Death at the Seaside

by Frances Brody

  In vain, Alma tried to recreate the mood of receptiveness, her seeing time as she called it. No use. She stood and stretched her arms. Her fingertips touched the distempered walls. With the door and window shut, the place had grown stuffy and airless but to open the door would be to break the mood, to betray her trust in the beyond and the messengers who guided her.

  She picked up her pack of Tarot cards, but then set them down, unable to phrase a question with sufficient clarity. Afraid that if she tried and failed the spirit of the cards would flee.

  Time to try something else. She picked up her pencil and took paper from her drawer – the discarded first draft of How to make Amusing Objects out of Newspaper – and began to write on the back. The words came quickly. She could barely keep up as they spilled onto the page.

  She shouldn’t stop to read but she did.

  Felicity where are you answer me show me make a picture in your thoughts and let me know you are safe and sound and are you wanting to come home I won’t make you if you don’t want to for God knows at sixteen I never wanted to go home but only to wait to be where I needed to be when fate would prompt the next step and sometimes to keep moving aimlessly but movement was all I never told you about when I sold flags as a girl and instead of standing in one place I walked and walked for miles thinking that the selling of flags depended on my effort on my walking and my energy but I walked somewhere where there were no people to buy flags and yet kept on walking expecting it was only natural to keep on, keep on, and that man who came from nowhere and looked around and saw me and did a bad thing, came right up and did a bad thing and then he bought a flag and walked away and I thought that selling flags was not a good idea not for me that I didn’t have the knack for it. Felicity what is it you have the knack for? Where are you? Talk to me.

  Alma took the pencil in her other hand. She did not want to hear herself. She wanted some other voice. The pencil wrote.

  It’s dark, and cold, am I dead, I don’t think so but am lonely as the dead and all I do is wait for something how much longer perhaps forever.

  This was not Felicity. Someone else was trying to reach her. Was this Walter, after all this time?

  Alma took the pen in her right hand.

  Tell me, tell me who you are, where you are. Show me what you see.

  Alma’s hands trembled. She tried to write, but her right hand shook. She held the pen in her left hand but could not hold it still. She used both hands, one holding the other steady. The words came spidering from the pencil.

  It’s me, Alma. Your husband Walter Turner. Turner turned cold. Turner turned old.

  Every sense of Alma’s being stirred and strained. She could feel her nerve ends tingling. If only there had been a full moon, she would have done better than this poor job. So much of her automatic writing came out as nonsense and some not decipherable, producing only a few lines that mattered.

  There was a great deal of guff before she reached those lines. She had grown sick and tired of messages from the afterlife that lacked sophistication and solidity. She could scream at those messages that told her to take the teapot to the kettle and not the kettle to the teapot. It pained her to learn from the spirits matters concerning the Yukon and the South China Sea, over which she had no control. She could only worry for those involved in landslides and storms.

  The message for her leaped out from the dross. Her errant Turner again, telling her for sure that he was still alive, speaking of himself in the third person.

  Turner expects visitors. One long-awaited, one red-haired, with money on his mind and bad intensions.

  Alma felt glad she did not have to mark her spirit guides, or her other self, whoever was responsible, for spelling. ‘Long-awaited’, that must be Felicity. Someone was taking Felicity to him. What was it they wanted?

  Further down the page – among advice about hemming a pair of trousers, information more fitting for a seamstress than for a fortune-telling mother of a missing daughter, was another line. This was a message direct from Turner.

  Don’t be foolish, Ally Alma. Philips doesn’t want you for yourself. He wants our daughter.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ she said to the walls of the pepper pot where the oil light had begun to flicker as the wick grew low. ‘Where are you? How can you be so cruel, and so wrong? Don’t you know the man is dead?’

  Someone knocked on the door.

  At first, she thought she must have summoned Felicity and that some astral wind had blown her daughter back from a far-off place, or Walter Turner himself had divined that she was once more subject to fainting fits and had whirled into her inner life again, his hypnotic powers undimmed, to set her to rights.

  But then she came back into the here and now. By-laws did not permit use of the pepper pot after daylight hours. The patrolling officer?

  ‘Are you in there?’

  She did not recognise the female voice. Blinking herself back into the world she took the few steps and opened the door. She stared at the woman in black with her shawl over her head and shoulders. ‘I’m not working. It’s after hours.’

  ‘And I’m not here for my fortune telling. I’m Mrs Webb, Hilda’s mother.’ She waited. ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  Alma stood aside and let the woman in. She recognised her now.

  Mrs Webb was tall and broad shouldered, her hair done in a loose wispy bun, her face lined with exposure to wind, weather and hard work evidenced by her rough hands. Alma felt a stab of guilt. It didn’t do for a fortune teller to have work-worn hands and she had cajoled Felicity into scrubbing the laundry and peeling potatoes. Forty-five, Alma thought, as she looked at the woman’s tired eyes. If Mrs Webb had called for a fortune, Alma would have guessed that worry about a child brought her to the pepper pot, or the need to know whether a husband in the afterlife had something to say.

  Mrs Webb’s first words gave no clue to why she was here. ‘This place stinks of paraffin. That lamp won’t do nobody’s chest no good.’

  She was right. Alma opened the window. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  Mrs Webb let her black shawl slide from her head so that it simply covered her shoulders.

  ‘What do you notice, Mrs Turner?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You don’t notice the stench of paraffin. Did you notice your lass was about to run off with my Brendan?’

  Alma felt her shoulders stiffen. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘A little bird told me.’

  Alma motioned Mrs Webb to take a seat before lowering herself carefully into the basket-weave chair. ‘Felicity left me a note. It came as a surprise. She didn’t mention anyone else.’

  ‘You got a note. You’re lucky.’

  Alma’s voice sounded strange to herself.

  ‘Where have they gone?’

  ‘You tell me. They must have brass. Did you give Felicity money?’

  Alma would have loved to give her daughter money, to take her again to Lindisfarne, buy her a new dress, take her to tea in Botham’s so that she was the one eating cakes, not serving them.

  ‘No.’ She hesitated, but there was no point in holding back. ‘Felicity withdrew her savings.’ She hesitated. This felt like a betrayal. ‘She pawned a watch-guard and left me the ticket.’

  The air became suddenly still. Staring at the woman, Alma had the impression that the wind had dropped and the waves paused, considering whether to crash.

  ‘Who did she pawn it with?’

  ‘Mr Philips, and I wish she hadn’t.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Mrs Webb seemed suddenly heavier, so heavy that the floor beneath might give way. They would drop into some dark place below the pier, where dead pirates dance and a lost bell chimes.

  The wind rose again. As a breeze blew through the cabin, a mad thought struck Alma: What if we both fainted, bashed heads, and were found concussed, or dead? That thought frightened her, not because she believed it would come to pass but because there had been long periods in her life when she d
id nothing but anticipate disasters.

  The women looked at each other across the crystal ball. Wouldn’t it be nice, Alma thought, if someone told me and Felicity a fortune and it was good and true and came to pass? Mrs Webb folded her hands. Alma saw the likeness to Hilda. Now she understood Hilda’s real reason for coming to see her earlier, and paying a shilling for a fortune she did not want.

  After a long silence, Mrs Webb spoke. ‘You were walking in the town with Jack Philips, taking tea with him. I saw you together.’

  ‘He paid me some attention.’

  ‘So we are both sorry he is dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We might be the only ones in this town who are sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My Brendan is Jack Philips’s son. Did you find that out?’

  Alma stared at Mrs Webb. Was this true? And why would Mrs Webb tell her?

  She felt slightly dizzy. When she and Jack were seen together, she had been conscious of censorious glances, of clicking tongues. It was one thing to know that Jack had a past, that there were rumours. It was another thing altogether to have this worn-out woman in her old-fashioned clothes telling her that Brendan was fathered by the glowing, wealthy Jack.

  When Alma did not answer, Mrs Webb continued. ‘That’s why Jack takes an interest in Brendan, took an interest I should say. He gave him jobs on the boat he keeps at Sandsend, the Doram.’

  ‘Are you saying that Felicity and your Brendan have gone off in a boat that belonged to Jack?’

  ‘They’ve gone. The boat’s gone.’

  They sat in silence as the lamp began its last flickers with a corresponding increase in stink.

  Mrs Webb spoke first. ‘Your friend, Mrs Shackleton, was out looking for you. Hilda brought her to my house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Hilda guessed.’

  Alma could not think straight. Felicity could not swim. This couldn’t be true. But she thought of the message from Walter Turner who had come through in her automatic writing. Turner turned cold. Turner turned old. It came to Alma on the breeze that blew in from the window and disturbed her sheets of writing that she must tell this woman what she had learned. She anchored the pages with the crystal ball.

  ‘Felicity has gone to find her father.’

  ‘To tell him you were soft on Jack? Did she kill Jack because she thought he’d taken a shine to you?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  Mrs Webb gave her a look that Alma could not read. Was it pity, or scorn?

  ‘Did my lad and your lass take revenge before they left? If they were fool enough for that, they’ll be found, brought back by the coastguard, charged with murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ Alma’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

  ‘Aye, murder. Whether they did it or no. That and stealing a boat. Or was it you, Mrs Turner? Did you do him in because he took you for a fool?’

  Alma’s mouth opened. She shook her head. ‘Why do you say he was murdered?’

  ‘Take your head out of the clouds and think what’s to be done.’

  Alma closed her eyes. She placed her palms flat on the table to steady herself. Why hadn’t Kate told her that Jack was murdered?

  She wanted this woman to go, she willed her to go. But she did not.

  ‘Our two have Jack’s money, and his boat. That’s enough to put a rope around my Brendan’s neck. Your Felicity’s too young to hang but you’d be waving her goodbye.’

  Fifteen

  Near dawn, as the world grew light, Felicity could once more see the shore and felt reassured. Perhaps that’s where the word reassured came from. After a long voyage, a traveller stepped ashore onto dry land.

  The wind had begun to blow. Brendan had turned off the engine. Both wide awake now, they raised the sail.

  They had the sea to themselves with not a vessel in sight.

  ‘We’ll sail on all day.’ Brendan was doing something with the ropes, tightening. ‘We’ll drop anchor tonight and rest. That way we’ll have put a good distance between us and Whitby.’

  Felicity took hard boiled eggs and bread from her supplies. ‘Shouldn’t we go closer inshore?’

  Brendan finished what he was doing with the ropes. He began to peel the shell from his egg. ‘Best not go much closer in. This coast is still mined from war. We’re avoiding danger spots.’

  ‘How do you know where to avoid?’

  ‘Well I don’t, not exactly. We put mines close in, so the Germans couldn’t land. They set mines against us. No one knows where they are.’

  ‘That’s not very clever. We could be blown up.’

  ‘We won’t be.’ He bit into his bread. ‘We should’ve brought salt.’

  Felicity carried two lucky pebbles in her pocket. She handed one to Brendan. ‘You might need this.’

  Sixteen

  ‘This way, Mrs Shackleton.’ Sergeant Garvin politely opened the door to the police station and ushered me in.

  Under other circumstances, Whitby police station might be a rather pleasant place. The entrance room looked freshly painted. On a large notice board was a map showing the Whitby division of the North Riding Constabulary with its stations at Grosmont, Hinderwell, Leaholm, Lythe, Robin Hood’s Bay and Staithes. North of these stations was marked the Northallerton headquarters. There were posters of a couple of villains, a warning regarding an outbreak of swine fever and a notice showing the times of tides.

  Sergeant Garvin politely suggested I leave my bag and coat with the constable at the desk. He then showed me to an interview room and after asking did I take sugar in my tea, left me there for a good long while. Slowly it began it dawn on me that my first impression, when he so courteously accused me of signalling to boats and – almost as an afterthought – of murder, he meant it. If his suspicion were not so absurd, it might be amusing.

  For a station in a town where a murder had taken place, there was a distinct lack of activity, an air of nighttime quiet. But then, Whitby is at the end of the line, and not so very many hours had passed since I had found the jeweller’s body.

  After a short time that was long enough for him to have made several telephone calls, the sergeant returned. He was followed by a constable who brought two mugs of tea, left and then came back carrying my satchel. The sergeant and I faced each other across a square unvarnished table that was scorch-marked where people had set down their cigarettes. Rings from the bottoms of mugs made an abstract pattern across the surface.

  His manner was so pleasant and friendly that it almost belied the fact that he had taken my satchel for examination and apologised for the fact that he might have to detain me.

  ‘I’m sorry we don’t have china cups,’ he said politely as he took out his notebook and pencil.

  ‘That’s quite all right, officer.’

  ‘I have just telephoned to the coastguard. They are always interested if people appear to be signalling, especially at night.’

  ‘I wasn’t signalling.’

  ‘Of course not, but we can’t be too careful, you see.’ He tasted his tea, pulled a face, picked up a spoon and began to stir with a slow, careful movement. ‘I have your details from earlier, your name, hotel, and the address on your card. When we have finished our tea, you might give me your statement.’

  ‘It’s very late, sergeant. May we do this tomorrow?’

  ‘I took the liberty of looking in your satchel.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes.’ He removed the spoon and took a sip from his mug. ‘Not that I am well-acquainted with ladies’ bags, but the contents of yours seem rather unusual.’

  ‘I suppose one might think that.’

  ‘If we were at war, which thankfully we are not, then some of those items would arouse suspicion. Camera, torch, knife, hip flask, unauthorised police whistle, set of keys.’ He reached into my satchel and placed each of the items on the table. ‘You might explain why these items rather than a purse, comb and powder compact.’ We both stared at the af
orementioned items.

  ‘I was climbing to the abbey in the dark. A powder compact would not be of much use.’

  ‘Nor would a camera.’ He spoke thoughtfully. I had the impression that he was rather pleased to have company on what otherwise might have been a dull evening. ‘Perhaps you might start at the beginning and tell me why you came to Whitby.’

  The tea was strong, almost red. ‘I’m here on holiday.’

  He listened while I explained my fondness for Whitby, my schoolgirl friendship with Alma Turner, née Bartholomew.

  ‘And did you know her husband, Walter Turner?’

  ‘I did.’ Remembering Alma’s request that I allay any suspicions he may have about Turner’s bigamy, I added, ‘I was their bridesmaid and a witness. I signed the register when they married in York.’ That was probably overplaying my part, but at least I had done my best for Alma.

  ‘And have you seen Mr Turner in recent times?’

  ‘No.’ I decided against enlarging on that simple answer.

  ‘Where did you set out from this morning?’

  ‘I did tell you earlier, officer. From Leeds.’

  ‘And have you recently visited other places?’

  ‘Such as?’ There must be some purpose to his questioning, other than suggestions for places of interest. Was he considering where to go on holiday?

  ‘You tell me, Mrs Shackleton. Do you get about much?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I do.’ Perhaps he was playing some game, or the events of the day had produced a strange effect in him. I was sufficiently interested to continue the conversation. ‘I was in London recently.’

  ‘London, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How about Northern Scotland, or the inner or outer Hebrides? They can be popular among certain circles at this time of year.’