Two for Sorrow (32 page)

He found Geraldine Ashby keeping company with a bottle of cognac. ‘Is the bitch pressing charges, then?' she asked as he walked in.

Penrose sat down opposite her. ‘If you mean Miss Bannerman, I seem to have forgotten to give her the opportunity.'

He smiled, and she looked surprised. ‘Good God—two understanding policemen in one day. In that case, I'll forgive you for preventing me from finishing what I started. Bannerman got off lightly, which is more than Marjorie did, by the sound of it.'

She nodded towards the bottle, but Penrose shook his head. ‘Not just now, thanks. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?'

‘Be my guest. As you can see, I'm not going anywhere.'

She spoke evenly, and he would never have guessed the level of the bottle from her voice, but the intoxication which Fallowfield had spoken of was obvious in her eyes and in the way her hand shook when she lit a cigarette. ‘Did Marjorie
ever tell you anything about her family when you saw her at Motley?'

‘No,' she said instantly, but Penrose's initial disappointment was short-lived. ‘She didn't know anything about them herself.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Just that. The first time I met her, she asked me what it felt like to be able to trace your family back for generations, because she only knew her parents and her brothers and sisters. I know she didn't get on with either her mother or her father these days, but she said even when she was younger they wouldn't tell her anything about the rest of her family.'

‘So she was curious about her own history?'

‘Yes—or rather about its absence. She asked me how she might find out more about it, but I told her I wasn't the best person to give that sort of advice—if I want to know anything about my family, I just go and look at a portrait on a wall. I suggested that she was better off not knowing, but she just pointed out that it was easy for me to say that, and of course she was right. She was right about a lot of things, actually.'

‘Such as?'

‘Such as making the most of your chances and standing on your own two feet. I don't think she meant that as a criticism, although she'd have been justified—let's face it, I live entirely on a monthly allowance which is almost offensively generous. But she was just being honest. I suppose that's what got her killed, is it?'

‘Quite possibly. We don't know yet, but we
will
find out and what you've just told me helps.'

‘Does it?' she asked. ‘Well, I'm glad, because it doesn't help
me. You know, sometimes it feels as though every bright thing in this world is snuffed out as soon as it begins to flourish.' She looked directly at him for the first time, and he was struck by how vulnerable she seemed. ‘Most of us suspect that, but we spend our time trying to convince ourselves otherwise; in your job, you must know it to be true. I don't know how you do it.'

He was tempted to tell her that neither did he, but such an admission was hardly appropriate. Instead, he stood up to go. ‘I'm sorry about what's happened,' he said quietly. ‘To Marjorie, and to Elizabeth.'

She raised her glass sadly, and he left her to it. ‘Looks like Miss Bannerman was right, then,' Fallowfield said when he was back in the foyer. ‘Marjorie found out too much for her own good. Do you want to postpone Miss Size and go straight back to the Yard to see Baker?'

Penrose thought about it. ‘No, she'll have a tight schedule and it'll take Waddingham and Merrifield a while to get over to Campbell Road and back. We'll stick to what we said, but don't hang about.'

He was on his way out the door when Fallowfield called him back. ‘I've just remembered, Sir—it's something Miss Tey said.' Penrose looked at him curiously. ‘It was the other day,' Fallowfield continued guiltily, trying to ignore his inspector's raised eyebrow. ‘I bumped into her and she happened to say that she was interested in Sach and Walters—so we had a chat about it.'

‘Oh yes? You never mentioned it, Bill.'

‘No, Sir—you were too busy. Anyway, I might be wrong, but I'm sure she said that one of the women who gave evidence at the trial was called Edwards.'

‘Edwards? As in Maria Baker's family?' Penrose was suddenly serious.

‘Yes. This Edwards woman lived in the house. It was her evidence that sealed Sach's fate, apparently. You've just got time to talk to Miss Tey if she's here,' Fallowfield added, trying not to look too smug. ‘She might not be Miss bloody Marple, Sir, but she's got a lot of notes.'

Penrose smiled, and went to reception to ask where he might find Josephine.

I sat in the car coming home this afternoon and wanted you so much that I stopped breathing. Are your eyes blue or grey, or grey-blue? Grey, aren't they? Perhaps I should never see you again. Perhaps it will take not one, but a hundred and one years to get over you. It's odd, this vivid physical realisation of someone whose body one has never known, and amusing to be scunnered at every physical approach to a new person by a love months old. You are like a ghost, my dear, coming between me and every other human being, but I'll lay you yet—in the accepted sense of the word. And London is lovelier when you are in it.

Josephine put the pages of Marta's diary down for a moment and walked over to the window. The snow in Cavendish Square was looking a little the worse for wear now, having been trampled underfoot by a procession of excited shop workers taking full advantage of their lunch hours, but at her level it was still fresh and magical, settling peacefully on the branches of the trees and, across to her left, providing a striking contrast to one of the city's finer bronzes. The sculpture was of a mother and child, and Josephine had found herself admiring it more on this visit than she ever had before; the stark, tender intensity of the bond between its figures resonated poignantly with the book she was writing.

For the moment, though, her work had been all but forgotten. The narrow bed was covered in a sea of blue paper, and she sat back down amongst it, curled her feet under her, and began to read again; had this been a book, she would have been fascinated by emotions so eloquently and intimately described; as it was, her confusion at being the object of them destroyed any pleasure in the writing.

I am very happy. Last night, I dreamt that we kissed. This is the first time I have dreamed of you. I have not allowed my imaginings to run riot; I have taken nothing from you in my thoughts. But last night, just after I went to sleep, you were there. You moved towards me and I knew, surprisingly, that you would kiss me. I lay looking at you and you took my face in your hands and kissed me. And then I awoke and heard the clock strike in the darkness. This morning, I know more about you than all your books and spoken words have taught me, and if you ask how one dreamed kiss could have shown me this, I cannot answer.

A knock at the door pulled her sharply back from Marta's world, and she looked up impatiently. ‘Come in,' she said, and then: ‘Archie! What on earth are you doing here? Why didn't you telephone?'

‘Don't take this personally, but I didn't really come here to see you.'

‘No?' She smiled at him, and started to gather up the pages. ‘Well, you certainly know how to humble a girl.'

‘Sorry, but I'm here to work and there are a couple of things that you might be able to help me with. Is this a bad time?'

‘Of course not. I was just reading a letter from a friend.'

‘Obviously one you haven't seen for a while.'

She looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Nothing. It just looks like there's a lot of news to catch up on.' He looked curiously at her. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine. I wasn't expecting you, that's all.' As she looked around for the envelope, he picked it up from the floor and handed it to her. ‘It's been a bit of a morning. Shall we go downstairs and have some coffee? You probably don't want to be surrounded by this mess.'

‘I don't mind if you don't.' He pointed to the desk, which was covered in her notes for the new book. ‘It's actually this mess that interests me. I need some information about the Sach and Walters case.'

‘Do you?' she asked, surprised. ‘Why? What's happened?'

Briefly, Archie summarised the events of the morning for her. ‘Good God, how awful,' she said when he'd finished. ‘How are Ronnie and Lettice?'

‘Shaken and devastated, but refusing to admit quite how badly it's affected them. They're moving in downstairs as we speak.'

‘In here?'

‘Yes. Obviously the workroom's out of bounds so they've talked Celia Bannerman into letting them prepare for the gala on the premises.'

‘I'm surprised it's still going ahead.'

‘Well, the first thought was to cancel it, but I think they feel they owe it to Marjorie. There was much talk about keeping up the morale of the rest of the staff, but the same applies to them. At least if they're working, they won't dwell on it too much.'

‘I suppose so. I'll go down and see them in a minute. But
first tell me what you need to know.' She picked up a sheaf of papers from the desk. ‘I can't believe this is happening. I've been living with these people, and I know there's only thirty years between us, but it seemed so much longer. They felt so safe, so …'

‘So dead?'

‘Yes, I suppose that's exactly what I mean. You really think Marjorie's mother might be the Edwards who lived with the Sachs?'

‘It seems too big a coincidence otherwise. Tell me what you know about her.'

‘I've got all the notes from the newspaper reports of the case, but it's probably quickest if you read this,' she said, removing the most recent chapter from the rest of the manuscript. ‘Everything she tells the police in there is taken directly from the evidence she gave at the trial. I've moved it forward to bring her into the story earlier, but it's pretty much verbatim. You'll see how crucial her statement was to Sach's conviction.'

Archie took the pages and read through them carefully. ‘This implies that Edwards and Jacob Sach were already having an affair before Amelia was arrested.'

‘Yes, but I don't know if that's true,' she admitted. ‘All I will say is that the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that she's the linchpin of what went on. At best, she knew what was happening and turned a blind eye; at worst, she was involved and got away with it by providing the evidence for a conviction.'

‘But you're not saying that Amelia Sach was completely innocent, and Edwards and Jacob Sach conspired to get her out of the way?'

‘I wouldn't go that far, although it has crossed my mind. No, I just think that a lot of people were doing what she was doing, and punishment for baby farming was a lottery, depending on which judge tried your case, whether or not you were allowed a decent defence, and who was around to stab you in the back. Sach and Walters were convicted on the basis of one child's death, but no one bothered to look into what happened to all the other babies who passed through; on the other hand, some of their contemporaries escaped the gallows because the babies they farmed were abandoned rather than killed—but those children would have died, too, if they hadn't been found so quickly, so where do you draw the line?'

It was a rhetorical question, but it echoed what Celia Bannerman had said about the police's attitude to the crime. ‘Thanks,' he said. ‘This really helps, and I'll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, do you know a housemaid called Lucy Peters?'

‘I've met a girl called Lucy here a couple of times—I don't know her second name. What's she got to do with it? Don't tell me—she's Walters's long-lost niece. It would be just like you to come up with a complete set of living, breathing people and leave me grubbing around in old newsprint.'

He laughed. ‘No, nothing like that—at least I don't think so. She was a friend of Marjorie Baker's.' She looked thoughtful. ‘What is it?'

‘She was up here the other night. She said she'd brought a vase up, but she was reading something I'd written about Sach and Walters, and she was crying. She left before I could ask her what was wrong. In hindsight, I probably wasn't very kind to her—I was cross because I found her reading my work.'

‘Do you know exactly what she was reading?' Archie asked.

‘This, I think.' She sifted through the pages and gave him another chapter. ‘You don't think she had anything to do with the murder, do you?'

‘No, not really. But I'm hoping she might be able to tell me if Marjorie was up to something that could have got her killed.' He read what he'd been given, and then said: ‘Of course, if Marjorie had found out the Baker-Sach connection and confided in Lucy, that would explain why this was so upsetting. Can I borrow it?' She nodded and he stood up to go. ‘I'd better make a move. I need to phone the information about Edwards through to the station, and then I've got an appointment at Holloway. Sorry this has been such a hit-and-run visit.'

‘Don't worry, I understand.' She thought for a moment, and then said: ‘Would it be inappropriate for me to ask for a lift to Holloway?'