Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves

by Rachel Malik

  Quillet was talking about Uncle’s habits now. She hated having to hear it all again, getting tangled up in his stale breath and clammy hands. She felt the eyes of the court, the furtive, grudging interest. Two of the female jurors cast tentative glances in her direction. There was more than curiosity, she was sure.

  ‘No one would deny that Miss Hargreaves and Miss Boston tried to do their best with Mr Massey in very difficult circumstances. However, his presence at the cottage took a toll on both of them. Committed as she was to caring for Mr Massey, Miss Hargreaves’s strongest bond was, as I have said, to Miss Boston. And she gradually came to feel that Mr Massey’s presence in the cottage was incompatible with her bond to her friend. Working extremely hard just to make ends meet, Miss Hargreaves was acutely aware that much of the daily caring for Mr Massey fell to Miss Boston, who was feeling the strain of it. Indeed, Miss Hargreaves came to fear for the vulnerable Miss Boston’s health, and visited the doctor on her account. Late in 1961, his behaviour took a further dip. Up to this point, I am sure that we can all sympathize with Miss Hargreaves’s difficulties with Mr Massey. But around this time, her goodwill evaporated and she took the decision to deal with Mr Massey in her own way. It was at this point that she took the decision to poison Mr Massey, a decision which required substantial premeditation. The pathologist’s evidence will demonstrate just how premeditated and deliberate. The poison that she used, sodium chlorate, is highly unpalatable and could only have gone undetected by the recipient if it was administered in tiny quantities over a period of time. Miss Hargreaves always served Mr Massey his breakfast before she went out to work. She sometimes served him supper and always took responsibility for his drinks during the evening. She also took a cup of tea up to his room before bed. She had ample opportunity.’

  Rene had to admit that Mr Quillet’s case against her sounded very reasonable. Some of it was true. She had felt a deep obligation to Bertha, and not just for the obvious things. If it hadn’t been for Bertha, she might not have left Manchester, might never have joined the Land Army; never met Elsie. And yet. No one knew just how cleverly Bertha had worked to secure her gratitude: those neat little stitches sewn over and over, so strong. And somehow, through the rain, very quiet but very regular, came a faint tapping, the sound of Bertha on her mother’s sewing machine. When she was working, that whirring tap tap could be heard through every wall of Bertha’s house. For it never became ‘Mr and Mrs Massey’s house’, it was only ever Bertha’s – Mr Quillet was quite wrong about that.

  The woman in the green silk hat was looking at her and Rene looked directly back. Their eyes met; the woman didn’t turn away. It was an open look, curious, not hostile. They were probably about the same age, and not as different as they might have been. The woman was smartly dressed in a tailored, brown velvet jacket, with neat silver buttons, and Rene caught a glimpse of a bright green blouse underneath. The clothes weren’t just smart, they were expensive, Rene could tell, even from a distance. Her hair didn’t reach her chin but it was thick and curly – no one would have noticed that it was short. There was something familiar about her.

  Rene turned her attention back to Mr Quillet. It seemed that he would never finish speaking.

  ‘Protection of her vulnerable friend was her primary motive. The prospect of modest financial gain also had a role. Mr Massey changed his will just after his arrival at Wheal Rock to make Miss Hargreaves his sole beneficiary. The sum of money involved was modest, but it should not be ignored, given the impecunious state in which they lived. However, it was her bond with the vulnerable Miss Boston that was primary, a bond that led her to take Mr Ernest Massey’s life, take his life, moreover, in a planned and premeditated way.’

  Vulnerable was the word Quillet used to describe Elsie. Rene didn’t like the way it sounded, but he must have liked the word because he used it a good deal. ‘Miss Boston was a vulnerable lady and Miss Hargreaves saw that Mr Massey had become too much for her,’ he said. ‘Miss Boston’s vulnerability,’ he said, ‘was never far from Miss Hargreaves’s mind.’ He used it like it was a word for something else. Touched was the word Rene used if someone wasn’t quite right; or sometimes poor: poor Eric with his puppet limbs at Mrs Crawford’s shop. Did Mr Quillet really think, Poor Elsie? And Rene felt angry all of a sudden. She pressed her hands down hard on the edge of the dock, stood up as tall as she could, and looked out steadily across the courtroom.

  Quillet finally concluded his outline of the case.

  The judge announced the break for lunch.

  Two WPCs took Rene down to the cells. Morris, the older, sullen one, went in front. Rene was cuffed to a nervous, young WPC whom everyone just called Maureen. Watch yourself, Morris said, for the steps were steep. The damp chill made her shiver and the cuff rubbed slightly on her wrist, but she and Maureen worked out a rhythm of sorts: very slow and steady, lots of stops. Morris was well ahead, and Rene could sense her irritation at their slowness. All of a sudden, Morris came to a sudden stop.

  ‘Oh lordy,’ she said.

  She was half a dozen steps from the bottom. Rene and Maureen stopped behind her and peered over Morris’s shoulders. Maureen squealed.

  The narrow corridor beyond was six inches deep in murky water; it lapped against the pale tiled walls and the metal padlocked doors of the cells. And it hadn’t finished rising yet. At the end of the corridor, the water was pushing up hard from a drain: above the metal grille, it foamed and spun.

  ‘Anyone here?’ Morris called, and her voice echoed and tremored along the corridor.

  There was no reply.

  An old metal chair, posted beside one of the cell doors, stood its spindly ground while the lights on the walls flickered alarmingly.

  For some moments, they didn’t move, just stood on the steps watching the water, half hypnotized by the sound and the flickering light. It was only when Maureen began to sniff and snuffle that Morris came to herself and ordered them back up to the next landing. Then they all made their way slowly upstairs. And Rene was led back to the empty courtroom, out through the judge’s door and into the warren of rooms behind. Morris alerted a clerk about the water below, but there was quite a delay before somewhere suitable could be found for Rene. Various offices on the first floor were considered. The first was deemed too big; in the second, there were glass panels on the door and this was thought unsuitable. WPC Morris went off to take her lunch. For another ten minutes, Rene stood awkwardly clasped to Maureen in the corridor, while there was much toing and froing of police and middle-aged suited men and women. The fingers of Rene’s free hand went tap, tap, tap on the wall behind, but Maureen had gone quite dull and limp after the excitement of the flood, as she called it.

  And finally a room was found: poky but with a large, uncluttered desk, three chairs and a solid wooden door. And a window. Without thinking, Rene made towards it, drawing, pulling, Maureen in her wake. Reaching it, Rene used her free hand to prise apart the pleated blind, and awkwardly rubbed her knuckles on the misted-up window. There wasn’t much to see: an empty street in heavy rain in a town she didn’t know. But it was a pleasure to be looking out, to meet the light at eye level.

  One person had ventured out: an old woman who was standing in the middle of the pavement as the rain poured down. She was standing quite still and seemed to be talking to her wheeled wicker basket. A car drove by, slow and stately; it splashed the woman but she didn’t seem to notice. Rene continued to look out on to the street, the limp girl locked to her wrist forgotten. She wished there were more people. She didn’t usually mind the rain, but she resented it now for keeping people inside, robbing the street of its everyday business. If there were more people, she might see someone familiar; if there were more people, she might see someone she knew. She knew she was being silly, but she kept looking all the same. And of course it was Elsie she was looking for. Elsie must be here by now, she thought, Elsie wouldn’t be put off by the rain.

  One flight up from Rene, in the dining room reser
ved for the Law, lunch was being served; it was a bit of a squeeze fitting in three courses.

  At the Crown and Two Chairmen, the press called in the pints and talk was lively. The news that Miss Hargreaves was Mrs Phillips, the spinster was really a widow, and a mother to boot, occasioned a good deal of speculation. Rene’s trousers were another talking point, that and the Eton crop. Cub reporter Colin Mackenzie had managed to tag along again. They were all soaking: coats and hats were sodden, hair flopped in oily licks on to cheeks. Only the lady reporter – Babs – had been able to preserve her hairdo from the rain. It was generally agreed that the defendant was ‘a bit nervy’, a bit ‘above herself’, and, perhaps predictably, ‘a bit of a chilly customer’. ‘Skinny as a whippet,’ Mackenzie nearly said, and stopped himself. Ruder and cruder were reserved for the evening. In the same pub, the woman who had caught Rene’s attention sat at a quiet table and sipped a gin and tonic, the green hat on a seat beside her. Close up and without the hat, she looked older, her short hair flattened by the rain; she watched the antics at the bar very carefully.

  At the Eagle, Margaret and Elsie ordered sandwiches and tea to be sent to Elsie’s room. If only it would stop raining.

  Back in the courtroom, the usher circulated photographs of Wheal Rock: a sequence of ten large grey images, each one sleeved in plastic. The jurors busied themselves with the photographs, relieved perhaps to be looking at something else.

  There was one of Ernest’s tiny bedroom, the bed stripped, pillow and blankets neatly piled. The picture had been taken by the window to include the half-open door. You could see on to the landing and the door of Elsie and Rene’s bedroom, which was firmly shut. There was a photo of the sitting room with the uncomfortable sofa and Ernest’s unwieldy armchair and, over by the window, the little cupboard, the cream, curved edge of the wireless, a biscuit tin. There were two photos of the kitchen, taken from different positions, and it was here that the tidying-up the police had done was most obvious. The table had been pulled closer to the back door and the chairs were pushed underneath it tightly. Jugger’s basket had been removed. The only sign of life was the jumble of long macs, coats and scarves on the door; all the everyday angles of living were gone.

  Rene looked over towards the jury, who were absorbed in the photos. What did they see? What were they looking for?

  She looked down at the photograph of the shed, its shelves stacked tight with bottles and tins, the huge can of Corry’s Slug Death and a jumble of things she barely remembered: an abandoned bellows, a clutch of mousetraps, a plastic box full of padlocks, plant pots, paintbrushes. The tin of sodium chlorate peeked out slyly from behind tins of varnish and coils of fat rope. Next to the shelves were the little table and stool that Elsie had set up for Ernest – the pile of curling, damp magazines was still there. And a mug and two glasses. There were close-up photographs of these: watermarked, printed with fingers and dusty sediments. Rene winced at the state of the glasses.

  She passed to the outside photos with relief: there was Nib, sitting like china in the window of the cottage, no sign of the yard. A shot taken from the field which included part of the old chimney. How far away it all seemed.

  ‘Call Dr Evans,’ the usher said.

  ‘You were Mr Massey’s doctor?’ Quillet asked, his manner brisk.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were also Miss Hargreaves’s doctor?’

  ‘I was. And Miss Boston’s, though you understand I never saw her as a patient, she was physically very strong.’

  ‘I see. And you were called to the cottage after Mr Massey’s death?’

  ‘Oh yes. I think it was Miss Hargreaves who called my surgery that morning, my wife took the message. I was already out on my rounds so –’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Quillet was eager to get on.

  ‘Dr Evans, when you look back on your visit to the cottage that afternoon, was there anything about the visit that struck you as abnormal, anything that suggested that this was not an ordinary, a natural, death?’

  ‘Then? No, nothing – well, nothing to speak of.’

  ‘Dr Evans?’

  ‘There was a slight yellowing of Mr Massey’s face. It was rather marked under the eyes.’

  ‘And this isn’t normal?’

  ‘It certainly could be. But it could also point to some pressure on the liver and the kidneys and poor function. Again, this could be quite normal, given the subject’s age and habits, but such yellowing is also, can also be, a sign of toxicity.’

  ‘So the yellowing of the skin could be a sign of poison?’

  ‘Yes, it could, though –’

  ‘But you didn’t suspect this at the time.’

  ‘There seemed no reason to suspect anything.’

  ‘But you ordered a post-mortem examination, did you not, Dr Evans?’

  ‘Oh yes, but I considered that appropriate because I hadn’t seen him for some time.’

  ‘I see. And was there anything about the behaviour of Miss Hargreaves – or Miss Boston, for that matter – that struck you as odd or suspicious?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Neither of them appeared upset, but I think that was pretty unexceptional given the circumstances.’

  Rene was finding it more and more difficult to attend to what was being said. She knew how much it mattered, but it didn’t stop her drifting. She kept trying to call herself back: with every question she focused anew. There was nothing difficult as such; she just kept losing the thread. In the morning it had been easier, she had been on her mettle. Hearing Quillet quoting from her statement and mangling her speech had kept her alert. But this afternoon it was just Mr Quillet and Dr Evans. Listen, she thought to herself, they’re talking about you, about you and Elsie and Uncle. Listen, it’s important.

  ‘Dr Evans, I wish to ascertain Miss Hargreaves’s attitude to Mr Massey in the months before his death. Did you get a sense of how she felt about him during this period?’

  ‘She was concerned for his health. She was also worn down and irritated by his very difficult behaviour – that was very clear. But her main concern was how Mr Massey’s continued stay at the cottage was affecting Miss Boston.’

  ‘She said this to you directly?’

  ‘Oh yes. She came to my surgery in Helston. I had been treating her for a chest infection. I assumed that was why she made the appointment, but she told me she was feeling much better. That was when she told me that she was worried about Miss Boston.’

  ‘So she made an appointment with you to talk about Miss Boston?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evans came to a stop, unsure of the impression he was giving.

  ‘Well, I asked her if Miss Boston was ill.’

  ‘I see. And what did Miss Hargreaves say?’

  ‘“Not exactly.” Those were her words. “Not exactly.” And then she said that Miss Boston was struggling to cope with Mr Massey. She was quite run-down by him, those were her words. She also told me that Miss Boston had been having terrible trouble sleeping.’

  ‘Why do you think she told you this?’

  ‘She was extremely worried about her friend – unnaturally so, one might say. It can happen in these cases.’

  Quillet let that pass.

  ‘And you had some direct experience of Miss Boston, I understand?’

  ‘Oh yes. I saw her on three of the occasions when I attended Mr Massey at the cottage and on an earlier occasion when I attended Miss Hargreaves herself.’

  ‘And how did you find her?’

  ‘Fragile certainly, not one of life’s best adjusted … if you take my meaning, but harmless of course, completely harmless. Miss Hargreaves was certainly very protective of her.’

  ‘Perhaps you could explain what you mean by that, Dr Evans?’

  ‘Of course …’

  And now nothing could stop Rene listening, though she dearly didn’t want to hear. ‘Not the best adjusted.’ Poor Elsie.

  And as the smug doctor went on talking – he too used the word vulnerable – it came to Rene tha
t Elsie would find out that Rene had gone to see Dr Evans. She had spoken to a stranger about their situation, about Ernest; worst of all, she had spoken about Elsie, she had offered her up to somebody else. TITTLE-TATTLE LOST THE BATTLE. And to Dr Evans of all people, whom Elsie particularly disliked. She looked down at the photograph in front of her: Nib sitting on the narrow ledge of the window. The cat seemed smaller than before, as if Wheal Rock itself had moved further into the distance.

  When Dr Evans finally finished speaking, the judge adjourned till the following morning – though he did not release the jurors. He had a practical matter to consider first, he said.

  The reporters dispersed briskly to write their copy.

  The accused was taken directly to the police van that was waiting in the flooded car park; a blanket was held above her head to keep the worst of the rain off. Released from the long-suffering Maureen, she sprang nimbly from the kerb to the second step of the van. WPC Morris was not so lucky: she partially lost her balance and ended up with her right leg deep in an oily puddle.

  In his office, the judge considered the progress of trial and weather. The latter, for the time being, concerned him more. One of his clerks had spent most of the afternoon on the telephone to the meteorological service. The forecast for the next few days was for more heavy rain and local flooding, probably severe. He was disheartened if not altogether surprised, but the usher brought him good news shortly afterwards: everyone who might be called had now reached Winchester. This made his task easier – he didn’t want to delay the trial if it was at all possible. The usher also told him that the pathologist, Maurice Vanstone, had arrived, and the judge asked him to be shown up – they shared a distant family connection. Vanstone was soon upstairs, splendidly dressed in oilcloths; he was due to appear first tomorrow and he corroborated the weather reports. He had driven, very carefully, from his home some ten miles away and believed that the roads into the town would be impassable by morning. The centre was already flooding.