Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  First it had been Graham and his beloved Norton. Then it had been Jennifer. But both, mercifully, had known little if anything.

  George Hennessey sat on the chair on the patio of the rear of his house in Easingwold. He had returned home and let himself in the large four-bedroom detached house on Thirsk Road to be greeted by a tail wagging, barking with joy—Oscar, his brown mongrel, and "best pal".

  He had taken Oscar for a walk and had then returned, whereupon he prepared meals for both he and Oscar. He had then been lured out to the rear of the house by a scarlet sunset, which seemed to cover the entire north western quadrant of the sky. Though lure, he thought, was not quite the right word because each day, no matter what the season, no matter what the weather, if he was at home and not laid up ill, he had always gone into the rear garden and said "hello" to Jennifer whom no woman, he felt, could replace.

  The house had been their first mortgage, they had been mortgaged up to the hilt, really beyond their means, but they had moved in and been oh so deliriously happy and content and fulfilled. But their garden, Jennifer had felt, had been dull, just a small square lawn to the front of the house and a large, nay vast, flat lawn to the rear. And so Jennifer, whom Hennessey recalled, knew only how to grow and nurture living things, had, when she was heavily pregnant with their first child, sat down one day, pen and paper in hand and had re-designed their garden.

  The front lawn needed to be bordered by a low privet she thought, and the rear lawn had to be divided widthways at the middle by a high privet with a gate set in the middle of the it. The final ten feet of the garden had to be left as waste land but with a pond dug for natural amphibia to colonise. Trees, too, would have to be planted to break up the flat skyline of the Vale within which the house and neighbouring houses seemed to be lost. She had once read that settlers on the prairies of the United States would plant trees so as to break up the monotony of the landscape and had said to a young George Hennessey, "that I can understand". And that year, Hennessey had been set to planting privet and building gates, and digging a pond in the part of the garden Jennifer referred to as "the going forth", having read Bacon's essay, "Of Gardens". Though their garden had been, and still was, less than Bacon's requisite minimum of thirty acres, it was still large enough to keep Hennessey trim and muscular.

  Then, just when all was going well, all was going swimmingly, all could not be improved—it was he and her and by then Charles, three months old—Jennifer had died. She had been walking in the centre of Easingwold, carrying shopping bags on a hot day when her legs, it was reported, just seemed to buckle. Suspecting an incident of fainting, folk had gone to her aid, quickly, eager to help without a sense of a tragedy unfolding, but there was no pulse to be found. She was pronounced dead on arrival at York City Hospital and the inquest concurred with the medical diagnosis of Sudden Death Syndrome, which Hennessey felt said more about medical ignorance than it said about medical knowledge, like "ague" which become known as "malaria", eventually. And so, he felt that until medical knowledge advanced to the point that the medics could explain why life should suddenly, and without warning, leave a young person in the prime of life and in the fullest of health, humanity just had to live with Sudden Death Syndrome.

  Her ashes were scattered on her beloved garden and each day, in whatever weather, if he was at home, he went into the garden and said "hello" to her. Sometimes he was there but briefly, sometimes, when troubled, he spoke to her at length. Latterly he had spent some time in the garden telling her about Louise, telling her that his feelings for had not diminished at all, not at all, that he had cherished her memory in the intervening thirty years, and still cherished it, but that both Louise and he needed companionship of a romantic nature, that Louise's children had accepted and welcomed him, that Louise knew about her. All of that he explained and hoped that she understood. And when he had told the garden about Louise he had felt a sudden rush of warmth and a strong and very benevolent presence as of someone who wanted only to nurture living things.

  Both had been young. Graham had been just twenty-two years old, and Hennessey recalled laying in bed listening to his older brother start up his motorcycle and roar away on it. Lying there, straining his ears to catch every last fading decibel as Graham had driven down Trafalgar Road towards the Maritime Museum and the Naval College, until finally the sound was swallowed by the sound of other traffic and ships' foghorns and a drunk with an Irish accent walking up Colombo Street beneath his window chanting his "Hail Mary's" very, very loudly. And later that same night a knock at the door, murmured voices and his mother's wailing and his father fighting back the tears as he told him that Graham had ridden his motorcycle to heaven because he wanted to get there ahead of us to save a place for us.

  Then just twenty years later a uniformed officer had knocked on his door looking solemn and awkward and he knew then how his parents had felt, or perhaps he didn't, perhaps losing a partner can never be like losing a child, despite the emotion involved.

  Jennifer had been twenty-three, one year of life more than Graham had had, and both had died in the summer. That had always seemed wrong somehow, he felt it was, well, just wrong, for a reason that he couldn't put his finger on. He had attended funerals and he had attended weddings and it had been his long-held observance that just as summer adds to a wedding, so winter adds to a funeral; the Minister saying "ashes to ashes" amid a snow flurry at his father's funeral had seemed so perfect. Yet Graham had been laid to rest amid lush grass, blue skies, and fluttering butterflies. It hadn't seemed right, it hadn't seemed right at all. It had been a day for Graham to take him for a spin on the Norton, a day for he and Jen to walk in the woods, arms round each other. Not a day for them to be put in a hole in the ground, or scattered, twenty years apart, but both had managed to leave a larger hole behind them than the hole they had filled, or could have filled, when they died and that, he felt, was how any person is measured upon their death. It's not the size of the hole they fill, it's the size of the hole they leave behind them. And there were other similarities, both the deaths had been so untimely that clerics had talked about "testing your faith" and "bringing you closer to God", they had both been those sorts of death.

  George Hennessey sat on the patio looking at the garden under a red sky. First there had been Graham and then there had been Jennifer. The evening began to grow cool and so he decided to go inside and read more about the Napoleonic war for an hour or two, or until he felt ready for his bed and a good, nourishing sleep. Hennessey stood and smiled at the lawn, and the trees, and the privet, and the pond "going forth" and said "Goodnight, Jennifer, goodnight."

  Five

  In which Hennessey visits two women who are married and are not married, and the gracious reader learns more of the Chief Inspector's private life.

  Hennessey thought it totally unnecessary for him to stand in front of the commander's desk, but the commander liked it that way and so he, the commander, got what he wanted. "Dapper", thought Hennessey, was the word that the great majority of people would use to describe Commander Sharkey. He was small for a police officer, dark suit, pencil-line moustache, piercing blue eyes. He had come to York City Police via a commission in the British Army and a period in the Royal Hong Kong Police, framed photographs of men in uniform on the wall behind him said so. He was a man, younger than Hennessey, who believed that there was a place for everything and that everything must remain in its place. And that included George Hennessey who stood, as expected, dead centre in front of the commander's desk. It was the Wednesday morning, the beginning of the third full working day of the inquiry and Commander Sharkey required "apprising".

  "It seems the deceased was a blackmailer, sir." Hennessey spoke calmly, comforted by his cynicism about the Commander's "game", as he saw it. "Not a pleasant fellow, one earlier attempt on his life resulted in the death of his first wife some eight years ago. It was probably prompted by that that he sold his house, which was within the walls apparently, and bought, or rather b
uilt, out at Strensall."

  "A nice village."

  "Yes, it is," Hennessey replied. "We're getting to know the place.

  "Anyway, the deceased moved out there and was very security conscious: gravel drive, dogs, good expanse of lawn between the road and the house, rose bushes, high fencing, a frightened man or so it would seem."

  "If he's blackmailing people he would be. You know if you're being blackmailed about something and you can't go to the police, there's only one of two things you can do, which is either pay up or bump the fellow off."

  "Agreed, and in fact Ossler had learned his lesson about making sure that his victim couldn't go to the police. He apparently turned the screws on a Scoutmaster once but he'd misinterpreted some photographs. Apparently, the Scoutmaster and his boys went skinny dipping one very hot summer but it was nothing more than that. Ossler clearly saw it as evidence of paedophile activity. The Scoutmaster went to the police and Ossler collected five years, served three."

  "And came out having learned a valuable lesson about the blackmail trade." Sharkey sniffed and glanced out of his window: tourists walking medieval walls beneath a cloudless blue sky.

  "Clearly, sir. Also he probably learned not to ask for more than the victim could afford. The Scoutmaster told me that if Ossler had asked for an affordable sum, he might have paid it."

  "Understandable, even if it would have been a mistake."

  "As you say, sir."

  "So, despite the security measures, someone shot Ossler in his own home. Someone who could get past the dogs. That might narrow the field considerably."

  "It might, sir, but it's best not to be blinkered about things. You can get past dogs if you spend time getting to know them and Ossler let his dogs have the run of the garden, so I'm keeping an open mind about that one. The people who the dogs knew—the present Mrs Ossler, the cleaning lady, who found the body, and the secretary—all have cast-iron alibis for the Sunday evening after eleven thirty p.m. We've been able to narrow the time of death down to a two-hour time window."

  "I see. Other suspects?"

  "Two, sir. Two men whom Ossler had information about, one of whom appears to be a bigamist and the other appears to have a very good job on the basis of a degree he doesn't possess. Neither of whom can go to the police and one of whom has access to firearms."

  "Two days and some good progress already."

  "I'd like to think so, sir. If nothing else, we've caught a bigamist and someone who's been obtaining money by deception. Help our clear-up rate if nothing else, as I said to Sergeant Yellich."

  "Good. You'll keep me informed?"

  "Of course."

  Sharkey leaned to one side and opened a drawer in his desk. "I brought this for you to have a look at." He handed Hennessey a book. "I was rummaging through my boxes the other day and came across it. An out-of-print, a very out-of-print eye-witness account of the battle of Gettysburg from the Confederate point of view."

  "Well…" Hennessey gripped the book. "Thank you."

  "It's a loan, of course."

  "Oh, of course, of course."

  "The author claims to have survived Pickett's charge…as you'll read. But I chanced upon it and knew your interest in military history. I thought it would be well up your street."

  "Thank you indeed, sir. I'll read it with interest. I'm back at Waterloo at the moment, a French account, in translation, but I'll put it on one side for this…"

  "About a week? All right?"

  "Be long enough, sir."

  Hennessey walked down the corridor clutching the dusty, slim volume and returned to his office. The sudden and totally unexpected display of warmth from the usually ice-cold Commander had touched him deeply.

  "It was his idea. And it seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does really. I heard he'd been shot on the TV news, 'Look North'. I don't watch ITV on account of the fact that I like the BBC and I thought, well, there goes my package holiday. I was going to Spain. I always go to Spain in November. It's not too hot then." Liz Humby was a large-boned woman, a little overweight, puffy about the face, with the sort of hair that a hairdresser would have difficulty doing something with. It was pale coloured, almost grey, and hung on her head like a mop. She sat in the chair in the front room of her small council house in Clemanthorpe with her arms hanging limply by her side. She spoke a flat monotone and seemed uninterested in the half-dozen flies buzzing about the shade the room provided from the heat and the light of the June day outside. The curtains, being half shut, exacerbated the gloom. Hennessey rapidly formed the opinion that the woman was living a small life and was shutting herself away even from that. He put her age as being about forty, about the same age as her husband, the slippery Major Hargrave, presently a member of the Yorkshire squirearchy and living a very well set existence.

  "How long has it been going on?"

  "About three years. I like Spain. I like Benidorm. I go a lot."

  "So I see." Hennessey cast his eye about the room; drab, spartan, unclean, untidy, but "lifted" here and there by a coaster or a framed photograph or an ornamental dagger, all of which had "Benidorm" printed on them.

  "How did it start?"

  "Ossler, he came knocking on my door so he did, right out of the blue. First time I'd met him and he didn't beat about the bush, he didn't beat about the bush at all didn't Ossler, no…anyway, tells me my husband was alive."

  "You believed your husband to be deceased?"

  "Dead, you mean? Well he disappeared didn't he? Walked out one day and didn't come back. There was no row nor nothing, he just went, didn't he? Left everything, birth certificate, passport, driving licence…police thought I'd done him in…searched the house and had dogs sniffing about the garden. I mean, the neighbours…"

  "That's just routine," Hennessey said, reassuringly as he saw Mrs Humby as being a little personality inside a very large body and as a woman he too would find some difficulty in living with, not doubting that eventually he too would probably have walked out of her life.

  "I just thought he was dead…after a while he didn't come back, I thought he was dead, murdered even. I mean there was no arguing…I always did what he wanted, my mother said that. She said marriage is like riding a horse, one has to sit in front holding the reins and the other's got to ride behind holding on as best she can. So I always sat behind and let him do the steering and that was what my mother said to do, so there's no reason for him to leave me. So I thought he'd been murdered or had an accident and his body lying somewhere, even after all these years, oh yes."

  "And that does happen as well," Hennessey said and paused as an ice-cream van drove down the street, its bells loudly chiming 'Greensleeves' and making all conversation impossible.

  "Twice a day he comes," Liz Humby said, speaking as if hypnotised, staring straight ahead. "Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This is the morning one."

  "Yes," said Hennessey but managed to refrain from saying anything more caustic. Apart from his own self-respect which he wished to retain, he did after all want this dull woman's interesting information.

  "But he wasn't dead, no he wasn't. I never knew what happened to him but Ossler, he came to my door and tells me I'm not a widow woman after all. Yes he did. Didn't like him much."

  "Ossler?"

  "My husband. Wasn't sorry he'd gone. Mind, now you mention it, I didn't like Ossler much either. Sort of creepy, slimy, slippery…no, didn't like him either. But Ossler tells me my husband isn't dead, tells me he's married, married a wealthy widow woman and lives in a grand house. Oh yes, a grand house. Showed me a photo."

  "Of your husband?"

  "No. I got plenty of them. No, of the house. Grand house. Ossler said my husband had done some work for him, putting up a fence or some such, he was a jobbing odd job man was my husband. That was when my husband was here, before he'd disappeared. That's how Ossler knew this address. Anyway, after my husband had been gone a year or two Ossler came to my door. My husband's alive, he said, and
married to a wealthy woman called Hargraves…I think that's what he said. That meant he was a bigamist, that meant, oh yes. Me, I was all for going to the police but Ossler said 'no'. Ossler said we should blackmail him."

  "Mrs Humby, I have to advise you that you may be about to incriminate yourself."

  "I could get into trouble, I know that." Liz Humby continued to sit still, hands lightly by her side, eyes fixed on a point about three feet from her face. "But it doesn't matter. Ossler said he can't go to the police. Ossler said that the police can only act on a complaint. Ossler said that even if the police knew we was blackmailing him, they couldn't do anything unless he made a complaint, Ossler said."

  "You're still admitting it…"

  "Ossler said you have to find folk who can't go to the police, then the pennies just start to drop out of the sky." She continued to speak as though Hennessey's words hadn't reached her. "Except it was more than pennies."

  "It was pounds?"

  "Oh yes. Benidorm every year. In the autumn, cooler then. See, my husband had got involved with the cadet force as well as married to a wealthy woman. He'd lose everything."

  "The army is important to your husband I take it?"

  "Best years of his life, but he wasn't a regular soldier, he was in the Territorials. Put in a lot of time, more than just the weekends and one night a week. It was all he had. Then he left, resigned over a dispute, regretted it but they wouldn't let him back in. If he tells you he was in the regular army and resigned because he didn't make staff college, he's telling the lie he tells anyone who'll listen. He lived with me in this house, he earned money by jobbing but each weekend and one evening a week and whenever else he could, he was a major in the British Army. Never took me to any of the parties they had in the officers' mess though. He never did that. Never could understand that because I always rode behind like my mother said I had to do. Anyway, I left it all to Ossler and each month I'd get a brown envelope in the post, just money, nothing else. I live on benefit and that doubled my income. It meant…"