Murders in the Blitz (17 page)
Eve rushed back to the police station and found that Inspector Reed had returned. She would brook no hindrance from Bert who tried to stop her from seeing him.
‘No, Bert, this is important. I have to see him right away.’
She stormed through to the offices at the back of the building and, with no more than a tap on his door she confronted the inspector, who was standing at the filing cabinet withdrawing papers. Words began to stream out of her mouth in an uncontrolled rush.
‘I think I’ve found it, sir, the link. It’s nothing to do with the dairy or the black market or those women. The two murders are connected, and the attack on Amy Grainger. It’s definitely got something to do with the school.’
‘Hold on a moment, Miss Duncan,’ the Inspector interrupted, ‘who the hell’s Amy Grainger?’
‘Oh, haven’t you heard, sir? She was attacked in the street this morning – in Uxbridge Road. She’s in the hospital, unconscious. She’d told her parents that she was going to see a school friend, just like Malcolm said. He’d told Katya he was going to see a school friend too. And Miss Broadbent, she was their teacher when they were at Ellerslie Road.’
Inspector Reed walked to his desk and sat, regarding Eve with a quizzical look.
‘I take it you have talked to this Amy Grainger’s parents, Miss Duncan?’
‘Well, yes, sir. I went to the hospital. I had to find out what had happened. I’ve had this feeling all along that it was all part of the same thing. That it was all linked. I hope you’re not cross with me, sir,’ she ended weakly.
His stern features, which he was obviously trying to arrange into a frown of admonition, were defeated and creased into a smile. ‘There’s no keeping you down is there, Eve? You’re quite right, of course, you should not have gone to the hospital without my authority, especially as I had asked you concentrate on the Malcolm Miller murder. But it seems that you may be on to something. The trouble is it brings us no nearer to a solution to what is now a body of three crimes. Who in the world would want to kill and injure these people? Can you think of a motive for it?’
Eve subsided into the chair on her side of the desk. ‘No, sir. Offhand I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it. But I will try to find out. I thought I would start by tracking down everyone who was in Miss Broadbent’s class at Ellerslie Road Elementary. It may have been one of them.’
‘But...’ interrupted the Inspector.
‘I know, sir. I have absolutely no idea why one of them would want to.’
‘You’d better get on with it then. I suggest you start at the school and get a list of the names and addresses of the pupils who were in Miss Broadbent’s class. It was more than ten years’ ago, so it may not be easy, but it’s a place to start. Tell anyone who asks, as usual, that you have my authority to make these enquiries. Good luck.’
Eve almost skipped down the corridor away from the office, a spring in her step, eager to get on with her task to find the killer.
She was only a short way from the police station when something strange happened. A sharp-looking man suddenly materialised at her elbow and thrust a heavy brown paper bag into her hand. Eve thought she recognised him as one of the black market traders that she had seen in the pub.
‘This is for you, Miss Duncan,’ his face contorted into a broad wink. ‘Don’t be too sorry at that Malcolm’s death, he’s no loss, blackmailing little shit. We’re all well shot of him.’
With these cryptic remarks the man slunk off leaving Eve gazing down at a good couple of pounds of black market sugar that she slid into her bag hurriedly, hoping that no-one had seen the exchange. So, she thought, Malcolm was a blackmailer too. He was probably getting his sugar cheap by threatening to expose the dealers to the police. No wonder they were glad he was permanently removed from the scene.
It was a short walk from the police station to Ellerslie Road. She passed the shops along Uxbridge Road, past Frithville and Stanlake Roads and up Loftus Road, then turned left into Ellerslie Road. A crowd was beginning to gather to go to a football match at the club situated behind the school. Eve pushed her way through the throng and up to the gates of the school only to be brought up short. The gates were firmly locked with a large padlock.
Saturday. Eve had completely forgotten that it was Saturday and the school would be closed. She should have remembered when she saw the football crowd. She turned away from the gates, wondering what to do next. She wasn’t going to get very far without the co-operation of someone at the school who could give her the information she needed about the former pupils. She grabbed the frame of the gate and shook it in frustration.
‘Oi!’ a voice called from behind her. ‘What the’ell do you think you’re doing?’
A stocky, middle-aged man in a brown overall was approaching her, his hands full with a ladder and a canvas bag that appeared to be full of painting equipment.
Eve stepped back from the gates, unable to restrain the frisson of guilt that passed through her at the voice of authority. It reminded her of her own schooldays in Wembley when she was forever in trouble.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, trembling, ‘I need to speak to someone at the school, urgently. I’d completely forgotten it was Saturday and that it would be closed.’
‘Well it is, so you’d better come back on Monday hadn’t you?’
The man began to unlock the padlock on the gate and go inside.
‘Perhaps it’s something you could help me with,’ Eve tried not to wheedle, but she felt compelled to try to persuade the man to let her in. He sighed and leant his ladder against the fence.
‘What’s it about then, this thing that’s so urgent?’
‘I work with the police, you see. There’s been two murders and one attack in the last week and they seem to be connected to the school. I need to find out the names and addresses of children who were attending the school in 1931.’
‘That’s ten years ago.’
‘I know, but I thought someone might know, or that there’d still be some records.’
‘Who was it that was murdered then?’
‘Malcolm Miller and Miss Broadbent, the teacher.’
The man’s eyes widened. ‘Miss Broadbent? She’s dead? That’s terrible. Lovely old thing she was, always visiting the school, helping out, even though she retired years ago. She made this place her life.’
‘So you knew her then?’
‘Oh, yes. I came to work here in ’28. I’m Head Caretaker now,’ the man was unable to keep a note of pride from his voice. ‘Anyway, she was here not more than a month ago, helped me to put the blast tape on the windows.’ He pointed to the white tape criss-crossing the windows of the school.
Eve saw a glimmer of hope. ‘So maybe you can help me. You may remember who was in Miss Broadbent’ s class all that time ago.’
‘Well, I may not actually remember, there’s lots of kids pass through here. But I know where to look it up. Come on in. Let’s see what we can find. I’m Fred. Fred Burridge.’
The man pushed the gate open sufficiently for Eve to enter the school yard.
‘Thank you so much, Mr Burridge, Inspector Reed will be very grateful.’
‘Fred,’ the man growled, ‘and don’t forget I’m doing this for Miss Broadbent, not for the coppers.’
He picked up the ladder and canvas bag and they crossed the playground to enter the school by the side door. They walked along a corridor lined with doors. Fred put down his equipment and led Eve into the school office. The look and smell of the place reminded Eve strongly of her own schooldays. Fred started to rummage in a filing cabinet and eventually drew out a thick folder. Eve sat at one of the desks, drew her notebook out of her bag, preparing to work.
‘I shouldn’t be touching this stuff, you know. Not my department, and anyway, I’m supposed to be putting some paint on the lavvies today. It’s got to be dry by Monday or there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘I’m sorry to upset your day, Fred, but this really is important. I’ve got to try and find out who’s doing this before he kills someone else.’
‘Well, you look through that, it’s the file for 1931. Miss Broadbent’s class will be in there somewhere. Just don’t tell anyone I gave it to you. Now I’ll go and make a start.’
Fred left the office and went to begin his work. Eve pulled the file towards her and started to leaf through it. Somewhere in here, she felt certain, was the name of the person who had killed two and injured another. Eve had to find them.
She found that whoever had filed the papers ten years ago had been sloppy and records from 1929 were mixed in with those from 1931. She separated the errant papers into a heap at her side to be put in the correct folder later. She wondered if the same thing had happened to the records from the year she was interested in. Eve groaned at the thought of wading through information from other years, especially if it was in as bad order as this file.
Luckily, after about half an hour of trying to get the papers in order, she found a full list of the pupils of Ellerslie Road School in 1931; 286 children in all. There were six groups of pupils, each from a different year’s intake. These groups were divided into classes of roughly twenty children, each with its own teacher. Eve was looking for the children who were the eldest in 1931, top of the school in the year before they moved up to the secondary school. It was clearly marked that Miss Broadbent was the class teacher of 6B, the initial obviously linked to her name as the other class in that year, overseen by Mrs Marchant, was 6M.
Eve scanned the list of pupils eagerly, searching for names that she recognised. Samuel Abrahams, Freda Berens, Brenda Clarke, John Ellis, Adrian Fitch and Edith Fitch, must be brother and sister thought Eve, probably twins, Amy Grainger, Charles Greene, Helen Hiller, Patricia Kean, David Kydd, Francis Lisle, Malcolm Miller – ah, there he was – Barbara O’Reilly, Patrick Scott, Phillip Twain, Arthur Wainright, Margaret Wright and Jane Vine. Nineteen children altogether, ten boys and nine girls.
Eve looked at the list she had copied in despair. How on earth was she going to find them all? She delved further into the file, looking for addresses. There were a few, but a complete record of addresses was absent and in any case, many of them would have moved by now; the pupil list was ten years old. Eve sat at the desk staring blankly at the school’s register of Miss Broadbent’s pupils. Beside each name someone had written an attendance record, each pupil marked with a series of ticks or crosses. She noticed that Malcolm had a far from perfect attendance record, but Amy seemed to have turned up every time. Most of the others had had the occasional absence, which could probably be put down to illness rather than truancy.
Eve came to the conclusion that the best way to trace these pupils would be at the Town Hall. There should be a record there of where they were living now. The boys would probably be easier to find as they would be in the Forces or working for some government department and they wouldn’t have changed their names by marriage, like Amy. She slid the file back into the cabinet and placed the notes for 1929 in the correct place. Then she gathered up her notes, her bag and gasmask and went to find Fred.
‘Thank you so much, Fred,’ she said from the doorway of the boy’s toilets. ‘I’ve got everything I want for now. All I’ve got to do is to try and find them all. No, don’t get down, I’ll see myself out.’
Fred waved a laden paintbrush from the ladder. ‘Well, good luck, Miss Duncan. I hope you find what you want. Don’t worry about the gate; I’ll lock up when I leave.’
A short trolley bus ride and Eve was presenting herself at Hammersmith Town Hall and explaining what she needed. The person at the reception desk was disinclined to believe her story about working for the police and insisted on telephoning the station before he would let her have access to any records. Satisfied with her credentials finally, he directed her to the department that could help her with the whereabouts of the young men on her list. It seemed that they kept a record of residents who were not living in the area at present, being posted abroad or working elsewhere in Britain. What Eve had not anticipated was the depressing toll that the war had already made on the children of the class of 1931 of Ellerslie Road Elementary School.
Samuel Abrahams, mathematician, working for the Ministry of War somewhere in Scotland, Adrian Fitch, deceased – Dunkirk, John Ellis, deceased, lost at sea, Charles Greene, RAF, stationed in Libya somewhere, David Kydd, deceased, Egypt, Francis Lisle had not lived in the area since 1934, Malcolm Miller, murdered last week, Patrick Scott, in Libya - probably, Phillip Twain, seriously injured and in rehabilitation somewhere in the country, Arthur Wainright, Royal Engineers, stationed in a secret location.
Something about this recitation, delivered after a great deal of searching and grumbling on the part of the clerk, who sighed heavily as he sorted through pages of records, was puzzling Eve, nudging at her memory.
‘No,’ she said. ‘David Kydd, he’s not dead. I saw him only the other day.’
‘Can’t have, miss. Says here he’s copped it.’ Eve felt a sharp pinch of annoyance at the man’s casual attitude.
‘I’m sure that was his name. He was wounded, but quite alive. Maybe someone has made a mistake.’
‘Ah, well,’ the man shrugged, ‘could be. They’re making mistakes all the time. Drives me nuts.’
‘Never mind, I’ll go round to his house and see him. There’s bound to be an explanation. I just hope I can remember where it was I saw him.’ Then Eve remembered that, when she was checking Malcolm’s milk round, she had made notes of everyone she had spoken to. She would find David Kydd in her papers.