Birdcage Walk (28 page)

It was too warm in the interview room again. George thought they must do it on purpose, to fuddle the brains of the suspects. Pearn had loosened his tie and removed his jacket and McArthur looked distinctly uncomfortable, a sheen of perspiration visible on his face. As it was, George felt more alert than he had the last time he’d sat in the rickety wooden chair. One of the back legs was splitting and he pushed against it now with his weight, testing how far it would give. It reminded him of a loose tooth; he couldn’t leave it alone.

Pearn had taken up his preferred spot by the window. George thought there was probably a welcome draught coming through the old sash frame.

“Woolfe, I suppose you are wondering what the outcome of the identification parade was yesterday?”

McArthur stared into the middle distance; he had clearly not told Pearn about his visit to the cells the previous evening. George nodded at Pearn.

“You will answer ‘yes sir,’ not nod at me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, we had what we might call a mixed bag of results. Some picked you out, others didn’t. Not that this sways me from my conviction, you understand. Witnesses are often confused when faced with an identity parade. They start to doubt their own recollections and get flustered. Did you recognise any of them, Woolfe?”

“Only Dent, sir. The barman at the Southgate. I don’t know him to speak to as such, but he’s served me a drink before.”

“You didn’t know any of the other four?”

George shook his head.

“What did I tell you, Woolfe? Not a minute ago.”

He clenched his fists out of sight under the table. He knew he mustn’t lose his temper.

“No, sir. I didn’t know any of the others.”

“That’s strange because two of them instantly knew your face. Can you think where they might have known you from?”

“No, sir. Perhaps they saw me outside the Britannia.”

Pearn sighed. “So you still maintain you went no further with Miss Cheeseman than the theatre?”

“Yes, sir.” George kept his eyes on the grain of the wooden table.

There was a silence for a time, as Pearn resumed his habitual pacing. McArthur wiped his face with a handkerchief; his chair creaking dangerously as he tucked it back in his inside pocket.

“So what about the other girl, then? I’m most intrigued about her.”

The abrupt about-turn in the conversation confused George. He could feel his cursed cheeks redden as Pearn waited for his reply.

“Are you blushing, Woolfe?” Pearn laughed uproariously.

“It’s too warm in here, sir. It’s the fire, that’s all.”

“It is hot, sir,” said McArthur quietly. “Perhaps we could open the window a crack.”

Pearn glared at them both and then went over to the window and wrenched it open a couple of inches.

“You haven’t answered my question. Who is the other girl you liked so much better than Charlotte that you needed to get rid of her? I paraphrase your own letter, of course.”

George cast his mind around, rejecting names and faces of girls he barely knew. All of them seemed improbable and, besides, he didn’t want anyone else dragged in here. Pearn suddenly appeared at his side, looming over him.

“Woolfe, you will answer my question immediately.” His voice was low and George flinched at the menace in it.

“She was just a girl I took a liking to. Nothing happened between us. Her name was Milly.” He gulped as he said the name but it was all he could think of with Pearn’s eyes boring into him.

“And does Milly have a surname?”

“I don’t know it.”

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know that either. I’ve seen her at the market a few times, that’s all. We talked for a few minutes.”

Pearn looked sceptical. “And you formed an attachment to this girl on the basis of a few snatched minutes of conversation about the price of meat at the market? How very romantic.”

“I was angry when I wrote the note to Charlotte, I told you. I just wanted to hurt her.”

“So you admit you had violent feelings towards her?”

“No, I don’t mean it like that. I mean that I wanted to hurt her feelings as she had hurt mine.”

Pearn sat down and drew his chair in so he was directly opposite George.

“It’s a peculiar thing, but the two men who came to identify you yesterday were together when they saw you, and yet only one of them knew your face.”

“I’m surprised either of them did, they’d drunk enough.”

George answered vaguely, his mind on Milly and whether he had mentioned her to anyone in relation to the Highbury. He was quite sure he had not, even to Cissy. Pearn spoke again, his voice casual.

“And how would you know that they were drinking if you’d never seen them before yesterday?”

George heard a rushing sound in his head and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, both Pearn and McArthur were looking intently at him. Pearn’s mouth had twisted slightly, as though he was suppressing a smile.

“They stank of drink when they came in yesterday, that’s what I meant by it. I could smell them from where I stood in the line. I don’t think they’d know who they’d seen and when.”

“See, I don’t think that’s what you meant at all, Mr. Woolfe. I think you saw them precisely where they claim to have seen you with the victim. In the saloon bar of the Park Hotel in Tottenham. I am right, am I not?”

George hung his head and slowly nodded. They knew now, there was no point making up further lies.

“I didn’t hurt her though. Just because I was in Tottenham with her, it doesn’t mean I did anything to her.”

“Let us see. We have at least one witness who saw you with the victim at the Park Hotel around ten or eleven o’clock. The same witness saw a disagreement between the two of you. When he looked again, both of you had gone. Did she try and leave and you chased her onto the marsh, where you brutally killed her? Is that how it went?”

“No, sir. It wasn’t like that.”

Pearn got up and swept his papers off the desk.

“I think that’s enough for the time being, don’t you, Inspector?”

McArthur got wearily to his feet.

“I think I am ready for a spot of lunch,” said Pearn. “We will reconvene at three.”

George was hardly aware of the short journey back to his cell. The rushing sound in his head had not retreated. Back on the hard slab of his bed, he felt numb and lay on his back, staring unseeing up at the low ceiling. He realised he also felt lighter and wondered if it was because the weight of some of his lies had dissolved.

As the afternoon drew on, Clemmie periodically went to the window to look at the sky. If it rained she thought that Milly might refuse to go to the police station. Though the early morning had been much brighter, the only clouds hanging lightly on the sky like gossamer, she thought the weather would hold.

Milly was in her father’s study dusting when Clemmie found her. It was strange to think of both George and the dead girl sitting in this very room on Christmas Eve. It made her shudder slightly, the goosebumps rising on her pale arms. Milly caught sight of her.

“I haven’t forgotten,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll finish this and then I’ll be off. I’ve told your mother that I need to buy some silver polish and she believed me right enough. Why wouldn’t she after having me do that whole service yesterday. My hands are aching today something chronic from it.”

She rubbed her joints and then continued to poke her feather duster in between the captain’s books.

“Milly, do you know what you’re going to say?” asked Clemmie.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

When Milly stepped out just before half past two she was surprised at how mild the weather was. It felt as though spring was close at hand, but she’d seen the weather forecast. The east winds were on their way and soon it would feel like the dead of winter again. She felt a kernel of excitement in her belly at the thought of her adventure. She had no idea what she would say to George if she actually managed to be admitted to see him; the challenge for her was getting to him in the first place. She’d always been a good liar. Nothing big, and she’d never done anything dishonest at the house more than taken some sugar home with her. She couldn’t risk losing her place there and she loved Clemmie too much besides. She was as good as gold these days but it had been a useful trick to be able to tell a convincing fib when she was young. When she and her friend Edith had stolen a box of chalk from school, it was so easy to say that Edith had made her when it was in fact Milly’s plan. By the end of it, even Edith thought the plan was of her own devising with Milly as her naive accomplice. The two of them remained friends to this day; Edith had married Milly’s brother.

When she reached the police station on Stoke Newington’s high street, she felt a brief spasm of nerves in her belly, but it was too late to turn back. Her pride wouldn’t allow her and, besides, she would never hear the end of it from Miss Clemmie. The front desk was manned by a young constable who was cultivating a moustache, albeit rather unsuccessfully. He was straightening the pencils, ink and paper in front of him as she approached and she wondered how many times he’d done it already during his shift.

“Can I help you?” he asked, not returning Milly’s smile.

“Yes, I hope you can. I’ve come to visit someone you’re holding here. He’s been arrested.”

The young constable looked up sharply at her words. There was only one prisoner in the cells at present, the only other one they’d had in was a drunk and he’d been released that morning. He’d left his cell in a dreadful state.

“Who are you, miss?”

Milly hesitated, wondering if she dared.

“I’m George Woolfe’s sister. I’ve come to see if he’s alright. I can’t see it would do any harm for me to talk to him for five minutes.”

He looked suspiciously at her, pretending to consider the matter for a time. Milly smiled, pinching the flesh on the back of her hand between her nails so she didn’t give him what for. He could only have been eighteen if he was a day. Finally, he wrote something in the ledger on the counter and then fetched a bunch of keys from a small cupboard hung on the wall.

She couldn’t quite believe she’d done it until the constable stopped halfway down the long corridor and unlocked a door with a scraping of metal against metal. He nodded her in and locked it securely again.

“You’ve got five minutes,” he called through the gap just above Milly’s head.

While they waited for his steps to retreat she and George simply stared at each other. He broke the silence first.

“How did you manage it? They haven’t told me but I know my father and sister must have come to see me and they didn’t let them down here, not even to speak to me through the door.”

Milly shrugged and grinned at him, jubilant now that her heart had stopped hammering so hard in her chest.

“But why are you here, Milly? I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, George. Miss Clemmie wanted me to come, and she’s always been able to twist me round her little finger. I don’t know how she does it, no one else can.”

“She sent you?” Stunned, George let his head fall back against the bricks with a thud.

“She saw the story in the paper before they got you. She was bad enough then but when she read about your arrest I thought she was going to have to take to her bed, she’s been that worried.”

“I never imagined that . . . “

“Look, George, she’s convinced you’ve done no wrong. That this has all been cooked up by the police because they don’t have anyone else. But I don’t know. When I first heard about it I agreed with her. You’re hardly the type, are you? Far too sensitive for it, I thought. He’d never stomach it, even if he hated her, and I’m guessing she did something bad when she come and seen the Captain. He couldn’t get you out of the house any quicker on Christmas Eve.”

She stopped and looked and George intently.

“But the longer I think about it, the more I don’t understand. Why would you run away if you hadn’t done nothing wrong?”

“I know how it looks, Milly, and that’s the trouble. But I swear on Miss Clemmie’s life that I didn’t touch Charlotte. I was furious with her, yes. She made up all these lies about me to Captain Drew to make sure I could never go back there. She was jealous that I had something there that she didn’t. That a piece of me wasn’t hers anymore. But when I saw it in the papers I was desperate, I couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t been identified but I knew it was her. She was dead and though I’d known it in my bones, it was awful to read it and know for sure.”

George put his head in his hands but the words rushed on, slightly muffled so that Milly moved closer to him.

“So I went straight to her sister’s, to tell her I thought the murdered girl was Charlotte, but when I got there it was crawling with police. I got on the first bus I could. When I saw this recruiting sergeant I thought it was fate or something. Like it was my last chance to escape.’

Milly nodded slowly.

“You shouldn’t have run, George. It makes you look guilty.”

“I know that now, don’t I?” He looked up at her, his eyes red. He suddenly laughed, the sound bitter.

“The worst of it is that I might have got away. I would have been on a ship for Africa in a couple of weeks and the police didn’t have a clue where I was. But I couldn’t just disappear without seeing my dad again. I went back and someone saw me in my uniform.”

“I thought they’d found you quick.”

She sat down next to him and put her small hand on his arm.

“Well, if it’s any comfort then Miss Clemmie hasn’t doubted you for a minute. I don’t think you did it, either. I never did, really, and now you’ve explained, I can see how it might happen like that.”

“It is a comfort to me. A great comfort. Will you tell her how she cheered me up?”

“You don’t look very cheery,” said Milly, smiling sadly.

George laughed and then gulped, rubbing at his eyes with a grubby sleeve.

“You’ll explain to her how it went, won’t you? Just in case she’s wondering why I would run away like you did.”

“Of course I will. George, if you didn’t do it then they won’t have enough proof, will they? You’ll be alright. You can’t trust these inspectors. They just want to get someone under arrest quick—otherwise the papers have them up for being useless. When—if it gets to court, it’ll be different there.”

She patted his arm and stood. Her sharp ears had caught the footsteps of the constable coming to fetch her. As she followed the constable back up the stairs and out into the reception she wondered if her visit had been futile. She didn’t think so; she had seen the hope light in his eyes, just as Miss Clemmie had wished. The situation was grim, though. She wouldn’t dream of saying so to her delicate mistress but George would be lucky not to hang for this, whatever she had just told him. There was little Londoners loved more than a good murder trial and there was no other suspect on the horizon.

Back at the front desk, she thanked the constable.

“Before you go, I have to fill in the rest of this ledger,” he said imperiously. “Sister of George Woolfe is all I’ve got. What was your first name again?”

Suddenly he stiffened, his eyes fixed at a point over her shoulder. She turned to see a large fair-haired man there, his smart hat still on his head and his coat buttoned up. She noticed his manicured hands, far whiter than her own.

“I am sorry to interrupt but did I hear correctly that you are George Woolfe’s sister?” He smiled at her though his eyes were cold. She hesitated but found she couldn’t look away from the man’s intense gaze.

“You did.”

He smiled widely and straightened up. He was even taller than she’d thought.

“How fascinating. I have met George Woolfe’s sister. In fact, I spent two entire days with her, touring the barracks in and around London. And she was certainly not you.”

Milly paled as he spoke but replied only a beat late.

“I’m his older sister, aren’t I?”

“Ah, his older sister. I see. And what would your name be then?”

“Milly,” she said defiantly. What was her Christian name to him?

The man raised an eyebrow and then nodded.

“Well, I must say this is excellent timing. I was talking to our Mr. Woolfe about you only this morning.”

Confusion flooded Milly’s face. Why would George have mentioned her? He must have been telling them about his visits to Highbury. He hadn’t said. When she got hold of him, she would wring his neck for mentioning the Drews. She dropped her voice and moved away from the desk and the hearing of the youthful constable.

“So maybe I’m not his sister. I’m . . . a friend of his. I wanted to see he was alright, that’s all. He didn’t kill that poor girl. I know him and he’s not the type.”

“Milly, if I may call you that? Why don’t you come with me and perhaps we can untangle this rather convoluted tale somewhere more private.”

She stepped backwards, wondering if she could bolt. Pearn saw her glance towards the door.

“You’re not in trouble, my dear. Not at all. In fact, you might well be able to help your friend Mr. Woolfe. He’s been somewhat confused himself but I think we are nearly at the bottom of the thing now.”

He ushered her through a door, the young constable craning to watch as they disappeared down the long corridor towards the room with the lit fire, wondering if he might be in trouble too.

In the quiet of the stuffy room, George’s recently severed connection with the Drews soon tumbled out of Milly. Within half an hour he had ushered her back out onto the street. As he watched her scurry off down the road, unsure whether she had done wrong or not, he smiled to himself. Making his way to the room behind the counter, he found McArthur sitting slumped in an easy chair, a thick wedge of pound cake raised to his lips.

“Ah, here you are, inspector. I hoped I would find you.”

McArthur looked up at him quizzically. On his return from a solitary lunch, the young constable on the desk had told him that Pearn was interviewing Woolfe’s sister. He hadn’t known what to make of that: Cissy Woolfe had surely had every last scrap of information on her brother wrung out of her by his superior already.

“You may have heard I had a little visitor this afternoon. Well, that’s not strictly true. In point of fact, she came to see Woolfe. That imbecile Biggs on the desk let her go down and see him, claimed no one had told him Woolfe wasn’t allowed visitors. Fortunately I intercepted her on her way out. Complete chance, really,” Pearn was extremely pleased with himself. McArthur waited for him to continue.

“You remember that Woolfe mentioned a new girl in his note that he had taken a fancy to. Well, who should turn up claiming to be his sister this afternoon—his older sister, mark you—but a young woman who goes by the name of Milly.”

McArthur put his piece of cake down.

“Ah, there’s more yet, inspector. According to her, Milly is not his sweetheart, let alone his sister, though Constable Biggs believed the latter readily enough. She’s the general maid at a house on Aberdeen Park, close to Highbury Fields. It belongs to a merchant seaman by the name of Drew. Apparently, our Mr. Woolfe has become a regular visitor to the house and made himself quite indispensable before Christmas running errands and the like.

“It transpires that he’s more the dark horse than we gave him credit for. According to the maid, something happened on Christmas Eve and Woolfe was sent from the house in disgrace by Captain Drew during some sort of festive gathering. She said she didn’t know why, it was none of her business, and became very tight-lipped after that. I let her go then, but I suggest we pay a visit to Aberdeen Park. There’s more to this. A good deal more.”

McArthur nodded and brushed the cake crumbs from his lap.

“Shall I go, sir?”

“Yes, why don’t you go in the morning? Unfortunately the good captain is away at sea but I expect you’ll find Mrs. Drew at home. Not much tends to get past the mistress of a house so I’m sure she’ll be able to answer all our questions.”

McArthur reached for his notebook to scribbled down the names.

“One other thing, Inspector. The maid mentioned a daughter, turned sixteen a few months ago. She and Woolfe were often in each other’s company, or so I gather. Apparently she’s been quite out of sorts since Woolf was brought in.”

McArthur’s eyes widened.

“You think he . . . ”

“In the first place, I don’t believe that the maid is being quite honest about her own relations with him. Why else would he mention her name this morning as the girl he preferred in the note? As to your unspoken question, inspector, I also think it very possible that after growing tired of the maid Woolfe went on to seduce Miss Drew and her father subsequently found out. This would explain his mysterious ejection from the Christmas Eve party. I think in believing this to be a mundane case of domestic violence taken too far we may have underestimated our Mr.Woolfe.”