Without a Trace

  ‘You have got a good job and a future,’ he said. ‘And don’t make the mistake of blaming yourself. No one could’ve been a better daughter than you were. Your dad really was a nasty piece of work – his death doesn’t change that. But of course you’re going to grieve, for what is past and for what could’ve been. Your mum was a lovely lady; she’ll be missed by so many people. I know you must feel you’ve got no one now but remember you’ve still got me.’

  Molly clung to him, soothed a little by his calm manner and his kindness.

  ‘Cup of tea now,’ he said, edging her back so she could sit on the bed. ‘I’ll pack your stuff for you.’

  It was late afternoon, dark and very cold when they arrived back in Sawbridge. There were Christmas lights up in the high street, and most of the shops had cheerful Christmas window displays. But Heywoods, which had always been the most prominent shop in the street, was in darkness. There was just enough light from the street lamps to see that all the windows were broken, the frames burnt, and there were marks where the flames had licked right up to the first floor.

  ‘It looks much worse at the back,’ Jack Ollerenshaw volunteered. He was a friend of George and had come to pick them up from the station. ‘But you don’t want to even think about that now, Molly.’

  Mrs Walsh hugged Molly wordlessly for several minutes before drawing her into the living room, taking her coat and making her sit down.

  The room was very neat and tidy, and a delicious smell of roasting meat was coming from the kitchen. ‘You must think of this as your home, my love,’ Mrs Walsh said. ‘My hubby and I feel deeply for you, and if we can do anything to make you feel just a bit better, you just shout.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Walsh, I really appreciate your kindness. I’m very glad I had George to travel home with. It would’ve been awful on my own.’

  ‘You are to have George’s bed, and he’ll go in with our Harry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what the procedure is in cases like this one. You weren’t here, so there would be no point in the police asking you questions, though I expect you’ll have to contact the insurance company. Will there be a post mortem, George?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ he said, frowning at his mother, as if to warn her to keep off such subjects. ‘I’m just going to nip along to the police station to let them know we’re here. Will you be all right, Molly?’

  Four days later Molly wanted to scream each time someone asked her if she was ‘all right’. Of course she wasn’t. How could anyone be all right when their parents had just died in a fire?

  She wasn’t just angry at people who asked such a senseless question, but with her father. A fire investigator had found a whisky bottle in the store room. It had broken in the heat of the flames, but there was evidence that the bottle and a glass had been on the desk and the pathologist had found that her father had been drinking heavily.

  Even if Molly had been away for a long time, she could imagine the scene as clearly as if she’d been in that store room. He would’ve been skulking there with the one-bar electric fire keeping him warm while he drank his whisky. He had always made out he did paperwork on his nights in there, but Molly knew he just sat and got drunk. Upstairs, her mother had to go to bed to keep warm when the coal ran out because he was so miserly with it.

  The investigator’s report said they believed that Mr Heywood had forgotten to turn the fire off when he went upstairs. He may have accidentally kicked it too close to one of the many cardboard boxes in the store room. It would have taken as much as an hour for the first box to go from singeing to bursting into flames but, from that point on, there would have been no stopping it, because the room was full of flammable goods, including a tank of paraffin.

  It was some small comfort that her parents hadn’t been burned. They had died of smoke inhalation in their sleep, and the closed bedroom door had kept the flames at bay.

  The shop, staircase, kitchen and sitting room were all gutted only her parents’ room and Molly’s were intact because the doors had been closed, although they were badly smoke damaged. The whole building was unsafe and would have to be demolished.

  George managed to find out where Molly’s sister, Emily, was living – Molly had no address or telephone number for her – and sent a telegram asking her to ring. Emily telephoned the Walshes’ house when she received it but, although she was as shocked and horrified as Molly, and concerned about her sister, she refused point blank to come back, even for the funeral.

  ‘What point would there be?’ she said in a cold voice. ‘I hated Dad. Have you forgotten that he threw me out just for seeing Tim? He put me through hell my whole childhood, and he stopped Mum and you contacting me once I’d gone.’

  ‘I know, but come back for Mum and me now,’ Molly pleaded.

  ‘No, I won’t. Mum should’ve stuck up for me. She didn’t even write to me more than once a year. I wrote and asked her to the wedding, said she could come with you. She never even replied.’

  ‘You married Tim?’ Molly was shocked to hear that. ‘I didn’t know. She told me you hadn’t written. You can bet your boots Dad took the letters! Oh God, Emily, if I’d’ve known I would have come to you, but I thought you didn’t want me or Mum in your life.’

  ‘I’m sure Dad did take the letters, but that doesn’t excuse Mum. What sort of a mother abandons one of her children?’

  Molly was too upset to continue. George took the view that she couldn’t make Emily come to the funeral, and maybe it would be for the best if her sister stayed away if she was so bitter.

  ‘Write to her once it’s all over,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe you can salvage something then.’

  Molly didn’t know what she would have done without George. He was everything she needed – adviser, confidant, brother, friend and sweetheart all rolled into one. He cuddled her when she cried, listened when she wanted to talk, took her for brisk walks when he felt that fresh air and exercise would help, and often made her laugh when she least expected it.

  His parents and brother, Harry, were all kind, too, attentive but not intrusive, caring but not to the point of suffocation. They fended off nosy neighbours and gossip-mongers, too, because, as if the fire wasn’t enough for people, there was the trial, too, which the newspapers went to town reporting.

  Miss Maud Gribble was found guilty of the murder of Reg Coleman and the manslaughter of Sylvia Coleman and sentenced to be hanged. But, for the locals, the real shock was that Petal had been Cassie’s sister, not her daughter, and she’d been trying to keep the child safe.

  Suddenly, even those who had said the nastiest things about Cassie were admiring her courage and kindness. Mrs Walsh got quite angry that they couldn’t have been more tolerant and caring while she was alive.

  ‘I hate this about people,’ she ranted. ‘They can make a person desperately unhappy because of some blind prejudice and then, when something happens to change that opinion, they never admit they were wrong, or apologize. It makes me see red!’

  Evelyn Bridgenorth had rung twice to offer her condolences, to keep Molly abreast of how Petal was, and to remind her she had a job and a home to come back to. ‘It’s crazy here at the moment, everyone talking about Miss Gribble and Christabel. If they don’t know anything, they make it up. I’m hoping that, after the hanging, it will all die down. It’s not good for Petal.’

  Molly’s parents’ funeral took place on 18 December. It was raining heavily and very cold. The church was packed, giving Molly some comfort that, even if people had disliked her father, they chose to put that aside for her mother’s sake.

  George held her hand firmly and, even if she had doubted his feelings for her before, she could now see his love for her in his face. She had chosen the hymn ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’, because she knew her parents had chosen it for their wedding. She would never learn now what had turned her father into such a hard, cruel man but, for today, she tried not to think of him that way but to remember that her mother had loved him.

  A
s for her mother, Molly could remember only good things. Being handed a buttered scone still hot from the oven and a cup of tea when she came home from school on a cold day. Picnics in the woods, going to Weston-super-Mare on the bus in the summer holidays, picking strawberries at a nearby farm and her mother teaching her to ride a bicycle.

  She may have been weak, but she was so loving, and when Molly glanced around the church she saw many of her mother’s friends crying.

  Some of them had laid on food and drink in the village hall after the interment. The cakes and tarts were all home-made, the tablecloths hand embroidered, brought out to honour Mary Heywood. Even the china was Sunday best. Molly noted it all, and knew her mother would have been very touched.

  One by one, people came up to her and offered a hug or a loving little anecdote about her mother. Every one of them said how proud Mary had been of Molly. They also said how much they admired her for rescuing Petal.

  No one asked why Emily wasn’t there, and they didn’t comment on her father either. Maybe they would discuss them when they got home, or in the pub over the next few days, but Molly didn’t care about that. She’d laid her parents to rest, and her mother, at least, had gone with everyone remembering her for her kindness and warmth.

  Enoch Flowers even made her laugh. He’d put on a suit, which obviously passed in his eyes for ‘best’, but it was shiny with age, had mildew marks on the jacket and stank of it, too. He approached Molly to compliment her on getting justice for Cassie and rescuing Petal. He said Cassie would rest easy knowing she had such a good friend.

  ‘Yer ma was a kind soul, too,’ he said. ‘Many’s the time she slipped me a few rashers of bacon or a lump of cheese when the old man weren’t looking. She seemed to always know when I was skint. Now yer dad was a miserable bastard and no mistake. I can’t bring meself to lie about him just to cheer you. Wouldn’t be right, but you just make sure when you get the insurance money that you go over to his grave and pour a drop of whisky on it to thank him for sparing you the need to care for him when he was an old codger like me.’

  A little black humour was just the lift she needed, and she planted a thank-you kiss on his heavily lined cheek. ‘I like it when people say what they really mean,’ she told him. ‘That would’ve made Cassie laugh, too.’

  ‘You and young Walsh oughtter get married,’ he said, wagging a very grubby finger at her. ‘Plain as the nose on me face you was meant for each other. And why don’t you adopt little Petal and give her a good home? You’ll have some brass coming from the insurance and, besides, I know you’ve always had a soft spot for her.’

  George was just walking towards them, and he smiled because he’d heard what Enoch had said. As the old man moved away, George took her hand.

  ‘Sometimes old folk see things clearer than us,’ he said, still smiling. ‘And I know the only thing I want for Christmas is you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  May 1955

  ‘Ready?’ Ted Bridgenorth asked as he opened the door of the limousine and reached in to take the wedding bouquet of pale-pink roses from Molly.

  ‘Willing, and able, too,’ she laughed, lowering her feet to the ground, then, scooping up the skirt and train of her dress, she stood up.

  It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. St Barnaby’s in Sawbridge was a pretty eleventh-century church, but it looked even prettier than usual as, today, the churchyard cherry trees were a mass of pink blossom. On either side of the path to the lychgate stately white tulips pushed through a mass of dark-blue forget-me-nots.

  Petal was waiting at the lychgate with Evelyn Bridgenorth and Dilys, hopping from one foot to the other in excitement at being Molly’s smaller bridesmaid. She looked a picture in a duck-egg-blue satin dress and with a garland of white rosebuds in her curly, dark hair. Dilys’s dress was the same colour and style, except it had a scoop neck rather than the high one Petal’s had.

  ‘I’ll lift your train until we get to the church porch,’ Ted said, bending to gather it up. ‘We don’t want it sweeping the path and taking leaves and God knows what into the church.’

  ‘I hope George hasn’t changed his mind and fled,’ Molly said with a wide smile, knowing that would be impossible.

  Ted laughed. ‘I think there would be a posse at the gate ready to turn us away if that were the case.’

  ‘There’s still time to change your mind and let me marry George,’ Dilys joked.

  ‘I believe in sharing with friends,’ said Molly, ‘but I wouldn’t go that far, not even for you. But his brother, Harry, is available still!’

  Evelyn arranged Molly’s train at the church porch and put the end of it in Petal’s hands.

  ‘Now, don’t forget you put it down when Molly reaches the altar, where George will be waiting. Uncle Ted will take his place alongside Harry, the best man, ready to give Molly away. You take her flowers and take a couple of steps back to stand in the aisle, alongside Dilys, like the very important person you are!’

  When Molly heard the church organ begin to play the Wedding March she turned her head and blew a kiss to Petal, who had a smile almost as wide as the River Avon. Evelyn nipped past her and into the church, and Ted crooked his arm and smiled. ‘Shall we go, Miss Heywood? Your last few steps with that name.’

  Nothing had ever felt so right. To be in the church which had been such a major part of her childhood with George, the boy who had held her hand on her first day at school, waiting for her at the altar rail.

  He had proposed to her on Christmas Eve, and he’d done it properly and reverently, getting down on one knee outside the church, just as they were going in to the midnight service. He had even bought a ring, a small sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds and, amazingly, it fitted perfectly.

  All through the service he had kept reaching for her hand and smiling. It wasn’t possible to erase the sadness of her parents’ deaths entirely, but it went an awfully long way towards it.

  It was a lovely Christmas, the best she’d ever known. The Walshes were a lively, warm family, and they were anxious to draw her in with them and keep her for ever. After so many dreary Christmas days with her own parents, her father carping about everything and her mother afraid to laugh or agree with anything Molly said, it was like soothing ointment on a wound.

  Now, finally, they were to be married.

  When the vicar asked the groom to lift Molly’s veil, George felt his heart swelling up and becoming tight in his chest because Molly looked so lovely. He had always thought of her as the prettiest girl in Sawbridge but, in her ivory satin dress, she looked simply beautiful. Her skin was radiant, her hair fixed up in some kind of topknot with her veil but with little curls escaping onto her pink cheeks. And those beautiful blue eyes were fixed on him as if he were a god.

  The church was packed. It was, after all, the wedding that even the most cynical people in the village had wanted to take place.

  Earlier today, George’s father had given his opinion about the impending marriage. ‘Son, if I’d been asked to pick the right girl for you, Molly would have been my first and only choice. She’s got a mind, a caring heart, a ton of patience and a pretty face. You belong together.’

  George might have always believed she was the girl for him, but it had been a long road and, even after the engagement, there had still been hurdles in the way.

  Miss Gribble was hanged on 2 January. The newspapers had a field day with it, rehashing every last bit of information about her, Christabel, Sylvia and Molly, and plenty of newer, juicy stuff that had surfaced during the trial.

  Molly was struggling enough with all the dreadful memories it brought back, and she wasn’t prepared for all the extra gossip and speculation in the village. It got to the point where she couldn’t leave the house without someone accosting her. And these people often grew indignant and quite nasty when she said she had nothing to say about it.

  Things got so bad she opted to go back to work in Rye. She used the excuse that she needed to work, b
ut George knew it was more because she was afraid Petal might be having the same difficulties.

  He understood. It was quite feasible that Petal might get to hear things that would upset her, and Molly could explain things in a way a little girl would understand. Another reason to leave Sawbridge was the burnt-out shop; each time Molly passed, it was an unwanted memory of how her parents had died.

  George had swallowed his disappointment, agreed she should go and put in for his sergeant’s exam, which he’d been talking about taking for over a year. Without Molly in the house he had no distractions from studying for the exam, and one weekend in four he drove his motorbike down to see her.

  One loose end about Cassie was finally stitched up during that time – the question of why she had gone to Bristol every Thursday and where she had got her money from. An elderly gentleman called Thomas Woods had rung the Sawbridge police station just after Miss Gribble was sentenced.

  ‘I should’ve come forward before,’ he said to the desk sergeant. ‘I didn’t because I thought my friendship with Cassandra would be misinterpreted. I am almost completely blind, and she came to read to me, through a librarian in Bristol library. She was a real treasure. She not only read to me but wrote letters for me, did a bit of cleaning and became a dear friend, because she loved books as much as I do. I paid her well because I valued her.

  ‘A friend who had watched Miss Gribble’s trial closely told me that the defence barrister had implied that Cassandra’s income had come from immoral earnings. It was then that I felt I had to put the record straight. No woman should be wrongly accused of such a thing, especially when that woman was as kind and intelligent as Cassandra was.’

  That last piece of the jigsaw meant a great deal to Molly. It rounded everything off; all her questions had been answered. It was another good thing she could tell Petal about, and perhaps they could even go to see Mr Woods one day.

  That last mystery about Cassie might have been cleared up, but George found himself thinking that the situation he and Molly were in, being so far apart, would never change. He had begun to think that the journey would seem to grow longer each time and leaving her ever more painful. Yet it did change. He passed his sergeant’s exam and shortly afterwards was offered a posting in Hastings, just a bus ride from Rye.