by Pam Weaver
‘Mind the doors.’ The guard blew his whistle and the train gathered steam before it thundered away.
‘Reg.’ Kipper was standing at his elbow and he had Dr Landers with him. ‘Could you step this way for a moment?’
‘I was just about to …’
‘It’s all right, Reg,’ said Kipper gently. ‘Marney will see to your duties.’
He could see Marney, his head down, hurrying along the platform.
Kipper was wearing that serious but sympathetic express of his. The same one he wore when Marjorie Thompson’s husband came to see where she’d jumped in front of the Bournemouth express.
Ah, thought Reg, they’d found the bodies at last. About time too. It had taken longer than he’d thought. He hoped they didn’t expect him to identify them. They’d look pretty grim after being shut up in that stuffy atmosphere for a couple of days. What if the place had rats? He braced himself as he followed the two men into the station master’s office. He knew he’d have to make this look good but he was confident he’d be fantastic. He’d practised it enough times. That was where so many people slipped up. They didn’t practise receiving the bad news.
He’d been brilliant when they’d found that old cow Bessie. He should have been on the bloody stage. Walking into the office, he was surprised to see that they’d arranged three chairs in a semi-circle. He sat in the chair Kipper indicated to him and John Landers closed the door.
Outside, they could hear Marney calling, ‘The train approaching platform two is the 9.16 to London Victoria, calling at …’
Reg glanced at the station master. He sat behind his desk, his eyes lowered and his hands on the desktop, the fingers tightly laced. Kipper positioned himself behind a chair, gripping the back. Everyone waited until John sat down.
‘What is this?’ Reg asked nervously. This was all a bit more formal than he’d expected. Perhaps they weren’t going to tell him they’d found Dottie and Patsy after all. Had they rumbled that he’d been tampering with the mail? Perhaps he’d been too greedy. After all, they had reported rather a lot of damaged bags in the past year.
‘It’s your wife and daughter,’ said Kipper gravely.
Reg widened his eyes the way he thought a concerned husband would.
‘We’ve found them,’ Kipper went on. ‘They were in an old bungalow …’
‘A bungalow? Whose bungalow? What were they doing there?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Kipper.
Reg looked away. Damn. He was so nervous he’d asked the wrong question. That was question two. He went back to the plan. ‘Are they all right?’ He tried to sound anxious, doing his best to make it look as if he could hardly bear to hear the answer.
‘I’m afraid …’ Kipper began.
‘Oh, no, no …’ Reg moaned. ‘Are you sure …?’
‘The neighbours called an ambulance. It took a while to come. It’s a bit isolated.’
Reg leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. He didn’t see Kipper open his mouth to say something more and John gripping his arm to silence him, but he did hear the station master’s chair scraping back and then one of the cupboard doors opened. Good. He was getting the brandy out. Only cheap stuff but brandy all the same. They had to help him hold the cup because he was trembling too much to manage on his own.
‘What happened?’ Reg choked.
‘They were gassed,’ said John.
‘She gassed herself,’ Kipper corrected.
‘You don’t know that,’ said John. ‘It could have been an accident.’
Reg looked up sharply. ‘She meant to do it,’ he said coldly. ‘She wrote a note. I gave it to you, didn’t I, Mr Kipling? She said she was going to do it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Kipper. ‘And that will be part of the evidence.’
Reg relaxed but as he caught John’s eye, he leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. ‘What happened, Mr Kipling?’
‘Oh my poor little girl,’ Reg moaned when Kipper had finished telling him. ‘Poor Dottie. How am I going to live without them, Mr Kipling?’ He began to weep. ‘Why did she do it? All locked up like that. If she’d only told me how she was feeling, I could have helped her.’
‘There’s still time,’ said John.
Reg lifted his tear-stained face and gave him a quizzical look. ‘Time? Time for what?’
‘You can go and see them for yourself, Reg,’ said the station master. ‘Under the circumstances the railway will give you some compassionate leave.’
‘They’re both in hospital,’ said John. ‘Dottie is still quite ill, but Patsy is making a good recovery.’
John watched the colour drain from Reg’s face and noticed that he had developed a nervous tic under his left eye.
‘Don’t you understand, Reg?’ Kipper said. ‘It’s good news.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Reg, downing the rest of the brandy and turning the glass in his hands. ‘Really good news. It couldn’t be bloody better.’
Forty-One
Kipper got the call just before he was going off duty. Sinking fast, they said. He went straight to the hospital.
Ernest Franks rallied slightly as Kipper walked in the door.
‘Got to tell you …’ he gasped, ‘before it’s too late.’
Kipper went to the bedside and Ernest grabbed at his coat. ‘Danny … he must have taken …’ Ernest sank back on the pillow, his eyes wild.
‘Take your time, sir,’ said Kipper gently.
The man’s breath was coming in short pants after his exertions. ‘Bomb site … Reg Cox …’
‘The real Reg Cox was found on a bombsite,’ said Kipper. Ernest nodded. ‘And Danny Sinclair took his identity?’
Ernest nodded again.
‘Tell me,’ said Kipper. ‘Was Reg Cox a coloured man?’
Ernest nodded. ‘Jamaican.’
Kipper patted Ernest’s arm.
‘He left him to die,’ said Ernest. ‘He could have helped him, but he didn’t.’
‘How do you know all this?’ said Kipper.
Ernest took a deep breath and sighed his last word on earth. ‘Military …’
Although Christmas was still weeks away, Billy’s mum had let him go carol singing but his heart wasn’t in it. The grown-ups had been getting together in little huddles for a couple of weeks. More than once, he’d heard his mum whispering, ‘Shh, keep your voice down. Let’s keep the children out of it,’ but they weren’t stupid. All of them knew something bad had happened to Auntie Dottie and Patsy. Even little Christopher was unsettled. He spent nearly all the time sucking his thumb and twiddling his hair. His dad always got cross when Christopher did that. He said he might be only four but it wasn’t manly … but just lately he hadn’t said anything to Christopher.
Billy and his mates Paul Dore and Dennis Long had walked right round the village and he was getting tired. They’d quickly realised that if they just sang outside a house, no one answered the door, but if they knocked first and sang as soon as the door opened, they’d get some money. His dad had given him the old oil lantern so that they looked more Christmassy and occasionally people kept the door open and listened. They weren’t so keen on that because you’d feel a right twit singing your head off with everybody looking at you with goo-goo smiles. But they’d made quite a bit of money.
Billy’s walk slowed to a crawl as his mates ran ahead. They were heading for Auntie Dottie’s road. He’d never tell his mates of course, but he really missed Patsy. She was good fun … for a girl.
Maureen missed her as well. She kept on and on, asking where Patsy was but no one would give her a straight answer. In the end, it drove his mum nuts so she said Patsy had gone to a new home. Maureen was upset but not as upset as she would have been if she’d understood what that meant. Billy knew and he was gutted.
Paul Dore came running back. ‘Hurry up, Billy,’ he shouted.
Billy’s heart did a cartwheel inside his chest as Dennis came up behind Paul, staggering under the weight of a pile of c
lothes.
‘Look at this lot,’ he cried. A jumper slid from the pile and unintentionally, he trod all over it. Billy recognised it at once. It was Patsy’s jumper. She didn’t like it much but it was the one Auntie Dottie had knitted with the kangaroo on the front. His eye gravitated to the rest of the pile. There was Patsy’s red coat and Auntie Dottie’s pink hat, the one she wore at Michael’s wedding. With an agonised roar, Billy charged up the road towards Auntie Dottie’s gate.
Holding up the lantern he could see a large pile of clothing beside the dustbin. When he lifted the lid of the bin he found Auntie Dottie’s sewing box and some material with pins in it. At the foot of the mound were two suitcases as well. The smaller one had a photo album in it and the other had loads of photo frames complete with pictures. Auntie Dottie and Auntie Sylvie, together with the old lady who used to live in Myrtle Cottage, smiled up at him from the top.
‘Stay there!’ Billy barked. ‘Don’t nobody touch it.’
‘Where are you going?’ cried Paul as he ran back down the road.
‘Just stay there!’
Billy charged back to the house. The old pram stood in the doorway. He could hear his mother in the kitchen talking to Aunt Peaches. Billy emptied out the bedding and backed it towards the door.
Christopher appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Where are you going, Billy?’
Billy put his finger to his lips and manoeuvred the pram out of the front door. As the door closed, he ran like the wind back to Myrtle Cottage.
The three boys set about loading up the pram, then Billy pushed it back while Paul and Dennis took it in turns to carry the big suitcase.
‘This thing is too heavy,’ Paul protested. ‘And we might drop the photo frames. They’ve got glass in them.’
‘We’re taking the lot,’ said Billy fiercely.
The overloaded pram kept shedding articles of clothing but Billy wouldn’t let anything stay in the road. He shouted at them tetchily to ‘pick ’em up,’ his face heavily flushed. His two friends couldn’t really understand why he was in such an odd mood.
‘I thought we were going carol singing,’ cried Dennis. ‘If my dad sees me with this lot, he’ll go mad.’
Billy glared at him. ‘We can’t leave it.’
‘What d’you want it for?’ asked Paul. ‘This is all rubbish. They chucked it out.’
Billy rounded on him. ‘All this stuff this belongs to Patsy.’
‘Patsy …’ Dennis pointed his finger at him and laughed. ‘He’s in love!’
‘You shut up, Dennis Long,’ shouted Billy, his eyes glistening with tears.
Paul pulled a woman’s cardigan from under the pile. ‘Well, this ain’t Patsy’s.’
‘It’s my Auntie Dottie’s and she’s coming home soon,’ said Billy snatching it back.
Paul and Dennis exchanged an anxious look. ‘Bet she don’t,’ said Dennis, ‘my dad says she’s a murderer. She tried to kill Patsy.’
‘That’s not true!’ cried Billy. He launched himself at Dennis, throwing him to the ground and wrong-footing Paul at the same time. In the scrap that followed, it seemed to Dennis and Paul that Billy had the strength of ten men. Although it was two against one, Billy won easily. Twenty minutes later, hot and sweaty, and struggling to control his emotions, Billy pushed the pram into his dad’s shed at the bottom of the garden. He cleared a space on the top of the workbench and began pulling at the untidy bundle. His shoulders shook as he folded each item carefully and placed them neatly on top of one another. It took him ages. That was because every now and then, he had to stop and wipe his nose on the cuff of his sleeve.
‘Sylvie, they’ve been found!’ Mary couldn’t contain her excitement.
On the other end of the telephone, Sylvie gasped. At first she was relieved that Dottie was alive but she listened with mounting horror as Mary told her what had happened.
‘The bad news is,’ Mary concluded. ‘Dottie has lost her baby.’
‘Baby?’ Sylvie gasped. ‘What baby?’
‘Oh!’ said Mary. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. I thought you knew.’
‘She and Reg …?’
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘I tried to talk her out of it, but she was determined to keep it. Anyway, now she’s lost it.’
There was a slight pause.
‘In one way, I can’t say I’m sorry,’ said Sylvie. ‘That Reg is an absolute pig, but knowing how much Dottie wanted children, I should imagine she’s devastated.’
‘I’m sure she is.’
‘Haven’t you seen her then?’
‘She’s not allowed visitors. She’s been haemorrhaging badly and they’re giving her blood.’
‘How awful.’
The two women struggled to contain their emotions.
‘And Patsy?’
‘She’s still quite ill. Some sort of poisoning. They’ve got her in the children’s ward. No visitors.’
‘Let me know when we can go,’ said Sylvie. ‘And I’ll take you over to see Dottie.’
‘I bet that blinking Reg had something to do with this,’ said Mary, darkly. Sylvie wouldn’t be drawn but as she hung up she pondered Mary’s words. When she’d last seen him, Reg was so sure Dottie was dead, he was even looking over his life policies. She shook her head in disbelief. Reg was a nasty piece of work, all right. He was capable of terrible things – but stooping as far as attempted murder? That was a different league altogether.
Dottie looked around the room, willing her mind to think about something less painful. She felt a bit woozy, probably from that stuff they had injected into her arm. The blood drip was gone. The room was stark, the walls bare. The locker beside her bed was empty apart from a jug and a glass of water. There were some screens in the corner and the material was faded. They must have left it in the sun. Her mind drifted back to that cold sunny day on Highdown Hill. In her head she could hear Minnie barking and Patsy was laughing and happy as she ran up to the chalk pits … Oh, Patsy …
John was there again. Neither of them spoke, but he held her hand and gently kissed her fingers.
‘Reg took us to see that bungalow in the car,’ Dottie said eventually. ‘He wanted me to buy it. It was horrible. So bleak and it was miles from anywhere. There were roses on the wall but inside it was old and smelly …’ She was beginning to gabble. ‘I didn’t like it at all but we had a picnic in one of the rooms. It wasn’t as much fun as the one we had on Highdown, but Reg was trying so hard and Patsy had egg sandwiches and …’
Something was beginning to niggle John, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Dottie turned her face away and began to cry again. John held onto her hand, stroking it with his thumb. Suddenly aware, she pulled her hand away.
‘John, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried writing but it seems cowardly. I want to tell you face to face. I’m having a baby.’
She could feel a tear running across the bridge of her nose. Every part of her body wanted to say yes but she thought too much of him to let him ruin his whole life and reputation for her and the baby. The gossips would put two and two together and make five in no time.
‘Listen, Dottie,’ he said lowering his eyes. ‘You need to know something –’
All at once, her eyes grew wide. ‘My baby? Is my baby all right? I had bad pains. I am still pregnant, aren’t I?’
John gripped her hand even more tightly. She couldn’t believe it when he started shaking his head slowly. ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry. They did all they could but you’d been starved of oxygen for so long …’
‘No!’ Dottie stared at him helplessly. She’d lost the baby? She wasn’t going to be a mother? ‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ Her other hand flew to her stomach and she pressed the flesh. It still felt a bit round but then she felt the sanitary belt around her waist and the bunny between her legs. ‘My baby …’
John stroked her forehead. ‘There will be other babies,’ he said softly.
‘No,’ she moaned. ‘I wa
nt my baby.’ She turned her head away. First Patsy and then this … ‘I can’t bear it.’
John seemed to be fighting to control his own emotions.
‘And Reg?’
‘Reg knows.’
‘I hate him.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper and her face crumpled as she searched in vain for a dry area of her handkerchief. ‘Have you seen poor Patsy yet?’
‘Not yet.’ He fished around in his pockets and found a clean handkerchief.
She took it gratefully and blew her nose. ‘I pushed her face by the gap under the door,’ Dottie went on. ‘I thought the air … fresh air …’ she paused, taking in a huge racking breath, ‘but I couldn’t stop the gas. I did try and save her …’ Her voice had risen to a squeak and now she was sobbing again.
He frowned. According to the sister, the police believed that Dottie had locked herself and Patsy into the bedroom and as soon as Patsy was asleep turned on the gas taps. At some point, Patsy had crawled out of bed and collapsed by the door, her face by the gap in a desperate attempt to get some fresh air. Dottie was found lying on the floor halfway between the bed and the door.
‘I don’t think you should try and say any more,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going to tell the sister to call the police. You must tell them everything you know.’
‘No, no. I can’t, I can’t talk to the police.’
‘Dottie, you have to,’ he said. ‘Listen. You’re a strong woman and if you really care about Patsy, you must help them find out what happened to her.’
‘If I really care?’ she said bitterly. ‘Surely you of all people must know how much I love her.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ said John. ‘But you need to persuade the police that you meant her no harm.’
‘You will stay with me, won’t you?’
He hesitated. How would that look for her case? Would it be such a good idea?
‘Please, John,’ she begged. ‘I need a friendly face with me when I talk to the police. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.’