Jowett rubbed the back of his head. ‘It’s not so simple when you put it like that. Sergeant, the more I look at this, the more conscious I am that we are dealing with a very resourceful criminal.’
‘He could be across the Channel already.’
‘Then we shall extradite.’
‘On what charge, sir?’ Cribb knew as well as Jowett that an extradition order was obtainable only for serious crimes.
There was an awkward silence.
‘We can’t charge the man with murder when his wife is already convicted of the crime,’ said Jowett. ‘Not unless we can prove they were jointly responsible. No, by Jove, we can’t charge Cromer unless his wife is pardoned. Once the fellow gets to the Continent, he’ll be clean away. What is to be done, Sergeant?’
‘Is the Commissioner in his office?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘I want permission to question Miriam Cromer,’ said Cribb for the third time.
SATURDAY, 23rd JUNE
‘That solicitor is here. Him that goes red to the tips of his ears when you call him Simon.’
The prisoner stopped. For twenty minutes she had been circling the exercise yard with her bed-blanket round her shoulders. It was cool in the small quadrangle bounded by cell-blocks. The sun penetrated there for four hours a day, between eleven and three. This Saturday morning it had just begun its slow descent down the granite wall.
‘He is waiting in the cell,’ Bell told her.
‘Alone?’
‘Miss, if you please.’
‘Miss,’ the prisoner tonelessly repeated.
‘Who else did you expect-the blooming Home Secretary? Yes, he’s on his own.’
Without hurrying, she crossed the cobbles to the arched doorway leading up to the condemned cells, Bell and Hawkins following.
The young solicitor jerked to his feet as if it was the Queen. Today he was in green tweeds. Each day it was different. When he smiled, boyish creases formed at the corners of his mouth.
‘Miriam.’
‘No touching,’ Bell cautioned.
The prisoner gave him a faint smile and guided her skirts round the table to her stool.
He remained standing while the wardresses found seats. He was a charmer, this one.
‘My dear, how are you this morning?’
‘Impatient for news, as usual,’ she answered.
He nodded. ‘And you shall have some. There has been a development. If it had not kept me so busy I should have come to tell you last night.’ He paused, measuring his words. ‘My dear, Howard is missing. The police want to question him.’
Bell caught her breath at the news and looked at the prisoner. She had widened her eyes a fraction, but she passed no comment.
‘I reminded the officer who informed me, of course, that Howard is under no obligation to notify the police of his movements,’ Allingham went on. ‘From the way I was questioned, you would think he was wanted on some criminal charge. Oh, they had learned from the servants at Park Lodge that he took a portmanteau with him. Scotland Yard seems to interpret that as tantamount to fleeing from justice.’
‘Are they pursuing him?’
‘I understand there are men looking for him at all the ports.’
‘And if they find him?’
Allingham shrugged. ‘If they propose to detain him, they must charge him with something.’
Bell exchanged a glance with Hawkins. From the prisoner’s composure, you would think she was indifferent to her husband’s predicament.
She said a curious thing. ‘Then it’s nearly over, Simon.’
His face lit with encouragement. ‘You have been marvellous. So brave! Yes, nearly over. No doubt they will come to pester you with more questions while they have you in this place, but you must refuse to say one word unless I am present. That is your right.’
She let out a small breath, as if his words had fortified her. A tinge of colour had come back to her cheeks. Exactly why Howard Cromer’s disappearance had lifted her spirit, the wardresses did not understand. They drew conclusions from what they saw. There had been opportunity enough in two weeks locked in a cell with the prisoner eight hours a day to read signals in her voice and expression. She might be sitting upright on her stool with her hands held together, but she was elated by what the solicitor had told her. If she had got the chance she would have hugged him. Between these two there were things going on.
‘Simon, which of the detectives questioned you about Howard? Was it the sharp-faced man with side- whiskers or the second one, with the beard, who pretended not to be a detective at all?’
‘The first.’ Allingham frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, because I believe I have seen the second. I was not supposed to, but while I was in the exercise yard this morning I happened to look up and saw a face at a window two floors up, staring down at me. He was the man Howard photographed, I am certain-the broad, scarred face, black beard and prominent eyes. Even the butterfly collar. As soon as I caught those codfish eyes he disappeared from view. I had to smile.’
Bell darted a warning glance at Hawkins. A word out of turn now, and either of them could be up before the governor. There were things it was forbidden under any circumstances to discuss with a condemned prisoner.
Allingham had an explanation. ‘Probably he was put on to the case after your trial. He would have had no opportunity of seeing you, except in photographs. He would be better employed meeting the trains at Dover than peering out of prison windows. This entire experience has done nothing to alter my low opinion of our detective force.’
She seemed not to be listening. She was looking at her fingernails, chipped and stained by prison fatigues. ‘Simon.’
He reddened. She had spoken his name with a kind of ardour.
‘In here, my thoughts have been much on the past,’ she said, speaking in a low, earnest tone she had not used before. It seemed to Bell that it was calculated to make the wardresses feel they should not be listening. ‘I think a lot about Hampstead, and the Society. Those interminable lectures that we endured for the conversation afterwards. The picnics and the outings. That trip up the river when you wore your striped blazer. I was never so happy as then.’
The young man began to look uncomfortable. ‘Nor me-capital memories,’ he said tamely.
‘Something we share,’ she said, and paused, watching him. ‘In the night, when it is difficult to sleep, I find my thoughts often turn to what might have happened in my life if things had happened differently. Those were happy times and I thought I understood why, but really I did not. Simon, I was blinkered. I knew nothing of the world. Oh, I basked in its pleasures, the joys of laughter, sunshine, pretty things. Like a child. Such thoughts as I possessed were shaped by impulse. If there were things I desired, chocolates, flowers, anything, I directed all the power at my disposal to obtaining them. And because I was pretty and surrounded by people who adored me I was never thwarted. A selfish, spoilt child.’
‘Come now, that’s too steep,’ Allingham demurred. ‘You have a sweet disposition, always did.’
He was incapable of stopping her now she had started. It was so sudden that it shocked, this baring of the soul by the woman who had consistently refused to confide a word. It seemed indecent, worse than nakedness.
‘I lacked any judgment, Simon,’ she said in a voice that did not expect to be challenged. ‘My actions were determined by impulse alone. Why do you suppose I married Howard? I could not give you a reasoned explanation.’
