Mirabelle crawled out and picked herself up. She brushed down her skirt. The children were now chewing too quickly to enjoy the food. Peter stuffed a piece of potato into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.
‘Father Sean had gone,’ the little girl said between mouthfuls.
Mirabelle turned.
‘Gone?’
‘He’d left before the doorbell. And it must have been two men. There were hats on the hooks, you see.’
‘I thought you didn’t see anything? Peter said the door was closed.’
‘I went to the lav.’ The girl stuffed in another bite of sausage. ‘And I saw two hats on the hooks. Brown ones. Sometimes the nurses have friends over.’
‘Do they have friends over often?’
‘Sometimes,’ the girl said.
‘Men?’
‘Sometimes men. Sometimes ladies. It’s up to them, isn’t it?’
‘And there were only men’s hats on the rack that night?’
‘Yes, miss.’
Father Grogan, Mirabelle recalled, wore a black hat consistent with his station.
‘I’d like a dolly,’ the girl continued. ‘They left my dolly at home when they sent me away. I’m lonely without her.’
‘I’ll keep you company, Laura,’ Peter said cheerfully.
Laura started coughing again. ‘You’re a boy,’ she managed, between heaving for breath.
Mirabelle glanced at the doorway. There was hardly any time.
‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’
Outside, she slipped along the side of the lawn, found a foothold and pulled herself back up over the wall. Two men, dressed in whites, looked up from their conversation in front of the nets as she landed on the grass at the other side.
‘I say,’ one said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I left a cardigan,’ Mirabelle managed. It had been a good enough excuse for Sister Taylor. ‘I was here the other day, in the pavilion. I thought the gate would be locked so I climbed over the back to check.’
The man’s gaze lighted on the back wall. ‘I don’t have the key to the pavilion,’ he said. ‘But if anything’s been left, we have a lost property box. The caretaker will be able to help you tomorrow morning, madam. He’s going to roll the field. He’ll be here first thing. You can enter by the gate, you know.’
‘Thank you,’ Mirabelle said crisply. ‘Wasted effort, then.’
‘Yes, rather.’
The men stared as she retreated. She thanked her stars that the English hated poking their noses into other people’s business.
‘What an extraordinary thing,’ she heard one say to the other as her heels clicked on to the paving stones and she turned up the street. Those poor kids, she thought. Next Thursday seemed a million miles off. It had been a long week already.
Chapter Nineteen
Undercover: to disguise identity to avoid detection
Mirabelle was up on Church Street by the time the sun set. She liked the edges of the day – the twilights and the sunrises. The world smelled different in those moments – something in the air changed. In summer it was a fresh smell and in winter it was salty. In the winter, on mornings when fog rolled in on the tide, she loved walking through it. There hadn’t been any fog for months. She found an old bench beside the post office and settled down to wait. Then she ran over the children’s story and placed these new facts in her timetable of events on the night of the murder – visitors arriving after she had left and nurses running up and down stairs, not simply listening as she’d been told. A bus passed and she checked her watch. It was still too early. Her stomach growled and she felt surprised. Mirabelle rarely felt hungry but the last few days she’d certainly had an appetite – and not only for whisky. Tonight she’d have the fish, she decided. Dover sole swimming in butter, with spinach.
She dragged her thoughts away from Dr Williams and the dining room at the Old Ship Hotel and instead tried to focus on the hats in the hallway. Father Grogan was on his way home, perhaps already dead, by the time the men had arrived. But where was Sister Taylor? Had she called the men to aid her escape or was she gone already? Laura had said the nurses had friends to visit. But why? Was there more to the sister than there had seemed? Or was she a victim in this, rather than a perpetrator? Either way, Nurse Uma, Nurse Frida and Nurse Berenice had all lied, not only to her, but to Robinson as well.
At two minutes past the hour, the bus approached and Mirabelle put out her hand to flag it down. She stationed herself to the rear of the carriage on the left and bought a ticket from the conductor, trying to make herself as small as possible in the seat. She was glad, again, that she’d chosen a dark dress and jacket today. She pulled her hat down as far as possible and comforted herself with the fact that people’s eyes moved to the right, naturally. She should be at her least noticeable in the back seat in the left-hand corner.
As the bus drew up at the next stop she waited, holding her breath and, sure enough, she heard them getting on. The chatter of women as they took their seats, as they had before, halfway up on the right-hand side. She recognised Frida’s voice first – out of breath from the rush to meet the bus’s timetable.
‘Little monkey,’ she declared. ‘It’s his birthday next week and he’d sell his soul for a cake.’
‘We should bake him a cake.’ This was Uma.
‘And then we’d be at it all the time, wouldn’t we? Cakes for every one of them. I don’t think so.’ Frida was adamant.
‘All the time.’ This repetition was a third voice, echoing Nurse Frida’s stout rebuff. Berenice. It was the first time Mirabelle had heard her speak.
The bus chugged away from the stop. Along the road, the dark windows of shops gave way to the electric light of pubs and restaurants and the neon of the cinema on the main street. From the upper deck, passengers disembarked for the dance hall. The conductor hummed a Vera Lynn song. ‘Not that old stuff, darling,’ a cheeky boy wearing a French navy suit winked at her. He drew deeply on a Capstan. ‘You got to get with it, you know. Doris Day and all that.’
The woman’s glare saw him off soundly at the next stop but she gave up humming.
‘Well,’ Mirabelle heard Frida say, ‘another day, another dollar.’
‘At least it was a quiet one,’ Berenice replied.
Uma didn’t join in; instead she looked out of the window, resting her forehead on the cool glass.
Then, just before Old Steine, Nurse Frida stood up. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
The other two made a cheerful sound in reply. Mirabelle got to her feet. It would be difficult to walk past Uma without being spotted. These things were often about timing. She pulled her jacket around her frame and turned away slightly as the bus slowed. Outside the window, the street was teeming with people. Someone shouted. Another voice squealed. Uma looked at her feet and Mirabelle took her chance, walked smoothly down the aisle, and stepped on to the pavement. She wondered if she had got away with it. Her heart raced. She didn’t dare raise her eyes to check if Uma was staring in her direction or, worse, following her.
The bus pulled away from the stop. Ahead, Frida cut past Brighton Pavilion, which was in darkness, and Mirabelle made to follow swiftly, glancing behind to check one more time. The bus was at the lights at Old Steine now, the exhaust chugging as it turned left. Uma and Berenice were still on board, both of them looking out of the window in the other direction. She’d got away with it.
At night the streets north of the town centre were quiet. The streetlights gave off an eerie glow like little clouds, lit from behind. A few local pubs were scattered around the Lanes but the rest of the buildings were shops, mostly. Nurse Frida crossed and crossed again, her cape swinging from side to side as she kept up a vigorous pace. She turned up one of the side streets and Mirabelle followed, keeping her distance. The houses were two up and two down – old brick terraces with outdoor toilets. Many people were abandoning them for the new flats out in the suburbs that had hot water
systems and plumbed bathrooms. As a result whole terraces had fallen into disrepair. A fringe of trailing ivy grew from one roof into the gutter. The window frames flaked. On the upper floors, a broken window was patched with brown paper.
Nurse Frida drew a key from her pocket and let herself in at a front door about halfway up the left-hand side. Mirabelle watched. This terrace seemed fully occupied. It could be tricky. On streets like these, neighbours looked out for each other and the accommodation was cramped. She leaned against a wall a few doors down and sighed. She might as well check it out from the rear, she decided, but she knew already that there was no easy way in.
At the back, the small, square gardens formed a grid, the alleyway behind them strewn with debris and litter. The lights in the houses were on, right along the row. At one end of the alley, a little boy kicked a half-deflated football against a wall. Mirabelle crouched to speak to him.
‘Do you know the lady who lives in that house?’ she pointed. ‘She’s a nurse.’
‘Yeah. Course I do. And her mum.’
‘She lives with her mother?’
The boy bit his lip, as if he suddenly realised he had said something he shouldn’t.
‘I’m not a grass,’ he said. ‘I’m not peaching. Not me.’
Mirabelle slipped her hand into her purse and drew out a sixpence. The boy licked his lips. He did not take his eyes off the coin. ‘I wonder if you might be a businessman?’
He smiled. He was about to say something. He had taken a breath in order to do so, when a familiar figure wheeled around the corner, mostly in shade with the light behind him. Superintendent Alan McGregor crossed his arms. The boy’s gaze flicked between the two adults.
‘You’re crazy, woman. I swear, you’ll be the end of me,’ McGregor said.
‘What are you doing here?’ Mirabelle tried not to let the ire sound in her voice.
‘I might ask you the same. But I know what you’re doing.’
‘You do, do you?’
McGregor shooed the boy away. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You’d better get going or you’ll feel the back of my hand.’
The child looked on mournfully as Mirabelle put the sixpence back into her purse.
‘Go on,’ McGregor repeated, and drew back his arm as if he might strike.
The boy didn’t wait to see if he meant it – he scooped up his football and took off down the lane.
‘You didn’t have to scare him.’
‘At least I still scare somebody. What did I tell you about not getting involved?’
‘I don’t have to do what you tell me, Superintendent.’
‘Actually, you do, Belle. I am an officer of the law.’
‘I’m obviously on the right track then.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’re here.’
‘I followed you, you ninny.’
‘Followed me? Alan, that’s outrageous.’
‘You’re the one being outrageous. One of my guys saw you climbing over the back wall of the children’s home, for heaven’s sake. He was in Sister Taylor’s bedsit. I’m lucky he called it in. Have you been drinking?’
Mirabelle felt a twist of anger in her gut. The setting sun had made mirrors of the windows on that elevation. She had spotted neither the man nor the superintendent. He must have tailed her all the way along Church Street into town. McGregor’s technique was good.
‘You weren’t on the bus, were you?’ she checked.
‘I was in a Maria. With a driver. Because I’m a police officer, not a madwoman.’
Mirabelle looked down. Her heels boasted a thin smear of dried mud that rose about half an inch. ‘What was your man doing in the bedsit?’ she said, at length.
‘I’m not getting drawn into that. But I’ll tell you what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t following around an innocent nurse and planning to break in at the rear of her property.’
‘I’m not so sure she’s innocent. And how do you know I’d have broken in? I might not have. I hadn’t decided.’
McGregor let out a sigh of frustration. ‘Form,’ he said. ‘Let me take you home.’
Mirabelle cast a glance over her shoulder. He wasn’t going to let her continue and she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next anyway. Still, she wanted to engage him.
‘Two men came to the home, Alan. After Father Grogan left. The nurses lied.’
‘Two men?’
‘The night Father Grogan died.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The children told me. That’s why I climbed over the wall. To speak to them.’
‘Really, Mirabelle. You’re impossible. You can’t go interrogating children. They make highly unreliable witnesses and they’re minors.’
‘Well, you should have asked them at least. Children aren’t stupid and one or two of the kids in the home are really very bright. Peter is sharp as a tack.’
‘Robinson already interrogated them. He interviewed everybody.’
Mirabelle waved a hand to dismiss the inspector. ‘Robinson,’ she said. ‘You know better than that.’
‘All right. What did these children say they saw?’
‘Hats. Two hats. Brown. Men’s. In the hallway. On the night in question. And they heard a good deal of coming and going too. The doorbell went late at night – after Grogan had left.’
‘Thank you for the information, Miss Bevan. I’ll look into it. Now.’ He pointed to the top of the alleyway. Mirabelle stalked past him. He was a spoilsport, she thought. It wasn’t fair.
McGregor accompanied her to the Maria which had cut its lights. He opened the door and she slipped into the back seat. ‘Take Miss Bevan home,’ he instructed the driver.
‘You aren’t coming?’
‘No,’ he grinned. ‘Well, somebody better question that nurse, don’t you think? Now that we’re all here. And that person is me because I’m a police detective. Not you because you’re a member of the public. You aren’t to approach Nurse Frida, Mirabelle. You’re a suspect. Do you understand? Give me your word.’
Mirabelle nodded curtly. ‘All right,’ she said.
The engine started. She sat forward in her seat. McGregor was enjoying this. He grinned from the kerb and tipped his hat. When the car turned the corner he had already disappeared back up the road. Mirabelle checked her watch.
‘Constable,’ she said, ‘I’m going to dinner with a friend. Could you take me to the Old Ship Hotel?’
‘Doctor Williams, is it, miss?’ The man’s tone was cheerful.
Mirabelle crossed her ankles.
‘Why do you say that?’ She was aware her voice sounded clipped.
‘We’re not as stupid as you think we are, Miss Bevan. We know what’s what. I’ll drop you off, shall I?’
Mirabelle felt tears welling up. It was humiliating. McGregor. Williams. The way everybody knew. Worse was what was left unsaid. What they thought of her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother. Just take me home.’
The car glided westwards and, when it pulled up, the driver watched her walk up the path at the Lawns and open the front door with her key. Upstairs, the note she’d left on the door was gone. She didn’t give the man in the car the satisfaction of switching on the lights so he would know she was safe inside. Instead, she stood like a shadow in the window. He waited for a minute or two, peered, squinted, and then started the engine, turning the car around and parking properly.
Mirabelle poured a full glass of whisky, hardly looking. She kicked off her shoes and wandered through to the bedroom. Outside the window, the autumn moon hung huge in the sky. She sipped the whisky but it didn’t cover what she was feeling. A tear rolled down her cheek and she gulped back a sob. ‘Bloody McGregor. Bloody Grogan. Bloody kids,’ she whispered as she reached out and pulled the curtain across the glass, obscuring the wide night sky and the dark police car below. She drank the glass far too quickly. Then she lay back on the pillows. It didn’t take long before she was fast asleep.
> Chapter Twenty
A foul morn may turn to a fair day
The hangover was dreadful. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to focus. She’d only had that glassful – a double perhaps. It couldn’t have been more. Or did one glass constitute four measures? And on an empty stomach. The sound of voices wafted up from the street – laughter like the chatter of crows and the sound of an engine as a car passed. Then she realised the doorbell was ringing.
She got to her feet and stumbled across the drawing room and into the hallway. When she opened the door, Doctor Williams stood before her. He carried a copy of The Times, a paper bag which she could smell contained some kind of baked goods, a small bottle of milk and a flask.
‘I made coffee,’ he said. ‘I realised you wouldn’t have milk.’
Mirabelle leaned against the doorframe. He kissed her cheek and came inside, laying the shopping on the table. She followed him into the drawing room. Without fuss, he took off his hat and jacket and disappeared into the kitchen. A few seconds later he emerged with cups and saucers that Mirabelle only vaguely recognised. He must have found them in one of the unopened boxes.
‘Doctor’s orders,’ he said, pouring the coffee. ‘And it looks as if you could do with some aspirin. Do you have any?’
‘In the kitchen,’ she managed. ‘The drawer.’
He fetched two and a glass of water, holding out the medicine and watching as she swallowed the little pills.
‘I know what this looks like,’ she said.
‘I’m a doctor,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I’ve taken the Hippocratic oath. So I can’t berate you for standing me up last night. Not until you’re restored to health. I have to do what’s best for you.’
He poured the coffee and positioned two chairs at the window. ‘It’s a nice day out there,’ he said.
Mirabelle gave in. She sat down and sipped the coffee. It tasted good. A breeze slipped over the lip of the sill and brushed her skin. The movement of the sea was hypnotic. He sat next to her. She was suddenly aware that the air smelled sweet. For a minute or two the silence felt restorative, then she felt the need to speak.
Indian Summer Page 17