodded toward the dead man — “wanted some beer. I went downstairs to get him some, but it took a bit of finding. It’s a large house and I’m not particularly familiar with the domestic quarters.”

“No servants, sir?”

“Yes, but they don’t sleep in — you can’t get them to do that these days. I’m a bachelor, which explains why I’ve got any at all.”

“I see. Now, about the time of death: I felt the skull when I- lifted his head — must’ve been coshed while you were getting the beer, sir.” Gill’s eyes strayed to the bottle standing on the table. “If I know this street, there are no exits or entrances except the front doors?”

“Exactly. But you don’t think the murderer might still be…?” Farrar broke off.

“Probably, sir.” Gill’s voice was reassuring. “But I’ve had my eyes on the hall — not that I can be in two places at once, just the same. It’ll be taken care of in a minute.”

Almost immediately after, Inspector Dane was very much in charge. He was a big man, as big as Gill, with a bleak face and rumpled clothes. He spoke with the abruptness sometimes to be found in the Criminal Investigation Department, hearing out Gill’s report and expressing his pungent views on the constable’s failure to search the house.

Then he waved the wooden-faced Gill to the unimportant task of guarding the door of the murder room.

The divisional surgeon arrived next, grumbling at being dragged from his bed. His examination was swift and expert.

“Usual blunt instrument. The occiput’s crushed like an eggshell — must’ve been a heavy blow.”

“Dead, eh?”

“Yes, he’s dead.” The doctor sighed but made no remark, knowing perfectly well the police cannot regard a corpse, even if it were cut into sections, as officially dead until the physician says so.

“Thank you, Doctor. How long’s he been dead?”

“Always confusing me with a magician, aren’t you? I can’t say, but the body’s still warm. Taking a long guess, you might say thirty minutes or so, but don’t try and hold me to that. And don’t call me again tonight, if you can help it, there’s a good chap.”

A brisk handshake and the doctor was gone.

When the experts had finished taking their photographs and fingerprint dustings, Inspector Dane was in a bad temper. He resented Gill’s humble but deft twist of the tables when Gill said the burglar could have hidden himself all the time the police were there, and possibly got out by way of the roof at his leisure — a probability strengthened by the finding of a desk with a broken lock on the top floor.

Farrar was brought in to explain the desk.

“There might have been somebody in the house all the time,” Dane admitted ungraciously; he was inclined to overlook details himself, expecting his underlings to see to things without orders. “Was anything of value kept in the desk?”

“There was!” Farrar swallowed. “There’s a secret drawer where I put a diamond I bought for — well, a lady friend.” He hesitated uncomfortably. “Paid nine thousand pounds for it.”

Dane gasped and, without even pausing to wonder at the extravagance of rich bachelors, took Farrar upstairs to make sure the diamond was really gone, suggesting, in his opinion, that the burglar might have found a hiding place when he was surprised by the arrival of Farrar and Marshall, realized he was caught when Marshall proposed to eat, used his cosh, and then had gone upstairs while Farrar was in the basement. The roof, Dane added, might have been an exit route.

Gill came to life immediately the door closed. He made a small noise to express his opinion of Dane. Though the uniform branch and the C.I.D. work well together, there are exceptions, and in Gill’s opinion Dane was one of them.

Moving quietly, Gill went to the little table and studied the cutlery. With deft movements unexpected in one of his size, he next examined the dead man’s hands. Then he opened Marshall’s jacket and carefully scrutinized the edges of his trouser pockets.

By the time Dane returned. Gill was standing impassively by the door, his face blankly empty.

Dane was now in a really bad temper. He was due to go on his annual leave the next day, but this murder looked as if it would keep him in town: the Force was under strength and Dane knew perfectly well that Central Headquarters would have a lot to say if he did not defer his holiday.

The obvious thing to do was to check with modus operandi files for that rare offender, a burglar who would not hesitate to use a cosh, and use it savagely. Dane called his Sergeant and sent him off to New Scotland Yard to deal with the chore.

Gill stepped forward, standing rigidly at attention, and cleared his throat.

“Sir, if I might make a suggestion.”

"What?” Dane turned from his contemplation of the uninteresting contents of Marshall’s pockets. “Not now, Constable. I’m busy. Talk to your Sergeant about it, and I think you’d better go back to your beat. Here, give me your book.”

Dane initialed the notebook where Gill had described his departure from routine and the reason for it.

In the hallway Gill passed the time of the day with a man from his division who was guarding the front door. The little dog was there as well and came up to be fondled, rolling on its back in an absurdly puppyish fashion. Gill gently rubbed the proffered stomach and said good night to the man at the door.

When he resumed his march along Hertford Street, he was chuckling softly. Dane had always disliked him, but that was no ordeal. Gill had all the stubborn independence of the native Londoner, so he was quite disinterested if his opinions were not welcomed, especially by a superior.

When he returned to Savile Row at 3:30 a.m., his tour of duty finished, Gill reported his round in the Night Occurrence Book, gave a cheery farewell to the Desk Sergeant, and went down the station steps, slipping off his duty armband as he headed toward his small flat at the back of Beak Street, a hundred yards away.

Mrs. Gill, as stout and kindly as her husband, stirred when he came into the bedroom to change swiftly into civilian clothes. She woke up as the door re-opened.

“Now, John! You’re not going out again, surely, man?”

Gill nodded.

“Sorry, dearie. Duty calls, as they say.” His voice was more natural and his vowels broader in his own home. “Been a murder on my perishing beat. Old Dane went all sniffy when I tried to give him a tip.”

“Him! Stuck-up pig!" Mrs. Gill shook her gray braids. “If you’re going to put him in his place, off you go, John, and good luck. But see you take care, there’s a lamb.”

The summer sky was lightening as Gill moved quickly toward Hertford Street, taking care to avoid his mates and consequent, time-wasting gossip.

There was an empty shop close to Farrar’s house, and Gill secreted himself in its sheltering doorway. He knew Dane was a slow worker, and he was not surprised when the Inspector came out thirty minutes later and drove away in a divisional car.

Gill waited patiently. At one time he was compelled to walk briskly into a neighboring street when his section relief appeared, walking his beat; but he still managed to keep the Farrar house in view.

At precisely 6:00 a.m., Farrar came out carrying a suitcase, and this initiated a problem. No matter what the story books say, it is impossible to shadow a man in deserted streets that are bright.

Gill solved it neatly by haling a milk delivery van, backing this with production of his warrant card, and appealing for help.

The driver was reluctant to abandon his round, but the romantic possibilities of a police chase overwhelmed his sense of duty.

Gill climbed to the seat beside the driver, secure in the comforting knowledge that a private car would probably have been too obvious for shadowing purposes; but tradesmen’s vans could do the most erratic things and get away with them.

Farrar had only reached the end of Hertford Street when they moved off. As they turned into Park Lane, Farrar hailed a taxi; the milk van moved up and was following close behind on a short journey that led through the clean bright streets and ended in the courtyard of Victoria Station.

Gill’s face was impassive as he left his temporary assistant and followed Farrar into the main waiting room of the great terminus. He watched the man buy a ticket and walk toward the departure platforms.

According to the time indicator before which Farrar paused, there was a train leaving for the coast in exactly ten minutes. Gill moved a little more quickly toward the entrance barrier, but it was no good taking foolish chances. Not until Farrar’s ticket was actually held out to the collector did Gill’s large hand grip the man’s arm.

“Mind coming over here, sir? I’d like a word with you.”

Farrar started violently and began to protest, then became curiously silent as he recognized the calm, bovine face, even though it looked startlingly commonplace without the distinguishing helmet.

Beyond the hearing of the interested ticket collector, Gill recited the formula of arrest, producing his warrant card at the same time.

Farrar’s “All right, it’s a cop” was reassuring to Gill, but the constable spent a miserable fifteen minutes on the way back to Savile Row. He was taking a very long chance indeed, and if he had made a mistake, dismissal and damnation would be his inevitable reward; nor was it any consolation to know that he had added to his probable enormities by making an arrest on railway property, which is private, and without seeking the cooperation of the Railway Police.

The Desk Sergeant at Savile Row station gasped audibly as Gill brought in the white-faced Farrar. Like a good policeman he listened unemotionally to the charge, writing stolidly in the Day Occurrence Book, but becoming human after the prisoner had been sent to the detention cells.

“You haven’t half been up to something, Gill — in civvies and all!”

“Yes, Sergeant. But I’ve got my uniform trousers on.” He pointed hopefully to his legs, and the Sergeant groaned aloud.

“Wearing your uniform for your private pleasures! You’ll get it in the neck all right, particularly if you’ve made a bloomer and pinched a respectable citizen. You’re out of your mind, Gill!” He sucked a hollow tooth with a sound of enjoyment. “Probably burn you at the stake, they will, chum!”

The station Inspector was informed, and, grave-faced, he telephoned Inspector Dane, who arrived forty minutes later, torn between fury at his lost sleep and rage at the apparent madness of Constable Gill.

He listened without comment to the story, then went to see Farrar, leaving Gill in a state of morbid depression which did not lift, even when Dane returned in a baffled mood.

“So you were right!” His voice rasped like a file on metal. “Farrar’s fingerprints check. Central’s just phoned verification that he’s Markey Bankan!”

Bankan? Something seemed to snap in Gill’s anxious mind: Bankan, one of the cleverest rogues in the business who was also that rarity among criminals, an educated man with a brain and a sense of humor, who took a special delight in cat-and-mouse games with the police.

“So-o, you’re a detective, eh?” Dane’s tones were acrimonious. “Perhaps you’ll enlighten me how you deduced all this so brilliantly, Gill, and without sanction of Police Law which, I imagine, you may have heard of a bit in your time?”

“Yes, sir.” The big constable writhed, but discipline held back the obvious retort. “I was a bit curious and took а look at the dead man when you were out of the room, sir. He’d fallen on the table — but the bottle of beer close to his head wasn’t disturbed.”

“Well?”

“It was a flimsy sort of table, sir. The beer ought to have…" Gill paused.

Dane glanced across the room at the silent station Inspector, present as routine required in such cases.

“That seems remarkably casual evidence — which I had noticed myself.” And then Dane added in a withering voice, “Not that it was important, considering the fact that Farrar, as he calls himself, admitted he went for the beer and found the man dead when he returned with it.”

The great wave of scarlet receded a trifle from Gill’s face, leaving it almost gaunt.

“Yes, sir.”

“Carry on, Mastermind.” Dane leaned back smugly. “I daresay there’s more to this Sherlock Holmes business than just that?”

“Y-yes, sir. The table was laid for a left-handed man. Just for confirmation I looked at the dead man’s trouser pockets — the edge of the right one was worn more than the left, which meant he was a right-handed man.” Gill swallowed; the evidence still seemed terribly unconvincing. “Farrar coshed the other chap and killed him, and then set the table for his alibi — you’ll have noticed Farrar is left-handed?”

“H’m. Well, I have to admit that our prisoner told me the dead man is Farrar, the real Farrar.”

Gill cheered up at the faint softening in Dane’s voice.

“I didn’t know that, sir. Well, as I saw it, he arranged the corpse to fit his story in case anything went wrong, which it did — meaning his meeting me on the doorstep.”

“I see.” Dane looked Gill slowly up and down. “Sheer gambling from beginning to end, and you’re damned lucky, Constable. Bankan, as we should call him, was after the diamond. He was slightly acquainted with the real Farrar — oh, you can guess the plot.”

“Yes, sir.” Gill’s face was red again. “There was something else, too, sir.”

“Indeed? I seem to be learning things. And what else was there?”

“The little dog — Bankan made a fuss over it while I was telephoning. It was a friendly little dog, sir, and he pretended it was his to keep up the illusion of being the true householder.”

“You seem to make the oddest deductions, Constable.”

“Yes, sir. The way he behaved, it was all so very natural that I never had any doubts that he was Farrar — and yet…"

Dane was growing bored. “Have you another stunning revelation up your sleeve?”

“Not — not exactly, sir. I talked to the little dog on the way back to my beat. That’s when I decided I ought to do something, you being too busy for my silly ideas, sir.”

“You’ve exceeded your duties, but perhaps I merit the reprimand. I’ll speak for you, though you don’t deserve it.” Dane’s voice was not unkind because he was a reasonably fair-minded man, but he could not hide an edge of sarcasm as he added, “And what did the dog have to say?”

“Oh, it didn’t speak, sir. But Bankan said, ‘Down, old boy, down’ when I was telephoning. It was a little female dog, you see, sir. .”

The station Inspector could hold it no longer. His stifled chuckle became outright laughter.