The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox

by Claire Gradidge

  21st April

  EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING, I know what I must do. I’ve tried the ugly sisters, now it’s time for a macabre Cinderella. It has to be early, before I go into the office and see Nash. If I ask him, he won’t let me. But I have to know. Unorthodox as it may be, I’m determined to establish the chain of evidence.

  The rhythm of my life has become a thing of shadows. I’m living like a thief or a spy, creeping around in the half-light, never quite legitimate. As I’m circling the hospital, looking for a way in that won’t take me past the porters’ lodge, the thought makes me grin. Nothing, really, has ever been legitimate about me. I’ve always been put – or put myself – on the fringes. A bastard. The only girl in Abe’s gang. Outcast from my home town, against my will in the first place and then by choice. My affair with Richard. I was so much more successful as his mistress than I ever was as his wife. Long before he set sail for Dunkirk it was over, and we both knew it. I should have expected that what he’d done with me to his first wife, he’d soon do to me, with someone else. A lot of someones, as it turned out. And while he seemed happy to take his distractions in drinking and girls, I could only withdraw, reject everything we’d ever shared. And whether he’s dead – though I don’t hate him enough to want that – or alive, and a prisoner somewhere, my mind’s made up. Even if he comes home, we’ll never be a couple again.

  Enough. Concentrate.

  I come to a place where a snicket of path leads to the rear of the wards. A nurse scurries out of a door, wrestling with a large bag of what looks like laundry. She disappears round a corner, and I follow. It’s the right direction for the mortuary. As I turn the corner, I can see an open-sided store where a heap of linen bags is stacked. The nurse heaves the one she’s carrying on top of the others. If she comes back this way, she’ll see me. I’m trying to think of an excuse for being there when a bell rings somewhere in the front part of the hospital and she hurries towards the sound without looking back.

  Beyond the linen store I can see the jut of the mortuary porch. When Grandfather sent me to meet Nash, the door was unlocked, and Billy Stewart was already on duty, but I’ve no idea what time he comes to work.

  I can’t afford to hang around. I cross to the black door. Lift the latch. The door’s hard to open, but it isn’t secured. It yields, and a gust of air rushes to meet me. It’s dim inside, the only illumination filtering through a high window in the far wall, but I can’t risk switching on the light. I stand still, listening, but there’s nothing to suggest there’s any presence here but my own.

  The insidious smell I noticed before makes me feel queasy. Everywhere’s gleaming clean, but there’s a disquieting element that won’t be denied, a kind of chemical bleed-through that’s worse than outright decay.

  I know where to find the room where the bodies are stored, which compartment Billy Stewart rolled Ruth’s body into the last time I was here. It’ll be all right so long as they haven’t moved her.

  I open the drawer, pull out the stretcher. Turn back the cover. It is Ruth, there’s the tag on her toe. I don’t have to see her face, I don’t have to do anything except try the shoe.

  I fumble it out of my bag.

  I don’t want to do this. But I can’t turn back now.

  Her feet are icy. I don’t think I’ve felt anything so cold in my life. The corpses I’ve been acquainted with till now have been soft, still warm, recognisably made of the same flesh as my own. Even meat from the butcher doesn’t have this icy chill, this absolute deadness.

  The first glancing contact makes me want to draw back, run away. But I won’t. I’ll play the grim fairy tale through to the end.

  This isn’t about identity. The shoes, if they are hers, are proof of where she was. Whoever gave them to the jumble sale is linked to her death.

  And before I try and track them down, I have to be sure.

  I grasp the stony flesh. Her foot is inflexible, the shoe stiff and intractable. At first it seems impossible. And to force her foot would be more wrong than I want to think about. A sacrilege against the dignity of the dead.

  One last try, and the shoe slides on. A fit.

  I slip it off again. Her foot is so small, so forlorn. It feels like abandonment to cover it over again without trying to chafe it warm, the way Granny used to do for me when I was little. But it’s ridiculous to feel like that. The only thing I can do for this girl is find her killer, bring them to justice.

  I straighten the sheet. Push the stretcher back.

  Outside, relieved to be free and clear in the air again, I turn to shut the door behind me. But my luck’s run out. There’s someone approaching. Billy.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing there?’

  I dive for the path. Race to the corner, bump into a nurse, knock another of those awkward laundry bags out of her arms. It scatters its burden across the path.

  ‘Sorry.’

  No time to stop.

  I run on to the next corner. Out of her sight, and out of Billy’s, if he’s following. I pull up to a walk, fast as I can but not running, not screaming my fugitive presence. I reach the outpatients’ entrance. Brisk, now, trying to seem unconcerned, not looking behind though I’m desperate to.

  I’m past the porters’ lodge, and onto the street. Cupernham Lane is on the right and I turn that way. A glance behind now, irresistible.

  No one following.

  Perhaps I’ve got away with it.

  *

  ‘Sit down,’ Nash snaps.

  Blimey, he’s looking grim.

  ‘I’ve had a telephone call from the hospital.’

  Ah, that.

  ‘From Billy Stewart. He’s very upset.’

  He’s easily rattled.

  ‘You’re not going to ask me why?’

  Not going to say anything that might incriminate me.

  ‘He says you were at the hospital this morning. He thinks you may have gone into the mortuary without permission.’

  He’s not sure, then?

  ‘I defended you. Said it couldn’t possibly have been you. Said I knew you wouldn’t do anything underhand.’

  Underhand? Is that what you think? Mr Magnanimous himself. Specially when I was doing your dirty work.

  ‘But he said he was sure he hadn’t been mistaken. He noticed your hair.’

  My bloody Judas hair.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Jo. You were there?’

  I play games to win. And if that means not talking . . .

  ‘Still nothing to say? That’s not like you.’

  You’d be surprised.

  ‘What were you doing?’

  I was going to tell you, but not like this. I’m not going to be interrogated.

  ‘Very well. Then how about this? You were in the office on Friday night.’

  Oh my God.

  ‘You looked at a number of files.’

  How can you possibly know?

  ‘I don’t know how you got in—’

  Aggie hasn’t peached, then?

  ‘Though Miss Haward has mislaid her key—’

  Misjudged her. She has. Mislaid it, my arse.

  ‘She said she saw you as she left.’

  That makes me the obvious suspect?

  ‘Level with me, Jo.’

  Incriminate myself?

  ‘Talk to me. We’re supposed to be in this together.’

  Not in this, we’re not.

  ‘You probably didn’t realise. On Friday night, I was in the office myself. Had a headache, didn’t want to go home to a lot of fuss, so I decided to sleep it off in peace and quiet.’

  Oh . . . my . . . God.

  ‘By midnight, I was feeling better. I was thirsty, I came downstairs to get some water. Imagine my surprise when I found a light was on. And there you were. Sleeping at your desk.’

  So that’s what woke me.

  ‘I should have woken you then. Don’t know why I didn’t. I suppose . . .’

  Yes, what?

  �
�You could put it down to a kind of fellow feeling. I didn’t think it’d do any harm to leave you alone. To let you sleep.’

  Big of you.

  ‘And then in the morning . . .’

  Yes?

  ‘You’d gone.’

  Good job too. If I’d known . . .

  ‘But I could see you’d been looking at the files. The drawers were clean where you’d wiped them.’

  A proper Sherlock Holmes.

  ‘You know how seriously we take client confidentiality. It’s a breach of trust.’

  So’s what happened to Nell.

  ‘I trusted you.’

  And now you don’t? Doesn’t take much, does it?

  ‘I need to know, Jo. Why were you there?’

  None of your business.

  ‘Was it anything to do with the business I hired you for?’

  That’d be telling.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Oh, why not. ‘Because . . .’

  ‘She speaks. Three cheers.’

  ‘If you’re going to be sarky . . .’

  ‘All right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  No.

  ‘Don’t go all silent on me again, Jo.’

  I don’t want to abandon the safety of silence, but I think I must. I take a deep breath. It’s going to be hard to explain.

  ‘I was trying to find out about my father—’

  I break off. There’s a stomp and clatter of feet on the stairs, the sound of raised voices. One is Miss Haward’s. The other belongs to a very angry man.

  The door bursts open. Dr Waverley.

  ‘Nash.’

  Miss Haward edges into the room behind him. ‘Mr Nash, I’m sorry . . .’

  For a moment I’m almost amused.

  Then Waverley’s gaze lights on me.

  ‘You, you bitch. Do you know what you’ve done?’

  He starts towards me, but I’m so shocked I can’t move.

  Miss Haward squawks outrage. ‘Dr Waverley!’

  Bram Nash moves to block the doctor’s path. It’s mayhem, but I sit like a lemon, mouth open, not knowing what to do.

  ‘Enough.’ Nash’s voice is quiet, but it cuts through the bluster and outrage. ‘Jo, my chair, now. Miss Haward, tea. Waverley, sit down.’

  Like a set of squabbling children responding to teacher, we do as we are told. Miss Haward disappears downstairs. I slide into Nash’s chair behind the desk, a protective width of polished mahogany between me and the irate doctor.

  Nash stays standing, the position of power. I envy him.

  ‘Now, Waverley, what’s all this about? Calmly, please.’

  ‘That bitch—’

  ‘I said, calmly. Without the language.’

  ‘That woman there—’ Waverley speaks as if through gritted teeth – ‘your assistant, killed my uncle.’

  ‘What?’ I can’t believe it.

  ‘Shut up, Jo. Not another word.’

  My mind skitters inconsequentially. That’s a bit much. After the last half hour of him trying to get me to talk, now he’s telling me to shut up.

  ‘Now, Waverley, let’s be clear. What exactly are you accusing Mrs Lester of?’

  Waverley stares at me. ‘Late yesterday afternoon, that woman there was seen leaving Ramillies Hall. Shortly after, I was called to attend my uncle. I was told he had collapsed, but by the time I arrived it was too late. There was nothing I could do. He was dead.’

  I can feel the blood drain from my face. I open my mouth to speak, but Nash holds up his hand in warning.

  ‘No,’ he says, and it would take a braver person than I am to challenge him. My hands and feet have gone icy cold, and there’s a tremor in my gut.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that Mr Oxley is dead,’ Nash says. ‘But what can his death have to do with my assistant? His health has been fragile for years.’

  ‘Fragile in the extreme,’ Waverley spits out. ‘I had forbidden him to put himself in any situation of stress or anxiety. Then she visits and—’ He breaks off, begins again, directed at me. ‘What did you say to him, you—?’

  ‘Careful.’

  I don’t know if the warning is for me or Waverley. I look to Nash, get a curt nod. Permission to speak. But my brain has kicked in and I’m cautious on my own account now.

  ‘It was a private matter. He was sleeping peacefully in his chair when I left.’

  ‘Where I found him,’ Waverley says. ‘And by all accounts, scarcely an hour after you left.’

  ‘You’re reporting the case to me as coroner, then?’ Nash says coolly. ‘Sudden unexpected death?’

  ‘Ghoul,’ Waverley snaps. Turns the evil eye on Nash. ‘Utterly obscene suggestion. You’re not getting your claws into my uncle. Not unexpected, it’s been on the cards for years. Respiratory failure, cardiac failure. As his physician, I’m within my rights to sign the certificate.’

  ‘So you’re not actually accusing Mrs Lester of any crime?’

  I don’t know who’s the more surprised at the mention of crime. Waverley looks as taken aback as I feel. He recovers quickest.

  ‘I hold her morally responsible,’ he says. But some of the wind has gone out of his sails. ‘I demand that you dismiss her.’

  Nash raises his eyebrow. ‘But I haven’t heard her side of the story.’

  ‘She doesn’t deny it, does she? Private matter. Left him sleeping in his chair. Look at her. She knows what she did. She frightened an old man to death.’

  Nash does look at me. I think my face must be a blank. I hope it is. I’m so numb with what Waverley’s said, I haven’t had time to work out what I feel. But there is guilt, coiling around somewhere, waiting to surface.

  ‘Peacefully,’ Nash reminds him. I bless the lawyer’s habit of mind that has kept him logical, despite everything. But his eye on me is thoughtful, almost wary. He’s not defending me, simply stating the case. ‘She said he was sleeping peacefully. Can your witness say as much?’

  Waverley bounces up from the chair. Confronts Nash with renewed belligerence. Though he must be half a generation older, he’s a powerful man. There is such a feeling of threat in the room that I find myself rising from my chair, though what I’ll be able to do if it comes to blows, I can’t imagine. The desk top is unhelpfully bare, there’s nothing I can use as a weapon.

  Miss Haward saves the day. She comes in with a tray loaded with teapot and cups, milk jug and sugar bowl, a plate of biscuits. I’m surprised she’s brought it herself instead of delegating the job to Cissy or June.

  ‘Tea?’ she says brightly.

  The tension fractures.

  Waverley makes a noise of disgust. Breaking the confrontation with Nash, he barges past Miss Haward so the cups rattle in their saucers. He turns at the door.

  ‘I won’t forget this in a hurry, Nash. Keep that woman out of my way. And you, you’ll stay clear too, if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘Well,’ Miss Haward says, putting the tray down on Nash’s desk. ‘How rude. See what he’s made me do. The milk’s slopped all over the biscuits.’

  22

  The same day

  BRAM NASH IS IN A dilemma. Jo’s revelation this morning has shaken him. He’d had no idea she’d come back to Romsey looking for her father. Now he does, what’s he going to do?

  He opens his private safe, takes out an envelope. It’s almost forty years old, but it’s never reached the archive. Like a number of other records, it’s always been considered too sensitive to allow general access.

  He’d inherited it with the business when his father retired in 1929. If he’d thought about it at all in the last ten years, it was only as a sort of curiosity, an oddity of no particular importance. But now he has to reconsider. Though the documents were obviously drawn up naïvely by the parties involved – he can imagine how his father might have deplored the vagueness of the language – he doesn’t doubt the letters would stand as proof of paternity in a court of law.

  On the outside o
f the envelope, in his father’s beautiful copperplate, is written: Deposited by Mrs Rose Fox, 25th July 1901. For safekeeping.

  Nash remembers Rose Fox. Jo’s grandmother had been the kind of woman for whom family was everything. Somehow, she must have persuaded Joseph Fox to let her keep Jo, bring her up, though he’d banished Nell. And somehow, Rose had engineered this.

  Inside the envelope, there are two sheets of paper. Plain, no heading, no salutation. Each is handwritten, but not his father’s writing. Each is signed, but it’s not the same signature on each, because these are parallel documents, not duplicate copies. The first reads:

  I acknowledge that the female infant born to Ellen Fox on 5th July 1901 is my child. In respect of this (and so long as the matter remains secret between us) I undertake to pay Mrs Rose Fox the sum of £12 per annum until she or the child shall die or the child attains independence.

  The signature is illegible, but unmistakable. The second sheet of paper is even briefer in content.

  I swear not to reveal the name of the father of Ellen Fox’s baby born 5th July 1901. In return, he will give me £1 a month for the child’s upkeep, paid privately to me and to me only.

  R. Fox (Mrs)

  He wonders about Joseph Fox. Was this why he’d thrown Jo out when Rose Fox died? Because the money dried up, and he couldn’t access it any longer? It makes Nash angry on Jo’s behalf to think that her care might have been dependent on cold cash. And so little of it. Yet the old man hadn’t held a grudge against the father. For men like Joseph Fox it was always the women who were to blame. It was Nell and her daughter who’d had to pay the most.

  He looks at the documents again. Should he tell Jo? There’d be no question of it if it had been her father who had deposited the documents. His first duty of confidentiality is always to the client. But the client in this case is Rose, and she’s dead. He can’t ask her what she’d want him to do now her granddaughter is looking for her father.

  Nash slides the letters back into the envelope, locks it safely away. He mustn’t act in haste. He’ll have to think what would be in Jo’s best interest. But right now, he hasn’t the faintest idea what that might be.

  What had Jo been going to say? Waverley’s interruption had put paid to her telling him. And after, he’d been more concerned to hear her story about her visit to Oxley.