Текст книги "Without a Trace"

Автор книги: Lesley Pearse

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

‘Maybe, but if you’re asked you’ve only got to say your friend is in the Church Army – that’s not bad company. But forget about it, Molly. Everyone knows Miss Stow is nasty to anyone who shines too brightly.’

‘I’ll try to be especially nice to her in future.’ Molly laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll keep going on about wanting to work in the Fashion Department so she feels less threatened.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the week before Christmas, Oxford Street and Regent Street were congested with shoppers from nine in the morning until closing time. Yet even after that, until ten or eleven at night, there were still people thronging the pavements to see the Christmas lights and gaze into the beautiful and brightly lit shop-window displays.

Molly was no stranger to being rushed off her feet at Christmas. Back in her father’s shop at previous Christmases, sometimes it had seemed as if people were afraid they’d starve during the two days the shop would be closed.

Bourne & Hollingsworth, though, was much busier than she could ever have imagined, and she was astounded at how much money some people were spending. She and her sister had only ever had one present each from their parents, and a filled stocking from Santa Claus, the latter being mainly stuffed with cheap things like crayons, colouring books, a few nuts, sweets and a tangerine. But shoppers in London had long lists of things they were going to buy, and the cost seemed almost unimportant.

Every male customer wanted advice on which pair of gloves to buy his wife, mother or sister, yet few knew what size the recipients were. Women customers were more decisive and usually chose more utilitarian gloves, not the fancy red suede ones or those in white kidskin. Yet the Christmas spirit seemed to be in everyone, as they were mostly genial and patient, even when they had to wait a long time to be served.

Molly had been as excited as any six-year-old when the legendary lights in Oxford Street and Regent Street, which she’d always wanted to see, were switched on at the end of November. Coming from a small village where the only Christmas lights she’d ever seen were those on the tree in the village hall, to her, London’s lights were like a glimpse of Fairyland.

Her delight grew as the display team at Bourne & Hollingsworth put lights and decorations up in the store, too. Each day, as Christmas inched closer and closer, there was a gradually increasing excitement in the air; people smiled and laughed more as they chose gifts or bought clothes to wear for Christmas parties. Molly got a warm feeling inside each time someone wished her a Merry Christmas, and when the Salvation Army band played carols right outside the store she got a lump in her throat.

Aided and abetted by Dilys, Molly had dared to buy the kind of dress for the staff party that, at home, would be unthinkable. It was red shantung with a low neck, a very full skirt and a wide, waist-clinching belt. Her father would have claimed she looked like a harlot, but after a few months in London she no longer cared about his opinion. The party was to be held on the evening of the twenty-third because many of the staff would be going home to their families after the shop closed on Christmas Eve.

As Christmas Eve fell on a Friday this year, most of the staff were taking advantage of the three-day holiday to do this. But both Molly and Dilys were staying on at the hostel. They told anyone that asked them why they weren’t going home that a very long train journey after a full day at work was too much for them, but of course that wasn’t the real reason they were staying in London.

In the past four months, the girls had become close enough for Molly to tell Dilys about her bullying father; Dilys had confided that hers was a drunkard and that her home in Cardiff was a slum. Admitting to each other that they hadn’t come from a happy family when so many of the other girls boasted about how wonderful theirs were was liberating, and it bound them even more tightly together.

After telling each other about awful Christmases they’d had in the past, they resolved that this one would be wonderful. They hung paper chains up in their room, filled a stocking for each other with cheap little things, and they both had new dresses. There was also far more going on in London than there ever would be back home.

After the shop closed on Christmas Eve it was the tradition that everyone staying on at Warwickshire House would go down to Trafalgar Square for the carol service that was held around the huge Christmas tree. This was always followed by a pub crawl back, with a drink taken in every pub they passed.

Christmas dinner was cooked by the few kitchen staff staying on and, afterwards, everyone played party games. On Boxing Day, the Empire would be open, and that promised to be a great evening as, a fortnight ago, the girls had met Frank and Robert, two men from Notting Hill who they really liked, and they’d arranged to meet them again on Boxing Day. Dilys had said gloomily that they’d probably forgotten her and Molly already, but Molly had sensed that both men were pretty taken with the girls and that they would be there.

Molly was just thinking about the staff party the next evening and how she’d look in her new dress when Dilys stopped at the glove counter on the way back from a late lunch break.

‘Pst!’ she hissed, to get Molly’s attention, then pretended to be studying a display of gloves tumbling out of a small basket.

Molly sidled nearer, opening a drawer beneath the counter and pretending to look in it. ‘What is it?’ she asked, concerned that they would be told off if they were seen chatting.

‘I just saw Miss Stow and Mr Hardcraft waiting for the lift together. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but they were talking, heads close together, and looked back in your direction before getting in the lift.’

‘So what?’ Molly said. ‘I expect they were just looking back to check there wasn’t a queue of people waiting to be served.’

‘Maybe, but I got a funny feeling about it – thought I’d warn you. Must go now.’

Molly smiled fondly as her friend scuttled off to the canteen. She thought that Dilys read too many thrillers and so saw intrigue everywhere. In fact, Miss Stow had been much less demanding recently. Molly thought it was because she’d finally come to the conclusion that Molly could be trusted to put unsold gloves back in the right drawer, not be rude to customers and that she wasn’t after her job.

It became even busier after four that afternoon. Schools had broken up for Christmas the day before, and so there were hundreds of mothers with children who had come up west to see the lights. It had started to rain heavily, so they were all taking shelter in the shops, and many of the children were badly behaved, touching everything and racing around.

‘Where on earth is Miss Stow?’ Julie Drysdale, the other assistant in the glove department, asked Molly. ‘Look what those blessed kids have done to the counter!’ She pointed to the sticky fingerprints all over the glass counter.

‘They’d have done that even if she had been here,’ Molly said as she went to serve a lady in a stylish, red, wide-brimmed hat. ‘I love your hat, madam,’ she said to the lady. ‘We’ve got some gloves that would match it perfectly.’

‘I’m sure you have, but I’m after some sensible, woolly gloves for my sister, who lives right up in the north of Scotland,’ she replied, smiling at Molly.

Molly was just ringing up the sale when Mr Douglas, the security man, came along. Molly had never seen him on the shop floor before; he was always in his cubbyhole down by the staff entrance and exit. He was there to see that no one took anything out of the shop with them. Staff purchases went down to him, too; he had to make sure no one added anything to the bag after paying for their goods.

She finished serving the customer and wished her a Merry Christmas, then turned to Mr Douglas. ‘A pair of gloves for your wife?’ she asked with a wide smile. ‘I hope you know her size.’

‘No, Miss Heywood, I’ve come to fetch you,’ he said. ‘They want to talk to you upstairs.’

Molly looked at him. Staff were summoned upstairs to the personnel office for a variety of reasons, but the message usually came by telephone, or through the department manager. She’d never heard of anyone being escorted there by Mr Douglas.

‘Now, please,’ he said, more sharply.

Molly felt faintly sick as she went up in the lift, wondering what she could have done wrong. It was clear she’d done something but, apart from being five minutes late to the counter last Friday morning, she couldn’t think of anything. But would she really be hauled out at such a busy time for something so trivial?

A voice from inside the personnel office responded to Mr Douglas’s knock, telling him to come in. He didn’t go in, though, just put his head round the door to say he had Miss Heywood with him.

‘Go in.’ He nodded at Molly, his face cold and blank.

Molly went in to find Hawk Face, the woman who had been on the interview panel, sitting behind the desk. She knew her now as Miss Jackson, one of the directors of the company, but aside from occasionally seeing her walk through the store, she’d had no reason to speak to her.

‘Miss Heywood,’ she began, not even asking Molly to sit down. ‘It has been alleged that you have been putting extra goods which haven’t been paid for into customers’ bags. As I am quite sure you are in total command of your faculties, I have to assume the lucky recipients are friends or relatives of yours.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Molly frowned, not really understanding. ‘There must be some mistake. I have never done such a thing.’

‘But we have two independent witnesses who saw you do it.’

Molly felt her heart plummet. In a flash she guessed that the two so-called witnesses were Miss Stow and Mr Hardcraft, but why they should claim such a thing was a mystery to her.

‘They’re mistaken. I have never stolen anything in my life, and this is theft you’re talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is. Any item taken from the store without payment or permission is considered stolen. A cunning way of stealing, too, as you personally would never have the stolen goods on you.’

‘Then why didn’t the witnesses call Security when they saw it happening?’ Molly asked, but the shock of being accused of theft made her voice waver and her eyes prickle with tears.

‘The first time, you were given the benefit of the doubt, but after that you were watched and, of course, you did it again, and again.’

‘I did not,’ Molly said with indignation. ‘Whoever told you this is a liar and a troublemaker. Get them in here, and they can say it to my face. I don’t have any friends or relatives in London to give anything to. The only people I know are members of staff.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Hawk Face said, her dark eyes flashing with steel. ‘I’ve heard you have friends in Whitechapel.’

Molly was astounded. ‘I know one person there, and she is a Sister in the Church Army,’ she retorted angrily. ‘And she’s a frail old lady in a wheelchair. She can’t even go out alone, much less come up to the West End so I can pass stolen gloves to her.’

‘Come now! Do you really expect me to believe she is the only friend you have?’

‘I have friends back home in Somerset.’ Molly was aware that her voice was rising in her agitation, but she tried to control it. ‘But the only friends I have in London are people who work here and live in Warwickshire House.’

‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, Miss Heywood. Or deny something which senior and trusted staff members have reported. I want you to go to Warwickshire House now, pack your suitcase and leave. You may count yourself very lucky we are not calling the police.’

‘You aren’t calling the police because you have no proof or evidence of theft,’ Molly said, wanting to scream and stamp her feet at the injustice of it, but she wasn’t the kind to do that. ‘You only have the word of a spiteful spinster who doesn’t like me because I’m popular with everyone else. And I expect she’s influenced Mr Hardcraft into believing her story about me.’

Miss Jackson sat back in her chair, putting her two hands together to make a church spire, and looked at Molly over them, a reflective expression on her face.

‘Go quietly now, or I will call the police,’ she said after a second or two. ‘Aside from everyone seeing you taken away to the police station, you are likely to get a prison sentence and a police record. So just be grateful that I am being so lenient.’

She got to her feet, picked a brown envelope up from her desk and handed it to Molly. ‘Your wages, made up till the end of the week. But I want you out of the store now.’

‘I didn’t do this,’ Molly pleaded. She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. ‘Please believe me, Miss Jackson. I promise on all that’s holy that I have never given any goods to anyone, or taken them for myself. This is an act of spite by Miss Stow because she is jealous of me. I love working here. I wouldn’t jeopardize my job by doing such a thing.’

‘Go now,’ the older woman said, and her voice was as cold as a January morning. ‘Mr Douglas is waiting to escort you from the premises, both from here and from the staff hostel.’

CHAPTER NINE

Molly caught hold of Mr Douglas’s sleeve as he ushered her out of the staff entrance and began walking her to the hostel.

‘I didn’t do this,’ she pleaded with him. ‘How can they throw me out of my job and home without any proof that I did anything wrong?’

He brushed her hand away from his jacket, his face cold and stern. ‘If the floor walker and the head of department say you did it, then that’s proof enough for me. I see thieves almost every day; they always deny their guilt. Now come along. It’s my job to oversee you as you pack your belongings and to escort you from the hostel.’

‘I haven’t got anywhere to go,’ Molly said, and the tears she’d tried to control spilled over and cascaded down her cheeks.

‘No good blubbing,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’ve got your wages. Go home to your folks.’

Twenty minutes later Mr Douglas stood with his arms crossed, resolutely unmoved by her tears as she packed her clothes into her suitcase. She found his manner even more distressing because he’d always been so nice to her before; they’d often shared a little light-hearted banter at the staff door. She couldn’t believe that he would turn against her like this.

What was she to do? She couldn’t go home, not when she’d told her father she’d never come back while he was alive. She couldn’t land herself on George and his family at Christmas either, not without being invited, and they weren’t even on the telephone so she couldn’t try sounding them out. And even if she had a fairy godmother living in the village, one who would welcome her with open arms and no strings attached, Molly would have to admit that she’d lost her job. The reason would soon come out and, before she could even say ‘dismissed’, it would be right round the village. No one would believe that she hadn’t done something bad.

Once she’d got everything into her suitcase, she looked pleadingly at Mr Douglas. ‘Please may I leave a note for Dilys?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ he said gruffly. ‘The management doesn’t hold with thieves fraternizing with employees. Pick up that case and get going.’

‘Dilys will be upset if I’m gone without her knowing why,’ she pleaded.

‘She will know why. All the staff will be told. It encourages them to stay honest.’

Molly put her hands over her face in despair to imagine all the girls she’d come to know and like thinking she was a thief. How could this have happened? She had never done anything wrong.

Yet from deep inside her indignation rose up. ‘What about innocent until proved guilty?’ she snapped at the security man. ‘If Miss Stow or Mr Hardcraft had really seen me slipping something to someone, as they claim they did, why didn’t they stop that person?’ Her voice rose in her anger and she moved closer to the man to drive her point home.

‘I haven’t even heard a description of this person! Not even whether it was a man or a woman. But then they couldn’t describe them, or stop them, because they just don’t exist. It’s all fantasy, malicious at that. If they could do this to me, they’re probably robbing the store blind between them. Have you thought of that?’

If her words meant anything to him, he didn’t show it. His face was as cold and hard as granite. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said and, putting his hand in the small of her back, he nudged her towards the door.

She took one last look at the room she’d been so happy in. Dilys’s somewhat bedraggled poster of Gone with the Wind, and the photograph of Frank Sinatra she used to kiss goodnight. The paper chains they’d made together, looped right round the room, the two bulging felt stockings hanging from the knobs on the wardrobe.

So many stories from the past traded in this room; a few tears, but far more laughter. Now Dilys would be alone for Christmas, thinking her best friend was a thief.

Mr Douglas shut the front door of Warwickshire House the second she was over the threshold and, as the cold wind hit Molly’s face, the enormity of her situation hit her, too. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve; she was jobless and homeless. What’s more, it would be difficult to get another job after Christmas without a reference from Bourne & Hollingsworth.

Part of her wanted to hang around and see Dilys to tell her what had happened. But all the staff came back together in big groups, and if they’d already been told what she was supposed to have done, they would probably be as nasty as Mr Douglas had been. Dilys might even believe it was true. After all, she’d been the one warning her that something was afoot.

Molly made her way towards Euston, rather than going the other way, which might mean running into someone from the store. Her suitcase was much heavier than when she had first came to London, because she’d bought new clothes and shoes. The weight of it and the need to sit down and think about what she was going to do made her go into a café and order a cup of tea.

Once she had her tea and an iced bun, she counted her money, including the wages she’d been given today. They’d paid her for two weeks, as she’d worked a week in hand when she had first arrived in London, and along with what she already had in her purse, she had three pounds, four shillings and sixpence. But that was all: no savings, nothing more.

If Miss Grady at the Braemar would give her a room, she had enough money for roughly five nights. Maybe she could get a job in one of the restaurants around Paddington?

But what if she couldn’t? Once her money ran out, she’d be destitute, like the men who slept on the park benches down on the Embankment.

A little later, she telephoned the Braemar from a telephone box, and Miss Grady answered.

‘I’m very sorry, Miss Heywood,’ she replied to Molly’s request for a room, ‘I’m full to bursting. So many people come to London at Christmas to see relatives, it’s often my busiest time of the year. But aren’t you going home?’

There was something guarded in Miss Grady’s voice, as if she suspected Molly was in difficulties and didn’t want to hear about it for fear of being expected to help. So Molly just said she’d left her job and was going on to a new one in the New Year. Even as she said it, she wondered how many more lies she was going to be forced to tell in the coming days.

Miss Grady didn’t suggest another hotel, and Molly was so demoralized that she didn’t ask.

The streets around Euston were becoming empty now that people had left their offices and all the shops had closed. She tried two guest houses close to the station, but they were full up, like the Braemar, but with even less friendly owners, who both said they couldn’t recommend anywhere else.

She walked back down Tottenham Court Road, because it felt safer to be amongst people.

Since her first day of working in London she had completely lost her fear of the big city, but that fear came back now. Suddenly, everyone looked tight-lipped, cold-eyed, elbowing their way aggressively through the crowds. Her case was heavy, she was cold and hungry and she was fighting back tears.

As she reached the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, she looked right and saw that Oxford Street was still packed with people who had come into town to see the Christmas lights. They didn’t have that mean and aggressive look she’d observed around Euston, but somehow their happiness and delight made her plight seem even more desperate.

Married couples arm in arm, a serenity in their expressions that said they expected this Christmas would be the best since before the war, because so many foodstuffs, including sweets, had come off ration. Sweethearts, hand in hand, looking at each other with tender smiles; old people huddled together for warmth, perhaps afraid this would be the last time they’d see the lights. And there were so many families, some of their children sagging with weariness on their father’s shoulders, others jumping up and down with the excitement of being out so late, but all gazing up at the lights with awe.

She remembered, when she and Emily were little, how excited they used to get as Christmas approached, making paper chains, sewing needle cases or making calendars for Christmas presents. If her parents had brought them to London to see the lights they would have been delirious with joy.

That same kind of joy was everywhere she looked, and it was unbearable when she didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. Unable to stand another moment of it, she turned off Oxford Street towards Soho.

When she had first got here, people had delighted in telling her lurid tales about Soho. It was supposed to be a dangerous haunt of prostitutes and gangsters. But from what Molly had read in newspapers and travel guides, it also had the best night clubs and restaurants in London. She and Dilys had loved walking through it and, though they certainly sensed an element of menace in some parts, perhaps because of the neglected old buildings and unsavoury smells, their overall impression was that Soho was just a melting pot of people from all walks of life and of many different nationalities. They had observed elegant, aristocratic women in evening dress with their equally elegant male escorts sharing the grubby pavements with vagrants, snotty-nosed urchins and the kind of rough-looking women in aprons and scarves, fastened turban-style, that her mother had always called ‘fishwives’. If there were prostitutes working here, then they weren’t out on the streets wearing the kind of tight skirts and clingy sweaters Molly imagined such women wore. Dilys had always joked that maybe streetwalkers were like vampires, and they had to wait for the midnight hour to come out.

Molly was really hungry now; she hadn’t eaten anything except a bun since noon. Her feet hurt, she thought a blister was coming up on her heel, her arms throbbed with carrying her case and she was icy cold. She could have stood it if she had been on the way to a warm place with a bed for the night but, knowing that the reality was a bench on the Embankment, she began to cry.

Wiping her eyes on her coat sleeve, she tried to sniff back the tears, but it was no good; she was too desolate to control her emotions, and she put her suitcase down, turned towards a shop window with a display of old books and let the tears fall.

‘Is that bookshop so tragic it makes you cry?’

Molly’s head jerked round on hearing the man’s voice. Its owner was about thirty, stocky, with a round, very pink face, a receding hairline. He was wearing a camel coat with a velvet collar and looked concerned for her.

‘What on earth could make you cry that hard?’ he asked.

‘I’m tired, hungry and cold,’ she blurted out. ‘And I’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘Is that so?’ he said, looking at her hard for a moment or two as if weighing up whether she was conning him. Then he smiled. ‘Well, suppose we sort a couple of those things out by getting something to eat in a warm café, and then you can tell me why you’ve got nowhere to go.’

Her mother had told her a hundred times not to talk to strangers, but as she had found out today that people who know you well can be treacherous, too, her mother’s advice seemed superfluous. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said in a small voice, and dabbed at her eyes with an already damp hanky.

‘I’m Seb,’ he said. ‘That’s short for Sebastian, but no one but my granny calls me that. What’s your name?’

‘Molly,’ she said, giving him a watery smile. ‘Molly Heywood.’

‘Well, Molly Heywood,’ he said, bending to pick up her case, ‘they do a good fish and chips just down here, and you can tell me your troubles while you eat.’

Five minutes later, sitting in a wooden booth at the back of a fish-and-chip shop, Molly felt more hopeful. It was very warm in the café, the fish and chips would be in front of her in just a few minutes and her cup of tea was just as she liked it: strong and very sweet. She liked Seb, too; he had a forthright manner, a lovely speaking voice and he was kind and a good listener. ‘So why did they sack you?’ he asked.

As Molly explained the reason and how humiliated she felt, she began to cry again. ‘As God is my judge, I didn’t let anyone have anything without paying. I don’t know anyone in London aside from the other staff at Bourne & Hollingsworth, so who would I give stuff to?’

‘That is really appalling,’ he said, and took her two hands in his and squeezed them. ‘But I have a friend who works in Personnel. I could contact them for you tomorrow and find out the legal position. I’m sure you have to catch staff red-handed to be able to dismiss them. You might be entitled to compensation, or at least your job back.’

He sounded so confident and knowledgeable that Molly’s spirits soared. The fish and chips were brought to them then, and she ate hungrily.

‘Can you recommend a cheap guest house for a few nights?’ she asked him, explaining how she’d called the Braemar already and it had been full.

‘I can do better than that,’ he said. ‘I know some girls living in a flat just down the road from here. They’re all around your age and they’ll be happy to put you up for a while. They might be able to help you get a new job, too, if you can’t go back to the shop.’

‘Really! You’d do that for me?’ she gasped.

He smiled and patted her hand. ‘I never could resist a damsel in distress. And you’ve been treated very badly.’

As Molly polished off the last of her fish and chips she felt reassured that everything would work out fine. If she could get a job right after Christmas, and was able to pay rent, maybe these friends of Seb’s would let her stay on with them permanently.

Although the street lighting in Greek Street was poor, Molly’s first thought when Seb pointed out the flat, which was above a barber’s shop, was that if the girls let her stay, her first job would be to clean the windows. Even in the dark she could see they were filthy.

A door beside the barber’s was open, revealing a litter-strewn, bare wood staircase and peeling distemper on the walls.

‘I know it looks a bit rough,’ Seb said, ‘but the landlord is too mean to get it smartened up. He claims the rent is too low to make it worth his while.’

‘All of London is a bit rundown after the war,’ she said. ‘I’m quite used to it now.’

He led her up two flights of stairs, past three or four closed doors, and then knocked on one very battered one to the front of the building. It was opened by a dark-haired woman of perhaps forty. She was wearing a grubby pink dressing gown and had curlers in her hair.

‘Hullo, Seb. What brings you round? If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve baked a bleedin’ cake,’ she said. Her accent was pure cockney and her smile was bright.

‘I found this young lady crying in the street; she’s lost her job and has nowhere to go,’ he said, half turning towards Molly. ‘This is my friend Dora, and, knowing how kind she is, I was certain she’d give you a bed for a few nights.’

‘Oh, you poor love!’ Dora exclaimed, taking a couple of steps nearer to Molly, her dark eyes soft with concern. ‘You come on in and we’ll get you sorted. I got a spare bed up top as it happens, ’cos Jackie went home for Christmas.’

‘I don’t want to impose,’ Molly said. She had a lump in her throat at this unexpected kindness. ‘I could give you a bit of money.’

‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Dora said. ‘Now, come on in. The place is a mess, but it’s warm and homely.’

Dora poured Molly a glass of sherry, saying it would warm her up and make her sleep well. Molly didn’t really like sherry, but she was too polite to say so. As she sipped it, she surveyed the room.

Dora had been right in saying it was a mess. It was like Paddy’s market, with clothes, make-up and unwashed dishes all over the place. The double bed wasn’t even made but, clearly, Dora felt embarrassed by it and quickly pulled up the covers and smoothed out the pink satin bedspread.

‘Some days, you just can’t seem to get into a routine,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I bet you’re a real tidy person, Molly?’

‘Not at all,’ Molly said diplomatically, though in fact she was. She’d had to be: clutter and slovenliness were things her father had ranted about.

The warmth from the gas fire was making Molly feel sleepy. Dora and Seb were talking about noise from a club nearby; they said the music went on till four in the morning.

‘You, my girl, are ready for bed,’ Dora said, touching Molly’s shoulder to rouse her. ‘I’ll show you up there now. Sleep’s a great healer. Nothing will look so bad tomorrow.’