Without a Trace (20 page)

Molly felt faintly sick as she went up in the lift, wondering what she could have done wrong. It was clear she’d done something but, apart from being five minutes late to the counter last Friday morning, she couldn’t think of anything. But would she really be hauled out at such a busy time for something so trivial?

A voice from inside the personnel office responded to Mr Douglas’s knock, telling him to come in. He didn’t go in, though, just put his head round the door to say he had Miss Heywood with him.

‘Go in.’ He nodded at Molly, his face cold and blank.

Molly went in to find Hawk Face, the woman who had been on the interview panel, sitting behind the desk. She knew her now as Miss Jackson, one of the directors of the company, but aside from occasionally seeing her walk through the store, she’d had no reason to speak to her.

‘Miss Heywood,’ she began, not even asking Molly to sit down. ‘It has been alleged that you have been putting extra goods which haven’t been paid for into customers’ bags. As I am quite sure you are in total command of your faculties, I have to assume the lucky recipients are friends or relatives of yours.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Molly frowned, not really understanding. ‘There must be some mistake. I have never done such a thing.’

‘But we have two independent witnesses who saw you do it.’

Molly felt her heart plummet. In a flash she guessed that the two so-called witnesses were Miss Stow and Mr Hardcraft, but why they should claim such a thing was a mystery to her.

‘They’re mistaken. I have never stolen anything in my life, and this is theft you’re talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is. Any item taken from the store without payment or permission is considered stolen. A cunning way of stealing, too, as you personally would never have the stolen goods on you.’

‘Then why didn’t the witnesses call Security when they saw it happening?’ Molly asked, but the shock of being accused
of theft made her voice waver and her eyes prickle with tears.

‘The first time, you were given the benefit of the doubt, but after that you were watched and, of course, you did it again, and again.’

‘I did not,’ Molly said with indignation. ‘Whoever told you this is a liar and a troublemaker. Get them in here, and they can say it to my face. I don’t have any friends or relatives in London to give anything to. The only people I know are members of staff.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Hawk Face said, her dark eyes flashing with steel. ‘I’ve heard you have friends in Whitechapel.’

Molly was astounded. ‘I know one person there, and she is a Sister in the Church Army,’ she retorted angrily. ‘And she’s a frail old lady in a wheelchair. She can’t even go out alone, much less come up to the West End so I can pass stolen gloves to her.’

‘Come now! Do you really expect me to believe she is the only friend you have?’

‘I have friends back home in Somerset.’ Molly was aware that her voice was rising in her agitation, but she tried to control it. ‘But the only friends I have in London are people who work here and live in Warwickshire House.’

‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, Miss Heywood. Or deny something which senior and trusted staff members have reported. I want you to go to Warwickshire House now, pack your suitcase and leave. You may count yourself very lucky we are not calling the police.’

‘You aren’t calling the police because you have no proof or evidence of theft,’ Molly said, wanting to scream and stamp her feet at the injustice of it, but she wasn’t the kind to do that. ‘You only have the word of a spiteful spinster who
doesn’t like me because I’m popular with everyone else. And I expect she’s influenced Mr Hardcraft into believing her story about me.’

Miss Jackson sat back in her chair, putting her two hands together to make a church spire, and looked at Molly over them, a reflective expression on her face.

‘Go quietly now, or I will call the police,’ she said after a second or two. ‘Aside from everyone seeing you taken away to the police station, you are likely to get a prison sentence and a police record. So just be grateful that I am being so lenient.’

She got to her feet, picked a brown envelope up from her desk and handed it to Molly. ‘Your wages, made up till the end of the week. But I want you out of the store now.’

‘I didn’t do this,’ Molly pleaded. She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. ‘Please believe me, Miss Jackson. I promise on all that’s holy that I have never given any goods to anyone, or taken them for myself. This is an act of spite by Miss Stow because she is jealous of me. I love working here. I wouldn’t jeopardize my job by doing such a thing.’

‘Go now,’ the older woman said, and her voice was as cold as a January morning. ‘Mr Douglas is waiting to escort you from the premises, both from here and from the staff hostel.’

CHAPTER NINE

Molly caught hold of Mr Douglas’s sleeve as he ushered her out of the staff entrance and began walking her to the hostel.

‘I didn’t do this,’ she pleaded with him. ‘How can they throw me out of my job and home without any proof that I did anything wrong?’

He brushed her hand away from his jacket, his face cold and stern. ‘If the floor walker and the head of department say you did it, then that’s proof enough for me. I see thieves almost every day; they always deny their guilt. Now come along. It’s my job to oversee you as you pack your belongings and to escort you from the hostel.’

‘I haven’t got anywhere to go,’ Molly said, and the tears she’d tried to control spilled over and cascaded down her cheeks.

‘No good blubbing,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’ve got your wages. Go home to your folks.’

Twenty minutes later Mr Douglas stood with his arms crossed, resolutely unmoved by her tears as she packed her clothes into her suitcase. She found his manner even more distressing because he’d always been so nice to her before; they’d often shared a little light-hearted banter at the staff door. She couldn’t believe that he would turn against her like this.

What was she to do? She couldn’t go home, not when she’d
told her father she’d never come back while he was alive. She couldn’t land herself on George and his family at Christmas either, not without being invited, and they weren’t even on the telephone so she couldn’t try sounding them out. And even if she had a fairy godmother living in the village, one who would welcome her with open arms and no strings attached, Molly would have to admit that she’d lost her job. The reason would soon come out and, before she could even say ‘dismissed’, it would be right round the village. No one would believe that she hadn’t done something bad.

Once she’d got everything into her suitcase, she looked pleadingly at Mr Douglas. ‘Please may I leave a note for Dilys?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ he said gruffly. ‘The management doesn’t hold with thieves fraternizing with employees. Pick up that case and get going.’

‘Dilys will be upset if I’m gone without her knowing why,’ she pleaded.

‘She will know why. All the staff will be told. It encourages them to stay honest.’

Molly put her hands over her face in despair to imagine all the girls she’d come to know and like thinking she was a thief. How could this have happened? She had never done anything wrong.

Yet from deep inside her indignation rose up. ‘What about innocent until proved guilty?’ she snapped at the security man. ‘If Miss Stow or Mr Hardcraft had really seen me slipping something to someone, as they claim they did, why didn’t they stop that person?’ Her voice rose in her anger and she moved closer to the man to drive her point home.

‘I haven’t even heard a description of this person! Not
even whether it was a man or a woman. But then they couldn’t describe them, or stop them, because they just don’t exist. It’s all fantasy, malicious at that. If they could do this to me, they’re probably robbing the store blind between them. Have you thought of that?’

If her words meant anything to him, he didn’t show it. His face was as cold and hard as granite. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said and, putting his hand in the small of her back, he nudged her towards the door.

She took one last look at the room she’d been so happy in. Dilys’s somewhat bedraggled poster of
Gone with the Wind
, and the photograph of Frank Sinatra she used to kiss goodnight. The paper chains they’d made together, looped right round the room, the two bulging felt stockings hanging from the knobs on the wardrobe.

So many stories from the past traded in this room; a few tears, but far more laughter. Now Dilys would be alone for Christmas, thinking her best friend was a thief.

Mr Douglas shut the front door of Warwickshire House the second she was over the threshold and, as the cold wind hit Molly’s face, the enormity of her situation hit her, too. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve; she was jobless and homeless. What’s more, it would be difficult to get another job after Christmas without a reference from Bourne & Hollingsworth.

Part of her wanted to hang around and see Dilys to tell her what had happened. But all the staff came back together in big groups, and if they’d already been told what she was supposed to have done, they would probably be as nasty as Mr Douglas had been. Dilys might even believe it was true. After all, she’d been the one warning her that something was afoot.

Molly made her way towards Euston, rather than going the other way, which might mean running into someone from the store. Her suitcase was much heavier than when she had first came to London, because she’d bought new clothes and shoes. The weight of it and the need to sit down and think about what she was going to do made her go into a café and order a cup of tea.

Once she had her tea and an iced bun, she counted her money, including the wages she’d been given today. They’d paid her for two weeks, as she’d worked a week in hand when she had first arrived in London, and along with what she already had in her purse, she had three pounds, four shillings and sixpence. But that was all: no savings, nothing more.

If Miss Grady at the Braemar would give her a room, she had enough money for roughly five nights. Maybe she could get a job in one of the restaurants around Paddington?

But what if she couldn’t? Once her money ran out, she’d be destitute, like the men who slept on the park benches down on the Embankment.

A little later, she telephoned the Braemar from a telephone box, and Miss Grady answered.

‘I’m very sorry, Miss Heywood,’ she replied to Molly’s request for a room, ‘I’m full to bursting. So many people come to London at Christmas to see relatives, it’s often my busiest time of the year. But aren’t you going home?’

There was something guarded in Miss Grady’s voice, as if she suspected Molly was in difficulties and didn’t want to hear about it for fear of being expected to help. So Molly just said she’d left her job and was going on to a new one in the New Year. Even as she said it, she wondered how many more lies she was going to be forced to tell in the coming days.

Miss Grady didn’t suggest another hotel, and Molly was so demoralized that she didn’t ask.

The streets around Euston were becoming empty now that people had left their offices and all the shops had closed. She tried two guest houses close to the station, but they were full up, like the Braemar, but with even less friendly owners, who both said they couldn’t recommend anywhere else.

She walked back down Tottenham Court Road, because it felt safer to be amongst people.

Since her first day of working in London she had completely lost her fear of the big city, but that fear came back now. Suddenly, everyone looked tight-lipped, cold-eyed, elbowing their way aggressively through the crowds. Her case was heavy, she was cold and hungry and she was fighting back tears.

As she reached the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, she looked right and saw that Oxford Street was still packed with people who had come into town to see the Christmas lights. They didn’t have that mean and aggressive look she’d observed around Euston, but somehow their happiness and delight made her plight seem even more desperate.

Married couples arm in arm, a serenity in their expressions that said they expected this Christmas would be the best since before the war, because so many foodstuffs, including sweets, had come off ration. Sweethearts, hand in hand, looking at each other with tender smiles; old people huddled together for warmth, perhaps afraid this would be the last time they’d see the lights. And there were so many families, some of their children sagging with weariness on their father’s shoulders, others jumping up and down with
the excitement of being out so late, but all gazing up at the lights with awe.

She remembered, when she and Emily were little, how excited they used to get as Christmas approached, making paper chains, sewing needle cases or making calendars for Christmas presents. If her parents had brought them to London to see the lights they would have been delirious with joy.

That same kind of joy was everywhere she looked, and it was unbearable when she didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. Unable to stand another moment of it, she turned off Oxford Street towards Soho.