Consequently, her liberation in the late spring of 1945 was followed by her almost immediate arrest by the British, and then there were a few months of confinement, no less grey, though better catered for, than her internment by the Germans. Clearly mere brewers were not powerful enough to engineer her immediate release, but when it came to having cigarettes, novels, periodicals, a radio and even a sewing-machine delivered to her cell, it seemed she only had to ask. And then, one unexpected morning, she was taken before the Camp Commandant and told that no action was going to be taken against her.
Freedom was something to which she could not adjust herself at first. She wavered before decision of any kind. The CO assumed that she would be ecstatic at the prospect of being flown to the UK from the nearest military airstrip that same afternoon. But if there was one thing about which she was determined, it was that she was not returning to the Lowther fold, not ever. What she wanted was to go somewhere quiet, and spacious, and empty—where she could go for a country walk, hear a bird sing—and cry. She told the Commandant she wanted to go back to Gheel. There were villagers there who had been good to her. She had possessions there, which somebody might still be looking after for her. The Commandant looked at her as if he were beginning to believe that there must have been good grounds for sending her to Gheel in the first place. His sphere of experience did not tell him what facilities existed for a British civilian to travel independently to Belgium. He sent her over to the offices of the Control Commission.
And that was where she fell in love—not for the first time in her life, but this time leading to marriage not long after the first encounter. She was now thirty and her boyfriend was an established British civil servant called Cater—a messenger, an opener of doors, a deliverer of files, and a pilot along corridors. When he found her, dazed and lost in one of the more bewildering of his corridors, Cater was courteous and kind to her. Throughout their life together, Cater was never anything but courteous and kind to her. He set her on a pedestal that elevated her far out of his own world. Cater was one of those who gained satisfaction from being of service—a handy quality in a civil service messenger. And when service transfers sent him to deliver files and open doors in Prague and Budapest, Beatrice moved with him within observing distance of the corps diplomatique.
Cater had died ten years ago. Four years ago she had come to Upper Marldale to set up her establishment as a sculptress.
“And you are suggesting,” the man from the Courier asked, “that what has happened to Mrs. Cater has its roots in something thirty-odd years old?”
“I am not suggesting anything. It is not my role to come to conclusions. I am not an investigator. Our investigator has been very patient with me for the last half-hour.”
She extended an arm in a leg-of-mutton sleeve to present Mosley with the floor.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mosley said. “I have an appointment for a press conference with you all in the Crook at nine o’clock. It is already half past. I apologize.”
“They won’t be closed yet,” someone muttered.
“Indeed they won’t. In fact I sometimes wonder if the Crook is not trying to beat the record of the London Windmill Theatre. But will it suffice for now if I just tell you that I am in possession of a vital clue, and that I hope to make an interesting announcement in the not-too-distant future?”
He hung behind the exodus of journalists to speak to Beamish.
“Beamish, go down at once to Lower Marldale and do one of your training-course searches on the bedroom that the punks occupied on the night Mrs. Cater was killed.”
“Sir.”
Beamish did a half-turn on his heel, then half-turned back.
“Am I looking for anything in particular, sir?”
“I’d hate to prejudice you by putting ideas into your head, Sergeant. Though I’d prefer to hope that they’re there already.”
“Sir?”
“Look for any evidence that the punks weren’t punks. And that two of them didn’t spend the night there.”
Then Mosley hurried after the column of the press and fetched up alongside the young woman from the Guardian.
“I take it that you’re going to the Crook, miss?”
“Do you know of anywhere else to go?”
“When you get there, look for a retired Major. I don’t think you’ll miss him. Sort of fire-eater who was probably a glorified storeman two hundred and fifty miles behind the line.”
“I think I’ve noticed him already.”
“Tell him that I’ve slipped up to his cottage to have a chat with his wife.”
Chapter Fifteen
Despite the absence of street lighting, it was possible to diagnose a good deal of the late-evening activity of Upper Marldale. Irregular triangles of curtain-filtered light fell across the uneven pavements and here and there a socially minded villager, perhaps expecting a visitor, had provided an electric bulb over his door, so that the facia of the Craft Shop was legible and even the front elevation of the Community Centre could be made out by those who already knew it was there. The hospitable inn sign of the Crook cast its invitation generously beyond its own forecourt, but by far the most prolific source of illumination during the half-hour after the meeting in Miss Bladon’s house was the procession of journalists’ headlamps. Many had now given up hope of using the phones in the Market Square and the pub and were driving off to seek communication from other villages; or in some cases were heading direct to their offices in Manchester, South Yorkshire or the West Riding.
Beamish was aware of peace and darkness settling over him as he drove down the Marl Valley for the second time that day. Here and there the windows of a farmhouse showed up wanly on some improbable flankside site, but for miles at a stretch there was no manifestation of life whatsoever as he edged cautiously round the hairpins. And then he became aware that there were tail-lamps ahead of him, pinpoints of red that rose and fell with the vagaries of the mad road.
Whoever it was in front was driving at a speed that Beamish would not have risked. At one stage the other vehicle got so far ahead that it seemed to have disappeared supernaturally into the night, but a mile later he had a momentary glimpse of its spots of red light as they vanished yet again round the corner of a falling bank. He had lost sight of it once more by the time he had reached Lower Marldale, and was unable to pick out any car, inside or outside the Old Glasshouse compound, that could have been the one he had been following.
Joe Murray: that was the name that Deirdre Harrison had quoted as the one-man reception committee for the punks. Beamish found Joe Murray—and he was the one from whom Mosley had been on the verge of buying a present for his niece. Joe was still at work at one of his benches, turning the stem of what looked to be a standard lamp.
“I’ve been waiting for you to show up again.”
Beamish told him what he wanted to see, and Murray conducted him past several huts. But when he came to the annexe that he wanted, the craftsman held up his arm to restrain the sergeant.
“There’s somebody in there.”
And there was—a torchlight, darting back and forth behind the crudely curtained windows. So Beamish had to go through the melodrama of an approach from cover, and when he finally thrust open the door, he was prepared for anything. Almost anything, that is, except what he actually found: the person on hands and knees in a corner of the cubicle, examining a few loose papers that were strewn there, was Deirdre Harrison.
Chapter Sixteen
It was impossible to look at Mrs. Hindle without wondering how she and the Major could have met, courted and settled down into a married life which each had learned to tolerate. Perhaps her drop-shots at the net had been the perfect complement to his service: though she hardly looked as if she had ever been a Joan Hunter Dunne. And there was little doubt that one of the most salutary features in their union must have been Hindle’s long absences overseas. One wondered what they could possibly ever have found to talk about. Was she a prop and suppor
t to him in his fashioning of walking-sticks? And was he prostrate with admiration for the economy and taste with which she maintained her ragbag?
It was the contents of this ragbag that she had out on the table when Mosley called, and she seemed to think that this in itself provided grounds for shame. She began stuffing bits of material back, spilling some on chairs and on the floor, utterly undoing any sorting out that she had had in progress.
“It’s the Major, you see. He does so dislike my having any work in sight about the house after what he calls Retreat.”
A very nervous woman.
“I’m sorry that the Major’s out. He does so like a glass of beer just now and then. And I think it’s good for a man to meet other men sometimes, don’t you, Inspector?”
“Oh, I dare say you can tell me all I need to know,” Mosley said.
The thought clearly horrified her. To be asked questions! To have to give specific answers—answers with which the Major was bound to disagree when she felt bound to tell him of them afterwards!
“I don’t really think there’s anything about this dreadful business that I can possibly tell you,” she said.
“I’m just trying to pick up a few impressions of the late Mrs. Cater.”
“Well, I don’t see how I can help you in that respect at all. We hardly knew the poor woman.”
“But you must have met her. I would have thought, in a community as small as this you’d have come across her now and then: church, charity functions, coffee mornings—”
“We have our friends, Inspector, and Mrs. Cater had hers—”
“And never the twain shall meet?”
“Mr. Mosley—the last thing on earth which I would wish to appear would be a snob.”
“I’m quite sure that you’re not, Mrs. Hindle.”
“Mrs. Cater was so close to these dreadful people down in Lower Marldale—people on social security—”
“That does not necessarily make them criminals, you know.”
“Oh, dear—have I put my foot in it again? Oh, I do wish William was here.”
Perhaps a life of saying wrong things had left her with the conviction that William was always right. Maybe during their early life in married quarters she had learned by catastrophe to trust his authority on matters of precedence and protocol.
“I wouldn’t expect your husband’s views about Mrs. Cater to be greatly different from your own,” Mosley said.
He heard the key of the latch and the opening of the front door, he heard the sounds of Hindle rapidly changing his shoes for slippers in the hall. So the Guardian reporter had done as he asked and told the Major that he had come here. So the Major must have finished his current drink in record time and left the Crook at a record early hour. Mosley raised his voice so that it carried to the hall.
“I would hardly expect your husband to know Mrs. Cater better than you do, Mrs. Hindle.”
At which instant the Major came noisily into the room. For a moment it looked as if he was going to lose his temper, demand a reason for the intrusion, postulate outraged citizen’s rights, refuse to treat with anyone lower than the Chief. But he caught Mosley’s eye, and Mosley was looking at him with the self-satisfaction of a man who knew where he had been spending some of his nights. Major Hindle disciplined himself. And as an embarrassed cat will wash himself, Major Hindle’s customary withdrawal from an undesired engagement was into jocularity: a forced, false and unimpressive jocularity that he had not the wit to nourish.
“Hullo, hullo, hullo—got a warrant to arrest dear Hilda, have you?”
Mosley smiled at him broadly, as if he were the one man on the globe that he was glad to see again.
“Hardly. Just adding to my impressionistic knowledge of the late Mrs. Cater.”
“Well, I don’t think Hilda will be able to help you much. Not kindred souls at all—thank God!”
“I was just asking Mrs. Hindle whether she thought you knew Beatrice Cater better than she did.”
“Well—I must say that’s an odd point of view. What a curious thing to ask a man’s wife.”
“Is it true, do you think?”
“Why on earth should you think that?”
“Well, it could be the case, now, couldn’t it?”
Hindle stared into Mosley’s face as if to challenge him. But an actual verbal challenge was something to which he dared not rise.
“Well, it certainly isn’t the case, Inspector,” he said, in a crisp tone fully worthy of an officer of field rank.
“But you agree, in theory, that it could be the case?” What had got into Mosley that he kept chewing at this, like a terrier at a rat already dead?
“Really, Mosley, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
And Hindle paused, white-faced, wishing he had not said that. It could be the trigger that would have Mosley spilling the beans: he might be only too ready to say what he was getting at.
“Just asking around, sir, that’s all, really,” Mosley said aimlessly—then came back insidiously into the danger area.
“People talk so in a village.”
“Oh, God—I know that. And I should think in your job you know how little attention to pay to gossip—”
Then at last he grasped the nettle.
“I’ve had enough of your innuendo, Inspector Mosley. I demand to know: who has been talking about me, and what have they been saying?”
“Oh—I’m sure it amounts to nothing, Major.”
Hindle looked at him blank-faced, and then suddenly laughed—a dry, staccato and mirthless laugh. “I suppose it’s because twice in the last month I ran Mrs. Cater to Bradburn in my car.”
He turned to put that matter right with his wife.
“I think I probably forgot to mention it to you, darling. Her car was off the road. It was going to take two or three weeks to get it fit to pass its MoT test. She had calls she wanted to make. Mostly at council offices, I think—you know how many irons she always had in how many fires—”
Mrs. Hindle seemed to have no difficulty in accepting the explanation. But she was looking worried, making twisting movements with her fingers. Perhaps she was fretful about the scene that must follow because she had been caught with her ragbag out after hours.
“That’s the only thing I can think of,” Hindle said.
“I don’t suppose you remember which council offices?”
“I don’t think I ever knew. Oh, she may have said. The woman never stopped talking there and back. One has to develop a defence mechanism. One switches off. One simply learns how not to listen.”
“But I’m sure you have a general idea of what it was all about.”
“I don’t see that it matters.”
“Everything might possibly matter. I’ve learned the hard way that in cases like this, Major Hindle, everything is information.”
“She had some ploy on about a footpath and a field. God!—there must have been people in County Hall who fled at her approach.”
During this interchange, Mrs. Hindle was making vigorous efforts to attract her husband’s attention. He must have known this, but obstinately avoided looking her way. Mosley came to her rescue.
“Did you want to say something, Mrs. Hindle?”
“Oh—I don’t think I ought to put my oar in—really—”
In front of a stranger, Hindle had to be courteous to her.
“No, darling—if there’s something that you think might be helpful—”
“No. It was nothing.”
“I think it was something,” Mosley said, with a firmness that he usually seemed to keep in reserve, and that was difficult to withstand when he did bring it out. Mrs. Hindle found it impossible to withstand. Now there were tears in her eyes.
“What is it, darling?”
“Oh, William—I do wish—”
“What do you wish, darling?”
“Oh, I know I’m speaking out of turn. But I do wish you’d tell Inspector Mosley everything. It’s bound to come out s
ooner or later.”
“I’m sure everything’s going to come out sooner or later. But neither Inspector Mosley nor I has the foggiest idea what you are talking about, my dear.”
“I mean the camp, William.”
“The camp?”
“In Germany.”
“Oh, that—”
Hindle produced his jolly laugh again.
“How one’s wife does love to protect one. Didn’t mention this to you, Mosley—didn’t want to complicate matters at this stage with irrelevancies from the past. Would have got round to telling you before long. You see, I met Mrs. Cater years ago. End of the war. I was Commanding Officer of a transit camp for civilian internees: sort of job they gave a man when his battalion broke up. Mrs. Cater—Trixie Lowther as she was in those days—was one of my clients. Not that I had much to do with her: routine administration, until one day I had the pleasure of informing her that they were not going to proceed against her. Sheer coincidence that she turned up in Marldale. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial thingummy.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Bugger it!”
Deirdre Harrison unbent from her examination of grubby papers on the floor.
“Just my sodding luck!”
“What are you doing here?” Sergeant Beamish asked her.
“Same as you are. Trying to find out who spent the bloody night here.”
“Except that I’m entitled to be here, and you’re going to have to do some very fast talking in the next minute or two.”
“Oh, Christ!” she said. “I would have to run into your bloody type.”
“Keep on talking, Miss Harrison. I’ll give you two minutes to come up with something credible.”
“I just wanted to know who spent the night here.”
“You know someone who might have done, I take it?”
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