If Daddy should give her away! If everyone got to know that she’d gone to that place, that she’d been with that sailor, that she’d lied about poor Simon and lied and lied and lied… If all the newspapers, cooing now about poor little innocent-injured Golden Daffodil—if they knew that she was just a sexy trollop who could give lessons to any of the boys at school and had given lessons to most of them! If they knew that she’d let Daddy go off and murder Simon—murder him!—was letting Daddy now face the rest of his life in prison, all because of her lies… And Mummy, poor Mummy, having to live on, with all the family knowing that Daddy had killed Simon, her own cousin, his own nephew, his own brother’s son—had actually shot and killed him: because of her lies…! If Daddy were ever to give her away!
But he wouldn’t. How could he ever harm her, his Golden Daffodil? He’d die to protect her. Daddy would die for her.
And it wasn’t only Maureen and Lindy. Now a man came forward and told the police that he’d recognised her picture in the paper as that of a girl he’d seen that night at the Blue Bar, a disreputable haunt of sailors in the bad part of town.
The police had informed the solicitor who was looking after Daddy’s defence and he came to see her. Could this man’s story possibly be true?
‘Of course not,’ said Daffy, opening the large blue eyes. ‘I never even heard of such a place.’
‘You were at the folk-singing café all through the evening?’
‘Yes, till we went home by the river. Of course we were.’
‘Did you see anyone who might confirm that?’
‘What, you mean at the café? No, we didn’t see anyone we knew. We were near the back and they keep the lights very low because of the singing.’
‘One man did speak to you?’
‘Yes, but he was a pusher. He wouldn’t come forward, would he?’
No flies on little Miss Jones, reflected the solicitor. He suggested: ‘Your cousin, however, had wanted to take you to some place like this bar? You told your father so.’
‘Oh, yes, but…’ She thought it all out rapidly. It was getting rather scarey. ‘Perhaps the man saw Simon there on some other night,’ she suggested, ‘and just mixed up the nights. He used to take other girls there—or anyway to some place.’
‘It was your picture the man recognised.’
‘He couldn’t from the papers, that was the most awful thing. He probably recognised Simon’s and remembered seeing him there on some other night with some other girl and then associated the other girl with me.’ It sounded pretty good, but it wouldn’t deceive Daddy; Daddy would think it too much of a coincidence, after all she’d told him about Simon wanting to take her to just such a place. And the thought flicked in and out again. If Daddy realised that all along Simon had been innocent of any assault on her—would he really stand by her still? Would he let Simon be blamed for the rest of his life—well, for the rest of his death, then: wouldn’t that seem even worse to Daddy?—that Simon was dead and unable to defend himself, that all Simon’s family, Daddy’s own family, his brothers and sisters and Granny and everyone—should live on, believing that dead Simon had been so vile, when all the time he’d been innocent? Of course she could admit to having been to the Blue Bar—to having allowed Simon to inveigle her to that awful place and then been ashamed to admit it; it need make no difference to the story of his subsequent attack on the river bank. But then if more people came forward, if people remembered how she’d gone off with the sailor of her own accord—indeed against Simon’s rather woozy protestations. Nothing to do but deny it; deny it all.
‘Don’t tell Daddy about it,’ she said. ‘It simply isn’t true that the man could have seen me there; it would only upset him.’
It upset the solicitor also. He thought to himself: ‘If this damn’ little bitch has been lying all this time!’ But it was necessary to take the story to her father.
The sad, grey man caged up in the prison hospital awaiting his trial said at once: ‘Of course it isn’t true.’
‘The man’s very sure. He says he remarked at the time how ill-suited they were to such a place.’
‘No, no, he wanted to take her—’ But that didn’t make sense. A thought, a memory, came to his mind, terrifying in its intensity. But he thrust it aside. ‘Surely this—mistake of this man’s needn’t come out in court?’
‘I don’t think so, no. They were obliged to inform us. But it’s no good to the prosecution. You’re pleading guilty, so that’s all there is to it. And for the defence—’