Dead of Winter

‘What’s that you’ve got there?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Miss Ellis’s throat had turned red and swollen like a turkey cock’s. ‘This young woman just dumped it on my desk.’

‘Remove it if you would.’ Bennett spoke gently. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

He waited until she had gone out, shutting the door behind her, then turned to Lily.

‘Now who are you, miss? And what the devil are you doing here?’

‘Sir, this is Officer Poole.’ Sinclair found his tongue at

last.

‘Officer Poole …!’ Bennett gazed at her in seeming wonder. Then, with a shake of his head, he resumed his seat.

‘Explain yourself, Constable.’ Sinclair had risen to his feet. He confronted the young woman. ‘What do you mean by bursting in like this?’ He gestured at her attire. ‘You’re not even on duty.’

‘Sir, I’m sorry, sir, but I had to speak to you right away.’ Overcome by what she’d done, Lily had been temporarily struck dumb. ‘I tried ringing you from Paddington but they said you hadn’t got in yet, and then I tried Inspector Styles but his desk didn’t answer so I thought I’d better come down to the Yard myself, but when I got here I found you were in with the assistant commissioner and I didn’t know how long you’d be.’ She paused to take breath. ‘But I knew this was something you had to know and right away so I-’

‘Had to know? What did I have to know?’ Sinclair glared at her. The sight of Bennett, whom he was able to glimpse out of the corner of his eye, trying not to smile, only lent fuel to his anger.

‘What this bloke was doing that was topped over in Paddington two nights ago, a private detective called Quill-’

‘I know all about Quill.’ The chief inspector’s bark made Lily jump. ‘It’s in the crime report.’

‘Yes, sir, but not what he was doing before he was topped. I know ’cos I got it from his tart only half an hour ago and she hadn’t been interviewed yet…’

Lily stopped, realizing what she’d just said. Sinclair’s gaze had hardened.

‘Are you telling me you’ve interfered with a CID investigation?’

Lily stood abashed.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Constable-?’

‘Chief Inspector …’ Bennett coughed theatrically. ‘I’m sure a reprimand is in order, but let’s hear what this officer has to say, shall we?’

He turned to Lily, who was still standing to attention.

‘I trust you didn’t force your way in here without good reason. Just what is it you have to tell us?’

Lily took a deep breath. ‘Sir, Molly Minter — she was Quill’s tart — she told me he’d been on a job these past few weeks, being paid good money, too, looking for a girl which this client of his wanted found. She knew he was due to meet this bloke that had hired him soon and that he was going to try and get some more money out of him.’

‘And why do we have to know that?’ Bennett frowned. ‘Why is it so important?’

‘Because it wasn’t just any girl he was looking for, sir.’ Lily looked from Bennett to the chief inspector and back again. ‘It was a Polish girl.’

25

‘I’m not sure this is very wise of me, Will,’ Madden confessed as they stood together beneath the station awning, taking shelter from the snow that had started falling again a few minutes earlier. ‘It seemed a better idea last night. If this girl doesn’t know about Rosa being murdered, she won’t thank me for telling her now.’

‘She’ll have to know some time, sir.’ Stackpole offered his verdict. ‘And if you don’t tell her, then it’ll be some policeman knocking on her door, and she might like that even less.’

‘We’re sure it’s her, are we?’ Madden blew on his fingers. ‘The same girl who was on the train with Rosa?’

‘No question, sir. Not to my mind. I talked twice to Bob Leonard. He said she came to Liphook, this Eva Belka, about six months ago with a lady from London. A Mrs Spencer. I’ve spoken to all the bobbies, as far down the line as Petersfield, and none of them has a Polish lass registered who fits the description except Bob. And she definitely went up to London about a month ago, this Eva Belka did. Took the train, I mean. I asked Bob to check and he had a word with the station-master there, who confirmed it. He said he spoke to Mrs Spencer herself that day and another lady. They’d brought the girl to the station and they wanted to be sure she’d reach Waterloo in time to make her connection. And the station-master remembers she had a basket with her as well as a suitcase, which is what that pilot told you.’

Madden grunted. He still wasn’t altogether happy.

‘Of course, if you wanted to be sure, you could try telephoning this Mrs Spencer. I got a number from Bob …’

Stackpole looked questioningly at him, but Madden shook his head.

‘What I have to ask this girl — what I have to tell her — can’t be done on the phone. I just wish it wasn’t Christmas Eve.’

‘Why not put it off then, sir? Wait till after the holidays.’

‘I thought of that. But with Ash still at large it’s not something we can drag our heels on. It sounds as though Rosa may have recognized him that day, and we don’t know what she might have said to this girl. Or given her, perhaps.’

‘Given her, sir?’ The constable was perplexed.

‘It’s just a thought. There’s still an aspect of Rosa’s murder that’s unexplained. Apparently Ash was searching for something after he killed her; there were charred matches found all around the body. We still don’t know exactly what happened in Paris that evening. All we know for sure is that Rosa fled the scene. So whatever passed between her and this other girl could be relevant to the investigation. As things stand the police haven’t much of a case against Ash. With no corroborating witnesses, what can they charge him with? So every lead matters. At the very least I’m hoping this girl will remember what happened on their journey up to London that day: the incident Tyson told me about. If she could recognize Ash again — if she could place him on the train — it would at least be a link in the chain of evidence.’

‘Well, you’ll know soon enough.’ Stackpole stamped his feet to restore circulation to his frozen toes. They’d been standing there for ten minutes waiting for the train to arrive. ‘What’s it to Liphook? Half an hour at the most, I’d say.’

It was the closeness of the Hampshire village to Highfield that had persuaded Madden in the end to make the journey after the constable had rung him shortly after breakfast with the information he was seeking.

‘It was no trouble, sir, just like I said. Bob Leonard was the second bloke I rang, and after I’d checked with the others I got back to him. This is our lass, all right.’

According to the Liphook bobby, Eva Belka was married to a young Pole serving with the Allied forces in France, Stackpole told him. Recently he’d been wounded, though not seriously, and she had gone up to Norwich for a few days to visit him in hospital. Her employer was a woman called Mary Spencer, whose home in London had been destroyed by a V-bomb, forcing her to seek alternative accommodation for herself and her young son. Together with Eva, the boy’s nanny, they had come down to Liphook six months earlier and taken up residence in a house called the Grange not far from the village.

‘Liphook’s only taxi has broken down, but you can walk out there easily, Bob said. You’ll need a good pair of boots, though, with all this snow.’

Still hesitant about making the expedition — Rob was due to arrive in the late afternoon from London and Madden didn’t want to miss his son’s return after the anxious weeks he and his wife had passed — he had consulted Helen, who, somewhat to his surprise, had urged him to go.

‘Lucy and I will be spending most of the afternoon in the kitchen with Mary,’ she had told him after he’d spoken to Stackpole. ‘ is, if firstly I can get her out of bed and secondly keep her out of the clutches of her various