The Lost Girls
Page 1
Also by Jennifer Wells
The Liar
The Secret
The Murderess
THE LOST GIRLS
Jennifer Wells
AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS
www.ariafiction.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Jennifer Wells, 2020
The moral right of Jennifer Wells to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781786691101
Cover design: Cherie Chapman
Aria
c/o Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
www.ariafiction.com
Contents
Welcome Page
Copyright
Agnes: 1937
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Nell: 1912
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Agnes: 1937
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Nell: 1912
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Agnes: 1937
Chapter 31
Nell
Chapter 32
Agnes: 1937
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Become an Aria Addict
Agnes
1937
Prologue
It had been twenty-five years since I had last seen the face of Iris Caldwell. I had never expected to see her again, yet the flickering grey figure that glowed from the whitewashed wall of the church hall that evening was definitely Iris. She wore the long white gown of the May Queen but the paleness of her complexion and her long, fair hair were dulled to grey by the aged cine film, her steps reduced to jerky movements as if she was no more than a marionette controlled by the hand of the projectionist. This was all that was left of Iris – an object captured in light and shadow – but my own memory of Iris had not faded, and at that moment I recalled the girl with the determined spirit and strong will as she had been back in the spring of 1912.
Iris crossed the village green in stockinged feet. Behind her I could just see the dark outline of the maypole, its ribbons still tied, and the long shadow cast by the oak tree. On May Day 1912 Iris should have been Missensham’s May Queen, but she would never walk in the procession or wear the willow crown, and now I watched her twenty-five years later as she walked with just one other – a man in a cloth cap whom she leant against as he led her across the grass.
Yet it was Iris’s face alone that held my gaze. At fifteen years old Iris Caldwell had been young and beautiful, but fifteen she had remained, because after May Day of 1912, Iris Caldwell was never seen again.
Iris’s face gave away nothing of what had happened to her on that morning or what was to come but, for just a second, she raised her head, as if she had heard a noise or could sense something in the air. I felt her eyes connect with mine as though she could see me as I sat on my wooden seat in the cold church hall. I fancied that she could see past my ageing body – my thinning hair and slackened skin – and recognise me as the woman she had once known, even read my thoughts and memories as if she gazed out at me from the afterlife.
At that moment, there was nothing more than Iris. I no longer felt the hard wood of the fold-up seat, the throb of my arthritic fingers or the chill from the old windowpanes. The silhouettes of the people seated in front of me mingled into the wavering light, and the murmurs of the audience and the rhythmic clicking of the projector sank into silence. It was not only me who recognised Iris because, as her face appeared on the screen, the people became still as if the room itself was taking one large breath.
Then a name was whispered, her name – ‘Iris Caldwell’. It was repeated quietly over and over, the words rippling across the room. Heads turned towards me – faces darkened by the glowing screen, wisps of hair caught in the beam of the projector, the grey flicker mirrored in dozens of spectacles. Then another word – ‘Murdered’.
Then a hand was raised in front of the screen, the shadowy finger pointing to the man Iris walked with – the man who would now be accused.
The people shuffled in their seats, chairs grating on the floor. They looked at each other with wide eyes, hands held up to open mouths, and whispered in each other’s ears.
I stood up quickly, the chair falling from under me. I fought my way to the aisle, pushing past knees and handbags and tripping over feet, the leaves of the oak tree quivering across my jacket and the spindles of light almost blinding me. I headed for the door, my legs threatening to buckle beneath me as I tried desperately to blink away the glowing images that lingered like ghosts behind my eyelids.
I should not have seen the face of Iris Caldwell again. She should not have been on that film, because by sunrise on the morning of May Day 1912, Iris Caldwell was believed to be dead.
1
It was an image that haunted me – the expressionless face of the young girl, her eyes reduced to dark pits by the grainy film, as if she held a secret she was not ready to share. When I closed my eyes I could see her again, looking out at me from the screen as if somehow glimpsing her future.
I sat down shakily on the bench outside the church hall, taking deep breaths of the cold night air, pulling my shawl about me and flexing my arthritic fingers.
I was not usually one for such drama. Before my husband’s death I had been a vicar’s wife. I had held hands at funerals and been an ear for all the village’s woes. I had lived through the horrors of the Great War and the epidemic that had followed it. I had learnt how to harden myself, to not get upset by things. After all, I had lived with the memory of what had happened on May Day 1912 for twenty-five years, but seeing the old image flashed across the screen so unexpectedly had caught me off guard.
I had been expecting a nice evening out – a special screening of Missensham’s past by the historical society, a chance to catch up with some of the older parishioners and an evening away from my lonely cottage – and until Iris had appeared on the screen, it had been so. The evening had begun well. The grey faces had jostled with each other onscreen, sending smiles and waves from the past, and the audience had given voices to their silence as they laughed along with them. I’d seen people I had known in my youth, faces forgotten as well as remembered, buildings that had long since decayed, fashions that had waned, and streets that were empty of cars.
There had been chatter all aro
und me: ‘Those were the days!’
‘Hasn’t he changed!’
‘She looks just like her daughter did at that age!’
‘I remember when that teashop was a dressmaker’s!’
Then the film had moved on to the May Day preparations – a willow arch propped up against the wall of the blacksmith’s yard and some little girls running around in frothy white dresses.
Things had changed when Iris Caldwell appeared on the screen. She was no more than shades of grey cast by the tangled beams of the projector, yet she flickered out of the darkness like a spirit. I could even see her with my eyes shut, the image ghosting purple under my eyelids, a single word echoing round my head – ‘Murdered.’
I had never liked that word, for it took me to a lonely place – a thicket of wych elms high up on the common land, foxholes nestling in tangles of bare roots, and low branches shielding all from view. For a moment I fancied that I could feel the winds that chilled that place and smell the dampness of the earth.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Ryland?’
But then the thought was gone.
‘Mrs Ryland?’
A man stood in front of me and, from the sound of his voice, I thought that he must have repeated my name several times before I heard him. When I looked up, I recognised his stocky silhouette and dark moustache. He wore an old brown suit and cap, and not his usual sergeant’s uniform, but the seriousness of his tone told me that he was now on duty.
‘Please call me Agnes,’ I said composing myself. ‘We have been friends long enough, Roy.’
I looked out into the night. The village green was in darkness. The large oak tree, church, pub, tearoom and doctor’s surgery had all faded into the night, the only light coming from the dull blue glow of the police station’s lamp and the bright orbs of the lampposts that marked the road.
The door of the church hall cracked open, a stream of people spilling out on to the pavement. They turned to each other, laughed and whispered but they spoke the same words that I had heard repeated over and over in the hall. A young man in a bow tie and round spectacles sat on the kerb, smoking a cigarette. He held his head in his hands and I fancied that he was the projectionist, only now aware of the meaning of the film he had shown.
We waited in silence until the people had gone, the young projectionist throwing the glowing cinder of his cigarette into the darkness then hurrying after the crowd.
‘I don’t understand what this all means,’ I said. ‘Tell me, what did I just see in there?’
‘It would appear that the film that we just saw was shot on the morning of May Day,’ Roy said. ‘In the late morning, for there was enough light for the cine camera to operate.’
‘So—’ I began.
‘Please don’t get your hopes up, Agnes,’ he said quickly. ‘It is a later sighting of Iris, that’s all. There is still no evidence to suggest that she is alive.’ He put his hand on my arm. ‘Although things don’t look good for Sam Denman now.’
‘You mean that things do not look good for the man walking with Iris,’ I said. ‘The man in the cloth cap, for you surely cannot be certain—’
‘Sam Denman has denied his involvement for so long,’ he said firmly, ‘yet now we see him with our own eyes walking arm in arm with Iris Caldwell on the morning of her murder.’
‘Leave him alone!’ I cried. ‘Surely he has suffered enough. I only wish that the police could have charged him without finding the rest of Iris’s remains, for at least then Sam would have had the chance to clear his name. The people of this town judged him guilty without trial and he has had to live with that sentence for years.’
Roy shook his head slowly.
‘The man on the film may have been dressed like a stable lad but they were ten a penny in those days,’ I persisted.
Roy ignored my protests. ‘Don’t you want the killer caught?’ he asked. ‘It must mean so much to you, what with—’
‘Of course I do,’ I muttered.
‘Maybe it is best if we resume this conversation after we have all slept,’ he said. I was ashamed at how calm his voice sounded compared to my own.
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘I suppose I should come to the station?’
‘I was going to suggest that I call on you at Oak Cottage,’ he said, then added more gently, ‘It is such a long time since I called on you at home. I can bring round some of Joyce’s tea loaf.’
I nodded. ‘Fine.’
He turned to go. ‘You do not mention your daughter,’ he said. ‘It is as if this has all been about Iris Caldwell and you do not even mention Nell by her name.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’
He hesitated for a moment, tipped his cap and left me alone in the darkness.
2
Roy had the grace not to call until eleven o’clock – it was a Sunday after all – and he arrived dressed in the suit I imagined he had worn for church. Oak Cottage was a respectable house in quite a public spot on the village green and it would not have done for him to call any earlier, in uniform or otherwise. I was a vicar’s widow after all and he knew that I had appearances to consider.
He stood politely in the hallway and then in the lounge as I ushered him through, not sitting until he was bid. We made small talk about the weather and the state of the roads until I had finished pouring the tea and he had handed out his wife’s cake from an old biscuit tin.
‘It was a funny to-do yesterday evening,’ he said.
‘I suppose it was,’ I said, but I did not know what more I could say about it. He had chosen the old rocking chair by the hearth and I remembered that he had sat in the same chair twenty-five years ago when we had discussed the matter for the first painful time.
I remembered how he had entered the cottage that morning – young and inexperienced, a blush of pimples on his face and a lanky body he had not yet grown into. He had seemed fearful of messing up the carpet with his boots, removing his helmet and stooping awkwardly through the doorframe as he entered. When I snapped at him for approaching the chair by the window, he had perched nervously on the rocking chair instead and looked anxiously at the chair I had forbidden him – the one with the emerald-green shawl draped over the back, a shawl that I hoped the owner would soon return for.
The chair by the window had meant little to me before that day, but since then I had always kept it free and never allowed anyone to sit on it. I had not even removed the shawl, although the colour had become quite faded in the sunlight. It was something that I could not bear to do as some days, just like today, I fancied that the chair was occupied by the memory of its owner, the girl who had used it so often, and I would sometimes think that I could see her sat in that spot, watching me silently, even though I knew that she was long gone.
Roy took out an old pocketbook and flipped over the yellowed pages. I thought that it must be something that he had hunted out from a vault deep below the cell, where things went to be forgotten.
‘The projectionist from last night was my nephew, Eric,’ he said.
I nodded politely as I recalled the young man in spectacles who I had seen smoking outside the hall.
‘He is only nineteen years old,’ Roy continued. ‘He found the old Pathéscope and film in the storeroom of the church hall. The reel was labelled as a “suffrage march”. It was part of a collection donated to the Historical Society by the WSPU so nobody had ever thought to view it in connection with the Caldwell case. The poor lad did not know what he was looking at when he viewed it – he knew nothing of Iris Caldwell – but when he saw what was on the old reel, he thought it fitting to screen it in light of this year’s preparations. After all, May Day was an ancient tradition here until 1912.’
Then he added: ‘In a way it is a shame that we have not had one since,’ but he looked down as soon as the words left his mouth and I was reminded again of the shy, young constable who had said all the wrong things. Then his tone changed. ‘Do you know who might have shot the film, Agnes?’
�
�It must have been the heir to the Waldley Court estate,’ I said. ‘I forget the young man’s name as he has since moved away, but he had one of those hand-wound cine cameras when they were still new.’
‘You are speaking of Francis Elliot-Palmer,’ he said, flipping through the yellowed pages of his pocketbook, but then he stopped, his finger tracing down a page. ‘No, it appears that Francis did not mention shooting such a film when he was interviewed back then, although there can be few others around who would have ever seen the like of a cine camera back in those days, let alone had the money to afford one. I will need to speak with him again.’
He took out a pencil and scratched a mark in the pocketbook as if correcting his old scribbles. ‘My nephew did not know what happened here in 1912,’ he said. ‘He had no idea that there had been two May Queens that year – Iris Caldwell and the child brought in to replace her when she—’ he glanced down at the pocketbook ‘—did not show up.’
I nodded to show that I understood the young man was not to blame for the awkwardness.
‘It was a nice idea,’ I said out of the politeness that was expected of a vicar’s widow. ‘I was so looking forward to seeing some of the village’s history.’ My voice sounded flat and he raised his eyebrows, flicking open another page of the book.
‘You say you woke at six o’clock on the morning of the first of May 1912 and left promptly for the church to begin the arrangement of flowers in the chancel. This was something quite ordinary for you to do for an important service, a role you had undertaken since you first moved to the parish with your late husband. You did not enter the back bedroom of the cottage, so you had no knowledge of whether—’
I stopped him. ‘I know what I said back then and nothing has changed. Nothing has changed over twenty-five years. There has been nothing new to learn.’
‘Until last night,’ he countered.
I must have given him a stare because he looked away quickly, his eyes landing on the chair by the window with the faded green shawl.