by Nicola Upson
The telephone rang while he was waiting. ‘Inspector Penrose? It’s Hilda Reader. I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘It’s no bother, Mrs Reader. Are you all right?’
‘Oh yes, thank you, but I’m glad I’ve caught you. There’s something you should know—something I’ve just found out from my husband.’
‘What is it?’
‘I told him about Marjorie—I hope you don’t mind, but he could see how upset I was and it helped to talk to him about it.’
‘Of course. I understand.’
‘Well, it turns out he saw her yesterday when she came into the shop to get the things Miss Motley needed. A man in his department served her, and there was a bit of a scene between them. John—that’s my husband—had to go over and tell them to be quiet. It turns out that this man—Lionel Bishop, his name is—had been seeing Marjorie behind his wife’s back, but she’d given him his marching orders. He was trying to talk her into starting things up again, but she was having none of it. John said he heard her threaten to tell Mr Bishop’s wife if he didn’t leave her alone. He was furious, apparently.’
‘And is Mr Bishop at the store today?’
‘Yes, Inspector. All day.’
‘Thank you again, Mrs Reader—you’ve been very helpful.’
‘There’s one more thing, Inspector.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know if it’s important or not, but he sold her those beads.’
Penrose went to look for Fallowfield and handed him a slip of paper in exchange for the folder of letters. ‘Lionel Bishop. Works in the haberdashery department of Debenhams. He’s been playing around with Marjorie Baker, but she wanted to put a stop to it and threatened to tell his wife.’
‘And he wasn’t best pleased?’
‘Exactly. Go and bring him in.’
Chapter Nine
The man waiting downstairs to be questioned stood up as soon as Penrose and Fallowfield entered the room. ‘What the hell is this all about, Inspector?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Your lot turn up at my place of work, embarrassing me in front of my staff, and no one has the decency to offer an explanation. I have rights, you know—you might have been more discreet.’
Penrose gestured to him to sit down again and calmly introduced himself. In his experience, people who insisted on their rights so quickly were usually the sort who trampled obliviously over everyone else’s, but he tried not to let cynicism cloud his judgement as he cast an appraising eye over Lionel Bishop. Marjorie Baker’s would-be lover was in his late thirties, with a weak chin, pale complexion and thin, sandy-brown hair. His clothes were expensive but unimaginative, and he wore them without conviction, almost as if they spoke of an authority which even he doubted he possessed. Penrose tried to resist making judgements but, from what he’d heard so far, this was hardly the type of man whom the dead girl would notice, let alone be attracted to. ‘I’m sorry to have caused you so much inconvenience, but I need to ask you some questions in connection with the murder of Marjorie Baker,’ he said, trying not to take anything but a professional satisfaction from the swift erosion of Bishop’s moral high ground. ‘I believe the two of you were well acquainted.’
‘Murder?’ Bishop asked. The shock was genuine, Penrose thought, but the horror in the man’s voice seemed to stem from panic at his own situation rather than any genuine sorrow. ‘What’s that got to do with me? I only knew her as a customer. She came into the shop once or twice a week to collect items on account.’
‘And you saw her yesterday?’
‘Yes, she came in around lunchtime and bought a few things—some beads and needles, and a roll or two of bias binding. We passed the time of day, that’s all. Are you arresting everyone who spoke to her?’
Penrose ignored the question. ‘What sort of needles?’ Bishop looked incredulously at him. ‘What sort of needles did Miss Baker buy?’ he repeated impatiently. ‘It’s a simple enough question.’
‘Standard embroidery needles.’
‘And did you and Miss Baker argue yesterday?’
‘There’s not much to argue about in a list of haberdashery items, is there?’ Bishop said sarcastically.
‘Where were you last night between the hours of nine o’clock and midnight?’
‘At home with my wife, of course. Where else would I be?’
Penrose looked at him for just long enough to make his scepticism obvious. ‘You won’t mind if we confirm that with your wife?’
For the first time, Bishop looked nervous. ‘Will you have to tell her why? She might think …’
‘What might she think, Mr Bishop?’ Penrose demanded impatiently. ‘Shall we start again? How well did you know Marjorie Baker?’
‘All right, all right. I took her out for lunch a few times, and the odd drink after work. So what? There was no harm in that. You know how it is.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t, so why don’t you tell me?’
‘Look, Inspector, I met my wife when we were both very young and we got married far too quickly and for all the wrong reasons. It was during the war. She was a nurse, and I was back from the front for a bit with a smashed leg from a German bullet. We mistook compassion and gratitude for love—that’s all there is to it. We weren’t the only ones, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’
‘So you comforted yourself with Miss Baker—until she’d had enough, and told you where to go. That must have made you angry.’
Bishop shrugged. ‘Not especially. There are plenty of girls like her about. Come on, Inspector—we’re all allowed a little fun, aren’t we? What my wife doesn’t know can’t hurt her.’
‘Except it’s not your wife who’s been hurt, is it, Mr Bishop?’ Penrose stood up, convinced they were wasting their time with the man in front of him. ‘Give your details to Sergeant Fallowfield. If your wife confirms what you say, you’ll be free to go.’
Men like Lionel Bishop brought out the worst in Penrose and he left the room seething. He was on his way up the stairs when Fallowfield called him back. ‘We need to hold on to him for a bit, Sir.’
‘It’s a waste of time, Bill. He didn’t care enough about Marjorie when she was alive to want her dead.’
‘Maybe not, Sir, but I’m wondering who’s giving an alibi to whom?’
‘What do you mean?’ Penrose asked, taking the slip of paper that Fallowfield held out to him.
‘It’s his wife, Sir, Sylvia Bishop. At work, she goes under her maiden name of Timpson—and she works at the Cowdray Club.’
Celia Bannerman paused halfway down the Cowdray Club’s main staircase, listening to the reassuring sounds of business proceeding as usual on the floor below. No matter how busy she was, she always found time to linger here, in one of the most beautiful areas of the building. The staircase was a magnificent feature of the original mansion house which had been left unaltered during the conversion to club and college and, as such, was the only part of the organisation to have an old-world feel about it. Grandiose paintings of ancient Rome covered the walls and ceiling, arguably the work of Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth’s father-in-law and one of the best known mural artists of his day. That the staircase had survived undamaged to enjoy a new existence was a tangible reminder of the past amid an ever-improving present, a symbol of earlier achievements and a firm foundation for those still to come.
Or so, at least, she hoped. The recent unrest at the club, her constant battles with Miriam Sharpe over the future of the organisation and, in a different way, her conversations with Josephine Tey about the past had made Celia take stock of her life: on the whole, she was satisfied with what she had achieved—satisfied, but appalled at how quickly the years had passed and, if she were honest, a little afraid of what the future might hold for her. Her early training as a nurse, before she went to Holloway, seemed like only yesterday but it had, she realised now, been the inspiration for everything she had done since. She could still remember the shock of those first few months on the ward, when she felt more like a c
harwoman than a young girl with a vocation to help the sick. Nursing at that time was little more than hard physical labour, often in nauseating conditions, and she had bitterly resented the fact that her goodwill and sense of duty had been so cynically exploited, that she and those who worked alongside her were expected to give so much of themselves in return for so little. Disillusioned and exhausted, she had abandoned her ambitions to reach sister or matron level just a few weeks after finishing her probationary period.
Ironically, it took the people she met in the prison service to restore her faith in the ideal of nursing and, although conditions were little better when she returned to the profession a couple of years later, she was, by then, armed with the determination to do something about it. After one or two administrative posts in hospitals in the north, she had been offered a senior position at Anstey and had jumped at the chance to train the nurses and teachers of the future; then came the war, and another generation of idealistic women had dedicated itself to the service of the sick and wounded, only to be financially and emotionally drained by the sacrifice. At Lady Cowdray’s request, Celia had left the sheltered environment of Anstey—which had, in any case, been tainted by Elizabeth Sach’s death—and thrown all her energies into the movement for reform, always with a commitment to education as the way forward. She had been instrumental in many milestones—training courses for nurses, scholarships for public health work and midwifery, the creation of a library of nursing and a student nurses’ association—but nothing gave her greater satisfaction than her involvement in the College of Nursing and Cowdray Club. Thanks to the drive for modernisation, nursing was no longer an isolated, enclosed profession, but was beginning to compete with other walks of life, where women earned new freedoms and rewards every day; Lady Cowdray’s death had been a blow, but it made those who had worked with her even more determined to carry on her vision—and, no matter what Miriam Sharpe said, surely they had come too far now for all that good work to be undone by those who refused to leave the past behind?
Celia moved on down the stairs, pleased to see that the foyer and lounge were busy. Saturday lunch was always popular, and small groups of women—some dressed in work clothes, others in town for a day’s shopping—stood around chatting, waiting for a free table in the dining room. She recognised one or two regulars, and stopped to talk to them on her way through to the office.
‘Bannerman!’ Surprised, Celia turned round. ‘Just the woman I was looking for, God help me.’ It was barely half past one, but Geraldine Ashby seemed to have been in the bar for some time. She stood in the doorway now, making no effort to conceal her anger. ‘I think you need to explain a few things to me. Starting with why you let a vulnerable young woman in your care string herself up in a fucking gymnasium.’
The silence which descended on the foyer was swift and unsettling, and Celia felt it as abruptly as if she had been suddenly plunged under water. She reddened with embarrassment and anger, but managed to keep the emotions out of her voice when she spoke. ‘Whatever you’ve got to say to me, Geraldine, I think it would be better if it were done in private, when you’ve sobered up a little.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you do. I’m sure that being involved in a young girl’s death doesn’t sit well with your professional pride or your social ambitions.’
‘Elizabeth Price’s suicide was a tragedy and a senseless waste of life, but there was nothing I could have done to stop it.’
‘So it was all her own fault? You make me sick. You speak as if you had nothing to do with Lizzie until she killed herself, but let’s not forget who set the tone of her life in the first place. You gave her an existence which was based entirely on lies, then tore her away from the one thing that had any truth in it. If anyone set her up to tie that rope around her neck, you did.’
‘Her mother never wanted Lizzie to know who she was, and if by …’
‘Her mother lost the right to dictate to Lizzie when she killed someone else’s baby and got caught.’
‘… and if by the one thing of truth you mean your friendship with her—well, a friendship like that wasn’t what she needed. Sixteen was far too young to come under that sort of influence—we all agreed that, especially your parents.’
‘What the fuck did it have to do with them? Or with any of you? I loved her.’
‘Perhaps you thought you did, but I’m sure you don’t need me to point out why that could never happen. We were simply looking out for Elizabeth’s best interests.’
‘So where were you when she really needed you? When she found out the truth and wanted someone who knew about her history to help her understand?’
‘You’re right,’ Celia admitted. ‘I should have done more to help, but it wasn’t only me who was found lacking. At least spare some of the blame for the person who told her.’
‘You think I don’t? I curse myself every day for writing that letter, but she had a right to know who she was.’
‘You told her?’ Celia could hardly believe what she was hearing, and the relief she felt after all these years was so great and so sudden that it made her speak without thinking. ‘So you were responsible for her death,’ she said, walking over to Geraldine. ‘Doesn’t that tell you anything about the sort of love you offered?’
She felt the sting on her cheek before she was conscious of what had happened. Someone moved across to restrain Geraldine before she could hit her again, then a voice cut through the room—stern and authoritative—ordering everyone to calm down, and Celia recognised the policeman who had been at the club the day before. ‘Are you all right, Miss Bannerman?’ he asked, coming over to her. She nodded, still too shocked to speak, and he introduced the man with him. ‘This is Detective Inspector Penrose.’
‘Inspector Penrose—I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said, knowing how ridiculous that sounded, but unable to think of anything else. ‘I thought the sergeant and I had covered everything we needed to when we spoke yesterday.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not why we’re here, Miss Bannerman,’ Penrose said, inviting her to step away from the crowd. She noticed that his voice remained relaxed and attractive despite the formality of the situation. ‘I need to ask you some questions in connection with the murder of Marjorie Baker.’
‘Marjorie Baker? The Motley girl?’
‘That’s right. Her body was found this morning at the studios in St Martin’s Lane. Is there somewhere a little more private we could talk?’
Penrose followed Celia Bannerman up the stairs and across a broad landing on to a mezzanine level which seemed to be devoted almost entirely to offices. After the elegance and grandeur of the entrance hall and public areas, the monastic simplicity of the secretary’s room seemed to belong to a different building altogether. The oak furniture was tastefully expensive but minimal—just a desk, two upright chairs and a storage cupboard in each alcove. As far as Penrose could see, the only items which were decorative rather than functional were three matching Chinese vases on the mantelpiece, and he wondered if the room’s austerity was a result of Celia Bannerman’s personal taste, or simply a reflection of the practical economy of nursing. Her desk—usually such a good indicator of somebody’s habits and preferences—suggested the former: there were no photographs, no ornaments, no books—nothing, in fact, which could have been said to belong to the person rather than to the organisation.
He took the seat that was offered to him, and waited while she removed a small powder compact from her bag and examined the red mark on her cheek, less concerned about the physical damage, Penrose guessed, than about the public embarrassment which it represented. ‘If I weren’t already ashamed of what happened downstairs, I would be now,’ she said, snapping the mirror shut and throwing it down on the desk. ‘Your business here makes our squabbles seem very petty, no matter how rooted in tragedy they may be.’
‘May I ask what this particular squabble was about?’
‘A mistake I made twenty years ago. How strange that it should have chosen t
his particular moment to come back to haunt me.’
‘Strange in what way?’
‘In that it may have something to do with why you’re here, Inspector—although I don’t see quite why Miss Baker’s death should bring you to the Cowdray Club.’
Intrigued, Penrose answered her question first. ‘I understand you had some dealings with Miss Baker in connection with Monday’s charity gala?’
‘That’s correct. She’d been here a number of times to deliver or collect things on behalf of Motley, most recently yesterday. I didn’t see her then, but I saw her later in the day at the studios in St Martin’s Lane. She was involved in the final fittings.’
‘And several of your members went for those fittings yesterday?’
‘Yes, four of us. Myself, Mary Size, Miriam Sharpe and Lady Ashby.’ To her credit, she spoke the final name without any resentment. ‘They’re not the only people who are having dresses made, but the others weren’t able to fit in an appointment yesterday.’
‘At the moment, we’re investigating a number of possible reasons for Miss Baker’s death,’ Penrose said, ‘but, for the purposes of elimination, I do need to ask everyone who saw her yesterday where they were last night between the hours of nine o’clock and midnight.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Are you really asking me to provide an alibi, Inspector? Well, I’m afraid I don’t have one. I live on the premises, and I was alone in my rooms all evening. I had an early dinner, and came straight upstairs at about eight o’clock. After that, I didn’t see any of the other members and no one saw me except the housemaid who brought me up some cocoa.’
‘Who was that, Miss Bannerman?’
‘Her name’s Tilly Jenkins.’
‘And what time did she bring the drink up?’