But in my little front room, all had remained the same. It was a room that had not changed after all those years, because to move a bookcase or replace a tablecloth would have been to move time on and move Nell’s memory further from me. This was the room that I had become accustomed to seeing my daughter in, so it was no wonder that I continued to see her in the place that she was not. But Nell was not sitting in her chair now and I was glad for it because I did not know how she would appear to me when I next saw her.
Some memories would return though – there had been no May Queen in Missensham for twenty-five years, yet now there was to be another. The maypole was already up and waiting, the courtyard of the bus station had been cleared and the willow arch was being constructed. Somewhere a mother would be sewing a May Queen’s dress and weaving a willow crown. Tomorrow would be May Day again and there would be more memories.
Then somewhere, from far out on the common, a single crack of gunshot.
20
It was a gunshot that was heard but not seen. A sound that was distant yet loud enough to wake me from my memories and, as I sat in my little cottage, peering through the trickles of rain on the window, I did not think about the others who had heard it too.
I did not know it at the time, but the sound of the gun had come from a spot near the old cart track high up on Missensham Common, barely half a mile from where the men of the search party were crossing the clumped grass and gorse of the higher ground. When they heard the shot, the men had turned and looked across the common – to the cart track and the gentle fall of the slope, which gave way to the view of the village below – but they had seen nothing. It was only the rooks circling over a thicket that caused them to change direction and head for a small clump of trees – the place that had come to be known as the Blood Elms.
They did not know that they would come to find the body of a man among the twisted tree roots, his gun on the ground next to him. They did not know that the man who lay dead and the one who had pulled the trigger were one and the same.
It was Roy who had told me the news. He did not say much at first, for he did not need to. The look on his face when he stood in my doorway was enough to tell me that there had been a death. It was an expression that I had seen many times in my life, too many, and I had always expected to hear of Sam’s death this way.
‘Oh, Sam!’ I cried.
Roy put his hand on my shoulder and guided me gently to my chair.
‘It is not Sam who has died,’ he said as I sat down shakily, ‘but you must know—’
‘Not Sam?’ I echoed. ‘Please, Roy, are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘You need not worry yourself about Sam. He was found in a little camp he had made by the railway cutting; he was cold and hungry, so gave himself up willingly and he is now safe and warm and has eaten a good meal in the cell.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘but when I saw your face I could have been sure that…’ But then I saw that his expression had not changed. His cheeks seemed hollow and drawn, his eyes sunken, and his skin ghostly white against the dark hairs of his moustache.
‘Please, Agnes, listen…’ He spoke of the search party again, of the men who I had seen on the green that morning as they set out with their dogs, their rifles cracked over their arms. He spoke of Sam’s capture and how the party had stopped to rest on the high ground when they had heard the shot fired among the Blood Elms. It was then that they realised one of their number was missing. There was only one man who set out that morning who I had known well.
‘Oh, Howard!’ I cried, but I could say no more.
Roy comforted me as I cried, his hand resting lightly on my shoulder. He said that Howard would not have suffered. The shot had been a clean one, fired from Howard’s own old service pistol. There were worse ways to go, he said, and this had been little more than a tragic accident.
It was more than I could bear for I still thought of what Howard must have felt in his last moments, no matter how brief, and I brushed off Roy’s hand and went to the kitchen, filling the kettle and lighting the burner. I wiped my eyes, smoothed down my skirts and straightened my shoulders before I returned and walked shakily back into the front room.
‘I know it must have come as a shock,’ Roy said as I sat back down.
I nodded, but I neither wanted to talk nor listen to him do so, and I found my gaze drifting to the window. Out on the village green there was a flurry of movement and colour. May Day morning was almost over and the procession had dissolved into a mass of white-clad children who raced around on the grass, their dresses billowing in the wind. The willow arch that had led the procession was now propped up against the trunk of the oak tree and a handful of Morris men had taken their tankards under the shade of the branches. Tables were being unfolded in front of the Red Lion, the billowing cloths anchored with platters of cake. Dancers circled the maypole, weaving between each other as the ribbons wound round the wood. Yet for all those who celebrated, there were still those who suffered – and it was those people who I thought of now.
‘And Sam,’ I said, ‘now that he is captured, what will become of him?’
Roy told me that Sam had already been indicted at the local magistrates’ court and would appear at the summer assizes at the Shire Hall in Oxworth. Sam’s story was the same as it had always been. He could remember nothing of May Day 1912 as he had been blind drunk in the morning, his first memory of the day being that of waking in the police cell. Drunkenness was something that I knew would do him no favours in court and I imagined the boy I had once known, beaten, handcuffed and thrown into a cell.
I nodded.
Doctor Crawford had examined the nightgown and, together with the petticoat found in the foxholes, it was his considered opinion that one so slight as Iris Caldwell could not have endured such blood loss and survived. There was no reason to suspect that the blood on Iris’s nightgown was not her own and, based on the doctor’s advice, the courts were prepared to accept the nightgown in lieu of a body. There was also the film, which showed Sam and Iris walking in the direction of Oak Cottage where the bloodied garment had been stowed. So now the police had their man and their murder. The evidence was against Sam – it was thought he would hang.
It was a day that had brought news of one death and heralded another. It had made me weary and I was glad that it was coming to an end. I think that Nell must have had similar thoughts because she seemed to blur and fade as she listened. Sometimes I would see the shake of her head or the curve of her mouth, but by the time my eyes focused on the movement, she would be gone again and I would find myself staring at the space where she was not. Nell was no longer the nightmare with the patchy scalp and weeping eyes that had visited me just two days earlier. She seemed softer now but more faded than ever and I feared that she would not return to me again after this, and that my memories of her would be lost forever.
Roy reached forward and held his hand out to me, but I brushed it away and he leant back in his seat.
I turned to look out the window once more. The church bell was ringing but I could not count the hour for I had not heard the first chime.
On the far side of the village green, people were mingling around the tables and sitting on the grass. Little girls in white dresses were running between picnic rugs and, on one head, a crown of flowers. The ribbons of the maypole were now loose and blowing in the breeze.