Death at the Seaside

by Frances Brody

  ‘No I would not.’

  ‘Of course not. How insensitive of me.’

  ‘What is a twalk?’ Immediately I regretted my question because of a sudden eagerness in Cricklethorpe’s glance.

  ‘Do join our merry band. You might even step in and take Felicity’s part.’ He checked his watch. ‘There is time for a rehearsal.’

  ‘Leave Kate alone, Crickly. She’s going to help me discover what’s going on with that daughter of mine.’

  Cricklethorpe gave up his claim on my services for the mysterious twalking. ‘Oh you couldn’t step in.’ He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair, not at the last moment.’ As if my question had only just penetrated, he gave me his full attention. ‘The twalking is my introduction to Whitby. I meet visitors by the bridge and conduct them on a walk while at the same time talking entertainingly about all they see and much that they do not. They hear tales of whaling, smuggling, storms and tempests, ghostly doings and the arrival of Count Dracula on a stormy night, including the parts that Mr Bram Stoker left out. I take them up the one hundred and ninety-nine steps. In the ruins of the abbey I sing a song from Caedmon, the swineherd monk. My accompanist – which tonight would have been Felicity – says a prayer by St Hilda and hands round the hat.’

  He gave me the look that said one volunteer would be better than ten pressed men.

  I am not sufficiently versatile, intrepid and plucky that on a single day I could drive for miles, find a dead man, cope with a distraught friend and then participate in a twalk, especially the part involving passing round the hat.

  As quickly as I could, I answered his look, ‘You’re absolutely right. That would be entirely beyond me.’

  ‘Then I promise to look out for you as I go about my walk. Feel free to join in at any point.’ Cricklethorpe gave a low bow.

  As he was about to leave, annoyance overcame Alma’s upset. ‘If you tell anyone in the town that she’s gone, I’ll strangle you. And if you see her first, tell her I’m going to strangle her.’ Alma smiled brightly as people sometimes do when their marbles have become wobbly.

  Cricklethorpe was not a man to give up easily. ‘I suppose… might it take your mind off the business if you come on the twalk? I have the part written.’

  ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘Well, if you’re certain. I’ll go.’ He walked away, turning at the door, ‘Good evening then, ladies. You know where the whisky is if you come over faint.’

  When he had gone, Alma moved quickly, standing up, taking out her purse, emptying silver and coppers onto the bed. She began to count sixpences and shillings. ‘That’s fifteen bob.’ She added coppers and threepenny bits. ‘And that’s sixteen and six. I’m going to Skinner Street. What on earth was Jack thinking of? I wonder if Felicity gave him any hint of her plans?’

  Cricklethorpe had not gone. He was hovering by the door. He came back in, producing a watch from his waistcoat. ‘My dear Alma, I keep telling you that little clock of yours loses one hour in every twenty-four. It’s two hours slow. Philips will have shut up shop.’ He went to the mantelpiece and wound the china clock. ‘I’ll buy you a new clock when our ship comes in, but I wouldn’t give my patronage to Jack Philips’s shop if he were the only clock seller in Whitby.’

  ‘How do you know I’m going to Philips’s?’ Alma asked.

  ‘I spotted the pawn ticket while you were swooning. The man is a scoundrel. He should not have advanced money to a sixteen-year-old girl. Make him wait.’ With this, he took his leave. Again. Almost.

  He came back, like the Cheshire cat, appearing and disappearing. ‘Don’t give Jack Philips the satisfaction of seeing your concern. When I come back, we’ll see. I’ll have money from the twalk.’

  We listened as his footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Alma said.

  ‘What does he have against Mr Philips?’

  ‘He had nothing against him, until Jack befriended me and Felicity. Then he became most strange. He hints that Jack has a reputation as a breaker of hearts and he doesn’t want me to be hurt. There are rumours about Jack and a married woman but I won’t let stories of past conquests put me off. At Easter, when Jack gave Felicity and her friend chocolate eggs, Crickly went up there to ask him his intentions. I’ve never been so embarrassed.’

  ‘Mr Cricklethorpe seems such a mild man.’

  ‘Don’t be deceived. He can simmer to boiling point faster than a pan of chip fat.’

  Alma picked up the pawn ticket and put it in her pocket. She scooped the sixpences and shillings into a velvet drawstring bag and added the coppers and threepenny bits. ‘Will you walk with me? I’ll keep an eye out for any chum of Felicity’s who might know something.’ She went to the mantelpiece and lifted the lid on a Rington’s tea jar. ‘I have a ten bob note for just such an emergency, that’s one pound six and six. I’ll pretend to look for the three and six and he’ll let me off.’

  ‘Look, Alma, I should…’

  ‘No, don’t offer, please! I won’t take it. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ She looked in the jar and fingered out a slip of paper. ‘Ah, I don’t have a ten bob note. I have an IOU for ten shillings from Felicity.’

  ‘The jewellers is closed. I passed it earlier.’

  ‘Oh it’s all right. Jack will be at the shop. He’s staying there while his Sandsend house is decorated. The smell of paint gets on his chest. Jack’s an amiable man. Felicity may have confided where she’s going.’

  ‘That’s unlikely, if she hasn’t told you.’

  She began to root through a drawer. ‘I once found half a crown at the back of this drawer.’

  It was unlike Alma to be so single-mindedly determined. There was something manic in her actions, arising from that need to do something. Gently, I touched her shoulders. ‘Come and sit down, Alma. You are going the wrong way about this. Mr Philips won’t be able to help you. Felicity must have a friend that she’s confided in. Who would it be?’

  ‘I don’t know and I’m not even sure exactly where her friends live, except in the vaguest way, across the bridge, up by the church, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Let’s sit down and make a plan. You probably know more than you think. Tell me her friends’ names.’

  She let me lead her to the window seat where we faced each other. ‘I know what I’m doing, Kate. I’m sure Jack will have asked her where she was going. He wouldn’t have just handed her money.’

  ‘There is something I need to tell you regarding Mr Philips.’

  She gave a groan. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve heard tittle-tattle as well, and you only here five minutes. I’m not interested in his supposedly colourful past. He has behaved like a gentleman towards me.’

  ‘It’s not gossip. It’s something much more serious. I shouldn’t really be telling you.’

  Alma stared at me. She put her hand to her heart. ‘What’s happened? Kate, I can’t take any more shocks. Tell me.’

  I took her hand. ‘Calm yourself, take a deep breath.’

  ‘Stop being head girl, Kate. Spit it out, do!’

  ‘I went by Mr Philips’s shop today, to look at a bracelet. Mr Philips is dead.’

  This was shock enough. She stared at me, repeating the word. ‘Dead. Dead?’

  I could not bring myself to speak the word murder. Nor did I mention the injury to his head. I fudged. ‘A doctor will be called. Sergeant Garvin asked me to say nothing until he reports the death.’

  For a long moment she did not speak, and then said, ‘You were a nurse. How did he look?’

  ‘There was no pulse. He… well, he was very obviously dead.’

  ‘Do people go blue when they have a heart attack? I don’t know.’

  ‘He looked pale.’

  ‘Was it a heart attack?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘He has a good colour usually, not quite florid but pink.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Oh God help me, Kate. What else can go wrong? And I never saw this coming.’

 
‘Well why would you?’

  ‘It must have been there… in the ether, on the cards. I’ve been too busy reading other people’s futures. It’s my fault. I should have seen some sign of this.’

  ‘Why would you?’

  ‘Poor Jack, and he was so happy about having his house done out. Not that I saw the house, well not from inside, but I did walk along the beach one day and look through the window. It was perfect. Through every window, it was perfect, and so modern. It’s only twenty years old.’

  ‘So sad.’

  She took out her handkerchief. ‘I hope he didn’t suffer.’

  ‘I think perhaps he didn’t.’ If the jeweller had been killed by a blow to the back of his head, he would have known little about it.

  Now that there was no question of going to the jewellers, she dropped the drawstring bag of money. ‘Oh such a nice man, Kate, and that house. I must admit that I let myself dream.’

  I felt such an upsurge of pity for her. Having made the best of a bad job with Walter, she deserved a little happiness. ‘And why shouldn’t you dream?’

  ‘God forgive me for thinking like this at such a time but the bungalow is so pretty. All the lights work. There’s parquet flooring. It’s on higher ground than the stream and hasn’t ever flooded. He even has a cat, and no mice. Poor Jack.’ She blew her nose.

  It wasn’t the most appropriate remark, but I said it anyway. ‘I wonder what will happen to the cat?’

  ‘He has a cleaner. She’ll look after it for now I suppose. He has no living relatives. I wonder who he remembered in his will?’

  It was a relief to me that Alma’s regret at the passing of Jack Philips seemed mainly concerned with the shattering of her dreams for a romance that would lead to a pretty house nestling beyond the bay at Sandsend. But sad, all the same.

  She stood. ‘I shall have to go into mourning.’ She crossed to her wardrobe. ‘Not deep mourning. Nothing had been settled between us. We were close for such a short time.’ She opened the door of a large wardrobe.

  ‘Not yet, Alma,’ I cautioned. ‘Don’t go marching out in black. I’m supposed to have told no one. The death will probably be announced from pulpits tomorrow.’

  She nodded, and took out a grey dress with black panels. ‘I wonder whether he said any last words to Felicity? Where is she, Kate, and how could she do this to me?’

  ‘She won’t have thought about the effect she’d have, Alma.’ I picked up Felicity’s notes and read them to her again. ‘She’s quite light-hearted about it. Whatever she’s doing, it seems to her the right thing.’

  ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘Whatever it is, she thinks it will take two weeks at least.’

  Alma flung the grey and black dress on the bed. ‘Two weeks! How do you arrive at that conclusion?’

  ‘Does Felicity know I’m here for a fortnight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I re-read the sentence from the note she had written for me. ‘Sorry to miss you after I have wanted you to come for so long but I have to go somewhere and I think you once told me that you have to do a thing when the time is right. I will come and see you in the winter. She doesn’t expect to be back before I go home.’

  ‘That’s madness. She can’t be away from me for two weeks. She’s never been away from me, apart from her visits to you.’

  ‘And she’ll send a postcard. That’s the kind of thing you say when you’re going on holiday. Has Felicity mentioned anywhere she’d like to visit?’

  ‘We went to Lindisfarne, and I know she’d like to go back. But she wouldn’t do that without telling me.’

  ‘Is she courting?’

  ‘Not really. She goes dancing. She and her partner won the spot prize last week at the Spa ballroom. She’s friends with girls who have brothers, that kind of thing.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  That was the question that made Alma cry. ‘I should have spotted this coming.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. She’s almost an adult.’

  ‘You’re right and I can’t keep track of her these days, what with her changing jobs, moping in winter when there’s no work, out all hours in summer.’

  ‘So when did you last see her?’

  ‘This is terrible. I’m not even sure. Not last night. I went to bed early, and she was gone this morning. So she could have left either last night or early this morning.’

  ‘If she sends you a postcard straight away, you’ll have it tomorrow.’ I wanted her to be hopeful. But we talked in circles, as one does when something like this happens.

  ‘If I did report her missing, it would be to Sergeant Garvin. Then it would all come up again, his sly questions about her father.’

  ‘Perhaps the sergeant is just curious. There’s no reason for him to know about the bigamy, is there?’

  ‘I don’t know. People don’t forget Walter Turner. He made a bit of a name for himself, buying the house that slid into the sea, and then joining in with Cricklethorpe to buy this haunted hall. Walter wasn’t in Whitby long but he managed to cut a figure, and then make a fuss about how he would love to stay but needed a warmer climate, and how he was going to send for me and Felicity.’

  ‘That’s it, Alma. She’s gone to find her father.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Was he going to send for you? Did he send for you?’

  ‘Of course not. He had his countess by then. The sending for us nonsense was so that he would be thought well of.’ Now that she had given up on the idea of redeeming the watch-guard from Philips’s jewellers, she dropped the coins into the Rington’s tea jar.

  ‘Do you know what, Alma?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Cricklethorpe is bound to know where Walter Turner is. If they knew each other well enough to go in on this house together, surely they at least kept in touch.’

  She paused for a moment and then went back to sit in the window seat. ‘I suppose Crickly might know. I haven’t kept track of Walter since he went to Madeira.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I don’t care where Walter has fetched up. I just want Felicity to come back.’

  ‘Has she spoken about her father recently?’

  ‘No. She hardly remembers him. She never speaks of him, not any more.’

  ‘Perhaps because she believes you’re still angry with Walter.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were.’

  ‘Not angry, no, just… exceedingly annoyed about my own predicament.’ She bit her lip. With what seemed an immense effort, Alma pushed herself up from her seat.

  ‘I’m going to take a look around Felicity’s room, see if I can find any clue as to where she’s gone, but first let’s go find Crickly’s whisky.’

  ‘Where does he keep it?’

  ‘There’s some in the kitchen cupboard. Come down with me. I hate it when this house is empty.’

  She did her bashing on the door to send the mice scuttling before we went into the kitchen. There was no whisky in the kitchen cupboard. Alma went out to the yard and came back with a bottle of malt. She took a glass from the cupboard. ‘Kate?’

  ‘Not for me.’

  She poured herself a generous drink. ‘Now to see what clues Felicity may have left behind. I never thought I’d be asking you to help me with this.’

  In Felicity’s room, the chocolate box full of postcards from Walter Turner was in full view, on the chest of drawers. Alma looked through them and handed several to me. They were from Madeira, Portugal, Boston, South Africa and Dublin. I checked the postmarks and put the cards in date order. The most recent was from Dublin but it was two years old.

  ‘He sent postcards frequently up to two years ago. Do you know if he’s still in Dublin?’

  ‘She stopped showing the postcards to me. She was always first to pick up the post.’ Alma shook her head emphatically. ‘Surely she wouldn’t go to Walter when he never comes to us?’ She opened a drawer and took out a bank book. ‘She had more m
oney than I thought, and she’s withdrawn almost all of it.’

  ‘Alma, perhaps you should report her missing.’

  ‘No! Even if we’re right, if she’s gone to him, he’ll have the decency to let me know and see her back safely. He’s not a wicked man, Kate, just… well, just Walter.’

  ‘So are you just going to wait and see – wait for the promised postcard?’ Felicity has a good head on her shoulders and at sixteen is bound to believe she knows everything. That was what worried me.

  Alma put the bank book back in the drawer. ‘I can’t go running to the police.’

  ‘Why not? Do you have a better idea?’ Although even as I asked I thought it unlikely there would be spare manpower to hunt for Felicity alongside a murder enquiry.

  ‘We don’t know for sure she has gone to him.’ Alma sighed. ‘You’ll think this is silly.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I’m going to my pepper pot. There’s a powerful bond between me and Felicity. I intend to try and contact her, or at the very least channel her whereabouts.’

  ‘Alma, that’s all well and good but I would prefer it if we had an address for Walter. I wonder if she’s taken the latest postcard with her? You go to your pepper pot and channel. I’ll borrow her photograph and make enquiries at the railway station.’

  ‘No! All Whitby would be talking about her. Let me do this my way.’

  Ten

  Alma and I walked as far as the pier together. She felt confident of her ability to channel awareness of Felicity’s location. She would go to her pepper pot and shut the door, needing to be alone and in the right frame of mind, insisting, ‘I’ll have something to go on if I can just sit and be still. The answers will come to me.’

  This struck me as hugely impractical, not to say quite mad, but I reluctantly gave in. It may be that Alma was relying on her subconscious. She could be underhand, but she had a fragile side to her. Perhaps she could only take in so much. The thought of Felicity going away without a word would take time to absorb, as would the dashing of her romantic hopes after the death of Jack Philips.