Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

  “Ah, yes. I was forgetting the daughter had been smuggled in in a warming pan.”

  “That’s about the only explanation that fits at the moment,” agreed Sloan gloomily. “There’s something else, too, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This woman—Grace Jenkins—was having her daughter on about something else. Her age.”

  “Her age?”

  “Yes, sir. She told the girl she would be forty-six next birthday. Dr. Dabbe says she was older than that.”

  “He should know, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She’d had her hair dyed.”

  “Who hasn’t?” said Leeyes cynically.

  “From blonde to brunette.”

  “It’s usually the other way,” agreed the superintendent.

  “The girl’s hair is dark,” said Sloan, “but the father’s is fair—noticeably fair—even in a photograph. Grace Jenkins was fair too—before she had her hair dyed.”

  “A pretty puzzle,” Leeyes said unhelpfully.

  “Yes, sir. So far we’ve confirmed that the woman went to Larking when the girl was a small infant and passed her off to everyone as her own.”

  “It’s been done before.”

  “Yes, sir. They rented a small cottage in the grounds of The Hall estate.”

  “Buried in the country.”

  “Exactly, sir. The rent is very low indeed. Seems almost nominal now but it may have been fair enough at the time. Landlord says he isn’t allowed to put it up.”

  “He may not have wanted to,” observed Leeyes.

  “That thought had occurred to me, sir.”

  “That’s been done before too,” said the superintendent emphatically.

  “What has, sir?”

  “Parking an infant in a corner like that. Where you can keep an eye on it.”

  “Without acknowledging anything,” Leeyes grunted. “What’s he like?”

  “Hibbs? Dark. But it’s not a father we’re short of, sir, it’s a mother.”

  “Someone who couldn’t acknowledge it either, I daresay,” said the superintendent.

  “Perhaps. Then who is Grace Jenkins?”

  “And why kill her?”

  “Aunt?” said Sloan as if he had not spoken. “Nanny? Or grandmother?”

  “Wet nurse, more like,” growled Leeyes.

  Sloan told him about the letter and the interview with Arbican. “He thought the wording read like the outcome of a settlement rather than straightforward renting.”

  “There’s nothing straightforward about this case,” said the superintendent irritably. “Nothing at all.”

  “No, sir.”

  “We don’t even know for a start that the deceased has been correctly identified.”

  “We’ve no evidence either way about that,” said Sloan carefully. “The only actual evidence we’ve got that will stand up in a coroner’s court is that she was childless. We’ve got none as to who she is.”

  “Then,” said the superintendent irritably, “you’d better get some, hadn’t you, Sloan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And quickly.”

  Henrietta refused to stay the night at the rectory.

  “It’s very kind of you,” she said awkwardly. “Mrs. Thorpe asked me to go to Shire Oak as well but I don’t think I will, all the same. I feel—well—I feel I ought to begin as I mean to go on.”

  “You may be right there,” conceded the rector, though the kindhearted Mrs. Meyton was all protestation. “I’ll just walk back with you, though, and see you safely home.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “Home,” said Henrietta.

  He took the question very seriously. “You know, what you need is a good solicitor.”

  “I feel,” she said fervently, “as if I need more than that. A magician, at least.”

  But she was grateful to him for escorting her home and said so.

  He came indoors with her and checked that Boundary Cottage was secure for the night.

  Henrietta pointed to the photograph on the mantelpiece. “Now I know why the police were so interested in my father.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t able to tell them much.”

  The rector nodded slowly. “Your mother never spoke about him to me.”

  “She did to me—but mostly about the sort of person he was. Not,” bitterly, “concrete facts for policemen.”

  “No.”

  “And she wasn’t my mother.”

  “I was forgetting,” he apologized obliquely.

  “It’s made me realize how little I really know about him too.”

  “A sergeant in the East Calleshires,” said Mr. Meyton, moving towards the photograph. “That’s definite enough.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he saw a fair bit of action.”

  “Yes.”

  “The D.C.M. and the Military Medal, I think,” said the rector, taking a closer look still. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Henrietta opened the bureau drawer. “They’re in here so that’s another thing that’s definite.”

  She pulled open the little drawer inside the bureau and got out the two medal cases. “Here they are.”

  She handed them to the rector. He flicked them open.

  “Henrietta,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “These medals …”

  “Don’t tell me,” she said in a voice that was almost harsh, “that there’s something wrong with those too.”

  “That chap in the photograph …”

  “My father.”

  “He had the D.C.M. and the Military Medal.”

  “I know.”

  “These,” the rector indicated the two in his hand, “these are the D.S.O. and the M.C.”

  SEVEN

  “Who?” asked Sloan into the telephone.

  “A Mr. Meyton, sir,” said the station sergeant. “The rector of Larking.”

  “Do you know him, Sergeant?”

  “Not to say know him exactly,” replied the sergeant carefully. “Not him, himself, if you know what I mean. But we know his hat and his gloves and his umbrella—particularly his umbrella. It comes in here practically every time he comes into Berebury. Very clearly marked, though, I will say that for them.”

  “Put him through,” said Sloan resignedly.

  He listened. Then in a quite different voice, “Are you sure, sir?”

  “Oh, yes, Inspector.” Mr. Meyton might forget his hat, gloves and umbrella but not his military history. “Henrietta showed them to me last night and I took the liberty of taking them home with me for—er—safekeeping.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And they’re quite different. This one was a white enamelled cross pattee with a slightly convexed face. The edge of the cross was gold.”

  “And the D.C.M.?”

  “Circular and made of silver,” replied the rector promptly. “It’s connected to a curved scroll clasp, too. The one that was in the bureau has a ring which fits on to a straight clasp.”

  “You saw the ribbons on the photograph?” said Sloan, thinking quickly.

  “I did indeed. And they’re not even similar.”

  “Oh?”

  “The D.S.O. ribbon,” said the rector, warming to his theme, “is red with an edging of blue. The D.C.M. one is crimson, dark blue and crimson in equal widths.”

  “Yes,” said Sloan thoughtfully, “there’s all the difference in the world, I can see that. What about the other two?”

  “The M.C. and the M.M., Inspector? The M.C. ribbon is white, a sort of purply blue, and white in three equal strips.” The rector paused. “I think I’m right in saying the Military Medal has a narrow white center stripe with narrow red, then I think it’s narrow white, and then two edging strips of rather wider dark blue on each side.”

  “Six—no seven stripes,” said Sloan.

  “That’s righ
t.”

  “Not easily confused even on a photograph.”

  “No. It’s not the different colors then, of course, it’s the widths which you can see.”

  “And you can’t very well confuse three broad stripes with a ribbon with seven small ones on.”

  “No,” agreed the rector. “Not easily.”

  “I see,” said Sloan slowly.

  “The other one was a cross, too,” went on the rector. “Whereas the Military Medal is round and attached to a curved scroll clasp.”

  “Didn’t they have any names on?” asked Sloan. “I thought they sometimes did.”

  “Sometimes,” said the rector. “The owner’s name, rank and date are usually engraved on the reverse of the M.C.”

  “Usually?” No one could have called Sloan slow.

  “Yes, Inspector. Not on this one. I’m no expert, of course, but I should say …”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I should say that—er—steps have been taken to remove the owner’s name from this one.”

  “Would you, sir?” Sloan became extremely alert.

  “The back is almost smooth—but not quite.”

  “I understand, sir. You’ve been most helpful. There’ll be an explanation, of course, but in the meantime perhaps you would be kind enough to keep them under lock and key until I get to you. I daresay,” he added heavily, “there will be rhyme to it as well as reason. If you know what I mean, sir.”

  “Indeed, yes,” affirmed Mr. Meyton. “There are, of course, matters which are properly mysterious to us in the religious sense but—er—finite matters are always …”

  “No, Inspector,” Henrietta shook her head. “I can’t tell you anything more than that because I don’t know anything more.”

  “I see, miss. Thank you.” Sloan and Crosby were back in the parlor of Boundary Cottage, sitting where they had been sitting the day before. Then, Henrietta had looked as if she hadn’t slept much the previous night.

  Now she looked as if she hadn’t slept at all.

  “The rector,” she went on wearily, “just said that they weren’t the right medals for the photograph.”

  “Yes, miss. He rang me.”

  “He took them away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Inspector …”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “Why weren’t they taken on Tuesday?”

  “On Tuesday, miss?”

  “By whoever broke into the bureau.”

  “I couldn’t say, miss.”

  “They must have seen them. They weren’t locked up in their cases or anything.”

  “No.” He cleared his throat and said cautiously, “If they’d gone then, of course, you would have missed them.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, that—their absence—might have served to call your—call our attention to—er—any irregularities in the situation between you and your—er—parents.” Sloan felt himself going a bit hot under the collar. It wasn’t a sensation he was accustomed to. “I don’t think it is generally appreciated that the—er—fact of childlessness is—er—established at a routine post-mortem.”

  He hadn’t appreciated it himself, actually.

  Until yesterday.

  To his relief Henrietta smiled wanly and said, “I see.”

  “I mean,” expanded Sloan, “the chances of your discovering that they were the wrong medals …”

  “Wrong?” she said swiftly.

  “Wrong for the photograph.”

  “Go on, Inspector.” Warily.

  “The chances of them being handled by anyone knowing quite as much about the subject as Mr. Meyton were really very slight.”

  Since putting down the telephone Sloan had sent Crosby to check up on the rector’s standing as an historian and found it high. Particularly in the field of military history.

  “Inspector, are you trying to tell me that someone has been unlucky?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, miss. But for the accident of the rector seeing them you might never have known.”

  “Known what?” she said with a sigh. “What exactly does it mean we know now that we didn’t know before?”

  “That the medals are significant,” said Sloan promptly.

  She looked up. “Do you think so, Inspector?”

  “I do, miss, though I don’t know what of just yet. Give us a little time.” He hesitated and then said, “I think we may be going to find the answer to a lot of questions in the past.”

  She nodded. “Twenty-one years ago.”

  “Why then?”

  “I’ll be twenty-one next month. At least I think I will be if my mother …” she corrected herself painfully, “if what I’ve been told is correct.”

  “Twenty-one?” Sloan frowned. “That could be important.”

  “To me, Inspector.” Her voice had an ironic ring. “The key of the door perhaps. But not to anyone else.”

  “I shouldn’t be too sure about that, miss. Not just yet.”

  “And it rather looks,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him, “as if I’m not the only one to have a key to the front door of Boundary Cottage, doesn’t it?”

  “True.” He paused. “Yesterday you told me as much as you could remember being told about your father.”

  “Yes?”

  “What all do you know about your … about Grace Jenkins?”

  It was pitifully little in terms of verifiable fact—if she was telling him the truth. Her mother had been a children’s nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell, somewhere over the other side of the county. Henrietta didn’t know the exact address but she had been brought up on stories of the Hocklington-Garwell children. There had been two of them—both boys. Master Hugo and Master Michael. Then Grace Wright had met Cyril Jenkins, and married him.

  “After that,” concluded Henrietta tightly, “I understood they had had me.”

  “I see,” said Sloan.

  “And that very soon afterwards my father had been killed.”

  “I see,” said Sloan again.

  “But they didn’t have me,” observed Henrietta astringently.

  “She didn’t,” agreed Sloan. “The chances of your being your father’s child—so to speak—are high.”

  “Thank you,” she said gravely. “I’ll remember that.”

  “And the chances of her having come from East Calleshire are higher still.” He told her about Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind in Calleford. “So, miss, I think we can take it that the mystery originates that way somewhere.”

  He did not mention murder.

  “What I want to know,” said the superintendent testily, “is not who got which going but what you’re doing about it, Sloan.” The inspector was speaking from the call box in Larking village.

  “Yes, sir. In the first instance we are looking for a car which hit a woman.”

  “An unknown woman,” pointed out Leeyes.

  “A woman who may or may not be unknown,” agreed Sloan more moderately, “which hit her on a bad bend outside Larking village on Tuesday evening sometime between say six and nine o’clock.”

  “And have you got anywhere?”

  “No, sir.”

  “There’s an inquest coming along on Saturday morning,” said Leeyes very gently. “It’s the law, Sloan, and the first thing the coroner does is to take evidence of identification.”

  “Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “We’ve no reason to suppose she isn’t Grace Jenkins.”

  Superintendent Leeyes gave an intimidating grunt.

  “But,” went on Sloan hastily, “I’m going to make some enquiries about her pension now, and see the two people who came back on the bus with her on Tuesday night. And I’ve got a man checking up now on the marriage register in Somerset House.”

  “What’s that going to prove?”

  “Whether or not this Grace Edith Wright did, in fact, marry one Cyril Edgar Jenkins. That should give us a lead.”

  “One way or the other,” said Le
eyes pointedly.

  “Exactly, sir. We’ve got the experts working on those tire casts too, and we’re putting out a general call for witnesses. We’re also trying to establish how she spent Tuesday—that may have some bearing on the case.”

  Leeyes grunted again.

  “It’s a bit difficult,” said Sloan, “because the girl has no idea …”

  “It strikes me that the girl has no idea about too many things.”

  “She was away at college at the time.”

  “Check up on that, too, Sloan.”

  “Yes, sir. This man Hibbs …”

  “Ah, yes,” ruminatively. “Hibbs. That solicitor fellow you were talking to yesterday …”

  “Arbican.”

  “He mentioned a settlement, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It could have been with Hibbs.”

  “Yes, sir. That had already occurred to me.”

  “Could he have killed Grace Jenkins?”

  “It strikes me,” said Sloan pessimistically, “that anyone could have killed her. Anyone at all.”

  “He’s a local,” said Leeyes.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He would know about the bend.”

  “And the last bus.”

  “So you see …”

  “And that it’s a deserted road at the best of times, but especially at night.”

  “I don’t like the country,” declared Leeyes. “There are never any witnesses.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Find out what Hibbs was doing on Tuesday night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What sort of a car has he got?”

  “The right sort,” said Sloan cautiously.

  “What?”

  “That size tire fits half a dozen cars. He happens to have one of them. A Riley.”

  “Was it damaged?”

  “I only saw the back.”

  “Then take a look at the front, Sloan, somehow. I don’t care how.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bill, will you do something for me?”

  Bill Thorpe throttled back the tractor to silence point and started to climb down from his high seat. “Not something.” He grinned. “Anything.”

  In spite of all that had happened, Henrietta smiled.

  “Changed your mind about coming to the farm to sleep?” asked Bill. “Mother’ll be pleased. She’s been worried about you down here on your own these last two nights.”

  “No, Bill, it’s not that.” Henrietta pulled her coat round her shoulders. “I’m not leaving Boundary Cottage even for one night.”