Murder on the Home Front (7 page)
Read Murder on the Home Front Online
Authors: Molly Lefebure
In other words, the society which had hesitated to birch them had no hesitation in hanging them.
Which seems a rather back-to-front way of going about things.
“In the Spring a Young Man’s Fancy”
Spring 1942 was made for romance. There were a great many young men home on leave, the most beautiful sunshine, all the birds singing, and all the trees bursting into bud all at once, like delicious green explosions of summer.
My days were spent happily around the mortuaries, on my job, my evenings gaily gallivanting around town with my escorts; a perfect combination of work and pleasure. Unfortunately the escorts were, almost invariably, appalled by the idea of my work and read me long, severe, prosy lectures on the subject. (Males have a weakness for long, severe, prosy lectures.) When they had finished their leaves and returned to the wars they bombarded me with long, prosy, lecturing letters.
My girlfriends, on the other hand, all envied me my job, and were constantly pressing me for gruesome details. “Do give me the latest news of any
good
murders, darling,” they would write. “And how are the mortuaries getting on? Still as great fun as ever?”
Whereas a boyfriend’s epistle would say, “Next time you write, please don’t mention stiffs. They give me the willies…”
But oddly enough, when the sexes get together at my flat over a supper party or some such, I discover that they reverse the process. If the subject of crime arises, it is the males then who clamor, in true he-man style, to hear gruesome details, see photographs, while the women, much to my interest, stage an equally determined volte-face.
The little lady who, when alone with me, adores discussing a case in full detail and laps up any pictures I have, now, for example, curls up in a chair and says weakly, “Oh Molly,
please
, not more about that awful job, I can’t bear it.”
“Poor Mary,” murmurs her husband, or boyfriend, as the case may be, bending protectively toward her, “she just can’t stand that sort of thing. She’s not like you, Molly. You’re tough, but Mary’s very feminine and foolish.”
Mary flutters her eyelashes, exchanges a meaningful look with me, and then heaves a long long feminine foolish sigh.
“I was going to show Mary my pictures of the Wigwam case,” I say briskly and brightly. “Wouldn’t you like to see them, Mary darling?”
Mary, who last time she came to visit me, alone, could not be torn away from the Wigwam pictures, now gives a cry and waggles her head in violent protest, covering her eyes.
“For heaven’s sake,” says her husband, “if you show her things like that she’ll never get over the nightmares. She just can’t stand that sort of thing. I don’t mind seeing ’em” (bracing himself, like Gary Cooper going to shoot up a posse), “but Mary’d better hide her face, she can’t stand that sort of thing. She’s very feminine and foolish…”
Women are much harder-boiled than men, but they’ll fight to the last ditch before they let the men know it…
To return to Spring 1942. One evening I was getting ready for a stroll on Hampstead Heath with a Forces Françaises Libres, a young man who liked to lean over the rather muddy waters of Ken Wood Lake and recite Verlaine with great meaning. I was in the middle of doing my hair when Keith Simpson came through on the phone, exclaiming happily that as it was such a fine evening, and as there was a very interesting shooting case at Wandsworth mortuary, he proposed to pick me up in the car and then drive over to Wandsworth to spend an hour or so sorting out the case with the CID.
It was a strict rule with me my job always came first—and, of course, to be honest, I felt much more inclination to spend the evening at Wandsworth mortuary sorting out an interesting shooting case with the CID than meandering beside Ken Wood Lake with a youth gloomily chanting:
“Un grand sommeil noir
Tombe sur ma vie;
Dormez, tout espoir,
Dormez, toute envie!”
So I rang the Forces Françaises Libres and explained to him that Ken Wood must be some other time, as a CID case had suddenly etc., etc. A voice from the other end of the line demanded with Gallic point, “But why, why do you not prefer me to a corpse?” Then came the customary lecture, and I made my stock speech about finding my work absolutely fascinating, whereupon the FFL burst into furious yowls, said some very nasty things about necrophilia, and ended abruptly and rather hysterically, exclaiming, “There must be something
WRONG
with you…to prefer a corpse…it’s so unnatural…you wait, when next I come home on leave I will
SHOW
you!”
Shortly afterward I was well on the way to Wandsworth—and I suppose the FFL was comforting himself with appropriate stanzas of Verlaine. Or, much more probably, a drink at the Spaniards.
The case at Wandsworth was very interesting. The body was that of a young soldier, found lying dead in a pond on Wimbledon Common, with a bullet through his head. The CID thought at first that it was a murder, but after a long and painstaking examination of the body Dr. Simpson found that it was a suicide.
Next morning we drove with the CID across the Common to look at the pond where the body was found. The CID had now learned more about the dead soldier than they had known the previous night. He had recently had VD, but also, which was worse, a series of army lectures on the subject, and these latter had so alarmed and depressed him that he had decided to shoot himself.
So he had gone to the pond and there, standing on the bank, had shot himself, falling forward into the water. A rather unusual suicide, which at first not unnaturally led to suspicions of murder.
Dr. Simpson spent some time at the pond, examining the ground around and reconstructing the soldier’s death. I stood on the bank, under the green springy trees, and looked into the water, where clots of blood and fragments of brain still floated, like exotic crimson water flowers. And I thought that if the soldier had only been a young middle-class intellectual, instead of a respectable working-class boy, he would have written a short story about his experience, and joked about the VD lectures, and built up his ego with it all, until he was bursting with superiority, like Maupassant and Hemingway rolled into one.
But, alas, he was a nice boy, that soldier, so he ended by blowing his brains into a pool. If only he had written short stories! For, as Somerset Maugham says, anything is grist to the writer’s mill. A pen, some paper, and anything, but anything, can quickly be worked out of the system.
Now every detective dreams of that great, big case which is going to come rolling along one day to bring him fame and promotion. And every crime reporter dreams of a similar great, big case, his own exclusive scoop, which will make him the idol and envy of Fleet Street. While pathologists (though, of course, in a somewhat more dignified manner) dream of that great, big case which will turn up one day, to make Spilsbury with his Crippen, and Glaister and Brash with their Ruxton, look slightly insignificant. And every pathologist’s secretary dreams of being around with her chief when that great, big case comes rolling along.
Well, a great, big case did come rolling along, and it was great and big, but, in the way of this world, the detective didn’t welcome it because he was already up to his eyes in work, the pathologist was very careful not to become too enthusiastic about it because he didn’t want to be disappointed, and the gentlemen of Fleet Street, God bless them, never even got a sniff or whisper of it until all was well under way. Aha, there was I, sitting, literally sitting, on one of the most interesting corpses of the century, one of the best murders in this country’s crime history, and the Fleet Street gentlemen didn’t know. I would see them all at the Old Bailey, polite exchange of smiles, “good mornings.” Gentlemen, back in my little back room at Guy’s there is a corpse that is literally making murder history, and you just haven’t got a clue. Aha,
what
a scoop! (And the late journalist in me wriggled for pure joy.)
It all began very lethargically, on Friday, July 17, 1942. A squad of demolition workers were toiling in the hot sunshine, clearing the bombed premises at 302 Kennington Lane, Lambeth. Presently one of them pried up a stone slab with his pickaxe and there, underneath, lay the remains of a body. The demolition worker was not in the least excited by this. The remains, he thought, of just one more old air-raid casualty, or one more old corpse out of this here old graveyard—for they were working in a cellar which adjoined an ancient graveyard. He stooped to pick up the body; parts of the arms and legs were missing, the skull rolled loose as he moved it. Casually he dumped the body on one side while he and his mates finished clearing the ground around; then they went to the local for a drink, and it was not until the end of the day that their foreman reported the discovery of the body to the coroner.
The coroner’s officer next morning telephoned Dr. Simpson. “We’ve got a p.m. here for you to do, sir, and there’s some old bones been brought in too, bits of some old air-raid casualty. The coroner would like it if you’d just take a look at them after you’ve done the p.m., though there’s not much in them.” It was a hot, lazy July Saturday morning and, as we hadn’t much to do, we were able to go right away to Southwark mortuary.
When we arrived the p.m. case was lying ready for CKS on the p.m. table. (It was just some ordinary noninquest case.) West was standing by the side table, trying to improve the appearance of a large, very untidy brown paper parcel.
“What’s that, West, our old bones?”
“The old bones, sir. But I’ve just taken a dekko [glance] at ’em, sir, and they look a bit fishy to me. The DDI’s been told they’re here, sir.”
“Well, I’ll take a look at them in a minute, when he arrives, but let’s polish this p.m. off first.”
We were just finishing the p.m. when in came Divisional Detective Inspector Hatton, followed by Detective Inspector Keeling.
Mr. Hatton is a very big, round-faced man, devoted to what he called “hard facts.” He was, at that time, up to his eyes in work—black market offenses, I believe he once said—and so he very understandably hoped that the “old bones” were those of an air-raid casualty, or an old body from the graveyard, and nothing more. He frankly said so. DI Keeling said nothing. Keen, quiet, very interested, he watched CKS untie the string of the brown paper parcel…
The body…but one could scarcely call it a body. It was really no more than an incomplete skeleton, with a few withered tissues adhering. The skull was loose from the trunk. Dr. Simpson, at that first examination, could say no more than that these remains were of a person some twelve to eighteen months dead, and that without doubt they were female, as the uterus (womb) was discernible. The body was small, so he added it might be that of a girl, maybe a young woman bomb casualty. He asked to be allowed to take the remains around to Guy’s, where he could work on them at his leisure, for any attempt to reconstruct them would obviously require hours of painstaking work.
So West presently carried the parcel around to Guy’s for us.
When CKS and I went into the Gordon Museum on the following Monday, there lay the brown paper parcel, and this time it was Ireland who was contemplating it with interest. CKS untied the string again, and then we stood staring at this withered, dried thing. Corpses, subjected to modern methods of examination, do talk, talk plenty, but it did look as though it would require a miracle to extract much more than a peep from this one.
The first thing Ireland did was to exchange the lady’s brown paper wrappings for a more respectable white dust sheet. Meanwhile, CKS remarked, “Well, the probability is that she’s no more than an air-raid victim, but even so she will provide me with a very interesting essay in reconstruction; some entertaining spare-time work.” And he gave me a grin. “Spare-time work” was a joke between us by that time.
On that Monday evening, when I went home, I left him happily in the Gordon Museum, cleaning the body with little bits of rag. Next day it was greatly improved in appearance. Cleaned of the dust and grit and the withered tissue it looked, even to me, to be considerably more informative. Dr. Simpson pointed out to me that the body did not seem to be an altogether normal air-raid casualty. The skull, for example, had been severed from the trunk very cleanly. The lower jaw was missing, there was no scalp tissue adhering to the skull, except one very small particle at the back of the head—and bomb blast does not scalp its victims like that. Neither did any of the facial tissue remain, not even a small tag. The lower parts of the arms and legs were missing; these amputations scarcely tallied with mutilation by falling debris—the limb extremities might have been chopped off, but scarcely shattered. Lastly, there were marks of burning upon the head, down the left side of the body, and at the level of each knee.
Could it be that the remains were those of a murder victim, and that an attempt had been made to dispose of the body, and destroy all clues to identity, by chopping off the head, stripping it of all face and scalp tissue, removing the lower jaw, chopping off the hands and feet, and then burning? If so, the job had been crudely done; a body is a difficult thing for an inexperienced person to dismember; somebody seemed to have had a grisly time carving and hacking at this one.
