‘What about the woman who went out over the roof?’
‘If one of Miss Bray’s guests chooses an unconventional way of leaving, that’s hardly a matter for the Metropolitan Police.’
The sergeant wouldn’t apologise to me, of course. He’d have sooner been rolled down the Heath in a spiked barrel. He glared at me, organised a search of yards and dustbins up and down the street just to make a nuisance, then they all piled into their car and went. The crowd dispersed reluctantly and the four of us went back inside. Amy, Gwen and I clung together, half laughing, half crying.
‘Oh God, when I saw her coming out of that house…’
‘So she got away? She got right away?’
‘I told Gwen she’d find a skylight.’
‘I wonder what the people in the house thought?’
‘Oh God, I can’t believe we’ve done it.’
Bill sat on the chaise-longue and watched us, but I could see there was something bothering him.
‘Your friend, June Price – I gather they released her from Holloway on licence because she was seriously ill from her hunger strike?’
Gwen bit her lip and left it to me.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Then they withdrew the licence later because they decided her health had improved enough to serve the rest of her sentence?’
‘Only it hadn’t, that’s the point. They withdraw the licences before people are anywhere near recovered, then the whole process starts all over again.’
‘But it seems Miss Price was well enough recovered to perform acrobatics on rooftops.’
Gwen turned away. Amy took a sudden interest in tidying up papers on the table. My decision. I’d known Bill for only a matter of months, been with him only a few days in those months. I decided.
‘June Price is still very ill. The last I heard, just a few days ago, she couldn’t walk let alone climb roofs.’
Bill looked at me, an unreadable look.
‘That wasn’t June Price up there. It was a friend of ours called Bobbie Fieldfare. The whole thing was a diversion to keep Special Branch busy while we got the real June Price somewhere they won’t find her.’
Gwen said, happier now I’d made the decision: ‘Only Bobbie didn’t keep to the plan. She never does.’
‘That’s right. The idea was simply that the police should go upstairs, pull the covers off the bed and – surprise – it’s not the woman they’re looking for. Since Bobbie isn’t actually wanted for anything at the moment, they’d have had to let her go.’
‘But being Bobbie, she naturally decides to improve on that and take to the rooftops.’
We started laughing again, but when I got my hands on the coffee grinder at last, they were shaking so much I could hardly pour in the beans. At least the police hadn’t been destructive in their search. The place wasn’t much more of a mess than it had been. When I went into the kitchen to fill the kettle the unexpected scent of lily-of-the-valley was flooding the place and I felt a surge of regret for Bill. He’d done well, very well, but I shouldn’t have let him in for this.
* * *
As we sipped our coffee he said, ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit late for Box Hill now, but what about a look at the fair on the Heath?’
Amy and Gwen said, far too quickly and politely, that they must go, they had things to do. Gwen, I knew, would be going back to a lonely flat in Paddington that she usually shared with June. She knew where we’d taken June for safety, but it was a long way from London and she was a marked woman so she couldn’t visit or even write to her. They went, leaving me and Bill alone, too alone. There was a lot I didn’t know about him, far more he didn’t know about me. He knew I was a suffragette, of course, but this was his first look at what that meant.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You helped a lot.’
That was less than he deserved. Without his authoritative manner, we’d have still had police crawling all over the house. Still, it had been convention that worked for him and he knew now what an outlaw I was.
‘Glad to be of use.’
Which told me nothing.
‘Sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce you to Bobbie. She’s a wild woman.’
‘So the rest of you are tame?’
‘You know, they might have caught her if it hadn’t been for that horn making such a row. Was it the police panicking?’
He shook his head.
‘Anywhere there’s a motorcar, there’s an urchin just itching to get his hands on the hooter.’
‘So it was one of the boys?’
‘With a little encouragement, yes.’
‘Encouragement?’
‘I gave him a shilling and suggested he should see how loud it was.’
‘Bill!’ I stared at him. ‘When you did that, you thought you were assisting the escape of a prisoner!’
‘Just don’t tell them that at the Inner Temple, that’s all.’
He smiled. I realised I was staring at him and stood up.
‘So what about that walk on the Heath?’
‘Yes, you look as if you need to relax. Not surprising, I suppose, with all this on your mind.’
I hadn’t forgotten about Verona, but the raid had been a diversion from the nagging questions. Now they were starting again.
‘I’m afraid it’s not only all this. Come on, let’s walk.’
Chapter Four
THE CROWDS WERE THICKEST ROUND THE FAIR IN the Vale of Health. A steam organ on the roundabout was pumping out Soldiers of the Queen. Smells of hot sugar and fat from food stalls hung in the air under a cloudy sky. I noticed a cart selling a Bavarian type of sausage. A big grey-haired woman spiked them out of a boiling vat. A small dark man who might have been her son swaddled them in twists of paper, dabbed on mustard and put them in waiting hands, threepence each.
‘Hungry?’ Bill said.
‘No. Just looking at the name.’
The name on the side of the cart was Harry Black, amateurishly painted. Underneath you could just make out another name – Hans Schwarz.
‘Poor blighter,’ Bill said: ‘The Daily Mail’s got a lot to answer for.’ Hunting for spies had become a national sport in the past few years, with Germany talking peace but building battleships, so it wasn’t a good idea to do business under a German name, especially as far as London crowds were concerned. The most inoffensive barbers, café owners or shopkeepers were potential agents of the Kaiser.
We walked halfway across the Heath to get away from the the crowds and sat down on a grassy slope with London stretched out below us in the haze. I told Bill about Verona and was grateful at least that he didn’t fuss, say how awful for me or any of the conventional, useless things.
‘So you weren’t close to her?’
‘Not in the least. I only looked her up out of duty.’
He gave me a long look.
‘You think I’m callous?’
‘I know you’re not. But…’
‘You think I should have taken better care of her?’
‘It isn’t a question of care. You weren’t in loco parentis.’
‘Her father thinks I as good as killed her. A good happy girl, apparently, until I got her involved in politics.’
‘From what you tell me, that’s nonsense.’
‘Yes, of course it is.’
‘So why are you feeling guilty?’
With anybody else I’d probably have exploded and said I wasn’t feeling guilty at all, why should I be? But Bill had such a matter-of-fact way of looking at things that I didn’t resent it.
‘Doesn’t everybody feel guilty when somebody they know commits suicide? You know – if I’d written that letter, or sent him ten pounds or gone to see him, then he wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Yes, but it’s not rational. Anyway, you did go and see her.’
‘Maybe I should have gone back. But that last time, with the two men there, I could see she didn’t need me. She had her own life. If it had been after that first v
isit, in December when she hadn’t been in London long, I might have understood.’
‘You thought she was suicidal then?’
‘No, of course not or I’d have done something. Only, she struck me…’ I had to stop and think about it. Bill asked if I minded if he lit his pipe. I liked the smell of his tobacco. It had a musty sweetness to it, like apples stored in a loft.
‘… she struck me as somebody who’d taken a leap and was close to regretting it. It can’t have been easy for her to leave a close family and the house where she’d grown up.’
‘Why did she, then?’
‘The usual things. Independence. Ambition.’
‘Ambition as an artist?’
‘My guess is that studying art was just an excuse to get out into the big wide world. Then she got there and didn’t know quite what to do. She was asking me about all sorts of things – socialism, pacifism, even anarchism. She struck me as somebody looking for a cause.’
‘Then she found one,’ Bill said.
‘Joining us, you mean? It’s one thing to go on a march or two but that’s not the same as being committed.’
‘If you saw her at that Buckingham Palace riot—’
‘Deputation.’
‘If you saw her there, that’s pretty committed.’
‘I’m not even sure it was her. But if it was, that bothers me.’
‘Why?’
‘Let’s assume it was. Even if she’s not in the thick of things, she cares enough to be there. Exactly a week after that, I find her dead. If she was that despairing about things, why bother to go to a political demonstration? Why does anything matter if you’ve decided to kill yourself?’
Bill lay back and closed his eyes. ‘There’s a story somebody told me once. A man with all sorts of troubles decides to end them by jumping off the pier. Police fish the body out, ask if anybody saw him before he jumped. Oh yes, says the man in the ticket booth. We had an argument. He reckoned I’d given him a dud halfpenny in his change.’
Music drifted over from the fairground, now Down at the Old Bull and Bush. Two children came rolling down the slope, laughing, nearly cannoning into us. I followed Bill’s example and lay back on the grass, looking up at the grey sky. After all that had happened it was good just to lie there thinking of nothing in particular. Or it would have been, if it had lasted for more than half a minute.
I said, ‘I could talk to people I know. Find out if it really was her outside Buckingham Palace.’
‘Will that help?’
‘I’d like to know. And I could go back to the student house again. I suppose there’ll be things of hers there. Her mother will want them.’
I remembered that her lodgings, on that first visit, had been decorated with little souvenirs from home – a framed photograph of her parents and brother, a painting of the estuary, a pennant that looked as if it came from a sailing dinghy.
‘Do you have to do that?’
‘I can’t leave it to Alexandra. I could take them when I have to go down for the inquest.’
‘Do you want me to come to the inquest with you?’
‘All the way to Devon from Manchester? Why?’
‘You might want a friend there.’
‘It’s all right, I’ve been to inquests before.’
I don’t know if he was hurt, but he went quiet for a while. I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but I was surprised he was so concerned. All I had to do was describe how I found her. It would be the coroner’s job and the jurors’ to draw conclusions, not mine. In spite of that, I couldn’t help worrying away at it, trying to visualise it. Walk into the boathouse, into the shadows. Salt water lapping against the walls, dinghies and rowing boats floating. It would be brighter than I remembered it, with the tide up and light reflecting from the water. There’d be plenty of rope in a boathouse, she’d know where to find it, and the girl who sailed a dinghy better than her brother would tie seamanlike knots. Stand on the wooden walkway, throw one end of a rope over a roof beam. It might take two or three tries, but she’d be efficient at that as well. Tie the rope, leaving a long end hanging down. Knot a noose, then sit down on the walkway and tie your feet to a plank of wood, firmly round the ankles so that they won’t get loose. They’d been good knots. I’d struggled to undo them before I realised it wasn’t any use. Then what? Noose round neck and push off into the water. You’d keep upright, couldn’t prevent yourself doing it. Her hands hadn’t been tied. They’d close round the rope that went up to the beam above her head, while her feet floated on the water. So she’d stay there, conscious, waiting for the tide to go out, feeling the tug of it on the plank, first a twitch then a drag that pulled her legs and body out towards the silver expanse of water that was getting narrower all the time. She’d surely fight it. Even if you wanted to die, you’d fight it. But sooner or later, the strength would drain out of your arms like the tide draining out of the creeks, and the noose would tighten.
Bill said, ‘Do you think she hoped somebody might come and save her?’
So he’d been thinking too.
‘Who? Nobody knew she was there. Her parents thought she was still in London. Her brother was away.’
‘There’s an element of gambling in some suicides, don’t you think? If anybody in the world loves me, I’ll be saved.’
‘But to stack the odds so much against herself? If there’s anything that’s certain, it’s tides. She grew up with that.’
‘You sound angry with her.’
‘I am, if—’
‘If what?’
I didn’t answer. After a while we got up and started to stroll back across the Heath.
‘Boris Godunov this evening?’
‘Why not?’
After all, we did have a victory over the police to celebrate, only I wasn’t as happy about that as I should have been. A suicide insults everybody left alive. All the things you think matter, from a great cause to the next cup of tea, hadn’t counted for anything in the suicide’s eyes. Devalued currency.
‘What’s going on there?’ Bill said.
We were back near the funfair. At first I thought Harry Black and his mother at the sausage cart were just having a rush of good business, then I heard the raised angry voices, saw the cart rocking and realised it was nothing as innocent as that. There was a chant going up.
‘Ger-man spies. Dir-ty Ger-man spies.’
Above the heads of the crowd, trapped inside the cart, I saw the scared faces of the old woman and the dark-haired man. He was trying to reason with them, getting nowhere.
‘Nell, wait! Leave it to the police.’
But Bill didn’t take his own advice. We both ran over. The air round the crowd was heavy with beer fumes. They were mostly young men and a few girls, having some holiday fun as they saw it, but once they’d started it was taking them over, growing vicious. As they chanted and pushed against the cart it rocked almost off its wheels. Another few heaves and it would be over with the the two people and a cauldron of boiling water inside. I shouted to the crowd to stop it but it did no good. Bill grabbed a couple of men by the collar and dragged them aside, so of course they turned on him. For once in my life I was glad to hear a police whistle shrilling and see navy-blue uniforms. Bill’s attackers melted away. He took my arm and dragged me to one side.
‘Just let them get on with it.’
The police didn’t even need to use their truncheons and nobody hung around to be arrested. In a few minutes all that was left to show there’d been trouble was an area of scuffed grass with burst sausages trampled into it. The Blacks were still inside the cart, the woman sobbing and trembling, the man apparently arguing with the police who didn’t seem sympathetic. We watched as a policeman escorted the man to fetch his donkey from where it was tethered under a tree and stood over him while he harnessed it to the cart. The woman emptied the cauldron on to the grass, stowed away the mustard jar and they rolled off towards the road. Some of the drunks cheered from a distance as they went.
Bill and I followed the cart out to the road and watched it going slowly down the hill. We’d both had enough of the Heath and the holiday, although it was still only midday.
I said, ‘I suppose I could go to the student house this afternoon, get it over with.’
* * *
I hadn’t intended Bill to come with me, but he seemed to take it for granted that he would and I was feeling too down to argue. We decided to take the underground into the centre of town. While we waited on the platform Bill asked: ‘You’re hoping her friends might give you some idea why she killed herself?’
A train was coming, which saved me from having to answer. Bill had been through enough already today. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him something that had been growing in my mind since I found her. Supposing the question wasn’t ‘why’ but ‘if’?
Chapter Five
THE STUDENT HOUSE WHERE I’D LAST SEEN VERONA alive was in one of the small streets behind Cheyne Walk in the stretch between Battersea Bridge and Albert Bridge, close enough to the river to hear seagulls and smell the mud when the tide was out. It was mid afternoon when we got there after a walk along Chelsea Embankment, not saying much. I wished, to be honest, that Bill weren’t there but after what he’d done for us, I could hardly tell him to go away. I hadn’t paid much attention to the outside of the house on my other visits, beyond noting that it looked run-down, so before we went in I stood with Bill on the pavement opposite and had a good look at it. The general impression was of a house that hadn’t woken up yet, even on a holiday afternoon. There were curtains drawn over the downstairs windows, yellowed linings turned to the street. The sash windows of the two upstairs storeys were closed, one of them pinning down a thin blue towel hung out to dry, flapping languidly in the breeze coming from the river. The sill next to it, with cream paint flaking off the stonework, supported a milk bottle and a dead geranium in a pot that looked as if it would slide down into the street at any moment.
‘Probably all out,’ Bill said, sounding unconcerned.
We crossed the street. The front door, probably blue once, had faded to grey blistered with paint bubbles from sunnier days than this one. The knocker was broken, hanging from one side. I knocked, waited, and knocked again.
The Perfect Daughter Page 4