Murder on the Home Front (20 page)

During the days that followed we all became progressively colder and stiffer and more and more impassive. The nights were torn with bombs and mornings brought more and more bodies to the mortuaries. Especially in the Hammersmith area. At Hammersmith, MacKay chugged around faster and faster and more and more bodies came in.

Among MacKay’s assistants at that time were an affianced couple, and it used to intrigue me very much to watch them billing and cooing at each other as they busied themselves over the gruesome work, tying the identity discs on the bodies and exchanging happy smiles whenever they caught one another’s eye. There certainly are some queer folk around.

Even MacKay had to relapse into a short, strangled chuckle when he caught them beaming lovingly among the dead. “Put that in a book, Miss Molly. Ah, but nobody’d ever believe you.”

Of course none of these bodies should really have come into the coroner’s mortuary, but they overflowed into it in a torrent, till MacKay didn’t know which way to turn. Finally, Mrs. MacKay, a charming and indomitable Scot, came down to the mortuary to help her husband. She had never handled a dead body before, but MacKay was so tired he had to rest, so she took over from him. “There was a coroner’s case to attend to, so I came down here to the mortuary in the evening and locked myself in with the body. I thought, ‘If I faint, or cry, or scream or have hysterics or do anything foolish there’ll be nobody to see me or know I’m being so stupid.’ But luckily I was all right and didn’t mind it like I had feared I might,” Mrs. MacKay told me afterward, simply.

“I should think you’ve had enough of dead bodies now, Miss Molly, to last you a lifetime,” remarked MacKay, threading his needle with string, preparatory to sewing up the anesthetic death Dr. Simpson had just been examining.

“I’m beginning to feel a trifle that way,” I confessed. “What about you?”

“Yes, they’re even getting me down a bit.” MacKay sighed. “It wouldn’t matter if you could get a good night’s sleep in between the work, but you can’t sleep in raids like these.”

CKS had arranged to meet three American doctors at Hammersmith on one of these mornings. When we arrived we found that bombs had fallen on houses just across the road from the mortuary. Deep, debris-filled craters marked the places where the houses had stood. Up the debris mounds struggled Civil Defense Rescue workers, wearily but determinedly struggling to save people still lying buried. In the mortuary were fresh rows of torn and dusty bodies, and around the door of the coroner’s office stood the stunned-faced, agonizingly dry-eyed relatives.

Presently up drove a jeep, with three very smart American medical officers and a fresh-looking young driver. The officers were ushered into the mortuary, where they stood, bewildered, among the bodies. A short conversation with Keith Simpson ensued. The bombing had rather complicated our day, and it was decided that instead of accompanying CKS on his postmortem rounds it might be better if the visitors went to the Old Bailey instead. I was to go with the party, to take care of them. CKS added, with a twinkle, “Here you are, Miss L., here’s your chance to ride in a jeep.”

Like every right-minded girl I was curious to ride in a jeep, so I put on my hat and coat with alacrity and trotted out of the mortuary with the three officers; who, by the way, appeared scared stiff of me.

Now CKS was lecturing that evening to the Medico-Legal Society, with a “social” to follow, and I was due to attend both these functions. Therefore I was dressed in my very best—there being no time to slip home at the end of the working day to change. I was wearing, as part of my ensemble, a model black Paris hat that didn’t like winds. Also I had on my only pair of silk stockings. Delightfully suitable for cocktails, but not for a ride in a jeep.

The jeep was in the mortuary yard, minus its driver. We found him over the road, watching the Civil Defense men with the interested but slightly remote expression of a tourist. He and the three medical gentlemen entrusted to my care had, in fact, only just arrived from the States, and this was their first encounter with an air raid, or rather, the aftermath of an air raid.

“These bombs sure do a lot of damage,” said the jeep driver. I gave him the look which veterans give novices, and then we all went back to the jeep.

The right way to ride in a jeep is to sprawl and yet brace oneself against the lurches and bounces, holding on to anything available with both hands. But in a tight skirt, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes, sprawling and bracing both become virtually impossible. I had to cling on to my hat with one hand and direct the driver with energetic gestures of the other, for he, sweet youth, had never driven in London before, he had not yet even got into the way of keeping to the left-hand side of the road, and he had a distinct passion for driving head-on against streams of “One Way Only” traffic. This made the journey rather hair-raising, and by the time we reached Piccadilly I felt exhausted. All my muscles were aching, and I felt bruised all over, for I was bouncing about the jeep like a piece of popcorn. We were beginning, too, to attract some notice from people on the pavements. A jeep careering erratically down Piccadilly, bearing four Americans and one young woman, the latter holding her hat to her head with one hand, gesturing like a Boadicea with the other, and endeavoring intermittently, with nervous and futile clutches, to restrain her brief wartime skirts from blowing above her knees, was quite a diverting sight. It requires a good deal to embarrass me, but I began to wish I had never taken that jeep ride. Meanwhile, I tried to maintain my poise and point out interesting landmarks to the gentlemen, who all jerked their heads to look where I pointed with gratifying promptitude—including the driver, which was not so gratifying.

When we reached Aldwych, this jaunty New World personality plunged us, despite all my warnings and pleadings, full steam ahead into the oncoming tide of traffic, with the result we escaped several collisions only by mere hairbreadths, and finally caused a traffic block. I felt so terrible I just closed my eyes and thought, “Remember, when you are questioned by the police you don’t understand a
word
of English.” But somehow we sorted ourselves out of the congestion we had caused, and all the other drivers were very friendly and hands-across-the-Atlantic, and finally we were on our way again. Not for long, though, because I unwisely pointed out a famous church and the driver thought I was directing him and accordingly shot us into a cul-de-sac, from which we then emerged, almost as fast as we had entered, in reverse. A final ghastly spurt of speed, another frantic gesture from me, which the driver followed up with a misunderstanding swerve, and we found ourselves in St. Paul’s Churchyard, missing a picturesque old post by inches. And now two of the party decided they would rather see St. Paul’s than visit the Old Bailey, and the driver said he’d sure like to take a look at St. Paul’s too, so we all climbed out of the jeep, and I and the one remaining officer interested in the Old Bailey set off to complete the last short lap of our journey there on foot, while the other three climbed the pigeon-decorated steps of the cathedral.

The rest of the morning my officer and myself spent in Number Three Court, listening to the astonishing story of a young thing of fourteen who had made herself out to be seventeen and had had high jinks with an unfortunate soldier whom she had afterward brazenly accused of rape. My American was very impressed with the court’s traditional procedure, and extremely shocked by the young thing of fourteen. We were both pleased when the soldier was found not guilty. This case was then followed by a charge against an abortionist, and I suggested we should leave the Old Bailey in search of some lunch…

The Medico-Legal Society’s meeting in the evening was as diverting as my morning had been, but in a vastly different way.

I once heard the Medico-Legal Society described by a reporter as “a crime club that hangs out in Portland Place.” This is, in a sense, both true and wildly untrue.

The Medico-Legal Society is a very serious scientific society which meets once a month to discuss various subjects of serious medico-legal interest. These meetings take place at the Society’s very dignified headquarters in Portland Place. The distinguished medical and legal members of this society range from famous women Harley Street specialists to celebrated judges. At the time of which I write Sir Bernard Spilsbury was treasurer of the Society, and Sir Roland Burrows, K.C., the president. The reader will therefore understand why such an elevated society, formed to discuss expertly medico-legal subjects, can scarcely be dubbed a “crime club.”

On this particular evening, after a council meeting upstairs, everybody went downstairs to a small but very comfortable lecture theater, where CKS gave a lecture on the Dobkin case, illustrated by lantern slides, the lantern manipulated very smoothly by the invaluable Ireland. The lecture nicely balanced the scientific with the stimulating, and the audience greeted it with enthusiastic applause.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury was the intended second speaker, but he failed to attend because the previous evening he had been at his club, the famous Carlton, when a bomb fell on that august place, covering Spilsbury, along with the other members present, with a deluge of plaster and soot. Sir Bernard therefore excused himself from Portland Place and remained quietly recovering at home instead.

Dr. Simpson was kind enough to take me along to several of the Society’s meetings, for he knew how I liked going to new places and collecting impressions. At one meeting he not only pointed out a famous woman doctor to me, but also brought to my notice a vast “potato” in the lady’s stocking!

Perhaps she too had been bothered by bombs and hadn’t been able to settle down to her darning.

Many of the members who attended these wartime meetings were, of course, in uniform. Everything was done in a manner which was typical of Britain at that time: the meetings held early, because of the raids and the blackout, the members arriving not in their cars but on foot, their dress somber and simple, and everyone showing a firm, albeit quiet, determination to carry on with the monthly meetings and the erudite discussions of crime in spite of Hitler and all the bombs, blastings, hangings and blowings-up he could muster.

All the same, beneath this cool façade, nerves, by this time, were becoming a trifle frayed and people, from time to time, did rather odd things, as our daily work in the mortuaries revealed to us. One example of frayed wartime tempers, which I shall never forget, concerned a Lambeth costermonger family. They all lived together in a brave little Lambeth house: the old parents, their son, their daughter-in-law, and one or two other members of the family not specified. And after so many sleepless nights and narrow squeaks they were all beginning to get a bit snappy with one another.

The family tension came to a head during dinner one day, over the subject of the blackout. The local Air Raid Precautions warden had been complaining recently about the household’s blackout and had threatened they would be served with a summons if they didn’t do something to improve matters. The head of the household, a peppery old costermonger of seventy-odd, said it was all the fault of his daughter-in-law; she just didn’t bother to see that the blackout was properly done. Up jumped the old man’s son, husband of the allegedly careless young woman, and said he wouldn’t have his wife blamed for everything, his father could take his remarks back. Father, adopting a pugilistic attitude with raised fists and tucked-in chin, responded, “Even if I am turned seventy I can stand up
to you
.” Amidst alarmed, shrill exclamations from the womenfolk the two men exchanged a flurry of trivial blows, one of which, from the old man, caught the son on the head, whereupon, much to everybody’s horror, he fell to the ground and lay there motionless.

The poor old father, immediately overcome by remorse, dropped on his knees beside his son, kissed him wildly, and called to him, “Wake up, John, wake up!” But John did not wake up. Various efforts were made to revive him, but without success. Finally the father decided on hot, stimulating applications in the region of the heart and being of the old, hardy school, chose the family flatiron, heated on the stove, as the method.

The iron, very hot, was twice firmly placed on the unconscious man’s chest, but there was no response even to this drastic treatment. (Indeed, if he had been capable of response this “stimulation” would surely have sent him leaping to the ceiling.) The fact was that the son was beyond all revival. The doctor, when called, confirmed he was dead and the body was taken to Southwark mortuary, while the poor old father was arrested.

The body we found on the p.m. table at Southwark was that of a well-built man in his late thirties, with a clearly defined hot iron mark burned on his chest, just as if he had been a tablecloth or sheet on which a careless housewife had set down her iron while she turned her attention to something else for the moment. I stared at this burn in astonishment. “But what a thing to do!”

“Very old way of reviving people, a hot iron,” said West. “And guaranteed to make a chap sit up, with a jerk and all—so long as he isn’t dead.”

“But, West, I think it’s ghastly.”

“I told you before, Miss Molly, that these costermongers are a real rough lot,” replied West, with all the Cockney’s supreme contempt for costermongers—costers, contrary to popular belief, not being Cockneys, but of Irish origin. Upon the other hand I have met costers who are intensely proud of being costers, who trace themselves back, with a superior expression, to their Irish forefathers, and who would not be labeled Cockneys on any account. Personally, being educated by West, I am all on the side of the Cockneys.