We waited in silence until the people had gone, the young projectionist throwing the glowing cinder of his cigarette into the darkness then hurrying after the crowd.
‘I don’t understand what this all means,’ I said. ‘Tell me, what did I just see in there?’
‘It would appear that the film that we just saw was shot on the morning of May Day,’ Roy said. ‘In the late morning, for there was enough light for the cine camera to operate.’
‘So—’ I began.
‘Please don’t get your hopes up, Agnes,’ he said quickly. ‘It is a later sighting of Iris, that’s all. There is still no evidence to suggest that she is alive.’ He put his hand on my arm. ‘Although things don’t look good for Sam Denman now.’
‘You mean that things do not look good for the man walking with Iris,’ I said. ‘The man in the cloth cap, for you surely cannot be certain—’
‘Sam Denman has denied his involvement for so long,’ he said firmly, ‘yet now we see him with our own eyes walking arm in arm with Iris Caldwell on the morning of her murder.’
‘Leave him alone!’ I cried. ‘Surely he has suffered enough. I only wish that the police could have charged him without finding the rest of Iris’s remains, for at least then Sam would have had the chance to clear his name. The people of this town judged him guilty without trial and he has had to live with that sentence for years.’
Roy shook his head slowly.
‘The man on the film may have been dressed like a stable lad but they were ten a penny in those days,’ I persisted.
Roy ignored my protests. ‘Don’t you want the killer caught?’ he asked. ‘It must mean so much to you, what with—’
‘Of course I do,’ I muttered.
‘Maybe it is best if we resume this conversation after we have all slept,’ he said. I was ashamed at how calm his voice sounded compared to my own.
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘I suppose I should come to the station?’
‘I was going to suggest that I call on you at Oak Cottage,’ he said, then added more gently, ‘It is such a long time since I called on you at home. I can bring round some of Joyce’s tea loaf.’
I nodded. ‘Fine.’
He turned to go. ‘You do not mention your daughter,’ he said. ‘It is as if this has all been about Iris Caldwell and you do not even mention Nell by her name.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’
He hesitated for a moment, tipped his cap and left me alone in the darkness.
2
Roy had the grace not to call until eleven o’clock – it was a Sunday after all – and he arrived dressed in the suit I imagined he had worn for church. Oak Cottage was a respectable house in quite a public spot on the village green and it would not have done for him to call any earlier, in uniform or otherwise. I was a vicar’s widow after all and he knew that I had appearances to consider.
He stood politely in the hallway and then in the lounge as I ushered him through, not sitting until he was bid. We made small talk about the weather and the state of the roads until I had finished pouring the tea and he had handed out his wife’s cake from an old biscuit tin.
‘It was a funny to-do yesterday evening,’ he said.
‘I suppose it was,’ I said, but I did not know what more I could say about it. He had chosen the old rocking chair by the hearth and I remembered that he had sat in the same chair twenty-five years ago when we had discussed the matter for the first painful time.
I remembered how he had entered the cottage that morning – young and inexperienced, a blush of pimples on his face and a lanky body he had not yet grown into. He had seemed fearful of messing up the carpet with his boots, removing his helmet and stooping awkwardly through the doorframe as he entered. When I snapped at him for approaching the chair by the window, he had perched nervously on the rocking chair instead and looked anxiously at the chair I had forbidden him – the one with the emerald-green shawl draped over the back, a shawl that I hoped the owner would soon return for.
The chair by the window had meant little to me before that day, but since then I had always kept it free and never allowed anyone to sit on it. I had not even removed the shawl, although the colour had become quite faded in the sunlight. It was something that I could not bear to do as some days, just like today, I fancied that the chair was occupied by the memory of its owner, the girl who had used it so often, and I would sometimes think that I could see her sat in that spot, watching me silently, even though I knew that she was long gone.
Roy took out an old pocketbook and flipped over the yellowed pages. I thought that it must be something that he had hunted out from a vault deep below the cell, where things went to be forgotten.
‘The projectionist from last night was my nephew, Eric,’ he said.
I nodded politely as I recalled the young man in spectacles who I had seen smoking outside the hall.
‘He is only nineteen years old,’ Roy continued. ‘He found the old Pathéscope and film in the storeroom of the church hall. The reel was labelled as a “suffrage march”. It was part of a collection donated to the Historical Society by the WSPU so nobody had ever thought to view it in connection with the Caldwell case. The poor lad did not know what he was looking at when he viewed it – he knew nothing of Iris Caldwell – but when he saw what was on the old reel, he thought it fitting to screen it in light of this year’s preparations. After all, May Day was an ancient tradition here until 1912.’
Then he added: ‘In a way it is a shame that we have not had one since,’ but he looked down as soon as the words left his mouth and I was reminded again of the shy, young constable who had said all the wrong things. Then his tone changed. ‘Do you know who might have shot the film, Agnes?’
‘It must have been the heir to the Waldley Court estate,’ I said. ‘I forget the young man’s name as he has since moved away, but he had one of those hand-wound cine cameras when they were still new.’
‘You are speaking of Francis Elliot-Palmer,’ he said, flipping through the yellowed pages of his pocketbook, but then he stopped, his finger tracing down a page. ‘No, it appears that Francis did not mention shooting such a film when he was interviewed back then, although there can be few others around who would have ever seen the like of a cine camera back in those days, let alone had the money to afford one. I will need to speak with him again.’
He took out a pencil and scratched a mark in the pocketbook as if correcting his old scribbles. ‘My nephew did not know what happened here in 1912,’ he said. ‘He had no idea that there had been two May Queens that year – Iris Caldwell and the child brought in to replace her when she—’ he glanced down at the pocketbook ‘—did not show up.’
I nodded to show that I understood the young man was not to blame for the awkwardness.
‘It was a nice idea,’ I said out of the politeness that was expected of a vicar’s widow. ‘I was so looking forward to seeing some of the village’s history.’ My voice sounded flat and he raised his eyebrows, flicking open another page of the book.
‘You say you woke at six o’clock on the morning of the first of May 1912 and left promptly for the church to begin the arrangement of flowers in the chancel. This was something quite ordinary for you to do for an important service, a role you had undertaken since you first moved to the parish with your late husband. You did not enter the back bedroom of the cottage, so you had no knowledge of whether—’