Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

  Henrietta was not to be diverted. “I am a person.”

  “Undoubtedly. If I may say so, quite one of the—”

  “You may not,” she said repressively.

  “Tea, I think, for two,” he said to the waitress. “And toast.”

  “When I was a little girl,” said Henrietta, “I used to ask myself, ‘Why am I me?’ Now I’m grown up I seem to be asking myself, ‘Who am I?’”

  “Philosophy is so egocentric,” complained Bill Thorpe, “and everyone thinks it isn’t. I’m not at all sure I like the idea of your studying it.”

  “I’m me,” declared Henrietta.

  “And very nice, too, especially your—”

  “I know I’m me, but where do we go from here?”

  Bill Thorpe stirred. “Your existence isn’t in doubt, you know. Only your identity.”

  “Then who on earth am I?”

  “I don’t know,” he said placidly, “and I don’t really care.”

  Henrietta did. “At this rate I could be anybody at all.”

  “Not just anybody.”

  “There are over fifty million people in this country and if I’m not called …”

  “We can narrow the field a bit.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Unless I’m very much mistaken,” he underlined the words, “you’re female. That brings it down to twenty-five million for a start.”

  “Bill, be serious. This is important.”

  “Not to me, it isn’t. But if you insist.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you’re a leucodermii.” He grinned. “That’s silenced you. I did anthropology for a year. Enjoyed it, too.”

  She smiled for the first time that day. It altered her appearance beyond measure. “Science succeeding where philosophy has failed, Bill?”

  “Well you’re the one who wants to find out who you are. Not me.”

  She lowered her eyes meekly. “And you tell me I’m a leucodermii.”

  He waved a hand. “So you are. If I said, ‘Come hither, my dusky maiden,’ you needn’t come.”

  That startled her. “I’m English.”

  It was his turn for irony. “White, through and through?”

  She flushed. “Not that, but surely … I never thought I could be anything but English. Oh, I am. Bill, I must be.”

  “Indo-European anyway.” He moved his chair back while the waitress set the tea in front of them. “Thank you.” While Henrietta poured out, he squinted speculatively at her. “Your head’s all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mesocephalic. Not long, not broad, but medium.”

  “That sounds English if anything does.”

  “The lady mocks me.” He held up a hand and ticked off the fingers one by one. “You’re not Slav, nor Mongol.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nor Mediterranean type. If your cheekbones had been a fraction higher, you could have been Scandinavian.”

  “I feel English.”

  “Nurture, not nature.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Unless you believe in all this inherited race consciousness theory.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know enough about it.”

  “Nobody does. Have some toast. Then I think all we can conclude is that you are free, white and nearly twenty-one.”

  “Free?” echoed Henrietta.

  “Remarkably so. No attachments whatsoever. Except to me, of course.”

  She wouldn’t be drawn but sat with her head turned away towards the window, staring at the street.

  “‘Free as nature first made man,’” quoted Bill.

  “You’ll be talking of noble savages in a minute, I suppose.”

  “Never!”

  “Tell me this,” she said. “Do vets still go in for branding?”

  “Sometimes,” he said cautiously. “Why?”

  “Because a few marks on my ear at birth would have saved a lot of trouble all round, that’s why.”

  “You’d better have another cup of tea,” he said. “And some more toast.”

  She refilled her cup and his, and sat gazing through the teashop window at the passersby.

  Suddenly she let her cup fall back into her saucer with an uncontrolled clatter. “Bill, look. Out there.”

  “Where?”

  “That man.” She started to struggle to her feet, her face quite white.

  “What about him?”

  She was pointing agitatedly towards the back of a man walking down the street. “It … it’s the man in the photograph. Oh, quickly. I’m sure it is.”

  “You mean your father?” He pushed his chair back.

  “Cyril Jenkins,” she said urgently. “I swear it is. It was exactly like the man in the photograph but older.” She started to push her way out of the tea shop. “Come on, Bill, quickly. We must catch him whatever happens.”

  TEN

  It was well after four o’clock before Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby met again. Crosby went into Sloan’s room at the Berebury Police Station waving a list.

  “Nearly as long as my arm, sir, this.”

  “It can’t be as long as your face, Crosby. What is it?”

  “The Holly Tree Farms in Calleshire.”

  “Routine is the foundation of all police work, Constable. You should know that.”

  “Yes, sir. Records have come through on the phone, too, sir. They’ve got nothing against any Cyril Edgar Jenkins or Grace Edith Wright.”

  “Or Jenkins.”

  “Or Jenkins.”

  “That doesn’t get us very far then.”

  “No, sir.” Crosby still sounded gloomy. “And I can’t get anywhere either with this family that the girl says her mother used to work for.”

  “Hocklington-Garwell?” Inspector Sloan frowned. “I was afraid of that. They may not have lived in Calleshire, of course.”

  “No, sir. I’d thought of that.” Crosby looked as if he might have to take on the world.

  “And there is always the possibility that the girl may be having us on.”

  “You mean they might not exist?” If Crosby’s expression was anything to go by, this was not quite cricket.

  “I do.”

  Crosby looked gloomier still. “It’s a funny name to be having us on with, sir, if you know what I mean.”

  “That, Constable, is the most sensible remark you’ve made for a long time.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Therefore I am inclined to think that the Hocklington-Garwells do exist.”

  “Not in Calleshire, sir,” said Crosby firmly. “Several Garwells but no Hocklingtons and not a sniff of a Hocklington-Garwell.”

  “Give me the Garwells’s addresses then,” said Sloan. “We’ve got to start somewhere and we’re getting nowhere fast at the moment.”

  “It would have been a lot simpler,” said Crosby plaintively, “if she had had the baby and we were looking for the father.”

  Superintendent Leeyes said much the same thing in different words a few minutes later in his office in the same corridor.

  “I’ve dealt with a few paternity orders in my time, Sloan, but I’m damned if I’ve met a maternity one yet.”

  “No, sir.” He coughed. “This case has several unusual features.”

  “You can say that again,” said his superior encouragingly. “Found out whose the medals were?”

  “Not yet, sir. The old boy at the rectory’s quite right. Knows his stuff. They’re the wrong ones for the photograph quite apart from the fact that the D.S.O. and M.C. are never awarded to sergeants.”

  “Officers, medals, for the use of.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This man Hibbs at The Hall. He an officer type?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hrrrmph.”

  “I’ve had a look at his car,” said Sloan hastily. “It looks all right to me. It’s not all that new and I don’t know how much damage to expect to the car from
her injuries. I’ll have a word with Traffic about that. And Dr. Dabbe.”

  “And check,” growled Leeyes, “that he hasn’t had them repaired. Plenty of time for that since Tuesday.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was he doing on Tuesday evening anyway?”

  “Nothing,” said Sloan cautiously.

  “Nothing?”

  “He was alone at home.”

  “Was he indeed? Interesting.”

  “You see, sir, it was the first Tuesday in the month.”

  “I am aware of that, Sloan, but the significance eludes me.”

  “That’s Institoot—I mean, Institute night.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Mrs. Hibbs,” said Sloan hurriedly, “is Branch President. So she was out.”

  “No servants?”

  “A daily. A real one.”

  “A real one?”

  “Comes every day. Daily.”

  “There’s no need to spell it out for me, man.”

  “No, sir.”

  “What you are trying to tell me—and taking the devil of a long time about it, if I may say so—is that James Heber Hibbs was alone all evening at The Hall, he has a car whose tire marks correspond with those found at the scene of the accident and you aren’t yet sure if he killed Grace Whatever-her-name is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There may well be something odd about this chap Jenkins, sir, apart from the medals.”

  “You can say that again,” responded Leeyes generously.

  “I’ve been making a few enquiries about his pension.”

  “Oh?”

  “And I can’t trace it. It wasn’t paid out via the local village post office which is not all that surprising, but it didn’t go into her bank account either. I’ve just seen the manager. No pension voucher record there. Her account was kept going with a small regular monthly cash payment over the counter.”

  “Who by?” sharply.

  “Grace Jenkins herself to all intent and purposes,” sighed Sloan. “According to the paying-in slips, she always handed it over herself.”

  “Maintenance,” concluded Leeyes.

  “Yes, sir, with any clue to its source carefully concealed.”

  “And anything not concealed equally carefully removed from the bureau on Tuesday.”

  “Just so,” agreed Sloan.

  “From what you’ve said so far,” said the superintendent, “she doesn’t strike one as having been a kept woman.”

  “Only literally, sir, if you follow me. I think it was the child who was kept. I’ve got in touch with the pension authorities and they’re doing a bit of checking up now but it’ll take time. It’s not as if it were an uncommon name even.”

  “No.” The superintendent thought for a moment and then said, “The most interesting question from our point of view is: Who was keeping both of them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And why.” The superintendent sat silent, thinking. Sloan knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. “If,” said Leeyes at last, “we knew why they were being kept I daresay we’d know who killed the woman.”

  “Whatever the story,” said Sloan, “I think we can be fairly sure the situation changed when the girl reached twenty-one.”

  “And someone didn’t like it the new way.”

  “No.”

  “That means there’s money somewhere, Sloan, or I’m a Dutchman.”

  “Perhaps.” Sloan tapped his notebook. “It could be a question of inheritance, easily.”

  “Or concealment of birth.”

  “I’d thought of that, sir. I’ve been on to the General Register Office with the only reasonable thing I could think of to ask them.”

  “What was that?”

  “A list of the female children born about the same time as Henrietta Jenkins says she was and who have the same Christian names.”

  “That’s a tall order,” said the superintendent.

  “They said it would take time,” agreed Sloan dubiously. “I don’t suppose a Friday afternoon’s the best moment to ask them either.”

  “No.” Leeyes looked at his watch. “Late on Friday afternoon at that.”

  “She was called Henrietta Eleanor Leslie though.”

  “That’s better than Mary, I suppose.”

  “But you don’t have to register a birth for six weeks and …”

  “And,” said the superintendent grimly, “we’ve only got her word for it that those are her names and that that is when she was born.”

  “Just so,” said Sloan.

  That was the moment when the telephone began to ring.

  Leeyes picked it up, listened for a moment and then handed it over to Sloan. “A call for Inspector Sloan from Calleford. Urgent and personal.”

  Sloan took the receiver in one hand and a pencil in the other. “Speaking …”

  He listened attentively, then he asked two questions in quick succession, advised the speaker to go home, and replaced the receiver.

  “That was Bill Thorpe, sir.”

  Leeyes nodded. “That’s the chap who helped find the body, isn’t it? The one the girl wanted to marry.”

  “Him,” said Sloan. “He’s with the girl in Calleford now and she’s just seen Cyril Jenkins.”

  “Who?” roared Leeyes.

  “Cyril Jenkins.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Not if she’s just seen him,” said Sloan reasonably.

  “How does she know it’s him?”

  “Living image of the man in the photograph but older.”

  “She’s imagining it then.”

  “She swears not.”

  “Wishful thinking.”

  “A dead likeness,” said Sloan pithily. “That’s what Thorpe said.”

  “Did he see him himself?”

  “No. Not his face. Just his back.”

  “I don’t like it, Sloan.”

  “No, sir.” He waited. “There’s something else.”

  Leeyes’ head came up with a jerk. “What?”

  “They’ve been in the Minster looking at the East Calleshire Memorial there.”

  “Well?”

  “Jenkins’s name isn’t on it and he was supposed to have been killed in the war.”

  “Well, if he’s alive and kicking in Calleford this afternoon that’s hardly surprising, is it? Be logical, Sloan.”

  “Yes, sir.” You couldn’t win. Not with Superintendent Leeyes.

  “And I suppose they let him get away.”

  “They were in a tea shop, sir. By the time they got out he’d disappeared.”

  “So we don’t know if the girl was right or wrong?”

  “Strictly speaking, no.”

  “And we don’t know either, Sloan, if she is having us all on, the Thorpe boy included.”

  “No, sir.”

  “If she is, do you realize that nearly all the evidence we’ve got—if you can call it evidence—comes from her?”

  “Yes, sir. Apart from Dr. Dabbe, that is.”

  “It’s a lonely furrow,” agreed Leeyes sardonically, “that the doctor’s ploughing. What did you tell them to do?”

  “Go home to Larking,” said Sloan. “As the crow flies they’re nearer there than they are to Berebury. I’ll go down to Larking to see them later.”

  Leeyes grunted.

  “And,” continued Sloan, “I’ll get some copies of Jenkins’s photograph blown up and rushed over to Calleford. No harm in looking for him.”

  “No harm in finding him,” retorted Leeyes meaningfully. “It’ll be interesting to see if they can pick him up over there. I understand that they can do almost anything at headquarters.”

  “Yes, sir.” The superintendent pursued his own private vendetta with County Constabulary Headquarters at Calleford.

  “Of course,” blandly, “he may not be called Jenkins.”

  “No,” agreed Sloan dutifully.

  “And that won�
��t make it any easier for them.”

  He did not sound particularly sorry about this.

  Sloan went into Traffic Division on his way back from seeing the superintendent. A lugubrious man called Harpe was in charge. He had a reputation for having never been known to smile, which reputation he hotly defended on the grounds that there had never been anything to smile about in Traffic Division. He was accordingly known as Happy Harry.

  So it was now.

  “Nothing’s turned up, Sloan,” he said unsmiling. “Not a thing. No witnesses. No damaged cars. Nobody reported knocking a woman down.”

  “Where do you usually go from here?”

  “Inquest. Newspaper publicity. Radio appeal for eyewitnesses to come forward.”

  “Any response as a rule?”

  “It all depends,” said Harpe cautiously. “Usually someone comes forward. Not always.”

  “They won’t this time,” prophesied Sloan. Harpe’s pessimism was infectious.

  “Don’t suppose they will. Lonely road. Unclassified, isn’t it? Nobody about. Dark. Pubs open. Shops shut.”

  “Institute night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Our chaps have been in all the local repair garages—no one’s brought in anything suspicious, but then if they were bent on not coming forward they’d go as far afield as they conveniently could.”

  “Or not repair at all.”

  Harpe looked up. “How do you mean?”

  “If this was murder,” said Sloan, “they’d be dead keen on not getting caught.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Well, I don’t think they’d risk having telltale repairs done in Calleshire.”

  “They might sell,” said Harpe doubtfully. “We could get County Hall to tell us about ownership changes if you like.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that, though it’s a thought. No, if I’d done a murder with a motor car and got some damage to the front … how much damage would it be, by the way?”

  Harpe shifted in his chair. “Difficult to say. Varies a lot. Almost none sometimes. Another time it can chew up the front quite a lot. Especially if the windscreen goes.”

  “It didn’t,” said Sloan. “There was no glass on the road at all. We looked.”

  “That means his headlamps were all right then, too, doesn’t it?”

  Sloan nodded.

  “Of course,” went on Harpe, with the expert’s cold-blooded logic, “if you’re engineering your pedestrian stroke vehicle type of accident on purpose …”