Penningtons

by Pamela Oldfield

  The policeman counted to ten as he scribbled the words ‘twenty-three’, and ‘pastry’. ‘And as far as you were aware, Miss Dutton, there was no one who might feel a grudge towards the family. No falling out of any kind?’

  ‘No one. Mind you, Monty kept himself to himself meaning he never invited the neighbours in or family members except at Christmas and on his birthday. But there were lots of photographs of his wife. Cressida. That was her name. Everyone loved Cressida. That’s what he used to say, anyway.’

  ‘What about the rest of the family – were they on good terms with each other? No family feuds?’ He looked up hopefully.

  ‘Goodness no!’ Miss Dutton snorted at the very idea. ‘I shouldn’t have cared for that sort of goings on! I would have been out of there like a shot!’

  Her mother nodded. ‘Like a shot, Mr Cresswell. You can take that as gospel.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘Maybe our visitor would like a cup of tea, Edie, and a biscuit.’ She smiled at him. ‘D’you fancy a cuppa tea, Mr Cresswell? I’d offer to make it but it’s my leg. I fell and broke it. Snapped right in two, it did – the bone that is. Leastways, that’s what I reckon. The doctor said it’s a fracture but I know better. What do they know, these doctors? It’s still swollen and I can’t get my shoe on that foot so I—’

  ‘No!’ he said hastily. ‘That is, no tea, thank you, Mrs Dutton. I mean, I’m sorry about your accident but I’m a bit pressed for time. Got to catch this blighter and put him behind bars!’

  ‘And serve the chap right. Bothering people and sneaking about like that.’ She leaned forward. ‘Thing is, Mr Cresswell, I ask myself where will it end. He might be getting worse. Might go on to murder someone.’

  Miss Dutton said, ‘Mother! The policeman hasn’t got all day. This is urgent.’ She turned back to him apologetically and was rewarded with a smile.

  He said, ‘Now, Miss Dutton, can you give me some brief details about the other members of the family – just to corroborate what I know already.’ He studied his notes. ‘Albert, the younger brother, and Dilys, the sister.’

  ‘Well. Let’s see now. Not a lot to say about Dilys,’ she informed him. ‘She married John Maynard and they had no family. He passed on quite recently . . . Albert is married to Hettie and they have a son called George Egbert. No, sorry, that’s George Albert. He married a French woman but they didn’t take to her one bit, and when they went to live in France . . .’

  Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘Funny lot, the French!’

  ‘. . . so I never saw the young couple but Monty did say once that her father owned a farm in Brittany – wherever that is.’

  ‘Did they ever have a falling out, Miss Dutton? The father and the son?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Not that Monty ever spoke about him. Just the odd mention, maybe.’ She shrugged then leaned forward as if to read his notebook. ‘Are you getting all this, constable? Albert and Hettie’s son George Albert. I got the impression they’d lost interest in him. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.’

  He wrote carefully. ‘I see that they all live around this corner of Bath and yet they don’t seem a very close-knit family.’

  ‘I don’t reckon they are. Monty was bedridden for years but they hardly ever came to see him.’ Realizing suddenly that she had answered his knock at the door while still wearing her pinafore, she hastily pulled it off, folded it and set it on the table beside her. ‘Birthdays, of course, and Christmas. Monty didn’t seem to care but I felt for him. I mean Christmas can be a lonely time when you’re old.’

  The old lady said, ‘People can be very selfish. ’Specially family. I remember wonderful Christmases when I was a child. Everyone came.’

  The constable coughed and turned pointedly towards the daughter. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Albert had been married before and they had a son but I never set eyes on him. Never seen a picture of him and they never mentioned him in my hearing.’

  ‘And his name is . . .?’

  ‘I don’t even know his name! He was long gone. Packed off to Ceylon to a friend of the family who managed a tea plantation. Leastways that’s what the gardener said. Lord knows why but rich people do things like that, don’t they?’

  Emily said, ‘Funny lot, rich people!’

  The policeman saw a glimmer of hope. ‘So would you think, Miss Dutton, that this first son might have quarrelled with his father and mother? Is that why he was sent off to Ceylon?’

  While Edie considered her answer, the old lady said, ‘I fancy a cup of tea and a biscuit.’

  ‘Mother! We’re trying to concentrate!’ She turned back to the constable. ‘There might have been a quarrel. D’you reckon that’s who’s doing these awful things, then? Stealing and trespassing and such like? The long lost son?’

  He shrugged. ‘It has to be a remote possibility if he’s still in Ceylon but I shall go to see Albert Pennington next and ask him directly. It just might be, if he’s back in England, that this is our first lead.’ Head bent, he wrote furiously. It would have been helpful to get a description of this alienated first son but that sounded unlikely. Who, he wondered, might have seen the young man before he was sent into exile. And what had been his crime, if there was one? A quarrel with his father or something worse?

  ‘Keeps me awake at night, this leg does. Throbbing like mad, whichever way I turn. Can’t get comfortable.’

  PC Cresswell ignored the interruption as he scanned his notes. He still felt vaguely dissatisfied with his enquiries which had provided a very thin possible lead. He racked his brain for anything else that might prove more fruitful. ‘And the sister, Dilys, thinks the man was in the free soup queue last week . . . Maybe we’ll find someone else who can add something to her description; maybe remember something else about him. His voice, perhaps. He might have had an accent.’

  The mother said, ‘A foreign accent, you mean?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  The daughter said, ‘Only Dilys could answer that, Mr Cresswell.’

  ‘Never mind, Miss Dutton. I appreciate your time.’ He sighed. ‘If he turns up at the soup kitchen again we’ll be waiting for him!’

  ‘A dab hand. Oh yes! Rough puff, too. Even pie crust! My daughter once won a prize at the village fête for a game pie! She can turn her hand to anything, my Edie can. She should be married by now instead of waiting hand and foot on a useless old man!’ The old lady held her crochet work up to the window and peered at it with obvious dissatisfaction, muttered something then rolled it up and stowed it in her knitting bag.

  Then she turned to the police constable and, assuming a determined smile, said, ‘If you’ve finished with your questions, Mr Cresswell, Edie can make us all a nice cup of tea –’ she gave her daughter a triumphant smile – ‘and you won’t say no to a biscuit!’

  SEVEN

  Almost to the minute Steven Anders arrived on the doorstep and rang the bell. While he waited he stepped back a pace or two and glanced up at the front of the house which had impressed him with its size and location and made him grateful that this was not Miss Letts’ home. That would have put her way out of his reach.

  The small front garden was neat with a strip of lawn and what was left of the summer’s flowers – sparse hollyhocks, marigolds and wallflowers. He had remembered to remove his cycle clips, which now were in the basket of his cycle, and carried a file which he hoped made him look businesslike. As he waited, he glanced at his reflection in the bay window, removed his hat and smoothed his hair carefully. The ring was finally answered and as the door opened he straightened his shoulders and smiled broadly.

  ‘Miss Letts!’

  ‘Mr Anders!’

  They smiled at each other.

  He said, ‘I’ve come about the signature.’

  ‘Oh yes. Please come in.’ She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Maynard wishes to join us.’

  ‘Ah!’ His smile wavered and he pulled a face but stepped inside.

  ‘May I
take your hat, sir?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He winked.

  Trying not laugh, she took the hat and hung it on the hall-stand. ‘This way, please.’

  He followed her into the sitting room which was elegantly furnished and smelled of beeswax polish but there were ashes in the grate and the aspidistra on the broad window ledge looked in need of water. A leather-edged blotter and an inkstand had been placed on the large table which stood in the centre of the room. He had brought a copy of the original sheet and he now produced this from the file with a flourish. In fact there was nothing at all wrong with the original – this had simply been a ploy to meet her again in circumstances other than the office but Mrs Maynard would never know that.

  A tall woman joined them, announcing herself as Dilys Maynard and he shook the outstretched hand. Another of the original Penningtons, he thought with interest. She seemed less formidable than her sister-in-law, however, and her slight frown and flustered manner suggested that she was distracted by the interruption of his visit.

  With a thin smile she told Steven, ‘You will have to be more careful in future!’

  For a moment he was at a loss for her meaning but then he remembered. ‘Ah yes! The tea I spilled on the original form?’ He contrived to look chastened. ‘I certainly won’t do that again!’

  They all laughed politely.

  He said, ‘Miss Letts has been very kind to allow me to—’

  ‘Truly, it’s no trouble, Mr Anders.’ Daisy smiled at him briefly.

  He swallowed hard then laid the sheet on the blotter.

  Daisy signed her name carefully and returned the pen to its place on the stand.

  ‘Thank you so much, Miss Letts.’ He was hoping that Mrs Maynard might offer a little refreshment which would prolong his visit but she said nothing.

  He said, ‘Well, that’s a relief. I’ll be off home. My trusty steed awaits!’

  Mrs Maynard smiled. ‘Your bicycle, I presume.’

  He nodded.

  Miss Letts said, ‘I’ll show you out, Mr Anders.’ And led the way back to the front door. Behind them Mrs Maynard was walking back towards the kitchen. Miss Letts whispered, ‘She’s going back to the kitchen.’

  Recognizing his chance now that it had come, he whispered quickly, ‘I don’t suppose you could meet me one Saturday. We could have tea together.’

  ‘I might be able to if Mrs Maynard goes back to her own home. How could I let you know?’

  He pulled a card from his pocket. ‘Ring the office and ask for me.’ His throat was dry with excitement and his voice sounded strained. ‘Say you are Miss Letts and you need to speak to me. I don’t always work all day Saturdays but sometimes I stay later to study for my exam. What about you?’

  ‘At the moment I work every day but if Mrs Maynard goes home I think Monty would give me time off if I ask him nicely.’

  He held up crossed fingers. ‘I shall hope for the best, Miss Letts.’

  ‘So will I. I’ll have to go now. I don’t want to rouse her suspicions.’

  He held out his hand and she took it. It felt small and warm and he was reluctant to let it go.

  She said, ‘Thank you for coming . . . It was a good lie – about the spilt tea!’

  ‘I am rather proud of it!’

  He cycled away with a broad smile on his face and a gleam in his eye. His thoughts were whirling and in his mind’s eye he saw the two of them cosily ensconced in Miss Maude’s Teashop and, distracted by this delightful picture, he narrowly missed colliding with a coster’s barrow loaded with walnuts.

  A day passed and Sunday evening turned into night. The sky was dark but clear with a few stars and the man sitting in the summer house leaned back with his eyes closed, waiting for midnight. He felt at ease, comfortable with his plan of action and certain of its effect. Midnight. That would be the perfect time for his next attack. Let them all get off to sleep, falsely secure in the knowledge that there was safety in numbers and that the windows and doors of the house were securely locked and bolted. He smiled grimly as he watched the pattern of lights in the house change. First one of the bedrooms was lit and curtains closed. Probably Uncle Montague.

  In a mocking accent he said, ‘Goodnight, Uncle Montague. Sleep well! Don’t let thoughts of your nephew disturb your slumbers. Think only of yourself, like all the Penningtons.

  ‘You silly old fool! Doddery old imbecile!’ He’d been quick to agree to the idea of sending his nephew away where they need not think about him again . . . But slow to realize that he might come back!

  Another light went on upstairs – most likely Aunt Dilys who had taken refuge there. Stupid old bat. She had not spoken a word, either, in his defence.

  ‘Nightie-night, Auntie!’

  Nor had John Maynard spoken up for him but then he was not a family member except by marriage so his advice had probably not been sought. Only the sister and brothers had been asked to comment on the idea. ‘Get the little blighter out of harm’s way,’ his father had insisted. ‘Give him a dose of real discipline. He can come back when he’s learned civilized behaviour.’

  Now the kitchen light had gone off which meant that the housemaid had finished for the day and would soon follow the others to bed. It was a shame for her. She was in no way to blame but that was not his fault. In the wrong place at the wrong time. That was her misfortune.

  A cat wandered into the summer house and approached him but he clapped his hands and shooed it out, helping it on its way with the toe of his outstretched boot.

  He pulled a sandwich from his pocket and unwrapped it. An old woman had given it to him as he sat with his back to a shop window in the town centre earlier, his cap held out for pennies. Said she had no money to spare but returned ten minutes later with a sandwich. So there were some people left in the world with a shred of decency, he thought, biting into it. Cheese and pickle. Not at all bad.

  Ceylon was supposed to make a man of him, according to his father. His mother had protested at the distance but gave in weakly when he insisted it was ‘for the boy’s own good’ and ‘would make a man of him’. Unfortunately he’d been exploited by his father’s so-called friend and, after revenging himself, had been finally betrayed to the authorities who had locked him up after a flawed trial. Eight years hard labour. So had it made a man of him? No. It had turned him into an ill-natured thug. ‘And that’s what I am and always will be!’ he muttered bitterly.

  The church clock struck midnight and he stood up, stretching cramped muscles. Moonlight illuminated the three large rocks he had chosen the previous night. One for his uncle’s room, one for Dilys and one for the maid. He hesitated. Was it fair? She had done nothing to hurt him . . . but she was part of it. Part of the cosy family set-up that he was about to shatter. The set-up he had waited so long to destroy.

  He moved forward, picked up the first rock and hurled it with unerring aim through the window of the maid’s bedroom. Before the first alarmed cries rang out he sent the second one into the old man’s room, and the third into his aunt’s room. For a moment he simply stood there, listening to the confusion his assault had provoked then, smiling grimly, he walked slowly round the side of the house and made his way along the pavement. He made no attempt to hide or hurry, just ambled along, head down, his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.

  By the time he had reached the corner and glanced back he saw that behind him neighbours had been roused and a small crowd was gathering outside the house. All the lights were on and he could imagine what was happening inside and it brought a gleam of deep satisfaction to his hard eyes.

  ‘Your turn next, Father!’ he whispered.

  The sound of the rock smashing its way into the room shocked Daisy into an upright position in the bed, the bed clothes clutched defensively round her. As she listened, there was a second crash and then a third. With a shock she realized that they were being attacked! For a moment she sat there in the darkened room, frozen with fear, then cautiously reached for matches and lit her
bedside candle. A rock had shattered the large casement window and rolled across the room. Shards of glass scattered across the floor. She thought of Monty and Dilys, equally shocked and imagined them blundering about.

  ‘Don’t move!’ she screamed. ‘There’s glass on the floor. I’m coming!’

  Slipping her feet into her shoes, she pulled on her dressing gown then tiptoed carefully past the broken glass and out of the room. Once in the passage she could hear Dilys moaning and Monty calling for help in a wavering voice.

  ‘The windows are broken,’ she told them. ‘There’s glass. Stay where you are!’

  She went first to Monty’s room and opened the door.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he cried. ‘Do you think it’s that man trying to get in?’

  ‘Maybe. Stay in bed for the moment, sir, until I can clear away the glass.’

  ‘Is he out there? Or is he inside the house?’ His voice rose querulously.

  ‘I don’t know yet but I’ll just check on your sister and then I’ll go down and find out.’

  ‘Oh no, Daisy! You mustn’t go downstairs. He might get you!’

  ‘I have to go down to telephone the police.’ She tried to sound calm and reassuring.

  In Dilys’s room she found Monty’s sister sitting on the end of the bed, clutching her left arm. ‘That rock!’ She pointed. ‘It must have landed on my arm before it bounced off on to the floor. I’m afraid my arm may be broken. A good job it wasn’t my head! It might have killed me.’

  Daisy urged her to stay where she was until she had brought up a bucket and brush to clear up all the glass. ‘Then we’ll all go downstairs and have a cup of Ovaltine and wait for the police. How bad is your arm? Shall I send for the doctor?’

  Dilys thought about it then shook her head. ‘I can’t feel any bits of broken bone so maybe it will just be a large bruise. I’ll see the doctor in the morning surgery to make certain.’