After leaving Rutherford, Grace returned to the police station. She considered going back to her lodgings but the moment Mavis arrived home she’d be playing foxtrots on the gramophone and what Grace needed was a less noisy place to think. The station was quiet except for the eternal laboured clicking of Constable Robinson at the typewriter.
Grace sat beside the shelves where the gas masks were kept and began making notes on a pad. Turning her thoughts into writing helped her think. She was confused. How could she believe Rutherford had tampered with one of the bodies at the temple but not the other, and had not murdered either one?
She began with the first victim, who had finally been identified as Mona Collingwood and who had been, strangely enough, the housemate of Phyllis Gibson. Or perhaps not so strange. Phyllis had moved to Gateshead from Benwell and may well have introduced Mona to one or more of her old clients.
Stu McPherson had confessed to robbing Mona after her handbag was found in his room but denied killing her.
Still, it wasn’t the only possibility.
Rutherford could have killed her for ritualistic use.
What about Ronny, who had planned to visit Phyllis upon returning to the area? Could he have had a dispute with his former lover’s housemate?
Grace penciled a dark line underneath her Mona Collingwood list and wrote down Ronny Arkwright.
The fact he’d also been found dead at the temple, his limbs arranged in the same fashion as Mona’s, pointed to Rutherford with his wild, necromantic schemes as the culprit, even if Rutherford wouldn’t admit it.
Then, too, Charlie Gibson had plenty of reason to hate Ronny. Impregnating his daughter, deliberately breaking his arm and crippling him. And he had got into a shouting match with Ronny the night Ronny died. He could have waited outside the pub for Ronny, followed him, and caught up to him near the ruins.
Phyllis, who had borne his child, also had a grievance against Ronny. Constable Wallace had mentioned her vicious temper.
So might Ronny’s widow. Despite Mavis’ denial, it was obvious to Grace it was Ronny who’d bloodied her nose.
What about Hans? Could he have been searching for Ronny that night trying to protect his friend Mavis? Hans had outbursts and Joop had wondered what he might do during one.
Then there were any number of unsavoury acquaintances. Ronny planned to move into the black market after he’d bribed a doctor to get a medical discharge. Had one of those acquaintances been afraid that Ronny might interfere with his business?
She heard Baines’ phone ring. A moment later Baines rushed out, pulling on his jacket, and was gone almost before the door’s bell stopped jingling.
Grace grabbed her coat, stuffed the pad in her pocket, and followed after Baines.
For a constable with barely a week on the job to be shadowing her superior was highly irregular, but some second sense had urged her to do so.
Despite a dying sun filling windows with blood, Grace felt dangerously exposed. All Sergeant Baines needed to do was look over his shoulder and he would see her.
Baines walked in the direction of the river. His progress was unsteady, reaching Scotswood Road as a tram was pulling up to the kerb. “Shop at Binns” advised the advertisement on the front of the tram.
Baines boarded the tram.
Grace had no time to think. She raced to the tram and got on as it started into motion.
Baines could hardly miss seeing her. “Miss Baxter, where are you going?”
He’d seated himself near the front. Not wanting to appear suspicious, Grace plumped down next to him. “Wallace asked me to deliver papers to headquarters.” She patted the pocket holding the note pad.
“A bit late, isn’t it? You ought to be on your way home now.”
“I’m going shopping afterward.”
“Oh?”
“At Binns,” she added, then realised she had no idea where Binns was located.
Luckily Baines wasn’t really paying attention. As the tram clattered on he lapsed into silence. Once he frowned. “Miss Baxter, you don’t have your gas mask with you!”
“Neither do you, sir.”
After that he was silent, leaving the tram at the Central Station. When they parted Grace did her best to lose herself in the crowd. As she looked back, he caught a Gateshead tram, just as she and Wallace had when they visited Phyllis Gibson.
Could Baines be going to interview Phyllis? Why?
Because Mona Collingwood had been Phyllis’ housemate. But why would Baines suddenly involve himself with a case he’d been ignoring?
Grace couldn’t very well follow Baines on the same tram after having claimed she was on her way to headquarters. She waited and took the next tram instead, having resolved to go straight to Phyllis Gibson’s home.
This time, crossing the High Level Bridge, Grace began to get nervous. What if her superior was there? Then what? It was reasonable for him to interview someone who knew the victim, although he shouldn’t be doing it in an impaired state.
Yet she didn’t think it was an official visit. There was that phone call before he departed the police station in a hurry.
There was really no way to know what was going on, nothing to do but take the leap or not.
Grace decided to leap.
***
Phyllis wore curlers and a flowered dress similar to the one she’d worn during Grace’s first visit. This time the flowers were bright yellow. She didn’t seem surprised to see Grace. She looked too exhausted for surprise or any other emotion. She had obviously been crying.
“You might as well come in, miss.”
Baines sprawled in an armchair facing the front window, sunlight framing him in a bright square. His eyeglasses were askew. “Good God, Phyllis!” He slurred her name. “What do you think you’re doing letting—?”
Phyllis told him to shut up, invited Grace to take a seat, and offered her tea.
Baines rose laboriously, steadying himself on the chair arm, and went to the table where he sat slumped forward, not looking at the women.
Grace glanced at him and then at Phyllis.
“Yes, we know each other,” Phyllis confirmed. “We’ve known each other for years. We met on the job. He was on his and I was on mine. A regular workplace romance, it was.”
She fetched a cup for Grace. “I hear you gave my daughter, Veronica, a nice Christmas present, miss. Thanks. I couldn’t do as much as usual for her this year. Things have been a little tight since my housemate vanished. Only found out today you bluebottles know she was the woman found at the temple. Took the local coppers coming round to tell me.” She turned to Baines. “Why didn’t you tell me, you bloody bastard?”
“I would have told you. You didn’t need to call me at the station.”
“When? When would you have told me, Joe?”
“Soon. I didn’t want to worry you. Tried to keep the police out of it,” he muttered.
“So you say,” Phyllis replied. “Seems like you failed, seeing as the police are here.”
“If you hadn’t rung up the station all hysterical insisting I get over here right away, she wouldn’t have followed me!”
Since she expected at the very least a reprimand on her record for following Baines and on the principle of in for a penny, in for a pound, Grace seized the opportunity Phyllis offered. “The lost paperwork, sir. Does that mean you didn’t want us investigating Mona’s death in case it led us here?”
Baines gave her a grim smile. “Oh, but I did want you investigating. You personally, Miss Baxter. Why do you think I’d put a raw newcomer on a murder case? And a woman, to boot? I was sure you and that broken down old fool, Wallace, would never find anything out.”
“Shows what you know, Joe,” put in Phyllis. “Women aren’t so stupid as you suppose. Was Mona blackmailing you? It wouldn’t do your career any good if it came out you were having an affair with me, a prostitute.”
Abruptly there was a gun in Baines’ hand.
“You looked in my handbag when I answered the door!” Phyllis shouted in outrage. “What else did you steal, you swine?”
Baines shrugged. “Illegal weapon. Shouldn’t have it. Useful for a personal quick exit, though.”
“But why?” Grace demanded, horrified.
“Do you think I haven’t felt like it ever since the night of the bombing? I killed her, her and the kids.”
“Joe, stop!”
The gun swung toward Phyllis.
Grace flung her cup at Baines’ head. Throwing up his hands to protect his face from hot tea, he dropped the weapon. Grace retrieved it from under the table.
“It’s mine,” Phyllis said, holding out her hand. “Like I said, my line of work is dangerous. These days I feel safer carrying it when I go out in the blackout. You never know who you might meet on a dark street.”
Baines got up abruptly and left the house, slamming the door.
“I would feel a lot safer if I actually had any bullets for it,” Phyllis continued after a moment.
“What does he mean he killed his wife and family?”
“He wasn’t at home at the time they died. It was a direct hit. He was with me at the time, you see, and feels so guilty about it he’s gone to pieces. He can’t forgive himself.”
Forgiven. That’s what the message at the séance must have meant, Grace thought. If it had indeed been sent by Baines’ wife.
Phyllis stared at her. “I love him,” she went on. “What in bloody hell’s wrong with me?”
***
Grace sat propped up on her bed, the bedroom door shut. She needed to be alone. She liked to think while walking, but the streets of Newcastle were too dark and cold for that, so she sought solitude, telling Mavis she wasn’t feeling well.
She heard Hans come in. She should have gone into the kitchen to say hello but she didn’t have the energy. Instead she picked up her mother’s Bible and leafed through its pages, searching out colloquies between her mother and grandmother.
Pausing at their lengthy duel over the witch of Endor, she thought of the séance.
What would the vicar say about attending such meetings? She recalled Mr. Elliott staring into the flaming church. This is real evil, he had said. Worse than the sacrilege committed with the rat, worse than any imagined rituals carried out at the temple with a stolen host.
From the kitchen came the sound of Geraldo and his Gaucho Tango Orchestra.
She set the Bible down on the chest of drawers, next to a couple of Mavis’ crisp bars.
Whether it was her wise woman’s blood or her subconscious at work, Grace could not say, but whatever the cause, the solution to the dual mystery came in a sudden silent explosion of realization, blowing everything else she had imagined away with the force of a bomb.