WHAT YOU FORGET is the smell of the houses back then: the smell of coal, and the smell of paraffin, the all-pervasive smell of damp, from the cold and from the condensation. And you forget about the sheer endless drudgery of household chores, the clothes boiled in a copper, the food cooked on the old ranges that had to be constantly blackleaded, and the mangles, the oil lamps, the hearths, the doorsteps forever to be whitened. The old feather beds, even, that you had to retick, rubbing soap inside to stop the feathers coming through. It was never-ending, and it was awful. The good old days weren’t just times of great hardship. They were appalling. Years after the completion of The County Guides, I would receive letters from people harking back to the good old days, recalling their memories and praising the England that we knew then and we wrote about, and how things were no longer the same. And I would always think, do you really want to go back in time?
The front door of Lizzie’s parents’ house opened to the red brick-floored living room, the kind of red brick floor that people used to rub with another brick to clean. There was a rag rug, a big old black coal range on which the cooking was done, and opposite, against the wall, a long black settle. And that was it. Leading out back you could see a tiny larder, with a little stone slab on which the milk was kept, something wrapped in brown paper. There were also a couple of earthenware crocks and the remains of something hanging on a hook in the ceiling.
Mrs Walter, Lizzie’s mother, was doing the ironing by the range on a worn wooden board. She took up her iron, spat on it to check the heat and then proceeded.
‘We won’t disturb you for long, Mrs Walter. I can see that you’re busy.’
‘That I am,’ said Mrs Walter.
‘Shall we?’ Morley nodded towards the settle.
Mrs Walter nodded and continued with her chores.
Morley had very little grasp, to be honest, of the working and domestic lives of ordinary people. Though from the very humblest of beginnings, at St George’s he now enjoyed the assistance of a housemaid, a cook, a gardener and a gardener’s boy. At one time he also employed a gamekeeper and a chauffeur. The cook was up to light the kitchen range at five every morning. The housemaid would set the fires and lay breakfast and bring water to the bathrooms for the washbasins. The laundry was taken once a week in its wicker hamper to the washerwoman in town, and there was always someone available to clean the lamps, and the cutlery, and the shoes, and to generally sweep and polish and dust. Having come from nowhere, he had successfully created for himself the life of an Edwardian country gent. Mrs Walter’s life was the opposite. You could certainly understand why Morley was a classical liberal. And you could certainly understand why Mrs Walter and her daughter might have turned to fascism, communism, or any other -ism.
We had introduced ourselves as school inspectors.
‘But we’re not school inspectors,’ I’d said to Morley.
‘Did we or did we not inspect Lizzie’s school when we were there?’
‘In a sense,’ I said. ‘Insofar as we ransacked her desk.’
‘There we are then,’ said Morley.
‘I cannot begin to imagine your grief, Mrs Walter,’ he said.
Mrs Walter spat on her iron and said nothing.
‘I wonder if you might be able to help us with something.’
Nothing.
‘We came across this note, Mrs Walter, in your daughter’s desk drawer at school.’ Morley produced the note with its list of names.
Mrs Walter appeared entirely uninterested.
‘I believe this note, Mrs Walter, may have been responsible for driving your daughter to the most extreme of measures.’
‘What sort of a note?’ said Mrs Walter.
‘It is a note containing a list of women’s names.’
‘And what’s that got to do with Lizzie’s death?’
‘We think it might be a list of Henry Harper’s lovers.’
I looked at Morley, startled. This, presumably, was one of the things he’d concluded on his long morning walk.
Mrs Walter carried on ironing.
‘We wonder, Mrs Walter, if perhaps Lizzie felt she had no one to turn to, that she was sent this note, that she felt she was being mocked and that she therefore … But we would only be able to prove that if, for example, she had left a note.’
Another note? The note listing Henry’s lovers and—
‘You mean a suicide note,’ said Mrs Walter.
‘That’s right,’ said Morley.
‘I told the police, there was no note.’
‘I know what you told the police, Mrs Walter. But I wonder if perhaps you might have misplaced it or overlooked it?’
‘I told the police there was no note.’
‘If there were a note,’ said Morley. ‘If it were to find its way into our hands it would be possible for us to present it to the police, along with this note, and no questions would be asked.’
‘What difference would it make?’
‘Well, if it were the case, Mrs Walter, that your daughter had … was … a suicide, then an innocent man would be going to prison – and indeed in all likelihood would be facing the death sentence – for a murder he did not commit.’
‘An innocent man?’ she said.
‘That’s right. Henry Harper.’
Mrs Walter had finished her ironing, which she piled up next to us on the settle. She wandered out back into her larder, took a rough-looking biscuit from the earthenware jar and poured herself a cup of milk – breakfast, presumably – and stood looking at us. She offered us nothing. She looked at us as if we were her sworn enemies.
‘You people have no idea.’
‘I don’t know which sort of people you mean by that, Mrs Walter.’
‘You people.’
‘Which people?’
‘Educated people, with your operas and your theatres, coming into town. There’s nothing in it for any of us, is there?’
‘But Lizzie was involved in the staging of the opera at the Hudsons’,’ said Morley.
‘She had ideas above her station,’ said Mrs Walter. ‘And look where it got her.’
‘Mrs Walter,’ said Morley, ‘do you know—’
‘Do you know how long my family has been in Lewes?’
‘I don’t, Mrs Walter.’
‘Four hundred years. How long have you been here?’
‘A couple of days,’ said Morley.
She snorted in derision. ‘Well, you’ve had your fill. I think it’s time you went.’
Morley and I got up to leave.
‘We know that Lizzie was pregnant, Mrs Walter,’ said Morley.
‘You do, do you? You think you know everything, don’t you?’
‘No,’ said Morley, ‘but—’
‘And what does it matter to you, that she was pregnant?’
‘It … I—’
‘Do you know what it would have meant to her?’
‘Being pregnant?’ said Morley. ‘Bringing a new life into the world and—’
‘It would have meant she’d have lost her job. After all those years of study. And what would he have done, do you think? Stood by her?’
‘I’m sure Henry Harper is a man of honour, Mrs Walter.’
‘Ha!’ Mrs Walter spat out a bitter laugh. ‘He’s a rich American is what he is. Drifted in here, working on some … thing for a couple of months. Lizzie meant nothing to him. She was just a bit of fun for him.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true, Mrs Walter.’
‘Are you married?’
‘I was …’
‘I’ve been married twenty years. I know what you’re like. You’re all the same. You’re worse than dogs.’
‘I do not know what happened between Henry and Lizzie, Mrs Walter,’ said Morley. ‘But I do know that whatever happened, Lizzie was terribly disappointed with Henry and that her … actions may have been intended to punish him, but I’m not sure that she would have wanted him to go to prison, and possibly hang.’
‘And you’d know her mind, would you?’
‘I know that in order for justice to be seen to be done, justice must be done, Mrs Walter – not injustice.’
‘And I know that oftentimes people like you get away with murder.’
‘Even if it wasn’t murder?’ said Morley.
A boy came clattering down the stairs. He was perhaps six or seven years old. He was dressed in a thin woollen jersey and a pair of ill-fitting shorts. He looked vaguely familiar.
‘Good morning, Sidney,’ said Morley.
It was the boy from King’s Road School. Lizzie’s little brother?
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Sidney.
‘How do you know this man, Sidney?’ asked Mrs Walter, furious.
‘He was at school.’
‘And Sidney did himself proud, Mrs Walter,’ said Morley. ‘Everyone deserves a chance. Isn’t that what your daughter had devoted her life to?’
‘Goodbye,’ said Mrs Walter, indicating the door.
We lifted up the latch – by means of an old shoelace – and stepped outside.
Morley took a deep sigh as we set off down the street.
‘Well, we did our best, Sefton.’
As we were about to turn onto the main street, Sidney ran up to us and gave us an envelope.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘From Mother.’
And then he ran off happily down the street, kicking a stone as he went.