‘I see you’ve brought one of the big guns with you this time,’ she said.
Paniatowski nodded. ‘My chief inspector,’ she said.
‘It’s not necessary, you know,’ Mrs Fortesque said to Woodend.
‘What isn’t necessary, madam?’
‘Your being here at all. Probably have some doubts about this young woman’s ability to do her job properly, simply because she is a young woman. Had the same doubts myself at first, I’m ashamed to admit. But you and I will just have to learn to change with the times, you know. Monika is a fine young officer. She’ll go far.’
Paniatowski smiled, though that was the last thing she felt like doing. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mrs Fortesque,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re not going to like it when I tell you the reason we’ve come back.’
‘Won’t I?’ Mrs Fortesque asked, her voice remaining friendly but her body tensing – as if she’d already guessed what the sergeant was going to say next.
‘We need to talk to the Major,’ Paniatowski said gently.
‘Can’t allow that,’ the other woman replied instantly. ‘He’s not been well. Simply isn’t up to being interrogated by the police.’
‘It is important.’
‘Can’t accept that. He doesn’t know anything that I don’t know.’
‘We think he does. We think he – and only he – knows something which is of vital importance to our investigation.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Still don’t care. You can’t see him.’
‘I was a soldier myself,’ Woodend said.
Mrs Fortesque looked at him with new interest. ‘What rank?’
‘Sergeant.’
‘And did you see service in India, Sergeant?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you weren’t some office wallah pushing chitties around in Aldershot, were you? Don’t look like the type of man who’d be happy with that sort of soldiering.’
‘You’re right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I’ve never been much good at filin’ papers.’
‘So where did you serve?’
‘North Africa an’ Europe.’
‘During the war itself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right in the thick of the action,’ Mrs Fortesque said approvingly. ‘Did you win any medals?’
‘I don’t really think that matters one way or the other, now the whole thing’s over.’
‘Spoken like a man who doesn’t need medals because he’s been awarded plenty,’ Mrs Fortesque said. She smiled, still not quite relaxed but certainly less tense than she had been a few moments earlier. ‘I’m well aware of what you’re trying to do, you know.’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course. You’re doing what we used to call “Playing the Old Comrade”. You’re trying to soften me up, so I’ll let you see the Major.’
‘You’re half-right,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But what I was also tryin’ to show you is that I’ve had quite a lot of experience dealin’ with officers, an’ I think I can say that I understand them.’
‘We all know what that means,’ Mrs Fortesque said. ‘Means you think that all officers are jackasses!’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Woodend promised. ‘There’s all kinds of officers. Good an’ bad, cautious an’ foolhardy, clever an’ stupid – but do you know the one thing most of’em had in common?’
Mrs Fortesque thought for only the briefest of moments. ‘A sense of duty,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Your husband knows that his duty is to give us the answers we need. You’re not goin’ to prevent him doin’ that duty, are you, madam?’
Mrs Fortesque looked at him with an expression that showed both defeat and admiration.
‘You’d have made a damned good Political Officer out on the North West Frontier,’ she said. ‘You’d better follow me into the lounge.’
The Major was sitting in his armchair as he had been the last time Paniatowski had seen him, but now he looked as if he wished it would swallow him up even further than it already had.
‘These two officers want to ask you a few questions, Major dear,’ Mrs Fortesque said gently. ‘I promise you it won’t take long.’
The Major’s eyes filled with panic. ‘Send them away!’ he gasped. ‘Send them away.’
‘I can’t do that, Major dear,’ his wife told him. ‘If I could, I’d spare you this by helping them myself. But they say it has to be you. And I believe them.’
‘Don’t want . . . don’t want . . .’
The old woman knelt down and took one of her husband’s gnarled hands in both of hers.
‘You’ve always been my hero, Major dear,’ she cooed softly. ‘You know that. Please don’t let me down now, so close to the end. I know it will take a lot of courage, but I know my man, too, and I’m sure he’ll find it from somewhere. Help them, my dear!’
‘I’ll . . . try,’ the Major promised feebly.
The old woman released her husband’s hand and rose arthritically to her feet. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it in peace,’ she said, her eyes rapidly filling with tears. ‘Call me if you need anything.’
Woodend and Paniatowski waited until Mrs Fortesque had left the room, then sat down on the sofa opposite the Major.
‘Do you remember the last time I was here?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Your wife was talking about the cars which pulled up in front of the Doddses’ house on the night of the murder, and you said, “They took Jane away.” At the time I thought you were saying that, after the murder, they took Jane away to live with her aunt. But that wasn’t what you meant at all, was it?’
‘No.’
‘What you really meant was that they took Jane away on the night of the murder. In one of the two cars that your wife heard. Isn’t that right?’
‘She . . . she had been staying with her Aunt Helen,’ the old man said weakly. ‘I thought she was still with her aunt. But . . . but when I heard the second car pull up, I was curious. I went over to the window.’
‘An’ what did you see?’ Woodend asked.
‘I saw Jane’s mother helping her into the car.’
‘Why didn’t you volunteer this information during the course of the investigation?’
‘I . . . I didn’t see the point. It had nothing to do with the murder. They’d already arrested Margaret. What good would it have done to have them bothering Jane?’ The old man hesitated. ‘Besides, I was afraid,’ he confessed.
‘Afraid?’
‘I . . . I’d lost my nerve by then. I’d stayed in India too long, you see. It’s a country that can destroy a man. Or . . . or at least, it destroyed me.’ A tear rolled down his cheek. ‘I’m s-so sorry.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, Major. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference if you had come forward,’ Woodend lied. ‘But there is one more way you can help us.’
‘What . . . what do you want to know?’
‘When you went to the window an’ saw the car which took Jane away, you didn’t happen to notice what make it was, did you?’
‘I had a car in India,’ the Major said nostalgically. ‘And a driver. I would have liked to have one when we came back to England, but we couldn’t afford it. Still, I took an interest in the latest developments, and this car was a beauty.’
‘Do you mean that you did notice the make?’
‘Of course,’ the Major said, as if surprised that he even needed to ask. ‘It was a Morris Isis.’
‘Well, that’s it then,’ Paniatowski said, looking at Woodend across the table in the Drum and Monkey.
‘Is it?’ Woodend asked.
‘Of course. Margaret Dodds comes home and finds her husband sexually assaulting her daughter. She flies into a rage – as any mother would – and kills him with the hammer. We don’t need to know any more.’
‘What about the two cars – the one which stopped there earlier and the Morris Isis which took Jane
away?’
‘What about them?’
‘Who was driving them?’
‘That’s a detail. It doesn’t really matter.’
Woodend placed his hands on top of Paniatowski’s. ‘You want it to be the mother who killed him, don’t you?’ he said.
‘It is the mother.’
‘You can’t bear the thought that she might have known that Fred was assaulting Jane, and still did nothing about it.’
‘She did do something about it. She crushed his skull to a pulp.’
‘An’ because you’re so set on believin’ what you want to believe, you won’t admit there’s even the slightest possibility that whoever was in the first car which stopped outside the house could be the murderer. That by the time Margaret got home, Fred was already dead.’
‘It didn’t happen like that.’
‘It might have, Monika.’
‘We have to work with probabilities. Margaret Dodds had the means, the motive and the opportunity. What possible grounds can you have for doubting that she was the killer?’
‘She said she didn’t do it.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve forgotten that, Monika. You’ve forgotten it because you wanted to. When Margaret Dodds was being interviewed by DCI Sharpe, she said, “I didn’t kill my husband.”’
‘She was lying!’
‘Why should she have lied?’
‘To protect Jane from gossip! To prevent what Dodds had done to her daughter from becoming public knowledge. I know that’s what my moth–– . . . what I would have done in the same circumstances.’
‘She could have come up with another reason for killing Dodds. She could have said she’d done it for the money.’
‘You don’t understand!’ Paniatowski said exasperatedly.
‘An’ you don’t want to understand,’ Woodend said softly. ‘Look, Monika, you may well be right. Perhaps Margaret Dodds did kill her husband. But until we’ve tied up all the loose ends that are hangin’ over this case, we won’t know for sure.’
Paniatowski took a slug of her vodka. ‘That’s the second time in this investigation I’ve stopped thinking like a bobby, isn’t it?’ she asked ruefully.
‘I haven’t been countin’,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ even if I had, I’ve got a terrible memory for cases once they’re over an’ done with.’
Paniatowski gave him a weak smile. ‘I don’t deserve a boss like you,’ she said.
‘Bollocks!’ Woodend said. ‘Everybody’s got to take the rough with the smooth, an’ you’ve just been landed with the rough for a while.’
‘These loose ends?’ Paniatowski said. ‘Which one do you think we should start with?’
‘Well, we could do worse than find out who in Whitebridge owned a Morris Isis in 1934,’ Woodend told her.
Twenty-Seven
The big house had an elevated position that overlooked the Corporation Park. It had once stood in splendid isolation, but the grounds had long since been sold off to speculative builders. Now it was surrounded by other detached houses that would have looked impressive in their own right, had they been elsewhere, but in this location seemed no more than dwarfish intruders hunkering down in the mansion’s shadow.
There had once been any number of houses like this in Whitebridge, Woodend thought as he walked up to the front door. But now that cotton was no longer king, this was the last one remaining.
He rang the bell. The door was answered by a round little woman in her early sixties. She looked up at him suspiciously.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I’d like to see Mr Earnshaw, please.’
‘Mr Earnshaw doesn’t see people himself, these days. I’m his housekeeper. Anything you have to say, you can say to me.’
‘It’s in the nature of a personal matter,’ Woodend explained.
‘A personal matter?’ the guardian to the gate repeated sceptically.
‘I’m an old friend.’
‘All Mr Earnshaw’s old friends are dead. And even if they weren’t, you’re too young to have been one of them.’
It would have been easy enough to produce his warrant card but, if possible, Woodend wished to avoid putting the whole matter on an official footing.
‘Will you ask Mr Earnshaw if he’ll see Charlie Woodend?’ he said.
The housekeeper sniffed. ‘I’ll ask. But it won’t do you any good. Like I said, he never sees anybody.’
The housekeeper returned two minutes later. If he would follow her, Mr Earnshaw would be delighted to see him, she informed Woodend, with a touch of annoyance in her voice.
She led him into a hallway that would have swallowed the entire ground floor of his cottage, and from there up a wide staircase that could easily have been the setting for one of the Douglas Fairbanks’ swashbuckler films that Woodend had revelled in as a child.
The housekeeper knocked on a door just to the left of the head of the staircase, opened it without waiting for an answer, and gestured to the Chief Inspector that he should go inside.
The room he entered was a large one, but then all the rooms in this house – with the exception of the servants’ quarters – were probably large. Against one of the walls was a double bed, and lying propped up in the bed was Seth Earnshaw. He had been a big man in his time, but his time had gone, and now he looked so frail and wispy that Woodend was almost surprised his trunk made even the slightest dent in the pillows that were supporting him.
‘You’ve given Mrs Green the hump, in no uncertain manner,’ the old man said. ‘She doesn’t like visitors. They make too much work for her. We used to have eight servants running this house. People who took a pride in their jobs – and a pride in the place they were looking after. Now it’s all down to Mrs Green and a weekly contract cleaning firm.’ Earnshaw sniffed. ‘The contract cleaning firm!’ he repeated. ‘It has such a large staff turnover that we rarely see the same face in this house twice.’
‘That’s the way of the world,’ Woodend said philosophically.
‘Pride in their work?’ the old man said. ‘These young lads don’t know the meaning of the words. And the only reason Dolly Green stays with me is because she expects me to leave her something in my will.’ He paused for a second. ‘It’s been a long time, Charlie.’
‘Must be twenty-five years,’ Woodend agreed. ‘My dad’s funeral.’
‘Now there was a man who took pride in what he did,’ Earnshaw said with enthusiasm. ‘And he’d have been proud if he could have seen you now. Chief Inspector Woodend! Who would have thought it?’
‘You shouldn’t be so surprised,’ Woodend said. ‘You always told me I had more imagination an’ drive than most of the folk round here.’
‘So I did.’
‘That’s why I was the one you sent to stand outside Strangeways Prison while Margaret Dodds was hung.’
‘Yes, I thought you were the best man for the job, and I was right. Listening to you describe it, it was almost like being there myself.’
‘What kind of car did you drive in those days?’ Woodend asked.
A flash of anger appeared in the old man’s watery eyes. ‘Don’t insult me, Charlie. I’m not quite a basket case yet – and I still read the papers. I know why you’re here.’
‘So what kind of car were you drivin’?’
‘It was a 1931 Morris Isis.’
‘An’ on the night of Fredrick Dodds murder, you made a visit to the Doddses’ house.’
‘Wrong!’ the old man said, perhaps just a little triumphantly. ‘I made two visits to the house.’
‘Two?’
Earnshaw smiled. ‘You’re a clever lad, Charlie, and no doubt you’d eventually get the truth out of me with all your questions. But wouldn’t it be quicker if I just told you what you wanted to know, in my own words?’
‘All right,’ Woodend agreed.
‘Margaret started working for me about a year after Jane was born. I was attracted to her from the start, but I never planned it that we should bec
ome lovers. Nor would we have been, if that first husband of hers had been anything of a man. But he wasn’t. He was weak, and he was useless. I wanted to give him that promotion he’d put in for, Charlie. I wanted to do it for Margaret’s sake – but I just couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘One of my responsibilities to my employees was to run the mill as well as I could – because that way they all stayed in work. And that meant putting the right people in the right jobs. Rob Hartley could never have handled that promotion. I knew it. He knew it. I don’t think he even wanted the job, if the truth be told. It was much easier to stay where he was – and he’d always been a man for following the easiest course.’
‘Don’t marry a man already set in his ways,’ Margaret’s mother had told her, all those years ago. ‘Find yourself a husband you can mould – a husband you can make something out of.’ And hadn’t that just worked out a treat? Woodend thought.
‘Anyway, he didn’t get the promotion, his wife was almost crushed with disappointment, Rob started drinking – and Margaret and I became lovers,’ Earnshaw said.
‘Both before an’ after her first husband’s death?’
‘She broke it off for a while when Robert died. Guilt, I expect. But a few months later we were back in each other’s arms again.’
‘Did you promise to marry her?’
Earnshaw gave the frailest shake of his head. ‘No, that was never on – and she knew it. I’d made it plain right from the start. I loved her more than I’d ever loved my wife, but I could never have divorced Edith. She needed me, you see, whereas Margaret only wanted me. Edith would have gone completely to pieces without me, but Margaret had this amazing inner strength.’
Why were men always such fools? Woodend wondered. How could Earnshaw say that Margaret had wanted him but never needed him? Had it not, at some point, occurred to him to ask himself why a very pretty young woman should wish to start an affair with a not-particularly attractive older man? Couldn’t he see that perhaps his main appeal to her had been more to do with him being a substitute for the father she’d adored?
‘Did you continue seein’ Margaret until her second husband was killed?’ the Chief Inspector asked.
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