by Ellis, Kate
‘What about his wife’s name?’
‘He called her Flower – said that was his pet name for her. He asked me about the people who lived around here – women who’d be the same age as his wife – and I talked about some of them, more to make conversation than anything. I suggested he try other places around here too – New Mills or Whalley Bridge.’
‘Can you describe him?’
The description Jones gave could well have fitted the man at the Devil’s Dancers. Only the dead man had been clean-shaven and his hair had been neatly cut, unlike Jones’s tramp who’d had a beard and straggly hair. Even so, Albert wondered whether it could be the same man, cleaned up and given a haircut. All he had to do now was to discover whether the man had managed to find his wife during the week between Jones’s act of generosity and the discovery of the body at the Devil’s Dancers. And whether that reunion had somehow led to his death. On the other hand, the two things might be completely unconnected and the tramp might still be wandering Derbyshire in search of his loved one.
Jones spoke again, interrupting Albert’s thoughts. ‘I told him the local vicar might be able to help, but he said someone from the hospital had written to all the vicars in the area months ago, enclosing a picture of his wife, and there hadn’t been a positive reply.’
This new piece of information caught Albert’s attention. Could this be the mystery letter that sent Bell hurrying out on the night he died? It was an intriguing possibility.
‘That’s all I can tell you, Inspector. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a busy man. And I’d never seen that man before in my life.’
‘Or since?’
Jones lowered his eyes. ‘Or since.’
‘You gave him a lift in your motor car. Where did you drop him off?’
‘In the village.’
‘Where?’
‘Near Tarnhey Court.’
‘Did you see where he went after that?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘He would have been conspicuous.’
‘There are so many vagrants about since the war ended that people have stopped noticing them,’ said Jones sadly. ‘There is one thing I remember. When I dropped him off, I saw that writer woman who was at Sir William’s dinner. She must have seen him. Why don’t you ask her whether she spoke to him?’
‘I will. Thank you.’
Albert thanked him and walked out through the clerks’ room where everyone was bent over their work in a great show of industry. When the door had opened it was clear they’d been expecting Mr Jones to appear; as soon as they saw it was Albert, they relaxed.
George Yelland’s desk was nearest the door and as he passed, Yelland cleared his throat.
‘Sir, can I have a word? In private?’ he said, eyeing the door to Jones’s office warily.
Albert left the room and waited outside for Yelland to join him in the corridor. He noticed the young man’s hands were shaking again.
‘What is it?’
‘I was given the job of clearing out Bert Pretting’s desk and I found something taped at the back of his bottom drawer. It’s a book with names and sums of money. Some of the names are only initials, but there’s an address in the back. It’s in Liverpool. I told Mr Perkins, the chief clerk, and he said not to bother you with it. He said Bert’s missus did him in so it can’t be important, but …’
He took a small tattered notebook from his pocket and handed it to Albert.
‘Thanks, George. You did the right thing.’
‘Will Bert’s missus hang? And the doctor? Do you think he really was her fancy man?’
Albert didn’t answer.
Chapter 65
George Yelland’s question about Rose Pretting’s and Ronald Kelly’s ultimate fate suddenly made Albert’s intention to speak to Rose more urgent.
Her message had been conveyed reluctantly by Constable Wren, who clearly thought the woman had no right to make demands, particularly not to a Scotland Yard inspector. She was being held in Strangeways Prison, Manchester; the place where Flora had met her death. Albert had visited the prison in the course of a previous investigation and the memory of what had happened there made it a place of dread. But if he was going to learn the truth about Bert Pretting’s murder he would have to pass through those forbidding gates again.
He hated the sounds and the smells of the prison; the feeling of being trapped. But there was a chance Bert Pretting’s widow might have something new to tell him about her husband’s death, so he’d be neglecting his duty if he didn’t go.
First, however, he asked Smith to call all the hospitals in the Buxton area to ask about the mystery man. One told him they’d had a patient matching his description, but he’d left their care over a month ago. He was a man who had no memory of his former life, although the doctors hoped it would return eventually. Other than that, they could tell him nothing apart from the fact he thought he’d once lived in Liverpool. At the time he left, he told them he was going there to look for his wife.
Albert told Smith he’d done well. But this new information wasn’t going to make him change his immediate plans.
Smith still hadn’t returned the motor car to New Mills, so Albert suggested he drive them both to Manchester. It would save time waiting for trains and, besides, he’d be glad of the young man’s company. Albert suspected that Smith reminded him of himself in his younger days, when he was a youthful uniformed constable just started in the Metropolitan Police. When he was first walking out with Mary.
Smith entered the prison gates at his side but Albert asked him to wait in the governor’s outer office while he spoke to Rose. The sight of a uniform might put her on her guard. Besides, it was him she’d asked to see and he wanted her to feel relaxed during their interview.
She was brought to him in the windowless room where lawyers usually saw their clients and a large woman in a warder’s uniform insisted on staying with the prisoner, posted at the door and watching with hard, unsympathetic eyes. Albert wished he could tell her to go but he didn’t want to make waves.
Rose herself looked gaunt, as though she’d lost weight since he’d last seen her. Her prison uniform hung off her thin shoulders and her face was grey. From the redness around her eyes, Albert could tell she’d been crying.
‘You asked to see me,’ Albert began gently. He doubted whether anyone had shown this woman much kindness since her arrest and, in his experience, kindness often worked better than bullying.
‘I thought you might understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘That I didn’t do it. I never killed Bert.’
‘Those letters – they described how you were planning to kill your husband. They’ll be pretty damning evidence when your case comes to court.’
‘But it was all made up. I read this book about a woman killing her evil husband, so I thought if I …’
‘Who wrote those letters to you, Rose?’
She hung her head as though she was ashamed. ‘I wrote them to myself. I disguised my writing so I could pretend they were from …’
‘Dr Kelly?’
She nodded. ‘He didn’t write them, honest. He had no idea I was in love with him. I was just a patient to him. I used to say I was ill and go and see him at the surgery and when he was looking down my throat or in my ear, I’d imagine what it would be like if he loved me. He got so close that I could feel the heat from his body and when he listened to my heart he’d say it was beating unusually fast and I wanted to tell him it was beating for him, but I was never brave enough. I wrote the letters and when I read them I’d imagine he’d sent them to me. It was a game of pretend. You have to believe me.’
Albert smiled. ‘I’ve read The Garden of Secrets. It’s about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who plots with her doctor lover to kill her husband by putting glass in his food. Did you do that?’
‘I tried it once but he found it, so I never did it again. I wanted to know what would happen – whether it would be lik
e in the book. It wasn’t.’
‘At the end of the book the lovers commit suicide before they can be arrested.’
Rose didn’t answer.
‘Did you think that was romantic – like Romeo and Juliet?’ She nodded eagerly. ‘Only being kept in here and facing a trial isn’t very romantic, is it?’
She bowed her head again. ‘All the wardresses say they’ll hang me. They’ve told me exactly what’s going to happen. How the hangman comes to measure you the night before and—’
‘They won’t hang you if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ Albert said sharply.
‘But what can you do?’
Albert caught the despair in her question. He was still waiting to hear from Mrs Greenbaum, so he couldn’t make any promises. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘It’s all any of us can do. You said you had something to tell me.’
She took a deep breath.
‘Bert had money. Lots of it. I think that must have something to do with his murder. I told Sergeant Teague but he said it wasn’t important.’
‘I already know about your husband’s blackmailing activities.’
She looked disappointed, as though the last weapon in her armoury had turned out to be useless. ‘I never knew what he was up to, I swear. He never told me.’
Albert had been hoping for new information about Pretting, something that would lead to his real killer. But Rose hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.
Then she spoke again. ‘A couple of weeks before he died he said he’d found something out and he was due some money. A lot of money, he said. I didn’t know whether to believe him ’cause he often said things like that. But this time it was a bit different. He seemed really … excited. The more I think about it, the more …’
‘Can you recall exactly what he said?’
She screwed up her face as though she was making a great effort to remember. ‘He came in one evening and said we were going to be in the money. He’d recognised someone from the past.’
‘Who?’ Albert held his breath.
‘Someone at work, he said. Someone who was going to keep us in comfort for the rest of our lives.’
‘Did he mean someone from the mill?’
She shook her head. ‘I think he said where he used to work. I’m sorry, that’s all I can remember.’
‘You said he lived on the Wirral before the war. Where did he work then?’
‘In Liverpool – told me he got the ferry to work every day.’
This caught Albert’s attention. The mystery man who’d left the Buxton hospital had mentioned Liverpool and now the name of the city had come up again. ‘What did he do?’
‘He was a clerk – in insurance. When we were courting he used to tell me how he called at big houses in the nice suburbs. Lovely places, some of them. He said one day we’d have a house like that.’ She laughed. ‘To think I used to believe him.’
‘Do you think the person he recognised was one of his old customers from those days?’
‘I don’t know. After the war he went to work at a bleach works near Stockport, so it might have been somebody from there.’
Albert looked at her hopeful face and felt a pang of regret. If he couldn’t prove her innocence very soon her life would end at the end of the hangman’s rope.
But he had the Liverpool address Bert Pretting had written in the back of his secret notebook. All of a sudden those few scribbled words took on a fresh significance. If his instincts were right, they might save the lives of an innocent man and woman.
Chapter 66
By the time Albert and Smith arrived back in Wenfield it was three o’clock in the afternoon. Seeing Peggy Derwent again was on his list of things to do but when he telephoned her cottage there was no answer, so he made some other calls and the fifth produced the result he wanted. By the time he’d finished it was too late to set off for Liverpool. But Buxton was far nearer.
Smith was happy to drive there and Albert sat in the passenger seat, looking out at the wild, hilly landscape as the young constable steered along the winding pass, avoiding the sheep that wandered into their path.
When they arrived in the town, Albert was surprised by the gracious architecture and the handsome stone-built crescents. He’d been expecting something less grand and more industrial, but Smith reminded him that Buxton was a famous spa town, renowned for its healing waters.
The hospital stood on the edge of town, a classical building with a portico which would grace any stately home. Smith waited in the motor car while Albert went in search of the matron, a tall woman with a straight back and a chiselled face. But her sympathetic manner belied the formidable first impression and she listened with interest to what Albert had to say before summoning a sister who, she explained, had looked after the man in question.
The sister was young and efficient, and matron left her to talk to Albert alone.
‘Tommy was better physically, so the doctor said he could leave. He was keen to get out of here because he had some bee in his bonnet about finding his wife in Liverpool. I’ve been rather worried about him, to tell the truth. Even though his body had recovered from his injuries, he still hadn’t fully regained his memory.’
‘Tell me what you know about him.’
‘He was brought here from a French field hospital in ’18 – found wandering in Flanders shortly after the Armistice and shipped back to Blighty. Complete memory loss. Nothing. The doctors said his memory would return eventually but it could take a long time, and he had no ID on him.’
‘I understand he was starting to remember things about his past?’
‘He remembered he was married. He had a photograph of his wife – his only possession that survived. He didn’t even have a uniform – somehow he’d managed to swap it for civvies. Got them from some Frenchman, he said.’ She shrugged her narrow shoulders.
‘But he was definitely a soldier?’
‘He said so, and his wounds seemed to confirm that he’d been in the middle of the fighting. And he certainly spoke like an officer.’
‘The picture of his wife, do you have it?’
She shook her head. ‘My brother had a photographic shop and he made some copies for him. I had the idea of sending the copies to vicars in the area to see whether any of them recognised her.’
‘He might not have come from round here,’ Albert said, puzzled.
The sister smiled. ‘He said he’d seen his wife’s picture in one of the local newspapers, you see. We let our patients read the papers. It gives them an interest.’
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know, but we don’t take any national papers. The news in them is far too disturbing for our patients.’
‘When did he see the picture of the woman he thought was his wife?’
‘This was a while ago. Must be over six months.’
‘Did he show you the picture?’
‘He showed me the page, but it wasn’t clear which picture he meant. There were a few and I was too busy to take much notice. To be honest, I thought he was probably mistaken, but I thought sending the copies of the wife’s picture to some vicars in the area would make him think he was doing something positive. Around that time he’d begun to have longer flashes of memory and I thought … Well, it couldn’t do any harm, could it? I wrote the covering letters for him.’
‘Do you still have a copy of the newspaper photograph?’
‘Good Lord, no. Old papers get thrown out. Probably went for chip paper months ago.’
‘And the picture of his wife?’
‘He kept the original and all the copies were sent out. I’m sorry. All the vicars replied saying they were sorry but they didn’t recognise her. No luck, I’m afraid.’
‘All the vicars?’
‘There might have been one who didn’t, but I’m afraid I don’t really remember.’
‘Do you know which vicar didn’t respond?’
She frowned in concentration, then shook her head. ‘I�
�m sorry. It was so long ago. If someone didn’t reply I expect it was because they didn’t know anything and they were too busy to write.’
Or perhaps they were dead, Albert thought, although he didn’t put this into words. ‘Will your brother have a copy of the picture?’
‘Sorry. He sold up and moved to London three months back. Says it’s better for business down there.’
‘What happened when Tommy left your care?’
‘As I said, his memory was starting to come back. Just bits and pieces at first. And dreams – nightmares. Then a few weeks ago he told one of the nurses he’d remembered where he used to live in Liverpool and he wanted to go back there to look for his wife. The doctors said he was well enough to leave, but I was worried about him. When he left I told him to write – to keep in touch – but …’ She spread out her small hands in a gesture of despair.
‘So he went to Liverpool? Did he give you the address?’
‘I’m afraid not. He said he remembered the house but not the address, although he seemed quite confident he’d find it. I hope he’s all right. I hope he’s found his family and he’s not living rough somewhere.’ Albert heard the anxiety in her voice. She cared.
He didn’t tell her about the man at the Devil’s Dancers. There was no point burdening the young woman with more tragedy than she’d already had to face.
He took his leave, more convinced than ever that it had been Tommy who’d met his end in that cave. But who would have wanted to kill a soldier robbed of his memory and identity by war?
Unless his killer was afraid that his memory was about to return.
Chapter 67
That evening Albert found that there were new guests at the Black Horse; a pair of cotton merchants from Bolton visiting one of the mills. They nodded to him at dinner but made no attempt to start a conversation with him; from what he could overhear, their talk rarely strayed from business matters. Albert decided to retire to his room. He’d brought some files back with him and he spent the evening studying them and making notes. The picture was gradually becoming clearer, but he still needed proof.