Mark shot her a censorious look. ‘Thank you so much for showing us all this, though,’ he said, pointedly.
Leah peered into a fish tank at a selection of tiny children’s shoes; most of them very basic, little more than a curve of leather with a short length of twine to fasten them. ‘I bet these came out of thatched roofs? Didn’t they?’ she asked. The builder nodded reluctantly. ‘It’s meant to be very bad luck to remove them, you know.’
The man fidgeted awkwardly for a moment. ‘Here’s the stuff you’re after. It was under the east end of the floor. The boards were so loose anybody could have lifted them up – they wouldn’t have needed tools or anything. But nobody had, it seems. Not in all that time.’
‘Unless whoever did just didn’t take what they found,’ Leah pointed out.
‘Look, young lady – there’s a thousand builders who’d have just scraped it up with the rest of the rubbish and carted it off with the spoil, without giving it a second thought, all right? I preserve these old things! I keep them safe!’
‘Leah, just button it and come and look at what he found, would you?’ Mark suggested.
It was a large leather bag with a long shoulder strap. About eighteen inches by twelve, like an over-sized school satchel, dark with age and as stiff as board. The metal buckles were rusty and pitted with corrosion. Leah ran her fingers along it, frowning. Her hands were where Hester Canning’s hands had been. She thought hard, tried to picture her. Hiding this bag in fear, in desperation. Hiding it and never returning to it; but never forgetting it either.
‘I left the things inside it, just as I found them. I always try to keep things just as I find them. Open it up. Go on,’ Chris Ward urged, clearly still excited by his find.
Leah carefully lifted the flap of the bag, and found herself holding her breath, expectantly, reverently. She gently removed four objects from inside it, and finally a sheaf of papers so stained and ruined that there was no hope of ever reading what had been written upon them. Leah stared at the objects, and felt a sudden pang of recognition. The three of them stood in silence for a minute, and Leah’s mind whirled with questions and answers.
‘I’ve … read the journal,’ Chris Ward admitted, somewhat hesitantly. ‘That’s how I knew the name Canning. But it doesn’t tell you what the other things are. Or what they mean.’
‘I know exactly what they are. I know exactly what they mean,’ Leah said quietly.
1911
Hester clenches her hands into fists to hide the bloodstains on them. She can’t bear to look at them, can’t bear having the stuff on her skin, but there is nothing in the room she can clean them on, not without leaving telltale marks for all to see. She stands stock still and tries to think, struggles to breathe. She thinks and she thinks, but can’t find any answers. Nothing that makes sense. A policeman is in the hallway outside. A different one, older. He calls her name repeatedly in a deep and gravelly voice. Feeling like she might be sick, Hester swallows convulsively and goes out into the hall. She shuts the library door behind her.
‘Ah, Mrs Canning, please forgive me for intruding into your home. The door was open, and I couldn’t rouse a servant to answer it …’ he says, then seems to realise the implication of his words and colours slightly. Hester feels tears, hot and savage, building up behind her eyes. ‘Forgive me,’ the man mutters again.
‘The vicar isn’t at home, I’m afraid.’ Hester’s voice is tiny and thin. ‘And neither is Mr Robin Durrant, our house guest. At this time of day they are often to be found in the water meadows between here and Thatcham, going about their—’
‘Oh, we know where Robin Durrant is, don’t you worry. He’s safely in custody, and guarded by three men.’
‘What do you mean? Why is he guarded?’
‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down, Mrs Canning? I can see this is all coming as a terrible shock, to the whole household …’ From downstairs, a fresh storm of pitiful crying erupts from Sophie Bell.
‘I do not want to sit down! Why is Robin Durrant guarded by three men?’
‘Well, Mrs Canning, it was Robin Durrant that committed the murder. He was seen by two men just after he did it, trying to dispose of the girl’s body in the canal. He didn’t even try to run away, and he was most dreadfully stained with her blood. Now he’s sitting in silence and won’t say a word to anybody, not even to deny it. Never a surer sign of guilt, in my experience. It’s a terrible business, truly terrible.’ The policeman shakes his head. Hester’s head fills with a muffled, uneven thumping. Grey shadows swell at the edges of her vision.