A Death by Wounds: The first Lambert and Strange mystery

by J. D. Oswald

  A DEATH BY WOUNDS

  by J.D. Oswald

  Copyright © J.D. Oswald 2017

  No reproduction, transmission or circulation without permission. All rights reserved.

  J.D. Oswald asserts the moral right to be identified as author of this work.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents depicted in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  In memory of Dad

  Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her

  Sherlock Holmes speaking in ‘The Copper Beeches’ by Arthur Conan Doyle

  Prologue

  I never thought I’d see old Blighty again, if you could call it seeing. We’re in some stinking dockyard tied up alongside another ship so I’m told. The walking wounded, like me, are to be dumped in barracks while the ship goes back to France to get the last contingent of our comrades. Well, I’m not staying in barracks, I’ve had my fill of that. I’ll find some nice digs, somewhere a bit more up market until they can get us home and demobbed. I tell you, if that doesn’t happen soon, there’ll be riots.

  I won’t be sorry to see the back of this ship. It’s packed to the gills with broken men and nurses at the end of their tether. I have some sport with them! No-one bothers who you are as long as you’ve got the right uniform and speak the King’s English. The poor chap in the next bed is a fellow countryman. He’s in a worse state than me, even his mother wouldn’t know him. He’s not going to make it, according to the nurse, which has given me an idea.

  1

  The Times

  LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1919

  DIED OF WOUNDS

  ELKINS - on 13th October on the troop ship HMCS Canada, docked in Southampton. 2nd Lieutenant Edward Elkins, 6th Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles, aged 35, well loved brother of Sir George Elkins J.P. of Southwell, Nottinghamshire.

  That was her husband. Edward was dead.

  Philippa felt her stomach lurch, forcing a gasp out of her open mouth. A few drops of tea splashed onto the white cloth. She gripped her cup with both hands and returned it to its saucer. An overwhelming sense of relief surged through her body, followed by a longing - like an itch - to tell someone. She could not. Nobody in this city knew that she was married.

  She risked a glance around the café. The only other customers – an elderly couple and a girl, their granddaughter perhaps – were busying themselves with their coats. There was no sign of the waitress. Philippa picked up the newspaper and squinted at the announcement. There was no mistake. It must be him. Suddenly she felt cold. She slipped her coat around her shoulders and took a sip of tea. Even in death, Edward had managed to pierce the cocoon that she had woven around herself. She had lived at Winchester College for a year now and almost convinced herself that she had always been Miss Philippa Lambert, College Nurse, and that her married life belonged to someone else. This news meant an end to that pretence, in her own mind at least.

  What to do now? She should write to her mother-in-law; yes, that would be the right - the expected - thing to do. She would compose the letter now and write it up properly in her room later. She fished in her handbag for notebook and pencil, and found a crumb free space on the table.

  Dear Augusta Lady Elkins

  I am writing to express my condolences on

  That sounded as if she did not care. She crossed it out. She did care and she wanted Augusta to know that. She had loved Edward so much when they had married; it had almost been an addiction. For a while, she had thought he felt the same, but she came to realise that his addictions were short-lived.

  Dear Lady Elkins

  I was so sorry to hear of Edward’s death. I hope that you will inform me of the funeral arrangements so that I may pay my respects

  No, there was no point in even trying to be civil. She crumpled up the paper and threw it into her cup where it slowly began to absorb the dregs. She could not attend the funeral. She would be shunned, the butt of whisper and rumour. Sir George had seen to it that her home town now thought of her as a hussy and a nag, all to draw attention away from the real reason why his black sheep of a brother had disappeared. It was naive to think that Augusta would help. Lady Elkins lived with George at the Hall, a vague, willowy presence, her expression always softly benevolent, her favourite phrase ‘whatever George or Edward thinks best.’ She would never side against her precious sons.

  And more to the point, a letter would have a postmark. Philippa knew that George would not hesitate to pursue her; he had promised as much. She traced the announcement, the newsprint blackening her finger tip. If the newspaper had not been abandoned by the previous customer, she would never have known. This announcement released her from any further association with that family. It made her life in Winchester not quite a lie. She should be grateful for that. Yet she could not quite shake off a sense of unease.

  ‘We’re closing up,’ the waitress called from behind the counter, pointing to the wall clock. ‘You’d better hurry if you don’t want to miss it.’

  Philippa heard the rebuke in the woman’s voice. She tore the page out of the newspaper as unobtrusively as she could and slipped it into her handbag. She left sixpence for her tea and scone, buttoned her coat and went out onto the frosty High Street. The few cars and vans had come to a halt, horses were reined in, an omnibus had parked against the curb depositing its passengers onto the pavement. Every person stood motionless and enveloped in their own breath. She eased herself into a gap between a matchseller and a boy dressed in an oversized coat. Only just in time. Suspended over the street on its ornate black and gold joist, the hour hand of the City clock juddered onto eleven. There was a pause, like a suppressed sigh, and then a three gun salute sounded in the distance. The silence began.

  This act of remembrance, on the first anniversary of the Armistice, was the King’s idea, albeit a last-minute one. An announcement in last Friday’s newspapers had encouraged his people to mark the ‘Great Deliverance’ by ‘a complete suspension of all our normal activities.’ This hesitant and uncomfortable silence was the result. Should she close her eyes, Philippa wondered? Some in the crowd had done so, dropping their heads as if in prayer. Others stared straight ahead, unseeing and isolated by thought. The men in uniform thrust their chins upward, thumbs pressed down the seams of their trousers. One of the officers had a scrap of blue paper, a pawn ticket it looked like, pinned to his left lapel. The boy gripped his mother’s hand and gazed at his shoes.

  How had Edward ended up on that troop ship? He had sailed to Canada after abandoning her, writing to George with a forwarding address in Vancouver. George had taken obvious pleasure in showing her the letter: ‘Couldn’t have got himself much further away,’ his whisper a mixture of glee and pity. So Edward must have stayed in Canada. A baby started to cry; its mother bent over the pram, anxiously attempting to quieten it. Philippa resisted the urge to press her hands over her ears, the penetrating wail a painful reminder that Edward doubtless had a second family over there. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that he would not have signed up willingly. He must have been conscripted. In Southwell, they would be quick to blame her, as they had always done: he wouldn’t have run away to Canada if she’d been a proper wife to him. His death would somehow become her fault, the War’s part in it conveniently forgotten. She heard a shuddering sob next to her and something brushed her arm. The boy’s mother had grasped her hand, an unconscious act as was clear from the woman’s pale cheeks and unblinking teary ey
es. People would expect her to feel like that about Edward. If they knew.

  The firing of a single round signalled the end of the silence. Two minutes had passed and she had not even prayed. A man cleared his throat, others responded by replacing their hats. Reluctantly it seemed, traffic started to move, people shuffled away. The baby stopped crying, soothed by the movement of its pram. Philippa eased her fingers out of the woman’s hand.

  The woman turned to her. ‘Oh I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you.’

  ‘It’s quite alright.’

  ‘Have you lost someone too?’ the woman said almost hopefully.

  Philippa paused. ‘Yes, I suppose I have.’

  ‘I’ve been trying not to think about it. For my son’s sake. But now...I’m not sure whether I can...’ The woman picked at her coat with her free hand. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I...er, don’t know.’ It was an unexpected question. As the woman wished her goodbye, a notion formed in Philippa’s mind: that Edward’s death might mean that she no longer had to hide, that she could decide for herself what her future held.

  Philippa wove her way through the crowd towards the pinnacled Butter Cross. She took the passageway that cut through the covered arcade and into the Square with its huddle of shops and eating houses. A man in front of her suddenly veered through an inconspicuous door leading to the tiny church of St Lawrence. Philippa caught a glimpse of candles flickering on the altar. Some people were already on their knees. She continued onto the Green, the Cathedral’s turreted west front bearing down on her. The beech tree next to Little Minster Street had abandoned its furnace-red leaves over the damp earth. She kicked through the piles, and then immediately chided herself for feeling almost joyful amongst such grief and remembrance. There had been a time when she would have mourned for Edward: the months of solicitous courting when he had written to her every day, and the year following their marriage during which he still regarded her as an amusing novelty worthy of his attention. Yet as a child, she had been wary of Edward Elkins. She first met him when she was 13 years old and still happy to play hide-and-seek with her best friend Elizabeth in the trees that bordered Southwell Minster’s graveyard. Two young men, one stout, the other tall and lean, had appeared from the direction of Westgate. They seated themselves on a tomb and proceeded to watch the game, sly smiles on their faces.

  ‘Who are they?’ Philippa whispered to Elizabeth.

  ‘The Elkins boys, George and Edward. Their father’s bought the Westwell estate. My mother says they’re not real aristocracy. Let’s go shall we? I don’t like them looking at us.’

  Elizabeth had linked arms with Philippa, and together they pranced away, heads held high, avoiding the boys’ stares. Philippa thought she remembered a voice behind her saying, ‘think they’re too high and mighty, do they? That’ll change.’ She wondered if that was when Edward had decided to have her, just to prove a point. From that moment on, he tended to leave the teasing, hair-pulling and doll-stealing to his older companions. Only once did she see him engage directly in an act of cruelty. Sunday communion over, Edward’s party had been talking with the Rector at the West Door. She had noticed Edward slip away, walk deliberately towards a patch of freshly dug soil where a group of sparrows fluttered excitedly, stamp upon the smallest bird and return without a backwards glance. She felt such anger and indignation that morning. Her younger self had been so much wiser.

  She walked through Curle’s Passage beneath the first flying buttress on the Cathedral’s south side, clutching her coat collar to her neck as the wind gusted around her, and then set off across the Inner Close towards Kingsgate. She noticed a group of men standing in the corner by the south transept wall, their heads bowed. They were surrounded by crates and trunks of all sizes, the words Diver’s Gang scrawled on many of them. A hose emerged from inside a huge metal wardrobe and snaked across the grass. All but one of the men wore stained flannel trousers and pressed cloth caps to their chests. The other man, a tall figure dressed in a black coat, waved a gangly arm and beckoned to her.

  She left the path. She rather liked Canon Creswell Strange, although in reality she knew little about him. A clergyman in his mid-40’s, he was one of Winchester Cathedral’s community of priests responsible for Sunday services and weekday Evensongs, and for other duties mysterious to anyone outside that world. He had been filling in as College chaplain since the start of the war, becoming a familiar face around the precincts. Now he strode energetically to meet her, a brief smile flickering across his narrow face.

  ‘How fortuitous, you’re just the person we need!’ Canon Strange took her arm and guided her into the midst of the men. ‘Gentlemen, this is Nurse Lambert from College Sick House.’ He crouched next to two army greatcoats spread out on the ground, covering something. She moved closer and smelt the tang of wet wool. All the soldiers had smelled like that during the War, or worse. Canon Strange grasped the coats and removed them with a flourish. ‘So, what’s the verdict?’

  The woman was dead; that much was certain. Her arms and legs were splayed in a star; mouth open to reveal yellowing teeth; blanched skin marked by pink blotches. Her tweed coat was buttoned up to the neck. The sleeves had bunched around her elbows revealing swollen, wrinkled finger-ends as if she had spent too long in the bath.

  Philippa took a step backwards, her hands instinctively moving to cover her mouth and nose, her heart pounding. Her first body since the War. It frightened her; it seemed so strange and out-of-place. Why hadn’t the Canon given her any warning? It was almost cruel. She must not show her fear. She linked her fingers together in case her hands shook, and walked around the body, hoping this portrayed an air of calm professionalism. Black patent leather shoes, brass buckles: smart, quite expensive. Stockings bunched around knees and calves, giving the woman’s legs the look of newly-sheared sheep skin. Then she knelt and tentatively touched the woman’s dark, curly hair. It was wet, thin twigs caught in the strands. And dyed - the roots were silvery grey. And through the coat, three, four…no, five slits rimmed with dirt and congealed blood. Died of her wounds.

  ‘It’s as if she’s been bayonetted,’ Canon Strange muttered, ‘with some force too, to get through her coat.’ He crossed himself - in a rather perfunctory way she noticed. ‘I don’t suppose you know who she is?’

  Philippa forced herself to look again at the swollen pussy face, and realised with a shock that she did. She stood up and went to stand by the Canon. ‘She works at the College in the office. One of the clerks or secretaries I think. Grace something. I don’t – didn’t - know her very well. They tend to keep themselves to themselves.’ She cast her mind back to the only time that she had tried to sit with the secretaries to drink her cup of morning coffee. The women had enquired half-heartedly about Philippa’s patients and then returned to griping about the weak morals and lack of diligence demonstrated by the younger Dons. Philippa couldn’t be sure but she thought that Grace might have been one of the most vocal. ‘Did you find her handbag?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah ha, one was fished out from in there.’ Strange pointed to a trench that had been dug at right angles to the Cathedral wall. ‘It was empty I’m afraid.’

  ‘The trench?’

  ‘No, the bag,’ Strange said slowly, as if addressing a rather dim child.

  ‘Where does the trench go?’

  ‘To the foundations below the waterline, where the concrete was put in before the War. The Dean asked the diver to reinforce the concrete with additional bags. The boys were due to close up the trench tomorrow.’

  ‘She was in there?’

  Strange nodded. ‘Someone had tried to weigh her down but she didn’t sink properly.’ He placed a hand on the shoulder of the stocky man beside him. ‘Gave you quite a shock eh, Jim. Why don’t you and the lads take yourselves off to the Eclipse for a couple of hours?’

  The Diver’s Gang did not need to be asked twice and soon she was alone with Canon Strange and the body. He was standing in the sort of stooped
stance often adopted by tall men. A thick strand of fair hair screened his eyes and it was impossible to tell whether or not he was praying. At last, she broke the silence.

  ‘Do you think Grace…the victim was dead when she went in?’

  ‘I don’t know; I hope so.’

  ‘If she was, how did the body get here?’

  ‘Now, there’s a question. The men say they were working until about half past seven last night. They wouldn’t usually work after dark but it took longer than expected to pack up the diver’s gear. All the gates to the Inner Close are supposed to be locked by a quarter past eight. Since the War they’ve taken security rather seriously. I can’t imagine why anything would have been different last night but I’ll check with the virgirs just to be sure. Once the gates were locked, it would be difficult to get a body inside. You’d have to heave it over one of the high walls, not an easy task and very likely to attract attention from the neighbouring houses, even at night.’ Strange wrapped his cloak across his chest. ‘I swear this Cathedral has weather all of its own,’ he remarked.

  Philippa bent down and peered into the trench, a shallow muddy slope leading into darkness. ‘Someone was bound to find her.’

  ‘So it would seem, although perhaps the killer was counting on the murkiness of the water.’

  She returned to the body. ‘May I take a closer look?’

  ‘Of course, if you wish.’

  The left coat pocket was empty. In the right, she found a fabric purse containing a few shillings, an empty cigarette case and a soft leather glove lined with thick fur.

  ‘Her gloves must have cost a bit,’ she said.

  ‘Is that so? I’m no expert on these things.’

  She unbuttoned the coat as far as the waist. Grace was wearing a cherry-red velvet dress, with a square neckline rather low cut for someone of her age. The bust was misshapen. Feeling a little self-conscious, Philippa slipped her hand inside the dress.