by Nicola Upson
‘You’ve spoken to her about us?’
‘No, not really, but she saw I was upset the other night at dinner and I told her you’d been in touch. Lydia was there as well, much to my surprise. As you can imagine, it wasn’t the easiest of evenings.’
‘Surely you didn’t say anything to Lydia?’
‘Of course not, but I felt vile about it and we can’t go on like this.’ She took her hand away and stared resolutely into the fire. ‘Go back to Lydia, Marta. She loves you, and she’ll accept all the love you can give her in a way that I don’t think I ever could.’
‘So that’s still your answer? To come here as some sort of selfless ambassador for someone else?’ She got up and placed herself in front of the hearth, forcing Josephine to look at her. ‘And what if I did go back to Lydia? How would you feel? Tell me honestly, Josephine.’
There was no need to think about it: she had asked herself the same question many times. ‘Jealous, I suppose. Resentful. But mostly relieved—relieved that things could go back to normal.’
‘And what does normal mean? Sitting in Inverness where no one can touch you? God in heaven, Josephine—what on earth is the matter with you? Why submit to being half alive when life is so short? Don’t you ever want to watch the sun rise from somewhere that isn’t Crown Cottage or Cavendish Square? Breathe some different air for once?’
Josephine was used to Marta’s sudden bursts of anger by now, and it wasn’t that which unsettled her. ‘You don’t understand,’ she began hesitantly. ‘I’m perfectly happy as I am.’
‘I’m sure you are, but just remember—a dying man often says leave me alone, I want to die, but when he recovers, he trembles every time he remembers his foolishness.’
‘So being with you is a matter of life and death, is it? Jesus, Marta, I thought I was arrogant. Why don’t you just listen for a moment? I don’t want the things you think I should want, and telling me that I want them won’t make me change my mind.’
‘No? Then perhaps this will.’ Marta moved forward to kiss her. As Josephine tasted the gin on her mouth and felt the softness of her skin, she realised that she wanted more than anything to understand what it was like to lose the rest of the world in the sheer joy of one person. She felt Marta hesitate, surprised by her response; tenderly, she put her hand up to Marta’s face, pulling her closer in the hope that the sudden wonder of their intimacy would be enough to prevent her from coming to her senses. For a moment, the simple disbelief of what was happening was enough to convince her that nobody could be hurt by what they did, that she herself would remain unchanged by it; as hard as she tried to forget it, though, Josephine knew that Marta would change her, no matter how much she claimed not to want to, and she pulled away.
Confused and upset, she got up to leave but Marta reached the door first and slammed it shut. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please don’t go. Just stay and talk to me; we haven’t finished this yet. Please, Josephine—don’t leave like this.’
‘Let me get this straight. You want to arrest the secretary of a prestigious private club—a woman with a distinguished career in nursing and welfare, who is admired and respected by all and sundry, who was Lady Cowdray’s right-hand woman—on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder without any evidence at all? Are you out of your mind, Penrose?’
The chief constable glared across his desk, and Penrose took a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t say that we’re without any evidence at all, Sir. Sergeant Fallowfield has traced three women who died just before Celia Bannerman left for Leeds and whose bodies were unidentified at the time. Two of them were recovered from the Thames, and the third went under a tube train.’ Penrose was convinced that one of these women was Eleanor Vale; certainly, there was no trace of her in the Leeds area as far as they could tell, and while this was in no way conclusive—people disappeared all the time, as he had explained to Josephine—he had not yet found anything which disproved his theory. ‘So it’s three counts of murder, really, and one of attempted murder. I think Celia Bannerman killed Eleanor Vale, and the current crimes …’
‘I’m not interested in the death of an ex-convict from thirty years ago, and neither should you be. From what you tell me, she should have hanged anyway and the pressure on us from the Home Office is rather more contemporary than you seem to realise.’
‘But that’s my point, Sir—there is a direct connection to what we’re investigating now. I think the Baker murders and Lucy Peters’s fall happened because Marjorie and her father found out about Vale’s death and were foolish enough to try to blackmail Miss Bannerman.’
‘Yes, yes, Penrose—I understand what you think. You’ve made that very clear. But I’ll ask you again—where’s your evidence? I don’t count three unidentified bodies who happened to depart this world just as Celia Bannerman was catching a train as incontrovertible proof. London’s full of women who disappear without leaving anyone behind to care—God knows it was even worse back then. And apart from anything else, the picture you paint of Bannerman’s well-intentioned interference in prison hardly fits with someone who could take a life simply because it was convenient to her.’
That was true, and the contradiction had made Penrose doubt his own theory at first; but, in his conversations with Celia Bannerman, he had detected a streak of steel, the kind of dedication and self-righteousness which occasionally blurred the boundaries between right and wrong, and he was willing to believe that her crusade to do good had, in her own mind, justified evil in its progress. The chief constable was clearly not in the mood to discuss the finer points of human nature, however, so he stuck to the basics. ‘Then there are the postcards I found in Lucy’s room,’ he said. ‘She and Marjorie had obviously been to see Ethel Stuke—the woman in the tea shop in Suffolk confirmed as much.’ It’s just as well she had, because the miraculous piece of evidence which he had hoped to find on Lucy’s camera had failed to materialise: all that the film would testify to was a girls’ day out, poignant in hindsight because of what had happened since, but nothing more than that.
‘A day out by the seaside and some idle gossip are hardly enough to warrant an arrest, though.’
It sounded thin, even to Penrose’s ears, but he pressed on. ‘Not in themselves, perhaps, but taken together with Celia Bannerman’s lies and the fact that she was on the scene at Lucy’s accident, I think we have enough to bring her in for questioning.’
‘Has Bannerman got any connection to this Baker girl other than having her frock made?’
‘No, but her father …’
‘And has she an alibi?’
‘A partial alibi.’
‘But there’s absolutely nothing to put her at the scene after two-thirty that afternoon, when she readily admits to being there?’
‘No, but she has a history with the family …’
‘And that’s all it is, Penrose—a history. What about the girl’s mother? Am I right in thinking that she has no alibi for the murder, that she was on bad terms with her family, and that she and Marjorie had been fighting in the street? Or did you make all that up just to pad out your report?’
‘Of course not, Sir.’
‘Then I suggest you concentrate on the woman you already have in custody and get a result before some do-gooder from a welfare organisation starts suggesting that we’re hounding the socially disadvantaged without good cause.’
‘I questioned her again this afternoon when I got back from Walberswick, Sir.’ He omitted to say that the interview had consisted mostly of questions relating to Eleanor Vale and Celia Bannerman, and that it had got him nowhere; if Jacob Sach and Marjorie knew something about that relationship, they certainly hadn’t shared it with anyone else in the family. Fallowfield had still been unable to establish a clear alibi for Edwards but, whilst this was a blow to the sergeant’s professional pride, it created no problematic doubts for Penrose: after the interview, he had taken her downstairs for the formal identification of Marjorie’s body and there was no question i
n his mind that her grief—which seemed to have gained strength from being denied for so long—was genuine. She had touched her daughter’s bruised and violated lips with a tenderness which Penrose doubted she had ever expressed while Marjorie was alive and, of all the regrets which he saw pass across her face, remorse at having killed her was not one of them. ‘The truth is we don’t have any good cause to keep her here,’ he said as patiently as he could. ‘I really don’t think it’s her.’
‘But you don’t know it’s not. You seem to be confusing the issue, Penrose. I asked you to take a look at the Cowdray Club because of some anonymous letters and a spate of petty thefts; I did not ask you to investigate the private lives of its members, and in particular of its secretary.’
‘I think they’re connected, though.’ It was a half-truth; he agreed with Fallowfield that Sylvia Timpson was likely to be behind the spiteful letters, driven by bitterness about her own abandoned career, but that didn’t exclude the possibility that Bannerman had received a threatening note from a different source. ‘Marjorie delivered two letters to the club on Friday morning,’ he explained, ‘and only one of them was from my cousins—I’ve checked that. I think Marjorie wrote the other one herself and challenged Celia Bannerman to …’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Not yet, sir, but it seems reasonable to assume …’
‘It’s not reasonable to assume anything when you’re dealing with something as sensitive as this. I hope to God you haven’t been stupid enough to tell anyone else what’s in your mind. When I asked you to look into the matter, I told you to be discreet.’
‘To be fair, Sir, we weren’t investigating two murders at that stage. Sudden death does rather limit the opportunities for discretion.’
He knew he’d pushed his luck too far: sarcasm was never the right tack to adopt with the chief constable, and certainly not with an issue that contained such a strong political subtext. ‘Do I need to remind you, Inspector, that the murders to which you refer happened half a mile away on someone else’s premises?’ The rank was spoken in such a way as to suggest that it was a temporary arrangement which could easily be dissolved. ‘Premises owned by your family, in fact. Perhaps I should take you off this case. The fact that one of the victims was your cousins’ employee creates an obvious conflict of interests.’
The comment wasn’t worth addressing seriously and Penrose ignored it; he was arrogant enough to realise his value to the force, and he knew that the Chief would never risk insulting his integrity without a better reason than the one he had just given. ‘But Lucy Peters wasn’t half a mile away, Sir.’ He had checked regularly on the girl’s condition with Miriam Sharpe and there had been no marked improvement; she may have survived the immediate trauma but, as Sharpe had warned him yesterday, there was still plenty to worry about. ‘She was well and truly on the Cowdray Club premises.’
‘And she fell down the stairs. It’s all very tragic, I agree, but it can’t be helped.’
‘But just suppose for a moment that I’m right, Sir. Peters is in danger, because the killer will try again.’ He was careful to avoid using Bannerman’s name; it would only antagonise his superior even further. ‘Do we really want to risk that? A young girl’s death caused by our negligence—that really would be a scandal.’
‘You’ve got a man posted outside her room around the clock, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then I don’t quite see your problem.’ The Chief hadn’t met Celia Bannerman in Lucy’s room and seen the fear in her eyes, Penrose thought; the longer Lucy survived the accident, the more desperate Bannerman would become. ‘Look, I understand what you’re saying to me and normally I admire your flair—you know I do.’ Penrose accepted the condescension through gritted teeth, but he knew that the battle was over for now. ‘This time, though, I honestly think you’ve got it wrong. There’s the gala tomorrow night to consider, and the minister’s going to be there. I really can’t allow you to make waves unless you’ve got the facts to back it up. Go back and talk to Baker or Edwards, or whatever her name is.’
Penrose knew that he could talk to Edwards until he was blue in the face, but the answer would still be the same: she hadn’t killed her daughter or her husband. Understanding now exactly how Miriam Sharpe felt about society getting in the way of the job, he tried one more shot. ‘And if I can bring you evidence that Bannerman is involved somehow?’
The chief constable looked at him as though he were a weapon which had fallen into dangerous hands. ‘Then of course I’ll allow you to bring her in,’ he said cautiously. ‘Good God, man, we’re not in the business of hushing things up. But don’t waste time that should be spent on the Baker woman, and if you can get a confession out of her before tomorrow night, it would reflect well on us all.’
Never mind that it’s the wrong one, Penrose muttered to himself, but he recognised a dismissal when he heard one. ‘I’ll do my best, Sir,’ was all he could manage to say with any degree of courtesy.
‘And you’re at the gala tomorrow night?’
‘Yes, Sir. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ He smiled, enjoying the nervous expression on his superior’s face.
‘Then I hope I can rely on you to put on a good show. There’ll be lots of important people there, and it wouldn’t do your career any harm to make a good impression. No nonsense, Penrose.’
‘Of course not, Sir.’ Still seething, Penrose shut the door behind him and went to look for Fallowfield. Perhaps the chief constable wasn’t entirely wrong after all, he thought, remembering the half-finished evening cloak which Marjorie had been working on for Celia Bannerman: a good show tomorrow night might be exactly what was needed.
‘I thought I might publish it, you know—the diary.’
‘You should do. It’s beautifully written. I imagine that people who can read it without feeling guilty will be fascinated by it—there’s a big market for angst by proxy.’
Marta laughed. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’
‘No, not really. Are you writing anything else?’ She and Marta had arrived at a fragile peace and, by an unspoken agreement, had lapsed into pleasantries to protect it. Josephine sensed that they both needed time to reassess what was going on between them; Marta had disappeared for ages on the pretext of getting them something to eat but, when she finally returned with plates of cheese and fruit, neither of them had touched it. While Josephine had been glad of the breathing space, she knew that sooner or later they would have to face their feelings or something precious would be lost; superficial chats on social occasions were not what she wanted from Marta, and she was surprised again by how important the relationship had become to her. ‘What about another novel? I can’t imagine you idle.’
‘I’ve started something, but I haven’t got very far with it. And you? I kept an eye out in the papers for a new play, but there hasn’t been anything.’
‘No, I’ve gone back to crime. It’ll be out early next year.’
‘Please tell me I didn’t drive you to it.’
‘Not to the crime, no, but there’s a character in it you might recognise—an actress. I gave her your name and Lydia’s personality.’
‘Determined to couple us in one way or another, then,’ Marta said, turning the bottle in the grate to warm the other side. ‘How is Lydia?’
‘Up and down. Work’s dismal, but the cottage is heavenly. She spends as much time there as she can, I gather.’
‘You gather? Don’t you see her much?’
‘We drifted apart a bit after what happened at the end of Richard, and it didn’t help that Queen of Scots wasn’t quite the career boost that she’d hoped for. We’re still friends, but it’s all a bit superficial at the moment. She’s never really forgiven me for being the one who was there for you when you needed someone. I get the feeling she doesn’t trust me any more.’ She gave a wry smile and poured the wine. ‘With good reason, as it turns out.’
‘You saved my life, Josephine—liter
ally. Lydia couldn’t have done what you did to make me believe in a future; she would never have said the right things. And I haven’t even thanked you for that, have I? All those pages of pouring my heart out to you, and I never once mentioned it. It must seem ungrateful of me, but it felt like the sort of thing that I should say to your face—if I ever got to see your face again. So thank you.’
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the soft crackle of the fire. ‘Sometimes I think it would have been kinder to let you do what you intended,’ Josephine said at last. ‘What you went through instead can’t have been easy. I was at Holloway yesterday.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘It started out as research for a new book, but really I went for you.’
Marta lit a cigarette and stared at her. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I wanted to understand. There’s so much that I don’t know about you, Marta. I met you as Lydia’s lover, and we’ve hardly seen each other—yet here we are, talking about love and deciding whether or not we should go to bed together.’
‘What do you want to know before you have your wicked way with me?’
Josephine took the cigarette out of Marta’s mouth and made her light another. ‘Don’t be so glib,’ she said irritably. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘No I don’t. I’m astonished and touched that you would bother to walk round Holloway just to understand what I’ve been through, but I don’t see why anything else matters.’
‘So if you could ask me anything at all, you wouldn’t bother?’
She shook her head. ‘Not if it was about the past, no. I don’t need to. How I feel about you won’t change just because I know what school you went to.’
Josephine flushed, and felt like a naive child who had failed to understand the simplest of life’s truths. The control she had marvelled at earlier was now all but gone and the power between them had shifted: at the beginning of the evening, it was Marta who had laid her soul bare, Marta who wanted something; now, Josephine wanted it too, and that made her vulnerable, as Marta clearly recognised. ‘Do you ever do what’s expected?’ she asked angrily.