“Of course, what I’ve always said about Lottie—” Oldham said. He used her Christian name as if she were a remote but not unloved member of his own family “—she made a wrong step once in her life. That soldier she wed was no use to her. And it was a wrong step for all time. In her own country, among her own kind, she’d happen have had a different look about her. But I understand why she never went back. It would be like me coming back home, if I’d done something daft.”
“And what can you tell me about the going of her?” Mosley asked.
“Nowt. She didn’t come down this way. My dogs would have told me. But then, she’d no call to come this way, had she? I do know that a week or two before he went, before we’d heard owt about spacemen, she was down here walking on her own. And she was poling round the Hole quite a bit. I thought to myself, aye, she’s wondering—”
“We’ve all been wondering for years,” Mosley said. “And the night Betty Longden was last seen in the Dale: what did your dogs tell you about that, Isaac?”
“To stay indoors and mind my own business, Jack.”
Tom Appleyard and Brad Oldroyd were the story-tellers of the Dale, and in their way its historiographers. There were few tales about mind-stretching events since the end of the war that one or both of them had not had a hand in, inventing—and improving. Some of the best of their tales had blossomed when they were together; and yet Brad’s approach to the art was quiet different from Tom’s. Brad Oldroyd could spin his ideas out of frosty air; Tom Appleyard needed something to trigger his off. He had to see a sheep and a mushroom to think of putting one beneath the other. But Brad Oldroyd did not need to see an empty cemetery to start counting the ghosts in it. Mosley went to see Oldroyd first.
Brad was one of those weather-seasoned men who eat heartily all their lives witout putting on an ounce of un-needed fat. He had looked sixty since he was forty, and would go on looking sixty if he lived to be eighty-five. He was a master carpenter, and could have earned good money at his trade, but he preferred odd-jobbing because he needed variety. He liked to have a different set of tools in his hands from week to week, he always said, and when Mosley found him, he was putting the finishing touches to some new guttering on Walter Passmore’s gable-end.
Nah, Brad—Nah, Jack—Atta weel?—There’s folks’s wuss—
Mosley could drop easily into the vernacular of men the likes of whom he had been to school with.
“What do you remember, Brad, about Betty Longden, before she went?”
“I remember when she came. We didn’t take to her at first—but that was only from the manner of her speech.”
Oldroyd lit a three-quarter-inch dog-end that he took from an old Elastoplast tin.
“Longden speaks the same English as the Queen, but you can tell he’s spent all his life in these parts. But she was Down South to the marrow. Yet she wanted to know folk. You could tell that she wanted to talk: not like Longden. When he gave you the time of day, you could tell it was because he thought he ought to.”
He flicked a fallen leaf off his boot.
“I mind after the Vegetable Show, she was helping dry up in the kitchen tent with my missus and one or two others. But he came and called her out of it. She wasn’t supposed to muck in. He played old Harry with her on their way to his car.”
“There was supposed to be a man in the case,” Mosley said. “In a cafe in Bradcaster. Did he ever show his nose in Hadley Dale to your knowledge?”
“Somebody would have said.”
“Was there a man, Brad?”
“You know me, Jack. I’ve told so many yarns in my time, I’m not all that good when it comes to straight talking. There’s nothing like a good tale—bar a better one. Not that I ever made anything up about the Longdens, you understand. But if you ask me what I believed, I’d say no: there was never a man.”
“So give me the benefit of a bit of your story-telling now, Brad. How could someone be seen going to Amsterdam, and yet not go to Amsterdam?”
Oldroyd gave it some thought.
“You’d need an out-of-work actress,” he said. “She wouldn’t need to know why she was doing it, would she? If she had any sense, she wouldn’t ask.”
Walter Passmore looked out of his window at the pair of them. He was the sort of man to reflect that he was not paying Brad to stand talking.
“When did the milk of love start going on between Longden and Lottie, Brad?”
Brad picked up his hammer and a masonry nail, but did not turn back yet to his guttering. “Who’s to tell? She was too natural for him, that was my view. All right; she taught him to be natural in his bedroom, which did him no harm. And while that was a novelty with him, he had to keep her sweet to keep the pot boiling. But she said things in a funny way in public, wasn’t going to snub her old pals in the village just because he said so. Vulgar—that’s what Longden thought of being natural. It couldn’t have lasted, Jack—and it didn’t. I’d better be getting up this ladder, before Passmore stops me a quarter.”
Tom Appleyard had been a time-keeper at the quarry, and in his retirement he read a lot, biographies mostly: Lloyd George, the desert generals, Toscanini. When Mosley called, he was watching a schools broadcast: “Music Workshop.”
The talk did not follow the same lines as with Brad; but it arrived at the same landmarks.
“Was there a man, Tom?”
“Certainly there was a man.”
“You speak as if you know.”
“I do know. I saw him.”
“Here in the Dale?”
“No, no. He never came here. I’m as sure of that as I am of this chair I’m sitting on. If he’d come up here, there’d have been all hell on up at the House, and the Plough would have been full of it.”
“Did they have rows up at the House? Did anybody ever hear them?”
“My daughter used to go up to give a hand sometimes—when they were spring-cleaning and the like. There was always an atmosphere.”
Appleyard took a plug of black twist from a jar on his mantelpiece and began shredding it on to a sheet of paper on a corner of his table.
“Not so much rowing as not rowing, if that doesn’t sound too daft. Tight lips. Backs turned. The row had gone on behind the scenes, maybe yesterday, maybe last week, wasn’t forgiven yet. Maybe never would be forgiven.”
“What about, do you know? What sort of things?”
“Do rows like that have to be about anything? She didn’t like living in Hadley Dale. He’d promised her paradise here. Things were going to be different, once they’d moved. But nothing had changed.”
“What did she want changed?”
“He went on with the things that he wanted to do. What she wanted to do was always out of the question. She wanted women from the village up at the House for a play-reading group. He wouldn’t have it.”
“And this man?”
“I saw him in Bradcaster. Once. I’d taken the deeds to the bank for safe keeping, after I’d paid off this mortgage. They were upstairs in the cafe. Enjoying each other’s company. That was all that could be said of it. I’d never seen her so relaxed. She was quite unaware anyone was watching her.”
“When was this, Tom?”
“Six or seven months before she went.”
“You saw them once. That doesn’t make it regular, does it?”
“No, but it was. That tale got round. Not my telling.”
“So who else was there, Tom?”
“There were three women from the Dale at one of the tables. They’d been at some women’s get-together. Need I say more?”
“Can you describe this man?”
But that was not very successful. A gentleman, Appleyard would say. Tailored suit, of a good cut, but not showy. Could have been a year or two younger than Betty Longden. Looked as if he might be a professional man. There were no details that would help pick him up all these years later—if one knew where to begin.
“And what about her manner of going from Hadley Dale, Tom
?”
“She can’t have been driven away from the House, else we’d all have known all about it. She could have walked out of the village, been picked up in a car.”
“What about her bags?”
“I hadn’t given that much thought. There could have been ways and means, I suppose. There are men about who would have helped her out for a quiet quid or two. Ted Hunter was working for them at the time. He might have lent her a hand. But I shouldn’t say that. I don’t know.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, there was news of her in Manchester, I always understood. Then didn’t she fly to Amsterdam? Then they got lost from there. I’d think there’d be a few dozen ways a couple could do that. Didn’t Matthew Longden hire a private detective to try to pick up their trail? Throwing his money away? You seem to be taking a lot of interest in Betty Longden this morning, Jack—”
“It’s Lottie Pearson, Tom. She’s been making it all happen again. She must have picked up this, that and the other idea in her years at the House. Maybe it all suddenly clicked into place. I can’t make my mind up whether it’s us she’s trying to tell—or whether she’s trying to drive Matthew out of his mind. But before very long, I reckon she’s going to chuck another link in the chain at us. And I want to be ready when that happens.”
Crime was rarely rife in Mosley’s area. It came in patches. At a time when he did not want that to happen, he was called away from Hadley Dale to attend to a rash of housebreaking, down in Hayburn Market. He always disliked it when individuals of fixed local habits went walkabout, started showing an interest in places where they did not belong. There had been strangers in Hayburn Market. The tally of property stolen may not have suggested an affluent community—or a tasteful one—but it included articles cherished by their owners: Albert Pickford’s life-tally of bowls medals, for one item, and a carriage clock that had belonged to Alice Tweed’s godmother.
Mosley listened at patient length to the unhappiness of those who had been deprived. He listened to other men’s talk in the bus-station snack bar, to whispers in the public reading-room. He heard who had been in Hayburn Market without convincing business.
Bertie Lee, from Strubshaw Bottoms. Alf Carter from Gunley. Mosley remembered seeing them in Crawdon, the night Joe Ormerod had driven him home after they had dug up Lottie Pearson’s oddments. He had been dead tired. He had done nothing about it. But he had not failed to take note that Jack Pearson made up the trio.
Mosley took a bus to Strubshaw Bottoms, then another to Gunley. The interviews followed familiar lines. Lee and Carter were in possession of much of the property concerned, but they indignantly denied any knowledge of it. It then became a routine process to jolly villains along from one admission to the lot. That was something in which Mosley had always excelled, and in this case he had an additional lever. Jack Pearson had not been with them in the Hayburn Market theatre of operations, but he had been their companion in other activities. Therefore Mosley could casually let it slip that he knew about Pearson—which to Bertie Lee and Alf Carter looked like some kind of magic. They assumed that Mosley, knowing this, also knew a lot more. They gave up the fight.
The next stage was to persuade them how advantageous it would be for them to ask for other cases to be taken into consideration. It would not wipe the slate clean, but it would temper justice with mercy—and please those at headquarters who liked neat records of property retrieved.
And it was at this juncture that the exercise took an interesting turn. The laborious statements of Bertie and Alf showed that they, together with Pearson, had been active on two nights a week throughout the summer months. But very little of their work had been done on Mosley’s territory. Most of it had been perpetrated in regions protected by Chief Inspector Marsters. They had been consistently defeating Marsters since shortly after Easter. Mosley left a copy of his report, suitably marked For Information, on Chief Inspector Marsters’s desk.
Then he went to the remand wing at Bradcaster to see Pearson again. This time it was not about robberies that he wanted to talk to him.
Hunter’s case came up before the Bradburn justices, Colonel Mortimer presiding. Colonel Mortimer told Hunter how narrowly he had escaped going to prison. He would be fined £250. But despite the fact that men of substance and integrity had been prepared to speak up in his favour, the Bench did not feel, in view of the callousness of the attack on young Bernard, that it would be safe to return the boy to his parents at present. He would therefore be committed to the Care of the Authority. It was open to the Hunters, if they wished, to appeal to the Crown Court against this Order. Hunter appeared to be living up admirably to his promises of law-abiding sobriety. If this proved not to be a flash in the pan, Colonel Mortimer felt confident that perhaps, in six months or a year …
Mosley took note of Hunter’s eyes as he left the court. They did not promise well for the Queen’s Peace.
Chapter Fifteen
Mosley happened to be loitering idly in the town centre of Bradburn late one afternoon when a small convoy drew up. There were three private cars, one Dormobile, one horse-box and a van painted with the exotic lettering of a contemporary publicity company.
The head man of the concern was of middle age and had a thick thatch of black hair. He was wearing a tee-shirt that suggested a connection with the Free University of Stoke Newington and he was driving in canvas beach-shoes whose laces were frayed down to thier last viable strand. Mosley had discovered from a Directory of Company Directors that the man’s name was Teagle.
“If I might just have a word with you, sir.”
Teagle mistook him for a town idler and showed no inclination to be forthcoming.
“I am a police officer.”
Mosley made a motion to get out his warrant card. Teagle waved it aside.
“It’s all right to park here for a minute or two, surely?”
“It isn’t a question of parking,” Mosley said.
“I hope you’re not intending to waste my time, officer. I’ve a lot on my plate at this moment.”
Mosley muttered something that Teagle did not quite catch. He was not meant to. Mosley’s approach always gave him a working advantage over men who could not decide how to make head or tail of him.
“Look—I’m carrying a very special animal in that horsebox. I need to get it to its quarters as soon as I can.”
“Yes, sir. That comes under the Cinematographic Films (Animals) Act, 1937, Section One. I have arranged for our friends from the RSPCA to come and look over your arrangements.”
A job for uniform branch; but Mosley had always taken a flexible view of such protocol. There was such a thing as finding one’s way into a case, and he had a very thorough knowledge of odd by-ways of the law.
“If that’s all it is,” Teagle said, “go ahead. In my own interests I’ve taken all available advice. You don’t think I’d take risks with a valuable animal like this, do you? You wouldn’t think so, if you knew what I’d paid for insurance.”
“That’s not all it is,” Mosley said.
“Well—do you mind if I pop down for a pee? I’m breaking my neck for one.”
Mosley waited meekly at the top of the urinal steps.
“Now, sir, I would prefer you to accompany me to the Bradburn police station.” And he muttered something else that was not properly audible.
“If you insist. But I shall stand on my rights. I would regard it as illegal detention to be taken to Bradburn police station, or anywhere else, without being shown good cause. Have you a warrant? Do you propose charging me with an offence?”
“I shall be charging you, sir.”
“With what?”
“Look, sir, I don’t think we ought to talk here. We are beginning to attract a crowd.”
Not more than eight people, five of them children, were now standing watching. Other members of Teagle’s team had got out of their vehicles and were making for the public lavatories. Mosley appeared to ignore them; he did
however take note that Lottie Pearson did not seem to be one of the passengers.
Mosley conducted Teagle across Bradburn on foot. The Bradburn police headquarters was not one of those airy showpieces with thermoplastic floor-tiles and pot plants in slatted holders. It was a bizarrely overcrowded Victorian hulk and had once been adequate for an inspector, a sergeant, and the very few constables who were not out getting wet and cold on the streets. Mosley poked his head into one dusty room after another before finding a kind of enlarged cupboard in which they could talk.
“I am anxious to help you, Inspector. I have nothing to gain by breaking the law, or by being suspected of so doing. I will give you an honest answer to anything you want to know.”
There was, it seemed, no qualification to his desire to co-operate, yet there was a certain nerviness about Teagle. It might have been the brittleness of a man who had something on his mind, and who hoped that this policeman was not working round to the same subject.
Mosley lowered his head in what might have been a kind of humility. Or it could have been congenital imbecility.
“Mrs. Pearson?” he asked.
“Mrs. Pearson?”
The name appeared to mean nothing to Teagle. But then he remembered.
“Oh, you mean Lottie?” He smiled, as if at some whimisical reminiscence.
“Have you brought her with you?”
“Brought her with me? Inspector—why on earth should I have brought her with me?”
“I’d like to know what contact you’ve had with her since you left your last location; or, indeed, since you left this location.”
“What contact do you expect me to have had, for God’s sake? Inspector—what do you think I am? And what is the purpose of this interview?”
Mosley simply sat looking at him.
“Inspector—I have halted in Bradburn so that my colleagues can answer calls of nature. Also, in case there were laggards, so that we could stay close together along the difficult road up to Hadley Dale. We have a unique animal aboard, and I want to get it settled into its quarters. Now—if we could dispose of what business you have with me—”
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