‘It’s quite distinctively marked,’ I said. ‘You think it might belong to the killer?’ The cufflink was not expensive enough to be Mr Milner’s. It was of a type that could be bought in any gentleman’s outfitters, or a jewellery store at the lower end of the market.
‘It’s possible, and it may indicate a scuffle,’ the inspector said. ‘Is it familiar?’
I shook my head. It struck me that one only notices cufflinks if they are particularly flashy, or if you are in love with the man.
‘Did you know Mr Milner before this evening?’
‘No. I sat next to him for the first act of the play, and then moved to the rear stalls.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Because?’
‘I don’t like to sit on the front row, and he was not an ideal theatregoer. His son was in the production. Mr Milner gave a running commentary.’
‘What sort of commentary?’
When someone is a bore and their comments unwelcome, it is suprising how much one shuts out. But I could still hear some of Milner’s words in my head.
‘He was critical of his son’s performance. He said that at Rodney’s age, he was serving in South Africa.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Tonight was the last night. Mr Milner had seen the play several times. I’m afraid he rather put my back up, so I wasn’t very sympathetic to the poor man. He said he hoped Rodney would not be treading the boards again anytime soon. That he was better at selling motor cars.’
The young constable eagerly scribbled this down. He was not sufficiently experienced to feign lack of interest.
I produced the programme from my bag and opened it at the page of Mr Milner’s advertisement.
MILNER & SON’S MOTOR WORKS
(Established 1903)
Summerfield Avenue
Harrogate
-----------------------------------------
Sole District Agent
Austin De Dion Ford Wolseley
Any make of car supplied
Official Repairers to Royal Automobile Club, etc.,
Agents A.A.
Tyres – Petrol – Accessories
Telegrams “Motor” Telephone 417
The inspector took the programme. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’
‘Please do.’
Inspector Charles turned to the cast list. ‘This must be his son, Rodney Milner, playing Henry Mynor.’
‘Yes. Rodney plays the up-and-coming businessman, the chap who gets the girl.’
There was something reassuring about the inspector’s presence. He was thoughtful, unhurried as he looked at the names.
‘Do you suspect one of the cast, or a theatre patron?’ I asked.
He stretched his legs. ‘It’s far too soon,’ he said gently, as though I had not asked a stupid question. ‘One must keep an open mind. It’s not theft. His wallet was not taken.’
‘Oh,’ I said rather stupidly. Mr Milner struck me as a man who would carry a wad of money.
He made a steeple of his hands. ‘Mrs Shackleton, if Mr Milner was not at the theatre because of his son’s less than scintillating stage performance, why was he there?’
The voice in my head said, Never speak ill of the dead. ‘To sell cars in the bar afterwards? I’m not sure.’ It seemed treacherous to damn Milner for a lecher as well as the worst kind of theatregoer. But it had to be said. ‘He admired Lucy Wolfendale, the young leading lady. He offered to escort her home, but she joined her friends.’
Scratch, scratch went the constable’s pencil.
‘Go on.’
‘Mr Milner struck me as a man who would persist. I felt sorry for Lucy and kept him talking. I was relieved when we were joined by Madam Geerts.’
The inspector interrupted me. ‘Madam Geerts?’
The constable, busy at his notes, had pricked up his ears. He looked at me, expectantly. I know that the police are meant to keep information confidential, but this fellow looked a little too keen for my liking. Something made me hold back the fact that Madam Geerts, with the subtlety of a hungry shark, had clutched Milner’s arm and whisked him away.
‘She and her husband are in the play,’ I said, in a voice that sounded to me over-prim. ‘I left Mr Milner with Madam Geerts, and that was the last time I spoke to him.’
The inspector picked up on my insinuation immediately. It was the last time I had spoken to Mr Milner, but not the last time I saw him.
The inspector turned to the constable who had paused in his note-taking. ‘That will be all. Call a cab will you?’
‘Right, sir!’
When the constable had gone, the inspector gazed at me candidly. ‘Mrs Shackleton, you are an observant woman and your impressions will be valuable. It would be unfair to keep you here any longer after your ordeal. But would you be willing to give me a written statement tomorrow, regarding what took place after the performance?’
‘Of course. Only I have no wish to embarrass people . . .’
‘Like Madam Geerts?’
‘Yes.’ He did not miss a trick. A man to watch.
He sighed and said gently, ‘If something is not relevant, believe me I won’t waste valuable time on it. Please tell me now.’
Relieved that the constable had left the room, I took a breath and began. ‘They went off together, Mr Milner and Madam Geerts. She first, he following a few moments later.’ I felt myself blush in case he thought I had followed them, which I had not. ‘Afterwards, I went to a dressing room, to collect my overnight bag that had been brought from the station Left Luggage. It’s a bit of a maze backstage. I opened the wrong door, and saw Mr Milner and Madam Geerts. Fortunately they did not see me. They were too busy.’
‘Go on.’
‘I think the legal term is in flagrante delicto.’
I was pleased with that – so much better than saying they were at it.
He leaned forward. ‘Might anyone else have come across them?’
At that moment, the constable opened the door. ‘Transport’s here, sir.’
The inspector escorted me into the street where the pony and trap waited. Meriel was already seated, and our bags in place.
‘Mrs Shackleton, may I?’ With great gentleness, Inspector Charles took my arm, helping me into the trap.
A constable climbed into the vehicle with us. Perhaps we were considered important witnesses, in need of police protection.
A single light burned in the ground floor flat at 29 St Clement’s Road.
‘Coming home under constabulary escort,’ Meriel murmured. ‘My blithering nuisance of a landlord is going to love this if he’s looking out of his window.’
‘Here you are, ladies. I’ll wait while you’re inside.’ The constable jumped from the trap and took our bags before handing us down.
I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be passing on a message.
‘Meriel, Lucy Wolfendale asked me to tell her grandfather that she’d be staying with . . . I forget the name, one of the other actresses.’
‘Alison?’
‘That’s it. I’m sure it would be better coming from you.’
‘And I’m sure it wouldn’t,’ Meriel said emphatically.
‘I’ve never met the man.’ I felt exhausted and wanted more than anything to fall into bed.
On the ground floor, a window flew open, flooding the garden with light. A face appeared, under a Wee Willie Winkie nightcap.
Meriel groaned and dashed into the garden out of sight, saying ‘You better give the old boy Lucy’s message. I’ll leave the door on the latch.’
She had already begun to walk round the garden, towards the back of the house.
‘Meriel!’ I pleaded.
She paused, keeping close to the wall, shaking her head. ‘Lucy asked you to tell him because she knows what he’s like with me. He’s got very petty about the rent. I’ve told him I’ll catch up. He only has to look at me and pounds, shillings and pence signs light up his eyes.’
The face at th
e window took on a voice and called, ‘Lucy? Is that you?’
My mind had gone blank. ‘I’ve forgotten his name.’
‘Same as Lucy. Wolfendale. Call him Captain, give him a salute and he’ll eat out of your hand.’
The old man watched as I mounted the front steps. Without waiting for me to knock, he opened the door. At the same moment, the driver gee-upped his pony which trotted away, the regular clip-clop of hooves breaking the silence of the night.
There was no light in the hall but a pale glow came from the flat. The elderly gent who peered at me had discarded his nightcap. He wore a shabby army great-coat over striped pyjamas and a pair of ancient brown leather slippers. He was in his seventies, with a short, bulky figure but upright and military in his bearing, and with a twirling moustache. He brushed a hand over his totally bald pate.
In a light-hearted tone I did not feel, I said, ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Captain Wolfendale. Message from the front line for HQ. Lucy is bivouacking at her friend Alison’s this evening. I promised to remind you.’
‘It’s one in the morning! Why is she sending me a message at this hour?’
We had been asked by the police to say nothing about the murder. I floundered for a reply. ‘I apologise for the lateness of the hour. I was at the play earlier this evening and I stayed on to help. There’s a touring company coming in tomorrow. You don’t notice the time when you’re striking camp.’
I like to think that the military jargon impressed. He tilted his head to one side. ‘And you are, madam?’
Not having rank and number put me at a disadvantage. ‘I’m Mrs Shackleton.’
‘Lucy asked you to come here?’
‘I’m staying with Miss Jamieson downstairs, just for this evening.’
‘Shackleton you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I have something for you. Please step inside.’
What could he possibly have for me, I wondered. As I entered his flat, with some trepidation, the Pekinese on the floor above began to bark.
The captain looked about for a moment, as if trying to recall where he had put the something he wanted to give me. Then he picked up an envelope from the sideboard. ‘Took delivery hours ago. Telegram. Nearly turned the boy away. Didn’t recognise the name.’
‘Thank you.’
It would be Sykes’s reply. Please let me not have made a mistake writing down the address of the unfortunate Mrs deVries. Sykes would think himself too clever by half if he had to put me right on that. ‘Do you mind if I read this straight away?’
‘Would you like to sit down?’ he asked courteously. ‘Sit under the lamp.’ He was solicitous. For so many, telegrams and bad news went hand in hand.
‘Thank you.’
He moved a few feet off, but hovered expectantly, as though I might suddenly collapse from shock and be in need of reviving. Sykes’s message was brief: ‘Address correct.’
So the pathetic gentlewoman pawning her mother’s diamond ring had given a false address. Perhaps a false name, too. Why?
‘Not bad news I hope?’ He spoke with a slight rasp, as though recovering from a sore throat.
‘No, thank you, Captain. I’ll leave you in peace.’
Opening a sideboard drawer, he said, ‘Don’t go stumbling about outside looking for Miss Jamieson’s entrance. Have a torch here. I’ll show you the back stairs that lead to her quarters.’ He managed to make Meriel’s quarters sound disreputable. She would like that.
He shone our way into the dark hall. ‘Need to change the gas mantle in the hall here.’
‘They don’t last two minutes these days,’ I agreed.
He lit me along the passage. ‘You are not theatrical then?’
‘No. I took the photographs for the play.’
‘Of course you did. I remember Lucy telling me about you. Jolly good photographs. Slipped into the back of the theatre on Wednesday evening. Lucy took a good part, but so did they all.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Only, I shan’t let the lower rooms to a theatrical again. Nothing personal, you understand, but horses for courses and all that.’ He pushed open the door at the end of the hall. ‘These back stairs lead to Miss Jamieson’s quarters. I’ll wait till you are through the bottom door, just to make sure she hasn’t bolted it and locked you out.’
Bag in hand I stepped onto the top step. He had not offered to part with his torch but shone a light.
I turned. ‘Captain Wolfendale, were you in the Great War?’
Why do I always have to do it? He was a captain, that’s why. Same rank as Gerald. Perhaps they had met.
Why do I expect the serendipity of stumbling into someone who will say, Ah yes, Captain Gerald Shackleton, fine fellow, knew him well.
‘Sadly not,’ said Captain Wolfendale. ‘South Africa, that was my last show, and what a show it was.’
‘Then you’re the second person this evening I’ve talked to who fought there.’
‘Indeed?’ he said in a non-committal voice that did not invite further comment.
But in spite of his dismissive tone, I said, ‘I sat next to Mr Milner at the theatre.’
Something clicked in my tired brain. When I had looked through the Wolfendales’ window earlier, the captain was playing a board game. His opponent had reddish-blond hair, just like Lawrence Milner.
‘You’ll know him,’ I persisted.
‘Ah Milner,’ the captain said, ‘the motoring man. Yes, he was in South Africa. Of course, that’s an old war now. People have forgotten all about it.’
‘Not everyone has,’ I said, thinking of my aunt’s old colonel chum who spoke of little else.
‘We had to go in there. They denied Englishmen the vote, you see. Had to have South Africa in the Empire, under the rule of law. Otherwise it would have been a free-for-all. Boers, and don’t get me wrong, there’s good and bad, but they’re bible-thumping farmers. You couldn’t trust them to manage gold mines and diamonds.’
It was far too late to be having a conversation at the head of the back stairs in the small hours, but it intrigued me that he had no words about Milner, only a general comment on the war – a war that was not forgotten by any means.
‘Did you and Mr Milner serve together?’ I asked.
‘I was all over the show. Started out in ’99, supposed to be relieving Kimberley, but that took longer than any of us expected. Brother Boer was a surprising kind of enemy. Bit of a blighter. He’d run up a white flag, and when you got near, pop!’
‘Goodnight then, Captain.’ I picked my way down the dim narrow staircase. Perhaps it had not been Milner whom I had seen with Captain Wolfendale earlier in the day. But if my guess was correct and they were old comrades, then Milner’s death would come as a great shock to the old man.
South Africa, November, 1899
Corporal Lawrence Milner stuck his head out of the carriage window, sick of this bloody heat, sick of being packed like a sardine. The Doncaster dimwits played cards for farthings. The skeleton from Skipton squeezed his canteen for the last drop of water. Every window on the train was open, to suck in a breath of air. A whole trainload of hot, sweaty blokes, trying to breathe.
What a foul bloody war to be dragged into. Fighting to teach Kruger a lesson. Fighting so that the English in the Transvaal could have a vote. My arse. Milner had never voted in his life, and his father neither. No one had ever said to Milner, here’s a vote, lad. If they had, he’d have told them what to do with it. Clear as the nose on your face what it was about. Glory of the British Empire? Glory of the diamond mines. Glory of the gold mines. Make you laugh, if you didn’t think the next bullet might have your name on it.
At least Milner was on the train, not like the poor sods marching on from Belmont and Graspan towards Kimberley.
November. In England there’d be fog, drizzle, grey skies. Here it was supposed to be spring. Upside bloody down, this country. Dust clouds rose from the flat land. Then sodding mountains and more sodding mountains. It was the White Man’s
burden to simmer in cauldrons for the glory of the Empire. Boer bastards in there waiting to pounce, and the top brass too bloody thick to get it. Brother Boer fights dirty. Shoots and melts away. So much for diamonds, so much for gold. Not a sniff. All Milner got for his pains was dust up his snout and a tongue the size of an ox’s. The quicker they gave the Boers it in the neck, the sooner he’d get round to making some money.
The train slowed. Milner rolled a cig. The train screeched to a halt. Cigarette paper stuck to his dry lips. Now he could hear the captain and his arse-licking batman in the next carriage. Milner leaned out to listen. Word was the Boers had dynamited the railway bridge that crossed the Modder River. Milner heard the poncy voice, Captain Wolfendale, saying to his sergeant, ‘What do you see out there?’
Milner couldn’t help but laugh. The idle bugger of a captain didn’t bother to stir to look out of the window. Oh no, his batman could do that for him, when he’d finished licking his arse.
Sergeant Lampton, piping up, doffing his cap with every word. ‘Nothing much beyond the settlement. Open land, the veld as they call it. Dusty . . .’
Milner guessed the captain had begun to stir his gin soaked carcass.
‘No welcome party?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘They must have heard the bloody train.’
‘Got your dress jacket here, sir.’
Why don’t you genuflect, Milner thought. Stroke his cock for him.
‘And here’s your belt, cap, gaiters.’
‘God it’s hot.’
‘Wet flannel, sir.’
A few minutes later, Milner watched the pair of them step from the train. The sergeant got out first, holding the door, of course. Milner couldn’t think of anything worse than to toady to an officer. Captain Wolfendale and Sergeant Lampton were a few feet away. Milner instinctively drew back, so as to earwig without drawing attention to himself. It irked him that the two could now see much more than he could.
A tame ostrich rose up from the acacia shrub and stepped forward as if to greet the new arrivals. ‘Come a bit closer and I’ll have you on a plate tonight,’ Milner muttered. The creature dipped its small neat head from side to side, casting a beady eye over the situation, like a pub landlord watching trouble brew.
A Medal For Murder: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 5