1.1 My First Murder

Post date: 24-Aug-2015 13:34:29

Looking back, 1975 was probably the most significant year of my life, with the most important events kicking off in the autumn, just after the annual ‘Sunny smiles’ collection for the National Children’s Home had finished. I’d been in CID for just on two years by then, but I hadn’t been involved in anything as dramatic as a murder enquiry yet; so when DI Paige told me that we were going over to the nurses’ home at the Radcliffe Infirmary to investigate a suspicious death I was pretty excited. It was pure luck that I was in at the beginning: his favoured sergeant was on leave and I was the only DC on duty that night.

When we got there we found a group of nurses sitting in their little kitchen with mugs of cocoa. There were four of them: Sister Catherine Spencer, Nurse Jane Bentham, Nurse Elaine Gregg and Nurse Angela Wheeler. They were all in their early twenties and all looking rather shell-shocked.

Sister Spencer was very much in charge. She was the one who had made the call to the police after another of the nurses in their part of the home had been found dead in her bed that evening. She was a tall, dark-haired woman with deep brown eyes which watched intently as DI Paige and DC Johns entered the room. She rose to her feet and signalled to her colleagues to do the same, but Paige waved to them to stay seated. Although in some ways he could be old-fashioned in his outlook, Richard Paige had no sense of his own importance and did not stand on ceremony.

Nurse Bentham was shorter and fairer than Sister Spencer was and less well turned-out. Both nurses had long hair secured in a bun at the nape of the neck but, while Sister Spencer’s was neat and tidy, Nurse Bentham’s had strands of mousey brown hair dangling from it and several hair grips protruding as if ready to fall out at any minute. I noticed that nurse Bentham’s mug of cocoa had left a brown ring on the kitchen table where it had spilled over while she was drinking it. She looked at us anxiously as if unsure what to expect.

Nurse Gregg was small, lively and garrulous – but perhaps that was just nerves in the presence of the police. She spoke rapidly in a strong Black Country accent, offering to make tea for us and repeating, over and over again, her opinion that it was incomprehensible that anyone should want to kill Susan Parry. As she talked, she took off her nurses’ cap and I could see that her brown hair was cut so that the upper layers were shorter than those beneath, in a way that was fashionable at that time. She and Nurse Bentham were both wearing their nurses’ uniforms, while the others were in civvies.

Lastly, we come to Nurse Wheeler, who stood out from the group because she was what we used to call at that time ‘coloured’, which is to say that she was of Afro-Caribbean origin. I later learned that she had come to Oxford from Jamaica only a few months earlier. Her hair was braided in an intricate pattern across her head, in a way that I had never seen before. Her eyes were bright and intelligent. She was of medium height with a curvaceous and beautifully proportioned figure.

Paige started by speaking to the group as a whole. We learned that Nurse Susan Parry had been found dead that evening when some of her colleagues had gone into her room to investigate why she had not appeared on the ward for her night shift. Sister Spencer had called for help and a doctor had come over from the hospital and examined the body. He had concluded that she had been killed by a stab wound to her chest and had ordered the nurses to call the police.

At this point Paige stopped the conversation and, after giving the nurses strict instructions to stay where they were, took me to inspect the body. A uniformed constable was guarding the entrance to the bedroom where the remains of Nurse Parry lay. He opened it for us and we went in and looked down at the figure lying beneath the sheet. Paige reached out and pulled down the covers to reveal a slim, blond figure wearing brushed cotton pyjamas, which lay open at the front, presumably unbuttoned by the doctor who had examined the body. Paige pointed silently at a narrow incision in her chest. A tiny trickle of blood had dried on her skin just below it and there was a small round stain on the sheet beneath. Then he covered up the body again with the sheet and looked round the room.

I followed his gaze, trying to work out what he might be looking for and what he was able to deduce from what he saw. Everything looked very ordinary to me; there was nothing obviously out of place. Paige prowled round, looking at the shelves and peering under the bed.

Suddenly he pounced on a key, which was lying on a small table next to the bed. He picked it up, using a handkerchief so as not to put his own fingerprints on it, and tried it in the door. It turned easily.

‘Hmm!’ he murmured. ‘We seem to have a classic locked-room murder, with our victim inside, the key beside her and the murderer apparently vanished into thin air!’

He replaced the key on the bedside table and went over to the window, craning his neck to see down to the paved area outside, two floors below. Finally, he checked that the window was closed and the catch was fastened.

‘Nothing obvious in here,’ he said at last, ‘but we’ll get forensics to go over it in case our killer left any traces behind. Now we’d better get back to those nurses and put them out of their misery. If we take two each we can get their preliminary statements and then let them get off to bed. We’ll have a better idea what we really need to know after we get the PM report.’