by Nicola Upson
Penrose took the piece of paper and looked down at the photograph. It had been taken in the Motley workroom and Marjorie stood on the left of the group, poignantly close to the spot where she had been killed. She was holding a glamorous evening gown, draped over her arm to show the material off to its best advantage, and he was struck by the contrast between the world of the picture and the world she had been born to—and by how comfortable she seemed in the former. She was exceptionally attractive, with a smile like a young Gwen Farrar and, as he gazed at this carefree image, he felt again the full horror of her final moments.
He passed the photograph to Fallowfield, who copied down the captioned names and returned it to Marjorie’s mother. ‘Did she associate with anyone in particular from work?’ he asked.
The woman shrugged. ‘Not especially, as far as I know.’
‘What about men? Was she walking out with anyone?’
The genteel phrase seemed to amuse her. ‘If she was, she never told me about him, but then she wouldn’t. She kept her secrets close to her, and I didn’t watch her every move—we didn’t have that kind of relationship.’
‘So you weren’t worried when she didn’t come home last night? When neither of them did?’
‘No, I was glad of the peace. I’m always glad if Joe stays out all night, and, like I said, Marjorie had other places to go. I don’t blame them—I wish I could get away.’
‘Where did your husband go, Mrs Baker? Who did he associate with?’
‘Any man who’d buy him a drink, and any woman who’d give him a bed for the night.’
‘Can you give us names?’
She shook her head. ‘He drank in the Feathers or the Green Man—they might be able to tell you there who he kept company with. The women weren’t from round here, I’ll give him that—he didn’t mess around on his own doorstep.’
‘Were you here all night, Mrs Baker?’ Fallowfield asked.
She laughed at him. ‘No. Actually, Sergeant, I took a long hot bath and went out to see some friends for supper. Then we went to the theatre.’ Her laughter had an edge of hysteria about it and, when it stopped, there were tears in her eyes. ‘Of course I was here all night. I’m always here—you can rely on that.’
Penrose stood up to go; there was no more to be learned here for the present. ‘Once again, I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Baker, and thank you for your time. If you think of anything that might help us, I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch immediately. We will, of course, keep you informed of any developments.’
‘I know what you’re both thinking,’ she said as they walked to the door. ‘I’m not as upset as I should be. Not as shocked. But grief’s a luxury I can’t afford—not with Marjorie’s wages to replace somehow. I don’t even know how I’m going to bury them.’
Penrose knew it was futile, but he said it anyway. ‘If there’s anything we can do to be of assistance, you know where to find us.’
As they went back downstairs, Fallowfield said: ‘Lucy Peters is at the Cowdray Club, Sir. Works there as a maid.’
‘Does she? Then perhaps that’s how Marjorie got hold of the photo frame we found on her body—that might have been the arrangement: Peters stole the stuff, and Marjorie sold it on. And some of the women in that picture …’
‘Are the ones who’ve had the letters, the ones who saw Marjorie the day she died. Yes, I noticed that. Do you think there’s a link? Perhaps it was Marjorie who sent them.’
‘That crossed my mind. It’s time we paid the Cowdray Club a visit, Bill, but I want to go back to the Yard first and try to get hold of Spilsbury. He might have something for us by now, and at least then we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with.’
‘What d’you make of the mother?’
Penrose considered carefully before answering. ‘I think life’s knocked everything out of her, Bill, and there’s nothing left to like or dislike. These two deaths have made it easier for her in some ways, I suppose, and harder in others. I’d like another opinion on the family, though. I wonder if that woman who let us in is still about?’
They found her in the back yard, breaking up some empty wooden crates. She looked up when she heard them, and a girl of about ten with rickety legs, her skin pallid from the amount of time which she spent in a damp, cold room, moved over to stand behind her mother, peering shyly out at them.
Without giving any details, Penrose explained briefly what had brought the police to Campbell Bunk. ‘Poor bitch is better off without ’em if you ask me,’ she said. ‘Joe Baker was a lazy, selfish bastard and that Marjorie had too much of what the cat licks its arse with—a bit of Woolworth’s jewellery and some make-up and she thought she was Joan bleedin’ Crawford.’
‘We understand that Marjorie argued a lot with her father.’
‘And her mother—believe me, there’s nothing worse than two women turning on each other. We know what we’re doing.’
Penrose was interested. ‘They fought physically, you mean?’
‘If you mean did they beat the shit out of each other, then yeah, they did. I remember Marjorie coming home not so long ago in a new coat and skirt—God knows what they must have cost her, but she didn’t even get inside the house in ’em. Maria was out here in the street, tearing ’em off her back. She told me later it was because Marjorie had been earning more than she let on and spending money on herself rather than the family, but it was more than that—it was sheer jealousy. Them clothes weren’t worth nothing by the time Maria’d finished with ’em, and if it’d been about money she’d have found out how much they cost and taken ’em to the pawn shop.’
Fallowfield raised an eyebrow and Penrose shared his surprise. More had changed in women’s lives in the last thirty years than ever before and, in spite of what Maria Baker had said, it would take a special kind of love not to grudge that just a little. But this particular struggle between mother and daughter sounded more bitter and more violent than one generation’s resentment of the chances offered to the next.
‘Do you know if Mrs Baker was at home last night?’ Fallowfield asked.
‘Of course she was,’ the woman said automatically. ‘I went up to see her a couple of times.’
It was a lie, but there was no point in wasting time proving that now. ‘Thank you,’ Penrose said, unable to keep a trace of sarcasm out of his voice. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
By the time they got back to the car, a long, deep scratch—admirable in its neat execution—had mysteriously appeared on the driver’s side, drawing some choice language from Fallowfield and a mocking expression of innocence from the small crowd of bystanders. As Penrose opened the door and got in, the filth and degradation seemed to cling to his clothes; had it not been for the manner of Marjorie’s death and the spirited image created by what people said about her, he could almost have believed that the girl was better off out of it.
Maria Baker sat on the bed for a long time after the policemen had gone, scarcely daring to believe that it was over: the shadow of that house in Finchley—which had wound itself like a shroud around her relationship with Joe, driving them apart and binding them unrelentingly together—had, with his death, finally lifted; the memories and the shame, which tracked them down no matter where they went or who they became, had lost their power to hurt.
She stood up to put the magazine back on the pile next to the grate, ready for the evening fire. As she bent down, she noticed that the date on the newspaper which Joe had left lying around yesterday was 22 November, and realised that tomorrow was her birthday. It was thirty-three years almost to the day since the nightmare had begun and now, at fifty-one, she was being offered a clean slate. Trying to remember the woman she had once been, Maria Baker walked over to the cot. The child stared up at her in astonishment as she laughed until she cried.
There was nothing from Spilsbury on Penrose’s desk when he and Fallowfield arrived back at the Yard.
‘I’ll have to telephone him,’ Penrose said reluctantly. The path
ologist hated being hurried and detectives who were too impatient for results were the only thing guaranteed to disturb his equable temperament.
‘Rather you than me, Sir,’ Fallowfield said. ‘I’ll get on to the Cowdray Club, shall I? Tell Miss Bannerman we’ll be over to see her.’
‘Yes. Who else from the club was in that photograph?’
Fallowfield looked at his notes. ‘Miriam Sharpe—she’s the president of the college, Sir, and I gather from what Miss Bannerman said that she’s not too happy about this gala business, even though she has to put up with it in public. I got the impression that her and Bannerman don’t really get on. Then there’s Lady Ashby, Mary Size and Sylvia Timpson—she’s the receptionist, Sir.’
‘Have you met her?’
‘Yes—very prickly and a bit grander than she ought to be. You know the sort.’
‘Only too well. You can tell me anything else I need to know about them on the way over. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to have an initial chat with Bannerman, Sharpe and Timpson—and Lucy Peters, too, if she works on a Saturday. I doubt the other two will be there at this time of day, so find out how we can get hold of Lady Ashby. I’d rather see Mary Size at the prison, anyway, so arrange that, will you, Bill? We’ll need copies of Marjorie’s prison records—and we might as well take a look at Peters’s while we’re there. Tell Miss Bannerman who we want to see, but don’t give her any details. Let her think it’s about the other business.’
‘She might already know what’s happened from your cousins, Sir, if they’ve phoned about using the premises.’
‘Damn—I’d forgotten. All right—get hold of Lettice or Ronnie first and find out, and if they haven’t already made contact with the club, ask them not to tell Bannerman why they need the space. And I want someone to do some digging on the Bakers—find out everything you can on the family, including the Edwards branch. Can you spare a couple of people for that?’
‘Yes, Sir, I’ll put Waddingham and Merrifield on it. Neither of them likes to be outdone by the other, so we should get some quick results.’
‘Excellent.’ Penrose picked up the telephone and got through to the mortuary in Gower Street. Spilsbury had built his reputation on a principle of proceeding slowly, taking nothing for granted and scrutinising every inch of a body before opening it up, but his insistence on doing everything himself led to occasional delays which drove the average detective—Penrose included—to distraction. But it was that very attention to detail—and a profound knowledge gained from years of experience—which enabled the pathologist to detect things invisible to others and, to Penrose’s knowledge, nothing he had seen with the naked eye had ever been reversed by subsequent examination with a microscope. He knew he was pushing his luck, but he hoped that an initial examination might at least allow Spilsbury to confirm that Marjorie had not been killed by her father.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Archie? If you want miracles, you need to go to a higher authority than me.’ The words were stern, but there was a note of humour in his voice which gave Penrose hope. ‘Actually, I was just about to call you. I’m afraid it doesn’t look as though you’ve caught your murderer yet—I don’t know if you regard that as good news or bad.’
‘I’m just grateful for any news at all,’ Penrose said.
‘I must stress that this is only my opinion, and nothing I’ve found yet would necessarily convince a jury, but a couple of things suggest to me that he didn’t kill her, and, taken together with the type of crime that’s been committed and your initial reaction, they’re pretty conclusive. Baker had very recent scratches on his face, but there was no skin under Marjorie’s fingernails.’
‘But the scratches could have …’
‘… nothing to do with the murder. Yes, I realise that. The second point is a little more reliable. There’s a small cloakroom a few yards down the corridor from the main workshop.’
‘Yes, I remember seeing it.’
‘Well, we found a towel there which has blood on it and, when we looked more closely, there were tiny specks of blood on the tiles behind the sink as well. Obviously we’ll have to wait for the tests to confirm that the blood is the same type as Marjorie’s, but, if it is, it seems fairly clear to me that the killer went in there to wash before leaving the building. That rules Baker out—his hands and face were both filthy. There’s no way that he could have wiped his daughter’s blood off his hands and left behind the dirt that we found.’
‘One of the other girls could have hurt herself during the day.’
‘Yes, I thought of that, but your cousins aren’t aware of any accidents and even the slightest cut has to be reported, apparently.’
‘Even if it is Marjorie’s blood, she could have used the cloakroom herself.’
‘Think about it, Archie—there were no external injuries whatsoever on Marjorie Baker’s body except for the damage to her lips and some small scratches around the mouth from glass beads which didn’t go down her throat. If that blood is hers, she would have had to have gone to the sink after those injuries were made, and you’re hardly going to nip along the corridor to make yourself presentable after suffering that sort of torture. No, I think the killer’s face and hands were covered with the same specks of blood and vomit that we found on the smock, and he or she wanted to wash all the traces off before going out into the street.’
‘Then why leave the smock and the towel behind, I wonder? I can understand someone missing the blood on the sink in their hurry to get out, but that seems a little careless.’
‘Perhaps he or she was worried about being seen with them. Anyway, the smock and the towel don’t actually tell us anything very incriminating—unless you think that the plan all along was to frame Baker for his daughter’s murder.’
‘I see what you mean. Baker may simply have come looking for Marjorie and turned up at the wrong moment, then had a helping hand down the stairs?’
‘I don’t put the story together, Archie—that’s your job—but I’ve found nothing yet to disprove what you’ve just said, although Joseph Baker had enough alcohol in him to end up at the bottom of those steps on his own. It’s only the scratches that suggest any sort of struggle—he was knocked unconscious by the fall and died of hypothermia, which makes the time of death difficult to establish, I’m afraid. Someone of his age didn’t stand a chance left out there in those temperatures.’
‘What about a time of death for Marjorie?’
‘She’d been dead for between eight and twelve hours when she was found. Unofficially, I’d say towards the upper end of that.’
Which fitted with what Lettice had told him about the lights going off in the studio, Penrose thought. ‘You said she had no other injuries—presumably she was drugged if she didn’t put up a fight?’
‘Yes, although I can’t say for certain with what until we get the results of some tests. She’d been dragged across the floor at some stage—her stockings were torn, and we found matching fibres on the leg of one of the tables.’
‘Was it in the vodka?’
‘Perhaps. Her pupils were dilated and her skin was grey—in fact, if you discount the horror of her injuries, the picture as a whole resembles clinical cardiovascular collapse, so one of the nitrites would have done the job. Amyl nitrite’s a possibility—it’s a muscle relaxant and they use it to treat angina, but it’s absorbed very rapidly from the lungs so making her inhale a good dose of that would achieve what the killer needed in order to complete the rest of the work.’
‘Is it readily available?’
‘Well, it has various medical uses and it’s commonly prescribed.’
‘Was she conscious throughout the worst of it?’ Penrose asked, although he thought he knew the answer already.
‘Oh yes. For a while, at least. She’ll have lost all the power in her muscles and she’ll have been drowsy, but certainly not drowsy enough. If she’d been allowed to remain lying down, she’d have recovered very quickly from the drug, but she
didn’t stand a chance as long as she was tied upright to that chair.’
‘Medical knowledge, then?’
‘Perhaps.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’ll get the full reports over to you as soon as I can.’
‘Thanks, Bernard—I appreciate it.’ Penrose put the phone down, satisfied. He had known in his heart that Joseph Baker, while having plenty to reproach himself for, was not guilty of his daughter’s murder, but he tried to see where the Cowdray Club fitted into the overall picture. Had Baker persuaded Marjorie to write those notes and try her hand at blackmail, and, if so, how had she got hold of the information to put in them? He tried to remember the details of the letters, but he had only given them a cursory glance at the time. Why, though, would someone kill Marjorie to silence her when the notes had been freely handed over to the police and their contents already made public? Perhaps there was someone at the club who had never confessed to receiving one.
Fallowfield put his head round the door and Penrose brought him up to date, then asked: ‘Are WPC Wyles’s sewing skills up to scratch, do you think?’
Fallowfield looked curiously at him. ‘Why, sir, have you got something that needs mending?’
Penrose laughed. ‘No, but I’m about to tell my cousins that they’ve got a new member of staff—I want Wyles in that club, watching those women like a hawk.’
‘Why don’t you ask Miss Tey to keep an eye out, sir? She’s on the spot already.’
‘Because she’s Miss Tey, not Miss bloody Marple. You’ve been spending your evenings in St Mary Mead again, haven’t you?’
Fallowfield looked sheepish. ‘Seriously, sir, that sort of work’s not really up Wyles’s street, is it? Women coppers are all right for taking statements and looking after juveniles, but undercover work’s a bit risky.’
‘Oh don’t be so old-fashioned, Bill. She’ll suit a smock better than you will, and she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. I thought about putting her in there as a nurse, but that would mean trusting someone in the building and, for all we know, any one of them could be capable of wielding a sack needle. No, the girls’ moving into the Cowdray Club is too good a chance to miss.’ Fallowfield still looked sceptical. ‘Cheer up, Bill—even if I’m wrong, it might get the chief constable’s wife off our backs. Have you got those anonymous letters handy? I’d like to have another look at them before we go over there.’
