‘I wasn’t even there.’
‘Then why do three people swear otherwise?’ asked Keedy.
‘Ask them.’
‘It’s no good lying, Sidney. You were
‘That wasn’t me!’ shouted Timpson, unnerved by the charge. ‘It was that bloke in the dungarees. He brought the can with him.’
When he heard what he’d just said, he put his hands to his face and groaned inwardly. The game was up. Under pressure from Keedy, he’d just confessed the truth. There was no way out.
‘Good,’ said Keedy, beaming. ‘I’m glad that we sorted that out. Let’s start all over again, shall we?’
Dorothy Holdstock was both relieved and delighted to see her sister again. Having had no official confirmation that Irene had survived the disaster, she’d been on tenterhooks as she waited for news. It had come in the best possible way — her sister’s arrival on her doorstep. Over a cup of tea, Irene explained how she’d managed to escape drowning. Playing down the role she took in helping others to get safely off the ship, she talked about the chair that she clung to as she waited to be rescued by a boat.
‘It sounds to me as if you owe a lot to your friend,’ said Dorothy.
‘Ernie has always looked out for me.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Years and years, Dot.’
‘Is he the one who proposed to you?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Why did you turn him down?’
‘There were lots of reasons,’ said Irene, pensively. ‘First of all, I don’t want another husband. I had a wonderful marriage with Arthur and no man could ever replace him. Second, I discovered that I wasn’t the only female member of the crew that Ernie Gill had proposed to.’ Dorothy was scandalised. ‘And third, much as I like him, he really upsets me sometimes.’
‘How does he do that?’
‘Well, he has a bit of a temper and uses bad language. I think he could turn violent if he was crossed.’
Her sister clicked her tongue. ‘You don’t want that,’ she said. ‘On the other hand, a proposal is a proposal. A woman can’t afford to be too fussy.’
There was deep sadness in Dorothy’s voice because she had never received a proposal of marriage. Irene had been the pretty sister. None of the boys had been interested in Dorothy. Now in her forties, she was a tubby and rather unprepossessing woman who’d given up all hope of finding a husband and settled for being a pillar of the local church, an occasional babysitter and the manageress of a shoe shop. She lived in the little house that she and Irene had jointly inherited at the death of their parents and staved off loneliness by renting out a room to a blind old lady named Miss James.
‘How long can you stay, Irene?’
‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay indefinitely.’
‘What about your job?’
‘I’ve finished with the sea, Dot. It’s had one go at trying to kill me and that’s one too many. I want to keep my feet on dry land from now on.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Dorothy. ‘Though I do wish that I’d had all those adventures you enjoyed — sailing on a famous liner, going to America all those times, getting proposals. I mean, it’s so romantic.’
‘That’s not how it felt at the time. If truth be told, it was too much like hard work.’
‘So what will you do now?’
‘Look around for a job in London,’ said Irene. ‘I hope you don’t mind having me back.’
‘No — of course I don’t. It’s a real treat for me. Besides, you own half the house.’
‘Do you still have Miss James here?’
‘Yes, she’s no bother — keeps herself to herself.’
‘When did she first move in?’
‘It must be almost five years ago.’
Irene smiled. ‘You live with someone for almost five years and you still don’t call her by her Christian name?’
‘No, she’ll always be Miss James to me.’
‘And does she still call you Miss Holdstock?’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy with mock propriety. ‘I don’t allow any familiarity under this roof.’ They traded a laugh. ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you back again, Irene. When I heard the awful news about the
Dorothy got up from the table and went off, leaving her sister to look around the kitchen and see how little it had changed in the past decade. Irene was pleased to be back in the house where she’d been born and brought up. It made her feel safe and wanted. Yet she was not simply returning to her roots. Moving to London would be the start of a new phase of her life, she told herself, and that was an exciting prospect.
By the time he’d finished interviewing the suspects from Shoreditch, Joe Keedy had elicited two additional names of people who took part in the looting of the shop in Jermyn Street. One was a member of the bar staff of the pub where the mob had been drinking beforehand. Another was a newspaper vendor with a regular pitch near Piccadilly Circus. Keedy sent off men to arrest the pair of them. The other three, meanwhile, had been charged and released on bail. They went off arguing furiously, each accusing the others of betraying him.
When Keedy went to Marmion’s office to compare notes with him, he found the inspector poring over a sheaf of papers on his desk.
‘Hello, Joe,’ said Marmion, ‘how did you get on?’
‘I had them singing like canaries in the end.’
‘What did they tell you?’
Keedy gave him an attenuated version of the three interviews. The most important development, he felt, was that all of the suspects had described the man with the petrol can and actually seen him pour the liquid out before using his cigarette to ignite it. None of them had known the man’s name but all said that he worked somewhere in the West End and knew the area intimately.
‘I’ve had the report from the fire brigade,’ explained Marmion. ‘They found the petrol can amid the debris but there was no way of identifying where it was bought. The intense heat had melted it and caused it to buckle.’
‘We’ve drawn a blank there, then,’ said Keedy.
‘My guess is that it was sold by a garage nearby. Nobody wants to carry a full can of petrol any distance. It would be too heavy. I’ve sent men off to check at any garages in the locality.’
‘That’s very wise, Inspector.’
‘Wisdom is like sciatica, Joe — it comes with age.’
‘You’re still a young man at heart.’
‘I don’t feel young. When I look at our Alice and realise how old she is now, I feel quite ancient.’
‘How is Alice?’
‘I’d like to say that she’s very well but she’s got this weird idea into her head that she’d like to join the WEC.’
‘What’s so weird about it?’
Marmion sighed. ‘Alice worked her socks off to get qualifications to teach, Joe. I don’t want her to throw all that effort away. In any case, the WEC is not short of recruits, whereas schools are certainly short of good teachers like my daughter.’
‘It’s her decision and she is over twenty-one.’
‘We accept that, Joe. At the end of the day, we’ll support her in whatever she does — as long as she doesn’t join the Women’s Police Service, that is. Apparently, that’s what you advised her to do.’
‘I did,’ said Keedy. ‘I think she’d make a good policewoman. Alice is bright, hard-working and she’s got a
