When the call came in - Attempted suicide, young woman - it took Paul Milner a moment to identify the reason the address was familiar.
Then it came to him. Sam.
"Did they give a name?" he demanded of the desk sergeant. The man shook his head. If it had been Brooke, he would have recognised that street, that number. He would have got a name, or at least a description.
But Brooke's shift had not yet started, and this man had only worked in the station a few months, not long enough to have even met Samantha Stewart, let alone know where she lived.
"I'll go out there," Milner said. "Tell Constable Marksbury to meet me at the car."
The desk sergeant frowned. "For a suicide, sir?" he said. "Can't Marksbury handle that alone?"
Milner ignored him, limping out the door. Couldn't be. Wouldn't be. Other women lived in that house, other young women. And Sam - there was no way Milner could imagine Sam giving up, no matter the situation, no matter how bad the news or how grim the circumstances.
But damn it, I wish the sergeant had got a name.
The drive took an age, especially at Marksbury's cautious pace, so different from Sam's cheerfully competent dash. When they finally arrived, Milner saw with relief a familiar figure leaning against the front gate, arms folded tightly, gaze fixed on the pattern she was tracing on the pavement with the toe of one shoe.
I knew it, he thought, although until that second he had not in truth been entirely free from fear. Sam would never …
He got out and limped toward her.
"Sam?" he said gently.
She looked up. "Paul," she said with a watery smile. "Oh, I did hope they would send you."
"What happened? Are you alright?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "It was Cicely."
She gave him an account, organised, precise, of what had happened, from Cicely Oswell's - two ells, she clarified - tearful revelation to the arrival of the ambulance, complete with who had said what and when they had said it, where they had been standing, and how she had secured the evidence by locking the door to Cicely's room with the key she promptly handed over. Milner didn't think any constable could have done better, and told her so.
Sam bit her lip. "I shouldn't have left her alone," she said.
"Sam, you saved her life," Milner pointed out. "Look. Can you go in and tell them - the other witnesses - that I'm here? They'll be more likely to talk to me if I come with your recommendation."
"Of course," Sam said, and went off to do just that.
Milner beckoned Marksbury over. "Drive over to Mr Foyle's," he said quietly. "Tell him what's happened - tell him Sam is fine - and then come back to pick me up. And -"
Marksbury winked. "And if I have a passenger on the return journey, makes no never mind?"
"Exactly," Milner said.
There was not much more information to glean from the other witnesses - Sam's account had been comprehensive - except that Milicent Lovell had heard somebody, possible Cicely Oswell, coming in at a little past four that morning. Without knowing how long the young woman had lain unconscious, it would not do much to pin-point the location of her assault, but it was better than nothing.
"And I'm sorry to be rude," Milicent said, "but I really do urgently need to get to work. I'm quite happy to give any statement you need, for however long you like, but -"
"I understand," Milner said. "WAF, wasn't it?"
"Clerk," Milicent said. "Tedious clerical but small cog, big machine, and so on."
"You can go," Milner told her. "And you too, Dr Blackwell. Thank you for your time."
The woman doctor got to her feet. "You're going to charge that poor girl," she said.
"It's not up to me, doctor," Milner said.
With a complete disregard for the presence of Sam, Millie, and Mrs Henderson, Dr Blackwell asked bluntly: "What about the bloody bastard who attacked her?"
"I'll do everything I can," Milner said, and then admitted: "Unless she can give a statement, that may not be much."
Dr Blackwell snorted. "Always the same," she said. "Men play, women pay."
Milner would have liked to have defended his gender, but, he knew, now was not the time. "I'll do everything I can," he repeated instead. "If you - if any of you - can persuade her to talk to the police about what happened, we'll have a much better chance of stopping this man."
Dr Blackwell went out, muttering something about stopping him with a scalpel, which remark Milner considered it the better part of valour not to hear. Millie made her escape in the direction of her bicycle, and Mrs Henderson headed for the stairs, no doubt, Milner thought, remembering what Sam had said about her landlady in the past, to make sure Marksbury's search of the room doesn't do any damage.
Turning to the window, Milner saw the police car pulling up again.
Before it had entirely come to a halt, the passenger-side drawer opened, and Mr Foyle got out.
His boss - his former boss - came up the front path at a rapid clip.
"Excuse me a moment," Milner said to Sam, and went out into the hall, opening the front door as Mr Foyle reached it. "Sir," he said.
"Milner," Mr Foyle said. "How's Sam?"
"Shaken," Milner said. "The girl was her friend. She found her."
"Any idea what happened?" Mr Foyle asked, stepping inside and removing his hat.
"Looks pretty clear cut, sir," Milner said. "The girl - Cicely Oswell - was attacked last night. We don't know by who, a soldier on leave who put something in her drink, from what she told Sam. She was very distressed this morning. Sam went to call a doctor, and when she came back, she found the girl hanging from her wardrobe."
"My God," Mr Foyle said, closing his eyes briefly. "Where is she?"
"In here, sir," Milner said, opening the door to the living room.
.
.
.
A/N:
'Clerk' or 'Clerk, special duties' was the standard designation for personnel assigned to both RADAR and signals intercept duties in the WAF and RAF, even those in crucial supervisory roles or senior analysts.
I have, I admit, applied modern legal principles to this story as regards 'dying depositions'. I do not, in fact, know if the same rules of evidence applied in 1940s England.