Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Yes!” Her face coloured as she looked back up at him. “Look, do you mind if we go somewhere more private to talk about this?” she hissed. “I have other guests to consider.” She motioned her head back towards the sounds of the radiogram.

  “Not at all,” said Greenaway. “In fact, I was hoping you might be able to show me Private Muldoon’s room. You’ve got a spare key for it, haven’t you?”

  “But he’ll be back any minute. Can’t you talk to him first?”

  “Mrs Cavendish-Field, how well do you actually know Private Muldoon?”

  The landlady frowned, her attention drawn back to the cigarette she had previously discarded. She lifted its smouldering remains and took a deep drag before answering. “Not as well as I perhaps should,” she admitted.

  “Has he ever given you a reason to feel afraid of him?”

  Her green eyes shot him a look that said he had her bang to rights. She crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray, took from her jacket pocket the set of keys that she herself had been on the verge of using just before her unexpected visitor arrived.

  “Follow me, please,” she said.

  – . –

  Muldoon’s room was right at the top of the staircase. Mrs Cavendish-Field hovered nervously outside, knocking on the door despite the fact she knew the room was empty and waiting a couple of seconds before putting the key in the lock.

  “You can go back downstairs to your guests if you want,” Greenaway told her.

  The landlady shook her head, folding her arms. “No, I’ll wait here. Only I don’t know if he put the blackout down before he went out …”

  Greenaway stepped past her into the room. A lingering, musky scent of aftershave and sweat hung heavily in the air, exactly the odours the PC on Waterloo Station had remembered. The curtains had not been drawn before Muldoon went for his constitutional, and in the glow cast from the hallway, Greenaway could see a room in disarray. He strode over and took a look through the window, to scan for any signs of life below, before pulling down the blackout and turning on the light.

  It illuminated a bed left unmade, sheets and a feather eiderdown in a tangle, a kitbag spewing out its contents in the middle of it. A bottle of NAAFI Canadian rye whisky on the table by the bed, only a dribble inside the smeared glass that had left rings over the polished surface it sat on. Boxes of Lucky Strike cigarettes on the bed and on the table, an ashtray overflowing with fag ends. Papers everywhere, pages of old newspapers and a thick wad of what looked suspiciously like petrol coupons. Muldoon was a deviator all right, and murder was clearly not his only transgression.

  Greenaway put down his murder bag and took out a pair of gloves. Snapping them on, he stepped in for a closer examination.

  “Can you tell me something?” he asked Mrs Cavendish-Field as he lifted the wad of coupons. There was at least a score of them and they looked pretty good forgeries. He had come across the like before. “How did you first become acquainted with Muldoon? Was he introduced to you socially or did he just turn up one day, looking for a room?”

  The landlady’s memory needed no prompting. “I met Joe in the Running Horse – that is to say, our local pub,” she said. “I was seeing a friend there for lunch, only I’d got there a bit early. I wouldn’t naturally go talking to strangers, but I had the dog with me and he started to make a fuss of her.” She cast her eyes back down the stairs, waiting for the sound of the door. “He was in uniform, so naturally, we began to chat about the war. But he soon digressed from that rather tiresome subject. You probably won’t believe this, but he was an interesting conversationalist.”

  Greenaway grunted. “He must have had something going for him,” he conceded.

  The comment, and its implication, stung Mrs Cavendish-Field and she moved forward from the doorway into the room. “Well, you wouldn’t have thought so from his rank or his age, but he seemed very well educated, keen to know all about the local history. He told me he was waiting for a friend from London who had suggested meeting at the Running Horse because of its history. Good Queen Bess is said to have stayed the night there, you know.”

  She realised that, in the state of panic she found herself in, she was rambling. But it was imperative that this oaf of a policeman believed her.

  “Anyway,” she reined herself in, “it turned out to be the funniest thing. When his friend did eventually turn up, it was one of the guests I already had staying with me. They hadn’t decided whether to remain here for the weekend or to go down to London, but, since I had a vacancy, they found it convivial to stay.”

  Greenaway stared at her. “And when was this, can you remember?” All sorts of angles had started clicking together in his mind as she spoke; separate threads suddenly pulling together to link his conversation with Alf Simmons on Waterloo Bridge to the Squad business that had brought him to Leatherhead the year before. Two lorries of NAAFI cigarettes bound for army bases in the area, hijacked a week apart, on the outskirts of the town.

  “I have a good memory for dates,” said Mrs Cavendish-Field. Though it was true, this one was etched on her mind for other reasons. “It was the first of March last year.”

  “And the friend’s name?”

  “Mr Parnell,” the landlady said, her voice lowering to a whisper, “Raymond.”

  A grim smile spread over Greenaway’s face. “Well, well …” he began.

  “Don’t say any more, Edie,” the voice came from outside the room: a Canadian accent mouthing a line like it came out of a Cagney film. Both pairs of eyes snapped towards the door. Neither had heard him creep his way up the stairs.

  Now he stood framed in the doorway: a swarthy man with a tangled mop of jet-black, curly hair. A face dominated by thick eyebrows and dark, glittering eyes, set over a boxer’s nose and underscored with a pencil moustache. His hands out front, waving a Smith & Wesson Military & Police model revolver from side to side between them.

  “Who is this?” he jerked the barrel in Greenaway’s direction, while his wild stare locked onto the landlady. “What’s he doing in my room?”

  “Chief Inspector Greenaway, Scotland Yard,” Greenaway said, opening his palms to show Muldoon he was unarmed. “I just want a little chat, son.”

  Muldoon’s pupils were so enlarged that his entire irises seemed black. He took a step towards Greenaway, the strong, musky scent of his aftershave advancing before him.

  “What are you doing with my things?” His voice rose into an unattractive whine. Greenaway kept a beady eye on the revolver.

  “Your things, are they?” he said. “That’s very helpful. Bootleg coupons and hijacked NAAFI supplies – not what I expected to find here, but a bonus, all the same.”

  “What you talking about, man? Bootleg? Hijacked? Get out of here!” Muldoon did what Greenaway wanted, came closer to him, leaving Mrs Cavendish-Field temporarily out of range. Greenaway had used that type of gun often enough himself to be able to see that the safety catch was still on, and it would only take another step for him to get close enough to knock it out of the Canadian’s grip with the side of his hand.

  But the landlady had other ideas.

  “Joseph,” Mrs Cavendish-Field’s voice trembled as it lowered. But she did not speak in fear now. It was rage that boomed the next lines from her lips. “What the hell have you been up to?” she demanded. “And what have you done with my Chocolate?”

  Muldoon lurched round in her direction. For a second, Greenaway had the notion that it was the landlady who was actually running the black market ops here and that she was missing the confectionery constituent of her order.

  “Shut up, Edie, I said, shut up!” Muldoon raged, waving the gun at her.

  “How dare you?” Before Greenaway could even make his move, she slapped Muldoon around the face so hard and so loudly that he dropped his weapon involuntarily. Deftly, Mrs Cavendish-Field dived forwards to snatch it up.

  “I wasn’t married to a colonel for thirty years for nothing, you fool,” she hissed. Setting her ja
w in a grim line, she unclicked the safety catch. “You’re supposed to do this before you threaten someone,” she told Muldoon, placing him firmly in her sights. “Now,” she said, “what the bloody hell have you done with my dog?”

  As if to answer her, the doorbell sounded in a furious jangle and with it came the muffled sound of barking.

  “Inspector Greenaway,” said Mrs Cavenish-Field, breathing heavily, “perhaps you would like to take this gun from me while I go and answer the door?”

  – . –

  “Sorry I couldn’t get here no earlier, Ted,” the Sergeant said. “Only he did lead me a bit of a merry dance.”

  Two reservists had arrived shortly after the Sergeant, called by him from the local pub after he had lost his tail on Muldoon. They were now sat guarding the prisoner in the back of Greenaway’s car while the DCI finished gathering up evidence at Mole Cottage and learning what his counterpart in Leatherhead had been up to all evening.

  Good as his word, the Sergeant had kept watch on the cottage until he’d seen Muldoon come out with Mrs Cavendish-Field’s springer spaniel. Recognising the uniform, he’d tailed him down to the Running Horse, where Muldoon took himself off to a corner by the fire, ostensibly reading the paper over his pint, but keeping an eye on the door. When he saw a couple of young women come in, he rapidly became animated. Just as he had once done to ingratiate himself to her owner, he used the dog as an ice-breaker, to initiate conversation with the pair. The Sergeant watched him buy drinks and settle them down at his table. Then, after a few minutes of chatter, Muldoon produced something from the pocket of his greatcoat – a small, black leather handbag with a tortoiseshell clasp.

  As the girls passed it between them, the Sergeant recognised the description Greenaway had given him of the bag the PC had seen Muldoon with at Waterloo Station. It was evident he was trying to sell it and one of them readily agreed – such a pretty little thing, they both considered. As soon as he had money in his hands, Muldoon excused himself, making for the Gents and leaving the spaniel still tied by her lead to the table leg.

  At this point, the Sergeant was forced to move in and get back what he knew to be a piece of crucial evidence. In the time it had taken to explain himself to them, he presumed Muldoon must have seen him talking to the girls, panicked and run back to Mole Cottage, forgetting the dog completely. Once the Sergeant had ascertained the Canadian was no longer on the premises, he had called up reinforcements and hot-footed it back himself, bringing the spaniel with him.

  “Two quid that cost me,” he said, handing the black leather bag to Greenaway. “And I still don’t think she believed a word I said. Right put out about it she were.”

  “Well,” said Greenaway, “it would have cost a lot more than that to begin with. She thought she had a nice little bargain in her grasp.” He sealed it inside an evidence bag, adding it to the mound he had culled from Muldoon’s room, before taking two pound notes from his own wallet to reimburse the Sergeant.

  “Hopefully it’ll still have some of his prints on it,” he said. “If not, we’ve got the ration book.” Greenaway had found the document, made out to Peggy Richards, stuffed inside Muldoon’s kit bag. “Like to see him talk his way out of that.”

  “Oh, he’ll think of something,” said the Sergeant, raising an eyebrow. “He likes a good jaw, from what I just seen of him.”

  Greenaway pointed to the cartons of fags. “And what about all this?” he said. “Puts you in mind of those NAAFI lorries last year, don’t it?”

  The Sergeant stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “That is the same cargo as what went missing back then. Makes you wonder, don’t it? Still, I expect you’ll get to the bottom of it, Ted. Anything else I can help you with, you know?”

  “I won’t keep you much longer. I just need a last word with Mrs C-F before I go.”

  The Sergeant allowed himself a smile. “What d’you make of her, then, Ted? Bit of a one-off, in’t she?”

  – . –

  “Come in,” the landlady bade him enter.

  She was in what she called her den, a small room at the back of the house where she ran the business that the sudden death of her husband five years ago had prompted her into undertaking. The den had a window at which, in daytime, she could look out onto her favourite part of the garden, but apart from this aspect, it was a very masculine room, crammed full of parchment lampshades depicting ships’ charts and naval scenes. A photograph of the late Colonel stared out of a black frame on the shelf over the roll-top desk, surveying his former domain from between two model galleons.

  Standing on the threshold, Greenaway had another flash of Marjorie Cummins in the front room that had so clearly been furnished to her husband’s taste, and instinctively he knew that this was part of what Muldoon had been doing here: finding out how the other half lives.

  Mrs Cavendish-Field sat beside the fire, clutching a glass of brandy. The brown spaniel lying at her feet raised her head and gave an inquisitive whine.

  “You asked me earlier if Joseph had ever given me a reason to feel afraid,” she said, staring into the flames. “Well, he hadn’t. Not until Wednesday morning.”

  “That so?” Greenaway moved cautiously towards her, wondering if she kept any of her own firearms tucked away about the place. “What happened then?”

  “He woke me at five in the morning, throwing stones at my window. I’d never seen him in such a state – hair standing on end, utterly reeking of booze and, when I let him in to stop him waking up the rest of the house, I could see he had scratches all over his hands. I asked him whatever had he been up to,” her eyes finally rolled up to meet Greenaway’s, “and he said he’d had some bad news from home, something about his sister. He’d gone drinking to drown his sorrows, apparently. Fallen asleep in a field somewhere and got injured trying to find his keys after they’d rolled underneath a barbed wire fence.” Her expression told him she did not believe it.

  “His sister?” Greenaway frowned. The dog got to her feet and bustled towards him, her whine getting more insistent as she pushed her head underneath his right hand.

  “I thought I’d get it out of him once he’d slept it off,” Mrs Cavendish-Field continued. “But he stayed in his foxhole until late this afternoon. I went up to see if everything was all right, I had really started to get worried by then. But he was still in a foul mood – hung over, of course. Wanted to be left alone, he said. He offered to take the dog out for a walk, so he could go straight to the pub, I suppose.” She shot the animal in question a look of disdain. “Look at her,” she said, “wanton beast. Some guard dog you turned out to be, eh, Chocolate? She’s never got over the loss of my husband, you see. She’s like this with every man she meets.”

  The spaniel stared up at Greenaway with love in her eyes, her stump of a tail thrashing from side to side. “Ah,” he smiled, trying not to marvel at how closely her words mirrored what the Sergeant had already opined of the landlady herself. “So you’re Chocolate, are you?” He ruffled the top of the animal’s head. “Don’t seem to me like you’re in much need of a guard dog, Mrs Cavendish-Field. I must say I’m impressed by how well you can look after yourself.”

  “Chief Inspector,” the landlady’s voice turned sharper, “you still haven’t told me what it is you wanted to see Joseph for.”

  Greenaway looked into her green eyes, straightening up to stand to attention. “There’s a few more things I need to ask you,” he said, taking out his notebook. “If I remember rightly, you told me Muldoon first stayed here on the first of March last year.”

  “That’s right,” she held his stare, her expression opaque.

  “After that, did he come back here on a regular basis?”

  “Well,” Mrs Cavendish-Field looked back towards the fire, “I suppose he did. Every couple of months he’d be back for a weekend and then, last summer, he spent two weeks of his leave here. That was the longest he ever stayed.” Her hands searched out her packet of Pall Malls and lighter.

 
; “And what about his friend, Mr Parnell? Did they always visit at the same time?”

  Mrs Cavendish-Field lit up. “No, not after that first time. Mr Parnell is a businessman, he travels a lot, so his visits were always fairly sporadic. After that first time, they were only here together once more and—” she found herself looking above Greenaway’s head to the photograph of her late husband. “And I’m afraid I don’t think they parted here the best of friends. They had some kind of a falling-out after they’d been to the pub one night. But don’t ask me what about,” she continued swiftly, her eyes dancing away. “Neither of them would tell me. Mr Parnell never came here again and this past week Joseph really hasn’t been himself at all.”

  He could hear the cracks start to form in her voice. It had been a long night already, and suddenly he felt sorry for her, as capable as she undoubtedly was.

  “During this past week,” he asked, “he didn’t mention the case of Gordon Cummins to you, did he? Or the Blackout Ripper, as the papers liked to call him?”

  Mrs Cavendish-Field shook her head. When she turned back to him, he could see that her eyes were beginning to glisten. “No, no, I can’t say he did.” The adrenaline provoked by her earlier confrontation with Muldoon having left her system, she had come over feeling very tired, very old and very stupid indeed. “Look, Inspector—” her eyes were pleading, “just tell me – what has he done?”

  Greenaway decided against mentioning the newspaper pages, annotated with Muldoon’s ramblings, that he had also recovered from the room. The Canadian’s little commentary on the Blackout Ripper’s progress could wait for the interview room.

  “I’m afraid it’s murder,” Greenaway said, putting his notebook away.

  22

  DRY BONES

  Friday, 20 February 1942

  “What you doin’ there, son? Lost something besides your marbles?”

  Bobby put the dustbin lid down and turned to face Soapy. “You still got any of yesterday’s papers?” he asked.

  Soapy shook his head, chewing thoughtfully on the toothpick that habitually protruded from between his canines as he took in the shadows under the boy’s eyes, the tousled mop of hair. “You know how it works, son, they all go in the boiler at the end of the day. You helped me clear them up yourself last night, if you can remember that far back. What you doing here at this hour anyway? Shouldn’t you be in school?”