by Nicola Upson
A mug of strong, black coffee appeared on the desk in front of him and he smiled gratefully at his sergeant. ‘Where do you get your energy from, Bill? Is it all that good Suffolk air you grew up with?’
‘I think it’s more straightforward than that, Sir. You sent me home for a couple of hours, remember? And as predicted, John Terry has gone up in the air and not come down. I didn’t know actors had such a vocabulary, but I’ve learnt a few words that aren’t in any script I know of.’
As they made their way downstairs, Penrose confided his fears to Fallowfield. ‘If Alice Simmons can’t tell us much about Elspeth’s background, we’re in an impossible position,’ he said. ‘We’re relying on there being a link between her and Aubrey but it would take an age to trace it by official records, and this killer’s going at the rate of one a day. There won’t be any room in the mortuary if we don’t soon find a shortcut between the past and the present.’
‘It’s a good sign that she wanted to see you right away, though,’
said Fallowfield, as optimistic as ever. ‘She must have something to say.’
‘She probably wants to know why I haven’t found her daughter’s killer yet,’ Penrose muttered as he opened the door of the interview room. ‘I would in her position.’
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But the woman seated at the small table in the middle of the room did not look as though she had come to complain to anybody; in fact, she looked like someone with no fight left in her at all. There was no blood relationship between Alice and Betty Simmons so it was silly of Penrose to have assumed a resemblance, but he realised now that he had imagined Elspeth’s mother as another version of her aunt. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. In her bearing, at least, she had none of the restraint that had been evident in her sister-in-law’s every move; in fact, even in the formal surroundings of a police interview room, she looked more relaxed than Betty had been in her own home.
She was tall, with attractive silver blonde hair which refused to be contained in its entirety by a plait, and she wore a suit which was sober only in its colouring; no part of the outfit had escaped a few little finishing-off touches and Penrose, who had never realised that black could be so expressive, searched in vain for a square inch of plain material; even the gloves on the table were attached to velvet flowers, while the hat, which was too big to go anywhere else but on the floor beside its keeper, was the most creative item of mourning attire that he had ever seen. What was most remarkable, though, was that Alice Simmons carried it all off with a dignity and composure which few people achieved with straight lines and understated simplicity.
‘Thank you for coming here so quickly, Mrs Simmons,’ Penrose said, ‘but I’m truly sorry for the circumstances that have brought you.’
‘Everybody’s been very kind,’ she said, so quietly that Penrose could barely hear her. ‘At the . . . the people who are looking after Elspeth couldn’t have been more thoughtful, and Betty said you were all working so hard to find out what happened. I am grateful, you know. Really I am.’
She looked at Penrose for the first time, and it seemed to him that fate had played a cruel trick in deciding that Alice Simmons would share no characteristic, no matter how small, with the daughter she so dearly loved. Her colouring, build and general demeanour were all distinctly at odds with the Elspeth he had seen 219
in Hedley’s photograph, and he wondered if the physical disparity had been a painful reminder to both mother and daughter that their relationship was built on a fragile practical arrangement rather than an unassailable natural bond. ‘We’re doing our best, Mrs Simmons,’ he said, and introduced Fallowfield, who took the empty cup from the table and sent the constable at the door off for a refill. ‘But I have to admit, we could do with a little help and we’re hoping you’ll be able to supply it.’
‘Of course you need help. How can you be expected to get anywhere when you only know half the story?’ She took a handkerchief from her bag, a safeguard against what was to come. ‘They let me sit with Elspeth for a bit, just the two of us,’ she continued.
‘I had to tell her I was sorry. She grew up surrounded by so much misery and the only consolation was that she never knew about it
– we always managed to keep it at bay. Now this has happened, and she’s paid the price after all for something that was never her fault. At a time like this you’re supposed to say you can’t believe it, aren’t you? But that’s not true for me. I hoped Walter’s death would be the end of it, but I think deep down I always knew there’d be worse to come. That’s why I’m here now – to stop it going any further.’
‘Do you know who killed Elspeth, Mrs Simmons?’ Penrose asked gently, hardly daring to believe that the answer could simply have walked through the door. He glanced at Fallowfield, and saw that he was also finding it hard to control his excitement.
‘No, but I can try and explain why it happened. Betty told you that Walter and I couldn’t have any children of our own?’ Penrose nodded. ‘We tried and tried before the war, but it didn’t happen and it was ruining our marriage. I couldn’t think about anything else except having a baby. All the joy I’d felt in just being with Walter, in knowing how much he loved me, disappeared and I couldn’t get it back. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was our failure. It tore him apart inside. There was no pleasure in sex any more. We’d always been really close in that way – he was so tender and loving – but it stopped being an intimate connection between the two of us and became something set apart from our 220
relationship, if you know what I mean. He stopped talking to me, too. I don’t think he had any idea what to say, so we ended up in this no man’s land; we couldn’t turn ourselves into a family, and we couldn’t go back to being happy as a couple. I hope you don’t mind my telling you all this, but it’s important.’
‘Of course not,’ said Penrose, who was genuinely happy to let her talk. Selfishly, though, he hoped that what had brought her to him was something more than a confession for one side of a bad marriage, and was pleased when Fallowfield gently moved things along.
‘So did you suggest adoption to your husband, Mrs Simmons?’
‘No, Sergeant, nothing as sensible as that, I’m afraid.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose it’s ridiculous of me to be ashamed of what I did suggest when so much else came later, but I am ashamed. It was so thoughtless, particularly as we didn’t know whose fault it was that we couldn’t conceive, but I asked Frank if he’d father a child for us. He agreed, but only if Walter and Betty knew about it and were happy with the arrangement. I must have been out of my mind –
Walter’s own brother! No man could stomach that. He was so angry when I told him. I’d never seen that side of him before –
well, I’m not sure it existed until I drove him to it. I don’t think Frank ever got round to telling Betty – there was no need, because Walter would never have agreed. Shortly after that, war broke out and Walter couldn’t sign up quick enough. Anything rather than stay with me and face that betrayal.’
That explained why Alice never came to London, Penrose thought, and he wondered if Frank Simmons had ever regretted his honesty. Was his interest in Elspeth a way of making up for that missed opportunity to be a father? And what on earth had he been thinking while they sat there yesterday discussing Walter and Alice’s marriage? ‘Frank told us that Walter arranged Elspeth’s adoption with someone in the army,’ he said. ‘Do you know who Elspeth’s real parents are?’
‘Yes, at least I know who her father was. I didn’t at the time, though – I was so grateful just to have Elspeth that I didn’t dare question anything about how I got her. All I knew then was that 221
there was no one to bring her up. She was only a month old when Walter brought her home to me, and the prettiest little thing you could imagine – so good-natured, even at that age. We called her Elspeth – it was Walter’s mother’s name and I wanted him to have a connection with her as strong as the one I felt. After that, I
never looked back. It was only last year, when Walter realised he was dying, that he told me everything he knew.’
‘Was her father’s name Arthur?’
Alice looked astonished. ‘So you know? Yes. He was an engineer in the war. How did you find out?’
‘Elspeth’s death is connected to another murder which happened shortly afterwards.’ Penrose was about to explain further, but Alice interrupted him.
‘Is Bernard Aubrey dead?’ Now it was the Inspector’s turn to look surprised. ‘If there’s been another killing, it had to be him.
Apart from me – and whoever’s doing this, obviously – he’s the only other person left alive who knew what really happened.
Arthur was his nephew. Bernard kept in touch with Walter after the war. He sent us money to help with Elspeth – on her birthday, every year without fail.’
‘With a note, asking you to let him know if you changed your mind about the adoption?’
‘Oh no. I mean, he did send a note but it wasn’t about the adoption. He knew we’d never change our mind about that and he was satisfied that Elspeth was well cared for. No, he wanted Walter’s help and Walter wouldn’t give it to him – that’s what Aubrey wanted him to change his mind about. You see, Inspector, Walter did something terrible to get Elspeth, something he never forgave himself for. He confessed to me, just before he died and it explains everything – why he changed so much, why his love for Elspeth always had a sense of regret about it. I don’t think she knew – I hope to God she didn’t – but Walter was capable of a much more generous love than he ever showed to her. I know everyone was affected by the war – how could they not be? – and if I’m being honest, it was easy for me to put his behaviour down to that because I couldn’t be expected to make it better for him. But there 222
was a much deeper grief. I wish more than anything that he’d told me earlier, because as soon as he did the old Walter came back. I’m making it sound like a sudden confession and it wasn’t that – he told me everything gradually, a bit more each day; you could tell it was a terrible strain for him, but it gave me long enough before he died to remember how much I loved him and I’m grateful for that, even though it made his loss so much harder.’
‘What did he tell you, Mrs Simmons?’ Penrose asked after a long silence, bringing her back from wherever her story had taken her.
‘I’m sorry. Of course – you need to get on. Well, Walter was an infantryman and his regiment worked closely with the tunnelling operation. We were hardly speaking when he went away because of what happened with Frank, but he soon began to write – it was so much more terrible out there than he could have imagined, and I think any connection with home helped. The very first thing he had to do was bury people. He’d never seen a dead body before, and there he was – faced with two or three hundred of them. I’ll never forget that letter. He told me how they had to pack them in the dirt so that the bottom of the trench was springy like a mat-tress because of all the bodies underneath. The stench was horrific, he said, but the flies were the worst thing; they lined the trenches like some sort of moving cloth and no matter how many the men killed with their spades, every day was just as bad. He liked the democracy of the trenches, though, the fact that everyone was in the same boat no matter who they’d been in civilian life. That was naive of him, I think, because not everyone saw it that way – it was just a case of getting by however you could, and it soon changed back when peace came. But one of the officers took him on as his batman, and they looked out for each other. Walter mistook that for friendship and he must have opened up to him about the trouble we were going through, because this man – the Captain, Walter always called him – got to know how desperately I wanted a child.
As the war went on, I think he saw a weakness in Walter, someone who was willing to follow, and in the end he used it against him.’
‘In what way?’ Penrose asked gently
‘He promised Walter that he’d help him get a child in return for 223
a favour when the time came. Of course, Walter agreed; he never could have guessed what the favour would be.’ Penrose thought he could, but waited for Alice to continue. ‘One of Walter’s tasks was to work the bellows that kept the air supply flowing down in the tunnels. Usually, they worked in pairs and took it in turns but there’d been so many casualties, and so many more men were sick with dysentery, that he was having to do long stints on his own.
One day, when there were three men underground laying a charge, a long way from the entrance, the Captain walked over and ordered him to stop pumping.’
How easy it could be to take a life, Archie thought, but what ruthlessness such a crime would require. He had seen some elaborate murders in his career, and plenty of deaths which would have demanded both strength and nerve from the people responsible for them, but nothing as callous as this casual execution. He imagined the cold-heartedness it would take to stand there as the seconds ticked past, knowing what suffocating horror must be going on beneath your feet and yet feel no mercy, no compulsion to pick up those bellows and grant life to three men.
‘Walter protested, of course – it went against everything he believed in, everything that was natural. But he wanted that child
– wanted it for me – and I honestly think he would have done anything. If he’d had longer to consider what he was doing he might have stuck to what he knew was right, but he had to act quickly and he made the wrong decision. I think the Captain was relying on the speed of the whole thing for his co-operation. Then when Aubrey and one of the others made it back to the surface unexpectedly, he pretended the system was blocked. In the end, only one man died, thank God, but it was the most important one –
Aubrey’s nephew and Elspeth’s father.’
‘But why did Arthur have to die? And what gave this man the right to decide what happened to his child?’
‘The law gave him the right. You see, Arthur had been having an affair with his wife. It had been going on for some time, while he was away and before Arthur signed up, and the Captain found out about it. I think he intercepted a letter that his wife had written to 224
Arthur – stupid, really: she must have known how they were all living in each other’s pockets. The trenches were never renowned for their privacy. But she had written to tell Arthur she was pregnant, and that was that – it sealed his fate, and I don’t know if he ever discovered he was going to be a father. Her fate, too, of course. Women had even fewer rights in those days than they do now, and the Captain wasn’t the sort to bring up another man’s child. As soon as the baby was born, he made his wife give her up.’
‘What happened to her? Elspeth’s mother, I mean.’
‘I don’t know. Walter never asked, and I don’t think Aubrey could have known either, or he’d have done something about it.
Apparently, when we first had Elspeth, Walter kept expecting her mother to turn up out of the blue but she never did. As the years went on, he assumed that the Captain had found a way to get rid of her – after all, someone who did what he did to Arthur was capable of anything. But he didn’t want to know. He had enough on his conscience.’
‘The man who orchestrated all this – the Captain – do you know his real name?’
‘Oh yes. After what he did to my husband, it’s hardly likely to be a name I’d forget. And anyway, he achieved a certain notoriety in his later years.’ She smiled bitterly and Penrose waited eagerly for her to continue, desperately hoping that what she said would make sense within the context of his investigation. His mind raced through several possibilities, but never in a million years could he have predicted Alice Simmons’s next words. ‘His name was Elliott Vintner,’ she said. ‘You probably know him as a novelist. These days, I think of him more as a murderer.’
Penrose was stunned, so much so that Fallowfield had to pick up the questioning. ‘Did Bernard Aubrey know all this, Mrs Simmons?’
‘Not immediately, no, but he wouldn’t let it rest. He was devastated by his
nephew’s death, of course, and he nearly died himself, but there was no reason to think it was anything other than a tragic accident. He only became suspicious because of the state Walter was in – it just didn’t make sense that he should be so trau-225
matised. He’d always been a reliable soldier and he had a reputation for staying calm in the most terrible situations, but he fell apart after that incident. He became ill, and God knows what he must have said in his delirium, but it was enough for Aubrey to realise that something had gone on. When Walter got better, Aubrey begged him to tell the truth about Vintner; he was the only person who could testify, you see, and Aubrey was obsessed with getting justice for his sister’s son. He promised Walter absolution if he would only bring the real murderer to trial, but he refused.
There was too much at stake with the baby.’
‘But Aubrey didn’t give up.’
‘No, he never gave up, but Walter had made up his mind once and for all. It’s funny – he was never as deferential when he came back. I think our men were generally less inclined to take orders after they’d fought so hard, but for him it was personal; he’d taken one order too many. But Aubrey kept trying. He felt responsible, you see, and he’d promised his sister – Arthur’s mother – that he’d find out the truth.’
‘Did Aubrey ever try to get the baby back?’ Penrose asked, surprised that the fatal agreement had been allowed to stand.
