Max Collins - The London Blitz Murders

“The same two scenes, please,” Irene called. “Larry, again, please read both parts.”

And the theater filled itself with Agatha Christie’s lines, and Mrs. Mallowan was quite enchanted…

… at least until she began to wonder if her ten little whimsical murders… her murders for fun… had a place in a world at war, and a city “stalked” (as Stephen had aptly if archly put it) by a Ripper.

The West E nd seemed rife with men in uniform these days, but not every bloke in khaki got respect, much less the perks of wartime enjoyed by so many. Still, Inspector First Class did sound impressive, didn’t it?

And would have been, were Jack Rawlins a police officer, say, and not a reader of shilling-in-the-slot electrical meters for the light company .

At thirty-six, an eighteen-year veteran among electrical “inspectors,” Rawlins had seen every bleeding thing in this business, from opulence to squalor, big fat women just stepped from the tub, lovely lithe ladies alighting from the shower (latter such instances were pressed in Rawlins’s mental memory book like flowers, while the former he strove to forget). Barking dogs, untended babies, passed-out drunks-what hadn’t he stumbled across in his duties for God, country and paycheck?

And in spite of the lack of respect for his branch of the service, Rawlins experienced his share of hazardous duty on these Blitz-torn streets, stepping over fire hoses, skirting craters, veering to avoid UXBs. When a bomb disrupted normal electrical services, was it a soldier or sailor who charged into the breech? Hell no! It was the fearless likes of Jack Rawlins ….

You might think working the Soho district would be glamorous or at least interesting. But the “foreign” quarter of the West End-enclosed by Wardour Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street-was as dull by day as it was provocative by night. Right about now, just before eight-thirty in the morning, the snow-flecked sidewalks were largely empty, the streetwalkers of Soho tucked in their wee beds, doing nothing at all spectacular, and the array of unique nightclubs and exotic restaurants wouldn’t be open for business till much later in the day .

In fact, Rawlins made a point of doing the flats above first, as it was difficult finding anyone in the clubs and restaurants till late morning, when they were either open for lunch or cleaning up for the coming night (and didn’t those “unique” nightclubs and “exotic” restaurants look disappointedly drab and dirty by the light of day) .

The shops and businesses and such weren’t open yet, either, like this optician’s at 153 Wardour Street, which was next on his route. Rawlins headed up the narrow unlighted flight of stairs to a small landing and a quartet of doors to a trio of flats and a shared bathroom; a yellow hanging bulb threw a pool of light for him to stand in, as if he were on stage. He’d encountered the woman who lived alone there, now and then-a pleasant, pleasantly plumpish, and oh so pretty prostitute, name of Evelyn Oatley .

Rawlins was a happily married man, however, and considered himself immune to Miss Oatley’s charms. Besides, what beauty offered to swap services with a meter reader to save a shilling? Not that he would have looked away, should he stumble onto the fetching fallen flower alighting from her bath ….

When he knocked, the door creaked open a few inches; he had not realized it was ajar .

“Miss Oatley!” he called. “Here to read your meter, miss!”

No answer .

Shrugging to himself, Rawlins stepped inside .

The small one-room apartment was quite dark, the curtains still drawn. He tried the light switch, but the slot meter’s money had run out and the light did not turn on; seemed he’d come ’round none too soon .

With no one home, Rawlins probably should have backed out of the flat and gone about his business. But the nape of his neck was prickling-it was not like Miss Oatley to allow her electricity to run out like that. She kept a small neat flat and was pretty enough to make her illicit way in the world, easily .

Rawlins took the small electric torch from his tool belt and switched it on, just to check things out a bit…

… and the shaft of light fell immediately upon Miss Oatley .

She lay sprawled on her back on her divan bed, head back and hanging over, clad only in a thin sheer nightgown, which was open to reveal her in nakedness, which might have been titillating to a red-blooded man like Rawlins .

But it was not, though this sight would be pressed, involuntarily, into his mental memory book; and the electrician immediately realized he had not seen every bleeding thing, after all ….

Because the plumply pretty prostitute was quite dead, her throat slashed, the blood having run down to gather and coagulate into a terrible black pool .

Heart in his throat, Jack Rawlins scurried out of the flat and down the steps onto the street, where he quickly found a bobby and reported what he’d discovered…

… not feeling much at all like one man in uniform talking to another .

It seemed to Agatha that Hampstead was quite the most rustic and sweetly antiquated of the suburban districts of Central London, blessedly free from major Blitz damage, with narrow lanes leading to sequestered spots so sheltered from the tumult of town that one could close one’s eyes halfway and imagine being in a country village.

Built in a haphazardly irregular fashion on the hill sloping up to the Heath, Hampstead would have been perhaps the most nightmarish place in the city for her symmetry-obsessed detective, Hercule Poirot. But spinster Jane Marple would have loved it-wide High Street with its old brick houses adapted to shops and businesses, an inviting maze of courtyards and passageways and byways, streets lined with elms shading country-style cottages with perfectly manicured front lawns.

Even the modern blocks of two-story brick Bauhaus flats somehow suited the old-world atmosphere. Agatha’s apartment at 22 Lawn Road was like a small gabled house, and had been perfect and cozy when she and Max had shared it. Since her husband’s posting overseas, the place felt to Agatha large and cold, but that was half psychology and half the winter weather.

The two-floor apartment that was the Mallowan portion of the connected Bauhaus flats had come furnished-just as well, as after the bombing at Sheffield Terrace, all their furniture had been stored in the new Winterbrook squash court in Wallingford. These accommodations pleased her-the neighbors were friendly but unobtrusive (nary a question about “Agatha Christie” since she’d moved in)-and the building included a small unpretentious restaurant where she took many of her meals. She loved to cook, but when provisions were so hard to come by, a decent close-at-hand restaurant like this one was a godsend.

In the summer the Lawn Road Flats were most pleasant, with a garden ideal for little picnics; she was particularly taken with the bank of trees and shrubs behind the building, and in the spring, a big white cherry tree that rose to a pyramidal point presented itself, in all its blooming glory, just outside her second-floor bedroom window, encouraging her to rise with a smile even in wartime.

The only furniture she’d imported were her basic office accoutrements: large firm table and typewriter and hard upright chair for writing, and her comfy old easy chair for thinking. She set herself up in the library-style study-whose empty shelves stared accusingly at her until, some months later, she’d half-filled them with reference works, mostly medical and chemistry tomes-where (as was her habit) she removed the phone.