Libby smiled to herself at Ben’s accurate description of the Bakers’ night in. ‘There was an anonymous letter scandal, followed by a suicide. We were thinking of a local play about it.’
‘Sounds a bit grim,’ said Jane dubiously. ‘Would the villagers want to be reminded of that?’
‘The more I think about it,’ said Libby honestly, ‘the less I think they would, but I’ve got interested, now.’
‘Come on, Libby,’ said Jane, in much the same tone that everyone else used, ‘you can’t go solving fifty-year-old mysteries.’
‘Oh, it isn’t a mystery,’ said Libby, ‘and I’m not trying to solve it. Although,’ she said after a pause, ‘there is one aspect …’
‘There,’ said Jane in triumph. ‘I knew it!’
‘And what aspect is that?’ asked Ben, when Libby put the phone down.
‘Oh, just the father of Amy’s baby.’ Libby was nonchalant.
‘Oh, yes? Still on that tack? Look, Libby, it won’t be anything to do with Cy’s mum, you know. For a start, Steeple Martin’s a hell of a long way from Maidstone, and certainly was in the nineteen-forties. Their hoppers would have been local. Well, it said so on the site you found about them, didn’t it?’
‘But they travelled around. Some of the people Flo was telling me about who didn’t have papers. They were itinerants.’
‘How do you know?’
‘George Orwell wrote about them,’ said Libby, looking uncomfortable. ‘In A Clergyman’s Daughter.’
‘And in his essay on hoppers, I know.’ Ben smiled. ‘I come from a hop-picking family, don’t forget, but, Libby, he was talking about nineteen thirty-one. Not the war years.’
‘But Flo said a lot of people came down from London who’d deliberately lost their identity cards. People who abandoned their families, or criminals –’
‘I’m sure they did, but why do you think there’s any connection either with Amy or Cy’s mum?’
‘Because of what Flo said about the pickers. Farmers were willing to take on men without identity cards because there was such a shortage, and a lot of them must have been criminals, mustn’t they? Or what we’d call draft-dodgers these days?’
‘Do we? I thought that was an American term. Anyway, yes, I suppose you could be right, but it still doesn’t link Cy’s mum with Amy Taylor for goodness sake. Why should it? Besides, Amy’s baby was born early in the war, if I remember rightly, whereas Cy’s mum would have been born much nearer the end, wouldn’t she?’
Libby looked crestfallen. ‘You’re right. I’m putting two and two together and making five as usual.’
Ben came over and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘And despite what I usually say, you’re so frequently right!’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Cheer up, kid! Tomorrow you can look up Jane’s archives and have a good delve into the Burton and Taylor mystery.’
‘But, you know,’ said Libby, perching on the edge of the sofa, ‘I think maybe I won’t write their story. It would make me uncomfortable.’
‘Because of what happened during The Hop Pickers?’
Libby nodded. ‘The more I’ve thought about it over the weekend, the more it seems like an intrusion.’
‘Into what, though? I thought we decided last night that there wasn’t anybody left who might be affected by it.’
‘Oh, you never know,’ said Libby. ‘Look how many times over the last few years Fran and I have found things in the past that have a direct influence on what’s happening now. I don’t want to stir things up.’
‘But if you go rooting round to find out about it, you’ll be stirring things up anyway.’
‘Not if all I do is look through archives,’ said Libby. ‘There won’t be anyone to talk to, and to be honest, I don’t know why I still want to.’
‘Because of the connection with the anonymous letters,’ said Ben. ‘That’s how you first got to hear about Burton and Taylor.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Libby, looking up. ‘Do you know, I’d forgotten about that for a moment.’
‘You hadn’t forgotten Cy’s mum, though. How could you have forgotten the anonymous letter connection?’
‘Oh, bother.’ Libby frowned. ‘I don’t know. Everything’s got a bit dissociated now. Perhaps I’d better go to bed.’
‘What a good idea,’ said Ben, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet. ‘Shall I come too?’
On Monday morning Colin phoned.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t get in touch yesterday,’ he said. ‘Cy was in a bit of a state.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Libby. ‘Because of me wanting to talk to him?’
‘No, no, dear. Because I’m off to work again. I’ll only be away a week – well, less, actually – back on Saturday. He’s worried about talking to people. I said he’s much better than he was.’
‘So does he want to see me?’
‘Oh, yes, dear. He’d welcome it. He’s not going back to work, probably until after Christmas, so it would be nice for him to have someone to talk to, apart from Sheila, who’s said she’ll pop in from time to time.’
‘That’s good of her,’ said Libby.
‘Yes.’ Colin sighed. ‘She’s a good soul, well, you saw, didn’t you, but she’s not exactly a laugh a minute.’
Libby grinned. ‘I think I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘So when shall I come over?’
‘Tomorrow? I’m off later today, so things will be a bit chaotic.’
‘Morning? About eleven?’
‘Lovely, dear,’ said Colin. ‘I’ll tell him, and I’ll see you when I get back.’ He gave a little giggle. ‘We’ve got quite friendly all of a sudden, haven’t we?’
It was some time later, while Libby was staring gloomily at a new painting in the conservatory, that Jane rang.
‘We haven’t got any copies here before about 1979, so I can’t tell you anything about Amy, but I looked her up online and found a couple of reports on odd little sites. Shall I email the links? At least it’ll give you a date, and you can go to the library and look it up.’
‘Brilliant, Jane! Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you were an adept silver surfer these days.’
‘Oi! I’m not that old.’
Jane laughed. ‘Ever young, that’s you. I’ll email these links now.’
‘OK, thanks, Jane. I hope you didn’t have to go to much trouble.’
‘No trouble for my own personal matchmaker,’ said Jane. ‘Bring Ben over for supper soon.’
‘Just name the day,’ said Libby, being a willing guinea pig for Jane’s new-found expertise in the cooking department.
When Jane’s email came through, there were several links, and Libby beamed at the screen, thankful for the insight she had once shown in doing her bit to get Jane and her husband Terry together. It meant Jane was always willing to do a little light investigating for her.
There were several short reports of the finding of Amy’s body, and a report of the coroner’s inquest on a genealogy site. This raised Libby’s hopes of finding living relatives, but the site only provided access to paid-up members. However, the report, whether verbatim or not, was interesting.
Amy Taylor’s body had been found by a dog walker (inevitable, thought Libby) early on April 21st 1957, in a small pond on land owned by Frank Carpenter. (Flo didn’t tell me that.) It was Easter Sunday. The dog walker, a Mr Elliott Brown, had recognised her and tried to pull her out, but, on realising she was dead, ran to the nearest house to raise the alarm. Luckily, according to the coroner, the owners were on the telephone.
Of course. Libby looked up at the window. Everybody didn’t have a telephone in those days. Unthinkable now, but for a lot of people, giving someone a quick ring meant a trek to the nearest red telephone box with four old pennies. She wondered which house it was. It could easily have been Steeple Farm. Who was living there then? Millie would have been too young, certainly not married yet. She returned to the screen.
For some reason,
the police had gone to the vicarage. Perhaps Mr Elliott Brown knew that Amy played for the Sunday School and the vicar would need to be told? Anyway, the vicar had been told and was asked for the names of any friends or family. The vicar, Reverend Greene, as Libby already knew, had been called to give evidence and confirmed that he had asked to inform Miss Maud Burton himself, as she was a close friend of Amy Taylor, and, indeed, they had both been on the parish council. And how did Miss Burton take the news? asked the coroner. Badly, Libby gathered, from the measured tones of the report.
The police, in the form of an Inspector Chadleigh, had then gone to Miss Taylor’s home and found the anonymous letter with its handwritten comment. This was agreed upon as the motive for the suicide, but had prompted Inspector Chadleigh to ask for an adjournment as it had been decided that the letter and its author must be investigated. The Inspector was asked if any others had been received in the village, and he was able to confirm that he knew of at least three, the vicar, Doctor Abercrombie, who had attended the body as police surgeon and Miss Maud Burton. The inquest was adjourned.
Frustrated, Libby tried to find further links on the site, but was unable to. Then she remembered Jane’s other links, and began to investigate them. Most, as she had already discovered, were merely short reports of Amy’s death. Then she had a brainwave and Googled Maud Burton’s name, linked with Amy Taylor’s. Sure enough, up came three top results.
The first was taken from a contemporary newspaper report. The other two linked back to it, so Libby downloaded the PDF document and settled down to read.
The first page was the newspaper report, copied verbatim. Maud Burton, it said, had been found in possession of certain items connected to the writing and sending of anonymous letters, and had admitted sending them over a period of six weeks. It further stated that it was the opinion of the police that the letter received by Amy Taylor had been the cause of her suicide, and this evidence was presented at the resumed inquest, which concluded with a verdict of suicide when the balance of the mind was disturbed. The coroner finished up with a severe lecture on the irresponsibility and dangers of anonymous letters, but no mention was made of a punishment for Maud Burton.
Well, thought Libby, I don’t suppose it was – what did they used to call it? – an arrestable offence. Unless it was libel – or was it slander? – no, libel was written, slander was spoken. Then the defamation laws would come into play, except that in the 1950s things were very different. But in Amy’s own handwriting there was the evidence that Maud’s accusation was true. Nothing was said about the contents, true or otherwise, of the letters received by the Reverend Greene, Doctor Abercrombie, Albert Grimes, Frank Carpenter and Hetty and Greg Wilde.
However, at the bottom of the newspaper report was a link to the next page, and surprisingly, more information. Libby checked the name of the website and saw that it belonged to a Kent local history society. Well, perhaps she could get in touch with them and ask for their sources. She reached for her cigarettes and carried on reading.
Perhaps it was not surprising, the writer continued, that Maud Burton left the village almost immediately. There had been an unpleasant scene after the resumed inquest, at which Maud Burton had been required to give evidence, and within twenty-four hours she had left her cottage, in Lendle Lane, Libby noted, and never been seen again. She was understood to have a sister in the neighbourhood, but no one had ever met her, or even knew her name.
Amy Taylor, on the other hand, came from a local family. She had been left her house by her mother, and had not only a brother and a sister, but an aunt and cousins within a few miles of Steeple Martin. The family had been devastated, as would be expected, but only the aunt, a Mrs Stephanie Brissac, had known anything of Amy’s “disgrace”, and had refused to talk about it.
So, thought Libby, there might be Brissacs still living in the locality, and they might know something about it. She put the laptop on the table and went to fetch the telephone directory – then stopped.
What on earth was she doing? This was not the back story she was supposed to be researching – or only on a superficial level, anyway. And the fact that there might be relatives of the two women affected still living confirmed her opinion that it might be considered less than tactful to write a play about them. She shut the telephone book. That was that then. She would go no further with the story of Burton and Taylor.
Chapter Thirteen
THE SKIES WERE FULL of yellowish grey cloud as Libby drove to her appointment with Cy the following morning. Snow was coming, and she only hoped it would stay away until after she got home again.
Cy’s face was still a riot of colour, but far less swollen than it had been last week.
‘Not sure what exactly you want to know,’ he said, as he sat her down at the table in the big kitchen-diner.
‘I still think there might be something behind all this – well, the letters, particularly – other than homophobia. It’s not the average gay-bashing, is it?’
Cy turned an ironic gaze on her. ‘It felt like it,’ he said. ‘And I bet it did to Paddy, too.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Libby, feeling immediate heat in her cheeks. ‘Sorry. I meant –’
‘I know what you meant.’ Cy filled a mug with coffee and took it over to her. ‘Colin said you wanted know about Josephine.’
‘Is that what you called her?’
‘Sometimes. She preferred it to “Mum”. She was very glamorous.’
‘And she was a hopper? Or from hopper stock?’
‘Well, it’s a bit confused, actually,’ said Cy, filling his own mug and coming to sit at the table. ‘She was adopted, you see, when she was quite young. At least she thought she was adopted. It turned out, when her mother died, that she had never been formally adopted, so she’d been fostered. Her birth certificate still had a mother’s name on it, but no father’s name.’
‘Sounds like someone else I know of,’ said Libby. ‘In fact, more than one.’
‘Really?’ Colin looked interested. ‘Mum never tried to find out anything else, but I was always curious.’
‘So all she knew was her mother’s name? And what was that?’
‘Cliona Masters.’ Cy pulled a face. ‘Sounded made-up to me.’
‘And Josephine didn’t want to try and find her?’
‘She said if her mother didn’t want her, then she didn’t want her mother.’
‘Yes, but things were so different, then, Cy. If girls had babies out of wedlock they were often taken away from them. Even up as far as the sixties.’
‘Must have happened loads of times in the war,’ said Cy. ‘The ones you knew about – were they in the war?’
‘Yes, well, one was a local girl who I think went with a hopper, and the other was an East Ender. Ben’s mother, actually.’
‘Ben? Ben was a hopping baby?’
‘No, but his sister Susan was. His mum was lucky. Ben’s father married her. She’s a terrific woman.’
‘Still alive, then?’
‘Oh, yes, very much alive. The other one isn’t though. She committed suicide.’
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Cy.
‘Yes. Not until years later when she thought it would all come out.’ Libby was suddenly struck by a thought. ‘I don’t suppose that’s what happened to your grandmother?’
‘My –? Oh, Jo’s mum. I don’t know.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose it’s possible. How would we find out?’
‘Death certificate? Your mum wouldn’t have that of course, but we know the name and the year your mum was born. When was she fostered?’
‘When she was a baby. So 1945. How would we do it?’
‘I think,’ said Libby screwing up her forehead, ‘that you can do it online, but you have to pay. Otherwise you have to go to the National Archives. You probably still have to pay.’
‘So all we’d have to go on was Cliona Masters, 1945. Sounds like an uphill job.’
‘They do it on those television programmes,’ s
aid Libby.
‘They have professional researchers to do it,’ said Cy, ‘not a couple of amateurs like us.’
‘But there are loads of online genealogy sites, and print magazines, too. It’s one of the fastest-growing hobbies, apparently. We ought to be able to find someone to help.’
Cy stood up. ‘But I’m not sure why we’d want to. More coffee?’
‘No, thanks. I mustn’t stay too long, I want to outrun the snow.’ She peered towards the window. ‘Don’t know how long it’ll hold off.’
Cy refilled his own mug and came back to the table. ‘So now you know about Josephine, what else do you want to know? I can’t see that there’s anything there that would make someone hate me.’
‘No,’ agreed Libby. ‘Did Josephine have any brothers or sisters? Adopted or otherwise?’
Cy shook his head. ‘No. Her parents were quite old when they took her. Never been able to have any, so I understood.’
‘So I wonder where they got her from? Direct from her mother, do you think? Or from some sort of organisation?’
‘I don’t know. And I still don’t know what it’s got to do with Paddy or me.’
‘Tell me what you know about Paddy,’ said Libby. ‘Where did his family come from? Do you know?’
‘Hoxton, I think,’ said Cy. ‘Then they settled here. Paddy’s mum was born here, and was around Josephine’s age. Bit younger maybe.’
‘And there’s no other link between the two families?’
‘None.’ Cy leant back in his chair. ‘So you see, I can’t think of anything other than us being gay that links us together. If you want to keep looking for a sick homophobe who knows both of us, fine. That’s what Harry said you could do, but don’t go digging up our families for no reason.’
‘No.’ Libby swallowed. ‘OK. Perhaps I’d better keep out of the way.’
Cy leant across and patted her arm. ‘No, you’re all right. If you think you can get to the bottom of it all, especially for Paddy’s sake, go ahead. I’m just saying, I can’t see what our past history has to do with it. Much,’ he said, leaning back and looking thoughtful, ‘as I’d quite like to find out about old Cliona.’
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