The White Feather Killer

by R. N. Morris

  ‘Perhaps she mistook the German spy for a shirker and tried to give him a feather!’

  ‘Oh, well, that is an interesting theory.’ Mrs Ibbott returned to scouring the newspaper account for details.

  ‘Who shot the policeman?’ Mary wondered. ‘Does it say?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t say very much about that, except that he is in a critical condition. That sounds jolly like a German spy to me, shooting policemen and everything.’

  Mary’s face suddenly lit up with excitement. ‘Mummy! We should do it! We should solve the crime! We’d make a spiffing team, you know.’

  For a brief moment Mrs Ibbott shared her daughter’s enthusiasm. And then the absurdity – and danger – of the proposal hit her. ‘This isn’t a game, Mary. Someone’s been murdered. And the police are getting shot at. Besides, we know nothing about solving crimes.’

  ‘How hard can it be? If old Quinn can do it, anyone can!’

  The child’s youthful arrogance was provoking. ‘No, we must leave it to the professionals.’

  ‘Oh, you’re no fun!’

  At first, Mrs Ibbott thought that Mary had offered this rebuke in a spirit of joshing. But then she saw the tears welling in her daughter’s eyes. A moment later, Mary ran from the room, slamming the door on the way.

  TWENTY

  A line of ambulances was parked on Hammersmith Road outside the West London Hospital. Quinn watched as a stretcher was lifted out of the back of one of them, on which lay a wounded soldier, still in his bloodstained and muddy uniform. His face was wrapped in bandages, which were discoloured by the seeping matter from his wounds. The porters carried him with great care, keeping the stretcher level, avoiding any sudden movements, but at the same time moving with practised speed. A doctor and several nurses were in attendance, supervising the arrival of the wounded. It was an impressive scene. Quinn was struck by the preciousness of the fragile body around which they were all huddled. So much human activity to preserve one life.

  He turned to Sergeant Inchball, who was by his side. The grim-set pallor of Inchball’s face mirrored Quinn’s mood.

  Quinn tilted his head towards the entrance of the hospital. Inchball nodded and the two men went in.

  Macadam was being cared for in a private room just off the Acute Ward. A soldier, presumably from MO5(g), stood on guard at the door.

  ‘They’re taking no chances, I see,’ muttered Inchball.

  A ward matron, with a cap and apron so brilliant white and starched that it almost skinned their eyes to look at her, came out of Macadam’s room. She challenged them with forbidding disdain.

  Quinn produced his warrant card.

  ‘We have enough to contend with here with all the war wounded without you policemen going around getting yourselves shot.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘I shall ask the surgeon to speak to you. Mr Carter-Minton.’

  Quinn felt chastened, and more than a little cowed, simply by the consultant’s name.

  All the same, the matron allowed them to go in.

  Macadam lay propped up in bed with his eyes closed. Quinn was shocked by how grey and drawn his face looked. Something had been sucked out of him from within. His breathing was shallow and rapid; he seemed to be fighting for every breath. Other than that slight but desperate movement, his body was appallingly inert. His arms lay at his sides on top of the covers, as if they had been placed there.

  Quinn felt a spreading blankness come over him.

  It was left to Inchball to ask, in a barely audible murmur: ‘What the Devil, Mac?’

  A tremor flickered across Macadam’s face, converging on one corner of his mouth, twitching it up into the suggestion of a smile. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. It could have been a reflex reaction to some unconnected nervous stimulus. Or it could have been an attempt at a wave.

  ‘The governor’s here too.’

  ‘Hello, Mac.’

  The sound of Quinn’s voice seemed to revive Macadam a little. With a tremendous quivering struggle that put Quinn in mind of a carnival strong man straining at dumbbells, his eyelids began to lift. The injured man’s eyes were revealed, swivelling like the glass balls in a doll’s head.

  His lips parted with a soft puh! that might have been an attempt at speech.

  ‘Take it easy, old chap,’ cautioned Inchball.

  The eyes closed again. Macadam’s mouth fell open and his breathing became louder and more erratic.

  To Quinn, it seemed that their visit had done more harm than good. ‘Perhaps we should leave him?’

  But there was an answering movement from the bed. Macadam’s head stirred in a minuscule side-to-side motion.

  He managed to smack his lips once or twice and then his hoarse, rasping breath coagulated into a sound that seemed to carry in it some semblance of articulation. It was a difficult sound to listen to, being as pathetic as it was heroic. Quinn touched Macadam gently on the shoulder to quell it. Macadam’s eyes opened again, this time with a desperate energy. His gaze locked on to Quinn pleadingly.

  ‘Very well, old man.’

  Quinn leant down and put his ear next to Macadam’s mouth. He tapped him again on his arm encouragingly.

  ‘What did he say?’ demanded Inchball as Quinn straightened up. Macadam slumped down into his pillows after the effort of communication.

  ‘White feather.’

  Inchball gave vent to a violent oath. But before he could explain the meaning of his outburst, they were joined at the bedside by a man in a tweed suit, with a neatly trimmed beard and a gruff, no-nonsense manner. ‘I hope you’re not agitating my patient.’

  ‘Your patient, my sergeant. I am Detective Chief Inspector Quinn of the Yard.’

  ‘The poor fellow’s not on duty now. For God’s sake, cut him some slack. He took a bullet in the chest, you know.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘It’s never good having a bullet shot into you, you know. Especially in the thorax. But, all things considered, he was lucky. It narrowly missed his heart, which is something. But the right lung has sustained severe damage. On top of all that, he lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, though?’

  ‘He’s not out of the woods yet but we’re doing what we can. Draining the chest cavity to relieve the pressure on his lungs. Keeping a close eye on him. He’s a fighter, I should say. Scrawny, lean, but tough.’

  It was strange to hear Macadam described in those terms. Macadam was the self-taught intellectual, eager, curious, full of enthusiasms. A sensitive man, even, someone who would take a slight to heart but was always quick to forgive. Scrawny, lean, tough seemed to be describing a piece of meat rather than the man Quinn knew.

  Macadam was not one to run in and take a bullet. Not that he was a coward. He had proven that on countless occasions.

  Just that he was not a fool.

  ‘Has he said anything to you about who shot him?’

  Carter-Minton’s eyes widened in outrage. ‘Why the Devil would he say anything to me? He was under anaesthetic most of the time that I spent in his company. And I have made it clear in my instructions that he should be discouraged from speaking to anyone for the time being.’

  ‘There are things we need to know, that only he can tell us.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s always the same with you policemen. But it will have to wait. The patient’s survival is my priority. I have no objection to you sitting quietly with him and letting him know that you are there. But I shall tell Matron to throw you out if she sees you questioning him.’ Carter-Minton gave a sharp nod, as if he were head-butting an imaginary antagonist. Then, with a slightly startled look in his eyes, left them to it.

  Quinn looked down disconsolately at Macadam. If anything, the sergeant’s breathing seemed more ragged than before. Every breath took its toll as it rattled through him.

  ‘I wonder if Coddington and Leversedge have been here to visit him?’

  Inchball gave a sardonic snort. ‘Do you think
?’

  ‘What was it you were about to say? Before the doctor came along?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you what Macadam had said and you looked like you had seen a ghost.’

  ‘Nah, it’s nothing. Just that I was given one of those blasted things this mornin’ on the way in to the Yard. Some little chit of a thing handing them out when I was walking through Trafalgar Square.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘I should say not! I sent her away with a flea in her ear, I did. Chucked the blasted feather away. Why should I hold on to a thing like that?’

  ‘Why did she give you a white feather?’ Quinn was genuinely confused. He knew that the white feather was meant to be a symbol of cowardice, but the idea of someone giving such a thing to Inchball was absurd.

  ‘Have you not read about it in the papers? Some admiral started it all off in Folkestone. It’s meant to shame young blokes into enlisting. The white feathers are chicken feathers, you see.’ Inchball made a noise like a clucking hen. ‘She took me for a coward, that girl. The cheek of it! I gave her a piece of my mind, and no mistake.’

  Quinn looked again at Macadam. There were questions he was desperate to ask him. But for now they would have to wait.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Mary Ibbott let out a curious sound, halfway between a snarl and a sob, as she threw herself down on her bed. The bedsprings creaked back at her sympathetically. Mary felt she wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. She buried her face in her pillow all the same. She often had the feeling that she was living her life under the gaze of a hidden watcher. Perhaps it was a relic of her years at Sunday school, an unconscious belief in God that Pastor Cardew had somehow instilled in her, after all. It left her feeling that she was an actor in a play. But the scenes never came off quite as she wanted them to. And the set decoration was positively tatty.

  She felt herself over-heating. On top of that, the feather stuffing made her nostrils itch. She turned over listlessly on to her back and let out a loud sneeze. Aggh! She hated sneezes!

  She opened her eyes to confront the unsatisfactory props and backdrop of her life. The insipid wallpaper with the twee posies of lilies of the valley. (Mary had once declared it to be her favourite flower, a passing whim now memorialized forever on her wall. She loathed the despondent drooping things.) The clashing chintz of the curtains, bedspread and armchair. The fussy lace covering on her bedside table. The china ornaments that she had once thought sweet, but which now struck her as infantile and embarrassing.

  She wanted to smash them all up. To tear down the curtains and rip away the wallpaper.

  She thought of the satisfaction it would give her, and the outrage it would provoke in her mother. She gave a little smile.

  Maybe it would be worth the trouble.

  Or maybe there was an easier way to get her own back at her mother.

  There was one relic from her younger days that she could still tolerate, a wooden box with twelve drawers. In it she kept such items of jewellery as she possessed, together with other treasures and trinkets small enough to be housed within its tiny compartments.

  The box was made of mahogany, inlaid with marquetry fleurs-de-lis on the top. When she was a child it had seemed to be such a sophisticated object, the kind of thing a lady would have to keep her secrets in. Each of the drawers was capable of being locked by a Lilliputian key. It was an operation of great delicacy and skill to insert the key into the lock and turn it.

  She pulled out the middle drawer of the bottom row, revealing her hoard of white feathers. The feathers sprang up eagerly as if they had been waiting for release. She picked out two and pushed the rest down so she could close the drawer again.

  Mary now opened one of the drawers in her dressing table. Rummaging through a hair-tangled melee of brushes, combs, brooches and hairpins, she pulled out a set of letter stationery, which she had bought herself from a shop in the Burlington Arcade with a half-crown her wealthy Aunt Leonora had given her last Christmas. She had got it especially for secret correspondence. Not even Mummy knew of the stationery’s existence.

  She took out one of the envelopes and slipped the feathers in before sealing it.

  Should she address the envelope? There was no need, she decided. Those who received it would know it was meant for them.

  Now she stood with her ear against the door, straining to hear over the thump of her own heart.

  She bent down and unfastened the cloth uppers on her two-tone brogue boots, ten buttons each boot. She was immensely attached to the boots and liked to wear them at every opportunity. But the occasion demanded a certain degree of stealth. The heels would produce a tell-tale clatter.

  Mary opened her bedroom door and tiptoed out on to the landing.

  Timberley and Appleby lived on the floor below. It was morning. They would be getting ready to leave for work. There was a risk that they might come out just as she was executing her mission.

  Of course, she could wait until they had left the house. But that would require too much self-control. She had conceived the plan to do this. She could tolerate no delay in executing it.

  She reached the landing below and listened at their door. She could hear whistling. It was probably Appleby. How dare he whistle when Jack had gone off to fight and he was shirking here!

  It was done in a moment, in less than a moment. A quick stoop and the envelope was pushed under the door, then she turned and ran upstairs again, her heart beating in time with her padding feet.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Quinn pushed open the door to Coddington’s office without knocking.

  Coddington looked up from behind his desk. His prodigious moustaches trembled like the whiskers of a startled walrus.

  ‘Ah, Quinn, old chap! How are you?’

  ‘Don’t give me that old chap guff. What the Devil were you thinking, letting Macadam get shot like that?’

  ‘Whoa, now! I did not let him get shot, as you so charmingly put it. He had his orders, which he disregarded. He was to watch the body and make sure no one approached it or tampered with it. My instructions were clear. He was not to move from that spot. If he had obeyed my instructions, he would not have got shot.’

  Quinn doubted that Coddington had ever given any such orders, but he let that go to point out: ‘And a possible suspect would have got away.’

  ‘All he had to do was blow his whistle.’

  The failure to blow the whistle was a mistake. And it was not like Macadam. Quinn suspected Macadam had as little faith in Coddington and Leversedge as Quinn himself did, and had preferred to trust to his own initiative. Perhaps he had not considered himself in danger. There must have been something about the suspect that had lulled Macadam into a false sense of security. Even the best coppers make mistakes.

  Naturally, Coddington was quick to make personal capital of it. ‘I put it down to poor training by his previous CO. I can’t begin to tell you what bad habits those ex-SCD officers have got into.’ Coddington shook his head sadly. ‘I can’t do a thing with them.’

  ‘They’re better officers than you’ll ever be, Coddington.’

  ‘Is that so, DCI Quinn? Well, thank you for sharing your opinion with me, but you really must excuse me. I have work to do. Proper police work. Not just writing notes in the margins of other chaps’ reports.’

  ‘I need you to share with me everything you have on the murdered girl.’

  Coddington threw back his head and let out a curious rasping sound. It was a moment before Quinn realized he was laughing.

  ‘Oh, you’re a card, Quinn. A real card.’ Coddington’s great display of amusement turned into a sudden expression of grave concern. It was quite a performance. ‘But, no, you’re serious, ain’t you?’

  ‘One of my men is lying in hospital.’

  ‘Sergeant Macadam is one of my men, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘And that’s the reason he got shot.’

  ‘Get out of my office, Quinn. You will see t
he file at the appropriate time. Which is to say, when you can’t do a fucking thing about it.’

  Quinn held his ground for a moment longer, wondering whether there was anything else he might be able to say to bring Coddington round. But the arrival of Coddington’s crony, Leversedge – ‘Everything all right here, guv?’ – persuaded him to leave it. It was hard enough talking to one idiot, he decided.

  ‘I wish to see Sir Edward.’

  Miss Latterly took her time in looking up from her typewriter. Her gaze was blank and unfocused. She looked round Quinn and through him, before finally acknowledging his presence with a frown.

  ‘That won’t be possible.’

  ‘I am willing to wait, if he has someone with him at the moment.’

  ‘He’ll not see you.’

  ‘Ah, so you do know who I am. I thought for a moment—’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I know who you are?’

  ‘I don’t know. You seemed not to recognize me.’

  ‘Well, it has been a long time since I saw you.’

  Quinn waited a moment before trying to explain himself. It was never going to be an easy undertaking. ‘I … know that I … should have … spo—’

  ‘No! You can’t come here, now, like this, and start … no!’

  ‘No.’ He saw her point. ‘I should have come before.’

  ‘If you have come here to see Sir Edward, you have not come here to see me.’

  ‘I have been afraid.’

  She looked at him in disbelief. ‘Of me?’

  ‘No. Of myself.’

  ‘This is ridiculous. And nonsense. And I won’t have it. I simply forbid you to—’

  ‘I have been on my own for so long.’

  ‘And that’s the way you like it, is it?’

  ‘No. But … I don’t think I would be any good at living any other way.’

  ‘What on earth does that mean? Any other way!’ She was contemptuous.

  ‘I admit it … I was to blame … I backed away … Because …’