Murder in the Afternoon: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  ‘My dear,’ Mrs Ledger said quietly, ‘I think we should let the police deal with this in their own way.’

  He sighed, strode across the room, and returned to his seat. ‘You’re right, darling. You’re right, of course. But I shall contact my solicitor all the same.’

  His agitation showed in the movement of his jaw, the flexing of his fingers.

  Mrs Ledger patted his arm. The two of them, side by side on the sofa, would have made a perfect second portrait. Older, but with none of their confidence, none of their certainties dented. Supply a solicitor. Talk sense to the constabulary.

  Calmer now, he spoke again. ‘You did the right thing coming here, Mrs Shackleton. I shall look out for Mary Jane’s … for Mrs Armstrong’s interests.’

  But would he? The part of me that had been brought up expecting men to take charge, men to put things right, wanted to let go, wanted to let him look out for Mary Jane. But the little voice in my head said, Don’t trust him.

  ‘Colonel Ledger, may I ask what you and Mary Jane discussed when you met on Tuesday?’

  His mouth dropped open. Mrs Ledger turned her head towards him. Her small tongue darted across her lower lip. She knew.

  ‘Tuesday?’ He shook his head. For two pins he would have me escorted out.

  If I were to get information from him, he needed to know that I could be trouble. ‘When you met at Horsforth railway station and drove to the Station Hotel.’ He opened his mouth to deny, or accuse me of being mistaken, but before his words tumbled into the air, I said, ‘Only I wonder if she gave her bank passbook into your safekeeping?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Why would she give me a bank book?’

  ‘Because the money is in her maiden name. It’s what you gave her when she was in your wife’s employ, and what you’ve given her since.’ The last part was a guess, but it hit home.

  Colonel and Mrs Ledger froze, but only for a fraction of a second. He gulped. She cleared her throat, as if to speak, but he was ahead of her. ‘Did Mrs Armstrong explain the money?’

  ‘She told me that when she was fifteen you photographed her in artistic poses.’

  He gave a small smile. ‘Quite innocent.’

  Mrs Ledger echoed her husband. ‘Entirely innocent.’

  There was a long silence. They were not going to say more, and why should they? I rose to go. ‘Then if you don’t have the bank book …’

  As I stood, so did the colonel, unsure whether to see me out.

  ‘Wait!’ Mrs Ledger gave a light, tinkling laugh. Her husband smiled at her, waiting to see what lead she would give him. She said, ‘Please sit down, Mrs Shackleton. It’s all very simple. Mary Jane was a pretty little thing and she certainly knew it. My husband is a keen amateur photographer and he took some portraits of her in a Grecian robe, terribly proper, which she, in her naivety, believed to be immensely daring. I’m sure if we can turn them up you may see for yourself. I gave her money when she was twenty-three, and about to be married. There was no connection with the photographs. At one of our harvest suppers, it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that Bob Conroy fell for Mary Jane. He spoke to the colonel one day and sought her hand, as though we were her parents. I found that touching, and if you must know, I looked on my gift to her as a sort of dowry. There have been connections between my family and the Conroys’ for generations. As it transpired, Ethan Armstrong stole her heart, and that was not a match made in heaven. But if some police inspector believes Mary Jane would have killed her husband, and he’s whisked her off to the Otley police station for a confession, then he should be packed off to some backwater of Empire.’

  The colonel said, ‘My dear you must be more temperate in your comments. It may be that the chief inspector simply wants to give Mrs Armstrong the opportunity to think more clearly, away from her home and children.’

  ‘And your tryst on Tuesday?’ I persisted.

  He sighed. ‘Not a tryst. She asked me to advise her. She lives in a tied house and feared eviction. I assured her that no such occurrence would take place.’ He turned to his wife. ‘That was all, my dear.’

  ‘Of course.’ She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I shall call my solicitor and have him get onto the police. It’s outrageous that Mrs Armstrong should be separated from her children. I would have identified Armstrong.’

  He sprang from the sofa. At the door, he turned back. ‘Are the police aware that Mrs Armstrong has her own deposit account?’

  He would wash his hands of her in a moment if he had to, to save his own reputation.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He closed the door gently as he left.

  Mrs Ledger’s smile condescended. ‘Mary Jane was with me for years. I grew fond of her. I hope this can be sorted out quickly. But the children will be well looked after at the farm, with Mr and Mrs Conroy.’

  Something in her voice seemed to be drawing a line under the past.

  ‘Of course, it’s your farm now.’

  Her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. ‘You won’t expect me to comment on that, and I’m surprised that Conroy would speak of the sale so prematurely.’

  It saddened me that what Ethan most argued against had come to pass. An age-old farm would be torn open and quarried, without Ethan standing in the way of progress.

  Yet there was something else going on. I sensed it but could not give a shape to what niggled at me.

  After a few more moments, the colonel returned. ‘My solicitor will be onto the police straightaway. He will look after Mary Jane’s interests.’

  Mrs Ledger stood up and joined her husband. ‘Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Mrs Shackleton.’

  I’d made a mistake. These people could not be trusted. Mary Jane would be in their power. The solicitor would look after her interests only if those interests coincided with the Ledgers’.

  I drove slowly back through the village, ready to make my way home. Yet I was drawn to Mary Jane’s cottage. If she had not given her bank book to Colonel Ledger for safekeeping, then where was it? And who had placed Ethan’s tools where they might be found and used against Mary Jane?

  The merest whiff of smoke still rose from the chimney, a forlorn signal meandering uselessly towards the clouds.

  I drew the key through the letter box and unlocked the door. Straightaway I knew the house was not deserted. Someone was here. I felt a presence, like a drawn breath. A footstep sounded on the stair.

  ‘Mrs Shackleton.’

  ‘Mr Sykes! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Same as you, I expect. Wondering who planted the tools in the coalhouse, wondering whether there was anything the police missed.’

  ‘And is there?’

  ‘No. Not that I can see.’

  ‘I don’t know where Mary Jane has put her bank book. I thought she may have given it to the colonel, but if she has, he’s saying nothing.’

  ‘You went to see them?’

  ‘They’re worried, but making light of it. Mrs Ledger claims the saucy photographs were simply artistic, Grecian toga stuff. They probably have the photographic prints and negatives to prove it, and anything else will mysteriously disappear.’

  ‘Still, it does put them on her side.’

  ‘It puts them on their own side, Mr Sykes. They’d sacrifice Mary Jane in a moment.’

  ‘Your chief inspector has nothing concrete against Mary Jane, except the hidden tools. Anyone could have put them there.’

  Sykes was already putting together a case for the defence. He rubbed his chin. ‘There’ll be a great deal of speculation in the local hostelry tonight.’

  Mr Sykes places great store by pub gossip because it gives him an advantage over me who wouldn’t be able to indulge in the same kind of information gathering.

  ‘If you must. But be careful. We don’t know how many plain-clothes men might have the same idea.’

  He met me halfway.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten I’m due at the insura
nce offices at nine o’clock in the morning. Just a couple of pints and an hour’s earwigging, and then I’ll find my way home.’

  I scribbled a note for Mary Jane and set it in the middle of the table so that she would spot it as soon as Sergeant Sharp brought her home; if he brought her home.

  ‘You’d better leave first, Mr Sykes. I shall pay my condolences to the vicar.’

  There was a connection between the death of Ethan Armstrong and that of Miss Trimble, and I intended to uncover that link.

  Seven

  A craggy man with a well-fed belly greeted me in a soft cultured voice. I guessed the vicar to be an Oxford man, and remembered his sister saying that he would rather have served God in Brighton than in the wilds of Yorkshire. He gave the impression of a man who had been over-condoled and there was the possibility I would be rebuffed. Perhaps this was not the moment for him to confront the woman who had shared his sister’s last moments.

  With my practised skill, I introduced myself with full credentials including my status and profession, Dad’s job and Mother’s title. That did the trick.

  Wearily, he picked up a book from the hall table. ‘Come into the study, Mrs Shackleton. So, I have you to thank for finding my sister.’

  I said a few appropriate words. He opened the book. ‘Condolences,’ he said, turning it towards me. ‘People have been very good. She didn’t realise how loved she was.’

  I glanced at the pages, full of signatures, prayers, and flowery sentiments.

  I was meant to take the pen. ‘I’m sorry to say I did not know Miss Trimble, having only met her that morning. If you’ll give me a moment …’

  Even with a moment, I could think of nothing to write.

  ‘Poor Aurora was in high spirits that day,’ he said glumly. ‘The lord gave her joy in her final days on earth.’

  ‘Was she joyful for a particular reason?’

  He pushed his sermon in progress away. ‘She’d spent a happy week in Clitheroe with our cousin who is married to the verger there. And of course, she loved the church windows, you see, leaded lights, heavenly stained glass.’

  ‘In Clitheroe?’

  ‘No. Here. Poor Aurora.’

  For a long moment, as I wrote something anodyne in the condolence book, I tried to think of how to phrase the question: is there anyone who would have wanted your sister dead? Instead, I said, ‘You have a lovely church.’ And then I remembered that one of the windows was plain glass. ‘Were you to have a new window?’

  ‘Yes. That was why she was so happy. Farmer Conroy spoke to my sister about it on Sunday. He would pay for a new one, in memory of his parents and his brother.’

  Bob Conroy. So he intended to donate some of the proceeds of his farm sale. He was in the churchyard after I left the vicarage, by his brother’s grave, talking to the dead, distressed. I kept my face as expressionless as a poker player as I wondered had Bob Conroy helped Aurora Trimble into the afterlife so that she could not give evidence against Mary Jane?

  Mr Trimble was speaking, asking me a question.

  ‘Sorry. What did you ask me?’

  ‘Did Aurora say anything before she died?’

  Oh dear. Gerald used to play a game with a doctor friend. One would name a person living or dead. The other had to quote or invent Famous Last Words. I was tempted to invent something marvellous now. But I had been hopeless at the game.

  ‘She said only two words, Mr Trimble. “Bitter” was the first.’

  ‘Bitter, or bitte?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘She spoke German you know. Just like her to be so polite, even on the point of death.’

  ‘Why would she speak to me in German?’

  ‘We had a cousin to stay from Baden-Baden. Perhaps she … No, she would not have mistaken you for our cousin. Did my sister say anything else?’

  This was even worse. Now he would think I was deaf, or making it up. ‘She said, “dandy”.’

  ‘Dandy?’ He shook his head in puzzlement.

  I waited, to hear what other languages she may have spoken, to other cousins, in which the word “dandy” meant thank you and goodbye.

  When I drove back to the cottage, a light shone in the window. Mary Jane was home. I tapped on the door, which was locked.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  She unlocked the door and opened it, waiting for me to step inside. She looked wrung out and exhausted.

  ‘I wanted to make sure you’re all right. Was it terrible?’

  ‘Yes.’ She returned to her chair by the fire and stared into the flames. ‘So final. It’s not him any more, Kate. Ethan’s gone. People say oh he’s just a shell. I never knew what that meant. I wish I hadn’t seen him like that.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘I’m not hungry. And look at that lot.’ She waved her arm at the table. There was a pot of stew, a cake, a pie. ‘People left stuff on the doorstep. For the kids probably. They don’t like me.’

  ‘That can’t be true. There’ll be a lot of sympathy for you in the village.’

  Reluctantly, I confided my visit to the Ledgers and the colonel’s telephone call to his solicitor. ‘Now is there anything I can do?’

  There was not.

  I ignored the rebuff and picked up the bed warmer from the hearth. It was a silver shoe, waiting to be filled with boiling water. I took it to the table, lifted the kettle and began to pour. ‘I’ll put this in your bed. You look done in.’

  She made no objection. While upstairs, I checked under the mattress for the disappeared bank book. Not there.

  We sat on either side of the fire. She gazed at the flames. ‘What did you say to the children?’

  ‘I told them as simply as I could. Austin, well, he didn’t understand.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose he would. You probably think I’m a coward not wanting to tell them myself.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She poked the fire, stirring up the flames. ‘Only when our dad died, Mam told us all straight away, all the details. He was brought home into that downstairs room and we all had to sit there, him lying on a board on the table. We all had to kiss him. It was horrible. Then go to the funeral, and I was too little, and my legs ached but no one noticed. I just had to try and keep up. I always said that if ever my children … I wanted to protect them. And you can’t. I see that now. There’s no way to do it. Mam did what she thought best.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you?’

  ‘No. The inspector, chief inspector, whatever he is, said nothing will happen now until after the post mortem and after more information has been gathered, whatever he means by that. I’ll just have to get through. I’ll be best on my own. Mrs Conroy will take care of the kids. I want a little time to be here, just a bit longer. Ethan loved this place, and I couldn’t wait to be out. Well, sometimes I couldn’t wait to be out and other times … I loved it too, at first. People will be calling on me tomorrow. I’ll have to put up with it. I’ll be best on my own.’

  ‘All right. You know where I am if you need me. Ask Sergeant Sharp to telephone me.’

  She nodded.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘I can’t bear it, Kate. Say I’ve gone to bed. Say you’re just leaving. Anything.’

  She let her shawl drop to the floor as she hurried to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Hello again.’ It was Bob Conroy.

  ‘Mary Jane’s gone to …’

  But she was there beside me, running to him, saying, ‘Bob, oh Bob.’ He stepped inside and took her in his arms.

  I left.

  By the tram stop on the main road, I stopped and picked up Sykes.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The one person who had claimed to see Mary Jane in the vicinity of the quarry at a crucial time was Miss Trimble. Miss Trimble was dead. The person who hovered near the vicarage at her time of death was Bob Conroy. But the doctor had c
ertified death from heart failure. And doctors are never wrong. I should put thoughts of poison out of my mind.

  THURSDAY

  Sage snail, within thine own self curl’d,

  Instruct me softly to make haste,

  Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.

  Richard Lovelace

  One

  Thursday was my favourite day as a child. It was the day the grocery box came from Lipton’s store, with a bar of Fry’s Five Boys chocolate. Thursday was the day when I came home from school with nothing to do, no ballet class (Monday and Wednesday); no visit from my home tutor (Tuesday) who smoked a pipe, wore a smelly tweed jacket, picked his nose and did all the sums himself as I pretended to follow while watching the dry skin fall from his chin onto the page as he rubbed bogeymen into his beard.

  This Thursday I lay in bed, my first long lie in since returning from London last Sunday. Mrs Sugden fussed over me and brought up breakfast. ‘Stop where you are, Mrs Shackleton, you look done in.’

  I felt done in, but from the frustration of making no progress, and the growing certainty that the investigation into Ethan Armstrong’s death was slipping from my grasp.

  When I am stuck, it can help to tell myself the story of what has happened so far, which I did, hoping then to project into where I should look next. A powerful image held me back. Each time I ran through the story, the embrace between Mary Jane and Bob Conroy brought me to a halt.

  Conroy had concluded his deal with Ledger. It would be simply a matter of time, selling up of farm stock and equipment, and then Conroy would move on. But where would he go, and with whom – his own wife, or Mary Jane, her children, and her bank book?

  Unable to go forward, I went back, to the vicarage drawing room and Miss Trimble’s last words. Bitter. Well yes, a bitter pill to be dying. Dandy. A person? During my brief time in Great Applewick, I saw not a single person who could be accused of snappy dressing.

  Mrs Sugden came into the bedroom to pick up my breakfast tray. ‘Do you want anything else?’