Dead to Me (29 page)

Archie was getting more interested now, so he bought her a glass of port and lemon and asked what had happened to the house in Whitechapel now Stephen was gone.

She just shrugged. Clearly wills – or buying and selling houses – were well above her level of understanding. ‘I dunno. But why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll show you some pictures? I’ve got all the stuff ’e had on ’im when ’e was killed.’

He made a joke about gentlemen not going to a lady’s house late at night. Then he thanked her for her company and said goodbye. It was dark now, and as he walked down the street his mind was whirling. If Stephen Lyle really did look like him, maybe he could steal the man’s identity. He’d been calling himself John Widdicombe, but he had no papers to back that up – and no ration book, either.

As he got to the house in Salmon Lane he saw the woman in the downstairs front room looking out of the window. She had annoyed him before with her prying. But he was aware that it was always useful to have an alibi if embarking on something which might prove to be against
the law, so he bowed extravagantly to her and blew her kisses. He saw her smile so, making a big show of being staggering drunk, he went inside and made a noise going up the stairs.

Excitement seemed to have sobered him up. Locking his door, he climbed out of the window, on to the lean-to washhouse beneath. From there it was easy to reach the narrow alley behind. He just hoped Mildred hadn’t left straight after him, because she hadn’t told him where she lived.

Luck was with him, she was just coming, somewhat unsteadily, out of the Ropemakers Arms as he got there. She put her right hand on the wall of the pub to steady herself, and he presumed she was waiting for her eyes to get used to the dark before moving on. Archie stayed back in the shadows, watching her.

When she finally moved, he followed her, keeping well back. There were few people on the streets now, just a few drunks lurching home. The blackout had been his friend since the start of the war, and it was again tonight; in a dark suit, and with a suntanned face, he was virtually invisible.

She stopped to unlock a door at the side of a boarded-up corner shop, only five minutes’ walk from the pub. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked as if the shop was bomb-damaged. With just a quick look to check no one was watching, Archie came up behind her.

‘Hello, Mildred, thought I’d take you up on your offer, if that’s okay,’ he said quietly.

‘Jesus, you made me jump!’ she exclaimed, putting her
hands over her mouth. ‘But come on in. A gent like you won’t like the way I live, but I can’t ’elp it.’

She was right, Archie didn’t like the room she took him into. He smelled filth even before she lit the gas light and he saw how dirty it was. The few bits of furniture and the strange collection of household items strewn around suggested she spent her days scavenging on bomb sites. Her bed in one corner was just a mattress with a few ragged blankets. He knew he wouldn’t be staying here any longer than he had to.

She took what seemed like for ever to find the photo of Stephen, opening boxes, pulling out envelopes and making even more mess than there had been before.

But finally she found a shoebox, and pounced on it gleefully. ‘This is it. I put all the stuff in ’ere what the air-raid warden found on ’im, after they dug ’is body out. But I don’t know what to do with it.’

‘I expect I can tell you,’ he said, wondering if she’d even taken advice about registering his death.

‘’Ere ’e is!’ she said, pulling out a photograph.

She was right, Stephen did look a lot like him. He had a very similar square jaw, their noses were almost identical, very straight and narrow, even their smiles were alike. Archie had been told his was more of a self-satisfied smirk, but Stephen’s was the same. It was very odd, staring into the face of someone so similar. ‘My goodness!’ he forced himself to smile at Mildred. ‘You must have got quite a start seeing me tonight.’

She gave one of her cackling laughs. ‘You is just like ’im, but I ain’t so daft I thought you was ’is ghost. He used to
come and visit me every time he come back ’ere, and often gave me a few bob to help out.’

‘What line of work was he in?’ Archie asked, sitting down on a rickety stool and taking the box of papers from her.

‘’E used to be an insurance man, like his dad, but he gave that up after ’is ma went. Last time I saw ’im ’e said ’e were strapped for cash but ’is ship was coming in soon. Did that mean ’e was going to sign on a ship for foreign parts?’

Archie thought it sounded very much as if Stephen Lyle and he had more in common than just looks. ‘I don’t know, Mildred,’ he said. ‘But let me look at these papers, there might be something in here to tell us what he was planning.’

She sat down heavily on an upturned crate, wobbling because she was so drunk.

Archie took no more than a cursory look at the contents of the box, as the light was very dim, but he saw a passport, a ration book, a set of keys and what looked like deeds for the house in Whitechapel. He wondered why the man had been carrying around so many private papers, especially deeds for a house. It could be that he’d been calling at a solicitor’s earlier, but to Archie’s mind it suggested he was up to no good.

‘Did you get a death certificate for him?’ he asked.

She shrugged, her face blank. ‘The air-raid warden gave me a bit of paper and told me to go to the address on it about Stephen,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t read it. And anyways, I was so upset I went and ’ad a drink and I must’ve lost it.’

‘What about his funeral? Did his relatives see to that?’

Again she looked blank. ‘’E didn’t ’ave no folk, not that I knowed about anyways. Don’t know about a funeral neither. No one told me when it was or nothing.’

Archie felt a little shiver of excitement run down his spine. He didn’t know what the procedure was when people were killed in air raids. As he understood it, they usually took bodies to the nearest hall for them to be formally identified. But on a night when many people were killed, it had to be very difficult to match the dead to living relatives.

It sounded like the air-raid warden believed Mildred was a relative, maybe he even took her back to the bomb site to identify him, and that was when he gave her this piece of paper she mentioned. That air-raid warden obviously didn’t realize she wasn’t the full shilling and wouldn’t understand legal requirements or how to arrange a funeral.

In peacetime this would never have happened, but during the Blitz the emergency services, hospitals and all the many voluntary organizations who did their utmost to find family members and offer support to the bereaved, were so overstretched and snowed under by deaths, that it was easily possible for a body to go unclaimed by anyone.

Of course Stephen Lyle’s body must have been held in the morgue waiting to be claimed, but if no one came forward after a time, he supposed there was no choice but to put the person in a mass grave.

‘I tell you what, Mildred,’ he said. ‘I’ll take these papers home and read them properly and I’ll come back and explain them to you in a day or two.’

He fully expected her to agree immediately, but to his
shock and surprise she sprang to her feet. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’ve got of ’im. You ain’t takin’ nuffin.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mildred,’ he said, trying not to get angry with her. ‘The light in here is too bad to read them, and it’s late and you need to go to bed. I’ll bring them back.’

‘No, you can’t take them,’ she shouted at him. ‘I don’t know you. You said a gentleman wouldn’t go in a lady’s house at night, but you must’ve followed me ’ere, so you might be going to rob me.’

She was edging towards the door and he was afraid if she got out into the street she’d start shouting. He couldn’t let that happen, he had too much to lose.

‘Oh, Mildred,’ he sighed, as if hurt by her, edging his way towards her, hands outstretched as if pleading for her forgiveness. ‘I didn’t follow you here at all, I took the wrong turning in the dark and all at once I saw you. I was really glad too, because I like you, and I was a bit afraid I’d hurt your feelings by not agreeing to come with you.’

She half smiled, as if she believed him, but as he took a step nearer her, she let out a piercing yell.

Archie couldn’t bear women screaming, it grated on his nerves. Cynthia used to do it, and so did Verity. He reacted instinctively to it, leaping forward and grabbing Mildred by the throat. But the moment his thumbs pressed into her larynx, he had to squeeze. She squirmed to get free, her eyes began to pop and her face turned from red to purple, but he couldn’t let go, he just pressed harder and harder until she was still.

He let her slump down on to the floor, then he reached down and felt her pulse. There was none, she was dead.

‘Why didn’t you just give me the box?’ he said aloud. ‘I didn’t want to kill you for it.’

For a few brief seconds he was stunned by what he’d done, just as he had been with the other women he’d hurt, and when he’d beaten Verity and locked her into the shelter. But remorse wasn’t in his nature. He quickly pulled himself together, opened Mildred’s purse and took the contents. There was only a ten-shilling note and some silver to pocket, but that way it would look like a robbery that had got out of hand.

Then, using an old rag that was lying on the floor, he wiped the purse clean of fingerprints, and dusted the stool he’d sat on in case he’d touched it. Then, picking up the box of papers, he tipped the contents into a canvas shopping bag which was hanging on the door. Still using the rag, he selected several old china ornaments, a couple of hairslides and a picture postcard from Southend. He put them in the box, wiped it down thoroughly and then tucked it under a pile of old newspapers. Stopping only to wipe the outside of the door down for prints, he left.

He hesitated at the back of the houses in Salmon Lane. It was late, he wanted to sleep, but common sense said he must get away from here immediately, as the landlord at the Ropemakers Arms would give a description of the man Mildred had been talking to earlier in the evening. Someone in the pub might know where he lived, so the police would come here.

But they weren’t likely to find her body straight away, so why not climb into his room the way he came out, get his stuff together and leave for good in the morning? To walk the streets around here at night with a suitcase was
asking to be stopped by the police. The morning was soon enough.

‘Anything exciting in the paper?’ Ruby asked Wilby.

Wilby looked at Ruby as she poured tea at breakfast and smiled. Ruby’s happiness wafted out of her like the sweet scent of honeysuckle. She was deeply in love with Luke, and it seemed he was equally smitten with her. Wilby had only one nagging fear and that was that when his training was complete, and he began going on bombing raids over Germany, the plane he was in might just be shot down. But she kept that fear to herself, for now it was just a delight to see Ruby so happy.

‘I didn’t read anything about a red-hot romance in Babbacombe,’ she replied to Ruby’s question. ‘Well, at least it’s not on the front page.’

‘It should be,’ Verity chuckled. ‘After all, she’s broadcast it so much it should have reached Fleet Street by now.’

Wilby was also happy to see Verity looking bouncy and joyful. Maybe she wasn’t going to fall in love with Bevan, but having fun with someone she liked and felt safe with was just what she needed.

Wilby turned back to the newspaper. ‘The Germans have captured Sebastopol,’ she said. ‘With luck they’ll march on up to Moscow and freeze when winter comes. That happened to Napoleon’s army, they had to retreat when they had no more food or warm clothes. Russia’s saviour is General Winter.’

Ruby pretended to yawn. ‘What about the society page? Any flamboyant, fabulous weddings? Any scandal?’

‘Thieves broke into a garage in Surrey to find more than
they expected; it was stacked to the roof with tinned food. It seems the owners had been stockpiling for years before the war. It took so long for the thieves to load it up, the police came and arrested them.’

‘So were the owners prosecuted for being greedy? Or were they allowed to throw tins at the thieves?’ Verity asked jokingly.

‘It doesn’t say. I bet the police snaffled some of it for themselves,’ Wilby said. ‘I wish I’d had the sense to start stockpiling years ago.’

‘You’d have only given it away to people you felt sorry for,’ Verity said. ‘Isn’t there a good murder in that paper? We never seem to get them any more. Is everyone behaving properly because of the war?’

‘A woman was found strangled in Limehouse,’ Wilby said. ‘They think she’d been dead in her room for over a week before anyone missed her.’

Ruby pulled a face. ‘How awful. Have they arrested anyone for it?’

‘Doesn’t say. Her name was Mildred Find, mid-forties, no family. A neighbour reported she was a little simple. The police think robbery was the motive, and are still making inquiries.’

‘It’s funny how real life carries on all around us, despite the war. Murder, stealing, road accidents, babies being born, and weddings too,’ Verity mused. ‘When the war started, I kind of had the idea that would all stop. Silly of me, but I did.’

‘I certainly never expected to see the glamorous Palace Hotel turned into a hospital, or imagined that I would ever be able to look at an open wound without fainting,’ Ruby
said. ‘Tell me, Wilby, are we going to win the war? It would be absolutely terrible if, after all we’ve been through, we lost.’

‘We won’t lose,’ Wilby said firmly. ‘We have Churchill at the helm, and he’ll get us through it. In a couple of years the barbed wire will be taken from the beaches, signposts will be back, lights will go on. And you two will be married and living happily ever after.’