The following morning, as he and Mary walked down Oxford Street, stepping around four-day-old puddles, sleek with oil, the large department stores reared into view and he made a decision.
‘We’ll do Debenham and Freebody today, Constable Moon,’ said Guy, careful not to break the rhythm of their walk.
‘Aren’t some of the men posted there already?’ Mary had asked, pulling at her left earlobe as she spoke. It was a tic that Guy had begun to find rather endearing.
‘Maybe, but we’ve got the advantage with you. We know the bigger shops are reporting thefts. But two men standing in a dress department look wrong, the Forty won’t go anywhere near them. They might as well be carrying signs to say they’re police. But with you, no one would suspect a thing.’
‘You say that, but we haven’t had any joy yet.’ Conscious, perhaps, of her lobe-pulling, Mary crossed her arms. She didn’t pout, it wasn’t her style, but Guy knew she was raring to score an arrest. He knew this because he felt exactly the same way.
‘Think about it. Stands to reason they’re more likely to target a bigger place. Easier to hide and plenty of genuine customers about. They know there aren’t enough staff to watch them even if they act suspiciously. The last arrest was made there.’
‘But what if we’re on someone else’s territory?’ That earlobe again.
‘We’ll cross that bridge if we have to. I think Cornish will be less worried about that if we’ve nabbed a Forty, don’t you?’
‘Hmmm, yes, I suppose so.’ They had stopped at the corner of the road and while they waited for a gap in the traffic, Mary took a cigarette out of a thin silver case. She offered Guy one, who shook his head but smiled as he did so.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but it feels rude somehow not to ask you anyway.’ She handed him the lighter and he lit the cigarette for her. Another ritual. They had been quick to create these patterns with each other and he felt a stirring of something in the pit of his belly. Whether it was pleasure or unease he couldn’t quite say.
They weren’t in uniform, which blurred the lines too. Without the clean, sharp cut of their navy jackets and polished boots, there had been a gradual but definite slip into civilian behaviour even when on duty. Guy was dressed a shade more elegantly than his usual Saturday civvies, with a tiepin and the folded triangle of a starched white handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket. It was designed to give the illusion of a man used to spending time in discreetly expensive shops, as he asked intricate questions about the silk lining of a mink stole.
Guy wondered if Mary had adopted a different character with her outfit, as surprising as the accent she had adopted in the pub, but he thought probably not. Her dark grey suit with its pleated skirt and narrow jacket were fashionable but not vogueish. Was that what he meant? He’d heard his sister-in-law describe someone with this bastardised word and he could hear that it was a compliment, so he assumed that it meant someone who looked as if they could be photographed by Vogue. At any rate, Mary Moon certainly looked that way when she turned slightly sideways, twisting her narrow waist so that it looked even tinier and arching her spine as she leant her head back to blow out a plume of smoke. It was a funny thing because usually when someone was seen out of uniform for the first time, it took a puff out of their sails; they looked less authoritative. With Mary it was different. In her uniform she looked like a small girl who’d been fishing in a dressing-up box but her own clothes gave her back her courage. It was easier to see the spunk it must have taken for her to join the police in the first place.
‘Let’s go to Debenham and Freebody,’ Guy persisted, ‘and at least try. If we don’t strike gold, or diamonds…’ He grinned. ‘Well, no one will be any the wiser.’
Mary stamped the cigarette beneath her foot and adjusted her hat. It was her sister’s and a touch too large for her, slipping down over her forehead when she looked down, but it was expensive-looking with navy netting that pulled down to the tip of her nose.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Two hours later they had walked over almost every inch of the department store Debenham and Freebody. Guy had picked up and inspected several glass vases, silk ties and a full cutlery set in polished silver. Mary had resisted trying on a number of adorable frocks in the name of research. Their stomachs were starting to rumble now, more from boredom than actual hunger, but the promise of a bowl of soup and a warm roll in a nearby café would soon be too difficult to resist. At least they hadn’t seen any of their fellow policemen and Guy wondered if the ones who had been sent there had decided to try pastures new as well. As the lunch hour approached, the shop began to fill up with secretaries and telephone operators, lingering over the cosmetics and perfumes on the ground floor. Mary was idling, trying out a cherry-coloured Revlon lipstick on the back of her hand and Guy was impatient to get out of there. He wasn’t comfortable standing about with so many women peering at themselves closely in minuscule mirrors.
‘I’m going up to the haberdashery department,’ he said.
Mary blushed and rubbed out the deep purple smudge. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Guy was comforted by the bolts of material that lined the walls up on the third floor, with a smell of cotton that reminded him of home. At one end, standing by a long table, a saleswoman pulled out long reams of a vivid green linen from a thick roll before slicing it off expertly with her pinking shears. She looked the same age as his mother and shared the same no-nonsense style of all those women who had grown middle-aged before the war: grey hair pulled back into a bun, half-moon glasses balancing above her eyebrows, ready to slide down when needed. Even though he had seen her just that morning, Guy felt a pang of missing his mother. He needed her reassuring smile and for her to tell him that everything would work out just fine.
The assistant and the woman who was buying the cloth were apparently sharing a joke, both stifling giggles as the cloth was folded and put in a brown paper bag. What did women always find to laugh about together? Even when they hardly knew each other, just a nod and a wink was enough to set them off. It was like all of the female sex were in on a secret joke that men would never – could never – understand. Mary was standing by the sewing machines, picking up different packets of needles and reading the backs, as if searching for a very specific size, though Guy could see that her eyes were constantly looking around the department. It was busy now, with several people looking through the spools of cotton thread, quilting squares and yards of ribbon.
Guy’s eye was caught by one woman who was rather taller than the rest and elegantly dressed. She didn’t strike him as a telephonist somehow, with her long brocade coat and a smart black hat. She carried herself with confidence and moved slowly around the department, fingering the edges of various bolts of fabric but not apparently requesting assistance from anyone. It was then Guy realised that there was a cluster of three plump shopgirls standing by the tills, their heads bobbing up and down as they whispered to each other, their hands fluttering. With their tucked-in white shirts they looked like a trio of finches pecking for seeds. Slowly – too slowly – Guy realised the beady eyes of the shopgirls were following the tall woman around the room and she was clearly getting them into something of a flutter. Who was she? Perhaps a music hall star – she had a slightly old-fashioned look about her, though she couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five years old. She might be one of those Hollywood actresses from the pictures that Mary liked to read about in magazines; she’d tried to interest him in one or two of the articles but they weren’t for him. He couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to know what an actor ate for lunch or what their house looked like. Wasn’t the point to believe in their character on the screen, not know what they were like in real life? And who they were in real life could hardly be as interesting as their persona in the film, where they might be a princess or a dragon-slayer, or even—
A hand clutched his arm and Guy turned round to see Mary, her
hat slipped so far forwards he could only just see her eyes behind the net. Her breathing was shallow and quick.
‘What is it?’ he said, but not loudly.
‘Over there,’ said Mary, nodding her head in the direction of the long table where the green material had been laid out only a few minutes earlier. The shop assistant had her glasses on her nose now as she stood by her table, quite still with the shears in her hand, watching the tall woman too. But that wasn’t who Mary was looking at. Mary had her grey eyes fixed on a girl standing in front of a stack of silk rolls wearing a cheap-looking buttoned up long coat with an unusually wide skirt beneath it. If her face wasn’t so pinched, Guy would think she had indulged in a few too many suet puddings.
‘Have you seen anything?’ he whispered.
Mary shook her head. ‘Not quite but … there’s something off. Look at her skirt, it’s too big.’
The birds by the shop till had stopped their pecking and although one of them was ringing up a customer’s cloth on the till, the others were rooted to the spot. Then the tall woman, who had been moving slowly, picked up her pace, turned right and disappeared around the corner. When she was out of sight, the shopgirls visibly exhaled and when Guy looked at the one with the glasses, she, too, had a look of relief pass over her face before she busied herself with tidying her station again. Mary’s hand, however, clutched his arm as tightly as before. She jerked him and nodded again at the pinched-face woman, who had moved away from the stack of silks and was edging towards the doorway, her hands in her pockets, almost as if she was holding herself in.
Guy shook his arm and Mary let go, then he walked towards the doorway, his steps small and fast. Before he could get there, a large woman with a straw shopping basket on one arm stood in his way, her bulk almost the width of the narrow aisle between the cutting table and a wall of material. She was holding a pince-nez with her other hand and leaning down to peer at the pattern.
‘Excuse me,’ said Guy, not wanting to touch her but needing, urgently, for her to stand up straight and give him enough room to squeeze past. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the wide back of the cheap coat heading fast towards the exit. The woman straightened up but turned to face him, her bulk and the basket blocking the way, the pince-nez still held up, through which she narrowed her eyes at Guy.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said in an unapologetic tone that indicated an impatience with the serving class. ‘I was merely—’
‘My apologies, madam,’ said Guy, not willing to hear what she was doing. He really didn’t care. ‘I must get past.’
The woman raised her shoulders, lowered her pince-nez and took a deep breath. She was preparing to deliver a lecture on manners and the behaviour of men in what was clearly a department for women who needed to take their time over domestic requirements. At least, Guy assumed she was preparing to say this but he wasn’t going to stick around to find out if he was right or wrong.
Then, as the wide skirt disappeared around the corner from his view, Guy saw Mary streak after her, the hat bumping up and down as she almost ran. If he was Theseus, he’d slay this Minotaur with its opera glasses but he was no Greek hero. Guy turned his back on the beast and followed another way out of the maze, making his way towards the exit in time to hear Mary proclaim, delight in her voice, ‘I think you’d better come with me, miss.’
As if a jolt of electricity had passed through all the persons there, the atmosphere was changed in a second. Guy ran around to Mary, trembling as she held on to her hostage, who was jerking her arm and shouting that this was an outrage. Guy took her other arm and – he couldn’t help himself – turned to Mary with a wide grin on his face; he wiped it off when the young woman started yelling even more loudly.
‘Keep quiet,’ said Guy. ‘Anything you need to say to us can be said at the station.’
The thought flashed through his mind that he hadn’t actually seen the woman steal anything; he hoped to God that Mary had. As if reading his mind, she stopped pulling and resorted to sullen mutterings about the fact that she hadn’t done anything, the assault on her person and character and so on. Guy was intensely aware of the eyes of the customers as they escorted her through the store, including an uncomfortable ride in the lift down to the ground floor. As they were about to exit into the street, Guy and Mary holding an elbow each, a red-faced man in a morning suit came puffing up. He gave Mary a quizzical look and addressed Guy.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on here?’
Guy pulled up short, aware that he and Mary weren’t in uniform. The scenario must have looked rather peculiar.
‘I’m Mr Northcutts,’ continued the man, his face settled down to peony pink, his white hair sticking out in tufts. ‘The general manager,’ he explained, seeing his name elicited no reaction.
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said Guy. ‘I’m Sergeant Sullivan of Vine Street police station, and this is Constable Moon.’ The manager didn’t even bother to look around at Mary but kept his eyes on Guy. ‘We’ve made an arrest – we have reason to believe this young lady has been stealing items from your store, in the haberdashery department.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Northcutts, batting this aside, ‘but what about…’ He lowered his voice and leant in towards Guy. The hostage went completely quiet and leant in too.
‘What about…?’
‘Alice Diamond.’
Guy felt the woman respond and he clutched her arm a little tighter.
‘She was in here, too,’ said Mr Northcutts. ‘The shopgirls know what she looks like. It’s an old trick – she comes in, distracts them and while they’re all watching her, the likes of this one –’ he jerked a thumb ‘– get away with it. Well, almost.’
Alice Diamond had been in there too? The pride Guy had felt in nabbing a shoplifter was immediately obliterated by the fear that Cornish would discover he’d let the prize slip away. Not for the first time, Guy cursed his short-sightedness. It was as if he thought he’d caught a ten-pound cod only to find nothing more than a mackerel and weeds on the end of his hook. He was almost tempted to let the woman go. But not quite.
Mr Northcutts was still talking, expressing his sorrow that the police time and again missed the biggest trick of all, the cost to his store … Guy cut him off.
‘Mr Northcutts, I think you’d better come and give a statement if there’s anything you’ve witnessed that could be important to this charge. But if you would please excuse us now, we had better proceed to the station.’
There was silence as several pairs of eyes watched the scene unfold before them. The anecdote would enliven many a dinner and pint in the pub that evening. People bustled through the doors from the street, only to be pulled up short by an arrangement of still figures dotted on the shop floor, some mid-poise, like casts of Pompeii.
‘I ain’t done nothing,’ the captive shouted as Guy and Mary walked her through the door and out into the cold air of the street. They could only hope that she had.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Louisa had always been enchanted when winter wrapped its icy arms around the Cotswold stone of Asthall Manor, perhaps because it had been in this cold season that she had first seen the house and its spell had been cast upon her. Awaking on that very first morning, she had seen the carpet of frost rolled out on the fields beyond the garden wall; close up were cobwebs laced with tiny, frozen drops of dew. It had seemed to her like another world and, in a way, it was. Growing up in London, she had had to look up to the sky to see a distance as great as the one she could cast across the land owned by Lord Redesdale.
The girls would complain about the cold, stamping their feet dramatically in the nursery and threatening to close the windows their mother insisted were kept open by six inches all the year round (though of course they never would dare). Nanny Blor chafed them gently, fetching woollen jumpers that smelled of lavender from the dried bundles kept in the drawers to deter hungry moths. Louisa almost enjoyed the tingle at the end of her nose, while her h
ands warmed on the range in the kitchen. Each morning, before the sun was up, Ada would silently lay and light a fire in Lady Redesdale’s bedroom before going down to the kitchen to help Mrs Stobie prepare breakfast. Even now she was married and lived out in the village she still came in for this task and Louisa wondered who might have to do it when she left: Ada had confided she was pregnant. ‘An early Christmas present,’ she’d laughed, and though Louisa was happy for her, at the same time she saw only years of further domestic drudgery ahead for her friend.
Winter lost its allure in the days after the death of Adrian Curtis. Unbroken, indistinguishable chilly hours followed one after the other as if they would never end. Even sunrise and sunset showed no difference in their grey light. Nobody had the desire to engage in their usual pastimes, all of which seemed either too frivolous or tiring. Nancy whined of exhaustion, which was most unlike her, and even Lady Redesdale had taken to her bed for three days, complaining of a heavy cold, asking for soup to be brought to her on a tray twice a day. Lady Redesdale was never ill. Lord Redesdale went on long walks with his dogs, coming home as dusk fell and retiring immediately to the child-proof room, where the fire now had to be laid each evening. The dining room was left dark and Mrs Stobie was querulous, uncertain each mealtime as to who was about and if anybody would eat anything she cooked.
Up in the nursery, Nanny Blor and Louisa tried to maintain normality for the younger ones who at least remained unaware of what had gone on, though they certainly knew something had happened. Debo sucked her thumb rather more ferociously than usual – ‘you’ll have no thumb left,’ Nanny Blor would say three times a day – but otherwise played quietly with her doll’s house, a battered thing now that five sisters had already been through it. Decca and Unity, when not in the schoolroom with the governess, sat together on a window seat, talking in low whispers. They didn’t appear to be playing a game but whatever they were doing with words was giving them great amusement. It was something of a relief to hear giggles spiralling out of their bedroom.
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