Murders in the Blitz (20 page)
‘I miss my mum,’ they’d snivel in dismal lament, ‘I don’t like the country, it’s dirty, wet and cold and they make us work so ‘ard.’
‘There, there,’ said Grace, patting shoulders in her motherly fashion. ‘You’ll get some leave soon and go home for a break. Write to your mum, that’ll make you feel better. And don’t forget you’re doing this for the country while the men are away fighting.’ Then she’d give them a cup of tea and a scone before sending them, much happier, back to work.
Even Grace’s encouragement and warm advice didn’t stop the girls’ grumbling. Some of the farmers didn’t know how to handle their Land Girls. They tended to forget that they couldn’t boss them around and bellow at them in the way they did the farm lads they’d known since they were little boys. The girls always had something to moan about: the lack of food, the shortage of decent booze in the pub (there was only so much watered-down beer anyone could tolerate), the hard work and the scarcity of young men to flirt with or take some of the burden of labour from their shoulders. As a result they were often in a state of obstinate rebellion; full of resentment and unafraid to voice their discontent.
‘Tell that bleeding git he can stuff his turnips where the sun don’t shine,’ one shouted to her friends. ‘And I’m not lugging another barrow load of shit today neither,’ as she stormed off to her billet.
Occasionally some poor lad came home from the fighting, on leave or to recuperate from a wound, and he’d be besieged by young women eager for male attention. Even the young men not fit to fight or in reserved occupations were surrounded by lonely girls, although they were looked on as skivers by the older inhabitants.
The local stately home, the country seat of the absent Earl, Lord Passmore, had been requisitioned to serve as a nursing home for the recuperation of wounded Forces’ personnel. Sometimes these soldiers, when they were well enough, would stroll into the village and sample the beer in the Royal Oak. Eve had met one or two of them after she’d slipped out of the house in the evening when the children were finally in bed. The pub wasn’t much like The Bush back home, much smaller and certainly much more rustic. But on chill, damp evenings there was always a fire in the hearth and it was a relief to have some adult male company, even if they were either well over forty or unfit for service, albeit temporarily.
Eve found that she missed Pete, her policeman boyfriend, much more than she’d thought she would. He might be serious and full of a sense of duty; a bit strait-laced to be honest, but he was loyal and a wonderful dancer! How she missed their Wednesday night visits to Hammersmith Palais. The loss of Charlie’s anarchic banter and unscrupulous ways had also left a huge void in her life. She missed the tales of her best friend’s exploits with his string of blondes and the underhand dealings of the black market. Charlie occasionally sent a pre-paid postcard with a scribbled message, usually a dirty joke he’d heard or a scrap of scurrilous gossip from the market. These notes may have been brief, but they made her laugh and feel closer to home.
One thing about this village, thought Eve gratefully when she was trying to recognise the positive side of being there, is that it’s the least likely scene for murder. That is unless she finally lost all patience with the mischievous evacuees and strangled one of them.
Eve began to get used to the sights and scents of the countryside, but found it hard to come to terms with the silence of the night and the clear freshness of the air, when it wasn’t raining, in the early morning. In the course of that first week Eve met more people from the village as she walked home from the shop with the groceries. She’d stirred up some curiosity amongst the locals and they were eager to speak to her. A visitor from London was a rare treat and they were avid for gossip, the more sensational the better. Grace briefed her on the circumstances of some of the locals.
Mrs Gough, a friendly soul who looked after the church, had two boys away from home, one at the Front and another with the North Atlantic convoys. The poor woman was in a constant state of anxiety only slightly relieved by a weekly censored letter from one boy or the other. Eve pictured her girls back at the Censor’s office in Mount Pleasant scanning the letters for indiscretions, information that might help the enemy, and passing thick black ink through the words.
Mrs Miller, a widow who’d lived in the village all her life, had lost her only son, a naval rating, some months ago, the news brought to her by the soulless telegram that had become the most dreaded communication imaginable. Since then, Mrs Gough reported, she’d become a virtual recluse and rarely ventured out anywhere except to church on Sunday, her spirit broken by loss.
Eve met Fred Gardiner, a rotund, jovial middle-aged man, in the pub one evening after supper, and they had an enlightening conversation. He was another long-standing inhabitant of the village − living in one of the more modern houses built on the outskirts during the 30s. But unlike many other villagers, he had no children away at the war as his own two offspring were still at school.
‘I’m lucky, I suppose,’ he said, ‘they won’t be in this war, thank the Lord.’
Fred’s chubby face flushed redder and redder over the course of the evening and his jokes grew more hilarious as he recalled stories he’d heard in the town hall in Highston where he worked. Who would have thought that a busy office, populated mostly by women, as the Censor’s Office in London was, could be the source of so much bawdy humour? Even Eve, as broad-minded as anyone, was shocked by some of Fred’s more hair-raising tales. But at least it gave her comical things to write to Charlie. She wasn’t sure that Pete would appreciate the humour.
‘That Fred Gardiner’s a cheerful chap,’ she commented to Grace when she got home. ‘He kept us all in fits at the pub.’
‘Yes, he should be. He’s got a lovely new young wife and a baby on the way. He’s a very happy man. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s too old for call-up.’
Eve didn’t think to ask what had happened to Fred’s first wife.
The Vicar, the Reverend Douglas Groome, whom Eve encountered outside the church after Matins one Sunday morning, proved to be a different kettle of fish. A grim, solemn man with the po-face to match his nature, Eve couldn’t warm to him and certainly couldn’t imagine him cracking a joke. She asked Grace what was the matter with him.
‘He’s such a miserable looking so and so,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t he got a wife to cheer him up? I thought vicars were supposed to be married.’
‘Oh, he did have. I liked her, she was much younger than him and quite well off, I believe,’ Grace replied, ‘but she died.’
Eve would have liked to ask more, but Grace was putting on her going-to-church hat and leaving the house with the posse of children in her wake, trying to make them walk in a suitably pious crocodile behind her.
Grace and Hugh habitually took their children to church on Sunday mornings, but after her first visit to Matins Eve vowed not to go again as she couldn’t stand another moment of the Vicar’s boring drone and his stale homilies. As none of the evacuees, except the two youngest, wanted to go to church again, Eve had a good excuse not to attend.
‘We don’t never go to church back ‘ome,’ Albert, one of the boys, said, ‘Dad don’ like no God-bothering.’ This also appeared to be the opinion of the other older boys.
‘You can stay with me and help get lunch ready then,’ Eve said, waving Grace and the other four children on their way. She’d hoped to enlist the remaining boys to peel the potatoes and carrots, but they disappeared with Jake on some mission of their own and didn’t reappear until Grace was home and lunch was almost ready to be served.
‘Thanks for your help, boys,’ said Eve, not even attempting to keep a note of sarcasm from her voice. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting the apple pie and custard I’ve made, then?’
The silence that accompanied the meal proved to Eve that she’d made a good job of Sunday lunch and, rather to her surprise, she got huge satisfaction from the knowledge that the hungry children had enjoyed it. Domestic accomplishments had never given her much pleasure before.
*
Monday morning dawned and Eve had a feeling of unease for a moment, of something missing, until she realised that it was the peaceful silence and the beam of sunlight that pierced the bedroom curtains that seemed so different. My God, she thought, it isn’t raining!
The children were up and dressed in record time, eager to get out and enjoy themselves.
‘What’ll we do today?’ they called to each other as they tumbled out of the back door and through the garden into the fields beyond in search of adventure and Eve watched, happy that they were able to amuse themselves for a change.
The sisters were preparing a couple of rabbit pies for the children’s tea when Eve heard someone shouting from outside in the back lane. Within moments, one of the ragamuffins stormed into the kitchen looking even more dishevelled than usual; covered in mud and with Jake at his heels infected by the excitement. Eve was about to send Albert out again with a flea in his ear when he blurted, ‘We’ve found some bones, Miss! Up in the field. You gotta come and look.’
Albert stood on the doormat quivering with agitation, which he’d managed to transmit to Jake, who began to bark, circling the boy’s feet with frenzied energy.
Eve and Grace stopped working and looked at the lad in silent amazement. The import of what he’d said took a moment to penetrate Eve’s brain and she regarded him in horror, at the same time thinking: ‘Oh no, not here as well!’
‘Wait a moment, Albert, while I get my coat and boots. You can tell me all about it on the way.’
The boots were kept by the back door and her coat hung on a peg above them; although it wasn’t raining it wasn’t warm enough to go out without a coat. What terrible weather for August! She slipped the clothes on and started to follow the boy up to the field.
‘Oh dear, I hope it’s not too horrible. I’d better go. I won’t be long, Grace,’ she said over her shoulder as she went through the door and trotted after the lad with Jake at her heels.
Grace placidly nodded acknowledgement and wiped a floury hand across her nose, not in the least fazed.
‘All right, I’ll see you later,’ she murmured to Eve’s retreating back.
‘Hurry up, Miss,’ said Albert.
In a brief passing thought Eve wondered why the children had elected to stick to calling her ‘Miss’ when they called her sister ‘Aunty Grace’. Did it mean that they viewed Grace with more affection? The reflection saddened her.
Eve and Albert hurried through the back gate, across the lane and into the potato field. Eve could see that a small crowd had gathered near the top of the steep slope. Albert explained on the way that he and the other children had gone to help the Land Girls thin out the potato plants. Each alternate plant was dug out by hand and any small early potatoes they found were packed into boxes waiting for transportation to the shops.
‘It’s great fun, Miss, like digging for treasure. The deeper you go, the more potatoes you find.’ His round freckled face glowed with pleasure and the state of his clothes proved he’d been having a splendid, messy time. Eve smiled grudgingly; more mess to sort out later.
The pair trudged through the mire to the top of the field where the gathering of Land Girls and children stood at the boundary beside a hedge bordering a small wood and beyond, the leafier, denser reaches of Barrington Wood. A gap in the hedge led into the copse. The group gawped silently down at something on the ground just inside the stand of young trees. One of the Land Girls seemed to be on the edge of hysteria, but the children were remarkably calm and merely fascinated by what lay at their feet. As Eve drew nearer she could see the outline of earth-darkened bones protruding from freshly dug soil surrounded by rotting leaves.
‘We’ve found a skellington, Miss,’ said Daisy, the little evacuee girl in Grace’s care, coming up to Eve and taking her hand in a grubby paw.
The Land Girls moved aside in apparent deference to Eve’s superior status and rumoured familiarity with corpses. She stared down at the few blackened bones scattered on the ground with more curiosity than horror. From her limited knowledge she could see that they were clearly human remains. Her detachment was the same as she had felt when she found the strangled body of the poor Polish girl back in Shepherds Bush. Mortality did not fill her with fear and horror, but merely with curiosity and compassion for the poor soul who lay there exposed in death.
‘I think you’d better all move away, and hold on to Jake, Albert,’ she told the group of onlookers. ‘The police will want to look around here and they won’t like it if you’ve walked all over the evidence.’
In fact, Eve did not think there would be much evidence here. The bones had clearly been here for some time, perhaps years, judging by the state of them. Only a few bones were visible and there was no sign of any clothing or anything else that might help the investigators.
‘Could somebody go down to the village and call the police, please? Dial 999 and they’ll get someone here as soon as they can. In the meantime, I want you children to go back to the house with Jake. No, don’t grumble. Get Aunty Grace to give you something to drink and tell her what’s happened. Let her know I’ll be back when the police have been. I need to stay here and keep people away.’
With reluctant hunching of shoulders and shuffling of feet in the sodden leaves, the children turned to leave; obedient for once. One of the more helpful Land Girls herded them down the hill and soon they were running, the boys doing their aeroplane impersonations, waving their arms and making the sound of ack-ack guns, anticipating the thrill of telling Grace all about their find.
*
It was over an hour before Eve saw a constable from Highston trudging up the hill, his notebook at the ready, probably thinking that this was a matter of little importance and that the children had merely found the skeleton of a badger or a lost sheep. Little Barrington hadn’t had a constable of its own since the beginning of the war and this man would have cycled over from Highston. Little wonder he was out of breath by the time he reached Eve’s side.
While she was waiting for the authorities to arrive, Eve had scanned the scene in more detail, trying not to move around too much. She was aware that any clues had long ago been obliterated, but she still didn’t want to get into trouble with the police for disturbing anything. Inspector Reid was always drumming into his staff the importance of the preservation of evidence.
‘So, what’s happened here?’ The local policeman puffed his way up to where Eve stood at the edge of the field.
‘Come with me, officer, I’ll show you. Some children went exploring and dug around over here and this is what they found. I can’t see the skull, but I’m pretty sure they’re human remains.’
The constable stopped dead by the burial site and his hand went to his mouth. This was obviously not what he’d expected.
‘It’s a body!’ he yelped.
‘Yes, didn’t the girl make that clear?’
The man started to bluster. ‘Yes. But we didn’t think... We thought it couldn’t be. There’s been no fighting around here.’
Eve felt a wave of impatience. She couldn’t understand what he was getting at at first until realising that the man was referring to the war. People seemed to have forgotten that there were more ways to die than in the war.
‘I know that. I think something else must have happened to this person.’
‘I’ll have to contact the Inspector,’ the man said. ‘They’ll need to get the Coroner up here too.’
‘Yes,’ said Eve. ‘Do you want me to stay and keep an eye on things till they arrive?’
‘That would be helpful, Miss. Just wait till I get back from the phone in the village, then I’ll take over and you can go home.’ The constable then realised that he should express gratitude to Eve for her help. ‘Thank you, Miss. Would you mind giving me your name?’ He took out his pencil, licked the point and started to write in his notebook.
As soon as the man had Eve’s name and address he scurried off down the hill to telephone his superiors while Eve remained with the heap of bones and contemplated the fate of the person to whom they’d belonged. She felt pity for the victim. Had they suffered before they died? Were they afraid, or was it all over too quickly for them to register what was happening to them?
*
Within half an hour the policeman was panting up the hill again. When he arrived at Eve’s side he stopped and leaned forward for a moment, his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
‘They’re on their way. You can go home now. Someone will come and talk to you and the children later,’ the constable wheezed.