The question took Stephen by surprise. He looked carefully at the image.

“No.” He looked at me with the same care. “Do you think he did for Mrs. Farrar?”

Without warning, the officer opened the door. “Time’s up, madam.”

I looked at my watch. “My time isn’t up, officer. Please leave us.”

Surprisingly, he did.

“Has anything unusual happened lately?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know nothing since I been in here.”

“Try and think. Have there been strangers about?”

“Not right round by us but the home was closed, and there’s been work going on nearby.” He leaned forward, suddenly eager to tell me something else. “Mebbe that’s why Mrs. Farrar were upset that time. She didn’t want the Bluebell Children’s Home to close. None of us did. She allus visited, went to see the kids.”

“The children’s home?”

“Where I was fetched up. A lot of us was.”

“What happened in your family?”

“Dad died. Mam went off. Mrs. Farrar allus said, ‘Don’t blame yer mam too much. She’ll be sorry. She’ll blame herself well enough one day.’”

“Mrs. Farrar sounds a good person.”

He gulped, fighting back tears. “I woulda been lost without her. She took me in when I was thirteen.”

The officer opened the door again, this time looking at his fob watch. “Time’s up.”

The officer produced handcuffs.

Stephen held out his hands. He spoke without prompting. “Tell mi friends not to fret.”

The officer stood back, so that I could leave before them.

I stood in the corridor.

As he came out, Stephen said, “It musta been that made her sad, made us all sad, the home closing.”

“Thank you, Stephen.” I needed to come again. I should have specified that I needed more time with him. “Chin up.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say to a man who must go to sleep with a noose at the back of his eyes. Words are easy to say when you are going in one direction along a corridor and a prisoner is going in the other.

Another escort appeared. I stood aside while Stephen was led away.

I turned back to look. So did he. He cast a glance of hope, and pleading, and then unaccountably began to sing, and though the prison officer barked at him, he kept on singing.

“The Grand Old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again. And when they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down, and when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down.”

My escort led me back the way we had come.

When we had left the corridors behind and were in a high-ceilinged open space, I turned to him. “I need to see the governor.”

A single crumb of comfort came from the fact that Stephen Walmsley had not yet been charged with murder.

Chapter Seven