Copyright & Information

Petrella At Q

First published in 1977

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105346	9780755105342	Print
0755132017	9780755132010	Kindle
0755132386	9780755132386	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The plot," wrote Keating, "is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings." It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: "I always take a latish train to work," he explained in 1980, "and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.". After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Note

When the first of these stories was written there was no Q Division of the Metropolitan Police Area. Recently an extra Division has been carved out on the north-west outer perimeter and awarded this letter. It seemed to me that since there could be no possible confusion between this Division and the Division in which Detective Inspector, (later Detective Chief Inspector), Petrella was operating during the year described in this book, I would leave it. I need hardly add that no reference is intended to any actual police officer or other person in either Division.

Patrick Petrella

When Lieutenant of police, Gregorio Petrella married Mirabel Trentham-Foster, their acquaintances were more than surprised; they were positively aghast. They predicted disaster, rapid disillusionment and separation. The two persons concerned confounded these prophets. They lived together in love and amity, and have continued to do so until this day.

The use, in the previous sentence, of the word “acquaintances” rather than “friends” was deliberate. Both of them were solitary by nature. This may have helped to cement their happiness. When two solitary-minded people find each other, their union can be very firm.

At the time of his marriage, Gregorio was a lieutenant in the political branch of the Spanish police, the equivalent, in England, of the Special Branch. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he spent most of his working life keeping General Franco alive. He carried out his duties efficiently, not out of any love of El Caudillo, or even of any particular sympathy with his policies, but because it was his job, and one which he was technically well equipped to do.

For one of Gregorio’s particular accomplishments, uncommon in a Spaniard, was that he was a linguist, bilingual in Spanish and French, competent in Arabic and English. This was useful since most of the hopeful conspiracies aimed at the removal of the head of the Spanish State had their origins abroad. A lot of his work took him into the country of the Basques and across the Pyrenees into Southern France.

Sometimes he went farther afield; to Tangiers, to Sicily and to Beirut. It was in Egypt that he found Miss Trentham-Foster. She was attempting a painting of the pyramids.

She had already torn up three versions in disgust and said to the friendly young Spaniard who had been watching her, “They all look so damnably conventional.” Gregorio considered the matter, and said, “Might it improve them, if you painted the pyramids lying on their sides? Or even upside down?”

They were married three months later. Patrick was their only son. His upbringing accorded with his parentage. For the first eight years of his life in Spain (a country democratic with children, rigidly autocratic with adults), he spent his time running around with other boys of his own age from all classes of the community, learning things which horrified his mother as much as they amused his father. On his eighth birthday, she put her small foot down. Coming as she did from an English professional family, she had irreversible ideas about the proper education of male children. Captain Gregorio saw that Mirabel’s mind was made up and gave way. His pay was not large, but fortunately there was family money on both sides. Prospectuses were sent for. The rival claims of different preparatory schools were carefully examined and the small Patrick was launched into the traditional educational system of the English middle and upper class.

With such an upbringing, he might have found it difficult to adapt himself to boarding-school life, and it is reasonable to suppose that he was, to start with, fairly miserable; but there were factors in his favour. His temperament was, for the most part, sunny and equable. On the other hand, when he lost his temper, he lost it thoroughly; and he knew how to fight. He had not altogether wasted his time with the small banditti of the slums of Madrid. His methods might be unorthodox, but they were effective.

By the time that he stepped off the other end of the educational escalator at the age of seventeen, there was nothing except the jet blackness of his hair and a slight darkness of his skin to distinguish him from any other public schoolboy.

At this point his father took a hand, and Patrick went, first to the American University in Beirut, where he learned to speak and read Arabic; then to a college of rather peculiar further education in Cairo, where he learned, among other things, how to pick locks.

His own ambitions had hardly changed since the age of eight. On his twenty-first birthday he joined the ranks of the Metropolitan Police as a constable. A slight difficulty, arising out of the question of his nationality was overcome through Colonel Gregorio’s personal friendship with the then Assistant Commissioner. After he had completed his training at Peel House, Patrick’s first posting was to the North London Division of Highside, and it was about his experiences here that the first stories were written.

It will be appreciated that the protagonist of a fictional series differs in a number of respects from his counterpart in real life. He is not born; he springs into being, mature, competent and armed at all points to deal with the first problem his Creator has seen fit to face him with (“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi! driver”.) Such autogenesis had its dangers, even for so meticulous a plotter as Miss Sayers. A whole literature has sprung up in an attempt to reconcile the details of the earlier life of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

There is an equally important matter which afflicts real and fictional characters alike: the matter of growing older. If Hercule Poirot really had retired from the Belgian Police Force in 1904, how old was he on his last appearance?

It may be true that readers, on the whole, care little for these niceties. For them, their favourite characters live forever in a fifth dimension where time does not wither nor custom stale. It is, however, worth noticing one point. Just as people believe that exterior circumstances occurring at the time of a child’s conception (a period of happiness, a sudden shock, the conjunction of the planets or the phases of the moon) can affect the infant’s character thereafter, so can quite trivial occurrences on the occasion of his first public appearance affect, for better or for worse, a character destined for a long fictional life.

The fictional Patrick Petrella was conceived in church. The moment of his conception is as clearly fixed in my mind as though it had happened yesterday, not twenty-five years ago. It was a drowsy summer evening and the preacher had reached what appeared to be only the mid-point of his sermon. It was not an inspired address, and I turned, as I sometimes do in such circumstances, to the hymn book for relief. It opened on the lines of Christina Rosetti, “Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I. But when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.” A commonplace thought, given great effect by the rhythm and placing of the words. Then—”Who has seen the wind? Neither 1 nor you. But when the leaves hang trembling, the wind is passing through”.

And there, quite suddenly, it was. A scene, complete in every last detail. A working-class family, composed of wife and children, sitting in their front room, being talked to by a visitor (parson? social worker? policeman?) but remaining totally unresponsive to his efforts. Answering in monosyllables. Trembling. Heads bowed down. Why? Because they know, but their visitor does not, that there is a monster in the back room. Their father, a violent criminal, had escaped that day from prison and is hiding there. Certainly heads would hang and limbs be trembling. It is at that moment that their visitor (he is now quite definitely a policeman, and a youngster at that) recalls the lines of the poem and realises the truth. He bursts into the back room, and tackles the intruder, who gets the better of him, and escapes. Pursuit. Final capture.

In that short sequence, which cannot have lasted for more than a few seconds, a complete character was encapsulated. A young policeman, in his first posting (this was automatically North London, since we had lived in Highgate before migrating to rural Kent); sufficiently interested in his job, and in the people involved in it, to visit the wife of a man who was serving a prison sentence; sufficiently acute to notice the unnatural behaviour of the woman and her normally rowdy children; sufficiently imaginative to deduce the reason for a single, furtive glance in the direction of the kitchen door. Courageous enough to go for the man, not nearly strong enough to overpower him, but with sufficient tenacity to continue the chase after he had been roughly handled; above all, an unusual young man, who read and could quote poetry.

Most police work was knowledge; knowledge of an infinity of small, everyday facts, unimportant by themselves, deadly when taken together. Nevertheless, Petrella retained an obstinate conviction that there were other things as well, deeper things and finer things; colours, shapes and sounds of absolute beauty, unconnected with the world of small people in small houses in grey streets. And while in one pocket of his old raincoat he might carry Moriarty’s Police Law, in the other would lie, dog-eared with use, the Golden Treasury of Palgrave.

“She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies,” said Petrella, and, “That car’s been there a long time. If it’s still there when I come back it might be worth looking into.”

Almost everything that happened afterwards was as traceable to that first conception as is the character of a real person to the vagaries of his parents and the accidents of the nursery and the schoolroom. Other things were added later, of course. Why was he called Petrella? A foolish question. Why are you called Gubbins? Because it was your father’s name. Why such an odd name? Because his father was a foreigner. Then why Patrick? Because his mother was an Englishwoman.

It was this dichotomy which produced the two opposite strands in his character. His father was a professional policeman, who carried out a job which was not always agreeable, in a totally professional manner. In such a situation, the end might be held to justify the means. At the same time, since he was a political policeman, it was inevitable that he would, from time to time, question the motives and the character of the people who gave him his orders.

From his mother, the daughter of an architect and the grand-daughter of a judge who was also an accomplished painter, he derived the cultural heritage of the English upper middle class, together with something else; an abstract notion of what was fair and what was unfair. It is a notion which is unfashionable in the materialistic win-at-any-price atmosphere of today. But curious that it should be sneered at when one considers the state in which the world now finds itself.

A Spanish temper and an English sense of equity. Such dangerous opposites were capable, from time to time, of combining into an explosive mixture capable of blowing Patrick Petrella clean out of the carefully regulated ranks of the Metropolitan Police.

At the moment of writing, he is a Detective Chief Inspector, in charge of one of the three stations in a rowdy but colourful South London Division.

His position dictates both the types of wrong-doing he will encounter and the general method of their solution. (Incidentally, it also overcomes an initial difficulty. A purely amateur detective who is also a series character has somehow to account plausibly for the extraordinary sequence of crimes with which he becomes involved. If a corpse is found in the library every time he happens to visit a country house, people will soon stop asking him down for the weekend.)

To a member of the C.I.D. crime is his daily portion. It will certainly not be an undiluted diet of murder. The crimes which come his way will cover innumerable variations on the general themes of theft and violence, of arson, blackmail, forgery and fraud.

For the most part, such crimes will be solved by the well-tried methods of the police. The asking of questions, the taking of statements, the analysis of physical evidence, the use of the Criminal Record Office, the Fingerprint Bank and the Forensic Science Laboratory. It is routine stuff for the most part; more perspiration than inspiration, but maybe none the less intriguing for that.

Petrella has the good fortune to belong, at a particular stage in its development, to what is, without question, the finest police force in the world. Whether he will rise any higher in it depends in part on his own efforts, in part on whether he can get along without unduly upsetting the top brass and in part on a number of imponderables about which it is pointless to conjecture.

Summer

The Elusive Baby

At the seaside, a heatwave can be a blessing. In August, in South London, in Detective Inspector Patrick Petrella’s view, it was too much of a good thing.

“Arson, wife-beating and indecent exposure,” he said to Detective Sergeant Blencowe. “Mostly the result of bad temper.”

“Seasonal,” said Blencowe. “Like shoplifting and cruelty to children. We get them at Christmas. You want to count your blessings. At least we aren’t lumbered with—”

What wrong-doing they were not lumbered with will never be known, because at that moment the telephone in the C.I.D. room at Patton Street rang. Petrella picked up the telephone, listened for a moment and said, “Damn and blast. All right, I’ll be right over.” And to Blencowe, “You’d better come with me. Someone’s lifted a baby.”

Baldwin Mansions was an old, but not unattractive block of council flats, arranged round an open courtyard. The flats had tiny balconies, with low balustrades. Outside the entrance to staircase E, a group of women had collected. The centre of attention was a sobbing woman. Not unattractive, thought Petrella. Middle twenties. Light hair, and a sunburned skin which was a contrast to the white cockney faces round her.

Constable Owers greeted his arrival with relief. “This is Mrs. Morgan,” he said. “It’s her baby boy. He was in the pram, on the balcony here.” He indicated the perambulator, a new and rather expensive model, with a strip of material which acted as a sort of blind in front.

“She means,” said Owers, “that she usually keeps that sort of flap thing down in front. The child’s very sensitive to sunlight.”

“That’s right,” said one of the women. “Always down, that flap in front was.”

Petrella detected a note of criticism in her voice. Maybe she was a fresh-air fiend. He said, “I suppose that means she can’t tell us when he went.”

Petrella was remembering all the things that he now had to do. The routine was well established, but there was a lot of it He said to Blencowe and Owers, “Start taking statements from all the women who live here. We want to know if anyone has been seen in this courtyard since nine o’clock. Any stranger. Particularly a strange woman. You know the form. I’ll get back to the station and alert Central. I’ll need a description of the baby. Can anyone give me that?”

He looked round the circle, which had fallen oddly silent. It was Owers, in the end, who said, “She gave me a sort of description. It was nine months old. Dressed in a white coloured wrap-round thing.” Constable Owers was a bachelor. Blencowe said, “He means a body-binder.”

The girl stopped crying long enough to say, “He had his father’s hair and eyes. He was the image of his father.”

“That’s enough to be going on with,” said Petrella. He made his way back to the car which had brought him. As he was climbing in he noticed that one of the women had followed him. She said, “Excuse me for taking the liberty, but I’d like a word with you.”

The woman said, “I don’t want to make trouble, but the others thought I ought to have a word with you. Before you start anything.”

“That Mrs. Morgan, she’s been here more’n a month now. And none of us haven’t seen the baby.” She added, with a depth of meaning which was not hidden from Petrella, “Nor we haven’t heard it, neither.”

Petrella, who knew something of the way life was lived in council flats, said, “I suppose it’s possible. Some babies are a lot quieter than others.”

“Another thing, she used to take it out in the pram, always with that flap down. Once, last week, Missus Crombie couldn’t resist it no more. She said, ‘I must have a peep at the little darling’, and she lifted the flap.” The pause was clearly for dramatic effect.

“Soap-flakes,” said Petrella. “Washing. Surely you’d have noticed that.”

“We’ve seen baby clothes. A pile of them hanging out to dry. But what we said was, baby clothes don’t necessarily mean a baby.”

The verdict of the jury of matrons was clear. And it was a verdict which put Petrella right on the spot. He knew, none better, the necessity for speed when a baby was stolen. The whole of the police of the Metropolis and the Home Counties needed the news. Hospitals, child-welfare organisations, chemists’ shops, children’s clothing shops had to be alerted. A warning had to go to all Registrars. And that most useful ally, the Press, had to be briefed. He also knew that if he set all this in motion and was being fooled, he was booked for something worse than a red face.

Back at Patton Street he got on the telephone and put his divisional boss, Chief Superintendent Watterson, rapidly in the picture. Watterson said, “From what you tell me, it seems to me we’re on a hiding to nothing either way.” (Some Chief Superintendents would have said “you”, not “we”. It was one of the reasons he liked working for Watterson.) He said, “She’s only been at Baldwin Mansions for a few weeks. The baby’s nine months old.”

“What I thought I’d do is get the girl round here for questioning. That’s natural enough in the circumstances, and it’ll keep her away from the Press. I’ll find out where she came from, get there quick. If there was a child, someone there must know about it.”

“We’ll hope it won’t be the Outer Hebrides,” said Watterson, who came from those parts himself. “All right. Whilst you’re doing that, I’ll alert Central, and start things moving. But I’ll warn them to keep it out of the papers for the moment. Right?”

“Right,” said Petrella. It was a relief to have some definite action ahead of him.

An hour later, as he sat in the front seat of the police car which Sergeant Blencowe was driving, he thought about the story the girl had told them. It was a simple one, and it could be true. Her husband, Evan Morgan, was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, and twenty years older than her. They’d been married for six years. During the first five years, he had had a shore-based job at Chatham and they had lived in their caravan on a site near Cuxton on the Medway. A year ago, two disasters had hit them at the same time. The caravan site had closed, and her husband had been re-rated for service on an aircraft carrier, currently in the Indian Ocean. A local landowner, a retired Commander Fanshawe, had come to their rescue. It was the Commander’s address, the Manor House, Cuxton, that Petrella had scribbled on a piece of paper.

The Commander opened the door to them himself. Petrella put him down as a man with money, who had left the service before retiring age to look after his property. When Petrella said, “I’ve come about a Mrs. Morgan. I believe she had a caravan on your land recently,” the Commander stared at him blankly then burst out laughing and said, “Whoever said the law was slow? Fancy you getting on to it so quick.”

“I suppose the planning people alerted you. Mind you, I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t seem to be hurting anyone. But regulations are regulations. Tell me the worst. Am I going to be put in prison?”

Petrella had at last grasped what he was talking about. He said, “You mean you didn’t get planning permission for her caravan to be on your property?”

“I tucked it away, behind Long Shaw Copse. I didn’t think anyone spotted it from first to last.”

“That’s what I really want to talk about,” said Petrella, and told him the story.

“It’s funny you should think that,” said the Commander. “It did occur to me, from time to time, that it was rather an elusive baby. I never saw it myself, and I couldn’t swear that anyone else did. Mind you, if she was fooling, she did it thoroughly. I saw baby clothes hung out to dry once or twice. And baby foods and stuff like that used to be delivered. I know that, because the tradespeople left the stuff here, and she collected it. They wouldn’t go up to the caravan. She had a boxer bitch she used to leave in charge when she went out. A short-tempered old girl. She took a piece out of my trousers once.”

“Didn’t she have any friends? People who called on her? You couldn’t very easily hide a baby from someone actually in the caravan.”

The Commander said, speaking slowly and rather reluctantly, “There was one. I don’t know that you can blame the girl. Living all alone in a neck of the woods.”

“He’s a local farmer. I don’t think I’m going to tell you his name. I’m sorry I brought it up. It was only gossip really.”

“All right,” said Petrella. “But let’s clear up one point. Her husband was posted overseas in January last year. The baby’s said to be nine months old. Was it soon after he left that she got friendly with this man, because if it was—”

“All right,” said the Commander. “I can do sums as well as you. Yes, it was immediately he left. She was very lonely. After the child was born, she seemed to lose interest in him. Maybe the child was company for her.”

“If he existed,” agreed the Commander. “One way you could have found out would have been to have a word with our District Nurse. Only you can’t. Six months ago she drove her car over a chalk-pit in a snow storm, on her way to a confinement. Tragic thing. However, you could try the Registrar at Chatham.”

From Chatham, an hour later, he telephoned Superintendent Watterson. He said, “We’d better back-pedal on this. No one here ever saw the baby. And no baby of that name was registered in the last six months of last year.”

When Petrella got back, Watterson said to him, “I’ve had a word with the lady. I talked to her like a Dutch uncle.”

“Not in so many words. I thought her denials were wearing a bit thin by the end. When I told her that until we had actual proof of the child’s existence we weren’t prepared to pursue the case, I thought she was pretty relieved, actually.”

Petrella said, “I shan’t be sorry, either. It isn’t as though we hadn’t got enough on our plates—”

It was at this moment that Constable Owers came into the room. He laid the evening paper on the table, folding it ostentatiously so that the headline could be seen. It said, in large black letters,

The next twenty-four hours was a period Petrella liked to forget. It wasn’t only the reporters, although they were bad enough. A missing baby is always good for a story. A missing baby which might not exist was front-page stuff. It was when District started getting round his neck that Petrella began thinking about resignation.

Watterson did his best, but Baylis, the head of No. 2 District at that time, was a bit of an old woman. To do him justice, he was probably being prodded by Central.

On the afternoon of the second day, with the temperature in the middle nineties, Petrella put his cards flat on the table. He said, “We’ve got two alternatives. We can tell the world that we don’t believe there was a baby. Or we can mount a search. I’d like to know which we’re to do.”

“So should I,” said Watterson. “I put the matter in that way to Baylis myself.”

“He said that I was the man on the spot, and in the best position to make my mind up.”

Petrella was on the point of saying something insubordinate when the Station Sergeant opened the door and ushered in a large, aggressive, red-headed man, who said, “What’s all this cock and bull about Elsie Morgan not having a baby? Certainly she had a baby. I’m his father.”

“The person who mentioned you was careful not to name anyone. He just said that someone had been friendly with Mrs. Morgan, after her husband was posted abroad—”

“Fair enough. I’m not denying anything. I was sorry for the poor kid. Dumped down in the middle of nowhere with nothing but sheep and cows to talk to. I’m not ashamed of what I did. These things happen.” He added, with a grin, “That husband of hers had been trying for five years. Perhaps he hadn’t got the knack.”

Petrella thought that there were few men whom he had disliked more on sight than Sam Turner. And he could understand and forgive Mrs. Morgan getting tired of him. But his mind was preoccupied with much colder and less comfortable thoughts.

Whilst he was working out this new line of speculation, Watterson took over. He said, “I take it you’ve actually seen this baby?”

“Seen it? Of course I’ve bloody well seen it. I’ve had it on my knee. Piddled on me more than once, messy little bastard.”

“I haven’t seen it up in London, if that’s what you mean. Soon as I read the papers I came up to have things out with Elsie. There was a bobby on the door. He wouldn’t let me in. That’s why I came round here.”

“And this is the first time you’ve tried to see Mrs. Morgan since she left Cuxton?”

“Of course it’s the first time. I didn’t know where she was before, did I?”

“You mean she came up to London without telling you anything about it. That’s rather odd, if you were the father of her child, isn’t it?”

For the first time, Turner looked uncomfortable. He said, “As a matter of fact, for the last few months, we weren’t quite so friendly. It wasn’t any of my doing – but that’s the way it was. Now I want to see her and the boy, and straighten it all out. I’ve got my rights.”

“As things stand at the moment,” said Watterson coldly, “you’ve got no rights at all. If you’ll wait downstairs – the Sergeant will show you the way – I’ll see what I can do for you.”

When the door had closed behind them, he said, “What’s worrying you, Patrick?”

“It’s something that’s been bothering me all along,” said Petrella. “And I’m afraid I’ve guessed the answer. If she wanted to keep the baby hidden, why on earth did she come up to London? As long as she was tucked away, in a caravan, on private property, guarded by a dog of uncertain temper, the thing was easy. In a council flat in London, it must have been almost impossible.”

“All right,” said Watterson. “I can see you’ve worked it all out. You tell me.”

“I think it was because she wanted to lose the baby convincingly before her husband came home. She couldn’t stage-manage it in a field in the country. No one would have believed it.”

“That’s possible enough,” said Watterson slowly. “But if she brought the baby up with her, where is it now?”

“She didn’t bring it with her,” said Petrella. “It’s in a hole in the ground, somewhere in Kent.” He added, “Sam Turner thinks so, too. I saw him thinking it.”

“It makes sense,” said Watterson, at last. “We’d better alert the local talent. If she did it at the last moment before she came to London, the grave will still be fairly fresh. They’ve got instruments which register on freshly opened ground. They’d better get on with it.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“I thought I might take Sam round with me. He already suspects the truth. As soon as he sees the child isn’t there, he’s going to blow his top.”

“I can’t think of anything in Judges’ Rules against it,” said Watterson.

When Petrella arrived back at Baldwin Mansions he found the patient Constable Owers arguing with a thick-set, black-haired man wearing a dark blue suit and the unmistakable look of a sailor out of uniform.

“Of course I’m her husband,” said the man in tones of deep exasperation. “Who the flaming hell d’you think I am? The Shah of Persia.”

“It’s a fine state of affairs if I need a ticket to get in to see my wife,” said the man. He produced a pay-book and other papers which identified him as Chief Petty Officer Evan Morgan. “I’ve spent fifteen flaming hours out of the last twenty in aeroplanes. Now I’ve got here, the police stop me seeing her.”

“I think we’d all three better go in,” said Petrella, with a glance at the crowd who were lapping it up. It seemed hardly the time or the place to explain who Sam Turner was.

When Mrs. Morgan opened the door to them, she took a startled look at the three men, threw her arms round her husband’s neck, and burst into tears. Somehow they got themselves into the living-room.

“What’s all this, Else,” said her husband. “I saw a lot of stuff in the papers about our baby. The Navy flew me home straight away. Where’d they dream up all that story about it not really being there at all.”

“Of course it was there,” said Turner, who had been steadily coming to the boil. “I told ‘em, I’ve had it on my knee, more than once.”

There was a moment of paralysed silence, and then Morgan, moving with surprising speed for a man of his bulk, had Turner by the throat. Turner grabbed his wrists and tried to pull them off. Then he changed his tactics and hit Morgan in the stomach. As Morgan dropped his hands, they broke apart and Petrella slipped between them. They were both bigger and heavier than he was. Before they could start the fight again they were interrupted. It was the thin cry of a baby, who has been woken up, and is annoyed about it.

Mrs. Morgan darted from the room, and came back, carrying a fat, sleepy-looking child. It had a surprising amount of hair for its age, and it was already quite undeniably russet, if not yet red colour.

“My grandfather had red hair,” said Morgan. “The child’s thrown back to him.”

Turner growled, and sidled forward, but Petrella had had enough. He said, “If you start rough-housing again, I’ll have you run in.” He signalled from the window to Sergeant Blencowe, who came at the double.

Turner looked as if he would have wished to argue, but Sergeant Blencowe had played rugby for the London Welsh, in the second row of the scrum, and very few people argued with him.

When Turner had gone, Petrella said to Morgan, “I want to talk to you. Alone.”

As they were going, the baby, who had been regarding Chief Petty Officer Morgan with a fixed, if slightly unfocused stare, suddenly smiled and said, “Da”.

It hardly seemed to Petrella to be conclusive evidence of paternity, but it cheered up both the Morgans enormously.

Petrella said, “It’s pretty clear, now, what happened. She was afraid you might disown the child.”

“Quite so,” said Petrella. “But she wasn’t sure you’d take such a sensible attitude. And there’s no doubt she’d been a bit indiscreet with that chap Turner.”

“That red-headed turd. If he makes any trouble I’ll fix him properly. Just tell me one thing. That child belongs to me. Right?”

“The child,” said Petrella slowly, “quite definitely belongs to you. You’re Mrs. Morgan’s husband. It was born, I gather, ten months after you left England, but that’s by no means exceptional.”

“Right,” said Chief Petty Officer Morgan. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

Petrella left the three of them together. They seemed to have arrived at a perfect understanding.

“Lucky his grandfather had red hair,” said Chief Superintendent Watterson that evening. “I still don’t understand what the hell she was playing at.”

“I think I do,” said Petrella. “She was nervous that as soon as her husband saw the child, he’d assume she’d been fooling round with Sam Turner. Which, of course, she had. She therefore, decided to ditch the child. But she couldn’t bring herself to hurt it. She staged what she thought would be a convincing child stealing here in London. A black-haired, blue-eyed baby, remember? Just like his dad. As soon as the fuss died down I imagine she was going to deposit the child, warmly wrapped up, on the steps of the Town Hall. No one would have associated it with her. What she underestimated was the Press coverage. It brought Sam Turner running.”

“What she underestimated,” said Watterson, “was her husband’s ambition to have a child, and to wipe Sam Turner’s eye—”

The Banting Street Fire

When Petrella arrived, Banting Street was blocked by a line of fire engines and fire tenders. Some way ahead of him, he could see a column of billowing smoke, white where the spotlights from the tenders hit it, shot through at the base with spiteful little tongues of orange flame. Over all hung the sharp, ozone smell of the foam extinguishers; and, as he found when he put up his hand to wipe his face, a steady drizzle of black smuts.

He pushed through the crowd and ran into Bill Brewer, the Borough Fire Officer. Brewer said, “Lucky we got here as quick as we did. With this wind it could have taken out half the street. I reckon we’ve got it under control now.”

“Garage and workshop. Won’t be much of it left by the time we’re through.” This was punctuated by a crash of falling timbers and a firework display of sparks.

“I’ll give you my ideas in the morning,” said Brewer, and hurried off. It was evident, even to Petrella’s inexpert eyes, that the fire was subsiding. He went home to bed.

When he got to Patton Street next morning, he found on his desk a copy of the report, which had gone to Superintendent Berriman, the head of the uniformed branch. It said that the Premier Garage in Banting Street belonged to William Cookson, who had acquired it three years before. There was a workshop, which formed the whole of the ground floor, and had working space for two cars. There was a yard at the back with a small office and lean-to accommodation for four more cars, which was approached from Kentledge Road and Banting Passage. There was living accommodation over the workshop.

It was the last sentence in the report which caught Petrella’s eye. This said, “The fire brigade authorities are not satisfied as to the origins of this conflagration.”

Petrella was still wondering why Constable Mitchinson, who had written the report, had used a four-syllable word to describe a one-syllable event when Bill Brewer was shown in.

“I’m afraid I had to,” said Petrella. “I ought to have had the sense to wear a gas-cape like you.”

“Dead sure. It had three different points of origin. Two in the workshop, one in the office at the back. O.K., I’m prepared to believe a fire can start accidentally. What I’m not prepared to believe in is three separate accidents happening on the same premises at the same time.”

“We’d call that conclusive by itself. But it’s not all. Not by any means. There was a strong wind last night. It helped to spread the fire. But it also blew it away from one of its points of origin in the office at the back. And we found this.”

He took from his briefcase an object wrapped in tissue paper, unwrapped it and placed it on Petrella’s desk. It had suffered in the flames, but was still recognisable as a small alarm clock, with the frayed ends of two wires sticking out of the back.

“Quite a neat job. It was connected to the electric fire in the office, through the fuse box. Whoever set it up, took out the fuse, and then turned the electric fire on. When this jigger went off, it restored the circuit. I don’t know what had been left in front of that fire. A pile of cotton waste soaked in petrol or a box of old film. Whatever it was has been destroyed, of course.”