by Nicola Upson
‘They certainly will—and if they really do pride themselves on their discretion, I doubt they’ll take kindly to slander from any of their employees.’
The door slammed behind her and Archie gave a round of applause. ‘I think she’s gone for more than the day, though,’ he said. ‘What on earth did she do to rile you like that?’
‘It’s not even worth mentioning,’ Josephine said. ‘Come down to the kitchen. I’ll make us some coffee and you can tell me why you look so awful.’
She led the way back downstairs, relieved to have the house to herself again. ‘I’ve just come from the Cleevers,’ Archie said when they were settled round the kitchen table. ‘All those years and they finally know who was responsible for their daughter’s death.’ Josephine listened while he told her everything that had happened since they last met. ‘There’s a part of me that thinks it might have been kinder to leave them in ignorance,’ he admitted, ‘but they’re not the sort to shy away from the truth. You were right, Josephine—Maud Cleever is remarkably brave and remarkably dignified. So is her husband.’ ‘They’ve lost everything,’ Josephine said. ‘A son as well as a daughter.’
‘Not necessarily. Webster managed to trace Ernest Cleever and found him in prison. He’s coming to the end of a six-month stretch for burglary and I’ve arranged for them to go and see him. They’re keen to get him back on the straight and narrow when he gets out. I think it’s given them a sense of purpose which they haven’t had for years. It won’t be easy—for any of them—but something might be salvaged. Let’s hope so.’
‘I can’t get Hodson’s Folly out of my head,’ Josephine said. ‘I went to see what it was like after I dropped your note off, and it’s desolate. Now I know what really happened there, I can’t stop imagining that poor girl’s face in the water. God, Archie, how she must have suffered. And Webster, too. That explains why he seemed so driven when he came here that night. It was as if each and every rape was personal to him, and in a way I suppose it was. I know it’s an awful thing to say, but I completely understand why he did what he did.’
‘Yes, so do I. I only wish I could have saved him.’
‘No one could have done that.’ Archie was quiet, and Josephine could tell how badly he had been affected by Webster’s death and the hours that had led up to it. ‘You can try and do as he asked, though. Do you think you’ll be able to charge Moorcroft? Have you got enough evidence?’
‘It’s looking hopeful.’
‘Then why do you look so unhopeful?’
‘Because it’s filthy, Josephine. The whole damned thing is corrupt from start to finish, and I’m part of that now. To get Moorcroft, I have to make a compromise.’ ‘With whom?’
‘With the only other man from that group who’s still alive. When we were in the tower, I told Moorcroft that Richard Swayne was about to give a full account of what had happened that night in exchange for leniency. It was a lie, told in the heat of the moment, and I shouldn’t have said it, but I wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. It gave me an idea, though. Swayne was complicit, but he didn’t instigate anything and he didn’t kill Ellen. From what Tom said, he could also argue that he didn’t actually rape her, so he’s in an ideal position to corroborate the evidence against Moorcroft. And of course the Home Office will do everything they can to push it through. Swayne’s one of theirs, and we all look after our own. I expect he’ll be pensioned off when a discreet amount of time has passed—a generous settlement if he goes quietly. Tom was right. Nothing’s changed.’
Josephine took his hand. ‘Don’t, Archie,’ she said gently. ‘Don’t tarnish yourself with someone else’s bitterness. Sin-eating is a fool’s game at the best of times and these aren’t your sins, whatever you might think now.’ He looked doubtful and there was obviously no point in pressing the matter. ‘Do you think there’s any chance that Moorcroft might be the rapist the police are looking for?’ she asked.
‘Leopards and spots, you mean?’
‘Something like that. But I was also thinking about the night of the rape next door—you came here because you were looking for Robert Moorcroft, so he was obviously out there somewhere and not at home.’
‘Yes, his wife told me that he often disappeared for nights at a time. The thought had crossed my mind, actually. I tried to speak to Clough about it, but it wasn’t the right moment. He’s so shocked and devastated by Webster’s death that he couldn’t take anything else in.’
‘But you’ve still got Moorcroft in custody?’
‘Oh yes. He’s not going anywhere for the time being.’
‘That must be a relief for his wife. I imagine she’s very grateful to have her son back safe and sound.’
‘I haven’t spoken to her.’
‘Why not?’
‘It didn’t seem right while I’m trying to hang her husband.’ He gave a wry smile and poured them both some coffee. ‘I went to see Bridget the night before last,’ he said, apparently oblivious to the telling train of thought. ‘I can’t believe it was less than forty-eight hours ago. It feels like a lifetime.’
‘Did you have a chance to talk properly?’
‘Not really. We were both conscientiously polite.’
‘That’s only natural. You’ve been apart a long time.’
‘It was more than that, though. We can’t go on like this and we both know it. It’s always a mistake to go back. Bridget and I have a past, but there’s nothing to connect us to that now, nothing to link the people we are to the people we were then.’
He was wrong about that, but now wasn’t the time to discuss Bridget or what the future might hold. ‘You’re too tired to think straight about anything,’ she said. ‘Let me make up a bed for you. You can’t go back to London until you’ve had some sleep.’
‘What would your daily woman say?’ He grinned, and she was pleased to see the clouds lift, if only briefly. ‘Don’t bother to make the bed up, though. I’ll be out like a light wherever you put me.’
He went off to the spare room and Josephine settled by the window to work, but all she could think about was Ellen Cleever and the last, torturous night of her life. The gardener was busy in the churchyard below and she watched him for a while, still not able to shake off her earlier suspicions entirely but struck more forcefully than before by the danger of judging what you could never really know. As she watched, a young woman opened the gate to St Clement’s and sat down on the bench by the church wall, shoulders hunched against the cold. She looked up towards the houses, her face visible now beneath the brim of her hat, and Josephine was surprised to see that it was Mary Ennis. Wondering what the girl was doing back in Cambridge, she took her coat from the rack and went out to speak to her.
Mary raised her hand in acknowledgement, and Josephine walked through the gravestones and sat down on the bench next to her. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect our paths to cross again, but I’ve often wondered how you are.’
‘We’ve just come back to collect my things,’ Mary explained. ‘I so badly wanted to do it myself, but in the end I just couldn’t bring myself to go back into that room.’
‘That’s hardly surprising. What happened is still very recent.’
‘Even so, it would have shown a bit of spirit, a bit of fight.’ She smiled sadly, and looked again to what had once been her window. ‘It seems that fight is something I don’t really do any more.’
‘Would you like me to get your things for you?’
‘Thank you, but my father’s in there with Peter. They shouldn’t be long now.’
‘Peter?’
‘He’s my fiancé.’ She hesitated over the word, as if it didn’t really belong to her, then took off her glove to show Josephine her engagement ring.
‘Congratulations.’
‘You don’t really mean that.’ She looked at Josephine, defying her to argue. ‘I know what you must think and you’re right, but nobody really understands how lonely it is. I’ve always liked my own compan
y, but not like this. It’s so hard to realise that people can only help you so far. Peter tries, though, bless him. He’s always loved me, right from when we were children.’
‘And do you love him?’
‘No, but I’m grateful to him. I was astonished when he asked me to marry him after everything that had happened—flattered, I suppose. I might feel second-hand, but Peter still wants me—not out of duty or pity, but out of genuine love. And I care for him. That’s a start, I suppose.’
‘But is it enough?’ It went against Josephine’s surest instincts to interfere in anyone’s life, particularly someone who was a virtual stranger to her, but there was something in Mary’s wilful sacrifice of her own future which was as tragic in its way as Ellen Cleever’s death.
‘It’s enough that Peter knows,’ Mary said. ‘That means the world to me somehow. If I met someone new, no matter how well suited we were, I’d have to start from the beginning and I really can’t face that. And I have to think about my parents, too. None of this is their fault and they’ve tried so hard to look after me. I remember my mother standing at the gate when I was a child, worrying herself half to death if I was so much as a few minutes late home from school—and I know now that she’s tearing herself apart because she wasn’t there to protect me when it mattered. My father’s so upset that he hasn’t once looked me in the eye since it happened.’
‘I can understand how hard it is for them, but what about your job? What about—’
‘My freedom? Don’t, Josephine—please. I know what you’re going to say, but it’s hopeless and I’ll send myself mad if I think about it. It’s better that I just accept what has to be and make the best of it, for my own sake as well as for Peter’s. That life is gone.’
The door of Mary’s former lodgings opened and two men came out into the street, burdened with suitcases and a couple of large picture frames. ‘Looks like it’s time for you to go,’ Josephine said, giving the younger woman a hug. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you. And thank you for everything you did that night. I’ll never forget it.’
Which was, of course, the trouble, Josephine thought as she watched her walk away. Peter put an arm protectively around his fiancée’s shoulders as they headed back down St Clement’s Passage to the waiting car, and she wondered how Mary would cope with all that desperate devotion. The girl in the nurse’s uniform who had cycled off to her shift with such energy and joy was a different person altogether.
*
Archie slept through lunch and afternoon tea, and Josephine was just beginning to think about a supper for them both when the telephone rang. ‘Miss Tey? It’s Bill Fallowfield here. I’m sorry to disturb you but is the Chief still there?’
‘He’s dead to the world, Bill. Is it urgent, or can I get him to call you when he wakes up?’
‘I’m afraid it is urgent, miss. He’d want to know about this. Would you get him for me?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She woke Archie and left him to discuss whatever developments his sergeant had to report in private, but he came to find her almost immediately. ‘I’m sorry, Josephine—I’ve got to go.’
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, taking one look at his ashen face.
‘There’s been another attack, and it looks like Bridget’s involved.’
‘Bridget?’
‘Yes. The woman who called the police gave her name as Foley. She’s not the victim, thank God, but she’s at the scene and I need to go to her. They say it’s serious.’
‘Where did this happen?’
‘In a theatre on Newmarket Road. Bill’s meeting me there.’
‘The Festival Theatre?’ Josephine asked, realising to her horror that the Miss Foley Archie was expecting wasn’t the one he was going to find. ‘Are you sure it’s Bridget? Shouldn’t you check before you go rushing off?’
‘Foley isn’t a very common name outside Donegal.’
‘But what would Bridget be doing in a theatre?’
‘Seeing a play? Painting scenery? For God’s sake, Josephine—how do I know? And I can’t waste time arguing with you about things that hardly matter. I need to make sure she’s all right.’
‘Well, at least let me come with you—’
But he grabbed his keys from the table in the hall and left without another word. Josephine telephoned Bridget, hoping to warn her, but of course there was no answer—if Bridget had been contactable, she would surely have left to be with Phyllis by now. Horrified by the impending disaster, she tried to think of some way of averting it but her mind refused to help her. Archie didn’t know Phyllis, of course, so if Bridget wasn’t with her, there was a small chance that he would leave without making the connection. And then she remembered the painting. Archie wouldn’t recognise Phyllis, but there was no way that Phyllis wouldn’t recognise the man she had been told was her father from Bridget’s poignant and sensitive portrait; how on earth would she feel when she saw him walking into the Festival Theatre alive and well? A war hero perhaps, but certainly not a war casualty. Feeling guilty at her part in the deception played on both of them, Josephine hurried out into the street to find a taxi.
24
One glance at the small yard in front of the Festival Theatre was enough to fill Josephine’s heart with dread. Three police cars and an ambulance fanned out from the foyer doors, parked as a barricade to a growing crowd of spectators, and she could only begin to imagine what horrors they heralded for those still inside. The taxi dropped her across the street and she joined the throng on the pavement nearby, a motley assortment of theatre-goers arriving early for the evening performance and ordinary passers-by, drawn to the ominous group of emergency vehicles. Police officers stood outside both entrances, solemn and tight-lipped, and, in the passageway which ran along the side of the building, Josephine could see the dark, forbidding outline of a mortuary van. There was no sign of Archie.
She pushed her way to the front of the crowd, heading for a man with a notebook whom she assumed was a reporter from the local paper. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, trying not to listen to the alarming speculation taking place on either side. ‘How bad is it?’
The journalist shrugged. ‘No one’s come out to talk to us yet, but there are rumours that this one’s fatal. It was always going to happen sooner or later. The police have been running round like headless chickens from the moment that this bloke first struck, and now it looks like some poor girl’s paid the price for it. The golden boy hasn’t even put in an appearance yet, as far as I can see. Perhaps he’s done the decent thing and resigned.’
If the reporter was referring to Detective Inspector Webster, then he was more accurate than he could ever have imagined. Clearly the scandal of the murders hadn’t reached the press yet, and for Archie’s sake Josephine was relieved. She waited impatiently for something to happen, sharing excitements with the crowd as sporadic flurries of activity by the front entrance stirred false hopes of a more tangible development, but eventually the side door opened and an ambulance man emerged, supporting a young woman wrapped in a blanket. Her head was covered and it was impossible to see her face, but a murmur of hope and relief rippled through the crowds when they saw that she was well enough to walk. As Josephine watched, searching for the slightest confirmation that this was Phyllis, she thought of Mary Ennis, walking down St Clement’s Passage on the night that she was raped, and of all that she had given up since; there was a certain ‘least of all evils’ element in praying that the girl climbing into the ambulance was Archie’s daughter, that the fatality was a colleague or a friend, but the alternative was unthinkable.
And then the door opened again. Two men bearing a stretcher walked out into the passage, and everyone fell silent as they carried their burden—shrouded entirely in a blanket—to the waiting mortuary van. There was something profoundly sad and shocking about the scene, Josephine thought, as if the body leaving the theatre carried with it the fear and sorrow of a whole community. The stretcher was load
ed gently into the vehicle and the crowd parted in a respectful silence to allow it out into the street. As it drove away and the babble of conversation returned, Josephine found herself wondering if the last few days could have been anything other than a surreal, hideous dream.
Such was the commotion now that it took her a few moments to locate the voice calling her name. Bill Fallowfield was walking down the side passage with a scene of crime photographer, and she waved in acknowledgement, relieved to see someone who might tell her what was going on. The sergeant nodded to one of the uniformed men who had been stationed at regular intervals to keep the public at a distance, and she was allowed to pass through unchallenged. The reporter glared at her, realising that he had missed an opportunity, and apparently blaming Josephine for not offering up her connection to events more readily. ‘Thank God you’re here, miss,’ Fallowfield said as he escorted her over to a quiet area by the door. ‘I had half a mind to telephone you.’
‘What’s happened, Bill? Is Archie all right?’
‘No, not really. He had such a shock when we got here, and I blame myself for that. I assumed the Miss Foley who’d made the emergency call was his Miss Foley, but it wasn’t.’
‘It was her daughter.’
Fallowfield stared at her in astonishment. ‘You knew she had a daughter?’
Josephine nodded, too shamed by the tone of his voice to listen carefully enough to his words. ‘Yes. I found out recently—by accident, really. Bridget swore that she was going to tell Archie, but she obviously didn’t do it quickly enough.’ Fallowfield looked sceptical, and she knew he was imagining some sort of feminine conspiracy which had never existed; his loyalty to Archie was unswerving, and he wouldn’t look kindly on anyone who served him badly. ‘Does Bridget know what’s happened yet?’ she asked. ‘She’ll want to be with Phyllis.’