‘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
‘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
‘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
