Two for Sorrow

Chapter Eight

Except for its prison, Holloway was an undistinguished area which blended so uneventfully into the neighbouring boroughs that it was hard to identify where one ended and another began. Campbell Road, where Marjorie and her father had lived, cut out of Seven Sisters Road, dissecting a line of busy shops close to Finsbury Park tube station. Although not technically a slum, the street held some of the poorest housing in north London and, to Penrose’s mind, some of the worst living conditions: his first few days in the force had brought him here—called to the death of a three-year-old girl, accidentally suffocated in her sleep by a family huddled together in one bed against the cold—and he had never forgotten the misery of that visit, fifteen years ago on a day very similar to this.

‘Kids brought up in the Bunk are usually tough enough to take care of themselves,’ Fallowfield said as he drove, giving the street the name by which it was best known among both locals and police, ‘but I don’t see how anything could have given that girl a chance.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t get her face out of my mind, you know, Sir. Poor kid—how old can she have been? Twenty? Twenty-one?’

‘Twenty-three, according to the records my cousins kept,’ Penrose said, ‘and she’d done three stretches in Holloway in as many years.’

‘Well that figures, coming from round here.’

Fallowfield’s comment might have sat uncomfortably with the welfare officers, but it was not entirely unjust. All districts had their notorious streets, but Campbell Road’s reputation was darker than most and the Bunk held a certain legendary status amongst the officers who dealt with trouble there on a daily basis. A chameleon by nature, the street was rife with domestic violence and disputes between households, yet it closed ranks at the slightest hint of interference from strangers, presenting an unfriendly but remarkably united face to the outside world.

They parked at the southern end of the street in front of a newsagent’s and a small beer off-licence. A group of men stood around on the pavement talking and idling away a Saturday morning, their ragged coat collars turned up to keep out the cold, their breath mingling with smoke from their cigarettes. The air bristled with hostility as Penrose and Fallowfield got out of the car. ‘Watch your motor, copper?’ a small boy shouted insolently from the other side of the street, and one or two of the men sniggered as a handful of snow and mud hit the windscreen. The boy moved nearer to the car, kicking a few stones towards the vehicle as he walked, full of bravado in front of his friends. Fallowfield glared at him and seemed about to say something, but Penrose shook his head. How early the antagonism set in, he thought as he led the way up the street; the oldest of the boys could only have been six or seven.

The Bunk was broad enough to give the impression that its houses had a right to be there and, unlike most slums, the street did not crouch into the shadows of a factory or gasworks. In fact, a stranger oblivious to its history would never have guessed that the three-storey buildings housed anything other than the artisan classes they had originally been designed for. The social face of the street may have changed, but traces of its architectural aspirations remained in the generous pavements and iron railings which ran in front of the houses, protecting a tiny sliver of private land from public footsteps. The door to number 35 was worn and neglected, the woman who answered it much the same; she looked forty but was probably younger; Penrose could smell the alcohol on her breath before she even opened her mouth. ‘We’re looking for a Mrs Baker,’ he said. ‘Is she at home?’

The woman smirked. ‘Maria? I don’t know where else she’d be. Top of the house—two rooms at the back. Would you like me to show you up, Sir?’

She spat the last word out sarcastically, and Penrose pushed the door open and walked past her, ignoring the mock curtsey that accompanied the offer. ‘No, thank you. We’ll find our own way.’

Inside, the house was in desperate need of repair: the plastered walls were peeling, the ceilings stained and dingy and, as they walked over to the stairs, Penrose noticed that the floorboards were springy with damp. Sections of balustrade had been removed for firewood, making the dimly lit, uneven steps more dangerous than ever. From what he could see through open doors on his way up, the overcrowding seemed to have got worse since he was last here. There must be more people per room than the law allowed, but that was hardly surprising; he knew from experience that what was acceptable was defined by what people were used to rather than what was legal.

‘We’ll just tell her the facts as gently as possible,’ he said quietly to Fallowfield on the middle landing. ‘Presumably she knew them both better than anyone else, so it’ll be interesting to see what conclusions she jumps to about what happened.’

He knocked at the first of four doors which led off the second-floor corridor, and it was answered almost immediately by a dark-haired woman in her late forties or early fifties. She looked up at him with tired eyes, her face sallow and expressionless—the look of guilt or dread which usually greeted his arrival was entirely absent. ‘Mrs Baker?’

‘What’s he done now?’ Her voice was deep and roughened by cigarettes, her accent that of a born Londoner. ‘It must be something serious if they’ve sent the busies. Or is it Marjorie you’re after?’

‘I need to talk to you about both of them, I’m afraid. May we come in?’ She nodded and stood aside to let them pass. After the dirt and degradation of the rest of the house, the Bakers’ room was refreshingly clean, but 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 both dead,’ he said, and for the first time Maria Baker looked shocked and confused. ‘Their bodies were found earlier this morning at Marjorie’s place of work, but we believe they died last night. Marjorie was murdered. Your husband was found at the bottom of some steps and his death may have been an accident.’

‘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 was her father’s fault. She started running errands for one of the moneylenders down the street—Joe stopped her one day on her way back from a customer and made her hand over the cash, but she took the flak for it.’

‘Why didn’t she just tell the truth?’ Fallowfield’s tone was incredulous. ‘There was no love lost between them.’

Maria Baker glared at him. ‘You don’t shop your own, and anyway, mud sticks. No one had a problem believing it was Marjorie who was in the wrong.’

Penrose could see that his sergeant was having trouble hiding what he thought of this honour-among-thieves principle. ‘I gather she kept in touch with one of the girls from prison,’ he said. ‘Do you know who that was?’

‘You must mean Lucy—Lucy Peters. She brought her here a couple of times. Scared little thing, she was, but then Marjorie always did look out for the underdog.’

Fallowfield made a note of the name. ‘Tell me about Marjorie,’ Penrose said. It was always so tempting to put a halo over a murder victim. People—particularly close relatives—were understandably reluctant to speak ill of the dead and, more often than not, he was given a picture of a person who had never existed, a person devoid of the very human weaknesses which had almost certainly got him or her killed. Already he could see how easy it would be to dismiss Marjorie Baker with a variety of stereotypes—the petty criminal with a heart of gold, the mouthy upstart who didn’t know her place, the victim of poverty who never stood a chance—but he trusted his cousins’ judgement and suspected that the true person was a complex blend of all these images. It was rare for a mother to be able to paint an accurate picture of her child, but Mrs Baker didn’t come across as a subscriber to sentimentality. ‘What was she like?’ he asked.

‘Not like me, that’s for sure. It’s a different world for girls now, they can afford to be cocky.’ It was the same word that Hilda Reader had used to describe Marjorie but without the affection, and Penrose sensed a rivalry between mother and daughter. ‘I’m Fonthill Road rag shop, she’s Islington market—or at least she thought she was. She was too good for this life, and almost clever enough to pull it off. She’d look at me sometimes with such pity in her eyes, and I’d know what she was thinking—anything but a life of scrubbing doorsteps and charring. I tell you—there’s plenty round here who’d take a charring job from under your nose as soon as look at you, but not Marjorie. Oh no, she was far too proud to go knocking on doors for work, although there’s been times when I could have begged her to.’

‘She seemed to have settled into her new job well, though; her employers tell me she was making a success of it.’

‘Well, it suited her idea of who she was, didn’t it?’ Mrs Baker bit her lip, and appeared to regret her words. ‘You must think I’m a wicked cow,’ she said, ‘and perhaps there are women out there who are better than me, who don’t grudge their daughters the chances they never had—but I’m not like that. Marjorie was lucky to get that job after being in prison. I used to say to her when she told me about all these new skills she’d learned inside—what’s the point of that? Prison teaches you how to do something and makes damn sure that no one’ll ever employ you to do it. But I was wrong, and someone gave her another chance. Now you walk in here and tell me she’s got herself killed because of something she said and I’m so angry with her for wasting it—not for her sake, but for mine, because if things had been different, that could’ve been me and I wouldn’t have chucked it away.’

Penrose gave her a moment before continuing, then asked: ‘Did Marjorie ever talk about the people she worked with? Did she seem happy?’

‘Yeah, she was happy, although Joe did his best to spoil it for her.’

‘By bothering her at work and embarrassing her in front of the other girls?’

She looked surprised. ‘You know more about that than I do. No—by putting her down, telling her it wouldn’t last. That’s what he was good at—bringing us all down to his level. Marjorie brought this picture home in one of them magazines that people read who have more time than sense. She was in it, you see, her and the other girls at the factory. They were with the ladies who were having the clothes made. Ever so proud of it, she was, but that just started Joe off worse than ever. He said something to her about it that obviously upset her.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘I don’t know—she wouldn’t say. But I got the impression that he was trying to persuade her to get more out of her new job than her wage packet.’

‘Do you still have the picture, Mrs Baker?’

‘I suppose it’s somewhere about.’ She stood up and rummaged through a pile of newspapers which sat by the grate, waiting to be burned. ‘Here, this is it.’

Penrose took the piece of paper and looked down at the photograph. It had been taken in the Motley workroom and Marjorie stood on the left of the group, poignantly close to the spot where she had been killed. She was holding a glamorous evening gown, draped over her arm to show the material off to its best advantage, and he was struck by the contrast between the world of the picture and the world she had been born to—and by how comfortable she seemed in the former. She was exceptionally attractive, with a smile like a young Gwen Farrar and, as he gazed at this carefree image, he felt again the full horror of her final moments.

He passed the photograph to Fallowfield, who copied down the captioned names and returned it to Marjorie’s mother. ‘Did she associate with anyone in particular from work?’ he asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘Not especially, as far as I know.’

‘What about men? Was she walking out with anyone?’

The genteel phrase seemed to amuse her. ‘If she was, she never told me about him, but then she wouldn’t. She kept her secrets close to her, and I didn’t watch her every move—we didn’t have that kind of relationship.’

‘So you weren’t worried when she didn’t come home last night? When neither of them did?’

‘No, I was glad of the peace. I’m always glad if Joe stays out all night, and, like I said, Marjorie had other places to go. I don’t blame them—I wish I could get away.’

‘Where did your husband go, Mrs Baker? Who did he associate with?’

‘Any man who’d buy him a drink, and any woman who’d give him a bed for the night.’

‘Can you give us names?’

She shook her head. ‘He drank in the Feathers or the Green Man—they might be able to tell you there who he kept company with. The women weren’t from round here, I’ll give him that—he didn’t mess around on his own doorstep.’

‘Were you here all night, Mrs Baker?’ Fallowfield asked.

She laughed at him. ‘No. Actually, Sergeant, I took a long hot bath and went out to see some friends for supper. Then we went to the theatre.’ Her laughter had an edge of hysteria about it and, when it stopped, there were tears in her eyes. ‘Of course I was here all night. I’m always here—you can rely on that.’

Penrose stood up to go; there was no more to be learned here for the present. ‘Once again, I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Baker, and thank you for your time. If you think of anything that might help us, I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch immediately. We will, of course, keep you informed of any developments.’

‘I know what you’re both thinking,’ she said as they walked to the door. ‘I’m not as upset as I should be. Not as shocked. But grief’s a luxury I can’t afford—not with Marjorie’s wages to replace somehow. I don’t even know how I’m going to bury them.’

Penrose knew it was futile, but he said it anyway. ‘If there’s anything we can do to be of assistance, you know where to find us.’

As they went back downstairs, Fallowfield said: ‘Lucy Peters is at the Cowdray Club, Sir. Works there as a maid.’

‘Does she? Then perhaps that’s how Marjorie got hold of the photo frame we found on her body—that might have been the arrangement: Peters stole the stuff, and Marjorie sold it on. And some of the women in that picture …’

‘Are the ones who’ve had the letters, the ones who saw Marjorie the day she died. Yes, I noticed that. Do you think there’s a link? Perhaps it was Marjorie who sent them.’

‘That crossed my mind. It’s time we paid the Cowdray Club a visit, Bill, but I want to go back to the Yard first and try to get hold of Spilsbury. He might have something for us by now, and at least then we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with.’

‘What d’you make of the mother?’

Penrose considered carefully before answering. ‘I think life’s knocked everything out of her, Bill, and there’s 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 damage to her lips and some small scratches around the mouth from glass beads which didn’t go down her throat. If that blood is hers, she would have had to have gone to the sink after those injuries were made, and you’re hardly going to nip along the corridor to make yourself presentable after suffering that sort of torture. No, I think the killer’s face and hands were covered with the same specks of blood and vomit that we found on the smock, and he or she wanted to wash all the traces off before going out into the street.’

‘Then why leave the smock and the towel behind, I wonder? I can understand someone missing the blood on the sink in their hurry to get out, but that seems a little careless.’

‘Perhaps he or she was worried about being seen with them. Anyway, the smock and the towel don’t actually tell us anything very incriminating—unless you think that the plan all along was to frame Baker for his daughter’s murder.’

‘I see what you mean. Baker may simply have come looking for Marjorie and turned up at the wrong moment, then had a helping hand down the stairs?’

‘I don’t put the story together, Archie—that’s your job—but I’ve found nothing yet to disprove what you’ve just said, although Joseph Baker had enough alcohol in him to end up at the bottom of those steps on his own. It’s only the scratches that suggest any sort of struggle—he was knocked unconscious by the fall and died of hypothermia, which makes the time of death difficult to establish, I’m afraid. Someone of his age didn’t stand a chance left out there in those temperatures.’

‘What about a time of death for Marjorie?’

‘She’d been dead for between eight and twelve hours when she was found. Unofficially, I’d say towards the upper end of that.’

Which fitted with what Lettice had told him about the lights going off in the studio, Penrose thought. ‘You said she had no other injuries—presumably she was drugged if she didn’t put up a fight?’

‘Yes, although I can’t say for certain with what until we get the results of some tests. She’d been dragged across the floor at some stage—her stockings were torn, and we found matching fibres on the leg of one of the tables.’

‘Was it in the vodka?’

‘Perhaps. Her pupils were dilated and her skin was grey—in fact, if you discount the horror of her injuries, the picture as a whole resembles clinical cardiovascular collapse, so one of the nitrites would have done the job. Amyl nitrite’s a possibility—it’s a muscle relaxant and they use it to treat angina, but it’s absorbed very rapidly from the lungs so making her inhale a good dose of that would achieve what the killer needed in order to complete the rest of the work.’

‘Is it readily available?’

‘Well, it has various medical uses and it’s commonly prescribed.’

‘Was she conscious throughout the worst of it?’ Penrose asked, although he thought he knew the answer already.

‘Oh yes. For a while, at least. She’ll have lost all the power in her muscles and she’ll have been drowsy, but certainly not drowsy enough. If she’d been allowed to remain lying down, she’d have recovered very quickly from the drug, but she didn’t stand a chance as long as she was tied upright to that chair.’

‘Medical knowledge, then?’

‘Perhaps.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ll get the full reports over to you as soon as I can.’

‘Thanks, Bernard—I appreciate it.’ Penrose put the phone down, satisfied. He had known in his heart that Joseph Baker, while having plenty to reproach himself for, was not guilty of his daughter’s murder, but he tried to see where the Cowdray Club fitted into the overall picture. Had Baker persuaded Marjorie to write those notes and try her hand at blackmail, and, if so, how had she got hold of the information to put in them? He tried to remember the details of the letters, but he had only given them a cursory glance at the time. Why, though, would someone kill Marjorie to silence her when the notes had been freely handed over to the police and their contents already made public? Perhaps there was someone at the club who had never confessed to receiving one.

Fallowfield put his head round the door and Penrose brought him up to date, then asked: ‘Are WPC Wyles’s sewing skills up to scratch, do you think?’

Fallowfield looked curiously at him. ‘Why, sir, have you got something that needs mending?’

Penrose laughed. ‘No, but I’m about to tell my cousins that they’ve got a new member of staff—I want Wyles in that club, watching those women like a hawk.’

‘Why don’t you ask Miss Tey to keep an eye out, sir? She’s on the spot already.’

‘Because she’s Miss Tey, not Miss bloody Marple. You’ve been spending your evenings in St Mary Mead again, haven’t you?’

Fallowfield looked sheepish. ‘Seriously, sir, that sort of work’s not really up Wyles’s street, is it? Women coppers are all right for taking statements and looking after juveniles, but undercover work’s a bit risky.’

‘Oh don’t be so old-fashioned, Bill. She’ll suit a smock better than you will, and she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. I thought about putting her in there as a nurse, but that would mean trusting someone in the building and, for all we know, any one of them could be capable of wielding a sack needle. No, the girls’ moving into the Cowdray Club is too good a chance to miss.’ Fallowfield still looked sceptical. ‘Cheer up, Bill—even if I’m wrong, it might get the chief constable’s wife off our backs. Have you got those anonymous letters handy? I’d like to have another look at them before we go over there.’

The telephone rang while he was waiting. ‘Inspector Penrose? It’s Hilda Reader. I’m sorry to bother you.’

‘It’s no bother, Mrs Reader. Are you all right?’

‘Oh yes, thank you, but I’m glad I’ve caught you. There’s something you should know—something I’ve just found out from my husband.’

‘What is it?’

‘I told him about Marjorie—I hope you don’t mind, but he could see how upset I was and it helped to talk to him about it.’

‘Of course. I understand.’

‘Well, it turns out he saw her yesterday when she came into the shop to get the things Miss Motley needed. A man in his department served her, and there was a bit of a scene between them. John—that’s my husband—had to go over and tell them to be quiet. It turns out that this man—Lionel Bishop, his name is—had been seeing Marjorie behind his wife’s back, but she’d given him his marching orders. He was trying to talk her into starting things up again, but she was having none of it. John said he heard her threaten to tell Mr Bishop’s wife if he didn’t leave her alone. He was furious, apparently.’

‘And is Mr Bishop at the store today?’

‘Yes, Inspector. All day.’

‘Thank you again, Mrs Reader—you’ve been very helpful.’

‘There’s one more thing, Inspector.’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know if it’s important or not, but he sold her those beads.’

Penrose went to look for Fallowfield and handed him a slip of paper in exchange for the folder of letters. ‘Lionel Bishop. Works in the haberdashery department of Debenhams. He’s been playing around with Marjorie Baker, but she wanted to put a stop to it and threatened to tell his wife.’

‘And he wasn’t best pleased?’

‘Exactly. Go and bring him in.’