She sat in the rocking chair, lifting the cat onto her lap. It jumped down and strode away. Sykes took the chair opposite. It was low with a padded seat and a straight back that tilted when he leaned against it. ‘You have it cosy here.’
‘I’m used to it. We lived here with my parents.’
‘Are they still alive?’
‘No. Just my brother and me left now, and his wife of course. You will have seen him at the opening ceremony.’
‘Yes, he and I met.’ There was a long silence. He decided not to mention that he had bought her brother a drink. ‘I expect you are on good terms with the other shopkeepers along the row, Miss Dowzell.’
It was the wrong thing to say. She gave him a sharp look. ‘Who are you really?’
‘I’m Jim Sykes.’
‘And were you a policeman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you still? Are you one of the men from Scotland Yard?’
‘No, on both counts.’
‘Do you write for the newspapers?’
‘No, and I’m not here to pry.’
‘I think you are, but I would like to know why, if you are not with the police.’
There was something about her, so direct and candid that it disarmed him. In the force, he had often had to break bad news and see the shattering depths of grief but there was something else in this woman, a kind of despair that made his skin itch. She should be wrapped in a blanket and given a hot water bottle. Rosie should be sitting with her, or Mrs Shackleton. She would be more likely to talk to them.
He felt the awkwardness of his situation, investigating but not officially. For once, no glib story came to mind. The truth would have to do.
‘I’m here on holiday, at Robin Hood’s Bay. When not on holiday, I work with an enquiry agent or private detective called Mrs Shackleton. She had the misfortune to find Mr Philips yesterday.’
‘I see.’ Miss Dowzell rocked her chair. ‘She came into the shop afterwards but said nothing to my brother. I had gone out for air.’
He could not read the expression on Miss Dowzell’s face but her hand gripped the glass more tightly. ‘Is she the lady who bought postcards?’
‘I don’t know. She bought tickets for the sale of work.’
‘I remember her. Tim, my brother, said she acted oddly.’
‘It’s absurd but she briefly fell under suspicion.’
She put down her glass. ‘As did I, and am under suspicion still for all I know.’
Sykes could well understand why this woman would come under suspicion. He must tread carefully. Strike a wrong note and she would clam up. He took a sip of brandy. ‘I think Mr Philips’s death touches you more than most.’
‘You are right.’
‘You called him Jack earlier.’
She closed her eyes, tightly enough to fight off tears. ‘We understood each other. He and I were born in the same year, the same month, two days apart. The midwife who attended his mother on the 15th of April came to my mother the following evening. We knew each other, through and through.’
‘You loved each other.’ Sykes surprised himself. It was as if the words had come from someone else, from Rosie, or Mrs Shackleton.
‘Sometimes I blame myself for how Jack’s life turned out.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, that he thought marrying someone else might hurt me. Something came between us, something huge. I sometimes wondered whether he dallied with other women and disappointed them only because I had refused him. Ever after that, he was the one to leave some woman mystified. He made a fine art of it.’
‘Why did you refuse him?’
She stared into her glass and something changed. She did not look at him. ‘My parents needed me. This business needed me. It was their income, and mine.’
For the first time, Sykes thought she was not being truthful. Marrying a jeweller might have been a reasonably safe financial course of action. A jeweller’s wife might provide for her elderly parents. Other difficulties would easily be resolved. ‘But you have a brother. You run the shop together I believe.’
‘The business came to me. My brother was away at the time. And now my brother has a wife and a son. The business keeps us all.’
‘The business came to you, the daughter. That’s unusual.’
‘All families are unusual in their different ways.’ She stood. ‘Your wife will think you’ve got lost. Thank you, and give her my regards.’
As Sykes stood, the bundle of last month’s magazines on the table caught his eye.
‘Is there anything I can do for you before I go? Are these returns to go outside?’
‘Yes. There’s a cover to keep them dry. You could carry them into the shop doorway for me.’
They walked through into the shop, Sykes carrying the magazines. She unshot bolts and turned a key.
He set down the magazines in the doorway. ‘What time do the papers come in the morning?’
‘Five o’clock.’
‘Will anyone be here to help you?’
‘I’m used to it.’
‘But your brother…’
‘He comes in later in the day, usually in the afternoon, for an hour or so.’
They went back through the shop to her living room, the little scullery and then into the yard. She looked such a lonely figure, standing at the gate. He still could not make up his mind. Had she carried a torch for Jack Philips all these years, regretted her decision to refuse him, resented his women, and finally taken revenge?
Thirty-Three
As I thanked Marcus for the lift back to my hotel, and got out of the car, the doorman came to meet me with his sheltering umbrella.
Discreetly, he pretended not to notice that I resembled a drowned rat. ‘There is a party of persons waiting for you in the library, madam.’
‘Would you do something for me please?’
‘Of course.’
‘Enquire at the hospital whether there has been any change in Mr Cricklethorpe’s condition.’
He gave me a look that struggled to be neutral. ‘I will, madam.’
I would be garnering a fine reputation here. I find a body. I befriend, or am befriended by, a chambermaid who then changes floors to avoid me. I stay out all night helping police with their enquiries. I enter Bagdale Hall where no one has come to harm in the past several hundred years and Mr Cricklethorpe is severely attacked. Now I come in dripping and have a reception committee of Mrs Sugden, Sykes and Rosie.
I had arranged to meet them in the library at five and it was past five. I popped my head around the door. There the three were, along with a heavily whiskered old gentleman who nodded over the pages of a newspaper.
My three were engaged with a jigsaw puzzle, a country scene with one of those idyllic thatched-roof cottages that in real life would be both plagued by damp and easily ignited. I apologised for keeping them waiting. ‘I won’t be long. I’ll just go upstairs and change.’
Sykes thoughtfully offered to order me a hot toddy.
Within twenty minutes I was back in the library, having booked a table in the restaurant. The elderly gentleman had departed so the library was ours. We were free to compare notes as to what we had uncovered during the afternoon.
Mrs Sugden did not wait to see who should go first. ‘That friend of yours, Alma Turner, she knows very well where that husband of hers is. He’s in Scotland. She gave it away without realising, saying how wherever he was in the world he always sent an English five pound note to Felicity and the only time he didn’t was when it was a Scottish five pound note. And I know it was recent because she came to that part of her tale last and the note was drawn on the Elgin Bank.’
‘So why would she keep quiet about that?’ Rosie asked.
I gave a quick glance at Sykes. Mrs Sugden, Rosie and I might be willing to turn a blind eye to the Turner and Cricklethorpe connection with contraband whisky. Sykes was a different matter. For now I would keep to myself the suspicion that Cricklethorpe at lea
st had made a great deal of money from the connection, and that Jack Philips may have been helpful in ensuring that not too much ready money was kept in Bagdale Hall by providing precious gems in exchange for cash. At some future date, Cricklethorpe might travel to another town and sell the jewels that Mrs Webb had sewn into the pantomime costumes.
Perhaps I would need to tell Sykes about this, but not yet.
I answered Rosie’s question. ‘Alma kept quiet about her husband because she doesn’t want to think about him. I believe there’s no doubt that Felicity has gone to find her father, but why now? I can only think it’s because she and Brendan had access to the boat, the Doram. That’s also the name Jack Philips gave to his bungalow.’
‘What does the name mean?’ Mrs Sugden asked.
‘I don’t know. But I’m worried sick about them being in that boat. The coastguard had them in their sights, and now they haven’t.’
Rosie touched her hand to her heart. ‘And that storm today. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
Sykes attempted nonchalance, picking up a jigsaw piece and slotting it in. ‘Why is the coastguard keeping them in sight? If it was to do with the suspicion of stealing a boat, or knowing something about the murder, they’d bring them in.’
‘For safety reasons,’ I suggested. ‘They’re young and inexperienced. Nobody would want to see them come to grief.’
Rosie chipped in. ‘Why didn’t Felicity just tell her mother? Just say, “I’m off to see my dad.”’
I hesitated. Would Sykes also feel obliged to denounce the wayward Walter Turner as a bigamist? Doubtful, but I decided not to take the chance. ‘Perhaps Felicity wanted a quiet life and Alma might have objected. She has reason to be angry with her husband. I was a witness at their wedding. I won’t go into details but she should never have married him.’
This piqued interest from Mrs Sugden and Rosie. I could see that each of them had instantly come up with a catalogue of sins committed by Walter Turner.
There was that slight flicker of Sykes’s eyelashes that indicated he would from now on be alert to any tiny detail that would allow him to find out the reason for Alma’s anger, and the interest of the coastguard. I could see by the look in his eyes he knew that I was putting them off some scent.
‘Anything else, Mrs Sugden?’ I asked.
‘Your friend Alma Turner is most definitely after a husband. Now that the poor jeweller has gone to meet his maker, she’ll be on the look-out. She’s one of them women who has to have a man at her side.’
Sykes’s jaw did not exactly drop but his mouth opened long before he spoke. ‘How can she be looking for a husband when she’s married? What about Mr Turner? Whatever he’s done, they’re still wed.’
There was a pause, a long pause. No one commented on Sykes’s question.
Rosie broke the silence. ‘The husband is well out of the picture. But here’s the question, did Alma Turner end up disappointed in love? So disappointed by Jack Philips that she did him in? Might she have slipped up to the shop?’
Mrs Sugden thought not. ‘She wouldn’t have given up hope so quickly. She’s more likely to have cast a spell, or despatched a rival, than kill the man.’
It was my turn. ‘What about the assistant from the newsagents? From the way she looked this morning, I don’t suppose she turned up for the sale of work.’
Sykes and Rosie exchanged a look. Rosie was a picture of sympathy. ‘That poor woman, and she’s not just the assistant. She’s Miss Dowzell. She did come. Jim walked her home. She has taken Mr Philips’s death very hard.’
Sykes was slow to speak. ‘She’s one of the few who will miss him. There was a minute’s silence for him this afternoon, and no one shed a tear or said a word of regret.’
I felt annoyed with myself. ‘Why did I jump to the conclusion that she was the assistant?’
Sykes tried not to look superior. ‘You’d no reason to ask her name and rank when you bought postcards. She’s Dora Margaret, the owner. I saw her name on some correspondence.’
Rosie touched her husband’s arm. ‘You took a bit of a shine to her, Jim.’
‘I did not. I pity her. She looked exhausted. That brother of hers swans into the shop in the afternoon. The rest of the time, as far as I can gather, he goes about being self-important, the councillor and ex officio justice of the peace, too tight to buy a pint for a chap who buys one for him. Miss Dowzell is up every morning to take in the newspapers and there she is, all alone, only a cat for company, in a shop next to where her friend was murdered.’
Something in Sykes’s words was niggling, some connection, but what? ‘You say they were friends?’
Sykes took out a cigarette. ‘She’s not an unattractive woman. There was a moment when she was nursing the cat. It stood and turned itself around to adopt a more comfortable position. She tilted her head and gave the brightest of smiles. She and Jack Philips had been close all their lives. She turned him down when he proposed because something came between them. She said it was something huge.’
‘What?’ Rosie and Mrs Sugden both spoke at once.
Sykes lit his cigarette. ‘I’ve no idea. Some other woman probably. I daresay Dora Dowzell was well out of it.’
It was one of those moments when we came to a full stop. I was tired and could not quite pull together the various strands that were emerging. Sykes knew that Miss Dowzell must be a suspect and yet was reluctant to acknowledge that fact.
Mrs Sugden had no such hesitation. ‘This puts a different slant on the business. If the jeweller wronged Miss Dowzell, perhaps she’s simmered for years. She might just have had enough and done away with him.’
‘Why now?’ Rosie asked.
‘Because Alma Turner cast her spell on him.’ Mrs Sugden waited to be contradicted by Mr Sykes. He said nothing. Mrs Sugden continued. ‘Alma Turner might be a good fortune teller and prophetess, and she certainly put on a fine performance reading from a novel this afternoon, but there’s not a bite of food in that house. I don’t know what she lives on. I’m not surprised her daughter has taken to the high seas.’
‘What is the relevance of that contribution?’ Sykes spoke sharply.
‘I’m only saying that I don’t know what Jack Philips saw in Mrs Turner.’
It was time for me to help us focus, if I could. ‘We are not here to judge anyone, or even to find who did the murder. I just want to know that Alma and Felicity aren’t involved, and try to work out how to find Felicity. We all seem flummoxed so let’s hope that Chief Inspector Charles does a reasonable job.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’ Sykes asked.
‘I walked along to Sandsend to take a look at the bungalow. Marcus Charles was there. He was friendly enough, though in retrospect perhaps a touch sniffy.’
Sykes surprised me by speaking his mind about Marcus. He had never shown any feelings about him before. ‘I never liked that man.’
‘How was he sniffy?’ Rosie asked.
‘There’s a cat missing. Mr Philips’s cleaner came while I was there, enquiring whether anyone had seen it. Marcus very smartly said she should describe it to me.’
‘And did she?’ Sykes asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Is anyone else hungry?’ Mrs Sugden gave a sigh. ‘Only I haven’t eaten since that scone in the railway buffet.’
‘Well I’ve booked a table in the restaurant so we can go in if we’re all ready.’
Mrs Sugden and Rosie decided they would go to the ladies room.
Sykes pondered the jigsaw puzzle for a moment. ‘This missing cat of Jack Philips, how did the cleaner describe it?’
‘Black and brown, flat face, little pointy ears.’
‘Did she say its name?’
‘Tiger.’
‘Miss Dowzell has it.’
‘That’s strange. It couldn’t have found its own way to Skinner Street from Sandsend.’
Sykes agreed. ‘So either he took it to her, or she went to fetch it when she knew he was dead.’
‘And his bungalow.’
Sykes stubbed out his cigarette. ‘So what was the “something huge” that came between them?’
The age of the bungalow, the age of the boat, the age of the boy, all pointed in the same direction. ‘The “something huge” was that when Jack was courting Dora, he got someone else pregnant.’
‘That’s a bit of a leap, Mrs Shackleton.’
‘Brendan Webb, Felicity’s boyfriend, is Jack Philips’s son. Miss Dowzell must have known that. It might have been a last straw for her that Jack let his son take the boat that was named for her.’
‘Miss Dowzell did it,’ Sykes said. ‘That’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t know. When I saw her on Saturday, she didn’t look like a woman who had just committed murder.’
‘She may have been pretending it didn’t happen. After you found the body, she had to face up to what she’d done.’
‘Do you believe that, Mr Sykes, or are you putting the case for the prosecution so that I’ll knock it down?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll find out. I’m seeing her in the morning.’
We walked towards the dining room. The doorman spotted me and came across. ‘Sorry to say there is no change. Mr Cricklethorpe is still unconscious.’
Thirty-Four
Jim Sykes took Rosie a cup of tea at half past four. She turned over, pulled up the eiderdown and declined his invitation to go with him to the newsagents in Whitby.
‘Jim, I’m on my holidays and it’s the middle of the night. Go away!’
‘I’m going to give Miss Dowzell a hand with the morning papers.’
‘Don’t be sticking your sneck in where it’s not wanted. She’ll have her own friends.’
Jim wasn’t so sure about that. There were no friends in evidence yesterday. ‘Well don’t let your tea go cold.’
She would. He could see that by the slant of her shoulder.
He looked in on the girls. Sleeping. Sleep was an enviable state but Sykes would rather be up and doing.
Death at the Seaside Page 25