Текст книги "Without a Trace"

Автор книги: Lesley Pearse

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘They tell me it was you I hit with an axe,’ Christabel said when Molly was shown into a small room at Hellingly to meet her.

Molly agreed that it was, thinking that this was the strangest introduction to anybody she’d ever had.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ Christabel added after a moment or two, as if it had taken that long for her to realize that an apology was necessary. ‘I can’t offer any real excuse other than I wasn’t myself.’

‘That will do,’ Molly said, and held out her hand to the older woman. ‘I was very fond of Cassie – your Sylvia – and Petal, too. My name is Molly Heywood.’

Molly had only had the briefest glimpse of Christabel the day she arrived at Mulberry House, and then again when she escaped from the cellar there. She had formed the idea from the first meeting that she looked similar to Cassie, but she hadn’t had enough time to study Christabel. She had time now, and she was glad of it.

Christabel Coleman and Cassie were about the same height and size, five foot five and of slim build. But Cassie had strength in her face, where in Christabel’s there was weakness. Cassie had a habit of sticking out her chin as if to show the world what she was made of, and she had a voluptuous, almost pin-up girl, appearance. Yet, looking at her mother now, Molly saw that Cassie had inherited her delicate bone structure, baby-blue eyes and wide mouth. Cassie had made herself more noticeable with her dyed hair, and with her unusual dress sense. Christabel had her mousy hair pulled back from her pale face in a single bunch, which did her no favours.

Molly had been told that this woman was forty-six, but she looked older, because she had deep wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth. The beige shirtwaister dress she was wearing aged her even more, but then Molly was fairly certain it wasn’t her own, just something she’d been lent by the hospital.

‘DI Pople thought it would be good for us to have a talk,’ Molly said. ‘And I think he’s right. Cassie never talked about you, and I assumed that was because you’d fallen out when Petal was born. Instead she talked about books, poetry, art, music and mystical things. Was she always like that?’

Christabel half smiled. ‘Yes, she was. She read anything and everything, going off to the library in Rye as soon as she was old enough to catch the bus alone. I think growing up on the marsh makes for artistic leanings. It’s the wildness of the terrain and the weather. I used to walk for miles as a girl and write poetry about what I saw, just as she did.’

‘She was very much a loner, but I always felt it wasn’t really from choice, but necessity. Would you agree with that?’

‘I think so. You see, she was just thirteen when war broke out and, if it hadn’t been for that, she could’ve made it to university. She might have been a teacher; she used to say that’s what she wanted.’

‘She did a good job teaching Petal,’ Molly said. ‘She could read fluently before she started school, and she loves history, too. Her teacher at the school in Rye tells me she’s very clever and eager to learn.’

‘She’s with you, staying at the George, isn’t she? How is she? After everything she’s been through, and so much of it my fault, I don’t feel I’ve even got the right to ask.’

Molly found herself warming to this woman she had thought she would hate and despise. She seemed a very honest woman, as Cassie had been. She might be a weak person who had allowed herself to be manipulated and controlled, but there was goodness at her core.

‘She’s quieter than she used to be. She watches people, as if she’s making sure about them, before speaking. She still has the occasional bad dream, and now and then she has tantrums that we have no real explanation for. I think it’s pent-up anger and frustration because she doesn’t understand what it was all about. Sadly, neither I nor anyone else can fully explain it to her, she’s too young to grasp it all.’

Christabel’s eyes welled up with tears, but she brushed them away as if she’d decided she had no right to cry about a child who was suffering because of her.

‘Will you tell me about her and Sylvia, or Cassie, as you know her? I mean, how their life was before Miss Gribble and I turned up.’

The raw longing and eagerness in her face touched Molly. ‘I will if you promise to tell me about Cassie before she ran away with Petal. How she reacted when you told her you were having a baby, how you both talked about it and how she came to run away. You see, you may be Petal’s real mother, but I’m the only link with the life Petal remembers with Cassie. If you tell me how it was, one day I can sit Petal down and explain the whole thing in a way she can understand.’

Christabel nodded. ‘You are a remarkable young woman,’ she said eventually. ‘I can see why my daughter chose you as a friend. If the dead are able to look down and watch us, I think she would be very proud to have known you, and so grateful that Petal is in your care.’

Molly blushed at the compliment. She’d thought she would be irritated by this woman’s weakness, but she wasn’t anything like the drippy, mad person she’d expected.

‘Okay, so where do I start? Cassie did rather take the village by storm. She not only wore tight sweaters and skirts and made no apologies for being a lone mother, but she had a “Don’t get on my wrong side” attitude. Yet she got round a local farmer who no one else has ever managed to charm, and he let her rent Stone Cottage.’

‘Were people nasty because Petal was mixed race?’

‘I can’t lie to you: they said horrid things behind Cassie’s back. My father, who is the village grocer, was just about the nastiest. But most people were nice to Petal. Of course, she is a little charmer, so bright and sunny natured. And she was a novelty, remember! Some of the villagers had never seen a black person before, and those who did only had memories of GI’s stationed in Somerset for the last couple of years of the war and, as you’ll remember, they didn’t get very good press. But, as I said, Petal’s a little charmer, so you can rest assured she didn’t suffer any real prejudice. Her teacher liked her and the other children played with her. I don’t think they even noticed her skin was a different colour to theirs.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Christabel sighed. ‘Benjamin – that was her father – used to tell me hurtful things that had been said to him, and of course, back in America where he came from, white people’s attitudes to Negros were appalling.’

‘Cassie put her head up and sailed through everything, and if she’d lived she would’ve made Petal do the same. I really admired her for that, and for her intelligence. I loved being with her, she knew so much. She was living in the East End of London before I met her; after her death, I stayed with a lovely old lady who had befriended her while she was there, and everyone who knew her only had good things to say about her.’

Christabel smiled to hear that. ‘How did she live, though? I mean, where did she get money? Did she have a job?’

‘Where she got her money was a bit of a mystery to me,’ Molly admitted. ‘She was very frugal. In Somerset she grew vegetables, made new clothes out of old ones, and she used to go into Bristol once a week on the bus, so she may have had a cleaning job there, or a man friend. But she never said.’

‘Did she talk about men friends?’

‘Yes, but I never met any of them. She liked men; she preferred their company to women’s, in general. She was very ahead of her time in that way.’

‘You mean she slept with them?’

Molly blushed.

‘You can say it. I was a fallen woman myself,’ Christabel said with a light laugh. ‘I worshipped Reg, and we were “carrying on”, as my mother used to call it, well before we got married. I was pregnant on our wedding day, and barely eighteen. I took it very hard when Reg went off to war. We’d been everything to each other – best friends and lovers – and I missed that.’ She paused, as if remembering.

‘We never intended to spend our entire married life in Mulberry House with my parents,’ she went on after a moment or two. ‘But Sylvia came, then the bad times in the thirties. Reg was a carpenter, and we couldn’t have survived on our own.’

‘Your father was a doctor?’

‘Yes, he was, and my grandfather before that. The practice had always been at Mulberry House. Back when I was a little girl, father went out on his rounds in a pony and trap. They had me quite late in life and, being the only child, I sort of felt obliged to stay with them. And, of course, they loved Sylvia. Then they died, a year apart, in 1935 and ’36, and the house became mine. It was our intention to fill it with children and live happily ever after.’

‘But you had Miss Gribble, the Wicked Witch, in the house with you …’

Christabel held her head in her hands as if the thought of everything that woman had done was too much to bear.

‘Reg was always saying I should make her go,’ she said after a few moments. ‘He said she gave him the creeps because she watched every move we made. He was right, of course, but she’d been there my whole life, and even before that with my parents. Where would she go? At her age, she wouldn’t find another job.

‘Then war broke out and Reg joined up and went off to France, so I was glad of her being there. It was a big house to be alone in with a child. But I’m wandering off a bit. You want to know about Sylvia.’

‘It’s all interesting,’ Molly said. ‘Some other time I’d love to hear how it was for you during the war but, for now, tell me about how Sylvia reacted when you got pregnant.’

‘I told her before I told Gribby and swore her to secrecy. Sylvia was always very mature for her age, and I didn’t have to point things out, she just got it. She was excited about having a baby brother or sister, but scared, too.’

‘What of?’

Christabel shrugged. ‘Mostly of what people would say. And of Gribby too – we both knew she wasn’t going to be a bit pleased I’d been with a man. Since Reg had gone missing, she’d become more and more forceful, taking over everything, as if it was her house. I should have put a stop to it, but I was grieving for Reg and it was easier than confrontation. Then, one day, when I was at least six months gone, she noticed.’

Molly observed that Christabel had leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and had begun speaking as if she were reliving that day.

‘We were doing the washing. Gribby was hooking the clothes out of the boiler with the boiler stick into the sink, and I was rinsing them. Sylvia was standing by at the mangle, ready to turn the handle when I fed the rinsed clothes into it.

‘It was early January and a wild, windy day, and when I accidentally sloshed water on to my clothes, I yelled because it was icy cold. Gribby turned to me and, where my wet overall had stuck to me, she saw my tummy sticking out.

‘“You little whore!” she said and leapt forward and slapped my face really hard.

‘“Do that again and I’ll hit you!” Sylvia screamed out. When I glanced at my daughter, she had the copper stick in her hands and was holding it, ready to strike Gribby. I remember, she was wearing a flowery red crossover overall over a dark-green jumper, her face was flushed from the steam in the kitchen and her hair had gone into tight curls.

‘“You’ll never lay a hand on my mother again or you’ll be out on your ear so fast you won’t know what’s hit you,” she snarled.

‘My face was stinging. I was icy cold from my wet clothes, but I was so proud of my daughter being so bold and brave in standing up for me.

‘“Yes, she’s having a baby,” Sylvia carried on, jabbing the copper stick at Gribby. “And we’re going to look after him or her between us. If you don’t like the idea of that, there’s the door,” and she pointed the stick at the back door. “Go and get yourself another job and another home, but just remember no other family will tolerate your interference or your bullying.”

‘“How can you speak to me like that when I’ve given my whole life to you and your family?” Gribby whined. “I’m only worried that everyone in the village will be talking about your mother. She won’t be able to bear that. And I don’t interfere or bully either of you. I don’t know how you can say that.”

‘“You don’t know any other way!” Sylvia shouted. “You bullied Granny and Grandpa, then Mum. But you won’t do it to me. I won’t stand for it.”

‘She didn’t stand for it either.’ Christabel opened her eyes again, seemingly unaware she’d been going back in time and reliving the scene. ‘When my baby was born and Gribby saw how dark-skinned she was, she looked at me with utter disgust. But I’d confided in Sylvia some time before, and she picked the baby up to cuddle her and gave Gribby a look that would turn anyone else to stone.

‘Gribby went mad, saying terrible things I can’t repeat. But Sylvia ordered her out of the room, and took charge. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I came to realize later that she never, ever left Gribby alone with the baby.’

‘You think she was afraid Gribby would smother her or something?’

‘Yes, I think so. I wasn’t doing well with feeding her, and I remember Sylvia told me she thought it was best I put her on a bottle and then she could do the night feeds so I could get strong again.’

‘Was that in preparation for Sylvia taking her away with her?’

‘No, I don’t think so, not then, only so she could take the baby into her room at night. I think she thought Gribby might come into my room and do something while I was asleep. Sylvia locked her door. I know, because I tried to go in there one night.’

‘So Sylvia was looking after Petal right from the start?’

‘Oh yes, she said even before Pamela was born that she’d say the baby was hers so people wouldn’t talk about me. Sylvia never did anything in half measures, so I think she believed if she was going to tell people it was her baby then she must act like its mother.’

‘DI Pople said that she registered Pamela’s birth. Did she tell you she was going to?’

‘Oh yes. She made me promise I would keep a constant eye on the baby that day because she couldn’t take her with her. She also told me I wasn’t to tell Gribby where she’d gone. I’m not sure why that was.’

‘Maybe she was already planning to run off and didn’t want Gribby taking the birth certificate from her?’

‘Perhaps.’ Christabel shrugged. ‘But you must understand that, back then, I didn’t believe Gribby could hurt anyone – well, no more than a slap, like she gave me. But Sylvia did. A couple of days before she left she said, “It’s not safe for Pamela here, I’ve seen the look on Gribby’s face, and she hates her.” I told her she was over-reacting but she just shook her head and said, “You’ve always been blind to her faults.”’

‘But did she tell you she was going to take Petal and run away?’

‘Yes, the day before. Gribby was out doing something to the car. Sylvia was washing some baby clothes in the sink. “I’m leaving with Petal tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t try and stop me, Mother, I know it’s for the best. She’s registered as my baby now, so you can’t do anything. If you gave Gribby her marching orders, I’d stay, but I know you can’t do that, she’s got too strong a hold on you.”’

‘Where was she planning to go? Did she have any money?’

‘She wouldn’t say where she was going, but she had money in a post office account from when her grandparents died. She said she’d contact me as soon as she was settled, and that if I made Gribby go she’d come back.’

‘Did she contact you?’

‘Yes, she called from a phone box. If Gribby answered she always put the phone down. She would tell me that Petal had got a tooth, or was eating solids, things like that, but never about where she was. Always the same question: had I made Gribby go? Of course, I hadn’t. I couldn’t, she was too strong for me to deal with.’

‘Constance, the Church Army sister who befriended her in Whitechapel, said she thought Cassie was waiting for something. Was that for you to get rid of Gribby?’

‘I would imagine so. I got lower and lower during that time. Guilt, sorrow and fear are a potent mix and I now suspect that Gribby was feeding me something to keep me calm and under control, as everything seemed very cloudy and disjointed. About the time Petal would have turned three Gribby talked about getting a private detective to find her. She kept saying she was sorry she’d been nasty about the baby, that it was just the shock and she wanted to make amends. She even talked about doing up a bedroom for Petal, and how wonderful it would be to have a small child in the house again.’

‘Did the detective find her?’

‘Not that one. We hired several, and they all drew a blank. They weren’t that good, I suppose, just took my money and sat on their backsides. I had my last phone call from Sylvia on Petal’s fourth birthday. She said there was no point in her ringing me any more because nothing was going to change. She had to think of Petal’s future, school and such like. She was tired of sitting on a platform for a train that would never come.’

Molly could almost hear Cassie making that last remark. ‘That must have been just before she came to Somerset.’

Christabel began to cry then, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘If only I’d been braver,’ she whimpered. ‘We could have had a good life together. We didn’t have to stay out on the marsh. We could have sold the house and moved anywhere we fancied. Now I’ve lost both my daughters and I’m going to prison. All because I was gutless.’

Molly’s heart swelled with sympathy for this broken woman. She couldn’t think of anything to say that would change Christabel’s life, but she got up and went to her and took her in her arms.

‘I get angry with my mother, too, because she stays with my father, who’s a terrible bully,’ she said softly. ‘I suggested we got a flat together in Bristol, but she won’t leave him, so I know how Cassie must have felt. I’ve been weak, too, working for Dad without a proper wage, letting him control my life. If it hadn’t been for Cassie’s death I’d still be the same, so I understand how it was for you.’

‘You are such a kind girl,’ Christabel said into Molly’s chest. ‘I hope that, whatever they decide about Petal’s future, she’ll be allowed to keep in touch with you.’

‘If I’m asked my opinion about you at the trial, I’ll say what Cassie would’ve said, that you were weak, but that that isn’t a crime or a sin. And if I can play any role in Petal’s life, and I do so hope I can, I’ll find a way that you can share in it, too.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The train to London was crammed with people going Christmas shopping. Molly had brought a book for the journey, but she couldn’t concentrate because of the butterflies in her stomach, so she stared mindlessly out of the window.

Miss Gribble’s murder trial was to start at the Old Bailey tomorrow, Tuesday, 6 December, and George would be meeting her at Charing Cross Station today to take her to the hotel he’d found for them both to stay in until the trial was over.

She didn’t know if it was the trial or meeting George that was causing the butterflies. Both were scary, but in different ways. At the trial, she just had to answer questions truthfully but in front of a great many people. With George, there would be no one observing or commenting, but ever since the day he had rescued her from Mulberry House he had rarely been out of her mind, and she felt it might be love. He hadn’t made his feelings clear to her, though, and now they would be alone together every evening for the duration of the trial she felt it was time to push things forward. However, if she made a move on him and he didn’t respond, she was going to be so embarrassed.

She felt they were meant for each other, and George had said something similar in his last phone call to her about today’s arrangements. ‘It was always you and me,’ he’d said. ‘We held hands when we went into school the first day. We always told each other our problems. You were my partner in ballroom-dancing lessons.’

She’d joked that they could hardly base their future on such flimsy connections. But, after she’d put the phone down, she was sorry she hadn’t just agreed with him.

It was very cold. Under her new red houndstooth-checked coat she wore a twinset and a straight wool skirt with a petticoat beneath that. Recently, since it had turned cold, she had taken to wearing slacks when she went out of the hotel, but Mrs Bridgenorth had said they weren’t smart enough for London, so she just had to put up with an icy bottom and legs. At least her feet were toasty, in fur-lined boots.

Looking out the window and seeing sheep huddling together for warmth in the muddy fields, she smiled, remembering the song ‘Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea’, which Petal had woken her with this morning.

It was such a silly song, by Max Bygraves, but Petal loved it. She was a good singer, so much so she was singing the first verse of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ solo at the carol service in St Mary the Virgin on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas.

Molly was sure she’d be crying with pride when she heard her.

The question of what was going to happen to this child was another huge worry. It made the questions of whether George cared for her, and whether she would be struck dumb when she was asked questions at the trial pale into insignificance. Mr and Mrs Bridgenorth loved Petal, but they still saw her stay with them as a temporary arrangement, until something more suitable turned up. So far, nothing had, but Molly almost had heart palpitations whenever the children’s officer visited, afraid she’d come to take her away.

Christabel was to be a witness in Miss Gribble’s trial, but the solicitor for the prosecution had told Molly that she wasn’t going to be charged with any crime. It was quite clear to everyone who had questioned her that she’d had no knowledge of her husband’s murder, and that the later crimes of abducting Petal and imprisoning Molly had been done without her knowledge or help.

‘She’s been punished terribly for her weakness already,’ the solicitor had said sympathetically. ‘Her husband and older daughter murdered, the younger one taken from her. She’ll have a sad and lonely life in her house on the marsh. Even if she sells it and moves away, the sadness will go with her.’

Molly totally agreed with him, and it made her sad, too. Not for the first time, she wondered what Cassie would’ve made of it all. Molly suspected she would be angry that, after all she’d gone through to keep Petal safe, her little sister’s future still hung in the balance.

When Molly stepped off the train at Charing Cross, George came haring through the crowd and enveloped her in a bear hug. ‘I thought today would never come,’ he said. ‘Sarge asked why I was so excited about a trial – after all, I’ve been to dozens of them. He must have forgotten I’ve always had a thing about you!’

Molly glowed. ‘Well, I’ve had a thing about you, too,’ she responded. ‘No wonder Londoners think Somerset folk are very slow!’

He carried her case and shepherded her down into the underground to make their way to the hotel, which he said was in Russell Square. ‘Sarge told me about it. He stayed there a couple of times while he was at trials in London. I was surprised at how nice it was. Your room is right next to mine, and there’s a bathroom just opposite.’

Molly wondered if the closeness of their rooms would mean he’d be trying to get into hers. But she decided she wouldn’t mind if he did.

The hotel was nice; nothing lavish, but the reception, with its highly polished floor and desk and shiny brass fittings gave a very good impression. It was lovely and warm, too, and Molly’s bedroom was clean and cosy, with a thick red eiderdown on the bed and tapestry curtains.

She and George went out in the evening to get something to eat, but it was so cold they went into the first place they found, a small café with a very limited menu.

‘Sausage and chips, egg and chips, fish and chips, ham and chips,’ George read out. ‘It wouldn’t do to hate chips in here, would it?’

‘Good job I love chips, then,’ Molly said. ‘My dad never allowed us to have them, he said they were a wasteful way of cooking potatoes. I could never see that, unless of course you count eating more than you would with plain boiled ones because they taste better.’

‘He’s a very opinionated man,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘I went into the shop yesterday before I left and, just to be polite, I told him I was coming up to London for the trial. It’s been the talk of the village, of course, because the local papers rehashed all the stuff about Cassie’s death and Petal disappearing the minute they found Reg Coleman’s body. They portrayed you as a heroine for rescuing Petal from Miss Gribble.’

The waitress came over to them at that point and they gave their order for sausages and chips and a pot of tea.

‘So what did he say?’ Molly asked once the waitress had gone.

‘“Waste of taxpayers’ money giving the woman a trial,” and he said it in that snooty way he has. “They should take her out and hang her. Can’t think what they need you there for either. You should be down here investigating who has been stealing my coal.”’

Molly laughed because George had sounded exactly like her father. ‘So who has been stealing his coal?’

‘No one. Your mum has just been putting more on the fire because it’s cold. She told me so herself. When he goes out to the pub she goes down and fills up the coal scuttle.’

‘She shouldn’t have to be carrying coal scuttles up the stairs at her age!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘He said four years ago he was going to get a gas fire put in. Do you know what stopped him?’

‘The cost of the fire?’

‘No, because some women were talking in the shop about how much less work there is without a coal fire. Hardly any dusting, and no clearing out ashes or laying the fire. He went right off the idea then, afraid Mum might spend part of her day sitting down reading a book.’

‘Surely not!’

‘I promise you. He made out that a gas fire costs more than a coal fire to run, but that just isn’t true. But I’m going off the subject … did he ask about me?’

‘No, but I asked if he had a message for you, and he said, “Why would I send a message?” I pointed out that being a witness is a horrible ordeal for most people. Guess what he said?’

‘That I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in other people’s affairs?’

George grimaced. ‘You know him so well. I don’t know how you stood him all those years. He’s utterly joyless.’

‘I thought about leaving so many times, but Mum was always the problem. I thought he’d be nasty to her. Is she all right, George?’

George leaned across the table, put one finger under her chin and tilted her face up. ‘She’s fine. For some peculiar reason, he’s been nicer to her, or at least so she tells me. She reckons he was always jealous of you girls, wanted her all to himself.’

‘That’s obscene.’ Molly laughed.

‘Since I’ve been in the police force, I’ve come across lots of men like your dad.’ George smiled. ‘They lash out because they feel inadequate. They say nasty things because they think it makes them sound like big men. Deep down, they’re insecure little twerps, but the saddest thing of all is that they don’t see what they’ve got. Like your dad: he’s got a lovely wife, two daughters to be very proud of – especially you – and a good business. Though it’s a wonder he’s got any customers, he’s so rude or offhand to most of them.’

‘I wish I could go home to check on Mum, but it’s difficult. She’d be upset if I didn’t make the peace with him and stay there, but I know I couldn’t do that.’

‘You could always stay with my folks and get a job locally. That would satisfy your mum.’

The waitress chose that moment to come with their meal, giving Molly time to think about how she could hint to George that she wanted more from him than just friendship.

‘Would it satisfy you? I mean, me being in the spare room?’

Molly was aware that the question hadn’t come out in the seductive way she’d intended but, considering the length of time they’d known one another, she would’ve expected him to at least laugh. Instead, he blushed furiously and looked very uncomfortable.

She was mortified, yet at the same time she felt indignant that he couldn’t rise to the occasion with a joke, some banter, anything that would stop her feeling like a first-class idiot.

It had spoiled the evening. George changed the subject to ask how Petal was, and Molly did her best to sound animated and happy when, inside, she felt hollow. George went on to tell her about two farmers in a neighbouring village who were caught up in a bitter feud. It had started when one of the farmers found his prize-winning sheepdog dead, apparently poisoned, and he was so convinced the other man had done it out of jealousy he retaliated by setting fire to his hay barn.

Normally, Molly would’ve been all too eager to hear the full story, but she wanted George to be the way he had been at the station, when he’d hugged her, to see that light in his eyes that said he thought the world of her and was excited to be alone with her in London for a few days. So she didn’t show any enthusiasm for his story. In fact, she yawned and looked pointedly at her watch.

They barely spoke on their way back to the hotel and, although George hesitated outside her door, shuffling his feet and looking sheepish, he didn’t say anything more than goodnight and that she shouldn’t get too worked up about being cross-examined in court the next day, as she probably wouldn’t be called for a day or two.

Molly slept soundly despite everything, and woke refreshed. After a very big cooked breakfast she and George decided to walk to the Old Bailey, as it wasn’t very far and they would be sitting down waiting for most of the day. Molly wasn’t one to keep up bad feeling with anyone, so she chatted normally, as if the night before had been a pleasant one.

George was in his uniform, as he was officially on duty as a witness, and he looked very smart. ‘Once witnesses have given their evidence they can watch the rest of the trial,’ he explained as they walked along. ‘It’s quite interesting watching and listening to the two opposing barristers. Sometimes, they’re just like actors, only playing to the jury instead of an audience. But I doubt I’ll be here to hear the closing speeches and the verdict. I expect I’ll be summoned back home.’