I held the nightgown out in front of me, the bloodied cotton bunched in my hands.
‘I would like to report a murder,’ I said.
18
‘She went mad,’ I said.
Roy leant back in his chair and put his pen back on the desk. ‘Are you sure about this, Agnes?’ he said. ‘Because this is not something you have mentioned before and, from what everyone else says, there is very little to suggest—’
‘Mrs Ryland,’ I said firmly. ‘My name is Mrs Ryland to you now because I am here to report a murder and I will be taken seriously.’ I heard my voice echo in the little room and realised that I must have shouted. It was a tiny space with whitewashed walls, a high arched ceiling and an iron-barred window, and I thought that it must once have been the cell in the days when the town had been much smaller. I could not help but think of the rattle of the iron door and the rants of the prisoners over the years.
‘Mrs Ryland,’ he echoed but there was still no respect in his tone.
‘In answer to your question – yes, I am sure about this,’ I said flatly. ‘I have not mentioned it before because for all these years I have been trying to be respectable and save my little family from the so-near disgrace that Nell brought upon us so many times. From the moment she went missing I have tried to preserve a good name for her but now I know that there are more important things that I need to say about Nell, things that I need to face up to. That is why I am coming to you now, Sergeant Astley.’
He folded his arms across his chest and waited for me to continue.
‘Look!’ I held up the bloodied nightgown. ‘Iris was murdered, and Nell was involved somehow.’ But I realised then that he could see nothing more than the cotton bunched in my hands, and a faded brown stain stretched across the top.
He had been keeping his eyes away from it, as if he did not want to look; did not want to know. When I had held it out to him he had not taken it, so now I stood up from my chair and held it aloft, letting it unravel all the way to the floor.
His eyes widened.
‘You always said that you could not convict without a body,’ I said. ‘Is this not good enough for you?’ I put a hand on each shoulder of the nightgown and shook it, opening it up as if the wearer was still inside, revealing the stain of browned blood stretching from the embroidered chest to the hem. It was only the long sleeves that still bore patches of white among the speckles of mildew. Here was his body – the body of Iris Caldwell.
Roy drew a sharp breath, then rang a little bell on the desk. ‘Will you take this into the office, Constable?’ he said to the uniformed man who appeared. He waited for the man to leave and then put his elbows on the desk, slowly rubbing his temples with his fingertips.
‘I found it under Nell’s bed the day after May Day,’ I said as I sat back down. ‘Not long before you came to search her room.’
‘You did not tell me,’ he said wearily. ‘After all these years you did not tell me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. I knew the words were not enough but I did not know what else I could say.
He looked at me sternly. ‘Agnes… Mrs Ryland, do you have anything else to add to what you have said today? Any other evidence that you have not shown me?’
‘No,’ I said after a while. ‘There is nothing more.’
‘That is not what you implied when you came in here,’ he countered. ‘You spoke of madness, of Iris’s murder and of Nell and Sam.’
I put my head in my hands. I could not remember exactly what I had said when Roy led me from the front desk into this little cell, his arm around me as if to hurry me out of sight, but I remembered speaking so fast that I could barely draw breath. Now I worried that he thought me hysterical. ‘I know I might have implied things,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I don’t really know what happened on that morning, but I have started to see things differently over the past few weeks.’
‘How so?’ he said, his eyes narrowing.
‘Well, before the film was shown there was never enough evidence to charge Sam, but when you tried to arrest him after the film, well, I suppose then I felt I should come forward,’ I said. ‘To clear his name.’
‘To clear his name,’ he repeated. ‘After twenty-five years!’
I had planned to say more but the words caught in the back of my throat. It was a speech I had prepared – arguments I had thought reasonable – but now as I tried to piece the words together again, I realised that they did not make sense after all.
‘I have always spoken up for Sam,’ I said quietly. ‘Haven’t I?’
Roy took a deep breath and opened his mouth, but I feared what he would say.
‘I always wanted to do more than that, of course,’ I said quickly. ‘From the day I found Iris’s nightgown, I wanted to bring it to you to show you that Sam was not guilty…’ But then I found that I could not continue because whatever I had wanted to do did not matter. I had let Sam live with the blame for what had happened, I had hindered the police investigation, and I had broken promises to those I had loved. I had let down both the living and the dead.
‘What would Thomas have thought of this, Agnes?’ Roy said as if reading my thoughts.
‘Thomas?’ I began. ‘Well…’ I thought of how Thomas had welcomed Sam into our home. He had done it out of duty to his family, but mainly because of his kind nature. When his health had started to fail, he had asked me to look out for Sam when he was gone. It was the final thing that he had asked of me, and I had failed him. ‘Do not speak of him!’ I said, my voice trembling. ‘I had little choice. Sam is related to me by marriage, but Nell is my blood. Nell had to come first. I had to protect my daughter.’ My eyes started to sting and I fumbled for my handkerchief.
But Roy’s voice did not soften. ‘Protect your daughter from what?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I whispered. ‘I was protecting her from the noose! If she is still alive somewhere I could not see her hang. I could not lose her a second time.’
‘There has never been anything to suggest that Nell is still alive,’ he said sternly. ‘You must have come to accept this by now.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘then I had to protect her memory – her reputation.’
He said nothing. He did not have to. I saw in his face what he was thinking, for his view of things was far simpler than my own – I was a woman who had hidden important evidence for twenty-five years. I had hindered his investigation and let the public blame a man who might be innocent, and I had done it all to save the reputation of a girl who had not been seen for well over two decades – a girl that he believed dead. But Roy did not share my guilt or my grief. He would not return home that evening to a house that was empty but for a memory so clear that it seemed real – a visitor that would stare but never speak.
He closed his eyes for a moment, his breath coming in slow hisses, and I thought he must be trying to clear his mind, to forget the last twenty-five years as if they had never happened.
Then at last he spoke again: ‘Mrs Ryland, you said that you have started to see things differently in the last few weeks. Has there been anything else that has caused you to come forward at this time?’