LIKE MANY LOCAL MEN WHO WERE TOO OLD FOR ACTIVE service but were still reservists, Ron Ellwood, a veteran of the Great War, had been enlisted as a guard at the camp on Prees Heath. There were over a thousand men incarcerated there, most of them classified as enemy aliens. As Jimmy had said, they were typically German intellectuals and professional men living in England who hadn’t got their nationalization papers in order. They had been swept up in the fear of invasion that gripped the country after Dunkirk.
Tyler liked and respected Ellwood. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one. Ellwood leaned his rifle against a tree and accepted gratefully.
“I picked up Bobby Walker about six-thirty. He lives on Green Lane, and we always take the Alkington Road to the camp because it’s faster. We’d just reached the crossroads where we turn when we encountered one of them Land Army girls. She was walking along the road, pushing a bicycle. She said her friend was their forewoman, and she was more than a half-hour late getting to the hostel where she’s supposed to pick them up.”
“They’re the girls who’ve been billeted in Beeton Manor, aren’t they?”
“That’s it. I was surprised Sir P. didn’t recognize the dead girl right off the bat. But then I didn’t either, did I, although I must have seen her in town.” Ellwood chewed on his lip. “It was the shock I suppose, and the mess the bullet had made of her face.” He drew in a lungful of smoke. “Well, the girl said as how she thought the lorry might have broken down seeing as it had done that before, and she was on her way to find out. She’d started off on her bike but she had a flat tire. She asked if we could give her a lift up the road a ways to see. We had a bit of extra time, so I said as how we could do that.” Another deep draw on the cigarette.
“What’s the girl’s name, by the way?”
“Rose, Rose Watkins. A little bit of a thing she is. You’d think she was no more than thirteen to look at her.”
“That’s not her bike, is it?” A maroon-coloured woman’s bicycle was lying by the hedge a few feet away.
“No, it isn’t. That one was there when we come up. We put Rose’s in the back of the lorry.”
Tyler went to have a look. “This one is certainly a good one. Not an official government issue like most of the girls have to ride. The back light is cracked, but other than that, it’s in good shape.” The cloud of flies was getting more dense and a few curious birds had hopped closer.
“Did Rose see the body?”
“She did. Me, I knew right off something serious had happened.” He gave a little cough. “I seen action in the last war, as you know, Tom, and there’s a stillness to a dead body that is unmistakable. I told Rose to stand back while Bobby and me checked, but she wouldn’t. She came right up. Course, she turned white as a sheet when she saw all the blood. I was afraid she was going to faint on us. But she’s tough for all she’s small. She’s a Londoner.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She just sort of cried out, ‘Oh no, Elsie. I warned you.’ ”
“Warned her about what?” Tyler asked.
“I don’t know, Tom. She never said. Bobby had got into quite a state, shaking like a leaf. Like I said, this wasn’t the first time I seen a dead body and I was thinking more clearly. Not that it wasn’t a shock, it certainly was, young girl like that. I thought at least we could get Sir Percy, seeing as he’s a magistrate, and he’d be likely to be on the telephone. Somebody had to stay here and I thought it best be me, so I bundled Bobby into our lorry, telling him to take the lassie back to the billet. I ordered her not to talk to anybody. Just to say there’d been an accident. No sense in upsetting everybody until we know exactly what’s happened here.”
“Good thinking, Ron. You kept a cool head. What time was it when you found her?”
“It was about ten to seven. I’d say death had definitely occurred within the previous hour. She were still warm but the blood was no longer flowing.”
Suddenly, there was a frantic flapping of wings and loud cawing as a flight of rooks flew out of the trees. Tyler jumped, aware his nerves were on edge. Ellwood tensed as well.
“That’s probably Dr. Murnaghan coming, but I don’t want anybody else driving through here. There’s some police tape in my car. We can use that to create a barrier across the road. We’ll stay here until reinforcements arrive.”
He held out his hand to pull Ellwood to his feet.
“I don’t remember anything like this happening here since Mrs. Evans clobbered her husband with a plank,” said the corporal.
Tyler gave him a grim smile. “Rhys Evans was a miserable bastard who deserved what he got. It’s hard to see Elsie Bates deserving this.”