Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the New World

There was the sound of trickling water, and looking down at the leg of Duffy’s prison uniform, Blackstone saw that the man had wet himself.

He nodded his head, with satisfaction at a job well done.

‘If it feels like that now, just imagine how it will feel when they’re actually putting the rope around your neck,’ he said.

Then, without another word, he turned and walked towards the steps.

When Blackstone appeared at the head of the stairs, the first thing the desk sergeant did was to look up at the wall clock.

‘You were talkin’ to him for six minutes,’ he said. ‘Maybe six and a half minutes.’

‘And was that long enough?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Long enough for what?’ the sergeant countered, a shifty, evasive look coming into his eye.

‘Long enough to satisfy whoever it was told you to get me talking to Duffy in the first place.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ the sergeant said.

‘So if you have no idea, you — and whoever put you up to it — won’t be expecting a cut of the bribe, then?’ Blackstone asked.

The sergeant paled. ‘Don’t tell me. . don’t tell me you took a bribe. Not with the. .’

‘Not with the what?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Well, if you did take one, it don’t have nothin’ to do with me,’ the sergeant said, ignoring the question.

‘Not with the what ?’ Blackstone persisted.

‘I swear before God that my slate is clean, an’ I’m innocent on all counts,’ the sergeant said, as if he was already addressing the court.

This was beginning to sound like a conversation between a dog and duck, Blackstone decided — because not only was it not going anywhere, but it seemed increasing unlikely that it ever would go anywhere.

‘Do you know if the police department has booked me into some sort of lodgings?’ he asked.

He certainly hoped it had, because the weather had been unpleasantly warm even when he’d landed, and as the morning had progressed it had grown even hotter. Now, with his shirt stuck to his back and small rivers of sweat cascading down his neck, what he wanted — more than anything else in the whole world — was a good cold bath.

‘Lodgings?’ the sergeant repeated. ‘Oh, yeah, you got a room booked for you at — ’ he rifled through the stack of paper to his left — ‘the Mayfair Hotel.’

‘Is that far from here?’

‘Maybe five minutes.’

‘Then if you’ll give me instructions on how to find it, I’d like to go there now.’

‘There ain’t time,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Sergeant Meade’s expectin’ to take you out to lunch at twelve.’

Blackstone glanced up at the wall clock.

‘It’s only just after ten thirty now,’ he said. ‘If my lodgings are only five minutes away. .’

‘An’ before that, we’ve got your meeting,’ the sergeant said.

‘My meeting?’ Blackstone repeated. ‘What meeting is that?’

‘The one with Commissioner Comstock,’ the sergeant told him.

Assistant Commissioner Todd of New Scotland Yard would have stayed firmly seated when Blackstone entered his office, but Commissioner Comstock of the New York Police Department was on his feet before the Englishman had even crossed the threshold.

Blackstone’s initial impression was of a scholarly, slightly built man, who wore a pair of pince-nez spectacles on the end of his nose, and looked as if he would have been far more at home on a small university campus than he could ever be in a large police department. But before there was time for further speculation, the inspector found his thoughts shifting away from the commissioner — and on to his own particular circumstances at that moment.

There was something wrong with the whole situation, he thought, as he crossed the office.

More than one thing, he told himself, as he shook the commissioner’s hand.

A whole series of things, he decided, as he accepted the commissioner’s invitation to take a seat.

The first thing that was wrong was that he was there in Comstock’s office at all . He was a relatively unimportant officer from Scotland Yard — fairly low on the totem pole, as the Americans might say — and yet he had been taken to meet one of the four police commissioners in charge of New York City.

The second — and more important — thing was the way in which Comstock himself was acting. He was doing his best to appear to be the patrician host welcoming his foreign visitor — but all he was actually succeeding in doing was looking unhappy.

Or nervous.

Or unsure of what to do or say next.

Or a combination of all of these.

The third thing. .

‘It is certainly a pleasure to meet you, Inspector,’ Comstock said in a low fussy voice which pushed the third thing Blackstone had been wondering about to the back of his mind.

‘And it’s a pleasure — and an honour — to meet you, too, sir,’ Blackstone countered.

Comstock unconvincingly shuffled some papers about on his desk for a few moments, then said, ‘I take it, Inspector, that there is no doubt at all in your mind that the man who you were sent to New York to identify is the one we are actually holding in our cells.’

‘No doubt at all, sir. As per the instructions you gave to your desk sergeant, I spent some time talking to him — even though, for identification purposes, there was no need to.’

He was taking a shot in the dark by assuming that the man who’d rung the sergeant had been the commissioner himself, but the look on Comstock’s face quickly confirmed that the shot had found its target.

‘Yes. . er. . as per my instructions. Quite,’ Comstock said. He glanced down, once more, at the pieces of paper on his desk. ‘Did this man Duffy by any chance attempt to bribe you?’ he asked, without looking up.

‘Bribe me?’ Blackstone repeated.

‘Bribe you.’

‘Why should you ask that?’

‘Just idle curiosity,’ Comstock said, unconvincingly. ‘After all, it’s not every man who would turn down the chance of earning four thou. .’

The commissioner clamped his mouth tightly shut, but the damage had already been done.

Duffy had been moved from one cell to another for one specific reason, Blackstone thought. And that reason had been that while there were no hidden microphones in his first cell, there undoubtedly were in his second.

But why should the commissioner have even wanted to listen in on the conversation?

Could it be because he had intended to skim off a portion of the bribe for himself?

Possibly.

But, thinking about it, it did seem highly unlikely that a police commissioner for New York City — even if he were corrupt — would wish to be become involved in such a thing. For Blackstone himself, four thousand dollars was a great deal of money, but for the commissioner it must seem like very petty graft indeed.

And even if that were his intention, he would now know that though a bribe had been offered by Duffy, it had certainly not been accepted by Blackstone.

While these thoughts had been running through Blackstone’s mind, Comstock had clearly been working out how to cover his gaffe.

‘You were planning to sail back to England as soon as possible, weren’t you?’ he asked, apparently having decided that his best course would be to pretend the gaffe had never happened.

Were planning?

‘I still am planning to sail as soon as possible, sir,’ Blackstone said emphatically. ‘I’ve got what I came here for, and the sooner my prisoner is hanging at the end of a rope, the happier I’ll be.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Comstock said. ‘Certainly so. The guilty must be punished as speedily as possible. I agree with you on that.’ He paused. ‘And, indeed, passage has been booked for you on the first available ship, which sets sail in four days’ time. But, as regards the other matter I just mentioned. .’