Текст книги "Without a Trace"

Автор книги: Lesley Pearse

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Reading through Cassie’s journal again, Molly realized that her friend had spoken of Rye as a favourite place to visit, not as if she lived there. One entry said, ‘Caught the early bus to Rye.’ To Molly, this implied that Cassie had travelled from an isolated village with a limited bus service. She studied a bus timetable and a map of the area and found that buses going to and from Hastings were regular, as they were on the route to Tenterden. So, in all likelihood, Cassie came from somewhere on the marshes between Rye and Hythe. As she didn’t mention the sea or beaches, Molly felt it must be inland, perhaps one of the tiny villages like Brookland, Old Romney or Ivychurch.

On her afternoons off Molly usually found somewhere new to ask about her friend and show the photographs. She’d already called at the library, and at the doctor’s and dental surgeries in Rye, but she’d drawn a blank at all of them. No one recognized Cassie.

Now that spring had arrived, Molly was looking forward to exploring the surrounding countryside and villages on her afternoons off, and she thought the best way to do it was by bicycle, as the land was flat as far as the eye could see. Albert, the old man who lit the fires, had told her there were a couple of ladies’ bicycles in the shed out in the backyard. Apparently, they were kept for the use of guests. All she had to do was check if it was all right for her to borrow one.

There was just one person who thought he might have seen Cassie before, and that was Ernest.

He’d squinted at the photograph for some time. ‘Her face is familiar,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but I’ve never met anyone called Cassandra, or Cassie. Maybe she was someone who came in a few times when I first got here five years ago. I don’t think it could’ve been more recent.’

‘She’s dead now,’ Molly told him, quickly telling him the story and that Petal was still missing. ‘I want to try and find her family. If she did come from somewhere around here, surely someone would remember a black baby.’

Ernest agreed that they would and said he would ask his wife because, as a teacher, she had contact with people from a huge radius around Rye. ‘Usually, she doesn’t forget anyone,’ he said with a proud smile. ‘We’ll be out together, and someone she taught twenty years ago will come up to her. She always remembers them, not just their name but the things they were good at.’

‘Then I hope she might help me with this,’ Molly said. ‘Local knowledge is invaluable.’

But, for now, seeing Charley was more important than questioning people about Cassie. She sensed from the tone of his letters that he was really serious about her, even if he hadn’t actually said anything to confirm that. She was serious about him, too: he was the last thing she thought about before dropping off to sleep at night and her first thought in the morning. She wished there was another girl of her age working at the George, someone she could talk about such things to, but all the female staff were in their mid-thirties or older, all married women with kids, and, although they were warm and friendly, they were hardly the kind she could have a heart to heart with about falling in love.

In women’s magazines and films love was always depicted as a kind of sickness, where the victim couldn’t eat, sleep or function normally. Molly, however, was sleeping like a top, eating like a pig, because the food in the George was so good, and, if anything, she was functioning on a day-to-day basis more efficiently than she ever had. It was true that Charley was never far from her mind – her stomach did a little flip every time she thought about his kisses – and she really missed seeing him all the time, as she had in Whitechapel. But was that love? Or just an infatuation that would fizzle out one day?

‘You’re looking very nice today, Molly,’ Mr Bridgenorth said on Saturday morning. ‘I take it your young man is coming to take you out?’

Molly had been leaving the staff room after eating breakfast when she ran into him in the corridor.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with a broad smile. She’d washed her hair the night before and slept with it plaited, so it was wavy, and she was wearing a new turquoise-and-white dress with a full skirt and three-quarter-length sleeves.

‘Yes, Charley is coming to take me out,’ Molly said. ‘We’re going for a picnic. It’s such a lovely day we might even paddle in the sea. But can I do anything for you? Were you looking for something, or someone?’

‘Yes, you, Molly. I wanted to tell you that, because Ernest thought your friend looked familiar, I looked through our records to see if a Cassandra March ever worked here. She didn’t, I’m afraid. Well, not if that was her real name.

‘But while she was on my mind I suddenly recalled hearing some gossip in the bar about a young unmarried woman out on the marsh having a mixed race baby. I think this was back in 1948, though I can’t be certain. All I really remember is that it was something of a mystery because no one had seen the child except the housekeeper.’

‘They must have had money, then, if there was a housekeeper!’ Molly said.

‘Some, I suppose,’ Mr Bridgenorth replied. ‘Probably a family with a sizable house and live-in help. The housekeeper might even have been a relative. As I recall, it was said there were mental problems in the family.’

‘Cassie didn’t have any mental problems,’ Molly said with a touch of indignation. ‘She was about the brightest person I ever met.’

‘People tend to say that about almost anyone who lives out on the marshes. They say it’s down to the wind.’

‘How did anyone know the baby was black, or even if there really was a baby if they hadn’t seen it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mr Bridgenorth shrugged. ‘But my experience of gossip is that there’s always some truth in it. Maybe the housekeeper talked. In any case, whether or not it’s true, that girl’s name definitely wasn’t Cassandra, it was something ordinary – Carol, Susan, something like that – and the family name is Coleman.’

‘Well, that’s a good start,’ Molly said, suddenly feeling hopeful now she had a name to go on.

‘I’m not sure it is, Molly,’ he said doubtfully. ‘You see, I’ve talked this over with Ernest and, after some discussion with his wife, who, as you know, is a teacher, he came up with more detail about the family. The grandfather was a doctor, and his daughter married a man called Reginald Coleman. Rumour had it that the parents disapproved of him. Anyway, he enlisted in the war and never came back. Ernest says he was reported missing, presumed dead, but there were whispers that he had deserted because he had a woman in France.’

‘Goodness me!’ Molly gasped. ‘So where is this house?’

‘A couple of miles from Brookland, very isolated, not another house near it.’

‘So why did no one around here respond when there were pictures of Petal and Cassie in the newspapers and they were asking for information?’ Molly asked. ‘Surely if Ernest thought she looked familiar, other people would recognize her, too?’

‘Don’t you think it’s all to do with place?’ he asked. ‘If a body had turned up down the road here, everyone would be talking about who had gone missing, who it looked like. But a girl found dead some hundred and fifty miles away doesn’t have the same impact. The newspaper gets wrapped round fish and chips and it’s forgotten.’

‘I suppose that’s it.’ Molly sighed. ‘But thank you for all that information. I’ll mull it over and decide what to do.’

Mr Bridgenorth smiled. ‘Forget it for now and have a lovely time with your young man. I must get off and do some work now.’

An hour or so later, as Molly was packing a bag with the picnic she’d made, Trudy, one of the cleaners, called out to Molly, ‘Your bloke’s in reception. Lovely smile he’s got!’

Molly’s heart flipped with excitement and she hurried from the kitchen to meet him.

Trudy was right, Charley did have a lovely smile, and it seemed even wider and warmer than she remembered. ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said, and swept her into his arms.

‘Not here,’ she whispered, blushing furiously, as she knew Trudy and Anne, the receptionist, were peeping round the door to watch. ‘I’ve made us a picnic!’ She picked up the straw basket she’d dropped on the floor just before he hugged her.

‘You look good enough to eat yourself,’ he said and, taking the basket in one hand, and hers in the other, he led her outside.

‘Sorry it’s only a van.’ He waved towards a small blue van with ‘JACK SPOT GARAGE’ stencilled on the side. ‘I wanted to come in a Rolls Royce but, strangely enough, none of my pals have got one.’

Molly laughed. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d turned up in a horse and cart.

She directed him away from the hotel, down the hill to the main road, and from there to Rye Harbour, on the way telling him the rumours Mr Bridgenorth had heard about a girl with a black baby.

Charley looked a bit apprehensive. ‘I can’t help thinking it would be better to leave well alone,’ he said. ‘The chances are it’s not your friend’s family and, if it was and Cassie left after some serious falling out, then you’ll only be stirring up muddy water.’

‘If it is her family, I just want to tell them about Petal and hope they’ll push the police to do more.’

‘Well, just be careful how you approach them, that’s all I’m saying. If they didn’t want to know the baby when she was born, they aren’t likely to care that much about what happened to her. And some families don’t like outsiders poking their nose in,’ he said.

Molly was a bit hurt and surprised by his attitude. She’d expected him to be behind her one hundred per cent.

‘We have to leave the van here and walk the rest of the way,’ she said a little sharply as they drove into Rye Harbour. Charley glanced sideways at her, then pulled over on to a scrap of waste ground.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’m afraid you’ll get yourself into hot water. Just let me kiss you and make it up to you.’

Molly wasn’t able to stay cross with him and allowed herself to be drawn into his arms.

The kiss was so sweet, and his tongue flickered into her mouth, making her heart beat faster and the outside world disappear.

‘I won’t be held responsible for what happens if we stay in this van,’ he murmured some twenty minutes later as he rained kisses on her neck, ‘so we’d better get out.’

It was just the best of days, warm and sunny with only the lightest breeze, and the way Charley was with her – the ready smile, the gentle caresses and his interest in her day-to-day working life – made her feel so very special. They ate their picnic on a grassy bank inside Camber Castle, laughing about everything and anything.

The kissing and cuddling was wonderful, too. Their bodies felt so close it was as if they were one person. ‘I hate not seeing you every day,’ Charley whispered. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else this week but seeing you today.’

‘I’ve been the same,’ she told him. ‘And now you’re here I don’t want to let you go.’

‘It won’t be for ever,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I can swing getting work in Ashford once I’ve passed my exam. I’ve been putting the word around that I want to move this way.’

‘I still wouldn’t be able to see you that much,’ she reminded him. ‘I have to work quite a lot of evenings and weekends.’

‘Then we’d better get married,’ he said.

Molly didn’t know whether he was joking or serious, as he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t enlarge on it further. She didn’t feel able to ask, though, in case he thought she’d taken him too seriously, so she changed the subject.

They walked on later to Winchelsea Beach and then on to Winchelsea, an ancient and pretty little town perched on a hill, as Rye was. They wandered around chatting and admiring all the old houses, then had tea and cake in a tea shop.

‘There’s so much space down here,’ Charley said as they walked back along the road to Rye to pick up his van. ‘In London you always feel someone is breathing down your neck. My idea of heaven would be a little cottage with no close neighbours. To have three or four children and bring them up knowing they were safe playing on the marsh or riding their bikes.’

‘That sounds good to me too,’ said Molly.

He turned to her, put one finger under her chin and tilted her face up. ‘Then let’s make it happen. Will you marry me, Molly?’

She was thrown. For some reason, in his idea of heaven, although she liked it, it seemed like the woman was almost an afterthought.

‘Doesn’t telling a girl you love her come before a proposal?’ she asked.

‘That goes without saying,’ he said, looking surprised.

‘Well, it shouldn’t. It’s important.’

‘Of course I love you. I think I fell for you the moment I clapped eyes on you in the café.’

She liked his words, but not the tone in which he said them. It sounded slightly insincere.

They hadn’t said anything more about it, and when Charley said goodbye and drove off Molly was left feeling very confused. She had expected him to stay till at least ten, but he’d said he had to go at eight thirty, and she couldn’t help but think he had something more exciting planned back in London than sitting in a pub with her on a Saturday night. Then there was that odd proposal.

It hadn’t been mentioned again. They had kissed and cuddled in his van and things had got a bit heated. But he still didn’t tell her he loved her, or ask if she loved him.

Why hadn’t he?

Molly didn’t have any first-hand experience, but in books and films men spoke from the heart when they said such things. It had sounded like an excuse when Charley said he had to leave because he had to be up early for work in the morning. But if it was true he’d been asked to work on a Sunday, why hadn’t he mentioned it when he phoned on Friday evening?

She felt downcast. It had been a lovely day and he had seemed as happy to be with her as she was with him, until he’d said he had to go. But, now she came to think on it, he hadn’t talked about his own life at all, not today or ever, really. He spoke of the men he worked with, of jobs he’d had in the past, but he didn’t volunteer personal information about his everyday life.

Molly went in through the hotel’s back door, as there was less likelihood of her running into anyone and she couldn’t trust herself not to cry if she was asked about her day. Fortunately, she was able to slink unnoticed up the back stairs to her room. Once inside, she fell on the bed and cried.

There was something not right about Charley, but she didn’t know what. She knew he wasn’t only after sex like most men: he could easily have lured her into it today, but he hadn’t even tried.

Then there was the way he’d been about Cassie. On the face of it, he was just being protective, but she had a feeling that wasn’t all of it. Did he have something to hide, and so not want her making a scene about anything in case it turned a spotlight on him?

He couldn’t be married – no man would propose to another woman if he already had a wife. Or could he?

It seemed unlikely, but she couldn’t think of any other reason that might explain things. Yet when she thought of his broad smile when he’d met her this morning and his tender goodbye kiss she felt ashamed that she was doubting him. Maybe she was the odd one?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A few days after her day with Charley, Molly borrowed one of the hotel bicycles and rode out towards Brookland. She had been on breakfast and chambermaid duties and, as it was a warm, sunny day and she didn’t have to be back until seven to turn the beds down, she’d put on a blouse and some shorts and decided to explore.

The previous day she’d received a letter from Charley. He’d apologized for leaving so early and said the reason he hadn’t told her earlier in the day was because he was afraid it would spoil things. He also apologized for proposing. He said it had just come out and, although he did want to marry her, it was all too soon, so would she please forgive him.

She didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t like that he sounded so weak, but then she told herself that he was right, it was too soon to be talking of marriage and, today, she was trying to put it out of her head.

Being out in the fresh air, whizzing past orchards of apple and pear trees in full blossom, seeing lambs frolicking in the fields and feeling the sun warm on her face, arms and legs, she felt happy. Her mother had always said, ‘What will be, will be.’ And even though she’d found that little homily irritating in the past, today it seemed profound.

She stopped at the post office in Brookland to ask the way to the Colemans’ house.

‘You won’t get no reply,’ the postmistress said. ‘She don’t answer the door to no one.’

As the postmistress had a big, soft, motherly face, Molly didn’t think she was being deliberately obstructive.

‘Why’s that?’ she asked.

The postmistress put one finger to her forehead and made a screwing motion, the way people often did to imply someone was barmy. ‘She’s been that way for years now. I can’t remember how long it is since she came into the village or passed the time of day with anyone.’

‘Does she have a daughter?’

The postmistress looked surprised by the question. ‘Yes, she do, but she went away years ago.’

Molly took the picture of Cassie out of her knapsack. ‘Is this her?’ she asked.

The older woman looked at it carefully for what seemed like minutes. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said eventually. ‘She’s got a bit of a look of Sylvia, but I couldn’t say hand on heart that it’s her.’

‘Sylvia?’ Molly repeated. ‘Is that her daughter’s name?’

‘That’s right.’ The woman continued to look at the picture. ‘It does put me in mind of her, but there’s sommat wrong.’

‘Is it the hair?’ Molly asked. ‘I know you can’t see the real colour of this girl’s hair. It looks so dark in a black-and-white picture, but she dyed it red, you see. What if it was much fairer?’

‘Maybe that’s it. Sylvia had lovely hair – the colour of butter, it were.’

Molly had no idea of the natural colour of Cassie’s hair, but she felt she was getting somewhere. ‘Can you tell me how long ago it was that Sylvia left here? You see, I’m trying to find the family of this girl in the picture and I don’t want to be going to the wrong house.’

The woman sucked in her cheeks. ‘Must be nigh on six years ago now, though no one is exactly sure, because of the way Miss Gribble was and still is.’

‘Who’s Miss Gribble?’

‘The housekeeper. Local kids say she’s a witch, and she’s certainly disagreeable, tight-lipped as they come. Some folks round here think she’s the reason Reg never come back after the war and why Christabel went crazy.’

Molly was getting excited. ‘Look, the girl in the picture was my friend, and I knew her as Cassandra, Cassie for short. She was killed on Coronation Day and her little daughter went missing at the same time and has never been found. The police seem to have given up on the case, but I thought I’d try to find her family. Would you please tell me, did the girl you know as Sylvia have a black baby?’

The postmistress hesitated and her expression showed the conflict she was feeling. Molly guessed she had suddenly realized she’d already been indiscreet.

‘It’s okay, you can tell me,’ Molly reassured her. ‘I’m sure the family saw it as a disgrace and did their best to cover it up. But none of that matters now: a child is missing, maybe even dead. People must say what they know.’

‘I really don’t know anything.’ The postmistress shrugged her shoulders. ‘There was a story going around that Sylvia had a mixed race baby, but I always thought that was spite, because she were a bit wild and the family was so peculiar. I never really believed it. After all, where would Sylvia meet a black man around here? Besides, no one I know ever saw the baby, so there probably weren’t one.’

‘If Sylvia and Cassie were the same person, which I believe they were, then there really was a child, a little girl. Petal, she was called, and she was a lovely kid, bright as a button and a credit to her mother. Her grandmother may not have wanted her, she might send me away with a flea in my ear, but she ought to be told her daughter is dead and that her granddaughter is missing.’

‘Fair enough. Put that way, I suppose she ought to know.’ The postmistress looked rattled now. She was wringing her hands and bright red spots of colour had appeared on her cheeks. ‘I’ll give you the address, but it would be best if you wrote to Christabel Coleman rather than going there. She won’t open the door to you.’

‘Okay,’ Molly said, though she had every intention of going straight there. ‘I’m really grateful for your help, and I won’t tell anyone the information came from you.’

She rode away slowly from the post office, the address of the Colemans’ house in her pocket, mulling over what she’d been told. She wanted to believe she’d found out Cassie’s real name, and her home and family, but she had no proof at all that Sylvia Coleman was Cassandra March. What she ought to do was go straight to the police and get them to find out for certain. She could almost hear George lecturing her, saying that this wasn’t a job for amateurs.

But the police might take for ever to act, and Molly was desperate to know the truth. Besides, now, she wanted to see mad Christabel Coleman and the fearsome Miss Gribble.

It seemed that Cassie hadn’t spoken about her family for good reason. Who would want to admit that their mother was barmy? But even if Cassie’s mother was as mad as a hatter, she would never have expected her daughter to die young or her granddaughter to be taken away. So, however weird the family was, surely they’d want to help in finding the daughter’s missing child?

Mulberry House was only about three miles from the post office, but it took Molly some time to find it, as the postmistress hadn’t given her any directions. The entrance was down a small lane and a wall of thick, evergreen trees hid the house. It was only by pure chance that she noticed the faded sign by a large, rusting wrought-iron gate, and she got off her bike to peer through the rails.

The house was set back some hundred yards from the lane at the end of a drive that was overgrown with weeds and broken up in parts. The house was quite picturesque: mellow red brick, with fancy tall chimneys and lattice windows; Molly thought it must be over two hundred years old. Ivy covered most of it, including some of the windows, and, like the drive, it was neglected, with plants growing out of the gutters and roof.

It was obvious that neither house nor grounds had received any maintenance for years. What would had once been a lawn was now more like a field, with clumps of rough grass suffocating the daffodils, which must have been planted years ago and somehow managed to survive. Huge rhododendron bushes had spread and choked any other plants and bushes that may have once filled the borders. The rhododendrons were about to burst into flower, and Molly was reminded that Cassie had been thrilled when she found a couple growing in the woods behind Stone Cottage. Back then, Molly had thought her friend was just a bit of a botanist, but now it seemed clear that she’d been pleased to see them because they were a reminder of her childhood home.

Molly tried the gate and found it unlocked, but then she thought that perhaps shorts and a blouse were hardly suitable attire to give someone the news of their daughter’s death and decided to come back the next day in a dress.

But she remained at the gate for a while, looking at the house and trying to imagine Cassie growing up there. It wasn’t difficult: it was as extraordinary as Cassie, and her friend had always had an air about her, as if she’d known better things. She knew the names of plants and trees, could talk about composers, writers and artists in a way that ordinary people never did. She wished Cassie had told her about her father going missing in France. Had she heard the gossip that he had a woman over there? Did she hate the implication that he might have deserted?

Molly thought it looked a sad house. Maybe that was just because of the neglect and the sketchy information she now had about the residents, but she couldn’t possibly imagine any child ever playing noisy games in the garden or the house ringing with laughter.

It was going to be even sadder when she gave Mrs Coleman the news. She might have ordered her daughter to leave when she had an illegitimate child, but no mother, however hard-hearted, could possibly be totally immune to grief.

Later that evening, after she’d turned the guests’ beds down and helped out in the kitchen for a while, as the restaurant was busy, Molly wrote to Charley, telling him an edited version of the day’s events. She didn’t think he’d approve of her going back to the house to inform Mrs Coleman of her daughter’s death, so she implied she was going to hand what she knew over to the police.

With police on her mind, she also wrote to George, because he’d known Cassie and had been as frustrated as she had when his senior officers had given up on finding Petal.

‘I’m hoping that talking to her mother and this scary-sounding housekeeper will result in them demanding a better investigation into Petal’s disappearance,’ she wrote. ‘If they don’t seem to care, then I’ll go straight to the police myself. I’ll let you know what happens.’

She also penned a letter to Mrs Coleman, on headed paper from the George, in case she wouldn’t answer the door and speak to her. In it, she told her about her friendship with Cassie, who she felt sure was Sylvia Coleman, her death on Coronation Day and that Petal had disappeared.

She kept the letter short and to the point, asking Mrs Coleman only that, as Petal’s grandmother, she should insist on further investigation by the police.

It was raining the next morning while Molly served breakfast, but one of the guests said they’d heard the forecast, which said that showers would be dying out by midday. By the time she’d finished the bedrooms she was delighted to see the rain had stopped, and she rushed off to change.

She selected a blue, checked, pleated skirt to wear as it was heavy enough not to blow up in the air and expose her stocking tops as she rode the bike, and with it a toning blue twinset. She tied her hair back with a matching blue ribbon. She looked at herself in the mirror for some time before leaving and, although she had butterflies in her stomach about what she had to do, she at least felt confident about how she looked. Her cheeks were pink again; they’d lost their colour in London, and her hair its shine. But it was shining now and the sun over the last few days had given her blonde streaks amongst the brown.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said aloud. ‘I doubt they’ll be that weird. That’s just stuff people love to say.’

When she arrived at Mulberry House she pushed the heavy iron gate open and wheeled her bike up the drive. She had a feeling she was being watched, but she couldn’t see anyone looking out of the windows. She leaned her bike against a low stone wall which surrounded a weed-filled rose bed, then went over to the front door and pulled on the bell.

She heard it ring loudly enough to alert even someone hard of hearing, but no one came, so she rang it again, even harder. Again, no response. She rang it five times in all, and when there was still no response she walked round the side of the house to see if there was another entrance.

Catching a fleeting glimpse of a white-haired woman through a window, she rapped on the glass and called out. But the woman didn’t respond so Molly continued round the house until she came to a kitchen door. It was propped open, and she rapped on it very loudly and called out.

Her early training never to step into anyone’s house uninvited made it difficult for her to cross the threshold, so she stood there for a while calling out. Still, no one came.

Coming through the open door there was an unpleasant smell of fish. She could see a saucepan on the gas stove and guessed it was being cooked for a cat. She hoped so, as it smelled too disgusting to be for humans.

The kitchen was like so many she’d seen in country houses back home: a central table with a scrubbed top; painted cupboards and shelves lining the walls. Here, though, everything looked neglected, untidy and dirty and with peeling paint.

She spotted a brass handbell sitting on the sink. Maybe Miss Gribble and Mrs Coleman were deaf, but perhaps they would still be able to hear it.

Drawing on all her courage, Molly stepped inside, went over to the sink, picked up the bell and rang it loudly.

On the second ring – and it had been a very loud, long one – the white-haired woman she’d glimpsed through the window appeared.

‘If the door bell isn’t answered, it means we don’t want visitors,’ she barked at Molly.

Molly was scared but stood her ground. She was fairly certain that this was Miss Gribble, not Mrs Coleman. She was perhaps sixty, her face was deeply lined and weather-beaten, but she looked strong, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular forearms, revealed by a faded, short-sleeved blouse. She looked like a formidable woman, and the way she was glowering at Molly was frightening.

‘I’m sorry to intrude, but I have something very important to ask Mrs Coleman,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking with fright. ‘If it hadn’t been so important I wouldn’t have been impertinent enough to come in uninvited. So will you please fetch her and let me get this over and done with?’

‘You can talk to me. Mrs Coleman isn’t well,’ she said.

‘No. In a matter like this, it is important to speak to the right person,’ Molly insisted. ‘It’s about her daughter.’

‘We have nothing to do with her,’ Miss Gribble snapped, drawing herself up very straight, as if doing her best to intimidate Molly.

‘I know that, and the reasons for it are none of my business. But I am not leaving here until I’ve spoken face to face with Mrs Coleman.’

The door through to the house opened slowly, and another woman came in. She was very dishevelled, with long hair the colour of dirty straw, and her shapeless maroon dress did her no favours, yet, even so, Molly could see Cassie’s face in hers, and it shook her. The same speedwell-blue eyes, the pointed chin and an expression of disdain which she’d seen Cassie flash many a time at people when they were mean to her.