Dead of Winter

Other signs of deft needlework were visible on the young woman’s underclothes, which were undamaged but had obviously been darned and patched more than once. The embroidered blouse she’d been wearing, on the other hand, looked new, and to both detectives’ surprise proved to be made of silk.

‘What’s that?’ Billy’s eye had been caught by a saucer standing on a shelf above the table. He took it down.

‘Looks like a matchstick.’ Cook peered at the charred fragment of wood which was all the saucer contained.

‘Wonder what it’s doing there.’ Billy was still examining his find when the swing doors behind them opened and Ransom strode in, thrusting an arm into the sleeve of a white physician’s coat.

‘Sorry to keep you, gentlemen. We’re like the Windmill Theatre here. We never close. I’m afraid there’s another cadaver awaiting my attention, so this’ll have to be brief. Hello, Inspector.’ He nodded to Billy. ‘I didn’t know you were on the case.’

‘I’m not, strictly speaking, sir.’ Billy put down the saucer and went over to shake hands with the pathologist. ‘Mr Cook’s in charge. But the chief inspector has an interest in it. I’m to report back to him.’

‘Sinclair, eh? Then we’d best be on our toes.’

Ransom blew out his cheeks. A heavy-set man with jutting eyebrows, he had a reputation in the Met as a joker, famous for his bons mots.

‘You’ve seen the corpus delicti, I take it.’ He moved over to where the wheeled table stood. The two detectives followed. ‘There was little in the way of injuries to record. I dare say you noted the lividity on her neck and the swelling’ — he pointed to the slight disfigurement on the slender column of the throat. ‘The only real bruises I found were on her knees. She must have gone down when he grabbed her. See …’

He pulled the cloth off the girl’s legs, showing the purple marks on her bare kneecaps.

‘But that’s all, really. There was no evidence of a struggle. She didn’t get a chance to fight back. There was no skin under her nails, nothing of that sort. It was quick and clean.’

Billy glanced at Cook, thinking he might want to handle the questioning, but found that his colleague had chosen that moment to fall into a doze. Lofty’s lack of sleep had finally caught up with him; he was swaying on his feet, his eyelids fluttering.

‘No evidence of a struggle, you say?’

‘That’s right, Inspector.’

‘He didn’t sexually assault her, then?’

‘Good heavens, no.’ Ransom frowned. ‘Why on earth …? Oh, yes, of course.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘It did look that way last night when we found her. The inspector and I discussed the possibility.’ He nodded at Cook, who’d come awake with a start. ‘I checked for it, of course, when I made my examination, even though her underclothes weren’t disturbed. But she wasn’t touched. Not there, at any rate. In fact, she was virgo intacta. Not that it makes any difference now, I suppose.’ He shrugged.

‘But if he strangled her …’

‘Strangled?’ Ransom’s bushy eyebrows rose in exaggerated amazement. ‘Did I say that?’

‘Yes, sir, you did.’ Angry with himself for having drifted off, Cook spoke sharply. ‘Last night, at the murder scene.’

‘Then I apologize. It was a hasty judgement.’ Ransom spread his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Put not your trust in pathologists. Particularly those called out in the blackout and made to examine bodies by torchlight. No, she wasn’t choked. Her neck was broken. It’s clear from the evidence. Let me show you.’ He removed the cloth from the girl’s head and shoulders again. ‘Do you see the swelling on her neck and that mark on the side? It shows that the killer grabbed her from behind, slipped his right arm around her neck and snapped her spinal column. And to anticipate your question, yes, he was a strong man, but it wouldn’t have required any special skill, particularly if she wasn’t expecting it. Just a good wrench of the head. The whole business would have been over in a second.’

He covered the girl’s head and shoulders again and then waited to see if the two detectives had any questions. A frown had appeared on Cook’s face as he’d listened and he caught Billy’s eye.

‘So what you’re saying is, he must have meant to kill her.’

‘It would seem so.’ Ransom shrugged. ‘It’s hard to see what other purpose he could have had in mind.’

‘But … but that doesn’t make sense.’ Cook spoke before he could stop himself.

‘Possibly.’ The pathologist looked owlish. ‘But that’s your department, Inspector, not mine. Now, if you’ve no more questions …’ He stood poised to leave.

‘One moment, sir.’ Billy spoke up. ‘That matchstick on the shelf over there. The one in the saucer. Where does it come from?’

‘What matchstick where?’ Ransom’s eyes swivelled in the direction of his pointing finger. ‘Oh, that. Yes, I found it tangled in her hair. Blown there by the wind, I dare say. She’d been lying on the ground for some time. Why do you ask?’

‘We found others at the scene. It looked like somebody had been trying to light one.’

‘The killer, do you mean?’ Ransom showed renewed interest.

‘Perhaps. But we can’t be sure.’ Billy glanced at Cook. His jerk of the head suggested it was time they too departed.

‘Yes, but … but why would he have done that?’ The pathologist was clearly intrigued by the notion. ‘If it was him, I mean.’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Billy’s shrug was noncommittal. ‘But he may have been looking for something — something he thought she had on her.’

4

‘She was a dear girl, very likeable. But so hard to get to know. Still grieving, I fear.’

Helen Madden mused on her words. Seated on a settee facing the fire that her husband had lit in the drawing-room a short while before, she turned her gaze on the flickering flames.

‘She kept surprising us with her talents. Soon after she came I gave her a piece of parachute silk that had come my way and she made two embroidered blouses from it. They were quite beautiful. She was wearing one of them the day she went up to London, I remember.’

Helen glanced across at Sinclair, who was seated in an armchair on one side of the wide fireplace.

‘And then we only discovered a week ago that she was a pianist. There was a call for volunteers to perform at a concert for the patients at Stratton Hall and Rosa came forward. She played two Chopin nocturnes and you could have heard a pin drop. I asked her afterwards where she had learned and she said her father had taught her. He was the schoolmaster in the village where she grew up. He must have been a remarkable man.’

Again she paused.

‘But these are just odd details. We didn’t really know her. She was so quiet. So withdrawn.’

Sinclair frowned. ‘You said “still grieving”. What did you mean?’

Helen looked at him. ‘Are you aware she was Jewish?’ she asked.

Sinclair nodded.

‘It so happened she was in France when the Germans invaded Poland. Or perhaps it wasn’t by chance. Her father had arranged the trip for her. He sent her to stay with an old university friend of his in Tours; it may be that he saw what was coming and wanted her out of the country. In any event she never heard from her parents again, nor her two younger brothers, though of course she kept hoping. For as long as she could. Until the truth came out.’

Helen regarded the chief inspector for a moment, then turned her gaze to the fire, where the heaped logs flamed and cackled, sending sparks flying up the chimney. Sinclair, too, remained silent. Two years had passed since the Foreign Secretary had risen in the House of Commons to confirm the reports that had been circulating for some time of the wholesale massacre of Jews in occupied Europe. He recalled a phrase from the joint declaration issued by the Allies, which had named Poland ‘the principal slaughterhouse’.

‘We only talked once, properly, I mean.’ Helen put a hand to her brow. ‘But I could see how much the thought