‘Did you?’
‘Well, it was dark, and that bloody smoke from the power station doesn’t make things any better. Like a real pea-souper, that is. Anyway, I might just have seen this figure, like, a quick glimpse.’
‘I understand. Any idea who it was?’
‘Not at first I hadn’t, but now I’ve an idea. I just hadn’t seen him for a long time.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Coming out of- Can’t have been more than two or three houses away. When I saw him he gave me a real fright, so I pressed myself back in the doorway, like, so he couldn’t see me.’
‘But you got a look at him?’
‘Not a good one. First thing I noticed, though, is he was wearing a uniform.’
‘What kind of uniform?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Soldier’s, I suppose.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Well, he moved off sort of sideways, like.’
‘Crabwise?’
‘Come again?’
‘Like a crab?’
‘If you say so, Constable Bascombe.’
Something about all this was beginning to make sense, but I wasn’t sure I liked the sense it made. ‘Did you notice anything else?’
‘I saw him go into a house across the street.’
‘Which one?’ I asked, half of me not wanting to know the answer.
‘The milkman’s,’ he said.
I didn’t want to, but I had to see this through. Tommy Markham. My own godson. All afternoon I thought about it, and I could see no way out of confronting Harry and Tommy. No matter how much thinking I did, I couldn’t come up with an explanation, and if Tommy had murdered Rose Faversham, I wanted to know why. He had certainly been acting oddly since he came back from the army hospital, but I had acted rather strangely myself after they released me from the hospital in Manchester in 1918. I knew better than to judge a man by the way he reacts to war.
I consoled myself with the fact that Tommy might not have killed Rose, that she was already dead when he went to see her, but I knew in my heart that didn’t make sense. Nobody just dropped in on Mad Maggie to see how she was doing, and the idea of two people going to see her in one night was absurd. No, I knew that the person Fingers had seen coming out of Rose’s house had to be her killer, and he swore that person was Tommy Markham.
Fingers could have been lying, but that didn’t make sense, either. For a start, he wasn’t that clever. He must also know that I would confront Tommy and that, one way or another, I’d find out the truth. No, if Fingers had killed Mad Maggie and wanted to escape blame, all he had to do was deny that he had been anywhere near her house and let the gypsy take the fall.
I steeled myself with a quick brandy, then I went around to Harry’s house just after eight o’clock. They were all listening to a variety programme on the Home Service, and someone was torturing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. As usual, Tommy was wearing his army uniform, even though he was on extended leave. He still looked ill, pale and thin. His mother, Polly, a stout, silent woman I had known ever since she was a little girl, offered to make tea and disappeared into the kitchen.
‘What brings you out at this time of night, then?’ Harry asked. ‘Want some company down at the Prince Albert?’
I shook my head. ‘Actually, it’s your Tommy I came to see.’
A shadow of fear crossed Harry’s face. ‘Tommy? Well, you’d better ask him yourself, then. Best of luck.’
Tommy hadn’t moved yet, but when I addressed him, he slowly turned to face me. There was a look of great disappointment in his eyes, as if he knew he had had something valuable in his grasp only to have it taken from him at the last minute. Harry turned off the radio.
‘Tommy,’ I said, speaking as gently as I could, ‘did you go to visit Mad Maggie last Wednesday night, the night of the air raid?’
Harry was staring at me, disbelief written all over his face. ‘For God’s sake, Frank!’ he began, but I waved him down.
‘Did you, Tommy? Did you visit Mad Maggie?’
Slowly, Tommy nodded.
‘You don’t have to say any more,’ Harry said, getting to his feet. He turned to me as if I were his betrayer. ‘I’ve considered you a good friend for many years, Frank, but you’re pushing me too far.’
Polly came back with the teapot and took in the scene at a glance. ‘What’s up? What’s going on?’
‘Sit down, Polly,’ I said. ‘I’m asking your Tommy a few questions, that’s all.’
Polly sat. Harry remained standing, fists clenched at his sides, then Tommy’s voice broke the deadlock. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ he said to Polly. ‘I want to tell him. I want to get it off my chest.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,’ she said.
Tommy pointed at Harry. ‘He does. He’s not as daft as he looks.’
I looked at Harry, who sat down again and shook his head.
Tommy turned back to me. ‘Did I go visit Mad Maggie? Yes I did. Did I kill her? Yes, I d id. I got in through the back window. It wasn’t locked. I picked up the posser and went through into the living room. She was sitting in the dark. Didn’t even have a wireless. She must have heard me, but she didn’t move. She looked at me just once before I hit her, and I could swear she knew why I was doing it. She understood and she knew it was right. It was just.’
As Tommy spoke, he became more animated and his eyes started to glow with life again, as if his prize were once more within his grasp.
‘Why did you do it, Tommy?’ I asked. ‘What did she ever do to harm you?’
He looked at Harry. ‘She killed my dad.’
‘She what?’
‘I told you. She killed my dad. My real dad.’
Polly flopped back in her armchair, tea forgotten, and put her hand to her heart. ‘Tommy, what are you saying?’
‘He knew,’ he said, looking at Harry again. ‘Or at least he suspected. I told him about the field, about the villagers, the madwoman.’
Harry shook his head. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘You never told me it was her. All I knew was that you were upset, you were saying crazy things and acting strange. Especially when you came in from the raid that night. I was worried, that’s all. If I ever suspected you, that’s the only reason, son, I swear it. When I found her body, I thought if there was the remotest possibility… That’s why I went for Frank. I told him to lay off it, to let the gyppos take the blame. But he wouldn’t.’ Harry pointed his finger at me, red in the face. ‘If you want to blame anyone, blame him.’
‘Calm down, Harry,’ I told him. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack.’
‘It’s not a matter of blame,’ Tommy said. ‘It’s about justice. And justice has been served.’
‘Better tell me about it, Tommy,’ I said. The air-raid siren went off, wailing up and down the scale. We all ignored it.
Tommy paused and ran his hand through his closely cropped hair. He looked at me. ‘You should understand, Mr Bascombe. You were there. He was your best friend.’
I frowned. ‘Tell me, Tommy.’
‘Before Dunkirk, a group of us got cut off and we were in this village near Ypres for a few days, before the Germans got too close. We almost didn’t make it to the coast in time for the evacuation. The people were frightened about what the Germans might do if they found out we were there, but they were kind to us. I became quite friendly with one old fellow who spoke very good English, and I told him my father had been killed somewhere near here in the first war. Passchendaele. I said I’d never seen his grave. One day, the old man took me out in his horse and cart and showed me some fields. It was late May, and the early poppies were just coming out among the rows of crosses. It looked beautiful. I knew my father was there somewhere.’ Tommy choked for a moment, looked away and wiped his eyes.