Mistress Murder (19 page)

‘Oh joy! And what the hell does all that add up to? Is he a chemist or a metallurgist or something?'

Turnbull waited patiently for Benbow's bout of exhibitionism to pass off.

‘Looks as if friend Golding has some connection with a place where metal plate is polished – you know, dishes and cutlery. The dust is all either silver itself or copper or nickel, both used as a base for silver plating. Copper was the base for expensive Sheffield plate, but nickel is used now for the cheaper stuff.'

Benbow whistled through his false teeth. ‘He might be in the jewellery or antique trade, you think?'

Turnbull shrugged. ‘That's up to you – but he's certainly been standing somewhere where a lot of metal polishing has been carried out – what conclusions you draw from it is your affair.'

‘Was it a lot of dust?'

‘I'd say it was certainly more that would come from a few casual cleanings of the household trophies … of course, he might collect the stuff for a hobby, but even so, the amount we got from his turn-ups was more than a gram – suggests work on almost a commercial scale.'

Bray, hovering in the background, threw in one of his customary wet blankets. ‘An uncle of mine always has the stuff over his trousers – he's dotty on old silver, but that's only a hobby – he's a bank manager.'

Benbow scowled at him.

‘Got any better ideas, sonny? – cause if not, we'll get down the flat again and see if there's anything we missed the first twice.'

In the afternoon, they went back to Ferber Street again and went up to Golding's flat, where a plainclothes man had been on duty ever since they had tracked Snigger to the place. The chief inspector sent the watcher down to keep an eye on the entrance while he and Bray set about searching the rooms for the third time. With the help of Sutcliffe, they went through all the drawers again, examined the furniture for hidden spaces and pulled up all the fitted carpets once more.

The phone rang while they were making a last desperate attack on the cushions and chair seams.

Benbow turned after the phone episode was over and surveyed the chaos in the lounge. In spite of the wrecked appearance, the only actual damage was to the velvet-covered cushions.

‘We can give up the watch on the place now,' he said gloomily. ‘Golding will be off his lair like a dose of salts after that call – and God knows which end of Britain he'll hide out in.'

Bray turned to the last chair, a leatherette easy chair with the same brown cushions as the others. He slid his hand down the crack at the side and felt all around.

‘Here's something … oh hell – a threepenny stamp – big deal!'

He slapped it in disgust onto the mantelpiece and carried on with his destruction of the cushions.

Benbow mooched around the flat again and came back to watch his sergeant finish the job.

‘Sutcliffe has been fishing around in the bathroom – had the lino up and looked down the waste pipes – no joy though.'

‘What are we supposed to be looking for anyway?' complained Bray.

‘I'll tell you when we find it,' said Benbow snappily. The frustration of getting a little bit further and then meeting a brick wall was irritating him more and more as the days went by.

Bray's fingers felt all along the remaining cracks and into the wadding of the cushion. ‘Damn all!' he said disgustedly.

Benbow turned away and idly picked up the stamp in his hands.

‘Looks quite new – not even creased,' he said with a yawn. Then his brows drew together in sudden concentration. ‘Bray – look at this!'

The sergeant took the stamp, turned it over in his fingers and looked questioningly at his chief.

‘Just an unused threepenny stamp – looks new, as you say – but I can't see what earthly use it is to us.'

‘Can't you? You try going out of here and buying a stamp like that.'

His voice was suddenly full of bounces and eagerness. Bray stared at the stamp for a few more seconds before the penny dropped.

‘A dragon? A ruddy dragon!' he exclaimed.

Benbow beamed like a fond father.

‘That's it, lad – you can only buy those in Wales.'

Back at the Yard, they took the stamp to the lab on the upper floors of the New Building and got someone to make sure that there was nothing extraordinary about the stamp apart from its place of origin.

In his office, Benbow sent for a trade telephone directory for the South Wales area and riffled through the pages eagerly.

‘Why South Wales?' Bray made his inevitable objection. ‘There's a North as well, they sell the same stamps there.'

‘Because two-thirds of the population live in the south – we've got to start in the most likely places.'

‘And what if some visitor to Golding's flat happened to drop the stamp? Golding himself still might come from Kent or Westmorland – or even Golders Green!'

Benbow groaned.

‘I'm going to get rid of you, Bray. You get on my bleeding wick … talk about a regular Doubting Thomas. Look, if you don't make a shot in the dark now and then, you'll never get to be a rich chief inspector like me, chum.'

He found the pages listing jewellers, antique dealers, and silversmiths. There were less than a score of antique dealers, but well over a hundred jewellers. The Admiral groaned when he saw the list.

‘We'd take a month of Sundays to go through those – let's have a crack at the antiques boys first.'

‘You can exclude any big shops, combines, and chain store jewellers,' observed Bray, losing some of his pessimism, ‘Golding would almost certainly be working on his own to be able to go flitting around like he does.'

His chief nodded over the directory. ‘Sure – we can narrow it down to a man with his own business, probably – if there is any business at all, that is.'

‘And we know he's not a very young man or a really old josser – nor has he got one leg or a hunchback,' added Bray facetiously.

‘He's somewhere in his forties, according to the miserable descriptions we've had so far,' agreed Benbow.

He riffled through the pages of the yellow book again. ‘And he's not very tall, very short, cross-eyed, bearded or bandy, so we want an average-looking bloke of middle age, who runs a silver business and often goes to London for a few days.'

His sergeant's face suggested that he thought this was Alice in Wonderland stuff, but he managed to keep his tongue still.

Benbow started by phoning the C.I.D. chiefs of the six police forces in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. He explained what he wanted and asked for their cooperation. This was readily given, though some of the Welsh detectives were politely incredulous.

Benbow confirmed and amplified his requests by Telex to each of the police headquarters, then went home to bed.

The weekend was quiet, nothing being heard from any of the Welsh constabularies.

On the Monday morning, a report from the Newport, Glamorgan County and Merthyr Tydfil forces said that there was no one on the list of dealers who at all resembled Golding in appearance or habits.

In the afternoon, there was a false alarm from the Swansea police force. They thought they had found a jeweller and silversmith who was nondescript enough to be the wanted man and who frequently spent long weekends away from home. But an hour later, a crestfallen detective inspector rang through to say that a tactful series of enquiries had given the man a cast-iron alibi in the shape of an attractive schoolmistress in Gloucester.

The afternoon wore on and Benbow began to feel the accusative eyes of Bray saying, ‘I told you so,' following him around the little offices. He began to wonder if he had better widen the net to take in the dealers in West and Mid-Wales, but at five o'clock the miracle came across the wires.

‘Cardiff City here … Detective Inspector Parry. We've raised a likely candidate for you, seems to fit the bill very well … name of Paul Jacobs. But the chief says to go very careful on this one. If it's a load of bull he doesn't want any comeback, thank you very much!'

Bray and Benbow caught the eight o'clock train from Paddington to Wales. The Admiral was bouncing and beaming and his sergeant openly sceptical as the diesel rumbled out of London for the long run westwards.

Chapter Fourteen

‘That big house on the end – the one with the double garage.'

Parry, the Cardiff detective, pointed out a large modern villa set amongst trees in a select suburban avenue of the Welsh capital. With Benbow and Bray, he sat in a police car – a Vauxhall this time – which was parked a respectable distance down the road from Paul Jacobs' home.

‘He's not in now, is he?' asked Bray in a worried voice. He had developed a very healthy respect for Golding's knack of smelling trouble at a distance.

A plainclothes constable in the front seat reassured him. ‘No, I've been watching since half past eight – he went out about nine.'

Parry explained how they had been keeping tabs on Jacobs since the day before.

‘Edwards here has been tapping the odd-jobber who does Jacobs' garden … that was it, wasn't it, Edwards?'

The junior detective nodded. ‘He likes to knock off for a fag and a gossip every now and then, so I was able to pump him quite easily.'

‘Have you ever seen this Paul Jacobs, Inspector?' asked Benbow.

‘No, if he's your man, I thought it unwise to let him get wind of me … according to you he's as slippery as the original greasy pole.'

‘You can say that again,' said Archie, with feeling.

Inspector Parry shook his head in wonder. ‘I still can't credit it. This man is well known in city business circles – couldn't have a better reputation. He's even in the same golf club as the chief constable.'

Bray grinned at his boss behind the local officer's back as Parry leaned forward to speak to the driver.

‘Turn round and go back to Llandaff nick, Thomas.' He turned to the London men.

‘No point in staying in sight more than we need.'

As they moved off through the pleasant suburb, he enlarged on the bare facts he had given them before.

‘This chap, Jacobs, is about forty-five to forty-eight – that right, Edwards?' The man in front nodded.

‘He's got an antique shop down near the docks – a small place, just a bit of silver in the window. I've asked the local division about it. They say they've never heard anything at all from there – no break-ins or suspicion of stolen property finding its way there. He's got an oldish man who looks after the shop. Jacobs does all the buying, that's why he's away so much.'

Benbow interrupted. ‘Is it a genuine business or just a front, d'you think?'

Parry was emphatic. ‘Oh, genuine, no doubt of that – I've made a few enquiries and plenty of people have dealt with him.'

Edwards added to this, ‘He only handles good stuff – all silver. He never advertises, he goes on dealers' recommendations and that. It's a genuine set-up all right, sir.'

Bray looked over his shoulder at the affluent residential area they were crossing. ‘Would a poky little shop like that turn in enough money to keep up a house like his?'

Parry shrugged. ‘I've never seen a poor jeweller yet.'

‘What about his trips away?' asked Benbow rather impatiently.

‘It's been difficult to find out actual dates without putting him on his guard,' replied Edwards.

He was a bright, chirpy young man. Benbow thought that he was cut out to get to the top in record time.

‘We know he goes away about ten days in every month,' put in Parry. ‘Usually every fortnight but not absolutely regular. We had a policewoman snooping around the local shopping centre yesterday – she found out that Mrs Jacobs varies her shopping lists according to whether he's home or not.'

‘What's the wife like?'

‘Very nice by all accounts. Quiet, pleasant, in her middle thirties, I think – perhaps a bit older.'

‘He definitely went away last Thursday,' cut in Edwards. ‘The gardener said that he came home unexpectedly the next day – the wife wasn't expecting him, sent the old man out next morning for a loaf.'

‘You seem to have got plenty out of the gardener,' observed Benbow.

Edwards grinned. ‘Any gardener – even at seven-and-six an hour – will talk about anything under the sun if it gives him a chance to lean on his spade instead of using it.'

They were approaching the local police station now, not far from the famous cathedral. In the charge room, Parry spoke aloud the thought that was passing through all their minds.

‘Well, is it him, or isn't it? How are you going to decide?'

Benbow, missing his pencils, chewed his knuckles instead.

‘Two things would clinch it – either his fingerprints … God knows we've got enough of those to compare – or get Irish or Gigal to identify him.'

‘Gigal wouldn't do it … O'Keefe might.'

Benbow gnawed away at his fingers.

‘No hope of getting anything out of the house with his dabs on, I suppose?'

Parry shook his head. ‘Don't see how we can … illegal and it would put the wind up him straight away, if he's the chap.'

‘What about the shop?' suggested Bray. ‘There should be plenty there carrying his prints – all that polished metal stuff.'

Edwards had a flash of inspiration. ‘Take something in for valuation – I could do it. He'd have to handle it and give it back, wouldn't he?'

Parry and Benbow mulled it over and agreed it was the simplest way.

‘But you'd better not take it, Edwards. You've been hanging around the house too much,' objected Parry.

‘What about Sergeant Bray here? He's a complete stranger.'

Bray was all enthusiasm. ‘If you could get me something right now, I could do it this morning. We've brought a photograph of Golding's prints from the Yard.' He rummaged in his briefcase and took out a standard identification form with copies of the dabs from both London flats that Golding had occupied. Bray's keenness was infective – the local men put their heads together and in a moment Parry thought of something suitable.