The Silent Girls (37 page)

Lionel knew that he had lost his touch the day he went to retrieve it and had scuffled with her on the stairs and pushed her to her death. A vague recollection of a moment of panic when the postman had knocked on the door explained it. With Dolly lying at the bottom of the stairs, clearly broken, he had rushed out of the house, allowing the door to slam behind him. Lionel loathed sloppiness and hated making mistakes. Precision in all things was what he had been taught.

Some consolation had come from the sight of young Edie wearing it. When she had emerged from the house that night wearing the dress he had felt a frisson of excitement and a reactive yearning in parts of his anatomy that he preferred not to think about. The chance meeting in the garden later that evening had been serendipitous indeed, especially when they had shared the very bench where he had first removed the dress. It thrilled him even now to think of it.

Sadly only a small piece of charred fabric remained. It had taken him a while to find it, he’d had to rake through the sooty remains of the burned-out kitchen for some time. It would be too fragile a thing to carry around in his pocket, but it completed his collection and he found it satisfying that his trophy cabinet could be considered complete.

It amused him no end that Edie and Matthew had taken up with each other. He’d taken great pleasure in inviting them round for tea and watching their coy, tentative interactions. Such sweet irony that the sins of their fathers had brought them together. They were gone now, both had wiped the mud of the square off their feet and had moved away. A house in Winchester, so he had been told. He hoped they would marry; all this living in sin still didn’t sit comfortably with him. Had they stayed he might have felt the need to intervene.

The day they’d gone Edie had brought him a gift, a box of Earl Grey from Fortnum & Mason and a photograph for his collection. She’d found it in the house she said, amongst Dolly and Dickie’s old things. A picture of them all as children. Lionel looked at it often, remembering the day it had been taken. He looked at it and considered that he’d been a handsome boy. When he looked long enough he was sure he could see a halo of light surrounding his own handsome head. In moments of self-doubt he thought it might just be a trick of the sun, but on other days it was clear to see that he had been a saint. How proud his mother would have been to see her son so rightly shown.

Chapter Thirty

Alice Hale couldn’t settle. She’d had to accept that Sam Campion wasn’t coming back. Hard as it was, she’d had to let go. Despite that, the name Campion continued to make her lose sleep at night.

Along with some smarmy looking old guy who smelled of mothballs and dressed like a throwback from the twenties with his dapper cravat and silver topped cane, she’d been one of only two witnesses at Lena Campion’s funeral. It would have been disingenuous to call herself a mourner. Besides, it would be hard to mourn at a state-funded cremation, they were always rather perfunctory affairs. It was hard to know the reason she had bothered going at all, but something about Lena Campion’s confession had been niggling at her. Despite her superior’s reluctance to re-open a solved case, the whole thing had piqued Alice’s curiosity. Since Lena’s death she’d been poking around and had requested the old case notes from the archives. There had been nothing new to find, John Bastin had been hanged on the evidence of his affair with Sally Pollet, his reputation as a lothario and the testimony of Lena and her friend Dolly Morris. Despite this apparent
fait accompli
, and the fact that it couldn’t realistically be re-investigated due to the fact that everyone involved was now dead, Alice was still curious. It had become the latest bee in her bonnet. As it buzzed, nudging at her consciousness, she moved across the office to make herself a cup of coffee. She would need the caffeine to focus, a great big fat file had just been delivered that would hopefully contain something which would help them move against Pascoe.

On top of the bigger file lay a small one, old, thin and intriguing. The name on the folder was Beryl Jackson. Pushing the Pascoe file aside she opened the thin folder and began to read, eager to see if her hunch had been right.

This latest line of personal enquiry had been to find out if any other crimes had been committed that could be linked to the Winfield murders. Her search had only come up with one interesting item, the report of an assault on a young woman, Beryl Jackson, who had been walking home after an assignation with her boyfriend. A man had hit her over the head with an unknown object and had raped and attempted to strangle her, but the attack had been interrupted by a witness. The attacker had fled the scene, disappearing into the night never to be identified.

The witness had been more concerned with the state of the girl than the escape of the felon, so hadn’t pursued him. Several elements of this report were rattling about in Alice’s mind. The location was bang on, the features of the victim fitted – a young girl with apparently loose morals – and the timing was right. In Alice’s opinion Beryl Jackson might have been the one that got away.

What was most interesting, and the thing that was mutating into a clear thought in her mind, was that the witness had reported that the attacker walked with a pronounced limp – he had loped rather than fled from the scene. Frank Morris had not walked with a limp, neither had John Bastin. What was most odd about Beryl’s statement was the observation that her attacker had an unusual smell about him, an odour reminiscent of bergamot. In fact, what Beryl had actually told the police was that the man who had tried to kill her had reeked of Earl Grey tea. Alice closed the file with a sigh, the contents meant nothing. There must be thousands of old men with gammy legs and a penchant for fancy tea, besides, the killings had stopped after the hanging. Perhaps her colleagues were right and she needed to learn how to let go and move on. She placed the file into her desk tray and picked up the brick of manila and paper that constituted the dubious life and times of Alan Pascoe and began to read, wondering what motivated such a man to be so relentlessly evil. In the back of the file was a copy of his birth certificate holding the bland statement ‘Father, unknown’. Alice thought it was quite the shame that Beattie Morris had been in prison at the time of his conception, she might have done Winfield a significant service otherwise. It was a terrible thought really; two wrongs didn’t form a right and two Beryls didn’t necessarily form a connection. Alice convinced herself that the name of Pascoe’s mother was completely irrelevant and totally coincidental – even if she was the same Beryl Jackson who had been attacked all those years before, and even if she did give birth to Alan nine months later, and even though she did marry Thomas Pascoe when Alan was three. Beryl Pascoe was long dead, and like everyone else from that time had retained the right to remain as silent as her own grave. Whatever questions Alice might have they would never get answered.

She needed to learn to let go and concentrate on the present not the past, stamp on her ubiquitous curiosity and focus on the matter in hand. She tucked the document into the back of the folder and began to focus on the here and now.

If you loved
The Silent Girls
turn the page for an extract from Ann Troup’s debut novel

The Lost Child

Chapter One

It all began with the dead badger. Elaine had spotted it on the road to Hallow’s End, lying stiff and cold near to the grass verge that edged the narrow lane.

Ordinarily she would have ignored it, just swerved past and put the sight out of her mind. However, faced with an oncoming tractor, she had no choice but to drive over the poor thing. As the rear wheels bumped over its now thrice crushed corpse, she gave absolution to its lingering spirit with an apology made insincere by the shudder of revulsion that accompanied it. Rural Devon seemed to be inordinately littered with roadkill.

Driving over the badger had caused a jolt to the suspension, which in turn dislodged the lid of an urn. The three events sent the contents of the urn, the ashes of Elaine's recently cremated mother, skittering across the boot in a cloud of gritty detritus.

Remnants of the dead woman worked their way into every surface as the car rumbled over uneven tarmac. The tumbling, rolling motion helped to embed the very crumbs of Jean Ellis deep into shoes and coats and bags, where she could cling unseen.

Even in death Jean could cleave to the daughter she’d coveted. In this powdered state she could nestle against Elaine’s skin, work under her fingernails and linger in the air that she would breathe. Jean had become an ethereal cloud, which no one could escape.

When the car drew to a halt Jean settled for a moment, a dust storm in waiting. At the eye of that storm a burdened soul smouldered.

*

Elaine knew none of this as she negotiated the lanes, diligently following the signs to Hallow’s End and looking out for the fork in the road that would lead to the cottage she had rented. Just past the village she took the right fork, as instructed on the booking confirmation, and within a hundred yards saw a cottage which matched the photograph from the website. Sure enough, the sign on the gate read ‘Meadowfoot Cottage’ and Elaine knew she had found the right place. A gravelled pull-in formed the parking space and she pulled up there. Once out of the driving seat she stretched her stiffened limbs and walked to the back of the car. A girl had emerged from the cottage next door and was walking towards her. ‘Miriam says I’ve got to help you with your bags’ she said.

Elaine smiled at her and opened the boot. She was forced to watch, helpless and appalled, as a gust of wind seized the remains of her mother and delivered them into the unsuspecting face of the teenager who was waiting to her side.

‘What the hell was that?’ the girl demanded, spitting. She wiped at her dusty skin with the sleeve of her hoodie.

Elaine quickly pulled a coat over the urn, trying to ignore the grime that sugared the fabric, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been having some building work done, I had a bag of plaster in here and some must have spilled.’ She had to think quickly. The confabulation was in lieu of the truth; she could hardly tell the girl she’d just received a face full of cremains. Mortified, she told the girl to go inside and clean herself up, she would unload her own bags.

The girl scowled and sloped off towards the neighbouring cottage, unknowingly patting clouds of dead woman from her clothes.

‘If that had been anyone else but you, Mother, it might have had a funny side,’ Elaine muttered as she shook out her coat and dusted off her luggage. She wondered how appropriate it would be to sweep one’s parent into a dustpan?

‘I should have had you buried, even you couldn’t have got out of a coffin.’ She scooped what she could back into the green plastic urn and screwed on the lid.

She groped around the boot for a bag, which she could wrap round the urn to stop it disgorging its contents again. When she had finally enclosed Jean inside a Tesco’s carrier she felt a flush of guilt. ‘Sorry Mum, but you never could resist embarrassing me. That poor girl! And I know you hated Tesco, but this will have to do.’

To her continuing shame her muttering was interrupted by a small cough, forcing her to turn around and face a cheery looking, apple-cheeked woman who had been standing behind her for God knows how long. ‘Hi.’ Elaine said, acutely aware of the blush that had crept across her own cheeks.

The woman took a long appraising look at both Elaine and her car, ‘You must be Miss Ellis, welcome to Hallow’s End. Good journey?’

Elaine hastily checked the open boot. ‘Not too bad thanks, though the road up here is a mite bumpy,’ Thankfully the remains looked more like unused cat litter than anything else. ‘Is the girl OK? I think I might have upset her when she came to help me unload.’

‘You mean Brodie? Oh, don’t mind her, she’s always like that. Hasn’t stopped moping since she got here.’ The woman bent to pick up one of the bags. ‘Righto, follow me and I’ll show you into the cottage and let you know how everything works. I’m Miriam Davies by the way, I live next door, so any problems and I’m on the doorstep. I come in twice a week to clean and change the linen, but anything you need in the meantime – don’t hesitate to ask. I look after my sister you see, she’s had a stroke poor woman, can’t do a thing for herself, so I’m always in. And now we’ve got Brodie to worry about too; poor waif, got to feel for her really, what with her mum being poorly in the hospital.’ Miriam scrunched up her face as she pronounced the word ‘hospital’, making it sound like a profanity – and leaving Elaine in no doubt about which kind of hospital it was. ‘So all in all, I’ve got my hands full, but nothing’s too much trouble for guests.’

By the time Miriam had finished talking they were inside the holiday cottage and she was busy straightening cushions and twitching curtains. As if she hadn’t already made the place spotless. ‘So, what brings you to Hallow’s End then, Miss Ellis?’ she asked, pausing her activity. Her ruddy face was expectant and smiling.

Elaine took a quick glance around the room where she was to live for the next few weeks. She was looking for the clock – the source of the incessant ticking, which was already grating on her. There it was, on the dresser, its face taking on the essence of a Cheshire cat. She turned her back on it. ‘It’s Elaine by the way. Well, I’m having some building work done at home, so need to be out of the way for a couple of weeks, and Hallow’s End is where my mother was born – she died recently – so I thought I’d come and see where she grew up.’ She hated explaining Jean’s death, it felt as though she were asking for sympathy. The anticipation of the mawkish reaction, which most people heaped upon her, was beginning to turn into a feeling of mild dread. She braced herself for Miriam’s anticipated compassion.

‘I’m sorry to hear that Elaine, that must have been very difficult for you. Still, life goes on doesn’t it?’ Miriam said evenly.

The matter-of-fact response was oddly refreshing, ‘Yes, I suppose it does. You might have known her. Her maiden name was Jean Burroughs.’