shabby and depressing nonetheless. Faded curtains with barely enough material to cover the windows hung on a piece of string, and the linoleum on the floor was scuffed and torn. The ceiling was covered in the obligatory damp stains and the bed stood at an awkward angle in the corner to avoid the three or four places where water was dripping through. A cot, an ugly deal table and chair and a chipped marble washstand were the only other significant items of furniture. A toddler with a shock of straw-coloured curls began to cry, and the woman went over to calm her down. Penrose watched as she lifted the girl from the cot, noticing the scald marks and scars on her work-sore hands; how impossible it must be to live safely in these inadequate rooms, with coal fires to cook on and oil lamps and candles for lighting; it was a wonder there weren’t more fatalities.
When the toddler was quiet again, Maria Baker looked challengingly at them, daring them to surprise her with whatever news they had brought about her family. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mrs Baker,’ Penrose began quietly, but he was interrupted before he could go any further.
‘Killed him at last, has she?’ Her matter-of-factness wrong-footed him, and it must have shown in his face. ‘Nothing would surprise me about them two,’ she added. ‘I’ve lived in the middle of their fighting for too long. It was only a matter of time before it got out of hand.’
‘I’m very sorry, but your husband and Marjorie are
‘He killed her?’
‘Is that likely?’
She walked over to the bed and sat down, then nodded to Penrose to take the chair. ‘They hated each other—always have. She stood up to him, you see—saw through his lies and his idleness and wasn’t afraid to say so. Only one who ever has—but that’s what girls are like today, isn’t it? We were always taught to put up with what we were given, and we found our own ways round it. But Marjorie wasn’t like that—she put him down to his face, played him at his own game. And Joe didn’t like people getting the better of him.’
‘Was he violent towards her?’ Fallowfield asked.
Mrs Baker looked scornfully at him. ‘He was violent to all of us—where do you think I got this from?’ She parted her hair and Penrose could see where a cut was just beginning to heal. ‘I don’t bang my own head against the wall, although there’s times when it feels like that. No, Joe’s attitude was that if I wanted to run the household—bring the money in, discipline the kids—then I could take my punishment like a man, as well. He wasn’t special in that—it’s what men do here. They’re no one on the outside, so they make their own power at home.’ She thought for a moment, absent-mindedly smoothing the blankets on the bed. ‘He wasn’t always like that, but it’s hard to love anyone when you hate yourself, when you’re ashamed like he was.’
‘Ashamed of what?’
‘Of his life. Of ending it here. He was an old man, sixty-seven next birthday. There were a lot of things that he regretted, and he blamed me for most of them. Marjorie could look after herself, though, especially as she got older—she had a hell of a temper. She broke his nose with a poker one night. If anything, he was afraid of her. That’s why I thought …’ The sentence was left unfinished as she tried to reconcile what had happened to her family with what she knew of them. ‘Are you sure he did it?’
Penrose evaded the question. ‘Marjorie’s murder was clearly planned,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid that she was subjected to a brutal, spiteful attack.’ He chose his words carefully, keen to spare her details which no mother would want to hear. ‘We have reason to believe that she was killed because of something she knew, perhaps a secret that she had threatened to reveal. Do you have any idea what that might have been?’
It was a shot in the dark, based on nothing more than his interpretation of the mutilation to Marjorie’s face, but Maria Baker glanced at him sharply and the guard which had begun to lift when she spoke of her husband returned more forcefully than ever. ‘If that’s true,’ she said coldly, ‘it’s nothing to do with anyone in this family. It’s very difficult to have secrets when you live in each other’s pockets.’
‘How long have you been here, Mrs Baker?’ Fallowfield asked.
‘Fifteen years or so. An aunt of mine lived here and she took us in. She never married, so she had room and she was glad of someone to look out for her. When she died, we kept the rent on.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Edwards. Violet Edwards.’
‘And where were you before?’
‘Essex for a bit. Joe’s got family in Southend, but it didn’t work out for us there.’ She smiled bitterly to herself. ‘In fact, I couldn’t honestly say it worked out for us anywhere. We never really stood a chance.’
‘Can I ask why?’ Penrose spoke gently. With so little to go on, he wanted to find out as much as he could about Marjorie’s family background, if only to satisfy himself that her father was innocent—of her murder, at least, if not of bringing pain and misery into her life from the moment she was born.
‘Joe was married before him and me got together, but it was a disaster and it turned very bitter at the end. He never shook off the memory—it scarred him, in ways you couldn’t imagine.’
‘Did Marjorie know about this?’
‘No, it was years ago, long before she was born, and he wouldn’t have his first wife’s name mentioned. As far as Marjorie knew, it’d been me and Joe from the beginning.’
‘Were there any children from that first marriage?’
‘Only one, but he lost touch with her when it ended. He made up for it with me, though—nothing short of a bleedin’ baby factory, we were. Eight in twelve years—it was like he had a duty to fill the place with kids.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘God knows why, ’cause he didn’t want anything to do with them once they were here.’
‘Where did Marjorie come in the family?’
‘Youngest of the ones that lived.’
‘And the rest of your children?’
‘Couldn’t see ’em for dust when they were old enough to leave home.’
‘So who’s this?’ he asked, nodding towards the cot.
‘She’s from next door. I look after other people’s kids—well, the ones that aren’t old enough to be put out to work or lent out for begging. We all do a bit to earn what we can—some of the women do housework, some lend money; me, I look after babies—God knows I’ve had enough practice.’
‘Did Marjorie sleep next door?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, with a couple of girls from the family across the landing. They help out with the rent.’
‘Would you mind if Sergeant Fallowfield had a look around?’
‘Help yourself, but you won’t find anything. Marjorie never left stuff lying around—prison taught her that.’
‘What did your husband do for a living?’ Penrose asked when Fallowfield had left the room.
She scoffed. ‘Joe and work never really got on. It was always short-term stuff with him—digging trenches for the new stands at the Arsenal, driving vans for the coal dealer down the road, the odd building job here and there.’ She looked round the room and added sarcastically: ‘It’s not what you’d call a hearth and home worth working for, is it? And if you mention where you live to most of the employers round here, you soon find yourself at the back of the queue. That’s what Joe said, anyway, but he could always find an excuse for not pulling his weight—it was one of the things that Marjorie hated him for; letting the rest of us pick up the shortfall.’
‘And Marjorie’s prison sentences—were they a result of her having to make up the shortfall?’
‘She’d been making her own way since she was a kid. Children’s wages are important—why do you think we have them?’ She laughed, but Penrose realised that the comment had not been a joke. He glanced up as Fallowfield came back in, but the sergeant shook his head. ‘And she was good at it, too,’ Mrs Baker continued. ‘She’d beg for used first-house programmes up at the Empire, then sell them back to the second houses, or buy cheap white flowers and dye them for button-holes—she was always creative, was our Marjorie.’
How easily she had slipped into talking of her daughter in the past tense, Penrose thought. ‘But what did she do to end up in Holloway?’
‘The first time was three Christmases ago—she got a job sorting mail at Mount Pleasant and pinched whatever was worth having. Then she nicked a handbag, and the last stretch—well, that
