By the time Penrose and Fallowfield arrived at the Cowdray Club, Lucy Peters had been moved to one of the treatment rooms on the second floor. Without waiting for an invitation, they went through the foyer into the separate staircase hall. Two maids were hard at work on the stairs, trying in vain to remove the mess caused by Lucy’s accident, but there were still enough traces left for Penrose to guess at the extent of her burns.
‘Get them to stop that until we’ve established exactly what happened here,’ he said quietly to Fallowfield, ‘and have Peters’s room locked. Then get statements from anyone who was close by when she fell. I’m going to find out how she is.’ He turned to go back to reception, then added: ‘And if my cousins and Miss Tey are here, make sure they’re all right, will you, Bill? The last thing Ronnie and Lettice needed tonight was another shock.’
A nurse was waiting at reception to show him through to the college. ‘Shouldn’t Miss Peters have been taken straight to hospital?’ he asked, as he followed her down a short corridor past the dining room and up another staircase, less ostentatious than its Cowdray Club equivalent but just as graceful. The newer building which housed the college had, he noticed, been carefully designed to conform to the type of the older one with which it was connected; it was a great architectural feat, achieved without a hint of awkwardness, and a visitor might easily pass from one house into the other without realising it.
His guide smiled at him reassuringly, as if he were a concerned relative. ‘She really won’t get better treatment than we can give her here,’ she said. ‘With injuries like hers, it’s best to be moved as little as possible, and the faster those burns can be treated, the more chance she stands of making a reasonable recovery.’
‘And you have the facilities to do that?’
‘Oh yes. Not on any great scale, of course, but the college is superbly equipped and you won’t find a greater concentration of knowledge anywhere in the country. Good, practical nursing knowledge, I mean, and that’s what’s needed here. We wouldn’t perform major surgery, but cleaning wounds and preventing infection, monitoring her blood levels and managing the pain as best we can—that’s all second nature to everyone here, and we have excellent contacts with the local hospitals. A doctor will check on her at regular intervals and oversee the treatment. Please don’t think I’m making light of what’s happened, Inspector, but if I were going to scald myself, I’d rather do it here than anywhere else.’
‘How serious is it?’
‘Extremely serious, but Miss Sharpe will explain everything to you. Wait outside, please. I’ll let her know you’re here.’
Left alone in a long, barrel-vaulted corridor, Penrose glanced through the glass in the door and saw Lucy Peters lying on a hospital bed; her injuries were hidden by a bed-cradle which had been placed over her upper body, preventing the sheets and blanket from touching her skin and ensuring that her wounds were protected but remained exposed to the air. Three nurses stood at her bedside, including one in a matron’s uniform whom he presumed was Miriam Sharpe. There was no sign of Celia Bannerman.
He watched, impressed, as Miss Sharpe calmly lifted the sheet to examine the girl’s body, then whispered some instructions to one of the other women. When she came out to greet him, she said nothing at first but gestured to a narrow space at the end of the corridor which had been furnished as a sitting room, with upholstered chairs and a Sheraton bookcase. When she spoke, her words held the same composed economy as her actions. ‘How can I help you, Inspector?’ she asked, and he detected a lingering note of Yorkshire in her voice.
‘I was intending to come here later tonight to question Lucy Peters in connection with the death of Marjorie Baker,’ Penrose said, pleased to see that their conversation was unlikely to be punctuated with time-consuming formalities. ‘Obviously, events have overtaken me. How is Miss Peters?’
‘Her condition is critical. Surprisingly, she escaped the fall without any serious damage other than a blow to the head, but the burns to her face, neck and chest are extensive and severe, particularly those on her chest where the cocoa soaked into her clothing and was kept in contact with her skin for longer. We’ve cleaned the wounds, drained the blistering and removed any loose rolls of epithelium—that’s the thin tissue on the outside of the skin—but her body is in shock and her blood pressure dangerously low. The next two hours will be crucial, and even if she survives those, there’s still plenty to worry about—secondary shock, anaemia, infection. I can’t offer you any guarantees at the moment, I’m afraid, except with regard to her care.’
There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘Assuming the best possible outcome, when will I be able to speak to her?’
‘Not for some time. If she regains consciousness—and I do mean if—she will still be in no state to be questioned by the police. The stress of that alone might kill her, and I couldn’t possibly allow it. Apart from anything else, she has extensive burns to her lips and tongue which will make speech painful, if not impossible.’
‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I wasn’t there, but I understand she tripped and fell down the stairs with a pan of scalding liquid. Quite what she was doing in that situation in the first place, I couldn’t say. The running of the Cowdray Club is entirely Celia Bannerman’s domain, but if you intend to ask her what the hell she thinks she’s playing at by allowing that sort of thing to go on, then you have my full support. My girls have enough to do in their day-to-day work without wasting time on accidents that could have been prevented by common sense.’
Penrose detected a degree of animosity in the outburst which went back further than current events. ‘Where is Miss Bannerman now?’ he asked.
‘Having her own injuries treated.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just minor burns on her hands from trying to help. After that, I advised her to go to her rooms to lie down—she was in shock herself.’
‘Was she first on the scene?’
‘By a matter of seconds, I gather. It was just as well that she was—someone without a nursing background might have done more damage by trying to help. Celia might have spent years in administration, but you never forget your practical training.’
‘I’ll need to speak to her as soon as she’s free, but do you have time to answer some more questions first? I wouldn’t keep you if it weren’t important.’ She nodded. ‘You knew Marjorie Baker?’
‘I’d met her once or twice. This wretched circus on Monday night has been somewhat forced upon me—if it were up to me, it wouldn’t be happening at all, but as it’s done in the name of the college of which I’m president, I feel obliged to take part. Anyway, I met Miss Baker at the fashion house. She helped at the fittings. Please tell me that Lucy Peters is not a suspect for her murder.’
‘Would that shock you?’
‘Quite frankly, Inspector, it would horrify me. I’m sure you’re already aware of recent shameful events at the Cowdray Club which have involved the police and which invariably reflect on the college. If you’re now going to tell me that one of the club’s employees is suspected of murder, I may as well hand in my resignation immediately. We’re supposed to be two organisations devoted to the care of the sick and the professional needs of those who look after them. We prolong life. We do not take it.’
Penrose thought about Sach and Walters and others like them, and wondered where their crimes fitted into Miriam Sharpe’s view of her profession. ‘Miss Peters isn’t a nurse, though.’
‘That’s hardly a distinction allowed for by the headline “Killer arrested at the heart of nursing”. And you haven’t answered my question. Is she a suspect? I have a right to know how much disgrace Celia Bannerman has brought on us, if only to try to limit the damage.’
That antagonism was there again, and he was interested to see that she made no attempt to hide it. She was right, of course: the papers would go to town on a story like this. ‘I’m not ruling anything out at the moment,’ he said cautiously, ‘but I want to talk to Lucy Peters primarily because she was Marjorie’s friend and I hope she might give me an insight into aspects of her life which other people can’t. Nothing more than that at this stage.’ He paused, thinking back to the Tatler photograph which he had been about to discuss with Nora Edwards again; Miriam Sharpe had been in that picture and, if Bannerman was right, she might have had a connection to Amelia Sach early in her career. ‘You spent some time at St Thomas’s Hospital, I believe?’
She seemed surprised by his change of direction. ‘That’s correct. I did my probationary period there and stayed on afterwards, first as a staff nurse and eventually as matron.’
‘When was that?’
‘From 1896 until 1916, when the college was established. Why?’
‘Did you know Amelia Sach and Annie Walters?’
‘What can that possibly have to do with anything?’
He repeated the question, although the expression on her face had already given him his answer, and, when she said nothing, added: ‘Marjorie Baker’s father, who was also found dead last night, was Jacob Sach, Amelia’s husband. I believe that Marjorie’s death has something to do with the crimes and execution of those two women. Anything you can tell me about their history may help, no matter how irrelevant it seems.’
‘I knew of Amelia Sach, but that’s all. Annie Walters, on the other hand, worked with me for a while. I assume by your question that you know they met at St Thomas’s Hospital?’
‘They were both trained midwives—Sach was young and ambitious, I gather; Walters was very much of the old school, a time when nursing was not the caring profession which it is today. Some people may tell you that I belong to that school myself, Inspector, but they confuse discipline with hard-heartedness; one does not necessarily lead to the other.’ Penrose nodded; he had already seen enough of Miriam Sharpe’s style to know exactly what she meant, but he wondered where she was going with her story. ‘Walters was the product of an emotionless regime, one which trained women to be psychologically robust, particularly in their dealings with patients. I’m not excusing what she did later on; plenty of nurses were trained in that way, but very few of them, to my knowledge, went on to be killers. But that environment blended with her particular mentality to create devastating results. In the late 1890s, we had a number of stillbirths at St Thomas’s; that was not unusual in itself, but the number continued to escalate and the authorities were obliged to investigate. Walters was in attendance at many of these births, and it was thought that she may have been responsible.’
‘In what way?’
‘If a baby is suffocated at the point of delivery, before it has a chance to take its first breath, then the death will appear to all intents and purposes like a stillbirth. She was reported by one of her colleagues, but there was no proof and of course she denied it. She was dismissed, but no criminal charges were brought because of the lack of evidence. Gossip was rife amongst the nurses, as you can imagine, and there’s no question that Sach would have heard about it. She left shortly after-wards to have her own child, but I often wonder if it was that incident which sowed the seeds of the scheme which she developed later, and I feel to a certain extent responsible. You see, Inspector, I reported Annie Walters to my superior and began the chain of action against her. It’s a turning point, in hindsight, which disturbs me a great deal.’
‘You could hardly have kept quiet, though. Who knows how many more lives might have been lost? More, probably, than Sach and Walters took.’
‘Oh, I know, and I have no doubt that what I did was right. But the lesser of two evils is still evil, Inspector. You must see that all too often.’
He nodded, intrigued by a connection with the past which he had certainly not expected but unable to see how it aided his present concerns. ‘Indeed I do, Miss Sharpe, and thank you for being so frank. Now, I’d like to see Miss Peters’s room.’
‘I’ll get someone to show you where it is.’
‘Please don’t worry. I’ve got to go back to reception—I’ll ask there.’
There was no sign of Fallowfield in the foyer, so Penrose collected the key to Lucy’s room from the night porter and followed the directions he was given to the servants’ area on the third floor. The bedroom he wanted was just along the corridor from Josephine’s, but it lay at the back of the house and, without the enviable view across Cavendish Square, its modest size made it oppressive and gloomy—not a great deal different from Lucy’s Holloway accommodation, he thought wryly, looking at the narrow single bed and basic furniture.
There was no great sense of belonging in the room, and it did not take him long to establish that the wardrobe and bedside chest of drawers held nothing of any interest. There was nowhere else to look except the bed, and there he had more luck: underneath the blanket, tucked by the pillow so that it wasn’t obvious at a glance, he found the most valuable thing that Lucy Peters owned—a Box Brownie camera. He picked it up, surprised, and wondered if she’d come by it honestly or if it was another item missing from the club. Either way, it wouldn’t take long to find out if anything helpful was on it. He checked the rest of the bed, then felt under the pillows and drew out two picture postcards, one of a row of beach huts and some sand dunes, the other of a lighthouse. There was no writing on either one, so he guessed that Lucy had bought or been given them as a souvenir of a visit. He looked at the location names printed on the back, and found that they were pictures of the Suffolk coast—one from Walberswick, the other Southwold. It was the second time he had seen Walberswick mentioned in a matter of hours; the first had been on Ethel Stuke’s address card, and somehow he didn’t think that was a coincidence.
He slipped the postcards into his jacket pocket and picked up the camera. Just as he was about to leave, the door opened and he was surprised to see Celia Bannerman. At first, he thought she had been told that he wanted to see her, but the look of astonishment on her face soon told him that whatever had brought her to Lucy’s room, it wasn’t him. ‘I’m sorry to barge in on you, Inspector,’ she said, flustered, ‘but I didn’t expect to find anyone in Lucy’s room.’
‘Can I ask why you’re here?’
‘It sounds silly, I suppose, but I thought she might appreciate some familiar things near her when she comes round.’
Penrose glanced at the bare walls and surfaces. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the type to collect much,’ he said, a little sarcastically. ‘And my understanding is that she may not come round at all.’
She stared defiantly at him, having regained her usual composure. ‘It’s wise to stay positive, in my experience.’ She pointed at the camera in his hand, and he noticed that her hand and wrist were bandaged. ‘You’ve found that, I see. The owner will be pleased to have it back.’
‘In due course, Miss Bannerman. I need to hold on to it for now. It’s fortuitous that you’re here, though—I wanted to ask you a few questions about Lucy’s accident. Did you see what happened?’
‘No. I’d just left the drawing room and was coming down the corridor to the stairs when I heard Lucy’s screams. I ran to the staircase immediately, but she was already lying in the stairwell.’
She had the sense not to offer more information than was asked for, Penrose noticed. ‘And you assumed she’d fallen?’
‘I didn’t assume anything at first—I just went to help her. But afterwards, of course that’s what I thought. What other explanation could there be? Her shoelace was undone, and she’d obviously tripped over that on her way up the stairs or lost her balance through the weight of the pan. Lucy should never have been carrying something like that up the stairs on her own,’ she added, taking the words right out of Penrose’s mouth, ‘but the lift is out of order and I suppose she thought she had no choice.’
‘Did you touch the pan?’
‘I moved it when I went to help her. I blame myself for what’s happened, I’m afraid—I should have been more vigilant.’
‘Why didn’t you call me as soon as Lucy returned to the club?’
Her demeanour changed instantly when she saw that he had no sympathy with her self-recriminations. ‘I left a message as you’d instructed, Inspector, so please have the decency to acknowledge your own shortcomings as I have mine. Cowdray Club business can hardly be brought to a standstill while we wait for the left hand of Scotland Yard to communicate with the right.’
‘No, Miss Bannerman, of course it can’t. A girl has been murdered and another one lies at death’s door, but evening cocoa must still be drunk.’ He ushered her into the corridor, locking the door behind him. ‘There will be a police presence outside the treatment room until Lucy regains consciousness,’ he said, as he walked with her back to the stairs. ‘I’ll take your advice, and remain positive that we’ll be able to speak to her very soon. There’s no doubt in my mind that she holds the key to Marjorie’s murder.’
It was said with a confidence which he certainly didn’t feel, but he thought he saw a flicker of fear pass across Celia Bannerman’s face. On their own, the lies that she had told signified nothing; taken together, though, they painted a rather different picture, and the possibility that she had simply been mistaken on so many accounts was slim. He wondered if he should confront her with them now, but decided against it; there was nothing that he could relate directly to Marjorie’s murder, and the other reason for bringing things to a head—ensuring Lucy’s safety, albeit a little late—could be easily achieved by the police presence he had warned her of. No—before he talked to Celia Bannerman again, he wanted to find out if Marjorie and Lucy had been to see Ethel Stuke, and, if so, what she had told them.
Downstairs, he met Fallowfield just coming up from the kitchens. ‘Anything interesting your end?’ he asked, after telling him about Miriam Sharpe and Celia Bannerman.
‘No, Sir. Nobody saw what happened—only Miss Bannerman trying to help the girl, and then the business of getting her moved upstairs.’
‘I wonder how hard she really was trying to help Lucy?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re missing something, Bill. Think about it: the only motive we’ve got at the moment for Marjorie’s murder—and her father’s—is what they knew about the Sach family history. Put Edwards to one side for a minute. There are three people in this club who freely admit a connection with that story—Geraldine Ashby, Miriam Sharpe and Celia Bannerman—but none of them has a reason to kill because of it. To our knowledge, though, only one of them’s lying; Bannerman lied to Josephine about Ethel Stuke’s death, and to me about going to see Jacob Sach; now she’s first on the scene at Lucy’s accident. I can’t help feeling I made a terrible mistake in sticking with Edwards rather than coming straight here when we heard Lucy was back.’
‘I’m not sure about that, Sir. What if Edwards was more involved in the baby farming than anyone realised, and lied in court to save her own neck? She told us herself—Sach loved his wife; if he found out later that Amelia had been made a scapegoat, he’d have been more resentful of Edwards than ever. He might have told Marjorie, maybe even threatened to go to the police—that would give her a powerful motive to shut them both up.’
‘You think Edwards did it?’
‘I wouldn’t rule it out. She lied, too, remember—she’s been lying for years.’
‘Yes, but I can understand why. I bet what she told us about the backlash they had to put up with after the trial only scratches the surface. On the other hand, Bannerman’s lies seem senseless—that’s what makes them interesting. There’s a significance in them that we haven’t seen yet.’
Fallowfield looked doubtful. ‘I spoke to the kitchen girls just now, Sir. Lucy was telling them how kind Miss Bannerman had been to her this evening. Said they’d had a long talk.’
‘Does Bannerman honestly strike you as the kind of woman who has cosy chats with her staff?’ Penrose asked impatiently. ‘Patronise or discipline—those are her codes, and there’s nothing in between.’
‘You don’t like her, do you?’
‘No, but that’s not the point,’ he said, a little more emphatically than was necessary. ‘Surely you don’t, either?’
‘Not especially, but I admire what she did as a prison warder. There’s obviously more to her than posh clubs and committees. And I do think she’s got more sense than to try to kill a girl in the middle of the Cowdray Club on a Saturday night. It’s a bit risky.’
Fallowfield’s defence of Celia Bannerman was beginning to grate on Penrose, not least because it made sense. ‘It didn’t have to be risky—that staircase is effectively a separate room, and it can’t be seen from the foyer or the public rooms above. And perhaps she had no choice—perhaps that little chat you mentioned was about establishing what had to be done. If Lucy had been to see Ethel Stuke with Marjorie—those postcards aren’t a coincidence—and learned something about Bannerman, then Bannerman would have been forced to act before we got to her.’ Fallowfield remained unconvinced, but Penrose pressed on. ‘Try this for a scenario—Sach sees that picture in Tatler and tells Marjorie something about Celia Bannerman that he thinks he might be able to make some money from, something she might pay to keep quiet. He wants Marjorie to do the dirty work because of her connections with Bannerman through Motley, but she doesn’t believe him. Why should she? He’s got her into trouble in the past, and this time she’s got more to lose. So she verifies it for herself. Remember what she said to Lady Ashby—her father told her something that turned out to be true; we assumed that was about his own history, but perhaps it wasn’t.’
‘What would Jacob Sach have on Celia Bannerman? She’s freely admitted that she interfered in his daughter’s adoption when she shouldn’t have done, so she’s hardly likely to bother to keep that quiet, and I don’t see what else he could have known?’
‘Maybe that’s what Ethel Stuke will tell us. I’m going to Suffolk first thing in the morning to talk to her, while you clear the decks on everything else. Go back to Campbell Road and try to establish once and for all if Edwards was at home last night—that house is so crowded that I refuse to believe we can’t find out for sure, no matter how hard they try to fob us off. Mary Size will need to be told what’s happened to Lucy, and she may have more to say about Celia Bannerman—but be careful there; don’t alert her to anything. I’ll brief Wyles and tell Ronnie and Lettice to come up with something that will keep her here round the clock. Did you find them, by the way?’
‘Yes, Sir, in the drawing room upstairs. They’re all right—shocked, of course, but to be honest, they both still seem so numb after what happened this morning that I don’t think this has touched them like it might have done otherwise. Anything else?’
Penrose thought about it. ‘Yes. It might be worth trying to find out a bit more about Lizzie Sach’s death—get on to the boys in Birmingham in the morning and ask them to look up a suicide at Anstey Physical Training College in 1916.’
‘Right-o. And Miss Tey should be able to help us with that.’
‘Is she still up?’
‘Yes, Sir—with your cousins.’
‘Good. I thought I might ask her along tomorrow. I want to know everything she can tell me about Bannerman, and I’m not happy about her being here at the moment anyway.’
Fallowfield nodded at the camera in Penrose’s hand. ‘Do you want me to get that developed?’
‘Yes. Was the girl who confirmed Bannerman’s alibi for last night down there when you talked to the staff just now?’
‘Tilly Jenkins? Yes, Sir.’
‘Good. Nip back down and double-check with her to make sure, and tell them they can get that staircase cleaned up. I’m going to talk to Josephine, and I’ll find out how Lucy is before we leave. I want to look through those prison files again when we’re back at the Yard, just in case I missed something. We’ll leave Edwards until tomorrow, when you’ve been back to the Bunk and I’ve seen Ethel Stuke.’
He found Josephine in the drawing room with Lettice, Ronnie and Geraldine Ashby. Like the other public areas of the club, this room struck a peculiarly feminine note; even if it had been empty, he would have known somehow, through the refinement of detail, that it was a place where women assembled, one in which he would not, as a matter of course, be welcomed. Unusually for Penrose, who was egalitarian by nature and comfortable in the company of either sex, he felt a small stab of resentment at the female solidarity which the building proclaimed in its every feature. It struck him all the more strongly for coming at a time when Josephine’s friendship with Marta Fox had created a part of her life from which he was similarly excluded, and he wondered if he would feel the same if she became close to another man. Probably not: as much as he hated the way in which his emotions were suddenly reduced to an antiquated stereotype, he realised that his resentment stemmed from the fact that, with Marta, there was simply no level on which he could compete.
Josephine smiled when she saw him, and he beckoned her over to the door. ‘Aren’t you coming to say hello to the girls?’ she asked.
‘In a minute, but I wanted a quick word with you first. Will you do me a favour?’
‘Of course, if I can.’
‘Will you come to Suffolk with me tomorrow morning? I’m going to see Ethel Stuke.’
‘Isn’t that you doing me a favour?’
He looked sheepish. ‘I can’t let you sit in on an interview like that, I’m afraid. I can’t even promise you’ll get to meet her. It depends on what she’s like and how much time we have. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right—I understand. But why do you want me to come with you? As nice as a day out in Suffolk sounds, I can’t see a favour—unless it’s purely the pleasure of my company.’ She smiled self-mockingly. ‘That’s understandable, I suppose.’
‘It goes without saying. But I need to speak to you about the past—the Sach and Walters case and Anstey, and I don’t know when else I’ll have time to do it. If we can talk on the way, it’ll kill two birds with one stone.’
‘Two jail birds, you mean?’ she said, but it wasn’t meant as a joke and she added, concerned: ‘How is Lucy?’
‘Not good. I gather the next few hours are crucial, but even if she pulls through, it’ll be a long haul to recovery. So you’ll come?’
‘Of course I will. I could do with a change of scene and a bit of sea air. It might clear my head.’
He refrained from asking why that was necessary. ‘It’ll mean an early start.’
‘That’s fine. Just tell me what time I need to be ready, and if you’re going to grill me too thoroughly, you’d better get the Snipe to send breakfast. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear for a flask of tea and a sausage sandwich.’
He laughed. ‘I’m sure she’ll do you proud.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Is Bill coming with us?’
‘No, there’s too much for him to do here, but he’s downstairs now if you want to see him.’
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. I was just wondering if I’ll have you to myself.’
As Penrose had requested, a car was waiting at Ipswich Railway Station, courtesy of the Suffolk police. Provincial train connections were few and far between on a Sunday, and, in any case, he had wanted to speak to the local force to establish that Ethel Stuke was still living at the address he’d been given, and that she was at home and happy to see him; it was a long way to go on a hunch, and even further if the hunch had decided to visit her sister in Bournemouth for the weekend. He and Josephine had used the train journey to go through everything she knew of the Sach and Walters case, but nothing fresh had come to light and he wondered now how much to tell her about his suspicions. There had been nothing in Celia Bannerman’s prison file except a record of exemplary conduct and a copy of her resignation letter prior to her taking an administrative post in a hospital in Leeds. Her alibi for the night of Marjorie’s death was solid, although, if the earlier end of Spilsbury’s estimate for time of death proved to be the correct one, she would still have had time to carry out the murder and get back to the club. If he was wrong, he didn’t want to compromise Josephine’s relationship with her former teacher; and if Bannerman did have something to hide, the last thing he needed was for Josephine to put herself and his case in danger by finding it impossible to behave normally around her.
He collected the keys from the station master as arranged, and they drove away from the town and out into open countryside. The East Anglian landscape was already scarred by the starkness of winter. With no leaves on the trees or crops in the fields, it appeared as a negative image of its fertile summer self, a world governed by absence, bracing itself for the long, dark months ahead.
‘Tell me about Anstey and what you remember of Lizzie Sach’s suicide,’ Archie said, handing her the map on which he had marked their route.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Who found her?’
‘The games mistress, I think. Her body was in the gymnasium. She’d used one of the ropes to hang herself.’
‘And were there any signs leading up to it? How long had she known about her mother?’
‘I don’t know, Archie. You’d have to ask Geraldine when she sent the letter. My impression at the time was that Lizzie killed herself as soon as she found out, but I don’t know that to be true. And as for tell-tale signs, I didn’t know her well enough to notice. I know it happened in the summer term, because we were all preparing for exams, so she’d have been at the college for nearly a year, but she’d never settled in from what I could see—and that makes sense now I’ve heard what Gerry had to say about it. But I doubt there was any warning of what she intended to do. The teachers at Anstey were very good, on the whole, and they genuinely seemed to care about our welfare. I think they’d have noticed and done something about it if she’d shown any sign of depression.’
‘How did Celia Bannerman react?’
Josephine thought before she answered, careful to distinguish between Celia’s reaction at the time and what she had said about the incident more recently. ‘She was shocked, obviously. I think she felt guilty because it happened while she was in charge, and because she brought Lizzie to Anstey in the first place.’
‘But it was professional sorrow rather than a personal sense of loss for a particular girl?’
‘You make it sound rather self-centred but yes, I suppose it was.’ She looked out of the window at a mill, admiring the way the light reflected off the sails. ‘It was so strange for us all—I’ve never known an atmosphere like it. Anstey was such a noisy place, you know, at every hour of the day—with so many girls crowded into it, it was bound to be. Yet the next morning the whole school seemed to be populated by ghosts. It didn’t last long, although it shames me to say it: I look back on her death now and I see the tragedy of it, particularly since I’ve talked to Gerry about it, but I think that’s an age thing. I hate to admit it, but there was a scandalous fascination about it for us girls. The teachers really felt it, though. I imagine there was an awful lot of black coffee drunk in the staff room that day, and a few recriminations handed round.’
‘I’m surprised Lizzie didn’t go to Bannerman when she got the letter. Wouldn’t that be the automatic reaction if you found out something like that—disbelief? A need to have it confirmed?’
‘It depends who told you, I suppose—she trusted Gerry and would have believed her. And we don’t know how much she remembered, do we? She wasn’t a baby when it all happened, so perhaps the story fitted with something she had a dim recollection of. Adults think they’re clever enough to keep things from children, but that’s often an illusion.’
‘All the same, you’d think she’d seek some sort of clarification, but she didn’t, as far as you know?’
‘No, not as far as I’m aware. If she’d gone to Celia, the suicide would have been prevented, I’m sure. Of course, I have no idea if she knew what an influence Celia had had on her life.’
‘I suppose it was suicide?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Archie—what else would it have been? She left a note.’ Penrose wondered if Fallowfield would be able to trace that note through the Birmingham police. ‘And it seemed significant to me that she’d chosen to die like her mother. Surely that would have been very hard to fake?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he agreed reluctantly.
They passed a sign to Framlingham, and Josephine turned back to look in that direction. ‘We really are getting close to my roots now,’ she said.
‘What? You’re a Suffolk girl?’
‘On my mother’s side, a couple of greats ago. They brewed beer somewhere between Framlingham and Saxmundham, apparently.’
‘Just think—you could be related to Bill. That really would make his day, especially if there’s a free pint involved.’ He slowed the car to take a sharp right-hand bend. ‘Do you know it, then? Did you ever come here with your family?’
‘No, and as an adult I’m afraid my Suffolk travels begin and end in Newmarket. I’m easily waylaid by the Rowley Mile. I’d like to get to know it better, though,’ she added, as they drove down a high street flanked on either side by handsome houses and small shops. The sun finally broke through the clouds for a second, burnishing the pavements as if cued by her enthusiasm, and she exclaimed in delight. ‘This is lovely. I may have to move south after all.’
‘You don’t think it’s all a bit too perfect?’
‘Is there such a thing? What makes you say that?’
He pointed at a picturesque gabled building with a walled garden, set back a little from the road. ‘What would you say if I told you that a young servant girl of dubious morals was found murdered in that house after a violent storm, stabbed several times in the chest and with her throat slashed from ear to ear?’
She laughed at the melodramatic note in his voice. ‘I’d say it was a nice house, and I hope they cleaned up well. Who killed her?’
‘Supposedly a man called William Gardiner. He’d got her pregnant, despite having a wife and two children.’
‘Good God, was that here?’
‘You know about it?’
‘I read about it recently. It was in the newspapers at the same time as Sach and Walters. Didn’t they have to have two trials or something?’
‘That’s right—the jury couldn’t agree. It was eleven to one guilty first time round, and eleven to one innocent when they tried again.’
‘Why was it so contentious?’
‘The evidence was confusing. They found a bottle by Rose Harsent’s body which contained paraffin that someone used to set light to her clothes, and it was labelled as medicine for Gardiner’s children. The prosecution said it was incontrovertible proof of his guilt; the defence claimed that only someone certifiably insane would have been stupid enough to leave a clue like that there, and they said it was a set-up.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with the defence, although I suppose it could have been an extremely audacious double bluff. What happened in the end? Did they have a third trial?’
‘No, the judge tried to force a conviction based on the evidence, but the jury wasn’t having any of it and Gardiner was released. He caught the first train to Liverpool Street and disappeared in London.’
‘I can’t decide if that makes him more likely to be innocent or guilty. How could he have just disappeared, though? Surely he was notorious all over the country.’
‘Disappearing off the face of the earth was easier than you think back then—it happened all the time. Newspapers didn’t carry photographs the way they do today, and people only had his word for what his name was. There were far fewer official records than we have. Look at what you told me about Annie Walters—she went from place to place with a different name each time and got away with it, and she only moved from street to street. Walters’s trouble started when she stayed in one place for too long, but Gardiner wasn’t as careless and London was a long way from Peasenhall.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It feels like a long way today, too.’
‘That must have been a terrible existence for him,’ Josephine said. ‘Surely he spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, never quite knowing if he’d got away with it? It must have been like that for Jacob Sach and Edwards, too, I suppose.’
‘Yes, and all happening at the same time. You should build it into the book.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. One real crime is more than enough at the moment, thank you. Don’t give me something else to worry about.’ She fumbled in her bag for a lighter and lit them both a cigarette, hoping that Archie hadn’t noticed Marta’s diary in amongst the clutter. ‘It’s interesting, though—Rose Harsent sounds like exactly the sort of girl who Sach took in. It makes you think, doesn’t it? These girls or their children—all given a death sentence because men couldn’t take the consequences of their actions. I don’t get any sense that the twelve men on Sach’s jury were quite so analytical of the evidence. If it had been Gardiner’s wife on trial for murder, they’d probably have hanged her first time.’ She had a point, Penrose thought; he had been surprised by what he had heard of the lack of evidence put up in Sach and Walters’s defence and, while he doubted they were innocent, he could see a number of loopholes in the prosecution which a good barrister would have used to save them from the gallows. They reached a junction and Josephine looked at the map, intrigued by the names of the villages. ‘Left here,’ she said, ‘then right in about five miles.’
They turned off the main road just as a magnificent church appeared in the distance, and the landscape changed once again. Closer to the sea, the rolling, arable countryside gave way to heathland covered with a patchwork of heather, scattered fir trees and gorse bushes. Miraculously, one or two of the gorse bushes were still in flower, and the flash of yellow, though tired and faded, made a refreshing change after the muted greys of the journey so far. At the edge of a small patch of woodland, a red deer moved shyly through the rhythms of light and shade created by the sun and the trees. ‘This must be stunning in summer,’ Josephine said, enchanted by the way in which such rich and varied scenery could exist in close proximity.
Walberswick itself was charming, too, perched on the Suffolk coast where the River Blyth joined the North Sea. The village obviously had a long history, Josephine thought, as they wound their way slowly into its heart: the variety of its architecture was fascinating, ranging from small cottages and converted fishing huts to large, rambling villas. Many of the houses had been built in the Arts and Crafts style which she loved and, by the time they passed the church, which sat defiantly in the ruins of an older, grander place of worship, she had identified at least three properties which she would have been very happy to own. ‘Not a bad place to retire to,’ she said.
‘Very nice,’ Archie agreed. ‘It’s hardly Holloway by the sea, is it? She lives on the green, so it must be quite central.’ The road offered no choices, and they found the heart of the village without difficulty. He drove a short distance further on, and parked outside the Bell Hotel, a welcoming, thatched building which looked out towards the estuary. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Have a look at the sea, I think—it’s a wonderful day for a walk. And we passed a tea shop opposite the green. I’ll wait for you there when I can’t stand the cold any longer, but don’t feel you have to hurry—I’ll pace myself with the scones.’
He smiled and watched her go, then headed back the way they had come. Ethel Stuke’s house was the last in a row of small, red-brick cottages on the left-hand side of the green, and he wondered whose sense of humour had named it after a famous siege. He closed the wooden gate softly behind him and knocked at the front door, although the fierce agitation of the downstairs curtains had already told him that he did not need to announce his presence. It was a minute or two before he heard the key turn in the lock, and he remembered that the former prison officer must be in her early seventies at least; when he saw her, though, he realised that it was not age but arthritis which had caused the delay. She was a tall woman, but bent low over two walking sticks, and her arms and legs were so thin that any sort of movement without injury seemed a small miracle in itself. ‘Miss Stuke?’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Archie Penrose from the Metropolitan Police. It’s very good of you to agree to see me at such short notice.’
She looked at him for a moment before speaking, and he tried to decide if hers was a hard face or if he had simply been influenced by what he knew of her style of pastoral care; in either case, Ethel Stuke was clearly not the type to indulge in social niceties. ‘Your colleagues weren’t very clear on what you wanted,’ she said, standing aside to let him into the sitting room. ‘I hope you’ve got a better idea of why you’re here.’ Her years on the Suffolk coast had done nothing to erode the harsh London edges of her speech. ‘Tea?’ she asked, with an economy born, he guessed, of years spent barking out monosyllabic orders; she managed to make the offer sound more like a challenge, and he was about to refuse when he noticed a tea tray in the corner of the room, carefully laid with cups and saucers and a selection of cakes. Perhaps Ethel Stuke’s bark was worse than her bite, or perhaps loneliness was too powerful an emotion these days for her reputation to matter. ‘That would be very nice,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
She went slowly through to the kitchen next door, and he took advantage of her absence to look around the room. It was fussier than he would have expected from someone who had spent most of her career in an institution like Holloway, but she could simply have been compensating in her later years for the trinkets and clutter which had been denied her until now. Most of the surfaces were covered in ornaments and pot plants—African violets, mostly, with a couple of aspidistras—but it was the bookshelves which interested him most. They were stacked with crime novels—Christie, Sayers and Allingham, interspersed with Freeman Wills Crofts and a Ngaio Marsh—and, although he couldn’t see a copy of Josephine’s book, The Man in the Queue, Ethel Stuke’s tastes seemed to bode well for the request he wanted to make on her behalf.
‘Have you been here long, Miss Stuke?’ he asked when she eventually came back into the room, her progress made even slower now by having swapped one of her sticks for the teapot. ‘It seems a lovely village.’ He resisted the temptation to help her, sensing that it would be looked upon as an insult; the last thing he needed to do was offend her before she had had a chance to tell him anything.
‘Sit down,’ she said, nodding to one of the armchairs by the fire. ‘I’ll bring your tea over.’ She added a slice of fruit cake to the saucer and put it down on the table next to him. ‘I came here to live with my sister when I retired eight years ago. It’s not so bad, I suppose. Full of people with too much time on their hands, and nothing better to do than worry about other people’s business, but I’ve met enough like that in the past to know how to deal with them, and they’ve not found quite such a warm welcome here recently. Mabel died in January, you see.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t be. We weren’t close. She never liked what I did for a living. Having to tell people that her sister was in Holloway created the wrong impression, if you know what I mean.’
It was impossible to tell if she meant the comment as a joke or a simple statement of fact. ‘It’s your time at Holloway that I’d like to talk to you about,’ Penrose said, ‘and some of the prisoners you looked after and the officers you worked with.’ She seemed to brighten at the prospect of talking about the prison, and he understood for the first time that she had lived for her job in exactly the same way as Celia Bannerman, Mary Size or Miriam Sharpe; no wonder she was bitter about the other villagers; to her, a retirement home by the sea must seem like a cruel parody of the institution she had reluctantly left behind. ‘But first I want to check—have two girls come here recently asking about the same thing?’
‘No,’ she said, and Penrose’s heart sank; had he really come all this way to learn nothing except that he was wrong? ‘There was only one girl. She came last week.’
‘Was her name Marjorie Baker?’
She smiled. ‘I knew she was a wrong ’un as soon as I clapped eyes on her. Far too sure of herself—she’ll be in and out of that place all her life.’ Penrose noticed that the force of nature to which Mary Size had referred was much more evident when the former warder was sitting down and the physical frailty of her body was less noticeable. ‘What’s she done this time? Must be serious for someone like you to be interested.’
‘She hasn’t done anything, Miss Stuke, but I would like to know why she came to see you.’
‘She wanted to know about a warder I worked with at Holloway, a woman called Bannerman. She’s gone on to far loftier things since, of course.’ There was a note of resentment in her voice which she made no effort to hide, but Penrose was too satisfied to pay it much heed. ‘The Baker girl was interested in the early days, though, just after the prison had been turned over to women.’
‘What did she want to know?’
‘What Bannerman was like, what sort of prison officer she made—I got the impression that she didn’t really know herself what she was looking for. She didn’t ask anything specific—just let me talk.’
‘Would you mind if I did the same?’ She shrugged. ‘Start by telling me when you first met Miss Bannerman.’
‘1902. She found it hard to fit in, right from the start. Most of us at that stage had gone into the profession because it was in the family—it was just like going into domestic service in that respect—but Bannerman had chosen it. She came from nursing, which is what she eventually went back to, because she’d heard some lecture on the terrible medical conditions for women in prison and she thought she could make a difference.’
‘And she was wrong?’
‘Of course she was. She might get away with that nonsense now—there’s no such thing as discipline these days, as far as I can see—but she was fighting a losing battle back then. She was soft on the prisoners, and far too kind to them—most of us start that way, but it soon rubs off. No, Bannerman was too good for us—I don’t mean she looked down her nose like she does now, by all accounts; I mean she was genuinely a good person.’ She said it in the incredulous tone which most people reserved for extraordinary feats that were beyond the capabilities of an average human being. ‘There was no place for sensitivity in Holloway, and it was only a matter of time before she got herself into trouble.’
‘In what way?’
‘She got too close to the women—didn’t report them when they broke the rules, tried to interfere in their lives outside.’
‘Are you talking about Sach and Walters?’
‘Sach could twist Bannerman round her little finger, but then she was a manipulative bitch at the best of times—that’s why she was in there. Got someone else to do her dirty work and thought she’d get away with it. Smarmed her way round the chaplain and the prison doctor, and had Bannerman eating out of her hand. She honestly thought she’d get off, too—right until we took her to the execution shed. That soon wiped the smile off her face.’
It was the first indication of an attitude which went beyond duty and discipline, and it sickened Penrose; Mary Size’s efforts at reform became all the more admirable when he saw what she was up against. ‘I understand that Miss Bannerman found their execution difficult to deal with,’ he said.
‘She didn’t understand like we do, Inspector. She was like all these abolitionists who wouldn’t dirty their hands by talking to a real criminal; she couldn’t see that some crimes are so abhorrent to decent people that there’s only one answer.’
She assumed his complicity because he was a policeman, and he didn’t correct her. Rarely did Penrose allow himself to think about the morality of taking a human life in the name of justice—he would never be able to do his job if he did—but there was a more practical reason why he questioned the sense of the death penalty: the reluctance of witnesses to appear in a hanging case, and of juries to convict, meant that there were far fewer guilty verdicts in the courts than there should have been. Privately, he believed that justice and the families of the victims would often be better served by an alternative—but this was not the time for a debate on abolition. ‘Did Marjorie ask you anything about Sach and Walters?’
‘No. I might have mentioned their names in passing, but she didn’t recognise them and she certainly wasn’t interested in finding out more about them.’
‘So what did interest her?’
‘Bannerman’s relationship with Eleanor Vale. That’s what I was saying—she was soft on the women, then wondered why they threw it back in her face.’
The name was familiar to Penrose from Josephine’s work. ‘Eleanor Vale was another baby farmer, wasn’t she? But she wasn’t condemned.’
Ethel Stuke nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘What do you mean by their relationship?’
‘It started shortly after Sach and Walters’s execution. That caused a lot of trouble amongst the other prisoners, and some of them took against Vale—taunted her, told her she should have gone to the gallows as well. Some of them said she was even worse than Walters, leaving babies to die rather than finishing them off quickly. You have to understand—most of the women in Holloway then were just drunks or prostitutes. They stuck together, and they didn’t look too kindly on people who took advantage of girls like themselves. They set out to make Vale wish she had been hanged, and they did a bloody good job of it. One night, she couldn’t put up with it any more and she started to smash her cell up. Bannerman was one of the warders on duty, but officers don’t carry cell keys—they have to be fetched from the chief officer, and that takes time.’ God help any woman with a genuine medical emergency, Penrose thought, but he didn’t interrupt. ‘By the time they got there, Vale had managed to break her windows with one of the planks from her bed. Bannerman was first inside to stop her and Vale cut her with a piece of glass, right down here.’ She made a slash from her left shoulder down across her breast. ‘A couple of inches higher, and she’d have cut her throat. As it was, she nearly bled to death.’
Penrose looked doubtful. ‘Nothing like that appears on Celia Bannerman’s prison record.’
She gave his naivety the expression of contempt it deserved. ‘Record is a contradiction in terms. Things like that tend to be omitted—they don’t look good at the Home Office.’
‘Is that why Celia Bannerman left the prison service?’
‘Partly, yes, but let’s not forget who we’re talking about. Most of us would have hated the woman for something like that, but Bannerman took her animosity on as a personal challenge. She forgot that a prison officer’s weapon is power, not reason, and she just redoubled her efforts at kindness. She was religious, I think, brought up in a convent or something—but whatever went on in her head, she went out of her way to forgive the woman. Set out on her own private rehabilitation scheme, she did; looked out for Vale in prison, and even took her into her own home when she got out. That’s the other reason she left, I suppose; officers weren’t supposed to associate with ex-prisoners.’
Penrose didn’t quite see why this would have satisfied Marjorie’s curiosity; kindness and naivety were hardly crimes to be kept quiet, and the shame of the incident was not Celia Bannerman’s. An affair with a baby farmer, however, would be something worth hiding from the circles in which she moved these days. ‘Were they lovers?’ he asked.
Ethel Stuke glared at him as though he had deliberately tried to offend her. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Prisoners might occasionally get that sort of thing into their heads, but it’s knocked out of them before it starts. It’s certainly not something an officer would get involved with, not even Bannerman. But it did backfire a little—Vale ended up sticking to her like glue, which probably wasn’t convenient once Bannerman started aspiring to better things.’
‘Who else did Miss Bannerman associate with? Was she close to any of the other warders, or anyone outside the prison?’
‘No. You say goodbye to a social life when you take that job on. That comes hard to most people at first, but not her. The prison was her life—she didn’t seem to need anything else. A career was all she cared about.’
‘And what happened to Eleanor Vale?’
‘Bannerman cast her on the scrap heap as soon as she got this new job up north. I took over the lease on her house in Holloway, as it happens, but I told her I wouldn’t have Vale boarding there so she must have asked her to go. She gave me a note with her new address and wished me well, but she didn’t say anything about Vale, and I never heard anything more about her. I don’t know where she went. I wrote to Bannerman a couple of times in Leeds, but she never bothered answering. The next thing I know, her name starts turning up in the newspapers and she’s more important than the Queen.’
‘I don’t suppose you still have that Leeds address, do you? And the London house which you took on after she left?’
‘It’s probably somewhere about.’ She left the room and went next door, where Penrose guessed she slept; he doubted that she managed the stairs very often these days. When she returned, she was carrying a photograph album stuffed full of pictures and newspaper clippings; from what he could see, most of them were reports of major trials, and it seemed surreal to him to look down at the faces of convicted criminals where he would normally have expected to find family photographs or souvenirs of treasured holidays. ‘Here it is,’ she said, and handed him a piece of paper.
‘May I borrow this?’ he asked, and she nodded curiously. ‘Did you give this to Miss Baker?’
‘No. She wasn’t interested in anything else after I told her about what had happened in the prison.’
‘And did she show you a photograph from a magazine?’ She shook her head. ‘Then I’ve taken up enough of your time, Miss Stuke. Thank you—you’ve been very helpful.’ She looked almost sorry to see him go; in spite of her protestations, she clearly welcomed company if it involved the past, and that augured well for Josephine; the least he could do was pave the way for her. ‘A friend of mine is writing a novel based on the Sach and Walters case,’ he explained. ‘I wondered if you’d be kind enough to help her with her research.’
‘If it’s a novel, she’s hardly likely to be interested in the truth, is she?’
He was surprised by the vehemence of the response. ‘The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Anyway, I couldn’t help noticing that you like crime fiction.’
‘I can’t bear it.’
‘But it takes up an awful lot of space on your bookshelf.’
‘Most of the things in here are what my sister left. I have read them, but they’re full of mistakes—not unlike her outlook on life in general.’
He couldn’t help the note of irritation in his voice. ‘So you read them to find fault with them?’
‘No one who’s touched real crime would give them the time of day,’ she said, and he wondered what she would say if she knew how much like Celia Bannerman she sounded. ‘So I’m afraid I can’t help your friend.’
As he stood up to go, his hat caught one of the plants and he remembered what Josephine had said to him. ‘Did Celia Bannerman put violets on the bodies after Sach and Walters’s execution?’ he asked as she walked him slowly to the door.
‘No. I did.’
He was astonished. ‘After everything you’ve said about punishment and paying for their crimes, you offer them a final mark of respect like that. Why?’
‘Because by that stage they were innocent again in the eyes of God,’ she said. ‘That’s the point—they’d paid the price and earned my respect.’
Josephine was pleased to feel the air on her face after the long journey, and even more pleased to discover that she didn’t have to share it with a crowd of people; the narrow lane down to the estuary was almost deserted, and she was able to stand at the water’s edge and take in the view without any distraction other than her own thoughts. The tide was out, exposing wide expanses of glistening mud, much to the delight of the wading birds and wildfowl which wintered there, and across the river she could see the lighthouse and church tower which marked the boundaries of a nearby town. The ferry which might have taken her there was shut up for the winter, but she had no intention of gravitating towards anything busier than the bank she was standing on; instead, she set out along the beach, enjoying the crunch of the shingle beneath her feet and the unassailable sense of solitude.
The Suffolk horizon was dominated by the energies of sea and sky, and by the endlessly fascinating play of light on water. At first, the sea seemed flat and grey, but she soon noticed that if you looked at it closely, the water was flecked by hundreds of metallic shades of silver and gold, and she felt that it was the sea of childhood—felt it so strongly, in fact, that she wondered if her parents had brought her here when she was young and she had simply forgotten. If not, the affinity she felt with this particular landscape would have to be put down to an innate recognition of some remote part of herself, of roots that could never be completely dislodged by time or distance. It was one of the miracles of the natural world, she thought, that you could invariably use it to gauge who you really were.
When she could stand the cold no longer, she turned inland and used the imposing chimneys of a red-brick manor house to guide her back to the village. The Old Cottage Tearooms occupied a pretty, single-storey white building opposite the village green. The beams and floorboards were ingrained with centuries of living and, as she took a table next to the fireplace, she relished the smell of home cooking which filled the room. A bell over the door had rung when she walked in, and she sensed the proprietor hovering behind the kitchen door long before she emerged. ‘What can I get you, Madam?’ she asked, stoking up the fire.
‘Some tea, please—and crumpets if you’ve got them.’
‘Jam or cheese?’
‘Oh, just butter, thank you.’
She smiled, and Josephine knew what was coming next. ‘You’re not from round these parts with an accent like that,’ the woman said, brushing some imaginary crumbs from the table.
Josephine was tempted to claim her Suffolk heritage, but she didn’t want to encourage any more conversation than she had to. ‘No, I’m only visiting,’ she said. ‘A friend of mine’s calling on someone in the village, so I thought I’d have something to eat while I’m waiting for him. I don’t expect he’ll be long.’ The woman took the hint and disappeared into the kitchen, and Josephine breathed a sigh of relief. From where she sat, she could see across the green; there was no sign of Archie yet, so she took the envelope from her bag, found her glasses, and began to read. The handwriting was—as he had said—impossible, but she was growing used to it by now, and its quirks and idiosyncrasies were almost as familiar to her as her own.
‘Josephine, I’m really tired and life seems a bit grim,’ Marta continued, and the sudden directness of the address unsettled her as it had throughout the diary. ‘I thought how lovely it would be to have four whole free days to write in, but my brain goes back on me. I want to do nothing but idle. There is so much I want to tell you about things that …’
‘There you are—crumpets with plenty of butter, and a nice pot of tea.’ She unloaded the tray, and stood back to admire her own handiwork. ‘It’s something sweet you’re missing. I’ve just got a lovely cinnamon and walnut cake out of the oven—how about a nice slice of that?’
Josephine smiled stoically back at her. ‘Perfect,’ she said, willing to try anything that might keep the woman busy. She went back to her reading, conscious now that her time was limited and wishing she’d braved the cold to sit in a sand dune.
There is so much I want to tell you about things that—like the strata in a rock—have lain in me since long ago. I have been writing this diary for five months and have said so little—nothing that can interest you. A shaming little record of a shameful little personality—arrogant and unsure. I cannot talk about my work in capital letters, nor theorise about it; I just want to do it, and the lack of opportunity—the result of my own inadequacy—makes me afraid to think about it with anything but flippancy. I do not even pray now the way I did when young, because that prayer would become a drop of water to wear away my heart.
‘I know I shouldn’t say it myself, but you won’t find better anywhere in the county.’ A large slice of cake was slapped proudly down on top of the rest of the diary and, to Josephine’s horror, the woman sat down in the chair opposite. ‘I’m Mrs Reynolds,’ she said, obviously hoping for an introduction, but Josephine just nodded. ‘What brings your friend to Walberswick, then? Who’s he gone to see? You did say “he”, didn’t you?’
Josephine put the pages down, abandoning all hope of getting any further before Archie turned up. ‘A lady called Ethel Stuke,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I believe she lives somewhere on the green.’
‘Ethel? Oh yes, that house just up on the left,’ she said, pointing out of the window. ‘She’s very popular all of a sudden, I must say. Two girls were here only the other day—they sat where you are, in fact. One of them had been to see Ethel, and very pleased she was with herself, too. Can’t think why—Ethel’s nothing like her sister, Mabel—now she enjoyed a good chat, but Ethel’s not the friendly type at all. She’s the sort of woman who’s never allowed herself a piece of cake in her life, if you know what I mean, so I’m surprised she’s having so many visitors.’
‘What were they like, these other girls?’ Josephine asked through a mouthful of sponge. The cake was exceptional, she had to admit, and almost worth the sacrifice she was making for it.
‘In their early twenties, I should think—they’d come all the way up from London, just for the day. I remember them because they ordered a piece of every cake we had, and I had to ask them to pay up front—well, you can’t be too careful, can you? The pretty one paid—said it was a sort of celebration, and there’d be plenty more where that came from.’
That was interesting, Josephine thought; there was no doubt that the girls were Marjorie and Lucy, and it saddened her to think of how short-lived their celebration had been; perhaps by now Archie had discovered its cause. The bell rang as an answer to her prayers, and Mrs Reynolds bustled off to settle another table, leaving her in peace for a moment. Rather than trying to get any further with the diary, Josephine let her mind go back over what she had already read, and her thoughts drifted back to one particular phrase which she remembered from the first few pages. ‘Always when I think of you, I feel we might be together without talking or doing anything in particular, and be happy.’ Thank God Gerry hadn’t read it, Josephine thought; the look of triumph on her face as Marta unconsciously countered Josephine’s objections, offering her the peace she sought, would have been unbearable. She glanced up and saw Archie on his way over the green; hurriedly, she gathered the papers together and shoved them back into her bag. Mrs Reynolds looked at her curiously and, for once, she couldn’t blame her: her behaviour was ridiculous, and it would simply have to stop.
‘Crumpet?’ she asked, as Archie sat down.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of Ethel Stuke’s cake to keep me going.’ Josephine could not resist a sly glance at Mrs Reynolds, who had come over to take his order and was obviously not as omniscient as she thought. He smiled at the proprietress, and Josephine watched, amused, as she was temporarily wrong-footed by his charm. ‘But perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me where the nearest public telephone box is?’
‘My brother’ll help you out there, Sir,’ she said. ‘He’s got the grocery store on the main street as you come into the village. He won’t mind opening up for you.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly put him to all that trouble,’ Archie said. ‘A public one will be fine.’
‘Near the village hall, then. Turn left out of here, and it’s about a hundred yards ahead of you.’
Josephine stayed behind to pay while he put his call through to the Yard. ‘Bill, I need you to find out what happened to Eleanor Vale—she’s the link between Bannerman and what happened to Marjorie and Lucy.’ He explained briefly what Ethel Stuke had told him, and passed on the addresses. ‘Something happened between those two women which Bannerman wants to forget—I’m convinced of it. Check on the Holloway house and make sure it was passed on as Stuke says, then find out if Vale ever turned up in Leeds. I know, I know,’ he added, cutting the sergeant off. ‘It’s a needle in a haystack, but just do your best. And if you have no luck, look for suspicious or accidental deaths between …’—he checked his notes—‘between March and August 1905. That’s the time span between Vale’s release and Bannerman’s departure for Leeds.’
‘Do you really think Bannerman got rid of her, Sir?’ Fallowfield asked, and distance did nothing to moderate the scepticism in his voice. ‘I thought you said she was full of the milk of human kindness?’
Penrose considered the contradiction for a moment, imagining a young Celia Bannerman, ready to start a new job and a new life but saddled with an ex-convict through excessive kindness and bad judgement: could she really have taken the ultimate step to press on unhindered with her career? Then he thought about the same woman thirty years later, the woman who had, in her own words, made a decision that work would be her entire life; could she kill to justify that decision? With the image of Marjorie’s bruised and bloody lips still in his mind, Penrose rather thought that she could.
He was impatient to get back to the Yard, and the journey through Suffolk seemed interminable. Neither he nor Josephine spoke much; both seemed preoccupied by their own thoughts, and he sensed that Josephine was censoring how much she said in exactly the same way as he was, although on a very different subject. At Ipswich, he was relieved to find the London train half-empty, and they had no trouble in getting a compartment to themselves. ‘I’m sorry she wouldn’t see you,’ he said as the train left the station.
‘Don’t be. To be honest with you, Archie, I’m losing heart with the whole thing. Ethel Stuke and Celia probably have a point—I shouldn’t put real people into a novel and manipulate them for the sake of the story. It’s not right.’
He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window. ‘You don’t really believe that. You just think you should believe it.’ She smiled and ignored him, and he took that to mean she conceded the point. ‘Do you know anything about Celia Bannerman’s personal life?’ he asked casually. ‘Did she ever talk about her family?’
Josephine considered the question. ‘Now you mention it, I’ve never heard her talk about her family at all. That may not be as strange as it seems, I suppose—we were pupil and teacher, so there was always a distance between us, but when I think back to Anstey, I could tell you something personal about most of the other teachers there. For a start, we were all homesick when we got there, so they’d share things about their own families to make us feel better, and we got to know them quite quickly. It was that sort of school. But I think I can honestly say that I’ve never heard Celia talk about anyone who wasn’t connected with the job she was in at the time.’
Her reticence would make sense if she had been raised in an institution, Penrose thought; even now, there was a stigma attached to that sort of upbringing. ‘And did she ever mention being attacked by a prisoner?’
She looked at him, startled. ‘No. Is that what Ethel Stuke told you? Sorry—I know I shouldn’t ask. I’m trying so hard to be discreet and respect the confidentiality of your case, but it’s not easy when I know some of the people involved.’
‘It’s because you know them that we can’t talk about it. Sod’s law, really—I’d value your opinion, but I simply can’t put you in that position. And please don’t mention it to her—the attack, I mean.’
‘Actually, I’m not terribly happy about your being at the Cowdray Club at all at the moment. Couldn’t you come to Maiden Lane and spend a couple of nights with the girls?’
‘They seem to be spending most of their time at the club right now. Ronnie told me she’s developing quite a taste for the institutional life, and Lettice has booked herself in for lunch every day until next Wednesday.’ His smile was half-hearted. ‘You mean it, don’t you? If it will stop you worrying, of course I’ll stay with them, although I can’t imagine they’ll thank me—they’re frantically busy.’
‘It’s all right—the Snipe will sort it out. She’ll be pleased to see you. Don’t make a big thing of it, though—you don’t have to tell anyone if you stay out all night, do you?’
She laughed. ‘It’s not a boarding school, Archie. I can come and go as I please.’
‘Fine. I’ll tell the Snipe to make up a bed.’
‘All right. There’s no hurry, though—I thought I’d pop in to Holly Place first if there’s time when we get back. You were right yesterday—I do need to speak to Marta.’ She waited, but he said nothing. ‘You haven’t asked me anything about it.’
‘Perhaps I just don’t want to know.’ The remark came out more abruptly than he had intended, but it had the advantage, at least, of being honest.
‘It isn’t what you think.’
‘I’m glad you know what I think, because I don’t.’
‘Oh come on, Archie. This isn’t like you. Can’t we at least talk about it?’
‘No, Josephine, I don’t think we can. Who you see and what you do is entirely up to you—you’ve always made that abundantly clear. But surely you can’t expect me to sit here like some sort of passive sounding-board while you work out where your heart is? I’m not a bloody saint.’ He could see he had shocked her; in truth, he had shocked himself, but there was no point in trying to retract his words now. ‘This is something you’re going to have to work out for yourself. I can’t help you.’
They sat in silence as the train snaked through the East End. When they got off at Liverpool Street, he was surprised to find Fallowfield waiting for him on the platform. ‘I’ve got some information, Sir—I thought the sooner you heard it, the better.’ He smiled at Josephine. ‘Can I drop you somewhere, Miss Tey?’
‘Thanks, Bill, but no. I’ll get a taxi.’
‘No, Josephine, don’t be silly,’ Penrose said. ‘At least let us take you to Hampstead. I didn’t mean that we can’t ever …’
She cut him off abruptly. ‘No, Archie, it’s fine—you’re busy. And you’re right. I need to sort this out for myself. Tell me one thing, though: Marjorie’s murder and what happened to Lucy—is it because I’ve been digging up Sach and Walters?’
‘No. Marjorie knew nothing about her family history—I’m convinced of that.’
‘Good. I’ll see you at the gala.’ He nodded and moved to kiss her, but she had already walked away.