Peter Lovesey - Waxwork

‘He is waiting in the cell,’ Bell told her.

‘Alone?’

‘Miss, if you please.’

‘Miss,’ the prisoner tonelessly repeated.

‘Who else did you expect-the blooming Home Secretary? Yes, he’s on his own.’

Without hurrying, she crossed the cobbles to the arched doorway leading up to the condemned cells, Bell and Hawkins following.

The young solicitor jerked to his feet as if it was the Queen. Today he was in green tweeds. Each day it was different. When he smiled, boyish creases formed at the corners of his mouth.

‘Miriam.’

‘No touching,’ Bell cautioned.

The prisoner gave him a faint smile and guided her skirts round the table to her stool.

He remained standing while the wardresses found seats. He was a charmer, this one.

‘My dear, how are you this morning?’

‘Impatient for news, as usual,’ she answered.

He nodded. ‘And you shall have some. There has been a development. If it had not kept me so busy I should have come to tell you last night.’ He paused, measuring his words. ‘My dear, Howard is missing. The police want to question him.’

Bell caught her breath at the news and looked at the prisoner. She had widened her eyes a fraction, but she passed no comment.

‘I reminded the officer who informed me, of course, that Howard is under no obligation to notify the police of his movements,’ Allingham went on. ‘From the way I was questioned, you would think he was wanted on some criminal charge. Oh, they had learned from the servants at Park Lodge that he took a portmanteau with him. Scotland Yard seems to interpret that as tantamount to fleeing from justice.’

‘Are they pursuing him?’

‘I understand there are men looking for him at all the ports.’

‘And if they find him?’

Allingham shrugged. ‘If they propose to detain him, they must charge him with something.’

Bell exchanged a glance with Hawkins. From the prisoner’s composure, you would think she was indifferent to her husband’s predicament.

She said a curious thing. ‘Then it’s nearly over, Simon.’

His face lit with encouragement. ‘You have been marvellous. So brave! Yes, nearly over. No doubt they will come to pester you with more questions while they have you in this place, but you must refuse to say one word unless I am present. That is your right.’

She let out a small breath, as if his words had fortified her. A tinge of colour had come back to her cheeks. Exactly why Howard Cromer’s disappearance had lifted her spirit, the wardresses did not understand. They drew conclusions from what they saw. There had been opportunity enough in two weeks locked in a cell with the prisoner eight hours a day to read signals in her voice and expression. She might be sitting upright on her stool with her hands held together, but she was elated by what the solicitor had told her. If she had got the chance she would have hugged him. Between these two there were things going on.

‘Simon, which of the detectives questioned you about Howard? Was it the sharp-faced man with side-whiskers or the second one, with the beard, who pretended not to be a detective at all?’

‘The first.’ Allingham frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, because I believe I have seen the second. I was not supposed to, but while I was in the exercise yard this morning I happened to look up and saw a face at a window two floors up, staring down at me. He was the man Howard photographed, I am certain-the broad, scarred face, black beard and prominent eyes. Even the butterfly collar. As soon as I caught those codfish eyes he disappeared from view. I had to smile.’

Bell darted a warning glance at Hawkins. A word out of turn now, and either of them could be up before the governor. There were things it was forbidden under any circumstances to discuss with a condemned prisoner.

Allingham had an explanation. ‘Probably he was put on to the case after your trial. He would have had no opportunity of seeing you, except in photographs. He would be better employed meeting the trains at Dover than peering out of prison windows. This entire experience has done nothing to alter my low opinion of our detective force.’

She seemed not to be listening. She was looking at her fingernails, chipped and stained by prison fatigues. ‘Simon.’

He reddened. She had spoken his name with a kind of ardour.

‘In here, my thoughts have been much on the past,’ she said, speaking in a low, earnest tone she had not used before. It seemed to Bell that it was calculated to make the wardresses feel they should not be listening. ‘I think a lot about Hampstead, and the Society. Those interminable lectures that we endured for the conversation afterwards. The picnics and the outings. That trip up the river when you wore your striped blazer. I was never so happy as then.’

The young man began to look uncomfortable. ‘Nor me-capital memories,’ he said tamely.

‘Something we share,’ she said, and paused, watching him. ‘In the night, when it is difficult to sleep, I find my thoughts often turn to what might have happened in my life if things had happened differently. Those were happy times and I thought I understood why, but really I did not. Simon, I was blinkered. I knew nothing of the world. Oh, I basked in its pleasures, the joys of laughter, sunshine, pretty things. Like a child. Such thoughts as I possessed were shaped by impulse. If there were things I desired, chocolates, flowers, anything, I directed all the power at my disposal to obtaining them. And because I was pretty and surrounded by people who adored me I was never thwarted. A selfish, spoilt child.’

‘Come now, that’s too steep,’ Allingham demurred. ‘You have a sweet disposition, always did.’

He was incapable of stopping her now she had started. It was so sudden that it shocked, this baring of the soul by the woman who had consistently refused to confide a word. It seemed indecent, worse than nakedness.

‘I lacked any judgment, Simon,’ she said in a voice that did not expect to be challenged. ‘My actions were determined by impulse alone. Why do you suppose I married Howard? I could not give you a reasoned explanation.’

‘In matters of the heart-’ Allingham started to murmur.

‘It was a whim, like everything else in my life up to that time,’ she said, and her voice became less insistent, dreamier. ‘Howard was there, and I wanted him. I gave it no more thought than if I had seen a bonnet in a shop window. Oh, I don’t mean that my head was not full of him. I doted on him. To me he was charming, handsome, urbane and his prospects were boundless. Yet what I wanted in truth was gratification. I was thinking of myself.’ She sighed. ‘The difference in our ages, his possessive ways, his devotion to photography above all things, I dimly recognised, but I did not consider these as reasons to hesitate. I wanted him as my husband and that was the end of it. The end.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘Nothing would deter me.’

She looked down at her hands again. Nobody spoke.

‘Simon, you of all people must have noticed that Howard and I … that the element one takes for granted in matrimony, the coming together of man and wife-’

Allingham appealed to her, ‘Spare yourself, Miriam. There is no need to … ’

The wardresses sat in silence, pretending to hear nothing, least of all what was unsaid.

The prisoner continued speaking. ‘There had to be disenchantment. Really we entered into marriage without knowing each other.’ She smiled faintly. ‘To Howard I was something between a child and a piece of porcelain. I needed to be guarded, humoured, cherished and photographed. He liked me best when I was silent and completely still.’ She looked away, in her own thoughts. ‘It was difficult for me to accept after our courtship had been so full of variety and companionship. I had imagined the parties would go on as if nothing had changed. Instead I was confined indefinitely in Park Lodge. I might as well have been here. I even had a gaoler until I insisted she was dismissed. Howard didn’t understand why I could not bear the woman. You know him, Simon. A kinder, more solicitous man does not exist. If Howard had made me unhappy from malice I could have rebelled, but he was infinitely kind. He bought me trinkets, chocolates, little toys and hid them in places where I would come upon them unexpectedly. What could I do but persevere, try to convince myself it was not the greatest mistake of my life?’