She lit another cigarette.
“I thought it was rather sweet at the time, but only because I was too bloody thick to recognise a couple of queens when I saw them. Now I just think it was sick. It’s no wonder my mother hated the Clarkes.”
“They moved after the murders,” said Roz thoughtfully.
“Vanished one morning without leaving a forwarding address.
No one knows what happened to them or where they went.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. I expect she was behind it.”
“Mrs. Clarke?”
“She never liked him coming round to our house. He used to hop across the fence at the back and he and Dad would shut themselves in Dad’s room and not come out for hours. I should think it must have worried her sick after the murders when Dad was all alone in the house.”
Images, gleaned from things people had said, chased themselves across Roz’s mind. Robert Martin’s vanity and his Peter Pan looks; he and Ted Clarke being as close as brothers; the room at the back with the bed in it; Gwen’s keeping up appearances; her frigid flinching from her husband; the secret that needed hiding. It all made sense, she thought, but did it affect anything if Olive hadn’t known it at the time?
“Was Mr. Clarke his only lover, do you think?”
“How would I know? Probably not,” she went on, contradicting herself immediately.
“He had his own back door in that room he used. He could have been out after rent-boys every night for all any of us would have known about it. I hate him.”
She looked as if she were about to erupt again but Roz’s look of alarm gave her pause.
“I hated him,” she repeated, before lapsing into silence.
“Because he killed Gwen and Amber?” asked Roz for the second time.
But Olive was dismissive: “He was at work all day. Everyone knows that.”
Olive Martin took an axe… Are you raising her expectations by telling her your book will get her out?
“Did your lover kill them?” She felt she was being clumsy, asking the wrong questions, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.
Olive sniggered.
“What makes you think I had a lover?”
“Someone made you pregnant.”
“Oh, that.” She was scornful.
“I lied about the abortion. I wanted the girls here to think I was attractive once.” She spoke loudly as if intent on the officers hearing everything.
A cold fist of certainty squeezed at Roz’s heart. Deedes had warned her of this four weeks ago.
“Then who was the man who sent you letters via Gary O’Brien?” she asked.
“Wasn’t he your lover?”
Olive’s eyes glittered like snakes’ eyes.
“He was Amber’s lover.”
Roz stared at her.
“But why would he send letters to you?”
“Because Amber was too frightened to receive them herself.
She was a coward.” There was a brief pause.
“Like my father.”
“What was she frightened of?”
“My mother.”
“What was your father frightened of?”
“My mother.”
“And were you frightened of your mother?”
“No.”
“Who was Amber’s lover?”
“I don’t know. She never told me.”
“What was in his letters?”
“Love, I expect. Everyone loved Amber.”
“Including you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And your mother. Did she love Amber?”
“Of course.”
“That’s not what Mrs. Hopwood says.”
Olive shrugged.
“What would she know about it? She hardly knew us. She was always fussing over her precious Geraldine.”
A sly smile crept about her mouth, making her ugly.
“What does anybody know about it now except me?”
Roz could feel the scales peeling from her eyes in slow and terrible disillusionment.
“Is that why you waited till your father died before you would talk to anyone? So that there’d be no one left to contradict you?”
Olive stared at her with undisguised dislike then, with a careless gesture hidden from the officers’ eyes but all too visible to Roz she removed a tiny clay doll from her pocket and turned the long pin that was piercing the doll’s head. Red hair. Green dress. It required little imagination on Roz’s part to endow the clay with a personality.
She gave a hollow laugh.
“I’m a sceptic, Olive. It’s like religion. It only works if you believe in it.”
“I believe in it.”
“Then more fool you.” She stood up abruptly and walked to the door, nodding to Mr. Allenby to let her out. What had induced her to believe the woman innocent in the first place?
And why, for Christ’s sake, had she picked on a bloody murderess to fill the void that Alice had left in her heart?
She stopped at a payphone and dialled St. Angela’s Convent. It was Sister Bridget herself who answered.
“How may I help?” asked her comfortable lilting voice.
Roz smiled weakly into the receiver.
“You could say: “Come on down, Roz, I’ll give you an hour to listen to your woes.”
Sister Bridget’s light chuckle lost none of its warmth by transmission down the wire.
“Come on down, dear. I’ve a whole evening free and I like nothing better than listening. Are the woes so bad?”
“Yes. I think Olive did it.”
“Not so bad. You’re no worse off than when you started. I live in the house next to the school. It’s called Donegal. Totally inappropriate, of course, but rather charming. Join me as soon as you can. We’ll have supper together.”
There was a strained note in Roz’s voice.
“Do you believe in black magic, Sister?”
“Should I?”
“Olive is sticking pins into a clay image of me.”
“Good Lord!”
“And I’ve got a headache.”
“I’m not surprised. If I had just had my faith in someone shattered, I would have a headache, too. What an absurd creature she is! Presumably it’s her way of trying to regain some semblance of control. Prison is soul destroying in that respect.” She tut-tutted in annoyance.
“Really quite absurd, and I’ve always had such a high esteem for Olive’s intellect. I’ll expect you when I see you, my dear.”
Roz listened to the click at the other end, then cradled the receiver against her chest. Thank God for Sister Bridget… She put the receiver back with two hands that trembled. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!
THANK GOD FOR SISTER BRIDGET… Supper was a simple affair of soup, scrambled eggs on toast, fresh fruit and cheese, with Roz’s contribution of a light sparkling wine. They ate in the dining room, looking out over the tiny walled garden where climbing plants tumbled their vigorous new growth in glossy green cascades. It took Roz two hours to run through all her notes and give Sister Bridget a complete account of everything she had discovered.
Sister Bridget, rather more rosy-cheeked than usual, sat in contemplative silence for a long time after Roz had finished. If she noticed the bruises on the other woman’s face, she did not remark on them.
“You know, my dear,” she said at last, ‘if I’m surprised by anything it is your sudden certainty that Olive is guilty. I can see nothing in what she said to make you overturn your previous conviction that she was innocent.” She raised mildly enquiring eyebrows.
“It was the sly way she smiled when she talked about being the only one who knew anything,” said Roz tiredly.
“There was something so unpleasantly knowing about it. Does that make sense?”
“Not really. The Olive I see has a permanently sly look. I wish she could be as open with me as she seems to have been with you, but I’m afraid she will always regard me as the guardian of her morals. It makes it harder for her to be honest.”
She paused for a moment.
“Are you sure you’re not simply reacting to her hostility towards you?