The front door to 22 Myrdle Street was open. Molly tapped on it and, when there was no response, she went into the narrow hall a little way and called out to Constance.

‘I’m back here!’ a weak voice called back. ‘Do come in.’

Molly nervously followed the voice to another open door at the end of the passage. It led to a rather dark room with a kitchen sink under the window. Constance was sitting in a wheelchair.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t get up very easily,’ she said. ‘You must be Miss Heywood?’

Constance was very small and thin. She wore a grey cotton dress and a grey cotton veil over her hair. Molly felt that she must belong to some religious order and that she was perhaps in her mid-sixties, maybe even older.

‘Yes, I’m Miss Heywood, but please call me Molly. Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ she said.

‘It is my pleasure. Now, pull that chair up and sit down. Tell me, did you get the job?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Molly said, pulling the easy chair closer to Constance. ‘I’m sorry that I addressed the letter just to “Constance”, but I didn’t know your other name.’

‘I’m known round here to everyone as Sister Constance,’ the old lady said. ‘I’m a Church Army sister. We aren’t like Roman Catholics: we don’t live in nunneries but out in the parish we are sent to. This has been my parish for over twenty years now but, since I ended up in this wheelchair, my work is mostly of the listening kind.’

‘I’ve always thought that good listeners are very valuable,’ Molly said. ‘Will you tell me how you got to know Cassie?’

‘She came to live next door when Petal was just a few months old,’ Constance said. ‘I wasn’t in the wheelchair then, and I walked down the street beside her one day. I asked her if she’d like to come to the young mothers’ meeting at the church.’

‘Did she go?’ Molly remembered Cassie being very anti-Church.

Constance shook her head. ‘No, she said she wasn’t a “joiner”, but we chatted as we walked, and I realized she was on her own without a husband and asked her if she got lonely.’

‘I bet she said she didn’t know the meaning of that word,’ Molly said.

‘No, what she said was that being alone can sometimes be far better for you than having others around you. I agreed with her, and I talked a little about how I pray when I’m alone, and how it clears my mind.’

‘She didn’t run a mile, then?’ Molly said lightly.

‘No! Despite her claims to be agnostic, she was a very spiritual girl. She understood about meditation, and had read widely on many religions. But let’s leave that for a minute, Molly. Explain to me first about her death? I was so distressed to get your letter and, to be honest, it didn’t make much sense to me. Why would anyone kill Cassie?’

‘I thought the same myself,’ Molly said, then explained everything, beginning from when she found her friend dead. ‘The coroner said the bruising on her arms and neck was evidence of a struggle, then it seemed she either fell back on to the hearth or was pushed, and her head banged hard on it, breaking her skull.’

Molly paused. She could see that Constance felt as deeply about Cassie as she did, and that was all the justification she needed to continue to search for answers.

‘What I don’t understand, though,’ she continued, ‘is why the police have given up on looking for Petal. I kind of see why they’ve run out of steam in finding Cassie’s killer, but they shouldn’t have stopped searching for a six-year-old. They wouldn’t be this way if she was the daughter of a doctor, or a teacher – someone that mattered. I hate it that they don’t care about her because she’s mixed race and her mother wasn’t married.’

Constance reached out and patted Molly’s knee. ‘You mustn’t hate. Pity people’s ignorance and prejudice perhaps, and try to show them by example what is right, but hating just makes you feel bad inside and serves no useful purpose.’

Molly smiled weakly. She liked everything about this woman: her soft blue eyes that were full of understanding; her acceptance that she had to be in a wheelchair now after spending the best part of her life caring for the poor. ‘I came to you because I’m hoping you can tell me stuff about Cassie which may make sense of everything. I want to be a detective and find Petal.’

‘That sounds a good idea to me.’ Constance smiled. ‘Though I don’t think I have any information that will help you. Cassie wasn’t one for confiding things about herself.’

‘But she must have told you where she came from, and something about Petal’s father?’

‘No, she didn’t. Let me explain something, Molly. People who aren’t born here in the East End come to live here for widely varying reasons,’ Constance said earnestly. ‘People like me, and nurses, doctors and social workers come here to serve the community. Some think it’s sort of romantic or heroic to work with the poor, and they soon find out that’s not the case and leave. Others, like me, come to love the people and stay. Other newcomers are immigrants, and they come because this is where friends and relatives have already settled and they want to join them. If you look around, you will see people from almost every corner of the globe: Jews, Arabs, Africans, Indians, and many more.

‘Other people end up here because they are too poor to go anywhere else. Finally, some are running away and see this as a good place to hide. But I doubt that any of these people, other than those who work here or were born here, actually want to live here. It is too tough and harsh.’

‘Do you think Cassie was running away?’

‘Yes, I believe so. But I don’t think she was hiding from the police. She would chat happily to a constable on his beat. She certainly didn’t slink away.’

‘So that means she’d run away from Petal’s father?’

Constance sighed. ‘That does seem to be the obvious assumption, but I’ve found that women tend to admit such things once they feel safe with a new friend. She never spoke of Petal’s father once, not even in a vague way. I came to the conclusion it was her parents she’d run away from.’

‘I’ve thought of that myself,’ Molly said. ‘But her father died in the war, so maybe her mother?’

‘Possibly. There were pointers to her having had a quite privileged childhood, though. She was well spoken, well educated, she had first-class manners. I would take a guess that she was brought up by a nanny or a housekeeper, though.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The lack of information about her mother, really. We all mention our mothers, even if only in passing. I asked Cassie once if she was orphaned, and she looked shocked. “I have a mother,” she said. “She just doesn’t figure in my life.” I thought that was a very odd thing to say.’

‘Yes, I agree.’ Molly frowned. ‘It sounds like she’d deliberately cut herself off.’

Constance nodded. ‘Hmm. I thought maybe her mother was cruel to her when Petal was born – after all, an unmarried mother with a mixed race baby is often far too much for some people to deal with. Especially those higher up the social scale. But, if that was the case and Cassie had been thrown out because of it, you would expect her to be bitter. But she wasn’t.’

‘No, I never saw any bitterness in her either,’ Molly agreed. ‘Did she ever say where she grew up? What she’d done before she had Petal?’

Constance shook her head. ‘She told me once she used to ride. The way she said that made me think she was brought up with horses, not just a ride now and then on a friend’s or neighbour’s horse. I don’t think she ever worked for a living – another clue to a gentle, privileged upbringing. Those sort of girls don’t work.’

‘But while she was here, how did she live?’

‘I think she must have had savings. Or she sold jewellery or other things to keep herself. She lived very frugally. She wasn’t above collecting up fallen fruit or vegetables at the close of the market. But, speaking of food, let’s have a cup of tea and some cake!’