The London Blitz Murders (10 page)

That the streets were so relatively barren of vehicles made the journey only frightening and not terrifying.

She attempted to slow his passage with conversation, but this had no apparent effect, and after one exchange on one subject, Agatha lapsed to silence.

That one exchange, however, was significant.

“Bernard,” she said, “I do have a concern.”

“What is that, Agatha?” he asked, careening around a corner down the wrong way of a one-way street, pedestrian eyes only slightly wider than if their bearers had just heard an air raid siren’s banshee cry.

“These murders,” she said, hanging on to a door strap, “have already attracted the attention of the gutter press.”

“Unfortunately, yes. And not just the tabloids, I’m afraid. Deplorable that this ‘Ripper’ connection has been made. Creates a difficult atmosphere in which to work.”

“That’s my concern, as well. I don’t know if you’re aware that I have a distinct aversion for publicity….”

“I was not, but I’m relieved to hear it.”

He slowed, barely, before running a STOP signal.

“Relieved?”

“Yes. I take you at your word that your interest in this case is scientific—background research. If the notion here was to attract the press to a ‘collaboration’ between the foremost forensics man and the world’s greatest mystery writer… well. I could not be party to that.”

“I abhor the press.”

“As do I,” he said, almost spinning the steering wheel, narrowly missing a bicyclist. “The newspapers have published an unending parade of lies and legends about me, exaggerating my career. I’m afraid I’ve developed an almost morbid aversion to publicity.”

Had they not been flying down a West End street like an ambulance, this confirmation would have warmed the cockles of Agatha’s heart.

“I have,” Sir Bernard continued, “made it clear that my participation as pathologist on call to Scotland Yard is contingent upon one condition: that I be protected from the press…. That shielding, my dear, will be extended to you.”

“Wonderful! Bernard…”

“Yes, Agatha?”

“Do you by any chance have a siren?”

“No.” He glanced at her, the soul of placid gravity. “This is not an official police vehicle…. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. Merely a point of research.”

Detective Chief Inspector Edward Greeno was waiting for them on Wardour Street, standing before a gigantic
Dali-esque eye painted upon the window of an optician’s shop. The inspector, puffing on a pool cue of a cigar, looked every inch the detective of film and fiction—a broad-shouldered bulldog in a snapbrim fedora and extravagantly lapelled trench coat.

Upon seeing Sir Bernard and Agatha approaching, the inspector dropped his cigar—though it was only half-smoked—and quickly ground it out with his heel on the pavement. Then he met them halfway, introducing himself, bowing to Agatha, who presented him a hand to shake, man-to-man fashion; he accepted her hand, grinning at her, his expression rather foolish.

“Excuse me for smiling under such conditions,” the inspector said, “but I have to admit, Mrs. Christie, that I am a big reader of yours.”

Sir Bernard—standing with an almost absurdly oversize black Gladstone bag in hand, looking like an impatient doctor making a house call (which was the case, actually)—crisply corrected Inspector Greeno.

“That’s her writing name, Inspector. This is Mrs. Mallowan. Her husband is the noted archaeologist.”

The inspector nodded a curt apology, saying, “Mrs. Mallowan…. A lot of the boys read your books. We feel as though we could use that little Belgian of yours, from time to time.”

“Inspector,” she said, “I am pleased and relieved by your attitude. I was afraid I would be considered a sort of fifth wheel. I can only assure you I will touch nothing and stay well out of everyone’s way.”

“Just the mouse in the corner, eh? You may spend a good deal of time out on the landing, I’m afraid, as it’s a small flat.”

“I will do as I’m told, Inspector.”

Another grin creased the bulldog face. “Well, Sir Bernard vouches for you, and the Home Office has given out instructions to treat you royally… which for a fan like me will be a pleasure.”

Sir Bernard said, “One small point, Inspector—Mrs. Mallowan has the same aversion to publicity that I do.”

“I’m ahead of you, Doctor. I’ll tell you I was mad as hell… excuse me, Mrs. Mallowan… about this press leak. Last thing we needed was panic on the West End, over a so-called ‘Ripper’… and now, I’m afraid, we indeed have one.”

Agatha frowned. “One what, Inspector?”

“A Ripper. The doctor has described the other two murders to you, in some detail, I understand.”

“He has.”

“Well, this time we have a bona fide Ripper-style sexual mutilation.” Gently, tentatively, Inspector Greeno touched the sleeve of her Glen Plaid. “And I did want to warn you, Mrs. Christie… Mrs. Mallowan. This is pure savagery, it is. You may wish to spare yourself the—”

“Inspector, I work with Sir Bernard at University College Hospital. My background is that of a nurse dealing with the combat wounded. Need I say more about my lack of squeamishness?”

“Not at all, Mrs. Mallowan.”

“May I take notes?”

“You may.” He gestured with a thick finger to the flat above the optician’s. “Initially we’ll stay out on the landing. I’ve had some photographs taken, but my procedure is always to preserve the crime scene as much as possible, until Sir Bernard arrives…. Shall we go on up?”

Inspector Greeno led the way, his voice echoing up the dim narrow stairwell. “Her name was Evelyn Oatley. Meter reader
found her. Our assumption is that she’s one of the working girls here in Soho.”

By this, Agatha knew, the inspector meant the woman had been a prostitute.

A uniformed police officer waited on the landing. He said to Greeno, “I’ll just get out of your way, Governor,” and headed down the stairs to stand watch on the street, thus making room in the small space for the inspector and Agatha. In the meantime, Sir Bernard went on through the open door into the flat, where the electric lights were on.

“The only thing I touched, Doctor,” the inspector said to the pathologist’s back, “was the electrical meter. Hope putting a shilling in the slot won’t do any harm.”

Sir Bernard said nothing. He set his big Gladstone bag down with a slight clank. At first he was blocking the body, which lay sprawled on a divan-style bed in the single-room flat. Carefully stepping over a vast pool of dried blood, the pathologist walked around the body, studying it, at times leaning almost close enough to kiss the dead woman’s naked flesh.

Intermittently, Agatha’s view of the corpse improved until she had seen it all too well.

The victim was thirty-odd, curvaceous and quite attractive in an apple-cheeked Kewpie-doll manner. Her throat had been cut—a wide, thin gash, like a terrible thin-lipped smile below her chin; and the lower part of the woman’s body, near her sexual organs, had been viciously slashed.

“When we interviewed the electrician,” the inspector said to Agatha, his voice soft and conversational, “he seemed quite sure Miss Oatley was a prostitute.”

“Do you think he was a client?”

The inspector’s quick look showed surprise at this frankness on Agatha’s part. “I asked him that. He said no, even when I assured him no charges would be proffered and it would be kept strictly confidential.”

“Had he ever spoken to the girl? Just a chat when he dropped around to read the meter?”

“Yes. He said Miss Oatley was a nice kid, a bubbly sort, not at all down about her lot in life. He said she was a showgirl.”

“Really?”

“Yes, she apparently danced at the Windmill, from time to time.”

The notorious Windmill Theatre was home to a long-running nude revue whose manager boasted about staying open throughout the Blitz, as a patriotic duty to servicemen. It was one of the few theaters in London that Agatha had never frequented.

“Looks like the old, old story,” the inspector said. “She was a showgirl, her looks started to slip, she took to the streets. Since the blackout began, prostitution’s gone up like a barrage balloon—all along Haymarket and Piccadilly, the girls stand with their torches pointing down, lighting their feet, so clients can find them easily.”

“I’m sure it passes the time,” Agatha said dryly, “during a blackout.”

Sir Bernard was kneeling at his Gladstone bag, which, unclasped, yawned wide; he was putting on rubber gloves.

The door to the adjacent apartment opened and a slender, not unattractive woman of perhaps twenty-five years stood, her hand with its red fingernails tight around the neck of her cotton terry cloth robe; a red-and-white candy-striped sash hugged her narrow waist. Despite the robe, she was fully (and rather overly) made-up.

Agatha hoped she was not making an unfair assumption by taking this young woman for another “working girl.”

“I… I believe I’ve composed myself, Inspector. I could answer your questions now, I think.”

The inspector glanced at Agatha. “This is Ivy Poole, Mrs. Mallowan. Miss Oatley’s friend and neighbor.”

Ivy Poole, her dark brown eyes huge, said, “Actually, Inspector, Evelyn is a missus. Was a missus. Mrs. Oatley, she was. I’m a miss. Miss Poole.”

The inspector wrote that down in a small notebook. Agatha removed the small spiral notebook from her topcoat pocket and began making her own minutes of the proceedings.

Miss Poole remained poised in her open doorway, leaning against the jamb; there was something sexual about the pose, and whether this was innate in the woman’s nature or perhaps reflected her profession or was a method of trying to get on the inspector’s good side, Agatha could not venture.

“And who might you be, dearie?” Miss Poole asked Agatha, with a frown.

The inspector answered for her: “This is my secretary. We both take notes, and compare them later. That’s standard police procedure, Miss Poole…. Of course, you wouldn’t know that, since I’m sure you’ve never had any run-ins with the law.”

“I haven’t, at that,” she said. She had a pretty mouth but her teeth were crooked, up and down. “Got a fag?”

The inspector provided her with a cigarette and lighted it up for her.

Agatha wondered if the young apparent prostitute would be quite so casual if she could share the view that the mystery writer had: the mutilated corpse of the prostitute next door.

“Was Evelyn a working girl?” the inspector asked.

“Who am I to say? I have a job in a restaurant.”

“Which restaurant?”

“Well, I used to have, I’m between engagements. But Evie, she used to go out in the evenings, so draw your own conclusions.”

“Her husband doesn’t live with her?”

“No. They’re separated. Bill’s his name, I think. He’s a salesman, working up north someplace.”

“And she would go out in the evenings?”

“Yeah. She lost her job at the Windmill. I guess she got too fat for ’em. These Yanks likes ’em skinny. Anyway, she’d come back about eleven p.m., sometimes with a man. You know—after the public houses shut.”

“What about last night?”

Miss Poole blew out smoke through her nostrils, like a dragon. “I weren’t her baby-sitter.”

“What did you see, Miss Poole?”

“Not a bleedin’ thing.”

“What did you hear, then?”

“Well… maybe I did see something, at that.”

“Tell me.”

“Last night I thought I’d wash my hair before I went to bed.” She put her free hand in her tousle of dark curls, and gave the inspector the least convincing demure smile Agatha had ever seen. “I come out on the landing, see, to fill the kettle in the loo. While I was out here, here comes Evie, up the stairs with a man. They went into her room.”

“What time was this?”

“I didn’t set my clock by it.”

“Take your best guess, Miss Poole.”

“Eleven-fifteen, p’haps?”

“Can you describe the man?”

“There’s just the one light. It’s terrible dark out here.”

“What did you see, Miss Poole?”

She shrugged, exhaled smoke. “You won’t involve me in this, Inspector, will you? There’s a good bloke.”

“Miss Poole, you are involved. The woman who lives next door to you was murdered. You may have seen the man who did it. Wouldn’t it behoove you to have that ‘bloke’ picked up and put away?”

She frowned. “You should hang the bleedin’ bastard, is my opinion.”

“And mine. Help me do that.”

“Well…. He was a civilian. Medium height. Wearing a light-blue overcoat. Gray trousers. Tan shoes. No hat. That’s all I can remember.”

“You’re doing fine, Miss Poole. What about his face?”

“Sorry. Didn’t get a good look at that. Not much light out here, as I was sayin’.”

“Well, you certainly took notice of his clothes.”

“Well, Guv, that’s how a girl sizes up a man, ain’t it?”

“All right. What happened then?”

She shrugged again, sighing smoke. “I stayed up till midnight, maybe a quarter after, give or take a tick. I have a little fireplace—I was sitting in front of the warm, brushing my hair, drying it….” Another coquettish look at the inspector. “A girl has to look her best in these times, you know.”

“What else, Miss Poole?”

“Well, I could hear Evie’s radio going, next door. She did that sometimes, turned it way up, when she had gentleman guests. It’s a way of… making so’s I couldn’t hear what went on over there. Only a thin partition-like, between rooms, you know. But I have a bigger place than Evie’s, Inspector;
bedroom’s separate from the other room. You can come have a look, if you like….”

“Maybe later. Go on, please.”

“Well. I went into my bedroom about twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty. Can’t hear the radio in there.”

“Did you hear anyone leave the flat?”

“No. But even if she did, or he did, I wouldn’t be able to hear it from my bedroom. I always shut my bedroom door, Inspector… and bolt it. Girl doesn’t like to be interrupted.”

No
, Agatha thought, her eyes going to the open doorway framing the slain woman next door on the divan,
a girl doesn’t
….

“And anyway,” Miss Poole said. “A girl’s got to be careful around here…. Anything else, Inspector?”