Two for Sorrow

by Nicola Upson

  Uncertainty was, perhaps, the cruellest form of grief. During the war, Celia had known women who, having given boys up for adoption earlier in their lives, had scanned the newspapers every day, terrified that their son had been lost in the trenches: it was a hopeless task, with no familiar name to look for, but they scarcely seemed to care, so great was the suffering caused by ignorance. Lucy had lost her child, but the fact that the girl lived on with someone else had obviously added a bewildering twist to the grieving process; what she didn’t know, and what Celia could not bring herself to tell her, was that her feelings were likely to intensify with time, that the guilt and sense of self-blame would get worse rather than better. Instead, she just listened, sensing that Lucy had rarely had an opportunity to talk about how she felt. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for not saying more to her when I had the chance,’ the girl continued, ‘but it didn’t feel like she was my baby to say anything to. I should have insisted on knowing what sort of life she was going to have, at least. Anything could have happened to her. I read what that woman upstairs is writing—I know I shouldn’t have looked at it, but I couldn’t stop myself. What if something like that happened to my baby?’

  There was a hysterical note in her voice now, and once again Celia cursed Josephine for her interference in the past. ‘It’s fiction, Lucy—she doesn’t understand what she’s writing about and anyway, it was a long time ago. Things like that don’t happen these days—there are laws and systems to make sure they don’t. You have to believe in your heart that what you did was for the best.’

  ‘You sound just like the rest of them,’ Lucy said scornfully. ‘Everyone told me to put it behind me and pretend it never happened, but they only did that so I wouldn’t embarrass them any more. No one would talk to me about it afterwards, not even Marjorie. You could almost hear the sighs of relief from everybody that life could go back to normal—they don’t seem to understand that mine never can.’

  ‘You’re still very angry, aren’t you, Lucy?’

  ‘I’m angry with all of them, yes. They made everything worse.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘By being so unkind. Sometimes I think I might never have grown attached to her if people had been more understanding, but it was just me and my baby against the world. In the end, I dreaded her being born because I knew I’d lose her; while she stayed inside me, we were together and nobody could do anything about it. If I hadn’t landed myself in prison, things might have been different.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy,’ Celia said, and put her arm round the girl, noticing that she trembled with grief and rage. ‘People think that cruel to be kind is the answer, and it’s not just because you were in prison—only someone who had experienced what you were going through would have been any use to you.’ She remembered thinking at the time that Amelia Sach’s weakness had been exactly that: she understood the pain of women who longed for children, but not the distress of those who were talked into giving them up; if she had, she could never have put the babies so callously into Walters’s hands. ‘You can’t torture yourself with what might have been.’

  ‘But it’s the unfairness of it all. When my sister had her little boy, my mum worked her fingers to the bone knitting shawls and boots. She was so excited, but she never even saw my baby—and would it really have hurt her to try to understand? Would it have hurt any of them? I wanted to scream at them, Miss, and worse. Because of them, that barren bitch had my child—I wanted them all to suffer like I have, teach them what pain really feels like.’

  Celia looked down at her, surprised and unsettled by the strength of feeling. ‘Even Marjorie?’ she asked.

  Lucy nodded. ‘Yes, even Marjorie, with her job and her prospects and a string of people after her. And what do I have? Nothing. Sometimes I hate her more than anyone, because she seems to have so many choices. Me, I was still trapped even after we got out of the nick—not by bars any more, but by what was going on in my head.’ Lucy’s grief had a desperate quality to it, and it occurred to Celia that this might drive the girl to go further than stealing trivial souvenirs of someone else’s life. She knew she would have to tell Penrose that he was right about the thefts, no matter how badly it reflected on the club, but should she also tell him what Lucy had just said about making people suffer? What would he read into that, and how would he treat her? Lucy would never have the wit to defend herself if the police suspected that she had killed Marjorie, and there was no guarantee that they would take into account her state of mind after the loss of her child. Could she really bring herself to set all that in motion? ‘It’s mean of me, I know,’ Lucy continued, embarrassed by her outburst and beginning to calm down a little. ‘It wasn’t Marjorie’s fault and she’s always been good to me. She took me for a day out last weekend, you know. Bought the train tickets for us both, and took me to the seaside to cheer me up.’

  ‘That sounds nice. Where did you go?’

  ‘Somewhere in Suffolk. I can’t remember what the place was called—it had a funny name. She wanted to talk to somebody who lived there, and I remember thinking how lucky they were. I’d never seen the sea before, except on postcards, and I walked along the beach, waiting for Marjorie to finish, and tried to imagine what it must be like to live there all the time and see it in summer as well as winter.’ She smiled to herself, thinking back to the day, and Celia let her talk, wanting her to make the most of the happy memories before she broached the subject of Marjorie’s murder. ‘We had tea before we came back, and it was like we’d left all the shit behind. We weren’t ex-cons or girls who couldn’t keep out of trouble or any of the other names they call us—we were just Lucy and Marjorie, out for a day by the sea. I even forgot about the baby for a bit—it seemed easier to do that when I was somewhere else.’

  ‘You should have more days like that, Lucy,’ Celia said gently. ‘Life’s very short. Just try to put the past behind you a little more each day. It will get easier—trust me.’ Lucy looked at her gratefully. ‘Now, why don’t you go downstairs and get the cocoa for the drawing room, and we can have a cup together and decide what to say to the police. There’s something else we need to talk about before you see them.’ The girl’s face clouded over. ‘Don’t worry—I’ll look after you. Go now, or Mrs Lawrence will haul me over the coals as well as you, but be as quick as you can. The lift’s broken again, I’m afraid, so use the main staircase—if you bring it up the back way, it’ll be cold by the time you’ve walked down all those corridors.’

  Lucy smiled and Celia watched her leave. Then, with a heavy heart, she reached for the telephone.

  Penrose was losing his patience with Maria Baker, as the woman sitting in front of him still insisted on being called. Like most people, she looked much less sure of herself now she was away from her home ground and in a police interview room but, since Waddingham and Merrifield had brought her in, she had steadfastly refused to speak other than to state her name; a flicker of surprise when he first mentioned the alternatives ‘Sach’ and ‘Edwards’ was the only indication she had given him so far that he was on the right track at all.

  ‘Mrs Baker—there are ways and means of proving your husband’s real identity and your own, but that will take days, perhaps weeks. By forcing us to go down those routes rather than helping us now, you are giving your daughter’s killer the advantage of time. Is that really what you want to do?’

  Still, there was no answer. She stared down at the table between them as if oblivious to what he had said. Exasperated, Penrose glanced across at Fallowfield and decided to try a new tactic. So far, he had deliberately avoided going through all the horrific details of Marjorie’s death: if Mrs Baker had killed her daughter, she would reveal herself eventually and he liked to keep some things close to his chest; if she had had nothing to do with it, then it was information which no mother needed to hear. But reason and firmness had got him nowhere, and shock seemed to be the only route left to him. ‘Marjorie was choked to death with glass,’ he said bluntly. ‘Her killer incap
acitated her with drugs, waited for her to come round, and then tortured her in the most horrific way possible. While Marjorie was still conscious, he or she took a needle four inches long and sewed her lips together so that the glass and the vomit went back down into her lungs.’ The woman covered her ears with her hands, but Penrose continued relentlessly, loathing what he was doing but determined not to lose the upper hand now that he had finally forced a reaction. ‘The needle tore through Marjorie’s skin and caused severe damage to her mouth, and the pain must have been more extreme than we can begin to imagine. As if that weren’t enough, Marjorie was made to look at herself in a mirror while all this was going on. It was a slow, ugly and humiliating death, and someone must be made to answer for that.’ He had used Marjorie’s name repeatedly in an effort to break down the extraordinary detachment which Maria Baker had managed to maintain since receiving news of her daughter’s death, and it seemed to have worked. She was crying now, and Penrose drove home his advantage. ‘I think your husband told Marjorie about his past, either deliberately or when he was drunk. I also believe that you discovered the secret was out, and were horrified to think that the shame which you’d been running from for years was about to catch up with you.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted angrily. ‘Marjorie knew nothing about all that. If she had, she would never have kept quiet.’

  ‘But that’s the trouble, isn’t it, Mrs Baker? Marjorie needed to be kept quiet, so you made sure that she was. And when your husband turned up, you saw the perfect opportunity to silence both of them.’

  ‘No,’ she screamed, standing up and slamming her hand down hard on the table in front of him. ‘That’s not what I meant. Marjorie didn’t know who we were.’

  ‘Shall I take that as an invitation to call you Mrs Sach?’

  ‘Call me what you fucking like, but I didn’t kill my daughter.’

  She was so close to him now that Penrose could feel her breath on his face, but he resisted the temptation to sit back. ‘There was no love lost between you, though, was there?’

  ‘So? You try playing happy families with the sort of life we had. What sort of world do you live in, for Christ’s sake? Walk down a street like ours, and you can count the loving mother-and-daughter relationships on the fingers of one hand. But there’s a difference between that and what you’ve just told me. I could never do that to another human being, and I didn’t do it to Marjorie.’

  ‘What about your husband? Could you have pushed him down some stairs?’

  ‘He wasn’t my husband. I didn’t marry him. He never asked me. He always loved Amelia.’

  Penrose was astonished that she would tolerate the life she had led for a man who didn’t love her, but he wasn’t going to give her another chance to point out his naivety by questioning her about it. Instead, he just said: ‘But you are Nora Edwards?’ She nodded. ‘Right, Miss Edwards—I’m going to give you a few minutes to compose yourself, and then I’d like you to answer my questions as honestly and as fully as you can. Let the constable outside know if you need anything.’

  In truth, it was Penrose who needed the break. He closed the door to the interview room and leant against it. ‘Well done, Sir,’ Fallowfield said quietly. ‘I began to think she was never going to admit the connection.’

  ‘At what cost, though?’ Penrose asked. ‘You know, Bill, sometimes I hate this job. If she’s not guilty, she didn’t need to know all that.’

  ‘She left you no choice, Sir. Do you think she is guilty?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Somehow I doubt it, but that could just be because I don’t want to believe that a mother could do that to her child.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘It must be the sort of world I live in. We’ll give her five minutes, then go back in. Right now, I need some coffee.’

  Fallowfield obliged, and returned with two mugs and a piece of paper. ‘A message for you at the desk, Sir. Miss Bannerman’s just telephoned—Lucy Peters is back at the club, and she’s keeping an eye on her.’

  ‘Then God help the poor kid,’ said Penrose. ‘But that’s good news—we’ll finish with Edwards first, and then go over there. Lucy won’t be disappearing again if she’s under that sort of surveillance.’

  Celia stood at the top of the staircase and waited for Lucy to come back with the cocoa. The club was always quiet at this time of the evening, particularly on a Saturday, when most of the members had either gone out to the theatre or to dinner, and she enjoyed the peace of the old house as it must have been when it was a family residence. It wouldn’t last long, she knew: she had done her duty and left a message for Inspector Penrose, and he was bound to arrive soon to speak to Lucy. She only hoped that she was doing the right thing.

  Voices drifted up from the bottom of the stairs, and Josephine appeared with the two Motley sisters. Celia greeted them warmly. ‘I hope you’ve had a peaceful evening after such a terrible day.’

  ‘Hardly peaceful,’ Josephine said wryly. ‘We’ve been all over the Highlands, and witnessed a shooting at the London Palladium.’

  ‘We went to see the new Hitchcock,’ Lettice explained. ‘It’s really terribly exciting.’

  ‘Although I’m not sure playing a sex-starved crofter’s wife counts as Peggy’s finest hour,’ Ronnie said, and continued in a dreadful Scottish accent. ‘ “You should see Sauchiehall Street, with all its fine shops.” Lydia will die laughing when she sees it.’

  ‘I thought she was rather good, didn’t you, Josephine?’

  ‘Not bad for someone who’s clearly never been north of Camden. But I think Lydia would happily play the croft if it meant getting a film role, so my advice is not to mention it.’

  Celia walked with them along the corridor to the drawing room. ‘Make yourselves at home. The hot drinks are on their way up.’

  ‘Bugger the hot drinks,’ Ronnie said, grimacing. ‘I want something a bit stronger after all that bracing Highland air.’

  Celia laughed. ‘Take a seat, then, and I’ll have something brought up to you. Large brandies all round?’

  ‘Lovely. And thank you for letting us take over your hall downstairs. I honestly don’t know what else we’d have done.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s me that should be thanking you for all you’re doing for the club—especially after what’s happened. It must be terrible for you. I know what it’s like to feel responsible for your staff, and Marjorie seemed to fit in so well at Motley.’

  ‘Yes, she’ll be very hard to replace,’ Lettice said. ‘But we’re determined to make the gala a success, if only to do her justice.’

  She and Ronnie chose some chairs by the window, but Josephine lingered at the door for a moment. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened earlier,’ she said. ‘I can’t help feeling responsible for stirring things up with Geraldine. Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Celia sounded more convinced than she was. ‘Please, Josephine—think nothing more of it. Go and enjoy the rest of your evening. I might join you for a nightcap later.’

  Thank God the lift didn’t let them down very often, Celia thought when she got back to the staircase and saw Lucy on her way up with a large pan of cocoa, concentrating hard to make sure that none of the liquid spilled out over her feet as she climbed: this might be a common enough sight in prison, but it was hardly appropriate in the Cowdray Club. The container was heavy and awkward, and Celia smiled encouragingly down at her. ‘Be careful, dear. Don’t burn yourself.’ She waited until Lucy was just a few steps from the top, then added: ‘By the way, I forgot to tell you. That little bitch Marjorie is dead.’

  The shock and confusion in Lucy’s eyes told Celia that she had the advantage she needed. While the girl was caught off guard, Celia put her foot against the side of the pan and pushed with all the strength she had. She had judged the angle correctly. Lucy lost her balance and tumbled backwards down the stairs, and the scalding contents of the pan poured all over her upper body. The cocoa spilled everywhere—two, three times as much, surely, as could possibly have bee
n held by one vessel—and the sugar in the liquid made it stick to Lucy’s face and neck like a deadly second skin, scorching her flesh and splashing back into her eyes. She came to rest awkwardly on the middle landing, the pan at her side, but, to Celia’s dismay, she remained conscious, and there was something primitive—inhuman, even—about her screams; it was the sound of an animal begging for death, the physical expression of a torment which, until now, had only touched Lucy emotionally.

  In a few seconds, the staircase would be full of people. Celia was by the girl’s side in an instant, trying to calm her down, but still she struggled and Celia was amazed and horrified by her strength, even as her body writhed in agony. Panic welled up in her as she realised that she only had a few seconds left to make sure of what she was doing. Her hands went automatically to Lucy’s throat, red and blistered already from the heat, but she stopped herself just in time; that would be suicide—this was supposed to look like an accident. Instead, she grabbed Lucy’s hair and banged her head hard against the stone wall of the staircase, desperate to subdue her cries. The force of the blow splattered hot liquid all over the delicate paintwork, but at last the girl was quiet and Celia looked for a pulse, feeling so sick with relief that she remained oblivious to the injuries on her own hands and lower arms where the cocoa had made contact with her skin. Lucy was alive, but only barely, and Celia knew enough about burns to be sure that the shock would kill her in a few hours, long before she regained consciousness. As the panic subsided, her head cleared and she reached down to pull one of Lucy’s shoelaces undone. Behind her, she could hear people hurrying up from the foyer and down from the drawing room; satisfied that it would do no good, she turned and screamed for someone to fetch help from the College of Nursing.

  ‘What happened after Amelia Sach’s execution?’ Penrose asked. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘We moved around a lot at first—Kilburn, Stockwell, the East End, but somehow people always found out who we were, or at least who Jacob was. It seemed like there was no one who didn’t know about that trial, and they tormented him, as if he’d been behind it all. They threatened him in the streets, drove him out of any job he tried to hang on to. Sometimes they’d leave stuff at the house—kids’ clothes and old news-papers. Once we came back from the pub and found a baby doll with a rope round its neck on the doorstep. All because that bitch was never satisfied and couldn’t see what she had already. As the years went on, people forgot about us and moved on to some other poor bastard. It got easier for us then, but the damage was already done.’