Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  Greenaway stopped writing. Reservist Constable Stokesby popped in his head, saying: “What people there was about were soldiers …”

  Not perhaps as blind as he had first appeared.

  “It could be, Ivy, it could be. Well remembered, love, that’s a very important detail,” Greenaway encouraged. “Now why did you say he seemed handsome, until you got close up?”

  Ivy took another swig from her teacup. “Well,” she said, dander now fully up, “when they passed my door, I had a good look at his face. It was all angles, you know, and he had these queer, light-coloured eyes that just seemed to see straight through you. He weren’t handsome, but he thought he was. I think he fancied himself rotten.”

  “And Nina,” Greenaway used the name Ivy called her neighbour, “how did she seem?”

  “Oh, all right, her usual self, you know. She gave me a smile and said goodnight. She’s a lovely girl, is Nina …”

  Not wanting her to drift back away from him, Greenaway put his hand on Ivy’s arm, made sure he had her full attention; that she was looking straight into his eyes.

  “Then what happened, Ivy? Did you hear anything coming from the room?”

  “Nina always puts the radio on when she gets in. Out of respect for me. I could hear the midnight news from the BBC coming on when I started to get ready for bed. It had finished by the time I’d turned in, there was just some music coming through the walls, dance bands, that sort of thing. Then, just as I was drifting off, it got turned up loud, real loud. Well, I should have known, shouldn’t I, that he was up to no good? Nina wouldn’t never be so rude …”

  Ivy’s eyes darted away from him, starting to look fearful again. “I should have gone to have a look, shouldn’t I, Inspector? I should have tried to help her. Only …”

  Greenaway gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “No you shouldn’t, Ivy. There was nothing you could have done against that maniac. I wouldn’t have wanted to find the two of you in there, now, would I?”

  Tears welled in Ivy’s eyes. “No, sir,” she said, sounding like a child.

  “Listen, Ivy,” said Greenaway. “You done a good job here, girl, you can be proud of yourself. You’ve helped me and you’ve helped Nina, too.”

  Ivy shook her head again, but a momentary flicker of defiance returned to her face.

  “You will get him, won’t you, Inspector?”

  “You got my word on it,” said Greenaway, handing her the rest of the bottle.

  – . –

  The Archer Street joint was late-afternoon quiet. Just a couple of terminal old soaks snoozing over their plates of curled-up sandwiches and half-empty pint pots and a cleaner pushing a mop half-heartedly across the floor to the strains of ‘Blues in the Night’ coming out of the wireless, nodding her head sagely in time to the tune and the wisdom imparted by the lyrics.

  Swaffer was not at the piano stool just yet, but lurking in the corner behind the stage, just visible behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, scribbling into his shorthand notebook.

  “What do you know?” said Greenaway.

  Swaffer looked up, blinked. “A couple of things,” he said. “One: you’ve been busy. You’ve shrugged off that lugubrious air that’s been haunting you since your onerous transfer. Two: the ladies of the parish are talking.” He raised his eyebrows. “These things must be connected.”

  “What they talking about?” Greenaway pulled up the chair that was opposite the journalist and swung it round beside him, to sit where he could see but not be seen.

  “An airman, I believe. Calls himself an officer. Am I getting warm yet?”

  Greenaway nodded. “Here’s one for your Ouija board, Swaff. There are two dead bodies in the morgue, both women called Evelyn. Miss Bourne and Mrs Bettencourt. Apart from their names, they couldn’t be more different. Miss Bourne was a pharmacist from Newcastle. I’ve just been talking to her sister.”

  Greenaway’s brow creased as he recalled the telephone conversation. Miss Kathleen Bourne was due in London tomorrow, entrusted with the ordeal of claiming her older sibling’s body.

  “A troubled woman,” Greenaway said. “On the outside, intelligent and respectable. Qualified as a chemist from Edinburgh University in 1938, got a job as a shop manageress there soon after, stayed for nearly two years and then suddenly packed it all in. Told her sister she was bored stiff with it, wanted a change.

  “Next she gets herself a job as a travelling saleswoman for a firm in Leicestershire, plugging new medicines to shops. Sticks that for seven months before she goes back home to her Ma’s in a state of depression. The sister persuades her to see a headshrinker she knows, who tells her she’s suffering from overwork and needs some kind of tonic. So she takes it easy for a couple of months, not doing much except reading and going to the theatre. No sign of a boyfriend in all this time; in fact, her sister couldn’t remember her ever having had one, or even having mentioned one.”

  “Ah,” said Swaffer. “I’m getting a sort of a picture here. A well of loneliness, do you think?”

  “Maybe.” Greenaway shrugged. “Or she could have been one of those unfortunate women who only seem to be able to attract the attentions of married men. That would explain her secrecy, breaking her jobs off suddenly, the depression. Her sister described her as an intellectual and a socialist, who only ever wanted to improve her mind – maybe she was an admirer of yours and that’s what sent her round the twist. Whatever’s the case, she’s not the type of woman who lets herself get picked up in the street by a soldier. Not even on the night of her birthday.”

  “Her birthday?” Swaffer echoed. “It was her birthday on Sunday?”

  Greenaway nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “She treated herself to a slap-up meal in the Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch. A plate of beetroot salad. Half an hour later she was dead.”

  Swaffer dropped his cigarette into the ashtray and reached for another. “Is that what brought her to London?” he asked, sparking up his Ronson.

  Greenaway shook his head. “For the past few months she’s been working at a chemist’s shop in Hornchurch, living in digs nearby. Sunday last, out of the blue, she settles up with her landlady, tells her she’s got a new job in Grimsby, but she’s stopping off at London for the night on the way – to make a connection in the morning, I suppose. She had arranged for her luggage to be forwarded. But here’s another funny thing: the booking clerk said she told him she was fed up with moving around and wanted to spend the rest of her days in peace. He said she had something wrong with her voice, and all, like her vocal cords were mangled.”

  Swaffer jolted, as if he had been given an electric shock. “Good Lord,” he said. “As if she had a premonition …”

  “Don’t start with that,” said Greenaway. “I don’t want to hear it. But,” he relented, “I know what you mean. And that ain’t information I’m going to be sharing with the rest of the pack, neither. So, what else have you got for me?”

  “He has a thing about blondes, apparently.”

  “Evelyn Bourne was about as dark as they come, her hair was almost black,” said Greenaway. “But she did have the unfortunate habit of always carrying all her cash around with her. That’s what got her killed. He watched her in the Corner House, I reckon, followed her from there. Evelyn Bettencourt, on the other hand, was a proper bombshell, just the type to get carried away by a fancy airman. So where’s your snout, Swaff? You didn’t find her hanging around here, did you?”

  “Hereabouts,” Swaffer withdrew the cigarette from his lips with a flourish. “I found her on her way back from her hair-dresser’s in Shaftesbury Avenue actually, although I see her more often at Miss Moyes’s. She is an old acquaintance of yours, too, I believe. I thought you might want to look her up.”

  Swaffer tore a page out of the back of his notebook and handed it across. “She was very concerned, you see, because at the moment she is working for the most strikingly blonde woman you have ever seen. They heard about this airman from a friend of theirs in the hairdresser�
��s this morning, a lady who’d had a bit of a close shave with him last night. She was in the process of having her hair dyed brown.”

  Greenaway looked down at the given name and address and felt the hairs prickle up on his arms. He folded the paper carefully and swapped it for the envelope that was in his inside pocket.

  “This friend of theirs was lucky. This,” he handed his exchange across, “is Spilsbury’s report on Mrs Bettencourt.”

  It disappeared into Swaffer’s topcoat so swiftly it might never have even been there. “What more does no one else know yet?” the journalist asked.

  “The man’s left-handed,” said Greenaway. “That’s the main reason why I know it’s him who done both of them. Fred Cherrill’s working on dabs, but so far, he don’t seem to be a known resident of any of his files. The airman thing fits with the information I got and the rest—” Greenaway looked up at the clock above the bar, “you’ll have to deduce for yourself.”

  The detective got to his feet. “Do a good job, won’t you, Swaff? For the sake of all the ladies of the parish. You know you’re the only one they ever read.”

  7

  I’LL BE AROUND

  Tuesday, 10 February 1942

  “And I told you – I ain’t going with no bleedin’ soldier!”

  Twelve hours after leaving Gladys’s salon with her freshly dyed locks waved and pinned securely under her favourite red pillbox hat, Lorna had found her voice again. It rang out shrill and hard in the ears of the Scots Guardsman who, approving of her new look, was flashing a wad of money at her, outside the New Eros cinema in Piccadilly Circus.

  “What’s wrong wi’ ye, hen?” he said, alcohol-suffused blood rising. “Ye not ready ter help the fightin’ man, eh? They’s battleships comin’ up the Channel, but ye’s too good ter do yer bit, are ye?”

  Lorna looked past him to the shadows under the awning of the tobacconist’s next to the cinema. Molly stepped out into view.

  “Ye’s just wait,” the Scotsman went on. “Ye’ll ha’ a fine auld time once the Russians get here. Oh aye …”

  The cosh she had borrowed slipped down Molly’s coat sleeve into her right palm.

  Lorna felt a presence on her left-hand side, heard the hum of a familiar tune, the clack of shoes coming to a halt beside her. The Guardsman must have noticed, too, because he swung his head in the same direction.

  A woman stood there, statuesque in a long black coat and matching felt hat, a cigarette in a long holder held poised in her right arm, smoke curving to wreath her face. She pointed in Lorna’s direction.

  “You tell him,” she said, “you’re thoroughly British and you’ll stand no more of his nonsense.”

  She took a drag on her cigarette, regarding the Guardsman through narrowed eyes. In the glare of her basilisk stare, he appeared momentarily lost for words. He looked from the woman to Lorna and then turned on his heel, stalking off down Piccadilly, muttering darkly to himself. The woman winked at Lorna. She resumed her humming as she continued on her way.

  Molly’s hand touched Lorna’s arm. “The Lady,” she said.

  The Lady afforded herself a smile. She was aware of how her fellow women of the street regarded her and how this was down to the way she projected herself, the attitude she kept at all times – she’d had a little training once, for the stage, and it had served her well. If only those two girls had known that the name on her ID card was Phyllis Rosemarie Lord.

  There was nothing showing at the vast Deco picture house she had just passed that Phyllis was eager to see. Next of Kin, One of Our Aircraft is Missing – all those propaganda films left her cold. The figures that danced in her head belonged to the era that preceded the war, top hats and tails twirling under the Klieg lights to swooping strings orchestrated by Irving Berlin. That was where Phyllis had always pictured herself, dancing in the arms of Fred Astaire.

  She took another long drag on her cigarette as her mind returned to more mundane concerns: the percentage of the night’s earnings she would need to put by for her daughter’s schooling at St Gabriel’s in Southend-on-Sea, for clothing, food and other provisions, the rent on her small flat in Gosfield Street. Phyllis had been something of a businesswoman once, when she had run the Beach Bazaar, her husband Fred’s fancy goods shop on the seafront. She had more nous for it, being an avid reader of Vogue and The Queen, and had always cut a stylish figure who knew exactly what cut-price copies of the goods displayed in those magazines would lure her customers into parting with their LSD.

  But Fred had been stuck in his ways. Fred had his friends whom he always did business with, in the shop, and at their afterhours card games. Up to his neck in hock to them, Fred had popped his clogs from a massive heart attack by the time their little Jeanie was ten. The only way to keep herself afloat after that was for Phyllis to sell the shop and everything in it, enrol Jeanie in the best school she could afford on the proceeds and turn to the streets of London for a way of making money that she found less distasteful than scrubbing floors.

  The one image she could not abide was that of herself on her knees in a pinafore, reflected in another woman’s eyes.

  Phyllis passed a couple of constables as she crossed into Shaftesbury Avenue. There were a lot of them about tonight and their presence brought briefly to her mind the headlines on the Daily Herald:

  SEX MANIAC LOOSE IN LONDON!

  NO WOMAN SAFE FROM LEFT-HANDED

  KILLER, SAY SCOTLAND YARD

  EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY HANNEN SWAFFER

  Under her tailored coat and her freshly pressed skirt, her silk blouse and lambswool jumper, Phyllis bore the scars of the trade she had taken up. The Lady had come to Lorna’s aid tonight precisely because she shared her views regarding servicemen. Those types always felt that there was something owed to them. Those types could rarely get aroused without becoming violent. After the last pounding she had taken from that Canadian, she wanted nothing more to do with them either.

  It was funny, though, how they had all deferred to the sound of an upper-class voice, the Guardsman and those girls. Yes, she mused, as she stopped in a doorway, a safe distance from the bogeys, to light another cigarette. When it came down to it, all her life had been some kind of act or other. It was the only way she knew how to get through it, pretending it was all a dream.

  “Pardon me,” came a voice beside her in the dark. A voice that purred like a well-oiled Bentley. “But I can’t help admiring your style. What say you join me for a drink?”

  Phyllis turned her head slowly, parrying her torch towards a face with high cheekbones and light-coloured eyes, goldishblond hair and a clipped moustache. She swept the beam down to take in the rest of him. He was tall and athletic-looking, he was the right age, but he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

  “Well,” she said, offering him her arm. “I don’t mind if I do.”

  – . –

  Inside the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, three hundred pairs of eyes rested on Swaffer. Not because of the headlines he had produced earlier in the day, nor because he was about to bring them news from the Other Side. Tonight, the pews of the austerely magnificent home of the Ethical Society were packed with people eager to hear him hold forth on another of his great passions: politics.

  His age might have prevented him from the frontline reporting he had produced in the last war, and the coalition government had called an uneasy truce on party politicking for his beloved Labour Party, but Swaffer had not been idle on the Home Front. He had been the first national journalist to report from the East End when the Blitz began. He had seen the fire and carnage and had listened to the stories of the people who preferred to take refuge in the tube stations or under their own staircases than risk their lives in the flimsy shelters that the government provided. Then he had taken their concerns to his old friend Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, via a march from Bethnal Green to Whitehall. His efforts had brought about another coalition: of ministers, Trades Unionists and Communists, who continued to harangue MPs about
the building of deep shelters and the bringing of relief to London’s beleaguered communities. Tonight’s meeting was both a progress report and a rallying of troops to keep the pressure on.

  As Swaffer spoke, he became aware of one pair of eyes in particular, staring at him with a peculiar intensity. Throughout his address and that of the next speaker, through the question-and-answer session that followed, they continued to stare – but the mouth said nothing.

  After the last cups of tea had been drunk, the cups washed up and the banners packed away, after the last hands had been shaken and the people dispersed, the owner of that pair of eyes lingered by the door like a shade. As Swaffer approached, she placed a hand on his arm and whispered a greeting.

  “Mr Swaffer,” she said, “my name is Daphne Maitland. We have never been introduced, but I have attended many of your rallies as a member of the CP and I am a great admirer of all your works.”

  Her appearance was that of an aesthete: tall and thin, encased in a dark grey suit and felt hat. The emphasis she placed on the last sentence sent a tingle up the arm where her hand still rested, to Swaffer’s brain, which began to replay the conversation he had had with Greenaway the previous afternoon.

  “I wondered,” she continued, “if I may speak to you about a matter of great concern to me. I’m afraid it is to do with that article you wrote in today’s paper.”

  “Of course, my dear,” Swaffer said, indicating that they should sit down.

  She shook her head. “No, not here, not in public.” When she looked back up at him, tears were brimming in her eyes, but she kept her voice level. “Would you do me the favour of accompanying me home? I won’t take much of your time, I promise, and I’ll have my driver take you anywhere you wish to go afterwards.”

  Swaffer did not laugh at the idea of an avowed Communist ordering her driver to chauffeur him home. Nor did he look at his watch and inform her of the prior engagement he had at the Savoy, to which he really should have been heading.