said was true.’
‘Yes. I’m afraid Ethel Stuke sealed Marjorie’s fate as effectively as if she’d hanged her.’
At last, Penrose understood what Stuke had said that seemed so conclusive to Marjorie. ‘She knew you’d never been attacked, didn’t she? She’d handled your fittings at Motley, and she knew there was no scar.’ It was a simple, feminine thing, but irrefutable, and Marjorie could have had no idea of the danger she was putting herself in by using her knowledge. Her death, he realised now, was a vicious, sadistic parody of the means by which she had gained that fatal piece of information. The peculiarly female intimacy of the dress fitting had come back to haunt her.
Vale nodded approvingly at him. ‘Yes. She was measuring me for silk and piercing me with steel. The letter came just before the final fitting.’
‘She wanted money?’
‘Of course. Nothing more imaginative than that. All the women I’ve taught and nurtured, all the people I’ve fought for to ensure they get a decent working life—and that stupid little bitch wanted everything handed to her on a plate. When I went to Motley on Friday afternoon, I promised her she’d have what she asked for later that night. I kept my word.’
‘And you got her to make sure that her father was there as well?’
‘No. I knew nothing about her father until he turned up drunk at Motley. Marjorie hadn’t mentioned him or how she’d come by her information in the first place, and I certainly had no idea who was in her family. He was waiting for her outside, and he caught me leaving the building. He slurred something about seeing me in that photograph, and that’s when he told me how he knew the real Celia Bannerman.’
‘Did he find out what you’d done to his daughter before you pushed him down the stairs?’
‘Does that really matter?’
Penrose looked at her for a long time before speaking again, astonished at how little remorse she seemed capable of. ‘Don’t you regret any of it?’ he asked eventually. ‘If you could go back to that underground platform, would you really do it all again?’
‘Yes, if it enabled everything that I’ve achieved during the years in between. People aren’t good or bad, Inspector—their actions are, and everyone is capable of both. Take Amelia Sach—a good mother, by all accounts, yet capable of destroying that sacred bond in others to advance her own position. And Celia Bannerman, of course —such an asset to society, so selfless in her efforts to help people, and yet she dropped her little rehabilitation project like a stone the minute a better offer came along. Ambition—that’s what it was about. That’s what it’s always about. Everyone in public life says it’s the work that counts, and what does it matter who does it—but deep down we all want the credit for our little piece of progress.’
‘Even when those achievements are undermined by the very violence on which they’re built? What about the people whose lives you’ve destroyed?’
‘A convict who would have been in and out of jail for the rest of her life? A drunk who made no contribution to society and couldn’t even keep his wife from the gallows?’
‘A police officer?’
‘Who was herself involved in an act of deception.’
‘You’re surely not comparing that with the lie you’ve lived for thirty years?’
‘I’m not the one making
The barbed reference to Josephine wasn’t lost on Penrose, but he refused to be drawn by it. ‘Let’s talk about Lucy Peters,’ he said, confident now that they were far enough along with the questioning for his own deception not to matter. ‘Did she know that killing Marjorie wasn’t enough for you? That you had to torture and humiliate her first?’
Vale looked at him warily. ‘Surely you know what I said to Lucy if you’ve been exchanging letters at her bedside?’
Penrose just smiled. ‘Eleanor Vale, you will now be formally charged with the murders of Celia Bannerman, Marjorie Baker, Jacob Sach and Lucy Peters, and taken to a …’
‘You bastard,’ Vale shrieked, standing up and shoving the table hard into his stomach. She lashed out at his face, but Fallowfield was too quick for her, catching her by the wrist as her arm came down. She screamed in agony as the sergeant’s fingers tightened around the blistered skin, but somehow she still managed to pull away, her rage exploding in a stream of abuse as she grabbed hold of a chair and went for them again. This time, though, Penrose was expecting the attack: he moved to one side, and the chair crashed harmlessly into the door while he held Vale’s arms behind her back, pinning her against the wall for long enough to give Fallowfield time to get the handcuffs on. Later, he would regret showing any emotion at all, but as he walked her into the corridor and gave instructions for her to be taken downstairs, his anger was the mirror image of hers: ‘I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done,’ he said.
Josephine sat at the front desk of New Scotland Yard, wondering what Archie wanted. She had been surprised to get his message, but relieved to have any excuse to get out of the Cowdray Club for an hour or two. The atmosphere there was unbearable: crime reporters given a tip-off by their society-page colleagues were the latest addition to Cavendish Square, and the arrival of the mortuary van to remove Lucy’s body was an image that no one was likely to forget, but the sadness ran deeper even than that. Everywhere she looked, Josephine saw her own sense of betrayal reflected in the faces of the other members; a professional mourning ran throughout the building, a feeling amongst the women that they had battled governments and legislation for so many years, only to see what they had worked for tarnished from within. They had been let down by one of their own, and it left them all feeling angry and foolish and guilty; personally, Josephine couldn’t remember a time when her trust had been more comprehensively destroyed.
When Archie came down to fetch her, he looked pale and exhausted. ‘I won’t bother to ask how you are,’ she said. ‘You’ll only lie, and anyway, I can see it in your face.’
‘Let’s just say it’s been an eventful night.’
‘How’s your policewoman?’
She saw him smile at her phrasing of the question. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s shaken, obviously, and she took a nasty cut to the chest, but thank God for the College of Nursing. Miriam Sharpe was wonderful.’
There was so much she wanted to ask him about what had gone on overnight, but she knew it would put him in an impossible position. ‘So why have I been summoned to the Yard?’
‘Come with me a minute.’ He led her out on to Victoria Embankment and pointed across the road.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘Do you see the woman on the bench over there?’ She nodded. ‘That’s Nora Edwards.’
Josephine stared in astonishment. ‘What’s she doing there?’
‘We released her straight away last night and took her home, but she was back a few hours later. I noticed her when it started to get light, but God knows how long she’d already been sitting there. I can only suppose it’s because she knows we’ve got her daughter’s killer here.’
‘I thought you said she didn’t care about Marjorie?’
‘Either I was wrong or she was. And going back to that place on her own with everything that’s happened can’t be easy. She’s had enough gossip and prejudice in her life, and now people are going to start on her all over again.’ Josephine knew exactly what he was going to say, and she tried not to look as horrified as she felt. ‘Anyway, I thought you might want to talk to her. I can’t arrange it—it wouldn’t be right now—but there’s nothing to stop you going over there and striking up a conversation.’
Josephine was torn between grabbing the only chance she would ever have to speak to someone who had been at Claymore House, and a cowardly reluctance to put herself through what was bound to be an ordeal. ‘I’m sure she’s been through enough without an interrogation from me,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Anyway, I was going to drop the whole thing. It’s too painful now; too many people have been hurt.’
‘Have you told your publisher that?’ he asked cynically. ‘You’ve got the story of the decade. It’s up to you, though: if you don’t think it’s appropriate, that’s fine, but I didn’t want you to miss the chance to satisfy your own curiosity, whether you go ahead with the book or not.’ As she hesitated, he added: ‘Just don’t tell her that I sent you. She’s hardly likely to be open with you if she knows you’re a friend of the person who’s spent the last two days accusing her of killing her daughter and her husband.’
‘So how will I explain who I am?’
