I didn’t like to tell him I was afraid of being alone in the twilight with the Dobkins; it sounded so silly, especially from the cool and collected Miss Lefebure. So I steeled myself to those horrid little afternoon sessions and even tried to force myself to walk calmly down the stairs when 4:15 arrived, but I rarely succeeded in this final tour de force and generally descended them in a wild dash for light and company.
However, as nobody saw me behaving in this illogical and foolishly feminine fashion, it didn’t matter. And, anyway, I had gained a reputation for being forever on the hop, skip, and jump. CKS was fond of pointing out that when I first joined him I “strolled” around, but that now my pace had “appreciably quickened.” He himself never walked but always ran everywhere, and I had got into the same habit. We streaked in and out of mortuaries and leapt and bounded about the hospital buildings in a positive excess of energy. Because of my constant hopping and skipping I came, in certain circles, to be known as “the Fairy.” My light build, fair hair, and ceaseless dancing about no doubt earned me this name. Personally I felt more like a performing flea than a fairy.
Of course I was called other things besides a fairy. I recall a very gallant old doctor who came to Poplar mortuary to see a p.m. he was interested in; as I walked into the p.m. room with the notes of the case he caught me up and exclaimed, “My dear young lady, I don’t like to see you in this sort of place, no, I don’t like it at all. I’m of the old school, and I find it most unsuitable.”
“I find it all very interesting,” I said, “I should miss it if I had to give it up for other work. And why shouldn’t I work here?”
“Ah,” he said mournfully, “a suffragette, yes, yes, a suffragette.”
I had delightful visions of myself chained to the mortuary railings, waving my typewriter and vociferously demanding the right to work among corpses.
However, most people took my presence in the mortuary more or less for granted.
A lot of people came to watch the p.ms., many of them doctors and, of course, many officers of the CID.
Among the CID personalities was a suavely dressed, good-looking, exceptionally genial detective inspector, who carried a most beautifully rolled umbrella which he brandished jauntily as he came into the mortuary. This was the famous Robert Fabian, whom we first met in Southwark. But later he turned up at Hammersmith, flourishing his umbrella even more gaily. He had become a DDI, and he accepted congratulations with infectious laughter. Although he was without a doubt a terror to the crooks he pursued, so far as we were concerned he was fun to work with. He had a terrific sense of humor and made jokes about everything. Sometimes he would hum to himself happily. He also had a genius for pithy comments.
I only once saw him disconcerted in any way, and that was when CKS remarked upon the sobriquet which one of the Sunday newspapers had bestowed upon him: “DDI Fabian, the Humphrey Bogart of Scotland Yard.” The Humphrey Bogart of Scotland Yard turned the slightest degree redder in the face and then grinned. “Well, Humphrey Bogart can have a bash at my job if he’ll let me have a bash at his salary.”
One job we did with Mr. Fabian was the case of an ex-Broadmoor man who battered his wife to death with a rolling pin and then gave himself up to the police. We went around to the house where the murder had taken place. It was a neat, tidy little house, complete with lace curtains, ferns in pots, artificial flowers on the sideboard, and a collection of family photographs on the mantelpiece. I began looking at these photographs, and Mr. Fabian came over to me, picked up one of the photos, and said, “That’s the devoted husband. Loved children and animals—particularly cats.”
“Did he have any children?”
“No, but there was a tabby cat.”
I looked at the bland, round, pop-eyed, broadly smiling face. He was sitting on a low wall, with two little children and a black dog. They all seemed very pleased with themselves.
“Was that since he came out of Broadmoor?”
“Oh yes, he’d been out several years.”
“Why did he go there?”
“For trying to murder his wife.”
“Why on earth did she have him back?”
“She wanted him back.”
“I suppose she never thought he’d try it a second time.”
“Lord, no; thought him the kindest, dearest soul on earth.”
I went on looking at the photographs, so many of which featured this round-faced, jaunty householder and taxpayer, the man who, according to his photographs, anyhow, was always beaming like the sun. Obviously very popular with his friends and relations and the life and soul of every party. In one photo he had his arm around his wife, in another snap he was cuddling the cat. And always smiling…
Back came Mr. Fabian from a brief search of the premises, carrying a bloodstained rolling pin. Adhering to the congealed blood were several long dark hairs.
“The weapon, Dr. Simpson.”
“Without a doubt, Mr. Fabian.”
“Considering he’d given her a pretty thorough battering the first occasion, she must have been a wonderfully trusting type. And now back he’ll go to Broadmoor. Ah well.”
Mr. Fabian later presented Dr. Simpson with the rolling pin, which was given a prominent position among the murder weapons exhibited in the Gordon Museum.
We collected many interesting trophies during the course of our work. One we obtained about this time, and which I especially liked, was a huge metal weight, impossible for me to lift, attached to a piece of rope. With this went a succinct suicide note: “I expect you will find me over Battersea Bridge—if you are interested.”
They did find him over Battersea Bridge.
Another collector’s piece was a geyser vent pipe, complete with starling’s nest blocking it; this had caused the accidental death from carbon-monoxide poisoning of a housewife taking her Friday night’s bath.
The felt hat of the murdered pawnbroker at Hackney was added to our collection of interesting garments.
When I first joined Dr. Simpson, one of the things that most intrigued me was the CID officers’ knowledge, or ignorance, of ladies’ underwear. Victims of crimes would be undressed, garment by garment, in the mortuary, one officer undressing the body and another tabulating the clothes as they were removed. The other officers present joined in, in a kind of male chorus. Shoes, stockings, dress, petticoat—or “slip,” as they always called it—panties, vest, bra, these caused no trouble, everybody could identify such things; but some items of wear puzzled the gentlemen very much and they would turn to me with inquiring, bothered faces. “Miss Lefebure, what’s this?”—holding it up suspiciously, at arm’s length. “A camisole,” I replied, after a moment’s staring. “Never seen one of them before,” was the rejoinder. “No, they’re just coming into fashion again, along with the new waist petticoats,” I explained. “Oh, thanks, Miss Lefebure.” Then, briskly, “Item, one camisole.”
“Miss Lefebure, whatever’s this?”
“Oh, it’s one of those boned, strapless brassieres.”
“She’s wearing it in a very funny place.”
“It’s slipped down.”
“Oh. Thanks, Miss Lefebure. Item, one strapless bra.”
There was one garment they always recognized immediately, all greeting it with triumphant shouts, “CamiKNICKS!”
Some of the clothes removed were occasionally so extraordinary even I couldn’t put a name to them. The results of home dressmaking courses, perhaps. “Why not make your own lovely lingerie, and save pounds?”
These disrobing episodes always amused me, but I always sat there very straight-faced, giving advice when asked.
I could never get them to appreciate the difference between a corset and a roll-on. But perhaps it didn’t really matter.
Many of the senior officers from the Yard filled me with considerable awe and at first meeting one or two of them quite scared me. One of these was Chief Supt. F. Cherrill, for so many years head of the world-famous Scotland Yard fingerprin
t department. Mr. Cherrill recently retired, but when I knew him he was at the zenith of his celebrated career, and indeed a man to be reckoned with, as famous in his own line as Spilsbury was in his.
We first met at Hammersmith. I recall it vividly.
In Hammersmith mortuary yard there grew a large castor-oil plant. Why, nobody knew; not even MacKay, the mortuary keeper, who generally knew everything concerned with his mortuary, and a lot more besides. But why there was a castor-oil plant in the yard MacKay just didn’t know. “Do you like castor-oil plants, MacKay?”
“Not particularly, Miss Molly, do you?”
“No. Does the coroner like castor-oil plants, MacKay?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Dr. Simpson definitely disliked the castor-oil plant. It got in his way when he parked the car.
One afternoon he had parked the car so close to this plant that when I climbed out of the car I became entangled in its greenery. I was dickering about with the wretched thing when a very loud, highly amused voice boomed, “Hullo, Eve. Looking for a fig leaf?”
Disentangling myself I looked up in some horror. There, standing in the mortuary doorway, grinningly surveying me, was a very large, solid, rather portly gentleman, even larger because of his vast gray overcoat. There was something about the goblin humor of his grin that sent me scurrying off to the coroner’s office for refuge. “Who’s the man in the gray coat and the bowler hat?”
Said the coroner’s officer, with bated breath, “Why, that’s Mr. Cherrill, the fingerprint expert. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”
Of course I had.
Gathering my courage I went back to the mortuary. Mr. Cherrill gave me another grin; he could see he had scared me, and it tickled him.
Gradually, in the course of several encounters, I got to know him and ceased to be so scared of him, although his quality of gnomish humor always kept me on the qui vive, ready to jump. He knew it too, and, I suspect, enjoyed teasing me.
Dr. Simpson frequently sent specimens from postmortems to Mr. Cherrill at the Yard, and I would be sent to take them to him. Visiting a high-up at the Yard was quite a business, at any rate, during the war. I had to fill in and sign a chit, which was then taken to the officer to be visited, who would scan it and say, “All right, let her come up.” Then a large police sergeant escorted me to the office of whoever I might be visiting; perhaps Chief Constable (now Commander) Hugh Young or Deputy Commander Rawlings, or perhaps one of the chief inspectors, but most often Mr. Cherrill.
One day as I walked into his office, he waved my chit ferociously at me and growled, “Can’t you write better than this?”
“It’s the awful pens the Yard provides, Mr. Cherrill.”
“Don’t blame our pens.”
“They’re dreadful.”
“So is this scrawl.” He contemplated it and shook his head.
“Can you read character from handwriting, Mr. Cherrill?” I ventured.
“I certainly can. I’m an expert at it. Want me to tell you yours?”
“No, thank you. It might be too disconcerting.”
“I know all about you,” he said, tapping the chit and grinning.
“I expect you do. At the Yard you all know everything about everybody, with or without the aid of handwriting.”
However, despite my horrible writing he not long afterward asked me if I would like to be his secretary. The offer didn’t seem to be a legpull, either, for he assured me I would come in most useful in his department, and rising briskly from his chair took me for a brief tour of the amazing place, pointing out this or that job I would be useful for.
I found it all absorbingly interesting, although it was very hard to believe there were enough crooks in the country to necessitate those vast stacks of fingerprint files. It gave one an alarming glimpse of the size and extent of the underworld. Record after record after record of criminals’ fingerprints. The efficiency of the system of filing was impressive to a degree. Mr. Cherrill was rightly very proud of it all, but when he again said, “Now, wouldn’t you like to be my secretary?” I repeated, in the style of a Mrs. Micawber, that much as I appreciated the offer I would never, never, never desert Dr. Keith Simpson.
At one stage we kept Mr. Cherrill supplied with fingers, with which he did several important experiments.
Another time, when CKS and I had been visiting him about some fingerprints on a revolver, he remarked as we were saying good-bye, “Oh, Dr. Simpson, before you go I wish you’d do me a favor.”
“Anything, Mr. Cherrill, anything,” responded CKS affably.
“I’ve got one or two bits of a young woman here,” explained Mr. Cherrill confidentially, “——— ———” (giving her name), “you remember the case, Dr. Simpson? Sometime back now.”
Dr. Simpson said he remembered.
“I had one or two odds and ends of her brought up here for me to look at, pickled, you know, of course, and I put them away in a cupboard afterward and forgot all about ’em, but I don’t want them cluttering the place up, we’re very short of space here, so I wondered if it’d be too much to ask you to pop them in your hospital incinerator; would that be too much trouble?”
“No trouble at all, Mr. Cherrill.”
“Let me find her, then.” He began poking around his cupboards, pulling out parcels and packages, shaking his head, pushing them back and muttering, “I know she’s here somewhere. I’ve got her somewhere. Bother the girl, where on earth is she?”
After a bit CKS said, politely, “What about leaving it till some other time, Mr. Cherrill? You can find her at your leisure, and I’ll take her next time I call.”
“But damn it, I know I had her here in one of these cupboards.”
A stickler for efficiency, he was most annoyed at his failure to find the lady, or what portions he had of the lady, and fumed around his office, grumbling, “I know I’ve got her here somewhere.”
We had to leave without her. The matter was never mentioned again, and I could never summon the courage to ask Mr. Cherrill if he had found her.
CHAPTER 15
Severe Testing of a Secretary
When August came CKS retired to his cottage for a fortnight’s “rest.” He took me with him for part of the time, for he was in the middle of writing his textbook, and it seemed to him that a rest was a splendid opportunity for doing some concentrated dictating and typing.
Most of the work we did out in the garden; the weather was lovely, and it certainly was a pity to stay indoors. I am not, however, perhaps so fond of fresh air as I should be, and I felt a slight exasperation with the playful little breeze that used to come along and create lively havoc with the pages of the manuscript. It was especially trying as we had reached the section of the book on poisons, and the section of the book which dealt with poisons struck me as somewhat nightmarish—from a typist’s point of view:
“Dinitrocresols; dinitronaphthols; dinitrophenols: dinitrothymols.
“Para-aminobenzenesulphonamide; its salts; derivatives of para-aminobenzenesulphonamide having any of the hydrogen atoms of the para-amino and sulphonamide group substituted by another radical; their salts (substances of the sulphonamide group)—”
And so on.
Nevertheless, in spite of the intimidating aspect of the typescript, it was very nice in the garden, with the sunny countryside spread before me, terminating in a horizon of gentle blue sky and Dunstable Beacon, while in the cornfield at the back of the cottage the harvesting machine went around and around with a familiar clank and rattle which reminded me, vividly and pleasantly, of the Exmoor farm Augusts of my childhood. And the work on the textbook was enlivened with bouts of gardening, picnics, jaunts to Whipsnade, climbing trees, swimming, going to look at some neighboring pigs—a delightfully snoozy pastime—and entertaining Americans from a nearby Army Air Force camp. The beautiful weather held, everything was honey-balmed, warm and tranquil, and then…along came the wasps.
They were everywhere: in the larde
r, the kitchen, the dining room, on the buns and in the jam at teatime; they even prowled around the toothpaste in the bathroom and investigated our gin slings before dinner. Obviously there was a nest of them somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. We scouted around, but found nothing.
Then, during a game of badminton, a shuttlecock fell into a small thicket of elderberry bushes, and when CKS emerged from retrieving it he looked quite excited. “I’ve discovered the wasps’ nest. A vast thing, hanging from a branch. When the children are in bed we’ll deal with it.”
“We” meant himself and me, for Mrs. Simpson was visiting friends for the day.
So, when the children were safely in bed, CKS said, “Come on, Molly, let’s settle those wasps.”
“Do you intend smoking them out?”
“No, I’ve a better idea than that.”
He fetched a kitchen stool, garden shears, and a very large glass specimen jar, with a lid to it; one of the jars you could pickle a whole baby in, if you wanted to. This he gave to me to carry. It was heavy and slippery and I put both arms around it and hugged it to my bosom, nervous of dropping it and breaking it.
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ll cut the nest from the branch, drop it gently into the jar, and you’ll clamp the lid on, presto!”
It sounded a highly daring scheme, a little too daring if the wasps got any inkling of our plan—and wasps are suspicious creatures, apt to draw hasty conclusions. No, I didn’t think it sounded an awfully good idea, not really a good idea at all.
I tried to hint this tactfully.
Murder on the Home Front Page 11