The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

street – her clients would be too high a class to meet her in deserted premises. Any evidence of sexual activity?’

‘More than once, I’m afraid.’ Northcote leaned down and, almost tenderly Cotton noticed, took up one of the dead woman’s hands. ‘Like you say this girl fought like a cat, look at her nails. I did find skin underneath them so somewhere on his person, our man has scratches.’

‘Any hair?’

‘Not one strand, so either he was as bald as a coot or, more likely given the wound at the back of her head, she was caught by surprise.’

‘Some men see women’s lives as cheap.’ At times like this, Cotton hated his job. Only an hour ago, this woman had her life before her.

‘Another case of girl lures gentleman into vacant house for sex then expects to fleece him.’ Northcote sighed.

Cotton knew he and Northcote differed on this subject because, in his experience, men did the luring.

‘How did she know it was empty? Hurrell was living here only days ago.’ Cotton thought aloud.

‘I’m always saying, George, we should recruit tarts to spy for Britain – they know exactly what’s going on. They’d take on those German kids we hanged today.’ Northcote adjusted his scarf against the chill in the unheated house and added, laughing, ‘Perhaps we do employ them, what?’

‘Perhaps.’ Cotton knew Northcote meant the two spies who, stumbling ashore at Dungeness last month, had got themselves caught immediately and hanged at Pentonville on the morning of the 10th. One, at twenty-four, was Shepherd’s age. Cotton was alone amongst his colleagues in thinking capital punishment brutal. It never put felons off from killing people or surely, in a war, committing treason.

‘That was a decent score.’ Northcote’s satisfaction reminded Cotton the pathologist had performed the post-execution autopsies. While Cotton could sometimes tire of policing, he never envied Northcote his job.

While Northcote was packing up, Cotton did his own check of the house and ascertained it unlikely the woman and her killer strayed beyond the living room. When he returned, he said, ‘If her killer knew this place was empty, maybe he planned to kill her here.’

‘How would he know?’ Northcote said.

‘There’s a danger sign outside, for a start.’

‘It rather suggests our man has killed other girls. Were that so, I might have expected to have them come through to me,’ Northcote said.

‘One thing: no handbag. Women always carry one. Mark you, he’s deposited it in a nearby bin.’

‘Spot on, George, our killer won’t want to be seen prancing along with some fancy handbag on his arm.’ Northcote was as much a detective as Cotton.

Cotton was gazing at the twisted corpse. The set of her features, the determined chin, suggested Maple Greenhill had known her own mind. How had she ended up dead in an empty house?

‘Sir.’ Shepherd was back. ‘Fingerprint man from the Yard’s here.’

‘Get him in toot sweet.’ Unlike some officers, Cotton welcomed anyone from the Yard. You couldn’t have too many cooks in the kitchen and these days fingerprinting was more often than not a clincher.

‘I’ll start on her first thing, George.’ Pausing, Northcote bowed his head to the dead woman and, donning his trilby, went out into the night.

*

Two hours later PC Shepherd was driving George Cotton past the brewery on their way to Corney Road, the address on the young lady’s ID card. As Northcote had predicted, police found her handbag in a bin near Eyot Gardens.

Maple’s purse contained no cash, but along with the ID was a wage slip for the Express Dairies. On her modest weekly income, it would have taken Maple months to pay off her Jaeger coat. Otherwise, one lipstick, a powder puff in a squashed cardboard box and, somewhat of a surprise, a copy of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins which Maple had borrowed from Boots. Her bookmark, an oblong of felt embroidered with the letters MVG, was tucked near the end. That Maple liked reading didn’t fit Cotton’s – and surely not Northcote’s – portrait of a prostitute.

‘Two sets of prints in the house. Not much to go on, sir.’ Shepherd crawled the Wolseley past Chiswick House on their right. ‘Inspector Cherrill said one set will be Hurrell, the man who lived there. He reckoned the other is a right thumbprint which he said was Dr Northcote. Fancy him just knowing that and why would Scotland Yard have the doc’s fingerprints?’

‘Cherrill’s got the dabs of all manner of distinguished personages. I, too, am honoured to be filed in his system. Come on, chin up, lad. In the past, I’ll have you know, we’ve got a result with less than that. In the end it’s about wearing out shoe leather, and nous.’ Cotton discouraged pessimism in his reluctant recruit. The lad had been in the police only two years when war was declared; Cotton himself stopped him joining up because he needed him in CID. He’d told Shepherd: ‘There’s a job to be done here on the home front. If we all go off to fight, we’re leaving London to the criminal fraternity.’

‘One stroke of luck is they’ve still got Mr Hurrell at the Co-op undertakers.’ Untypically, Shepherd was quick to rally. ‘What with his funeral being tomorrow. The inspector is sure he’s not on file, otherwise we’d have been faced with exhumation.’

‘I’m sure he could have obtained plenty from all over the house. Just convenient having the original to hand, so to speak. One thing we know is Hurrell’s not a suspect.’ The brightest of CID having been called up, Cotton had to exercise patience.

He’d explained the ID card wasn’t sufficient evidence to name their dead woman. You could get yourself in hot water relying on paperwork. Rifling through her bag and along the lining, tucked in a secret compartment with a folded ten-shilling note, Cotton had discovered a photograph. Edges crinkle-cut, it showed a boy aged about two perched on the lap of a young woman against a painted backdrop draped in velvet.

It was Shepherd who confidently pronounced,