by Emily Gunnis
‘I don’t understand how Jessie could have got on a bus? There wasn’t any CCTV of that, was there? Just her walking towards the train station.’
‘It’s possible that she walked through the station and got on a bus there, where there isn’t CCTV. It would make sense, as there are no other CCTV sightings so we all assumed that she’d got on a train but she wasn’t seen on any of the CCTV footage on the platforms.’
‘So she may have headed towards Wittering?’
‘It’s a possibility. Does she have any connection with Wittering?’
‘I used to own Seaview Farm in Wittering Bay. I inherited it from my father. But I sold it nearly forty years ago, when Jessie was baby.’
‘Seaview Farm,’ DC Galt repeated from the other side of the room, writing it down in her notebook.
‘And did you ever go back there?’
‘Not very often – it’s a long, narrow and often traffic-choked road to the Witterings. It’s one of the reasons I sold it. Jessie used to go with Liz in the summer holidays so it would make sense for her to go there. But you said this morning? Surely there’s no way they could have been there all this time? It’s bitter down there in the winter, harsh and exposed. I was there this morning with the dogs, before I knew Jessie was missing. I backed up for that bus! Are you telling me Jessie might have been on it?’
Harvey stared at DC Galt wide-eyed, his mind racing. ‘But it’s dark now, we won’t be able to see them. If they are in the dunes, that baby will be freezing to death. You need to send out search parties along every stop of that route, she could have got off anywhere.’ Harvey was pacing now.
‘Well, we need to try and establish if she was on the bus, and the route covers a huge area. As you say, it’s dark now, so we will probably start again at first light, once we’ve heard from Forensics and coordinated a search.’
‘But the doctors said the baby didn’t have long. That she would become seriously ill if she wasn’t found within twelve hours.’
‘It takes time to organize a search party, Mr Roberts. You need equipment, a search grid, and we need to coordinate everyone so that we’re not wasting time covering the same ground.’
DC Rayner looked up at DC Galt. ‘Could we arrange for a car to go over to Seaview Farm now, have a look around, speak to the current owners?’
‘Sure,’ said DC Galt, and left the room.
Harvey shook his head. ‘We can’t just sit here and wait for it to get light while they die out there. We might as well just wait for the call to say their bodies have been found. You’re handing out Elizabeth’s death sentence by doing nothing.’
‘It is certainly not the case that we are doing nothing. We will send some officers down there with torches to search the dunes, if you think there’s a possibility they could be there.’
Harvey let out a heavy sigh. ‘Well, I’m putting some more layers on and heading down to that beach,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be getting some of my friends out there to join me if that’s all right with you.’
‘I think it would be better if you stayed here, Mr Roberts, in case there are any developments.’
‘I’ll be on my mobile if anyone wants me.’ He left the room, as DC Rayner watched him go and heard the thunder of Harvey’s shoes up the stairs and onto the landing.
‘Has anyone been to interview the elderly lady at St Dunstan’s Hospital that the nurse called in about?’ asked DC Galt as she walked back into the room.
‘It wasn’t a nurse, it was one of the staff from her care home. Rosie Jones I think the name was. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to speak to the elderly woman as they are talking about sending her down to ICU. Reading between the lines, they don’t think she’s got long,’ added DC Rayner.
‘And what is it that she said again which was of particular interest?’ said DC Galt.
‘She saw Harvey Roberts on the news at lunchtime, and said that he knew where her baby was.’
‘Her baby, not Jessica’s baby?’ queried DC Galt.
‘No, her baby. But the old lady knew Jessie. Or rather Jessie knew her. Jessie tried to get hold of her a couple of weeks ago, according to Rosie Jones. She came to the care home, but the old lady was asleep and Jessie didn’t want to wake her. Rosie recognized her from the lunchtime news.’
‘Who is this woman? Why would Jessie know her? ’ DC Galt scanned her notebook for any clues and then nodded her head. ‘Okay, send a car to the hospital now. Can you update me once someone’s spoken to her? Is someone on their way to Seaview now?’
‘Yes,’ said DC Rayner as Harvey’s shoes came thundering down the stairs again.
Harvey watched one of the policemen who was carrying a box full of his belongings out of the front door grab the picture of Jessie and Liz which was sitting on the hall table.
As Harvey followed him out, he looked down at the photograph of the two women smiling into the camera, and in the background, on the cliffs behind them, Seaview Cottage.
Of course she would go to Wittering Bay. How could he have been so blind?
Harvey stopped in front of the policeman, blocking his path, and reached in to take the framed picture of his wife and daughter out of the box, before making his way out into the descending night.
Chapter Eighteen
Harriet
January 1947
Harriet Waterhouse stood on the driveway of Northcote House watching the ambulance take her sedated, restrained husband away to Greenways Lunatic Asylum. Feeling eyes on her she looked up to see Cecilia Barton staring down at her from her bedroom window. She was as white as a ghost and shaking, her hands pressed hard onto the glass of her balcony window and Harriet watched as she let out a silent scream.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Harriet turned to the head housekeeper who was hustling back inside the servants who had come out to see what the commotion was.
‘Yes. I just need a minute if that’s okay?’ Harriet managed, before rushing through the cold stone corridors to her bedroom, and curling up in a ball on the bed. Her head in her hands, she closed her eyes, and tried to make sense of the morning’s events which she knew she would never be able to live down.
She had been laying out Cecilia’s clothes for the day when she heard running footsteps along the stone corridor. Knowing that running in the hallways was forbidden at Northcote she’d had an immediate feeling of dread that all was not well in the household. When a frantic knock came at her door, it was with trepidation that she opened it, to see one of the servant girls standing there, looking very pale.
‘Sorry to bother you, Mrs Waterhouse,’ she had said, out of breath from rushing. ‘But Mr Jameson said to come and fetch you. There’s been an incident in the kitchen involving your husband.’
Despite getting to the other side of the house as fast as she could, by the time they had reached the kitchen door, Jacob had managed to push the chopping block in front of it so that no one could get in or out. All they could hear was Cook screaming from the inside.
‘What’s happening?’ she had asked Mr Jameson, the head butler, who was hammering at the door and shouting to be let in.
‘Your husband has shut himself and Betty in. Apparently, he’s convinced there are Germans occupying the house, and that Betty is to blame for fraternizing with them. He’s torn the telephone out of the wall so we can’t call the police and when he shut the door, he had a knife to Betty’s throat.’
Harriet had stared at the head butler, then placed her hand against the cold, stone wall to steady herself just as Cook’s piercing screams echoed again through the corridor where they stood.
She had then turned to the young servant girl who had fetched her from Cecilia’s bedroom. ‘Mary, run to the stables and tell Sam to cycle into town and call the police. He must tell them there is an emergency at Northcote and they’ve to come immediately. Go now, and hurry. Don’t come back here saying you can’t find him. If he’s nowhere to be found, you go.’
‘Yes, Mrs Waterhouse.’
Sh
e’d walked over to the kitchen door, asked Mr Jameson to step aside, and gently tapped on the door. ‘Jacob? It’s me, Harriet. Please open the door. You’re frightening Betty. Let her go, Jacob. I know you don’t want to hurt her.’
She had pleaded and begged for him to come out – all to no avail. And as she stood at the door, trying to come to terms with the horror that Jacob would most likely be incarcerated in an asylum, she began to pick apart the past months in her mind, trying to work out what she could have done to prevent it.
Despite Jacob totally withdrawing from her, she had still tried to visit him in the barn where he had lived for the past six months. But it had reached a point where she felt every visit angered him more, whilst the nest he had built for himself high up in the animal barn, with a view over the countryside, a paraffin lamp, his books and blankets seemed to have created some form of peace for him. So she had started recently to give up and leave him to the feral existence which appeared to make him calmer – as long as she stayed away.
Betty’s screams had stopped now and Mr Jameson had begun hammering on the door again. Harriet pictured the scene in the kitchen, her husband’s brown eyes black with rage, the kitchen turned upside down from the commotion, cook locked in Jacob’s tight grip, terrified for her life. And it was all her fault. Knowing they needed to keep their jobs, she had tried to hide Jacob’s behaviour, praying that, with time, he would start to recover.
In part, they had got away with it thus far because Mr Barton had no complaints. On the contrary, Jacob, plagued by insomnia, worked up to twenty hours a day and had been promoted to head groundsman. According to gossip in the servants’ quarters, he was the most hard-working groundsman ever employed at Northcote. In addition to this, Jacob’s absence from Harriet’s life meant that Harriet was available round the clock to be with his ‘tiresome’ wife, as she was now known, which also pleased Mr Barton greatly.
After what felt like hours, when Harriet was hoarse from calling through the door to Jacob, they finally heard the sirens and Harriet had staggered in a daze to the main entrance and watched three vehicles hurtling down the drive: two police cars and an ambulance.
The passengers had got out and rushed past her. Within seconds, the policemen had forced the kitchen door open, pinned Jacob to the floor and plunged a huge needle into his buttock. Barely conscious, he had been led past her, a brown blanket wrapped around his shoulders. In his drugged state, when she had reached out to touch him, he had not recoiled for once and with tears in his eyes had told her that he was sorry for what he had done.
She had known Jacob would never fully recover, she had convinced herself that lately he was finding a way to cope – in his work, living in the countryside, being away from the battlefield for over a year. He had never shown his violent side to anyone other than her before that day and this episode, to Harriet, seemed to have come out of nowhere.
A tall man with dimples and a tweed jacket, who had been in the ambulance, held out his hand to shake hers. ‘My name is Phillip Poole. I’m one of the welfare officers at Greenways Asylum, and I’m here to make sure your husband is well looked after. We have an acute battle neurosis unit at Greenways, and your husband is obviously experiencing some difficulties so we’d like to take him in and assess him over the next few days.’
She had looked up helplessly at the man, who was considerably taller than her and cast a huge shadow over her. ‘What will you do to him? He would never have hurt Betty. It’s the war that’s done this, it isn’t him.’
‘We won’t do anything for a while. I suspect he hasn’t slept properly for a long time, so we’ll give him something to help with that. Then we may consider some other options.’
‘Please don’t give him electric shock treatment,’ she pleaded, moving closer to him so as not to be heard by the others. ‘He just needs rest. I don’t want that for him.’ Though she tried to control herself, panicked tears escaped at the thought of what they might do to her husband.
‘It will most likely be something called modified insulin treatment. But we will call you in when we have a better idea of where we are, and we won’t do anything without your consent. Try not to worry. It’s the best place for him at the moment.’
Lying on her bed now, the covers wet from her tears, she saw her diary sticking out from under the mattress. The image of Cecilia at the balcony window, watching them take Jacob away, flashed into her mind’s eye. The look on Cecilia’s face did not seem to Harriet to be concern for Jacob, Harriet reflected now, but more like abject terror. As she tried to work out the trigger for Jacob’s breakdown, Harriet found herself pondering the last time she had seen Cecilia and Jacob speaking together in the grounds. Their friendship seemed to have evaporated as quickly as it had begun, right around the time that Cecilia’s nerves had got the better of her. With a feeling of unease creeping over her, Harriet flicked through the pages, racking her brain for a picture of the past months, trying to find an explanation for what had caused Jacob to go so suddenly downhill. She started to read.
May 1946
Dear Diary
I have done my best to hide it but, unfortunately, it is no longer a secret that Mrs Barton has become rather unwell. Her nerves over matters concerning the house have become so acute that she is incapable of reaching any decisions. She tortures herself over the tiniest of details, to the point where she sometimes loses two nights’ sleep over one conversation she had with a house servant. Though he tries to be patient, Mr Barton is spending increasing amounts of time in London entertaining business acquaintances and guests he would normally see at Northcote but now cannot due to his wife’s troubled state, and their love affair appears to be cooling rather over past weeks.
She speaks longingly of escaping oppressive Northcote and returning to her childhood summers at Seaview; long, hot days with her mother, swimming and picnicking in the cove.
Indeed, she talks of it so often I feel as if I know Seaview, an old stone cottage that sits not fifty feet from the beach at Wittering Bay and backs on to a neighbouring farm, so is surrounded by nothing but barley fields and ocean. A cobbled path up to it from the beach, white wood windows dressed in lace curtains that blow in the sea breeze, a beautiful open fireplace in the living room and a balcony from which you can see for miles.
When Mr Barton is away for long periods, my lady swings between periods of great apathy when she refuses to get out of bed and will not wash or make any effort at all with her appearance to days of delusion when she adopts deep obsessions about throwing grand fancy-dress parties with all her husband’s business acquaintances to get herself back in her husband’s favour. During these times she barely sleeps, preparing invitations, lists, menus and costume fittings for parties that will never happen – exhausting me, the servants and herself entirely. Last week she was in such emotional turmoil that the doctor was called and my lady was prescribed very strong sedatives. These help her sleep for an hour or so, but then she wakes screaming that her mother is drowning and that she must go to her. As I cannot convince Jacob to return to our bedroom, I have taken to sleeping on the chaise longue in my lady’s room so that I can calm her when she wakes, as Mr Barton is away so much my presence is not an annoyance to him.
Rather than helping her, Mr Barton’s sisters take great delight in her suffering. I often hear them talking, rather too loudly and cheerfully, about how Charles is no longer in love with her and that if she continues her descent into madness – as they describe it – so that she ends up in the asylum, it will be rather a fortuitous way to get her out of the way so that Charles can marry more suitably.
A knock on the door brought Harriet back to the present, but she felt too faint to answer it. ‘Yes,’ she managed to call.
‘I’m sorry, but Madam is asking for you.’ It was Violet, one of the young servant girls. Even though the under butler and the housekeeper had been kind enough to let Harriet have some time to herself, Cecilia was no doubt worrying about Jacob.
‘Pleas
e tell her I’ll be there presently. Then go to the kitchen and prepare the baby’s milk and bring it back here to me,’ she managed, forcing herself to sit up on the bed.
‘But Madam doesn’t like anyone else but you to prepare the baby’s feed, Mrs Waterhouse.’ Harriet could hear the nervousness in Violet’s voice.
‘Just do it, please, Violet.’ Harriet felt sick at the thought of Jacob alone in that ambulance, sedated, frightened. Waking tomorrow morning to find himself incarcerated in an asylum. Her love, with whom she had shared her life, now broken, unreachable. She could hear Cecilia’s baby crying and she wanted to go to her to feel the comfort of her tiny body next to hers. She had grown so close to Cecilia, and to her baby girl. She loved spending every second with the child and, as Cecilia’s anxieties grew, she had needed help desperately and Harriet, broken-hearted over Jacob and desperate for a child of her own, had been only too happy to oblige. But her love for Cecilia and the baby meant that she had neglected her husband terribly, and the guilt haunted her as she pored over the pages of her diary, desperately trying to find evidence that she had tried to help Jacob. She felt sick with guilt. He was right to think she didn’t love him. She hadn’t fought hard enough.
12 January 1947
Dear Diary
As dawn breaks over the Sussex countryside and I sit here watching the contented breathing of the beautiful baby girl who has given me untold happiness, it is hard to think about the pain she caused when she came into the world four days ago. The small miracle that is the rightful heir of Mr Charles Barton was born here at Northcote – three weeks before she was due – on the morning of 8 January 1947.
From the first second I saw her, screaming blue murder as her mother’s blood was washed from her fair skin, I loved her as if she were my own. And, contrary to Cecilia’s fears, she is a healthy baby. Over the past two days Cecilia has become convinced that the doctors are trying to kill her and the baby – citing as the reason that Charles no longer loves her and wishes to remarry. Whenever the doctors come near, she will not let go of the baby. And she will not let anyone but me feed her or hold her so I have to sit in a chair with the baby while Cecilia sleeps in case something happens to either of them. I am to keep watch all night and I am exhausted.