On Norman View, Sykes found the door key, under a stone by the roses. He let himself in. Somewhere there would be a clue, something that had been missed. He started in the cellar, where two traps held dead rodents.
Finding nothing of consequence in the cellar or the downstairs rooms, Sykes went upstairs. He opened the bedroom drawers and looked under the lining. He checked under the mattresses, turned back the rugs, lifted the jug and bowl on the washstand.
Mrs Shackleton had said Deirdre had taken some clothes, but some were left behind, including a winter coat. Why take an old black coat to New York when she might be dressed in furs?
He sat down on her bed, and thought where she may have gone. And then he heard a sound downstairs.
Sykes froze. How would he explain being here to some next of kin, or a workmate of Fitzpatrick’s, or Deirdre herself?
All was quiet. He waited. After another few moments, he slowly descended the stairs.
No one.
A square white envelope lay on the mat. He had heard the click of the letterbox.
The letter was addressed to Cyril Fitzpatrick, in neat, childlike, writing.
It was from her.
Sykes told himself that his hands did not tremble as he picked it up. It was the envelope that fluttered of its own accord. He felt a wave of relief. She was alive. He should not open it, of course. The postmark was York, and the date, not one bit smudged, was yesterday, a late collection. He should not open a dead man’s letter.
Sykes took a knife from the kitchen drawer. He slit the envelope. It was a short note, without endearments.
Fitz, I did all I could for Mam. It was Anthony’s turn so I let him get on with the funeral. I could not face everyone saying sorry for your loss and outdoing themselves in the prayers department. I said my goodbyes on Sunday when Mam died and will visit her when she and I can be on our own.
Don’t worry about me. We both did our best in our own ways but it cannot go on.
I am going to the n. sea and you will hear.
May God keep you close as I cannot any more.
Your wife, so they say,
Deirdre
Sykes read it again. One line in particular puzzled him. I am going to the North Sea and you will hear. What did she mean? This did not sound like the note of a woman about to flee the country. Unless North Sea meant just that, that she was leaving the country with no sense of geography. She would not leave for America via the North Sea.
He put the note in his pocket, left the house, and replaced the key, no further on than when he had arrived. Intending to show the note to Mrs Shackleton, before handing it in for entry in the murder log, he rode back to Headingley.
Mrs Shackleton was not alone. Rosie was waiting with her. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, drinking Camp coffee.
Sykes passed Deirdre’s note to Mrs Shackleton who raised an eyebrow. Sykes knew he should not have gone haring off on his own.
‘Where were you?’ Rosie asked. ‘Alfred’s son cycled across from Chapeltown with a message. He said to tell you it was for Paul Sheridan and you’d understand. Paul Sheridan has to speak to his solicitor. That’s the message.’
‘I know what it’s about,’ Sykes said. ‘It’s work.’ He shot a quick glance at Mrs Shackleton, hoping for moral support. She appeared to be totally engrossed, reading the label on the Camp Coffee bottle.
Rosie had a right to be put out. He had hardly been home for more than a couple of hours since this business started.
‘What’s it all about, Jim?’
Sykes took a deep breath. ‘It’s to do with acting as a special constable. I adopted a nom-de-plume. It’s all hush-hush, Rosie, but I might have to go to Scarborough. We’ll go back home now and I’ll pick up my shaving gear.’
‘Why? Are you stopping the night there?’
Two hours later, Sykes was on the train. His small valise in the luggage rack contained hairbrush, comb, shaving gear and a clean shirt.
When the train pulled into York, he hardly dared look about the platform in case he saw Deirdre Fitzpatrick.
Everything fitted. He was to meet the woman in the Peasholm café. She would be slim, in her twenties, wearing a green hat, and carrying a copy of The Lady. He imagined her dark hair, spilling down from her hat as it had when he looked at her through opera glasses when she sat in the stalls at the Grand Theatre.
When he alighted at Scarborough station, Sykes risked glancing at the other passengers, to see if Deirdre was among them. She was not. Suitcase in one hand, The Times in the other, he set off walking the mile or so to the café on the corner of Peasholm Gap and the Promenade.
When he saw her, he must put her at her ease, tell her not to be afraid, gain her confidence. He would explain that she must come back to Leeds with him, and answer a few questions. He tried to imagine her state of mind, having lived six years in a marriage where she did not share a room, never mind a bed, and something told him that it was not because Fitzpatrick snored. The compositor could read upside down and inside out; he worshipped his Roman Catholic God and virgins, but not his own good-looking wife. Sykes would have to tell her that Fitzpatrick was dead. She was free. The man must have something put by, an insurance policy. Deirdre would be her own woman. When would he tell her, now, or later?
There it was, the café on the corner.
Sykes checked his watch. Three minutes to go. Would she be early, late, or on time? With a minute to go, he entered the café, chose a table and sat down, laying his copy of The Times on the table.
The waitress delivered a tray of tea to people seated by the window. She returned to the counter. I’ll wait, Sykes thought, and order when Deirdre comes. He had begun to call her Deirdre now, no longer Mrs Fitzpatrick.
At a minute past three, the clapper clanged as the door opened. A tall slender woman in green entered, carrying a bulky tapestry bag and a copy of The Lady.
She crossed to his table, glanced at the newspaper, and said cheerfully, ‘Hello. It’s Mr Sheridan isn’t it?’
Her long blonde fringe reached her narrow painted eyebrows.
On Friday night, Marcus arrived at my front door just as I was opening it to go out.
‘Marcus, what a surprise!’
‘Sorry.’ He looked subdued. ‘I shouldn’t have turned up out of the blue. Just needed to stop for a while and clear my head.’
I noticed his car and driver, parked in the street.
‘So are you giving yourself an hour or two’s rest and recreation?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Come round to the Chemic with me, if you don’t mind having a drink with your special constable, Mr Sykes.’
He hesitated. I half expected that he would resist fraternising with the troops. He caught my look and laughed. ‘Why not?’
‘The air will do you good. Tell the driver it’s on Johnston Street.’
If I needed confirmation from Marcus that he is never off duty, it came as we rounded the corner, into Headingley Lane. He asked me if I have ever been on one of Lord Fotheringham’s shoots. When I admitted that I had, years ago, he was full of questions about the guns, who I know and what I know.
In the Chemic, the four of us claimed a corner of the snug, Rosie and me on the bench by the wall, Sykes and Marcus on buffets. We played a couple of good-natured games of dominoes, against the background banter of darts players, before giving up seats to the regulars, a knot of pipe-smoking, snuff-taking old fellows who take the dominoes a lot more seriously than we do.
We moved to a table vacated by a group of young chaps who like to crawl pub to pub and were setting off for the White Rose.
In spite of winning at dominoes, Sykes was down in the mouth. It pleased me that Marcus took the trouble to reassure Sykes. Yes, he had failed to find his quarry in Scarborough. But he did give the lie to a certain gentleman’s claim that he never would supply a co-respondent. The solicitor had some difficult questions to answer.
I felt sorry for Rosie
who had cottoned on that her husband had been to Scarborough on a wild-goose chase, but knew no details. She sipped her port. ‘I hope you got some sand between your toes, Jim.’
Sykes stubbed his cigarette into the full ashtray. ‘The tide was in.’
‘Well don’t tell the kids you went, or they’ll be asking for their stick of rock.’
Marcus hailed the waiter and ordered one more round as the landlord called last orders.
Rosie suddenly said, ‘I do read the papers. I can guess what you’re all not saying.’
Sykes gave her a warning nudge. ‘Not the time or place, love.’
There was an awkward lull in the conversation. I obligingly changed the subject and talked about HMS Pinafore.
The landlord called, Time gentlemen please, and we finished our drinks. Marcus glanced at his watch. I guessed he would not be laying his head on a pillow anytime soon.
To calls of goodnight, we left the pub. Sykes and Rosie set off up Johnston Street. Marcus’s driver had returned, and was parked outside.
Marcus said, ‘Get in, Kate. We’ll give you a ride home.’
But it was a pleasant evening, and I wanted some air after the fug of the pub. ‘I’m going to walk.’
The streets were filling up as the pubs emptied. Walking among whistling, singing merrymakers might help my brain function. Something was niggling at me, something I had missed, and I could not quite bring the thought into focus. It was to do with Mrs Hartigan’s funeral.
Marcus was not to be put off. ‘I’ll walk with you.’
He spoke to the driver, and then took my arm. ‘The driver will follow us round. I wanted a word with you.’
‘I thought so. You didn’t expect Rosie to come along tonight?’
He laughed. ‘No. I imagined it would be just you and Sykes. Shows what I know about how normal people spend their Friday nights.’
‘She’d be discreet.’
‘I’m sure. But there are things I can’t say.’
‘But what can you say to me? Or did you just come for the dominoes?’
Marcus slowed his pace. ‘The solicitor, Lansbury, that was a good piece of work, Kate. I left him in a room at CID HQ, telling him I’d be back to continue questioning him. He admits that he supplied co-respondents for the Barnard and Runcie divorce cases. He could hardly wriggle out of that when presented with Sykes’s evidence. But he denies knowing the whereabouts of Deirdre Fitzpatrick.’
‘What is his attitude, to being found out?’
‘He tried to bluff a little at first, but underneath he is afraid. It’s left me wondering whether someone else had found out what he does and was blackmailing him.’
I thought for a moment. ‘If he is being bled for money, then that would explain why he took the risk of providing a co-respondent to meet Mr Sykes in Scarborough.’
‘I can’t force the man to talk, but I may have to offer him a way out of his predicament, if he’ll tell me the truth.’
‘He must know how serious this is.’
In both directions, people were wending their way home. By the light of the streetlamp, an old man searched the gutter for tab ends.
‘Have you had confirmation of Mr Fitzpatrick’s cause of death?’
Marcus said, ‘It was a deeply unfortunate accident. The pathologist found no indication of foul play. Mr Fitzpatrick tripped and hit his head.’
‘I feel so sad about the poor man. It’s somehow worse because I found him irritating, and that leaves one feeling guilty about not being kind.’
‘I’m sure you were kind.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
‘Kate, you got to know Fitzpatrick.’
‘A little.’
‘Did he believe that the photographer, Leonard Diamond, was having an affair with his wife?’
His words made me slow my steps. ‘I did not get that impression. Mr Fitzpatrick thought Len Diamond may have known something about Deirdre, where she went, whom she saw. Why do you ask?’
He sighed. ‘This morning, I had a second pathology report on Diamond. He did not take his own life.’
‘I knew it!’
‘Yes you did, and you were right. The first examination of Diamond’s body was too cursory, assumptions were made because of the way he was found. The local men interpreted the disarray in his rooms as his own doing while drunk. The first report seemed to bear that out. With hanging, the rope marks angle towards the knot, which was true in Mr Diamond’s case. But the second pathologist noted horizontal marks, consistent with ligature strangulation.’
‘That’s horrible. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘Sorry. I don’t want to give you nightmares. And I didn’t want to tell you before we went in the Chemic. I know you liked the chap.’
‘I admired him, or his work that is. He was an odd man, always a little reserved about himself, but a gossip about other people.’
A knot of drinkers, reluctant to go home, stood outside the Hyde Park. We manoeuvred our way around them.
‘You think the perpetrator was looking for something?’
‘I do. Kate, you knew Diamond. Can you think of anything he could have had that someone would go to such lengths to find? Did find, for all we know.’
‘Not money. He gambled, and drank, which I didn’t know until my friend Mr Duffield told me.’
‘Duffield?’
‘He’s the librarian on the local paper.’
We turned into my road. ‘I’ll gladly help if I can. I’m desperately sorry about Everett Runcie, naturally, having known him. But in a different way I find Diamond’s death a small tragedy, a loss. He was talented. It seems such a waste.’
‘There is a strong possibility that the same man killed both Runcie and Diamond. But what did those two victims have in common, that’s what I need to know.’
‘They were in the same place at the same time twice this month, once at the shoot, and again on Ebor Day.’
‘And they have Deirdre Fitzpatrick in common, one taking her photograph and the other taking her to his bed.’
‘Yes. With Fitzpatrick dead, the other man most closely connected to her is Hartigan. He is ruthless, Marcus. He ignored his mother and sister for years, and then used a visit to them as a cover to come here and buy liquor.’
Marcus sighed. ‘He’s a man I don’t want let loose on our streets. If I thought he was involved in murder, I’d see him hang. But Hartigan turns out to have an impeccable alibi. After he had a drink with Runcie in the hotel bar, on Friday night, after the lovely Deirdre had retired, he extricated himself and embarked on an all-night card game with two other guests, respectable professional men. We have to rule him out.’
I thought about the incident in New York, when Hartigan had allegedly shot a man on a street car and there were no witnesses. ‘Can you be absolutely sure?’
‘Yes. The waiter, Archie Heppelthwaite, would lie under oath for a half crown, but there were other diners who saw the woman go to her room before Hartigan joined Runcie for a drink. I’ve given Hartigan the all clear to leave for Southampton. The sooner he’s back in the arms of the Statue of Liberty, the better I’ll feel.’
We had reached my gate. Like some young courting couple, we lingered, but not for reasons of courtship.
Marcus said, ‘I’m glad to be able to report to our American cousins that Anthony Hartigan visited his terminally ill mother, arranged her funeral, and returned in mourning to Southampton.’
‘You won’t report his dealings with the Scottish distiller?’
Marcus smiled. ‘Last time I looked on our statute book, we had no laws against dealing in spirits. I have no intention of giving US immigration an excuse to deport him back here as an undesirable alien. New York made him, New York can have him back.’
I had rarely heard Marcus sound so downhearted. ‘You don’t think he’ll try and take his sister back with him?’
‘I’d say there’s no love lost between them, and that she could be a nuisance to him, b
ut I just don’t know. I’m concerned that she knows something and could have come to harm. The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to get to the truth.’
I glanced down the street. Marcus’s driver had turned the corner and was parked under the street lamp.
We said goodnight. Marcus insisted on waiting until I had gone inside, as though some monster might leap from the shadows.
After the noise and smoke of the pub, and the busy streets, the empty house felt peaceful. Sookie came to greet me, asking to go out. I opened the back door. She spotted something and made a dash for it, perhaps a field mouse or a pipistrelle bat. I could not make out what she saw.
And then it came to me that Fitzpatrick had seen something, or more likely someone, when he parted from me in such haste at the cemetery yesterday.
The deckchair was still in the back garden. I sat down and stared into the darkness, remembering the scene at the funeral, and my conversation with Fitzpatrick. He had been telling me about Deirdre, and how she helped him after his mother’s death.
I closed my eyes, to help me recall the scene. He had looked across at the nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and said how good they had been to the people of the Bank. Speech suddenly deserted him, and he left me quickly, which was surprising given that I was the only person at the funeral who spoke to him. Then he had stumbled. Eddie, Deirdre’s childhood sweetheart, had grabbed him, to keep him from falling. But now that I pictured the scene again, I wondered, was Eddie catching him, or stopping him? Where or who would Fitzpatrick have got to if Eddie had not intervened?
Had he swung himself on his crutches in the direction of the family, the neighbours, or the nuns?
Fitzpatrick had been looking at the nuns. All wore black, except one. One nun had worn a brown habit. The lenses of her spectacles had caught the sunlight. She must be some novitiate, I thought.
Across the wall, Sookie prowled. She gave one of her giveaway small meows of frustration. Some prey had eluded her.
And then the wild thought came, and those are always the best thoughts though sometimes far too wild to be true. The nun in brown was Deirdre, with a pair of spectacles to aid her disguise. Eddie had recognised her, and so had Fitzpatrick: the two men who loved her.
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