Free Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square by William Sutton

writing some new serial, and asks us to check the files?”
    I fished the papers out of the bin and left the Dickens theft open.
    It was a happy time for me. Wardle stomped in and out, shrouded in gravitas, which impressed me greatly. I never could work out quite how he was so busy. Either he was involved in cases of which I knew nothing, or else, through years of grind, he had earned himself one of those positions of such respect that nobody knows what your responsibilities are any more.
    I worked at the smaller desk – nonetheless a broad affair with drawers and an inkwell. He decreed that I start working back through the files from the previous New Year; more recent cases might yet admit of progress. Christmas had been busy, and it took several weeks to sift through December of ’59, trying to find a sure-footed style for my reports.
    We soon fell into a routine. On Fridays, we lunched together at the Dog and Duck, and he went home early, leaving me to put the office in order. The rest of the week, I chose between wandering out to a street stall and sandwiches in the back room, where Darlington bombarded me with stories about the Yard. He told me that Wardle was an expert in unmasking frauds and cracking gambling rings. That Irish financier investigation, for instance, was the famous Sadleir suicide, an undercover coup that scandalised the business world; the story went that the man had left such a revelatory suicide note, the police had been obliged to cover it up and forge a less explosive document. Darlington saw this as a touchstone of Wardle’s genius. His own department was much more mundane, he complained, and I realised he envied me my post.
    Thus occupied, I managed for nearly a month to resist looking up the spout case, more through fear than self-denial. If Wardle caught me looking at it, it would be obvious I had ditched chronology for curiosity. I had no greater dread than stepping out of line and finding myself back at Brunswick Square under Glossop’s mocking eye.
    One Friday, when Wardle had gone to the doctor with a pain in the gut I found myself pulling out the envelope marked “ Euston Square, 9th November ”. It was marked as closed. Seized by excitement, I flicked through it urgently, the porter’s statement, and Roxton Coxhill’s; my own report, in pristine condition; Jackman’s summary. Of Wardle’s previous sergeant I knew little, beyond the sour impression I’d received when handing in my report. From his paperwork he seemed a dab hand in calligraphy, but no visionary with the bigger picture. A few comments around the Yard had given me the impression that he had departed under a cloud. “Wardle’s new boy? Good luck. You’ll need it.” I didn’t ask for details.
    Filled with excitement at the prospect of unravelling the mystery, I scanned through Jackman’s summary. I found myself none the wiser. Rather than solve the riddle, he seemed simply to have ignored it. He had left out everything of importance, labelling it an industrial mishap, with not a question mark in sight. My indignation rose as I read the travesty of a report over and over. It mentioned that the corpse was sent for post-mortem, but there was no mention of Simpson’s revelation. In fact, Jackman mentioned none of the peculiarities, the clock sabotage, the mysterious repair man. There was no new evidence whatsoever, and the companies involved were exonerated from blame under the tag “accidental damage”.
    The complacency of the thing left me breathless. I stomped around the office in indignation. Was I simply to despatch this case into obscurity, like all the others? True enough, I had thrown away cases still more inconclusive than this, but it would not do to worry about that. I stood at the little window, as Wardle often did, the details of that night flooding back to me, when the door opened and in stomped the inspector himself.
    “Afternoon, Watchman. You’re working hard.”
    “Sir! Are you quite well? I