Forests of the Night

by David Stuart Davies

  And then another slurp.

  * * *

  After the food and the warm tea, I was overcome with tiredness. Luckily so was my young charge and almost in unison, we fell into a deep sleep in our chairs by the fireplace like two old duffers in a gentleman’s club after one snifter of brandy too much.

  Pressure on my bladder roused me first and I was amused to hear my young guest giving forth a whole series of variegated pig-like snores.

  I gave myself a strip wash, shaved and dug out a clean shirt from the wardrobe. I felt almost human again. While I was doing this, Peter snored on as though giving an inarticulate commentary to my actions. When I was ready, I woke the lad.

  ‘I’ve got to go out now. I’ve a few jobs need doing. I want you to be a good fellow and wait here for me. I’ll be back before dark. OK?’

  Bleary-eyed, he nodded.

  ‘If you get hungry there’s a packet of biscuits in that cupboard. And you know how to make a cup of tea, I’m sure. When I get back, I’ll take you out for a meal at a very posh restaurant, I know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. There are some Tiger Blake comics I got you under that chair so you can spend some time reading them.’

  ‘Great. Thanks, Johnny.’

  I ruffled his hair. ‘That’s OK, kid.’

  He grinned back at me. I had never seen him so happy.

  thirty-seven

  When I entered the cell, Freda Palfrey was sitting on the bed, a tray with an uneaten meal by her side. She was staring straight ahead at some invisible point beyond the confines of her prison, her hands clasped together on her lap.

  Her eyes flickered with recognition as I pulled up a chair and sat opposite her.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Palfrey,’ I said, quietly.

  She did not reply.

  ‘You’ll forgive me for coming to see you, but there are some things that are nagging at the back of my brain – some things I’ve got to understand. Things that only you can tell me.’

  She turned to look at me. ‘Me?’ she said softly with some puzzlement.

  I nodded. ‘It might help you to talk.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve done with talking.’

  ‘The police will have other ideas. But their purpose is not mine.’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I just need to know the truth … to lend you a sympathetic ear.’

  She paused for a while.

  ‘I am not in need of sympathy.’

  She meant it.

  I tried a different approach. ‘Why did you engage me to find your daughter when you knew where she was all the time? You did know where she was, didn’t you?’

  Her features registered no emotion but her eyes flickered with amusement. ‘Oh, yes, I knew. As soon as Pamela started to work for Epstein, I made it my business to keep an eye on her. She was my baby and she didn’t know the nastiness of the world. Father and I had done our best to protect her from it. But we couldn’t keep her at home for ever. So I watched her, followed her, and saw, to my horror, what she was turning in to. She became a tramp, a cheap whore. Years of our care, training and preaching were dispensed with overnight. It was as though she had flung our love and moral values back in our faces. It was then that I knew I had to kill her. To save her soul.’ She paused and allowed herself a little ironic smile. ‘But of course I can’t expect you to understand.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, you’re right, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course I had to bide my time. Choose the right moment to release my Pamela from her sordid existence. But then events overtook me. You see I never told Father what our daughter had become. It would have destroyed him. He just thought she had rebelled a little, that’s all. He was desperate to find her. He was sure he could persuade her to come home again.’

  ‘And that’s why you came to me.’

  She nodded. ‘I had to. At first Father wanted to go to the police but I managed to persuade him to employ a private detective instead. I told him that after all it was a personal, domestic matter. There was no crime involved. So he agreed. I picked your name out of the phone book.’ She turned her stony gaze towards me. ‘I didn’t expect you to be very good.’

  I raised a laconic eyebrow.

  ‘But as soon as I met you, I knew. I knew that you’d find Pamela pretty quickly and so my time was limited.…’ Her words faltered and she turned away from me.

  ‘You had to kill her before I found her.’

  There was no reply. The silence said it all.

  ‘My God,’ I said, a thought striking me, ‘so it was you, it was you who hit me from behind. You almost killed me.’

  ‘I didn’t intend you to die. I just wanted … I was just trying to buy myself some time.’

  I leaned forward and put my hand on her shoulder. Freda Palfrey stiffened, her whole body turning rigid.

  ‘Didn’t you think to talk to her? Find out why she was acting the way she was? Maybe try to understand her. Persuade her to come home?’

  ‘It was too late,’ she cried, the words echoing around the small cell. ‘She was a whore. That’s all there is to it.’

  There was no breaking through that armour of self-conviction that Freda Palfrey had constructed for herself. It had given her strength, determination and power and in the final months of her life it would give her faith. But she was wrong. Whatever self-righteous impulse or belief drove her to plunge the knife in to her own daughter’s chest did not alter that fact. She had committed murder.

  Suddenly I felt weary and eager to leave. I had learned perhaps more than I needed or wanted to know. Sad though this creature was, there was something repellent about her, too. It seemed that she had subjugated all her human and motherly feelings to carry out this crazy act of murder.

  As I rose to go she turned to me again. ‘I did talk to her,’ she said softly, almost to herself. ‘That night I went to her flat. I told her of all the heinous things she’d done. How she had blackened her soul though her own selfish desires. I told her the truth. Do you know what she did? She laughed at me. Just laughed. She said I was pathetic … my own daughter. And she laughed. I knew then there was no going back. I did the right thing.’

  I shook my head. ‘It is not given to us to have the power to decide such things … to take the law into our own hands. It is a transgression.’

  ‘I can live with my conscience for the short span I have left.’

  I reached the door. ‘I wonder. You didn’t know that Pamela was pregnant did you?’

  Her eyes widened in horror. Silently, she mouthed the word ‘pregnant’ as she stared at me in disbelief.

  I nodded. ‘Yes. She was expecting a baby. Your grandchild.’

  It was a few seconds before the truth sank in and then Freda Palfrey threw back her head in a roaring wail of despair.

  It rang in my ears long after I had left the cell.

  * * *

  For some time I walked along the embankment, kicking the errant piles of autumn leaves which had collected there, trying to expunge all the disturbing memories of the Palfrey case from my mind without much success. They seemed embedded in my consciousness like the fragments of some unpleasant dream which refused to fade away. In particular I was reminded of the bloodstained mattress and Freda Palfrey’s feral cry of anguish as she learned that Pamela was expecting a baby.

  After a while I leaned over the parapet, lit a Craven A and watched the grey water swirl past sluggishly. As I gazed, mesmerized almost by the seething, truculent river, I realized that I was putting off another unpleasant duty that had come along with the case.

  I sighed, flicked the tab end into the river, and set forth for Charing Cross Hospital.

  On reaching the children’s ward I asked to speak to Nurse McAndrew. My luck was in. She had just come on duty.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’ she said, without any preliminary greeting, bundling me into an empty side ward.

  ‘News?’

  ‘About Peter.
He’s done a bunk. Ran away last night.’

  I couldn’t help but smile at the phrase ‘done a bunk’. It brought to mind an image of Peter, pretending to be Tiger Blake affecting an escape from the Hospital Prisoner of War Camp.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Sister McAndrew was obviously dismayed and annoyed at my reaction.

  ‘He’s with me,’ I said, still grinning.

  ‘With you!’

  I held up my hands in defence. ‘I had nothing to do with it. The lad just took it into his head to jump ship and come to live with me. I found him on my doorstep early this morning when I got in.’

  ‘The poor mite.’

  ‘It seems he thinks I’m a better bet than an orphanage.’

  ‘But he can’t live with you!’

  ‘I know. But he can’t go to a bloody orphanage either. I speak from experience.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Those places crush you. Stamp out any spark of individuality. They crucify sensitive souls like Peter.’

  ‘Sensitive souls like you?’ It was Sister Susan McAndrew’s turn to smile.

  ‘I suppose,’ I replied, with a somewhat sheepish grin.

  ‘I think I’ve got the answer. I’ve been on the phone to my sister, Julia: she’s married to a farmer in Devon. They’re very happy to take Peter on as an evacuee for the duration.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I beamed. ‘All the lad needs is a loving stable home life.’

  ‘And after the war … what then?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Auntie Susan.’

  We laughed. It was a warm, happy laugh which made us feel good.

  ‘I’ll need to deal with the paperwork and stuff, but I’m sure I’ll be able to sort it out without much difficulty. Kids are a nuisance in London. They’re being shipped to the country by the cartload. One more poor sod won’t make much difference.’

  ‘Nurse McAndrew, I love you,’ I beamed, and embraced her, giving her a kiss on the lips.

  She blushed and, pulling away from me, she adjusted her cap.

  ‘If that’s a proposal, the answer is no,’ she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

  * * *

  An hour later I was on my third errand of the day. I stood once more before the shabby terraced house in Carlton Street in Maida Vale. The curtains were drawn and there was no sign of life. I gazed at the house for some time wondering whether to knock or not when the door of the adjoining property opened abruptly and an aged, thin-faced old crone appeared on the doorstep. Although it was the afternoon, she was wearing a faded dressing-gown wrapped around her scraggy frame. Her hair was in curlers and a smoking cigarette dangled precariously from her lip.

  ‘If you’re looking for that young couple what live there, you’re out of luck, mister.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked simply.

  ‘They’ve moved out. Did a moonlight flit last night. Saw ’em with my own eyes. You a debt collector? Reckon you’ve missed the boat with them two.’ She gave a strangled rasp which I assumed was an expression of merriment but it soon developed into a hacking cough.

  I raised my hat in a polite gesture, thanked the old witch for the information she had proffered and turned on my heel.

  ‘Goodbye, Eve,’ I muttered under my breath, as I trundled back to Warwick Street tube station. ‘I hope you’ll be all right.’

  thirty-eight

  That evening I took Peter for the promised slap-up meal in a posh restaurant. Well, at least we had the best table at Benny’s Café. And this was certainly a notch up on the doorways that the lad had been used to recently. With a little hint from me Benny made an effort to make the occasion special. He even lit a candle on the table to help create a festive effect. I was determined that neither beans nor Spam would be a feature of our little repast and Benny rose to the culinary challenge providing us with two steaming plates of spaghetti bolognaise. Remarkably, the bolognaise had a passing resemblance to beef. A first for Benny.

  Peter was delighted with the experience and giggled heartily as he sucked hard on the long strands of spaghetti until they shot into his mouth with some force, leaving the surrounding area smeared with bolognaise sauce. Benny hovered by our table, a jovial spectre at the feast, happy that his meal was causing so much enjoyment.

  As he cleared our plates away, he leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘In honour of our young guest this evening, I think I can rustle up some ice-cream if that would be acceptable.’

  ‘Would you like some ice-cream, Peter?’ I asked.

  He beamed and nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

  Benny beamed too. ‘On the house,’ he crowed, as he disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘This is great,’ said Peter, his face flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Only the best for my little friend.’

  His hand stole across the table and touched mine. ‘We are friends, Johnny, aren’t we?’

  ‘Certainly are. Whatever happens.’

  ‘Whatever happens? What d’you mean?’

  ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

  The smile faded from Peter’s face.

  I ruffled his hair. ‘It’s good news.’

  At this point Benny plonked a dish of ice-cream in front of him. ‘Enjoy, my boy,’ he grinned.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked.

  ‘Ice-cream is for the children, Johnny. Special treat. For you, I got a custard pie.…’

  ‘I’ll pass on that.’

  Benny gave a mock grunt of disdain and shuffled off.

  ‘What news?’ asked Peter when Benny had left us, his dish of ice-cream untouched.

  ‘I’ve found a home for you … in the countryside away from all the bombing.’

  ‘A home?’

  ‘Yes. Not an orphanage but a proper home with two kind people who’ll sort of be your mum and dad for a while. Until we beat the Germans.’

  ‘Will you be there?’

  I shook my head. ‘My work is in London. But I’ll come down and see you. And I’ll write and send you some Tiger Blake comics.’

  ‘Do you promise? Please promise.’

  ‘Of course. I’m not losing touch with you, you little rascal. We’re pals, aren’t we?’

  Peter nodded vigorously, his smile forming again.

  ‘Now eat your ice-cream before it melts.’

  Peter nodded and tucked in. After a few mouthfuls, he passed the spoon to me. ‘You have some, too,’ he said with a smile.

  * * *

  A few days later with Peter clutching my hand we entered the stately portals of Paddington Station. It was just before midday and it was heaving with travellers. As we pushed through the crowds, Susan McAndrew came forward to greet us. She bent down and gave Peter a hug. He glanced up at me, embarrassed. I knew he liked Susan but this show of affection from a lady affected his masculine image. I gave him a knowing look.

  Susan had secured some leave and was taking Peter down to her sister’s farm in Devon to help settle Peter in.

  ‘Our train’s arrived. It’s on platform five,’ she cried above the hubbub.

  I nodded and together we made our way there, each holding Peter by the hand, looking for all the world like a pair of devoted parents.

  Peter and Susan boarded the train and leaned out of the carriage door window.

  ‘Oh,’ I cried, ‘just before I forget.’ I pulled some comics from the inside of my coat and passed them over to Peter. ‘Something for you to read on the train.’

  His little face crumpled and he began to cry. ‘Can’t you come with us?’

  For one reckless moment I almost said yes but I didn’t. I shook my head instead. ‘I’ve got some important business to deal with here in London. You’ve got my address. Don’t forget to write. And I’ll come down and see you very soon.’

  He nodded bravely, brushing the tears from his eyes.

  I leaned closer to him. ‘Now, remember, there may be Nazi spies on the train, so keep your eyes open. It’s your mission to prot
ect Nurse McAndrew.’

  Peter looked at me seriously and rose to his full height. ‘You can rely on me, Johnny.’

  ‘Good man.’

  The whistle blew and the train began to move. We were all lost for words now and all we could do was wave at each other. And so I waved until the train shimmered out of sight.

  FORESTS OF THE NIGHT. Copyright © 2013 by David Stuart Davies.

  All rights reserved.

  For information, address St. Martin’s Minotaur, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  eISBN 9781466841635

  First eBook edition: March 2013