Murder on the Home Front (14 page)

The neighbor left it at that. The English carry their belief in personal freedom to a fantastic degree; if wives wish to hang screaming from their windows and husbands want to pull their screaming wives indoors and slam the windows shut—why, then let them. It’s a free country, and it’d be pretty bad form to interfere.

A little while later this same neighbor saw the husband of the erstwhile screaming woman leave his house burdened with two suitcases and walk away up the road.

Not long afterward a charwoman discovered the wife dead in the kitchen.

The cause of her death was shock from blunt wounds of the head, accelerated by coal-gas poisoning. She had clearly been chased around the house by her attacking husband and killed, after a struggle, in the kitchen. But why?

Only the husband could say why, and he never offered any explanation.

Dr. Simpson could reconstruct the actual killing. The CID could search the man’s house and investigate his private affairs and build up the salient outline of the case. Nobody could look into the murderer’s mind and probe the quick and heart of the matter. There was no Open Sesame for that.

It is this ultimate secrecy of each one of us which makes the story of everyday life so fascinating. Each one of us has a secret room which is inviolate.

CHAPTER
14

Portrait of a Fairy

The Dobkin case had involved us in an aftermath of quite considerable literary activity, for CKS wrote—and read—a paper on the case for the Medico-Legal Society, and after this he wrote an article on the same subject for the
Police Journal
.

Dr. Simpson, as a Home Office pathologist, subscribed regularly to the magazine, and it was felt that his secretary might also read it. Some articles, however, were not unnaturally far above my simple secretarial head, such as “A Numerical and Dual-Purpose System of Fingerprint Classification” or “Spurious Gems and Their Scientific Detection.” But there were other articles, for instance, “Drunk In Charge; Some Hints on Evidence and Procedure” by Inspector Frederick Pickard of the Birmingham City Police, that I studied avidly, for it was crammed with hints which I felt might one day come in very useful. For example, this quote of advice of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett to a motorist:

“If you are ever stopped by the police, don’t for goodness sake touch the car in any way, as you will be said to be leaning on it for support. Don’t sway at all when you are walking, or you will be said to be staggering under the influence of drink. Spring smartly to attention, stand upright outside the car, and say, ‘I am not guilty of whatever you are about to charge me with doing.’”

The Dobkin case article was such a success Dr. Simpson wrote another on the Wigwam Murder, and after this he contributed regularly to the
Journal
, with accounts of his more important and interesting murder cases.

Besides these articles he had begun writing his students’ textbook on forensic medicine, so I found myself with a lot of “spare time” typing to do. The “spare time” came mostly in the afternoons, when it did come. CKS would leave me upstairs in our Department, while he went to work downstairs with Ireland in the Gordon Museum. I would sit typing, seated on my high stool at the departmental bench, under which still lay the remains of Mrs. Dobkin, wrapped in her dust sheet.

At first there were other people up there with me, at work in Dr. Ryffel’s big laboratory, but as the light dimmed, the short, dreary light of English winter afternoons, they would finish their work and go home, for there were no blackout arrangements on the top floors of the Pathology Block (ours was the top floor but one), so no electric lights could be used after blackout time, and consequently when dusk fell it was necessary to end laboratory work for the day. The Pathology Block, built just before the war, was the work of an optimistic architect who had designed the laboratory walls almost entirely of wide glass windows, and these proved very difficult during the war; during air raids they were rather a menace to the people working doggedly in the laboratories, and so far as blackout went they were impossible to cope with. Consequently in midwinter work in the upper floor labs ended about four o’clock.

I had instructions from CKS to join him in the Museum for tea around about 4:15. By that time all the upper floors were deserted save for myself, and just after four a porter, somewhere in the bowels of the building, switched off all the lights on the upper floors with a master switch, thereby plunging me abruptly into near darkness. Then, foolish as it sounds, I became hideously aware of my lonesome state and of the murdered Mrs. Dobkin lying under my bench, an inch or so from my feet. It was not so much that I feared her—poor, stupid, inoffensive little woman, nobody could have feared her, either in life or death; but I had a terrible phobia that if I looked up I should see Harry Dobkin glaring at me through the windowpane, pallid and sweating, as he had glared at me at the Old Bailey. As soon as the lights went out, therefore, Lefebure leapt up, gathered together her typewriter and papers and beat a precipitate retreat down the four flights of stairs (the electric lift stopped working, of course, when the porter switched off the juice), and after a final nervous canter along a dark corridor arrived at the Museum, trying to appear as casual as possible, although by that time severely out of breath.

Presently I began timing myself so that I had packed up and left the Department just before the lights went out. This worked nicely, but then the wretched porter began switching off the electricity earlier and earlier, and therefore I arrived in the Museum earlier and earlier, too, thereby creating an impression of one unduly eager for her tea, and finally calling from CKS the comment, “Miss L., you’re turning up at ten-to-four these days, although you know there’s no tea until quarter past. You won’t get enough typing done if you stop so early. It isn’t all that dark upstairs, surely you can manage the last quarter of an hour up there without a light?”

I didn’t like to tell him I was afraid of being alone in the twilight with the Dobkins; it sounded so silly, especially from the cool and collected Miss Lefebure. So I steeled myself to those horrid little afternoon sessions and even tried to force myself to walk calmly down the stairs when 4:15 arrived, but I rarely succeeded in this final tour de force and generally descended them in a wild dash for light and company.

However, as nobody saw me behaving in this illogical and foolishly feminine fashion, it didn’t matter. And, anyway, I had gained a reputation for being forever on the hop, skip, and jump. CKS was fond of pointing out that when I first joined him I “strolled” around, but that now my pace had “appreciably quickened.” He himself never walked but always ran everywhere, and I had got into the same habit. We streaked in and out of mortuaries and leapt and bounded about the hospital buildings in a positive excess of energy. Because of my constant hopping and skipping I came, in certain circles, to be known as “the Fairy.” My light build, fair hair, and ceaseless dancing about no doubt earned me this name. Personally I felt more like a performing flea than a fairy.

Of course I was called other things besides a fairy. I recall a very gallant old doctor who came to Poplar mortuary to see a p.m. he was interested in; as I walked into the p.m. room with the notes of the case he caught me up and exclaimed, “My dear young lady, I don’t like to see you in this sort of place, no, I don’t like it at all. I’m of the old school, and I find it most unsuitable.”

“I find it all very interesting,” I said, “I should miss it if I had to give it up for other work. And why shouldn’t I work here?”

“Ah,” he said mournfully, “a suffragette, yes, yes, a suffragette.”

I had delightful visions of myself chained to the mortuary railings, waving my typewriter and vociferously demanding the right to work among corpses.

However, most people took my presence in the mortuary more or less for granted.

A lot of people came to watch the p.ms., many of them doctors and, of course, many officers of the CID.

Among the CID personalities was a suavely dressed, good-looking, exceptionally genial detective inspector, who carried a most beautifully rolled umbrella which he brandished jauntily as he came into the mortuary. This was the famous Robert Fabian, whom we first met in Southwark. But later he turned up at Hammersmith, flourishing his umbrella even more gaily. He had become a DDI, and he accepted congratulations with infectious laughter. Although he was without a doubt a terror to the crooks he pursued, so far as we were concerned he was fun to work with. He had a terrific sense of humor and made jokes about everything. Sometimes he would hum to himself happily. He also had a genius for pithy comments.

I only once saw him disconcerted in any way, and that was when CKS remarked upon the sobriquet which one of the Sunday newspapers had bestowed upon him: “DDI Fabian, the Humphrey Bogart of Scotland Yard.” The Humphrey Bogart of Scotland Yard turned the slightest degree redder in the face and then grinned. “Well, Humphrey Bogart can have a bash at my job if he’ll let me have a bash at his salary.”

One job we did with Mr. Fabian was the case of an ex-Broadmoor man who battered his wife to death with a rolling pin and then gave himself up to the police. We went around to the house where the murder had taken place. It was a neat, tidy little house, complete with lace curtains, ferns in pots, artificial flowers on the sideboard, and a collection of family photographs on the mantelpiece. I began looking at these photographs, and Mr. Fabian came over to me, picked up one of the photos, and said, “That’s the devoted husband. Loved children and animals—particularly cats.”

“Did he have any children?”

“No, but there was a tabby cat.”

I looked at the bland, round, pop-eyed, broadly smiling face. He was sitting on a low wall, with two little children and a black dog. They all seemed very pleased with themselves.

“Was that since he came out of Broadmoor?”

“Oh yes, he’d been out several years.”

“Why did he go there?”

“For trying to murder his wife.”

“Why on earth did she have him back?”

“She wanted him back.”

“I suppose she never thought he’d try it a second time.”

“Lord, no; thought him the kindest, dearest soul on earth.”

I went on looking at the photographs, so many of which featured this round-faced, jaunty householder and taxpayer, the man who, according to his photographs, anyhow, was always beaming like the sun. Obviously very popular with his friends and relations and the life and soul of every party. In one photo he had his arm around his wife, in another snap he was cuddling the cat. And always smiling…

Back came Mr. Fabian from a brief search of the premises, carrying a bloodstained rolling pin. Adhering to the congealed blood were several long dark hairs.

“The weapon, Dr. Simpson.”

“Without a doubt, Mr. Fabian.”

“Considering he’d given her a pretty thorough battering the first occasion, she must have been a wonderfully trusting type. And now back he’ll go to Broadmoor. Ah well.”

Mr. Fabian later presented Dr. Simpson with the rolling pin, which was given a prominent position among the murder weapons exhibited in the Gordon Museum.

We collected many interesting trophies during the course of our work. One we obtained about this time, and which I especially liked, was a huge metal weight, impossible for me to lift, attached to a piece of rope. With this went a succinct suicide note: “I expect you will find me over Battersea Bridge—if you are interested.”

They did find him over Battersea Bridge.

Another collector’s piece was a geyser vent pipe, complete with starling’s nest blocking it; this had caused the accidental death from carbon-monoxide poisoning of a housewife taking her Friday night’s bath.

The felt hat of the murdered pawnbroker at Hackney was added to our collection of interesting garments.

When I first joined Dr. Simpson, one of the things that most intrigued me was the CID officers’ knowledge, or ignorance, of ladies’ underwear. Victims of crimes would be undressed, garment by garment, in the mortuary, one officer undressing the body and another tabulating the clothes as they were removed. The other officers present joined in, in a kind of male chorus. Shoes, stockings, dress, petticoat—or “slip,” as they always called it—panties, vest, bra, these caused no trouble, everybody could identify such things; but some items of wear puzzled the gentlemen very much and they would turn to me with inquiring, bothered faces. “Miss Lefebure, what’s this?”—holding it up suspiciously, at arm’s length. “A camisole,” I replied, after a moment’s staring. “Never seen one of them before,” was the rejoinder. “No, they’re just coming into fashion again, along with the new waist petticoats,” I explained. “Oh, thanks, Miss Lefebure.” Then, briskly, “Item, one camisole.”

“Miss Lefebure,
whatever’s
this?”

“Oh, it’s one of those boned, strapless brassieres.”

“She’s wearing it in a very funny place.”

“It’s slipped down.”

“Oh. Thanks, Miss Lefebure. Item, one strapless bra.”

There was one garment they always recognized immediately, all greeting it with triumphant shouts, “Cami
KNICKS
!”