‘Who was it that was murdered then?’
‘Malcolm Miller and Miss Broadbent, the teacher.’
The man’s eyes widened. ‘Miss Broadbent? She’s dead? That’s terrible. Lovely old thing she was, always visiting the school, helping out, even though she retired years ago. She made this place her life.’
‘So you knew her then?’
‘Oh, yes. I came to work here in ’28. I’m Head Caretaker now,’ the man was unable to keep a note of pride from his voice. ‘Anyway, she was here not more than a month ago, helped me to put the blast tape on the windows.’ He pointed to the white tape criss-crossing the windows of the school.
Eve saw a glimmer of hope. ‘So maybe you can help me. You may remember who was in Miss Broadbent’ s class all that time ago.’
‘Well, I may not actually remember, there’s lots of kids pass through here. But I know where to look it up. Come on in. Let’s see what we can find. I’m Fred. Fred Burridge.’
The man pushed the gate open sufficiently for Eve to enter the school yard.
‘Thank you so much, Mr Burridge, Inspector Reed will be very grateful.’
‘Fred,’ the man growled, ‘and don’t forget I’m doing this for Miss Broadbent, not for the coppers.’
He picked up the ladder and canvas bag and they crossed the playground to enter the school by the side door. They walked along a corridor lined with doors. Fred put down his equipment and led Eve into the school office. The look and smell of the place reminded Eve strongly of her own schooldays. Fred started to rummage in a filing cabinet and eventually drew out a thick folder. Eve sat at one of the desks, drew her notebook out of her bag, preparing to work.
‘I shouldn’t be touching this stuff, you know. Not my department, and anyway, I’m supposed to be putting some paint on the lavvies today. It’s got to be dry by Monday or there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘I’m sorry to upset your day, Fred, but this really is important. I’ve got to try and find out who’s doing this before he kills someone else.’
‘Well, you look through that, it’s the file for 1931. Miss Broadbent’s class will be in there somewhere. Just don’t tell anyone I gave it to you. Now I’ll go and make a start.’
Fred left the office and went to begin his work. Eve pulled the file towards her and started to leaf through it. Somewhere in here, she felt certain, was the name of the person who had killed two and injured another. Eve had to find them.
She found that whoever had filed the papers ten years ago had been sloppy and records from 1929 were mixed in with those from 1931. She separated the errant papers into a heap at her side to be put in the correct folder later. She wondered if the same thing had happened to the records from the year she was interested in. Eve groaned at the thought of wading through information from other years, especially if it was in as bad order as this file.
Luckily, after about half an hour of trying to get the papers in order, she found a full list of the pupils of Ellerslie Road School in 1931; 286 children in all. There were six groups of pupils, each from a different year’s intake. These groups were divided into classes of roughly twenty children, each with its own teacher. Eve was looking for the children who were the eldest in 1931, top of the school in the year before they moved up to the secondary school. It was clearly marked that Miss Broadbent was the class teacher of 6B, the initial obviously linked to her name as the other class in that year, overseen by Mrs Marchant, was 6M.
Eve scanned the list of pupils eagerly, searching for names that she recognised. Samuel Abrahams, Freda Berens, Brenda Clarke, John Ellis, Adrian Fitch and Edith Fitch, must be brother and sister thought Eve, probably twins, Amy Grainger, Charles Greene, Helen Hiller, Patricia Kean, David Kydd, Francis Lisle, Malcolm Miller – ah, there he was – Barbara O’Reilly, Patrick Scott, Phillip Twain, Arthur Wainright, Margaret Wright and Jane Vine. Nineteen children altogether, ten boys and nine girls.
Eve looked at the list she had copied in despair. How on earth was she going to find them all? She delved further into the file, looking for addresses. There were a few, but a complete record of addresses was absent and in any case, many of them would have moved by now; the pupil list was ten years old. Eve sat at the desk staring blankly at the school’s register of Miss Broadbent’s pupils. Beside each name someone had written an attendance record, each pupil marked with a series of ticks or crosses. She noticed that Malcolm had a far from perfect attendance record, but Amy seemed to have turned up every time. Most of the others had had the occasional absence, which could probably be put down to illness rather than truancy.
Eve came to the conclusion that the best way to trace these pupils would be at the Town Hall. There should be a record there of where they were living now. The boys would probably be easier to find as they would be in the Forces or working for some government department and they wouldn’t have changed their names by marriage, like Amy. She slid the file back into the cabinet and placed the notes for 1929 in the correct place. Then she gathered up her notes, her bag and gasmask and went to find Fred.
‘Thank you so much, Fred,’ she said from the doorway of the boy’s toilets. ‘I’ve got everything I want for now. All I’ve got to do is to try and find them all. No, don’t get down, I’ll see myself out.’
Fred waved a laden paintbrush from the ladder. ‘Well, good luck, Miss Duncan. I hope you find what you want. Don’t worry about the gate; I’ll lock up when I leave.’
A short trolley bus ride and Eve was presenting herself at Hammersmith Town Hall and explaining what she needed. The person at the reception desk was disinclined to believe her story about working for the police and insisted on telephoning the station before he would let her have access to any records. Satisfied with her credentials finally, he directed her to the department that could help her with the whereabouts of the young men on her list. It seemed that they kept a record of residents who were not living in the area at present, being posted abroad or working elsewhere in Britain. What Eve had not anticipated was the depressing toll that the war had already made on the children of the class of 1931 of Ellerslie Road Elementary School.
Samuel Abrahams, mathematician, working for the Ministry of War somewhere in Scotland, Adrian Fitch, deceased – Dunkirk, John Ellis, deceased, lost at sea, Charles Greene, RAF, stationed in Libya somewhere, David Kydd, deceased, Egypt, Francis Lisle had not lived in the area since 1934, Malcolm Miller, murdered last week, Patrick Scott, in Libya - probably, Phillip Twain, seriously injured and in rehabilitation somewhere in the country, Arthur Wainright, Royal Engineers, stationed in a secret location.
Something about this recitation, delivered after a great deal of searching and grumbling on the part of the clerk, who sighed heavily as he sorted through pages of records, was puzzling Eve, nudging at her memory.
‘No,’ she said. ‘David Kydd, he’s not dead. I saw him only the other day.’
‘Can’t have, miss. Says here he’s copped it.’ Eve felt a sharp pinch of annoyance at the man’s casual attitude.
‘I’m sure that was his name. He was wounded, but quite alive. Maybe someone has made a mistake.’
‘Ah, well,’ the man shrugged, ‘could be. They’re making mistakes all the time. Drives me nuts.’
‘Never mind, I’ll go round to his house and see him. There’s bound to be an explanation. I just hope I can remember where it was I saw him.’ Then Eve remembered that, when she was checking Malcolm’s milk round, she had made notes of everyone she had spoken to. She would find David Kydd in her papers.
She parted company with the grumpy records clerk and sat on a leather-padded seat in the panelled foyer of the Town Hall, reviewing the notes in her bag. Yes, here he was, David Kydd, she had written, ‘wounded, seemed scared to be seen outside the house’. She had wondered at the time why he was so afraid. Now she would have to go and ask him.
Gathering up her possessions she strode out of the Town Hall and made her way to the row of terraced houses where she had seen the w
ounded boy. She hoped she would find him at home and that he could explain the anomaly.
Chapter Thirteen
As before, there was a considerable delay until the door to the house was opened. She could hear the sound of someone moving around inside and, eventually, the shuffling of reluctant feet approaching the front. She stayed firmly on the doorstep, waiting. At length the door opened a fraction and the uninjured cheek of David Kydd appeared in the crack.
‘I told you,’ his voice emerged in a hoarse whisper when he recognised Eve. ‘I wasn’t out on Monday morning. I didn’t see anything.’
‘It’s not that, Mr Kydd, I need to ask you about something else.’
The door opened a fraction wider and that same look of fear crossed the young man’s face.
‘I can’t think what that is. I’ve nothing to tell you.’
‘Actually,’ said Eve, ‘it’s quite simple. I’ve just been to the town hall and their records say that you are dead. Why do you think that is?’
The young man reeled back a few inches, almost as if he intended to slam the door and flee back into the house.
‘Well, as you can see, I’m clearly not dead. They must have made a mistake. They thought I might die, at one point in the field hospital, but I didn’t, as you can see.’
Eve noticed that Kydd’s hands shook and he had turned deathly pale, as if he was about to faint. She thought that he was not strong enough to take much more interrogation.
‘Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll tell them at the Town Hall and they can get their records straight. Sorry to have bothered you again.’
As Eve turned away from the door she noticed that dusk had begun to fall. Hurrying back to her flat she remembered that she was supposed to be going out with Pete this evening. A visit to the cinema and then home for a meal and, if Pete was in the mood and when was he not, an early night and a bout of sex. All this, of course, only if the Germans kept away and the bombs dropped in the East End or on another city. Eve felt a frisson of guilt at this thought. How selfish to wish the onslaught on to other people, but it was difficult not to long for a rare night of calm.
They went to see Never Give a Sucker an Even Break with W.C.Fields, at the Rialto; it promised to be very funny. They settled into the plush seats, lit up a cigarette each and settled down to enjoy themselves. As usual there was a short film, about an hour long, to begin the programme and a cartoon. The news came from Pathé, with disturbing images of warfare in the North African desert accompanied by reassurances that things were going well for our brave chaps. The programme was not bad value for one and six, they thought. They were giggling through the cartoon when Pete reminded Eve of something.
‘Do you remember when we were kids and we went to Saturday morning pictures for a tanner?’
‘Yes, I used to go with Charlie. I loved the cartoons and the Buster Keaton shorts.’
‘My favourite were the cowboy films,’ said Pete, ‘Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kidd, Hopalong Cassidy. Here have a sweet.’
Pete passed Eve the paper bags of sweets he’d bought with their ration. Then he lit up another Craven A and settled back with his arm round Eve’s shoulder to enjoy the main film. There was something about this conversation that lit a faint memory in Eve’s brain. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something.
After the pictures they planned to meet friends in the pub, but the siren went just as they were leaving the cinema and they hurried to the shelter. Someone started a sing-song, which kept everyone’s spirits up as Pete and Eve cuddled up together in the damp, cold concrete bunker until the All Clear sounded with the dawn. Whenever she emerged from a shelter after a raid, Eve, after first scanning the immediate neighbourhood for signs of bomb damage, blessed her luck that she had managed to survive another night. Local damage was not too bad today. Grabbing Pete’s hand she dashed home, crossing the Green as fast as they could, under the shadow of the barrage balloon, through the rows of cabbages and leeks. When they reached her house, she pushed Pete inside, dragged him into her bedroom full of energy and gratitude for being alive.
Pete was not on duty on Sunday, but he was playing football for his team and Eve had decided not to cheer him on from the sidelines.
‘Not today, Pete. It’s only a Sunday friendly and I’ve got stuff to do. Good luck though.’
*
After flapping a duster round her two rooms, cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and eating some of the food left from last night, she took Jake for a walk. Poor Jake had been neglected recently with her rushing about for Inspector Reed. She would have to make it up to him when the case was over, take him out to the more countrified suburbs, like Ruislip or Edgware, and find a proper field for him to run in.
When she had finished her rudimentary housework, she thought that she would go to the hospital again and see if Amy had regained consciousness. It had only been one day, but you never knew. She was young, resilient and fit; she might have come round by now.
Eve took the bus to Fulham and walked to the hospital, picking up a little posy of flowers from a seller outside a church on the way. There had been some bomb damage overnight down here and crews were out clearing the debris. On the fringes of the crowds of helpers were the usual loiterers, waiting until the site was clear so that they could see what was left that was worth scavenging. A more criminal element went in search of sites where there was no activity yet and looted the unguarded premises of whatever they could find. This made the return of householders to their property from the shelters doubly traumatic as they lost their houses and anything of value that might have been salvaged as well. How cruel it was! Eve thought that all looters should be shot and was glad that they received heavy prison sentences, often with hard labour, when they were caught.
Sunday had brought a throng of visitors to the hospital to visit friends and relatives. Most of them would have been working in the week. Visiting time was strictly limited to between 10.30 and noon in the morning and 3.00 and 4.30 in the afternoon. Ward sisters would chase away any lingerers remaining outside these hours and matron dealt severely with anyone who complained. Eve had experienced this in the hospital in Wembley where old Pop, her grandfather, had spent his final days.
Now she knew where Amy was she swiftly arrived at the bedside. The girl had no other visitors this morning and, to Eve’s eyes, she seemed not to have moved a muscle. The drip stood exactly as it had, the blankets still cocooned her tightly and the bandages around her head looked exactly the same as yesterday. Eve sat in the chair beside the bed, wondering what to do next. The room was warm and, in spite of the visitors, who seemed mostly to be talking in whispers, remarkably quiet. It had been a disturbed night and Eve had not realised how weary she was. Tiredness overcame her and what started out as daydreaming in the chair turned into a doze.
She was jolted awake by a voice in her ear.
‘Hello,’ it said, ‘who are you?’
A plump girl in an ATS uniform stood beside the chair. Her arms were full of flowers and magazines. Eve, startled out of her sleep, sat up abruptly, jolted into wakefulness.
‘Oh, hallo,’ she spluttered, ‘I’m Eve Duncan. I work for the police. I came in to see if Amy had woken up yet and I must have dropped off.’
The girl laughed, ‘Hard night was it? I can never sleep in the shelter either.’ She put the flowers on the end of the bed with her other gifts. ‘It doesn’t look as if poor Amy’s going to be reading anything for a while. I do hope she’s going to be all right.’
‘Her parents said the doctors told them that she will almost certainly be absolutely fine, it wasn’t a very severe blow and she didn’t suffer any brain damage as far as they can tell. It’s a concussion and being unconscious is the best thing for her to rest and recover,’ Eve recalled from her visit yesterday.
‘I’m Patricia Kean,’ the girl said, shaking Eve’s hand.
‘Oh yes, I know you. You were at Ellereslie Road School with Amy.’
‘That’s right.
How did you know?’
‘It’s part of my enquiry into Amy’s attack and some other things I’m working on. Her parents thought you were meeting Amy yesterday.’
‘No. I had to go and watch my little brother play football and take him home as my mother was working.’
‘Do you have any idea where Amy was going?’
‘No. I haven’t spoken to her since last weekend. I’m very busy,’ she pointed to the ATS uniform, ‘on a training course, learning to drive ambulances and trucks.’
Eve felt disappointed; she had really hoped that Patricia would be able to tell her where Amy was going on Saturday. Then she remembered something, Amy had spoken before she lost consciousness.
‘Amy said something when she was hurt, before she was put in the ambulance. I wonder if you can make any sense of it. She said something like “he wasn’t there”. No, it was, “it wasn’t him. Billy. It wasn’t him”. Do you understand that? Her parents said they thought she was going to visit a school friend. They understood it was you and Barbara, but obviously that was wrong.’
‘Yes, Barbara was at a funeral yesterday afternoon, one of her uncles was killed in the Blitz. I didn’t know Amy knew anyone called Billy,’ Patricia thought for a moment. ‘No, wait a minute, she must have meant Billy...’
Eve nodded expectantly, ‘Yes...?’ she said, baffled by this contradiction.
‘Dave Kidd, we always called him Billy. You know, because of Billy the Kid.’
‘Oh, my word,’ realisation washed over Eve. ‘Of course, it’s so obvious when you know. But what did she mean by “it wasn’t him”?’
‘Goodness, I don’t know. Come to think of it, I thought Dave Kydd was dead. Someone told me he’d died in Egypt.’
‘I’d heard that too,’ said Eve, ‘but I’ve met him; been round to his house and all. He’s wounded, not dead.’
‘Well,’ said Patricia, ‘it sounds as if there’s something wrong there.’
Murders in the Blitz Page 17