Murder at Aldwych Station (eBook)

The heart-pounding wartime mystery series

Jim Eldridge (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Allison & Busby (Verlag)
978-0-7490-2838-1 (ISBN)

Infos

December, 1940. With the Luftwaffe pounding the city nightly, Londoners seek refuge in underground stations. Aldwych has been taken out of service to provide shelter for the British Museum's priceless Elgin Marbles, as well as civilians escaping the bombing. When the body of a young man is discovered on the tracks, wearing evening dress but barefoot, Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are on the case. Before long, more bodies are discovered, and Coburg's wife Rosa becomes a target for the brutal killer. Caught up in a world of underground jazz clubs, abandoned tube stations and looters, Coburg and Lampson must track down the ruthless murderer before it's too late.

Jim Eldridge was born in central London towards the end of World War II, and survived attacks by V2 rockets on the King's Cross area where he lived. In 1971 he sold his first sitcom to the BBC and had his first book commissioned. Since then he has had more than one hundred books published, with sales of over three million copies. He lives in Kent with his wife.

Textauszug

CHAPTER THREE

Tuesday 3rd December 1940. 10 a.m.

Detective Chief Inspector Edgar Walter Septimus Saxe-Coburg, accompanied by his detective sergeant, Ted Lampson, walked along the currently disused railway track of the Aldwych Underground station, deeper into the tunnel. Just three months before, this branch of the Piccadilly line to Holborn had been an active part of the London Underground system, but the Blitz in September changed all that.

The Blitz had begun in early September, the intensive bombing by the Luftwaffe of London and Britain’s other major cities, but primarily London. Before that there’d been daytime bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, but the small Spitfires and Hurricanes from the airfields in Kent and Essex had kept most of them at bay during the period from mid-July until early September that became known as the Battle of Britain. The death toll had been high during the Battle of Britain, especially among the young fighter pilots who’d been sent up day after day to confront the giant German bombers and engage in aerial battles with their German fighter Messerschmitt escorts, but the death toll for the Germans had been even higher. Finally, the Germans had to admit that the RAF had defeated the Luftwaffe in these daytime attacks, so the Germans had switched to night-time attacks, when the small fighter planes could not defend the city.

The docks in the East End had been among the first to suffer, the whole area ablaze, and then more and more of London had become a target. On 10th September, Buckingham Palace itself had been hit by a German bomb, proving that no one and nowhere was safe. The block of flats in Hampstead where Coburg and his wife, Rosa, had lived had been completely demolished during a raid. Fortunately for the couple, they had been out when it happened, but everyone else in the block who’d sought safety in an Anderson shelter in the grounds had been killed.

Coburg and Rosa had relocated to another flat in central London, this time ensuring that it had a strong shelter in the basement.

Coburg’s sergeant, Ted Lampson, a widower in his early thirties, lived in Somers Town, a major target area for the Luftwaffe because it was right next to Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross stations, all main railway termini. For him and his ten-year-old son, Terry, Euston Square Underground station was their nearest shelter.

At first there had been panic among Londoners when the Blitz began, then, as it went on night after night, and occasionally during the day, a kind of unhappy acceptance had settled in. Daylight raids were less frequent because the RAF were still battling in the skies above Kent, downing the giant German bombers when they could, while at the same time engaging in aerial dogfights with the German bombers’ Messerschmitt fighter escorts. Now, in early December, the bombing had been going on for fourteen weeks, with no apparent let-up. And life in the capital went on. Shops were open, although in the case of butchers’ and some grocers’, with limited supplies due to rationing. People still went to work. Coburg’s wife, Rosa, a well-known pianist and jazz singer, also worked part-time driving an ambulance for St John Ambulance. Nearly everyone volunteered to help the war effort as air raid wardens and auxiliary firemen to battle the blazes from the bombing. Many former soldiers and retired people joined the Home Guard, ready to resist the Germans when they invaded, as everyone expected them to do. Reports of German troopships and landing craft moored off the French coast just twenty-five miles from the Kent coast were common knowledge. It was not if the Germans launched their invasion, but when.

Crime also carried on in the capital. The black market thrived in these days of rationing: sugar, bacon and especially petrol, along with many other products that were not freely available without coupons restricting how much anyone could buy at any one time: a limit of four ounces of bacon per person, and eight ounces each for sugar, butter and cheese, with meat purchases restricted to one shilling’s worth. As a result, butchers’ shops and warehouses had become prime targets for thieves.

Murder, also, seemed to Coburg as bad as ever. Along with the daily count of dead bodies from the bombing came reports of dead bodies found in places where the bombs couldn’t reach. Like now, with the report of the body of a dead man discovered deep in one of the tunnels at Aldwych station, close to where the famous Elgin Marbles were being stored, following their removal from the British Museum.

Although the electric current had been cut to the rails, it still powered the overhead and side lights in the walls of the tunnel, but the lighting was dim and they had to walk carefully to avoid stumbling over the rails and sleepers. Finally, they came to a long, low flatbed wagon on the tracks, on which lay a massive length of carved marble. Beyond that was a second identical flatbed wagon containing another length of marble, and then another, and another, each of them covered with a length of cloth.

‘The Elgin Marbles,’ said Coburg. ‘Or, more properly, the Parthenon Sculptures.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Lampson, impressed. ‘They’re enormous! How many of them are there?’

‘The whole thing is 246 feet long, when laid end to end,’ said Coburg. ‘Didn’t you see them when they were on display at the British Museum?’

‘I’ve never been to the British Museum,’ admitted Lampson.

‘Ted, I’m shocked,’ said Coburg. ‘It’s one of the greatest museums in the world, and you live within walking distance of it.’

‘Yeh, well, museums were never my thing,’ said Lampson. ‘They reminded me too much of school, which I was never fond of. If I had an afternoon off, I went to football. White Hart Lane.’ He looked at the lengths of carved marble. ‘They must be bloody heavy.’

‘A hundred tons, I’m told,’ said Coburg. ‘They were moved here at the start of September.’

‘How?’ asked Lampson.

‘A low-loader lorry from the British Museum to the London Transport depot at Lillie Bridge in Kensington, then transferred to rail wagons, and then here. It’s not the first time this station’s been used for hiding valuable treasures to keep them safe. In September 1917, because of the threat of German air raids during the First War, the National Gallery sent most of its paintings here to be stored, and they were kept here until December 1918.’

‘All this stuff’s more important than people, is it?’ said Lampson sourly. ‘I remember the scenes of people clamouring to get into the Tube stations when the Blitz started to try and get somewhere safe from the bombing, and the gates were locked and the people were actually beaten back to stop them coming in.’

‘I was told that was because the government were worried that once people came below ground to seek refuge, they wouldn’t go up top again, which would mean no workers,’ said Coburg. ‘No firemen, no plumbers, no bus drivers, no one to keep the city operating.’

It had been the invasion of the Savoy Hotel by angry East Enders on 14th September that had changed things, reflected Coburg. Furious that the people of the East End were being killed in their hundreds by the German blitzkrieg because the public were barred from seeking safety in the Underground stations, but instead had been left to go to the street-level brick public shelters, which invariably collapsed when a bomb went off near one of them, a crowd of people from Stepney had descended on the Savoy, brought by the Savoy’s advertising campaign in which it boasted of its basement air raid shelter, extolling its virtues, its luxury, the guarantee of safety. The Savoy’s Swiss night manager, Willy Hofflin, had allowed them in and they spent the night in the hotel shelter. This invasion by the proletariat sent ripples of unease through the ruling classes, many of whom were at the Savoy that night, and shortly afterwards the government relented and allowed London’s Underground stations to be used as shelters.

Aldwych station had been closed down as a passenger station early in September and electricity to the line disconnected to allow safe storage of the British Museum’s valuables, not just the Elgin Marbles but part of the British Museum’s collection of rare books and some oriental antiquities. Towards the end of the month, it had been handed over to the local authority, Westminster City Council, for use as a public air raid shelter, with people using the platforms and for 320 yards into the tunnel towards Holborn. It was estimated that two thousand, five hundred people sheltered in it. Most of them went back to the surface during the day, but there had still been a few people on the platforms when Coburg and Lampson arrived, surrounding themselves with chairs, mattresses and small tables, creating subterranean homes from home.

A uniformed constable stood behind a barrier that had been placed in front of the wagons. Next to him was a man in the uniform of a British Museum attendant. The constable saluted when he recognised Coburg.

‘PC Thompson, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve been...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.11.2022
• Reihe/Serie: London Underground Station Mysteries
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Historische Kriminalromane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: Hotel Mysteries • Jim Eldridge • London • london underground stations • Murder • Museum Mysteries • Mystery • Second World War • The Tube • Underground
• ISBN-10: 0-7490-2838-6 / 0749028386
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7490-2838-1 / 9780749028381