Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

Blackstone said nothing.

‘You’re quite right, of course,’ Flynn conceded. ‘Only four people ever came down here.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘The two sons — who are known in this household as Mr George and Mr Harold — the butler, and one of the maids who does the cleaning.’

‘So apart from when he left the suite, they were the only people he saw,’ Meade said.

‘They were the only people he saw period ,’ Flynn replied.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘According to the information I’ve been given, he didn’t leave the suite.’

‘Ever?’

‘Ever!’

So he’d been down there for seven years, Blackstone thought, and in that time he had only seen four people. Well, if he hadn’t been mad when he decided to bury himself in this vault, he was probably pretty close to it now.

‘Can we see the rest of the suite, now?’ he asked.

Flynn shrugged. ‘Why not?’

The bedroom was entered through a door at the back of the study. There was a low, persistent hum in this room, almost as if it had a life of its own, and when Blackstone placed the back of his hand against the wall, he felt a slight vibration.

‘That’s the generator,’ Flynn said. ‘Its installation was personally supervised by Thomas Edison himself. I’m told it powers both the electric light and the extractor fans.’

Extractor fans! That would explain why the air down there was both fresh and cool, Blackstone thought.

‘If there are fans, there must be ventilation shafts,’ he said aloud.

‘That’d be your sharp mind working again,’ Flynn replied.

‘And how wide are the shafts?’

‘Not wide enough for a man to crawl down, if that’s the direction your thoughts are moving in, Mr-Scotland-Yard-Man.’

Blackstone looked around the room. All it contained was a bed, a dressing table and a wardrobe.

He opened the wardrobe. There were at least a dozen suits hanging from the rail. He ran the edge of one of the jackets between his thumb and finger. The material felt expensive to him — but then, what did he know?

‘Would you say this is a good quality suit, Alex?’ he asked his partner.

Meade gave the jacket a cursory glance. ‘From the cut, I’d say that it comes from Jackson Brothers,’ he said. ‘Which means that it’s not just good quality, it’s the best .’

Blackstone took the suit out of the wardrobe, and held it up in front of himself.

Big Bill hadn’t acquired his nickname just because he was important in the business world, he decided. The man these suits had been made for had to be at least six feet three tall and with a barrel of a chest.

‘If he really never left this place, as you say, why did he need so many clothes?’ Alex Meade asked Flynn suspiciously.

‘Now you wouldn’t be accusing me of purveying you untruths, would you?’ the local inspector replied, deceptively lightly.

‘Wouldn’t I?’ Meade challenged. ‘Well, what makes you think-?’

‘No, of course he’s not accusing you of anything like that,’ Blackstone interrupted. He turned to Meade. ‘We used to have district officers in British India who, even when they were alone and in the middle of the jungle, would still dress formally before they sat down to dinner. Maybe Mr Holt is cast in the same mould.’

‘Maybe he is,’ Meade admitted, reluctantly.

Another half-smile flitted across Flynn’s face. ‘You’re a great one for the diplomacy, aren’t you, Mr Blackstone?’ he asked.

‘Whenever possible,’ Blackstone agreed.

He took hold of the wardrobe and heaved it to one side.

‘What are you looking for now?’ Flynn asked. ‘The entrance to a secret tunnel?’

‘That’s right,’ Blackstone replied.

Not that he expected to find one, any more than he had expected the ventilation shafts to be wide enough to accommodate a man. The position of the Pinkertons’ bodies had pretty much ruled out any method of entry other than the obvious one — but he had learned from experience that the point at which the solution looked so obvious that there was absolutely no need to check it out, was precisely the point at which it should be checked out.

There was nothing behind the wardrobe but a blank wall, and a single tap with his knuckles was enough to reassure Blackstone that the wall had not been recently disturbed.

There was one more room — the bathroom.

‘I expect, coming from England, you’ll be a stranger to inside plumbing,’ Flynn said.

‘Now just hold on there a minute!’ Meade protested angrily. ‘Inspector Blackstone is a guest in our country, and-’

‘It’s all right, Alex,’ Blackstone said soothingly. He turned to Flynn. ‘You’re quite right, Inspector. In London, the house I board in has a single tap in the back yard and an outside privy which it shares with several other houses.’

‘Worse than I thought,’ Flynn mused, then continued, in an obvious attempt to bait the Englishman. ‘Do they pay you so badly in New Scotland Yard that that’s the best you can afford?’

‘No, they don’t. But I use most of my salary for other purposes.’

‘And what purposes might they be?’

To help keep the orphanage running, Blackstone thought.

‘That’s really none of your business, now is it, Inspector Flynn?’ he said aloud.

Flynn gave him another half-smile.

‘As hard as I’m trying, you’re making it difficult for me to dislike you, Mr Blackstone,’ he said. ‘Is that deliberate?’

‘Yes,’ Blackstone told him. ‘I’m a graduate of a charm school.’

Flynn’s smile widened, and then was gone. ‘Well, I imagine that before I leave you alone to root around like pigs in the forest, there’ll be some questions you’ll be after asking me,’ he said.

‘A few,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Did the Pinkerton Detective Agency have the sole responsibility for guarding Mr Holt?’

‘It did.’

‘And who chose which guards would be assigned here?’

‘Pinkerton’s New York City office.’

‘So Holt himself had nothing to do with it?’

‘Nothing at all. The Pinkertons don’t work like that. You tell them the job you want doing, but you don’t tell them how to do it.’

‘Do the agents live somewhere on Coney Island, or do they travel in from the city every day?’

‘They live on Coney Island — in the grounds of this very house. Holt had a row of cottages specially built to accommodate them.’

‘And how many agents are there?’

‘Six.’

‘So they worked three eight-hour shifts?’

Flynn shook his head. ‘They worked twelve-hour shifts, with one pair resting. And before you say anything else on the subject, I’d agree with you that, under normal circumstances , twelve hours is far too long for any man to remain vigilant.’

‘But not in these circumstances?’

‘Exactly. Think about it — the only way to get into the suite is through the guard room, and the only way to get into the guard room is through that steel door. A trained monkey could have done the job them Pinkertons were doing.’

‘So what went wrong last night?’

‘Ah, there you have me,’ Flynn admitted. ‘I think I’d have to say that if Cody and Turner let the kidnappers in, it could only be because they were working hand in glove with them.’

‘And the moment the kidnappers were inside, they murdered Cody and Turner because they were the weak link in the chain?’

‘Well, exactly. You’d agree with that, would you?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Blackstone said.

But, in truth, he’d already decided it was more than that — because Flynn was right and there was no way that the kidnappers could have got in without the cooperation of the guards.