nothing left to like or dislike. These two deaths have made it easier for her in some ways, I suppose, and harder in others. I’d like another opinion on the family, though. I wonder if that woman who let us in is still about?’
They found her in the back yard, breaking up some empty wooden crates. She looked up when she heard them, and a girl of about ten with rickety legs, her skin pallid from the amount of time which she spent in a damp, cold room, moved over to stand behind her mother, peering shyly out at them.
Without giving any details, Penrose explained briefly what had brought the police to Campbell Bunk. ‘Poor bitch is better off without ’em if you ask me,’ she said. ‘Joe Baker was a lazy, selfish bastard and that Marjorie had too much of what the cat licks its arse with—a bit of Woolworth’s jewellery and some make-up and she thought she was Joan bleedin’ Crawford.’
‘We understand that Marjorie argued a lot with her father.’
‘And her mother—believe me, there’s nothing worse than two women turning on each other. We know what we’re doing.’
Penrose was interested. ‘They fought physically, you mean?’
‘If you mean did they beat the shit out of each other, then yeah, they did. I remember Marjorie coming home not so long ago in a new coat and skirt—God knows what they must have cost her, but she didn’t even get inside the house in ’em. Maria was out here in the street, tearing ’em off her back. She told me later it was because Marjorie had been earning more than she let on and spending money on herself rather than the family, but it was more than that—it was sheer jealousy. Them clothes weren’t worth nothing by the time Maria’d finished with ’em, and if it’d been about money she’d have found out how much they cost and taken ’em to the pawn shop.’
Fallowfield raised an eyebrow and Penrose shared his surprise. More had changed in women’s lives in the last thirty years than ever before and, in spite of what Maria Baker had said, it would take a special kind of love not to grudge that just a little. But this particular struggle between mother and daughter sounded more bitter and more violent than one generation’s resentment of the chances offered to the next.
‘Do you know if Mrs Baker was at home last night?’ Fallowfield asked.
‘Of course she was,’ the woman said automatically. ‘I went up to see her a couple of times.’
It was a lie, but there was no point in wasting time proving that now. ‘Thank you,’ Penrose said, unable to keep a trace of sarcasm out of his voice. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
By the time they got back to the car, a long, deep scratch—admirable in its neat execution—had mysteriously appeared on the driver’s side, drawing some choice language from Fallowfield and a mocking expression of innocence from the small crowd of bystanders. As Penrose opened the door and got in, the filth and degradation seemed to cling to his clothes; had it not been for the manner of Marjorie’s death and the spirited image created by what people said about her, he could almost have believed that the girl was better off out of it.
Maria Baker sat on the bed for a long time after the policemen had gone, scarcely daring to believe that it was over: the shadow of that house in Finchley—which had wound itself like a shroud around her relationship with Joe, driving them apart and binding them unrelentingly together—had, with his death, finally lifted; the memories and the shame, which tracked them down no matter where they went or who they became, had lost their power to hurt.
She stood up to put the magazine back on the pile next to the grate, ready for the evening fire. As she bent down, she noticed that the date on the newspaper which Joe had left lying around yesterday was 22 November, and realised that tomorrow was her birthday. It was thirty-three years almost to the day since the nightmare had begun and now, at fifty-one, she was being offered a clean slate. Trying to remember the woman she had once been, Maria Baker walked over to the cot. The child stared up at her in astonishment as she laughed until she cried.
There was nothing from Spilsbury on Penrose’s desk when he and Fallowfield arrived back at the Yard.
‘I’ll have to telephone him,’ Penrose said reluctantly. The pathologist hated being hurried and detectives who were too impatient for results were the only thing guaranteed to disturb his equable temperament.
‘Rather you than me, Sir,’ Fallowfield said. ‘I’ll get on to the Cowdray Club, shall I? Tell Miss Bannerman we’ll be over to see her.’
‘Yes. Who else from the club was in that photograph?’
Fallowfield looked at his notes. ‘Miriam Sharpe—she’s the president of the college, Sir, and I gather from what Miss Bannerman said that she’s not too happy about this gala business, even though she has to put up with it in public. I got the impression that her and Bannerman don’t really get on. Then there’s Lady Ashby, Mary Size and Sylvia Timpson—she’s the receptionist, Sir.’
‘Have you met her?’
‘Yes—very prickly and a bit grander than she ought to be. You know the sort.’
‘Only too well. You can tell me anything else I need to know about them on the way over. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to have an initial chat with Bannerman, Sharpe and Timpson—and Lucy Peters, too, if she works on a Saturday. I doubt the other two will be there at this time of day, so find out how we can get hold of Lady Ashby. I’d rather see Mary Size at the prison, anyway, so arrange that, will you, Bill? We’ll need copies of Marjorie’s prison records—and we might as well take a look at Peters’s while we’re there. Tell Miss Bannerman who we want to see, but don’t give her any details. Let her think it’s about the other business.’
‘She might already know what’s happened from your cousins, Sir, if they’ve phoned about using the premises.’
‘Damn—I’d forgotten. All right—get hold of Lettice or Ronnie first and find out, and if they haven’t already made contact with the club, ask them not to tell Bannerman why they need the space. And I want someone to do some digging on the Bakers—find out everything you can on the family, including the Edwards branch. Can you spare a couple of people for that?’
‘Yes, Sir, I’ll put Waddingham and Merrifield on it. Neither of them likes to be outdone by the other, so we should get some quick results.’
‘Excellent.’ Penrose picked up the telephone and got through to the mortuary in Gower Street. Spilsbury had built his reputation on a principle of proceeding slowly, taking nothing for granted and scrutinising every inch of a body before opening it up, but his insistence on doing everything himself led to occasional delays which drove the average detective—Penrose included—to distraction. But it was that very attention to detail—and a profound knowledge gained from years of experience—which enabled the pathologist to detect things invisible to others and, to Penrose’s knowledge, nothing he had seen with the naked eye had ever been reversed by subsequent examination with a microscope. He knew he was pushing his luck, but he hoped that an initial examination might at least allow Spilsbury to confirm that Marjorie had not been killed by her father.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Archie? If you want miracles, you need to go to a higher authority than me.’ The words were stern, but there was a note of humour in his voice which gave Penrose hope. ‘Actually, I was just about to call you. I’m afraid it doesn’t look as though you’ve caught your murderer yet—I don’t know if you regard that as good news or bad.’
‘I’m just grateful for any news at all,’ Penrose said.
‘I must stress that this is only my opinion, and nothing I’ve found yet would necessarily convince a jury, but a couple of things suggest to me that he didn’t kill her, and, taken together with the type of crime that’s been committed and your initial reaction, they’re pretty conclusive. Baker had very recent scratches on his face, but there was no skin under Marjorie’s fingernails.’
‘But the scratches could have …’
‘… nothing to do with the murder. Yes, I realise that. The second point is a little more reliable. There’s a small cloakroom a few yards down the corridor from the main workshop.’
‘Yes, I remember seeing it.’
‘Well, we found a towel there which has blood on it and, when we looked more closely, there were tiny specks of blood on the tiles behind the sink as well. Obviously we’ll have to wait for the tests to confirm that the blood is the same type as Marjorie’s, but, if it is, it seems fairly clear to me that the killer went in there to wash before leaving the building. That rules Baker out—his hands and face were both filthy. There’s no way that he could have wiped his daughter’s blood off his hands and left behind the dirt that we found.’
‘One of the other girls could have hurt herself during the day.’
‘Yes, I thought of that, but your cousins aren’t aware of any accidents and even the slightest cut has to be reported, apparently.’
‘Even if it is Marjorie’s blood, she could have used the cloakroom herself.’
‘Think about it, Archie—there were no external injuries whatsoever on Marjorie Baker’s body except for the
