expression he put on at moments of difficulty and setback, a look that said you’ve let me down. How could you. I’m so disappointed.
But late this afternoon, as Sergeant Donaldson came back to Maidenhead to make his final inquiries, and the shopkeepers and businessmen began to shut up their stores and their offices, he was wrong. Inspector Fletcher was not disappointed when the sergeant told him the news. He hardly took any notice. His eyes were bright and he began walking up and down his office, smacking one fist into another.
‘There’s another one, Sergeant! Another dead body with the strange markings! That makes three of them! It’s the biggest case we may ever see. Three murders, one after another! And the most important one right here on our doorstep!’
Fletcher stopped suddenly and looked at his sergeant. He might have a hangdog expression when he was being told bad news. Fletcher’s own superior officer, Detective Chief Inspector Galway, did not care for such niceties. He shouted at people. Some of his officers reported that they were sure he was on the verge of knocking them down.
‘I do hope,’ the Inspector said, with the elation draining slowly out of his face, as he realized what might happen next, ‘that they don’t take the case away from us. They might give it to somebody senior. Or they might bring somebody in from London. I do hope they don’t. This may be the biggest case I’ll ever see. If I don’t get promotion after this, Sergeant, then I never will.’
The newspapers’ reaction to the three murders was proof that the really important news is what happens closest to home. Distant earthquakes, plagues in countries with unpronounceable names, civil wars in far-off lands like Kurdistan, failed to make it into print in local organs of opinion like the Reading Chronicle or the Norwich Evening News. Both of these papers carried banner headlines, ‘Murder in the Almshouse’ for Marlow, and ‘Public School Murder’ in Fakenham. The last of the three, Sir Rufus by the Silkworkers’ steps, merited a small article on an inside page of the local papers in London. None of the reporters who wrote the stories mentioned the strange marks on the dead men’s chests. So far the police had managed to conceal that information in all three cases. Nobody knew how long the line would hold, or how many days it would be before a policeman would sell the information to a journalist who would have a scoop on his hands.
One of the very few people apart from Powerscourt and the forces of law and order to know of the stigmata was Sir Fitzroy Robinson Buller, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, regularly described by insiders in the Civil Service as Whitehall’s head prefect. Sir Fitzroy had been watching over the Home Office’s wide powers which included supervision of the police and the criminal justice system for many years. In that time he had developed, as he liked to confide in his fellow permanent secretaries over a regular lunch at the Athenaeum, a Nose For Trouble. In his long career he had divided his political masters, the Home Secretaries of the day, into four different types. There were those who listened to his advice and were too stupid to understand it. There were those who listened to his advice but were too frightened to do anything about it. There were those — ‘Too many, alas, too many,’ he would confide to his lunchtime companions over the port — who didn’t even listen to his advice at all. And there was a rump party, far too small a body in Sir Fitzroy’s view, who listened to his counsel and did something about it. The Permanent Secretary still had an open mind about the current incumbent of the great office he served, Herbert Gladstone, youngest son of the legendary Prime Minister. Once he had listened and acted decisively. Once he had listened and done nothing at all. Sir Fitzroy was too seasoned and too wily an operator to think that his advice on this current matter could be decisive in the formation of his judgement. Never or impossible were not words that should pass from a permanent secretary’s lips. Salvation should surely be available to ministers as it was to the many sinners of London. Looking out at St James’s Park, with the nannies wheeling their charges round the lake and the birds poised and ready for action in the bare trees, he composed his memorandum to his master.
‘Dear Home Secretary,’ he began, ‘I do not need to remind you of the gravity of the current situation regarding the three very recent murders where the bodies have been disfigured in a particularly distasteful fashion.’
Sir Fitzroy was reluctant to mention the precise details of the disfigurement. One of the reasons for his long tenure at the Home Office was his refusal to trust anybody completely. Home Secretaries, he said to himself, have been known to leave their red boxes in the backs of London taxis. One particular box had managed to travel successfully all the way to Edinburgh in the luggage rack, its owner having left the train at Grantham. Like many public servants, Sir Fitzroy had a total horror of what might happen in his world if the public were to find out what was really going on. Secrecy, in his view, was the lubricating oil of government, a vital weapon in the long war against disorder and democracy.
The newspapers, as you well know, Sir Henry, have not yet heard of the disfigurements to the dead bodies. Coverage in the Press has been muted so far. I would, however, be failing in my duty if I did not draw your attention to the possibility, nay, in my opinion, the near certainty, that this intelligence will leak out into the public domain and will do so very soon. In my judgement there are a number of developments likely to follow from such a revelation.
One, there will be a massive hue and cry and general frenzy in the newspapers of every stripe. Nothing succeeds in terms of raising circulation and increasing advertising rates like scandal and sensation. Three dead bodies with stigmata of an unusual kind rate high in the ledgers of scandal and sensation. We are having a fairly quiet time at present in terms of major political developments. The public have grown tired of the rows between the Commons and the Lords. They are even more tired of the depressing number of strikes and the growing popularity of industrial action. They may even — would that it were so — be growing tired of rumours of foreign wars. There is, as you well know, Minister, nothing the newspapers like more than real murder mysteries. All the present one lacks is a female element, some suspicion of adultery or foreign adventuresses. If no such facts come to light, we may be sure that the newspapers will invent them.
Two, in the light of the eventualities referred to in the previous section, I should draw your attention to the likely reaction in the House of Commons. The only thing — and I know you share this view — worse than the baying of the newspaper columns is the hypocrisy and self-advertisement of various backbenchers who will attempt to get their names in the Press by asking ridiculous questions. Why is the Government not doing more to catch the culprits? How is it that the Home Secretary allowed this foreign criminal — in the minds of many, if not most newspapers, all murders are committed by foreigners — into our country and slaughter our fellow citizens?
Three, if the news emerges, as per section one, above, the most damaging charge that can be levelled at the Government is the accusation of waste and duplication. Why do we have three separate police forces investigating the murders, which are so clearly linked and the work of a foreign gang? Why should we, as taxpayers and ratepayers, have to bear the expenses of three senior detectives and their teams when one would do? Why does the Government not take control of the matter and put the investigation into the hands of one of the Metropolitan Police’s most senior officers who will, by definition, have more experience of murder inquiries than the inexperienced of Marlow and the novices of Norfolk?
Four, I fear that the Department is about to face a most difficult decision. You are caught, Minister, to use a phrase too readily invoked, I fear, by my colleagues, caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Refuse the pleas for a single man and the newspapers will hound you for taking the wrong decision. Appoint a single man who fails to solve the mystery and the newspapers will hound you for taking the wrong decision. Consistency has never been a necessary feature of the behaviour of the Press. Opportunism is all.
Sir Fitzroy paused at this point and read his memorandum back to himself. There were, he knew, many of his colleagues who would give firm advice at this point to follow a particular course of action. It was known at the Athenaeum lunch club as making the minister’s mind up for him. But that was not Sir Fitzroy’s way. It was not for him to tell his minister what to do. Not this time anyway, with such a delicate issue. His job was to marshal the arguments for and against, to make sure that the minister was fully informed about the options involved. Anything more definite, as he used to say in his introductory lecture to new recruits to the Civil Service, would be a usurpation of the functions of government.
The man they called Eye Patch stood motionless behind his curtains and stared out to sea. It was half an hour short of midnight and nothing moved on the streets and the seafront of the little town. The moon was nearly full and if he looked closely he could see the small collection of yachts moored in the harbour. The largest and most mysterious was his own. He could, had he so fancied, have looked at her through the finest telescope money could buy, permanently sited up in the top floor of his huge house, but he couldn’t be bothered to climb two flights of stairs. There were no lights on in the drawing room looking out over the waters. The man disliked the thought of being overlooked. He valued security above all else. Why else should he hide himself away like a reclusive
