The London Blitz Murders (17 page)

“Well, she was a respectable woman, a landlady at a seaside boardinghouse. But the army come and evicted her—took over her place for barracks and such.”

Agatha had a shock of recognition—she’d been similarly “evicted.”

“She was a right good-looking woman, for her age,” Miss Wick said.

“How old was she?”

“In her cups one night, she admitted to bein’ forty-two. It says something about her, you know, favorable like, that at her age the men would still seek her favors.”

The fifty-odd Agatha decided not take offense. Young women in this profession lived hard and died young. Age, it would seem, was relative.

“You called her ‘Pearl.’ ”

“Yes. Her daughter calls her ‘Margaret,’ but it’s Pearl, on the street. Calls herself Pearl Campbell, or she did, anyway. That’s the name you’ll find on your books.”

“She’s been arrested?”

“Last week, you fellas was ’round ’cause of a row she was havin’ with a soldier. Right noisy, it was.”

The inspector exchanged glances with Agatha, saying to Miss Wick, “Who called to complain?”

“Well…” Suddenly Miss Wick seemed embarrassed. “I denied it, when she accused me… I told her it musta been them in the flat, other side of hers… but it was me, all right.”

“That’s… not exactly according to your profession’s code, is it?”

“I would never turn no girl in for making a few honest bob. Dishonest, maybe you’d call it. But I had a gentleman caller meself, at the time, and the noise got so bad, my guest got nervous and flew the coop.”

“I see.”

“Besides, maybe he’d a hurt her or somethin’, the bloody row goin’ on over there. So I was doin’ her a favor, really, callin’ it in—wouldn’t you say, Guv’nor?”

“Did the police come?”

“Yes—like I said, it’ll be on your books. Ask the bobby on this beat—he’s right downstairs!”

“I’ll do that.”

“They wrote the soldier up, too. Good-looking boy.”

“RAF?” the inspector asked, possibly because of Cadet Cummins, Agatha supposed.

“No. Canadian. Nice boys, the Canucks; but they don’t spend as free as the Yanks.”

“Was there any noise last night? Or this morning?”

“No. And I didn’t see Pearl at all last night. No idea who she was entertainin’…. It’s the Ripper, ain’t it?”

“You did your friend a favor. Allow me to do you one.”

“What’s that?”

“I won’t take you in on suspicion of soliciting, if you agree not to go out tonight.”

She frowned. “Don’t nick me, Guv. I got but one date tonight and he’s a regular. No harm done.”

“Miss Wick, you live and work in the middle of this monster’s stamping grounds. You stay in, till we get him.”

“Is that advice or a threat?”

“It’s advice. The threat is down on the street…. You identified the body, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Do I need to say more?”

“No, Guv.”

“Thank you, Miss Wick. You go on inside, now. There’s a good girl.”

And she did.

“Will she listen to you?” Agatha asked.

“No. But she’ll stay with her regular clients.”

“The murderer might be a regular client.”

The inspector grunted a humorless laugh. “Precisely. One credible theory regarding the original Ripper had it that Jack was a habitué of prostitutes who caught a disease from one and took his rage out on many.”

“You’ll check on this Canadian soldier, of course.”

“Of course.” He sighed mightily. “Solving a murder is like doing a jigsaw—all you need do is fit the pieces together… but you have to find them first.”

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. Something 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?”