Lady collendons cook, p.23
Lady Collendon's Cook, page 23
Franny dabbed at her tears as the two officers escorted Alice out of the cell and banged the iron door shut.
‘Good riddance!’ Jessie said under her breath.
Alice was almost frog marched off the wing and through several locked connecting doors to the reception area. There she was given her other belongings and was signed out at the desk by an unsmiling lady prison officer. Alice felt rushed. ‘Where am I going?’ she endeavored to ask.
‘You’ll find out!’ the shorter of the two female officers said. ‘We’ll be glad to see the back of you!’
Holding her bags and belongings and struggling to put on a coat was a challenge in the windy night. She was ushered, unhandcuffed, to a waiting black van in the rear sector of the prison. The back doors of the van were opened, and she was unceremoniously helped in. She sat down on the wooden bench which ran along the inside. She just caught a glimpse of the Governor looking out of a window on the first floor of the prison, as they banged the van doors shut.
All her belongings had been tossed in with her and they slid about the floor as the van drove off. There was a small window just about level with Alice’s eyes, and she could see they were driving away from the prison at speed. Being a diesel, the smell of the engine’s fumes was quite strong in the back. Alice squeezed herself up in the corner of the van as it bumped and swerved on its journey. Dawn was beginning to peep above the houses, from what she could see. She had the impression she was being driven away from the town, and it was clear they were heading out into the country. A road sign suddenly flashed by the window. It went by so quickly it was unreadable. Where she was, or where she was going was hard to tell. The fact that they had not handcuffed her was a cause for some thought.
When she had been arrested and taken to court and then back and forth to Holloway, she had always been handcuffed. Now, for some reason she wasn’t, and she wondered if this was a good thing. The van rocked and bumped along the road and made her feel sleepy. She closed her eyes and found herself dozing despite the discomfort. After what seemed like quite a while, she looked out of the window again. By her calculation, going by the light outside, it was pretty certain that a couple of hours had elapsed. They appeared to be coming to the end of their journey. Through the window she could see what looked like some sort of a military establishment. There were soldiers standing about with rifles and military vehicles in front of low-level huts.
Once again, she was unable to read any of the signs from her viewpoint, except one, which said, ‘Turn Left Only!’ The van finally jolted to a halt.
After a couple of minutes, there was the sound of marching footsteps approaching. There was the rattling of keys, and then the back doors were thrown open with a thud. Two soldiers, one with a peak cap, and another with a cloth hat and two stripes on his arm stared at her. The one with the peak cap was holding a board.
‘Alice Green?’ the soldier said reading from his list.
‘Yes?’ Alice said still sitting where she was.
‘Come with us,’ the Corporal said producing some handcuffs which he slipped onto Alice’s wrist, much to her chagrin. ‘And don’t look so depressed. It’s a holiday camp here!’
The more senior soldier gave the corporal and dirty look, and then they matched her into a small building.
***
The little village of Aughrim in County Wicklow, Ireland, was once the scene of a battle in 1691. Since then, nothing quite so exciting had happened. Succeeding generations of the local young folk would grow up and move away in search of a life for themselves. This was certainly true of Marjorie Accling’s generation, which had grown up in Aughrim in the twenties and thirties. They now hankered for some independence and mostly went and found it in Dublin. In Marjorie’s case, her mother’s lung condition, had made it difficult for her to take that step. Marjorie felt duty bound to stay around and help her mother. This was all the more pressing since her father had died four years earlier from cancer.
A small income from his pension enabled them to survive quite well. Marjorie had done her little bit too, after a brief education, by going to work as a cleaner in a shop. It was an existence with many limitations but at least there was food on the table and a moderately nice roof over their heads. Her father had been a docker and had commanded a good wage. Then there were the little extras, items he was able to procure from the docks, which kept body and soul together. Unfortunately, when he died, these dried up. Fortunately, he had left some savings, and so the Accling household could stay afloat.
Nevertheless, a certain amount of frustration was building up inside Marjorie, who wasn’t entirely happy with her prospects. At the age of nineteen, she had already received one proposal of marriage from a poor neighbour who worked as a clerk in a credit house. Although she liked the young man, Aiden, all he was offering her was a life boarding at his parent’s house in the town. She may as well just stay at home looking after her mother. However, it was a fateful day when the landlord suddenly turned up and gave them thirty days to move out. It wasn’t that they were in arrears or anything like that. The landlord had received an offer for the property from a chain of grocers. They wanted to knock down the house and the ones next to it and build a large shop and so it was incumbent on the landlord to sell the house without tenants. The Acclings took this in their stride and prepared to move out. And in the disorganisation of getting ready to move to another abode, Marjorie found the letters which would change her life.
***
Despite Sir Hugh’s admonition to rest, Geoffrey Beresford decided to go to Drewstaignton where Alice Green was being held at an army experimental unit. Perversely, she was being viewed as an enemy of state, despite being convicted of poisoning a German diplomat. This all seemed quite logical to Beresford, although he didn’t quite have the confidence to leave the matter to its own devices. He felt it still required his oversight. The prosecution of Alice Green had been his project, and his reputation with the Germans rested on the next phase going well. German High Command were under the impression Mrs Green was going to spend the rest of her life in prison. It was the expected penalty for harming one of their ‘sons of the soil.’ From what Beresford could see, keeping her in custody was likely to attract more attention and cause more problems than not.
The prospect of influential people coming to visit her, threatened to undermine what he had been trying to achieve. He was also bound to the promise he had made to Lord Collendon to have her freed within a few months. Beresford was annoyed he had allowed himself to accede to that condition. In an ideal world she would have been hanged, and that would have been the end of the matter. As things stood, there was still a bit of a mess to clear up. Beresford had spent days trying to fathom what to do to tidily extract this thorn in his side. Simply freeing her could backfire badly and hadn’t been properly thought through.
He was entertaining these very thoughts as he journeyed up to Drewstaignton with a driver in a black Daimler. The bumpy journey adversely affected the bruising on his chest from Brinkmann’s bullet. A big black bruise had already spread to his neck and mid torso which was quite tender. He was taking regular doses of Nyalgesic for the pain. As he sat uncomfortably in the back of the car, thumbing through the dossier on his lap, he suddenly raised his head. Some sixth sense prompted him to look up at the driver’s rear-view mirror. The driver glanced back at him in the mirror in turn and as he did so, he twitched in a slightly nervous way which Beresford found off-putting.
Beresford’s normal driver had not been available, and so this man was entirely new to him. Beresford immediately began to feel even more uncomfortable. He also didn’t like the look of this particular man, who had eyebrows which joined just above his eyes. His skin had a strange unnaturally whitish hue to it underneath a severe haircut. To make matters worse, he wasn’t driving the car with any great care. He tended to speed along, which made for an unpleasant ride.
When they were driving through Rutland, Beresford spotted a little tea shop and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Pull over here, driver. Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’
The driver gave him a dark look. ‘John. If we stop now, we won’t make it on time,’ the driver replied.
Beresford checked his watch. What was the man talking about? They had plenty of time. ‘We’re fine. Look, I’m in pain and I need to have some tea and take some medicine.’
The man nodded in an unpleasant way and abruptly brought the car over to the side of the road. Beresford looked back down the street at the tea shop. ‘You’ll have to reverse up a bit,’ Beresford said feeling his blood pressure slowly rising.
The driver seemed irritated by this request, and he put the car into reverse and quickly commandeered it to a spot nearer the teashop. The driver’s whole attitude was beginning to annoy Beresford enormously.
‘You wait for me here!’ Beresford snapped, getting out of the vehicle and strolling down to the little teashop. He entered the shop and placed his order for tea and some salmon sandwiches and took a seat in the window within sight of the Daimler. As he did so, he was astonished to see the driver leaving the motor and going over to a telephone box and making a call.
In terms of normal protocol, this was strictly forbidden, especially in view of the seniority of the passenger. It was effectively the desertion of a post during duty. Beresford began to get very angry indeed. As soon as he returned to London he would have the man dismissed at once. Checking his watch again, Beresford had his snack, took his pain killers and within forty minutes was walking back to the car again. Only this time, the driver was nowhere to be seen.
Beresford looked up and down the moderately busy road looking for him, and then spotted a public house nearby. Perhaps the driver had gone in there to use the latrine. Still, this wouldn’t normally have been allowed without express permission from Beresford. As far as he was concerned the driver had gone too far. However, it had the effect of putting Beresford’s suspicions on alert. Apart from the obvious liberty, something about the driver and his attitude wasn’t quite right and went beyond mere rudeness.
Bemused, Beresford slowly open the back door of the car. He was about to step in when he caught sight of the driver reflected in the shiny rear panels of the vehicle. The driver, oddly, was hovering at the end of the street with something in his hand. Before Beresford could compute all this sensory information with his logical mind, his survival instinct suddenly kicked in. Some impulse made him throw himself away from the car. It was just as well he did, because in the next millisecond the Daimler exploded into flames with a deafening boom.
Smoking car fragments were sent in all directions, narrowly missing a shocked elderly lady who was crossing the road. Beresford himself went flying through a shop window with a violent resounding splintering crash. He landed on a stack of books and broken glass pieces, which cushioned his fall. The heat from the vehicle was considerable and the car continued to burn fiercely for fifteen minutes before the fire services came to the rescue. Before Beresford passed out, his last thought was, ‘Heads will roll for this!’
***
Eustace Haycock, formally Inspector Haycock had insisted that he was going to take early retirement, which he did. He christened the event by purchasing a small run-down bed and breakfast in Colwyn Bay, in Wales. He soon found that old habits die hard. He couldn’t help phoning the Lincoln Constabulary from time to time to get an update on the Fintan O’Brian situation.
Apparently, a man of Fintan’s description had been seen approaching another prison, although he had escaped when challenged by the police. Haycock was certain this was Fintan. What he was doing visiting another prison wasn’t clear, although it surely had to be something to do with Alice Green. But this was no longer Haycock’s problem. Besides, he was enjoying his new life too much, renovating a sizeable three-story building which hadn’t seen a lick of fresh paint for decades. He was also encouraged by the reaction he’d had from local people, who openly asked him what he was doing and showed enthusiasm for the project.
Of course, guesthouses were a dime a dozen in Colwyn Bay, although there was always room for another one. Especially if it was near the bay itself and Haycock really liked the locality and wanted to embrace his new role. But being a dyed-in-the-wool ex-policeman, Haycock knew that he would always continue to keep his eyes and ears open. In the long run it invariably seemed to pay off, even when not on duty. His wife seemed unsure he was going to be able to settle down to this new life. He assured her that he would. Though it was a new business, it would be a way of relaxing after thirty odd years of working for the constabulary. She couldn’t have agreed more. But a phone from detective Jamie Croft of the Lincoln Constabulary, made Haycock have brief second thoughts about the new life he was now leading. It was only a blip in his consciousness, and sanity resumed after five minutes.
‘Hello Jamie, what’s up?’ Haycock asked putting down the trowel he had been using to scrape a wall.
‘Nothing urgent. I was emptying out a filing cabinet and I came across some bumf about Mrs Alice Green which wasn’t in the normal cabinet.’
‘It’s probably stuff I read and then stashed away under ‘M’ for miscellaneous,’ Haycock answered.
‘Exactly right,’ Jamie said. ‘I gather Mrs Green used to be Lord Fenwicke’s cook.’
‘Yes, I believe she was,’ Haycock said. ‘You can throw all that stuff away if you like. It has been duplicated in the main file.’
‘Ok, sir,’ Jamie said. ‘Just one thing though. Did you know that she had an affair with Fenwicke’s butler, a man called Stuart Clawe?’
‘No, I didn’t know, how did you find that out then?’ Haycock asked intrigued.
‘I phoned the Fenwicke residence and they obliged me with some background information.’
‘I was meaning to do that myself actually,’ Haycock said.
‘Well, apparently Mrs Green had a kid by him!’ Jamie said.
Haycock gasped in surprise. ‘Well, that is interesting. What happened to the kid?
‘It was a girl and she went into foster care,’ Jamie said. ‘Ireland, I believe, so Fenwicke’s son’s secretary told me.’
‘Now that is sad, or good, whichever way you want to look at it,’ Haycock answered. ‘Anything to prevent a scandal!’
‘Times haven’t changed much,’ the junior detective said. ‘But guess what? Clawe, the butler that Alice Green had an affair with, died under unusual circumstances!’
This remark literally stopped Haycock in his tracks. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Well according to the secretary, Clawe’s death wasn’t properly explained,’ Jamie said. ‘The household just accepted it and moved on.’
‘Wasn’t there an enquiry?’
‘Not that I can tell,’ Jamie said. ‘Not much of one at any rate.’
‘Write it up and put in the main file,’ Haycock suggested. ‘Just in case there are questions later.’
‘Okeydokey, sir,’ Jamie said.
‘And thanks for ringing,’ Haycock said smiling to himself. ‘There’s nothing like food for thought to keep one’s retirement interesting!’
***
For the first time in three months, Alice was beginning to feel more upbeat about her future prospects. The army were treating her nicely, bringing her cups of tea and chatting with her in a friendly conversational way. She had always liked the army and had a cousin who had joined the forces years ago. This autobiographical point proved to be a good conversational gambit and gave her the chance to ask some pertinent questions about her situation. The answers she received though tended to be unhelpful. She had been put into a small room with quite a big window overlooking an army vehicle parking area. A small single bed had been brought in and there was a toilet and shower and sink unit in the corner. It was better than the prison conditions she had been used to, despite being very makeshift. She had the impression the room used to be an office which had been converted. There were alsp locked filing cabinets in the corner, and a map of Europe on the wall.
Not being a bookish person, she hadn’t had the opportunity to see maps very often, and it interested her how odd the shape of Great Britain was. In fact, it looked to her as if it had broken off from the mainland of Europe. She was particularly interested in Ireland and ran her fingers over it as she studied it intently. Then, as she was staring at the map, the door of her room suddenly opened, and two soldiers came in and removed it from the wall. This made Alice think she was being watched, even though there were no other windows in the room or door. The feeling was disquieting.
One morning several days after her incarceration, the young corporal who had escorted her from the prison van came in with her breakfast and offered her a cigarette. She declined it at first and then agreed to have it.
‘I don’t normally smoke now,’ she said allowing the corporal to light it up for her and then taking a few doubtful puffs.
‘How are things then, Alice?’ the corporal asked with a smile.
‘Alright, I suppose,’ Alice replied. ‘I just wish I knew what was going on.’
‘You’ll be free soon,’ the corporal said with a cheeky grin. ‘They just want to have a little talk with you, this afternoon.’
‘Who do?’ she asked.
The corporal dropped his voice. ‘Well, don’t say I said so, but I think it’s people from the Home Office.’
Alice gave the soldier a blank look. ‘Home Office?’
‘Yeah, you know, in London, near the cenotaph, Whitehall,’ the corporal said.
Alice nodded and had another puff of the cigarette. ‘I wonder what they want then?’
‘Just say yes to everything,’ the corporal advised. ‘I would. You don’t want to stay here longer than you have to.’
‘Where am I, anyway?’ she asked.
‘Drewstaignton Research Center, near Exeter,’ the corporal said. ‘We test new weapons and what-have-you. Don’t know why they brought you here.’
Alice frowned and then relaxed. She was tired of feeling uncertain and fearful. Being in an army barracks made her feel safer. From what the corporal said, there was nothing to be worried about anyway.
