Henry moved the conversation elsewhere, not sure what to do and wishing he could think of something constructive to say, but the problem occupied his mind as he made his way back to his flat, and by the time he had packed his bag ready for the next day’s journey, he had decided that he should mention the conversation in his reply to Cynthia’s letter. That an elderly lady in his sister’s employ should be afraid of being dispossessed was not something that had ever occurred to Henry. Where did old nannies go to? Did they have savings – he was certain Cynthia would have paid above-average wages – but he had not thought about the bigger problem of being without a permanent home.
He recalled vividly the day he and his sister had left their parents’ house for the last time, after their father had died. He could never bring himself to refer to it as the family home; it never had been that. Their father, a doctor, had rented the house and the landlord had given them an extra week’s grace before they were out on their ears. Cynthia had used the time to sell every stick of furniture, every vase, their mother’s jewellery, even the fire irons, just to provide them with a little travelling money. Their father had, it turned out, been heavily in debt, and it was only the fact that a colleague had purchased his practice that saved them from worse trouble. As it was, the day they closed the front door for the last time and left the key beneath a plant pot on the porch, they possessed the clothes they stood up in, a small bag each, containing spare clothing and a few small possessions, and the money Cynthia had managed to raise.
The night before, she had counted it up and split it into four purses. Her own, their mother’s and a couple of drawstring bags she had rescued from their father’s pharmacy cupboard. One had contained liquorish and the other moth balls.
‘I’m dividing the money into four equal parts,’ she said. ‘Henry, you are to put one part in your coat and another in the bottom of your bag, and for goodness’ sake don’t ever let that bag out of your sight. I’ll do the same. We’re going out into a world we hardly know, and we can’t afford to fall foul of thieves.’ It was a strategy that reminded Henry of Joseph, packing his emergency money in his suitcase and then leaving it behind.
Cynthia had been fifteen and at that point in their lives she had rarely travelled by train; in fact, they had rarely been more than a few miles from where they lived, their father considering money for any kind of travel an extravagance, as far as his children were concerned. They were, indeed, going out into a world they hardly knew. They would catch a train to London and then go in search of their mother’s brother – a brother who hadn’t even attended his sister’s funeral. Cynthia had visited him once, when she was very small, before her mother had died, but she knew that he still owned a bookshop and that he had a storeroom above. She knew this because she and her mother had slept there on their visit. She had an address and that was all.
Henry reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his journal.
Lord alone knows what would have happened to us had our uncle moved away and not told us. As it was, I will always remember the way Cynthia marched into the shop. She’d waited until customers had gone inside. The right kind of customers, she said, in front of whom our uncle was unlikely to make a scene. And we had stood in the cold for a full hour, watching and waiting until a well-dressed couple in their middle years went in. Only then, with what she judged to be appropriate witnesses, did Cynthia decide the time was right.
Henry paused. He could still remember the look on their uncle’s face as Cynthia and Henry had made their entrance. The tears Cynthia had managed to produce from somewhere – certainly not at grief for the death of their father – and the performance she had put on, the upshot of which was not sympathy from their uncle but, as Cynthia had so rightly judged, such expressions of concern from his important customers that within the hour a space in the storeroom was theirs.
That was about all he ever offered. He might have been related to our mother but in temperament he was closer to our father.
He stopped. No, that was not quite fair. Uncle Bart was mean and disinterested but he was never violent, and he had at least given them shelter and coal for the fire, although he’d made it clear that they would have to fend for themselves in all other respects.
Henry glanced about his little flat. It was small – a living room, tiny kitchen, functional bathroom and a bedroom – but it was his space and his sanctuary, and the view of the river made up for many of its shortcomings. He had come to depend upon this bolthole, this place of his own.
He put down his journal and picked up his sister’s letter, read it once more and then took up his pen to reply. It had probably not even occurred to Cynthia that Nanny should be worried, Henry thought, so he would take it upon himself to tell her now, before the intricacies of another murder filled his brain with its mysteries and its vital trivia so that there was little room for anything else.
NINE
Bardney turned out to be a pretty and slightly sprawling village set in a flat landscape.
PC George Young had met them at the station and introduced them to the station master, and they had spoken briefly, agreeing to meet up later when the man was less busy.
It was mid-afternoon. Mickey and Henry were both tired, but also eager to see the body before it became too dark. PC Young had explained that the body was in an old dairy, now disused, on the farm close to where the body had been found. The farmer had agreed to provide oil lamps should they need them and was keen for the body to be gone as it was ‘stinking the place up’.
They walked out of the village with PC Young. He told them it was about a mile to the farm and he filled that mile with chatter, pointing out the geographical features and the history of the place, clearly uncomfortable with these two officers from Scotland Yard and also uncomfortable with the fact that he had not acted sooner.
‘Goes right back to the Domesday Book, so it does, and there was an abbey here until Henry VIII took against it, and now it’s all agricultural land, mostly sugar beet. You see over there?’ He pointed to a large and somewhat unsightly building out of keeping with the rest of the village and set a couple of miles distant. ‘Sugar beet factory, that is. Got its own railway line – joins up with the line just where the river bends. See? The land is all drained by dykes and in winter it floods, so you can see it was a devil to search it.’
‘It took some time for the body to be found,’ Henry said, and there was no mistaking the disapproval and coldness in his voice.
The constable immediately started to make excuses: the big area to search … he had no manpower … there was absolutely no indication that the boy had really gone missing at Bardney to start with.
‘I imagine local farmers could each have been persuaded to check the borders of their own land,’ Mickey said, his tone milder than Henry’s but no less disapproving. ‘You’ve arranged for us to meet the man who did eventually find him?’
‘Of course. I’ve told him I’ll send word as he is needed. He’s a good lad – a bit slow, but a good lad. Works hard. Trained the dog himself.’
Henry was pointedly ignoring the man and Mickey saw no reason to engage in further conversation, so PC Young was left to fill the silence. Everyone was relieved when the dairy came into view, standing some distance from the farmhouse and the barns and obviously long disused. This farm, like many others, had been turned over to the production of sugar beet.
PC Young unlocked the door and swung it open wide, but the smell had already reached them; decomposition was advanced, and Henry was glad that the weather was still cold and the buzz of flies therefore not overwhelming. The situation was also helped by the architecture of the dairy. Quarry tiles on the floor, designed to be wet to cool the place in summer. Barred and unglazed windows at either end so the prevailing wind blew through. It had been built for a specific purpose and had no doubt served that well. It had been a reasonable place to store a body, Henry thought.
Constable Young, glad now that he had something to do, lit the la
mps. It was only a little after four, but dusk was closing in fast, lowering grey skies, threatening rain and ice, the wind blowing chill across the fens. Henry held the lamp high and looked down at the blackened face of Joseph Levy.
By the time they had finished their initial examination, it was too late to walk to the spot where the body had been found. Evening was closing in and so was the weather, and Henry had no wish to get a soaking at the end of what had already been a tiring day. They walked back to Bardney, and this time even the constable was quiet, each man with their own thoughts. When they reached the pub where they would be staying, Henry said, ‘I would like the young man who found the body to come to speak to me as soon as possible.’
Constable Young, glad of an excuse to make his escape, headed off with the message.
‘Here we are,’ Mickey said. ‘And let’s hope they provide decent food.’
Henry wasn’t sure that his appetite had returned. The smell had got into his nostrils and into his lungs, and he knew it would be a while before he freed himself of it. He was glad that their walk had been a good way across the fields and the wind had had a chance to blow the stench from his clothes, although he knew it would still cling. Just now he was more concerned with a bath than a feed.
There were several pubs in Bardney, among them the Anchor down by the river and the Angel on the Wragby road, the Black Horse and the Nags Head, but they were being lodged at the Railway Hotel. Unlike most hostelries bearing that name, it had not been built by the railway but had previously been the Bottle and Glass, and the landlord proudly told them that the pub had been there for at least a hundred and fifty years.
‘Ghastly business,’ he commiserated as Mickey introduced himself and Henry. They had dropped off their bags earlier but not made proper introductions. ‘The poor lad had been missing for a while, I understand?’
‘Sadly, yes,’ Mickey agreed.
Henry didn’t pay much attention to the conversation. Mickey was better at the day-to-day than he ever was, and his head was already filled with what he had seen and with things that in Henry’s mind didn’t make sense but which he hadn’t quite resolved into thought.
‘I’d like to take a bath,’ he said, his first contribution to the conversation.
The landlord looked put out, as though this was an unusual request. Then he recovered himself and nodded. ‘Of course, Inspector. It is Inspector, isn’t it?’
‘Chief Inspector, actually,’ Mickey said, quick on the uptake that such things were important to their host.
‘Chief Inspector. Indeed, sir. You’ll find a bathroom at the end of the corridor,’ he said. ‘And when would you gentlemen like supper?’
They agreed on six o’clock, and asked that when Jed Fox made an appearance, Mickey should be notified. One look at his boss told him that interviewing Jed would be his responsibility alone. Henry’s mind was already elsewhere and he would not be patient with the likes of the farm labourer.
Mickey led the way upstairs. ‘So,’ he said. ‘This is your room, apparently, and I’m just over there, and that down there must be the bathroom.’
Henry nodded absently and said, ‘Those marks on his head – he was hit with something?’
‘Or he hit something when he went into the water. The body’s in a hell of a state; that much is certain, if nothing else.’
‘We should contact Abraham Levy,’ he said. ‘Tell him that we will be sending his nephew home as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘I’ll take care of it later,’ Mickey said.
He paused in the corridor and waited until Henry had entered his room and he heard the thump of his valise drop on to the floor, and then made his way to his own quarters, taking his own suitcase and the murder bag with him.
Mickey had time only to unpack his pyjamas and toiletries before being summoned downstairs with the news that Jed Fox had arrived. He was in the company of PC Young and a rather fine-looking spaniel cross that wagged its tail at the sight of Mickey. Mickey generally got on well with children and dogs.
‘Be still, Sally,’ the young man said. He had taken off his cap and stood twisting it between his hands. Mickey led Jed and Constable Young to a table in the corner of the bar. The pub was not yet open, but preparations were being made. Mickey would have liked to settle close to the fire, but the landlord was busying himself with unnecessary tidying in that area, clearly eager to overhear what was about to be said.
‘It must have been a shock, finding him like that,’ Mickey said.
Jed nodded. ‘It were Sal,’ he said. ‘Smelt him out, went chasing off and then started barking, so I knew summat was wrong. He were lying half in, half out the water. We ’ad floods round about and couldn’t even walk in that there field up to Sunday. So we’d not been up there. But boss said I could go out rabbiting that morning. It’s slack work, this time o’ year, when the ground gets sodden, like; we can’t work the land when it’s that wet.’
‘So, you’d been out shooting rabbits. I like a rabbit pie,’ Mickey told him.
Jed nodded in return. ‘Missus wanted a couple for the pot. Boss likes to keep to the old ways and there’s always a stew on the go for anyone coming in at odd times. Bread, too,’ he added.
Mickey didn’t fully understand but gathered this was very important.
‘And he said if I got another brace, I could take them to old Jenny. She’s a widow woman, on her own, like. I was on my way there when Sal sniffed out the body. She’s got a good nose on ’er, that dog.’
Sally looked expectantly, and Mickey extended a hand for her to sniff and then stroked the soft ears. ‘She’s a fine-looking animal,’ he agreed. ‘What’s she crossed with?’
Jed shrugged. ‘Her mum weren’t all that particular,’ he said. ‘But she had a litter of six and boss let me pick one.’
‘So, when you found the body, what did you do next?’
It seemed that Jed was well practised in his story now. He told Mickey how he had called off the dog and gone racing back to the farm to get help. How he and the farmer and the stockman had tumbled the body on to a tarpaulin and dragged it back across the sodden fields and put it in the old dairy, and the constable had locked it inside and no one had disturbed it since.
By the time he had finished, the pub had opened for the evening, and Mickey felt obliged to buy the young man and the constable a beer. He would wait until Henry was down before ordering his own. Having arranged for Jed to take them out the following morning to the place where he had found the body, he went up and knocked on Henry’s door and told him that food would soon be ready.
‘Come in.’
Mickey opened the door. Henry was seated in a chair by the window. He had been writing in his book and his pen was poised to continue. Mickey closed the door quietly and sat down on the bed, waiting until Henry finished his sentence. He knew this was his boss’s way of thinking. He’d found it strange at first, but as their working relationship expanded into friendship, he had come to understand that Henry needed to pin things to the page in order to really see the interrelationships.
Henry set the book aside and recapped his pen, screwing the top gently back in place.
‘Food is almost ready for us and I’m ready for a pint. I’ve delayed until you came down, just to savour the moment.’
Henry laughed. ‘And what did you get out of our farm worker?’
‘That he’s told his story so often it’s now become legend. He is now enjoying his pint, along with our Constable Young, and will take us out to where he found the body tomorrow morning. I’ve just telephoned to Scotland Yard and made arrangements for the body to be moved once we’ve taken another look first thing in the morning. The ambulance should be coming for it around midday. I’ve told them to bring rubber liners and a lead-lined coffin. I think they’ll be taking it to Saint Mary’s.’
‘And Abraham Levy?’
‘When I phoned central office I asked that our news be passed on. That his nephew would soon be on his way back t
o London and that we’ll be in touch. It’s the best we can do at the moment.’
Henry nodded again. ‘No clear cause of death,’ he said. ‘Although I’d say the body had been in water for some time, I don’t believe it was dumped there. After three weeks, skin would be sloughing and I’d be expecting more bloating. It just doesn’t look as though the right foot has spent all this time in water.’
‘I agree,’ Mickey told him. ‘According to Jed Fox, the field’s been at least ankle-deep in water – not severely flooded, but enough possibly to drag a body down into the dyke as the flood receded?’ He shrugged. ‘No, that’s not right either. If I’m to make a guess, and I’m reluctant to do so without seeing the scene, then I would pass judgement that the body was dumped close to the water, perhaps in reeds or bushes and perhaps tumbled half in and half out of the water later on, as the mud shifted or the water receded.’
‘Until we inspect the scene, it’s impossible to speculate,’ Henry agreed. ‘I’m reminded of the case last year, out on the mud flats in Kent – all that shifting ground and network of little creeks.’
‘But from what we saw from the train, we won’t quite find that here. This is all agricultural land – reclaimed, yes, but of a different order. There are no inlets here, only the straight dykes cut between the fields as far as I can tell. Looked like some of them might even be navigable – I saw small boats out.’
‘Well, as always, we will need local knowledge. What do you make of our Constable Young?’
‘Now there’s a man who knows he’s done a bad job and is doing his best to make up for it,’ Mickey laughed. ‘He was convinced that if a body did turn up, it wouldn’t be on his ground; now that it has, he finds himself embarrassed.’
‘And so he bloody should be.’ Henry stood and put his notebook and pen back into his jacket pocket.
‘Go easy on him,’ Mickey told his friend. ‘He’s one man managing a big area, most likely alone and with very little support. Very little intelligence too, from what I’ve seen, but nevertheless he is going to be a respected member of the community and we need him on side if we are to learn anything useful.’
The Clockmaker Page 6