“LAC Gordon Frederick Cummins,” he went on, “training to be a pilot. Made an exemplary test, it says here.” He had a form laid out on the table in front of him, beside the brown teapot and tin mugs with which he’d furnished Greenaway with an early morning brew. His office was in the foyer of a modern apartment block requisitioned by the RAF, where once a uniformed concierge would have served well-heeled residents. Now the marble and brass Deco fittings, the scalloped wall lights and parquet floors, had all been subsumed under layers of aerial maps and stacks of filing cabinets, overlaid by the smell of tobacco and boot polish.
“He’s also six foot tall, has fair hair and wears one of them little pencil moustaches.” He looked up at Greenaway with a steady, slate-grey stare. “Fancies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man, so they say. Would that be …?”
Greenaway cut him off with a nod. “It does have some bearing,” he allowed. Though he’d introduced himself as a senior Yard detective acting on information received, he hadn’t yet gone into the nature of the offence he was investigating, nor the department that he worked for. He didn’t want rumours circulating round the barracks while he sniffed out a likely suspect.
“How long has he been here?” Greenaway asked, wondering how closely his interviewee read the linens. He looked like a Herald man, though one that would start with the sports pages and probably never had time to get much further.
The Corporal glanced back down at his form. “Not long,” he said. “He were assigned his billet Monday, the second of February.”
Greenaway felt the same prickling of his skin that had come when he was studying the map the night before.
“And did you manage to find out his whereabouts between midnight and dawn on the nights of Sunday, the eighth and Monday, the ninth of February?” he asked.
The Corporal raised one thick black eyebrow. “Aye, sir, that I did. And I’m afraid this is the point where all similarities end. I’ve the mess logbook here,” he handed it across the table, “and as you can see, Cummins was here at the times you mention. Curfew’s 22.30 hours sharp. The lads respect that.”
Greenaway let his expression reflect mild surprise. “Do they?” he said. “Only it don’t always look that way round Piccadilly Circus of an evening.”
The Corporal grunted. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I followed up on him for you. His four roommates swear blind he was in bed by ten-thirty both evenings and was still in his cot when they all got up.”
Greenaway studied Cummins’s handwriting. It sloped slightly to the right. Underneath the entry written on the night of the ninth of February, was one for an LAC F. R. Simpson. He passed the logbook back, pointed the name out. “Felix Simpson, is it?” he asked.
The Corporal frowned. “That’s right, sir. How did you happen to know?”
Greenaway smiled. “I’m a detective, ain’t I?” he said. “Now this Simpson … He wouldn’t by any chance be one of the roommates who swear blind Cummins was safely tucked up for lights-out on both evenings, would he?”
“That he would,” said the Corporal, his eyes narrowing for a moment, slate-grey glinting into steel. “But I’ve three others gave exactly the same story and none of them are quite so enamoured of Cummins as young Simpson is. They wouldn’t be making up a cover story for him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Greenaway raised his palms, smiling blandly. “Course not, Corporal, you know your men. You say so, I believe you. But you’ve got to admit it’s interesting. My sources mentioned a Gordon and a Felix and here are these two, bunked up together. Course, it could all be coincidence …”
The Corporal kept his face straight. There was a reason why taciturn men like him were always put in charge of officer cadets.
“Why don’t you call back later, when they’re off duty?” he said. “Speak to them yourself, sir? I can always make sure their duties detain them here this evening.”
“All right, Corporal,” said Greenaway, getting to his feet. “I will. But I tell you what. Before I go, you wouldn’t mind just showing me their kip, would you?”
– . –
The Duchess got to Holland Park at a quarter to ten, stepping through a swirl of sleet borne by a spiteful northeasterly wind as she made her way down Lansdowne Road. With a headscarf tied about her copper hair and a heavy tweed coat, she looked like any ordinary housewife burdened down with cares. The laundry bag she heaved over her right shoulder was her penance: heavy with offerings for Miss Moyes.
The iron railings outside number 3 had long since been taken away and smelted down for the war effort. The windows at the top of the stucco mansion were boarded up from the time incendiaries had got in and caused a fire on the third floor during heavy bombing the previous May. Once gleaming white, the outside walls were now crusted with soot, the paint-work below the fire-line torn and peeling. But still there was a smiling face to greet Duch at the front door.
“What a lovely surprise, dear.” Winifred Moyes did not look like Madame Blavatsky, or the veiled, black-clad figures of ghost stories. She was square-shaped, mannish. Bobbed hair, which had once been auburn but now shot through with grey, crinkled around a long, equine face with round brown eyes set behind wire-rimmed spectacles. She dressed in sensible twin-sets and tweeds and would not have looked out of place with a pair of Labradors, posing as a vicar’s wife.
Miss Moyes had given up her job on the Daily Telegraph to form the Christian Spiritualist Greater World Association in 1931, at the behest of her spirit guide, Zodiac. Despite a singular lack of resources and bouts of ill-health that belied her robust appearance, everything she needed to aid her mission had been provided since she took her leap of faith – these premises and those for her women’s night shelters, the funds to keep them afloat, a loyal band of women and men to assist her in raising money, printing weekly pamphlets and giving audiences to the needy up and down the country, which the war had not disrupted, despite all the privations of the Blitz and wartime rail travel.
Duch had herself been the recipient of charity once, at a crucial time in her life. Since she had taken up residence nearby, she had made regular attendances at Miss Moyes’s circle and discreet donations to her funds. She handed over the bag and watched with satisfaction the expression of delight form across the other woman’s face as she examined its contents.
“Sheets and blankets, just what we need.” Miss Moyes held one neatly folded bed sheet up to the light. It had the initials CR monogrammed on the border. “Good as new,” she considered, then winked. “I won’t ask where you got them from.”
Duch smiled. It was better Miss Moyes didn’t know that the fine linen and blankets had furnished Carmen’s boudoirs in Dover Street. She’d had more money than sense, had Carmen, and Duch had clocked Greenaway taking note of everything else that had come from that house the moment he’d arrived the night before – he never missed a thing. Which was why she’d felt it prudent to donate some of those gains to the bombed-out recipients of Miss Moyes’s charity.
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “I do what I can.”
However, there was a more compelling reason for her visit. “Is there anybody else here at the minute?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Miss Moyes placed the neatly folded sheet back into the bag, “there is.” She moderated her voice so that it couldn’t be heard through the walls. “I’ve spent most of the night talking with a friend of yours, who’s in a state of some distress. Shall we go through? I know she’ll be glad to see you.”
Duch nodded, followed her hostess through the door into the parlour, which now acted as both office and a waiting room for those who came for aid. Sitting there now was a woman of striking appearance, huddled in a black astrakhan coat, with a scarlet, feathered hat on the seat beside her. Despite the warmth of Miss Moyes’s welcome, it was deathly cold in the high-ceilinged old house.
“Look who’s here,” said Miss Moyes.
“Madame Arcana,” said the Duchess, her breath hanging on
the air like smoke.
“Duchess!” the little Frenchwoman sprang to her feet. “You couldn’t sleep either?”
– . –
“Present for you, Fred,” Greenaway hefted a sack into Cherrill’s office at Scotland Yard. The fingerprint man looked up from behind the stack of files that threatened to obscure him from view, his brows rising in a quizzical expression.
“Been holding up the postman, Ted?” he enquired.
“I just lifted this from an RAF billet on Regent’s Park,” said Greenaway. “It’s the contents of the bin of LAC Gordon Cummins, who just happens to match the description Ivy Poole gave me of the man she saw with Evelyn Bettencourt the night she was murdered. The full-screw in charge of his gaff reckons he’s got proof Cummins was tucked up in his bunk on the nights in question, but even so, he don’t like him much. He let me have a rummage through his bin and if there’s anything in here we can connect to the victims then I’m going back as soon as he’s off duty for a parade of a different kind from what he’s used to.”
“You seem pretty sure of him, then?” said Cherrill, getting to his feet.
“Spoke to a snout last night with a matching description to Ivy’s,” said Greenaway, “who also knew the killer’s name was Gordon. I had a shufti through all the RAF billets and Abbey Lodge is the closest to that shelter on Montagu Place. Cummins arrived there a week ago. Same snout told me this Gordon had a mate called Felix. Unusual name, I thought. Just so happens, one of Cummins’s roommates is a Felix Simpson.”
Cherrill nodded. “I see,” he said. “Bring it over to this table by the window.”
“There’s more,” Greenaway followed his colleague through the labyrinth of filing cabinets that made up Cherrill’s domain, to a window overlooking the Thames. There was a long, metal-topped table in front of it. “The full-screw told me Cummins fancies himself rotten. I found a greatcoat in his locker that’d been altered by a tailor, a flash suit and a shirt that reeked of perfume.”
“All right,” said Cherrill, pulling on a pair of gloves. “You can tip it out now.”
“Also,” Greenaway upended his offering and let the contents slowly slide out, “Cummins’s handwriting slopes to the right. Like he writes with his left hand.”
“Got you,” said Cherrill, poking a pen through the debris of tea leaves, newspapers, cigarette packets and the contents of several ashtrays. “Well, that’s promising. I managed to lift some decent prints from the tin opener and the mirror I took from Mrs Bettencourt’s room. One off the thumb of a left hand. If I can take anything from this that does correspond, then we could be in business. Did you say the fellow had an alibi?”
Greenaway grunted. “Yeah,” he said. “The logbook says he was in quarters Sunday and Monday, between ten-thirty and dawn. And all his roommates swear to it.” He looked over Cherrill’s head, out of the window, visualising the billet. “Only there’s a fire escape down the back of the building, goes underneath their kitchen window. If he was a stealthy bastard – which odds on, he is – he might have made use of that without any of them ever noticing. So I don’t think it’s bulletproof.”
“Aha,” said Cherrill, “what have we here?”
– . –
Madame Arcana’s breath smelt of aniseed and her voice was husky from lack of sleep as she described to Duch the events that had brought her over to Miss Moyes’s the night before.
“I tried to warn her, I did my best, but Nina would have none of it. Then I read in the paper yesterday …” she shook her head. “What good is this gift of ours if we can’t make people see? The very people who come to us for help …”
“What did you see, Madame?” asked the Duchess. “What cards did she draw?”
Madame shook her head. “First of all,” she said, “the five of Swords. Reversed.”
“Ah,” the Duchess nodded understanding. The first card was the one that set the tone for the whole reading, and this choice did not bode well.
“Secondly, the Knight of Swords.”
Duch felt the blood drain from her cheeks. Lil had selected Swords from the pack last night. The Fool reversed, the ten of Swords and the six of Swords.
“And finally,” Madame held the Duchess’s green-eyed gaze. “The Tower.”
“Couldn’t get much worse than that, could it, dear?” Miss Moyes noted.
Duch gave a low whistle. She had wanted to talk about what she had seen, the aftermath of Ted’s visit and the effect all of this was having on Lil’s nerves. If she had had a fitful night, picturing her charge on the edge of peril, it was no wonder the Frenchwoman’s had been entirely devoid of rest. Her client had picked a configuration that spelt out pure calamity.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she said. “The Knight of Swords.”
Madame nodded. “Nina had a boyfriend,” she said, “in the services. A spiv, like they all are. He was making her do all sorts of stupid things, including trying to frighten her poor old husband away. I am sure it was him who murdered her.”
“What sort of serviceman was he, do you know?” Duch sat forward. “RAF?”
“No,” said Madame, “he was a Canadian. Nina dreamt he was going to take her away with him when the war is finally over.” She gave a short, brittle laugh.
“Well, love,” said Duch, trying to hide her disappointment, “you can stop punishing yourself for that, then. The fella they’re after is English.”
Her audience drew their breath in. Miss Moyes found her voice first. “And how did you come to know that?” she asked.
“An old friend of mine,” Duch smiled grimly, “is in charge of the Murder Squad. He was round our gaff last night asking questions. See, Lil heard some talk down the hairdresser’s Tuesday morning, about an RAF man with a kink for blondes, nearly done a girl in the night before. She was so frightened, she was having her hair dyed dark brown. The two of us ran into Mr Swaffer soon after, so I had Lil tell him what she heard and then give our address to send for Ted Greenaway.”
Madame frowned. “I never knew you were friends with a policeman.”
“Well,” said Duch, “maybe ‘friends’ ain’t quite the right word for it. But my point is I’ve known Ted for donkey’s. I know exactly what kind of a man he is. If anyone can catch this maniac, he …”
The sharp trill of the doorbell made all three women jump.
“Oh,” Miss Moyes’s hand fluttered up to her chest. “Oh, I’d better see who that is.”
Madame turned to the Duchess. “So it wasn’t Nina’s boyfriend,” she said. “That is some kind of relief, I suppose. But do you really think your friend will catch the one who did this to her? It would mean a lot to me if he did.”
“You know the old saying?” said Duch. “Send a bastard to catch a bastard.”
The parlour door opened and Miss Moyes came back in, ushering a tall, nervous-looking woman in a grey coat and matching felt hat.
“Ladies, may I introduce Miss Maitland?” Miss Moyes said. “A friend of our dear Mr Swaffer’s. She’s come to offer her services to the refuge. Isn’t that grand?”
– . –
Mari Lambouri left her flat at eleven o’clock for her first cleaning job of the day. As she locked her front door and turned towards her neighbour’s, she noticed the postman had been and left a parcel outside Phyllis Lord’s front door. She tutted to herself, imagining the woman would have been too fast asleep to hear him call, after the night she had no doubt had. Shaking her head, she went on her way.
10
YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE
Thursday, 12 February 1942
The rest of the debris having been sifted through and discounted, Cherrill was left with a green propelling pencil and a pair of size-ten rubber-boot soles. He didn’t hold out hope of the former being much use, but the latter were certainly of interest. Crammed into the tread were particles of dust and cement that brought his mind back in an instant to the scene of Evelyn Bourne’s murder.
He rang Greenaway at Tottenham Co
urt Road. “I’m sending them to the lab for analysis against the samples we took from the shelter at Montagu Place. If I remember rightly, the newspapers reported us finding footprints in the snow that morning, and if this fellow is as stealthy as you think he is …”
Greenaway, sat in front of a desk awash with statements taken from the prostitutes of Soho and Paddington, snapped the pencil he was holding clean in half.
“You beauty,” he said. “How long will that take?”
“Hard to say,” Cherrill glanced up at the clock on the wall in front of him. It was coming up to seven. “Even at top priority I’d be amazed if we got it back before the morning. There’s just too few people with too many jobs to do.”
“Don’t worry,” Greenaway’s voice came back, “we can keep it up our sleeve for when I take the bastard in. Anything else?”
Cherrill picked up the propelling pencil and described it. “The sort of thing a sub-editor might use,” he concluded, “or a draughtsman.”
“Doubt Ivy’ll recognise it, then,” said Greenaway. “But keep hold of it, anyway.”
The minute they had ended their conversation, another phone rang in Greenaway’s office. This one wasn’t a line from the Yard, but a private number he gave out to snouts, paid for out of his own pocket to ensure the confidence of his sources. The voice on the other end belonged to a member of a South London firm, who was not averse to a little cavort amongst the stalls of Berwick Street market when supply and demand required.
“Got some gen for you, Inspector,” he came straight to the point. “A girl I know reckons she can put the finger on this sex maniac you’re after.”
“What,” said Greenaway, “shopping you at last, is she?”
“Oh very droll, Inspector, very droll. Nah, but seriously, she had a run-in with him on Piccadilly, night before last.”
“So did half the girls in London,” said Greenaway, eyeing the mound of paperwork before him, his afternoon spent sifting witness reports that concurred with Ivy’s description, and still only halfway done. “What’s she got to add I ain’t heard before?”
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