Blood From Stone

by Frances Fyfield

  The copied report shivered in her hand, along with the memory of the scene. Her own shame at what else she had done, such as sending a copy to Marianne Shearer after too much thinking about it, an act of spite and an early Christmas present. Hen was ashamed of herself, put her head in her hands and wept. Because Richard M. Boyd was back, like the miasma he was.

  Wanting his souvenirs. Wanting the evidence of what he had done, so no one else could have it. Seeking out anything that Marianne Shearer had preserved, angry with her for not proving him innocent, plus anything else she, Henrietta Joyce, had withheld. He must be afraid. He must feel ill at ease, to go and ask. Richard M. Boyd. After his release, he had insisted on the return of all his property. She had been asked if she had anything and choked with rage as she tore up the letter, then wrote back, saying everything was with the police or his lawyer, M. Shearer. What did he believe? Maybe he thought Marianne Shearer had everything, the full possession of the facts. It had taken Henrietta Joyce right up until now to realise that Ms Shearer had never been in full possession of the facts. She had only been armed with her ghastly belief.

  What to do? Take it all to Thomas Noble. Keep Rick Boyd away. She could feel his hatred, drifting over the courtroom, burning her as his counsel made a right royal fool of her. Grimacing, rather than smiling as if in pity, the most contemptuous thing of all.

  Take it to Thomas Noble, the messenger. Tell him it had some bearing on the death, get rid of it. Then think about the trunk delivered to her father. Hen hesitated. She had automatically repacked the carpet bag and put it back where it had been. Then she hefted it out again. She had lived with it long enough.

  The blood on the skirt could wait. She wanted out. The new knowledge of that bastard wandering round with his own mission made her twitch. He wanted what Marianne Shearer knew and he wanted what was his and he knew where she lived.

  He had been here before, to collect his Angel.

  And she had been waiting.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Thomas was reading.

  Continuation of cross-examination of Angel Joyce by Marianne Shearer, QC

  MS. We’ll leave the business of you supposedly having been raped, but I will come back to it. I can tell it’s a strain on you. Are you OK, Angel? Bit pale this morning, are we?

  AJ. Fine.

  MS. As plain as ever . . .

  Interruption from Counsel.

  MS. My Lord, if you’ll let me finish my sentence. I was saying as plain-speaking as ever, OK? I make no allusions to Angel’s exceptionally unangelic appearance. If your Lordship would stop interrupting, we might get on with this trial, right?

  OK, Ms Angel, how did you lose that finger?

  AJ. He cut it off.

  MS. When was that?

  AJ. I don’t know. Not exactly. I’d done my nails and—

  MS. You don’t know when? A memorable experience, surely? Losing a finger. As well as doing your nails.

  AJ. I was waiting for him to come home. I’d found some nail varnish, varnished my nails. Last thing I’d got left, really, always had nice hands.

  MS. And in he came and chopped off your first finger? Just like that? With an axe?

  AJ. We had an axe to get into the squat. A little one. I don’t know where it was.

  MS. You didn’t know where it was? Did he know?

  AJ. Hesitation. I dunno. There was always something sharp about the place. Something to hurt. Sharp things. Like glass.

  MS. Sharp things that weren’t available when he was absent? Things with which you could hurt yourself?

  AJ. Yes. He hid them until he came home. Then he got them out.

  MS. He hid the sharp things from you, did he?

  AJ. I suppose so. We had an axe, anyway. Put away somewhere safe. Only a little one.

  MS. Like the one you used to trash the other flat?

  AJ. I never did that. I might have done, but I never did. I liked it.

  MS. Oh, you liked it, did you? So why did you trash it?

  AJ. I didn’t. Whenever I was out of my head, I slept. When he went away, I slept and went to work. It was like that.

  MS. But the sharp things were hidden when he went away?

  AJ. Yeah.

  MS. He hid the sharp things to save you from harming yourself, didn’t he, Angel?

  Pause. Witness confused and looking round.

  AJ. Did he? I didn’t think that was why. He always hid things. I wasn’t supposed to look.

  MS. Tell us about when he cut off your finger with the little axe.

  AJ. Animated. I’d found this old nail varnish. My nails were all cracked and bitten, but they looked great when he came home. I told him I’m going to work with my sister, ’cos I’m good at sewing, and he said, what for? And I said, to sew. And he said, you can’t make anything. And I said, yeah, I can. I’m not worthless, you know, I’m gonna leave you. She’ll give me a job. And I showed him my nice nails, and he took a picture, and he said, which finger do you use most when you sew? That one, I said. And he hit it with that little axe.

  MS. A little axe? You’re sure about that?

  AJ. Yeah. I had my hands on the table, showing my nails, and—

  MS. How much had you had to drink? Or smoke? Or snort?

  AJ. Excited. He brought back weed, and vodka. I don’t know how much.

  MS. Definitely an axe?

  AJ. Yeah. Because I said I was leaving. I didn’t see him get it out.

  MS. Right. You said it didn’t hurt much at the time?

  AJ. No. It did afterwards. He put salt on it.

  MS. And, much later, after your sister Henrietta came to collect you and took you back to London, the finger was examined? Not the rest of you, because you refused, but the finger?

  AJ. Yes. I remember that.

  MS. And examination showed that it wasn’t done with a sharp blow from an axe. Examination showed that the top knuckle of your right index finger was sawn off, possibly with a large pair of scissors. He didn’t think you were a danger to yourself with scissors, did he?

  AJ. Whispers. I mended his clothes. There were always scissors.

  MS. Proper, professional scissors, which you turned on yourself, Angel. You did, didn’t you?

  AJ. I don’t know. Witness becomes restless. Calms down. What he didn’t know is how you use all your fingers to sew. You use them all. I can still sew. Hen made me. So he didn’t win.

  MS. You could take off your own finger with an industrial-sized pair of dressmaking scissors, couldn’t you Angel?

  AJ. I suppose. I don’t know.

  MS. Are you aware that when the flat was searched by the police, no axe was found, but there was a pair of scissors? Interruption by HHJ McD. The witness cannot possibly answer that question.

  MS. Quite right, Your Honour, I take it back. Better adjourn here, Your Honour, don’t you think? Give the witness a rest.

  AJ. Screaming. You don’t believe me, do you?

  MS. I can’t possibly answer that question.

  Dear God. Scissors.

  Thomas found the huge scissors he used in his office for cutting open harmless paper sacks, tamper-proof envelopes of the sort used by banks, as well as for the destruction of the cardboard boxes in which his wine deliveries arrived. These boxes had to be reduced to tidy fragments to go out with the ordinary rubbish. Cutting them up tidily was a process he enjoyed.

  He spread his left hand on the desk and held the scissors in his right hand. They were the size of small shears and comfortably heavy. With three fingers and thumb, he opened the blades, keeping them far away from the spread hand, and closed them, slowly. Yes, he supposed it could be done, with the right kind of madness and the right pair of scissors.

  This afternoon, Thomas had found it difficult to resist the manuscript of the trial for several reasons, viz. a) he was restless and he did not have enough to do, b) the Lover inspired him to read it for clues, and c) it was appallingly interesting. He had leafed through selectively, looking for her, vowed nev
er to bother again, and still he was drawn, if only to those pages where he could hear her talking. He had no interest in the evidence-in-chief of the witnesses, answering questions from the Prosecutor, only in the pages containing her name. Such a ruthless bitch, making it quite obvious that the silly girl was lying, with her frightful cross-examination technique, asking several questions at once, confusing but effective with a slow witness. He was wondering why she was never stopped, remembering how she could mesmerise with conversation alone, what a fast talker she was, with a way of deflecting interruptions. He was missing her again, on tenterhooks about Peter Friel and the Lover, found himself wanting to tell her about it, until he came across this bit about scissors and dropped the pages to the floor. It was important to put them back in the box, alongside a learned discussion on the law of kidnap, before going to find his own scissors. It was like putting Marianne away, to sleep with a cloth over her head. Thomas was glad it was almost time to close the office and go home, leaving her there.

  He was still examining the scissors for size, peering at them with his hand clasped behind his back, when downstairs rang up and said, Ms Henrietta Joyce to see you. Dear God, again. A real-life Joyce? A spectre rising up from the printed page of a transcript, which was all that was left of Marianne Shearer as far as he knew. Pretty and harmless, downstairs said in her own code. Smells OK.

  He was hiding his own weapons when she came in. How peculiar. H. Joyce, not A. Joyce. Funny little thing with an interesting coat and an enchanting carpet bag, and, as he discovered to his relief when he shook her hand, she certainly had all five fingers. The right Ms Joyce. The same name; the person to whom Peter Friel had taken the skirt. He simply had not made the connection before. What the hell was going on? Outmanoeuvred and excluded, angry again, and yet, oddly, he could not take exception to her physical presence. She was . . . what was the right word for her? Nice, and strangely familiar. Racking his brains. She was not the one Marianne had described as that silly little bitch, but the sister of same. Stood up well to cross-examination, Marianne said. Better than some. A miracle I got her on the stand first, they must have been mad to let me.

  This one walked like a princess, full of natural charm. The right kind of diffidence and a perfectly crazy coat. Like something made out of a man’s wool pinstripe, pieced together with big, bone buttons. He craved it in a different size. Also the red boots.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Noble. Where would you like me to sit?’

  ‘Anywhere you like. I don’t expect you’ll be staying long, we close soon.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. It’s very kind of you to see me at all.’

  She perched on the edge of the armchair, with no sign of permanent occupation, still wearing her coat, ignoring the fire and everything else that might have impressed her. So far, so good.

  ‘How can I help?’

  His standard response, while wondering whatever it was for. A woman appearing out of the pages of a transcript, beautiful but businesslike, smaller than he could ever have imagined, with a nice, electric voice he seemed to have heard before. The sister of a nutcase who has scissored off her own finger. Only the last joint of it; he must remember that.

  ‘I don’t know if you can actually help, Mr Noble, but I wondered if you could. I gather Mr Richard Boyd, who thinks Ms Marianne Shearer, deceased, may have kept something of his, visited you recently. I don’t know if that’s true, but if he comes back, could you give him this?’

  She gestured towards the bag at her side.

  ‘He may thinks it’s his,’ she said. ‘He may think Ms Shearer had it. Not the bag, the contents.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Just about.’

  He cleared his throat to hide deepening confusion and a faint feeling of going mad.

  ‘Is there anything of hers in there? Anything that could explain her death? Anything I should see?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. It might be better if you didn’t look.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You want me to act as messenger to this Rick Boyd, whom I do not know, just like that? I’m a lawyer, Miss Joyce, not a delivery service. A lawyer acting as ex officio executor in the estate of Ms Marianne Shearer, a lady you’ve encountered, I believe, in a professional context?’

  To his surprise, she smiled. It was a delightful smile, showing small teeth and a wide mouth and crinkles round her eyes. A face of premature wisdom, he decided, falling into one of his sudden, unaccountable likings for highly individual women. In Marianne Shearer’s case, it had proved more dangerous than falling in love and he was glad to find he still had the capacity. The smile on her face grew broader and more rueful, until it turned into a small, natural laugh, directed at herself.

  ‘Two questions in one,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I just love the idea of a professional encounter. Puts it into context. I never quite thought of it that way. Witness and interrogator, that’s all it was. Professional. Personally, I could never bring myself to refer to her as a “lady”. Could we start again?’

  He was smiling in response to her smiling, beginning to enjoy himself, forgetting scissors, fingers in pies and Peter Friel’s gross impertinence in not telling him where, exactly, he had taken that skirt and with whom, precisely, he had left it. Or not telling him the context of how she was otherwise involved. He was entertaining small thoughts of jealousy at the same time. Peter got to her first, and Peter was in demand with the Lover. Beggars cannot be choosers. A gay man who preferred the company of women had to take what he could. Live by the hour. He sat back. So, to his relief, did she. Intriguing.

  ‘I love this square,’ she said. ‘Although it isn’t really a square. It was a field. Then a building site, I suppose. Some of the oldest buildings in London. What a great place to work. I knew where you were, because it’s so close to the Sir John Soane’s Museum. I can’t imagine how you manage to do any work here at all. Me, I’d spend all my time looking out of the windows.’

  ‘I do,’ he said.

  There was a brief, relaxed pause. He noticed the big fat scissors still sitting on the desk. He worked it out, briefly. Her testimony had preceded her sister’s. She would not know, might not know what was suggested next, but clearly, huge scissors sitting around, ready to chop, held no fear for her.

  ‘Can I be clear?’ he said. Rules of cross-examination, ask one question at a time. Never ask a question when you don’t already know the answer, something learned at law school, never much used in his practice. Up until now, he waited for people to tell, rather than recite to them what he needed to know. For her, he would make an exception.

  ‘You’re Henrietta Joyce. Your sister killed herself, accidentally or not (oh God, more lawyer speak, always hedging bets), rather than continue to be cross-examined by Marianne Shearer. You were yourself professionally mauled by Ms Shearer, who is my deceased client, in her very last, important case. You’re some kind of expert in old clothes. My colleague, Peter Friel, consulted you in the matter of a dead woman’s apparel.’

  Why couldn’t he stop speaking like this? Apparel? Deceased, rather than ‘dead’?

  She was shaking her head. Rain fell out of her hair. Marianne always had good hair, even when flattened by a wig. Good hair, ugly face.

  ‘None of which explains why you’re here. I’m inadequately informed, Miss Joyce. Enlighten me.’

  He was doing it again. Old-fashioned speak, his best defence against being charmed. Wasted on the Lover, though not on her.

  She was smiling again. Thank God for an interval between smiles, otherwise a smile became a rictus, no wonder you never got smiling portraits, the longest pose to hold. Thomas never could rid his mind of irrelevancies. He wanted to look out of the window into the new dark, and did it anyway. Taking off her coat she followed and stood beside him.

  At first glance, Lincoln’s Inn Fields was obscured by blinding rain, bashing against the windows with a thudding sound. Almost a squall. Then the shape of trees and shrubs too
k shape, swaying in the wind beyond the railings guarding the fields and, although dark and feeling like the middle of the night, the pathways in the fields were full of life. People crisscrossing, going-home time, offices, everything, emptying out with scurrying human beings aiming themselves elsewhere and out of the place where they would linger on the grass in summer. If you looked long enough, you could imagine it. As it was, he could see the beautiful shapes of winter, bare branches, grey shrubs, elegant street lamps casting pools of wet light, could have watched for ever.

  ‘I’m so lucky,’ Thomas said, gazing. Such an instinctive remark, he didn’t realise he had spoken it out loud. ‘So lucky to have this.’

  He had forgotten where he was, turned to her and remembered.

  ‘How can I help?’ he asked, thinking, one question at a time. This time, he meant it.

  ‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘Just look.’

  He looked and saw a jogger tripping round the paths of the Fields with a basset hound at his heels, going faster than him on small, wobbly legs, caught in the light of the intricate lamps as a comic freeze frame, jogger defeated, dog triumphant, plodding along arrogantly. They both admired the dog first.

  ‘So handsome,’ Hen said.

  They stayed where they were, looking for similar delights, watching as the hound went out of vision and the other people continued. Easier to talk near a window, like talking in a car.

  ‘I brought you some incrimating photographs, Mr Noble, and I shouldn’t have done it, really. They’re the original photos of my sister in the extremes of her own sort of torture. I think Rick Boyd is desperate to find any of the evidence left over from his trial. Anything which might still incriminate him and anything not revealed which shows what he is. Marianne Shearer would have plenty of material like that, wouldn’t she? Things she could reveal. He’s still afraid. He was acquitted, but he was never proved innocent. Anyway, I wanted to give them to you because Peter told me that he’s been here already. He went to the initial inquest, too. Rick Boyd wants what he thinks Marianne Shearer kept, even her memories. He’ll want what he knows I have. He wants the physical evidence of anyone else’s knowledge. Fear neutralised everyone else, except Ms Shearer and me. I don’t know exactly what he wants. Only that he’ll come back, now she’s dead, either here to this office, or to me, to get what he thinks is his, so I thought you might be able to give him this, and say leave us alone. Get him off everyone’s back. It might be enough. Then he might disappear again. Otherwise, he might hurt anyone else who gets in the way.’