Five Dead Canaries

by Edward Marston

  Having made some notes during the account, Marmion closed his pad.

  ‘Six of them went into that room,’ he said, reflectively, ‘but only five remained there. Have you any idea why the sixth young lady left early?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hubbard, ruefully. ‘There’s only one explanation.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘You’re the detective – you should have worked it out by now. That girl ran out as if she was fleeing a ghost. It’s obvious, isn’t it? She knew there was going to be an explosion there,’ he claimed with a surge of anger. ‘There was a plot to bomb my outhouse and that bitch was part of it.’

  Joe Keedy was in luck. When he got to the hospital, Maureen Quinn was still there. Having been treated for shock, she’d been discharged but had felt too numbed by the experience to do anything more than sit in the waiting room and brood. The full implications of what had happened were terrifying. At a stroke, she’d lost five good friends at the factory. Their lives had been snuffed out like candles in a matter of seconds and, if she’d stayed a little longer at the pub, Maureen would now be lying beside them on a slab in the hospital morgue. It was a sobering thought. She was still wrestling with recriminations when Keedy joined her.

  ‘Miss Quinn?’ he asked, gently.

  She looked up. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Keedy from Scotland Yard and I’ve been called in to investigate the explosion at the Golden Goose.’ Maureen shrunk back as if in fear of arrest. ‘There’s no need for alarm. I just want to ask a few questions.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Well, yes – if you must.’

  ‘It’s such a help to us to have a survivor,’ he said, taking the seat beside her. ‘It means that we can identify the victims. The only one we know by name is a Mrs Florence Duncan.’ He smiled softly. ‘I believe you called her “Florrie” at work.’

  ‘Everyone did, Sergeant.’

  He flipped open his notebook. ‘Could I have her address, please?’

  Before long, he had the names and addresses of all five women and – because of the way that Maureen’s voice modulated each time – he had some idea of how she related to each one of them. Evidently, Agnes Collier was the biggest loss to her whereas Jean Harte seemed to be no more than an acquaintance. Having taken down Maureen’s own details, Keedy could see from his notes that she and Agnes lived fairly close to each other.

  ‘Next of kin will have to be informed,’ he said. ‘Who will that be in the case of Mrs Collier?’

  ‘Her mother – a Mrs Radcliffe – she looks after Agnes’s baby son.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘This will come as a terrible blow to her. Then there’s her husband, Terry, of course. He’s in France somewhere.’

  ‘What about you?’ he asked solicitously.

  She was defensive. ‘What about me?’

  ‘Do you live alone or is there someone to look after you?’

  ‘I live with my parents and my younger sister.’

  ‘So you’ll have plenty of support at home.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘With respect, Miss Quinn, you don’t look fine.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Sergeant,’ she said, keen to end the interrogation.

  ‘I’d be happy to give you a lift home,’ he offered.

  ‘No, no, you needn’t do that. It’s only a few stops on the train.’

  ‘Naturally, the factory will have to be informed that they’ve lost five of their employees. Could you tell me who to contact?’

  ‘Mr Kennett is the works manager. Speak to him – though he won’t come on duty until six tomorrow morning. But,’ she went on, thinking it through, ‘they’ll have his home telephone number at the factory. You could contact him this evening.’

  ‘That’s a good suggestion – thank you.’

  Anxious to leave, she rose to her feet. ‘I must be off now.’

  ‘Are you sure that you feel well enough?’

  ‘Yes, I’m much better.’

  ‘Then let me ask a last question,’ said Keedy. ‘I saved it until the end because it’s the most important one. Why did you leave in the middle of the party? Weren’t you enjoying it?’

  ‘I was enjoying it very much, Sergeant.’

  ‘So why did you walk out when you did?’

  ‘I had this upset stomach,’ she replied, putting a hand to her midriff. ‘It’s been troubling me all day. I hoped that it would wear off but it got steadily worse. There was a point during the party when I felt I was going to be sick. That’s why I had to leave. I simply had to get out of there.’ She pulled her coat around her shoulders. ‘Can I go now, please?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘please do. And thank you for your help. I’ll be in touch.’

  Her whole body tensed. ‘Why? I’ve told you all I can.’

  ‘There may be some small detail that slipped your mind.’

  ‘But there isn’t, Sergeant. I’ll swear it.’

  ‘Then I’ll let you go,’ he said, pleasantly, getting to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Having stayed at the hospital longer than she needed, Maureen now left it as if she had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Chewing on his pencil, Keedy watched her go. He felt profoundly sorry for her. Having dealt with survivors of explosions before, he knew how consumed with guilt they could become, blaming themselves for escaping from an accident that had claimed the lives of others. Not that the bomb at the Golden Goose was in any way accidental – it was deliberately designed to kill and wreck. Maureen Quinn had been extremely fortunate to leave the building when she did and she appeared to have had a good reason for doing so.

  Keedy wondered why he simply didn’t believe her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was just like old times. Ellen Marmion was seated in her kitchen, having a cup of tea with a member of the police force. However, it was not her husband on this occasion but her daughter who was nibbling a ginger biscuit beside her. Having established that Joe Keedy had been sent off to investigate a crime that evening, Alice had sighed resignedly in a way she’d seen her mother do a hundred times. Instead of going back to her flat, she went back home so that she could commiserate with Ellen about their absent partners. Having joined the Women Police Service on impulse, Alice was now having regrets. Her duties were strictly circumscribed and seemed to consist largely of taking orders from her superiors and carrying messages to and fro. Longing to be given some operational role, she was confined to clerical work. It made her look back on her time in the Women’s Emergency Corps with fondness. The work had been onerous but it had a wonderfully unpredictable range to it.

  ‘Did you find out where they were going?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘No,’ replied her daughter, ‘but it must have been a major incident or they would have sent someone less senior than Daddy.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let’s just say that Claude Chatfield is not your father’s greatest admirer. He takes pleasure in unloading awkward cases onto him. To give him credit, he does his job well but there’s a nasty streak in the superintendent.’

  ‘That’s because he knows, in his heart, that Daddy is a much better detective. At least, that’s what Joe believes. They call him “Chat”, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard your father call him a lot worse than that, Alice.’

  They shared a laugh and reached for another home-made biscuit. Ellen was delighted to see her daughter again. Since she’d moved into a flat of her own, Alice’s visits had become less and less frequent. With her son away in France and her husband on call at all hours, Ellen was well acquainted with loneliness. An unexpected evening with Alice was therefore a bonus. She bit into her biscuit.

  ‘Have you set a date yet?’

  ‘We’ve set it a number of times, Mummy, but we keep changing our minds.’

  ‘Why is that?’
>
  ‘Things sort of come up.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Alice with a weary smile. ‘One minute I find a reason to change the date; next minute it’s Joe’s turn. It’s a question of finding a time when both our families can be there. My stipulation is clear. I’m not getting married unless Paul is back home from France.’

  Ellen pulled a face. ‘Well, that’s in the lap of the gods.’

  ‘This war can’t go on forever.’

  ‘How many times have we both said that?’

  ‘Then, of course, there’s Joe’s family. They have commitments.’

  ‘You didn’t really take to them, did you?’

  ‘It wasn’t that,’ said Alice, remembering her visit to the Midlands. ‘I just never got to know them. When Joe told me that his father was an undertaker, I thought that he’d relax when he was off duty but he couldn’t, somehow. It was the same with Mrs Keedy – she chisels the names into the headstones so is very much part of the business. She and her husband are both grim.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll improve with a drink inside them.’

  Alice grinned. ‘No chance of that – they’re both teetotal.’

  ‘I can see why Joe didn’t stay in the family trade. He was born to enjoy life.’ She put her hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘I’m so glad that this has happened, I really am. Your father may be against it now but he’ll mellow in time. He loves Joe. He just doesn’t like the idea of having him as a son-in-law.’

  ‘Would he rather that we just lived together?’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’

  ‘I was only joking, Mummy.’

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake, don’t joke about it in front of your father. He’s very sensitive on that subject at the moment. Working with Joe always used to be a real joy for him. Now there are definite tensions between them.’

  When he finally got back to the Golden Goose, Keedy found Marmion deep in conversation with a uniformed inspector who kept nodding in agreement. The crowd had drifted away now and the area was cordoned off with ropes. Two constables were on duty to ensure that nobody tried to loot the pub or poke about in the rubble. One of them chased away a dog that tried to urinate over the inn sign that had been knocked off its iron bar by the force of the blast. The golden goose looked outraged at the sudden change in its fortunes. Marmion excused himself and came over to Keedy.

  ‘You were gone a long time, Joe,’ he observed.

  ‘I know,’ replied the other. ‘After I’d talked to Maureen Quinn, I went over to the factory. They gave me the number of Mr Kennett, the works manager, and let me phone him at his home. He was knocked sideways by the news, Harv. He knew who Florrie Duncan was. She must have been a real character to stand out from the thousands of other women employed there.’

  ‘Was this Maureen Quinn the sixth guest at the party?’

  ‘Yes, she was still at the hospital when I got there.’

  ‘How would you describe her?’

  ‘She’s a very pretty girl but – not surprisingly – stunned by what happened.’

  ‘What did you learn from her?’

  ‘Lots,’ said Keedy, taking out his notebook.

  After moving into the spill of light from a nearby lamp post, he translated his scrawl into a terse account. Marmion was relieved to hear that all five victims now had names. Since four of them lived in Hayes itself, he delegated the task of informing their next of kin to the local police, who’d locate the addresses far more easily. Thankful to learn the identities of the dead women, the uniformed inspector said that he would pass on the bad news in person to each of the respective families.

  ‘We’ll go to Agnes Collier’s address,’ said Marmion. ‘She lives some distance away.’

  ‘Her mother will be there, looking after her grandson. She’s a Mrs Radcliffe. I hope she’s got a husband or some good friends,’ said Keedy. ‘She’ll need someone to help her get through this.’

  ‘Yes, the birthday party has turned out to be a nightmare.’

  ‘What have you been doing, Harv?’

  ‘I spoke to the landlord, Leighton Hubbard. You only have to look at the pub to imagine how he must be feeling. The worst of it is that he thinks he’s somehow responsible for the deaths.’

  ‘That’s silly. It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘He did give us one valuable clue.’

  ‘Oh?’ Keedy’s interest quickened. ‘What was that?’

  ‘That outhouse was almost never used. He only rented it out two or three times a year. That narrows down the possibilities at once, Joe.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marmion. ‘It means that those five women were not just random victims. One or all of them were intended targets. The person who planted that bomb knew the time they’d be here and he could rely on them not being too inquisitive. When you go to a birthday party, the last thing you do is to search every nook and cranny for a bomb. They had no chance. They were sitting targets.’

  ‘Why should anyone want to kill five harmless women?’

  ‘The original intent was to kill six of them, remember.’

  ‘In that case, Maureen Quinn was very lucky to escape.’

  ‘According to the landlord, it wasn’t luck at all but design. He tried to persuade me that she was the bomber and knew exactly when to get out. It sounds like a fanciful theory to me.’

  ‘And to me, Harv,’ said Keedy, recalling his conversation with Maureen. ‘I don’t think she’s capable of anything like that. She seemed like a decent, honest, law-abiding young woman. There was no real spark in her. She was shy and unassertive.’ A memory nudged him. ‘On the other hand …’

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Marmion.

  ‘It’s always wise to double-check, I suppose.’ Keedy reached a decision. ‘When we’ve been to Agnes Collier’s house, perhaps we should go on to have another word with Maureen Quinn. I’d like to see what you make of her.’

  They couldn’t believe it. When Maureen got home and told her family the news, they found it impossible to accept. On the previous Sunday, Agnes Collier had come to the house for tea with her baby son. They’d all had a very enjoyable time. Yet they were now being told that they’d never see the woman alive again and that the child would have to grow up without a mother. Their sympathy went out to him. When Maureen told them about the other four women who’d died in the bomb blast, she had to force each name out and her voice trembled as she did so. Seated beside her on the sofa, Diane Quinn, her mother, kept a comforting arm around her shoulders and offered her a handkerchief whenever she lapsed into tears. Eamonn Quinn, her father, sat opposite in silence, his face blank, his mind in turmoil. Sitting cross-legged on the floor was fourteen-year-old Lily Quinn, not understanding the full import of what she’d been told but realising that something truly terrible had occurred and that her elder sister was at the heart of it.

  ‘Will they put your name in the papers, Maureen?’ she wondered.

  ‘Don’t ask such a stupid question,’ said her father, reproachfully.

  ‘Mrs Fenner’s name was in the Standard when she got knocked down by that car and all she did was to break a few ribs.’

  ‘Be quiet, Lily.’

  ‘But our Maureen is going to be famous.’

  ‘It’s not the kind of fame we want,’ said Diane, tightening her grip on her elder daughter. ‘Whenever she goes out, people will point at Maureen and say that she was the one who escaped from that dreadful explosion. Yes, and the tongues will wag about the rest of us as well. The whole family will suffer.’

  ‘I’m not worried about being stared at,’ said Maureen, solemnly. ‘I’m used to that. It’s the gossip that will hurt me. I’m bound to be blamed.’

  ‘No, you won’t, love. You didn’t plant that bomb.’

  ‘But I was the one who walked away without a scratch on me. Agnes’s mother will be the first to blame me. I know exactly what Mrs Radcliffe will say. “Why was it her and not my A
gnes? What’s so special about Maureen Quinn?” And the other parents will be the same. They’ll all hate me.’

  ‘Well, they’d better not say anything against you when I’m around,’ warned her father, bunching his fists, ‘or they’ll have me to answer to. It’s a miracle you got saved, Maureen, and I’m not having anyone criticising you as a result.’

  Quinn was a beefy man with deep-set eyes in a florid face and a rough beard. His wife was also carrying too much weight but she still had vestiges of the good looks inherited by her daughters. Hailing from London, Diane had a light Cockney accent whereas her husband had a whisper of an Irish brogue in his voice. Maureen and Lily had grown up talking more like their mother.

  A protracted silence fell on the room. It was eventually broken by Lily.

  ‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ decided her mother. ‘I’m keeping you at home.’

  ‘But everyone will want to ask me about Maureen.’

  ‘That’s exactly why you’re staying here. Word will have spread by tomorrow. I’m not having you pestered by questions at school. Apart from anything else, you might say something out of turn.’

  Lily flushed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ confirmed Quinn. ‘You’ll stay at home – and the same goes for your sister. The pair of you will keep out of the way for a while.’

  Maureen sat up. ‘But I think I ought to go to work, Daddy.’

  ‘Then you think wrong. Your place is here.’

  ‘I’m not going to hide.’

  ‘It’s the sensible thing to do,’ advised her mother. ‘You’ve had the most awful shock, Maureen. You can’t expect to shrug it off so soon.’

  ‘But they need me at the factory – Mr Kennett will want to hear the details.’