Nicola Upson - Two for Sorrow

Then there were shouts in the corridor outside. For the briefest of seconds, Wyles was overcome with relief—until she realised that the prospect of help was just the impetus Bannerman needed to finish what she had started. As desperate shoulders pushed against the heavy oak door, she felt the scarf tighten around her neck and knew that the struggle was all but over. Seconds later, she heard Penrose’s voice calling her name and felt him dragging Celia Bannerman away from her, but she lost consciousness before she was able to thank him.

‘Loving you is hard for me—it makes me a stranger in my own house. Familiar things, ordinary things that I’ve known for years like the dining-room curtains, and the wooden tub with a silver top that holds biscuits and a watercolour of San Remo that my mother painted, look odd to me, as though they belonged to someone else—when I’ve just left you, when I go home, I’m more lonely than I’ve ever been before.’

Josephine had tried not to look over to Marta’s table too often, but the music-hall sketch had given way to an exquisitely written piece set in a railway station cafe, and, as Gertrude Lawrence’s character continued with an understated but affecting monologue which seemed so accurately to express the situation they found themselves in, she was compelled to look to Marta for some solidarity, if only to reassure herself that she wasn’t suffering alone. Lydia chose that moment to stand up and walk to the bar; as she passed behind Marta, she let a hand rest on her shoulder and Marta squeezed it affectionately. It was an unconscious gesture, not designed to be provocative in any way, but its very ordinariness was the last thing that Josephine wanted to see: it spoke of a bond that didn’t need to be continually questioning itself, a life too busy being lived to find its way into the pages of a diary, and it was so different from the connection which she and Marta shared that she could stand it no longer. She stood to get some air, wondering if Noël and Gertie had ever had to put up with so much disruption during a performance. The mood at supper afterwards was likely to be deadly.

The door to Henrietta Place stood open and she watched the comings and goings in the street for a while, too glad of the anonymity to worry much about the cold. Putting Marta from her mind, she wondered where Archie was; she had long given up trying to work out what was going on—the conclusions she came to were simply too bizarre to contemplate—but she was worried about him, in spite of his reassurances that everything was fine. As if in response to her concern, the noise of an ambulance cut sharply across the murmur of night-time traffic in Oxford Street; to her horror, it rounded the corner a moment later and pulled up by the kerb, followed shortly by two police cars, and she moved back into the foyer to allow the men through unhindered.

One or two people began to drift out of the hall when they heard the commotion. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Gerry asked.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Josephine shrugged. ‘I just hope that everyone’s all right.’ It seemed a ridiculous thing to say as people in uniform continued to pile into the building, but she had nothing else to offer. Ronnie and Lettice joined her, but she had barely begun to explain when Archie appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Thank God,’ she said, then looked on, astonished, as he held the door open for Celia Bannerman to be brought through; Fallowfield and another officer led her carefully downstairs, her dress stained with blood, to where a crowd was gathering in the foyer.

‘Are you all right, Celia?’ Josephine asked, but her voice faded as she saw that Bannerman’s hands were cuffed behind her back, and she looked apprehensively at Archie. ‘What’s she done? Who’s been hurt?’

‘It’s WPC Wyles, but she’ll be fine, thanks to Miriam Sharpe. They’re taking her to hospital, but there’s no danger.’

‘And what else?’ In her heart, Josephine already knew the answer; still, she clung to the possibility that there might be some other explanation, but Archie’s silence said it all. She turned to Gerry, but it was too late to stop her.

‘You fucking bitch,’ she screamed, throwing herself at Bannerman. ‘Did letting Lizzie die give you a taste for it? What did Marjorie ever do to you?’

Archie pulled her away and held her until she was calm. ‘She will pay,’ he said quietly. ‘It may not seem like justice, but I promise you—the pain that Marjorie suffered will come back to haunt her when she’s waiting in that cell, and the fear will be a thousand times greater than anything Marjorie had time to know.’

Ronnie looked at Celia Bannerman in disbelief. ‘Marjorie? You did that to Marjorie?’

Fallowfield tried to move on, but Josephine caught his arm. ‘Why, Celia?’ she asked softly. ‘I’ve looked up to you since I was eighteen. All the people you’ve taught and cared for, every woman you’ve given a start to in life—does that count for so very little that you just trample all over it as if it never existed?’

Celia Bannerman stared back at her. ‘You can’t rewrite history, Josephine, no matter how hard you try. Those achievements still stand, regardless of anything else I’ve done.’

‘Of course they don’t. They were tainted the moment you started choosing between lives to build and lives to destroy.’ She looked at her old teacher, wondering how she could possibly remain so unchanged by what she had done. ‘I don’t even know who you are any more.’

Bannerman laughed and took a step towards her. Josephine flinched as she felt the woman’s breath on her face and Archie stepped forward to intervene, but she waved him away; her pride refused to let her pull back, and, in any case, she was still hoping for some sort of explanation which would help her to understand how she could have been so wrong. ‘And do you know who you are, Josephine?’ Bannerman asked, her voice low, almost gentle. ‘The lives you separate, the names you hide behind—one day, they’ll all come crashing down and you’ll be left on your own, trying to work out where the real person went. If I’ve taught you anything, let it be that.’

She turned and allowed herself to be led away. Fallowfield headed for the Henrietta Street entrance, but Penrose stopped him. ‘No, Bill,’ he said, unable to resist a quick glance in the chief constable’s direction. ‘Take her out the front. She inflicted as much humiliation as she could on Marjorie Baker—let’s show her how it feels.’

Chapter Fifteen

Penrose glanced through the small window of the interview room where Celia Bannerman was waiting for him. She seemed calm now, with no trace of the frenzied anger that had prompted her attack on Wyles, and, when he opened the door, she simply lifted her face and gave him a steady, faintly scornful stare. He sat down opposite her, Fallowfield next to him, and took two pieces of paper from the file in front of him.

‘Before we start, Miss Bannerman, I understand that you’ve chosen not to have any legal representation present during this questioning. It’s my duty to advise you against that, and to ask you to reconsider.’

‘I’m my own counsel, Inspector. I’ve never relied on anyone else for help, and I have no intention of starting now.’

‘Very well. You have already been charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. This interview relates to the murders of Marjorie Baker and Jacob Sach—also known as Joseph Baker—on Friday 22 November at 66 St Martin’s Lane.’

Before he could continue, Bannerman interrupted him, showing no more sign of agitation now than when he had sat down at the Cowdray Club to question her as a witness. ‘I imagine you have no proof of my involvement with those murders, Inspector, or that little stunt with your policewoman wouldn’t have been necessary.’