Hardcastle's Mandarin

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

It is June 1917. DDI Ernest Hardcastle, head of the CID for the Whitehall division of the Metropolitan Police, is called to investigate the murder of a very senior civil servant, Sir Nigel Strang. Given that Sir Nigel was the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Munitions, Hardcastle wonders whether the German Intelligence Service might be responsible. Then another murder, of a man on a bus near Scotland Yard, leads Hardcastle to a woman working at Woolwich Arsenal who is suspected of passing information to the enemy. But is there a connection? Hardcastle, aided by Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott, must find out . . .

Release date: October 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 208

Sample

The milkman was somewhat of a dandy. His navy-blue apron covered the top of his gaiters, which in turn covered the top of his boots. But he wore a
waistcoat – an albert strung between the pockets – and a bowler hat. And he was whistling.

It was Tuesday, the fifteenth of May 1917, and the Great War, as it became known, had been dragging on for two years and nine months. The optimists who had forecast that it would be over by
Christmas 1914 had been proved disastrously wrong.

‘Morning, guv’nor,’ said the milkman cheerfully, as he limped across Kennington Road, Lambeth, a small churn of milk in his hand. The limp was a legacy of the Battle of the
Somme, a battle that had marked the end of his brief military career.

‘That for twenty-seven?’ asked the policeman.

‘That’s right, guv. It’s that Scotland Yard detective who lives there, so they say.’ In fact, the occupant was a divisional officer, but his police station was
immediately opposite the Yard, hence the milkman’s belief.

‘Give us it here, then,’ growled the policeman in reply. It was just past six in the morning, and he should have been off duty ten minutes ago. He was not, therefore, in the best of
moods. With some trepidation, he banged loudly on the door of number twenty-seven, a house not far from where the legendary Charlie Chaplin had been born.

It was some time, and several knocks, later, that the door was opened by a stocky man, some five foot ten in height. His greying hair was tousled, and he wore an old jacket over a
nightshirt.

‘DDI Hardcastle, sir?’ queried the policeman.

‘Yes, and what the hell do you want at this hour of the morning?’ Hardcastle glanced at the milk churn in the policeman’s hand. ‘You taken to delivering milk in your
spare time, lad? That’s against the regulations, you know.’

‘No, sir, I was just doing the milkman a favour.’

‘Well, you’re not doing me any. What d’you want?’ Hardcastle asked again.

The policeman placed the milk churn on the doorstep, and fumbled in one of his tunic pockets, eventually producing a message flimsy. ‘It’s from Detective Inspector Rhodes at Cannon
Row, sir. There’s been a murder in Whitehall.’ The PC handed over the message form. ‘He requests your immediate attendance.’

‘Well, at least this one’s on my own patch.’ Ernest Hardcastle, the divisional detective inspector of the A or Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police, had had a surfeit
of out-of-town enquiries recently. He tugged at his Kitchener-style moustache as he glanced through the handwritten message. He grunted and looked at the PC. ‘Are the bus drivers still on
strike, lad?’

‘Yes, sir, and the trams are crowded fit to bust.’

‘In that case you can find me a cab while I get dressed.’ And with that, Hardcastle slammed the door leaving the policeman, and the milk churn, on the doorstep.

It took the DDI less than ten minutes to shave, attire himself in his customary blue serge suit, and don his bowler hat. Seizing his umbrella, he shouted to Alice, his wife, to tell her where he
was going, and walked out to the street.

‘Where to, guv?’ ask the cab driver.

‘Ministry of Munitions in Whitehall, and be quick about it,’ said Hardcastle.

An A Division policeman stood at the entrance to the building bearing a brass plate proclaiming it to be the offices not only of the Ministry of Munitions, but of the
Ministries of Food and Health also. He saluted as Hardcastle approached him. ‘All correct, sir.’

‘Matter of opinion,’ muttered Hardcastle, as ever irritated by the requirement that junior ranks should make such a report, whether things were all correct or not. ‘Where is
it?’

‘Top of the stairs, sir. It’s the big door facing you. There’s a PC outside.’

Hardcastle produced his warrant card to the custodian, and mounted the broad, stone-flagged staircase. As the policeman at the front door had said, there was another policeman stationed outside
a large oaken door. He too saluted and reported that all was correct before opening the door for Hardcastle.

Detective Inspector Rhodes stepped across as Hardcastle entered the room. ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning, Mr Rhodes.’ Hardcastle gazed around the well-ordered office. There was a large desk, and a high-backed chair. To one side stood a large bookcase, and his eye lighted
on a copy of the Army List 1917; he wondered briefly why the office’s occupant should have such a volume.

‘I’m sorry to have called you out, sir,’ Rhodes continued, ‘but this murder could have repercussions.’

‘Repercussions, Mr Rhodes? Who is it, then?’

‘Sir Nigel Strang, sir. He’s permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Munitions.’

Although Hardcastle was surprised at the murder of so senior a civil servant, he showed no signs of that surprise. ‘D’you know that for sure, Mr Rhodes?’

‘None of the officials have arrived yet, sir, but the night-duty custodian, a man called Bowles, has positively identified him.’

‘Cause of death?’ Hardcastle walked across the room to where a body was lying on the floor between the large desk and a window that gave a view of Whitehall. The victim’s
waistcoat was stained red with blood.

‘Looks like a single stab wound to the heart, sir,’ suggested Rhodes. ‘It was either a lucky hit, or he knew what he was doing.’

‘Find any weapon, did you?’ asked Hardcastle, as he knelt to examine the body more closely.

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, that rules out suicide, I suppose,’ muttered Hardcastle, somewhat jocularly, as he stood up again. ‘Who found him, Mr Rhodes?’

‘A charwoman, sir. There’s four or five of ’em come in at about half past five each morning to clean the offices.’

‘How did they get in?’

‘The night-duty custodian let them in, sir.’

‘Where’s he?’

‘In the next room, sir, along with the charwoman. DS Marriott’s taking statements.’ Rhodes pointed at a door on the far side of the office.

Hardcastle entered the smaller office that, he later learned, was normally occupied by Sir Nigel Strang’s secretary. Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott sat behind the desk, writing. An
elderly man in a blue uniform with crowns on the collar was sitting in front of Marriott. Seated next to the custodian was a young woman, probably no older than twenty-five, whose tear-stained face
was still drained of colour, doubtless with the shock of having discovered Strang’s body.

‘Morning, Marriott.’

‘Good morning, sir.’ Marriott rose to his feet.

‘I’ll have a word with these two before you carry on,’ said Hardcastle. He switched his gaze to the custodian. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Bowles, sir. Henry Bowles.’

‘When did you start duty here?’

‘Last night, sir, at ten o’clock. I’m supposed to be off at six. Me relief’s downstairs already.’

‘Yes, and I wasn’t supposed to start until nine o’clock,’ Hardcastle said, with no show of sympathy, although he was often to be found in his office at eight. ‘But
there’s a war on. Tell me what your duties are, Bowles.’ He sat down and began to fill his pipe.

‘To be stationed at the main entrance, sir, but once each tour of duty, I has a walk round the offices to make sure that no lights has been left on, nor no safes left unlocked.
They’re very tight on security here.’

‘So tight that the permanent secretary got himself murdered,’ said Hardcastle drily. ‘When did you last visit Sir Nigel’s office?’

‘Must’ve been about eleven o’clock last night, sir. Like I said, I checked that the lights was out, and that Sir Nigel’s safe was locked.’

‘Does that mean that you didn’t know that Sir Nigel was in the building?’

‘That’s right, sir. But the bosses has their own key and can come and go as they like.’

‘Their own key to where?’

‘There’s a private entrance at the back of the building, sir, and a flight of stairs what leads up to the floor where their offices is. That’s this floor.’

‘Oh, very secure,’ said Hardcastle sarcastically. ‘And do these important people always use that entrance?’

‘Not always, sir. Like as not they comes and goes through the front door.’

‘And how d’you get to this secret entrance, Bowles?’

‘You goes through archway off of King Charles Street, sir, into the quadrangle and the door’s on the left.’

Hardcastle glanced at his sergeant. ‘People coming and going without so much as a by-your-leave. You wouldn’t think there was a war on, would you, Marriott?’

‘No, sir.’ Sensing that his chief was on the point of launching into one of his usual diatribes about lack of wartime security, Marriott confined himself to monosyllabic words of
agreement.

‘Seems odd having the Food, Health and Munitions Ministries all together,’ commented Hardcastle.

‘Oh, they don’t have nothing to do with each other, sir,’ said Bowles. ‘They just shares the same building, if you takes my drift. They’re all separate.’

‘D’you always do night duty, Bowles?’

‘No, sir, we does lates, earlies and nights, week and week about.’

‘Did anyone leave the building or, in fact, arrive here during your tour of duty?’

‘No, sir, nobody. Apart from the cleaning ladies, and they gets here about half past five of a morning.’

‘And what about you, miss?’ Hardcastle directed his gaze at the young woman sitting next to Bowles. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Daisy Johnson, sir. Mrs Daisy Johnson.’

‘And how long have you been a cleaner here?’

‘About a year and a half, sir, ever since my Gerald was called up,’ said Daisy. ‘He’s a lance-sergeant in the Grenadier Guards,’ she added proudly, ‘but even
so, the marriage allowance don’t add up to much, not when there’s two bairns to feed and clothe.’

‘Who looks after them while you’re working?’ asked Hardcastle, as ever a stickler for gathering inconsequential pieces of information.

‘Me mother, sir.’

‘Live near you, does she?’

‘Yes, sir. She lives with me in Peabody Buildings, off Wild Street. It’s not far from Bow Street.’

‘Do you always clean Sir Nigel’s office, Daisy?’

‘Yes, sir. And it’s the first one I does each morning.’

‘Have you ever found Sir Nigel in his office that early in the morning before?’

Daisy Johnson put a hand to her mouth, but Hardcastle noticed that she hesitated. ‘No, sir, never. And I never saw him this morning till I went round behind the desk. Give me the shock of
me life, I can tell you, sir, seeing him lying there.’

‘What time was that?’ asked Hardcastle.

‘Twenty to six,’ said Daisy promptly.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘There’s a clock on the wall in his office, sir, and I noticed that’s what the time was.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I ran downstairs and told Mr Bowles what had happened.’

Hardcastle turned to Bowles. ‘Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir. Just coming up to a quarter of the hour it was.’

‘And you called the police immediately, I presume.’

‘Not straight off, sir. First I went up to check what Daisy had said. To see if Sir Nigel really was dead, having done a bit of first aid like. Then I ran out to the street because I knows
there’s a copper – er, sorry, constable – on a fixed point right outside. He come on up and had a look at the body, and then asked if he could use the telephone.’

‘Who was this PC, Marriott?’ asked Hardcastle.

‘PC 527A Vaughan, sir.’ Marriott had worked with Hardcastle long enough to know that the DDI expected his sergeant to know the answer to any question put to him. ‘DS
Wood’s taken a statement from him.’

‘I should hope so,’ muttered Hardcastle. ‘Tell me, Bowles: when do the officials arrive at this terribly important ministry of yours?’

‘Usually about nine o’clock, sir, although Sir Nigel’s often a bit later than that, ’specially if he’s had to go to an early meeting at Downing Street. And
there’s been a few of them lately, what with the strike and that.’

‘What, the bus drivers’ strike?’

‘No, sir, the munitions workers.’

‘There’s been nothing in the newspapers about that,’ said Hardcastle.

‘No, there wouldn’t have been, sir,’ said Bowles. ‘It’s the press censors what keeps it out of the linen drapers, but between you and me, there’s more than a
hundred thousand out. Lancashire, Sheffield, Coventry and Derby. And some of ’em down here at Woolwich, an’ all. But they was at pains to keep it dark. Sir Nigel was vexed something
cruel about it, to say nothing of Dr Addison.’

‘Who’s Dr Addison?’ queried Hardcastle.

‘He’s the minister hisself, sir. Dr Christopher Addison, he is.’

‘How d’you know all this?’ demanded Hardcastle, somewhat piqued that a ministry doorman should know more about such a crippling strike than he did.

Bowles permitted himself a brief chuckle. ‘You’d be surprised what I hears, just being in the front hall, sir.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t go bandying it about in time of war, Bowles. You never know who’s listening.’ Having, in his view, redressed the balance, Hardcastle returned to the
matter in hand. ‘Who’s the next most important official after Sir Nigel.’

‘That’d be Mr Cresswell, sir. Mr James Cresswell, CB, sir.’

‘What’s he?’

‘Deputy secretary, sir.’

‘And where’s his office when he deigns to turn up?’

‘Right next door to Sir Nigel’s, sir,’ said Bowles. ‘It’s the other door that leads out of his office,’ he added.

‘Carry on, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle, having recognized a booming voice coming from Strang’s office. ‘Sounds as though Dr Spilsbury’s here.’

‘Ah, Hardcastle, a very good morning to you,’ said Spilsbury, as Hardcastle returned to Strang’s office.

‘Good morning, Dr Spilsbury.’

Bernard Spilsbury was the foremost forensic pathologist in the country, if not the world. His skill at determining the cause of death was legion, and defending counsel always dreaded the sight
of his tall, stocky figure ascending the witness box to give evidence for the Crown. His greatest forensic triumph was probably securing the conviction of George Joseph Smith, the infamous
brides-in-the-bath murderer, two years previously.

‘I see the quality of your victims is getting better all the time.’

‘It would seem so, Doctor.’

‘Got a mandarin this time, by Jove.’

‘A what, sir?’ Hardcastle had not the faintest idea what Spilsbury was talking about.

‘Officials like this fellow are called mandarins, Hardcastle.’ Spilsbury gestured at the body of Sir Nigel Strang. ‘The original mandarins were high-ranking officials of the
Chinese Empire, and our senior civil servants seem to have assumed the term to describe themselves, or at least their subordinates have.’

‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs,’ muttered Hardcastle. The only mandarins he knew about were the small oranges that Mrs Hardcastle occasionally bought from the
greengrocer at the end of Kennington Road. Not that any had been available since the start of the war.

Spilsbury knelt down and began to examine the body, occasionally asking questions. But at last he finished his preliminary examination, although to Hardcastle it appeared that the pathologist
had not done very much. ‘Have the cadaver taken to St Mary’s, Paddington, Hardcastle, there’s a good fellow. I’ll let you have my report as soon as possible.’ He stood
up, packed his few instruments into his Gladstone bag, and left.

‘Well, you heard what the doctor said, Mr Rhodes. Get a police van down here to take the body up to Paddington.’

‘Very good, sir. I’ll get someone to do it.’ Rhodes immediately left the room to instruct the constable outside to do what Hardcastle had ordered.

‘What about the charwoman and the custodian, sir?’ asked Marriott, appearing from the next office.

‘Got the full statements?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And home addresses?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right, you can send them home.’ Hardcastle pulled out his chromium hunter, looked at it, briefly wound it, and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘I don’t know
about you, Marriott, but I’m starving. We’ll take a turn down to that cafe near Craig’s Court and have a bite of breakfast. Then we can get back here in time to welcome these
civil servants that come in half way through the day.’ He paused as Inspector Rhodes returned to the office. ‘Better send a message for DI Collins, too, Mr Rhodes. Ask him to have the
office examined for fingerprints.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Hardcastle, like so many officers of his age and service, had still to accustom himself to the comparatively new science of fingerprint identification. It was only as recently as 1909 that it
had been accepted in evidence. Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins was the leading expert in the field and had been head of the Yard’s Fingerprint Department since 1908.

‘And if any of these civil servants arrive before I get back, don’t let any of ’em in here. I shall need to talk to ’em before they start their important war work, but
don’t tell ’em why.’

‘Of course not, sir,’ said Rhodes, slightly offended at being told something that to any detective was second nature. ‘I’ll arrange with the security people for an office
where they can all be assembled.’

‘Good idea,’ said Hardcastle, and seized his bowler hat and umbrella. ‘Come, Marriott.’

On his return, at just after nine o’clock, Hardcastle walked into a storm of protest. Detective Inspector Rhodes had corralled the arriving staff in a conference room on
the first floor of the Ministry.

‘Are you in charge?’ demanded a tall man attired in black jacket, pinstriped trousers, and a grey cravat held in place by a pearl tiepin.

‘Who are you?’ asked Hardcastle.

‘James Cresswell, the deputy secretary.’

‘Yes, I’m in charge. Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division.’

‘Are you indeed? Well, Inspector, I want to know the meaning of this. The moment we arrived, that fellow told us all to come in here, but gave us no reason at all.’ Cresswell
extended a languid hand towards DI Rhodes. ‘I’ll have you know that the Ministry of Munitions is conducting important business vital to the war effort. Sir Nigel Strang will be
extremely annoyed when he hears of this.’

Hardcastle drew the deputy secretary away from the others in the room. ‘Sir Nigel won’t be hearing of it, Mr Cresswell,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s dead. Someone
murdered him. In his office.’

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Cresswell. ‘When did this happen?’

‘I’ll be better placed to answer that when the pathologist sends me his report,’ said Hardcastle mildly. ‘And now, I suggest that your people get to work. Apart from you,
that is. I want a word with you. Perhaps you’d show me to your office.’

A shaken Cresswell led the way along a corridor and ushered Hardcastle and Marriott into his well-appointed office.

‘This has come as a terrible shock, Inspector.’

‘I daresay it has,’ said Hardcastle, as he and Marriott sat down.

Cresswell seated himself at his desk. ‘Are you able to tell me what happened, Inspector?’

Hardcastle outlined the sequence of events as related to him by Bowles, the custodian, and Daisy Johnson, the cleaning woman.

‘And now, Mr Cresswell, you know nearly as much as me.’

‘Do you think that there is some sinister motive behind this tragedy, Inspector?’ Cresswell had, by now, reco. . .