The Girl in the Letter

by Emily Gunnis

  ‘How utterly dreadful. The poor little thing,’ said Maude, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘What if it was Kitty that died that night,’ said Sam, ‘and Elvira took her place for fear of being sent back to St Margaret’s?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. How can she just have taken her sister’s place – it’s impossible.’ Maude’s blue eyes were troubled.

  ‘Is it?’ said Sam. ‘They were twins.’

  ‘But they would have looked different, surely?’ Maude was leaning towards her. ‘Elvira lived at St Margaret’s, she would have been neglected, whereas Kitty came from a loving home. Elvira’s hair, nails, teeth would have been filthy and she would have been much thinner than Kitty, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Kitty said she woke up in hospital three days after she met Elvira. She said she spent the night in a ditch. So she would have been caked in mud by the time she got to hospital anyway, and they would have cleaned her up.’

  ‘But her mother and father would have known; a mother knows,’ said Maude, staring at Sam.

  ‘Their birth mother was dead. If you’re talking about Helena Cannon, she was very ill in hospital at the time and George would have been stressed and distracted.’ Sam paused. ‘It’s possible that Elvira, knowing Kitty was dead, took her sister’s place and has spent her life getting revenge for what happened to her.’

  ‘Revenge? What do you mean?’ Maude looked confused, tugging at the tissue in her hands.

  ‘Everyone that Ivy mentions in her letters is dead. And I think they were killed by Elvira.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Maude, pausing for a moment to take it in. ‘Well, everyone except Rose.’

  Sam stared at Maude, her eyes wide with horror, ‘Oh my God. Nana.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Maude. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Sam raced to the front door, grabbing her bag and pulling on her shoes as she shouted out to Maude, ‘Call the police, tell them an elderly lady has been attacked at Flat 117 on the Whitehawk Estate.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Monday 6 February 2017

  It didn’t take Fred long to find the detached Victorian house the lady at the post office had directed him to. He didn’t hold out much hope that the Jacobson family would still be living there, so his heart fluttered when an attractive elderly woman in a pink cashmere cardigan came to the door. She propped her glasses on top of her perfectly blow-dried hair and examined him closely.

  ‘Mrs Jacobson?’ said Fred with a warm smile. He had read in Dr Jacobson’s obituary that he had died in 1976 and that he and his wife had been married for twenty years prior to that so Mrs Jacobson had to be in her eighties. Still, she clearly took pride in her appearance, thought Fred, and looked well for her age.

  ‘Yes?’ she replied nervously.

  ‘I don’t know if you remember me. I used to live in the area as a boy. I’m Fred Cartwright; your husband was my father’s GP for years,’ he lied, feeling guilty about it but pushing on for Sam’s sake.

  The woman frowned, trying to make sense of her unexpected visitor.

  ‘Dad always spoke very highly of him. I believe he wrote when your husband died. He was very upset,’ said Fred.

  ‘I see. How can I help?’ the woman replied.

  Fred paused. ‘I’d like to ask you a question or two about your late husband if you have the time.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I was just catching up on Saturday’s episode of Casualty,’ said the woman, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘I was sorry to hear of Dr Jacobson’s death. You and your daughters must miss him dreadfully – Sarah and Jane I think Dad said their names were, is that right?’ Fred had memorised the names in the cuttings he’d pored over earlier.

  ‘Thank you. Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘It really won’t take more than five minutes. We could talk out here on the bench, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh no, it’s terribly cold. Forgive me, I’m an old lady on my own, so I get a little nervous. It’s always lovely to talk about Edward – do come in.’ He followed her down the hallway. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Jacobson,’ said Fred, nodding.

  ‘Call me Sally. Please come through and have a seat while I make a fresh pot.’

  She led him into a large sitting room with a plethora of soft furnishings, family photographs and flowers. The room was immaculate, not a cushion out of place, and the huge house had obviously been recently decorated. There was no way a frail old lady such as Mrs Jacobson could tend to a house this size on her own. Edward Jacobson had obviously made sure his wife was well provided for long after he was gone.

  As Mrs Jacobson busied herself in the kitchen, Fred studied the selection of photographs on a polished antique table. He picked up a picture of Dr Jacobson with his arm round a honey-coloured spaniel.

  ‘We all loved that dog,’ said Mrs Jacobson, who had appeared behind him with a tray of tea and biscuits. ‘I think I cried more when Honey died than when Edward did. She was such wonderful company after he went. It was the final straw losing her.’

  ‘I can imagine. So how are Jane and Sarah doing?’ said Fred.

  ‘Gosh, so grown up now, I can hardly believe it. Sarah is a doctor like her father, and Jane is an architect,’ she said, setting the contents of the tray on the table. ‘They try to come and see me as much as they can, but they’re very busy. You know how it is.’

  Fred smiled. ‘You must be so proud of them.’

  ‘Yes, it just makes me sad that Edward didn’t get to see how well they’ve turned out.’ Sally handed him a cup of tea. ‘So what are you doing with yourself these days, Fred?’

  Fred smiled. ‘Well, Sally, actually I’m a historian, and I’m trying to find out about a place called St Margaret’s in Preston. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?’ He took a biscuit from the plate offered to him and put it on his saucer.

  ‘Of course, the mother-and-baby home. It’s been derelict for years, but they’re tearing it down soon, I think.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Fred, pausing to find the right words. ‘I was just wondering if you knew whether your husband had any dealings with St Margaret’s?’ He watched Mrs Jacobson’s face, waiting for any sign of defensiveness, but there was none.

  ‘Well, yes, they took in unmarried pregnant girls, didn’t they? Edward used to go up there sometimes to help with difficult births, but he didn’t like to speak of it much.’

  Fred nodded. ‘It would have been typical of him to want to help,’ he said, taking a gulp of tea.

  The elderly lady sat back on the plump sofa cushions as she sipped from her bone-china cup. Fred immediately pictured the scene: Sally tucked up in silk sheets, barely stirring as the front door clicked shut and Dr Jacobson crept in, his hands still covered in blood from fighting to save a poor young girl’s life. She would have stirred and lifted her head as he stood in the bedroom doorway and whispered, ‘I’m just going to have a bath, darling, I’ll sleep in the spare room so I don’t disturb you.’

  A Persian cat appeared at the French windows and made them both jump.

  ‘What are you doing there, Jess?’ said Sally, getting up to let it in.

  ‘Your garden is beautiful,’ said Fred, looking beyond the French windows as Sally closed them quickly and wrapped her cardigan tightly around her. ‘It can’t be easy to run a house this size on your own.’

  ‘Well, I’m lucky that I can afford help. The girls keep trying to get me to leave, but I can’t. It’s all very well them thinking they know what’s best, but how is it good for me to move somewhere I don’t know, to live on my own and leave Edward behind? I’d be letting him down.’ She put her cup on the table. ‘He died here, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry, that must be very hard.’ He waited for her to go on, but she remained lost in thought. ‘Had he been ill?’

  ‘No, not at all. He drowned in the pool house. We still don’t know quite what
happened, but somehow he got trapped under the cover. The autopsy showed he’d dislocated his shoulder. We think Honey got stuck under there and he was trying to get her out and fell in.’

  ‘How dreadful. Were you here at the time?’ said Fred.

  ‘No, I was out Christmas shopping. My car got a puncture, so I was gone for a while . . .’ Sally’s voice tailed off as she played with her hands in her lap. ‘We’d bought the strongest make of pool cover so that the children couldn’t fall in; it should have held him, but he hit his head when he fell, so he was unconscious when he slipped into the water.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Were the police helpful?’ said Fred, watching Sally’s face carefully.

  ‘They were. I kept telling them that something wasn’t right. Honey hated that pool house; she feared water and would never have gone in there. And Edward broke a pane of glass trying to get in – his fingerprints were on a rock he used. He knew where the key was; why would he break into his own pool house? I don’t blame the police for not listening to me. I was in such a state after his death, I had to be sedated for several days. I couldn’t attend the inquest. I knew the verdict would be accidental death. Why wouldn’t it be? There was no reason for anyone to want to hurt Edward.’

  ‘No,’ said Fred, looking at Dr Jacobson’s photograph on the wall, surrounded by his girls.

  ‘I’ll never forgive myself for not being here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sally,’ said Fred. ‘He was always very kind to our family. Life’s really not fair sometimes.’

  Sally wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. ‘It’s selfish of me, I know – we had twenty incredibly happy years – but I sometimes still see friends bickering with their husbands and I want to scream, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have someone to get cross with!” ’

  Fred waited for her to go on, sad that she was so lonely she would share so much with a stranger.

  ‘He wanted to come shopping with me, but I made some excuse. He was a bit of a hindrance to shop with, you see. If only I’d had more patience with him, he’d still be here with me now.’

  ‘As my father says, every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,’ said Fred.

  Sally looked up and smiled, her eyes still full of tears. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me talking about Edward. How can I help you?’

  ‘Well, I was just wondering if you’d kept any of Dr Jacobson’s paperwork? I thought he might have information on some of the girls he helped to save at St Margaret’s so I could interview them. It would make a lovely tribute to him in my dissertation.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ said Sally, frowning suddenly. ‘I’ve never really had the heart to go through his paperwork properly. I just want to leave everything as it was.’

  ‘I completely understand,’ said Fred, pausing for effect. ‘Perhaps if you were to just see whether he had any files for St Margaret’s, then you could maybe have a think and talk to your daughters. I could come back another time if you felt comfortable. No pressure.’

  Slowly Sally digested his proposal. ‘Well, that sounds fine. But I have to say, I don’t think there will be much. It was very strange: just before he died, he was sorting through four or five boxes of files that had been delivered to him that week by Father Benjamin. I presumed they were to do with St Margaret’s.’

  Sally thought back to that day in mid December 1976, a week before Edward had died, when Father Benjamin had turned up on the doorstep.

  ‘Hello, Sally, is Edward in?’ he had said, standing on the doorstep, walking stick in hand.

  ‘Um, yes. Is he expecting you, Father?’ She had known he wasn’t; that he had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home. But obviously she couldn’t turn Father Benjamin away.

  ‘What on earth does he want? Can’t you tell him I’m ill or something?’ Edward had snapped when she went to find him, a look of alarm in his tired eyes.

  Sally had been slightly taken aback by her husband’s tone. ‘Well, I can’t tell him that now, Edward, it’s too late.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake. Well, you’d better let him in then,’ he had hissed at her, huffing and puffing as he moved paperwork off his desk.

  After showing Father Benjamin up to Edward’s study, she had stood nervously on the landing, listening to their raised voices from inside.

  ‘Well, I can hardly see what you want me to do about it all now, Father,’ Edward had said. ‘I warned you at the time that you needed to keep proper records for those poor children, God rest their souls.’

  ‘Those children were fed and sheltered by us; we had no other way of paying for their upkeep. I take offence at the moral high ground you have taken over this, Edward. You have always known this went on, and yet you have continued to benefit extremely well from the girls you send to us.’

  ‘Sent, Father, sent. I haven’t referred a girl to you for nearly six years.’

  Sally had heard Father Benjamin laugh at this, a harsh, empty laugh that made her feel sick to her stomach. ‘I think your part was well played out before then, Doctor. I don’t want this to turn acrimonious, but I have records in my car, records the council is now legally entitled to see. If I refuse, I could be in contempt of court if it were to go to trial.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you spent all the money Mercer Pharmaceuticals gave you.’

  ‘Listen to me, Edward Jacobson,’ Father Benjamin had roared so loudly that Sally had scuttled back down the stairs. ‘If I have to answer questions over this, I am taking you down with me. You and you alone are able to go through these files and find explanations for what is in their pages. We have one week, and I suggest you get started tonight.’

  Sally had heard the study door open and had rushed into the kitchen as the priest marched downstairs and out of the front door, leaving it wide open. She had watched him fling open the boot of his car, pull out four large box files and lug them into the house, leaving them in the hallway. He had said nothing as he had caught Sally staring at him; simply turned and slammed the front door behind him.

  Fred looked up at her now, his ears pricking up. ‘Well, if they were St Margaret’s files, I’d certainly be very interested to see them,’ he said, trying to hide his eagerness.

  ‘I’m not sure what he did with them. I never saw them again; they certainly aren’t in his study. To this day I don’t know where they went. Would you like to wait here and I’ll go and see if I can find anything useful?’ said Sally, smiling cheerfully.

  Fred nodded. As soon as he heard footsteps above him, he looked at his shaking hands and went over to the drinks cabinet. He opened it, poured himself a small whisky and downed it. After a few minutes, he heard Sally’s voice; quite obviously she was on a phone call. Someone had called her, he thought, or she had begun to worry and called them.

  ‘Well, I presume so, I don’t know, darling!’ she was saying, her voice slightly raised in agitation. She walked back into the room with the phone to her ear.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck,’ she said to Fred, her warm body language and tone changed entirely. ‘There are no such files and my daughter, who lives in the next village, is due any moment. I think it might be an idea if you left now.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Fred, trying to hide his panic. ‘Thank you for the tea. Could I possibly use the lavatory quickly before I go? I’ve got a long drive back to London ahead of me.’

  Sally’s lips pursed. It was obvious that since checking in with her daughter, she’d been utterly spooked. ‘Yes, all right, it’s just along there on the left.’

  Fred walked down the hall, glancing into the other rooms as he passed. As he went to close the door to the bathroom, he spotted an open door on the landing at the top of the stairs opposite him. He didn’t hesitate. Checking that the coast was clear, he closed the bathroom door and quietly went up the stairs, walking into a large study furnished with a mahogany desk, leather chair and two filing cabinets, one of which had a s
et of keys in its lock.

  Knowing he had only minutes before he was discovered, he twisted the key urgently and pulled open the first row of hanging files on their runners. Finding nothing under ‘S’ for ‘St Margaret’s’, he looked at ‘M’, but that only held a file entitled ‘Mercer Pharmaceuticals’. He pulled it out. The file contained a single piece of paper, what seemed to be a contract, on headed paper, the words Private and confidential at the top. At the bottom were two signatures, Dr Jacobson’s and that of the president of Mercer Pharmaceuticals, Philip Stone. Fred pushed on, and under ‘F’ he found a bulging file with Father Benjamin’s name on it. With trembling hands, he pulled it out and opened it.

  The first documents were Father Benjamin’s medical records – various references to minor ailments – but behind them were accounts of around forty deliveries Dr Jacobson had attended, most of which appeared to have ended in stillbirths, and all of which had taken place at St Margaret’s.

  Desperate as he was to give the documents the attention they deserved, his thumping heart reminded Fred that he didn’t have the luxury of time. As he sped through as many as he could, he came to a small file at the back held together with a flimsy paper clip. From Dr Jacobson’s scribbled notes, it seemed that he had attended children as young as three or four at St Margaret’s with fever, neck pain, stiffness, spasms, vomiting, listlessness and seizures. Who were these children? As far as Fred knew, St Margaret’s was a mother-and-baby home where mothers gave birth to babies who were then adopted.

  Sally Jacobson’s voice came echoing up the stairs. ‘Fred?’ Smashing his knee against the desk, Fred rushed to the doorway and saw her hammering on the bathroom door below.

  Hands shaking, he removed the letter from the Mercer file, folded it in half and pushed it down the back of his trousers. Then he closed the main file and returned it to the cabinet as fast as he could. Checking that all was as he had found it, he snuck out of the study and ran down the stairs.