The Death of Lucy Kyte (14 page)

‘How dignified,' Marta said, when she realised that Andrews wasn't joking.

‘He made about £50 a year, I think. I suppose today we'd call it prisoner rehabilitation.' He smiled, and added more seriously: ‘Corder was a rarity, I'm pleased to say. They abolished dissection as a punishment four years after he hanged.'

‘Thank God for that.'

Andrews began to remove a pair of pistols from another case. Marta squeezed Josephine's hand and wandered quietly off to another part of the museum. Josephine watched her, concerned about how she must feel and sorry that they had come here at all. ‘These are the guns that Corder was supposed to have used that day. See – they removed the hammers before the trial so they couldn't be discharged by mistake in court.'

Josephine tried to concentrate on what Andrews was telling her, and looked at the pistols in surprise: they were only about six inches long, and seemed barely capable of harming anyone. ‘He claimed Maria shot herself, didn't he?' she said, remembering the line of defence that Curtis had reported.

‘At first, yes. But it was unclear how she had died – that's why they charged him with ten counts, so he couldn't get off on a technicality. It made legal history. But he denied stabbing her right to the end; he said the stab wounds were made afterwards, when they were prodding about the barn floor, looking for her body. That's feasible, because she was only nine inches or so below the surface. This is what they're supposed to have used. It was her father's.'

He pointed to a mole spud, and Josephine shuddered when she thought of how Thomas Marten must have felt when he uncovered his daughter's rotting body. The other items on display were less sensational, but somehow more evocative: a horn lantern, used to find the body; a snuffbox in the shape of a shoe, made out of wood from the Red Barn; and a pair of box irons belonging to Maria, the only thing that testified to her life rather than her death. ‘There's not much about the real Maria here, is there?' she said. ‘That's not a criticism. I just find it interesting that history tends to remember the murderer and not the victim, while the melodramas all seem to celebrate
her
name.'

‘I know exactly what you mean.' He grinned at her, and Josephine sensed that she had given him the opportunity he was waiting for; when it came, his pitch was both charming and shameless. ‘Of course, you could put that right if you would ever consider loaning the rest of Hester's collection to the museum. We'd take very good care of it, and it would rather redress the imbalance to have more of Maria's things on display.'

‘To be honest, I haven't seen anything that looks remotely as though it might have belonged to anyone from that time, but there's still a lot of sorting out to be done.' Her heart sank when she thought of the boxroom. ‘What should I be looking for?'

‘Maria's wooden clothes chest is the jewel in the crown,' Andrews said. ‘It's about four feet by two, made of oak and lined with very faded silk. It's scuffed and marked and you wouldn't give it a second glance if you didn't know whose it was. But if you look closely, you can see where she's scratched her initials on the lid.'

‘I found a chest in the garage. It holds the stage props I told your assistant about.'

‘I doubt Hester would have put it in the garage,' Andrews said. ‘It was her pride and joy, and she had it next to the fire when I saw it, but it always travelled with her when she and Walter were on tour. She kept her costumes in it for luck. Hers, but never his; she told me that nothing to do with Corder ever went near it.' Of all the theatrical superstitions Josephine had heard over the years, Hester's was one of the more original. ‘Then there were lots of Maria's early letters to a friend, and her mirror . . .'

‘A small silver hand mirror with roses round the glass?'

His face lit up. ‘Yes, exactly.'

‘That's still there. I did my make-up in it this morning.' It was the only mirror in the house. Until she found out about Hester's blindness, Josephine had been surprised by such an uncharacteristic lack of vanity in an actress. Before she had time to consider the strangeness of looking into the glass that Maria had used, Andrews was moving on through his inventory.

‘Hester also had two Staffordshire figurines, one a Sherratt piece with William enticing Maria into the barn, and the other a group of murderer, victim and judge all standing together. There was an original iron bar from one of the doors to the Red Barn, and something made out of the wood, not unlike the snuffbox we've got already. I particularly liked the collection of painted backdrops she had from the early peepshows that travelled round in the 1840s. They were done by a chap called Jack Kelley, a drunken Irishman who lived in Leather Lane – one of them depicted Corder boiling an egg on the morning of his arrest. And last but not least, she had a small elm table that came from the Corder house. Actually, we had that on loan for a while but she asked for it back not long before she died. She said she missed it too much.'

‘Where did she get it all?' Josephine asked, ignoring for now the more pertinent question of where it had all gone.

‘There are dealers who specialise in that sort of thing, and there always have been. I suppose it goes back to the tradition of the hangman having the right to a murderer's clothes. It didn't take him long to realise that he could sell those for far more than he was paid to open a trap. Madame Tussaud paid handsomely, I believe. She used to buy clothes and accessories from real murders to display with the waxworks. In fact, I read somewhere that when they sold off the contents of Road House after the Constance Kent case, they kept back the victim's little cot in case it ended up in the Chamber of Horrors.'

‘That's fascinating,' Josephine said. ‘I had no idea.'

‘Oh yes. It encouraged a lot of fraudsters, of course. Corder's head was allegedly exhibited by a showman at Bartholomew Fair, although as far as we're concerned it's still firmly on his shoulders in the hospital. I suppose Hester was following in a theatrical tradition with her collecting, too. Owners of the sort of theatre that
Maria Marten
played at used to snap these things up for props, so you might be lucky in your chest in the garage.' He must have realised he had Josephine completely enthralled by now, because he added mysteriously: ‘Then there are the things that we know exist but have no idea where.'

‘Like what?'

‘Maria's hand is the most legendary, but there are also rumours that Creed bound a second copy of the trial.'

‘You're surely not telling me that Hester had Maria Marten's hand tucked away somewhere?'

‘No. She always denied buying any of the more gruesome relics, even the rope that hanged him – and several people own an inch or two of that.'

‘Don't you believe her? You sound sceptical.'

‘I'm always sceptical where collectors are concerned, probably because I'm one myself. We lie, and play things very close to our chests. But I did believe Hester. She was always more interested in the social history of the crime, in Maria as a woman.'

‘And the things she owned were valuable?'

‘Good God, yes. Murder relics have always been big business, even though people are divided about them. Some are disgusted by them, like your friend; others would go to great lengths to get hold of them.' He smiled at her. ‘Where do you stand?'

‘With most people, I suspect. In my heart, I know it's wrong and the inhumanity of it disgusts me – but I'm also fascinated by it. And as far as Hester's collection is concerned,' she added, telling him what he really wanted to know, ‘I can see the appeal of owning something that Maria loved when she was alive, but I'm not sure I'd want anything from the place where she was killed, and pottery figures are just something else to dust. You're welcome to those if I come across them.'

‘That's very kind, but I must warn you against being too generous. Those Staffordshire models alone are probably worth more than your cottage. Relics attract very large sums of money – if they can be authenticated, and Hester's always were.'

‘Yes, I rather got the impression she was a stickler for that sort of detail.' She told him about the letter that had arrived with the rare book and the hoops through which the bookseller had obviously been made to jump to prove its value.

‘That sounds about right. Did you say John Moore?'

‘Yes. Do you know him?'

‘No, but Corder's son was called John Moore. He took his mother's maiden name, for obvious reasons.'

‘Unless the years have been miraculously kind, it must be a coincidence.'

‘Yes, and it's a common enough name, but it will have amused Hester.'

Josephine cast a quick glance round the museum, but there was no sign of Marta. ‘Thank you for everything you've told me,' she said, holding out her hand, ‘and especially for taking those stage sets off my hands. I had no idea that trying to do the right thing for someone you never knew would be quite so difficult.'

‘I'm sure there's a lot to think about, but they'll be greatly enjoyed here. Who knows? We might even put on a performance or two in Hester's honour.'

‘I'll arrange for them to be sent over to you before I leave.'

‘You're not here all the time?'

‘No, and there are easier places to commute to Suffolk from than Scotland, but I'm sure it will work out eventually. And I'll be in touch if I find any of the other things you mentioned, but it seems that Hester got rid of an awful lot in the last couple of years.'

He looked doubtful but didn't argue, and Josephine walked out into the sunshine, glad to be free of the museum's shadows. She looked round for Marta and saw her coming out of a bookshop, looking pleased with herself. ‘What have you got?' she asked.

‘I'll show you later. Have you finished in the Black Museum?'

She spoke lightly, but Josephine knew that what she had seen had affected her, no matter how old the crime. ‘I'm sorry for taking you there,' she said. ‘I should have gone another time.'

‘Don't be silly – it was my choice to go in. It's a damned good story and I can understand why it interests you, but all I can see in those cases is a woman who was desperate and a man out of his depth. Now – what shall we do first? Shopping or lunch?'

The change of subject was sudden and final. It bothered Josephine that Marta had an intuitive understanding as far as she was concerned, drawing her out and encouraging her to speak about her feelings as she had the day before, but she rarely allowed the gift to be reciprocated. It was the only imbalance in their relationship, but it seemed to Josephine an important one, and she had not yet found a way to fight it. ‘Shopping, I think,' she said. ‘I'm not sure I could face food just yet.'

‘Good. There's a department store just down here.'

Plumpton's offered everything that Josephine wanted; within an hour, she and Marta had bought new linen, ordered curtains, chosen pans and a kettle for the kitchen, and argued over crockery as if they had years of domestic compromise behind them. ‘I still think you should have gone for the Susie Cooper,' Marta said, as they struggled back to the car with all they could carry. ‘Whoever's heard of Charlotte Rhead?'

‘If I wanted brown and dingy, I'd use what I've got already,' Josephine insisted. ‘But if it makes you happy, I'll buy you a nice beige cup of your own.'

After lunch, they walked through the Abbey Gardens, enchanted by its ruined beauty. A long stretch of green sloped down towards the river bank, and they sat for a while, watching families picnic in the sun. ‘I can't go there, Josephine, and I never will,' Marta said, out of nowhere. ‘I know you want me to talk about what happened, and I know you want to help, but it wouldn't help. It would destroy me even to say his name.' She was close to tears and Josephine longed to hold her, but she sat staring into the distance, her face impassive, her body tense and wary of the slightest touch. ‘Is that all right?'

‘Of course it's all right,' Josephine said quietly.

‘I don't want you to feel that I'm shutting you out, but I can't let that be part of our life. Part of
my
life.'

She started to say something else, but Josephine put a hand on her cheek. ‘Marta, look at me. It's all right. I understand.' She felt Marta's relief and it saddened her, because she knew she could never truly understand. Marta's son had killed her daughter, and paid the ultimate price. It was what had brought them together and what would always, to some extent, keep them apart.

10

The following day, Josephine spent a long and dusty morning in the garage, emerging at last with two large boxes of rubbish but no clue as to the fate of Maria's clothes chest. ‘Any luck?' Marta asked.

‘No, just props in a trunk with travel stamps all over it. I'm not sure Maria ever went as far as Karachi.'

‘Don't you think it will all be in that room you're avoiding?'

‘Perhaps, but I'm not ready for that yet.'

‘I'll help you.'

‘Not on such a lovely day. What have you been up to?'

‘Waging war on the vegetable garden. I hope you like beetroot. Hester obviously did.'

‘Not especially,' Josephine said, looking doubtfully at the mound by Marta's feet.

‘No, I can't stand it either. Still, we could always take it to the church.'

‘What?'

‘The vicar's wife called while you were busy. She seems nice.'

‘Not much like a vicar's wife, you mean.'

‘Exactly. She told me not to disturb you, but she brought an invitation to the harvest service tonight. I said we'd go.'

‘You are joking.'

Marta laughed at the horror in her voice. ‘No, I thought it would be fun. It's the ideal opportunity to have a look at the rest of the village.'