by Nicola Upson
‘Here we go,’ Ronnie muttered. ‘It’ll be Tomorrow at Bloody Six by the time she’s finished.’
‘The Actors’ Orphanage, of which Mr Coward is president, started nearly forty years ago and now offers a home and a school to sixty children at a time. I need hardly stress to you that today, even with the vast improvements that have taken place in social welfare over the last few years, one of the casualties of a modern city is still the unwanted child, or the child who is left without anyone to care for him. Hard times press hardest on our children: now that the winter has come, and the days are dreary with fog and the streets are cheerless, now that Christmas approaches, it’s only natural that we turn our thoughts to bringing some brightness into their lives. But Mr Coward and his colleagues work tirelessly to do that all year round; thanks to them, and to other organisations like the Actors’ Orphanage, women are no longer driven to the desperate measures with which they were once faced, and children find the fabric of their lives immeasurably improved each day. I’m sure you’ll agree that money donated to such a cause is money well spent.’
Archie slipped into the seat on Josephine’s right, and she poured him a glass of champagne. ‘I’ve got to hand it to Celia,’ she said, ‘this is quite a performance.’ He nodded, but seemed too intent on the stage for any further conversation.
‘Before we move on to the night’s other very good cause, I have one more organisation to thank. You will all know the name of Motley; through their splendid designs for the stage and the high street, they bring romance into our lives and glamour into our wardrobes, and I’m sure I’m not the only woman here who offered them up a prayer when she was getting dressed tonight.’ A murmur of appreciation ran through the audience. ‘Tonight, though, our thanks are tinged with sadness when we think of the appalling tragedy which took place just a few days ago, and which would have brought a less stoical organisation to its knees. Lettice and Ronnie tell me that the dress I’m wearing this evening was the last that Marjorie Baker worked on before she died, and I feel humble and honoured to own it. The money from tonight may go to our charities, but the spirit of the occasion belongs to Marjorie, and to her colleagues and friends who must continue without her.’
Ronnie made a great show of rummaging under the table for a napkin, but Archie seemed less moved. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered under his breath, and Lettice looked questioningly at Josephine; she shrugged, completely bewildered by his reaction.
‘Now to the organisation closest to my own heart and, I know, to many of yours. Of all the people I’ve met in my life, the one I feel most privileged to have known and worked alongside is the lady who has given her name to this club—her name, and so much more. Annie, Viscountess Cowdray, was one of the most sincere and true friends that it is possible for a body of professional women to have. She had a wonderful grasp of business matters, a great ability to make quick and wise decisions and, above all, a deep compassion and desire to be of use to those who needed help.’ She pointed upwards, to three stained-glass windows built into one of the walls, each depicting a cherub in a different pose. ‘Tonight, we’re watched over by the three symbols of the nursing profession, Love, Fortitude and Faith—although some would say that to those three should be added a good sense of humour and a strong back.’ The laughter was most appreciative amongst the nurses in the room, Josephine noticed. ‘Lady Cowdray had more than her fair share of all of them, and it is to her that we owe the success and good standing that her club and this college enjoy all over the world today. If I may, though, I’d like to finish on a more personal note.’ She paused, and looked slowly round the room. ‘Tonight will be my last public event as secretary of the Cowdray Club. The last thirteen years have brought me great joy and satisfaction, but, while I hope my reserves of love, fortitude and faith are as strong as ever, the apocryphal qualities let me down increasingly in the face of old age and it’s time to hand over the reins to younger hands. I hope that my successor, whoever she is, will find this job as rewarding and fulfilling as I have. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen—please enjoy the show, and give as generously as you can to our causes.’
She relinquished the stage to the first act of the night, and Archie turned to Josephine. ‘Did you know she was going to do that?’ he asked, almost accusingly.
‘No, I had no idea. I’ve hardly seen her over the weekend.’ She looked at him, a little put out by his tone. ‘I suppose she wants to leave while she’s still got the respect of most of the members. That scene with Gerry on Saturday must have been the last straw for her, don’t you think?’ Archie said nothing and, although she made several more attempts at conversation, he seemed far too preoccupied to listen to a word she was saying. Exasperated by his silence, and able to think of only one explanation for it, she took his face in her hands and made him look at her. ‘Archie, would you be happier if we didn’t see each other?’ she asked.
‘What?’ At least now she had his attention. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. This is about yesterday, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Josephine, but that’s not why I’m so distracted. Forgive me.’ He kept her hand where it was with his own, and smiled at her. ‘But in answer to your question, I can’t imagine a world in which you and I don’t see each other. Nothing would make me unhappier. I know it’s not always easy, and I know that there are bound to be things in both our lives that get in the way, things that can’t be shared, but there will never be a time for me when your absence is preferable to your company, and I hope you feel the same.’
She was about to say something when a waiter came over to their table and passed Archie a note. ‘Shit,’ he said, standing up to leave. ‘I’m sorry, Josephine—I’ve got to go. We’ll talk about this later.’
‘I thought you’d want to know immediately. She died ten minutes ago. There was nothing I could do. Her heart was so weak that there was insufficient blood-flow to the vital organs, and the kidneys never regained their function. I’m sorry.’
Penrose realised that Miriam Sharpe was expressing regret at Lucy’s death rather than its inconvenience to his plans, and normally his priorities would have been the same, but Celia Bannerman’s resignation speech had created a sense of urgency which left him uncharacteristically tactless. ‘Who knows about this?’ he asked.
‘Only you and one other nurse, and the policeman who was on duty. But I can’t keep this quiet, if that’s what you’re about to ask. There are procedures to follow and next of kin to be notified, not to mention the small matter of common decency.’
‘I know, and I wouldn’t put you in this position unless it were absolutely necessary,’ Penrose said, desperate to buy himself some time: if Celia Bannerman found out that Lucy was dead, she would have no reason to take any more risks and could happily sail off into a glorious retirement, leaving him with absolutely no proof whatsoever. ‘Please—just give me an hour.’
Miriam Sharpe thought for what seemed like an age to Penrose before saying: ‘I won’t hold up what I need to do, Inspector, but neither will I go out of my way to let anyone know about Lucy’s death. Everyone is preoccupied downstairs at the moment, and that should give you the time you’re asking for. But I hope I don’t need to tell you that I can’t have policemen crawling all over what is sadly now a place of rest.’
She didn’t: even in his desperation to trap Celia Bannerman, Penrose had no intention of offering up a young girl’s body as bait. He thanked Miriam Sharpe, and went to tell Wyles and Fallowfield about the change of plan.
The lights dimmed again after the interval, and an audience which had responded to the entertainment so far with polite applause stood and cheered as the curtain rose on the stars of the night. Noël and Gertie, dressed as music-hall performers, stood in front of a painted street scene which could have been the backdrop to any provincial theatre in England; both wore curly red wigs and sailor clothes with exaggerated bell-bottomed trousers, and each carried a telescope. They launched into their first number, and Archie raised his glass to an older man on a nearby t
able, who smiled suspiciously as he returned the greeting. ‘Who’s that?’ Josephine asked.
‘The chief constable.’
‘Why’s he looking at you like that?’
‘Because he thinks I’m about to disgrace him with the Home Office.’
She stared at him. ‘And are you?’
‘I hope not.’
They turned back to the stage, where Gertrude Lawrence was taking particular delight in mocking the seedy touring life which she had known earlier in her own career; Coward’s music, and the banter which ran in between the songs, perfectly captured the half-desperate atmosphere of a struggling music hall, an atmosphere that Josephine remembered herself from her early introductions to theatre. The piece was a light-hearted affair, both loving and cynical, but even the ridiculously exaggerated outfits couldn’t hide the magic of the partnership on stage; it was a radiant, if fragile, glamour which had sustained people since the war and which continued to keep them spellbound now, even as most of them feared that their lives were once again held to ransom by politics, and Josephine doubted that there was a single person in the room who wasn’t thankful for it.
As the orchestra picked up the refrain and the on-stage husband and wife lapsed into a series of terrible jokes, Josephine noticed Mary Size leave the room, followed swiftly by Fallowfield. She watched him go, surprised that he was willing to miss a second of the performance; he glanced quickly at Archie as he passed, but she thought nothing of it. His departure left an empty seat by the Snipe, who seemed to be finding the performance a vast improvement on Romeo and Juliet; the Motleys’ housekeeper smiled when she caught Josephine’s eye, and Josephine hoped to God that she could rely on her to be discreet about the bed which sat redundant in Maiden Lane. She didn’t want to have secrets from Archie, but she wasn’t ready to face her own feelings for Marta yet, let alone discuss them with anyone else.
The fading music-hall couple attempted a snappy finale, but Lawrence’s character dropped her telescope and ruined the whole effect. As her husband glared at her, the curtain fell, then rose again almost immediately on a squalid dressing room. Noël and Gertie reappeared, still breathless from the number and looking furiously at each other; they flung their wigs down and ripped off the sailor clothes, and the sight of Gertrude Lawrence clad only in brassiere and silk knickers drew the loudest cheer of the night. ‘I bet you’re not saying “Gertrude who?” now,’ Josephine whispered to Archie, but he was still miles away. He nodded at someone, and she followed his gaze to the door and to Lillian Wyles; as she watched, Wyles walked over to the committee table and whispered something in Celia Bannerman’s ear, then handed her a note and left the room. ‘What’s going on, Archie?’ Josephine asked, suddenly afraid. ‘First Mary Size and now Celia.’ As if on cue, Bannerman got up and hurried from the hall. ‘You surely can’t think …’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Just stay here. I’ll explain later.’ Without another word, he got up and went after the two women.
From the doorway to Memorial Hall, Fallowfield watched Mary Size walk across the college foyer to the stairs, then followed her at a discreet distance up to the first floor. She hesitated at the mezzanine level, and he held back, waiting for her to make a move; for a moment, he thought she was simply looking for the ladies’ cloakroom and he breathed a sigh of relief, but then she turned and hurried up the stairs. He quickened his pace, hoping that the muffled cheers and applause from the hall below would mask the sound of his footsteps, and followed her over the next landing and up to the treatment rooms on the second floor. There was only one place she could be headed for now, and he could think of no legitimate reason why she should have left the performance to see Lucy Peters. But a prison governor? Could they really have got it so wrong?
He arrived at the door to Lucy’s room just in time to hear her remonstrating with Miriam Sharpe. ‘Oh come on, Miriam—just let me see her for a moment. I won’t stay long and surely it won’t do her any harm? From what I hear, it can’t get much worse for the poor girl.’
The nurse looked questioningly at Fallowfield, and he nodded. ‘You’re right, Mary,’ she said gravely. ‘I’m afraid it really can’t get any worse at all. Lucy died earlier this evening.’
Fallowfield watched Mary Size’s face as she took in the news, but there was no hint of relief, only a deep sorrow which she made no effort to hide. He introduced himself, and then asked gently: ‘Can I ask why you wanted to see Miss Peters, Ma’am?’
She took a moment to register the question, then held out a photograph. ‘Yes of course, sergeant—I came to leave this by her bedside. I wanted it to be the first thing she saw when she came round.’ He took the picture and looked down at a beautiful baby girl, less than a year old. ‘I’m afraid I’ve broken all the rules and accepted procedures to get hold of it. You should never contact the new parents once an adoption has gone ahead, but I don’t regret it. The one thing Lucy wanted was to know that her baby was all right. I thought if she had that peace of mind, she might have the strength to pull through this terrible thing that’s happened to her, but it seems that I’ve come too late.’ She unpinned the silk violets from the front of her dress and handed them to Miriam Sharpe with the photograph. ‘I hope she may have found some peace of a different sort now, but will you give her these anyway?’
Fallowfield was about to offer what words of consolation he could find, but, before he had the chance, a scream came from the floor below.
By the time Penrose left the hall, there was no sign of Celia Bannerman, but he knew exactly where to go: he had instructed Wyles to lead her to the first-floor drawing room, where two other officers were already concealed, and he hurried up the stairs and along the corridor, past the glass dome over the dining room and into the Cowdray Club part of the building. The door was ajar, but there was no sound of voices from inside. Impatiently, he waited a few seconds, then cautiously pushed the door open. As he had feared, the room was empty.
‘Where is she?’ he shouted, panic driving him quickly to anger.
Swann and Christofi emerged from their respective hiding places, looking bewildered. ‘She hasn’t come anywhere near here, sir,’ Christofi said. ‘When did she leave the gala?’
‘A few minutes ago,’ Penrose snapped as he headed back to the door. ‘Come on. If she’s on her own with that bitch, God knows what might be happening.’
The scream from further down the corridor offered more possibilities than any of them wanted to hear.
Wyles had not expected Bannerman to follow her so quickly from the hall; before she had a chance to climb the stairs, she heard a voice behind her, calling her back.
‘Not the drawing room,’ Bannerman said calmly, her voice showing no trace of anger or fear. ‘Someone may come in. If you want to talk to me, we’ll go to my office.’
Wyles hesitated, knowing that to obey would be to go against everything that she had been taught in her fifteen years of policing; by the same token, a chance like this was what she had been waiting for all that time. She weighed Penrose’s anger against his approval, and the latter won. After all, the woman in front of her was in her fifties or sixties; if she was no match for that, she shouldn’t be in the police force at all. Hesitantly, she nodded at Bannerman, and followed her up to her room.
Once inside, Bannerman locked the door and removed the key. Without a word, she walked over to the other side of the room, took a piece of paper out of her evening bag and placed it with Lillian’s note on the desk between them. ‘Your letter implied that you know what happened to the last person who sent me a threatening message,’ she said. ‘If that’s the case, I’m surprised you would wish to risk following in her footsteps.’
This veiled affirmation of everything that Penrose had suspected sent a shiver of triumph and fear through Wyles. She looked defiantly at Bannerman, determined to force her into a more direct confession. ‘I’m smarter than Marjorie,’ she began cautiously, ‘and I’m not greedy. Anyway, you can’t go on like this f
orever, can you? Sooner or later, it’s got to stop, and it might as well stop with me. I can keep my mouth shut for a fair price, without the help of a needle.’
It was a gamble, but it seemed to give Bannerman the proof she was looking for. She nodded, and unlocked the top drawer of her desk. ‘I see. And what would you call a fair price?’
‘Two hundred should do it.’ Wyles looked over at the pile of notes that Bannerman had removed from the drawer. ‘Or as near as damn it. Like I said, I’m not greedy.’
‘And how do I know that if I give you your money today, you’re not going to come back tomorrow for more?’ Bannerman walked towards her, the money in her hand.
‘Because you can trust me. Why would I push you when I know what you’re capable of?’
‘A good answer, but not quite the right one.’ She held out the notes, and only spoke again when Wyles had committed herself to taking them. ‘You see, I’ll know you’re not coming back because you simply won’t be able to.’ Even as her fingers closed around the money, Wyles was conscious of Bannerman’s other arm moving rapidly upwards, drawing a line across her chest; she saw the glint of a knife before she felt the pain, and looked down to see blood already seeping through her dress. The cut was mercifully shallow, but the shock of the attack and the sudden realisation of the danger she was in were enough to make her feel faint, and she struggled not to lose consciousness. Bannerman came at her again with the knife. It was a surgical instrument, Wyles noticed, small but deadly, and it struck her as ironic that something which had been created to save lives should so easily be put to the opposite purpose. Using her strength while she still had some to use, she grabbed hold of Bannerman’s wrist and smashed her arm down on the desk. The woman yelled in pain and let go of the knife, and Wyles used her temporary advantage to kick it across the room. The respite was only brief: Bannerman’s anger fuelled her strength, and Wyles was astonished and horrified by the ease with which the older woman pushed her to the floor. She tried to resist, but the brief amnesty on pain which follows any wound was well and truly over now, and Wyles felt increasingly weakened by the loss of blood. Sensing victory, Bannerman pinned her to the floor and put her knee on Wyles’s chest, twisting it hard against her skin and aggravating the injury until she screamed to be released from the torture; she thought she saw her attacker smile as she took the scarf from her own neck and wound it round Wyles’s throat.