Waxwork

FRIDAY, 15th JUNE

Cribb had slept badly. His brain had floundered for hours in the shallows of oblivion, producing aberrations that jerked him awake. Once he was being ushered in by Jowett to Sir Charles Warren, but instead of the Commissioner at his desk, there was a camera facing them and the little figure that emerged from under the black cloth was female and grey-haired and wearing a crown. He had sat up in bed with such a start that it had disturbed Millie. He had not told her his dream. Instead he had gone to make tea and when he returned with the cup he had distracted her by suggesting they planned a visit to the theatre. He had known she would rise to that. The Mascotte at the Haymarket with Miss Lottie Piper. Millie was so quick with the suggestion that they both laughed. Later, in the darkness, Cribb was troubled. She had not asked him the reason for Jowett’s visit. He had always been frank with Millie. It was as if he was buying her silence for the price of two theatre tickets.

He knew if she heard about this she would jump to the wrong conclusion. She would think the Commissioner had singled him out because he was the best detective in the force. Millie had never doubted it, always believed they were on the point of promoting him. It was no use telling her Warren had gone to Jowett because he was the Judas of Monro’s team and Jowett in a blue fit had blurted the first name that sprang to his lips.

Cribb was a realist. After seventeen years on a sergeant’s rank, it would take fireworks on the Crystal Palace scale to get him lifted.

He had decided to start with Inspector Waterlow. When he looked up the address of the police station at Kew he found an asterisk against the entry. The footnote below stated Not continuously manned. A memory of Waterlow as a constable excusing himself from the beat flitted into Cribb’s mind. He drew a long breath, picked up the valise containing the papers on the Cromer case and walked out of Scotland Yard with a maltreated look in his eye.

He took a train from Waterloo on the London and South Western.

He was the only passenger to alight at Kew Gardens. The platform was deserted. Nobody collected his ticket. It was a good thing he needed no help with directions. The address was Station Approach.

Before leaving the booking hall his eye caught a name among the posters advertising local businesses.

HOWARD CROMER

PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST

PARK LODGE, KEW GREEN

The highest class of photographs reproduced under

ordinary conditions of light. Sittings by appointment.

Portraits, cabinet and carte-de-visite, family

groups and wedding parties a speciality.

In pencil, somebody had added Funerals Arranged.

Station Approach was broad and shaded by trees. The police station was located above a chemist’s. Access was up an iron staircase at the side. Cribb opened a door badly in need of paint.

‘Good day, sir,’ said a tall, callow constable holding a large ginger cat in his arms. ‘Not a bad day at all. Capital for Ascot. What can we do for you?’

‘You can tell Inspector Waterlow, if he is in, that Sergeant Cribb of Statistics would like a word with him.’

The cat was dropped like a stone.

‘Statistics. Yes, Sergeant. Very good. I’ll tell him this minute.’ He opened a door behind the desk just enough to put his head and shoulder round. A murmured, agitated exchange took place. He closed the door and turned back to Cribb. ‘The Inspector won’t be a moment, Sergeant.’ He busied himself with some pieces of paper.

‘This your animal?’ Cribb inquired. The cat was leaning on his shins.

‘Just a stray, Sergeant,’ the constable answered unconvincingly. ‘We get a lot of them, being next to the butcher’s. When you came in, I was ascertaining whether it had a collar, for identification.’

‘I hope you’ve got it in the occurrence book,’ said Cribb tartly.

A bald head and shoulders appeared round the door, hands fastening the top buttons of an inspector’s tunic. ‘Cribb, it really is you,’ said Inspector Waterlow. ‘What are you waiting there for? Come inside, man.’

The cat was inside first. It hopped on to the window sill and settled proprietorially in the sun. Inspector Waterlow made no attempt to remove it.

Slimly built, with ferocious eyebrows to compensate for baldness, he had altered little in the ten years since Cribb had seen him. The set of his head on an over-long, narrow neck still unaccountably irked.

‘Stoke Newington, wasn’t it?’ he said unnecessarily. ‘By George, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those days. Busy times. Sit down, won’t you? Have a spell in the armchair. I don’t suppose you get much time for that. Where are you now?’

The chair was warm from a recent sitter. ‘The Yard. Statistics Branch, sir.’ Some evasion was necessary with Waterlow.

‘Out of the action, then? My word, you’ve earned a turn behind a desk if anyone has. Do you mean to say they haven’t made you up to inspector yet?’

‘I had two commendations a couple of years back. That’s all.’

‘Good man,’ said Inspector Waterlow, more to the cat than Cribb. He was stroking its head with his forefinger. ‘Confidentially, promotion in the force is a lottery, old boy. I’m the first to admit I was no great shakes as a copper. Got my name mentioned in the right quarters just the same-hang it, there had to be some compensation for all the paper-work I did. Soon after you left, I got my stripes. But I didn’t see myself as a sergeant, so I er’-he removed his forefinger from the cat and tapped the side of his head-‘submitted a practical suggestion to the Commissioner: to give up issuing truncheon-cases and have a truncheon-pocket sewn into the uniform instead. As you know, it was acted upon two years ago, and I was made up to inspector.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a lottery to me.’

‘You’re right. I owe it to my inventive mind,’ said Waterlow smugly.

‘Where did you go as inspector?’

Waterlow grinned sheepishly. ‘I did a rather calamitous tour of duty at Bow Street. After that they sent me to Kew. I must say, I find it more agreeable than central London.’

Cribb murmured agreement from the armchair and pondered the vagaries of fate.

‘What brings you here?’ Waterlow casually inquired. ‘No problem over my statistics, I hope? There isn’t a great amount of crime here, you will appreciate. A few incidents in the Royal Botanic Gardens-pilfering orchids, and so forth. We had an indecent exposure in the Water Lily House last month, but I can’t in all conscience say we make many arrests. The most exciting thing in years was the poisoning in Kew Green last spring. No doubt you heard. I sorted it out myself. The wife did it, of course. She confessed before the trial. Facing facts, you see. By then I had a cast-iron case against her.’

‘Nice work, sir.’ Cribb beamed at Waterlow. This was the opening he needed. ‘As it happens, the Kew Green poisoning is what brings me out here. Someone in the Yard has the notion that we could detect crime more efficiently if we kept a fuller record of felonies committed in the past. As you know, the present practice is to list the number of felonies committed under different headings-housebreaking, robbery with violence, arson and so on. That’s a help, but it doesn’t tell us what time most burglaries are committed, or what class of person raises fires.’

‘Is that important?’

‘It could be useful, sir. We don’t know if it’s feasible yet. Between ourselves, it’s going to mean the devil of a lot of work in Statistics Branch. Be that as it may, I’ve been asked to see if I can get the salient facts about a crime and reduce them to a row of columns. If we can get our columns right, we can do anything in Statistics. I’m starting with murder. From all I’ve heard, your Kew Green case was a copybook investigation.’

Waterlow went pink. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that. It’s decent of you to say so, of course.’

‘A classic of its kind,’ eulogised Cribb. ‘Ideal for my purpose. You won’t find it tedious telling me how you nabbed Mrs Miriam Cromer?’

Benignly, Waterlow answered, ‘I am gratified to know that my little investigation is of any consequence.’

‘The cornerstone, so far as I am concerned,’ said Cribb, seeing there was no limit to the flattery Waterlow could absorb. ‘Will it trouble you, sir, if I take notes?’

‘Not in the least. Where would you like to begin?’

‘At the point when the police were called to the house. I understand you personally were the first member of the force on the scene.’

‘Yes, I had a hand in this from the outset,’ Waterlow confirmed, and his voice took on the compelling tone of the anecdotist with a good tale to tell. ‘It was a Monday afternoon in March, towards five o’clock, a fine day, as I remember, still light. I was clipping my front hedge. I have my own house in Maze Road, if you follow, and I generally take Monday afternoon to catch up on my gardening. The station is not continuously manned, thank Heaven. There I was, then, tidying up the privet, when a girl in servant’s dress came running up the road and told me I was wanted urgently at Park Lodge. Fortunately Dr Eagle knows my habits and sent the girl direct to my house with the news that the man Perceval was dead. It’s a matter of two or three minutes from Maze Road to Kew Green, so I was there directly. When I arrived, Eagle was attending to Mrs Cromer in her room. It seems she had passed out from the shock. I went straight to the processing room where the body was. All in all, Cribb, my career has not brought me face to face with death too often, but I saw at once that Perceval had not gone peacefully. The poor fellow had kicked off a shoe and torn his clothes in his agony, besides rucking up the carpet and knocking over a chair. I found a wine glass lying on its side on the floor, so the possibility of poison suggested itself to me even before Dr Eagle came in and gave his diagnosis. He’s an old stager, you know, sharp as a winkle-pin. “Hold on to that glass,” he said. “I’ll stake my reputation there’s cyanide in it.” He took me to the poison cabinet and showed me the bottle of the stuff, more than half empty.’

‘Was the cabinet unlocked?’

‘No. We had to take the keys out of the dead man’s pocket to get the damned thing open. But old Eagle told me he had already had the cabinet open once. As soon as he had sniffed the cyanide, the old boy had asked Miriam Cromer where it was kept. She had shown him. He had to take the keys out of Perceval’s trouser pocket for her to unlock the cabinet. You know, that struck me as peculiar at the time, that a man committing suicide would put the poison bottle back in the cabinet and lock it again. Anyway, after Dr Eagle had checked the contents of the cabinet he locked it and put the keys back in the pocket, to leave the scene of the crime exactly as he found it. For my benefit, you see.’

‘And you presumed it was a case of suicide?’

‘Just as you would have done, Sergeant,’ said Waterlow, piqued. ‘Perceval had been alone in the studio all afternoon. But make a note of this for your columns. I took possession of the wine glass and the poison for analysis, and-most importantly, as it turned out-the three decanters. They weren’t in an obvious position, you know. I found them locked in a small sideboard-chiffonier, I remember they called it in court. Two days later I heard from the analyst that the madeira was laced with cyanide. It quite transformed the course of my inquiry. Up to then I had taken it that Perceval had done away with himself. I was busy collecting evidence about his financial affairs. He was in deep with the bookies at the time of his death. Seventy pounds, give or take a few. That’s half a year’s wages for a fellow in his job.’

‘Mine, too.’

Waterlow was too deep in his narrative to take note of Cribb’s admission. ‘Plenty have committed suicide for less. I think it would have satisfied a coroner’s jury. But once I heard there was poison in the decanter, I had to ask myself what could account for that. Am I going too fast?’

‘I’m keeping up,’ said Cribb. ‘You realised someone else was responsible for the poisoning.’

‘Exactly. If Perceval had poisoned himself, he wouldn’t have put cyanide in the decanter. He would have put it straight into the wine glass. There was no question of it, Cribb-I had a case of murder on my hands. That’s a devil of a thing to discover when you’re the man in charge of a station, with other responsibilities and precious little assistance. Possibly I should have asked the C.I.D. for help, but, dash it, I didn’t want the Yard taking over my office. And candidly I considered I was capable of handling the case myself. As I saw it, the murderer had to be a member of the household at Park Lodge. Already I had checked that there were no visitors on the day of the murder. Mr Howard Cromer was in Brighton. Unless he had tampered with the decanter before he left, only his wife or the servants could have done it. I made an appointment to visit Park Lodge, asking that every member of the household should be available to answer questions.’ Waterlow gave a sigh. ‘In retrospect, I can see that I should not have let them know that I was coming.’

‘Was someone not available?’

‘No, they were all present, but so was Allingham, the family solicitor. I would have got a lot more done without him. He knows his job, does young Allingham. I had met him already on the day of the murder. He was present when I interviewed Miriam Cromer the first time. I believe Dr Eagle had sent for him, the wily old cove. Well, on this occasion Allingham raised so many objections to my questions that he came close to obstructing me in the course of my duty. You may find this difficult to believe, but it took over an hour to establish who had filled the blasted decanter, and at what time.’

‘Miriam Cromer?’

Waterlow nodded. ‘By sheer persistence I managed to extract the information. She admitted it was a regular task of hers-responsibility, she called it-filling the decanters after the wine arrived on Monday mornings. By Friday they were empty, so there was a standing order with the wine merchant. On the day of the murder the wine arrived at noon and she went with it to the studio as usual.’

‘Was Perceval working there?’

‘So she told me. In the next room, the processing room, where the poison cabinet was situated. It was obvious that she couldn’t have obtained the cyanide while he was working there-if she was telling the truth. As Perceval was dead, I could not confirm the statement. Clever. The solicitor made damned sure she didn’t say any more. Anything else would have to be discovered by patient detective work.’

‘Did you question the others, sir?’

‘Yes. I told you Cromer spent the day in Brighton at a conference. The three servants, all females, didn’t venture upstairs until they felt they couldn’t ignore the racket Perceval was making in his convulsions. Cromer doesn’t like his clients to see the domestics, so they were supposed to keep below stairs. By the time they got to him, the poor beggar was paralysed and bereft of speech. That’s about all I got from the servants, except the alibis they provided for each other. Oh, they did confirm that there wasn’t a visitor to the house all day, apart from tradesmen. There was only one conclusion I could draw, and that was that Miriam Cromer was a murderess.’ Waterlow paused for dramatic effect. ‘You can imagine my predicament, Cribb. Here was a respectable married woman of the genteel class, or not far short of it. Their neighbours are people like the Duchess of Cambridge. A Major-General lives next door and the Director-General of Kew Gardens is close by. You can’t ask people of that class whether they have noticed anything irregular.’

‘You must have gone back to the servants.’

‘Yes, I’m coming to that,’ Waterlow peevishly said. ‘I did, and I don’t mind telling you that I managed it without creating the least suspicion in the family. Two of the servants lived in, but a third, a housemaid of thirteen named Margaret Booth, resided in Brentford. “Resided” isn’t quite the word now that I recall the squalor of the street, but that’s of no importance. Margaret had been warned by Allingham in peril of her job not to make a statement of any kind to the police.’ He gave a belly-laugh. ‘Young Margaret wasn’t prepared for me to be seated in her own parlour beside her father when she came home. The old man describes himself as a docker. If you ask me, the only dock he regularly sees is the one at Brentford Police Court. He is habitually drunk. I was lucky to find him vertical, more or less, when I picked him up at the pub on the corner. By the time his daughter Margaret came home, I made sure Albert Booth was a sober and frightened man, and so was his wife. They were convinced I would get him sent down for three months’ hard if I didn’t get cooperation. Margaret’s resistance didn’t last long. She gave me what I wanted: a tolerable account of Miriam Cromer and her dealings with Josiah Perceval.’

‘She knew about the blackmail, did she?’

‘Lord, no, nothing so helpful as that. She told me that it was no secret below stairs that Mrs Cromer had a strong dislike for Perceval. Nobody knew why exactly, just that it had got worse in recent weeks. There were sometimes arguments upstairs when Mr Cromer was out, and Perceval seemed to get the better of them, which surprised the servants. They had thought of their mistress as iron-willed, more than a match for the likes of Perceval. What was said was not audible in the servants’ quarters, but they could tell when voices were raised, and they also knew by the state of Mrs Cromer’s eyes when she had been reduced to tears. That was as much as I got from Margaret Booth about what went on upstairs, but’-Waterlow beamed in self-congratulation-‘I persuaded her to talk about the other servants.’

Cribb tried to appear impressed. Waterlow in the old days had put in less time on the beat than anyone at Stoke Newington. The titbits of gossip any bright young constable picked up automatically from making conversation at doorways were outside his experience. He had never been invited in for a slice of rabbit pie in his life. So it was a triumph to have coaxed a few confidences from Margaret Booth. Cribb listened and made an occasional note. He could raise no interest in how the housekeeper embezzled the accounts and what the parlourmaid got up to with the grocer’s boy. He wanted to know about Miriam Cromer.

What was she like, this woman who would hang unless he found a flaw in her confession? In any regular investigation he would have started by interviewing her, forming an impression of her character. There was more to detective work than clues and statements. It involved people, their ambitions and fears, innocence and guilt. You needed solid evidence to determine the truth, but you could divine a lot by meeting them face to face. Whatever had happened that afternoon in Park Lodge, the question for Cribb was whether Miriam Cromer had done what she claimed. She was the focus of his investigation, but because authority deemed it inappropriate he was prevented from meeting her. He was obliged to glean what he could at second hand, from people whose recollection would be coloured by their own conceits and prejudices. Waterlow was the first.

‘When I visited the house that evening to put my information to practical use,’ the self-advertisement ran on, ‘I used the tradesmen’s entrance, naturally. Nobody upstairs knew I was making a second visit to Park Lodge. I relied on what I knew to keep the servants’ tongues from wagging.’

‘What did the housekeeper tell you?’ Cribb asked, his patience on the ebb.

Waterlow smacked his lips. ‘She was a frightened woman before I was through, I can tell you, Cribb. What did I learn from her? Why, the very thing I needed: the dates when Mrs Cromer had gone into the studio to talk to Perceval and their raised voices had been heard downstairs. She knew exactly when it happened because the meetings took place when the master of the house was out for the day and not expected back till late in the evening. She has to keep a note of his days out to get her catering right. She keeps a calendar in the kitchen on which such things are marked. There were four occasions between October and March when Mrs Cromer and Perceval had a “ruction”, as she called it. I noted them carefully in my pocket-book.’

‘What form did these ructions take?’ asked Cribb.

‘There was a difference of opinion about that. Everyone in the servants’ quarters agreed that there were raised voices, and the parlourmaid told me Mrs Cromer was reduced to tears, but the housekeeper insisted that they never heard weeping. She said the mistress was red-eyed with anger. I think she was probably right. I don’t see Miriam Cromer dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief, do you?’

‘I haven’t met the lady.’

Waterlow accepted this with a nod. ‘Well, as I say, I preferred to believe the housekeeper, but the parlourmaid did give me another piece of information that I put to good use. She had twice observed that on days after these scenes her mistress went out for a morning walk. There may seem nothing remarkable to you in that, Sergeant, but it was a departure from normal practice. She was in the habit of taking a daily constitutional in the Botanic Gardens. This is where local knowledge came in useful. The Gardens being part of my patch, I happen to know that they don’t open in the morning. One o’clock till sunset are the hours. I asked the parlourmaid if she had observed which direction Mrs Cromer had taken. She told me she had watched from the breakfast room. She was interested, because it was such an uncommon thing. Mrs Cromer had walked up to the main road and turned right, towards Kew Bridge.’ Waterlow grinned again. ‘A stroll by the Thames? Feeding the ducks? Not on your life. She was going to Brentford to put jewellery in pawn, and I proved it!’

‘How did you get on to that, sir?’

‘Smart detective work. I told you just now that Perceval was in trouble with the bookmakers at the time of his death. Well, he had been running up debts for a year or more. He made occasional repayments to show good faith. He dealt with Harry Cobb’s, the Richmond firm. I went to see them and took a note of those repayments, the dates and sums involved. I compared them with the dates the housekeeper had given me, and, what do you know, they matched! It was obvious what the connection was: Perceval had persuaded Mrs Cromer to help him meet his debts, except that persuasion didn’t come in to it. As I discovered from the housekeeper, the lady of the house had precious little ready money of her own. She didn’t need it. Women of her class don’t spend money. They have accounts, which their husbands settle quarterly. They keep a few shillings in their purse for emergencies, but nothing like the money Perceval was getting-twelve, fifteen pounds. To lay her hands on as much of the ready as that, she would need to go to a bank or a moneylender. I verified that she had no account of her own.’ Waterlow waved his hand expansively. ‘So she must have raised a loan, and that’s where local knowledge came in again. The nearest pawnshop is in Brentford High Street.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘Four visits. October, December, January, February. All confirmed by the pawnbroker. Jewellery each time. Good stuff, too, that could have raised more, but she was glad to take the first price he offered. He would have made a splendid prosecution witness, that pawnbroker. He gave me a first-rate description, from her plush hat to her brown buttoned boots.’

‘So you concluded Perceval was blackmailing her?’

‘Proved it,’ said Waterlow. ‘I even recovered the pawn-tickets, ready to exhibit in court. The only thing I didn’t fathom was what he had on her. I must admit that vulgar pictures never crossed my mind. I mean it doesn’t square with High Church and a house on Kew Green. It doesn’t square at all.’

‘So much the better for a touch of blackmail,’ Cribb commented.

Grudgingly, Waterlow agreed. ‘But it’s not the sort of thing you expect from the daughter of a mayor of Hampstead,’ he went on. ‘If a well-bred woman has a secret, nine times out of ten it’s a lover. You have to have a theory to work on, don’t you? The walks she took in the Botanic Gardens interested me. I would have put my money on some sort of assignation among the rhododendrons. As a matter of fact, I had practically convinced myself it was young Allingham, the solicitor. He is more of her own generation than her husband. Did you know that she is sixteen years younger than Cromer? Allingham’s connection with the family goes back a few years, I gather. He was in the social set they moved in before the marriage. He is the only one they have kept up with, I suppose because of the professional connection. It still seemed to me-and, I think, the housekeeper, who is a shrewd woman-that Mr Simon Allingham was taking a closer interest in Miriam Cromer than you would expect from the family solicitor. There was nothing you could describe as flagrant, simply looks that passed between them and the way he put his hand on her arm to prevent her answering my questions.’ He shrugged. ‘I have to admit to a slight misjudgment there. As I say, the real reason for the blackmail took me by surprise.’ Having admitted his fallibility, Waterlow absolved himself. ‘That’s of no importance. I’m sure we would have secured a conviction on the evidence we had. The prosecution didn’t need to go into the details of the blackmail. In fact, it could have been detrimental to the case to dwell on the business. All in all, I believe I was entitled to expect a commendation in court for the work I did.’

Cribb was near the limit of his tolerance, but he still had one crucial question to put. ‘As a matter of interest, what sort of person is Miriam Cromer?’

Waterlow blinked, jogged out of his train of thought. ‘You seem to be taking this job seriously, Cribb. I thought it was statistics you came to ask me about.’

With an effort to be amiable, Cribb said, ‘You’ve got me interested in the case, I can’t deny it, sir. Miriam Cromer makes a fascinating study. A woman who will kill is a rare one.’

‘Rare-my word, yes.’ Inspector Waterlow perched himself on the edge of his desk and took the cat into his lap, stroking it as he talked. ‘Exquisitely good-looking. Entirely in command. Questions wouldn’t shake her. Look how she stood up in court and faced old Colbeck when he sentenced her to death. I tell you, he was paler than she was. An astonishing woman by any reckoning. To be candid, I have a secret hope that the Home Secretary will commute the sentence to penal servitude for life. Miriam Cromer is altogether too remarkable to consign to the hangman’s rope. There’s a world of difference between a woman like her and that creature in Richmond a year or two ago who murdered her employer and boiled her body in the copper.’

‘Kate Webster? No comparison, sir.’

‘You know, I’m still unable to understand what induced Miriam Cromer to confess. The case I put together was overwhelming, I admit, but a decent counsel, Sir Charles Russell, for instance-the family could afford him, for God’s sake-might have raised points that would have helped towards a reprieve. As it stands, there’s simply her confession. I can’t believe the prospect of a long trial unnerved her. Whatever she is, she is no coward.’

‘Possibly she reckoned it would save her from the gallows,’ Cribb suggested. ‘A frank admission of guilt is something in a prisoner’s favour.’

‘Not in the eyes of the law. The details of the crime in her own words are very damning. It was not an impulsive crime. She planned it. There’s little doubt she would have got away with it if the cyanide had killed the victim instantaneously, as she expected. She could have let herself into the studio when she got back to the house and calmly emptied that decanter and refilled it with fresh madeira. To make quite sure, she could have placed the cyanide bottle beside the corpse. There’s no denying it was done in cold blood, Cribb. The judge made that clear when he sentenced her. Having met her, I believe I understand how she planned it and carried it through. If you ask me what sets her apart from other women, it’s an absence of pity. She is so damned self-possessed that she can’t imagine how other people feel. In all the interviews I had with her, she never expressed a syllable of sympathy for her victim. I’d lay all the money I own that even in the death cell she isn’t wasting a thought on Perceval.’

‘From all accounts, he isn’t worth it,’ said Cribb. ‘She sounds a lot more interesting than her victim. Like you, sir, I find it difficult to understand why a woman of her character should have confessed. Did she make the confession to you?’

‘No, it was done while she was awaiting trial in Newgate. She drew it up with the solicitor, Allingham, and then arrangements were made for her to swear an affidavit before a magistrate. Everyone was taken by surprise. Cheated, you could say. This had every promise of being one of the classic trials of the century.’

Cribb thought, with Inspector Waterlow of V Division as principal witness for the prosecution. ‘Yes, sir, it must have been a facer after all the work you put in. To see it written down in a confession, all that evidence you spent weeks patiently uncovering. Cruel.’ He solemnly shook his head. Then he said more brightly, ‘I expect it wasn’t wasted. You still had to check that the confession was true.’

‘That wasn’t difficult,’ said Waterlow. ‘The evidence confirmed everything she said. You couldn’t fault it.’

‘I’m sure.’ Cribb paused, about to venture into a sensitive area. ‘You said just now that the reason for the blackmail took you by surprise.’

‘The indecent pictures? That’s true.’

‘Did you by any chance turn up any of these pictures when you looked through Perceval’s possessions, sir?’

Waterlow gave a sly grin. ‘Care to see one, then? No, Cribb, I didn’t. He sold her the ones he had, and she destroyed them. If you recall, she said in the confession he was offering to buy the plates.?150, wasn’t it?’

‘So there were no pictures or plates in Perceval’s lodgings?’

‘I told you, no. It isn’t important,’ added Waterlow. ‘The details of the blackmail are immaterial. The fact that blackmail took place is admitted, and there is plenty of proof. From the moment I walked into the pawnbroker’s in Brentford we had Miriam Cromer on toast.’

‘No wonder she confessed,’ said Cribb, content to resume the adulation now that the point was clear.

‘I was sorry when it came to an end,’ said Waterlow. ‘I don’t often get challenges here in Kew, but I’m capable of meeting them. Tell them that at Scotland Yard if you like. While they collect statistics, we in the divisions are out on the streets coping with crime from hour to hour.’

When Cribb got up to go, Inspector Waterlow took his place in the armchair. Justifiably, Cribb reflected when he got outside. The streets of Kew were as deserted as when he had arrived.