by Nicola Upson
‘You’ve heard then?’ Ethel Stuke came up behind Bannerman and smirked at Amelia. Wearing a dark-blue bonnet with strings hanging down on either side of her long face, jangling the bunch of keys and chains at her waist, the prison warder reminded Amelia of something from Dickens which had missed its appointment with Christmas but was determined to deliver the warning anyway. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Sach. Yours is a very different case. Vale hasn’t killed anyone.’
‘Neither have I. The jury will understand that.’ Amelia tried to keep the doubt out of her voice.
Stuke laughed scornfully. ‘Not when Darling’s finished with them, they won’t. He’s not called the hanging judge for nothing, you know.’ She walked over to where Amelia sat on the bed and gently straightened her collar, allowing her hand to linger for a second on the back of her neck. It was a fleeting gesture, but its significance was obvious and Amelia felt the panic well up inside her. ‘Anyway,’ Stuke continued, ‘Vale was lucky with the prosecution—made a right mess of it, he did.’ She paused to make sure that her words were hitting home. ‘Trouble is, he’s defending you. Sleep well, Mrs Sach.’
She forced Bannerman out of the cell ahead of her, and the door clanged shut behind them. Their footsteps faded away, and Amelia listened as the calls for attention from further down the landing grew faint from exhaustion, then ceased altogether. Left alone with Stuke’s words, she was too frightened even to scream.
Chapter Eleven
Sylvia Timpson looked suspicious, then horrified when she opened her front door to Fallowfield on Saturday afternoon. Clearly policemen were as unwelcome in the claustrophobic suburbia of Westcott Road as they were in Campbell Bunk, because she ushered him over the doorstep of her small terraced house with unseemly haste, then carefully positioned herself in the hall to ensure that he could go no further without an explanation.
‘I would have thought that any more questions about this unpleasant business could have been handled at the club, Sergeant. I don’t appreciate being bothered in my own home.’
Fallowfield smiled politely at her. ‘I’m afraid it’s a different unpleasant business this time, Mrs Bishop,’ he said, noticing her surprise at his use of her married name. ‘Marjorie Baker was killed last night, and I need to ask you a few questions.’
At first, she seemed to struggle to place the name, and then said: ‘The Motley girl? She was at the club yesterday lunchtime. But why do you need to talk to me?’
‘We’re speaking to everyone who saw her on Friday,’ Fallowfield said non-committally. ‘Might I come in for a minute?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She led him through to a typically unused front parlour where the only thing that caught his attention was a photograph on the mantelpiece of a young woman in a nurse’s uniform, standing on the pavement outside St Thomas’s Hospital. She saw him looking at it. ‘That was taken so long ago now that even I don’t recognise myself,’ she said, and there was a note of bitterness in her voice which she made no effort to hide.
‘I didn’t know you’d been a nurse, Mrs Bishop.’
‘Why would you?’
‘Is that how you came to be at the Cowdray Club?’
‘How I ended up there, you mean? Yes. I lost my nursing career because I was foolish enough to get married, Sergeant. Now I sort mail for the women who were cleverer than me—women who’ve kept their independence—and the women who are too rich or too titled to care. It’s funny how life works itself out, isn’t it?’
‘You regret your marriage?’
‘I was one of those starry-eyed young women who gave themselves up to the service of the sick during the war. It was a typical nurse-and-wounded-soldier marriage, like a thousand others. We all felt as though we needed to make up to those boys for what they’d gone through, but that was all they were—boys, looking for a mother figure. The gratitude was welcome for a while, but it soon wears off.’ Her description of the marriage was very similar to her husband’s, Fallowfield noticed. ‘But what can this possibly have to do with Marjorie Baker?’
‘I believe you were on duty yesterday when Miss Baker came to the club.’
‘That’s right. She delivered some things from Motley for Miss Bannerman.’
‘How long was she there?’
‘About fifteen minutes, I suppose.’
‘And who else did she talk to?’
‘Miss Size was there. They obviously knew each other already.’ From her tone, there was no difficulty in guessing what her opinion was on the rehabilitation of prisoners. ‘And Lady Ashby made the usual exhibition of herself in the foyer.’
‘In what way?’
‘She made it very clear that she was looking forward to her fitting, if you know what I mean. That was it—except Baker wanted to see Lucy Peters, so I made her wait outside until Peters’s break. We can’t have staff fraternising in the foyer.’
‘So Miss Baker and Miss Peters talked?’
‘I assume so. I saw Miss Baker afterwards, waiting on one of the benches in the square.’
‘And she didn’t go anywhere else in the building or speak to anybody at the club?’
‘No.’
‘Was that the only time you saw her yesterday?’
She looked at him sharply. ‘Of course it was.’
Fallowfield nodded. ‘Just a couple more questions, then. Where were you last night, between nine o’clock and midnight?’
‘Here.’
‘And can your husband confirm that?’
She laughed suddenly, but Fallowfield could not tell whether it came from scorn or relief. ‘Ah, so that’s it. Was Miss Baker one of my husband’s indiscretions, Sergeant? Is that what this is about? Oh, don’t look so defensive. You men—you stick together through thick and thin, don’t you? Must be another legacy of the war, I suppose. Well, actually Lionel can confirm that—we were at home together all evening. We listened to the wireless, went to bed at around ten o’clock, and said approximately three words to each other all evening. So there you are—you have the alibi you came for.’ She seemed almost regretful about it, and Fallowfield had no doubt that she was telling the truth. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘Lionel isn’t a murderer—he doesn’t have the backbone for it.’
‘You must see a lot of comings and goings in your job, Mrs Bishop. In your opinion, is there anybody at the Cowdray Club who would have the backbone for it?’
‘Several people, I should think—although I can’t imagine that a seamstress fresh out of Holloway would inspire that sort of energy. Have you tried looking in the gutter, Sergeant? One of her prison friends, perhaps—you should talk to Lucy Peters.’
‘We will, Mrs Bishop. In the meantime, can you tell me exactly what Marjorie left at the club yesterday?’
‘A parcel full of material samples and two letters, both for Miss Bannerman.’
‘Two letters?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were the envelopes handwritten or typed?’
‘Both handwritten, but not by the same person; one was flamboyant and written in ink, the other was in pencil, with more ordinary lettering. But the envelopes were the same.’
‘So both envelopes came from Motley with the parcel?’
‘I assume so.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Bishop. You’ve been most helpful. I won’t keep you any longer.’
As she showed him to the door, he glanced into one of the other rooms off the hall which was obviously used by the Bishops on a regular basis. On the centre table, there was a typewriter and a stack of paper, but the door was closed too quickly for him to see more. ‘Looks like a nice machine,’ he said casually. ‘Do you have much correspondence?’
‘It’s my husband’s,’ she said quickly. ‘He uses it for work. Good day, Sergeant.’
Lucy sat at a corner table in the Oxford Street Lyons, and watched as a young woman lifted her baby out of its pram and settled it comfortably on her lap. For some reason, children seemed to be everywhere that Lucy went; sometimes she found herself follow
ing a mother with a baby, wondering if it was the little girl she had given up. Usually, she managed to convince herself that her behaviour was down to a natural desire to find out what had happened to her child; occasionally, though, she felt in her heart that knowing would not be enough: the only thing which would stem this inconsolable grief was to have the baby in her arms again.
It was strange, this constant longing for something which was initially so unwanted. The idea of being pregnant when the shame of prison was still so new had been too intense an emotional trauma to come to terms with immediately; she had hidden the knowledge for as long as possible, pretending to others and especially to herself that all was well. Denial was followed by fear. She knew nothing about having a baby and had nobody to ask, so threw herself into the heavy labour that prison demanded, hoping against hope that something might happen to release her from this trap. Ironically, it was her sense of isolation that changed the way she felt about her child: alone at the most destructive time of her life, Lucy began to rely on her baby as the only person who made her feel worthwhile, her only friend in a hostile world. By that time, it was too late: she had already agreed to adoption and set in motion a process which could not be reversed, and, as the pregnancy progressed, Lucy came to fear that her one legacy to the child would be her own sense of abandonment.
She drained the cup of tea that she had nursed for more than an hour, and tried to fight the pain which returned to haunt her whenever she thought about the weeks leading up to her confinement but, even eight months later, the memories were cruelly vivid. Expectant mothers were supposed to be moved to the hospital wing for the final month of their pregnancy but, when it came to Lucy’s time, there were no free beds and she had continued in her own cell, locked in night after night with no means of summoning help in an emergency except a temperamental bell. Her sense of panic grew at the thought that the baby might come while she was alone but, in the end, she almost wished it had: there was nothing joyful or familiar about the birth, and the staff treated her so brutally that they might have been conspiring with her baby to punish her for what she was about to do.
Afterwards, she was given twenty minutes with her daughter. She spent them trying to memorise the child’s features, wishing that people would stop talking so that she could take in everything about this small part of her which was about to be removed, angry at them for wasting her time. The emotions she felt were so new that it was impossible to know how to respond to them, but she remembered that her hands were like ice, and she had desperately tried to warm them so that her baby’s only memory of her would not be this cold, unfamiliar touch. Then she heard the door open, and knew that someone had arrived to separate them. She tried to ignore it, and moved over to the far side of the bed, turning her body to the wall to protect the child, but it was no good. For some ridiculous reason, she had tried to smile when they took her away, had made an effort to look nice, as if this moment could somehow be stamped on her baby’s consciousness as deeply as it was on hers. But she felt the scream start up inside her before the door closed, and it had never gone away.
The woman with the pram got up to go, and Lucy followed her out into the street. She walked a few paces behind, and then, as the mother paused in front of one of the sparkling Christmas window displays which were beginning to appear along Oxford Street, Lucy grabbed her opportunity. While the mother was distracted, she reached gently into the pram and pulled the blankets down to take a closer look at the baby’s face, but she had underestimated the other woman’s vigilance. She stared at Lucy in horror, and snatched the pram away; realising how this must look, and with no way of explaining that she just wanted to find her child, Lucy hurried off into the anonymity of Oxford Circus.
She slipped into the Cowdray Club through the Henrietta Place entrance, hoping to get down to the kitchens before anybody noticed she was late. ‘Lucy—wait a moment, please.’ Celia Bannerman was standing by the carved oval balcony which overlooked the lobby from the mezzanine level. ‘I’d like a word with you before you start work.’
Celia had thought long and hard about what to do when Lucy Peters returned from her afternoon off, and had decided that she was unwilling to let the girl face the police without some sort of gentle warning. She didn’t doubt that Lucy was behind the thefts at the club and she would have to be disciplined accordingly, but Celia had no intention of allowing it to get out of hand in light of what else had happened; Lucy was fragile at the best of times, and there was no telling what she would do if the news of Marjorie’s death were sprung on her by an unknown and unsympathetic police inspector. The reputation of the Cowdray Club was at stake, and containment was to be fought for at all costs.
She looked down at the girl’s anxious face through the oval well-opening and cut off her apologies for arriving back late. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Come upstairs with me for a moment—your evening duties can wait. I’ve told Mrs Lawrence that I’ll be needing you for a while.’
Lucy’s apprehension turned to suspicion, and Celia wondered what sort of impression she usually made on the girls if this was their reaction to a few words of kindness from her. She led the way up the back stairs to her own rooms on the third floor, and asked Lucy to sit down. The girl perched uncomfortably on the edge of the settee, and Celia tried not to be irritated by her timidity. ‘Now, Lucy—there are some serious matters that I need to speak to you about. I don’t want you to be alarmed, and I promise to take care of you, but it’s vital that you’re honest with me.’ Lucy nodded. ‘The police were here this afternoon, asking about some of the items that have gone missing from the club recently, in particular Lady Weston’s silver photograph frame. Do you know anything about it?’
‘Just because I’ve been in the nick before, you assume it’s me?’ Lucy said angrily, but the defiance was half-hearted.
‘Did you take it, Lucy?’ Celia asked patiently. Lucy nodded. ‘And the other things? The scarf and the money.’
‘Yes.’ She looked up, and Celia saw the panic in her eyes. ‘What will happen to me, Miss? Will I have to go back inside?’
‘Not necessarily, Lucy. The police will have to know, of course, but I’ll help you all I can if you’re honest with me now. Tell me why you took those things. None of them were worth much, so why put your job here at risk?’
The girl shrugged. ‘It’s hard to explain, Miss. I don’t really know myself why I took them, but the little girl in that photograph—she looked so much like mine. I know it was wrong, but I just wanted something to remind me of her, something that I could keep.’ She looked up at Celia, desperate to make her understand. ‘These women—they’ve all got children to love, and someone out there’s got something of mine—I just wanted to take a little bit back for myself. The baby made me feel special, you see—she’s the only person who’s ever looked to me for help, who’s ever made me think that I might have something precious to give.’
She began to cry, and Celia moved over to sit beside her, angry with herself for having been too busy to notice Lucy’s distress before now. ‘Why did you give her up if you were so attached to her?’ she asked gently.
‘It didn’t feel like I had an option, Miss. Everyone said it was for the best, and I just got carried along with it. It sounds daft, I suppose, when I already had a prison record, but I was worried about what people would think of me and what that would do to the baby. Anyway,’ she added, as if trying to convince herself, ‘how could I ever have looked after a little girl?’
How, indeed, Celia thought. ‘What about the father? Couldn’t he have helped, at least financially?’
Lucy scoffed. ‘He denied she was his—the family told him to. They said it was my word against his, and no one would ever believe a con.’
‘And your own family?’
‘Oh, my mother believed me all right. She said I’d brought disgrace on the family twice, and there was nothing she could do about the prison sentence, but she’d bloody well do something abo
ut the kid. She wouldn’t tell my father, said the shame would finish him off if he ever found out—he still doesn’t know he’s got a granddaughter out there somewhere.’ She wiped her hand across her eyes. ‘It’s probably best—he doesn’t deserve to feel like this.’
‘And neither do you.’
‘Don’t I? That’s not what my mum says. She told me it was my own weakness that got me into this, and she was right, I suppose. You get used to doing what you’re told in prison, but that wasn’t new for me. I’ve been doing it all my life. That was what got me into trouble with the baby in the first place, and that was what made me give her up—I was too weak to argue. I used to dream that somebody would come in at the last minute and save us from being separated, but dreaming doesn’t get you anywhere, does it? The prison brought some woman in to arrange it all. She always seemed to be in a hurry, rushing it all through in case I changed my mind. I hated her, you know, for making a living out of taking my baby away from me.’
‘I expect she was trying to help, Lucy. She was just doing a job, like the rest of us—providing a service that she thought you needed. It’s easy to blame the messenger, but it wasn’t her fault.’
‘I know, I know—and it was myself I really wanted to punish. It sounds wicked, Miss, but I almost wished the baby was dead. It would have served me right.’
Celia knew that it was impossible for women to understand or even to imagine the disgrace of an unwanted pregnancy if they hadn’t been through it themselves; even so, she was shocked. ‘Surely you didn’t really think that it would have been better if she’d died, Lucy?’
‘At least then I’d know what had happened to her. As it is, I don’t know if she’s happy or sad, rich or poor, ill or healthy. I don’t know what she looks like, or what she’s been told about me—if she’s been told anything about me at all. She could be dead, Miss, for all I know.’