except for a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard, nothing new to Bostonians or New Yorkers.
Heather came in shivering and warmed herself by the fire before shucking off her long winter coat. Her cheeks had a healthy glow, though I knew she wouldn’t thank me for saying so. She was sensitive about her complexion. She didn’t even like me admiring her freckles. So I said nothing. I went to the bar and got her a vodka and tonic while she studied the menu on the blackboard over the fireplace. In the end she went for the venison sausage, and I decided on lamb chops.
‘So how does it feel to be a member of the human race again?’ she asked.
‘I was seriously in danger of going crazy up there.’
‘A man reverting to his primitive roots. Yes. A frightening thing, indeed. But you’re all right now?’
‘Nothing a decent pint couldn’t cure.’
‘Have you found your evacuee yet?’
‘Billy? No. The library’s still closed. This bloody weather.’
‘I still don’t see what you think he’ll be able to tell you.’
‘I’ve been working on a theory.’
‘Another one?’
‘Say Grace did it. Say she killed her husband.’
‘Then I don’t see any point in going any farther. I thought your aim was to prove your precious Grace innocent? I thought you’d already decided that she didn’t do it.’
‘I had. It was. It is. But maybe even more so it’s to get at the truth.’
‘You don’t think that came out at the trial?’
‘Of course it didn’t. I think Louise put it best when she said the jurors all fantasised about Grace and hated themselves for it, so they found her guilty. But I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that Ernest Fox died of natural causes.’
‘Then what? The next best thing? Her motives were noble?’
‘In a way.’ I lowered my voice. I hardly needed to, as there was nobody else in the dining room and the television was on over the bar, but it wasn’t the kind of thought you voiced out loud. I paused, trying to weigh the words before I said them. ‘What if Ernest Fox had abused the evacuee?’ I said. ‘What if he was a paedophile?’
Heather looked aghast at me. ‘What?’
‘It doesn’t sound so strange, does it? This evacuee, Billy. He might have remembered years later. People do bury such secrets, you know, even from themselves. He found himself training in Catterick, close enough that he just had to tell Grace what he had remembered.’
‘And she believed him? Just like that?’
‘I’ve thought about that, too. If Grace believed him,’ I said, ‘it was because she already had an inkling, but she didn’t want to admit it to herself, that she’d been living with a pervert all those years. And they had a son. He was seven-’
‘You’re not saying Ernest Fox abused his own son, too?’
‘I’m saying it’s possible. Or that Grace had noticed the way he was starting to treat the boy, or look at him, and it worried her.’
Heather shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Chris,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost me on this one, I’m afraid. You’re grasping at straws. This is just wild imagination. There’s no evidence at all.’
‘Why would there be? But won’t you at least admit it’s possible, as a theory?’
Our food arrived and we started eating. Heather pushed back her hair. ‘Lots of things are possible,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean they happened. I mean, if you’re after way-out theories, you don’t even have to go that far.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe she killed him because he was abusing her. Have you thought of that? Or maybe he committed suicide?’
‘But communities covered up things like paedophiles back then. And nobody would suspect a doctor. Ernest Fox was a pillar of the community. They’d had separate bedrooms since Randolph was born.’
‘If you’re right, then why didn’t Grace just tell the police?’
‘Because they’d never believe her, for a start, because she couldn’t prove it, and even if she succeeded, the shame she’d bring on herself and her son would have been too much to bear.’
‘More than the shame of having a father murdered and a mother hanged for his murder? I’m sorry, Chris, but that comes pretty high on my list of shameful things to live with.’
‘I doubt she was acting entirely rationally. And she didn’t expect to get caught!’
‘Either she was irrational, or she was calculating. You can’t have it both ways.’
‘Of course you can. Some people are perfectly rational in their actions when they’re angry or upset.’
‘Even so, I think that if you’re coming to the conclusion that Grace Fox did it, anyway, then you should start trying to accept that the jury was right all along and give up on it. Its been obsessing you, taking over your life.’
‘Not really. I just want to know. There are one or two more things I can do before the whole thing dries up on me, and I’m going to do them, starting with finding Billy.’
Heather gave me a look she no doubt kept in reserve for hopeless cases, then she smiled. ‘Well, you’ve certainly got staying power, I’ll give you that. How about another drink?’
It was business as usual on the A1 two days later when I drove to Darlington, but some of the country and residential roads were still covered in snow and ice and tough to negotiate. It was a grey day with a pale, haloed disc of sunlight trying to burn through from the south, without much success. When I got to the city, there were few people on the streets, and the pavements were still covered in slush over patches of ice. I hadn’t visited Darlington often, and the parking confused me, so I headed for the large, open car park in the city centre. Even there, they hadn’t done a great job of clearing away the deluge, and it was tricky to back my way into a parking spot without slipping.
The library was an old red-brick building, reminiscent of the provincial schools of the late Victorian era, at the back of the Cornmill Centre. I had phoned ahead the day before and managed to book a microfilm reader. Normally, I was told, there would be a longer waiting period, but things were a little slow owing to the weather. I was glad I had something to thank the weather for.
Libraries these days are very different places from the ones of my childhood. I used to go nearly every day to the children’s library in Armley, where I grew up, mostly because I was in love with Yvonne, the librarian with the beehive hairdo. There was a special smell about the place, probably a mixture of paper, glue, polish, ink and Yvonne, that I found irresistible. She had a lovely, gentle way of stamping the books out. Today, though, it’s called a One Stop Centre, and more people go there to get advice about housing or benefits, pay their council tax or play games on the Internet than to borrow books. As libraries go, Darlington’s wasn’t bad. There was plenty of old wood, a pleasant, distinctive smell, and Jean, one of the librarians, was very helpful, though she didn’t have a beehive. She showed me to the readers and got me all set up with the Northern Despatch and Northern Echo microfilms.
I was lucky that I already knew Billy had arrived in Richmond in September 1939, and it took me no more than about ten minutes to find the little story tucked away in the Northern Despatch between a report on the Post Office coating the tops of its pillar boxes with yellowish gas-detecting paint, and warnings of stiffer penalties for blackout violations. Even better, there was a photograph, poor-quality black and white, but it was the same boy Grace had been photographed with in the garden of Kilnsgate, the same pinched, suspicious features and blond fringe. There’s a new addition to the household of Dr. Ernest Fox at Kilnsgate House, near Richmond. This is seven-year-old William ‘Billy’ Strang, officially the first evacuee to be billeted in the charming Yorkshire town. At Kilnsgate, Billy will take up residence with Dr. and Mrs. Fox and will no doubt enjoy the attentions, not to mention the famous pies and cakes, of maidservant and cook Hetty Larkin, of nearby Ravensworth. ‘He’s a lovely lad,’ said young Hetty. ‘The poor mite misses his mum and dad something cruel already, but Dr. and Mrs. Fox do their best to make him feel at home. We all do.’ ‘We’re only doing our duty,’ said Dr. Fox, with characteristic modesty. ‘It’s nothing to make a fuss about. If we can do anything to save these poor children from the bombing that is sure to be directed against Tyneside and the nation’s other industrial and shipbuilding regions, then we should do so.’ The doctor’s wife, Mrs. Grace Fox, added, ‘We’re more than happy to have him. He’s a delightful child. Polite, well- mannered and no bother at all.’ As for young Billy himself, what does he have to say about all this upheaval? When asked by our reporter, he remarked that he found the countryside interesting, full of all sorts of flowers and animals
