Suffolk, England: November 1938
Beatrice Pymm died because she missed the last bus to Ipswich.
Twenty minutes before her death she stood at the dreary bus
stop and read the timetable in the dim light of the
village's single street lamp. In a few months the lamp would
be extinguished to conform with the blackout regulations.
Beatrice Pymm would never know of the blackout.
For now, the lamp burned just brightly enough for Beatrice
to read the faded timetable. To see it better she stood on
tiptoe and ran down the numbers with the end of a
paint-smudged forefinger. Her late mother always complained
bitterly about the paint. She thought it unladylike for
one's hand to be forever soiled. She had wanted Beatrice to
take up a neater hobby -- music, volunteer work, even
writing, though Beatrice's mother didn't hold with writers.
"Damn," Beatrice muttered, forefinger still glued to the
timetable. Normally she was punctual to a fault. In a life
without financial responsibility, without friends, without
family, she had erected a rigorous personal schedule. Today,
she had strayed from it -- painted too long, started back
too late.
She removed her hand from the timetable and brought it to
her cheek, squeezing her face into a look of worry. Your
father's face, her mother had always said with despair -- a
broad flat forehead, a large noble nose, a receding chin. At
just thirty, hair prematurely shot with gray.
She worried about what to do. Her home in Ipswich was at
least five miles away, too far to walk. In the early evening
there might still be light traffic on the road. Perhaps
someone would give her a lift.
She let out a long frustrated sigh. Her breath froze,
hovered before her face, then drifted away on a cold wind
from the marsh. The clouds shattered and a bright moon shone
through. Beatrice looked up and saw a halo of ice floating
around it. She shivered, feeling the cold for the first time.
She picked up her things: a leather rucksack, a canvas, a
battered easel. She had spent the day painting along the
estuary of the River Orwell. Painting was her only love and
the landscape of East Anglia her only subject matter. It did
lead to a certain repetitiveness in her work. Her mother
liked to see people in art -- street scenes, crowded cafés.
Once she even suggested Beatrice spend some time in France
to pursue her painting. Beatrice refused. She loved the
marshlands and the dikes, the estuaries and the broads, the
fen land north of Cambridge, the rolling pastures of Suffolk.
She reluctantly set out toward home, pounding along the side
of the road at a good pace despite the weight of her things.
She wore a mannish cotton shirt, smudged like her fingers, a
heavy sweater that made her feel like a toy bear, a reefer
coat too long in the sleeves, trousers tucked inside
Wellington boots. She moved beyond the sphere of yellow
lamplight; the darkness swallowed her. She felt no
apprehension about walking through the dark in the
countryside. Her mother, fearful of her long trips alone,
warned incessantly of rapists. Beatrice always dismissed the
threat as unlikely.
She shivered with the cold. She thought of home, a large
cottage on the edge of Ipswich left to her by her mother.
Behind the cottage, at the end of the garden walk, she had
built a light-splashed studio, where she spent most of her
time. It was not uncommon for her to go days without
speaking to another human being.
All this, and more, her killer knew.
After five minutes of walking she heard the rattle of an
engine behind her. A commercial vehicle, she thought. An old
one, judging by the ragged engine note. Beatrice watched the
glow of the headlamps spread like sunrise across the grass
on either side of the roadway. She heard the engine lose
power and begin to coast. She felt a gust of wind as the
vehicle swept by. She choked on the stink of the exhaust.
Then she watched as it pulled to the side of the road and
stopped.
The hand, visible in the bright moonlight, struck Beatrice
as odd. It poked from the driver's-side window seconds after
the van had stopped and beckoned her forward. A thick
leather glove, Beatrice noted, the kind used by workmen who
carry heavy things. A workman's overall -- dark blue, maybe.
The hand beckoned once more. There it was again -- something
about the way it moved wasn't quite right. She was an
artist, and artists know about motion and flow. And there
was something else. When the hand moved it exposed the skin
between the end of the sleeve and the base of the glove.
Even in the poor light Beatrice could see the skin was pale
and hairless -- not like the wrist of any workman she had
ever seen -- and uncommonly slender.
Still, she felt no alarm. She quickened her pace and reached
the passenger door in a few steps. She pulled open the door
and set her things on the floor in front of the seat. Then
she looked up into the van for the first time and noticed
the driver was gone.
Beatrice Pymm, in the final conscious seconds of her life,
wondered why anyone would use a van to carry a motorcycle.
It was there, resting on its side in the back, two jerry
cans of petrol next to it.
Still standing next to the van, she closed the door and
called out. There was no answer.
Seconds later she heard the sound of a leather boot on gravel.
She heard the sound again, closer.
She turned her head and saw the driver standing there. She
looked to the face and saw only a black woolen mask. Two
pools of pale blue stared coldly behind the eyeholes.
Feminine-looking lips, parted slightly, glistened behind the
slit for the mouth.
Beatrice opened her mouth to scream. She managed only a
brief gasp before the driver rammed a gloved hand into her
mouth. The fingers dug into the soft flesh of her throat.
The glove tasted horribly of dust, petrol, and dirty motor
oil. Beatrice gagged, then vomited the remains of her picnic
lunch -- roast chicken, Stilton cheese, red wine.
Then she felt the other hand probing around her left breast.
For an instant Beatrice thought her mother's fears about
rape had finally been proved correct. But the hand touching
her breast was not the hand of a molester or a rapist. The
hand was skilled, like a doctor's, and curiously gentle. It
moved from her breast to her ribs, pressing hard. Beatrice
jerked, gasped, and bit down harder. The driver seemed not
to feel it through the thick glove.
The hand reached the bottom of her ribs and probed the soft
flesh at the top of her abdomen. It went no farther. One
finger remained pressed against the spot. Beatrice heard a
sharp click.
An instant of excruciating pain, a burst of brilliant white
light.
Then, a benevolent darkness.
The killer had trained endlessly for this night, but it was
the first time. The killer removed the gloved hand from the
victim's mouth, turned, and was violently sick. There was no
time for sentiment. The killer was a soldier -- a major in
the secret service -- and Beatrice Pymm soon would be the
enemy. Her death, while unfortunate, was necessary.
The killer wiped away the vomit from the lips of the mask
and set to work, taking hold of the stiletto and pulling.
The wound sucked hard but the killer pulled harder, and the
stiletto slipped out.
An excellent kill, clean, very little blood.
Vogel would be proud.
The killer wiped the blood from the stiletto, snapped the
blade back into place, and put it in the pocket of the
overall. Then the killer grasped the body beneath the arms,
dragged it to the rear of the van, and dumped it on the
crumbling edge of the tarmac.
The killer opened the rear doors. The body convulsed.
It was a struggle to lift the body into the back of the van,
but after a moment it was done. The engine hesitated, then
fired. Then the van was on the move again, flashing through
the darkened village and turning onto the deserted roadway.
The killer, composed despite the presence of the body,
quietly sang a song from childhood to help pass the time. It
was a long drive, four hours at least. During the
preparation the killer had driven the route by motorcycle,
the same bike that now lay beside Beatrice Pymm. The drive
would take much longer in the van. The engine had little
power, the brakes were bad, and it pulled hard to the right.
The killer vowed to steal a better one next time.
Stab wounds to the heart, as a rule, do not kill instantly.
Even if the weapon penetrates a chamber, the heart usually
continues to beat for some time until the victim bleeds to
death.
As the van clattered along the roadway, Beatrice Pymm's
chest cavity rapidly filled with blood. Her mind approached
something close to a coma. She had some sense she was about
to die.
She remembered her mother's warnings about being alone late
at night. She felt the wet stickiness of her own blood
seeping out of her body into her shirt. She wondered if her
painting had been damaged.
She heard singing. Beautiful singing. It took some time, but
she finally discerned that the driver was not singing in
English. The song was German, the voice a woman's.
Then Beatrice Pymm died.