The London Blitz Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  The brunette secretary/assistant, Janet Cummins, was highly cooperative, but had little to tell.

  “I dealt with Miss Ward at the audition,” she said, her blue eyes large and rather naive behind the lenses of the black-rimmed glasses, “and spoke to her in that regard, probably half a dozen times.”

  “But you’d never met her before?”

  “No.”

  “I understand it was your job to call her and inform her that she’d landed the understudy assignment.”

  “That’s right. Before we left the theater evening last, Miss Irene told me she’d decided on the Ward woman. I was to give her a call, next morning. This morning, that is.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. About ten o’clock. A police officer answered. I said I had news for Miss Ward, and the officer said Miss Ward was indisposed.”

  Nicely understated of the officer, Agatha thought.

  The inspector was asking, “Do you happen to know if your husband knew the Ward girl?”

  “Gordon? I don’t imagine so. He certainly said nothing to me about it.”

  The inspector flicked a look Agatha’s way, indicating he’d had the same thought she had: if the pilot did recognize the girl auditioning on stage, he’d be unlikely to say as much to his wife.

  Agatha filled the awkward silence with a question: “Janet, are you able to spend many evenings with your husband? What with him stationed here in London.”

  “Now and again, but lately, no. I’ve been so busy with the production, and the nights we haven’t worked all hours, I’ve been simply spent.”

  The inspector asked, “How about last evening? Were you and your husband together?”

  “No. We talked about it, but I was exhausted. The last days before opening night are punishing. We talked about going out tonight, too, but Gordie’s on fire duty.”

  “What does that consist of?”

  “Staying in his billet, keeping himself available, should he be needed.”

  Agatha saw the wheels turning in the inspector’s eyes—he could go out and talk to Cadet Cummins tonight.

  “Is there anything else, Inspector? I really should get back.”

  “No, you’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Cummins. Thank you.”

  When they were alone, the inspector asked, “What do you make of that, Agatha? Anything strike you strange about any of our interviewees?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t say, really. How odd, to be faced with my friends and colleagues as if they were suspects in one of my fictions.”

  “I’m not sure they are suspects. We have a spree killer here, a multiple murderer. What we’ve heard this afternoon might constitute the makings for suspicions were Nita Ward the only victim.”

  Agatha nodded. “On the other hand, Ted, everyone we spoke to most certainly read at least some of the press coverage of the first two murders… the same ‘Ripper’ rabble-rousing rubbish we referred to earlier.”

  “That’s true. But what strikes you as significant about that?”

  “Well… I hesitate to say.”

  “No, please!”

  “It will sound foolish…. It’s a notion straight out of my books.”

  “I like your books. Try me.”

  “I was just thinking… if one wanted to commit a murder, and have it go undetected… what better way than to hide it among a series of killings by a madman?”

  His eyes tightened and he began to nod, apparently taking her suggestion seriously, or at least pretending to. “The term the Americans use for that kind of thing is a ‘copycat’ killing.”

  “Really?” she said brightly.

  And Agatha wrote that down.

  In Agatha’s tiny living room, the inspector sat on a comfortable chair while Agatha took a straightbacked one, with Stephen Glanville sitting on the sofa, arms outstretched along the cushions on either side of him, his legs crossed. He was the picture of casualness.

  “With all due respect, Inspector,” Stephen said, with unhidden amusement, “this line of questioning indicates my good friend here has led you astray.”

  Agatha sat up. “Whatever do you mean!”

  Stephen chuckled. “She’s undoubtedly portrayed me as some overaged Casanova, constantly in pursuit of one romantic conquest after another.”

  Frowning, the inspector said, “She’s done nothing of the kind….”

  “Oh, I don’t mean to get your dander up, Inspector… or yours, for that matter, Agatha. But I am a married man, and I have had a few ill-advised affairs.”

  Agatha rose. “Why don’t I step into the library, while you and Inspector Greeno continue…”

  “Nonsense,” Stephen said, waving for her to sit back down, which she did. “I’m not going to embarrass anyone but myself… and I have a rather high embarrassment threshold, as you may have noticed.”

  “I simply asked,” the inspector said, “if you had known Nita Ward.”

  “And my point,” the handsome professor replied, “is that my occasional peccadilloes notwithstanding, I do not necessarily know every shop girl, chorine and streetwalker in the city of London…. No, I saw Miss Ward only once, when she auditioned yesterday. And barely took note of that.”

  “And yesterday evening—”

  “I was in my flat, reading up on the Eleventh Dynasty. Agatha, if you will take the time to read the Henanakhte Papers, I just know you’ll come around.”

  The inspector flashed a look at Agatha, who sighed and said, “Stephen is twisting my arm about writing a mystery set in ancient Egypt.”

  Brightly, Stephen said, “It’s a dreadful alibi, I know, Inspector. I was alone. The Windmill chorus line wasn’t available for a private function, last night, I’m afraid.”

  The Inspector tried to sit straight up, but the comfortable armchair worked against him. “Sir, this is a serious matter. I can’t say I appreciate the frivolity of your attitude.”

  Stephen’s smile faded. “I do apologize. I’ve had a long day, and—meaning no disrespect at all to the late Miss Ward—have been dealing with life and death matters relating to the war, and our young men who are so gravely at risk. That you would drag me into this, simply because of my ‘reputation,’ is the height of absurdity, and rather than be insulted about it, I decided to be amused.”

  The inspector, who’d also had a long day, rose and nodded. “Point taken…. Did you have an opportunity to inquire about Cadet Cummins?”

  Stephen rose. He withdrew a small folded piece of paper from his suitcoat’s inner pocket. “Here’s the address of Cummins’s billet, and the names of various superior officers. You might catch him tonight—he’s on fire picket.”

  “His wife said as much. I’ll do that.”

  Agatha had also risen. She stood between the two men, and placed a hand on their nearest arms, rather like a benign referee.

  “I believe I’ll allow you to make that call by yourself, Inspector,” she said. “I’ve had quite enough detecting for one day, I’m afraid.”

  “Understood, Mrs. Mallowan.”

  Suddenly playing host, Stephen said, “I’ll see Inspector Greeno to his car, my dear,” and took the man by the elbow and walked him to the door and outside.

  Poised in the doorway, she watched as—beyond the breast-high brick pillars bookending the wrought-iron gate—a quite serious Stephen Glanville conversed with Inspector Greeno, whose demeanor was equally somber, though this was a respectful exchange, not an argument.

  When the inspector had driven off in his Austin, Stephen returned to the porch.

  “Your behavior,” she said, “was quite despicable.”

  “I had nothing to guide me—I’ve never been a murder suspect before.”

  She could see in his face the wear and tear of his current life—the pressures of Whitehall, the complications of life away from his family—and knew how false the levity had been.

  Suddenly she knew what he’d been speaking to Greeno about: once again, doubtless, Stephen had been pleading
the case against Agatha’s involvement in this investigation.

  “You are worried about me, aren’t you?” she said, and touched his sleeve.

  A devilish half-smile flashed. “Careful—remember what a rogue I am with the ladies…. Shall we dine at the Lawn Flats restaurant, my dear? The off-the-rations special is baked cod and parsnip balls.”

  She winced. “Hitler’s secret weapon,” she said.

  But she got her coat and went with him.

  FEBRUARY 11, 1942

  AND SO, JOINING THE GLOOM-DRIVEN hazards of the blackout, among the other strains and inconveniences of wartime, came this new and yet all too familiar terror.

  The press, the tabloids in particular, seemed to take bloodthirsty relish in having so traditional and homegrown a menace to share with their readers; it was as if the yellow journalists were relieved to be able to interrupt the continuing chronicle of international woe—Singapore falling, Rommel’s Afrika Corps advancing again in the Western Desert—with good old-fashioned British blood lust.

  Any respectable women—forced to walk alone down pitch-dark snowy streets, making their way to the safety of air-raid shelters—moved quickly, looking about them in bird-like anxiety, terrified that a lurking murderer might spring from the silence of a doorway or an alley’s mouth, to claim another victim. And was a shelter truly safe, when Monday’s victim had been discovered in one?

  And what of the not-so-respectable women of London?

  The first Jack the Ripper had terrorized the East End, notorious in its day for an abundance of ladies of the evening. The Blackout Ripper—as the tabloids had dubbed the unknown killer, who had instantly become a household name—sought his soiled-dove prey on the West End, which had become (in these war years particularly, and in the words of Superintendent Fabian of the Yard) “the Square Mile of Vice.”

  Even before the blackout, the limited visibility of which made conditions virtually identical to Jack’s fog-shrouded atrocities, these narrow streets and shadowy pavements—Soho, particularly—echoed with the eerie footsteps of London’s long, proud, wicked criminal history. Here you could enjoy anything and everything, for a price—drugs, games of chance, blue movies (in “secret” cinemas); you could buy a diamond ring for two hundred and fifty pounds (only it would prove to be diamothyst, worth one-thirtieth of the price). You could be dominated by a woman with a whip, or defile a “virgin” (Catholic school girl costumes were a must, in the wardrobes of the higher-paid call girls).

  By day and night, Piccadilly Circus was bustling, swarming with uniforms from many nations—Poles, Canadians, Free French, and of course the Americans, so many Americans. Sinful business was booming….

  So the women of the street, who were not seeking the relative safety of a shelter, put themselves at even greater risk than usual. Many stayed in, however, alone in their dingy flats—or confining their clientele to known and trusted “regulars”—too frightened to venture into their usual haunts. Unbeknownst to them, the ladies of the evening were joined by policewomen in plainclothes and too much makeup, under the watch of Yard men also in the disguise of ordinary clothing.

  This had been Detective Chief Inspector Ted Greeno’s doing, only one of a number of strategies he’d pursued, following the three murders. He was, after all, in charge of the biggest case of the war, the kind of murder case that could make a career.

  Or break it.

  SIX

  A QUIET MORNING

  AGATHA AWOKE WITH A START, slightly after seven a.m. Typically, she had been sleeping with her head under a pillow.

  This was a wartime habit for her, a precaution against flying broken glass, and to help dampen the shrill cry of air-raid sirens, which she ignored. Since the war had begun, during air raids, she and Max had always stayed in their bedroom, wherever they might be living, and did not follow the conventional wisdom of fleeing to the basement.

  The futility of shelters had been proven beyond doubt to Agatha when Sheffield Terrace had been bombed, one weekend, while she and Max were away in London. A bomb hit across the way, taking out three houses, and what had been blown up at their own home? The basement! The ground and first floors had gone largely undamaged (although her precious Steinway had never been quite the same).

  Even before that incident, she refused any suggestions that she ought to go to a shelter. Few things frightened Agatha Christie Mallowan, but the thought of being buried alive, of being trapped underground under dirt and rubble… well, she had decided to sleep only in her own bed, wherever she might be.

  And Max had honored her preference, staying right with her throughout the nastiest and noisiest of bombings. By now she was so used to air raids on London that she hardly woke up for them, sleeping through the worst of it in 1940. When a siren or bomb did manage to wake her, she’d merely roll over, muttering, “Oh, dear, there they are again!” and would pull the pillow over her head, tighter.

  What had woken her, this morning, was that nightmare again, that damned Gunman dream. She dreamed she was having lunch with Max in a large country house, surrounded by flower beds. Afterward, she and Max walked through the garden, vivid colors, wonderful fragrances, all around them, James on a leash at her side; and then she had glanced at Max and, suddenly, he was that blue-eyed Gunman, and rather than suffer any longer through the unpleasantness of it, she had forced herself awake. Right now!

  Next to her bed, as was also her wartime habit, was a chair on which she kept her two most precious possessions: her fur coat; and her rubber hot-water bottle. Gold and silver came and went; but in this war, rubber, now that was valuable.

  The fur coat and rubber hot-water bottle, she knew, would see her through all emergencies.

  Outside her window, the world was an overcast gray, the sky the color of gunmetal and her beloved cherry tree a skeletal figure silhouetted against the sky like a surrendering prisoner. She had intended to sleep in, but once awake, she was awake….

  She felt rather in a funk and did not care to dress straightaway, much less go down for breakfast in the little Lawn Road Flats restaurant. Even the most trivial passing conversation with a waitress or fellow resident of the Flats seemed quite more than she could bear to face. She was scheduled to work this evening at the hospital, in the pharmacy, and so the day stretched out endlessly before her. Slipping into the lovely powder-blue Jaeger dressing gown Max had given her as a farewell present, she padded downstairs.

  She did not bathe—she was restricting herself to twice a week, due to the water shortage—but allowed herself a sponge bath, using soap sparingly, as the ration was one tablet per person per month. (When she did bathe, she used only the allowed five inches of hot water; it was the least she could do, since King George VI was having his valet measure five inches thereof for the royal bath.) She put on no makeup, briefly frowning at the face of the old woman who glanced at her from the mirror.

  After poaching herself an egg and making toast and coffee, and barely touching any of it, she wandered into the library and sat herself down. She began to cry. She wept for perhaps five minutes. This had happened before, and she kept a handkerchief handy in a pocket of the robe.

  She was not sure why she was blue (“depressed” would have overstated it). Missing Max was a constant in her life, but on certain days, his absence hit her like a physical blow; she hurt from not having him here—she ached with the possibility of any harm coming to him. True, he was as safe as any military man might be, in his posting; but this was, nonetheless, war. People died.

  She might die. A bomb might strike the Flats and her pillow wouldn’t do a bit of good and she and Max would never see each other again. She cried a little more.

  James was curled beside the chair, but the terrier ran for cover when she dried her face, blew her nose, cleared her throat, rose with resolve, moved to her desk and began typing—the machine’s chatter always frightened the animal, though on the last air raid, the dog had slept soundly through it, much as he did through thunderstorms.
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br />   She typed a letter to Max, not telling him anything of her true-crime research project with Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Max would probably have approved of the effort, had he been around; he was always supportive, and as a man whose calling in life was digging for truth, he would not likely echo Stephen Glanville’s rather chauvinistic concerns regarding a mere woman undertaking an endeavor at all dangerous.

  But she did not want to burden Max with what she was up to, nor did she want to risk him reacting, well, like a normal husband… the distance between them, in these times already fraught with peril, might cause Max to revert to conventional male wisdom (if the latter two words weren’t a contradiction in terms).

  Agatha did admit to her absent husband that she was “sad this morning, and had cried a bit.” She thanked him for his letters, his many loving letters, and admitted to him that receiving such tender missives “after all these years we have been married makes me feel that I have not been a failure in life—that at least I have succeeded as a wife.”

  She paused, embarrassed. And then she said to herself: He is your husband. You need not hide from him.

  And she went on: “What a change now, from the unhappy, forlorn person you met in Baghdad so many years ago. You have done everything for me, my love.”

  She went on to tell him about the play, and how well rehearsals were going, and that she was dreading opening night, and yet there was something terribly brave of presenting a first night in Blitz-ravaged London. It seemed to her British in the best sense.

  When she’d finished the letter (three typewritten pages) and prepared it for mailing, she moved to her comfortable chair, taking a sheaf of papers with her.

  The galley proofs of her novel, The Body in the Library, had arrived yesterday from her publisher, William Collins & Sons. They had rebounded well, after their offices were bombed in December 1940, though the sorry state of their records had contributed to her current financial difficulties. The Collins book warehouse in Paternoster Row near St. Paul’s had been ravaged as well, and publishing remained dicey, what with paper allocations cut to a fraction of pre-war quantities.