Four

‘Have you heard?’ said Ruby. ‘Someone was murdered in one of the girls’ digs.’

Max stopped, halfway through applying greasepaint.

‘What?’

‘You know Betty, the one with sausage curls? Well a girl was killed in her lodgings. Murdered in her bed, Betty said. She’s very upset. Janette too. They share a room.’

‘Where are these lodgings?’

‘Hove. Off Western Road. Do you think that’s why Edgar couldn’t come tonight?’

Marvelling afresh at the way that Ruby managed to turn everything, even murder, back to herself, he said, ‘I expect so. Poor old Ed. Another crazed killer on the loose.’

‘Do you think that’s who it was?’ Ruby gave a shiver. ‘A crazed killer.’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘It’s usually the boyfriend or the father, someone like that. Murder’s pretty boring on the whole.’

‘Edgar caught the Conjuror Killer,’ said Ruby. She was almost the only person who still used this name. Max and Edgar talked about the case as little as possible.

‘With a bit of help from Diablo,’ said Max. ‘Did you know he was coming tonight?’

‘Uncle Stan?’ Ruby brightened. ‘I can’t wait to see him.’

‘He’s with his landlady friend, Queenie.’

‘What about your landlady friend?’ said Ruby, looking at herself in the mirror.

‘She’s coming,’ said Max, watching Ruby’s refection. She was so pretty, with her dark hair and brown long-lashed eyes. Did she look like him? He couldn’t see it although Joe said that they were ‘two peas in a pod’. He couldn’t see Ruby’s mother, Emerald, in her either. Mind you, he could hardly remember what Emerald had looked like when she was young. She had been pretty, though, he was sure of that. When he thought of that far-off summer in Worthing, when he and Emerald had fallen in love, he could only picture impossibly good weather, making love on the beach, walking hand in hand along the promenade while the band played. He couldn’t recall actual details like the colour of Emerald’s eyes, though, curiously enough, he could remember the name of the python who had been her partner in the act. It was called George. Secretly he thought that Ruby probably resembled his mother, an Italian opera singer, who had died when he was six.

Ruby turned and grinned at him. She had an irresistible smile, with dimples appearing in each cheek.

‘We’d better put on a good show then. Especially as the girls might be a bit below par.’

 

Peggy and Brenda didn’t seem to be able to take in the news at first. ‘But we only saw her on Thursday,’ said Brenda, a solid-looking girl with a fringe and pale, rather protuberant, eyes. ‘We went to the flicks together.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Emma, ‘but we need to get an idea of Lily’s last movements. Would you mind answering a few more questions?’

‘No,’ said Brenda. She started to rearrange a group of glass animals on her bedside table. Peggy and Brenda’s room was the same size as the one shared by Betty and Janette but it was much more homely. There were chintz curtains at the window and matching pink candlewick bedspreads on the twin beds. The bedside table also had a ruffled chintz skirt. Emma wondered whether one of the girls had made it themselves—it didn’t seem Edna’s style somehow. The ornaments were obviously Brenda’s: a horse with a green tail, an elephant with an orange trunk, three rather unpleasant-looking monkeys that were welded together. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Emma had never really gone in for toys herself, even as a child. Her favourite companion had been an imaginary horse on whom she used to gallop for hours, cantering down the corridors at school and changing into an embarrassed skip if she saw a teacher coming. She couldn’t imagine transporting a menagerie like this from house to house. But Brenda and Peggy had lived at Lansdowne Road for over a year so maybe it seemed like home to them now.

Brenda came from Shoreham, she told Emma. She’d worked at the local bank since leaving school but was offered the chance to transfer to the Brighton branch. ‘Senior cashier,’ she said, lining up the glass animals so that they could catch the light. ‘It was a real opportunity.’ She’d commuted from home at first but then Peggy, who worked at the same branch, had found the room with Mrs Wright and suggested that they share.

‘It’s a nice room,’ said Brenda, ‘and convenient for work. It’s nice to have someone to share with as well.’ ‘Nice’ seemed to be her favourite adjective.

‘How well did you know Lily?’ asked Emma.

‘Quite well. She moved in about the same time as us. She’s ever such a nice girl. Oh dear . . .’ Brenda reached for a tissue from an embroidered box (chintz naturally). ‘I just can’t believe she’s dead. Who would do such a terrible thing?’

‘That’s what we’ve got to find out,’ said Emma. ‘Did Lily ever talk to you about work, about her life? Boyfriends, for example?’

‘She didn’t have a boyfriend,’ said Brenda. ‘Like I said, she was a quiet girl.’

Being quiet doesn’t stop you having boyfriends, thought Emma. She had been quiet herself but neither that, nor going to an all girls’ school, had stopped her having several teenage romances. True, the boys involved hadn’t always been aware of them, but the emotion had been real enough at the time.

‘Betty said that someone used to leave flowers outside Lily’s room,’ she said. ‘Did you know anything about that?’

‘Oh, Lily mentioned something about it,’ said Brenda. ‘I don’t think it was anything serious though. She used to giggle about it.’

‘But you had no idea who it was?’

‘No. Every girl has something like that though. Someone used to leave love notes on my typewriter when I worked in Shoreham.’

But you haven’t been brutally murdered, thought Emma, so it’s not relevant.

‘Can we go back to when you last saw Lily?’ she said. ‘I think you said it was Thursday night?’

‘Yes. We’d been to the pictures. They were showing The Robe. Such a nice film, very religious. We came back at about nine. Lily went upstairs to her room but later I heard her talking to Betty and Janette in the hall.’

‘You didn’t go out and join them?’

‘No. I didn’t really know Betty and Janette all that well. They’re only staying for two weeks and . . . well . . . they’re on the stage. They’re not really our sort.’

Betty and Janette had been to the cinema on Thursday too, remembered Emma. She was willing to bet that they hadn’t seen The Robe. It was interesting that Lily, supposedly so quiet and shy, had apparently got on well with the two theatricals. She’d been interested in the show too, going in to watch a rehearsal and planning to watch a performance.

‘What did you do on Friday night?’ she asked Brenda.

‘Went to see my mother in Shoreham,’ said Brenda. ‘I left straight from work and got back at about ten.’

‘And you didn’t see Lily?’

‘No, the house was quiet. Mr Entwhistle goes to bed early and Peggy was out with Steve.’

But the house hadn’t been completely quiet, thought Emma. They wouldn’t know until they had the postmortem results but it was probable that, at some time during Friday night, the quiet girl in the attic bedroom had been strangled.

 

Bob found Peggy rather more congenial. She was a pretty redhead who, in happier circumstances, was probably the sort of girl who laughed easily. Today though, she was shocked and tearful, putting her hand over her mouth if she thought she had spoken too loudly or too cheerfully. It was probably a good idea to speak quietly, Bob thought. They were in the snug and, although they could hear Edna crashing about in the kitchen, he wouldn’t put it above her to listen at the door.

Peggy said that she’d liked Lily. Peggy, Brenda and Lily quite often went out together, to the flicks or to the Lyons’. She’d last seen Lily on Thursday night when the three of them had been to the pictures. They’d said goodnight but Lily had come down later to have cocoa with Betty and Janette. Peggy had been out with her fiancé on Friday night. His name was Steve and he was a printer at the Argus. They’d said goodnight on the doorstep—Mrs Wright wouldn’t let Steve come in the house after lights out—and Peggy had gone to bed. She thought it was about eleven. Brenda was already asleep. No, she hadn’t heard anything from upstairs. Shudder.

‘Was that when it happened? When Lily was . . .’

‘I can’t say,’ said Bob, shutting his notebook. ‘Thank you very much for your help.’

 

And then it was time to go upstairs. The DI was already there, standing thoughtfully in the middle of the room. Emma forced herself to look at the scene dispassionately: single bed with white eiderdown, bedside table with jam jar of flowers (red and white roses), chair, wardrobe, towel rail, chest of drawers, two windows with venetian blinds half-drawn. It was a big room, high-ceilinged and bitterly cold, the central light fitting swaying in a thorough draught. By the bed there was a large bloodstain on the bare boards.

‘Was this where she was?’ asked Emma.

‘Yes.’ The DI seemed to wake from his reverie. ‘She was kneeling by the bed, tied to the back of this chair.’ He indicated the cane-backed chair. ‘Her arm was tied to the back of the towel rail to make it look as if she was pointing.’ The towel rail was just a wooden bar between two uprights. It was standing at right angles to the chair.

‘Facing the bed?’

‘Yes.’

Emma turned to face the bed but all she could see was the wall opposite, painted cream above the wooden dado rail, green below. Why had Lily been posed in this way? What had she been pointing at?

‘Where was the box? The vegetable crate?’

‘Here. Beside the bed. I’ve sent it to the lab to see if they can dust it for fingerprints. There’s still some straw from it over there.’ He pointed to the corner of the room where wisps of straw gave a strangely rural impression, as if they were in a barn.

‘There aren’t many personal items,’ said the DI. ‘Just a novel and a letter on the bedside table.’

Emma went over to look. As well as the flowers in the jam jar, now dropping their petals, there was a letter in a lilac envelope and a paperback romance showing a yellow-haired nurse being embraced by a square-jawed doctor.

‘Can I look at the letter?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said the DI. ‘Wear gloves though.’ This was one of the DI’s obsessions, not touching anything in the crime scene without wearing gloves. Emma pulled on her leather gloves. The letter was dated a week ago. It began, ‘Dearest Lily’ and ended ‘Keep smiling, Mum.’ Emma felt her eyes beginning to prickle. She opened the book and found a dried carnation between the pages.

‘Someone used to leave flowers outside Lily’s room,’ she said. ‘Betty told me.’

‘Really?’ The DI looked up. ‘That could be very significant. Did Betty have any idea who it was?’

‘No,’ said Emma, ‘she seemed to treat it as a bit of a joke. Brenda did too. She said Lily used to giggle about it.’

‘Maybe,’ said the DI. ‘But that doesn’t mean that the sender didn’t have some sinister purpose in mind.’

‘Everyone says she was a quiet girl,’ said Bob, who’d just come in and seemed unwilling to touch anything in the room. ‘Quiet and shy with no boyfriends.’

‘That may be true,’ said Edgar. ‘Someone may have been attracted by her precisely because she seemed so shy and enigmatic. And she was a very good-looking girl. Look, her mother gave me this.’ He pulled a photograph from his inside pocket. It was a studio portrait showing Lily, three-quarter face, with her blonde hair flowing around her.

‘She was beautiful,’ said Emma. ‘She looks more like an actress than the two that live downstairs.’

‘That’s what her mother said.’ The DI held the picture up to the light. ‘She said, “Lily could have been on the stage with looks like that but she wasn’t interested in performing. All she wanted to do was work in a little flower shop.”’

‘Were these the flowers that were left outside her room?’ said Bob, pointing to the jam jar.

‘Maybe,’ said Emma. ‘But Edna said she saw Lily holding flowers when she came home on Friday. Apparently she often brought flowers back from work.’

‘We don’t have a time of death yet,’ said Edgar, ‘but Carter said he thought it could have been on Friday night.’

‘Brenda was visiting her mother on Friday night,’ said Emma. ‘She said the house was quiet when she got back.’

‘Peggy was out with her fiancé,’ said Bob. ‘She says the same.’

Emma opened the wardrobe door. Inside were two black dresses, maybe the ones that Lily wore for work, three tweed skirts and a formal green suit. There was also a black overcoat with a green paisley scarf around the neck. On the floor were black boots, padded with newspaper to keep their shape, some brogues and a pair of court shoes. In the chest of drawers she found jumpers and blouses, all neatly folded. Underwear was in the drawer below together with a lavender bag. No love letters hidden under the lining paper, nothing untoward or out of place; it was all so ordinary and unassuming that it made Emma feel nervous.

‘What was she wearing when you found her?’ she asked.

‘A white nightdress,’ said Edgar. ‘Linen, I think.’

‘There are pyjamas in the drawer here,’ said Emma. ‘Fleecy-lined ones. That’s what she would have worn on a cold night. I think someone dressed her in the nightdress specially.’

Bob was quiet and Emma thought that he might disapprove of her rummaging through Lily’s clothing but it seemed she had misjudged him. After staring at the bedside table for a few minutes, he said, ‘Where’s the letter?’

‘What letter?’ said Emma.

‘Mr Entwhistle said that Lily got a letter on Friday morning,’ said Bob. ‘It’s not here.’

‘I’ll get someone to search the dustbins,’ said Edgar. ‘Come on. Let’s go back to the station. There’s nothing more to see here.’