Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

  “She’d never have spoilt it like this,” retorted Henrietta quickly. “Besides she wasn’t the sort of person who lost keys.”

  “Yes.” Hepple knew what she meant. His own impression of Mrs. Jenkins was of a neat quiet lady. Law-abiding to a degree.

  “Moreover,” went on Henrietta, “if she had had to do something like that I’m sure she’d have told me in her letter.”

  P. C. Hepple came back to the question of time.

  “When?” repeated Henrietta vaguely. “I don’t know when.”

  “Yesterday, miss. You came back yesterday.”

  “That’s right. They brought me home from Berebury in a police car afterwards …”

  “About what time would that have been, miss?”

  But time hadn’t meant anything to Henrietta yesterday.

  “It was dark. I don’t know when exactly.”

  “Was the bureau damaged then?” persisted Hepple.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t go into the front room at all last night. I’ve just been in there now.”

  “The cottage was all locked up just gone twelve o’clock yesterday morning,” said Hepple, “because I went along myself then to check. There were no signs of breaking and entering then, miss.”

  “There aren’t any now,” said Henrietta tersely. “Just the bureau. That’s the only thing that’s wrong.”

  With which, when he got there, P. C. Hepple was forced to agree.

  “Windows and doors all all right,” he said. “Unless they had a key, no one came in after I checked up yesterday morning.”

  They went back to the front room and considered the bureau again. Henrietta pointed to a deep score in the old wood.

  “My mother never did that. She’d have sent for a locksmith first.”

  “Yes.” Now he could see the bureau, that was patently true. No one who owned a nice walnut piece like this would ever spoil it in that way just to get inside. “What did she keep in there, miss, do you know?”

  “All her papers,” said Henrietta promptly. “Receipts, wireless license—that sort of thing …”

  “Money?”

  “No, never. She didn’t believe in keeping it in the house—especially a rather isolated one like this.”

  “Jewelry?”

  Henrietta shook her head. “She didn’t go in for that either—she never wore anything that you could call jewelry. My father’s medals, though. They were in there.”

  Henrietta’s gaze travelled from the bureau to the mantelpiece and a silver framed photograph of an Army sergeant—and back to the bureau. “They’re in a little drawer at the side. I’ll show you them if you like.”

  “No,” said Hepple quickly. “Don’t touch it, miss.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides.

  “Fingerprints,” said Hepple. “It may not be worthwhile but you can’t be sure until you’ve tried.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that …” Her voice trailed away.

  “Now, miss, about last night.” Constable Hepple was nothing if not persistent.

  “They brought me home in a police car sometime in the early evening I think it was. I didn’t hear—about Mother until nearly lunch time and it took me a while to get back to Berebury. Then I was there for quite a bit.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “They didn’t want to leave me here alone the first night but I promised I’d go across to Mrs. Carter if I wanted anything.”

  “But,” agreed Hepple gently, “the Carters are away. I called there this morning.”

  “That’s right. Only I didn’t know that until I banged on her door and didn’t get an answer. So I came back here.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t come into this room?”

  “Not until this morning.”

  “You heard nothing in the night?”

  “I didn’t hear anyone levering the bureau open if that’s what you mean. And I’m sure I would have done.”

  They both regarded the splintered lock.

  “Yes,” said Hepple, “you would.”

  “Besides which,” said Henrietta, heavy-eyed, “I can’t say that I slept much last night anyway.”

  “No, miss,” the policeman was sympathetic, “I don’t suppose you did.”

  “And this couldn’t have been done quietly.”

  “So,” said Hepple practically, “that means that this was done before you got back yesterday evening, which was Wednesday, and after your mother left home for the last time—which was presumably some time on Tuesday.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Henrietta. “If she’d had to do it, she’d have told me in a letter—and if she’d found it done I’m sure she would have told the police.”

  “Can’t understand it at all, sir.” Police Constable Hepple rang his headquarters at Berebury Police Station as soon as he left Boundary Cottage. He was put onto the Criminal Investigation Department. “Mind you, we don’t know what’s gone from the bureau—if anything. The young lady isn’t familiar with its contents. Her mother always kept it locked.”

  “Did she indeed?” said Detective-Inspector Sloan.

  “And there’s no sign of forced entry anywhere.”

  “Except the bureau.”

  “That’s right, sir.” Hepple paused significantly. “I shouldn’t have said myself it was the sort of place worth a burglary.”

  “Really?” Sloan always listened to opinions of this sort.

  “It’s just one of Mr. Hibbs’s old cottages. Mind you, they keep it very nice. Always have done.”

  “Who do?”

  “Mrs. Jenkins and Henrietta—that’s the daughter. Of course, coming on top of the accident like this I thought I’d better report it special.”

  “Quite right, Constable.”

  “Seems a funny thing to happen.”

  “It is,” said Sloan briefly. “How far have they got with the accident?”

  “Usual procedure with a fatal, sir. Traffic Division have asked all their cars to keep a lookout for a damaged vehicle, and all garages to report anything coming in for accident repair. I’ve got a decent cast of a nearside front tire …”

  “Size?”

  “590 x 14.”

  “Big,” said Sloan, just as Bill Thorpe had done.

  “Yes, sir. They’re asking for witnesses but they can’t be sure of their timing until after the post mortem. The local doctor put the time of death between six and nine o’clock on Tuesday evening, but I understand the pathologist is doing a post mortem this morning.”

  “We’ll know a bit more after that,” agreed Sloan.

  Wherein he was speaking more truthfully than he realized.

  “Yes, sir,” said Hepple. “They’ll be able to fix an inquest date after that. I’ve warned the girl about it. But as to this other matter, sir …”

  “The bureau?”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me. That house was all locked up when I went ’round it at twelve yesterday. I could swear no one broke in before then.”

  Sloan twiddled a pencil. “She could have gone out on Tuesday and forgotten to shut the door properly.”

  “Ye-es,” said Hepple uneasily, “but I don’t think so. Careful sort of woman, I’d have said. Very.”

  “When did she go out on Tuesday? Do we know that? And where had she been?”

  “We don’t know where she’d been, sir. No one seems to know that. Her daughter certainly doesn’t. As to when, she caught the first bus into Berebury and came back on the last.”

  “Not much help. She could have gone anywhere.”

  “Yes, sir. And it meant the house was empty all day.”

  “And all night.”

  “All night?”

  “She was lying in the road all night.”

  “So she was,” said Hepple. “I was forgetting. In fact, you could say the house was empty from first thing Tuesday morning until they brought the daughter from Berebury on Wednesday evening.”

>   “I wonder what was in the bureau?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. She didn’t keep money in there, nor jewelry. Nothing like that. Just papers, her daughter said.”

  Detective Constable Crosby was young and brash and consciously represented the new element in the police force. The younger generation. He didn’t usually volunteer to do anything. Which was why when Detective-Inspector Sloan heard him offering to take a set of papers back to Traffic Division he sat up and took notice.

  “Nothing to do with us, sir,” the constable said virtuously. “Road Traffic Accident. Come to the C.I.D. by mistake, I reckon.”

  “Then,” said Sloan pleasantly, “you can reckon again.”

  Crosby stared at the report. “Woman, name of Grace Jenkins, run down by a car on a bad bend far end of Larking village.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Larking’s miles away.”

  “In the country,” agreed Sloan. “Let’s hope the natives are friendly.”

  Sarcasm was wasted on Crosby. He continued reading aloud. “Found by H. Ford, postman, believed to have been dead between ten and twelve hours, injuries consistent with vehicular impact?”

  “That’s the case. Read on. Especially P.C. Hepple’s report of this morning.”

  “Bureau in deceased’s front room broken open. No signs of forced entry to the house.” Crosby sounded disappointed. “That’s not even breaking and entering, sir.”

  “True.”

  “I still don’t see,” objected Crosby, “what it’s got to do with her being knocked down and killed.”

  “Frankly, Crosby, neither do I.” Sloan put out his hand for the file. “In fact there may be no connection whatsoever. In which case some of your valuable time will have been wasted.”

  “Yes, sir.” Woodenly.

  “That is,” he added gravely, “a risk we shall have to take.”

  Detective-Inspector Sloan read the accident report again and thanked his lucky stars—not for the first time—that he didn’t work in Traffic Division.

  “Of all the nasty messes,” he mused aloud, “I think a hit-and-run driver leaves the worst behind. No medical attention. No ambulance. No insurance.”

  “And no prosecution,” said Crosby mordantly. He pointed to the report. “Perhaps this character who hit her was drunk.”

  “Perhaps.” Sloan got up from his desk. “Though it was a bit early in the evening for that.”

  “Perhaps she was drunk then,” suggested Crosby, undaunted.

  Sloan shook his head. “Hepple didn’t suggest she was that sort of woman—quite the reverse in fact. A car, please, Crosby, and we shall venture into the outback at once.”

  They didn’t go quite straight away because the telephone on Sloan’s desk started to ring.

  “Berebury Hospital,” said a girl’s voice. “Can Inspector Sloan take a call from the Pathologist’s Department, please?”

  Crosby handed the receiver over to Sloan, who said, “Speaking.”

  “Dabbe here,” boomed a voice.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” said Sloan cautiously.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to your Traffic Division about a woman I’m doing a p.m. on.”

  “Yes?”

  “They say she’s your case now and you’ve got all the papers …”

  “In a way,” agreed Sloan guardedly. He’d sort that out with Traffic afterwards.

  “I’ve got her down,” said the pathologist, “as Grace Edith Jenkins.”

  “That’s right. We’re treating it as an R.T.A., Doctor.”

  “Road Traffic Accident she may be,” said the pathologist equably. “I’ll tell you about that later. That’s not what I’m ringing about. The notes that came in with her say she was identified by her daughter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Sloan picked up the file. “Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins said it was her mother.”

  “Any doubt about the identification?”

  “None that I’ve heard about, Doctor.”

  The pathologist grunted. “She wasn’t disfigured at all—there were no facial injuries to speak of.”

  “No? Is it important, sir?”

  “Either, Inspector, this girl …”

  “Miss Jenkins.”

  “Miss Jenkins has identified the wrong woman …”

  “I don’t think so,” objected Sloan, glancing swiftly through the notes in the file. “The village postman and a neighboring farmer’s son called Thorpe put us on to her—to say nothing of Constable Hepple. They all said it was Mrs. Jenkins well before we got hold of the daughter.”

  “That’s just it,” said the pathologist.

  “What is, sir?”

  “She wasn’t the daughter.”

  “But—”

  “This woman you’ve sent me may be Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins,” said Dabbe.

  “She is.”

  “I don’t know about that,” went on the pathologist, “but I can tell you one thing for certain and that’s that she’s never ever had any children.”

  “Her daughter, Doctor, said—”

  “Not her daughter.”

  Sloan paused and said carefully, “Someone who told us she was Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins then.”

  “Ah,” said Dabbe, “that’s different.”

  “She said she was prepared to swear in a coroner’s court that this was the body of her mother, Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins, widow of Sergeant Cyril Jenkins of the East Calleshires.”

  The pathologist sounded quite unimpressed.

  “Very possibly,” he said. “That’s not really my concern but …”

  “Yes?”

  “You might take a note, Inspector, to the effect that I shall have to go to the same coroner’s court and swear that, in my opinion, she—whoever she is—had certainly never had any children and had very probably never been married either.”

  THREE

  “Have you turned over two pages or something, Sloan?”

  The Superintendent of Police in Berebury glared across his desk at the head of his Criminal Investigation Department. It was a very small department, all matters of great moment being referred to the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters in Calleford.

  “No, sir. The girl positively identified the woman as her mother and Dr. Dabbe, the pathologist, says the woman had never had any children.”

  “How does he know?” Truculently.

  “I couldn’t begin to say, sir,” said Sloan faintly. The superintendent’s first reaction was always the true English one of challenging the expert. “But he was quite definite about it.”

  “He always is.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan coughed. “There are really three matters.”

  Superintendent Leeyes grunted discouragingly.

  “First of all a woman is knocked down and killed on Tuesday evening not far from her home.” Sloan stopped and amended this. “Not far from what we believe is her home. At some stage before or after this but before Wednesday evening someone lets himself into her house with a key but doesn’t have a key to the bureau so breaks it open.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know yet, sir. Thirdly—”

  “Well?”

  “The woman isn’t the mother of the girl who identified her as her mother.”

  “It’s not difficult,” said Leeyes loftily. “She’s probably the father’s bastard.”

  Sloan ignored this and said conversationally, “Mrs. Jenkins seems to have been a very unusual woman, sir.”

  “You can say that again,” said the superintendent. “I’ve never heard of unnatural childbirth before.”

  “She managed”—Sloan was still struggling to keep the tone at an academic level—“she managed to keep her private affairs private in a small village like Larking.”

  “I’ll admit that takes some doing. Did she have a record then?”

  “I don’t know, sir, yet, but that’s not quite
the same thing as a secret.”

  “No? Perhaps, Sloan, I’ve been in the Force too long.”

  “I think this secret must have been of a matrimonial nature.”

  The superintendent brightened at once. “Then perhaps it was Mr. Jenkins who had the record.”

  “I’ll check on that naturally, sir, but there is another possibility.”

  “There are lots of possibilities.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not all of them to do with us.”

  “No, sir. This could well be just a family matter.”

  “Most of our cases,” the superintendent reminded him tartly, doing one of his famous smart verbal about-turns, “are family matters.”

  “Yes, sir.” He paused. “Constable Hepple doesn’t know anything about them not being mother and daughter and he’s been living out that way for donkey’s years.”

  “A good man, Hepple,” conceded Leeyes. “Knows all the gossip. If there’s much crime in the south of Calleshire he never tells us.”

  This might not have been Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary’s view of what constituted a good policeman but the superintendent was not a man who looked for work.

  “What are you going to do about it?” he asked Sloan.

  “See the girl for a start—and the bureau.”

  “She could be lying.” Leeyes tapped Traffic Division’s file. “According to Dr. Dabbe she is.”

  “Her mother could have lied to her …”

  “A by-blow of the father’s,” repeated the superintendent firmly, “for sure, brought up as her own. Some women will swallow anything.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sloan cautiously. “But just suppose she isn’t Grace Edith Jenkins?”

  Superintendent Leeyes looked quite attentive at last. “I don’t believe we’ve had a case of impersonation in the county for all of twenty years.”

  Young Thorpe had called at Boundary Cottage to see if Henrietta needed anything, and to say how sorry he was.

  “It is nice of you, Bill,” she said sincerely, “but I’m quite all right.”

  He stood awkwardly in the doorway, almost filling it with his square shoulders. He wasn’t all that young either but being Mr. Thorpe of Shire Oak Farm’s son he was destined to be known as young Thorpe for many years yet.