Recalled to Life

‘Shh,’ said Pascoe, for at last, after assertion and argument, it looked as if they were getting down to evidence.

This took the form of an interview with the one Mickledore Hall guest willing or able to appear. It was Mavis Marsh, the Partridges’ nanny. Far from the stiff and starchy figure of William Stamper’s recollection, the woman who appeared on the screen was elegantly dressed and attractive, relaxing very much at her ease in a luxurious armchair in a room which looked like an illustration from an interior decorator’s brochure.

In voice-over Jay Waggs said, ‘I met Mavis Marsh in her Harrogate apartment and asked her to tell me what she recalled of that night.’

Miss Marsh spoke in a light clear voice with a genteel Morningside accent.

‘I was on the second floor, and my bedroom was directly above the gunroom. I went to bed early and fell asleep almost at once. I don’t know exactly how long I’d been asleep when something woke me up –’

‘What was it?’ interrupted Waggs.

‘I don’t know. A sort of crash –’

‘Could it have been a gunshot?’

‘Possibly, though of course I didn’t think of that at the time.’

‘Was any attempt made later to reproduce the sound? I mean, for instance, did the police experiment by firing a shot in the gunroom to test your reaction?’

‘No. There was some talk of it, I recollect, but it never came to anything.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I suppose they’d got Cecily Kohler’s confession by then, so thought it would be a waste of time.’

‘OK. So you heard a noise. What then?’

‘My first thought was naturally of the children, and I jumped out of bed very quickly. I suppose I forgot where I was and headed for where the door would have been in my room at home, I mean at Haysgarth, the Partridge family seat. The result was, I walked into a wardrobe and banged my nose.’

‘What did you do then?’

She looked amused and said, ‘I did what any normal person would have done. I yelled out and sat down on the bed. My nose felt as if it were broken, and it was certainly bleeding, I stanched it with some tissues from my bedside table, then I went to the door.’

‘You found it all right this time?’

‘I rarely repeat a mistake,’ she said with a sudden acidity that gave a glimpse of the stern nanny beneath the sophisticated surface. ‘And besides, I’d switched on the light by now. I went into the corridor and I saw Miss Kohler.’

‘Cissy? What was she doing?’

‘She was standing outside her room.’

‘As if she’d just come out, you mean? Like maybe she’d been disturbed by the same noise as you?’

‘Possibly. In fact, very probably. But when she saw me she came straight to me. I must have looked a ghastly sight. My nosebleeds always produce a disproportionate amount of blood. She made me go back to my room and lie on the bed while she cleaned me up. She was very efficient, I recollect, which is what I would expect from a trained nanny. She assured me no bones were broken and told me to lie on my back with a cold compress on my nose till the bleeding had completely stopped. Then she left me to rest.’

‘So when William Stamper saw her in the corridor with blood on her hands, it was probably your blood?’

‘It would seem very likely, yes.’

‘Did you tell this to Superintendent Tallantire?’

‘I can’t honestly remember but I would assume so.’

‘It doesn’t appear in your signed statement.’

‘I naturally left it to the police to decide what was and what was not relevant.’

‘But later, didn’t you feel you ought to speak out …?’

Miss Marsh fixed Waggs with a gaze that would have stopped apples falling.

‘Speak out about what, pray? A murder had been committed. Miss Kohler had confessed to being Sir Ralph’s accomplice in its commission. We were all in a state of considerable shock. I had told the police all that I knew.’

‘But when it became apparent at the trial that the prosecution were making such a lot of Miss Kohler’s appearance in the corridor with blood on her hands, blood of the same group as Pamela Westropp, Group B, which is of course your group too, didn’t you then feel some unease?’

‘Had I known of this, I might have done, though the fact of her confession must still have told heavily against her. But at the time of the trial I was in Antigua. Lord Partridge, Mr Partridge as he was then, took his family out there to his cousin’s estate to avoid media harassment almost immediately after leaving Mickledore Hall. He had to return because of his parliamentary duties, of course, but his wife and I and the younger children remained abroad till January.’

‘Didn’t you follow the trial on the radio or in the newspapers?’

‘No, we did not. What had happened at Mickledore Hall was not a topic Lady Partridge cared to discuss. Total abstention seemed the best course.’

‘And the defence made no attempt to talk with you?’

‘There was a letter from some lawyers. I took advice from my employers and replied that I was unable to add anything to my statement.’

‘But now you know all the facts of the trial, all the details of evidence, how do you feel about things, Miss Marsh?’

The camera closed in on the nanny till her face filled the screen. Her complexion stood up very well to the close scrutiny and the eyes that focused unblinkingly on the lens were clear and hard as diamonds.

‘If the verdict depended at all on the evidence of the blood, then clearly it was in error and ought to be set aside.’

‘And the confession?’

She made an impatient gesture.

‘She was young, possibly immature. Anyone who has had to deal with children professionally will know that their propensity for denying obvious truths is matched only by their readiness to admit to obvious falsehoods. They do it out of misunderstanding sometimes, and sometimes they do it out of a desire to please. But most often they do it out of simple irrational fear.’

‘But she didn’t retract.’

‘Of course not. Why, having chosen what clearly seemed to her the lesser of two terrors, should she now once more put herself in the way of the greater? If you can’t see that, young man, then clearly you yourself are obtuse enough to make a policeman!’

‘My God,’ breathed Dalziel. ‘I’d love for her to have the changing of my nappies.’

The programme finished a few moments later with a passionate plea from Waggs for the case to be re-examined and justice to be done at last. Dalziel looked at Pascoe and said, ‘Well?’

‘Why didn’t you do a gun test?’

‘We did. But we did it while the stable clock was chiming. You couldn’t hear a bloody thing outside the room.’