The London Blitz Murders by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

any crime scene….”
    She smiled innocently at him. “Do you think the Ripper will wait?”
    He frowned. “Agatha, I have grave misgivings.”
    “Is that a pun?”
    “How often do you have an opening night, my dear?”
    “Bernard,” she said with mild exasperation. “Every time you perform an autopsy, it’s opening night.”
    And after that, apparently, Sir Bernard Spilsbury could think of nothing else to say on the subject.

THREE

TEN LITTLE ACTRESSES

    T HE S T . J AMES T HEATRE, ON King Street, was its usual majestic self, though the building next door, Willis Sale Rooms, was in a sorry state. This noted home of public dinners, meetings and cotillions had been severely damaged in the 1940 air raids; the sumptuous site, with its spacious supper room with gallery and ballroom, still tempted after-hours looters. The St. James was nonetheless structurally sound, despite its shambles of a next-door neighbor; and the pub on the other side of the theater, the Golden Lion, remained healthy, even if Christie’s Auction House, across the way, was vacant due to bombing, as well. That the theater district resembled a war zone… in fact, was a war zone… did not deter the production of another Christie work.
    Right now the St. James bore a massive angled marquee adorned with both the author’s name and that of the new play—a controversial title, it would seem… much to Agatha Christie Mallowan’s chagrined annoyance.
    After all, what on earth could be more innocent than a nursery rhyme? She enjoyed the irony of using a children’s chant in an adult tale of murder—some time ago she’d done a short story called “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” and was even now noodling with a plot for a Poirot to be called Five Little Pigs .That anyone might take offense at a play named after an old English counting rhyme—in which ten little boys, one by one, disappear—seemed utterly absurd to Agatha.
    She had been forced to change the title to Ten Little Indians for publication of the source novel and production of the play in the United States, where the final word of her own title was considered offensive to the Negro race—so much so, that the movie the Americans were planning was to be christened with the last line of the rhyme-in-question: And Then There Were None . Apparently, dating all the way back to their Civil War, in America the term “nigger” referred exclusively, and in a derogatory fashion, to Negroes (whereas in England, of course, it might refer to any member of any darker-skinned race).
    Surprisingly, according to her producer, there had even been complaints here at home. These related to the large influx of American Negro soldiers, who suffered prejudicial treatment from their own fellow soldiers, the white ones, that is.
    Londoners like Agatha found this confusing and disturbing, and minor scandals had erupted all over town as restaurants catering to the well-moneyed American soldiers refused service not only to Negro soldiers but coloured Britons as well. Shockingly, Learie Constantine, the renowned West Indian cricketeer, had been turned away from the Imperial Hotel because American guests had threatened to cancel their reservations.
    These Americans were strange ducks—fighting a war against Hitler and his Master Race and his concentration-camp hatred of the Jews, and yet displaying a deep-seated hateful bigotry both primitive and tasteless.
    Of course, some considered Agatha herself tasteless, in her insistence that her nursery-rhyme title remain; her view: therhyme was innocent and so was her use of it, free of the hatefulness the Americans read into mere words. She meant no offense and would not be responsible if offense was taken.
    Still, Agatha had capitulated about her title where the American market was concerned; but this was England, and her title would stand (besides, the American “Indian” title seemed to refer to a stateside counting rhyme of banal simplicity… one little, two little,