by Barbara Vine
The well was never used again. I don't know where the farmer got his drinking water from, for I am sure it was impossible to have a system linked to the mains in 1941. Perhaps there was a pump near by. Anne and I squeezed through the hedge and trespassed on his land to peer down the deep green hole. I am sorry to say that for a while playing Elsie displaced our Mary Stuart game and we would enact Elsie's walking along the lane, seeing the well and jumping down it. These actions we performed in Anne's garden, a pit that had once been an ice cave doing duty as the well. We were only twelve and that must be our excuse.
At school, just as on wet mornings at assembly, if ‘Summer suns are glowing’ was due to be sung, a more suitable hymn would be substituted for it, so a round we had enjoyed singing was abruptly removed from our repertoire.
‘London's burning, London's burning,
Fetch the engines, fetch the engines.
Fire, fire! Fire, fire!
Pour on water…’
would have constituted a serious breach of taste in January 1941.
I had been home for Christmas only, returning to Laurel Cottage for the start of the new term. In our suburb, after the All Clear had sounded, the children went about the streets collecting up the pieces of shell from anti-aircraft fire. I had a fine collection of shrapnel to show Anne. My Uncle Gerald had been home on leave for Christmas, Francis had his fourteenth birthday and Eden, to everyone's astonishment, announced her intention of joining the WRNS.
Vera had more or less come to terms with it and rallied by the time I saw her again. Or else she was putting on a good front for my benefit.
‘Of course it's very much the most superior of the women's services,’ she said. ‘The ATS are the lowest and then the Waaf and the Wrens at the top. That's a well-known fact. Eden won't be doing any manual labour, that's quite out of the question.’
But she wouldn't be able to live at Laurel Cottage, I thought.
‘The uniform is very attractive. Just like a smart navy-blue costume really. And that saucy little hat.’
A tear ran down the side of Vera's nose and splashed on to the magazine she was holding, right on to the photograph in fact of a Wren in uniform. Her tears embarrassed me. I was stunned and a little unnerved when she clutched my hand. I murmured that everything would be all right, the war would soon be over, while vistas of grown-up grief opened in my mind's eye before me and I glimpsed for a moment how limitless and infinitely varied these might be. Vera released my hand, dried her eyes and told me fiercely not to say a word to my father that she had ‘broken down’, still less to Eden herself.
Before I went back to London in the summer my Uncle Gerald had been home on embarkation leave. Almost certainly his destination and that of his regiment was North Africa. It may be that Vera suffered as deeply over his departure as she had over Eden's, it may have been even worse for her, but if she did and if it was she had learned by then to keep her unhappiness totally concealed. It was a fine Saturday in June when he left quite early in the morning. After he had gone Vera took all the bedroom curtains down and washed them at the kitchen sink.
24a Llangollen Gdns,
Notting Hill Gate,
London WII.
12 March.
Dear Faith,
It was good to hear from you though I wish it could have been about something else. There is no reason why you should know this but I was seventeen before anyone told me who my grandmother was and then it was a girl at school who told me. I think it has set up a sort of block about anything to do with her. I shy away from it, I absolutely hate even thinking about it, and although I know it is unhealthy to be so uptight, I can't help it, I have tried.
Daniel Stewart did write to me and I wrote back and said what is the absolute truth, that I don't know any more about Vera Hillyard than everybody knows. Less, probably, as I have never read any accounts of the trial, etc. He seemed to think I was called Hillyard and addressed the envelope like that. Some sort of sixth sense made me open it – that name always makes my hair stand on end – and for weeks afterwards I imagined that other people in this house must guess that Elizabeth Hills is Vera Hillyard's granddaughter. That was stupid, of course, because they don't, most of them are too young to have heard of her, but it will give you some idea of the state I get into about the whole thing.
I have never heard anything about this secret. The name Kathleen March doesn't mean anything to me and I'm sure you'll find it doesn't to Giles either. As far as I'm concerned, you can tell it to Stewart who is in the market for any sort of dirt as these people always are. I shouldn't dream of reading his book so it doesn't matter to me. The only interest I have in it is in seeing that he doesn't mention my name or give any indication of who I am or where I live.
Mother sends her regards and says do give her a ring sometime. She says she would love to see you again. Sorry if this letter seems negative but you must understand by now how I feel.
Yours,
Elizabeth.
6 Blythe Place,
London W14.
18 March.
Dear Faith Severn,
I'm afraid I can't remember if you and I have ever met. Daniel Stewart wrote to me but I didn't reply. As far as I am concerned my mother and Elizabeth are the only family I have and I want to keep it that way. I just don't want to know my relations, living or dead, and that goes for my father. Sorry about this if it sounds rude.
Yours,
Giles Hills.
Via Orti Orcellari 90,
Firenze.
20 March.
Dear Faith,
As you see from above, I have moved. I went round to the old place and they had kept your letter for me. If you do come to Florence this spring, remember we have a date and I am going to cook for you. I am feeling pleased with myself because my first book has just been published. It would be nothing to Francis who is quite a blasé author by now with half a dozen under his belt. Mine, too, is about putting things under one's belt, in other words, is a cook book, Cucina Ben Riuscita (Mondadori, L2o,000).
No, I have never heard of any family secret. Remember, I was six when it happened. Pearmain wasn't likely to give me any revelations, he hardly ever spoke to me. Now I am wondering if I want to know what it is or if I don't. On the whole I think not. I should like to say it can't be worse than what I do know but that is a very challenging statement, asking for trouble. I suppose it is something involving my mother when she was young and I am inclined to say, don't tell Stewart. I know what journalists are and he will only make it out worse than it was.
You can tell all (the secret too if you must) when you come here. Till then.
All the best,
Jamie.
16 Queens Gate Mews,
London SW7.
31 March.
Dear Mrs Severn,
I am afraid I have been thick-skinned. It has taken me a long time to realize how repugnant to you is the idea of telling me the story of your aunt and Kathleen March. But you will see by my use of the name that I have pinpointed it and have in fact done much more than that.
The files of the newspaper chain for which Chad Hamner once worked provided me with most of the facts. I wasn't specifically looking for the ‘secret’, just for anything which might have happened in Myland and later Great Sindon during the time your grandparents and their young family lived in those places. Also Mrs Adele Bacon is still alive, though nearly ninety. Three of Kathleen's siblings, all younger than she, survive. I have talked to all these people and seen the records in the possession of the Essex police, both for 1921 when the incident occurred and 1979 when the child's skeleton was found.
Enclosed is my account of what happened. Albert March has looked at it and says it is accurate as far as he knows. May I trouble you to read it? You may at any rate have the satisfaction of knowing that the information did not reach me through you and yet be able to correct my errors or misapprehensions. The account will form part of chapter three of my book, a section in which
I shall attempt some kind of character analysis of Vera Hillyard.
This is a copy so there is no need to return it to me unless you want to make any actual changes or additions to the text.
I am very grateful.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Stewart.
In the spring of 1916, a young soldier called Albert March became engaged to be married to a girl who had been his sweetheart since childhood. Her name was Adele Jephson and she and he were eighteen. A week after the engagement was formed, Albert went out to the trenches and in July 1917, during the Allied advance on Ypres, was very severely wounded.
Albert was told that it was unlikely he would ever be able to lead a normal life. It would, for instance, be unwise for him to marry. In civilian life he had been a signalman with the Great Eastern Railway at Colchester and in the opinion of doctors at the hospital where he had received treatment for his wounds to head and chest, there was no chance of his returning to this occupation. Albert, however, was strong-minded and determined. He would always suffer from breathlessness and headaches that prostrated him but he was determined notwithstanding these drawbacks to marry Adele and continue with his career. He and Adele were married in August 1918 at Great Sindon parish church, the Jephson family being parishioners.
At that time a branch line of the GER ran north-westwards from the main London/Marks Tey/Sudbury line, branching off at a station called Sindon Road, a mile from the village of Great Sindon. Albert managed to get himself put in charge of the signalbox there and he and Adele moved into a cottage in Bell Lane just off the Great Sindon main street. The row in which their house formed the last unit was called Inkerman Terrace, named for an earlier battle in an earlier war. Today the four cottages in the terrace have been converted into the Ringdove Gallery, an arts and crafts shop, and is also the home of its owners, Philip and Joy Lees.
Mrs Adele Bacon, formerly March, says:
‘People expect something more when they are starting out in life these days. We had two rooms up and two down; we lit the cottage with oil lamps and drew our water from the pump on the village green along with the people in the other cottages in the row. It was all we needed and we thought ourselves lucky to get it. Of course, at Laurel Cottage next door, they had water laid on and electric light, but that wasn't really a cottage, it was quite a big house by my standards. There was a Mr and Mrs Price living at Laurel Cottage when my husband and I moved in next door. Mr Price died and she sold the house to the Longleys.
‘Mr Longley was quite elderly. I was very young at the time and to me he was an old man. His wife was younger and they had twins who were about twelve, John and Vera. Vera was a pretty girl, very fair and with blue eyes. Later on, she got something the matter with her which made her get very thin but when the Longleys first came she was lovely. She gave me a photo of herself as a bridesmaid at her half-sister's wedding.
‘My first child was born soon after they moved in. It was a girl and we called her Kathleen Mary. Mary was after Albert's mother but Kathleen was just because we liked the name. Vera Longley was crazy about the baby. I hardly knew her mother, she was a bit standoffish, thought herself a few cuts above us, I daresay, but Vera was always in and out of my house, wanting to hold the baby and bath her, that sort of thing. And the truth was, I was a bit flattered. Times have changed so much, it's like a different world, but in those days a man who'd worked in insurance and who lived in a detached house with electricity laid on was miles above us, there was no comparison. My father was a farm labourer – well, agricultural worker you'd call him now – and my husband was a signalman on the railway. I really thought Vera was condescending coming into my house and I used to bend over backwards to make her welcome and have things nice for her.’
In the meantime, less than a year after the birth of Kathleen, Mrs March was delivered of a second child, a son this time called Albert after his father but always known as Bertie. The birth was a difficult one and Adele was ill for several months following it. Vera's help was therefore even more welcome and a pattern became established. She got into the habit of wheeling Kathleen out every afternoon during the long summer holidays in the old-fashioned perambulator that had been Adele's own when she was a baby.
Mr Albert ‘Bertie’ March, who now lives in Clacton and has recently retired from his job with the Anglian Water Authority, told the present writer:
‘I was too young to remember anything about that afternoon. Kathleen was a bit over two and I was fifteen months old. My mother never spoke about it. She never said a word at any time, it was just as if I had never had an older sister, and of course I can't remember Kathleen. It's only since my stepfather died and Mother came to live with my wife and me that she's opened up at all and once or twice has said things about Kathleen. Like how she was just starting to talk and how she had very curly hair, that kind of thing.
‘It was my father who told me about it. I was fourteen and out at work. It was a couple of years before he died. He was only thirty-five but he'd been knocked about in the Great War and that messed him up. He used to have these blinding headaches that came from a head wound he'd got at Ypres. The afternoon we lost Kathleen, he'd had to come home early. He was blind with pain. They didn't like men knocking off with headaches back in 1921, I can tell you, it was a different thing from today. You'd lose your pay for one thing and there wouldn't be any car to send you home in and don't-come-in-again-till-you're-better-Albert sort of thing. Not likely. But my Dad had to knock off, he was a danger to the company in that state, a responsible job like he'd got, responsible for hundreds of lives. And of course he had to walk home, though it wasn't much above a mile and that was nothing in those days.
‘His way home he took by the back lanes, not the main road. You had to cross the river at a sort of ford we called the “wash” but there was a wooden bridge for people going on foot. As my father was crossing the bridge, he saw Vera Longley and another girl sitting on the river bank, and a few yards away from them, under some trees, a pram. The girls had their backs to the pram which was on high, flat ground while they had evidently scrambled down the bank. The thing was that my father didn't connect the pram with his own child, it didn't occur to him that his own child might be in it. Probably he wasn't able to think about anything much but the pain in his head.
‘He had been home about an hour, he was lying in a chair with a wet rag on his head, my mother was attending to me, when Mrs Longley came to the door. She was expecting a child herself by then, the one they called Eden. She told my mother Kathleen was gone, she had disappeared from her pram. What always angered my mother was how Vera didn't come herself, she had to send her mother…’
Kathleen March was never seen again. The police were sent for and the village people mounted a hunt. A local farmer had a famous tracker dog which was called in to help in the search. Arthur Longley and his son John were in the search party. It was a bright, moonlight night and the fifty or so men kept up the search until dawn.
What did Vera Longley tell the police? No record of any interrogation of or interview with Vera – if any was undertaken – survives. Here again we have to rely on the March family, or rather on Mrs Bacon, remembering that Albert March was less than two years old at the time.
‘Vera didn't want to see me and her mother didn't want her to. She said it would do no good. But I insisted. It was my child that was lost, wasn't it, my daughter? If she wouldn't come to me, I would go to her, I said, and I did. I went to Laurel Cottage and I saw Vera. Mrs Longley said she was in a terrible state, sobbing and crying, but she wasn't crying when I saw her. She was just very white and sort of haunted looking.
‘My husband had told me what he'd seen, Vera and her friend sitting talking on the river bank. Vera said yes, that was right, she had met her school friend, Mavis Vaughan, and they had gone to the wash together. Kathleen had fallen asleep. They left the pram up on a bit of high ground and climbed down the bank themselves to the water's edge. She never took her eyes off th
e pram for more than five minutes, Vera told me, but I knew that couldn't have been true. She said Mavis sat with her for half an hour and then went off home along the river, leaving Vera alone. She said she kept watching the pram, watching for a movement, you know. If she saw it rock, she'd know Kathleen had woken up. Of course it never did move because there was no one in it by then. Or so she said. When she went up to it, she said, it was empty. Someone had come up behind her and taken Kathleen away. That was what she said. I never knew whether to believe her, but what could I do?’
Mavis Vaughan, later to become Mrs Broughton, died in 1978, aged seventy-one, but her story of what happened that day is well-known to her daughter, Mrs Judith Jones, who lives in nearby Sissington.
‘Everything that happened in connection with the missing March child made a deep impression on my mother. Even in the light of what happened later – the murder, I mean – she was convinced Vera Hillyard had nothing to do with it. Vera loved children. Well, I would have thought the circumstances of the murder showed that really. She loved Kathleen March as much as she was later to love her own baby sister. My mother said that Edith Longley being born when she was saved Vera's sanity, she really believed that. As it was, Vera was ill for months after the new baby came.
‘A lot of things were said about what Vera and my mother were doing when Kathleen was taken. People suggested they had gone there to meet a couple of boys – you can imagine the kind of insinuations. It was all nonsense. They sat and talked, that was all, and they were never out of earshot of the pram, they were no more than a dozen yards away from it. Mother had been on her way to the shop at Great Sindon for her mother – they lived right out in the middle of nowhere at Cole Fen – when she met Vera, and she had to get on and do her shopping. She said she'd wished a thousand times she'd gone past the pram up to the lane so she'd have known once and for all if Kathleen was in there then or not. But she didn't. She climbed up the bank and got on to the footbridge. And it was deliberate, too. It was done so as not to disturb Kathleen. Ironical, wasn't it?
