Symmonds, though. That was familiar. He’d come across a Symmonds recently, but when? He switched on his torch and began thumbing through his notebook.
There it was. The scrawny woman who’d come to the station, looking for her husband.
Missing since February
, he read,
Lives at 14 Poland St, On business? 45/6, hair brown, straight, eyes brown, own teeth, corns. Bigamist? Statement taken (Gaines). Birth date given (16th April ’94) incorrect. Chiropodist?
‘Bingo,’ murmured Stratton. Dr Byrne had mentioned a dental plate, but that wasn’t the same as false teeth, so it was entirely possible . . . it could have been dislodged at some stage, and not replaced.
For some reason - and insurance was the obvious one, if she was hard up - Mabel Morgan had identified an unknown and very burnt corpse, possibly one of her lovers, as her husband, Cecil Duke. And he obviously hadn’t colluded because, according to the letter, he hadn’t even known about it until he’d met this man Wolcroft. So where had he been at the time of the fire? Out of London? Mabel had taken a big risk if that was the case - he might have come back at any moment and blown the gaff. Abroad was more likely, and America seemed the obvious choice for a film director.
Stratton fished the letter out of his pocket and ran the torch over it. No date. A chance meeting . . . That must have been quite an encounter for both him and Mr Wolcroft, he thought. Mabel Morgan had seemed like a phantom on celluloid, but Cecil Duke was a living ghost. Mabel’s fear would definitely make sense if she’d been looking out for Cecil-cum-Arthur, who had come back to England and - if Stratton was right - had palled up, bigamously, with Mrs Symmonds. ‘I shall look you up very soon.’ To demand money, presumably - money that Mabel hadn’t got. But Cecil hadn’t looked her up, had he? Had he been killed before he got the chance? Maybe there was something else . . .
Depositing the notebook and letter on the seat beside him, Stratton took out his penknife once more, and, holding his torch between his teeth, set to, sliding the blade into the gap he’d made in the cardboard frame and wiggling it up and down until . . . ‘Yesss,’ he said to himself. There was something else. More paper . . .
Unfolding it, he read the heading Weill, Blynde & Cartsoe, Solicitors. Of course, thought Stratton, remembering the label on the deed box. W. B. & C. It must have come from them. The letter was dated the twenty-seventh of August, 1935 and directed to Mabel at an address in Clapham. Stratton glanced through it:
Late husband’s will . . . insurance . . . documents . . . personal effects lodged with us . . . Yours sincerely, Thos Blynde
. Even if Cecil Duke hadn’t had much money to leave, there was still the insurance. If both Cecil and the house had been insured, that could have amounted to quite a tidy sum . . . What had Mabel spent it on, he wondered. Keeping body and soul together, certainly, but it must have been done in quite some style. Boyfriends, he supposed. Drink. Parties. It was certainly possible . . . Stratton wondered why Mabel had kept the letters. The one from the solicitor he could understand - it was, after all, an official document. But Cecil Duke’s note? Most people’s reaction to something like that would be to tear it up or throw it on the fire. ‘Who knows?’ he muttered. People were bloody odd . . .
He shrugged and turned back to his notebook: Mrs Symmonds, 14 Poland Street. He thought for a moment, then peered out of the window, trying to make out, from the dark shapes of buildings, where they were. Seeing nothing identifiable, he removed the torch from his mouth and leant forwards. ‘Miss?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Where are we?’
‘Pall Mall, sir. Detour. Unexploded bomb, sir. I’ll go down Vauxhall Bridge Road.’
‘Could you turn back? I need to go to Poland Street first. In Soho.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You don’t mind?’ asked Stratton.
‘Course not, sir.’
‘The raids’ll be starting soon.’
‘Shouldn’t be bad tonight, sir. No moon.’
‘That’s true.’ Pleased by her composure, Stratton decided that this was as good a time as any. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . I didn’t quite catch your name.’
‘That’s all right, sir. Legge-Brock. Rosemary.’
Legge-Brock, repeated Stratton to himself, as she turned the car round. Must remember. Rosemary Legge-Brock. Not much better, really. Oh, well . . . He wondered if Mrs Symmonds would be at home, or if she would already have headed for the shelter. He could always ask at the Wardens’ Post.
‘Here we are, sir. I’m afraid I’ll have to get out and check the house numbers.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Stratton. ‘I’ll go. Wait for me here.’
Blundering along in the dark, shining his torch into doorways, Stratton illuminated a couple in a clinch, said ‘I beg your pardon,’ and decided that the blackout did, after all, have its uses. Cursing himself for not knowing which way the numbers went - he’d walked this beat so often he bloody well ought to remember - he was peering up at a shop sign when somebody grabbed his arm, roughly - ‘What are you playing at?’ - and a beam of light hit him full in the face, almost blinding him.
‘Unless you’re asking me to dance, Arliss,’ said Stratton, irritably, ‘I suggest you let go of my arm.’
‘Oh, sorry, sir. I didn’t recognise you.’
‘Obviously,’ said Stratton. ‘I don’t suppose you can take me to number fourteen, can you?’
‘Yes, sir. This way. It’s only a few doors down.’
Mrs Symmonds stuck her thin face out of the door, a metallic fringe of curlers poking out from beneath her turbaned headscarf. ‘What do you want?’ she asked truculently.
‘Detective Inspector Stratton, CID. You came to see me at the station. Just a few more questions about your husband. I shan’t keep you long.’
‘I should hope not. I was on my way down to the shelter - they’re bound to start any minute.’
‘We could talk there, if you like.’
‘And have everyone knowing my business? No thank you. Have you found him yet?’
‘That’s why I’d like a word, Mrs Symmonds.’
She opened the door a grudging few inches to admit him, and motioned him to follow her upstairs. Closing the door of her flat after him, and leaning against it, arms crossed over her non-existent bosom, she said, ‘Well?’
Stratton glanced round the poky room. It was none too clean, with yellowing lace curtains and balls of dust beneath the chairs, but there were no obvious traces of male occupancy apart from a greasy-collared coat that lay across the end of the threadbare sofa. ‘I’d like to show you a photograph, if I may,’ he said.
‘Fair enough.’ She twitched the picture out of his hand, glanced at it, and said, ‘That’s him. What you done with him, then?’
‘Nothing, Mrs Symmonds. We haven’t found him yet.’
‘Where’d you get that, then?’
‘Have you seen it before?’ Stratton parried.
‘No. Must have been when he was in America.’
‘When was that?’
‘Before we met. He was English, of course. Down to the bone. Went to America on business.’
‘What business was that?’
Her expression and tone changed from vinegary shrewdness to vague uncertainty. ‘Couldn’t rightly say.’
‘When did you first meet him?’
‘A year or so ago. October.’
‘Before the war?’
‘That would be right, yes.’
‘You told me you’d been married for eighteen years, Mrs Symmonds.’
‘I . . .’ Mrs Symmonds’s eyes re-focussed, but not on Stratton. She was staring hard at the linoleum, and harsh red spots had appeared on her cheeks. ‘I must have made a mistake,’ she said, haltingly.
‘Rather a big one,’ agreed Stratton genially, sensing victory. ‘When were you married?’
‘I couldn’t rightly—’
‘Are you married, Mrs Symmonds?’
‘Not . . . as such.’
‘I see. How long have you been calling yourself Mrs Symmonds?’
‘That’s my name!’ she said, indignantly.
‘So who is Mr Symmonds?’ asked Stratton.
‘My husband. My late husband, that is.’
‘And his name was Arthur Symmonds, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’d been married for eighteen years before he died?’
‘Yes. He passed away last August.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Here, in this very room.’ She looked around as if she expected to see the late Mr Symmonds, glass-eyed and stuffed with horse-hair, standing in a corner to provide confirmation.
‘Did you report his death?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Did you report it to the proper authorities?’
‘I couldn’t very well leave him here, could I?’ she said, tartly.
‘I meant, all the proper authorities.’ Mrs Symmonds glared at him, the red spots on her cheeks now intensified to an almost luminous glow. ‘It can easily be checked,’ Stratton added. ‘Fraud is a serious matter.’
‘How could I manage?’ she burst out. ‘I’ve no children - my boy died when he was six. Tuberculosis. Arthur had a small pension, because he was an invalid, you see, so I just . . .’
‘Carried on drawing it?’
‘I didn’t know what else to do! I thought of getting a job, but my nerves wouldn’t stand it - I’d never done anything like that, only looked after Arthur, and my boy, and I’ve no family - my sister’s in Canada - so I didn’t know which way to turn. I didn’t mean to do wrong, only the pension was there, so I just went on fetching it, because when he got ill, you see, it was me that collected it, and I never thought . . .’
‘And then you met the man who now calls himself Arthur Symmonds. What did he call himself then?’
‘Twyford. Mr Henry Twyford. Wasn’t that his real name?’
Stratton hedged. ‘We’re not sure. Did he have an identification card in that name?’
Mrs Symmonds shook her head. ‘He said he’d become an American citizen, so he couldn’t get one. He said it was for business. He was going to take me back to America with him, only the war broke out. He said we could be married there.’
Stratton could see that to a woman like Mrs Symmonds, who clearly revered ‘business’ in all its nebulous glory, this was an entirely plausible explanation. It was pitifully easy to imagine the dreams that ‘business’ had conjured for her - men in top hats smoking cigars, with herself, outfitted in artificial silk and a fur coat, on her husband’s arm . . . And with Cecil Duke being educated - or having the semblance of it - and better spoken than she, all he would have had to do was draw a sketchy picture in a few words, and the credulous woman would have filled in the details for herself with very little prompting. She’d been widowed and lonely and a man like Duke must have been the answer to her prayers. And - once he realised that she was able to provide him with a new identity - she was the answer to his. ‘Did Henry Twyford know about your husband’s pension?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I told him.’
‘And the rent book is in your late husband’s name?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you had his birth certificate?’
Mrs Symmonds nodded.
‘And then you obtained an identification card and a ration book in his name.’
‘Yes, for Henry. What’s going to happen to me?’ she wailed. ‘I’m so frightened, with him leaving like that, and all this’ - she gestured at the sky - ‘with me on my own. I can’t stand it!’
‘Why don’t you come and sit down,’ said Stratton, indicating the sofa. Mrs Symmonds followed him, picking up the coat and sitting crouched over in silence, hugging it to her bony chest. Stratton positioned himself in the chair beside the gas fire, and concentrated on his notebook for several minutes. ‘He’ll be feeling the cold without this,’ she said, suddenly, stroking the coat. ‘I was mending it for him. And his poor feet! I’ve still got that corn plaster. I’m keeping it for him.’ Stratton winced inwardly. It was now almost a certainty - unless some sort of miracle occurred - that he, or some other poor bugger, would have to tell her that both the coat and the corn plaster were redundant. ‘It’s strange to think I don’t really know who he was,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘I was ever so fond of him. All these months, it’s been terrible. And when he never came back, I didn’t know what to do but I thought, if he had his cards, you’d be able to find him.’
‘The date of birth you gave us.’
‘That was his birthday - what he told me.’
‘And your husband’s date of birth?’
‘September the third, 1896.’
‘So he was, what . . . forty-four, when he died?’
‘Yes, sir. Consumption, like my boy.’
‘I see. And the description you gave at the station, for Mr Twyford, brown hair and eyes, was that correct?’
‘That’s right . . . You will still try to find him, won’t you? Now I’ve told you. Only I couldn’t . . . Oh, poor Arthur!’ Mrs Symmonds buried her face in the coat.