Deeds of Darkness (The Home Front Detective Series) Read online

  Deeds of Darkness

  EDWARD MARSTON

  This one is for my beloved grandfather, Albert Edward, who fought in the Great War and who resolutely kept its ugly secrets to himself.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  About the Author

  By Edward Marston

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  1916

  War and Charlie Chaplin did not sit easily together in the mind of the Reverend Matthew Hearn. He had a rooted objection to cinemas themselves, but he saved his fiercest condemnation for the little actor who’d forged an international reputation by playing the part of a hapless tramp. Chaplin’s popularity seemed to have no bounds. Songs had been written about him. Shops sold Chaplin merchandise. Music hall artistes impersonated him. But it was the way that Chaplin featured in comics and cartoon strips that rankled with Hearn. He believed that the minds of innocent children were being polluted and that was unforgivable. When he saw two parents approaching the cinema with their young daughter, he moved across to intercept them.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, politely, ‘but do you think it’s wise to take your child to see Mr Chaplin?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied the father, looking fondly at his daughter. ‘Laura adores him. We had to bring her.’

  ‘It isn’t only Laura who enjoys Charlie Chaplin,’ said his wife. ‘We do as well. He makes us laugh until we cry.’

  ‘That’s my point,’ argued Hearn. ‘Should you be laughing at a time of national calamity? There’s a war on – a dreadful, bitter, shameful war that’s killing our young men in untold thousands. Do you think that laughing at the antics of a clown is the most appropriate response to this crisis?’

  The man shrugged. ‘We like the films. They help us forget the war.’

  ‘That’s why Chaplin is so dangerous.’

  ‘I want to go in, Daddy,’ said Laura, fretting at the delay.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ said her father. ‘I know.’ He turned to Hearn. ‘I’m sorry. We made a promise to our daughter and we can’t disappoint her.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Hearn, standing aside. ‘But remember what I said.’

  There was, however, no chance of their doing that. As they joined the crowd that converged on the cinema, the trio dismissed him from their minds. All that they wanted was the magic of another performance by a comic genius in the guise of a tramp, a man who could delight people of all ages and send them out of a cinema in a state of mild delirium. It was the same with everyone to whom Hearn spoke. They resented being stopped and brushed aside his objections to the entertainment they’d come to see. Of the dozens of cinema patrons he’d accosted, not a single one had been persuaded to turn back. It was dispiriting.

  As he patrolled the pavement, Matthew Hearn cut an odd figure. A big, broad-shouldered, shambling man in his fifties, he looked less like a priest than a farm labourer in clerical garb. Beneath the wide-brimmed black hat was a gnarled face that was positively ugly in repose. What made him less threatening to newcomers was the low, gentle, reasonable voice. It came from the heart.

  A uniformed soldier approached him with a young woman on his arm.

  ‘One moment,’ he said, detaining them. ‘Have you really thought about the implications of what you’re doing?’

  ‘We’re going to the cinema, that’s all,’ said the soldier.

  ‘But it’s not all – that’s the trouble.’

  Hearn launched into his denunciation of Charlie Chaplin but his words fell on stony ground. With a protective arm around her shoulders, the soldier hustled his girlfriend past the priest and took her into the cinema. A policeman who’d watched the encounter sauntered over to Hearn.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, I’m afraid,’ he remarked.

  ‘They just don’t realise what they’re doing.’

  ‘Yes, they do. They’ve come in search of some fun.’

  ‘There’s no place for fun when a war is on,’ insisted Hearn. ‘The soldier should have known that and so should the rest of them. Can’t they hear the sound of artillery from across the Channel? Don’t they read the casualty lists? Zeppelins are flying over London to drop bombs on us, yet all that they can do is to giggle at Charlie Chaplin.’

  ‘Well, he is very funny,’ said the policeman, admiringly.

  ‘Are you saying that you condone what’s going on in that cinema?’

  ‘It’s a free country, sir. You can’t stop people doing what they want.’

  ‘Cinemas are a source of evil.’

  ‘I can’t agree with you there.’

  ‘They’re places of darkness in every sense.’

  The policeman looked at him shrewdly. ‘Have you ever watched a film?’

  ‘No,’ replied Hearn, ‘because I refuse to cross the threshold of places like this. Look at it,’ he went on, pointing. ‘Even the foyer is dimly lit. I’m told that it’s almost pitch-black inside. That incites people to all sorts of improprieties.’ The policeman smiled. ‘That’s not a cause for amusement,’ he said, reproachfully. ‘Your duty is to uphold the law. Cinemas are frequented by prostitutes who ply their vile trade in the darkness. Doesn’t that concern you?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the other, ‘though I don’t think you’ll find many ladies of that kind at a Charlie Chaplin film. It brings in a family audience.’

  ‘You may be wrong there, Constable. In the time that I’ve been standing here, I’ve seen two or three women slipping in there alone. Cinemas lure in unaccompanied females of questionable morality. And here’s another one,’ he added with a note of censure, ‘that proves my point.’

  An attractive, well-dressed woman in her twenties was hurrying towards the cinema. When she entered the foyer, she paused to check the time before buying herself a ticket. The policeman shook his head.

  ‘You’re mistaken there, sir,’ he said. ‘In a job like mine, you learn to pick out prostitutes at a glance and she is certainly not one of them. You’re being very unkind to her. She’s a respectable young lady who’s simply come to watch a film.’

  The woman in question handed her ticket to the usherette and was shown to a seat in the back row. She immediately removed her hat and put it on the seat beside her in order to reserve it. A newsreel was flickering up on the screen but she paid no heed to the information that appeared in large capital letters. Like everyone else there, all that she was waiting for was The Floorwalker, the latest film starring Charlie Chaplin. Once it was on, her friend would arrive. A concerted cheer went up when the main feature finally started and the accompanist began pounding the keys of her piano. Within seconds, the audience was shaking with mirth. The woman was only half-watching the scene in front of her. She was there for something more important than a film. Hope and expectation made her tingle. The feeling did not last. After several minutes, there was no sign of him and she soon had doubts that he would come at all. Her nerve started to fail her. He’d changed his mind or – worse still, she feared – he’d found someone else with who
m to have an assignation. The very thought made her shudder. As time rolled on, the anticipatory joy she’d brought into the cinema slowly turned to acute embarrassment.

  In a place where everyone else was rocking with laughter, she felt alone and utterly betrayed. She was on the verge of getting up and running out in tears when a shape was conjured out of the darkness. The man sat down beside her and reached out to hold her hand. She was so overjoyed that she didn’t even mind the fact that her hat was being crushed beneath his weight. He was there. That’s all that mattered. He cared for her enough to honour his promise. She was ecstatic.

  After kissing her hand, he stroked her arm then moved his attention to her thigh, caressing it with increasing boldness until she felt exquisite electric shocks all over her leg. He then put an arm around her shoulders, using the other hand to fondle her breast and make the nipple harden. It burnt with pleasure. By the time his lips met hers, she was giddy with sensation. She’d never been held and kissed like that before. It went on and on with gathering intensity and she lost all inhibition. Her surrender was complete.

  Charlie Chaplin no longer existed. She was in another world but she was not allowed to savour its joys indefinitely. Her lover’s kiss suddenly became a clamp across her mouth. His embrace tightened painfully. The hand that had explored her body with such practised skill now sought her throat and squeezed hard. Up on the screen, a chase scene was sending the audience into uproar. Chaplin’s tramp was trying to run down an upward escalator and staying more or less where he was. As they cheered, yelled and laughed uncontrollably, they almost drowned out the piano’s rising frenzy. It was cruel on the woman. In the general pandemonium, nobody heard her struggle or saw her frantic attempts at escape. Resistance was pointless. The man was bigger, stronger and more determined than her. Surrounded by merriment, he stuck to his task, stifling her protest with his mouth and using both murderous hands to throttle the life out of her.

  When she eventually went limp, he eased her back in her seat, picked up her handbag, then vanished into the darkness.

  She would have no need of the crumpled hat now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Who found her?’

  ‘It was one of the usherettes. When the lights came up, everyone else left the building. The woman appeared to be asleep. The usherette shook her and she keeled over. It was obvious that she had not died by natural means.’

  ‘What a grim discovery to make!’

  ‘How on earth could it have happened?’ asked the superintendent. ‘The cinema was almost full yet nobody had the slightest inkling that a murder was taking place under their noses.’

  ‘Charlie Chaplin is a powerful distraction.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that, Inspector.’

  Marmion was surprised. ‘Have you never taken your children to a Chaplin film?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. As a matter of fact, they don’t go to any cinema. However,’ said Chatfield with a dismissive flick of the hand, ‘let’s forget my family for the moment and concentrate on the crime.’

  ‘Do we have any more information, sir?’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Then I’d better get over to Coventry Street.’

  Harvey Marmion had been summoned to the superintendent’s office at Scotland Yard to hear about the murder. Claude Chatfield had taken the call from the manager of the West End cinema.

  ‘Mr Brack was very agitated,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying.’

  ‘That’s understandable, sir. It must have come as a terrible shock to him. Apart from anything else, the cinema has had to close and turn people away. In view of what’s happened, audiences might not be quite so keen to flock there now.’

  ‘I’ll want a full report as soon as possible.’

  ‘That goes without saying, Superintendent.’

  ‘And the commissioner is taking a personal interest in the case. Like me, he has grave reservations about the whole notion of cinema.’

  ‘We must agree to differ on that subject, sir.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your opinion, Marmion.’

  ‘Then I won’t presume to offer it.’

  Marmion gave him a non-committal smile. There had always been unresolved tension between the two men and it had been intensified by the fact that Chatfield had been promoted over the inspector. The superintendent was a tall, thin, pale man in his forties with bulbous eyes set in a narrow face and warning signs of a bald patch. Marmion, by contrast, was muscular, well proportioned and had a full head of hair. His features were pleasant rather than handsome and they were now composed into the expression of resigned obedience that he always reserved for Chatfield.

  ‘Well,’ said the superintendent, irritably, ‘don’t just stand there, man. Get over to Coventry Street with Sergeant Keedy and find out the full facts.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Most important of all, solve the mystery.’

  ‘Mystery?’ echoed Marmion.

  ‘Yes – why is it that a murder is committed in a crowded cinema yet we have absolutely no witnesses?’

  ‘With respect, sir, that’s not quite true.’

  Chatfield’s eyes bulged even more. ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’

  ‘Nobody may have seen the actual murder,’ explained Marmion, ‘but we are all witnesses after the event. That was the killer’s intention. He deliberately left his victim on display. It would have been much easier and far less dangerous for him to dispose of her in some quiet corner or dump her in the Thames. Instead of that,’ he went on, ‘he chose to do it in public, certain that his crime would soon be revealed in all its horror and that – when the newspapers report it tomorrow morning – the whole of London will witness what he did. That’s the real mystery, sir.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Why does he feel the need to show off?’

  Emmanuel Brack prowled up and down the empty foyer of the West End cinema and pulled intermittently on a cigar. He was a short, stout man in his forties with a face contorted by anguish. Dressed in an expensive, well-cut suit and sporting a bow tie, he wore gleaming black shoes that completed a picture of flabby elegance. He pulled out the white handkerchief from the top pocket of his jacket and mopped his brow. Through the glass windows, he could see the people outside, held back by uniformed policemen and wondering why they were unable to see the second showing of The Floorwalker. Wild rumours were already circulating, all of them detrimental to the immediate future of the cinema. Murder was bad for business.

  When the detectives finally arrived by car, the manager rushed forward with gratitude and opened one of the doors for them. Marmion entered the foyer with Joe Keedy. There was a flurry of introductions and an exchange of handshakes.

  ‘Thank heaven you’ve come, Inspector!’ said the manager, still perspiring. ‘This has been a disaster for me.’

  ‘Forgive me if I reserve my sympathy for the victim,’ said Marmion, crisply. ‘Her situation is rather more serious than yours.’

  ‘But I’m left to suffer the consequences.’

  ‘Where is the body?’

  ‘It’s exactly where it was found. We haven’t dared to move or touch it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It was Mabel – she’s one of our usherettes – who made the discovery. She almost fainted. Mabel is still recovering in my office and so is another member of my staff.’

  ‘We’ll need to speak to them in due course, Mr Brack,’ said Marmion. ‘First of all, we’d like to visit the scene of the crime.’

  The manager stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray. ‘Follow me.’

  As they fell in behind him, the detectives exchanged a glance. Tall, good-looking and lithe, Joe Keedy had come to the same conclusion as Marmion. Both of them had identified the manager as a self-important businessman whose only interest was in his cinema and who treated the death of a young woman as an ugly stain on his property that needed to be removed as soon as possible. Opening a door, Brack led
them into the auditorium which was now blazing with light.

  The corpse lay sprawled on the carpet between the rows of seats. When the usherette had shaken her, the woman had pitched forward onto the floor. Marmion and Keedy moved in for a closer look but the manager held back. It was Keedy who knelt beside the body to examine it. Before he joined the Metropolitan Police Force, he’d worked in the family undertaking business and grown wearily accustomed to the sight of death. He knew its unpleasant smells and its gift for disfigurement of its victims. Marmion was happy to let the sergeant carry out the inspection. He reserved his interest for the surrounding area.

  Keedy looked up at him. ‘She was strangled, Inspector.’

  ‘Poor woman!’ said Marmion. ‘Even though she’s slightly built, she must have put up some sort of struggle.’

  ‘Why did nobody hear her?’ asked the manager.

  ‘It was because the killer chose the film with care, sir. Charlie Chaplin always generates a barrage of noise and laughter. It would muffle her protests and the darkness would hide the pair of them from prying eyes.’

  Brack turned away in disgust. ‘Can you get her moved, Inspector?’

  ‘An ambulance will be on its way. But we’ll need to take photographs before that,’ said Marmion, beckoning the police photographer.

  ‘I feel sorry for her, naturally but … well, frankly, I don’t want her here.’

  Keedy stood up. ‘We’re looking for a strong man,’ he decided, ‘and one who was confident in his strength. He came here to kill and he succeeded.’

  ‘He must also be something of a charmer,’ observed Marmion. ‘Back rows are normally the realm of courting couples. I doubt very much if they were strangers to each other. He might have persuaded her to come here willingly. The woman would have been completely unaware of his real intentions.’