‘Yes, I told her about seeing survivors of the concentration camps and all the horrors that went with that. It was good to get it off my chest, as it had preyed on my mind. She was incredibly well informed. Goodness knows how she became so.’

‘She used to go into the library and read the newspapers after she’d taken Petal to school. I asked her once why she hadn’t gone to university, because it was obvious she was bright enough to go. But she just laughed.’

‘I suspect she came from the kind of middle-class background where women don’t have work,’ he said. ‘She never spoke about it, but she had that sort of genteel manner, didn’t she?’

Molly thought about this for a moment. ‘You might be right about that, but I’d say she went out of her way to hide it. She was such a mystery.’

Simon smiled at her. ‘You’re a mystery, too. I can’t imagine why you haven’t been snapped up by someone and got a brood of little ones.’

‘My dad puts off any potential suitors.’ Molly laughed. ‘That’s yet another reason to leave home and why I needed advice.’

‘Is that about what to do, or where to go?’ he questioned.

‘Both, I think,’ said Molly, blushing, because she knew she sounded a bit drippy. ‘I’ve never done anything but work in the shop, and how do I find a place to stay and a job all at once?’

‘First, you get the job,’ he said. ‘Seeing as you know shop work, you could apply to Selfridges, Harrods – or even Fortnum & Mason, the posh grocery shop. Once you’ve been offered a job you could get a place in a girls’ hostel.

‘You make it sound so easy,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘The only tough part is making the decision to go and sticking to it. It will all fall into place once you know that’s what you really want.’

She got to her feet, suddenly aware she’d been there for over an hour. ‘I must go now, Simon, but thank you for the chat and the advice. Once the inquest is over, I’ll do it.’

‘You can come and talk to me any time, if it helps,’ he said.

As Molly walked home, she realized that talking to Simon had had an effect similar to that talking to Cassie had always made on her. Both gave her the ability to see her life and the path ahead a little more clearly. He was such a nice man; a bit too posh and sophisticated for her – but a girl could dream.

The inquest was held in Bristol a week later. Molly had to be there to give evidence about finding Cassie’s body. George took her in a police car because, although he didn’t have to give any evidence, he had to drop off some papers at Bristol’s Bridewell police station.

At the inquest, the pathologist who performed the post-mortem confirmed that Cassie had died of a fractured skull, the result of her head being hit against the stone hearth several times with considerable force. He said that there were bruises on her neck, arms and a blow to her cheek consistent with a violent tussle prior to her being knocked down on to the hearth and the final blows which killed her.

Molly had to confirm the date and time when she found Cassie’s body, and she was asked a few questions about Cassie’s private life. As Molly had never met any of Cassie’s other friends, she could offer no information about them. All she could give were her views on her friend’s character.

As a result of the findings, the coroner recorded the death as Murder by a Person Unknown.

Molly was glad of the verdict, as she thought it would force the police to renew the investigation, but when she met up with George afterwards for a cup of tea in a café near the Coroners Court, he sounded doubtful.

‘There’s a possibility that, if the killer is still holding Petal, it might make him panic and release her so he can get away,’ he said. ‘But it’s just as likely he’ll feel he must kill her, too.’

‘Don’t say that!’ Molly exclaimed.

‘I certainly hope it won’t come to that,’ George said. ‘Everything about Cassie and this case is so mysterious. I know you think the police have done nothing at all, but that’s not true. We can’t find a record of her birth, trace her parents, find out where Petal was born – nothing. We don’t think Cassandra March was her real name but, normally, when we make an appeal for information in the press with a photograph, someone comes forward. But no one has – well, except the four men who had got to know Cassie since she moved to Sawbridge.’

‘Were they the ones I told you about? Her lovers?’ Molly asked.

‘Yes. They’d all had a relationship with her, but they knew precious little about her. They came forward voluntarily, and they all had firm alibis for the time of her death, so we could rule them all out. From what we’ve gathered from them, Cassie wasn’t one for talking about herself and her past. She certainly didn’t tell any of them who Petal’s father was or why they weren’t together. Each one of the men said she was fun to be with, didn’t take life too seriously, that she was warm and amusing. I think we can assume that meant she was sexy, too.’

Molly blushed. She had a feeling these men in Cassie’s life had cared more about the sex than anything else. ‘We all – you, me, the whole village – assume it’s Petal’s father who took her. But what if we’re all barking up the wrong tree?’

‘We’re assuming that because he’s the most likely candidate. For one thing, he must have been a bad lot for Cassie to be hiding away from him in Stone Cottage.’

‘But we don’t know that is who she was hiding from. Petal’s father could be just a man she slept with once and never saw again! Maybe the killer had some entirely different grievance with her? She’d run out on him, stolen his money, told his wife he’d been a naughty boy? Anything.’

‘Yes, that’s a good point. But can you tell me, Molly, if the murderer wasn’t Petal’s father, why would they take her with them? She would only make the culprit’s escape harder and, like you said earlier, it would be far less risky to kill her there in Stone Cottage.’

‘Okay, so if it was Petal’s dad, what do you think his plan was?’

‘I don’t think he had one. I suspect it was just instinct to flee with her.’

‘He was organized enough to take some clothes and her toy with him.’

‘Yes, well, maybe he stopped for long enough to think that through. And there are places that a black man could be invisible – an area like St Pauls, for instance,’ George said. ‘She’d be just another child of an immigrant. He could always say her mother had died or run off. So many people come and go there, no one would think anything of it. And they aren’t likely to tell tales on anyone either.’

St Pauls was an area of Bristol quite close to the Coroners Court. With its elegant, large Georgian houses and close proximity to the city centre and the docks, it had once been a very desirable place to live. But back in the thirties the owners found their property too expensive to maintain and many sold it on to people who turned the houses into flats or lodgings. As there had always been a sizable proportion of black people in Bristol because of the docks, many of them gravitated towards St Pauls and its cheap rooms.

Bristol had suffered a great deal of bomb damage during the war and this had made housing very scarce. The local council had concentrated its efforts on building new homes in the suburbs of Bristol, ignoring inner-city areas like St Pauls. At the same time, immigrants from the West Indies were flooding into England, too, lured by the prospect of work as nurses, as bus and train drivers, and in factories. Unable to find homes in the better parts of Bristol, they, too, made for St Pauls, and unscrupulous landlords were quick to exploit the situation.

St Pauls was now a ghetto. The poorer tenants had no choice but to share their accommodation to pay their rent, and the ensuing overcrowding and unsanitary conditions were shameful.

‘And I suppose there is no accurate record of everyone living there either?’ Molly said.