The London Blitz Murders (9 page)

Even the modern blocks of two-story brick Bauhaus flats somehow suited the old-world atmosphere. Agatha’s apartment at 22 Lawn Road was like a small gabled house, and had been perfect and cozy when she and Max had shared it. Since her husband’s posting overseas, the place felt to Agatha large and cold, but that was half psychology and half the winter weather.

The two-floor apartment that was the Mallowan portion of the connected Bauhaus flats had come furnished—just as well, as after the bombing at Sheffield Terrace, all their furniture had been stored in the new Winterbrook squash court in Wallingford. These accommodations pleased her—the neighbors were friendly but unobtrusive (nary a question about “Agatha Christie” since she’d moved in)—and the building included a small unpretentious restaurant where she took many of her meals. She loved to cook, but when provisions were so hard to come by, a decent close-at-hand restaurant like this one was a godsend.

In the summer the Lawn Road Flats were most pleasant, with a garden ideal for little picnics; she was particularly taken with the bank of trees and shrubs behind the building, and in the spring, a big white cherry tree that rose to a pyramidal point presented itself, in all its blooming glory, just outside her second-floor bedroom window, encouraging her to rise with a smile even in wartime.

The only furniture she’d imported were her basic office accoutrements: large firm table and typewriter and hard upright chair for writing, and her comfy old easy chair for thinking. She set herself up in the library-style study—whose empty shelves stared accusingly at her until, some months later, she’d half-filled them with reference works, mostly medical and chemistry tomes—where (as was her habit) she removed the phone.

Oh, and one other thing: a spinet piano. She could not exist without a piano; life would not have been worth living. This she kept in the library as well, because intermissions of music between bouts of writing and thinking she found frankly therapeutic.

Her only company—outside of Stephen Glanville popping in twice or thrice a week, from a few doors down—was the Sealyham terrier, James. He was a playful pup, beautifully housebroken (James, not Stephen), and excellent company when she walked to Hampstead Heath, four hundred and twenty acres of delightful grassy common, perfect for picnics and walks among the wooded groves and open spaces. What heaven it was to sit nibbling an apple, gazing out at rippling glassy lakes where young lovers rowed.

But it was winter now, with snow on the common, and that left only work—work at the hospital by day (and occasional evenings), work by night in the library on her novels and stories and plays. Few would have guessed that for Agatha writing was a chore, as tedious as doing the dishes, as hard as chopping wood… harder—or that she would much rather have spent her time cooking or gardening or going on outings with (the absent) Max.

Or better still, being out on a dig with Max, lovely sun beating down, pearls of well-earned perspiration gliding decoratively over her cheeks, as she assisted the man she loved in his truly important efforts (as opposed to the trivialities of her own “career”).

And yet still, somehow, if not by nature then through the accumulation of time and effort, she had become a writer; and writing never left her. Even now, as she sat in the cheery, informal little Lawn Road Flats restaurant—Tuesday morning, a respectable-looking matron (A matron already! What a horror!) in sensible brown tweed and a cream silk blouse, remindful of a femininity she had not (yet) abandoned—she noodled on the plotting and characters of the next Poirot in a small black spiral notebook…

… not unlike the notebooks in which Sir Bernard Spilsbury recorded the clues relating to his very real crimes.

And that gave her a shudder of revulsive self-recognition, a shameful shiver of senselessness. Like Max, Sir Bernard did important work. His notebook entries dealt with real mysteries, not fanciful ones. Whatever useful purpose in this war-torn world might her work serve?

The only response she could come up with was, perhaps, a self-serving rationalization; recalling that RAF cadet she’d met yesterday, that brave lad whose life would soon be on the line for his country, Agatha knew that her silly little novels gave that hero-to-be solace, distracted him briefly from the problems of his real, very unpleasant world.

She wondered if that were justification enough.

Sipping her coffee (that she preferred the brew to tea seemed somehow unpatriotic), Agatha had another mental flash, suddenly remembering a dream she’d had last night. Usually her dreams left her within seconds of rising; other times she could vividly recall them long enough for her to record them in one of her notebooks… you never knew what mental trifle might prove useful in the writing game.

The reason this dream had come back to her in so whole a state (and she had no notion whatever what subconscious nudge had brought it suddenly to the surface) was simple enough: this was a recurring dream, a dream she’d had (variously revised) many, many times….

The nightmare dated to childhood and centered upon a figure she had come to term “the Gunman,” a handsome French soldier with a powdered wig, three-cornered hat, and a musket, his eyes a haunting, piercing light blue. Oddly, the figure in her nocturnal fantasies had never done anything threatening, much
less shoot the weapon at her: it was his very presence, specifically his incongruous presence, that frightened her.

This dream figure of potential violence initially had turned up in a children’s party, where he would enter and ask to join the game. Later versions found him sitting at a tea table with an otherwise benign group of Agatha’s friends and relations; sometimes, in an eye-blink, her mother or sister or a chum would be replaced by the blue-eyed Gunman; other times she would be walking along the beach with a friend and then, suddenly, he and his weapon would be beside her, instead.

Agatha felt strongly that there was no simplistically Freudian aspect to the dream—she had been very young when the Gunman dreams first began; and, anyway, she understood psychology well enough to know that if the figure had shot her or even threatened to shoot her, a sexual connotation might be drawn.

But Sigmund himself had said it, hadn’t he? Sometimes a banana simply was a banana.

Nor did she recall any storybook that she might have read as a child (or had read to her), whose vivid illustration of a soldier might have planted this seed of fright.

The most disturbing of the dreams had been during her marriage to Archie. Even before their relationship had begun to deteriorate, she would dream of blue-eyed Archie—in his uniform of the Great War—metamorphosing into the blue-eyed Gunman. Chilling how little difference there was between the fantasy figure and the real Archie, how small a metamorphosis was required.

Odd, wasn’t it? Even as a child she’d had an instinct that people were not always who or what they seemed, that even a friend or family member might become someone, something, sinister. Perhaps this was why she had been drawn to writing
mysteries in which violence and menace lay beneath the humdrum surface of everyday living.

“I hate to interrupt this reverie,” a familiar voice said.

She looked up at her friend and neighbor, Stephen Glanville, a typically devilish grin on that Ronald Colmanesque, dimple-chinned face. Both dashing and professorial in a light gray tweed suit with dark gray bow tie, Stephen had some folded newspapers tucked under one arm, and was leaning on the chair opposite her at the small table.

“Please join me, Stephen.”

He did. “You looked perfectly glazed over, when I came in. I trust you’re lost in thought, devising fiendish plot twists for our Egyptian mystery.”

Archaeologists were, by nature, a persistent lot.

“Actually, I’m fiddling with the new Poirot idea.”

“I thought you despised the little bastard—if you’ll pardon my French. Or in this case, Belgian.”

“Stephen—please. Whatever I may think of the little monster, he is popular with my readers, and their opinions count more than mine…. Shouldn’t you be at Whitehall?”

He glanced at his watch. “I’m due at the ministry in half an hour. I have time for a cup and a quick hello.”

A waitress brought Stephen tea, and he said to Agatha, “I’m glad I found you here.”

“It’s nice to be appreciated…. Why?”

“Then I trust you haven’t seen the press?” He folded open the newspapers, and a particularly vile tabloid was on top: the front page asked, LONDON PLAGUED BY NEW RIPPER?

“I don’t read
The News of the World
,” Agatha said, with prim disgust.

“Someone at the Yard must be on the payroll. Several someones, judging by the various stories.” The other papers had also picked up on the Maple Church and Evelyn Hamilton murders, Stephen showed her, though none as blatantly as the tabloid.

“Typically irresponsible,” Agatha said. “Two murdered women does not a ‘new’ Ripper make.”

“No, but some ‘confidential source’ has shared the fears of Inspector Greeno and your friend Sir Bernard that these killings may mean a Blackout Ripper is among us. Sells papers.”

“And creates panic. Disgraceful.”

“I know how you feel about the newspapers, Agatha….”

She said nothing.

She trusted Stephen knew not to enter forbidden territory. Even after all these years, the discomfort, the embarrassment of a certain newspaper campaign remained a palpable presence in her psyche. When she had fled her problems with Archie and his philandering, seeking sanctuary at a health resort, the press had treated her “disappearance” as major news, and then, when she had turned up alive and well (considering), had accused her of staging a publicity stunt.

From that time on, she felt a revulsion toward the press, a dislike for journalists and their undue, tasteless attention. She knew firsthand how a fox felt—hunted, the earth dug up around her, hounds snapping at her every step.

“You are the rare public figure, Agatha, who deplores notoriety. Most authors seek publicity.”

“The work is the work, Stephen. My life is my life. And my own.”

“I know. I hope I have not overstepped….”

“Not yet.”

He sighed. Sipped his tea. Sat back in the hard chair. Folded his arms. Said, “That’s why I have sought you out, to ask you one last time to reconsider the foolishness of involving yourself with Spilsbury and these Ripper crimes.”

“The
press
has designated them Ripper crimes. I do not necessarily think—”

He raised a hand, stopping her in mid-sentence. “I bring these papers ’round only to let you know what you may be in for. If the press detects your presence, even on the fringes of this matter, you may be in for an unpleasantness for which you are wholly unprepared.”

She frowned in thought. “Stephen… I admit to you that this had not occurred to me. Thank you for pointing it out.”

He leaned forward, touched her hand. “Then you have reconsidered. You’ll stay well out of this.”

“No. But I will take precautions to avoid journalists in the matter.”

His face fell. “Agatha… tell me truthfully. Does Max ever win an argument with you?”

“We don’t argue. We discuss.”

“And do you always prevail?”

“Certainly not. But then Max is my husband… you’re merely my friend.”

He chuckled. “With precious little influence, obviously…. Oh, I must run.”

He came around, kissed her cheek, and was gone.

Back in the flat, in the library, Agatha sat in her easy chair, making notes on the Poirot; but Stephen’s concerns about the press, his warning, lingered.

The telephone rang out in the hall, and she allowed herself to be interrupted; she wasn’t getting much work done, anyway.
The phone was on a stand just around the foot of the stairs. The caller proved to be Sir Bernard.

“I am taking you at your word,” he said.

“I would expect nothing else.”

“Well, our murderer has struck again. I’ve been called to the scene—over Soho way, not far from Piccadilly. Shall I come ’round and pick you up?”

“Are you at the hospital?”

“Actually I’m at my flat.”

Sir Bernard lived with his sister Constance on nearby Frognal Street; he and Agatha were practically neighbors.

“I could pick you up,” he was saying, “in a matter of minutes.”

“Please do.”

“Mrs. Mallowan… Agatha. I’m told it’s unpleasant.”

“It’s a murder, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” he said, with an air of understanding.

And they said good-byes and hung up.

Agatha had already assembled a crime-scene wardrobe. She had given it considerable thought, actually. The weather was brisk if not brutally cold, but she could hardly wear a fur coat to a murder—this was not, after all, a first night at the theater.

Nor did she wish to present either an overly feminine or schoolteacher matronly appearance. She chose a wardrobe that seemed to her suitably appropriate for detective work, and only hoped she had not inadvertently stooped to melodramatically theatrical effects.

The suit was a mannish pastel beige affair, jacket with cardigan neckline and patch pockets, skirt pleated front and back. To the Glen Plaid tones-of-brown woolen topcoat—boyish-looking with its flap pockets and raised welt seams on the sleeves and in back—she added a mannish wide-brimmed light brown felt hat with darker brown band.

The latter was enough like a man’s fedora to make her wonder if she might not be pushing her detective credentials; but it was the current style….

Sir Bernard, however, wore no topcoat at all. In his crisp black suit with his characteristic red carnation in its buttonhole, he might have been the best-tailored undertaker in town. He seemed oblivious to (or perhaps contemptuous of) the chill weather.

Agatha, who loved to drive and had a reckless streak herself, found the experience of being Sir Bernard’s passenger in his Armstrong-Siddeley sedan a surprising if not wholly pleasant one. For an individual who appeared the soul of moderation—she had seen no signs that he either smoked or drank—the pathologist took liberties with traffic lights and one-way streets that would have inspired fines and perhaps jail time for any mere citizen.