“Fancy a pint? The Black Swan?”
Annie smiled. “You took the words right out of my mouth.” What a relief. If she had been hoping for a cup of tea, the prospect of a pint of Swan’s Down was even more appealing. She had been in the stifling basement for the best part of the afternoon, and her mouth was full of dust, her contact lenses beginning to dry out. And it was gone five on a Friday afternoon.
Comfortably ensconced on a padded bench just a few minutes later, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, pint already half finished, Annie smacked her lips. If she were a cat, she would have been purring.
“I checked the Voters Register first,” she said, “but the clerk in the council office told me it was frozen at the start of the war. The last person they’ve got listed for Bridge Cottage is a Miss Violet Croft. I had a bit more luck with the Land Registry. Violet Croft rented the cottage from the Clifford estate, and the manager kept impeccable records. She lived there between the fourteenth of September, 1919, and the third of July, 1940, so she must be the old lady Ruby Kettering remembered, the one the village kids thought was a witch. The cottage remained empty until June 1941, when a Mr. and Mrs. Shackleton took up residence there. It might have been requisitioned for the billeting of evacuees or military personnel in the interim period, but there was no record of that, and there’s no way of finding out.”
“I doubt that many places stayed empty for long during the war,” said Banks. “Maybe some soldiers got billeted there, killed a local tart in a drunken orgy and then decided to cover their tracks?”
“It’s possible.” Annie gave a slight shiver.
“We’re talking about wartime,” Banks went on. “Army camps and air force bases sprang up overnight, like mushrooms. Evacuees came and went. It was easy to disappear, change identity, slip through the cracks.”
“But people had identity cards and ration books. The council clerk told me. He said there was a National Registry at the beginning of the war, and everyone got identity cards.”
“I imagine those sort of things were open to a fiddle easily enough. Who knows, maybe we’re dealing with a Nazi spy done in by the secret service?”
Annie laughed. “Mata Hari?”
“Maybe. Anyway, what happened to Miss Violet Croft?”
Annie flipped over a page in her notebook. “I dropped by Saint Jude’s next and found the young curate very helpful. They’ve got all the old parish registry records and magazines from Saint Bart’s stored in the vestry there. Boxes of them. Violet Croft, spinster of the parish, died in July 1940 of pneumonia. She was seventy-seven.”
“That lets her out. What about the Shackletons?”
“Much more interesting. They were married at Saint Bart’s on the seventh of June, 1941. The husband’s name was Matthew Stephen Shackleton, the wife’s maiden name Gloria Kathleen Stringer. The witnesses were Gwynneth Shackleton and Cynthia Garmen.”
“Were they Hobb’s End residents?”
“Matthew Shackleton was. His parents lived at 38 High Street. They ran the newsagent’s shop. The bride’s listed as being from London, parents deceased.”
“Big place,” Banks muttered. “How old was she?”
“Nineteen. Born the seventeenth of September, 1921.”
“Interesting. That would put her within Dr. Williams’s age range by the end of the war.”
“Exactly.”
“Any mention of children?”
“No. I looked through the registry of baptisms, but there’s nothing there. Was he certain about that, do you think?”
“He seemed to be. You saw the pitting for yourself.”
“I wouldn’t know a parturition scar from a hole in the ground. It could have been a postmortem injury, couldn’t it? I mean, these things are often far from accurate.”
“It could have been. We’ll check with Dr. Glendenning after he’s done the postmortem. Do you know what? I’m beginning to get a vision of St. Catherine’s House looming large in your future.”
Annie groaned. Checking birth, marriage and death certificates was one of the most boring jobs a detective could get. The only positive aspect was that you got to go to London, but even that was offset by the department’s lack of willingness to grant expenses for an overnight stay. No time to check out the shops.
“Any luck with the education authorities?” Banks asked.
“No. They said they lost the Hobb’s End records, or misplaced them. Same with the doctors and the dentist. The ones who practiced in Hobb’s End are all dead, and their practices went with them. Records, too, I imagine. I think we can say good-bye to that line of inquiry.”
“Pity. What does your instinct tell you, Annie?”
Annie pointed her thumb toward her chest. “Moi?”
“Yes, you. I want your feelings on the case so far.”
Annie was surprised. No senior officer had ever asked for her feelings before, for her feminine intuition. Banks was certainly different. “Well, sir,” she said, “for a start, I don’t think it’s a stranger killing.”
“Why not?”
“You asked for my feelings, not logic.”
“Okay.”
“It looks domestic. Like that bloke who killed his wife and sailed off to Canada.”
“Dr. Crippen?”
“That’s the one. I saw Donald Pleasence play him on telly. Creepy.”
“Crippen buried his wife under the cellar.”
“Cellar. Outbuilding. Same difference.”
“All right, I take your point. Conclusion?”
“Victim: Gloria Shackleton.”
“Killer?”
“Husband, or someone else who knew her.”
“Motive?”
“God knows. Jealousy, sex, money. Pick one. Does it matter?”
“Did you ask Mrs. Kettering if she kept in touch with anyone else who lived in Hobb’s End?”
“Sorry, sir. It slipped my mind.”
“Ask her. Maybe we can track down some people who actually knew the Shackletons. Who knows where the old residents live now? We might even get a weekend in Paris or New York out of this.”
Annie noticed Banks avert his eyes. Was he flirting? “That would be nice,” she said, sounding as neutral as possible. “Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think it’s more the kind of thing someone who lived there, or near there, would do. It was a good hiding place. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the reservoir, or the drought. Not that it would matter, really. I mean, if Adam Kelly hadn’t been playing truant and larking about on that roof, we’d never have found out. You can’t anticipate an accident of fate like that.”
“Blackout curtains.” Banks slapped his palm on the table.
“Come again, sir?”
“Blackout curtains. It’s something John Webb told me. He said they found some heavy black material with the body. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but it makes sense now. The body was wrapped in blackout curtains, Annie. And Geoff Turner mentioned wartime dental work. When did the blackout end?”
“At dawn, I suppose.”
Banks smiled. “Idiot. I mean when was it no longer required?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can find out easily enough, I suppose. Either the blackout material was left over – which I’d guess was unlikely, because from what I remember my mother telling me, nothing was left over during the war – or it was no longer needed for its original purpose, which might help narrow down the time of the murder even more. But I certainly think we’re dealing with a wartime crime, and Gloria Shackleton fits the bill as victim.”
“Brilliant, Holmes.”
“Elementary. Anyway, before we go any further, let’s find out all we can about her. What was her maiden name again?”
“Stringer, sir. Gloria Stringer.”
“Right. We already know she’s about the right age, and we know she lived in Bridge Cottage during the war. She hasn’t shown up as missing?”