Chapter 8 #2
“I don’t know that logic has much to do with the traditions of the Yeoman Warders. There’s no reason you should guess, but that’s how it was.”
“Pity. I’d still like to know what he said and where he went afterwards.”
“We’ll ask him,” said Alec, “but I can’t promise to tell you.”
Daisy sighed, then turned a considering look on the house beside which they stood, and its attached neighbours. “Someone might have watched out for him from one of these windows. Suppose he went home after dropping off the keys, and came out again later—”
“Daisy, I thought you were in a hurry to get home to the babies.”
“I am, I am.”
“And you’re feeling all right?”
“Yes.” She looked very well, but the red umbrella cast a deceptively healthy pink glow on her face. “The girls—Fay and Brenda—offered to go with me to the tube, but I’m perfectly all right.”
“You’d better take a taxi, all the same.” Alec felt in his pocket for change.
“I have enough cash, thanks, darling.” She looked as if she were going to kiss him. Tom’s presence wouldn’t have stopped her, but either the complication of her dripping umbrella and his dripping hat or the blank stare of the nearby windows dissuaded her.
“Go carefully, Mrs. Fletcher,” Tom admonished her. “These cobbles get slippery.”
As she departed, she said over her shoulder, “Oh, by the way, it may not mean anything, but this house has two back doors.”
“Back doors?” said Tom blankly to Alec, watching Daisy hurry past the fatal stairs.
“I would guess she was suggesting that had someone kept a lookout for Crabtree from this house, he could then have sneaked out through a back door, reducing the chance of being seen by the sentry.”
“Ah. Might as well take a dekko while we’re on the spot.”
They turned around the side of the house. At the back, against the inner bailey wall, a staircase went down to a tiny area and a door that must lead into a windowless cellar.
“One,” said Tom. “Where’s the second?”
“It must open onto the wall up there. I’ll go and see, but you’d better get on with the King’s House staff.
” He knew that, far from ruffling feathers, Tom would soon have them all eating out of his hand, especially the women.
“Then go over to the Waterloo Barracks. I hope by then to have arranged for you to talk to last night’s sentries. ”
“All of ’em, Chief?”
“Those who were on duty at the King’s House at least. Ernie and Ross can handle the rest when they’re done with the yeomen.”
Consulting his map, Alec climbed the steps to the top of the wall.
This was Ralegh’s Walk, apparently. Before the construction of the Victorian residences, the prisoner had been able to stroll along the wall from the door of the Bloody Tower at one end to the King’s House at the other.
Now a wrought-iron gate marked private gave access to a few yards of wall top apparently used as a balcony, blocked at the other end by a two-story house wall with a door in it.
Conceivable, he thought, but unlikely that the murderer had come out that way to follow his victim.
At the other end, the Bloody Tower had no window in the upper floor on this side, though the floor below had two, as well as the main entrance, where a sign read TICKET HOLDERS ONLY.
Was it locked at night? It would make a good place to lurk unseen, for someone with a luminous watch who knew roughly when to expect Crabtree.
He looked over the rampart, towards the river.
Tower Bridge loomed large to his left. From inside the Tower one didn’t notice it, but in height the bridge dwarfed even the White Tower, the mercantile structure eclipsing the royal fortress’s ancient preeminence.
Closer, just across Water Street, was the wide, flattened archway of Traitors’ Gate.
On either side of the gate stood a stone tower, outposts of St. Thomas’s Tower, connected by a brick and timber building constructed over the arch.
On the near side, adjoining the Bloody Tower and blocking the view along Water Street, was the bulge of the Wakefield Tower, home of the Crown Jewels.
Had the Chief Warder possessed a key to the Wakefield Tower?
Surely General Carradine would have mentioned it, would have been distraught about the possibility of its having been stolen, even in the midst of shock at the murder.
Shock had odd effects on men’s minds, though. Something else to be checked.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the Resident Governor appeared as Alec descended the stair.
In broad daylight, even with the drizzle turning to rain, and even with his hat pulled low, he was recognizable by the time he came level with the sentry at the top of the shortcut steps.
So was his faithful shadow, the frog-faced Jeremy Webster.
They both looked up at Alec’s hail.
“Fletcher! Dare I hope?”
“Sorry, sir, it’s a bit early for results.
In fact, I’m just beginning to realize how ignorant I am about the Tower and how it’s run, all the stuff they don’t put in this otherwise admirable brochure of yours.
I don’t suppose you could spare Mr. Webster to go about with me, just for a while, to act as a sort of walking guidebook. If you would be so kind, Mr. Webster?”
His glasses spotted with raindrops in the shadow beneath his hat, Webster looked more enigmatic than ever, and a trifle supercilious. He did not speak, neither consenting nor demurring when the general agreed to lend his services. Alec understood why Daisy found him a trifle unnerving.
He decided it would be tactful to warn Carradine about Tom’s presence in his house. “By the way, sir, my sergeant, DS Tring, is talking to your servants,” he said.
Carradine looked taken aback, but after a moment he said quite mildly, “I suppose you are bound to suspect everyone.”
“Not so much suspect as need to rule out.”
“Even your wife?”
“Even my wife. To be honest, Daisy’s the main reason we’re starting with the King’s House and hoping to eliminate everyone residing there. If we can’t, I may have to hand over the reins to someone else.”
“I trust not,” the general said dryly. “Better the devil we know, if you’ll excuse the phrase, not to mention that clearing Mrs. Fletcher will also clear myself, along with my household.”
“And that,” Alec admitted with a wry smile, “is the other reason we’re starting there. Without the cooperation of the Resident Governor, the investigation would be ten times more difficult.”
“Believe me, I’ll cooperate.” With grim jocularity, he added, “I don’t know if you realize it, but if I have to keep the place closed to the public for more than a couple of days, there will be the sort of ructions that will inevitably lead to questions in the House.”
In fact, any case where the CID of the Metropolitan Police was called in had the potential to lead to questions in Parliament.
This one, however, involved a royal palace, an ancient monument of national importance, and the murder of one of those picturesque, romantic beings the public called Beefeaters. Talk about fodder for the press!
“We always work as fast as possible, sir,” Alec assured the unhappy Resident Governor.
“Trails grow cold. Unfortunately, there’s never enough manpower available.
I was hoping to use some of your Special Constables, once we’ve sorted out their alibis, but perhaps I’d better ask Superintendent Crane to spare me a few more men. ”
“No, no, I have every faith in your efficiency, my dear chap. Let’s at least wait until we see how it looks by the time you knock off this evening.”
He went off, leaving Alec with Webster.
“First question: Is the Bloody Tower locked at night?”
“No. It holds nothing of great value.”
“I assume the Wakefield Tower is locked. Did the Chief Warder have a key?”
“Certainly not.”
“Who does?”
“The Keeper of the Regalia has one, of course. That’s General Sir Patrick Heald.
The Resident Governor is responsible for the other.
Except when there’s work to be done inside, cleaning and so on, I lock the door as soon as the Wakefield Tower closes to the public, take the key to the King’s House, and lock it in the safe. ”
“So, in essence, you control the second key.”
“Yes,” said Webster frostily. “However, I cannot see that the fact has any bearing whatsoever on the murder of Crabtree.”
“Nor can I,” Alec agreed. Nonetheless, it was interesting, if only because the man was so defensive about it.