He saw her the evening after the wake, standing in that back field, leaning against the bit of ruined wall and looking carefully the other way pretending, he fancied, to watch the flock of caddie crows rising from where Hanson’s men had been ploughing the top field that afternoon.
‘Eat up, Ethan,’ his mam told him. ‘You’ll be clemmed after the day you’ve had and no sleep the last night.’
‘I’m OK, Mam. In fact, I think I’ll take a walk before I get to bed.’
‘A walk? You haven’t done enough walking today? You’ve been on your feet since Lord knows when.’
‘I’m not that tired. Not that hungry neither.’ He pushed his plate over to where his younger brother and little sister stood, waiting for their turn at the table. He and his dad were the workers in the house, fed first while the rest of the family, his mother included, waited for whatever was left. Ned, his brother, dived on the plate, stuffing the scraps into his mouth even before Ethan stood up. Ethan frowned. When he had gone away from home, in fact, through most of his childhood, the family had abandoned the old pecking order and sat together at table, but he’d come back to find the old ways reinstated and not just in his father’s house. It was a sign of poverty returning, though his mam managed to keep the pot filled somehow and even now she was ladling more on to Ethan’s abandoned plate and handing the young ones bread to mop up the gravy.
Ethan ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to tidy it. Too long, his dad said. He tucked in his shirt, trying to neaten himself up. Ethan frowned. ‘Do you still have the button tin, Mam? I lost one somewhere. I meant to ask before.’
‘Of course I do. Leave the shirt out and I’ll find the closest match I can,’ she promised him. ‘And I’ll tighten the others too. You don’t want to go losing more.’
‘And if you see any rabbits on your walk, bring us a couple back,’ his dad said.
‘I’ll do that,’ Ethan promised. He took the heavy walking stick his dad kept in the corner by the door. The field behind the house was one big warren if you moved quietly; it was easy enough to kill a rabbit with the stick. Rabbits and whatever the garden provided were the staples that went into the pot, together with the tares and field beans his mother kept dried in old glass jars stacked in the pantry. The farm workers supplemented their own feed by filching locust beans and linseed cake meant for the cattle, slipping the odd fragment into their pockets to give the kids. Dar believed that it was good for them and the locust beans were sweet.
Ethan glanced back from the doorway, watching his siblings fight over what was left of the rough bread. ‘Mam, don’t forget to feed yourself,’ he said.
Ethan skirted the row of cottages and hauled himself over the wooden fence that separated the gardens from the field. Would she still be there? he wondered. The sky was a clear dark blue, the night threatening but not yet fully arrived. A few more weeks and they’d still be working this late of an evening, though Ethan loved the harvest for all that it was exhausting work, and this year it promised to be a good one. The men would get paid then, their rate depending on what the grain made when it went to market and what cattle Hanson decided to let go rather than feed through winter. Too good a harvest and the price would drop. Too poor a harvest and there would be too little left for domestic use. Too low a price and the wages agreed with the men back in February might not be met; there would be no bonus if the price was high. The owner of the land took care to get his profits first – even a good man like Elijah Hanson.
Ethan himself had made no arrangement with his boss. He’d returned and been taken on because of his dad and Elijah Hanson would be the one to profit from his labour this summer, if there were any profit to be had. Ethan would get his food and board at home and be given breakfast each morning at the farm. If Hanson was pleased with his work there’d be money agreed after the harvest was gone. As an unmarried man with no dependents, Ethan had expected nothing more. The old ways had largely died out elsewhere and many workers in the district – those who had work, and work was painfully scarce – started to have their pay calculated weekly or monthly, though as far as Ethan could tell they were no better off for it.
Ethan could have signed on, of course, but the dole would give him nothing. They might even have means tested his family so they’d have lost the little bit of stuff they had. Then they’d have given Ethan his daily ticket and sent him off to wherever. Twelve miles away, twenty, it didn’t matter. If the dole found you work and you didn’t go you got nothing, and if your excuse was that it was twenty miles of walking before you even started and another twenty back they’d just tell you to start out sooner. Ethan would rather go back shipboard than deal with any of that, so when Hanson’s offer had been made he’d taken it gratefully.
Once in the field, Ethan paused for a moment to work out the best way of approaching the place where Helen stood. Silently, he circled round, looping up into the field towards the ruins so that he’d come upon her, if she was still waiting, without her seeing.
He caught his breath. Helen Lee still stood beside the broken wall, her gaze still fastened on the now-vanished caddy crows and the fading light of the upper field.
‘Waiting for someone?’
To his immense satisfaction, he saw her jump.
‘Who would I be waiting for?’ She smiled at him, recovering quickly from her shock.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Your dancing partner maybe?’
‘There’s no music to dance to.’ She shifted uneasily and glanced around her. ‘I was about to go, anyway.’
‘Why? You scared of the castle ghosts?’
She wriggled her shoulders irritably. ‘Why should I be scared of ghosts? The vicar says there’s no such thing.’
‘And he’s a wise man, Mr Newell – we all know that.’
She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know – I’m chapel meself. I don’t go into the church.’
‘Ah, and what does the minister say about the castle ghosts?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever discussed it with him.’
Ethan had moved towards her, almost as close as he had when she had danced with him the night before. She put out a hand to stop him, her palm flat against his chest. Ethan felt as though his heart might stop.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you ain’t afraid of no ghosts. Ain’t afraid to be here alone.’
‘I’m not alone now, am I?’ The palm against his chest trembled slightly.
Ethan gently covered her hand with his own then, as gently, he moved the hand aside, stepping inside her boundary.
‘Ethan. I told you, no closer.’
‘I didn’t hear you say nothing?’
‘I didn’t say, I …’ She stepped away from him, her back now against the old bricks of the castle wall. Her eyes were bright in a face made pale by the twilight, eyes that half laughed but displayed just a little fear. ‘You going to give me my hand back?’ she asked him and now her voice trembled too.
‘I might.’ He had followed her backward step, moving once again within the boundary she had set. He could feel the heat coming off her body, see the rise and fall of her breasts, more rapid now with her growing excitement and nervousness. He released his grip on her hand but only lightly, just enough to allow him to slide his own palm over hers and then on to her wrist and the slender swelling of her forearm. She was wearing an old blue cardigan over her dress. Carefully, he slid two fingers beneath the welt of the cuff, circled her arm with his hand and slid the fabric back, relishing the soft skin along its inner side. Then he slid his other arm around her waist, the back of his hand grazing against the wall before he eased her forward, away from the coarse bricks and closer to him.
Closer now than when they danced. He held her tightly, though after the first moments she didn’t struggle. Instead, she raised her face expectantly towards his, not smiling now but her full lips slightly parted, the tip of her tongue moistening them nervously.
Ethan bent his head and kissed Helen Lee.
EIGHT
His hammering on the door had attracted attention. A neighbouring window opened and a woman shouted down.
‘George, George, that you? Yer woman’s gone, George, moved out just after you went off. Landlord said he didn’t want … Well, you know. We all warned her George, told her …’
George’s shoulders sagged. ‘For God’s sake, Mary,’ he muttered quietly, despairingly. ‘Where did they go? Did she say where they were going?’
‘Sorry, George, but she never told me.’
The window closed, the light went out and George was left standing in the darkness. The euphoria that had carried him through the long day of travelling and walking now dissipated. He knew what the neighbour was saying, why Mary and Ruby had been turned out of yet another home. Landlords didn’t like that kind of thing – women carrying on when their men were away – and Mary wasn’t always subtle about it. But she’d promised him, last time he was home, that this would be the end of it. And he’d believed her, hadn’t he? He’d certainly wanted to but maybe that was just stupidity on his part. They all told him, friends he discarded because they told him, family that had been trying to look out for him, they said, by telling him she was no better than she ought to be, but he’d ignored them all because, God help him, he loved her. Loved her, loved Ruby, with an intensity he’d never felt for anyone else, even knowing what she was and that she would never change whatever she told him, whatever he chose to believe.
George turned away back into the street. In the morning he’d start knocking on doors – someone would know where she was – but in the meantime he was going to have that drink. He wished now he’d gone off with his shipmates, got himself blind drunk and come rolling home the following day like most of them would have done. She would have deserved that, carrying on while he was away again. Slow anger burned inside of him, setting a fire in his hungry belly and reminding him that it was hours since he’d eaten because he’d not wanted to spend any more of his hard-earned money – he’d wanted to wait until he reached home and a good meal and a good woman.
More fool him, George thought. More bloody fool him.
NINE
It was only a short walk along Eastgate from the train station to the police station and Henry and Mickey had arrived with the early train. There were only three people on duty in the police station when Mickey and Henry arrived in Louth – the desk sergeant and a couple of constables. The man who had sent for them would not, it seemed, be available until much later in the morning. Henry Johnstone remained behind to try and get their informant on the telephone and sent Sergeant Hitchens on ahead. He followed about fifteen minutes later.
They had left their personal luggage in the care of the desk sergeant with instructions that it should be sent on to the King’s Head Hotel and Henry now followed his directions to the crime scene some ten minutes’ walk away, back down Eastgate and past the station and Holy Trinity Church, then towards the canal and the oddly named Ticklepenny walk. It was still early, the town just waking and stretching. The scent of fresh bread drifted across from somewhere, reminding him that they had not eaten that morning but instead left the hotel in Lincoln and come to the small market town as early as possible. He should be feeling hungry, Henry thought.
The street they had been directed to was on the outskirts of town, a small terraced row on one side of the street and a shorter row including two shops on the other, one shop on the corner and one next to the crime-scene house. This establishment was empty but they’d been told that refurbishment was taking place in readiness for an extension. The existing shop was separated from a narrow house by a partly broken wall and double gates that led into the yard. He spotted Sergeant Hitchens standing with a group of people Henry assumed must be neighbours. Mickey Hitchens spotted him and came across the road.
‘That’s the house the dead woman and child lived in.’ Sergeant Hitchens nodded at it. ‘And that’s the yard they were found in.’ A police constable stood on guard outside the yard gates and another, looking very young and uncomfortable, next to the house.
Detective Inspector Johnstone introduced himself and one of the gates was opened just enough to let them through.
There were three bodies. A man, a woman and a child, all laid out in separate but shallow graves. When he had sent word that they were to be left alone and undisturbed until he arrived, it had taken some arguments and some harsh words on his part to get the agreement of the local police. It was disrespectful, he was told. It was unkind.
It was necessary, Johnstone had insisted. He needed to see the bodies just as they’d been buried. View the scene as it had been found.
Eventually he had got his way and it was agreed that the bodies would be left in situ.
Overnight, the uncovered graves had been draped with tarpaulins and these weighted down with bricks from the half-demolished wall that surrounded the grave site. After midnight it had rained heavily and the backyard, now almost devoid of flagstones and cobbles, was a rough landscape of churned earth and slimy clay.
The workmen who had originally uncovered the bodies and who had now pulled the sodden tarpaulin aside stood warily next to the broken wall.
‘It ain’t right,’ one of them muttered, ‘leaving them in the ground like this.’
Johnstone glanced his way then moved carefully across the mud and crouched down beside the smallest of the bodies. Beyond the broken wall a small crowd had gathered. The two police constables kept them at bay but the bus stop directly across the road provided a legitimate rallying point for the curious. Johnstone wondered how many would actually get on the bus when it arrived. Walking up from the station he had noticed that the buses here in Louth were still emblazoned with the cipher Silver Queen even though the company had become part of the Lincolnshire Road Car company the year before and they were now liveried in green. He liked the idea of a fleet of silver queens. Road Cars sounded bland in comparison, though from what he had seen of the area the practicality of the new name would suit better. Louth, he had decided, was peopled with the solid and honest, but it was not an imaginative place.
Sergeant Hitchens crouched beside him. ‘The neighbours say the kiddie that lived here was seven,’ he said. ‘Looks about right. Her name was Ruby Fields.’
Johnstone nodded. Fair hair lay in a muddied and sodden mass. Her features had all but gone, the shallow grave being no protection from the rats, and Henry could tell that the tarpaulin covering the bodies had been even less protection overnight, remembering the notes he had made in his commonplace book. That real crime scenes were rarely as predictable as Megrun’s example. The flesh left on the limbs was mottled and grey beneath the coating of clay. She had, he noted, been dressed for bed. Her arms lay at her sides.
Hitchens picked up a bit of stick and scraped some of the earth away from the child’s neck. Her head was turned to the right. ‘I’m guessing at a broken neck,’ he said. ‘Angle the head’s at is all wrong. And there’s what looks like a depressed fracture just behind the temple.’
�
��The neck injury could have happened after she was put in the ground,’ Johnstone cautioned. ‘She looks to have been crammed into the grave. Whoever dug this was in a hurry.’ He stood up and turned his attention to the other two buried beside the child. The smell of decay was already present but it was not yet particularly rank or foul. He had smelt worse and was reminded always of his army days. He was grateful that the June day was unusually chilly and damp. The woman was fully clothed in a blue dress and a lightweight cardigan. Her dress had a lace collar and a brooch had been pinned, front and centre, where the lobes of the collar met. Her hair was still carefully pinned at the temples and Henry could imagine the tight waves, held in place, neat and delicate. She had made an effort with her appearance, had wanted to look nice … for whoever had killed her. ‘No stockings,’ Johnstone noted, ‘and her feet are bare.’
‘Neighbours reckon it’s Mary Fields,’ Hitchens said. ‘They got a look at her yesterday when the workmen found them. She’s still recognizable if you knew her, I suppose.’
‘No wedding ring.’
‘Might be in the grave. Might have fallen off.’
‘And the man. What do the helpful neighbours say about him?’
‘That he’s not her husband,’ Hitchens said flatly. ‘They don’t know who he might be but she was a lady with, shall we say, a bit of a reputation and a husband who was working on the boats for weeks at a time. So, plenty of opportunity for playing away. That’s what the gossip says.’
Johnstone nodded. The man was lying face down and his hands had been pulled back as though they’d been tied behind him, though there was no ligature present that Johnstone could see. ‘And, not seeing his face,’ he enquired, ‘how do the neighbours come to the conclusion that he isn’t the husband?’
The Murder Book Page 3