“Can’t blame them,” I said, and then was distracted by yelling from the searchers. Tree and I broke into a run, heading down the path. A knot of men stood at the edge of the bank, Binghamton and another GI standing in the waist-deep water.
“Call the inspector!” Binghamton screamed, a look of horror on his face. “We found her! There’s a walkie-talkie in the jeep. Go!” Tree sprinted to the vehicle as I watched them lift the thin, pale body out of the water. A girl. Her dress was ripped, her skin mottled and wrinkled. Her arms hung limp and helpless, strands of vegetation wound about them like ribbons.
“Sweet Jesus,” one of the GIs murmured. They laid her out on the path, and Binghamton arranged what was left of the torn dress to cover her decently. I knelt for a closer look. Her eyes had been eaten away, the soft tissue that fish and other creatures go for first. It was a blessing not to have to look into her eyes, but those dark, empty sockets held the promise of nightmares. They were gruesome, but not so terrible as to distract me from her neck. Dark bruises turning to yellow decorated her delicate throat.
“Help me turn her over,” I said. No one moved. I looked to Tree, who handed the walkie-talkie to a GI and knelt. We gently rolled her over and I unhooked the last button that was holding her dress together. I told myself her modesty no longer mattered, she was beyond caring, but it still felt wrong and I tamped down the surge of emotion churning in my gut. Shame, horror, grief, sadness, and anger all tried to claw their way out as I took a deep breath and studied the body. Sophia’s body. Her shoulder blades were bruised, a sickly color at each sharp angle of bone. We rolled her back and I picked up one leg, bending it at the knee. As I expected, bruises along her inner thighs. Setting her leg down, we rose, and I was grateful for a glimpse of blue sky overhead. She could not have been more than fourteen, still a child. Painfully thin, but then there were few chubby English children these days.
“The inspector’s here,” Binghamton said, his voice quivering. The water was cold, I knew. So was the feel of dead, waterlogged flesh. Inspector Payne hurried along the path and stared down at the body.
“Strangled,” I said. “He held her down and choked her. The shoulder blades are bruised from being pressed against a hard surface. Raped as well.”
“My God,” Payne said. “That’s as may be, but this poor girl is not our Sophia Edwards.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tree drove the shivering Lieutenant Binghamton to the 617th bivouac area as the search finished up. No Sophia, no other clues, and we were left with more questions than answers. We followed the coroner’s wagon into Hungerford, skirting the Tank Destroyer encampment outside of town before arriving at the local police station.
“We’ll wait here for the coroner,” Inspector Payne said. “Doctor Brisbane’s office is across the road. He’ll give us an initial report as soon as he’s through. Meanwhile I could use a cup of hot tea and some time to think.” We had a lot to think about. I followed Payne into the small station, about the size of a house, built of brick, like most of the structures around here, and covered in ivy.
“Captain Boyle, this is Police Constable Peter Cook,” Payne said, introducing me to the man on duty. He explained that I was working with him on the Neville case, and that I was a fellow officer.
“It was a bad turn, finding that girl,” Cook said. “A missing girl is one thing. A missing girl and a corpse is another. I’ll put the kettle on, Inspector. After a day in the fields it will go down well.”
“You read my mind,” Payne said. “Boyle?”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t a big tea drinker, but I knew enough about the English by now not to turn down a cuppa. Cook’s office had that lived-in look of any small-town station. One wall was taken up with photographs of previous constables, the oldest a picture of a stern Victorian with bushy sideburns. A worn couch that he’d probably spent the night on more than once and an easy chair next to a radio. An interior door opened into what looked like a squad room anywhere in the world. A table full of papers, empty cups and full ashtrays.
“Cook’s a widower,” Payne said, noticing my observations. “He puts in a fair amount of time here. Gets on well with everyone, and knows their business as well.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “Speaking of business, Miss Gardner did give me the names of Neville’s last customers.”
“Did you go through official channels, or charm the information out of her?”
“I bought her lunch, and she’s willing to help if we need it. Here.” I handed the slip of paper to Payne, glancing at the names as I did so. I hadn’t had the time to look before, and I figured the names wouldn’t mean anything to me anyway. I’d been wrong.
“One of these is Ernest Bone,” I said.
“The sweet shop fellow?” Payne said.
“Yes. I stopped by today, and asked him if he’d heard of Stuart Neville. He said he hadn’t.”
“And what brought you to interview Mr. Bone? Or do you have a sweet tooth?”
“I get all the Hershey bars I need at the PX,” I said. “It was a long shot, but I thought there might be some connection to the missing girl. A stranger in the area, either known to her or not.”
“A stranger who might have bashed in Neville’s skull, you mean?”
“I know it sounds farfetched, but I keep thinking about the canal. It’s a quiet getaway route, for either a killer or a kidnapper.”
“Or both,” Payne said. “These are small towns, Hungerford and Newbury. Kintbury is merely a village. We don’t have gangsters running about. There’s some logic to one villain as opposed to several. But no evidence, more’s the pity.”
“Do you know the other name Miss Gardner gave us?” I asked.
“Stanley Fraser, Atherton Street,” Payne said, reading the other name. “Yes, Fraser is a solicitor, does quite well for himself. Not surprising he’s getting himself a new place.”
“Ernest Bone seems to be barely hanging on,” I said. “I wonder what he’s up to. And why he said he didn’t know Neville.”
“You know, I believe he did mention something about renovating his shop,” Payne said. “I’ve been in there a few times; the missus likes her sweets well enough. We got to chatting. He lives upstairs, and said he needed the room. He’s quite keen on making the sweets himself, the old-fashioned way. I have the impression he has some money, and the store is more of a hobby. Not a bad business, if he can hang on. Once the war is over and rationing is a memory, sweets will be an affordable luxury. Tell me, did you show him the picture, or give him Neville’s name?”
“I didn’t show it to him. It was more of an offhand remark.”
“We’ll have to ask him again, but perhaps he simply forgot. Chap from the bank comes around with paperwork about your mortgage application, you might not pay much attention to his name,” Payne said.
“Unless you don’t get the mortgage,” I said.
“Right. Then you go and bash the bloke’s head in. Nice try, Boyle. Ah, tea.”
Constable Cook set a tray on his desk and we poured ourselves tea. He had sugar out, but knowing how hard it was to come by, I passed. We drank in silence for a few minutes, and I was glad of the warmth of the cup, if not the taste of the milky brew.
“I got the report back from Broadmoor,” Constable Cook said to the inspector. “No escapes.”
“What’s Broadmoor?” I asked. “A prison?”
“More or less,” Payne said. “The Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum is about thirty miles east of here, in Crowthorne. I thought it worth checking to see if any of the inmates had broken out.”
“It’s good to know I’m not the only one with a weakness for long shots,” I said.
“The inspector’s been known to go the long way around to solve a case or two,” Cook said with a grin. “But no pleasure men have gone over the wall.”
“Pleasure men?” I didn’t know what that meant, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to not understand plain English spoken by a Brit.