Murders in the Blitz (19 page)
Mud! Acres of stinking bloody mud.
Eve Duncan struggled to pull her wellington boot out of the mire that threatened to suck it from her foot. Her efforts almost caused her to topple over when her centre of gravity came perilously close to the tipping point. Her arms flailed at the damp air as she restored her precarious balance.
This mud wasn’t just plain old mud. It was sodden clay mingled with unspeakable farmyard substances that cloyed and stank, even though the farm in question was nearly half a mile away. The brutally sticky, stinking muck had wormed its way into every crevice after washing down the lane during the last week’s unstoppable rain.
Eve growled as she stomped through the field’s five-bar gate to catch up with the boys, only belatedly remembering to close it behind her when she spotted the cows gazing at her in hopeful anticipation. Even with the borrowed tweed hat she had pulled down over her ears she knew that her ginger curls would be an unmanageable frizz by the time she got home. Grumpiness threatened to overwhelm her. She’d always suspected that the countryside was overrated and this visit had done nothing to alter that opinion. You didn’t get this sticky, disgusting mess in Shepherds Bush.
In a fit of what she now perceived as misplaced generosity Eve had agreed to come and spend her leave in Little Barrington with her sister Grace. Frank Gibbon, her boss at the Censors’ Office at Mount Pleasant in London, had agreed that she was due for a break, not having had any proper leave since the end of 1939 when the war began, almost two years ago now. You couldn’t exactly count her stints of helping the police with a couple of murder cases as holiday time. Even her police mentor, Inspector Reed, had reluctantly conceded that her work for him had been sufficiently distressing to entitle her to a paid holiday. Eve’s involvement in the discovery of several murdered bodies, and the subsequent search for their killers had, in their minds, clearly debilitated her delicate female spirit. Eve had in fact relished the challenge the cases posed and enjoyed her time as a part-time detective, but she wasn’t going to argue at the prospect of a few weeks in the country in summer, away from the horrors of the bombing in London.
‘Take as much time you need, a month if you like,’ the inspector said, with Mr Gibbon’s more reluctant agreement. ‘Your sister needs you and you’ll benefit from all that country air.’
She’d accepted the offer with delight; a break from wartime London would be wonderful. A proposal of a spell of freedom and rest would normally have suggested a stay at the seaside, usually in a homely boarding house. But since the outbreak of war the beaches of England were out of bounds to civilians, and certainly to holidaymakers. The shores were now seeded with anti-personnel mines and surrounded by barbed wire and concrete blocks to deter invading landing craft from delivering their payload of enemy soldiers. The authorities had made it as difficult as possible for the enemy to get a foothold on English soil, but their diligence had completely ruined the prospect of a summer’s traditional seaside break.
Just as Eve was contemplating the restricted options of where to go for her leave, she’d received a letter from her sister Grace, begging her to come to the country to help her out.
‘Please come, Evie. I’m expecting again and I can’t cope with the morning sickness and all these kids. They never seem to stop eating; all the cooking is killing me. And Hugh’s away at that headmasters’ conference in Yorkshire in August. I really need your help. Be a love and come and stay as soon as you can. You can bring Jake, he’ll love it here.’
There was more along these lines in Grace’s rambling letter, written in her barely decipherable scrawl, but to Eve the message was clear; her sister needed her. How could she refuse? It was high summer, so the weather would be fine. A little sunshine and lounging about in verdant fields and garden, or under a canopy of leafy trees making daisy chains in lazy contemplation would suit her very well. How much trouble could a couple of kids be?
Eve’s arrival in Little Barrington by bus, after her emergence from the nearest train station in Highston, had been accompanied by rain. Not the soft gentle rain that might have been expected in summer, but a determined, continuous downpour. St. Swithin’s Day, on the 15th of July, had come and gone, the clouds dropping their burden onto the trees and fields with enthusiastic abandon, and it hadn’t stopped since. It looked as if the traditional prediction of 40 days of downpour was inevitable right through August.
What Eve had forgotten when she agreed to stay with Grace was that as well as her own two lively offspring, her house was overrun by a posse of evacuees from the East End of London. During the terrifying daily bombing of the Blitz many families sent their endangered children to the safety of the homes of volunteers in the country willing to take them in; away from the peril of the Luftwaffe’s onslaught. As the East End was the area worst affected by the targeted bombardment, because of the docks and warehouses, most of the refugee children came from there.
There were five lodging with Grace in her old farmhouse, four boys and a girl, though it was often difficult to tell which was which, so uniformly scruffy were the clothes they wore. They were aged from about five to nine years old. Eve had rarely seen such a bunch of undisciplined urchins, although she became convinced in those first days that they wound each other up to misbehave. Messy and untrustworthy, they swarmed over the house and garden like locusts. They seemed to be constantly ravenous and if they were not given what they wanted they would pinch it, or ‘borrow’ it, as they would claim. Grace’s own two children adopted this new, exciting lawlessness with enthusiasm. Normally well-behaved – well, their father was headmaster of the local school – they ran wild with the visiting mob.
‘Poor things,’ said Grace of the evacuees, brushing back her long blonde hair from her damp forehead as she laboured in the kitchen, cooking endless meals. ‘They must be missing their parents.’
‘I can’t see much sign of that,’ said Eve, ducking a tennis ball that was being thrown around the room. She couldn’t see symptoms of homesickness; they seemed full of beans and reckless joy. ‘Outside, all of you!’ she cried. ‘I don’t care if it is wet, you’re not allowed to play ball in the kitchen.’
The children were enjoying themselves hugely. Now that school had broken up for the holidays they demonstrated their exuberant natures to the full, causing a constant state of exhaustion and anxiety among the adults.
Grace was not at her best; tired and nauseated much of the time, being in the early weeks of her latest pregnancy, she was exhausted with having to concoct meals for them all from the rations. Luckily the countryside provided extras in the form of rabbits, pigeons and the occasional hare shot by local hunters. One or more of these dead creatures almost always hung in the larder or outside the back door. Grace’s chickens – housed in a malodorous and precariously built run at the end of the long garden − were, mercifully, laying well. But all this food had to be prepared and Grace’s staunch, responsible nature meant that she spent most of her time cooking; she even made her own bread. The situation reminded Eve of where a baby cuckoo took over the nest of another bird, only in this case the invader was a whole gaggle of insatiable cuckoos.
Eve’s job, meanwhile, was to supervise the children. Keeping them occupied proved to be a recurring challenge, especially on the wettest days when it really wasn’t feasible to trudge through the dripping lanes, woods and fields. There was only so much Snakes and Ladders or Ludo anyone could tolerate, and card games like Snap and Beggar Your Neighbour were beginning to pall. Eve longed for Hugh’s return from the conference; she knew that he would be able to control this unruly crowd with a word and one of his withering glances. He had a way of showing that he was disappointed in you with the merest glance. Eve found him daunting and felt sure he considered her a bit of a flibbertigibbet. He was seven years older than Grace and exuded the palpable authority of a stern leader, even though he was at heart a gentle and mild-mannered man. He reminded Eve of her boss, Inspector Reed of the Shepherds Bush police force.
Eve often wondered what their mother had been thinking when she named her girls. The name Eve, from the mother of us all, hardly fitted her small-boned, ginger haired person. And Grace had developed into an Amazonian figure, big busted and with the child-bearing hips of the earth mother. Although not endowed with the elegance promised by her name, she had a lovely face, a dazzling smile, kind brown eyes and a chaotic riot of golden curls. She spoiled the children rotten, rarely reprimanding them, and they all adored her. Discipline fell to Eve. The women had a third sister, Hope, safely ensconced in the United States. She had, so far, managed to live up to her name.
Earlier that afternoon, after lunch had been cleared away and Grace had gone up to bed for a quick rest, and moments after Eve had put her feet up at the hearth accompanied by a cup of restoring tea and the Daily Mirror, nine grubby faces confronted her. She noticed that two extra little girls lurked behind the lodgers. They were the refugees billeted with Grace’s neighbour June, who, apart from feeding and clothing the children in her care, expected them to amuse themselves.
‘I’ve far too much to do,’ June said, dismissing the two with a nonchalant wave of her hand, ‘to spend my time amusing a couple of little gals. They can go outside to play, the fresh air’s good for them.’ This was said regardless of the state of the constantly wet weather.
Eve lowered the newspaper and glared at the kids; it didn’t look as if she was going to get a moment’s peace today. She could sense the beginning of a revolt; whining and tears were bound to follow. The youngsters stared back, expectancy blatant in every face, without a word spoken. Most of them had learned the art of manipulating adults from babyhood.
‘All right.’ Eve rose to her feet, sighing and exaggerating the stiffness in her back, folded the paper and arranged the fireguard round the glowing hearth. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
Jake, Eve’s black and white terrier, who had been snoozing on the hearthrug as close as he could get to the fire, jumped to his feet, never able to ignore that carelessly uttered word, and turned excited circles near the door, waiting for it to open. After the typical restrictions of Shepherds Bush he loved the countryside and the divine new smells it offered the canine nose.
They hadn’t been out for long before Eve realised her mistake. The glue-like consistency of the mud in the fields made it stick to the children like cement plastering a wall. For some reason they seemed to find it amusing to throw the stuff at each other like snowballs, in great filthy dollops. Soon they resembled a platoon of statues brought to life. Jake was hardly recognisable as a dog, suggesting some alien species encased in a carapace of clay. When they arrived home she would have to give them all a bath – not the easiest task. These children scarcely had such a luxury at home and an occasional visit to the local public baths had to suffice, if their mothers were diligent and had the necessary thruppence. Also, and more inconveniently, although they lived in a sizable old farmhouse with five bedrooms, Grace didn’t have indoor running water. A hand pump served the kitchen sink and the bath was galvanised tin, much the same as the sisters’ parents had in Wembley. This had to be filled by hand with water in buckets from the pump outside in the yard, which was then heated in the copper over the wood-fired stove. It would all be very hard work and take ages. The kids would need to be washed in shifts, although Eve supposed she could do two at a time. She would have to enlist their help to carry the buckets of water to the copper and then the tub, once it was positioned near the fire in the sitting room. The hearthrug was bound to get soaking wet. Eve could predict a rebellion at the arduousness of the task. And did they have enough towels? How Eve longed for the basic comforts, especially the bathroom with hot water supplied by the gas geyser, in her little basement flat in Shepherds Bush. She was not accustomed to these primitive conditions.
‘Righto, troops.’ She gathered her muddy flock around her. ‘Let’s see who can get home first. Just don’t any of you dare go into the house until I say so.’
Ever since she arrived in Little Barrington Eve had been struck by the variety of people that lived there.
‘A right rum bunch,’ Charlie, her best friend back in London, would have said.
Grace had taken Eve on a tour of the village when she first arrived, telling her about everyone they met on the way. They strolled down the hill towards the centre of the village with Jake on his lead beside them. In the street on the way they met a brace of ladies of indeterminate age, their hair beginning to grey and their clothes from another era of fashion. They paused for a moment and Grace introduced Eve to the women. While passing the time of day Eve tried to keep her mouth from gaping as she gazed at the drab pair. They were identical in every way except that one wore red and the other blue; a bizarre state of affairs in women of their age.
‘The Gossard twins, Emily and Vera,’ said Grace when they eventually parted from the women’s garrulous company. ‘Their parents dressed them in red and blue when they were babies, to tell them apart, and they’ve never changed the habit, although their parents have been dead for years. They both lost their fiancés, young men from the village, in the Great War and now they live alone together in their parent’s old cottage on the hill. It’s very sad.’
‘How old are they? They can’t be that old.’
‘I know. They look older than they are. They must be about forty two or three, I suppose, and they’re horribly poor, living hand to mouth on a tiny pension. When their parents died they didn’t leave much, just the house. They’re completely dependent on each other.’
Grace and Eve had shopping to do in the village. They always seemed to be short of something because the children swept through the house like a plague of locusts, eating every scrap of food available. Poor Grace was constantly making bread, cakes (when there was enough fat and sugar) and anything else she could think of to keep everyone satisfied.
The bell on the door jangled as they walked into the gloom of the village shop; the windows too full of heaped up tinned goods to allow much light to filter into the room beyond. The proprietor stood behind the wood-panelled counter with tall shelves, stocked with cans, jars and packets, reaching to the ceiling behind him. The scent of spice and bacon, tea and a slight undercurrent of mouse struck Eve’s senses as they entered. The stout black cat sitting on a chair near the door radiated contentment. Eve was glad she’d left Jake at home in the care of the children.
‘Mr Forbes, good morning,’ said Grace, ‘May I introduce my sister Eve? She’s staying with me for a few weeks. I expect she’ll be coming in to collect the shopping some days. How are the rations going this week?’
As was customary in small communities, Grace left the ration books with the grocer and he subtracted the ‘points’ according to what Grace bought for herself and her tribe of children. Eve handed her own ration book, to be used while she was staying with Grace, over to Mr Forbes. The only commodity that the grocer didn’t supply was fish, which was sold from an open-sided van on Fridays after being delivered to the nearest harbour in the early morning and driven to the villages on its route inland. Fishing in the seas around Britain had become a hazardous business, what with the mines in the water and attacks by enemy shipping, so the price of fish had soared. The meat that Mr Forbes supplied was not of the best quality, Grace had explained to Eve, but it was easier and quicker to get it from him than to take the bus into Highston and go to Sainsbury or the butcher. But it was good enough for casseroles and pies. In any case, they didn’t do badly for meat because of the game supplied by the hunters, often in exchange for eggs when Grace’s hens were laying well. A flourishing barter system operated in the village and the population shared everything according to need.
‘A couple of your little blighters was in here yesterday, Mrs Pritchard. Trying to pinch stuff, they was. I gave them a right telling off and sent them packing. Please can you tell ‘em what’s what? I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head. I’d prefer it if they kept out of the shop altogether, if you’d tell them, please.’ The man’s gaze pleaded with Grace, he clearly didn’t wish to offend her, but at the same time he was anxious to keep thievery away from his premises.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Forbes, I’ll have another word with them. I’m afraid they haven’t got much idea of what isn’t acceptable. They’ve had very hard lives you know. And then there’s been the bombing...’
‘I realise that, Mrs Pritchard, but all the same...’
A stout, middle-aged woman joined the grocer behind the counter and offered a tentative smile and a nod. Grace introduced her to Eve as Agnes Forbes.
‘You can’t help being sorry for them, away from their homes and parents an’ all,’ she said, ‘But that’s still no excuse for stealing. It’s not as if we’ve any of us got much these days, we can’t afford to lose anything.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Forbes, I’ll talk to them and put a stop to it. Anyway my husband will be back soon and he’ll soon put them straight.’
Mr and Mrs Forbes nodded sagely; obviously well aware that Hugh’s influence would steer the most wayward child back to the straight and narrow.
Grace and Eve carried their purchases back to the house in large shopping baskets. With so many mouths to feed the shopping had considerable bulk and weight. They loaded in two-pound bags of flour and sugar, lard, margarine, a small amount of butter, tea and so on. But the two women knew that within a short time it would be gone again, used up in baking for the nine of them. The farmer’s horse and cart delivered pints and pints of milk to the house daily. Children had an extra ration allowance of milk, so that was one commodity of which there was a plentiful supply. A couple of the East Enders would not drink milk without the offer of a bribe as they were not familiar with it in such abundance, if at all. Grace had to explain the benefits of drinking it, trying to be as persuasive as she could.
‘It’ll make you big and strong; build up your bones and muscles.’
Even those who refused to drink it cold however, were partial to warm milk poured over torn up bread sprinkled with sugar and eaten in front of the fire at bedtime, and they loved the mugs of cocoa that Grace made.
So far as bribery went, Eve had a secret weapon. Before she came to Little Barrington she had gone to visit her mother in Wembley. In an unprecedented gesture of generosity Mum had sent her off with some rich home-made toffee − sacrificing her and Dad’s sugar ration – roughly wrapped in a greasy brown paper bag that had once held butter.
‘For the kiddies,’ she’d said when she saw Eve’s bemused expression at this bounty, ‘You ‘ave a good ‘oliday, love. You’ve been looking a bit peaky lately. A bit of that country air’ll do you the world of good.’
The result was that when she was desperate to persuade the children to bend to her will, a tiny shard of toffee each was all that was required to swing them in her favour.
When Eve and Grace arrived home from the village they found June, Grace’s neighbour with the two little girls in her care, in the front garden, wringing distraught hands and with a face close to tears.
‘Where have you been? Those dreadful children of yours have torn the washing off the line and left it in the mud. Mrs Metcalf’s beside herself; she’ll have to wash it all again. Can’t you keep the little beasts under control?’
‘I’m so sorry, June,’ said Grace. ‘We left them to play in the garden with Jake as it’s not raining for once. We had to go to the village and get the shopping.’ She indicated the brimming baskets. ‘Wait a moment while we get these inside and I’ll come and help you.’
Eve followed Grace into the house and they dropped their burdens on the kitchen table. Grace put on the kettle while Eve put tea in the pot.
‘Shouldn’t we go and see what’s happened?’ asked Eve. ‘It sounds dreadful.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, she does exaggerate so and gets into a tizzy. Mrs Metcalf, she’s her daily, is very competent, she’ll sort it out. We’ll have a cup of tea and then see what’s up. I don’t expect it’s too serious.’
Ten minutes later, after putting the shopping away in the larder, they joined June in her spacious back garden. The line lay tangled on the ground but there was no sign of any washing.
‘Mrs Metcalf’s taken it back inside,’ said June. ‘The children ran off into the fields, like a tribe of savages.’ She shuddered with theatrical excess.
Eve’s heart sank at the news; it meant they’d be in the most awful mess again. She turned towards the familiar sound behind her. Jake was growling deep in his throat and the fur around his neck stood up in a ruff; he looked as threatening as such a small dog could. June’s stout pug, which had taken a fancy to Jake, bounced around him, eager for a game. Jake was deeply suspicious of the snub-nosed little creature and expressed his feelings vocally whenever he encountered him.
‘Vickie,’ said June in her upper class accent, ‘leave that horrid mongrel alone.’
Eve felt a spasm of outrage, which she refrained from expressing in deference to Grace’s interests; she didn’t wish to upset the neighbour any further. Mongrel indeed! Jake was a pure bred Jack Russell terrier. Eve glowered at ‘Vickie’ with disfavour as she drew Jake away with a soothing murmur. The pug was variously referred to as Vickie, despite his obvious maleness, or Hugo, depending on June’s mood, as his full name was Victor Hugo, for some forgotten reason.
Leaving the dogs outside to resolve their differences, the three women trooped into the house to find Mrs Metcalf in the scullery with her arms plunged in the sink. It soon became clear that only one sheet required rewashing as, when the children pulled down the line only the item at one end fell onto the muddy grass, leaving the rest of the laundry suspended unsullied on the reminder of the line. Grace apologised profusely to June’s charlady for the inconvenience.
‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Pritchard,’ said Mrs Metcalf cheerfully, as she dunked the grubby sheet in water and rubbed it between her reddened hands, ‘there’s not much damage done, it’ll only take a shake to rinse this through again. The little monkeys; they will have their fun. They only wanted to use the line for a game, I expect. I’ll find something else for them to play with later.’
‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’ asked Eve.
‘I fancy they’ve run off up to the farm, miss, after Madam shouted at them. They like to look at the animals and they’ve made friends with some of the Land Girls.’
Eve didn’t know much about English country villages but she imagined that Little Barrington could have stood as a model for many others. Its inhabitants seemed to have all the customary characteristics and the lanes were lined with the dwellings of a stereotypical little country town. A pub, a village shop, a church at the bottom of the hilly main street, groups of ancient cottages, larger village houses and several farms in the open land beyond, and a stately home, Passmore Hall; exactly what Eve would have expected with her limited knowledge of such things. A water-lily strewn pond stood to the side of the village green with old chestnut trees marking the perimeter. The churchyard, a model of neatness, held the largest yew tree that Eve had ever seen, spreading its branches benevolently over the gravestones and, on the other side, over the wall to the lane. Apparently this tree was several hundred years old.
Eve knew her jaundiced eye did not entirely appreciate the historical significance of the village’s evolution or the centuries of tradition that had formed its final perfection. She recognised its prettiness – even in wartime the timelessness of thatch and red tile and brick endowed the place with delightful peacefulness. In fact, war had hardly touched this community; the age-old routines of the countryside carried on as if the war were happening in another world. Only the shortages common to everyone showed that anything was different and, of course, the urgency to produce as much food as possible from the land. With the young men away at the war the fields were tended by Land Girls, who had been recruited from towns all over England and had often never seen a field before, let alone worked on a farm. The farmers supervised them and often found their work inadequate and complained at their incompetence.
To Eve the village seemed like an island marooned in endless lanes and fields, occasionally visited from the outside world by people bringing provisions, information or law and order. For news and entertainment they had the wireless, just as they did in Shepherds Bush, from the ubiquitous BBC. Joe Loss’s Orchestra, Vera Lynn and ITMA filled the living rooms with sound here as much as in London. A man on a bicycle delivered daily newspapers, their sparse pages reduced in number because of paper shortages, and full of propaganda designed to lift the spirits, and cartoon strips to raise a laugh.
There had been changes in village life, of course. No strapping young men strode the streets or enjoyed a pint of beer in the pub in the evening, flirting with the girls and exaggerating their exploits. They were nearly all away at the war. The constant fear that the population would starve was still a powerful force as German U-boats destroyed the merchant shipping bringing provisions to British shores. Many of the Land Girls had never set foot in the countryside before, and adjustment was difficult. The backbreaking work, the homesickness and lack of distraction in an alien environment made some very unhappy. Grace, with her generous nature, was forever giving advice and providing a shoulder to cry on whilst holding their chapped and broken-nailed hands for comfort.