The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

10

The Victoria Vanishes

“That’s her.”

Arthur Bryant peered more closely at the waxen face in the gun-grey zip bag before him. He could only recall the woman on the examination table of the Bayham Street Morgue because he had made such a deliberate effort to observe her. There was nothing remotely memorable in her appearance. If asked to sum her up in a single word, he would have said, damningly, that she appeared ‘respectable’.

“Are you absolutely sure?” asked May. “It’s just that it seems rather an odd coincidence, you being there.”

“Not really. I bumped into my butcher at the Royal Albert Hall last month,” said Bryant. “I always see people I know, even when they’re trying to avoid me. This is definitely the woman I passed last night. What happened to her?”

“At first glance I’d say she slipped off the kerb and bashed her head,” said Giles Kershaw. “There’s a contusion at the base of the skull consistent with her falling onto her back, although I’ve not found any bruising at the base of her spine. Mind you, she was wearing a thick grey woollen skirt and a thick coat which would probably have protected her.”

“Just a little cut, hardly seems anything.”

“The contusion is small, but the surrounding area is soft to the touch, and if we push in you can just see that the dura is ruptured. I removed a small bone fragment, little more than a splinter. The fracture was enough to expose her brain, causing clotting. The pupil of her right eye is unusually enlarged, which suggests a clot on that side. Any impact can ripple through the entire head, right down to the spinal cord, causing traumatic damage. The impact point showed up like a tiny black star on the X ray, and I could see some swelling in the rear right cranial hemisphere. I also found a few drops of cerebrospinal fluid leaked from her right ear, which suggests some form of basal skull fracture. There are so many things that can go wrong at the base of the skull. If she’d had immediate neurosurgical intervention I imagine she would have lived. There are more than a billion neurons in the human brain and we damage them all the time, but once the tissue starts swelling the damage rate rises exponentially unless intervention can halt it. She had quite a lot of alcohol in her blood, which exacerbated the effect of the injury. No recent food in her stomach.”

“So you think she was plastered and missed the kerb?”

“No, funnily enough I don’t.” Kershaw swept a lick of blond hair behind his ear. Like Finch before him, he seemed determined not to wear protective headgear in the morgue. He tipped his head, studying the dead woman’s physiognomy, thinking. “I think she fell all right. The impact point is consistent with a kerb-fall, a real jab of a blow.” He gestured with his knuckle. “The sort of thing you’d get from tripping over something sharp-cornered in the way of pavement furniture, but you’d have to fall very heavily. Something wrong about that, I think. You put your hands out when you fall, even if you’re drunk. Her palms were completely clean. So no, not just plastered.”

“Do you have the ID confirmed?”

“She was reported missing by her partner at around two a.m., and a local officer was told to keep a lookout. Carol Wynley, forty-six, divorced, kept her married name, did parttime secretarial work in Holborn. She’d told her fella she was going for drinks with colleagues after work. She’d often done it before and they usually went on until nine or ten, birthday bashes and leaving parties, that sort of thing, so he hadn’t been worried. They live in Spitalfields.”

“So it wouldn’t have taken her long to get home, even if she had trouble finding a cab.”

“Do you have any idea what time it was when you saw her?”

Bryant remembered the darkened dog-leg, London planes and copper beeches rustling dusty leaves above a battered brick wall. The black-painted traffic barriers, the rendered keystones, the wreath-shaped door-knocker, the ornamental wrought-iron balcony, the carved blind window. Pushing deeper into his recollections, he saw the figure of Carol Wynley weaving slightly as she moved toward him, almost stumbling on the edge of the kerb.

How close had she come to falling at that moment? In his mind’s eye he saw the frosted lower windows of the public house on the corner, the beery amber glow surrounding the gold lettering on the clear glass that read The Victory – no, The Victoria Cross. A date of establishment that he couldn’t recall. He saw a few beer and spirit bottles on sparse shelves, the opening door as she pushed inside. He heard the rise of bar chatter, somebody laughing too loudly, the clink of glasses. A youthful figure appeared through the darkened doorway behind the bar, coming out to serve a customer. He could not bring to mind a face. The barman was ahead of her, already starting to take the order. As if he had been waiting for her to walk through the door.

“I wasn’t the last person to see her alive,” he said with finality.

♦

“You’re quite sure this is where she was?” John May asked for the second time as they walked through the alleyway toward the top of Whidbourne Street.

“Yes, but obviously I was coming from the other direction, heading up toward Euston Road,” said Bryant. “Do you want half of my Mars bar?”

“Bit mainstream for you, isn’t it, a Mars bar? I thought you’d be breaking out aniseed balls, milk gums, sugar shrimps or some other brand of confectionary not seen since the last war.”

“My supplier’s been closed down,” said Bryant gloomily, sounding like a drug addict who had lost his connection. “I suppose I could order them over the Internet but it wouldn’t be the same. And I’ve a sweet tooth, as you know.”

“Your teeth are false. Go on then, give me a bit.” May accepted a chunk and popped it in his mouth. He stopped at the corner of the pavement, removing the blue adhesive tape left for him by one of the Albany Street officers. “Spot where she was found,” he said, poking a toe cap against the kerb. “Nothing much to be seen here. No sharp corners except that low wall, which I suppose would do it.” He indicated an area of broken brickwork. “Dan will have taken a sample. No scuff marks, no signs of violence.” He glanced up at Bryant, who had suddenly turned pale. “What’s the matter?”

“No pub,” said Bryant in a small strangled voice.