The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ said Pete, sitting down beside her with a smile. He smelled of soap and his hair was still damp, combed back neatly. He’d caught the sun across his nose and cheeks, and the skin was shining and bronze. Pudding scrabbled in her satchel for the book, and handed it back to him.

  ‘I was thinking that if you don’t listen to me, I shall go and talk directly to Superintendent Blackman. But first you need to finish reading this,’ she said.

  ‘Shall I get us a couple of drinks first?’ said Pete, looking crestfallen.

  ‘Please, Pete – please just read it.’

  ‘All right.’ He frowned down at the book, and read the whole story – it was only two pages long, one of the shortest in the book, dealing mainly with the particulars of the girl’s death. Pudding had all but memorised it by then, and there was little about who she’d been, or who might have killed her. Sarah was believed to have had a lover, though he never came forward, and it was thought that her murder was the result of a lovers’ tryst, held in the warmth and privacy of the mill, that had gone badly wrong. The case, it said at the end, remains unsolved, the murderer at large.

  ‘Well?’ said Pudding, when Pete looked up at her. ‘It can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

  ‘Well …’ Pete shrugged slightly, but he was frowning, thinking. ‘I think I remember my old nan talking about this, now you come to mention it – she worked at the little mill back then, sorting the rags. It’s proper strange, I’ll give you that,’ he said.

  ‘The murderer remains at large, it says.’ Pudding flicked to the back of the book. ‘This book was published nine years ago.’ The year before the war began, she reflected, after which everyone lost their appetite for horror. ‘Surely we’d have heard about it if it had been solved since then?’

  ‘We would. It was most likely her fella, if he never came forward.’

  ‘But the murderer is clearly still at large – the same man who killed Alistair Hadleigh. It has to be the same man!’

  Pete was still frowning as he got up and went inside, then returned with two glasses of dark beer. Pudding chose not to mention that she’d never drunk beer before, and sipped cautiously. It tasted bitter, earthy, half good and half bad. She tried not to grimace as she swallowed. It turned warm and woolly in her stomach.

  ‘You sure you won’t come inside, Pud? Nobody’d mind,’ said Pete.

  ‘Well … it’s easier to talk out here, where it’s quiet. And it’s warm enough, after all.’

  ‘That’s true.’ He smiled at her in a kind of soft, inconsequential way that made her chafe impatiently.

  ‘Pete. Constable Dempsey! Will you please say something about what I’ve told you,’ she burst out. ‘I can’t work out why nobody I’ve told is doing anything!’

  ‘I was thinking on it all the while, Pudding – I was. The thing is,’ he said, looking uncomfortable, ‘there’s two ways of looking at it. One is that Mr Hadleigh was killed by the same person as killed this girl fifty years ago – although that’d make the killer past seventy now, at least, you’d have to suppose.’ Pudding paused. She hadn’t considered that.

  ‘Plenty of seventy-year-olds are still fit and strong enough to … commit a crime,’ she said.

  ‘Plenty? I think that’s a bit of a stretch, Pud.’ He held up a placating hand as she drew breath to argue. ‘But it’s possible, I’ll grant. The second way to look at it is that somebody who knew about the old murder committed this new one deliberately to make it seem as though the same person has done both.’

  ‘But … why would anybody do that?’

  ‘Who knows? Who knows why anybody would kill Mr Hadleigh – or this other girl – in the first place? I know it bothers Superintendent Blackman that we still haven’t come up with a good reason why.’ He took a long swig of his beer. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, really, Pudding.’

  ‘You mean, he’s still not convinced it was Donny?’ said Pudding, keenly. Pete shook his head.

  ‘No, no – that’s not what I’m saying. He’s convinced it was Donny – all the evidence points to it. But he’d prefer to know why he did it. And the thing is …’ Pete paused, and looked at Pudding for a while. His eyes were wide in the failing light, and his face wore a kind sort of look that was almost pity, which made Pudding cringe inside. ‘The thing is, if we go and tell him about this book of yours, and that’s it’s been lying around your house for a while … he’s going to say that your Donny most likely picked it up and read about the first murder, and took his cues from it. He might even say that … it gave him the idea to kill Mr Hadleigh in the first place.’

  Pudding stared into the near distance as the significance of this sank in. She felt like Cassandra, condemned to be disbelieved; she felt the awful weight of not being able to help her brother. Everything seemed hopeless, and just then despair felt like a welcoming place to lie down and rest. Pudding drank her beer down – more warmth, more woolliness.

  ‘This is all like a nightmare,’ she said, quietly. ‘The book was only ever in my room, on the nightstand. Mum doesn’t like me reading dreadful things, so I never leave it lying about the house. Donny never goes into my room. He never does,’ she said, appealing to Pete, whose face still wore the sorrowful look. ‘There’s no way he would have read it.’

  ‘I know you know that, Pudding – I understand, and I believe you. Trouble is, it can’t be proved, can it?’

  ‘You’ve known Donny since you were born, Pete. Do you believe he killed Alistair?’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference what I believe,’ he said, looking uneasy.

  ‘It does to me,’ said Pudding. ‘I need to know who’s on my side.’

  ‘I’m on your side, Pudding – course I am. But I’ve a job to do as well, keeping the law. And I have to do it to the letter. I can’t do anything else.’ Pudding thought for a while, though the beer and bad news seemed to have turned her thoughts soupy. She bit the ends of her fingers to get her own attention.

  ‘Well, you have to tell Blackman. Will you? If not, I’ll tell him myself.’

  ‘Even if it gives him the “why” he’s after? He doesn’t know Donny from Adam, don’t forget.’

  ‘Even so, it might make him think … you will tell him my idea, won’t you – that it’s the same killer?’

  ‘I’ll tell him, yes,’ said Pete, sounding resigned.

  ‘And … will you look into the first murder?’

  ‘Look into it? How in hell shall I do that, Pudding? The case is fifty years old!’

  ‘There must be records – notes on who she was, who was suspected, that kind of thing? Surely there’ll be records of that, at the station?’

  ‘Well … I suppose there might be, not that I’d have the first clue where to look. That’s if I get permission, of course. I can’t just go rummaging, willy-nilly.’

  ‘But you could suggest it to your superiors, couldn’t you? That it might be an idea to look into it?’

  ‘I’ll suggest it, yes.’ Pete sat quietly, seeming to wait for whatever was coming next.

  ‘Good,’ said Pudding. ‘Take the book and show him – but I want it back as soon as he’s seen it.’

  She got up abruptly, then had to wait while her head stopped spinning. Pete stood up to anchor her.

  ‘Steady on, Pud … not got much of a head for the beer, have you?’ He smiled.

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the first time I’ve had any,’ said Pudding, thinking that the sky was very far away, and that the ground sloped even though it looked flat. Pete cocked his head, still holding her arm.

  ‘I forget you’re still so young, Pudding,’ he said. ‘What with you so …’ He broke off, gesturing vaguely at her figure before letting his hand and his eyes drop.

  ‘What with me so what?’

  ‘Never mind. Come on – I’d best get you home.’

  ‘I came on foot, and I know the way,’ said Pudding, grandly.

  ‘Well, you’re not going back on foot, I
can tell you. Come on – up to the farm, and we’ll take the pony and trap.’

  ‘That’ll take ages; walking’d be faster.’

  ‘Well, Pudding Cartwright, if what you say about your Donny is right, then there’s a murderer on the loose. Given that, if nothing else, what kind of police officer would I be if I let a young lady walk home all alone?’

  The route to Spring Cottage that was navigable by pony and trap was long, and steep, climbing to the top of the hill out west of Ford and then dropping down again. The pony huffed and puffed, the trap swayed over stones and ruts, and Pudding fought to stay awake against a near irresistible drowsiness. Twice she jerked awake to find her head resting on Pete Dempsey’s shoulder, with the warmth of him reaching her cheek through his shirt. She tried to move further away along the seat, but it was a very narrow seat. ‘It’s all right, Pudding, you can get your head down if you like,’ said Pete, his voice half-hidden by the creak of wheels and clop of hooves. Pudding shook her head.

  ‘You’ll look into it then, and you’ll talk to Blackman? You promise?’ she said, as he set her down outside her home.

  ‘I promise to talk to Blackman, and to do what I can,’ Pete qualified. Pudding nodded sleepily, and turned to go. ‘You’ll be looking into it yourself, I bet,’ Pete called after her, in a knowing tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well … if it’s the same killer and they’re past seventy, and they’ve been in the area before and are back, or have always been here … then chances are some of the old-timers might have some thoughts on who that could be, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pudding, as neutrally as she could. ‘Yes – I suppose so.’

  ‘You be careful, Pudding Cartwright. I’d tell you to leave it to the law if I thought you’d take a blind bit of notice, but you be careful. Goodnight, then,’ he said, turning the pony as Pudding waved him goodnight.

  She didn’t realise until the morning that she had forgotten to thank Pete for the drink, and for the ride home. But it didn’t really matter – she had more important things to do. The beer had plunged her into a deep sleep, and she woke with a clear head, more convinced than ever that whoever had killed Sarah Martock in 1872 had also killed Alistair. And she knew exactly where she was going.

  * * *

  They walked a good way out of Slaughterford to catch the bus to Swindon from Castle Combe, so that the driver wouldn’t recognise them. Clemmie had tied a shawl over her telltale hair, and was too hot, and her legs felt heavy all the way. Eli walked fast, with his face set, sometimes towing her by her hand just as her mother had done on the way to Manor Farm. But it wasn’t just her legs that felt heavy; the heaviness seemed to be in all the muscles of her body and every bit of her head, a dragging unwillingness that she couldn’t shake – the near irresistible urge to sit down and rest, and to then turn back. When she drifted to a halt, to stare at a skyline of hills that she didn’t know and feel the horrible strangeness of that, Eli turned back impatiently.

  ‘Come on, Clemmie!’ he said, his desire to be away every bit as strong as her desire to stay. When she whimpered, he was gentler with her, and kissed her, and clamped her hands in his, like he was praying. ‘Well, come on then,’ he said. ‘This is our new life we’re running to. The three of us.’ Murmuring and soothing until she carried on again. Cottages she didn’t know; faces she didn’t know; fields and gates and stiles she didn’t know. Paths, green lanes, copses of trees; battered farmyards alive with geese and rats and children. She lost the edges of herself in the unfamiliarity of it; she felt herself blurring, getting lost. Once they were on the bus the changes only came more quickly, more alarmingly, and Clemmie had no way of saying that it felt as though the world itself had been swapped for one she had no hope of understanding. She gripped Eli’s hand not out of love, but out of fear.

  The bus was crowded, and spirits seemed high as they came out of the valley onto flatter ground, and the team of cobs trotted steadily along. Men with moustaches and bowler hats, some in waistcoats that had seen better days, carrying their jackets over their arms; strappers going between farms in just their shirtsleeves, stinking of sweat, work and the muck on their boots; two women so alike they had to be sisters, gossiping happily, going into town in straw bonnets and lawn frocks with old stains washed in at the hem, and offering a punnet of cherries around the other passengers. Eli scowled blackly at everybody, so nobody spoke to them. Clemmie cowered back in her shawl, too scared to look people in the eye, too scared not to look. The sun was high but she stretched her arms out from the shade of the hooped canvas roof while they changed horses in Great Somerford; reaching them into the sunshine, reaching for things she couldn’t touch. Later, when Eli shook her shoulder to get her attention, Clemmie jumped. He pointed at buildings on the horizon, coming nearer – church spires, factory chimneys, tall townhouses. His face had come alive with triumph. ‘We’re all but there! And just think – your folks might not even have noticed you gone yet,’ he said, jubilantly. Clemmie nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to smile. ‘Don’t look so cowed, my Clem. I’m going to look after you, and it’ll all work out well – I’ve said so. You believe me, don’t you?’ he said, and she made herself nod again.

  Eli’s cousin, Matthew, didn’t look much like a Tanner. He was squat, pug-nosed and had brown eyes, not blue; his lips were too full, and had a damp, swollen look, and his hair was a greasy swathe of mouse-brown in need of a cut. But he had a wide smile, and the shiftiness in his eyes was more speculative than malicious. His wife Polly was so pregnant she looked like the moon rising. The weight of the bump had dragged her spine into an impossible-looking kink, and she kept her hands wedged there, bracing it, whenever she could. She might only have been twenty or so but her face sagged with exhaustion, and a toddler swung from her skirt as she let them in.

  ‘Don’t panic, missy,’ she said to Clemmie, catching her staring in alarm at the size of the bump. ‘This is due to drop any day now, and I’ve a feeling there’s more than one in there – my ma was one of triplets, God help me. So chances are you won’t come up half as big as this.’ Matthew and Polly had been told that Clemmie was mute, but there was still that pause when she was expected to reply, and the slight awkwardness of moving on when she didn’t. ‘How far along are you?’ Polly asked, before blushing, realising that Clemmie couldn’t answer that, either.

  ‘Only Clem knows,’ said Eli, looking at her as though she’d worked a miracle. ‘The rest of us must just wait to see.’ Polly squinted at Clemmie, and, nodding for permission, grabbed her middle and gave her a prod.

  ‘Early days,’ she said. ‘No more than a couple of months, I reckon.’

  ‘Plenty of time for me to work, then, and find us rooms.’

  ‘Ar, well,’ said Matthew, not sounding too sure. ‘You can stay as long as needs be. Family’s family after all.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Polly. ‘I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’

  Matthew and Polly had the ground floor of a cramped townhouse; two rooms, one at the front where they cooked and washed and ate, the other at the back where they slept with their first child, three-year-old Betsy. Outside the door to these rooms, narrow stairs ran to the upper rooms from a hallway with a grimed wooden floor. It was dark, and cramped, and most of the space was taken up with pots and boxes, brooms, pails and an old milk churn in a trolley that Polly used to fetch water from the pump at the end of the street. Cooking smells lingered, as did the damp and smuts aroma of neglected corners everywhere. Beneath the stairs, a thin mattress stuffed with rags had been laid, and draped with a blanket. It was just about wide enough for two people to lie side by side, shoulders tight together. Clemmie thought of the huge bed at Weavern Farm that she’d shared with Josie. It had been there long before her parents had taken over the farm, more a part of the building than a piece of furniture, and over the years the posts had been gnawed by beetles and wasps. But it had been soft and enveloping, and it had been at home. Safe. H
ere, people’s feet would pass by in the street, not three yards from where her head would lie.

  ‘I’ve had a word with old Mrs Shepherd upstairs and she don’t mind. She hasn’t managed the stairs in years anyway – only time she gets out is when we take her. Her daughter comes by every day to dress and feed her, and empty the pot, but you’ll be up and about before she comes, I’m sure. Only thing we need to watch is the landlord. He comes by for the rent each month, usually on the first Tuesday, so he shouldn’t spring us if we’re careful – not that he’d put you out, only he’d be wanting more money for you staying here, is all.’

  ‘Our thanks, Pol,’ said Eli, dropping his canvas sack onto the mattress.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off on the evening shift,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ll let the foreman know you’re here. Hopefully he’ll just say to bring you in with me in the morning, then he’ll glance you over like he’s weighing you up at market, but don’t let it rile you – he’s a tiny prick of a man, in all manner of ways.’