Murder on the Home Front by Molly Lefebure

were a Fuzzy-Wuzz.”
    I would have liked, that afternoon especially, to have looked soignée and efficient, because it was my first encounter with that famous detective, Mr. Greeno, and as Dr. Keith Simpson’s secretary I did not want to create a poor impression with the high-ups at Scotland Yard. Moreover, the high-ups at the Yard all made terrific impressions upon me; indeed on first meeting them I was generally scared quite literally stiff. Mr. Greeno was no exception. More than anything he resembled a huge, steel-plated battle cruiser, with his jaw thrust forward instead of a prow. He spoke little, noticed everything, and was tough, not in the Hollywood style, but genuinely, naturally, quietly, appallingly so.
    I found myself misquoting Hilaire Belloc, on the subject of the Lion—but it did just as well for Mr. Greeno:
“His eyes they are bright
And his jaw it is grim,
And a wise little child
Will not play with him.”
    Thus was the area superintendent, Mr. Edward Greeno, when he came stalking into Shoreditch mortuary with two lesser detectives crunching on his heels. The grim light of battle glimmered in his eyes, and he started asking questions in a rather rasping voice that sent shivers down my spine. He was on the warpath, and I thought: “God help the poor fool he’s after.”
    By the time the postmortem had been in progress for some ten minutes any sympathy I felt for the killer concerned in the case had dwindled away, for it was one of those brutal, senseless, ugly coshings which reek of stupidity and cowardly violence.
    The dead man was an aged pawnbroker who had kept a shop in the Hackney Road, a poor, little, skinny old man. Nine days previously he had been beaten up in his shop by two men, who had got away, leaving him unconscious on the floor. They had dealt him five savage wounds on the head; the only thing which had, amazingly enough, prevented him from being killed outright was the felt hat he had been wearing. Dr. Simpson examined this hat, which had been brought to the mortuary, with great interest, remarking how astonishing it was that a mere felt hat could, to some extent, protect the head.
    But in spite of the felt hat the blows on his head had ultimately proved fatal to the old pawnbroker and nine days later he died, and a murder hunt began.
    Besides beating up the old man the thieves had also coshed, and killed, his dog, presumably to stop it barking.
    During the p.m. Mr. Greeno showed us a big, heavy spanner, with which it was suggested the old man might have been struck. Certainly the spanner did seem a likely weapon, but, as it turned out, it was not the one the killers had used.
    We soon learned the true story of the case, for within a few days of the p.m. at Shoreditch Mr. Greeno arrested and charged two youths with the murder.
    Their names were Dashwood and Silverosa. Both were ex-reformatory boys, both had criminal records stretching back to their early teens. Civilized, enlightened attempts had constantly been made to convert them into good citizens, but without success. They had been given lectures and lessons and handwork and physical training and fresh air, and interviews with psychologists and dozens and dozens of reports had been made about them; everything had been tried, except a good hiding. Nobody had thought of that. Or, if anybody had thought of it, the notion had always been dismissed as impossibly barbaric. So these two young men had drifted on their merry way, using their Stone Age tactics without compunction, till finally they had bit an old man—and his dog—a little too hard, which removed Dashwood and Silverosa abruptly from the hands of the reformers into the incipient clutches of the hangman.
    As there is no honor among thieves, and especially not among the younger generation of pseudo-gangsters, Dashwood and Silverosa both made statements in which each did his best to pin the actual violence upon the other. Silverosa said:
    “Two weeks ago last Thursday I went