The Chelsea Murders

by Lionel Davidson

  By nature and training Warton was an unpleasant man; suspicious, close-grained, unfriendly. He was very senior in his job, which for a long time now had been striking him as a ridiculous one; it seemed high time he was out of it and into something more solid and administrative with set hours and respectable anonymity. There was something raffish and unsavoury in this skittering about, setting up headquarters and solving mysteries.

  However, he was better than competent at it, which was why he was here.

  When the first murder had occurred the newly appointed Crime Commissioner (C.C.) at the Yard had immediately sent for one of his commanders and said, ‘Get someone reliable on this right away, someone like Ted Warton. We can’t have a nonsense here.’

  There’d been too many nonsenses. There had been the nonsense involving Lord Lucan, and Lady Lucan. There had been the nonsense with Slipper of the Yard, returned from Brazil without his rightful captive, Biggs the train-robber. There had been the Cambridge rapist who had terrorized the university town for months until on his belated, almost accidental, capture he had been found to have a record from here to next week apart from having left prodigal evidence, including signed messages, in his trail.

  None of this was good for the police.

  ‘What’s Ted got on his plate?’ the C.C. had inquired.

  Warton had nothing. He had been cunningly clearing things off his plate in anticipation of translation to other sees.

  This was how he had bought the assignment.

  Two weeks before, an American called Alvin C. Schuster had been found wrapped round a lamp-post near his house in Bywater Street. There were two stab wounds in his chest and he had been dead for three hours.

  A neighbour exercising her dog had first noticed him at a few minutes to midnight. Other neighbours had been stepping in and out of their houses all evening without having noticed him, which had brought Warton out in his first evil distemper.

  Obviously, someone had put Schuster round that lamp-post – and shortly before the neighbour found him. This wasn’t an easy thing to do, unless Schuster had been dragged there from his house. This he had not been. The family dog never failed to bark when Schuster so much as approached the house. It hadn’t barked.

  But if he hadn’t reached the lamp-post via his house, how had he got there? Bywater Street was a cul-de-sac lined bumper-to-bumper with the cars of the residents. It could only be entered from the King’s Road; getting to the lamp-post, which was three-quarters of the way down it, would have caused considerable commotion even by sedan chair.

  Warton’s frazzled inquiries into any possible Intelligence angle – result negative – had brought him an early morning call, at home, from the C.C. He had been curtly told not to put funny buzzes about. The Americans leaked things, and people talked. The C.C. told him to remember the people he had in the district, and to treat the case as one of normal murder.

  Warton knew the people he had in the district – troublemakers of all kinds, judges, bankers, politicians. Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the leader of the Conservative Party, had her well-publicized abode in Flood Street, just a few hundred yards from Schuster’s lamp-post.

  He also knew normal murder. Long grubby experience taught that ninety-nine per cent of it was domestic in origin.

  However, it didn’t seem to be the origin in Schuster’s.

  So far as the most thorough investigation could show, Alvin C. had been having no side orders of sex; no arguments, either, or drink or drugs, or any other kinds of trouble. He had been a cheery horn-rimmed oil executive, sensitive to the anxieties of labour in industry, mindful of the role of management. He owed nobody any money. Nobody owed him any. He hadn’t sacked anybody much.

  Warton thought the most likely thing was that someone had got the wrong bloke.

  Unfortunately, this was worse than getting the right one. Your average bloke, reading his paper, could well understand how even the most violent and baffling of murders had a rational cause. A natural justice or reason would be found lurking beneath the surface of the thing. Wrong blokes were a different kettle of fish entirely. Anybody could turn out to be one of those. It led to anxiety and indignation, and often letters to legislators (many living in Chelsea).

  He had proceeded from the phone call to his Chelsea HQ (unpromisingly sited in Lucan Place) immediately into the next golden spot of the day. His deputy, Summers, had greeted him with the news that they had got another. Two streets away from Schuster, Jubilee Place, a daily had shown up with a bright good morning to find her employer starkers in the hall. Her employer had been Miss Jane Manningham-Worsley, aged 82. She had been throttled and raped.

  Warton went to the third floor flat and had a look at her.

  Everything was in ship-shape order (saving Miss Manningham-Worsley) except that the daily said the safety catch wasn’t on. She had never known it not to be on unless the old lady had admitted a friend. This meant that the old lady had had an aberration, or that she had known and admitted the friend who had raped and throttled her, or that the bastard had come in some other way.

  Nothing of value was missing; not the old lady’s money, not any of her jewellery. The only thing the daily couldn’t find was a jar of pickles she had brought the day before.

  Warton felt his subordinates looking at him so he lit a cigarette and went down to the car and hunched there, looking more of a wart-hog than ever.

  Yes. All as normal. All they wanted in this one was a chap with a zest for pickles and for ladies of 82.

  No sense anywhere. Not a glimmer of it.

  He had depressively told his wife so, as he’d wound the clock last night at Sanderstead.

  But long before the clock rang, his bedside phone did.

  Four in the morning.

  Summers’s voice was hushed at the other end.

  ‘Thought you’d want to know, sir. River police have a floater in our patch.’

  ‘Right.’

  He had lumbered up at once and out to the car in the dark.

  He’d stood hunched at the autopsy, simply nodding as the pathologist pointed silently to the bruised Adam’s apple.

  ‘Anything doing?’ he asked.

  The pathologist manipulated Germaine a bit.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Open her.’

  The first moment of true satisfaction in a couple of weeks had come when the midget foetal mess was cupped invitingly for his attention in the pathologist’s glove.

  ‘How old’s that?’

  ‘Ten weeks? I could tell you better tomorrow.’

  ‘Fine.’

  So it was. Sense at last! Two people had been involved in the making of that gloveful. Find the other, he’d found his lead.

  ‘He didn’t know what?’ he therefore demanded menacingly now of Summers. Summers had just returned from The Gold Key.

  ‘That she was pregnant, sir. I’d go bail on it.’

  ‘But having it off with her?’

  ‘Oh, not a doubt of that.’ Unlike his boss, the chief inspector was a tall and gaunt individual, a pipe-smoking bloodhound. ‘All I can say, is that he seemed surprised to me. Shocked. Taken aback,’ he amended.

  ‘Chaps having it off get taken aback when young women are put in the club?’

  ‘Days of the pill, sir.’

  ‘Which she was on, was she?’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Evidently not. What the hell are you on about, Summers?’

  ‘Well, sir.’ Summers tamped his pipe. ‘The thing with this girl – I’ve got a few lines out – she was a bit of an all-rounder. Both sexes, general fun and games.’

  ‘I can tell you one game, Summers,’ Warton said, inner eye constant on the only bit of sense these past two weeks, ‘and one sex that put her in the club. Know which one?’

  ‘My meaning there,’ Summers said mildly, ‘was that given her way of life, it wouldn’t have caused much alarm. I’d guess she’d had a spot of trouble before, sir, wouldn’t you?’


  Warton declined to speculate on other trouble.

  He sat hunched and brooding over his own.

  ‘This landlord. Weeper,’ he said. ‘Just as untroubled, is he?’

  ‘He’s over the top,’ Summers said briefly. ‘Petrified his wife will find out – result of this case. Dying in hospital. You’ll see it there, sir.’

  Warton grunted, examining the papers placed on his desk.

  ‘What’s this film crew over the river?’ he said.

  ‘Semi-amateur crew. We’ll have more later.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Mooney?’

  ‘Yes.’ Summers began scraping his pipe. ‘Slight cock-up there. Uniformed man on the door let her in before we got there. Some confusion about what she wanted.’

  ‘Bike. Jeans,’ Warton read out. ‘That’s a local reporter,’ he said, looking sharply up.

  Summers scraped away. ‘What I thought,’ he said.

  So he had, after Detective Mason had diffidently suggested it.

  ‘She’ll be a stringer. For one of the nationals.’ Warning bells had begun to clamour in Warton’s brain. ‘Before you got there …? What did she get, then?’

  ‘Well, the landlord was a bity hazy as to exactly –’

  ‘What was there to get? What have we got? What was she doing, this part-timer, when not at the bar or having her fun?’

  ‘A bit of modelling, nothing very –’

  ‘What – masseuse?’

  ‘No. Just the odd session posing for –’

  ‘A model? An artist’s model? A real Chelsea artist’s model?’

  A certain baying note in his voice, an experienced old note, brought the inspector’s startled face up from his pipe.

  ‘You could call it that,’ he admitted with quiet alarm.

  ‘Could call it? They bloody will, bet your bottom dollar. Did she get a photo? Were there any photos?’

  ‘Well, a few snapshots, but I don’t think –’

  There was a polite knock on the door. ‘Latest editions, sir.’

  With a wordless snarl Warton had them on his desk.

  The Evening News and the Standard had sizeable headlines: CHELSEA BARMAID MURDERED, and a photo of The Gold Key.

  The Globe had a much more sizeable headline: CHELSEA ART MODEL MUREDERED, also a photo of The Gold Key: also another one, a huge one, flagged Exclusive, of Germaine looking candidly up from a floor.

  Just a few short hours before, the superintendent had seen her looking up from a slab. He read through the big type of the intro, and the columns underneath, and on the back. Playing it up big.

  Twenty-five-year-old Germaine … feeling unwell … in the nude for life classes at Chelsea Art School … registered as a model with the Inner London Education Authority …

  He knew from a slight stiffening behind him exactly when Summers connected with that. A bit of posing, just the odd session, eh? Bloody newspapers had it, and the police didn’t. Should have had it: model, looking for work, Chelsea. Warton stored this in his festering brain bank and read on.

  They actually had a little picture of him, on page 2, looking like a tit in a trance as he had emerged from Miss Jane Manningham-Worsley’s to have a drag in the car while pondering the pickles in the earlier nightmare. Det. Ch. Supt. Edward Warton, in charge of the Chelsea Inquiries, read the caption, and an accompanying small box encapsulated the nature of the inquiries to date.

  Yes. All they weren’t using were phrases like ‘tight-lipped police officials were not indicating today whether …’

  There were certain phrases that catastrophes to others had taught him to watch out for. They weren’t using this one yet. They hadn’t got on to the pregnancy, either. They were sniffing at it. ‘Feeling unwell.’ Sniffing at it.

  There was a lot he had to say to Summers, and the moment he looked at Summers he knew that Summers was expecting it, but he didn’t say it yet. That was not his way.

  ‘They haven’t got the pregnancy yet, Summers,’ was all he said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I don’t want them to.’ Summoning huge reserves he said, ‘You could be right, Summers. He might not have anything to do with it. But somebody had. He’s not answering calls, is he?’

  ‘No, we’ve got someone there, sir.’

  Warton sat brooding. It was hours since he’d stumbled out in the dark. He had a longing for a nice stressless office; desk, central carpet, smell of floor polish. Problems to do with manning, budgets, the odd conference. Might bring in a few flowers from the garden at Sander stead. Decent neighbours there, insurance officials, bank officials. See them getting up in the middle of the night to examine the inside of a whore.

  His mouth was well furred, but he lit a cigarette and broodingly examined the box on page 2 again. It had the quality of a tombstone. He scented something about it. It might not have occurred to them yet; they worked fast and were mainly in the dark, too.

  ‘Summers, you and I know these murders have nothing in common, don’t we?’

  ‘Obvious, sir.’ Summers relaxed slightly.

  ‘Ng.’ Warton drew on his cigarette. ‘One of these bright bastards, give him a day or two, will start asking if we haven’t got a maniac here.’

  5

  ‘THINK we’ve got a maniac here, Chris?’

  ‘Maniac, h’m.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Maniac. Strong.’

  ‘Not bad, though, is it?’

  ‘Oh, not bad. No. Maniac’

  ‘Chelsea maniac,’ the editor said.

  ‘Chelsea maniac’

  They sampled it a bit, looking at each other.

  ‘I’m wondering if we’ve quite reached that point,’ Chris said.

  ‘Well, have they reached some other?’

  ‘Oh, no. Running about. Still, the elements are a bit mixed, aren’t they? American oil man. Eighty-two-year-old spinster. Barmaid.’

  ‘Model,’ the editor said.

  ‘Model,’ Chris allowed.

  ‘Was she in the pudding club, by the way?’

  ‘Probably. They aren’t saying.’

  ‘What’s the landlord say?’

  ‘He isn’t saying. You can’t get at him.’

  ‘What about friends?’

  ‘We’re trying friends. Mooney is.’

  ‘Yes. Good work from her. Bonus, I think.’

  ‘Thanks. She’ll be glad. What she’s really after,’ Chris said, ‘is a job.’

  ‘I know. Tricky, that. Hiring problems and so forth.’

  ‘Oh, sure … I mean, I get the story. It’s strong, though.’

  ‘I like it,’ the editor said, simply.

  ‘I like it, too.’

  ‘It’s a very good word. As a word.’

  ‘Oh, good word.’

  ‘With follow-through … Bed-sitters, student hostels, old-age homes.’

  ‘Judo, karate, manly arts.’

  ‘Double locks, peep-holes … I basically wanted you to be convinced there was stuff, Chris.’

  ‘Well, I am, jack,’ Chris said. ‘Womanly arts, too, come to that,’ he added. ‘Special evening classes. They get them going for the balls, don’t they?’

  ‘And that spray. What’s that spray stuff?’

  ‘Mace.’

  ‘That. Run on the stocks. Suppliers besieged … You know, it’s a little beauty when you think of it. Gun licences, dogs. Dogs good. What was that word a moment ago? Besieged. Chelsea besieged.’

  ‘Chelsea Under Siege.’

  ‘I’ll think of it. Good night shot. Policeman watching. Atmospheric. Damn it, it’s better than Cambridge! Well, it’s Chelsea, isn’t it? Double locks, peep-holes. And the Thatcher angle – never let us forget. Copper watching Thatcher. Anyone can get raped, can’t they? Jesus,’ he said, wistfully.

  ‘Yeah. I mean, it’s good, anyway,’ Chris said. ‘We’re working on this film crew. You know, filming while it actually happened. They seem to have a spade in charge.’

  ‘Really?’
>
  ‘Yeah, real one, all black. Johnston. Artie Johnston,’ he said, looking at a note. ‘Nominal producer. Some arty-farty thing. Using various gilded Chelsea layabouts. Opens up certain vistas.’

  ‘Yes. Who else have they got?’

  ‘Director a young kook, Steve – is it? – yes, Giffard, brilliant career at film school, great things expected. The whole thing is kooky. It’s a group. What I was thinking there – the Polanski case, gifted director, wife murdered, the Manson shower. You know. Also, the art director’s a lecturer at Chelsea Art School – could easily have known this girl.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Another weirdo. Frank – Doctor Frank Colbert-Greer. Art historian. Queer as a coot. He’s writing a book on something.’

  ‘Where’s this from – Mooney?’

  ‘Yeah. What I was thinking – they’re all young. Gifted. Evil, is what I was sort of straining away at. A kind of nest, or coven. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t go overboard, though. I mean, I get the angles – evil, covens, gifted young. On the other hand, it isn’t a maniac, is it?’ asked the editor seriously. ‘Get one of those on his rounds and you can’t print enough copies. Women going in fear. What’s the bastard up to? They seek him here, they seek him there. Panic stalks the streets. Closely followed by us.’

  ‘Well, I see that, but –’

  ‘Not for a moment that I’m pissing on covens. It’s simply a question of proportion. There ought to be some way of speeding this up. They aren’t getting tight-lipped yet, are they?’

  ‘Not yet. Not really. Only on whether she was in the club or not. Understandable.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t let’s be too understanding … Greer. I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘The father. Portraitist. Painted all the Bloomsbury group. Dr Frank’s the fruit of his late fornications.’

  ‘Got him, have we?’

  ‘We will. He’s out of sight at the moment.’

  ‘What do you mean, out of sight?’