Blue Is the Night (7 page)

‘It is our knife,’ Kathleen said.

‘Our knife?’

‘From our kitchen. I saw my mother use it to cut bread that morning.’

‘Was it bent then?’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

Curran nodded to the constable, who stepped forward bearing a cotton frock. The frock was stiff in his arms. There was a dark slurry of blood and dried stock in its folds and pleats. The front and bodice of the dress was rent with knifemarks. Sun fell upon the dress from the high windows, giving the material the appearance of some gorgeous apparel of deep red velvet, a brocaded princess of the dead presented to some dread ball.

‘Is this your mother’s dress?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one she was wearing on the morning of the murder?’

‘It is. We bought it. We went together to the city centre.’

The girl’s voice was steady and her back was straight. The judge nodded approval at her demeanour. There would be no outbursts in his courtroom. Patricia’s face was white and she was staring at her father. Ferguson could hear the tremor in the girl’s voice, the deep, harming undertone. Kathleen McGowan was in shock. Ferguson had seen it in servicemen. Men sitting alone in scenes of recent carnage, their eyes empty. They answered to the medics without looking at them. They spoke softly for they spoke with the voices of the dead.

‘The photographs,’ Curran said. The policeman brought forward a cardboard folder with the coroner’s crest on the cover. The tipstaff opened the folder and removed a sheaf of monochrome prints. Curran caused them to be shown to the jury and then displayed to the witness. Kathleen McGowan grasped the rail in front of her.

‘Is this your mother?’ Curran asked. Kathleen nodded then said, ‘Yes,’ quietly, though it would have been also true for her to say no, Ferguson thought, for how could the profane creature in the autopsy photographs be her mother?

‘Is this your mother?’ Curran held up another photograph and Kathleen assented.

‘What’s he doing?’ Patricia whispered in Ferguson’s ear.

‘He’s making sure that the jury get to see her mother’s injuries.’

‘It’s terrible.’

Curran showed Kathleen the prints one by one then put the last photograph on the bench and sat down. He took an affidavit from the desk in front of him and began to read.

‘Are you finished with the witness, Mr Curran?’ the judge asked.

‘I am, your honour.’ Kathleen McGowan started to get down from the box but Hanna rose to his feet.

‘A few questions if you don’t mind, Miss McGowan.’

‘You may sit if you wish, Miss McGowan,’ the judge said.

‘No thank you.’

The autopsy photographs had been left on the evidence bench, in the late morning heat. The paper exuding the scent of developing fluid. From the gallery Ferguson could just see the shape of the woman’s body, the nude form against the monochrome, lost in the deep shadow. He could feel Patricia’s thigh against his as Hanna cross-examined Kathleen, his manner warm, asking her if it was true that her mother was ‘a generous large-hearted type of woman and a good devout practising Catholic’.

Kathleen stumbled as she stepped down from the witness box and Hanna stepped forward to steady her as the judge called the lunch recess.

Outside Ferguson stood in the shade of the portico and lit a cigarette. He held the lit cigarette cupped and hidden in his hand, furtive doings his stock in trade. He felt Patricia take him by the arm.

‘Why is Father being so cruel to that girl?’ she said.

‘I’m not sure if he sees her,’ Ferguson said. ‘I think he only sees his case.’

‘I shall tell him what I think,’ Patricia said. ‘Can I have a pull of your fag?’

‘Not here, Patricia.’

‘Will she ever get over what happened to her mother?’ Patricia said.

‘She’ll get over it,’ Ferguson said. ‘People do.’

‘But she’ll never get over Father, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I could see it in her eyes. He might as well have been hitting her with that bloody spanner.’

‘The case is there to be won.’

‘The way he’s going at it, you’d think he had a bet on it to win.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I know he gambles, Harry. All my friends talk about it. They hear their parents talk about it. You know the way parents whisper in corners and think nobody hears?’

Ferguson did know about people thinking themselves unheard to the world.

‘You don’t say very much, Harry.’

‘No?’

‘I know why.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘Silence makes people uncomfortable. They start talking to fill up the quiet. Next thing they’re telling you their life story.’

‘You’re very sharp, Patricia. Tell me something. What did you think of Hanna’s cross-examination?’

‘He was kinder than Father.’

‘Was he?’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘All this decent, kind-hearted woman nonsense? What was he really trying to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Making sure the jury knew she was a Catholic. Driving the point home. He wasn’t trying to make them sympathise. The opposite. He was reminding them that she was a Fenian.’

‘There’s a meanness about people in this town,’ Patricia said.

The trial resumed after lunch with legal argument concerning the admissibility of the dead woman’s identification evidence. Hanna argued badly. He removed his wig several times to wipe sweat from his forehead. He said that Mary McGowan did not think that she was dying. She had not asked for her husband. She had not asked for the last rites. Her thoughts were of a ‘terrestrial’ nature. Therefore her dying testimony, according to the law, was inadmissible.

‘If she was a good woman like Mr Hanna said before,’ Patricia said, ‘then she wouldn’t name an innocent man.’

‘That’s right,’ Ferguson said, ‘you’re learning. Hanna’s out of his depth. Making a bad case worse. If you’ve nothing to say, then best say nothing.’

Curran was clipped and precise. Mary McGowan had told several witnesses that she was dying. She spoke calmly and without drama to her neighbour, Mrs Rafferty, mother of the twins, to neighbour Robert Skillen and to Detective Sergeant Davis who had sat at her bedside in hospital that night. The judge ruled that testimony to the victim’s dying statements was admissible. Mrs Rafferty went into the witness box. Curran guided her through the events of the murder. She was followed by DS Davis, who confirmed that Mary McGowan had named Taylor as her attacker. Curran had taken command of the courtroom. Ferguson thought he was like a figure of the testament from his youth.
The voice he spoke with was that of the Lord and he was wroth.
Patricia told Hilary afterwards that she felt as if she had found herself in some theatre of old where a tale of blood and guile was enacted. Lily sat unmoved beneath her veil. Taylor in the dock between two warders, the music-hall imp, the child actor ready to move centre stage, freckle-faced and manic.

When Patricia arrived home the housekeeper, Mrs McCrink, was waiting for her in the hallway.

‘I thought you’d never come home, Patricia.’

‘What’s up, Agnes?’

‘Your mother.’

‘She got the heebie-jeebies again?’

‘I had to call Dr Wilson. He gave her a sedative, but I was afraid to leave her alone.’

‘Where’s the sainted Desmond?’

‘Master Desmond must be at the law library.’

‘Surprised he wasn’t in court to see Father tormenting that poor girl.’

‘Please, Patricia, will you go up to her?’

‘Of course I will. Though much good may it do. You know what she’s like with me when she has a turn.’

‘You could brush her hair. That calms her down.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘Mr Curran will probably dine at his club.’

‘If he’s any sense he’ll steer clear of here.’

‘You will go up, won’t you, Patricia?’

‘Don’t worry, Aggie dear, I’ll brush the head off her if it helps. Just wait until I get changed.’

Doris sat alone in her room. Dr Wilson had waited to see her take the tablets he had brought for her, but she only pretended to swallow them, hiding them the way Lucy had shown her at Broadmoor.

Through the bedroom window she had watched Patricia walking towards the house from the bus stop. She saw her stop on the driveway and lift up her school jumper. She worked at the waistband of her skirt then let the jumper fall back again. At the start of that term Doris had noticed how short Patricia’s skirt was. She put her hand on Patricia’s waist and it was just as she thought. Her daughter had rolled the waistband of the skirt to bring the hem above her knee. They had words about it. Patricia was not a mill girl and Doris told her so and had forbidden her to go to the pictures with the Douglas girl who was as common as they come for all her father was clergy. Your winsome air does not fool me, miss, Doris would think with her mouth in a grim set, nor does your horsey face. Doris knew what went on in a stable block.

The year after they were married Ferguson had taken Lance and Doris to a stables near Newtownards. Ferguson wanted Lance to join a syndicate to buy a racehorse. The stables owner had taken them to see a mare covered by a stallion. Ferguson had suggested that Doris might like to take tea with the owner’s wife but Lance said no, what is it but nature? And Doris was not shocked, how could she be, with all that she had seen at Broadmoor and how the stallion did in daylight what others strained at in the darkness.

Down below in the shrubbery she saw Patricia settle her skirt and take a small mirror and a handkerchief from her school bag. She wet the corner of the handkerchief and rubbed at the lipstick, then at her eye make-up, checking in the mirror to see if it was gone. The sneaky gestures, one after the other, her daughter thinking herself hidden in the shrubbery. Doris keeping her under surveillance. Doris the watcher from the window.
Eyes dark blue. Very sharp.

Doris had faced Patricia with the evidence of her disobedience over the years. A list that was forever to hand when she needed to speak to Patricia. Bazooka bubblegum. Lipsticks. Cigarettes. Mademoiselle magazine with advice on ‘how to steal a man’s heart’. Valentine cards. A letter from a lovesick boy. All Patricia’s smutty schoolgirl doings which went along with the hitched-up skirt and the caked-on make-up to say only one thing to a mother’s worried mind.

There was no doubt in Doris’s mind that there was talk about Patricia. The other mothers heard it from their daughters. That her classmates considered Patricia
fast.

When Doris was ten years old she had watched the line of washhouse girls walk through the icy yards to their work in the prison laundry. She asked Lucy who they were. Them is the trollops, Lucy said, who made their bed and now are in a requirement to lie on it. The girls looked pale and underfed in darned pinafores. Their ankles were bare to the frost. You thought of the industrial poor. Of slum folk. One of them turned as she drew level with Lucy. The girl spat at her feet.

‘Keep tha beaky face to thaselve.’ Her face was pale and vehement. She looked down at Doris.

‘Who would set a loon like thee to mind a child?’ The girl had a hoarse, mannish voice and black eyes.

‘Get away from us,’ Lucy said.

‘What landed thee in this place?’ the girl said. ‘You’ve the look of one who’s done time on her back. They do say them that have slain their own bairns are sent here.’

Doris felt Lucy’s hand tighten on hers so that she cried out. The noise drew the attention of a female warder. The turnkey called out to the girl to get back in line. The girl smiled at Doris. Doris expected some gap-toothed slum grin but the girl’s teeth were white and perfect like those of a film star.

‘Keep tha head high and tha knees closed, girlie, and you’ll not end up like me and her.’

The girl joined the line again. The laundry workers filed through the top gate, shuffling, tainted.

Doris turned away from the window when she heard Patricia’s tread on the stairs. She knew that Mrs McCrink would send her up to brush her hair and calm her down before Lance got home. Doris wasn’t born yesterday. She knew how to put a stop to their gallop. She saw the door handle turn slowly. Patricia trying to gain entry to the only room where Doris knew any peace. But Doris had locked the door the minute Mrs McCrink had left, knowing she would be in cahoots with Patricia. The door handle turned slowly again. It was like a film with a lady in a bedroom and evil without measure on the other side of the door, the night-prowled hallway. It was almost dark outside now and sleet blew against the bedroom window. The coming night was all about her and she was afraid.

At Broadmoor there had been a siren to warn the countryside that an inmate had escaped. The hospital and its inmates were in the consciousness of the communities surrounding the asylum, a deep tainted undertow. Madmen abroad on the moors. Child-killers at large in the byways. The local people knew the felonious roll call. William Chester Minor. Kelly. Dadd. They were familiar with their crimes, their dark proclivities, their unsated lusts. The siren was sounded on the night of 10th September 1923. Townspeople sat up in bed, ran to their children’s rooms, their worst fears confirmed. The sound rolled out from the front tower of Broadmoor, the dire tocsin sounding in the night. In Bagshot. In Owlsmoor. The siren rang twice for two minutes then ceased. There was the baying of hounds from the direction of the prison.

‘Mother?’ The voice sounded like that of Patricia but she could not be certain. The mad were cunning and had many ruses. Doris thought she would stay quiet. She would not say a word.

‘Mother, it’s Patricia. You can unlock the door. I thought we could have a chat and I could brush your hair.’ The doorknob rattled again. The demented were persistent. You never saw the face until the end, the killer’s face. White, harried, intent. Reaching for you with his long strangling fingers. Raising above you the long sharp knife.

Doris got up and went to the wardrobe. She took her dressmaking box from the wardrobe floor. The dressmaking box had a padded lid with a floral pattern. It had belonged to her mother and Doris had not been allowed to play with it. There were spools of bright thread and needles which glittered. The box had the feel of something from an old tale of malice, of fingers pricked on spindles, the needles glittering, stepmothers hollow with envy.