Through the tearoom window, he watched pedestrians fighting with umbrellas in the blustery wind and hurrying to get out of the rain. Faces that had been bright and cheerful yesterday were today stern, irritable and bent against the inclement weather. People scurried about hardly looking at one another or exchanging a word, he wondered if those living in sunnier climates were happier and friendlier.
The waitress and Fiona arrived at his table at the same time. “Your tea and sandwich sir,” the waitress said as she frowned at Fiona and looked pointedly at the vacant tables.
“May I join you?” Fiona asked smirking at the waitress when Darrington nodded to a chair opposite. The waitress moved off huffily. “She probably thinks I’m trying to pick you up,” said Fiona removing her wet, shiny red PVC coat and hanging it on the back of her chair, then dropping her red matching umbrella into a nearby stand.
Darrington raised his eyebrows, “That’s very flattering, Fiona. Would you like me to order you some tea or something to eat?” She settled for a cup of tea that he ordered from the sulky waitress. “I haven’t seen you in here before,” he said noticing her smudged eye makeup and guessing she had been crying.
“No, I usually have lunch with Matt but we’ve sort of fallen out.” She suddenly looked straight into his eyes. “Look, I can’t go on calling you Chief Inspector Darrington or Sir. I will in the office of course, but can I use your first name whatever that is,” she chuckled, “always assuming Chief Inspectors do have first names.”
Darrington smiled, “Well I certainly do; in fact I have four, Michael Alexander Xavier Charles, more commonly known as Max, which is what you may call me.”
Fiona’s eyes widened over her teacup, “Great names! How come you have so many? You should use Xavier it’s very stylish and unusual, perhaps that’s what I should call you.” She pulled a face when he shook his head, “Okay, Max it is.”
“So why have you and Matt fallen out?” She hesitated and he realised he was prying, a policeman’s habit. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be nosey Fiona, I just thought I might help but please don’t feel you have to tell me.”
“No, you’re right, I should get a second opinion.”
Having reared daughters of his own, Darrington recognised Fiona as the epitome of a 1960s girl. She embraced every facet of the latest fashion in haircuts, footwear, make-up and clothes and it would be easy to mistake her for a dumb blonde but she certainly wasn’t that. Fiona Derbyshire was very intelligent young woman. Why, he wondered, did she try to disguise the fact?
“No-one knows this Max but Matt and I have been having an affair.” She bit down on her lip. “He’s married, of course, with a family, but he was going to leave his wife because they’re dreadfully unhappy but now he says he can’t because one of the children is sick.” Her large eyes appealed to him, “I mean it’s nothing too serious only a grumbling appendix but there’s a waiting list to get her into hospital and he says he’ll have to stay until it’s over and he’s certain she’s okay.”
Darrington chewed his sandwich and tried to think of something tactful to say. “Are you quite sure he intends to leave his wife? It’s something men are inclined to say when they fall for someone young and attractive, like yourself, but often they have other motives.”
“You mean like trying to get me into bed?” she said rather loudly.
He looked around and realised, to his embarrassment other people, including the sulky waitress, were listening. “Better keep your voice down Fiona or the whole of Winchester will know of your affair.”
“Oh, let them know!” she declared defiantly. “While they’re talking about me they’re leaving someone else alone. That’s the trouble with people today Max, and if you don’t mind me saying so, the trouble with the older generations, they’re hypocrites. They are just not honest. They say things behind your back but not to your face. They sneer at what young people do openly but would they like us to know what they get up to behind the lace curtains, not a chance.” She giggled and looked around, “Not that I can imagine any of this lot getting up to much with or without lace curtains, can you?”
Their laughter attracted more disapproving glances, “Fiona you’re doing nothing for my reputation, but seriously how honest is it to have an affair when you’re a married man?”
“But he’s not happy and wasn’t happy long before I came on the scene,” she protested.
“That may be the case but he’s still being dishonest with one or both of you. Does he lie to his wife to spend time with you? And if he’s capable of that, is he being truthful with you?”
The full glossy lips pouted, “Are you married Max?”
Darrington nodded, “Yes, I am. I have four children, two that are married and have their own children. I’ve been married for a long time and I wouldn’t cheat on my wife even now.”
She smiled mischievously, “That’s a pity you know because you’re very attractive especially when you laugh. Do you have any unmarried sons?”
Max stood up, “Come along, time to go, the other customers can’t take much more of this and we’re going to be late getting back to work.”
Miss Bevis eyed them speculatively when they entered the bunker together but said nothing. Fiona disappeared into the ladies presumably to repair her makeup and Darrington unlocked his office and instinctively sensed someone had been in the room while he was out. Was it another example of the paranoia he had felt since starting the job? Were these feelings a result of his close brush with death or years of experience as a detective alerting him to intrigue?
A few minutes later Matt banged on the door and leaned his head into view in the window, “Can you open the door, sir?” he mouthed and when Darrington obliged he carried in a large blackboard and easel. “Is this okay, sir? It’s the largest one I could find and there are a couple of boxes of chalk, one all white and one in various colours as requested.”
“Thanks, Matt that’s fine.” Darrington always worked with a blackboard and found writing things down and highlighting the theoretical against the factual often disclosed some hitherto unseen pattern or glaringly obvious connection.
Matt seemed not to want to leave, “Is there anything else sir?”
“No thanks, not just now.” Matt remained standing by the door looking uneasy until Darrington glanced up. “Is there something you want Matt?”
The well-built young man whose muscle padded arms seemed in danger of bursting through his shirt sleeves stepped into the office and pushed the door shut. “It’s about Fi,” he said almost in a whisper, “she told me you had lunch together today.”
Darrington hoped it wasn’t a jealous lover confrontation, knowing he was neither fit enough nor young enough to take on the musclebound young man. “We ate lunch at the same place Matt, there’s a difference.”
Matt smiled and Darrington thought, unlike most people, he looked uglier than when he was not smiling and wondered what the good looking Fiona saw in him. “Yes, I see what you mean but it’s what she said to you, she told me and, well I don’t think she should have. I mean it’s nothing to do with anyone else and if you were to say anything I might lose my job.”
“You’re absolutely right Matt, it’s nothing to do with anyone else. I think Fiona was a bit upset and just wanted someone to talk to. However, you needn’t worry, I’m certainly not going to get involved or do anything that might lose you your job.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Matt looking relieved. Before he turned to leave he put his feet together and for a moment Darrington thought he might salute. Was he also not what he appeared to be?
Chapter Thirteen
Right on cue, at the end of January 1941, the killer struck again. Darrington perused the file on Rona McLean a 17-year-old run away from Inverness. She had been in London only a few weeks and was working as a dancer in the Golden Garden, a Soho nightclub and sharing a small flat with three other girls also working there. Her body was found in the flat and this time the case was more interesting as
the killer had been seen. Darrington ploughed through the statements made by the girls who lived in the flat and the police reports written at the time.
Again the murder had taken place during an air-raid that, all the statements taken at the time indicated, was particularly heavy and although the manager of the Golden Garden had ordered the dancers to continue the show, when the ceilings began to crack and shed plaster across the stage they fled to the nearest air-raid shelter wearing only coats over their scanty costumes.
The appearance of the overly made-up and underdressed showgirls may have heartened the male occupants of the shelter but drew angry objections from the wives and mothers, adamant their children and menfolk should not be exposed to such wickedness. The ensuing fight started when one of the dancers, an Irish girl named Nancy Carey, having had a few drinks, was persuaded to dance for a group of men, one of whom played an accordion.
Studying the conflicting accounts of how the trouble began, Darrington smiled to himself. In his many years as a policeman, he had found there to be an element of humour in most investigations, even the extremely serious ones. According to whose statement was to be believed, the dancers, the outraged women or the railway staff who had tried to intervene, when the fighting died down, the dancers decided to leave of their own accord or were bodily ejected into the dangerous streets on a freezing cold night by a dozen or so angry females.
Rona McLean became separated from the others and took some time to find her way home, a fact not surprising given the precarious nature of her journey during an air-raid. Another of the girls, Norma Hammond, was already in the flat and her statement confirmed she was in the bedroom she and Rona shared but didn’t come out when she heard the younger girl arrive and Rona remained in the living room.
Darrington thought it curious that two women alone, in such frightening circumstances, remained in separate rooms. He made a note with a question mark on his blackboard.
According to Norma Hammond’s statement, when the raid ended the building was without power and putting her coat over her stage outfit, she went to borrow a candle from the ground floor tenants leaving Rona alone in the flat. The people downstairs had just returned from the air-raid shelter and took a while to find the candles so perhaps fifteen minutes elapsed before Norma, shielding the flickering light with her hand, made her way back up the unlit staircase. She was about half-way up when a man running down the stairs collided with her and the candle went out. She was not surprised to meet someone coming down as there were two floors above and several flats, but she didn’t recognise the man or get a good look at him. This part of the statement was underlined in red ink with a question mark beside it.
Going back into the flat Norma had stumbled around in the darkness, falling over an upturned chair as she looked for matches and when she relit the candle, her screams brought tenants running from all over the house. They found her standing rigidly in the flickering candlelight beside the body of Rona McLean, who lay on the sofa her throat cut and her face smashed almost beyond recognition.
Darrington found it disconcerting reading statements taken from people he hadn’t interviewed personally, so much of his successful work was based on intuition, what he felt about a person, the sound of their voice and their body language. Right now, he had Norma Hammond down as a liar or at least hiding something but that was from reading a statement taken more than a quarter of a century ago, not looking into her eyes.
The police report detailed the mêlée in the underground shelter and confirmed that Rona McLean had gone home alone and remained in the living room of the flat while her room-mate was in the bedroom but failed to ask questions or draw any conclusions as to why. Darrington read on occasionally glancing up at the blackboard until suddenly he guessed why — Norma Hammond was not alone in the bedroom and being aware of it Rona stayed out of the way.
The police report documented Norma’s encounter with the man she had not seen well enough to describe and, as in her own statement, this part was also underlined in red. There was a vivid description of the horrific injuries sustained by the victim as she lay on the sofa on a blood-soaked pillow and blanket wearing her dancer’s outfit.
A Sergeant Desmond Coombes signed the police report and Darrington wondered if he had been responsible for the red underlining and why. He made another note on his blackboard.
The post-mortem report was brief, the victim died from shock and loss of blood caused by a single wound across the throat made by a sharp, thin-bladed knife possibly an open razor and sustained the injuries to her face immediately after death.
This was the fourth victim and fourth set of gruesome details Darrington had read with the detachment of an experienced police officer but two words at the end of the medical report caught his attention and filled him with an overwhelming sense of pity for the young girl, ‘virgo intacta’. He had supposed that, although several years younger, like Norma Hammond, Nancy Carey and the others, she would have been a tough and streetwise, good-time girl, but young Rona McLean was a virgin.
The other victims were all involved in something immoral, two of them were prostitutes and Paula James was married and having an affair. They had been murdered shortly after having sex suggesting they had been stalked or watched. Darrington had convinced himself the killer was on a moral crusade of some sort but Rona McLean definitely did not fit that particular mould.
Re-reading the statements, the profile of a lonely, young runaway emerged. In London for just a short time, she had already settled for working in a sleazy nightclub being ogled and leered at by the clientele. She was living in a squalid flat with three older girls and sharing a bedroom with Norma Hammond, whom Darrington felt certain was entertaining in that room on the night of the murder and possibly on many other nights since poor Rona felt it necessary to move her bedding to the sofa in the living room.
What happened on the night she died? Scared out of her wits in the nightclub from which she and the other dancers fled to the safety of the shelter, she was then set upon by an angry mob and turned out into the maelstrom of the air-raid to find her way home alone. Was she terrified and lost? Having reached the flat at last was she forced to listen to the moans and grunts of Norma Hammond’s lovemaking, curled up on the sofa wishing she were home in Inverness? Finally, alone in the darkness, she came face-to-face with a ruthless killer and her short life must have ended in abject terror. Whether she was too afraid to cry out or not given the chance, no-one would ever know.
Darrington closed the file. Why Rona McLean? Inconsistencies irritated him and from his desk he stared at his chalky handwriting checking off the similarities between the first three victims confirming several times that this particular girl did not fit.
Some fifteen minutes later still staring intently at the blackboard he suddenly spoke loudly, “He killed the wrong woman!” He stood up and moved closer to his notes. “He killed the wrong woman!” he repeated aloud. “In the darkness he killed the wrong woman! He was after Norma Hammond!” They were dressed the same, living in the same flat, dancing in the same club only one was good-time girl and one an innocent and in the darkness he killed the wrong one. The killings were not random, the killer stalked them waiting for an opportunity to mete out his moral retribution.
Hearing Darrington’s voice, Alice Bevis looked up but he was back at his desk busily rustling through papers. There had to be something else! What was the significance of the red underlining in the police report and Norma Hammond’s statement? The file was shabby and untidy and, in accordance with wartime regulations, many of the flimsy sheets were used on both sides the printing faint where typewriter ribbons were used over and over again. One by one he re-read and straightened the sheets eventually finding what he had originally missed, a small creased page torn from a notepad, the words on it were handwritten in red ink.
Norma Hammond stated — cannot identify the man on stairs. Questioned earlier on the night of the murder by P C Greener. Told him she saw the face of the m
an quite clearly? But now denies that, seems scared but will not budge. Possibly on game. Possibly shielding a client. Sergeant D. Coombes
Pleased with himself Darrington sat back in his chair. In 1940 Sergeant Coombes had judged Norma Hammond a liar, and some twenty-seven years later he, Max Darrington, had reached the same conclusion just by reading her statement. But why was she lying? It would take a lot to frighten a tough woman like her, but something had and in a very short space of time.
After a gentle tap on the door, the small face of Alice Bevis appeared, “It’s almost five-thirty Chief Inspector, and we usually close at this time. Of course, if you wish to work on we can make arrangements.” Her tone betrayed a note of how inconvenient this would be.
Darrington looked at his watch, “Good heavens so it is, thank you for letting me know Miss Bevis and sorry to keep you. I was engrossed, I’d quite forgotten the time but I won’t stay any longer, I shall be in trouble at home as it is. If you’ll just give me a minute to tidy up.”
She remained at the door watching as he cleared his desk and packed papers into his briefcase, “Things seem to going well, but you mustn’t overdo it. It’s a very old case and there’s no urgency.”
Why, Darrington wondered, did everything Alice Bevis said assume the mantle of threat or warning?
Closing the file on Rona McLean, he saw the small red star at the top right-hand corner.
Chapter Fourteen
As Max pulled into the driveway Sarah was waiting at the door, “Where’ve you been Max?” she asked anxiously, “I was expecting you a couple of hours ago.”
“Sorry darling, I should’ve phoned but they were closing the office and I didn’t want to delay them further. What’s the matter? Why have you got your coat on?”
“It’s Alexander. He collapsed and he’s in hospital. Your mother rang, she and Charles are with him and I promised you’d go as soon as you got home but you’re so late. I rang Winchester Police Station, but they didn’t know where you were.” Sarah watched his face for some reaction to the fact he was not where he should have been, but there was none.
The Lazarus Secrets Page 10