The London Blitz Murders

SIX





A QUIET MORNING





AGATHA AWOKE WITH A START, slightly after seven a.m. Typically, she had been sleeping with her head under a pillow.

This was a wartime habit for her, a precaution against flying broken glass, and to help dampen the shrill cry of air-raid sirens, which she ignored. Since the war had begun, during air raids, she and Max had always stayed in their bedroom, wherever they might be living, and did not follow the conventional wisdom of fleeing to the basement.

The futility of shelters had been proven beyond doubt to Agatha when Sheffield Terrace had been bombed, one weekend, while she and Max were away in London. A bomb hit across the way, taking out three houses, and what had been blown up at their own home? The basement! The ground and first floors had gone largely undamaged (although her precious Steinway had never been quite the same).

Even before that incident, she refused any suggestions that she ought to go to a shelter. Few things frightened Agatha Christie Mallowan, but the thought of being buried alive, of being trapped underground under dirt and rubble… well, she had decided to sleep only in her own bed, wherever she might be.

And Max had honored her preference, staying right with her throughout the nastiest and noisiest of bombings. By now she was so used to air raids on London that she hardly woke up for them, sleeping through the worst of it in 1940. When a siren or bomb did manage to wake her, she’d merely roll over, muttering, “Oh, dear, there they are again!” and would pull the pillow over her head, tighter.

What had woken her, this morning, was that nightmare again, that damned Gunman dream. She dreamed she was having lunch with Max in a large country house, surrounded by flower beds. Afterward, she and Max walked through the garden, vivid colors, wonderful fragrances, all around them, James on a leash at her side; and then she had glanced at Max and, suddenly, he was that blue-eyed Gunman, and rather than suffer any longer through the unpleasantness of it, she had forced herself awake. Right now!

Next to her bed, as was also her wartime habit, was a chair on which she kept her two most precious possessions: her fur coat; and her rubber hot-water bottle. Gold and silver came and went; but in this war, rubber, now that was valuable.

The fur coat and rubber hot-water bottle, she knew, would see her through all emergencies.

Outside her window, the world was an overcast gray, the sky the color of gunmetal and her beloved cherry tree a skeletal figure silhouetted against the sky like a surrendering prisoner. She had intended to sleep in, but once awake, she was awake….

She felt rather in a funk and did not care to dress straightaway, much less go down for breakfast in the little Lawn Road Flats restaurant. Even the most trivial passing conversation with a waitress or fellow resident of the Flats seemed quite more than she could bear to face. She was scheduled to work this evening at the hospital, in the pharmacy, and so the day stretched out endlessly before her. Slipping into the lovely powder-blue Jaeger dressing gown Max had given her as a farewell present, she padded downstairs.

She did not bathe—she was restricting herself to twice a week, due to the water shortage—but allowed herself a sponge bath, using soap sparingly, as the ration was one tablet per person per month. (When she did bathe, she used only the allowed five inches of hot water; it was the least she could do, since King George VI was having his valet measure five inches thereof for the royal bath.) She put on no makeup, briefly frowning at the face of the old woman who glanced at her from the mirror.

After poaching herself an egg and making toast and coffee, and barely touching any of it, she wandered into the library and sat herself down. She began to cry. She wept for perhaps five minutes. This had happened before, and she kept a handkerchief handy in a pocket of the robe.

She was not sure why she was blue (“depressed” would have overstated it). Missing Max was a constant in her life, but on certain days, his absence hit her like a physical blow; she hurt from not having him here—she ached with the possibility of any harm coming to him. True, he was as safe as any military man might be, in his posting; but this was, nonetheless, war. People died.

She might die. A bomb might strike the Flats and her pillow wouldn’t do a bit of good and she and Max would never see each other again. She cried a little more.

James was curled beside the chair, but the terrier ran for cover when she dried her face, blew her nose, cleared her throat, rose with resolve, moved to her desk and began typing—the machine’s chatter always frightened the animal, though on the last air raid, the dog had slept soundly through it, much as he did through thunderstorms.

She typed a letter to Max, not telling him anything of her true-crime research project with Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Max would probably have approved of the effort, had he been around; he was always supportive, and as a man whose calling in life was digging for truth, he would not likely echo Stephen Glanville’s rather chauvinistic concerns regarding a mere woman undertaking an endeavor at all dangerous.

But she did not want to burden Max with what she was up to, nor did she want to risk him reacting, well, like a normal husband… the distance between them, in these times already fraught with peril, might cause Max to revert to conventional male wisdom (if the latter two words weren’t a contradiction in terms).

Agatha did admit to her absent husband that she was “sad this morning, and had cried a bit.” She thanked him for his letters, his many loving letters, and admitted to him that receiving such tender missives “after all these years we have been married makes me feel that I have not been a failure in life—that at least I have succeeded as a wife.”

She paused, embarrassed. And then she said to herself: He is your husband. You need not hide from him.

And she went on: “What a change now, from the unhappy, forlorn person you met in Baghdad so many years ago. You have done everything for me, my love.”

She went on to tell him about the play, and how well rehearsals were going, and that she was dreading opening night, and yet there was something terribly brave of presenting a first night in Blitz-ravaged London. It seemed to her British in the best sense.

When she’d finished the letter (three typewritten pages) and prepared it for mailing, she moved to her comfortable chair, taking a sheaf of papers with her.

The galley proofs of her novel, The Body in the Library, had arrived yesterday from her publisher, William Collins & Sons. They had rebounded well, after their offices were bombed in December 1940, though the sorry state of their records had contributed to her current financial difficulties. The Collins book warehouse in Paternoster Row near St. Paul’s had been ravaged as well, and publishing remained dicey, what with paper allocations cut to a fraction of pre-war quantities.

So the rest of the morning was spent checking for punctuation and typographical problems in the latest Jane Marple mystery. She found herself liking Miss Marple and quite satisfied with the book—a rarity, as she was a harsh critic of her own work—and her mood brightened.

She did pause, at one point, to get up and go out to the kitchen for an apple. James followed her and she gave him half a biscuit (even dogs were on ration) and then she realized why she’d been so forlorn.

It hadn’t been Max, not entirely….

That crime scene yesterday—she had viewed it dispassionately, with the clinical perspective of a nurse, with the calloused attitude of a war correspondent. Not once had she felt ill or in any way uncomfortable. It had not been a pose; it had come naturally to her.

But now, as she settled back into her little flat where she’d been writing her homicidal confections—hiding away from the war and her absent husband—the loss of life represented by that woman’s brutal murder hung over her like a cloud, rumbling, dark, oppressive, with the promise of a storm.

For a moment she sat in her comfortable chair, James again curled beside her (now that the machine-gunning of the typewriter had been silenced), the loose pages of her latest mystery in her lap, and wondered if she should remove herself from the investigation. Already she had involved her friends and colleagues, and—while she of course knew her responsibility had been to aid the police in their efforts—she felt embarrassed by the inconvenience she had caused them.

The irony was, Agatha enjoyed the company of the theatrical crowd precisely because their existence was somehow disconnected from real life. She found it relaxing to associate with actors in wartime, because to these children—whose profession was acting out fantasies—the theatrical world was the real world. This ravaged London where the war was happening was an incomprehensible nightmare, a long, drawn-out inconvenience preventing them from going on with their own truly important lives.

All they spoke of was the theater—of fellow actors and directors and producers; the only momentous events taking place in the world were those happening in the theatrical world. The only war talk related to the Entertainments National Service Association.

She had found this wonderfully refreshing.

And now she had ruined everything by introducing a murder—a real murder—into the playacting.

This thought had barely passed through her mind when the telephone rang. She had a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the winter weather: if that were Sir Bernard or Inspector Greeno, it would likely mean another young woman had been murdered.

If so, would she politely withdraw from her association with the investigators? Or would she answer the call?

Well, she would answer this call, at least. She rose, pausing to pick up her spiral notebook and a pencil, and went to the phone on its stand by the stairs.

And it was indeed Inspector Greeno.

“Oh, Ted,” she said, “I hope there hasn’t been another killing.”

“There hasn’t,” the pleasantly gruff baritone voice responded. “At least, not that we know of. And I’ve practically jumped, all morning, every time the phone’s rung, dreading another such discovery.”

Somehow it was reassuring that she and the hard-boiled inspector had been thinking, and reacting, alike.

The inspector had called, “just checking in,” but with a good deal of new information for her. For one thing, he had a new telephone number for her reference.

He had set up his enquiry headquarters in an office at the Tottenham Court Road Police Station, out of which he was supervising a systematic scouring of Paddington and Soho. All of the “top resources of Scotland Yard” had been mobilized, and every available man from the wartime-depleted police force had moved into the West End. A circular with the description of Evelyn Oatley’s last gentleman caller, as provided by next-door neighbor Ivy Poole, had already been widely distributed.

“We’re talking to every known prostitute,” he said, “and asking each girl if she’s met a violent client in the blackout, of late, or if she knows of another girl who has.”

There was a small chair by the telephone stand; Agatha sat. “Has this proved fruitful?”

“To an extent, but so far everything falls into that latter category—girls who’ve heard stories from other girls. All quite secondhand.”

“Enough to go on, though, I would hope.”

“Two promising leads. We’ve heard complaints of a ‘rough customer’ who passes himself off as the illegitimate son of a member of the House of Lords. Speaks in an affected, imitation Oxford accent, and demands to be called the ‘Duke.’ ”

“Does he have a real name?”

“Not that he’s ever given to any of these good-time girls, and their descriptions are vague and inconsistent. He’s a good-looking fellow, that much they all agree on—but he’s been variously described as twenty-five and thirty-five and points in between. Very well-dressed, as befits his pretensions. Tosses money around. He’s blue-eyed and brown-eyed and, well, you can see the problem.”

“Could his story about a noble if illegitimate heritage be true?”

“Possibly, but more likely it’s simply a fantasy he’s hiring these girls to help him enact. That’s rather typical of working girls and their ‘mugs.’ ”

“You said ‘two promising leads.’ What’s the other?”

“Ah, well. A girl named Phyllis O’Dwyer is said to have had a ‘close call’ or a ‘scrape’ with a particularly wild customer. Three of her friends told us the same story.”

“What does Phyllis say?”

“Apparently, she’s holed up somewhere. Frightened out of her skin. We are looking for her.”

“That does sound promising.” Agatha was making notes. The inspector didn’t seem to mind answering her questions, so she pressed on. “Has Sir Bernard uncovered any significant evidence?”

“Well, he’s made his opinion official that no sexual assault was involved in any one of the three cases. And he passed along to Superintendent Cherrill various items for fingerprinting.”

Fred Cherrill was to fingerprinting what Sir Bernard Spilsbury was to forensics: the Yard was taking no chances on this case. Top resources, indeed.

“Going back to the Evelyn Hamilton murder,” Inspector Greeno said, “the superintendent checked the handbag that had been emptied out in the air-raid shelter, and various contents of the bag; but he found only the victim’s prints.”

“I hope Superintendent Cherrill did better with that tin-opener and those curling tongs.”

“Smudged prints only, I’m afraid—but he was able to back up Sir Bernard’s opinion that our assailant is left-handed: the tin-opener had a smeared print belonging to the little finger of a left hand. The tongs had also been held in a left hand, and a mirror in the emptied-out handbag had a left thumbprint. Again, not identifiable, but indicating we indeed have a left-hander.”

Agatha paused in her note-taking. She said, “Ted… Inspector… I must say it’s generous of you to take time to share all of this with a… what is the word? Kibitzer?”

“Agatha, I have orders from the Home Office to give you every courtesy. But beyond that, you’ve been enormously helpful in this inquiry, thus far—not only with the theatrical link-up, but with your keen powers of observation.”

“Again, all I can say is, you’re most generous. Frankly, I’m blushing.” But, of course, she wasn’t. “Have you had any luck tracing Mrs. Oatley’s husband?”

“In fact, we have. Our people traced him to Blackpool. He seems in the clear. His alibis on the murder nights are, as you say in your books, ironclad.”

She chuckled. “Well, most of the ‘ironclad’ alibis in my books are in the possession of the murderer.”

“Not in this case, I’d wager. The bloke and his wife have been separated by mutual agreement for over a year. They’ve stayed friendly, far as it goes, and he’s seen her in London, from time to time… most recently, about a week ago.”

“Was he aware of his wife’s profession? And I am not referring to dancing or acting.”

“Mr. Oatley says not. I don’t believe him.”

“Well… that’s the kind of lie that does not raise suspicions.”

“True enough. But the main reason I called, Agatha, was to give you a report on your friends at the theater. We’ve checked up on all of them.”

“Now I feel quite ashamed of myself.”

“Please don’t. I can give you mostly good news about all of them—their stories, their alibis, all check out.”

“Then why, Ted, do you say ‘mostly’ good news?”

The inspector’s sigh came across the wire distinctly. “It’s the problem detectives have, outside of books, where alibis are concerned—people rarely have those ironclad ones we mentioned, before.”

“You mean, it’s difficult to determine whether Larry Sullivan sneaked out of the Savoy and back in again? Too many exits?”

“Yes, and not enough doormen—only at the front and back. There are numerous side and rear ways out of the hotel. Most of the doors lock automatically, but one could arrange easily enough for a door not to shut entirely or place adhesive over a lock.”

She nodded to herself. “And Bertie and Irene’s, with their quiet evening at home, is also rather worthless, isn’t it?”

“Yes. One could be covering for the other. And your friend Stephen Glanville says he was home, alone, at his flat, which is where Janet Cummins spent the evening, as well.”

She knew the detective meant Janet had spent the evening in her own flat, and did not correct him.

“Men of mine,” he was saying, “attempted to find witnesses who might have seen Mr. Glanville or Mrs. Cummins exit their buildings, but without success.”

“And what about Mr. Cummins? Janet’s handsome cadet? Aren’t military men often the clients of these ‘good-time girls’?”

The inspector grunted. “He’s in the clear, too. I spoke to him at his quarters last night—he was on fire duty, as you may recall. He seems an intelligent, well-spoken lad.”

“He wasn’t acquainted with the late Mrs. Oatley, or should I say Miss Ward?”

“No. Cadet Cummins says he saw her only that once, on stage, trying out for the understudy part.”

“And what exactly puts him ‘in the clear’?”

“Our RAF cadet was in billets at the time of the two recent murders. The billet passbook confirms the times he came and went, and his roommates verified seeing him go to bed and get up in the morning.”

“I must say I’m relieved.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, I like the young man. He has excellent taste, you know.”

“Really? How do you know that, Agatha?”

“He’s a fan of my books.”

Inspector Greeno actually laughed; she had a feeling it might have been his first laugh of the day.

He said, “Frankly, Agatha, I don’t find it likely that one of your theatrical crowd is our Ripper… whether Jack or Jill. I find it marginally possible that one of them might have had reason to kill Miss Ward, or should I say Mrs. Oatley… but the other two murders? No.”

“And you find my notion of a murderer hiding his work amid another murderer’s tally… melodramatic. More suited to Hercule Poirot’s world than Ted Greeno’s.”

“I do,” he admitted. “Nonetheless, the Yard is… as I said… mobilizing all its top resources. And you are a top resource in my book, Mrs. Agatha Mallowan.”

“How can I be of help?”

“Stay with us, on the scent.”

“You think there will be more murders, then?”

“I’m surprised this morning’s phone hasn’t rung. I’m wondering if some poor girl is dead on her divan, right now… as yet undiscovered by a meter man or landlord.”

“Why are you so certain, Ted?”

“Two murders in two days… with the savagery of them mounting. This is a beast, Agatha. A beast on a killing spree. If you should want to bow out of it, I would not blame you. I would understand.”

“Oh, I do want to bow out of it.”

Surprise and disappointment colored the inspector’s voice. “You do?”

“I do… but I won’t.”

And they rang off; and both went off to work, on their respective murder cases.





FEBRUARY 12, 1942





HER MOTHER WAS EXPECTING HER.

That was what confused Mary Jane Lowe, who had taken the tube from Charing Cross station to meet her mother, Margaret, at the second-floor flat on Gosfield Street, a narrow side street just off Tottenham Court Road. Mary Jane was fourteen, a tall, dark, brown-eyed brunette with a blossoming figure the boys were noticing; right now she was boyishly dressed herself—navy blue coveralls and a matching corduroy jacket—partly because that was the style, but also due to the chill, snowy weather.

Mary Jane did not wear makeup—her mother didn’t approve—but her features were so pretty, her brown eyes so big and long-lashed, her smile so wide and white, her lips so full, she didn’t really need to. She was proud of her good looks, which she’d inherited from her mum, who had just enough Spanish blood in her to make both mother and daughter seem vaguely exotic.

Someday, perhaps, she would be as beautiful as her mother.

Before the war, Mary Jane’s mum had kept a boardinghouse in the coastal town of Southend, and the girl had fond, vivid memories of sunny blue-sky mornings and running along the sand with their Scottie terrier. But Southend tourism was a thing of the past these days—barbed wire strung along the beach, aimed to keep out the invading German hordes, kept out holiday fun-seekers, as well—and then the boardinghouse, which was on the verge of going broke anyway, got commandeered by the military.

Mum had left Mary Jane in Southend with Uncle Rodney and Aunt Grace—whose restaurant business had survived, thanks to the soldiers—and, while Mary Jane carried on with school and all, Mum had found a position as a banker’s secretary, in London.

This, at least, was what Mary Jane’s mother had told her. But Mary Jane had suspicions otherwise. First, Uncle Rod and Auntie Grace gave each other funny looks, whenever Mary Jane—receiving monthly envelopes of cash from London—commented on Mum’s secretarial situation. And Mary Jane herself knew Mum had never had anything like training in that line of work.

She wondered if Mum were a waitress or a cleaning woman or such like, and was ashamed to say so to her little girl, particularly after they’d had such a nice life at the Seaside Inn. She also wondered, sometimes, if her late father had really died when Mary Jane was two; she was at an age where the thought did occur to her that her father, who was just a grinning face in some faded photographs, might have simply run off and left Mum and her to fend.

When the girl came to London, once every six weeks or so, to spend a weekend with Mum (and Scottie, who Uncle Rod had not welcomed), Mary Jane longed to ask her mother these and other related questions. But somehow Mary Jane could not bring herself to do so. Mum seemed so sad, these days.

Funny thing was, Mum didn’t say she was sad or act sad, and in fact, around Mary Jane, she smiled rather too much, if anything. Mary Jane sensed something forced about Mum’s good mood, and her over-involved anecdotes about herself and co-workers at the bank, and how she was the bank president’s “right-hand gal.”

Now, as she knocked on the door for the twentieth time, with Scottie on the other side, yapping and yowling (despite the girl’s assurances: “It’s only me, love”), Mary Jane trembled with an intermingling of frustration and fear….

Outside the door, next to where Mary Jane had set down her little tan suitcase, was a wrapped parcel addressed to her mother. Its presence, this late in the day, on the doorstep, struck Mary Jane as odd.

Mum had said in her letter that she’d be taking Thursday and Friday off, to spend with Mary Jane, who had a long weekend because of end of exams. Staying in Mum’s flat was always rather harrowing—it seemed to Mary Jane little more than a glorified prison cell, really.

Mum said nice rooms were hard to come by, ’cause of the war and all, though Mary Jane suspected her mother was living so close to the bone so’s she could send Mary Jane (and her uncle and aunt) all that money. But the girl always had a wonderful time, visiting Mum, and this weekend would be no exception. They would do all sorts of fun things together—take Scottie to the park, go to the cinema, perhaps spend an afternoon at Harrod’s, pretending they could afford to buy something.

But with an unclaimed parcel on Mum’s doorstep, and no response to ardent knocking, and Scottie going simply mad barking, Mary Jane felt herself teetering on the edge of panic. She knew she was being silly, but she couldn’t help imagining the most tragic things… particularly with what the newspapers were saying about a Blackout Ripper and all….

Absurd! Ridiculous! That fiend targeted streetwalkers, not bank secretaries… or waitresses, even, or charwomen. Her mum had simply got called away, had to go in for work, last minute. Probably the bank president himself. How could Mum say no to him?

Not sure what else to do, Mary Jane knocked on the door of the neighboring flat, Scottie’s yapping sounding pitiful now.

The woman who answered was pretty, in a haggard sort of way, and was wearing a dark blue dressing gown; her platinum hair was up in pin curls, and she seemed to have just about applied half of her makeup—one eye, a beauty mark and her roughed-in lip rouge. She had a cigarette in one red-nailed hand and smoke curled like a question mark.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Mary Jane said, for she had never met her mother’s neighbor before, “but I’m Mrs. Lowe’s daughter, here for a visit….”

“I’m Alice Wick. You must be Mary Jane! The good student I keep hearin’ so much about. Pearl’s right proud of you.”

“Pearl? My mother’s name is Margaret.”

“Just a nickname, love. Whatever’s wrong?”

When Mary Jane had finished explaining, the neighbor frowned and said, “Y’know, love, I noticed that parcel there, myself, this mornin’.”

“She might just not be back from the bank, yet….”

Miss Wick frowned. “Was she goin’ to the bank, dear?”

“That’s where she works.”

“Is it now?… Let me slip somethin’ on, and we’ll go find ourselves a constable.”

And within minutes a bobby was shouldering open the door to the flat, and the little dog flew onto the landing and jumped into Mary Jane’s arms, the girl kneeling to meet the dog halfway. She looked up and into her mother’s sparsely furnished one-room flat—no sign of Mum. On the bed, which hugged the wall lengthwise, a black comforter bulged, probably with tangled bedclothes. At the foot of the bed, some of her mother’s apparel was scattered, a dress, her coat, a little feathered hat.

Some other things were distributed around on the throw rug, near the side of the bed, but Mary Jane couldn’t make out what they were, exactly. She caught a glimpse of steel catching light from somewhere, though the curtains were drawn.

Funny. Her mother usually kept the tiny flat tidy—a holdover from her landlady days.

It just didn’t look… proper in there, somehow. The very stillness of the flat seemed unsettling to the girl.

“Officer,” Mary Jane said, as the little dog licked her face eagerly, “would you mind terribly, going in and checking for me?”

“I was going to insist, miss,” the bobby said, holding up his hand as if conducting traffic. “So if you’ll just wait here….”

The constable had an oval face with dark eyes set too close together, and wasn’t much taller than Mary Jane, a fact amplified by the tin hat he wore in place of the traditional tall helmet. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty. But his voice was both kind and firm, and he had a commanding way about him.

He entered the flat and Mary Jane saw him go to the bed and—though his back was to her, she could tell what he was doing—lifted up the black quilt. His head was bowed as he studied whatever it was on the bed; then he gently lowered the quilt and slowly—watching where he was going—came back out, his face very white.

“Mary Jane,” the bobby said, his voice soft, kind, which oddly enough frightened her, “that’s your name, isn’t it? Mary Jane?”

“It is.”

“Mary Jane, could you wait next door, with your pup, for a few minutes?”

He looked toward the neighbor, who nodded her assent; Miss Wick was wearing a white and pink housedress now, but her platinum locks were still in pin curls.

Then to the girl, the constable said, “There seems to be a problem in your mother’s flat.”

“What kind of a problem? What was under the quilt?”

The bobby turned to the blonde neighbor. “Do you have a phone, miss?”

“No.”

“I’ll use the box ’round the corner, then. Neither of you are to go into that flat. Is that understood?”

Miss Wick nodded.

He repeated it to Mary Jane: “Is that understood, miss?”

“Yes, sir.”

Miss Wick slipped her arm around Mary Jane’s shoulder; the girl was cradling the terrier in her arms like a baby.

The bobby’s footsteps were echoing down the stairwell as Mary Jane entered Miss Wick’s flat.

“Everything will be all right, love,” Miss Wick said, again and again, as she paced and smoked and occasionally looked at the wall separating this flat from the next. Early on she asked Mary Jane if she wanted a glass of water—“It’s all I have that’s suitable, dear, I’m afraid”—and Mary Jane politely declined the offer.

Sitting on the couch, playing with the terrier, Mary Jane pretended to herself that her mum would be showing up any time now, from work. From the bank.

But at the same time the girl could not banish from her mind’s eye that bulging black quilt on her mother’s bed, and the terrible white face of the constable who’d seen what was under there.