The London Blitz Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,41
a visit….”
“I’m Alice Wick. You must be Mary Jane! The good student I keep hearin’ so much about. Pearl’s right proud of you.”
“Pearl? My mother’s name is Margaret.”
“Just a nickname, love. Whatever’s wrong?”
When Mary Jane had finished explaining, the neighbor frowned and said, “Y’know, love, I noticed that parcel there, myself, this mornin’.”
“She might just not be back from the bank, yet….”
Miss Wick frowned. “Was she goin’ to the bank, dear?”
“That’s where she works.”
“Is it now?… Let me slip somethin’ on, and we’ll go find ourselves a constable.”
And within minutes a bobby was shouldering open the door to the flat, and the little dog flew onto the landing and jumped into Mary Jane’s arms, the girl kneeling to meet the dog halfway. She looked up and into her mother’s sparsely furnished one-room flat—no sign of Mum. On the bed, which hugged the wall lengthwise, a black comforter bulged, probably with tangled bedclothes. At the foot of the bed, some of her mother’s apparel was scattered, a dress, her coat, a little feathered hat.
Some other things were distributed around on the throw rug, near the side of the bed, but Mary Jane couldn’t make out what they were, exactly. She caught a glimpse of steel catching light from somewhere, though the curtains were drawn.
Funny. Her mother usually kept the tiny flat tidy—a holdover from her landlady days.
It just didn’t look… proper in there, somehow. The very stillness of the flat seemed unsettling to the girl.
“Officer,” Mary Jane said, as the little dog licked her face eagerly, “would you mind terribly, going in and checking for me?”
“I was going to insist, miss,” the bobby said, holding up his hand as if conducting traffic. “So if you’ll just wait here….”
The constable had an oval face with dark eyes set too close together, and wasn’t much taller than Mary Jane, a fact amplified by the tin hat he wore in place of the traditional tall helmet. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty. But his voice was both kind and firm, and he had a commanding way about him.
He entered the flat and Mary Jane saw him go to the bed and—though his back was to her, she could tell what he was doing—lifted up the black quilt. His head was bowed as he studied whatever it was on the bed; then he gently lowered the quilt and slowly—watching where he was going—came back out, his face very white.
“Mary Jane,” the bobby said, his voice soft, kind, which oddly enough frightened her, “that’s your name, isn’t it? Mary Jane?”
“It is.”
“Mary Jane, could you wait next door, with your pup, for a few minutes?”
He looked toward the neighbor, who nodded her assent; Miss Wick was wearing a white and pink housedress now, but her platinum locks were still in pin curls.
Then to the girl, the constable said, “There seems to be a problem in your mother’s flat.”
“What kind of a problem? What was under the quilt?”
The bobby turned to the blonde neighbor. “Do you have a phone, miss?”
“No.”
“I’ll use the box ’round the corner, then. Neither of you are to go into that flat. Is that understood?”
Miss Wick nodded.
He repeated it to Mary Jane: “Is that understood, miss?”
“Yes, sir.”
Miss Wick slipped her arm around Mary Jane’s shoulder; the girl was cradling the terrier in her arms like a baby.
The bobby’s footsteps were echoing down the stairwell as Mary Jane entered Miss Wick’s flat.
“Everything will be all right, love,” Miss Wick said, again and again, as she paced and smoked and occasionally looked at the wall separating this flat from the next. Early on she asked Mary Jane if she wanted a glass of water—“It’s all I have that’s suitable, dear, I’m afraid”—and Mary Jane politely declined the offer.
Sitting on the couch, playing with the terrier, Mary Jane pretended to herself that her mum would be showing up any time now, from work. From the bank.
But at the same time the girl could not banish from her mind’s eye that bulging black quilt on her mother’s bed, and the terrible white face of the constable who’d seen what was under there.
SEVEN
A WOMAN’S TOUCH
GOSFIELD WAS A CLAUSTROPHOBIC SIDE street whose chief attribute was not having been blown up in the war, as yet; a row of nondescript brick apartment buildings faced another, exchanging what struck Agatha as glaring expressions, as if each were slightly miffed its opposite would dare stand so close. Margaret Lowe’s flat was just around the corner from an intersection where a fish-and-chip