Murder on the Home Front (6 page)

The lack of injuries suggested the dead woman had had help with the syringing, because women who try to perform these illegal operations on themselves usually fumble and cause bruises or tears. But there was nobody to come forward with any evidence of any kind, there was nobody to say what had really happened, and so, as in very many of these cases, the police drew a blank.

(The 1939 Abortion Committee reported that one out of every five to six pregnancies terminates prematurely, and that in some 40 percent of these there is evidence of criminal interference. This figure is probably an underestimate of the proportion of criminal abortions. But it is a social problem which, not being very glamorous, does not attract much attention. Moreover, to solve, or help solve, the problem would require straight and honest thinking on the subject of birth-control education. And as few people like, or are even capable of, straight and honest thought, the ignorance and criminal abortions will go on. Since the appearance of powerful bacterium-killing agents like M and B 693, penicillin, and the like, the gravity of the problem of deaths from septicemia arising from illegal abortion has faded to a remarkable degree. Abortionists have not been slow to avail themselves of the benefits of “chemotherapy.”)

CHAPTER
8

Thoughts and Episodes of Spring

For some time it had been increasingly obvious that mortuaries are not the coziest of places to work in during winter, but it was not until after Christmas that I really discovered what awfully uncomfortable places they can be.

Christmas itself was a warming time, with so many friendly faces and messages of good cheer I never noticed the weather. We worked on Christmas Eve, had Christmas Day clear, and were at work by eight thirty on Boxing Day morning. We spent the morning in the East End doing postmortems, then lunched at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, then did one case at Hammersmith. Then CKS returned to his family, I had a lively Boxing Day tea with mine, and in the evening went to the ballet.

But the weather which followed Christmas was very cold and raw. The mortuaries with their stone floors, tiled walls, refrigerators, and constantly opening and shutting doors can best be left to the imagination. I became numb as I sat shivering at my typewriter, and Dr. Simpson had to have very hot basins of water to dip his hands in as he worked, for the bodies, brought out from the refrigerators, were petrifying to handle.

I remember one especially awful occasion when we found ourselves doing an early morning double job in North London on an elderly man who had murdered his wife with a hatchet and then gassed himself. The meager morning light was just unfolding as we walked into the particularly uncomfortable mortuary. A chair and typing table had been thoughtfully placed for me—next to the refrigerator. The p.m. room door wouldn’t shut, so an icy draft blew in from the mortuary yard all the time and wrapped itself around our feet. To add a hideous finishing touch, the p.m. table was of such inefficient design that a stream of blood spilled continuously over its edge, forming a pool by my chair. Two or three detectives, wrapped up to the ears, stood watching the blood dripping from the table with horribly mesmerized faces.

The mortuary attendant, a wild-eyed old man, dropped instruments in all directions and teetered about the place in a kind of trance. Dr. Simpson’s taut expression and ice-cube voice indicated to me that he was inwardly seething. When we finally drove from that place I prayed never, never, never to go there again. And, thanks be, we never, never did.

To add to the delights of that winter, an influenza epidemic arrived. The postmortem figures mounted and mounted, until we found ourselves frantically busy. One Monday, for instance, I recall we did thirteen p.ms., attended one—very long—inquest at Stratford-by-Bow, and went to the Old Bailey. We ate a sausage-roll lunch dashing along in the car from Stratford to the Old Bailey. It was a nonstop day, from eight thirty to six. Tuesday was just as frantic, and by Wednesday evening we had done forty-two p.ms. in three days…

But spring always comes. The frosts vanished, the air grew warmer, the birds began twittering, the work slackened its furious pace. Gradually I peeled off the layers of heavy woolen clothing I had accumulated and began to look a little less like an Eskimo and a little more like my slender self. Pretty soon I was able to buy a spring hat and get out my spring coat.

Now those were the days of clothing coupons, and at all costs one tried to avoid buying a new coat, for a new coat left one practically bankrupt of clothing coupons for the rest of the year. My spring coat was by no means new, but I thought it would do for one more season if I shortened it, so the night before I intended wearing it I turned up the hem. The next morning was an early start; I met CKS at King’s Cross at seven forty-five. Just as I was getting into his car I discovered the hem of my coat still had white tacking-thread stitched all around it. White, on a blue coat. Yes, it certainly showed.

I tried pulling out the thread as we drove to our first mortuary of the day, but it was all so securely stitched and back-stitched—my own idea of what a good strong tack should be—I couldn’t move it. And, of course, we hadn’t been at work long before a call came to go to the Old Bailey. So there I was at the Old Bailey, complete with tacking, walking down Court Number One, trying to look very confident and poised and feeling worse than a low-grade tramp. But that wasn’t the end of the story, ah, no. A message was brought to CKS: Mr. Justice Humphreys wished to have a word with him. I accompanied my employer into the presence of the great, and I was so aware of that white tacking I felt it was all lit up with neon lights. What a dreadful experience—to meet Mr. Justice Humphreys the very day one’s coat was fastened with white tacking cotton. A nightmare notion come true.

Besides overhauling my spring wardrobe I did what every right-minded woman does in April—indulged in a new coiffure. This meant that much spare time had to be spent at the hairdresser’s, because I am a sucker at doing my own hair. So one Saturday afternoon I was under the dryer in a tasteful off-white and mushroom-pink cubicle, reading
Vogue
. The mortuaries were behind me for the weekend and I was all set for a chic, gay time in town. Or so I thought. But suddenly an assistant peeped under the dryer at me, “Miss Lefebure, you’re wanted on the phone.” Arrayed in white dust-cover and hairpins I hurried to the phone, to hear CKS asking, “Miss L., how far is your beautifying process under way?”

“I’m under the dryer.”

“How soon will you be dry?”

“In about twenty minutes.”

“Can you come out slightly damp and pick me up at Guy’s? There is a murder in Shoreditch mortuary.”

“I’ll be right along.”

The hairpins were removed and a limply becurled Lefebure scurried into the Underground. By the time I reached Guy’s I looked alarmingly like a French poodle. CKS kindly made no comment. We whizzed away to Shoreditch, and a few minutes after our arrival there I was sitting on a stone slab—originally intended for corpses—dashing off shorthand notes while CKS, Mr. Heddy, the coroner, Chief Superintendent Greeno (at that time an area superintendent) and DDI Kean bent over the body on the p.m. table.

The only person who was ever tactless enough to mention my astounding appearance that afternoon was the coroner’s officer, and he couldn’t resist whispering to me, “Now, Miss Molly, I know what you’d look like if you were a Fuzzy-Wuzz.”

I would have liked, that afternoon especially, to have looked
soignée
and efficient, because it was my first encounter with that famous detective, Mr. Greeno, and as Dr. Keith Simpson’s secretary I did not want to create a poor impression with the high-ups at Scotland Yard. Moreover, the high-ups at the Yard all made terrific impressions upon me; indeed on first meeting them I was generally scared quite literally stiff. Mr. Greeno was no exception. More than anything he resembled a huge, steel-plated battle cruiser, with his jaw thrust forward instead of a prow. He spoke little, noticed everything, and was tough, not in the Hollywood style, but genuinely, naturally, quietly, appallingly so.

I found myself misquoting Hilaire Belloc, on the subject of the Lion—but it did just as well for Mr. Greeno:

“His eyes they are bright

And his jaw it is grim,

And a wise little child

Will not play with him.”

Thus was the area superintendent, Mr. Edward Greeno, when he came stalking into Shoreditch mortuary with two lesser detectives crunching on his heels. The grim light of battle glimmered in his eyes, and he started asking questions in a rather rasping voice that sent shivers down my spine. He was on the warpath, and I thought: “God help the poor fool he’s after.”

By the time the postmortem had been in progress for some ten minutes any sympathy I felt for the killer concerned in the case had dwindled away, for it was one of those brutal, senseless, ugly coshings which reek of stupidity and cowardly violence.

The dead man was an aged pawnbroker who had kept a shop in the Hackney Road, a poor, little, skinny old man. Nine days previously he had been beaten up in his shop by two men, who had got away, leaving him unconscious on the floor. They had dealt him five savage wounds on the head; the only thing which had, amazingly enough, prevented him from being killed outright was the felt hat he had been wearing. Dr. Simpson examined this hat, which had been brought to the mortuary, with great interest, remarking how astonishing it was that a mere felt hat could, to some extent, protect the head.

But in spite of the felt hat the blows on his head had ultimately proved fatal to the old pawnbroker and nine days later he died, and a murder hunt began.

Besides beating up the old man the thieves had also coshed, and killed, his dog, presumably to stop it barking.

During the p.m. Mr. Greeno showed us a big, heavy spanner, with which it was suggested the old man might have been struck. Certainly the spanner did seem a likely weapon, but, as it turned out, it was not the one the killers had used.

We soon learned the true story of the case, for within a few days of the p.m. at Shoreditch Mr. Greeno arrested and charged two youths with the murder.

Their names were Dashwood and Silverosa. Both were ex-reformatory boys, both had criminal records stretching back to their early teens. Civilized, enlightened attempts had constantly been made to convert them into good citizens, but without success. They had been given lectures and lessons and handwork and physical training and fresh air, and interviews with psychologists and dozens and dozens of reports had been made about them; everything had been tried, except a good hiding. Nobody had thought of that. Or, if anybody had thought of it, the notion had always been dismissed as impossibly barbaric. So these two young men had drifted on their merry way, using their Stone Age tactics without compunction, till finally they had bit an old man—and his dog—a little too hard, which removed Dashwood and Silverosa abruptly from the hands of the reformers into the incipient clutches of the hangman.

As there is no honor among thieves, and especially not among the younger generation of pseudo-gangsters, Dashwood and Silverosa both made statements in which each did his best to pin the actual violence upon the other. Silverosa said:

“Two weeks ago last Thursday I went with Dashwood to a café where we had dinner. He told me he had a gun and he showed me a revolver. He told me he was going to do a job. I asked him, ‘Where?’ and he said, ‘Anywhere, I don’t care as long as it is something.’ We went along the Hackney Road, and he said the gun was only for putting the frightening powder in. We were going past a pawnbroker’s. He said, ‘We might as well go and do this if you are coming.’ I said, ‘All right, only no violence.’ He said, ‘All right.’ We waited until closing time as it was early closing day and only one o’clock. We saw the pawnbroker come out and put the shutters up and go back into his shop and we walked in after him. I closed the shop door and when I turned around I saw the old man falling down. I didn’t see Sam strike him but I surmised what he had done. I said, ‘You silly sod, what did you do that for?’ He said, ‘I had to, he was going to blow a whistle.’ I wiped some blood off the old man’s head with my overcoat. I said to Sammy, ‘Well, we’ve done the damage, we had better do what we came here to do.’ We took some rings from the safe and off the table. We walked into Mare Street and took the bus to Walthamstow High Street…”

Dashwood, in his statement, admitted striking the old man, but tried to suggest that it was Silverosa who had started the struggle with the pawnbroker. His statement reads:

On Thursday, 30 April, we went to a pawnbroker’s…The dog started barking. I hit the dog between the eyes. George and the old man were scuffling, and we both jumped on him to hold him down and he started shouting. I said, “For Christ’s sake quiet down, or you will get hurt.” The old boy went on shouting. George said, “Look out!” I bent over the old boy to shut him up and he put his arms round my neck, I bent over him and hit him on the top of the head with the revolver…

Actually, of course, it did not matter which of the two had struck the fatal blows. Both had been present at the time of the murder, and therefore both were guilty of murder. But this was something beyond their stunted powers of comprehension. Less than uneducated, reared solely on a culture of picture papers, blaring radio, films, cigarettes, back streets, pin-table saloons, and easy money, eternally bored, fed to the back teeth with everything and everybody, including themselves, bad-tempered, impatient, and carrying great, great big chips on their shoulders, they were brought, like two sulky, bickering children, into court. They were at loggerheads with one another and they were soon at loggerheads with their counsel, the famous Serjeant Sullivan, with whose services they presently abruptly dispensed, saying they preferred to conduct their own defense. Their method of defending themselves was for each to accuse the other of striking the old man. Alas, they had no revolvers with them at the Old Bailey; they couldn’t shoot the judge, or frighten the jury, or silence the prosecuting counsel by coshing him on the head. They could do nothing except bluster and lie, and snarl and scowl at one another, and so they were sentenced to death and, in due course, were “topped,” as they themselves would have called it.