The Case of the Missing Bronte

by Robert Barnard

  Well, I talked with them a bit about recent bringers of literary material, but I got no joy out of that. If Miss Wing had been to see Tetterfield, she certainly hadn’t done so at his place of work. Then I snuffled around the books a bit longer, getting very bored with population registers and Dictionaries of Yorkshire Worthies. Then, when the pubs opened I had a pint in a deadly little place, all varnish and stale beer, not far from the library. At five past seven I was ringing the doorbell of Dr Tetterfield’s home, an imposing Victorian three-storey and basement job, set in its own half acre of ground. A man with a bit of money of his own, the people at Milltown had said. I could believe it. There was a long wait on the step, but eventually the door was opened by a massive woman in an apron, arms akimbo, eyes suspiciously peering, exuding all the charm of an East German female discus-thrower.

  ‘Yes?’

  I had decided to play it unofficial for the moment.

  ‘I’d like to see Dr Tetterfield. Could you give him my name, please? It’s Peregrine Trethowan.’

  She looked at me as much as to say ‘A likely story!’ but what she actually said was a grudging, ‘I’ll see.’ Whereupon she shut the door in my face while she went to do so. This time, though, the wait was not long. She returned, shaking her head dubiously, and said: ‘He’ll see you.’

  When I got into the hall, I saw why she had shut the door. The place was littered with books, manuscripts and typescripts, as well as tea-chests full of what looked like old clothes and other memorabilia of the Yorkshire great.

  ‘Mind your feet!’ snapped my charming guide. ‘This stuff’s valuable, so they tell me!’

  We picked our way up the stairs, in semi-darkness, and little bundles of this and that, tied with string and labelled, adorned every step of the way. The landing turned out to be as littered as the hall, and we hopped from empty space to empty space, like hikers crossing a swollen torrent on stepping stones. Finally she opened a door and we came into a brightly lit study, similarly encumbered with the literary junk of centuries, but made more welcoming by a splendid large desk, and by walls of books that gave the place colour and warmth. Seated in a little armchair by the empty grate was Dr Tetterfield.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, advancing and rubbing his hands.

  Dr Tetterfield, seen from close to, was not as unprepossessing as might have been guessed from the distant prospect of him, or the words of his assistants. He was small, but spry, and his eyes had a beady, bird-like sharpness. On the other hand, his voice was high, a strangulated treble, and his clothes seemed to have been bundled round him by some kindly Salvation Army lass — they bore traces, too, of egg, stew and other culinary experiences. And his welcome seemed to consist of little chuckles and snuffles, expressive of a delight in seeing me that was well beyond my deserts.

  ‘Ah — Mr Trethowan. I don’t have to guess who you are. One of the Northumberland Trethowans, eh? Fine family — it’s an honour to make your acquaintance. Sherry, my boy?’ He took from a bookcase in the corner two perfectly beautiful cut-glass sherry glasses, shone to sparkling perfection, and a matching decanter. The place was altogether the oddest mixture of luxury and squalor I had come across.

  ‘Always think it’s better to sip at something while one does business, eh?’ he snuffled.

  ‘Er—’

  ‘Is it Mr Lawrence Trethowan’s manuscripts you’re offering? Recently dead, I believe? A loss to letters, but it was a long and fruitful life — that’s a consolation for you, I’m sure. Not precisely a Yorkshire writer, but still — we can stretch a point, eh? — stretch a point.’

  As he came over with the sherry, I became aware that the housekeeper was still in the room, standing by the door, her arms folded over her intimidating bosom, and looking like the sort of prison wardress who is going to consign Susan Hayward to the gas chamber in the last reel. Dr Tetterfield saw my glance.

  ‘Ah — er — you may go, Mrs Hawby.’

  The housekeeper sniffed. ‘You know how these people put it over you. I’ll not have you done down, like you usually are. I’ll stay.’

  ‘I can put your mind at rest,’ I said. ‘I’ve nothing for sale. I’ve no idea where my Uncle Lawrence’s manuscripts are, and they certainly wouldn’t be mine to sell.’

  Dr Tetterfield was in the act of putting the glass into my hand. He seemed to be within an ace of snatching it back.

  ‘Disappointing,’ he said, as if I had deceived him. ‘Most disappointing. There now, Mrs Hawby, you can go.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay, all the same,’ she intoned massively.

  Dr Tetterfield looked uncertain, but he motioned me to an armchair, and as I sank into it whispered hopefully:

  ‘She goes off duty at eight.’

  Well — we were a cosy little gathering. I felt like an aristocrat in the Bastille, being watched over by Madame Defarge. I sipped my sherry, to give me confidence.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘I am on business, and it does concern a manuscript.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Dr Tetterfield, brightening up at once, rubbing his hands and emitting those high squeaks of anticipation that suggested nothing so much as a tiny rodent in the claws of a cat. ‘Ah!’

  ‘The manuscript is one you may have seen, or one which may be brought to you. It may be — it has the appearance of being — by one of the Brontë sisters.’

  In the scruffy, disorganized body in the next chair I sensed an immediate access of tension. There was a short pause, and when he spoke he showed none of the interest or excitement which in such a collector would have been the natural response.

  ‘I know of no such manuscript,’ he said. ‘No specific one, at least. And who, may I ask, do you represent in this matter?’

  ‘I represent the CID,’ I said.

  ‘You silly old bugger,’ said the housekeeper from the door. ‘You’ve gone and got yourself mixed up with the police.’

  He looked daggers at her.

  ‘There, there, Mrs Hawby. You don’t understand. He-he-he — women, Inspector, eh? Eh? Now, what was it precisely you wanted to consult me about?’

  One thing I could not do, at that moment, was accuse him. Or even insinuate any connection. And yet there was something about him, some indefinable air, that made me want to. As it was, I could only circle vaguely round the subject.

  ‘Well, now,’ I said, ‘I gather that nobody has come along to you with an offer of any such manuscript?’

  ‘No, no. Would they had, eh? A real find that would be. No, I’m afraid not, Inspector.’

  He was more relaxed now, and in his greater ease he seemed to give off a distinct air of hugging himself — of being delighted with his own cleverness or good fortune, or of enjoying some little private joke very much indeed.

  ‘I suppose you get to know a great deal about literary manuscripts that may be up for sale?’

  ‘Tolerably much, Inspector. I have the resources of the library, and a limited private source of funds. People have got to know this.’

  ‘You buy both for the library and for yourself?’

  ‘In effect the two are indivisible. I have no heirs. On my death my collection — modest, but I like to think not entirely contemptible — will go to the library.’ There was a snort here from the direction of the door. Either Mrs Hawby did indeed think the collection contemptible, or she could think of other destinations for her employer’s money.

  ‘I see. And there is library money too?’

  ‘Precisely. Under the terms of Josiah Brunskill’s will — doesn’t he sound like a character from a Thomas Armstrong novel? — we have an income from investment that amounts to some twenty thousand a year. Not riches, but it has proved most useful. The specific purpose is to buy manuscripts or other memorabilia connected with local writers and artists.’

  ‘An enlightened man. So people — members of the public — come along with things of possible interest?’

  ‘Quite. Or I contact them. Sometimes they’re too modest to realize that what they have is of
value. There are writers who never imagine what interest might be attached some day to, for example, their old clothes. But they soon catch on, they soon catch on! Sometimes I go along to their funerals. Find out the next of kin. Sometimes I do a bit of detective work on my own, and come up with things. This pen, Inspector — ’ he brandished a perfectly ordinary fountain-pen which had been lying on his desk — ‘this pen was the very one used by Phyllis Bentley to write her great novel Inheritance!’

  I left a suitably respectful pause.

  ‘Then you don’t know the name of Miss Edith Wing?’

  He looked at me sideways, then puckered his brow in thought.

  ‘I can’t say I do. The Wing family was once notable in — where was it? — the Halifax area, I think. But I can’t say I recollect this particular name.’

  ‘And nobody else has been along to you recently, offering a long manuscript in a handwriting that resembled the Brontës’?’

  ‘No, no indeed, Inspector.’ There erupted from him at that moment something that seemed to be a high-pitched chuckle. He made haste to cover it up. ‘The only time I have been offered any manuscript by one of the sisters it was a letter from Charlotte, written in her later years, accepting a dinner invitation from the Wheelwright family. Hardly a prize item, yet it was snapped up by the University of Texas at a price well beyond what we could afford. A bitter pill, to lose our artistic heritage in that manner, eh, Inspector? It is Inspector, isn’t it?’

  ‘Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Well, I suppose there’s nothing further to ask you. Obviously if you do get offered any such thing, we’d be glad if you’d contact us.’ I got up. ‘Express interest, but contact us as soon as you can.’

  He rubbed his hands delightedly, and seemed to be suppressing great wheezes of self-congratulatory laughter.

  ‘I will of course, Inspector. Superintendent. Naturally. And, Superintendent — ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If there should be any question of selling family manuscripts or other things — ’

  ‘I’ll put the seller straight on to you. I should like the thought of my Uncle Lawrence’s hearing aid joining Phyllis Bentley’s pen.’

  I made my way out, preceded by Mrs Hawby, who trod across the cluttered landing and down the stairs with all the delicacy of a Soviet tank entering Kabul. She was not, I suspected, in a good humour. At the door I turned to her.

  ‘Was he telling the truth?’

  ‘As far as I know.’ She shrugged her massive shoulders — it was like a tidal wave in the South Atlantic. ‘You can never tell with him. Childish, you know. Like all these what they call intellectuals.’

  And she shut the door in my face. As I made my way down the overgrown pathway I reflected that, in its way, this interview had been as odd as the one I’d had with Timothy Scott-Windlesham. Not only had Tetterfield expressed no interest or enthusiasm when the subject of the Brontë manuscript first came up, but he had never subsequently asked about the nature of it, or its likely authenticity.

  As I opened the gate, I thought I saw, some way down the tree-lined road, a figure slipping from the shade of a tree into a front garden. It was just a movement, in the corner of my eye, but it bothered me. Because the shape — I could make out no more — seemed vaguely familiar. I paused and watched. I thought I caught the sound of two voices, talking in a low tone. But after waiting a minute or two I shrugged and got into my car.

  It was not until next morning that I heard that during the night Dr Tetterfield’s house had been ransacked, and he himself tied up and subjected to prolonged mistreatment that almost amounted to torture. I thought then, again, about the shape under the trees.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US

  The devil of it was, the silly old bugger refused to talk. He just lay back there in the hospital bed, three-quarters dead, and insisted that he didn’t know the men who’d done him over, didn’t know who they were working for, and didn’t know what they were after. It was this last thing that gave him away: it was impossible to believe. We kept asking him what the hell he was tortured for, if they didn’t tell him what they were trying to get hold of, but he just answered that he supposed they were kinky, that they were just ordinary thieves, after his valuable collection, and so on. He produced this word ‘kinky’ with a self-satisfied smile, as if it was highly ingenious and explained everything. I suppose I ought to have admired the obstinate old lunatic in a way: it took guts, when you’d been worked over with fists, razors and God knows what else, to lie back there writhing in pain and still produce that air of suppressed self-satisfaction. Me, I just cursed my luck, in that as usual I had got myself involved in a case where half the cast list seemed already three parts along the road to the psychiatrist’s couch and the padded cell. In the end a self-important young doctor bustled along and forbade further questioning, and I didn’t quarrel with him. I could see there was no point in going over the same ground yet again: old Tetterfield was going to hug to himself the details of what had happened to him, and why.

  After I left the hospital I called round to his house, where Mrs Hawby was proving more than a match for six or seven stalwart Bradford cops. My God! It was chaos in there — Winifred Holtby’s bras all mixed up with J.B. Priestley’s pipes, the pleasant study reduced to a wreck. A search of a random, frenzied, indiscriminate kind had obviously taken place, proceeding parallel, no doubt, to the treatment of poor old Tetterfield. The question was, whether anything had been found. I extricated myself as quickly as possible from the ruins, bearing as best I could the baleful looks of Mrs Hawby, who for some obscure reason seemed to hold me directly responsible for the affair. I drove thoughtfully back to Miss Wing’s cottage. I despatched Constable Bradley down to the Dalesman for a lunch-time snack, and as luck would have it, that was when Jan rang.

  ‘I suppose Nanny is in the room, making sure you don’t say a word out of line?’ she began nastily.

  ‘As it happens, no.’ I was very frosty.

  ‘Right — fill me in on every detail. Quick, while he’s away,’ she commanded. And of course I did what I was told.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, when I had finished. ‘The plot thickens. In fact, it’s got distinctly lumpy, don’t you feel, Perry? You got the impression that both Windlesham and Tetterfield knew where the manuscript was, did you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said cautiously. ‘But it was only an impression.’

  ‘That seems to be one too many, doesn’t it? They can’t both have stolen it.’

  ‘No reason why not. Certainly they could both be involved.’ I had my own ideas about that, but I didn’t go into them. Jan is much too prone to take on a Girl Friday role in my cases, quite unasked. ‘Whatever the truth is, old Tetterfield seems to have paid the price.’

  ‘And yet he’s still not talking.’

  ‘No. And of course he has every reason not to, if he’s been involved in the theft of something as valuable as this manuscript could turn out to be. Stiff gaol sentence — end of career. But I don’t think it’s just that: in fact, I don’t think it’s that at all. You should see the way he’s hugging himself still. Either he thinks they didn’t get it — he could have passed out before they did. Or else he’s hoping to get it back again.’

  ‘He knows who the thugs are, you mean? Or who they’re working for? You know, Perry, when you think about it, don’t hired thugs seem awfully unlikely?’

  ‘Sweet innocent little thing. Hired thugs have been a lot commoner than nice little old ladies these twenty years and more. And unemployment doesn’t diminish the number. You can live in London and doubt the existence of hired bully boys?’

  ‘No, of course not. But here. I mean, in this sort of case. Lost work of literature, and all that. It’s so out of character. I can believe in unscrupulous academics and cracked librarians in this connection, but hired thugs — ?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I admitted, ‘it is a bit out of keeping. But don’t forget that appalling cousin. He’s lived and
worked in Los Angeles, remember — “there is sin, there is shame” ’ — I imitated his ghastly nasal pulpit pomposity. ‘If there’s any sin or shame going, I bet the Reverend Amos Macklehose is in there shamelessly sinning.’

  ‘That’s a point. But he seemed to think it was still in the cottage, didn’t he? Perry — have you seen today’s papers?’

  ‘Heavens, no. No time for that. You surely don’t want to talk about the latest Gallup ratings of the Social Democrats, do you, Jan? I’m busy, you know.’

  ‘Don’t be potty. Or pompous. It’s just that in the Yorkshire Record there’s mention of a millionaire — an American multi-millionaire, a well-known collector. And he’s currently in Bradford.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What on earth would he be doing in Bradford, Perry?’

  ‘Buying the Town Hall, I would hope,’ I said. But I was definitely interested. Bradford was not a Mecca for multimillionaire aesthetes — if that, indeed, was what the gentleman was, and not just a grabber. I could be interested in a grabber.

  ‘Any details on what he collects?’ I asked.

  ‘They mention pictures — he’s got several Samuel Palmers already in his collection — and a “fine Turner”, they say. But also manuscripts of the Romantic poets.’

  ‘Hmmm. Not spot on, but it could be worth following up. What’s his name?’

  ‘James L. Parfitt.’

  ‘Fine old English name. Probably spoils it by adding “the third”, or something. Well, thanks, Jan — I must go. I can hear Bradley coming back.’

  ‘Don’t let Nanny find out you’ve been a naughty boy,’ said Jan.

  She can be a bit aggravating at times.

  Bradley and I had a snack of tomato and cheese sandwiches, and ale that tasted of the can. I rang up Scotland Yard and asked them to get on to the States and see if the FBI had anything on James L. Parfitt. While we were jawing and gobbling Bradley, with a heavy flourish, produced a piece of news.

  ‘Know who the old girl left her money to?’