HONOR MISPLACED

Arthur Browne

Chapter Thirteen

   It took them very little time to find the house. It was smaller and less ornate than the General’s house, but rather nice nonetheless. They knocked on the front door but no one answered.

A voice surprised them, coming from their left. “”I believe Colonel Crowley might have left, sirs, I haven’t seen him in three or four days.” The voice belonged to an elderly man in a dark suit. He was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the house next door. He continued, “Beg pardon, I work for Mrs. Parsons, who has lived in this house for many years. The Colonel can usually be seen taking an afternoon stroll, but he hasn’t been about.”

Charlie explained who they were. The man asked to see some identification, and Charlie obliged him. “We just want to check up on the Colonel. Did you actually see him leave?”

“Well, no,” admitted the man. “But the Colonel often travels. Or he did before his eyes began giving him so much trouble.”

Meanwhile Billy had tried the front door, and found it to be locked. He came down from the low porch and began walking past Charlie and the man he was talking to. “I’ll just go around the back and make sure it’s all secure,” he told his superior. There was no space between the buildings on this street. He would have to go to the end of the block to get to the service alley in back. Charlie decided to accompany him, and excused himself.

Soon enough they were where they needed to be. The rear door was closed, but they both noticed something right away. There were gouges in the edge of the door, and some of the wood had been split away. “Someone’s been at it with a crowbar,” Charlie said. He tried the door and it was unlocked. He was carful to grab it by the base of the doorknob so as not to smear any prints that might have been left behind. He looked at Billy, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, and then pulled the door slowly and quietly open. They had no legal right to enter the house, but they both knew they were going to anyway.

As soon as the door swung open, they new they had their excuse for entering. The smell of death filled the large and rather old-fashioned kitchen. Charlie said to Billy, “We can just tell them we smelled it from outside. That gives us cause.” They passed through the kitchen and down a hallway and on their left was an open door. The smell grew stronger. They entered a library full of books and masculine, leather-covered furniture. The man they could only assume was Thornton Crowley lay sprawled in a large chair. It looked as though he might have been rising from the chair when the bullet… or bullets… struck him. His chest was a mass of gore.

Charlie pointed to a telephone on a small table. “Ring up the lab boys, Billy. But tell them not to rush. I believe he’s been dead since before his nephew was shot. And be careful with the telephone.”

Bill used a handkerchief to gingerly pick up the instrument. As he placed the call, Charlie scanned the room looking for anything out of place. Other than the corpse and a light layer of dust, the room seemed to be in order. Billy finished the call and Charlie said, “I don’t believe we will find any prints. It looks as though the killer broke in quietly while the Colonel was reading.” He pointed to a novel on the floor by the corpses feet. “I doubt the old boy heard anything. Or if he did, it took him a long while trying to stand up. He seems to have still had his hands on the arms of the chair to push himself up.”

“Or even with his failing eyesight, he saw movement and that alerted him,” Billy added, once again playing the speculation game that was the stock in trade of the Detective Inspector. “Funny that no one found the body. A house this size would seem to call for some staff. And what with his family living so close by.”

“I think it is safe to say that we will find he has been shot with a Webley,” Charlie put in. “There is now no way for me to believe that this isn’t all aimed directly at the General. Bloody hell, I’m glad it isn’t up to us to break the news to that poor family.”

They decided to wait for the investigative squad out front. The air was just too much to take. They were once again careful not to smudge any possible evidence when they let themselves out, although they we both certain there would be no fingerprints. The killer had just been too careful so far. The lab technicians were not long in arriving. Charlie filled them in on what little they had seen. He then realized that their lunch date with his uncle was fast approaching. They told the crime unit where they could be reached if they were needed and headed towards the Black Mare.

Uncle Jack had beaten them to the pub and he held his favorite table in the back corner. He greeted them warmly, yelled for two more pints, and before they had even sat down he launched into an excited explanation of what he had so far discovered. “I talked to the old cronies, I did. Knew we could eliminate them right off the bat. I just casual like started them speculating on the notion that if would sure be strange if a cabbie had something to do with the killings. Turned it into something of a game, saying how the opportunity was there. They got into the spirit of the thing, all right.”

Charlie couldn’t help but smile at how excited his uncle was to be playing detective. He was like a little boy.

His uncle went on, “we soon discounted all those we knew couldn’t have done it. Either they where not working during the hours the murders were thought to take place, or maybe one of us saw them in a taxi line somewhere. And of course there were a few that none of us could bring ourselves to consider.”

Charlie knew that there was a danger in ever assuming that a person was incapable of committing murder, but he held his tongue.

But still his uncle had more to say. “Then the game got fun. We started asking ourselves who we could see as murdering someone. And there were more of those than you might think. Now it comes down to two groups of people. There’s the ones we’ve known for some time, and then there’s the newcomers. And the more we talked, the more we realized that we had some very real suspects.”

Charlie was fascinated despite trying not to get his hopes up. He sat up straighter and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. Anasera arrived with the drinks and asked them if they would have their usual lunches. They just nodded, for once paying the girl no mind. She seemed just a bit put off by this lack of attention, but realized they were talking about something important and left to put their orders in.

Uncle Jack was relishing his captive audience. “Looking at the old gang it didn’t take us long to pick the odd men out. You know them, so you’ll know I’m right. What about Bryan Kehoe and Tim O’Neil? Thick as thieves those two have always been. Never really tried to fit in with the rest of us. I know their families have been here for years, but do the Irish ever really love us Englishmen? The war wont last forever, you know. But the troubles will. And what about  Artur Kretschmer? Oh, he’s a nice enough bloke, you ask me. But he still has his German accent when he gets excited. Only been here for a dozen years or so. And you know how those Germans like to plan ahead. Wouldn’t put it past them to slip a few of their people in years before the war began.”

Charlie was uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had taken. He had known these men for a long time. True, the Irishmen had never really gone out of their way to join the old gang of cabbies, but on the other hand the cabbies were a tight knit bunch, and it wasn’t as easy as Jack was making it out to be. And two men with family still in Ireland, with common history, and knowing they would always be outsiders to some degree, would naturally tend to stick together. And Artur Kretschmer was a fat, jolly fellow who just loved beer and his fat, jolly wife and his fat, jolly son. He spent less time with the other cabbies because he truly wanted to be at home. But that wasn’t to say that there wasn’t some underlying sense to Uncle Jack’s suspicion. There were plenty of Irishmen who wouldn’t shed a tear at the General’s misery, and the Germans weren’t above putting agents into place during peace time. Or a man born in Germany might have been a perfectly happy English citizen until the war started, and then begin questioning where his loyalty should really lie. The food arrived and they began eating as they listened.

Uncle Jack had built up a full head of steam by this point. “That brings us to the new fellows. Now some we eliminated for obvious reasons. But there are a handful that bear looking at, Charlie, my boy. There’s a new lad. Only about twenty or so. Walks with a limp and says he can’t get into the army because of it. Name of Belvedere Solomon, have you ever hear the like? Has cold eyes, like a fish, he does. He took over old Bill Haney’s cab. Doesn’t have ‘the knowledge’, just like most of the new men. They don’t have time to make them learn all they need to know to be a true cabbie now. They haven’t earned the badge, and we don’t hold that against them. But this lad, he’s a quiet one. Hangs around like he’s listening to everything we say, but never pipes in with his own thoughts. And he was working round when both murders happened. But the thing is, nobody remembers seeing him nowhere.”

That did sound promising, Charlie considered.

“And then there’s Simon Oliphant, a right nasty old cuss.” Uncle Jack seemed as if he could go on forever. “Nobody remembers if he was out and about during the killings, and we don’t want to tip pour hand, do we. Harry Anderson and Scott Townsend, they fall into the same category. I haven’t a word to say against either of them. Harry is getting on in years, and Scott lost two fingers in the great war. But they both might have been working, and nobody recalls seeing them at any of the usual hot spots.”

Charlie sighed. The field was not narrowing down enough for his liking. But still, too many suspects was better than none at all.

“There are three or four more,” Uncle Jack threw out, “but we aren’t done comparing notes yet. A fellow named Terry Parker, and another named Tom Hartford. Hartford is a big, hulking brute of a man. He was a prize fighter once, and had his brain knocked about one too many times, you ask me. Not all that bright. We think both of them were driving at the right times. Tom is friendly enough, unless you make fun of him. He must have gotten into a scrape with someone. He has a bruise and some cuts on his face.”

Charlie and Billy shared glances and sat bolt upright. They had never mentioned the small amounts of flesh under Katherine Crowley’s fingernails. Charlie for one felt ashamed once again. How could he have forgotten to mention that fact. Scratches on the killers face or arms would be the easiest way to narrow down their search. He was, he told himself, too personally involved with the case. He should excuse himself. Hand it off the Chief Inspector to give to someone who could do the job right.

“What is it, Charlie?” Uncle Jack wanted to know. He had seen the looks, sensed the sudden interest.

“I think we need to have a little chat with this Hartford fellow,” Charlie told his uncle evenly.