Текст книги "An Expert in Murder"

Автор книги: Nicola Upson

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

When her companion took the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign from its hook and hung it outside the door, then stepped quickly over to the window to pull down the blind, Elspeth opened her mouth to protest, but the words were too slow to save her.

An arm reached out towards her, drawing her into a deadly embrace which seemed to mock the physical affection she had so recently come to know. There was no time to scream. The hand that gripped the back of her neck, holding her close, was swift and sure, and by now no strength was needed. Surprise had given way to a paralysing horror and she had no more control over her limbs 15

than the doll which fell to the floor and lay staring upwards, an indifferent witness to her final moments. She tried to breathe normally, to stay calm, but her face was pressed into her assailant’s chest and panic welled up in her as she realised that this must surely be death. Please God, no, she thought, not now, not when I’m so happy.

When the lethal point punctured her skin, she felt nothing more than a sharp blow beneath her ribs but there was no chance to be thankful for the lack of pain, nor to wonder that her body should surrender itself with so little ceremony. In that briefest of moments, somewhere between waking and oblivion, between life and death, she was aware of all she would miss but the longing was soon over, replaced as she fell to her knees by a lasting, if pre-mature, peace.

16

Two

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose could never travel in the King’s Cross area without feeling instantly depressed. North London was the city at its most forbidding and, despite the widening of the streets, its most claustrophobic. He drove down an uninspiring thoroughfare bordered with drab houses, few of which had ever been decorated or even cleaned, and past the straggling shabbiness of Euston Station. Then there was King’s Cross itself; he always thought that the station’s facade – two main arches separated by a clock tower of dreadful yellow brick, turned black with the dirt of ages – looked more like the entrance to a gaol than the gateway to a capital. Certainly it did nothing to help a man on his way to a murder investigation.

A sizeable crowd had gathered at the head of Platform Eight, obscuring his view of the train in which the girl’s body had been discovered less than an hour ago by a young railway employee.

According to Penrose’s colleague, Sergeant Fallowfield, the boy was now in a state of shock. Fallowfield, who had been handling an incident round the corner in Judd Street when the call came in and was first on the scene, approached him now, pushing his way through the on-lookers with very little patience for their ghoulish curiosity.

‘You’d think they’d have something better to do on a Friday night, wouldn’t you, Sir? Bloody vultures, the lot of ’em.’

The comment was uncharacteristic of his sergeant, who usually had a more positive view of human nature despite years of experience to the contrary. Whatever he had seen on the train had clearly got to him. ‘Poor kid, she can’t be more than twenty,’ Fallowfield 17

said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Hardly had a chance to start her life, let alone live it.’

‘Do we know who she is?’ Penrose asked.

‘Assuming it’s her bag in the carriage, her name’s Elspeth Simmons and she’s from Berwick-on-Tweed – at least, that’s where she got on the train, and it’s a return ticket. It’s a nasty one, this, Sir – as spiteful as anything I’ve seen. I reckon we’ve got a sick bastard on our hands.’

When he saw what awaited him in the sealed-off carriage, Penrose could only agree. The dead girl sat – or rather seemed to have been composed – on the middle of the three seats to the right of the compartment, an ornate and deadly hatpin protruding from under her breastbone. Her hands had been clasped together in front of her in a mockery of applause at the scene which someone had created for her benefit in the vacant space opposite. There, a pair of dolls – one male and one female – had been carefully arranged on the seat like actors on a stage. They stood together in a half embrace, and he noticed that the woman’s left hand – the one that bore her wedding ring – had been broken off and lay on its own in front of the couple like a sinister prop from a horror film. Close to them on the seat was a hand-written note on expensive-looking paper: ‘Lilies are more fashionable,’ it said, but the flower that lay on the floor was not a lily but an iris.

It was immediately obvious to him that this was not a random or spontaneous killing but a carefully thought-out, and probably deeply personal, act of violence. Not for a second did he think that the murderer wished to be quickly identified, but there could be little doubt that a message could be traced in every object that he – or she – had been so careful to leave on and around the body.

It was a crime that had required considerable nerve.

‘Were the blinds up or down when she was found?’ he asked.

‘Both down, Sir. The boy says he pulled that one up as soon as he came in.’

Even so, Penrose thought, the scene must have taken a few minutes to arrange once the murder had been committed, and that would mean a greater risk of discovery than most people could 18

countenance. That was the point, though: in a symbolic killing such as this, they were not dealing with the fears and doubts of a normal person but with the arrogance and sense of invulnerability that invariably accompanied evil.

‘And is this exactly how she was found?’

‘Yes, or so he says. Forrester’s his name and he’s obviously frightened out of his wits. Maybrick’s had the waiting room cleared and taken him there with a cup of tea. Poor little sod – I’m not surprised he’s scared: I wouldn’t have liked to walk in on something like this at his age. Those dolls are enough to put the wind up anybody, and they gave him a right start – as much as finding the body.’

Penrose turned to look at them. The dolls were each about a foot high and elaborately clothed in fringed cloaks and old-fashioned head-dresses. Intrigued, he moved slightly closer, marvelling at the detail with which the faces had been modelled, appearing perversely life-like in a place of death. ‘They’re not just any dolls, Bill. I wonder if they were hers or if the killer brought them? They’re souvenirs from a play that’s on in the West End at the moment – Richard of Bordeaux; it’s a historical piece about Richard II. Those dolls have been made specially to look like the characters in it. And that piece of paper,’ he continued, pointing to the note on the seat, ‘that’s a quotation from it: “Lilies are more fashionable.” I think it’s the Queen who says it at some point.’

Fallowfield had never heard of the play, but it came as no surprise to him that his superior should know all about it. Apart from policing, theatre was Penrose’s great passion and he had an exhaustive knowledge of the subject as well as a few friends and relatives in the business. ‘I just thought the note was a funny sort of love letter,’ Fallowfield said.

‘I suppose in a way it is,’ Penrose replied. ‘The question is –

who’s it from? And is the sender going to be devastated when we break the news that Miss Simmons is dead?’

‘Or does he know already, you mean?’ Fallowfield finished the line of thought. ‘Bit of an obvious calling card, that, don’t you think, Sir? I mean, we’re going to find out if she was courting and 19

if it really is a boyfriend who did it, he might as well have left his address and saved us some time.’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but I don’t think for a minute it’s going to be as simple as all that. For a start, we’ve no guarantee that it is a love letter and, judging by everything else that’s been put here for a reason, I’d say there’s a much deeper meaning than some kind of clumsy romantic gesture. And apart from all this extra paraphernalia, don’t you think that hatpin’s an odd sort of weapon to choose? Not a very masculine sort of killing. It’s straight out of Agatha Christie: Murder on the Royal Highlanderin fifteen easy chapters.’

‘Perhaps they all did it then, Sir. And there’s only nine chapters, by the way,’ Fallowfield said with unconscious irony, betraying an au fait-ness with current detective fiction that always surprised Penrose. He suddenly had an image of his down-to-earth sergeant rushing home from the Yard every night to devour the latest thriller by his fireside. Better still, perhaps he was actually writing one of his own. The thought of Miss Dorothy L. Sayers turning out to be a portly, moustached officer of the law in his early fifties was priceless, and he made a mental note to mention it to Josephine when he saw her tomorrow night.

Except now, of course, he would have to see her earlier than planned and there would be no joy in the meeting. For whatever reason, this girl’s murder was linked to her play and, no matter how innocent the explanation, he could not conceal that fact from her and neither would she want him to. He wished he could dilute the shock by promising the sort of tidy solution with which she had concluded her first detective story, but he couldn’t insult her intelligence in that way and wouldn’t get away with it if he tried.

He might long for the sort of luck that his fictional counterpart, Inspector Alan Grant, had enjoyed on his debut outing, but he and Josephine both knew that the reality of death was different, that murder brought with it a contagious messiness, a stain of grief, horror and disruption which refused to be contained within the pages of a novel.

He realised with embarrassment that Fallowfield had continued 20

the conversation beyond his erudite knowledge of the works of Mrs Christie, but he had no idea what the man had been saying.

The Sergeant, who was used to Penrose’s tendency to allow his mind to wander, patiently repeated himself. ‘I was just saying about the hatpin, Sir. Turns out that millinery was her job. So perhaps it was just convenient to stab her with that.’

Penrose glanced at the hat which lay scuffed and crumpled on the floor close to the body, a casualty of the violence that had taken place. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ He looked at the girl intently, trying to see beyond features which had been dulled by death, to imagine what she had been like just a few hours ago and pinpoint what would have struck him about her had he passed her in the street.

With any murder investigation, he insisted on giving the dead a dignity and individuality which he could not always assume they had been afforded in life. The old adage was true: there were only a few genuine reasons for murder – love, greed and revenge topped the list – but each victim was different, and each had the right to be treated as if theirs were a unique death. He moved over to the body, close enough to notice a bloodstain on her collar. The mark indicated a cut to the neck but it was so small that it would have been easy to miss it. The victim’s head was tipped to one side and slightly forward, and he could see that a small patch of hair had been shaved off at the back. It had been roughly done – obviously the murderer had been in too much of a hurry to worry about breaking the skin – and a few strands of hair still lay on the girl’s left shoulder. Such an odd thing to do, he thought – so insignificant, and yet somehow so humiliating.

The air in the compartment was heavy and oppressive, and Penrose was glad to step outside into the corridor. ‘Where is the luggage, by the way?’ he asked Fallowfield. ‘Was it being sent on or was she planning to take it with her?’

‘I’ve had it locked in one of the guards’ rooms, Sir. There were no instructions for it to be sent anywhere.’

‘Then someone must have been coming to meet her. You’d better go and see who you can find in that crowd, Sergeant. Whoever it is will be worried sick by now – unless they’ve got something to 21

hide, of course. We’ll leave the scene to the boys, but tell them I want photographs of the lot – every small detail, particularly that cut on her neck. And we’ll need to start working through the passenger list, so the sooner you can get hold of that and a list of staff on duty, the better. I’ll go and see if Forrester can tell us anything we don’t already know – I could do with a cup of Maybrick’s tea myself, now you mention it – but if you find that anyone’s been waiting for her, I want to be told straight away. Have you gone through her bag yet?’

‘I’ve had a quick look, Sir. A few papers and a couple of weeklies, and this was in the side pocket with her train ticket,’ said Fallowfield, holding out a magazine. ‘Look at page fourteen.’

Penrose did as he was told. When he saw the dated inscription, his heart sank: ‘To dear Elspeth, with thanks for an unforgettable trip. I hope we’ll meet again! Much love, Josephine (Gordon).’ So she had known her as well, and could have been one of the last people to see her alive. Suddenly he needed something a little stronger than Maybrick’s tea.

When he saw the closest thing he had to a witness sitting in the waiting room clutching a full cup of tea that must have been cold for some time, Penrose realised he was unlikely to hear anything of great use. Fallowfield had been accurate in his assessment of Forrester’s fear, and it was hardly surprising. Most people were fortunate enough to reach a comfortable middle age before an awareness of the transience of life began to weigh heavily on them, but that was a luxury which had been denied to his own generation and he was all too experienced in recognising the moment when someone first came face to face with his own mortality.

For Penrose, that moment had come before he really had a chance to find anything out about himself, to know who he might have become if the world had turned out differently. He could still remember that week in early September – a month or so short of his return to Cambridge for the final year of his medical degree – when the war had begun, but before it had gathered any real momentum.

In Cornwall it had been intensely hot for the time of year, and he 22

was making the most of his last days at home. The village had decided to continue as planned with the Harvest Festival in defiance of the stresses and strains of war, so he had joined the rest of the family in a walk to the cliff-top church on the edge of his grand-father’s estate to listen while his uncle, the rector of the parish, thanked God for a magnificent harvest and the unbroken weather which had allowed it to be gathered in.

As soon as he saw the great Union Jack which had replaced the usual hanging at the front of the pulpit, Penrose realised that God’s representative – a sanctimonious bigot at the best of times, even if he was family – had changed his agenda. After preaching a terrifying sermon on the glories of battle, sanctifying maiming, slaughter and bloodshed with the blessing of a higher authority, the rector had urged all the young men to join the army, to sate the country’s appetite for soldiers who would defend the justice of the war. What he had failed to mention was that it was a cause for which thousands of them would be asked to give their lives, but his harvest sermon had done the trick: by the end of the year, every eligible man in the village had signed up to Kitchener’s new army, an exodus which was replicated all over the country, swelling the ranks by nearly a million in the space of just four months. Some expected garrison service at home while the real soldiers went off to do the real soldiering; most believed the papers when they said it would be a short war, over by Christmas at the outside. All had been wrong, and he was still sickened to the stomach when he thought of that call from the altar for young men to offer themselves for the glory of God and eight shillings and nine pence a week.

In his darker moments, when a connection to life was harder to find, he wondered if that was perhaps what kept him in this job –

not an abstract desire for justice or a belief that he could do anything to stem the evil which ran inherently through some men’s hearts, but a desperate need to contain the sense of guilt which he had carried since those days. Sometimes it worked, and the natural course of an investigation in which the humanity of an individual was paramount dispelled the sense of waste that came from seeing death on such a massive scale – but those moments were rare, and 23

the anger that had been a part of him since the war only seemed to grow deeper with time.

‘Let’s go back to before you found Miss Simmons in the compartment,’ he said to the boy gently.

‘Is that her name, then?’

‘Yes, she was called Elspeth. What were you doing in that carriage?’

‘I was only in there to make sure it was clean and tidy, ready for the next journey.’

‘But that wasn’t your job, was it? You’re a waiter, not a porter.’

Tommy took one look at the Inspector’s face and knew instantly that it would be pointless to string him along by pretending any great diligence in his work. ‘There was this girl, see? In the restaurant car – she kept giving me the eye, so I asked one of the other blokes if I could have a go at checking some carriages because I knew she’d be there somewhere. I thought I could catch her before she got off and see if she fancied a bite to eat later on. There wasn’t any harm in it,’ he finished defiantly.

‘And did you?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Catch her before she left the train.’

‘I did, as it happens. I was supposed to meet her outside the sta -

tion when I knocked off. I expect she’s given up by now,’ Tommy said, with a wistful glance in the direction of the door.

‘Does this girl have a name?’

‘Ivy. I don’t know what her other name is. We hadn’t got that far.’

‘You’re sure you didn’t really go looking for Miss Simmons in that compartment?’

Penrose’s voice had taken on a harder edge and it suddenly dawned on Tommy that his quest for a date might have brought him a little more trouble than he’d bargained for. ‘You don’t think it was me, do you?’ he cried in horror. ‘I know I flirted with her in the restaurant, but I was only being friendly and I’m like that with everyone. I’d never hurt a girl and anyway, I thought she was already off the train – I saw her on the platform while I was talking to Ivy.’

24

‘All right, calm down.’ Penrose sent Maybrick out to see if the elusive Ivy had anything better to do than hang around outside a railway station waiting for her meal ticket, then turned his attention back to Tommy. ‘No, actually I don’t think you had anything to do with it, but I need you to be honest with me about exactly what you saw and when. You say you noticed Miss Simmons on the platform, but surely there were a lot of people milling around?

What made her stand out?’

‘Her hat for a start,’ Tommy replied. ‘You couldn’t miss that.

And her luggage – she had loads of it. I remember being glad that I didn’t have to unload that lot.’ He paused for a moment, then fell back on the criteria that made most sense in his world. ‘She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, either. Not in the same class as Ivy, obviously, but you wouldn’t mind being seen walking out with her.’

‘And how long after seeing Miss Simmons on the platform did you find her body?’

‘I don’t know – about ten or fifteen minutes, I suppose. I caught up with Ivy just as she was about to get off the train – I think she’d been hanging about, hoping I’d come and find her – and we talked just outside the carriage door for a few minutes. That’s when I noticed the girl. She was a bit further down the platform, talking to a couple of other women. Then I saw Mr Folkard – he’s the boss

– coming towards me, so I had to fix something up quick with Ivy and scarper before he asked me what I was doing. It only took me a few minutes to look in on the other compartments to make sure nothing had been left behind – and then I got to that one.’

‘Did you notice anybody hanging about?’

‘I didn’t seeanybody, no.’

‘But?’

‘Well, when I got to that compartment, the “Do Not Disturb”

notice was hanging on the door so I just knocked and told them to hurry up, then I went on to the next one.’

‘How did you know there was someone in there? Wasn’t it more likely that the notice had just been left on the door?’

‘I could hear someone moving about.’ Tommy looked down, embarrassed. ‘I thought they were having a bit of . . . well, you 25

know. So I left them to get themselves sorted out and came back a couple of minutes later, after I’d heard someone shut the door and leave.’

‘Exactly what did you hear inside the compartment?’

‘Just a bit of shuffling.’ He looked up at Penrose, suddenly more aggressive. ‘You don’t think I’d have left her if I’d known what was going on, do you? How was I supposed to guess that there was a bleeding psychopath on board?’

So that was why the boy was so defensive. It wasn’t just shock at discovering a body that had so affected him, but the realisation of how close he had come to the murder and a sense of guilt at having failed to stop it. Penrose continued more gently.

‘What did you see when you first went into the compartment?’

‘It was nearly dark because the blinds were down, but I could see someone was still in there. I thought they must be asleep, so I went over and lifted the blind at the window. When I turned round, I saw the girl, and some funny dolls on the other seat.’

‘How long were you in there?’

‘It can only have been a minute or two but it felt like ages. I wouldn’t have stayed that long but I suddenly thought – what if whoever did it was still about? Then that flower fell off the seat and I just legged it. It sounds stupid, I know, but I couldn’t bear it any longer.’

‘Did you touch anything?’

‘Only the blind when I first went in. It was too dark to tidy up, you see.’

‘And the women Miss Simmons was talking to – did you recognise them from the train?’

‘One of them, the taller one with the dark hair and the smart suit. She’d been on since Edinburgh and they had lunch together in the restaurant car. Spent a lot of time talking, they did.’

‘So they seemed to know each other well?’

‘I don’t know about that, but they were definitely getting on like a house on fire.’

‘What about the other woman?’

‘I don’t think I’d seen her before, but there are a lot of meals 26

served on that journey – I might not have noticed. But she certainly wasn’t eating with the other two.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Nice-looking, I suppose, for her age – she must have been in her forties. Long hair, but that’s about all I remember.’

Penrose had heard enough to confirm that Elspeth’s companions matched the signatures in her magazine. ‘Were they still with Miss Simmons when she got back on the train?’ he asked, trying to keep the sinking feeling out of his voice.

‘I told you – I don’t know. They’d all disappeared by the time I looked again and I just assumed they’d left. I didn’t see anybody get back on, but you know what it’s like when there’s people getting off and luggage everywhere – it’s far too busy to keep an eye on everything that’s going on.’

‘All right, we’ll let it go now but it’s vital that you don’t tell anyone what you saw in the train – do you understand?’ he asked sternly, without any real hope of his words being heeded. The boy was bound to talk to someone because, as Penrose knew from his own experience, there was nothing worse than the twisted intimacy of being the first to look upon a dead body. The loneliness of it was unbearable.

Maybrick re-entered the room and gave a brief nod. ‘Well Tommy,’ Penrose said, ‘it looks like your Ivy might be keener than you thought. She’s confirmed what you’ve told us, so tell the Constable where we can get hold of you if we need to and you can be on your way. Better not keep the girl waiting any longer but remember what I said – no details to anyone.’

‘To be honest, I haven’t really got the stomach for courting now,’ Tommy said despondently as Maybrick handed him a pencil to write down his address, ‘but I suppose I shouldn’t disappoint her.’

As Penrose left the waiting room to look for his sergeant, he saw Fallowfield already approaching and knew instantly that the man at his side had come to King’s Cross to meet Elspeth Simmons. Her father, he guessed, or perhaps an uncle – too old, in any case, to be 27

a boyfriend. But whatever connection he had had to the girl, the news of her death seemed to have devastated him: his walk, his shoulders, the constant movement of his hands and the blank expression on his face – all signalled the stubborn disbelief of the violently bereaved.

‘This is Frank Simmons, Sir,’ said Fallowfield. ‘He’s Miss Simmons’s uncle.’

Archie held out his hand, knowing from experience that the habitual formalities of everyday life could, in their very familiarity, act as a small but reassuring prop to those whose world had just been snatched from under them. ‘Detective Inspector Penrose,’ he said, and then simply, ‘I’m so very sorry.’

The man nodded in acknowledgement. ‘It’s all my fault, you see,’ he said, in response to an accusation which came not from the policemen but from a voice inside his head. ‘I was so late to meet her. If only I’d just stayed where I was, she’d be all right now.’

Penrose let him talk, making whatever confession he thought necessary, until he had been led gently to a seat in the waiting room. ‘This is going to be difficult for you, I know, but it’s important that I ask you some questions now about Elspeth and any arrangements that had been made with her for this evening. What did you mean when you said you should have stayed where you were?’

Simmons rubbed his forehead with his fingers, as if the pressure would help him to discipline his thoughts. ‘I came to meet her in the van like I always do,’ he began, ‘but when I got here one of the guards told me that the train was late and wouldn’t get in for an hour and a half or so. I often have to wait and usually I just kick my heels on the platform or have a cup of tea round the corner, but today I hadn’t finished my round and I thought an hour would give me just about enough time to drop off the last order and still be back here to meet Elspeth. That way, we could go straight home and there’d be plenty of room in the back for the new stock she was bringing down. There’s always hell to pay with Betty – that’s my wife – if anything gets squashed.’

28

By now, Penrose was lagging some way behind in the conversation. ‘What were you delivering?’ he asked.

‘Tea mostly, and coffee, but the Coventry Street shop needed some new equipment and that’s what was taking up the room.’ As the Inspector continued to look questioningly at him, he expanded a little on his explanation. ‘I’m a driver for Lyons. I’ve been with them ever since I left the regiment. It’s not the most exciting of jobs, but you get to know your way around. That’s why I was sure that a few short cuts would get me there and back in no time, but something had gone on in Judd Street. I was stuck there for ages before I could get through and make the delivery, and then I couldn’t find anywhere to park at the station. By the time I got back to the platform, you lot were crawling all over the place and I knew something had happened.’

Fallowfield opened his mouth to speak but Penrose, anticipating what he was going to say, shook his head. There would be a time to ask Frank Simmons to prove that he was away from King’s Cross when the train had pulled in, but this was not it; all the life had already been kicked out of him and there was worse still to come. Saving any further questioning for the next day, he concentrated solely on what could not be avoided. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to identify Elspeth’s body,’ he said quietly. ‘Her next of kin must be told, of course. Is that her parents?’

‘Yes. Well, her mother at any rate – that’s my sister-in-law. My brother died last year. Elspeth was adopted, though. They couldn’t have kids of their own so she meant everything to them – to all of us, really. I don’t know how Alice would have got through these last few months if it hadn’t been for her. Elspeth kept her smiling.’

As the reality of his loss came home to him, Simmons finally lost the self-control to which he had been clinging so doggedly. ‘How am I ever going to face Alice knowing that I’ve taken that away from her?’

Acknowledging the question but realising there was no answer he could give, Penrose said nothing. Instead, he led Simmons gently from the waiting room towards his niece’s body, and his worst fears.

29

Three

When Josephine awoke next morning, it had just gone nine and St Martin’s Lane was in full swing. It was Saturday and, even at this early hour, an air of obligatory enjoyment had settled on the weekend inhabitants of the West End. From her window at Number 66, she looked south towards Trafalgar Square, marvelling as she did so at the multitude of human dramas which were unfolding in the street below – far more than could possibly be played out each night in the more artificial realms of London’s theatre-land.

She shifted her gaze across the narrow street to the building opposite, and wondered how long it would be before Elspeth looked her up at stage door as she had promised. The New Theatre, where Richard of Bordeauxwas about to enter its last week, sat imposingly between the Salisbury and the Westminster County Court, the daily necessities of ale and justice and make-believe found in companionable proximity to one another. To say it was the finest theatre in London was as pointless as electing a best church – they all served different creeds, and one was as good as another – but it was magnificent, even to an eye less partial than hers. Built only as an afterthought on a leftover plot of land that backed onto Wyndham’s, to which it was still linked by a footbridge, the New was nevertheless a splendid example of clas-sical design, its Portland stone facade, bold ornamentation and giant pilasters giving a dignity and permanence to the elusive trick of entertaining the public.

Number 66 St Martin’s Lane would be Josephine’s home for the next few days, as it often was when she visited London. It had 31