The London Blitz Murders

by Max Allan Collins

She shook her head in admiration. “What you do, Ted, requires incredible patience.”

  “It does at that. Real policework is careful plodding, questioning, screening, sifting. Before tonight, our Ripper hadn’t left us many clues.”

  “But now he has?”

  “He may have. Sir Bernard will tell us. You’ll note at once that the fiend’s madness, his… blood lust, if you’ll forgive the melodrama….”

  She smiled gently. “Melodrama is my business, Ted.”

  He returned the smile, though his seemed weary. “Well, he’s accelerating in viciousness.”

  “As did the original Ripper. Perhaps our man is a kind of ‘copycat,’ too.”

  “I think he well may be. But these mutilations reveal a loss of control, not the execution of some master plan. You’ll see a small armory of makeshift weapons, in there—each potentially a carrier of fingerprints and other clues.”

  When finally Sir Bernard allowed her to enter, he stayed in the doorway, watching her. Because the photographers had not yet arrived, the pathologist had not collected any of the evidence, merely made his observations.

  The late Margaret Lowe lay stiff and naked on the cheap cotton-covered divan, which was heavily, darkly stained with blood. Despite her condition, it was clear she had been a striking woman with a fine figure, very much the beauty her teenaged daughter would one day be.

  Agatha prayed the daughter’s fate would be kinder.

  The victim’s eyes were open wide and pink with burst blood vessels, her mouth open in a silent scream; around her neck a much-darned nylon stocking had been tightly knotted.

  Thirty seconds to die, Agatha thought. She was screaming when she went… breathing out, then.

  The mutilations were as promised—a shocking escalation of the previous murder: razor slashes on the breasts and stomach, and the lower part of her body stabbed and slashed, again and again. As a terrible final gesture, a candle had been employed in an obscene fashion.

  She turned away with a shudder. Eyes lowered, she saw the “small armory” on the rug: a bread knife, a carving knife, a razor blade, a fireplace poker… all bloodstained.

  A hand touched her arm and she started.

  “I’m sorry, Agatha,” Sir Bernard said. “I thought…”

  “I’m not feeling sick… just sick at heart.”

  “I know. The objectivity of your medical training must come to bear.”

  “Is this the world, Bernard? Is this the world we live in now?”

  “Only a part of it, Agatha.”

  “Evil… so evil.”

  Watching as she went, so as not to disturb any evidence, she moved away from both Sir Bernard and the bed, pausing in the small sitting area by the fireplace. Her eyes went to the mantelpiece, where stood a cheap chrome-plated candlestick.

  She moved closer, raising a finger like a child wondering if a burner should be touched. “Bernard… this is where he got the candle….”

  “Very probably.”

  “You can see the fingerprints!” She wheeled, excited. “You can see all kinds of fingerprints.”

  Sir Bernard, whose focus had been on the corpse and the area surrounding, came to have a close look. “Cherrill will have a fine time with this,” he said, smiling tightly as he leaned in, keen-eyed.

  Then the pathologist frowned.

  “What is it, Bernard?”

  “These are fingerprints from a right hand….”

  She took a closer look, herself. He was correct. But then she smiled. “Yes, but when a left-handed person removes a candle from a candlestick, he holds the candlestick with his right hand…”

  Sir Bernard’s eyes sparked. “And grasps the candle in his left!… Very nice, Agatha. Very nice indeed.”

  A voice behind them said, “Excuse me—Sir Bernard, I’m not sure what we should do about this….”

  “About what, Inspector?”

  Inspector Greeno looked almost as pale as the corpse. “I just got word from a motorcyle dispatch rider.” He held up the message in his hand. “We have another one….”

  One of Inspector Greeno’s detectives, arriving with the police photographer, took charge at the Margaret Lowe crime scene. Superintendent Fred Cherrill himself had been called to take over, and to collect the fingerprints.

  Sir Bernard, with Agatha and her terrier in tow, followed Inspector Greeno to Sussex Gardens, Paddington—in the same Edgware Road district as Montague Place, where the Hamilton woman had been killed. With the inspector in the lead, Sir Bernard could not careen wildly through the blacked-out streets of West London, for which Agatha was grateful (James, too).

  The ground floor flat consisted of two rooms—a kitchen and a bedroom. Unlike Margaret Lowe’s spartan quarters, these were fully furnished digs, with modern kitchen appliances and the bedroom well and comfortably furnished, judging by the glimpse Agatha received before Sir Bernard closed himself off in there with the corpse of Doris Jouannet.

  The flat, while nice enough and palatial in comparison to their last stop, did not speak well of its late tenant’s housekeeping habits. On the kitchen table were dirty dishes, and in the nearby sink another stack of the same. A layer of dust that would have petrified Hercule Poirot provided an unpleasant patina throughout.

  The inspector and Agatha were seated at this squalid kitchen table with the devastated husband of the murdered woman, who had been a willowy blonde of thirty-two.

  Henri Jouannet was seventy-four. Slender, with light blue eyes setting off a narrow face that had been handsome some decades ago, he wore a neat dark gray suit and a lighter gray tie, and was a well-groomed old gentleman, but for the occasional stray hairs growing out of his ears and nose.

  The constable who’d met them outside told the inspector that Doris Jouannet was known in the neighborhood to be a “good-time girl,” a part-time prostitute who seemed to have been in the game for thrills as much as extra money.

  Her husband appeared unaware of this. He had taken British citizenship ten years ago. Presently he was night manager at the Royal Court Hotel in Sloane Square, Chelsea. This explained his spiffy dress, in the midst of this squalor, Agatha knew: the Royal Court was a reasonably fashionable hotel.

  The old fellow sat at the table, slumped and in shock, but responding to the inspector’s questions. Talking helped keep his wife alive, for just a little while longer.

  “I sleep here,” the hotelier said in his musical French accent, “only on my night off—t’night, T’ursday. Other night, I sleep at the Royal Court, you know.”

  The inspector asked, “When did you see your wife last?”

  “Yesterday. We eat together, every night. Last night, she cook the meal, we eat at this table. Then she accompany me to the station, Paddington Station. She say to me, ‘Good night, Henri,’ very sweet. Her last words to me were, ‘Don’t be late tomorrow, my darling.’ ”

  He covered his face and wept quietly. Agatha offered Mr. Jouannet a handkerchief from her purse, and he accepted gratefully.

  “Merci.” He shook his head. “Who could do such a terrible t’ing?”

  The inspector did not reply, instead saying, “I know you’ve been over this, sir, but please tell me what happened this evening. From the beginning, if you would.”

  Mr. Jouannet nodded, swallowing, drying his eyes with the hanky. “I return to the flat not long ago… hour ago, maybe. I am surprised to see the milk bottle, it was not taken in. I go in to the flat and I shout out, ‘Doris!’ But there is no reply. And the supper things from last night, they are still on the table. This is not like my wife. She is a good wife, you know, good housekeeper.”

  Agatha could hardly agree—the layer of dust in this apartment had taken longer than overnight to accumulate. But she of course said nothing; the old man’s high opinion of his late wife’s housekeeping abilities seemed the least of his illusions about her.

  “I was worry, and see the bedroom, it is locked, and now I know something, something is… what is the word? Amiss. Some
thing is very amiss! I could get no reply, for my knocking and my shouting, so I go to the building manager, and we send for the police.”

  “Neither you nor the manager had a key to the bedroom.”

  “No! Well, I have a key, I tried the key, but it did not work. For some reason, unknown to me, my Doris, she put a new lock on the bedroom door.”

  He wept again, but talked through it, describing the arrival of a pair of constables, one of whom had broken down the door while the other held the husband back.

  “The bobby, he come out, and he look pale, like the bottle of milk. He say, ‘Sir, don’t go in, sir,’ and then he tell me… my wife. She is dead.”

  He sat forward now, leaning on both elbows, covering his face with his hands and Agatha’s handkerchief. She rose and stood next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing from time to time.

  Finally, Inspector Greeno said, “Mr. Jouannet—do you have any reason to think there would be another man in your flat last night?”

  “No! None at all. We have been happy, these six years. Some, they say the age difference, it would be… difficult. But no. We are in love.”

  “I see.” Inspector Greeno shifted in his chair. “I’m going to request that you return to your quarters at the hotel, sir. We’ll need to do some work here, and you really need to sleep elsewhere, tonight.”

  “I don’t want to leave her!”

  Agatha said, softly, “Mr. Jouannet… your wife is not here. She’s with God now. You must get some rest.”

  He swallowed and looked up at her. “You are very kind. I will have your handkerchief laundered and return.”

  “Please, no.” She patted his shoulder. “The inspector can arrange to have you driven back to your hotel.”

  And that was done for the old fellow.

  Then Agatha and Inspector Greeno were seated at the filthy kitchen table, alone but for a pair of uniformed men milling out on the landing.

  “As if this weren’t horror enough,” Agatha said, “that poor man will soon learn from the tabloids that his wife had a secret life.”

  The inspector sighed. “They were both working the night shift, all right. Damned shame.”

  Sir Bernard appeared in the bedroom doorway, his hands in the rubber gloves, his expression typically grave. He made a small motion to Inspector Greeno, who rose and went to him. Though the invitation may not have included her, Agatha rose as well and fell in alongside the inspector.

  Sir Bernard shook his head. “We have a madman on parade, here, no question. But looking at the wounds… and judging by the wounds I examined at the Lowe flat… he’s definitely a left-handed madman.”

  The inspector nodded. “When was she killed, do you think?”

  “The body’s still warm.”

  Agatha said, “The Lowe woman was last night’s victim. Mrs. Jouannet is tonight’s.”

  “I think you’re right,” the inspector said. “He’s on a spree—one killing a night. But why in hell did he miss a night?”

  “Perhaps,” Agatha said, “we should merely be grateful he hasn’t attempted to make that one up.”

  Sir Bernard said, “We should get Fred Cherrill over here to do the fingerprinting personally, when he’s finished at the other crime scene.”

  “Agreed,” the inspector said.

  “May I enter?” Agatha asked.

  Sir Bernard said, “Really, my dear, it’s just more of the same savagery….”

  “Though not so redundant,” Agatha said firmly, “as to discourage you from spending half an hour with her…. I have an idea I wish to pursue. It may prove helpful.”

  The two men exchanged glances, obviously curious what this helpful idea might be.

  So, once again, she was allowed to examine the crime scene, and—since, as before, the police photographer had not been around to do his job yet—she took special care neither to touch nor disturb anything.

  On a chair at the foot of the bed the woman’s clothes were heaped. On the dressing table lay a bloody safety razor blade—on the carpeted floor, an open, rifled handbag minus any money.

  Doris Jouannet had been a slim, fair-haired woman, reasonably attractive. She lay sprawled across the double bed, clad only in a flimsy light blue dressing gown, which apparently had been ripped open by the frenzied killer. The bedclothes were disarrayed, and perhaps this time a brief struggle had preceded the inevitable.

  Again, a knotted silk stocking was tightly knotted around the victim’s neck. From the expression on the dead woman’s face, Agatha felt this had been a fifteen-second death—one small, unintentional mercy. Though the killer had lacked a “small armory” this time, and had been confined to the use of a razor blade, the slashing to breasts, stomach and the sexual area were shockingly deep, and resembled the Lowe woman’s mutilations.

  Agatha spent little time studying the corpse, however; that was better left to Sir Bernard and his forensics expertise.

  But she felt sure Dr. Spilsbury’s focus had been again entirely on the body, and she brought her own feminine skills and instincts to bear as she looked around the dust-covered room that the late Mrs. Jouannet had bequeathed to the investigators.

  She had an idea that the bequest would be a generous one…

  … and she was correct.

  On the dressing table was a hand mirror, on which fingerprints could be detected by the naked eye. This, however, was not as interesting to Agatha as the cleaner, distinctly formed patches on the table’s dusty surface.

  Several objects had been removed from the table, obviously—possibly by the killer, who was, after all, a thief.

  She summoned the two men and pointed out her discovery.

  “That shape indicates, I would say,” Agatha mused, “a fountain pen. Or some other similarly shaped object. And this I would say is just big enough to be a pocket comb, minus some teeth. This, a wristwatch.”

  An edge of excitement in his controlled voice, Sir Bernard said, “We need photographs of these. And measurements.”

  The inspector was smiling, nodding. “The photographer will be here momentarily; I’ll do the measurements myself.” He turned to the mystery writer. “Agatha, your woman’s touch may make a real difference, here….”

  “It’s the lack of a woman’s touch,” she said, gesturing to the dusty dressing-table top, “that made the difference.”

  FEBRUARY 13, 1942

  FOUR MURDERS IN FIVE DAYS.

  All had been committed within two miles of Piccadilly Circus; but nighttime revelers did not abandon the West End.

  The United States military responded to the Ripper threat by expanding the number of their own police on the streets—snowdrops, the MPs were called, thanks to their distinctive white helmets, floating visibly above crowds in darkened Piccadilly.

  The tabloids were irresponsibly fueling the notion that the Ripper was an American soldier, and all over town mothers were telling their young daughters to beware of American soldiers, all of whom were rapists. In the meantime, the flowers of the night continued to bloom around the Americans and their superior pay. Some were neither streetwalkers nor call girls, rather factory workers and even precocious school girls, looking to milk an escort for all he could give and then slip away into the night.

  Not that all of the Americans were as naive as commonly thought: they dismissed British films as stodgy and boring; hated the beer; weren’t impressed by the dance halls; and missed being able to drive, even if on the wrong side of the street.

  They did, however, like the women—deemed them hospitable, and not as sophisticated as they’d been warned.

  There were those—Americans and Londoners alike—who considered the city in the blackout, particularly in winter, a thing of beauty, with a fresh tang in the air. Whatever the season, the Americans found London fragrant—a city with no central heating, burning cannel coal, that oily form of shale leaving its distinctive pungent odor behind. Even to locals, the city did smell surprisingly good—petrol fumes were larg
ely gone, with so few vehicles on the streets. (Horse-drawn wagons had increased, with their own attendant fragrance.)

  London in the moonlight could reveal the architectural wonders of classically constructed buildings; lovers—whether an engaged couple or a temporary alliance—might walk hand in hand along the moonlight-shimmering Thames or down a cozy side street to enjoy the blackout’s romantic calm… or was it a lull? A moon could light a bomber’s way, after all….

  The Blackout Ripper—the press continued to hammer that designation home—did not love the moonlight; he was shielded by darkness, killing in silence, targeting women of the street, though a respectable lady out alone, like Margaret Hamilton, might be mistaken for his chosen prey.

  If the good-time factory and school girls momentarily outnumbered the street-hardened prostitutes on the West End, it was because the latter understood they were the preferred victims, and were too scared to venture out, knowing that the streets they usually haunted were haunted by another predator who utterly out-classed them. He would strike again, the new Ripper, that seemed certain—the lust of killing had him in its malicious grip.

  Jack the Ripper murdered his eight or more victims over a period of well over a year.

  But even Jack the Ripper had never murdered four women in five days.

  EIGHT

  SURVIVORS

  THE WOMAN ACROSS THE DESK from Inspector Ted Greeno in his small temporary office at Tottenham Court Road Police Station sat with her shapely stained-tan legs crossed and her arms folded over her considerable bosom.

  Ten years ago, the features of her heart-shaped face would have rivaled any budding film actress; but now, at perhaps thirty-five, those features had hardened into a kind of mask, emphasized of course by her heavy makeup, from her phony beauty mark to the scarlet gash of her generous mouth; in the harsh light of the station house, the caked makeup was obvious and settled unflatteringly in pockmarked patches along her rouged cheeks. Her dark blue eyes were hooded and her light blonde hair was due not to a bottle but her own Nordic heritage, and for all her hardness, it was not difficult for Ted Greeno to understand why a mug might part with a few bob for her favors.