Back in the kitchen Aunt Betty was still busy with the prune pudding she and Lily had been making when her husband arrived. Though she was no cook herself, Lily was happy to take orders from her aunt and under her direction had earlier removed the stones from a packet of prunes that Aunt Betty had managed to lay hands on in lieu of the dried fruit she would have liked to have had.
‘There’ll be no Christmas pudding this year,’ she had told her niece when Lily had arrived straight from the Yard after work earlier that evening. ‘We’ll have to make do with these.’
And a little imagination, as Lily found out when she’d watched her aunt simmer the fruit in a mixture of water flavoured with golden syrup and cinnamon before blending cornflour into the mixture and then pouring it into a damp mould.
‘There now, that’ll set well. And I’ll make a nice custard to go with it, though it’ll have to be with powdered eggs.’
A motherly woman who’d been unable to have children of her own, Betty Poole harboured the hope that the cooking lessons she gave her much loved niece whenever the opportunity presented itself would one day take, like a vaccination, and Lily would suddenly blossom into a home-loving body like herself; and once this transformation had been achieved, the acquisition of a suitable young man to go with it would not lag far behind.
Fred Poole himself wisely declined to offer any opinion when these pipe-dreams were aired, as they were quite frequently, and particularly as the end of another year approached. He reckoned he knew their niece better than his wife did, and as soon as he’d poured them all a drink he turned to a subject he knew would seize her interest.
‘I’ve been doing door-to-door, that’s why I’m late. Me and half a dozen of the lads. Up and down Praed Street.’ He saw the gleam in Lily’s eye. ‘It’ll be on your crime sheet at the Yard tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘Matter of fact he’s an old friend of ours. Remember Horace Quill?’
‘That little rodent?’ Lily was all ears. ‘I thought you put him away. Two years, wasn’t it? What’s he been up to now?’
‘Not a lot.’ Fred gave his wife a placatory smile. He knew she didn’t like hearing him talk about his work; not the gory details, anyway. ‘Fact is, he got himself topped last night.’
‘Go on!’
‘Up in that rat hole of an office he kept off Praed Street. It must have happened last night, but the body wasn’t found till late this morning when a cleaning woman went up. He only had her in once a week, so that was lucky.’
‘How’d he cop it?’ Lily asked, forgetting for a moment that her aunt was standing beside her.
‘Had his head bashed in.’ Fred coughed, as if the noise might somehow distract Aunt Betty from the disapproval she was now starting to display. Busy with a sage and onion stuffing, she was stirring the bowl with unusual vigour. ‘There was a big brass urn with a plant in it lying next to the body. I heard them talking about it at the station. Gawd knows where it came from; probably nicked off a bomb site, knowing Horace. Anyway, that was the weapon used. They could tell from the blood.’
‘Now that’s quite enough of that.’ Driven beyond endurance, Aunt Betty tried to put her foot down. But to no avail.
‘Any idea who did it?’ her niece asked eagerly.
‘Not a clue. Not as yet.’ Fred tossed off his sherry and poured himself another.
‘Mind you, with a bloke like that, it could be almost anyone. You could never tell what Quill was up to, except it was likely against the law.’
‘He was sent up for selling forged identity cards, wasn’t he?’ Lily asked.
‘That and dodgy ration books and petrol coupons. He and his partners. They had a nice little business going. But he swore when he came out that he wasn’t going to touch it again. Said he was going to stick to his profession from now on. At least that’s what I heard.’
‘His profession?’ Lily scoffed. ‘He couldn’t even do that straight. You remember when he got had up for planting evidence in that divorce case? They should have put him away then.’
She shook her head in disgust. Horace Quill’s was a name she remembered only too well from her years at Paddington. A private enquiry agent — so-called — he had dabbled in all kinds of other businesses, including at least one that had caused their paths to cross.
‘I had to speak to him more than once,’ she recalled now. ‘It was about that girl of his, the one he used to send out on the street when he was short of cash. Molly was her name. Molly Minter. A couple of times he knocked her about so bad she had to go to St Mary’s. She wouldn’t lay a charge, but I warned him if I ever caught him at it I’d see him put away.’ Lily shook her head. One of her duties at Paddington had been to keep an eye on the tarts, of whom there was no shortage around the big railway station. ‘Silly cow. She thought Quill was going to marry her one day. That’s what she told me. Can you imagine — getting spliced to an oily little reptile like that?’
Her words brought a muttered but inaudible remark from Aunt Betty, who was still labouring over her stuffing.
‘The trouble is,’ she said, speaking aloud now, ‘oily little reptiles is the only kind of men you’re going to meet, my girl, if you stay at that job of yours.’
‘Now that’s not true, love.’ Fred put an arm around his wife’s waist, winking at Lily as he did so. ‘’s a nice strapping young copper somewhere just waiting for our Lil to come along.’
His sally brought a snort of disbelief from Aunt Betty which was echoed by her niece.
‘That’s enough out of you, Fred Poole,’ she declared. ‘Your supper’s been warming in the oven all evening and if you want it you’d better look lively.’ To Lily she said, ‘I’m almost done here. Why not go up to your room and get into your pyjamas? Then we can all sit by the fire for a spell before you go to bed.’
It was two years since Lily had moved out. Reckoning it was time she left the nest, she had found a place to rent in St Pancras which was nearer to Bow Street, her new place of work. But Aunt Betty had never accepted the move and kept Lily’s room as it was, believing that her niece was bound to return one of these days.
Lily took off her apron. But her curiosity wasn’t satisfied yet.
‘So they don’t know why he was murdered?’ she asked Fred, who had fetched his plate from the oven while they were talking and was sitting at the kitchen table, eating.
‘Horace, you mean?’ Fred shrugged. He was making short work of the sausage and mash Aunt Betty had left for him, chewing steadily. ‘Like I said, could be any of a number of things. They’ve been asking around, trying to find out what he’s been up to lately. What he’s been doing that might make someone want to kill him.’
‘Have they asked Molly?’
‘His tart?’ Fred shrugged a second time. ‘Dunno. All I can tell you is what I hear round the station. They’re trying to find out if he had a client call on him yesterday. Late. He was topped around eight o’clock. That’s what we were doing door-to-door.’ He peered shrewdly at Lily. ‘Why you asking?’
She hesitated. Then shrugged. ‘I was thinking about that business he used to have. False cards. This bloke we’re looking for, Ash, they reckon he might have changed his name already. Got himself a new identity.’
‘And you think it could have been Quill who got it for him?’ Fred chuckled. He popped the last piece of sausage into his mouth. ‘I know you want to make your mark at the Yard, love, but you’re stretching a little, aren’t you?’
‘Probably,’ Lily agreed with a grin. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing: if he had got himself a new ID card and there was only one person in the world who knew it — I mean the feller he’d got it from — then it’s odds on he’d top him. He’s that sort of bloke.’
She saw Fred’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at the bluntness of her words.
‘If I was them, I’d talk to Molly,’ she went on as Fred rose from the table and took his plate to the sink. ‘ CID blokes. I’d squeeze her. Find out what she knows. She was living with Quill the last I heard. He’s bound to have dropped a few hints as to what he was up to.’
‘I’ll pass that along,’ Fred said as he rose from the table and took his plate to the sink. ‘I’m sure Roy Cooper will be glad of the advice,’ he added with yet another wink, referring to a detective-sergeant Lily knew who was stationed at Paddington. ‘He’s handling the investigation.’
About to go up to her room, Lily paused at the door.
‘Tell me, Uncle Fred, do the tarts still meet at the Astor Cafe?’ she asked him.
‘So far as I know.’ Fred eyed her suspiciously. ‘Why you asking?’
‘No special reason.’ Lily grinned at him from the door. ‘But I might look in there tomorrow and wish the girls a
