Two for Sorrow (33 page)

‘Of course not, but why do you want to go there?'

‘Celia told Mary Size what I was doing and she left me an invitation to look round the prison with one of her officers. I'd need to phone to make sure it's convenient, but the note said to come at any time and just to let her know. To be honest, I'm dreading it, but it seems rude not to go. It might not be quite so daunting if I turn up with Scotland Yard.'

‘That's fine. I'll phone Miss Size for you now while you get ready.'

‘Oh, I'm as ready as I'll ever be,' Josephine said, picking up her coat and gloves. ‘What do you wear to look round a prison, anyway?'

She saw him cast a glance at the gardenia as they left, but he said nothing and she followed him down the stairs. When they reached reception, she saw that the Motleys had already made their presence felt: for the time being, the elegant,
ordered atmosphere of the Cowdray Club's foyer had given way under the strain of rolls and rolls of fabric, half-made clothes on hangers and a bizarre collection of sewing machines and bric-a-brac. It was a shame that Miss Timpson wasn't on duty, she thought; the look on her face would have been priceless.

‘I'll go and make the calls,' Archie said, grimacing at the chaos. ‘See you back here in a minute.'

She found the girls in a spacious room leading off the foyer which was usually used for private meetings. ‘I take back everything I said about this place being deathly dull,' Ronnie said, dropping the bale she was carrying and coming over to give Josephine a hug. ‘The first thing we heard about when we got here was the fight in the foyer, and we half-wondered if we'd have to slap each other as some sort of induction ritual.'

‘What fight? What on earth are you talking about?'

‘Oh, Geraldine Ashby and the Bannerman woman decided to recreate the Battle of Bosworth in the foyer. The lunchtime queues were getting a bit restless, apparently, so they staged a distraction all of their own.'

‘She's exaggerating,' said Lettice, ‘but there was a bit of bother. Geraldine slapped Celia because of something she said, and it was all very public.'

‘Yes, the skeletons are all so firmly out of the closet that we'll probably end up dressing them for the gala as well,' Ronnie added cynically, hauling another tailor's dummy in from the foyer. ‘And if that was lunch, I think I'll book myself in for dinner now. Which is the best table?'

‘God, I think that might be all my fault,' Josephine said, and both sisters turned to look quizzically at her. ‘It's too long a story to go into now, but I'll tell you later if you're still here.
I've got to go out, but I'm so sorry about what's happened—you must be devastated.'

‘Yes, only we could organise the best entertainment three days before the actual event,' Ronnie said bitterly, and Josephine saw Lettice glance anxiously across at her sister; as Archie had said, neither of them seemed particularly willing to acknowledge the shock of what had happened, and there was something frenetic and desperate about Ronnie's movements, as though she were afraid that standing still for too long would force her to confront her grief.

She was about to say something, but was interrupted by a voice from the door. ‘Excuse me, I'm Lillian Wyles.' Josephine looked up to see an attractive woman dressed in a Motley smock standing hesitantly outside the room. ‘I think you're expecting me.'

‘Good God, is that what policewomen look like?' Ronnie muttered. ‘No wonder Archie's so keen on welcoming them into the force.'

Lettice hit her hard on the shoulder. ‘You're not supposed to say anything,' she scolded, and gave her sister a shove. ‘Go and make her welcome.'

‘What was all that about?' Josephine asked, as Ronnie went over to greet the new arrival.

Lettice looked round as if she expected to find peepholes in the oak panelling. ‘Don't tell anyone,' she whispered loudly, ‘but that girl's one of Archie's. He's brought her here to work for us undercover so she can keep an eye on the goings-on.' They were quiet for a moment as each of them looked Miss Wyles up and down. ‘Ronnie's right, though,' Lettice admitted eventually. ‘I can see why he chose her. You'd never guess, would you?'

‘No,' said Josephine, glancing again at the woman's wavy nut-brown hair and perfectly made-up face. ‘No, you wouldn't.'

‘Listen—now I've got you on your own for a minute, are you all right?' Lettice asked. ‘I was worried about you last night.'

‘I'm fine, but you're obviously not. You're both trying far too hard to be normal, and that's ridiculous—what's happened to you today isn't remotely normal.'

‘Oh, we're all right. Ronnie's worse, I think—I take what's happened as a tragedy, and she takes it as a personal affront. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she finds the culprit before that policewoman's stitched her first hem.'

While they were talking, Archie came back from making his calls and Josephine watched as Ronnie did a mock introduction between the two police officers. The woman said something which she couldn't quite catch but which made Archie laugh warmly, and then he beckoned Josephine and Lettice over.

‘Where would you like me to start?' Lillian Wyles asked when the remaining introductions were over.

‘You can help us set up first,' Lettice said. ‘We'll worry about the sewing later.'

‘Oh, that'll be fine. My grandmother was a dresser at the Lyceum—I was practically brought up on a Singer.'

‘Bloody marvellous!' Ronnie said, pinching Archie's cheek. ‘You'll be lucky to get this one back by the time we've finished with her.'

‘I'll take my chances,' Archie said, winking at his colleague. ‘We'd better go.'

‘Haven't you forgotten something?' Ronnie asked, pointing
accusingly at Josephine. ‘You're supposed to be having a fitting around now.'

‘Sorry, it'll have to wait,' she said. ‘I've got an appointment with some blue serge. Can I come and find you later?'

Lettice nodded. ‘Of course you can. You won't want to rush it—I think you'll find we've surpassed ourselves.'

‘Is it a surprise, then?' Wyles asked innocently, and Lettice whispered something in her ear. ‘Oh, you'll look fabulous.'

‘Yes,' said Josephine pleasantly, ignoring Ronnie's smirk. ‘I'm sure I will.'

‘Putting double agents into the Cowdray Club is a bit extreme, isn't it?' she said when they were in the car. ‘It's more like something out of John Buchan than an English police investigation.'

Archie smiled, and his obvious amusement at her irritation did nothing to improve Josephine's mood. ‘You sound just like Bill,' he said. ‘Actually, he went as far as suggesting that you might be up for the job. I suppose you're right—it
is
much more English to allow an amateur to track down a murderer, but I think I'll stick with WPC Wyles for now.'

It was good-humoured sparring on his part, something which they often lapsed into, but Josephine couldn't be bothered to keep up with it. Unsettled by her conversation with Geraldine, shocked at the events which had suddenly overtaken her interest in the Sach and Walters case, and furious with herself for behaving like a guilty schoolgirl caught with Marta's diary, she knew it was unfair of her to take her ill humour out on Archie but couldn't seem to help herself, if only because he was there. ‘Good,' she muttered, looking out of the window, ‘because I've got enough to think about without your sergeant finding work for idle hands.'

She was grateful that he knew her well enough to take the hint without questioning it, and neither of them spoke again until they were close to their destination. ‘There it is,' he said, pointing over to the left, and Josephine had her first glimpse of Holloway, seen through the line of trees marking the junction of Parkhurst and Camden Roads. For reasons best known to the architect, the prison had been designed to resemble Warwick Castle, complete with high wall, imposing gateway and crenellated towers; it dominated the immediate skyline like a parody of its medieval prototype, built to keep people in rather than out. Archie parked the Daimler outside the main entrance and rang the bell in the huge studded gate. They waited, listening to a jangle of keys on the other side, and eventually a small wooden door within the larger gate was opened to admit them. Two rooms lay beyond, one cosy and oddly domestic, the other more functional and office-like; straight ahead, Josephine could see a steel-barred gate which presumably led into the prison yard and through to the main building. The gate officer took their names and glanced down the pages of an enormous book, then telephoned through to announce them. ‘Male officers aren't allowed any further than this,' he explained with a smile, ‘but someone will be across to take you over in a minute.'

‘Do you know Mary Size?' Josephine asked Archie while they waited.

‘No, we've never met but I've heard a lot about her. Civil servants are notoriously parsimonious with their praise, but they have nothing but good things to say about what she's achieved here.'

‘Celia's the same. I don't know quite what to expect, though—it must take a very singular sort of mind to want to spend
your life in a place like this, and a formidable resilience to manage it so successfully.'

But the woman who arrived at the gatehouse a few minutes later was neither single-minded nor formidable, at least in appearance, and Josephine—who had expected to be fetched by a minion—took a moment to realise that this was in fact the deputy governor of Holloway. Mary Size must have been in her early fifties; she resembled every school teacher that Josephine had ever had, with a smart but anonymous suit, a no-nonsense attitude, and a face which defaulted to strict but was transformed easily to kindness with a smile. The gate officer wasn't the slightest bit surprised by her arrival—clearly, Miss Size often came to meet her visitors—and the genuine pleasure in his greeting told Josephine more about the woman's achievements here than a thousand civil servants could have done.

She smiled at Josephine, but dealt with the formality first. ‘Welcome to Holloway isn't a phrase I often use, Inspector Penrose, and you'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't say it now. I'm very sorry that you've come here today. Marjorie Baker was a girl with real spirit, and she'd just begun to blossom. I suppose I should know better, but it's hard to believe that a personality like that can be so easily destroyed.' Her voice held a soft Irish inflection which added to the warmth of her words, and Josephine got her first real sense of the girl whose death had brought them to the prison. ‘But I'm delighted to meet you at last, Miss Tey,' she continued. ‘I can't think why our paths have never crossed at the club, but Celia's told me a lot about you, and of course I loved
Richard of Bordeaux
. I must have seen it half a dozen times or more.'

‘Good grief—perhaps it's you who should be locked up,'
Josephine said without thinking, but Mary Size only laughed heartily.

‘You're not the first person to say that, and I doubt you'll be the last.'

‘Seriously, though—it really is very good of you to let me look round. I can imagine how busy you and your staff are, and writers digging up the past must be a nuisance.'

‘Nonsense—I hope you'll find it valuable. As I said in my note, there's no one left to my knowledge who was here during the period that interests you, but parts of the building itself have changed very little and I've dug out some old suffragette accounts of prison life for you—they're later, obviously, but things won't have changed much. Ah, this is Cicely McCall,' she added, introducing a young woman dressed in a blue prison warder's uniform who had just arrived. ‘She's writing a book about the prison, so you couldn't be in more knowledgeable hands. And it really is no trouble.'

‘Even so, I appreciate it. This isn't a museum, after all—you must be more concerned about the future than former prisoners who are beyond your help.'

Mary Size looked at her, pleased, and Josephine sensed that she had just walked willingly into the subtlest of traps. ‘It's funny you should say that,' the deputy governor said, ‘but I do have an ulterior motive in inviting you here. I'm always keen that people in the public eye should see what we're up to, and there's still such a long way to go. We've got a good band of people on board now, many of them writers; Vera Brittain, of course, and Elizabeth Dashwood—E. M. Delafield, you know—has agreed to write a foreword to Cicely's book. I hope you might be persuaded to join us.' There was a twinkle in her eye, and Josephine could easily understand how people were
persuaded to do anything she asked, but she had never seen herself as a campaigner and just smiled non-committally. Even so, she was impressed; harnessing the Provincial Lady herself to prison reform was quite a coup; it was certainly a far cry from the mannequin in Selfridge's window.

Miss Size led them over to the administrative block and up a stone staircase to the first floor. ‘We'll talk in my sitting room, Inspector,' she said. ‘If we stay in my office, we'll be interrupted every two minutes. Miss Tey—I hope you'll find your tour interesting and please feel free to ask Cicely anything at all. We'll see you in about three quarters of an hour.'