Blood From Stone

by Frances Fyfield

  She was in full flight and Peter was listening.

  ‘But I still don’t understand her taste. It’s truly eclectic. She likes silk and wool and jersey, she doesn’t mind innovation or the relatively modern, and she likes all sorts of different shapes in the end. Big shapes and no shapes. Look at this, entirely different. It’s typical Christian Dior. A white silk and satin ball gown flocked with black carnations. Boned bodice, skirt too big for a taxi. She could certainly dress to surprise, this lady. And in all the colours.’

  ‘And what is Miss Joyce wearing today?’

  She put one hand on her hip, turned her profile away from him, posing.

  ‘A Charles Creed suit, circa 1953. Lightweight herringbone tweed jacket with huge lapels and padded shoulders, fitted dead close to the waist. Fastened with three enormous buttons, detail repeated on the cuffs. Skirt like a pencil. You have to hold your breath in this and you’d have to bend at the knees to pick up anything off the floor, but apart from that it’s quite comfortable really. A real power suit. I prefer the Valentino pink chiffon evening gown with the ostrich feather stole. Great with a tan, but not with buzz-cut hair like mine.’

  She sat down. Peter winced at her almost bald head. The crew-cut hair, beginning to grow, was a vast improvement on the tufted and bloody scalp he had first seen outside WJ Storage. She refused to discuss it. It needed restyling, she said. Hair will grow. A finger wouldn’t; it was so much better than what I thought he would do.

  ‘No,’ she went on. ‘I can’t guess her taste. She’s got all sorts of labels, all nationalities, French, English, Japanese, American, as if she was picking the best from all decades. Diane von Furstenberg, Sarmi, Missoni, Hartnell, Chanel. She goes from demure and severe, like this, to vamp. There’s a very girly thing in mint-green organdie, a floor-length shirt-waister I wouldn’t have thought was her at all. She’s got the labels, and she’s got the fakes. Not fakes, but handmade copies. Things she must have got made. The Fortuny’s genuine, though. Belongs in a museum.’

  ‘Or on the back of a woman who needed to feel important. Like that suit you have on.’

  Hen flushed.

  ‘I’m not criticising,’ he said. ‘But I prefer your own label.’

  She moved out of his line of vision. Reluctantly he kept his eyes fixed on the new racks of clothes crowding the dressing room. How had all that been marshalled into a trunk and two wardrobe bags, and then expanded to such sweet-smelling volume? He could taste the scent of lavender and soap. Hen was taking off the suit: he could hear her doing that from the rustle of it and the sound she made when she let out her breath. A constricting suit, fit for a funeral where no one either sat, or cried. She came back into his line of vision, clad in denim. Ms Shearer might never have worn denim.

  ‘Did you ever know,’ he asked, ‘where you and Angel came from?’

  ‘The stork brought us,’ she said. ‘The stork brought along a selection, and we were chosen because we were lovely. That’s my version.’

  ‘Yes, of course the stork did. Via an adoption agency who kept the birth certificates. Your parents probably never even saw them. But whatever her name, your mother might not be dead. Marianne Shearer’s detective found the originals. Do you want to know any more?’

  ‘No, not now. Perhaps in a year or two. I’ve got too much else to do and what would it achieve? I’ll settle for the stork and what I’ve got. Is it wrong to feel so liberated? Am I so frivolous that happiness lies in the conservation and repair of all these brilliant clothes? Yes, I am. My sort of aunt has dictated my immediate future and I’m bloody grateful. Do you want more tea or shall we bypass that and go straight to the bottle?’

  ‘You were right, you know. She did have her clothes made, quite apart from what she collected. The everyday clothes were all handmade.’

  ‘Why did she leave me this legacy, Peter?’

  ‘Because you were the one who tried to rescue her child? Because she respected you? I don’t know. Nobody knew her. Let’s go out. Have you tried on every single thing?’

  She blushed.

  ‘Not the underwear, of course, but yes, most of the others. I’ve got to make an inventory. I had to see what condition they were in, trying them on is just one way to check. She was a good conservator. I had to check for repairs. They aren’t really mine, you know.’

  He laughed at her embarrassment, at the excitement she could not conceal. She leant over him and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Peter, you’re the only man I’ve ever met who likes shopping.’

  He stood up to hug her. That was easy. He was thinking how strange it was that all of Marianne Shearer’s collected garments, the priceless and the ordinary, should be her size.

  Loving her a little helplessly, and wondering how he could ever make a person of such self-sufficiency need him. Wondering if he would ever break that lifelong habit of arriving too late, such as arriving outside that terrible storage building with a phalanx of police after dark, only to discover the ambulance already there. Still wondering, too, after what he had been told, exactly how it was that Rick Boyd had come to die.

  She was like a very adult child who has been given a dressing-up box. The joy of it was unseemly on the eve of a funeral. He felt Ms Shearer might approve.

  ‘I think the lingerie was made by nuns,’ Hen said. ‘Convent-made items from between the wars. You can tell by the stitching. Nun’s stitch. My mother taught me. I like the irony of Marianne Shearer’s negligee being made by nuns.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  January 14

  ‘Pray stand for Her Majesty’s Coroner.’

  They all stood. This Coroner bounded into the room like a greyhound let out of a trap, all businesslike energy, noticing quite a crowd and the eye of the world on him, determined to be heard and admired for clarity, rather than producing fodder for journalists. If they thought he was in any sense corruptible or persuadable, they had another think coming. He knew his verdicts; he was not going to be swayed by any other consideration, such as other people’s money. That was not the business of this Coroner’s Court, but oh, dear me, what an unpleasant woman she seemed to have been and so utterly selfish in the manner of her dying. Such an attention-seeker. His sympathies, such as they were, were with the people who had been forced to watch and pick up the pieces. Photographer, policeman, the ambulance man with the shovel for the brains. Not fair. Not his business, but still, more interesting than most and oddly moving, so disturbing he was more impatient than ever.

  ‘Mr Noble, I understand you’re representing the deceased in the absence of her sole relative who is in prison at the moment? Yes? Fine. DC Jones for the police? We established continuity of the body and identification last time, didn’t we? I suggest we do a short cut on the narrative, since there’s not much disagreement about the facts.’

  The front row in the wooden benches nodded like mechanical dummies and the crowd on the plastic chairs at the back found themselves nodding also.

  ‘May I remind you all that the purpose of this court is to establish the cause of the death of Ms Marianne Shearer, the deceased. How, not why, except insofar as it influences the verdict. We’re looking at the death, not the life. Let’s start with you, DC Jones, if you’d take the stand. Just the salient points, please. We’re not here to entertain journalists.’

  ‘I swear by Almighty God to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . . .’

  He looked as if God would strike him down if he did not. He speeded up his delivery to keep pace.

  ‘The deceased took a suite in the Imperial Hotel on the evening of December 28. She had a small suitcase containing nothing but personal effects, toiletries and nightwear. She left her credit card at the desk and requested nothing further from the staff. At seven thirty the next morning, she was seen sitting on the balustrade of the balcony of her room by a chambermaid who had stepped out of the next door room she was cleaning to have a cigarette. The maid saw a woman. She said to Ms Shearer, hello, are
you OK, you’ll get your skirt dirty, would you like a cigarette? The maid, sir, had limited English and has since left the hotel’s employment. Ms Shearer is reported to have said, No thank you. Then she jumped. Mr Paul Bain, a photographer, who happened to be walking to work in the street below, also saw Ms Shearer stationary on the balcony. He recorded her last movements with his camera.’

  ‘We should have Mr Bain at this point,’ the Coroner said.

  One man shuffled out of the witness box, and another shuffled in, the latter looking embarrassed. The Coroner looked at him with concealed curiosity, as if he was examining a curious species of lizard, and Bain shrivelled under his scrutiny.

  ‘Won’t keep you long, Mr Bain. You took your snapshots and remained at the scene, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long were you standing there before she jumped?’

  ‘Less than a minute. I just looked up and saw her there.’

  ‘No doubt you moved to get a better angle?’

  Sitting in the first row of the plastic seats at the back, next to Hen, Peter could see Thomas Noble bow his head. Bain remained silent.

  ‘Mr Bain, the suggestion’s been made that there was another person in the room behind Ms Shearer. Did you see any other person either on the balcony or in the room? A shadow, even?’

  Bain looked at Thomas Noble, who looked away.

  ‘There were net curtains behind her, billowing out slightly. A bit theatrical.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking for your comments on how it looked. Did you see anyone else? The merest suggestion hinting at the presence of someone else behind her?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t see into the room at all. She was the only person on the balcony. She didn’t look back into the room. She looked sideways to the next balcony, and then she jumped.’

  He began to shake. It was not quite what he had wanted to say.

  Then the Pathologist, intoning details without relish, respectfully, the bloodiness downplayed with scientific terms. It seemed almost polite of him to mention that the deceased had normal heart and lung functions and was free of any notable disease; it sounded as if he was complimenting her. Thomas remarked later that it was as if he was saying she wasn’t in bad nick for her years and still had good legs, too. All in order, apart from being dead. Injuries: ruptured spleen, severed spinal cord, multiple fractures to the skull, as if, the witness said, she had twisted mid air, defied the gravitational pull of her own weight and allowed her skull the first impact with the ground. Death instantaneous: cause of death multiple injuries, some twenty of which would have been individually sufficient to achieve the end result. Insignificant traces of alcohol in her blood. No medication.

  Perhaps she really was trying to save the skirt, Peter thought. You don’t have to hear this, he whispered to Hen. Yes I do, she said. She deserves that I do. I wish she had been drunk.

  It was the Coroner’s choice how much or how little he said about all the other information at his disposal. He was not there to reveal the life, only to reach and deliver a reasoned verdict. No one cared about this woman except the journalists; he was free to say as little as he liked, and still he faltered.

  ‘Facts dictate that the deceased killed herself by jumping from a height. She appeared to have dressed for the occasion. Did she fully intend the consequences of her actions, or was she acting when the balance of her mind was disturbed, by which I mean, was the mental state of the deceased such that her actions were unpredictable, the result of loss of mental balance, something she would not have done unless her mind was disordered? If you take the example of a person who climbs to the top of a tall building while under the influence of drugs and then leaps off because he thinks he can fly, that is death where the balance of the mind is disturbed or at least confused, if you take my meaning. It may look like suicide, but it isn’t suicide according to law. That dead person intended to fly, not to die in the attempt. A person who takes too many pills when drunk and depressed, for instance, is not a suicide, either. That’s closer to death by misadventure.’

  He cleared his throat, which had become oddly constricted.

  ‘Suicide requires more elements than disorder. For suicide to be the proper verdict in this court, it must be proved beyond doubt that the deceased intended to die, planned to die by self-infliction, gave notice of that intention and really meant to carry it through. Suicide, in the strict legal sense, is the act of a rational mind.’

  He paused again, upset by his own words.

  ‘I wouldn’t have considered a verdict of suicide here in the absence of evidence from Ms Shearer herself as to her intentions. I have never given a verdict of suicide without some form of suicide note, however deliberate the actions of the deceased. It’s the most distressing verdict of all. Why? Because it leaves the survivors, the family and friends with a colossal burden of guilt. They should have known; they should have prevented it. They bear the accusations, the mistrust of the deceased whom they thought they knew and they did not offer help. They are rendered impotent. I cannot approach such a verdict lightly.’

  It was strange, Peter thought, how much it mattered. Nothing to do with heaven and hell. How much it would have mattered to the Lover. How much it mattered to himself, although he scarcely knew her. They would all have preferred death by misadventure or the act of a disordered mind. The voice went on.

  ‘Suicide is the proper verdict. Ms Shearer was possessed of a highly rational mind. She left an abundance of suicide notes in various protracted forms. She showed her intentions in the plans she made which I do not have to describe here. The verdict is suicide, beyond reasonable doubt. The only thing I can say to comfort those who admired her is that it does seem to have been, in her case, a peculiarly positive act.’

  ‘What did he mean, “positive”?’ Thomas said later, facing them both across the table and wafting away the steam from a cup of foul-looking herbal tea. The late February rain streamed down against the windows of the coffee shop and the traffic rumbled by on High Holborn. The table by the window was too small for three and too low for comfort. Thomas adored Hen’s suit. So good of her to dress formally for an inquest she need not have attended. He supposed she had come to support Peter, in case he should be called to give evidence. It had not happened: thank God for a coroner of such discretion, even if his verdict depleted an estate.

  ‘Positive?’ Thomas repeated. ‘How did he make a positive out of such a negative? Still, I liked his style.’

  ‘I can see what he meant,’ Peter said. ‘Rick Boyd is dead and Frank Shearer is in prison. Marianne’s wealth will be fairly distributed. That all flows from the suicide. Seems pretty positive to me.’

  ‘And I met you,’ Hen said to him. ‘Positive so far?’

  ‘How so?’ Thomas asked her. She turned towards him. She never usually looked at anyone other than Peter if Peter was there to be observed. Couldn’t quite take her eyes away from him, leading to the conclusion that there was no accounting for taste. Perhaps that was the positive result the Coroner meant.

  ‘He dresses better than he did,’ she said. ‘Not that I care what he wears.’

  The man doesn’t stand a chance, Thomas thought, not a cat in hell’s chance. If she had her way, they’d be breeding five children before he knew it. A woman was so incredibly determined once she had made up her mind.

  She was laughing at him the way Marianne had laughed; in a way that made him feel part of it.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she was saying. ‘I’m glad I was there, and wish I wasn’t. I wanted to mourn, but I can’t do that. Would she want to be mourned, do you think? Mourned or respected? Anyway, it was a reminder, oh I don’t know, of what a small amount a court case covers. You only get half the story. That’s all you ever get.’

  Peter leaned forward, suddenly earnest.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There’s a different dynamic in a criminal court. I mean the thing has its own wheel, turning on a bloody uneven surface, generating sparks and
punctures, subject to weather conditions, drivers, highwaymen, rain and fog. Think of the logistics of getting a number of people to turn up at the same place and time, think of the egos who take the reins, and the lame horse, and the capacity for accidents. Think of someone without a compass and someone with one. Luck and incompetence in combination. The wheel stays off or on. The thing can sabotage itself. I can’t have you blaming her. Not entirely. It isn’t all sabotage. There was plenty of truth in the verdicts. Marianne Shearer owed you nothing.’

  He turned to Thomas.

  ‘She would have wanted her brother to have a decent defence, you know. Whatever he did. Shall I do something about that, or will you? Someone must.’

  No should, must.

  Maybe he did have a cat in hell’s chance.

  She was looking at that honest face of his, with her mouth half open in admiration, shaking her head as if she had suddenly encountered a wonder of the world.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Marianne’s victim. Boyd’s victim. Everyone deserves a defence.’

  Her profile was a beautiful version of the same profile, her shape the same shape. She sat the same way. She would suit the clothes.

  Some mistake, surely, some quirk of the light.

  About the Author

  FRANCES FYFIELD has spent much of her professional life practicing as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed her highly acclaimed novels. She has been the recipient of both the Gold and Silver Crime Writers' Association Daggers. She is also a regular broadcaster on Radio 4, most recently as the presenter of the series ‘Tales from the Stave.’ She lives in London and in Deal, overlooking the sea, which is her passion.

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