HONOR MISPLACED

Arthur Browne

Chapter Nine

   The short drive down the river bank was uneventful. Constable Danforth pointed the way to the little alley where he had found the one piece of real evidence they had to show for all their work so far. A young Constable who looked to be all of 17 years old stood by trying to look like he thought a member of the London Metropolitan police ought to look. Charlie had to smile.

Charlie and Billy followed the older constable as he led them to a pair of rubish bins just inside the alley. The small, sequined handbag was laying behind them. “The lab boys will be long soon,” Charlie said. “Why don’t we poke around and see if we can find anything useful.” It was a rather clean alley as alleys went. Not a lot of rubish laying about. And no evidence that they could find laying about either.

The detectives arrived  with the fingerprint kit and some other equipment, but there were no footprints to fill with plaster, no items to examine and catalog and tag. Except for the small black handbag, that is.

They photographed it from several angles. Then they dusted it for prints, but the tiny sequins were a poor surface for retaining prints. They let Charlie peer carefully inside, but he couldn’t see anything but a silver cigarette case, a small mirror, a comb and a tube of lipstick.

While the technicians were thus engaged, Charlie set Billy and the two constables to knocking on doors. But this wasn’t a residential neighborhood. The buildings on both sides of the alley were small businesses, one an antique shop and the other a bookstore. They didn’t know the exact time of death, but Charlie was willing to bet that the bag had ended up here after the shops were closed. The proprietors of each claimed to have not seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.

Charlie had already noticed that the trash bins were very close to the mouth of the alley where it ended at the road running alongside the river. There was something about the way the bag lay that made Charlie think that it had been tossed there from some little distance. He was beginning to doubt that the murder had taken place here at all. He couldn’t imagine that Kat had been walking in a dark alley. But she might have been grabbed out on the street. Or after her murder the killer threw the purse into the alley as he walked or drove by. Or it had been found by someone else in another place and then tossed here when the money had been removed or because there was no money in it to begin with. Everything about these killings was frustrating him. Every lead led to a dead end or in too many directions to be of any use.

The technicians told him that they were taking the purse back to the lab to dust and examine the items inside, and that they would get a report as soon as the lab work was finished. He reminded them that this case had top priority, and that was that. They weren’t a single step closer to solving the case than they had been when they arrived.

Charlie sent the two constables back to normal duties after thanking them. Then he and Billy drove back to the office. He was frustrated and angry with himself. He had no idea what he should do next. As they walked into the building, Charlie vented some of his frustration. “I just can’t see any connection between these two other than their father. I suppose they could have been up to something together, something shady, but she just didn’t seem the sort, do you know what I mean? And they both had jobs that kept them busy. They didn’t need money, so black market activities seem unlikely. They might have made someone angry before the war, and they are just getting around to making their anger known. But it still seems to come back around to family no matter how I look at it.”

Once again Billy joined in the brainstorming session as they returned to Charlie’s office. “Can we really rule out the Nazis? What if someone were offering the victims huge sums of money for some of their father’s secrets. That would certainly be worth any sum to the Germans. Or maybe they were being blackmailed somehow. And maybe they decided they just couldn’t carry on doing it. Being traitors I mean. Or if there really is a spy at work maybe he had gotten all he was going to get and just decided to do away with any possible witnesses.”

“Or it might have been the Flight Lieutenant selling the secrets about what his squadron was doing, and maybe Kat found out about it and was going to tell the General. Then this mysterious spy would have to have killed them both, wouldn’t he?” Charlie realized that he was creating an entirely fictitious account and yet still trying to slant it so that Kat came out smelling like a rose. He had lost his impartiality, and that was the last thing an investigator could afford to lose. “Well, we certainly need to find out about their private lives, their friends, going all the way back to before the war.”

He stopped suddenly because something had just occurred to him. “Billy, you said she was in her WAAF uniform. But she was on leave for her brother’s funeral. So where was she going dressed like that? Was she staying at home or did she go back to work for some reason? Was she on her way to work or was she going back home again?  We need to borrow the car again, Billy. She worked over at St. Bart’s. We can pop over and chat up her boss and a few of her friends. Someone was the last person to see her alive. What do you say, young man? Perhaps you’ll meet a lovely nurse.”

Half an hour later they were pulling up in front of Saint Bartholomew’s, the oldest hospital in London. They could plainly see some of the scars left from German bombs back in the early days of the blitz when the skies over London were seldom free of the enemy. The hospital, as Charlie recalled, had been hit at least twice. Not long after they managed to track down the commander of the contingent of WAAF personnel at the hospital, a formidably built woman with the formidable name of Sofia Leo. She also held the formidable rank of Section Officer.

Section Officer Leo had not yet been told of Corporal Crowley’s death. She was visibly shaken by the news, and more so when she learned that it was caused neither by accident or enemy action. “I do so worry about my girls,” she choked out, moved to tears. It seems she was nowhere near as formidable as  her rank, position, or sturdy build might lead someone to assume. “We started off driving ambulances on an airfield outside London. The girls were just taking wounded flyers from the field to the nearby medical tents, and then on to a civilian hospital if it was deemed necessary. It all seemed safe enough. Then the Germans began their raids on our airfields, and we were hit a number of times. I lost two girls to the bombs during the first big blitz. Then, as the WAAF expanded, they decided to send some of us back into the city to help. Things were rather quiet when the bombing tapered off. Now they have picked up again and we have been quite busy.”

The Germans had cut back on the bombings when Hitler had decided to give up on his idea of an invasion. But now the raids were being directed once more at the cities, in response, so the Germans said, to Britain’s bombing of German cities. Charlie didn’t know who was being more honest in this propaganda war, but he wouldn’t have bet on the other side.

Section Officer Leo continued, “So far we have been lucky, but now you tell me that someone murdered that poor, sweet girl? And right after she lost her brother in the same way. This is all too much to bear.”

Charlie understood this sentiment all too well. “We are doing our best to catch whoever did this horrible thing, Section Officer,” he assured her. “We wanted to know about last night. We were given to understand that she had been given leave for her brother’s funeral. But when she was found, she was in uniform. Did she return to work for some reason.”

The Section Officer nodded and went on to explain. “There was a bomb that went off in the West End. It must have been a delay fuse. Who knows how long it was buried there, in a previously hit building. No one even noticed it. It went off right as people were changing shifts at a factory that makes web belts for the Army. The casualties were horrendous. We needed some extra hands, and I called her to see if she could come in for just a few hours. I thought being busy might help take her mind off…” The woman’s eyes grew wide as the thought struck her. “Oh my God. Do you think she was killed on her way here? Is it all because of me?” Tears began to flow freely.

Charlie took her hand. “You can’t look at it that way,” he told her sincerely. “If the killer has been waiting for a chance to get her, he would have sooner or later. But however it works out, it is no fault of yours. You have a very important job to do under very difficult circumstances, and all for the greater good. You needed her help and she was happy to give it.” Charlie was reluctant to press on, but the question needed to be asked. “When did you phone her, if I might ask?”

“It was yesterday afternoon, a little after five o’clock, as I recall.” The distraught woman seemed almost frail now. “When she didn’t show up I just assumed she had been unavoidably delayed and unable to reach me. We got so busy that I didn’t have time to worry about it. I should have called someone, sent someone looking for her.”

Once again Charlie did his best to comfort the woman, but his words were only of so much use. And he felt in need of some comfort himself. Kat had never arrived at the hospital. It was another dead end in the investigation. He asked the Section Officer if they might speak with some of the Corporal’s friends in the unit.

“Oh, yes, of course.” She answered in a downcast tone, and led them to a small canteen in the hospital. As they walked, she told them, “Katherine and Mary Scott were thick as thieves, though their upbringing couldn’t have been more different. Mary is from a small farm in the Midlands. But the two just hit it off right from the very beginning.”

Mary turned out to be a very young woman with bright red hair and freckles that well suited her broad accent. She was crushed when she learned about Kat’s death, and broke down completely. It took all three of them to get her to a chair with a cup of tea in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. When at last she had herself under control enough that she could speak, she didn’t seem to be able to say anything other than nice things about her friend.

“Oh, I love that girl so,” she managed between sniffles, ” and her being a lady and all that. Never put on airs, that one. Salt of the earth. And as kind as the day is long, I’m here to tell you.” She surprised Charlie by smiling briefly, then went on to say, “She told me about you, you know. Stopped by here after your little meeting. She was all in a whirl. Couldn’t stop talking about you, and the little lunch you had planned.”

Charlie felt a pain in his chest and once again he was struck by that profound sense of loss. It was also painfully clear that this young girl wasn’t going to be added to the nonexistent list of suspects. It was even doubtful that she had any information that would be useful to the investigation, but he went through the motions, asking if Kat had made any enemies that the girl knew of, or if she had ever heard Kat talking about anything that might have presented a danger to her. Or even if anything seemed out of the ordinary at all, if Kat had seemed worried. But the answers were all what he expected to hear. Kat got along with everyone, led a carefree life with no social entanglements or complications at all. After assuring the two women that they would keep them appraised of the case, the two policemen took their leave.

Charlie glanced at his watch, and turned to Billy as they drove back to Scotland Yard. “We still have some time before we have to go meet his Lordship, Billy. But I’m cursed if I know what we should do next.”

Billy didn’t have any ideas of his own. They decided to grab a quick bite and get themselves cleaned up as best they might. They also decided that they were not looking forward to meeting the General with nothing to show for their troubles and some awkward questions that needed to be asked.