‘I take exception to that.’
‘But, also, she’s got all the notes, all the instructions, personal material, everything he wanted to say when he took the stand, all the stuff, and she knows, down to the last detail exactly what he’s done and she’s the keeper of that knowledge. She had to know the truth about him in order to defend him. She’s got enough for a book. He wants that back. He may have hounded her to get it back; he might have threatened her to get it back. She’s got him, his words written and recorded, his soul, if you like.’
‘Where has she put her THINGS?’ Thomas yelled. ‘WHERE are they? That’s all I want to know.’ He stopped. ‘Wait a minute, that’s what he said. He said, “she knew me better than anyone.” How very uncomfortable. The second thing?’
‘Revenge. The trial was supposed to get him revenge. But he didn’t get it. He used Marianne to expose the Joyce sisters. He sat in court, hating Henrietta Joyce like poison. She made her sister report him and she led to the finding of the others. She was the catalyst who put him into prison. There was something she kept back, something he said she stole… Oh, hell, I’ve lost the plot.’
Thomas was sober again, and tired, but he knew a good storyteller when he saw one.
‘Well, yes, I’m hearing what you’re saying, but I can’t quite see how I should make it my business, unless he actually came up behind Marianne and pushed her out the window. In which case, it is my business. Shall we look at these wretched, smelly clothes while you’re here? Please say yes.’
Peter swam back into the present, with a terrible gut ache interfering with his breathing. He was remembering the awful feeling of impotence and inertia and fury. Charismatic, persuasive Rick Boyd. Marianne had won, but there were no winners, only losers and unfinished business.
‘Sorry. Let’s do it.’
Without waiting for further invitation, knowing what Thomas wanted, Peter went towards the labelled paper bag unstrategically placed in the corner of the room, exactly as it had been delivered and treated as contagious ever since. He could quite see why. Thomas handed him a pair of industrial-sized scissors with huge black handles and blades like heavyweight saws. He thought, irrelevantly, how useless they would be as a combat weapon, no good for stabbing, only for cutting. A vital piece of equipment for a lawyer’s office; as useful as the paperclip. In the face of such scissors, it was disappointing to find the tough paper so fragile. No exhibit labels, no seals, therefore, no crime; although everything about him screamed out to say there must be. He simply laid the bag on its side and cut across the top.
The skirt spilled out like something live, a fantastic vision of crimson, red, blue, a creature escaped from a cage. It expanded as they watched, and settled on the floor, breathing out and breathing in, crumpling, finally, amongst its own folds and settling down. Both of them took a step back, watching it deflate like a parachute. The garment seemed to be made of tightly pleated delicate material, which increased from its own folds into volumes of cloth that needed to breathe. The colours took Thomas’s breath away, they were so unexpected. In the photographs of her free-fall death, this garment had been a blurred mass of dark fluff. Thomas regretted it on her behalf. So unlike Marianne Shearer, in her killer black suits, so horribly alive in its own right. She never wore skirts; she wore immaculate trousers. There were so many yards of material in this it should have changed the direction of the fall.
It was Thomas who tipped out the rest of the bag. A boned corset, stockings, suspenders, a heavy silk slip embroidered with lace, camiknickers in lockknit silk. Small, heeled boots, not for walking. The delicate but substantial undergarments were split, bearing the soak of what little blood there was. Death instantaneous, external bleeding to the torso minimal, contained in the undergarments, leaving the skirt almost fit to be worn. The delicate, pleated silk moved with the breeze from the window. Peter thought it was beautiful.
There was a very long pause. Thomas filled the glasses and sat back on his office chair, old, slumped and bewildered.
‘Why did she die dressed like that?’ Thomas howled, crying into his whisky. ‘What the hell kind of funeral garment is that? Could she have hidden something inside it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Peter said. ‘But I may know someone who does. I’ll take it all away, shall I?’
Thomas threw his glass through the open window. They both heard it smash on the pavement.
Frockserve.com.
Henrietta Joyce rescues clothes and knows all about them. And might need rescuing herself, if Boyd was around. She had something of his.
Peter put the clothes and the boots back into the bag.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I can’t pay much,’ Hen was saying to the new girl, ‘because I never seem to end up getting paid very much myself, and at the moment I use most of what I make to buy something else. Increase my own stock and buy the chemicals.’
The girl, whose name was Ann, was looking round herself, turning this way and that and saying, Oooh, ooh, look at that, bustling around with wary enthusiasm.
‘And,’ Hen said, ‘I’ll have to be very careful about what I let you do. Don’t want injuries or you drawing blood on scissors. We’ll stick to alterations for the time being, shall we?’
‘I don’t care what I do,’ Ann said. ‘I just want to be here.’
That was nice, and made Hen smile, because it was exactly the way she felt herself. The feeling might not last beyond a day or two in a newcomer, but it had lasted in herself for years, or anyway so long she had stopped counting. A room like this, full of clothes, a myriad of colours and textures catching the light from the big window and looking like an invitation to dance. To the left, a selection of five evening dresses, carefully hung from the waist, as if they were making a bow and shaking out their own creases. Green and scarlet and midnight blue. Next to them, a row of sombre black jackets, hung from the shoulders, all showing on closer inspection that black was never really black and no black quite the same. A selection of multicoloured shawls draped themselves over the shoulders of the black clothes, as if they were embracing each other. On the hanging rail to the right were some shabby wool suits and voluminous skirts, next to a small selection of cloaks, which gave way to the whites and creams of a wedding dress and a selection of large pieces of lace. On the shelves high above the garments were the hats, tilting towards them on wire stands, showing off every colour of the rainbow. Beneath the hats were the shelves of knitted clothes laid flat.
‘You always lay the knitted stuff flat,’ Hen said. ‘Preferably not on top of one another. They take up a lot of space. If you fold them, you have to fold them another way every so often. Creases weaken the fabric. If you hang them, they stretch. I’m not sure what I’ll ever do with these.’
The centre of the room was empty space occupied by a very old and worn rug in various faded shades of rose madder and olive green. At the far end of the room was the workstation, a large, old pine table that could have seated six and was spotlit from above. The surface was covered with two sewing machines, boxes of threads, scraps of material. From the open door of the shelved wardrobe that stood behind it, Ann could see small samples of cloth and pieces of other clothes, stuffed in and spilling out against a large roll of muslin propped against a wall. The mirrored wardrobe doors reflected the room and doubled the light.
‘Never that much light in here,’ Hen said. ‘Light might be good for the eyes, but not always for clothes, not in the long run. I’m not skilled enough to know how things fade, but I know they do, and you can do a lot to restore stuff but you can never put back the colour. Doesn’t matter so much for these things. They’re work in progress, might not be here long. Storage is another matter. Here, look at this. I shan’t make you wear it, promise.’