‘Yes, I know it’s a big house but we don’t live here like lords and ladies. Everyone has to work on the farm, including me and Henry – that’s my husband. None of us is afraid to get dirt on our hands and mud on our boots. You’ll have to take us as you find us.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Vout,’ said Alice. ‘Having come all this way, it would have been dreadful to be sent straight back.’
‘My husband’s a hard man. You have to be sometimes.’
‘How long was Paul here?’
‘The first thing is that he didn’t use that name.’
‘What name did he use?’ asked Ellen, confused.
‘Colin Fryatt.’
‘Colin was a friend of his who died in action.’
‘That’s what he told us to call him.’
‘When did you know his real name?’
‘It was only when my husband searched his belongings.’ She looked upwards. ‘He had a room in the attic next to the servants. It was how we got to know his real name. We were shocked. Henry didn’t like being lied to and neither did I.’
‘It was very kind of your husband to send the money,’ said Alice, trying to strike a note of appeasement. ‘When exactly did Paul – or Colin – leave the farm?’
Binnie Vout sniffed. ‘It must be the best part of a month ago.’
They arrived at the morgue and were given the pathologist’s initial report. While Keedy went in to view the body, Marmion read the comments. The woman was in her thirties and had been in the water for two weeks or more. Her body was hideously bloated and distorted. The cause of death was given as asphyxiation. Her tongue was missing and there was evidence of sexual interference. There would be no chance of identifying her by her clothing. The victim had been tossed naked into the Thames.
When Keedy rejoined him, Marmion was filled with sympathy for the deceased and fury at her killer. His feelings were mirrored by the sergeant.
‘Her own family wouldn’t recognise her in that state,’ he said.
‘Was there anything at all to go on, Joe?’
‘No, I’m afraid not. There were no effects.’
‘What about rings on her fingers or tattoos on the body?’
‘There was nothing.’
‘The report mentions a final indignity,’ said Marmion, handing it to him. ‘It looks as if the killer had some fun with her.’
‘Was that before or after she was dead?’
‘To a monster like that, it probably didn’t make any difference. Donohoe goes into the water fully clothed while she doesn’t have a stitch on her. Apart from the obvious answer, what do you deduce from that?’
‘Donohoe was murdered in a hurry,’ suggested Keedy, ‘then tossed quickly into the river with his shoes off. The woman’s death was more leisurely so the suffering was more intense. The killer took his pleasure before dumping her in the Thames. That’s my guess, anyway – not that it helps us very much.’
‘We have the same killer for two very different people. What’s the connection between them?’
‘Lord knows! I’m just relieved that I’m not in the river police. I’d hate to have hauled someone like that aboard. It’s such a grotesque sight.’
‘If she’d been missing that long, someone must have reported it.’
‘I’ll check when we get back to the Yard.’
‘She can’t have been employed by Donohoe or her disappearance would already have been noted. And I don’t think she has any link with the Club Apollo because there are no women there.’
‘You’re forgetting Dulcie Haddon.’
‘I was thinking of the staff there – all men.’
‘That takes us on to the property company. Was she working in some way for Donohoe and Sprake? No,’ he went on, answering his own question, ‘or Sprake would have told us that she’d gone missing.’
‘Not if he’d been instrumental in her death.’
‘That would make Peebles the likely assassin.’
‘I wouldn’t find it difficult to believe in that, Joe.’
‘Neither would I,’ said Keedy. ‘There’s something about that man that’s just not right. I still fancy that there’s a link between him and Thomas Day.’
Jean-Louis Peebles had transformed his new office. Out went all the individual touches put there by his predecessor and in came some photographs of Peebles on a yacht and a painting of Edinburgh Castle. It was a much more masculine environment now and it gave him a sense of having been promoted. When the telephone rang, he picked it up with a lordly hand.
‘Peebles here …’
‘I need to see you,’ said a voice.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ replied Peebles, suddenly more subservient.
‘Did you tell that sergeant that you knew me?’
‘No, no, Mr Day, I denied it.’
‘Then you didn’t do it convincingly enough. He didn’t believe you.’
Entering Corley Hall had been like stepping back in time. The floors were paved with stone and the walls were half-timbered. Sloping ceilings showed that there’d been a degree of subsidence over the years. Right angles were in very short supply but cobwebs were plentiful in the dark corners. The air was musty. Binnie Vout took them into the kitchen, a large room at the rear of the house with an undulating paved floor. As they sat at the table, the visitors noticed a piece of wood under one of the legs to keep it level. Through the window they could see cattle grazing in the field beyond. Ellen and Alice were already crestfallen. The news that Paul had left as much as a month ago meant that the trail had gone decisively cold.
While she made a pot of tea, their hostess told them what had happened. Her manner was brisk rather than friendly.
‘Colin, as we knew him, came to us three months ago,’ she recalled. ‘He was looking for work and desperate enough to take almost anything. He hadn’t eaten for days. Henry had his doubts but we certainly needed help so he took Colin on.’
‘What sort of work did he do?’ asked Alice.
‘This is a dairy farm. That means a very early start. He’d be up at four in the morning to do his chores, then he’d take the dog with him and bring in the herd. When he’d got them into the standing pen, he wheeled the churns into place. They’re very heavy when they’re full so a pair of strong hands came in useful.’
‘Did he tell you about his time in the army?’
‘Yes, he was injured at the Somme, he said.’
‘He was covered in shrapnel wounds and blinded completely for a while.’
‘That bit was true then, was it?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Binnie went on to talk about the way that their new labourer had taken on a variety of jobs. They were surprised to hear that he took the churns to the station to be loaded on to the milk train. The idea of Paul handling a horse and cart seemed incongruous. Life on the farm involved hard physical labour but it also provided him with food, shelter and the feeling of doing something useful.
‘He liked it here,’ said Binnie, ‘and we grew to trust him.’
‘Did he talk about where he’d been before coming here?’ said Ellen.
‘Not to me, he didn’t.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘Henry’s not a talking man. He judges people by what they do, not what they say. And Colin did well for a while.’
She broke off to make the tea then set the teapot in the middle of the table before crossing to the Welsh dresser to get three cups and saucers. Opening a drawer, she took out three teaspoons. Milk and sugar were already standing on the table. Ellen and her daughter waited patiently, ready to let the conversation go at the pace set by the farmer’s wife. Conscious that Paul had left under a cloud, they didn’t want to say anything out of turn. While she was pouring the tea, Binnie took up the story.
‘Henry’s a good man,’ she said, defensively. ‘He was angry when it happened, that was understandable, but it preyed on his mind that Colin left with money owing to him. In the end, he felt he had to send it aft
er him.’
‘That’s how we come to be here, Mrs Vout,’ said Alice. ‘We’ve lost track of my brother completely. It’s the first time we had any idea where he was so we came here straight away.’
‘Well, I can’t say I was pleased to see you both but you can’t be to blame for what he did. The least we could show was a little hospitality.’
‘We’re very grateful.’
Ellen put milk and sugar into her tea and stirred it. She ventured a question.
‘We still don’t know why he was dismissed from here. Did he steal anything?’
‘He tried to,’ said Binnie. ‘He tried to steal the most precious thing we have. That’s why Henry grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him out. Don’t ask for details,’ she went on, voice hardening, ‘because I’m not going to talk about it. The truth is, Mrs Marmion, we’re sorry we ever met your son.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Claude Chatfield reacted to the latest development with commendable speed. He drafted in more detective constables and briefed them at a meeting attended by Marmion and Keedy. They admired his grasp of detail and the way he used diagrams to illustrate the points he was making. When he’d finished, he handed over to Marmion who began to deploy the new men accordingly. He reinforced a point that the superintendent had made: newspapers would give them a bumpy ride. They’d been criticised heavily in the press over one unsolved murder. A second one – related to the first – would only increase the severity of their reproaches. When the meeting broke up, Chatfield called the two of them over.
‘How many more bodies are we likely to find?’ he asked, ominously.
‘Let’s just worry about the two we have, sir,’ said Marmion. ‘At least we’ve made headway on the first investigation. Once we identify the second victim, we can look closely into her background.’
‘What if she doesn’t have a background?’ asked Keedy.
‘Everybody has a family and friends, Sergeant.’
‘Then why have none of them come forward to report her missing? Any family or group of friends would worry if someone vanished for a fortnight. If most people go missing for twenty-four hours, someone will contact the police, yet they didn’t do so here. When we checked the list of missing persons, nobody fitting the victim’s description was on it. That’s telling.’
‘And what does it tell you?’ asked Chatfield.
‘I believe she could be a displaced person, sir. War has created hundreds of thousands of them. We have so many Belgian refugees that they outnumber our own citizens in some districts. Then we have French, Dutch and other nationalities. If some of them had fled their country entirely on their own, who is to raise the alarm if they disappear?’
‘That’s a sound argument, Sergeant.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘We should contact foreign communities in London,’ said Marmion. ‘Nobody lives in isolation. Even those who came here on their own tend to make friends. Why didn’t this woman do so?’
‘It’s exasperating,’ said Chatfield. ‘We know far too much about one victim and nothing whatsoever about the other.’
‘We have one key detail,’ Marmion reminded him. ‘The same man killed them, so they have to be connected in some way.’
‘What about the obvious one?’
‘We thought of that, sir. From what we know of him, it’s very unlikely that Mr Donohoe had a mistress. He was a family man and, like you, a Roman Catholic. His wife is especially devout. If you’d met his secretary, Miss Kane,’ said Marmion, ‘you’d have realised that he was not exactly a ladies’ man. Those who are,’ he added, thinking of Thomas Day’s secretary, ‘tend to like pretty faces around them.’
‘I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject,’ said Chatfield, drolly. ‘Where do you and the sergeant propose to go next?’
‘We’ll have to split up and go over old ground, sir. One of the people we’ve already met, I suspect, knows who that woman in the morgue is and they have a good reason for keeping the information from us.’
‘Give me some names.’
‘Jean-Louis Peebles is the first that comes to mind. If the victim is indeed a French refugee, she might have turned to him for help.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind when I speak to him,’ said Keedy.
‘Thomas Day would be my second contender. To speak to him, I may well have to go to Birmingham once again. That will enable me to question Donohoe’s family as well. There’s a lot more I need to shake out of his son.’
‘Are you naming Adrian Donohoe as a suspect?’ said Chatfield.
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, sir.’
‘Who’s next?’
‘Jonathan Ulverton. He’s too good to be true.’
‘I’d never accuse him of being involved in two murders,’ said Keedy. ‘He’s Mr Pickwick to the life – honest, generous, a little eccentric and the soul of decency.’
‘But he’s not a fictional character, Sergeant. He’s real and real people are sometimes capable of the most alarming behaviour. Our prisons are full of them.’
‘Peebles, Day, Donohoe’s son and this fellow Ulverton,’ said Chatfield, counting them off. ‘Have we forgotten anyone?’
‘If there was a supplementary list,’ said Marmion, ‘I might put the manager of the Devonian Hotel on it. That has an important place in the story. When the sergeant has finished in Richmond, I’d like him to go and see Mr Armitage again.’
Keedy grinned. ‘He’ll like that.’
The ordeal had continued and the pattern was repeated hour after hour. Iris Goodliffe and Jennifer Jerrold walked side by side and kept their eyes peeled. Every so often, Jennifer would ask what her partner considered to be an inane question. Iris would give her a brusque answer and ensure silence for a while. There were few incidents to distract them. From Iris’s point of view, it was simply a question of walk, talk and suffer the endless boredom. Then her gloom finally lifted. Douglas Beckett stepped out of a side street to have a quick word with her. Iris was so thrilled that she hardly heard what he said. In less than a minute he was gone, hurrying to get back to his prescribed beat. Jennifer was stupefied.
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘That was my gentleman friend.’
The words tasted like the finest honey.
All they could do was to sit in the kitchen, drink their tea and listen to the problems of running a dairy farm. Binnie Vout refused to say anything more about Paul, leaving her visitors feeling that their journey had been in vain. Ellen was wishing they hadn’t come and Alice felt that they should first have written to the farmer instead of turning up unannounced. As it was, hours had been wasted on the enterprise. Draining her second cup, Binnie sat up.
‘We’ll need to get you back into Coventry,’ she said.
‘Is there a bus?’ asked Alice.
‘It only comes once in a blue moon and you’d have to walk half a mile to catch it. No, I said I’d get you back and I will. If you’d like to wait outside, I’ll get my younger son to harness the horse and take you in the trap.’
‘Thank you very much, Mrs Vout.’
‘We can’t leave you stranded.’
She took them out through the back door and led them around to the stables. They waited while she went off in search of their driver. Surrounded by noise and inhaling pungent country odours, they felt thoroughly out of place and wondered how Paul had adapted to life there. Accustomed to the populous streets of London, they felt they’d been marooned on an island. Everything was foreign to them. It was then that a figure came out of the barn and strolled towards them. She was a pretty, fair-haired girl of eighteen with the bloom of youth on her. When she first saw them, she managed a smile then she slowly seemed to work out who they might be. It brought her to a sudden halt. Alice was the first to realise that she was looking at the reason for Paul’s sudden ejection from the place. He had got too close to the girl. The most precious thing that the farmer and his wife had was their daughter.
She’d been caught with Paul Marmion.
The mood in Stepney remained uneasy. People went about their business as usual and the rubble had now been cleared from the houses destroyed in the bombing. Yet there was an underlying apprehension, especially among old people. While the gangs held sway, they were all potential targets. The Evil Spirits reinforced their control over the area by patrolling it in numbers. Clifford Burge saw evidence of their determination to remain in control. Spotting a member of the Warriors daring to walk on the same side of the street as them, a group of Spirits gave chase, hurling whatever missiles they could find and hitting the youth more than once. Though he managed to outrun them, he’d be going home with bruises to remind him of his folly. Burge saw a large stone that had been hurled with vicious force at the boy. Sooner or later, he feared, the gangs would start killing each other.
‘Come in, Sergeant Keedy.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It’s nice to see you once again.’
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Sprake.’
‘Dare I hope that you’ve brought us good news?’
‘Unfortunately, I haven’t, as it happens.’
When he called at the offices in Barnes, Keedy was given a cordial welcome. Norris Sprake was his usual mixture of charm and watchfulness. Assured at first that progress was being made, he was disturbed to hear of the second murder.
‘Are you certain that it’s linked to Gilbert’s death?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir, we’re absolutely certain.’
‘Who was the woman?’
‘I was hoping that you might be able to hazard a guess or two.’
‘If you’re suggesting that Gilbert was involved with this person,’ said Sprake, stoutly, ‘then you are on the wrong track. He was a man who honoured his marriage vows. In short, the killer was not a jealous husband who murdered his wife because of her liaisons with Gilbert Donohoe.’
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