A Bespoke Murder by Edward Marston Page A

things to come out of the war.’
    ‘I’m not convinced of that,’ said Ellen.
    ‘Good things do come out of bad ones, Mummy.’
    ‘How can you call having women car mechanics a good thing?’
    ‘Alice makes a fair point, love,’ said Marmion, chewing some toast. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining. Look at this business with the Lusitania , for instance. I bet the captain of that submarine thought he’d struck a blow for Germany when he ordered that torpedo to be fired. It’s led to some bad results, of course – I was dealing with one last night – but there was also a gain. Enlistment has picked up amazingly. When I went past the recruiting centre yesterday, there was a queue halfway down Whitehall. So the loss of the Lusitania was not a total disaster.’
     
    Irene Bayard was one of the first of the survivors to return to England. Rescued by a fishing boat, she’d been taken to Queenstown where she was given food, shelter and limitless sympathy. As soon as a ship departed for Liverpool, however, she was on it with Ernie Gill and a number of other survivors. She was keenly aware of how fortunate she’d been and was upset to learn that almost all the passengers she’d looked after on the Lusitania had perished. Irene had no desire ever to go to sea again but there was no other way to reach Liverpool, so she steeled herself for the short voyage. Though irritating at times, Gill helped her to keep up her spirits.
    Neither of them was prepared for the welcome they received in Liverpool docks. It was overwhelming. The pier was thronged with relatives and friends of those who’d survived the sinking, their numbers swelled by well-wishers. But it was the number of newspaper reporters that surprised Irene. There were dozens of them. She was ambushed the moment she stepped off the ship. Irene tried to pretend that she had nothing to do with the Lusitania but her uniform gave her away. She was still wearing the distinctive garb of a stewardess that she’d had on when she jumped into the sea. The seemingly endless questions wereboth painful and intrusive. Irene wanted to forget the tragedy, not be forced to reconstruct it for the benefit of an article in a newspaper. She was glad to escape from the harassment.
    Ernie Gill, by contrast, had enjoyed all the attention.
    ‘They even took my photograph,’ he boasted. ‘Well, I’ll see you around, Irene. Will you be staying here for a while?’
    ‘I don’t know, Ernie.’
    ‘I will. The only trouble is that I’ve got here too late.’
    She was puzzled. ‘Too late for what?’
    ‘Too late for the fun,’ he explained. ‘I wanted to help them chase every bleeding Hun out of Liverpool. There was a pork butcher from Lubeck at the end of our street. If I’d been here, I’d have sliced the ugly bugger up with his own meat cleaver.’
    Irene let him give her a farewell kiss then she went off to catch her tram. Gill’s violent streak disturbed her. She was happy with the thought that she’d probably never see him again. She would certainly never be part of a crew with him. That phase of her life was decidedly over. When she reached the house where she rented a couple of upstairs rooms, the first thing she had to do was to calm her tearful landlady down and assure her that she felt no ill effects. Then she filled the boiler so that she could heat enough water to have a bath. Once that was done, she put on fresh clothes and threw her uniform into the bin. Her break with the past was complete.
    Next morning, Irene caught the early train to London.
     
    When the commissioner faced Herbert Stone across his desk in Scotland Yard, both of them were wearing Jacob Stein suits. It was the morning after the crimes in Jermyn Street and his visitor’s ire had increased rather than subsided. Sir Edward Henry kept a respectful silence whileStone ranted on about the shortcomings of the police and the fire brigade. It was only when he began to criticise Harvey Marmion that the