Here Comes The Copper

Book 279: Murder Room

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

PC John Bragg is young and full of ambition, and with his eye on making Superintendent one day, he squares up to each case that comes his way as an opportunity to show himself brave, reliable and a good detective. In town and country, at scenes of murder, robbery, fraud, abduction, military and industrial spying and arson, PC John Bragg's character grows as his mettle is tested. From dealing with artists' models in a murder case, to ensuring a bejewelled, high-spirited American heiress doesn't attract the wrong sort of attention, to protecting the pay destined for a staff of quarrymen, PC Bragg has his work cut out for him.

Release date: June 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

POLICE-CONSTABLE JOHN BRAGG was an ambitious young man who intended to rise to
the highest rank in the Force—Superintendent at least, possibly even Chief Constable. Above that, of course, in the Metropolitan Police Force, there was still this prejudice about bringing in
outsiders—soldiers and such like. Bragg knew that to achieve his dearest wish he must not only be a reliable and brave policeman, he must also be an astute detective. At present he was in the
uniformed branch (B Division, Chelsea), and competition for the C.I.D. was keen, but a constable who displayed unusual powers of observation was sure to get in. Systematically Bragg set himself to
develop those powers; at present they were, he realised, little more than embryonic, but by persistent practice they would develop until his superiors could not fail to notice them.

As he strolled home on completion of a tour of patrol duty on the afternoon of 8th May, 1935, he was following out his principle: Notice and Remember. This was better practice than anything he
did on duty, as then he had to take copious notes in case they were wanted as evidence, and Bragg knew that there is no deadlier enemy of memory than a note-book. Off duty, however, he took no
notes, he Noticed and Remembered. For instance, outside an artists’ colourman’s in the King’s Road stood a low-lying, powerful car, two bucket seats, two minute wind-screens,
bonnet strapped down—one of these Brooklands aces, no doubt, though it was odd to find it outside an artists’ colourman’s. Arda-Rienzi, registration number AWXZ 54, licensed for
the quarter only . . . . Bragg noticed these facts; for the rest of the evening he would put them out of his mind, but to-morrow morning as he shaved he would recite them, together with the other
facts noticed on his way home.

Partly from curiosity he looked into the pigeon-hole in the dash-board and was surprised to see a woman’s vanity bag squeezed in together with a small pair of high-heeled shoes. On the
driver’s side, so presumably belonging to the driver. Not a Brooklands ace after all, then—but there, women were in every game now, more’s the pity, thought Bragg.

Turning down a side-street the young constable found plenty to attract and distract him; a chimney in No. 35 was smoking, No. 42 had a Carter Paterson sign in the window, the front door of 60
was being painted. Now he was in the region of big studios; the first to catch his eye was the property, he knew, of Frank Franks, the celebrated sculptor, whose groups and portrait busts
fascinated the few and revolted the many, but from whichever cause were always in the public eye. At the moment controversy raged round the commissioning of Franks to do the National memorial to a
great soldier. However, that was not Bragg’s business; he knew the studio, with its huge north light and towering blank wall broken only by one small window. At the moment that window was
clouded with condensed steam; no doubt a bathroom and the artist, contrary to popular belief, having a bath. Or perhaps it was one of those models. . . . Bragg flushed as he thought of
artists’ models; how any nice girl could stand up there with nothing on in front of a man, artist or no artist . . . how the artist himself could . . . better not think about it.

And here, three doors off, was the studio of that painting woman, Delia Featherly—no better than she ought to be, people said. And there was Mrs. Featherly’s door opening and a man
coming out of it—slinking out of it, Bragg would say. A nasty looking customer, Dago of sorts, well built and all that, but . . . another model, no doubt; male model; bah!

The man carried a parcel and his general appearance and behaviour roused the policeman’s curiosity as well as resentment. He stopped and waited for the man to come through the little
gate.

“You a friend of Mrs. Featherly’s?” he asked.

The man showed a row of white teeth in a nervous grin, but did not answer.

“What’s in the parcel, eh?”

Bragg gave it a sharp tap with his knuckle. If it was hard and hollow it might be silver or a box of something; on the contrary it was yielding. Again the man grinned and held out his
parcel.

“My dancing shoes,” he said. “After the sitting the lady like to dance—gramophone. I dance well.”

Bragg was conscious of an unpleasant feeling of nausea. These artists! Well, it was his tea-time and he was hungry, and unless he was mistaken it would be sheep’s brains, a favourite dish.
Without a word he turned away and made for home. Perhaps he felt rather disappointed that the incident had not provided a little professional excitement. His self-imposed training was all very
well, but the ordinary course of his duty was inclined to be monotonous and even dull.

Superintendent Cleaver, head of B Division, of which Police-Constable Bragg was but a modest pawn, had no such complaint about his duty. Arduous it might be, exasperating it
often was, but never dull. He did not particularly care for the locality in which his work lay; Chelsea, with its Bohemian colony, was not the milieu best suited for a police-officer who
had begun life as a soldier; nor was Cleaver, with rigid Army discipline as a background to his official outlook, the type of man best suited to be the guardian angel of men and women whom he did
not in the least understand. However, he was a conscientious officer and tried to deal fairly with facts and circumstances as they presented themselves.

On the morning of 15th May he was, so far from finding life monotonous, inclined to consider it overcrowded with incident. He had just satisfactorily concluded his investigation of a stabbing
affair in which ladies had not behaved as ladies should; he was in the depth of an apparently unfathomable problem connected with the disappearance of pictures from a local show; and now Scotland
Yard was demanding full and immediate details of the life and habits of that blatant but influential sculptor fellow, Frank Franks.

It appeared that the Belgian police had discovered Mr. Franks’ passport, sodden with rain, at the side of a road of no great importance ten miles west of Brussels. Mr. Franks had been
expected a week previously in Dinant, where he was to have executed a commission for a portrait bust of the industrial magnate, M. Jules Pollivet, but he had not put in an appearance. The
circumstance of the sodden passport was worrying the Belgian police, who had communicated with Scotland Yard, who in turn had passed the job on to Superintendent Cleaver. Well, there was nothing
for it but a visit to Franks’ studio; an Inspector could do all that was needed equally well, or even a Sergeant, but Franks, for all his Bohemian habits, had influential friends in high
places; better, thought Cleaver, to go and do the job oneself.

The great studio sounded hollow and deserted when Cleaver rattled the grotesque knocker on the heavy oak door; there was no bell. Within a minute a window in a modest house next door was thrown
up and an untidy female head appeared.

“It’s no use you knocking, Sergeant,” cried a shrill voice. “’E’s aw’y.”

Slightly nettled at his loss of rank, Superintendent Cleaver ceased knocking and walked across to the window.

“When did he go? Can you tell me, ma’am?”

“Well, I’m not ’is auntie, and I don’t count ’is comin’s and goin’s, saucy fellow as ’e is, but ’e ’ad a farewell party a week ago
yesterday, that’s Tuesday, as I do know, m’sister Gertie bein’ ’ere and took bad and all that noise goin’ on, something crool, constable, and the ladies if you can
call ’em such, worse than the men . . . these artists!”

“Tuesday evening last week! That would be the 7th. And did he leave that evening or next day?”

“’Ow should I know? I’m not ’is love bird. You’d better ask the tridesmen.”

That was good advice. Enquiries among the neighbouring tradesmen elicited the fact that no milk or bread had been ordered for the morning of Wednesday, 8th, neither had any other goods been
ordered or delivered later than the 7th. The matter was clinched by inspection of the passport, which had now reached London, and which showed a Belgian stamp, applied on the Flushing boat, dated
8th May. That settled the time of Franks’ leaving England, though there remained the question, presumably unimportant, as to whether he had slept at his studio on the night of the 7th, or
elsewhere. Here no doubt the sculptor’s friends could help, and Superintendent Cleaver set about the task of discovering and questioning them.

It was not a difficult task. Franks was a well-known character in Chelsea; everyone knew him and many knew his friends. Superintendent Cleaver was soon in possession of a list of those who
attended the farewell party on the 7th May, and from this list it was only a matter of time to select two or three who could give useful information.

Paula Heldwig, Franks’ reigning favourite of the moment, knew all about the sculptor’s visit to Dinant; she even knew the price he was being paid for the commission, a sum which
staggered the policeman. She had not been surprised at hearing nothing from Franks; he never wrote a letter. But she was surprised to hear that he had not fulfilled his engagement; behind
an off-hand manner Franks was, Cleaver gathered, a business man. Paula explained the domestic arrangements of the studio; Franks did not live there habitually; he had a house, complete with
servants, overlooking Regent’s Park; but he did occasionally, if working late, sleep in the studio, and if that happened a woman—Mrs. Jennings, her name was—was summoned to tidy
up. Unless Paula happened to sleep in the studio too, and then she generally did the tidying up herself to save paying Mrs. Jennings; Franks did not care to waste his money. The heavy cleaning work
in the studio itself was done by Mrs. Jennings’ husband, a professional cleaner-up of sculptors’ studios, but he also only came when he was sent for.

Superintendent Cleaver interviewed both Jennings and his wife, but neither had been to Franks’ studio since 4th May. They had expected to be summoned to clear up the débris of the
farewell feast, of which they had heard, but had not been surprised at the omission; nothing an artist did or did not do surprised the Jenningses. Franks was usually good-tempered and pleasant,
with occasional fits of rage and a permanent trait of meanness.

No, they had no key to the studio. Mr. Franks was always present himself when any tidying or cleaning was done. He had once experienced wholesale destruction of embryo masterpieces at the hands
of a charwoman who suffered, he had said, from spasmodic fits of religious mania; Mrs. Jennings, however, thought the simpler explanation was that Franks had bilked her in the matter of wages.

Of Franks’ male friends two, John Durward and Piers Tomblin, seemed to Cleaver most likely to prove useful; Durward because he also was a sculptor and therefore might be expected to know a
good deal about Franks’ professional life, Tomblin because he was by common consent Franks’ greatest friend. As it happened, too, these two men shared a studio, Tomblin being a subject
painter; moreover they had been the last to leave after the farewell party. Franks, they were able to say, intended to spend that night in the studio; he had his luggage there, together with the
tools of his trade which he would require at Dinant, all ready packed. They had left him, in his usual good spirits, soon after midnight and were under the impression that he intended to travel by
the 9.30 a.m. Harwich train from Liverpool Street the next morning.

There could be little doubt that Franks had done that. His large body and auburn beard made him a striking figure; both a ticket collector and a restaurant-car steward on the Harwich train
remembered seeing a man answering the description given by the police, though neither knew who he was, nor could say for certain on which day he had travelled. However, the date stamp on the
passport settled that point.

As to the fact of his departure, Superintendent Cleaver felt that the evidence was conclusive, but no amount of enquiry provided any explanation of his non-appearance at Dinant, and the curious
discovery of his passport. Tomblin did so, so far as to admit that though Franks was always apparently in boisterous spirits he believed that he suffered corresponding periods of depression, when
he shut himself up in his studio and, on the pretext of work, refused to see anyone. That might, Cleaver realised, lead to melancholia, and he put it up to Scotland Yard as the only apparent reason
for Franks’ disappearance, if disappearance there had been. For his own part Cleaver thought it just as likely that Franks had picked up a ‘friend’ somewhere on the journey and
was spending a pleasant holiday with her; he suggested that careful enquiries should be made in the neighbourhood where the passport was found, and put the matter from his mind.

Police-Constable Bragg had heard nothing of all this story while Superintendent Cleaver and his divisional detectives were carrying out their investigations. It was not till he
got home and found his wife reading the evening paper that he learned what had been going on more or less under his own nose. Not unnaturally piqued that he, the budding C.I.D. star, should have
remained so completely in the dark, Bragg read the meagre story that an enterprising journalist had been able to create from scraps gathered from the tradesmen and artists who had been
interrogated; there had been no police statement.

Bragg was not impressed by the story, but one small point did attract his attention: the date of Franks’ departure. Something tucked away in his memory caused him to get his wife’s
confirmation of the fact that sheep’s brains were fresh on Wednesdays. He was thoughtful and silent for the rest of the evening and on the following morning repaired to the police station a
quarter of an hour earlier than was necessary. Seeking out one of the detective-constables, Bragg learnt from him sufficient further details to justify him in applying for ‘a word with the
Super.’

Cleaver was busy with his picture case and not at all anxious to discuss one that he had put out of his mind, but experience had taught him that in police work it was never safe to refuse to
listen to a story. He pushed aside a report he had been reading and told Bragg to go ahead and make it snappy.

“I understand it was last Wednesday, the 8th, sir, that Mr. Franks left for the continent. That would be the morning train?”

“Yes, 9.30 Liverpool Street. As a matter of fact we got word late last night of a milk-roundsman who saw him leave the studio soon after seven; earlier than one would expect, but he
travelled by the 9.30 all right; we know that.”

“Locked up his studio, sir, didn’t he? No one went in after he left?”

“No; so far as we can find, no one did.”

“Someone was having a bath there, sir, at 5.45 p.m. that afternoon.”

Superintendent Cleaver stared.

“How the hell do you know that?” he asked.

“I was passing, sir, and I saw steam condensing on that little window in the north wall. I took it to be a bathroom.”

“You’re sure it was steam? not dirt?”

“Sure, sir; I saw the moisture trickling down. I thought it was Mr. Franks having an afternoon tub or”—the blush reappeared—“maybe one of those models.”

That re-opened the whole question. It could not have been Franks who was having a bath in Chelsea at a time when his boat had just landed him at Flushing, but, in view of the Yard’s
enquiries it was essential to find out just who had been in the studio at a time when all the evidence pointed to its having been empty and locked. Cleaver and his detectives spent the day
re-covering the whole ground; the Jenningses, the friends, the tradesmen, the servants at the Regent’s Park house—all were questioned again but no one admitted having been in
Franks’ studio at any time on Wednesday. Superintendent Cleaver himself paid a visit to Scotland Yard, and learning from Chief Constable Thurston that the Belgian police were still without
news of Franks and that the Commissioner himself was interested, decided that the time had come to enter the studio.

It would not be an easy matter, without attracting undesirable attention. The door was of solid oak, nobody knew of a duplicate key. . . . Cleaver decided that the small hours of the morning
were indicated. As a reward for his contribution, Police-Constable Bragg was allowed to deprive himself of half his night’s sleep and join the party which assembled outside the studio at 4.30
a.m. on a cold and misty morning.

“That’s the window, sir,” he said rather unnecessarily, pointing to the only aperture in the great north wall; it was ten feet up and about two by three in size.

“It’s open,” said Cleaver, conscious that he had not at his former visit noticed the window at all.

“It wasn’t open when I saw it, sir.”

Superintendent Cleaver was not pleased with himself.

“Well, that’s the way you’ve got to get in,” he said crossly, “and see if you can open the door from the inside.”

Helped by a ‘back’ from Detective-Sergeant Ainsworth, Bragg was soon inside and, finding that the lock was of the ‘slam’ type, had no difficulty in admitting his
colleagues. His first sight of the great studio had given him a nasty turn; in the centre, towering almost to the thirty-foot ceiling, stood the gigantic figure of a horse, white and somehow
frightening in its immobility. On its back, as Bragg now had leisure to observe, sat the rough beginnings of the figure of a man, minus a head and one arm which were represented by mere rods of
metal. Even to Bragg’s untutored eye, the man’s body appeared small and insignificant in comparison with the horse which, whatever horrors of inaccuracy might duly be attributed to it
by equine anatomists, did seem to be a fierce and noble animal. By contrast the man, even without his head, appeared puny and strutting; Bragg knew just enough about the artist’s
reputation to realise that this representation of a national hero was probably his idea of a joke.

Superintendent Cleaver and Sergeant Ainsworth made a careful examination of the studio, its screened ‘bedroom’ and the tiny bathroom, without discovering anything of significance.
Cleaver studied the sculptured model for a minute of disgusted silence and then turned to a modelling stand on which was some object covered with a cloth. As he removed this Cleaver made a grimace;
Bragg imagined this to be caused by the artistic imperfections of the head which was now revealed.

“That’ll be the Field-Marshal, sir, no doubt,” said Sergeant Ainsworth, pleased with his own perspicacity.

The work, though still in the rough, did show an unmistakable resemblance to the great commander whom his country was delighting to honour. It was not, thought Bragg, nearly so bloody awful as
most of the Franks masterpieces which he had seen.

Superintendent Cleaver did not, however, appear to be greatly interested in the question of likeness. He was holding the cloth which had covered the model gingerly to his nose; he now handed it
to Sergeant Ainsworth, who obediently did likewise.

“Stinks, sir.”

“What of?”

“Dead Hun.”

Ainsworth’s whole outlook on life reflected the year of horror carved from his impressionable youth.

Bragg started at the words and found his Superintendent staring at him. By common consent all three men drew farther away from the modelling stand. Cleaver was the first to speak.

“Fetch me that brandy out of the cupboard.”

He lit a pipe and, having swallowed a stiff peg of brandy, approached the model. Seizing . . .