The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(98)
“He’d been killing women in private, one every six months or so, and disposing of them in a large kiln in the basement of the Castle Hotel. But when he was called up, his anxiety increased. He wanted to do something more public, make a statement. The pace of his killings also increased, as his date of departure loomed.”
Maggie chewed on her lip. “So, that’s where the anger and rage came from—the women of the SOE—who were succeeding where he’d failed.”
“More than that, I’m afraid. We still have to connect the dots, but it seems he’d already started abducting and killing young women from St. Hilda’s at Oxford, even before the war. There’s no telling how many women he’s killed. We do know his mother abandoned him when he was three. According to police reports, his father was abusive—made him and his brother beat each other with belts for sport.”
“He has a brother?”
“The brother’s institutionalized now. And from what our psychologist said of Nicholas Reitter, working women remind him of his mother. And so, by murdering SOE women, he could be punishing his mother over and over again for leaving, for living a public life, for working. In his eyes, for abandoning him.”
“How did he manage it?” Maggie felt a wave of nausea. “Did he have a contact at SOE?”
“Thankfully, no. But he was engaged to the daughter of the hotel’s manager.”
“May?” Maggie did remember the young blonde. Remembered how May had shown her to her room that night, must have shown Brynn to the same room…“May knew of the murders?”
“Worse than that—May helped Nicholas set the women up to be captured and killed. She and Reitter met and fell in love when her father had to rebuild the hotel. She became his accomplice, leaving the cards for the Castle Hotel at the SOE offices—Reitter knew where they were, of course, because he’d interviewed there himself. She always asked women who arrived how they found out about the hotel, and if they said SOE, she was sure to put them in rooms fitted with gas pipes, then let Reitter know they were there. She helped him give food to the women, helped move the bodies, too.”
Mind-boggling. “But why?”
“We don’t know.” Durgin crossed himself. “Love, probably. Or, at least, what she thinks of as love. But she’s in custody as well, for her part.”
“My God.” Maggie blinked. “A woman—a woman involved with all this…A woman helping to kill other women…” Then she startled. “Gas pipes?”
“Yes, that’s how he—they—kept their victims quiet.”
“Dr. Frank also owned the building in Pimlico that exploded. The newspaper said it had something to do with the gas pipe.” Maggie put the pieces together. “It’s probable Reitter had something to do with that, too, isn’t it?”
Durgin gave a deep sigh. “You may be right. I’ll get my men on the connection—and all of Dr. Frank’s other properties, as well,” he said with a grim nod. “Look, I don’t want to push you—but you’re going to have to give your statement to the police.”
“Well, you’re the police, aren’t you?” She tried to force the corners of her mouth up into a smile, but it hurt too much.
“It’s a bit more formal than that. The infamous endless paperwork, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, paperwork—I know how much you love paperwork.” She grimaced. “Just one more question—how did you know your men had been killed and I was alone there with him?”
“The redoubtable Mrs. Baines. Thank goodness for her! She saw all the light pouring out from the window you’d opened and rang me. I knew then that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.”
“Well, remind me to thank Mrs. Baines.”
“Last night you brought down evil, Maggie. Pure evil.”
“Evil actually can’t be scientifically defined.” Maggie tried to fix the bandages on her head, then gave up. “Evil’s nothing more than an illusory moral concept linked to religion and mythology.”
“I know evil,” Durgin insisted. “I’ve seen it. Fought it. And last night—that was the real thing.”
“You should know now,” Maggie told him, “before we go out to dinner, that while I have a great respect and affection for many religions—and a particular affection for the Jesuits for reasons I can’t go into—I’m not a believer myself.”
Durgin’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You’re not?”
“I’d rather concentrate on the here and now. I choose to act as though God does exist—and, who knows? It is possible. Even as a mathematician and scientist I’m aware there are mysteries we can’t begin to know. I take on many of the traditional morals not because of reward and punishment, but because I feel they help me live a better life and it’s the right thing to do. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’—it’s quite beautiful—and common sense, really.”
Durgin shook his head. “Nicholas Reitter—we found where he was keeping and killing the women, his victims. It looked like something out of the Inferno.”
“Reitter was a man—but not a devil. And certainly not a beast.” She shuddered as a vague memory of something, something gigantic with knife-sharp horns, flashed through her mind. Then she dismissed it. “The belief in a supernatural source of evil isn’t at all necessary. Men alone are quite capable of it.” She took a sip of water. “It’s interesting Dr. Frank’s a psychoanalyst—maybe at some point they’ll be able to isolate what we think of as ‘evil’ and perhaps even cure it. But it might take a while—despite Freud’s writings on the unconscious and Jung’s on the shadow self.”