Harry knocked. He put his ear to the panel and heard some bustling about and footsteps, then a gruff voice replied, quite close to the other side of the door, ‘I told you we were not to be disturbed.’
Needless to say, this did not allay their fears and, when Maggie called out to enquire if Mrs Henshaw was all right, they heard a few more groans cut off almost immediately and a distinct cry of pain.
Harry called out a warning before using his spare key to unlock the door.
The woman was shrieking now, ‘What have you done to him?’
The door opened two inches before it hit the wardrobe that had been dragged across it.
‘What are you doing?’ the same voice shrieked. ‘No. Don’t hang me… please.’
Those last words were choked as Harry began to force his way through. There was the sound of a slap, a yelp and then a low hoarse, ‘Come on or I’ll snap your pretty neck,’ more scuffling and then a strangled cough.
Harry got a hand in to turn the light on but that was all he could do. There was no response to his enquiries now. He squeezed his way through and found the lower sash window had been fully raised, the curtains drawn back. The walls were splattered with blood, the recently replaced carpet sticky with it.
Ian Henshaw lay naked on the bed, spread-eagled on his back by thin cords at the wrists and ankles to the brass bedstead, covered in bruises, weals and cuts. A gag had been forced into his mouth. It was later found to have been made from two rolled-up men’s stockings held in place by the blue tie Ian Henshaw had been wearing when he checked in. The tie was knotted round the back of the head. His hands were blackened by the tightness of the ligatures.
Of the woman there was no sign until Harry looked out of the window and saw two figures receding into the shadows of the small back garden. The taller figure appeared to be dragging that of the woman away.
It was then that a third figure appeared, Noble Jones, an ARP warden in a fury at the showing of a light and, by the time Harry Bright had managed to explain the situation and persuade the warden to turn his own torch on to search for them, the two figures had disappeared.
While Harry Bright shut the window, turned the light out and locked the door, Maggie Morgan-White rang the police.
Inspector Jack Clements at Braintree Police Station was the first officer at the scene but it was too big a case for the local force and it was not long before the chief constable of Essex, realising his men had no experience of such crimes, requested help from Scotland Yard.
Suffolk was the neighbouring county but, in police terms, it was a different world and forces were alarmingly reluctant to share information with each other. The kidnapping received national coverage in the press, though, and even the flotsam that washed up into sleepy Sackwater in the guise of policemen could not help but see the striking similarities with events at the Royal George Hotel.
Of especial interest was that the body of Ian Henshaw was identified by his wife. Mrs Henshaw had been at home all the time. It seemed her husband had borrowed her ID card for the night. The identity of the missing woman, therefore, remained a mystery.
The post-mortem report recorded many injuries, detailing lacerations, bruises and cigarette burns received while Ian Henshaw was still alive, but the pathologist was confident that the cause of death was the two deep puncture wounds he had noted about an inch and a half apart on the left side of the victim’s neck. In a footnote he remarked that these were similar to those in reports he had read of the Suffolk Vampire.
*
Jim returned. His tea had gone cold but he was not going to let a tot of alcohol go to waste.
‘Couple of squaddies found they were both saying goodbye to the same sweetheart,’ he grinned, ‘and, by the look of ’er, one of ’em will be a daddy before too long.’
‘Had a word with the guard on the twenty-five-past. ’E’ll take you in ’is van if you don’t mind sitting on the luggage.’
‘Thanks, Jim.’ I shuffled the papers awkwardly back into the envelope. ‘But I’ve had a change of plan.’
76
THE SOCKS AND THE PSALMS
Rail travel at night was no fun in wartime. Apart from the cold, the whole train was blacked out, the windows being painted over except for rectangular peepholes. That night the clouds only parted enough to give brief glimpses of a crescent moon glinting weakly on the iced landscape. All the station names had been removed and at every one voices could be heard demanding to know where we were. There was an air raid alert at Chelmsford, so we were shunted into a siding for an hour until the all-clear sounded – another false alarm, thank goodness.
I changed at Witham – another long wait in a draughty ladies’ waiting room; the canteen was closed and there was no fire in the grate – with two overly grand, sanctimonious women who berated me about how I should be knitting socks for sailors until I politely asked them to show me how I could. After that they went back to clicking their lethal-looking needles while tossing quotes from the psalms to each other as if it was a competitive sport. When the train finally steamed in, I went into a smoking compartment and choked quietly rather than listen to any more of that. I counted the three stops but still appreciated hearing a voice announce, ‘Braintree. This is Braintree,’ in direct contravention of government directions to confuse enemy spies who had probably studied their route more thoroughly than the average hapless traveller.
The few other passengers who disembarked with me soon disappeared into the night. I waylaid a porter hurrying back into his cosy office.
‘Where can I get a taxi?’
‘Witham.’ He wiped his nose on the back of his hand.
Witham was the best part of ten miles away and I had been through it to get where I was.
‘I need to get to the Dunworthy Hotel.’
He smirked. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Well, I didn’t fly from the train.’
‘Up the road, turn right, into town, head towards Bocking and through. ’Bout a mile or two.’
There’s a bit of a difference between a mile or two on a wintry night but, having no choice, I trudged off, head down against a cold wind that was driving iced air into my eyes. I soon began to wish I was in uniform. Though not especially stylish, the thick woollen skirt, blouse and coat were better protection against the elements than anything more fashionable.
The roads were quiet – petrol rationing had seen to that – but an army truck pulled up, green canvas flapping over an iron frame. The driver slid across to open his window.
‘Like a lift, darlin’?’ He was a cheery-looking man with more than the regulation number of chins and unlikely, I thought, to cause me any trouble.
‘Are you going past the Dunworthy Hotel?’
‘I am now.’ He winked.
I clambered into his cab, my coat and skirt rising halfway up my thighs and I could not really begrudge the man, a corporal, his appreciative glance before we set off, the light from his partly painted-over headlamps giving worryingly little view of the road ahead. He seemed to know his way, though – at least I hoped he did from the speed he got up through the narrow streets.
‘The Dunworthy? You must be desperate,’ he chatted as we quit the little market town of Braintree.
‘I have business there.’
Bocking was much as I imagined it, not so much sleepy as comatose.
He pulled up near a factory, a massive structure that seemed out of keeping with its semi-rural setting – Courtaulds, I realised, famous for its silk. It was probably making parachutes now. ‘’Ow about doin’ a little business with me first?’
‘I would love to.’ I reached into my handbag. ‘If it’s police business you’re after.’
‘Eh?’
I flipped open my lighter – the Brass Zippo Windproof that Adam had given me – and spun the wheel to light the wick, just long enough for him to see my warrant card.
‘It was an innocent question,’ he protested.
‘Tell that to your wife,’
I suggested.
‘What? I ain’t—’ But he stopped when I tapped the photograph he had wedged on the dashboard.
‘If that’s you with your mother,’ I said, ‘why are you being showered with confetti?’
He sniffed. ‘Most girls like a man in uniform.’
‘I work with men in uniform. The novelty soon wears off.’
The corporal sniffed again and restarted the engine and two minutes later we were there. I peered out to make sure the corporal wasn’t dumping me somewhere in revenge but the sign was just legible in the damped light from his lorry.
‘If you change your mind…’ he tried hopefully.
‘If I lose it, you mean.’ I opened the door and jumped down. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ I meant that last remark. The porter’s mile or two had been at least four and, as far as I could tell, we had gone directly there.
77
THE DUNWORTHY GHOUL
The Dunworthy Hotel was an anonymous-looking brick building, a square block dumped on the edge of the village for no reason that I could think of.
I went inside, slightly surprised to find the door unlocked. Good old Reginald Foort was pumping ‘Keep Smiling’ out of his good old organ on the wireless but that was as cheery as my greeting got. If the woman who emerged through a curtain behind the desk had done something with herself she might have passed as drab. Her greying fawn hair looked like the last time it had seen a brush it had fled in confusion.
‘Yes?’
I had had a better welcome from Gerry Froop, the forger, when I led a raid on his gaff.
‘Yes what?’ I challenged.
There was no need to ask if this was the same receptionist who had been there on the night of the murder. I had seen a photo and Maggie Morgan-White did not look like an unkempt squirrel.
‘What d’you want?’ What she lacked in looks was not quite made up for by her charm.
‘Do you do this for a living?’ I asked in genuine surprise.
‘Wouldn’t call it a livin’.’ She wafted the air as if I had fouled it.
‘I need a room for the night,’ I told her, wishing already that I didn’t. ‘Room 14 to be precise.’
The uncordial face of the Dunworthy Hotel slid into a sneer. ‘I fought you was one of them. Ghouls you are.’ She slammed the register shut. ‘We don’t need your sort.’
I wouldn’t have thought they could pick and choose but I had a problem. Without permission from the Essex Constabulary, I had no right to be sniffing around their patch.
‘I’m a journalist,’ I announced, ‘for The Times of London.’
The sneer got sneerier. ‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba.’
‘Then you have aged remarkably well over the last two thousand years.’ She hadn’t but I was brought up to be polite. I reached into my handbag. ‘This is my press card.’ I flashed my warrant card, thumb over the official stamp, just quick enough for her to see the photo.
‘Pluck me, so you are.’ She jerked her shoulders one at a time. ‘Now clear off.’
‘One of the reasons this establishment is doing so badly,’ I continued, ‘is that many people believe the murderer still works in the hotel or lives close by, but I have evidence that he lives in Cornwall. If I can prove it, people may not be so frightened of coming here.’
It must have been quite a gristly thought for the receptionist spent a long time masticating it. The idea of bribing her flashed through my mind but I only had just enough on me to pay for a room. I delved into my coat pocket.
‘Aniseed ball?’ I offered and she perked up immediately.
‘Oh, thank you very much.’ She snaffled the whole bag. There must have been at least eight sweets in there.
‘You don’t look like a—’
‘Ghoul,’ I chipped in helpfully.
She turned to the rack behind her, rattling her chewed fingers through it. ‘It’s room 15 now. We get a lot of—’
‘Ghouls,’ I offered again.
‘That’s the word,’ she said gratefully, ‘or the other sort what don’t like to sleep anywhere near it.’
Judging by the lack of empty hooks, people didn’t want to sleep in most of the other rooms either.
‘Do you have any other guests at the moment?’
‘Just two commercial travellers,’ she admitted.
‘I suppose the gas leak didn’t help.’ I slipped the key off the desk.
‘Only four of them died,’ she protested.
‘And how many guests did you have at the time?’
She scowled. ‘Three. A chambermaid came a cropper as well.’
‘How long have you worked here?’
‘I own it,’ she snarled. ‘Didn’t think I’d be back on the desk until all this happened.’
‘So you must be Mrs Villier Jameston.’
‘Seems I must,’ she conceded.
‘But you were away on the night in question.’
‘Isle of Wight.’
‘What happened to Maggie Morgan-White?’
‘You’ve done your homework,’ she conceded. ‘Maggie left.’
‘Where is she now?’ I reached for the register.
Mrs Villier Jameston inhaled through her nose like she was appreciating a damask rose. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’ She put up her hand like I would to stop a car. ‘You don’t have to worry about filling that in.’
‘Oh I shan’t worry,’ I assured her and picked up the pen. It was the law after all – plus I wanted to see who else had been there at the time. But this was a new book.
‘I suppose the police took the other register away.’
‘You suppose correctly.’ Mrs Villier Jameston dragged it off me.
‘Do you have a porter?’
‘No.’ The receptionist scrutinised my signature with a dedication that would have done credit to a forensic graphologist.
Some officers pride themselves on having a nose for a lie. This one floated into my nostrils and made itself at home there.
‘So who uses his office?
‘Nobody.’
‘Then I had better go and put the light out.’
‘Hang on. You can’t…’
But I already could. I strode through the yellow pool oozing from under the door at the bottom of the stairs, the one with a sign saying Porter, and turned the handle.
An elderly man was dozing in a chair with a folded newspaper on his lap that was almost as crumpled as him. He had a sparse whiskery moustache, as white as his meagre scattering of hair but with yellowed tips on the left, from smoking, I assumed.
‘Good evening, Mr Bright,’ I greeted him. Harry Bright was still easily recognisable from his picture in the Express. It was an old one taken when he had rescued a puppy from the sea. He had aged since then but who hasn’t unless they’ve been embalmed?
‘Oh, Harry, I thought you had gone to bed,’ Mrs Villier Jameston, suddenly at my shoulder, said as convincingly as my father expressing surprise with the socks my mother gave him without fail every birthday.
78
THE NIGHT-AND-DAY PORTER
For all his advanced years Harry Bright could still get quite a sprint on up the stairs, but my long legs had no difficulty in keeping up and I was not the one who was wheezing by the time we reached the top.
The corridor was long and dimly lit, the carpet through to the backing in places, the wallpaper so cheerlessly washed out that, if it had been a cup of tea, you would have sent it back.
I let him fumble on the chain for his master key. Not every hotel had them and I wanted to know if that part of the account was true.
‘Don’t like coming in here, Mrs,’ he told me.
‘Miss,’ I corrected him. ‘So do you ever?’
‘When I have to.’ He had a red jacket on, shiny at the elbows and it looked too big for him. Perhaps he had shrunk more than it had.
‘I believe you opened the door.’
‘With this.’ He put the key in. ‘The door hit the wardrobe but I managed to squeeze
in.’
‘That was brave of you.’ I stepped through the opening. ‘Not knowing what was going on in there.’
It had taken all my nerve to do the same.
‘Stupid more like.’ Harry followed warily like he thought the murderer might be lurking round the corner.
‘Brave,’ I insisted and looked about me. Room 14 was quite a good size, a similar layout to the one in the Royal George but larger. The hotel had probably been converted from the home of a wealthy Victorian family, the large number of rooms being required for their prodigious breeding habits, the multitude of servants required to pamper them and the obligation to be ostentatious. There is no point in being rich if the world cannot see you are. It would be like buying an expensive dress to lock in your wardrobe.
The double bed with its brass bedstead was straight ahead. There was a wide sash window at the back of the room to the left of it. The paper was brown-and-yellow striped, hanging away at the top corner. There was a sink on the right-hand wall and a single wardrobe on the wall to the left as we entered. It appeared that not only were the crimes here and at the Royal George similar, the rooms were too, but then – as I reminded myself – so were countless rooms in thousands of Britain’s dreary hostelries.
Harry Bright was curling and uncurling his fists at his sides. He blinked slowly, loath, I thought, to open his eyes but afraid to keep them closed.
‘Do you know where Maggie is now?’ I shut the door.
‘She left a day or two after. Couldn’t stand it – the memories and the newspaper reporters. Went back to her parents in Brighton, I think, but I never heard any more.’
‘Has anything been changed since that night?’
Harry Bright glanced about. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘So the bedding, carpet and wallpaper are all the same?’
‘Well, of course not.’
I never quite understood why, whenever I point out something stupid that people have said, they talk to me as if I’m the idiot.
‘What else then? And can you look around properly this time, please?’
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire Page 29