Two for Sorrow

Chapter Six

Hilda Reader emerged from the underground station at Piccadilly Circus into a world transformed by freshness and light. Snow had fallen heavily overnight and into the early hours, and now there was a look in the sky which promised more. She had always thought that winter suited London better than any other season; the city was bright with the peculiar, hard brilliance of cold weather, and she was glad that she had decided to leave the stale fug of the underground a stop early in order to enjoy it. At street level, the snow had fallen victim to traffic and the games of children but it remained unspoilt on canopies and rooftops, and the upper storeys of buildings faded into blacks, whites and greys, almost as if she were looking at a photograph. The only splashes of colour came from a few resilient flower sellers who sat on the steps around Eros, their displays made suddenly more precious by the bitter weather.

She walked on down Coventry Street and across Leicester Square, looking forward to work as she always did. The Motleys were busier now than ever and she went in most Saturdays, glad of the chance to get on with jobs which the constant supervision of thirty girls often made impossible during the week. It didn’t affect her home life: her husband was a buyer for Debenhams and she was lucky in her second marriage to have found a man who valued her career as highly as his own. Widowed at thirty by the war, Hilda had been forced to accept that the prospect of building a loving home like the one in which she was raised had been buried in Belgian soil along with her husband. Grudgingly, she resigned herself to a life without intimacy, glad at least that her profession was not one which she was expected to relinquish to the handful of men who returned from the fighting, and, in her work with Motley, she found a different sort of fulfilment. Later, as her friendship with John grew miraculously into something more, she lived in fear of having to choose—but she had underestimated him: he was a good man, and wise enough to understand that, had he been tempted to force the issue, she would never have agreed to marry him.

But the marriage had worked, and the time they spent together was important to them both. They always went out on a Saturday night, and Hilda knew the West End theatres and cinemas as well as most people knew their friends. The Motleys encouraged her to see as much as possible and to keep up with the new ideas and changing fashions of the stage; that was what she loved most about them—their willingness to include others. They listened to her as carefully now as they had when they were sitting at her feet, learning to sew, and the fame of the last few years hadn’t changed that. The business grew more chaotic by the day, and it drove Hilda’s ordered mind to distraction at times, but it was the large, unruly family she had never had and they were blessed with a good set of workers at the moment. She would be the first to admit that the prospect of taking on ex-prisoners had filled her with horror, but she had been wrong; now, her biggest worry was how to hang on to Marjorie, how to keep her on the straight and narrow and make sure that she was sufficiently involved not to be lured away by any of the other fashion houses who knew talent when they saw it.

As Hilda turned into St Martin’s Lane, the first flakes of the threatened snow shower began to fall. She fumbled around in her bag for the heavy set of keys, but was surprised to see that the wrought-iron gates which divided the street from the staff entrance were unlocked. The sisters must have come in early, she thought, but one look at the perfect covering of snow on the cobbles told her that no one had entered the premises that morning. Surely Marjorie hadn’t worked all night? Or perhaps she had simply forgotten to lock the gates when she left, in which case Hilda would have to have a quiet word with her on Monday. She pulled the gates shut behind her and trudged into the yard, enjoying the dry crunch of untouched snow beneath her boots. When she turned the corner, she stopped short in her tracks: at the foot of the iron staircase, too close to the building to be visible from the street, someone was lying motionless in the snow, partially covered in a blanket of deathly white. Please God, no, she thought, hurrying forward, not Marjorie—the child must have slipped on the stairs in the darkness; if she’d been there all night, she’d have had no chance against the cold. But as she got closer, she realised that the figure was a man, and, bending over him, she saw not Marjorie but her father.

He was beyond help—she could see that instantly. He lay on his side, his eyes still open, flakes of snow frozen to his eyelashes and the stubble on his face; Hilda felt the lonely horror of his death at the same time as she thanked God for saving her from a deeper grief. There was a profound stillness about the scene, and she wondered why she had never noticed how quickly the everyday sounds of St Martin’s Lane disappeared once you were in this courtyard. Here, amid the double disorientation of snow and sudden death, her mind struggled to make sense of what had happened. Had Marjorie’s father come looking for her and met with an accident? Or was it worse than that? She remembered how upset the girl had seemed when she came back from lunch yesterday. Had there been some sort of struggle? Had he tried to hurt her, and had Marjorie—in putting up a fight—gone further than she intended? Hilda hesitated for a moment. She knew she must go upstairs and telephone for help, but was reluctant to leave the dead man on his own. It was stupid, she realised—no more harm could come to him, and cold and loneliness had lost their power to hurt—but it seemed wrong to abandon him now and, in truth, she longed for company herself, even that of a stranger.

Quickly, Hilda turned and went back towards St Martin’s Lane, where she caught the attention of a young man who happened to glance in through the gates as he passed. Startled but keen to help, he offered to go back into the street and find a policeman, but she knew it would be quicker to call from the studio and, in any case, she had to telephone the Motley sisters as soon as possible to let them know what was happening. Leaving the man with the body, she went carefully up the steps; they were still perilous, and she clung tightly to a handrail which was slippery and far from reliable, wondering again where Marjorie was and what had happened. When she got to the top, she saw that the door to the building was open. The wind had blown some of the snow into the corridor, where it had melted into a muddy dampness. She walked quietly towards the studio, sensing somehow that she was not on her own even before she saw Marjorie sitting on the other side of the room, her back to the door.

‘Marjorie, love—thank God you’re safe. What on earth’s happened?’ The girl must be in shock, Hilda thought, because she didn’t move or respond in any way, even when she called her name again. ‘It’s all right, love—whatever’s gone on, you’re not on your own. We’ll look after you.’ As Hilda stepped closer and reached out her hand, she noticed the smell but the significance of it didn’t register until it was too late; by now, she was at an angle to see Marjorie’s reflection in the full-length mirror which stood just a few feet away from her. She stared in revulsion and terror at the blood and bruising around her mouth, at the needle still hanging on a thread from her lips, at her own image standing over the dead girl, adding to Marjorie’s degradation by the very act of witnessing it. Understanding now why there had been no response, Hilda opened her mouth and screamed for them both.

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose sat at his desk in New Scotland Yard, wondering how he could make a pact with the devil to add a few more hours to each day. He had been at work since just after seven and was only halfway through the reports that had come in overnight. Among them was Fallowfield’s account of the thefts and anonymous letters at the Cowdray Club; it was not the sort of thing which Penrose would normally investigate, but the chief constable was putting pressure on him to give some time to it, and the sooner it was cleared up, the better.

He picked up the telephone to make an appointment but, before he had a chance to speak to the operator, Fallowfield stuck his head round the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Sir, but we’ve got to go. Thompson’s just called up from the desk—a man’s reported two bodies, and I recognised the address. It’s your cousins’ place—and one of the bodies is a young woman.’

For a second, Penrose was numb, trying to take in the implications of what he had heard. Then he reached for the telephone again and barked Lettice’s number into the receiver. ‘Come on, pick it up,’ he muttered as it rang and rang, but there was no answer, and the result was the same when he tried Ronnie’s flat. ‘What else did Thompson say?’ he asked as they ran out to the car. ‘Do we have a description of the dead woman?’ Fallowfield hesitated, and Penrose knew that there was something he was reluctant to share. ‘Well?’

‘We don’t have a description of the woman, Sir—only what’s been done to her.’

‘And? Oh for God’s sake, Bill, just tell me.’

‘Someone’s stitched her mouth up.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Penrose paused before getting into the car, and tried to rid himself of the images crowding his mind. ‘Please God, no,’ he said, more quietly this time.

‘Come on, Sir—we don’t know anything for sure yet,’ Fallowfield said calmly, taking the keys from Penrose’s hand and going round to the driver’s side. ‘She was found in the workroom. The other body’s outside in the yard—looks like he fell down the stairs on his way out.’

‘And who reported it?’

‘Chap called Gaunt. Ellis Gaunt, I think.’

The name meant nothing to Penrose, but then very little else did either. The short journey from the Embankment to St Martin’s Lane was a blur to him, and he was out of the car even before Fallowfield had brought it to a standstill in front of number 66. Just inside the gates, he saw Lettice and Ronnie comforting an older woman whom he recognised as their head cutter; another man—presumably the Gaunt who’d made the call—stood awkwardly to the side, at a discreet distance from the group of women, as if reluctant to intrude on their sorrow. All of them looked up, startled, as Penrose ran over to them. ‘Thank God,’ he said, scarcely caring that it was not the most professional of responses. ‘I thought for a moment that one of you …’

‘No, Archie—we’re fine.’ Lettice smiled weakly, but she and Ronnie both looked ten years older than when he had last seen them, and Ronnie in particular seemed to be struggling to keep her emotions under control—anger, he noticed, rather than tears, but that was what he would have expected; ever since they were children, Ronnie’s response to grief or injustice had always been to rage against it rather than admit her vulnerability. The other lady—why couldn’t he remember her name?—was making a valiant effort to pull herself together, but in vain: she stared down at the handkerchief in her hands, winding one of the corners repeatedly round her finger and shaking her head; she seemed grateful when Lettice saved her from having to go over what had happened straight away. ‘No, it’s Marjorie who’s been killed—Marjorie Baker, one of our girls. Hilda found her father over by the steps when she came in to work this morning. She went up to telephone for help, and that’s when she found Marjorie’s body.’

Penrose glanced over to the foot of the iron staircase. ‘There’s another way we can get up to the workroom, isn’t there?’ he asked.

‘Yes, through the clients’ entrance at the front and up the stairs there.’ Lettice opened her bag and took out a set of keys. ‘Here, you’ll need these.’

Penrose walked back to the street, where Fallowfield was getting some gloves and other equipment out of the car, and handed him the keys. ‘Have a quick look round inside, Bill—I want to get everyone out of the yard. They’ve had a shock and they shouldn’t be out here in these temperatures, but check everywhere first. We don’t want any more surprises.’

He returned to the group and spoke gently to the woman who had found the body. ‘I’m so very sorry for what you’ve been through. My sergeant’s just checking the premises and sealing off the workroom. He won’t be long, and then I’ll need to ask you a few questions. We can do it in one of the rooms here, or, if you’d rather not go back into the building straight away, I’m sure I can find us somewhere nearby to talk.’

‘No, no—it’s fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to make any more work for you.’

‘We’ll go into the flat upstairs in a minute,’ Lettice said, squeezing Hilda’s shoulder. ‘It’s chock-a-block with materials, but it’s quiet and well away from everything, and at least we can have some tea to warm us up.’

Penrose was grateful for his cousin’s tact. The comings and goings of photographers, scene-of-crime officers and mortuary vans were not comfortable things to witness for anyone who didn’t work with them, and he needed Hilda to concentrate without any upsetting distractions. ‘You must be Mr Gaunt?’ he said, holding his hand out to the man by the gates. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Penrose. I gather you reported the murder?’

‘That’s right,’ Gaunt said. ‘I was on my way to work, when I saw Mrs Reader coming out from the yard. She was obviously upset about something, so I stopped to find out what was wrong. She asked me to wait down here with the man’s body while she went to call the police, just to make sure that nobody else came into the yard. Then I heard her screaming, so I went straight up—I thought she was in trouble.’ He paused, looking at Hilda Reader. ‘When I saw what had happened, I was so sorry that I’d let her go up and make the call, but it seemed the best thing at the time—she knew where the telephone was and everything. But I wish I could have saved her from seeing that. It’s terrible up there—even more so for anyone who knew the girl.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Penrose said, impressed by the young man’s decency. ‘What did you do when you got upstairs?’

‘I asked Mrs Reader where the telephone was, and told her to wait in the corridor. Then I called you.’

‘And you came down together as soon as you’d finished.’

‘No, Archie—they did a little light dusting and finished the spring collection. Of course they came straight down—they’re hardly going to stay up there with a human pin cushion, are they?’ Ronnie’s frustration had finally got the better of her, but there were tears in her eyes as she glared at him.

Gaunt looked uncomfortable, but Penrose nodded encouragingly at him to continue. ‘More or less straight down, Sir. Mrs Reader wanted me to telephone her employers as well. So I went back to do that, and then we came down here to wait.’

‘We came straight away,’ Lettice explained. ‘We just couldn’t believe it. I suppose we’d been here about five or ten minutes before you arrived.’

‘And neither of you have left the courtyard?’

‘No, of course not. We knew we mustn’t touch anything.’

‘There is one thing, though.’ Hilda Reader spoke so faintly that Penrose could hardly hear what she was saying. ‘Upstairs I … it was the smell, you see. I couldn’t stop myself. The shock of finding her there like that, seeing what he’d done to her. I’m afraid I … I was sick. I couldn’t help it,’ she said again. ‘I’m sorry—I hope I haven’t ruined anything.’

‘Oh, Hilda,’ Lettice said, wrapping her arms round her. ‘How bloody awful for you. There’s no need to be sorry.’

‘Lettice is right, Mrs Reader,’ Penrose said. ‘There’s absolutely no need to apologise—it’s a perfectly natural reaction.’

‘I didn’t realise she was dead at first, you see,’ Hilda explained. ‘She had her back to me, and when I saw her I thought that something had gone on between her and her father. If I’m honest, I thought she’d hurt him—then I realised it was the other way round.’

‘Why did you think that Marjorie had hurt her father?’ Penrose asked.

‘Because he was hanging around here at lunchtime yesterday, asking to see her. She went over the road to meet him, and when she came back she seemed upset—angry, really. I think she was ashamed of him—she never talked about her home life. She kept apologising in case he’d been any bother to me.’

‘It’s us that should be sorry,’ Lettice said. ‘All the time it was going on, we were just across the road at the theatre. My God,’ she added, remembering, ‘we even saw the lights go out. We could have helped her.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Just after the play finished, so around ten-fifteen, I suppose. We should have gone up to see her, like we said we would. We should never have let this happen.’

‘Damn right we shouldn’t.’ Ronnie lit a cigarette and looked provocatively at Archie, daring him to forbid her to smoke at a crime scene. ‘Why didn’t we know that Marjorie was in trouble? Because we never have time to talk to those girls about anything except work, that’s why. We’re so busy with our plays and our reviews and our fucking charity galas that we can’t see what’s going on under our roof. I swear to God, if that bastard hadn’t cracked his own skull open, I’d be more than happy to do it for him.’

Fallowfield reappeared in the yard and nodded discreetly to Penrose. ‘The rest of the building’s clear, Sir,’ he said. ‘Nothing looks out of place except in the workroom.’

‘Fine. Well, if everyone could go up to the flat now, I’ll be with you as soon as I can. And Mr Gaunt—you must be very late for work, so we won’t keep you any longer at the moment. We’ll need a formal statement from you in due course, and there may be some further questions—let Detective Sergeant Fallowfield know how we can get hold of you, and you’re free to go. Can we give you a lift anywhere?’

‘No thank you, Sir—I’m only a couple of minutes away. I work at the Coliseum.’

‘Stage crew?’ Penrose asked, and Gaunt nodded. They watched as Lettice and Ronnie led Hilda Reader round to the front of the building. ‘Thank you for what you’ve done this morning,’ Penrose added. ‘It can’t have been easy for you. I’d appreciate it if you could keep the details to yourself at the moment. Miss Baker’s remaining family will have to be told and I need to establish exactly what happened here—and all that will be much less painful without the help of the evening papers. Can I rely on you not to mention names to anyone?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Gaunt said.

For once, Penrose actually believed the answer he was given. ‘Is the team on its way?’ he asked Fallowfield. ‘This snow’s not much at the moment, but it’s going to get worse.’

‘Should be here any minute, Sir. I caught Spilsbury on his way out—said he’d come right over.’

‘Excellent.’ Penrose left Fallowfield to take down Gaunt’s details, and walked over to the foot of the staircase. Standing at a distance, so as not to disturb the area immediately around the body, he looked down at the dead man. He lay with his head towards the stairs and parallel with the building, one hand close to his face, the other flung out behind him, just touching the step, as though he had still been trying to save himself when he hit the ground. In his sixties, Penrose guessed, and, from what he could see where the snow had not settled, shabbily dressed. Crouching down, he noticed the raw, red discolouration on the man’s knuckles where his skin had been exposed to the cold; the snow had done its quiet work, drifting, enfolding, obliterating; imperceptibly draining his life if the fall had not killed him, and creating more difficulties for those investigating his death.

Penrose turned his back on Baker and headed upstairs through the front entrance to try to piece together the last moments of his daughter’s life, stopping on the way to fetch his bag from the car. He stood just inside the door to the workroom, taking advantage of the stillness before forensics arrived to absorb the scene as a whole. Once the detailed analysis of individual pieces of evidence began, the chance to do this was lost, so he was always relieved to be the first professional to arrive at the scene of a crime; photographs were invaluable, and many a cruel murder had been solved in the photographic department high above the Thames, but, for Penrose, there was no substitute for his own first impressions. Carefully, he put his bag down on the table nearest the door and took out some gloves, then walked slowly into the room. It was a scene of nauseating horror. Marjorie was slumped on an upright wooden chair and, although he could see the extent of her injuries in the mirror, nothing could have prepared him for the trauma of looking directly into her face. It was impossible to imagine what she might have been like in life, so distorted and mutilated were her features. Blood and vomit had trickled down her nose and out through the stitches in her lips. It ran in narrow lines down her face and onto the front of her sewing smock, defacing the Motley monogram. Penrose noticed the small pieces of black glass which mingled with it and realised that Marjorie’s suffering must have begun long before the needle touched her skin. As he looked closer, he could see tiny cuts and grazes all around her nose and on her cheeks, presumably from glass which had missed her mouth in the violence of the attack; some of the beads were still on the table next to the body, and he saw that they had been roughly crushed to make their edges even sharper and more deadly. Her swollen lips were bruised and discoloured, and the needle—about four inches long and angled at the tip—hung down from her mouth on a length of thick, black thread. The stitching was crudely done, and Penrose could not even begin to imagine the pain; in truth, though, he didn’t have to—the evidence of that was all too obvious in her eyes. Glazed and passive in death, and fixed on their merciless reflection, they nevertheless seemed to plead with him to call a halt to the torment; as he crouched down beside her, obscuring the line of vision between the body and its grotesque mirror image, he could almost believe that she was grateful.

Marjorie’s hands were clasped together in her lap, but the red marks around her wrists suggested that they had, at some point, been tied together. There was a similar chafing to her neck, and the width of the mark seemed to match the tape measure which hung over the back of the chair. Penrose had tried to prevent his mind from focusing on the stench of the body, but it was unavoidable; he would not know until the post mortem whether the incontinence was a result of some sort of toxic substance or purely of fear, but he would be surprised to find that Marjorie had not been incapacitated in some way. She was young and looked reasonably strong, but there was no sign of a struggle in the room: the work tables still stood in neat rows and the chairs and tailor’s dummies remained upright and undamaged. The killer would have had ample time to tidy up, of course, but somehow Penrose did not think that was what had happened. No, he sensed something much more controlled and methodical in this determined violation of a young girl’s body. He stood and looked around him at the fabrics and drawings, at the contrasts of colour and texture that filled the room. Death was always ugly, whether it came from a merciful bullet to the head or the sort of prolonged torture he saw here, but more often than not it confined itself to poorer districts and normal, even squalid, domesticity; the fact that it had been allowed to taint a place of beauty, that Marjorie had been disfigured in the most repellent way amid the trappings of class and fashion, seemed to him significant.

It occurred to Penrose that this was the first time he had attended a murder scene in a room he knew well, and he was struck by the way in which violence affected the atmosphere; it went far beyond the power of any physical damage, and he wondered how Lettice and Ronnie would cope with what had taken place here, or if Hilda Reader would ever feel capable of working in this studio again. He remembered what he and Josephine had discussed the other night: the story wasn’t the crime or the investigation—the stages which concerned him; it was how people picked up from there and carried on with their lives. If the obvious explanation here turned out to be the truth, and Marjorie’s father had fallen to his death after killing her, then Penrose’s involvement in their narrative was over before it really started; for everyone else—Marjorie’s family and workmates, others who would be destroyed by the shame of what her father had done—it was just the beginning, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow for the unrecognised victims of murder, the thousands of people for whom justice was not the same as solace, and who were left to cope while professionals like him washed their hands of one set of lives and moved on to the next.

Somehow, though, he didn’t think his business with the Bakers was finished yet: the obvious scenario might be logical, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. He glanced across the table next to the body, taking in the cotton reels and squares of material, the boxes of pins and needles—all the clutter which would make the necessary analysis of the scene so difficult—and stopped when he noticed an empty vodka bottle and two glasses. That might easily explain how Marjorie had been drugged, but, after what Hilda Reader had said, would the girl really have settled down for a cosy drink with her father on work premises? He doubted it. There was something else, too: on the floor by the mirror lay another sewing smock, exactly like the one which Marjorie wore. When he bent down to examine it, he could smell the faintest trace of vomit and see that it was covered in tiny flecks of blood. Clearly, the smock had been worn by the killer. Why had it been left behind? he wondered, but, more to the point, was Baker the sort of man who would bother to take such precautions? He was wary of jumping to too many conclusions before he’d heard the scientific evidence, but his instinct told him that, if Baker had killed his daughter, it would have been with a blow to the head or a hard shove down the stairs—something clumsy and unimaginative. This was altogether different; it was spiteful and emotional and—if he really wanted to speculate—the sort of crime more often committed by a woman than a man. The stitching of the mouth had obvious connotations: Marjorie had said too much, exposed a secret, perhaps, or told a lie. Then she had been made to watch herself die, taunted and mocked by her own helplessness. The evidence might prove him wrong but, at the moment, the personality of the crime did not tally in Penrose’s mind with the man who lay dead outside.

Deep in thought, he heard a noise behind him and turned round, expecting to see Fallowfield or a scene-of-crime officer, but it was Ronnie. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he snapped, his concern for her making him react more angrily than he meant to. ‘I told you to go to the flat.’ He went over to the door and took her arm, but she shook him off.

‘I want to see her, Archie,’ she said, ‘and don’t think you’re going to stop me. These are our premises and Marjorie is—was—our responsibility. Hilda walked in on this when it should have been one of us, and she’s up there now in some sort of private hell created by what she’s seen. I can’t just hide upstairs and pretend I know how awful it must be. I won’t do that. It’s disrespectful to Marjorie and plain bloody cowardly as far as Hilda’s concerned. Please—let me see her properly.’

She tried to push past him but he wouldn’t let her. ‘Does Hilda know you’re here?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘No, I thought not. She didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d want to share her pain—not like this, anyway. There are ways of helping her that don’t involve putting yourself through this just because you feel guilty.’ He and Ronnie were alike in many ways, and he understood exactly where her anger was coming from. ‘Trust me, please—I didn’t know Marjorie and you did, but no woman would want to be seen like this—that’s not respect. You can stay here with me for a minute if you like, but I won’t let you go any closer.’ Ronnie seemed to realise that she had no choice but to accept his decision. She stared across the room, bewildered and horrified by what she saw, and he watched her face as she tried to come to terms with a string of unfamiliar emotions, understanding how alienated and helpless she must feel in a space where she was usually so in control. ‘Have you noticed anything out of place?’ he asked after a moment or two.

‘Apart from a dead seamstress, you mean?’

‘Apart from that, yes.’

Ronnie looked around the room. ‘The mirror’s been moved,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s usually over there by the window to catch the light. Otherwise, it’s all as it should be.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘You could almost believe it was a normal working day, couldn’t you? Oh, Archie—why did he have to pick Hilda’s table to kill her at? It seems such a small thing, I suppose—what does it matter where she died when she died so horrifically? But if it had been anyone else’s, they need never have known. Now, I honestly don’t know how any of us can carry on here.’

He saw no point in lying to her. ‘It’s going to be difficult at first, and I agree with you—Hilda may find it impossible. But it does fade, you know—that image in your mind. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does.’

‘Did he really stitch her mouth up?’ He nodded, and Ronnie seemed to search for words that would express how she felt. In the end, she simply said: ‘I liked her, Archie. I really liked her.’

‘Come on,’ he said gently, leading her away. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

They walked back along the corridor and, as they passed the open doorway which led on to the staircase, he glanced down into the courtyard, where Fallowfield was busy organising the other officers as they arrived. The snow was still falling, but only lightly, and he was pleased to see a sense of urgency in the proceedings; the sooner they could photograph both scenes and remove the bodies for post mortem, the better. He needed some preliminary results as soon as possible to confirm exactly what he was dealing with, and he knew he could rely on Spilsbury to be both swift and thorough.

Lettice had not been exaggerating about the state of their old flat on the top floor of number 66. There were rolls of material everywhere, and the living room had been transformed into a makeshift workroom to accommodate extra staff during busy times. The three bedrooms that led off it looked like the storage area for a West End jumble sale: each was packed with props, set models and costumes from past productions, and Penrose wondered how long it would take his cousins to fill Maiden Lane as well. Somehow, Lettice had found the sofa amid the clutter and she and Hilda Reader were drinking tea; he was pleased to see that both looked a little stronger than they had downstairs. As soon as she saw her sister, Lettice got up and gave her a hug, and some unspoken words of comfort passed between them. Not for the first time, he admired and envied their closeness.

‘Mrs Reader—would you mind taking me through exactly what happened when you got to work this morning?’ he asked, sitting down opposite her.

‘Well, I knew something wasn’t right when I found the gates unlocked,’ she said. ‘I thought that Miss Lettice or Miss Ronnie might have come in early—we’ve got so much on at the moment, and they often do—then I realised that wasn’t so because the snow was untouched. Beautiful, it looked.’

‘So there were no footprints or marks in the courtyard at all?’

‘No, nothing, so I just assumed it was carelessness. Then when I got through the arch and turned the corner, I saw someone lying at the bottom of the stairs. I thought it was Marjorie at first—she’d been working late the night before, and I thought she’d slipped on the steps in the dark—but when I got closer, it was obviously a man. I was so relieved at first, which was wicked of me, I suppose, but I was just glad it wasn’t Marjorie.’

Penrose let her compose herself for a moment, and then asked: ‘Why was Marjorie working on her own last night? Was that usual?’

It was Lettice who answered. ‘There’s been a lot of overtime recently—like Hilda says, we’ve been rushed off our feet and it’s coming up to Christmas, so the girls are all happy to have a bit extra in their pay packets. They’ll often stay late. But Friday night’s different—they all want to get home to their families or go out for the evening, so they clock off at the normal time.’

‘But not Marjorie?’

‘No,’ Hilda said. ‘She seemed keen to stay. I always got the impression there wasn’t much for her to go home to, although, like I said, she never talked much about her family.’

‘You didn’t suspect that there was something particular she wanted to stay for, though? A reason why she might want to be alone in the building?’

Hilda shook her head. ‘No, I can’t think of anything that would make her want to do that. You see, she always made an extra effort to show that we could trust her. We’re lucky with most of our girls—they’re honest and hard-working, but I think Marjorie always felt she had to try that bit harder than the rest because of where she’d come from.’

‘Sorry—I don’t understand.’

‘She’d been in prison,’ Ronnie explained. ‘We took her on trial six months ago, just after she got out of Holloway—for the third time, I believe. You know Mary Size?’

‘The deputy governor?’

‘That’s right. She’s a great believer in finding prisoners some sort of meaningful work to go to when they’re released. Some of the women have a talent for needlework—God knows they get enough practice—so she approached us. Marjorie’s the fourth one we’ve had in the last couple of years. All of them have done well, actually, but Marjorie flourished.’

‘What was she in prison for?’ Penrose asked, surprised and impressed by his cousins’ understated social conscience.

‘Theft, mainly—petty stuff, but persistent.’

‘And you’ve had no trouble like that since she’s been with you.’

‘No,’ Lettice said firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Who was last to leave, apart from Marjorie?’

‘I was,’ Hilda said. ‘We had a late fitting for the Cowdray Club gala. Lady Ashby was here and Marjorie was dealing with her, so I waited until they’d finished.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Seven o’clock. I’m sure about that because Lady Ashby needed to be at the Ham Bone Club by half past, and I offered to call her a taxi but she said she’d have time to walk. We went down to St Martin’s Lane together. She tried to persuade Marjorie to go with her, but I think she was joking.’

‘I doubt it,’ Ronnie said. ‘No pretty girl in London is safe when Geraldine’s on heat.’

In any other circumstances, the expression on Hilda Reader’s face would have been priceless. ‘How did Marjorie seem when you left her?’ Penrose asked.

‘She’d cheered up since the incident with her father at lunchtime. We kept her busy, and work seemed to help her to forget about it. I made sure she knew what jobs were to be done, and I left her to it. She seemed impatient to get on.’

‘And did you lock the gates when you left?’

‘No, I just pulled them to. It’s hard to unlock them from the inside, you see, because it’s so dark under the arch. I thought it would be easier for Marjorie when she left.’

Penrose didn’t bother to ask if anyone could have opened the gates from the street; it would be easy enough to check for himself and he didn’t want to say something which might suggest to Hilda Reader that she was in any way to blame for Marjorie’s death. ‘And there was no sign of her father hanging around outside when you left?’

‘No. If there had been, I’d never have left her on her own.’

‘Of course not. Could you tell me what happened at lunchtime?’

‘It was just after twelve. One of the other girls came down to the workroom from up here to fetch something, and she told me there was a man outside asking for Marjorie.’

‘So he’d come into the yard?’

‘Yes. When I went out to talk to him he was standing at the top of the stairs, just outside the door. I recognised him right away—he was often hanging about when the girls left on a Friday, but I never knew it was Marjorie he was waiting for. He introduced himself—Joe, I think he said his first name was—and asked if he could have a quick word with Marjorie. I told him she was out—she’d gone to the Cowdray Club to drop some samples off—but she’d be back any time. He said he’d wait across the road for her, and could I be sure to tell her? By across the road, I assumed he meant the pub. I had a quick look out the window, but I couldn’t see him in the street.’

‘And what was Marjorie’s reaction?’

‘Embarrassed. Angry. Worried that he might get her into trouble, I suppose.’

‘But she went?’

‘Yes, but she wasn’t gone long. About ten minutes, I suppose. She didn’t bother taking the rest of her lunch break.’

‘And you said she was upset when she came back?’

‘That’s right. I didn’t ask her about what had happened because she never liked you to think that she was vulnerable. She pretended to be a lot harder than she was, gave the impression that things didn’t matter to her, but they did. All she said when she got back upstairs was that she was damned if she was going to be walked all over like her mother, and that she’d rot in hell before he got another penny out of her. She was talking to herself, really, and she went quiet when she realised I’d heard. I wish I’d talked to her about it now, but I didn’t like to.’

‘How did Marjorie get on with the other girls?’

‘Well enough,’ Hilda said, considering his question. ‘There was never any unpleasantness. She made them laugh, and I think they were a bit in awe of her at times because she was a natural and learned so quickly. She could leave most of them standing when it came to the work we do here.’

‘And didn’t they resent her for that? It would have been quite natural for them to feel threatened by a newcomer, and women can be unkind if they’re put in that position.’

Hilda smiled. ‘That’s true enough, Inspector, but if they felt that way, I never saw it—and I don’t miss much. Marjorie had a charm about her, a cockiness—in a nice way, though, if you know what I mean. She wasn’t arrogant—she was just young. It would have been very difficult not to like her, and I honestly think most of the girls admired her for the way she was shaking off her past, and wanted her to do well.’

Shaking off her past was an interesting phrase, Penrose thought. ‘Did she still associate with anyone from prison?’ he asked.

‘There was one girl she saw who she’d been inside with. They’d have lunch together occasionally, go out on their days off, that sort of thing. I never saw her, though, and I can’t remember her name. Miss Size would be able to tell you that.’

‘Tell me a bit about the other seamstresses—have most of them been here a while? Where do you hire them from?’

Ronnie was not inclined to hide her exasperation. ‘As lovely as it is of you to take an interest in our business, Archie, how can that possibly matter now? Marjorie’s dead, and a full inventory of our staff is hardly going to bring her back.’

‘Just humour me.’

‘We take students from the trade schools each year,’ Lettice said. ‘Shoreditch and Barrett Street, mainly. Most of them come to us on a personal recommendation from the staff, or Ronnie and I go along to the annual exhibition and hand-pick anyone we think looks particularly promising. We’re lucky—more often than not, we get the ones we want because we can offer theatre as well as fashion, and everyone thinks that’s glamorous. There isn’t as much call for society dressmaking these days—people want more practical clothes.’

‘Thank God,’ Ronnie said with feeling. ‘Some of the staff come to us from the department-store workrooms, as well. Hilda gets us some absolute gems from Debenhams—her husband works there, so she has inside knowledge.’

‘And once they’re here, they do tend to stay. Everyone seems happy enough.’

Penrose nodded. ‘There’s a vodka bottle on the table downstairs, and it looks as though Marjorie was having a drink with someone before she died. Was the bottle around before you left, Mrs Reader?’

‘Absolutely not. We never allow drinking in the workroom. Apart from anything else, it’s dangerous.’

‘So Lady Ashby didn’t request it or bring it in with her?’

‘No,’ Hilda said, although Ronnie looked sceptical.

‘Take me through everything else that happened yesterday—you said Marjorie went to the Cowdray Club in the morning?’

‘Yes,’ Lettice said. ‘She delivered some samples ahead of the gala on Monday, then went on to Debenhams to get a few things we needed—beads, a couple of particular threads that we’d run out of. Nothing particularly unusual.’

‘Black beads?’

She looked at him curiously. ‘Amongst others, yes. She also delivered a note to Miss Bannerman at the club, asking her to send her ladies round for their final fittings. Four of them came yesterday afternoon, and Marjorie spent the rest of the day dealing with that.’

‘Who were the four?’

‘Lady Ashby, Mary Size, Celia Bannerman and Miriam Sharpe—she’s the president of the College of Nursing. Don’t ask me where that fits into the Cowdray Club—the politics are beyond me. We just smile and do what they ask, but she didn’t seem particularly happy to be here.’

Penrose jotted down the names. ‘Do you have a lot to do with the Cowdray Club?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ Lettice said. ‘Several of the members are also private clients of ours, and we’re doing the gala for them next week—at least we were. But that’s because Amy Coward—Noël’s aunt—asked particularly for us. Flattering, I suppose, but it’s been a lot of work.’

‘Yes—the sort of flattery we can live without,’ agreed Ronnie. ‘In return, the club has been helping us out with some classes for the girls—exercise classes, physical training, that sort of thing. People who work for years in this industry are notoriously prone to health problems.’

‘And Marjorie would have been involved in those?’

‘Yes,’ Lettice said. ‘I don’t remember her being the most enthusiastic participant, but we insist that they all do it to some extent. It’s important that they keep themselves well.’

‘Mrs Reader, I’m sorry if this is painful for you, but there’s one thing I have to ask. The needle that was used in the attack on Marjorie—it’s about four inches long, and it bends slightly at the tip.’ He saw her flinch, but there was no way of avoiding the question. ‘I had a quick look around downstairs, but I couldn’t see anything else like it. Do you keep a lot of them? Would it have been easy for someone to pick up when they got inside?’

‘Four inches? Are you sure?’ she asked, forcing herself to concentrate on the question rather than its implications. He nodded. ‘That’s a sack needle, Inspector—we don’t keep those as a rule.’

‘What? None at all?’

‘They’re not delicate enough for most of the materials we use here. We’ve had one knocking about at some point for stage work—sail material, something like that—but not recently, and it’s certainly not something that a stranger could just pick up. I wouldn’t know where to lay my hands on one—and that’s if we’ve got any at all.’

So the murderer had come prepared to humiliate, Penrose thought, more convinced than ever that Marjorie’s death and her father’s were more complicated than they looked. ‘One last thing—was Marjorie paid today?’

‘Yes, everyone got their week’s money at the end of the day.’

‘And as far as you know, she didn’t leave the building afterwards?’

‘No.’

‘Is any money kept on the premises?’ he asked.

‘Just a bit of petty cash in the office,’ Lettice said. ‘No more than a few pounds.’

‘I’ll have to have a look round your office. I need Marjorie’s address—that is where you keep the staff details?’ She nodded. ‘I’ll get a car to take you home now, Mrs Reader. Will there be someone in? You shouldn’t be on your own.’

‘My husband’s at work, but if someone could take me to Debenhams, he’ll see me safely home and stay with me.’ She stood up, and Penrose helped her on with her coat. ‘What’s to happen about the work for Monday?’ she asked, turning to Lettice and Ronnie. ‘There’s still a lot to do if we’re to be ready in time.’

‘God, I hadn’t even thought,’ Ronnie said. ‘We’ll have to let the rest of the girls know what’s happened somehow. But I don’t see how we can possibly go on with this gala now.’

‘Why not?’ Hilda asked.

Lettice looked surprised. ‘Well, we haven’t got anywhere to work for a start.’

‘There’s plenty of space at the Cowdray Club,’ Hilda said, buttoning her coat. ‘And I reckon they owe you girls a thing or two after what you’re doing for them. It is their bloody gala, after all.’

‘Hilda!’ Ronnie said, shocked. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard you swear once in fifteen years.’

‘You’ve taught me a thing or two, Miss Ronnie—I just like to choose my moments.’

‘But is it right to go ahead after what’s happened?’ Lettice asked. ‘It seems so heartless, somehow.’

Hilda looked at her, then sat down and took her hand. ‘It’s too easy to say what the dead might or might not have wanted,’ she said. ‘I should know—it took me long enough to stop feeling guilty about marrying again. But sooner or later, you have to think about the living and what they need—and those other girls have been looking forward to this gala for weeks. They’re going to be devastated when they hear about Marjorie—and they’ll need something to focus on to get them through it. Making them idle won’t help. And personally, I think Marjorie would have been the last to down tools if it’d been someone else.’

‘Oh Hilda—we do love you,’ Lettice said, giving her a hug. ‘You’re right, of course—we’ll ask Miss Bannerman.’

‘No we bloody won’t,’ Ronnie said. ‘We’ll tell her. Go with Archie now, Hilda, and we’ll be in touch to let you know what’s happening. And if you need anything—anything at all, promise you’ll ask us.’

‘There is one thing—it’s Miss Bannerman’s evening cape, the blue silk. Marjorie must have started work on it last night—I’d like to finish it for her. You won’t let anything happen to it, will you, Inspector?’

‘No, of course not. I’ll make sure it’s safe. We’re going to have to go over everything very carefully, I’m afraid, and it will take time, but we’ll be as quick as we can.’ He followed Hilda over to the door. ‘Whatever you pay this woman,’ he said, looking back at his cousins, ‘it’s nowhere near enough.’

‘Do you think we don’t know that?’ Lettice answered, but Ronnie called him back.

‘You think there’s more to this, don’t you?’ she said quietly.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Please take care of yourselves.’ He delivered Mrs Reader into the safe hands of PC Ellis, then went to find Fallowfield. ‘Pop over to the Salisbury for me, Bill. I think Marjorie and her father had a bit of a row there yesterday lunchtime. Find out what it was about if you can. I’m going upstairs to talk to Spilsbury.’

As he had known it would be, the Motleys’ workroom was now a completely different place and the ominous stillness of an hour ago had given way to an organised clamour of activity. There were several photographers in the immediate crime scene, each one a trained detective, and the Home Office pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury—as famous in his own right as the criminals he convicted—waited patiently for them to finish before he could examine the body. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you Archie?’ he said as soon as he saw Penrose. ‘I gather this is your cousins’ business. I’m sorry to hear that—it must be terrible for them. I suppose the logical scenario is that he kills her and falls down the stairs in his haste to get away.’

‘But?’ Penrose asked, and his eagerness must have been obvious.

Spilsbury smiled. ‘Yes—somehow I thought you’d be looking for a but. Well, I can’t give you anything more than you’ve got yourself at the moment, and that’s instinct—but the logical scenario doesn’t quite add up to me either. I’d say that the man downstairs was knocked unconscious by the fall and died of exposure, which doesn’t help to build any other case but the obvious one—but I’m hoping to find something more conclusive for you up here.’

‘All done now, Sir,’ one of the photographers called, and Spilsbury went over to the body.

‘You were right about the row, Sir,’ Fallowfield said, coming up behind Penrose. ‘Barman said he thought he was going to have to call for help at one point—she threatened Baker with a glass, apparently.’

‘Really? What was it about?’

‘Money. He wanted her to hand over her wages, and she wasn’t having any of it. Did you know she’d been inside?’ Penrose nodded. ‘Well, he got at her about that, as well—that’s when she picked up the glass.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No. She wasn’t there very long. The bloke had been in now and again over the last few weeks, the barman said—he’d never seen him before that. But he was always on his own until yesterday.’

‘Right—then we need to find out if Marjorie’s wages are still here somewhere,’ Penrose said, and walked across to where Spilsbury was making his painstaking examination. ‘Bernard, I need to know right away if you find any money on the body.’

‘I can tell you that now, Archie.’ He held up a small brown envelope in a bag. ‘Is this what you’re looking for? It was in the pocket of her dress.’ Penrose took the wage packet, which he could see had not even been opened. ‘And this was with it.’ The second bag held a small silver photo frame, with a picture of a young woman and baby. It was no one he recognised.

‘That’s interesting, Sir,’ Fallowfield said, taking the bag from him. ‘I’d have to check, but it matches the description of something stolen from the Cowdray Club. Why would she have that?’

‘I’ve no idea, Bill, but I think it’s time we paid the club a visit.’ He brought his sergeant succinctly up to speed on what he had learned from Hilda Reader and the Motleys.

‘So you think someone else is involved?’

‘I think this suggests that,’ Penrose said, holding up the wage packet. ‘They were fighting over money, so why would he go to all that trouble only to leave behind what he came for? And for God’s sake, Bill—how much do you think is in here? Twenty shillings? Thirty? It hardly warrants that sort of violence, does it? No—either someone disturbed him before he could take what he wanted …’

‘In which case, why haven’t they come forward?’

‘Exactly. Or he didn’t do it. I don’t doubt that he came here looking for Marjorie, but I think this is what he found. No wonder the poor bastard fell down the stairs—they might not have got on, but can you imagine how any father would feel, seeing his daughter like this?’

‘I suppose he might even have walked in while it was happening.’

‘Indeed he might, Bill, and then we could be talking about two murders, not one—but all this is speculation until we have the post-mortem reports.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘In the meantime, we’ve got to break the news to her mother so I’d better dig her address out. Then we need to find a tactful way of asking if she thinks her husband was capable of choking their daughter with beads and stitching her mouth up with a sack needle. If you’ve got any ideas as to how to put that, I’ll hear them on the way.’