ON MY TRAVELS with Morley I often found myself in towns and in cities late at night or early in the morning and rather at a loss. What does one do in a town like Lewes when you can’t sleep? It was a problem I never seemed to face in London: then again, it was the sort of problem that made for fewer problems.
I found myself in the cool of that morning, standing smoking in the churchyard behind St Michael’s Church on the High Street. It was a rather lovely spot: a weeping willow, a nice view of the Castle Keep, Tom Paine’s house. You get to appreciate a place early in the morning, even in the cold and the dark: Lewes, I realised, sits in a kind of shallow hollow, surrounded by hills: Firle Beacon, Mount Caburn, Mount Harry. It feels secure and permanent.
Early mornings are deceptive.
Morley came striding past.
‘Good morning, Mr Morley,’ I called to him.
He seemed neither startled nor surprised.
‘Good morning, Sefton!’
‘Early start?’
‘I have been for a walk, Sefton, a good long walk, to mull things over. Up and over Mount Caburn to Glynde, from Glynde to Ringmer and then from Ringmer over the hills to Lewes again.’
‘That sounds like quite a walk.’
‘There was a lot of mulling to be done, Sefton. But yes, it was a super route. You should try it.’
‘Perhaps I shall.’
A milkman came rattling past, three bottles in each hand, cigarette clamped in his mouth. Miriam’s milkman. Morley whistled a cheery hello in greeting. The milkman whistled back and carried on his way.
‘Come on,’ said Morley. ‘Let’s walk together. I have done my thinking and have reached my conclusion.’
‘Your conclusion?’
‘About Lizzie’s death.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘There’s good news and there’s bad news, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, shall we start with the good news?’
‘I say good news …’ Morley tutted, as if scolding himself. ‘I was on the telephone last night to an old friend, Bernard Spilsbury. Do you know him?’
‘I can’t say I do, Mr Morley.’
The iceman was unloading ice outside the fishmonger’s.
‘Good morning!’ said Morley.
‘Good morning, gents.’
‘Pathologist – the Brighton trunk murder cases? The blazing car murder? Brides in the bath? Dr Crippen?’
‘They certainly ring a bell,’ I said.
‘He’s the best in the country, Bernard. I wanted to check something with him. It was something you said.’
‘Something I said?’
‘You said that when you pulled the poor girl from the swimming pool there was a something around her neck?’
‘Yes. It looked like a shoelace.’
We passed the baker, the butcher, the window cleaner, and greeted them all.
‘The shoelace,’ continued Morley, ‘is what made everyone think it was murder. Yet the doctor assigned to the case here – I spoke to him yesterday evening – told me that if the girl had been strangled he would have expected a deep groove in the neck.’
‘A deep groove?’
‘Precisely. Dreadful, I know. But they found no indications of such a groove, or indeed of asphyxia. Which rather casts doubt upon the possibility that she died by strangulation. Nor was there evidence that she had been subjected to forceful sexual intercourse.’
‘Thank goodness,’ I said.
‘But …’ Morley paused and stopped walking.
When out in the country he could not spot a bird’s nest, a squirrel, a mouse or indeed almost anything else without commenting upon it. There was not a ditch he would not pause to examine, forever seeking frogs and tadpoles and admiring every variety of fern and grass. But when in town, if anything, it was worse. He liked to stop at every shop. He had paused now outside a shop selling basketware.
‘They also sell dog leads,’ he said. ‘Look. And paraffin, for stoves.’
‘Very good, Mr Morley,’ I said.
‘Hooks, chains, ropes. I wonder if it was at one time a chandler’s?’
‘I don’t know. You were saying?’
‘I was?’
‘About Lizzie?’
‘Oh, yes. Lizzie.’
Lewes’s high-class greengrocer drove past in his van, bringing his provisions, ready to serve Virginia Woolf and the rest of Sussex’s artistic crème de la crème.
‘She was pregnant,’ said Morley.
‘Lizzie?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So, you think …?’
‘I rather fear Henry will be charged with her murder, yes. On the assumption that the child was his and they argued and … A shoelace has been found in his possession that matches the shoelace around her neck.’
‘Dear me,’ I said. ‘So you think he killed her when he learned that she was pregnant?’
‘Oh no. I don’t think for a moment that Henry killed her, Sefton. It’s just proving that he didn’t that’s the problem.’
I knew exactly how to prove that Henry didn’t kill Lizzie – to get Miriam to confess that she had spent the night with him. But I had given my word.
‘It’s hardly our problem, though, Mr Morley, is it? That’s a matter for the—’
‘I promised Molly I would do anything I could to assist her in proving her son’s innocence before leaving Sussex. Anything.’ He looked quite forlorn. ‘There’s one last thing left I can try, Sefton, if you’d like to accompany me. I may need your support.’