Two for Sorrow (57 page)

‘She was four years old, Josephine. I doubt she'd have remembered anything that could threaten Vale's lie.'

‘I was thinking about what you said on the way to Suffolk, though, and you were right: the natural thing for Lizzie to do when she first heard about her mother was to seek confirmation from the woman who had shown such an interest in her life—not take every detail on trust and hang herself in the gym. Wouldn't you ask questions before you did something like that? What if Celia knew what she was going to do and didn't try to stop her?' He said nothing, but Josephine could see that he agreed. ‘Archie, Gerry's life will never be settled as long as she believes that it was her fault, and only her fault, that Lizzie died. If there's the slightest chance that Celia was in some way responsible, couldn't you at least question her about it?'

‘I can't guarantee I'll be questioning her about anything else with the state she's in at the moment,' he admitted. ‘And the three recent deaths have to be my priority. I'm not even sure that I can get her for the murder of Celia Bannerman after all this time.'

‘I thought you said she'd confessed?'

‘She has, but we still need corroborative evidence if we're to get a conviction, and she knows that.'

‘So what you're trying to tell me, in the nicest possible way, is that you can only hang her once.' She was quiet for a moment,
trying to make sense of everything in her life that had been thrown into doubt over the last few days. ‘How far would she have gone, do you think?'

‘She'd have done whatever was necessary to protect the lie,' he said. ‘I'm sure of that, at least.' He looked at his watch. ‘I'm sorry, but I've got to go. Can I get Bill to drop you back at the club?'

‘No, I'd rather walk. I'll be stuck on a train for long enough later.'

Archie looked surprised. ‘I thought you were staying until the weekend?'

‘Not any more—I've managed to get a sleeper for tonight.' She stood up, hoping to avoid a long explanation. ‘London's lost some of its loveliness for a bit, and I need to get away.'

He knew better than to try to change her mind. ‘Do you know when you'll be back?'

‘Not at the moment.'

‘But you'll call me when you do?'

‘Of course.' She smiled, and bent to kiss him. ‘Perhaps you'll have got those bloody boxes unpacked by then.' She was almost at Westminster Bridge when she heard him call after her. ‘What did you say?' she asked, shouting to make herself heard over the traffic.

‘I told you to think about yourself.' He threw his cigarette stub on the ground and stood up. ‘Not me. Not Lydia. Not even your family. Just you.'

Josephine walked slowly up the hill to Crown Cottage with the latest
Film Weekly
tucked under her arm. Inverness was grey and quiet and misty in the late morning, and the weather seemed to have settled on a compromise, halfway between the absurdly March-like sun which had lit the Grampians on her journey south and the snow which had turned them white to their roots by the time she travelled home. But if nature had righted itself to usher in December, her world remained strangely at odds with itself. She glanced down towards the railway station, with the bleak, dark mass of Ben Wyvis in the background, and watched as the Edinburgh train pulled lazily out into the countryside; just a fortnight ago, she would have considered the sight of a train headed for London as a lifeline; now, she was not so sure.

‘You're popular today,' called a cheerful voice from across the road.

Josephine waved to the post girl, but her heart sank as she envisaged a pile of bills, begging letters and catalogues. The mail was always so dull after a trip away, and it was only a matter of days now, surely, before the first Christmas card dropped smugly on to the mat. ‘Couldn't you just tell them I've moved, Jenny?' she asked drily. ‘How bad is it?'

‘Eight letters and a parcel. I've left them in the porch for you.'

Josephine thanked her and climbed the narrow set of steps which led directly to the back of the house, saving her the bother of greeting her neighbours as she went down the drive. What could the parcel be, she wondered? Something back from the laundry, perhaps, although she couldn't immediately remember sending anything to the laundry. When she picked it up and saw the label of an Oxford Street bookshop, she smiled and looked for the explanatory letter; there it was, in Marta's handwriting; in fact, two of the envelopes were from Marta.

She barely had a chance to close the front door behind her before her maid emerged from the kitchen, clutching a wet towel. ‘Miss Tey—thank goodness you're back. The sitting-room grate's fallen out and now we've got a leak under the kitchen sink. I've mopped it up as best I can, but the whole place will be flooded if it's not fixed this afternoon.'

How quickly reality came crashing back in, Josephine thought, listening to the catalogue of domestic disasters that seemed to have befallen Crown Cottage in the space of an hour and a half. She took one look at the girl's worried face, and knew that she just wanted to be on her own. Putting the mail down on the hall table, she took the towel from her gently and led her back to the kitchen. ‘Why don't you take the rest of the day off, Morag. You've had a lot to deal with while I've been away, and you deserve some time to yourself.'

Morag looked at her in astonishment. ‘But I haven't even started your unpacking yet.'

‘I'll take care of it later,' Josephine said firmly. ‘Go and do some Christmas shopping or something.'

‘But what about the leak?'

Just in time, she stopped herself saying something about the
leak that Ronnie would have been proud of. ‘Stick a bucket under it before you go, and I'll make sure it's dealt with.' She helped Morag on with her coat. ‘Were there any messages while I was out?'

‘Your sister telephoned. She and Mr Donald are coming up on Thursday instead of Friday next week. And your father won't be in for supper—he said to go ahead and eat without him.'

Josephine breathed a sigh of relief as Morag's footsteps faded down the drive, and tried to remember the last time she had had the house to herself for eight glorious hours. The rooms were still fragrant with Marta's flowers; the scent had followed her to Inverness from London, filling the sleeper and reminding her—if she needed reminding—that whatever she was running from was not so easily shaken off. She picked the post up, walked through to the tiny sitting room at the back of the house where the grate was still intact, and settled down with her feet on the hearth to look through her mail. The book was a copy of
Wuthering Heights
, a beautiful leather edition with gilt lettering, its pages yet to be cut; Marta had looked at her in disbelief when she said she hadn't read it, almost as if it were a personal affront, and Josephine knew that it would only be a matter of time before the novel found its way to Inverness. With apologies to Emily Brontë, she put the book aside and turned to Marta's letters. One envelope contained some more pages from the diary, which Marta had promised to continue to send her; the other, a short note.

You left me no time to give this to you in person, so I throw myself upon the mercy of His Majesty's post and hope that it slips through those hallowed defences at Crown Cottage,
even if I can't. It seems that we're destined to spend our lives at railway stations, you and I, and hurried departures are becoming a habit. Once again, you've blighted my life by going out of it, but tonight, somehow, Inverness feels closer than it used to.

Lydia tells me that she's writing to suggest you join us at Tagley for Christmas. It will be amusing to see whether you accept or refuse. In your place, I should wickedly accept for the fun of seeing what the other fellow would do, but perhaps your Scottish code doesn't allow that? Stop being so glib, I hear you say—but Josephine, sometimes it's the only way. Don't ever be fooled by it; don't doubt that I love you.

That, at least, was no longer in question: Josephine had known it from the moment that Marta first touched her, had felt the truth of it in every hour they spent together, and she was ashamed to remember how easily she had dismissed Marta's feelings as something less than real. And if the looker-on in her still insisted that there was no sense in loving someone you couldn't be with, there was, for the first time in her life, another voice which accepted that the loving itself was not a matter of choice.

She glanced through the rest of the mail—sure enough, there was the card from Lydia—and put it down to open later. There was something she needed to do first, something for Gerry which she would have found impossible when they had talked that morning at breakfast. Consciously or not, she had underestimated Gerry's love for Lizzie Sach, too, and had written it off as some sort of adolescent passion which would have passed with time, but she realised now that it was her imagination which had been lacking, not Gerry's feelings.
Determined to make it up to her, she settled down at her typewriter to lay the Sach and Walters case to rest once and for all. The final chapter would only ever be read by one person; even so, it was the one that mattered most.

(untitled)

by Josephine Tey

First Draft

Anstey Physical Training College, Birmingham, Wednesday 14 June 1916

Lizzie knocked loudly on the door of Celia Bannerman's office and went straight in without waiting for a reply. Miss Bannerman was at her desk, and made no acknowledgement of any interruption until she had finished the letter she was writing. The arrogance of her unhurried progress across the page sickened Lizzie, and she could barely contain her anger; eventually, the teacher looked up at her and smiled.

‘Miss Price—what can I do for you at this time of night?'

‘Don't you mean Miss Sach?' Lizzie was gratified to see that her words had temporarily ruffled Bannerman's composure, and she pressed home her advantage by throwing the letter down on the desk in front of her—Gerry's letter, which she had waited all day to open, holding on to it as some sort of salvation from the misery of her daily life, only to find that its contents destroyed the very fabric of her existence. She waited impatiently while Bannerman read it through, taking her time and going back over some of the earlier paragraphs, and wondered how she could ever have trusted or respected the woman in front of her.

‘Geraldine shouldn't have told you any of this,' she said calmly when she had finished. ‘It was irresponsible and reckless of her, and I'm sorry you've had to find out in this way.'

‘Of course she should have told me,' Lizzie shouted, incensed
by the lack of remorse in Celia Bannerman's voice. ‘Don't transfer all your shortcomings on to her—she's not to blame. It looks like she's the only person in my life who's ever told me the truth, and thank God she did. At least there's someone I can trust.' She paused, then said more quietly: ‘I assume by your attitude that it
is
all true? And you knew all the time?'

‘Yes, it's true, and I know how hurt you must feel, but …'

‘You have absolutely no idea how I feel—none of you. You all think you've been so clever, managing my life for me and treating me like a child, but this is where it stops. You can keep your precious school and your career—I won't stay another day in this bloody prison.'

‘Stop being ridiculous, Elizabeth, and calm down. Where on earth would you go?'

‘To find Gerry. We're going to be together—she's got money, she'll look after me until I can find a job.'

‘That won't be possible, I'm afraid,' Bannerman said, and there was a coldness in her voice now that frightened Lizzie. ‘This is the last time you'll be hearing from Geraldine.'

‘What do you mean? What's happened to her?'

‘Nothing, as far as I know, but your parents'—Lizzie looked scornfully at her for using words which no longer applied, but she carried on oblivious—‘your parents
and
Lady Ashby all agree that your relationship with Geraldine isn't … well, appropriate. I have to say, I think they're right.'

Lizzie stared at her in disbelief. ‘You really think you can keep us apart, don't you?' she said, snatching the letter and holding it up to Bannerman's face. ‘But she means what she says in here, you know. She loves me.'

The older woman laughed softly. ‘Oh, my dear, you're so young, but you must understand—Geraldine Ashby has
responsibilities. Money doesn't solve problems in the way you think it does. It creates them.'

‘Don't fucking patronise me,' Lizzie said, shocked by her own anger, but Celia Bannerman continued her relentless denial of everything that Lizzie had ever taken for granted, slowly eroding her confidence and her ability to fight back.

‘Geraldine has no more control over her origins than you do. She may think she's free to do as she likes at the moment, but her future is already mapped out for her, and it doesn't include the servants' daughter.' She paused, making sure that she had Lizzie's attention. ‘And it certainly could never include the child of a convicted murderer. I'm sorry to have to speak to you in this way, but, since you've raised the subject of your past …'