Dead of Winter

by Rennie Airth

  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 admirers, who’ve been ringing up since breakfast asking for her. All that dancing last night seems to have done wonders for the walking wounded. If you’re going to go, you might as well do it today. At least you won’t have it weighing on your mind over Christmas.’

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I’ve been caught up in this long enough, I know.’ Madden had been contrite. ‘But I have to be sure I’ve done all I can. Followed up every lead. I can’t explain it exactly, but I feel we owe it to Rosa. To her memory.’

  ‘And so do I.’ Helen’s kiss had served as a seal on her words. ‘But don’t be too late back. I want us all to be together this evening.’

  Soon afterwards she had dropped him at the station on her way to her surgery and Madden had found Stackpole waiting for him on the platform, with the welcome news that extra trains would be running to cope with the flood of travellers expected over the Christmas period and he would have no difficulty getting back to Highfield once his selfimposed duty was done.

  Another figure in a police constable’s uniform was waiting on the platform at Liphook when Madden’s train arrived, this one considerably shorter in stature than Will Stackpole, but no less portly.

  ‘Bob Leonard, sir.’ The bobby touched his helmet. Well past middle age, he sported a grey toothbrush moustache and veined red cheeks. ‘We’ve not met, Mr Madden, but I know you by name. Weren’t you with the Yard once?’

  ‘I didn’t think there was anyone left who remembered that.’ Madden laughed as they shook hands.

  ‘Ah, well, when you’ve been in this job as long as I have …’ Leonard chuckled. ‘I was due to put my feet up four years ago, but then the war came along and there was no one else to do it.’ He nodded at the train from which Madden had just alighted and which was still disgorging passengers. ‘You might have picked a better day. Don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘er so full.’

  The same thought had come to Madden as he’d sat wedged in a corner seat while they’d crawled along at a snail’s pace. Despite the cramped conditions the holiday spirit had been well in evidence and the sound of a sing-song had reached his ears from another compartment a little way down the corridor in the antique carriage. Reprieved by the needs of wartime from the junkyard perhaps, it had been decorated by photographs of straw-hatted girls walking arm-in-arm along a seaside promenade with young men clad in white flannels. Phantoms from another age.

  Many of those travelling had belonged to the services and some were still recovering from their
wounds. Noticing that an army sergeant standing in the crowded corridor outside was on crutches, Madden had given up his seat halfway through the trip, and when they had finally reached his destination he had paused long enough to help another injured soldier, this one an officer with a bandage covering one eye, who was stepping down uncertainly on to the platform behind him with the help of a cane, oblivious to the salutes which a pair of privates were offering him as they strode by.

  Although it had stopped snowing during the journey, the grimy slush covering the platform was deep underfoot and Leonard suggested they take refuge in his office, which was nearby and where he would give Madden directions to the Grange.

  I don’t know the young lass myself,’ he said as they plodded through the snow, down Liphook’s main street. ‘Except by sight. Will told me you wanted a word with her, but not why.’

  The unspoken question required an answer. The Liphook bobby had done them a favour, after all.

  ‘If it’s the right girl, she was on the same train as a young woman who was murdered in London a few weeks ago. Another Pole called Rosa Nowak. She was working for me as a land girl. Apparently they knew each other. Rosa was murdered less than an hour after they parted at Waterloo. I want to have a talk with Eva. I want to know what happened on that journey.’

  ‘You’ve been in touch with the Yard about this, have you, sir?’

  The tone of Leonard’s query was polite, but firm, and Madden smiled.

  ‘Yes, don’t worry, Constable. I’m not acting on my own. I’ve been helping the police with this. In fact, I may want to ring Chief Inspector Sinclair from your office later when I come back.’

  ‘You’ll be welcome, sir.’ Leonard looked relieved. ‘In fact it might be easier for you to do it from here than from the Grange, say. The telephone lines are jammed at the moment. It’s the Christmas season. But I can get through to the Yard all right, and if you need to ring me from the Grange you’ll have no trouble. The village exchange isn’t affected.’

  Sweating slightly in spite of the frosty air, glad of the boots he’d put on that morning, Madden strode down the narrow lane. Walled on either side by dense woods, the road was more than ankle-deep in fresh snow and the louring sky threatened another fall soon. Since leaving the outskirts of Liphook he had not seen a living soul; only the cries of a flock of plovers wheeling overhead had broken the silence of the white-clad countryside all around him, and in the deep stillness he had found his thoughts drifting back to the past: to the bitter winter of 1916 when he had huddled with others around flickering spirit stoves in the trenches before Arras, trying to thaw the thick chunks of bully beef in their mess tins. Once a prey to memories of the slaughter, and to the nightmares that had plagued his sleep for years afterwards, he seldom thought of that time now. But on emerging from the woods into a landscape of flat, gently rolling contours not unlike the killing fields of northern France, he found long-forgotten images returning to fill his mind.

  He had wasted little time in Liphook, staying only long enough to warm his hands at the small wood fire burning in Leonard’s office and to receive directions from the constable on how to reach the Grange.

  ‘There are no signposts up any more. They took them down during the Jerry invasion scare. I dare say it’s the same over at Highfield. But if you follow the road to Devil’s Lane and turn right at the crossroads, you can’t go far wrong. Watch out for a fork in the road when you reach the old mill, though. Left will take you to the MacGregors’ farm, and you don’t want to end up there.’

  There seemed to have been little traffic on the lane recently – he saw no marks of tyre tracks in the virgin snow – but after he had been walking steadily for a quarter of an hour he heard the sound of muffled hoofs behind him, and, turning round, spied a pony-and-trap driven by a broad-shouldered figure well wrapped in winter garments coming his way. He moved to one side of the road to give it passage, but when the trap reached him it came to a halt.

  ‘Where are you headed? Can I give you a lift?’

  The voice was a woman’s, though it would have been hard to judge her sex by appearance alone: clad in an old army greatcoat, she was also wearing a fur-lined cap whose earflaps, tied beneath the chin, hid most of her features.

  ‘I’m going to a house called the Grange,’ Madden replied.

  ‘Are you now?’ The answer seemed to interest the driver, and she leaned down from the trap’s seat to peer at his face. ‘Well, hop on, if you like. I can only take you as far as the crossroads, but that’ll save you half a mile’s walk.’

  As Madden put his foot on the step, she reached down a gloved hand and hauled him up beside her.

  ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ The face she turned to him, framed in fur, was fiftyish and weathered.

  ‘No. I came over from Highfield, in Surrey.’ He settled himself beside her. ‘Madden’s my name. John Madden.’

  The woman had been on the point of flicking the reins; now she hesitated.

  ‘Not the John Madden who married Helen Collingwood that was?’

  ‘The very same.’ Madden grinned. ‘And you are—?’

  ‘Elizabeth Brigstock. Bess.’ She offered him a hand which he shook. ‘I knew your wife years ago, but only slightly. It was when we were girls. Our mothers were friends, but Helen’s died young.’

  ‘So she did. Before the war – the last war. I never knew her.’

  ‘We used to be hauled by our mas out to dances in the neighbourhood. In my case, anyway.’ She chuckled. ‘I was the perennial wallflower. I used to sit watching the couples, thinking the evening would never end. But Helen was such a beauty; she had to fend the young men off. But I did like her; she had such lightness of spirit. One of those people you were always pleased to see. I went abroad after the war and we lost touch, but I was told she’d got married again.’ She was still looking at him; but her gaze had lost focus and she seemed to be searching her memory. ‘And what was it I heard? There was some story about you …’

  ‘About me?’ Madden grinned. ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘No, I’m sure … It’ll come back to me in a moment.’ She smiled in turn and then clicked her tongue. ‘Wake up, Pickles.’ She flicked the reins. ‘Get a move on, you lazy beast.’

  Soon they were travelling at a sedate trot.

  ‘I’m the village postlady. One of them. I have to make a circuit of the farms on this side of Liphook. I’ll get to the Grange eventually, but only later, I’m afraid, otherwise I’d offer you a lift all the way. You know Mary, do you?’

  ‘Mary—?’ Madden looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Mary Spencer.’ She returned his glance. Her eyebrows had risen fractionally; in surprise, perhaps.

  ‘No, but I know who she is.’ Madden paused. ‘Is she a friend of yours?’

  ‘Very much so.’ Steering carefully, Bess Brigstock negotiated a dead branch that had fallen on to the road in front of them beneath the weight of snow.

  ‘Actually it’s not Mrs Spencer I want to speak to. It’s the Polish girl who works for her. Eva Belka is the name I’ve been given.’

  Expecting her to say something more – to question him, perhaps, ask him his business – he waited; but they were approaching the crossroads and Bess slowed the pony to a walk before bringing it to a halt.

  ‘That’s your way.’ She pointed to her right. ‘I doubt you’ll find another soul on the road today so you’d better not get lost. Make sure you take the right fork when you reach the mill.’

  Thanking her, Madden stepped backwards down from the seat. When he looked up he found her steady gaze fixed on him. Her face bore an expression he couldn’t quite read: half curious, half wary.

  ‘I’ve just remembered what it was I heard about you,’ she said, settling the reins in her hands again. ‘My mother wrote to me while I was working in Africa and told me Helen was getting married again and how surprised everyone was.’

  ‘Surprised – why?’

  ‘Because of whom she was mar
rying.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Ma said he was a policeman.’

  26

  ‘WELL, AT LAST we seem to be getting somewhere, sir.’

  Sinclair bustled into Bennett’s office with his file under his arm, limping, it was true, but more from habit than anything else. As though in keeping with the festive spirit, the pain in his toe had eased somewhat and he was enjoying the momentary respite from discomfort.

  ‘We’ve had a sighting of Ash. Tentative, but encouraging. I’ve just had word of it from Brixton. A local landlady called in at the station this morning and said she was reasonably sure he’d been staying at her boarding house until a few days ago. She said she recognized his face from the passport photograph published in the papers.’

  ‘Reasonably sure?’ Bennett paused in the middle of slipping some papers into a drawer to look up. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, bear in mind the snapshot’s an old one, taken when he was a young man, so it would have been hard for her to be certain. But in spite of that she seemed to think the resemblance was strong. The detective she spoke to at Brixton pressed her hard, but she stuck to her guns: she said she was ninety per cent sure it was the same man. And there are other factors that seemed to support her story.’

  ‘Such as … ?’ The assistant commissioner closed the drawer. He was on the point of leaving for his Christmas break, but had asked Sinclair at their meeting earlier that morning to keep him informed up to the last minute.

  ‘His behaviour, in a word.’ The chief inspector sat down. ‘He was there for a week, but his landlady saw very little of him. He didn’t mix with her other lodgers – she served them breakfast and supper – but had his meals in his room. And he always seemed to manage to slip in and out without encountering anyone. Quiet as a cat, she said.’ Sinclair’s eyes had narrowed. ‘The cat who walked by himself, perhaps. My nose tells me it was Ash and I’m acting on that assumption. Especially as we have a name.’