Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

  “I think we were.”

  Harpe shrugged. “If you can afford to wait until you can see the whites of their eyes, then naturally you pick your spot.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You hit them full on.”

  “Amidships, so to speak?”

  “Between the headlamps,” said Harpe seriously. “You wouldn’t break any glass then.”

  “I see,” said Sloan.

  “Of course, your ‘exchange principle’ still applies.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Car traces on the pedestrian. Pedestrian traces on the car. Paint, mostly, in the first case.”

  “Dr. Dabbe didn’t say and he never misses anything.”

  “Blood stains on the car,” went on Harpe cheerlessly, “and hair and fibers of clothing—only you haven’t got the car, have you?”

  “No,” said Sloan. “Then, to go back to concealing the damage …”

  “If you didn’t want to take it anywhere to repair …”

  “I know what I’d do.”

  Harpe looked at him uncompromisingly. “Well, and what would you do?”

  “Bash it into a brick wall,” said Sloan cheerfully. “Or arrange another accident that would destroy all traces of the first. That would make him safe enough if they did find the car.”

  Even then Harpe did not smile.

  It was about a quarter to six when Henrietta and Bill Thorpe got back to Boundary Cottage, Larking.

  Henrietta went straight through into the front room and halted in her tracks. Bill nearly bumped into her.

  “Oh, I’d forgotten,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The police inspector took the photograph away with him.”

  “Why?”

  “The medals,” said Henrietta vaguely. “He was going to talk to the rector about them.”

  “There’s a fair bit of talking needing doing,” said Bill, settling himself in a chair. “Am I glad you’re going to be twenty-one next month!”

  “Why?” She hardly bothered to turn her head.

  “Because if we’ve got to find this character Jenkins and ask his permission for you to marry me we’re in real trouble.”

  “He’s not my father,” said Henrietta. “My father’s dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t,” she agreed miserably. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know what I know and what I don’t know.”

  Bill Thorpe nodded comprehendingly. “I follow you—though thousands wouldn’t. All the same, I’m glad that we’ll be able to get to the altar without him. Shouldn’t know where to begin to look.”

  “It was him,” she said in the tone of one who has said the same thing many times before. “I’d know him anywhere again. I knew that photograph like the back of my hand.”

  “So you said before.”

  “He was older, that’s all.”

  “Twenty years older?”

  “About.” She sat down too. “Men don’t change all that much.”

  “Sorry to hear you say that.” Bill Thorpe grinned and ran a hand over his face. “There’s room for improvement here. Or do you like me as I am?”

  She made a gesture with her hand. “I can’t like you, Bill—I can’t like anyone at the moment. Not until I know who I am. Oh, I can’t put it into words but there just isn’t any of me left over for things like that. Besides, you must know who it is you’re marrying.”

  “You,” said Bill Thorpe promptly. “And very nice, too.”

  “Bill, do be serious.”

  “I am,” he said. “Deadly. I want to marry you. You as you are now.”

  She shook her head. “I’m too confused. I don’t know what I want.”

  “I do,” he said simply. “You.”

  She turned away without speaking.

  Bill Thorpe was not disconcerted. Instead he looked at his watch and then switched on the radio. It hummed and hawed for a bit and then presently the weather forecast came on. He listened intently until it was finished and was just leaning across to switch the radio off when the announcer said:

  The six o’clock news will follow in a minute and a quarter. Before the news there is a police message. There was an accident on the lower road to Belling St. Peter in the village of Larking, Calleshire, on Tuesday evening when a woman was knocked down and fatally injured. Will the driver of the vehicle and anyone who witnessed the accident or who may be able to give any information please telephone the Chief Constable of Calleshire, telephone Calleford 2313 or any police station.

  Henrietta gave a sudden laugh. It was high-pitched and totally devoid of humor.

  “Any information!” she cried. “That’s good, isn’t it? If they only knew how much information we needed!”

  ELEVEN

  “External examination,” Inspector Sloan began to read. “The body was of a well-nourished female …”

  Dr. Dabbe’s typewritten report of his post-mortem examination, addressed to H.M. Coroner for Calleshire and marked Copy to Chief Constable, lay on Inspector Sloan’s desk. He got as far as “aged about fifty-five” when Detective Constable Crosby came in.

  “Everyone else seemed to be having tea, sir, so I brought some down. And the last of the cake.”

  “Good,” said Sloan. “I was beginning to feel the opposite of well nourished myself. How have you got on?”

  Crosby carefully carried a cup of tea across the room and sat down. Then he opened his notebook. “The hair, sir.”

  “Ah, yes.” Sloan fingered Dr. Dabbe’s report. “I’ve got the name of that dye down here. All twenty-five syllables of it.”

  “I found the ladies’ hairdressing saloon, sir.”

  “They drop the second ‘o,’ Constable, nowadays.”

  “Really, sir? Well, she had it done at a place called Marlene’s in the High Street. I spoke to a young person there by the name of Sandra who—er—did her.”

  “When?”

  “Every second Friday at ten o’clock. Without fail.”

  “Yes.” Sloan set his cup down. “It would have to be without fail. Otherwise it would show.”

  “What would, sir?”

  “Her fair hair. According to Dr. Dabbe she was fair-haired.”

  “And the girl was dark so she dyed hers dark, too,” concluded Crosby, “so that the girl would think …”

  “It’s a good a disguise as any, too,” said Sloan. “Especially if you don’t expect it.” He paused. “Cyril Jenkins was fair. You could see that much on the photograph.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That suggest anything to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Sloan sighed. “Constable, I agree the possibilities in this case are infinite. The murderer could be anyone, and as far as I am concerned the victim could be anyone and I am not altogether sure of the nature of the crime but there are just one or two clues worth considering.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Crosby stolidly.

  “The fact that Cyril Jenkins had …”

  “Should it be ‘has,’ sir?”

  Sloan glared. “What’s that? Oh, yes, that’s a point.” He grunted and went on. “Has—may have—fair hair and Grace Jenkins had fair hair which she took pains to dye the same color as Henrietta’s is interesting.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s worse than drawing teeth, Crosby. Don’t you have any ideas at all?”

  “Yes, sir. But not about this,” he added hastily, not liking the look on Sloan’s face.

  “Has it occurred to you that there is one possibility that would account for it? That Cyril and Grace Jenkins were brother and sister.”

  “No, sir,” replied Crosby truthfully. He thought for a minute and then said very very cautiously, “Where would the baby come in then?”

  “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.”

&n
bsp; “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 fifteen and 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-mortem examination 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 CD. 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 Larking. 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 country,” 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 s
nort. “I needn’t have worried, need I?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Now, on the whole I’m rather glad. You realize, don’t you, 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 honors 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 apologize for disturbing you. Routine enquiry, you understand.”