Dead to Me

  Having no money meant he was not only hungry and dirty, but he couldn’t catch a train to another town. He was so desperate that he stole a woman’s purse one day in broad daylight. She had left it on the top of her shopping basket, and he snatched it without even checking if anyone was watching.

  There was nearly three pounds in it. It kept him from starving for a few days, but it wasn’t enough for a few nights in a guest house so he could clean himself up and buy a train ticket.

  He blamed Verity for his present plight. If she hadn’t been so sneaky, going off to meet that friend of hers, he wouldn’t have hit her and they’d still be in Weardale Road and doing fine. Why couldn’t she have appreciated that she owed him for bringing her up and sending her to a private school? They could have made a great team, if only she hadn’t kept coming out with that mealy-mouthed whinging about it being wrong to steal from people’s homes.

  He blamed Cynthia too. He told her when she said she was pregnant that he’d never wanted children, that he didn’t even like them. But she twisted his arm into marrying her, and as soon as they were married he found out it wasn’t even his.

  Looking back now, he didn’t know why he ever got involved with her. The Great War had taken so many young men, and a tall, handsome man from a good family, like him, could have found a society girl with money. But Cynthia was pretty and sexy, and he liked her drive, the fact that she aspired to the middle classes. But perhaps what endeared her to him most was that she didn’t turn a hair when she found out he’d been cashiered, dismissed from the army for suspected theft from another officer.

  Of course he insisted to her that he had been set up, and that the reason he wasn’t court-martialled was because there was no proof. But the truth of the matter was that he had stolen money several times, and although there was no absolute proof, such as catching him with marked notes in his wallet, he was the only man who had the opportunity to do it. So he was cashiered, and he got a vicious beating from his fellow officers. It could have been prison, if there had been a trial. But the war had just ended, and perhaps no one had any stomach for something which would only sully the regiment’s name.

  It turned out Cynthia hadn’t actually believed he was innocent, but she had few morals herself, and perhaps was even too dumb to understand what a disgrace being cashiered really was.

  But they made a good team in those early years. For three years they ran a hotel in St John’s Wood for the owner, who lived in South Africa. By not declaring a good half of the bookings, and skimping on the guests’ breakfasts, domestic staff and redecoration costs, they bought the house in Daleham Gardens. Finally, they had the status they both felt was owed to them.

  At the hotel Verity was usually left with one of the staff, so Archie had little to do with her, but there was something about the way she looked at him and tried to get his attention that really irked him. In front of guests he’d always tried to play the loving, affectionate father, and this obviously confused her when he switched it off.

  When they moved to Daleham Gardens, he got taken on by a new construction company who were building large estates of new housing, part of the plan for ‘a country fit for heroes’. He set up and ran their accounts department, and he worked long hours, so Verity was mostly in bed by the time he got home. But at weekends and holidays there she was, trying to get close to him in any way she could. And the harder she tried, the more it annoyed him. He wanted to hurt her, and although he mostly controlled himself, sometimes he did slap her far too hard.

  If he had just stuck to syphoning off small amounts of money from the construction company into his bank account, he might never have been found out. He had, after all, devised the system, and knew how to play it. The directors of the company were really just builders, they knew everything about construction, but not bookkeeping and accounts.

  But as his gambling habit grew, Cynthia’s need for smarter clothes and jewellery grew too, and there were Verity’s school fees, the housekeeper, and quite often he had a mistress who he wined and dined. So he was taking larger and larger amounts from the company.

  He still often thought of that day when the whole thing came out. He had come back from a long, late lunch with his lady friend to spot auditors in his office with the company books spread all over his desk. He knew immediately what this meant and panicked. He fled home, intending to pack a bag, grab money he had stashed away there, get his passport and be on his way to France before the auditors conferred with the company directors and called in the police.

  He hadn’t expected that Cynthia would already know what he’d done. As always when she thought she might be inconvenienced, she screamed at him like a fishwife. In the midst of all that the police brought Verity home for being in league with some thieving guttersnipe.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have taken out his anger at being discovered, or his fear of going to prison, on Verity. But when he hit her once, he couldn’t stop. He got some wild thrill out of it too, almost as big as the one he’d got the previous Christmas when he made her take his penis in her mouth.

  Maybe that was why he’d eventually killed two women. That thrill he got from hurting Verity – both back then and, more recently, when he ended up shoving her into that Morrison shelter – he’d tried to duplicate it with other women he’d hit. But it was never as satisfying.

  It had taken strangling Mildred and Pearl to replicate it, and there was something about the risk that made it all the sweeter.

  He had always enjoyed risk. Whether that was stealing from other officers in the army, embezzling company funds, gambling, having an affair right under his wife’s nose, or forcing a child to perform a sex act on him.

  He’d taken even bigger risks after he was forced to go on the run. Most of that time, before he tracked Verity down at her aunt’s house, was spent in France where he lived by theft, confidence trickery and gambling. The impending war brought that to an end. He’d had to get back to England while he could, and with no money or home, he turned to Verity as a last resort.

  It didn’t take much to bring back the oh-so-eager-to-please girl with the puppy-dog eyes. All it took was a bit of praise, patience and guile. Separate her from her friends, then a spot of blackmail to keep her in line. She was on the hook and he could reel her in any time he liked.

  He didn’t, of course, reckon with that pal of hers breaking into the house and getting Verity out. And Verity had to tell the police all about him, didn’t she? Since then it had been downhill all the way, and Verity was to blame.

  ‘You’ll pay,’ he murmured aloud, pulling another blanket over him. He was so cold and hungry, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. There was nothing worse than lying awake in the dark with just bitter thoughts for company.

  Yet as he lay there, hunched up against the cold, he suddenly recalled Verity telling him it was a place called Babbacombe where she used to go and stay with her friend. She had spoken of the Downs that had the best view of the sea in England.

  ‘I’ll find you,’ he murmured to himself. ‘You just wait.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Archie went into the post office and made out he was filling out a form at the bench at the side of the office, while keeping one eye on transactions being made with each of the four assistants behind the metal grilles.

  Most were posting parcels or buying stamps, but what he was hoping for was someone withdrawing money from a post office book. He had tried loitering in a bank for the same reason, but his scruffy appearance had made one of the bank tellers come and ask if he needed help. He knew that was a thinly veiled suggestion that he should leave the bank.

  Post offices were less picky about their clientele. Since he’d been standing here he’d seen everything from a priest buying a postal order to a burly builder, encrusted in mud and brick dust, posting a parcel. In between these extremes he’d seen men in uniforms, little old ladies, children and housewives.

  Then just as he was thinking he’d have to give up
for the day he saw notes being counted out to a lady of about sixty. It was quite a pile of notes, and she hastily put them into her handbag and quickly left.

  Archie followed her. The post office was in Corn Street, in the financial centre of Bristol, and the woman walked up to High Street, which had been badly damaged by bombs, then over Bristol Bridge to Victoria Street.

  She had her handbag, an oblong brown leather one, securely on her right arm. She was neatly dressed in a tweed coat, a brown felt hat with a narrow brim, and sturdy brown lace-up shoes. She walked quite briskly for a woman of her age. He wondered if she was going to catch a train at Temple Meads, as people just going home or returning to the office tended to amble.

  He would have to make his move soon in case she was going to the station, as it was always busy there and he could be easily caught. Victoria Street, however, was fairly quiet mid-afternoon, as it was mainly offices, and there were streets turning off it which would make it easier for him to make his escape.

  Archie didn’t like this method of getting some money; he’d used it quite a bit in France years ago, and it was fraught with unexpected problems. You had to hit the person hard enough to temporarily incapacitate them, grab the wallet or handbag, and then run like the wind to get away. Often someone you hadn’t even noticed before gave chase, or someone coming the other way could see what you’d done and block your path.

  He was strong enough to incapacitate a sixty-year-old woman, but he could no longer run very fast.

  Luck was on his side. Once they were well over Bristol Bridge and past the few shops and the brewery on the left-hand side, he couldn’t see anyone else on either side of the road. There were quite a few bomb sites along the road too, so few windows overlooking the road.

  He picked up a bit of speed, looked over his shoulder to check no one was behind him. A car and a van went past, but now it was clear both ways. He had in his pocket a short length of lead piping. He gripped it tightly, keeping it to his side, then once he was just a yard behind the woman, he pounced, bringing the pipe down hard on her right shoulder. She gasped rather than screamed, and began to keel over. The handbag slid off her arm to the pavement.

  Archie snatched it up in one fluid movement and ran. Mitchell Lane was just a few yards ahead on his right-hand side. The woman was screaming now, and he thought he heard a car stop, but he didn’t look back. He ran into Mitchell Lane, and seeing a semi-cleared bomb site, he ducked into it, scrambled over some debris until he reached the back and hid behind a wall which was still standing. Panting with the exertion, he got the wad of notes out of the handbag, stuffed it into the inside pocket of his overcoat, then emptied the contents of her purse into his outside pocket. Then he poked the handbag and the piece of lead piping under some ivy growing on the wall.

  He was reluctant to leave what seemed a safe place, as his heart was still racing, but if a car had stopped for the woman the police would be with her in minutes. Keeping to the back of the bomb site, he found an old doorway through bomb-damaged walls on to a road which ran in front of some old warehouses overlooking the floating harbour. There was no one about and he walked quickly up to Redcliffe Way, then doubled back on himself towards Queen Square.

  It was only on reaching Queen Square that his heart stopped thumping with fear, because there were plenty of people around for cover. He strolled through the square, suddenly aware the sun was shining and there was even some early blossom on a couple of trees. What he really wanted was a stiff drink, but the pubs weren’t open yet – and besides, he had to do something about his appearance immediately.

  Two hours later, Archie got off a bus outside Temple Meads Station. He had been to a barber’s and had his beard and moustache trimmed and his hair cut. His overcoat was in dire need of a good brush, his shirt collar was filthy, and he badly needed a bath. But he no longer looked like a tramp or an escaped patient from an asylum.

  He had been back to the derelict house to collect his things. And when he counted the notes he’d stolen, he found it was twenty-five pounds – more than he’d expected. His plan was to go as far as Exeter tonight, find cheap lodgings and then go on to Torquay tomorrow.

  Babbacombe and Verity were just a few miles from there.

  Wilby watched Ruby’s face as she spoke to Luke on the telephone. She had wheeled herself into the kitchen for supper and was still there when Luke rang.

  ‘I’ve walked backwards and forwards on the bars three times today,’ she told him excitedly, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed. ‘My legs ache a bit now, but that’s a good sign the muscles are waking up.’

  Clearly Luke had made some joke, as she roared with laughter, and then went on to say that by the time he got leave to come and see her, she intended to be able to dance again.

  This was the first time Wilby had heard her being so positive, only a week ago she’d said she was doomed to spend the rest of her life walking with sticks. Even that had been a significant improvement on what she’d said when she first got home from hospital, that she’d spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

  Wilby finished off drying the supper things. Verity wasn’t home yet, so hers was being kept warm. Colin and Brian were in the sitting room doing a jigsaw.

  It suddenly occurred to Wilby just how much her life had changed since she was widowed. Yet at the time she had believed it was the end. She and Douglas had married in 1898, when she was twenty and he was twenty-four. Douglas was an articled clerk then, but he became a solicitor a couple of years later and eventually was made a junior partner and saw his name added to that of Reid and Quigley, to become Reid, Quigley and Wilberforce. They lived with his widowed mother in an old house in Wellswood.

  Eunice voluntarily helped at the local primary school, and although she had no teaching qualifications she was highly thought of, and the children loved her. That was when she first got the nickname Wilby. It wasn’t just an abbreviation of Wilberforce, as most people assumed, but because she had a habit of saying, ‘What will be, will be.’ And so it stuck. She much preferred it to Eunice anyway.

  Just after Douglas left for France in the first war, Wilby found she was pregnant. But to her heartbreak, at nearly five months she lost the baby and she was told she was unlikely to carry another baby full term.

  That was the point when she realized, if she wasn’t to spend the rest of her life grieving, or becoming bitter, she must help other children. For the duration of the war, through a military charity, she took in war widows in difficult circumstances and their young children, to give them not just a holiday by the sea but a chance to adjust to a life where their husband and father was not going to return to them.

  Douglas was wounded at Verdun, but Wilby and his mother considered themselves lucky to get him home again, when so many of his friends had been killed.

  Later in the 1920s old Mrs Wilberforce died, and Eunice and Douglas bought the newly built house in Higher Downs Road in Babbacombe because it was close to Douglas’s office in St Marychurch. It was also large enough for Wilby to take in more children in need of help. She chose to help children who had been drawn into criminal activity because they had no choice. She insisted that they had to be first-time offenders and their parents, if they had any, were incapable of taking care of them. Depending on the age of the child, the younger ones went on to a permanent foster home once they had been loved and shown the right way to behave, and she found work and lodgings for the older ones.

  Douglas died in 1931 from a blood infection. It was thought by his doctor that the infection to the wound he received in Verdun had lain dormant, flaring up again when he had a fall on the ice, with fatal consequences.

  Wilby had believed when Douglas came back from the war that they’d live together to a ripe old age, and so losing him suddenly and so cruelly was another terrible blow. But as she had done after losing her baby, she wallowed in self-pity for a while, then picked herself up and looked for more children to help.

  The children came and went
; almost always she’d had the satisfaction of knowing she’d helped them through a difficult time in their lives, and they would go on to become well-adjusted adults. She didn’t grieve for them. Knowing she’d played her part in their rehabilitation was enough.

  But when Ruby came to her, from the very first day Wilby knew this girl was for her. She was the daughter she’d wanted all her life, and she hoped so much that she could keep her.

  Well, she’d kept Ruby with her for years now, through thick and thin, without any regrets. With luck she would marry Luke when the war ended, and they’d have children, making Wilby a grandmother. And that would round off everything perfectly.

  A ring at the doorbell made Wilby jump and look to Ruby who rolled her eyes, equally surprised, for it was a rare thing for anyone to come to the door after nine in the evening. Ruby hurriedly put the phone down on Luke.

  ‘Do you think it could be him?’ she said in a stage whisper.

  ‘It’s a bit soon since we spoke to him,’ Wilby replied. ‘I’d better open it and see.’

  She opened the door to see a very dishevelled woman in a fur coat which had several bald patches. She wore very high heels but had bare legs, the colour of parchment.

  ‘I’m Ruby’s ma,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t get down before, but I’m ’ere now.’

  Wilby gulped, completely lost for words. She heard Ruby wheel her chair closer.

  ‘Ma!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  Wilby had to ask her in, if for no other reason than breaking the blackout. She sensed Angie Taylor was going to be trouble, and judging by the small suitcase in her hand she was expecting to be asked to stay.

  ‘Come into the kitchen, Mrs Taylor,’ Wilby said. ‘Have you just got off the train?’

  ‘Yeah, and what a bleedin’ long journey it was,’ she said, pulling a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lighting one up.