Without a Trace (40 page)

‘It seems to me, Mrs Coleman,’ he said carefully, ‘that you’ve allowed Miss Gribble to take over your whole life. Tell me, when your husband was alive, what did he have to say about her?’

‘He didn’t like her at all,’ Christabel admitted. ‘He called her the Black Widow. In fact, she tried to stop me marrying him by hinting he had other women. I expect you know my father was a doctor? Well, he and Mother liked and trusted Reg, though Gribby would say the exact opposite, so I took no notice of what she said and we got married. A year later, in 1926, Sylvia was born and we were terribly happy. Reg was always firm with Gribby then, expecting her to know her place as housekeeper. She did help me with Sylvia sometimes, but not much. Then Father died and, soon after, Mother too, and I suppose I leaned on Gribby more than I should’ve done. Then, when the war started and Reg was called up, she just sort of took over. She ate with Sylvia and I, she came in the drawing room with us, she became like a mother.’

‘You must have been very upset when your husband was reported missing. You leaned on Miss Gribble still more then?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I was terribly upset. I kept crying, I felt so terribly alone. But Gribby took care of me and, looking back, I think she might have been giving me some sort of drug then, too, because I became very, very muddled. One night, I was sure Reg came back. It was so clear to me – he came into my bedroom and kissed and
hugged me. He said that he’d got separated from the rest of his unit at Dunkirk. I can remember him saying he was going downstairs to find something to eat. The next thing I knew it was morning and he wasn’t there. Gribby said I’d dreamt it.’

DI Pople looked pointedly at Sergeant Wayfield. The two men excused themselves and went outside the room to confer. ‘Could Reg Coleman have returned and Miss Gribble killed him?’ he asked.

‘Well, they said he was missing, presumed dead, but if he did get separated from his unit he could have made it back home.’

‘In the Great War it was common enough for men to go missing and never be found, dead or alive, but it was fairly rare in the last one. There was one report on file that he was seen in Folkestone some time after the rest of his unit got back. But it was thought to be false information when he didn’t surface again.’

‘Why would Gribble kill him?’

‘To have Christabel to herself? Because she was afraid Reg would kick her out? We’ve already established that the woman is capable of such a thing.’

‘But we can’t take the word of a woman who’s a bit cracked for it.’

‘She isn’t cracked at all. Though, considering that Gribble was lacing her food with some kind of drug, it’s surprising she isn’t. We ought to have thought of that when we found so much medicine left in the doctor’s old surgery. A sly woman like Gribble would delight in finding out the side effects of various drugs and experimenting with them. But there’s nothing to stop us digging around in the garden of Mulberry
House. We’ll go back in to Christabel now, but start the ball rolling afterwards.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Christabel asked sweetly when they came back in. ‘I bet you think I’ve gone right off my rocker, imagining Reg came home.’

‘Not at all. But can we move on a bit, to the point when Petal was born. It must have been an awful shock to have an illegitimate child in the family?’

She nodded and hung her head.

‘Do you know who the child’s father was?’

‘I can’t talk about that. It’s too painful,’ she said, her voice rising in agitation.

‘The shame? People talking?’ DI Pople said. ‘I can imagine. So when Sylvia took off with her baby, it must have been a relief for you and Miss Gribble?’

She nodded again, mutely.

‘So why, if you were glad, did you decide to look for her six years later?’

‘I wasn’t glad she left, I was terribly sad, and it just got worse and worse. Gribby kept telling me to snap out of it, but I couldn’t. I was afraid I was heading towards the asylum, and that only seeing Sylvia and the baby and knowing they were all right would save me.’

DI Pople then questioned Mrs Coleman about the trip to Somerset. Her account of finding Stone Cottage, seeing Sylvia and Petal and then going out to sit in the car was virtually identical to what Miss Gribble had said.

‘But didn’t you find it odd that Sylvia didn’t come out to say goodbye to Petal and you?’

‘It was raining so hard, Gribby said she’d told her to stay
indoors. She said we were taking Petal to the Coronation party and would come back for Sylvia later in the afternoon.’

‘But weren’t you horrified when Miss Gribble drove on out of the village?’

‘Absolutely. Petal screamed blue murder about going to the party and wanting her mother. Gribby stopped the car and smacked her. She whispered to me so Petal couldn’t hear that Stone Cottage wasn’t fit to keep pigs in and Sylvia couldn’t make ends meet so she’d suggested we took Petal and then Sylvia could go to London and get a job and come home at weekends. She said Sylvia was relieved because her life there was such a struggle. She didn’t even have electricity, or a bathroom!’

‘So you were glad?’

‘Well, yes. I’d seen how ramshackle Stone Cottage was. Then Petal snuggled up to me in the back of the car, and it all felt so good and right.’

‘When did you find out that Sylvia was dead?’

‘I didn’t. Later, when Petal was asleep, Gribby said that Sylvia was selling herself to make a living, and she’d become nasty and hard-faced. She also claimed that Sylvia had asked for fifty pounds for Petal, and she had given it to her.’

‘And you believed your daughter was capable of that?’

Christabel shrugged and made a gesture with her hands. ‘It had been six years since I’d seen her, and she hadn’t written once. She was living in a tumbledown shack, and I believed that Gribby was telling the truth about how she was living. I thought Sylvia had acted in Petal’s best interests.’

‘So when did you begin to doubt that?’

Christabel wrung her hands and looked frightened. ‘A few days after we got home, really. When Gribby was so stern
and wouldn’t let Petal come down with us I remembered how things had been between her and Sylvia. I started to wonder why Sylvia would risk Petal being treated as she now was. I did have a big argument with Gribby about it, I said if Petal was going to live here she should be downstairs and going to school. It was after that I started to feel poorly, and I suppose I wasn’t capable of taking in what was going on, because I don’t really remember anything much from that time.’

‘Were you aware that Molly Heywood had come to the house and Miss Gribble had imprisoned her?’

‘No, I knew nothing of that. When I first got here I had a vague, dream-like picture of picking up an axe and a girl lying on the ground in the garden, but it was like that picture of Reg coming back – it didn’t seem real. Even now I know I did hit her with the axe, and she got Petal out of the house, it still seems like a story about someone else.’

DI Pople nodded. He felt that Christabel Coleman was an honest woman. Gullible, too trusting and weak, but as much a victim as Petal and Molly.

‘Miss Gribble did kill Sylvia. She admitted she saw red at something Sylvia had said. She described how she shook her, holding her by the arms, then banged her head back against the fireplace. We are fairly certain that she intended to kill Molly Heywood, too, and she even admitted that Petal would have to go also. In view of this, we think she could also have killed your husband when he came home from France. Because of this, we would like to ask your permission to dig up your garden.’

DI Pople watched Mrs Coleman’s face carefully and saw, in turn, horror, disbelief and then anger flood it.

She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. ‘Do it. And if you find my Reg there, then I shall wish I had taken that axe to her.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

‘It so wonderful to see you, Molly,’ Dilys said breathlessly, throwing her arms around her friend on the platform of Rye Station. ‘I’m dying to know what the police are doing about those two madwomen, and whether Charley has realized that you are the best thing that ever happened to him and returned to the fold.’

Dilys had come down to see Molly just after she got out of hospital. Molly had been smarting from Charley’s rejection, anxious about Petal and still feeling poorly, so, as lovely as it was to see Dilys, the visit hadn’t been all they’d both hoped for.

‘I’m so glad you came again,’ Molly said, picking up her friend’s overnight bag with one hand and tucking the other through her friend’s arm. ‘There’s so much to catch up on, and I wasn’t really myself last time.’

‘Gosh, Rye is pretty!’ Dilys said as they crossed the road into one of the many cobbled streets lined with tiny, ancient cottages leading up to the church. ‘No one ever told me there were nice places outside of Wales. I’ll have to spread the word.’

Molly giggled. She knew it was a joke, but then, people back home in Sawbridge seemed to believe there was nowhere else in England as lovely as the West Country.

‘I’ve got the rest of today off,’ she told her friend. ‘So what would you like to do? Mooch around town? Ride a bike down
to Camber Sands? Catch the bus into Hastings? I haven’t even got to pick Petal up from school – Mrs Bridgenorth said she’d do it.’

‘Surely she’s old enough to come home on her own?’ Dilys asked.

‘Yes, she’s old enough, she’s recently had her seventh birthday, but after all she went through we don’t want some mean kid saying something nasty to her and setting her right back. Every now and then she still gets a bit sad and scared, so we have to keep an eye on her.’

‘Poor kid. I think it’s amazing she’s come out of it so well. But speaking of coming out of things well, I’ve got a surprise for you.’

‘You’re coming down here to work?’

Dilys laughed. ‘No, nothing to do with me. It’s good news for you. Miss Stow has been caught handing goods over to a friend.’

Molly stopped short in shock. ‘Really? She blamed me and she was doing it herself?’

‘That’s right! She got transferred to Handbags just recently. There was a bit of a stink when they did a stock check on Gloves, but it was assumed by everyone they’d been stolen by customers – after all, they’re quite small and easy to hide. But then Mr Hardcraft caught her and her friend red-handed. Miss Stow had rung up a cheap plastic handbag but she’d put a really dear leather one in with it. It turned out she’d been doing it for some time.’

‘That bitch blamed me!’ Molly exclaimed, her cheeks turning red with anger. ‘They threw me out the night before Christmas Eve. I went through hell.’

‘I know. Everyone’s talking about it at Bourne & Hollingsworth. Nobody ever believed you’d done it, anyway, except of course Mr Hardcraft and Miss Jackson. But wait, its gets better, they checked her room and they found all sorts of stuff she’d nicked. She’d been putting it down her girdle to get past security.’

‘I bet they don’t even bother to apologize to me,’ Molly said with some bitterness. She had never been able to forget the shame and humiliation of being made to leave the company.

‘I think you’re wrong there,’ Dilys grinned. ‘You see, a lot of people saw the story in the newspaper about you rescuing Petal, so when this thing about Miss Stow broke two days ago everyone was up in arms on your behalf. They’re going to have to do something for you. After all, you could go to the newspapers.’

‘I wouldn’t do that. It was bad enough being accused in the first place, and I certainly don’t want the world and his wife to learn about it now.’

‘I so much wanted to phone you and tell you.’ Dilys’s eyes were sparkling with the news. ‘But I wanted to see your face when I told you, so I waited.’

‘So what does my face say?’

‘It did say you’d like to kill Miss Stow, but that’s gone now, you just look kind of weird.’

‘Something like this happened to my dad,’ Molly admitted. ‘He was accused of stealing the takings from the shop he worked at. He and Mum had a terrible time of it. He never got over it. I think it’s what made him such a nasty, sour apology for a man.’

‘Whatever Miss Stow put on to you, it hasn’t made you like that,’ Dilys insisted. ‘In fact, if it weren’t for that crabby cow,
you’d still be at Bourne & Hollingsworth. You wouldn’t have met Charley, come to work here or found Petal.’

‘Remind me to send her a bouquet,’ Molly said sarcastically. ‘That is, instead of cheering as they cart her off to Holloway Prison.’

Dilys laughed. ‘Let’s forget about that and go to Camber Sands on bikes. I’ve got a new swimming cossie, and I look like a beauty queen in it. I think it’s warm enough to prance about with next to nothing on and get chatted up by a couple of lads.’

‘Good thinking,’ Molly said, suddenly aware that what her friend had suggested sounded like a lot of fun. She hadn’t had any of that for quite some time. ‘And tonight we’ll hit the hot spots of Rye and get silly drunk.’

On the day that Dilys had arrived to visit Molly, unbeknown to them, digging work had started at Mulberry House.

Two days later, when DI Pople drove into the grounds there, his heart sank. It was pouring with rain for the second day running and the garden was a complete quagmire. It looked as if a family of giant moles had been digging, throwing up small mountains of soil, and in between were huge puddles. His men had tried to fill in each hole they’d dug with the soil from the next one, but it hadn’t really worked. All the trees and shrubs that had been planted pre-war hadn’t been disturbed, but it was still a vast site, and there was still a great deal more ground to cover.