Daughters of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  That’s how it goes sometimes.

  TWENTY

  8th May, 1944

  The trick was not to be overly ambitious, Grace reminded herself, as, on her knees, she scrubbed and scrubbed away at the ingrained dirt on the kitchen floor of the house on Bombay Street. And what that meant, in purely practical terms, was that she should not attempt to achieve too much herself, nor – more importantly – should she try to push Jane too hard.

  For example, Jane should not stay in this house. It was unhealthy for her baby, not just because of the damp and the crumbling walls, but because it had no running water, and the nearest tap was a hundred yards away, which can seem like a huge distance when you’re carrying two heavy pails.

  But while all that was true, Jane refused to leave because of her fear that the authorities would take her baby from her.

  Very well, then, if she wouldn’t move, the house needed to be sanitized from top to bottom.

  But that wasn’t possible, either. It would take a small army of workers to get the whole place reasonably clean, and a smaller – but still significant – army to keep it clean.

  So what you had to do was scale back – abandon the idea of attaining the perfect, and work towards what could be done.

  And what could be done was to establish this one room as an island of hygiene, floating above the sea of filth which surrounded it.

  She had already begun this process, with the cleaning, and Jane – bless her heart – was doing her best to help, even though it was obvious that she had never been taught how to tackle housework.

  Once they had the room thoroughly clean, Grace intended to replace all the furniture (most of it currently in the back yard) with some basic – but good – second-hand furniture.

  She looked up from her task. Jane was conscientiously working away in the far corner.

  ‘That’s it,’ Grace called out encouragingly. ‘We’ll soon have this place so clean you could eat your food off the floor.’

  And that was another thing, she thought, she needed to teach Jane how to eat properly, because while the rations provided by the government weren’t very tasty (now that was an understatement!), they did contain all the nourishment that a woman with a baby growing inside her needed.

  She stopped scrubbing, and stood up.

  ‘I think we’ve earned a brew,’ she said.

  She had brought a spirit stove and kettle with her, and having spent a good fifteen minutes cleaning the cups she’d found in Jane’s cupboard, she had everything she needed.

  It was awkward pouring water from the bucket to the kettle – she should bring a jug with her the next time she came, she thought – but she managed that too, and they sat on the floor, waiting for the kettle to come to the boil.

  ‘I’m going to love my little baby, and my little baby will love me,’ Jane said. A look of anguished uncertainty suddenly crossed her face. ‘He will love me, won’t he, Grace?’

  Grace laughed. ‘Of course he will. But you do know that it might be a girl, don’t you?’

  Jane shook her head. ‘He’ll be a boy. I know he will.’

  Oh dear, Grace thought.

  ‘Does that mean that if the baby’s a girl, you won’t love her?’ she asked, anxiously.

  It was Jane’s turn to laugh.

  ‘Of course not! I’ll love her – I’ll love her to pieces. I’m going to be the best mum there ever was.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Grace said.

  But as she poured the boiling water into the teapot, she found herself worrying that however willing she was to reform, Jane might yet give in to her weaknesses.

  ‘You’re worried I’ll start drinking again, aren’t you?’ Jane asked, reading her mind.

  ‘A little,’ Grace admitted, cautiously.

  ‘You’ve no need to be. I haven’t had a drink since we met last night. It’s been very hard, but I haven’t.’

  ‘It’ll get harder yet,’ Grace cautioned.

  ‘I know that – but my little boy deserves the best.’

  Grace poured the tea, and they sat drinking it in companionable silence.

  Then Grace decided the time had come to take another gamble, and reached into her handbag.

  ‘Here’s a pound,’ she said. ‘I’ll be giving you some money every week, but I don’t want you to spend it. What I do want you to do is to save it, because when the baby’s born, you’ll need to buy him things.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you saved it for me?’ Jane asked.

  ‘No,’ Grace said firmly. ‘By giving it to you, I’m saying I trust you, and I know you won’t let me down.’

  ‘I won’t. I won’t,’ said Jane, with tears in her eyes. She took the pound carefully, as if it were some holy relic. ‘Nobody’s ever trusted me before.’

  ‘Now the next thing we need to discuss is getting you the care you need,’ Grace said.

  Jane put down her cup. The cheerful, intimate atmosphere evaporated, to be replaced by a chill of fear and suspicion.

  ‘What do you mean, “getting me the care I need”?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to arrange for a qualified midwife to come and see you regularly and—’

  ‘No!’ Jane interrupted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not seeing anybody but you.’

  ‘Be reasonable,’ Grace pleaded. ‘You’ll have to see a midwife eventually, because you’ll need her to help you give birth.’

  ‘You can help me.’

  ‘But I’m not qualified.’

  ‘You can do anything you put your mind to,’ Jane said. ‘I know you can. You’re just marvellous.’

  ‘I’m not marvellous, but even if I was, I simply don’t have the training a midwife has.’

  ‘If you won’t help me, I’ll do it on my own,’ Jane said stubbornly.

  She would, too, Grace thought. Such was her terror of the authorities that she’d risk her baby’s life – and her own – rather than have anything at all to do with them.

  ‘Will you help me?’ Jane asked.

  She had watched babies being born in Papua New Guinea, Grace reminded herself. She had even assisted in a couple of the births. But she had never done it alone.

  Yet what choice did she have? If she refused to help, it was possible that Jane, in return, would refuse to see her again. Even worse, the girl might begin to see her as just one more enemy, and, in a panic, run away, only to die unloved and uncared for in some anonymous alley.

  ‘Yes, I’ll help you,’ she said. ‘You can always rely on me.’

  Jane looked at the hair bracelet on her wrist, and then the one on Grace’s wrist.

  ‘You’re the best sister a girl could ever have,’ she said, with tears forming in her eyes.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It is late afternoon, darkness has begun to cast its heavy cloak over the ancient city of Oxford, and the air temperature has already started to drop. I have dined, in some style, on one of the Bulldog’s excellent prawn sandwiches, and washed it down with a gin and tonic. Now, I’m back at St Aldate’s police station, this time in one of the less impressive conference rooms (and accompanied by one of the less impressive representatives of law and order).

  The reason I am here is that, having drawn a blank with all the national newspapers I viewed in the Oxford Central Library, there seem to me to be only two courses of action that are still open to me.

  The first is that I can visit the public libraries of every town and city in the whole country, and check through the local newspapers in their stacks, in order to see if I can find any reference to Grace Stockton. At a conservative estimate – and working flat out – that should take me at least a year.

  Thus, I have chosen to go with the second option, which is to examine Grace Stockton’s papers (currently held by the Thames Valley Police, as part of their cold case investigation) in the hope I’ll find something there that will point me in the right direction.

  Last time I was here (God, was
it only this morning!), I had DS George Hobson – old friend and ex-lover – riding shotgun on me, but it would appear that George’s talents are in demand elsewhere, so this time my companion on my journey of discovery goes by the name of Detective Constable Bentley.

  Bentley is around twenty-three, I would guess, which is rather young to be in the CID. He has vague, hazel-coloured eyes, a nose which is only remarkable in its lack of remarkableness, and a mouth edged by unexceptional lips. In other words, his is the sort of face you forget the moment he has walked out of the room.

  As I suggested earlier, he does not seem to be the brightest new star in the CID firmament, which is probably why he has been assigned to watch me, rather than devoting his talents to tracking down serial killers or gangs of international jewel thieves.

  The conference room contains a table and six foldable chairs, and on the table sit the evidence boxes and personal documents which relate to the murder of Grace Stockton, and which have just been delivered by a middle-aged female clerical officer with a bad cold and rampant dandruff.

  The document that I am most interested in is Grace’s diary from 1972, which is listed as being in Evidence Box 2.

  The list does not lie, and the diary is just where it is supposed to be. It is about the size of a paperback novel, though nowhere near as thick. And (it soon becomes apparent), it is not, as so many diaries are, a place in which hopes, aspirations and fears are recorded, but instead contains nothing more than a list of appointments and dates she needs to remember.

  I quickly flick through the pages covering the relevant period before the murder, which (according to the police theory) took place shortly after the arrival of Red Duffle Coat Woman on the 13th of April.

  10th April:

  Dentist 10.30.

  Hairdresser 2.30.

  I feel nothing but admiration – with perhaps a stab of jealousy thrown in – for any woman who could face up to two of the things that I hate most in the world on a single day.

  Under the entry for the next day, I discover the probable reason for her visit to the hairdresser’s.

  11th April:

  Talk. Southwark. 2.00 pm. The work of an anthropologist.

  Southwark is a borough of London. I do not know London well myself – we northerners have a distrust of the capital city handed out to us with our rattles and teething rings – so I have no idea how many institutions there are in Southwark which are important enough to host a lecture by a world-famous anthropologist. Still, that obviously narrows down my search a little.

  I move on.

  12th April:

  Reception at Master’s Lodge, St Luke’s.

  Oh yes, Oxford dons do love a good reception, and not, as the naive outsider might think, because it provides a forum for fine minds to discuss weighty matters. Rather it provides an opportunity or excuse (call it what you will), to raid the college cellars for fine wines that were laid down twenty or thirty years previously by some epicurean bursar.

  The 13th to the 15th have the same two words written in them: Research/Article.

  Or to put it another way, the darker side of my brain suggests: Research/Article/Decapitation.

  I think about the relative isolation of the manor house, and what a perfect location it is for anyone who wanted to be left alone to finish a scholarly article. It is also, of course, the perfect place to commit a murder and escape from the scene of the crime without anyone noticing.

  The entry for the 16th reads: Pick up Derek from airport.

  She’s got that wrong, I tell myself, because he arrived back at Heathrow on the fifteenth.

  There is a phone at the end of the table – one of the old-fashioned ones made from chunky black Bakelite which used to feature prominently in 1950s films about newspaper offices.

  ‘Would it be all right if I used that phone?’ I ask DC Bentley.

  A dubious look comes to his face and is almost instantaneously replaced by a worried one.

  ‘I don’t know if you can,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure whether the regulations cover civilian use of police telephones.’

  ‘But I really need to use it,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’d have to check,’ he says, ‘and I couldn’t do that without leaving you alone with the evidence.’

  Heaven forbid he should leave me alone with something I have permission to see! And if it needs someone’s permission, why doesn’t he use the bloody phone to ask for it?

  ‘I’ll tell you what – why don’t you arrest me?’ I suggest.

  ‘Arrest you?’ the Einstein of St Aldate’s nick repeats. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Ah well, you see, DC Bentley, if you arrested me, I’d be entitled – by law – to make one phone call.’

  ‘But you haven’t done anything wrong, Miss Redhead,’ he says, sounding puzzled.

  I sigh. I love working with people with no sense of humour – it brings that extra little zing to an otherwise mundane existence.

  ‘How would it be if you made the call, and then handed the phone to me once you’ve been connected?’ I say.

  He still looks uncertain.

  ‘If you’re ever going to climb your way to the top of your chosen profession, you’re going to have to learn to be decisive,’ I tell him. ‘Do you think DCI Macintosh would ever have hesitated like you are now?’

  That seems to do the trick.

  He picks up the phone. ‘Who would you like to talk to?’ he asks.

  My first impulse is to tell him I’d like to speak to Slasher McVicious or any other member of the Cornmarket Mad Dog Cutthroats, but there’s always a danger he’ll take me seriously, and write me up as someone with known criminal associates who is well worth keeping an eye on.

  So what I actually say is, ‘I’d like to talk to Dr Derek Stockton. You’ll probably find him either at his home number, or in his study in St Luke’s College.’

  DC Bentley (or rather, the woman manning the police switchboard) tries the college first, but eventually finds Dr Stockton at home.

  ‘What is it now, Miss Redhead?’ he asks, when DC Bentley – gingerly and unsurely – hands me the phone.

  Does his voice sound weary or wary?

  It’s possible that it’s both.

  ‘Your wife wrote in her diary that she was expecting you on the 16th of April,’ I say. ‘Was that a mistake on her part?’

  ‘No,’ he replies. ‘Originally, I was coming back on the 16th, because I was meant to debate Oliver Keanan in Boston on the 15th.’

  ‘Oliver Keanan?’ I hear myself repeat.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies in a voice which indicates that he’s surprised I don’t seem to know who he’s talking about. Then, realizing that not everyone is as wrapped up in his subject as he is himself, he adds, ‘Oliver Keanan is a famous – though some might say infamous – American atheist. I was supposed to be debating him at Harvard, but he pulled out at the last minute. I saw no point in kicking my heels in Boston, so I decided to catch an earlier flight.’

  ‘Did you tell your wife?’

  ‘I thought I did at the time.’

  He thought he did?

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ I ask.

  ‘When I rang her, all I got was the answering machine, and so I left her a message.’

  ‘How many times did you ring her?’

  ‘Just the once.’

  If I wanted someone to pick me up, I’d make bloody certain they’d got the message, I think, so why didn’t Stockton?

  ‘Are you still there?’ he asks, and I realize I’ve been pondering in silence for maybe ten seconds.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I’m still here,’ I say. ‘I was just wondering …’

  ‘You were wondering why I didn’t ring her up again, to make sure she’d got the first message.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t wonder if you’d known Grace. She was one of those people who – however busy they are – religiously check the answerphone every two hours. When I rang her
on Friday, I was confident that she would get the message and be there to meet me on Saturday, but as we now know’ – his voices drops to almost a whisper – ‘when my call was being recorded on the answerphone, she was already dead.’

  I feel a sudden wave of guilt at having put him through all this for what must be the hundredth time.

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ I say.

  ‘My daughter has asked me to co-operate with you, and that is what I’m doing,’ he tells me.

  And then he hangs up.

  I suppose he could have been more gracious about it, but I can’t help feeling that I have got off lightly.

  If the police know their job, they will have listened to the answerphone, and there should be a transcript of what was on it, I tell myself as I search through the list of evidence.

  It’s not that I doubt Dr Stockton, you understand – he’s up to his neck in solid alibis – but in this job you quickly learn to trust no one, not even God (unless he can produce a library card or some other form of identification).

  There is a transcript, but there is also the answerphone itself. I plug it in, hoping it has not seized up in the three years it has remained dormant, and I am in luck, because the lights come on and there is a slight static hiss.

  I rewind the tape, and then press play.

  ‘Hello, this is Martha,’ the caller says. ‘I was hoping to catch you at home, but it’s nothing important – I just felt like a chat.’ A pause. ‘To be honest with you, I’d like some reassurance that I wasn’t being the least beastly to Charles at the St Luke’s reception last night.’ Another pause, and then, sounding very disappointed, Martha continues, ‘Well, I suppose if you’re not there, you’re not there.’

  I press the pause button to give myself thinking time. The reception was held on Wednesday the 12th, which meant this call was made on Thursday the 13th, the day the police believe Grace was murdered, and since it is the first call on the tape, she must have rubbed off all the previous ones.

  I press play again, and this time the speaker has a rich baritone voice and an obvious air of self-importance.