V 1944: A sinking feeling
The man thought, “Oh Lord, I’m really getting hot round the collar, even though I’m not wearing one!”
He was laying on his back, bare chested, on a padded massage table, and a physical therapist, a woman of course, was energetically kneading the left part of his chest and his shoulder. And the wonderful thing was that her ample but firm bosom was shaking with the effort just one foot from his face. Of course she was wearing a stiff white overcoat, but still…
The man, middle aged, bald pate, his body going to fat, suffered from a persistent electric tingling in his left elbow. So his GP had sent him over to this “physical therapist”. Little had he known that this meant a masseuse: wonderful! And it had turned out that she was rather shapely and very attractive: even better! And then she happened to be blind; she was wearing a pair of dark, round glasses, and judging by the way she kept her head stiff, slightly turned away from the work at hand, she really had to be totally blind.
This in itself was rather off-putting, of course, but on the other hand, you could stare at the movements of her chest as much as you wanted, and she didn’t notice a thing: as blind as a bat!
The man stared and stared. If you looked beyond the girl’s dark glasses and the stiff neck, she was actually a quite luscious blonde creature. Even the frown on her haughty brow was attractive in a way. “I know you’re hard to get, lady, but I’m ogling you all the same!” It was rather exciting.
The man started fantasising. “Once again I am Caius Lucullus, the Roman patrician, and I have ordered my prettiest slave to come to me and give me a massage… Of course I would have ordered her to take off her clothes, or better still, she would be wearing a very skimpy tunic… And I would put my left hand on her beautiful behind and fondle her buttocks to my heart’s content…”
The man gulped. “Oh Lord, I’m getting a hard-on something terrible! It’s a good thing that this sexy little number has no way of knowing what on earth is going on…” He sighed deeply. “God, now I really need to touch myself; if I don’t give myself some relief, I’m going to burst! Shall I dare to do it? She can’t see me anyway…” And just when he slowly, stealthily raised his right hand from the padded table and tried to grope his crotch, the blind girl’s hand shot forward and she forestalled his movement. She pushed back his wrist. Then she lifted up the man’s trouser front with her left hand, slipped her right hand inside his pants and firmly gripped his erect member in the vice of her powerful masseuse’s fingers.
“Are you enjoying yourself, mister?”
“Ouch! Ouch! Stop it, Miss… How on earth could you tell, Miss?”
“It is Mrs Prendergast to you. And if you really want to know: I can read your thoughts… But apart from that: you’ve been panting like a randy dog from the moment I started my treatment.”
“Good Lord, I had no idea! I’m terribly sorry!”
“Well, apology accepted. But keep your dirty mind in check from now on, yes?”
When Daisy got off for lunch, that day, she was feeling very tired and rather depressed. How could the others keep this up full time? She was glad to be working only two and a half days a week. And even that was a challenge. She went out into Hyde Park, not far from where she worked. The early-spring sun was shining, only noticeable to her as a slight and agreeable glow on her skin. She crossed Bayswater Road with a little help from a friendly old lady, then navigated by memory to a favourite bench near the Serpentine, where she wanted to eat her sandwiches.
Hyde Park had become a difficult terrain, with trenches, air raid shelters and antiaircraft guns. Apparently there were a lot of barrage balloons floating above it, but of course she had no idea how they looked. Someone had told her that they looked like huge sausages… Well, she’d had enough of big sausages for the day.
She found her bench and sitting down she took her sandwiches out of her handbag. She started to munch, and reflected. The incident with the ‘pervert’ this morning had been a bad turn. She should never have reacted so aggressively. That had been very unprofessional. On the other hand, with this particular man the problem had been solved in one of two ways: either he would never come back, or from now on he would be the perfect gentleman. But it wouldn’t do to fly off the handle like that with every indecent patient; she would have to devise a better conduct, a mode of coexistence with such characters. Her favourite teacher at the clinical courses had told the students that they should keep up some small talk, just like hairdressers and beauticians would do. “Talk about the weather, ask the male patients what they do for a living, ask the female patients about their children; things like that…” In the case of the male patients, the idea was that if you kept up the small talk, they would be distracted from any funny ideas. And if they tried to flirt, you could tick them off… verbally. But today, Daisy had to admit, she herself had been too distracted, too preoccupied by other things to function properly. She would have to find a gentler way of dealing with perverts.
“Either that, or I’ll just have to strangle all my male patients,” Daisy mumbled to herself.
Daisy felt depressed, even while thinking back to her training, recalling the teachers who had made it possible for her to learn this profession, the fellow students who had been sympathetic and supportive. The three girls who had helped her revise for her exams, and all those others. It had not been easy. Before her professional training she had been used to a school where everyone was blind like her. But now she had finally achieved her goal. And for what? Fat, middle-aged men lusting after her? You strive and you struggle, and then, when you reach your goal at last, the long awaited rewards turn to dust between your fingers… It just gave you that sinking feeling.
The same applied to her quest to find Ralph’s murderer. After a heady breakthrough at first, her investigation had come to nothing. That was what was preoccupying her; she was thinking about it all the time.
When D-Daisy had landed at Great Dunmow airbase, she had been very eager to talk to Victor, of course. But the batman had spent the night in custody at the police station in town, and he was not back yet. It appeared that he would not be released on that day. Daisy had been very tired after a long and stressful night, and it was clear that she would have to leave the base and find a room at a hotel or at an inn to get some sleep. But before she left, Major Mannings managed to get hold of her and told her politely but firmly that she was not to come back to the base. “I would say that you have had ample opportunity to talk to Ralph’s crew during your little excursion to Berlin, Mrs Prendergast. And now the investigation is in the able hands of Chief Inspector Cockett, while I and all the men here have a bombing campaign to run… Do I make myself clear?”
“Of course, Major. But surely you’ll allow me to say goodbye to the skipper and the crew as soon as they have finished their debriefing?”
She had only just managed to speak to the men before they themselves went to bed, and through them she had gotten hold of a telephone number that would enable her to get in touch with Victor when he came back to the station. Then she had been evicted.
A few days later, back in London, she had finally managed to speak to Ralph’s batman on the phone.
“Victor!” she cried, “How are you? Did you manage to escape the inspector’s clutches?”
“Daisy… Yes. I’m fine, thank you. Glad to hear your voice. I need to get back my sanity. Maybe talking to you will help…”
“Of course! Tell me what happened.”
“Well, it was quite horrible. The inspector was obviously certain that I am the murderer. He kept reproaching me my background, he kept trying to break me down. He shouted at me, he said that it was useless to deny the facts, that he had more than enough evidence to get me hanged… He told me it would be better for my own sake to confess straight away.”
“Oh, poor thing! I hope you remembered what I told you: that no one has the right to accuse you just because you were doing your job…”
“Oh yes, I thought of you a lot. And I came to the conclusion that you are absolutely right. The fool doesn’t seem to grasp one small detail: that as long as I know I didn’t do anything wrong, I have no reason whatsoever to believe a single word of what he says about this so-called evidence… I mean, knowing as I do that I didn’t do it?”
“Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right there, Victor, your logic is impeccable! And so the man didn’t ask any real questions? He didn’t even discuss your testimony?”
“No, nothing of the sort! It was very frustrating…”
And at about that point in their conversation they had been cut off. As part of the wartime rationing, private phone calls were limited to three minutes. Then the switchboard operator would mutter “your time us up,” if she said anything at all, and she would abruptly end your conversation. “Drat!” Daisy exclaimed, and prepared to go out. She had to find a public phone booth if she wanted to continue her conversation with Victor. With all the damage from the blitz it was not easy to find a phone in a place like Tufnell Park, and if you were blind it was even worse, but after asking a few passers-by, someone at last was able to lead her to a booth that worked and that was available.
As soon as she got hold of Ralph’s batman again, she started explaining as succinctly as possible the conundrum of the missing Thermos flask. “So tell me Victor, Ralph did use two flasks, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but not on the day he died, that’s right.”
“So which one did you give to me?”
“The one he’d left behind, definitely. I took it from the cupboard where I had stowed it away the day before…”
“And what happened to the other one?”
“It was brought to me with Ralph’s things that came back from the bomber and from the morgue. I put those things on his bed, including the Thermos. I didn’t even rinse that one. But by the time you arrived to pick up Ralph’s possessions, the Thermos was gone. Then I remembered the other one in the galley cupboard, and I put that one on the bed for you…”
“Any idea what could have happened to the first Thermos?”
“Well, there’s a lot of pilfering going on, you know. I remember thinking that the culprit was probably not aware of having pinched a dead man’s flask. That is: this would evidently bring you such bad luck, that nobody who was aware of it would even have contemplated the act…”
“But you don’t know who could have done it?”
“No, I’ve thought about it a lot, but it remains a complete mystery to me.”
And then they were cut off again. “Damn, damn, damn!” Daisy cried in frustration. At least this time the conversation had been more or less rounded off, she reflected, there was not much more to discuss, but the outcome was very disappointing. Now Daisy had to find her way back home, which was not so easy, as on the way out she had been briskly guided to a phone booth she was not familiar with. She had to ask for directions several times before she got back on familiar terrain. And when she finally arrived at her place and unlocked her front door, she heard her own phone ringing. She was just in time to pick it up. It was Victor, who at once started talking as fast as possible.
“Daisy! I’m calling from the mess kitchen phone… Listen: something just occurred to me. Do you remember how I told you that Ralph’s quarters had to be vacated immediately to make room for another officer? Well, I was saying that because on the very same morning an RAF officer I had never seen before had made a brief appearance to take a look at Ralph’s place. He really gave me the impression that he might soon become my new boss. But the funny thing is: he never came back; I never saw him again!”
“Victor! That is important information! That man could have been there to retrieve the incriminating Thermos: he could be Ralph’s killer. Can you describe him?”
“Yes, yes. Tall and thin with fair hair. In fact, the hair so fair that it looks almost white. And pale grey eyes, exceptionally pale eyes, almost colourless… but good-looking all the same.”
“So you would easily recognise him if you met him again?”
“Oh, yes! I would recognise him anywhere, in a crowd of thousands, even. I’m good at remembering a face, and this one was particularly memorable…”
“Anything else?”
“Ah yes! Another remarkable thing about this man is that he wore the stripes of a Group Captain. A rank that would be rather high for a regular pilot. And I remember thinking that he was rather young for a Group Captain…”
“Good, good… Fantastic! Now Victor, quick: think! What could this mean? Is there anything you can deduce from this? A very young chap with a very high rank?”
“Oh? Ah, yes! Wait, wait a minute… I would say an ADC… Yes, the ADC to a high ranking member of the General Air Staff…”
“An ADC! What’s that? What’s an ADC?”
“An aide-de-camp! The personal secretary of a Major-General or some such!”
“All right! Now we’re getting somewhere…”
And then they had been cut off. But it didn’t matter. Daisy would have liked to ask Victor if he had told inspector Cockett anything about this mystery man, but she already knew the answer: of course not, the whole story of this encounter had just occurred to him, and the inspector hadn’t asked any questions anyway…
Sitting in the soft glow of the early-spring sun on her favourite bench near the Serpentine, Daisy thought back to that day. The excitement of the breakthrough; the relief at the idea that the crew and Victor himself were no longer suspects; how ecstatic she had felt! It was possible, after all, to find some useful information about what had happened to Ralph… But then, how did you act on it? What could you do? She would have liked to go back to the airbase at once and start pestering all and sundry about the mysterious visitor, but Major Mannings had made it quite clear that he would not allow her back at his station. She could have asked for Cedric’s help once more, but he was likely to be back in Egypt by now, and his intervention probably wouldn’t have changed the major’s point of view. She could also have gotten in touch with Chief Inspector Cockett, but she didn’t expect much support from that quarter either… And when you looked at it dispassionately, you had to admit there was very little to go on: how could you accuse this mysterious Group Captain of murder on such circumstantial evidence? Soon she had felt the benefits of her first big breakthrough turn to dust between her fingers.
She had kept in touch with Victor, who was as eager as she was to find out more, but as he had said: “I can’t just go barging into the CO’s office and demand information about that Group Captain… The major would throw me out on my ear!” Of course he had promised to keep his eyes peeled; he would make discreet inquiries left and right, but until now it had all been to no avail.
Then a few weeks ago she had heard from Victor that D-Daisy had been shot down. Most witnesses had declared that both her starboard engines had been on fire, but that it was impossible to say whether the crew had bailed out or not. Daisy assumed that they had, as long as the witnesses had seen her go down, but hadn’t seen her exploding in one big ball of fire… You just had to hope that they had finally made their way to the Stalag Luft and a ticket for survival, bless their hearts.
And in the end, a few days ago, Daisy had phoned Chief Inspector Cockett in Great Dunmow. Even though the man was an awful pest, she had begged him for an interview. It had taken a lot of pleading and persuasion: she had played the card of the grieving widow aggressively, knowing full well that it was an argument the Chief Inspector was not totally immune to… So in the end he had relented. Tomorrow Daisy was taking an early train to Great Dunmow, but she was not looking forward to the interview.
Lost in thought while enjoying the glow of the sun, Daisy was brought back to the reality of Hyde Park by a hesitant male voice. “Excuse me Miss, I couldn’t help noticing that you’re blind… May I sit down on this bench?”
“Well, I don’t own it, you know, so be seated, by all means… But I’d rather not talk, if you don’t mind.”
The man sat down next to her, mumbling a word of thanks, and kept quiet for a while. But of course, inevitably, this restraint didn’t last. “Excuse me, but may I offer to be your guide when you leave the park?”
“Very kind of you, but no, thank you. There’s no need. Hyde Park is utterly familiar to me, so I can manage just all right on my own…”
“Oh. I just wondered, you know…”
Daisy thought, “Please, not another saviour of damsels in distress, not another knight in shining armour… Not today, of all days!” Then, without saying a word, Daisy retrieved a handkerchief from her handbag, slowly took off her dark glasses, and turning her head slightly towards the man, she started polishing her glasses thoroughly, as if she needed them to be absolutely spotless. The man of course looked at her eyes, and gulped. Daisy was frowning fiercely, giving him her Gorgon stare. At the best of times her eyes were off-putting, but now, with the tear-duct infection she’d had—even though it had healed—her eyelids were still reddish, looking raw, and there were some last yellowish crusts clinging to them… Daisy heard the sound of receding footsteps: the man had quietly slipped away.
“It works every time,” Daisy reflected. “Maybe I should simply take off my glasses when one of my perverts is lusting after me. That should put them off.”
Once again the Chief Inspector was tapping with his pencil on his desk. “So… You wanted to see me. What can I do for you, Madam?”
To her dismay Daisy clearly heard that the man, once again, could hardly contain his merriment. “And I haven’t even said a word yet,” she thought. “What on earth does he think he’s up to?” Suddenly it occurred to her that he might be merrily ogling her, just like that randy patient yesterday. Aloud she said, “Chief Inspector, I have some information that I’d like to share with you…”
“Oh, really? So you’re still trying to solve the case on your own, eh?”
“No, no, not at all. I just happened to discuss some things with the crew… Surely you heard that they invited me to fly with them to Berlin? So we had many hours to discuss things…”
“All right. And what precious piece of information did you hear from them? Let’s have it!”
“Well, maybe I’m going to tell you a lot of things that you already know, but here it is…” And Daisy explained the riddle of the Thermos flasks to the policeman, and told him about the mysterious Group Captain that Victor had encountered on the morning after Ralph’s death. “So, Chief Inspector, to make a long story short, what I’m saying is: this man could possibly have been there to take away Ralph’s Thermos, the murder weapon, but he was obviously not aware of the fact that there were two Thermoses… Does this make any sense to you?”
“Well, I can tell you one thing that doesn’t make sense to me at all… First you say: ‘Oh, I just happened to discuss these matters with the crew’, then you tell me some wild theories that you concocted together with the batman… and you would still have me believe that you’re not interfering with police work, and that you’re not putting your pretty little nose into matters that are none of your business? Well, lady, allow me to laugh heartily at that! Har-har-har!”
“But, Chief Inspector, be that as it may, the information I just gave you might be important. And for you it would be no trouble at all to ask Major Mannings about the identity of the Group Captain who was visiting the airbase on that day. Of course I have no idea how far you are with your investigation, but in the end we both want to get some results, don’t we?”
“Funny that you should say that! As it happens, I have plenty of results, thank you very much…”
“So you’ve already found the culprit, then?”
“I’m not supposed to tell. For the time being the results of the police investigation are confidential.”
“Well, am I not entitled to know a little more, if you happen to know who killed my husband? After all, when the case goes to court it will be public knowledge anyway…”
“Ah, but there’s the rub, Madam. This case is not going to court.”
“What? Why on earth not?”
“Again I’m not supposed to tell. But I’ll make you an offer. You see, the only mystery I’m interested in, is who initiated the orders to pick up the case. I heard from the station commander that it was a certain Cedric Clifton who pulled an awful lot of weight to get you permission to snoop around at the airbase. The CO assured me that this Clifton chap was not a friend of his… Now, if you can tell me more about this, I’ll tell you more about the results of the inquest…”
“Fair enough, Chief Inspector. I happen to know Cedric very well. He is a full cousin of my husband’s, but it’s his mother who is a Prendergast, and she’s married to a Clifton, so Cedric and Ralph don’t have the same family name… At any rate, when I found out about the poison in the Thermos, you know, from the pharmacist, Mr Dobbs… Well, when he heard about that, Cedric offered his help, and promised to use his influence to get a coroner’s inquest started. So yes, it is Cedric Clifton who was at the root of those orders you apparently received…”
“Well, I don’t like being hounded! You do understand that, don’t you, Mrs Prendergast?”
“Yes, yes, Chief Inspector, it won’t happen again, I promise… Now for the results of that inquest you were talking about. Why did you say that the case is not going to court?”
“Well, as it happens, just a week ago I submitted my report to Coroner Jacobs of Saffron Walden, and the man has already read it, and reported back that he is very satisfied with my efficient handling of the case, and that he agrees wholeheartedly that we can let it rest. I have his letter here somewhere… So you see, I’m a happy man…”
“Yes, and what was the conclusion of the report, Chief Inspector?”
“In one word: accidental poisoning…”
“What? Accidental poisoning? Good God! And the coroner accepted that?”
“Oh yes, Mrs Prendergast. And mind you: it is not accidental death but accidental poisoning, which means that the poisoning has not been proven to be the cause of death… The Coroner accepted that conclusion too, and even congratulated me for making that very essential distinction…”
“But, for crying out loud, how can you say that? Of course the arsenic is the cause of death…”
“No-no-no, Mrs Prendergast. Have you actually seen the reports from Mr Dobbs and Doctor Westmore? I mean, of course you haven’t, as you’re blind, but are you aware of their contents?
“Yes, yes, of course, I had them read to me several times, and I have an excellent memory…”
“Well then, what I want to say is that it’s all very inconclusive, you know. ‘Traces of arsenic’ in the coffee, ‘but sample was watered down’, and ‘impossible to say if the coffee contained a lethal dose’. Then the doctor’s report is even vaguer: ‘small sample’ and again ‘traces of arsenic’ and then ‘a more thorough analysis would be needed’.”
“Exactly, and that’s the first thing that