‘Whatever part of the past the woman came from, I don’t think she was intending to kill Grace when she arrived here,’ Stockton says.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘The weapon she used.’
I frown. ‘There’s nothing at all in the evidence folder about a murder weapon.’
‘That’s true, but the officers conducting the case privately agreed with me that it was probably a Trinka battle knife.’
‘Explain,’ I suggest.
‘I’ll do better than that,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you. Follow me.’
THIRTEEN
7th May, 1944
It was not a long journey from the King’s Head to Bombay Street, where Jane said she lived, but they had to take a zigzag path, in order to avoid the mountains of rubble which had once been houses in which decent, hardworking people had led their uneventful lives.
The whole of London had suffered from the Blitz – the German bombing of the city between September 1940 and March 1941 – but Canning Town, being close to the docks, had been particularly badly hit, and because any money or time that might have been available for reconstruction was instead being poured into the war effort, the rubble was still there for all to see.
The government was keeping quiet about just how many bombs had been dropped, of course, but Derek Stockton, Grace’s new husband, had seen many of the statistics, and when he had been trying to persuade her to leave London, he had told her (though officially he should not have done) that the estimated figure was close to twenty thousand tons. He had added – in an attempt to strengthen his argument – that the government had also underplayed the civilian casualties, and the true number was over forty thousand dead and well over one hundred thousand injured, which was why anyone with the wherewithal was getting out.
‘All the more reason for me to stay,’ she had countered, ‘because if most of the able people are fleeing the city, then those able people who remain become even more necessary.’
‘Grace …’ he had said.
‘I work for the Ministry of Food now. That may not seem very important to a soldier who will soon be risking his life in battle, but believe me, for the people who live here, the work I do is vital.’
Thinking back to that conversation, she smiled as she carefully picked her way through the rubble. Derek had never met her mother, but if he had done, he would have recognized the look of stubbornness which filled Grace’s face at that moment, as something she’d inherited.
There’s definitely something of the missionary about me, too, she thought.
FOURTEEN
Derek Stockton leads me down a long, low corridor. It is well lit-up by electric lighting now, but there are brackets on the walls which once held flaming brands soaked in pitch, and behind those brackets, the dressed stonework is black from centuries of singeing.
We turn off the corridor into a light, airy room.
‘This was Grace’s study,’ Stockton says.
I look around me. It is obvious it is not used now – it has the sort of feel to it that ‘period’ rooms in museums have – but someone has kept it scrupulously dusted. One wall is taken up by a large window which looks out onto the garden, another two walls are hidden by bulging bookcases, and the fourth is dominated by a huge stone fireplace.
But it is the bits of wall on each side of the fireplace that are especially interesting, because Grace Stockton had chosen this as a display area for her artefacts. There are masks and aprons, tools and fetishes. But there is one space where something once hung but hangs there no longer.
‘That’s where the Trinka battle knife was,’ Stockton explains. ‘The Trinka are one of the tribes that Grace was studying. Until recently, they were headhunters and cannibals. The battle knife was there when I left for the States, and missing when I came back – and it hasn’t been seen since.’
‘In other words, you’re saying that Duffle Coat Woman – that’s what I’m calling the killer for convenience – came to the manor with no intention of doing harm, but when she did lose her temper, she searched for a weapon, found the knife and used it.’
‘Correct.’
I take a deep breath, because what I’m about to say has to be said, but I don’t want to say it to this particular man.
‘So let’s get this clear, Dr Stockton – Duffle Coat Woman used this missing Trinka knife to cut your wife’s head off.’
He barely flinches, but when he speaks again there is a notable tremor in his voice.
‘Yes, that is what I believe happened. The knife was crafted for just that purpose.’
More unpleasant questions: ‘Why did she bury your wife’s head separately?’ I ask.
‘We don’t know she did bury it,’ Stockton replies. ‘Perhaps she took it with her.’
‘And why – in God’s name – would she do that?’
‘She didn’t do it in God’s name,’ he says heavily.
It is a serious rebuke – no doubt about it.
I would have thought that given the scope of our general conversation, taking the name of his god in vain was something that could be overlooked, but I was clearly wrong.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ I say.
‘It’s all right,’ he says, milder now.
But a feeling of awkwardness has suddenly grown up between us, and it is perhaps because of this that he says, ‘Let me show you something.’
He walks over to the fireplace, and indicates that I should follow him.
‘Do you know what a priest hole is?’ he asks.
I’m not sure how he wants me to react to the question – whether he wants me to profess ignorance, or whether it will simply annoy him to have to explain it all to me. I think about it for a moment, then I decide – what the hell! – I might as well be honest.
‘It’s a kind of hiding place that was secretly built into some covertly Catholic houses during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,’ I say. ‘Catholic priests needed to hide from the queen’s secret police, because if they were caught, they stood a very good chance of being hanged.’
He nods, and it seems I’ve chosen the right course.
‘There’s a priest hole here in the fireplace, Miss Redhead,’ he says. ‘See if you can find it.’
I give a couple of the dressed stones above the hearth a gentle push, and nothing happens. I try a couple more, with the same result. I’m getting annoyed now, because I don’t like being defeated by something that was constructed over three hundred years ago, and my gentle pressure soon gives way to maximum force – which gets me no further at all.
‘You’ll never find it, however hard you try,’ Stockton says confidently, from somewhere behind me.
I bloody will, I think. Oh, yes, I most certainly bloody will.
But after five minutes more searching, I’m forced to admit that no, I bloody won’t.
I step out of the fireplace, and Stockton steps in.
‘They had to be made difficult to find, because the authorities were constantly raiding Catholic houses and looking for them,’ he says.
And then he runs his hands over the wall next to the fireplace, before resting them on two stones about eighteen inches apart. He presses both stones at exactly the same time, and a section of the wall swings out on a creaking hinge to reveal a small room.
‘It was probably built by a carpenter and stonemason called Nicholas Owen,’ he says, ‘because Owen was responsible for most of the priest holes in England. He travelled secretly from manor to manor, taking no more in payment for his labours than what he needed to survive.’
‘Did they catch him in the end?’
‘Oh yes, his luck ran out eventually, as he’d always known it would. The authorities incarcerated him in the Tower of London, and tortured him to make him tell them where all the priest holes were. They had some particularly nasty methods of torture in those days, but he never said a word, and eventually the torture killed him. Now that is what you call faith.’
Ah,
so that is what this was all about – another object lesson on the nature of faith for the redheaded atheist!
Stockton swings the wall back on its hinge, and it looks so permanent that it is hard to believe – though I’ve just seen it for myself – that there is a room hidden behind it.
The diversion is over, and the banished feeling of awkwardness rushes back in to fill the gap.
‘Your wife’s private papers are being held in the police evidence room, and I need your permission to look at them,’ I tell Stockton, partly because it’s true and partly because I just feel the need to say something.
‘All right,’ he agrees gravely. ‘You have it.’
‘I don’t want to be difficult, but I need it in writing.’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Come through to my study.’
FIFTEEN
7th May, 1944
They finally reached Bombay Street. Once, a row of terraced houses had run the whole length of it, but now it was reduced to the four end houses, which creaked and tottered in the wind, as if they might fall down at any moment.
A poster had been pasted onto the crumbling brickwork of the end terrace. It read:
Ministry of Housing
Warning! Unsafe!
This building is condemned
Jane led Grace to the second of the two houses, and pushed the front door open.
‘The place is a bit untidy at the moment,’ she said apologetically. ‘I must admit, I get very lazy when my husband’s not here to bully – I mean, to encourage – me.’
It was worse than untidy, Grace thought as they walked down the hallway and entered the back room – much, much worse.
To be fair, it would have been difficult to make this crumbling house presentable whatever she did. The walls were so damp that it was shedding the wallpaper like a snake sheds its redundant skins, and crumbling plaster contributed its own particular musty smell.
But there were other smells, too – like cheap alcohol and vomit.
And the room was not just dingy, it was filthy.
It was tempting to comment on this immediately – to point out that Jane owed a duty to her unborn child, and that living in this squalor was the worst thing she could possibly do for it.
She sensed Jane tense, as if she were expecting just such an attack, but Grace knew that this was not how you approached your kimpum, and so she sat down at the table as if she didn’t even notice the dirt, and smiled.
‘Well,’ Jane said, clearly knocked off balance by the other woman’s ready acceptance, ‘what sort of talk are you paying for? Do you want to hear all about the men I’ve been with, and what I’ve done with them?’
‘Why would I want to hear about that?’
‘I thought that’s why we were here. I thought it was how you got your kicks.’
‘It isn’t. But if your experiences with men are what you really want to tell me about, then I’m happy to listen,’ Grace said.
‘Well, what else would you like me to tell you about?’ Jane asked – meaning, What else could somebody like me say that would be of any possible interest to somebody like you?
Grace shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. You could tell me about your childhood, I suppose.’
Jane returned the shrug. ‘It’s your money.’
She started cautiously, giving a heavily edited version of her early life, but as Grace listened – with a kindly, understanding half-smile on her face – Jane grew more confident and more candid. She talked for over half an hour, and when she reached the end, she was both more exhausted, and more at peace, than she could ever remember being before.
‘What about you, then?’ she was surprised to hear herself say. ‘I expect you were brought up in a big house full of servants.’
Grace laughed. ‘No, it wasn’t like that at all.’
She described her childhood in the jungle – how there were no other children to play with, and how, even if there had been, she wouldn’t have been allowed to, because her parents considered play to be at best frivolous, and worse sinful. She talked about the time when she was feverish for two weeks, and none of the medicines in her parents’ modest cabinet seemed to have any effect.
‘The nearest doctor was a hundred miles away,’ she explained, ‘and a hundred miles by canoe is much, much further than a hundred miles by road.’
‘How bad were you?’ Jane asked.
‘It was touch and go. My father even had one of the natives dig a grave for me.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He told me.’
‘When you’d got better?’
‘No, when I was still very ill.’
‘How could he do that?’ Jane gasped. ‘How could he be such a monster?’
Grace laughed, a little unconvincingly. ‘He wasn’t being a monster – at least, not in his terms. To him, my physical life was of no importance, because I’d already been saved. And as for me – I should be glad I was being given a short cut to heaven.’ She shivered. ‘I think that was the moment I stopped being a Christian.’
And I thought I’d had it rough, Jane reflected.
‘But your dad was very happy when you recovered, wasn’t he?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Grace agreed, ‘but I think he also looked on digging that grave as a waste of effort that could otherwise have been devoted to doing the Lord’s work.’
‘It must have been terrible for you,’ Jane said.
‘Oh, it wasn’t all bad,’ Grace said lightly. ‘Sometimes the missionary society would send us a can of corned beef, and then I felt like just about the luckiest girl in the world.’
‘Corned beef made you feel like that?’ Jane asked incredulously. ‘Ordinary corned beef?’
Grace smiled. ‘I can assure you, it wasn’t ordinary to me.’
‘But even we had that – and we had nothing. To tell you the truth, we had so much of it that I got sick of it.’
‘I never did. It was magic.’
It was time to risk taking the next step, Grace decided.
‘I like you,’ she said. ‘Do you like me?’
‘Yes,’ Jane said – and then looked around the room as if to find out who had spoken.
She wondered why she felt like that. Maybe it was because Grace was not as posh as she’d seemed at first. Maybe it was because the other girl seemed willing to accept her for what she was. And maybe – maybe – it was because she felt so sorry for the younger Grace, who this Grace had just so vividly described to her.
‘I don’t have a sister,’ Grace said. ‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Back home – in Papua New Guinea – we have what we call an adopted sister,’ Grace said. ‘Will you be mine?’
‘Yes,’ Jane said, and this time she had no doubt that the voice which agreed was her own.
‘In that case, we have to go through a ritual,’ Grace said.
Alarm suddenly filled Jane’s face.
‘Will it hurt?’ she asked.
Grace laughed. ‘No, it won’t hurt. But I have to take a lock of your hair. Would that be all right?’
‘Yes.’
Grace took a small pair of scissors from her handbag and snipped at Jane’s hair. Then she took a lock of her own. She laid one lock on top of the other, and mingled the two samples. Then she divided the pile into two equal heaps.
With skilled hands, she wove each new pile into a hair bracelet.
‘One is for you, and one is for me,’ she said. ‘You must wear it at all times.’
‘I will,’ Jane promised.
‘I know people in the Ministry of Housing,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll see if I can get you better accommodation than this.’
‘No!’ Jane said, with sudden violence.
‘But this place is so unhealthy and—’
‘I’m safe here – because nobody knows I live here.’
‘Safe from what?’
‘Safe from the people who will try
to take my baby away from me.’
For a second, Grace was about to ask her why she thought they would try to take her baby away. But the answer was obvious – they would try to take it away because she was not fit to be a mother.
‘Do you really care about your baby?’ she asked.
‘I love him,’ Jane said, and her face glowed with that love. ‘I’d die if I didn’t have him.’
Well aware that she was about to take a huge gamble from which there was no retreat if it failed, Grace said, ‘If you really love him, then you’d better start taking care of him, even before he’s born.’
This was the moment at which Jane could explode and demand she leave the house.
Instead, the other woman lowered her head and said very quietly, ‘Yes, I know.’
‘That means you’re going to have to stop drinking …’
‘Yes.’
‘… and going with men …’
‘Yes.’
‘… and if you refuse to leave this place, then the least you have to do is give it a thorough cleaning.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll help you with the cleaning, but you’ll have to manage the other things on your own,’ Grace said.
‘It will be so hard – I’ve been drinking since I was twelve – but I’ll try. I promise I’ll try.’
Grace reached across the table, took Jane’s hand, and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow with the cleaning materials,’ she said, ‘and I’ll bring a locksmith with me, so we can get some decent locks put on the front and back doors. Whenever you need anything, I’ll do my best to provide it – as long as it isn’t booze. And I’ll visit you as often as I can.’
She stood up, and so did Jane. The two women hugged each other.
‘Goodnight, sister,’ Grace said.
‘Goodnight, sister,’ Jane replied.
SIXTEEN
Derek Stockton’s study is at the other end of the corridor, and though it is of similar size and shape to Grace’s, the choice of furnishings gives it an altogether much more masculine feel.
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