“Apparently so. I have just realized that Mr Gilchrist is the only one of my detectives I’ve yet to meet.”
Day glanced at Gilchrist’s desk. It was the cleanest of all the desks in the squad room. In fact, Day was sure nothing had been moved on that desktop in the past week.
Sir Edward’s brow creased and he sniffed. He turned his back and drew a handkerchief from his trouser pocket. The detectives looked around the room at one another, and Day recognized that there was something being silently communicated among them. After a moment, Sir Edward turned around to face them again.
“I apologize,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of a chill and thought I was going to sneeze just now. What was I saying?”
Tom Wiggins cleared his throat.
“You was sayin’ Patrick Gilchrist is the one you ain’t met yet,” he said.
“So I was. That in itself is bothersome, but it is particularly so on a day such as this. Are we sure he’s quite all right? Has anyone seen him in the past twenty-four hours?”
He held up a finger and turned away again, his handkerchief flying to his nose. Day watched the detectives. Every man in the room looked at Inspector Gilchrist’s spotless desk. Then they all looked at one another again. He had met barely half of them in the course of the week and spoken to maybe three of them. They were busy, in and out of the building at all hours, and there had been no time for niceties. But he knew them by their desks. He had memorized where each of them sat so that he would be able to talk to them in the future without confusion. He knew Oliver Boring, of course, and Jimmy Tiffany. He knew Michael Blacker and tiny Crockett O’Donnell. This was the first time he’d laid eyes on Tom Wiggins. He glanced at the other desks, doing his best to associate these faces with the names he already knew: Inspectors Alan Whiteside, Waldo George, Waverly Brown, Ellery Cox. There were so few of them. And there was so much death for them to deal with.
And he suddenly understood something about them.
If there was one thing Day felt he was good at, it was reading people. He had an honest face and most people opened up to him easily, but even when they didn’t, he was able to read their expressions, no matter how they tried to compose themselves. This ability made it easy for him to trust others and that often led to the mistaken belief that he was naive.
But he wasn’t naive.
He waited for Sir Edward to turn back around.
“That sneeze won’t leave me,” Sir Edward said. “While we wait for it to present itself, who has seen Mr Gilchrist?”
“I have, sir,” Day said. “He was by earlier this morning. Hot on the trail of a dangerous criminal. He asked me to tender his apologies.”
“A dangerous criminal, you say? I suppose there’s no better excuse. But please tell him that I’d like to see him at his earliest convenience.”
Sir Edward looked down at the cigar box on Gilchrist’s desk. He drew in a deep breath before looking up at the room again.
“You are my Murder Squad,” he said. “You were all chosen for this unit because you have demonstrated exemplary skill in solving crimes. You are among the best that Scotland Yard has to offer. Therefore you are the most qualified to solve the worst crimes in London. Many of you are still carrying cases having to do with robbery, missing persons, assault, and the like. For eleven of you to try sorting out the murders in London is a difficult task. Perhaps an impossible one. But for you to take on the burden of every crime is ridiculous. Your morale is already low, and Mr Little’s fate can do you little good in that regard. In addition to helping Mr Day with this case, if he so deems, you will also sort through your files and remove anything that doesn’t have to do with murder. You are to deal with no cases that are not to do with murder. You are experts on murder now.”
“What makes us experts on murder?” Oliver Boring said.
“I do,” Sir Edward said. “Now, when I arrived here,” he said, “I asked that you limit your duties and take on no new work that wasn’t to do with fatalities. It was my expectation that you would gradually work your way through your cases and be left with nothing but murders. That has not happened. Your workloads are simply too large. And so I now ask you to take every case that is not a murder across the hall and give it to the sergeant on duty there. He will pass those cases along to the other detectives. Or to the many constables whose job it is to deal with common crimes.”
“Sir, the other detectives’ve got their hands full with the dockworkers’ strike. They don’t got no more time than us.”
“No. You’re right, they don’t. But murder trumps all. You are my elite detectives, the select few chosen to excel at solving the most heinous of crimes. And, beginning today, you will act the part. A member of my Murder Squad has himself been murdered, and that will not do. You will find the man responsible for this crime and he will pay.”
He waited for his words to sink in, nodding almost imperceptibly to himself.
“Take care,” he said. “I cannot afford to lose another man.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then turned without another word and closed himself in his office.
A moment later, Day jumped at the sound of a hurricane-level sneeze that shook the walls of Sir Edward’s office.
5
Well done, old man. But how did you know?”
Day turned to see Inspector Michael Blacker staring up at him, a mischievous grin at play beneath the limp ginger mustache.
“How did I know what?”
“That won’t do, old boy. Nobody’s seen Gilchrist round here since he upped to Wolverhampton last year. Heard he’s a bona fide shopkeeper there now. But you knew he wasn’t here and you carried on our little joke with Sir Edward. How did you know?”
“Intuition, I suppose. The behavior of everyone since I arrived as regards Mr Gilchrist and his empty desk. You might want to make it look like it’s being used if you want to continue pretending he’s working here.”
“But that’s just it. Patrick was the most cleanly of the lot of us. That desk looks just the same as it did when he was here.”
“I think that’s why he left us,” Tom Wiggins said. He walked over to stand with Day and Blacker. Oliver Boring and Ellery Cox followed behind him. Boring reached out and clapped Day on the shoulder.
“Work here was too untidy for the likes of him.”
“A nice little shop in the Midlands is what a personality like his calls for,” Cox said. “Probably serving tea to old ladies at this very moment.”
“Discussing the weather, they is.”
Wiggins minced about the room and pitched his voice high, mimicking an old Black Country woman. “Oh, it’s quite brisk out today, don’t you think, Mr Gilchrist?”
“If it’s brisk you want,” Crockett O’Donnell said, “then you’ll want a holiday in London right about now.”
“Oh, did you know I used to be police round in London?” Boring said. Day was sure Gilchrist couldn’t possibly have sounded like Boring’s lisping impersonation. It was more likely a sign of contempt. One of their own had washed out and left, his tail between his legs. Gilchrist had failed. There was probably a certain amount of fear in Boring’s mimicry: There but for the grace of God go I, and do I have what it takes for the long haul?
“Why, let me tell you about a grisly murder I saw there, Mrs Dalrymple,” O’Donnell said. He, too, had pitched his voice high and sounded much like a teenaged girl.
“Oh my, no. That sounds dreadfully … well, dreadfully dreadful, Mr Gilchrist.”
“More tea, then?”
“Yes, please. And some for my dog as well.”
By now the other men were laughing despite themselves at the impromptu play being enacted by their friends. They were all exhausted and worried and they had lost a colleague. The laughter eased the pressure in the room. Day was laughing along with them, despite never having met Patrick Gilchrist. A small part of him, the part that was always the outside observer, felt silently pleased to be included.