Josephine Bell
Doris Bell Collier (1897–1987) wrote her first crime novel, Corpse at the Mill, at the age of 32, after training to be a doctor. Although it failed to find a publisher, she had better luck with her next attempt, Murder in Hospital, which was published in 1937 under the name Josephine Bell. Hiding her identity behind a pen-name (Bell was her grandmother’s maiden name, and Joseph her father’s first name) was unavoidable, because the rules governing medical practitioners forbade any form of advertising. Before long, Bell established herself as a prolific writer of traditional mysteries, some of which made good use of her medical expertise; her first series character, David Wintringham, was a doctor.
After the Second World War, Bell was elected to membership of the Detection Club, and also joined the fledgling Crime Writers’ Association, founded in 1953. Together with Michael Gilbert and Julian Symons she co-edited the CWA’s first anthology of short stories, Butcher’s Dozen (1956), and her own work in the short form was characteristically professional. She served as Chair of the CWA in 1959–60. This story first appeared in the Evening Standard, and was collected in The Evening Standard Detective Book: Second Series (1951).
***
‘Come across, Steve,’ said David Wintringham, pouring his guest a generous brandy, while Jill handed him a cup of coffee. ‘Something is bothering you. Let’s have it.’
‘As long as it doesn’t involve David in another case,’ said Jill.
‘It can’t do that,’ answered Superintendent Mitchell gloomily. ‘The case is over. The chap was guillotined this morning.’
‘He was what?’ two voices cried incredulously.
The superintendent nodded.
‘Extradition case. They put me on to it. You must have seen it in the papers. Frank Hayward. French girl he picked up on holiday.’
‘I remember vaguely,’ said David. ‘Something to do with a cross-channel steamer. Tell it us straight, Steve.’
‘O.K., I will. Frank Hayward and his wife did a little motor tour of northern France this August. At one of the hotels they stayed at the proprietor’s daughter took a fancy to Frank and he to her.
‘Mrs Hayward didn’t suspect anything, but she played into their hands by falling in love in her turn—with the town where the hotel was. So they stayed there over a week, and visited it again for three days before setting off for their return to England.
‘These last days must have made Frank aware that he had taken on more than he could manage. He was careful, though. He never wrote the girl a line, and she only got his address through her father, who had kept the letter Hayward wrote him, asking for a room for the second visit. He had written this letter on notepaper headed with his English address.
‘The next thing we know for certain is what happened at Dieppe during the embarkation of passengers for Newhaven.
‘Hayward drove his car to the quayside, saw Mrs Hayward on board, where he had booked a cabin for her, as she was a bad sailor, and then walked along the quay to watch the car going into the hold. I forgot to tell you they were going by the night boat.’
David nodded.
‘They have old-fashioned steam cranes on the quay at Dieppe: very picturesque at night with the fires and the wisps of smoke floating back across the road lamps. Well, as Hayward watched the grappling-irons being put on his car he was joined by the girl. She was seen talking to him. She must have told him she was coming with him, could not live without him, something of that sort. The French are highly emotional, you know.’
‘They can take love very seriously,’ said David.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Mitchell with a disapproving glance. ‘The next thing we have for certain is that Hayward argued with the girl at the foot of the gangway for some time, according to the sailor in charge of it, and then he went on board. He gave up his ticket at the purser’s office, got a landing ticket, and stayed in the corridor near the office for a considerable time.
‘The girl must have come on board, and he must have intercepted her before she could see the purser. A little while after this she left him to go to the ladies’ room, but she joined him again afterwards.
‘They went on to the upper deck and through the door at the forward end of it on the side overlooking the harbour.
‘There was a drizzle of rain that night. It must have been both misty and dark out there. Aft of the door the rain-screens of canvas had been let down over the rails, cutting off any view of the harbour. There is always a lot of noise on the quayside near a boat about to leave. I don’t suppose anyone heard them out there. No passengers took seats on deck that night, so probably no one came near them at all.
‘At some point in their talk Hayward must have attacked the girl and she must have slumped across the rails of the foredeck. He must then have pitched her overboard into the harbour.
‘Directly afterwards he went back through the door to the other part of the deck, making his way down to his wife’s cabin.
‘On the way to the cabin he took off his mackintosh, which he had worn up till then, folded it inwards and carried it into the cabin over his arm.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘Because he had discovered when he got to the lighted part of the deck that there were fresh white-paint stains on it. The rails of the foredeck were covered with fresh paint. If there was a notice they can’t have seen it, but in any case no one was expected to go out there in such weather.’
‘Then the girl’s clothes must have had paint on, too,’ said Jill.
‘They did. He must have known that, and he hoped to conceal his mackintosh. But he had been away from that cabin too long; his wife was annoyed with him, and in the close air, of course, she detected the smell of paint at once.
‘She had a look at the stains after the ship started. Hayward told her he got them on the quay when he was watching the car go on board. He could not stop her taking the mac to a cleaner when they got home, which clinched that bit of evidence.’
‘Now for the discovery,’ said David.
‘The girl’s body was picked up next morning early, floating in the harbour, only a few hours after her death. The post-mortem showed her lungs to be full of water, and it also showed her neck was broken.’
‘Did she hit anything on the way down the ship’s side or in the water?’
‘There was no wound of any kind on her face or head.’
‘Mr Hayward must have knocked her unconscious and overdid it,’ said Jill. ‘He would want to stop any chance of her resisting being pushed overboard, screaming or holding on to the rail.’
‘I doubt if anyone would have heard her. But, yes, the paint stains on the front of her costume suggested that she had slithered down the rail. There was no paint on her hands, though.’
‘How was Hayward incriminated?’ asked David.
‘She had a handbag on a strap over one shoulder and hanging under the other arm. It had not come away from the body. In it were found a slip of paper with Hayward’s name and English address still visible, two traveller’s cheques, no currency either French or English, no ticket for the journey.’
‘Queer she had no ready money.’
‘It might have been in coins in her pocket and fallen out. She had the traveller’s cheques.’
‘But no ticket. Apart from the paint, which is not conclusive, how do we know she was really on board? Or if on board, that she did not commit suicide in the harbour?’
‘Because in the right-hand pocket of her jacket she had a landing ticket.’
‘Oh, but,’ said David, ‘you said she never got to the purser’s office!’
‘She got to the ladies’-room,’ said Jill. ‘That’s why you knew she must have gone there, isn’t it? Because the stewardess takes your boat ticket and gives you a landing ticket, a yellow one—the others are brown or white.’
‘Quite right,’ said Mitchell approvingly. ‘And Hayward didn’t know that, or he would have taken more trouble. The fact that she had no railway ticket on from Newhaven suggests she intended to go with Hayward in the car or take a ticket when she knew exactly where he was going.
‘She didn’t trust him, obviously. But her having a landing ticket and traveller’s cheques point against suicide very strongly. Everyone was agreed on that. Besides, a girl with a broken neck can’t very well jump off a ship, can she?
‘I was in charge of this end of it, and we got the mackintosh business straight, so there was nothing for it but to extradite Hayward when the French asked for it.
‘There was a lot of excitement at the trial. The prosecution brought in a maid from the hotel who had been a confidante of the girl’s—the mother was dead—and not a very sensible adviser. She saw it all as a first-class romance and at the same time, with French hard-headedness, as a source of future profitable blackmail. For all that the judge was obviously on her side. They found him guilty, naturally, and I hardly blame them. Unpleasant type. It was a bit hard on him having the guillotine, though. Nasty old-fashioned method, the knife.’
‘Quite,’ said David. ‘It was really very bad luck, since it was not he, after all, who killed the girl.’
‘David!’ cried Jill. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was afraid of this,’ said Mitchell, ‘when I started talking.’
‘Like the cranes at Dieppe and the execution method,’ said David, ‘the inquest must have been a bit old-fashioned, too, and in more than one sense of the word. Anyone who has their lungs full of water and a broken neck as well must have got them in that order, and no other.’
‘Oh!’ breathed Jill.
‘Who picked her up out of the water, and finished her off, and why?’ David asked sternly.
‘The assistant who came over there with me,’ said Mitchell with a sigh, ‘was a man who had been in the Commando raid on Dieppe. He was left behind severely wounded on that occasion, and for eight months he was looked after by the Maquis.
‘He was hidden in the house of a longshoreman of about his own age who had been invalided out of the French Army for TB at the start of the war and had kept out of the German conscripted labour force for the same reason.
‘My assistant and I both thought the way you did about the girl’s death, and as he speaks the lingo and wanted to look up his old friends anyhow, I gave him a free hand. I don’t know if it was this actual man or another, but my chap told me the one who did it was desperately poor, as most of them are except the racketeers; his family of young children was practically starving.
‘He was in his boat in the harbour that night; they go scavenging for anything saleable to exchange for food. He saw the girl thrown over. He picked her up and found she was not breathing, though her heart was still going.
‘She had money; four thousand francs and a couple of English pounds. He took it. Then she showed signs of coming round, so he thought it would be kinder to finish her off quickly than to put her back in the water to go on drowning.’
‘Your assistant refused to name this man?’
‘Absolutely. They had saved his life, and, besides, he felt a bit responsible. You see, he spent some of his eight months after he recovered teaching them Commando ways of killing.
‘If the French doctor had been a bit more up to date at the inquest he would have recognised the method used in breaking the girl’s neck. But he didn’t. It worries me, though, when I think of Hayward’s end, and that the girl might have been saved.’
‘Don’t let it,’ said Jill soothingly. ‘Hayward meant to kill her, so he was a murderer, by intention.’
‘She was asking for it, too,’ said David. ‘The French often take love too seriously.’