Another World by Pat Barker Page A

Muriel had slept in his room instead. James was a nervous child, frightened of the dark, and still more frightened of the shadows cast by his night-light. His first word, pointing at the shadows, had been ‘sadda’. Jessie shook Muriel awake, but she was difficult to rouse and seemed unaware of her surroundings. James was nowhere to be found and the police were called to the house.
At almost the same time as James’s bed was found empty, a boy from Tidmarsh Street, playing truant from school in order to guard the street bonfire from rival gangs who might steal from it or set it alight, crawled inside the open space at the heart of the fire, and found himself confronted by the body of a fair-haired toddler. The Guy’s mask had been placed over his face, perhaps to hide the terrible injuries underneath, but blood had seeped through.
The Fanshawes were immediately informed of the discovery, and shortly afterwards William Fanshawe identified the dead boy as James. There were no signs of a forced entry to the house, though the front door, which William Fanshawe distinctly remembered locking, was open.
William and Isobel Fanshawe slept together. The two maids shared a bedroom in the attic. That left Robert, sleeping by himself, and Muriel, sleeping in James’s room. She had taken cough medicine, she said, thinking that her cough was keeping James awake. She had seen and heard nothing. Robert’s story was even simpler. He had gone to bed and gone to sleep. The next thing he knew Jessie was screaming. He had, however, noticed a tramp hanging about in the lane behind the house several days previously, though he had not thought to mention it to anybody at the time. Muriel had seen him too, or so she said. They described a scruffy villainous-looking man with a scar down one cheek, the sort of figure who could not possibly have passed unnoticed. Nobody else had seen him.
The Fanshawes were well known, and news of the murder spread quickly. William Fanshawe was the largest of the local employers, and almost everybody in the neighbourhood either worked in his factories or was dependent upon somebody who did.
The day following the discovery of the body, one Jeremiah Cookson came forward and said that on his way home on the night of 4 November he had seen two children pushing what he took to be a Guy on a wheeled trolley. He had noticed them particularly because they were smartly dressed, and it seemed strange that two such children should be out alone at that time of night. It was well past midnight. So strange did it seem that he made a point of following them. They became aware of his footsteps behind them, and paused under a street lamp to look back. It was Robert and Muriel Fanshawe.
Cookson was a petty criminal, and the police were reluctant to rely on his evidence, but public opinion was pressing for an arrest. The creaking trolley, with its grotesquely masked burden, haunted the imagination. People had nightmares about it. What were the police doing?
Three days after the discovery of James’s body the Fanshawe children were charged with James’s murder and taken to Westgate Police Station for questioning. They denied everything and went on denying it. The great strength of their story was its simplicity. If they had been asked to account for their movements, or to supply alibis, they would almost certainly have begun to contradict themselves. But there was none of that. They were in bed, they were asleep, they knew nothing – and they said so over and over again. Their father, who, despite his grief, never wavered in his support for them, sat in on every interview. It was noticeable that during Muriel’s interviews her father’s gaze never left her face.
The first day of the trial dawned cold and bleak. People hurrying towards the Moot Hall bent their heads to battle with the wind that blew off the Tyne, carrying with it flakes of stinging snow. The courtroom smelled of wet wool, and even at noon there was a constant