Of course she never comes straight to the point and so we chatted about her journey from Wakefield and I told her about visiting Mary Jane in Otley Courthouse.
‘Goodness me, was it very horrid?’ she asked.
Well, it’s a gaol as well as a police station, Mother, and she is near enough to being charged with mariticide. But I said, ‘It’s a not an unpleasant part of Otley. And Mary Jane could have been in a worse frame of mind. But you didn’t ask me here to talk about that.’
‘No, you’re right. Only my information seems so trivial by comparison.’ She brought out a letter from deep within her reticule; someone as grand as my mother would never carry a simple handbag. She sighed. ‘This came by the first post this morning, from the well provided woman. I opened it, as you instructed.’
I took the letter from her and read.
Dear Mr Wright
I thank you for your communication and your suggestion that we meet with which I heartily concur and look forward to that event.
It is good of you to think of seeing me in so salubrious a place as the Griffin Hotel. However, I prefer to meet privately if that is agreeable to you. You were kind enough to give your address. I know my way well to Wakefield and instead of meeting at the Griffin, I shall call to see you in your home on Sunday afternoon at four o’clock. If this proves an embarrassment to you in respect of your landlady, I shall be glad to be introduced as a distant relation on this one occasion!
Although this may appear a bold venture on my part, be assured that I am a respectable and childless widow of a generally retiring nature, left well provided by my late husband and sometimes longing for a little male companionship.
I trust this will be agreeable to you and that you will excuse my boldness. Be assured that from my point of view our meeting will hold you to no further obligation unless you are so inclined.
I remain, sir, yours sincerely
Gertrude Alexander (Mrs)
I looked at Mother and she looked at me. ‘What do you make of it?’ I asked.
‘She wastes no time and wants to see the bird in his own bush. But you see my difficulty, Kate?’
‘Yes. She’s left no opportunity to reply. It’s one thing to ask Mr Duffield to make a trip to the Griffin, and quite another to have the poor man come to your house in Wakefield under the guise of Mr Wright, to receive a lady visitor.’
‘Sunday,’ she stressed. ‘Four o’clock? Does that ring a bell?’
My hand flew to my forehead. ‘Oh no! Sunday dinner. You’ve invited Marcus.’ I looked at the letter again. ‘Mrs Alexander doesn’t give an address for reply. That’s a bit much of her. What a cheek.’
‘Well, exactly. The dreadful woman is going to turn up on our doorstep at four o’clock, and your father will be there, and Mr Charles. I don’t know how I shall explain this.’ She lay the letter down next to the sugar basin. ‘Either we answer the door and tell her there has been some mistake, or your Mr Duffield must be there to meet her.’
I looked at my watch. ‘This is a pretty pickle. I’m not sure what hours Mr Duffield works on Saturdays. Either way, he’ll have to know.’
Mother held up her hand to calm me down. ‘Let me think.’ She closed her eyes, sighed, and thought, a small frown creasing her forehead. When she opened her eyes, she gave her isn’t-this-easy smile. ‘What’s he like, this Mr Duffield?’
‘He’s about fifty years old, a very cautious sort of man – I was surprised he agreed to my scheme; a little eccentric perhaps, clever …’
‘In appearance, and manner?’
‘In appearance a typical bachelor, a little shabbily turned out, but a most amiable man, quite charming.’
‘Is he a good conversationalist?’
‘I have always found him interesting. He’s a librarian and not short of a story or two.’
‘Then we shall give him lunch on Sunday …’
‘But you don’t like odd numbers. We can hardly get in touch with …’ I checked the woman’s name, ‘Gertrude Alexander …’
‘Mr Duffield will come to lunch, and afterwards he will be on the spot to receive his visitor.’
‘But …’
Mother held up a hand. I was about to receive a lesson in etiquette. ‘I know that Sunday has the purpose of your Mr Marcus Charles becoming acquainted with your father … No wait, Kate, let me finish. By having two more guests we shall make the occasion less weighty. Also, I am going to quite a lot of trouble over this lunch and I know well enough that your chief inspector could cry off at the last moment, and so could your father. That would leave us feeling rather flat. Since you are asking this great sacrifice of poor Mr Wright …’
‘That’s not his real name, Mother. His real name is Duffield.’
‘Of course. Since you are asking this great sacrifice of poor Mr Duffield, wanting him to meet this obvious gold digger, this desperado of a woman who is vulgar enough to advertise for a husband, and set her own terms as to where she will meet him, then the least we can do is give Mr Wright, I mean Mr Duffield, lunch. Tell me, does Mr Duffield play bridge?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Really, Kate! Call yourself a detective and you can’t tell me whether a man plays bridge.’
‘Mother … what are you planning?’
‘Why, nothing at all, dear. Only obviously I must make up the numbers for Sunday and it would help to have the gentleman’s measure. I shall invite Martha Graham.’
‘You’re matchmaking, and you haven’t even met the man.’
‘Kate, your Mr Duffield would never have agreed to this scheme if he were not on the look out for romance.’
When the waitress brought our pot of coffee she was followed by the restaurant manager, bringing me a message.
Telephone communication from Mrs Sugden. Mr Sykes has sent telegram: do not be in least alarmed but please go to the cottage in Great A as soon as possible.
I thanked the manager and passed the note to Mother.
‘Good heavens, Kate. Poor Mr Sykes must have his hands full. To say you have only recently met these members of the Whitaker family, they certainly know how to make demands. Let us hope for your sake the other ten Whitaker siblings do not find themselves in the same kind of quandary as Mary Jane.’ Mother poured coffee. ‘You will travel better for having a cup of coffee and a small sweet bite. There’s nothing that cannot wait for a moment’s refreshment, and I am partial to their curd tart. As to Mr … Duffield, please leave him to me. I shall call at the newspaper offices myself. It’s proper that I should extend the invitation personally, and I should like to take a little look at him.’ She chose a dainty chocolate-covered bun. ‘It may be that the gentleman is a confirmed bachelor, and you hadn’t noticed.’
Three
It was not out of my way to call home and pick up a few items, including a change of clothing, in case I needed to stay the night at the cottage. As I drove to Great Applewick, I wondered about the reason for Sykes’s telegram; a development in the investigation, perhaps. I fervently hoped that Marcus had come to some breakthrough and released Mary Jane. Or there could be something the matter with the children. I remembered Austin’s reluctance to go to the farm. The Conroys may have had enough of them, but that seemed unlikely for two such good-hearted neighbours.
As I drove, I began to regret following up the personal advertisement and involving Mr Duffield. Dad would not take kindly to his drawing room being used as a matrimonial agency by Mr Duffield and the mysterious Mrs Alexander.
Too late now.
When I arrived at the cottage, I heard voices from the garden and walked round to the back. Sykes was drawing water from the well, supervised by Harriet and Austin. The children were laughing at something and I felt full of admiration, and a little envy, that they were so at ease with him and that he had somehow managed to amuse them at what must be the darkest time of their young lives.
Sykes greeted me, pretending pleased surprise. So the children did not know he had contrived to s
end me a telegram.
Harriet and Austin looked at me, and then past me, to see if I had brought their mother.
‘Your mam will come as soon as she can,’ I said. ‘She has a few things to attend to. And I’m to be sure and take you to your granny tomorrow.’
Austin said, ‘I was in a fire. Dad fetched me home.’
He stared at me, daring me to contradict that his father had reappeared and rescued him.
‘There really was a fire,’ Sykes said quietly. ‘The cowshed caught light.’
Before I had time to ask whether anyone was hurt, Harriet said, ‘Austin, what did Dad smell of when he fetched you home? Did his hair smell of stone?’
‘He smelled of Bonfire night.’
‘Dad never liked Bonfire night so he wouldn’t smell of that.’
‘He did smell of it, he smelled of fire.’
‘It must have been Uncle Bob who brought you home.’
A small explosion went on inside Austin as he burst to say something and could not find the words.
Sykes gathered the two together and whispered something to them. They went inside. When they had gone, Sykes told me about the fire at the farm, the horrible fear that Bob Conroy had been burned alive, and the failure to find his remains in the ashes.
We sat on opposite sides of the well. I pressed my hand against the cool stone.
‘Do you mean that Conroy was so badly burned that nothing remains?’
‘That’s what the police and the firemen are allowing people to think. He escaped. I’m sure of it. It could have been a terrible accident or a ploy by him to make it look that way. At present, the firemen are saying only that they are examining the scene.’
‘Then how do you know he escaped?’
‘Millie told Harriet. She saw Conroy running from the cowshed, carrying Austin with him. I think Conroy’s gone to ground.’
‘But he voluntarily went into the police station yesterday. Mary Jane thought he must be there to protest her innocence.’
Sykes fiddled with the well handle. It creaked. ‘I spoke briefly to Chief Inspector Charles this morning. Of course he gave nothing away to me, but I believe he connects Bob Conroy with the death.’
I could hardly bring myself to ask. ‘And Mary Jane?’
‘She’s not out of the woods. I don’t know whether your sister is involved or not, Mrs Shackleton. But it’s looking bad for Bob Conroy. People know he and Mary Jane were very close. Perhaps that’s why Ethan went to talk to Mrs Conroy. They shared a sense of betrayal in common. A double betrayal for Ethan, if he’d found out that Bob was reporting on him to Special Branch.’
‘Is that why you’ve asked me to come here, to be with the children? Mrs Conroy’s not going to be up to it.’
An image flashed behind my eyes: myself miscast in the role of dutiful aunt thrust into caring, having to look every day at children whose mother died swinging on the end of a rope.
Sykes said, ‘I want to look for Bob Conroy.’
‘Aren’t the police searching?’
‘Yes, but something he said last night, and something Harriet said, gave me a hunch as to where he may be. And there’s another thing …’
‘What for God’s sake?’
‘That little girl who works for Mrs Conroy, Millie. She’s missing too. She wasn’t caught in the fire. Perhaps she’s run away, expecting to be in trouble, expecting to be blamed.’
‘What on earth is going on?’
‘I wish I knew. Will you take the children to their grandma’s today?’
‘No. They’ve been shifted about enough. Let them have a day and a night in their own home.’
Sykes began to wind up the bucket from the bottom of the well. ‘I sent them inside to unpack the hamper, and surprise you by setting it all out on the table. Lady Bountiful sent it.’
‘Lady Bountiful?’
‘Mrs Ledger. Didn’t you say she’s the nearest Great Applewick has to lady of the manor?’
‘Yes. And that solicitor of theirs intends to have Mary Jane released into the Ledgers’ care, God help her.’
I closed my eyes for a moment, to gather the strength to go in and be normal with the children, whatever normal is. ‘I’d stake my life on Mary Jane’s innocence.’
Sykes’ said, ‘Of course you would. How could you bear to believe otherwise?’ He picked up the bucket of water.
‘Is anyone looking for the little girl?’
‘Arthur and the other chap from the farm. Mrs Conroy was casting round for who to blame for the fire. Apparently Millie has run away before.’
We began to walk up the path, the overfull bucket swinging and spilling as we went.
I tried to picture the little girl, talking to the lamb by the fire, talking to the sheepdog. ‘Where do you think that little girl comes from? She’s not local.’
‘Millie?’ Sykes smiled. ‘She’s surely not. We had a chap in the force talked not unlike her. If he was pointing out a fair-haired female, it’d be, “Hur thur with the fur hur.” I’d put her down as being from Lancashire and if I had to pinpoint it a bit sharper, I’d say Blackburn.’
The contents of Mrs Ledger’s hamper were spread on the table: ham on the bone, bread, butter, soup, pie and cake; eggs and milk; tea and dandelion wine.
‘I want Mam to come home and have some,’ Harriet said.
‘We’ll save some for her. Tell me, Harriet, do you have an atlas of the British Isles?’
She went to the pile of books above the chest of drawers and found the atlas. I made space on the table. ‘See if you can you find the page with Lancashire. I’d like to know how close are Blackburn and Clitheroe.’
It occurred to me that the reason for Miss Trimble’s untimely death may be nothing at all to do with having seen a female in a plaid cape by the quarry at four o’clock. Miss Trimble had spent the previous week in Clitheroe.
Harriet measured the distance between her thumb and finger and looked at the scale on the map. ‘It’s about nine miles from Clitheroe to Blackburn.’
There was something that I was missing, but what?
Bitter, Miss Trimble had said. Dandy, Miss Trimble had said. We had thought of all the dictionary definitions of that word, dandy, and of dandy fever. But what if it was only part of a word. Bitter. Dare I taste the dandelion wine sent by Mrs Ledger?
Four
Sykes clambered into the Jowett. He now regarded himself as a confident driver. He was less confident about his ability to find the missing Bob Conroy, and he knew he was still missing because Sergeant Sharp had called at the cottage twice under the pretext of checking whether the children were all right. Even Harriet had said, ‘The sergeant’s looking for Uncle Bob.’
While waiting for Mrs Shackleton to arrive, and while keeping the children occupied, Sykes had recalled the previous evening in the pub, the smell of bitter ale, slops, full ashtrays and unwashed bodies. I was the one playing clever, Sykes thought, escorting Bob home, leaving him at his gate. What if he played me, played me for a fool? You see it on the music hall, rubber-legged comics, sober as a judge, acting the intoxicated buffoon. Sykes dismissed the thought. Conroy had been throw-up-and-fall-over drunk, stinking of ale and whiskey. If he’d been in that cowshed a moment longer, he’d have lit up like a Roman candle. Getting out of that blaze alive should have sobered him up quickly. Where would the man have gone, and why? Did he really think he could fake his own death in a fire?
Sykes drove to the edge of the moor. This was the place Bob had spoken of in his cups, where he used to come with Ethan. He and Ethan had hiked this way every Sunday as lads, and had continued when the opportunity arose. The wind helped Sykes on his way, a light rain whipping the back of his neck. He hitched up the scarf Rosie had knitted for him and wound it tightly.
This was the place Harriet said her father and Uncle Bob sometimes brought them on a Sunday, the walk that Bob Conroy had described, as he cried into his beer last night.
By driving, Sykes had chopped off what he
imagined may have been the early section of Conroy’s hike, but he was left wondering whether he had struck out from the right spot.
The path led through rough moorland. Sheep nibbled coarse grass. Trees grew sparsely. This part of the moor offered no protection from the elements. When the land dipped unexpectedly, it turned boggy. The stout boots, that had formed part of Sykes’s payment when he worked in security for the boot and shoe company, were soon caked in mud.
It was what a bookmaker would call long odds, but Harriet had supplied clues: walk upstream, cross a rickety bridge, pass the standing stones shaped like upturned mushrooms. Look for a copse and an abandoned bothy.
It had sounded simple, and no doubt would be if Harriet were doing the walking. Country children could read a landscape in a way that a townie never would. With no street signs, pubs or shops to guide him, Sykes felt like a landlubber crossing a choppy sea on a sledge.
After a good hour’s walking, he began to guess he had struck out in the wrong direction for the woods that Harriet had described as an enchanted forest. Where to now? Bob Conroy had boasted of the splendid views from high rocks.
In the dampness of the afternoon, and with the light mist, his field glasses were not much help. Not a solitary human could he see. There must be a hundred secret places, caverns, disused mines, where a man familiar with the landscape could hide.
In the distance, Sykes saw a clump of trees and, to his left, farm buildings.
Somewhere far off, a dog barked.
He veered off, to try the farm buildings that he could see on the horizon. A man out on such a night as last night would need shelter. Bob Conroy would know the farmers, but Sykes knew that the police would have set up their own search, drawing on reserves of manpower and local knowledge.
When he finally reached the farm, he half expected to have to supply difficult explanations. He searched a barn, full of farm machinery that looked like medieval torture instruments, and stacked with sacks of something that stunk; an empty cowshed; a stable where a horse cheered up at his approach and let him stroke its flanks. Defeated, he knocked on the door, asked for a glass of water, and whether his friend Bob Conroy had passed this way. The water was supplied with hospitable speed, but the question about Bob drew a blank.
Murder in the Afternoon: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 25