The lost boys, p.1
The Lost Boys, page 1
part #8 of Esther & Jack Enright Mystery Series
THE LOST BOYS
Esther and Jack Enright Mystery
Book Eight
David Field
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
A NOTE TO THE READER
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
Chapter One
Jack Enright swallowed hard to hold back the tears as he threw the first shovel full of earth onto his mother’s lowered coffin and turned back to where Esther was standing, head down and black-veiled, alongside their four children. The vicar, the Reverend Glanville, had advised the congregation inside St Margaret’s Anglican Church, Barking, that they were there to celebrate the life of Constance Enright, not to mourn her death. Mind you, as the recently appointed and latest incumbent of the parish, he had barely known the somewhat straight-laced old matriarch of the Enright clan, so what did he know of her life? Jack had delivered the eulogy through teeth clenched against tears, and he hoped he’d done her justice.
Constance had failed to dominate his life, as she’d striven to do with increased determination after his father had died sixteen years previously, and when she finally realised that Jack had made a marvellous match in Esther Jacobs, and that he couldn’t be talked out of the police career that he’d chosen for himself under the influence of his surrogate father Uncle Percy, she seemed to have grudgingly accepted reality. To Esther she’d been a supportive mother-in-law, and to their four children she’d been a devoted, if somewhat stern, grandmother. He hoped he’d done her justice, but somehow he felt that he hadn’t.
‘Jack and Esther have advised me that there’ll be a funeral tea at the old family home, to which everyone is invited,’ the Reverend Glanville announced to those grouped around the grave. Esther gripped Jack’s hand in a final gesture of solidarity in their collective grief, then gathered the three elder children around her, lifted eighteen-month-old Tommy into her arms, and turned towards the lych gate, anxious to be the first back at the house in order to ensure that Polly the cook had made enough sandwiches.
Constance had died only eight days previously, following the latest, and most serious, of the heart attacks that had plagued the final year of her life. She’d ignored the doctor’s orders as usual and weighed just as much when she keeled over in the garden as she had when ordered to shed some pounds. She’d only been in her mid-fifties, and although she’d lived to a greater age than the husband who’d gone before her, Jack was now contemplating the possibility that a weak heart was also part of his heritage, along with the house and the money.
Constance had at least consulted her lawyer when she sensed the Grim Reaper beckoning, and her estate — including the family trust fund that had financed her middle-class lifestyle of bridge and ladies’ associations — had been left ‘in equal shares between my son Jackson and my daughter Lucy, for them to dispose of as they may decide inter pares.’ A brief and somewhat tearful meeting between her two offspring had resulted in Jack conveying his house in Bunting Lane free of charge to Lucy and her family, for them to use as a weekend and holiday retreat from the noise and bustle of London, and Teddy’s ever-growing architectural practice. In exchange, Lucy had relinquished all claim to the former family home in Church Lane, in which Jack and his family were now installed, although the loose location of the various items of furniture in the sitting room suggested that there was still a good deal of fine-tuning left to be completed.
Along with the Church Lane house came the domestics, Polly and Alice, and Esther for one was looking forward to the greater freedom this would give her to enjoy watching their children grow up. In Bunting Lane she’d relied on her general domestic assistant Nell, whom she’d rescued from a local orphanage several years ago. Nell was now installed as ‘live-in’ housekeeper for Lucy and her family, while the ‘handy work’ and gardening was in the capable hands of Billy, Nell’s former close friend from the orphanage. Nell and Billy were to be married next month, and Jack and Esther would be happily bearing the cost of both the ceremony and the honeymoon in Southend that would follow, financed from Jack’s share of the residue of the family trust. Lucy had spent her share on new furnishings for their ‘weekend house’ and was more than content to take over responsibility for Nell and Billy’s joint wage of three pounds a week.
Jack’s sister Lucy sidled up to him once they returned to the house.
‘Thanks for speaking so bravely for both of us at Mother’s sending-off.’ She smiled appreciatively. ‘I’d just have become a blubbering mess, I know I would.’
‘I thought you theatrical types were taught how to keep emotions in check,’ Jack observed, in reference to Lucy’s fulltime hobby of amateur dramatics, but Lucy shook her head.
‘Just the opposite — we’re trained to display emotion, and I wouldn’t have wanted Teddy and the children to see what a pathetic heap I can become once I open the floodgates.’
‘Will you be staying down the road overnight?’
Lucy nodded. ‘It makes sense to do that, rather than drag the children back to Holborn after dark. Plus, I persuaded Teddy to take the morning away from his practice, so we’ll be able to enjoy one of Nell’s delicious breakfasts. Do you miss them, or is Polly good at them too?’
‘To tell you the truth we’ve barely had time to move in. Thank God for Billy and his strong arms, not to mention the wagon we managed to borrow from the local baker up the road, but it’s all still a bit disorganised, as you can see.’
‘Don’t let Percy eat another thing,’ Aunt Beattie instructed Jack sternly as she sidled up to him at the buffet table. ‘His waistcoat is already threatening to fire buttons across the room, and he’ll use this generous spread as an excuse not to eat any supper when I get him home.’
Jack grinned at the lifelong memories of Aunt Beattie’s atrocious cooking, and could well understand her husband’s strategy, but there was another way of preserving his uncle, at least temporarily, from gastric perils.
‘We were rather hoping that you and Uncle Percy would stay the night,’ Jack said, smiling invitingly.
‘That’s very kind of you, but do you have the room?’ Beattie asked doubtfully.
‘Of course we do. We have one more bedroom than we had in Bunting Lane, and Miriam and Tommy are sharing a room at present, until we get everything properly sorted.’
‘Not Lily and Bertie?’
‘Not unless you want a world war on the upper floor.’ Jack grinned, and Beattie’s face softened.
‘If you insist.’
The next morning, after breakfast, Percy and Jack retired outside to allow Percy to smoke his pipe.
‘So, young Jack,’ Percy smiled through the wreathing pipe smoke, ‘do your sailor boy bobbies still resent your appointment?’
Following his and Percy’s success the previous year in foiling an assassination plot during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, they had both been rewarded with promotions and new responsibilities. For Percy it had been a rise to the dizzy height of Detective Chief Inspector inside a new Scotland Yard division headed ‘Disciplinary Branch’ that had been created specifically for him, given his track record for breaking the rules himself. For Jack, it had been a promotion to the rank of Inspector at the unusually young age of thirty, but that only added to the occasional resentment of the men under him in the ‘Port of Tilbury London Police’ constabulary that was officially a standard police contingent, but was in reality a sort of dockyard security force that ensured that all was well in one of London’s most important freight and passenger ports. He’d been appointed there, on the insistence of Superintendent Melville of Special Branch, largely as a reward for his loyalty and patriotism but Jack was still a London bobby at heart.
‘You can’t really blame them,’ Jack explained, ‘since Sergeant Pickering should really have got the promotion, given his twenty-odd years of service. He’s the best of the three sergeants, and I relied on him completely when I first took up the post. It’s totally different from normal policing, and I knew nothing about life on the dockside except the few bits and pieces I picked up in Wapping during my Whitechapel days.’
‘So what’s involved?’ Percy asked.
Jack sighed heavily. ‘Stuff that’s not really my best suit. Thieving, of course, and regular brawls among labouring gangs. They’re hired by the day, and they’re obviously very jealous if one man gets hired and they don’t. Those I can handle, but when stuff goes missing from the dockside I have to know all about things called “bills of lading” and “advance shipping notes”.’
‘Is there no normal policing inside Tilbury Dock apart from breaking up brawls and chasing after stolen grain consignments?’
‘Not inside the place, no,’ Jack confirmed, ‘but that’s the other problem. Although the town has its own police force, after a fashion — the usual story of an undermanned and listless bunch whose morale is at rock bottom — they insist that we supplement them when there’s trouble in the streets, and in particular the pubs. They’re full of prostitutes, and they average half a dozen drunken punch-ups a night. Unfortunately we have a telephone, and more than once the local publicans have called us for assistance before contacting the town station. You might want to g et your good friend Melville to light a fire under the Chief Constable of Essex, to remind him that our duties are focused on the need to monitor what comes in and out of the nation on board ocean-going vessels, not breaking heads in public bars.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Percy said as he jerked his head in the direction of the glass ‘sun lounge’ extension to the sitting room, from the window of which Aunt Beattie was gesturing for him to rejoin the company. ‘In the meantime, back to burnt offerings. Thanks for two days of decent food.’
Chapter Two
The following Monday, Percy muttered a curse as he came to the end of the fourth-floor corridor and encountered another dead end, the third since he’d left his own second floor office in answer to the summons up to Special Branch that had come by messenger and had contained the advice that a response was required ‘ten minutes ago, if not earlier.’ That was all very well, but until someone produced a reliable guidebook to this rabbit warren on Victoria Embankment he could hardly be expected to break any records answering the call. Not that he was all that eager anyway — he was very comfortable with the billet he had now, where nobody bothered him, and he could bother other people in accordance with his own timetable.
He spotted the rear end of a cleaning lady bent over a bucket, mop in hand, and called out, ‘Assuming that there’s a face on the other end of what I can see at present, do you have the remotest idea where Special Branch may be found?’
‘Yer cheeky wotsit!’ The lady grinned as she rose and turned. ‘It’s down that way, ter yer left just past the staircase. Mind yer don’t slip on yer own greasy tongue.’
Two minutes later Percy was announcing his delayed arrival to the underling seated at the desk when he heard a bellow from the open door to the inner office beyond.
‘Percy! Get your arse in here yesterday, and never mind the backchat!’
‘I’d have been here sooner,’ Percy explained with a frown as he threw himself into the chair facing Superintendent Melville, ‘but it’s not my fault if this new place was designed with all the complexity of an Egyptian burial site. So where’s the fire, and why me?’
‘First things first. Am I correct in recalling that your nephew now holds down command of Tilbury Docks?’
‘He’s the Inspector of the Docks Police, certainly, on your recommendation as I also recall,’ Percy replied. ‘Are you about to tell me why you ask?’
‘Because it features in what I have to tell you,’ Melville replied as he glanced down at the contents of a file open on his desk. ‘It’s a long story, but a short one as well. Which would you prefer?’
‘Neither, if it means I’m going to be sent after bomb-chuckers or anarchists when I’m meant to be kicking arse inside the Met.’
‘And from what I hear you’re making a thoroughly good job of that,’ Melville smiled. ‘There may even be more of that for you to indulge yourself in before all this is over, but that will depend upon what you unearth. I’m pulling you back inside Special Branch for a particular job, Percy. You may recall that your promotion, and that of your nephew, was conditional upon you making yourselves available whenever the nation needed you?’
‘And that moment has arrived?’
‘Perhaps, and then again perhaps not. We don’t know whether the job I’m about to throw at you is political in motivation, or has a simpler explanation, but either way you would seem to be the appropriate one to lob it at.’
Percy opted for silence, one of his best interrogation techniques, since the other person always felt obliged to keep talking, and Melville was no exception.
‘Have you ever heard of Upminster School?’
‘Can’t say I have, but then I doubt if they’ve heard of me either,’ Percy quipped, earning a frown of rebuke from Melville.
‘Cut out the funnies, Percy, this is serious. Two boys have disappeared from there in recent weeks — at the end of their summer term, to be precise. It’s a boys’ boarding school out in Essex. On the north west side, as you head out towards Hertfordshire. We need to find them — or at least, to come up with the reason for their disappearance.’
‘I assume that these two spotty absentees didn’t disappear of their own accord, and that their absence is a matter of national concern?’
‘Whether or not they planned their own disappearance will be a matter for you to determine,’ Melville advised him. ‘I don’t suppose their names will mean much to you, but I’d consider it a distinct improvement in your attitude since you came through that door if you’d at least make a note of them.’
Percy frowned slightly and extracted his notebook and pencil. ‘If they’re double-barrelled, I might need larger note paper,’ he muttered as he sarcastically licked the leaded end of his pencil.
‘Keep your Socialist wit to yourself, Percy,’ Melville growled. ‘Their names are Horace Davenport and Ernest McIlwain.’
‘You’re right — they meant nothing to me, and they don’t ring any bells,’ Percy confirmed as he wrote them down. ‘I assume that they’re not remotely royalty, so why Special Branch?’
‘We do more than guard errant princes,’ Melville asserted. ‘We keep an eye on everyone whose existence and safety are of importance to the nation, whether for reasons of State or more sordid economic ones.’
‘So these two boys are the heirs to industrial empires, that it?’
‘Yes, in the case of Ernest McIlwain. His father’s a gold prospector out in Boer country — Witwatersrand, in the Transvaal, to be precise. He’s an uitlander.’
‘Am I meant to be impressed?’ Percy asked.
Melville tutted. ‘I assume that your perusal of the newspapers is confined to the horse racing page. The word “uitlander” means “foreigner” in Afrikaans — that’s the language spoken by the heathen Dutch, who regard us English as trespassers in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. There’s an ongoing battle between us and the Dutch regarding settlement out there in the middle of dusty nowhere — land that was unfit to inhabit until some Johnny discovered gold.’
‘Wasn’t there a war out there only recently?’
Melville snorted. ‘The more you speak, the more I realise how much this nation needs a Special Branch that keeps its eye on world affairs. There was indeed a war out there recently, Percy, when we tried unsuccessfully to annex the Transvaal in order to secure the gold mining fortune that’s to be had out there. To that you can add the discovery of diamonds in the Orange Free State, and we’ve been rattling sabres at the Boers ever since. The “Boers”, for your further education, are Dutch farmers who’re being supported by the Germans in the hope that they’ll resist British expansion in the gold and diamond fields. Even you can presumably see why a wealthy and technology-rich gold prospector like McIlwain might be vital to British interests, and why the Germans might want to divert his mind into more personal matters.’
‘So you reckon that the Germans have kidnapped his son?’
‘We can’t rule that out at present, certainly, which is why I want you on the job.’
‘So how does Jack fit into all this?’
‘I haven’t given you the whole story about Ernest McIlwain yet,’ Melville reminded him. ‘On the twenty-second of July, Ernest McIlwain climbed into what was believed at the time to have been his father’s coach, which was scheduled to take him down to Tilbury, where he had a berth on a passenger vessel to Durban in South Africa.’
‘So what happened?’
‘That’s what we need you to find out,’ Melville told him. ‘You’ll be sent to investigate in your capacity as a senior officer at the Yard, without any reference to Special Branch, and your nephew will be able to assist so far as concerns the Tilbury end of things, although we’re not sure if the boy ever got that far.’
‘What about the coach driver?’
Melville shook his head. ‘Do you think we didn’t enquire? According to the headmaster, who was watching the boys heading off for their summer vacation, everyone assumed that the coach that Ernest McIlwain climbed into belonged to his father. But when his father contacted the British Attaché in Durban regarding the son’s failure to arrive on the boat he was supposed to be on, he finally admitted that due to the distraction of overseeing the shafting of an exploratory mine he’d completely forgotten to instruct the family’s English coachman to collect the boy, so he must have hired his own. Apparently the young man enjoyed a generous allowance.’
