Henrietta Who?

by Catherine Aird

“Quite so.”

  Sloan got up to go. “About a woman who used to work as a children’s nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell and we’re trying to trace—”

  Without any warning the whole atmosphere inside the drawing room of The Laurels, Cullingoak, changed.

  Two beady eyes peered at Sloan over the top of the brandy glass. Just as quickly the old face became suffused with color. A choleric General Sir Eustace Garwell put down his glass with shaking hands.

  “Sir,” he said, quite outraged, “is this a joke?”

  He struggled to his feet, anger in every feature of his stiff and ancient frame. He tottered over to the wall and put his finger on a bell.

  “If I were a younger man, sir,” he quavered, “I would send for a horse whip. As it is, I shall just ask my man to show you the door. Good night, sir, good night.”

  TWELVE

  As always, Sloan was polite.

  He had long ago learned that there were few situations where a police officer—or anyone else, for that matter—gained by not being.

  Henrietta was sitting opposite him and Crosby in the little parlor of Boundary Cottage.

  “Yes, Inspector, I’m certain it was Hocklington-Garwell. It’s not really a name you could confuse, is it?”

  “No, miss, that’s very true.”

  “Besides, why should I tell you a name like that if it isn’t the one I was told?”

  “That’s not for me to say, miss.”

  She stared at him. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  “The mention of the name certainly upset the old gentleman, miss. He ordered us out of the house.”

  Henrietta just looked puzzled. “I can’t understand it at all. It was Hocklington-Garwell and they had two boys. Master Michael and Master Hugo. I’ve heard such a lot about them always.”

  “The General said he hadn’t had any children,” said Sloan.

  “There you are, then. It must have been the wrong man.”

  “But the merest mention of the name upset him, miss. There was no mistake about that.”

  She subsided again, shaking her head. “I can’t begin to explain that. They’re wrong, you know, when they say ‘What’s in a name?’ There seems to be everything in it.”

  “Just at the moment,” agreed Sloan. He coughed. “About the other matter, miss.”

  “My father?”

  “The man in the photograph.”

  “Cyril Jenkins.”

  “Yes, miss. We’ve got a general call out for him now, starting in the Calleford area.”

  “You’ll find him, won’t you?”

  “I think we will,” said Sloan with a certain amount of reservation. “Whether, if we do, we shall find he fulfils all three conditions of identity …”

  “Three?”

  “That your father, the man in the photograph and Cyril Edgar Jenkins are all one and the same.”

  She nodded and said positively, “I can only tell you one of them, that he was the man in the photograph.” She tightened her lips. “You’ll have to tell me the other two afterwards, won’t you?”

  Sloan frowned. There were quite a few little matters that Cyril Jenkins could inform them about and the first question they would ask him was where exactly he had been just before eight o’clock on Tuesday evening. Aloud he said, “We’ll tell you all we can, miss, though you realize someone might simply have borrowed his photograph to put on the mantelpiece here?”

  She smiled wanly. “Is that what they call a father figure, Inspector?”

  “Something like that, miss.”

  “Why should she have told me he was dead if he wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know, miss.” Sloan couldn’t remember a time when he had used the phrase so often. “He might have left her, I suppose.” It wasn’t a subject he was prepared to pursue at this moment, so he cleared his throat and said, “In view of what you have told us about the War Memorial and the rector about the medals, we are in touch with the War Office but there will inevitably be a little delay.”

  A brief smile flitted across her face and was gone. “Friday afternoon’s not the best time, is it?”

  “No, miss, I doubt if we shall have anything in time for the inquest.”

  “Mr. Arbican’s coming,” she said, “and he’s going to get someone to start going through the court adoption records.”

  “That’s a long job,” said Sloan, who had already taken advice on this point.

  “Starting with the Calleshire County Court and the Berebury, Luston and Calleford Magistrates’ ones. That’s the most hopeful, isn’t it?” she said. “I expect you think I’m being unreasonable, Inspector, but I must know who I am—even if Bill Thorpe doesn’t care.”

  “Doesn’t he?” said Sloan alertly.

  She grimaced. “He only thinks it’s important if you happen to be an Aberdeen Angus bull.”

  “Back to Berebury?” enquired Crosby hopefully, as they left Boundary Cottage. Breakfast was the only solid meal he had had so far that day and he was getting increasingly aware of the fact.

  Sloan got into the car beside him. “No.” He got out his notebook. “So young Thorpe doesn’t care who she is.”

  “So she said.”

  “But he still wants to marry her.”

  “That’s right,” said Crosby, who privately found it rather romantic.

  “Has it occurred to you that that could be because he already knows who she is?”

  “No,” responded Crosby simply.

  “I think,” said Sloan, “we shall have to look into the background of young Mr. Thorpe. Just to be on the safe side, you might say.”

  “Now?” Crosby started up the engine.

  “No. Later. Just drive up the road. We’re going to call at The Hall. To see what Mr. James Hibbs knows.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs were just finishing their evening meal. Enough of its aroma still hung about to tantalize Crosby’s idle digestive juices, though there was no sign of food. The Hibbs’s were having coffee by a log fire in their hall, the two gun dogs supine before it. A bare wooden staircase clambered up to the first floor. The rest was dark paneling and the total effect was of great comfort.

  Sloan declined coffee out of cups so tiny and fragile looking that he could not bear to think of them in Constable Crosby’s hands.

  “You’re quite sure?” said Mrs. Hibbs. She was a tall, imposing woman with a deep voice. “Or would you prefer some beer?”

  Sloan—to say nothing of Crosby—would have greatly preferred some beer but he shook his head regretfully. “Thank you, no, madam. We just want to ask a few more questions about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins.”

  “A terrible business,” said Mrs. Hibbs. “To think of her lying there in the road all night, and nobody knew.”

  “Except, I daresay,” put in Hibbs, “the fellow who knocked her down. All my eye, you know, this business that you can say you didn’t notice the bump. Any driver would notice.”

  “Quite so, sir.”

  “It’s a wonder that James didn’t find her himself,” went on Mrs. Hibbs, placidly pouring out more coffee.

  “Really, madam?”

  “You sometimes take Richard and Berengaria that way, don’t you, dear?”

  “Yes,” said Hibbs rather shortly.

  Sloan said, “Who?”

  “Richard and Berengaria.” She pointed to the dogs. “We always call them after kings and queens, you know.”

  “I see, madam.” Sloan, who thought dogs should be called Spot or Lassie, turned to James Hibbs. “Did you happen to take them that way on Tuesday, sir?”

  “No, Inspector.”

  “Which way,” mildly, “did you take them?”

  “Towards the village. I had some letters to post.”

  “About what time would that have been?”

  “Half-past eightish.”

  “And you saw nothing and nobody?” The answer to that anyway was a foregone conclusion.

  “No.”

  “I see
, sir. Thank you.” Sloan changed his tone and said easily, “We’re running into a little difficulty in establishing the girl’s antecedents. It wouldn’t matter so much if Henrietta—Miss Jenkins—weren’t under twenty-one.”

  “Probate, I suppose,” said Hibbs wisely. “And she was intestate, too, I daresay. I’m forever advising people to make their wills but they won’t, you know. They think they’re immortal.”

  “Quite so, sir,” said Sloan, who hadn’t made his own just yet.

  “She needn’t worry about the cottage, if that’s on her mind. She’s a protected tenant and anyway I can’t see myself putting her on the street.”

  This was obviously meant to be a mild joke for his wife smiled.

  “Even if Threlkeld would advise it,” went on Hibbs heartily, “and I expect he would. There’s more to being an agent than that.”

  “That letter he found for us,” said Sloan, “which put us on to the Calleford solicitors.”

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t get us much further. They had no records of any dealings with her.”

  “I’m not really surprised,” said Hibbs. “It was a long time ago.”

  “That’s true.” Sloan, it seemed, was all affability and agreement. “Actually, we have gone a bit further back than that. To some people Grace Jenkins used to work for.”

  “Really?” Hibbs didn’t sound unduly interested.

  “They were called Hocklington-Garwell.”

  “Yes?” His face was a mask of polite interest.

  “Does the name convey anything to you?”

  Hibbs frowned. “Can’t say it does, Inspector.”

  But it did to Mrs. Hibbs.

  Sloan could see that from her face.

  Superintendent Leeyes was never in a very good mood first thing in the morning. He sent for Inspector Sloan as soon as he got to the police station on the Saturday morning. The portents were not good.

  “Well, Sloan, any news?”

  “Not very much, sir. Inspector Harpe hasn’t got anything for us at all on the Traffic side. No response at all to the radio appeal. Of course, it’s early days yet—it only went out last night.”

  Leeyes grunted. “They either saw it or they didn’t see it.”

  “No witnesses,” went on Sloan hastily. “No cars taken in for suspicious repairs anywhere in the county.”

  “I don’t know what we have a Traffic Division for,” grumbled Leeyes.

  Sloan kept silent.

  “What about Somerset House?”

  “Still searching, sir.”

  Leeyes grunted again. “And the pensions people?”

  “They’ve been on the phone. They say they’re paying out a total disability pension to a Cyril Edgar Jenkins.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not him. This one was wounded on the Somme in July 1916.”

  “That’s not a lot of help.”

  “No, sir.” He coughed. “In view of the brief reappearance of Jenkins I’ve asked the War Office to turn up the Calleshire Regiment records. His discharge papers would be a help.”

  “So would his appearance,” said Leeyes briskly. “Calleford haven’t found him yet, I take it?”

  “I rang them this morning,” said Sloan obliquely. “They’d visited all the people called Jenkins in the city itself without finding anyone corresponding to either the photograph or the girl’s description—but there’s a big hinterland to Calleford. And it was their market day yesterday too. He might have come in to that—or to shop or to work.”

  “Or to see the Minster,” suggested Leeyes sarcastically. “What I don’t like about it is the coincidence.”

  “I suppose it is odd,” conceded Sloan. “The one day the girl happens to go there she sees him.”

  “She says she sees him,” snapped Leeyes.

  “On the other hand he might be there every day. For all we know he is.”

  “Get anywhere with the Garwells?” Superintendent Leeyes always changed his ground rather than be forced into a conclusion which might subsequently turn out to be incorrect. His subordinates rarely caught him out—even if they never realized why it was.

  Sloan obediently told him how far he had got with the Garwells.

  Leeyes sniffed. “Funny, that.”

  “Yes, sir. The General very nearly threw a fit and Mrs. Hibbs knew something. I’m sure of that.”

  “What about Hibbs himself?”

  “Didn’t move a muscle. If the name meant anything to him, it didn’t show in his face like it did in hers.”

  “Is he putting the girl out?” said Leeyes hopefully. “That might mean something.”

  “No.” Sloan shook his head. “He says she’s a protected tenant but in any case he wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s still a bit feudal out there, sir.”

  “They had this sort of trouble in feudal times.”

  “Gave me the impression, sir, that he felt a bit responsible for his tenants.”

  “Impression be blowed,” retorted Leeyes vigorously. “What we want to know is whether he was literally responsible for the girl. Biologically speaking.”

  “Quite so,” murmured Sloan weakly.

  “It’s all very well for him to be hinting that he couldn’t put her on the street because it wasn’t expected of a man in his position but,” Leeyes said glaring, “that’s as good a way of concealing a real stake in her welfare as any.”

  “Sort of taking a fatherly interest?” suggested Sloan sedulously.

  The superintendent snorted. “This village patriarch of yours—what’s his wife like?”

  “Tall, what you might call a commanding presence.”

  Leeyes looked interested. He felt he had one of those himself.

  “She didn’t,” said Sloan cautiously, “strike me as the sort of woman to overlook even one wild oat.”

  “There you are then.” He veered away from the subject of the Hibbs’s as quickly as he had brought it up. “What next?”

  “The inquest is in an hour.” Sloan looked at his watch. “And then a few inquiries about young Master Thorpe of Shire Oak Farm.”

  “Oh?” Leeyes’s head came up like a hound just offered a new scent.

  “He,” said Sloan meaningfully, “doesn’t care who she is. He just wants to marry her as soon as possible. That may only be love’s young dream …”

  “Ahah,” the superintendent leered at Sloan. “From what you’ve said she’s a mettlesome girl.”

  “On the other hand,” said Sloan repressively, “it may not.”

  The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton and Bill Thorpe all went into Berebury with Henrietta for the inquest. It was to be held in the town hall and they met Felix Arbican, the solicitor, about half an hour beforehand in one of the numerous rooms leading off the main hall.

  “I can’t predict the outcome,” was the first thing he said to them after shaking hands gravely. “You may get a verdict of death by misadventure. You may get an adjournment.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Henrietta.

  “The police may want more time to find the driver of the car.”

  “And Cyril Jenkins.”

  Arbican started. “Who?”

  Henrietta told him about the previous afternoon.

  “I’m very glad to hear you’ve seen him,” responded the solicitor. “It would seem at this juncture that a little light on the proceedings would be a great help.”

  “No light was shed,” said Henrietta astringently.

  “None?”

  “We couldn’t find him in the crowd,” said Bill Thorpe.

  Arbican turned to Thorpe and asked shrewdly, “Were you able to identify him?”

  Bill Thorpe shook his head. “I only saw his back.”

  “I see. So Miss Jenkins is the only person who is certain who it was and the police haven’t yet found him?”

  “Yes,” intervened Henrietta tersely.

  “Extraordinary business altogether.”

  “M
ore extraordinary than that,” said Mr. Meyton, and told him about the medals.

  Arbican’s limpid gaze fell upon the rector. “Most peculiar. Let us hope that the police are able to find this man and that when they do some—er—satisfactory explanation is forthcoming.” He coughed. “In the meantime I think we had better come back to the more immediate matter of the inquest.”

  Henrietta lifted her face expectantly. The animation which had been there since she saw Cyril Jenkins had gone.

  “Your part, Miss Jenkins, is quite simple. You have only to establish identity.”

  “Quite simple!” she echoed bitterly. “It’s anything but simple.”

  “To establish identity as you knew it,” amplified Arbican. “If the police have evidence that Grace Jenkins was not—er—Grace Jenkins they will bring it. As far as you are concerned that has always been the name by which you knew her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Strong presumptive evidence. In any case—”

  “Yes?”

  “The coroner holds an inquest on a body, not—so to speak—on a person. An unknown body sometimes.”

  “I see.”

  “His duty will be to establish the cause of death. If it was from other than natural causes, and it—um—appears to have been, then he has a parallel duty to inquire into the nature of the cause.”

  “I see.” Henrietta wasn’t really listening any more. For one thing, she found it difficult to concentrate now. Her mind wandered off so easily that she couldn’t keep all her attention on what someone was saying. For another she didn’t really want to hear a legal lecture from a prosperous looking man in a black suit. He had never had cause to wonder who he was. He was too confident for that.

  “The cause of death,” he was saying didactically, “would appear to be obvious. The main point must be the identity of the driver. If the police found him we could try suing for damages.”

  “Damages?”

  “Substantial damages,” said Arbican.

  “If no one else saw the car even, let alone the driver, I don’t see how they’ll ever find him.”

  Bill Thorpe was getting restive too. “And it was nearly a week ago already.”

  “They’ll go on trying,” said the solicitor. “They’re very persistent.”

  “You say,” put in Mrs. Meyton anxiously, “that all Henrietta will have to do will be to give evidence of identification?”