Two for Sorrow (44 page)

‘She hasn't done anything, Miss Stuke, but I would like to know why she came to see you.'

‘She wanted to know about a warder I worked with at Holloway, a woman called Bannerman. She's gone on to far loftier things since, of course.' There was a note of resentment in her voice which she made no effort to hide, but Penrose was too satisfied to pay it much heed. ‘The Baker girl was interested in the early days, though, just after the prison had been turned over to women.'

‘What did she want to know?'

‘What Bannerman was like, what sort of prison officer she made—I got the impression that she didn't really know herself what she was looking for. She didn't ask anything specific—just let me talk.'

‘Would you mind if I did the same?' She shrugged. ‘Start by telling me when you first met Miss Bannerman.'

‘1902. She found it hard to fit in, right from the start. Most of us at that stage had gone into the profession because it was in the family—it was just like going into domestic service in that respect—but Bannerman had chosen it. She came from nursing, which is what she eventually went back to, because she'd heard some lecture on the terrible medical conditions for women in prison and she thought she could make a difference.'

‘And she was wrong?'

‘Of course she was. She might get away with that nonsense now—there's no such thing as discipline these days, as far as I can see—but she was fighting a losing battle back then. She was soft on the prisoners, and far too kind to them—most of us start that way, but it soon rubs off. No, Bannerman was too good for us—I don't mean she looked down her nose like she does now, by all accounts; I mean she was genuinely a good person.' She said it in the incredulous tone which most people
reserved for extraordinary feats that were beyond the capabilities of an average human being. ‘There was no place for sensitivity in Holloway, and it was only a matter of time before she got herself into trouble.'

‘In what way?'

‘She got too close to the women—didn't report them when they broke the rules, tried to interfere in their lives outside.'

‘Are you talking about Sach and Walters?'

‘Sach could twist Bannerman round her little finger, but then she was a manipulative bitch at the best of times—that's why she was in there. Got someone else to do her dirty work and thought she'd get away with it. Smarmed her way round the chaplain and the prison doctor, and had Bannerman eating out of her hand. She honestly thought she'd get off, too—right until we took her to the execution shed. That soon wiped the smile off her face.'

It was the first indication of an attitude which went beyond duty and discipline, and it sickened Penrose; Mary Size's efforts at reform became all the more admirable when he saw what she was up against. ‘I understand that Miss Bannerman found their execution difficult to deal with,' he said.

‘She didn't understand like we do, Inspector. She was like all these abolitionists who wouldn't dirty their hands by talking to a real criminal; she couldn't see that some crimes are so abhorrent to decent people that there's only one answer.'

She assumed his complicity because he was a policeman, and he didn't correct her. Rarely did Penrose allow himself to think about the morality of taking a human life in the name of justice—he would never be able to do his job if he did—but there was a more practical reason why he questioned the sense
of the death penalty: the reluctance of witnesses to appear in a hanging case, and of juries to convict, meant that there were far fewer guilty verdicts in the courts than there should have been. Privately, he believed that justice and the families of the victims would often be better served by an alternative—but this was not the time for a debate on abolition. ‘Did Marjorie ask you anything about Sach and Walters?'

‘No. I might have mentioned their names in passing, but she didn't recognise them and she certainly wasn't interested in finding out more about them.'

‘So what did interest her?'

‘Bannerman's relationship with Eleanor Vale. That's what I was saying—she was soft on the women, then wondered why they threw it back in her face.'

The name was familiar to Penrose from Josephine's work. ‘Eleanor Vale was another baby farmer, wasn't she? But she wasn't condemned.'

Ethel Stuke nodded. ‘That's right.'

‘What do you mean by their relationship?'

‘It started shortly after Sach and Walters's execution. That caused a lot of trouble amongst the other prisoners, and some of them took against Vale—taunted her, told her she should have gone to the gallows as well. Some of them said she was even worse than Walters, leaving babies to die rather than finishing them off quickly. You have to understand—most of the women in Holloway then were just drunks or prostitutes. They stuck together, and they didn't look too kindly on people who took advantage of girls like themselves. They set out to make Vale wish she
had
been hanged, and they did a bloody good job of it. One night, she couldn't put up with it any more and she started to smash her cell up. Bannerman was one of
the warders on duty, but officers don't carry cell keys—they have to be fetched from the chief officer, and that takes time.' God help any woman with a genuine medical emergency, Penrose thought, but he didn't interrupt. ‘By the time they got there, Vale had managed to break her windows with one of the planks from her bed. Bannerman was first inside to stop her and Vale cut her with a piece of glass, right down here.' She made a slash from her left shoulder down across her breast. ‘A couple of inches higher, and she'd have cut her throat. As it was, she nearly bled to death.'

Penrose looked doubtful. ‘Nothing like that appears on Celia Bannerman's prison record.'

She gave his naivety the expression of contempt it deserved. ‘Record is a contradiction in terms. Things like that tend to be omitted—they don't look good at the Home Office.'

‘Is that why Celia Bannerman left the prison service?'

‘Partly, yes, but let's not forget who we're talking about. Most of us would have hated the woman for something like that, but Bannerman took her animosity on as a personal challenge. She forgot that a prison officer's weapon is power, not reason, and she just redoubled her efforts at kindness. She was religious, I think, brought up in a convent or something—but whatever went on in her head, she went out of her way to forgive the woman. Set out on her own private rehabilitation scheme, she did; looked out for Vale in prison, and even took her into her own home when she got out. That's the other reason she left, I suppose; officers weren't supposed to associate with ex-prisoners.'

Penrose didn't quite see why this would have satisfied Marjorie's curiosity; kindness and naivety were hardly crimes to be kept quiet, and the shame of the incident was not Celia
Bannerman's. An affair with a baby farmer, however, would be something worth hiding from the circles in which she moved these days. ‘Were they lovers?' he asked.

Ethel Stuke glared at him as though he had deliberately tried to offend her. ‘Of course not,' she said. ‘Prisoners might occasionally get that sort of thing into their heads, but it's knocked out of them before it starts. It's certainly not something an officer would get involved with, not even Bannerman. But it did backfire a little—Vale ended up sticking to her like glue, which probably wasn't convenient once Bannerman started aspiring to better things.'

‘Who else did Miss Bannerman associate with? Was she close to any of the other warders, or anyone outside the prison?'

‘No. You say goodbye to a social life when you take that job on. That comes hard to most people at first, but not her. The prison was her life—she didn't seem to need anything else. A career was all she cared about.'

‘And what happened to Eleanor Vale?'

‘Bannerman cast her on the scrap heap as soon as she got this new job up north. I took over the lease on her house in Holloway, as it happens, but I told her I wouldn't have Vale boarding there so she must have asked her to go. She gave me a note with her new address and wished me well, but she didn't say anything about Vale, and I never heard anything more about her. I don't know where she went. I wrote to Bannerman a couple of times in Leeds, but she never bothered answering. The next thing I know, her name starts turning up in the newspapers and she's more important than the Queen.'

‘I don't suppose you still have that Leeds address, do you? And the London house which you took on after she left?'

‘It's probably somewhere about.' She left the room and went next door, where Penrose guessed she slept; he doubted that she managed the stairs very often these days. When she returned, she was carrying a photograph album stuffed full of pictures and newspaper clippings; from what he could see, most of them were reports of major trials, and it seemed surreal to him to look down at the faces of convicted criminals where he would normally have expected to find family photographs or souvenirs of treasured holidays. ‘Here it is,' she said, and handed him a piece of paper.

‘May I borrow this?' he asked, and she nodded curiously. ‘Did you give this to Miss Baker?'

‘No. She wasn't interested in anything else after I told her about what had happened in the prison.'

‘And did she show you a photograph from a magazine?' She shook her head. ‘Then I've taken up enough of your time, Miss Stuke. Thank you—you've been very helpful.' She looked almost sorry to see him go; in spite of her protestations, she clearly welcomed company if it involved the past, and that augured well for Josephine; the least he could do was pave the way for her. ‘A friend of mine is writing a novel based on the Sach and Walters case,' he explained. ‘I wondered if you'd be kind enough to help her with her research.'

‘If it's a novel, she's hardly likely to be interested in the truth, is she?'

He was surprised by the vehemence of the response. ‘The two things aren't mutually exclusive. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that you like crime fiction.'

‘I can't bear it.'

‘But it takes up an awful lot of space on your bookshelf.'

‘Most of the things in here are what my sister left. I have
read them, but they're full of mistakes—not unlike her outlook on life in general.'

He couldn't help the note of irritation in his voice. ‘So you read them to find fault with them?'

‘No one who's touched real crime would give them the time of day,' she said, and he wondered what she would say if she knew how much like Celia Bannerman she sounded. ‘So I'm afraid I can't help your friend.'

As he stood up to go, his hat caught one of the plants and he remembered what Josephine had said to him. ‘Did Celia Bannerman put violets on the bodies after Sach and Walters's execution?' he asked as she walked him slowly to the door.

‘No. I did.'

He was astonished. ‘After everything you've said about punishment and paying for their crimes, you offer them a final mark of respect like that. Why?'

‘Because by that stage they were innocent again in the eyes of God,' she said. ‘That's the point—they'd paid the price and
earned
my respect.'

Josephine was pleased to feel the air on her face after the long journey, and even more pleased to discover that she didn't have to share it with a crowd of people; the narrow lane down to the estuary was almost deserted, and she was able to stand at the water's edge and take in the view without any distraction other than her own thoughts. The tide was out, exposing wide expanses of glistening mud, much to the delight of the wading birds and wildfowl which wintered there, and across the river she could see the lighthouse and church tower which marked the boundaries of a nearby town. The ferry which might have taken her there was shut up for the winter, but she
had no intention of gravitating towards anything busier than the bank she was standing on; instead, she set out along the beach, enjoying the crunch of the shingle beneath her feet and the unassailable sense of solitude.

The Suffolk horizon was dominated by the energies of sea and sky, and by the endlessly fascinating play of light on water. At first, the sea seemed flat and grey, but she soon noticed that if you looked at it closely, the water was flecked by hundreds of metallic shades of silver and gold, and she felt that it was the sea of childhood—felt it so strongly, in fact, that she wondered if her parents
had
brought her here when she was young and she had simply forgotten. If not, the affinity she felt with this particular landscape would have to be put down to an innate recognition of some remote part of herself, of roots that could never be completely dislodged by time or distance. It was one of the miracles of the natural world, she thought, that you could invariably use it to gauge who you really were.

When she could stand the cold no longer, she turned inland and used the imposing chimneys of a red-brick manor house to guide her back to the village. The Old Cottage Tearooms occupied a pretty, single-storey white building opposite the village green. The beams and floorboards were ingrained with centuries of living and, as she took a table next to the fireplace, she relished the smell of home cooking which filled the room. A bell over the door had rung when she walked in, and she sensed the proprietor hovering behind the kitchen door long before she emerged. ‘What can I get you, Madam?' she asked, stoking up the fire.