‘I know I shouldn’t say it myself, but you won’t find better anywhere in the county.’ A large slice of cake was slapped proudly down on top of the rest of the diary and, to Josephine’s horror, the woman sat down in the chair opposite. ‘I’m Mrs Reynolds,’ she said, obviously hoping for an introduction, but Josephine just nodded. ‘What brings your friend to Walberswick, then? Who’s he gone to see? You did say “he”, didn’t you?’
Josephine put the pages down, abandoning all hope of getting any further before Archie turned up. ‘A lady called Ethel Stuke,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I believe she lives somewhere on the green.’
‘Ethel? Oh yes, that house just up on the left,’ she said, pointing out of the window. ‘She’s very popular all of a sudden, I must say. Two girls were here only the other day—they sat where you are, in fact. One of them had been to see Ethel, and very pleased she was with herself, too. Can’t think why—Ethel’s nothing like her sister, Mabel—now she enjoyed a good chat, but Ethel’s not the friendly type at all. She’s the sort of woman who’s never allowed herself a piece of cake in her life, if you know what I mean, so I’m surprised she’s having so many visitors.’
‘What were they like, these other girls?’ Josephine asked through a mouthful of sponge. The cake was exceptional, she had to admit, and almost worth the sacrifice she was making for it.
‘In their early twenties, I should think—they’d come all the way up from London, just for the day. I remember them because they ordered a piece of every cake we had, and I had to ask them to pay up front—well, you can’t be too careful, can you? The pretty one paid—said it was a sort of celebration, and there’d be plenty more where that came from.’
That was interesting, Josephine thought; there was no doubt that the girls were Marjorie and Lucy, and it saddened her to think of how short-lived their celebration had been; perhaps by now Archie had discovered its cause. The bell rang as an answer to her prayers, and Mrs Reynolds bustled off to settle another table, leaving her in peace for a moment. Rather than trying to get any further with the diary, Josephine let her mind go back over what she had already read, and her thoughts drifted back to one particular phrase which she remembered from the first few pages. ‘
‘Crumpet?’ she asked, as Archie sat down.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of Ethel Stuke’s cake to keep me going.’ Josephine could not resist a sly glance at Mrs Reynolds, who had come over to take his order and was obviously not as omniscient as she thought. He smiled at the proprietress, and Josephine watched, amused, as she was temporarily wrong-footed by his charm. ‘But perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me where the nearest public telephone box is?’
‘My brother’ll help you out there, Sir,’ she said. ‘He’s got the grocery store on the main street as you come into the village. He won’t mind opening up for you.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly put him to all that trouble,’ Archie said. ‘A public one will be fine.’
‘Near the village hall, then. Turn left out of here, and it’s about a hundred yards ahead of you.’
Josephine stayed behind to pay while he put his call through to the Yard. ‘Bill, I need you to find out what happened to Eleanor Vale—she’s the link between Bannerman and what happened to Marjorie and Lucy.’ He explained briefly what Ethel Stuke had told him, and passed on the addresses. ‘Something happened between those two women which Bannerman wants to forget—I’m convinced of it. Check on the Holloway house and make sure it was passed on as Stuke says, then find out if Vale ever turned up in Leeds. I know, I know,’ he added, cutting the sergeant off. ‘It’s a needle in a haystack, but just do your best. And if you have no luck, look for suspicious or accidental deaths between …’—he checked his notes—‘between March and August 1905. That’s the time span between Vale’s release and Bannerman’s departure for Leeds.’
‘Do you really think Bannerman got rid of her, Sir?’ Fallowfield asked, and distance did nothing to moderate the scepticism in his voice. ‘I thought you said she was full of the milk of human kindness?’
Penrose considered the contradiction for a moment, imagining a young Celia Bannerman, ready to start a new job and a new life but saddled with an ex-convict through excessive kindness and bad judgement: could she really have taken the ultimate step to press on unhindered with her career? Then he thought about the same woman thirty years later, the woman who had, in her own words, made a decision that work would be her entire life; could she kill to justify that decision? With the image of Marjorie’s bruised and bloody lips still in his mind, Penrose rather thought that she could.
He was impatient to get back to the Yard, and the journey through Suffolk seemed interminable. Neither he nor Josephine spoke much; both seemed preoccupied by their own thoughts, and he sensed that Josephine was censoring how much she said in exactly the same way as he was, although on a very different subject. At Ipswich, he was relieved to find the London train half-empty, and they had no trouble in getting a compartment to themselves. ‘I’m sorry she wouldn’t see you,’ he said as the train left the station.
‘Don’t be. To be honest with you, Archie, I’m losing heart with the whole thing. Ethel Stuke and Celia probably have a point—I shouldn’t put real people into a novel and manipulate them for the sake of the story. It’s not right.’
He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window. ‘You don’t really believe that. You just think you
Josephine considered the question. ‘Now you mention it, I’ve never heard her talk about her family at all. That may not be as strange as it seems, I suppose—we were pupil and teacher, so there was always a distance between us, but when I think back to Anstey, I could tell you something personal about most of the other teachers there. For a start, we were all homesick when we got there, so they’d share things about their own families to make us feel better, and we got to know them quite quickly. It was that sort of school. But I think I can honestly say that I’ve never heard Celia talk about anyone who wasn’t connected with the job she was in at the time.’
Her reticence would make sense if she had been raised in an institution, Penrose thought; even now, there was a stigma attached to that sort of upbringing. ‘And did she ever mention being attacked by a prisoner?’
She looked at him, startled. ‘No. Is that what Ethel Stuke told you? Sorry—I know I shouldn’t ask. I’m trying so hard to be discreet and respect the confidentiality of your case, but it’s not easy when I know some of the people involved.’
‘It’s
‘Of course I won’t.’
‘Actually, I’m not terribly happy about your being at the Cowdray Club at all at the moment. Couldn’t you come to Maiden Lane and spend a couple of nights with the girls?’
‘They seem to be spending most of their time at the club right now. Ronnie told me she’s developing quite a taste for the institutional life, and Lettice has booked herself in for lunch every day until next Wednesday.’ His smile was half-hearted. ‘You mean it, don’t you? If it will stop you worrying, of course I’ll stay with them, although I can’t imagine they’ll thank me—they’re frantically busy.’
‘It’s all right—the Snipe will sort it out. She’ll be pleased to see you. Don’t make a big thing of it, though—you don’t have to tell anyone if you stay out all night, do you?’
She laughed. ‘It’s not a boarding school, Archie. I can come and go as I please.’
‘Fine. I’ll tell the Snipe to make up a bed.’
‘All right. There’s no hurry, though—I thought I’d pop in to Holly Place first if there’s time when we get back. You were right yesterday—I do need to speak to Marta.’ She waited, but he said nothing. ‘You haven’t asked me anything about it.’
‘Perhaps I just don’t want to know.’ The remark came out more abruptly than he had intended, but it had the advantage, at least, of being honest.
‘It isn’t what you think.’
