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Chapter Three

Some said there had not been even one clear week of sunshine since the cease-fire. It was easy to believe. Today the air was damp, and the colourless sun only just visible through the grey clouds, like an empty plate on a dirty tablecloth.

And yet even a born and bred Londoner, such as Douglas Archer, could walk down Curzon Street, and with eyes half-closed, see little or no change from the previous year. The Soldatenkino sign outside the Curzon cinema was small and discreet, and only if you tried to enter the Mirabelle restaurant did a top-hatted doorman whisper that it was now used exclusively by Staff Officers from Air Fleet 8 Headquarters, across the road in the old Ministry of Education offices. And if your eyes remained half-closed you missed the signs that said ‘Jewish Undertaking’ and effectively kept all but the boldest customers out. And in September of that year 1941, Douglas Archer, in common with most of his compatriots, was keeping his eyes half-closed.

The scene of the murder to which, as Detective Sergeant Harry Woods had predicted, they were called, was Shepherd Market. This little maze of narrow streets and alleys housed a mixture of working-class Londoners, Italian shopkeepers and wealthy visitors, who found in these tortuous ways, and creaking old buildings, some measure of the London they’d read of in Dickens, while being conveniently close to the smart shops and restaurants.

The house was typical of the neighbourhood. There were uniformed police there already, arguing with two reporters. The ground floor was a poky antique shop not much wider than a man could stretch both arms. Above it were rooms of doll’s-house dimensions, with a twisting staircase so narrow that it provided an ever-present risk of sweeping from its walls the framed coaching prints that decorated them. Only with difficulty did Harry get the heavy murder bag to the top floor where the body was.

The police doctor was there, seated on a chintz-covered couch, a British army overcoat buttoned up tight to the neck, and hands in his pockets. He was a young man, in his middle twenties, but already Douglas saw in his eyes that terrible resignation with which so many British seemed to have met final defeat.

On the floor in front of him there was the dead man. He was about thirty-five years old, a pale-faced man with a balding head. Passing him in the street one might have guessed him to be a rather successful academic – the sort of absent-minded professor portrayed in comedy films.

As well as blood, there was a large smudge of brown powder spilled on his waistcoat. Douglas touched it with a fingertip but even before he raised it to his nose, he recognized the heavy aroma of snuff. There were traces of it under the dead man’s fingernails. Snuff was growing more popular as the price of cigarettes went up, and it was still unrationed.

Douglas found the snuff tin in a waistcoat pocket. The force of the bullets had knocked the lid off. There was a half-smoked cigar there too, the band still on it, a Romeo y Julieta worth a small fortune nowadays; no wonder he’d preserved the unsmoked half of it.

Douglas looked at the fine quality cloth and hand stitching of the dead man’s suit. For such expensive, made to measure garments they fitted very loosely, as if the man, suddenly committed to a rigorous diet, had lost many pounds of weight. Sudden weight loss was also suggested by the drawn and wrinkled face. Douglas fingered the bald patches on the man’s head.

‘Alopecia areata,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s common enough.’

Douglas looked into the mouth. The dead man had had enough money to pay for good dental care. Gold shone in his mouth but there was blood there too.

‘There’s blood in his mouth.’

‘Probably hit his face as he fell.’

Douglas didn’t think so but he didn’t argue. He noted the tiny ulcers on the man’s face and blood spots under the skin. He pushed back the shirt sleeve far enough to see the red inflamed arm.

‘Where do you find such sunshine at this time of the year?’ the doctor said.

Douglas didn’t answer. He drew a small sketch of the way that the body had fallen backwards into the tiny bedroom, and guessed that he’d been in the doorway when the bullets hit him. He touched the blood on the body to see if it was tacky, and then placed a palm on the chest. He could feel no warmth at all. His experience told him that this man had been dead for six hours or more. The doctor watched Douglas but made no comment. Douglas got to his feet and looked round the room. It was a tiny place, over-decorated with fancy wallpapers, Picasso reproductions and table lights made from Chianti bottles.

There was a walnut escritoire, with its front open as if it might have been rifled. An old-fashioned brass lamp had been adjusted to bring the light close upon the green leather writing top but its bulb had been taken out and left in one of the pigeon-holes, together with some cheap writing paper and envelopes.

There were no books, no photos and nothing personal of any kind. It was like some very superior sort of hotel room. In the tiny open fireplace there was a basket of logs. The grate was overflowing with ashes of paper.

‘Pathologist here yet?’ Douglas asked. He fitted the light bulb into the brass lamp. Then he switched it on for long enough to see that the bulb was still in working order and switched it off again. He went to the fireplace and put his hand into the ash. It was not warm but there was no surviving scrap of paper to reveal what had been burned there. It was a long job to burn so much paper. Douglas used his handkerchief to wipe his hands.

‘Not yet,’ said the doctor in a dull voice. Douglas guessed that he resented being ordered to wait.

‘What do you make of it, doc?’

‘You get any spare cigarettes, working with the SIPO?’

Douglas produced the gold cigarette case that was his one and only precious possession. The doctor took the cigarette and nodded his thanks while examining it carefully. Its paper was marked with the double red bands that identified Wehrmacht rations. The doctor put it in his mouth, brought a lighter from his pocket and lit it, all without changing his expression or his position, sprawled on the couch with legs extended.

A uniformed Police Sergeant had watched all this while waiting on the tiny landing outside the door. Now he put his head into the room and said, ‘Pardon me, sir. A message from the pathologist. He won’t be here until this afternoon.’

Harry Woods was unpacking the murder bag. Douglas could not resist glancing at him. Harry nodded. Now he realized that to keep the Police Surgeon here was a good idea. The pathologists were always late these days. ‘So what do you make of it, doctor?’ said Douglas.

They both looked down at the body. Douglas touched the dead man’s shoes; the feet were always the last to stiffen.

‘The photographers have finished until the pathologist comes,’ said Harry. Douglas unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt to reveal huge black bruises surrounding two holes upon which there was a crust of dried blood.

‘What do I make of it?’ said the doctor. ‘Gunshot wound in chest caused death. First bullet into the heart, second one into the top of the lung. Death more or less instantaneous. Can I go now?’

‘I won’t keep you longer than absolutely necessary,’ said Douglas without any note of apology in his voice. From his position crouched down with the body, he looked back to where the killer must have been. At the wall, far under the chair he saw a glint of metal. Douglas went over and reached for it. It was a small construction of alloy, with a leather rim. He put it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘So it was the first bullet that entered the heart, doctor, not the second one?’

The doctor still had not moved from his fixed posture on the couch but now he twisted his feet until his toes touched together. ‘There would have been more frothy blood if a bullet had hit the lung first while the heart was pumping.’

‘Really,’ said Douglas.

‘He might have been falling by the time the second shot came. That would account for it going wide.’

‘I see.’

‘I saw enough gunshot wounds last year to become a minor expert,’ said the doctor without smiling. ‘Nine millimetre pistol. That’s the sort of bullets you’ll find when you dig into the plaster behind that bloody awful Regency stripe wallpaper. Someone who knew him did it. I’d look for a lefthanded ex-soldier who came here often and had his own key to get in.’

‘Good work, doctor.’ Harry Woods looked up from where he was going through the dead man’s pockets. He recognized the note of sarcasm.

‘You know my methods, Watson,’ said the doctor.

‘Dead man wearing an overcoat; you conclude he came in the door to find the killer waiting. You guess the two men faced each other squarely with the killer in the chair by the fireplace, and from the path of the wound you guess the gun was in the killer’s left hand.’

‘Damned good cigarettes these Germans give you,’ said the doctor, holding it in the air and looking at the smoke.

‘And an ex-soldier because he pierced the heart with the first shot.’ The doctor inhaled and nodded. ‘Have you noticed that all three of us are still wearing overcoats?’ said Douglas. ‘It’s bloody cold in here and the gas meter is empty and the supply disconnected. And not many soldiers are expert shots, doc, and not one in a million is an expert with a pistol, and by your evidence a German pistol at that. And you think the killer had a key because you can’t see any signs of the door being forced. But my Sergeant could get through that door using a strip of celluloid faster than you could open it with a key, and more quietly too.’

‘Oh,’ said the doctor.

‘Now, what about a time of death?’ said Douglas.

All doctors hate to estimate the time of death and this doctor made sure the policemen knew that. He shrugged. ‘I can think of a number and double it.’

‘Think of a number, doc,’ said Douglas, ‘but don’t double it.’

The doctor, still lolling on the couch, pinched out his cigarette and put the stub away in a dented tobacco tin. ‘I took the temperature when I arrived. The normal calculation is that a body cools one-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit per hour.’

‘I’d heard a rumour to that effect,’ said Douglas.

The doctor gave him a mirthless grin as he put the tin in his overcoat pocket, and watched his feet as he made the toes touch together again. ‘Could have been between six and seven this morning.’

Douglas looked at the uniformed Sergeant. ‘Who reported it?’

‘The downstairs neighbour brings a bottle of milk up here each morning. He found the door open. No smell of cordite or anything,’ added the Sergeant.

The doctor chortled. When it turned into a cough he thumped his chest. ‘No smell of cordite,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll remember that one, that’s rather rich.’

‘You don’t know much about coppers, doc,’ said Douglas. ‘Specially when you take into account that you are a Police Surgeon. The uniformed Sergeant here, an officer I’ve never met before, is politely hinting to me that he thinks the time of death was earlier. Much earlier, doc.’ Douglas went over to the elaborately painted corner cupboard and opened it to reveal an impressive display of drink. He picked up a bottle of whisky and noted without surprise that most of the labels said ‘Specially bottled for the Wehrmacht’. Douglas replaced the bottles and closed the cupboard. ‘Have you ever heard of postmortem lividity, doctor?’ he said.

‘Death might have been earlier,’ admitted the doctor. He was sitting upright now and his voice was soft. He, too, had noticed the coloration that comes from settling of the blood.

‘But not before midnight.’

‘No, not before midnight,’ agreed the doctor.

‘In other words death took place during curfew?’

‘Very likely.’

‘Very likely?’ said Douglas caustically.

‘Definitely during curfew,’ admitted the doctor.

‘What kind of a game are you playing, doc?’ said Douglas. He didn’t look at the doctor. He went to the fireplace and examined the huge pile of charred paper that was stuffed into the tiny grate. The highly polished brass poker was browned with smoke marks. Someone had used it to make sure that every last piece of paper was consumed by the flames. Again Douglas put his hand into the feathery layers of ash; there must have been a huge pile of foolscap and it was quite cold. ‘Contents of his pockets, Harry?’

‘Identity card, eight pounds, three shillings and tenpence, a bunch of keys, penknife, expensive fountain pen; handkerchief, no laundry marks, and a railway ticket monthly return half; London to Bringle Sands.’

‘Is that all?’

Harry knew that his partner would ask for the identity card and he passed it across unrequested. Harry said, ‘Travelling light, this one.’

‘Or his pockets were rifled,’ said the doctor, not moving from his position on the sofa.

Harry met Douglas’s eyes and there was a trace of a smile. ‘Or his pockets were rifled,’ said Douglas to Harry.

‘That’s right,’ said Harry.

Douglas opened the identity card. It was written there that the holder was a thirty-two-year-old accountant with an address in Kingston, Surrey. ‘Kingston,’ said Douglas.

‘Yes,’ said Harry. They both knew that, ever since the Kingston Records Office had been destroyed in the fighting, this was a favourite address for forgers of identity documents. Douglas put the card in his pocket, and repeated his question. ‘What sort of game are you playing, doctor?’ He looked at the doctor and waited for an answer. ‘Why are you trying to mislead me about the time of death?’

‘Well it was silly of me. But if people are coming and going after midnight the neighbours are supposed to report them to the Feldgendarmerie.’

‘And how do you know that they didn’t report it?’

The doctor raised his hands and smiled. ‘I just guessed,’ he said.

‘You guessed.’ Douglas nodded. ‘Is that because all your neighbours ignore the curfew?’ said Douglas. ‘What other regulations do they regularly flout?’

‘Jesus!’ said the doctor. ‘You people are worse than the bloody Germans. I’d rather talk to the Gestapo than talk to bastards like you – at least they won’t twist everything I say.’

‘It’s not in my power to deny you a chance to talk to the Gestapo,’ said Douglas, ‘but just to satisfy my own vulgar curiosity, doctor, is your opinion about benign interrogation techniques practised by that department based upon first-hand experience or hearsay?’

‘All right, all right,’ said the doctor. ‘Let’s say three A.M.’

‘That’s much better,’ said Douglas. ‘Now you examine the body properly so that I don’t have to wait here for the pathologist before getting started and I’ll forget all about that other nonsense…but leave anything out, doc, and I’ll run you along to Scotland Yard and put you through the mangle. Right?’

‘All right,’ said the doctor.

‘There’s a lady downstairs,’ said the uniformed police Sergeant. ‘She’s come to collect something from the antique shop. I’ve told the Constable to ask her to wait for you.’

‘Good man,’ said Douglas. He left the doctor looking at the body while Harry Woods was going through the drawers of the escritoire.

The antique shop was one of the hundreds that had sprung up since the bombing and the flight of refugees from Kent and Surrey during the weeks of bitter fighting there. With the German Mark pegged artificially high, the German occupiers were sending antiques home by the train-load. The dealers were doing well out of it, but one didn’t need lessons in economics to see the way that wealth was draining out of the country.

There were some fine pieces of furniture in the shop. Douglas wondered how many had been lawfully purchased and how many looted from empty homes. Obviously the owner of the antique shop stored his antiques by putting them in the tiny apartments upstairs, and justified high rents by having them there.

The visitor was sitting on an elegant Windsor chair. She was very beautiful: large forehead, high cheekbones and a wide face with a perfect mouth that smiled easily. She was tall, with long legs and slim arms.

‘Now maybe someone will give me a straight answer.’ She had a soft American voice, and she reached into a large leather handbag and found a US passport, which she brandished at him.

Douglas nodded. For a moment he was spellbound. She was the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. ‘What can I do for you, Madam?’

‘Miss,’ she said. ‘In my country a lady doesn’t like being mistaken for a Madam.’ She seemed amused at his discomfiture. She smiled in that relaxed way that marks the very rich and the very beautiful.

‘What can I do for you, Miss?’

She was dressed in a tailored two-piece of pink wool. Its severe and practical cut made it unmistakably American. It would have been striking anywhere, but in this war-begrimed city, among so many dressed in ill-fitting uniforms or clothes adapted from uniforms, it singled her out as a prosperous visitor. Over her shoulder she carried a new Rolleiflex camera. The Germans sold them tax-free to servicemen and to anyone who paid in US dollars.

‘My name is Barbara Barga. I write a column that is syndicated into forty-two US newspapers and magazines. The press attaché of the German Embassy in Washington offered me a ticket on the Lufthansa inaugural New York to London flight last month. I said yes, and here I am.’

‘Welcome to London,’ said Douglas dryly. It was shrewd of her to mention the inaugural flight on the Focke-Wulf airliner. Göring and Goebbels were both on that flight; it was one of the most publicized events of the year. A journalist would have to be very important indeed to have got a seat.

‘Now tell me what’s going on here?’ she said with a smile. Douglas Archer had not met many Americans, and he’d certainly never met one to compare with this girl. When she smiled, her face wrinkled in a way that Douglas found very beguiling. In spite of himself, he smiled back. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘I get on well with cops, but I didn’t expect to find so many of them here in Peter’s shop today.’

‘Peter?’

‘Peter Thomas,’ she said. ‘Come on now, mister detective, it says Peter Thomas on the door – Peter Thomas – Antiques – right?’