Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

that bright windy morning, shirtsleeves rolled up and jacket tied around my waist, I thought about her again. Had she trod this very same path? Had she enjoyed solitary walks, wondered about the magnificent ruin of the grandstand? What had she thought about? How had marriage to Ernest Fox become so unbearable to her that she saw murder as her only way out? Where was the edge, and what had pushed her over it? Perhaps, as Ted had hinted, times were so different then that a woman seeking to escape a suffocating marriage for a young lover might have no recourse but to murder. I doubted it, though. I couldn’t help but think that there had to be more to it than that. The fifties may have been a more sexually uptight era than our own, but it was hardly the Victorian age. Surely the war must have shaken morality up a bit?
    As I walked on, mulling over all this, a question formed in my mind, and I couldn’t push it away: What if she hadn’t done it? Innocent people got hanged all the time. Look at Timothy Evans, who was executed for the murders John Christie committed at 10 Rillington Place, or Derek Bentley, who had murdered no one, had simply shouted the famous and ambiguous words ‘Let him have it, Chris’. As Ted had mentioned, there was even some doubt these days that Dr Crippen – such a monster that he’d been standing in Madame Tussaud’s for years – was innocent of his wife’s murder. So it was certainly within the bounds of possibility.
    What if Grace Fox hadn’t done it? Why had no one considered that? Or had they? I realised how little I knew. Somehow, the idea of proving Grace’s innocence excited me. I quickened my pace as the breeze whipped up, hardly pausing now to stop and gaze at the view of the town spread out below me as I carried on down the hill past the Garden Village development at the old army barracks, surrounded by its high stone wall and narrow entrance. The hill was called Gallowgate, I noticed. Gallowgate . What irony! There was a lot I needed to know, and the first thing I had to find out was where to look.
    One of the shops built into the south walls of what used to be Trinity Church, in the market square, was the second-hand bookshop Ted Welland had mentioned, Richmond Books, and it was there that I started my search. Unfortunately, the owner didn’t have a copy of the edition of Famous Trials that dealt with Grace’s case, though he said he would ask around and try to locate one for me. I left my address and telephone number with him. I thought of what Ted Welland had said of tracking down the newspaper accounts, too. They would be on microfiche somewhere. I decided to wait for the book and then see whether I felt I needed more detail.
    The owner did, however, point me in the direction of Wilf Pelham, a retired local schoolteacher, who had been eighteen when Grace Fox was hanged, and apparently still had the memory of an elephant. At this time of day, the bookseller said, glancing at his watch, I was as likely to find Wilf propping up the bar in the Castle Tavern as anywhere else. A free pint would go a long way towards loosening Wilf’s tongue and sharpening his memory, he added.
    There weren’t many people in the Castle Tavern at that time of day, and only one of them was standing at the bar. I stood beside him, and as the barman pulled my pint, I asked him whether he was Wilf Pelham.
    ‘And who wants to know?’ he replied.
    I introduced myself and noticed him frown. His hair was greasy, he was overweight, and he had a three-day stubble, but his blue eyes were as lively and intelligent as they had probably always been.
    ‘So you’ll be the new owner of Kilnsgate House?’ he said, turning towards me and showing interest.
    ‘Word gets around.’
    ‘Especially if you’ve got nowt much else to do but listen to gossip,’ he said.
    ‘Can I buy you a drink and ask you a few questions?’ I offered.
    ‘I don’t see why not. Terry, give us another pint of bitter, will you,