by Alys Clare
‘But Manda isn’t—’ Lily began.
Then the senior medical man grasped her upper arm, holding it in a painfully tight grip. He leaned down, his mouth against her ear, and hissed, ‘I am informed that you have been trying to gain admission to the chakla to see your young friend.’
‘Yes indeed, for I am deeply worried about her and I—’
His grip tightened. He didn’t like being interrupted.
‘To reach the chakla, one must pass close by the barracks,’ he said musingly. ‘Right by the soldiers’ quarters!’ he added in feigned wonder, as if it had only just occurred to him. Then, leaning close again, he said, ‘If you are seen there again, Nurse, it will be assumed that you are there for the purpose of soliciting, and I am sure you do not need me to tell you what will happen next.’
She almost fainted.
Her legs shook and it seemed as if her knees could no longer hold her up.
No, he didn’t need to tell her, for she had seen it for herself – oh, far, far too often! – and she knew.
Arrest. Detention. The rough hands of two or more men stripping her, putting her on the table, her legs in stirrups and the terrible ‘steel rape’ as the speculum was thrust into her.
Some women fought; Lily had seen them and silently applauded their courage, although resistance led to greater brutality and she had seen a young girl receive a severe injury to her spine.
Would she be brave enough? Would she cry out her innocence? Would it do any good if she did?
The senior medical man released her arm and she slumped against the wall. Her heart was thumping in dread, she could hardly breathe, she wanted to be sick.
He stared down at her, a supercilious smile crossing his handsome face.
Then, slowly, he nodded. Then he walked away.
He knew, just as she did, that she would not protest any more.
She could not bear to stay.
She endured a sleepless night, then another, and on the morning of the third day she sought an interview with her superior and said that sickness in the family necessitated her immediate return to England.
She was not allowed to go straight away. She endured two and a half weeks of working under the disapproving, disappointed eyes of nuns and nurses who thought the job was too much for her, that she was giving it up because she couldn’t stand the strain of long days, very hard work and little sleep.
She did not dare to tell them the truth.
She lived those days in terror of the senior medical man carrying out his threat. He seemed to appear before her all the time, that same sardonic smile on his face, that expression in the pale blue eyes that seemed to say, Where’s your brave stance now, Nurse? Not so easy to protest on behalf of others when you face the same thing yourself, is it?
She wouldn’t have denied the accusation even if she could. For he was absolutely right.
She endured the long journey home, the endless succession of trains and the troopship, eyes turned inwards so that she saw nothing. Nothing but her own deep shame – sometimes in her nightmares the terrible procedure with which the senior medical officer threatened her had already happened, was happening, and she woke screaming and sweating – and her cowardice. Back in England, reeling under the additional blow of discovering her adored Aunt Eliza had died while she was on her way home, she took the necessary steps to end her nursing career.
She was numb with anguish, heavy-hearted, grieving for her aunt. Grieving for the life she had loved.
And she had absolutely no idea what on earth she was going to do next.
It is long after midnight. Lily, cold, unmoving as stone, still sits beside her window.
I have done it, she thinks, and she is shaky and slightly nauseous. I have opened the door, gone back into my past, faced the horror I fled from.
She doesn’t know if she is relieved or regretful. She doesn’t know how she feels; it is too soon.
Slowly she stands up, straightening her stiff muscles. She goes to the bathroom, undresses, puts on her nightdress, turns back the bedclothes. The actions are automatic and she hardly knows what she does.
She lies in bed in the darkness. She is exhausted, both body and mind desperately in need of sleep.
But she doesn’t think it will come easily.
If at all.
TWELVE
Back at Kinver Street, Felix finds Marm in his chair by the fire, glass of whisky in his hand, and he responds gratefully to his friend’s invitation to join him.
‘It is late and you smell of the great outdoors, so I deduce you have—’ Marm begins, but Felix interrupts. His mind is so full of what he has discovered that he has little room for anything else and barely registers Marm’s words.
‘I need you to contact your friend in Chichester again,’ he says, taking a huge mouthful of whisky that burns pleasantly as it encounters his tongue and throat.
‘Douglas Blackmore?’
‘Yes. The Southsea man he put us on to – Michael Nicholls, the one who wrote the piece about the body under the pier – was useless, but I accept that’s not your friend Blackmore’s fault.’
‘Good of you,’ murmurs Marm. ‘What is it you want me to ask him?’
‘Whether he can dig up anything about the death of a woman found near Havant on the LB & SCR a year ago last autumn.’
Marm sits perfectly still, frowning slightly, staring into the fire. Felix might have suspected he hadn’t heard or was ignoring the question, but he has lived with Marm for long enough to recognize his thinking face. Marm, it appears, is capable of going inside himself and rummaging around in the great reference library in his head until he comes to the very item he requires. Sometimes the retrieval is swift; sometimes, as now, it takes a little longer.
Then Marm puts down his glass, holds up his hand with the forefinger raised and says, ‘Wait there.’
He goes through into his own room and to the big old desk beneath the window. He delves into a drawer, then, with a soft sound of impatience – ‘Of course, over a year ago,’ he mutters – moves to a tall filing cabinet. He flips quickly through files, then, with a satisfied ‘A-ha!’, comes back to the fireplace.
He indicates the thick file he has brought back with him. ‘My Lost Women file,’ he says.
Yes. Felix ought to have thought of this, for he is fully aware of its existence.
For Marmaduke Smithers is a crusader on behalf of women who suffer suspicious deaths; specifically, poor women, unimportant women, prostitutes; any woman whose demise has not, in Marm’s opinion, been treated with sufficient seriousness by the investigating authorities. He has been angry for a long time and, the very first time Felix met him, complained furiously that his editors constantly cut his articles about such women and deleted all the speculation and tub-thumping because it wasn’t what readers wanted to hear about. Since the case last year that was the cause of that initial meeting, however, public interest has been roused and the public conscience pricked, and Marm’s pieces have of late been in some demand.
He has kept his Lost Women file faithfully for years, adding cuttings and notes of his own speculations on each woman’s fate, and quite often since moving into Kinver Street, Felix’s final image as he retires for the night is of Marm sitting by the last of the fire, intent on the newest case in his file.
For there are always new cases.
‘Here it is,’ Marm says softly. ‘Havant and the railway line rang a bell. Knew I’d seen or heard something about that one.’ He takes a sip of whisky, his eyes flipping rapidly from side to side as he reads the cutting and his own notes. ‘The body was that of a woman in early middle age and the incident occurred when you said, back in the late autumn before last. She was modestly dressed in good-quality but far from new clothes, reasonably well fed and in adequate health if a little on the thin side, according to the post-mortem.’ Marm looks up at Felix. ‘She wasn’t a prostitute, there were no signs of violence or ill-usage that could not be explained by the fall from t
he train, so I filed it but did not pursue it.’
‘She was a school teacher,’ Felix says quietly.
Marm gives him a sharp look. ‘I can’t fight for all of them,’ he says curtly. ‘Besides, the coroner’s verdict was accidental death. They think she might have believed the train was stopping at Havant whereas it went straight on. It was late, not many passengers and nobody was waiting, and the driver decided to risk it.’
‘She was an intelligent woman!’ Felix protests. ‘She surely understood that you don’t alight from a moving train! Besides, if that had been the case she’d have been found at Havant, not – how many miles did you say it was down the track?’
‘Two and a half,’ Marm admits with obvious reluctance, glancing back at the cutting. ‘But she could have been dragged!’
He is sounding heated now, and Felix realizes his distress is due to guilt. But he’s right, Felix thinks, he can’t save everyone, and he does as much as any man could for the causes he does espouse. The poor bugger looks exhausted, and he has a nasty cough.
Filled with affection for his friend, he says, ‘I’m sorry, Marm. I know you can’t pursue every instance of a woman’s death that could be murder but was probably an accident.’
Marm huffs a bit but seems to have recovered his equanimity. Then he says, ‘Who was she?’ and Felix tells him.
‘How did they identify her?’ he mutters.
‘Did they?’ Felix asks, then, immediately answering his own question, ‘Yes, of course they did, because someone went to the hostel in Cambridge asking about her belongings.’
Marm has gone back to the cutting again. ‘Ah, yes, I see. She had a little purse hidden away in an inside pocket,’ he says. ‘Her name had been written carefully in ink, and there was a small amount of money, her train ticket and a piece of paper with the address of the hostel neatly printed in what is described as a lady’s hand.’ He turns his gaze to the fire. ‘Hmm.’ He sounds thoughtful.
‘What are you thinking?’ Felix demands.
‘I’m wondering,’ Marm says slowly, ‘what happened to her possessions. She’d have had a handbag at least, and possibly a valise as well.’
‘But there’s no mention of them?’
‘Not only is there no mention but the coroner remarks upon the lack,’ Marm replies. ‘Says it’s a shabby sort of thing, when a woman dies in such a dreadful accident and someone sees fit to steal her belongings. The police searched the line, you see, and the train, but found nothing.’
‘If she was killed,’ Felix says, the thought developing even as he speaks, ‘then wouldn’t the perpetrator make quite sure there would be no way of identifying her? He’d have taken the handbag and valise because they’d have been easy to spot, but he must have missed the little purse.’
And Marm, looking at him with the light of battle kindled in his eyes, says, ‘Yes.’
On Saturday morning Felix is at 3, Hob’s Court soon after half-past eight. He is only too aware that in Lily’s absence it is up to him to keep the Bureau running, and that three days have now passed since his brief visit on Wednesday.
There is a promising amount of post, some of it still where it fell from the postman’s hands on the mat just inside the door, some of it placed on Felix’s desk, undoubtedly by Mrs Clapper. Ripping open the half-dozen envelopes, Felix is happy to find a cheque from a satisfied but dilatory client who should have settled up two months ago and a thank-you letter from the fiancé of the jealous young woman who accused him of running an opium den. (She broke off the engagement, the letter says, told me all the hullaballoo was too much for her nerves, which was rich since it was her started it – except that you did really by kissing her sister under the mistletoe, Felix thinks – and I’m now courting her sister, who is a great deal easier-going and hence this letter.) The remaining items are publicity circulars, which Felix chucks in the waste-paper basket. He puts the cheque aside for paying into the bank later, files the thank-you letter in the appropriate place and then wanders through into Lily’s inner sanctum.
On her desk is a folded sheet of paper addressed in a firm hand to Miss Lily, the writing heavily underlined, as is the PRIVATE in block capitals in the top left corner.
Felix suspects it is from Mrs Clapper, and his instinct is to respect her request for privacy and leave the note for Lily on her return. But then he reasons that the Bureau is his responsibility just now, that Mrs Clapper’s communication may be urgent, that it could even be to do with a new client, and that such speculations are pointless anyway since he knows full well he’s going to unfold the paper and see what Mrs Clapper has to say.
It is just as well he does.
Miss Lily I do not like to bother you with this and I know the Boorow is your business and it is not my place to interfeer but when Persons of a certain Type come knocking on the door demanding to see Mr Felix and won’t take no for an answer when told he is not here and I do not know when he will be and then tell me I have to give out his address when I know full well that is not allowed well it is TOO MUCH and I feel I must say something specially seeing as there was a smell of alcohol and also flowery perfume and she was dressed in evening clothes seemingly well I have to speak my mind hoping you will understand yours faithfully B Clapper Mrs.
Mrs Clapper’s handwriting is that of the school girl she was several decades ago, round, clear but largely unformed and she has no use for commas. Felix speculates on what B might stand for … Beryl? Bertha? Bernadette? Bianca? He grins at the unlikeliness of Bianca, but you never know, and—
Then, furious with himself for his time-wasting and his inattention, he realizes who this perfume-and-alcohol-smelling visitor dressed in what looked to Mrs Clapper like evening clothes must have been.
When was the visit?
He scans the letter again, searching for a date, and there it is at the top of the page: Thursday noon.
The day before yesterday.
Felix replaces the folded page exactly where he found it, collects the cheque from his own desk, throws himself into his outdoor clothes and runs out of the office.
He stops only to pay in the cheque and then takes a tram to the West End. Only when he is trundling along the King’s Road does it occur to him that Violetta is not a morning person and it is still not ten o’clock. He curses under his breath for a good half-minute, then works out a plan of action. He knows where she is performing at present, having met her outside the Aphrodite Theatre only last Monday, and so he will go there first. It’s Saturday, he reassures himself, and there is certain to be a matinée performance, so Violetta will surely arrive at the theatre in good time and maybe even around noon, which is only a little over two hours away.
He is right and there is a matinée today.
He is wrong about Violetta arriving in good time; or possibly his idea of what constitutes good time differs significantly from hers. He goes for a cup of coffee to fill in the time until midday, stands outside the theatre for an hour watching the comings and goings, becomes so cold that he cannot feel his hands or feet and returns to the small eating house for a hasty bowl of soup with bread and cheese, all the while peering out of the window at the stage door, and he is back at his post outside when Violetta finally turns up at ten to two for the half-past two performance.
‘Felix, come in, I want to talk to you!’ she calls out over her shoulder, gliding elegantly up the steps to the door. She exchanges a few muttered words with the heavily built man in the cubicle just inside, indicating Felix and presumably saying it’s all right to let him in, then sweeps off down a dark and dank little corridor smelling of very old sweat and, strangely, also carnations and curry, turns left and right as she weaves a way through a maze of passages until finally she flings open the door of a small room with a table and chair set before a large mirror, a sofa covered with cushions and a thick blanket and a rack on which there are several brightly coloured outfits which Felix guesses are Violetta’s costumes.
‘Sit,’ she says, pointing t
o the sofa, ‘we’ll have to talk while I prepare. Maudie!’ The last word is yelled so loudly that Felix’s ears ring, and before the echoes die a small woman dressed entirely in shades of brown comes scurrying in, clean towels and what looks like a voluminous white petticoat over her arm. She notices Felix on the sofa but then totally ignores him – perhaps she is used to strange men in Violetta’s dressing room – and proceeds to set out potions in pots of various sizes and a jam jar stuck with make-up brushes.
‘I came to see you,’ Violetta says, a note of accusation in her tone. ‘You weren’t there.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I had leads to follow up on the coast and then a meeting with Lily.’
‘She’s all right?’ Violetta’s huge and beautiful brown eyes meet his in her mirror.
‘Yes, she’s quite all right.’ He manages to quell the instant of fear he feels. ‘What did you want to see me about?’
Again she meets his eyes, this time sliding her own in a sideways glance at her dresser. ‘Oh, it’ll keep till later. If you have time, you could watch the performance, and then you can take me out to tea afterwards.’
He says courteously, ‘There’s nothing I’d like more.’
He would have said if asked that spending close on two hours sitting in a crowded theatre watching a lurid melodrama (about an abandoned woman searching for her lost daughter, taken from her in infancy by her husband who, unbeknownst to the woman, was secretly a Russian prince who needed a daughter to offer in marriage as a pawn to further his own ambitions) was the last thing he would either want or enjoy. But he had reckoned without Violetta da Rosa’s skill as an actress, her luminous beauty and her enduring sexual appeal, despite the growing tally of her years, for virtually every man in the audience, most definitely including him.
He joins in the enthusiastic applause, and Violetta is brought back to the stage for three curtain calls, modestly bowing and wiping a surreptitious tear from her eye as she nods and smiles. ‘You dear, dear people,’ she exclaims with apparent spontaneity over the limelights, ‘how very welcome you make me feel!’