‘It’s surprising nobody came across her before they did,’ Blades said, ‘though I don’t expect many people go up and down this lane in the middle of the night.’

  Parker continued to study the corpse. He tested for internal temperature and felt the limbs for stiffness. He made a careful inspection of the stab wounds. He collected a sample of blood. He tutted a bit, wrote notes, tutted a bit more, then sighed and stood up. ‘I’ll arrange to have the body taken away for a post-mortem. You’ll want the time of death. I don’t know. Maybe between one and two in the morning? And, initially, I see no sign of interference.’

  ‘Was she murdered by a man or a woman?’

  ‘There’s an awfully good question, and it’s hard to say. The blade has been stabbed in with force, but a woman could manage to inflict wounds like these too.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘No signs of violence apart from the knife wounds. She must have been taken by surprise. There’s nothing useful under the fingernails.’

  ‘So, it could be someone she knew and trusted.’

  ‘From my point of view, but you’re the detective. Do you know who she is?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Her bag’s not here and there’s no identification on the body, but if the murderer took the bag to delay our identification of the body, he was wasting his time.’

  ‘You know who she is?’

  ‘I interviewed her yesterday. This is someone who worked in the same shop as Daphne, they were friends at one time. Her name is Jane Proudfoot, and our suspect probably knew both of them.’

  ‘The murderer took her bag?’

  ‘Unless she wasn’t carrying one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think that likely.’

  ‘Someone she knew robbed her?’ Peacock said.

  ‘I wonder if she was worth robbing,’ Blades said. ‘These are not expensive clothes, and that’s a glass necklace she’s wearing, and the killer left that.’

  ‘Someone else could have come along later and taken the bag,’ Peacock said. ‘If she died between one and two as Dr Parker has said, she was lying here for a few hours.’

  ‘If someone did that, it would be useful to trace them. They might have seen the killer.’

  ‘I’d better be off,’ Parker said. ‘Any progress on the young woman on the beach?’

  ‘We don’t know who did it,’ Blades replied, ‘though there is one line of inquiry that might be interesting.’

  ‘Do you think he did this?’ Parker asked.

  ‘We’ll question him. He must have known both victims.’

  ‘I hope you get him.’

  As he turned to go, Blades and Peacock did the same, though Blades did leave two constables to guard the crime scene. He wasn’t finished with that. As they were leaving the lane, a man approached them who wore a broad felt hat and distinctive overcoat that Blades could not fail to recognize, a tall man who seemed to loom, as he came out of the shadows. Blades’ initial apprehension turned to irritation, as it always did when he met John Musgrave, a reporter for the Birtleby Times.

  ‘Another body?’ John’s voice boomed. ‘Is it another young woman?’

  Blades gave thought to what statement he ought to be making at this point. He decided meeting John straight after the discovery of the body could be useful, but the first reply Blades gave was brief, as he gave consideration to what information he ought to release. ‘It is.’

  ‘Murdered in the same way?’

  ‘I can’t give details at the moment and I can’t give identification either until her family has been informed. I can tell you, she was about the same age as the other victims.’

  ‘Do you think it’s the same killer?’

  Blades frowned. Reporters. How could a policeman give conclusions before investigating the crime?

  ‘I can’t rule it out, but we will be exploring other possibilities as well.’

  ‘Do you know when she was killed?’

  ‘Sometime last night.’

  ‘In the Khyber Pass?’

  ‘That’s right. A lurid name. And now a lurid crime has happened in it, unfortunately. It would be useful to know if anyone spotted something suspicious in the vicinity, particularly at about one or two in the morning. We need to catch this killer. We don’t want this happening to another young woman.’

  ‘Have you made progress with the murder of Daphne Tanner?’

  ‘We are pursuing inquiries, but it would prejudice them to release details.’

  ‘You have a suspect, then?’

  Blades thought that a question to be avoided and did so. ‘No one has been arrested. If that should happen, I will let you know.’

  ‘What our readers want to know is this: is the Ridges murderer back?’

  Blades pondered his reply. ‘We don’t even know if all of the Ridges murders were committed by the same person. It seems unlikely when the sailor Pulteney was hanged for two of them.’

  ‘The conclusion the public came to at the time was that you’d hanged the wrong man.’

  ‘You mean the conclusion the press came to – and there was no proof of it.’

  ‘Is there any chance of a link between this murder and that of Daphne Tanner?’

  ‘There’s no proof of that either, though it is a line of inquiry. If we could establish links between those who knew the victims, that would help, as would links between people seen at the time at both murder scenes. Another avenue we’re pursuing is that there could be a link with the murder of Elspeth Summers. We have records of witnesses who came forward at the time of that murder, but any others would be useful. We do especially appeal for witnesses to this crime. Someone probably does know who did this, even if they’re not aware of it. They may have seen something suspicious in someone’s behaviour. They may have noticed unexplained blood on someone’s clothing. If anyone is afraid to come forward, they may rest assured we will protect them.’

  Blades ended the interview there. The reporter had copy and Blades had made his plea. Perhaps both of their interests had been served.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The place where Jane had lived – which was her parents’ house – looked substantial from a distance, being a large stone cottage, but, with more than one front door and several lines of washing, it was obvious on closer approach that it was split into more than one dwelling. It was Martha herself, Jane’s mother, who answered the door; an alarmed look appeared on her face as soon as Blades showed his card.

  ‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

  Blades didn’t want the interview to take place in such a public place as a doorway, so he didn’t answer the question. Instead, after a moment’s pause, he asked, in the gentlest tone he could manage, ‘Is it all right if we come in?’ which perturbed Martha even more.

  She answered her own question. ‘Something has. It’s Jane, isn’t it?’

  ‘It would be easier if we came in,’ Blades said.

  Martha took a deep breath and put her hand on the doorway as if to support herself, then turned. ‘Come on in,’ she said. Then she stopped and turned again. ‘It’s not John, is it? His boat hasn’t gone down? Whenever it blows up and he’s out at sea, I worry myself half to death. But it hasn’t been stormy so, it can’t be John, can it?’

  Blades was trying to work out the best way to reply, when Martha rescued him by ushering them inside. Blades could see how cramped the Proudfoot’s quarters were, though they were well enough furnished with mahogany pieces that might have seen better days but had been built to last. Two wally dugs stared at them from the fireplace. Above them, a delft black-and-white china plate urged them to think of their sins, which Blades duly did.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Martha said as she heaved herself into an armchair and waved an arm in the direction of a couch, but Blades and Peacock remained standing. This was no social call.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Blades said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you outside.’

  ‘I knew it. I knew it.’ Martha put her hands to her face, which was collapsing into a mass of folds and lines. Blades struggled for the words. He could imagine Jean in this situation, and how it would affect her if anything happened to their son. ‘Tell me,’ Martha said.

  Blades could see Peacock was starting to look at him with impatience.

  ‘We have no news of your husband,’ Blades said. ‘We’ve no reason to suppose anything has happened to him. I’m sorry, but this is about your daughter, Jane.’

  ‘She’s dead?’ Martha said.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Blades said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh no. You can’t mean it? Dead?’ Martha was obviously shocked and struggling to take this in. She continued talking for what seemed the sake of it. ‘I’d hoped and hoped she was staying the night with Alice. And she’s dead? She doesn’t always tell me beforehand she’s visiting her. And I thought she must be there. But it’s what I wanted to think, isn’t it? How did it happen? I always told Jane to be careful. And she was. She was a good girl was Jane. How did it happen?’

  ‘We don’t know the circumstances,’ Blades said, ‘but her body was found early this morning in an alleyway they call the Khyber Pass. She had been stabbed at about one or two in the morning.’

  ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘Nothing of that sort happened to her. She wasn’t beaten or sexually assaulted. The police surgeon says it would have been a quick death.’

  Now Martha burst into tears. The only thing Blades could think of to say was ‘I’m sorry’ again. Then Martha stood up and left the room. When she returned, she had recovered some composure, but her face was so white and drawn, she looked as if she had aged about twenty years. She sat in her seat again but could not bring her eyes to meet Blades’. She wrung her hands, became aware of this, and stopped. Then she did look up at the policeman opposite her.

  ‘Is there anybody we can ask to come and be with you?’ Blades asked.

  ‘Alice, I suppose, but she’s married with two children. I’ll go over and visit her. In any case, I want to break this news to her myself.’

  That made sense, as far as Blades could see. ‘Do you mind if we ask you some questions?’ he asked.

  ‘I can manage that,’ Martha replied. ‘I’m a grown woman. And I want you to catch whoever did this.’

  ‘Can you tell me where Jane was last night?’ Blades asked.

  Martha did not need to give that thought. ‘She was at a friend’s place with a few other girls, nothing wicked. They have a sewing circle.’ Martha made a strangled noise which might have been meant to be a laugh. ‘How can anyone get themselves murdered at a sewing circle?’ She cackled again and Blades noted the hysteria.

  ‘Do you know where they met and what the names of the other girls were?’

  Martha told Blades where Jane had been and who she had been with.

  ‘Did Jane complain of anyone recently?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Has she been receiving unwelcome attentions, or has anyone been behaving in a threatening way towards her?’

  ‘She would have told me about that, and she didn’t.’

  ‘Did Jane have any men friends?’

  ‘She was engaged to be married, but her young man died in the war.’

  Blades sighed. Not that story again, he thought. It had happened to so many young women.

  ‘That war destroyed a lot of lives, Jane’s included. I kept telling her that John would have wanted her to meet someone else, to lead a full life, to have fun. But she never seemed interested in anyone else.’ Then she paused, before continuing. ‘Except that Frank Bywaters. I don’t know what she saw in him. And he wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Frank Bywaters?’ Blades said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Martha replied. ‘A scarecrow with sticky-out ears, and the girls were fascinated with him – before he became a conchie at least.’

  Daphne was for one, Blades was thinking. That made two young women – and both dead.

  * * *

  Blades and Peacock went around interviewing everyone who had been at that sewing circle, and the women agreed it had been a normal meeting, with everyday chatter, and the sharing of sewing tips. Blades asked if they knew about any men Jane had been seeing but they did not. There had been gossip about their own menfolk, but Jane had made no contribution to that. They said Jane had slight interest in the species, which struck Blades as odd. Jane was not a woman with no interest in men, so was there someone she was keeping secret about? If so, why, and who? Which was speculation. There could be nobody. It could be that, thwarted by Frank, she was lying fallow. What was useful was that they were told the time that Jane left, which was ten o’clock at night. At that point, her friends had bid farewell to her outside Marie Croft’s cottage in Marchmount, and she had started on her walk home. All going well, that ought to have taken Jane about half an hour, yet the police surgeon reckoned she had met her end in the Khyber Pass between one and two in the morning. What had she been doing in the time in between? Blades cursed that reporter for his prompt arrival at the crime scene. If Blades had been given more time before going public, he could have asked if anyone knew where Jane had been after ten. He supposed someone might come forward to say that all the same, and an update could be given to the press later.

  ‘Could she have been seeing Frank?’ Peacock asked when they were back at the station.

  Blades was standing at the stove warming his hands. He grunted, then turned to Peacock. ‘In any other case, Parker has always said how difficult it is to estimate when death occurred. In this one, he instantly gives a more or less precise time. Perhaps he was right before when he said that isn’t possible.’

  Peacock was seated at his desk; in front of him, a pile of reports which he was ignoring. ‘If time of death was between ten and eleven the body lay on a public footpath for a long time before being discovered.’

  Blades’ eyes held Peacock’s. There was an alertness in Peacock’s face, as if he were readying himself for a contest, even though it was only a sharing of minds. ‘It was dark,’ Blades said. ‘Do people like using that passage at night? I don’t think I would. It’s steep. It’s not lit. It would be easy to lose your footing there and hurt yourself. And it’s not overlooked. Yet, it’s where we found her. She might have gone there with someone.’

  Peacock nodded. ‘Frank? If not, it’s a good spot for a random murder. She presented the opportunity, and someone took it.’

  ‘I think there’s a link to Daphne’s murder,’ Blades said. He reached in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, then offered one to Peacock. ‘They were in the same social circle – and they had Frank Bywaters in common, our conscientious objector with his high and mighty views of the sanctity of human life; his own at least.’ Blades lit a safety match and proffered it to Peacock, who puffed at the cigarette. Blades continued speaking. ‘Frank strikes me as being a self-obsessed individual. He didn’t care what he put his family through by refusing to report for military duty. And he’s split Daphne’s family. He didn’t mind estranging her from her aunt’s family or her brother. Does he understand people as well as ideas?’

  ‘Just a man of principle?’ Peacock suggested.

  Blades lit his own cigarette, then breathed out the smoke, but he did not appear all that interested in it. His mind was elsewhere. ‘Who happens to suffer from a serious lack of empathy. He understands it as an idea. He knows how to express it when putting forward an argument for being a conscientious objector. It’s just that he doesn’t feel any?’

  ‘He has feelings for Daphne.’

  Blades felt his mind racing now, or was he letting his thoughts run away with him? ‘As a conquest or what? Maybe he thinks he needs a wife for social standing. He comes from a conventional family – with middle-class pretensions.’

  Peacock nodded. ‘He also has a better chance of establishing himself in teaching again if he’s married.’

  Blades stabbed his cigarette at the air as he gestured with his hand. ‘So, why kill her? Had she decided to finish with him? Her family don’t mention it, though her brother could have been having another go at her and finally persuaded her.’

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  Blades began to pace as if in pursuit of his own thoughts. Then he stopped himself and turned towards Peacock again.

  ‘Even if Frank did kill Daphne, why would he kill Jane?’

  ‘Did she know something?’

  ‘It’s not likely. She hadn’t even had much to do with Daphne lately.’

  ‘Maybe she did and had arranged to meet with Frank to talk about what she knew.’

  ‘If she did know something, why not tell the police?’

  ‘Unless she wasn’t quite sure of what it was she had seen?’ Blades could see that Peacock was beginning to be frustrated by these arguments; he was stubbing his cigarette out, though he had smoked little of it.

  ‘If he did kill her,’ Peacock replied, ‘it doesn’t matter why he did it. He knows why. It might not even make sense to us. We need to concentrate on what witness statements we can conjure up.’

  ‘All right,’ Blades said. ‘Let’s see what information the constables turn up from people living near the Khyber Pass.’

  Peacock returned his thoughts to Frank. ‘As we’ve said, a CO might be possible, but it would be a real turn up all the same.’

  It might be too surprising, Blades was thinking. ‘We need to find out what his fellow COs in the Non-Combatant Corps thought of him. Did he fit in with them? Was he just looking for an easy way out of the war?’

  Then, Blades sat further back in his seat. He took a deep draw of his cigarette. ‘So, our Frank – mocked and derided by the actual soldiers, maybe by his fellow conchies too, just behind the line or even in it, possibly as much a candidate for shellshock as any soldier – comes back to a life he has ruined for himself by not fighting. There’s no job for him with the standing that he had, and he has to scratch away part-time in a poorly-thought-of school. That’s enough to make anyone bitter, and he was maybe a bit odd and intense in the first place. A person like that could have done it. Something could have gone wrong inside him. He could have done both, which is a nice theory. And we need facts to back it up. Equally, are there any that suggest he didn’t commit these murders? But we won’t interview Frank yet. We’ll wait till witness statements start coming in.’

 

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