The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

‘After that?’

  ‘Yes, after your mother had picked up the spade, and the tramp said—’

  Mercy, but this time I could see the tramp saying it, his twisted lips wrapping round the words, his skin red and wrinkled in the sun and the scent of alcohol and tobacco.

  Then I remembered my mother as she stood with the spade clenched in her hands, the blade raised to her chest, her jaw jutting and her eyes wild. There was something about the way she drew it up to her bosom, ever so slowly and deliberately, and I realised then that something had changed; the gentle mother that I had always known was gone and the woman that now stood in front of me was something different, something animal.

  ‘Then you said in your statement that she raised the spade higher.’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘She raised the spade higher.’

  ‘Kate…’ But then he hesitated and his voice became more formal. ‘You have always said that you had never thought your mother capable of murder and that you had never seen her violent before, do you still stand by that?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said quickly, but then I saw my mother’s face again and the cowered tramp. I had thought him a large man but I was not fully grown back then and had been sat the whole time, and now that I remembered him stood next to my mother, I was not sure if he had been so large after all. I remembered the fear but not the reason for it and not who inflicted it, and I could no longer be certain who had been in danger. ‘No, I don’t know anymore.’

  ‘You cannot ask her that,’ said Dad quickly. ‘It is an unfair question. She was just a child at the time and she has not seen her mother since. I don’t really see how this can be helping us.’

  ‘But I think it does in a way,’ said Mr Crozier, ‘It proves that Millicent was scared, scared to distraction, and, and…’ He closed his eyes and put his finger to his brow. ‘Now, what would be an appropriate word?’

  ‘Violent,’ I whispered.

  ‘Kate!’ gasped Dad. ‘No!’ He hurried over to me, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. ‘I think you had better leave.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘It seems that I have got some more thinking to do anyway.’

  ‘Wait!’ Mr Crozier held the necklace out to me, the pendant turning in the light of the window. ‘Please, Kate, I know you struggle to understand what your mother did, but please do remember how fortunate you are to have this reminder of her. After all, it could have been stolen.’

  ‘Well, my mother made sure that it wasn’t.’ I said sharply, taking the necklace from him. ‘All the intruder managed to do was break the chain, he did not steal it.’

  ‘He tried though,’ insisted Dad.

  ‘And then my mother threatened him. And this big man left – he left with nothing.’

  Mr Crozier looked at me and we exchanged glances, an understanding, I thought. I nodded to him and walked to the door.

  ‘But don’t you see,’ said Dad desperately, ‘he appealed to her and she listened. She showed him the mercy that he asked for. Didn’t she? Mr Crozier, didn’t she?’

  I shut the door behind me.

  Chapter 13

  August 1941

  The deceased woman was unaccompanied, wore no wedding ring and carried no form of identification.

  It had been several years since I’d had cause to read anything about my mother’s case but, at Dad’s insistence, I had gone into the old housemaid’s room and got the old suitcase of documents down from the top of his wardrobe. I had heaved it next door to my own room and opened it on the bed, trying to dam the flow of documents as they slid out over the counterpane. Then I had sat on the bed, amongst the witness statements, court reports and newspaper articles, and I had read idly for several hours, my mind unable to settle.

  For three months I had been trying to write my testimony; the piece about my mother’s gentle nature that Dad wanted to win the pity of the parole board. But in all that time I had found that I could only recall being scolded when I licked my finger to turn the page of a book or having my hand slapped when I wiped my nose upon my sleeve.

  I had tried to remember the times that we would spend together in the walled garden reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the bloodstained blanket from my birth wrapped around my shoulders. I had once thought these memories precious but, when I closed my eyes and tried to relive them, I recalled only my envy for young Alice’s freedom, and my resentment of the blanket that seemed to bind my shoulders so tightly – a sign that I could escape neither the Grange nor my mother.

  I had struggled even to remember my mother’s face and found that I could only recall her smile – the strange smile that she had given me on the station platform just before she had ruined my life and, after that, my thoughts would always turn to a woman splayed motionless across the tracks, a sheen of blood creeping along the iron rails. My mother had no gentleness in her and the page had remained blank.

  She was a short, small-boned woman but well-nourished and wore dark-framed spectacles, a smart mauve tweed suit and carried a moderately expensive handbag. Her hands were soft, but her lack of wedding ring and her smart attire suggested that she was supported by her own means, as a company secretary or in a typing pool or the telephone exchange. Her injuries were consistent with…

  I stopped reading. I could not recall any descriptions of my mother’s victim being read aloud in court, but now that I was confronted with them, I found the details unsettling and I could not face reading any further. I thought about the women that I had seen about town, the independent types – the secretaries at the solicitors’ or the doctor’s surgery, the clerks at the church office and the bus station. This woman could have been someone like them, someone who I would have met in the street and exchanged pleasantries with, and now I felt that I at last had a sense of her, of Rosalie.

  I could see her standing on the platform, right on the edge, her back to the oncoming train. Her lips were moving, something was being said but it was drowned out by the clatter of iron and steel. Then I saw my mother’s arms reach out to her and the image seemed to slow and I saw my mother’s palms flatten against the mauve tweed of the woman’s coat. Could she have stumbled or jumped even? Or was this the memory that I should have trusted all along?

  Then there was a loud tapping sound.

  ‘No!’ I shouted as I watched the woman fall away. But then there was another tap and I realised that it was coming from my bedroom door. ‘Wait a minute!’ I called frantically.

  But Aunt Audrey did not wait, the door flew open and she stood in front of me, an excited smile on her face.

  I tried to gather up the papers and stuff them back in the suitcase but she ignored me and them, as if whatever she had interrupted mattered little to her.

  ‘Party time!’ cried Audrey, waving her hands like a jazz singer.

  ‘What?’ I murmured.

  ‘Jemima leaves for Tower Vale School next week and on Saturday we shall have a grand party to send her off.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said quietly.

  ‘It’s to be a surprise,’ she giggled, placing her finger to her lips dramatically. ‘We must be quiet, she’s only upstairs, and I’ve left her sleeping.’

  I could barely manage a nod or smile but she didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I need your help of course, Kate.’ Audrey sat down on the bed next to me and looked me in the eye as if what she was telling me was of great importance. ‘We shall invite all of Missensham society – the vicar and his wife and that funny little spinster who runs the village school, the new doctor, and Mr and Mrs Partridge from the store and Mr Crozier the solicitor.’

  ‘Aunt Audrey, I—’

  ‘And Walter shall come down from London and regale the guests with hilarious tales from the asylum – of lunatics gnawing through straitjackets – that sort of thing. We shall use the drawing room, with its view across the Long Lawn. Of course, we shall have to lock the undesirables in the gardener’s cottage; you do know that woman’s former husband boards with Walter in London
? So my husband won’t want them around.’ She winked and elbowed me in the ribs. ‘We shall have to sort through the cutlery, sort out the silver from the tinplate and get out the patterned cake plates. Ooh Battenberg! We shall have Battenberg—’

  ‘We shall have whatever the sugar ration allows us to, Aunt Audrey.’

  ‘Don’t be glib with me, girl,’ she snapped. ‘People want cheering up in the drudgery of war!’

  ‘It’s not a case of what we want, it is what we—’

  ‘Well let’s not worry about the details,’ said Audrey crossly.

  ‘Well someone has to!’

  ‘Just put the date in your diary,’ she insisted.

  ‘Understood,’ I said glumly.

  ‘In any case,’ said Audrey. ‘We will have to sweeten the pill for the poor lamb, won’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘about that – Jemima is only five, isn’t that a little young to be sent to boarding school? It is quite a big pill to sweeten, especially as there is a perfectly good school in Missensham.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Audrey, waggling her finger at me as if disciplining a mischievous dog, and she began to talk about the acquirement of social graces, etiquette and deportment and the other accomplishments that could be gained at boarding schools for young ladies.

  I stopped listening but nodded attentively, a skill I had mastered over the year since Audrey had moved in to the Grange. I looked at the old suitcase beside me on the bed and thought of the memories it contained. I had been fifteen when I had been separated from my mother and I had soon come to miss the little everyday things that meant she was near – the way she would dress my hair, the sound of her laughter and the smell of her floral soap – and I felt for little Jemima.

  ‘Kate? Kate? You look quite emotional.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘It is none of my business.’

  ‘You are right, it isn’t,’ Audrey’s mouth puckered disapprovingly as if she could read my thoughts, but then her face changed when her eyes fell on the suitcase. ‘Is that your mother’s case notes?’ she asked more gently.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t normally look at them, it’s just that…’ But I found that I couldn’t finish my excuse.

  ‘Oh dear girl!’ She patted my hand but neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Then she said, ‘Chin-up, there’s no use crying over spilt milk.’ She elbowed me in the ribs again.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there you go then!’ She got up to go.

  ‘Wait,’ I said but then stopped. I wanted her to stay, she was my mother’s sister after all. I remembered her being around at the time of my mother’s arrest and trial, but it was only the London bombs that had driven her back to the Grange nine years later. I could not believe that she had no interest in the life of her only sister, or what had happened to wrench her from her family and home. ‘I found out something new,’ I said at last, thinking of something she might find more interesting than cake forks and Battenberg. ‘I know the victim’s name now. The woman on the platform – her name was Rosalie.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked, sitting back down slowly.

  ‘It was in something I found here,’ I said, pointing to the suitcase, fearing that telling the truth would result in a lecture on silly coincidences and stiff upper lips.

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Well, if that really was her name, I’m afraid it means nothing to me.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think it would. I just thought that I would tell you. I thought that it might be worth a try.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I always find that names mean very little, Christian names anyway. One can go by any name, but really they are quite meaningless, just look at your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘Well, yes, when we were children there was a name that she used to call herself, I just wish that I could remember what it was, something fanciful. She would use it just to taunt me, I think.’

  ‘Why would it taunt you?’ I laughed.

  ‘She would act like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth when our parents were around and I loved her for it, don’t get me wrong. But there were times when, if things didn’t go her way, I would see another side to her and she would launch herself at me, kick my shins, scratch my face and pull my hair, put her hands round my neck, with this wild look in her eyes. I always thought that the person who did this was not her, not Milly, but her, the other name.’

  ‘All children fight,’ I said, thinking of Audrey’s unruly eight-year-old twins. ‘Just look at what happens when Ethel and Alan get home in the school holidays.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t just mean when we were children,’ she said.

  ‘Oh’ I said and nothing more, as I saw that her face was blank, her lips pressed into a tight line and I could not tell if the story was meant in jest.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time exactly,’ she said at last, ‘but it was probably still happening when I was your age! Not so much of course, but she would still threaten me if I got on the wrong side of her; she would get that same look in her eyes and she would say that she would make me sorry.’ And suddenly there was no question in her face whether this was a joke. ‘By “she”, I mean “her”,’ she said. ‘You see, Milly would use that other name, whatever it was.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said wearily. ‘Your mother was perfectly meek and mild, but she was as determined as a wild rabbit.’

  ‘A rabbit?’ I echoed, thinking of the downy rabbits that grazed so languidly on the Long Lawn.

  ‘Well, just ask your father about the rabbits! Doe rabbits may look helpless but when you try to take them from the gin traps they will turn on you and give you a nasty bite. They will even turn on their young if they think that killing them is the best way to protect them. They are just like your mother, they look harmless but they have a fierce streak.’

  ‘Well, I never saw it!’ I said, shocked.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I would hope not too. I am sure that I’m still missing clumps of hair that your mother pulled out!’ She tugged at her perfectly set waves and wound one round her finger and suddenly the serious side was gone and she was the Aunt Audrey that I recognised again.

  I laughed. ‘You never say much about when you and mum were children.’

  ‘No,’ she said sadly, ‘I don’t say enough about this family, but I have my reasons.’

  ‘It would seem that Dad has those reasons too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh Kate, sometimes people keep things from you for your own good. I’m sure your father just has your best interests at heart and you should be grateful for…’ But then she seemed to forget both her words and their sentiment. ‘Is that a train timetable?’ she said brightly. ‘I shall have to find the train times to Oxfordshire.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Well actually, no, it is from the suitcase, but it is nine years old, I’m not sure how many connections there were into Oxfordshire back then. When I was heading to Tower Vale, the plan was for me to get a carriage from the nearest station.’

  ‘Well someone has circled some train times on it, maybe the trains will be the same even if they do not go as far.’ She looked down at the little booklet, tracing her finger along the lines of numbers.

  ‘I think it might have been the dead woman’s timetable,’ I said. ‘I think it must have fallen on the platform and, in all the confusion, I must have picked it up. Maybe the police thought it was mine.’

  ‘Well then, if this did belong to the poor woman, it doesn’t appear that she was lost after all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I always thought that she was supposed to have arrived on the train from London, but two arrivals have been circled for Missensham, one for the London train and then one for the earlier train, the one which would have come into the other platform from Evesbridge.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think she would hav
e needed to ask your mother anything. It looks like she had already got to where she was going.’

  ‘Oh, maybe you are right,’ I said. ‘You don’t think that she was there to meet Mother, do you? Do you think she did know her after all?’

  We looked at each other for a while and then there was a faint wail from upstairs as Jemima woke from her nap, and Audrey broke away and looked to the door.

  ‘Who really ever knew your mother!’ she said, standing up and throwing the timetable back on to the bed. ‘She always made pretty sure that nobody did.’ The door banged behind her as she left.

  She was right of course – after all this time, all I had was a suitcase of old case notes detailing times, locations, and coroner’s reports, but there was nothing about my mother herself. And for all of her time in prison, she had kept to herself, never saying a word to anyone about what had happened, and I thought again of the foolishness of Dad’s hopes for her release. A silence that has lasted for nine years surely could never be broken.

  Chapter 14

  August 1940

  ‘Mercy!’

  I could see the twisted lips that spoke the word. Hear the creak of the spade handle as my mother’s hands tightened round it. Feel the beat of my heart in my throat. But as I closed my eyes and tried to remember that moment in the walled garden all those years ago, the memories became blurred. There was something odd about what had happened that day, but I could not think of what, and each time that I replayed the scene in my mind, the images seemed more and more faded, as if bleached by the sun.

  Then there was a loud bang close beside me and I realised that I was no longer the girl in the walled garden, I was a grown woman and I was stood in the kitchen lost in my thoughts as the kettle boiled dry.

  I wound a tea towel round my hand and heaved the kettle from the burner and turned off the gas. Then the bang was repeated and I rushed to the back door, the towel still in my hand.

  The girl from the gardener’s cottage, the one with the mottled cheek, stood in the doorway.