The Throwaway Children

by Diney Costeloe

  The door was opened by a smartly uniformed maid. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘I need to see Miss Vanstone,’ said Mrs Hawkins without bothering to return the greeting. ‘It’s a matter of great urgency.’

  ‘If you’d care to step into the hall for a moment, I’ll see if Miss Vanstone is at home. Whom shall I say is calling?’

  See if she’s at home! thought Mrs Hawkins angrily. We both know perfectly well she’s at home. But she controlled her anger and said, ‘Tell her it’s Mrs Hawkins from Laurel House, and tell her I need to see her urgently.’

  ‘Please take a seat.’ The maid indicated a straight-backed chair just inside the door, and disappeared into the house.

  It was several minutes before she returned, and saying, ‘Come this way please,’ showed her into a drawing room.

  It was a beautiful room, elegantly furnished, with French windows that opened onto a terrace, and from there to a wide expanse of carefully tended lawn. Not wanting to sit down on one of the plush sofas, Mrs Hawkins went over to the windows and looked out. Flowerbeds flanked the lawn, and a smooth gravel path led through a neatly clipped box hedge to an orchard beyond. Everything was beautifully kept, and everything about both house and garden whispered, ‘Money.’

  She spun round as Emily Vanstone sailed into the room. ‘Mrs Hawkins,’ she said with some asperity, ‘what can be so important that you come to disturb my lunch on a Sunday? You know I’m visiting Laurel House this afternoon. Surely whatever it is could have waited till then.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Miss Vanstone,’ answered Mrs Hawkins. ‘You won’t be visiting Laurel House this afternoon; there is no Laurel House.’ Seeing the expression of bafflement on Emily’s face she went on with relish, ‘Laurel House has burned to the ground.’

  ‘It can’t… When…? How…?’ Miss Vanstone tottered forward and dropped down onto one of the sofas. Mrs Hawkins watched her with interest, seeing the colour draining from her cheeks, and sweat breaking out on her brow. Miss Vanstone had clutched at her head and was gasping for breath, but it was several moments before Mrs Hawkins said, ‘Are you all right, Miss Vanstone?’ Her tone was concerned, but her eyes gleamed with malice.

  ‘I will be in just one moment,’ gasped Emily, ‘if you could just ring for Freeman…’ She waved her hand in the direction of a bell-pull beside the door.

  Mrs Hawkins gave the bell a tug, and moments later the maid appeared at the door.

  ‘You rang, madam?’

  Emily was looking slightly better now, and though her breath still rasped in her throat, she managed to say. ‘Just a glass of water, please, Freeman.’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’

  The maid was back almost immediately with a glass of water. She handed it to Emily who sipped it gratefully. Gradually the muzziness in her head began to clear and her breathing quietened, beginning to return to normal.

  Mrs Hawkins watched the colour slowly return to Emily’s face, keeping an expression of concern on her own, but with her mind whirling. It was clear to her that Emily Vanstone wasn’t well, and not only that but that she must have had such turns before. Freeman knew what to do. She must have dealt with them before. There was no suggestion that they call a doctor, though Mrs Hawkins was tempted to suggest it herself just to see the reaction.

  ‘Sit down, Mrs Hawkins,’ Emily said. ‘I shall be fine again directly. Just a moment’s giddiness.’ Then turning to the maid again she said, ‘Thank you, Freeman, that’ll be all.’

  Mrs Hawkins sat down and then wished she hadn’t. The advantage of towering over her stricken employer was lost.

  ‘Now,’ said Emily, taking one final drink of water and then setting the glass aside, ‘tell me exactly what has happened.’

  ‘That I really can’t say,’ said Mrs Hawkins. ‘On the way home from church we were overtaken by fire engines and a police car. When we got to Shepherd Street the police had blocked off the road. The constable there said that it was Laurel House that was on fire, and that it was burning so fiercely that the fire brigade were having trouble bringing it under control.’

  ‘But how did it start?’ demanded Emily, sounding more like her usual self.

  Mrs Hawkins shrugged. ‘I don’t know. All I do know is that we have to find somewhere for thirty children to spend the night tonight and for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked Emily, her mind beginning to kick into action.

  ‘In the church with Mrs Smith and Mrs Reynolds,’ Mrs Hawkins replied. ‘We had to get them off the street, but obviously they can’t stay there.’

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Emily, and suddenly she was all action. Her moment of weakness had passed and she was on her feet, and ringing for Freeman.

  Mrs Hawkins stood up, too, hardly able to believe the transformation from droopy old woman, turning grey and gasping for breath, to the dynamo that was now Emily Vanstone. Freeman was despatched to the kitchen to make a mound of sandwiches for the children’s lunch. Foster, the chauffeur, was called to drive them back to the church and then on to Laurel House.

  Within the hour she had contacted Miss Hopkins, the Children’s Officer, and demanded placements for all the girls left homeless by the fire. Miss Hopkins, daunted by such a task, protested she couldn’t find so many places all of a sudden and on a Sunday, but bullied by Emily, she was persuaded to go into her office and try.

  While May Hopkins was beavering away in her office, Emily and Mrs Hawkins returned to the church, handed out sandwiches to the hungry children, and were then driven to Shepherd Street.

  The street was still closed to traffic, a fire engine standing outside the remains of Laurel House. The big constable was still on duty and though the car was halted he let the two women pass when they explained who they were.

  Together they walked down the street and standing by the fire engine, stared up at the blackened shell, still wreathed in drifting smoke.

  Emily was angry. How could the place in which she’d invested so much time and money simply disappear in a matter of minutes?

  ‘Everything I owned was in there,’ said Mrs Hawkins bitterly. ‘I’ve only the clothes I stand up in, now.’

  Emily turned to her in surprise. She’d been so concerned with EVER-Care, the loss of the house and the immediacy of finding places for the children, she had given no thought at all to the adults who lived in the home and had lost everything.

  ‘I suppose you have,’ replied Emily. ‘Mrs Hawkins, I’m so sorry.’ She thought quickly. ‘You and the other staff must move into a hotel at once. EVER-Care will pay, and advance you each some money for clothes.’

  ‘Advance?’ Mrs Hawkins pounced on the word. ‘What do you mean “advance”?’

  ‘Well, I expect there’ll be insurance money, but that won’t come through straight away, so in the meantime, I’ll advance what you need. I’m sure you can get emergency coupons in the circumstances.’

  ‘I see,’ was all Mrs Hawkins said, but inside she was gleeful, planning her claim for all that she’d lost and for much that she hadn’t.

  Just then two firemen emerged from the front door. ‘No doubt about it,’ one was saying to the other, ‘definitely deliberate. The chief’s already in touch with the police.’

  ‘What did you say?’ cried Emily, overhearing his words. ‘What did you say, my man?’

  The fireman stopped short, seeing the two women for the first time.

  ‘What are you doing here, lady?’ he asked. ‘No one’s allowed in here till we’ve finished damping down.’

  ‘What did you say just then,’ repeated Miss Vanstone at her most imperious, ‘about it being deliberate?’

  ‘Nothing I can tell you, madam.’

  ‘Indeed you can,’ asserted Emily. ‘I own this house.’

  ‘I can tell you nothing, madam,’ repeated the fireman, looking to his mate for confirmation. ‘You’ll be told through official channels. Now please go back out of the gate.’

  As soon as she
got home again, Emily phoned her brother-in-law. ‘Martin, Laurel House has burned down,’ she began.

  ‘What!’ he exclaimed.

  She explained what had happened, adding, ‘And I overheard one of the firemen say that it was deliberate.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me anything. Said I’d hear about the fire through “official channels”. But I heard him say it was definitely deliberate and that the chief was already in touch with the police.’

  ‘Did you speak to the chief?’

  ‘He wasn’t there. By the time I got there, they were damping down. Martin, I assume we’ve got the place well insured.’

  ‘Yes, of course we have,’ said Martin, ‘but if the fire was started deliberately, it may take a while for them to pay out. They have to be sure we didn’t burn the place down for the money.’

  ‘As if we would with thirty children in there,’ protested Emily.

  ‘But they weren’t in there, were they?’ Martin pointed out. ‘They were in church. Everyone who lived there was in church, so they were never in danger.’

  ‘Martin, I can’t believe you’re saying this,’ said Emily.

  ‘Emily,’ he said patiently, ‘I’m only saying what other people will say; and we have to be prepared for it.’

  ‘So, what do we do?’ asked Emily testily.

  ‘We put in a claim in the usual way and wait and see what happens.’

  Half an hour later Emily received a call from her other brother-in-law, Edward.

  ‘Emily,’ he roared down the phone, ‘what’s this I hear about that home of yours being set fire to?’

  ‘We don’t know it was set fire to, yet,’ Emily said, irritated as always by Edward’s bombast. ‘We haven’t been told it was arson.’

  ‘Well, Martin seems to think it won’t be long before you are, and that’s bad. That’s very bad.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Emily, ‘but we’ll deal with it when and if it happens.’

  ‘Thing is, Emily, I’ve been talking it over with Amelia, and I think, well, we both do, that we’ve had enough bad publicity already, what with that thing about kidnapping children which was all over the papers. Can’t go on, you know.’

  ‘But that was rubbish, spread by that rag the Drum. It wasn’t true.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ drawled Edward, ‘but it was mud, and mud sticks. So we’ve decided, Amelia and I, that we can’t lend our names to the association any more. You must see that the good name of the Sherrington family is at stake here. Sorry, Emily, but as from now I am withdrawing my name as the patron of EVER-Care. I shall have to make a brief announcement in all the papers, so that there is no chance that I, or my family, will be associated with anything that transpires.’

  ‘In that case, Edward,’ answered Miss Vanstone, ‘this will be the last time we speak to each other… ever.’

  ARSON AT EVER-CARE! shrieked the headline. ORPHANAGE BURNS! was scrawled on the billboard beside the news-stand. Lily stared at the headline and then scrabbled in her purse for coins and bought the paper.

  When Terry Knight’s article about the background to the murder had been published in the Chronicle, Lily had been horrified.

  ‘Who could’ve told the paper all that?’ she’d wondered to Anne as they sat together reading the paper Anne had brought round.

  ‘I sent that reporter away,’ Anne said stiffly.

  ‘Oh, Anne,’ cried Lily, ‘I wasn’t suggesting it was you, but I hate the idea of our dirty linen being washed in public.’

  ‘Well,’ said Anne, ‘I expect it would have all come out in the end. Can’t hurt your Mavis now, can it? But never mind that, Lil, how’re you keeping?’

  Lily didn’t know how she’d have managed without the Baillies. She had known them for years, but in the days that followed Mavis’s death, their support had been a lifeline and had cemented the friendship.

  She smiled at Anne now. ‘I’m all right. Bit tired, you know. Ricky don’t sleep well at night.’ Lily felt tired all the time now, though she wasn’t going to admit it, not even to Anne. Looking after Ricky was exhausting; he was a lovely baby, but he certainly wasn’t an easy one.

  She could see Anne had a point about the newspaper story. It might do some good. Too late for her girls, but it might make another mother think twice before handing her children over to EVER-Care. It wasn’t just the Chronicle: the Daily Drum had also spread the story of Mavis, Jimmy and the two little girls, and it had greatly upset Lily.

  ‘I expect they picked up the story from the Chronicle,’ Anne said, always the voice of calm. ‘That’s what them big London papers do sometimes.’

  ‘Well, I wish they hadn’t,’ retorted Lily. The Drum had sensationalized the foul murder of a defenceless young mother and what was headlined as THE EVER-CARE SCANDAL. It had run for several days before the Drum had lost interest.

  Now, the ‘Arson’ headline shrieked at her, another huge EVER-Care story. Lily tucked the paper inside the pram and took it home to read properly.

  Under the headline there was a picture of the blackened shell that had been Laurel House, its roof gone, its window frames bent and twisted by the heat. The grey stone walls and the squat little tower topped only by a few charred roof beams, stood stark against the sky, all that was left of the EVER-Care home. A smaller headline proclaimed:

  MIRACLE ESCAPE FOR ORPHANS!

  The children living at Laurel House, the EVER-Care home in Shepherd Road, Russell Green had a miraculous escape on Sunday when the orphanage was torched by an unknown intruder. Laurel House, recently facing questions about its adoption and migration policies, was empty at the time of the fire. The orphans were at church on Sunday morning when the house was broken into and ransacked. To cover his tracks the burglar used paraffin to set fire to the house. The fire rapidly took hold and by the time the alarm was raised and the fire brigade called, the place was an inferno.

  ‘I can’t imagine who would do such a thing,’ said Mrs Hawkins, the superintendent of the home. ‘What a cruel thing to do to children already orphaned. Laurel House was their security, their sanctuary, and now it has gone. They have lost everything.’ Laurel House is now nothing but a shell. The children have all been rehoused by the Children’s Committee in foster homes in the area. Asked by the Chronicle for an interview, Children’s Officer Miss May Hopkins was unavailable. A source has revealed that the records of all children passing through EVER-Care, kept at Laurel House, were lost in the fire. Is this the end of EVER-Care, the charity set up by Miss Emily Vanstone in the thirties to rescue destitute children from the streets? Who can tell? Miss Vanstone, when approached by this paper, was also unavailable for comment.

  ‘We are following several promising leads,’ said Inspector Carter, police officer in charge of the case. ‘Whoever did this had knowledge of the orphanage’s routine. They knew the house was always empty on a Sunday morning.’ The police investigation continues.

  As Lily read the piece through again she was struck by a dreadful thought. All the records gone. Now there’s nothing left to tell me where my girls are, she thought bleakly. I’ll never know where they was sent. Who could have done this dreadful thing? And why?

  Later that afternoon, Anne looked in, copies of the Chronicle and the Drum under her arm. ‘I wondered if you’d seen this, Lil,’ she said, putting the papers on the table.

  ‘Seen the Chronicle,’ Lily said. ‘Has the Drum got it too?’

  ‘Yes, here.’ Anne pointed to a piece on the front page. The article was not long, and it had a different slant.

  INSIDE JOB?

  Was it really just luck that no one was inside the EVER-Care home, Laurel House in Belcaster, when it went up in flames last Sunday? The home, recently the subject of another story in our paper, burned furiously for some time before firemen managed to get the blaze under control. Investigators from the fire brigade say that the fire was deliberately set and now the police are hunting the arsonist. Have they got far to look, we�
��d like to ask them?

  In a statement to the press, Inspector Carter of Belcaster, the senior officer investigating the case, said that whoever it was knew the routine of the house, and knew that no one would be at home on a Sunday morning. So, was this really a burglary? Or is it something more sinister?

  Could the blaze have been started by a disaffected former resident? A girl with a grudge? A family with a grudge? Or perhaps we should be asking the insurance company who stands to gain from this fire? Miss Emily Vanstone, founder of EVER-Care, when approached by this paper was, again, unavailable for comment. However, the Drum notes with interest that Sir Edward Sherrington has publicly withdrawn his patronage from EVER-Care. Does Sir Edward know something that the rest of us don’t, we ask? The investigation continues, and we at the Daily Drum will be watching the outcome with interest.

  ‘Well,’ said Lily when she’d read it, ‘someone’s keeping the Drum up to date.’

  ‘You think it was arson?’ asked Anne.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ replied Lily. ‘All I know is all the records was destroyed. I’ll never find my girls now.’

  When Anne had gone, Lily made up a bottle for Ricky. As she fed him she thought about what the papers had said. Someone had set fire to Laurel House. Someone who knew it would be empty on a Sunday morning. A burglar, or was the Drum right? Was there a different motive? The children were now all in foster homes. Had that been the motive? To get the children moved from that dreadful place?

  Hundreds of kiddies must have been through EVER-Care, she thought. Where are they all now? Had any of them really been adopted, or had they, like Rita and Rosie, simply vanished? Had someone read the story of kidnapped children spread across the Drum and realized they’d been lied to? Had someone decided to take matters into their own hands?

  No, thought Lily, that really is a bit far-fetched. But a tiny corner of her brain was telling her, ‘I might have, if I’d thought of it and I’d had the nerve!’