Bright Young Things

by Jane A. Adams

  That he and Vic have done.

  Now she tells me that she will be leaving soon and though I shall miss her dreadfully I see a means of getting help. I have almost convinced her to send a letter for me. To send a letter to Pat, to you, my sweetest sister. I know that you will come and find me if you only know that I am still alive.

  If I can convince her to do this one small thing for me. This one big, massive, special thing. This dangerous thing that I’m afraid to ask in case she tells him. Then I might just make it out of here alive.

  Friday 17 January

  The next few days were busy but not particularly productive so far as Henry was concerned. They began by contacting those on the lists given by Pat, Mrs Belmont, and then by the Cooper sisters. Intelligence from these sources added contact details to others on the list. This all, Henry considered, simply added to the mass of information they had that led absolutely nowhere.

  Henry divided his data into three sets. He found that it fell naturally into these categories and that the names of their different lists grouped into firstly ‘Friends of the Belmonts’, who were the well-off, influential, but not quite out of the top drawer. The second group were the ‘Hangers On’, as he found himself calling them, who were not a natural fit into the Belmont society and comprised artists and writers and even a few professionals such as bank managers and physicians who found themselves nominally accepted, because of something particular they had to offer.

  Elements of this group also crossed over into his third category, as he found that writers and artists and those from the acting profession often did. The third category was perhaps the hardest for him to reach and to interview, comprising as they did members of the ‘Bright Young Things’ but also their elders. Older brothers and sisters, parents, suppliers of those allowances which allowed younger siblings to run riot across the city.

  ‘They don’t exactly run riot,’ Mickey observed.

  ‘They don’t? There have been reports of up to fifty cars and their occupants participating in one of their so-called scavenger hunts. Young women chasing through the London Underground in search of some fresh sport or other, some clue their friends have left. That is as close to running riot as makes no matter.’ He saw the amusement on his sergeant’s face and sat back in his chair with a sigh. ‘I want to be out there and doing, Mickey, not shuffling paper and speaking on the telephone to people who can offer me nothing more than fake condolences and assurances that they would help me if they could. And have you seen the newspapers?’

  ‘I have indeed; we feature most prominently.’

  ‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Why should it? We do our job, which is investigating the crime. The newspapers do their job, which is to report the most scandalous elements and if they can’t find any scandalous elements they make them up.’

  ‘I wish I could be as sanguine,’ Henry complained.

  ‘You may take comfort from the fact that the newspapers are mostly rehashing those elements about the early investigation that they now know to be incorrect. When Faun Moran was falsely declared to be deceased. It is the first investigation, such as it was, that comes out badly and about which the press are most scathing. Most now express the belief that with Detective Chief Inspector Johnstone and his faithful Sergeant Hitchens on the case a solution will be found and all will again be right with the world.’

  Grinning at his boss, Mickey pulled out a chair and sat himself down. ‘What point is there in getting annoyed? But while you are in this mood I’ll give you something else to be cross about so we can get it all over and done with.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘We made the assumption, did we not, that Caius Moran must’ve identified the body of his own daughter and it seems he did not.’

  Henry sat bolt upright. ‘What? Why would he hand such a task over to someone else? So who did identify her?’

  ‘Oh, it gets better. It seems the family doctor was dispatched and according to a statement we have, from said family doctor when I spoke to him about an hour ago, he told Mr Moran that he believed in all probability the body in the car was Faun Moran but that the head was too badly damaged to be of use in identification. He asserted, or so he says, that anything he could report would be purely circumstantial, predicated on the fact that Miss Moran got into the car and was wearing the same jewellery. That the young woman in the car was approximately the same height and build, so far as he could tell, but that he had not actually seen Miss Moran for at least three years as she was, and I quote, “an uncommonly healthy young lady”.’

  Henry was staring at him. ‘And did Moran give some excuse for not attending to this task himself?’

  ‘It would seem that both he and the elder brother were away on business. I don’t know where, because the doctor did not know where, but a telegram had been sent informing them of the girl’s death and a telegram was sent back requesting the doctor do the necessary. The doctor made the identification, the body was shipped off to the undertaker and was interred at a private ceremony. This happened only three days after the car crash.’

  ‘A private ceremony? But Cynthia and others we have spoken to went to the funeral.’

  ‘No, if you remember she said they went to the memorial service. That she saw only where the body had been interred. The body itself had already been placed in the mausoleum, but the memorial service seems to have been organized as though the poor unfortunate young woman’s body was still present, along the lines of a normal funeral service. The doctor, who was present, tells me it was a very grand affair.’

  ‘But only three days after the crash? The inquest had not yet been held. And we know that no post-mortem was carried out. This was all very irregular.’

  ‘I raised this with the doctor and he pointed out, as it seems Mr Moran had already done to him, that the body was merely placed in the coffin and interred in the family mausoleum. She had not been embalmed. The body was examined by the police surgeon and death was pronounced. Her own doctor viewed the body and asserted that death must have been as a result of the crash. Should the body be required for further investigation, it could, theoretically have been made available. It seems Mr Moran has religious objections to post-mortems. It seems he also has the money to pay off any officials or to make appropriate donations so that nobody seemed to raise objections.’

  ‘Pay off what officials, what donation? Why would he even do that?’

  ‘As to why, you’d have to ask him, and good luck with that. As far as the payments are concerned, this is something the doctor said in passing and a statement he then tried to rescind. I think the doctor was annoyed to have been put in such a position, especially as it’s likely the press would make a meal of it should they know. It is enough for the press to make a meal of, Henry. A man who does not even wish to identify the body of his own child, whether estranged or not, and a doctor who does not know his own patient but just assumes that the dead girl was who he was told she ought to be.’

  Henry narrowed his eyes and peered closely at his sergeant. ‘Do you believe this is likely to become known to the press?’

  Mickey tipped his chair back on two legs, balancing experimentally before clunking it back down again. ‘Who knows what the newspapers will print,’ he said. ‘What anonymous sources might let slip.’

  Henry glared for a moment and then laughed. ‘I’m not sure if that would help or hinder our investigation.’

  ‘It will stir things up,’ Mickey told him. ‘And it will deflect a little of the heat from the original investigation. I’m not seeing this as a favour to DI Shelton. But the local officers certainly deserve more credit than they have been given and I think there should be a report on that as well. Scotland Yard did not give the finest account of itself on that occasion but the local constabulary did an excellent job, so far as they were allowed.’

  ‘You are sailing close to the wind, Mickey.’

  ‘Why? What have I done? This place leaks like a sieve, y
ou know that.’

  ‘This place only leaks when someone pierces it from the inside.’

  A constable arrived and handed Henry a folder. It contained the post-mortem report of the young woman who had been found in the car, the young woman who had been burnt and her body had been mistaken for that of Faun Moran. Henry laid it on the table so they could both look at it.

  ‘So she did not die of smoke inhalation or of burning, that is a mercy at least,’ Mickey said. ‘Cause of death isn’t clear. There are injuries to her legs and body consistent with being hit by a car – though the surgeon states that can only be speculation. He believes most, if not all, of the injuries to the head and neck to have occurred after death but again stresses that this is speculation. And he suggests that had photographs of the crime scene been available then our task and his might be easier. So where are those damned photographs? I think perhaps I’ll go and speak to the lads in the evidence store, just on the off chance.’

  ‘We are lucky to have anything after all this time,’ Henry said. ‘In terms of identifying marks, she had previously broken a leg, but that’s a commonplace enough injury and we do not have any idea where she was treated. Do we know what happened to the clothing? To whatever the girl was wearing before she was interred?’

  Mickey shook his head. ‘I’ll speak to the undertaker. But my guess is they will have been destroyed, or otherwise disposed of. What was left of them after the fire had taken its share. From the state of the corpse I doubt there would have been anything much left. The fire had consumed hair and skin over perhaps ninety per cent of the body. The post-mortem suggests that she was drenched in accelerant which would explain the smell of petrol. But whoever did this, did not do such a thorough job as they intended. Time was not on their side and so their work was sloppy and overly swift.’

  ‘And Carter and his son-in-law were overly efficient and overly brave,’ Henry said. ‘I guarantee most people would simply have seen the fire and run as fast as they could in the opposite direction.’

  He glanced through the rest of the report. ‘There’s not a great deal more of use to us,’ he said. ‘The girl was of similar height to Faun, perhaps just a little heavier, but one thing is for certain – the dress that Faun was wearing when she was left on the beach did not belong to this girl. That was made for someone taller and plumper.’

  ‘And richer than this girl, if we’re judging by the compact.’

  ‘That’s true. It had just occurred to me that it would amuse whoever is responsible for all this to dress one girl in the clothing of the other. The girl in the car must have been similarly dressed to Faun Moran if they were to have had any hope of the deception being accepted.’

  ‘Though had the body been fully burnt, it wouldn’t really matter what the girl was wearing and no doubt that was the intent.’

  ‘True,’ Henry conceded.

  ‘You’re not voicing your more disturbing thought,’ Mickey stated. ‘That the beaded dress and patent shoes belonged to a third girl, that there may well be a third girl missing. And if there is, then her identity is as much a mystery as that of the girl in the car. And if a third girl is missing, what is there to prevent there being a fourth or even a fifth?’

  ‘If you don’t mind we will put that aside for the moment,’ Henry told him. ‘I have no doubt we will need to deal with this possibility, but for the moment two dead girls is enough.’

  Henry turned back to the stack of love letters that had sat on his desk since they had returned from their visit to the Cooper sisters. ‘We are still no closer to knowing who this mysterious R might be,’ he said. ‘On the lists we have there are Richards, Robins, Roberts and even a Ralph, all of whom deny sending the letters or having anything more than a casual, passing association with Faun Moran. And of course one of them might be lying, but without bringing them in for interview there is no way of discovering that and even then all they have to do is hold their nerve and we’ll get no further. And this set has plenty of nerve to hold. All but one are married men, and all are respectable.’

  ‘With a capital R. And so we are also warned not to be heavy-handed with these respectable men. Have any agreed to submit handwriting samples?’

  ‘Yes, several in fact, which is at least helpful. I have asked for permission to release a sample of the handwriting from the letters to the press, but the deputy commissioner is reluctant to do so for fear of embarrassing a perfectly innocent party. He points out that as the recipient of the letters is never actually mentioned by name, they might not even be Faun Moran’s. It’s possible that someone entrusted them to her keeping because they didn’t want a husband or father to see them.’

  ‘An unlikely scenario, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Agreed, but we have been told to tread carefully, there are wealthy and influential people involved in all of this and the deputy commissioner considers there is enough scandal attached already, with the failure of the original investigation. I don’t know, Mickey. I feel as though we are being blocked at every turn. What do you make of the letters?’

  Mickey took the topmost, slid it out of its envelope and unfolded it, laid it on the table and began to read.

  My dearest sweet darling,

  I cannot tell you how much the hours will drag until I see you again. You brighten my day with your smile and your laughter makes my heart feel as though it will explode.

  ‘And so they go on, page after page, letter after letter,’ he said dryly. ‘If you ask me they are so overblown as to be unbelievable and absolutely designed to turn the head of a teenaged girl who, by all accounts, has been left with little guidance, has only minimal contact with her family, and seems to have very few true friends. I don’t doubt that her sister Pat loved her very dearly, but Pat has a family of her own and couldn’t be expected to nursemaid a younger sister who had absolutely no intention of being protected or of listening to the voice of experience.’

  ‘I suspect youth usually believes it knows best,’ Henry agreed. ‘And I have to admit on occasion it does. Sometimes we can get set in our ways and forget that once upon a time we had the courage of our own youthful convictions and that conviction often carried us through.’

  ‘My, we are feeling jaundiced today.’

  ‘Jaundiced indeed. I’m feeling the strain of knowing that two and perhaps three young women are dead, and that every direction I look, every lead we follow, seems either to go nowhere or to end in a wall of marshmallow, that just absorbs our efforts.’

  ‘But if it’s marshmallow we have we’ll just have to eat our way through it,’ Mickey told him.

  Vic

  She had arrived one night out of the blue, driving that little car of hers at speed down the lane and skidding to a halt at the foot of the steps. It had been raining, Vic remembered, raining heavily and in only her thin silk dress she was soaked through by the time she had reached the door.

  The commotion her arrival had created had drawn Vic into the front hall and she had flung herself at him. ‘I’m never going home. I’m never going back there again.’

  ‘What happened? Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I want to see Ben; I want to talk to him. I want to talk to him now.’

  She had never, Vic had thought, sounded more like a petulant child. Any illusion of Faun as a grown woman fell away. She was angry and tearful and sounded, he thought, more like an infant of five or six.

  He was about to tell her that Ben could not be disturbed when his employer appeared at the head of the stairs and motioned that they should both come up.

  ‘Sit down,’ he had told her when they had all assembled in Ben’s private sitting room. ‘Here, drink this. Tell me, what’s been going on?’

  She had taken the brandy glass and cradled it between her hands. She was shivering now and Vic had thrown a rug around her shoulders but she seemed oblivious of him. She had eyes only for Ben. ‘He’s threatening to cancel my allowance, and not to pay the rent on my flat unless I behave, as he puts it. He s
aid I was behaving like … like a whore. Me, his own daughter, and he says something like that. He says I flirt too much. That I’ve been seen in unsuitable places.’

  ‘Well, in his eyes, both of those things are probably true.’ Ben sounded flippant, unconcerned, and she was furious.

  ‘You were the one that took me there, to those places!’

  ‘And that was probably wrong of me. You are just a child, after all. Perhaps I should apologize to your father. Though I think if he knew that I was responsible for your insubordination, I would have heard about it by now. I doubt he realizes that I was involved so perhaps we should keep it that way. He would definitely not approve of that.’

  She had stared at him, uncomprehending. She had come to Ben believing that he would stand up for her and all he was doing was making fun. ‘That’s a lousy thing to say, it’s all hokum. I thought you were my friend.’

  Ben came close, knelt down beside her chair. ‘Of course I’m your friend. We are all friends here. And we all know you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.’

  Somewhat mollified, she had allowed him to take her hand and when he had suggested that they all have a late supper she had agreed. And then when he had suggested that she remained there for the night instead of driving back to London she had agreed to that too, on condition that she was in her own room, of course. And Ben had laughed. ‘There will be no impropriety, I promise you that.’

  And Vic had seen how disappointed she had looked. Ben could have asked her to do anything at that moment and she would have acquiesced.

  FOURTEEN