Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  Parnell looked at the small print on the ad. “That a problem?” he asked.

  Bobby nodded. “My mum would send it straight back.”

  “Ah,” said Parnell. “She don’t approve, eh? Religious, is she?”

  “Yeah,” said Bobby, frowning. “She’s a Roman Catholic.”

  Parnell’s eyes registered surprise.

  “My dad isn’t,” Bobby added quickly. “He’s Jewish, like Soapy and Bluebell.” Then he shrugged. “Don’t know what that makes me.”

  “Only half-kosher,” the Maestro’s face lit up in a dazzling smile, “same as me. Listen, Bobby,” he said as he handed the advert back, “what you’ve got there, that’s not magic, that’s more like extortion, that is.”

  “Well, if you can teach me instead,” Bobby said, his voice lowering to a barely discernible whisper, “I can give you a bottle of French brandy.”

  Parnell looked at the solemn little face in front of him. “A whole bottle?” he asked. “Not one fell out of Bluebell’s back pocket?”

  “No,” said Bobby. “This is proper French brandy.”

  Parnell laughed. “Well, I won’t ask you where you came by that then, but all right, son, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Really?” this was a much better result than Bobby had dared dream of.

  “Really,” the Maestro handed the boy the deck of cards, catching Soapy’s eye with a wink. “From now on, you can be my apprentice, too.”

  20

  I GET ALONG WITHOUT YOU VERY WELL

  Thursday, 19 February 1942

  “So, let me get this straight, son,” Greenaway sounded calm, almost reasonable as he read back from his notes. “You came across a Canadian solider rummaging inside a lady’s handbag on Platform 15 of Waterloo Station at one o’clock Wednesday morning. Can you describe him to me?”

  The young PC tried to meet the dark brown eyes beneath the heavy lids of the man sat opposite, but found that he couldn’t; they didn’t match the tenor of the voice. He flicked his gaze up at the clock on the wall behind him instead. “He was about five foot ten,” he replied, “quite broadly built and with a swarthy complexion. One of them pencil moustaches. Wearing the uniform of the Cameron Highlanders.”

  “Aha,” said Greenaway. “A regiment, at last. And apart from what he was up to, did you notice anything unusual about his appearance?”

  “Well,” said the PC, “he was sweating quite heavily and seemed to be drunk. When I took the handbag from him, I saw there was a scratch mark on his left hand.”

  “So you took the handbag from him. What did it look like?”

  “Quite small, maybe four inches by two. Black leather, with a tortoiseshell clasp. I’m no expert but I’d say it cost a few quid.”

  “And naturally, you asked him what he was doing with it?”

  “Yes, sir,” the PC made eye contact for less than a second before looking back at the clock. “He told me it belonged to his girlfriend, and that she must have dropped it on the bench behind him when they were saying their goodbyes before she got her train. He said they were both a bit the worse for wear and he did smell very strongly of perfume. I noticed that there was a ration book in the middle compartment of the bag, so I asked him what her name was. He told me it was Peggy.”

  “And the name on the ration book was?” asked Greenaway.

  “Peggy Richards.”

  Greenaway wrote it down. “What else was in the bag?” he asked.

  “A powder compact and a lipstick, that was all. He told me she always carried her purse and her door keys about her person, that she’d be OK getting home, but he’d make sure he got it back to her first thing in the morning. I didn’t think there was anything she couldn’t do without for one night.”

  “And did you ask him to turn out his pockets? To make sure he hadn’t actually siphoned off her purse and anything else of value already?”

  The PC bit his lip. “No, sir,” he said.

  “You gave him the bag back instead,” said Greenaway, shaking his head. “Well, son, you might never make a detective. But you did get his name and regiment, at least?”

  “Yes, sir,” the PC’s fingers fumbled over his notebook, “it’s Private Joseph Muldoon of the Cameron Highlanders. They’re stationed in Ewshot, in Hampshire.”

  “Well, well,” said Greenaway. “There’s hope for you yet.”

  – . –

  The description of the soldier tallied with witness reports that had been given to Greenaway the previous evening, following his pub crawl around the Strand. Not being as familiar with the locale as he was with Soho, he had taken along an old timer PC from Charing Cross station, who reckoned he knew this Peggy a few years back.

  “There was one just like her used to be a regular on this beat,” he told Greenaway. “An older lady, Irish, took better care of her looks than most of the others. Seemed to be fairly well educated, too. Used to have an unusual repertoire of names, if I’m right. She liked to name herself after poets.”

  It was the barman in the Hero of Waterloo who had seen three soldiers with Balmoral caps entertaining a couple of brasses in his saloon on Tuesday night. One he described as “swarthy and quite athletic-looking” had left with an older woman wearing a red turban. The cellar man backed up his story. They had reason to remember the troop, as they’d both had to help one of the soldiers off the premises when the others had left him there, face down on the table.

  Added to this, the green PC’s bag-snatcher looked like a fit. Greenaway picked up the phone.

  – . –

  Frances Feld saw the sketch of the dead woman while she was on the bus, on the front page of the Daily Herald that was being read by the man sitting opposite. STOCKING WOMAN’S FIGHT FOR LIFE ON WATERLOO BRIDGE read the headline above it.

  Frances looked back at the image. It was only a drawing, a police artist’s impression. But her sister’s eyes stared back at her accusingly.

  “Mary, Mother of God,” Frances breathed, her fingers seeking out the crucifix around her neck as she leaned forward in her seat, straining to read the newsprint beneath the headline. POLICE SEEK INFORMATION announced a smaller subheading. The man turned the page before she could see any more.

  “Are you all right, love?” asked the woman sitting next to her.

  Frances turned, her eyes not quite focused. “Yes, thank you,” she said in a high, quavering voice. “This is my stop,” she added, and though it was nothing of the sort, she stood up and rang the bell. The other woman continued to look at her with concern as she hurried away, the weight of so much human company around too much to bear.

  The bus set her down on a wet, congested pavement full of people and, as it left her, sent up a wave of rainwater in its wake to splatter down the front of her coat.

  – . –

  Set on a meandering road that traced the course of the river after which it was named, Mole Cottage was a vision of rustic idyll: all faux wattle and daub, red-brick chimney stacks and a low, shingled roof with a gabled porch, net curtains at the diamond-paned windows, a sign hanging at eye level reading: VACANCIES. Not the sort of place you’d take for the hideout of a killer on the run.

  Yet, as Greenaway had earlier learned from his Regimental Sergeant Major, it was to this address that Private Muldoon had been headed for his week’s leave. It seemed he was a regular guest at the boarding house, in the Surrey town of Leatherhead, some distance from his barracks in Ewshot. There was a suggestion amongst the men that he had some sort of arrangement with the landlady. Yes, the RSM had opined, in tones very similar to those of Cummins’s corporal before him, Muldoon did have a bit of a reputation with the ladies.

  Once their conversation had concluded, Greenaway had rung the local police to find out more about the landlady from a friendly sergeant he’d had cause to work with once before. Mrs Edith Cavendish-Field was in her early fifties, he learned, the widow of a colonel. She was also something of a local celebrity, with a host of admirers drawn to both her r
eputedly glamorous appearance and perceived bank balance. Not the sort who would seem likely to fall for a twenty-one-year-old spiv in a private’s uniform.

  There had been no reports of suspicious behaviour at her establishment over the past three days, but the Sergeant advised Greenaway against announcing his arrival in advance. Mrs Cavendish-Field would likely turn unhelpful if she caught a whiff of any impending scandal. When Greenaway explained exactly what kind of danger she might be getting herself into with her lodger, the Sergeant offered to keep a discreet eye on things himself until the Yard could get there.

  Driving out of London through the evening dusk, Greenaway turned over the information the RSM had given him, wondering how much trouble Muldoon might give him. The young Canadian had not set his sights on a career in the military; he’d been working as a bartender when he had been drafted, from Hull in Quebec, and his introduction to the army was as brutal as it came. Though thousands of frontline troops had arrived in Britain from the Empire since War was declared, the Cameron Highlanders was one of the few Canadian regiments that had seen any actual fighting – and Muldoon had been deployed in the very worst of it.

  During the retreat from Dunkirk in May 1940, he was part of a reserve company of forty-five men who had led a counter-attack to drive the enemy back over the Lys Canal at La Bassée. They had fought with utter, bloody determination for five solid hours before ten Churchills’-worth of the Royal Tank Regiment came to their aid. Between them, the Allies managed to take down twenty-one enemy tanks and force the Germans into retreat – by which time there were only seven Highlanders left standing. It was just the sort of battle that had destroyed so many young men of Greenaway’s generation, if not in body then in soul.

  On his return from France, Muldoon had been given a couple of weeks’ leave before a medical board assessed him fit to continue service. The CO, a decorated veteran who had fought for the 16th Canadian Scottish at the second Battle of Ypres, was of the mind that it was better for a man to get straight back in the saddle if he wasn’t to lose his nerve. However, an Allied agreement that precluded Canadian troops from the campaign in North Africa meant there was little for them to actually do but make their own entertainments. Muldoon had already served time in the company slammer for running card games and books on the dog races at White City.

  In all, it appeared he was a damaged and dangerous young man – but was Edith Cavendish-Field as unaware of this fact as Cummins’s own wife had been? And was Muldoon as adept as the airman had been at being able to kill, steal and still turn up behaving as if nothing untoward had ever happened?

  Night had fallen by the time Greenaway locked up the Wolseley on the road outside Mole Cottage. Before he had even reached the front door it was opened and a woman stood framed in the light. She was as striking as the Sergeant had suggested. Thick chestnut hair coiled into a high coiffure framed an angular face. A slim figure in a well-cut tweed suit, cashmere jumper and a string of ancestral pearls – almost like an older, just as well-bred version of Marjorie Cummins. Only her wide, green eyes belied the air of authority she would usually have conveyed, as, with a flash of wild panic, they met with Greenaway’s and floundered for recognition.

  “Oh,” she said, putting a hand up to her throat. “I was expecting someone else.” The hand came back down quickly, and with it the pitch of her voice, modulating to its usual, deeper tones as she gave his face a rapid assessment. “Sorry, can I help you?”

  Greenaway showed her his warrant card as he gave her his name. “I’m looking for a soldier I believe you’ve got staying with you,” he said, “a certain Joseph Muldoon of the Cameron Highlanders.”

  The hand went back up, this time further, to land on a strand of curl around her right earlobe. Her forefinger snaked around it, tugging at it, and the panic flared again in her eyes as she glanced beyond Greenaway into the darkness.

  “That’s just who I thought you were going to be,” she said, dragging her gaze back. “He took the dog out over two hours ago, I don’t know what’s keeping him.”

  “Well,” said Greenaway, taking a step forward, “shall we wait for him inside?”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Mrs Cavendish-Field opened the door to him, manners instilled in childhood taking over, though she hesitated before shutting it again behind them. Her green searchlight eyes once more strafed the garden path. Only then did the implication of Greenaway’s job title seem to sink in. “Oh my word,” she said, leaning back against the woodwork. “Whatever do you want with him?”

  – . –

  Bobby Feld was concentrating so hard on perfecting the trick that it took a while for the sound of voices coming from downstairs to permeate his consciousness. He had found it hard to believe, at first, that it could be so easy, but the Maestro had shown him it was. All you had to do was remember the card underneath the one that had been picked. It didn’t matter how many times the pack was then reshuffled, you couldn’t take odds on those two cards being separated. So when you fanned them out again, you just picked the card to the right of the one you had memorised.

  He had repeated the sequence over twenty times already, and each time it worked. Tomorrow he would be ready to try it out on Barney Newbiggin and all the other gulls at school. He was just picturing his friend’s face when his mother’s raised voice broke through the wanderings of his imagination.

  “What was I supposed to do, Harry? Should I have asked her to stay, introduced her to him as his auntie? She might have been earning enough to wear a fur coat but she looked exactly what she was – a woman of the night!”

  “Calm down, Frances, be quiet,” he heard his worried father reply. “You don’t want the boy to hear you.”

  Bobby put the deck of cards down on the bed.

  “Did I do so wrong?” his mother’s voice was cracking into tears. Bobby slipped his shoes off and walked softly to the door.

  “Of course not, bubbala, you did what any good woman would have done in your place,” his father replied. “You did more than enough for that one already.”

  Bobby turned the door handle softly, stepped out onto the landing. He could hear his father whistle between his teeth the way he always did when words were about to fail him. “Families,” he said. And then, “Are you sure it was her?”

  There was a brief silence as Bobby set himself stomach-down on the landing, cocking his ear beside the stair rail. The rustling of paper and then his mother’s voice again.

  “Take another look, Harry, and tell me I’m wrong.”

  Bobby heard his father make another whistling sound. “It looks like her, all right,” he said. “But it’s not a photograph. What makes you so sure of it, my dear?”

  “The clothes,” his mother’s voice was steadier now. “Everything they describe is identical to the outfit she was wearing that night. No, Harry, there’s no mistake about it. You know the life she was leading. Is it any surprise where it took her?”

  There was another long silence, during which time Bobby could feel his heart beating through the floorboards. Who was this woman of the night they were talking about – and what was a woman of the night, anyway? A strange sense of dread overcame him, though he couldn’t understand why.

  “What are you going to do?” his father spoke again.

  “Do my duty, I suppose. Go to the police, identify the body, if I have to. Lord knows who else will be able to do it.” The calmness in his mother’s voice as she said these words chilled Bobby still further.

  “If you’re sure it’s her, then you must,” his father agreed. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, Harry, this is my burden. It was me who started it by not listening to my own father all those years ago and now it’s up to me to see it through to the finish. God forgive me for saying so, but at least now he’ll never have to know. There’s no risk of her ever turning up out of the blue like that again.”

  “Frances,” his father sounded shocked, “are you sure you know what you’re saying? Don�
��t you think there will ever come a time when he should know?”

  “Why?” the voice that replied was icier still. “What do you think it would do for him if he did know? Isn’t he trouble enough as it is?”

  Bobby heard his father’s chair scraping back from the kitchen table.

  “All right, all right. You wouldn’t listen to your father, so why should you listen to me? Have it your own way. But you remember, as hard as you try to keep them, secrets have their own way of finding you out.”

  Bobby got up, ran back to his bedroom. Dived onto the bed with his heart pounding, feeling for the Ace Comic under his pillow and breathing in the faintest scent of violets.

  21

  I’VE HEARD THAT SONG BEFORE

  Thursday, 19 February 1942

  “I’m hoping Private Muldoon can help me with a little enquiry.” Greenaway took in the layout of his surroundings as he spoke. The dining room was off to the right; he could see the tables and chairs through the half-open door, so the sounds of a radiogram coming from the left suggested that was the lounge where the guests spent their evenings. Mrs Cavendish-Field must have been lingering in the hallway, where a cigarette smouldered in an ashtray on the table next to a half-drunk glass of sherry, waiting for sounds of Muldoon’s return.

  “But you’ve come all the way from London,” she said.

  “That’s right. Can you remember what Private Muldoon was up to this past Tuesday night? Was he here with you all evening or did he go up to town for the night?”

  “I-I don’t keep tabs on my guests at all times,” the pitch of her voice started to rise again. “I was out myself on Tuesday night. Can you please tell me …” She put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “But he was here for breakfast Wednesday morning?” Greenaway scrutinised her face. The landlady took her hand away and her eyes fell along with it. “Well, yes, yes he was,” she began to twist her fingers together, rubbing at her wedding ring.

  “You’re certain of that?”