Having left the Armstrong-Siddeley on the street, Agatha—a most unmilitary figure in her fur coat, copy of the new Poirot tucked under one arm—approached the building, which loomed monolithically in the moonlight. She entered to find the lobby a functional area of the same yellow brick with a few patriotic posters on several bulletin boards—“Let’s Go! Wings for Victory,” “Tell Nobody—Not Even Her!” and (irony again, she thought) “Hitler Will Send No Warning—Always Carry Your Gas Mask.”
A pair of guards in RAF uniform played cards at a small table near the door; looking painfully young to her, they looked up at Agatha curiously. Standing, one asked, “Help you, ma’am?”
“Just visiting my nephew,” she said.
“At this hour, ma’am?”
“I only just got in to town by motor—terrible delays. He said he’d be up late. Am I breaking a rule? After visitors’ hours, is it?”
“We don’t stand on ceremony around here, least not on the weekend. What’s his name, ma’am?”
“Gordon Cummins.”
“Oh,” the guard said with a smile. “The Count!”
Oh dear, she thought.
“Pardon?” she said.
“Nothing, ma’am, just a sort of nickname the blokes call your nephew…. I’m not sure LAC Cummins is in, ma’am. Hardly anybody is, y’know. Friday night. It’s an empty building, you’ve dropped by to.”
“I spoke to him on the telephone. I think he’s expecting me.”
“Do you know what billet, ma’am?”
“I do indeed. Room 405.”
“Go on up, ma’am.”
The guards returned to their cards—that new game, gin rummy, if she wasn’t mistaken—and she took the automatic lift to the fourth floor.
Flats faced each other across a central hall, in hotel fashion; the brick walls and the tile flooring again gave off an institutional air which seemed appropriate for the building’s commandeered use as a billets, but which must have been depressing for apartment living.
The guards were correct: the hallway was deserted. No Saturday night parties or card games could be discerned, no radios blared behind doors. The troops had no doubt descended upon Piccadilly.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to return to the lobby to request that one of those young guards unlock Cummins’s door for her—and she didn’t: after her knock went unheeded, she tried the knob and found it unlocked. Not surprising, in what was after all a glorified barracks.
The flat, drably modern, was a sitting room beyond which lay a small, separate kitchen and two small bedrooms, one of which was off the kitchen, the other off the sitting room, which also had an adjacent bathroom. Four cots had been erected in the sitting room and each cramped bedroom had a single cot. Those using the sitting room were apparently living out of small wooden RAF-issue trunks; but each tiny bedroom, glorified closets really, had bureaus—Viceroy Court had apparently provided furnished apartments to its prior tenants.
The small bedroom off the kitchen—with its easy access to the fire escape—was Cadet Cummins’s, or so she assumed. The reason for her deduction provided one more small irony: on the bureau were two stacks of popular inexpensive editions of her novels.
That much, at least, had been true: Gordon Cummins was a fan, a dedicated reader of hers.
She did not even have to open the drawers of the bureau to find what she’d been looking for: near one stack of her books, beside multiple sideways displays of her own name, were the apparent souvenirs of slaughter: a cheap comb missing teeth; a fountain pen; and a woman’s wristwatch.
Though it would take measurements and the forensics skills of Sir Bernard to confirm so, Agatha’s eyes told her these items mirrored the shapes she’d discovered in the dust at the Jouannet murder flat.
Leaning closer, narrowing her eyes, she thought she could make out something odd about that watch: it had something on the back of it….
She lifted the cheap watch and turned it over and saw the oddly cut piece of elastic tape, fitted there for the original (late) wearer’s comfort, again seeming to mirror the shape of the portion cut from the roll of sticking plaster Ted Greeno had found in a drawer of that dust-covered dresser in the Jouannet place.
Finally, an inexpensive silver-plated cigarette case, bearing the initials N.W., seemed to indicate the ghost of actress Nita Ward. A pack rat, this killer was; not a good thing to be, in that line of interest.
“What a pleasant surprise….”
Startled, she turned to see the owner, or at least the possessor, of these ghoulish keepsakes: the boyishly handsome RAF cadet, Gordon Cummins, standing with cap in hand, his smile sideways, his eyes a greenish unblinking blue.
And in a flash she recognized him, finally: the Gunman.
The smiling blue-eyed Gunman of her childhood nightmares, who had come back to haunt… and perhaps warn… her in recent nights.
How like Archie he was.
“Oh, do forgive me,” Agatha said, turning her back to the bureau and beaming at her host. “I was driving home from the hospital, and I simply couldn’t sleep, and thought I’d run over and leave this here, to surprise you….”
She held out the copy of Evil Under the Sun for him to see, then placed it on the bureau top behind her.
“I still need to sign it, I’m afraid, but I wanted to thank you properly. I thought you were spending the night with Mrs. Cummins.”
He shut the door. The cadet remained near the door, but the bedroom was so small, so claustrophobic, that they still stood relatively close to one another.
“I thought when you got back,” she said, “that you would find the book in your bedroom and just be… pleasantly surprised. But then, you said you were pleasantly surprised, just now, didn’t you? And I hope that’s true.”
He said nothing. Still smiling. Twisting the hat around in his hands.
“Well… perhaps I should go,” she said. “I’m afraid I was misguided… invading your sanctum sanctorum, as I have.”
“No,” he said. “I’m pleased to see you…. The party broke up early. Everyone was too concerned about you, and the explosion at the theater, for the merriment to continue.”
“Ah.”
“Janet was upset, and suggested I go on back to my billet. No night for celebrating, really…. Do you suspect me?”
The bluntness of that struck her like a blow, but she did her best not to show it, saying quickly, “No. But I’m afraid the police do.”
He sat on the side of the bed, which hugged the wall lengthwise, opposite the bureau; his unblinking eyes stared into nothing. “But I’m innocent. I hope you believe me.”
“Oh, I do, Gordon. You’re my savior, after all. My knight.”
His eyes met hers and his smile turned into a crinkly thing, as if unsure whether or not to become a frown. “If they caught him… this Ripper… he wouldn’t be as famous as the other one, would he?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Well, the first one… Jack… they never caught him. He was too smart for them, they’ll say. But the truth is, he didn’t have Sir Bernard Spilsbury and these modern detectives up against him, did he? Fingerprints and things.”
“No. He didn’t. It was all quite crude then.”
“But if the new Jack were to kill someone famous, that would be different.”
“I’m afraid… afraid I don’t follow you, Gordon.”
He shrugged, the smile boyish as ever, charming. “Well, imagine if the Ripper killed you, Mrs. Mallowan. Mrs. Christie. What headlines that would make—the fiend who killed the mistress of murder. That would make history.”
“I suppose so. If you were guilty. But I don’t believe that you are.”
His eyes tightened and, finally, he blinked. “You don’t?”
She sat next to him on the bed and patted his hand reassuringly. “Certainly not. You’re a smart boy, Gordon. Would a smart boy like you leave such obvious clues just scattered about? These things on your bureau…
worthless items, a toothless comb, a fountain pen, a cheap watch.”
He was frowning in thought. “Then you see it, don’t you? That I’ve been framed for this.”
She smiled and clasped her hands in a single clap. “Exactly. And I know who did and how it was done.”
Still frowning, nodding, he said, eagerly, “Do tell.”
“They’ve found a gas respirator, you know, the police have. With a service number that will likely lead to you, Gordon. I don’t see your mask anywhere here in your room, or on your person.”
“No. It was stolen several days ago.”
“I knew it!” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “These clues were planted, Gordon. And who was responsible?”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you, though it pains me, it grieves me to my core.” She sighed heavily, lowered her head. “My ‘friend,’ your ‘benefactor’… Stephen Glanville. Who better, with his Air Ministry connections, to help himself to your personal items, to enter inconspicuously and plant these obvious clues?”
“Why Glanville?”
“He is a notorious ladies’ man, our Stephen. Though he denied knowing her, Stephen undoubtedly had an affair with Nita Ward. And he may… I hate to tell you this, as it may cause you pain, Gordon… he may have set his sights on your lovely wife.”
The cadet’s eyes flared. “Janet!”
“I’m afraid so. He has loitered around rehearsals, and his eyes have fallen upon her…. I don’t believe she has given him any cause for the unforgivable thoughts he’s clearly having regarding her, so I do beg you not to blame or reprove her. But with you out of the way…”
“He would have a clear field,” Cummins said, squinting in anger.
“Seeing your lovely wife,” Agatha said, “told me everything I needed to know about you, Gordon. With such a lovely, desirable creature in your life, you would have no need for the soiled flowers of the West End.”
“I love her. Janet is wonderful. I would never hurt her.”
She gripped his hand again. “Then you must cling to your innocence. And I will help you, Gordon. I will plead your case. Together, we will shatter this frightful frame, and restore your good name.”
He looked at her almost lovingly. “You’re wonderful, Mrs. Mallowan. You’re like… something from one of your own books.”
“As are you, Gordon. As are you.”
The door burst open and Inspector Greeno stood there with revolver in hand—such weapons were checked out only when an officer felt a vital need, and Greeno clearly felt it. His eyes widened at the sight of Agatha, then turned hard, as he leveled the weapon at the cadet, and behind him were two more plainclothes detectives, equally well armed.
“Stand up, Cummins,” the inspector said, “and put your hands on your head…. You’re nicked!”
The cadet’s eyes flew to Agatha’s. “Tell him, Mrs. Mallowan! Tell them I’m innocent.”
“I’ll give the inspector all the details,” she said gently. “Rest assured. Go quietly, dear, and it will speak well for you.”
The inspector and another detective squeezed into the room, and the assistant handcuffed the cadet as Greeno said more formally, “You’re under arrest for committing grievous bodily harm to Greta Heywood…. Take him away.”
The two plainclothes men did, Cummins calling to Agatha, “Be sure to tell him! Be sure!”
“I will,” she reassured him smilingly, “I will.”
When they were alone in the cubbyhole billet, the inspector asked, “What in hell are you doing here, and what in hell was that about, Agatha?”
Ignoring his first question, she answered the second. “Oh, I convinced him I believed in his innocence.” She showed the inspector the murder souvenirs on the bureau top. “I told him I believed that Stephen Glanville had framed him for these murders, planting these clues and others, like the respirator…. I assume the number on the mask led you here?”
“It did. That’s why we’ve arrested him only for assaulting that prostitute, Greta Heywood. We’ll get ’round to willful murder charges soon enough. Why Glanville?”
“Poor Stephen and his womanizing… he was a believable suspect. With his position at the Air Ministry, he might well have framed the boy.”
“That’s a load of rubbish!”
“Of course it is,” Agatha said pleasantly.
“Well, Cummins certainly knew Glanville didn’t do it! Why would telling him that story hold any weight?”
“What was important was that it seemed a credible defense to him… and his counselor may eventually try to utilize it. I needed him to believe I thought him innocent, and that I would defend him to the death…. You may not be aware of it, Ted, but that madman saved my life, earlier, at the theater cave-in.”
The inspector nodded, sighing, “I did indeed hear that. He must have thought you owed him a debt.”
“I owe him no debt—he was considering killing me, as his last grand gesture. But I talked him out of it.”
“My Lord, how did you manage it?”
“Oh, really, Inspector—it was easy. The boy likes my work.” She gestured to the stacks of books. “He’s a fan…. May I show you something?”
She escorted the amazed inspector into the kitchen. “With his bedroom isolated as it is, and the fire escape leading off as it does, the testimony of any of his flatmates who might say they saw him go off to bed is irrelevant.”
“It is indeed,” the inspector said, taking in the fire escape view. “If we can just get past those damned billet books.”
She laughed, genuinely amused. “Oh, Inspector, that was my first real suspicion of our cadet. I was the wife of an RAF pilot, in the first war—I know all about billet books and men covering up for each other, as they sneak in and out to see their sweethearts and wives… not necessarily in that order.”
“Blimey, I never thought it—it’s bleedin’ obvious, if you’ll pardon me saying.”
“It’s a trick immemorial, in service camps, Inspector. Oh, they’ll fuss and moan, when you try to prove it—tell you you’ll blow the billet wide open, if you expose the practice. But take my word: that so-called passbook is a tissue of lies…. Do you have a pen, Inspector?”
“I believe so,” he said, and dug it out. Then, a grin splitting the bulldog face, he added, “Two pens, counting the one Cummins copped from the Jouannet flat.”
She sat at the little kitchen table—which was cluttered with the dishes of RAF cadets—and cleared a place. She signed the title page of Evil Under the Sun and then inscribed on the flyleaf: “To Gordon Cummins—a reader I will never forget. A.C., St. John’s Wood, 1942.”
With a smile, she handed the book to the flabbergasted inspector, saying, “See to it Mr. Cummins gets it, will you?”
AFTER…
DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR EDWARD GREENO, Sir Bernard Spilsbury and Frederick Cherrill mounted an airtight case against Airman Gordon Frederick Cummins.
The items Agatha had found in the cadet’s billet were identified as belongings of murder victims Doris Jouannet and Nita Ward. The fingerprints on the candlestick and the tumbler of beer from the Lowe flat were Cummins’s. Greta Heywood and Phyllis O’Dwyer identified Cummins as their would-be assailant (they shared the tabloid reward money).
Sir Bernard Spilsbury matched sand, grit, and cement dust from the gas mask’s fabric to samples from the air-raid shelter where Evelyn Hamilton’s body had been found. Items belonging to Miss Hamilton were also found in the billet, and the two five-pound notes Phyllis O’Dwyer had turned in to Inspector Greeno were traced to Cummins, through RAF pay records.
As Agatha had predicted, the billet passbooks had been falsified, cadets covering up for cadets out on the town. But other RAF airmen were just as eager not to cover up for Cummins, whom they did not particularly like: the nicknames of the “Duke” and the “Count,” which Cummins claimed as his, had been seized upon derisively by fellow cadets offended by Cummins’s constant boasting about his “noble
” birth. They said he often got dressed up in his best civilian clothes, affecting an upper-class accent, going out to impress prostitutes.
“And him with such a beauty for a missus,” one cadet had said, shaking his head.
Other cadets confirmed that they’d seen Cummins throwing money around, in his “Count” persona, shortly after Evelyn Hamilton’s murder. The Hamilton woman, of course, had been stripped not only of her life but of eighty pounds.
Throughout, Cummins maintained his innocence as well as a sunny, confident disposition. His wife, Janet, remained loyal and claimed to believe his story of having been framed by a “higher-up” at the Air Ministry. Janet even managed to mount a petition seeking a stay of execution until the “mystery man” who “switched gas masks” with poor Gordon could be found.
Despite this effort, shortly before eight a.m. on June 25, 1942, Gordon Cummins strolled, a smiling self-proclaimed innocent martyr, to the gallows. His wife wept; working girls, eager to return to the dimly lit streets behind Piccadilly in relative safety, cheered. The clatter of the falling trapdoor punctuated the distant thunder of explosions.
Luftwaffe planes were flying over London, on a rare daylight bombing raid.
Agatha’s new play received glowing reviews. It moved to the Cambridge Theatre for a long run, and opened in New York in June, 1944, under the sanitized title Ten Little Indians, where it ran for an impressive 426 performances.
The great tragedy of the war for Agatha was the death of her daughter’s husband; but Rosalind and Hubert’s son, Matthew, would be the love of Mrs. Mallowan’s later life.
Toward the end of the war, after a weekend visit in Wales with Rosalind and grandchild Matthew, Agatha returned to Lawn Road Flats. Exhausted and chilled to the bone, she switched on the heat and began to cook up some kippers, when Max came home, unexpectedly early, from his service in North Africa.
The London Blitz Murders Page 17