by Nicola Upson
‘Twenty-three, according to the records my cousins kept,’ Penrose said, ‘and she’d done three stretches in Holloway in as many years.’
‘Well that figures, coming from round here.’
Fallowfield’s comment might have sat uncomfortably with the welfare officers, but it was not entirely unjust. All districts had their notorious streets, but Campbell Road’s reputation was darker than most and the Bunk held a certain legendary status amongst the officers who dealt with trouble there on a daily basis. A chameleon by nature, the street was rife with domestic violence and disputes between households, yet it closed ranks at the slightest hint of interference from strangers, presenting an unfriendly but remarkably united face to the outside world.
They parked at the southern end of the street in front of a newsagent’s and a small beer off-licence. A group of men stood around on the pavement talking and idling away a Saturday morning, their ragged coat collars turned up to keep out the cold, their breath mingling with smoke from their cigarettes. The air bristled with hostility as Penrose and Fallowfield got out of the car. ‘Watch your motor, copper?’ a small boy shouted insolently from the other side of the street, and one or two of the men sniggered as a handful of snow and mud hit the windscreen. The boy moved nearer to the car, kicking a few stones towards the vehicle as he walked, full of bravado in front of his friends. Fallowfield glared at him and seemed about to say something, but Penrose shook his head. How early the antagonism set in, he thought as he led the way up the street; the oldest of the boys could only have been six or seven.
The Bunk was broad enough to give the impression that its houses had a right to be there and, unlike most slums, the street did not crouch into the shadows of a factory or gasworks. In fact, a stranger oblivious to its history would never have guessed that the three-storey buildings housed anything other than the artisan classes they had originally been designed for. The social face of the street may have changed, but traces of its architectural aspirations remained in the generous pavements and iron railings which ran in front of the houses, protecting a tiny sliver of private land from public footsteps. The door to number 35 was worn and neglected, the woman who answered it much the same; she looked forty but was probably younger; Penrose could smell the alcohol on her breath before she even opened her mouth. ‘We’re looking for a Mrs Baker,’ he said. ‘Is she at home?’
The woman smirked. ‘Maria? I don’t know where else she’d be. Top of the house—two rooms at the back. Would you like me to show you up, Sir?’
She spat the last word out sarcastically, and Penrose pushed the door open and walked past her, ignoring the mock curtsey that accompanied the offer. ‘No, thank you. We’ll find our own way.’
Inside, the house was in desperate need of repair: the plastered walls were peeling, the ceilings stained and dingy and, as they walked over to the stairs, Penrose noticed that the floorboards were springy with damp. Sections of balustrade had been removed for firewood, making the dimly lit, uneven steps more dangerous than ever. From what he could see through open doors on his way up, the overcrowding seemed to have got worse since he was last here. There must be more people per room than the law allowed, but that was hardly surprising; he knew from experience that what was acceptable was defined by what people were used to rather than what was legal.
‘We’ll just tell her the facts as gently as possible,’ he said quietly to Fallowfield on the middle landing. ‘Presumably she knew them both better than anyone else, so it’ll be interesting to see what conclusions she jumps to about what happened.’
He knocked at the first of four doors which led off the second-floor corridor, and it was answered almost immediately by a dark-haired woman in her late forties or early fifties. She looked up at him with tired eyes, her face sallow and expressionless—the look of guilt or dread which usually greeted his arrival was entirely absent. ‘Mrs Baker?’
‘What’s he done now?’ Her voice was deep and roughened by cigarettes, her accent that of a born Londoner. ‘It must be something serious if they’ve sent the busies. Or is it Marjorie you’re after?’
‘I need to talk to you about both of them, I’m afraid. May we come in?’ She nodded and stood aside to let them pass. After the dirt and degradation of the rest of the house, the Bakers’ room was refreshingly clean, but shabby and depressing nonetheless. Faded curtains with barely enough material to cover the windows hung on a piece of string, and the linoleum on the floor was scuffed and torn. The ceiling was covered in the obligatory damp stains and the bed stood at an awkward angle in the corner to avoid the three or four places where water was dripping through. A cot, an ugly deal table and chair and a chipped marble washstand were the only other significant items of furniture. A toddler with a shock of straw-coloured curls began to cry, and the woman went over to calm her down. Penrose watched as she lifted the girl from the cot, noticing the scald marks and scars on her work-sore hands; how impossible it must be to live safely in these inadequate rooms, with coal fires to cook on and oil lamps and candles for lighting; it was a wonder there weren’t more fatalities.
When the toddler was quiet again, Maria Baker looked challengingly at them, daring them to surprise her with whatever news they had brought about her family. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mrs Baker,’ Penrose began quietly, but he was interrupted before he could go any further.
‘Killed him at last, has she?’ Her matter-of-factness wrong-footed him, and it must have shown in his face. ‘Nothing would surprise me about them two,’ she added. ‘I’ve lived in the middle of their fighting for too long. It was only a matter of time before it got out of hand.’
‘I’m very sorry, but your husband and Marjorie are both dead,’ he said, and for the first time Maria Baker looked shocked and confused. ‘Their bodies were found earlier this morning at Marjorie’s place of work, but we believe they died last night. Marjorie was murdered. Your husband was found at the bottom of some steps and his death may have been an accident.’
‘He killed her?’
‘Is that likely?’
She walked over to the bed and sat down, then nodded to Penrose to take the chair. ‘They hated each other—always have. She stood up to him, you see—saw through his lies and his idleness and wasn’t afraid to say so. Only one who ever has—but that’s what girls are like today, isn’t it? We were always taught to put up with what we were given, and we found our own ways round it. But Marjorie wasn’t like that—she put him down to his face, played him at his own game. And Joe didn’t like people getting the better of him.’
‘Was he violent towards her?’ Fallowfield asked.
Mrs Baker looked scornfully at him. ‘He was violent to all of us—where do you think I got this from?’ She parted her hair and Penrose could see where a cut was just beginning to heal. ‘I don’t bang my own head against the wall, although there’s times when it feels like that. No, Joe’s attitude was that if I wanted to run the household—bring the money in, discipline the kids—then I could take my punishment like a man, as well. He wasn’t special in that—it’s what men do here. They’re no one on the outside, so they make their own power at home.’ She thought for a moment, absent-mindedly smoothing the blankets on the bed. ‘He wasn’t always like that, but it’s hard to love anyone when you hate yourself, when you’re ashamed like he was.’
‘Ashamed of what?’
‘Of his life. Of ending it here. He was an old man, sixty-seven next birthday. There were a lot of things that he regretted, and he blamed me for most of them. Marjorie could look after herself, though, especially as she got older—she had a hell of a temper. She broke his nose with a poker one night. If anything, he was afraid of her. That’s why I thought …’ The sentence was left unfinished as she tried to reconcile what had happened to her family with what she knew of them. ‘Are you sure he did it?’
Penrose evaded the question. ‘Marjorie’s murder was clearly planned,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid that she was subjected to a brut
al, spiteful attack.’ He chose his words carefully, keen to spare her details which no mother would want to hear. ‘We have reason to believe that she was killed because of something she knew, perhaps a secret that she had threatened to reveal. Do you have any idea what that might have been?’
It was a shot in the dark, based on nothing more than his interpretation of the mutilation to Marjorie’s face, but Maria Baker glanced at him sharply and the guard which had begun to lift when she spoke of her husband returned more forcefully than ever. ‘If that’s true,’ she said coldly, ‘it’s nothing to do with anyone in this family. It’s very difficult to have secrets when you live in each other’s pockets.’
‘How long have you been here, Mrs Baker?’ Fallowfield asked.
‘Fifteen years or so. An aunt of mine lived here and she took us in. She never married, so she had room and she was glad of someone to look out for her. When she died, we kept the rent on.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Edwards. Violet Edwards.’
‘And where were you before?’
‘Essex for a bit. Joe’s got family in Southend, but it didn’t work out for us there.’ She smiled bitterly to herself. ‘In fact, I couldn’t honestly say it worked out for us anywhere. We never really stood a chance.’
‘Can I ask why?’ Penrose spoke gently. With so little to go on, he wanted to find out as much as he could about Marjorie’s family background, if only to satisfy himself that her father was innocent—of her murder, at least, if not of bringing pain and misery into her life from the moment she was born.
‘Joe was married before him and me got together, but it was a disaster and it turned very bitter at the end. He never shook off the memory—it scarred him, in ways you couldn’t imagine.’
‘Did Marjorie know about this?’
‘No, it was years ago, long before she was born, and he wouldn’t have his first wife’s name mentioned. As far as Marjorie knew, it’d been me and Joe from the beginning.’
‘Were there any children from that first marriage?’
‘Only one, but he lost touch with her when it ended. He made up for it with me, though—nothing short of a bleedin’ baby factory, we were. Eight in twelve years—it was like he had a duty to fill the place with kids.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘God knows why, ’cause he didn’t want anything to do with them once they were here.’
‘Where did Marjorie come in the family?’
‘Youngest of the ones that lived.’
‘And the rest of your children?’
‘Couldn’t see ’em for dust when they were old enough to leave home.’
‘So who’s this?’ he asked, nodding towards the cot.
‘She’s from next door. I look after other people’s kids—well, the ones that aren’t old enough to be put out to work or lent out for begging. We all do a bit to earn what we can—some of the women do housework, some lend money; me, I look after babies—God knows I’ve had enough practice.’
‘Did Marjorie sleep next door?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, with a couple of girls from the family across the landing. They help out with the rent.’
‘Would you mind if Sergeant Fallowfield had a look around?’
‘Help yourself, but you won’t find anything. Marjorie never left stuff lying around—prison taught her that.’
‘What did your husband do for a living?’ Penrose asked when Fallowfield had left the room.
She scoffed. ‘Joe and work never really got on. It was always short-term stuff with him—digging trenches for the new stands at the Arsenal, driving vans for the coal dealer down the road, the odd building job here and there.’ She looked round the room and added sarcastically: ‘It’s not what you’d call a hearth and home worth working for, is it? And if you mention where you live to most of the employers round here, you soon find yourself at the back of the queue. That’s what Joe said, anyway, but he could always find an excuse for not pulling his weight—it was one of the things that Marjorie hated him for; letting the rest of us pick up the shortfall.’
‘And Marjorie’s prison sentences—were they a result of her having to make up the shortfall?’
‘She’d been making her own way since she was a kid. Children’s wages are important—why do you think we have them?’ She laughed, but Penrose realised that the comment had not been a joke. He glanced up as Fallowfield came back in, but the sergeant shook his head. ‘And she was good at it, too,’ Mrs Baker continued. ‘She’d beg for used first-house programmes up at the Empire, then sell them back to the second houses, or buy cheap white flowers and dye them for button-holes—she was always creative, was our Marjorie.’
How easily she had slipped into talking of her daughter in the past tense, Penrose thought. ‘But what did she do to end up in Holloway?’
‘The first time was three Christmases ago—she got a job sorting mail at Mount Pleasant and pinched whatever was worth having. Then she nicked a handbag, and the last stretch—well, that was her father’s fault. She started running errands for one of the moneylenders down the street—Joe stopped her one day on her way back from a customer and made her hand over the cash, but she took the flak for it.’
‘Why didn’t she just tell the truth?’ Fallowfield’s tone was incredulous. ‘There was no love lost between them.’
Maria Baker glared at him. ‘You don’t shop your own, and anyway, mud sticks. No one had a problem believing it was Marjorie who was in the wrong.’
Penrose could see that his sergeant was having trouble hiding what he thought of this honour-among-thieves principle. ‘I gather she kept in touch with one of the girls from prison,’ he said. ‘Do you know who that was?’
‘You must mean Lucy—Lucy Peters. She brought her here a couple of times. Scared little thing, she was, but then Marjorie always did look out for the underdog.’
Fallowfield made a note of the name. ‘Tell me about Marjorie,’ Penrose said. It was always so tempting to put a halo over a murder victim. People—particularly close relatives—were understandably reluctant to speak ill of the dead and, more often than not, he was given a picture of a person who had never existed, a person devoid of the very human weaknesses which had almost certainly got him or her killed. Already he could see how easy it would be to dismiss Marjorie Baker with a variety of stereotypes—the petty criminal with a heart of gold, the mouthy upstart who didn’t know her place, the victim of poverty who never stood a chance—but he trusted his cousins’ judgement and suspected that the true person was a complex blend of all these images. It was rare for a mother to be able to paint an accurate picture of her child, but Mrs Baker didn’t come across as a subscriber to sentimentality. ‘What was she like?’ he asked.
‘Not like me, that’s for sure. It’s a different world for girls now, they can afford to be cocky.’ It was the same word that Hilda Reader had used to describe Marjorie but without the affection, and Penrose sensed a rivalry between mother and daughter. ‘I’m Fonthill Road rag shop, she’s Islington market—or at least she thought she was. She was too good for this life, and almost clever enough to pull it off. She’d look at me sometimes with such pity in her eyes, and I’d know what she was thinking—anything but a life of scrubbing doorsteps and charring. I tell you—there’s plenty round here who’d take a charring job from under your nose as soon as look at you, but not Marjorie. Oh no, she was far too proud to go knocking on doors for work, although there’s been times when I could have begged her to.’
‘She seemed to have settled into her new job well, though; her employers tell me she was making a success of it.’
‘Well, it suited her idea of who she was, didn’t it?’ Mrs Baker bit her lip, and appeared to regret her words. ‘You must think I’m a wicked cow,’ she said, ‘and perhaps there are women out there who are better than me, who don’t grudge their daughters the chances they never had—but I’m not like that. Marjorie was lucky to get that job after being in prison. I used to say to her when she told me ab
out all these new skills she’d learned inside—what’s the point of that? Prison teaches you how to do something and makes damn sure that no one’ll ever employ you to do it. But I was wrong, and someone gave her another chance. Now you walk in here and tell me she’s got herself killed because of something she said and I’m so angry with her for wasting it—not for her sake, but for mine, because if things had been different, that could’ve been me and I wouldn’t have chucked it away.’
Penrose gave her a moment before continuing, then asked: ‘Did Marjorie ever talk about the people she worked with? Did she seem happy?’
‘Yeah, she was happy, although Joe did his best to spoil it for her.’
‘By bothering her at work and embarrassing her in front of the other girls?’
She looked surprised. ‘You know more about that than I do. No—by putting her down, telling her it wouldn’t last. That’s what he was good at—bringing us all down to his level. Marjorie brought this picture home in one of them magazines that people read who have more time than sense. She was in it, you see, her and the other girls at the factory. They were with the ladies who were having the clothes made. Ever so proud of it, she was, but that just started Joe off worse than ever. He said something to her about it that obviously upset her.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘I don’t know—she wouldn’t say. But I got the impression that he was trying to persuade her to get more out of her new job than her wage packet.’
‘Do you still have the picture, Mrs Baker?’
‘I suppose it’s somewhere about.’ She stood up and rummaged through a pile of newspapers which sat by the grate, waiting to be burned. ‘Here, this is it.’
Penrose took the piece of paper and looked down at the photograph. It had been taken in the Motley workroom and Marjorie stood on the left of the group, poignantly close to the spot where she had been killed. She was holding a glamorous evening gown, draped over her arm to show the material off to its best advantage, and he was struck by the contrast between the world of the picture and the world she had been born to—and by how comfortable she seemed in the former. She was exceptionally attractive, with a smile like a young Gwen Farrar and, as he gazed at this carefree image, he felt again the full horror of her final moments.