‘I want you to tell me, Baines… if you assisted Wylie when, on the night of Tuesday last, he entered a rear bedroom of 52 Blantyre Road and removed from there a suitcase containing United States treasury notes.’
‘Don’t tell him, Bonce!’ screamed Jeff, leaping to his feet, ‘don’t tell him, you bloody little fool!’
‘Silence!’ thundered Gently in a voice that made even Dutt wince, ‘get back in your chair, Wylie!’
‘But it’s a lie… he’ll say anything…!’
‘Get back in your chair!’
Copping sent the Teddy boy sprawling into his seat again and held him there struggling and panting.
‘Now, Baines… have you anything to answer?’
Bonce gaped and gurgled in his throat, his eyes rolling pitiably. Then the spring clicked and his head began to nod. ‘I went with him… it’s true… I kept watch in the alley…’
‘You fool — oh, you bloody little fool!’ sobbed Jeff, ‘don’t you understand it’s murder they’re after us for — don’t you understand it’s murder?’
There was a ripping sound as Gently’s pencil crossed from one corner of the pad to the other.
The charge was made: burglary on the night of the eleventh. Jeff was in tears as he gave his statement. Of the two of them, it was Bonce who showed the better front. Having shed the intolerable load of conscious guilt he seemed to stiffen up and gain some sort of control of himself, while Jeff, on the other hand, went more and more to pieces. It was from Bonce that Gently received the more coherent picture.
They had been in ‘The Feathers’ late on the Tuesday evening when the prostitute Frenchy entered. She was well known to them — Jeff claimed to have slept with her and Bonce wasn’t sure that Jeff hadn’t — and she approached them with the information that a man-friend of hers had left in his bedroom a suitcase containing something of considerable value.
‘Was she in the habit of divulging such information?’ queried Gently.
Jeff stoutly denied it, but Bonce admitted one or two instances.
‘And were you accustomed to act on it?’
Bonce hung his head. ‘Once we did…’
Frenchy had struck a quick bargain. They would go halves in whatever the loot realized. She gave them the address, explained the situation of the bedroom and guaranteed to keep the man busy for another hour or two at least. When she left they followed her at a discreet distance and saw her meet a man resembling the one in the photograph. He had exchanged a few words with her and then signalled a taxi. The taxi had departed in the direction of the North Shore.
‘Where did the taxi pick them up?’ asked Gently.
‘It was just outside the Marina.’
‘What would have been the time?’
Bonce glanced at Jeff. ‘About ten, I should think.’
‘Would you know the taxi again?’
‘N-no, sir, there wan’t nothin’ special about it.’
‘From which direction did it come?’
‘From the Pleasure Beach way, sir.’
The owner of the suitcase having been seen on his way, they hastened round to Blantyre Road and identified No. 52. Then they approached it by the back alley and while Bonce kept watch outside, Jeff broke into the rear bedroom.
‘Weren’t you taking a bit of a risk?’ inquired Gently of Jeff. ‘The lodger may have been out, but it’s pretty certain the landlady wasn’t.’
‘We could see them down below,’ sniffed Jeff, ‘they were watching the telly.’
‘The television couldn’t have had much longer to go by the time you got there.’
‘It’s the truth, I tell you!’
‘All right, all right — just answer my questions! It may have been running late on Tuesday. How long did it take you to do the job?’
‘Ten minutes… quarter of an hour, perhaps.’
‘No longer than that?’ Gently glanced at Bonce.
‘That’s about it, sir.’
‘But you had to hunt around for it?’
‘Why should I?’ sniffed Jeff, ‘I knew what I was looking for… a blue suitcase with chromium locks. It was standing with the other one near the wardrobe.’
‘Did you look in the other one?’
‘No… I never touched it.’
‘Didn’t you go through the drawers or anything of that sort?’
‘I tell you I didn’t touch anything! I just got what I came for and went. Ask him if I aren’t telling the truth.’
Bonce corroborate his leader’s statement — he had returned with the blue suitcase and nothing else. They had carried it off to a quiet spot in Blantyre Gardens, forced the locks and discovered the astounding contents. Immediately there was a change of plans. Jeff decided they would tell Frenchy that they had been unable to find the suitcase — a proposition she wasn’t situated to contradict — while in reality they would keep it hidden until the hue and cry had died down and then dispose of it by slow and cautious degrees. This they did, and for some reason Frenchy accepted their story without much fuss. When the murder became news and they recognized the pictures which were issued as being of Frenchy’s man-friend, they had an additional incentive for keeping the stolen notes under cover. Unfortunately, their patience was soon exhausted. A financial crisis at the end of the week had slackened their caution. Surely, they had thought, there could be no harm in cashing just one of that inexhaustible pile of notes… just one, to see them comfortably through the weekend…
Gently sighed at the end of the recital. ‘And the rest of them, where are they now?’
Bonce swallowed and glanced again at Jeff. ‘They’re under the pier.’
‘Which pier is that?’
‘Albion Pier… there’s a hole between two girders.’
‘You’d better show me… Dutt!’
‘Yessir?’
‘Tell them to bring a car round, will you?’ He returned to Bonce. ‘That evening… in the bar at “The Feathers”… were all the usual crowd there?’
Bonce twisted his snub nose perplexedly. ‘I–I suppose so, sir.’
‘Was Artie serving at the bar?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘That fellow who wears loud checks and lives on whisky?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Louey?’
‘N-no, sir… you don’t often see him in the bar.’
‘Peachey?’
‘I think he looked in while we were talking to Frenchy…’
There was the sound of a car swinging out of the yard and Copping rose to his feet. He looked at Gently questioningly and motioned to the two youths with his head. ‘Cuffs on them… just to keep on the safe side?’
Gently smiled amongst the nebulae. ‘Let’s be devils this morning, shall we? Let’s take a risk!’
Exceeding Sunday-white lay the Albion Pier under mid-morning sun. Its two square towers, each capped with gold, notched firmly into an azure sky and its peak-roofed pavilion, home of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots, notched equally firmly into a green-and-amethyst sea. Its gates were closed. They were not to open till half past two. The brightly dressed strollers, each infected in some degree by the prevailing Sundayness, were constrained to the languid buying of ice-cream, the indifferent booking of seats or the bored contemplation of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots’ pics. They didn’t complain. They knew it was their lot. Being English, one was never at a loss for a moral attitude.
Even the arrival of a police car with three obvious plain-clothes men and two obvious wrong-doers didn’t seriously upset the moral atmosphere, though it may have intensified it a little.
