Two for Sorrow

by Nicola Upson

  Fallowfield reappeared in the yard and nodded discreetly to Penrose. ‘The rest of the building’s clear, Sir,’ he said. ‘Nothing looks out of place except in the workroom.’

  ‘Fine. Well, if everyone could go up to the flat now, I’ll be with you as soon as I can. And Mr Gaunt—you must be very late for work, so we won’t keep you any longer at the moment. We’ll need a formal statement from you in due course, and there may be some further questions—let Detective Sergeant Fallowfield know how we can get hold of you, and you’re free to go. Can we give you a lift anywhere?’

  ‘No thank you, Sir—I’m only a couple of minutes away. I work at the Coliseum.’

  ‘Stage crew?’ Penrose asked, and Gaunt nodded. They watched as Lettice and Ronnie led Hilda Reader round to the front of the building. ‘Thank you for what you’ve done this morning,’ Penrose added. ‘It can’t have been easy for you. I’d appreciate it if you could keep the details to yourself at the moment. Miss Baker’s remaining family will have to be told and I need to establish exactly what happened here—and all that will be much less painful without the help of the evening papers. Can I rely on you not to mention names to anyone?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Gaunt said.

  For once, Penrose actually believed the answer he was given. ‘Is the team on its way?’ he asked Fallowfield. ‘This snow’s not much at the moment, but it’s going to get worse.’

  ‘Should be here any minute, Sir. I caught Spilsbury on his way out—said he’d come right over.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Penrose left Fallowfield to take down Gaunt’s details, and walked over to the foot of the staircase. Standing at a distance, so as not to disturb the area immediately around the body, he looked down at the dead man. He lay with his head towards the stairs and parallel with the building, one hand close to his face, the other flung out behind him, just touching the step, as though he had still been trying to save himself when he hit the ground. In his sixties, Penrose guessed, and, from what he could see where the snow had not settled, shabbily dressed. Crouching down, he noticed the raw, red discolouration on the man’s knuckles where his skin had been exposed to the cold; the snow had done its quiet work, drifting, enfolding, obliterating; imperceptibly draining his life if the fall had not killed him, and creating more difficulties for those investigating his death.

  Penrose turned his back on Baker and headed upstairs through the front entrance to try to piece together the last moments of his daughter’s life, stopping on the way to fetch his bag from the car. He stood just inside the door to the workroom, taking advantage of the stillness before forensics arrived to absorb the scene as a whole. Once the detailed analysis of individual pieces of evidence began, the chance to do this was lost, so he was always relieved to be the first professional to arrive at the scene of a crime; photographs were invaluable, and many a cruel murder had been solved in the photographic department high above the Thames, but, for Penrose, there was no substitute for his own first impressions. Carefully, he put his bag down on the table nearest the door and took out some gloves, then walked slowly into the room. It was a scene of nauseating horror. Marjorie was slumped on an upright wooden chair and, although he could see the extent of her injuries in the mirror, nothing could have prepared him for the trauma of looking directly into her face. It was impossible to imagine what she might have been like in life, so distorted and mutilated were her features. Blood and vomit had trickled down her nose and out through the stitches in her lips. It ran in narrow lines down her face and onto the front of her sewing smock, defacing the Motley monogram. Penrose noticed the small pieces of black glass which mingled with it and realised that Marjorie’s suffering must have begun long before the needle touched her skin. As he looked closer, he could see tiny cuts and grazes all around her nose and on her cheeks, presumably from glass which had missed her mouth in the violence of the attack; some of the beads were still on the table next to the body, and he saw that they had been roughly crushed to make their edges even sharper and more deadly. Her swollen lips were bruised and discoloured, and the needle—about four inches long and angled at the tip—hung down from her mouth on a length of thick, black thread. The stitching was crudely done, and Penrose could not even begin to imagine the pain; in truth, though, he didn’t have to—the evidence of that was all too obvious in her eyes. Glazed and passive in death, and fixed on their merciless reflection, they nevertheless seemed to plead with him to call a halt to the torment; as he crouched down beside her, obscuring the line of vision between the body and its grotesque mirror image, he could almost believe that she was grateful.

  Marjorie’s hands were clasped together in her lap, but the red marks around her wrists suggested that they had, at some point, been tied together. There was a similar chafing to her neck, and the width of the mark seemed to match the tape measure which hung over the back of the chair. Penrose had tried to prevent his mind from focusing on the stench of the body, but it was unavoidable; he would not know until the post mortem whether the incontinence was a result of some sort of toxic substance or purely of fear, but he would be surprised to find that Marjorie had not been incapacitated in some way. She was young and looked reasonably strong, but there was no sign of a struggle in the room: the work tables still stood in neat rows and the chairs and tailor’s dummies remained upright and undamaged. The killer would have had ample time to tidy up, of course, but somehow Penrose did not think that was what had happened. No, he sensed something much more controlled and methodical in this determined violation of a young girl’s body. He stood and looked around him at the fabrics and drawings, at the contrasts of colour and texture that filled the room. Death was always ugly, whether it came from a merciful bullet to the head or the sort of prolonged torture he saw here, but more often than not it confined itself to poorer districts and normal, even squalid, domesticity; the fact that it had been allowed to taint a place of beauty, that Marjorie had been disfigured in the most repellent way amid the trappings of class and fashion, seemed to him significant.

  It occurred to Penrose that this was the first time he had attended a murder scene in a room he knew well, and he was struck by the way in which violence affected the atmosphere; it went far beyond the power of any physical damage, and he wondered how Lettice and Ronnie would cope with what had taken place here, or if Hilda Reader would ever feel capable of working in this studio again. He remembered what he and Josephine had discussed the other night: the story wasn’t the crime or the investigation—the stages which concerned him; it was how people picked up from there and carried on with their lives. If the obvious explanation here turned out to be the truth, and Marjorie’s father had fallen to his death after killing her, then Penrose’s involvement in their narrative was over before it really started; for everyone else—Marjorie’s family and workmates, others who would be destroyed by the shame of what her father had done—it was just the beginning, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow for the unrecognised victims of murder, the thousands of people for whom justice was not the same as solace, and who were left to cope while professionals like him washed their hands of one set of lives and moved on to the next.

  Somehow, though, he didn’t think his business with the Bakers was finished yet: the obvious scenario might be logical, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. He glanced across the table next to the body, taking in the cotton reels and squares of material, the boxes of pins and needles—all the clutter which would make the necessary analysis of the scene so difficult—and stopped when he noticed an empty vodka bottle and two glasses. That might easily explain how Marjorie had been drugged, but, after what Hilda Reader had said, would the girl really have settled down for a cosy drink with her father on work premises? He doubted it. There was something else, too: on the floor by the mirror lay another sewing smock, exactly like the one which Marjorie wore. When he bent down to examine it, he could smell the faintest trace of vomit and see that it was covered in tiny flecks of blood. Clearly, th
e smock had been worn by the killer. Why had it been left behind? he wondered, but, more to the point, was Baker the sort of man who would bother to take such precautions? He was wary of jumping to too many conclusions before he’d heard the scientific evidence, but his instinct told him that, if Baker had killed his daughter, it would have been with a blow to the head or a hard shove down the stairs—something clumsy and unimaginative. This was altogether different; it was spiteful and emotional and—if he really wanted to speculate—the sort of crime more often committed by a woman than a man. The stitching of the mouth had obvious connotations: Marjorie had said too much, exposed a secret, perhaps, or told a lie. Then she had been made to watch herself die, taunted and mocked by her own helplessness. The evidence might prove him wrong but, at the moment, the personality of the crime did not tally in Penrose’s mind with the man who lay dead outside.

  Deep in thought, he heard a noise behind him and turned round, expecting to see Fallowfield or a scene-of-crime officer, but it was Ronnie. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he snapped, his concern for her making him react more angrily than he meant to. ‘I told you to go to the flat.’ He went over to the door and took her arm, but she shook him off.

  ‘I want to see her, Archie,’ she said, ‘and don’t think you’re going to stop me. These are our premises and Marjorie is—was—our responsibility. Hilda walked in on this when it should have been one of us, and she’s up there now in some sort of private hell created by what she’s seen. I can’t just hide upstairs and pretend I know how awful it must be. I won’t do that. It’s disrespectful to Marjorie and plain bloody cowardly as far as Hilda’s concerned. Please—let me see her properly.’

  She tried to push past him but he wouldn’t let her. ‘Does Hilda know you’re here?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘No, I thought not. She didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d want to share her pain—not like this, anyway. There are ways of helping her that don’t involve putting yourself through this just because you feel guilty.’ He and Ronnie were alike in many ways, and he understood exactly where her anger was coming from. ‘Trust me, please—I didn’t know Marjorie and you did, but no woman would want to be seen like this—that’s not respect. You can stay here with me for a minute if you like, but I won’t let you go any closer.’ Ronnie seemed to realise that she had no choice but to accept his decision. She stared across the room, bewildered and horrified by what she saw, and he watched her face as she tried to come to terms with a string of unfamiliar emotions, understanding how alienated and helpless she must feel in a space where she was usually so in control. ‘Have you noticed anything out of place?’ he asked after a moment or two.

  ‘Apart from a dead seamstress, you mean?’

  ‘Apart from that, yes.’

  Ronnie looked around the room. ‘The mirror’s been moved,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s usually over there by the window to catch the light. Otherwise, it’s all as it should be.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘You could almost believe it was a normal working day, couldn’t you? Oh, Archie—why did he have to pick Hilda’s table to kill her at? It seems such a small thing, I suppose—what does it matter where she died when she died so horrifically? But if it had been anyone else’s, they need never have known. Now, I honestly don’t know how any of us can carry on here.’

  He saw no point in lying to her. ‘It’s going to be difficult at first, and I agree with you—Hilda may find it impossible. But it does fade, you know—that image in your mind. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does.’

  ‘Did he really stitch her mouth up?’ He nodded, and Ronnie seemed to search for words that would express how she felt. In the end, she simply said: ‘I liked her, Archie. I really liked her.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said gently, leading her away. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

  They walked back along the corridor and, as they passed the open doorway which led on to the staircase, he glanced down into the courtyard, where Fallowfield was busy organising the other officers as they arrived. The snow was still falling, but only lightly, and he was pleased to see a sense of urgency in the proceedings; the sooner they could photograph both scenes and remove the bodies for post mortem, the better. He needed some preliminary results as soon as possible to confirm exactly what he was dealing with, and he knew he could rely on Spilsbury to be both swift and thorough.

  Lettice had not been exaggerating about the state of their old flat on the top floor of number 66. There were rolls of material everywhere, and the living room had been transformed into a makeshift workroom to accommodate extra staff during busy times. The three bedrooms that led off it looked like the storage area for a West End jumble sale: each was packed with props, set models and costumes from past productions, and Penrose wondered how long it would take his cousins to fill Maiden Lane as well. Somehow, Lettice had found the sofa amid the clutter and she and Hilda Reader were drinking tea; he was pleased to see that both looked a little stronger than they had downstairs. As soon as she saw her sister, Lettice got up and gave her a hug, and some unspoken words of comfort passed between them. Not for the first time, he admired and envied their closeness.

  ‘Mrs Reader—would you mind taking me through exactly what happened when you got to work this morning?’ he asked, sitting down opposite her.

  ‘Well, I knew something wasn’t right when I found the gates unlocked,’ she said. ‘I thought that Miss Lettice or Miss Ronnie might have come in early—we’ve got so much on at the moment, and they often do—then I realised that wasn’t so because the snow was untouched. Beautiful, it looked.’

  ‘So there were no footprints or marks in the courtyard at all?’

  ‘No, nothing, so I just assumed it was carelessness. Then when I got through the arch and turned the corner, I saw someone lying at the bottom of the stairs. I thought it was Marjorie at first—she’d been working late the night before, and I thought she’d slipped on the steps in the dark—but when I got closer, it was obviously a man. I was so relieved at first, which was wicked of me, I suppose, but I was just glad it wasn’t Marjorie.’

  Penrose let her compose herself for a moment, and then asked: ‘Why was Marjorie working on her own last night? Was that usual?’

  It was Lettice who answered. ‘There’s been a lot of overtime recently—like Hilda says, we’ve been rushed off our feet and it’s coming up to Christmas, so the girls are all happy to have a bit extra in their pay packets. They’ll often stay late. But Friday night’s different—they all want to get home to their families or go out for the evening, so they clock off at the normal time.’

  ‘But not Marjorie?’

  ‘No,’ Hilda said. ‘She seemed keen to stay. I always got the impression there wasn’t much for her to go home to, although, like I said, she never talked much about her family.’

  ‘You didn’t suspect that there was something particular she wanted to stay for, though? A reason why she might want to be alone in the building?’

  Hilda shook her head. ‘No, I can’t think of anything that would make her want to do that. You see, she always made an extra effort to show that we could trust her. We’re lucky with most of our girls—they’re honest and hard-working, but I think Marjorie always felt she had to try that bit harder than the rest because of where she’d come from.’

  ‘Sorry—I don’t understand.’

  ‘She’d been in prison,’ Ronnie explained. ‘We took her on trial six months ago, just after she got out of Holloway—for the third time, I believe. You know Mary Size?’

  ‘The deputy governor?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s a great believer in finding prisoners some sort of meaningful work to go to when they’re released. Some of the women have a talent for needlework—God knows they get enough practice—so she approached us. Marjorie’s the fourth one we’ve had in the last couple of years. All of them have done well, actually, but Marjorie flourished.’

  ‘What was she in prison for?’ Penrose asked, surprised and impressed by his cousins’ un
derstated social conscience.

  ‘Theft, mainly—petty stuff, but persistent.’

  ‘And you’ve had no trouble like that since she’s been with you.’

  ‘No,’ Lettice said firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Who was last to leave, apart from Marjorie?’

  ‘I was,’ Hilda said. ‘We had a late fitting for the Cowdray Club gala. Lady Ashby was here and Marjorie was dealing with her, so I waited until they’d finished.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Seven o’clock. I’m sure about that because Lady Ashby needed to be at the Ham Bone Club by half past, and I offered to call her a taxi but she said she’d have time to walk. We went down to St Martin’s Lane together. She tried to persuade Marjorie to go with her, but I think she was joking.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Ronnie said. ‘No pretty girl in London is safe when Geraldine’s on heat.’

  In any other circumstances, the expression on Hilda Reader’s face would have been priceless. ‘How did Marjorie seem when you left her?’ Penrose asked.

  ‘She’d cheered up since the incident with her father at lunchtime. We kept her busy, and work seemed to help her to forget about it. I made sure she knew what jobs were to be done, and I left her to it. She seemed impatient to get on.’

  ‘And did you lock the gates when you left?’

  ‘No, I just pulled them to. It’s hard to unlock them from the inside, you see, because it’s so dark under the arch. I thought it would be easier for Marjorie when she left.’

  Penrose didn’t bother to ask if anyone could have opened the gates from the street; it would be easy enough to check for himself and he didn’t want to say something which might suggest to Hilda Reader that she was in any way to blame for Marjorie’s death. ‘And there was no sign of her father hanging around outside when you left?’