Murders in the Blitz

by Julia Underwood

  When he loomed in the doorway Eve recognised him immediately as the man she had seen at the bombsite where Malcolm was found. Had he been returning to the scene of the crime? Eve had been told that this was a common habit amongst criminals curious to see the outcome of their handiwork. A strongly built man of about five feet ten, Jack showed every sign of inclining to be belligerent. His normally ruddy face, due to working outside most of the time no doubt, had taken on a purplish hue.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? I thought you’d asked all your questions at the dairy.’

  ‘I did say I would be coming round to see some of you later, Mr Graves,’ Eve reminded him politely.

  The man calmed down slightly and, still simmering, he slumped into an armchair. ‘I can’t tell you anymore. I don’t know what happened to the little bastard.’

  ‘Had you not heard? His body was found in Coningham Road, on the big bombsite. I thought I saw you there, Mr Graves.’

  Jack had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yeah, well, I saw all the coppers and the ambulance. I didn’t realise it was Malcolm that was there. Could have been anyone’s body.’

  ‘He was still wearing his dairy uniform. But never mind that. One of your colleagues told us that you had an especial grudge against Malcolm.’

  Jack Graves leapt up and stood over the sofa, a dark and menacing expression on his face and fists clenched. Even Charlie quailed and drew back into the cushions.

  ‘Now you can stop that nonsense right away, girl!’ he yelled. ‘You’re not going to pin this on me. I didn’t do the little bugger in.’

  Eve tried not to flinch at the verbal onslaught and she laid a hand on Charlie’s thigh as he looked as if he might stand and give the bloke a wallop. She carried on calmly.

  ‘I understand that he made your daughter, er, pregnant.’

  ‘Bloody gossips, sticking their noses into everyone else’s business. I suppose it was that Jim told you that, was it? Never could keep his mouth shut, the bleeding idiot.’

  ‘I merely asked if anyone knew a person who had a grudge against Malcolm Miller, Mr Graves, and that is what I was told.’

  Graves subsided into his chair, in a mute sulk, and Mrs Graves came in with the tea tray. He started to speak again once he had been given his cup.

  ‘Yes, well, I wanted to kill him when I found out. I could happily have strangled the little blighter. I tried to get him to marry our Patty, but he laughed at me; said it was probably not his anyway. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. Our Patty’s a good girl; he must have seduced her to get her in the family way.’

  Mrs Graves, listened with an expression of cynical humour in her eyes. Eve could almost hear her thoughts: a doting father always likes to think the best of his daughter, she would always be perfect in his eyes, but she’s not as good a girl as he likes to think. Eve was sure her own father would be mortified to find out the true nature of her relationship with Pete Heller.

  ‘He said he had no intention of marrying my girl. He didn’t seem at all sorry about what he’d done.’ He paused for a moment. ‘In any case, Patty wasn’t having none of it. She didn’t want to marry him neither. Said he was a feckless so and so, and she’d rather bring the baby up herself than marry him.’

  ‘When was this, Mr Graves?’

  ‘Couple of months ago. Patty’s gone to stay with her sister down Somerset way until the baby comes. She’ll be safer down there an’ all. I swear to you Miss Duncan, I didn’t kill Malcolm, nor never would. I was so angry at the time I let my mouth run away with me and threatened him with everything I could think of.’

  Calmer now, Jack Graves was sipping his cup of tea. His wife’s hand had briefly caressed his shoulder as she gave it to him. The couple had clearly been very upset by the turn of events and had probably been trying to forget about it now that Patty was safely away from home. Eve changed the subject.

  ‘Do you have other children, Mr Graves?’

  ‘Yes, two boys, they’re in North Africa with Monty’s lot.’

  The North Africa Campaign, under the leadership of Lieutenant-General Montgomery, had been raging across Libya and Egypt for months, fighting Italians and the German’s Afrika Korps, under the command of the Wehrmacht’s General Rommel. It had proved to be a bitter battle with many lives lost on both sides.

  ‘I hope they come home safely,’ Eve said. She felt genuine sympathy for any parents with children at the Front. How terrible it must be not to know what was happening to them and getting no news for weeks on end as to whether they were alive or dead.

  Mrs Grave spoke, her words quiet but confident. ‘They’ll be back,’ she said, ‘I just know it. I feel it in my bones.’

  She stood beside her husband and grasped his hand as she said this, as if the contact would make her words true and transfer her strength and conviction to him.

  Eve thought it was time to leave. She stood, gathering her belongings, and Charlie joined her.

  ‘I don’t think I have any more questions for now. Thank you for the tea, Mrs Graves.’

  Once they were on the landing outside the flat Charlie spoke for the first time.

  ‘I don’t think he done it, Eve. He’s got a temper on him and he was certainly royally pissed off by Malcolm’s behaviour and his not being at all sorry. But as the girl wasn’t going to marry Malcolm, I think that was the end of it. There wasn’t much Graves could do about it.’

  ‘I agree, Charlie,’ said Eve. ‘Come on, let’s go and find someone else to bother.’ She slipped her hand through his arm and they walked out into the street.

  Their next visit was to Sid Barrett, the man who was having trouble with his wife. He turned out to be a slight, ineffective man with such a washed-out air that it was clear that he was unlikely to have the strength of will to do anything about Malcolm and his affair with his young wife. His appearance was utterly grey – grey jumper, grey trousers, even a grey tie and his sparse hair was beginning to go grey as well. He walked with a bent, apologetic gait. It was a mystery to Eve why such a wishy-washy man had managed to snare a young, flighty wife. He was just a milkman, hardly a catch even today when there was a shortage of young men to get hitched to. Eve was curious to meet the young Mrs Barrett, but she worked at the Waring and Gillow factory, making tents, parachutes and gas masks, doing her bit for the war effort.

  ‘I need to ask Mrs Barrett a few questions,’ said Eve.

  ‘She’ll be home later.’ Sid said. ‘I expect,’ he added, as if she was frequently absent on mysterious business of her own.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Barrett,’ said Eve as she left with Charlie. ‘Tell her we want to talk to her about Malcolm Miller. We’ll be along later.’

  The husband gazed at them meekly, without surprise. It seemed highly unlikely that Sid Barrett would have ever summoned up enough energy or passion to do Malcolm to death.

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ she said to Charlie as they walked back towards Shepherd’s Bush Green. ‘He couldn’t kill a fly, let alone a beefy young bloke like Malcolm. We’d better go and look at the people living on the milk round. Perhaps someone there will have something to tell us. At least we may be able to find out at what point the milk stopped being delivered. That may give us a clue to where the murderer is.’

  It wasn’t far to where Malcolm’s round started. He came up from the dairy in Hammersmith via Shepherd’s Bush Road and visited the side streets on the left hand side of that main road. The right hand side was covered by another milkman or rather woman in this case, who delivered to the roads east of the main road.

  Eve and Charlie sighed at the number of houses they needed to visit. As they had done before on enquiries, they took alternate dwellings, or opposite sides of the road and briefly questioned the residents. Eve was surprised at the difference in attitude to Malcolm by his customers compared to his co-workers.

  ‘Malcolm? Oh, he’s such a lovely lad. Always cheerful, full of smiles and ready for a chat. Not that I do see him often
, mind, he comes very early. But he’s here later on Saturday, when he collects his money.’

  People told Eve more or less the same story along the entire route. There was, of course, shock and dismay when Eve told them of Malcolm’s death.

  ‘Oh my! That’s terrible. The poor lad. Who can have done such a terrible thing? I do hope you find the person who did it, miss. Such a nice boy, they should be strung up for it.’

  Eve knew that whoever had done this murder would, more than likely be hanged for the crime. She wasn’t sure that she approved of capital punishment, what if they got the wrong person? But that was the law and it was rare for a murderer to be spared the ultimate fate.

  After a couple of hours walking the streets it was getting dark and people were putting up their blackout curtains, securing the edges so that not a chink of light escaped to guide the Luftwaffe’s bombers to the area. Many of the houses Charlie and Eve visited were empty, their occupants still at work, and having found that no-one had seen Malcolm on that Monday morning, though some had heard the chink of bottles as he passed, they decided to call it a day. There were still the customers on the other side of the Green to cover, but that could wait for another time.

  ‘I’ll report to Inspector Reed in the morning, Charlie. Then I think we’d better go and look at Malcolm’s mother’s house in Arminger Road. The keys are at the station. Perhaps we’ll also be able to find out something about Malcolm’s black market connections and where he gets the sugar from.’

  They popped into The Bush pub for a quick drink and then split up to go to their homes with a nagging feeling of disappointment that the day had not turned up much in the way of useful information. Perhaps tomorrow would be better.

  Chapter Eight

  Eve had hardly been home for ten minutes when the air raid siren began to wail.

  ‘Bugger,’ she cried out vainly, ‘couldn’t you at least wait until I’ve had a bath?’

  This was always happening. She’d get home from work at Mount Pleasant, planning a hot soak before making her meagre supper or going to the pub with Pete or Charlie, when an air raid warning would sound and she would have to gather together her emergency bundle of torch, blanket, pillow, water and a bit of food and with Jake on his lead she would set out for the shelter or the tube station. She could practically find these essentials in her sleep and often had to if the electricity was out. The most important thing was the torch as the streets were impenetrably dark. Even then the beam had to be shielded outside. People had been arrested, fined and even imprisoned for as little as striking a match to light a longed for cigarette in the blackout, however ridiculous that might seem. How could the pilot of a bomber see a lighted match from a few hundred feet above London? Like everyone else, Eve was getting totally fed up with it. When would this bloody war be over?

  This evening there were people she knew in the shelter and they played a riotous game of cards before settling down to try and get some sleep. Someone was singing and playing an accordion farther along the crowded platform. The pungent stench of chemical toilets pervaded the air, but that was better than a couple of months ago, before the authorities had installed them in the interest of hygiene. Before that the men at least had used the railway line - the electricity was switched off for safety - to relieve themselves.

  Trying to blot out the sounds of violence from outside, Eve pulled the pillow around her ears and attempted to sleep. Jake curled up close beside her. He had finally got used to these disturbances; at first he had whined with fear at the racket, but now he seemed to have come to accept that Eve would keep him safe.

  They emerged from the shelter at about 4.30 am after the All Clear sounded; the sirens singing on a different note. Bleary eyed, the crowd shambled back to their beds to sleep for a few hours before work. Jake had snoozed in the shelter and now skittered around, wanting to play. He tried to drag Eve towards the Green, but somehow she summoned the strength to pull him home.

  ‘Not now, Jake. I’ve got to get some proper sleep,’ she said.

  As she approached the building where she rented the basement flat, she heard the sound of a milkman’s float; the horse’s hoofs crunching through the newly fallen debris and broken glass from windows shattered in the night raid. How amazing it was, she thought, that everyone just keeps going, regardless of what the Germans throw at us. She was reminded of Malcolm who had met his end on his milk round, just doing his job in the early hours. Who could it have been that decided to kill him during his work? How did they manage to get away with it without being seen?

  Eve crawled into bed with thoughts of the milkman with his horse and dray parading, harness jingling, through her mind. Before long she was fast asleep.

  *

  On Thursday morning Eve woke, washed and dressed in the usual rather drab clothing that she considered suitable for conducting enquiries in, and went to the police station to report to Inspector Reed. Charlie, who was supposed to meet her there, had not appeared yet, but she hadn’t expected him to be on time. She knew that he had spent the night with his latest lively blonde girlfriend - they were always blonde whether it was natural or came from a bottle - and would probably be late.

  Inspector Reed received her report with his habitual aplomb and approved her plan to go to look at Malcolm’s house to see if that gave her any ideas as to what had happened to him.

  ‘Have you found out about the black market chaps he was dealing with?’ he asked. ‘I think they hang out in the pub.’

  Eve couldn’t help wondering why, if they knew where to find the black market spivs, they didn’t just go and round them up and put them inside.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Miss Duncan,’ Reed said. ‘We’ve got leads on a lot of these people, thanks in part to your friend Charlie Spalding, but we’re just keeping our eyes on them for the time being. I want to watch and see who the people are supplying the goods, where it’s all coming from and so on. We’ll have a big round up one of these days, but in the meantime we’re waiting for them to dig their own graves,’ he finished with relish.

  ‘I understand, sir. We’ll ask around in the pub at lunchtime. Charlie may know something too, I’ll ask him.’

  ‘I think he almost certainly will,’ the inspector answered dryly. ‘Don’t let that young man lead you into trouble, Miss Duncan.’

  Eve thought this a little unfair as Charlie was a reliable source of information to the police. It seemed odd to also regard him as a criminal. She walked to the front of the station and waited in the lobby for Charlie to arrive. She would have liked to poke around the Miller’s house alone and see what she could find. But the inspector insisted that she have someone to protect her and Charlie was all she had. The police were far too busy to allow a constable to accompany her. That is why she had this job, after all.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Charlie rushed into the lobby after another fifteen minutes, unshaved, looking as if he had dressed in the dark, but without losing any of his glamour. ‘Where’re we going this morning, titch?’ He slung one of his long arms round Eve’s shoulder. She shrugged it off in annoyance. He might be her best friend, but his fecklessness drove her mad sometimes.

  ‘Come on, Charlie, don’t waste time, you’re bloody late as it is. We’re going to look at Malcolm’s house.’

  Charlie ignored her admonition, as usual.

  ‘It was a big raid last night,’ he remarked, ‘Some house in Uxbridge Road, just a couple hundred yards down from me, copped a direct hit. Horrible mess. The ARPs are there now, clearing up.’ This cryptic message indicated that the authorities were removing the bodies and looking after the survivors, if any. The horrific sight of these cleanups had become almost commonplace and now anyone who was passing helped the wardens do their grisly work, picking up body parts and conveying them to the mortuary. The swimming baths in Blomfontein Road were being used as an emergency morgue to store bodies after bombing raids, until the authorities were able to identify them. Stacks of coffins were stored in
the changing rooms and the Coroner used the manager’s office.

  Charlie lived in a couple of squalid rooms above a barber’s shop in the Uxbridge Road, close to this latest atrocity. Eve knew he would have done what he could to help before coming to join her.

  ‘You were lucky then,’ said Eve without emotion, but thinking inwardly how close they all were every day to losing their friends and families to random death. She was tempted to pull Charlie closer to her in a gesture of friendship, but she hadn’t forgiven him for being late.

  They hurried to Arminger Road and, using the key that the inspector had given Eve, they let themselves in.

  The little house already showed signs of neglect. Dust hung in the cold airless rooms and covered every surface with a thin layer of grey. The noxious stench of decaying food emanated from the kitchen. Eve went in and found, in the larder, a curdled bottle of milk and some rancid bacon and mouldy bread. She poured the milk down the drain and wrapped the rotten food in old newspapers and put it all out in the dustbin on the pavement and the empty milk bottle on the step. This didn’t help much with the smell so she opened all the windows. It didn’t matter about the blackout curtains any more as there was no-one living here who would show a light. She reminded herself to tell the Housing Department that this place was now empty. It meant that someone made homeless by the bombing would have somewhere to live, even temporarily. The air raids had created a dire shortage of housing.

  Whilst Eve was busy in the kitchen Charlie began to scan papers in the sitting room. The sparsely furnished room held a two-seater sofa and an armchair facing the fireplace, a low table and an ornately carved oak sideboard with a wireless on it. Apart from a few family photographs, an ashtray full of dog ends and a vase of dead daffodils, the surfaces were clear. It didn’t look as if Malcolm had spent much time there after his mother left for the nursing home. There was not even a discarded teacup.