The German agent known as Miss Pillbody had memorized every inch of the bathing closet that served the landing they had assigned her at Holloway. It was about twenty feet long, nine feet wide and ten in height. There were two baths in this room, separated from each other by a wooden partition, so two female prisoners could bathe at the same time. But she always bathed alone, after the incident where she was forced to near-drown the Dryden woman in scalding water, just to show her who was boss. For months afterwards Dryden had stared out from eyes sunk into shiny, scarred skin and each time the gaze of hatred had been held by Miss Pillbody. After Dryden’s husband visited for the last time, just before his wife’s release date, she had hanged herself in the laundry. Miss Pillbody wasn’t sure what her roughhouse of a husband had said about welcoming home a mutilated monster, but she could imagine.
Adjoining the bathroom was a small store of prison-made clothing, carefully arranged on the shelves, consisting of dark grey jackets, vests, skirts, socks and shoes. There was also a large chest of drawers containing linen, stockings, flannel shirts, and drawers. This was the domain of Mrs Gray, the bathing wardress.
Miss Pillbody piled up her stockings, drawers, petticoat, dress, apron and cap and slipped on a chemise, taking her shoes with her. There would be freshly laundered clothes waiting for her upon her return. She was taken by a landing wardress to the medical room, where she was weighed by a matron, who noted the figure in a ledger, and then returned to the bath closet, where the bathing wardress had already drawn the water and was waiting to gift her the cube of carbolic soap she was allowed, plus an oatmeal-coloured linen towel and a rag of flannelette.
‘Ten minutes,’ the ferret-like Mrs Gray said.
‘Fifteen, please, ma’am,’ Miss Pillbody replied, head to one side, eyes as wide as she could make them. She thought of a dormouse or a cute rabbit as she did so.
‘Twelve,’ said Mrs Gray, her voice losing its sharp edge. ‘Shout if you need anything.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the prisoner replied. ‘And thank you, ma’am.’
Once the sour-faced bitch was next door, Miss Pillbody quickly kneeled and, using what fingernails she had left after stitching webbing belts for the British soldiers, she levered up a loose hearth tile and slipped out the piece of metal she had been working on for weeks now. She had spotted it, glinting in the corner of the exercise yard, close to a drainpipe. She had resisted the urge to look up, to see where it had come from. Where it had come from didn’t matter. Where it was going did. Stooping to apparently retie her shoelaces, she had managed to secrete the metal up the sleeve of her prison jacket, and to keep it hidden until the next bath time.
It was around fifteen centimetres long, perforated with four drilled holes, two at each end, and with blunt, rounded extremities. A fixing strap of some description, intended to repair the drainpipe or gutter or part of the roof. About as threatening as a baby’s rattle. No matter, it was not made of lead or zinc or copper or any other useless metal, but galvanized steel.
And so each bath time she used the hardest pumice stone to work on one of those curves, masking the sound by splashing enthusiastically with her feet, ever alert for the footfall of Wardress Gray, honing and honing until now, more than a month after she had begun, a definite point was beginning to emerge.
She wasn’t quite sure what she would do with it. She had considered taking Gray hostage, but that would leave her trapped in the bathroom with no further card to play. True, she was sure that there was a way to the prison’s roof space, following the pipes, if one had time to tear down the ceiling. Perhaps even get onto the roof. What then? It was a long way down to freedom without a ladder of some description. And the prison had searchlamps and sharpshooters, and the governor wouldn’t be afraid to use them.
She had to do something to get free. She had been reprieved once, that was true, but she knew she was an itch the British Government would love to scratch into oblivion. One day, they would find the means to retry her and hang her. Whether it was when they had won or lost the war would make no difference. Whatever the outcome, she was a loose end to be tidied away – a German spy and a multiple murderer who once had the temerity to try to kill the great Sherlock Holmes out on the sinking sands of Foulness island. Hanging, she imagined many would think, was too good for her. Of course she could be wrong, they might just leave her to rot into old age, in many ways an even worse fate.
No, sometime, somehow, the chance to escape would present itself and she would be ready.
The banging on the door made her jump and she quickly pushed the makeshift weapon under her thigh.
‘Wardress Gray!’ She recognized the gruff voice as belonging to Jefferys, the big-nosed senior warden of this wing. The door was unlocked, but he would not enter a room where there might be naked ladies, much as she suspected he might enjoy that. One thing that had been a pleasant surprise, none of the male staff had ever tried to molest her. Perhaps they had heard what happened to Gray’s predecessor, who liked to help the prisoners clean all their most intimate places. Slipped on the soap and cracked her skull, the report said.
Wardress Gray came through and opened the door a notch. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Tell Pillbody to hurry along.’
Pillbody. She had thought it best not to use her true German name. It would be a constant reminder to both guards and inmates of why she was in prison.
‘I have only just got in,’ she protested from the tub.
‘Yes, Missy, but you have a visitor.’
A visitor? She thought. Nobody ever visited Miss Pillbody. Her curiosity got the better of her. She moved the crude knife towards her buttocks, lifted one cheek, wedged it in the crack and clenched hard. She would find a way to return it to the hiding place or locate a new one when the opportunity arose. She carefully levered herself up.
‘Can I have a towel, ma’am?’ she asked, excited, despite herself, at the prospect.
A visitor!
‘Who is it, Mr Jefferys?’ she asked. ‘Did you get a name?’
‘There’s a Mrs Gregson to see you.’
Miss Pillbody almost fell back into the water in shock. Of all the Fotzen to come out of the woodwork, it had to be that one.