The London Blitz Murders (18 page)

“The body’s still warm.”

Agatha said, “The Lowe woman was last night’s victim. Mrs. Jouannet is tonight’s.”

“I think you’re right,” the inspector said. “He’s on a spree—one killing a night. But why in hell did he
miss
a night?”

“Perhaps,” Agatha said, “we should merely be grateful he hasn’t attempted to make that one up.”

Sir Bernard said, “We should get Fred Cherrill over here to do the fingerprinting personally, when he’s finished at the other crime scene.”

“Agreed,” the inspector said.

“May I enter?” Agatha asked.

Sir Bernard said, “Really, my dear, it’s just more of the same savagery….”

“Though not so redundant,” Agatha said firmly, “as to discourage you from spending half an hour with her…. I have an idea I wish to pursue. It may prove helpful.”

The two men exchanged glances, obviously curious what this helpful idea might be.

So, once again, she was allowed to examine the crime scene, and—since, as before, the police photographer had not been around to do his job yet—she took special care neither to touch nor disturb anything.

On a chair at the foot of the bed the woman’s clothes were heaped. On the dressing table lay a bloody safety razor blade—on the carpeted floor, an open, rifled handbag minus any money.

Doris Jouannet had been a slim, fair-haired woman, reasonably attractive. She lay sprawled across the double bed, clad only in a flimsy light blue dressing gown, which apparently had been ripped open by the frenzied killer. The bedclothes were disarrayed, and perhaps this time a brief struggle had preceded the inevitable.

Again, a knotted silk stocking was tightly knotted around the victim’s neck. From the expression on the dead woman’s face, Agatha felt this had been a fifteen-second death—one small, unintentional mercy. Though the killer had lacked a “small armory” this time, and had been confined to the use of a razor blade, the slashing to breasts, stomach and the sexual area were shockingly deep, and resembled the Lowe woman’s mutilations.

Agatha spent little time studying the corpse, however; that was better left to Sir Bernard and his forensics expertise.

But she felt sure Dr. Spilsbury’s focus had been again entirely on the body, and she brought her own feminine skills and instincts to bear as she looked around the dust-covered room that the late Mrs. Jouannet had bequeathed to the investigators.

She had an idea that the bequest would be a generous one…

… and she was correct.

On the dressing table was a hand mirror, on which fingerprints could be detected by the naked eye. This, however, was not as interesting to Agatha as the cleaner, distinctly formed patches on the table’s dusty surface.

Several objects had been removed from the table, obviously—possibly by the killer, who was, after all, a thief.

She summoned the two men and pointed out her discovery.

“That shape indicates, I would say,” Agatha mused, “a fountain pen. Or some other similarly shaped object. And this I would say is just big enough to be a pocket comb, minus some teeth. This, a wristwatch.”

An edge of excitement in his controlled voice, Sir Bernard said, “We need photographs of these. And measurements.”

The inspector was smiling, nodding. “The photographer will be here momentarily; I’ll do the measurements myself.” He turned to the mystery writer. “Agatha, your woman’s touch may make a real difference, here….”

“It’s the lack of a woman’s touch,” she said, gesturing to the dusty dressing-table top, “that made the difference.”

FEBRUARY 13, 1942

F
OUR MURDERS IN FIVE DAYS
.

All had been committed within two miles of Piccadilly Circus; but nighttime revelers did not abandon the West End
.

The United States military responded to the Ripper threat by expanding the number of their own police on the streets—snowdrops, the MPs were called, thanks to their distinctive white helmets, floating visibly above crowds in darkened Piccadilly
.

The tabloids were irresponsibly fueling the notion that the Ripper was an American soldier, and all over town mothers were telling their young daughters to beware of American soldiers, all of whom were rapists. In the meantime, the flowers of the night continued to bloom around the Americans and their superior pay. Some were neither streetwalkers nor call girls, rather factory workers and even precocious school girls, looking to milk an escort for all he could give and then slip away into the night
.

Not that all of the Americans were as naive as commonly thought: they dismissed British films as stodgy and boring; hated the beer; weren’t impressed by the dance halls; and missed being able to drive, even if on the wrong side of the street
.

They did, however, like the women—deemed them hospitable, and not as sophisticated as they’d been warned
.

There were those—Americans and Londoners alike—who considered the city in the blackout, particularly in winter, a thing of beauty, with a fresh tang in the air. Whatever the season, the Americans found London fragrant—a city with no central heating, burning cannel coal, that oily form of shale leaving its distinctive pungent odor behind. Even to locals, the city did smell surprisingly good—petrol fumes were largely gone, with so few vehicles on the streets. (Horse-drawn wagons had increased, with their own attendant fragrance.)

London in the moonlight could reveal the architectural wonders of classically constructed buildings; lovers—whether an engaged couple or a temporary alliance—might walk hand in hand along the moonlight-shimmering Thames or down a cozy side street to enjoy the blackout’s romantic calm… or was it a lull? A moon could light a bomber’s way, after all
….

The Blackout Ripper—the press continued to hammer that designation home—did not love the moonlight; he was shielded by darkness, killing in silence, targeting women of the street, though a respectable lady out alone, like Margaret Hamilton, might be mistaken for his chosen prey
.

If the good-time factory and school girls momentarily outnumbered the street-hardened prostitutes on the West End, it was because the latter understood they were the preferred victims, and were too scared to venture out, knowing that the streets they usually haunted were haunted by another predator who utterly out-classed them. He would strike again, the new Ripper, that seemed certain—the lust of killing had him in its malicious grip
.

Jack the Ripper murdered his eight or more victims over a period of well over a year
.

But even Jack the Ripper had never murdered four women in five days
.

EIGHT

SURVIVORS

T
HE WOMAN ACROSS THE DESK
from Inspector Ted Greeno in his small temporary office at Tottenham Court Road Police Station sat with her shapely stained-tan legs crossed and her arms folded over her considerable bosom.

Ten years ago, the features of her heart-shaped face would have rivaled any budding film actress; but now, at perhaps thirty-five, those features had hardened into a kind of mask, emphasized of course by her heavy makeup, from her phony beauty mark to the scarlet gash of her generous mouth; in the harsh light of the station house, the caked makeup was obvious and settled unflatteringly in pockmarked patches along her rouged cheeks. Her dark blue eyes were hooded and her light blonde hair was due not to a bottle but her own Nordic heritage, and for all her hardness, it was not difficult for Ted Greeno to understand why a mug might part with a few bob for her favors.

“You don’t believe me, do you, Guv?”

“A thousand pounds would see you pretty, Greta, for a good long time.”

One of the tabloids,
The News of the World
, had posted a thousand-pound reward for “information leading to the capture, arrest and conviction of the Blackout Ripper.” This had brought
the doxies out of the woodwork, and Greeno was using four men in as many interview chambers to thin out the hordes of suddenly cooperative ladies of the evening.

Greta’s story had been interesting enough to bring her to the attention of the inspector himself.

She claimed that last night—about two hours after the latest victim, Doris Jouannet, had been slain—a young airman had approached her at the bar at the Trocadero. He struck up a conversation with her and bought her a drink and a sandwich. According to Greta, the airman flashed a wad of Treasury notes her way and made “an indecent suggestion.” When she declined this offer, and left to walk toward her apartment, he followed her and shoved her into a doorway and said, “At least let me kiss you good night,” and when she said no, he began to strangle her.

“I struggled with ’im, kicked him in the family jewels, and he dropped something… his gas-respirator, I think… and I screamed bloody murder and he went runnin’ off, into the darkness, like a scared rat.”

That was the story that Greeno was now reflecting upon. Finally he said to her, “How can I believe your story, Greta, when it’s riddled with lies?”

“Did I do this to meself, then?” Greta Heywood asked, opening her pink silk blouse a button and indignantly gesturing to her bruises on her throat.

“No, but your ponce might have done.”

“I don’t work with no bleeding ponce!” she blurted. “I’m a one-woman business, I am.”

This was an interesting outburst for two reasons.

First, Greta had hitherto clearly avoided copping to any solicitation of prostitution with the phantom airman, weaving an incredible story of her “virtue” being challenged.

Second, she had inadvertently led Greeno to a relevant realization: none of the working girls attacked, at least those who’d taken the Ripper to their flats, had fallen under the protection of a procurer, or “ponce,” as girls like Greta called them. In many cases, a ponce would have been watching from a distance (perhaps with cosh in hand to help liberate the mark of his loot). In other instances, a ponce might share the flat, lurking in an adjacent room or behind a blanket draped on a clothesline as a partition.

So the Ripper had either been careful to avoid the procurers, or had been damned lucky.

“Greta, you’ll not be charged with soliciting. Tell me what really happened.”

“Well… it’s just what I said, or mostly was. I met this RAF bloke at the Troc. I already had a date I was waiting for, but this one was cute. So I told the bloke he could have a quickie, if he liked. So after we had a drink, we saunter across to that side street… by the Captain’s Table?”

Greeno nodded. “Go on.”

“I was leading the way with me torch. I snapped it off and we stepped in a doorway and he started in makin’ love to me. Kissing me. I don’t let just any steamer do such a personal thing as that…”

A steamer was a client, a mug—cockney rhyming slang: steamtug, mug.

“… but he was a pretty boy. Kind of sweet and shy…”

Could she be telling the truth? That might have been young Cummins she was describing.

“… sweet and shy, that is, till he started chokin’ me to death! Gor blimey, did I let him have it in the—”

“The rest of your story is substantially true, then.”

“ ’Course it is. What kind of girl do you take me for, Guv?”

Greeno allowed that one to slide past. Then he asked, “Did he really drop his respirator?”

“Swear on me mum’s grave, he did. I heard the clunk.”

“All right. I’m going to send you over to the Trocadero with my sergeant. You show him how and where this all occurred.”

The inspector put this in motion, then returned to the desk in the cluttered little office, where he lighted up one of his trademark cigars. A map of Central London with pins in the murder spots covered most of one wall, filing cabinets huddled along the other, and he sat facing a glass-and-wood wall looking out on the bullpen of constables and detectives as well as the receiving desk.

It did sound like Cummins. The other flier in the case, that Canadian, the one who had argued with Margaret Lowe, was in the clear: he had shipped out the day after Miss Wick phoned in her noise complaint.