Madden stood stunned. He had heard the phone ringing from the drawing-room where he’d been laying the fire and had come to the study to answer it. As he picked up the receiver he had switched on a green-shaded lamp on the desk beside it, and now he found himself staring at his own reflection in the window, hardly able to comprehend what the chief inspector had just told him.
‘That’s correct. But not manually. The killer used a garrotte.’ Sinclair spoke in a weary tone. ‘I’m sorry, John. This is wretched news to be giving you …’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Some time overnight, it seems. She was due at Bow Street station this afternoon and when she didn’t turn up they sent an officer to her flat in Soho. There was no reply when he rang her bell, but someone let him in the house and he found her body on the floor inside her flat. That was less than an hour ago.’
The reflected image of himself Madden was staring at faded: in its place he saw Florrie Desmoulins’s lacquered red hair, her wide painted smile.
‘She told him she wouldn’t forget his face.’
‘I’m sorry?
‘When he went off. She yelled after him and he looked back. It’s in her statement.’
‘Yes … I see what you mean. But we can’t jump to conclusions. She was a prostitute, after all. It’s a hazardous profession.’
The chief inspector was silent. But the sound of a heavy sigh came faintly to Madden’s ears.
‘I’m waiting to hear more. Styles is at the murder scene now. Perhaps he’ll learn something. I’ll speak to you again later.’
8
‘Either piano wire or a cheese-cutter. That’s what Ransom reckons. He cut right through the skin and into the flesh. Bloody nearly took her head off, Ransom says. He put her on the slab right away.’
Lofty Cook screwed his features into a grimace. He had just returned from the mortuary at St Mary’s where he’d accompanied the pathologist, leaving Billy behind at Florrie Desmoulins’s flat with Joe Grace and a forensic team.
‘And there were no other injuries?’ Billy asked. Alerted by a call from Sinclair, he’d left his desk at the Yard and hurried up to Soho.
‘None that he’s found. She was topped, that’s all. Just like the other one.’
Florrie Desmoulins’s body had still been lying where it was found when Billy had arrived. Her flat was on the top floor of a narrow, three-storey house tucked into an alleyway called Cable Lane, off Dean Street, and he’d had to step over the corpse, which was curled in a foetal position in the narrow hallway and so close to the door it would only open a foot or two. The likelihood of a garrotte having been used had been mentioned in the report phoned from Bow Street, and when he crouched down Billy could see the red welt circling Florrie’s throat from which blood must have leaked earlier — there were streaks visible on her pale skin above the nightdress she was wearing. Her green eyes were wide and staring. He recalled her smile and the way she’d snapped her compact shut with a flourish.
That the flat had also been her place of business was confirmed by her landlady — for so she claimed to be — a woman named Ackers, who’d been convicted twice of running a bawdy house. Reassured by Cook, the first detective on the scene, that she would not be prosecuted on the basis of anything she told them she’d admitted it was Florrie’s habit to pick up her customers in Soho Square, only a few minutes’ walk away, and bring them back to the flat.
‘Last night she wasn’t busy. Said it was too cold out and there weren’t any men about. She brought one back at about nine and he left half an hour later. Florrie came down and told me she wasn’t going out again. That’s the last time I talked to her.’
Middle-aged and skeletal, with cropped brown hair, Mildred Ackers was being questioned by Cook on the cramped top-floor landing outside Florrie’s flat when Billy had tramped up the linoleum-covered stairs to join them. Wrapped in a brown cardigan that hung shapelessly about her, she had stood with folded arms staring into space.
‘A bit later Juanita came in with a man. He stayed for half an hour.’
Juanita de Castro, the other tenant of the building, lived on the first floor, Lofty had told Billy.
‘Though if that’s her real name, I’m the Queen of Romania.’
Juanita was lying down in her flat below at that moment, still recovering from shock — it was she who had let in the bobby sent by Bow Street to fetch Florrie that afternoon and had seen the body on the floor inside.
‘The girls had keys to each other’s flats. They sometimes worked as a team. Or so Madam Ackers says.’ Lofty had drawn Billy aside for a moment to bring him up to date. ‘Juanita’s bloke was a Yank airman. He took off about ten — we know that from her and from Ackers, who heard him leave.’ He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Billy, who shook his head.
‘Ackers lives where? On the ground floor?’
Lofty nodded.
‘Keeps an eye on the comings and goings, does she?’
‘No question.’ Cook put a match to his cigarette. ‘That’s what makes it strange. Whoever topped Florrie got in and out without being seen or heard. Normally anyone turning up here would ring the bell and Ackers would let them in. Besides the men they picked up, the girls had regulars, blokes who’d come round to see them by arrangement. But there were none last night.’
Billy grunted. He looked at the woman, who was standing a step or two away from them. Her attitude hadn’t changed. She stood with folded arms, a vacant look in her eyes, waiting for this to be over so she could get on with whatever it was she called a life. Aware of his gaze she glanced up.
‘So you didn’t hear anything last night?’ Billy asked her.
Ackers shook her head.
‘What about the stairs? They creak, I noticed.’
The woman shrugged. I told you, I didn’t hear anything.’
‘Listening to the radio, were you?’
She viewed him with a leaden gaze.
‘Yes or no?’
‘I had it on some of the time.’
Billy turned back to Cook.
‘Better have the forensic boys look at the lock on the street door. He may have jimmied it. And this one, too …’
He bent down to peer at the Yale lock on Florrie’s door. Lofty joined him.
‘I can see he might have crept in,’ he said. But how would he know which flat was Florrie’s?’
‘By watching outside?’ Billy suggested. He stood up straight. He could have followed her down from Soho Square and then waited in the alley to see which light went on. Even with blackout blinds you can tell. But he couldn’t go in at once. She had a bloke with her, and then Juanita came back and she had a feller, too. He would have had a long wait. But once the girls’ lights went out he could have slipped in. If Ackers had her radio on she wouldn’t have heard him.’
‘Still, she might easily have come out into the hall.’
Billy shrugged. ‘Then he’d have done her too, this bloke.’
‘Hmmm …’ Lofty was still peering at the lock. ‘But once he got up here, couldn’t he have just knocked on Florrie’s door?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps. But would Florrie have let him in? She wasn’t expecting anyone. At the very least she’d have asked who it was. It’s more likely she heard him working on the lock and came to investigate. That would explain why the body’s where it is rather than in the bedroom.’
