The Case of the Missing Bronte

by Robert Barnard

  There was silence in the house, and then I heard the sound of slippered feet advancing along the hallway. The door opened a fraction.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, are you Miss Boothroyd?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder if I may come in and speak to you?’

  ‘If you’re selling anything, I’m not interested.’

  ‘I’m not selling anything. It’s about a manuscript.’

  She opened the door a fraction more.

  ‘Oh, if it’s about a job — ’

  ‘It’s not exactly a job I have for you. It’s a manuscript that may have been given to you to type. A very old one.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Miss Boothroyd, I am a policeman — ’

  There came over her face an expression of dismay, in which was mingled fear — obvious, unconcealable fear. She let the door swing open a little more, and I put my foot in the opening. Now I could get a look at her for the first time. She was a faded scrap of gentility in a muddy mauve woollen dress, with lacklustre hair that was fading from fair to grey, without ever having been attractive in either shade. It was a tired, troubled face, giving the impression of one for whom worry was a way of life. I thought I’d seen her before, but in her generation — she was, I guessed, in her late fifties — one still found plenty of these disappointed, repressed, slightly hysterical spinsters (and bachelors) whom life seemed not just to have passed by, but given a contemptuous kick to in passing. Probably in a generation or two the type will virtually have died out — unless, as I sometimes suspect, the permissive society does not exist outside a two mile radius of central London. I imagined Miss Boothroyd staying on in the house where she had been born, as the rest of the family died out or moved away, finding it much too big for her, but resisting the thought of moving, and clinging on to all the things that reminded her of childhood, when she had life and activity and people around her. I had no desire to cling to my childhood, but I understood the instinct to cling. Miss Boothroyd’s charges seemed to be high. How far would she be willing to go, if the price was right?

  ‘Perhaps we could go inside, Miss Boothroyd?’

  ‘Do you have a search warrant?’

  ‘No — ’

  ‘Then I can’t let you in. I’m alone in the house. How do I know you’re a policeman?’

  I showed her my identification.

  ‘Nevertheless . . .’ she said. ‘We can talk quite well here.’

  I sighed. ‘Very well. As I said, what I’m investigating is a manuscript that has disappeared.’

  ‘I told you, I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  ‘It was stolen.’

  She blinked, but resumed her obstinate expression: ‘Well, I’m very sorry, but I don’t know why you should come to me.’

  ‘I haven’t described the manuscript to you yet. Perhaps you should not deny knowledge of it till you know what it looks like. It’s a very old one. Large sheets of paper, folded several times. They are covered with very tiny writing, almost unreadable. It is a novel, or part of one. One of the characters is called Thomas Blackmore. There’s a place called Lingdale Manor in it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she repeated.

  ‘It would be a very difficult manuscript to transcribe, which is why I thought they might have come to you.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t,’ she said, her voice rising, and taking on an edge, close to tears. ‘There are plenty of others who do this sort of thing. Why did you come to me?’

  ‘I thought of you because you once transcribed a manuscript of my uncle Lawrence — Lawrence Trethowan.’ I offered this as a delicate branch of friendship.

  ‘That was a disgusting book,’ she burst out, flinging the branch back in my face. ‘It was positively unclean. He ought to have been ashamed, sending a thing like that to a lady.’

  ‘My uncle was like that,’ I said, not wishing to get into an argy with the moral majority. ‘Now, as I told you, this manuscript was stolen — ’

  ‘I don’t know why you go on. I’ve told you I know nothing about it. I’m a busy woman with a living to earn, so will you please go away — ’

  ‘It was stolen in circumstances of great brutality.’ This time she flinched, good and openly. ‘I would like you to know the sort of person you may be dealing with. The lady who owned the manuscript, a lady some years older than yourself, was physically attacked, and so ferociously that she is only beginning to come round now, a fortnight later. Her wounds were so serious that her life was despaired of.’

  Now there was no mistaking it. Her expression had become one of naked fear, and her hand was shaking on the doorknob.

  ‘Another person who had the manuscript in his possession was beaten up, very sadistically, over a long period of time, to make him give it up.’

  ‘Please stop it! I don’t want to hear about these horrors!’

  ‘But I think you should, Miss Boothroyd. Do you think it sensible to get mixed up in something of this kind? To get involved with the sort of people who would do things like that? Because you may feel safe with the people who employ you, but there is more than one lot involved. Are you safe from the rest of them? Can your thugs protect you from the other thugs?’

  ‘You’re treating me like a criminal!’

  ‘Now that you’ve been told what you’re involved in, you would be a criminal if you continued with what you’re doing. I’m telling you for your own protection. And if you’re sensible you surely will admit that no amount of money could compensate for the mental pressure you’ve been putting yourself under.’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she almost shrieked. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know anything about any manuscript — ’

  ‘Then why are you getting so worked up?’ I asked. I leaned forward ingratiatingly. ‘Miss Boothroyd, there’s no possible blame attaching to you in this matter — so far. Now, why don’t you let me in, and we can discuss — ’

  But unfortunately in leaning forward persuasively I had taken my foot out of the door, and she banged it shut, fetching me a hefty clump on the nose. I’d make a rotten salesman. I shouted through the door: ‘You do realize you’re putting your own life in danger, don’t you, you silly woman?’

  There were hysterical sobs from inside, and then:

  ‘Go away! Leave me alone! I won’t put up with this persecution.’

  I waited, hoping my words would sink in. There was silence from inside, then the sound of someone going upstairs. Going to lie down on the bed and have a good cry, I thought. So ended my attempt to lean heavily on the weak and feeble. I was annoyed with myself, but more aggravated by the stupidity of the woman: the fact is, there is no one stupider than someone who has seen an unexpected windfall landing in their lap, and then has to contemplate it eluding their grasp after all.

  I went down to the gate, and then out into the road. Somehow I was going to have to get into that house. The sheer suspiciousness of Selina Boothroyd’s behaviour had probably justified me in applying for a search warrant. But that took time. Had I got it? Not if Miss Boothroyd got on the phone to her employers. I felt the manuscript had eluded me often enough already in this case.

  I walked down Jubilee Parade, and a dreary, unfestive parade it seemed to me now. At the end, at the corner of Cardigan Road, there was a phone-box, and I decided to ring up Jan and tell her the success of her inspired guess. I had only just got through and was launching into the story when I saw stirrings down the road at No. 45. Over the shrubs I could just see the front door open, and someone come out.

  ‘Hang on, Jan,’ I said, ‘I think something’s happening.’

  I leant low over the phone, but Miss Boothroyd was coming along on the other side of the road, and by the distraught style of her walk it seemed unlikely that she would see anybody. She was wearing a large felt hat with a feather in it, and clutching a brown hold-all.

  It was then that I rea
lized why I’d had the idea that I’d seen her before. She was the woman who had sat in front of me at the Tabernacle of the Risen Moses.

  CHAPTER 14

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  As she went past I started muttering nonsense into the phone to Jan, the mouthpiece cradled in my shoulder, my arm covering my face. Oh yes — it was her all right: the hat was unmistakable. It was the woman who had sat in front of me at the Macklehose religious rites, and it was the member of the congregation I’d seen at the tennis. And as I thought back I remembered more. What was it she had cried out? Something about greed. She’d mentioned lust for gold. She’d looked into her heart and found lust for gold. Oh yes, Sister Boothroyd — I believe you!

  Sister Boothroyd . . . Now I remembered Amos Macklehose’s good-nights on the porch of his spiritual hovel. ‘See you on Tuesday, Sister Boothroyd,’ he had said. ‘It will do you good.’ That was a facer. What was the betting the silly woman had been to him and confessed? Told him what she was doing? This raised all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. She could even be taking the thing to him now . . .

  ‘ ’Bye, Jan — ring as soon as I can,’ I gabbled, and I slammed down the phone and emerged from the box as Miss Boothroyd went out of sight round the corner.

  I dashed to the corner and peered round a privet hedge, down the traffic-ridden expanses of Cardigan Road. She was waiting at a bus stop. She was clutching her hold-all so desperately that she seemed to be trying to pull it apart, her hands working vigorously and hysterically the whole time. She kept looking down the road in my direction, and I had to keep darting back behind cover. Within a couple of minutes she was rewarded. A bus came along, going to the centre. She darted on as if she were being pursued by a troop of mounties. As the bus drove off I dashed down Jubilee Parade and found the turning where I had parked my car. In half a minute I was after the bus.

  I was on tenterhooks that she would get out before it had finished its run, and dash into somewhere that would turn out to be the Reverend Macklehose’s manse. But she didn’t. In little over ten minutes the bus drew up at City Station and she got out, still looking more than a little dazed and distressed. I left the car in the forecourt, any old how, and leapt after her.

  By the time I caught up with her she had her ticket, and was heading in the direction of Platform Three. There was nothing to be done but catch her up and stop her.

  ‘Miss Boothroyd!’

  ‘Oh!’ She jumped, looked round, then broke into a flood of tears. ‘You’re persecuting me! I shall complain to my MP. What right have you to follow me in this way? I’ve done nothing wrong. You said so yourself. You’re treating me like a criminal!’

  People began looking at her, and edging away from us.

  ‘Miss Boothroyd, I don’t think you’re a criminal, but I do think someone has involved you in criminal business. Do you mind telling me where you’re going?’

  ‘I’m going to Scarborough. To stay with my sister. I can’t — I can’t stand it anymore. The strain, the worry. The persecution — by the police, who are supposed to protect us. I’ve got to get away.’

  ‘That’s probably the wisest thing you’ve done in a long time. But just one more thing: can I search your bag?’

  ‘Oh! This is too much. To be searched like a common thief in a public place. Oh — oh, take it.’

  She threw the bag at me, and broke into another uncontrollable fit of sobbing. To add to her public humiliation, the bits and pieces of personal belongings and underwear scattered all over the platform. I put my hand in the bag and felt around, but the manuscript was not there. Together we got down on our knees on the grimy platform and tried to put Miss Boothroyd together again into a middle-class lady of unimpeachable rectitude. But in the end we had to scramble everything together and bundle her past the ticket-collector and on to the train. She ran frantically down the platform, never once looking back. I suppose I couldn’t have expected a vote of thanks.

  At any rate that was her out of the way, and — it was to be hoped — out of danger. The next thing was to get back to the house. Darkness was some way off, but it would come. Meanwhile I wanted to see that no one got into that house. I wanted to keep that house safe for me.

  Back in Jubilee Parade things were quiet and early eveningy — a mixture of dusk and dust, with lawns being mown and television sets winking through the windows. A few students came out, on studently errands to discos and pubs, no doubt, most of them catching the bus from Miss Boothroyd’s stop in Cardigan Road. Other than that, few were about. I left my car in the little side-street off the Parade, and ensconced myself in the telephone kiosk. As I expected, Jan was desperately waiting for my call, and thoroughly agog.

  ‘Perry, what on earth is happening? Suddenly you start muttering like a madman and then you go off the line. Are you trying to drive me crazy or something?’

  I told her what had been going on, and where I now was.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ said Jan. ‘It sounds as if you’ve practically driven her over the brink.’

  ‘OK — poor old thing. But why should middle-class people expect the sort of kid-glove treatment which they’d hate us to give your average street thug? She did everything except remind me that she paid her taxes. Most people seem to regard that as exempting them from suspicion. At best this old duck was silly. At worst — well, she’s an intelligent woman, or she couldn’t do the job she does do. Don’t tell me she didn’t know what she was doing when she agreed to do the job for the Scands. Did she think it was all in a day’s work when she agreed to receive the manuscript in the way she did? And when she found that it was old, and probably valuable — didn’t she have a faint whiff of suspicion? I bet they offered her a mint of money for doing it.’

  ‘So they ought to have. But it’s obvious she was feeling guilty even before you came.’

  ‘Nervous, anyway. All right — probably guilty too. The dregs of the good old British Nonconformist conscience. When that sort of conscience is really reduced to the dregs it goes batty, and starts frequenting places like the Tabernacle of the Risen Moses. That’s the thing I’m most afraid of: that Miss Boothroyd has opened her heart to the dreadful Amos. I refuse to call it confession. Blabbing might be the word.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s given up?’

  ‘I do not. I think he’d come after it. That is, if he isn’t in it with James L. Parfitt himself. That’s something I just can’t make up my mind about.’

  ‘But, Perry, are you going to stick around there like a stuffed owl all night? What’s the point?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m just waiting till dark.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Oh, then I’m going in.’

  ‘You’re not, Perry! Without a warrant?’

  ‘Warrants take time. I’ve been told,’ I said carefully, ‘that they don’t worry too much about the rule book, in Leeds.’

  ‘But, Perry, it could be dangerous. You might — ’

  But I put down the phone on that. Of course I intended to take all precautions. But I felt that at last I had the case under control, and from now on I was going to make the running. Now all I had to do was wait until dark.

  But nothing is slower in coming than night on a summer evening. I dallied in the telephone booth for a bit, but before long another user appeared. I strolled up and down Jubilee Parade, loitered on the corners, inspected the houses and gardens as if I were interested in buying property. Gradually the lawn-mowers ceased to hum, and were cleaned and put away in garages and sheds. More television sets started winking in the windows as more people settled down in front of the evening news, to get their statistics on unemployment and inflation, the chirpings of comfort and doom from politicians. The odd car drove up, bringing people from pubs and cinemas. A few upstairs lights went on as children were put to bed. Finally cloud began to come up, to hasten the twilight process. The light became tenuous, the air heavy. I walked round to my parked car, and fetched a torch. In those final minutes before night fe
ll I strolled once more along Jubilee Parade, hell of a casual, and then pushed open the sticky gate of No. 45 and let myself into the gloomy garden.

  The late-Victorian middle-classes certainly had a way with a garden. It was all very well for Wordsworth to babble about the spiritual benefits of one impulse from a vernal wood. He never tried it with a suburban shrubbery. As I crept along the front of the house all sorts of heavy, green-black leaves, shiny and unpleasant, brushed my face. The darkness suddenly seemed impenetrable. I had to duck to avoid sudden, unexpected overhanging branches. Round the side of the house the overgrowth thinned a little, and I could just see, through a gap, the living-room of the house next door. The family were crouched in front of one of those American police series where the credit titles are so long and arty that it’s time for the commercial break before they’re over. I didn’t think I needed to fear interference from that quarter.

  I parted fronds, and plodded cautiously ahead to the back garden. A weedy tentacle caught my foot, and I went sprawling into a mass of nettles. I repressed the blasphemy that rose to my lips (who said one was close to God in a garden?) and ploughed on. At the back of the house there was an overgrown lawn, but by now it was as totally dark as the front. Totally dark and still. So it was too on the other side of the house. I lingered on the lawn. The back garden seemed to abut on a similar garden on another street. I needn’t, presumably, expect any incursions from that direction. The house was completely dark. The problem now was how to get in.

  The obvious way was to start trying the windows. Miss Boothroyd had left in a hurry and a state of hysteria, and was all too likely to have left one unfastened. On the other hand, the vision of myself doing a sneak-in similar to that of Amos Macklehose at Miss Wing’s cottage was not an enticing one. If I knew Miss Boothroyd, she was a typical middle-class householder, and as a policeman I know that your typical middle-class householder usually has a spare key hidden somewhere. Somewhere, be it said, where any burglar with half a brain can find it. And what any burglar can do, any burglarious policeman can do too. So much more dignified, I thought, to go in through the front door. I edged my way back through the undergrowth, towards the front of the house.