“Inspector, I work with Sir Bernard at University College Hospital. My background is that of a nurse dealing with the combat wounded. Need I say more about my lack of squeamishness?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Mallowan.”
“May I take notes?”
“You may.” He gestured with a thick finger to the flat above the optician’s. “Initially we’ll stay out on the landing. I’ve had some photographs taken, but my procedure is always to preserve the crime scene as much as possible, until Sir Bernard arrives…. Shall we go on up?”
Inspector Greeno led the way, his voice echoing up the dim narrow stairwell. “Her name was Evelyn Oatley. Meter reader found her. Our assumption is that she’s one of the working girls here in Soho.”
By this, Agatha knew, the inspector meant the woman had been a prostitute.
A uniformed police officer waited on the landing. He said to Greeno, “I’ll just get out of your way, Governor,” and headed down the stairs to stand watch on the street, thus making room in the small space for the inspector and Agatha. In the meantime, Sir Bernard went on through the open door into the flat, where the electric lights were on.
“The only thing I touched, Doctor,” the inspector said to the pathologist’s back, “was the electrical meter. Hope putting a shilling in the slot won’t do any harm.”
Sir Bernard said nothing. He set his big Gladstone bag down with a slight clank. At first he was blocking the body, which lay sprawled on a divan-style bed in the single-room flat. Carefully stepping over a vast pool of dried blood, the pathologist walked around the body, studying it, at times leaning almost close enough to kiss the dead woman’s naked flesh.
Intermittently, Agatha’s view of the corpse improved until she had seen it all too well.
The victim was thirty-odd, curvaceous and quite attractive in an apple-cheeked Kewpie-doll manner. Her throat had been cut-a wide, thin gash, like a terrible thin-lipped smile below her chin; and the lower part of the woman’s body, near her sexual organs, had been viciously slashed.
“When we interviewed the electrician,” the inspector said to Agatha, his voice soft and conversational, “he seemed quite sure Miss Oatley was a prostitute.”
“Do you think he was a client?”
The inspector’s quick look showed surprise at this frankness on Agatha’s part. “I asked him that. He said no, even when I assured him no charges would be proffered and it would be kept strictly confidential.”
“Had he ever spoken to the girl? Just a chat when he dropped around to read the meter?”
“Yes. He said Miss Oatley was a nice kid, a bubbly sort, not at all down about her lot in life. He said she was a showgirl.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she apparently danced at the Windmill, from time to time.”
The notorious Windmill Theatre was home to a long-running nude revue whose manager boasted about staying open throughout the Blitz, as a patriotic duty to servicemen. It was one of the few theaters in London that Agatha had never frequented.
“Looks like the old, old story,” the inspector said. “She was a showgirl, her looks started to slip, she took to the streets. Since the blackout began, prostitution’s gone up like a barrage balloon-all along Haymarket and Piccadilly, the girls stand with their torches pointing down, lighting their feet, so clients can find them easily.”
“I’m sure it passes the time,” Agatha said dryly, “during a blackout.”
Sir Bernard was kneeling at his Gladstone bag, which, unclasped, yawned wide; he was putting on rubber gloves.
The door to the adjacent apartment opened and a slender, not unattractive woman of perhaps twenty-five years stood, her hand with its red fingernails tight around the neck of her cotton terry cloth robe; a red-and-white candy-striped sash hugged her narrow waist. Despite the robe, she was fully (and rather overly) made-up.
Agatha hoped she was not making an unfair assumption by taking this young woman for another “working girl.”
“I… I believe I’ve composed myself, Inspector. I could answer your questions now, I think.”
The inspector glanced at Agatha. “This is Ivy Poole, Mrs. Mallowan. Miss Oatley’s friend and neighbor.”
Ivy Poole, her dark brown eyes huge, said, “Actually, Inspector, Evelyn is a missus. Was a missus. Mrs. Oatley, she was. I’m a miss. Miss Poole.”
The inspector wrote that down in a small notebook. Agatha removed the small spiral notebook from her topcoat pocket and began making her own minutes of the proceedings.
Miss Poole remained poised in her open doorway, leaning against the jamb; there was something sexual about the pose, and whether this was innate in the woman’s nature or perhaps reflected her profession or was a method of trying to get on the inspector’s good side, Agatha could not venture.
“And who might you be, dearie?” Miss Poole asked Agatha, with a frown.
The inspector answered for her: “This is my secretary. We both take notes, and compare them later. That’s standard police procedure, Miss Poole…. Of course, you wouldn’t know that, since I’m sure you’ve never had any run-ins with the law.”
“I haven’t, at that,” she said. She had a pretty mouth but her teeth were crooked, up and down. “Got a fag?”
The inspector provided her with a cigarette and lighted it up for her.
Agatha wondered if the young apparent prostitute would be quite so casual if she could share the view that the mystery writer had: the mutilated corpse of the prostitute next door.
“Was Evelyn a working girl?” the inspector asked.
“Who am I to say? I have a job in a restaurant.”
“Which restaurant?”
“Well, I used to have, I’m between engagements. But Evie, she used to go out in the evenings, so draw your own conclusions.”
“Her husband doesn’t live with her?”
“No. They’re separated. Bill’s his name, I think. He’s a salesman, working up north someplace.”
“And she would go out in the evenings?”
“Yeah. She lost her job at the Windmill. I guess she got too fat for ’em. These Yanks likes ’em skinny. Anyway, she’d come back about eleven p.m., sometimes with a man. You know-after the public houses shut.”
“What about last night?”
Miss Poole blew out smoke through her nostrils, like a dragon. “I weren’t her baby-sitter.”
“What did you see, Miss Poole?”
“Not a bleedin’ thing.”
“What did you hear, then?”
“Well… maybe I did see something, at that.”
“Tell me.”
“Last night I thought I’d wash my hair before I went to bed.” She put her free hand in her tousle of dark curls, and gave the inspector the least convincing demure smile Agatha had ever seen. “I come out on the landing, see, to fill the kettle in the loo. While I was out here, here comes Evie, up the stairs with a man. They went into her room.”
“What time was this?”
“I didn’t set my clock by it.”
“Take your best guess, Miss Poole.”
“Eleven-fifteen, p’haps?”
“Can you describe the man?”
“There’s just the one light. It’s terrible dark out here.”
“What did you see, Miss Poole?”
She shrugged, exhaled smoke. “You won’t involve me in this, Inspector, will you? There’s a good bloke.”
“Miss Poole, you are involved. The woman who lives next door to you was murdered. You may have seen the man who did it. Wouldn’t it behoove you to have that ‘bloke’ picked up and put away?”
She frowned. “You should hang the bleedin’ bastard, is my opinion.”
“And mine. Help me do that.”
“Well…. He was a civilian. Medium height. Wearing a light-blue overcoat. Gray trousers. Tan shoes. No hat. That’s all I can remember.”
“You’re doing fine, Miss Poole. What about his face?”
“Sorry. Didn’t get a good look at that. Not much light out here, as I was sayin’.”