It was only a week since the police appeal for help in The Times, but already there had been more than twenty reported sightings of Nancy Collett. The woman couldn’t have been more helpful if she’d laid a trail.

The press conference was packed with reporters and police officers, amateurs and local rags, pushing to get a place on the balcony. The case had kicked off. Not just the murder itself, the victim being an old war hero who’d lost his leg, but because the killer was his wife. And then there was the fact that Nancy Collett was a person of dubious reputation, who wore revealing frocks and dyed her hair. Also, though this was not said in so many words, she was of the lower class. The words “cold, calculated, shrewd” were written on the blackboard at the front, as was “femme fatale.”

“Before meeting the deceased,” announced the superintendent, “Nancy Collett had a part-time job as a hostess at a local nightclub.”

Much scribbling. This stuff was good.

“Her husband was ten years her senior, and before the war he worked as a solicitor. They were married for seven years. They had no children.”

Only a few jotted down these details.

“It is now understood that Nancy Collett spent several days with the body of the deceased before she made her escape.”

The superintendent said no more than that—he knew no more than that—but the pause he left was long enough for people to start filling it with ideas of their own. Pens went wild.

“She was seen by a neighbor leaving the house she shared with Percival Collett early on October the nineteenth. She was carrying three suitcases, and a red valise.”

The officer in charge of the chalk now switched on the projector and showed a slide of a red valise, just in case no one was sure what that might look like.

It was the red valise that was of particular interest to the police, said the super. It was believed the red valise contained vital evidence from the scene of the crime.

Following this, another slide was shown: a plan of the interior of the house, with a cross to mark the spot—the bed—where the deceased had been discovered.

“There were signs of suffocation, as well as a prior vicious attack with a sharp implement, such as a scalpel or knife.”

More intakes of breath. Fortunately, no slides.

“We believe Mrs. Collett made her way toward Fenchurch Street station, where she was seen waiting by a number of witnesses. At the station she asked for help from a porter but refused to let go of the red valise. It appears she then took a train to Tilbury to board a liner to Australia, but there were problems with her passport and she was delayed for questioning. We know she boarded the ship that same afternoon because she made lewd and inappropriate suggestions to several members of staff, while still holding the red valise.”

With the news of her escape, there was a jeer from the upper balcony. Men felt they had been outwitted by this woman, and they didn’t like it. But down at the front, some of the older hacks got ready to leave. “It’s over,” one said. “If she’s already in Oz.”

Then the superintendent said, “What we don’t understand right now is the role of her female accomplice.”

Those members of the press who had put away their notebooks took them out again.

Nancy Collett had been seen by witnesses at Fenchurch Street station greeting another woman. From the projector came a slide of a big lady without a head. So far, the superintendent explained, they were having difficulties finding any full images of this suspect. Her flat had been searched by the police and it appeared she was one step ahead. (No pun intended but, nevertheless, he got a laugh.) There was a flash of lights as press cameras went off everywhere.

“So what you’re saying,” piped up one of the older blokes, “is that you’re looking for a femme fatale and a fat woman with no head.”

Yes, said the super. That was about the sum of it.

“Bloody hell,” said a chap in the front row. “This is hotter than the Norman Skinner case.”

It was all over the morning papers.