Miss K Benteen,

The Grange,

Locksbottom,

Kent

I don’t know if she’d be able to add anything to my reminiscences.

Please remember me to Gretchen, and to Matron, who was always very kind to me, and give them my best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Brenda van Lingen

This letter, which was awaiting Jean on her return from Lymington, sent her hurrying back to Alice Halfyard’s diary, with a guilty jolt that she had allowed her focus on the investigation to slip. But the positive outcomes of the various medical tests had made her complacent and her emotional involvement with the Tilburys had distracted her.

There, on August 20, was the reference to the deliberate overdosing of Gretchen and Martha, confirmed now by Brenda as a regular occurrence and not the one-off event Alice had believed it to be. She checked the dates against Margaret’s birth—April 30. She had not been premature, so conception must have occurred some time between early July and the beginning of August. The possibility that for at least some of those nights she had been all but unconscious seemed too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Clearly, Martha and Brenda would have heard nothing, for different reasons, but Kitty?

Jean felt a certain reluctance to pursue the fourth member of this curious fellowship but knew that she must. It was pure squeamishness—a fear of confronting serious illness—that made her hesitate and while she delayed, something else happened that threw all other plans into confusion.

22

“That man’s here again.”

Jean’s mother was standing at the front-room window, counting in the sacks of coal as they were carried past to the bunker in the back garden, convinced that it was only her vigilance that kept tradesmen honest.

“What man?” Jean asked, but her heart had got ahead of her, already knocking at her ribs.

On the street outside, just beyond the dray from Hall & Co., was the green Wolseley. Howard sat behind the wheel, motionless, for so long that Jean wondered if he might be about to change his mind and drive off.

They had been back from Lymington for a week and there had been no communication from the Tilburys apart from a postcard from Margaret of the Forest of Dean. She had described a visit to a ruined abbey and her frustration at not being allowed to swim in the river because of the dressing on her skin graft.

Work had claimed all of Jean’s attention; she had been too busy catching up after her absence, and chewing over the contents of Brenda’s letter, to feel more than a trace of uneasiness at the silence, but here was Howard now, calling unannounced on a Monday evening. He showed no sign of moving and in any case it would be easier to talk away from the inquisitive gaze of her mother, so Jean hurried up the driveway, drawing her cardigan around her against the chill evening air.

He looked up as her shadow darkened the window and gave a wan smile, then reached over to open the door.