Daughters of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  ‘She needed money to buy a train ticket to Oxford. Do you know where she got that from?’

  ‘There’s a petty cash box in the office,’ the doctor says. ‘We didn’t keep it locked back then, though we do now.’

  ‘Well, that was very careless of you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Leaving it open made it easier for the staff to access it, and there seemed no danger of a patient taking it, because some of them had forgotten what money was, and even those who hadn’t, felt no need for it in here.’

  ‘Until Molly,’ I say.

  ‘Until Molly,’ he agrees.

  I know where she came from, and how she got to Oxford, but I still have no bloody idea why she desperately needed to see Grace Stockton.

  ‘Tell me more about her,’ I say.

  The director opens a desk drawer, and pulls out a file which must have been sitting there since shortly after the porter informed him that I was at the gate.

  ‘For her first few months here, she just sat there, staring at the wall. Then, for no discernible reason, she became manic, and rushed around the institute screaming that she had to find her child.’

  ‘Did she say where she thought the child was?’

  ‘No, at that stage she was nowhere near articulate enough. But she wasn’t being entirely delusional, because there was clear medical evidence that she had given birth sometime in the past. At any rate, the institute simply couldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour – it would have unsettled all the others – so she was kept sedated for nearly a year.’ He consults the file again. ‘Then one of the doctors came up with the idea of giving her a doll, and apparently it worked like magic. She calmed down almost immediately, and became a model patient. Over the years, she grew less and less dependent on the doll, but even so, the sight of a baby on television was more likely than not to bring tears to her eyes.’

  My gut is telling me that it was a mistake to ever come here, but it’s still not too late to back out.

  And now my brain is getting in on the act, reminding me that I don’t work for Julia Pemberton any more, and that I can probably save myself a considerable amount of emotional wear and tear by telling the local police everything I’ve found out, and then walking away.

  And do you know what? I simply can’t bring myself to do that!

  ‘The way you’ve been talking about Molly, you make it seem as if all this happened before your time,’ I say. ‘Did it?’

  The doctor laughs with what seems like genuine amusement.

  ‘Oh, good heavens, yes,’ he says. ‘I know I’m nothing like those handsome young doctors you see in the television dramas, but I’m not that old. In fact, when Molly was admitted here, I was still in medical school.’

  My stomach is revolving like a tumble dryer.

  ‘How long was she a patient here?’ I ask.

  ‘Nearly thirty years. The police found her wandering up and down the Borough High Street in the winter of 1944. When they questioned her, she didn’t seem to know who she was, or where she’d come from. Her clothes were in rags, and she had cuts and bruises all over her body. The doctors who first examined her thought the most likely explanation was that she’d been caught in a bomb blast – there were a lot of doodlebugs being aimed at London around that time – and that all her problems stemmed from that trauma.’

  My stomach has switched from tumble dryer to loaded cement mixer gone berserk.

  The winter of 1944!

  It couldn’t be!

  It couldn’t possibly be!

  ‘It wasn’t the 25th of November when all this happened, was it?’ I ask, dreading the answer.

  The doctor consults his file again.

  ‘As a matter of fact, it was. How could you possibly have known that?’

  Oh my God!

  ‘But you said her name was Molly,’ I gasp.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Or rather, that’s what she was called here. She seemed to have no idea what her real name was, you see, and the staff had to call her something, didn’t they? She acted as if she was quite happy to be known by that name – and why wouldn’t she be, it’s a perfectly reasonable name – but then the day before she disappeared, she told me that she’d remembered that her real name was Jane.’

  But Jane is dead, I tell myself.

  Jane was pulled from the rubble of Bombay Terrace by Grace, taken away in a pram, and put on a burning rowing boat in the river.

  Except that that had never happened. Jane wasn’t dead – she’d only been sleeping inside Molly – and the article in the local newspaper about Grace Stockton’s visit to the school had brought her back to life.

  So why did neither Annie Tobin nor the landlord of the King’s Head recognize her from the photograph taken at Oxford railway station?

  Simple! The Jane who was living in Bombay Terrace was an undernourished eighteen- or nineteen-year-old alcoholic, and she bore no resemblance to the Jane who had lived on a balanced diet and under constant medical supervision for twenty-eight years, and who, if she hadn’t been mad for all that time, was, at the very least, hugely emotionally disturbed by the photograph she saw in the local paper.

  I have been wrong before during the course of this investigation – so very, very wrong – but now I think that I have finally got it right.

  I know who was in the rowing boat that Grace drenched in paraffin, set on fire, and then pushed out into the river.

  I know why Geoffrey Markham’s phone call was erased from Grace’s answering machine – and I know who erased it.

  And lastly, I know how Jane – who hadn’t left the confines of the institute for nearly thirty years – found the strength to enter an alien world and make the journey to Oxford. It had been a tremendous achievement – the equivalent, perhaps, of a blind man skiing down a mountain – but that really must have been stretching her ability to its maximum. It was unrealistic, almost criminally stupid, to ascribe anything else to her, to imagine – even for a second – that she would have the skill to decapitate her victim, or the forethought to bury her victim’s body, once the terrible act had been carried out.

  I cannot get out of St Dymphna’s Institute fast enough, but on the way back to the underground station, I force myself to make time to pay a final visit to the library, because there is something else I need to look up in Grace’s book.

  I take the book from the shelf, and there it is in black and white – the section of the text which might provide me with the confirmation that I need. I could stop and read it here, but I don’t want to. My brain tells me that London holds nothing that is threatening to me, and I know that to be true – but I feel threatened, and I need the security of my poky little flat back in Oxford.

  I photocopy the relevant section of Grace’s book, stuff it into my pocket – and flee.

  Last night, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep minutes after the train pulled out of the station. There is no danger of that now. My nerves are stretched on the rack of my recent discoveries, and I doubt if I will sleep at all until I have brought this terrible business to its tragic, untidy conclusion.

  As we leave the big city behind us, I take the photocopy from my pocket, smooth it out, and read what is written there.

  The Trinka attitude to dead enemies is also illuminating. A slit is made at the back of the head of the dead enemy, and the skin is peeled free of the skull. The skin is turned inside out, and the spare fat cleared out. The skin is boiled for half an hour (any longer, and the hair would start to fall out) then further fat cleaning occurs, this time using heated stones and hot sand (for the more inaccessible areas). This process is repeated for up to six days, until the skin has shrunk by the required amount.

  Some anthropologists have viewed this as an act of triumph – the final humiliation of the enemy – but I do not believe this to be the case.

  And why do I not believe it?

  Because it is an essential part of the ritual that the eyelids of the dead man be sewn up, so that his soul cannot see out, a
nd his lips likewise fastened together, so that he cannot ask that his death be avenged.

  In other words, the whole process should be seen as no more than a defensive act by the killer, who believes that the battle goes on even after death.

  But no one will have your head, will they, Grace, I think. Wherever you are, it will still be firmly attached to your shoulders, because your killer doesn’t believe in that sort of thing.

  PART SIX

  Saturday 1st November, 1975

  THIRTY

  I was wrong to think that I wouldn’t sleep last night. I did sleep, but it would have been better – much better – if I hadn’t.

  As I tossed and turned in my narrow bed, the faces of the now-dead – all of them as pale and unnaturally elongated as the faces in an El Greco painting – floated back and forth across my unconscious mind. They mocked me for my incredible stupidity. They challenged me to do the right thing, when the time came for the right thing to be done. And when I finally awoke, at just after a quarter past eight, the feeling of dread which had cocooned me through that long terrible night still clung to me like a second skin.

  I breakfast on a bowl of Rice Krispies, but though they do their best to cheer me up with their usual ‘snap, crackle and pop’ routine, I stop eating halfway through, run the bowl under the tap, and abandon it in the sink.

  I brew myself a strong cup of coffee, and when I take a sip of it, I discover that it tastes like mud.

  If only I smoked, I would have something to do with my hands, but I know that in my present state, the tobacco would carry with it the delicate flavour of dried cow dung.

  I pace my flat – no mean feat in a flat that size – asking myself what is wrong with me.

  No woman in her right mind would have paid that visit to the institute, instead of going to the police and handing the problem over to them, I tell myself.

  Any investigator with even half a brain in her head would have pulled out of the whole case while she had the chance.

  I am right about that – I know I am right – but I also know that if I was facing the same dilemma again, I would act in exactly the same way.

  I check my watch.

  Nine o’clock.

  Time to go.

  It is five days to Bonfire Night, and the air on the street is crisp and clear. On my way to my borrowed car, I pass three small children, standing next to a dummy dressed in a pair of old trousers and a tatty shirt, stuffed with newspaper. Unlike the corpse discovered in the bluebell wood, this figure has a head – a large cabbage to which a grotesque mask has been affixed. This is Guy Fawkes, who once tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and has been burned in effigy, across the whole country, every 5th of November since then.

  One of the children boldly steps forward, effectively blocking my way.

  ‘Penny for the guy, miss?’ he asks.

  I smile. As a kid, I too was heavily involved in an extortion racket aimed at raising money to buy fireworks, except that back then, a penny really did mean a penny, which was enough to buy a banger. Now, the fireworks have got more elaborate and more expensive, and when the boy thanks me politely for my fifty pence, it is plain from his lack of excitement that he regards this as no more than a standard contribution.

  As I walk towards my borrowed car, I find myself thinking about other people’s childhoods.

  The young Grace Stockton probably never knew about Bonfire Night, and even if she had, it would have seemed a strange and exotic ritual to a girl brought up amongst river gods and spirits of the forest.

  Annie Tobin, I imagine, would never have experienced the joys of Bonfire Night, because that would have involved mixing freely with other children, and thus jeopardizing the hold her mother had over her.

  And what about Jane? I know so little about her – even her second name is an unknown, and will probably always remain an unknown – but I suspect that she had an unhappy childhood in which the pleasures of Guy Fawkes Day were reserved for the kids who had parents who loved them.

  I drive to Oxford Railway Station, leave my car in the car park, and walk up the main concourse. Given the day I have ahead of me, this might seem to some people like a deliberate diversion – a way of postponing, for the moment, an encounter I am dreading.

  It isn’t.

  I am here searching for the spirit of Jane, in the hope that I can somehow tap into it and purloin for myself a little of her strength.

  At the top of the concourse I turn around, and gaze down on the city as she must have gazed down at it, three years ago.

  I try to see what lies before me as she must have seen it – with the eyes (and the mind) of a middle-aged woman who had been shut off from normal life since she was a teenager.

  Her tentative, monitored expeditions onto Borough High Street might have taken a little of the edge off the shock, I think, but it will still have been a frightening prospect to her.

  There will have been so very much to get used to. When she’d been growing up, the roads had been populated by clumsy, clunky cars like the Morris 8 and Austin 10, so the sleek aerodynamic vehicles which were zooming along the Botley Road below her must have seemed like something out of a science fiction magazine. Then there were the shops – no longer dingy little establishments, displaying only the limited stock that wartime rationing allowed, but bright shining temples of unlimited consumption.

  And the people! No uniforms in evidence now, as there had been during the war. Instead there were women dressed like fashion models, and girls dressed like tramps (in carefully torn designer jeans). Men had always worn hats before the war, but now they were in a small minority. And just when, she must have wondered, did boys stop wearing short trousers?

  Yes, it must all have been both fascinating and frightening. She will have been torn between running away, and lingering to savour this strange and wonderful new reality. But she hadn’t done either of these things. Determined to be neither seduced nor frightened off, she had set out on her quest – and I was about to follow in her footsteps.

  I drive to the manor, and park by the dolphin fountain. The ancient Greeks admired dolphins, and if Greek mariners saw the creatures following in the wake of their ships, they took it as a sign of good luck. But the dolphins certainly hadn’t brought this place much good luck in the last few years, I think, as I climb out of the car and ring the front doorbell.

  Derek Stockton answers the door, and I note that he is old-fashioned enough to be wearing a tie, even though he is in the house alone.

  Stockton does not look at all pleased to see me, and in case his facial expression is not enough to communicate his feeling, he underlines it with the tone of his voice.

  ‘Look, Miss Redhead,’ he says, ‘I’ve tried to be reasonable with you for my daughter’s sake, but enough simply has to be enough. Don’t you realize how painful it is for me to talk about Grace’s death?’

  Hypocrite! I think instinctively.

  Yet perhaps I’m wrong about that. Grace’s death was – I am almost sure – unintended, and the fact that he tried to conceal it does not necessarily mean that he didn’t love her.

  But whatever his motives – whatever his true feelings – I need to find some way to weaken his resolve if we are to conduct our necessary business.

  ‘“I’ve tried to be reasonable for my daughter’s sake!”’ I repeat back at him. ‘“Reasonable for my daughter’s sake!”’

  I’m not exactly taking a leap in the dark here, because Jane’s actions that fateful morning three years ago (and Grace’s later that same day) would already seem to confirm my theory, but until I see the look of hurt come into Derek Stockton’s eyes, I don’t know for sure that I’m right.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he says.

  But he has – and he knows that I know he has.

  ‘I think I’d better come inside, Dr Stockton,’ I say.

  He sighs. ‘Yes, I suppose you better had.’

  Last time, he took me to the ki
tchen with its cosy family atmosphere. This time, he leads me into a much more formal reception room, and indicates I should sit down on one of the leather armchairs.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asks once I have done as instructed.

  Yes, a voice within me screams, I’ll have a double gin and tonic. No, better make that a treble.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I hear myself say. ‘I think it would be best to get this over with as soon as possible.’ I take a deep breath, then continue, ‘Killing your wife was an accident, I presume.’

  ‘What!’ he exclaims.

  ‘Killing your wife was an accident, I presume,’ I repeat.

  ‘What makes you think I killed my wife?’ he asks, in a voice which suggests he will not go down without a fight. ‘I was in America when she died.’

  ‘No,’ I contradict him. ‘You were in America when the woman found in the shallow grave was killed.’

  ‘And that was Grace.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, it wasn’t. And you knew as you were identifying her that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Let’s say for a second that you’re right,’ he proposes. ‘It won’t make any difference, because that body has been cremated. So even if it wasn’t Grace, you can’t prove that now, can you?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I agree, ‘but I can certainly make a very strong circumstantial case for it.’

  ‘Then by all means go ahead and try.’

  ‘The person who, until now, was presumed to have killed her, was called Jane. She’d been in a mental institution in Southwark for twenty-seven years. The woman who was disinterred in the bluebell wood was wearing the sapphire blue dress which was the uniform of that institution, and on her wrist she had a hair bracelet which you identified, so the police tell me, as being something that Grace habitually wore.’

  ‘And so she did,’ Stockton says.

  I shake my head. ‘No, she didn’t. But I can see why you lied about the bracelet.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Oh yes. It was all part of making a positive identification. You wanted to establish an alibi for yourself, and if this body was Grace’s, then you couldn’t possibly have killed her, because, as you’ve already been at pains to point out, you were in Boston at the time she died.’ I pause. ‘Shall I go on?’