A Medal For Murder: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  Through the open window, he could smell smoke from the fire the men had lit. The Boer boy looked through the window, said something to his mother.

  ‘The men have killed a pig to roast,’ Sergeant Lampton said quietly.

  The captain nodded.

  When they had finished eating, Captain Wolfendale thanked the woman politely. He made a point of ruffling the lad’s hair. The boy squirmed. Captain and sergeant pulled on their caps, and left the house.

  Early the next morning, the captain knocked on the door again. This time he had half a dozen men with him. The woman opened the door. Behind her was a girl of about sixteen who seemed unsure whether to stay put or to hide. The woman spoke to her daughter, telling her to give the men a jug of milk.

  The captain nodded to Corporal Milner to take the jug. Then he said, in his loudest, clearest English, ‘You have ten minutes to leave the house and then we shall burn it down.’

  The woman did not understand.

  He repeated the words.

  The girl dropped the jug. It smashed. Milk spread in a puddle across the flagged floor. She translated the captain’s words.

  In came the six men, carrying straw. Like furniture removers, they began to shift table, chairs and the dresser. Unlike furniture removers, they stacked it in the middle of the room.

  ‘Not yet,’ the captain said.

  The six men took up positions around the room, idly picking up this item and that. Corporal Milner pulled one of the framed texts from beside the door, dropped it with a clatter, ground it under his heel.

  A shot rang out. The boy ran to the window and yelled. His sister joined him.

  The girl drew herself up defiantly, turned to her mother and spoke quietly, then back to the captain. ‘Why do you kill the bullock?’

  The captain pointed to the clock. He held up his fingers. ‘Ten minutes.’ No one could say he was an unfair man.

  The girl and her mother disappeared upstairs.

  Milner said, ‘I wouldn’t mind living here meself.’

  One of the straw bringers said, ‘Seems a terrible shame.’

  ‘Are we gloomy?’ asked Private Clark. ‘No we are not.’ He pulled out the piano stool, sat down and began to play ‘Rule Britannia’. Lampton took out his mouth organ and joined in. At the end of each chorus, the men sang the words at the ceiling, Britons never ever ever shall be slaves!

  From upstairs came a young sweet voice, singing in Afrikaans. One of their damned hymns.

  Private Clark thumped out a music-hall tune as mother and daughter came down, carrying bags, wearing coats and sturdy shoes. The mother and daughter looked straight ahead as they left the house and walked into the yard. The boy helped a bent old woman. Hatred spilled from her currant eyes. She cursed, spit dribbling from her mouth.

  ‘Never mind that, Ma,’ the captain said. ‘Just get yourselves outside.’

  The old grandmother leaned heavily on the boy’s arm, still cursing the soldiers as she left.

  The captain looked through the window at the burning fields, at the cattle being walked away, at the sacks of oats and barley, being lifted by the mule drivers onto the carts. He would never ask his men to do a job he wouldn’t do himself. Striking a match, he lit his pipe. With great care, he held the match out to his batman. Lampton took the match. Every eye was on him as he touched it to the straw in the middle of the room, beneath the stacked furniture. There was a low derisory laugh when it did not take and Lampton had to strike another, breathing soft encouragement on the flame.

  There is something about a burning house, as the flames lick up the walls, as the smoke pours out, chased by the wind, as a wooden lintel cracks and drops and a roof collapses in on itself.

  The old woman cursed every soldier in sight, her hand on the boy’s shoulder. Their faces blank with misery, mother and daughter watched the house burn. It was as if, by not turning their backs, the destruction might be reversed.

  Africans had appeared from who knows where, the farm labourers. They stood in silence, watching.

  The girl said, in English, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘You should have thought of that before,’ the captain said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘We know your father and brothers come here for supplies and to use this as a base for going out and cutting the telegraph lines and destroying the railway. Ask them what you should do.’

  A plume of black smoke rose through the light spring breeze, etching cruel unnatural clouds onto the clear blue sky.

  What would Dylan Ashton have to say for himself, I wondered. Might he have dared let Lucy and Alison stay in his rooms above the house agent’s office?

  Croker & Company, house agents, occupied a prime position in the town centre. A small poster advertising Anna of the Five Towns still held pride of place in a corner of the window. A flyer taped to the glass of the door informed, in neatly printed block script, “Tickets at the box office, or apply within.”

  A balding gentleman with a perfectly egg-shaped head sat at an important-looking oak desk scanning a ledger. Dylan, slight, his hair oiled into submission, came from the back room carrying a file. He frowned with concentration as he took his seat at a smaller desk opposite the door, where a typewriter held paper. He looked down at the open file, and then began to type.

  I stared hard through the window, hoping to attract his attention. I did not relish the thought of waiting until either he or his boss chose to go out for their midday meal. Mr Croker looked like a man whose wife would wrap a potted meat sandwich in a piece of beef sheeting.

  Dylan had said that he lived above the premises, so he may not venture out.

  Mr Croker raised his head. I tried to look like a woman dissatisfied with her current abode as I perused the information in the window. If Dylan felt my stare, he did not respond. Just when I thought this could not go on for much longer, the telephone rang.

  Mr Croker picked up the receiver and began an animated conversation. I stepped inside and approached Dylan and his tap-tapping typewriter. He stopped and looked up.

  I smiled warmly. ‘Pretend you’re helping me with something in the window and step outside.’

  His eyes lit with surprised recognition. ‘Mrs Shackleton. How lovely to see you.’

  Poor boy. I felt quite mean that all I wanted was information, not to pass the time of day or to reward Mr Croker for his advertisement in the theatre programme by becoming a customer.

  ‘A property in the window, Mr Ashton?’

  The edge to my voice deflated Dylan in an instant. For a moment, he looked as though he would object. He thought better of it.

  ‘Certainly, madam.’

  Dylan followed me into the street, turning his back towards Mr Croker. He ran his tongue over his lower lip. His face was pale, with just a little soreness around the right ear. A sprinkling of fiery spots could have been a skin complaint that erupted now and again. He had cut himself shaving and had taped a plaster under his chin. Something about him inspired pity. The hardness in my voice came with some effort.

  ‘Captain Wolfendale is desperately worried about his granddaughter who is missing. I think you might be able to help.’

  ‘Lucy?’ he said, the fiery spots on his cheeks growing a deeper shade of red. ‘Why should I know?’

  It was the lack of concern in his voice that gave him away. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Lucy is missing, Dylan, and so is Alison. You were with them last night. Where are they?’

  He touched the red blotch on his face as if to soothe it. ‘I tell you, I don’t know.’

  He was not a good liar.

  ‘Where did they go when they left the theatre?’

  He glanced back at his employer who was returning the telephone to its cradle. ‘You’ll lose me my job.’

  ‘No I won’t. I’m interested in a property . . . unless you refuse to help me find your friends. Either you’ll help me, or I’ll call the police.’

  His face clouded with a
nxiety. ‘Lucy’s twenty-one. She can do as she pleases, I think.’

  ‘The police take blackmail very seriously. And your employer wouldn’t like the bad publicity of a clerk who aids and abets a crime.’

  ‘It’s not a crime for a person to want her own money.’

  Straight away, he realised he had said too much.

  ‘You wanted to help her. But after what has happened, you had better tell me everything you know, and quickly.’

  I guessed that he had heard about the murder. Something like that does not stay quiet long.

  He glanced back into the office, where Mr Croker was watching us with great interest. ‘I gave my word to Lucy.’

  ‘Did you give your word to Alison?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then tell me where Alison is.’

  ‘They both went to the Geerts’ house.’

  ‘The truth!’

  ‘That is the truth. Madam Geerts, Lucy and Alison went there together.’

  ‘And you?’

  He met my look with defiance. ‘Mr Geerts walked me back here. We had a drink, upstairs in my flat. That is the truth.’

  ‘Where do the Geerts live?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But they hold their classes in the arcade.’ He cast a worried look at his employer.

  To let him off the hook, I said, ‘Let’s go inside, Dylan. You can say I am looking for a cottage to rent and write down some suggestions.’

  Mr Croker greeted me warmly and stood over Dylan, suggesting various properties. Dylan wrote down the addresses. He handed me the sheet of paper, which I held by its corner before placing it carefully in my satchel. It would be useful to have Dylan Ashton’s fingerprints.

  The telephone rang. Mr Croker moved to answer it, saying to me, before he picked up the receiver, ‘Would you like to be taken on a viewing?’

  ‘Not yet, thank you. I’ll look at some properties from the outside.’

  As I made my escape, Mr Croker was saying into the mouthpiece, ‘Yes, a shocking business, shocking.’

  So news of the murder was spreading.

  It was now eleven o’clock. I must make my mind up what to do next.

  Everything so far had taken longer than expected. Part of me wanted to simply tell the captain to call on the Geerts’s, and I would catch the first train back to Leeds. But now I was intrigued. I wanted to get to the bottom of this. Missing persons are more my special interest than missing jewellery. I would postpone Mr Moony’s business just a little while longer. In fact, I might spend one more night in Harrogate. Mr Moony would not expect any report back over the weekend.

  Over the road, a cabdriver dropped off his fares. I waved to him. He brought his cab closer, and I climbed in.

  ‘Where to, madam?’

  Not knowing any of the hotels, I said the first name that came into my head. ‘The Grand Hotel.’

  It was probably extravagant, and I could not entirely justify it. Oh go on, the little voice in my head said. Live a little. It’s what Gerald would want, and he did leave you enough money not to stint.

  At the Grand Hotel, I booked a room and placed a telephone call. I guessed that my housekeeper had been out for her errands and would be putting her feet up with a cup of tea and the newspaper. While I waited in the lobby for the call to come through, I pictured Meriel. She would shortly be gracing the dining room of this very hotel, preparing to enjoy a meal with her impresario, oblivious to the disappearance of her leading lady. Surely she must have had some inkling of what was going on? Would she be on a pre-lunch drink at this very moment? I had a good mind to waylay her and demand that she be the one to go marching round the town, wearing out shoe leather in the search for Lucy Wolfendale.

  The porter beckoned me to the reception desk. I took the telephone from him. ‘Your call,’ the operator announced in a nasal twang that sounded as if she had a clothes peg on her nose.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Sugden.’

  ‘Mrs Shackleton. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is perfectly all right. I’m booked in at the Grand Hotel. I shall extend my stay. It seems a shame to be here and not take the waters.’

  ‘That sounds splendid. It will do you no end of good. Shall I tell your mother?’

  I tried not to groan. ‘I haven’t arranged to see her this weekend.’

  ‘She did telephone.’

  ‘You might get a message to Mr Sykes for me please.’

  I wondered how he was getting on with his enquiries about the pawnbroker’s stolen goods, and felt a pang of guilt that I would now be putting him to some trouble on a totally unrelated matter.

  I heard a shuffling sound as Mrs Sugden reached for paper and pencil.

  ‘Yes? I’m ready to take the message.’

  ‘Please tell him to send the kit as a rail parcel on the first afternoon train. I’ll meet the train and collect it.’

  The pencil scratched into silence.

  ‘But you said . . .’ Mrs Sugden began, and thought better of telling me off for having led her to believe I was staying on in Harrogate simply for rest and recreation.

  The kit is our code for the fingerprint set. It had occurred to me that if Lucy and Alison had someone else helping them, it was likely to be Dylan, a poor liar whose very skin burst into a giveaway red rash that betrayed guilt and anxiety. His fingerprints on the list of addresses he had given me would allow me to confirm my suspicion, or eliminate him.

  But I believed he was telling me the truth when he said that Lucy and Alison had gone to the Geerts’s house. He had seemed surprised that they had gone there, and that made me think it was not the first lie that would have sprung to his lips.

  My call to Mrs Sugden was a kind of insurance, a superstitious feeling that if I had the fingerprint kit, I would not need to use it. With a bit of luck, a single visit to Monsieur and Madam Geerts would solve the mystery. Having given my own theatre programme to Inspector Charles, I had taken the precaution of borrowing Lucy’s. I opened the programme at the half page advertisement for the Geerts’ dancing school.

  Monsieur and Madam Loy Geerts

  Dancing School

  Ballroom Ballet Tap

  Classes and private tuition

  Tea dances

  (Professional partners)

  7 Arcade Buildings, High Harrogate

  Telephone 312

  The hours dragged. Lucy had done her health and beauty exercises on the battlements. Now she came back down to the floor below. Light filtered through the narrow slit of window. A blackbird perched on the sill. Tilting its head as though showing off its bright yellow beak, it peered at her. She stared up at the cobwebbed beams and into the corners of the tower’s ceiling. She counted four nests, three above the beams and one between a beam and the wall.

  The floor had grown harder during the night. She had slept in her clothes. Her face felt hot and dry. She reached into the depths of her tapestry bag and took out the small mirror. Looking glass in hand, she ran fingers through her hair, smoothing it into place. Lucy smiled at her reflection. No one would ever suspect her of anything wicked or underhand. She lowered her eyelashes for the demure, angelic look. ‘Oh you,’ she said aloud. ‘You are such a monster, Lucy Wolfendale.’

  What time must it be?

  She reached for her watch. Eleven o’clock. The romance of the tower had entirely worn off. This place was damp, smelly and very uncomfortable. Only the thought of her brilliant future would keep her here two more nights. Two more nights! I must have been mad, Lucy thought. There should have been another way. I shouldn’t have been so quick to make a move the minute we brought down the curtain on Anna of the Five Towns. But once you made up your mind, it was best just to do it. The RADA term loomed. A letter had come to Lucy’s invented parent, asking for payment of her first fee.

  If Granddad was to believe she had been kidnapped, it had to look real. If the plan went madly wrong, then she would look the part, dishevelled and unwashed. Acting distressed would not be difficult. If th
is scheme went awry she would be more than distressed, she would be furious, thwarted, frustrated, murderous.

  Granddad would have had her ransom note by the first post this morning, just after seven. Perhaps even the second note would have arrived by now. The wheels of her future had begun to turn. Soon they would spin and take her far from here.

  She yawned, stretched and slowly unfurled herself. Slipping on her shoes against the splinters of the ancient floorboards, she stood. She shook out her blankets, folded them carefully, set them down on the ground sheet and covered them with that. If this was to be her home for two days, she must make the most of it.

  Seated on her folded blankets, she drank from her bottle of water, emptying it. Perhaps later she might risk a walk to the stream for a refill. From her Oxo tin she took the last of her bread and cheese. This would have to do, until Dylan brought her more food. He would not come yet. Saturday was a working day for him.

  The thought of work reminded Lucy of another annoying attitude of her grandfather’s. He did not believe that girls and young women of their station in life should work. It was no use telling him that Alison had a job in a solicitor’s office. As far as Granddad was concerned, Lucy should marry, settle down, and soon.

  A knocking on the door of the tower disturbed her thoughts. Her heart began to thump. She had been so sure no one came here. For a moment she hardly dared breathe. Then she hurried up to the battlements and looked down. Dylan. He took a couple of steps back and waved up at her. ‘Let me in!’

  She threw down the key. It fell into the long grass. She watched as he bobbed down and searched for it.

  Moments later, he bounded up the stairs, empty-handed. She hoped he would have chocolate in his pocket.

  He spoke all in a rush. ‘I haven’t got long. Everything’s changed, Lucy. Someone has been asking for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That woman, that friend of Meriel’s.’

  ‘Mrs Shackleton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well what about it? Let her ask.’

  ‘She knows.’