‘This wardrobe would take some replacing, that’s true.’
Was I right, I wondered? Had Mr Cricklethorpe and his partner in contraband, Walter Turner, made a great deal of money? What kind of whisky was he moving from the yard that night when I called with Hilda? Perhaps the source of the whisky would lead to the mysterious Walter Turner.
‘This whisky I’m to have, what’s its provenance?’
There was a long pause before he answered. Would he trust me? Did he know what I was really asking? He watched as I adjusted a red dress.
‘The distillery is in Elgin.’
‘Then I’m sure it will be excellent.’ I let the moment pass and turned my attention to the dresses, adjusting a gown on a padded hanger. ‘This is stunning.’ It was made of scarlet satin, studded with rubies.
‘It’s one of my walk-down gowns for the wedding finale.’
‘Pantomimes are so reliable. And what fine rubies! Don’t let Chief Inspector Charles take a look at these, Mr Cricklethorpe.’
Cricklethorpe gave me a cautious look, and rubbed his chin. ‘Want them for himself, would he?’
‘He’s a most discerning detective, just back from America and keen to make his mark. Go see him, and then he won’t need to come here.’
These were not paste jewels, I felt sure of it.
Was it Jack Philips who had supplied the gems and paid the money into his own account so that there would be no suspicion about the proceeds of contraband goods?
Cricklethorpe was no one’s fool. He was looking at me, his eyes narrowed. ‘I might just go and see your chief inspector.’
‘Good.’ I smiled. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘I thought you might be.’
‘Which was the painting that you wouldn’t sell to Mr Philips?’
He was relieved to have a change of topic. ‘It’s over there. The Wreck of the Rohilla. She sank in 1914.’
There were paintings on the far wall that I had not paid much attention to. I went across to look and stood a few feet from the painting of the sinking of the hospital ship Rohilla.
The broke-back vessel, tossed onto its side in the stormy sea, seemed close enough to touch. Tiny figures clung to the deck side. Its mast pointed accusingly at the lowering clouds and mountainous waves.
It was so finely executed that looking at it made me shiver. ‘I can’t remember what happened exactly. Did the Rohilla strike a mine?’
‘No. That’s what the captain thought, that he had been grounded by a mine. He was sailing far in to shore so as to avoid mines and hit the scaur, near Saltwick Nab.’
In the foreground, an unlit lighthouse loomed, indifferent to the efforts of those tiny figures carrying swaying lanterns and the men attempting to launch a lifeboat against crashing waves.
‘Why was the lighthouse unlit?’
‘Wartime security.’
‘Of course, I forgot.’
‘One does,’ Cricklethorpe said. ‘The ship was so close, only a mile off shore. Some took their chance, jumped ship and swam. The lifeboats couldn’t be launched in that tempest. The worst thing for the lifeboat crew was to be helpless in the face of such a tragedy. They wouldn’t and couldn’t give up. The rescue attempts lasted three days.’
‘There are men walking out into the sea.’
‘Some from the ship were drawn to safety. Others met their maker over those three days. More than eighty drowned.’
‘Yet it’s so close.’
‘That was the worst part for the Whitby men, being unable to reach the ship. There were lifeboats from all along the coast but no chance of getting out of the harbour from seaward. With no motorboats, all depended on the power of oars. There was an attempt to launch the lifeboat from below the East Cliff where the rocks are treacherous. The boat was damaged, but they rowed on, making two trips, and saved thirty-five lives. Out of two hundred and twenty-nine souls on board, one hundred and forty-six were saved. But it’s the lost ones, those who perished we mourn. I salute the brave folk of Whitby who did more than would be thought humanly possible. Some of those heroic chaps who went to the rescue are hard-pressed to feed their families now. So if I can do a little bit of good for this place and the people in it, I will.’
I admired the cheek and boldness of Percival Cricklethorpe. He regarded his illicit trading, in part, as a service to the community.
It would have been tactless for me to ask if he thought some little bit of good included despatching Philips to an early grave. What did Cricklethorpe really hold against Jack Philips that he refused to sell him a painting? Cricklethorpe’s story of the Rohilla disaster touched me deeply. ‘It’s a fine painting. I’m not surprised you wouldn’t part with it.’
‘I wouldn’t, but especially not to him.’
‘Why especially would you not sell to Mr Philips?’
‘I had previously sold him another painting – Sandsend at dawn.’
‘Did he have a particular reason for wanting this one?’
Cricklethorpe crossed the room and came to stand beside me. He pointed to one of the tiny figures pushing a boat into the water. ‘That’s Webb, Cap’n Webb as we all called him. He was a fine man. Made one mistake and lost his master’s licence. After that he turned to drink, but he’d brought up Brendan like his own son. Everyone could see the likeness to Jack Philips, and there was talk, but it quietened down, out of respect for Cap’n Webb.’
We were silent for a while, continuing to hang the costumes. When we had done, I began to look at the paintings that hung on either side of the window. There were theatrical scenes, and some by a much younger and inexperienced hand. I looked at the signature and was delighted to see that they were by Felicity.
‘How lovely that Felicity paints! She sometimes did little drawings on her thank you notes but I didn’t know she could paint too.’
Cricklethorpe smiled. ‘She likes this room and the costumes. She used to help me sometimes, mixing paint and daubing a bit herself.’
‘Would you say she has talent?’
‘She brims with talent, but not for painting.’
‘This one looks good.’
It was full of colour – a tropical island.
The painting next to it, also Felicity’s, might have been copied from a school atlas. It was a map of the world, painted in a simple style with the British Isles dominating the Earth.
Capital cities were named, and ports. Dotted lines had been added between certain places, criss-crossing between Liverpool and Dublin; Whitby and Bordeaux; Bordeaux and Lisbon; Lisbon and Madeira; Dublin to Belfast; Belfast to points in Scotland and the Inner Hebrides.
I turned to Cricklethorpe. ‘Sergeant Garvin asked me an odd question after he found me on the West Cliff. I was shining my torch, looking for Alma after you’d told me she sometimes walked there.’
‘What did our fossil-collecting sergeant ask?’
‘He wanted to know had I visited Northern Scotland or been to the Hebrides.’
‘A good guess. And had you?’
‘No.’
Cricklethorpe gave a little shake of the head. ‘Well as far as I’m concerned, this painting was just something to help Felicity with her geography you know. Geography was her favourite subject.’
‘And based on her father’s travels?’
‘He did send postcards.’
I looked at Felicity’s painting of the map. ‘Alma said that the postcards from Madeira stopped several years ago.’ I traced the line above the routes, taking care not to touch the painting. ‘He deals in wines and spirits?’
‘How perceptive of you.’
‘Not at all. It’s what these places have in common. Bordeaux, Madeira, Lisbon, for wine and port, Dublin for Jameson’s whiskey, Scotland for malt.’
‘So, Mrs Shackleton, you didn’t want whisky for your assistant. You want to know where Felicity has gone.’
He was right that I did not want whisky for Jim Sykes. If Sykes knew it was contraband, he would choke. ‘You’r
e right, Mr Cricklethorpe, but I would like some for myself. So Felicity has gone to Elgin to find her father?’
‘She was desperate to see him. The longing came over her so strongly. Alma wouldn’t have agreed to her going. With my hints and her postcards, she came up with her plan. She’s a clever girl.’
‘Why now?’
‘Because very soon it will be too late. I’ve had word that Walter doesn’t have long to live.’
Twenty-Three
They were here because that was the story Felicity had told the coastguard, who had a presence here on Lindisfarne.
You have to stick to your story.
When Felicity and her mother came here they had reached the Holy Island by walking across the sand at low tide, along with pilgrims and visitors. There was a sense of excitement – the possibility of being cut off, the feeling that here was somewhere very special. Her mother recited a poem to her as they walked across the causeway. Walter Scott had written about the path. She remembered the words and repeated them to herself.
Dry-shod, o’er sands, twice every day,
The pilgrims to the shrine find way;
Twice every day, the waves efface
Of staves and sandall’d feet the trace.
Approaching by sea seemed strange, as if they had come from a long time ago and the visit must be special and significant. Previously, the lighthouses and the markers had been for other people, for seafarers. Now she was a seafarer, a voyager into a strange land.
There was only one place she wanted to go and that was the church, to pray for her father, to keep him alive by determination and faith. ‘Are you coming with me?’ she asked Brendan.
He shook his head. ‘We’re not here just to stick to the story.’ He looked about. ‘I need to talk to someone who knows this coast.’ He nodded towards a bent old man who was mending a lobster pot, and surrounded by lobster pots. ‘I reckon him.’ With the toe of his boot, Brendan dug a pebble from the sand. ‘Weather’s changing. We need to know a safe harbour if it turns foul.’
She saw that two of the old fishing boats had been turned upside down and made into sheds. ‘We could stop here, like the coastguard officer said.’
Brendan shook his head. ‘I want to get us to Berwick. We’ve time.’
‘Well then, you ask for that old man’s help. I’ll ask for God’s.’
He nodded. ‘I hope we won’t need it.’
Twenty-Four
Cricklethorpe and I were interrupted by a tap on the door. It was Sergeant Garvin, wanting to talk to me. ‘A word in private,’ as he put it.
He led the way along the corridor into the room that held paintings.
‘Would you like to sit down, Mrs Shackleton?’ With a conjuror’s flourish, he indicated the dusty chairs.
‘I’ll stand.’
‘You brought an item of confectionery for Felicity.’
‘Yes. A slab of toffee.’
He gave a surprised look as if I had confessed too easily and too soon. ‘So you admit to having brought toffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘This toffee, when and where did you buy it?’
‘At Dowzells newsagents, shortly after I arrived.’
‘And where is the toffee hammer?’
‘There was no toffee hammer. It wasn’t the kind of toffee that comes with a hammer.’
Sergeant Garvin’s eyes narrowed. ‘We shall be enquiring further into this.’
‘Sergeant, I didn’t kill Mr Philips with a toffee hammer, or any other weapon.’
I decided against assuring him that the small hammer found by the constables searching the bins at the back of the Royal Hotel had nothing to do with me. Only the guilty protest too much. Besides, such a comment might lead to a question of why I was looking through binoculars from a window on a third floor back room at the Royal.
‘Thank you. That will be all for now.’ He held open the door for me.
Was he pondering his next move towards putting a noose around my neck as we parted at the top of the stairs?
I heard him leave the building as I went to find Alma.
The door to her room was wide open. She was sitting in the window, looking out onto Bagdale, a linen tablecloth, etched with flowers and leaves for embroidering, draped across her lap. She looked up from her needle-stabbing and cast a wan smile in my direction. ‘There you are, Kate, I thought you’d abandoned me in my hour of need.’
‘Not yet, but give me five minutes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why didn’t you tell Sergeant Garvin that I knew nothing about Jack Philips’s interest in you, or yours in him, until after I found him dead? I’m his favourite suspect.’
‘He didn’t ask me about that.’ She poked her needle into the cloth. ‘I praised you. I said how protective you were of any girl at school who was upset or in bother.’
‘He’ll make an utter fool of himself if he goes on suspecting me.’
‘He doesn’t suspect you.’ She withdrew her needle from a partially completed silvery leaf. ‘I just happened to mention that you always brought toffee for Felicity, even though she doesn’t like it any more.’
I felt deflated at hearing Felicity had gone off toffee. ‘I hope she would have told me.’
‘Oh, she would.’ Alma reached for her hanky. ‘I’m so worried that I feel sick.’
I took her hand.
‘Felicity has gone to find Walter. You must know that.’
‘But how? He’s probably in Madeira with that woman.’
‘He’s in Scotland. There’s a map in the costumes room with all his travels marked on it.’
‘But we haven’t had a postcard for ages.’
‘You did say that Felicity had been picking up the post before you.’
‘Yes, so she did.’ The hope didn’t stop her tears. ‘If you’re right, I’m such an idiot and a useless mother.’
She bent her head towards the embroidery. ‘Felicity bought me this cloth and threads for Christmas. I thought it would be soothing, and that if I worked on it, her postcard would come but the postman passed us by and there’s only one delivery on Sunday.’
Sitting down beside her, I remained calm and did not let myself become annoyed. ‘Alma, dear, why do you prefer not to know things?’
She slotted her needle into the fabric. ‘I might just as well ask you why you have to know everything. It was drilled into me by my old deaf aunt. A lady must be prepared to turn a blind eye. A lady must not enquire too deeply into things.’
‘What do you call communing with the moon and the spirits?’
‘Oh that’s different,’ she spoke with bright certainty and then blew her nose. ‘Did everyone but me know? Brendan Webb is Jack’s son.’
‘What? Alma, you’re confusing me.’
‘Mrs Webb came to see me last night in the pepper pot. She told me that Jack Philips is Brendan’s father. That explains why Brendan looks different to everyone else in that family. My automatic writing was correct. Turner came through in the writing. He said that Jack Philips didn’t want me for myself, he wanted Felicity.’
‘In what way did he want Felicity?’
‘Not in that way, thank goodness. But you see, with Felicity being Brendan’s sweetheart, having me and Felicity as friends would be a way for Jack to see Brendan.’
‘That would be a bit convoluted. If what you say is true…’ Alma did not let me finish the sentence which was just as well as I didn’t know where my own thought would lead.
‘But don’t you see it? Because I do. And how could he, Kate, how could he?’
‘How could he what?’
‘Have an affair with a married woman from the east side and give her a baby. I’m shocked, Kate.’
‘I’m surprised Mrs Webb found the time.’
‘Her husband was alive then.’ Alma made an extravagant gesture that sent her embroidery silks scattering across the floor. ‘But that was convenient for Jack I suppose, leaving his cuckoo in the nest.’
‘Alma, concentrate on finding out about Felicity. Talk to Sergeant Garvin. You don’t have to tell him about the contraband.’
‘What contraband?’
‘Oh never mind. Just say that you think the Doram is sailing up the coast.’
‘But how do I know the Doram is sailing up the coast? And if I did say that, would I be getting Felicity into trouble?’ She began to pick up her embroidery threads and I wondered if it was so that I would not see her face. How much did she really know?
‘Is there time for them to have landed in Elgin? I’ve no idea how long such a voyage would take.’
‘Neither have I, but if she has gone to see her father, I shouldn’t stop her.’
‘No, but it might be an idea to stop them coming back with a boat full of whisky and being caught by the coastguard.’
‘How do I do that?’ She closed the lid on her embroidery basket.
‘Talk to Mr Cricklethorpe. He must have ways of communicating with Walter.’
I moved to leave the room.
She called me back. ‘Wait! If what you say is true and Cricklethorpe and Walter Turner have been in cahoots all this time…’
‘You must know they have.’
She carried the embroidery basket back to the sideboard. ‘You’re right. Do you know how I know you are right?’
‘Do tell, Alma.’
‘When Walter Turner was in Madeira and Portugal, crates of port came. It was very good.’
Alma was not stupid but was either self-deluded or so self-centred as to not see what was under her nose unless through a crystal ball. On the other hand, she could be leading me a merry dance. Perhaps there was a stronger motive for the jeweller’s death than jealousy or greed. He may have been in a position to betray the lucrative trade in which Cricklethorpe took pride.
‘I’m going now, Alma.’
‘Where are you going? I don’t want to be on my own.’
‘I need some fresh air.’
Alma picked up her cape. ‘What’s it like out there? I’m coming with you.’
Death at the Seaside Page 18