by Tom Bradby
Ruth frowned.
‘I mean, was Alice there?’ He looked at Julia.
‘Every time I saw them, it was with Alice.’ Now Ruth looked at Julia. ‘Sometimes with Julia, too.’ Julia blushed. ‘Edna saw them alone, I think.’
Professor Malcolm sipped his tea, then sat back in his chair. Julia could not see what he was getting at.
‘Did you see much of Alan back then? Talk to him?’
‘No. He’s a charming man, but he was less happy then.’
‘In what way, exactly?’
Ruth shrugged.
‘How was he with Sarah?’
Ruth shrugged again, as if it was none of her business how husbands and wives were together.
‘Affectionate?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you detect any friction?’
Ruth didn’t respond.
Professor Malcolm took another sip of his tea.
‘Ruth,’ he said, ‘there’s something I’d like to put to you.’ He leant forward in his chair again, his elbows on his knees, fingers supporting his chin. ‘Around the time the Ford family moved to the village, Alice looked like any other little girl of her age. That is to say that she was unremarkable. Scruffy, a little tomboyish on occasions, even. But as we approach the time of her death, it is clear that her appearance is changing. She is suddenly smarter. Much smarter. Her appearance, from being normal, is suddenly … well, I would say a little inappropriate. She is being moulded, you might say, into the image of her mother. It’s a striking development when you know to look out for it. Did you notice this?’
‘No.’
‘Does it ring any bells now?’
‘She was neat. Always well dressed.’
‘Uncomfortably so?’
Ruth shrugged once more. She did not understand, or did not wish to understand, the implication.
‘Did you ever … This is an uncomfortable subject, I know, Ruth, but did you ever see a man taking what you would consider an inappropriate interest in little Alice?’
Ruth was looking down, her narrow hands clasped neatly together. Julia saw that she wore no rings.
‘We didn’t like the way …’ Ruth’s voice trailed off. Professor Malcolm waited. ‘We remember Robert Pascoe as a boy, you see.’ She looked at Julia, then back at him. ‘We hate all this …’
She meant the protests. Julia noticed how she always used ‘we’, as if there were two bodies, but only one mind. She was unsure whether it was attractive or unsettling.
‘You didn’t believe,’ Professor Malcolm said, ‘that Pascoe could have committed the …’
Ruth was distorting her mouth in disgust, interrupting Professor Malcolm’s question. Her demeanour was more than negative, it was total dismissal. ‘He was a such a nice boy, shy. They said he was … that he liked children. We …’ She looked at Julia. ‘It couldn’t have been true. It wasn’t. It was all made up, it was a fabrication.’
‘Made up by whom?’
Her mouth had hardened. Julia thought she’d waited a long time to tell someone in authority this and was going to take her time.
‘Sarah Ford was a bad woman, but the people she mixed with weren’t the likes of Robert Pascoe.’
‘You think the police …’
‘We think the officers closed ranks and protected themselves. Who was Pascoe? How could he defend himself?’ She looked at Julia then back at Professor Malcolm. The inference stretched beyond Pascoe, as if the officer class – among which, Julia assumed, were numbered her own family and the likes of the de la Rues – had even arranged the war. Julia had never imagined the two old women sitting here with such anger. ‘By the time he came back from the war,’ Ruth went on, ‘he was ruined. He’d have said anything. That’s what his mother told us. She went to see him in prison but she could hardly ever get a word out of him. He wouldn’t agree to an appeal, nor speak to a psychologist or anyone who could help him. Mrs Pascoe – Elaine – she said he didn’t want to leave prison.’
‘Did you—’ Julia stopped. The question had formed in her mind from nowhere. She felt the blood pounding in her head and Professor Malcolm was looking at her. ‘Did you—’ Julia realized that her inability to articulate the question was pathetic and unprofessional. ‘Did you think,’ she said, in a level voice, meeting Ruth’s eye, ‘that Sarah Ford was having an affair with my father? That’s what you’re saying. Pascoe was a scapegoat.’
Ruth did not answer. She was beginning to look worried, as though she might have said something she shouldn’t. Professor Malcolm smiled reassuringly and, as if responding to an off-stage signal, they all stood up at once. He mumbled his thanks.
Outside, squinting against the sun, Professor Malcolm glanced across at the church.
‘Could you tell me,’ she said, ‘the point of that?’
He looked at her disapprovingly, as an unemotional man does to an emotionally charged woman. ‘Calm down,’ he said.
‘You should calm down,’ she said. ‘You heard all of that on Saturday and led the interview so I would hear it for myself.’
‘Calm down.’
‘No. It seemed like an attempt to humiliate me.’
‘I think you’re being a little irrational, Julia, and you’re wrong. I didn’t hear that on Saturday, though I got the impression she would tell us something along those lines. And, anyway, if I was going to hear anything, I thought it important you heard it for yourself. I was under the impression that that was what this was all about.’
Julia put her hand to her forehead to stem the headache. She realized her defensiveness was making the situation worse and she tried to force herself to relax. ‘I don’t think she said anything we didn’t already know.’ She became aware that, though they were speaking quietly, some of the journalists standing on the village green had turned their heads.
‘I thought,’ Professor Malcolm said, instinctively turning his back on them, ‘that she said a few things I wouldn’t have expected.’
‘Like what?’
‘She believes there has been some kind of conspiracy.’
‘Yes, but not a very developed or convincing one. The whole officer class closing ranks? Why?’
He was frowning.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He was looking at the reporters now, who seemed to have lost interest.
‘Why do you keep asking about, you know, this business about Alice’s appearance having changed in the last year of her life? I thought you said the crime was about the woman.’
‘Yes. That’s right. My analysis of the crime scene suggests that. But,’ he was gesturing with his arms now, ‘there is a whole picture here to be assembled, and a couple of things puzzle me. My hunch is that if we pursue them they may illuminate important corners of that picture.’
‘And the way Alice was dressed in a couple of photographs …’
‘It’s more than that. It’s a development. When I asked you about it, I could see clearly that it had crossed your mind at some point over the years. It’s not earth-shattering, perhaps it will turn out only to be a small thing, but it was a change that occurred that year and there’s a reason behind it. Until we discern the reason, I would like you to ask people about it – all those who might have known them that last year. In the same way, Alice’s body puzzles me. I cannot explain why we haven’t found it yet. Perhaps we will, but if we don’t then there is a mystery there, too.’ He half turned. ‘It seems clear that Pascoe confessed because he had lost his mind. He was just an easy target for the police by the time he got back from the war and no one helped him.’ He was staring into the middle distance. ‘I suppose the question is: has he, despite everything, somehow managed to get it back … the shock of his mother’s death, perhaps …’ He turned back to face her. ‘I wish we could find him.’
‘Where do you think he has gone?’
‘I think he’s somewhere not too far away. I would say that Pascoe, by nature, is a watcher.’ He pulled up
the belt on his trousers. ‘You’d better get on,’ he said. ‘I left the room open. I think I should return to the search to hold Weston’s hand. I don’t trust him not to give up.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JULIA WENT HOME, changed and had a cup of coffee, then walked down to the pub, climbed the external staircase and knocked on the door of Professor Malcolm’s room, just to make sure he had not come back. There was no answer.
Inside, it was neat and orderly. The bed had been made, his small grip was by its side, but there were no other personal effects.
Julia sat at the desk. In front of her was a letter signed by Weston, formally requesting her and Professor Malcolm to proceed with ‘a review of the evidence’ in the case of the Crown v. Pascoe. She folded it up and put it into her pocket, trying to put out of her mind the search, which seemed to hang in the air like mist.
It was lighter than yesterday, the morning sun now spilling across the desk, and Julia pulled over Sarah’s address book and turned to H. The entry she sought read, ‘Haydoch, Mickey’. It was in Sarah’s handwriting.
Julia had never called Michael ‘Mickey’. She wondered what kind of friendship Michael and Sarah had enjoyed. Could Sarah have had a friendship with a man where sex wasn’t an issue?
She returned to the point she’d marked yesterday and continued.
The first number she dialled was dead. The second rang for a long time.
‘Hello, Katherine Bowman.’
‘Katherine, my name is Julia Havilland and I’m working on a review of the evidence in the Welham Common case. You may have seen in the press that the accused man has been released on appeal.’
‘Yes. It’s dreadful.’
‘That’s right. Well, the police are duty bound to review the case and that’s what I’m engaged in. We’re contacting all of Sarah’s friends and relatives to try to ascertain if there are any avenues of inquiry worth pursuing that were overlooked at the time.’
‘Right,’ Katherine Bowman said. She sounded more confident than most of those Julia had reached on Friday.
‘My first question is what was your relationship with Sarah?’
‘I was at school with her.’
‘Which school was that?’ Julia had not yet spoken to anyone who had been at school with Sarah.
‘Cheltenham Ladies’ College.’
Julia hesitated. Somehow she’d not imagined Sarah going to such a conventional public school.
‘You were friends, obviously.’
‘Yes.’ Katherine’s voice was firm.
She was not ashamed of having been Sarah’s friend and Julia warmed to her. ‘A lot of Sarah’s friends seem to want to qualify that description.’
‘Well, Sarah isn’t easy but, then, many people who are interesting are not, in my experience. I wouldn’t have married her, but she is capable of being a good friend if you accept her limitations and don’t expect too much.’
Katherine was not the first respondent to slip into talking about Sarah in the present tense and Julia imagined that she was talking to a tall, bulky, confident woman. Not conventionally good-looking, probably, for this was someone, she thought, who had not been challenged by, or in competition with, Sarah.
‘Why did you say you wouldn’t have married her?’
‘Too emotionally high maintenance.’
Not for the first time, Julia wondered what Alan had seen in Sarah.
‘What were her limitations as a friend?’
Katherine Bowman sighed. Julia could hear a child crying in the background now. ‘Jonathan … Jonathan, stop. Sorry, yes?’
‘No, my apologies. You’re busy. You talked about her limitations as a friend?’
‘Yes. I liked Sarah, but she was unreliable. One minute, you would benefit from her full attention. She would come and see you and be totally charming and interested in everything going on in your life, then the next she would forget something important, like turning up to a dinner or … I don’t know, she would call two days later and act as if you’d never had a conversation at all. It’s hard to explain, but my point is that she was fun, she was lively, she was interesting. If you didn’t expect anything, then she was good to have as a friend.’
‘Why do you think some people felt ambiguous towards her?’
‘People expected too much. Men, in particular.’
‘Did she know a lot of men?’
Katherine laughed. ‘Did she sleep around? She liked men, that’s all I’ll say, except that I’m not sure she really did. She couldn’t disentangle sex and affection. She slept with men because that was what they wanted, but didn’t engage with them. You know what I mean. If I was being unfair, I would say she toyed with them. Led them on, then dropped them without explanation or apology. She couldn’t really relate to men without involving sex and I wouldn’t have thought she had many male friends per se. But … look, that was a long time ago. That was at school. I didn’t see her for a long time before … well, before the end. She probably changed a lot, but at school, you know, then introducing Sarah into a room full of boys was like triggering a nuclear explosion.’
Julia could tell Katherine was smiling.
‘You never met her husband?’
‘No. We lost touch when she went to the Slade. Well, we had lunch once or twice, exchanged Christmas cards, but I felt I was making most of the effort, so contact petered out. I was surprised to learn whom she married, but I never met him.’
The boy had started crying in the background again. Julia waited to see if Katherine was going to attend to him. ‘Why were you surprised?’
‘Well, Sarah was really the school black sheep, you know. She was expelled for being caught with drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and a boy from the town in her room. It was hard to imagine her doing something as conventional as marrying an army officer, but I never met him, so I don’t know … Maybe he was an unconventional army officer.’
Julia thought of Alan with his battered brogues and too-short trousers. He was hardly unconventional.
‘Did you meet Sarah’s family?’
The boy was crying louder. ‘No. Sarah never talked about them.’
‘Isn’t that odd?’
Katherine had picked the child up. Julia could hear him whimpering. ‘I don’t know if it was odd. I know she was an only child and that her parents were well off. She never lacked for money, always the best of everything. More than that I can’t tell you.’
Katherine was whispering to the boy now. Julia thanked her, replaced the receiver, stood and walked to the other side of the room, switching on the overhead light. She stared at the photograph in the centre of the wall.
Julia tried to contain her personal enmity, but it was hard. She recalled the way Sarah had stood next to her parents on the afternoon of the fête and touched her father’s arm then his cheek in a gesture of idle sensuality, oblivious to her mother’s presence.
They had been on the far side of the garden, in the rough section of grass used for tossing the caber, and when she approached, Sarah had turned to her and smiled, before returning to the conversation. She had then said to Mitchell and Caroline that she would love to provide a diet for Julia because she knew ‘how tough it was to be overweight’.
Julia had always felt that children – all children – irritated Sarah as a distraction from the adult world.
She tore herself away from the sardonic smile on the wall and sat down again at the desk. She wondered how Katherine Bowman could have liked Sarah. She wondered how anyone could.
The next successful call was more straightforward. A man called Damian confessed to disliking Sarah. He’d travelled with her to India after she had been expelled from Cheltenham, one of a group of four. Damian said Sarah had gone initially as the girlfriend of his then best friend, but had soon embarked on a campaign of promiscuity. The picture he painted of Sarah was essentially the same as Katherine Bowman’s, but without affection.
There were two more dud numbers then Julia reached Simon Cri
ck on the Cranbrooke exchange. At the end of her explanation, he said that he was a photographer and that he had had some business with Sarah.
‘What kind of business?’ Julia asked.
There was a hesitation. ‘Sarah was a model.’
‘What kind of model?’
‘Not the kind you’re suggesting.’
Julia was silent. She did not know why this news was surprising. Sarah had been easily beautiful enough to have been a model.
‘She gave it up when she had the baby, then came back when she wanted the little girl done.’
‘What?’
His voice betrayed irritation. ‘She was modelling the little girl.’
‘What kind of modelling?’
‘Any kind. Advertising, mostly. Kids’ clothes. That sort of thing.’
Julia was staggered by this. Alice had never mentioned it. It had been kept entirely secret. Then she remembered the list of incoming sums of money in the diary.
‘Why do you think Sarah told no one about this?’
He did not answer for a few moments. Then, ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe she didn’t want her husband to know. I was never to phone her at home. She insisted on calling here.’
Julia felt sure that this man, too, had slept with Sarah and felt queasy at the way Alice had been dragged into that world. Adults were so unscrupulous.
‘Do you think … Where is your office, please?’
Something in the man’s voice, a wariness, made Julia think this was worth exploring.
He hesitated. ‘Cranbrooke. Gerard Street Mews.’
‘Would you mind if I came round? I can be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘I’m out for lunch.’
‘It is part of a review of the Welham Common case, Mr Crick.’
He sighed. ‘All right, if you’re quick. I’m only here until one.’
After putting down the receiver, Julia pulled over the appointments diary and flicked through its pages once more. There was no reference at all to a Simon Crick, photographer. Why would Sarah choose not to put those appointments in when she was brazenly listing assignations with her lover – the M of the diary? Had that been, after all, an attempt to taunt someone, perhaps her husband? Julia noticed that there were a number of appointments with a Dr Simon, sometimes with the word ‘hospital’ written next to them. She wondered if Dr Simon was really Simon Crick the photographer and ‘hospital’ a code. Certainly, some of the entries had ‘Alice’ next to them. Julia looked all the way back to the start of the year and counted them. There were ten with Dr Simon, four with the word hospital alongside. There was another Cranbrooke number by the last entry and Julia called it to see if it was simply a different line for Simon Crick, but there turned out to be a real Dr Simon and, after a short explanation and wait, Julia was put through to him. He spoke with a slight South African accent and told her he was too busy to talk now, but was happy to see her if she wished to come by the surgery this afternoon, though she’d have to wait for a break between patients. Julia said she would be there. She walked out without leaving a note and took the stairs on the fire escape three at a time.