Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Oh, Jeannie,” she said. “I’m afraid we have to go with the policemen now.”

  “But why?” Jeannie replied. “Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

  Mari Lambouri looked round at the two silent coppers and then back at her. Her other hand held rosary beads. “It’s your mother,” she said.

  – . –

  “Mr Coles?”

  Herbert opened his eyes slowly, unwilling to break the spell that the perfume had cast, the feeling that a spectral Claudette had wrapped her arms around him. When he did, he saw a large plainclothes detective in a long black coat. His face looked like it had gone a few rounds, but the sleepy brown eyes showed sympathy.

  “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Greenaway,” he introduced himself. “I’m in charge of this investigation and I’m sorry to have to intrude on you like this. Is there anyone I can call for you? Anyone you could stay with, instead of waiting here?”

  Herbert shook his head.

  “N-no,” he said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears, as if it was coming down a long tunnel. “There was no one else but Claudette.” His watery eyes searched Greenaway’s face for answers; then, finding none, dropped back down to the handkerchief he was holding.

  “We’re going to have to leave you for a while, Mr Coles,” Greenaway knelt down beside him, “but I’ll be back within the hour, I hope, to ask you some questions.”

  Herbert nodded without looking up. His finger traced the pattern of the red rose on the centre of the handkerchief.

  “We’ll have to take her with us,” the detective went on. “Along with the bedroom door and the wardrobe door – for fingerprints, you see? But I’m going to leave this bright young constable with you until I come back, so he can …”

  “Make sure I don’t go in there,” Herbert said.

  “I was going to say, so he can make you a cup of tea,” said Greenaway. “Look after you. But, yes. It would be for the best if you let us clean things up here.”

  “I understand,” said Herbert. “Just do what you have to do, Detective Chief Inspector.” He buried his face in the handkerchief.

  – . –

  Greenaway heaved his murder bag out of the door. Inside, bagged up for Forensics: two discarded French letters found on the floor by the bed, one containing fluid, and some crumpled, stained tissues. The butt of a Craven A cigarette left in the ashtray. A purse, containing Claudette Coles’s identity card and some ration coupons, but devoid of any money. A Gillette safety razor, its blade encrusted in blood and a roll of Elastoplast with a thin strip neatly cut out of it.

  He had one more stop to make, at West End Central, for the items found on Cummins at the time of his incarceration. The strip of Elastoplast on the back of the woman’s watch they had found on the airman could be a match for that cut out of the roll of tape just recovered – and he would need to take it back to show to Herbert for identification. The silver cigarette case could have come from either or any of the women Cummins had been preying on. But there was nothing else that they had taken from her flat that he could possibly show to Phyllis Lord’s young daughter.

  – . –

  Back at Tottenham Court Road station, Jeannie was waiting for him.

  15

  STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT

  Saturday, 14 February 1942

  Greenaway crossed Vauxhall Bridge, the events of the past twelve hours spooling through his mind as if he were viewing them all on a cinema screen. He felt the way he always did when he knew he was about to close a case: perfectly calm and still, running on the adrenaline surge that came from weaving all the strands together so tightly that the case had no weakness which could snap under the questioning of a clever barrister or KC. The long hours he, Cherrill, Spilsbury, DS Sheeney at West End Central, the Service Police and the Forensics team at Hendon had put in had forged a rope strong enough to take the weight of Gordon Frederick Cummins.

  He could see Jeannie Lord’s hazel eyes as if they were staring at him through the windscreen of the Wolseley, the way she had looked at him when he handed her the silver cigarette case.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Mother always carries this about with her. If it isn’t in her handbag, it’ll be on the kitchen table. If you look inside,” she said, opening it up, “there’s a yellow band across the middle. You see?”

  For a second, Jeannie had looked at him with an eagerness that seemed to imply that she had passed a test. Then the full weight of her discovery and all that it meant bore down on her and she shut the case again.

  “Why?” she had asked him. “Why would anyone do such a thing to Mother?”

  There was no answer to that question that he could give.

  But a further piece of evidence came his way shortly afterwards. A report made by a woman named Kate Molloy of an attack on her person on Thursday night by an airman she had picked up on Piccadilly – just fifteen minutes after Cummins had left Madeline Harcourt for dead around the back of St James’s market. When Greenaway had interviewed her in her room so close to Sussex Gardens, not only did Kate’s description tally, but she still also had the wad of money her thwarted Romeo had given her – and two of the notes had sequential serial numbers.

  One more trip back to Abbey Lodge and Greenaway ascertained that these had been paid out of the five hundred brand new Bank of England notes dispensed to the cadet officers on Thursday the twelfth of February. The notes were given out consecutively as the men were paid, in alphabetical order. Greenaway found the man who had been in line directly before Cummins, who still had most of his pay packet on him, including the notes numbered 39806 and 39807. Kate Molloy’s were 39808 and 39809.

  Meanwhile, the Service Police had found the owner of the gas mask Cummins had brought back to barracks with him – another airman who had been drinking in the Captain’s Cabin in Piccadilly, around midnight on Thursday. Despite everything he had inflicted upon Madeline Harcourt, Kate Molloy and Claudette Coles during the course of that night, once he had realised he was without it, Cummins had still had the wherewithal to get himself a replacement for the gas mask he had lost, and from a location just steps away from where he had mislaid it.

  Greenaway drove through Clapham Common, pock-marked by craters of bomb blasts and the gaps of rubble amid the rows of tall houses that fringed its edges, barrage balloons swaying languorously overhead. Now it was Herbert Coles’s watery eyes the detective could see staring back at him through the windscreen.

  Herbert had identified the watch immediately, a present he had bought for his wife. He then had to face the ordeal of visiting her in the morgue. When Spilsbury turned back the sheet, Herbert had given a little cry, like a wounded bird, before turning his head away.

  “Why did she have to …” he whispered, choking on fresh tears before he could get to the end of the sentence. Another question Greenaway had no answer to.

  But the men that dealt in irrefutable facts had found their own indisputable solutions. Cherrill had made matches with the prints found at Evelyn Bettencourt’s room with the ones taken from Phyllis Lord’s flat and the doors they had removed from Claudette Coles’s bedroom. They corresponded to the prints taken at West End Central at the time of Cummins’s arrest. Further traces of rubble found inside the cadet officer’s discarded gas mask were identical to those taken from the air-raid shelter where Evelyn Bourne had been murdered.

  As Greenaway drove down Streatham Hill, he could picture Cummins swinging from the gallows. The image carried him all the way to his destination, where the airman had been remanded following the charge of assault on Madeline Harcourt made by DS Sheeney, the detective who waited for him there. Justice to come for the orphan and the widower, who might still have a mother and a wife, if it wasn’t for the last time he had travelled this way, on his doomed foray to the Effra Arms. His hands were steady on the steering wheel as he arrived at Brixton Prison.

  – . –

  “Chief Inspector,” Cummins looked up with a bright sm
ile, as if he was receiving an old comrade at the Officers’ Mess and not the two detectives who stood before him. “Glad to see you. I’ve been trying to explain to your junior officers,” he said, casting a sideways glance at Sheeney, “but I’m sorry to say, they haven’t taken a blind bit of notice. I certainly hope we can sort this out now – between gentlemen.”

  Greenaway stood on the threshold of the interview room and took in the form of his phantom in the daylight. Cummins had made the most of the basic facilities to have a wash and comb back his wayward hair. Those strange, moonstone eyes were only slightly pink around the rims, suggesting that he had been sleeping well.

  In short, nothing about the man’s appearance would lead the casual observer to suspect he was responsible for the carnage Greenaway had witnessed during the past six days. Compared to the battle-scarred visages of the past roll-call of villains he had put away – all the racketeers, heisters, hoisters, petermen, kite-fliers and tweedlers – Cummins didn’t look like much, least of all the worst of them.

  Greenaway stepped inside the room. “I’m sure we can,” he said, nodding at the guard to lock the door behind himself and Sheeney. “I think we’ve just about got everything sewn up. Only you have me at a disadvantage, Cummins.” He sat down slowly, putting his murder bag on his knee. “I ain’t exactly what you’d call a gentleman.”

  Cummins opened his palms. “Well, maybe I’m not so much of one either,” he allowed. “Look, I know it was bad form sneaking in and out after curfew. But I’m not the only one guilty of that. After all, it’s pretty remiss of the barracks, isn’t it, to leave a fire escape outside the window like that?”

  “It’s gone a bit beyond that now,” said Sheeney.

  “Really?” Cummins leaned forwards eagerly. “Have you found the man who took my gas mask? The blighter that assaulted that woman?”

  “Oh, we’ve found him all right,” Greenaway said. He began to remove a set of crime scene photographs from a brown envelope. “The man whose gas mask you brought home with you was drinking in the Captain’s Cabin Thursday night, too pissed to know his arse from his elbow. As I’m sure you recall.”

  Cummins raised his eyebrows. “Whatever do you mean?” he said. “Has your friend here not told you?” he cast another curt, meaningful glance at Sheeney. “I was at a party on Thursday night, in St John’s Wood …”

  “I’ll give it to you officially,” Greenaway cut him short. “My name is Detective Chief Inspector Edward Greenaway and I am conducting investigations relative to the murder of four women during the past week. One case at an air-raid shelter on Montagu Place, Regent’s Park, on the night of Sunday the eighth of February.”

  He put down the black-and-white. Evelyn Bourne, her silk scarf cutting off her last breath, staring into infinity with her own pair of gloves pointing up at her in an inverted prayer.

  “One case at 153 Wardour Street, W1, night of Monday, the ninth of February.”

  He added Evelyn Bettencourt, lying on a blood-saturated mattress, her torch protruding from between her thighs.

  “Another at Flat 4, 9–10 Gosfield Street, near Tottenham Court Road, the night of Wednesday, eleventh of February.”

  Phyllis Lord with all her injuries and the knives that had made them placed in a ring around her thighs.

  “And finally, the fourth, at a flat at 187 Sussex Gardens, Paddington, the night of Thursday, the twelfth of February, approximately one hour after the assault on Mrs Harcourt.”

  Claudette Coles, her stocking tied in a ghastly bow around her neck.

  Greenaway straightened them out on the table in front of Cummins and sat back, watching for a reaction.

  The calm grey eyes surveyed each scene for a few brief seconds. Cummins’s pinprick pupils neither dilated nor contracted and not a muscle in his face moved until he raised his head to look back at Greenaway with a mildly quizzical expression.

  “What has this got to do with me?” he said.

  “Would you like to explain your whereabouts on those evenings?” Greenaway asked.

  – . –

  Lil sat at the table, the paper spread out before her.

  “Duch,” she said, as the door opened, “read this.”

  Duchess had been picking up some shopping from the market on Portobello Road. She put her basket down on the table and leaned over her companion’s shoulder to see the headlines.

  BLACKOUT RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN!

  TWO MORE DEAD IN VALENTINE’S

  EVE MASSACRE

  Her eyes ran further down the page, taking in the details and their implications.

  “Oh my godfathers,” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” said Lil. “Thursday night. You was right, I never should have gone out.”

  “He was here,” Duch said. “Right here in Paddington.”

  “Not only that,” Lil put a forefinger down on a photograph of a cross-looking woman wearing her fair hair up a chignon, “but I only just missed him. This lady was out on Praed Street, opposite the station. I said hello to her just before I come home.”

  “You never?”

  “I did,” Lil took Duch’s arm, pulled her down on the chair beside her. “I said there was nothing doing out there, I told her to go home.” Her eyes were filled with horror. “If only she had. If only she had. Oh my gawd, Duch – what have I done?”

  Duch blinked out the memory of Madame Arcana with her hand on her arm saying more or less exactly the same thing to her on Thursday morning.

  “What you talking about?” she said instead. “You ain’t done nothing. You had a lucky escape, right enough, but you can’t blame yourself for what happened to her. It was her bad luck, not yours.”

  Lil shook her head. “No, Duch, you don’t understand. I was so angry that night. Angry with Tom, angry with you, angry with the whole bleedin’ world. I made a dare with him – if he was there, he should come out and show his face.” She glanced down at the newspaper then back at Duch. “I was high on them bennies, like you said, they turn me into a monster.” Tears dropped out of the corners of her eyes, bounced in bright sparkles down her cheeks. “I brought this on her, Duch. I dared the Devil – but he got her instead.”

  “Oh, my darling,” Duch took the sobbing Lil into her arms. She closed her eyes, feeling tears of her own prickling behind her lids. She knew it now. The time had finally come to say goodbye to her beautiful golden girl.

  – . –

  It seemed like Cummins had been talking for hours, etching out a fictitious account of his activities between Sunday night and the early hours of Friday morning. Sheeney was dutifully taking it all down.

  “I’ve never been to a flat near Tottenham Court Road,” he was saying. “I don’t know Gosfield Street at all. Had I ever been there, I’m sure I would have remembered it. And I’ve never been with any woman in any flat in Sussex Gardens. I mean, I know the place, but …”

  He frowned, patting at his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

  “Oh,” said Greenaway, “how remiss of me. You want a smoke, don’t you?”

  Cummins put back what Greenaway could see was a packet of Craven A.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “Getting pretty low on stocks in here.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way around that,” said Greenaway, offering his case. Cummins made his selection with his left hand, smiled as the detective lit him up.

  “What was I saying?” He scratched his head, loosening an unruly lock from his carefully combed tonsure.

  “You don’t have to make a statement,” Greenaway stared hard into the airman’s eyes. “Anything you say may be taken down and submitted in evidence against you.”

  Cummins’s pupils dilated by minuscule amounts as he waved the left hand that held the cigarette. “But I want to give an account of all my movements,” he said. “I do know Wardour Street, I went to a flat somewhere around there with a blonde woman on Monday night, I already said as much. But I’ve never been in any other flat in the area with any ot
her women.”

  Not entirely fictitious then, Greenaway realised. Cummins had also mentioned his friend Felix Simpson accompanying him on his rounds of Piccadilly and the blonde woman they met on Monday would be Lil’s friend from the hairdresser’s. Cummins was weaving fact with fiction, so as better to convince himself of the tale he was spinning. Perhaps the reason he remained so calm was that while he was talking, he actually believed it was the truth.

  Greenaway went back into his murder bag. He took out the silver cigarette case and the wristwatch with the Elastoplast stuck to it.

  “That cigarette case isn’t mine,” said Cummins immediately.

  “And the watch?” Greenaway saw Herbert Coles in his mind’s eye again.

  “That isn’t mine either,” Cummins protested. “But both of those things were taken from the case of the gas mask that I had with me at West End Central Police Station.” He was starting to look bored with the conversation now and Greenaway could see just how easily his phoney charm could curdle. “The one that wasn’t mine. You said you’d found the other fellow,” Cummins went on. “It’s him you want to ask about those.”

  Greenaway looked down under the table that separated them. When he looked up, it was his turn to smile at the man who sat across from him.

  “Those your RAF-issue boots?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Cummins, “naturally.”

  “Would you mind taking them off, please?”

  Cummins rolled his eyes, stubbed his cigarette out in a final petulant gesture. Then he did as he was told, removing his boots and sliding them across the table.

  “Thank you,” said Greenaway, lifting them upside down and showing the soles to Sheeney. “What d’you reckon?” he asked his colleague.

  “They look brand new,” said Sheeney.

  “Don’t they just?” Greenaway agreed, returning to his murder bag for one last item.