by Sarah Rayne
Georgina and Dr Ingram would report what had happened to the police, of course. Vincent thought he would have to be prepared for that. As a respected, responsible resident of the town he would be as shocked as everyone else when the news got around.
Most likely the attacks would be put down to a vagrant. As Vincent went up to bed, he felt safe in the certainty that no one had seen him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘It’s Vincent Meade,’ said Georgina, staring in disbelief at the shadowy footage on the police monitor, and the figure frozen into immobility.
‘She’s right,’ said Drusilla, leaning forward. ‘It really is Vincent.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Georgina.
‘I’m sure as well,’ said Mr Huxley Small, who was apparently present in the dual capacities of police solicitor and managing agent of Calvary. ‘Sergeant, don’t you agree? You know Mr Meade, don’t you?’
‘Not really,’ said the detective sergeant, who had been taking notes, and who was studying the screen closely. ‘Not enough to positively identify him from that.’
‘But why would Vincent be in Calvary?’ demanded Georgina. ‘Why would he close the gallows trap on Jude and – and shut us both in the lime store, and all the rest of it?’
‘I don’t know, Miss Grey. Let’s have a look at the shot again.’
The young constable who was operating the camcorder, wound the film back a bit and they watched the man come into the execution chamber a second time.
‘It’s definitely Vincent Meade,’ said Mr Small. ‘I’ve known him for years, I couldn’t mistake him.’
‘But how would he have got in?’ said Drusilla. ‘We were so careful about locking up and so on.’
‘We’ll need to question him,’ said the sergeant. ‘But I’m not sure if this is enough for us to actually charge him with anything. All we’ve got is a shot of him inside Calvary Gaol, closing the gallows trap. That’s peculiar behaviour, but it’s not firm evidence of him shutting Mr Stratton and Miss Grey in the lime store. It’s suggestive, but it’s not proof positive, right, Mr Small?’
‘Quite right.’
‘Mr Stratton, you hadn’t met Mr Meade, I think?’
‘No,’ said Jude. ‘So I can’t help you.’
‘Miss Grey, was there anything about your attacker that would tie him to Mr Meade? Build – voice – body scent.’
‘Nothing,’ said Georgina. ‘Whoever attacked me didn’t speak and I only got a fleeting glimpse of a figure in the execution suite. The man I saw was the right sort of build for Vincent, though. But look here – this is all absurd. Vincent doesn’t know Jude and he hardly knows me. He invited me here.’
‘The Caradoc Society invited you here, Miss Grey,’ said Mr Small. ‘Vincent Meade merely wrote the letter in his capacity as secretary.’ He frowned, and then said, ‘I dislike gossip and in my profession it’s strongly discouraged, of course. But I do feel a certain responsibility in this case.’ He glanced at the sergeant, and then said, ‘If you’ve finished with Miss Grey and the others?’
‘Yes, for the moment.’
‘Then,’ said Mr Small, ‘perhaps we might walk along to my office for a little more discussion. Miss Grey, are you able to manage that? It is only a few steps along the main street.’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Dr Ingram? Mr Stratton?’
‘D’you want all of us?’ said Chad.
‘Yes, if you would.’
Georgina liked being in Mr Small’s office again; she saw herself describing it to Jude afterwards, and Jude’s appreciation of the blending of the Victorian era and the twenty-first century.
‘None of this is your fault,’ said Chad, as they were gestured to seats facing the large mahogany desk, behind which Mr Small looked even wispier.
‘No, but I think you are owed some explanation.’ He regarded them, and then said, ‘Vincent Meade.’
‘Yes?’
‘If he is proved to have been your attacker, he will, of course, have to answer for the consequences. I make no excuse for violence of any kind. But I would like you to know that Vincent is a man with a very unfortunate childhood. His mother’s name before her marriage was Elizabeth Molland. That doesn’t convey anything to you?’
‘No,’ said Chad, having glanced at the others.
‘I thought it probably wouldn’t. It’s a long time ago. Elizabeth Molland was originally thought to have been one of Neville Fremlin’s victims.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Drusilla, leaning forward eagerly. ‘Mr Small, we’ve been researching Neville Fremlin a bit, along with the programme on Calvary.’
‘Ah. Indeed? Well, Elizabeth vanished at the start of his killings,’ said Mr Small. ‘And she was known to have frequented his shop in Knaresborough, so it was a reasonable assumption. But the police didn’t find a body, so there was always a question mark over what had happened to her. Fremlin would never talk, so they say. He went to the gallows without confessing to a single one of the murders with which he was charged.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Drusilla.
‘Very gentlemanly behaviour, according to all the accounts,’ said Mr Small rather drily. ‘The police tried very hard to get the truth about Elizabeth from him – in fact, Miss Grey, when he was in the condemned cell they asked your great-grandfather to talk to him about her.’
Georgina felt a sudden spiral of anticipation. Was this to be the link that would take her back to Walter? ‘And – did he do so?’
‘According to the reports, he did,’ said Mr Small, ‘but he couldn’t get anything out of Fremlin any more than the police could. It was only after the hanging they found that far from being a victim, Elizabeth was alive and well. Moreover, she had acted as Neville Fremlin’s accomplice.’
‘His accomplice? That’s a twist to the tale,’ said Chad. ‘And she was caught?’
‘Yes, eventually. She was tried and taken to Calvary in 1939. It ought to have been something of a cause célèbre of course – Fremlin had been – but war had just been declared, and the newspapers were full of that.’
‘But how does any of this explain Vincent getting into Calvary and attacking Jude and Georgina?’ said Chad.
Phin, who had listened in respectful silence to everything so far, said eagerly, ‘I can see how it might. Uh – excuse me, for butting in. But how about Vincent wanting to – um – protect Elizabeth’s memory? To stop anyone knowing she’d been found guilty of murder – especially murder alongside Neville Fremlin, what with him being notorious and all?’
‘I don’t see how shutting Jude and Georgina in the lime store would stop people finding out about his mother,’ objected Drusilla.
‘Well, see, there are two ways it could go. One is that it could make it seem as if there were hobos or druggies up there. Two is that if nobody believed Jude and Georgina about being attacked and locked in, it would make us all look irresponsible. Careless. We’d seem like people who got shut up in dangerous parts of the building. Either way we’d probably be ordered off the premises.’
‘That’s very astute of you,’ said Small, looking at Phin with approval.
‘He is astute,’ said Chad, and Phin was covered in such delighted confusion that he could not speak for a moment.
‘And Vincent could have wanted to protect his mother’s memory,’ said Georgina. ‘That’s perfectly credible, you know.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Drusilla. ‘Because obviously she was let out in the end, and married and had a son. Did they reprieve her or did she serve her sentence, or what?’
‘She was not reprieved and she did not serve a sentence,’ said Mr Small. ‘She was condemned to death, but she escaped.’
‘Escaped?’
‘Yes. She was got out of Calvary just before the execution. I don’t know the details of the escape itself, and I don’t know if your great-grandfather was part of that escape, Miss Grey. But he was certainly Calvary’s docto
r at the time.’
‘Then he might have helped Elizabeth to escape,’ said Phin. ‘That’s possible, isn’t it?’
‘Especially if he thought she was innocent,’ said Jude.
‘Oh, she was not innocent,’ said Mr Small at once.
‘You can’t know that,’ said Chad.
‘I do know it, Dr Ingram. I have it on very good authority.’
‘Whose authority?’ asked Jude, and Georgina glanced at him, because for the first time she had heard an incisive note in his voice and she remembered he was a journalist, used to interviewing all kinds of people, used to chipping away until the truth emerged.
‘The authority of my own ears, Mr Stratton,’ said Small. He paused, and then said, ‘I don’t think I’m betraying client confidentiality over this – the people concerned are all dead. But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that no one who ever met Elizabeth Molland ever forgot her. I was still very young when I met her, and I have certainly never forgotten her.
‘You knew her?’ said Jude.
‘I met her in 1958,’ said Mr Small. ‘I was in my early twenties – newly qualified. My father was unwell and looking to retire, so when Lewis Caradoc needed help, I was the one assigned to him.’
‘Help?’ said Jude.
‘Legal help,’ said Mr Small, ‘with a prisoner who had been recently admitted to Holloway Prison.’
‘Elizabeth Molland.’
‘Yes.’
‘Neville Fremlin’s cat’s paw,’ said Jude thoughtfully. ‘The sorcerer’s apprentice.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mr Small at once. ‘Elizabeth never played apprentice to anybody, and certainly not to Neville Fremlin. It was the other way round. But it was not until more than twenty years after Fremlin was hanged that the truth came out.’
August 1958
A great many years had passed since Lewis Caradoc had driven through that rain-swept night with Elizabeth in the car, but there were times when he could almost imagine it had been last week.
This, of course, was one of the tricks that extreme age played. Time altered its dimensions; it made the events of the past seem more vivid than what you had just had for lunch. Even so, he was fairly sure his mind was as sharp as it had ever been. He could still enjoy his books and his music, and he was interested in what went on in the world: sputniks and beatniks and atomic power, the new dance from America they called rock and roll. Lewis had a suspicion that if it had been around in his youth he might have considered it rather attractive and exciting. When you were approaching your ninth decade you no longer had the feelings you had in your youth, but he could still admire the brightly dressed modern girls with their flouncy skirts and the spiky heels that made their ankles look so very trim. But it was the last bastion of age to dislike modern fashions and tastes, so he usually agreed with his contemporaries that the music was discordant and the hairstyles outrageous.
There were not so many of his contemporaries left nowadays, of course, but there were enough. He was still invited to people’s houses for lunches and sometimes for whole weekends. The weekends were becoming a bit tiring, although he always accepted the invitations and dressed as sprucely as ever for them. Over the last few years he had taken to wearing a small goatee beard; a number of people said it made him look rather donnish. Scholarly. Clara would have liked that. A pity she had not lived to see it. And Caspar would have been proud of his distinguished father.
If Caspar had lived, he would have been married with children – by now the children would probably have children of their own. I’d be a great-grandfather, thought Lewis rather wryly. It was sixty years since his son died in the mud and terror of the war to end all wars. It was twenty years since he had snatched his daughter away from Calvary, and got her onto the ferry from Holyhead to Ireland. It seemed wrong that Elizabeth, whom he had only known for those few hours, should be more vivid to him than Caspar was. Was that because he and Elizabeth had shared those frantic few hours as they made that desperate drive through the night, with Lewis watching for roadblocks and constantly looking in the driving mirror for signs of pursuit?
When first he put her in the car, she had seemed unaware of what was happening. Lewis had expected this; he had known Walter would give her something for the pain he believed her to be suffering. They had driven for almost an hour before she roused, enough to take note of her surroundings and of Lewis himself.
‘You’re my rescuer,’ she said. ‘Thank you for getting me away from that place.’
It had stopped raining by then, and a watery moonlight shone into the car. It showed up the pure delicacy of her face – beautiful bones, thought Lewis – and he saw her eyes were filled with tears.
‘We’re not out the woods yet, I’m afraid,’ he said gently.
‘Aren’t we? But the further we get, the safer we’ll be, won’t we? Where are you taking me?’
‘To Holyhead to the ferry for Dún Laoghaire. You should be in Dublin this time tomorrow.’
‘Safe?’
‘I think so.’
‘Shall I live there? I haven’t any money.’
‘I know that. I’ve brought money for you. It’s in an envelope in the glove compartment.’
‘How much money?’
The question struck an odd note, but Lewis said, ‘Enough, I promise you. You’ll probably have to buy Irish punts with it – you could do that in a bank. Can you manage that by yourself?’ He had no idea how much she understood about currency and finance and travelling.
‘Yes, of course I can manage that,’ she said. ‘I like the idea of Ireland. Neville lived in Ireland for a time – he told me that. He made it sound so beautiful. You’re giving me the chance to make a completely new life, aren’t you, Lewis? You’re being very kind to me. Why is that? Why are you risking so much for me, Lewis?’
Lewis . . . It was the first time she had used his name, and incredibly Lewis heard the caress in her voice – a caress that was so nearly sexual in quality that in other circumstances he would probably have felt a tug of physical desire. She did not know who he really was, of course – she had absolutely no idea he was her real father – so perhaps it was understandable she should use a little feminine charm on him. Innocent, he thought. She’s so very innocent.
‘Oh, old-fashioned gallantry,’ he said, as lightly as he could. ‘You’re too young to die, and I think you were under Neville Fremlin’s spell.’
‘Mr Higneth thought that as well, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘He was just as kind to me. He gave me the stuff you told me about – to make me sick.’ She thought for a moment. ‘That doctor – Dr Kane. Did he know all about this?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He didn’t know anything,’ said Lewis.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ she said, consideringly. ‘He’s very clever. Although he wasn’t clever enough to know I was a virgin.’
The words struck a discordant note in the car. Lewis looked at her, but she was watching the road. ‘Dr Kane got it all wrong about me,’ she said. ‘He was so surprised when he found out I hadn’t been to bed with Neville Fremlin.’
‘Hadn’t you?’ This was one of the most bizarre conversations Lewis had ever had. He concentrated on the dark ribbon of road unwinding in front of them.
‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever want to go to bed with anyone.’
‘You’ll think differently in a year or two,’ said Lewis after a moment.
‘Will I? I suppose I’d like a baby of my own some day.’ Again she sent him the sidelong glance. ‘You’re thinking this is a strange conversation for us to be having, aren’t you? I suppose it’s because we’re together like this. Danger brings people closer together, doesn’t it?’
‘Sometimes.’ Had it brought her close to the man she had known as Neville Fremlin?
‘It’s so odd,’ she said, ‘but I feel that I can tell you all these things. About me. About Neville.’
Lewis thought: bu
t I don’t want to hear them. I don’t want your confidences, Elizabeth – not when they concern Fremlin.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Neville saw me as a – a goddess. That’s what he said, anyway. So I don’t think he ever even wanted to be in bed with me – you don’t go to bed with goddesses, do you? He said I was the most perfect thing he had seen – like a china figure. And he used to read poetry to me, can you imagine that?’
‘It’s sometimes considered very romantic,’ said Lewis. ‘What kind of poetry?’
‘Dull stuff. Something about not dying for flag nor king, but for a dream. Something about a dream that had been born in a cowshed or something and because of it Ireland had got to be free.’
So Nicholas had still had that dream, thought Lewis. He never lost sight of that, not even at the end of his life.
‘My papa would have said it was a lot of sloppy sentimentality,’ said Elizabeth.
My papa. Lewis said carefully, ‘Didn’t he – your father – like poetry?’
‘Oh no, he was always too busy making money and being on councils and things. I used to tease him about it.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Is that the road to Holyhead?’
‘Yes.’ Lewis swung the car left, and thanked whatever powers might be appropriate that so far they had been unchallenged. ‘We’re not far away now,’ he said. ‘The ferry leaves at six – I’ll see you safely onto it, of course. We can have some breakfast somewhere beforehand, if you like.’
‘Oh, yes, please. Do I let you know how I get on in Ireland?’ she said. ‘Do you want me to do that? To write to you or something?’ And then, before Lewis could even start to sort out his emotions, she said, ‘No, it would be better not. If I got into your life I’d be a great risk, wouldn’t I?’
‘Yes. But if you’re ever in trouble,’ said Lewis slowly, ‘you must write to me at once.’
‘Can I? That makes me feel very safe,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me your address though. If I ever need you, I’ll find you.’
Lewis slowed the car down, and turned to look at her properly. ‘Do you think you ever will need me, Elizabeth?’
