Henrietta Who? iscm-2

by Catherine Aird

  "I don't know." Sloan turned back to the report. "How did you get on otherwise?"

  "No joy about where she'd been all day except that it wasn't in Berebury."

  "What?"

  "I showed her photograph to the Inspector at the bus station. He thinks he saw her at the incoming unloading point about half five. Doesn't know what bus she got off…"

  "Wait a minute," said Sloan suspiciously. "How does he remember? That was Tuesday. Today's Friday."

  "I wondered about that, too, sir, but it seems as if an old lady tripped and fell and this Grace Jenkins helped her up and dusted her down. That sort of thing. And then handed her over to the bus people."

  Sloan nodded. "Go on."

  "It appears she stayed in the bus station until the Larking bus left at seven five. In the cafeteria most of the time. The waitress remembered her. Says she served her with…"

  "Baked beans," interposed Sloan neatly.

  Crosby looked startled. "That's right. At about…"

  "Six o'clock," supplied Sloan.

  "How do you know, sir?"

  "Not me." Laconically. "The pathologist. He said so. She ate them about two hours before death. That ties up with her being killed as she walked home from the last bus."

  "Wonderful, sir, isn't it, what they can do when they cut you up?"

  "Yes," said Sloan shortly.

  Crosby turned back to his notebook. "Wherever she'd been she didn't get to the bus station until after the five fifteen to Larking had left, otherwise she'd presumably have caught that."

  "Fair enough," agreed Sloan. "What came in after five fifand before she went into the cafeteria?"

  "A great many buses," said Crosby with feeling. "It's about their busiest time of the day. I've got a list but I wouldn't know where to begin if it's a case of talking to conductors."

  "Return tickets?" murmured Sloan. "They might help."

  Crosby looked doubtful. Sloan went back to the post-morexamination report.

  "Was Happy Harry any help, sir?" ventured Crosby a little later.

  "Inspector Harpe," said Sloan distantly, "has instigated the usual routine enquiries."

  "I see, sir. Thank you, sir."

  Suddenly Sloan tapped Dr. Dabbe's report. "Get me the hospital, will you, Crosby? There's one thing I can ask the pathologist…"

  He was put through to Dr. Dabbe's office without delay.

  "About this Grace Jenkins, Doctor…"

  "Yes?"

  "I notice you've made a note of her blood group."

  "Routine, Inspector."

  "I know that, Doctor. What I was wondering is if the blood group could help us in other ways."

  "With the alleged daughter, you mean?" said Dabbe.

  "Her alleged husband has turned up too," said Sloan; and he explained about the sighting of Cyril Jenkins.

  "Blood groups aren't a way of proving maternity or paternity. Only of disproving it."

  "I don't quite follow."

  "If the child has a different one then that is a factor in sustaining evidence that it is not the child of those particular people."

  "And if it is the same?"

  "That narrows the field nicely."

  "How nicely?" guardedly.

  "Usually to a round ten million or so people who could be its parents."

  "I see." Sloan thought for a moment. "We already know that Grace Jenkins is not the mother of Henrietta…"

  "We do."

  "But if Cyril Jenkins is alive and is the father of Henrietta, then their blood groups would tie up, wouldn't they?"

  A low rumble came down the telephone line. "First, catch your hare…"

  General Sir Eustace Garwell was at home and would see Inspector C. D. Sloan.

  This news was conveyed to the waiting policemen by an elderly male retainer who had creaked to the door in answer to their ring. He was the fourth Garwell upon whom they had called since leaving the police station late that afternoon. The other three had numbered several Jenkins's among their acquaintance but not a Cyril Edgar nor a Grace and certainly not a Henrietta Eleanor Leslie. Nor did they look as if they could ever have had a hyphen in the family, let alone a Hocklington.

  It was different at The Laurels, Cullingoak.

  Sloan and Crosby had left it until the last because it was on the way to lurking. Both the hyphen and the Hocklington would have gone quite well with the Benares brass trays and the faded Indian carpets. There were a couple of potted palms in the hall and several fronds of dusty pampas grass brushed eerily against Crosby's cheek as he and Inspector Sloan followed the man down the corridor. He walked so slowly that the two policemen had the greatest difficulty in not treading on his heels. There was that in his walk though, together with the fact that he had referred to "the General"and not "Sir Eustace" that made Sloan say:

  "You've seen service yourself."

  "Batman to the General, sir, since he was a subaltern."

  "The West Calleshires or the Cavalry?" hazarded Sloan.

  The man stopped in his tracks and drew himself up to his full height "The East Calleshires, sir, not the West."

  Sloan began to feel hopeful.

  "We only live in the Western part of the county," went on the man, "because her ladyship was left this property, and though she's been dead some years, the General's too old to be making a change."

  "I'm sorry," said Sloan, suitably abject.

  A very old gentleman struggled out of a chair as they entered.

  "Come in, gentlemen, come in. It's not often I have any callers in the evening. We live a very quiet life here, you know. Stopped going out when m'wife died. What'll you take to drink?"

  Sloan declined port, madeira and brandy in that order.

  "On duty, sir, I'm afraid."

  The General nodded sympathetically, and said they would forgive him his brandy and soda because he wasn't on duty any more, in fact it was many a long year now since he had been.

  "It's about the past we've come," said Sloan by way of making a beginning.

  "My memory's not what it used to be," said the old man.

  "Pity," murmured Crosby sotto voce.

  "What's that? I can't hear so well either. Damned M.O. fellow wants me to have a hearing aid thing. Can't be bothered." The General indicated a chair on his left and said to Sloan, "If you would sit here I shall hear you better." He settled himself back in his own chair. "Ah, that's more comfortable. Now, how far back in the past do you want to go? Ladysmith?"

  "Ladysmith?" echoed Sloan, considerably startled.

  "It was Mafeking they made all the fuss about—they forgot the siege of Ladysmith." He fixed Sloan with a bleary eye. "Do you want to know about Ladysmith?"

  "You were there, sir?"

  The General gave a deep chuckle. "I was there. I was there for a long time. The whole siege. And I've never wasted a drop of drink or a morsel of food since." He leant forward. "Are you sure about that brandy?"

  "Certainly, sir. Thank you."

  The General took another sip. "Commissioned in '99. Went through the whole of the Boer War. Nearly died of fever more than once. Still"—he brightened—"none of it seemed to do me any harm."

  This much, at least, was patently true. They were looking at a very old man indeed but he seemed to be in possession of all his faculties. Sloan thought back quickly, dredging through his schoolboy memory for names of battles.

  "Were you at Omdurman, Sir Eustace?"

  Sir Eustace Garwell waved the brandy glass under his nose with a thin hand, sniffing appreciatively. The veins on his hand stood out, hard and gnarled. "No, sir, I was not at Omdurman. Incredible as it may seem now, I was too young for that episode in our military history. At the time I was very distressed about missing it by a year or so. I was foolish enough to fear that there weren't going to be any more wars." He gave a melancholy snort. "I needn't have worried, need I?"

  "No, sir…"

  "Now, on the whole I'm rather glad. You realise, don'tyou, that had I been born
a couple of years earlier I should probably be dead by now."

  Sloan took a moment or two to work this out and then he said, "I see what you mean, sir."

  "The East Callies were there, of course. Battle honours and all that…"

  "Yes." Sloan raised his voice a little. "There is just one little matter on which you may be able to help us by remembering. After Ladysmith. Probably sometime between the wars."

  "I was in India from '04 to 1913," said the General helpfully. "In the Punjab."

  "Not those wars," said Sloan hastily, hoping Sir Eustace was too deaf to have heard Crosby's snort. "Between the other two."

  "Ah. It wasn't the same, you know."

  "I daresay not," said Sloan dryly.

  "Everything changed after 1914 but war most of all."

  "Do you recollect a Sergeant Jenkins in the Regiment, sir?"

  There was a row of ivory elephants on the mantelpiece, their trunks properly facing the door. Sloan had time to count them before the General replied.

  "Jenkins did you say? No, the name doesn't mean anything to me. Known quite a few men of that name in m'time but not in the Regiment. Hirst might know. Ask him."

  "Thank you, sir, I will."

  "They put me on the Staff," said the old voice querulously. "You never know anyone then."

  "Did you ever have a woman called Grace Jenkins working for you either, sir?"

  "Can't say that we did. We had a housekeeper but she's been dead for years and her name wasn't Jenkins."

  "Or Wright?"

  "No. One of the cleaning women might have been called that. You'd have to ask Hirst. They come and go, you know."

  If the dust on the ivory elephants was any measure, this was one of the times when they had gone.

  "No, not a cleaning woman," said Sloan. "A children's nurse, perhaps. A nanny?"

  "Never had any children," said the General firmly. "No nannies about the place ever."

  "I see, sir. Thank you. Well, then, I must apologise for disturbing you. Routine enquiry, you understand."

  "Quite so."

  Sloan got up to go. "About a woman who used to work as a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell and we're trying to trace…"

  Without any warning the whole atmosphere inside the drawing room of The Laurels, Cullingoak, changed.

  Two beady eyes peered at Sloan over the top of the brandy glass. Just as quickly the old face became suffused with colour. A choleric General Sir Eustace Garwell put down his glass with shaking hands.

  "Sir," he said, quite outraged, "is this a joke?"

  He struggled to his feet, anger in every feature of his stiff and ancient frame. He tottered over to the wall and put his finger on a bell.

  "If I were a younger man, sir," he quavered, "I would send for a horse whip. As it is, I shall just ask my man to show you the door. Goodnight, sir, goodnight."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As always, Sloan was polite.

  He had long ago learned that there were few situations where a police officer—or anyone else, for that matter— gained by not being.

  Henrietta was sitting opposite him and Crosby in the little parlour of Boundary Cottage.

  "Yes, Inspector, I'm certain it was Hocklington-Garwell. It's not really a name you could confuse, is it?"

  "No, miss, that's very true."

  "Besides, why should I tell you a name like that if it isn't the one I was told?"

  "That's not for me to say, miss."

  She stared at him. "You do believe me, don't you?"

  "The mention of the name certainly upset the old gentleman, miss. He ordered us out of the house."

  Henrietta just looked puzzled. "I can't understand it at all. It was Hocklington-Garwell and they had two boys. Master Michael and Master Hugo. I've heard such a lot about them always…"

  "The General said he hadn't had any children," said Sloan.

  "There you are, then. It must have been the wrong man…"

  "But the merest mention of the name upset him, miss. There was no mistake about that."

  She subsided again, shaking her head. "I can't begin to explain that. They're wrong, you know, when they say 'What's in a name?' There seems to be everything in it."

  "Just at the moment," agreed Sloan. He coughed. "About the other matter, miss…"

  "My father?"

  "The man in the photograph."

  "Cyril Jenkins…"

  "Yes, miss. We've got a general call out for him now, starting in the Calleford area…"

  "You'll find him, won't you?"

  "I think we will," said Sloan with a certain amount of reservation. "Whether, if we do, we shall find he fulfils all three conditions of identity…"

  "Three?"

  "That your father, the man in the photograph and Cyril Edgar Jenkins are all one and the same."

  She nodded and said positively, "I can only tell you one of them, that he was the man in the photograph." She tightened her lips. "You'll have to tell me the other two afterwards, won't you?"

  Sloan frowned. There were quite a few little matters that Cyril Jenkins could inform them about and the first question they would ask him was where exactly he had been just before eight o'clock on Tuesday evening. Aloud he said, "We'll tell you all we can, miss, though you realise someone might simply have borrowed his photograph to put on the mantelpiece here?"

  She smiled wanly. "Is that what they call a father figure, Inspector?"

  "Something like that, miss."

  "Why should she have told me he was dead if he wasn't?"

  "I don't know, miss." Sloan couldn't remember a time when he had used the phrase so often. "He might have left her, I suppose…" It wasn't a subject he was prepared to pursue at this moment, so he cleared his throat and said, "In view of what you have told us about the War Memorial and the Rector about the medals, we are in touch with the War Office but there will inevitably be a little delay."

  A brief smile flitted across her face and was gone. "Friday afternoon's not the best time, is it?"

  "No, miss, I doubt if we shall have anything in time for the inquest."

  "Mr. Arbican's coming," she said, "and he's going to get someone to start going through the Court Adoption records."

  "That's a long job," said Sloan, who had already taken advice on this point.

  "Starting with the Calleshire County Court and the Bere-bury, Luston and Calleford Magistrates' ones. That's the most hopeful, isn't it?" she said. "I expect you think I'm being unreasonable, Inspector, but I must know who I am—even if Bill Thorpe doesn't care."

  "Doesn't he?" said Sloan alertly.

  She grimaced. "He only thinks it's important if you happen to be an Aberdeen Angus bull."

  "Back to Berebury?" enquired Crosby hopefully, as they left Boundary Cottage. Breakfast was the only solid meal he had had so far that day and he was getting increasingly aware of the fact.

  Sloan got into the car beside him. "No." He got out his notebook. "So young Thorpe doesn't care who she is…"

  "So she said."

  "But he still wants to marry her."

  "That's right," said Crosby, who privately found it rather romantic.

  "Has it occurred to you that that could be because he already knows who she is?"

  "No," responded Crosby simply.

  "I think," said Sloan, "we shall have to look into the background of young Mr. Thorpe. Just to be on the safe side, you might say."

  "Now?" Crosby started up the engine.

  "No. Later. Just drive up the road. We're going to call at The Hall. To see what Mr. James Hibbs knows."

  Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs were just finishing their evening meal. Enough of its aroma still hung about to tantalise Crosby's idle digestive juices, though there was no sign of food. The Hibbs's were having coffee by a log fire in their hall, the two gun dogs supine before it. A bare wooden staircase clambered up to the first floor. The rest was dark panelling and the total effect was of great comfort.

  Sloan dec
lined coffee out of cups so tiny and fragile looking that he could not bear to think of them in Constable Crosby's hands.

  "You're quite sure?" said Mrs. Hibbs. She was a tall, imposing woman with a deep voice. "Or would you prefer some beer?"

  Sloan—to say nothing of Crosby—would have greatly preferred some beer but he shook his head regretfully. "Thank you, no, madam. We just want to ask a few more questions about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins."

  "A terrible business," said Mrs. Hibbs. "To think of her lythere in the road all night, and nobody knew."

  "Except, I daresay," put in Hibbs, "the fellow who knocked her down. All my eye, you know, this business that you can say you didn't notice the bump. Any driver would notice."

  "Quite so, sir."

  "It's a wonder that James didn't find her himself," went on Mrs. Hibbs, placidly pouring out more coffee.

  "Really, madam?"

  "You sometimes take Richard and Berengaria that way, don't you, dear?"

  "Yes," said Hibbs rather shortly.

  Sloan said, "Who?"

  "Richard and Berengaria." She pointed to the dogs. "We always call them after Kings and Queens, you know."

  "I see, madam." Sloan, who thought dogs should be called Spot or Lassie, turned to James Hibbs. "Did you happen to take them that way on Tuesday, sir?"

  "No, Inspector."

  "Which way," mildly, "did you take them?"

  "Towards the village. I had some letters to post."

  "About what time would that have been?"

  "Half-past eight-ish."

  "And you saw nothing and nobody?" The answer to that anyway was a foregone conclusion.

  "No."

  "I see, sir. Thank you." Sloan changed his tone and said easily, "We're running into a little difficulty in establishing the girl's antecedents… it wouldn't matter so much if Henrietta—Miss Jenkins—weren't under twenty-one."

  "Probate, I suppose," said Hibbs wisely. "And she was intestate, too, I daresay. I'm forever advising people to make their wills but they won't, you know. They think they're immortal."

  "Quite so, sir," said Sloan, who hadn't made his own just yet.

  "She needn't worry about the cottage, if that's on her mind. She's a protected tenant and anyway I can't see myself putting her on the street."