The Deserter's Daughter

by Susanna Bavin

  When she spied him coming along Wilbraham Road, recognising the length of his stride and the set of his shoulders in the distance, she raced downstairs; not the shop stairs – Ralph was in the shop – but the private stairs, flinging open the door and pelting along the pavement in her slippers to meet him, and bugger what Ralph would say if he saw. Ralph could go and boil his head.

  She could tell the moment Adam saw her because he, too, broke into a run. They slowed as they approached, Carrie deliberately keeping several feet away. She didn’t want to be close to him. She didn’t want to be close to anyone, except just now Evadne. She had been separate from the world all this time. It had been just her and Joey, her and her grief, her and her guilt, her and the blame. And now, of all people, the person who had broken through her solitariness was Evadne.

  ‘I’m sorry, Carrie—’

  Her heart pounded. Was she out of breath? No, it was hatred, sheer hatred, that was making her heart beat so hard. How dare Evadne do this to her? How dare she land herself in such a serious predicament when all attention should be focused on Joey’s memory? No, it wasn’t Evadne she hated. It was herself for being wrenched out of her darkest grief. She felt wide awake in a startling, sharp-edged world that battered her senses. She wasn’t prepared for this. It was too much. She couldn’t face it, couldn’t do it, couldn’t breathe.

  She swung away, leaving Adam standing there.

  ‘Carrie—’

  She breathed in deeply through her nose, clenching all her muscles and shutting her ears. She wanted to shut out everything and go back to centring her existence around Joey, but she couldn’t. There was too much to do. How was she to tell Mam? She had held off doing so, because what was the point when Evadne was going to be cleared? But now she must be told. It was almost enough to make you wish she couldn’t hear.

  Arriving back in the flat with her slippers damp and stretched, so preoccupied was she with breaking the news to Mam that when Mrs Porter handed her the afternoon post, she took it without a thought.

  Her gaze landed on the familiar envelope with its typewritten address. A swoop of fear was followed by an inner stillness edged with sick misery. She deserved this. She had allowed herself to be wrenched away from Joey. She deserved it.

  The cry erupted from deep inside, almost tearing her in two.

  ‘I – don’t – need – telling! ’

  Evadne stared at Ted Geeson. Somehow, after the trail of bizarre events since yesterday, she still had room to be astonished. In the cramped, impersonal room, he was big and broad and capable.

  ‘What are you doing here? You can’t stay. I’m expecting someone.’

  ‘Your friend Mr Larter?’

  ‘What business is that of yours?’

  ‘It’s very much my business, Miss Baxter, since I’m more of a friend to you than he’ll ever be.’

  She sprang up, nearly overturning the wooden chair. ‘That’s enough! Get out!’

  For answer, he threw his cap and gloves on the table and shrugged out of his greatcoat, hanging it over the back of a chair. He was dressed in a jacket and tie, and it jolted her to behold him so decently turned out. He was a burly man, but the smart clothes sat well on him.

  Lips pursed, she resumed her seat. She couldn’t pull off indifference, but she managed a brief shake of the head and a sharp sigh to make it clear he wasn’t welcome.

  ‘May I?’ Geeson pulled out a chair. ‘He isn’t coming.’

  ‘If you’re referring to Mr Larter, the police haven’t located him yet.’

  ‘They spoke to him yesterday. Did you imagine they would arrest you without interviewing him? He’s dropped you right in it.’

  An old, scorned Wilton Lane word popped into her head. She was gawping. She snapped her mouth shut.

  ‘I have it on good authority,’ Geeson said softly. ‘I used to be a copper, so I called in a few favours, asked some questions, got in here to see you.’

  ‘You’ve been misinformed. If the police have already spoken to Mr Larter, why wasn’t he in court? Why wasn’t his name even mentioned?’

  ‘Because he’s out of the top drawer and the magistrate chose to keep his name out of it.’ He rested his arms on the table and leant forward. ‘I’m here to help you. I need to hear everything Larter said and did. Or,’ he added, ‘we could sit in silence and wait for the prison van.’

  She flung him a dark look. What he was suggesting was monstrous. Yet why would he come here to tell lies? In a voice cracking with reluctance, she embarked on her tale.

  ‘So whenever you visited a customer alone, it was because they’d sought another appointment with Larter?’

  ‘Yes. My visit was always the final one.’ Evadne lifted her chin. ‘There! If Mr Larter has turned against me, which I don’t believe for one moment, all the police need do is confirm with any client that he or she got in touch with Mr Larter and that I duly made an appointment. That proves he knew of my visits.’

  Geeson shook his head. ‘He’s smarter than that. He might have let you believe your visit was the last, but he then made another – the real final visit – afterwards.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Thus enabling him to claim that the client invited him back and he duly went, and if you’d made a secret visit in between, how was he to know?’ He permitted no time to let that sink in. ‘Did he ever make arrangements for you? How about at that auction place?’

  ‘I did everything.’

  ‘Including telling a few whoppers about yourself, I gather.’

  Oh, those delightful Chester trips. She had played her part to perfection.

  ‘The customers believed you were buying for Armstrong’s,’ he pressed her.

  ‘I was!’

  ‘Yet the stuff you bought wasn’t kept in the Armstrong’s storerooms.’

  ‘I had my own cupboard so my purchases could be kept separate, ready to go to Chester.’

  ‘And your things didn’t appear on any of the Armstrong’s lists?’

  ‘I told you. It was part of the Chester arrangement.’

  ‘And you alone had a key to that cupboard.’

  ‘Nonsense. Ralph has a huge ring of keys. He throws it on the table with a great crash so everyone knows how important he is.’

  ‘He’s never had a key to that cupboard, and the housekeeper’s is missing. The police believe you swiped it. As for the money you made in Chester, you stashed it in a new savings account and went on a shopping spree.’

  ‘Alex—Mr Larter told me to. He said … Never mind what he said.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Geeson spoke gently. ‘I’ll guess if I have to. Did he want you as his mistress?’

  ‘Certainly not! As a matter of fact—’ Her eyes were burning. God, she loathed this man.

  ‘Were you expecting marriage?’

  ‘He … he wanted me to meet his mother.’

  It was the closest she could come to admitting it. Geeson’s hand stretched towards hers, but withdrew before she could snatch hers away.

  ‘Larter lost his mother during the war. I know because I served under him.’

  Recalling the disappointment with which Alex had explained that his mother’s trip had been called off, Evadne closed her eyes. He had blamed it on the illness of his mother’s oldest friend. ‘So they’re off to Switzerland together. Fresh mountain air and all that.’ She had smiled bravely, even pretending a polite wish for the friend’s recovery, all the while cursing the unknown invalid for coming between her and her heart’s desire.

  Now, her heart slumped in defeat. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  With a sharpness that rattled through her, Geeson replied, ‘You’d better start believing it, Miss Evadne Baxter, or you haven’t a hope in hell.’

  Careless of the damp, Carrie knelt beside Joey’s grave, arranging the flowers she had brought. They would undoubtedly be blasted by frost overnight, but she couldn’t bear Joey not to have flowers, even though it made her feel cruel to expose the blooms to harsh nig
ht-time temperatures. She had rushed here this morning, pulled by an agonising urgency that demanded capitulation. It happened this way sometimes. She could be in the middle of something, anything, changing the bed or paring rind to make lemonade, and suddenly she would feel herself drowning in the need to be close to her baby.

  Sinking back on her heels, she pulled off her gloves and trailed her fingers down the headstone. How it had wounded her the first time she saw the fresh addition to the carved inscription. Here, Joey was Joseph Ralph Armstrong, which sounded like someone else, not at all like her baby boy, her Joey.

  As for herself – son of Ralph and Caroline.

  Caroline. Who the hell is Caroline? she had screamed inside her head the first time she saw it, before she slumped into dull acceptance. After neglecting her son and letting him die, she didn’t deserve her own name.

  ‘Carrie.’

  She looked up. ‘Adam.’ A flare of resentment – how dare he intrude on her private moment?

  ‘I have a message from your sister.’

  Her breath caught. ‘You’ve seen her?’ She came to her feet, taking a step closer.

  ‘The message comes via someone else. She says thank you for coming to the police station.’

  ‘I’m just sorry I’ve done nothing else.’

  ‘Perhaps you can do something. Will you come to Brookburn – now? I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to catch you today. I know you hardly set foot outside these days except to visit Joey. There’s been a lad stationed by the cabbies’ hut outside the Lloyds since breakfast, with orders to stay put until you appeared. Come with me. There’s someone I need you to meet.’

  ‘Really, I—’

  ‘It could help Miss Baxter.’

  That decided her.

  They walked up the path between the old gravestones and out beneath the lychgate, then round the corner of the wall and alongside it down the sloping road. The pavement was narrow, just wide enough for two to walk abreast, but Carrie had no wish to be so close and walked ahead.

  The morning was cold and overcast. As they passed the pub with its bowling green behind it, Adam slipped neatly into step behind her. He made an attempt at conversation, but Carrie cut him off. She wasn’t here to talk. She wasn’t going to play at conversation, at real life, at happy families. She was here to help Evadne, nothing more.

  When they reached Brookburn’s fancy gateway with the stone pillar to either side and the tall wrought-iron gates standing open, Carrie’s step quickened. Her heart was thudding with hope. Adam led her, not up the gravel drive, but across the damp grass and through the trees towards a house in a fenced-off garden.

  ‘The groundsman’s cottage,’ he said.

  ‘That’s never a cottage. You could stow a family of six in there and still have room for Grandma.’

  He opened the door and she stepped through a lobby with boots standing beneath a bench and waterproofs hanging up, and found herself in a spacious kitchen-cum-sitting room. Immediately, she felt at home. Living in the kitchen was how she had grown up, one of the many things Ralph despised about Wilton Lane.

  A man in shirtsleeves and waistcoat was lifting a singing kettle off the heat. Her diffidence melted at the sight of the kind smile in the serious, weather-beaten face. As he came forward, hand outstretched, Carrie realised he had an artificial leg and forced herself not to look down. Her hand disappeared inside his as Adam introduced them.

  ‘This is Ted Geeson. He looks after the grounds. Geeson, this is my sister-in-law, Mrs Armstrong.’

  ‘Miss Baxter’s sister,’ said Ted Geeson, as if this made it right. ‘Take a pew, Mrs Armstrong. I’m about to warm the pot.’

  She had to know immediately. ‘Was it you who saw Evadne?’

  ‘Aye, lass. She’s frightened and confused, as you’d expect, and as innocent as a May morning, if I’m any judge.’

  With that, Carrie gave him her heart. She and Adam sat down while he set about brewing the tea. Carrie marvelled that a big man like that could make tea for a woman without being a figure of fun. As much as Ralph loved her, he wouldn’t have poured her a glass of water if she had been choking.

  She turned to Adam. ‘You said I could help Evadne.’ A look passed between the two men and her senses sharpened.

  ‘We don’t know for certain,’ said Ted Geeson. ‘It’s only a maybe.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Do you know why she was arrested?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Ralph told me. The police think she was pretending to buy for Armstrong’s when really she was working for herself, but Evadne would never do that. I don’t care what anyone says.’

  ‘What does Ralph say?’

  ‘That the police can prove it. It’s not as though he knows her like I do,’ she added, trying to hide her deep hurt. She squared her shoulders. ‘Tell me what to do.’

  ‘We need you to go through all the records you can lay your hands on,’ said Adam, ‘for the shop as well as the auction room. Ledgers, lists of acquisitions, anything.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Anything that catches your eye.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘For example, a seller or buyer who lives unusually far afield.’

  ‘Like – Knutsford, you mean?’

  ‘Or a piece of stock that arrives at the last minute and is auctioned without delay,’ said Adam. ‘I’m sorry, Carrie. I’d tell you exactly what to look for, if I could.’

  ‘Ralph wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘He mustn’t know about it,’ Ted Geeson said gravely.

  ‘You want me to go behind his back?’

  ‘It’s the only way.’

  Didn’t they know what they were asking? Didn’t Adam know what Ralph was like, how furious he would be if he found out? Ralph, the husband who refused to let her out of the flat when he was angry with her over Letty; Ralph, the father who used to take her baby away from her to ensure her quiet obedience. Well, he couldn’t do that to her any more, could he? She could do anything now, because no punishment he meted out could possibly matter.

  She looked at Adam. ‘Why the secret? So what if Ralph doesn’t like Evadne? So what if he believes the police? If you told him what to look for—’

  ‘No.’ Adam hesitated before asking, ‘Do you know Alex Larter?’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  ‘What’s his connection to your husband’s business?’ Ted Geeson asked.

  ‘Ralph calls him an associate, whatever that means. I know he finds stock, because he takes Evadne with him. Why?’ When both men hesitated, she said sharply, ‘I’ve a right to know.’

  Adam said, ‘We think Larter got Evadne into this mess.’

  ‘On purpose? Why?’

  ‘Listen, lass,’ Ted Geeson stepped in. ‘If Larter has done the dirty on Miss Baxter, who is Armstrong going to believe? The sister-in-law he doesn’t know that well, and what he does know he doesn’t like, or the man he trusts to work alongside him?’

  ‘You mean, Ralph had to choose between them?’ Carrie nodded. At least Ralph hadn’t taken against Evadne out of blind prejudice. That was something. ‘All right. I’ll try. It’s not just the police who need convincing. Ralph does too.’ The clock on the mantelpiece pinged the half-hour. ‘I must go. I have to get the dinner on.’

  The men rose, Ted Geeson skilfully pushing himself to his feet.

  She held out her hand to him. She wanted to give him both hands. ‘Thank you for believing in Evadne. I’m that grateful.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, lass.’

  Her glance landed on Adam and slid away. She couldn’t meet his eyes, let alone offer her hand. She made a fuss of fastening her coat and smoothing her gloves. ‘Mind, I don’t know what use I’ll be. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’

  ‘Let’s hope you recognise it when you see it,’ Ted Geeson said sombrely.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the road,’ Adam offered.

  ‘No need.’ Carrie mad
e a dash for the door.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Standing by the window as Carrie hurried away, Adam’s chest squeezed as his heart reached out to follow her. Grief had torn the flesh from her bones, giving her a vulnerability that made his throat ache with words that were forced to remain unspoken. Gone was the lovely young mother, so radiantly happy, replaced by a desperately slender creature with a pixie-pointed chin and haunted eyes.

  There was nothing he could do for her. Even if he could, she wouldn’t want it. The girl from Wilton Lane, whose gentle, generous spirit and quiet strength he so deeply admired and respected, and whom he loved with more capacity than he had known he possessed, had built a barrier around herself to hold the world at bay. He suspected that where he was concerned, the barrier was double-thick. He had lost her. He would have been her friend, her brother, anything if only he could give her comfort and support as she struggled to cope with the loss that still overwhelmed her.

  That hurt, but what hurt more was knowing that she didn’t seem to have anyone else either. As far as he knew, she had not turned to anyone. That she was carrying her burden alone tore into him. She deserved a better husband than Ralph.

  Behind him, a door opened and he turned to see Woods, Drummond and their colleague Parsons come in. With five men inside, the room seemed to shrink.

  ‘I’m not happy about this,’ said Woods.

  ‘Believe me,’ said Drummond, ‘if there were any other way …’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told Mrs Armstrong that Larter was the one to drop her sister in the soup,’ Parsons rebuked Adam.

  He bridled. ‘I said what needed saying. Carrie isn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to look through the paperwork just because we asked her. She needed an explanation and I happen to think she’s entitled to one. Besides, it’s better she blames Larter than that she realises the truth about Ralph’s part in the arrest.’