Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘That would depend. He might suggest that she go to the police station, but vagrants usually aren’t very eager to do that.’

  ‘So what else?’

  ‘Perhaps one of the churches. There’s one in particular that runs a mission for railway vagrants.’

  I asked directions to it. A short walk from the station, past brick terraces grimed with railway smoke; even the privet hedges were so grey their leaves might have been made from metal. About five minutes away the clerk had said, but probably three times that for a woman weighed down with a baby, her world fallen apart.

  The main door of the church was locked but a side one was open. I found two women carefully polishing a brass eagle lectern. They didn’t seem surprised when I enquired about a woman and baby, though neither of them had any knowledge of her. The curate would know, they said.

  ‘Where can I find the curate?’

  ‘He’s in the house at the back, but he’s having his tea.’

  They made it sound as if it were some kind of religious ceremony. I went round to the back and interrupted the curate at his tea. He was a young man but slow in speech and movement, as if dazed by the problems of the world.

  ‘Yes, there was an unfortunate young woman. I’m not sure which day it was, but certainly about this time of day some time last week.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I gave her a cup of tea and escorted her to Lady Mary Bentley.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Its full title is the Lady Mary Bentley Memorial Home for Distressed Women, though not many of us use it. Use the name, I mean. The home as well, of course … that is to say…’

  His embarrassment made it clear what sort of home it was. I asked directions. Three or four more grey terraces, men in grimy overalls and heavy boots marching homewards from their work in the locomotive factories now the sun was setting. Janie would have taken that same walk, with the self-conscious curate beside her and the baby in her arms leaving no doubt at all where she was heading. It was a substantial brick house at the end of a road, set a little apart from its neighbours, the sort of place where the railway owners might have lived before they used their profits to move to healthier places. I walked up the steps to the black-painted front door and knocked.

  After some time a harassed woman in a dress the colour of the sooty privet leaves opened it. She didn’t give me a chance to speak.

  ‘No visitors after four o’clock.’

  From somewhere behind her, unseen, a small chorus of babies cried.

  ‘I just want to enquire if a friend of mine named—’

  ‘All enquiries between office hours of nine-thirty and three-thirty, or in writing to the trustees.’

  ‘But can’t you even tell me if—?’

  She shut the door on me. I was tempted to hammer until she opened it again but guessed it wouldn’t help.

  The trail had come temporarily to an end against that door and I was doomed to a night in Swindon. I spent it at a decent kind of lodging house for the poorer sort of railway traveller near the station, a necessary economy because my money, like Janie’s, was running low. Lamb chop, beans and mashed potato for supper, then bed in a partitioned-off piece of a room so narrow that if you happened to stand with hands on hips your elbows grazed the walls on either side. The bedding was clean but the mattress lumpy. Not that it mattered because sleep was unlikely anyway, with noise from the trains going on most of the night and the locomotive works in full cry by six in the morning. At nine-thirty on the dot I was back on the doorstep of the Lady Mary Bentley Memorial Home.

  * * *

  The same woman in the same dress opened the door and pretended she’d never set eyes on me before. I restated my business and she grudgingly allowed me into a small office with a desk, a cupboard and two hard chairs and left me there for a quarter of an hour or so without another word. The place smelt of cheap polish and carbolic disinfectant, with a stubborn undertone of sour milk and misery. When the woman returned she asked me yet again the name of my friend, managing to say the word ‘friend’ as if it were something that had to be picked up with tweezers.

  ‘We have nobody of that name here.’

  ‘Then she must have given a different name. The young woman I’m looking for was brought here by a curate on the evening of the Monday before last.’

  ‘Are you the young woman’s employer?’

  ‘No, I’m a friend of her husband’s.’

  That caught her by surprise at least. She went to the cupboard and brought out a thick ledger with cloth covers and a leather spine. When she opened it on the table I saw long columns in copperplate writing.

  ‘A young woman and a male infant were admitted that evening. She gave her name as Brown.’

  ‘May I speak to her, please?’

  ‘She is carrying out her domestic duties at present.’

  I stood up and leaned across the table so that she had to look at me.

  ‘Her husband’s frantic with worry. He has no idea where she is. Whatever she’s doing can’t matter as much as this.’

  She stared, then went to the door, opened it and shouted into the passage, ‘Send Brown Three to the office. She’s in the laundry room.’

  ‘Brown Three?’

  ‘They nearly all say they’re called Brown or Smith or Jones.’

  Silence in the room, broken at last by footsteps on the linoleum in the passage. The door opened.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  Janie, in grey dress, soiled apron and white cap with a few damp strands of hair straggling out from it, hands bright pink and wrinkled. A smell of boiled towelling followed her into the room. Her eyes were downcast and she didn’t see me. I stood up to let her sit down, but the woman gave me a look that said it was against the rules.

  ‘Mrs Sutton,’ I said.

  Her head jerked up. She recognised me and looked terrified.

  ‘Walter? Has something happened to Walter?’

  ‘No, he’s quite safe – only very worried about you.’

  She seemed frozen.

  ‘Can we talk on our own, do you think?’ I said to the woman, but got a shake of the head.

  ‘Mrs Sutton, Janie, if there’s anything he did to make you leave I promise you there’s never been a man more sorry. He wants you and the baby back.’

  ‘It wasn’t him did anything.’

  She said it in a whisper to the floor, her sodden pink hands twisting against the apron as if still wringing out wet nappies.

  ‘Who, then? What happened?’

  She didn’t answer. I didn’t blame her, with the woman listening.

  ‘Will you come back home with me now? Whatever it is that scared you, I promise we’ll protect you.’

  The woman answered for her. ‘They’re not allowed to leave unless with an employer or close relative.’

  I could have argued with that. Legally I was sure Janie had the right to take the baby and go, but it had to be of her own free will and she looked incapable of even getting out of the room without being told to. I made sure that I spoke to her rather than the woman.

  ‘Well then, I’ll go straight back home and tell Mr Sutton where you are. If there’s time, I’m sure he’ll be back here by this evening. If not, it will be tomorrow. Will you be all right till then?’

  She managed to look at me and say yes.

  ‘They’ll be needing you back in the laundry, Mrs Sutton.’

  There was just a touch more kindness in the woman’s voice, now Janie had a Mrs to her name. When the door closed behind Janie, she almost managed an apology.

  ‘How are we to know? Most of them say they’re deserted wives or widows.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  I went without saying thank you or goodbye. Afterwards I thought I was hard on the woman who, after all, had to live with the sour milk and boiled nappy smells as well. At the time, I was simply angry. Angry for Janie and the other girls. Even more angry because, after all the trouble of finding h
er, I was no nearer knowing what had made her run away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT DIDN’T HELP MY MOOD THAT I missed a connection on the way back so it was mid-afternoon by the time I walked into the workshop.

  ‘I’ve found Janie. They’re all right.’

  I had to say it again before he let himself believe it, then he staggered and would have fallen if he hadn’t hung on to my arm. At first he thought I’d found her somewhere in the village and it took a long time to make him understand about Swindon and the home for distressed women.

  ‘Why did she go to a place like that?’

  ‘She was running away from something and I still don’t know what it is. She’s still scared, but she’ll come back with you. She can’t stay where she is.’

  Once he’d gathered that she was waiting for him he rushed upstairs to change and collect money for the journey. I called up to remind him that the three of them would probably have to stay in Swindon overnight and he’d better take their marriage lines with him or the place might not let her out. The train wasn’t due for some time but he insisted on going straight away in case of missing it. I went with him and he almost ran up the street. When people looked at him he shouted, ‘She’s all right! I’m going to fetch them home,’ and went hurrying on.

  ‘So it wasn’t Janie who took the money from the chest,’ I said, trying to keep pace with him.

  It hardly registered with him, he was so intent on getting to her. I tried a couple of times more and, still unsuccessful, wished him luck and left him on the platform, staring along the line as if he could make the train come earlier by sheer force of will.

  * * *

  I went up to the Venns’ house and asked to see Carol. She was in the studio, Annie said. The maid always had a scared look on her face when she opened the door these days, as if expecting more trouble. She was probably right.

  It was the first time I’d been in the studio since finding Daisy’s body. The black oak cabinet had gone and at first glance the room was back to normal, but it wasn’t the harmonious place it had been just two weeks before. All the fine pieces of furniture seemed to have lost their glow, even though the curtains were drawn back and afternoon sun was coming in through the windows. A light fur of dust had collected, probably because Annie couldn’t be expected to come in and clean after what had happened.

  At first I couldn’t see anybody in the room and stopped, as on my first visit, to look at the woman in the tapestry with her crinkly hair, her remote smile and long white feet among carefully disordered grass blades. Then there was some small sound and I turned to find Carol on her knees by the far wall, paintbrush in hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, admire her while you can.’

  She was wearing a dark dress with a painter’s smock over it. I went closer and saw she was painting a wooden firescreen with a design of two swans facing each other, necks entwined. She dipped her brush and drew a long white stroke.

  ‘They’re beautiful.’

  Her sad smile made her look even more like the woman in the tapestry.

  ‘A commission. You know the way fire fenders are shaped, like swans’ necks?’ She put down her brush and used both hands to draw complementary curves in the air. ‘A client wants to follow it through with this and two log boxes. I haven’t been able to work on it but … but what do you do after all when things are falling apart round you?’

  ‘It’s not all bad news,’ I said. ‘I’ve found Janie Sutton.’

  She listened to the story, still kneeling by the firescreen.

  ‘But what possessed her to run away to that?’

  ‘I didn’t have a chance to ask. We might find out tomorrow when her husband brings her back.’

  She picked up a fine brush, loaded it with black and gave the swans eyes. If the news had raised her spirits, there was no sign of it.

  ‘At least he’ll be able to work again,’ I said.

  ‘At what? The wreck’s total, you know. Everything’s going: the house, the workshop. That hairy communist friend of yours…’

  ‘Not really my friend.’

  ‘Well, he’s right. It isn’t economic, making furniture the way we do. The world’s not built that way and it’s no use fighting it.’

  ‘So what will happen to them?’

  ‘Back to the railway carriages, I suppose.’

  ‘What caused the wreck? Was it what Hawthorne wrote?’

  ‘It didn’t help, but I can’t blame him for all of it. Poor Philomena didn’t leave us as well off as we’d hoped and we’ve been … been trying to juggle things I suppose since she died. Only we didn’t juggle well enough. You get tired in the end.’

  ‘So what will happen to you?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve already had an offer for the house. A brewer from Birmingham. Quite good taste, as it happens. He’ll take it furniture and all.’

  A gesture with her brush round the studio. One of the reasons why it looked odd and abandoned already was the space at the heart of it where the dark oak cabinet had stood. Some of the other furniture must have been pushed back to make room for it and the whole arrangement had lost its balance.

  ‘It’s gone back to my friends,’ she said, guessing what I was thinking. ‘Goodness knows what they’ll do with it. The police did their measurements and took photographs before it went.’

  ‘There’s another little mystery about Janie,’ I said.

  ‘Oh God, aren’t there enough of them?’

  ‘Her husband was sure she took that money from the chest on Wednesday night. It can’t have been her, though. She was at that awful place in Swindon by then.’

  She said nothing, sitting back on her heels and staring at the swans.

  ‘And he was certain too that only you, he and Janie knew the money was there.’

  ‘Well, he was wrong about one thing, so maybe he was wrong about the other.’

  She got to her feet in one supple movement, not using her hands. ‘Thank you for finding poor Janie. Was there anything else you wanted to ask?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  She put her head on one side and looked at me.

  ‘You’re not sure, are you? Or rather you are sure, but you don’t want to say it. Is it to do with that talk you had with poor Flissie?’

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘She didn’t confide in me, but I guessed where she was going. She needed to tell somebody. If I’d encouraged her at all I think she’d have even told me.’

  ‘That she and Adam…’

  ‘Were lovers? Yes, I knew.’

  ‘And didn’t mind?’

  Her eyes looked as sad as something left out in the rain but she only shrugged – if you could call the little rippling of her shoulders anything as vulgar as a shrug.

  ‘What I felt didn’t matter. Some people make too much fuss about their feelings. The important thing was what was to be done about it – or rather, not done.’

  ‘Not leave him, you mean?’

  Divorce was difficult, even for the moneyed classes. The already precarious finances of the Venns would be pulled apart by it, Carol’s workshop and her dreams for a village of craftsmen put aside for a lonely room somewhere. A lot of women I knew were forced to make those sorts of bargains.

  She shook her head. ‘Daniel not finding out.’

  ‘But if he was going to marry her, didn’t he have a right?’

  ‘Right? A virgin bride, is that what you mean?’

  ‘No. Trust between him and Felicia.’

  ‘And no trust ever again between him and Adam? I know they’ve quarrelled now but that’s only politics. It doesn’t matter. Daniel will stop thinking he’s a revolutionary and settle down.’

  ‘And never know?’

  ‘You don’t understand how close they are, deep down. Daniel was only four when their parents got killed. Adam was father and elder brother to him in one. I don’t want Daniel to lose all that over bedroom bus
iness.’

  The last two words came out almost explosively.

  ‘And what about Felicia?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Felicia. She’s tougher than you think. You know the kind of perfectly ordinary woman who comes through earthquakes with a child or a puppy in her arms and not a hair out of place? Felicia will be one of those.’

  A touch of contempt in her voice, but I couldn’t help smiling at the picture. She smiled too.

  ‘But seriously, you’re not going to tell Daniel, are you?’

  ‘No. Felicia told me in confidence.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He’d know some time though, I thought. Not many secrets last a lifetime. She knelt down again and made a small adjustment to a swan’s eye.

  ‘Are you still looking for Daisy’s uncle?’

  ‘Yes. I’m hoping Janie might be able to tell me something when they get back tomorrow.’

  ‘Why Janie?’

  ‘Something scared her. It may be nothing to do with him, but if I’m right he was actually inside the workshop helping to move that cabinet the day she ran away.’

  ‘You may be right. I expect you’re usually right. Are you?’

  A touch of bitterness in her voice. She didn’t look at me.

  ‘Very far from it,’ I said.

  When I looked back from the door she was still staring at the firescreen. Such a nice civilised family, with so very much to hide. They’d all of them – Oliver, Adam, Carol, even Daniel – behaved as if the survival of the Venns mattered enough to the world to justify financial deceit and lying. And yet it was all coming apart in any case. The Birmingham brewer would enjoy the beautiful rooms and tidy up the garden, the lawyers would pick through the financial wreckage and any money that was left afterwards might go to Philomena’s good causes. Mr Sutton would be back fitting precisely similar pieces of wood to lines and lines of precisely similar railway carriages. Daisy’s body would rot in some unvisited grave in a remote Wiltshire churchyard. And Felicia, if Carol was right, would walk out of the earthquake with a puppy or a baby in her arms. I doubted it.

  * * *

  I went back to Mrs Penny’s for tea and some one-sided gossip on the woodworker’s runaway wife. Naturally the news that he’d gone to fetch her back was all round the village and since he’d been seen in my company she knew I had something to do with it but I didn’t enlighten her. It was a sore point too that I’d spent a night away without warning her. When she realised she was getting nowhere, she changed tack.