Evelyn laughed, a light little trill that might mean she felt she’d been caught out. ‘Oh, Molly. You didn’t use to say boo to a goose, and now you’ve found confidence enough to pick me up on things I say. I’m glad of that – you were once far too meek and mild. I like this new assertive person.’
Molly had no intention of backing off just because of a bit of flattery. ‘Then tell me what fault lay in Charley?’
Evelyn hesitated, biting her lip.
‘Go on, spit it out,’ Molly insisted.
‘He was homosexual,’ Evelyn blurted out. ‘We didn’t want to tell you, but it isn’t right that you keep blaming yourself.’
Molly’s eyes almost popped out of her head. She was utterly astounded. ‘Surely not! I can’t believe it. What makes you say such a thing?’
Evelyn explained what had happened the day that Ted had gone over to Whitechapel to tell Charley that Molly was in hospital. She recounted it carefully, making sure Molly fully understood that there had been no mistake. ‘There was no doubt about it,’ she ended up. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Molly. It isn’t an easy thing to tell anyone, especially someone you care about.’
Molly had turned pale. Her eyes were wide and glassy, and she ran her fingers through her hair distractedly, as if trying to think up a reason why it couldn’t be so.
Evelyn waited. She wanted to embrace the girl and take away her hurt, but that would be like trying to put a plaster on a broken leg.
‘I can’t believe it! Surely you’re wrong!’ Molly exclaimed, and tears came into her eyes. ‘But I know you and Ted wouldn’t tell me this unless you were absolutely sure.’
She paused, taking deep breaths as if trying to calm herself. ‘Poor Charley!’ she finally burst out. ‘What a terrible thing for him! He can’t help how he was born, can he? And I’m sure he didn’t know what to do, or who to turn to.’
Evelyn was moved by Molly’s ability to feel sympathy for Charley even when she was so hurt. ‘That’s very understanding of you,’ she said. ‘I think I’d be tempted to stamp my feet and ask why he’d led me up the garden path and talked about marriage. But you must always remember he did the right thing by you in the end, and that was because he was genuinely fond of you. Both Ted and I have met quite a few men in the hotel trade that are that way. They have to hide it, of course, but they’re usually true gentlemen.’
Molly began to fold some napkins. She looked very pensive for some time. Evelyn got on with the seating plan, but she kept glancing over at Molly, afraid she might break down when the reality of it hit her.
But, to her surprise, Molly suddenly looked up, bright eyed again, as if she’d given herself a mental shake.
‘Then it was for the best,’ she said. ‘Imagine how awful it would’ve been if we had got married and it was all a sham? It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘No, it doesn’t, and I’m sure Charley is feeling as bad as you are about it,’ Evelyn assured her.
‘I don’t feel bad exactly, just rather foolish,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t seem to be any good at working men out. Am I going to make a prize fool of myself with George, too?’
Evelyn smirked. ‘Hardly – the man is nuts about you.’
‘But the distance between us?’ Molly said.
‘You’re putting the cart before the horse.’ Evelyn laughed. ‘Go home for a weekend, see how it goes, and if it’s meant to be the pair of you will come up with solutions to the problems.’
Molly frowned, deep in thought. ‘Of course, we’ll both be witnesses at Miss Gribble’s trial. Maybe I could wait and see how it goes with him there, up in London, where no one is watching. It would be easier than back home in Sawbridge.’
‘A brilliant plan,’ Evelyn said, delighted that Molly was finally being positive about the situation with George. ‘London can be very romantic, especially at night. Walks along the Thames Embankment, an intimate Italian restaurant, or St James’s Park in the moonlight. Ted and I had some lovely times there.’
Molly smiled. ‘I’m not sure the Old Bailey could be thought of as romantic, especially as we’ll both be put through our paces by the barristers.’
‘Yes, but think of the relief when it’s all over.’ Evelyn sighed. ‘That’ll be the night for romance and looking to the future. I know I’m sick of people talking about the case in the bar, asking me questions, giving their point of view, which is mostly inaccurate. And it must be a hundred times worse for you, Molly.’
‘It is tiresome when people stop me in the street or outside the school gates – they do it even when Petal’s with me,’ Molly said indignantly. ‘I really hate that they haven’t the sense to realize she shouldn’t be hearing this stuff. I suppose they’ll forget about it as soon as the trial is over, though.’
‘I believe the only thing holding it up is that the police are still waiting to get a statement from Christabel Coleman. One of the local bobbies told me she became hysterical when she was told Miss Gribble killed her daughter. She hasn’t been fit for questioning since, and they’ve got a lot of loose ends to tie up that only she can help with.’
‘How could she have not known? Or that Miss Gribble was ill-treating Petal? They were all in the same house, for goodness’ sake! The woman is a total loony!’ ’
‘Perhaps, or maybe it’s just years and years of being conditioned into accepting her housekeeper’s views and behaviour.’
‘Do you think the she-devil will hang?’
Evelyn shrugged. ‘She should – she’s an evil woman and no mistake – but so many people are against hanging now, she might just get life.’
‘I wonder what will happen to Christabel. I do wish she’d find her voice and tell us all her side of the story. I’m quite sure that Cassie would never have wanted her mother to end her days in an asylum.’
At the time Molly and Evelyn were discussing Christabel Coleman, DI Pople and his sergeant, Brian Wayfield, were waiting in a small room at Hellingly Hospital near Hailsham in East Sussex to see her.
Christabel’s ward sister had reported that her patient had become much calmer and had been talking about Miss Gribble, and this was passed on to the police.
Both policemen had visited other mental institutions, most of which were very grim, but Hellingly had been built as recently as 1906 and was not only in a rather splendid building which had its own railway, hairdresser’s and beautiful grounds, but it also had a reputation for taking good care of its patients.
The room they were in was on the ground floor and had a big window looking out on to the grounds. It was decorated in an attractive pale blue with a darker blue chintz-covered sofa and armchairs. If they hadn’t observed a few patients shuffling about, talking to themselves, the two policemen could almost have imagined it was a private hospital.
Christabel was brought in by a plump, middle-aged nurse. ‘I’ll be outside if you need me,’ she said to the patient. ‘But you’re well today, aren’t you, Mrs Coleman?’
Christabel nodded. She looked quite attractive. Her fair hair shone and curled around her face, she was wearing a little lipstick and a pale-grey pleated skirt and baby-pink jumper. She certainly didn’t look insane, only nervous, as she sat down in one of the armchairs and folded her hands in her lap.
‘I understand that I must talk now about what happened when we took Petal away,’ she said, her blue eyes fixed on DI Pople. ‘But I hope you believe that I really didn’t know Gribby, I mean Maud – sorry, Miss Gribble – had killed Sylvia.’
DI Pople was surprised to find her so articulate. From everything he’d been told, he had expected her to be simple and for this to be why Miss Gribble had been able to manipulate her.
‘You can call Miss Gribble whatever you feel most comfortable with. And yes, we do believe that you didn’t know she killed Sylvia,’ he said. ‘But weren’t you suspicious when you got back to Mulberry House and Miss Gribble imprisoned Petal in an attic room?’
‘She said it was because people would talk if they saw a bla
ck child and, when I kept going up to see Petal, to read to her and play with her, Gribby got cross with me.’
‘But surely you could have insisted that Petal was brought downstairs and treated properly? Also why weren’t you concerned that Sylvia hadn’t turned up to get Petal?’
‘Well, that’s the strange part. You see, I started to feel peculiar about that time. Sort of woozy and strange. Gribby said I was ill and that I must go to bed to recover. I had to, because I couldn’t stand up sometimes, and everything seemed so muddled and cloudy. But since I’ve been here in the hospital I’ve gradually stopped feeling like that, so I think she must have been drugging me.’
DI Pople had been told by the doctor that tests on Christabel Coleman’s arrival had revealed narcotics in her bloodstream. The doctor thought it was withdrawal symptoms that gave the impression she was insane, because she’d been given this drug for a considerable time. DI Pople had himself been into Christabel’s father’s surgery in the house. It was very old-fashioned, a time-warp room from Victorian times, with a big mahogany desk and shelves from floor to ceiling filled with medical books and rows of medicines. In the drawers and cupboards they’d found countless bottles of pills and, presumably, Miss Gribble, when a much younger woman, had managed to discover what a great many of them were for.
DI Pople studied Christabel now. She must have been very attractive as a young woman. How sad it was that her life had been blighted because of an inability to stand up for herself.
‘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 w
as 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.