Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

  “I had wondered about that,” said Henrietta.

  The rector stirred his tea. “It is a distinct possibility.”

  Henrietta stared into the fire. “That would make me her stepdaughter.”

  “Yes.” He coughed. “It might also account for the strange fact that following his death she didn’t tell you.”

  “She didn’t,” said Henrietta vigorously, “behave like a stepmother.”

  “That’s a fiction, you know,” retorted the rector. “You’ve been reading too many books.”

  Henrietta managed a tremulous smile, and said again, “Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter. I know she loved me.”

  “Of course she did,” insisted Mrs. Meyton.

  “Perhaps that’s the wrong word,” said Henrietta slowly. “It was more than that. I always felt—” She looked from one of them to the other struggling to find a word that would convey intangible meaning, “—well, cherished, if you know what I mean.”

  “Of course, I do,” said Mrs. Meyton briskly. “And you were. Always.”

  “It wasn’t only that. She made great sacrifices so that I could go away to university. We had to be very careful, you know, with money.” She pushed her hair back from her face and said, “She wouldn’t have done that for just anybody, would she?”

  What could have been a small smile twitched at the corners of the rector’s lips but he said gravely enough, “I think we can accept that, whoever you are, you aren’t—er—just anybody.”

  “But am I even Henrietta?”

  “Henrietta?”

  “Henrietta Eleanor Leslie. Those are my Christian names.”

  “Well?”

  “I thought I was my mother’s daughter until this morning.”

  “You’re looking for proof that—”

  “That at least I’m Henrietta.”

  “If you had been baptized here—”

  “I wasn’t then?”

  The rector shook his head. “No. Your mother—”

  “She wasn’t my mother.”

  “I’m sorry.” He bowed his head. “I was forgetting. It isn’t easy to remember.”

  “No.” Very ironically.

  “Mrs. Jenkins told me you were already baptized.”

  He did remember then. Aloud Henrietta said, “That’s why the bureau was broken into then. I can see that now.”

  “You think there must have been something there?”

  “I do.”

  The rector frowned. “It does rather look as if steps have been taken to conceal certain—er—facts.”

  Henrietta tightened her lips. “It’s not going to be easy, is it?”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Finding out who I am.”

  Sloan and Crosby saw Constable Hepple soon after they had forked left at the post office. He had brought a plan with him.

  “You can’t see the chalk lines any more, sir,” he said, “but deceased was lying roughly here.”

  “I see.”

  “Walking home and hit from behind, I’d say,” went on Hepple. “People never will walk towards oncoming traffic like they should.”

  “No.”

  “His front wheel caught that bit of grass verge afterwards, deflected a bit by the impact, I’d say.”

  Sloan nodded.

  “I’ve got a good cast of that,” said Hepple.

  Sloan stood in the middle of the bend and looked in both directions. It was a bad bend but with due care and attention there was no need to kill a pedestrian on it.

  Hepple was still theorizing. “I reckon he didn’t see her at all, sir. There’s not a suspicion of a skid mark on the road. Daresay he didn’t realize what he’d done till afterwards and then he panicked.”

  That was the neat and tidy explanation. And, but for Dr. Dabbe it would probably have been the one that went down on the record. Pathology was like that.

  “Where exactly did you say she was lying?” asked Inspector Sloan.

  Constable Hepple stood squarely on the spot where he had seen the body.

  “That,” pronounced Sloan somberly, “fits in very well with the first set of injuries.”

  “The first, sir?” Hepple looked shocked. “You mean—”

  “Run over twice,” said Sloan succinctly.

  “Once each way,” amplified Crosby for good measure.

  “But—” Hepple pointed to the patch of road where he was standing. “But, sir, someone coming the other way—from Belling St. Peter—would have had to come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her.”

  “Yes.”

  “But—” said Hepple again.

  “I am beginning to think someone did come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her,” said Sloan, still somber. “The pathologist reports that a second car went over her after she was dead.”

  “After she was dead?”

  “Broke her femur.”

  “A second car?” echoed Hepple wonderingly. “Two cars ran over Mrs. Jenkins on this road?”

  “Yes.”

  “And neither of them stopped?” That was the enormity to P. C. Hepple. A new crime in an irresponsible society, that’s what that was, something they’d have been ashamed to put on the Newgate Calendar.

  “Two cars,” said Sloan ominously, “or the first one on its way back.”

  Constable Hepple looked really worried. “I don’t like the sound of this at all, sir.”

  “No.” Sloan looked at the village constable. “I don’t think I do either.” He examined the road again. “Now, tell me this—just supposing that it was the same car that hit her both times …”

  “Yes, sir?” Clearly Hepple didn’t like considering anything of the sort.

  “Where would he have been able to turn?”

  This was where really detailed local knowledge came into its own.

  “If he’d wanted to stay on the metalled road, sir, he’d have had to go quite a way. There’s no road junction before Belling and this road is too narrow for a really big car to turn in. But if he’d settled for a gateway or the like …”

  “Yes?”

  “Then Shire Oak Farm is the first one you’d come to beyond the houses. The Thorpes’s. After that there’s Peterson’s and then Smith’s.”

  Inspector Sloan sent Crosby off to search for tire prints. “It’s probably too late, but it’s worth a look.” Then he asked Constable Hepple to tell him what he knew about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins of Boundary Cottage.

  “Known her for a long time, sir, and always very pleasant when we met.” Thinking this might be misconstrued he added hastily, “Never in the course of duty, mind you, sir. I never had occasion to speak to her in the course of duty. A quiet lady. Kept herself to herself, if you know what I mean.”

  Sloan knew and wasn’t pleased with the knowledge. Not the easiest sort of person to find out about.

  “Tuesday,” he said. “Did you find out anything about what she’d been doing on Tuesday?”

  “She was away from Larking all day,” replied Hepple promptly, “that’s all I know. She went off on the early bus—the one that gets people into Berebury in time for work. And she came back on the last one. Two Larking people got off at the same time. Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows.”

  “Do we—does anyone—know how she spent the day?”

  “Not yet, sir. They—Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows—had been shopping but if Mrs. Jenkins had, I don’t know what she’d done with her basket because it wasn’t here when I searched yesterday morning.”

  “I see.”

  “Must have been all of eight o’clock when she was killed,” went on Hepple. “Allowing for the walk from the post office.”

  Sloan stroked his chin. “Eight o’clock fits in with what the pathologist says.”

  “Sir.” The conscientious Hepple was still worried about something.

  “Yes?”

  “This second accident—was it straight after the first?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows.”


  “Oh, I see, sir, thank you.”

  “We only know,” said Sloan, “that she was killed outright by the first one, and that after it another car ran over her.”

  Hepple had scarcely finished shaking his head over this before Crosby was back.

  “Didn’t have to go very far, sir.”

  “How far?”

  “He—whoever he was—turned in the first farm gateway.”

  “Shire Oak Farm,” said Hepple. “The Thorpes’s.”

  “He was fairly big,” went on Constable Crosby. “He had to have two goes at it to get round.”

  “Yes.” That was what Sloan would have expected.

  “The offside rear tire print’s nearly gone—had some big stuff through that gate since then I should think.”

  “Tractors,” supplied Hepple, “and the milk lorry.”

  “But there’s a good one of a nearside rear.”

  Sloan pointed to the grass verge. “So we’ve got a nearside front tire print there.”

  “A good clear one,” contributed Hepple professionally.

  “And a same sized nearside rear tire print turning in the Thorpe entrance about—how far away would you say, Crosby?”

  “About half a mile.”

  Hepple didn’t like the sound of that at all. “So you think he came back this way, sir?”

  “I do.”

  “He must have seen her the second time,” persisted Hepple. “The road isn’t wide enough for him not to have seen her lying across it the second time even if he didn’t the first.”

  “I am beginning to think,” said Sloan grimly, “that he saw her quite well both times.”

  “You mean, sir …”

  “I mean, Hepple, that I think we’re dealing with a case of murder by motorcar.”

  SIX

  The offices of Waind, Arbican & Waind were still in Ox Lane, Calleford.

  Inspector Sloan telephoned from the kiosk outside Larking post office. There were, it seemed, now no Mr. Wainds left in the firm but Mr. Arbican was there, and would certainly see Inspector Sloan if he came to Calleford. Sloan looked at his watch and said they might make it by six o’clock. Cross country it must be all of forty miles from Larking to the county town.

  They got there at ten minutes to the hour, running in on the road alongside the Minster as most of the population were making their way home. Crosby wove in and out of the crowded streets until he got to Ox Lane.

  The solicitor’s office was coming to the end of its working day too. In the outer office a very junior clerk was making up the post book and two other girls were covering over their typewriters. One of them received the two policemen and showed them into Mr. Arbican’s room. The solicitor got to his feet as they entered. He was in his early fifties, going a little bald on top, and every inch the prosperous country solicitor. The room was pleasantly furnished, if a little on the formal side.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Do sit down.” He waved them to two chairs, and said to the girl who had shown them in, “Don’t go yet, Miss Chilvers, will you? I may need you.”

  Miss Chilvers looked resigned and returned to the outer office.

  Arbican looked expectantly across his desk. It had a red leather top and was in rather sharp contrast to the wooden one at which Sloan worked.

  “It’s like this, sir,” began Sloan. “We’re in the process of making enquiries about a client of yours.”

  Arbican raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Or it might be more correct,” went on Sloan fairly, “to say a former client.”

  Arbican cleared his throat encouragingly but still did not speak.

  “A Mrs. Jenkins,” said Sloan.

  “Jenkins?” Arbican frowned. “Jenkins. It’s a common enough name but I don’t think I know of a client called Jenkins.”

  “Jenkins from Larking,” said Sloan.

  “Larking? That’s a fair way from here, Inspector. I shouldn’t imagine we would have many clients in that direction. You’re sure there’s no mistake?”

  “We are working, sir, on the supposition that she came from East Calleshire before she went to Larking.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. Quite possibly. Though I can’t say offhand that the name alone means anything to me.” He raised his eyebrows again. “Should it?”

  “We have a letter you wrote …”

  Arbican’s voice was very dry. “I write a great many letters.”

  “To a Mr. James Heber Hibbs of The Hall, Larking.”

  Arbican shook his head. “I’m very sorry, Inspector. Neither name conveys anything.”

  “That could be so, sir. It was all a long time ago.”

  “You’re being quite puzzling, Inspector.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sloan stolidly. He took out the letter James Hibbs had given him and handed it across the desk to the solicitor. “Perhaps you’d care to take a look at it.”

  Arbican took the letter and read it through quickly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t remember the name but I must have written hundreds of letters like this. In fact, Inspector, it’s neither an uncommon name nor an uncommon letter.”

  “I suppose not, sir.”

  “It was—er—as you say quite a long time ago, too.”

  “Over twenty years.”

  “Then you can’t really have expected me to remember.” He smiled for the first time. A quick professional smile. “I was a comparative youngster then, cutting my legal teeth on routine where I couldn’t do any harm.”

  “But you did write it?”

  He scanned the letter again. “I must have done. These are certainly my initials at the top—F.F.A. Therefore”—he frowned—“therefore we must have done business with this Mrs. G.E. Jenkins.” He looked curiously across at Sloan. “And so?”

  “And so you might have some records, sir,” responded Sloan promptly.

  “I very much doubt it at this distance of time. We destroy most records after twelve years except conveyances and wills. However, we can soon see.” He rang for Miss Chilvers whose look of patient resignation had changed with the passage of time to one of plain resentment. “Miss Chilvers, will you please see if we have any records of a Mrs. G.E. Jenkins of—” he looked down at the letter, “Boundary Cottage, Larking.”

  Miss Chilvers withdrew but her unforthcoming expression started a new train of thought in Sloan’s mind. He waved vaguely towards the outer office. “Perhaps, sir, whoever actually typed the letter might remember. Not Miss Chilvers naturally …”

  Arbican looked at the letter again and shook his head.

  “No?” said Sloan.

  “I’m afraid not. I should say that our Miss Lendry typed this letter. Her initials are there after mine—W.B.L.”

  “Couldn’t she help?”

  “No. She isn’t with us any more.”

  “Perhaps we could find her,” suggested Sloan. “Do you know her address?”

  “I’m sorry. I was using a euphemism.” He sighed. “Miss Lendry’s dead. About six months ago.” He tapped the letter. “She wouldn’t have been all that young when this was written, but she’d have remembered all right.”

  “I see.”

  “Been with the firm for years,” said Arbican. “Knew everything.”

  “Right-hand woman?” suggested Sloan helpfully.

  They could hear Miss Chilvers bumping her way round the filing cabinets in the outer office.

  Arbican sighed. “It’s not the same without her.”

  Sloan knew what he meant. Miss Chilvers returned with little ceremony to announce that she couldn’t find anything about a Mrs. G.E. Jenkins at all anywhere.

  “Thank you,” said Arbican. He turned to Sloan. “I’m sorry, Inspector, it doesn’t look as if we’re to help you with this Mrs. Grace Jenkins but if we do come across anything …”

  Sloan got to his feet. “Thank you, sir. I’d be much obliged if you’d let me know.”

  Arbican handed the letter back. “Whoever she was, it looks as if she got
her settlement all right.”

  “Settlement?” said Sloan sharply.

  The solicitor pointed to the letter. “Isn’t that what that was?”

  “Was it?” countered Sloan.

  “I can’t remember,” said Arbican cautiously, “but it reads to me now as if it could have been. We advised her to accept the man’s offer—that phrasing sounds like a settlement to me but I may be wrong. It’s all a long time ago, now, Inspector, and I certainly can’t remember.”

  “Murder by motorcar!” exploded Superintendent Leeyes. “Are you sure, Sloan?”

  “No, sir.” Sloan was both tired and hungry. “Not yet.”

  It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening and they had just got back to Berebury Police Station after an hour’s driving along the main road from Calleford.

  “But Crosby found some tire prints in a gateway where the car turned and came back, and Dr. Dabbe says she was run over twice.”

  “Twice?” said the superintendent, just as Hepple had done.

  “Twice. Once alive, once dead.”

  “Macabre chap, Dabbe.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan paused. “It’s not exactly the sort of road where you could miss seeing someone lying in it.”

  “So that makes you think that …”

  “I think,” said Sloan heavily, “that she was knocked down from behind on that bend on purpose by someone who afterwards turned in the entrance to Shire Oak Farm and who came back and deliberately hit her again.”

  Leeyes grunted.

  “Only he had a bit of bad luck.”

  “It sounds to me,” said the superintendent sarcastically, “as if he wasn’t the only one who had a bit of bad luck.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, in what way was he unlucky?”

  “He happened to kill her outright the first time he went over her which meant the pathologist knew he’d gone over her twice.”

  “How?”

  “Because the second lot of injuries were post-mortem ones. They don’t—bleed,” he added elliptically.

  “You wouldn’t convince a jury on that alone, Sloan.”

  “I shouldn’t try,” retorted Sloan spiritedly. “But it’s not alone. Put it together with the breaking into of the bureau and the fact that whoever Grace Jenkins was she wasn’t the mother of the girl.”