Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Michael Gilbert The Happy Brotherhood

The Grants lived in Kennington. Mr. Grant worked in an architect’s office in the City and had inherited the small terrace house on Dodman Street. It was convenient, since he could reach the Bank Station in ten minutes on the Underground. But it was not a neighborhood which he found really congenial. There was Mr. Knowlson, who worked in insurance and lived two doors up. But most of the inhabitants of Dodman Street were uncouth men, with jobs at railway depots — men who went to work at five o’clock in the morning and spent their evenings in public houses.

Mr. Grant had often spoken to his wife of moving out to the suburbs, where people went to their offices at a rational hour and spent the evenings in their gardens and joined tennis clubs and formed discussion groups. The factor which tipped the balance against moving was Timothy. Timothy was their only child and was now fourteen, but with his pink and white face and shy smile he could have been taken for eleven or twelve. After a difficult start he was happily settled at the Matthew Holder School near the Oval, and sang first treble in the choir at St. Mark’s.

“It would be a pity to make a change now,” said Mrs. Grant. “Timothy’s easily upset. I’ve put his dinner in the oven, so I hope he won’t be too late back from choir practise. If his dinner gets dried up he can’t digest it properly.”

At that moment Timothy was walking slowly down the road outside St. Mark’s. He was walking slowly because, if the truth were told, he had no great desire to get home. When he did get there, his mother would make him take off his shoes and put on a dry pair of socks and would sit him down to eat a large and wholesome meal, which he did not really want, and he would have to tell his father exactly what he had done in school that day and—

A hand smacked him between the shoulder blades and he spun around. Two boys were standing behind him, both a little older and a lot bigger than Timothy. The taller one said, “It’s a stickup, Rosebud. Turn out your pockets.”

Timothy gaped at him.

“Come on, come on,” said the other one. “Do you want to be ruffed up?”

“Are you mugging me?”

“You’ve cottoned quick, boyo. Shell out.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Timothy. “But I’ve actually only got about ten pence on me. It’s Thursday, you see. I get my pocket money on Friday.”

He was feeling in his trouser pocket as he spoke and now fetched out a fivepenny piece and a penny and held them out.

The taller boy stared at the money, but made no move to touch it. He said, “How much pocket money do you get every week?”

“A pound.”

“So if we’d stuck you up tomorrow, we’d have got a quid?”

“That’s right,” said Timothy. “I’m terribly sorry. If you’re short tonight I could show you how to make a bit perhaps.”

The two boys looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

“Cool,” said the tall one. “That’s cool.”

“What’s the gimmick?” said the second one.

“It’s the amusement arcade in the High Street. There’s a big slot machine, tucked away in the corner, and no one uses it much.”

“Why no one uses that machine is because no one ever makes any money out of it.”

“That’s right,” said Timothy. “It’s a set-safe machine. I read about it in a magazine. It’s a machine that’s organized so that the winning combinations never come up. A man comes and clears the machines on Friday. By this time it must be stuffed with money.”

“So what are you suggesting we do? Break it open with a hammer?”

“What I thought was, it’s plugged into a wall socket. If you pulled out the plug and broke the electric circuit while it’s going, the safety mechanism wouldn’t work. It would stop at some place it wasn’t meant to stop, so you’d have a good chance.”

The two boys looked at each other, then at Timothy.

Timothy said, “It would need three people. One to distract the attention of the attendant. You could do that by asking him for change for a pound. The second to work the machine and the third to get down behind and jerk out the plug. I could do that. I’m the smallest.”

The tall boy said, “If it’s as easy as that why haven’t you done it before?”

“Because I haven’t got—” said Timothy and stopped. He realized that what he had nearly said was, “Because I haven’t got two friends.”

“We’d better go somewhere and count it,” said Len. Their jacket pockets were bursting with twopenny bits.

“That bouncer,” said Geoff. He could hardly get the words out for laughing. “Poor old sod. He just knew something was wrong, didn’t he?”

“He was on the spot,” agreed Len. “He couldn’t very well say, that machine’s not meant to pay off. He’d have been lynched. Come on.”

Since the “come on” seemed to include Timothy he followed them. They led the way down a complex of side streets and alleys, each smaller and dingier than the last, until they came out almost onto the foreshore of the Thames. Since the dock had been shut two years before, it had become an area of desolation, of gaunt buildings with shuttered windows and boarded doorways.

Len stopped at one of these and stooped. Timothy saw that he had shifted a board, leaving plenty of room for a boy to wriggle under. When they were inside and the board had been replaced, Geoff clicked on a flashlight. Ahead were stone stairs, deep in fallen plaster and less pleasant litter.

“Our home away from home,” said Len, “is on the first floor. Mind where you’re walking. Here we are. Wait while I light the lamp.”

It was a small room. The windows were blanked by iron shutters. The walls, as Timothy saw when the pressure lamp had been lit, were covered with posters. There was a table made of planks laid on trestles, and there were three old wicker chairs. Timothy thought he had never seen anything so snug and cozy in the whole of his life.

Len said, “You can use the third chair if you like.”

It was a formal invitation into brotherhood.

“It used to be Ronnie’s chair,” said Geoff with a grin. “He won’t be using it for a bit. Not for twelve months or so. He got nicked for shoplifting. They sent him up the river.”

“Your folks going to start wondering where you are?”

“No, that’s all right,” said Timothy. “I can say I went on to the club after choir practise. It’s a church club. The vicar runs it.”

“Old Amberline? That fat poof.”

Timothy considered the Reverend Patrick Amberline carefully and said, “No. He’s all right.”

Mr. Grant said, “Timmy seems very busy these days. It’s the third night running he’s been late.”

“He was telling me about it at breakfast this morning,” said Mrs. Grant. “It’s not only the Choir and the Youth Club. It’s this Voluntary Service Group he’s joined. They’re a sort of modern version of the Boy Scouts. They arrange to help people who need help. When he leaves school he might even get a job abroad. In one of those depressed countries.”

“Well, I suppose it’s all right,” said Mr. Grant. “I used to be a Boy Scout myself once. I got a badge for cooking too.”

They were busy weeks. For Timothy, weeks of simple delight. Never having had any real friends before, he found the friendship of Len and Geoff intoxicating. It was friendship offered without reserve, as it is at that age.

He knew now that Len was Leonard Rhodes and Geoff was Geoffrey Cowell and that Len’s father was a market porter and Geoff’s worked on the railway. He had enough imagination to visualize a life in which a boy was not expected to come home until eleven o’clock at night, a life in which you had to fight for everything you wanted, a life which could be full of surprising adventures.

The first thing he learned about was borrowing cars. This was an exercise carried out with two bits of wire. A strong piece, with a loop at the end, which could be slipped through a gap forced at the top of the window and used to jerk up the retaining catch which locked the door. Timothy, who had small hands and was neat and precise in his movements, became particularly skillful at this.

The second piece of wire was used by Len, who had once spent some time working in a garage, to start the engine. After that, if no irate owner had appeared, the car could be driven off and would serve as transport for the evening. Timothy was taught to drive. He picked it up very quickly.

“Let her rip,” said Geoff. “It’s not like you were driving your own car and got to be careful you don’t scratch the paint. With this one a few bumps don’t matter.”

This was on the occasion when they had borrowed Mr. Knowlson’s new Ford Capri. Timothy had suggested it. “He’s stuck to the television from eight o’clock onwards,” he said. “He wouldn’t come out if a bomb went off.”

The evening runs were not solely pleasure trips. There was a business side to them as well. Len and Geoff had a lot of contacts, friends of Geoff’s father, who seemed to have a knack for picking up unwanted packages. A carton containing two dozen new transistor pocket radios might have proved tricky to dispose of. But offered separately to buyers in public houses and cafés and dance halls, they seemed to go like hot cakes. Len and Geoff were adept at this.

The first time they took Timothy into a public house the girl behind the bar looked at him and said, “How old’s your kid brother?”

“You wouldn’t think it,” said Geoff, “but he’s twenty-eight. He’s a midget. He does a turn in the halls. Don’t say anything to him about it. He’s sensitive.”

The girl said, “You’re a ruddy liar,” but served them with half pints of beer. Mr. Grant was a teetotaler and Timothy had never seen beer before at close quarters. He took a sip of it. It tasted indescribable. Like medicine, only worse. Geoff said, “You don’t have to pretend to like it. After a bit you’ll sort of get used to it.”

Some nights they were engaged in darker work. They would drive the car to a rendezvous, which was usually a garage in the docks area. Men would be there, shadowy figures who hardly showed their faces. Crates which seemed to weigh heavily would be loaded onto the back seat of the car. The boys then drove out into the Kent countryside. The men never came with them.

When the boys arrived at their destination, sometimes another garage, sometimes a small workshop or factory, the cargo was unloaded with equal speed and silence, then a wad of notes was pushed into Len’s hands.

The only real difference of opinion the boys ever had was over the money. Len and Geoff wanted to share everything equally. Timothy agreed to keep some of it, but refused any idea of equal sharing. First, because he wouldn’t have known what to do with so much cash. More important, because he knew what it was being saved up for. One of the pictures on the wall of their den was a blown-up photograph of a motorcycle — Norton Interstate 850 Road Racer.

“Do a ton easy,” said Len. “Hundred and thirty on the track. Old Edelman at that garage we go to down the docks says he can get me one at wholesale. How much are we up to?”

As he said this he was lifting up a board in the corner. Under the board was a biscuit tin, the edges sealed with insulating tape. In the tin was the pirates’ hoard of banknotes and coins.

“Another tenner and we’re there,” said Geoff.

Timothy still went to choir practise. If he had missed it his absence would have been noticed, and inquiries would have followed. The Reverend Amberline usually put in an appearance, mainly to preserve law and order, and on this occasion he happened to notice Timothy. They were practising the hymn from the Yattenden hymnal. O quant juvat fratres. “Happy are they, they that love God.”

The rector thought that Timothy, normally a reserved and rather silent boy, really did look happy. He was bubbling over, bursting with happiness. “Remember now thy Creator,” said the Reverend Amberline sadly to himself. “In the days of thy youth.” How splendid to be young and happy.

That evening Detective Chief Inspector Patrick Petrella paid a visit to Mrs. Grant’s house in Dodman Street. He said, “We’ve had a number of reports of cars being taken away without their owner’s consent.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Grant. “And I’m glad you’re going to do something about it at last. My neighbor, Mr. Knowlson, lost his a few weeks ago. He got it back, but it was in a shocking state.”

“Yesterday evening,” said Petrella, “the boys who seem to have been responsible for a number of these cases were observed. If the person who observed them had been a bit quicker, they’d have been apprehended. But she did give us a positive identification of one lad she recognized. It was your son, Timothy.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mr. Grant, as soon as he had got his breath back. “Timothy would never do anything like that. He’s a thoroughly nice boy.”

“Can you tell me where he was yesterday evening?”

“Certainly I can. He was with the Voluntary Service Group.”

“The people at Craythorne Hall?”

“That’s right.”

“May I use your telephone?”

“Yes. And then I hope you’ll apologize.”

Three minutes later Petrella said, “Not only was he not at Craythorne Hall on Wednesday evening, but he’s never been there. They know nothing about him. They say they only take on boys of seventeen and over.”

Mr. Grant stared at him, white-faced.

“Where is he now?”

“At choir practise.”

“Choir practise would have been over by half-past eight.”

“He goes on afterwards to the Youth Club.”

Petrella knew the missioner at the Youth Club and used the telephone again. By this time Mrs. Grant had joined them. Petrella faced a badly shaken couple. He said, “I’d like to have a word with Timothy when he does get back. It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve got something on at the Station which is going to keep me there anyway.”

He gave them his number at Patton Street.

The matter which Petrella referred to was a report of goods stolen from the railway yard, being run to a certain garage in the docks area. It was out of this garage, at the moment that Petrella left Dodman Street, that the brand-new shining monster was being wheeled.

“She’s licensed and we’ve filled her up for you,” said Mr. Edelman, who was the jovial proprietor of the garage. “The petrol is on the house.” He could afford to be generous. The courier service the boys had run had enriched him at minimal risk to himself.

“Well, thanks,” said Geoff. He was almost speechless with pride and excitement.

“If you want to try her out, the best way is over Blackheath and out onto the M.2. You can let her rip there.”

Geoff and Len were both wearing new white helmets, white silk scarves wrapped round the lower parts of their faces, black leather coats, and leather gauntlets. The gloves, helmets, and scarves had been lifted the day before from an outfitter’s in Southwark High Street. The coats had been bought for them by Timothy out of his share of the money. Len was the driver. Geoff was to ride pillion.

“Your turn tomorrow,” said Geoff.

“Fine,” said Timothy. “I’ll wait for you at our place.”

“Keep the home fires burning,” said Len. “This is just a trial run. We’ll be back in an hour.”

“And watch it,” said Mr. Edelman. “There’s a lot of horsepower inside that little beauty. So don’t go doing anything stupid.”

His words were drowned in the roar of the Road Racer starting up. Timothy stood listening until he could hear it no longer.

Petrella got the news at eleven o’clock that night.

“We’ve identified the boys,” said the voice on the telephone. “They both lived in your area. Cowell and Rhodes. I can give you the addresses.”

“Both dead?”

“They could hardly be deader. They went off the road and smashed into the back of a parked lorry. An A.A. patrol saw it happen. Said they must have been doing over ninety. Stupid young fools.”

The speaker sounded angry. But he had seen the bodies and had sons of his own.

The Cowells’ house was nearer, so Petrella called there first. He found Mr. and Mrs. Cowell in the kitchen, with the television blaring. They turned it off when they understood what Petrella was telling them.

“I warned him,” said Mr. Cowell. “You heard me tell him.”

“You said what nasty dangerous things they were,” agreed his wife. “We didn’t even know he had one.”

“It was a brand-new machine,” said Petrella. “Any idea where he might have got it from?”

“Tell you the truth,” said Mr. Cowell, “we haven’t been seeing a lot of Geoff lately. Boys at that age run wild, you know.”

“We’ve brought up six,” said Mrs. Cowell, crying softly.

Mr. Cowell said, “He and Len were good boys really. It was that Ronnie Silverlight led them astray. Until they ganged up with him we never had no trouble. No trouble at all.”

It was one o’clock in the morning by the time Petrella got back to Patton Street. The desk sergeant said that there had been a number of calls. A Mr. Grant had rung more than once. And a boy who said he was Len Rhodes’s brother was asking for news.

“How long ago was that?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“That’s funny,” said Petrella. “I’ve just come from the Rhodes’. And I don’t think Len had a brother. What did you tell him?”

“I just gave him the news.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just rang off. I think he was in a phone booth.”

At this moment the telephone on the desk rang again. It was Mr. Grant. His voice was ragged with worry. “It’s Timothy,” he said. “He’s not come home. You haven’t—”

“No,” said Petrella, “we haven’t got him here. Is there any other place he might have gone? Has he got any friends?”

“We don’t know anyone round here. He wouldn’t just have walked out without saying anything. His mother’s beside herself. She wanted to come round and see you.”

“I don’t think that would do any good,” said Petrella. “We’ll do what we can.” He thought about it, then said to the desk sergeant, “Can you turn up the records and find out what happened to a boy named Ronald Silverlight? He was sent down for petty larceny about two months ago. One of the Borstal Institutes. See if you can find me the Warden’s telephone number.”

In spite of being hauled from his bed the Warden, once he understood what Petrella wanted, was sympathetic and cooperative. He said, “It’s a long shot, but I’ll wake Ronnie up and ring you back if I get anything.”

Ten minutes later he came through again. He said, “This might be what you want. I gather they were using some derelict old building down in the docks area. It wouldn’t be easy to describe the location. The best plan will be to send the boy up in a car. It’ll take an hour or more.”

“I’ll wait,” said Petrella.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning before the car arrived, with a police driver, and Ronnie Silverlight and a guard in the back. Petrella got in with them and they drove toward the river.

“You have to walk the last bit,” said Ronnie.

Petrella thought about it. There seemed to be too many of them. He said, “I’ll be responsible for the boy. You two wait here.”

When they got to the building Ronnie said, “We used to shift the bottom board, see, and get in underneath. It’ll be a tight squeeze for you.”

“I’ll manage,” said Petrella.

He did it by lying on his back and using his elbows. When he was inside he clicked on the flashlight he had brought with him.

“Up there,” said Ronnie. He was speaking in a whisper and didn’t seem anxious to go first, so Petrella led the way up.

When he opened the door, the first thing that caught his eye was a glow from a fire of driftwood in the hearth which had burned down to red embers. Then, as his flashlight swung upward, the white beam showed him Timothy. He had climbed onto the table, tied one end of a rope to the beam, fixed the other in a noose round his neck, and kicked away the plank.

Petrella put the plank back and jumped up beside him, but as soon as he touched the boy he knew that they were much too late. He had been dead for hours.

He must have done it, thought Petrella, soon after he had telephoned the station and heard the news about Len and Geoff. And he made the fire to give him some light to see what he was doing.

“It’s Timmy Grant, isn’t it,” said Ronnie.

“Yes,” said Petrella. “It’s Timmy.” He was thinking of all the things he would now have to do, starting with breaking the news to his parents.

“He was a good kid,” said Ronnie. “Geoff wrote me about him.”

Petrella’s light picked up a flash of white. It was a piece of paper that had fallen off the table. On it was written, in Timothy’s schoolboy script, two lines. Petrella recognized them as coming from a hymn, but he did not know, until Father Amberline told him long afterward, that they were from the hymn the choir had been singing that evening.

Petrella folded the scrap of paper and slipped it quickly into his pocket. It was against all his instincts as a policeman to suppress evidence, but he felt that it would be too brutal to show it to Mr. and Mrs. Grant.