Two for Sorrow

Chapter Ten

I sat in the car coming home this afternoon and wanted you so much that I stopped breathing. Are your eyes blue or grey, or grey-blue? Grey, aren’t they? Perhaps I should never see you again. Perhaps it will take not one, but a hundred and one years to get over you. It’s odd, this vivid physical realisation of someone whose body one has never known, and amusing to be scunnered at every physical approach to a new person by a love months old. You are like a ghost, my dear, coming between me and every other human being, but I’ll lay you yet—in the accepted sense of the word. And London is lovelier when you are in it.

Josephine put the pages of Marta’s diary down for a moment and walked over to the window. The snow in Cavendish Square was looking a little the worse for wear now, having been trampled underfoot by a procession of excited shop workers taking full advantage of their lunch hours, but at her level it was still fresh and magical, settling peacefully on the branches of the trees and, across to her left, providing a striking contrast to one of the city’s finer bronzes. The sculpture was of a mother and child, and Josephine had found herself admiring it more on this visit than she ever had before; the stark, tender intensity of the bond between its figures resonated poignantly with the book she was writing.

For the moment, though, her work had been all but forgotten. The narrow bed was covered in a sea of blue paper, and she sat back down amongst it, curled her feet under her, and began to read again; had this been a book, she would have been fascinated by emotions so eloquently and intimately described; as it was, her confusion at being the object of them destroyed any pleasure in the writing.

I am very happy. Last night, I dreamt that we kissed. This is the first time I have dreamed of you. I have not allowed my imaginings to run riot; I have taken nothing from you in my thoughts. But last night, just after I went to sleep, you were there. You moved towards me and I knew, surprisingly, that you would kiss me. I lay looking at you and you took my face in your hands and kissed me. And then I awoke and heard the clock strike in the darkness. This morning, I know more about you than all your books and spoken words have taught me, and if you ask how one dreamed kiss could have shown me this, I cannot answer.

A knock at the door pulled her sharply back from Marta’s world, and she looked up impatiently. ‘Come in,’ she said, and then: ‘Archie! What on earth are you doing here? Why didn’t you telephone?’

‘Don’t take this personally, but I didn’t really come here to see you.’

‘No?’ She smiled at him, and started to gather up the pages. ‘Well, you certainly know how to humble a girl.’

‘Sorry, but I’m here to work and there are a couple of things that you might be able to help me with. Is this a bad time?’

‘Of course not. I was just reading a letter from a friend.’

‘Obviously one you haven’t seen for a while.’

She looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. It just looks like there’s a lot of news to catch up on.’ He looked curiously at her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.’ As she looked around for the envelope, he picked it up from the floor and handed it to her. ‘It’s been a bit of a morning. Shall we go downstairs and have some coffee? You probably don’t want to be surrounded by this mess.’

‘I don’t mind if you don’t.’ He pointed to the desk, which was covered in her notes for the new book. ‘It’s actually this mess that interests me. I need some information about the Sach and Walters case.’

‘Do you?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

Briefly, Archie summarised the events of the morning for her. ‘Good God, how awful,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘How are Ronnie and Lettice?’

‘Shaken and devastated, but refusing to admit quite how badly it’s affected them. They’re moving in downstairs as we speak.’

‘In here?’

‘Yes. Obviously the workroom’s out of bounds so they’ve talked Celia Bannerman into letting them prepare for the gala on the premises.’

‘I’m surprised it’s still going ahead.’

‘Well, the first thought was to cancel it, but I think they feel they owe it to Marjorie. There was much talk about keeping up the morale of the rest of the staff, but the same applies to them. At least if they’re working, they won’t dwell on it too much.’

‘I suppose so. I’ll go down and see them in a minute. But first tell me what you need to know.’ She picked up a sheaf of papers from the desk. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve been living with these people, and I know there’s only thirty years between us, but it seemed so much longer. They felt so safe, so …’

‘So dead?’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s exactly what I mean. You really think Marjorie’s mother might be the Edwards who lived with the Sachs?’

‘It seems too big a coincidence otherwise. Tell me what you know about her.’

‘I’ve got all the notes from the newspaper reports of the case, but it’s probably quickest if you read this,’ she said, removing the most recent chapter from the rest of the manuscript. ‘Everything she tells the police in there is taken directly from the evidence she gave at the trial. I’ve moved it forward to bring her into the story earlier, but it’s pretty much verbatim. You’ll see how crucial her statement was to Sach’s conviction.’

Archie took the pages and read through them carefully. ‘This implies that Edwards and Jacob Sach were already having an affair before Amelia was arrested.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know if that’s true,’ she admitted. ‘All I will say is that the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that she’s the linchpin of what went on. At best, she knew what was happening and turned a blind eye; at worst, she was involved and got away with it by providing the evidence for a conviction.’

‘But you’re not saying that Amelia Sach was completely innocent, and Edwards and Jacob Sach conspired to get her out of the way?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, although it has crossed my mind. No, I just think that a lot of people were doing what she was doing, and punishment for baby farming was a lottery, depending on which judge tried your case, whether or not you were allowed a decent defence, and who was around to stab you in the back. Sach and Walters were convicted on the basis of one child’s death, but no one bothered to look into what happened to all the other babies who passed through; on the other hand, some of their contemporaries escaped the gallows because the babies they farmed were abandoned rather than killed—but those children would have died, too, if they hadn’t been found so quickly, so where do you draw the line?’

It was a rhetorical question, but it echoed what Celia Bannerman had said about the police’s attitude to the crime. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘This really helps, and I’ll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, do you know a housemaid called Lucy Peters?’

‘I’ve met a girl called Lucy here a couple of times—I don’t know her second name. What’s she got to do with it? Don’t tell me—she’s Walters’s long-lost niece. It would be just like you to come up with a complete set of living, breathing people and leave me grubbing around in old newsprint.’

He laughed. ‘No, nothing like that—at least I don’t think so. She was a friend of Marjorie Baker’s.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘What is it?’

‘She was up here the other night. She said she’d brought a vase up, but she was reading something I’d written about Sach and Walters, and she was crying. She left before I could ask her what was wrong. In hindsight, I probably wasn’t very kind to her—I was cross because I found her reading my work.’

‘Do you know exactly what she was reading?’ Archie asked.

‘This, I think.’ She sifted through the pages and gave him another chapter. ‘You don’t think she had anything to do with the murder, do you?’

‘No, not really. But I’m hoping she might be able to tell me if Marjorie was up to something that could have got her killed.’ He read what he’d been given, and then said: ‘Of course, if Marjorie had found out the Baker-Sach connection and confided in Lucy, that would explain why this was so upsetting. Can I borrow it?’ She nodded and he stood up to go. ‘I’d better make a move. I need to phone the information about Edwards through to the station, and then I’ve got an appointment at Holloway. Sorry this has been such a hit-and-run visit.’

‘Don’t worry, I understand.’ She thought for a moment, and then said: ‘Would it be inappropriate for me to ask for a lift to Holloway?’

‘Of course not, but why do you want to go there?’

‘Celia told Mary Size what I was doing and she left me an invitation to look round the prison with one of her officers. I’d need to phone to make sure it’s convenient, but the note said to come at any time and just to let her know. To be honest, I’m dreading it, but it seems rude not to go. It might not be quite so daunting if I turn up with Scotland Yard.’

‘That’s fine. I’ll phone Miss Size for you now while you get ready.’

‘Oh, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,’ Josephine said, picking up her coat and gloves. ‘What do you wear to look round a prison, anyway?’

She saw him cast a glance at the gardenia as they left, but he said nothing and she followed him down the stairs. When they reached reception, she saw that the Motleys had already made their presence felt: for the time being, the elegant, ordered atmosphere of the Cowdray Club’s foyer had given way under the strain of rolls and rolls of fabric, half-made clothes on hangers and a bizarre collection of sewing machines and bric-a-brac. It was a shame that Miss Timpson wasn’t on duty, she thought; the look on her face would have been priceless.

‘I’ll go and make the calls,’ Archie said, grimacing at the chaos. ‘See you back here in a minute.’

She found the girls in a spacious room leading off the foyer which was usually used for private meetings. ‘I take back everything I said about this place being deathly dull,’ Ronnie said, dropping the bale she was carrying and coming over to give Josephine a hug. ‘The first thing we heard about when we got here was the fight in the foyer, and we half-wondered if we’d have to slap each other as some sort of induction ritual.’

‘What fight? What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Oh, Geraldine Ashby and the Bannerman woman decided to recreate the Battle of Bosworth in the foyer. The lunchtime queues were getting a bit restless, apparently, so they staged a distraction all of their own.’

‘She’s exaggerating,’ said Lettice, ‘but there was a bit of bother. Geraldine slapped Celia because of something she said, and it was all very public.’

‘Yes, the skeletons are all so firmly out of the closet that we’ll probably end up dressing them for the gala as well,’ Ronnie added cynically, hauling another tailor’s dummy in from the foyer. ‘And if that was lunch, I think I’ll book myself in for dinner now. Which is the best table?’

‘God, I think that might be all my fault,’ Josephine said, and both sisters turned to look quizzically at her. ‘It’s too long a story to go into now, but I’ll tell you later if you’re still here. I’ve got to go out, but I’m so sorry about what’s happened—you must be devastated.’

‘Yes, only we could organise the best entertainment three days before the actual event,’ Ronnie said bitterly, and Josephine saw Lettice glance anxiously across at her sister; as Archie had said, neither of them seemed particularly willing to acknowledge the shock of what had happened, and there was something frenetic and desperate about Ronnie’s movements, as though she were afraid that standing still for too long would force her to confront her grief.

She was about to say something, but was interrupted by a voice from the door. ‘Excuse me, I’m Lillian Wyles.’ Josephine looked up to see an attractive woman dressed in a Motley smock standing hesitantly outside the room. ‘I think you’re expecting me.’

‘Good God, is that what policewomen look like?’ Ronnie muttered. ‘No wonder Archie’s so keen on welcoming them into the force.’

Lettice hit her hard on the shoulder. ‘You’re not supposed to say anything,’ she scolded, and gave her sister a shove. ‘Go and make her welcome.’

‘What was all that about?’ Josephine asked, as Ronnie went over to greet the new arrival.

Lettice looked round as if she expected to find peepholes in the oak panelling. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she whispered loudly, ‘but that girl’s one of Archie’s. He’s brought her here to work for us undercover so she can keep an eye on the goings-on.’ They were quiet for a moment as each of them looked Miss Wyles up and down. ‘Ronnie’s right, though,’ Lettice admitted eventually. ‘I can see why he chose her. You’d never guess, would you?’

‘No,’ said Josephine, glancing again at the woman’s wavy nut-brown hair and perfectly made-up face. ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Listen—now I’ve got you on your own for a minute, are you all right?’ Lettice asked. ‘I was worried about you last night.’

‘I’m fine, but you’re obviously not. You’re both trying far too hard to be normal, and that’s ridiculous—what’s happened to you today isn’t remotely normal.’

‘Oh, we’re all right. Ronnie’s worse, I think—I take what’s happened as a tragedy, and she takes it as a personal affront. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she finds the culprit before that policewoman’s stitched her first hem.’

While they were talking, Archie came back from making his calls and Josephine watched as Ronnie did a mock introduction between the two police officers. The woman said something which she couldn’t quite catch but which made Archie laugh warmly, and then he beckoned Josephine and Lettice over.

‘Where would you like me to start?’ Lillian Wyles asked when the remaining introductions were over.

‘You can help us set up first,’ Lettice said. ‘We’ll worry about the sewing later.’

‘Oh, that’ll be fine. My grandmother was a dresser at the Lyceum—I was practically brought up on a Singer.’

‘Bloody marvellous!’ Ronnie said, pinching Archie’s cheek. ‘You’ll be lucky to get this one back by the time we’ve finished with her.’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ Archie said, winking at his colleague. ‘We’d better go.’

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ Ronnie asked, pointing accusingly at Josephine. ‘You’re supposed to be having a fitting around now.’

‘Sorry, it’ll have to wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an appointment with some blue serge. Can I come and find you later?’

Lettice nodded. ‘Of course you can. You won’t want to rush it—I think you’ll find we’ve surpassed ourselves.’

‘Is it a surprise, then?’ Wyles asked innocently, and Lettice whispered something in her ear. ‘Oh, you’ll look fabulous.’

‘Yes,’ said Josephine pleasantly, ignoring Ronnie’s smirk. ‘I’m sure I will.’

‘Putting double agents into the Cowdray Club is a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ she said when they were in the car. ‘It’s more like something out of John Buchan than an English police investigation.’

Archie smiled, and his obvious amusement at her irritation did nothing to improve Josephine’s mood. ‘You sound just like Bill,’ he said. ‘Actually, he went as far as suggesting that you might be up for the job. I suppose you’re right—it is much more English to allow an amateur to track down a murderer, but I think I’ll stick with WPC Wyles for now.’

It was good-humoured sparring on his part, something which they often lapsed into, but Josephine couldn’t be bothered to keep up with it. Unsettled by her conversation with Geraldine, shocked at the events which had suddenly overtaken her interest in the Sach and Walters case, and furious with herself for behaving like a guilty schoolgirl caught with Marta’s diary, she knew it was unfair of her to take her ill humour out on Archie but couldn’t seem to help herself, if only because he was there. ‘Good,’ she muttered, looking out of the window, ‘because I’ve got enough to think about without your sergeant finding work for idle hands.’

She was grateful that he knew her well enough to take the hint without questioning it, and neither of them spoke again until they were close to their destination. ‘There it is,’ he said, pointing over to the left, and Josephine had her first glimpse of Holloway, seen through the line of trees marking the junction of Parkhurst and Camden Roads. For reasons best known to the architect, the prison had been designed to resemble Warwick Castle, complete with high wall, imposing gateway and crenellated towers; it dominated the immediate skyline like a parody of its medieval prototype, built to keep people in rather than out. Archie parked the Daimler outside the main entrance and rang the bell in the huge studded gate. They waited, listening to a jangle of keys on the other side, and eventually a small wooden door within the larger gate was opened to admit them. Two rooms lay beyond, one cosy and oddly domestic, the other more functional and office-like; straight ahead, Josephine could see a steel-barred gate which presumably led into the prison yard and through to the main building. The gate officer took their names and glanced down the pages of an enormous book, then telephoned through to announce them. ‘Male officers aren’t allowed any further than this,’ he explained with a smile, ‘but someone will be across to take you over in a minute.’

‘Do you know Mary Size?’ Josephine asked Archie while they waited.

‘No, we’ve never met but I’ve heard a lot about her. Civil servants are notoriously parsimonious with their praise, but they have nothing but good things to say about what she’s achieved here.’

‘Celia’s the same. I don’t know quite what to expect, though—it must take a very singular sort of mind to want to spend your life in a place like this, and a formidable resilience to manage it so successfully.’

But the woman who arrived at the gatehouse a few minutes later was neither single-minded nor formidable, at least in appearance, and Josephine—who had expected to be fetched by a minion—took a moment to realise that this was in fact the deputy governor of Holloway. Mary Size must have been in her early fifties; she resembled every school teacher that Josephine had ever had, with a smart but anonymous suit, a no-nonsense attitude, and a face which defaulted to strict but was transformed easily to kindness with a smile. The gate officer wasn’t the slightest bit surprised by her arrival—clearly, Miss Size often came to meet her visitors—and the genuine pleasure in his greeting told Josephine more about the woman’s achievements here than a thousand civil servants could have done.

She smiled at Josephine, but dealt with the formality first. ‘Welcome to Holloway isn’t a phrase I often use, Inspector Penrose, and you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t say it now. I’m very sorry that you’ve come here today. Marjorie Baker was a girl with real spirit, and she’d just begun to blossom. I suppose I should know better, but it’s hard to believe that a personality like that can be so easily destroyed.’ Her voice held a soft Irish inflection which added to the warmth of her words, and Josephine got her first real sense of the girl whose death had brought them to the prison. ‘But I’m delighted to meet you at last, Miss Tey,’ she continued. ‘I can’t think why our paths have never crossed at the club, but Celia’s told me a lot about you, and of course I loved Richard of Bordeaux. I must have seen it half a dozen times or more.’

‘Good grief—perhaps it’s you who should be locked up,’ Josephine said without thinking, but Mary Size only laughed heartily.

‘You’re not the first person to say that, and I doubt you’ll be the last.’

‘Seriously, though—it really is very good of you to let me look round. I can imagine how busy you and your staff are, and writers digging up the past must be a nuisance.’

‘Nonsense—I hope you’ll find it valuable. As I said in my note, there’s no one left to my knowledge who was here during the period that interests you, but parts of the building itself have changed very little and I’ve dug out some old suffragette accounts of prison life for you—they’re later, obviously, but things won’t have changed much. Ah, this is Cicely McCall,’ she added, introducing a young woman dressed in a blue prison warder’s uniform who had just arrived. ‘She’s writing a book about the prison, so you couldn’t be in more knowledgeable hands. And it really is no trouble.’

‘Even so, I appreciate it. This isn’t a museum, after all—you must be more concerned about the future than former prisoners who are beyond your help.’

Mary Size looked at her, pleased, and Josephine sensed that she had just walked willingly into the subtlest of traps. ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ the deputy governor said, ‘but I do have an ulterior motive in inviting you here. I’m always keen that people in the public eye should see what we’re up to, and there’s still such a long way to go. We’ve got a good band of people on board now, many of them writers; Vera Brittain, of course, and Elizabeth Dashwood—E. M. Delafield, you know—has agreed to write a foreword to Cicely’s book. I hope you might be persuaded to join us.’ There was a twinkle in her eye, and Josephine could easily understand how people were persuaded to do anything she asked, but she had never seen herself as a campaigner and just smiled non-committally. Even so, she was impressed; harnessing the Provincial Lady herself to prison reform was quite a coup; it was certainly a far cry from the mannequin in Selfridge’s window.

Miss Size led them over to the administrative block and up a stone staircase to the first floor. ‘We’ll talk in my sitting room, Inspector,’ she said. ‘If we stay in my office, we’ll be interrupted every two minutes. Miss Tey—I hope you’ll find your tour interesting and please feel free to ask Cicely anything at all. We’ll see you in about three quarters of an hour.’

She disappeared with Archie, and Josephine noticed how efficiently the two visits had been managed to ensure him the discretion he needed without offending her. Left alone with Miss McCall, she felt a little uncomfortable: normally, she was too lazy or too shy to go this far in the name of research, and the bravado of her prison visit had much to do with resisting Celia Bannerman’s dismissal of her work as popular entertainment. She had no idea why she was suddenly so concerned about authenticity—to be entertaining and popular had always been enough for her in the past—but she was honest enough to admit that there was a more personal reason for coming to Holloway which had nothing to do with proving anything to her former teacher. Bracing herself, she smiled over-confidently at her guide and walked through the glass door which was held open for her, feeling a little like Dante following Virgil.

Holloway had been built on the radiating principle, with four glass-roofed wings diverging from one centre like the spokes of a wheel. From where Josephine stood on the first floor, she could look down to the cells on the ground floor and up to the two galleries overhead, and her first impression was unexpectedly one of light. The afternoon sun was hazy but valiant in its efforts, and it shone through the glass on to fresh white paintwork, providing a refreshing contrast to the darkness of the office corridors.

‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?’ the prison officer said, noticing her expression. ‘Apparently, the first thing Miss Size did when she got here was change the colour. This all used to be orange and brown—can you imagine how drab and depressing that must have been?’

‘How long have you been here?’ Josephine asked as they walked further into the main building.

‘Only a couple of years. I first came here as a social worker back in ’32 because I was interested in prison conditions for women, but, when I saw what they were trying to do, it seemed sensible to help from the inside. What would you like to see first?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind—I’ll be led by you.’

‘Right, then—we may as well start with the cells.’

On the way to one of the wings they passed a table full of flowers, some exotic and obviously expensive, others which looked as if they had been picked from the garden rather than ordered from a florist. Each pot or vase held a piece of paper with its owner’s name and number, and Josephine exclaimed in surprise at the brightness of the display. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect to see flowers in Holloway,’ she said.

‘Well, they’re not allowed in the cells so we keep them here. That way, prisoners can look at what they’ve been sent four times a day as they pass through to work or to exercise, and it’s nice for those who never receive anything of their own. We put some in the chapel, too, but you have to be careful.’ She grinned. ‘Tulips are particularly good for hiding make-up.’ Josephine was struck by the combination of cheeriness and practicality, and wondered—should she find herself on the receiving end of it—whether she would find it reassuring or irritating. ‘This is the first offenders’ wing,’ Cicely continued, unlocking another glass door at the head of yet another corridor. ‘You’ll notice they’re wearing green checked overalls instead of blue.’ It seemed to Josephine a negligible distinction: the women she had seen so far had all had their individuality knocked out of them by shapeless dark dresses, a charwoman’s overall, black shoes and thick, black woollen stockings; some stood at the doors to their cells, others were fetching water from a tap on the landing or queuing by a lavatory recess, but all seemed to wear an expression of resignation which suggested that the experience of prison was much the same whether your uniform was finished with blue or with green. ‘Most of the women eat in their cells, but there’s a dining area downstairs where those who’ve earned enough good conduct marks can eat together and talk or read a paper,’ she added. ‘It sounds grand, but it’s actually a cheerless strip of landing between two rows of cells and, if I’m honest, most of the women in here have no interest whatsoever in the Daily Telegraph’s view of the world. Still, it keeps them in touch with things, but we’ve a long way to go before we catch up with the men.’

‘Are men’s prisons very different, then?’ Josephine asked, relieved to find that Cicely McCall’s view on prison reform was not as rose-coloured as it had at first seemed.

‘Good God, yes. At Wakefield, they eat together, unsupervised, and they don’t all look like they’ve just stepped out of the workhouse. I suppose it’s because there are so many more male prisoners than female—they’re a bigger problem, so they get more attention from those who make the decisions. But it would be nice if more people on the outside recognised that women aren’t somehow less affected than men by this sort of demoralisation.’ She stopped outside an open door at the very end of the wing. ‘Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and show you the cell.’

Josephine walked in, and realised too late that it had been ridiculous of her to expect the room to be empty. A woman of about thirty stood in front of a mirror. She reddened when she saw a stranger, and Josephine felt the heat of the blush reflected in her own face; it was hard to say who was more embarrassed. ‘This is Miss Tey, Browning,’ Cicely explained. ‘Miss Size has sent her round to have a look at us.’

‘What a lovely bright … er … room,’ Josephine said and could have bitten her tongue out for sounding so preposterous, but Browning seemed genuinely pleased.

‘Isn’t it?’ she said, then noticed Josephine looking at the photographs on the walls. ‘That’s my husband,’ she explained, pointing to a picture of a good-looking young man in a postman’s uniform, ‘and this—this is my Bobby, but I expect he looks so different already. They grow so fast at that age, don’t they?’

There were tears in her eyes when she spoke of the baby. ‘Will you be away from them long?’ Josephine asked gently.

‘Another six months, Miss.’

‘That must be very hard.’

‘Yes, Miss—it’ll be half his life.’

‘He looks like you, though,’ she said, stepping closer to the picture. ‘Six months won’t change that.’ They left Browning to her enforced privacy and walked back down the corridor. As they neared the hub of the prison, Josephine noticed how much darker the cells became due to the close proximity of the other wings; obviously Cicely’s scepticism did not entirely overcome the natural desire to make a good impression on a visitor. ‘Have the cells changed much in the last thirty years?’ she asked, remembering for a moment why she was supposed to be there.

‘It’s only in the last few months that photographs and a looking glass have been allowed, and the beds are different—they have proper springs these days, rather than old wooden planks. There’s an electric light now, and it’s lights out at ten to give them a chance to read or write letters. Oh, and there’s a bell in case they need anything in an emergency. Sometimes it even works.’

‘And the women on this landing—what are they in here for?’

‘All sorts.’ She pointed to each cell in turn. ‘Williams was too heavy-handed with her foster child, Pears and Gregory are both shoplifters, like Browning, and Gaskell is the daughter of an admiral who somehow forgot to pay her bill every time she left a hotel. Over here, we’ve got a bigamist, a prostitute and a widow who lost her job and tried to steal two tins of fruit from Woolworth’s.’

‘So the only thing they have in common is being a first offender?’

‘That’s right. The only first-timers who go elsewhere are brothel keepers.’ Josephine raised an eyebrow. ‘For some reason, they get the heaviest sentences, they’re treated like lepers and are not usually favoured by the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society—they never get any money when they’re released. We reckon it’s because the ladies on the committee fear for their husbands’ moral welfare.’

‘But the others are all treated the same, no matter what they’ve done?’

‘Yes. All classes, all crimes, all ages—they get the same routine and the same treatment, no matter how long their sentence.’

To Josephine, it seemed anathema to reform that women should be herded together with so little understanding of their backgrounds or needs, and she said so. ‘Or is that just naive of me?’

‘Not at all—you’re absolutely right, but we’re battling for twentieth-century changes in a Victorian building, and even Miss Size can only do so much with the shell she’s given. If she had her way, they’d knock the whole place down and start again with something more workable, but she’s shot herself in the foot by achieving as much as she has. The Home Office sees that she’s making life bearable in the existing prison, so we drop a long way down the Treasury’s priority list.’

Bearable was a subjective term, Josephine thought, but she said nothing. ‘Is anything done for their families while they’re in here?’ she asked, remembering the young woman’s face as she had looked at the picture of her child.

‘There’s a group of voluntary visitors who look after families as well.’ Josephine’s reservations must have been obvious, because Cicely said: ‘I know what you mean and, by and large, they’re made up of the great and the good, but it’s nothing like the old lady visitors system; they were all terribly earnest and devoted to a woman’s spiritual welfare, but they had no idea how to deal with what they found here. No, these volunteers are more practical—they give money so that women can get their husbands’ tools out of hock or pay their rent arrears, things that keep the family going and give the prisoner a fighting chance of not ending up back in here a week after she’s released. And some of the friendships that are made last well beyond the end of a sentence.’ Josephine could not help but reflect on how different it sounded from Celia’s guarded comments about her own time in the prison service, when any such fraternisation would have been frowned upon. ‘I know I joked about the brothel keepers,’ Cicely added, ‘but the Aid Society is a remarkable organisation. It’s raised nearly twenty thousand pounds since it started.’

The sewing rooms and laundry were housed in separate buildings, and Josephine was glad to leave the oppressive smell of grease and sweat and general dirt behind for a while as they walked across the yard. ‘I might as well show you the workrooms,’ her guide said, ‘but don’t forget that all the work would have been done in individual cells during the period you’re writing about.’

‘So didn’t the prisoners associate with each other?’ Josephine asked, surprised. In her mind, she had created an image of Sach and Walters glaring at each other across the exercise yard as they awaited trial, or Sach and other baby farmers like Eleanor Vale talking at meal times and finding comfort in their shared fate.

Cicely smiled. ‘I can only tell you what it’s like now. Inside each cell, there’s a card of prison rules and any woman who can be bothered to read it will find that no talking is allowed at any time.’ She nodded as Josephine opened her mouth to argue. ‘I know, I know—you’ve only been here half an hour and already you can see that’s nonsense. They talk while they’re standing at the doors to their cells, and while they’re waiting to go to chapel. Most of the gossip happens mornings and evenings while they’re queuing to empty their slops or waiting for the luxury of the lavatory. You’re not telling me that fifty women on a landing with one hot tap and four toilets aren’t going to talk to each other, even if it’s only to suggest politely that the woman in front might like to get a move on. Then there’s the exercise yard—I could show you a dozen old lags who can carry on a conversation with the woman in front without moving their lips or turning their heads. Excellent ventriloquists they’d make in another life.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not saying it’s non-stop chatter from dawn until dusk, but they do speak—and I assume it was the same back then.’

‘One of the women who was tried for baby farming at the same time as Sach and Walters was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. What would that have meant?’

‘For women, it just means straightforward imprisonment.’

‘No difference at all?’ Privately, Josephine had wondered if Eleanor Vale suffered more than Sach and Walters, whose punishment, although final, was at least swift.

‘Don’t misunderstand me. Prison isn’t easy and it was far worse then—but most people cling to life at all costs, so if she got away with hard labour rather than hanging, she’ll have been down on her knees thanking someone.’

There was little to see in the workrooms on a Saturday afternoon, and they didn’t linger there long. The path from the laundry back to the main building took them through one of the exercise grounds, and Josephine stopped to look at the odd assortment of women walking round and round dejectedly on cement paths laid in concentric circles, each about a yard wide with snow-covered grass in between. The outside circle was occupied by an energetic prisoner who behaved as though she were tramping across the Pennines; by contrast, an elderly woman, frail and hunched low against the cold, inched slowly round the smaller circle, and Josephine could scarcely recall seeing anything more depressing than a crowd of women walking aimlessly and getting nowhere. ‘You wouldn’t guess it, would you, but exercise is looked forward to as a treat,’ Cicely said. ‘Gardens like this are a novelty for some of these women, and a sanctuary for others.’

They looked bleak enough in the fading light of a November day, but Josephine could imagine how important the lawns and carefully arranged flower beds might be to these women; in the spring and early summer, if you could detach them from their surroundings, they might even be said to be beautiful. As she looked around, her eye was drawn to an oblong bed of neatly trimmed evergreens at one end of the grounds; it stood alone, and seemed out of place next to the general scheme of paths and plants that sat between the radiating arms of the cell blocks. Cicely followed her gaze, and said: ‘That’s Edith Thompson’s grave. She was the last prisoner to be hanged here. There’s no stone or marker, but you don’t need one: every woman in here knows what it is and what it means, and they’d find it hard to forget.’

‘Are there many women buried here?’

‘Too many, if you ask me.’

‘And Sach and Walters would be among them?’ Cicely nodded. They stood in silence for a moment, looking over towards the trees. ‘What’s that?’ Josephine asked, pointing at a new building which was just visible over the top of a nearby wall.

‘That’s the new execution chamber—and I mean brand new.’ She shook her head. ‘All that trouble they’ve gone to to build it, and no one’s had the decency to try it out yet. How ungrateful can you get?’ Her sarcasm was blatant, but justified, in Josephine’s opinion: there was something quietly horrifying about the close proximity of the scaffold to the victims of its predecessor. ‘They pulled the old chamber down after Thompson went,’ Cicely explained. ‘They said she haunted it. A gang came in from one of the men’s prisons to build this beauty—they arrived in a bus each day, like some sort of day trip. Do you want to see it?’

‘No, not if it’s not the original.’ Cicely seemed relieved, and Josephine remembered what Celia had said about the burden of being the warder at an execution; to go to the chamber at all must seem like tempting fate. ‘We’d better go back, anyway. I don’t want to hold Inspector Penrose up.’ She looked at her watch, realising suddenly how badly she wanted to leave Holloway behind.

‘Why do you do this?’ she asked as they walked back to the main building. ‘I can’t imagine it’s for the money.’

‘You’re right there, and it’s not for the social life either.’ She thought before answering, and then said: ‘The best way I can explain it is to tell you something about Miss Size. We had a woman in here who’d been caught shoplifting. She’d run up huge debts with her husband and she was in despair because she didn’t know how he’d manage without her or what she’d do when she got out. Miss Size asked her for a list of her debts, and she wrote to each and every one of them personally, asking what they’d accept by way of payment. Everyone was paid out of money from the Prisoners’ Aid Society, and that woman left prison with a clean slate, debt-free for the first time in her life. That’s just one story—I could have chosen a dozen more, but that’s why I do it.’

One glance around the deputy governor’s sitting room was enough to tell anyone how Mary Size spent what little free time she had: books lay everywhere, and Penrose noticed that she divided her loyalties equally between her countrymen—there was a good smattering of Joyce, Swift and Wilde—and the contemporary female writers who had been recruited into the movement for reform. Her taste for satire obviously extended to the visual: she was a keen collector of cartoons, and examples by Tom Webster and David Low lined the walls. ‘David’s a friend,’ she explained when she saw him looking at them, ‘although sometimes I wonder.’ She drew his attention to a small framed drawing by the fireplace, in which a monstrous female figure towered over three caged and emaciated men, one labelled ‘discipline’, one ‘punishment’, and the third and weakest of the three, ‘justice’; like all the best cartoons, the image was at once grotesquely exaggerated and instantly recognisable as her.

Penrose smiled and took the chair he was offered. There were two folders on the table in front of him, one each for Marjorie Baker and Lucy Peters, and she pushed them across for him to read. He thanked her, but left them where they were; he had liked Mary Size instantly and was interested in hearing her personal opinion before he looked at any official records. ‘Tell me about Marjorie Baker,’ he said.

The openness of the question seemed to throw her for a second, and she considered it carefully. ‘When I first met Marjorie, she was sullen, resentful and aggressive. She showed no interest in her fellow prisoners and rejected any offer of friendship; she regarded prison officers as her deadly enemies. To prove that she wasn’t afraid of anyone, she was always ready to strike the first blow, be it verbal or physical. The last time I saw her, which was only yesterday, she was in command of a responsible job where she was admired for her talent and valued for her hard work; she obviously got on well with her employers and colleagues, and was happy and excited about her future. It takes considerable courage and strength to make those changes without losing the essence of who you are, and that’s probably the most important thing that I can tell you about Marjorie.’

‘What do you put those changes down to?’ He smiled. ‘Apart from prison rehabilitation, I mean—it sounds like she benefited from her time with you.’

‘Yes, she did. Her earlier behaviour was entirely down to frustration and despair, and she was terrified that she would never amount to anything. Once she could believe that she had a future other than as an outcast, she found she could look people in the eye again. It sounds terribly sentimental when I put it like that,’ she added, sensing his scepticism, ‘and of course there were some setbacks along the way—I can see you’re about to remind me that Marjorie needed more than a second chance—but it came right for her eventually. Call it third time lucky if you’re a man who believes in luck.’

‘And do you genuinely believe that she wouldn’t have done anything to bring her back to prison?’

‘I’ve been in the service for thirty years now, and I’ve learned not to make claims which are quite as definite as that. But contrary to what some of my older officers will tell you, they don’t always come back, and Marjorie had something to lose at last. That’s the most powerful incentive I can think of.’

‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? Any prisoners who had a grudge against her or someone recently released who had a score to settle? You said that she didn’t make friends at the beginning of her sentence.’

‘No, she didn’t, but that’s the sort of behaviour which might bring instant retaliation: it hardly warrants the sort of violence you’re talking about. I have to admit, when your sergeant telephoned and told me that her father was found dead as well, I assumed that her death had something to do with him, but, from your questions, that’s obviously not the case. Can I ask how she was killed?’

Penrose outlined the barest details of the murder, and Mary Size looked both saddened and horrified. It was a long time before she spoke again. ‘I honestly can’t think of anything that’s happened here which would make someone react like that,’ she said. ‘I’m not aware of everything that goes on, of course, but people will tell you that I miss very little—and I would tell you if there had been something, no matter how badly it reflected on the prison.’ Penrose believed her and appreciated her frankness; it was refreshing after Celia Bannerman’s cautious responses to his questions about the Cowdray Club, although it seemed to him that the reputation of an organisation like Holloway was much more worthy of defence than a society for privileged women. He could only suppose that the deputy governor’s personal affection for the victim had influenced her desire to help, and he liked her all the more for it. ‘I suppose the manner of Marjorie’s death encouraged you to think of her time in prison,’ she added.

‘Yes, in part,’ he said, surprised. ‘I gather that the type of needle in question is the sort traditionally used for heavier work like sacking and mailbags.’

‘I was thinking more of the glass in her mouth. It’s one of the nastier forms of prison violence, and I’m pleased to say that it’s never happened on my watch, but it’s not unknown for glass to find its way into a prisoner’s food.’ That hadn’t occurred to Penrose, but it made sense. ‘As I say, though, I can’t think why Marjorie would have been subjected to something like that.’

‘When you saw her at Motley yesterday afternoon, was there anything different about her? Did she seem troubled or did she confide in you about anything?’

‘I’m not sure I’d go as far as troubled, but she told me that her father had been hanging around again, making a nuisance of himself while she was at work. She was worried that he’d jeopardise her job and I think she wanted me to put in a good word for her, but there was no need; everyone at Motley was more than pleased with her, and I told her as much.’ There was no new information here, and Penrose was about to move on when she added: ‘She did mention one thing, though. She said that her father had told her something which she hadn’t believed at the time, but which had turned out to be true.’

‘Oh? Did she say what it was?’

‘No. I asked her, and she seemed to be weighing up whether to say more or not, but in the end she brushed it aside.’

Penrose would have put money on the fact Marjorie had come close to telling Mary Size about her family history. It looked as though Celia Bannerman was right—the information must have come from Jacob Sach himself, and been verified by Marjorie’s own investigations. If Josephine’s suspicions were correct, that must have been quite a blow to Nora Edwards and he wondered if she were safely in custody yet; if his oversight had given her time to disappear again, he might as well draft his resignation letter now. ‘Do you know anything about Marjorie’s mother?’ he asked.

‘I know that neither of her parents impressed her much. From what she said, there was no love lost between any of them.’

He decided that there was nothing to lose by telling Mary Size what he knew about the Baker family history, although he stopped short of revealing where the information had come from. Her astonishment was obvious and he could tell from her face that there were hundreds of questions which she would have liked to ask, but she also had the sense to realise that this wasn’t the moment to indulge her own curiosity. In the end, all she said was: ‘So your investigations and Miss Tey’s aren’t as separate as I imagined. How strange that those paths should cross.’

‘Yes. Can you think of anyone here—staff or inmate—who might know of the connection between the Bakers and the Sachs?’

‘Not unless it had been handed on as gossip. When I got Miss Tey’s request, I checked very carefully in case there was someone here who could help her, but I drew a blank. Celia might know—but she probably gave you the information in the first place?’ He nodded. ‘You’re welcome to talk to anyone here, of course, but I’m afraid I can’t give you a shortcut. You obviously think that her death is connected to who her family was?’ Again, he confirmed with a nod. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re right, but I will say one thing: I would have thought it highly unlikely that Marjorie would be any keener than her mother or father for the truth to come out. Unfortunately, a shame like that spreads and Marjorie was more aware than most of how difficult it is to distance yourself from the mistakes of the past.’ Penrose agreed with her, but he also thought that panic could have driven any possibility of careful reasoning from Nora Edwards’s mind. ‘This really was a new start for Marjorie,’ she emphasised.

‘At Motley?’

‘Yes. Ironically, the most important thing for me is what happens to these women when they leave Holloway. We prepare them as best we can for the outside world, offer them tuition in cookery or childcare or home management, but it’s organisations like Motley which really allow us to make a difference.’ He smiled. ‘You know Lettice and Ronnie?’

‘We’re cousins, for my sins.’

‘Are you? Then I’m glad they have someone who can help them at a time like this—after I’d got over the shock of Marjorie, I thought of them. It must be a devastating thing to have to come to terms with—a death like that on your watch.’ She spoke of Lettice and Ronnie as if they were custodians of Marjorie’s welfare and in some ways, he supposed, they had been. She carried on, unconsciously echoing the sentiments expressed by Celia Bannerman. ‘But what I was going to say was that it’s a worthless existence without some kind of meaningful work, without a way to support yourself and make your own way in the world, and that’s hard for ex-prisoners, particularly the younger ones. Employers actively discriminate against them, and they’re hounded by fellow workers or exposed by policemen with a grudge. No offence meant.’

‘None taken. I know it goes on.’

‘We used to bang our heads against the problem, but now we concentrate on a few forward-thinking organisations who genuinely want to do some good and it’s paying off: just after the war, we placed an average of 150 prisoners in employment; this year, it’s 250. It’s people like your cousins and Celia at the Cowdray Club who have made that possible.’

‘How do you find the club? I wouldn’t have thought you had much spare time.’

‘For another claustrophobic female institution, you mean?’ He was treated to the laugh again. ‘I don’t, really, although I can’t deny that a change of surroundings is welcome, but it’s a valuable contact so I sit on the committee. Some of our nurses come from the college, and lots of the ladies on the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society are members. Cynically speaking, the Cowdray Club is a rich recruiting ground for ladies with time and money on their hands, and Celia helps tremendously—one of us, gone over to the other side; the volunteers adore that. And of course the food’s excellent.’ She looked down at herself good-humouredly. ‘As you can see, a good dinner is a splendid antidote to incarceration.’

‘And were you at the club for dinner last night?’

‘What a charming way of asking for my alibi. No, I was here. I came straight back after my fitting because we had a bit of trouble in the hospital wing. When staff are off sick, it’s all hands to the pump—or to the bedpan, in this particular case. There are plenty of people who’ll confirm that.’

‘Did Marjorie have anything to do with the club, apart from the preparations for the gala?’

‘Not to my knowledge, although I bumped into her there yesterday lunchtime when she was dropping something off, and she seemed perfectly at home in those surroundings. She was certainly giving that awful Timpson woman the run-around.’

‘Oh? In what way?’

‘Well, you know the sort. She’s a terrible snob and hates it if the likes of Marjorie get above their station, and Marjorie was clearly enjoying the fact that she had as much right to be there as Timpson.’

‘But nothing more vindictive than that.’

‘Oh no. It was cheeky, but I didn’t blame her. In fact, I encouraged her.’

‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but some of the Cowdray Club committee members have received some unpleasant letters.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve had one myself.’

‘Really? It’s not on the list that Miss Bannerman gave us.’

‘I didn’t bother reporting it. Someone in my position gets lots of mail; most of it’s kind and most of it’s signed, but not all of it. I destroyed it as soon as it arrived.’

‘Can I ask what it referred to?’

‘Of course. It implied that my appointment here was the result of unfair favouritism from someone in the Home Office.’

‘And do you think there’s any possibility at all that Marjorie was behind these letters?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘None whatsoever—not mine, anyway. It simply wasn’t her style. If Marjorie had a grievance, she told you about it, and she didn’t give a damn about the Home Office.’

‘Marjorie’s friendship with Lucy Peters—did that begin in prison or did they know each other beforehand?’

‘No, they met here. Lucy’s a different case altogether, though—a victim, and you would never have called Marjorie that, at least not until today.’

‘What was Lucy in prison for?’

‘Stealing from her employer. Of course, what wasn’t obvious until she’d been in here for three months was that her employer—or rather, her employer’s son—had taken something from her as well. Technically, I know that’s not an excuse but she’s not the brightest of girls and there was no way that she was emotionally equipped to deal with either prison or pregnancy; both at the same time could have been a disaster, so I asked Marjorie to keep an eye on her.’

‘And she was happy to do that?’

‘Yes, I probably didn’t even need to ask. Marjorie knew when someone was vulnerable.’ Penrose couldn’t help thinking that Marjorie had underestimated someone’s vulnerability with tragic consequences, but he said nothing. ‘Have you spoken to Lucy yet?’ Miss Size asked.

‘No. She’d gone off duty for the day by the time we got to the club.’

‘So she probably doesn’t even know Marjorie’s dead.’

‘We’ll be speaking to her as soon as she returns this evening, and I’ll make sure she’s taken care of; my sergeant said you were worried.’

‘Yes, they were close. Will you make sure to tell her that she can come to me at any time?’

‘Of course. Would Marjorie have covered for Lucy?’

‘Almost certainly. Why?’

‘There have been a number of thefts at the club. One of the stolen items was found on Marjorie’s body.’

‘What was it?’

‘A small silver photograph frame.’

‘And the photograph?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What was the photograph.’

‘It was a picture of a woman with her baby.’

‘That’s what Lucy stole, then. The value of the frame was incidental. She’s still grieving—you need to understand that. And it is a type of grief, you know, the pain a mother feels when she gives up her child, but it’s not like bereavement; there are no certainties, no rituals like a funeral to begin the healing process. If you lose your child to adoption, you lose the right to know anything more about it and lots of women find the uncertainty very difficult. Lucy suffered a great deal—clearly she’s still suffering. But Marjorie would definitely protect her.’

No wonder Josephine’s manuscript had upset Lucy so much, Penrose thought. ‘What is the adoption procedure here? Are prison mothers encouraged to give up their children?’

‘No, it’s entirely up to them. Babies are born here, in the hospital wing, and mothers are given pre-natal care and a lot of help after their confinement. On release, each mother gets a complete new outfit for the child. It’s not much, I suppose, but it helps.’

‘And if the mother decides to give her child up?’

‘Then we arrange it for her as painlessly as possible. Our volunteers help a great deal with that, and the warders are involved to oversee the welfare of the prisoner.’

How things had changed since Lizzie Sach’s adoption, Penrose thought; if Celia Bannerman had been more typical, if the support had been as open and as comprehensive thirty years ago, then at least one tragedy might have been averted. ‘Miss Bannerman must have been ahead of her time as a prison warder,’ he said, but there was a knock at the door before she had a chance to respond.

‘Am I interrupting?’ Josephine asked.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘We’ve just about finished.’

‘Has Cicely shown you everything you need to see?’ Mary Size asked, offering her a seat. She looked at the expression on Josephine’s face as she sat down, and said sympathetically: ‘It’s unsettling when you come to it for the first time.’

‘Yes, it is, but from what Cicely told me, it must have been much more so thirty years ago. She’s marvellous—are all your staff as receptive to change as she is?’

‘Good God, no. In fact, I was just about to say to Inspector Penrose—some of the older ones are still very set in their ways and they’re convinced we’re giving the women a holiday rather than a punishment, but the young women coming through now are much more responsive and natural retirement is gradually shifting the balance. There’s hope, as long as the girls are patient enough to wait for promotion. I’ve never understood why, but we’re not allowed to sack people for being incompetent.’

‘Sadly, the prison service isn’t alone in that stipulation,’ Penrose said, smiling. ‘But I can see how frustrating it must have been for Miss Bannerman to be surrounded by such a rigid system.’

‘Indeed. Most warders of her generation would still tell you that I molly-coddle the girls, but if Celia came back to work here now, I’m pleased to say that she’d be in the majority. I’d have her like a shot, as well, but unfortunately she’s too good at what she does now.’

‘You obviously admire her, but she told me that she’d been found lacking as a prison officer because she wasn’t sufficiently detached.’

Josephine looked at him in surprise, but Mary Size just smiled. ‘I’d dispute that she’d been found lacking, from what I know. Prison is full of marred lives and wrecked hopes—that’s as true today as it was thirty years ago—and, as I understand it, if Celia had a fault it was that she concentrated on the individual rather than the system. I think her lack of detachment caused her more suffering than anyone in her care.’ She turned to Josephine. ‘I know you’ve talked to Celia about Holloway back then, but, as I said, she certainly wasn’t typical of her time. If you want to write about prison as it really was, you should talk to someone at the other extreme—Ethel Stuke, perhaps.’

‘I thought she was dead?’

‘Ethel?’

‘Yes, Celia told me she’d been killed in a Zeppelin raid during the war.’

‘Believe me, if she’d been caught in a Zeppelin raid, the Zeppelin would have come off worse. She’s quite a force of nature, is Ethel. No, she was still working here when I arrived, although she left soon after.’ There was something like pride in her voice, Josephine noticed, and it complemented the twinkle in her eye quite beautifully. ‘As far as I know, she’s alive and well and living in Suffolk—we’ll have her address on file. Celia must have meant one of the other warders—there were three sets of two looking after each condemned woman.’

‘Do you still keep staff records for Celia Bannerman?’ Penrose asked.

‘Our records go back to when the prison came over to women, so I imagine they’re in the archive somewhere. Can I ask why?’

‘She’s the main link with the Sach case, and I wondered if her records might mention someone else who could help us.’

‘Bear with me a second and I’ll find out.’ She picked up the telephone. ‘Smithers? Come up to my sitting room, will you?’ Her request was answered immediately. ‘This is Detective Inspector Penrose. Will you take him down to the office and look in the archive for a file on Celia Bannerman? She was a warder here in 1902. And give him Ethel Stuke’s address as well.’

Penrose picked up the other two files. ‘I’ll return these to you as soon as possible.’

‘Thank you. Do you mind if Miss Tey and I talk for a couple of minutes? I won’t keep her long—I know you’re busy.’

He looked at Josephine, who nodded and sat down again. ‘I’ll see you downstairs. And thank you for your time, Miss Size. It’s much appreciated.’

‘You’re welcome, although I don’t know how much use I’ve been to you.’

‘Apart from anything else, you’ve helped me to understand what happens when my job is over,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think we’re not sufficiently aware of the consequences of what we do.’

He left, and Mary Size turned to Josephine. ‘Now, Miss Tey …’

‘Please—call me Josephine,’ she said, ‘but can I ask you something first?’ ‘Of course.’

‘Marta Fox—how did she cope?’

Mary Size looked surprised but, to her credit, she resisted the temptation to answer Josephine’s question with one of her own. ‘I always think the miracle is that she did cope,’ she said quietly. ‘I see every prisoner within hours of her arrival here, and I feared for Marta at first. It wasn’t surprising after everything she’d been through—an abusive marriage, the loss of her children in the most horrific circumstances, so many revelations which must have been impossible to come to terms with—but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone quite as empty. Guilt and self-reproach, even despair—those are all emotions I’m used to seeing, and I can deal with them in whatever way is best for the prisoner concerned. But emptiness, a complete lack of concern for what happens to you—that’s very hard, and it went on for some time. She refused all visits and returned all her letters unread—but you probably know that?’

Josephine nodded. ‘So what changed? Or did it change?’

‘Yes, gradually. Two things helped, I think. The gardens, strangely enough. She seemed to find peace there—peace, rather than nothingness. And her writing. I don’t know what she was working on but, in the end, I think she wrote herself back to sanity.’

‘And now? What does it feel like to come out the other side of that?’

‘Is that really why you’re here? To understand what she’s been through?’

‘To know what she’s been through, perhaps. I doubt that I could ever understand. But I would like to have some idea of what she needs now.’

‘Well, not the sort of help that the Prisoners’ Aid Society can give, that’s for sure. I’m not a psychologist, Josephine, but I’d say that Marta needs something—or someone—she can rely on. Something that isn’t going to be snatched away from her. Above all, something safe.’ The telephone rang on her desk. ‘We’ll be right down,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting for you at the gate. I won’t bother you with prison reform now; it looks like you might have your own rehabilitation project on your hands, but do think about it, and if you want to talk to me—about anything at all—you know how to get hold of me. Next time, though, we’ll have a drink at the club.’

‘And I’ll see you at the gala on Monday.’

‘You certainly will, although I considered boycotting it because I’m furious that Celia’s got Noël and Gertie. I can see I’m going to have to raise my game in the fundraising stakes; perhaps you could have a word with someone for me?’

Josephine smiled. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Excellent. And if it’s appropriate, Josephine, please give my regards to Marta.’

‘Do you think Celia Bannerman did mean one of the other prison warders?’ Archie asked as he waited for a gap in the traffic streaming down Camden Road.

‘What? Oh, no, I don’t. I’m sure she said Ethel Stuke—it’s not the sort of name I’d make up.’

‘Says the woman who created Ray Marcable.’

She laughed. ‘That’s different. You’re allowed ridiculous names in detective fiction—in fact, it’s positively encouraged. No, Celia must have made a mistake—it would have been almost impossible to keep up with prison news after she’d changed careers. Have you got Ethel Stuke’s address for me?’

‘Yes. I might use it myself if I draw a blank with Edwards. Where are you going now? Back to the club?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said, although there was something very tempting about the overnight sleeper to Inverness. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got time for a drink?’

‘Afraid not. I’ve got to get back to the Yard—I hope Edwards will be there by now.’

‘She fascinates me, you know. I think she’s the most interesting person in the entire case. I suppose there’s no point in asking you if I can sit in on that one?’

‘No. No point at all.’

‘Bill would let me.’

‘Which is why Bill’s still a sergeant.’

‘Did she kill Marjorie, do you think?’

Archie considered the question, although he had been thinking of very little else. ‘She’s certainly the main contender—she’s got a motive and no alibi, and the method of killing fits with the sort of jealousy that she’s supposed to have shown towards her daughter. And her reaction to the news was very odd.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

‘Not in my heart, no. But I’ll make you a promise—if she turns out to have no connection with this murder, I’ll ask her if she’ll see you. Are you sure I can’t drop you somewhere a little more welcoming than the Cowdray Club?’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad, and the girls might still be there. If not, I suppose I could go and see a film later—it sounds like Geraldine needs keeping out of trouble.’

‘You wouldn’t rather go to Holly Place?’

She looked at him, horrified. ‘How could you possibly have read the address on that letter?’

‘I didn’t—I just recognised Marta’s handwriting. She sent me a note, too, a few weeks after she got out. Rather briefer than yours, thank God—the writing’s impossible. It just said thank you, although judging by the expression on your face when you got back from your prison tour, she has precious little to thank me for.’

‘I don’t know about that. She was an accessory to murder, and what you did for her was extraordinarily generous.’

‘It was right, that’s all. She didn’t kill anyone, and she was badly used—by everyone in her life, as far as I could see.’

‘Even so, she made things difficult for you, and I didn’t help.’

‘I’m not in policing to get my own back.’

She stared out of the window, relieved that Archie had raised the subject of Marta but unsure of how much to say to him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d heard from her?’ she asked.

‘Because I thought she’d be in touch with you as well and, if she wasn’t, there was no point in raking it all up again.’ He pulled over in Camden Town, ignoring the angry hooting from the car behind, and looked at her with genuine concern. ‘So, what’s it to be—Holly Place or the Cowdray Club?’

‘The Cowdray Club,’ Josephine said quickly. ‘I’m not ready to talk to Marta yet.’