“What is it you want?” Norma Gordon kept Darrington standing in the hallway and did not offer to take him any further into the house.
“I'm looking into events that took place in London in 1940 to 1941 during the Blitz, you may have seen the recent newspaper article about girls who were murdered at that time.” She didn't react other than to clasp her strong hands together across her ample midriff and sniff with an air of indifference. Darrington felt like an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman, “I believe you were a witness in the case of a girl called Rona McLean with whom you shared a flat. That's true isn't it? You were formerly Miss Norma Hammond.”
“Can I see your identification again?” The request took Darrington by surprise and when he handed over his warrant card, she studied it carefully, “Were you a policeman during the War?”
“I was a special constable in the last two years of the war.”
“In London?”
“No, in Southampton.”
She handed back the warrant card apparently satisfied he was who he said he was. “You'd better come through to the dining room, I've just made some tea.”
In the small room at the back of the house, they sat opposite one another at a table beside a sash window that looked out onto the back garden and she poured tea from a heavy brown teapot. Darrington was, for once grateful for the drink and not partaking out of politeness.
“I really can't believe this has come up again after all these years. How did you find me?” Norma Gordon asked.
“It's not too difficult these days. A friend of mine is an investigator and he helped, but I want to stress Mrs Gordon I'm not here to cause you any trouble. I need information off the record.”
She snorted, “Yes, off the record for how long? This friend of yours was he a policeman?”
“Yes, but he wasn't in London during the War either and I trust him completely,” Max assured her.
She was cautious, suspicious and intelligent. Such characteristics had enabled her to successfully flee from danger and quietly make a new life for herself. To persuade her to jeopardise that security Darrington knew he would need to gain her trust. The mental picture he had compiled of her was that of a tough, hard-faced young woman with little integrity but now, face-to-face, he instinctively felt the stoically resilient woman, who looked directly at him when she spoke, could be believed.
“Mrs Gordon there's no reason why you should trust me, particularly as I'm a policeman. I've read the file and I know why you disappeared but I need your help not only as a policeman but personally. I knew one of the young women who was murdered, I thought she was killed in an air-raid but now I believe she might have been a victim of the same person who killed Rona McLean. I shouldn't be here talking to you and if you report me I'll be in all sorts of trouble but I'm desperate to get to the truth. I've trusted you with this information and ask you to trust me.”
It was Norma Gordon's turn to weigh up the stranger who asked so much of her. He was a big man with power, but no bully, his eyes were sharp and could probably be menacing but at the moment they looked only troubled. He sat back rather than crowding her and he was asking not threatening. She was afraid of the situation, not him. Since the newspaper article had come out she had been waiting for someone to knock on the door and had prayed the face she would encounter would be that of a stranger and not the fearful countenance etched in her memory.
“I have to trust someone I suppose,” she said eventually her large, capable hands cupping the sides of the teapot as if to keep them warm. “You see my husband died a few months ago; in fact, his funeral was the day the article about the murders was in the newspaper. I always trusted him to know what the right thing to do was but now he's gone and I'm alone.”
Darrington lowered his eyes. The right thing for him to do would be to leave the poor grieving woman in peace not drag up the nightmares of her past, but his own needs pushed him on. “Thank you, Mrs Gordon, if you could tell me about your relationship with Rona McLean and what happened on the night she died.”
At age 17 Norman Hammond ran away from home and put out of her mind forever her strictly religious mother and drunken father. As far as she knew, her disappearance was not reported to the police by her mother, who would assume the wrath of God had swooped down to punish one so wicked, or by her father who would probably not notice her absence until payday.
For the next few years she worked in clubs and striptease joints in London's red light district, living at one time with a pimp who often lashed out at her and forced her to work the streets when he needed money. When he was given a lengthy prison sentence for stabbing another girl, Norma took the opportunity to move on to another part of London and made a promise to herself never to be at the beck and call of anyone else as long as she lived.
Working at the Golden Garden Club during the war she made as much from tips as she did in wages for cavorting before the noisy, lustful audience. She never again worked the streets but occasionally entertained men in the seedy flat where she lived and if they were generous enough to reward her with money or gifts, took them without flinching.
At the time of Rona's murder she was involved with a rich, inadequate patron of the Golden Garden Club and regularly using the bedroom she and Rona were supposed to share, to elicit from him as many expensive gifts as possible.
“I lived an immoral life at that time,” she said sadly and looked away from Darrington's face. “I was hard and cruel and when Rona moved into the flat I gave no thought to the poor girl. She was so young, lost and innocent and I completely ignored her, in fact, I did worse, I made her life a misery perhaps because she reminded me of what I'd once been.”
“I understand,” said Darrington anxious, not to censure.
“No,” she said staring grimly at him, “I doubt you do, but no matter.”
She went over the events leading up to the dancers being expelled from the air-raid shelter and he believed her when she described how they had begged not to be turned out into the raging bombardment but the respectable mothers and wives had bodily ejected them while their menfolk looked on without sympathy.
An office building ripped apart by a bomb crashed down into the street sending the screaming girls scattering in all directions. Knowing her way around, Norma was the first to reach the flat where she found her pathetic Romeo waiting in the doorway.
In her bedroom, she cried and sulked over her damaged coat, being placated and obliging only when her impatient lover coughed up the price of a new one. She snatched the money with no word of thanks knowing humiliation and degradation were what he was there for and anxious to get it over with.
Later, as Norma saw her guest out of the flat, a power cut had plunged the place into darkness. At first she hadn't noticed Rona huddled on the sofa but her impatience with the girl softened when she saw how scared she was and when the all-clear sounded she went down to the ground-floor flat to borrow candles leaving the door to the flat unlocked.
Darrington looked away as Norma dabbed a tissue at the tears springing from her eyes. “You can't imagine the shock, Chief Inspector. That poor girl, she was ever so pretty you know, dark and small with huge, lovely blue eyes but when I lit that candle and saw the mess he'd made of her, she looked like some sort of hideous monster and there was blood everywhere.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as if trying to rid it of the memory.
“But before that on the staircase when you were coming back to the flat, you saw him,” Darrington insisted gently.
For the first time, Norma Gordon looked frightened and nodded as if afraid to acknowledge the fact out loud. She fidgeted nervously with the corner of a lace tablecloth that sat in the centre of the table, “I can't tell you,” she suddenly blurted out, “I can't, I'm still scared.”
Darrington moved his chair nearer to hers. Closing up was like opening up, once people made up their minds to speak or not to speak they clung to the decision like a security blanket. “Please Mrs Gordon, Norma, I give you my word I won't tell anyone what you tell me. I know you don't know me, but I promise you I'm doing this for Rona and the other girls.”
Wringing her large hands together in her lap she began again, “I was going back up the stairs to the flat when I heard him coming down. He was running but he stopped a few steps above me, he was covered in blood and even in the candlelight I could see him clearly. I didn't know him, but he looked shocked to see me and then ran towards me. I dropped the candle and in the darkness his face came close to mine and he whispered the word âwhore'. I thought he must be some sort of lunatic, there were enough of them running around in those days and I assumed he'd been hurt in the raid. Someone came out of one of the flats above and he ran off out of the main door and I went on upstairs and found Rona and you know the rest.”
“You told the first policeman you spoke to you'd seen him clearly then later when someone took your written statement you said you didn't see his face. Why was that?”
“Because he came back,” she said firmly. “There were doctors, policemen, and press in and out of the building in the next couple of hours. The other girls had met up and gone to a party, I was there on my own with Rona still laid out on the sofa in that dreadful state. Even though I was in a state of shock, the police weren't exactly friendly, they saw my unmade bed and wanted to know who'd been there. I told them I didn't know his name and they were more than happy to believe that. They looked down their noses and sneered but I recognised a couple of them from the Golden Garden Club and when I was working the streets, some of my customers were policemen.”
Mistrust edged back into her voice. Darrington went on quickly, “When did he come back?”
“As I said, there were lots of people coming and going, it was just a small place and they seemed to be everywhere. I was still very shocked you know and I didn't look at their faces but when they took poor Rona away all wrapped up in a sheet, I couldn't bear to watch and went into the kitchen and that's when I saw him. He'd changed into his sergeant's uniform and cleaned himself up and he was glaring at me from the doorway. There was no other way out of the kitchen and he'd followed me in. I was petrified. Everyone else was watching the stretcher being taken out, but he was staring at me with those awful eyes. He spoke very softly but with such menace and said if I breathed a word he would get me and it would be worse than what happened to Rona. Then he was gone. Two detectives questioned me later and I said I didn't see him clearly. They said I was lying and tried to make out Rona was murdered by my guest or âclient' was the word they used. They tried to bully me, but I was more scared of the other one and far too frightened to say anything so they left but said they would be back.
After they'd gone Bruce from upstairs came down to see if I was all right,” a smile softened her face. “Bruce Gordon, the man I married, such a good man. I'd never paid much attention to him before that night even though he always spoke to me and once or twice he'd done things for us girls in the flat, but that night I saw what a wonderful man he was. I was quite hysterical and the others still weren't home, so he took me up to his flat and made me some strong tea with lots of sugar. It may not seem much now but in those days people didn't give their precious sugar away to just anyone. He let me sleep in his bed and he slept on the sofa, not quite what I'd expected and the next morning I told him everything. He convinced me to tell the truth and went with me to the police station.”
Her expression turned to anger as she recalled her ordeal at the police station where the detectives were, at first delighted when she agreed to make a statement, then hostile at the suggestion that one of their own might be involved and again she was accused of lying to protect someone. They took her statement but made it clear they didn't believe her.
“I was in an awful position, a dangerous position. I thought I would get police protection but they didn't believe me. I'd told them I could identify the killer and I knew it wouldn't be long before he heard about it and came looking for me so Bruce and I packed up that day and moved to Brighton where he came from. We established ourselves as Mr and Mrs Gordon, who had moved from their home in the East End where everything we possessed had been destroyed in the Blitz. We got married and bought this house and this is where we lived our lives together until Bruce died.”
“I'm sorry Mrs Gordon,” said Darrington, “about your husband and for coming here at this time. I suppose we all carry baggage from the war, but yours was a heavy load.”
“It was indeed, but I had a wonderful life with Bruce. We put the past unpleasantness behind us and were very content and happy. Bruce was a religious man and through him I found a faith I'd never had and it gave me great strength and happiness.” She gave him a disconcerting stare, “I can't pretend I'm not angry with you for spoiling that Chief Inspector and I hope you won't forget your promise. If he's still out there he'll probably have a lot more to lose now and if you can find me so can he. You've brought fear back into my life,” she accused.
Trying to quell his guilt, Darrington went back to the reason for his visit. “Mrs Gordon can you describe the man? Did you hear anyone use his name?”
“Well, I can tell you what he looked like all those years ago if that's any help, to be honest, I wish I could forget his face but I can't. I didn't hear anyone use his name, but he was probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He wasn't a big man, in fact, he was slim and medium height. He had light brown hair swept straight back and light coloured eyes, pale blue or grey â such cruel eyes.”
Darrington wrote it down but doubted it would help then he stood up and handed her a card with his name and home number on. He wrote the number of the Winchester Archives on the back. “Please call me anytime if you remember anything else or if you're frightened or worried. If you can't get me at home, ring the Winchester number it records calls so if I'm not there leave a message and I promise I'll call you back.”