Hardcastle's Secret Agent Read online

  ‘So I understood from Mr Cherrill,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Any label inside it?’

  ‘No, sir, and it may belong to the male deceased, although we’ve not found a left-handed glove of similar pattern anywhere in the house.’ The scientist looked down at his notes. ‘There’s just a trace of mud inside the French doors, which I suspect was the result of the killer having crossed the lawn rather than the noisy gravel path. But there’s precious little else that we found that will help your investigation. I reckon you’re dealing with a consummate professional. Nevertheless, we’ll keep looking.’

  ‘Mr Cherrill made the same suggestion: that this killer was a professional, and I’m inclined to agree with him,’ replied Hardcastle gloomily. ‘Thanks anyway. Just my luck to get a couple of murders like these.’

  Despite it being almost three o’clock in the morning of Sunday before Hardcastle got home, he was ready and waiting for Detective Sergeant Bradley when he arrived at the DDI’s house at ten o’clock.

  ‘What was Howard Austin’s address, Jack?’

  ‘Birkenhead Avenue, sir,’ said Bradley, opening his pocketbook. ‘I’ve got a note of the number here.’

  ‘Good. That’s walking distance from here.’

  The two detectives set off down Canbury Park Road, turned left under the railway bridge and finally into Birkenhead Avenue.

  ‘Inspector Hardcastle!’ Austin could not conceal his surprise at finding the DDI on his doorstep on a Sunday morning. ‘What brings you here? Has something happened? Oh, I’m sorry, do come in.’

  Hardcastle and Bradley followed Austin into the large sitting room. A few moments later, they were joined by a woman.

  ‘This is my wife, Eunice, Inspector,’ said Austin, and turned to his wife. ‘This is Detective Inspector Hardcastle, my dear.’

  ‘How d’you do?’ Eunice Austin was dressed in navy-blue slacks and a polo-necked jumper, and her brunette hair was tied back into a ponytail. ‘It’s my air-raid shelter outfit,’ she said. ‘Not that we’ve had any air raids yet, but it pays to be prepared.’ She gave a gay laugh. ‘Would you gentlemen care for a cup of coffee? Howard and I usually have one about now.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Austin, that would be most welcome.’ As Eunice Austin left the room, Hardcastle added, ‘We were up until three this morning, Mr Austin, which is the reason we’re here.’

  ‘Oh dear! A policeman’s lot and all that sort of thing, eh?’ Austin seemed to find it rather amusing. ‘You’d better take the weight off your feet, Inspector. You too, Sergeant Bradley.’

  The two policemen sat down and Hardcastle went on to tell Austin about the murder of Frank Roper and his wife Helen.

  ‘Good God!’ Austin was visibly shocked by the news and sat down suddenly. ‘This is a terrible blow. Eunice and I knew Frank and Helen Roper extremely well. We were good friends.’

  ‘How long has he been with the company, Mr Austin?’

  ‘Oh, not that long. I think he came from abroad somewhere. America maybe.’ Austin paused in thought. ‘Yes, I’m sure he said America.’

  ‘His name wasn’t on the list of employees that you gave us,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Was it that his job was not a particularly sensitive one? Or too sensitive, perhaps?’

  ‘On the contrary. He was a design engineer. It’s a very important job, but the reason I didn’t give you his address is that he doesn’t work at Kingston. He’s one of the chaps who’s based at Windsor. Their personnel department would usually deal with any such request. He drives there every day and has one of those gas bags fitted to his car. You’ve probably seen them on some of the buses and taxis. The gas is produced from anthracite and we’ve got a unit at our place in Portsmouth Road to produce the stuff.’ The scientist in Austin demanded that he explain about the gas bags, even though Hardcastle was fully conversant with how they worked. ‘Have you any idea who was responsible for this awful crime, Inspector?’

  ‘Not at this stage, sir,’ said Bradley, ‘but I think it’s fair to say that we are dealing with a professional killer.’

  ‘D’you think the murderer might’ve been a member of this … What did you call it the other day, Sergeant Bradley?’

  ‘The Abwehr. The German Intelligence Service,’ said Bradley. ‘Not necessarily. There’s nothing at this point to suggest that’s the case.’

  Eunice Austin entered the room carrying a tray of coffee and set it down on an occasional table.

  ‘Mr Hardcastle has just brought some terrible news, darling,’ said Austin. ‘Frank and Helen Roper have been murdered.’

  For a moment or two, Eunice stood absolutely still, her face white with shock. ‘Both of them?’ she eventually managed to ask.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Austin.’ Hardcastle turned back to Howard Austin. ‘I wonder if I could rely on you to tell the people at Windsor what’s happened, Mr Austin. I shall be in touch with them in due course, but our immediate concern is to find the Ropers’ killer.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Inspector. And I hope you do.’

  ‘I’m sure we shall.’ Hardcastle was not all that confident, but he could hardly say that he had no idea where to start looking. ‘There is one other thing, Mr Austin: do you know if the Ropers had any relatives? If there is a family, then they must be informed.’

  ‘I believe Frank had a married sister who lived in Weybridge, Inspector.’ Austin turned to his wife. ‘Can you remember the name of Frank’s sister, darling? I mean her married name, of course.’

  ‘I’ve got it written down in my address book. I’ll go and get it.’ Eunice Austin left the room, returning only minutes later holding a small notebook. ‘Daphne Shepherd is Frank’s sister, Inspector. She and her husband, Basil, live in Weybridge, in a road very close to the Brooklands racing circuit which, of course, is closed now.’ She handed the book to Sergeant Bradley so that he could make a note of the exact address.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I’ll arrange for her to be notified today.’ He paused briefly. ‘On second thoughts, I think I’ll go myself.’

  SIX

  Following their visit to see Howard Austin on Sunday morning, Hardcastle and Bradley settled down in the DDI’s office that afternoon to consider what should be done next.

  Before leaving the scene of the murder earlier that day, Hardcastle had directed Ken Black, the detective inspector at Kingston, to deploy as many of his CID officers as he could spare to carry out house-to-house enquiries in the area where the Ropers had lived. Because of the blackout and the lack of street lighting, he was not very hopeful that anything would be discovered, but there was always an outside chance that somebody might have spotted something, however minor, that would assist the police. He also suggested the possibility that a neighbour may have heard four shots being fired. That would at least fix the time of the murder, but not much else. Hardcastle also tasked Black to put a couple of detectives – preferably a man and a woman – into the George and Dragon public house for an evening or two, to listen to the local gossip. Hardcastle also said that if nothing was forthcoming, they should identify themselves and start asking questions.

  Detective Superintendent Cherrill had telephoned Hardcastle to confirm that the only fingerprints found in the house were those of the dead couple and a number of others that, subject to elimination prints being taken, probably belonged to a cleaner; they were certainly small enough to have been those of a woman or even a child and were not in places that the killer was likely to have touched. The implication was that the Ropers rarely received visitors or that the cleaner was very good at her job. However, a cleaner could not remove all fingerprints, no matter how efficient she was.

  The first reports of the scientific search of the Ropers’ house also came to Hardcastle on the Sunday afternoon. Although the forensic science people had told the DDI that they had found a man’s glove, they now reported in writing that a search of the wardrobes in the house had not discovered its companion. The provisional deduction confirmed Hardcastle’s view that it h
ad been left by the murderer. There was, however, an interesting discovery in Helen Roper’s wardrobe: a green tweed costume with the labels inside the jacket and the skirt of a German supplier with an address in Dusseldorf.

  ‘There’s not much chance of following that up, guv’nor,’ said Bradley.

  ‘You could try, Jack,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You’d probably get a Commissioner’s Commendation.’

  ‘Or a spy’s funeral,’ said Bradley. ‘In Berlin.’

  ‘Seriously though,’ said Hardcastle, ‘it puts an entirely different slant on this enquiry. Were the Ropers agents of the Abwehr? Leaving those labels in the woman’s costume is the sort of stupid mistake the Germans did sometimes make.’

  Overall, though, nothing else of importance had been found that would lead the DDI to the immediate arrest of the murderer. If, however, the Ropers had been identified as spies, and had been ‘taken out’ by an operative of MI5, the chances of an arrest became extremely remote. That said, Hardcastle thought it extremely unlikely that MI5 would resort to murder, even in time of war, particularly when arrest by Special Branch officers, on behalf of MI5, was a much safer option.

  The scientists had collected soil samples from the front lawn of the house that matched the small deposit inside the French windows. They had also found footprints on the lawn and had taken plaster casts of them in the hope that one day the killer might be identified by the shoes he wore that night. They had already checked those footprints against the shoes found in the Roper residence and were satisfied that they did not match.

  There had also been a few, almost indiscernible, strands of fibre on the edge of one of the two doors that comprised the French windows. They were preserved in the hope that the killer, when he was found, had matching traces on some piece of his clothing. It was possible, of course, that one of the Ropers had brushed against the edge of the door and that the fibres had nothing to do with the killer, but that would be decided once the scientist had examined the contents of the Ropers’ wardrobes in greater depth than the cursory glance that they had been afforded so far.

  There was, however, a piece of hard evidence from the ballistics section of the Hendon laboratory. The senior ballistics scientist, a man called Gordon Strutt, regarded it as of sufficient importance for him to appear in person in Hardcastle’s office at Putney police station that afternoon.

  ‘It is Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s opinion, Mr Hardcastle, that these are the two rounds that killed Frank Roper,’ said Strutt, donning protective gloves to remove two rounds of ammunition from the thick paper envelope in which they had been transported. ‘And the other two killed Helen Roper. It was a bit of luck,’ he continued, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, ‘that in both cases the rounds went straight through the bodies of the deceased and we were able to extract them from the fabric of the property. As you can see, they’re nine-millimetre parabellum and that gives them a very high muzzle velocity, which is why they passed straight through the bodies of the victims.’

  ‘That helps us, does it?’ asked Hardcastle, already having some difficulty in keeping up with Strutt’s technical explanation.

  ‘Of the two that killed Frank Roper,’ continued Strutt, clearly intending to go at his own pace regardless of Hardcastle’s question, ‘one lodged itself in the door jamb and the other in the wall just to the left of it. The two that killed Mrs Roper were both embedded in the front door on the ground floor after passing through her body. Presuming that Mrs Roper was on her way upstairs at the time the shots were discharged, the killer would probably have fired downwards rather than aiming a level shot, if you see what I mean. Fortunately, the rounds were relatively undamaged and that will enable us to make a comparison with the weapon that fired them.’ He paused. ‘When you find it, of course, Mr Hardcastle,’ he added with a smile.

  ‘Can you suggest the sort of weapon that might have been used, Mr Strutt? I mean, what are we looking for?’

  Strutt made a wry face as he pondered the problem. ‘I’m somewhat reluctant to suggest a particular weapon, Mr Hardcastle. However, there is no doubt that it was an automatic pistol because, as I said, the cartridge rounds are parabellum, and the killer probably fired the four rounds in pretty quick succession: two and then another two a matter of seconds later. Secondly, the striations on the four rounds that were recovered led me to think in terms of the Luger Parabellum PO8 pistol as the possible murder weapon. But I hasten to add that it could have been one of several other weapons.’ The cautionary note in Strutt’s voice implied that he was unhappy at committing himself to a specific firearm.

  ‘I gather that the weapon you’re talking about is German, Mr Strutt. Lugers are German, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. That model was developed by Georg Luger in 1900 and adopted by the German Army in 1908.’

  ‘If that’s the case, it could be that I’m looking for a German murderer,’ Hardcastle mused aloud as he considered the original possibility of a German agent seeking information about the research being conducted by Alan Moore and Company’s two factories.

  ‘Not necessarily. These pistols were in widespread use in the last war. It’s quite possible that a British soldier could have picked one up on a battlefield and kept it as a souvenir. We have received dozens of weapons that were surrendered by soldiers who had found them, but when they got home found that their wives wouldn’t tolerate having them in the house.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Mr Strutt,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You’ve cheered me up no end.’ He laughed and then shook hands with the ballistics expert.

  ‘If you’re lucky enough to find the pistol, Mr Hardcastle, I should be able to confirm that it was the murder weapon almost immediately. Or that it was not,’ he added, after a short pause, and laughed.

  ‘We’ll have to find out whether the Ropers had a cleaner, Jack,’ said Hardcastle, once Strutt had departed. He glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose we’d better get down to Weybridge and talk to the Shepherds today.’

  ‘Couldn’t we get the Surrey Constabulary to do that, guv’nor?’

  ‘No, Jack. The Shepherds might know something that will point us in the right direction. After all, we may not be dealing with a random murder. The Ropers might have been targeted for a particular reason, a reason not necessarily connected to Roper’s work as a design engineer for Alan Moore and Company. It could be a gambling debt, a jilted woman with whom he’d had an affair and had lost her mind as a result – in fact, there are dozens of reasons for committing murder. Or perhaps the Ropers were German agents, if Mrs Roper’s Dusseldorf clothing is anything to go by.’

  ‘Mr Basil Shepherd?’ The man who answered the door of the Weybridge house where, according to Eunice Austin, Frank Roper’s sister lived, was probably in his mid-thirties. He was holding a copy of the Sunday Express and his frown gave the impression that he was annoyed at having his Sunday afternoon disturbed.

  ‘Yes. I’m Basil Shepherd.’ He tugged briefly at his right ear lobe, a habit that he was to repeat often during their conversation.

  ‘Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle, Mr Shepherd, and this is Detective Sergeant Bradley. We’re from the Wandsworth Division of the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Shepherd’s frowning countenance immediately changed to one of concern.

  ‘If we may come in, Mr Shepherd, I’d like to talk to you about your brother-in-law, Frank Roper.’

  Shepherd led the way into a comfortable sitting room. ‘These gentlemen are from the police, my dear,’ he said, addressing an attractive young woman who was listening to a programme on the wireless. ‘This is my wife, Daphne, Inspector.’

  Daphne Shepherd swung her feet on to the floor and turned off the wireless. ‘I was only listening to a repeat of ITMA,’ she said. She touched her long blonde hair that was dressed in victory rolls.

  Hardcastle had learned over the years that there was no easy way to break news of the death of a relative, other than to come straight out with it. ‘I’m sorry to say th
at I have some bad news, Mrs Shepherd,’ he began. ‘It’s about your brother and his wife. They’ve been killed.’

  Daphne Shepherd stared at Hardcastle with a stunned look on her face, as though her brain was attempting to absorb what he had just told her. ‘But how? Was it a car accident? Not an air raid, surely? The raids have only been on the east coast, according to the Daily Mail.’

  ‘They were murdered, Mrs Shepherd. Friday just gone, we believe. The matter is still being investigated, of course.’

  ‘Murdered! Oh God! How awful.’ Daphne Shepherd put a hand to her mouth. ‘Who would have done such a thing?’ It was apparent that she was only just managing to hold back the tears.

  ‘That’s what we’re attempting to find out, Mrs Shepherd,’ said Bradley.

  Daphne’s husband, seeing his wife’s distress at the loss of her brother, quickly crossed the room to a cocktail cabinet and poured her a glass of brandy. ‘Drink this, darling.’ After a pause, he said, ‘Can I offer you gentlemen a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mr Shepherd. From what we’ve learned at this stage of the investigation, Mrs Shepherd,’ said Hardcastle, ‘it would appear that your brother and his wife left their house and were on their way to a local pub. Apparently, it was their custom to do so every Friday and Saturday evenings. The fact that they didn’t show up at the pub this weekend resulted in the customers’ concern being brought to the notice of the police. We are guessing at the moment, but the most likely sequence of events is that minutes after setting off to walk to the pub, they returned to the house for some reason. In fact, Mr Roper’s wallet was found on one of the bedside tables, so I think it’s possible that he and his wife went back to the house to collect it. At the moment, we are assuming that Frank must have gone upstairs and disturbed a burglar who shot him and then shot his wife.’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Shepherd. ‘The war’s only been on for a week, but suddenly everybody has become belligerent, or so it seems.’