a slap-up meal of egg and chips.
‘Do you have a smoke?’ she asked.
I had two Craven As. A man at a nearby table practically fell over himself to light our cigarettes.
She took a deep drag. ‘What happens now?’
‘That depends on you. If you’ll stay put, I’ll take you home, and telegram that you’ll be at your house, to answer questions. If you’re going to try and hop it, I’ll ask the waitress to fetch the railway police now.’
‘Before I’ve had my egg and chips?’
‘I’m not that heartless.’
‘Anyway, where would I go?’
‘I’m sure you would think of somewhere. If you go back to the Bank, there’ll be a baker’s dozen of friends and relations willing to keep you out of the way. Your old flame Eddie would be top of the list.’
‘I’ve made a pig’s ear of my life as it is, without going back to throw in my lot with people who love me but haven’t two ha’pennies to rub together. I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed.’
The tea and bread and butter came first. I left Deirdre to pour, as I spotted a railway policeman on the concourse. I took a business card from my satchel and wrote Marcus’s rank and name, and the message that Mrs F would be ‘at home’ at six o’clock. The officer looked suitably impressed at Marcus’s rank and went immediately to his office to make the call.
Six o’clock would give Deirdre time to get used to the idea that she must start telling the truth. Of course it would also allow her to concoct a clever tale, but I would have to risk that.
Deirdre splashed brown sauce on her chips. ‘Who sent you to look for me?’
‘A question for a question?’
‘All right.’
‘Your husband, brother and Eddie all came to see me. And there’s a police search on for you. I told the chief inspector in charge of the enquiry that I would do my best to find you.’
‘Poor Fitz asked you to look for me.’ She played with a chip, dipping it into the egg. ‘Last Sunday, after Mam died, I couldn’t face seeing him. My life would have been so different if I’d married someone else. I just fell into it. I wanted Mam to come and live with us when we married, and Fitz said no. He relented when she got ill, but by then she’d taken against him and she wouldn’t come. I was caught between the two of them, pulled apart.’
‘But at least he came with you, last Sunday.’
‘He insisted on coming, to show her that everything was all right between us.’
‘And it wasn’t.’
‘No. I should never have married him. What’s happened to him is a judgement on me, my punishment.’
‘It was an accident, a terrible accident.’ That may not have happened if he had not been so exhausted as to be clumsy enough to drop something on his foot and hobble about on crutches. She would think that soon enough. ‘Why did you marry him?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure any more. By then it was over between me and Eddie. Oh, he was a great dancer, top boxer. Poor lad never had much going on in the attic and he went on boxing long after he should have stopped. When they sent him home from the war, he’d lost his stuffing and the lights went out. He couldn’t see beyond bedtime. If I’d stuck with Eddie, I’d have had a life like Mam, eight or more kids and living in a place where you can’t keep the vermin out, rats down the chimney, bugs in the wall.’
‘Eight? I thought there was just you and your brother.’
‘Two alive, six dead. And they’re the ones I know about. I sometimes think Mam lost count herself.’
We finished our egg and chips. Deirdre wiped round the plate with a crust of bread. ‘Fitz hated me doing this, wiping round my plate. He said it smacked of poverty.’
‘Weren’t you ever happy with him?’
‘He was kind. He wanted the best for me.’
That sounded like a no.
‘Deirdre, how did you meet Mr Lansbury, the solicitor?’
She chewed and swallowed her crust. ‘How do you know about him?’
‘I just do. You went to him, for your assignments I suppose we could call them. Some of them are known about, some not.’
‘Did Fitz know?’
‘No.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God for that. I had to do something. I wanted money, for Mam, and for me when I finally plucked